"It's like a big slumber party!" Yang slid onto her impromptu bed, which sat next to Haruka's, trying to get a reaction out of the Knight, who simply looked up from her scroll with a completely blank expression.
Both of the girls had dressed in nightclothes, Yang in a tank top and shorts, while Haruka was in a long sleeve turtleneck and sweatpants, with socks and gloves on, apparently to hide any trace of her cybernetics.
"I honestly have noted several parallels to when the Knights and TSAB personnel all end up sleeping in a single group while on exercise. Though, I have never attended a 'slumber party' myself, and this would not notice the similarities." She noted.
"You've never had a slumber party?" Yang asked, curious. That might explain why she chose the corner of the room. No one else's over here, except that girl with the bow from earlier.
Haruka's hand made its way to Rosenkreuz, and there was a very faint flash of red light, after which she lowered her hand to her lap again.
"Silencing spell active, now I can speak freely. To answer your question, no. When I lived with Lady Hayate and the rest of my family, there were few others of my age around. I went to live in the barracks with the other Church Knights for the last two years of my training. After I completed said training, I was posted onboard the Archon almost immediately." Haruka told her.
"I didn't know that." Yang admitted. "So, what was it like?" She asked, propping her head up on one of her hands.
"Living in a church barracks?"
"Yeah." The blonde brawler clarified. "I've never heard of church barracks before."
"Because your churches do not maintain armed forces." Haruka set her scroll down as she spoke. "It is not too dissimilar to how the Priesthood lives, honestly. We commonly live four to a room, with small storage spaces for each and an attached bathroom. In the accommodations at the Grand Cathedral on Midchilda where I lived, there were lounges every floor, with small kitchens as well alongside the main dining hall on the ground floor. A small library was located on the second floor, and the Grand Cathedral's main library was not too far away. There was a gym in an adjacent building, which saw quite a bit of use. The outdoor training fields also were located immediately to the east, and there were a variety of classrooms in the main building. After all, one must know more than combat to be a proper Knight." She smiled at that. "Our instructors lived with us, on the top floors of the residential building."
"Sounds like a nice place." Yang commented.
"It is. There is far, far more there, as well. The Grand Cathedral's main hall is probably the size of this building, and the surrounding buildings, a campus of a sort itself, is significantly larger than Beacon's. And it is easy to get to the nearest city, the trams run every twenty minutes, if walking or flying for a few minutes is not to your liking." Haruka still was smiling as she reminisced about her home.
I still find the similarities in timekeeping to be weird.
"You like it there." Yang stated. "You miss your home?"
"Yes, I do. But I miss the people more." Haruka's small smile left her face, and her gaze slid down. "I want to see Cinque again. I want to see everyone again, but I miss my wife the most." She admitted.
"What's she like?" Yang asked. Haruka never had told her much about the Nakajima family, or her wife.
She still wasn't entirely used to or comfortable with the idea that Haruka had married already, but she knew that it was incredibly important to the Knight, and didn't say any of her thoughts on the subject out loud. Taiyang and Qrow both had voiced their opinions, resulting in an argument that had ended with Haruka challenging them to a duel for her and her wife's honor. Taiyang had declined, but Qrow had taken her up on it, and promptly been beaten into the ground with spells. Magic was a bit overpowering when it came to duels, especially when one was unprepared for such.
"'Lady of war' is the first phrase that comes to mind. She is… She is very stoic around others, but towards her family she just… Opens up in a way you would never think she could. She seems even emotionless sometimes, but her smile… Radiant, I think, is the best description. She is very gentle, too, for a soldier. " Haruka gave a sad smile. "She is also very beautiful. At least, I think so. I am not good at describing others. You… Will have to meet her." She looked down further, then up again, and Yang could see something in her eyes she couldn't quite identify. "You will meet her." The Knight promised. "Though, I can say, like all of the Nakajimas and Scaglietti's daughters, she is very dangerous if you are fighting her." This came with a grin. "We are a dangerous family." So they're like a family of Hunters or something? Probably all Knights or Military.
"So, you married into them, right?" Yang asked, curious.
"Cinque was adopted into the Nakajima family first, then I married her. I was Haruka Yagami before that, remember?" Haruka told her.
"Right, yeah." Haruka's in a talkative mood for once. Yang mentally noted, and she wanted to learn as much as she could. "What about the rest of your family? The Nakajimas?" She clarified.
Haruka glanced off to Yang's side for a moment, then spoke in a low voice. "We are beginning to be noticed. I will dismiss the spell, do not speak of magic or other abnormal topics."
