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I, Jaune: Or, Underpowered Alcoholic Makes Huntsman School Noticeably Worse [RWBY]

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Volume 7, Chapter 4
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    • Chapter 4: Since When Did This Story Become a Coffeeshop AU?
    "I'd ask you to think outside the box on this, but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia."

    — 6 —​

    Weiss didn't know what exactly she expected when she called her father. Maybe he would look at what she was wearing and be disgusted. Maybe he would demean her for being a vegan. Deride her choices in life and laugh at her for reaping the reward for failures. Simply shrug his shoulders and say that those were the works, and there was nothing he could do, and so live with it.

    She didn't expect him to look so frazzled. His cool blue eyes were nearly bloodshot. His suit was ruffled, with patches of oil and dust. His mustache didn't look combed. And the fact that he smiled the moment he saw her made every single hair on the back of her neck stand up.

    Weiss immediately wanted to run. She wanted to turn away and hide. What she was seeing was wrong, like it shouldn't possibly happen. And this was all her fault somehow.

    "Father," she said, and her voice hitched. She tried to keep a perfect posture, to be prim and presentable. But she couldn't even speak right.

    "I know, snow pea," he said grimly. "I've been trying to reach you for days ever since I saw the reports from Montluçon. I worried that after what those fools did, you wouldn't be able to contact me. But I should have known you were resourceful and would have found a way."

    Weiss didn't know how to feel about that. She hadn't spoken to her father in nearly half a year. And even when she did speak with him, they had been mostly brief encounters. Feeling him compliment her just made her stomach do a backflip. She knew instantly that something was horribly wrong with him. For a moment, she even wondered if maybe she was back in the reality marble and she was speaking to a skinwalker.

    She hesitated. "What's going on?"

    Her father rubbed his eyes. "You tell me."

    All at once, Weiss felt more at ease. She had asked a dumb question and she knew it. Her father wasn't asking her genuinely. He was testing her to make sure she was actually following along. This felt more like her father, even if he was frayed at the edges.

    She ran her hand through her hair, and was momentarily surprised when she remembered how short it was. "Vale is no longer allowing payment processing from Atlas. We can't pay any of our workers in this country. Even I don't have access to any of my funds." Weiss thought it through. "But we're also the only realistic supplier of Dust in the kingdom. This country will collapse without us, and they know it. If they're not going to resort to direct nationalization, which could be considered an act of war, they're planning on economically killing us, and then buying up what's left and taking it over?"

    Her father smiled, and she hated herself for just how good it made her feel. "Yes. When I was a boy, Vale didn't have merely one Dust company like it does today with us; it was a complete wilderness. La Société Minière Valais, Magneria Dust LLC, Pylevaya Kompaniya Novovalska, and others. A disorganized mess from Eranstan to Vytal that the SDC came in and cleaned up. They couldn't even agree upon a single language to use! LaChance thinks he can go back to that. Drive us out of business, buy up what's left, and continue where we left off under new management. And maybe get any Atlesian nationals to leave the country without him having to force his hand."

    "Their Dust situation was already precarious," Weiss said slowly. "I understand there were supply issues with terrorists and organized crime. Without the SDC, they're going to run out and fast."

    "The civilian market, yes. Which is exactly why they think they can push us out," her father said. "Supplies from Atlas have been dwindling. Vale has enormous strategic reserves of Dust precisely so they can't be bullied by embargo or pre-planned Dust shortages we would use to adjust the market to our needs. The old government was already in plans to start releasing Dust onto the market to curb prices. I have no doubt LaChance will make good on that promise. His reserves will outlast our abilities to survive in the country. This is a long game Vale believes it can win, even if it means breaking its hand to bloody our noses, and so the wolves are circling. If that's not bad enough, I've received credible rumors of massive weapons orders from Damecrown to its factories in Graad and Montluçon; and there's great expectations of work from shipyards as far south as Eranstan."

    The man stroked his mustache, his eyes distant in a way that seemed so unlike her father. So unlike a man who'd ever compliment her just because. "The Valean bear hopes to drown Atlas in flesh and steel. If war happened this very day, we might win. But it's no different than the Great War. The bear might be weak now, but give them time to mobilize and re-tool their industry, and for every ton of steel we forge, they produce ten; for every volunteer we enlist, a hundred fresh Valean conscripts roll off the trains. The new colossus of Atlas can't compete with the old bear if you rouse it, and they know this, and they're counting on that do-nothing coward Ironwood giving them the time to win."

    He rubbed his nose again. "You know this. I should be keeping better track. I haven't slept much these past days dealing with the fallout. Arguing with politicians, investors, stockholders, and the innumerable other parasites that come with the cost of doing business."

    Weiss stayed silent. She couldn't tell if it was because she didn't know what to say, or because she was so used to just saying nothing in the presence of her father even through a screen.

    "I am not sure I can get you out," he said. "With tensions as they are, I can't conceive of anything I could force that wouldn't become a diplomatic incident, an escalation of tensions, or even a war if that madman LaChance is half as insane as our board of directors think he is."

    "I don't want to leave," she said quickly.

    The response seemed to catch him off guard. She almost expected him to get angry at her defiance. Instead, he simply asked, "Can you survive?"

    "You saw me fighting on the streets for days in Montluçon," she said. "I can always tighten my belt and make do."

    Another one of those elusive smiles that made her skin crawl. "I wouldn't have let you attend Beacon had I thought any differently of you. But no good father refuses to indulge in a child's ambition. You wouldn't be worthwhile as a daughter if you didn't seek to outdo me, Weiss."

    The barrage of frankly nice things he was saying continued to feel wrong. It was almost as if he was a man on his deathbed trying to repent his sins to a preacher on the off chance he could go to heaven despite the depths of his evils.

    She almost found herself wondering if maybe her father wasn't that bad a person. And then she remembered her mother crying alone in her room with a bottle of wine, or Klein telling her not to worry about the penal laborers the SDC licensed out from the government on the cheap. Weiss wanted to hug herself, but she just couldn't with him watching her like this.

    She swallowed. "But what will you do until then?"

    "I have no means to support you or even get you out. General Ironwood is besieged in his airship and is being forced to leave that country. Our assets are crumbling and I have no means to control or pay them. I can't even reliably communicate with you."

    He turned to the side and briefly got into a conversation with somebody Weiss could not see.

    "But if you need me, I'll do whatever I can. I'm still your father. I have my obligations to fulfill. But, I'm counting on you not to need me. I raised you better than that."

    She nearly said, You hardly raised me at all, but bit her tongue. Instead, she simply nodded.

    "I have to go, Snow Pea. I'm sorry. But don't let the bastards grind you down."

    He ended the call. And Weiss just felt numb.

    — 7 —​

    Weiss showered and just laid in bed. She would've gone to class, but Shamrock texted her saying class was canceled for Team BASS for the week. Something about the stress of a mission. She couldn't really follow along. It just meant she had nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

    Normally when she had free time, Weiss would take a trip to the city to stock up on groceries. And then spend the next couple of days over the weekend systematically burning and destroying every single one of those in an attempt to create increasingly disastrous recipes until one of them finally came out edible. But she couldn't even do that now. She didn't have the money. Couldn't buy things.

    She rolled out of bed and honestly considered leaving in her underwear to check what she did have left in the cupboards outside. Instead, she found the only good outfit she had left. She'd ruined her normal outfit in the caves along with her long hair. It was the snow pea getup with the black highlights for her. It felt like an eternity to get it on, from stockings to skirt to blouse.

    And then an eternity to slink into the kitchen and examine all of her nothing. A couple of eggs that had gone bad since Montluçon. And the remains of a bag of corn flour and whatever the heck xanthan gum was. Only in Vale could you find edible things with the letter X in them. Oh, and a bag of pecans. She half remembered a plan to try to concoct a pecan pie.

    She grabbed the pecans and collapsed in the chilly common room, right onto a couch. She booted up some social media app and just scrolled. Her hobbies were gone. Her ability to spend her free time productively had been robbed from her. She couldn't even go to class and try to focus on being the best. And all she could do was half-heartedly pretend like she was going to eat pecans on a couch and look at posts of people who pretended to be more popular than her.

    It got boring quickly.

    Where was the rest of her team?

    You: What are you doing?​
    ​
    Jaune: I lift​
    ​
    Jaune: Now is this a booty call or do you want to join me?​
    ​
    You: No. My legs are still jelly from this morning.​

    She tried again.

    You: What's up?​
    ​
    Blake (Some Relation): About 2 do the mission interview with the headmaster u?​
    ​
    You: I've got mine later, so nothing.​
    ​
    Blake (Some Relation): Sorry :(​

    Weiss sighed.

    You: Doing stuff?​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: Oh no, cold texting. I'll send someone to get u​
    ​
    You: What?​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: u only do this when ur upset. I take it call with ur dad went bad​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: where u?​
    ​
    You: Dorm common room, simply existing.​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: hang tight cuz I'm busy​

    Weiss sat up, staring at the text. She didn't only text Shamrock out of the blue when she was upset, did she? Granted, there was that one time before she went up teaching Jaune to sing. Every other time she can recall texting Shamrock, she had a plan in mind and was pretty upfront with it.

    If she just scrolled a little up, she could see where she was texting Shamrock her plans for Blake's surprise birthday party this Saturday and an invitation to show up to help make the cake. Although now she didn't know how she was going to do that, when she couldn't even buy ingredients. It just gave her more anxiety. She had promised to break a cake for her eighteenth birthday, something homemade and awesome and well researched, but now she couldn't even do that.

    Blake herself right now seemed busy. And Weiss wasn't ready to put on tight workout pants in front of a crowd just yet with Jaune. She had always had a vague suspicion that the girls who did that on the campus gym were just there for a mild exhibitionist fetish.

    You: Don't be silly. I'll come to you. Location?​

    It took a couple of minutes before Shamrock replied.

    J. Shamrock: Campus cafe. Want some coughee?​
    ​
    You: What?​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: Coughee. Dirty bean caffeine water with sugar and cream​
    ​
    You: You mean "coffee"?​
    ​
    J. Shamrock: p sure that's not how it's spelled​

    Weiss returned her bag of pecans that she couldn't have eaten in any case, due to all the calories and fat and things she didn't really need. At least now she had a vague direction of somewhere to go. Something to do.

    It was mostly just a hop, skip, and a jump from the dorms to the café. It was technically located in the library, a sort of large nook you could access from the outside directly or from the warehouse of books that Blake liked to haunt. It was past lunch time and that meant there weren't really any crowds here. Weiss supposed that made it perfect for someone like Shamrock who wasn't in class right now to stop in for a coffee. Much like the bagel store in the student center, technically you could get everything they had on offer at the cafeteria at some point, but the cafeteria was only open at certain hours today, had an incredibly limited selection, and it tended to be mediocre at best. As you would expect from a well-run corporation, the bagel shop and the café did it better than the government standard.

    She looked around the tables trying to find Shamrock and join them. Until a girl in café uniform and a flamboyant tophat appeared before her.

    "It's seat yourself," Shamrock said, taking out a notepad. "I recommend a comfy window seat. Empty enough that you have prime real estate pick. Our soup of the day is soupe à l'oignon, our special is a toa-ahi with parrot egg sushi, and we add an automatic thirty percent surcharge if you touch one of us."

    Weiss blinked. "What?"

    Shamrock shrugged. "A lot of boys and girls come from culture where giving us the goose is considered in good humor instead of sexual harassment. With all of the foreigners here for Vytal, it's become a kind of occupational hazard. Might as well milk those creeps since there's no way the charges will stick."

    "What the heck!"

    She sighed. "Beacon has terrible HR. I'm convinced it's no accident our school uniform skirts are so short. Bunch of horny old men probably designed them. Why do you think I prefer to wear the men's suit for class?"

    "No, I mean—Shamrock, you work here?"

    "Uh, yeah? Why is everyone surprised I actually have a job?" She put hands on hips. "What do you think I'm doing when I'm not hanging out with you guys? Do you think I actually have friends?"

    "I mean, we do play cards with Jack and Yang."

    "Those two are firmly under the category of 'you guys.' I need to get my betting money from somewhere! Now are you going to sit down and order something or do I have to throw you out like that monkey boy from earlier?"

    Having no idea what else to do, Weiss found the best table she could manage and just sat.

    Shamrock folded her arms, leaning her hip against the table. "So what's got you so upset and sad?"

    "I'm not sad."

    "Uh-huh. So after all of our heart to heart talks about your daddy in just how much he fucked you up in the head, talking to him didn't make you sad?"

    "How do you even know I had to call my father?"

    Shamrock shrugged. "Jaune told me."

    Weiss played with her fingers. "So you know why I did it, then."

    "Not really, no. Jaune just popped back into the room, told me that class was apparently canceled for the week for us, kind of just stood around there with this distant look on his face, and then said he was going to the gym."

    "You would think he would find something more productive to do," she said.

    "I don't think he has any hobbies. It's kind of sad. All he knows how to do is lift weights and send Blake mixed messages."

    Weiss blew out a puff of breath. "Yeah, no kidding. I kind of feel like every time our team starts to fall apart or has trouble, it's because of Jaune or Blake."

    "I feel like I'm missing out by not causing us emotional trouble," Shamrock said, twirling her pen. With a single gesture, she made it disappear. Only to pull it out from behind Weiss' ear and smile. "So if your dad didn't do it, how did those two idiots make you sad?"

    "Nothing. I don't think there's anything they can do to make me sad. Angry and annoyed, that's a constant. But sad? No. Those two are just whatever. Even my father is just part of the cost of doing business, I suppose."

    "If those things can't ruin your day, what can?"

    "Horses," Weiss said simply.

    Shamrock glanced at the entrance as someone came in. But another waitress came over to take their order, and Shamrock returned her focus to Weiss. "Are you afraid of horses or something?"

    "What? No, don't be ridiculous. The mere existence of horses just upsets me. Not because I hate them; I actually really like horses. They're extremely rare in Atlas. Usually their hearts just explode if you get them that high up."

    Sitting down across from her, Shamrock put her hat upside down on the table. "Did you once pet a horse and think you were getting pregnant?"

    "I mean, horses are pretty much perpetually aroused, but it's because they die for pretty much no reason. It's why they're actually a little easier to breed than you might expect. We have a word in Atlas called snowhorse, or Schneepferd if you want to get technical."

    "Let's say that I do?"

    Weiss looked to the ceiling, remembering. "In old Mantle, horses were pretty rare. They don't survive that well in the far north. Unlike popular belief, Solitas isn't just ice and glaciers; that's just an effect of the seasons. If you go far enough, sure, that's all you'll see, but there are plenty of places where you can actually grow food during summer, and even a few volcanic hot spring areas that are green year-round. Despite it all, horses really don't like it up there. Even the ones we did breed for the climate are extremely expensive and take a lot of care. So the old king of Mantle used to put disfavored courtiers in charge of the royal horses. He'd give them a Schneepferd. This person would have to pay out of pocket to take care of the horses, and it would usually financially destroy them. But to refuse the offer, which was a prestigious position, would spit in the face of the king and ruin your social standing."

    "So you don't like horses because they're expensive? And here I was thinking your family could afford anything."

    Weiss widened her eyes theatrically. "Everybody but me! At least, as of this morning. By the way, I can't actually afford to buy any coffee or anything right now."

    Shamrock frowned. "Weiss, I know you're my best friend, but rules are rules and I will kick you out if you can't find a way to tip me for good service."

    Her eyelashes fluttered. "Wait, I'm your best friend?"

    "Am I not yours?" Shamrock asked with a gesture to ward off the evil eye.

    Drumming her fingers on the table, Weiss said, "It's… I know it's a little late, but I've just never really put a label on it like that, I guess? It's weird."

    "Lemme put it like this: if you had to pick someone to kill—"

    "Jaune," Weiss said quickly. "And Blake. I'll shoot her over you. If I have to spend the rest of my days here with one of you idiots, I'd rather it be you. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I'm getting close to finally being able to beat you in a game of cards, and I can't even beat Jaune at a jog."

    Shamrock looked impressed. "I was going to ask you, 'fuck, marry, or kill,' but now I'm afraid you might not change your answer."

    Weiss laughed despite herself. "Is that really a game people play after middle school?"

    "It's an important friendship litmus test. A Huntsman team comes preequipped with four people, which is just designed to play fuck, marry, or kill with."

    "And I suppose the correct answer is marry your partner?"

    Shamrock put a hand to her chest, pretending to be offended. "Personally, I think I'd make a wonderful one night stand, thank you very much!"

    "Don't quit your day job," Weiss said, flicking a little packet of table sugar at her partner.

    "I mean if I married you, I could live a life of luxury off of your estate. Then I could finally quit this coffee shop job and pay off my gambling debt to Jack."

    She made a face. "That sounds uncomfortable. I wouldn't trust owing anything to Jack. I feel like he's the kind of person to claim that pictures of your breasts would suffice for money."

    "No, I offered that," Shamrock said casually. "To be fair, I was drinking. He said no, because he'd rather get his hands on blackmail material the honorable way." She sat forward. "Though if you get your hands on pics of Yang, I'd be down. I am convinced she stuffs her chest."

    "That's mean!" Weiss laughed.

    Shamrock rolled her green eyes. "Please. She tries to act all tough and sexy, but I think she's just pretending for some reason. I think being the hot party girl was just who she always imagined she would have been if she wasn't an unwilling teen mom for her little sister, basically."

    Weiss was going to reply to that, but then paused. "Wait, what were we talking about? I'm completely lost here."

    "Yeah," Shamrock said with a wink. "I dragged you out of your feelings kicking and screaming. You don't look so sad anymore."

    Leaning back, Weiss sighed. A little laugh bubbled from her lips. "No, I suppose not. It doesn't change the fact that economic warfare has rendered me a pauper who can't even afford socks to stuff Yang's bra with."

    Shamrock snorted. "Tits McGee aside, what are you gonna do now?"

    "Well, it's not exactly like I can leave. I'm not going to go back home as a failure who couldn't make do when things got tough. And I'm especially not going to abandon any of you. Pretty sure Team BASS would die in a blaze of stupidity without me here to keep you all in line. So if Vale wants to go crazy nationalistic, then tough; I'm not budging."

    Weiss leaned back, putting her arm over her chair. She looked around the room, eyes drifting to people passing outside the windows. "My grandfather had a problem like this once in Vacuo. The local beylik thought he could try to throw out the SDC while he was there to personally oversee the mission."

    "Bey," Shamrock said. "It's Seljuk, my native language. A beylik is the territory of a bey. Like duke and duchy."

    "Stop correcting me on my cultural insensitivity; I'm trying to tell a story," Weiss said, giving the gesture for pardon. "Point is, when he was all alone without support, he used what he had on hand. He refused to bend over and leave. He forced the system to work with and for him. Starting from nothing until he had built his own miniature SDC no one could go without, because those savages couldn't mine Dust like we could. No offense."

    "Some taken," Shamrock said casually.

    "My point is, he was given an awful hand, and worked with it until he came out on top. If my grandfather could do it, why can't I? I'm still a Schnee, one way or another. So I guess I'll have no choice."

    "To do what? Make your own Dust company and subvert the market?"

    "No," Weiss said grimly. "First I'm going to need a local bank account so I can earn money. And then I'm going to find a way to fill that bank account. With the fruits of my own labor. It's times like this when you have to ask yourself the three most important questions."

    Shamrock looked like she was phasing out, her eyes distant and everything. "And those are?"

    Weiss smirked. "'What do I have?', 'What do I want?', and 'How can I use the former to get the latter?' It's basic business. It's how you should approach every situation."

    "Uh," Shamrock droned, twirling her pen.

    "Obviously, I have my career as a Huntress, the fact that I'm smarter than pretty much anyone else here, and I have my name."

    "I too have a name. It is currently Jetty."

    Weiss waved her hand. "That's not what I mean. It is your name, but it doesn't have weight. See, my name is still good for something; I'm sure I can get a loan with a moderate interest rate and use it to start a business. But what will I sell?" She put her fingers together. "The trick is finding a niche in the market. Something that no one else is doing, or else doing it better than everyone already is. Quite clearly, I need to play to my strengths. I'm going to need to acquire a sample of every mass produced bagel out there, so I can then figure out how to do it better, but cheaper. The problem is, this country has startlingly high minimum wage laws, because some politicians thought it was smarter to enforce a wage instead of letting the market figure it out, because politicians are always so much better than the actual market. That was sarcasm by the way."

    "I never would have guessed."

    She poked her finger into her cheek. "Alternatively, this country does have penal labor. Perhaps I could exploit that? People like seeing reformed inmates playing with puppies and getting jobs. So why not convince people that leasing to my new business inmate labor at cheap cost to help produce bagels and breads is the way to go? Pastries are based on grains, and carbohydrates are already extremely cost efficient per calorie—"

    "What the fuck is going on?" Shamrock said in a breathy whisper.

    "So by using cheaply imported grain from Graad and prison labor, I can cut down on costs from the outset. And perhaps market my product at a premium, since it's ethically sourced using ethically treated non-consenting labor as a form of reform. But how will I master my recipe? Drugs are startlingly legal in Vale. I'll need to see food purity laws to see if I can add cheap yet addictive chemicals to—"

    Shamrock slammed her hands on the table. "Okay, that's enough!"

    Weiss blinked. "Wha'?"

    "Look, I was waiting for you to make an obvious connection, but it's clearly beyond you." She reached forward and rapt her knuckles against Weiss' forehead.

    "Ah!" Weiss yelled, shielding her face from the onslaught. "That hurts!"

    "Work here. With me. It pays pretty good. Enough that I can keep my crippling gambling addiction without going to prostitution."

    Weiss gasped. "Customer service!"

    "And half the time we get away with pretty good tips. You're hot; you'd make a killing."

    "But tipping is unethical!"

    Shamrock raised her notebook threateningly. Weiss flinched.

    "I was kidding!" Weiss said. "I don't—I don't really want to use prison slavery to make cinnamon rolls. It was just kind of fun to think about and I got carried away. It would probably still work, though. Just saying."

    "You've got a weird sense of humor."

    Weiss sulked. "It's because I'm funny and you're not!"

    "Do you want me to help you get a job here or not?"

    Gritting her teeth, Weiss asked, "Do I have a choice?"

