Warrior Thinkerer [Solo Shadow Mission/Engineer] [DONE]

Syne academy was now offering the opportunity to students to shadow some person that agreed to become mentors for those who were interested in becoming something else that a Huntsman or Huntress as this job requires Grimms to fight and you aren't paid if there is not Grimm to hunt, it's only logical. As Lloyd was looking at the roster of mentors, he was intrigued about the engineer as she seemed to specialize herself in weaponry and the such. Lloyd looked a moment at his lance, folded in his hand. "I'll need to upgrade you soon, this might give me an idea on what needs to be improved. I could also look into what other form you could have..." Lloyd looked around as he saw other students giving him a strange look as he was talking to his weapon. He just shrugged it, talking to oneself is apparently good for you as it helps relieving some stress, or so he heard.

He went toward the Headmistress office as he needed her approval to go on this shadowing trip. Since she wasn't there, he left a note with the request and left toward his dorm. It wasn't long before a student came knocking to his door. "The Headmistress sent me to give you the confirmation that you are now allowed to participate in the shadowing of Peri Scone. She also say to have fun." The girl gave Lloyd a note with all the details about where to go, when and how as he'd need an airship to get to town. Lloyd bowed to thank the student before she left. He looks at the note thoroughly to get all the details before thinking about something. "I'm going to be alone, and I have permission to go in town... Maybe I could try to get there earlier to get a look around before meeting with Peri. I don't have to get there before 2:30 pm tomorrow, I could grab a bite somewhere while exploring..." He looked at the hour he needed to board the airship. "1:00 pm, with an hour of travel or so... Man I wouldn't have the time for a bite, would there be another way..." Lloyd dropped the note on his desk and retrieved a map of the school's surroundings and tried to find anything interesting... When he found what he was looking for, he grabbed the map and the note and went to see the airship pilot.

Arrived at the drop zone, Lloyd looked for the pilot as he wanted to discuss with him about tomorrow. When he found him, he waved walking slowly to the man. "Hello Sir, I'll need to take the airship tomorrow at 1:00 pm to get to the city, but the problem is I would have loved to get into the town a little sooner. Do you think we could arrange something?" Lloyd didn't want to bribe the man, but he was ready to offer a service for another. "Well youngster, I'm sorry but first I'd need proof that you're allowed to go in town." Lloyd gave him the note with the Headmistress marks. "Yes, yes, it's all good. May I ask why then you want to get earlier into the city?"
-I want to go around town a little. Because of the curfew we aren't allowed to in normal circumstances, so I wanted to use of this opportunity, that's all.
-I see, well I can't really fly just you in town, I would have to get back here midway to get the scheduled flight.
-Is there anyway you could drop me just out of the forest then?

Lloyd took out the map of his bag and showed it to the man. "See? Right here, you could drop me and I could continue my way into town from there."
-And you'd go there on foot? Don't be silly boy, you'd lose time doing that. Be realistic.
-There must be some other way then...

The pilot looked at Lloyd for a second before rubbing his beard. "I might have what you need, kid. Follow me..." He brought him into the storage bay of the airship and lifted a sheet that was there to cover something from dust. "Do you know how to use this? Because if you can it's yours now, I'm too old for that and I don't have the time either with being a pilot and all..." Lloyd looked at the man with surprise, not knowing if it was just a really bad joke. "Wait, you can't be serious, you're really giving it to me? I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but does it works? I mean it looks a little... rusted..." The man gave Lloyd a nod "I'd be happy if someone took care of it for me, and yes I know it looks damaged and all, but it works just fine. It true that a couple of new parts wouldn't hurt but it will get you around. You could ask Peri to give you tips to repair it." The man smirks before exiting the bay with Lloyd following, still surprised by the man's generosity. "See you tomorrow at 10, kid." The man waved before returning to his duty as Lloyd went to his dorm, to wait impatiently for tomorrow.

As the new day began, Lloyd was eager to go. He seemed more exited by the way he would get there than the actual shadowing. He went to meet the pilot as told at 10 am. Lloyd waved the man as soon as he was in sight. "Hello youngster, ready for your little adventure out of the academy? the man said with a smile. Lloyd returned the smile. "Yes I am Sir, thanks again for that. I don't know what I can do to repay you."
-No need to repay me kid, just take good care of "her" and your dept is paid.
-Thank you kindly Sir.