There was a brief odd feeling, as if the rest of the world had suddenly gotten louder, before Haruka spoke again.
"You asked after the Nakajimas? Well, I will tell you this, we are an odd family." The Knight admitted. "For one thing, only Genya, the father, is not a cyborg. The rest of us all are, and I have the least amount of cybernetics." A family of cyborgs? "We are also a rather large family. There is Genya, the father, I have already noted he is the only non-cyborg. He is a very kind man, always willing to help in whatever way he can. I am proud to call him 'father', if only as an in-law." Yang mentally winced at that. I'm very glad dad isn't here for this. That might crush him. Or not, given she specifically noted he's her father-in-law. She refocused on Haruka.
"Then there is Ginga, the eldest sister. I do not know her well." The younger girl admitted. "There is Subaru, who I know a bit better. She is… Unique. In many ways. She is also the one who noticed that Cinque and I were… Interested in each other, and encouraged us to… I think the phrase is 'get together'?" Haruka glanced off into space and shrugged. "Irrelevant, you understand my meaning. Another of us is Nove. She is aggressive and violent, but is also solid and dependable when it is required of her. And is significantly nicer towards her family. She was, last I heard, teaching Lady Vivio martial arts."
Who's Lady Vivio? Yang wondered. Some Church priestess or something? Or is there a Nobility system on Midchilda? Come to think of it, she never has said anything about things like that. Yang mentally shook her head, Haruka was still talking.
"There is also Deci, though she is even colder than Cinque to those she does not know, she can still 'warm up' I think the phrase is, to some others, though she is not as quiet as Cinque. I do not know her very well, either." The Knight admitted. "The last sister in the Nakajima family is Wendi. Of all my siblings, she is, without a doubt, the most talkative and the most energetic. You would never mistake her for someone else." Haruka said this with a grin.
"That is a large family. Anyone else? No mom or brothers?" Yang asked.
"No brothers. And as for a mother…" Haruka trailed off for a moment. "Quint died ten years ago. I never knew her, all I know is from her personnel file and the stories told to me from others."
"Oh." Yang couldn't really think of anything else to say, and at that point, the lights went out. Save for moonlight coming from the large windows several feet up, the only light was from a set of candles someone had lit. The girl next to them looked vaguely familiar, but Yang didn't care enough to think too much on where she'd seen her before.
"Well, I think that was a sign we should go to bed." The blonde brawler noted, letting her arm slip from supporting her head. "'Night."
"I will pray first. But, goodnight, Yang."
Right, Church Knight. She does tend to pray a lot. She reflected.
In the dark, Yang could vaguely make out Haruka shifting to a kneeling position, bowing her head and clasping her hands together in front of her, as she began to murmur in Belkan.
"So, you seem awfully chipper this morning." Yang noted from the bench she was sitting on. She and Haruka were within the locker room of Beacon Academy, retrieving their gear for Initiation, though in practice, only Yang had anything to get, as Haruka would be using Rosenkreuz as her weapon, and had 'dressed' in her Knight's Clothing, albeit with Sleipnir suppressed, instead of 'normal' combat gear.
"Chipper?" She asked, unfamiliar with the word.
"Active, happy. You're a lot happier than you normally seem to be." There was a click as the blonde brawler finished loading her gauntlets.
"Ah." The Knight nodded. "I admit to looking forward to this. I wish to test myself on the 'Grimm', and to test Rosenkreuz's Crescent configuration." The modifications made should prove… Interesting to test.
"And what about teams?" Yang asked.
Haruka froze for a moment, then turned away. A complication, honestly.
"I… Have not given much thought to that. I am… Uninterested in working in a team. I am capable of doing so easily, I have in the past, but I do not wish to be here."
I don't plan on staying too long, after all. Sooner or later, a TSAB Vessel will arrive to investigate the Archon, and retrieve its remains. And I plan on leaving with them.
"Why not?" Yang asked her, then seemed to have a moment of realization, dropping her voice down to a whisper. "You don't plan on staying, do you?" Haruka glanced back, and felt slightly guilty over the fact that the blonde brawler looked like a kicked puppy.
The Knight didn't answer back, instead turning to her assigned locker, closing it. She hadn't actually retrieved anything from it, instead using the locker as a convenient place to transform Rosenkreuz. She turned back right as the other girl began to speak.
"Haruka—"Yang started to speak again, though as Haruka turned back to her, another student interrupted her by walking between the two.
"Ridiculous! There's no way I put my gear in locker six-three-six yesterday, I would've remembered having to count that high! Why does this have to happen today?" He complained, contemplating his scroll as he continued walking down the locker room towards the higher-numbered lockers.
