I had been slightly resigned to something similar to what happened with the Varden after my victory over Pyrrah and her team. Obviously not to the same extent, since demolishing a good part of an army by myself was vastly different than beating a teenage girl – no matter how good of a fighter she was. But to my pleasant surprise, most of the school seemed indifferent about it.
I was a member of Beacon's staff, even if I was just an assistant, of course I was going to be good. If a bunch of first year students could come in and beat me right away then what was the point of classes at all?
Similarly, Pyrrah's own reputation hadn't changed much to the girl's quiet frustration. At best I'd overheard a few students commenting that the redhead would win before the end of the year. At worst…I'd heard a few fans of hers say that Pyrrah only lost because her team was dragging her down.
Not exactly the mindset the teachers were trying to promote but good luck getting them to stop when it came to defending their personal celebrity crush from any slights to their image.
But Pyrrah's popularity issues were small issues in the end and classes continued to run smoothly as we started rotating through every team in class, addressing any issues we discovered as they came.
Most of the obvious ones continued to be around teamwork and group tactics, things that needed time and practice to really do anything about, or some of the students' individual fighting styles falling apart when faced with a more skilled opponent. One particularly bad example was a student that preferred to throw their weapon into the air like a color guard's baton and combo into it to create some interesting attack angles from above…and utterly failed to adapt when I either knocked the weapon away with an attack of my own or simply moved far enough out of the way and they were forced to stand there awkwardly until the weapon fell back down.
They weren't the only example of issues like that, but they were the worst.
"It sounds like you've had your share of troubles." Leona commiserated as I finished complaining about this world's culture of promoting individual fighting styles…even to a rather stupid degree. "I can understand your frustration though. A lot of the students seem to enjoy coming up with the most impractical and inefficient method of fighting they can and then have the nerve to be surprised to end up in the infirmary when they mess up."
I frowned because while we did send a few students her way almost daily, she never mentioned anyone with serious injuries before. "Did something happen?"
She sighed and rubbed at her eyes. "No, not really. I'm just tired of constantly digging out Dust slivers from people coming from Professor Peach's class. I'm learning a lot from Dr. Tsune, but ever since I made the mistake of using my 'Semblance' to do so she's had me handle every case that comes through the door."
"Ah."
One of the things I had been teaching Leona along with everything a person going from a medieval fantasy world to a modern one would need to know was how to properly speak the Ancient Language from her homeworld. Considering I had been given practically unlimited access to several libraries thanks to Arya and how trivial it was to create a mystic code that could record images, I had effectively digitized a good portion of Ellesméra's written works before I had left.
And while I couldn't write in the Ancient Language without consciously learning it, my omniglot ability meant I could read it just fine and translate certain things for Leona while she was learning.
All that together meant Leona was free to expand her magical repertoire without mentally exhausting herself trying to make connections with the limited vocabulary she had previously or relying purely on mystic codes.
Of course that only applied to things the elves actually discovered words for and I sincerely doubted the proper name for Dust was one of them.
Leona would have no issue using a more vague spell on any slivers she needed to remove, but she would have to seriously focus on each one and maybe the type while removing them which would eventually be very mentally taxing. No wonder she was tired.
Although…
"Would you like me to add a mystic code to your device that handles that for you? It wouldn't take long."
I'd just need something that could identify crystalline objects and gently extract them with a telekinetic vector. I'd already made something similar for handling splintered wood fragments from arrows that was more brute force than what I planned for this one. I could actually repurpose most of the design for that one considering wooden arrows would be a lot more rare going forward.
With how quickly her device ended up in my hands and the look on her face, it was safe to say the answer to my question was a resounding 'yes'.
"Alright, then let's find something I can use as a workbench and I'll get that taken care of."
-o-
I sighed as I avoided looking directly at the pair of sparkly silver eyes aimed my way from across the bench with the guts of Leona's device laid out on top of it.
Honestly though? I should have expected a moment like this to happen eventually.
"Hello team RWBY, did you want to watch while I finished fixing up Leona's weapon? If not, I'll be do–"
"CAN WE?!" Ruby rather enthusiastically shouted before she was restrained by her partner Weiss.
"What our team leader meant to say, was that we'd be honored to observe if you're sure we won't be a bother, Professor Cross."
Both Leona and I chuckled at the whitehaired girl's serious tone.
"We're outside of class right now, Ms Schnee, you can just call me Alex or Ms Cross if you insist on being formal." I said. "Besides, I'm not actually a professor anyways."