    "Not unless you've mastered cards and can rake Yang or Jack over the Dust."

    Weiss made a gesture, breathing life into her Semblance. She created a 4 of Hearts out of glyphs. "Is this your card?"

    Shamrock rolled her eyes. "Don't know why I asked. Point is, this job here is pretty okay. Occasional sexual harassment aside—which we are protected under via this kingdom's self-defense laws, if you are so inclined—it pays well, the tips are good, and all campus jobs must work around your class schedule and hours. I've been doing this a while. And we could really use the extra help. Plus, y'know, it'd be fun to hang out with a coworker I actually like."

    "Me?" Weiss asked, pointing at herself.

    "Uh, duh."

    Weiss mulled it over for an uncomfortable moment. Putting her hands in her lap, she said, "Is there an interview process? Do I get to look at my schedule? Do I have to wear the same uniform you do, because that color is kind of tacky and I think it would really clash with my skin."

    "Do you have any idea how a job works?"

    With an awkward laugh, Weiss said, "No? I mean, I've helped around for stuff for my family. Business related stuff, you understand. But it wasn't exactly a job. More like training for when I eventually take over the SDC."

    Shamrock stood, arms extended onto the table to prop her up. "Well, consider this training to be an employee. One of the countless number of faceless goons you'll wind up employing one day."

    "I already feel a creeping sense of dread."

    Shamrock winked. "Welcome to customer service!"

    — 8 —​

    "Okay, you're hired!" the red-eyed girl with the blue beret said. "But only if you can score me a hot date with one of your teammates!"

    Apparently, there was actually an interview process. Shamrock had explained it as more or less a rubber stamping. She had talked with the head of the café, who didn't have any objections to having more hands to help, and then sent her on her way. Weiss had gone alone to the girl single-handedly manning the front desk in the student center.

    The name tag on her uniform read Cards, and she had a way of making Weiss feel like she was in a sting operation. Just the way she happily seemed to accept everything that came up, and then did stuff like this. Weiss would have called the girl small, except that they were about the same height. It was just that her uniform looked a little too big on her, like she had lost a lot of weight since she acquired it, or maybe they just ran out of toddler size during orientation after Weiss and Ruby. There was also the fact that she was wearing leggings designed to look like tentacles on her thighs, and it just looked unprofessional.

    Which, in an ironic way, made Weiss feel more at home. Without a suit or even a good dress, Weiss was worried that she would fail the interview just because she wasn't dressed for the part. But if these were the standards that the student employees maintained, Weiss could have probably showed up in her yoga pants and been fine.

    On Cards' desk were all of the bits of paperwork Weiss needed to get filled out and signed so that she could officially get a job, and start making an income. The girl would occasionally sign something or make a doodle, and then spin around in her chair while humming to herself. Almost as if she was lost in her own little world, only to be reminded that reality existed every time she saw Weiss. And apparently, whatever she saw in Weiss was grounds for disapproval.

    "I do not operate an escort service?" Weiss said slowly, feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

    Cards nodded. "Good! You passed the first test. We don't hire people who are running a secret prostitution ring on our campus."

    "Has this been a problem in the past?"

    "Eh, not really. But you can never be too careful. Kids these days." She tsked her tongue. "Usually, the worst we have is the occasional wannabe amateur porn star. Imagine being a Huntress who fights against the forces of evil and darkness by day, and at night taking pictures of your tits. Not that you would know, of course; you don't have any."

    Weiss felt a lance of something hot and angry run up her back. She did her best to control her temper, just grabbing at the hem of her skirt. "Thaaaanks."

    "Oh, no, don't thank me," Cards said happily. "I was insulting you. You've got to get used to that in customer service, especially in the café. People are dicks. I'm preparing you for a harsh life in the real world!"

    Weiss looked around. She was sitting at the desk in the student center, in clear view of everyone passing by. She could even see the little bagel store she had stopped by this morning, and for a moment idly wondered if Jaune had actually bothered to eat anything today. This wasn't exactly a private place for an interview by any stretch of the imagination. She could feel people's eyes on the back of her neck as they walked by. She wondered how many of them were simply idly curious and how many knew her from the news footage.

    "Are people really that bad on campus?" Weiss asked. "I mean, I've gotten stuff from student employees before. I don't think I've ever been mean to them or anything."

    Cards shrugged one hand. "Honestly, it depends. I know this one guy who works with Croaker in medical. He tells me things. Most of the time it's 'please leave me alone' or 'why do you keep taking the free condoms; no one wants to sleep with you,' but other times he says that injured students who have to go to the hospital can get pretty nasty. My job here is pretty nice. I got it by accident. I was just trying to find umbrellas during initiation night and accidentally got the job because I was the first freshman to apply for one out of our whole year. Things pretty much trickled down from there because it's a pretty visible position and I don't really do anything besides chase parrots. So in my case, it's a really cushy position, and people seem to respect me for it, which is all the motivation I need to keep going with a smile on my face!"

    "But what about as a waitress?"

    Cards adjusted her beret. "I mean, it's a super public space. I don't hear much, but I can imagine." She threw up her hands in a kind of dude-bro gang sign. Deepening her voice, she said, "Damn, baby, are you a drunk college girl? Because I would literally violate your bodily autonomy without any respect to your consent if I thought I could get away with it."

    She ended it with a big, goofy smile. As if expecting some sort of praise.

    Weiss just blinked, and slowly pulled her head back in a kind of horrified disgust. She was nearly awestruck. In the worst way possible. She folded her legs defensively, arms crossed. "That actually happens?!"

    "Eh, calm down, ice queen. It's probably not that bad. I'm spitballing the worst I can imagine. Not a real example."

    Weiss hissed. "I—what—you—gods, you are creepy. That is not okay to say. To anyone! Even as a joke!"

    Cards didn't look impressed. "Take it up with the complaint department. Which is me. I run way too many miscellaneous things from the student-side of things. Because the system is kinda stupid."

    It took Weiss a very long moment to collect herself. She ran her hands through her hair before straightening out her skirt. Several breaths later, she thought she was able to swallow the indignant hatred to try to actually get back to reality with this cretinous little creep. "So, if you're in charge of HR and complaints, you hear stuff. Am I correct?" Weiss asked slowly.

    The girl thought about it for a moment by spinning around in her chair. "Hmm, I guess so. Last complaint I got was from customers, actually. They were wondering why their favorite, most pretty waitress was gone. But it turned out she died on a mission, so it was out of our control."

    She said it so casually, like someone's death didn't matter. It was enough to give Weiss goosebumps. She's stiffened in place.

    Weiss didn't want to be anywhere near Cards ever again if she could help it.

    "Is that a common problem?" Weiss asked.

    Cards brushed away one of her black bangs, tucking it beneath her hat. "Hm. Depends. I saw your team on TV. I doubt a lot of people could make it through that alive. You'll be fine, but others? Sometimes I wonder. People die in this lifestyle. It's easy to forget when I spend most of my days messing around behind a desk here, and the missions my team goes on are pretty basic stuff like providing security for an archeology team in the Forever Fall Forest, but we're Hunters. We die. It's a part of life. More specifically, the very last part of life. Which is why you should totally try to score a hot date before you die if you can." She winked.

    "Are… you using the ever-present guillotine of our careers to hit on me?"

    Cards laughed. "Oh, please. Don't be so full of yourself, Weiss. My type is hot, tall, probably doesn't know my name, and—oh my god he's bringing me food right now!"

    "That's a ludicrously specific type."

    "No, I mean—hi!"

    Weiss turned to find Jaune of all people setting a little plate of hand pies on Cards' desk. He looked like he might on any other day, except for how his expression seemed a mix between guarded and sour. He eyed Cards with distrust as she shoved one of the entire little pastries into her mouth without gagging, which was actually kind of impressive in a horrifying way.

    "It's a deep fried cinnamon apple pie. Is this real life?" Cards asked around a mouthful of food. "Have I finally managed to steal Ruby's husband?"

    "Jaune?" Weiss gasped. "What are you doing here?"

    "I promised I'd feed Cards in an alternate dimension. She said that was acceptable because she is eternal in all realities," he said, as if that was a completely reasonable answer and not absolutely mental.

    "I'm going to assume that means you had a dream about me," Cards said. "If so, hell yeah. I finally made it into the dreams of hot boys! Cross one thing off the bucket list."

    "I lack the object permanence to discern fiction from reality, so your answer is as good as mine. But a promise is a promise. Anyhow, Weiss, how's my favorite girl boss doing?"

    "I'm doing da betht!" Cards said in a kind of sultry baby voice that made Weiss' skin crawl.

    "Cards," Jaune said with a contented sigh. "If racism didn't exist, I would invent it specifically to segregate you from the general populace and oppress you."

    The girl in the beret nibbled on a second apple hand pie. "Honestly, for free food, you could do anything to me and I probably wouldn't go to the police. Mostly because my mom is a cop and it will be pretty embarrassing explaining how we got in that situation to her."

    He rolled his eyes. "Drink some water. You sound thirsty."

    "Wow, rude much? I thought we were cool!"

    "I gave you my number to call in case anything interesting popped into the lost and found, and you never gave me a ring," Jaune said. "If it wasn't obvious, back then I was actually trying to hit on you."

    The girl shrugged, over exaggerating the gesture in a cartoonish fashion. "I lost it. On purpose. Because everyone said you were a creep. A girl's got to protect herself. Momma didn't raise no fool!"

    Jaune leaned against the desk, eyeing Weiss in a way that made her feel intensely self-conscious. She crossed her legs, hands in her lap. Then she remembered that this was Jaune, a boy who habitually neglected to eat. His opinion of her really shouldn't be something she allowed to bother her. If anything, she just found herself getting irritated.

    "You see what I deal with when I try to be nice to a girl?" he asked Weiss, shaking his head. "Next you're gonna tell me you faked laughing every time I told a joke."

    "I've never laughed at your jokes," Weiss said.

    "Same!" Cards added, finishing the last hand pie. She was getting crumbs all over the desk and Weiss' employment paperwork.

    "It's because you don't recognize humor when you see it," Jaune said, putting his nose in the air. "I'm currently performing the greatest joke of all time, and I am the only one laughing."

    "You mean that thing you call a life?" Weiss asked.

    "Oooh!" Cards cooed. "I thought you two were friends, but I am here for these sick burns!"

    Jaune waved his hand dismissively. "Stop stealing my punchline, Weiss. Ya finna make me think I'm predictable."

    Weiss made a so-so gesture. "Honestly, at this point, nothing you do really surprises me. It's more like a long, persistent chain of disappointments that I keep expecting you to learn from yet you consistently fail."

    The boy almost looked offended for a split second. Before he just shrugged it off and said, "I mean, the whole fact I'm from a different reality and can't die seemed to surprise you."

    Her eyes shot to Cards as soon as he said that. In public of all places. The short girl in the beret was idly kicking her feet as she finished up paperwork, only occasionally looking up to fake interest in the conversation now that it no longer concerned her. The various other students walking through the student center weren't close enough to overhear them, and in any case she didn't know who any of them were.

    After a moment, Weiss decided maybe it didn't matter. If she overheard a conversation where somebody she didn't know claimed to be from another reality, she would assume it was either insanity or a roundabout metaphor. A part of her, however, continued to be mildly annoyed on a spiritual level that nobody, not even herself, particularly cared about this Remnant shattering revelation. She was honestly more amazed that she wasn't amazed than anything else.

    "That didn't surprise me," Weiss said pointedly. "It made things about you make sense for the first time in my life. And speaking of sense, good gods what are you wearing?"

    He looked down with some mild surprise. It looked like his typical tight jeans and a kind of open faced vest. "It's a weskit."

    "What?" she intoned.

    Jaune shrugged. "Look, fuck if I know. Grimm ate my good shirt out in Montluçon. And the cape Ruby designed with me. This is my last article of clothing that Coco and I went shopping for. Looks good, huh?"

    She squinted in disbelief. "Congratulations. You have graduated from regular pornstar to gay pornstar."

    He clicked his tongue. "My body, my choice. I don't appreciate you sexualizing me just because I exist in a feminized space. I do not exist for your viewing pleasure nor do I have to conform to your standards of decency."

    "What kind of political jargon is that?"

    "Of course, you know," he said smugly, putting a hand to his chest as if offended, "as a feminist, I believe in equality between the sexes, including my ability to free the nipple."

    Her head hurt just trying to comprehend that. Stabbing her hand towards him in a knife gesture, she said, "No, you are not a 'feminist.' You made fun of that Yatsuhashi guy just for standing up to your wildly sexist language."

    "He was just upset that I was badmouthing Velvet, who herself kept being a bitch to Blake."

    "They started fighting after you made fun of him."

    "Preemptive self-defense," he said quickly.

    "That's not a thing. You were just mean to him for no real reason."

    He had this look of blank incomprehension on, the kind of expression he only made when he knew exactly what you were saying, but was mentally refusing to process the words. "Lo, I deny the reprobate opinions of miscreants malappropriating gender equality simply because the moon is in retrograde."

    "Now you're clearly saying words you don't understand!"

    "I understand most things, sometimes those include the words I say. It's not a perfect Venn diagram, but, y'know." He shrugged.

    Weiss sighed, leaning against the help desk as Cards hummed away her paperwork. "You don't even understand how to eat. Have you even put anything in your mouth today? Besides cigarettes."

    He opened his mouth, but upon her clarification just went quiet in a boyishly stubborn kind of way. As he was searching for some way to shift responsibility for his lack of eating onto something stupid, Cards stood up.

    "Here you go!" she said happily, holding out the paperwork. She wiped some of the handpie crumbs around her mouth away on her sleeve. "Normally, I'm all for hot people standing around me, getting all hot and bothered. But the more you talk, the more I feel like I'm the unwanted child of a divorce. Take this crap to the maitre d' of the café or whatever. Just get out of my hair before I decide to forget to include you on the next payroll out of spite."

    Weiss gave Jaune one last sour look before taking the little stacks of paper. "I don't believe that's legal and you will be hearing from my lawyer if you try that on me."

    Cards scoffed. "With this pay? Honey, you are not affording a lawyer. Unless you try taking nude pics on the side."

    "Would that really turn a profit, though?" Jaune asked.

    The girl adjusted her beret again. "Anything's possible if you're willing to sell your dignity while stubbornly insisting it's 'empowerment' and not 'prostitution.'"

    The boy put his hands on his hips. "Huh. That was an oddly succinct critique, coming from you."

    Cards shrugged. "My mom was a cop. She told me neither the legal system nor its enforcers treat prostitutes as human beings. And what is wage labor but prostituting the rest of your body save your groin?"

    "What?" Weiss said, tilting her head. "That's literally so stupid I don't know if I misheard you or had a stroke. I mean that genuinely. I'm wondering if I can smell toast right now, after you just said that."

    The girl looked away. "I don't know. It sounded pretty deep. My team leader, Jack, said that and I'm still not sure if it was really cool or just really dumb."

    "Wait, Jack? Indigo Jack?" Weiss shook her head. "Really tall guy who is always carrying around a couple of knives? Compulsive liar? Probably a communist despite having literally zero grasp on economic theory on even a preschool level?"

    "Das da one," Cards said. "Anyhow, Weiss, you're used to wage slavery. Be real with me here: what is the difference between what you're doing now, and selling ass pics?"

    Weiss compressed a groan in her throat. "One is the honest use of your skills and abilities to earn a better lot in life, and the other is exchanging what should be something deep and personal for a couple lien. They're only even vaguely equivalent if you presume humans are just meat and not people. It's gross."

    "Well, hold on," Jaune said mildly, "I'm not really sure she's in a position to judge fairly, philosophy aside. For one, she doesn't have an ass to sell. Secondly—"

    Sucking on her lip, Weiss just turned around to avoid them seeing the only somewhat homicidal redness creeping over her cheeks. "Not dealing with this. Not dealing with this. Both of you are stupid and I'm leaving."

    She barely made it to the sliding front door before Jaune caught up to her. Weiss gave him a harsh look as she negotiated around a team of junior Huntsmen entering. Outside, the crisp daylight air was nice, the sun reflecting off the snow before freshly salted sidewalks turned it all into a gray morass.

    "But for real, where you goin'?" he asked.

    Weiss clutched her paperwork to her chest. "Shouldn't you be off not eating somewhere else?" she snapped.

    He kept pace with her, burning a mild Aura to stay warm. His expression was somewhere between mildly thoughtful and vaguely alarmed. "Sorry, sorry. I was making a joke and got lost in the moment. I wasn't trying to demean or ignore you."

    She sideyed him. "I think you should stop there. There's nowhere that conversation can go that I wouldn't find uncomfortable."

    Jaune shrugged. "What about somewhere positive? I like the new outfit. The blacks go well with the whites. I take it you lost the old one back in the city like I did mine?"

    Half-heartedly, she rolled her eyes and said, "You don't have to act like you're hitting on me to try to be nice. If anything, it just makes you look sad and desperate, and I worry for Blake."

    "Oh, no. If I wanted to hit on you, I would just do it without pretense. That's why I'm a feminist; I can punch smaller women in the face and not feel any kind of moral conundrum over it."

    "So, is that what feminism is in your world? An excuse to punch girls in the face?"

    He put one hand in his pocket, his eyes to the clouds as if considering his answer. "I've punched a couple of women. But they've all been of the superpowered variety, so they had the advantage over me."

    "That White Fang girl wasn't."

    Jaune looked puzzled. Rather than directly walk beside her, he stepped up onto the bricks of a little garden and balanced his way forwards like a toddler. "The Humming Lady? We never threw hands. Although I probably should have. Kept making Blake uncomfortable. Just a real bitch to her. Made my blood boil. It was like she got off on the fact that she could say whatever, and we wouldn't touch her because we were all too busy fighting Grimm."

    Weiss shook her head. "No, even earlier. Way back during that Dust store robbery that, for some reason, you convinced us to go along with."

    That seemed to take him genuinely off guard. "I did?"

    "Yeah, it was… kind of brutal. You beat her face into a counter."

    He hopped off the bricks and kept up beside her again. "I have… a poor memory of that. Even my first couple of days forcefully sober here, I barely recall. Talked to Pyrrha and Ruby, I think. I want to say that I apologized to at least one of them for something."

    "Hm. Speaking of things you should apologize for, why exactly are you following me?"

    Jaune shrugged a shoulder. "Spent most of my night trying to bake some treats and work on weapons with Ruby. Haven't really seen much of Blake, and… y'know, I saw you and figured it'd be good conversation. I like you. Mostly unironically these days, too."

    "So you're saying you used to not like me?" she asked, more than a little curious.

    He nodded eagerly. "Oh yeah. Sort of. I vaguely recall being fed up with you the moment we met. Just trying to ask for your help with my Aura felt like scraping my teeth with sandpaper. I knew you were smart and really badass, but, y'know."

    For some reason, the lopsided compliment made her hold her head up a little higher. It felt nice, warming her better than her coat. "Pride and ego kept you away, huh?"

    Almost surprised, he said, "No, none of that. Do you think anyone with a shred of pride would dress like this? I'm shameless. It was more—you just weren't good people. I didn't know a single person who liked you. And like I'm one to talk, I know, but I just didn't want to be near you. Now, fuck it, I'd be dead without you. We're a team. A little family, I guess. And I just like talking with you these days, y'know?"

    "Family. What a particular word." With a gesture, she summoned a little snowflake glyph in her palm. She crushed it in her fist.

    "Yeah. Which is why I'm having you all vaccinated." He winked. "The sooner you develop autism and become socially stunted, the longer it will take you to realize you'd probably be better off without me. I feed on them social attachments to keep from killing myself."

    Weiss sighed. "Jaune, suicidal, on-the-ledge humor isn't funny. If we were better off without you, I wouldn't constantly be pestering you about your diet, or lack thereof. It's not a good sign. Making a joke of it doesn't make it better. If anything, it proves how self-aware you are of the problem, which makes you all the more deplorable for not addressing it. I know how much you like to pretend to be stupid, but you're a lot smarter than that and you know it."

    Neither of them spoke. They passed by a pair of senior girls comparing weapons. Jaune eyed their guns, probably trying to figure out how they worked. Just anything to prevent him from having to answer Weiss' accusation.

    "We handle what bothers us in different ways," Jaune finally said, examining the sheath strapped to his arm. He tapped his fingers against it thoughtfully. "Blake likes to avoid it altogether. Shamrock switches faces and becomes someone else. You'll work towards even the slightest improvement because you don't like sitting still. I… just don't think about it. I shut down, and I don't think about it, and I act like nothing is wrong because I don't know what to do."

    "But we do know what to do," she said, turning a corner. "We're going to actually have Blake's birthday party and then I'm going to lock you in a room together until you wind up working through what's wrong; die in the attempt; or, I don't know, one of you gets pregnant. Just whatever it takes until you get the stupid out of your systems."

    "But I don't need any more children; I already have you guys," Jaune whined. He reached out to her to do something, and paused. At his questioning expression, Weiss sighed and gave a slight nod. As if nothing happened, he grabbed Weiss around the shoulder and said, "This is my Weiss and teammate. I've only been her friend for, like, maybe a day, but if anything happened to her I would kill everyone in the world and then myself. Same for Blake and Shamrock. In fact, none of you get near my babies."

    Weiss pushed him away, rolling her eyes. "Your paternalistic instincts to protect are backwards. If anything, I'm the mom of this family."

    "Team teen mom much, Weiss?" he asked, nudging her shoulder.

    She slowed down a fraction. "I… suppose. You could consider it practice. I've always wanted children in a way. Of course, if my children are anything like you, I should get my tubes tied and leave heirs to my brother." She flashed a smile.

    More than anything, he just looked surprised in a way which got under her skin. "You, a mother?"

    Weiss stopped outside the café door and bristled. "What's that supposed to mean?" she snapped.

    Jaune stepped backwards, raising his hands. "It's just—jokes aside, I never reckoned you the type. Figured you'd be more a career woman. Or…" He shrugged.

    "Or what?" she asked sharply. "Do you expect me to want to become some old spinster with seventeen cats?"

