Self insert in remnant.. without powers...just lot of questions... and questions can change a lot...
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Look Again (RWBY SI) (NO POWERS)
- Thread starter Emiya Pendragon
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Chapter 1: Semblances Are Magic, Change My Mind
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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[CCT Network — Livestream: "Semblances are magic, change my mind" — 👁 87 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay, simple question tonight. People here can turn invisible, bend metal with their mind, stop time for a second, make clones out of their own soul. Why does everyone insist on calling that a "Semblance" instead of what it obviously is, which is magic?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
ValeCommuter_22: because it's not magic? it's a Semblance
SI: That's not an answer, that's just the word again
ValeCommuter_22: it's the correct word though
MistralMom_Jenna: Magic is fairy tale stuff. Semblances are real. Everyone has an Aura, lots of people unlock Semblances. Something that common can't be magic.
SI: Why not? If everyone in a world could cast spells, the spells would still be spells.
MistralMom_Jenna: but they're not spells, they're natural
SI: so is lightning, and nobody would call throwing lightning out of your hands "natural"
grimm_bait_420: lightning Semblance guy in my class would disagree lol
AtlasTechStudent: The difference is rules. Semblances have limits, cost Aura, get stronger with training, show up on diagnostic equipment, and can be quantified. Magic in stories has no cost and no rules. That's why it's a different category.
SI: Okay, that's the best argument so far. But lots of fictional magic systems have costs and rules too. "It drains your energy and you have to practice" is like, the most standard wizard training there is.
AtlasTechStudent: Fictional magic systems aren't evidence.
SI: Neither is a scroll showing a green bar labelled "Aura." You're measuring the output. You don't actually know what the soul is, you just know how much of it is left.
AtlasTechStudent: we know enough to build tech around it
SI: people built tech around electricity before they understood it too, I'll give you that one
ValeCommuter_22: so you admit it's science
SI: I admit it's studied. Doesn't make it not magic.
HunterWannabe_Tom: this is just a semantics argument
SI: Kind of! But words matter. Calling it a Semblance makes it sound like a trait, like being tall. Nobody's tall at someone so hard they get thrown across a room.
HunterWannabe_Tom: lol fair
VacuoVeteran: Speaking as someone who's been using mine for twenty years: it doesn't feel like magic. It feels like a muscle. You don't call your arm magic.
SI: That's actually really interesting. So from the inside it feels like part of your body, not something you cast?
VacuoVeteran: Yeah. Nobody sat me down and taught me words or gestures. It just came out one day when I was scared. Like a reflex.
SI: See, that's what makes me think the word thing is cultural. If it feels like a body part, of course nobody here calls it magic. But from the outside? Someone who'd never seen Aura would lose their mind.
MistralMom_Jenna: who's never seen Aura?? everyone has seen Aura
SI: ...hypothetically
grimm_bait_420: "hypothetically" okay buddy
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Aura is a gift from the Brothers. The soul was made by them. Calling it "magic" cheapens it, like it's a trick.
AtlasTechStudent: oh here we go
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: you asked why people don't call it magic. that's one reason. for a lot of older folks it's sacred, not magic.
SI: That's a genuinely good point, and a different one from the "it's science" crowd. So one group says it's too scientific to be magic and the other says it's too holy to be magic. Kind of funny that both sides land on the same word.
HunterWannabe_Tom: the "Semblance" word was probably picked BECAUSE it's neutral then
SI: oh that's smart
FaunusRights_Now: also historically "magic" was used against people. there were old accusations about faunus being "unnatural." people are touchy about calling abilities mystical for that reason too
SI: Huh. I didn't know that. That makes sense.
DustTrader_Mo: ok but what about the unlocking thing. my cousin got her Aura unlocked by a Huntsman who put a hand on her and recited this whole verse. that sounds a LOT like a spell
AtlasTechStudent: the verse is traditional, not functional. it's to help focus.
DustTrader_Mo: have you ever seen someone unlock Aura WITHOUT saying it?
AtlasTechStudent: ...I'd have to look that up
SI: Now THAT is what I'm talking about. Somebody check that.
ValeCommuter_22: you're still wrong. it's a Semblance.
SI: I respect your consistency.
MistralMom_Jenna: Honestly if you want "real" magic, that's what the Maiden stories are for. Old man, four sisters, seasons. That's magic. Semblances are just people.
SI: So the line for you is: if everyone can do it, it's normal. If only four people ever can, it's magic.
MistralMom_Jenna: Basically? Magic should be rare and special.
SI: That's actually a pretty coherent definition. I think that's the answer to my question, honestly. Magic here means "rare and from a story." Semblances are too common to count.
VacuoVeteran: there you go. mystery solved.
SI: I still think it's magic.
VacuoVeteran: of course you do
grimm_bait_420: 10/10 stream, nobody changed their mind
anon_viewer_4471: Interesting discussion. Where did you grow up, if you don't mind my asking? Your perspective is unusual.
SI: Oh, uh, small place. Far out. You wouldn't know it.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course. Thank you for the stream.
SI: Okay, that's time. Next week: why do people carry guns that are also scythes. Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 142]
* * *
SI: Okay, simple question tonight. People here can turn invisible, bend metal with their mind, stop time for a second, make clones out of their own soul. Why does everyone insist on calling that a "Semblance" instead of what it obviously is, which is magic?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
ValeCommuter_22: because it's not magic? it's a Semblance
SI: That's not an answer, that's just the word again
ValeCommuter_22: it's the correct word though
MistralMom_Jenna: Magic is fairy tale stuff. Semblances are real. Everyone has an Aura, lots of people unlock Semblances. Something that common can't be magic.
SI: Why not? If everyone in a world could cast spells, the spells would still be spells.
MistralMom_Jenna: but they're not spells, they're natural
SI: so is lightning, and nobody would call throwing lightning out of your hands "natural"
grimm_bait_420: lightning Semblance guy in my class would disagree lol
AtlasTechStudent: The difference is rules. Semblances have limits, cost Aura, get stronger with training, show up on diagnostic equipment, and can be quantified. Magic in stories has no cost and no rules. That's why it's a different category.
SI: Okay, that's the best argument so far. But lots of fictional magic systems have costs and rules too. "It drains your energy and you have to practice" is like, the most standard wizard training there is.
AtlasTechStudent: Fictional magic systems aren't evidence.
SI: Neither is a scroll showing a green bar labelled "Aura." You're measuring the output. You don't actually know what the soul is, you just know how much of it is left.
AtlasTechStudent: we know enough to build tech around it
SI: people built tech around electricity before they understood it too, I'll give you that one
ValeCommuter_22: so you admit it's science
SI: I admit it's studied. Doesn't make it not magic.
HunterWannabe_Tom: this is just a semantics argument
SI: Kind of! But words matter. Calling it a Semblance makes it sound like a trait, like being tall. Nobody's tall at someone so hard they get thrown across a room.
HunterWannabe_Tom: lol fair
VacuoVeteran: Speaking as someone who's been using mine for twenty years: it doesn't feel like magic. It feels like a muscle. You don't call your arm magic.
SI: That's actually really interesting. So from the inside it feels like part of your body, not something you cast?
VacuoVeteran: Yeah. Nobody sat me down and taught me words or gestures. It just came out one day when I was scared. Like a reflex.
SI: See, that's what makes me think the word thing is cultural. If it feels like a body part, of course nobody here calls it magic. But from the outside? Someone who'd never seen Aura would lose their mind.
MistralMom_Jenna: who's never seen Aura?? everyone has seen Aura
SI: ...hypothetically
grimm_bait_420: "hypothetically" okay buddy
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Aura is a gift from the Brothers. The soul was made by them. Calling it "magic" cheapens it, like it's a trick.
AtlasTechStudent: oh here we go
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: you asked why people don't call it magic. that's one reason. for a lot of older folks it's sacred, not magic.
SI: That's a genuinely good point, and a different one from the "it's science" crowd. So one group says it's too scientific to be magic and the other says it's too holy to be magic. Kind of funny that both sides land on the same word.
HunterWannabe_Tom: the "Semblance" word was probably picked BECAUSE it's neutral then
SI: oh that's smart
FaunusRights_Now: also historically "magic" was used against people. there were old accusations about faunus being "unnatural." people are touchy about calling abilities mystical for that reason too
SI: Huh. I didn't know that. That makes sense.
DustTrader_Mo: ok but what about the unlocking thing. my cousin got her Aura unlocked by a Huntsman who put a hand on her and recited this whole verse. that sounds a LOT like a spell
AtlasTechStudent: the verse is traditional, not functional. it's to help focus.
DustTrader_Mo: have you ever seen someone unlock Aura WITHOUT saying it?
AtlasTechStudent: ...I'd have to look that up
SI: Now THAT is what I'm talking about. Somebody check that.
ValeCommuter_22: you're still wrong. it's a Semblance.
SI: I respect your consistency.
MistralMom_Jenna: Honestly if you want "real" magic, that's what the Maiden stories are for. Old man, four sisters, seasons. That's magic. Semblances are just people.
SI: So the line for you is: if everyone can do it, it's normal. If only four people ever can, it's magic.
MistralMom_Jenna: Basically? Magic should be rare and special.
SI: That's actually a pretty coherent definition. I think that's the answer to my question, honestly. Magic here means "rare and from a story." Semblances are too common to count.
VacuoVeteran: there you go. mystery solved.
SI: I still think it's magic.
VacuoVeteran: of course you do
grimm_bait_420: 10/10 stream, nobody changed their mind
anon_viewer_4471: Interesting discussion. Where did you grow up, if you don't mind my asking? Your perspective is unusual.
SI: Oh, uh, small place. Far out. You wouldn't know it.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course. Thank you for the stream.
SI: Okay, that's time. Next week: why do people carry guns that are also scythes. Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 142]
Chapter 2: Semblances Are Magic, Part Two
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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[CCT Network — Livestream: "Semblances are magic pt. 2 (I'm not letting this go)" — 👁 163 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay, last stream a lot of you said Semblances and magic are different. Fine. For the sake of argument, let's say they are. Then tell me what makes them different. Both use a mystical energy we don't fully understand. And before anyone says "science" — I dare you to tell me anyone fully comprehends a soul. We can measure Aura, sure. Aura is energy generated by the soul, and it powers Semblances. So: mystical source of power, producing supernatural effects, that science can't replicate. What part of that isn't magic? Is it just me, or am I the brain-dead one here?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: he came back with a THESIS
ValeCommuter_22: it's still a Semblance
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I knew you'd be here
ValeCommuter_22: always
AtlasTechStudent: "We don't fully understand it" isn't the same as "it's magic." We don't fully understand gravity either. Nobody calls falling magic.
SI: Gravity isn't coming from my soul though. That's the difference. If falling was powered by my personality I would call it magic.
grimm_bait_420: LMAO
AtlasTechStudent: ...the personality part is a correlation, not a mechanism
SI: you don't know the mechanism. that's my whole point.
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok I'll take a real shot at this. magic in the stories can do anything. a wizard in a fairy tale throws fire one day and flies the next. Semblances do ONE thing. you get what you get. that's a real difference.
SI: That's a good one. But that just makes it a limited kind of magic, not not magic. A wizard who only knows one spell is still a wizard.
HunterWannabe_Tom: hmm
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok but the wizard CHOSE the spell. you don't choose your Semblance
SI: So magic you're born with doesn't count? Every story has a kid born with powers. We still call that magic.
HunterWannabe_Tom: dang it
MistralMom_Jenna: Like I said last time, magic is rare. Semblances are everywhere. Half my neighborhood has one. If something is ordinary it stops being magic.
SI: That's the argument I actually think is the real reason. But notice it's about how common it is, not what it is. If everyone on Remnant woke up able to breathe fire, it'd be normal to you, but it'd still be fire coming out of your mouth.
MistralMom_Jenna: well yes but then we'd call it firebreathing, not magic
SI: and that's exactly what you did with Semblances. you gave it its own name so it doesn't feel weird.
MistralMom_Jenna: ...I don't love that you have a point
VacuoVeteran: From my side it's about how it feels. Magic sounds like something you do to the world. My Semblance feels like something I am. Like a reflex.
SI: I actually really like that answer. But "it feels natural to the person using it" is true of basically every magic user in fiction too. The wizard doesn't think his magic is weird. We do.
VacuoVeteran: fair. I'm just saying why people don't use the word.
SI: Totally, and that's useful. That's the cultural reason, not the logical one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The difference is the source. The stories say magic was given by the Brothers, power from the gods. Aura comes from your own soul. One is borrowed, one is yours.
SI: Okay, that's the strongest definition anyone's given, genuinely. "Magic comes from the gods, Semblances come from you." But the soul itself — where'd that come from in those same stories?
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: ...the Brothers made people
SI: so Semblances come from something the gods made. that's still gods-adjacent power.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: that's a stretch
SI: a little, yeah. I'll give you that.
AtlasTechStudent: Coming back to "science can't replicate it." Atlas already builds tech around Aura. Aura amplification, Aura readings, Dust channeling through Aura. We work with it every day. Can you do that with magic?
SI: Nobody's tried with magic, because everyone agreed magic isn't real. You can't say "science can't work with magic" when there's nothing you've admitted is magic to test on.
AtlasTechStudent: that's circular
SI: yours was too though
AtlasTechStudent: ...
AtlasTechStudent: I need to think about this
DustTrader_Mo: also Dust is a glowing rock that turns into fire and ice and gravity when you hit it right. nobody calls that magic either. this whole planet is just "magic but we named it something else"
SI: DUST GUY GETS IT
grimm_bait_420: Dust guy for mayor
FaunusRights_Now: I think the honest answer is: there's no hard logical line. "Magic" here just means "something from a storybook." Semblances were never in storybooks because they were real. So they got a normal name.
SI: That's it. That's the answer, I think. It's not that Semblances can't be magic. It's that the word "magic" got reserved for stuff people think is fake.
ValeCommuter_22: I still think it's a Semblance.
SI: You're allowed to call it a Semblance. I just want you to admit it could also be magic.
ValeCommuter_22: no
SI: respect
HunterWannabe_Tom: honestly came in thinking you were dumb, leaving thinking you're annoying but right
SI: I'll take it
MistralMom_Jenna: Not brain dead. Just very stubborn.
VacuoVeteran: It's magic that got a job and paid taxes. That's the difference.
SI: ...that's the best definition anyone's said all night. I'm stealing that.
grimm_bait_420: clip it
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 311]
* * *
SI: Okay, last stream a lot of you said Semblances and magic are different. Fine. For the sake of argument, let's say they are. Then tell me what makes them different. Both use a mystical energy we don't fully understand. And before anyone says "science" — I dare you to tell me anyone fully comprehends a soul. We can measure Aura, sure. Aura is energy generated by the soul, and it powers Semblances. So: mystical source of power, producing supernatural effects, that science can't replicate. What part of that isn't magic? Is it just me, or am I the brain-dead one here?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: he came back with a THESIS
ValeCommuter_22: it's still a Semblance
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I knew you'd be here
ValeCommuter_22: always
AtlasTechStudent: "We don't fully understand it" isn't the same as "it's magic." We don't fully understand gravity either. Nobody calls falling magic.
SI: Gravity isn't coming from my soul though. That's the difference. If falling was powered by my personality I would call it magic.
grimm_bait_420: LMAO
AtlasTechStudent: ...the personality part is a correlation, not a mechanism
SI: you don't know the mechanism. that's my whole point.
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok I'll take a real shot at this. magic in the stories can do anything. a wizard in a fairy tale throws fire one day and flies the next. Semblances do ONE thing. you get what you get. that's a real difference.
SI: That's a good one. But that just makes it a limited kind of magic, not not magic. A wizard who only knows one spell is still a wizard.
HunterWannabe_Tom: hmm
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok but the wizard CHOSE the spell. you don't choose your Semblance
SI: So magic you're born with doesn't count? Every story has a kid born with powers. We still call that magic.
HunterWannabe_Tom: dang it
MistralMom_Jenna: Like I said last time, magic is rare. Semblances are everywhere. Half my neighborhood has one. If something is ordinary it stops being magic.
SI: That's the argument I actually think is the real reason. But notice it's about how common it is, not what it is. If everyone on Remnant woke up able to breathe fire, it'd be normal to you, but it'd still be fire coming out of your mouth.
MistralMom_Jenna: well yes but then we'd call it firebreathing, not magic
SI: and that's exactly what you did with Semblances. you gave it its own name so it doesn't feel weird.
MistralMom_Jenna: ...I don't love that you have a point
VacuoVeteran: From my side it's about how it feels. Magic sounds like something you do to the world. My Semblance feels like something I am. Like a reflex.
SI: I actually really like that answer. But "it feels natural to the person using it" is true of basically every magic user in fiction too. The wizard doesn't think his magic is weird. We do.
VacuoVeteran: fair. I'm just saying why people don't use the word.
SI: Totally, and that's useful. That's the cultural reason, not the logical one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The difference is the source. The stories say magic was given by the Brothers, power from the gods. Aura comes from your own soul. One is borrowed, one is yours.
SI: Okay, that's the strongest definition anyone's given, genuinely. "Magic comes from the gods, Semblances come from you." But the soul itself — where'd that come from in those same stories?
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: ...the Brothers made people
SI: so Semblances come from something the gods made. that's still gods-adjacent power.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: that's a stretch
SI: a little, yeah. I'll give you that.
AtlasTechStudent: Coming back to "science can't replicate it." Atlas already builds tech around Aura. Aura amplification, Aura readings, Dust channeling through Aura. We work with it every day. Can you do that with magic?
SI: Nobody's tried with magic, because everyone agreed magic isn't real. You can't say "science can't work with magic" when there's nothing you've admitted is magic to test on.
AtlasTechStudent: that's circular
SI: yours was too though
AtlasTechStudent: ...
AtlasTechStudent: I need to think about this
DustTrader_Mo: also Dust is a glowing rock that turns into fire and ice and gravity when you hit it right. nobody calls that magic either. this whole planet is just "magic but we named it something else"
SI: DUST GUY GETS IT
grimm_bait_420: Dust guy for mayor
FaunusRights_Now: I think the honest answer is: there's no hard logical line. "Magic" here just means "something from a storybook." Semblances were never in storybooks because they were real. So they got a normal name.
SI: That's it. That's the answer, I think. It's not that Semblances can't be magic. It's that the word "magic" got reserved for stuff people think is fake.
ValeCommuter_22: I still think it's a Semblance.
SI: You're allowed to call it a Semblance. I just want you to admit it could also be magic.
ValeCommuter_22: no
SI: respect
HunterWannabe_Tom: honestly came in thinking you were dumb, leaving thinking you're annoying but right
SI: I'll take it
MistralMom_Jenna: Not brain dead. Just very stubborn.
VacuoVeteran: It's magic that got a job and paid taxes. That's the difference.
SI: ...that's the best definition anyone's said all night. I'm stealing that.
grimm_bait_420: clip it
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 311]
Chapter 3: The Thought Experiment
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- Mar 9, 2018
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- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Semblances pt. 3: the thought experiment" — 👁 402 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay. I saw the replies. I saw the thread. Somebody made a forum post called "Stream Guy Is Annoying But Might Be Right" and it has four hundred comments, so thank you, I guess. Tonight I'm not arguing. I'm just asking a hypothetical.
Assume, for some reason, humanity forgot everything. No Aura. No Semblances. No Dust. Wiped out of history. Then one guy rediscovers it. He meditates, feels this energy in himself, and one day he makes something float. Is he going to call it a "Semblance"? Or is he going to call it magic?
And then he digs a mine and finds glowing crystal veins running under the earth that explode into fire or ice when you strike them. Why wouldn't he call those magical leylines, like in every fantasy book?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: part 3 LET'S GO
ValeCommuter_22: he'd call it a Semblance
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 why
ValeCommuter_22: because that's what it is
SI: He doesn't KNOW that word. It doesn't exist anymore in this hypothetical.
ValeCommuter_22: ...
ValeCommuter_22: he'd figure it out
grimm_bait_420: Vale guy is a rock and I love him
HunterWannabe_Tom: nah he'd 100% call it magic. if I'd never heard of Aura and my hand started glowing I wouldn't go "ah yes, a personal manifestation of my soul." I'd scream "I'M A WIZARD"
SI: Thank you. That's my point. The word "Semblance" isn't something the universe handed us. Somebody named it that at some point.
AtlasTechStudent: Counterpoint: depends who rediscovers it. A farmer calls it magic. A researcher runs tests, sees it's consistent, sees it drains and recharges, and gives it a technical name. "Soul projection" or whatever.
SI: Okay, that's fair. But the researcher only does that if his culture already expects the world to have rules. If his culture's full of fairy tales, "magic" is the first word he reaches for.
AtlasTechStudent: which is why the first word doesn't matter. the word that sticks is the one people agree on after studying it.
SI: Hm. So you're saying he'd call it magic first, and then later scholars would rename it?
AtlasTechStudent: probably, yeah
SI: so you agree it would start as magic
AtlasTechStudent: I walked into that
DustTrader_Mo: ok the Dust part is my specialty. if you'd never seen Dust before and found a glowing vein that bursts into flames when you hit it with a pickaxe? leylines. mana crystals. dragon blood. literally anything but "Dust."
SI: Why do you think we call it "Dust" anyway? That's such a boring name for something that powerful.
DustTrader_Mo: probably because the first stuff people used was powdered. you grind it, it's dust. people name things by what they look like, not what they do.
SI: That's actually really interesting. So "Dust" is a miner's name. Practical people named it.
DustTrader_Mo: exactly. if a poet found it first we'd be calling it starfire or something
grimm_bait_420: "hand me the starfire rounds" goes hard ngl
MistralMom_Jenna: My kids' history book says early humans only survived the Grimm because they found Dust. When you're desperate and fighting monsters, you don't sit around deciding what's "magic." You call it whatever and use it.
SI: That's a great point. The name comes from how you use it. We use Dust like fuel, so it got a fuel name. We use Semblances like skills, so they got a skill name.
VacuoVeteran: And a guy rediscovering it alone would have no one to use it with. He'd be the only person on the planet who could do it. That's the definition of magic from last stream, isn't it? Rare and special.
SI: Oh. Oh, that's good. By your guys' definition, one person with a Semblance is magic, and a million people with Semblances isn't. Same power. Different headcount.
MistralMom_Jenna: ...yes, that is what I said, and I'm starting to regret it
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: He might call it a blessing. Not magic. If you feel power come from inside you, a lot of people would think a god put it there.
SI: That's fair, and honestly that's the other road it could go. Magic or miracle. Either way, it's not going to be "Semblance" on day one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: agreed there
FaunusRights_Now: also the leyline thing is more accurate than people think. Dust deposits aren't random. They're concentrated in certain regions, and cities got built near them. If you mapped them out with no science background you'd absolutely think the earth had magic veins in it.
SI: Right? Like, if the map looks like a fantasy map, I'm going to call it a fantasy map.
AtlasTechStudent: Geological deposits following fault lines and mineral formations is not a leyline.
SI: Every leyline in every fantasy book is just a geological deposit that nobody bothered to study. You're just the guy who studied it.
AtlasTechStudent: I hate how that sounds almost reasonable
HunterWannabe_Tom: so basically: same exact stuff, but if you rediscover it alone with no context, it's magic. if you grow up with it, it's a Semblance and Dust.
SI: Yeah. That's where I landed. The thing doesn't change. Only the word does. And the word depends on whether you found it first or were born into it.
VacuoVeteran: So last stream's line still holds. Magic that got a job and paid taxes.
SI: And tonight's addition: magic is what it's called before it gets the job.
grimm_bait_420: CLIP IT
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
SI: In the hypothetical, Vale guy, nobody has ever heard the word—
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
SI: ...I can respect a man with principles.
anon_viewer_4471: An interesting hypothetical. You seem to think about lost knowledge quite a lot.
SI: Uh, I just like thought experiments.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course. Good stream.
SI: Okay, that's the stream. Next time: if Grimm don't have souls, what are they actually made of? Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 688]
* * *
SI: Okay. I saw the replies. I saw the thread. Somebody made a forum post called "Stream Guy Is Annoying But Might Be Right" and it has four hundred comments, so thank you, I guess. Tonight I'm not arguing. I'm just asking a hypothetical.
Assume, for some reason, humanity forgot everything. No Aura. No Semblances. No Dust. Wiped out of history. Then one guy rediscovers it. He meditates, feels this energy in himself, and one day he makes something float. Is he going to call it a "Semblance"? Or is he going to call it magic?
And then he digs a mine and finds glowing crystal veins running under the earth that explode into fire or ice when you strike them. Why wouldn't he call those magical leylines, like in every fantasy book?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: part 3 LET'S GO
ValeCommuter_22: he'd call it a Semblance
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 why
ValeCommuter_22: because that's what it is
SI: He doesn't KNOW that word. It doesn't exist anymore in this hypothetical.
ValeCommuter_22: ...
ValeCommuter_22: he'd figure it out
grimm_bait_420: Vale guy is a rock and I love him
HunterWannabe_Tom: nah he'd 100% call it magic. if I'd never heard of Aura and my hand started glowing I wouldn't go "ah yes, a personal manifestation of my soul." I'd scream "I'M A WIZARD"
SI: Thank you. That's my point. The word "Semblance" isn't something the universe handed us. Somebody named it that at some point.
AtlasTechStudent: Counterpoint: depends who rediscovers it. A farmer calls it magic. A researcher runs tests, sees it's consistent, sees it drains and recharges, and gives it a technical name. "Soul projection" or whatever.
SI: Okay, that's fair. But the researcher only does that if his culture already expects the world to have rules. If his culture's full of fairy tales, "magic" is the first word he reaches for.
AtlasTechStudent: which is why the first word doesn't matter. the word that sticks is the one people agree on after studying it.
SI: Hm. So you're saying he'd call it magic first, and then later scholars would rename it?
AtlasTechStudent: probably, yeah
SI: so you agree it would start as magic
AtlasTechStudent: I walked into that
DustTrader_Mo: ok the Dust part is my specialty. if you'd never seen Dust before and found a glowing vein that bursts into flames when you hit it with a pickaxe? leylines. mana crystals. dragon blood. literally anything but "Dust."
SI: Why do you think we call it "Dust" anyway? That's such a boring name for something that powerful.
DustTrader_Mo: probably because the first stuff people used was powdered. you grind it, it's dust. people name things by what they look like, not what they do.
SI: That's actually really interesting. So "Dust" is a miner's name. Practical people named it.
DustTrader_Mo: exactly. if a poet found it first we'd be calling it starfire or something
grimm_bait_420: "hand me the starfire rounds" goes hard ngl
MistralMom_Jenna: My kids' history book says early humans only survived the Grimm because they found Dust. When you're desperate and fighting monsters, you don't sit around deciding what's "magic." You call it whatever and use it.
SI: That's a great point. The name comes from how you use it. We use Dust like fuel, so it got a fuel name. We use Semblances like skills, so they got a skill name.
VacuoVeteran: And a guy rediscovering it alone would have no one to use it with. He'd be the only person on the planet who could do it. That's the definition of magic from last stream, isn't it? Rare and special.
SI: Oh. Oh, that's good. By your guys' definition, one person with a Semblance is magic, and a million people with Semblances isn't. Same power. Different headcount.
MistralMom_Jenna: ...yes, that is what I said, and I'm starting to regret it
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: He might call it a blessing. Not magic. If you feel power come from inside you, a lot of people would think a god put it there.
SI: That's fair, and honestly that's the other road it could go. Magic or miracle. Either way, it's not going to be "Semblance" on day one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: agreed there
FaunusRights_Now: also the leyline thing is more accurate than people think. Dust deposits aren't random. They're concentrated in certain regions, and cities got built near them. If you mapped them out with no science background you'd absolutely think the earth had magic veins in it.
SI: Right? Like, if the map looks like a fantasy map, I'm going to call it a fantasy map.
AtlasTechStudent: Geological deposits following fault lines and mineral formations is not a leyline.
SI: Every leyline in every fantasy book is just a geological deposit that nobody bothered to study. You're just the guy who studied it.
AtlasTechStudent: I hate how that sounds almost reasonable
HunterWannabe_Tom: so basically: same exact stuff, but if you rediscover it alone with no context, it's magic. if you grow up with it, it's a Semblance and Dust.
SI: Yeah. That's where I landed. The thing doesn't change. Only the word does. And the word depends on whether you found it first or were born into it.
VacuoVeteran: So last stream's line still holds. Magic that got a job and paid taxes.
SI: And tonight's addition: magic is what it's called before it gets the job.
grimm_bait_420: CLIP IT
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
SI: In the hypothetical, Vale guy, nobody has ever heard the word—
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
SI: ...I can respect a man with principles.
anon_viewer_4471: An interesting hypothetical. You seem to think about lost knowledge quite a lot.
SI: Uh, I just like thought experiments.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course. Good stream.
SI: Okay, that's the stream. Next time: if Grimm don't have souls, what are they actually made of? Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 688]
Chapter 4: The Footnote
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Faculty Quarters, 11:47 PM
Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck had not intended to be awake at this hour. He had intended to finish grading forty-three essays on the Faunus Rights Revolution, most of which confused the dates of the Battle of Fort Castle with the signing of the treaty afterward, a mistake so common it had become a kind of personal nemesis.
But one of the essays had a footnote. And the footnote said: "See also: 'Stream Guy Is Annoying But Might Be Right' thread, CCT forums."
He did not approve of students citing forum posts. He clicked it anyway, purely to confirm his disapproval.
That was two hours and three thermoses of coffee ago.
* * *
The thread itself was chaos, as these things always were. Half the posters were arguing semantics, a quarter were posting reaction images of Huntsmen shrugging, and one very committed individual named ValeCommuter_22 had simply replied "still a Semblance" on every single page. Oobleck found himself, against his will, admiring the stamina.
Then he found the stream recordings, and he watched all three.
The first one he watched sitting down.
The second one he watched standing up.
By the third, he was pacing so quickly across his quarters that the stack of essays on his desk had begun to lift slightly at the corners from the draft.
"No, no, no, the name Dust is not simply because it was powdered, that is a gross oversimplification—" he told the screen, then paused, rewound, and listened again. "...although the earliest recorded usage does refer to ground forms. Mhm. Hm. Fine. Partial credit, Mister Trader."
He took a long drink from his thermos.
The young man on the stream wasn't a scholar. That much was obvious. His vocabulary was casual, his arguments were loose, and he had a habit of declaring victory the moment someone paused to type. He had never, apparently, heard of proper citation.
And yet.
"The word depends on whether you found it first or were born into it," the recording said.
Oobleck stopped pacing.
That was not a layman's observation. That was the entire foundation of historical linguistics, stated clumsily, in a cheap apartment, with a Dust-lamp flickering in the background. Names are not neutral. Names are records. Every word a society uses is a fossil of the moment it was coined, and of who coined it. A miner's word. A priest's word. A soldier's word. You could reconstruct a people's entire relationship with a thing just by studying what they chose to call it.
He had given nearly that exact lecture to second-years last spring. Four students had fallen asleep.
This boy had given it to four hundred strangers, and they'd argued back.
"Remarkable," he muttered, zipping to his bookshelf in a blur. He pulled down three volumes on early settlement history and one on the etymology of Huntsman terminology and began flipping. "Where does 'Semblance' first appear in the written record? Mhm. Mhm. Academy application standards, formalized... but the word itself predates that. Older. Much older."
He turned another page. Then another.
The trail went back further than he expected, and then it simply... thinned. Records of early humanity fighting the Grimm, the discovery of Dust as the turning point for survival, kingdoms forming around deposits — all well documented. But before that, the sources grew sparse, vague, contradictory. Fragments. Folk tales. Things written down long after the fact by people who clearly weren't there.
This wasn't new to him. Every historian of Remnant knew that the oldest eras were murky. It was a known gap, the kind you mentioned in the first week of class and then moved past, because there was no data to fill it and speculation was unprofessional.
But the boy's hypothetical sat in his mind like a stone in a boot.
Assume humanity forgot. Then someone rediscovers it.
"A thought experiment," Oobleck said aloud, firmly, to the empty room. "Merely a rhetorical device. Popular in amateur philosophy. Mhm."
He did not put the book down.
* * *
He rewatched the section where the young man called Dust deposits "leylines," and the Atlas student objected that they simply followed geological formations.
"Every leyline in every fantasy book is just a geological deposit nobody bothered to study."
Oobleck actually laughed, a short, sharp bark that startled himself. It was an absurd statement. It was also, from a certain angle, a perfectly reasonable description of how scholarship worked. Mythology was frequently just observation that had been passed down without its explanation. Every legend of a river spirit was, somewhere at its root, a very old account of a flood.
Which raised the uncomfortable question of what, exactly, the Maiden story was a very old account of.
He found himself glancing at the fairy tale section of his shelf. A children's collection sat there, spine worn — he kept it for his course on oral tradition. Four sisters. A kind old wizard. The seasons.
"Folklore," he said. "Cultural allegory for seasonal cycles. Agricultural societies personifying weather. Standard interpretation." A pause. "The standard interpretation is correct."
He took another drink of coffee. The thermos was empty. He hadn't noticed finishing it.
* * *
At 12:31 AM, Doctor Oobleck did something he had never done before in his entire academic career.
He made a forum account.
He spent eleven minutes on the username alone before settling on HistoryIsNotBoring_BO, which he felt was both accurate and a small act of defiance against every student who had ever slept through his lectures.
He typed, deleted, typed again. It came out far longer than intended.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: As someone with a professional background in history, I must object to several of the stream's claims. The etymology of "Dust" is considerably more nuanced than the powdered-form explanation, the characterization of deposits as "leylines" is geologically unsound, and the speaker's grasp of source analysis is, frankly, nonexistent.
That said, the central thesis — that the naming of a phenomenon reflects the circumstances of its discovery rather than its intrinsic nature — is entirely correct and is taught in introductory historiography. The speaker has independently arrived at it, badly, and I find that genuinely admirable.
I would also note, for the benefit of the thread, that Remnant's earliest historical record does contain significant gaps, and it is worth asking what words we might have lost along the way. Purely academically.
Also, ValeCommuter_22, you have posted the same four words forty-one times. Please expand your argument or cite a source.
He read it over twice, hit submit, and then sat very still.
Within three minutes, there were replies.
grimm_bait_420: who is this guy lmao
HunterWannabe_Tom: "badly, and I find that genuinely admirable" is the most teacher sentence I've ever read
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
FaunusRights_Now: professional historian?? can you do a guest appearance on the next stream
grimm_bait_420: GET THIS MAN ON THE STREAM
Oobleck stared at that last line for a long moment.
Absolutely not. It would be highly unprofessional. A Beacon faculty member debating an anonymous amateur on a public broadcast about the metaphysics of Aura. The Headmaster would have questions. Glynda would have looks.
He began grading essays again.
He made it through four of them before he opened a new document and, at the top, typed: Possible Discussion Points — Etymology of Aura Terminology, For General Interest.
Then, underneath, smaller:
What would we call it, if we had forgotten?
He looked at that line for a while. Then he poured himself a fresh thermos, and did not go to sleep at all.
Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck had not intended to be awake at this hour. He had intended to finish grading forty-three essays on the Faunus Rights Revolution, most of which confused the dates of the Battle of Fort Castle with the signing of the treaty afterward, a mistake so common it had become a kind of personal nemesis.
But one of the essays had a footnote. And the footnote said: "See also: 'Stream Guy Is Annoying But Might Be Right' thread, CCT forums."
He did not approve of students citing forum posts. He clicked it anyway, purely to confirm his disapproval.
That was two hours and three thermoses of coffee ago.
* * *
The thread itself was chaos, as these things always were. Half the posters were arguing semantics, a quarter were posting reaction images of Huntsmen shrugging, and one very committed individual named ValeCommuter_22 had simply replied "still a Semblance" on every single page. Oobleck found himself, against his will, admiring the stamina.
Then he found the stream recordings, and he watched all three.
The first one he watched sitting down.
The second one he watched standing up.
By the third, he was pacing so quickly across his quarters that the stack of essays on his desk had begun to lift slightly at the corners from the draft.
"No, no, no, the name Dust is not simply because it was powdered, that is a gross oversimplification—" he told the screen, then paused, rewound, and listened again. "...although the earliest recorded usage does refer to ground forms. Mhm. Hm. Fine. Partial credit, Mister Trader."
He took a long drink from his thermos.
The young man on the stream wasn't a scholar. That much was obvious. His vocabulary was casual, his arguments were loose, and he had a habit of declaring victory the moment someone paused to type. He had never, apparently, heard of proper citation.
And yet.
"The word depends on whether you found it first or were born into it," the recording said.
Oobleck stopped pacing.
That was not a layman's observation. That was the entire foundation of historical linguistics, stated clumsily, in a cheap apartment, with a Dust-lamp flickering in the background. Names are not neutral. Names are records. Every word a society uses is a fossil of the moment it was coined, and of who coined it. A miner's word. A priest's word. A soldier's word. You could reconstruct a people's entire relationship with a thing just by studying what they chose to call it.
He had given nearly that exact lecture to second-years last spring. Four students had fallen asleep.
This boy had given it to four hundred strangers, and they'd argued back.
"Remarkable," he muttered, zipping to his bookshelf in a blur. He pulled down three volumes on early settlement history and one on the etymology of Huntsman terminology and began flipping. "Where does 'Semblance' first appear in the written record? Mhm. Mhm. Academy application standards, formalized... but the word itself predates that. Older. Much older."
He turned another page. Then another.
The trail went back further than he expected, and then it simply... thinned. Records of early humanity fighting the Grimm, the discovery of Dust as the turning point for survival, kingdoms forming around deposits — all well documented. But before that, the sources grew sparse, vague, contradictory. Fragments. Folk tales. Things written down long after the fact by people who clearly weren't there.
This wasn't new to him. Every historian of Remnant knew that the oldest eras were murky. It was a known gap, the kind you mentioned in the first week of class and then moved past, because there was no data to fill it and speculation was unprofessional.
But the boy's hypothetical sat in his mind like a stone in a boot.
Assume humanity forgot. Then someone rediscovers it.
"A thought experiment," Oobleck said aloud, firmly, to the empty room. "Merely a rhetorical device. Popular in amateur philosophy. Mhm."
He did not put the book down.
* * *
He rewatched the section where the young man called Dust deposits "leylines," and the Atlas student objected that they simply followed geological formations.
"Every leyline in every fantasy book is just a geological deposit nobody bothered to study."
Oobleck actually laughed, a short, sharp bark that startled himself. It was an absurd statement. It was also, from a certain angle, a perfectly reasonable description of how scholarship worked. Mythology was frequently just observation that had been passed down without its explanation. Every legend of a river spirit was, somewhere at its root, a very old account of a flood.
Which raised the uncomfortable question of what, exactly, the Maiden story was a very old account of.
He found himself glancing at the fairy tale section of his shelf. A children's collection sat there, spine worn — he kept it for his course on oral tradition. Four sisters. A kind old wizard. The seasons.
"Folklore," he said. "Cultural allegory for seasonal cycles. Agricultural societies personifying weather. Standard interpretation." A pause. "The standard interpretation is correct."
He took another drink of coffee. The thermos was empty. He hadn't noticed finishing it.
* * *
At 12:31 AM, Doctor Oobleck did something he had never done before in his entire academic career.
He made a forum account.
He spent eleven minutes on the username alone before settling on HistoryIsNotBoring_BO, which he felt was both accurate and a small act of defiance against every student who had ever slept through his lectures.
He typed, deleted, typed again. It came out far longer than intended.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: As someone with a professional background in history, I must object to several of the stream's claims. The etymology of "Dust" is considerably more nuanced than the powdered-form explanation, the characterization of deposits as "leylines" is geologically unsound, and the speaker's grasp of source analysis is, frankly, nonexistent.
That said, the central thesis — that the naming of a phenomenon reflects the circumstances of its discovery rather than its intrinsic nature — is entirely correct and is taught in introductory historiography. The speaker has independently arrived at it, badly, and I find that genuinely admirable.
I would also note, for the benefit of the thread, that Remnant's earliest historical record does contain significant gaps, and it is worth asking what words we might have lost along the way. Purely academically.
Also, ValeCommuter_22, you have posted the same four words forty-one times. Please expand your argument or cite a source.
He read it over twice, hit submit, and then sat very still.
Within three minutes, there were replies.
grimm_bait_420: who is this guy lmao
HunterWannabe_Tom: "badly, and I find that genuinely admirable" is the most teacher sentence I've ever read
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
FaunusRights_Now: professional historian?? can you do a guest appearance on the next stream
grimm_bait_420: GET THIS MAN ON THE STREAM
Oobleck stared at that last line for a long moment.
Absolutely not. It would be highly unprofessional. A Beacon faculty member debating an anonymous amateur on a public broadcast about the metaphysics of Aura. The Headmaster would have questions. Glynda would have looks.
He began grading essays again.
He made it through four of them before he opened a new document and, at the top, typed: Possible Discussion Points — Etymology of Aura Terminology, For General Interest.
Then, underneath, smaller:
What would we call it, if we had forgotten?
He looked at that line for a while. Then he poured himself a fresh thermos, and did not go to sleep at all.
Chapter 5: Lecture Hall 3B
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- Mar 9, 2018
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- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 9:00 AM
The students knew something was wrong the moment they walked in.
Doctor Oobleck was not zipping. He was standing perfectly still at the front of the hall, thermos in hand, next to a projector screen displaying a paused video of a young man in a cramped apartment. Under the video, in bold, the title read: "Semblances are magic, change my mind."
"Is... is that a CCT stream?" Yang whispered, sliding into her seat.
"In a history class?" Weiss hissed back. "That's absurd."
"Oh, this is gonna be good," Nora said, not whispering at all.
Oobleck waited until the last student, Jaune, who stumbled in clutching a half-eaten muffin, had sat down. Then he took a slow, deliberate sip of coffee.
"Good morning, class. Today, we will not be discussing the Faunus Rights Revolution. Several of you will be relieved. Several of you," he glanced pointedly at Cardin, "confused the dates of Fort Castle again, and will be less relieved when you receive your grades. But that is for later."
He raised a remote.
"Instead, I am going to show you three recordings. They were made by an individual of no academic standing whatsoever. His arguments are imprecise. His sources are nonexistent. His posture is atrocious." He pressed play. "Watch them anyway."
* * *
Three streams took a little over an hour.
The reactions around the room shifted as they went. During the first, there was laughter, mostly at ValeCommuter_22, whose unwavering "it's a Semblance" had Yang wheezing into her sleeve by the fourth repetition. During the second, the room got quieter as the arguments got sharper, and a few students were visibly muttering counterpoints under their breath. During the third, when the young man asked what someone who had forgotten everything would call it, the hall had gone almost completely silent.
The video ended on the frozen frame of [STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 688].
Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Well?" He zipped to the center of the room so fast that the papers on the front desk fluttered. "Thoughts! Reactions! Objections! Is he right? Is he wrong? Is he merely annoying? Speak!"
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Weiss's hand shot up.
"Ah! Miss Schnee."
"With respect, Doctor, the premise is fundamentally flawed." She stood, smoothing her skirt. "He keeps saying Semblances are 'mystical.' They aren't. My family's glyphs have been studied for generations. They follow consistent principles. They respond to training, discipline, and Dust in predictable ways. Magic, in every story I've ever read, is arbitrary. The difference is rules."
"Mhm! The Atlas student's argument from the second stream. And how did our streamer respond to that?"
Weiss's jaw tightened slightly. "He said that fictional magic systems often have rules too."
"And?"
"...And that 'it costs energy and requires practice' describes most wizard training in literature." She sat down, a little stiffly. "Which is a cheap rebuttal."
"Cheap," Oobleck agreed cheerfully, "but not incorrect! Anyone else?"
Yang leaned back in her chair. "I mean, honestly? I kinda agree with him. My Semblance makes me hit harder the more I get hit. That's not science, that's a video game mechanic. If I'd never heard the word 'Semblance' and that started happening, I'd one hundred percent think I was cursed or something."
"Cursed with awesome," Ruby added.
"Obviously."
"Ooh! Ooh!" Nora was practically bouncing. "Mine's lightning! I eat lightning! If that's not magic, what is?!"
"Nora," Ren said quietly, "you're proving his point."
"I KNOW. I'm on his side."
A few people laughed. From the back, Cardin snorted loudly.
"This is dumb," he announced. "It's a word. Who cares what you call it? Semblance, magic, whatever. It's still just a power. The guy's a nobody streaming from a dump, and he's making everyone argue about vocabulary."
"Mister Winchester!" Oobleck zipped to his row, and Cardin flinched. "You have, entirely by accident, made a profound observation."
Cardin blinked. "I have?"
"'It's just a word. Who cares what you call it?'" Oobleck spun to face the room. "Historians care, Mister Winchester! Because words are records! The name a people give something tells you who named it, when, and why. Our friend on the stream argues that 'Dust' is a miner's word. A practical word. And he's right, at least partially! If poets had found it first, we might call it something else entirely." He paused. "Although I object to 'starfire.' Too dramatic."
"I liked starfire," Ruby murmured.
A hand rose from the middle row. Blake, who had been quiet through all three streams.
"Miss Belladonna."
"I think the most interesting part wasn't whether Semblances are magic," Blake said slowly. "It was the Faunus viewer in the first stream. The one who said 'magic' was used against people historically. Calling Faunus unnatural." She glanced briefly toward Velvet, a few rows ahead. "When your abilities are called 'magic,' people start treating you like something to be afraid of. 'Semblance' makes it sound... normal. Human. Like it belongs to everyone."
The room was quieter now.
"So maybe the name was chosen on purpose," she continued. "Not because it's more accurate. Because it's safer."
Oobleck had gone very still again, which was somehow more unnerving than when he moved.
"That," he said, "is an excellent point, and one I would like to see in an essay. Go on."
"That's all," Blake said. "Just that a neutral word keeps people from fighting over what it means."