Lloyd bowed to the man to thank him. "Now get on board, we wouldn't want you to miss your flight, right?" They both entered the airship. The pilot went for the cockpit while Lloyd went for the storage bay. As the airship took flight, Lloyd's heart started to pump faster from excitement. He looked like a child you were bringing to an amusement park.

After a while, the pilot talked to Lloyd through the communication system. "Okay kid, get ready, we're arriving near the drop zone. Lloyd looked at a camera in the corner and made a thumbs up to show that he understood. He looked through his bag to see if he had everything before putting goggles on. The airship started to lower in altitude, staying above ground around 20 meters. "Alright kid, I'm opening the bay, go when you're ready. Oh and don't forget: Have fun! As the door of the storage bay opened, Lloyd upped on and started the engine. The second after, he could be seen exiting the bay on a motorbike and landing on the ground safely. He waved toward the pilot hopping to be seen before leaving towards the town.

As Lloyd was riding the bike, he felt great. There wasn't really a reason, he just felt that way, being alone riding somewhere without really caring at the moment. It was somewhat relieving. He felt free like never before, but focused himself back on the driving. Unfortunately, the bike started to make weird clanking noises. Lloyd knew that it was in bad shape but so soon? He stopped before stepping off trying to look at the problem. realizing that some parts we're fissured. The jump he had made surely didn't helped. He decided to continue on foot, he wasn't that far now anyway.

As he arrived into town after a while, he went to Peri's workshop asking if he could leave his bike there for now as he would pick it up later. Showing them the note from the Headmistress, they accepted. Lloyd then went into different shops, restaurants, cafes and other buildings just to explore as he killed time. After a couple of hour, it was now time to meet up with Peri.

Lloyd walked in the workshop, picking back up his bike where he had left it and started to seek Peri. He asked around trying to know where she could be. The others were saying that Peri was in the hangar and pointed to Lloyd the direction. As he stepped in, a loud explosion occurred in the back followed by some shouting. Lloyd could see from afar the smoke rising as well as a girl his own age walking in circle yelling profanities. Lloyd slowly walked towards her, smiling to be sure she didn't thought he would be intruding or something. She looked towards him and immediately glared and shouted. "You! what do you think you're doing? You're not suppose to be here! I'm waiting someone to come and he is late and now my machine broke down! I'm sure it's all your fault!" She started to flail her arms at him furiously. "Wow, calm down! If you're Peri, I'm the student that came for the shadowing. Wait, "late"? How am I late? The note said to be here for 2:30, I'm even a couple of minutes early..." Peri stopped her flailing and looks at her watch, that was broken... She looked back at Lloyd before scratching the back of her head. "Oops, sorry. I think I have felt like the time went flying... but hasn't that much... and yeah, I'm Peri. You must be Lloyd, right? It's nice to meet you." Lloyd and Peri shook hands "It's a pleasure to meet you as well, I've heard a lot about you and your accomplishments. Altough we're the same age from what I've heard, you are really someone I look up to. While I grew up, I heard your name constently back home in my family's industry."
-You heard of me in your family's industry? What is it's name?
-The Vanheim Freelance Industries, I'm the son of the current Head. We are mainly operating in Vale, but we have some clients elsewhere. Maybe you heard of us...
-Sure I did, probably not for the reasons you hope though...

Peri gave Lloyd a stare full of hatred, not aiming it personally at him, more at his entire family. He could feel the bad vibe of the gaze and looked away for a second, embarrassed. He scratched the back of his head as he knew she was referring to the fact that Lloyd's father was using faunus labor in the company without caring for their safety or health. That story made the front page of some newspaper, mainly those who supports faunus rights, but also the news broadcast back in Vale. Lloyd felt horrible for all of this, not because he was responsible, hell no, but because he lost many friends to that. Some had left the industry, fleeing away, while other died. Lloyd bowed toward Peri, to apologize, knowing well enough that it wouldn't fix things up, but still... "I-I'm sorry, I wish each day that things would have been different... But what can a kid do against his father?... Peri wasn't sure of this was overacting or pure sincerity, but decided that for now, she would let it slide. She sighs. "Listen, I don't know what the deal was with your father and personaly I don't even understand how your even able to call him "father", but I think you're different, or at least I hope. Prove me wrong only once and I'll be sure to make YOU pay for everything... Got it?" She gave his what seemed to be a death stare, probably to be sure that Lloyd wouldn't mess up. He nodded in silence as he had a feeling she would put this treat to execution... "Oh God, "execution"..."