    "No, it's more—like…" He made a gesture like trying to conduct a small orchestra, as if physically trying to grab the words from his head and put them in order before him. Eventually, posture slumping sheepishly, he said, "I was pretty fucked up as a kid. Dad was born illegitimate and spent life as a sailor who kept getting sent to one war or another. Mom was raised by a drug addict and barely knew how to handle kids. They tried, and got me. Mom used to say I was the beta version so they could get all the accidentally fucking the child in the head shit out of the way first. It's why I left home. Ran away, almost. And it made me really believe in safe sex, you know? That I'd fuck up someone down the line like they did never sat well with me, despite a vague desire to have a family one day. With everything you tell me about how you were brought up, well…"

    Weiss took a moment to process what he was saying, the underlying meaning. When it all clicked with her, she felt a sudden weight in her stomach. It made her want to grit her teeth and bite someone. "I'm not like my father. Nor am I my mother."

    He seemed confused. "I didn't—that's not what I—"

    "I'm a wholly original kind of messed up," she said, and ran her tongue over her teeth. "But I'm not about to let any of that stop me from what I want to do. The difference is, I've learned the hard way about what doesn't work because I was raised at its mercy. You should know it too. It's why I know what I'm not going to do when I inherit my birthright, either for the SDC or some theoretical child. I know what I want, I know what I have, and nothing is going to stop me from using the latter to get the former."

    Weiss tried to toss her hair back, only to find it was short. She kept forgetting that. "It's a lesson I had to learn early in life, but it didn't click for the longest time. You're supposed to be older than me; what's stopped you from figuring that out?"

    Jaune just stood there. Weiss stared back at him, feeling like she was somehow fighting him again on some moral principle.

    The café door opened. And suddenly Jaune looked flabbergasted.

    "Shamrock?" he asked.

    "Yes, hi, me," Shamrock said, tipping her hat. "If this is the part where you express shock and admiration that I actually have a job, you can skip it. It's already happened twice today."

    Weiss turned, only for Shamrock to grab her and drag her into the building. "Hey, hold on!"

    "Nope," Shamrock said. "It looks like you're fighting. You are not allowed to fight on company time. And since you're back and have the paperwork, I am presuming you're on the clock right now. Jaune, no. Bad Jaune. Don't make me get out the spray bottle of water!"

    "Uh," Jaune said. "We weren't fighting. Please don't leave me alone with my own thoughts. I can't handle the existential dread of merely being alive by my lonesome."

    Shamrock closed the door. Jaune pawed helplessly at the door. And then just kept standing there with this comically sad look on his face as Shamrock prevented him from entering.

    "No, really, we were okay," Weiss tried, leaning to the side to peek over Shamrock's shoulder.

    Jaune continued to look as if someone had just shot his favorite dog, and then forcibly had his second favorite cat neutered for good measure.

    Shamrock took the paperwork and looked it over quickly. "Well, if I spoke legal employment jargon, I'd presume this was in order. Take it to Milly in the back. She's our maitre d'. She'll get you fitted for your uniform, both this one and the special one we're going to need this weekend."

    "Wait, hold on," Weiss said, holding up her hands. "Slow down. What's this about a second uniform?"

    Shamrock gave a gesture to Jaune that meant ask me no question, I will tell you no lies. He just sort of frowned, folded his arms, and slunk away. Weiss' heart felt oddly heavy with guilt, as if she had just caused her friend some devastating emotional damage. She watched him go, passing by the windows, until Shamrock snapped her fingers to get her attention.

    "Okay, hustle!" Shamrock said frantically. "We're about to go into the dinner rush and without you, we're short staffed, and that's going to really suck for me until you get suited up. You gotta really learn this one on the job. I'll do my best to teach you, but it's gonna be hectic."

    "But what's with the two uniforms?"

    "Oh, that. N'importe," Shamrock said, flopping her hand over. "One's for regular work hours. The other is gonna be your costume for café maid night. I'm sure you'll look drop dead sexy in it, or you'll drop dead in it."

    Anyhow, that was the story of how Weiss would end up enduring the most awkward fitting session of her life, and come away fitted for the costume of an overly sexualized, short-haired Valais maid.

    The tips were good that first night on the job, though.

    Enough to be able to afford the ingredients to make Blake's birthday cake. Which was where most of the paycheck was going to in any case.

    In hindsight, maybe Cards was right. There really wasn't much of a philosophical difference between wage labor and selling ass pics. At least Weiss would still have some dignity as an amateur pornstar.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Got to read those contracts for service industry jobs. I wonder what the blue collar scene is like in Vale, with Grimm being a prevalent issue you would think there is plenty of repairs to work on.
     
    pingas plight said:
    Wait.

    Does your Jacques "The Cock" Gele actually have some fatherliness in him?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I know. It freaks Weiss out too. It's why she zeroes on in something being really wrong with him, to get him acting like this. His approval fills her with shame.

    CupswithsomeDude said:
    Got to read those contracts for service industry jobs. I wonder what the blue collar scene is like in Vale, with Grimm being a prevalent issue you would think there is plenty of repairs to work on.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I think Shamrock is slightly hamming it up. It's like how we in the Army love to talk about how horrible it is, how miserable we are, all the bullshit, but we're still here and most of us are enjoying our time. It's sort of a humble "look how tought I am for putting up with this bullshit" deal. I don't think people are routinely trying to grabass super dangerous Huntresses who can and will break your fucking hand if you touch them.

    Blue collar is probably normal in the cities. A bit with Blake where she talks about the Royal Army in this story seems to imply the military does a lot of major repairs outside of the safety of those cities in Vale.
     
    Volume 7, Chapter 5
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 5: You Too Can Be a Monster
    "WTF am I gonna go to a therapist for? So I can pay money for some bitch to tell me I'm straight? To find out I'm bi and in the closet? To help me discover that deep down I'm a straight ass gender-conforming bitch? LMAO pass. Miss me with that shit. I am gay. IAMGAY!"

    — 9 —​

    Professor Ozpin visited Coco in Beacon's hospital. She could feel the weight of his judgment in between the beeps of the EKG machine. Between the little pulses of the burning nerves in her cracked back whenever they manage to slip through the painkillers. She'd been in this bed for days since returning to campus. Doc Croaker had given her a bad prognosis or diagnosis or whatever the word was. Coco didn't know.

    A dislocated and then poorly relocated arm. A broken hip. A concussion. Mild pulmonary edema. A bit of frostbite on her fingers. And she had hairline fractures over her spine and everywhere else that mattered. According to the X-rays, her bones looked like a spiderweb instead of the building blocks of calcium that should've been holding her meat together. Only her Aura had kept her together, and only if you really squinted and were willing to shrug your shoulders at any permanent damage. Beacon had some of the best medical care in the world, and Croaker's supernatural abilities meant a Hunter could recover from anything short of actually losing a limb. But even he had limits.

    The doc had put nails in her spine and channeled his Semblance through it. If he'd gotten to her immediately after the injury, before the damage set it, she would've made a full, nearly instant recovery. But Coco had broken it days ago. Everything still hurt. She'd need weeks to properly recover, which was still a damn sight better than being a cripple. But she'd still need just a bit of physical therapy in water tanks and with casts and wires just to make sure she was up to snuff, and then would need months retraining her body to get back to where she was before Montluçon.

    Ozpin was hardly her first visitor. At first it was just Croaker and the nurses. Then trickled in the rest of Team CFVY, making sure she was good, asking how she was, the usual meaningless shit. She'd done her best to smile, to tell them she'd be fine. She'd make a full recovery, which wasn't strictly speaking a lie, but it underscored how long that'd take. Coco could handle the looks of pity in their eyes. Even from Fox, who'd sat there and spoken in her head, she could feel the pity.

    Pity is the single cruelest, most evil form of compassion out there, Jaune had told her in the caves before they got separated. Before she'd failed as a leader, let Jaune take control, and nearly gotten everyone killed. To say nothing of the people in the city who died because they'd touched some ancient evil thing they'd stumbled upon all because Coco couldn't tell everyone she'd found CCHS and then ran away.

    Jaune was pretty much the only one who didn't visit her. Which might have been for the best. No one on her team liked the kid. Really, no one from Team BASS or CFVY liked each other, save for Jaune and Coco. And Coco didn't know how it'd turn out if one of them walked in while she was with someone from her team, with all the dirty looks and arguments that would ensue.

    But hell, something about that hurt. Even Ruby had visited Coco in this depressing little room.

    "Hey, Coco!" Ruby had said, all smiles. She held up a little box. "I got you a little gift for surviving and saving all those people! And, y'know, for being there for me when I needed some advice. So, yeah, I asked your friends and thought you might need this!"

    Coco's back and ass had hurt as she reached out to accept the little box. And then everything hurt as she took out the designer shades she'd broken. Coco was only too glad when Ruby finally left. She didn't think she'd be able to live it down if Ruby saw her crying over something so simple and stupid.

    Professor Ozpin leaned on his cane as he read the medical reports by the foot of Coco's bed. When he looked back at her, she averted her eyes. "You've gone through more in a couple of days than many Huntresses go through in a lifetime," he said softly.

    Coco adjusted herself in her bed, trying to sit up. "Is this going to be the part like last time where you wonder how I'm going to do all of the homework I missed during the mission?"

    Professor Ozpin put her medical files back in the folder slot at the foot of her bed. "No. You only accrue homework during a mission if you overstay your time in the field. You weren't in Montluçon any longer than expected, despite what happened. And more to the point, you performed beyond expectations. I have already interviewed with your team."

    Her eyes widened. "And what did they say?"

    He looked down his glasses at her. "That you fought hard within the caves and afterwards. That you went above and beyond your calling as a Huntress. And that you suffered a grievous injury in the line of duty to protect your teammates."

    All at once, Coco realized something. Her teammates hadn't been telling the full story. They couldn't have been. She wasn't injured fighting; Coco got hurt because she ran ahead due to her claustrophobia and got shot off a ledge by a face stealing monster. She hadn't been able to keep control of her team, and everyone had defaulted to Jaune instead. The two teams hadn't ever seen eye to eye, and were fighting and bickering. And then, after the encounter with the liquid Grimm, the teams had been separated and hadn't reunited until after the fighting was done. Hell, the last part you could probably see from the TV reports. But they were all closing ranks around her.

    And Coco had to screw her eyes shut.

    "No," Ozpin said. "Despite everything that happened, you stuck to your guns as a Huntress, fought and defended people until the very end. I have nothing but admiration for people like you. You should be proud of what you did. But with pride comes knowing your limits."

    "And what does that mean?" Coco asked with more hostility than she had intended.

    He regarded her evenly. "That you need to rest, above all. Many a Hunter has fallen in the line of duty because they failed to realize what their limits were. They thought they could rely on their Aura or superior firepower to take care of them, and it cost them everything. You were hurt. And until you have recovered, I can't in good conscience ask you to return to class and your duties." He leaned forwards on his cane. "I'm excusing you from class for the next month to recover."

    "That's bullshit!" she snapped, slamming a fist into the railing of her bed. "You can't just take me away from class, my friends, my peers!"

    Professor Ozpin held up his hand. "I don't intend to. But I help make the lesson plans. I'm not going to punish you for doing well and saving lives by forcing you into advanced physical training or battlefield tactics that you have clearly demonstrated mastery of. You will be fine to relax for the next month and focus on your health. That is what concerns me most. I don't intend to remove you from your friends; I just want you to be okay. Once you are cleared to leave the hospital, you can return to your dorm room with your team. And then you can continue to relax and post on social media or do whatever it is the kids do these days while you focus on your recovery."

    Coco grabbed at the sheets of her bed, bunching them in her hands. "And what if I don't want to? What if I want to return to class? Hell, what do you think people will say or think if I suddenly vanish because I got hurt?"

    "They will be amazed at the hell you went through, and the fact that you still returned invincible as ever, Coco Adel," he said simply. "You went through something that would have killed most students here. Almost anybody without an Aura or the care of Doc Croaker would have been rendered a paraplegic by now. Yet here you are, one day returning, fine and fit for the fight. That is what they will see."

    She stared into her lap, not knowing how to reply to that, how to argue with the man. How to fight him and win.

    While she said nothing, he pulled up a chair and sat beside her. He drummed his fingers on his cane until she was able to look back up at him. At him in that damn little smile of his.

    "I don't intend to keep you locked up in a tower," he said. "You are one of our best, Coco. But you're also young and impulsive and brash and all of those other qualities that make you an excellent Huntress. I simply won't let your best traits be the ones that destroy you." He shrugged with one hand. "But I'll talk to the doctor. I think he wants to play it safe and keep you here as long as possible. I believe I can negotiate with some of the best brandy I keep hidden in my desk to allow you out of here sooner, if you're truly feeling it and promise not to strain yourself."

    She swallowed, nodding. Far behind the professor, through the windows, the CCTS tower obscured the sun and cast long shadows through the room. She could barely see his face even this close.

    "Thank you, professor," she said weakly. It felt so empty and pathetic. Like a starving dog being forced to roll over for table scraps. But she didn't know what else she could get. What else she could do.

    Coco saw the faintest glimmer of Aura in the eyes of his shadowed face as he said, "There is one other matter. About what you saw down in the caverns."

    Her mind's eye went to Haakon, screaming her name as the tree grew through his body. As that monstrous Grimm with the chain around its neck protected her from harm and let her go, with an almost implicit promise that one day she would be next for whatever it was doing to the man.

    Instead of directly asking, he pulled out his scroll. With the touch of a button, she watched a video unfold. She felt almost numb as saw herself in the video, leg shaking, skin melting. Jaune talking to a blonde girl. And a woman with porcelain skin who drowned them. Coco didn't so much watch it, as experienced all over again, remembering every single detail. She felt her breath hitch in her throat not from the pain or the shame or the shock that there was a video of this, but from the sudden memory of the little baby bat she had adopted before the air in the cave had scrambled its organs into a mushy paste.

    "Your friend Velvet took this video," he said. "She took a number of pictures and videos from your adventure. But this one was the most concerning. Do you know who she is?"

    She remembered being trapped in what during the airship ride back to Vale, Jaune had called a reality marble. The encounter in the fake cafeteria with all the people who just stopped, their faces and body language rigid as they stood up and stared her way.

    "She said…" Coco swallowed. "No, I don't know. I think she had power over the Grimm. She's the one who made the liquid flow. Trapped all of us in this kind of liminal space. She said that she 'grants people eyes.' I don't know what it meant, but she felt so inviting, so motherly, but everything around her gave me the feeling like I was bleeding internally."

    The professor stared at her for a long moment. She just kept bunching her hands into her bed sheets and felt sweaty. She really wanted the man's eyes off her.

    "Do you believe people can control the Grimm?" he asked. It felt like a loaded question somehow.

    "No—maybe? I don't know. I don't know what I saw. What was going on. I don't know anything." Every answer fell with the wrong one. Like everything she said made his eyes burrow deeper into her. Every time she tried to give an answer, Ozpin inched away from the friendly, if somewhat absent-minded professor who ran the academy to something Coco didn't like.

    "It's possible," he said simply, and she stared at him. "Two years ago in the city of Kuchinashi, Mistral, a man by the name of Javi Pastel discovered a necklace. Much like the architecture I can see in this video, Pastel found the artifact in ruins beyond time. It allowed him to control the Grimm. A team of Huntsmen eventually subdued him and took him out, putting the necklace safely into the possession of the academies."

    She sat up sharply. "Wait, so there's something to those ancient fairy tales?"

    "Every legend begins with a grain of truth. The Girl in the Tower, the Lance of Passion, the Infinite Man. This world is old. And even its most ancient civilizations knew Remnant's ancient age as a fact." He sighed deeply. "I'm telling you this because sometimes these old horrors show their faces. And we Huntsmen have to put them down, and keep them secret. I've known men close to me who've gone mad pursuing these powers and abilities, like Doctor Merlot, for good or ill. The results are always the same. Although I'm sure you've never heard of him because of our efforts. To be a Hunter is more than just to fight evil wherever it may rear its head; sometimes it is protecting people from the truth for their own sake."

    He gestured to the television in the room, broadcasting a standoff between General Ironwood of Atlas and a faunus colonel whose division had been let within the pomœrium to evict Atlas as part of a state of emergency. The faunus looked almost eager to be able to metaphorically spit in the general's face and throw him and his airship out of the harbor.

    "We believe the person you saw down there was someone much like Javi Pastel," he said. "Someone twisted and corrupted by things we don't understand, but know are evil. Pursuing power and control and pain."

    "Who is she? And why would she do that?" Coco croaked.

    "Because she can," he said softly. "You too can be a monster, Coco. It pays handsomely."

    She didn't know what to say.

    "You saw first hand that she can be beaten," he said. "That's what we do to monsters. Our job is to make it too costly to play these wicked games for the opposing team. Just her afterimage, the swarm of Grimm in an old fortified city, was enough to throw this entire country into disarray. Could you imagine the panic, the chaos, the death and destruction, if the truth got out? If what you knew entered common knowledge, how far would the damage go?"

    Coco swallowed. "It would be awful," she said slowly, trying to follow along with what he expected her to conclude. "People would panic. The Grimm would be enraged. People could die, not just here, but all across the world."

    He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. It felt cold. "Indeed. I'm glad you see it my way. Because it is our duty to save lives. To protect the defenseless against the monsters. That's why you signed up to be a Huntress. That's why I became a Huntsman. I wouldn't normally trust this kind of information to a sophomore. But you saw it first-hand, and then you went above and beyond the call of duty. I know you're someone I can trust, Coco. But at this level of play, the only way out is through, and we must take our secrets to the grave if we wish to uphold the promises we made by becoming what we are."

    For a moment, Coco felt something cold in her heart. Something in the way he was looking at her, the tone of his voice. She almost thought, for a completely insane instant, that he was going to kill her. That he told her this just so that she would die with questions answered, reassured that she had done her best, but knew too much. If she wasn't injured, she imagined she could have been able to fight him. He might have been the hottest shit when he was her age, but he was in his forties now, decades away from the front lines she had just returned from.

    But as things were now?

    Instead, Professor Ozpin stood up. He turned to face the window and the dying embers of the sun. "This world is old, Coco. And I have been around long enough to know its most dangerous secrets are best left forgotten. But I too shall die one day. When that happens, my position must go to the strongest of your generation, the most compassionate, the most able to tell right from wrong."

    He looked over his shoulder at her and allowed himself a smile. "Which means I can't let my most promising student in recent memory hurt herself. I know you'll do the right thing. It's in your nature. I'm sorry this happened to you. But I believe you'll be your old self in no time if you allow yourself."

    Professor Ozpin turned to leave.

    "Wait!" Coco said, holding out her hand.

    He gave her a curious look, saying nothing.

    "Where are you going now?" She swallowed, and her throat felt dry enough that she nearly coughed. The only sound she heard was the distant hum of the air conditioner, a constant background droning.

    Professor Ozpin put a shushing finger to his lips. "I'm doing as the headmaster must do: working to take permanent care of my students. Some more than others. I might care about you, but you're hardly the only one who has my eye. It wouldn't be fair otherwise."

    "And what if I still have questions about what I saw, about the things that go bump in the night?"

    Chuckling to himself, he walked towards the door. "Come find me when you recover. There's much work to be done keeping nightmares in their graves, if only you're willing to damn yourself to it. Whatever choice you make, I have faith in you, Coco."

    And then Coco was alone. More than anything, she felt like she needed a drink.

    — 10 —​

    The evening colors washed everything out. Coco bent her knees, testing her back, seeing what did and didn't hurt. She moved a little too quickly and hissed, nearly falling back into her hospital bed. A brief flare of Aura and everything was better.

    Doc Croaker eyed her. In an abstract way, she could kind of see what so many girls saw in him. When he had first taught a guest lecture back in her freshman year, Coco couldn't roll her eyes hard enough at the way Velvet fawned over him. Human, dark blue eyes, big, sharp features for a man his age, with a permanent expression like he thought he was better than you and somehow really annoyed that you didn't agree.

    He made a face, chastising her in a language she didn't understand.

    She looked back up at him, blinking. "What?"

    Croaker frowned, tapping his medical clipboard against his knee as he sat there. "Oh. Your name's Adel. Figured you spoke Eranstani."

    She scowled. "Let me guess, you were trying to badmouth me for nearly falling over?"

    He made a so-so gesture with his zombie hand, the one that looked like it had been cut apart into neat little pieces before being sewn back together. It was his most distinctive feature. "More or less. The old man says it's bad for him if I constantly swear at students. So I use one of the many languages I picked up in my mercenary days to get around that stupid rule. Did you know he also says it's bad form to swear at him when he says it's okay to let an injured student back to her room without observation? Because you should."

    She folded her arms. "I'm fine!"

    Croaker flipped the medical clipboard around, showing her a diagram of her body and injuries. "Enough to walk, post on social media, and generally make an ass of yourself, but not enough to be a functioning Huntress. We've only had you for a couple of days. I expect you to still show up for check up appointments until you're actually cleared to return to the field."

    Coco glared at him, and found him returning her gaze with a calm dispassion. She averted her eyes until she realized she had the sunglasses Ruby had gotten her as replacement. She put them on, and suddenly the faded colors of the room felt right, felt natural. It was a shame with evening afoot, she wouldn't be able to actually see with them much longer. But already, it made her feel like he couldn't track her eyes, but she could follow him. It felt like a weight sloughed off her heart.

    "Yeah, sure, fine," she said, throwing a hand up. "I'll come back for the routine weekly prostate check. Just—can I go yet, doc?"

    She hated the way he stared right through her sunglasses.

    "Go for it, kid," Croaker said. "I'm not going to be the one that's legally at fault if you hurt yourself. That's for old man Ozpin."

    "You two are practically the same age!" she huffed, looking for her purse, before she had a moment of sanity and realized her equipment was probably back in her dorm room.

    "I think he lies about his age," Croaker said evenly. "His eyes are wrong."

    Coco remembered Ozpin's hand on her shoulder from only a couple of days ago, the way his tone had shaken her, and swallowed.

    The doctor shrugged. "Then again, you've gained a couple years beneath those shades these last few weeks too."

    She gave him one last glare, before realizing he probably couldn't see them. Then she just tightened her beret, kept her Aura running as low as it could possibly go to prepare for the winter chill outside, and left the hospital.

    Coco had lost her best pair of heeled boots back in Montluçon. While she was staying in the hospital, Fox had brought her a pair of something to wear so she could walk around. She didn't think she'd notice it if it was, but the subtle loss of inches made everything feel just a little off. The only good thing about it was the colors were back to normal, darkened by her shades. She'd missed it.