"The church viewer said something similar," Ren added. "That older people see Aura as sacred, and 'magic' would cheapen it. So the scientists didn't want it called magic, and the religious didn't want it called magic, for completely opposite reasons. And 'Semblance' was the word that offended nobody."
"A compromise term!" Oobleck said, delighted. "Mhm! Language as diplomacy! Yes!"
Jaune, who had been fidgeting, slowly raised his hand.
"Mister Arc?"
"Um. So. The third stream. The guy who forgets everything and rediscovers it." Jaune rubbed the back of his neck. "I kinda relate to that guy? I don't have a Semblance yet. My Aura only got unlocked recently." He glanced at Pyrrha, who gave him a small encouraging nod. "And honestly, when it happened, it didn't feel like 'a manifestation of my soul.' It felt like... something impossible. Like I'd been let in on a secret. I think if nobody had told me what it was called, I'd have called it magic too."
"Thank you, Mister Arc. The perspective of the uninitiated. Quite valuable." Oobleck turned. "Miss Nikos? You've been quiet."
Pyrrha hesitated. "I was thinking about the woman in the first stream. The one who said magic is for the Maiden stories. That magic is rare and special."
"Yes?"
"It's just that... the streamer turned it around on her in the third stream. If one person has a power, it's magic. If a million people have it, it's a Semblance." She folded her hands. "That means our definition of magic isn't about what something is. It's about how many people can do it. And that seems... fragile. As definitions go."
"It is fragile," Oobleck said. "Most definitions are, once you press on them. That is precisely why this is interesting." He zipped back to the front. "Which brings me to the question our streamer raised without realizing he'd raised it. Miss Nikos mentioned the Maidens. What are the Maiden stories, historically?"
"Fairy tales," Weiss said promptly. "Allegory. Agricultural societies personifying the seasons."
"That is the standard interpretation, yes. And it is a very good one." Oobleck took a sip of coffee. "But let me ask it the way our streamer might. Many myths, when studied, turn out to be very old memories of real events, stripped of their explanations. A flood becomes a river spirit. A plague becomes a curse. So." He set the thermos down. "If the Maiden stories were a memory of something real... what would that something have been?"
The silence that followed was the longest yet.
"Women with really strong elemental Semblances?" Yang offered finally.
"People who were good at using Dust, before everyone knew how Dust worked?" Ruby said.
"Or nothing at all," Weiss said firmly, "because it's a children's book."
"All valid hypotheses!" Oobleck said. "None of which can currently be proven, because, as I have told you all a great many times in the first week of term—"
"The earliest historical records are incomplete," half the class droned in unison.
"Precisely!" He pointed at them, beaming. "You were listening! Which is why this is a thought experiment, and not a thesis. Do not go around telling people Beacon's history department believes in fairy tale wizards. The Headmaster will have questions. Professor Goodwitch will have looks."
Several students laughed.
"Assignment!" Oobleck zipped to the board and began writing faster than anyone could read. "Two thousand words. Choose one of the following. One: Are Semblances and magic meaningfully different, or is the distinction purely cultural? Two: Analyze how the name 'Dust' or 'Semblance' reflects the society that coined it. Three: Imagine, as our streamer did, that humanity lost all knowledge of Aura, Semblances, and Dust. Using historical examples of how societies name the unfamiliar, argue what they would be called upon rediscovery."
"Can we cite the stream?" Yang asked.
"You may cite the stream," Oobleck said, "as a primary source of public opinion. You may not cite it as fact. And Mister Winchester."
Cardin looked up.
"You may not write two thousand words of 'who cares, it's just a word.'"
"...Wasn't gonna."
"You were absolutely going to." He checked his watch. "Class dismissed! Go! Think! Argue with each other!"
* * *
The students filed out in a wave of noise, and it was clear the discussion wasn't ending at the door.
"It's a technique," Weiss was saying. "Glyphs are a technique."
"You literally summon a giant ghost knight," Yang said. "That's a spell. You're a spellcaster. Deal with it."
"I'm going to call my Semblance magic from now on," Ruby declared. "Crescent Rose, magic scythe. Me, magic girl."
"Please don't," Weiss groaned.
Behind them, Nora was explaining to a very patient Ren that she was going to write her essay entirely about how she was a lightning wizard, and Ren was nodding in the way he did when he had long since accepted his fate.
Pyrrha lingered near the door for a moment, looking back at the frozen stream title on the board.
"Pyrrha?" Jaune asked. "You coming?"
"Yes," she said. "Sorry. Just thinking." She smiled. "It's a good question, isn't it? What we'd call it, if we'd forgotten."
"Yeah," Jaune said. "Weird how it sticks with you."
At the front of the hall, Doctor Oobleck was already rewatching the third stream on his scroll, muttering to himself, a fresh thermos steaming at his elbow.
On the forum, a new comment appeared under the thread.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Update: I showed these streams to a class of students. The discussion was the liveliest I have had all year. I remain firmly of the opinion that the speaker's methodology is poor. I would also like to formally thank him.
grimm_bait_420: HE SHOWED IT TO A CLASS
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy is on the SYLLABUS now
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
The students knew something was wrong the moment they walked in.
Doctor Oobleck was not zipping. He was standing perfectly still at the front of the hall, thermos in hand, next to a projector screen displaying a paused video of a young man in a cramped apartment. Under the video, in bold, the title read: "Semblances are magic, change my mind."
"Is... is that a CCT stream?" Yang whispered, sliding into her seat.
"In a history class?" Weiss hissed back. "That's absurd."
"Oh, this is gonna be good," Nora said, not whispering at all.
Oobleck waited until the last student, Jaune, who stumbled in clutching a half-eaten muffin, had sat down. Then he took a slow, deliberate sip of coffee.
"Good morning, class. Today, we will not be discussing the Faunus Rights Revolution. Several of you will be relieved. Several of you," he glanced pointedly at Cardin, "confused the dates of Fort Castle again, and will be less relieved when you receive your grades. But that is for later."
He raised a remote.
"Instead, I am going to show you three recordings. They were made by an individual of no academic standing whatsoever. His arguments are imprecise. His sources are nonexistent. His posture is atrocious." He pressed play. "Watch them anyway."
* * *
Three streams took a little over an hour.
The reactions around the room shifted as they went. During the first, there was laughter, mostly at ValeCommuter_22, whose unwavering "it's a Semblance" had Yang wheezing into her sleeve by the fourth repetition. During the second, the room got quieter as the arguments got sharper, and a few students were visibly muttering counterpoints under their breath. During the third, when the young man asked what someone who had forgotten everything would call it, the hall had gone almost completely silent.
The video ended on the frozen frame of [STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 688].
Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Well?" He zipped to the center of the room so fast that the papers on the front desk fluttered. "Thoughts! Reactions! Objections! Is he right? Is he wrong? Is he merely annoying? Speak!"
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Weiss's hand shot up.
"Ah! Miss Schnee."
"With respect, Doctor, the premise is fundamentally flawed." She stood, smoothing her skirt. "He keeps saying Semblances are 'mystical.' They aren't. My family's glyphs have been studied for generations. They follow consistent principles. They respond to training, discipline, and Dust in predictable ways. Magic, in every story I've ever read, is arbitrary. The difference is rules."
"Mhm! The Atlas student's argument from the second stream. And how did our streamer respond to that?"
Weiss's jaw tightened slightly. "He said that fictional magic systems often have rules too."
"And?"
"...And that 'it costs energy and requires practice' describes most wizard training in literature." She sat down, a little stiffly. "Which is a cheap rebuttal."
"Cheap," Oobleck agreed cheerfully, "but not incorrect! Anyone else?"
Yang leaned back in her chair. "I mean, honestly? I kinda agree with him. My Semblance makes me hit harder the more I get hit. That's not science, that's a video game mechanic. If I'd never heard the word 'Semblance' and that started happening, I'd one hundred percent think I was cursed or something."
"Cursed with awesome," Ruby added.
"Obviously."
"Ooh! Ooh!" Nora was practically bouncing. "Mine's lightning! I eat lightning! If that's not magic, what is?!"
"Nora," Ren said quietly, "you're proving his point."
"I KNOW. I'm on his side."
A few people laughed. From the back, Cardin snorted loudly.
"This is dumb," he announced. "It's a word. Who cares what you call it? Semblance, magic, whatever. It's still just a power. The guy's a nobody streaming from a dump, and he's making everyone argue about vocabulary."
"Mister Winchester!" Oobleck zipped to his row, and Cardin flinched. "You have, entirely by accident, made a profound observation."
Cardin blinked. "I have?"
"'It's just a word. Who cares what you call it?'" Oobleck spun to face the room. "Historians care, Mister Winchester! Because words are records! The name a people give something tells you who named it, when, and why. Our friend on the stream argues that 'Dust' is a miner's word. A practical word. And he's right, at least partially! If poets had found it first, we might call it something else entirely." He paused. "Although I object to 'starfire.' Too dramatic."
"I liked starfire," Ruby murmured.
A hand rose from the middle row. Blake, who had been quiet through all three streams.
"Miss Belladonna."
"I think the most interesting part wasn't whether Semblances are magic," Blake said slowly. "It was the Faunus viewer in the first stream. The one who said 'magic' was used against people historically. Calling Faunus unnatural." She glanced briefly toward Velvet, a few rows ahead. "When your abilities are called 'magic,' people start treating you like something to be afraid of. 'Semblance' makes it sound... normal. Human. Like it belongs to everyone."
The room was quieter now.
"So maybe the name was chosen on purpose," she continued. "Not because it's more accurate. Because it's safer."
Oobleck had gone very still again, which was somehow more unnerving than when he moved.
"That," he said, "is an excellent point, and one I would like to see in an essay. Go on."
"That's all," Blake said. "Just that a neutral word keeps people from fighting over what it means."
"The church viewer said something similar," Ren added. "That older people see Aura as sacred, and 'magic' would cheapen it. So the scientists didn't want it called magic, and the religious didn't want it called magic, for completely opposite reasons. And 'Semblance' was the word that offended nobody."
"A compromise term!" Oobleck said, delighted. "Mhm! Language as diplomacy! Yes!"
Jaune, who had been fidgeting, slowly raised his hand.
"Mister Arc?"
"Um. So. The third stream. The guy who forgets everything and rediscovers it." Jaune rubbed the back of his neck. "I kinda relate to that guy? I don't have a Semblance yet. My Aura only got unlocked recently." He glanced at Pyrrha, who gave him a small encouraging nod. "And honestly, when it happened, it didn't feel like 'a manifestation of my soul.' It felt like... something impossible. Like I'd been let in on a secret. I think if nobody had told me what it was called, I'd have called it magic too."
"Thank you, Mister Arc. The perspective of the uninitiated. Quite valuable." Oobleck turned. "Miss Nikos? You've been quiet."
Pyrrha hesitated. "I was thinking about the woman in the first stream. The one who said magic is for the Maiden stories. That magic is rare and special."
"Yes?"
"It's just that... the streamer turned it around on her in the third stream. If one person has a power, it's magic. If a million people have it, it's a Semblance." She folded her hands. "That means our definition of magic isn't about what something is. It's about how many people can do it. And that seems... fragile. As definitions go."
"It is fragile," Oobleck said. "Most definitions are, once you press on them. That is precisely why this is interesting." He zipped back to the front. "Which brings me to the question our streamer raised without realizing he'd raised it. Miss Nikos mentioned the Maidens. What are the Maiden stories, historically?"
"Fairy tales," Weiss said promptly. "Allegory. Agricultural societies personifying the seasons."
"That is the standard interpretation, yes. And it is a very good one." Oobleck took a sip of coffee. "But let me ask it the way our streamer might. Many myths, when studied, turn out to be very old memories of real events, stripped of their explanations. A flood becomes a river spirit. A plague becomes a curse. So." He set the thermos down. "If the Maiden stories were a memory of something real... what would that something have been?"
The silence that followed was the longest yet.
"Women with really strong elemental Semblances?" Yang offered finally.
"People who were good at using Dust, before everyone knew how Dust worked?" Ruby said.
"Or nothing at all," Weiss said firmly, "because it's a children's book."
"All valid hypotheses!" Oobleck said. "None of which can currently be proven, because, as I have told you all a great many times in the first week of term—"
"The earliest historical records are incomplete," half the class droned in unison.
"Precisely!" He pointed at them, beaming. "You were listening! Which is why this is a thought experiment, and not a thesis. Do not go around telling people Beacon's history department believes in fairy tale wizards. The Headmaster will have questions. Professor Goodwitch will have looks."
Several students laughed.
"Assignment!" Oobleck zipped to the board and began writing faster than anyone could read. "Two thousand words. Choose one of the following. One: Are Semblances and magic meaningfully different, or is the distinction purely cultural? Two: Analyze how the name 'Dust' or 'Semblance' reflects the society that coined it. Three: Imagine, as our streamer did, that humanity lost all knowledge of Aura, Semblances, and Dust. Using historical examples of how societies name the unfamiliar, argue what they would be called upon rediscovery."
"Can we cite the stream?" Yang asked.
"You may cite the stream," Oobleck said, "as a primary source of public opinion. You may not cite it as fact. And Mister Winchester."
Cardin looked up.
"You may not write two thousand words of 'who cares, it's just a word.'"
"...Wasn't gonna."
"You were absolutely going to." He checked his watch. "Class dismissed! Go! Think! Argue with each other!"
* * *
The students filed out in a wave of noise, and it was clear the discussion wasn't ending at the door.
"It's a technique," Weiss was saying. "Glyphs are a technique."
"You literally summon a giant ghost knight," Yang said. "That's a spell. You're a spellcaster. Deal with it."
"I'm going to call my Semblance magic from now on," Ruby declared. "Crescent Rose, magic scythe. Me, magic girl."
"Please don't," Weiss groaned.
Behind them, Nora was explaining to a very patient Ren that she was going to write her essay entirely about how she was a lightning wizard, and Ren was nodding in the way he did when he had long since accepted his fate.
Pyrrha lingered near the door for a moment, looking back at the frozen stream title on the board.
"Pyrrha?" Jaune asked. "You coming?"
"Yes," she said. "Sorry. Just thinking." She smiled. "It's a good question, isn't it? What we'd call it, if we'd forgotten."
"Yeah," Jaune said. "Weird how it sticks with you."
At the front of the hall, Doctor Oobleck was already rewatching the third stream on his scroll, muttering to himself, a fresh thermos steaming at his elbow.
On the forum, a new comment appeared under the thread.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Update: I showed these streams to a class of students. The discussion was the liveliest I have had all year. I remain firmly of the opinion that the speaker's methodology is poor. I would also like to formally thank him.
grimm_bait_420: HE SHOWED IT TO A CLASS
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy is on the SYLLABUS now
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance
Chapter 6: Fine, Then Where Is Magic?
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Semblances pt. 4: fine, then WHERE is magic?" — 👁 1,204 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay. First, hi to the new people. Apparently a professor showed my streams to a class, which is insane, and I'm choosing to take that as a compliment.
I've read all the arguments. Rules, rarity, feels-like-a-muscle, sacred-not-magic, compromise word. Great. So tonight I'm conceding. For the sake of argument: Semblances aren't magic.
Then what is? Where is it? And don't say "magic doesn't exist." Because the way I see it, there are only two options. Either Semblances are magic, or magic is something different that humanity forgot about. Maybe someone even erased it. Because every time we talk about this, the naming keeps splitting and people keep fighting over the definition.
So let me just make one. Here's my definition:
Magic is the ultimate class of miracle-working. It achieves results impossible to reproduce by humans or the planet, even with infinite time and resources.
That excludes Dust, because Dust comes from the planet. It excludes the Maidens, if they're even real, because they're probably just really powerful Dust users. And it excludes Semblances, because a Semblance is one specific mystical effect bound to one specific person.
So by that definition... where is magic?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE CONCEDED?? who are you and what have you done with stream guy
SI: Strategic concession. Keep reading.
ValeCommuter_22: finally. it's a Semblance.
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 you win this round. enjoy it.
ValeCommuter_22:
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, I actually like that you wrote a definition. But there's a problem. "Impossible even with infinite time and resources" can never be tested. You can't run an experiment with infinite time. So under your definition, nothing could ever be confirmed as magic.
SI: Yeah, I know. That's kind of the point. Magic should be the thing that's off the scale. If you could eventually build it, it's just engineering you haven't done yet.
AtlasTechStudent: Then you've defined magic as "the thing science can never touch." Which means you've made it unfalsifiable on purpose.
SI: Correct. Magic is supposed to be unfalsifiable. That's what makes it magic and not a Semblance.
AtlasTechStudent: ...I genuinely can't tell if that's brilliant or cheating.
grimm_bait_420: it's both. it's always both with this guy.
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait, you excluded the Maidens by just saying "probably Dust casters." you can't just declare that lol. that's the same thing you yelled at everyone else for.
SI: ...
SI: okay yeah, that's fair. I assumed that. Let me rephrase: IF the Maidens were real, and IF their power could be explained by Dust or Aura, they don't count. If it can't, they do.
HunterWannabe_Tom: better
SnowAngelFan_01: so what would even pass your test? like give an example
SI: Good question. Something no amount of Dust, Aura, or tech could ever do.
DustTrader_Mo: bringing someone back from the dead. no Dust does that. no Semblance I've ever heard of does that. no machine does that.
SI: Yes. That's one.
MistralMom_Jenna: Creating a soul. We can measure Aura, but nobody's ever made one out of nothing.
SI: Oh, that's a great one. Yes.
FaunusRights_Now: Making an entire species. Out of nothing. Like the Grimm, or like people.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: You all just described the Brothers.
grimm_bait_420: oh
grimm_bait_420: OH
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Creating life. Creating the world. Creating the Grimm. The old stories say that's what the Brothers did. By your definition, the only thing that counts as magic is what the gods did.
SI: ...huh.
SI: Okay, I didn't plan that, but that's actually exactly where the definition goes, isn't it? If magic is "things no human or planet can ever do," then magic is by definition god-tier stuff.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. I've been saying that for three streams.
SI: You have. I'm sorry I didn't listen.
VacuoVeteran: So to answer your question — "where is magic?" — under your own definition, the answer is "wherever the gods went." Which, according to the stories, is gone.
SI: That's... kind of a sad answer, honestly.
VacuoVeteran: Most real answers are.
AtlasTechStudent: Or the answer is "nowhere, because gods are a myth," which is also consistent with your definition.
SI: I said don't say magic doesn't exist.
AtlasTechStudent: I didn't. I said it might not currently exist. Very different.
SI: ...lawyer.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: If I may contribute as the professor in question: two points.
grimm_bait_420: HE'S HERE
HunterWannabe_Tom: PROFESSOR IN THE CHAT
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: First, your definition has improved considerably. You have separated magic by capability rather than by name, which avoids the cultural-labeling problem from your earlier streams. Well done.
SI: oh wow thank you
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Second, I must strongly caution against the phrase "someone erased it." Gaps in the early historical record are real and well known. But gaps are the normal state of ancient history. Records burn. Languages die. Wars destroy archives. Leaping from "we have gaps" to "someone deliberately erased magic" is not scholarship. That is the beginning of a conspiracy theory.
SI: That's fair. I'm not saying it DID happen. I'm saying if magic existed and nobody remembers it, "forgot" and "erased" are the only two options.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: "Forgot" is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it.
SI: Noted, professor.
grimm_bait_420: stream guy getting graded LIVE
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: B-minus. Improving.
SI: I'll take it!!
MistralMom_Jenna: Okay but I want to go back to something. If magic is only god-level stuff, then Semblances are basically... a tiny piece of that? Like, we can't make a soul, but every soul can do something impossible on its own.
SI: Oh, I like that. Like Semblances are sparks, and magic is the fire.
VacuoVeteran: Magic that got a job and paid taxes, and real magic is the one that doesn't answer to anyone.
SI: Exactly. Okay, final version, based on chat:
Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do — creating souls, raising the dead, making life from nothing. As far as anyone knows, that belongs to the gods in the old stories, and it left with them.
Semblances are what's left in us. One small, personal, impossible thing per soul. Not magic in the full sense. Maybe an echo of it.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's the most respectful thing anyone's said on this stream. Thank you.
AtlasTechStudent: I still think you built the definition so it can never be disproven.
SI: I absolutely did. But it answers the question.
AtlasTechStudent: ...yeah. It does. Annoyingly.
ValeCommuter_22: so it's a Semblance
SI: YES, VALE GUY. Tonight, it's a Semblance. You win.
ValeCommuter_22: I have always been winning
grimm_bait_420: this whole saga was just Vale guy's redemption arc
anon_viewer_4471: A well-reasoned conclusion. "Forgot" rather than "erased." Your professor gives good advice.
SI: Yeah, I'm starting to trust the guy.
anon_viewer_4471: Wise.
SI: Okay, that's the stream. I think the Semblance saga is officially done. Next time: Grimm and souls, like I promised last week. Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 2,317]
* * *
SI: Okay. First, hi to the new people. Apparently a professor showed my streams to a class, which is insane, and I'm choosing to take that as a compliment.
I've read all the arguments. Rules, rarity, feels-like-a-muscle, sacred-not-magic, compromise word. Great. So tonight I'm conceding. For the sake of argument: Semblances aren't magic.
Then what is? Where is it? And don't say "magic doesn't exist." Because the way I see it, there are only two options. Either Semblances are magic, or magic is something different that humanity forgot about. Maybe someone even erased it. Because every time we talk about this, the naming keeps splitting and people keep fighting over the definition.
So let me just make one. Here's my definition:
Magic is the ultimate class of miracle-working. It achieves results impossible to reproduce by humans or the planet, even with infinite time and resources.
That excludes Dust, because Dust comes from the planet. It excludes the Maidens, if they're even real, because they're probably just really powerful Dust users. And it excludes Semblances, because a Semblance is one specific mystical effect bound to one specific person.
So by that definition... where is magic?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE CONCEDED?? who are you and what have you done with stream guy
SI: Strategic concession. Keep reading.
ValeCommuter_22: finally. it's a Semblance.
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 you win this round. enjoy it.
ValeCommuter_22:
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, I actually like that you wrote a definition. But there's a problem. "Impossible even with infinite time and resources" can never be tested. You can't run an experiment with infinite time. So under your definition, nothing could ever be confirmed as magic.
SI: Yeah, I know. That's kind of the point. Magic should be the thing that's off the scale. If you could eventually build it, it's just engineering you haven't done yet.
AtlasTechStudent: Then you've defined magic as "the thing science can never touch." Which means you've made it unfalsifiable on purpose.
SI: Correct. Magic is supposed to be unfalsifiable. That's what makes it magic and not a Semblance.
AtlasTechStudent: ...I genuinely can't tell if that's brilliant or cheating.
grimm_bait_420: it's both. it's always both with this guy.
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait, you excluded the Maidens by just saying "probably Dust casters." you can't just declare that lol. that's the same thing you yelled at everyone else for.
SI: ...
SI: okay yeah, that's fair. I assumed that. Let me rephrase: IF the Maidens were real, and IF their power could be explained by Dust or Aura, they don't count. If it can't, they do.
HunterWannabe_Tom: better
SnowAngelFan_01: so what would even pass your test? like give an example
SI: Good question. Something no amount of Dust, Aura, or tech could ever do.
DustTrader_Mo: bringing someone back from the dead. no Dust does that. no Semblance I've ever heard of does that. no machine does that.
SI: Yes. That's one.
MistralMom_Jenna: Creating a soul. We can measure Aura, but nobody's ever made one out of nothing.
SI: Oh, that's a great one. Yes.
FaunusRights_Now: Making an entire species. Out of nothing. Like the Grimm, or like people.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: You all just described the Brothers.
grimm_bait_420: oh
grimm_bait_420: OH
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Creating life. Creating the world. Creating the Grimm. The old stories say that's what the Brothers did. By your definition, the only thing that counts as magic is what the gods did.
SI: ...huh.
SI: Okay, I didn't plan that, but that's actually exactly where the definition goes, isn't it? If magic is "things no human or planet can ever do," then magic is by definition god-tier stuff.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. I've been saying that for three streams.
SI: You have. I'm sorry I didn't listen.
VacuoVeteran: So to answer your question — "where is magic?" — under your own definition, the answer is "wherever the gods went." Which, according to the stories, is gone.
SI: That's... kind of a sad answer, honestly.
VacuoVeteran: Most real answers are.
AtlasTechStudent: Or the answer is "nowhere, because gods are a myth," which is also consistent with your definition.
SI: I said don't say magic doesn't exist.
AtlasTechStudent: I didn't. I said it might not currently exist. Very different.
SI: ...lawyer.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: If I may contribute as the professor in question: two points.
grimm_bait_420: HE'S HERE
HunterWannabe_Tom: PROFESSOR IN THE CHAT
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: First, your definition has improved considerably. You have separated magic by capability rather than by name, which avoids the cultural-labeling problem from your earlier streams. Well done.
SI: oh wow thank you
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Second, I must strongly caution against the phrase "someone erased it." Gaps in the early historical record are real and well known. But gaps are the normal state of ancient history. Records burn. Languages die. Wars destroy archives. Leaping from "we have gaps" to "someone deliberately erased magic" is not scholarship. That is the beginning of a conspiracy theory.
SI: That's fair. I'm not saying it DID happen. I'm saying if magic existed and nobody remembers it, "forgot" and "erased" are the only two options.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: "Forgot" is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it.
SI: Noted, professor.
grimm_bait_420: stream guy getting graded LIVE
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: B-minus. Improving.
SI: I'll take it!!
MistralMom_Jenna: Okay but I want to go back to something. If magic is only god-level stuff, then Semblances are basically... a tiny piece of that? Like, we can't make a soul, but every soul can do something impossible on its own.
SI: Oh, I like that. Like Semblances are sparks, and magic is the fire.
VacuoVeteran: Magic that got a job and paid taxes, and real magic is the one that doesn't answer to anyone.
SI: Exactly. Okay, final version, based on chat:
Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do — creating souls, raising the dead, making life from nothing. As far as anyone knows, that belongs to the gods in the old stories, and it left with them.
Semblances are what's left in us. One small, personal, impossible thing per soul. Not magic in the full sense. Maybe an echo of it.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's the most respectful thing anyone's said on this stream. Thank you.
AtlasTechStudent: I still think you built the definition so it can never be disproven.
SI: I absolutely did. But it answers the question.
AtlasTechStudent: ...yeah. It does. Annoyingly.
ValeCommuter_22: so it's a Semblance
SI: YES, VALE GUY. Tonight, it's a Semblance. You win.
ValeCommuter_22: I have always been winning
grimm_bait_420: this whole saga was just Vale guy's redemption arc
anon_viewer_4471: A well-reasoned conclusion. "Forgot" rather than "erased." Your professor gives good advice.
SI: Yeah, I'm starting to trust the guy.
anon_viewer_4471: Wise.
SI: Okay, that's the stream. I think the Semblance saga is officially done. Next time: Grimm and souls, like I promised last week. Night, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 2,317]
Chapter 7: Homework Day
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 9:00 AM
This time, the students came in early.
Doctor Oobleck noted this with deep suspicion. In his experience, students only arrived early for exams they had crammed for or professors they intended to ask about extensions. Neither applied today.
"You are all here," he said, zipping to the podium, "four minutes before the bell. Explain yourselves."
"Is there another stream?" Ruby asked immediately.
"There is another stream," Yang said, grinning. "It's all over the forums. Part four. And the professor showed up in the chat."
Every head in the room turned toward Oobleck.
He took a long, slow sip of coffee.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. "First, homework."
* * *
He began handing back essays at speed, each one landing on its desk with a crisp slap.
"Overall, the class performed considerably better than on the Fort Castle assignment, which I choose to interpret as evidence that you learn more when you are arguing than when you are memorizing. Let that be a lesson to you, and also to me."
He paused at Weiss's desk.
"Miss Schnee. Option one. You argued that the distinction between Semblances and magic is not purely cultural, because Semblances display consistent, trainable principles. A rigorous essay. Well sourced. Your section on the historical formalization of hereditary Semblances in noble families was excellent." He set it down. "A-minus. You lost points for calling our streamer's arguments 'juvenile' four separate times. Once is critique. Four times is a grudge."
Weiss flushed. "They were juvenile."
"And yet you wrote two thousand words refuting them." He moved on.
"Miss Belladonna. Option two. 'Semblance as a Language of Safety: How Naming Protects the Named.'" He held it up for a moment. "You expanded your point from class about the historical use of 'unnatural' and 'magical' as accusations, particularly against the Faunus, and argued that 'Semblance' functioned as a neutralizing term. This is the best essay I received." He set it down gently. "A. If you are ever interested in pursuing historiography, my office door is open."
Blake blinked, then looked down at the paper, a small, surprised smile on her face.
"Miss Rose. Option three."
"I wrote about the lost-humanity guy!" Ruby said.
"You did. Your argument was that a person rediscovering Aura would call it 'magic,' then 'powers,' then eventually give it a proper name once others could do it too. Sensible structure. Good use of historical naming examples." A pause. "You also, on page four, drew a small picture of a scythe labeled 'magic scythe.'"
"It's relevant!"
"It is not. B-plus. The drawing did not help."
"Miss Valkyrie." He held up an essay that was noticeably thicker than the rest. "You wrote four thousand words. The assignment was two thousand."
"There was a lot to say about being a lightning wizard," Nora said solemnly.
"The first half was a surprisingly thoughtful discussion of Semblances that interact with external energy and whether that blurs the line with Dust. The second half was a short story in which you defeat a Grimm dragon using 'thunder magic.'" He set it down. "B for the first half. I did not grade the second half. I did, however, read it. Twice."
Nora pumped her fist. Ren quietly patted her shoulder.
"Mister Winchester."
Cardin straightened, bracing himself.
"Your thesis was: 'It's a word, and words don't matter, which is why this assignment doesn't matter.'"
Several students snickered.
"And then," Oobleck continued, "you spent the remaining nineteen hundred words explaining, in considerable detail, why people care so much about the word. Their religious reasons. Their political reasons. How the Atlas crowd and the church crowd agree for opposite reasons." He dropped the essay on the desk. "You proved your own thesis wrong, Mister Winchester. Accidentally. Thoroughly. C-plus, and the highest grade you have received in this class."
Cardin stared at the paper. "...Huh."
"Mister Arc. You wrote from personal experience about recently unlocking your Aura and what it felt like to have no word for it. Unconventional for a history essay. But the section connecting it to how early societies described unfamiliar phenomena was genuinely moving. B."
Jaune looked like he might float out of his seat.
"Mister Lie. Miss Nikos. Both option one, both argued that Semblances might be a 'lesser expression' of something larger, and both did so very well. A-minus, each." He paused, frowning slightly. "I will note that the stream I am about to show you arrived at nearly the same conclusion. After your essays were submitted. Make of that what you will."
Ren and Pyrrha exchanged a look.
* * *
"And now." Oobleck set down the last essay and turned to the projector. "Part four."
"So you were in the chat," Yang said.
"I will neither confirm nor deny my presence in a public forum," Oobleck said primly, and pressed play.
* * *
The stream opened with the young man thanking a professor for showing his streams to a class, and the entire room burst into noise.
"He's talking about US," Ruby squeaked.
"We're famous," Nora announced.
"We are not famous," Weiss said. "We are anonymous. And that's how I prefer it."
When the streamer conceded that Semblances weren't magic, there were groans from half the room and cheers from the other half. Weiss looked quietly vindicated. Then he laid out his definition, and the room slowly went quiet.
"Magic is the ultimate class of miracle-working. It achieves results impossible to reproduce by humans or the planet, even with infinite time and resources."
"Oh," Weiss said softly. "That's actually a good definition."
"You're saying that out loud," Yang whispered.
"I'm aware."
When the Atlas student called the definition unfalsifiable, Weiss nodded vigorously. When the streamer replied that magic was supposed to be unfalsifiable, she made a noise of pure frustration that got a laugh from the row behind her.
Then the chat began listing examples. Bringing someone back from the dead. Creating a soul. Making life from nothing.
And the church viewer typed: You all just described the Brothers.
The room was very still.
Pyrrha, near the front, had gone quiet in a way that Jaune noticed without quite understanding. She was watching the screen with her hands folded tightly in her lap.
* * *
Then the username appeared.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: If I may contribute as the professor in question: two points.
The class erupted.
"THAT'S YOU!" Ruby shouted.
"BO! BARTHOLOMEW OOBLECK!" Yang was pointing at him, wheezing. "History is not boring! You made a username!"
"I did not make a username," Oobleck said, with great dignity, while the video continued behind him. "An anonymous scholar with excellent taste made a username."
On the screen, the anonymous scholar gave the streamer a B-minus, live, in front of two thousand viewers.
"You GRADED HIM," Nora cried, delighted. "You graded a random internet guy!"
"His methodology," Oobleck said, "was improving. It would have been dishonest not to acknowledge it."
When the recording reached the part where the professor cautioned against the word "erased," the room quieted again.
"'Forgot' is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it."
Blake tilted her head. "That's good advice," she said. "But you sound a little... worried."
Oobleck paused the video.
"Not worried, Miss Belladonna. Responsible." He turned to face the class. "Here is something I want you all to understand. There are real gaps in our earliest records. That is true. That is normal. Every civilization has them. But the moment someone says 'someone erased this,' the conversation stops being about evidence and starts being about finding a villain. And people who go looking for villains usually find one, whether or not one exists." He took a sip. "History is the discipline of preferring the boring explanation until the evidence forces you to abandon it. Records burn. Languages die. People forget. That is almost always the answer."
"Almost always?" Ren asked quietly.
Oobleck held his gaze for a moment. "Almost always, Mister Lie. Which is why we check."
He pressed play again.
* * *
The stream wound down. The streamer's final version filled the screen:
Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do. As far as anyone knows, it belongs to the gods in the old stories, and it left with them. Semblances are what's left in us. One small, personal, impossible thing per soul. Not magic in the full sense. Maybe an echo of it.
"Sparks and fire," Ren murmured. "That's almost exactly what we wrote."
"Great minds," Pyrrha said, but her voice was a little distant.
The video ended. Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Well?" he said. "Thoughts."
Weiss raised her hand first. "I'll admit it. His final definition is defensible. It separates magic by capability rather than name, which is exactly what my essay argued should be done." She paused. "He's still juvenile."
"Noted. Miss Schnee concedes. Mark the date."
"I liked that it ended respectful," Blake said. "The church viewer spent three streams being ignored, and in the end the whole argument came back to what they'd said from the beginning. That happens a lot in history. The quiet voice was right, and nobody listened until the end."
"An excellent observation," Oobleck said. "Mister Arc?"
"I liked the echo thing," Jaune said. "That Semblances are a little piece of something bigger. It makes it feel... less like a random power and more like it means something."
"I don't love the dead part," Yang said, a bit more quietly than usual. "Like, bringing people back being the example of real magic. That one kinda stuck with me."
"It's supposed to," Ren said. "That's why it's the example. Everyone understands immediately that it's the one thing we can't do."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Miss Nikos?" Oobleck asked. "You've been silent again."
Pyrrha looked up, as if pulled out of a thought.
"I was just thinking," she said carefully, "that the definition only works if the stories are just stories. If the old tales were ever real, even partially... then it wouldn't just be the gods who had it. It'd be whoever they gave it to." She hesitated. "But that's a big if. It's a fairy tale."
"It is a very big if," Oobleck agreed. "And a very good thought. Hold onto it, Miss Nikos, but hold it loosely." He clapped his hands. "No assignment this week!"
The class cheered.
"Instead," he continued, "I would like each of you to think about one question, and discuss it with your teammates. Not for a grade. For your own curiosity." He zipped to the board and wrote a single line:
What would count as evidence?
"If someone told you magic existed, or once existed, what would it take to convince you? And what would it take to convince you it didn't? The streamer built a definition that can't be disproven. That is clever, but it is also dangerous. A good scholar always knows what would change their mind." He checked his watch. "Dismissed!"
* * *
The students filed out, arguing as usual.
"You made a username," Yang was still saying, walking backward toward the door. "I'm never letting this go, Doc."
"I have no idea what you're referring to, Miss Xiao Long."
"B-minus, improving."
"Out."
When the room had emptied, Oobleck sat down at his desk, pulled out his scroll, and opened the forum. The thread had grown to over two thousand replies.
Near the top, a new comment:
grimm_bait_420: ok so the professor is 100% a Beacon teacher right? the timing lines up with that "showed it to a class" thing
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy got BEACON'S attention. we're watching history
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance, but I respect the professor
Oobleck considered replying. Then he closed the app, poured himself another cup of coffee, and looked at the question still written on the board.
What would count as evidence?
He found, somewhat to his discomfort, that he did not have a tidy answer to his own question.
This time, the students came in early.
Doctor Oobleck noted this with deep suspicion. In his experience, students only arrived early for exams they had crammed for or professors they intended to ask about extensions. Neither applied today.
"You are all here," he said, zipping to the podium, "four minutes before the bell. Explain yourselves."
"Is there another stream?" Ruby asked immediately.
"There is another stream," Yang said, grinning. "It's all over the forums. Part four. And the professor showed up in the chat."
Every head in the room turned toward Oobleck.
He took a long, slow sip of coffee.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. "First, homework."
* * *
He began handing back essays at speed, each one landing on its desk with a crisp slap.
"Overall, the class performed considerably better than on the Fort Castle assignment, which I choose to interpret as evidence that you learn more when you are arguing than when you are memorizing. Let that be a lesson to you, and also to me."
He paused at Weiss's desk.
"Miss Schnee. Option one. You argued that the distinction between Semblances and magic is not purely cultural, because Semblances display consistent, trainable principles. A rigorous essay. Well sourced. Your section on the historical formalization of hereditary Semblances in noble families was excellent." He set it down. "A-minus. You lost points for calling our streamer's arguments 'juvenile' four separate times. Once is critique. Four times is a grudge."
Weiss flushed. "They were juvenile."
"And yet you wrote two thousand words refuting them." He moved on.
"Miss Belladonna. Option two. 'Semblance as a Language of Safety: How Naming Protects the Named.'" He held it up for a moment. "You expanded your point from class about the historical use of 'unnatural' and 'magical' as accusations, particularly against the Faunus, and argued that 'Semblance' functioned as a neutralizing term. This is the best essay I received." He set it down gently. "A. If you are ever interested in pursuing historiography, my office door is open."
Blake blinked, then looked down at the paper, a small, surprised smile on her face.
"Miss Rose. Option three."
"I wrote about the lost-humanity guy!" Ruby said.
"You did. Your argument was that a person rediscovering Aura would call it 'magic,' then 'powers,' then eventually give it a proper name once others could do it too. Sensible structure. Good use of historical naming examples." A pause. "You also, on page four, drew a small picture of a scythe labeled 'magic scythe.'"
"It's relevant!"
"It is not. B-plus. The drawing did not help."
"Miss Valkyrie." He held up an essay that was noticeably thicker than the rest. "You wrote four thousand words. The assignment was two thousand."
"There was a lot to say about being a lightning wizard," Nora said solemnly.
"The first half was a surprisingly thoughtful discussion of Semblances that interact with external energy and whether that blurs the line with Dust. The second half was a short story in which you defeat a Grimm dragon using 'thunder magic.'" He set it down. "B for the first half. I did not grade the second half. I did, however, read it. Twice."
Nora pumped her fist. Ren quietly patted her shoulder.
"Mister Winchester."
Cardin straightened, bracing himself.
"Your thesis was: 'It's a word, and words don't matter, which is why this assignment doesn't matter.'"
Several students snickered.
"And then," Oobleck continued, "you spent the remaining nineteen hundred words explaining, in considerable detail, why people care so much about the word. Their religious reasons. Their political reasons. How the Atlas crowd and the church crowd agree for opposite reasons." He dropped the essay on the desk. "You proved your own thesis wrong, Mister Winchester. Accidentally. Thoroughly. C-plus, and the highest grade you have received in this class."
Cardin stared at the paper. "...Huh."
"Mister Arc. You wrote from personal experience about recently unlocking your Aura and what it felt like to have no word for it. Unconventional for a history essay. But the section connecting it to how early societies described unfamiliar phenomena was genuinely moving. B."
Jaune looked like he might float out of his seat.
"Mister Lie. Miss Nikos. Both option one, both argued that Semblances might be a 'lesser expression' of something larger, and both did so very well. A-minus, each." He paused, frowning slightly. "I will note that the stream I am about to show you arrived at nearly the same conclusion. After your essays were submitted. Make of that what you will."
Ren and Pyrrha exchanged a look.
* * *
"And now." Oobleck set down the last essay and turned to the projector. "Part four."
"So you were in the chat," Yang said.
"I will neither confirm nor deny my presence in a public forum," Oobleck said primly, and pressed play.
* * *
The stream opened with the young man thanking a professor for showing his streams to a class, and the entire room burst into noise.
"He's talking about US," Ruby squeaked.
"We're famous," Nora announced.
"We are not famous," Weiss said. "We are anonymous. And that's how I prefer it."
When the streamer conceded that Semblances weren't magic, there were groans from half the room and cheers from the other half. Weiss looked quietly vindicated. Then he laid out his definition, and the room slowly went quiet.
"Magic is the ultimate class of miracle-working. It achieves results impossible to reproduce by humans or the planet, even with infinite time and resources."
"Oh," Weiss said softly. "That's actually a good definition."
"You're saying that out loud," Yang whispered.
"I'm aware."
When the Atlas student called the definition unfalsifiable, Weiss nodded vigorously. When the streamer replied that magic was supposed to be unfalsifiable, she made a noise of pure frustration that got a laugh from the row behind her.
Then the chat began listing examples. Bringing someone back from the dead. Creating a soul. Making life from nothing.
And the church viewer typed: You all just described the Brothers.
The room was very still.
Pyrrha, near the front, had gone quiet in a way that Jaune noticed without quite understanding. She was watching the screen with her hands folded tightly in her lap.
* * *
Then the username appeared.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: If I may contribute as the professor in question: two points.
The class erupted.
"THAT'S YOU!" Ruby shouted.
"BO! BARTHOLOMEW OOBLECK!" Yang was pointing at him, wheezing. "History is not boring! You made a username!"
"I did not make a username," Oobleck said, with great dignity, while the video continued behind him. "An anonymous scholar with excellent taste made a username."
On the screen, the anonymous scholar gave the streamer a B-minus, live, in front of two thousand viewers.
"You GRADED HIM," Nora cried, delighted. "You graded a random internet guy!"
"His methodology," Oobleck said, "was improving. It would have been dishonest not to acknowledge it."
When the recording reached the part where the professor cautioned against the word "erased," the room quieted again.
"'Forgot' is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it."
Blake tilted her head. "That's good advice," she said. "But you sound a little... worried."
Oobleck paused the video.
"Not worried, Miss Belladonna. Responsible." He turned to face the class. "Here is something I want you all to understand. There are real gaps in our earliest records. That is true. That is normal. Every civilization has them. But the moment someone says 'someone erased this,' the conversation stops being about evidence and starts being about finding a villain. And people who go looking for villains usually find one, whether or not one exists." He took a sip. "History is the discipline of preferring the boring explanation until the evidence forces you to abandon it. Records burn. Languages die. People forget. That is almost always the answer."
"Almost always?" Ren asked quietly.
Oobleck held his gaze for a moment. "Almost always, Mister Lie. Which is why we check."
He pressed play again.
* * *
The stream wound down. The streamer's final version filled the screen:
Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do. As far as anyone knows, it belongs to the gods in the old stories, and it left with them. Semblances are what's left in us. One small, personal, impossible thing per soul. Not magic in the full sense. Maybe an echo of it.
"Sparks and fire," Ren murmured. "That's almost exactly what we wrote."
"Great minds," Pyrrha said, but her voice was a little distant.
The video ended. Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Well?" he said. "Thoughts."
Weiss raised her hand first. "I'll admit it. His final definition is defensible. It separates magic by capability rather than name, which is exactly what my essay argued should be done." She paused. "He's still juvenile."
"Noted. Miss Schnee concedes. Mark the date."
"I liked that it ended respectful," Blake said. "The church viewer spent three streams being ignored, and in the end the whole argument came back to what they'd said from the beginning. That happens a lot in history. The quiet voice was right, and nobody listened until the end."
"An excellent observation," Oobleck said. "Mister Arc?"
"I liked the echo thing," Jaune said. "That Semblances are a little piece of something bigger. It makes it feel... less like a random power and more like it means something."
"I don't love the dead part," Yang said, a bit more quietly than usual. "Like, bringing people back being the example of real magic. That one kinda stuck with me."
"It's supposed to," Ren said. "That's why it's the example. Everyone understands immediately that it's the one thing we can't do."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Miss Nikos?" Oobleck asked. "You've been silent again."
Pyrrha looked up, as if pulled out of a thought.
"I was just thinking," she said carefully, "that the definition only works if the stories are just stories. If the old tales were ever real, even partially... then it wouldn't just be the gods who had it. It'd be whoever they gave it to." She hesitated. "But that's a big if. It's a fairy tale."
"It is a very big if," Oobleck agreed. "And a very good thought. Hold onto it, Miss Nikos, but hold it loosely." He clapped his hands. "No assignment this week!"
The class cheered.
"Instead," he continued, "I would like each of you to think about one question, and discuss it with your teammates. Not for a grade. For your own curiosity." He zipped to the board and wrote a single line:
What would count as evidence?
"If someone told you magic existed, or once existed, what would it take to convince you? And what would it take to convince you it didn't? The streamer built a definition that can't be disproven. That is clever, but it is also dangerous. A good scholar always knows what would change their mind." He checked his watch. "Dismissed!"
* * *
The students filed out, arguing as usual.
"You made a username," Yang was still saying, walking backward toward the door. "I'm never letting this go, Doc."
"I have no idea what you're referring to, Miss Xiao Long."
"B-minus, improving."
"Out."
When the room had emptied, Oobleck sat down at his desk, pulled out his scroll, and opened the forum. The thread had grown to over two thousand replies.
