Whips are cool! But they're not very, straightforward? Smacking yourself is a possibility, and if he's not from a hunter family he wouldn't have that much combat training, right? So why choose a whip?
You turn your attention to the workstation and oh wow it looks even more complicated than it did when you last looked. The three women are forging straight on ahead and you're already lost, you squint to try and decipher the notes Skuld's leaving on the blackboard but they look like complete gibberish to you.
rip in pieces shadow, welcome to the classroom condition. zoning out for thirty seconds and coming back to realized the teacher's moved from basic definitions to eighth-dimensional analysis.
Time ticks down, closer and closer to the moment of truth. You've never been flustered before, but now that you have you hate it and you want it to go away forever. Now you're barely even focusing on Blake's instructions, you're just trying to stop banging into Russell. He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, no doubt trying to puzzle out how to throttle the distiller. Blake gives you the final instructions and just stares up at the ceiling, silently disowning the abomination she helped create. You whisper to Russell that you've got it, fhurriedly shake the last few drops out of the spout, giving the it one last frantic stir-
Ngl Jaune Dark discovering new and terrible facets of being human is one of my favorite parts of this quest so far. It really does manage to sympathetically nail that fish-out-of-water deal 'cause there's a fair bit of humor/emotional value in seeing a weird alien monster realize that humans are sad and strange and weird. Almost deliberately so!
Man I am warming up to these fuckers, Blake as the needling, aggressive, and kinda...disrespectful? gadfly kinda Works balanced against Ruby's "We can all be friends! ", Weiss's competing superiority and inferiority complexes, and Yang being @TheOneMoiderah bait. Also fucking Christ she's not hiding the ears under a ribbon, it's so much nicer. I mean sure that's a low bar to step over but it neatly axes the dramatic reveal prompt and lets us get into other stuff like 1. Why does she have a weird complex hookblade sword 2. How does she implicitly know so much about brewing enhancers 3. What is your deaaaaaaaal Blake whatare all these plot hooks hanging around you?
You look right. Russell's still staring resolutely up at the board, refusing to budge his neck so much as a degree for fear of missing something crucial again. But you catch him glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.
"... thanks."
"Anytime," you reply. Apparently that's the proper response.
"No groups," he says in a voice like gravel and coal soup once you're all inside. "Weaponcraft is solo work. Grab your weapons and take whichever bench you'd like."
I do like the spread of teacher personalities thus far and the rough sense of our schedule. Lecture in the morning with Gotthard who's fairly strict and meticulous and it looks like her class is pretty reading and work heavy. It's mostly about the cultural context of being a Hunter I think? What Semblances mean, what's the role of a Hunter and Dust in society and shit. Then there's Alchemy with Skuld, Verthandr, and Urdr which is more laidback but has steeper consequences for zoning out and missing shit, plus it's group work and mostly practical. Then there's shop class with Regin which is regimented and formal as hell but basically all practical I'm guessing? Leaaaving Jaeger for combat and field stuff, then a late lunch and that Chiron dude?
Tbh I'm mostly trying to figure out how Jaune needs to prioritize his classwork and what he can slack on.
At least nobody's fucking sleeping in class or reading comics.
He jabs his thumb to the left-hand wall where your weapon cases all wait in a neat line. Most of the class starts over immediately. You linger long enough to catch Russell shoot the professor a quizzical look. The rough-hewn forgemaster just inclines his head towards the collection of cases. Russell hesitantly follows his classmates - and sure enough there's a spare waiting for him, name neatly stamped on the lid. He double-takes, bewildered.
Also man I am weirdly enthused about this dude of all fucking people getting decent characterization:
This "literally who" Best Value Malfoy looking motherfucker trying to impress Jaune is kinda engaging all on its own considering how Actually Nothing he is in the show. But, tbh, you could say the same about literally any other member of team CRDL who I'm 90% sure just falls through a crack in reality between episodes and vanishes from the series.
[X] Ask him where he's from. Cardin said he's a farmer and/or from the country but he might've just been being... Cardin.
I'm kinda curious to learn more about the overall topography of Vale (we know there's the docks which are a major part of the port town, the rotting underbelly, the shopping concourses, and an entire Schnee Town located within the city's limits) and "so where ya from" is a pretty natural and organic segue that says a lot all on its own. What his family's like, what the lot of the "average" citizen of Vale is like, and the how of how he ended up at Beacon. We don't need to start pumping him for loads of immediately applicable information off the bat and if we can strike up a kind of friendship with him like we have with Russell it's useful all on its own. I mean these guys mostly know us as "nice enough dude who doesn't roll over and doesn't afraid of anything", right now we're just building that kind of cover.
[x] Ask him why he came to Beacon. You know what the teachers think of course, but there's no reason to assume they're infallible sources of information. You'd like to know why Sky thinks he's here - it may prove illuminating.
[X] Ask him why he came to Beacon. You know what the teachers think of course, but there's no reason to assume they're infallible sources of information. You'd like to know why Sky thinks he's here - it may prove illuminating.
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
"So, uh, how'd it go down yesterday?" Yeah, Jaune's pretty sure that's how you ask about someone's day. "I was dragged off before I got to see your team in action."
You hope Pyrrah didn't hear that last part, but it sounds better than "I was plucked from the chaff by our most skilled member while she left you all to rot".
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
Also man I am weirdly enthused about this dude of all fucking people getting decent characterization:
This "literally who" Best Value Malfoy looking motherfucker trying to impress Jaune is kinda engaging all on its own considering how Actually Nothing he is in the show. But, tbh, you could say the same about literally any other member of team CRDL who I'm 90% sure just falls through a crack in reality between episodes and vanishes from the series.
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
[X] Ask him why he came to Beacon. You know what the teachers think of course, but there's no reason to assume they're infallible sources of information. You'd like to know why Sky thinks he's here - it may prove illuminating.
[X] Ask how the exam went for him yesterday. You know in general terms how everyone else did, but you're curious to know the details - how he hurt his leg, how everyone came together, how Cardin did as a leader, everyone's Semblances, etc etc.
", Weiss's competing superiority and inferiority complexes, and Yang being @TheOneMoiderah bait. 
Also fucking Christ she's not hiding the ears under a ribbon, it's so much nicer. I mean sure that's a low bar to step over but it neatly axes the dramatic reveal prompt and lets us get into other stuff like 1. Why does she have a weird complex hookblade sword 2. How does she implicitly know so much about brewing enhancers 3. What is your deaaaaaaaal Blake whatare all these plot hooks hanging around you?