    It was maybe a twenty minute walk back to the dorms from the hospital on campus. Coco made it in thirty, slower than she liked. Some of that was a mix of trying not to agitate her back. And some of that was just slowing down to say hi to all the people who saw her and cheered on her return. From watching the newsreel on TV in her room, she had learnt that Teams CFVY and BASS had been front and center on most people's TV for the better part of a couple of days, interspersed with soldiers and artillery and all that nonsense from the city. The soldiers had been boots on the ground, but there was always a kind of mystique about Hunters that dominated the imagination.

    Of course, whenever she saw herself on TV, the only thing she could see was Yatsuhashi carrying her because she couldn't run. Occasionally setting her down, forcing her on her knees as she used Gianduja like a kind of stationary turret. She wasn't out there in the thick of it, fighting tooth and nail. She was a glorified machine gun on rails at the best of times, trying to give orders and directions as she couldn't move.

    Nobody greeted her when she entered the dorms. For some reason, she had expected a kind of surprise welcome party. But she hadn't exactly announced she was getting out of the hospital just yet, and it was late enough in the evening that people probably weren't likely to be coming and going in any large numbers. She stared at the staircase she usually took. And then at the elevator that went up to the third story, where she dormed. Coco was alone in the poorly lit entrance hall, next to all of the PO mailboxes. Just looking between the stairwell and the elevator. Rubbing her hand over her lower back and wondering if she could take it without using her Aura. And if anyone would see her taking the elevator and wondering what was wrong with her.

    "Coco, you're back!" Ruby's inherently squeaky voice cried out from behind her.

    Coco spun around, bracing herself. And just like she thought, Ruby was practically sprinting at her from the doorway. Only to pull up short.

    "You cool with a hug?" Ruby asked. She was carrying a bunch of bags in one hand.

    Coco laughed. "Since when has personal space ever been an issue for you?"

    "Ha! It's not. But, I just don't want to, you know." Ruby smiled widely.

    Oh. Oh. She meant that Coco was so hurt and weak, she couldn't even handle a basic goddamn hug. The girl was hiding an implicit insult behind a friendly offer.

    Trying not to let it sour her, Coco made herself smile as she grabbed Ruby into a hug. "Aw, screw you, kid! These sunglasses are awesome. How are you doing?"

    Ruby hugged back, but her arms were a lot weaker than they normally were. Like she wasn't trying to squeeze as hard. Like she thought Coco was delicate.

    "I have no opinions on the topic!" Ruby said happily. "I've mostly just been going through class. We didn't really have a hard mission, even though things got really stupid, so we weren't given recovery time unlike you and BASS. Which has been kind of awful. I basically can't go outside anymore."

    Coco frowned, pushing Ruby away. "Why not?"

    Ruby looked away and grimaced. "Well, my dad and uncle just keep calling me to make sure I'm okay, and it's getting really annoying, so I need to constantly pretend that I'm in a tunnel to avoid talking to them again. It's like, there's only so many times I can tell them I'm fine before it just gets annoying, you know?"

    "I know what that is like," Coco said with a laugh. "My first week here my mom just would not leave me alone. I nearly had to block her to keep her from using up my minutes. My advice is just to say you're good, and leave it at that. We're supposed to be independent here, not just kids anymore. We're adults now. They can be worried, but you're your own person."

    "Makes sense to me." She wrung her hands. "Just feels a little rude."

    "Well, birds that don't leave their eggs just die in their shells," Coco said, recalling a poorly translated saying her grandfather once gave her.

    "I like that. I'm going to steal that from you," Ruby said.

    Coco tousled Ruby's hair, earning her an adorable scowl. "Go for it, Ruby. I'm all about dispensing helpful advice."

    "Do you also know what it's like dealing with an online hate mob?" Ruby asked suddenly.

    Coco blinked. "Wha'?"

    Waving a hand dismissively, Ruby said, "Aha! I have found the limits to your advice."

    "No, no, no, run that back by me one more time."

    Ruby frowned. "It's sort of why I'm avoiding the internet. We were on a mission and it got complicated, and I might have helped General Ironwood not take a rock to the face, and then there was a whole riot, and people were kind of blaming me and my team but also not really and it's—ugh, it just sucks."

    Coco just stared. "Don't use your scroll?"

    "Tried that," Ruby said, blowing a stray bang from her face. "But the thing about Beacon is they give you a scroll and expect you to keep it on hand. I hate my scroll. All my enemies are inside it. Like Becky from Signal." She balled her hands. "She used to spell my name Reuben like the sandwich and thought my love for guns was way too boyish. Well, who's laughing now, Becky! If she knew how to use a gun, she would've been able to figure out condoms and wouldn't be pregnant. She's not even married and I am. Stupid Becky. Stupid Signal. Stupid internet!"

    That took a lot of Coco's brainpower to process. Which gave Ruby time to calm down and collect herself.

    "You're married?" Coco finally asked.

    Ruby shrugged like it didn't matter. "Tax reasons. Long story. Not terribly interesting. Think I should post pics of us being happy together to make Becky seethe? I'm a Huntress who's got a boywife with a clickbait body, and you have gross stretch marks. We are not the same."

    "Maybe don't do that?"

    "Yeah, you're right. Too petty. I'm above that kind of stupid drama. I'm better than her and don't need to prove it. Forget I said anything."

    Coco just kind of stared. "So. Uh. Internet hate mob?"

    Ruby groaned. "Look, I'll just stay offline for a couple of days. Except maybe to show off to Becky. People have really short memories. I'm not one of those terminally online losers, so it'll be easy. I'll just stick to text and stuff."

    Coco glanced at the stairs. Ruby still wasn't moving, just sticking around. Which meant Coco couldn't slink to the lift while she was here and could see.

    "What's with the bags, Ruby?" Coco tried, hoping to so thoroughly bore Ruby that the girl would just lose interest in Coco like some sort of bear.

    "Hmm, these?" Ruby jostled the bags. "My husband asked me to go to the store and pick up some ingredients. He's making his partner a cake and apparently is broke as heck, so being the sugar momma I am, I picked up some actual sugar."

    "What, so, it's like an open relationship?"

    Ruby snorted. "Please. Open relationships are just an excuse to cheat on your significant other without any guilt. If your partner asks for one, your relationship is basically already over and they just want your material benefits without any of the real commitment. I just use Jaune for tax benefits, no love involved."

    "Wait, Jaune?"

    "Only one I know, see?"

    Ruby held up her scroll, showing a text chat over the last hour or so.

    Jaune Rose: I just need the cake stuff. Please don't use the money to buy gun oil.​
    ​
    You: It'll make the cake yummy! Look here's a picture​

    And there it was, a picture of Ruby's face next to a case of gun lubricant and other cleaning supplies.

    You: is non-toxic! Works as food coloring​
    ​
    Jaune Rose: I'm divorcing you.​
    ​
    You: gyaaa~ I think we're moving our relationship too fast. We need to go thru *years* of mistrust and an affair before we get to the divorce​
    ​
    Jaune Rose: Fuck you​
    ​
    You:;) okay when?​
    ​
    Jaune Rose: use the leftover money to buy condoms​
    ​
    You: I'm getting strawberry flavored ones​
    ​
    Jaune Rose: Good idea. I think strawberries will really make this birthday cake pop.​
    ​
    You: <3​

    Coco just stared at the text. "I legitimately can't decide if your relationship is wholesome or deeply distressing."

    Her scroll beeped again. Ruby groaned. "Ugh. Uncle Qrow's still trying to talk to me."

    "Tell him you're busy?"

    Ruby looked thoughtful in a way that made Coco's skin crawl. "Hmm. Good idea. Here." She screenshotted her conversation with Jaune and sent it.

    You: Stop texting me. You're killing my boi game out heyah~​
    ​
    Uncle Qrow: !!! WITH JAUNE?​
    ​
    You: ye​
    ​
    You: bye​

    Ruby stared at her scroll for a moment. When nothing happened, she sighed contently and said, "Ah, I love my uncle and the fact he respects my boundaries to a frankly weird extent. Anyhow, you should join us in making the cake if you're feeling it. I gotta run; they're waiting on me!"

    She turned into a storm of rose petals and vanished up the stairs. Coco watched to make sure she wasn't going to come down to hug Coco again or something, but no. Ruby had truly left Coco alone.

    Which meant she could crawl to the elevator and enjoy her misery alone.

    The ride up seemed to take forever. Just her and the hum of the lift.

    The walk to her dorm felt even longer. Coco was alone in an empty hallway, dimly lit. No signs of life but her. But she doubted she was alive in the first place.

    She stood outside her door, room key in hand, simply staring at the electronic lock. She couldn't hear anything from within. No sounds of Velvet listening to obnoxious music. No Yatsuhashi trying to play peacekeeper to some dumb argument. And no Fox making wise remarks, that no one found funny, but he just kept doing them all the same because he liked it. For a brief moment, she wondered if maybe she had just imagined her team surviving. Hallucinated seeing them in her hospital room. A part of her thought it might have been easier. To come from an empty hospital room to a barren dorm. In silence to undress and crawl under the covers, never to return.

    Coco swallowed and opened the door in one motion.

    It was almost as she remembered leaving it before she hopped on the airship to Montluçon. That little dent on Fox's bed from where he routinely banged his shins somehow almost every morning. The band posters by Velvet's section of the room. The way the walk-in closet didn't close properly because of the one time Yatsuhashi had forced himself through the doorway and broken it, and they just simply hadn't reported it to any authorities for fear of being charged for the damages.

    Coco found somebody in the room, but that somehow made it worse. No Velvet, no Yatsuhashi. Fox sat alone by the side of his bed, staring down the point of one of his arm blades. For a moment, she thought she was back in that reality marble thing, helpless to watch as her friend and partner gouged out his own eyes. But he wasn't moving to stab himself. He was just running his fingers along the blade, moving it towards his pupil as if expecting some reaction, but not even flinching.

    "You should've knocked," Fox said directly into her mind, sending shivers down Coco's spine. She kept staring at the bite marks on his throat only recently turned to scar tissue. "I could have been naked."

    Coco closed the door with her foot. "It's not like I don't know what you look like naked already. Remember that time under the waterfall during that one mission?"

    He regarded her mildly. "Yes, the time your designer shampoo rendered an entire species of carp extinct."

    She plopped down on her bed, removing her shoes. "Gah, are you still on that? I told you it was an accident!"

    Fox set his arm blades down and neatly by his feet. "If we could just go on one mission without causing an ecological disaster, I'd be happy. First the carp, and then you probably destroyed an entire underground ecosystem by setting it on fire. We really do suck as a team, don't we?"

    "Well, if rare, endangered creatures wanted to survive, they shouldn't make for such nice coats!" she huffed, crossing her arms.

    He smiled. "I missed you. Glad you're back."

    "Where are the other two?"

    "Velvet went to the mailroom to get a new shipment of hard light Dust from her dad," Fox said. "Yats went with. I have been all alone with nothing but my thoughts. And my thoughts suck. I just keep replaying the events of the last few days over and over."

    Setting her sunglasses and beret on her nightstand, Coco said, "Just do what I do and repress it all. Really does wonder for the skin."

    Although Fox didn't look at her, she still somehow felt his intense focus on her. It looked like he wanted to say something, but just kept failing. In the end, he just shook his head and said, "Yeah."

    Halfheartedly, she raised her hand as if to touch him, and gave up herself. "Yeah."

    Coco didn't know what to say. Neither of them really did. Eventually, Fox shoved his gear under his bed and stood up. She kept feeling his intense focus on her, even with his eyes nowhere near her. Even as he just sat down on his bed and held his head in his hands.

    She could hear the nearly imperceptible buzz of the fluorescent light. The way air circulated through the ventilation. Even the occasional buffet of snowy wind outside on the window. But more than anything, as she watched him, Coco could feel her heart. The way blood moved from ventricle to ventricle, dispersing through arteries, capillaries, and eventually becoming a ringing in her ears. Her chest felt hot.

    When Fox's eyes lifted to her, she thought this was it, the moment she was waiting for. When he asked her why she had fucked them all; when he told her that she had failed her team; that all of the suffering he and the rest of team CFVY went through, could have just been avoided if only she had better thought the mission through, had actually been the leader they deserved.

    "I don't know what we saw back there," Fox said softly, like distant rain.

    She cringed as she forced herself to smile. "You can't see, remember?"

    "For once, I was able to forget."

    Coco pressed her fists into her eyes until she saw nothing but spots. They were the same color as the inside of her mouth.

    "There was a girl with scratched out eyes," Fox said. "She played with your hair. Told me if I wanted to protect the people I cared about, I'd have to give up the one thing I wanted most. So I did."

    She watched with silent horror as he pressed his index finger into the whites of his eye. Fox rubbed back and forth. He pulled his hand back and stared at the little spot of moisture on his finger his eyeball had left behind.

    "I don't—I don't know where I'm going with this," he said. "Professor Ozpin told me—told all of us, really—not to talk about it. Not in so many words. But I got the feeling he knew what we saw. And he was afraid of what would happen if people knew. As if now, I have to make the choice between trying to process what I saw, and keeping the world safe."

    Fox laughed. "But it's the most crazy thing. All the legends, all the stories, they like to paint Huntsmen as the thin line between civilization and the Grimm. People who exist solely to fight and die against those horrors from beyond the pale. That's all we're good for. All anyone expects of us." He shook his head. "And I don't really give a fuck about the world. It's too big, too abstract. Of all the millions of people on Remnant, I can count the ones I care about who are still alive on one hand."

    Coco swallowed. "How many fingers do you need?"

    "Three. And I'll eventually see every one of them if I just sit here all day."

    "If you don't want to protect the world," she said, gripping at her pants, "why did you become a Huntsman?"

    Fox tilted his head. "Well, I didn't join to cut out my own eyes. I did that for the people I do care about. If Fatima al-Random asked me to do that, I'd kindly ask her to go shove it."

    She thought back to the professor's hand on her shoulder, tight, firm, and somehow implicitly threatening even as he suggested that one day she might succeed him. "Fox, I need you to trust me here, but we can't talk about it. It would only make everything we've done so far in vain."

    He hesitated, and that hurt worst of all. "Where I'm from, the word for trust is the same as the word for water. It's not common in the deserts. Water flows from the mountains, bubbling from the oases, and it must be shared evenly lest the whole tribe die. One can only know true trust if the last member of the tribe to receive a drink is allowed the same as the first."

    "I understand," she said slowly. "Professor Ozpin told me. There are ancient things that let people control or influence Grimm, I think. Lost technology or artifacts or something, I don't know. Whatever we saw down there, it was the result of something like that. Sometimes the job of a Hunter is to kill monsters. And sometimes, our job is to prevent people from knowing just how bad the monsters are. Fear, discord, panic—it makes them stronger, the Grimm. Whatever's bothering you, we can talk about it ourselves, but I don't think… I mean, I know it can't get out. We saw something we never should have, got involved with things way above our pay grade, but now that we know, we can't unknow."

    He stared at her for a long time. "Ozpin drank more water than you."

    She stood up sharply. "I know, okay! I don't even think he wanted to tell me, but he had to, because of what we saw, because of the video Velvet took. If she hadn't been so stupid and dedicated to documenting our entire adventure, maybe we could have pretended like we didn't see anything and—"

    "Don't call her stupid," he snapped. "You're sounding like one of those BASS assholes."

    Coco rubbed her face. "You're right, I'm sorry. It's just—it's just I don't know what to do. I don't know a lot of things. And I'm just trying my best." She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I really don't know that my best can cut it anymore!"

    Fox sighed, rubbing his arm. "If there's one thing I've always admired about you, it's that you don't know how to scroll it in. Always trying to be the best, to be number one, and to drag us all along with you whether we consented or not. It's what made us the team we are. You damn near broke your back down there, and yet after we crawled out of those caves, you were still fighting your best, trying to keep control of the situation against hopeless odds, and one way or the other were the reason we got out of there alive."

    He was lying to her. She knew he had to be. The same way he and the rest of her team had lied to Ozpin. Instead of blaming her, rightly pointing out just how much she had fucked up every step of the way, he was trying to comfort her. Tell her that she had done her best, and that her best really had been good enough, instead of the slap dash failure it was.

    "Stop it," she said, pressing her fingers into her tear ducts. She paced back and forth. "Just stop it, alright?"

    His expression soured. "Oh, okay. Let me just stop believing in you for one second real quick."

    "Fuck you!" she hissed.

    Fox sneered. "Pass. I got vision for the first time in my life, and pretty much the only thing I saw were women. In hindsight, I'm gonna consider it a victory that I've never seen any of the girls I've been with."

    "Great, now you're making fun of me!"

    He threw his hands up. "Hell yeah I am! What's gotten into you?"

    "Me? Me? Oh that's pretty fucking rich!" She made a noise in her throat that pretended it could be a laugh. "It's like you're perfectly okay listening to me when we're in danger out in the field, but the moment I say maybe we shouldn't talk about the potentially world ending consequences of what we saw, you start questioning me. Why is now any different, huh?"

    "The hell are you on about, girl?" Fox asked, shaking his head. "I feel like we're having two different conversations, each one stupider than the last."

    "No! Because this is all one conversation. About my judgment and your trust of it! One moment, you do, because it got you through Montluçon. But when I say maybe we keep a lid on what we really saw down there until we actually understand it, then you have questions, and then you stop caring about the entire world."

    "Because I don't think you know the full story! Something about this just feels wrong. It's like you're taking a suggestion as divinely inspired truth."

    "Maybe it's because the same way you trust me, I trust Ozpin! If he says it's a bad idea, I'm willing to listen to him."

    "Why?" Fox asked with painful emphasis.

    "Because I don't know what else to do!" she screamed. She found herself staring him down, panting. Her skin felt hot and clammy. Her heart felt like it had an extra compartment just for all of her disgust and doubt to pile up in, seeping into her bloodstream. "If there's anybody who knows about this kind of thing, it's him. We saw something we can't explain. He could, and I think he's terrified, and so I'm terrified. Is that so hard to understand?"

    He looked down into his lap. "I don't know."

    "Good!" she said, putting her foot down hard. "So we're in the same boat. You trusted me this far, so let's share a little bit more water. This is my team, and I'm in charge, and this is my decision. We stick together as one or we're not a team at all. And you might as well have just plucked your eyes out for no goddamn reason if that's how you want to play."

    Fox had the audacity to look like she had just slapped him across the face. He raised a hand to rub his cheekbone, just staring at her, eyes wide. It looked like he couldn't find anywhere comfortable to rest his fingers, and just kept playing with them across his arms.

    "Yarham allah," he whispered, and wet his lips.

    She continued to just stand there, panting. Fists balled at her side. But staring him down felt ridiculous. What was the point if she won a staring contest against someone who was blind and didn't even know he was playing?

    "Are… Coco, are you okay?" he asked.

    Coco inhaled sharply. "Don't you play that card with me! Because you know what, I'm not okay. I think I'm actually thirsty. And I'm going to go get a drink of water from the kitchen sink, because unlike Vacuo, water is a little easier to come by in civilization. Thank you!"

    She stormed out of the room without even bothering to put her shoes on or fetch her beret.

    — 11 —​

    Coco made it only seven steps before her heart caught up to her. Clutching at her chest, she nearly doubled over, and dry heaved. She choked for air, as if suffocating on nothing. The feeling kept bubbling from her guts as she slid across the wall, face pressed into the wallpaper, all the way down to the third floor kitchen.

    Finally, she spat out all of her nothing into the sink. She watched the little dribble of drool leak down from her mouth into the drain, saliva mixed with the thinnest bits of blood. She tasted acid and bile in the back of her throat. It was all she could do to just keep spitting it out and washing it down with water.

    Her knees gave out before anything else. She collapsed onto her ass, back against the sink as she held her legs to her chest. Her spine sang in pain as she landed. The running water drowned out the forced, angry sobs.

    What the fuck was she doing? What was the point of this? What if someone saw her, the awesome and cool Coco Adel, with drool around her mouth and tears in her eyes? They'd realize she was pathetic. Just a fraud. Barely a team leader, just some dumb girl who kept stumbling her way into not dying time and time again. Coco didn't have any answers, didn't have any good reasons; not even any plausible lies. She was just a girl in the fetal position beneath a sink.

    She felt like she did all those years ago, when she'd been locked inside of a cabinet during a game of hide and seek. One way or the other, the walls were closing in on her. Fox had to know. The rest of her team knew. They were just pretending for her sake, maybe to try to preserve their own sanity. But they had to know better. Nobody could be that blind, not even a boy like Fox who didn't have working eyes.

    Coco Adel didn't know what she was doing. She didn't have any answers. Didn't even have a properly working backbone anymore, metaphorically or literally.

    Because maybe if she had one, she would have been able to tell her friends the truth about Haakon and avoided this entire disaster. They wouldn't have kept going into the cave, sparking the whole disaster, and getting untold amounts of people eaten alive by demons. Or maybe better yet, she wouldn't have abandoned him to the Grimm, and could have died fighting with some dignity.

    She screwed her eyes shut, and all she could see was the man with the tree growing through his body as he screamed at her. The scent of cherries and mustard in the air that she still couldn't get out of her lungs. And the rattling chain of that monstrous Grimm as it smiled at her and gently patted her head.

    Coco had to wonder what her grandfather would think if he could see her now.

    She slammed the back of her head against the counter to make the thoughts stop. It didn't help terribly. It just gave her a new headache to focus on.

    Before she could do it again, she felt a thump beneath her. Like somebody the floor below had just jumped into the ceiling. Coco dragged herself up to the edge of the sink and turned it off just so she could listen. It came again, a thump on the floor. And the distant sound of people shouting and screaming and laughing below from the second story kitchen.

    Instantly, she thought back to all of the bags Ruby was carrying to bake a cake, and wondered if that was the cause of the ruckus. And if so, why trying to make dessert had turned into a riot. It made her really want to see what was going on. Especially because it seemed like something to do that didn't involve bashing her head against the counter until she blacked out from another concussion.

    She looked back at the hallway, towards her dorm room. Fox hadn't followed her. He had to have still been in the room, just sitting there, maybe waiting for her to crawl back and apologize or come clean or… whatever. But when she looked down at the floor, it almost sounded like somebody was stomping on it, like gravity had been inverted and they were line dancing.