Near the top, a new comment:
grimm_bait_420: ok so the professor is 100% a Beacon teacher right? the timing lines up with that "showed it to a class" thing
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy got BEACON'S attention. we're watching history
ValeCommuter_22: still a Semblance, but I respect the professor
Oobleck considered replying. Then he closed the app, poured himself another cup of coffee, and looked at the question still written on the board.
What would count as evidence?
He found, somewhat to his discomfort, that he did not have a tidy answer to his own question.
Chapter 8: The Tower
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Headmaster's Office, CCT Tower, 10:42 PM
The gears turned overhead, as they always did, their slow clicking filling the silence of the office.
Ozpin had not gone looking for the streams. He rarely went looking for anything anymore. Things tended to find him eventually, and when they did, he preferred to meet them with a cup of cocoa and an open mind.
This particular thing had found him through Glynda.
"I thought you should be aware," she had said that afternoon, placing a tablet on his desk with the precise, disapproving care she reserved for matters she considered beneath her but necessary. "Doctor Oobleck has been showing CCT livestreams in his history lectures. Amateur content. Some young man arguing that Semblances are magic."
"Has he?" Ozpin had said mildly.
"He's also," Glynda continued, and here her mouth tightened, "been posting in the comments. Under a username. He graded the streamer. Publicly."
"I see."
"The students have figured out it's him. It's become something of a running joke." She adjusted her glasses. "I'm not suggesting any disciplinary action. It's harmless enough. But the discussions have drifted toward the Maiden stories, and I thought, given..." She hadn't finished the sentence. She hadn't needed to.
"Thank you, Glynda. I'll take a look."
* * *
Now, hours later, he had watched all four.
He sat back in his chair and let the last frame linger on the screen. [STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 2,317].
The young man was clearly no threat. That was the first conclusion, and the easiest. He had no training that Ozpin could see, no connections, no suspicious knowledge. Everything he'd said about the Maidens came straight from the children's version of the story, the one printed in every picture book in Vale. Four sisters. An old wizard. A gift for kindness. Anyone could have said it.
And yet Ozpin found himself returning, again and again, to one sentence.
"Either Semblances are magic, or magic is something different that humanity forgot about. Maybe someone even erased it."
He took a slow sip of cocoa.
Bartholomew had been right to push back. "'Forgot' is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it." It was good advice. Sound, scholarly, responsible. Exactly what a historian should say.
It was also not entirely true.
Magic had not simply faded from the world like a forgotten language. It had been allowed to fade. Guided out of sight. Kept in small, quiet places, passed from Maiden to Maiden in secret, hidden behind vaults and fairy tales, because the alternative — a world that knew what power still existed, and who wanted it — had been tried before. Ozpin remembered how that went. Not from books. From having been there, in one form or another, when it went wrong.
So he had helped the world forget. Over many lifetimes. Gently, patiently, and with the best intentions he could manage.
He supposed that did make him the villain in the boy's version of the story. Or at least, the one who did the erasing.
Ozpin smiled faintly into his mug. It was not a comfortable smile.
* * *
The definition, though. That was what truly held his attention.
"Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do. Raising the dead. Creating a soul. Making life from nothing."
The chat had built it together, piece by piece, and landed precisely on the Brothers. The church viewer had seen it first. They usually did. Faith kept old truths alive long after scholarship dismissed them.
It was a good definition. Better than the boy knew.
Because by that measure, Ozpin could list a few things in the world that came uncomfortably close to qualifying. A soul that returned, again and again, into new lives. A woman who could not die. A project in Atlas that the public knew nothing about, involving a girl whose Aura had been, in a very real sense, made.
None of which could ever be discussed on a public stream.
He scrolled back to the thread. Two thousand replies, mostly jokes, reaction images, and a remarkably persistent individual who believed, unshakably, that it was still a Semblance. Ozpin found himself quietly fond of that one. There was something reassuring about a person who refused to be carried along by a good argument.
Then he saw the transcript from Bartholomew's class. Glynda had attached a summary.
Miss Nikos: "The definition only works if the stories are just stories. If the old tales were ever real, even partially, then it wouldn't just be the gods who had it. It'd be whoever they gave it to."
Ozpin set down his mug.
Pyrrha Nikos. Of all the students to arrive at that thought.
He read it twice. There was nothing dangerous in it, not really. A bright young woman following an idea to its logical end in a classroom discussion. Bartholomew had told her to hold the thought loosely, which was exactly the right response. She had no reason to suspect anything more.
But it was the kind of thought, he knew, that would make the conversation he would eventually need to have with her a little easier. Or a little harder. He wasn't yet sure which.
* * *
There was one more thing.
He scrolled back through the chat logs of all four streams and found the name he had noticed on the second viewing. anon_viewer_4471. It appeared once per stream, near the end, always calm, always polite.
"Where did you grow up, if you don't mind my asking? Your perspective is unusual."
"You seem to think about lost knowledge quite a lot."
"'Forgot' rather than 'erased.' Your professor gives good advice."
Ozpin looked at it for a long while.
It was probably nothing. A curious viewer. A lonely one, perhaps. Someone who liked the young man's thinking and was too shy to argue with the rest of the chat. The CCT had millions of users, and most of them were exactly what they appeared to be.
Probably.
But Ozpin had lived a very long time, and he had learned that the people who paid the closest attention were rarely the ones who spoke the loudest.
He made a small note on a separate document. Not an order. Not even a request. Just a name and a question mark, to be mentioned to Qrow the next time he checked in, if he happened to have a free evening and happened to be in Vale.
* * *
He considered, briefly, whether he ought to do anything else.
He could ask Bartholomew to stop showing the streams. That would be easy, and it would only make the students more curious. He could have the boy looked into more closely. That seemed unnecessary, and a little unkind; he'd done nothing but ask questions, which was, as far as Ozpin was concerned, the most valuable thing a person could do. He could leave a comment himself.
That last thought made him smile properly for the first time all evening. He could imagine Glynda's face.
No. The wisest course was the one he usually chose. Watch. Wait. Let the conversation run its course. People argued about magic in taverns and schoolrooms all over Remnant, and it had never once led anyone to a vault. A few thousand people debating definitions online was, if anything, reassuring. As long as they were arguing about words, they weren't looking for things.
He glanced at the final line of the last stream, where the boy announced his next topic.
"Next time: Grimm and souls."
Ozpin's smile faded slightly.
That one, he thought, he would watch a little more carefully.
He finished his cocoa, closed the tablet, and sat for a while longer in the quiet, listening to the gears turn above him, thinking about a young man in a cheap apartment who had stumbled, without meaning to, into asking the one question Ozpin had spent lifetimes making sure no one asked seriously.
Where did the magic go?
"Somewhere safe," he murmured to the empty office. "I hope."
The gears turned overhead, as they always did, their slow clicking filling the silence of the office.
Ozpin had not gone looking for the streams. He rarely went looking for anything anymore. Things tended to find him eventually, and when they did, he preferred to meet them with a cup of cocoa and an open mind.
This particular thing had found him through Glynda.
"I thought you should be aware," she had said that afternoon, placing a tablet on his desk with the precise, disapproving care she reserved for matters she considered beneath her but necessary. "Doctor Oobleck has been showing CCT livestreams in his history lectures. Amateur content. Some young man arguing that Semblances are magic."
"Has he?" Ozpin had said mildly.
"He's also," Glynda continued, and here her mouth tightened, "been posting in the comments. Under a username. He graded the streamer. Publicly."
"I see."
"The students have figured out it's him. It's become something of a running joke." She adjusted her glasses. "I'm not suggesting any disciplinary action. It's harmless enough. But the discussions have drifted toward the Maiden stories, and I thought, given..." She hadn't finished the sentence. She hadn't needed to.
"Thank you, Glynda. I'll take a look."
* * *
Now, hours later, he had watched all four.
He sat back in his chair and let the last frame linger on the screen. [STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 2,317].
The young man was clearly no threat. That was the first conclusion, and the easiest. He had no training that Ozpin could see, no connections, no suspicious knowledge. Everything he'd said about the Maidens came straight from the children's version of the story, the one printed in every picture book in Vale. Four sisters. An old wizard. A gift for kindness. Anyone could have said it.
And yet Ozpin found himself returning, again and again, to one sentence.
"Either Semblances are magic, or magic is something different that humanity forgot about. Maybe someone even erased it."
He took a slow sip of cocoa.
Bartholomew had been right to push back. "'Forgot' is sufficient and requires no villain. Please prefer it." It was good advice. Sound, scholarly, responsible. Exactly what a historian should say.
It was also not entirely true.
Magic had not simply faded from the world like a forgotten language. It had been allowed to fade. Guided out of sight. Kept in small, quiet places, passed from Maiden to Maiden in secret, hidden behind vaults and fairy tales, because the alternative — a world that knew what power still existed, and who wanted it — had been tried before. Ozpin remembered how that went. Not from books. From having been there, in one form or another, when it went wrong.
So he had helped the world forget. Over many lifetimes. Gently, patiently, and with the best intentions he could manage.
He supposed that did make him the villain in the boy's version of the story. Or at least, the one who did the erasing.
Ozpin smiled faintly into his mug. It was not a comfortable smile.
* * *
The definition, though. That was what truly held his attention.
"Magic is power that can do what no human, no Dust, and no planet could ever do. Raising the dead. Creating a soul. Making life from nothing."
The chat had built it together, piece by piece, and landed precisely on the Brothers. The church viewer had seen it first. They usually did. Faith kept old truths alive long after scholarship dismissed them.
It was a good definition. Better than the boy knew.
Because by that measure, Ozpin could list a few things in the world that came uncomfortably close to qualifying. A soul that returned, again and again, into new lives. A woman who could not die. A project in Atlas that the public knew nothing about, involving a girl whose Aura had been, in a very real sense, made.
None of which could ever be discussed on a public stream.
He scrolled back to the thread. Two thousand replies, mostly jokes, reaction images, and a remarkably persistent individual who believed, unshakably, that it was still a Semblance. Ozpin found himself quietly fond of that one. There was something reassuring about a person who refused to be carried along by a good argument.
Then he saw the transcript from Bartholomew's class. Glynda had attached a summary.
Miss Nikos: "The definition only works if the stories are just stories. If the old tales were ever real, even partially, then it wouldn't just be the gods who had it. It'd be whoever they gave it to."
Ozpin set down his mug.
Pyrrha Nikos. Of all the students to arrive at that thought.
He read it twice. There was nothing dangerous in it, not really. A bright young woman following an idea to its logical end in a classroom discussion. Bartholomew had told her to hold the thought loosely, which was exactly the right response. She had no reason to suspect anything more.
But it was the kind of thought, he knew, that would make the conversation he would eventually need to have with her a little easier. Or a little harder. He wasn't yet sure which.
* * *
There was one more thing.
He scrolled back through the chat logs of all four streams and found the name he had noticed on the second viewing. anon_viewer_4471. It appeared once per stream, near the end, always calm, always polite.
"Where did you grow up, if you don't mind my asking? Your perspective is unusual."
"You seem to think about lost knowledge quite a lot."
"'Forgot' rather than 'erased.' Your professor gives good advice."
Ozpin looked at it for a long while.
It was probably nothing. A curious viewer. A lonely one, perhaps. Someone who liked the young man's thinking and was too shy to argue with the rest of the chat. The CCT had millions of users, and most of them were exactly what they appeared to be.
Probably.
But Ozpin had lived a very long time, and he had learned that the people who paid the closest attention were rarely the ones who spoke the loudest.
He made a small note on a separate document. Not an order. Not even a request. Just a name and a question mark, to be mentioned to Qrow the next time he checked in, if he happened to have a free evening and happened to be in Vale.
* * *
He considered, briefly, whether he ought to do anything else.
He could ask Bartholomew to stop showing the streams. That would be easy, and it would only make the students more curious. He could have the boy looked into more closely. That seemed unnecessary, and a little unkind; he'd done nothing but ask questions, which was, as far as Ozpin was concerned, the most valuable thing a person could do. He could leave a comment himself.
That last thought made him smile properly for the first time all evening. He could imagine Glynda's face.
No. The wisest course was the one he usually chose. Watch. Wait. Let the conversation run its course. People argued about magic in taverns and schoolrooms all over Remnant, and it had never once led anyone to a vault. A few thousand people debating definitions online was, if anything, reassuring. As long as they were arguing about words, they weren't looking for things.
He glanced at the final line of the last stream, where the boy announced his next topic.
"Next time: Grimm and souls."
Ozpin's smile faded slightly.
That one, he thought, he would watch a little more carefully.
He finished his cocoa, closed the tablet, and sat for a while longer in the quiet, listening to the gears turn above him, thinking about a young man in a cheap apartment who had stumbled, without meaning to, into asking the one question Ozpin had spent lifetimes making sure no one asked seriously.
Where did the magic go?
"Somewhere safe," he murmured to the empty office. "I hope."
Chapter 9: Grimm and Souls
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Grimm and souls: what are we even made of?" — 👁 3,106 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay, welcome back. Semblance saga is closed. Vale guy won. We move on.
Second question, and this one's been bothering me even more. Everyone knows Grimm exist. Everyone's seen one die. And when they die, they dissipate into... something. What is that something? It can't be tar. It's definitely not smoke, smoke doesn't float up in little black flakes and vanish. Can it even be a normal material?
Because here's my thought. If magic is god-tier creation stuff, and the old stories say the Grimm were made by one of the gods... then whatever Grimm are made of is a material created by magic and left behind when the gods left. Or it's also magic, just a weaker kind. And if that's true, we might have to rewrite last week's definition.
And second part. Souls. The — sorry — what? We can apparently measure them? HOW? Does a soul emit radiation? What is the scroll actually measuring when it shows your Aura bar? Somebody explain this to me like I'm five.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: my username is finally relevant
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Grimm
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I didn't even ask what it's called
ValeCommuter_22: preemptive
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok the dissolving thing is genuinely weird now that you say it. I've seen like 30 Grimm die in training and never once thought "wait what is that stuff"
SI: Right?? Nobody thinks about it. It's just normal. That's the Semblance thing all over again.
AtlasTechStudent: There's been research on it. The problem is Grimm bodies break down too fast to collect good samples. By the time you get equipment to a corpse, most of it is gone.
SI: Wait. So it's not just that we don't understand it. We literally can't keep any of it?
AtlasTechStudent: Small amounts, briefly, under specific conditions. Nothing stable long-term, as far as publicly released research goes.
SI: That's insane. That's a material that refuses to exist once the thing using it is dead. Name one normal material that does that.
AtlasTechStudent: ...
AtlasTechStudent: Some unstable compounds decay rapidly.
SI: Into nothing? No residue, no ash, no gas cloud you can capture?
AtlasTechStudent: I'd have to check the papers.
grimm_bait_420: "I'd have to check the papers" is Atlas guy's version of "still a Semblance"
GreatHunterPPort: Ah! A question on Grimm! Allow a veteran of COUNTLESS encounters to enlighten you, young man!
HunterWannabe_Tom: oh no
GreatHunterPPort: In my youth I felled a Boarbatusk with nothing but a blunderbuss and my own formidable moustache, and I watched it dissolve before my very eyes. I can say with authority: the substance is NOT smoke. It has no smell! No heat! It simply... departs!
SI: Okay, that's actually useful. No smell, no heat. So it's not burning.
GreatHunterPPort: Precisely! Burning implies combustion. This is something else entirely. The creature simply ceases to be held together.
SI: "Ceases to be held together." What was holding it together?
GreatHunterPPort: ...
GreatHunterPPort: That, my boy, is a question for the scholars. I merely do the felling.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, please stop posting during office hours.
GreatHunterPPort: Bartholomew! You are posting during office hours as well!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I am monitoring.
grimm_bait_420: TWO PROFESSORS. THE BEACON FACULTY IS IN THE CHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy's getting a staff lounge
MistralMom_Jenna: I always thought Grimm were made of shadow. That's what my grandmother said. The God of Darkness made them out of darkness itself.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's the old teaching, yes. The younger Brother created the Grimm, the older created life. The Grimm are the opposite of living things. No soul, no Aura. That's why they're drawn to people.
SI: Okay, so this is exactly what I'm getting at. If the story's even partly true, Grimm are the only thing on the planet that was directly made by a god and is still being made. They keep appearing. Nobody's ever seen a Grimm born. So either they're coming from somewhere, or they're coming out of nothing.
FaunusRights_Now: nobody's seen a baby Grimm, that's actually true. you only ever see them already grown
DustTrader_Mo: you see younger ones and older ones. older Grimm are bigger and smarter. but nobody's ever found a nest with eggs or anything
SI: So where are they coming from???
AtlasTechStudent: Grimm spawning is one of the biggest open questions in the field. Genuinely. There are theories, no consensus.
SI: OKAY so by last week's definition — power that does what no human, Dust, or planet could ever do, like making life from nothing — something is still making Grimm right now. That's the definition of magic. Still happening. Today.
grimm_bait_420: oh that's creepy
MistralMom_Jenna: I don't like this stream as much as the Semblance ones
VacuoVeteran: Grimm aren't alive though. That's the whole point. No soul. So it's not "making life from nothing." It's making... not-life.
SI: Oh. Oh, that's a really good distinction. Okay. So maybe Grimm are what you get when you make something without a soul. Like the material is the body part of creation without the soul part. And when there's no soul holding it together, it can't last. That's why it falls apart the second the Grimm dies.
GreatHunterPPort: "Ceases to be held together!" I SAID THAT.
SI: You did, Professor. You get credit.
GreatHunterPPort: Excellent. I shall inform my class.
AtlasTechStudent: That's a hypothesis, not a finding. But I'll admit it would explain why samples don't hold.
SI: So rewriting the definition, based on chat, I think there are tiers:
Tier 1 — Creation magic. Making souls, making life, making the Grimm themselves. God-level. Whatever's making Grimm today is still doing this.
Tier 2 — Residue. Stuff that was made by Tier 1 and is still around. Grimm bodies. Maybe even Dust, if the old stories are right that the gods shaped the world. Not magic by itself, but not normal either.
Tier 3 — Personal. Semblances. One spark per soul.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's surprisingly close to how some of the old texts describe it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Better structure. I will note that placing Dust in Tier 2 relies entirely on mythological sources and should be labeled speculative.
SI: Labeled. Speculative. Got it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: B.
SI: LET'S GO
* * *
SI: Okay. Part two. Souls. Explain to me how a scroll measures a soul.
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, this one I can actually answer, at least partly. The scroll doesn't measure your soul. It measures your Aura.
SI: Which is made by your soul.
AtlasTechStudent: Yes, but Aura has physical effects. It resists damage. When you take a hit, it absorbs force. That absorption is measurable. Combat systems track how much impact your Aura has absorbed versus your baseline capacity, and turn that into a percentage.
SI: So... it's not measuring the Aura directly. It's measuring how much damage the Aura has blocked.
AtlasTechStudent: Simplified, but basically. Plus calibration data from when your Aura was first recorded.
SI: So it's like measuring how full a water tank is by counting how many buckets you've taken out. You never actually see inside the tank.
AtlasTechStudent: ...Yes. That's a fair analogy.
grimm_bait_420: wait so nobody's ever actually measured a SOUL
AtlasTechStudent: Not directly. No. You measure what the soul does, not what it is.
SI: That's what I've been saying since stream ONE. We measure the output. Nobody knows what the source actually is.
AtlasTechStudent: I am aware that I have just made your argument for you.
SI: Thank you for your service.
HunterWannabe_Tom: so does a soul emit radiation or not
AtlasTechStudent: Not in any form we've detected. No heat signature, no light unless Aura is actively flaring, no radiation. It doesn't show up on anything until it does something.
SI: So a soul is an invisible, undetectable source that only exists, measurably, when it acts on the world. And Grimm are the one thing that doesn't have one, and they fall apart the moment they stop moving.
VacuoVeteran: Put that way, it sounds like the soul is the thing that keeps anything real.
SI: ...yeah. That's kind of what I'm getting at.
MistralMom_Jenna: I really don't like this stream
FaunusRights_Now: it's a good stream it's just creepy
grimm_bait_420: 10/10 existential dread
anon_viewer_4471: An interesting framework. The Grimm are simply what they are, I suspect. Some questions don't need answers to be survived.
SI: Hm. Maybe. But I think people survive better when they know what they're fighting.
anon_viewer_4471: Perhaps. Good stream.
* * *
SI: Wait, wait, before I close. One last thing, and then I promise I'm done.
If something's still making Grimm right now... then there's a source. Somewhere. Nobody's ever seen a baby Grimm, which means they're not breeding like animals. They're coming from somewhere.
So hypothetically: if we found that place, wherever Grimm are born, and wiped it out... wouldn't that mean every Grimm a Huntsman kills after that is permanently gone? Numbers only go down, never up. And eventually, Remnant would be Grimm-free?
grimm_bait_420: oh he's going for the BIG one
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait. that's actually... yeah? if they don't breed and you stop the source, it's just a countdown
ValeCommuter_22: they'd still be Grimm until they're dead
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 technically correct, the best kind of correct
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, from a pure population standpoint, you're right. If birth rate goes to zero and kill rate stays above zero, population declines to zero eventually. That's basic math.
SI: SEE
AtlasTechStudent: But it depends on huge assumptions. One, that there's a single source. Two, that it can be destroyed. Three, that Grimm don't form some other way we don't know about. We don't know any of those.
SI: Fair. Very fair. But even if there are like five sources, the logic still holds, right? Find all five, and it's a countdown.
AtlasTechStudent: In theory. If they're finite, findable, and destroyable.
GreatHunterPPort: Young man, I have trained Huntsmen for decades, and my master before me, and HIS master before him! In all that time, the Grimm have never once run low! Not a single season! If there were a mere nest to be found, surely some brave soul would have found it by now!
SI: Unless nobody's looking, or it's somewhere nobody can get to.
GreatHunterPPort: ...well. Hm. There ARE many unexplored regions. The far reaches beyond the kingdoms are largely unmapped.
FaunusRights_Now: there are entire continents where nobody goes. if the source was there nobody would know
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note, since this is my area. Humanity has, many times, cleared a region of Grimm. Every single time, the Grimm eventually returned. Mountain Glenn is the most famous recent example, but the pattern is very old. Clearings never hold.
SI: That kinda supports my point though? They come back because they keep getting made. If they weren't being made, cleared areas would stay cleared.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is consistent with your hypothesis. It is also consistent with Grimm simply migrating from uncleared areas. The evidence doesn't distinguish between them.
SI: Okay, that's fair. That's a really good point, actually.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I know.
MistralMom_Jenna: What about the negativity thing? Everyone knows Grimm are drawn to negative emotions. Fear, anger, grief. My grandmother always said that's where they come from, not just what attracts them.
SI: Oh no.
SI: Oh no, that's worse. If Grimm come from negativity, then the source isn't a place. It's us. You can't wipe that out.
grimm_bait_420: stream guy just made it SO much worse
HunterWannabe_Tom: why would you say that
AtlasTechStudent: To be clear, the attraction to negative emotions is well documented. Grimm spawning from negative emotions is folklore. There's no evidence for that.
SI: Okay, thank you, that's calming. Folklore. Noted.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The old teachings say the Grimm were made by the younger Brother, and the Brothers left long ago. If Grimm are still appearing, something is still doing the making. That's the same thing you said earlier.
SI: Yeah. And if that's the case, the question isn't "where's the nest." It's "what's still doing what a god used to do."
VacuoVeteran: And if the answer is "a god," you're not wiping that out with a Huntsman team.
SI: ...yeah. That's the scary version.
DustTrader_Mo: ok but hear me out on the dumb but real part. if Grimm disappeared tomorrow, what happens to Huntsmen? Beacon? Atlas's army? half the economy is built around fighting Grimm lol
SI: Oh man, I didn't even think about that. Every kingdom's defense budget, the academies, the Dust industry for weapons...
AtlasTechStudent: That's actually a real concern historians and economists have raised. Remnant's entire social structure formed around Grimm defense. Kingdoms cooperate because of a common enemy.
HunterWannabe_Tom: so if the Grimm vanished, we'd probably just fight each other
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The Great War happened while the Grimm still existed. I would not bet on humanity doing better without them.
grimm_bait_420: professor dropping the most depressing history fact of the night
MistralMom_Jenna: I would still rather live in a world without Grimm, personally
SI: Same. People'll figure out the rest. They always do, eventually.
VacuoVeteran: Optimist.
SI: Somebody has to be.
GreatHunterPPort: Well spoken, young man! And should that day ever come, I shall happily retire and write my memoirs! Volume one: The Boarbatusk.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you've been writing that memoir for twenty years.
GreatHunterPPort: Greatness takes TIME, Bartholomew.
anon_viewer_4471: An ambitious thought. I suspect whoever found the source would find it much harder to reach than they imagine.
SI: Probably. Most things worth doing are.
anon_viewer_4471: Indeed.
SI: Okay. So, summary, for real this time:
In theory? Yes. If Grimm only come from a source, and you destroy the source, every kill after that is permanent, and eventually they'd be gone. That's just math.
In practice? Nobody knows if there's one source, many sources, or something that isn't a place at all. History says cleared areas always get Grimm back. And if what's making them is still doing what the old stories say a god did... then it's not a nest. It's a who.
grimm_bait_420: "it's a WHO" ending the stream on that is psychopathic behavior
SI: Sorry. Sleep well, everyone.
MistralMom_Jenna: I will not
ValeCommuter_22: they're still Grimm
SI: Thank you, Vale guy. Night.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 7,215]
* * *
[CCT Network — Livestream: "one sec" — 👁 1,988 viewers]
(Back on camera, hoodie half on, clearly about to go to bed.)
SI: Sorry, sorry. Thirty seconds. It was bugging me.
I said "it's a who." But that's me assuming. It could also be a what. A place, a machine, some leftover piece of the gods' power just... running on its own, with nobody behind it. Like a faucet someone left on when they left the house.
Okay. That's it. Goodnight for real.
grimm_bait_420: HE CAME BACK TO MAKE IT WORSE
HunterWannabe_Tom: "a faucet someone left on" is somehow scarier than "a who"
MistralMom_Jenna: I was ALMOST asleep
AtlasTechStudent: Honestly, "a what" is the more scientific hypothesis. An unmanaged process is more plausible than an intelligence.
SI: See, Atlas guy gets it.
AtlasTechStudent: I'm not agreeing with you. I'm ranking your nightmares.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Or both. A what, with a who standing next to it.
grimm_bait_420: WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT
VacuoVeteran: Church guy's been the scariest person in chat this whole time and nobody noticed
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Both hypotheses are unfalsifiable at present. Go to sleep.
GreatHunterPPort: Whether a who or a what, it shall meet the business end of my blunderbuss!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter. Sleep.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Grimm factory
SI: ...
SI: Vale guy, that's the most helpful thing you've ever said.
ValeCommuter_22: I contain multitudes
anon_viewer_4471: A who or a what. Curious that you felt the need to come back for that distinction.
SI: Just being precise. Professor's orders.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course.
SI: Okay. Bed. Actually bed. Bye.
[STREAM ENDED — Duration: 0:01:47]
* * *
SI: Okay, welcome back. Semblance saga is closed. Vale guy won. We move on.
Second question, and this one's been bothering me even more. Everyone knows Grimm exist. Everyone's seen one die. And when they die, they dissipate into... something. What is that something? It can't be tar. It's definitely not smoke, smoke doesn't float up in little black flakes and vanish. Can it even be a normal material?
Because here's my thought. If magic is god-tier creation stuff, and the old stories say the Grimm were made by one of the gods... then whatever Grimm are made of is a material created by magic and left behind when the gods left. Or it's also magic, just a weaker kind. And if that's true, we might have to rewrite last week's definition.
And second part. Souls. The — sorry — what? We can apparently measure them? HOW? Does a soul emit radiation? What is the scroll actually measuring when it shows your Aura bar? Somebody explain this to me like I'm five.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: my username is finally relevant
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Grimm
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I didn't even ask what it's called
ValeCommuter_22: preemptive
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok the dissolving thing is genuinely weird now that you say it. I've seen like 30 Grimm die in training and never once thought "wait what is that stuff"
SI: Right?? Nobody thinks about it. It's just normal. That's the Semblance thing all over again.
AtlasTechStudent: There's been research on it. The problem is Grimm bodies break down too fast to collect good samples. By the time you get equipment to a corpse, most of it is gone.
SI: Wait. So it's not just that we don't understand it. We literally can't keep any of it?
AtlasTechStudent: Small amounts, briefly, under specific conditions. Nothing stable long-term, as far as publicly released research goes.
SI: That's insane. That's a material that refuses to exist once the thing using it is dead. Name one normal material that does that.
AtlasTechStudent: ...
AtlasTechStudent: Some unstable compounds decay rapidly.
SI: Into nothing? No residue, no ash, no gas cloud you can capture?
AtlasTechStudent: I'd have to check the papers.
grimm_bait_420: "I'd have to check the papers" is Atlas guy's version of "still a Semblance"
GreatHunterPPort: Ah! A question on Grimm! Allow a veteran of COUNTLESS encounters to enlighten you, young man!
HunterWannabe_Tom: oh no
GreatHunterPPort: In my youth I felled a Boarbatusk with nothing but a blunderbuss and my own formidable moustache, and I watched it dissolve before my very eyes. I can say with authority: the substance is NOT smoke. It has no smell! No heat! It simply... departs!
SI: Okay, that's actually useful. No smell, no heat. So it's not burning.
GreatHunterPPort: Precisely! Burning implies combustion. This is something else entirely. The creature simply ceases to be held together.
SI: "Ceases to be held together." What was holding it together?
GreatHunterPPort: ...
GreatHunterPPort: That, my boy, is a question for the scholars. I merely do the felling.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, please stop posting during office hours.
GreatHunterPPort: Bartholomew! You are posting during office hours as well!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I am monitoring.
grimm_bait_420: TWO PROFESSORS. THE BEACON FACULTY IS IN THE CHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy's getting a staff lounge
MistralMom_Jenna: I always thought Grimm were made of shadow. That's what my grandmother said. The God of Darkness made them out of darkness itself.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's the old teaching, yes. The younger Brother created the Grimm, the older created life. The Grimm are the opposite of living things. No soul, no Aura. That's why they're drawn to people.
SI: Okay, so this is exactly what I'm getting at. If the story's even partly true, Grimm are the only thing on the planet that was directly made by a god and is still being made. They keep appearing. Nobody's ever seen a Grimm born. So either they're coming from somewhere, or they're coming out of nothing.
FaunusRights_Now: nobody's seen a baby Grimm, that's actually true. you only ever see them already grown
DustTrader_Mo: you see younger ones and older ones. older Grimm are bigger and smarter. but nobody's ever found a nest with eggs or anything
SI: So where are they coming from???
AtlasTechStudent: Grimm spawning is one of the biggest open questions in the field. Genuinely. There are theories, no consensus.
SI: OKAY so by last week's definition — power that does what no human, Dust, or planet could ever do, like making life from nothing — something is still making Grimm right now. That's the definition of magic. Still happening. Today.
grimm_bait_420: oh that's creepy
MistralMom_Jenna: I don't like this stream as much as the Semblance ones
VacuoVeteran: Grimm aren't alive though. That's the whole point. No soul. So it's not "making life from nothing." It's making... not-life.
SI: Oh. Oh, that's a really good distinction. Okay. So maybe Grimm are what you get when you make something without a soul. Like the material is the body part of creation without the soul part. And when there's no soul holding it together, it can't last. That's why it falls apart the second the Grimm dies.
GreatHunterPPort: "Ceases to be held together!" I SAID THAT.
SI: You did, Professor. You get credit.
GreatHunterPPort: Excellent. I shall inform my class.
AtlasTechStudent: That's a hypothesis, not a finding. But I'll admit it would explain why samples don't hold.
SI: So rewriting the definition, based on chat, I think there are tiers:
Tier 1 — Creation magic. Making souls, making life, making the Grimm themselves. God-level. Whatever's making Grimm today is still doing this.
Tier 2 — Residue. Stuff that was made by Tier 1 and is still around. Grimm bodies. Maybe even Dust, if the old stories are right that the gods shaped the world. Not magic by itself, but not normal either.
Tier 3 — Personal. Semblances. One spark per soul.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's surprisingly close to how some of the old texts describe it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Better structure. I will note that placing Dust in Tier 2 relies entirely on mythological sources and should be labeled speculative.
SI: Labeled. Speculative. Got it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: B.
SI: LET'S GO
* * *
SI: Okay. Part two. Souls. Explain to me how a scroll measures a soul.
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, this one I can actually answer, at least partly. The scroll doesn't measure your soul. It measures your Aura.
SI: Which is made by your soul.
AtlasTechStudent: Yes, but Aura has physical effects. It resists damage. When you take a hit, it absorbs force. That absorption is measurable. Combat systems track how much impact your Aura has absorbed versus your baseline capacity, and turn that into a percentage.
SI: So... it's not measuring the Aura directly. It's measuring how much damage the Aura has blocked.
AtlasTechStudent: Simplified, but basically. Plus calibration data from when your Aura was first recorded.
SI: So it's like measuring how full a water tank is by counting how many buckets you've taken out. You never actually see inside the tank.
AtlasTechStudent: ...Yes. That's a fair analogy.
grimm_bait_420: wait so nobody's ever actually measured a SOUL
AtlasTechStudent: Not directly. No. You measure what the soul does, not what it is.
SI: That's what I've been saying since stream ONE. We measure the output. Nobody knows what the source actually is.
AtlasTechStudent: I am aware that I have just made your argument for you.
SI: Thank you for your service.
HunterWannabe_Tom: so does a soul emit radiation or not
AtlasTechStudent: Not in any form we've detected. No heat signature, no light unless Aura is actively flaring, no radiation. It doesn't show up on anything until it does something.
SI: So a soul is an invisible, undetectable source that only exists, measurably, when it acts on the world. And Grimm are the one thing that doesn't have one, and they fall apart the moment they stop moving.
VacuoVeteran: Put that way, it sounds like the soul is the thing that keeps anything real.
SI: ...yeah. That's kind of what I'm getting at.
MistralMom_Jenna: I really don't like this stream
FaunusRights_Now: it's a good stream it's just creepy
grimm_bait_420: 10/10 existential dread
anon_viewer_4471: An interesting framework. The Grimm are simply what they are, I suspect. Some questions don't need answers to be survived.
SI: Hm. Maybe. But I think people survive better when they know what they're fighting.
anon_viewer_4471: Perhaps. Good stream.
* * *
SI: Wait, wait, before I close. One last thing, and then I promise I'm done.
If something's still making Grimm right now... then there's a source. Somewhere. Nobody's ever seen a baby Grimm, which means they're not breeding like animals. They're coming from somewhere.
So hypothetically: if we found that place, wherever Grimm are born, and wiped it out... wouldn't that mean every Grimm a Huntsman kills after that is permanently gone? Numbers only go down, never up. And eventually, Remnant would be Grimm-free?
grimm_bait_420: oh he's going for the BIG one
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait. that's actually... yeah? if they don't breed and you stop the source, it's just a countdown
ValeCommuter_22: they'd still be Grimm until they're dead
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 technically correct, the best kind of correct
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, from a pure population standpoint, you're right. If birth rate goes to zero and kill rate stays above zero, population declines to zero eventually. That's basic math.
SI: SEE
AtlasTechStudent: But it depends on huge assumptions. One, that there's a single source. Two, that it can be destroyed. Three, that Grimm don't form some other way we don't know about. We don't know any of those.
SI: Fair. Very fair. But even if there are like five sources, the logic still holds, right? Find all five, and it's a countdown.
AtlasTechStudent: In theory. If they're finite, findable, and destroyable.
GreatHunterPPort: Young man, I have trained Huntsmen for decades, and my master before me, and HIS master before him! In all that time, the Grimm have never once run low! Not a single season! If there were a mere nest to be found, surely some brave soul would have found it by now!
SI: Unless nobody's looking, or it's somewhere nobody can get to.
GreatHunterPPort: ...well. Hm. There ARE many unexplored regions. The far reaches beyond the kingdoms are largely unmapped.
FaunusRights_Now: there are entire continents where nobody goes. if the source was there nobody would know
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note, since this is my area. Humanity has, many times, cleared a region of Grimm. Every single time, the Grimm eventually returned. Mountain Glenn is the most famous recent example, but the pattern is very old. Clearings never hold.
SI: That kinda supports my point though? They come back because they keep getting made. If they weren't being made, cleared areas would stay cleared.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is consistent with your hypothesis. It is also consistent with Grimm simply migrating from uncleared areas. The evidence doesn't distinguish between them.
SI: Okay, that's fair. That's a really good point, actually.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I know.
MistralMom_Jenna: What about the negativity thing? Everyone knows Grimm are drawn to negative emotions. Fear, anger, grief. My grandmother always said that's where they come from, not just what attracts them.
SI: Oh no.
SI: Oh no, that's worse. If Grimm come from negativity, then the source isn't a place. It's us. You can't wipe that out.
grimm_bait_420: stream guy just made it SO much worse
HunterWannabe_Tom: why would you say that
AtlasTechStudent: To be clear, the attraction to negative emotions is well documented. Grimm spawning from negative emotions is folklore. There's no evidence for that.
SI: Okay, thank you, that's calming. Folklore. Noted.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The old teachings say the Grimm were made by the younger Brother, and the Brothers left long ago. If Grimm are still appearing, something is still doing the making. That's the same thing you said earlier.
SI: Yeah. And if that's the case, the question isn't "where's the nest." It's "what's still doing what a god used to do."
VacuoVeteran: And if the answer is "a god," you're not wiping that out with a Huntsman team.
SI: ...yeah. That's the scary version.
DustTrader_Mo: ok but hear me out on the dumb but real part. if Grimm disappeared tomorrow, what happens to Huntsmen? Beacon? Atlas's army? half the economy is built around fighting Grimm lol
SI: Oh man, I didn't even think about that. Every kingdom's defense budget, the academies, the Dust industry for weapons...
AtlasTechStudent: That's actually a real concern historians and economists have raised. Remnant's entire social structure formed around Grimm defense. Kingdoms cooperate because of a common enemy.
HunterWannabe_Tom: so if the Grimm vanished, we'd probably just fight each other
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The Great War happened while the Grimm still existed. I would not bet on humanity doing better without them.
grimm_bait_420: professor dropping the most depressing history fact of the night
MistralMom_Jenna: I would still rather live in a world without Grimm, personally
SI: Same. People'll figure out the rest. They always do, eventually.
VacuoVeteran: Optimist.
SI: Somebody has to be.
GreatHunterPPort: Well spoken, young man! And should that day ever come, I shall happily retire and write my memoirs! Volume one: The Boarbatusk.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you've been writing that memoir for twenty years.
GreatHunterPPort: Greatness takes TIME, Bartholomew.
anon_viewer_4471: An ambitious thought. I suspect whoever found the source would find it much harder to reach than they imagine.
SI: Probably. Most things worth doing are.
anon_viewer_4471: Indeed.
SI: Okay. So, summary, for real this time:
In theory? Yes. If Grimm only come from a source, and you destroy the source, every kill after that is permanent, and eventually they'd be gone. That's just math.
In practice? Nobody knows if there's one source, many sources, or something that isn't a place at all. History says cleared areas always get Grimm back. And if what's making them is still doing what the old stories say a god did... then it's not a nest. It's a who.
grimm_bait_420: "it's a WHO" ending the stream on that is psychopathic behavior
SI: Sorry. Sleep well, everyone.
MistralMom_Jenna: I will not
ValeCommuter_22: they're still Grimm
SI: Thank you, Vale guy. Night.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 7,215]
* * *
[CCT Network — Livestream: "one sec" — 👁 1,988 viewers]
(Back on camera, hoodie half on, clearly about to go to bed.)
SI: Sorry, sorry. Thirty seconds. It was bugging me.
I said "it's a who." But that's me assuming. It could also be a what. A place, a machine, some leftover piece of the gods' power just... running on its own, with nobody behind it. Like a faucet someone left on when they left the house.
Okay. That's it. Goodnight for real.
grimm_bait_420: HE CAME BACK TO MAKE IT WORSE
HunterWannabe_Tom: "a faucet someone left on" is somehow scarier than "a who"
MistralMom_Jenna: I was ALMOST asleep
AtlasTechStudent: Honestly, "a what" is the more scientific hypothesis. An unmanaged process is more plausible than an intelligence.
SI: See, Atlas guy gets it.
AtlasTechStudent: I'm not agreeing with you. I'm ranking your nightmares.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Or both. A what, with a who standing next to it.
grimm_bait_420: WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT
VacuoVeteran: Church guy's been the scariest person in chat this whole time and nobody noticed
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Both hypotheses are unfalsifiable at present. Go to sleep.
GreatHunterPPort: Whether a who or a what, it shall meet the business end of my blunderbuss!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter. Sleep.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Grimm factory
SI: ...
SI: Vale guy, that's the most helpful thing you've ever said.
ValeCommuter_22: I contain multitudes
anon_viewer_4471: A who or a what. Curious that you felt the need to come back for that distinction.
SI: Just being precise. Professor's orders.
anon_viewer_4471: Of course.
SI: Okay. Bed. Actually bed. Bye.
[STREAM ENDED — Duration: 0:01:47]
Chapter 10: Research Proposals
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Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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Chapter 10: Research Proposals
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 8:51 AMNine minutes before the bell, and every seat was already full.
Doctor Oobleck stopped in the doorway, thermos halfway to his mouth, and stared at the room. Students from other sections had shown up. Team CFVY was sitting in the back row. Velvet had a notebook open. Coco had her sunglasses pushed up on her head, which Oobleck understood to be the highest form of attention she paid anything.
"This," he said slowly, "is a history lecture."
"It's the Grimm stream," Ruby said, practically vibrating. "You're showing the Grimm stream, right? Please tell me you're showing the Grimm stream."
"I have not announced any such—"
"Professor Port was in the chat," Yang said. "Everyone knows. He's been telling his whole class about the Boarbatusk again because the stream guy gave him credit."
"'Ceases to be held together,'" Nora quoted, in a booming voice. "I SAID THAT."
Oobleck closed his eyes briefly. Then he zipped to the podium, set down his thermos, and picked up the remote.
"Fine. Yes. We are watching the Grimm stream. Also the addendum. Also," he sighed, "the second addendum."
The room cheered as if he'd cancelled finals.
* * *
The stream played, and the class watched it like it was the Vytal Festival finals.
When the streamer asked what dissolving Grimm were actually made of, there was a ripple of murmuring. Half the students had seen dozens of Grimm die. Almost none of them had ever stopped to wonder.
"Huh," Jaune said. "Yeah. What is that stuff?"
"Black... flakes?" Ruby offered. "Grimm dust?"
"Don't call it dust," Weiss said sharply. "That's confusing."
When GreatHunterPPort appeared in the chat, the room exploded.
"THERE HE IS!"
"'My own formidable moustache,'" Yang read aloud, doubling over. "He put that on a public forum."
"He's been telling that story since first week," Cardin muttered, but he was grinning.
When HistoryIsNotBoring_BO told Peter to stop posting during office hours, the class turned in unison to look at Oobleck, who was staring very intently at the ceiling.
"Monitoring," Coco said from the back row, deadpan. "Sure, Doc."
"Continue watching," Oobleck said.
* * *
The room grew quieter as the streamer got to the part about Grimm having no souls, and the material falling apart without one to hold it together.
Ren shifted slightly in his seat. Nora glanced at him, and for once said nothing.
Then the Atlas student explained how scrolls measured Aura, and the streamer made his water-tank analogy.
"Oh," Pyrrha said softly. "That's... exactly right, actually. We never see the Aura itself. Just how much of it we've spent."
"That can't be right," Weiss said, frowning. "Atlas has been studying Aura for decades." She paused, lips pressed together. "...Although I suppose every Aura reading I've ever seen was based on absorbed impact or calibration baselines."
"So Atlas guy was right?" Yang asked.
"Atlas guy was right," Weiss admitted. "Which means the streamer was right. Which I don't enjoy."
* * *
Then came the final question. If we find where Grimm are born and destroy it, does every kill become permanent?
Ruby sat up so fast her chair squeaked.
"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, that would be amazing."
She watched the rest of the segment with her hands clasped tight in front of her. When the Atlas student said basic math, she nodded vigorously. When Port declared that Grimm had never once run low, she deflated a little. When Oobleck's username pointed out that cleared regions always got Grimm back, she deflated a little more.
And when the streamer said, "I would still rather live in a world without Grimm," and the chat called him an optimist, and he replied "Somebody has to be," Ruby smiled at the screen like she'd found a friend.
Yang was watching her sister, not the video. Her expression had softened in a way it rarely did in public.
* * *
When the addendum began, the one where the streamer came back to say "or a what," the room groaned in collective horror.
"Why would he come BACK for that?" Jaune said.
"'A faucet someone left on,'" Velvet read quietly from the back. "That's awful."
"'A what, with a who standing next to it,'" Coco read, eyebrows up. "Church guy's terrifying."
When ValeCommuter_22 typed it's a Grimm factory, the entire room cheered.
"VALE GUY!"
"He's evolving," Nora said reverently.
The stream ended on Duration: 0:01:47. Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Well," he said. "Discuss."
* * *
Nobody waited to be called on.
"Okay, the Grimm material thing," Yang started. "I've fought a lot of Grimm, and I never once thought about it. That's the Semblance thing again, right? When something's normal, you stop asking questions."
"Precisely the pattern," Oobleck said. "Familiarity breeds incuriosity. Go on."
"The streamer's idea that Grimm fall apart because nothing's holding them together," Blake said. "Because there's no soul. I've never heard anyone put it like that. It makes sense of a lot of things. Why they don't leave bodies. Why they don't age like animals."
"We don't actually know that Grimm don't age," Weiss said. "Older Grimm are larger and more intelligent."
"Older, but do they ever die of age?" Blake asked. "Has anyone ever found a Grimm that died of old age?"
Weiss opened her mouth. Then closed it.
"...I don't know."