"Cool, so what are you doing then? This looks like a lot of stuff for a spear." Yang asked curiously.
"Wanna take a guess?" I asked instead.
"Oh, oh! This whole design is meant to deploy in different configurations, right? There aren't any obvious similarities between the parts so a spear would have to break and shit apart to move whatever the pieces around without being awkward to use. Are you checking for wear on the tolerance points? Or maybe strengthening some of the internal components? A spear is also a good base for longer range precision modes, so maybe adding in some kind of sniper rifle mode? But I don't see any signs of a gun barrel or sight system so maybe not…" Ruby began to ramble mostly to herself. At least until one of her team gave her a tiny nudge to break her out of her monologue.
Ruby smiled sheepishly as she realised she had gotten so caught up in her speculations she hadn't given me or Leona an opportunity to talk.
"Good observations, you were closer than I would have figured." I complimented, "When I made Leona's weapon-" "Triage," My apprentice added in, and I made a mental note of the name. Fitting considering its primary utility. "-I included the ability to add modules that directly interface with her aura and Semblance, allowing her to perform some of the more repetitive things she uses it for automatically. What I'm doing now is adding in one that will help her with Dust crystal splinter extraction since she's gotten so many cases of those lately."
I thought that simple explanation would be the end of things, but I realised I might have messed up when I saw the looks on team RWBY's faces.
"That's impossible. Automatic Semblance and Aura use through a machine? Atlas has been trying to create a working prototype of that kind of technology for years and you expect us to believe you managed to create it?!" Weiss shrieked and pointed an accusing finger at me.
"And that you got it small enough to fit on a personal weapon despite no one hearing about it?" Blake added, looking both suspicious and doubtful.
"Well, there's a reason I'm a staff member at Beacon and it isn't just my teaching skills." I deflected weakly. I was going to have to do some research into exactly how groundbreaking my magitech device was. Because in my excitement to finally get a few working prototypes created, I had forgotten the only other two machines I knew of that could use aura - not monitor it like several other devices, but actually use it - were the life support machine used to keep the Fall Maiden alive after she was ambushed and Penny, an android built by Atlas meant to replace Huntsmen.
Both examples were obviously kept secret from the general public so as far as team RWBY was concerned, my device was the only working example of that kind of technology in the world.
"Is it that big a deal?" Yang asked after seeing how her other two teammates reacted.
"A big de– YES!" Weiss gestured angrily. "Companies have spent millions trying to build stuff like that!"
"Yikes! Alright, no need to shout about it!"
Or maybe I could just let Weiss rant and she would tell me everything I needed to know.
I huffed in amusement at the thought, but I wanted to move on from this topic.
"We can talk more about it when I have more time, but I do need to get Triage back in one piece and tested out before tomorrow. So I'm going to have to ask for no questions right now." I said before starting to quickly reassemble Leona's device.
"While she's doing that, do you girls mind helping me set up for the test?" Leona asked.
"Sure! What kind of test? How can we help?!" Ruby eagerly volunteered. I guess the thought of seeing some kind of new tech in use was more important to her than how it existed in the first place.
"We need to set off a few Dust crystal explosions and get a bunch of shards into the test dummy over there." My apprentice indicated a mannequin that had been covered in a flesh analogue. "As for what kind of test, I told Lady Alexandria how removing Dust shards from students was becoming mentally taxing on me and she offered to modify Triage to handle extracting them for me."
"Wait, like the little splintery stuff? We're supposed to get that removed!? I thought it just went away on its own! I'm not going to get sick or something from that, will I?!"
"Will you calm down already!?" Weiss snapped. "Small amounts of Dust are naturally broken down by the body. It's only larger fragments or long exposure with multiple of Dust that can cause health issues. You're fine."
The heiress turned to Leona. "Now then, did you plan on using a standard fragmentation test or a more free form one?"
While the girls all moved off to help set up the test dummy, I couldn't help but notice three of them giving either me or Leona some suspicious looks and trading glances between themselves.
I couldn't exactly blame them.
If I ran into some no-name teaching assistant with what should be revolutionary technology just acting like having it was normal, I'd have been suspicious too. My only hope was that things would pick up enough at Beacon that team RWBY wouldn't have the time to think too hard about it. Or worse talk to someone outside the school about what I could do.
Ozpin having the small amount of power over me he did was bad enough. God forbid that some Council member got word of my tech and started thinking they were entitled to it.
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