    Coco washed her face in the sink, getting rid of the tears and a bit of snot. She sniffled and made sure she was looking presentable. As cool and awesome as everyone liked to think she was, as she desperately needed them all to think of her. And then made the arduous trek down the stairs to the second floor, so that no one would see her take the elevator and think she was as pathetic as she actually was.

    She heard people yelling. Maybe it was Ruby and Weiss? There was music playing on the other side of the door. All she had to do was open it and walk onto the second floor and into the common room kitchen. For a sudden, awful moment, she had an attack of sanity, and wondered just what the hell she was doing. She should be trying to collect her wits and go back to apologize to Fox. But somehow, the thought of turning around and going right back to the room right after screaming at him felt wrong. More cowardly than just standing here, her hand on the door, listening to music and people arguing.

    "Coco?" a girl asked, coming up the stairs. "What are you doing here?"

    She jumped, turning around to see one of the members of Team VYPR, Yang Xiao Long. The girl was wearing the equivalent of gym clothing or maybe some kind of pajamas that revealed her navel. On some level, Coco was surprised Yang knew who she was; but of course she would know who Coco was, the famous leader of Team CFVY and the girl who just spent a couple of days on the front page news cycle from Montluçon. Everyone had probably seen her.

    Probably even her grandfather in Eranstan.

    "Oh, I, uh, what are you doing?" Coco said back.

    Yang frowned. "I asked you first. You're standing in front of the door, too."

    "Yes, but I'm a sophomore, so I have seniority of questioning."

    After a long moment of dubious staring, Yang held up her scroll. "Was in the gym. Then my uncle asked me to check up on Ruby about a cake she was making."

    "Is that really something worth stopping a workout for?"

    Yang shrugged. "He used proper punctuation and spelling, which is an instant red flag, so pretty much, yeah."

    "Ah!" Ruby yelped from beyond the door. "Watch it, ouch! Careful with that. My hair!"

    "For the love of God or the Saints or whatever crazy sky people you believe in," Weiss screamed, "would you knock that off, you two!? Ugh!"

    Yang swore under her breath and ran for the door. She nearly pushed Coco through it on her way past. Coco stumbled into the common room and nearly fell before Yang caught her.

    Coco saw what she supposed was a kitchen, except it was in complete disarray. Piles of ingredients all over the place, pots and pans scattered to the four winds, baking trays in improbable locations, a sink about to overflow, and four freshmen. She recognized Shamrock and Weiss—

    Whoa. Never mind, Coco did not recognize Weiss. For a moment, she almost thought the girl wasn't wearing pants, the way her leggings matched her general color scheme. She had to kind of admit she liked it. And the utterly pissed off expression on her scarred face was just the most adorable thing. That apron would have looked really good on her. If only she wasn't wearing that blouse beneath it.

    It took her a moment to realize that everyone was staring at Jaune and Ruby, currently fighting with their hands interlocked like a game of patty cake that had gone violent—just trying to push each other away and win, but he was way bigger than her. Rock music from someone's scroll played in the background.

    "Ruby!" Yang yelled.

    No one said anything for a moment. Jaune just looked like he was about to die. But Ruby, she just got a vicious look in her silver eyes.

    "Don't worry," she said malevolently. "It's consensual and exactly what you think it is!"

    Jaune stared down at her as if watching his entire life die before his eyes. Then he set his features into stone and said, "You know what, fuck it. Actually, it's worse. We're trying anal, but Ruby here is just an entire asshole full stop, so I don't know where to stick it and I'm trying everywhere."

    "It's true!" Ruby said happily. "I'm a bundle of painful mysteries because every thorn has its rose. Yang, why does it look like you're having a stroke?"

    Weiss grabbed her face and dragged her hands down, groaning hard. Her partner, Shamrock, put a supporting hand on her shoulder.

    Coco watched the scene, having no idea what to make of it. She looked at the way Ruby was challenging Yang, the way Jaune just seemed like he was accepting it, and the myriad of emotions fluttering across Yang's face. For just the briefest of moments, she thought she saw a tint of red behind Yang's otherwise purple eyes. Her body tensed.

    And then the fire beneath Yang's ass just kind of died. She rubbed her forehead and sighed. "You know what? I don't care anymore. Just don't kiss her. Because if you kiss a girl while doing anal, you're basically forming a singular tunnel of meat from your mouth all the way to your dick. Basically giving yourself a blowjob with her asshole."

    Ruby beamed. "I know, right? I'm going to get a tramp stamp that says exit only. My butt is mine."

    Jaune let go of Ruby as Yang walked into the kitchen. "Wait, so we're cool? Did our last conversation actually have lasting consequences?"

    As soon as his hands were away from her, Ruby slammed her hand into the wall beside Jaune as if trying to pin him in place kabedon style. It almost might have been intimidating if it wasn't for the fact that her head only came up partially up his chest. "Gotcha! Now you cannot escape me as I tell you all about my collection of weapon figurines!"

    "Mm, no," Jaune said, casually shoving her back. Without Ruby in the way, Coco could read the words on his apron: please do not pet me i am a service dog. She didn't think he was wearing a shirt beneath it, which gave him an appreciable side profile.

    Yang leaned against the kitchen island, resting her head on her hand as she watched her sister and apparently her brother-in-law or whatever the hell this relationship was. "Look, just—I don't care. You can't make me care. I'm not falling for it this time. Not letting any of you get to me or anything. Do you need help making a cake or whatever? I came all this way, so I might as well do something productive."

    "Yes!" Weiss shouted, throwing her hands up. "Please, thank you, someone with a lick of sanity!"

    "I'm well appreciated everywhere I go for my ability to lick, Weiss cream," Yang said dryly, like she was trying to sound sultry but her heart just wasn't in it.

    "Somehow, I doubt that," Shamrock said helpfully, picking up her scroll and turning the music off.

    "Let me pretend like I'm cool and in control here. Just give me this. That's all I ask for." Yang sighed. "But for real, how you been, Sham, Weiss?"

    "Awful!" Weiss said, frantically gesturing to all of the scattered objects around her kitchen.

    "I'm actually having a pretty good time," Shamrock said, running a hand through her red hair.

    Weiss stabbed her finger at Shamrock. "Don't encourage them!"

    "I'm cool being encouraged!" Ruby said, walking up to the oven. "The sooner we can figure out how to make a cake, the sooner I can take a selfie with it to show Becky that I'm living a much cooler and happier life than she is."

    Coco looked at her hands before deciding to say, "I thought you said you were better than her."

    Ruby and Jaune both seemed to remember at once that Coco was there.

    "I've decided the only way to prove I'm better than her is to rub it in that I'm a cool Huntress and I've got a meal ticket husband, and she has to go on reality TV just to figure out who her baby daddy is."

    Cracking a couple of eggs into a mixing bowl, and occasionally glancing at Weiss to make sure he was doing it right, Jaune said, "I'm not sure I want to advertise our sham not-even-legal marriage to the world just so you can flex on a bitch. We're not even together. You're basically my completely platonic stalker at this point."

    Ruby took out her scroll and bit Jaune on the bicep. Right on the tattoo. She took a selfie with it.

    "Ow, what the fuck?" he asked.

    As she typed furiously on her scroll, Ruby said, "Okay, I think I'm going to title this one '#TastesAsGoodAsItLooks'. What do you think?"

    "I think you left a goddamn bruise! My poor, delicate skin!" Jaune whined.

    Yang pulled a pop out of the fridge. She looked like she kept expecting herself to get angry, but just couldn't find the willpower to feel any particular emotion. "If you're going to keep faking it, you should leave me a better cover story, you two. I mean, Jaune, Ruby, which one of you is the wife, and which one of you is the one who's going to tragically die on a mission?"

    Coco held up her hand and a moment later Yang tossed her another pop. Some kind of Patch sarsaparilla. "You know, I can't tell if that question was homophobic or something even dumber."

    "I mean, it's a fair question," Yang said, glaring at Jaune over the top of her can. "Pretty sure my dad was the wife. Mom couldn't cook."

    "Cake. Help. Now," Weiss said, glowering. "Or else I'm going to burn your house down."

    "Chill out, ice princess," Yang said. "What can I do?"

    Weiss picked up a book off the counter and held it up. "We're following this recipe. I did some background research, and a lot of asking innocuous questions that there's totally and absolutely zero way she saw through, and I've come to the conclusion that Blake really likes cookies and cream. So the bottom layer of the cake is going to be a cookies and cream crumble birthday cake, and the top, smaller layer is going to be a same flavored cheesecake. Yang, I want you to mix the cream cheese with the crème fraîche."

    Yang squinted. "The what?"

    "A Valais kind of sour cream, which we can also add to the cheesecake if there's no fraîche."

    "Sour cream?" Yang asked dubiously, as if the idea disgusted her. But she fished around in the refrigerator for them anyway.

    Weiss double-checked her notebook. "Alright, I don't actually know why the recipe calls for sour cream as an alternative, but I have faith. I have only destroyed six recipes from this website, which means I can't possibly mess it up a seventh time."

    Carrying a bag of flour to Jaune and the main mixing bowl, Shamrock said, "Sour cream is a common softening agent. Makes it more moist. Hint of tang, too." She made an okay sign with her left hand.

    Weiss replied with a more complex gesture from the same hand starting at her heart. "How do you know that?"

    Shamrock shrugged. "I used to belong to a religion that outlawed the consumption of certain things. Vale requires products to list ingredients and their general purpose. I actually research what I eat."

    Weiss glowered, then turned back to Yang. "Okay, so we're going to, I believe, mix the cream cheese with sugar and blend together. Do you know how to use a blender? I mean, a whisk. Electric whisk. I think there's one in the cupboard. You know how to use that kind of thing, right?"

    Yang dropped an armful of cream cheese and a container of sour cream onto the counter. With a dubious expression, she asked, "Is that a vibrator joke?"

    "What, no!" Weiss sputtered, rubbing her hands on her own apron. It didn't have a dumb service dog joke on it. "Why would you even think that? Why would your mind go there?" She rapped her knuckles on Yang's temples.

    Yang shrugged. "This whole conversation has been uncomfortably sexually charged, Ruby."

    Ruby looked up from her scroll in a confused daze. "What, what? I took another picture and now I'm looking for a filter; don't distract me. Becky already replied to the last picture and I need to establish dominance."

    Coco looked down at the pop Yang had thrown her, and just felt out of place. The freshmen were giving each other a shit, talking about nonsense, and most of them seemed to be having a good time. She didn't know what she was doing. For a girl who liked to be the center of everyone's attention, she sure did feel like a wallflower. It was an alien experience, like being out of body behind her own eyes.

    "Hey, Coco, you gonna just stand there or you finna help?" Jaune asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

    She jumped at his touch, nearly hiccuping in surprise. She hadn't even realized he left his mixing bowl. Coco stared at the girls in the kitchen trying and rather failing to make a cake or even cooperate on a basic level. And then her attention went back to Jaune.

    The boy shrugged. "You just look like you want something to do. At the very least, I could use someone to help me distract Ruby. Kid's a goddamn handful."

    "How can you be so calm and happy?" she asked in a low voice. "After everything we just went through, all that shit and everything, how can you just go back to—just being an idiot and trying to make a cake?"

    Jaune blinked. He glanced over his shoulder. "What the fuck else is there to do?" he said for only her to hear. "Sit around my ass and feel sorry for myself? Please. I've got enough trouble on my plate without my own feelings getting in on the action. I've got the people worth fighting for here with me now, willing to hang out."

    Coco felt a powerful urge to bite her fingernails and had to stop herself, fingers inches from her lips. She realized he was staring into her eyes without the protection of her sunglasses to shield them. It was all she could do to stop herself from looking away first.

    "It just feels… trivial," she said.

    Jaune laughed. "Yeah, it better be. It's the trivial shit that makes life worth living. Pretty sure we'd all die of boredom and burn out if everyday was a life or death circumstance. Only reason I fought so hard to get back here was so that I could have these moments again. Usually with this group of idiots."

    He put his hand gently on her upper back and pushed. She felt a sudden panic in her heart And she worried it might spike the pain and she would double over or something. But nothing happened. She just found herself getting pushed into the kitchen, into the mess of people who didn't seem to know what they were doing in the least bit.

    Jaune put a mixing spoon into her hand and left to go grab something from the bottom drawer of the fridge.

    Coco looked back and saw Ruby staring at her, eyes a little too discerning for comfort.

    "Hey, you're an expert at looking cool, right?" Ruby asked.

    Coco nodded, making herself smile. "Best in the business, girl."

    Ruby grinned. "Awesome. I need to figure out the best, most passive aggressive way to caption a picture with you. And then we'll mix the cake and cook it and try not to burn it, because the last time Weiss burnt a cake it set off the smoke detector at two in the morning."

    "The burning cake didn't set off the smoke detector!" Weiss said loudly. "It was the drapes. Catching fire. Again."

    Coco looked around, and felt the most weird sensation. A laugh bubbling up from somewhere in her chest. Things weren't better. Things were not alright. They were pretty much the opposite of alright. But for the moment, surrounded by a bunch of idiot freshmen, most of whom still seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason, Coco could allow herself to forget. And just be swept away in a moment of normal idiocy amidst a sea of guilt.

    And, for a brief bit of cake-making time, Coco could be happy again.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Failed culinary projects are the sure-fire way to make unbreakable bonds and solve all of life's problems...aside from hunger.
     
    ZubScore said:
    Failed culinary projects are the sure-fire way to make unbreakable bonds and solve all of life's problems...aside from hunger.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Fuck hunger. I don't need to eat. I just need to emotionally collapse and shut down all physical activities except for obsessive, routine weightlifting to fill the void in my heart.

    Y'know, like a perfectly mentally healthy human being.
     
    Eric d'Orléans said:
    Ruby held up her scroll, showing a text chat over the last hour or so.
    Jaune Rose: I just need the cake stuff. Please don't use the money to buy gun oil.
    You: It'll make the cake yummy! Look here's a picture
    And there it was, a picture of Ruby's face next to a case of gun lubricant and other cleaning supplies.
    You: is non-toxic! Works as food coloring
    Jaune Rose: I'm divorcing you.
    You: gyaaa~ I think we're moving our relationship too fast. We need to go thru *years* of mistrust and an affair before we get to the divorce
    Jaune Rose: Fuck you
    You:;) okay when?
    Jaune Rose: use the leftover money to buy condoms
    You: I'm getting strawberry flavored ones
    Jaune Rose: Good idea. I think strawberries will really make this birthday cake pop.
    You: <3
    Coco just stared at the text. "I legitimately can't decide if your relationship is wholesome or deeply distressing."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Coco, dear, let's just compartmentalize the trauma we likely don't even know we just acquired for a bit, say this is hilarious, laugh, and swear to never bring this up again even if God himself descends and demands us too.
    Eric d'Orléans said:
    You: Stop texting me. You're killing my boi game out heyah~
    Uncle Qrow: !!! WITH JAUNE?
    You: ye
    You: bye
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Jaune: SOMETHING'S WRONG I CAN FEEL IT-
    Eric d'Orléans said:
    "Don't worry," she said malevolently. "It's consensual and exactly what you think it is!"

    Jaune stared down at her as if watching his entire life die before his eyes. Then he set his features into stone and said, "You know what, fuck it. Actually, it's worse. We're trying anal, but Ruby here is just an entire asshole full stop, so I don't know where to stick it and I'm trying everywhere."

    "It's true!" Ruby said happily. "I'm a bundle of painful mysteries because every thorn has its rose. Yang, why does it look like you're having a stroke?"
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    This feels like I injected stale crack, and god fucking damnit, I wish I could feel this emotion on demand.
    Eric d'Orléans said:
    Y'know, like a perfectly mentally healthy human being.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    At some point, it stops being a coping mechanism and starts becoming a crutch to deal with the soul-killing, mind-numbing pain that is usually only reserved for the likes of hitler in hell.

    Thankfully we are nowhere near that point
     
    Last edited:
    Volume 7, Chapter 6
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 6: Going Straight to Your Thighs like the Cake You Ate
    "Somewhere below the selfish, hapless, egoistic and funny surface there is an enormous loneliness and need for acceptance."

    — 12 —​

    The Boy: Hey, wanna do awkward small talk?​

    Blake stared at the text, trying to decipher its meaning. All week she'd been trying to remember what she liked to do before she and her team had really clicked together. But that first month or so felt like a lifetime ago, even though it'd only been half a year since she started attending Beacon. Normally, there'd be class, but she was on "recovery," and thus excused for the week.

    She thought about going through the library and just grazing, strolling from shelf to shelf and picking out anything that looked interesting. That had lasted a day until she found herself in the very room she remembered Jaune beating Sun's face into a crater in, and lost her appetite for literature. Blake thought maybe she'd go to the gym and do something, but she couldn't remember the hours Jaune liked to go there, and didn't really want to run into him, half-naked and covered in sweat, breathing hard as his veins strained with the effort of the weights. The reasons for that aversion seemed pretty self-evident to her. Way too awkward.

    One day she spent out in the city of Vale. The problem there was, Blake had never been a city girl. Kuo Kuana on Menagerie was just a large town by the standards of this kingdom. And the City of Vale was a big place. She'd bought a new outfit in a boutique, had some sub-par sushi, and seen a movie with the worst tacked-on romance she'd ever seen. Trying to find dinner, she came across a little bakery with a "no faunus" sign out front. Blake might have just scowled and ignored it until she saw the two uniformed faunus soldiers inside arguing with the baker.

    Their sight had startled her from being lost in her own thoughts. Soldiers were not supposed to be within the City of Vale. Then Blake remembered that racist prick LaChance had allowed the Royal Army to break the Loi du Pomœrium to ensure General Ironwood got the message to take his men and leave the city. But seeing them still filled her with a creeping sense of dread and a desire to run away. It got worse when she recognized the unit patches on their shoulders; they were 13th Infantry "Bridgeburners," a mostly faunus unit that even the White Fang had wanted nothing to do with. It was one of those horrifying truths that mixed-race or faunus units were particularly vicious to faunus like her out on the frontier. Blake bit her finger, remembering there were White Fang in the city, and now the Royal Army was here.

    A cop had shown up to the disturbance, only to get kneed in the groin by one of the soldiers. While his partner demanded the baker serve them, the other soldier had turned and made eye contact with Blake through the window. His eyes went to her bow and he gave her first a knowing look then a wink.

    She lost her appetite for anything after that.

    The only times she'd seen Jaune or done anything with her team all week was try to ignore them and get some sleep whenever she returned to their room. They'd barely spoken beside some vague acknowledgements. And now, out of the blue, he was texting her while she was trying to watch the sunset by the airship docks.

    You: not really no​
    ​
    The Boy: Good. Small talk's a terrible way to spend a Friday night.​
    ​
    You: shouldn't you be working detention tonight?​
    ​
    The Boy: I'm "on call," apparently. Dunno what that means, but I'm free atm​
    ​
    The Boy: Hey, you like karaoke?​
    ​
    You: no​
    ​
    The Boy: Kino​
    ​
    You: do u want something??​
    ​
    The Boy: Ayo fuck objects. All my homies reject materialism or the desire for things​
    ​
    You: -_- okay​
    ​
    The Boy: :(​
    ​
    The Boy: I was being funny​

    Blake rubbed her face, wondering why, exactly, she had any feelings for Jaune again.

    You: laughter comes in 5-7 business days​
    ​
    The Boy: But when I put you in my cart, I selected Next Day Shipping​
    ​
    You: u want *me*?​

    Jaune sent her a coordinate. She tapped on the link, and her Pathz app opened up to directions to her dorm building. Blake stared at the directions for a moment, wondering if they were flirtatious or passive-aggressive.

    The Boy: ;)​

    She remembered Shamrock a couple of days ago saying that the team was planning something nefarious for her this weekend or earlier in the dorm common room. Standing up and turning to head home, she felt a creeping sense of dread. The kind of feeling when your friend wants to hang out, and you just want to lay in bed all day relaxing, and you can't figure out any decent-sounding excuse. More to the point, even if Blake just wanted to go home and merely exist, she'd have to go back to the dorms in any case. She had a sudden feeling of being trapped and unable to escape.

    Maybe Jaune had planned it that way on purpose.

    Blake took a breath and took the long walk through fading sunlight back home. Every step made gravity feel just that much heavier. Despite the late January chill, she felt uncomfortable and sweaty. Her ears burned under her bow. It made her think of herself as somehow gross and unpresentable. She imagined going to this whatever it was and everyone suddenly wrinkling their noses and scowling at her.

    It almost stopped her from going into the dorms. She found herself looking at the masonry, looking for a way she could scale up the side using ledges and her Shadow in order to just sneak into her room. Could she shower and change really quick? She had that nice new outfit in a bag under her bed. She was about to actually try it until she saw Velvet and Yatsuhashi walking in her direction, each of them carrying boxes. Her eyes met Velvet, and Blake scowled. Velvet's expression soured too.

    Blake just entered the building. She didn't want Velvet watching her scale a building. If she had apparently told Sun that Blake was a bitch, she did not want to hear what unsightly rumors Velvet might spread about that.

    She made her way up the stairs quickly, stopping briefly at the door to the second floor. Her cat ears twitched, able to hear things through the door and distance beyond that a human probably wouldn't: people whispering.

    "Ugh! J'en ai ras de cul," Shamrock of all people said in a low, angry voice.

    "Look, it'll be fine, stop swearing," Ruby said. At least Blake thought it was Ruby. She only knew the girl from a couple of classes here and there. "It was a good deal. I had to invite Nora in exchange for her karaoke machine."

    "We don't have enough for everyone!" Weiss hissed.

    "I won't eat; it's cool," Jaune said.

    Weiss made a tired, frustrated noise. "No! You will put something in your mouth today!"

    "That's what he said!" a girl Blake didn't recognize said eagerly.

    "Where'd he say it?" another girl said. "After cornering you in a dark alley?"

    "Wow, that got dark."

    "Nora, there literally wasn't any other way to interpret that," a calm boy said. His tone conveyed the idea that he existed without his consent and carried on purely through inertia.

    Blake made a face. What the hell was going on out there? Her head spun trying to figure it out. She half-wondered if this was going to turn into some kind of group intervention. She'd just open the door and a group of half-strangers were going to tell her, "Blake, you have a problem. You need to stop reading steamy lit in public; it's making us all uncomfortable."

