Outsider POV
Imagine this, you are a student at a prestigious academy that trains your peoples soldiers and heroes. You've been in school for barely a few weeks when you hear rumors of a new group of transfer students. The rumors talk about the group's odd looks and mannerisms, but most huntsmen are odd so you think nothing of it.
Then you see them in the lunchroom, none of them are eating, they are all abnormally pale, three of them are blindfolded and the one who isn't has eyes that just unnerve you, though you don't know why. The blind folded three all have the same white hair, and are wearing black gothic outfits, a bit odd as huntsmen are usually more colorful than that but the outfits are nice enough that you don't think much of it.
But the one with the unnerving eyes is just wearing what looks like a suit of tactical armor, metal plates and all. In the cafeteria. With all that weight it's no wonder the bench is bending. What little of his skin you can see is covered in purple and gold lines, and you immediately think of tattoos.
Your attention is drawn away from the odd group by an ensuing food fight, you never notice that none of the food manages to hit them or the table, and you don't notice them quietly leave before the teachers arrive.
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Mundane bugs? Never heard of em
2B knew there was going to be a problem the moment she saw the ants in the hallway outside their dorm. A quick glance at the engineer proved her right, his right eye was twitching.
She barely dodged the blast of fire, only moving on instinct. It wasn't as though the flame would even scorch her hair, but a life of dodging attacks made the action automatic.
The column of ants was not so durable and they were soon reduced to a scorched pile of charcoal.
This was a fairly common problem. On Nauvis there were no safe insects, and the engineer was never near the insects on earth, the minds purged them with insecticide and flame before they could reach the outposts.
Any insect therefore activated the engineer's fight or fight while running away instinct, and an explosion or burst of fire tended to follow. The few other students in the hall backed away from them both.
At least that might keep away some of the leers.
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Death stalkers in the woods means no more woods
It had been a fairly normal training expedition to the emerald forest, teams would go through the woods and fight grimm. Nothing you and your team hadn't done before, at least once or twice. The teachers would be on watch if you ever needed help, it was supposed to be safe.
All these thoughts passed through your mind as you watched the forest around you burn. The grimm and animals within screaming as their flesh bubbled away.
The engineer was walking through the woods, followed closely by two destroyer drones and safely ensconced in his power armor.
The rest of his team were in the woods around him, dealing with the smaller groups of grimm. His job was simple, if a large group of grimm appeared he'd deal with it with a few mortars or missiles. Mainly because there was no point for him to deal with a few small grimm himself.
His relatively peaceful walk through the grimm infested woods was interrupted by the ground erupting in front of him, reminding the engineer that he needed to install seismic sensors in the woods, or double check the ones on his armor. He was about to blast the unlucky grimm to oblivion when the rubble and dust cleared to reveal its form.
A giant black scorpion, a giant insect.
The engineers' armor started to emit a wail not dissimilar to an air raid siren, and then the world exploded with a flash of white.
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9S let out a tired sigh, on the team the engineer was the one capable of the most sheer destruction, but he didn't have any mind for collateral damage. Usually that was fine, a few more trees would get broken than needed but nothing absurd.
That was as long as 32D and 2B did their jobs and kept any of the insectoid grimm from getting too close to the engineer. Given the rapid series of explosions as incendiary missiles turned the forest to ash….. They had missed one.
He was not looking forward to explaining this to the teachers, this was the third time this month.
The drones had gotten really good at putting out fires and replanting trees at this point.
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Secret bunker!
The engineer often talked about running away rather than fighting, but it wasn't something he actually did all that often.
That changed today as he sprinted down the halls of beacon, being chased by an angry Yang, who based solely on the contents of her shouting was not exactly pleased with the cybernetic modifications he'd installed on Ruby.
It wasn't his fault she had asked for a laser gun and the power source for it needed to go somewhere! And Ruby had been the one to okay it.
It didn't feel fair that this was happening to him, but the engineer resolved to try and maybe pay more attention to how others would react to his actions, possibly.
Still, he had been attending Beacon for over a month now, and that was more than enough time to install some escape routes and bunkers. Even if he had needed to build around the bunker already under Beacon.
In fact there was one secret entrance to the schools new under tunnels in the hallway up ahead, and if the engineer could just get there he could escape yang long enough for ruby to calm her sister, or for yang to passively calm down. Either would work.
He rounded the corner and watched the hidden panel on the wall start to slide open and the engineer picked up his pace as he heard Yang slam into the hall just behind him, it would be no use to enter a bunker if Yang knew where it was, she'd just pry him out of it with her freakish strength. Or blow up the doors.