"Nobody knows," Oobleck said cheerfully. "Which is the most honest sentence anyone has said in this room all year. Next!"
Ren raised his hand, which was unusual enough that the room quieted a little.
"Mister Lie."
"The part about negativity," Ren said. "The streamer's viewer, the one whose grandmother said Grimm come from negative emotions." He paused. "The Atlas student was right to call it folklore. But I think the reason it upset people is that we all know Grimm are drawn to it. And if you've ever been somewhere where everyone was afraid..." He trailed off. "You understand why people believe the folklore."
Nora reached over and squeezed his hand under the desk. Ren didn't pull away.
"A thoughtful point," Oobleck said, more gently. "Folklore often grows from real experience, even when the explanation it offers is wrong. Thank you, Mister Lie."
"I have a question," Jaune said. "About the Grimm-free world thing. The part where everyone said the economy would collapse and people would fight each other." He looked uncertain. "Is that... true? Historically?"
"Yes and no," Oobleck said, zipping to the board. "The Great War happened while the Grimm existed, as I said in the chat—"
"So you admit it WAS you," Yang said.
"—as the anonymous scholar said in the chat," Oobleck corrected, "and it was, in part, the shared threat of the Grimm that pushed the kingdoms toward the peace that followed. A common enemy unites. That is one of the oldest patterns in history."
"That's depressing," Jaune said.
"It is also incomplete," Oobleck said. "Because humans have also, many times, cooperated without a common enemy. Trade, art, science, marriage, friendship. We are not only held together by what we fear." He glanced, briefly, at Blake and then at Velvet in the back row. "Though fear is admittedly very efficient."
Blake's ears twitched under her bow. "The streamer said people would figure out the rest," she said. "I'd like to believe that."
"So would I, Miss Belladonna."
* * *
"Miss Rose," Oobleck said. "You've been unusually quiet. For you."
Ruby looked up. She was still smiling a little, but it was a quieter smile than usual.
"I just really liked the idea," she said. "That it could end. Like, actually end. Not just 'we hold the Grimm back,' but 'they're gone.'" She fidgeted with her sleeve. "Everybody talks about Huntsmen protecting people. But if you found the source... you wouldn't just be protecting people. Nobody would need protecting anymore. Nobody would have to go out on a mission and..." She stopped. "...and not come back."
The room went quiet.
Yang put an arm around her sister's shoulders without a word.
Oobleck set down his thermos. For a moment, he didn't zip, didn't pace, didn't do anything at all.
"That," he said finally, "is the best reason I have ever heard for becoming a Huntress, Miss Rose."
Ruby ducked her head, cheeks pink.
* * *
"Okay, but the addendum," Coco called from the back, breaking the silence. "The 'who or what' thing. What's the actual answer, Doc?"
"Nobody knows, Miss Adel."
"Yeah, but what do you think?"
Oobleck considered this for a long moment. Every eye in the room was on him.
"I think," he said carefully, "that 'what' is the more likely scholarly hypothesis. An unmanaged natural process. A phenomenon we simply have not yet discovered, in a region we have not yet mapped." He took a sip of coffee. "And I think that historians who say 'I am certain' about questions like this one tend to be proven wrong by the next generation of historians. So I am not certain."
"That's a cop-out," Coco said.
"That is scholarship, Miss Adel."
"Same thing," Yang said, and the room laughed.
* * *
Blake raised her hand one more time.
"One more thing," she said. "Did anyone else notice the anonymous viewer? The one who shows up at the end of every stream?"
A few students nodded.
"'Some questions don't need answers to be survived,'" Pyrrha said quietly. "And 'Curious that you felt the need to come back for that distinction.'"
"Yeah," Blake said. "That one. It's... creepy. It's always polite, and it always asks something personal. Where he grew up. Why he thinks about lost knowledge." Her ears flattened slightly. "It reads like someone who's paying attention for a reason."
"Or someone who's just lonely and likes the streams," Jaune offered.
"Maybe," Blake said. She didn't sound convinced.
Oobleck's expression didn't change, but he was quiet for a beat longer than usual.
"The internet is full of strange people, Miss Belladonna," he said at last. "Most of them are harmless. But your instinct to notice patterns is a good one. Keep it." He clapped his hands. "No essay this week!"
The class cheered.
"Instead, a group activity. In your teams, I want you to design a research proposal. If you were given unlimited resources to answer one question from this stream, which question would you choose, and how would you go about answering it? What would you measure? Where would you go? What evidence would convince you?" He zipped to the door. "Presentations next week. Dismissed!"
* * *
The students poured out of the hall in a wave of noise.
"We're doing the Grimm source," Ruby declared immediately. "Team RWBY is finding the Grimm source."
"We are not going to find it, Ruby, it's a proposal," Weiss said.
"We're proposing to find it."
"I want to do the Aura measurement thing," Weiss muttered. "At least that one has data."
"Team JNPR's doing Grimm decomposition," Nora announced to no one in particular. "We're gonna catch the flakes. In a JAR."
"That's... actually a good starting point," Ren admitted.
From the back, Coco was already dragging her team toward the door. "Grimm aging. Nobody knows if they die of old age. Somebody's gonna figure that out, and it's gonna be us."
Velvet trailed behind, notebook clutched to her chest, looking genuinely excited for the first time in weeks.
Pyrrha lingered again near the door, looking at the empty projector screen.
"You okay?" Jaune asked.
"Mm. Just thinking about Ruby's answer," she said. "About it ending." She smiled at him. "It's a good thing to hope for."
"Yeah," Jaune said. "It is."
* * *
At the front of the empty hall, Oobleck poured the last of his coffee and pulled out his scroll.
The forum thread had passed four thousand replies. At the top was a new post, from an account he recognized.
GreatHunterPPort: My students have informed me that Bartholomew's class had a VERY lively discussion of MY contribution to the stream. I would like it noted on the record that I coined "ceases to be held together."
grimm_bait_420: port's never letting this go lmao
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: He is not.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Grimm factory
Oobleck smiled, closed the app, and looked out at the empty seats for a long moment.
He had been teaching for a very long time. He could not remember the last time an entire room of students had been excited to come to class.
He decided he would write the streamer a thank-you note. Anonymously, of course.
Chapter 11: What Is Dust, Actually?
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Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Dust: what is it, actually?" — 👁 6,430 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay. Welcome back. Apparently there's a Beacon class doing research proposals based on the last stream, which is terrifying, and also, hi, please cite me properly.
Tonight's question. Dust. I've seen Dust. I assume everyone has seen Dust. It's in weapons, lamps, trains, airships, kitchen stoves. And the explanation everyone gives is that it "stores elemental energy."
So: what is elemental energy?
Is it Tier Two, something the gods left behind? Is it something the planet makes? Because if the planet makes it... is the planet alive? Is Dust its blood? Is the planet conscious?
I'm asking for a friend. The friend is me.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: he's going after the PLANET now
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I knew it. I literally knew it.
ValeCommuter_22: tradition
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. Dust is a crystalline mineral. It forms in deposits, gets mined, refined, and used. "Elemental energy" is just a shorthand for stored potential energy that releases in a specific form. Fire Dust releases heat, ice Dust absorbs it, and so on.
SI: Okay, but where does the energy come from? If I burn wood, the energy came from the tree, which got it from the sun. Chain of custody. If I strike a red crystal and a fireball comes out, what did the crystal eat?
AtlasTechStudent: It formed under specific geological conditions that stored energy in its structure.
SI: What conditions store gravity?
AtlasTechStudent: ...
SI: Gravity Dust exists. You can hit a crystal and make things float or slam into the ground. What geological process stores gravity in a rock?
AtlasTechStudent: Gravity Dust is poorly understood.
grimm_bait_420: "poorly understood" is doing SO much heavy lifting in this chat
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I work in a Schnee warehouse. I handle Dust every day. You know what nobody tells you? It's not all the same, even from the same mine. Some batches are stronger than others and nobody can predict it. The refiners just test every batch.
SI: Wait, really? Same mine, same type, different strength?
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: yep. that's why quality control is half the job. they sort it by purity after mining, not before
SI: That's weird for a mineral, right? Iron from the same vein doesn't randomly get stronger.
AtlasTechStudent: Mineral purity varies all the time. That's normal geology.
SI: Purity, sure. But potency? Fire Dust that's just... angrier than other fire Dust?
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: "angrier" is honestly how the refiners describe it lol
DustTrader_Mo: okay this is my stream now. two things nobody talks about. one, Dust gets unstable if you take it way up high. I've heard people say it stops working entirely outside the atmosphere. two, nobody's figured out how to MAKE it. you can refine it, mix it, compress it, but every bit of Dust ever used came out of the ground.
SI: Hold on. Hold on hold on hold on.
SI: It only works on the planet, and it can only be made by the planet.
DustTrader_Mo: that's what I'm saying
SI: That's the most "planet's blood" fact I've ever heard.
AtlasTechStudent: Or it's a mineral that reacts with atmospheric conditions. Plenty of compounds are unstable at low pressure.
SI: Okay, that's a real counterargument, I'll give you that. But "we can't make it, we can only dig it up, and it stops working if you take it away from the planet" is at minimum very on-theme.
AtlasTechStudent: On-theme is not evidence.
SI: Noted. It's still on-theme.
GreatHunterPPort: In my youth I once carried a vial of fire Dust up the tallest peak in Solitas! Near the summit it grew sluggish! Weak! As though it longed to return home!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, altitude affects combustion. That is basic chemistry.
GreatHunterPPort: It LONGED, Bartholomew!
grimm_bait_420: port's dust had FEELINGS
MistralMom_Jenna: Okay I'll be the normal one. Dust is a rock. A very useful rock. My stove runs on it. I don't want my stove to be a planet's blood.
SI: That's fair. Nobody wants a stove that's a vein.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The old teachings say the Brothers shaped the world together. The elder made life and light. The younger made the dark and the wild. Some teachers say Dust is what's left of the elder's work in the earth. The power of creation, sleeping in stone.
SI: Okay, see, so that's the Tier Two answer. Dust as leftover creation magic.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Or the planet itself was the creation, and Dust is part of it. Both readings exist.
SI: Which would kind of mean both answers are the same answer. If the gods made the planet, and the planet makes Dust, then Dust is "the planet's" and "left by the gods" at the same time.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. That's what I've always thought.
VacuoVeteran: I'll tell you something from Vacuo. We have a lot of Dust out in the desert. Out there, people don't treat it like a mineral. Old miners talk to the deposits. Leave water at the entrance to a new dig. Nobody really believes it, but nobody skips it either.
SI: That's so cool. That's exactly what people do when they think the ground is alive, even if they won't say it.
VacuoVeteran: Old habits. Nobody wants to be the guy who skipped it and had the tunnel collapse.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note. Nearly every mining culture in history developed rituals toward the earth. That tells you about the danger of mining, not necessarily about the consciousness of the planet.
SI: Fair. Very fair. But why is it always the same instinct? Every culture, independently, decides to treat the ground like it's listening.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Because the ground frequently kills miners. Humans personify things that can kill them.
SI: ...okay that's a really good answer, professor.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I know.
FaunusRights_Now: also the planet literally has a broken moon above it and nobody knows why. if we're talking about weird planet stuff, can we talk about THAT
grimm_bait_420: OH MY GODS THE MOON
HunterWannabe_Tom: we all just accept the moon is shattered. every night. we just look at it.
SI: WAIT. I didn't even— okay, that's a whole stream on its own, but you're right. The planet is literally called Remnant. The remnant of what?
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The etymology of "Remnant" is disputed and the shattering of the moon predates reliable records. Both are fascinating. Neither are tonight's topic.
SI: Yes, professor. Moon stream is next. Writing it down.
AtlasTechStudent: Coming back to the question: is the planet conscious. No. There's zero evidence of planetary consciousness. Dust deposits follow geological patterns. That's it.
SI: Okay, but "alive" and "conscious" are different. A tree is alive and not conscious. Could the planet be alive in the tree sense? Making Dust the way a tree makes sap?
AtlasTechStudent: That's... a much more defensible framing. I still wouldn't call it alive. But "a planet with processes that produce energy-bearing crystals" is literally what's happening.
SI: So you're saying it makes sap.
AtlasTechStudent: I am saying it has geological processes.
SI: Sap.
AtlasTechStudent: Geological processes.
grimm_bait_420: the sap war has begun
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: honestly after 6 years in the warehouse "the planet makes angry sap" is the most accurate description of my job I've ever heard
SI: Okay, wrapping up. Where I've landed:
What we know: Dust only comes from the ground. Nobody can make it. It varies in strength unpredictably. It may stop working away from the planet.
What elemental energy is: Nobody knows where it comes from. Fire, ice, lightning, and gravity stored in rock, with no clear source. "Stored potential energy" describes what it does, not where it came from. Same problem as souls. We measure the output.
Updated tiers: Tier 1: Creation. Gods-level. Tier 2: What creation left behind — and I think Dust goes here, if the planet itself was made. Which would make Dust both the planet's and the gods' at the same time. Tier 3: Semblances.
Is the planet alive? Maybe in the tree sense. Sap, not blood.
Is it conscious? No evidence. But every miner in history acts like it is, and nobody wants to skip the water at the tunnel entrance.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: A good summary.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Speculative, clearly labeled, and you conceded the consciousness point to the evidence. B-plus.
SI: B-PLUS. MOM, I'M ON THE HONOR ROLL.
GreatHunterPPort: And do not forget: the Dust LONGED.
grimm_bait_420: hey wait. where's anon_viewer? they're usually here by now
HunterWannabe_Tom: oh yeah. no creepy polite guy tonight
FaunusRights_Now: kind of weirder that they're gone honestly
SI: Huh. Yeah. Maybe they're busy. Or maybe they just don't care about rocks.
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
SI: It's Dust, Vale guy. It's always Dust. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 9,108]
* * *
SI: Okay. Welcome back. Apparently there's a Beacon class doing research proposals based on the last stream, which is terrifying, and also, hi, please cite me properly.
Tonight's question. Dust. I've seen Dust. I assume everyone has seen Dust. It's in weapons, lamps, trains, airships, kitchen stoves. And the explanation everyone gives is that it "stores elemental energy."
So: what is elemental energy?
Is it Tier Two, something the gods left behind? Is it something the planet makes? Because if the planet makes it... is the planet alive? Is Dust its blood? Is the planet conscious?
I'm asking for a friend. The friend is me.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: he's going after the PLANET now
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I knew it. I literally knew it.
ValeCommuter_22: tradition
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. Dust is a crystalline mineral. It forms in deposits, gets mined, refined, and used. "Elemental energy" is just a shorthand for stored potential energy that releases in a specific form. Fire Dust releases heat, ice Dust absorbs it, and so on.
SI: Okay, but where does the energy come from? If I burn wood, the energy came from the tree, which got it from the sun. Chain of custody. If I strike a red crystal and a fireball comes out, what did the crystal eat?
AtlasTechStudent: It formed under specific geological conditions that stored energy in its structure.
SI: What conditions store gravity?
AtlasTechStudent: ...
SI: Gravity Dust exists. You can hit a crystal and make things float or slam into the ground. What geological process stores gravity in a rock?
AtlasTechStudent: Gravity Dust is poorly understood.
grimm_bait_420: "poorly understood" is doing SO much heavy lifting in this chat
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I work in a Schnee warehouse. I handle Dust every day. You know what nobody tells you? It's not all the same, even from the same mine. Some batches are stronger than others and nobody can predict it. The refiners just test every batch.
SI: Wait, really? Same mine, same type, different strength?
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: yep. that's why quality control is half the job. they sort it by purity after mining, not before
SI: That's weird for a mineral, right? Iron from the same vein doesn't randomly get stronger.
AtlasTechStudent: Mineral purity varies all the time. That's normal geology.
SI: Purity, sure. But potency? Fire Dust that's just... angrier than other fire Dust?
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: "angrier" is honestly how the refiners describe it lol
DustTrader_Mo: okay this is my stream now. two things nobody talks about. one, Dust gets unstable if you take it way up high. I've heard people say it stops working entirely outside the atmosphere. two, nobody's figured out how to MAKE it. you can refine it, mix it, compress it, but every bit of Dust ever used came out of the ground.
SI: Hold on. Hold on hold on hold on.
SI: It only works on the planet, and it can only be made by the planet.
DustTrader_Mo: that's what I'm saying
SI: That's the most "planet's blood" fact I've ever heard.
AtlasTechStudent: Or it's a mineral that reacts with atmospheric conditions. Plenty of compounds are unstable at low pressure.
SI: Okay, that's a real counterargument, I'll give you that. But "we can't make it, we can only dig it up, and it stops working if you take it away from the planet" is at minimum very on-theme.
AtlasTechStudent: On-theme is not evidence.
SI: Noted. It's still on-theme.
GreatHunterPPort: In my youth I once carried a vial of fire Dust up the tallest peak in Solitas! Near the summit it grew sluggish! Weak! As though it longed to return home!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, altitude affects combustion. That is basic chemistry.
GreatHunterPPort: It LONGED, Bartholomew!
grimm_bait_420: port's dust had FEELINGS
MistralMom_Jenna: Okay I'll be the normal one. Dust is a rock. A very useful rock. My stove runs on it. I don't want my stove to be a planet's blood.
SI: That's fair. Nobody wants a stove that's a vein.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: The old teachings say the Brothers shaped the world together. The elder made life and light. The younger made the dark and the wild. Some teachers say Dust is what's left of the elder's work in the earth. The power of creation, sleeping in stone.
SI: Okay, see, so that's the Tier Two answer. Dust as leftover creation magic.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Or the planet itself was the creation, and Dust is part of it. Both readings exist.
SI: Which would kind of mean both answers are the same answer. If the gods made the planet, and the planet makes Dust, then Dust is "the planet's" and "left by the gods" at the same time.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. That's what I've always thought.
VacuoVeteran: I'll tell you something from Vacuo. We have a lot of Dust out in the desert. Out there, people don't treat it like a mineral. Old miners talk to the deposits. Leave water at the entrance to a new dig. Nobody really believes it, but nobody skips it either.
SI: That's so cool. That's exactly what people do when they think the ground is alive, even if they won't say it.
VacuoVeteran: Old habits. Nobody wants to be the guy who skipped it and had the tunnel collapse.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note. Nearly every mining culture in history developed rituals toward the earth. That tells you about the danger of mining, not necessarily about the consciousness of the planet.
SI: Fair. Very fair. But why is it always the same instinct? Every culture, independently, decides to treat the ground like it's listening.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Because the ground frequently kills miners. Humans personify things that can kill them.
SI: ...okay that's a really good answer, professor.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I know.
FaunusRights_Now: also the planet literally has a broken moon above it and nobody knows why. if we're talking about weird planet stuff, can we talk about THAT
grimm_bait_420: OH MY GODS THE MOON
HunterWannabe_Tom: we all just accept the moon is shattered. every night. we just look at it.
SI: WAIT. I didn't even— okay, that's a whole stream on its own, but you're right. The planet is literally called Remnant. The remnant of what?
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The etymology of "Remnant" is disputed and the shattering of the moon predates reliable records. Both are fascinating. Neither are tonight's topic.
SI: Yes, professor. Moon stream is next. Writing it down.
AtlasTechStudent: Coming back to the question: is the planet conscious. No. There's zero evidence of planetary consciousness. Dust deposits follow geological patterns. That's it.
SI: Okay, but "alive" and "conscious" are different. A tree is alive and not conscious. Could the planet be alive in the tree sense? Making Dust the way a tree makes sap?
AtlasTechStudent: That's... a much more defensible framing. I still wouldn't call it alive. But "a planet with processes that produce energy-bearing crystals" is literally what's happening.
SI: So you're saying it makes sap.
AtlasTechStudent: I am saying it has geological processes.
SI: Sap.
AtlasTechStudent: Geological processes.
grimm_bait_420: the sap war has begun
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: honestly after 6 years in the warehouse "the planet makes angry sap" is the most accurate description of my job I've ever heard
SI: Okay, wrapping up. Where I've landed:
What we know: Dust only comes from the ground. Nobody can make it. It varies in strength unpredictably. It may stop working away from the planet.
What elemental energy is: Nobody knows where it comes from. Fire, ice, lightning, and gravity stored in rock, with no clear source. "Stored potential energy" describes what it does, not where it came from. Same problem as souls. We measure the output.
Updated tiers: Tier 1: Creation. Gods-level. Tier 2: What creation left behind — and I think Dust goes here, if the planet itself was made. Which would make Dust both the planet's and the gods' at the same time. Tier 3: Semblances.
Is the planet alive? Maybe in the tree sense. Sap, not blood.
Is it conscious? No evidence. But every miner in history acts like it is, and nobody wants to skip the water at the tunnel entrance.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: A good summary.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Speculative, clearly labeled, and you conceded the consciousness point to the evidence. B-plus.
SI: B-PLUS. MOM, I'M ON THE HONOR ROLL.
GreatHunterPPort: And do not forget: the Dust LONGED.
grimm_bait_420: hey wait. where's anon_viewer? they're usually here by now
HunterWannabe_Tom: oh yeah. no creepy polite guy tonight
FaunusRights_Now: kind of weirder that they're gone honestly
SI: Huh. Yeah. Maybe they're busy. Or maybe they just don't care about rocks.
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
SI: It's Dust, Vale guy. It's always Dust. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 9,108]
Last edited:
Chapter 12: Angry Batches
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 9:00 AM
"Research proposals first," Oobleck announced, before anyone could ask. "Stream after. If I show the stream first, none of you will pay attention to each other, and your classmates worked hard."
A collective groan went up. Oobleck ignored it with the serenity of a man who had survived many groans.
"Team CFVY. You volunteered to go first, which I appreciate, because no one else did."
* * *
Coco strolled to the front, sunglasses on, with Velvet clutching a stack of note cards, Fox standing silently behind them, and Yatsuhashi looming politely in the corner.
"Question," Coco said. "Do Grimm die of old age?"
She nodded at Velvet, who stepped forward, took a breath, and spoke faster than anyone expected.
"We'd track individual Grimm over years using long-range observation in remote areas where Huntsmen rarely patrol. Distinctive markings, size, behavior. If any older Grimm ever just... stops, without being killed, that's evidence. If none ever do, that suggests Grimm might not have a natural lifespan at all." She flipped a card. "We'd also cross-reference old Huntsman field journals. Some families have records going back generations. If the same distinctive Grimm shows up in a grandfather's notes and a granddaughter's, that's decades of life."
The room was quiet.
"That's... actually brilliant," Weiss said.
"The journals were Velvet's idea," Coco said. "I just made it look good."
Velvet turned bright red.
"Excellent," Oobleck said, already scribbling. "Particularly the use of family archives. Historians love a family archive. A-minus. Next!"
* * *
Team CRDL shuffled up. Cardin cleared his throat.
"Our question is... how strong is the strongest Grimm."
"And how would you measure that?"
"We'd fight it."
"...And?"
"And see how strong it is."
Oobleck stared at him. The room waited.
"Mister Winchester, that is not a research proposal. That is a death wish with a methodology section."
"We had a methodology section!" Russel protested.
"Your methodology section says 'bring more guys.'"
The class was crying laughing. Cardin had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.
"C-minus," Oobleck said. "Because you technically identified a question and technically proposed a way to answer it. Please do not attempt it."
* * *
Team JNPR went next. Nora marched to the front with a glass jar held triumphantly over her head.
"We're going to CATCH the Grimm flakes!"
"In a jar," Ren clarified calmly. "Specifically, a sealed, pressurized container, deployed at the moment of a Grimm's death, to capture the dissolving material before it disperses. Then we'd test whether the material behaves differently at different pressures and temperatures, and whether it's affected by Aura."
"Because," Pyrrha added, "if the streamer's hypothesis is right, that Grimm fall apart because nothing's holding them together, then introducing something that can hold things together — like Aura — might slow the process. That would be evidence for the hypothesis."
Jaune raised a hand awkwardly. "And, uh, I did the risk assessment. Which is mostly 'don't open the jar.'"
"That is an excellent risk assessment, Mister Arc."
"Thank you, sir."
"A," Oobleck said. "The Aura test in particular is inventive. And Miss Valkyrie, the jar is a good prop."
"I KNOW."
* * *
Team RWBY last.
Ruby stood at the front, practically bouncing. "Our question is: where do Grimm come from?"
"An ambitious question," Oobleck said. "How would you begin?"
"Maps!" Ruby said. Weiss stepped forward with a folder that was noticeably more organized than anyone else's. "We'd take every reliable Grimm-sighting record from all four kingdoms, going back as far as possible, and plot them. Density, direction of movement, which areas get recleared fastest after a purge."
"If Grimm are migrating in from somewhere," Blake continued, "the maps would show flow. Like a river. You'd see where they're coming from. If they just appear randomly everywhere, the maps would show that instead."
"And then," Yang finished, "if it points somewhere, we go look."
"You would not go look," Weiss said.
"We'd propose going to look."
"The proposal ends at the maps, Yang."
"The proposal ends with me punching the Grimm factory."
"The proposal," Oobleck interjected, "ends at the maps, and it is very good. Using historical sighting records as migration data is precisely the kind of thing historians should be contributing to Grimm studies, and almost never do." He paused. "A. And Miss Xiao Long, you may punch nothing."
* * *
"And now," Oobleck said, "the Dust stream."
The room cheered.
Weiss, notably, did not. She sat very straight, arms folded, with the expression of someone preparing to defend her family's honor in front of a live audience.
* * *
When the streamer asked what elemental energy actually was, several students leaned forward.
When the Atlas student said stored potential energy, Weiss nodded.
When the streamer asked what geological process stores gravity in a rock, Weiss stopped nodding.
"...That's a fair question," she muttered.
Then SDC_Warehouse_Guy appeared, and Weiss went rigid.
"He works for us," she said under her breath. "He works for my family."
"Did he say anything wrong?" Blake asked, watching her carefully.
Weiss watched him describe how batches from the same mine varied unpredictably in strength, how quality control was half the job, how the refiners called some Dust "angrier" than others.
"No," she said, after a long pause. "No. He's right. That's... actually true. My father's company tests every batch because potency is unpredictable. I've heard the refiners say 'angry' too." She frowned. "I just never thought it was strange. It was always just how Dust was."
"The Semblance thing again," Yang said. "Normal stuff stops being weird."
"Yes, thank you, Yang. I'm aware."
* * *
When DustTrader_Mo mentioned that nobody could make Dust, and that it might stop working away from the planet, the room went quiet.
"Is that true?" Jaune asked. "The atmosphere thing?"
Weiss hesitated. "It's... been observed. Dust behaves unpredictably at extreme altitude. There's never been any real reason to take it higher than airships go, so nobody's studied it much."
"So we don't know," Ruby said.
"We don't know," Weiss admitted. Then, quieter: "I don't like how often I've said that this week."
* * *
When GreatHunterPPort declared that his Dust had longed to return home, the class lost it.
"The Dust LONGED," Nora wailed, clutching her jar.
"He's going to tell us about this in class," Cardin groaned. "He's going to tell us for an HOUR."
"Bartholomew said altitude affects combustion," Yang said, glancing at Oobleck. "Bartholomew was right, by the way."
"Bartholomew is always right," Oobleck said primly.
* * *
When the Vacuo veteran described miners leaving water at tunnel entrances, Blake sat up a little.
"My family used to know Faunus miners," she said quietly. "Before... everything. They did things like that too. Little rituals. Knocking on the rock before a new dig." She paused. "A lot of Faunus work the mines. Most of them never talk about it. I don't think anyone ever thought to ask."
Weiss glanced at her. For a moment, something passed between them that neither said aloud. Then Weiss looked away, jaw tight, and said nothing.
* * *
When the chat brought up the shattered moon, the entire room erupted.
"THE MOON!"
"We look at it EVERY NIGHT!"
"Why is nobody talking about the MOON?"
"Because," Oobleck said loudly, over the noise, "the shattering of the moon predates reliable records, and there is almost nothing that can be said about it that is not speculation!" He paused. "It is also one of my favorite topics, and I am delighted the streamer intends to cover it. Settle down!"
They did not settle down.
* * *
The stream ended with the streamer's summary and his B-plus. The room cheered again, partly for him and partly because they'd started treating his grades like sports scores.
Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Discuss."
Weiss's hand went up before anyone else's.
"Miss Schnee."
She stood, took a breath, and said, with visible effort: "I came in intending to defend Dust as a mineral. Scientifically. Firmly."
"And?"
"And I still believe it's a mineral." She paused. "But I can't answer his question. Where the energy comes from. Why gravity Dust exists. Why potency varies. Why we can't make it. My family has mined Dust for generations, and I have never once heard anyone explain where it comes from. Only how to get it out of the ground." She sat down. "That bothers me. More than I'd like."
The room was quiet.
"That," Oobleck said, "is the most honest thing I have heard a student say in this classroom. And I have taught lot." He took a sip of coffee. "Thank you, Miss Schnee."
Weiss nodded stiffly, cheeks faintly pink.
* * *
"I liked the sap thing," Ruby said. "The planet being alive like a tree. Not thinking, just... growing stuff."
"It's a softer idea than 'blood,'" Pyrrha agreed. "Easier to live with. The idea that the world is giving us something, not bleeding for us."
"The church viewer's version was interesting too," Ren said. "That Dust is the planet's and the gods' at the same time. If the gods made the planet, there's no contradiction."
"Which moves Dust to Tier Two," Blake said. "If you accept the myth."
"If," Weiss muttered.
"If," Oobleck agreed. "Always if."
* * *
Blake raised her hand again.
"Miss Belladonna. Let me guess."
"The anonymous viewer," Blake said. "They didn't show up this time. First stream they've missed."
A few students murmured.
"The chat noticed too," Jaune said. "Somebody said it was weirder that they were gone."
"Maybe they just don't care about rocks," Yang said, echoing the streamer. "Can't blame 'em."
"Maybe," Blake said. She didn't sound convinced. "It's just strange. Every stream in a row, always at the end, always asking something personal. And then the one stream where people start talking about the moon and the planet and the gods making the world... nothing."
Oobleck was quiet for a moment.
"An absence is also data, Miss Belladonna," he said finally. "But a single absence is not a pattern. Keep watching. Don't conclude." He clapped his hands. "Dismissed! Excellent proposals, all of you. Except you, Mister Winchester. Please do not fight the strongest Grimm."
"Wasn't gonna," Cardin said.
"You absolutely were."
* * *
The students filed out, arguing about the moon, about sap, about whether Dust could long for anything.
Weiss walked a little slower than usual. Blake fell into step beside her.
"You okay?" Blake asked.
"I'm fine," Weiss said. Then, after a few steps: "I'm going to ask my father's refiners about the angry batches. When I'm home over break." She paused. "And the miners. I want to know about the rituals."
Blake looked at her for a long moment.
"That's a good idea," she said quietly.
* * *
At the front of the empty hall, Oobleck pulled up the forum thread. It had crossed six thousand replies. Near the top, a new comment from a familiar account:
GreatHunterPPort: My students informed me that Bartholomew's class laughed at my Dust anecdote. I maintain that it LONGED.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It did not long, Peter.
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
grimm_bait_420: moon stream when
Oobleck scrolled down, past the jokes and arguments, looking for one particular username.
anon_viewer_4471 had not posted.
He looked at the empty space for a moment longer than he meant to. Then he closed the app, picked up his thermos, and headed for Peter's office to argue about Dust.
"Research proposals first," Oobleck announced, before anyone could ask. "Stream after. If I show the stream first, none of you will pay attention to each other, and your classmates worked hard."
A collective groan went up. Oobleck ignored it with the serenity of a man who had survived many groans.
"Team CFVY. You volunteered to go first, which I appreciate, because no one else did."
* * *
Coco strolled to the front, sunglasses on, with Velvet clutching a stack of note cards, Fox standing silently behind them, and Yatsuhashi looming politely in the corner.
"Question," Coco said. "Do Grimm die of old age?"
She nodded at Velvet, who stepped forward, took a breath, and spoke faster than anyone expected.
"We'd track individual Grimm over years using long-range observation in remote areas where Huntsmen rarely patrol. Distinctive markings, size, behavior. If any older Grimm ever just... stops, without being killed, that's evidence. If none ever do, that suggests Grimm might not have a natural lifespan at all." She flipped a card. "We'd also cross-reference old Huntsman field journals. Some families have records going back generations. If the same distinctive Grimm shows up in a grandfather's notes and a granddaughter's, that's decades of life."
The room was quiet.
"That's... actually brilliant," Weiss said.
"The journals were Velvet's idea," Coco said. "I just made it look good."
Velvet turned bright red.
"Excellent," Oobleck said, already scribbling. "Particularly the use of family archives. Historians love a family archive. A-minus. Next!"
* * *
Team CRDL shuffled up. Cardin cleared his throat.
"Our question is... how strong is the strongest Grimm."
"And how would you measure that?"
"We'd fight it."
"...And?"
"And see how strong it is."
Oobleck stared at him. The room waited.
"Mister Winchester, that is not a research proposal. That is a death wish with a methodology section."
"We had a methodology section!" Russel protested.
"Your methodology section says 'bring more guys.'"
The class was crying laughing. Cardin had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.
"C-minus," Oobleck said. "Because you technically identified a question and technically proposed a way to answer it. Please do not attempt it."
* * *
Team JNPR went next. Nora marched to the front with a glass jar held triumphantly over her head.
"We're going to CATCH the Grimm flakes!"
"In a jar," Ren clarified calmly. "Specifically, a sealed, pressurized container, deployed at the moment of a Grimm's death, to capture the dissolving material before it disperses. Then we'd test whether the material behaves differently at different pressures and temperatures, and whether it's affected by Aura."
"Because," Pyrrha added, "if the streamer's hypothesis is right, that Grimm fall apart because nothing's holding them together, then introducing something that can hold things together — like Aura — might slow the process. That would be evidence for the hypothesis."
Jaune raised a hand awkwardly. "And, uh, I did the risk assessment. Which is mostly 'don't open the jar.'"
"That is an excellent risk assessment, Mister Arc."
"Thank you, sir."
"A," Oobleck said. "The Aura test in particular is inventive. And Miss Valkyrie, the jar is a good prop."
"I KNOW."
* * *
Team RWBY last.
Ruby stood at the front, practically bouncing. "Our question is: where do Grimm come from?"
"An ambitious question," Oobleck said. "How would you begin?"
"Maps!" Ruby said. Weiss stepped forward with a folder that was noticeably more organized than anyone else's. "We'd take every reliable Grimm-sighting record from all four kingdoms, going back as far as possible, and plot them. Density, direction of movement, which areas get recleared fastest after a purge."
"If Grimm are migrating in from somewhere," Blake continued, "the maps would show flow. Like a river. You'd see where they're coming from. If they just appear randomly everywhere, the maps would show that instead."
"And then," Yang finished, "if it points somewhere, we go look."
"You would not go look," Weiss said.
"We'd propose going to look."
"The proposal ends at the maps, Yang."
"The proposal ends with me punching the Grimm factory."
"The proposal," Oobleck interjected, "ends at the maps, and it is very good. Using historical sighting records as migration data is precisely the kind of thing historians should be contributing to Grimm studies, and almost never do." He paused. "A. And Miss Xiao Long, you may punch nothing."
* * *
"And now," Oobleck said, "the Dust stream."
The room cheered.
Weiss, notably, did not. She sat very straight, arms folded, with the expression of someone preparing to defend her family's honor in front of a live audience.
* * *
When the streamer asked what elemental energy actually was, several students leaned forward.
When the Atlas student said stored potential energy, Weiss nodded.
When the streamer asked what geological process stores gravity in a rock, Weiss stopped nodding.
"...That's a fair question," she muttered.
Then SDC_Warehouse_Guy appeared, and Weiss went rigid.
"He works for us," she said under her breath. "He works for my family."
"Did he say anything wrong?" Blake asked, watching her carefully.
Weiss watched him describe how batches from the same mine varied unpredictably in strength, how quality control was half the job, how the refiners called some Dust "angrier" than others.
"No," she said, after a long pause. "No. He's right. That's... actually true. My father's company tests every batch because potency is unpredictable. I've heard the refiners say 'angry' too." She frowned. "I just never thought it was strange. It was always just how Dust was."
"The Semblance thing again," Yang said. "Normal stuff stops being weird."
"Yes, thank you, Yang. I'm aware."
* * *
When DustTrader_Mo mentioned that nobody could make Dust, and that it might stop working away from the planet, the room went quiet.
"Is that true?" Jaune asked. "The atmosphere thing?"
Weiss hesitated. "It's... been observed. Dust behaves unpredictably at extreme altitude. There's never been any real reason to take it higher than airships go, so nobody's studied it much."
"So we don't know," Ruby said.
"We don't know," Weiss admitted. Then, quieter: "I don't like how often I've said that this week."
* * *
When GreatHunterPPort declared that his Dust had longed to return home, the class lost it.
"The Dust LONGED," Nora wailed, clutching her jar.
"He's going to tell us about this in class," Cardin groaned. "He's going to tell us for an HOUR."
"Bartholomew said altitude affects combustion," Yang said, glancing at Oobleck. "Bartholomew was right, by the way."
"Bartholomew is always right," Oobleck said primly.
* * *
When the Vacuo veteran described miners leaving water at tunnel entrances, Blake sat up a little.
"My family used to know Faunus miners," she said quietly. "Before... everything. They did things like that too. Little rituals. Knocking on the rock before a new dig." She paused. "A lot of Faunus work the mines. Most of them never talk about it. I don't think anyone ever thought to ask."
Weiss glanced at her. For a moment, something passed between them that neither said aloud. Then Weiss looked away, jaw tight, and said nothing.
* * *
When the chat brought up the shattered moon, the entire room erupted.
"THE MOON!"
"We look at it EVERY NIGHT!"
"Why is nobody talking about the MOON?"
"Because," Oobleck said loudly, over the noise, "the shattering of the moon predates reliable records, and there is almost nothing that can be said about it that is not speculation!" He paused. "It is also one of my favorite topics, and I am delighted the streamer intends to cover it. Settle down!"
They did not settle down.
* * *
The stream ended with the streamer's summary and his B-plus. The room cheered again, partly for him and partly because they'd started treating his grades like sports scores.
Oobleck clicked off the projector.
"Discuss."
Weiss's hand went up before anyone else's.
"Miss Schnee."
She stood, took a breath, and said, with visible effort: "I came in intending to defend Dust as a mineral. Scientifically. Firmly."
"And?"
"And I still believe it's a mineral." She paused. "But I can't answer his question. Where the energy comes from. Why gravity Dust exists. Why potency varies. Why we can't make it. My family has mined Dust for generations, and I have never once heard anyone explain where it comes from. Only how to get it out of the ground." She sat down. "That bothers me. More than I'd like."
The room was quiet.
"That," Oobleck said, "is the most honest thing I have heard a student say in this classroom. And I have taught lot." He took a sip of coffee. "Thank you, Miss Schnee."
Weiss nodded stiffly, cheeks faintly pink.
* * *
"I liked the sap thing," Ruby said. "The planet being alive like a tree. Not thinking, just... growing stuff."
"It's a softer idea than 'blood,'" Pyrrha agreed. "Easier to live with. The idea that the world is giving us something, not bleeding for us."
"The church viewer's version was interesting too," Ren said. "That Dust is the planet's and the gods' at the same time. If the gods made the planet, there's no contradiction."
"Which moves Dust to Tier Two," Blake said. "If you accept the myth."
"If," Weiss muttered.
"If," Oobleck agreed. "Always if."
* * *
Blake raised her hand again.
"Miss Belladonna. Let me guess."
"The anonymous viewer," Blake said. "They didn't show up this time. First stream they've missed."
A few students murmured.
"The chat noticed too," Jaune said. "Somebody said it was weirder that they were gone."
"Maybe they just don't care about rocks," Yang said, echoing the streamer. "Can't blame 'em."
"Maybe," Blake said. She didn't sound convinced. "It's just strange. Every stream in a row, always at the end, always asking something personal. And then the one stream where people start talking about the moon and the planet and the gods making the world... nothing."
Oobleck was quiet for a moment.
"An absence is also data, Miss Belladonna," he said finally. "But a single absence is not a pattern. Keep watching. Don't conclude." He clapped his hands. "Dismissed! Excellent proposals, all of you. Except you, Mister Winchester. Please do not fight the strongest Grimm."
"Wasn't gonna," Cardin said.
"You absolutely were."
* * *
The students filed out, arguing about the moon, about sap, about whether Dust could long for anything.
Weiss walked a little slower than usual. Blake fell into step beside her.
"You okay?" Blake asked.
"I'm fine," Weiss said. Then, after a few steps: "I'm going to ask my father's refiners about the angry batches. When I'm home over break." She paused. "And the miners. I want to know about the rituals."
Blake looked at her for a long moment.
"That's a good idea," she said quietly.
* * *
At the front of the empty hall, Oobleck pulled up the forum thread. It had crossed six thousand replies. Near the top, a new comment from a familiar account:
GreatHunterPPort: My students informed me that Bartholomew's class laughed at my Dust anecdote. I maintain that it LONGED.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It did not long, Peter.
ValeCommuter_22: it's Dust
grimm_bait_420: moon stream when
Oobleck scrolled down, past the jokes and arguments, looking for one particular username.
anon_viewer_4471 had not posted.
He looked at the empty space for a moment longer than he meant to. Then he closed the app, picked up his thermos, and headed for Peter's office to argue about Dust.
Last edited:
Chapter 13: The Moon
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "I did math about the moon and now I can't sleep" — 👁 11,382 viewers]
* * *
(Looking noticeably more tired than usual, a notebook full of scribbles beside him.)
SI: Okay. Moon stream. As promised.
I did something dumb. I went to the public library, pulled the numbers from the Atlas observatory reports, estimated the mass of the moon from the pieces we can see through telescopes, and asked one question: if the moon was whole once, how much energy would it take to break it?
Here's the screen. Check me. Please. I want to be wrong.
* * *
ROUGH NUMBERS (from public observatory data, approximated)
Total mass of all moon fragments ≈ 7.3 × 10²² kg
Radius if it were one whole sphere ≈ 1,740 km
Energy to break a moon apart (gravitational binding energy — the energy needed to pull every piece away from every other piece):
U = (3/5) × G × M² / R
= 0.6 × (6.67 × 10⁻¹¹) × (7.3 × 10²²)² / (1.74 × 10⁶ m)
≈ 1.2 × 10²⁹ joules
For scale: largest dust bomb ever tested anywhere ≈ 2 × 10¹⁷ J, so the moon needs ~600 billion of those. In megatons ≈ 30 trillion megatons. The sun's entire output for about 5 minutes, all aimed at one rock.
If it was an impact: a rock hitting at ~20 km/s would need to be around 6 × 10²⁰ kg, roughly 700+ km across. That's not a meteorite. That's a small planet.
Lower bound: even if it only cracked the moon instead of fully blowing it apart — say 1% of that energy — you still get ~10²⁷ J. Still absurd.
* * *
SI: That is ABSURD. What the hell does that much damage?
A meteorite? Okay, say it was a 700-kilometer rock. Then where's the debris? If even one percent of the moon's mass fell on us, that's about 7 × 10²⁰ kg hitting at orbital speeds. That's around 4 × 10²⁸ joules landing on the planet. The sky would've caught fire. The oceans would've boiled. Every living thing would be gone.
But humanity's still here. We're right here. Streaming.
And the part that's actually keeping me up: the pieces are still clustered. They're just sitting there in a group. Physics says broken chunks that close together should either pull back into one moon over time or spread out into a ring. Neither happened. They're just... hanging there.
What. How. When. Why.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: stream guy did HOMEWORK
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I know it's the moon, Vale guy, I need to know WHY IT'S BROKEN
ValeCommuter_22: it's a broken moon
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, checking your math. Binding energy formula is correct for a uniform sphere. Mass and radius are in the right range from the published estimates. Your answer is right to within an order of magnitude.
SI: I was hoping you'd say I was wrong.
AtlasTechStudent: I was hoping so too. You're not.
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait so the sun would need to point AT the moon for FIVE MINUTES
SI: The WHOLE sun. Every direction. All of it. Aimed at one moon.
HunterWannabe_Tom: i hate this
AtlasTechStudent: To be fair, the real moon may never have been fully "blown apart." The pieces are close together. That suggests fracturing, not total dispersal. Your 1% lower bound is probably more realistic.
SI: Which is still a hundred quadrillion megatons.
AtlasTechStudent: Yes.
SI: So "more realistic" is still "impossible."
AtlasTechStudent: ...Yes.
GreatHunterPPort: Young man, I once fell from an airship onto a Deathstalker, and I can tell you that even THAT did not produce such numbers!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, nobody compared you to the moon.
GreatHunterPPort: I am simply providing SCALE, Bartholomew.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note, as always. There is no written record of the moon shattering. None. Every surviving account, from the earliest fragments we have, describes it as already broken. Whatever happened, it happened before anyone was writing things down.
SI: Before anyone? Not even carvings? Cave paintings?
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Some very early artwork depicts the moon. It is always shown broken.
SI: So humanity has never, in all of recorded history, seen the moon whole.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Correct.
grimm_bait_420: okay THAT'S creepy
FaunusRights_Now: so either humanity got here after it broke, or we survived it and forgot
SI: And by my math, "survived it" isn't an option. Nothing survives that. So...
MistralMom_Jenna: So we came after. Which means before us... what?
SI: I don't know. That's the question.
DustTrader_Mo: what about the "held together" thing? port said grimm fall apart when nothing holds them together. what if the moon pieces are staying clustered because something IS holding them together?
SI: ...
SI: Okay, I did not have that thought, and now I will never sleep again.
GreatHunterPPort: I COINED "HELD TOGETHER."
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter.
AtlasTechStudent: To be clear, there are natural explanations for fragment stability. Gravitational interactions between fragments, orbital resonances, time scales that are longer than we assume. It could take a very long time to reaccrete or spread.
SI: How long?
AtlasTechStudent: ...Depends on initial conditions nobody knows.