    She realized she could stand here all day just worrying and trying to figure it out. Problem was, there was a chance that Velvet and her partner would take the stairs, and then they would see her standing there like a weirdo. No, better to tear this bandage off now and just see what it was.

    So Blake took one last breath and threw the door open.

    The common room was dark. At this hour, someone should have turned the lights on, or else they were keeping them off on purpose. Her eyes had no trouble seeing the crowd gathered around the kitchen. She saw her team—Jaune, Weiss, and Shamrock—alongside a rogues' gallery of miscellaneous characters she only vaguely knew. Ruby and her entire team were scattered about. Some Mistrali boy with a strand of dyed-pink hair. Coco floated around oddly close to Jaune. And even motherfucking Cardin was here.

    Instantly, any of the arguments stopped. They all turned in her vague direction, most of them probably not being able to see too well in the dark.

    Weiss slammed her hand down on the kitchen island, right next to a misshapen cake and eclectic variety of snacks. "Happy birthday, Blake!" she said first, loudly, as if instructing everyone to follow along. Most of them did, to varying degrees of enthusiasm.

    Except Jaune, who just shouted, "Happy Halloween!"

    Weiss smacked her face. "Jaune!"

    He threw up his hands and took a step back, nearly bumping into Coco. "I panicked! She startled me with the door."

    Yang belatedly flicked on the lights. "Merry birthween," she added dryly. "I don't know who you are, but there's cake, I guess."

    Blake stood there, nearly frozen in place with all of the attention. Her ears felt incredibly hot under her bow. She knew her chest was red beneath her shirt. "I—what is this?"

    Weiss pulled down in her face and groaned. She made herself smile and held her arms out. "I said I'd make you a cake, and I only mostly lied! Mostly because I'm not entirely comfortable calling this a cake so much as a pile of baked batter under a pile of frosting. It was the best we could really do between all of us; it was like herding cats. People just kept inviting people, and now it's a party. Surprise?"

    The poor girl looked like she wanted to die. Like she had lost complete control of her life, and this was her best approximation to sanity.

    "It's true," Pyrrha Nikos said happily. "I'm not even sure why I'm here, and I didn't know it was your birthday, but here we are."

    "I bought most of the ingredients so I have a right to this cake," Ruby said, folding her arms.

    "And the karaoke machine is mine," Nora Valkyrie sing-songed, her arm draped around a boy's shoulder.

    There it was, right there on what looked like some kind of impromptu stage. A wireless speaker, a crappy karaoke machine, and a microphone. It looked to be of similar quality to the abomination of a cake Weiss had made. And was that some kind of weird cheesecake sitting on top of the cake, crushing it? This entire thing just looked like a wreck. Hell, even some of the snacks looked like people had just grabbed things out of their room and tossed it together in an incongruent potluck.

    Blake was tempted to just turn around and pretend like she hadn't seen this disaster in the making. But then she would run into Velvet. So all she could do was close the door and numbly walk towards the kitchen, looking around with wide eyes at all of the people apparently here for her eighteenth birthday party. Most of the people started chatting about how they had wound up here. Cardin apparently had just followed his partner, the Ren boy that Nora was holding onto, and remained incredibly confused about what was even happening. Ren wasn't given the option; Nora had apparently kidnapped him. Coco was here because of a noise complaint, and no her team wasn't going to be here, thank god.

    "Are we not singing the birthday song?" Jaune asked as Blake stared at the food. He was wearing sweatpants and an apron reading please do not pet me i am a service dog. She looked up from reading the words and met his eyes, and then quickly averted her gaze when he smiled.

    "What's the birthday song?" Blake asked.

    He squinted, before looking around as if not sure he was going crazy or not. "Huh. Weird. Culture mismatch. Still, I could teach you? I learned how to sing not long ago."

    Blake made a face. "I feel like that's a threat instead of an offer."

    "Jaune," Weiss said patiently, leaning forwards on the kitchen island. "I am holding a very big knife right now. Please get the plates for me before I stick the knife in you just to free up one of my hands to do it myself."

    "Eh," Jaune said. "You call it a 'knife wound,' I call it a 'handy dandy personal knife pocket.' It's about mindset."

    Blake felt weirdly under the microscope as she grabbed a pile of paper plates and offered them to Weiss. "Here, I got it."

    "No, sweetie," Weiss said softly, yet vaguely condescendingly. "This is your birthday party; you don't have to lift a finger. Just sit on a couch or something while I serve you."

    Shamrock raised an eyebrow. "You're really taking that service with a smile brainwashing to heart, huh?"

    "It's not a smile; it's a grimace of pain," Weiss said with a wink.

    "That sounds like a more healthy outlook!"

    "I am still holding a knife, Jetty."

    Jaune took the plates from Blake. She kind of just let it happen, distantly listening to all of the idle chatter from the partygoers. They were starting to form a line for cake and snacks. Not really sure what else to do, Blake exchanged a quick smile with Jaune and wandered off. She didn't really go very far, just to one of the side rooms with the couches.

    She sat there and wondered if this was how she always was. Somehow, the presence of so many people to talk to made her clam up. It wasn't that she was an introvert exactly. Blake could easily talk to people like a normal person. She just genuinely didn't know these people. Blake almost felt paralyzed by the options. Here were all of these effective strangers, trying to celebrate her birthday, a party she never asked for or really wanted, and Jaune was here too, and it was clear everyone had made some effort for her.

    It felt more than a little overwhelming. And god did she feel uncomfortably warm.

    Yang sat down on the couch beside her. "Yo, what's up, birthday girl?" she asked casually. She looked like she was wearing gym clothes. "I'm Yang, a friend of Weiss'."

    "I didn't think Weiss had many friends."

    "Just like how I don't think we've met before."

    "We have," Blake said slowly, eyeing the two glass bottles of beer Yang was holding in one hand. "It was right before Initiation. Your sister wouldn't leave me alone, and then she got into an argument with Weiss. I think one of you said something about exploding but I kind of just tuned you out."

    Yang scratched her head. "Really? Huh."

    "Yeah…"

    "Cool!"

    "I guess?"

    Yang just stared as if expecting a conversation to follow up after then. The silence lasted longer than a polite pause for someone else to think. It became something slowly uncomfortable. Blake felt like she should be doing something, but nothing felt right.

    "Oh!" Yang said, holding up a beer. "I dug this out of a secret compartment. Figured a birthday was as good a place as anything. Eighteen is kind of a big deal; they expect you to pay taxes now." She put Aura into her thumb and used it to pop the cap off.

    Blake accepted the drink and instantly felt wrong. "Aren't these against the rules?"

    Yang shrugged. Getting on her hands and knees to turn on the video game console at the foot of the TV, she said, "Only if you buy them. I won these in a game of cards off a guy named Jack."

    "I see."

    As soon as Yang sat back down on the couch with a controller, Cardin came into the room with a piece of cake and a bag of miniature pretzels.

    "Ah crap, you guys have a console on your floor!" he said. "All we have on the first floor is a broken pachinko machine, but a bunch of wasps made their nest in the prize box, so now we just avoid that room out of fear."

    "Sucks to suck," Yang said. "You guys want in? I think there's a copy of Soul Hunter."

    Blake shook her head and slowly slid to the far side of the couch. Cardin grabbed the controller and took the spot she had just been on.

    "Is it the new one?" Cardin asked.

    As she just stared at the two of them, Blake nearly jumped as a storm of rose petals dashed into the room and materialized as Ruby Rose. She was carrying two pieces of cake and looked a little frantic. "No! That's only for the new console. Jaune and I haven't figured out a way to scrounge up money for a new one, but we're working on it."

    Cardin made a face. "I'll chip in. Anything for something to do. I've been trying to get new hobbies but competitive trading card games are expensive and I can't afford that. And also, complete nerd shit. But if they like it, I'm convinced there's some sort of link between people who retain their virginity forever and being rich. How else can they afford to play their trading card games? Can't find the link myself just yet, but one day…"

    Ruby scowled as she grabbed a controller, sitting on the floor between Cardin and Yang. "No way. I don't want you owning a stake in my console."

    "What did I do?" he asked, offended.

    Blake tried to make a comment about him being a racist, but with all of the people crowding around her, she found it oddly hard to find her voice. She just clutched the beer she didn't want to drink and sat at the edge of the couch in silence. Something about it vaguely humiliated her.

    She tried to get off and go around the back, to rejoin the main room. At least her teammates and actual friends would be there, minus whoever else was just looming and showing up to a birthday party she didn't ask for, and weren't really invited to, and were just crowding her and making things feel claustrophobic.

    "It's more about what you didn't do," Ruby said simply.

    Cardin gasped. "Whoever said I use a little bit of Aura to help deadlift is lying! I only use it to help recover, not to assist reps. Ask Jaune; we lift together."

    Yang took a sip of beer. "Dude, you should really try to find a way to self-actualize. Your default response to being questioned shouldn't be to run crying to your boyfriend."

    Cardin scowled. "I identify as heterobrosexual, thank you very much."

    Ruby frowned. "I meant more about how you didn't become my friend, and I don't really know who you are, and I don't want some random dude trying to play my console at odd hours. It's only in the common room because we don't have a TV in our dorm."

    Blake slipped out of the common room into the wider kitchen. She nearly bumped straight into Jaune and his stupid dog apron. He blinked in surprise, holding a plate of cake in each hand. His eyes went to the beer she was holding, and instantly she felt her cat ears go hot again.

    But for just the briefest moment, she remembered talking to Jaune in a café months ago when she hated him. Right before they all got involved in fighting crime. He had actually flirted with her, in a really cringe inducing, painful way; in his own words, he said he'd love to get her naked, but didn't feel like that was in the cards because, "I'm playing Uno and y'all here doing poker." With the cold beer in her hand, she wondered where exactly along the lines his train of thought had changed. How exactly she'd gone from disgusted at the very idea of even being in a room with him alone, to being upset at how awkward things were between them.

    She wondered what would happen if she asked him to drink with her. He'd probably say no, but what if? If he had any in his system, would his tune about her change? Maybe then he'd be willing to kiss her back.

    Blake froze, inches away from Jaune, realizing just how colossally fucked up and monstrous that one thought had just been. And the fact that she had actually been thinking about it in the first place.

    Jaune frowned, seeming to interpret her actions as just more awkwardness. He pushed one of the plates into her hand and she accepted it.

    "Good timing. I was just trying to bring you this! The line got a little long." He shrugged.

    Blake swallowed. "This party is awful."

    With the grimace, he said, "It wasn't really supposed to be this big. Just us and Ruby, because we kind of needed Ruby to help us get groceries and this was the price of admission. Apparently everyone else just kind of flocked at the smell of cake. I've never really been good at parties."

    She considered for a moment, whether to just move past him or to actually try to talk to him like the old days. After he had messed with her parents, she actually thought maybe just acting like things were normal would sort the problem at itself.

    So she took a big breath and went for it. "That's a little hard to believe."

    He gestured for her to follow, and she actually did. He leaned against the island and set his plate down, and she stood next to him. "Iunno. I'm pretty much fueled by social interaction, but I fall apart if I'm not the center of attention."

    "Huh. That explains a lot," Blake said, poking at the ugly piece of cake with a fibre plastique fork. Idly, she watched Weiss waving her knife around to prevent Nora from taking more than a single slice.

    The boy nodded. "See, that's the advantage of our tight-knit little team of four. No matter where we are, so long as we're together, I can reliably ensure that I'm the focus of at least two people's attention, usually exasperating them or ruining their day, but that counts for something."

    He just stared at her.

    "What?" she asked.

    "Cake."

    She remembered a conversation she had a long time ago with Weiss about Jaune's diction. Cocking an eyebrow, she slowly asked, "Is that a butt reference?"

    "What?"

    Blake shrugged as Nora sulked away from the island. "I mean, I think you once told me the only piece I have is cake. And I'm pretty sure that was some kind of slang."

    He didn't look like he was following. "I do me that a lot. Believe it or not, it's not because I'm an extradimensional alien monster thing. It's purely a function of my abomination of an accent. Though I do wonder me where the hell plastic comes from."

    Scratching a nail over the fork, she said, "Do you not have plastic where you're from?"

    "Oh, we have plenty. Sometimes it forms gigantic islands in the middle of the ocean. I like to throw straws into the ocean to kill sea turtles to establish my mammalian domination of all creatures great and small."

    "Why would it kill sea turtles? They would just dissolve."

    "What, turtles? Are turtles biodegradable here?"

    "I mean, in theory, everything is biodegradable if you kill it." Blake shrugged.

    "Yeah, but plastic?"

    "Plastic is also dead."

    "Dinosaurs, maybe."

    She made a face. "What's a dinosaur? Sounds fake."

    "Where the hell does plastic come from, then?" he asked, throwing up a hand

    Blake idly put a piece of cake in her mouth. "Fiber plastic trees, I guess. Also, try the cake. It doesn't taste like I'm eating charcoal. I think she's getting better."

    "I heard that!" Weiss shouted from across the room, turning around from a conversation with Pyrrha, who didn't really seem all that interested in talking.

    "It was a compliment!" Blake yelled back.

    "And that's the only reason why I'm not going to break your knees while you're asleep tonight!"

    "Do it!" Jaune said, cupping his hands to his mouth. "No balls!"

    "I'm glad you know what a woman is," Weiss said. "I was getting afraid there for a moment."

    Blake rolled her eyes and laughed. "You two are stupid."

    Pretending to be offended, Jaune said, "I've been slowly whittling down our team's collective IQ, thank you very much for noticing."

    She blew air through her lips. "Yeah, I know. I feel stupid just being around you."

    "You say it like it's a bad thing."

    Blake tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Isn't it, though?"

    Jaune folded his arm on the table, looking around the open room. His eyes lingered on Coco and Nora, who were trying to get the karaoke machine to start and sync music to the wireless speaker. Blake, for some reason, felt vaguely annoyed he was paying Coco any mind instead of just her.

    "Not everything has to be some exercise in intellectual superiority," Jaune said. "You don't care about people because it's the intellectually correct thing to do; you do it because it feels right. Because doing things based on feelings is dumb. And that's why it's worth doing."

    She poked at the cake, frowning. "I feel like you've said this before."

    He shrugged. "I've struggled with it. And I've reached the point where I've come to accept a lot of the things in my life. It's not exactly a deep philosophy, probably riddled with contradictions and flat out insanity here and there. But I've come to be comfortable with my place in the world. What I've done for myself in it. And all because I'm surrounded by people like you, who make this life worth living."

    Very hesitantly, he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. She wanted it to flinch away, but didn't. Something about the touch was comforting. It really did make things feel, for lack of a better term, normal. Almost like kissing him and running away afterwards wasn't the end of the world.

    Maybe it really wasn't. Maybe she was being crazy. But that didn't feel right. It felt more complicated and painful and stupid all at the same time. This didn't feel like something they could just have a couple of friendly conversations and, poof! Problem solved as though it never happened.

    "If it's worth living at all," Blake said, enjoying the brief flash of what almost looked like panic on his face before she continued, "then you'd actually eat food."

    His expression instantly soured. "I helped make it, but it's just sugar and carbs. I don't wanna."

    "Jaune!" Weiss threatened.

    He scowled. "Stop eavesdropping."

    "I'm sorry that I can't help but overhear you in a very public space," she said. "Now eat the cake."

    Looking like an oversized petulant toddler, he stabbed at his cake and took a bite. "Ew, food, the lifeblood of life itself. My disappointment is measurable and my day is ruined."

    Blake made a dubious face. "So you'll listen to her and not to me when I tell you to not kill yourself?"

    He gave her such a serious look that she felt suddenly self conscious again. "I've always valued your advice and sense of what to do. Sort of what I like most about being around you, Blake," he said. "But I hate taking good advice when I don't want to hear it. Weiss, however, is holding a knife. I don't have a choice."

    "Yeah, and? You could literally survive a three-story fall and shrug it off. Remember?"

    He gestured with the fork. "Blunt force bodily trauma and a pinpoint stab wound are different."

    "Don't you mean 'handy dandy personal knife pocket'?"

    Hands on his hips, he just looked like he had been slapped and didn't even know the first place to begin responding. It was theatrical in a way which made her cover her mouth with her hand and laugh.

    "How dare you throw my own words back at me!" he said. "It's almost as if you expect me to face the consequences of my actions."

    "Yes, that would be nice," she said with a wink.

    "Shame."

    The speaker in the corner of the room made a whining noise. "Alright!" Nora said, clapping her hands. "I got this stupid thing to work. Who wants to sing!?"

    From the other room, Cardin screamed. Yang cried out that something was bullshit. A moment later, Ruby zoomed into a room with her Semblance.

    "Me!" Ruby said. "I wanna do a rap battle."

    "No, you don't get to go first," Jaune said, earning him one hell of a look from Ruby. Then, without warning, he grabbed Blake's hand and raised it into the air. In an incredibly poor imitation of her voice, he said, "I am the birthday girl and I go first!"

    Blake sucked in a breath and slid out from his grip. "Jaune, no!"

    "Jaune, yes!" he said, taking her by the hand again in a more firm grip.

    "I'm serious, please, don't do this," she begged. "I don't want to do karaoke; it is literally the lamest thing in the world."

    Despite it, she didn't resist too hard when he pulled her towards the little impromptu stage thing.

    "Karaoke rap battle royale!" Nora said, clapping excitedly.

    Blake looked around for help and support. Weiss just stood there, arms folded beside Pyrrha. And Shamrock was sitting on one of the countertops having a conversation with Ren.

    "It's okay, Blake," Jaune said. "I don't want to do it either. Therefore, if we both don't want to do it, or combined negative energy will flute back around and make us want to do it!"

    For some terrible reason, Blake actually laughed when he thrust the microphone into her hand. It was probably a nervous, panicked noise that got lost somewhere in translation between her lungs and her mouth. She looked at the little display that would show the lyrics as they came.

    Nora frantically tapped at her scroll, searching for a song with Coco. "Okay, do you two want a lovey duet, some cheesy pop song, or—"

    "Rap battle!" Ruby said. "Freestyle this!"

    Cardin came out of the common room, looking like someone had just punched him in the soul. He slunk over to the kitchen island and stole a couple sticks of string cheese that someone had brought. "High intensity psychedelic ska," he said.

    Jaune scoffed. "Bro, what the hell is that?"

    "The true patrician choice," Cardin said, stripping away little strings of the cheese with his teeth. "Also, is this cheese the low-fat variety, or the protein blasted double mozzarella? Apparently there's a national trade shortage of low carbohydrate protein powder, so I've had to do with meat and cheese to fuel my gains."

    Ruby waved him away. "We don't play hipster music in this house. It's rock and roll or gangster rap!"

    Jaune looked at Blake. "Your show. Whatcha feelin'?"

    Cheeks red, Blake just stared back at him. "That I don't want to do this."

    Nora selected a song. "Ooh, good choice. The '32 single I Don't Want to Do This. One of the last good disco tracks. The artist recorded this song and then immediately died of a heroin overdose just to make sure it charted."

    "Why do you know so much about disco?" Ren asked.

    Nora shrugged. "I went through a retro disco phase about three weeks ago."

    "Jaune, please," Blake whispered as he grabbed the other microphone. He had the dumbest, most boyish smile she had ever seen. "Don't make me do this."

    She made a high-pitched noise in her throat as he put an arm around her shoulder. "Don't worry, we've got teamwork on our side. Ain't nothing we cain't work through together. Especially when it comes to making asses of ourselves in public!"

    "Jaune," she said as the music kicked on. "I really—No, baby, I don't want to do it. It's not your fault that you're always wrong. The needle burns and I'm just not strong. " The first lines of the song.

    And by god was she off key and terrible and the whole thing was awful and everyone was watching her and why was she smiling and why was her heart trying to rip out of her chest and oh God she was actually having some kind of fun, wasn't she?

    Jaune picked up, almost embarrassingly more in tune to the music than her. "I can't resist when we dance disco. When you're in my veins, how could I say no?"

    She could just tell this was going to be a long, endless, horrible, and possibly somehow fun night. In the least consensual way possible.

    — 13 —​

    They went through two songs together like that. Until eventually Blake found her opening to escape. Everything burned, but in a way she almost kind of liked. She imagined this actually might have been a fun kind of date idea, if only there weren't so many people around. Making a complete clown of yourself with someone you're comfortable with was a common tactic she'd seen in so many of her books. But this was too public. It was fun in a weird way, but not something she really wanted to keep doing.

    Blake tossed her microphone to Ruby, to instantly declare a rap battle against anyone who would dare challenge her. It gave her the chance to retreat towards the food and collect herself.

    Jaune gave Blake a look; she smiled apologetically, then shoved cake in her mouth as an excuse to not talk.

    He frowned, and looked down at Ruby beside him. "Girl, you have no chance at beating me. Not only can I deadlift five times your body weight, but I can also deadlift five times all of your emotional baggage. You cannot hope to win."

    "Wow," Ruby cooed sarcastically, twisting a finger in her cheek. "That was so courageous and manly both that I think I'm going to get a preemptive abortion just to make sure I didn't get pregnant."

    Ruby glanced towards her sister, who didn't really react. Yang just poked at the graham cracker crust of her cheesecake, downing it with a pull of beer. All she did was shrug nonchalantly, and for some reason that seemed to kind of upset Ruby. As if she was just trying to egg her big sister on.

    With a more focused expression, Ruby said, "Put your money where your mouth is, boy! Nora, give me a beat. And no, this is a freestyle. I'm not going to read any lyrics on screen, because I can't read in the first place!"

    Blake had long ago lost the beer Yang had given her, which she didn't mind. She still felt it was somehow offensive for Yang and Cardin to drink around Jaune. She wanted to slap the bottle out of the girl's hand, and call Cardin a shitty friend and a subpar weightlifter just to rub it in. Yang might be forgiven, but Cardin had to know Jaune's deal with drinking, right? It bothered her more that Jaune didn't seem bothered. Which made her wonder if it was sensible for her to be offended on his behalf.

    "Why'd you run?" Weiss asked, appearing suddenly beside her.

    Blake nearly jumped. She coughed on the miscellaneous snacks she'd been eating from one bag or the other off the counter. "What?"