"Haruka—" Yang tried again once he had passed, only to be interrupted again, this time by Haruka.
"Not here. Too many prying ears." The Knight told her, tossing her head to the side, indicating the other students. "We will talk another time, just not here and now. That conversation will be had."
The blonde brawler took a few seconds to process that, before nodding slowly.
"Okay." With that, she began a final check of her gauntlets, and Haruka mentally queried Rosenkreuz.
"Any success in negating or mitigating Remnant's AMF?"
"I've had some, Meister. We should now be able to cast up to AA+ Rank spells without too much interference, and I figured out how to compensate for the magilink bonds weakening over distance, so I'd say our maximum range with spells has increased to roughly seven-hundred fifty meters!"
"Excellent. Any last-minute concerns related to your new configuration?"
"None at all!" Haruka smiled internally, strapping the Interface Bracer onto her left arm just before the wrist. Normally, she could just directly link her arm to the weapon she'd modified, but, due to not wanting to reveal her cybernetics, she'd had to settle for swapping her regular Knight's Clothing bracer for the Interface Bracer.
She brought her hand down to the small of her back, and brought Rosenkreuz around, giving the mental command to unfurl her new configuration as she did so.
The Device unfolded, barrel lengthening, handgrip sliding up into place, supports attaching to the Interface Bracer, linking with her directly, the Heads-Up Display flashing into being in her vision, and the normal feeling of her Device beginning to draw Mana from her made her smile outwardly, along with the sight. The modifications to the Formula Cannon did indeed seem to have gone as planned.
Though she wasn't too fond of the idea of being reliant on a mass weapon for her long-range capabilities, Haruka had admitted early on that she'd need one if she wanted to blend in with the Hunters of Remnant. That said, it had taken a while for her to finally get around to bother using one.
Part of her reluctance was a general Midchildan aversion to Mass Weaponry, that, despite her rather Belkan upbringing, had still been instilled in her, and part of it was simply concerns about ammunition. After all, weapons with physical ammunition could run out long before their wielder ran out of mana. On top of that, physical ammunition could be expensive, jam a weapon if made improperly, could be lost or stolen, and could go off early if exposed to the right kind of trigger.
In all, the only solid munitions weapon Haruka was at all fond of was the Formula Cannon built into the Fortress System, and that was a hybrid: She could cast with it, albeit with less range and power than with Rosenkreuz's normal modes, as well as send spikes of metal downrange, and, thanks to the weapon's ability to form its solid projectiles out of mana, she didn't have to worry about her concerns with ammunition. Thus, when she had finally acquiesced to the necessity of a mass weapon, she had set out to modify the Formula Cannon, instead of getting a standard firearm.
There hadn't been many modifications required after the separation from the Fortress System, if she were to be honest. The main two had been the ability to use magazines and the addition of a large magazine port, where she could load the weapon as to not draw attention to the fact the weapon didn't actually need loading, or load specialized rounds. Given that its solid projectile mode was a railgun, she didn't need more sophisticated ammunition than steel or iron spikes, and it was even advanced enough to compensate for different size spikes, provided they were straight. She'd taken advantage of this, and, with the assistance of Rosenkreuz and Taiyang, fashioned several magazines of specialized spikes, each containing small reservoirs of Dust, to give the rounds special effects in battle.
The only other modifications even worth mentioning were the addition of heat vents so she could cover more of the weapon's internals with plating to reduce potential damage in the field and the aforementioned plating.
"I've said this before, and I'll say it again, that thing's a monster." Yang commented from the bench, gazing up at the Knight's weapon. Haruka hefted the black, red, and silver rail-cannon, turning to face her.
"This 'monster' is one of the handful of weapons I trust." She said, grinning, right hand coming around and taking a hold of the foregrip. "This is the CFW-X-02-F/M/AB Formula Cannon." She raised the 'barrel' to point at the ceiling. "I could kill an airship with this with ease, and mission-kill most armored vehicles in a single shot."
"Overkill, much?" Yang asked, also grinning at Haruka's subtle but still present enthusiasm for the weapon.
"Oh, certainly. But, to quote a source called 'Tv Tropes', 'There Is No Kill Like Overkill'."
The Blonde Brawler shook her head at that with a grin, but before she could say anything, the intercom came on.
"Would all first-year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation? Again, all first-year students report to Beacon Cliff immediately." Glynda Goodwitch's voice sounded, before the intercom fell silent again.
"We probably ought to get going." Haruka noted.