SI: So we don't know.
AtlasTechStudent: We don't know.
grimm_bait_420: every stream ends with atlas guy saying "we don't know" and i've grown to love him for it
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Some very old teachings say the moon broke when the Brothers left. That it was the last thing they did.
SI: Okay. That's... actually the only answer anyone's given that fits the numbers. If something could make souls and Grimm and a whole planet, breaking a moon's probably not that hard.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: There's more. Most people don't teach this part anymore. The oldest versions say humanity did end. Once. That the Brothers were angry, and there was a first humanity, and it didn't survive. And that we're what came after.
grimm_bait_420: WHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: church guy you CANNOT drop that at 11pm
MistralMom_Jenna: I have work in the morning
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: It's not commonly taught. Most modern teachers treat it as allegory.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is a minority tradition, poorly attested, and the surviving texts are fragmentary and late. It should not be taken as historical fact.
SI: But professor, it's the only story that matches the math. My numbers say "humanity should be gone." The old story says "humanity was gone." That's not nothing.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Consistency with a hypothesis is not confirmation of it. You know this.
SI: I know. I know. I'm just saying it's weird.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is weird. I will grant you weird.
AtlasTechStudent: For the record, an alternative is that the fragmentation was gradual, or tidal, or happened extremely long ago, and the debris fell over millions of years in amounts the planet could absorb. There are natural paths. They just require assumptions we can't check.
SI: That's fair. That's genuinely the best non-god answer anyone's given. It was slow, it was a long time ago, and the planet healed.
AtlasTechStudent: Thank you.
SI: But it still doesn't explain why the pieces are still clustered.
AtlasTechStudent: No. It doesn't.
VacuoVeteran: Here's what gets me. We look at it every night. It's on flags. It's in songs. Kids draw it. And nobody's ever asked what broke it.
SI: That's the Semblance thing again. When it's always been there, nobody asks.
anon_viewer_4471: Your arithmetic is sound. It's rare for someone to check.
grimm_bait_420: OH THEY'RE BACK
FaunusRights_Now: anon's back and only for the MOON
SI: ...hi. We missed you last stream.
anon_viewer_4471: Rocks are less interesting than the sky.
SI: Fair. Do you have a theory? About what broke it?
anon_viewer_4471: I think some questions are asked most safely with numbers, and least safely out loud. Goodnight.
grimm_bait_420: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon is being SO weird tonight
SI: ...okay. That was a little ominous. Moving on.
SI: Summary:
The math: Breaking a moon this size takes roughly 10²⁹ joules. Even a partial crack is around 10²⁷. That's trillions of megatons. Minutes of the sun's total output.
The meteor theory: Would need a small planet as the impactor, and the debris should've wiped out all life here. It didn't. Unless it happened so long ago, and so slowly, that the planet recovered. Possible, but unverifiable.
The records: No human has ever recorded seeing the moon whole. Ever.
The clustering: The pieces should have pulled back together or spread into a ring. They didn't. Nobody knows why.
The old stories: Say the Brothers broke it when they left — and some fringe versions say humanity ended before us. Poorly attested. But it's the only story that matches the numbers.
AtlasTechStudent: You labeled the myth correctly. I'll allow it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Careful, well-bounded, and you gave the natural hypothesis a fair hearing. A-minus.
SI: A-MINUS?? PROFESSOR, THAT'S MY FIRST A!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: You did arithmetic. I reward arithmetic.
GreatHunterPPort: And he credited me for "held together"!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Nobody credited you, Peter.
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: It's the moon, Vale guy. It's the moon, and it's broken, and I have no idea why. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 14,760]
* * *
(Looking noticeably more tired than usual, a notebook full of scribbles beside him.)
SI: Okay. Moon stream. As promised.
I did something dumb. I went to the public library, pulled the numbers from the Atlas observatory reports, estimated the mass of the moon from the pieces we can see through telescopes, and asked one question: if the moon was whole once, how much energy would it take to break it?
Here's the screen. Check me. Please. I want to be wrong.
* * *
ROUGH NUMBERS (from public observatory data, approximated)
Total mass of all moon fragments ≈ 7.3 × 10²² kg
Radius if it were one whole sphere ≈ 1,740 km
Energy to break a moon apart (gravitational binding energy — the energy needed to pull every piece away from every other piece):
U = (3/5) × G × M² / R
= 0.6 × (6.67 × 10⁻¹¹) × (7.3 × 10²²)² / (1.74 × 10⁶ m)
≈ 1.2 × 10²⁹ joules
For scale: largest dust bomb ever tested anywhere ≈ 2 × 10¹⁷ J, so the moon needs ~600 billion of those. In megatons ≈ 30 trillion megatons. The sun's entire output for about 5 minutes, all aimed at one rock.
If it was an impact: a rock hitting at ~20 km/s would need to be around 6 × 10²⁰ kg, roughly 700+ km across. That's not a meteorite. That's a small planet.
Lower bound: even if it only cracked the moon instead of fully blowing it apart — say 1% of that energy — you still get ~10²⁷ J. Still absurd.
* * *
SI: That is ABSURD. What the hell does that much damage?
A meteorite? Okay, say it was a 700-kilometer rock. Then where's the debris? If even one percent of the moon's mass fell on us, that's about 7 × 10²⁰ kg hitting at orbital speeds. That's around 4 × 10²⁸ joules landing on the planet. The sky would've caught fire. The oceans would've boiled. Every living thing would be gone.
But humanity's still here. We're right here. Streaming.
And the part that's actually keeping me up: the pieces are still clustered. They're just sitting there in a group. Physics says broken chunks that close together should either pull back into one moon over time or spread out into a ring. Neither happened. They're just... hanging there.
What. How. When. Why.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: stream guy did HOMEWORK
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I know it's the moon, Vale guy, I need to know WHY IT'S BROKEN
ValeCommuter_22: it's a broken moon
AtlasTechStudent: Okay, checking your math. Binding energy formula is correct for a uniform sphere. Mass and radius are in the right range from the published estimates. Your answer is right to within an order of magnitude.
SI: I was hoping you'd say I was wrong.
AtlasTechStudent: I was hoping so too. You're not.
HunterWannabe_Tom: wait so the sun would need to point AT the moon for FIVE MINUTES
SI: The WHOLE sun. Every direction. All of it. Aimed at one moon.
HunterWannabe_Tom: i hate this
AtlasTechStudent: To be fair, the real moon may never have been fully "blown apart." The pieces are close together. That suggests fracturing, not total dispersal. Your 1% lower bound is probably more realistic.
SI: Which is still a hundred quadrillion megatons.
AtlasTechStudent: Yes.
SI: So "more realistic" is still "impossible."
AtlasTechStudent: ...Yes.
GreatHunterPPort: Young man, I once fell from an airship onto a Deathstalker, and I can tell you that even THAT did not produce such numbers!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, nobody compared you to the moon.
GreatHunterPPort: I am simply providing SCALE, Bartholomew.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: A historical note, as always. There is no written record of the moon shattering. None. Every surviving account, from the earliest fragments we have, describes it as already broken. Whatever happened, it happened before anyone was writing things down.
SI: Before anyone? Not even carvings? Cave paintings?
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Some very early artwork depicts the moon. It is always shown broken.
SI: So humanity has never, in all of recorded history, seen the moon whole.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Correct.
grimm_bait_420: okay THAT'S creepy
FaunusRights_Now: so either humanity got here after it broke, or we survived it and forgot
SI: And by my math, "survived it" isn't an option. Nothing survives that. So...
MistralMom_Jenna: So we came after. Which means before us... what?
SI: I don't know. That's the question.
DustTrader_Mo: what about the "held together" thing? port said grimm fall apart when nothing holds them together. what if the moon pieces are staying clustered because something IS holding them together?
SI: ...
SI: Okay, I did not have that thought, and now I will never sleep again.
GreatHunterPPort: I COINED "HELD TOGETHER."
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter.
AtlasTechStudent: To be clear, there are natural explanations for fragment stability. Gravitational interactions between fragments, orbital resonances, time scales that are longer than we assume. It could take a very long time to reaccrete or spread.
SI: How long?
AtlasTechStudent: ...Depends on initial conditions nobody knows.
SI: So we don't know.
AtlasTechStudent: We don't know.
grimm_bait_420: every stream ends with atlas guy saying "we don't know" and i've grown to love him for it
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Some very old teachings say the moon broke when the Brothers left. That it was the last thing they did.
SI: Okay. That's... actually the only answer anyone's given that fits the numbers. If something could make souls and Grimm and a whole planet, breaking a moon's probably not that hard.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: There's more. Most people don't teach this part anymore. The oldest versions say humanity did end. Once. That the Brothers were angry, and there was a first humanity, and it didn't survive. And that we're what came after.
grimm_bait_420: WHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: church guy you CANNOT drop that at 11pm
MistralMom_Jenna: I have work in the morning
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: It's not commonly taught. Most modern teachers treat it as allegory.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is a minority tradition, poorly attested, and the surviving texts are fragmentary and late. It should not be taken as historical fact.
SI: But professor, it's the only story that matches the math. My numbers say "humanity should be gone." The old story says "humanity was gone." That's not nothing.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Consistency with a hypothesis is not confirmation of it. You know this.
SI: I know. I know. I'm just saying it's weird.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: It is weird. I will grant you weird.
AtlasTechStudent: For the record, an alternative is that the fragmentation was gradual, or tidal, or happened extremely long ago, and the debris fell over millions of years in amounts the planet could absorb. There are natural paths. They just require assumptions we can't check.
SI: That's fair. That's genuinely the best non-god answer anyone's given. It was slow, it was a long time ago, and the planet healed.
AtlasTechStudent: Thank you.
SI: But it still doesn't explain why the pieces are still clustered.
AtlasTechStudent: No. It doesn't.
VacuoVeteran: Here's what gets me. We look at it every night. It's on flags. It's in songs. Kids draw it. And nobody's ever asked what broke it.
SI: That's the Semblance thing again. When it's always been there, nobody asks.
anon_viewer_4471: Your arithmetic is sound. It's rare for someone to check.
grimm_bait_420: OH THEY'RE BACK
FaunusRights_Now: anon's back and only for the MOON
SI: ...hi. We missed you last stream.
anon_viewer_4471: Rocks are less interesting than the sky.
SI: Fair. Do you have a theory? About what broke it?
anon_viewer_4471: I think some questions are asked most safely with numbers, and least safely out loud. Goodnight.
grimm_bait_420: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon is being SO weird tonight
SI: ...okay. That was a little ominous. Moving on.
SI: Summary:
The math: Breaking a moon this size takes roughly 10²⁹ joules. Even a partial crack is around 10²⁷. That's trillions of megatons. Minutes of the sun's total output.
The meteor theory: Would need a small planet as the impactor, and the debris should've wiped out all life here. It didn't. Unless it happened so long ago, and so slowly, that the planet recovered. Possible, but unverifiable.
The records: No human has ever recorded seeing the moon whole. Ever.
The clustering: The pieces should have pulled back together or spread into a ring. They didn't. Nobody knows why.
The old stories: Say the Brothers broke it when they left — and some fringe versions say humanity ended before us. Poorly attested. But it's the only story that matches the numbers.
AtlasTechStudent: You labeled the myth correctly. I'll allow it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Careful, well-bounded, and you gave the natural hypothesis a fair hearing. A-minus.
SI: A-MINUS?? PROFESSOR, THAT'S MY FIRST A!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: You did arithmetic. I reward arithmetic.
GreatHunterPPort: And he credited me for "held together"!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Nobody credited you, Peter.
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: It's the moon, Vale guy. It's the moon, and it's broken, and I have no idea why. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 14,760]
Chapter 14: The Assumption
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 8:47 AM
Thirteen minutes early. Every seat was full. Students were sitting on the steps. Someone from a third-year Atlas exchange team was standing in the back with a notebook.
Doctor Oobleck stopped in the doorway and simply stared.
"I want it noted," he said, "that when I taught the Faunus Rights Revolution, I had four empty rows."
"The moon, Doc!" Yang called. "You gave him an A-minus!"
"He did arithmetic, Miss Xiao Long."
"You've never given me an A-minus."
"You have never done arithmetic."
* * *
He didn't show the stream right away. Instead, he walked to the board and wrote the streamer's equation in large, precise chalk strokes.
U = (3/5) × G × M² / R
"Before we watch anything," he said, "someone is going to check this. Personally. In front of the class. Because a historian who accepts a number without checking it is not a historian." He turned. "Miss Schnee."
Weiss blinked. "Me?"
"You are the only person in this room I have seen voluntarily do mathematics."
She rose, took the chalk, and began working through it on the board. The room watched in silence as she squared the mass, multiplied, divided, and muttered under her breath about exponents.
"...one point two times ten to the twenty-ninth," she said finally. She stepped back and stared at it. "He's right."
"What's that in, like, normal words?" Jaune asked.
"In normal words," Weiss said slowly, "if you took every bomb ever built by every kingdom and set them all off at once, you wouldn't even scratch it. Not even close."
"BOOM," Nora whispered reverently.
"Much bigger than boom, Nora."
"BOOOOOM."
"Closer," Ren conceded.
* * *
The stream played.
When the streamer showed the comparison to the sun, a collective noise of horror went through the room.
"The whole sun," Ruby breathed. "For five minutes."
"All aimed at one rock," Yang said. "Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight either."
When he pointed out that the debris should have wiped out all life on Remnant, the room went quiet. When the Atlas student confirmed his math, it went quieter.
When HistoryIsNotBoring_BO stated there was no record, anywhere, of the moon ever being whole, several students turned to look at Oobleck.
"Is that true?" Velvet asked from the back. "Nobody's ever drawn it whole?"
"It is true," Oobleck said. "I have spent a great deal of my career looking. Every depiction, from the oldest fragments we have, shows it broken." He paused. "I have always found that strange. I simply never had anyone to say so to."
* * *
Then came the church viewer's message. The oldest versions say humanity did end. Once.
The room went completely still.
Ruby's hand drifted to her sister's sleeve. Blake's ears flattened beneath her bow. Even Cardin, slouching in the back, sat up.
"That's..." Jaune started, and then didn't finish.
Pyrrha, near the front, had gone very pale.
Oobleck paused the video.
"I want to be very clear about this," he said, and for once, he wasn't moving at all. "That tradition exists. It is real, in the sense that some very old texts mention it. It is also a minority tradition, found in only a handful of fragmentary sources, most of them written long after whatever they claim to describe. Most scholars treat it as allegory. A story about loss and renewal, not a historical record." He looked around the room. "I said as much in the chat. I stand by it."
"But it matches the math," Ren said quietly.
"It is consistent with the math, Mister Lie. So is the Atlas student's slow-fragmentation hypothesis. So, I imagine, are several explanations none of us have thought of yet." He took a slow sip of coffee. "When two explanations fit the evidence, and one requires gods and the end of the world, and the other requires only time... a scholar prefers time. Until time stops fitting."
"And if it stops fitting?" Blake asked.
Oobleck held her gaze for a moment.
"Then we will have a very interesting lecture," he said, and pressed play.
* * *
When the chat noted that the moon's pieces were still clustered, and DustTrader_Mo asked whether something was holding them together, the room groaned.
"I hate that," Yang said.
"Professor Port's going to be unbearable," Cardin muttered. "He's going to say he coined it again."
"He did not coin it," Oobleck said.
"He's going to say he did."
"That, Mister Winchester, is a certainty."
* * *
Then anon_viewer_4471 reappeared.
Blake leaned forward so fast her chair creaked.
"I think some questions are asked most safely with numbers, and least safely out loud. Goodnight."
The video played through to the end, but nobody was really watching the summary. When the stream ended on its record viewer count, Oobleck clicked off the projector and the room stayed silent.
"Discuss," he said.
Blake's hand was already up.
"Miss Belladonna."
"That anonymous viewer," she said. "They skipped the Dust stream. Came back for the moon. And then said that." She shook her head. "'Asked most safely with numbers, least safely out loud.' That isn't a theory. That's a warning."
"Or someone being dramatic online," Yang offered. "The internet's full of weirdos who like sounding mysterious."
"Maybe," Blake said. "But every other time, they asked him something personal. Where he grew up. Why he thinks about lost knowledge. And this time, they just... told him to be careful." Her voice dropped. "Why would anyone need to be careful asking about the moon?"
Nobody answered.
Oobleck set his thermos down very deliberately.
"Miss Belladonna raises a fair observation," he said. "I would caution everyone against building a story out of a handful of messages from a stranger. That is how rumors are born." A pause. "But I would also say this. Mister Streamer is asking questions in public, to an audience of fifteen thousand people. Most of whom are kind. Some of whom may not be. That is true of anyone who speaks loudly in any age." He looked around the room. "It is always wise to notice who is listening."
* * *
"I have a different question," Ruby said, a little hesitantly.
"Miss Rose."
"If nobody's ever seen the moon whole... and nobody remembers what broke it... then how do we know it was ever whole at all?"
The room turned to look at her.
"...Huh," Weiss said.
"Like," Ruby continued, "what if it just formed like that? Or what if it's not a broken moon, it's just... a moon that looks broken?"
"The physics wouldn't support that," Weiss said slowly. "Fragments that close together should either merge or disperse. The Atlas student said so." She frowned. "Though he also said nobody knows the time scale."
"So Ruby's idea is..."
"...not disproven," Weiss admitted. "Technically."
"That," Oobleck said, "is an excellent question, Miss Rose. The streamer assumed the moon was once whole. So did the chat. So did I. Every one of us built our reasoning on that assumption without examining it." He zipped to the board and wrote beneath the equation: ASSUMPTION: the moon was once whole. "Always check your foundation. Miss Rose, you have just done what an entire livestream and a professor failed to do."
Ruby turned bright red. Yang ruffled her hair.
* * *
"I want to talk about the fringe thing," Jaune said. "The first humanity. Even if it's allegory." He paused. "Why would anyone write that story? Like, what's it for?"
"A good question, Mister Arc. What do you think?"
Jaune thought about it. "Maybe... to remind people that it could happen? That we're not guaranteed to last?"
"Or to explain loss," Ren said. "Every culture has stories about a world before this one. A golden age, or a flood, or a fall. It helps people understand why things are the way they are."
"Or," Pyrrha said quietly, "because someone remembered something, and the only way to pass it on was as a story."
The room turned to her. She was looking down at her hands.
"That's the least comfortable version," Yang said.
"Yes," Pyrrha said. "I know."
Oobleck watched her for a moment, something thoughtful in his expression. Then he moved on.
* * *
"No assignment," he announced. "Instead, one question to take with you. The same as before, but sharper."
He wrote on the board:
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
"Not what broke it," he said. "That comes later. First, the foundation. What evidence would you need? Where would you look? What would you measure?" He capped his chalk. "Discuss it with your teams. We'll return to it next week. Dismissed."
* * *
The students filed out in a low buzz of conversation, quieter than usual. Nobody was shouting about lightning wizards or Grimm factories today.
"I'm going to look at it tonight," Ruby said on the way out. "The moon. Really look at it."
"We look at it every night," Yang said.
"No, I mean really look."
Weiss was still staring at the equation on the board. "I want to redo his math with a non-uniform density model," she murmured. "Moons aren't uniform. It'll change the number."
"Up or down?" Blake asked.
"Probably down. Not by enough to matter." Weiss sighed. "It'll still be absurd."
Blake glanced back at the empty projector screen. "I want to know who anon is."
"You and the entire internet," Yang said.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck sat down heavily at his desk and looked at the two lines on the board.
ASSUMPTION: the moon was once whole.
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
A soft knock sounded at the door.
He looked up. Headmaster Ozpin stood in the doorway, cane in one hand, mug in the other, with his usual mild expression.
"Bartholomew. I hear your lectures have become rather popular."
Oobleck stood quickly. "Headmaster. Yes. Well. The students have taken an interest in a... particular series of public broadcasts. Purely as a teaching tool. Critical thinking. Source evaluation. I assure you, I've been extremely careful to frame everything as—"
"I'm not here to reprimand you," Ozpin said gently. "Curiosity is the reason this academy exists." He glanced at the equation on the board, and then at the question beneath it. His gaze lingered a moment on the words once whole. "It's a good question."
"Thank you, sir."
"I did want to say," Ozpin continued, in the same mild tone, "that you were quite right, in the chat, to steer the young man toward 'forgot' rather than 'erased.' And to call the older traditions what they are. Fragmentary. Unreliable." He took a sip from his mug. "It's always wise, in a public forum, to prefer the boring explanation."
Oobleck studied him for a moment. "Of course, Headmaster."
"Good." Ozpin smiled faintly. "Carry on, Bartholomew. And do give my regards to Peter. I understand he coined 'held together.'"
"He did not—"
But Ozpin was already gone, the soft tap of his cane fading down the hall.
Oobleck stood alone in the empty lecture hall for a long moment, looking at the doorway.
Then he turned back to the board, and, after some hesitation, wrote a third line beneath the other two. Smaller. For no one but himself.
Why does everyone keep telling me to prefer the boring explanation?
He looked at it for a while. Then he erased it, picked up his thermos, and went to find Peter.
Thirteen minutes early. Every seat was full. Students were sitting on the steps. Someone from a third-year Atlas exchange team was standing in the back with a notebook.
Doctor Oobleck stopped in the doorway and simply stared.
"I want it noted," he said, "that when I taught the Faunus Rights Revolution, I had four empty rows."
"The moon, Doc!" Yang called. "You gave him an A-minus!"
"He did arithmetic, Miss Xiao Long."
"You've never given me an A-minus."
"You have never done arithmetic."
* * *
He didn't show the stream right away. Instead, he walked to the board and wrote the streamer's equation in large, precise chalk strokes.
U = (3/5) × G × M² / R
"Before we watch anything," he said, "someone is going to check this. Personally. In front of the class. Because a historian who accepts a number without checking it is not a historian." He turned. "Miss Schnee."
Weiss blinked. "Me?"
"You are the only person in this room I have seen voluntarily do mathematics."
She rose, took the chalk, and began working through it on the board. The room watched in silence as she squared the mass, multiplied, divided, and muttered under her breath about exponents.
"...one point two times ten to the twenty-ninth," she said finally. She stepped back and stared at it. "He's right."
"What's that in, like, normal words?" Jaune asked.
"In normal words," Weiss said slowly, "if you took every bomb ever built by every kingdom and set them all off at once, you wouldn't even scratch it. Not even close."
"BOOM," Nora whispered reverently.
"Much bigger than boom, Nora."
"BOOOOOM."
"Closer," Ren conceded.
* * *
The stream played.
When the streamer showed the comparison to the sun, a collective noise of horror went through the room.
"The whole sun," Ruby breathed. "For five minutes."
"All aimed at one rock," Yang said. "Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight either."
When he pointed out that the debris should have wiped out all life on Remnant, the room went quiet. When the Atlas student confirmed his math, it went quieter.
When HistoryIsNotBoring_BO stated there was no record, anywhere, of the moon ever being whole, several students turned to look at Oobleck.
"Is that true?" Velvet asked from the back. "Nobody's ever drawn it whole?"
"It is true," Oobleck said. "I have spent a great deal of my career looking. Every depiction, from the oldest fragments we have, shows it broken." He paused. "I have always found that strange. I simply never had anyone to say so to."
* * *
Then came the church viewer's message. The oldest versions say humanity did end. Once.
The room went completely still.
Ruby's hand drifted to her sister's sleeve. Blake's ears flattened beneath her bow. Even Cardin, slouching in the back, sat up.
"That's..." Jaune started, and then didn't finish.
Pyrrha, near the front, had gone very pale.
Oobleck paused the video.
"I want to be very clear about this," he said, and for once, he wasn't moving at all. "That tradition exists. It is real, in the sense that some very old texts mention it. It is also a minority tradition, found in only a handful of fragmentary sources, most of them written long after whatever they claim to describe. Most scholars treat it as allegory. A story about loss and renewal, not a historical record." He looked around the room. "I said as much in the chat. I stand by it."
"But it matches the math," Ren said quietly.
"It is consistent with the math, Mister Lie. So is the Atlas student's slow-fragmentation hypothesis. So, I imagine, are several explanations none of us have thought of yet." He took a slow sip of coffee. "When two explanations fit the evidence, and one requires gods and the end of the world, and the other requires only time... a scholar prefers time. Until time stops fitting."
"And if it stops fitting?" Blake asked.
Oobleck held her gaze for a moment.
"Then we will have a very interesting lecture," he said, and pressed play.
* * *
When the chat noted that the moon's pieces were still clustered, and DustTrader_Mo asked whether something was holding them together, the room groaned.
"I hate that," Yang said.
"Professor Port's going to be unbearable," Cardin muttered. "He's going to say he coined it again."
"He did not coin it," Oobleck said.
"He's going to say he did."
"That, Mister Winchester, is a certainty."
* * *
Then anon_viewer_4471 reappeared.
Blake leaned forward so fast her chair creaked.
"I think some questions are asked most safely with numbers, and least safely out loud. Goodnight."
The video played through to the end, but nobody was really watching the summary. When the stream ended on its record viewer count, Oobleck clicked off the projector and the room stayed silent.
"Discuss," he said.
Blake's hand was already up.
"Miss Belladonna."
"That anonymous viewer," she said. "They skipped the Dust stream. Came back for the moon. And then said that." She shook her head. "'Asked most safely with numbers, least safely out loud.' That isn't a theory. That's a warning."
"Or someone being dramatic online," Yang offered. "The internet's full of weirdos who like sounding mysterious."
"Maybe," Blake said. "But every other time, they asked him something personal. Where he grew up. Why he thinks about lost knowledge. And this time, they just... told him to be careful." Her voice dropped. "Why would anyone need to be careful asking about the moon?"
Nobody answered.
Oobleck set his thermos down very deliberately.
"Miss Belladonna raises a fair observation," he said. "I would caution everyone against building a story out of a handful of messages from a stranger. That is how rumors are born." A pause. "But I would also say this. Mister Streamer is asking questions in public, to an audience of fifteen thousand people. Most of whom are kind. Some of whom may not be. That is true of anyone who speaks loudly in any age." He looked around the room. "It is always wise to notice who is listening."
* * *
"I have a different question," Ruby said, a little hesitantly.
"Miss Rose."
"If nobody's ever seen the moon whole... and nobody remembers what broke it... then how do we know it was ever whole at all?"
The room turned to look at her.
"...Huh," Weiss said.
"Like," Ruby continued, "what if it just formed like that? Or what if it's not a broken moon, it's just... a moon that looks broken?"
"The physics wouldn't support that," Weiss said slowly. "Fragments that close together should either merge or disperse. The Atlas student said so." She frowned. "Though he also said nobody knows the time scale."
"So Ruby's idea is..."
"...not disproven," Weiss admitted. "Technically."
"That," Oobleck said, "is an excellent question, Miss Rose. The streamer assumed the moon was once whole. So did the chat. So did I. Every one of us built our reasoning on that assumption without examining it." He zipped to the board and wrote beneath the equation: ASSUMPTION: the moon was once whole. "Always check your foundation. Miss Rose, you have just done what an entire livestream and a professor failed to do."
Ruby turned bright red. Yang ruffled her hair.
* * *
"I want to talk about the fringe thing," Jaune said. "The first humanity. Even if it's allegory." He paused. "Why would anyone write that story? Like, what's it for?"
"A good question, Mister Arc. What do you think?"
Jaune thought about it. "Maybe... to remind people that it could happen? That we're not guaranteed to last?"
"Or to explain loss," Ren said. "Every culture has stories about a world before this one. A golden age, or a flood, or a fall. It helps people understand why things are the way they are."
"Or," Pyrrha said quietly, "because someone remembered something, and the only way to pass it on was as a story."
The room turned to her. She was looking down at her hands.
"That's the least comfortable version," Yang said.
"Yes," Pyrrha said. "I know."
Oobleck watched her for a moment, something thoughtful in his expression. Then he moved on.
* * *
"No assignment," he announced. "Instead, one question to take with you. The same as before, but sharper."
He wrote on the board:
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
"Not what broke it," he said. "That comes later. First, the foundation. What evidence would you need? Where would you look? What would you measure?" He capped his chalk. "Discuss it with your teams. We'll return to it next week. Dismissed."
* * *
The students filed out in a low buzz of conversation, quieter than usual. Nobody was shouting about lightning wizards or Grimm factories today.
"I'm going to look at it tonight," Ruby said on the way out. "The moon. Really look at it."
"We look at it every night," Yang said.
"No, I mean really look."
Weiss was still staring at the equation on the board. "I want to redo his math with a non-uniform density model," she murmured. "Moons aren't uniform. It'll change the number."
"Up or down?" Blake asked.
"Probably down. Not by enough to matter." Weiss sighed. "It'll still be absurd."
Blake glanced back at the empty projector screen. "I want to know who anon is."
"You and the entire internet," Yang said.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck sat down heavily at his desk and looked at the two lines on the board.
ASSUMPTION: the moon was once whole.
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
A soft knock sounded at the door.
He looked up. Headmaster Ozpin stood in the doorway, cane in one hand, mug in the other, with his usual mild expression.
"Bartholomew. I hear your lectures have become rather popular."
Oobleck stood quickly. "Headmaster. Yes. Well. The students have taken an interest in a... particular series of public broadcasts. Purely as a teaching tool. Critical thinking. Source evaluation. I assure you, I've been extremely careful to frame everything as—"
"I'm not here to reprimand you," Ozpin said gently. "Curiosity is the reason this academy exists." He glanced at the equation on the board, and then at the question beneath it. His gaze lingered a moment on the words once whole. "It's a good question."
"Thank you, sir."
"I did want to say," Ozpin continued, in the same mild tone, "that you were quite right, in the chat, to steer the young man toward 'forgot' rather than 'erased.' And to call the older traditions what they are. Fragmentary. Unreliable." He took a sip from his mug. "It's always wise, in a public forum, to prefer the boring explanation."
Oobleck studied him for a moment. "Of course, Headmaster."
"Good." Ozpin smiled faintly. "Carry on, Bartholomew. And do give my regards to Peter. I understand he coined 'held together.'"
"He did not—"
But Ozpin was already gone, the soft tap of his cane fading down the hall.
Oobleck stood alone in the empty lecture hall for a long moment, looking at the doorway.
Then he turned back to the board, and, after some hesitation, wrote a third line beneath the other two. Smaller. For no one but himself.
Why does everyone keep telling me to prefer the boring explanation?
He looked at it for a while. Then he erased it, picked up his thermos, and went to find Peter.
Chapter 15: The Gardeners Left
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- Mar 9, 2018
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- 1,325
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- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Moon follow-up + a question for church guy" — 👁 16,904 viewers]
* * *
SI: Okay. First, homework. Apparently a certain professor's class got the question "What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?" and someone sent it to me.
Honestly? I think the answer's pretty obvious. Every other big body we can see through a telescope is whole. Round. Normal. Only our moon is sitting there in pieces. If one out of everything is shattered, the simplest explanation isn't "it formed that way." It's "something happened to it." It was obviously once whole.
AtlasTechStudent: I'll add one thing, since you're half right. The strongest evidence isn't that everything else is whole. It's the fragments themselves. Observatory imaging shows several large pieces with fracture surfaces that roughly match each other. Like a broken plate. Things that formed separately don't have matching edges.
SI: Oh, that's WAY better than my answer. Broken plate. Yeah. That's the proof.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Matching fracture surfaces would be strong evidence. I'll accept that as a sufficient answer to the question. Thank you both. My class will be pleased.
grimm_bait_420: the professor outsourced his homework to the chat lmao
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I crowdsourced a peer review.
* * *
SI: Okay. Now tonight's real question. And this one's not science. This is purely mythology, and it's for church guy specifically.
Last stream, you said the oldest versions of the story say humanity ended once. The Brothers got angry, the first humanity didn't survive, the Brothers left, and we're what came after.
So... who made us? If the Brothers were gone, they weren't around for the second humanity. So what created the new one?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: oh he's going straight for the theology
ValeCommuter_22: people made people
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I mean, yes, eventually. But who made the FIRST ones of the second batch?
ValeCommuter_22: people
SI: ...you're consistent, I'll give you that.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: It's a good question. It's one of the oldest questions in the tradition, actually. And there isn't one answer. There are several, depending on which texts you follow. I'll give you the main ones.
SI: Please. Floor's yours.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: First version, and the most common among people who believe the story literally: the Brothers made the second humanity before they left. They ended the first, regretted it or saw that the world needed people, and planted a new beginning. Then they departed. We grew from what they left.
SI: Okay, so they made us on the way out the door.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: In that reading, yes. A last act.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Second version: the world made us. The Brothers had already shaped the land, the water, the living things. Some teachers say that once life has been woven into a world, the world keeps making it. Humanity grew back out of the earth the way a forest grows back after a fire.
SI: WAIT. That's the sap thing. From the Dust stream. The planet making things on its own.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. I thought of that when you said it. It's an old idea. The world as a garden that keeps growing after the gardeners leave.
VacuoVeteran: that's a comforting version honestly
MistralMom_Jenna: I like that one. I'll take that one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Third version, less popular: humanity didn't fully end. A few survived, hidden, and everything after came from them. Most teachers reject this because the texts say ended, not nearly ended.
SI: That would contradict my moon math, too. If the moon broke when they left and it's anywhere near what I calculated, nobody hides from that.
AtlasTechStudent: Unless the moon didn't break at the same time. The myth links them, but there's no evidence they happened together.
SI: Oh. Good point. The myth might have mashed two separate events together.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: That is extremely common in oral traditions. Events centuries apart become a single story. A very good observation.
AtlasTechStudent: Thank you. I've been waiting weeks for the professor to say that to me.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Fourth version. This one is rare, and I'm only mentioning it because you asked for all of them. Some fragments suggest the Brothers didn't leave the world completely empty. That something of theirs stayed behind. Gifts, or power, or a piece of their will. And that the second humanity came from that, or was guided by it.
grimm_bait_420: okay that one's creepy
SI: Something of theirs stayed behind... like Tier Two. Leftover creation. Dust, Grimm material, the soul itself.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's one way to read it. The texts are very vague. Most teachers don't take it seriously.
FaunusRights_Now: question for church guy. do any of the versions talk about Faunus? like, were Faunus part of the second humanity? or separate?
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Honestly? The oldest texts don't distinguish. They say "people." Later texts added a lot of ugly ideas about Faunus being "made differently." Scholars now mostly agree those were added much later, during periods of conflict.
FaunusRights_Now: so the original story just says "people." both of us.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. As far as I've ever read. Everything else was added.
FaunusRights_Now: ...thank you. genuinely.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I can confirm this from the historical side. The division appears in texts from the pre-war period. It is not original.
SI: Honestly, that might be the most important thing anyone's said on any of these streams.
GreatHunterPPort: I would like to contribute my own theory! Humanity was made by BRAVERY! We simply refused to not exist!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, that is not a theory.
GreatHunterPPort: It is a MOOD, Bartholomew.
grimm_bait_420: port's theory is actually the most hopeful one lmao
SI: Okay. So let me try to put this together.
Every version has the same problem I asked about: something had to make the second humanity after the makers were gone. And every answer comes down to one of three things:
One: The Brothers planned it and did it before leaving.
Two: The world did it on its own, because life had already been woven into it.
Three: Something the Brothers left behind did it. Power, gifts, will.
And in two out of those three, the answer is "something stayed." Either the world carried on the work, or something of the gods did.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's a fair summary. And it's what makes the tradition hopeful, underneath all the darkness. Even in the stories where the gods left angry, the world didn't end. Something kept going.
SI: "The gardeners left, but the garden kept growing."
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. That's exactly it.
VacuoVeteran: I didn't expect to get emotional on a moon stream
MistralMom_Jenna: Same honestly
anon_viewer_4471: A thoughtful question. Most people only ask who ended the world, not who began it again.
grimm_bait_420: anon's back again
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon only shows up for the cosmic stuff now
SI: ...do you have a favorite version? Of the four?
anon_viewer_4471: I think the one about something staying behind is the most interesting. And the least comfortable.
SI: Why least comfortable?
anon_viewer_4471: Because if something stayed, it has been here all this time. Watching the garden grow. Goodnight.
grimm_bait_420: ANON WHY
HunterWannabe_Tom: every time. every single time.
FaunusRights_Now: anon is doing a horror bit and i'm scared
SI: ...okay. Yeah. That was a little unsettling. But it's mythology, everyone. Fringe texts. Church guy said so, the professor said so.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Correct. Fragmentary, late, and minority traditions. Treat accordingly.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Agreed. Treat it as what it is. A story. A meaningful one, but a story.
SI: Okay. Final notes:
Moon: Was once whole. Proof is the matching fracture edges. Thank you, Atlas guy.
New humanity, according to mythology: Made by the Brothers before leaving, grown by the world itself, or made by something they left behind. Every version agrees something carried on after they were gone.
And the original texts don't split people into humans and Faunus. Just "people." That part got added later.
ValeCommuter_22: people made people
SI: ...you know what, Vale guy? In three out of four versions, you're basically right. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 19,331]
* * *
SI: Okay. First, homework. Apparently a certain professor's class got the question "What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?" and someone sent it to me.
Honestly? I think the answer's pretty obvious. Every other big body we can see through a telescope is whole. Round. Normal. Only our moon is sitting there in pieces. If one out of everything is shattered, the simplest explanation isn't "it formed that way." It's "something happened to it." It was obviously once whole.
AtlasTechStudent: I'll add one thing, since you're half right. The strongest evidence isn't that everything else is whole. It's the fragments themselves. Observatory imaging shows several large pieces with fracture surfaces that roughly match each other. Like a broken plate. Things that formed separately don't have matching edges.
SI: Oh, that's WAY better than my answer. Broken plate. Yeah. That's the proof.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Matching fracture surfaces would be strong evidence. I'll accept that as a sufficient answer to the question. Thank you both. My class will be pleased.
grimm_bait_420: the professor outsourced his homework to the chat lmao
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I crowdsourced a peer review.
* * *
SI: Okay. Now tonight's real question. And this one's not science. This is purely mythology, and it's for church guy specifically.
Last stream, you said the oldest versions of the story say humanity ended once. The Brothers got angry, the first humanity didn't survive, the Brothers left, and we're what came after.
So... who made us? If the Brothers were gone, they weren't around for the second humanity. So what created the new one?
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: oh he's going straight for the theology
ValeCommuter_22: people made people
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 I mean, yes, eventually. But who made the FIRST ones of the second batch?
ValeCommuter_22: people
SI: ...you're consistent, I'll give you that.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: It's a good question. It's one of the oldest questions in the tradition, actually. And there isn't one answer. There are several, depending on which texts you follow. I'll give you the main ones.
SI: Please. Floor's yours.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: First version, and the most common among people who believe the story literally: the Brothers made the second humanity before they left. They ended the first, regretted it or saw that the world needed people, and planted a new beginning. Then they departed. We grew from what they left.
SI: Okay, so they made us on the way out the door.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: In that reading, yes. A last act.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Second version: the world made us. The Brothers had already shaped the land, the water, the living things. Some teachers say that once life has been woven into a world, the world keeps making it. Humanity grew back out of the earth the way a forest grows back after a fire.
SI: WAIT. That's the sap thing. From the Dust stream. The planet making things on its own.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. I thought of that when you said it. It's an old idea. The world as a garden that keeps growing after the gardeners leave.
VacuoVeteran: that's a comforting version honestly
MistralMom_Jenna: I like that one. I'll take that one.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Third version, less popular: humanity didn't fully end. A few survived, hidden, and everything after came from them. Most teachers reject this because the texts say ended, not nearly ended.
SI: That would contradict my moon math, too. If the moon broke when they left and it's anywhere near what I calculated, nobody hides from that.
AtlasTechStudent: Unless the moon didn't break at the same time. The myth links them, but there's no evidence they happened together.
SI: Oh. Good point. The myth might have mashed two separate events together.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: That is extremely common in oral traditions. Events centuries apart become a single story. A very good observation.
AtlasTechStudent: Thank you. I've been waiting weeks for the professor to say that to me.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Fourth version. This one is rare, and I'm only mentioning it because you asked for all of them. Some fragments suggest the Brothers didn't leave the world completely empty. That something of theirs stayed behind. Gifts, or power, or a piece of their will. And that the second humanity came from that, or was guided by it.
grimm_bait_420: okay that one's creepy
SI: Something of theirs stayed behind... like Tier Two. Leftover creation. Dust, Grimm material, the soul itself.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's one way to read it. The texts are very vague. Most teachers don't take it seriously.
FaunusRights_Now: question for church guy. do any of the versions talk about Faunus? like, were Faunus part of the second humanity? or separate?
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Honestly? The oldest texts don't distinguish. They say "people." Later texts added a lot of ugly ideas about Faunus being "made differently." Scholars now mostly agree those were added much later, during periods of conflict.
FaunusRights_Now: so the original story just says "people." both of us.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. As far as I've ever read. Everything else was added.
FaunusRights_Now: ...thank you. genuinely.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I can confirm this from the historical side. The division appears in texts from the pre-war period. It is not original.
SI: Honestly, that might be the most important thing anyone's said on any of these streams.
GreatHunterPPort: I would like to contribute my own theory! Humanity was made by BRAVERY! We simply refused to not exist!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, that is not a theory.
GreatHunterPPort: It is a MOOD, Bartholomew.
grimm_bait_420: port's theory is actually the most hopeful one lmao
SI: Okay. So let me try to put this together.
Every version has the same problem I asked about: something had to make the second humanity after the makers were gone. And every answer comes down to one of three things:
One: The Brothers planned it and did it before leaving.
Two: The world did it on its own, because life had already been woven into it.
Three: Something the Brothers left behind did it. Power, gifts, will.
And in two out of those three, the answer is "something stayed." Either the world carried on the work, or something of the gods did.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: That's a fair summary. And it's what makes the tradition hopeful, underneath all the darkness. Even in the stories where the gods left angry, the world didn't end. Something kept going.
SI: "The gardeners left, but the garden kept growing."
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Yes. That's exactly it.
VacuoVeteran: I didn't expect to get emotional on a moon stream
MistralMom_Jenna: Same honestly
anon_viewer_4471: A thoughtful question. Most people only ask who ended the world, not who began it again.
grimm_bait_420: anon's back again
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon only shows up for the cosmic stuff now
SI: ...do you have a favorite version? Of the four?
anon_viewer_4471: I think the one about something staying behind is the most interesting. And the least comfortable.
SI: Why least comfortable?
anon_viewer_4471: Because if something stayed, it has been here all this time. Watching the garden grow. Goodnight.
grimm_bait_420: ANON WHY
HunterWannabe_Tom: every time. every single time.
FaunusRights_Now: anon is doing a horror bit and i'm scared
SI: ...okay. Yeah. That was a little unsettling. But it's mythology, everyone. Fringe texts. Church guy said so, the professor said so.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Correct. Fragmentary, late, and minority traditions. Treat accordingly.
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: Agreed. Treat it as what it is. A story. A meaningful one, but a story.
SI: Okay. Final notes:
Moon: Was once whole. Proof is the matching fracture edges. Thank you, Atlas guy.
New humanity, according to mythology: Made by the Brothers before leaving, grown by the world itself, or made by something they left behind. Every version agrees something carried on after they were gone.
And the original texts don't split people into humans and Faunus. Just "people." That part got added later.
ValeCommuter_22: people made people
SI: ...you know what, Vale guy? In three out of four versions, you're basically right. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 19,331]
Chapter 16: Just "People"
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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- 1,325
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- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 8:44 AM
Sixteen minutes early. Every seat full, the steps full, and three students sitting cross-legged in the aisle.
Oobleck didn't even comment this time. He simply walked to the board, where last week's question was still written in chalk, and underlined it twice.
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
"Before anything else," he said, "your answers. Teams. Quickly."
* * *
Team RWBY went first. Weiss stood with a sheet of neatly written calculations.
"Our argument is composition," she said. "If the fragments were once one body, they should be made of the same material, in proportions consistent with a single origin. Spectral analysis from the observatories could test that. If the pieces match each other, and differ from other bodies in the sky, that supports a common origin."
"Good," Oobleck said. "Solid. Next."
Team JNPR. Ren stood.
"Orbits. If you trace the fragments' current paths backward in time, and they converge on a single point, that suggests they were once together."
"Also good. Next."
Team CFVY. Velvet, slightly more confident than two weeks ago.
"We looked for historical accounts of the moon changing. Any record of the fragments moving, drifting, getting closer or further apart. If there's any change over time, you could extrapolate back." She hesitated. "We didn't find anything. But the method works in principle."
"It does," Oobleck said. "And negative results are still results. Well done."
"Team CRDL," he said, bracing slightly.
Cardin stood. "We think you'd have to go up there and look."
The room waited.
"...And then?"
"And then see if the pieces fit together."
Oobleck opened his mouth to object, then stopped.
"That," he said slowly, "is actually very close to the answer the chat arrived at."
Cardin blinked. "It is?"
"Matching fracture surfaces. Pieces that fit together like a broken plate. You proposed checking it physically. The observatories can check it visually." He paused. "C-plus, Mister Winchester. You were right for the wrong reasons, but you were right."
Russel slapped Cardin on the back. Cardin looked stunned.
"And now," Oobleck said, "the stream."
* * *
When the streamer said "every other planet is whole, so it was obviously once whole," Weiss winced.
"That's a weak argument," she said. "It's an analogy, not evidence."
Then the Atlas student corrected him with the broken plate.
"...That's a strong argument," she admitted. "Annoyingly."
When HistoryIsNotBoring_BO declared the answer sufficient, the class turned to Oobleck.
"You got the internet to do your homework," Yang said.
"I crowdsourced a peer review, Miss Xiao Long."
"That's what the chat said you'd say."
"The chat," Oobleck said, "is becoming insufferably familiar with me."
* * *
Then the streamer asked his question. If the Brothers were gone, who made the second humanity?
The room quieted. This time it wasn't the silence of horror, like the moon stream. It was the silence of people leaning in.