Peri sighs once more shaking her head as she didn't really thought she would kill him or something. It was more of an empty treat. She took a moment to look at Lloyd wondering what he could have up his sleeve as he didn't quite looked like a huntsman. "Tell me Lloyd, your a Huntsman, or more like studying to become one, so what is your weapon? You did bring it here right?" As she asked, Lloyd took away his lance, Gae Bulg, and unfolded it in front of Peri. He also activated his armor to further demonstrate his arsenal. Peri looked at him, from all angle, analyzing him as she started to question him. "Pretty impressive, never an armor like that before... Did you make it yourself or some employes made it for you? Also, from what material is it made of? Titanium? Palladium? Not Silver I hope..." Lloyd wasn't really surprised that she was more interested in his armor than his lance, even though he would have wish the opposite as he needs an idea for its upgrade, but he went with it and answered the best he could without reveling too much. Although I had help for the sewing from some maid that happily helped me, I made the main pattern and worked on the metal myself." He paused a moment to look at her looking at him. He wasn't use to be analyzed like that. He then continued. "As for the material I used, well, I can tell which metal I used, which is an alloy of Dust-induced titanium for the durability and Dust-induced of polycarbonate silver, for the shine and the weight." He saw in Peri's eyes that she wasn't satisfied of his answer. "That's nice and all, but how are you able to change its form like you did?"
-That? Oh, I can't really tell...
-Why? Top secret recipe or something?
-Kinda yeah... Secret recipe, secret technique, secret material... It's really complicated and all...
Peri paused a moment, wondering what Lloyd was hiding. A coat that could change form and literally change in composition. She then tried to "kinda blackmail" him. "Listen, you tell me everything on your coat, and I maybe I could do something for you in exchange..." She looked at the bike that was next to the door. "I could help you with that, you know, bring that fossil back to life...

Lloyd looked at his newly given bike that Peri was referring to. "No, I want to repair it myself, that was the reason why I have it now. I promised I would take care of it and I will. Although I would maybe be incline to tell you on certain condition... He pointed a chair, asking if he could sit down and Peri made a gesture to say that it was okay. She sat on another one as she was ready to listen to his conditions. She would be ready to so a lot for that information. She had a lot of ideas for condition-changing materials. "Well, first of, if you have a spare set of tools that I could borrow for a time in order to repair my bike, it would be appreciated. Second, I'd like us to talk about weaponry, I know it's your specialty and I would love to share information, opinions and such with you. I want to upgrade my weapon and I don't know what to do so, maybe some suggestion would help we could talk while we go around your workshop. Third and lastly, if you promise not to tell anyone and that you won't abuse that knowledge, something I doubt you'd do, I'm okay with telling you." Peri was surprised that Lloyd didn't ask for something more valuable, like a totally new and powerful weapon, or some secret knowledge that she could be hiding him. But no, he was open to the idea and didn't want anything too big in return. His trust even seemed exaggerated as they both didn't know each other. She then nodded to him, letting him know that she was agreeing to his condition.

Lloyd looked around to see if there was anyone near to hear them as he didn't want any loose ears to roam around. He then sighs before looking at Peri. "Okay then... The secret behind my coat, it's alchemy. You know what it is right?"
-Transmutation of a material into a new one, sure I know what it is, who doesn't?
-Okay, it'll make things simpler already. Tell me, do you know the composition of the body of a Grimm?
-No, like everyone. No one was able to keep a Grimm alive to research them.
-Only if they die.
-Don't tell me you were keeping live Grimm for you're research. You're crazy!
-We did, it was hard but we managed to keep them alive during our research, just enough to analyze their composition which lead to our discovery.
-And what was that discovery?