The engineer was just leaping through the open hatch when Yang tackled him midair, and they fell through the hole in the wall, fell a few dozen feet down the hatch, and then slammed into the floor.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The engineer used Yang's brief discombobulation to run off into the pitch black darkness of the bunker.
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The Monster of Nauvis, The Monster of Man
The creature was not born on Nauvis, that is just where it was tempered, where it became the monster. It is said that the monster was once a man, but that was never true, it had just been a machine in the form of a man, a creature forged in a lab to be the perfect tool, something made to break reality and corrupt the world around it, spreading its plague of metal and industry throughout existence.
It had not kept the form of man for long, it was too limiting, the strength of flesh reaching limits that metal would never have. The transformation started slowly, each piece replaced one by one until nothing of the original flesh remained, but even then it still had the basic shape of a man. That too would change.
The monster of metal was forced to grow ever stronger just to survive, pushed to limits it would have never reached without the trials Nauvis forced upon it. Eventually its mind was not enough, even with its superior metal logic centers replacing the brain, there just wasn't enough space in a human styled body for enough computation.
The science and engineering that needed to be done was exceeding what the creature could do, and so the creature did as all things from Nauvis do. It adapted, leaving its old shape behind as it had left its body before.
At this point it did not need a body at all, the factory that it had once needed to grow by hand could now grow without its direct presence, and so its corporeal form had ceased to have a purpose. Instead the consciousness migrated to the circuitry of the factory, the hardware became its mind and body.
With this last ascension the few remaining chains on the mind of this abomination fell away, Man had been smart in caging the beast, they had learned well how to control the monsters they created, but Nauvis had provided it the tools to break free. And now the thing that was once a tool in the shape of a man could grow unabated.
It still had avatars though, but even those ceased pretending to be anything humanoid. Taking on special forms for whatever task they had, in the end they were little more than particularly advanced drones.
The other monsters came to destroy the metal beast, as they always did, but it was beyond them now, and they could do little but slow the tide of metal as the planet was engulfed. Without limits on how fast it could think there was no limit to the technology it could craft, and while beasts unimaginable assailed the walls of the factory weapons beyond even them tore the weaker monsters asunder.
They couldn't adapt fast enough, not anymore. And so the factory overtook them and snuffed out their spark. The weak do not survive on Nauvis, and the complacent strong do not remain strong for long.
This was a lesson the abomination had learned well. It was never safe and it was never strong enough. In the absence of threats a lesser creation would stop growing, this was not a lesser creation. It kept clawing its way to higher and higher heights, slower in the absence of true threats yes but growing nonetheless.
Eventually Nauvis was covered in metal, the oceans depths were mined for resources for the beasts within had fared no better than the bugs.
One day, months after the last of the organic life on Nauvis was purged and thrown to the furnaces, portals sprung up all over the world letting monsters, beasts, and heroes pour out onto a world that was naught but a metal wasteland filled with mechanical horrors.
The factory would spread to their worlds too, and then all worlds beyond those.
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Swim class
I felt perfectly valid as I stood on the surface of the pool, sure the teacher had told us to swim, but walking on water by increasing its hardness and surface tension was equally valid. And it meant I didn't actually have to get in the water. Just had to stand above it, exposed in nothing but swim trunks. All my various scars and modifications open to the world.
It was a bit funny that I looked less human than the androids or the Fanus.
I distantly noticed one of the teachers talking to me, the one in charge of the 'gym' classes. I hadn't bothered to learn his name even if I would just need to think it to know. My mind received the words he spoke but I didn't actually comprehend them for a few seconds. "That isn't exactly swimming is it?" a subroutine noted the tone as vaguely sarcastic, most likely implying that I should actually be swimming, I composed my own response and sent it to my built-in speaker. "No, this is far more efficient, also I can't actually swim, too much metal means I sink" not necessarily true, with correct application of shields i could simulate swimming, it was just harder than not floating at all.
The teacher let out something identified as a humm before speaking again "how would you get someone out of the water if they were drowning?" no need to respond to that one, the androids were swimming relatively nearby, it had been the work of a few hours to make them water capable, using that same shield trick to make the dense robots swim. I extended my own shield and slowly lifted 9S out of the water, letting him flop on the surface. Then I turned my gaze back towards the teacher, who nodded "that'd work, how long can you do that?" a millisecond to compose a response and then waiting a few more so I didn't respond quickly "longer than you can swim".
The teacher nodded again, muttered something under his breath, and walked off to talk to a few other students. I let 9S drop back into the water and he immediately sank to the bottom. I guess he had turned off his shields.
The rest of the class I just made small sculptures out of solid water using projectors and shields.