When the church viewer laid out the first version, the Brothers making humanity on their way out, Ruby nodded slowly. When they described the second, the world growing people back like a forest after fire, her face lit up.
"The garden," she whispered. "The world kept growing us. I love that."
"It connects to the Dust stream," Ren said. "The planet making things on its own."
"Sap," Nora said solemnly. "We're sap people."
"That is not what it means, Nora."
"We are sap people, Ren."
* * *
When FaunusRights_Now asked whether the old stories said anything about Faunus, Blake went very still.
Velvet, in the back, set down her pen.
"The oldest texts don't distinguish. They say 'people.' Later texts added a lot of ugly ideas about Faunus being 'made differently.'"
And then, from Oobleck's own username: "I can confirm this from the historical side. The division appears in texts from the pre-war period. It is not original."
Blake didn't say anything. She didn't move. But her ears, beneath the bow, had risen slightly, and her hands were pressed flat against the desk as though she was holding onto it.
Velvet was blinking rapidly, looking down at her notebook.
Weiss glanced at Blake, then at Velvet, then down at her own hands. She was quiet for a long moment.
"Is that true?" she asked, finally, turning toward Oobleck. Her voice was careful. "That the division was added later?"
"It is true, Miss Schnee," Oobleck said. "The oldest surviving fragments refer only to 'people.' The language separating humans and Faunus appears centuries later, and it appears, almost without exception, in documents written during periods of political conflict. It was not in the original tradition. It was added to justify things people had already decided to do."
Weiss nodded slowly. She didn't say anything else. But she didn't look away from Blake, either.
* * *
When Port's message appeared, "Humanity was made by BRAVERY! We simply refused to not exist!", the tension broke and the room burst into laughter.
"It's a MOOD," Nora shouted, delighted.
"Port's theory is the best one," Jaune said. "Honestly."
"Port's theory," Oobleck said, "is not a theory. But I will concede it is a very good mood."
* * *
Then came the summary, the garden, and the final exchange.
"If something stayed, it has been here all this time. Watching the garden grow."
The laughter died.
Blake's hand went up before the video had even ended.
"Miss Belladonna."
"That's four streams now," she said. "Every time it's the big questions. The gods, the moon, the end of the world. And every time, anon says something that sounds like a warning." She looked around the room. "Last time it was 'least safely out loud.' This time it's 'something's been watching.' That's not someone having fun. That's someone who wants him to stop."
"Or someone doing a creepy bit for attention," Yang said. "The chat thinks it's a horror bit."
"The chat also thinks Professor Port's moustache is a primary source," Blake said.
"It IS a primary source," said a booming voice from the doorway.
Every head turned.
Professor Port stood there, beaming, hands on hips.
"Peter," Oobleck said, with the weariness of long experience. "You are not supposed to be here."
"I was passing by! And I heard my theory being discussed! I simply wished to clarify that it was, in fact, a theory!"
"It was a mood, Peter."
"A THEORY with a MOOD, Bartholomew!"
The class was in hysterics. Port gave a small bow, twirled his moustache, and departed as abruptly as he'd arrived, his laughter echoing down the hall.
* * *
When the room had calmed, Oobleck turned back to Blake.
"Miss Belladonna's concern is noted," he said. "And I share part of it. Not because I believe anything sinister is watching the world." He paused. "But because the streamer has twenty thousand viewers now. That is no longer a small conversation. Any time someone becomes that visible, it is worth being careful."
"Should someone tell him?" Ruby asked.
"He has a chat of twenty thousand people who have noticed the same thing," Oobleck said. "I suspect he is aware."
* * *
"I want to talk about the fourth version," Jaune said. "The something-stayed-behind one."
"Go on, Mister Arc."
"The church guy said most teachers don't take it seriously. And the streamer connected it to Tier Two. Leftover power." Jaune frowned. "But anon said something different. Anon said 'if something stayed, it's been here watching.' Like it's a someone, not a something."
"You noticed that," Oobleck said, quietly.
"It just sounded different. The church guy said power. Anon said watching." Jaune scratched his head. "Power doesn't watch."
The room was quiet again.
Pyrrha was staring very hard at the desk in front of her.
"Miss Nikos," Oobleck said. "Are you all right?"
She looked up, a moment too late. "Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking about the garden idea," she said, smoothly. "I think it's the one I'd choose to believe. That the world kept going on its own."
"Many people would," Oobleck said. He watched her a moment longer. Then he let it go.
* * *
"Final question for today," he said, zipping to the board. "No assignment. Just think."
He erased last week's question and wrote a new one.
Why did someone add the division between humans and Faunus?
"Not the mythology," he said. "The history. Who gains when a story is changed? Who decides which version gets taught? The streamer and the church viewer discovered, together, that an old story had been altered. That is not a mythological question. That is a historical one. And it is one this class is capable of answering." He capped the chalk. "Dismissed."
* * *
The students filed out slower than usual.
Blake stayed in her seat a moment. Weiss hovered nearby, clearly wanting to say something and not knowing how.
"The oldest texts just say 'people,'" Weiss said finally.
"Yeah," Blake said softly.
"I didn't know that."
"Most people don't."
Weiss nodded. She hesitated. Then, awkwardly, stiffly, and with enormous effort, she said, "I'd like to read them. The old texts. If you'd... want to go to the library sometime."
Blake looked up at her, surprised.
"...Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."
In the back row, Velvet was still sitting with her notebook open. She'd written only one line on the page, and she was looking at it with an expression somewhere between disbelief and something much softer.
Just "people."
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck didn't reach for his scroll right away.
Instead, he pulled a small, battered notebook from his desk drawer. It was one he'd started after the Headmaster's visit. He'd told himself it was simply for organizing lecture material.
He opened it and looked at the list he'd been keeping.
Moon. No record of it whole. Ever.
Oldest texts: humanity ended once. Minority tradition. Fragmentary.
Faunus division added later. Pre-war political documents.
"Something stayed behind."
And beneath that, in smaller writing, a note he'd added two days ago:
Headmaster says: prefer the boring explanation.
He looked at it for a long while. Then he picked up his pen and added one more line.
anon_viewer_4471: "Watching the garden grow."
He closed the notebook, locked it in the drawer, and sat back in his chair, listening to the empty lecture hall.
For the first time in his long career, Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck found himself hoping that he was wrong about something.
Sixteen minutes early. Every seat full, the steps full, and three students sitting cross-legged in the aisle.
Oobleck didn't even comment this time. He simply walked to the board, where last week's question was still written in chalk, and underlined it twice.
What would it take to prove the moon was once whole?
"Before anything else," he said, "your answers. Teams. Quickly."
* * *
Team RWBY went first. Weiss stood with a sheet of neatly written calculations.
"Our argument is composition," she said. "If the fragments were once one body, they should be made of the same material, in proportions consistent with a single origin. Spectral analysis from the observatories could test that. If the pieces match each other, and differ from other bodies in the sky, that supports a common origin."
"Good," Oobleck said. "Solid. Next."
Team JNPR. Ren stood.
"Orbits. If you trace the fragments' current paths backward in time, and they converge on a single point, that suggests they were once together."
"Also good. Next."
Team CFVY. Velvet, slightly more confident than two weeks ago.
"We looked for historical accounts of the moon changing. Any record of the fragments moving, drifting, getting closer or further apart. If there's any change over time, you could extrapolate back." She hesitated. "We didn't find anything. But the method works in principle."
"It does," Oobleck said. "And negative results are still results. Well done."
"Team CRDL," he said, bracing slightly.
Cardin stood. "We think you'd have to go up there and look."
The room waited.
"...And then?"
"And then see if the pieces fit together."
Oobleck opened his mouth to object, then stopped.
"That," he said slowly, "is actually very close to the answer the chat arrived at."
Cardin blinked. "It is?"
"Matching fracture surfaces. Pieces that fit together like a broken plate. You proposed checking it physically. The observatories can check it visually." He paused. "C-plus, Mister Winchester. You were right for the wrong reasons, but you were right."
Russel slapped Cardin on the back. Cardin looked stunned.
"And now," Oobleck said, "the stream."
* * *
When the streamer said "every other planet is whole, so it was obviously once whole," Weiss winced.
"That's a weak argument," she said. "It's an analogy, not evidence."
Then the Atlas student corrected him with the broken plate.
"...That's a strong argument," she admitted. "Annoyingly."
When HistoryIsNotBoring_BO declared the answer sufficient, the class turned to Oobleck.
"You got the internet to do your homework," Yang said.
"I crowdsourced a peer review, Miss Xiao Long."
"That's what the chat said you'd say."
"The chat," Oobleck said, "is becoming insufferably familiar with me."
* * *
Then the streamer asked his question. If the Brothers were gone, who made the second humanity?
The room quieted. This time it wasn't the silence of horror, like the moon stream. It was the silence of people leaning in.
When the church viewer laid out the first version, the Brothers making humanity on their way out, Ruby nodded slowly. When they described the second, the world growing people back like a forest after fire, her face lit up.
"The garden," she whispered. "The world kept growing us. I love that."
"It connects to the Dust stream," Ren said. "The planet making things on its own."
"Sap," Nora said solemnly. "We're sap people."
"That is not what it means, Nora."
"We are sap people, Ren."
* * *
When FaunusRights_Now asked whether the old stories said anything about Faunus, Blake went very still.
Velvet, in the back, set down her pen.
"The oldest texts don't distinguish. They say 'people.' Later texts added a lot of ugly ideas about Faunus being 'made differently.'"
And then, from Oobleck's own username: "I can confirm this from the historical side. The division appears in texts from the pre-war period. It is not original."
Blake didn't say anything. She didn't move. But her ears, beneath the bow, had risen slightly, and her hands were pressed flat against the desk as though she was holding onto it.
Velvet was blinking rapidly, looking down at her notebook.
Weiss glanced at Blake, then at Velvet, then down at her own hands. She was quiet for a long moment.
"Is that true?" she asked, finally, turning toward Oobleck. Her voice was careful. "That the division was added later?"
"It is true, Miss Schnee," Oobleck said. "The oldest surviving fragments refer only to 'people.' The language separating humans and Faunus appears centuries later, and it appears, almost without exception, in documents written during periods of political conflict. It was not in the original tradition. It was added to justify things people had already decided to do."
Weiss nodded slowly. She didn't say anything else. But she didn't look away from Blake, either.
* * *
When Port's message appeared, "Humanity was made by BRAVERY! We simply refused to not exist!", the tension broke and the room burst into laughter.
"It's a MOOD," Nora shouted, delighted.
"Port's theory is the best one," Jaune said. "Honestly."
"Port's theory," Oobleck said, "is not a theory. But I will concede it is a very good mood."
* * *
Then came the summary, the garden, and the final exchange.
"If something stayed, it has been here all this time. Watching the garden grow."
The laughter died.
Blake's hand went up before the video had even ended.
"Miss Belladonna."
"That's four streams now," she said. "Every time it's the big questions. The gods, the moon, the end of the world. And every time, anon says something that sounds like a warning." She looked around the room. "Last time it was 'least safely out loud.' This time it's 'something's been watching.' That's not someone having fun. That's someone who wants him to stop."
"Or someone doing a creepy bit for attention," Yang said. "The chat thinks it's a horror bit."
"The chat also thinks Professor Port's moustache is a primary source," Blake said.
"It IS a primary source," said a booming voice from the doorway.
Every head turned.
Professor Port stood there, beaming, hands on hips.
"Peter," Oobleck said, with the weariness of long experience. "You are not supposed to be here."
"I was passing by! And I heard my theory being discussed! I simply wished to clarify that it was, in fact, a theory!"
"It was a mood, Peter."
"A THEORY with a MOOD, Bartholomew!"
The class was in hysterics. Port gave a small bow, twirled his moustache, and departed as abruptly as he'd arrived, his laughter echoing down the hall.
* * *
When the room had calmed, Oobleck turned back to Blake.
"Miss Belladonna's concern is noted," he said. "And I share part of it. Not because I believe anything sinister is watching the world." He paused. "But because the streamer has twenty thousand viewers now. That is no longer a small conversation. Any time someone becomes that visible, it is worth being careful."
"Should someone tell him?" Ruby asked.
"He has a chat of twenty thousand people who have noticed the same thing," Oobleck said. "I suspect he is aware."
* * *
"I want to talk about the fourth version," Jaune said. "The something-stayed-behind one."
"Go on, Mister Arc."
"The church guy said most teachers don't take it seriously. And the streamer connected it to Tier Two. Leftover power." Jaune frowned. "But anon said something different. Anon said 'if something stayed, it's been here watching.' Like it's a someone, not a something."
"You noticed that," Oobleck said, quietly.
"It just sounded different. The church guy said power. Anon said watching." Jaune scratched his head. "Power doesn't watch."
The room was quiet again.
Pyrrha was staring very hard at the desk in front of her.
"Miss Nikos," Oobleck said. "Are you all right?"
She looked up, a moment too late. "Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking about the garden idea," she said, smoothly. "I think it's the one I'd choose to believe. That the world kept going on its own."
"Many people would," Oobleck said. He watched her a moment longer. Then he let it go.
* * *
"Final question for today," he said, zipping to the board. "No assignment. Just think."
He erased last week's question and wrote a new one.
Why did someone add the division between humans and Faunus?
"Not the mythology," he said. "The history. Who gains when a story is changed? Who decides which version gets taught? The streamer and the church viewer discovered, together, that an old story had been altered. That is not a mythological question. That is a historical one. And it is one this class is capable of answering." He capped the chalk. "Dismissed."
* * *
The students filed out slower than usual.
Blake stayed in her seat a moment. Weiss hovered nearby, clearly wanting to say something and not knowing how.
"The oldest texts just say 'people,'" Weiss said finally.
"Yeah," Blake said softly.
"I didn't know that."
"Most people don't."
Weiss nodded. She hesitated. Then, awkwardly, stiffly, and with enormous effort, she said, "I'd like to read them. The old texts. If you'd... want to go to the library sometime."
Blake looked up at her, surprised.
"...Yeah," she said. "I'd like that."
In the back row, Velvet was still sitting with her notebook open. She'd written only one line on the page, and she was looking at it with an expression somewhere between disbelief and something much softer.
Just "people."
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck didn't reach for his scroll right away.
Instead, he pulled a small, battered notebook from his desk drawer. It was one he'd started after the Headmaster's visit. He'd told himself it was simply for organizing lecture material.
He opened it and looked at the list he'd been keeping.
Moon. No record of it whole. Ever.
Oldest texts: humanity ended once. Minority tradition. Fragmentary.
Faunus division added later. Pre-war political documents.
"Something stayed behind."
And beneath that, in smaller writing, a note he'd added two days ago:
Headmaster says: prefer the boring explanation.
He looked at it for a long while. Then he picked up his pen and added one more line.
anon_viewer_4471: "Watching the garden grow."
He closed the notebook, locked it in the drawer, and sat back in his chair, listening to the empty lecture hall.
For the first time in his long career, Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck found himself hoping that he was wrong about something.
Chapter 17: Rockets Without Dust
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "OUTDOOR STREAM: rockets without Dust (please don't call the police again)" — 👁 22,817 viewers]
* * *
(The camera shows an empty field outside Vale's city limits, late afternoon. A folding table, a portable blackboard covered in chalk, a small launch rail staked into the dirt, and a sealed metal cabinet with hazard tape wrapped around it. The SI steps into frame. He has no eyebrows.)
SI: Hi. Before anyone asks: yes, my eyebrows are gone. We'll get there.
So. Last week somebody in chat mentioned that the old space program got shut down because Dust stops working past the atmosphere. And I thought about that for about three days straight, and I kept coming back to one question.
If Dust doesn't work up there... why not use something else?
Everybody on Remnant thinks of energy as "which Dust do I use." But Dust isn't the only thing that burns. Fire existed before anybody mined a crystal. So I ordered a bunch of chemicals. Some of them got flagged. I had a very long conversation with a very polite officer who wanted to know why one person needed that particular list. I explained. She was... skeptical. I'm not in jail, so she eventually believed me.
And then one of the tests went off early, and that's where the eyebrows went. Lesson learned. Everything today is at distance.
I've got two setups. Let me walk you through the board.
* * *
THE PROBLEM
To reach orbit, you need roughly ~9.4 km/s of total velocity change (orbital speed + losses to gravity and air).
Dust fails above the atmosphere, so you need something that carries its own oxidizer. No air in space to burn with.
THE ROCKET EQUATION
Δv = Isp × g₀ × ln(m_full / m_empty). Isp = "specific impulse": how efficient a fuel is. Higher = better.
SETUP 1 — "Hydrazine-injected" (liquid, hypergolic)
Fuel: hydrazine family. Oxidizer: dinitrogen tetroxide (N₂O₄), which carries its own "oxygen." Hypergolic = ignites on contact. No spark needed.
2 N₂H₄ + N₂O₄ → 3 N₂ + 4 H₂O (hot nitrogen + steam → thrust)
Isp ≈ ~300–340 s. Exhaust velocity ≈ 3.2 km/s. Mass ratio to orbit ≈ e^(9.4 / 3.24) ≈ ~18 : 1. Hard. But possible with stages.
SETUP 2 — Sugar motor (solid)
Oxidizer salt + sugar as the fuel, cast solid. Isp ≈ ~120–130 s. Exhaust velocity ≈ 1.3 km/s. Mass ratio to orbit ≈ ~1,600 : 1. Orbit? No. Proof of concept? YES.
* * *
SI: So here's my thought process.
The whole point is that in space, there's no air. Normal fire needs oxygen from the air. Dust, as far as anyone can tell, needs something about the planet. So you need a fuel that brings its own oxygen with it. That's what an oxidizer is. A chemical stand-in for air.
Setup one is the serious one. Two liquids: a hydrazine-type fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide. The wild thing is they're hypergolic. You don't light them. The instant they touch, they react violently, turn into hot nitrogen gas and water vapor, and that expanding gas shoves out the back of the engine. No spark. No Dust. Works in a vacuum because both halves are in the tanks.
Efficiency-wise, it's good enough that with staging — dropping empty tanks as you climb — you could actually reach orbit. It's not theory. The math works.
Setup two is the fun one. Sugar. Literally sugar, plus an oxidizer salt, cast into a solid fuel. Way less efficient. You're never getting to orbit on sugar; look at that mass ratio. Sixteen hundred to one. But it proves the point: you can make a rocket fly with zero Dust.
SI: Now. The hazard cabinet is the hydrazine setup. And I'm going to be honest with you all: I am not firing it today.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HIS EYEBROWS
HunterWannabe_Tom: bro looks like a boiled egg
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it IS a rocket, thank you
MistralMom_Jenna: Why aren't you firing it? Not that I WANT you to
SI: Because hydrazine is extremely poisonous. Like, "breathing it is bad for your whole life" poisonous. And N₂O₄ turns into a toxic brown gas. I did the reading after I bought it, which, yes, was backwards. Real engineers handle this stuff in full protective suits with ventilation and trained crews. I'm one guy in a field with no eyebrows.
AtlasTechStudent: THANK YOU. I was about to type a paragraph.
AtlasTechStudent: Seriously, everyone watching: do not buy hydrazine. It's toxic, it's a carcinogen, and hypergolic mixtures do not forgive mistakes.
SI: Agreed. It's getting handed over to someone qualified. The officer from earlier actually gave me a contact at a university lab.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: That would be me. Confirming. Sir, the lab pickup is Thursday. Please do not open that cabinet before then.
grimm_bait_420: THE COP IS IN THE CHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: the cop is WATCHING
SI: Hi, Officer Reyes! Not opening it. Promise.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: I'm off duty. I'm just curious now. Launch the sugar one.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like it on the record that I strongly disapprove of civilians ordering hazardous chemicals, and I am also extremely interested in the outcome.
GreatHunterPPort: LAUNCH IT, YOUNG MAN! In my youth I lit a firework in a Beowolf's mouth and I have NO regrets!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you have many regrets. I have heard them all.
* * *
(The SI walks to the launch rail. A slim cardboard-and-plastic rocket, about the length of his arm, sits on it. A long wire runs back to a switch box on the table, well over a hundred paces away. He jogs back to the table.)
SI: Okay. Launch safety. Everybody's behind me, nobody within range, wind is low, we're way outside the city, and I have a bucket of water and a fire blanket. Last time I skipped the distance part. You can see how that went.
SI: There's no Dust anywhere in that rocket. Not in the fuel, not in the igniter, nothing. It's sugar, an oxidizer, a cardboard tube, and a nozzle.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN COUNTDOWN COUNTDOWN
SI: Three.
SI: Two.
SI: One.
(He flips the switch.)
(A sharp hiss, a burst of thick white smoke, and the rocket leaps off the rail and screams upward, trailing a column of smoke into the orange evening sky, climbing and climbing until it's just a dot. A few seconds later, a tiny parachute pops open far overhead.)
(The SI stares upward, mouth open.)
SI: ...it worked. IT WORKED. NO DUST! NO DUST AT ALL!
* * *
grimm_bait_420: HE DID IT
HunterWannabe_Tom: WHAT
MistralMom_Jenna: Oh my gods it went so HIGH
GreatHunterPPort: MAGNIFICENT! A TRIUMPH OF BRAVERY!
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: IT'S A ROCKET, VALE GUY!!
VacuoVeteran: I've seen Dust fireworks my whole life and that's somehow the most impressive thing I've ever watched
DustTrader_Mo: as a Dust trader I feel professionally threatened
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. I need to say something, and I want everyone to understand it's not a joke.
AtlasTechStudent: Chemical propulsion was studied, early on. It's in the old Atlas archives. It was dropped because Dust was cheaper, more powerful per kilo in the atmosphere, and way easier to handle. When the space program failed, everyone blamed Dust not working up there, and just... stopped. Nobody went back to the old research, because everyone had already decided rockets = Dust.
SI: Wait. So people knew?
AtlasTechStudent: People knew chemical rockets were possible. Nobody connected "Dust fails in space" with "use the thing that doesn't need Dust." Or if they did, it never got funding.
SI: That's the Semblance thing AGAIN. Everyone's so used to Dust that nobody thinks outside it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: This is a genuinely fascinating historical point. A technology abandoned not because it failed, but because a more convenient one existed. And then forgotten when the convenient one hit a wall. This happens far more often than people realize.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: For the record, that was the coolest thing I've seen on a CCT stream. Also you're getting a noise complaint.
SI: Worth it.
* * *
(The parachute drifts down. The SI jogs out to retrieve it and holds up the scorched but intact rocket to the camera, grinning.)
SI: Okay. Summary, and then I'm going home to cry about my eyebrows.
The question: If Dust doesn't work in space, why not use something else?
The answer: You can. You need a fuel that carries its own oxidizer, because there's no air up there.
Hydrazine-type engines: Efficient enough to reach orbit with staging. Hypergolic, no spark. Also horribly toxic. Professionals only. Mine's going to a lab on Thursday.
Sugar motors: Can't reach orbit, not even close. But they fly. With zero Dust. You just watched it.
The big one: Humanity didn't stop going to space because it was impossible. It stopped because everyone assumed Dust was the only way, and when Dust failed, nobody looked at the alternatives.
grimm_bait_420: we're going to space boys
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy space program when
AtlasTechStudent: Please do not start a space program in a field.
SI: No promises.
AtlasTechStudent: PLEASE.
anon_viewer_4471: Many have looked up at the sky and wanted to reach it. Few have asked what might be waiting there.
grimm_bait_420: ANON NO
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon we were having a GOOD time
FaunusRights_Now: anon is determined to make every stream a horror movie
SI: ...rocks, probably. Moon pieces. Very big rocks.
anon_viewer_4471: Probably. Congratulations on your launch.
SI: Uh. Thanks.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: An excellent demonstration. Sound reasoning. Genuinely responsible handling of the dangerous material, eventually. I cannot grade this, because I do not grade chemistry, and because I would have to deduct heavily for the eyebrows.
SI: Fair.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: It's a rocket, Vale guy. And it went up. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 31,406]
* * *
(The camera shows an empty field outside Vale's city limits, late afternoon. A folding table, a portable blackboard covered in chalk, a small launch rail staked into the dirt, and a sealed metal cabinet with hazard tape wrapped around it. The SI steps into frame. He has no eyebrows.)
SI: Hi. Before anyone asks: yes, my eyebrows are gone. We'll get there.
So. Last week somebody in chat mentioned that the old space program got shut down because Dust stops working past the atmosphere. And I thought about that for about three days straight, and I kept coming back to one question.
If Dust doesn't work up there... why not use something else?
Everybody on Remnant thinks of energy as "which Dust do I use." But Dust isn't the only thing that burns. Fire existed before anybody mined a crystal. So I ordered a bunch of chemicals. Some of them got flagged. I had a very long conversation with a very polite officer who wanted to know why one person needed that particular list. I explained. She was... skeptical. I'm not in jail, so she eventually believed me.
And then one of the tests went off early, and that's where the eyebrows went. Lesson learned. Everything today is at distance.
I've got two setups. Let me walk you through the board.
* * *
THE PROBLEM
To reach orbit, you need roughly ~9.4 km/s of total velocity change (orbital speed + losses to gravity and air).
Dust fails above the atmosphere, so you need something that carries its own oxidizer. No air in space to burn with.
THE ROCKET EQUATION
Δv = Isp × g₀ × ln(m_full / m_empty). Isp = "specific impulse": how efficient a fuel is. Higher = better.
SETUP 1 — "Hydrazine-injected" (liquid, hypergolic)
Fuel: hydrazine family. Oxidizer: dinitrogen tetroxide (N₂O₄), which carries its own "oxygen." Hypergolic = ignites on contact. No spark needed.
2 N₂H₄ + N₂O₄ → 3 N₂ + 4 H₂O (hot nitrogen + steam → thrust)
Isp ≈ ~300–340 s. Exhaust velocity ≈ 3.2 km/s. Mass ratio to orbit ≈ e^(9.4 / 3.24) ≈ ~18 : 1. Hard. But possible with stages.
SETUP 2 — Sugar motor (solid)
Oxidizer salt + sugar as the fuel, cast solid. Isp ≈ ~120–130 s. Exhaust velocity ≈ 1.3 km/s. Mass ratio to orbit ≈ ~1,600 : 1. Orbit? No. Proof of concept? YES.
* * *
SI: So here's my thought process.
The whole point is that in space, there's no air. Normal fire needs oxygen from the air. Dust, as far as anyone can tell, needs something about the planet. So you need a fuel that brings its own oxygen with it. That's what an oxidizer is. A chemical stand-in for air.
Setup one is the serious one. Two liquids: a hydrazine-type fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide. The wild thing is they're hypergolic. You don't light them. The instant they touch, they react violently, turn into hot nitrogen gas and water vapor, and that expanding gas shoves out the back of the engine. No spark. No Dust. Works in a vacuum because both halves are in the tanks.
Efficiency-wise, it's good enough that with staging — dropping empty tanks as you climb — you could actually reach orbit. It's not theory. The math works.
Setup two is the fun one. Sugar. Literally sugar, plus an oxidizer salt, cast into a solid fuel. Way less efficient. You're never getting to orbit on sugar; look at that mass ratio. Sixteen hundred to one. But it proves the point: you can make a rocket fly with zero Dust.
SI: Now. The hazard cabinet is the hydrazine setup. And I'm going to be honest with you all: I am not firing it today.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HIS EYEBROWS
HunterWannabe_Tom: bro looks like a boiled egg
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it IS a rocket, thank you
MistralMom_Jenna: Why aren't you firing it? Not that I WANT you to
SI: Because hydrazine is extremely poisonous. Like, "breathing it is bad for your whole life" poisonous. And N₂O₄ turns into a toxic brown gas. I did the reading after I bought it, which, yes, was backwards. Real engineers handle this stuff in full protective suits with ventilation and trained crews. I'm one guy in a field with no eyebrows.
AtlasTechStudent: THANK YOU. I was about to type a paragraph.
AtlasTechStudent: Seriously, everyone watching: do not buy hydrazine. It's toxic, it's a carcinogen, and hypergolic mixtures do not forgive mistakes.
SI: Agreed. It's getting handed over to someone qualified. The officer from earlier actually gave me a contact at a university lab.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: That would be me. Confirming. Sir, the lab pickup is Thursday. Please do not open that cabinet before then.
grimm_bait_420: THE COP IS IN THE CHAT
HunterWannabe_Tom: the cop is WATCHING
SI: Hi, Officer Reyes! Not opening it. Promise.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: I'm off duty. I'm just curious now. Launch the sugar one.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like it on the record that I strongly disapprove of civilians ordering hazardous chemicals, and I am also extremely interested in the outcome.
GreatHunterPPort: LAUNCH IT, YOUNG MAN! In my youth I lit a firework in a Beowolf's mouth and I have NO regrets!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you have many regrets. I have heard them all.
* * *
(The SI walks to the launch rail. A slim cardboard-and-plastic rocket, about the length of his arm, sits on it. A long wire runs back to a switch box on the table, well over a hundred paces away. He jogs back to the table.)
SI: Okay. Launch safety. Everybody's behind me, nobody within range, wind is low, we're way outside the city, and I have a bucket of water and a fire blanket. Last time I skipped the distance part. You can see how that went.
SI: There's no Dust anywhere in that rocket. Not in the fuel, not in the igniter, nothing. It's sugar, an oxidizer, a cardboard tube, and a nozzle.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN COUNTDOWN COUNTDOWN
SI: Three.
SI: Two.
SI: One.
(He flips the switch.)
(A sharp hiss, a burst of thick white smoke, and the rocket leaps off the rail and screams upward, trailing a column of smoke into the orange evening sky, climbing and climbing until it's just a dot. A few seconds later, a tiny parachute pops open far overhead.)
(The SI stares upward, mouth open.)
SI: ...it worked. IT WORKED. NO DUST! NO DUST AT ALL!
* * *
grimm_bait_420: HE DID IT
HunterWannabe_Tom: WHAT
MistralMom_Jenna: Oh my gods it went so HIGH
GreatHunterPPort: MAGNIFICENT! A TRIUMPH OF BRAVERY!
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: IT'S A ROCKET, VALE GUY!!
VacuoVeteran: I've seen Dust fireworks my whole life and that's somehow the most impressive thing I've ever watched
DustTrader_Mo: as a Dust trader I feel professionally threatened
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. I need to say something, and I want everyone to understand it's not a joke.
AtlasTechStudent: Chemical propulsion was studied, early on. It's in the old Atlas archives. It was dropped because Dust was cheaper, more powerful per kilo in the atmosphere, and way easier to handle. When the space program failed, everyone blamed Dust not working up there, and just... stopped. Nobody went back to the old research, because everyone had already decided rockets = Dust.
SI: Wait. So people knew?
AtlasTechStudent: People knew chemical rockets were possible. Nobody connected "Dust fails in space" with "use the thing that doesn't need Dust." Or if they did, it never got funding.
SI: That's the Semblance thing AGAIN. Everyone's so used to Dust that nobody thinks outside it.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: This is a genuinely fascinating historical point. A technology abandoned not because it failed, but because a more convenient one existed. And then forgotten when the convenient one hit a wall. This happens far more often than people realize.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: For the record, that was the coolest thing I've seen on a CCT stream. Also you're getting a noise complaint.
SI: Worth it.
* * *
(The parachute drifts down. The SI jogs out to retrieve it and holds up the scorched but intact rocket to the camera, grinning.)
SI: Okay. Summary, and then I'm going home to cry about my eyebrows.
The question: If Dust doesn't work in space, why not use something else?
The answer: You can. You need a fuel that carries its own oxidizer, because there's no air up there.
Hydrazine-type engines: Efficient enough to reach orbit with staging. Hypergolic, no spark. Also horribly toxic. Professionals only. Mine's going to a lab on Thursday.
Sugar motors: Can't reach orbit, not even close. But they fly. With zero Dust. You just watched it.
The big one: Humanity didn't stop going to space because it was impossible. It stopped because everyone assumed Dust was the only way, and when Dust failed, nobody looked at the alternatives.
grimm_bait_420: we're going to space boys
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy space program when
AtlasTechStudent: Please do not start a space program in a field.
SI: No promises.
AtlasTechStudent: PLEASE.
anon_viewer_4471: Many have looked up at the sky and wanted to reach it. Few have asked what might be waiting there.
grimm_bait_420: ANON NO
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon we were having a GOOD time
FaunusRights_Now: anon is determined to make every stream a horror movie
SI: ...rocks, probably. Moon pieces. Very big rocks.
anon_viewer_4471: Probably. Congratulations on your launch.
SI: Uh. Thanks.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: An excellent demonstration. Sound reasoning. Genuinely responsible handling of the dangerous material, eventually. I cannot grade this, because I do not grade chemistry, and because I would have to deduct heavily for the eyebrows.
SI: Fair.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket
SI: It's a rocket, Vale guy. And it went up. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 31,406]
Chapter 18: Path Dependence
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
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Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 8:40 AM
Twenty minutes early. The hall was so packed that Oobleck had to step over two first-years sitting against the podium.
He set his thermos down, looked out at the crowd, and before he could say a single word, Nora shot to her feet.
"ROCKETS!"
The room cheered.
"Miss Valkyrie, sit down."
"But ROCKETS, Doctor!"
"I am aware of the rockets. The entire kingdom is aware of the rockets. Sit down."
She sat. She was still vibrating.
* * *
"Before we begin," Oobleck said, "there is someone who would like a word."
The side door opened, and Glynda Goodwitch walked in.
The room went instantly silent. Twenty-some students who had been loudly discussing sugar a moment ago suddenly found their desks fascinating.
Glynda stood at the front, riding crop tucked under one arm, and surveyed them over her glasses.
"I am aware," she said crisply, "that many of you watched a livestream this week in which a civilian launched a homemade rocket. I am also aware that some of you," her gaze passed over Nora, over Yang, and lingered meaningfully on Team CRDL, "have been heard discussing ordering chemicals."
Cardin slid slightly lower in his seat.
"Let me be perfectly clear. The young man in that video lost his eyebrows. He was fortunate. Hydrazine is a poison. Oxidizers are dangerous. Improvised propellants have killed people who were far more careful than a student with a scroll and an idea." She paused. "Any student found attempting to replicate that stream on Beacon grounds, or anywhere else, will be dealt with by me personally. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Professor Goodwitch," the room chorused.
"Good." She turned to leave, then paused at the door. "For what it's worth, his reasoning was sound. His safety was not. Learn from the correct half." And she was gone.
The room let out a collective breath.
"She watched it," Yang whispered. "Goodwitch watched the stream."
"Everyone watched the stream," Oobleck said. "Thirty-one thousand people watched the stream. Now. Let us watch it again."
* * *
When the SI stepped into frame with no eyebrows, the room collapsed.
"HIS EYEBROWS," Yang wheezed, gripping the desk.
"He looks like a boiled egg," Jaune gasped, quoting the chat.
"That's not funny," Weiss said. Then, a second later, with a strangled noise: "...It's a little funny."
When he explained that he'd nearly been arrested, Ren nodded slowly. "That seems appropriate."
* * *
Then the camera zoomed into the blackboard, and the room changed.
Weiss leaned forward, eyes narrowing, pen already moving.
"The rocket equation," she murmured. "Delta-v equals specific impulse times gravitational acceleration times the natural log of the mass ratio." She scribbled. "Exhaust velocity of three point two... nine point four divided by three point two four... e to the two point nine..." She stopped. "Eighteen. He's right. Eighteen to one."
"Is that bad?" Ruby asked.
"It means for every eighteen kilos of rocket on the launch pad, only one kilo reaches orbit. The rest is fuel." Weiss looked up. "That's hard. But he's right that it's possible, if you drop empty stages as you go." She went back to scribbling. "And the sugar one... sixteen hundred to one. Completely impossible for orbit. He said so himself."
"You're checking his math again," Blake said.
"Someone has to," Weiss said, not looking up.
* * *
When the SI explained why he wasn't firing the hydrazine setup, and that it was going to a university lab, Oobleck paused the video.
"Note this," he said. "A person who made a series of reckless decisions, then stopped, did the reading, recognized the danger, and handed the dangerous material to qualified professionals. On camera. With twenty thousand people urging him to press the button." He tapped the screen. "That is harder than launching a rocket. Most people cannot admit a mistake with an audience watching. Remember that."
"And Officer Reyes!" Nora added.
"And Officer Reyes, yes," Oobleck said, resuming play. "Who I suspect has become a fan."
* * *
The countdown.
The room went silent. Even students who had already seen it leaned forward.
Three. Two. One.
The rocket leapt off the rail and screamed into the evening sky.
The lecture hall erupted as if it were the first time. Ruby was on her feet. Nora was standing on her chair. Jaune was clapping. Even Weiss, still clutching her pen, let out a small, involuntary "oh."
"NO DUST," Ruby shouted. "It went up with NO DUST!"
"I know," Weiss said, a little dazed. "I know. I did the math. But seeing it..."
"Ruby, you're standing on the desk," Yang said.
"I'm aware!"
* * *
When the Atlas student explained that chemical propulsion had been studied early, then abandoned because Dust was cheaper, and then forgotten when the space program failed, Oobleck paused the video one final time and turned to face the room.
"This," he said, "is the most important part of the entire stream. Far more important than the rocket."
The room quieted.
"A technology abandoned not because it failed," Oobleck said, "but because something more convenient existed. And then, when the convenient thing hit a wall, no one went back to the older path. Because by then, no one remembered it was a path." He zipped to the board and wrote a phrase in large letters.
PATH DEPENDENCE.
"Historians call this path dependence. Once a society commits to one way of doing something, every later decision is shaped by that commitment. The alternatives don't vanish. They simply stop being seen." He tapped the board. "Remnant built everything around Dust. Weapons, lighting, transportation, industry, the space program. When Dust stopped working in space, the entire kingdom concluded that space was impossible. Not that Dust was the limitation."
"The Semblance thing," Jaune said. "Again."
"The Semblance thing again, Mister Arc. The streamer keeps finding the same pattern, in a different place, every single week. Familiarity blinds. It is the single most common failure in human reasoning."
* * *
"Discuss," Oobleck said.
Weiss raised her hand, slower than usual.
"Miss Schnee."
She hesitated, looking down at her calculations.
"My family's company," she said carefully, "is built on the idea that Dust is essential. For everything. The whole kingdom runs on it. And I've always believed that." She paused. "I still mostly believe that. But I didn't know chemical rockets were studied and dropped. I didn't know Atlas had archives on it. And I've grown up surrounded by Atlas scientists." She looked up. "Why didn't anyone ever mention it?"
"Why do you think, Miss Schnee?"
Weiss was quiet for a long moment.
"Because nobody made money from it," she said finally. "And because everyone had already decided Dust was the answer." Her jaw tightened slightly. "That's uncomfortable."
"Most important thoughts are," Oobleck said gently.
Blake glanced at Weiss. Weiss didn't look back, but she didn't look away from her notes, either.
* * *
"I want to talk about the officer," Ruby said. "Officer Reyes. She stopped him from being arrested, then gave him a lab contact so the dangerous stuff went somewhere safe, then stayed and watched." Ruby grinned. "That's so cool. That's what the police should be like."
"A good point, Miss Rose," Oobleck said. "Authority that redirects rather than simply punishes. Rarer than it ought to be."
"I want to talk about the ROCKET," Nora said.
"We have talked about the rocket, Miss Valkyrie."
"I want to talk about it MORE."
"You may talk about it more after class. Quietly. Away from any chemical supplier."
Ren patted her arm. "I'll make sure."
* * *
Blake raised her hand. The room collectively sighed, because everyone knew what was coming.
"Miss Belladonna. Anon."
"Anon," Blake agreed. "'Many have looked up at the sky and wanted to reach it. Few have asked what might be waiting there.'" She shook her head. "It keeps getting more specific. First it was 'where did you grow up.' Then 'lost knowledge.' Then 'least safely out loud.' Then 'something's been watching.' And now 'what's waiting up there.'"
"The streamer said rocks," Yang said. "Moon rocks."
"And anon said 'probably,'" Blake said. "Not 'yes.' Probably."
"You're reading a lot into one word," Cardin said, surprisingly.
"Maybe," Blake said. "But I don't think anon uses words carelessly."
The room was quiet.
"I will say again what I have said before," Oobleck said. "A pattern in a stranger's messages is not evidence of anything sinister. But—" He paused. "You are right that this individual chooses words with unusual care. Keep noticing. Keep not concluding."
Pyrrha, near the front, said nothing. But she had written the anon's line down in the margin of her notebook, and she was looking at it.
* * *
"No assignment," Oobleck announced. "Instead, a question. The same pattern the streamer found, but you must find it yourselves."
He wrote on the board, beneath PATH DEPENDENCE:
Find another technology Remnant abandoned because Dust was easier.
"It does not have to be rockets. It can be anything. Lighting. Heating. Medicine. Weapons. Transport. Find something that existed before Dust dominated, or alongside it, that was dropped not because it failed but because Dust was more convenient." He capped the chalk. "Bring it next week. And under no circumstances," he added, glancing at Team CRDL, "should your research involve building anything."
"Wasn't gonna," Cardin said.
"You absolutely were."
* * *
The students poured out of the hall, noisier than they'd been in weeks.
"I'm doing weapons," Ruby announced. "There's gotta be old non-Dust guns. Mechanical stuff. Springs, compressed air..."
"Of course you're doing weapons," Yang said.
"I'm doing lighting," Weiss said. "There were oil lamps before Dust lamps. And gas lighting. I want to know why they disappeared." She hesitated. "And whether my family had anything to do with it."
Blake looked at her, a little surprised. Weiss kept walking.
"I'm doing ROCKETS," Nora said.
"Nora, he already did rockets," Ren said.
"I'm doing them AGAIN. In HISTORY."
"...That's actually allowed," Ren admitted.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck opened the locked drawer and took out his notebook.
He turned to the page where he kept the list and added two new lines beneath the last entry.
Space program abandoned when Dust failed. Chemical alternatives existed, known, forgotten.
anon: "Few have asked what might be waiting there."
He looked at the list for a long while. It was getting longer.
Then, almost without deciding to, he flipped to a fresh page, and at the top he wrote a single question, one he had never written down before in all his years of teaching.
What else have we stopped looking at?
He sat with it for a moment, the empty hall silent around him. Then he closed the notebook, locked it away, and went to find Peter, who he suspected had already ordered a rocket kit.
Twenty minutes early. The hall was so packed that Oobleck had to step over two first-years sitting against the podium.
He set his thermos down, looked out at the crowd, and before he could say a single word, Nora shot to her feet.
"ROCKETS!"
The room cheered.
"Miss Valkyrie, sit down."
"But ROCKETS, Doctor!"
"I am aware of the rockets. The entire kingdom is aware of the rockets. Sit down."
She sat. She was still vibrating.
* * *
"Before we begin," Oobleck said, "there is someone who would like a word."
The side door opened, and Glynda Goodwitch walked in.
The room went instantly silent. Twenty-some students who had been loudly discussing sugar a moment ago suddenly found their desks fascinating.
Glynda stood at the front, riding crop tucked under one arm, and surveyed them over her glasses.
"I am aware," she said crisply, "that many of you watched a livestream this week in which a civilian launched a homemade rocket. I am also aware that some of you," her gaze passed over Nora, over Yang, and lingered meaningfully on Team CRDL, "have been heard discussing ordering chemicals."
Cardin slid slightly lower in his seat.
"Let me be perfectly clear. The young man in that video lost his eyebrows. He was fortunate. Hydrazine is a poison. Oxidizers are dangerous. Improvised propellants have killed people who were far more careful than a student with a scroll and an idea." She paused. "Any student found attempting to replicate that stream on Beacon grounds, or anywhere else, will be dealt with by me personally. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Professor Goodwitch," the room chorused.
"Good." She turned to leave, then paused at the door. "For what it's worth, his reasoning was sound. His safety was not. Learn from the correct half." And she was gone.
The room let out a collective breath.
"She watched it," Yang whispered. "Goodwitch watched the stream."
"Everyone watched the stream," Oobleck said. "Thirty-one thousand people watched the stream. Now. Let us watch it again."
* * *
When the SI stepped into frame with no eyebrows, the room collapsed.
"HIS EYEBROWS," Yang wheezed, gripping the desk.
"He looks like a boiled egg," Jaune gasped, quoting the chat.
"That's not funny," Weiss said. Then, a second later, with a strangled noise: "...It's a little funny."
When he explained that he'd nearly been arrested, Ren nodded slowly. "That seems appropriate."
* * *
Then the camera zoomed into the blackboard, and the room changed.
Weiss leaned forward, eyes narrowing, pen already moving.
"The rocket equation," she murmured. "Delta-v equals specific impulse times gravitational acceleration times the natural log of the mass ratio." She scribbled. "Exhaust velocity of three point two... nine point four divided by three point two four... e to the two point nine..." She stopped. "Eighteen. He's right. Eighteen to one."
"Is that bad?" Ruby asked.
"It means for every eighteen kilos of rocket on the launch pad, only one kilo reaches orbit. The rest is fuel." Weiss looked up. "That's hard. But he's right that it's possible, if you drop empty stages as you go." She went back to scribbling. "And the sugar one... sixteen hundred to one. Completely impossible for orbit. He said so himself."
"You're checking his math again," Blake said.
"Someone has to," Weiss said, not looking up.
* * *
When the SI explained why he wasn't firing the hydrazine setup, and that it was going to a university lab, Oobleck paused the video.
"Note this," he said. "A person who made a series of reckless decisions, then stopped, did the reading, recognized the danger, and handed the dangerous material to qualified professionals. On camera. With twenty thousand people urging him to press the button." He tapped the screen. "That is harder than launching a rocket. Most people cannot admit a mistake with an audience watching. Remember that."
"And Officer Reyes!" Nora added.
"And Officer Reyes, yes," Oobleck said, resuming play. "Who I suspect has become a fan."
* * *
The countdown.
The room went silent. Even students who had already seen it leaned forward.
Three. Two. One.
The rocket leapt off the rail and screamed into the evening sky.