    Weiss shrugged. "You looked like you were having fun."

    "Fun, but with dubious consent." She mimed the act of holding a microphone.

    Folding her arms and sighing, Weiss said, "I know. This kind of got out of hand, and by the time you showed up we really couldn't control it. It was supposed to just be Ruby for grocery reasons. We needed her to buy them for us."

    "Didn't the paycheck from Montluçon come in already?"

    Weiss made a so-so gesture. "Maybe? If it did, it was linked to my old bank account, which is in Atlas, so nothing I can use. I actually had to get a job just to pool my money with the loose change Ruby had for the cakes. But we pretty much had to invite her in exchange for her help."

    "What about Jaune?"

    "Him? Yes, he helped make everything." Looking slightly sour, she added, "He seems weirdly good with cheesecakes, but for the life of him can't figure out how to make dough properly. I do not know what to make of that, but I'm pretty sure I should be afraid of what it implies."

    "No, I mean, his half of the mission reward."

    Weiss looked away. "His business. Not for me to say."

    "Whenever you say anything like that, you are literally just begging someone to ask you about it," Blake said, rolling over one hand. "It's like holding a sign up that says, 'I have some juicy gossip but I'd like you to weedle me for it so I don't feel so bad.'"

    "I mean…" Weiss shook her head. "I mean, genuinely, that's for him to answer. It'd ruin the surprise." It was hard to miss the way the corner of her lip quirked up.

    "Wow, you're really not good at this whole thing, are you?" she asked. "He spent all of his money on a birthday present, didn't he?"

    "I didn't say that!"

    Blake rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but I'm not stupid."

    Weiss gave a single quick laugh. "Yes, you are. Exhibit A—" She gestured both of her arms towards Jaune and Ruby's rap battle.

    "Yeah, that girl outrageous," Ruby freestyled. Poorly. "All her friends know her booty famous. But a thin blue thong? Dang! I think she racist!"

    "No, there's nothing stupid about hating rap," Blake said. Then, in a lower voice just for Weiss: "I don't really know why people think faunus should like it. It just sounds so unclean, y'know?"

    Weiss held up a second finger. "Exhibit B: purposefully misinterpreting my vague gestures."

    "Oh, no, I perfectly understood what you were implying about Jaune," she said. "I just didn't like it, so I chose to ignore it."

    Hands on hips, she looked up at Blake. For someone that short, she sure could look intimidating. Especially because she was still carrying around that kitchen knife with bits of cheesecake gore on the side. Blake watched carefully as Weiss set the knife by the table, almost as if to reinforce the idea that you could grab it anytime and use it.

    Of course, the moment Weiss took her eye off it, Cardin snatched it up to help cut his string cheese into evermore uncomfortably small slices and nibble at it.

    "What the heck, Jaune!" Ruby cried, distracting Blake.

    Jaune spun his microphone around and tucked it into one of the strings tying his apron on. "Fuck around and find out. I'm a goddamn rap god. I've been listening to this stuff longer than you've been alive, short stuff."

    Ruby hugged herself, frowning with somehow malicious intent. "Yeah, but low hanging fruit, man. My boobs aren't small, they're just—they're tactical. Tactiddy!"

    "Wow," Yang said with a sigh. "Never say those words ever again."

    "You and what boobies?" Ruby asked.

    "Yeah, Yang," Jaune said, folding his arms defensively as he took position next to Ruby. "Flat chested women like you don't get to have opinions on this kind of thing. Only buxom brawlers like myself get those."

    Ruby examined Jaune thoughtfully. "Yeah. Between us, I think we have at least one DD."

    Yang made a face. "I keep thinking I should be offended, but then I realize both of you are doing this to me on purpose, and I just don't care."

    Ruby groaned. "Great. She's onto us. Hey, Coco, you take my spot. Defeat my immortal rival in a musical contest."

    Coco caught the microphone, nearly fumbling in her hands. "Wait, me? Just me and karaoke, is this going to be a duet, or another rap battle?"

    "I do not take you for a rappist," Pyrrha said mildly.

    "The word you want is rapper," Ren said helpfully. "But by speaking, I think you volunteered."

    Pyrrha blinked. "I don't sing."

    Nora snorted. "You sure about that, Pyrrha? You've got symbols for Eriginio all over your shield. He's your god of violence and music, right?"

    Pyrrha actually looked impressed. "I never took you for someone who knew about Akhaioi gods."

    Blake watched Jaune come up to the island and snatch one of the sticks of string cheese from Cardin.

    "Hey!" Cardin whined.

    "Hey yourself," Jaune said. "And be careful with that knife. You're going to give yourself a double circumcision."

    "How would you know whether or not I was circumcised?" Cardin asked.

    Jaune stared his friend down. "I can just tell. I have an eye for penises."

    It took the two of them a moment of this looking at each other, before they both broke out laughing.

    "What the fuck, dude?" Cardin snorted.

    Shaking his head, Jaune said, "You know, every now and again I just say something and then it occurs to me what just passed between my lips, and I almost can't believe I just said it."

    "I believe we learned in psychology class," Weiss said thoughtfully, "that lacking the ability to know what you should and should not say is a sign of mental illness."

    Jaune stripped away a bit of cheese, then grabbed it with his fingers and threw the little strand at Weiss.

    "No, not cheese!" Weiss shrieked, quickly summoning a tiny snowflake glyph to intercept the attack. She reached forward and stole the knife from Cardin. "I'm keeping this. No one get near me. No one throw any food at me. This is my one good apron and I'm not having you get it covered in food!"

    Blake frowned. "Isn't the purpose of an apron to get dirty?"

    Weiss gestured the knife at her. "Yes. But that only applies to people who can afford laundry detergent. And I need to wait for a paycheck before I can afford to do my clothes."

    In the background, Coco and Pyrrha started fighting over karaoke song choices. It was a pleasant kind of chaotic.

    "You can borrow one of my shirts, y'know, if you need it," Cardin offered around a mouthful of food.

    She scowled. "Are you obliquely flirting with me?"

    "What's obliquely mean?"

    Jaune ran a hand down his side. "It refers to the muscle group around your abs. It's what you train when you do oblique crunches." He bent to the left and right to show them off.

    "I don't like those; I'm pretty sure they're bad for your spine or something," Cardin said.

    "Más o menos," Jaune said. "Worst I ever felt was something around my groin I were vaguely worried was a hernia, but was just pulled groin muscles from doing whatever."

    "That sucks. Only thing that should be pulling on your groin is bitches."

    "Tig ol' biddies," Jaune said.

    Cardin pursed his lips and thought. "Pet ass wushy."

    Inexplicably, the two boys continued making these kinds of noises at each other. They weren't even really words. It was like watching two people completely devolve into cavemen language in real time. Blake was fairly certain it was somehow sexual? She just couldn't understand the complete nonsense.

    Weiss frowned. "Huh. Someone is ignoring my indignant anger. I don't know how to process that."

    Jaune shrugged. "It happens sometimes. I'm still trying to properly socialize my rescue gym rat."

    Cardin seemed to remember Weiss existed. "Oh, yeah, it's totally true. I will growl and bite if I see you touch my food bowl."

    Instead of directly replying, Weiss sized Blake up, then gazed meaningfully at Jaune. The boy idly chewed string cheese and met her gaze. She had to repeatedly waggle her brows until she was almost acting a complete clown before Jaune inhaled sharply.

    Jaune turned his body towards Blake, and hesitated. "Hey, kemosabe, borrow you for a lick?"

    Weiss rubbed her eyes. Cardin looked in at Coco and Pyrrha awkwardly trying to sing along together.

    Blake felt a slight heat beneath her cheeks. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Where?"

    Jaune made a show of looking around, and then pretended to remember something. "Actually, hold on. It's back in the room. You wanna come with?"

    "Sure!" Blake said, hoping she didn't sound too eager or desperate or anything.

    He smiled and gestured for her to follow. A small part of her felt indignant as she did, and the other part of her marveled at the fact that suddenly everyone was pretending like they weren't looking at them. Nora met her eyes and winked.

    Blake felt the heat seep down into her chest again. She once again felt just a little sweaty, and just a little gross. She really wished that Velvet hadn't shown up outside so that she really could have snuck into the room and changed first. But then she wondered if that would have spoiled whatever surprise Jaune had.

    Well, it wasn't really a surprise. She knew it had to be some kind of gift. Weiss had made it painfully obvious. She liked to pretend she was subtle and clever, but she really wasn't.

    Just a few yards down the hall, Jaune opened the door. Blake caught the door and stood in it for a moment. She glanced back around and saw Weiss staring, who then quickly looked away and pretended to measure out the cake for more precision and perfectly portioned slices.

    With a breath, Blake stepped inside and was alone with Jaune. He was kneeling by the foot of his bed, searching for something. The light was on, but barely. Her faunus eyes meant she could still see perfectly. She looked at Jaune's naked back, following it down to his arms.

    "So, I should probably apologize for the crowd out there," Jaune said.

    She swallowed. "Yeah."

    He pushed something aside before finding what he was after. "Honestly, it was kind of a domino effect. My fault, though. Originally I had to compromise and get Ruby to help, because she had some spare money for the groceries we needed for the cake. Me or Weiss would have bought them ourselves, but we didn't have much to spare, and we're still waiting for the reward money from the mission. And I kind of spent my money on this."

    He stood up, holding a box. It was wrapped up poorly. The ends didn't line up, the pattern on the wrapping paper didn't work right. It seemed to mostly be held together with masking tape and happy thoughts. Jaune held it up for her.

    He was still a room away from her.

    Blake suddenly worried about everything. What he might say, what he might do, if she was clean, if she smelled bad, if her outfit was too dirty—hell, she even briefly panicked because she couldn't remember what color underwear she was wearing. It was enough that she managed to get secondhand embarrassment from her own thoughts.

    So she just swallowed again and walked towards him.

    "I didn't really know what to get you," Jaune said, smiling awkwardly. "We're kind of in a weird place, you and I. I was never any good at gifts. Growing up, I used to actually ask specifically for nothing for my birthday or religious holidays. Just nothing I wanted. Plus, y'know, poverty. And it made me pretty bad at figuring what other people wanted."

    The box rattled slightly when she gave it an experimental shake. Blake had to use her nails to really cut the poorly wrapped paper off. It stuck to her fingers and she had to shake it off. When everything was off, she just stared at the gift, eyes wide, her heart dropping.

    She opened it up and gasped.

    He sucked on his lip as though he had just made a monumental error. Awkwardly wringing his hands, he said, "I—I saw you drawing. You do it sometimes instead of actually paying attention in class. Or studying with us. You don't really talk about it much, but you do it a lot. So I thought, what the hell, maybe you'd like some really good drawing pens. Some of them is colored, but I'm not entirely sure how many or what shades. I just know they're pretty highly recommended from whatever research I did, y'know?"

    She set the box of gorgeous pens to the side. Then she steadied herself. Gave her hands a little shake as if to brush the worries away. And then grabbed Jaune in a hug fully intended to crush his spine.

    He actually flinched, but she didn't let go. He fell back onto his bed. "Easy, easy! If you don't like them, you don't have to try to murder me!" He somehow managed to shove her backwards.

    She sat beside him and just laughed. It was all she could do. Blake laughed and laughed until she was nearly crying. "Exactly what part of my face makes you think I don't like it?"

    He shrugged mildly. "You've got this kind of resting bitch face thing going on. Hard to read you."

    Blake punched his shoulder. And then hugged him again. He smelled of the dying embers of some cologne and cake batter. "It's just one of those things I didn't realize how much I wanted until I had it. It's kind of a recurring problem with things around you."

    "So, all copacetic?"

    "Jaune, I love it!" she said, throwing her hands up. She gave him an exasperated kind of look. "I seriously couldn't have thought of anything I did want, but you found it. It's giving me this really weird urge to start drawing stuff again like when I was a little girl."

    There was a slight flush to his cheeks as he said, "Oh. Well. That ruins my entire planned speech."

    "You're no good at making speeches. How haven't you learned this by now?"

    He scoffed as if offended. "You should know by now that I take it as a point of pride that I refuse to ever learn my lesson." Jaune shook his head. "But, like, for real, I expected you to not really like it. I was thinking all week for things you might like, and I realized I didn't know. That was supposed to be the whole point of it. That despite everything we've been together, in a very real sense, I don't feel like I really know you. And there's no way you can really know me."

    Blake sighed in exasperation. "That sounds like the worst plan I've ever heard. Entirely without prompting, you figure out what my favorite little hobbies are that I don't even speak about, and then you go out and buy really nice accessories to help me do it. You obviously paid a lot of attention to me, and you gave it a lot of thought. I know what a thoughtless gift from you looks like. Or do you not remember that time you tried buying me books I've already read in order to convince me to go after organized crime?"

    He let out a breath that lasted so long it began to whistle at the tail end. "Yeah, that, uh—that was kind of passive aggressive of me in a way, huh?"

    Blake gestured at the frankly marvelous little box of pens. "Compared to that bullshit from half a year ago, what part of this here implies you don't know me, or that I don't know you by extension?"

    Jaune tightened his shoulders, grimacing. "Because you still kissed me."

    They both went quiet for a very long moment. Outside the window, the sun had gone down. It wasn't snowing, but bits of wind still buffeted the window. The air conditioning thrummed softly. She could hear her own heartbeat. And this close to him, she was confident she could make out his, and it sounded a lot more desperate than hers.

    She felt slightly numb as she stood up and retrieved one of her new pens. A crisp black one with fine ink that fit perfectly in her hand. Just holding it made her feel like she could do anything. Like she could upgrade from meaningless doodles to actual art.

    Jaune's cheeks looked red as she sat back down beside him, their thighs touching. She took his arm and set it beside hers. He didn't resist as she drew across their skin, connecting them together with a little piece of art.

    When it was done, he squinted and put the back of his hand up towards his eye. "'I'm with stupid'?" he read.

    Blake shrugged. "No. Your half just reads. 'I wi stu'. But when we put ourselves together, the message is a lot clearer. Only then are we really with stupid. Without you, and without me, we're meaningless. Just words."

    "You broke your pen's virginity for this?" he asked.

    She pouted. "I thought it was sweet and clever."

    He looked like he was going to make a joke about it, and Blake braced for it. But at the last second he seemed to have caught a sudden case of common sense and looked away. "It was. And that's the problem. Because…"

    Jaune groaned and let himself fall down onto the bed. She followed a moment afterwards, just looking at him.

    They were quiet for another moment of just staring and thinking. Until the lack of talking struck a sudden nerve with her.

    "So, what do we do, Jaune?"

    "Geez," he said mildly. "You make it sound like your parents were right and I did knock you up."

    "I'm serious."

    He sighed. "I think… I think we kissed. And that was that. It was a confusing explosion of feelings after a lot of really complicated emotional trauma and exhaustion and suffering and I don't think any of us were thinking clearly."

    Blake's lip turned up. "No, we don't get to ignore it like that. Yeah, that happened, that's true, but I don't think I wasn't thinking right. It wasn't like I was drinking or was coming off a nasty breakup and was desperate or anything. I thought we felt the same about each other. That we, y'know, that we… loved each other, I guess."

    His head jostled back and forth as if listening to a Saint on one shoulder and a Grimm on the other. "Where I'm from, an ancient culture had several words for love. I always thought they had the right idea. They defined it based on relationship, specific emotions within it, and—"

    "You're being way too analytical," she said harshly. "Stop trying to think it through like that. It's like you're making excuses to yourself. Just—just tell me what you feel, okay? Be straightforward and just get it over with. I'm a big girl."

    He swallowed. "I promised I'd always be there for you, and I won't ever let you make a liar out of me. I'm too stupid to get out of Dodge when danger is staring me down. But the fact is, Blake, I love you. But I'm not in love. I just can't be. Not anymore. Not with who we are. Who I am and you are."

    "Who I am?" she asked. "What, was kissing me so bad you realized you were gay?"

    "No," he said grimly. "I'm just… I knew how you felt for a while. But I didn't know how to handle it. Because the thing I'm worried about most is hurting you. And I know that the person I am, if we did date, it would change everything about us, and there was no way that could end but tears."

    "Would it really?" she asked softly. "I kinda figured nothing would really change. It would be more like just making official what seemed like was already going on. How many times are we touching or holding hands and hanging out already? I thought it'd be like that, but with a kiss here and there."

    For some reason, the question looked like it hurt Jaune. He cringed softly. "I've been through that before. It wouldn't be the same. The subtle expectation of difference. The way it changes things. I've tried to pretend like I was friends but lovers before, and that's never how it is. The little things would grate on us. Until it ends up feeling like we're both being neglectful because we're still trying to be friends when we're not. And it ends in me hurting you. That's because I'm still a fuck up after everything I've been through and done, and I love you too much to bash myself against you like some kind of anvil trying to fix myself."

    She hugged herself. "How was that any different than what you've been doing?"

    "I'm sorry?"

    "The way you hurt all of us when we met. And the way you bashed yourself against us until you straightened yourself out and became, well—because someone I guess I have feelings for."

    "It's not the same."

    "So ramming yourself into us until I'm in tears because it seems like my life is breaking down before my eyes is fine, but doing the same thing with our lips pressed together somehow isn't?"

    "Blake, please don't," he said, avoiding her eyes.

    But she had already riled herself up. "No, because it doesn't make any sense. It's like you're all so gung-ho about finding what's wrong with you, and then fixing it so you can be a better friend and teammate and whatever. It's like it's your entire mission in life to be a better person in your own weird little way. But the moment, the moment, I see something in you and want to really help, suddenly you freak out and push me away. Your entire problem with friendship and love sounds entirely like a you problem. But I've seen you at your worst, and I've seen you crawl your way here. And it's like this last major obstacle you have is truly and openly trusting someone to want to support you the same way you want to support everyone else."

    "What part does logic and coherence have to do with how I feel?" he asked.

    "I don't know! Maybe we just feel the way we do without reason or cause. But that doesn't make them any less true."

    "Then it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, no. Blake, I love you, but no, I don't want anything romantic. I just want to be friends and move on. Just let things be normal."

    "That's not even how you feel!"

    "How do you figure?"

    She made a face at him, one of her cheeks still slightly bunched up from laying on the bed. "So I'm supposed to expect you just want me to pretend like I don't feel anything, and eventually I'll just get bored and wander off emotionally or something. And then you'll be totally cool with walking me down the aisle in, like, five years to some other man."

    His expression tightened fractionally. He tried to hide it, try to keep it suppressed, but she saw it clear as day. There was something sour behind his eyes.

    "Yeah, see? Back in that fake little world, you didn't get angry at Sun because he was a skinwalker or fake or anything. You saw what that place did to me, how it made me think I felt about that loser, and you were jealous!"

    "Are you really trying to argue that because I'm not so much a human being as I am a sentient pile of red flags, that we therefore should be fucking?"

    She blinked. Sighed. Ran her hands through her hair. "I'm just… no, that's not what I mean. I'm saying I know how I feel. I think I know how you feel. And I think it terrified you. Are you afraid you'll hurt me or something?"

    He looked towards the ceiling. "Not physically, no. But emotionally? I don't know. And I'm not interested in testing that theory. Not with who I am today. And not with who you are, and not from the broken place your feelings came from."

    Blake wasn't sure what to say. The little momentary rush of excitement and anger seemed to fade. As she continued to fumble with her hair, she found one of the strands that held her bow together and pulled it. Her ears twitched freely.

    Jaune and Blake just laid there, inches apart. A faunus girl running from a life of regrets, and a sentient pile of red flags poorly masquerading as a human being. They really would have made one freaking bizarre couple, wouldn't they?

    Slowly, he got up. He held his hand out to her and she accepted. The words on their arms lined up in a perfect I'm with stupid.

    "C'mere," he said, leading her to the bathroom. He flickered on the lights and stood behind her.

    She looked at her reflection. His hands were on her shoulders.

    "What do you see?" he asked.

    Her cat ears stood up. And she hadn't realized just how red her eyes looked. Was she always that tired? She was slowly starting to look like her mother.

    "I see myself," she said.

    "What if I asked that question when we first met?"

    "Same thing?"

    "Six months before that."

    She thought of Adam. She thought of the frontier. Fighting with and running away from soldiers. Rallying support among tribes and towns with faunus in them. Grimm and death and stealing. There wouldn't have been Blake. There would have just been a girl in the mask beside Adam.

    "Still would have been me."

    He looked down at her. "But would you have felt like the same person?"

    "No," she said quietly.

    "And yet, despite everything, it's still you. It was you, is you, and will be you, Blake. The same you, sometimes worse, sometimes better, but always a version of you. Who Blake is today is someone I love, someone I respect, but we're not meant to be together. We would hurt each other. Our demons wouldn't like their playdate."

    "And who would you be tomorrow?"

    Jaune rubbed the outline of his face. "I'd be me. Whoever I am. Whatever I am. Faces change like the seasons. But I've grown used to seeing different faces as my own. I can still recognize who I am, who I was, and who I'm trying to be."

    "If the Blake and Jaune there in the mirror aren't meant to be, what about the people they'll become? The same us, but different inside?"

    He swallowed. "I think that's a cop out answer. The equivalent of stringing you along with a promise of maybe tomorrow. Or even worse shit, way creepier if you think about it. You, I guess—where your feelings come from now, I can't reciprocate. They came from a scared, hurting, and lonely girl trying to figure out her place in the world. There's several layers of fucked up to that if I went along with 'em. I don't even want to think of what ifs because they give me the heebie-jeebies."

    She laughed softly. "That's such a baby word."

    "Babies speak truth to power."

    "And what if that power," Blake said, "is as long as I feel about you from where it comes from, it'll be okay. Never be reciprocated. But if another future me came to feel the same way coming from a different place altogether?"

    He tilted his head. "Stop trying to groom yourself. You're getting all twisted up in the weird metaphor. That's not what I'm trying to get at. The one I was trying to get at is that whatever we feel for each other is definitely stemming from a deeply unhealthy place within two deeply unhealthy individuals. And I'm too old for that shit anymore."

    Blake nodded slowly. "So."

    "So."

    "I'm still not really sure what any of this means," she said. "But I guess I know where it leaves me. Leave us."

    "Not in love," he said.