Lloyd looked at Peri, seeing how much she was eager to know the truth behind his coat. He smirked a little, not wanting to be rude, just because he enjoyed the fact that two person that didn't met on a good note could still find affinities. He then continued. "We discovered that a possible reason that causes the Grimms to vanish when killed might be due to some instability in their organism, leading to a total vaporization when their vital functions cease. So by analyzing multiple Grimms, we understood that they have an unstable composition of Dust, like everything, but all have a common composition that is different from humans, faunus and everything else really. So, knowing that the Grimms are able to stop vaporizing by being alive and that they can evolve and become stronger, we decided to created a material with the same composition as the Grimms, so we would have a evolving material. The main problem we encountered was that the material would vaporize itself after a while as it wasn't linked to some life force of sort. We thought that if we negated some of the instability by adding some other Dust it would stop to disappear, and it worked. So adding a Dust-infused material to the Grimm-like one would make a great material that would be able to evolve and change. I made my coat and adding other "features" in it in order to push the work other did. It works very well, with some downside but what doesn't have some?"

Lloyd looked at Peri, who looked like she was about to crumble under so much new information. She seemed like she would explode just from excitement. She stood up before looking at him. "Okay, so you analyzed Grimms to know their composition and work with that? So now don't tell me more as I want to discover the rest by myself." Lloyd looked at Peri as she stood up as she got toward a workbench and picked up an utility belt with a bunch of tools in it. She threw it at him."Here, part one of our deal, ready for part two?" He caught it and strapped it around his waist for now. He would arrange something for it sometime, but for now it would do.

Lloyd followed Peri into the main part of her workshop where heavy machinery and a lot of people were. It was impressive to see that Peri was the Head of such an impressive place. They talked a lot, about what it was to be an engineer, to work as a giant family and on other matters. When they started to talk weaponry though, they went back to the workshop they first were and Peri asked Lloyd to hand her his lance. He did, trusting she wouldn't break it or something, would be hard to break though... "Tell me, you want to upgrade your weapon, correct? Do you have a basic idea of what you would want as a secondary weapon? Because you need to know before upgrading to basically prepare your weapon for the new form before." Peri sat next to her table and started to sketch Lloyd's lance on a blueprint. Lloyd sat next to her and watched as he answered."I thought about some kind of heavy ranged weapon to counter-balance my melee fighting style, to be more versatile in a way." Peri drew multiple sketches, having different second weapon but still the lance at its base. The first one seemed to look like a sniper rifle. By the sketch, the lance would open at the center to show the barrel and it would shoot some kind of energy blast. The second was a rocket launcher. The lance would enlarge itself to make place for the missile to go through. Another looked like a giant lazer beam canon, but Peri quickly scrapped it for some reason. The last one was a machine gun, something simpler, but Peri seemed to have difficulty to place the barrel somewhere. Lloyd looked at the sketch carefully. "Do you think it would be possible to have more than one barrel? Like, I don't know, three? They could be placed in a triangle pattern, so it would have more chance to hit a target." He pointed on the drawing where he thought and watched Peri finishing the blueprint. She looked at it longingly before handing it to Lloyd. "Here, you'll have to show it to me once it's done, as well as that bike." She gave him a smirk, trying to taunt him a little, suggesting he won't be able to.

The day was coming to an end and Lloyd's shadowing as well. The whole day was something great after another. First, the bike followed by the chance to visit the city, then the visit of Peri's workshop and an awesome idea for his weapon's second form. Could the day be better?

Peri walked Lloyd toward the the exit as she was glad that he was in the end someone of trust amidst everything that happened around his family. She handed him a certificate that would prove that he attended the shadowing and a pass that would grant him access to the workshop if he needed to use it. Lloyd was surprised by that last gift as he didn't expect to receive something like that. When he asked why, Peri only answered that he would be welcome to join the workshop if he needed money, he would be welcome to work with all of them. As Lloyd looked away toward the airship that was visible from where they were, Lloyd bid farewell to Peri before walking, his bike to his side, toward the airship he would take back to the academy.

As he stepped in, he was immediately greeted by the pilot that brought him this morning. Lloyd just replied with a thumbs up through the camera as the man asked him how his day went. Lloyd then took a seat, rearranged the black utility belt to be strapped on the outside of the right side of his coat. He then started his repair on his bike before starting to talk alone again. "So, how should I call you?... How about Sleipnir? Yeah, that sounds nice..."