The lecture hall erupted as if it were the first time. Ruby was on her feet. Nora was standing on her chair. Jaune was clapping. Even Weiss, still clutching her pen, let out a small, involuntary "oh."
"NO DUST," Ruby shouted. "It went up with NO DUST!"
"I know," Weiss said, a little dazed. "I know. I did the math. But seeing it..."
"Ruby, you're standing on the desk," Yang said.
"I'm aware!"
* * *
When the Atlas student explained that chemical propulsion had been studied early, then abandoned because Dust was cheaper, and then forgotten when the space program failed, Oobleck paused the video one final time and turned to face the room.
"This," he said, "is the most important part of the entire stream. Far more important than the rocket."
The room quieted.
"A technology abandoned not because it failed," Oobleck said, "but because something more convenient existed. And then, when the convenient thing hit a wall, no one went back to the older path. Because by then, no one remembered it was a path." He zipped to the board and wrote a phrase in large letters.
PATH DEPENDENCE.
"Historians call this path dependence. Once a society commits to one way of doing something, every later decision is shaped by that commitment. The alternatives don't vanish. They simply stop being seen." He tapped the board. "Remnant built everything around Dust. Weapons, lighting, transportation, industry, the space program. When Dust stopped working in space, the entire kingdom concluded that space was impossible. Not that Dust was the limitation."
"The Semblance thing," Jaune said. "Again."
"The Semblance thing again, Mister Arc. The streamer keeps finding the same pattern, in a different place, every single week. Familiarity blinds. It is the single most common failure in human reasoning."
* * *
"Discuss," Oobleck said.
Weiss raised her hand, slower than usual.
"Miss Schnee."
She hesitated, looking down at her calculations.
"My family's company," she said carefully, "is built on the idea that Dust is essential. For everything. The whole kingdom runs on it. And I've always believed that." She paused. "I still mostly believe that. But I didn't know chemical rockets were studied and dropped. I didn't know Atlas had archives on it. And I've grown up surrounded by Atlas scientists." She looked up. "Why didn't anyone ever mention it?"
"Why do you think, Miss Schnee?"
Weiss was quiet for a long moment.
"Because nobody made money from it," she said finally. "And because everyone had already decided Dust was the answer." Her jaw tightened slightly. "That's uncomfortable."
"Most important thoughts are," Oobleck said gently.
Blake glanced at Weiss. Weiss didn't look back, but she didn't look away from her notes, either.
* * *
"I want to talk about the officer," Ruby said. "Officer Reyes. She stopped him from being arrested, then gave him a lab contact so the dangerous stuff went somewhere safe, then stayed and watched." Ruby grinned. "That's so cool. That's what the police should be like."
"A good point, Miss Rose," Oobleck said. "Authority that redirects rather than simply punishes. Rarer than it ought to be."
"I want to talk about the ROCKET," Nora said.
"We have talked about the rocket, Miss Valkyrie."
"I want to talk about it MORE."
"You may talk about it more after class. Quietly. Away from any chemical supplier."
Ren patted her arm. "I'll make sure."
* * *
Blake raised her hand. The room collectively sighed, because everyone knew what was coming.
"Miss Belladonna. Anon."
"Anon," Blake agreed. "'Many have looked up at the sky and wanted to reach it. Few have asked what might be waiting there.'" She shook her head. "It keeps getting more specific. First it was 'where did you grow up.' Then 'lost knowledge.' Then 'least safely out loud.' Then 'something's been watching.' And now 'what's waiting up there.'"
"The streamer said rocks," Yang said. "Moon rocks."
"And anon said 'probably,'" Blake said. "Not 'yes.' Probably."
"You're reading a lot into one word," Cardin said, surprisingly.
"Maybe," Blake said. "But I don't think anon uses words carelessly."
The room was quiet.
"I will say again what I have said before," Oobleck said. "A pattern in a stranger's messages is not evidence of anything sinister. But—" He paused. "You are right that this individual chooses words with unusual care. Keep noticing. Keep not concluding."
Pyrrha, near the front, said nothing. But she had written the anon's line down in the margin of her notebook, and she was looking at it.
* * *
"No assignment," Oobleck announced. "Instead, a question. The same pattern the streamer found, but you must find it yourselves."
He wrote on the board, beneath PATH DEPENDENCE:
Find another technology Remnant abandoned because Dust was easier.
"It does not have to be rockets. It can be anything. Lighting. Heating. Medicine. Weapons. Transport. Find something that existed before Dust dominated, or alongside it, that was dropped not because it failed but because Dust was more convenient." He capped the chalk. "Bring it next week. And under no circumstances," he added, glancing at Team CRDL, "should your research involve building anything."
"Wasn't gonna," Cardin said.
"You absolutely were."
* * *
The students poured out of the hall, noisier than they'd been in weeks.
"I'm doing weapons," Ruby announced. "There's gotta be old non-Dust guns. Mechanical stuff. Springs, compressed air..."
"Of course you're doing weapons," Yang said.
"I'm doing lighting," Weiss said. "There were oil lamps before Dust lamps. And gas lighting. I want to know why they disappeared." She hesitated. "And whether my family had anything to do with it."
Blake looked at her, a little surprised. Weiss kept walking.
"I'm doing ROCKETS," Nora said.
"Nora, he already did rockets," Ren said.
"I'm doing them AGAIN. In HISTORY."
"...That's actually allowed," Ren admitted.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck opened the locked drawer and took out his notebook.
He turned to the page where he kept the list and added two new lines beneath the last entry.
Space program abandoned when Dust failed. Chemical alternatives existed, known, forgotten.
anon: "Few have asked what might be waiting there."
He looked at the list for a long while. It was getting longer.
Then, almost without deciding to, he flipped to a fresh page, and at the top he wrote a single question, one he had never written down before in all his years of teaching.
What else have we stopped looking at?
He sat with it for a moment, the empty hall silent around him. Then he closed the notebook, locked it away, and went to find Peter, who he suspected had already ordered a rocket kit.
Chapter 19: Six Kilometers
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "ONE MONTH LATER: Rocket 2 (supervised this time, I promise)" — 👁 38,552 viewers]
* * *
(The camera opens on a very different field. Flat, fenced, with a concrete pad, a blast wall made of sandbags, and a small bunker with a window slit. Three people in university lab jackets are moving around the pad. In the center stands a sleek, white rocket about the height of a grown man, gleaming under floodlights. Its body is smooth, machined aluminum. Beside it on a cart sit two tall insulated dewars, frosting and venting faint white vapor. A small inset window in the corner of the stream shows a live feed from a camera inside the rocket's nose, currently pointed at the sky.)
(The SI walks into frame. His eyebrows have grown back, mostly.)
SI: Hi everyone. Yes, the eyebrows are back. Seventy percent. We're healing.
It's been a month. A lot happened. Remember Officer Reyes? After the last stream, she put me in touch with the propulsion group at Vale University, the same lab that took the hydrazine off my hands. Turns out they'd been wanting to test a non-Dust engine for years and could never get funding, because, and I quote their department head, "every grant committee asks why we're not just using Dust."
After the last stream went viral, they got funding.
So this time, they're in charge of anything dangerous. I'm the guy who machined the body on a CNC mill over about three hundred hours, and who's going to explain the math. Please meet the actual professionals.
(One of the lab techs waves at the camera without looking up from a checklist.)
SI: The white vapor you see is from those two dewars. One is liquid hydrogen. One is liquid oxygen. Both are extremely cold. The lab team handles them in full gear. I am not allowed within ten meters, which honestly, fair.
Board time.
* * *
FUEL COMPARISON (vacuum Isp, approximate)
Sugar motor: ~130 s, mass ratio to orbit ~1,600 : 1
Hydrazine / N₂O₄: ~330 s, mass ratio ~18 : 1
Liquid H₂ / Liquid O₂: ~450 s, mass ratio ~8.4 : 1
THE REACTION: 2 H₂ + O₂ → 2 H₂O. Exhaust is literally water vapor. Very hot. Very fast. No toxic exhaust.
THE MATH: Exhaust velocity ≈ 450 × 9.81 ≈ 4.4 km/s. Mass ratio = e^(9.4 / 4.41) ≈ 8.4. For every ~8 kg on the pad, ~1 kg reaches orbit. Less than half of hydrazine's requirement.
THE CATCH: Hydrogen is extremely light, so very large tanks. Must stay extremely cold (–253 °C) or it boils off. Leaks. Hard to handle. Best efficiency, worst logistics.
* * *
SI: So last time I said hydrazine could get you to orbit with staging. That's true. But hydrogen and oxygen is the best chemical fuel there is, efficiency-wise. Mass ratio drops from eighteen to about eight. That's the difference between "maybe with a huge rocket" and "genuinely doable."
And the exhaust is water. Hydrogen plus oxygen, burned together, makes steam. That's it. Compared to hydrazine, where the fuel itself can poison you, this is way cleaner.
The catch is handling. Hydrogen's so light that you need massive tanks to carry enough. And it has to stay at about minus two hundred fifty degrees or it just boils away. That's why there's a lab team and why I'm standing way over here.
Now. Second board.
* * *
(He flips a second board around. On it is a hand-drawn schematic: two tanks at the top, lines running down into a small spinning assembly labelled TURBINE / PUMP, and from there into a combustion chamber and a bell-shaped nozzle. A side branch splits off a small line into a box labelled "gas generator," with an arrow pointing to the turbine.)
HOW DO YOU GET FUEL INTO THE ENGINE FAST ENOUGH?
Small rockets (like today's): Pressurize the tanks. Gas pressure pushes fuel into the engine. Simple. Heavy tanks.
Big rockets: Pressure alone isn't enough. You need a pump. But pumps need power. Where does the power come from?
Burn a little bit of the fuel in a small side chamber (gas generator). Hot gas spins a turbine. Turbine spins the pump on the same shaft. Pump shoves huge amounts of fuel into the main engine.
The rocket powers its own fuel pump by burning a small fraction of its own fuel. No Dust. No outside power. Self-sustaining.
* * *
SI: This one's the part I'm most excited about. Today's rocket is small enough that we just pressurize the tanks and let the gas push fuel into the engine. But for a real orbital rocket, you need to move enormous amounts of fuel per second, and pressure alone can't do it without the tanks weighing a ton.
So you put in a pump. And you power that pump by spinning a turbine with a tiny bit of your own burning fuel. The rocket feeds itself. It's the same idea as the steam turbines in old power plants, just much faster and much more violent.
Nobody on Remnant builds these, because Dust does the pushing for you. But if you want to leave the atmosphere, this is how you'd do it. This is the missing piece.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE'S BACK AND HE BROUGHT A LAB
ValeCommuter_22: it's a bigger rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it IS a bigger rocket
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. I'm genuinely impressed. Your numbers are right. H₂/O₂ Isp around 450 in vacuum is standard, mass ratio 8.4 checks out, and the gas generator cycle diagram is basically correct at a conceptual level.
AtlasTechStudent: Also thank you for having actual professionals handle the cryogenics.
SI: I learned my lesson. The eyebrows taught me.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Checking in. Permits are filed, range is licensed, fire crew is on standby. This is the most paperwork I've ever done for something I'm not getting paid for.
grimm_bait_420: THE COP IS BACK
SI: Officer Reyes is the reason any of this is happening. Thank you, genuinely.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Just launch it before my captain asks why I'm on a CCT stream again.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Hi everyone. Lab lead here. Just want to confirm: the kid did the airframe, the lab did the engine and propellant handling. We've been trying to test non-Dust propulsion for eight years. Every single grant proposal got rejected because "why not use Dust." After his last stream, we got funding in a week.
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy funded SCIENCE
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The historical significance of this is not lost on me. A research path abandoned for decades, revived by public interest. This almost never happens. Please do not blow anything up.
GreatHunterPPort: LAUNCH THE MAGNIFICENT BEAST! I have brought snacks!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you are watching a stream. You cannot bring snacks to a stream.
GreatHunterPPort: I have brought them to MY OWN COUCH, Bartholomew!
DustTrader_Mo: as a Dust trader I am now feeling EXTREMELY threatened
VacuoVeteran: the camera in the corner is a great touch. we get to ride along
SI: That's the plan! The camera's in the nose. There's a parachute in the upper section. If everything works, we all get to see what it looks like up there. Live.
* * *
(The lab team finishes fueling. White vapor is now venting steadily from a small valve near the rocket's top. The techs retreat behind the sandbags. The SI walks back to the bunker, and the camera follows him inside, looking out through the window slit at the pad.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Tanks pressurized. All personnel clear. Range is clear. Fire crew in position. We are go for launch.
SI: Okay. This is it.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN
SI: Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
(A deep, roaring hiss, a burst of nearly invisible flame with a faint blue shimmer, and a billowing cloud of white steam engulfs the pad. The rocket lifts off smoothly, faster than anyone expects, and climbs straight up into the evening sky with a steady, ripping roar.)
(In the corner window, the nose camera shows the pad falling away. The field shrinks. The sandbags, the bunker, the fence all become tiny. Then the roads. Then the city of Vale, glittering in the distance, drawn in lines of light. The horizon begins to curve very slightly as the rocket climbs.)
(The engine cuts out. For a moment, the camera tumbles slowly, and the view rolls across the darkening sky.)
(And there it is. Hanging above the horizon, huge and pale and broken, the shattered moon. Clearer than anyone has ever seen it from the ground, its fragments sharp against a sky that's darkening toward black.)
(The camera holds on it for three seconds. Then the parachute pops, the view jerks, and the rocket begins to drift slowly back down.)
* * *
grimm_bait_420: THE MOON
HunterWannabe_Tom: OH MY GODS
MistralMom_Jenna: I'm crying. Why am I crying.
VacuoVeteran: you can see the edges. you can actually see the broken edges
AtlasTechStudent: Peak altitude reads roughly six kilometers from the telemetry. That's... that's excellent for a vehicle that size.
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: (staring at the monitor, voice shaking slightly) It worked. It worked. No Dust. It worked.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Nominal flight. Clean burn. Parachute deployed. We're recovering the vehicle now. This is the first successful non-Dust liquid-fueled flight on record in Vale in, as far as we can tell, decades.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like to say something, and I would like it recorded.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: That image of the moon, from above the lower atmosphere, taken by a rocket that used no Dust whatsoever, is the most historically significant thing I have ever seen on a public broadcast.
GreatHunterPPort: I dropped my snacks.
grimm_bait_420: port dropped his snacks. this is a historic day.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Worth the paperwork. Completely worth the paperwork.
DustTrader_Mo: I'm quitting my job and joining the space program
FaunusRights_Now: we saw the moon. we SAW it. from UP there.
anon_viewer_4471: A beautiful flight. And a clear view. Most people only ever see it from below.
grimm_bait_420: anon's being nice for once??
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon had a moment
SI: ...thank you. Yeah. It was beautiful.
anon_viewer_4471: It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it.
FaunusRights_Now: and there it is
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon could not resist
SI: (quiet, looking at the frozen frame of the moon) ...Okay. Summary. And then I'm going to go outside and look at it again.
The fuel: Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Best chemical fuel efficiency there is. Mass ratio to orbit about eight to one. Exhaust is just water. Extremely hard to handle, which is why professionals did it.
The pump: Big rockets can't just rely on tank pressure. You burn a little of your own fuel to spin a turbine, which spins a pump, which feeds the main engine. The rocket powers itself. That's the piece Remnant never built, because Dust did the pushing.
The result: Six kilometers. No Dust. And the clearest view of the moon anyone's ever had from Remnant.
The big one: Space was never impossible. We just stopped trying the moment Dust failed. Everything we needed to get up there already existed.
AtlasTechStudent: I've been arguing with you for three months. I have no arguments tonight.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: No grade. This is not a thing that should be graded. This is a thing that should be remembered.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket. and it's the moon.
SI: Yeah, Vale guy. It's both. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 62,941]
* * *
(The camera opens on a very different field. Flat, fenced, with a concrete pad, a blast wall made of sandbags, and a small bunker with a window slit. Three people in university lab jackets are moving around the pad. In the center stands a sleek, white rocket about the height of a grown man, gleaming under floodlights. Its body is smooth, machined aluminum. Beside it on a cart sit two tall insulated dewars, frosting and venting faint white vapor. A small inset window in the corner of the stream shows a live feed from a camera inside the rocket's nose, currently pointed at the sky.)
(The SI walks into frame. His eyebrows have grown back, mostly.)
SI: Hi everyone. Yes, the eyebrows are back. Seventy percent. We're healing.
It's been a month. A lot happened. Remember Officer Reyes? After the last stream, she put me in touch with the propulsion group at Vale University, the same lab that took the hydrazine off my hands. Turns out they'd been wanting to test a non-Dust engine for years and could never get funding, because, and I quote their department head, "every grant committee asks why we're not just using Dust."
After the last stream went viral, they got funding.
So this time, they're in charge of anything dangerous. I'm the guy who machined the body on a CNC mill over about three hundred hours, and who's going to explain the math. Please meet the actual professionals.
(One of the lab techs waves at the camera without looking up from a checklist.)
SI: The white vapor you see is from those two dewars. One is liquid hydrogen. One is liquid oxygen. Both are extremely cold. The lab team handles them in full gear. I am not allowed within ten meters, which honestly, fair.
Board time.
* * *
FUEL COMPARISON (vacuum Isp, approximate)
Sugar motor: ~130 s, mass ratio to orbit ~1,600 : 1
Hydrazine / N₂O₄: ~330 s, mass ratio ~18 : 1
Liquid H₂ / Liquid O₂: ~450 s, mass ratio ~8.4 : 1
THE REACTION: 2 H₂ + O₂ → 2 H₂O. Exhaust is literally water vapor. Very hot. Very fast. No toxic exhaust.
THE MATH: Exhaust velocity ≈ 450 × 9.81 ≈ 4.4 km/s. Mass ratio = e^(9.4 / 4.41) ≈ 8.4. For every ~8 kg on the pad, ~1 kg reaches orbit. Less than half of hydrazine's requirement.
THE CATCH: Hydrogen is extremely light, so very large tanks. Must stay extremely cold (–253 °C) or it boils off. Leaks. Hard to handle. Best efficiency, worst logistics.
* * *
SI: So last time I said hydrazine could get you to orbit with staging. That's true. But hydrogen and oxygen is the best chemical fuel there is, efficiency-wise. Mass ratio drops from eighteen to about eight. That's the difference between "maybe with a huge rocket" and "genuinely doable."
And the exhaust is water. Hydrogen plus oxygen, burned together, makes steam. That's it. Compared to hydrazine, where the fuel itself can poison you, this is way cleaner.
The catch is handling. Hydrogen's so light that you need massive tanks to carry enough. And it has to stay at about minus two hundred fifty degrees or it just boils away. That's why there's a lab team and why I'm standing way over here.
Now. Second board.
* * *
(He flips a second board around. On it is a hand-drawn schematic: two tanks at the top, lines running down into a small spinning assembly labelled TURBINE / PUMP, and from there into a combustion chamber and a bell-shaped nozzle. A side branch splits off a small line into a box labelled "gas generator," with an arrow pointing to the turbine.)
HOW DO YOU GET FUEL INTO THE ENGINE FAST ENOUGH?
Small rockets (like today's): Pressurize the tanks. Gas pressure pushes fuel into the engine. Simple. Heavy tanks.
Big rockets: Pressure alone isn't enough. You need a pump. But pumps need power. Where does the power come from?
Burn a little bit of the fuel in a small side chamber (gas generator). Hot gas spins a turbine. Turbine spins the pump on the same shaft. Pump shoves huge amounts of fuel into the main engine.
The rocket powers its own fuel pump by burning a small fraction of its own fuel. No Dust. No outside power. Self-sustaining.
* * *
SI: This one's the part I'm most excited about. Today's rocket is small enough that we just pressurize the tanks and let the gas push fuel into the engine. But for a real orbital rocket, you need to move enormous amounts of fuel per second, and pressure alone can't do it without the tanks weighing a ton.
So you put in a pump. And you power that pump by spinning a turbine with a tiny bit of your own burning fuel. The rocket feeds itself. It's the same idea as the steam turbines in old power plants, just much faster and much more violent.
Nobody on Remnant builds these, because Dust does the pushing for you. But if you want to leave the atmosphere, this is how you'd do it. This is the missing piece.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE'S BACK AND HE BROUGHT A LAB
ValeCommuter_22: it's a bigger rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it IS a bigger rocket
AtlasTechStudent: Okay. I'm genuinely impressed. Your numbers are right. H₂/O₂ Isp around 450 in vacuum is standard, mass ratio 8.4 checks out, and the gas generator cycle diagram is basically correct at a conceptual level.
AtlasTechStudent: Also thank you for having actual professionals handle the cryogenics.
SI: I learned my lesson. The eyebrows taught me.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Checking in. Permits are filed, range is licensed, fire crew is on standby. This is the most paperwork I've ever done for something I'm not getting paid for.
grimm_bait_420: THE COP IS BACK
SI: Officer Reyes is the reason any of this is happening. Thank you, genuinely.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Just launch it before my captain asks why I'm on a CCT stream again.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Hi everyone. Lab lead here. Just want to confirm: the kid did the airframe, the lab did the engine and propellant handling. We've been trying to test non-Dust propulsion for eight years. Every single grant proposal got rejected because "why not use Dust." After his last stream, we got funding in a week.
HunterWannabe_Tom: stream guy funded SCIENCE
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: The historical significance of this is not lost on me. A research path abandoned for decades, revived by public interest. This almost never happens. Please do not blow anything up.
GreatHunterPPort: LAUNCH THE MAGNIFICENT BEAST! I have brought snacks!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, you are watching a stream. You cannot bring snacks to a stream.
GreatHunterPPort: I have brought them to MY OWN COUCH, Bartholomew!
DustTrader_Mo: as a Dust trader I am now feeling EXTREMELY threatened
VacuoVeteran: the camera in the corner is a great touch. we get to ride along
SI: That's the plan! The camera's in the nose. There's a parachute in the upper section. If everything works, we all get to see what it looks like up there. Live.
* * *
(The lab team finishes fueling. White vapor is now venting steadily from a small valve near the rocket's top. The techs retreat behind the sandbags. The SI walks back to the bunker, and the camera follows him inside, looking out through the window slit at the pad.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Tanks pressurized. All personnel clear. Range is clear. Fire crew in position. We are go for launch.
SI: Okay. This is it.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN
SI: Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
(A deep, roaring hiss, a burst of nearly invisible flame with a faint blue shimmer, and a billowing cloud of white steam engulfs the pad. The rocket lifts off smoothly, faster than anyone expects, and climbs straight up into the evening sky with a steady, ripping roar.)
(In the corner window, the nose camera shows the pad falling away. The field shrinks. The sandbags, the bunker, the fence all become tiny. Then the roads. Then the city of Vale, glittering in the distance, drawn in lines of light. The horizon begins to curve very slightly as the rocket climbs.)
(The engine cuts out. For a moment, the camera tumbles slowly, and the view rolls across the darkening sky.)
(And there it is. Hanging above the horizon, huge and pale and broken, the shattered moon. Clearer than anyone has ever seen it from the ground, its fragments sharp against a sky that's darkening toward black.)
(The camera holds on it for three seconds. Then the parachute pops, the view jerks, and the rocket begins to drift slowly back down.)
* * *
grimm_bait_420: THE MOON
HunterWannabe_Tom: OH MY GODS
MistralMom_Jenna: I'm crying. Why am I crying.
VacuoVeteran: you can see the edges. you can actually see the broken edges
AtlasTechStudent: Peak altitude reads roughly six kilometers from the telemetry. That's... that's excellent for a vehicle that size.
ValeCommuter_22: it's the moon
SI: (staring at the monitor, voice shaking slightly) It worked. It worked. No Dust. It worked.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Nominal flight. Clean burn. Parachute deployed. We're recovering the vehicle now. This is the first successful non-Dust liquid-fueled flight on record in Vale in, as far as we can tell, decades.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like to say something, and I would like it recorded.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: That image of the moon, from above the lower atmosphere, taken by a rocket that used no Dust whatsoever, is the most historically significant thing I have ever seen on a public broadcast.
GreatHunterPPort: I dropped my snacks.
grimm_bait_420: port dropped his snacks. this is a historic day.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Worth the paperwork. Completely worth the paperwork.
DustTrader_Mo: I'm quitting my job and joining the space program
FaunusRights_Now: we saw the moon. we SAW it. from UP there.
anon_viewer_4471: A beautiful flight. And a clear view. Most people only ever see it from below.
grimm_bait_420: anon's being nice for once??
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon had a moment
SI: ...thank you. Yeah. It was beautiful.
anon_viewer_4471: It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it.
FaunusRights_Now: and there it is
HunterWannabe_Tom: anon could not resist
SI: (quiet, looking at the frozen frame of the moon) ...Okay. Summary. And then I'm going to go outside and look at it again.
The fuel: Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Best chemical fuel efficiency there is. Mass ratio to orbit about eight to one. Exhaust is just water. Extremely hard to handle, which is why professionals did it.
The pump: Big rockets can't just rely on tank pressure. You burn a little of your own fuel to spin a turbine, which spins a pump, which feeds the main engine. The rocket powers itself. That's the piece Remnant never built, because Dust did the pushing.
The result: Six kilometers. No Dust. And the clearest view of the moon anyone's ever had from Remnant.
The big one: Space was never impossible. We just stopped trying the moment Dust failed. Everything we needed to get up there already existed.
AtlasTechStudent: I've been arguing with you for three months. I have no arguments tonight.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: No grade. This is not a thing that should be graded. This is a thing that should be remembered.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a rocket. and it's the moon.
SI: Yeah, Vale guy. It's both. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 62,941]
Chapter 20: Remarkable
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
Beacon Academy — Lecture Hall 3B, History of Remnant, 8:30 AM
Half an hour early, and the hall was past capacity. Students stood along the back wall. Two Atlas exchange students had brought folding stools. Someone had taped a printout of the moon, taken from the rocket's nose camera, to the door.
Doctor Oobleck stepped inside, took one look, and said simply, "Homework first."
Nobody groaned this time. They were too busy staring at the paused frame already glowing on the projector screen: the broken moon, sharp and pale against a darkening sky.
Oobleck turned off the projector. "Homework first," he repeated. "It will still be there in twenty minutes. It has been there for all of recorded history."
* * *
The presentations were quick, and better than he expected.
Ruby had found records of old mechanical weapons: spring-loaded crossbows, compressed-air rifles, clockwork repeaters. "They worked," she said, practically glowing. "They just weren't as strong as Dust rounds. So everyone stopped making them. But you could still use them if Dust ran out!"
Nora presented pre-Dust fireworks. "People made rockets with powder before Dust! They were for festivals! Then Dust fireworks were brighter, so everyone forgot!" She paused. "The streamer basically rediscovered festival science."
"That is a surprisingly apt summary, Miss Valkyrie."
Blake had researched Faunus herbal medicine, old remedies from mining communities that fell out of use when Dust-infused treatments became common. "Some of them actually worked," she said quietly. "Nobody studied them properly, because nobody thought they needed to."
Jaune, a little sheepishly, presented his family's sword. "Crocea Mors doesn't use Dust at all. It's just steel. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Great War with it. People told me it was outdated." He shrugged. "Turns out it's just... a different path."
Oobleck nodded slowly. "A sword that has outlived every Dust weapon designed alongside it. An excellent example, Mister Arc."
Then Weiss stood, and the room noticed immediately that she was holding a sealed envelope.
"I researched gas lighting," she said. "Cities used to be lit by gas lamps before Dust lighting replaced them. It was cheaper and cleaner for a while. And then Dust lamps took over within about twenty years." She hesitated. "I wanted to know why so fast. So I wrote to the refiners at my family's company, like I said I would. About the angry batches. And about history."
She held up the envelope.
"One of the oldest refiners wrote back. He said the Schnee Dust Company, generations ago, lobbied several city councils to phase out gas lighting. It was legal. It was business. But the gas lamps weren't failing. They were replaced." She lowered the envelope. "It was path dependence. Partly by design."
The room was very quiet.
"That," Oobleck said softly, "took courage to present, Miss Schnee."
"It's history," Weiss said, a little stiffly. "History is supposed to be accurate." She sat down. Blake, next to her, didn't say anything. She just shifted her chair a few inches closer.
* * *
"And now," Oobleck said, turning the projector back on, "the stream."
* * *
The room watched the lab team, the dewars, the frosting vapor. Weiss copied the new blackboard as fast as the camera would allow.
"Eight point four," she murmured. "Mass ratio of eight point four. That's less than half of hydrazine."
"Is that good?" Ruby asked.
"It's the best chemical number there is." Weiss looked up. "It means it's actually possible."
When the schematic of the turbine and pump appeared, Ruby leaned forward so far she nearly fell out of her seat.
"It powers its own pump," she whispered. "It burns a little bit of fuel to spin the thing that feeds it more fuel. That's so cool."
"It's a self-sustaining system," Ren said. "Like a heart."
"A rocket heart," Nora said reverently.
When ValeU_PropulsionLab announced that they'd been denied funding for eight years because "why not use Dust," the room turned, almost in unison, toward Weiss.
She didn't look away this time. "I know," she said quietly. "I know."
* * *
Then the countdown began.
Nobody talked. Nobody moved. Even the Atlas students on their stools were leaning forward.
Three. Two. One.
The rocket lifted off in its cloud of steam. The corner window showed the ground falling away, Vale shrinking to a web of light, the horizon beginning to bend.
The engine cut. The camera tumbled.
And the moon rolled into view, huge and broken and closer than any of them had ever seen it.
The lecture hall didn't erupt. It went completely, perfectly silent.
Ruby's hand went to her mouth. Yang, beside her, reached over without looking and squeezed her sister's shoulder. Blake had stopped breathing. Weiss's pen had frozen mid-word. Nora, for the first time anyone could remember, made no sound at all.
Pyrrha sat very still, looking up at the screen, her eyes bright.
The frame held for three seconds. Then the parachute popped, and the camera began its slow descent.
Only then did someone in the back begin to clap. And then everyone was clapping, not cheering, just clapping, steadily, for a long time.
* * *
Oobleck stopped the video on the frozen image of the moon.
He didn't say anything for a while. He simply stood beside the screen, thermos forgotten on the podium, looking at it.
"In all my years of study," he said finally, "I have looked at every surviving depiction of the moon that exists. Carvings. Paintings. Photographs. Observatory plates." He paused. "None of them look like this. None of them were taken from above."
"You said it should be remembered," Jaune said. "In the chat. Not graded. Remembered."
"I did, Mister Arc."
"Why?"
Oobleck turned to face the room.
"Because history is not only what happened," he said. "History is also the moment when someone looks again. When a thing everyone has stopped seeing is suddenly seen. That image is a record, not of the moon, but of humanity deciding to look up again after decades of looking down at the ground and the Dust in it." He took a breath. "Those moments are rare. And they are almost never recognized at the time."
* * *
"Discuss," he said, more quietly than usual.
Ruby raised her hand.
"Miss Rose."
"I've looked at the moon every night my whole life," she said. "Dad used to tell us stories about it. And I never thought I'd see it like that." She blinked hard. "It felt like... like it was closer. Like we could actually get there someday."
"Perhaps we can," Oobleck said. "The mathematics says we could."
"I want to talk about the lab," Weiss said. "They were ready for eight years. The knowledge was there. The engineering was there. The only thing missing was someone willing to pay for it." She looked down at the envelope in front of her. "And people like my family made sure nobody wanted to."
"That's not your fault," Blake said.
"No," Weiss said. "But it's my name." She was quiet a moment. "I'm going to find out what else we replaced."
Blake looked at her for a long moment. "I'll help," she said.
* * *
"The anonymous viewer," Oobleck said, before Blake could raise her hand. "Go on, Miss Belladonna. I know you want to."
A few students laughed softly. Blake almost smiled.
"'It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it,'" she quoted. "That's the first time anon's ever sounded... sad. Every other time, it was a warning, or a question. This time it sounded like someone who's been looking at the moon for a very long time."
"People can be melancholy online," Yang said.
"They can," Blake agreed. "But 'that is the trouble with it.' Why would the moon being beautiful be trouble?"
Nobody had an answer.
Pyrrha, near the front, was very still. She had written the line down, beneath the others in her notebook margin. Her pen was resting on the page, and she didn't seem to have noticed she'd stopped writing.
"Miss Nikos?" Oobleck asked gently.
"Sorry," Pyrrha said. She looked up, composed. "I was just thinking it's a strange thing to say about something beautiful. That's all."
"It is," Oobleck said. He watched her a moment longer than he meant to.
* * *
The door at the back of the hall opened quietly.
Heads turned. And one by one, the students straightened in their seats, because standing in the doorway, cane in one hand and mug in the other, was Headmaster Ozpin.
"Please," Ozpin said mildly, raising a hand. "Don't let me interrupt. I was told this is the most popular lecture at Beacon. I wanted to see why."
"Headmaster," Oobleck said, and for the first time in anyone's memory, he sounded slightly flustered. "We were... discussing the most recent broadcast."
"So I gathered." Ozpin's gaze moved past him to the frozen frame on the screen.
He stood there, quite still, looking at the broken moon as seen from six kilometers above Remnant.
He didn't say anything. His expression didn't change in any way the students could name. But he looked at it for a long time. Longer than someone looking at a photograph usually does.
"Remarkable," he said at last, very softly. "Truly."
Then he turned to the class, and his usual mild smile returned.
"You're fortunate to have a teacher who encourages you to look again at things everyone else stopped seeing," he said. "Doctor Oobleck is right. These moments are rare. Pay attention to them." He nodded to Oobleck. "Carry on, Bartholomew."
And he was gone as quietly as he'd come.
* * *
The room stayed silent for a few seconds after the door closed.
"...Was that weird?" Jaune whispered. "That felt weird."
"He looked at it for a really long time," Ruby said.
"It's a really good picture," Yang said.
Blake didn't say anything. But she was looking at the door.
Pyrrha was looking at it too.
* * *
"No assignment," Oobleck said at last, recovering. "Not this week. Instead, go outside tonight. All of you. Look at the moon. Really look at it." He paused. "And remember that someone, this month, looked at it from above, with no Dust at all, simply because they refused to accept that it couldn't be done. Dismissed."
The students filed out slowly, talking in low voices.
"We're going to the roof tonight," Ruby said. "All of us. Team RWBY. And JNPR too. Everyone."
"It's cold," Weiss said.
"We'll bring blankets."
"...Fine," Weiss said, and nobody believed she was annoyed.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck took out his notebook, unlocked it, and turned to his list.
He added, beneath the last entry:
Rocket 2. Six kilometers. No Dust. First image of the moon from above.
anon: "It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it."
Headmaster came to class. Looked at the image for 11 seconds. Said "remarkable."
He paused, pen hovering. Then, slowly, he added one more line.
He did not look surprised by what he saw. He looked like he was remembering something.
Oobleck looked at that sentence for a long, long time.
Then he closed the notebook, locked it in the drawer, and sat alone in the empty lecture hall, staring at the frozen image of the moon until the projector bulb began to dim.
* * *
Beacon Academy — Headmaster's Office, CCT Tower, 11:58 PM
High above the academy, the gears turned.
Ozpin stood at his window, cocoa cooling in his hand, looking up at the broken moon hanging over Vale. On his desk, a tablet glowed with a single paused frame: the same moon, seen from six kilometers up, taken by a rocket that had used no Dust at all.
Far below, on the roof of the dormitories, he could just make out a cluster of small figures huddled under blankets, pointing upward.
He watched them for a while.
"Most people only ever see it from below," he murmured.
Then he turned away from the window, sat down at his desk, and did not sleep for a long time.
Half an hour early, and the hall was past capacity. Students stood along the back wall. Two Atlas exchange students had brought folding stools. Someone had taped a printout of the moon, taken from the rocket's nose camera, to the door.
Doctor Oobleck stepped inside, took one look, and said simply, "Homework first."
Nobody groaned this time. They were too busy staring at the paused frame already glowing on the projector screen: the broken moon, sharp and pale against a darkening sky.
Oobleck turned off the projector. "Homework first," he repeated. "It will still be there in twenty minutes. It has been there for all of recorded history."
* * *
The presentations were quick, and better than he expected.
Ruby had found records of old mechanical weapons: spring-loaded crossbows, compressed-air rifles, clockwork repeaters. "They worked," she said, practically glowing. "They just weren't as strong as Dust rounds. So everyone stopped making them. But you could still use them if Dust ran out!"
Nora presented pre-Dust fireworks. "People made rockets with powder before Dust! They were for festivals! Then Dust fireworks were brighter, so everyone forgot!" She paused. "The streamer basically rediscovered festival science."
"That is a surprisingly apt summary, Miss Valkyrie."
Blake had researched Faunus herbal medicine, old remedies from mining communities that fell out of use when Dust-infused treatments became common. "Some of them actually worked," she said quietly. "Nobody studied them properly, because nobody thought they needed to."
Jaune, a little sheepishly, presented his family's sword. "Crocea Mors doesn't use Dust at all. It's just steel. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Great War with it. People told me it was outdated." He shrugged. "Turns out it's just... a different path."
Oobleck nodded slowly. "A sword that has outlived every Dust weapon designed alongside it. An excellent example, Mister Arc."
Then Weiss stood, and the room noticed immediately that she was holding a sealed envelope.
"I researched gas lighting," she said. "Cities used to be lit by gas lamps before Dust lighting replaced them. It was cheaper and cleaner for a while. And then Dust lamps took over within about twenty years." She hesitated. "I wanted to know why so fast. So I wrote to the refiners at my family's company, like I said I would. About the angry batches. And about history."
She held up the envelope.
"One of the oldest refiners wrote back. He said the Schnee Dust Company, generations ago, lobbied several city councils to phase out gas lighting. It was legal. It was business. But the gas lamps weren't failing. They were replaced." She lowered the envelope. "It was path dependence. Partly by design."
The room was very quiet.
"That," Oobleck said softly, "took courage to present, Miss Schnee."
"It's history," Weiss said, a little stiffly. "History is supposed to be accurate." She sat down. Blake, next to her, didn't say anything. She just shifted her chair a few inches closer.
* * *
"And now," Oobleck said, turning the projector back on, "the stream."
* * *
The room watched the lab team, the dewars, the frosting vapor. Weiss copied the new blackboard as fast as the camera would allow.
"Eight point four," she murmured. "Mass ratio of eight point four. That's less than half of hydrazine."
"Is that good?" Ruby asked.
"It's the best chemical number there is." Weiss looked up. "It means it's actually possible."
When the schematic of the turbine and pump appeared, Ruby leaned forward so far she nearly fell out of her seat.
"It powers its own pump," she whispered. "It burns a little bit of fuel to spin the thing that feeds it more fuel. That's so cool."
"It's a self-sustaining system," Ren said. "Like a heart."
"A rocket heart," Nora said reverently.
When ValeU_PropulsionLab announced that they'd been denied funding for eight years because "why not use Dust," the room turned, almost in unison, toward Weiss.
She didn't look away this time. "I know," she said quietly. "I know."
* * *
Then the countdown began.
Nobody talked. Nobody moved. Even the Atlas students on their stools were leaning forward.
Three. Two. One.
The rocket lifted off in its cloud of steam. The corner window showed the ground falling away, Vale shrinking to a web of light, the horizon beginning to bend.
The engine cut. The camera tumbled.
And the moon rolled into view, huge and broken and closer than any of them had ever seen it.
The lecture hall didn't erupt. It went completely, perfectly silent.
Ruby's hand went to her mouth. Yang, beside her, reached over without looking and squeezed her sister's shoulder. Blake had stopped breathing. Weiss's pen had frozen mid-word. Nora, for the first time anyone could remember, made no sound at all.
Pyrrha sat very still, looking up at the screen, her eyes bright.
The frame held for three seconds. Then the parachute popped, and the camera began its slow descent.
Only then did someone in the back begin to clap. And then everyone was clapping, not cheering, just clapping, steadily, for a long time.
* * *
Oobleck stopped the video on the frozen image of the moon.
He didn't say anything for a while. He simply stood beside the screen, thermos forgotten on the podium, looking at it.
"In all my years of study," he said finally, "I have looked at every surviving depiction of the moon that exists. Carvings. Paintings. Photographs. Observatory plates." He paused. "None of them look like this. None of them were taken from above."
"You said it should be remembered," Jaune said. "In the chat. Not graded. Remembered."
"I did, Mister Arc."
"Why?"
Oobleck turned to face the room.
"Because history is not only what happened," he said. "History is also the moment when someone looks again. When a thing everyone has stopped seeing is suddenly seen. That image is a record, not of the moon, but of humanity deciding to look up again after decades of looking down at the ground and the Dust in it." He took a breath. "Those moments are rare. And they are almost never recognized at the time."
* * *
"Discuss," he said, more quietly than usual.
Ruby raised her hand.
"Miss Rose."
"I've looked at the moon every night my whole life," she said. "Dad used to tell us stories about it. And I never thought I'd see it like that." She blinked hard. "It felt like... like it was closer. Like we could actually get there someday."
"Perhaps we can," Oobleck said. "The mathematics says we could."
"I want to talk about the lab," Weiss said. "They were ready for eight years. The knowledge was there. The engineering was there. The only thing missing was someone willing to pay for it." She looked down at the envelope in front of her. "And people like my family made sure nobody wanted to."
"That's not your fault," Blake said.
"No," Weiss said. "But it's my name." She was quiet a moment. "I'm going to find out what else we replaced."
Blake looked at her for a long moment. "I'll help," she said.
* * *
"The anonymous viewer," Oobleck said, before Blake could raise her hand. "Go on, Miss Belladonna. I know you want to."
A few students laughed softly. Blake almost smiled.
"'It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it,'" she quoted. "That's the first time anon's ever sounded... sad. Every other time, it was a warning, or a question. This time it sounded like someone who's been looking at the moon for a very long time."
"People can be melancholy online," Yang said.
"They can," Blake agreed. "But 'that is the trouble with it.' Why would the moon being beautiful be trouble?"
Nobody had an answer.
Pyrrha, near the front, was very still. She had written the line down, beneath the others in her notebook margin. Her pen was resting on the page, and she didn't seem to have noticed she'd stopped writing.
"Miss Nikos?" Oobleck asked gently.
"Sorry," Pyrrha said. She looked up, composed. "I was just thinking it's a strange thing to say about something beautiful. That's all."
"It is," Oobleck said. He watched her a moment longer than he meant to.
* * *
The door at the back of the hall opened quietly.
Heads turned. And one by one, the students straightened in their seats, because standing in the doorway, cane in one hand and mug in the other, was Headmaster Ozpin.
"Please," Ozpin said mildly, raising a hand. "Don't let me interrupt. I was told this is the most popular lecture at Beacon. I wanted to see why."
"Headmaster," Oobleck said, and for the first time in anyone's memory, he sounded slightly flustered. "We were... discussing the most recent broadcast."
"So I gathered." Ozpin's gaze moved past him to the frozen frame on the screen.
He stood there, quite still, looking at the broken moon as seen from six kilometers above Remnant.
He didn't say anything. His expression didn't change in any way the students could name. But he looked at it for a long time. Longer than someone looking at a photograph usually does.
"Remarkable," he said at last, very softly. "Truly."
Then he turned to the class, and his usual mild smile returned.
"You're fortunate to have a teacher who encourages you to look again at things everyone else stopped seeing," he said. "Doctor Oobleck is right. These moments are rare. Pay attention to them." He nodded to Oobleck. "Carry on, Bartholomew."
And he was gone as quietly as he'd come.
* * *
The room stayed silent for a few seconds after the door closed.
"...Was that weird?" Jaune whispered. "That felt weird."
"He looked at it for a really long time," Ruby said.
"It's a really good picture," Yang said.
Blake didn't say anything. But she was looking at the door.
Pyrrha was looking at it too.
* * *
"No assignment," Oobleck said at last, recovering. "Not this week. Instead, go outside tonight. All of you. Look at the moon. Really look at it." He paused. "And remember that someone, this month, looked at it from above, with no Dust at all, simply because they refused to accept that it couldn't be done. Dismissed."
The students filed out slowly, talking in low voices.
"We're going to the roof tonight," Ruby said. "All of us. Team RWBY. And JNPR too. Everyone."
"It's cold," Weiss said.
"We'll bring blankets."
"...Fine," Weiss said, and nobody believed she was annoyed.
* * *
When the hall was empty, Oobleck took out his notebook, unlocked it, and turned to his list.
He added, beneath the last entry:
Rocket 2. Six kilometers. No Dust. First image of the moon from above.
anon: "It is always beautiful. That is the trouble with it."
Headmaster came to class. Looked at the image for 11 seconds. Said "remarkable."
He paused, pen hovering. Then, slowly, he added one more line.
He did not look surprised by what he saw. He looked like he was remembering something.
Oobleck looked at that sentence for a long, long time.
Then he closed the notebook, locked it in the drawer, and sat alone in the empty lecture hall, staring at the frozen image of the moon until the projector bulb began to dim.
* * *
Beacon Academy — Headmaster's Office, CCT Tower, 11:58 PM
High above the academy, the gears turned.
Ozpin stood at his window, cocoa cooling in his hand, looking up at the broken moon hanging over Vale. On his desk, a tablet glowed with a single paused frame: the same moon, seen from six kilometers up, taken by a rocket that had used no Dust at all.
Far below, on the roof of the dormitories, he could just make out a cluster of small figures huddled under blankets, pointing upward.
He watched them for a while.
"Most people only ever see it from below," he murmured.
Then he turned away from the window, sat down at his desk, and did not sleep for a long time.
Chapter 21: One Hundred Thirty-One Kilometers
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
- Messages
- 1,325
- Likes received
- 46,788
[CCT Network — Livestream: "Rocket 3: I was being dumb (two stages, three cameras)" — 👁 71,208 viewers]
* * *
(Same licensed range as before. The concrete pad, the sandbag wall, the bunker. But the rocket on the pad is different now: taller than a person, nearly two and a half meters, and clearly built in two sections. The lower half is thicker, matte black, with a ring of small red-and-yellow Dust cartridges visible through inspection windows near the base. The upper half is the familiar white machined aluminum, venting a thin line of frost. The stream now has three small inset windows along the bottom of the screen, labeled UP, SIDE, and DOWN.)
SI: Hi everyone. So. I owe you an apology. Well, I owe myself an apology.
For two whole streams I've been going "no Dust, no Dust, no Dust." And after the last launch, I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and it hits me. Dust works fine in the atmosphere. It only fails up high. So why was I refusing to use it for the part where it works?
I was so busy proving Dust wasn't necessary that I forgot it's still really, really good. That's path dependence in reverse. I got so attached to not using Dust that I stopped seeing it as an option. So. Hi. I was being dumb.
Today's rocket uses both. Board.
* * *
THE PLAN: TWO STAGES
STAGE 1 — DUST (black section): fire + gravity Dust cartridges, fired in sequence. Huge thrust, cheap, easy to handle. Works great in thick air. Cuts off around ~20 km (Dust stops responding). Target at burnout: ~20 km altitude, ~700 m/s.
STAGE 2 — LIQUID H₂ / LIQUID O₂ (white section): separates after Stage 1 burns out. Lights at ~20 km, where Dust can't work. Burns ~30 s, adds roughly ~900 m/s.
COAST (after Stage 2 burnout): air is extremely thin above ~30 km, so drag is almost zero. Extra height from coasting ≈ v² / (2g) ≈ (1,500 m/s)² / (2 × 9.8) ≈ ~115 km.
PREDICTED PEAK ALTITUDE: ~120–140 km
This is NOT orbit. Orbit needs ~7.8 km/s sideways. We're going straight up and coming straight back down. But ~100 km+ is where the atmosphere effectively ends. This is space.
* * *
SI: So here's the logic. Dust is incredible in the atmosphere. Cheap, powerful, way easier to handle than cryogenic hydrogen. So the black first stage burns Dust the whole way up through the thick air. Around twenty kilometers, the Dust stops responding. The lab has measured that part carefully now, by the way, and I'll show you data later.
That's where Stage One drops off, and the white stage lights up. Hydrogen and oxygen don't care how high they are. They bring their own oxidizer. So Stage Two takes over right where Dust gives up.
Once Stage Two burns out, the air is so thin that there's basically nothing slowing the rocket down. It just coasts upward on momentum. And if the math is right, it coasts all the way past a hundred kilometers.
Which is space. Not orbit, I want to be super clear. We're not staying up there. But it'll touch space and come back.
And that's why there are three cameras. One looking up. One looking sideways. One looking down. We're going to see what it looks like.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE'S USING DUST NOW LMAOOO
HunterWannabe_Tom: the redemption arc for Dust
DustTrader_Mo: DUST IS BACK BABY. I AM NO LONGER THREATENED.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Dust rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it's HALF a Dust rocket
ValeCommuter_22: it's half a Dust rocket
AtlasTechStudent: This is exactly what real launch design would do. Use the cheapest, most powerful propulsion for the low stage and the most efficient for the upper stage. You've basically reinvented staging strategy.
AtlasTechStudent: Coasting math is a simplification, but at those altitudes drag is negligible. 120–140 km is plausible.
SI: Thank you, Atlas guy. Your approval means a lot at this point.
AtlasTechStudent: Don't make it weird.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Lab lead here. Quick note for viewers: we put sensors on the Dust cartridges during test burns. Dust output starts dropping noticeably around 15 km and falls off sharply near 20. It doesn't cut off like a switch. It fades. Like it's losing contact with something.
SI: "Losing contact with something." Yeah, I've been thinking about that sentence for a week.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like it noted that "losing contact with something" is a description, not an explanation. That said, I also find it very interesting.
GreatHunterPPort: THE DUST LONGS FOR HOME! I SAID THIS MONTHS AGO!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, please.
GreatHunterPPort: THE DATA SUPPORTS ME, BARTHOLOMEW!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: ...The data is consistent with a gradual weakening. Which is not longing.
grimm_bait_420: port finally has DATA
SDC_Official: The Schnee Dust Company is proud to note that the Dust powering today's first stage was sourced from SDC mines. We congratulate the team and look forward to continued Dust-powered innovation.
grimm_bait_420: OH NO
HunterWannabe_Tom: the corporation has entered the chat
FaunusRights_Now: "continued Dust-powered innovation" lmao the lab got rejected for 8 years for NOT using Dust
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I'm the guy who literally packed that shipment and I promise the company didn't know what it was for until this morning
SDC_Official: [message deleted]
grimm_bait_420: SDC DELETED THEIR MESSAGE
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Permits filed, airspace cleared up to unlimited altitude for a ten-minute window, which took three weeks and a phone call to Atlas air traffic. You're welcome. Launch before the window closes.
SI: Officer Reyes, you're a legend.
* * *
(The lab team finishes fueling the upper stage. White vapor streams off the top. Everyone retreats. The SI heads into the bunker. The three camera insets flicker: UP shows darkening evening sky; SIDE shows the range fence and the distant tree line; DOWN shows the concrete pad beneath the engine nozzle.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Stage two tanks pressurized. Stage one Dust cartridges armed. Range clear. Airspace window open. We are go.
SI: Okay. Here we go.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN
SI: Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
(The base of the rocket erupts in a blinding burst of red-orange flame, laced with faint purple distortion from the gravity Dust. The roar is louder than anything the stream has broadcast before. The rocket tears off the pad and rockets upward, a pillar of fire and smoke trailing behind it.)
(DOWN camera: the pad drops away instantly. The range shrinks. The forest becomes a green carpet. Vale's rooftops appear in the distance, then Vale itself, small as a toy city.)
(SIDE camera: the horizon tilts slightly and holds steady. The sky shifts from pale blue to deep blue.)
(UP camera: the sky darkens. And darkens.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Ten kilometers. Stage one nominal.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Fifteen. Dust output dropping. As predicted.
(The flame at the base begins to flicker and sputter, the red growing dim and patchy.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Nineteen... twenty. Stage one burnout. Separation.
(DOWN camera: a jolt. The black first stage falls away beneath, tumbling, a small parachute blossoming from its top as it drops toward the ground.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Stage two ignition.
(A nearly invisible blue-white flame flares from the white upper stage. The rocket surges upward again.)
(SIDE camera: the horizon begins to curve. Visibly. Unmistakably. Below the black sky, a thin, glowing band of blue hugs the edge of the world.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Forty kilometers. Sixty. Stage two burnout. Coasting.
(Silence. The engines are off. The rocket climbs on momentum alone.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Eighty.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred and ten.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: ...one hundred and twenty...
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred and thirty-one kilometers. Apogee.
* * *
(All three cameras, at once
(DOWN: Remnant. Not a map. Not a painting. The curve of the whole continent of Sanus spread below, green and brown and white-capped, with the gleaming speck of Vale on the coast. Clouds drift in slow swirls over an impossibly blue ocean. Far to the edges of the frame, other landmasses, some familiar from maps, some faint and unfamiliar at the horizon, fade into haze.)
(SIDE: the edge of the world. A razor-thin line of glowing atmosphere, blue fading to black, and above it, nothing. Pure, total darkness. The stars are out, in daytime, sharper than anyone on Remnant has ever seen them.)
(UP: the moon. Broken. Enormous. Not blurred by a single wisp of air. Every fragment crisp and bright, the jagged edges clear as cut glass, the gaps between them black and empty. Up here, above the atmosphere, it looks close enough to touch.)
(For several seconds, the stream is completely silent. The rocket hangs at the top of its arc.)
(Then, slowly, it begins to fall.)
* * *
SI: (barely audible) ...we're in space.
SI: (a little louder, voice cracking) We're in space. We made it. We actually—
(He stops and doesn't finish. He just watches the three screens.)
* * *
grimm_bait_420: WE'RE IN SPACE
HunterWannabe_Tom: I CAN SEE THE WHOLE CONTINENT
MistralMom_Jenna: I'm sobbing. I'm sobbing at my kitchen table.
VacuoVeteran: the stars. in the daytime. look at the stars.
FaunusRights_Now: the edge of the world is BLUE. it's so thin. it's so THIN.
ValeCommuter_22: it's space
AtlasTechStudent: Telemetry confirms. 131 km. Above the practical boundary of the atmosphere. This is the first image of Remnant from space in recorded history.
AtlasTechStudent: I've been arguing with you for four months. I'm crying at a lab bench.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: We did it. We actually did it. Eight years.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Best paperwork I've ever filed.
GreatHunterPPort: I have no words. I, Peter Port, have NO WORDS.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Nobody say anything to Peter. This is historic.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: And I will say only this. For the entirety of recorded history, humanity has looked at the moon from below and at the land from within. Today, for the first time, someone looked at both from outside. Everything written about this world from now on will be written by people who have seen it from above.
DustTrader_Mo: and DUST helped. DUST GOT IT HALFWAY THERE.
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I packed that Dust. I packed the Dust that went to SPACE. Well, halfway to space.
grimm_bait_420: warehouse guy is having the best day of his life
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: I've read old texts my whole life that describe the world as a garden. I never imagined I'd see the garden from above.
VacuoVeteran: church guy that's beautiful
anon_viewer_4471: One hundred and thirty-one kilometers. Higher than anyone has been in a very long time.
grimm_bait_420: anon's here
HunterWannabe_Tom: "in a very long time"??? anon what does that MEAN
FaunusRights_Now: anon's implying someone's been up there before???
SI: ...what do you mean "in a very long time"?
anon_viewer_4471: Only that the old space program never reached so high. Congratulations. You've given people something to look up at.
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok that's a normal explanation but anon SAID it in a weird way
FaunusRights_Now: anon always says it in a weird way
SI: Yeah. That's... fair. The old program didn't get this high. Thanks, anon.
* * *
(The UP camera tumbles as the rocket falls. The moon drifts out of frame. Moments later, the parachute deploys, and the white upper stage begins its slow descent back toward Remnant.)
SI: (wiping his face, laughing a little shakily) Okay. Okay. Summary. I'm going to try to get through this without crying again.
The mistake: I refused to use Dust because I wanted to prove it wasn't needed. But Dust works great in the atmosphere. Refusing to use it was its own kind of path dependence.
The fix: Two stages. Dust gets you through the thick air, cheap and powerful, until it fades out around twenty kilometers. Then hydrogen and oxygen take over where Dust can't.
The data: Dust doesn't cut off like a switch. It fades, from about fifteen to twenty kilometers. The lab says it's like it's "losing contact with something." Nobody knows what.
The result: One hundred thirty-one kilometers. Space. Not orbit, just touching it. But we saw it. The whole continent. The edge of the world. Stars in the daytime. And the moon, with nothing in the way.
The big one: We didn't need to choose between Dust and no Dust. We needed both. The old way and the new way, together.
AtlasTechStudent: Best summary you've ever given.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Agreed.
ValeCommuter_22: it's space
SI: It's space, Vale guy. It's really space. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 184,603]
* * *
(Same licensed range as before. The concrete pad, the sandbag wall, the bunker. But the rocket on the pad is different now: taller than a person, nearly two and a half meters, and clearly built in two sections. The lower half is thicker, matte black, with a ring of small red-and-yellow Dust cartridges visible through inspection windows near the base. The upper half is the familiar white machined aluminum, venting a thin line of frost. The stream now has three small inset windows along the bottom of the screen, labeled UP, SIDE, and DOWN.)
SI: Hi everyone. So. I owe you an apology. Well, I owe myself an apology.
For two whole streams I've been going "no Dust, no Dust, no Dust." And after the last launch, I'm lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and it hits me. Dust works fine in the atmosphere. It only fails up high. So why was I refusing to use it for the part where it works?
I was so busy proving Dust wasn't necessary that I forgot it's still really, really good. That's path dependence in reverse. I got so attached to not using Dust that I stopped seeing it as an option. So. Hi. I was being dumb.
Today's rocket uses both. Board.
* * *
THE PLAN: TWO STAGES
STAGE 1 — DUST (black section): fire + gravity Dust cartridges, fired in sequence. Huge thrust, cheap, easy to handle. Works great in thick air. Cuts off around ~20 km (Dust stops responding). Target at burnout: ~20 km altitude, ~700 m/s.
STAGE 2 — LIQUID H₂ / LIQUID O₂ (white section): separates after Stage 1 burns out. Lights at ~20 km, where Dust can't work. Burns ~30 s, adds roughly ~900 m/s.
COAST (after Stage 2 burnout): air is extremely thin above ~30 km, so drag is almost zero. Extra height from coasting ≈ v² / (2g) ≈ (1,500 m/s)² / (2 × 9.8) ≈ ~115 km.
PREDICTED PEAK ALTITUDE: ~120–140 km
This is NOT orbit. Orbit needs ~7.8 km/s sideways. We're going straight up and coming straight back down. But ~100 km+ is where the atmosphere effectively ends. This is space.
* * *
SI: So here's the logic. Dust is incredible in the atmosphere. Cheap, powerful, way easier to handle than cryogenic hydrogen. So the black first stage burns Dust the whole way up through the thick air. Around twenty kilometers, the Dust stops responding. The lab has measured that part carefully now, by the way, and I'll show you data later.
That's where Stage One drops off, and the white stage lights up. Hydrogen and oxygen don't care how high they are. They bring their own oxidizer. So Stage Two takes over right where Dust gives up.
Once Stage Two burns out, the air is so thin that there's basically nothing slowing the rocket down. It just coasts upward on momentum. And if the math is right, it coasts all the way past a hundred kilometers.
Which is space. Not orbit, I want to be super clear. We're not staying up there. But it'll touch space and come back.
And that's why there are three cameras. One looking up. One looking sideways. One looking down. We're going to see what it looks like.
* * *
LIVE CHAT
grimm_bait_420: HE'S USING DUST NOW LMAOOO
HunterWannabe_Tom: the redemption arc for Dust
DustTrader_Mo: DUST IS BACK BABY. I AM NO LONGER THREATENED.
ValeCommuter_22: it's a Dust rocket
SI: @ValeCommuter_22 it's HALF a Dust rocket
ValeCommuter_22: it's half a Dust rocket
AtlasTechStudent: This is exactly what real launch design would do. Use the cheapest, most powerful propulsion for the low stage and the most efficient for the upper stage. You've basically reinvented staging strategy.
AtlasTechStudent: Coasting math is a simplification, but at those altitudes drag is negligible. 120–140 km is plausible.
SI: Thank you, Atlas guy. Your approval means a lot at this point.
AtlasTechStudent: Don't make it weird.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Lab lead here. Quick note for viewers: we put sensors on the Dust cartridges during test burns. Dust output starts dropping noticeably around 15 km and falls off sharply near 20. It doesn't cut off like a switch. It fades. Like it's losing contact with something.
SI: "Losing contact with something." Yeah, I've been thinking about that sentence for a week.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: I would like it noted that "losing contact with something" is a description, not an explanation. That said, I also find it very interesting.
GreatHunterPPort: THE DUST LONGS FOR HOME! I SAID THIS MONTHS AGO!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Peter, please.
GreatHunterPPort: THE DATA SUPPORTS ME, BARTHOLOMEW!
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: ...The data is consistent with a gradual weakening. Which is not longing.
grimm_bait_420: port finally has DATA
SDC_Official: The Schnee Dust Company is proud to note that the Dust powering today's first stage was sourced from SDC mines. We congratulate the team and look forward to continued Dust-powered innovation.
grimm_bait_420: OH NO
HunterWannabe_Tom: the corporation has entered the chat
FaunusRights_Now: "continued Dust-powered innovation" lmao the lab got rejected for 8 years for NOT using Dust
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I'm the guy who literally packed that shipment and I promise the company didn't know what it was for until this morning
SDC_Official: [message deleted]
grimm_bait_420: SDC DELETED THEIR MESSAGE
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Permits filed, airspace cleared up to unlimited altitude for a ten-minute window, which took three weeks and a phone call to Atlas air traffic. You're welcome. Launch before the window closes.
SI: Officer Reyes, you're a legend.
* * *
(The lab team finishes fueling the upper stage. White vapor streams off the top. Everyone retreats. The SI heads into the bunker. The three camera insets flicker: UP shows darkening evening sky; SIDE shows the range fence and the distant tree line; DOWN shows the concrete pad beneath the engine nozzle.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Stage two tanks pressurized. Stage one Dust cartridges armed. Range clear. Airspace window open. We are go.
SI: Okay. Here we go.
grimm_bait_420: COUNTDOWN
SI: Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
(The base of the rocket erupts in a blinding burst of red-orange flame, laced with faint purple distortion from the gravity Dust. The roar is louder than anything the stream has broadcast before. The rocket tears off the pad and rockets upward, a pillar of fire and smoke trailing behind it.)
(DOWN camera: the pad drops away instantly. The range shrinks. The forest becomes a green carpet. Vale's rooftops appear in the distance, then Vale itself, small as a toy city.)
(SIDE camera: the horizon tilts slightly and holds steady. The sky shifts from pale blue to deep blue.)
(UP camera: the sky darkens. And darkens.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Ten kilometers. Stage one nominal.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Fifteen. Dust output dropping. As predicted.
(The flame at the base begins to flicker and sputter, the red growing dim and patchy.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Nineteen... twenty. Stage one burnout. Separation.
(DOWN camera: a jolt. The black first stage falls away beneath, tumbling, a small parachute blossoming from its top as it drops toward the ground.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Stage two ignition.
(A nearly invisible blue-white flame flares from the white upper stage. The rocket surges upward again.)
(SIDE camera: the horizon begins to curve. Visibly. Unmistakably. Below the black sky, a thin, glowing band of blue hugs the edge of the world.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Forty kilometers. Sixty. Stage two burnout. Coasting.
(Silence. The engines are off. The rocket climbs on momentum alone.)
ValeU_PropulsionLab: Eighty.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred and ten.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: ...one hundred and twenty...
ValeU_PropulsionLab: One hundred and thirty-one kilometers. Apogee.
* * *
(All three cameras, at once
(DOWN: Remnant. Not a map. Not a painting. The curve of the whole continent of Sanus spread below, green and brown and white-capped, with the gleaming speck of Vale on the coast. Clouds drift in slow swirls over an impossibly blue ocean. Far to the edges of the frame, other landmasses, some familiar from maps, some faint and unfamiliar at the horizon, fade into haze.)
(SIDE: the edge of the world. A razor-thin line of glowing atmosphere, blue fading to black, and above it, nothing. Pure, total darkness. The stars are out, in daytime, sharper than anyone on Remnant has ever seen them.)
(UP: the moon. Broken. Enormous. Not blurred by a single wisp of air. Every fragment crisp and bright, the jagged edges clear as cut glass, the gaps between them black and empty. Up here, above the atmosphere, it looks close enough to touch.)
(For several seconds, the stream is completely silent. The rocket hangs at the top of its arc.)
(Then, slowly, it begins to fall.)
* * *
SI: (barely audible) ...we're in space.
SI: (a little louder, voice cracking) We're in space. We made it. We actually—
(He stops and doesn't finish. He just watches the three screens.)
* * *
grimm_bait_420: WE'RE IN SPACE
HunterWannabe_Tom: I CAN SEE THE WHOLE CONTINENT
MistralMom_Jenna: I'm sobbing. I'm sobbing at my kitchen table.
VacuoVeteran: the stars. in the daytime. look at the stars.
FaunusRights_Now: the edge of the world is BLUE. it's so thin. it's so THIN.
ValeCommuter_22: it's space
AtlasTechStudent: Telemetry confirms. 131 km. Above the practical boundary of the atmosphere. This is the first image of Remnant from space in recorded history.
AtlasTechStudent: I've been arguing with you for four months. I'm crying at a lab bench.
ValeU_PropulsionLab: We did it. We actually did it. Eight years.
VPD_Officer_Reyes: Best paperwork I've ever filed.
GreatHunterPPort: I have no words. I, Peter Port, have NO WORDS.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Nobody say anything to Peter. This is historic.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: And I will say only this. For the entirety of recorded history, humanity has looked at the moon from below and at the land from within. Today, for the first time, someone looked at both from outside. Everything written about this world from now on will be written by people who have seen it from above.
DustTrader_Mo: and DUST helped. DUST GOT IT HALFWAY THERE.
SDC_Warehouse_Guy: I packed that Dust. I packed the Dust that went to SPACE. Well, halfway to space.
grimm_bait_420: warehouse guy is having the best day of his life
ChurchOfTheBrothers_Anon: I've read old texts my whole life that describe the world as a garden. I never imagined I'd see the garden from above.
VacuoVeteran: church guy that's beautiful
anon_viewer_4471: One hundred and thirty-one kilometers. Higher than anyone has been in a very long time.
grimm_bait_420: anon's here
HunterWannabe_Tom: "in a very long time"??? anon what does that MEAN
FaunusRights_Now: anon's implying someone's been up there before???
SI: ...what do you mean "in a very long time"?
anon_viewer_4471: Only that the old space program never reached so high. Congratulations. You've given people something to look up at.
HunterWannabe_Tom: ok that's a normal explanation but anon SAID it in a weird way
FaunusRights_Now: anon always says it in a weird way
SI: Yeah. That's... fair. The old program didn't get this high. Thanks, anon.
* * *
(The UP camera tumbles as the rocket falls. The moon drifts out of frame. Moments later, the parachute deploys, and the white upper stage begins its slow descent back toward Remnant.)
SI: (wiping his face, laughing a little shakily) Okay. Okay. Summary. I'm going to try to get through this without crying again.
The mistake: I refused to use Dust because I wanted to prove it wasn't needed. But Dust works great in the atmosphere. Refusing to use it was its own kind of path dependence.
The fix: Two stages. Dust gets you through the thick air, cheap and powerful, until it fades out around twenty kilometers. Then hydrogen and oxygen take over where Dust can't.
The data: Dust doesn't cut off like a switch. It fades, from about fifteen to twenty kilometers. The lab says it's like it's "losing contact with something." Nobody knows what.
The result: One hundred thirty-one kilometers. Space. Not orbit, just touching it. But we saw it. The whole continent. The edge of the world. Stars in the daytime. And the moon, with nothing in the way.
The big one: We didn't need to choose between Dust and no Dust. We needed both. The old way and the new way, together.
AtlasTechStudent: Best summary you've ever given.
HistoryIsNotBoring_BO: Agreed.
ValeCommuter_22: it's space
SI: It's space, Vale guy. It's really space. Goodnight, everyone.
[STREAM ENDED — Peak viewers: 184,603]
Chapter 22: The Amphitheater
New
Emiya Pendragon
The Boundary
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Beacon Academy — Main Amphitheater, History of Remnant, 8:15 AM
Lecture Hall 3B couldn't hold them anymore.
After the previous class, when students had been turned away at the door, Professor Goodwitch had sent a short, crisp message to Oobleck: Use the amphitheater. Please. The fire marshal has opinions.
So now Doctor Oobleck stood on the stage of the main amphitheater, the same room used for the Headmaster's opening address, looking up at nearly three hundred students. First-years. Second-years. Upperclassmen. Atlas exchange students. A handful of Haven transfers. Professor Port in the front row, beaming, a bag of snacks in his lap.
"Peter," Oobleck said.
"I am AUDITING, Bartholomew."
"You are eating."
"I am auditing while eating."
Oobleck sighed, took a long sip from his thermos, and looked out at the sea of faces.
"When I began teaching," he said, "I had a class of twelve. Three of them slept." He set the thermos down. "I would like to state, for the record, that I do not know how to feel about this."
The amphitheater laughed.
"There is no homework to review," he continued. "I assigned you the moon. I trust you all looked at it."
Three hundred students nodded. On the fourth row, Team RWBY and Team JNPR sat shoulder to shoulder, several of them still slightly bleary from a night spent on the dormitory roof under blankets.
"Good," Oobleck said. "Then let us see it from somewhere else."
* * *
The amphitheater screen was enormous. When the stream began, the three camera windows filled half of it on their own.
When the SI announced, "I was being dumb," a wave of laughter went through the room.
"He admitted it," Yang said. "On camera. To seventy thousand people."
"That's the second time," Ren noted. "He did the same thing with the hydrazine."
When the SI explained that refusing Dust had been its own kind of path dependence, Oobleck paused the video and turned to the audience.
"Note this," he said. "Last week, I taught you the term path dependence. This week, our streamer discovered that you can fall into it by rejecting a path, just as easily as by following one. He became so committed to proving Dust unnecessary that he stopped seeing Dust as a tool." He tapped the screen. "The mind that says always and the mind that says never are the same mind. Both have stopped looking."
A few students wrote that down.
* * *
When the lab lead described Dust fading between fifteen and twenty kilometers, "like it's losing contact with something," Weiss went very still.
"That matches," she murmured.
"Matches what?" Blake asked.
"The refiner's letter. The one I got about the angry batches." Weiss pulled a folded page from her bag. "He said the most potent Dust always comes from the deepest parts of the mines. Deeper veins, stronger Dust. Surface deposits are weaker. And Dust that sits in storage for years slowly loses potency, even sealed." She looked at the screen. "Deeper is stronger. Higher is weaker. Further from the ground, less power."
"Like it's connected to the planet," Ruby said.
"Like it's connected to something," Weiss said carefully. "I'm not saying the planet. I'm saying the pattern is consistent."
"Porty's theory," Nora whispered. "The Dust longs."
In the front row, Port had turned around in his seat and was pointing at Weiss with enormous enthusiasm.
"MISS SCHNEE HAS DATA!"
"Peter, turn around."
* * *
When SDC_Official appeared in the chat, a groan went through the amphitheater. When the message was deleted, it became laughter.
Weiss had put her face in her hands.
"That's my father's PR department," she said, muffled. "I know the woman who writes those."
"It's not your fault," Blake said, patting her shoulder.
"It's my name," Weiss groaned. "Again."
* * *
Then came the countdown.
Three hundred students fell silent.
The first stage roared off the pad, red-orange Dust flame laced with purple gravity distortion. The DOWN camera showed the range falling away. The SIDE camera showed the horizon steadying. The UP camera showed the sky darkening.
When the Dust flame began to sputter at fifteen kilometers, Weiss leaned forward and watched it with an intensity that made Blake glance at her.
"Nineteen... twenty. Stage one burnout. Separation."
The black first stage fell away beneath.
"Stage two ignition."
And the rocket climbed into the black.
* * *
When the three cameras reached apogee, the amphitheater didn't make a sound.
The DOWN camera showed the whole continent of Sanus spread beneath them like a map come to life. Vale on the coast. The Emerald Forest, a dark green smudge. Mountains, rivers, clouds drifting in slow spirals over the ocean.
"There's Beacon," someone whispered in the back. "I think that's Beacon. That little dot by the cliffs."
The SIDE camera showed the edge of the world. A razor-thin band of glowing blue, and above it, nothing.
"It's so thin," Ruby breathed. "Everything we breathe. It's just that thin line."
The UP camera showed the moon. Broken, enormous, and utterly clear.
Nobody spoke.
Then, very quietly, from somewhere near the top of the amphitheater, a first-year began to cry. And nobody laughed at her, because a lot of people were doing the same.
* * *
Oobleck let the frame hold for a long time before he paused it.
"Before we discuss," he said, "I want to show you something."
He rewound the DOWN camera footage to apogee, and zoomed in on the far edges of the frame.
"Here. And here." He pointed. "Along the edges of the image, near the horizon. Landmasses. Some you'll recognize from maps. Anima's northern coast. The edge of Solitas." He moved the pointer. "And this one."
At the very edge of the frame, hazy and faint, a dark shape sat at the curve of the world.
"I have checked every map in the Beacon archives," Oobleck said. "Twice. That landmass is poorly charted. Its coastline appears on only a handful of very old maps, and none of them agree with each other. No modern survey has mapped it in detail. It is simply marked 'unexplored.'"
The room was quiet.
"Is that where the Grimm come from?" Ruby asked. "Our proposal. The maps. The migration flow."
"I have no idea, Miss Rose," Oobleck said. "And I would caution you against leaping to that conclusion. But I will say this. For the first time in history, we have a photograph of places we have never been. That alone changes the questions we can ask."
Team RWBY exchanged a look. Yang was already grinning.
"We are not going there," Weiss said immediately.
"We're proposing—"
"No."
* * *
"Discuss," Oobleck said.
The amphitheater had never been this full, and it had never been this eager. Hands went up everywhere.
A second-year from Atlas stood first. "The two-stage design," she said. "It's not just clever engineering. It's a philosophy. Use Dust where Dust works, and something else where it doesn't. Atlas has built everything on the assumption that Dust must do everything. This proves it doesn't have to."
"An excellent point," Oobleck said. "Next."
Velvet, from the back, raised her hand shyly. "The church viewer said they'd read about the world being a garden their whole life, and never imagined seeing it from above." She paused. "I think that's what this stream was really about. Not the rocket. Just seeing something you've always been told about, for real."
"Well said, Miss Scarlatina."
Jaune raised his hand. "I want to talk about the landmass. And the unfamiliar stuff at the edges. If we can see places we've never been... does that mean the next thing is going there?"
"Perhaps, Mister Arc. Every age of exploration in history began with someone seeing a coastline they couldn't reach."
* * *
And then, of course, Blake's hand went up.
The amphitheater, which had learned the pattern even among students who didn't normally attend, let out a quiet, knowing murmur.
"Miss Belladonna," Oobleck said. "Anon."
"'Higher than anyone has been in a very long time,'" Blake quoted. "Then, when the streamer asked, anon said it only meant the old space program never got that high." She shook her head. "But that's not what 'in a very long time' means. If you meant 'higher than the old program,' you'd say 'higher than anyone has ever been.' 'In a very long time' means someone was. Once."
"Or anon just phrased it badly," a first-year called out.
"Anon doesn't phrase things badly," Blake said. "That's the whole point. Every message has been careful. Every single one."
"Maybe anon meant the gods," Ren said quietly. "In the old stories. If the Brothers left, they'd have gone... up. Or away. Somewhere."
The amphitheater was very quiet.
"That's a mythological reading," Oobleck said carefully. "Not a historical one."
"I know," Ren said. "But anon keeps saying things that only make sense in the mythological reading."
Pyrrha, beside Jaune, had gone pale. Not dramatically. Just a subtle draining of color. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, and she was looking at the frozen image of the moon on the enormous screen as if it were speaking to her.
Jaune noticed. He didn't say anything. But he moved his hand an inch closer to hers on the armrest.
"Miss Nikos," Oobleck said gently. "Your thoughts?"
Pyrrha took a breath.
"I think," she said, very carefully, "that some old stories might be older than we assume. And that some people might take them more seriously than the rest of us." She paused. "That's all."
Oobleck looked at her for a long moment.
"Thank you, Miss Nikos," he said quietly.
* * *
"No assignment," he announced finally. "I have run out of questions to give you that the streamer has not already asked better. So instead, I will ask you to do one thing."
He turned to the enormous frozen image of Remnant from above.
"Remember where you were when you saw this. Genuinely remember it. Write it down tonight, somewhere private. Because one day, historians will ask people what they felt the first time they saw Remnant from space, and I would like at least some of those answers to come from this room." He paused. "Dismissed."
* * *
The amphitheater emptied slowly, in a low, humming wave of conversation.
In the front row, Port finally stood, brushing crumbs off his coat. "A magnificent lecture, Bartholomew. Truly. I shall tell my classes that I was present."
"You were eating, Peter."
"I was present while eating."
He clapped Oobleck on the shoulder and departed, humming.
Pyrrha lingered near the top of the stairs, looking back down at the stage, where the image of the broken moon still glowed.
"You okay?" Jaune asked.
"I'm fine," she said. Then, after a moment: "Jaune... do you ever feel like you've been told part of a story, and you're only now realizing how much you weren't told?"
Jaune blinked. "...Yeah? I mean, kind of. All the time, lately."
Pyrrha smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Yes," she said softly. "Me too."
* * *
When the amphitheater was empty, Oobleck sat alone on the edge of the stage and took out his notebook.
He added to the list:
Rocket 3. 131 km. First image of Remnant from space.
Dust fades 15–20 km. "Losing contact with something."
Refiner: deeper veins = stronger Dust. Storage = gradual decay.
Unexplored landmass visible at horizon. Poorly charted. Old maps disagree.
anon: "Higher than anyone has been in a very long time."
Miss Nikos: "Some people might take old stories more seriously than the rest of us."
He looked at that last line for a long time. Then he underlined it.
He closed the notebook, and for the first time, he didn't go looking for Peter. He simply sat on the stage in the empty amphitheater, looking at the enormous frozen image of the moon, and thought about how many people might already know things he didn't.
* * *
Beacon Academy — Headmaster's Office, CCT Tower, 1:14 AM
The elevator opened. Qrow Branwen stepped out, flask in hand, looking tired.
"You wanted me to look into your internet ghost," he said, dropping into the chair across from Ozpin's desk.
Ozpin didn't look up from the tablet in front of him. On its screen was the image from the DOWN camera: Remnant from above, and at the very edge of the frame, a dark, hazy landmass at the curve of the world.
"And?"
"And nothing." Qrow took a swig. "That account routes through something like eleven different relays. Some of them go through Mistral. Some through Vacuo. A couple I couldn't even trace. Whoever's behind it knows exactly what they're doing." He set the flask down. "Oz. That's not some lonely fan who likes rocket videos."
Ozpin was quiet for a long moment.
"No," he said softly. "I didn't think it was."
Qrow studied him. "You know who it is?"
"I have suspicions." Ozpin set the tablet down, the image of the dark landmass still glowing between them. "And I don't like any of them."
"Want me to pull the kid out? Get him somewhere safe?"
"Not yet." Ozpin turned toward the window, where the broken moon hung over Vale. "If someone is watching him this closely, removing him would only confirm that he's worth watching. For now, the safest thing he can be is exactly what he appears to be. A curious young man asking questions in public."
"And if the ghost decides curiosity's a problem?"
Ozpin didn't answer right away.
"Then," he said quietly, "we'll need to be watching too."
Qrow looked at him a long moment. Then he picked up his flask, stood, and headed back to the elevator.
"You know," he said over his shoulder, "for a kid in a cheap apartment, he's sure making a lot of powerful people lose sleep."
The elevator closed.
Ozpin stood alone at the window, looking up at the moon, until the sky over Vale began to lighten.
Lecture Hall 3B couldn't hold them anymore.
After the previous class, when students had been turned away at the door, Professor Goodwitch had sent a short, crisp message to Oobleck: Use the amphitheater. Please. The fire marshal has opinions.
So now Doctor Oobleck stood on the stage of the main amphitheater, the same room used for the Headmaster's opening address, looking up at nearly three hundred students. First-years. Second-years. Upperclassmen. Atlas exchange students. A handful of Haven transfers. Professor Port in the front row, beaming, a bag of snacks in his lap.
"Peter," Oobleck said.
"I am AUDITING, Bartholomew."
"You are eating."
"I am auditing while eating."
Oobleck sighed, took a long sip from his thermos, and looked out at the sea of faces.
"When I began teaching," he said, "I had a class of twelve. Three of them slept." He set the thermos down. "I would like to state, for the record, that I do not know how to feel about this."
The amphitheater laughed.
"There is no homework to review," he continued. "I assigned you the moon. I trust you all looked at it."
Three hundred students nodded. On the fourth row, Team RWBY and Team JNPR sat shoulder to shoulder, several of them still slightly bleary from a night spent on the dormitory roof under blankets.
"Good," Oobleck said. "Then let us see it from somewhere else."
* * *
The amphitheater screen was enormous. When the stream began, the three camera windows filled half of it on their own.
When the SI announced, "I was being dumb," a wave of laughter went through the room.
"He admitted it," Yang said. "On camera. To seventy thousand people."
"That's the second time," Ren noted. "He did the same thing with the hydrazine."
When the SI explained that refusing Dust had been its own kind of path dependence, Oobleck paused the video and turned to the audience.
"Note this," he said. "Last week, I taught you the term path dependence. This week, our streamer discovered that you can fall into it by rejecting a path, just as easily as by following one. He became so committed to proving Dust unnecessary that he stopped seeing Dust as a tool." He tapped the screen. "The mind that says always and the mind that says never are the same mind. Both have stopped looking."
A few students wrote that down.
* * *
When the lab lead described Dust fading between fifteen and twenty kilometers, "like it's losing contact with something," Weiss went very still.
"That matches," she murmured.
"Matches what?" Blake asked.
"The refiner's letter. The one I got about the angry batches." Weiss pulled a folded page from her bag. "He said the most potent Dust always comes from the deepest parts of the mines. Deeper veins, stronger Dust. Surface deposits are weaker. And Dust that sits in storage for years slowly loses potency, even sealed." She looked at the screen. "Deeper is stronger. Higher is weaker. Further from the ground, less power."
"Like it's connected to the planet," Ruby said.
"Like it's connected to something," Weiss said carefully. "I'm not saying the planet. I'm saying the pattern is consistent."
"Porty's theory," Nora whispered. "The Dust longs."
In the front row, Port had turned around in his seat and was pointing at Weiss with enormous enthusiasm.
"MISS SCHNEE HAS DATA!"
"Peter, turn around."
* * *
When SDC_Official appeared in the chat, a groan went through the amphitheater. When the message was deleted, it became laughter.
Weiss had put her face in her hands.
"That's my father's PR department," she said, muffled. "I know the woman who writes those."
"It's not your fault," Blake said, patting her shoulder.
"It's my name," Weiss groaned. "Again."
* * *
Then came the countdown.
Three hundred students fell silent.
The first stage roared off the pad, red-orange Dust flame laced with purple gravity distortion. The DOWN camera showed the range falling away. The SIDE camera showed the horizon steadying. The UP camera showed the sky darkening.
When the Dust flame began to sputter at fifteen kilometers, Weiss leaned forward and watched it with an intensity that made Blake glance at her.
"Nineteen... twenty. Stage one burnout. Separation."
The black first stage fell away beneath.
"Stage two ignition."
And the rocket climbed into the black.
* * *
When the three cameras reached apogee, the amphitheater didn't make a sound.
The DOWN camera showed the whole continent of Sanus spread beneath them like a map come to life. Vale on the coast. The Emerald Forest, a dark green smudge. Mountains, rivers, clouds drifting in slow spirals over the ocean.
"There's Beacon," someone whispered in the back. "I think that's Beacon. That little dot by the cliffs."
The SIDE camera showed the edge of the world. A razor-thin band of glowing blue, and above it, nothing.
"It's so thin," Ruby breathed. "Everything we breathe. It's just that thin line."
The UP camera showed the moon. Broken, enormous, and utterly clear.
Nobody spoke.
Then, very quietly, from somewhere near the top of the amphitheater, a first-year began to cry. And nobody laughed at her, because a lot of people were doing the same.
* * *
Oobleck let the frame hold for a long time before he paused it.
"Before we discuss," he said, "I want to show you something."
He rewound the DOWN camera footage to apogee, and zoomed in on the far edges of the frame.
"Here. And here." He pointed. "Along the edges of the image, near the horizon. Landmasses. Some you'll recognize from maps. Anima's northern coast. The edge of Solitas." He moved the pointer. "And this one."
At the very edge of the frame, hazy and faint, a dark shape sat at the curve of the world.
"I have checked every map in the Beacon archives," Oobleck said. "Twice. That landmass is poorly charted. Its coastline appears on only a handful of very old maps, and none of them agree with each other. No modern survey has mapped it in detail. It is simply marked 'unexplored.'"
The room was quiet.
"Is that where the Grimm come from?" Ruby asked. "Our proposal. The maps. The migration flow."
"I have no idea, Miss Rose," Oobleck said. "And I would caution you against leaping to that conclusion. But I will say this. For the first time in history, we have a photograph of places we have never been. That alone changes the questions we can ask."
Team RWBY exchanged a look. Yang was already grinning.
"We are not going there," Weiss said immediately.
"We're proposing—"
"No."
* * *
"Discuss," Oobleck said.
The amphitheater had never been this full, and it had never been this eager. Hands went up everywhere.
A second-year from Atlas stood first. "The two-stage design," she said. "It's not just clever engineering. It's a philosophy. Use Dust where Dust works, and something else where it doesn't. Atlas has built everything on the assumption that Dust must do everything. This proves it doesn't have to."
"An excellent point," Oobleck said. "Next."
Velvet, from the back, raised her hand shyly. "The church viewer said they'd read about the world being a garden their whole life, and never imagined seeing it from above." She paused. "I think that's what this stream was really about. Not the rocket. Just seeing something you've always been told about, for real."
"Well said, Miss Scarlatina."
Jaune raised his hand. "I want to talk about the landmass. And the unfamiliar stuff at the edges. If we can see places we've never been... does that mean the next thing is going there?"
"Perhaps, Mister Arc. Every age of exploration in history began with someone seeing a coastline they couldn't reach."
* * *
And then, of course, Blake's hand went up.
The amphitheater, which had learned the pattern even among students who didn't normally attend, let out a quiet, knowing murmur.
"Miss Belladonna," Oobleck said. "Anon."
"'Higher than anyone has been in a very long time,'" Blake quoted. "Then, when the streamer asked, anon said it only meant the old space program never got that high." She shook her head. "But that's not what 'in a very long time' means. If you meant 'higher than the old program,' you'd say 'higher than anyone has ever been.' 'In a very long time' means someone was. Once."
"Or anon just phrased it badly," a first-year called out.
"Anon doesn't phrase things badly," Blake said. "That's the whole point. Every message has been careful. Every single one."
"Maybe anon meant the gods," Ren said quietly. "In the old stories. If the Brothers left, they'd have gone... up. Or away. Somewhere."
The amphitheater was very quiet.
"That's a mythological reading," Oobleck said carefully. "Not a historical one."
"I know," Ren said. "But anon keeps saying things that only make sense in the mythological reading."
Pyrrha, beside Jaune, had gone pale. Not dramatically. Just a subtle draining of color. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, and she was looking at the frozen image of the moon on the enormous screen as if it were speaking to her.
Jaune noticed. He didn't say anything. But he moved his hand an inch closer to hers on the armrest.
"Miss Nikos," Oobleck said gently. "Your thoughts?"
Pyrrha took a breath.
"I think," she said, very carefully, "that some old stories might be older than we assume. And that some people might take them more seriously than the rest of us." She paused. "That's all."
Oobleck looked at her for a long moment.
"Thank you, Miss Nikos," he said quietly.
* * *
"No assignment," he announced finally. "I have run out of questions to give you that the streamer has not already asked better. So instead, I will ask you to do one thing."
He turned to the enormous frozen image of Remnant from above.
"Remember where you were when you saw this. Genuinely remember it. Write it down tonight, somewhere private. Because one day, historians will ask people what they felt the first time they saw Remnant from space, and I would like at least some of those answers to come from this room." He paused. "Dismissed."
* * *
The amphitheater emptied slowly, in a low, humming wave of conversation.
In the front row, Port finally stood, brushing crumbs off his coat. "A magnificent lecture, Bartholomew. Truly. I shall tell my classes that I was present."
"You were eating, Peter."
"I was present while eating."
He clapped Oobleck on the shoulder and departed, humming.
Pyrrha lingered near the top of the stairs, looking back down at the stage, where the image of the broken moon still glowed.
"You okay?" Jaune asked.
"I'm fine," she said. Then, after a moment: "Jaune... do you ever feel like you've been told part of a story, and you're only now realizing how much you weren't told?"
Jaune blinked. "...Yeah? I mean, kind of. All the time, lately."
Pyrrha smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Yes," she said softly. "Me too."
* * *
When the amphitheater was empty, Oobleck sat alone on the edge of the stage and took out his notebook.
He added to the list:
Rocket 3. 131 km. First image of Remnant from space.
Dust fades 15–20 km. "Losing contact with something."
Refiner: deeper veins = stronger Dust. Storage = gradual decay.
Unexplored landmass visible at horizon. Poorly charted. Old maps disagree.
anon: "Higher than anyone has been in a very long time."
Miss Nikos: "Some people might take old stories more seriously than the rest of us."
He looked at that last line for a long time. Then he underlined it.
He closed the notebook, and for the first time, he didn't go looking for Peter. He simply sat on the stage in the empty amphitheater, looking at the enormous frozen image of the moon, and thought about how many people might already know things he didn't.
* * *
Beacon Academy — Headmaster's Office, CCT Tower, 1:14 AM
The elevator opened. Qrow Branwen stepped out, flask in hand, looking tired.
"You wanted me to look into your internet ghost," he said, dropping into the chair across from Ozpin's desk.
Ozpin didn't look up from the tablet in front of him. On its screen was the image from the DOWN camera: Remnant from above, and at the very edge of the frame, a dark, hazy landmass at the curve of the world.
"And?"
"And nothing." Qrow took a swig. "That account routes through something like eleven different relays. Some of them go through Mistral. Some through Vacuo. A couple I couldn't even trace. Whoever's behind it knows exactly what they're doing." He set the flask down. "Oz. That's not some lonely fan who likes rocket videos."
Ozpin was quiet for a long moment.
"No," he said softly. "I didn't think it was."
Qrow studied him. "You know who it is?"
"I have suspicions." Ozpin set the tablet down, the image of the dark landmass still glowing between them. "And I don't like any of them."
"Want me to pull the kid out? Get him somewhere safe?"
"Not yet." Ozpin turned toward the window, where the broken moon hung over Vale. "If someone is watching him this closely, removing him would only confirm that he's worth watching. For now, the safest thing he can be is exactly what he appears to be. A curious young man asking questions in public."
"And if the ghost decides curiosity's a problem?"
Ozpin didn't answer right away.
"Then," he said quietly, "we'll need to be watching too."
Qrow looked at him a long moment. Then he picked up his flask, stood, and headed back to the elevator.
"You know," he said over his shoulder, "for a kid in a cheap apartment, he's sure making a lot of powerful people lose sleep."
The elevator closed.
Ozpin stood alone at the window, looking up at the moon, until the sky over Vale began to lighten.