    She smiled at him. Even as her heart sank to her stomach as she made it. As one of her ears quivered. As her entire mouth felt dry, and she needed to swallow twice just to avoid choking on her own tongue. She turned around and put their arms and the little doodle on them together.

    "With stupid," she said knowingly.

    He looked at the little scribble and laughed. "You still lost your pen's virginity on a fucking joke."

    Blake thought long and hard about what she was going to say to that. At least she was going to. In the end, she realized that just not thinking anything through it all would probably make things go smoother.

    So she gave him a meaningful yet dumb look and said, "Well, wouldn't be the only time I've thought about losing my virginity fucking a joke."

    Jaune stepped back, rapidly pointing his fingers at her. "Nope. Too raunchy. Dial that back a notch, baby doll. Establishing my boundaries right here."

    "It was funny!" she said with an expansive gesture. "Maybe I wasn't even talking about you, huh? Besides—I'm pretty sure you and Ruby make those kinds of jokes all the time."

    "The difference being, she and I never had any awkward sexual tension."

    She was going to say something about how saying and doing something ironically long enough would eventually make things unironic, before she realized something way more important.

    Blake gawked. "Did… did we seriously just have a really long, complicated, hard to explain, emotionally charged conversation and argument—while you were fucking wearing your please do not pet me i am a service dog apron?!"

    He looked down at himself in surprise. "Uh, yes?"

    She ran her hands down her face, pulling at her eyelids. "Oh my fucking God," Blake groaned. "How did I ever wind up with feelings for you of all people? Take that off right now!"

    "I thought we just had a conversation about you no longer trying to get me naked!"

    "Take that off right now, boy!"

    "I'm not wearing anything underneath it!"

    With a scoff, Blake gestured towards the shower. "Oh, please. It's not like you've got anything I haven't seen already. You're half naked most of the time. And there was that one time you drunkenly passed out naked in the shower and we had to drag you out."

    "So that's when you got pregnant! I was wondering about that day; I felt violated for reasons I couldn't articulate."

    Blake snorted. And then just broke out laughing. "Didn't we just talk about boundaries like this?"

    "This is me in self-defense mode. Just like how I'm going to self-defense mode back out into the party. And you're coming because it's your birthday. And once the music gets going, I'm going to show you how to do the Argentine tango."

    "What, you can dance?"

    He shrugged affably. "I only know the Argentine tango and Orange Justice, only one of which I'm shameless enough to do in public. You coming?"

    "Not like part of me had hoped for originally, but I guess here I can."

    "You're like my new Ruby except I can't definitively say you're just fucking with me. I don't like that."

    Blake shrugged indifferently. "I'm still trying to work out an appropriate level for this new normal. Give me a couple of days to iron out the kinks before I'm sufficiently self-aware."

    Jaune grabbed the door and threw it open. Immediately, a crowd of people who were just standing outside of it scrambled away like roaches. Blake saw at least Nora, Ruby, and Weiss. She felt lucky that she had already put on her bow before he opened the door

    "Wait, what the fuck?" Jaune asked.

    Blake poked her head out the door, and saw Shamrock just standing there and sipping from a juice box.

    "What?" Shamrock asked. "I live here too." She sipped obnoxiously. "I was waiting for my turn to go in so I could use the bathroom. It's my favorite one."

    Weiss ran back to drag Shamrock away.

    "No, my juice box! My precious cran-lemonade!" Shamrock cried out.

    Blake and Jaune just stood there, side by side, watching everyone else at the party quickly try to pretend like they totally hadn't been trying to listen in through the door. Everyone except for Cardin, who was continuing to stay in his lane and eat string cheese.

    She looked at Jaune, who looked back. Wordlessly, they both communicated on a somehow telepathic level about whether or not they should be offended or upset or anything. Given that both of them were kind of retarded, it got lost in translation, and they both broke out in disbelieving laughter that slowly turned into a raucous but genuine uproar.

    After managing to get a hold of himself, Jaune said, "Hey, Blake, partner, awkward girl, other half of my stupid—want to listen to bad salsa and learn the tango?"

    "No," she said simply, with just a hint of melancholy. "But when has what I wanted ever factored into what you do?"

    He smiled and took her hand. "Perfect. We're gonna need some practice if we want to show off how badass and elegant our team is at the upcoming school dance, huh?"

    As it would turn out, dancing was not her proudest, most elegant move. Doubly embarrassing because she was the centerpiece of her own birthday party. And she absolutely knew she was going to make a complete ass of herself at next month's student dance, which she had apparently just accidentally consented to going to, and at this point she was in too deep to find an excuse not to go.

    But she knew that then, like now, it wouldn't be so bad. After all, she would still be with the people she loved. Her dumb little circle of friends that almost felt like a family.

    a/n: Well, that wraps up posting for the year. See you 2022 after Holiday Block Leave. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Volume 7, Chapter 7
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 7: These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends
    "This wasn't about failure or success. It was always going to be horror. I shouldn't have suggested it, and you shouldn't have listened to it."

    — 14 —​

    Ozpin's secretary had activated the alarm.

    It wasn't a call. Ms. Smiles at the CCTS front desk had pressed the button for the silent alarm straight to his office. It had been a long week between trying to reestablish communications with his otherwise silent allies in Damecrown and interviewing the members of Team BASS save Jaune over what they saw and did out on their mission. He had no need to debrief Jaune, the center of his little investigation, who had probably coached his team on what and what not to say. Ozpin thus had been staying late, parsing through the interviews to figure out what they were lying about, correlating the disparities in an otherwise unified front in order to find the real truth. They were all universally talking around something, and he knew it.

    When the silent alarm went off, he switched his computer monitor over to the front lobby cameras, and saw them. Seven men in the uniforms of the Royal Army entering with a gust of late night snow from the outside. All armed, through none with weapons in hand. They fell in line behind a slight man wearing the wide-brimmed frontier hat iconic to the Valean First Cavalry. When he turned his head to spit out a cigarette onto the floor and stamp it out, Ozpin saw the lieutenant rank bars on either side of his lapel; the name slanted on one side of his uniform read Sousan.

    In a single motion, he tipped his hat to Ms. Smiles and removed it, but otherwise didn't seem to acknowledge her. When she tried to stand up and ask what they were here for, they went for the elevator, with one of them telling Smiles politely yet firmly to mind her own business. There was only one student in the lobby, who gave the soldiers a wide berth as they passed. Ozpin switched cameras to see them take the elevator. And when he checked which floor they were going to, he swore under his breath.

    They were headed to the CCTS comms center, where members of both Vale and Atlas worked. They shouldn't have been able to select the floor without proper access. But someone must have allowed them in. At this late hour, it had to have been Lsgt Ozrick, the very man Ozpin suspected had intercepted Velvet's video of Salem and forwarded it to Kornilov, and thus to Vale's current Prime Minister. Only last week, LaChance had authorized the Army to violate the Pomœrium, marching uniformed soldiers into Vale for the first time in nearly a century in order to throw General Ironwood out of Vale. The Atlas nationals still in the CCTS tower were scrambling to evacuate after their general.

    Which meant some of them might still be there.

    And the Royal Army was coming to finish the job.

    Ozpin grabbed his cane and went for his personal lift. He did not need another goddamn disaster on his hands. It had been one after another after another since he allowed Team CFVY to bring BASS along with them on their mission. If his hair wasn't already white, it'd've lost all color by now.

    The ride down to the comm center was short. Alone with his thoughts and worst case scenarios, it felt like a lifetime.

    Long enough for him to steady his nerves. To calm his breathing. To meditate away the heat beneath the flesh of his chest. Half of his power and influence was merely in his ability to look like he was in control. Reality had a funny way of bending over to accommodate false perception.

    It helped greatly when he walked into an armed standoff in the middle of some of the most expensive IT infrastructure on the entire planet.

    "It would be in the interest of your health to put those back, Hans," Lieutenant Sousan was saying, his voice tinged with a faint Eranstani accent. While his tone was kind, the fact that he was using the slur Hans didn't do any favors.

    On one side of the room stood various members of the Atlas armed forces. It looked to be about everyone who worked in the tower from that country, both day and night shifts together. Only three of them had weapons, their body armor looking haphazardly strapped on in a rush. They had coalesced around Technical Sergeant Eschweiler, one arm cradling a handful of small objects.

    Sousan stood there, most of his men arrayed around him with weapons drawn. The exception was that pudgy bastard, Ozrick, unarmed and standing by his desk. His eyes looked frantic, hands raised.

    "With all due respect, sir," Eschweiler said, a faint quiver in his voice as he stared down the rifle barrels, "these keys are the property of Atlas. We can't let you have them."

    "Hans, you're being relieved of duty," Sousan said, holding his hat to his chest. "This tower belongs to Vale and we're asserting eminent domain. Your services are no longer desired. Play this cool and I'm authorized to evacuate you on our bullhead to your general. Put the guns down and come along. I don't want this to get ugly anymore than you do."

    "Not without these keys!"

    The lieutenant rolled his eyes. "So make copies real quick. I'm willing to accommodate so this doesn't turn into a shootout."

    "That's not how these work!"

    Sousan glanced at Ozrick. With a slight stutter before starting, the sergeant said, "They're symmetrical cryptographic keys, sir. Atlas uses them to encrypt communications to airships in the region. The symmetry means they all operate on the same wavelength, you know? If we got our hands on just one, we'd have keys to the kingdom, their entire cryptographic network. At least on the relevant hardware. They're not like brass keys; you can't just make a copy at your local hardware store."

    "Ozrick!" Eschweiler snapped. He almost sounded betrayed.

    All the Valean did was avert his eyes. The man's posture slumped slightly.

    Sousan blinked. "You let Atlas run secret communications in our tower?"

    "It was like that before I got stationed here, sir! The tower is technically international. Or, I guess, at least it was? We've got our own cryptographic infrastructure running out of this place too. There's stuff only they can touch, and stuff only we can touch."

    The lieutenant thought it over for a moment. His expression darkened. "Hans, our two nations are not allies. I don't think you had the right to do that. The way I see it, you've been running illegal networks from within our tower. Those keys belong to machines on Valean soil. If you take those with you, it will be espionage."

    Eschweiler scoffed, and the armed men around him tightened their grips on their weapons. "Beowolfshit!"

    "I'm just here to make sure you get the message and have an easy way out of the country," Sousan said, tilting his head. "It's a courtesy after your general ran away with his tail between his legs. If my perfectly reasonable interpretation is wrong, I'm sure proper diplomatic channels will have them returned to you. Until then, they stay in their machine, and everything keeps running as normal. Do I make myself understood?"

    "And give you dogs gods know how long to freely prod our cyphers?" He gave an unhinged laugh. The sweat was soaking through his uniform. "As if!"

    One of the royal riflemen gave Sousan a questioning glance. Ozrick was shivering.

    Ozpin banged his cane on the ground as he stepped into view. Three rifles instantly pointed his way, and he stared them all down. "There are three things even the wisest of men fear," he said softly, letting the acoustics of the room carry his voice. He walked almost casually forward, unconcerned with crossfire. "A storm at sea, the moon made whole, and the anger of a calm man. It's a very old saying, but one I have found true time and time again. There's a certain wisdom in old things that refuse to die, wouldn't you say, lieutenant?"

    He stopped before Sousan, who was nearly a full head shorter. With a slight smile, he simply stood there. This close, he could easily read the 1st Cavalry unit patch on the lieutenant's arm. On the other arm, beneath the twin axes of Vale, was a deployment patch showing the Simurgh, the many-winged bird woman of Eranstani mythology. Jaune Arc, for whatever reason, had a stylized version of her as a tattoo. It meant that this officer had been deployed before and seen combat. To say nothing of the unit's involvement with Montluçon.

    Ozpin could tell a killer by his eyes. He would know. After all, he looked at one every morning in the mirror.

    Sousan took a step back, sizing the headmaster up. No one seemed to know what to do. Until the lieutenant cleared his throat and said, "Headmaster Ozpin, apologies for not coming to you first, but this is an issue of national security. I have the paperwork with me."

    "Do you now?" he asked evenly.

    The man didn't budge. "My orders come from as high as they get. Stand down, headmaster. This shouldn't concern you until we're done here. I cannot guarantee your safety unless you stand down and step aside this instant."

    Ozpin focused on his breathing, letting Aura flow through his every vein and capillary. In a sudden motion, he grabbed Sousan by the collar with one hand and picked him up.

    "Shoot me if you will, but command me nothing," he hissed, bits of spittle flying out. The officer gasped, his men aiming at Ozpin. "This is a neutral place. You will not start a shooting war in my academy. What you will do is turn around, pick up the cigarette you left in my lobby, and then politely arrive in my office to discuss your orders like civilized men do."

    He released his hand and dropped the officer. To Eschweiler, he said, "Neither shall you leave. This place was built by Atlas for all free peoples. It belongs to all and none. While you are here in my service, you are under my protection. Until such time as I can guarantee your safe passage away, you will continue to maintain our systems. Do I make myself clear to all of you?"

    Sousan had dropped his hand, and was now rubbing his throat. "You have no authority in this matter," he coughed out. "Either stand down, or we'll be forced to make you!"

    Ozpin stared for a very long moment. Until his façade cracked, and all he could do was roll his eyes. "Oh, please," he said tiredly. He couldn't even bother to pretend like the threat had any weight.

    The lieutenant reached for his sidearm. "I'm not repeating myself—"

    With a motion faster than most eyes could even perceive it, Ozpin grabbed Sousan's hand. Ozpin leveled the officer's pistol at his own forehead. The movement made Sousan fire.

    The single shot echoed throughout the entire room. Everyone froze. At first, nothing happened. No one could even properly process what had just happened. Until the sound of the broken, flattened bullet fell away from Ozpin's Aura and bounced on the metal grates of the floor.

    "First come smiles," Ozpin said carefully. "Then the lies. Last is gunfire. And thus we've concluded the three stages of every negotiation. Throw that damn cigarette in the trash already. Unless you'd care to learn how many bullets it takes to get through the Aura of a Huntsman."

    — 15 —​

    Ozpin saw no reason to stand from his desk as Sousan came up the lift, flanked on either side by a disarmed soldier. He gave Ozpin a hostile look before wiping it off for a kind of diplomatic blank. Ozpin enjoyed watching him cross the gap, walking across the wide floor while he just sat there and watched in silence.

    Leaning forwards, Ozpin asked, "Didn't think it was worth it to come alone, lieutenant?"

    Sousan stopped across from the desk, holding his wide-brimmed hat in his left hand. "Never speak to anyone in a position of authority alone, professor."

    Ozpin made a show of looking to his left and right, and shrugged. "Then I'm glad my lonesome self isn't speaking to anyone like that."

    The officer clicked his tongue. "Staff Sergeant Pétion?"

    One of the men with Sousan, a large black man whose scales implied dragon somewhere in his lineage, stepped forwards. He handed his officer a manilla folder. Sousan opened it up briefly, pretended to read it, and then slid it across Ozpin's desk.

    "What is this?" Ozpin asked.

    "Read it," Sousan said simply.

    Ozpin made no motion for it. "I didn't ask for instructions. I asked what it was."

    The lieutenant compressed a noise in his throat, saying nothing.

    Folding his hands on the desk, Ozpin said, "Sousan, you're Eranstani, right? I see the Simurgh on your arm. You've obviously been on the frontier for some time. Is this your first time back in civilization since you joined? Through the pomœrium, at least."

    "I didn't 'join,' professor," Sousan said tersely.

    Slowly, Ozpin nodded. And then, switching to the Eranstani he had learned lifetimes ago, he said, "A conscript yourself, then. How ironic that the men to whom we entrust the defense of our freedom are so often those denied the chance to enjoy it."

    Sousan's eyes widened fractionally. The men around Sousan gave him a questioning look. He looked like he was trying to process what he'd heard before he replied in Eranstani himself.

    "You speak like you're reading from holy texts; no one talks like that anymore," Sousan said in a dialect that somehow sounded slurred to Ozpin's ear.

    "You'll have to forgive me; I'm out of practice," Ozpin said with a simple shrug. "There was a time when Eranstani was the lingua franca for Vacuo and much of middle Sanus. Before Vale and its language subsumed it and your entire people. Much like the last Tsarina of Graad, the great king of kings was made to bend the knee to his betters. The great Simurgh of Eranstan betrayed her people, selling her sons like you to those who held her chains for the privilege to simply exist."

    Sousan scowled. "What are you getting at, old man?"

    Ozpin spread his hands. "That you of all people, lieutenant Sousan, should know when to roll over for your betters. We are civilized men here in Vale. And we Huntsmen are its most barbarous watchmen. So when I tell you to explain what's in your paperwork, you do not get to make demands back of me; you simply obey."

    The man tensed, lowering his head to protect his neck. As if he actually thought he had a chance if he tried to fight. Although his men clearly didn't understand what was being said, they instinctively knew something dangerous was afoot.

    "You—"

    A quick motion of Ozpin's hand. Sousan flinched, taking a step back. Ozpin simply smiled as he reached for his late night cup of coffee and enjoyed a long pull.

    "I'm glad you understand the situation, lieutenant. Now tell me what it's in this paperwork and why I should care even the slightest for what it contains."

    Sousan slowly rallied himself, settling his nerves. Eventually, his posture returned to a sort of military professionalism. But his eyes betrayed an inner fire that was painfully enjoyable to witness. "We've abrogated le loi du Pomœrium in the interests of national security. While Beacon is not technically within it, we've been authorized to strengthen our garrison here to take over for the Atlesians no longer welcome within our borders. These orders come from the Prime Minister, who is your technical employer as well. I'm to oversee the foreigners' removal and the transition team. You are to assist us."

    "We'll be severely handicapped by the loss of the Atlesians," Ozpin said. "I doubt they'd care to train hostile replacements to ensure a smooth transition."

    "I understand it's already been going slowly," Sousan said, turning his head slightly. "Lance Sergeant Ozrick claims a student who helped operations has been absent on mission and has since been relieved of duty."

    Ozpin felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. "Yes, Mr. Arc. He was serving there as a punishment since served. It's why he was not invited to assist tonight. His services were no longer needed."

    Sousan looked meaningfully at the paperwork and any orders doubtlessly within. "Ozrick disagrees, and I'm inclined to trust my men's judgement. Have him assist our transition team. We don't care if you offer to hire him or trump up another charge to punish him back into our services. Doesn't matter. It'll ensure CCTS operations continue with minimal hiccups."

    Tapping fingers on the desk, Ozpin said, "Need I remind you whose students these are, whose academy this is?"

    The lieutenant stared at the fingers, as if wary they'd suddenly stretch our several feet to pluck his eyes out. "If you'd rather an inexperienced team accidently down the entire kingdom's communications, I'm sure the public would be perfectly understanding."

    "For a man who claims to trust his men so much, you have comically little faith in them." He almost wished he was speaking plainly, so the soldiers beside Sousan could understand the slight.

    "I trust, but verify," Sousan said smoothly. "But this is too important a matter to risk an inability to verify."

    "Yes, imagine what would happen in distant Eranstan if Damecrown could no longer rattle their chains."

    The look behind Sousan's eyes sharpened. "All Sanus would go dark. Terror, fear, and panic would spread like pestilence. The railroads can only go so fast. The riled demons at the fringes would swarm in to plug the gaps. And is not your job as a Huntsman, the reason we built Beacon around the tower, to ensure the protection of civilization from the monsters? Or are you so stubborn you'd shirk your duty just to project strength to me?"

    Ozpin put his hands together, leaning forwards fractionally. He stared Sousan down, weighing his thoughts and options. Until all he had left was the taste of blood in his mouth. And his shoulders felt twenty pounds heavier. "I have sway over the Atlesians here. I'll ensure the transition goes smoothly until they are properly relieved."

    "And the helpful student?"

    Ozpin resisted the urge to purse his lips. "I'll handle it as I see fit, lieutenant. There will be no trouble; I'll see to that personally. If you intend to stay on campus, my secretary can assign you rooms in the dorms we have set aside for any garrison. You are dismissed."

    Sousan didn't move.

    Switching back to a language everyone understood, he said, "You are dismissed, lieutenant Sousan."

    He waited for the men to turn and leave. He watched them disappear into the elevator. And only after he saw them speaking to Ms. Smiles at the front desk did Ozpin allow himself a breath to relax. He put his face in his hands and just sat there in long silence. The surplus of caffeine today was giving him vague frissons of heart palpitations. He wished Glynda hadn't already gone home for the day just so he'd have someone to talk to.

    Ozpin wasn't sure how long he was like that. But at some point his hands grew numb. He opened the folder on his desk, and then took out the automatically made transcripts of his post-mission interviews with Team BASS. Even when Ozpin was trying to subtly push Jaune out and to the side to deal with him at a more opportune time, the bastard somehow managed to become front and center to Ozpin's current problems.

    Jaune had that feather with the magical aura. He had been front and center with some unknown blonde girl when he used it to summon Salem's apparition. It wasn't particularly hard to figure out; he had just activated an old device of a type he himself had once used in a previous life to speak to the woman he was then married with across continents. She had probably been expecting Ozpin. But one way or another, Jaune had caused the Grimm attack that had rattled the kingdom to its core, collapsed an entire government, and had led to this current geopolitical abomination.

    His teammates had covered for him. Either that, or they didn't know. Ozpin wasn't sure what was scarier. Even Team CFVY seemed unsure. They only knew that they had seen something, and it troubled Fox especially. Digging into it just made them clam up. For both teams. To the point that he actually felt worried for their mental health enough to back off.

    BASS wasn't even supposed to be there. Ozpin had his eye on Coco Adel as someone important. But he never would have dreamed of even hinting at the truth to her if she hadn't seen something she wasn't supposed to. She could easily be the kind of student who might one day replace him as headmaster. She was an asset in her own way, the same as Ruby Rose and her silver eyes. And yet, almost completely on their own, they had wound up close friends with Jaune. As if the boy knew exactly who Ozpin's most important investments were, and sought them out. What was supposed to be a useful lesson for Ruby had instead gone to Jaune, who had done all of this for reasons Ozpin couldn't fathom. It would almost be easier to imagine Jaune was somehow bumbling into these events, and that this pattern was completely random.

    And now, Coco and Ruby seemed to be on his side. The Schnee heiress was his friend. The daughter of the former leader of the White Fang was too. Even Qrow seemed amicable to him, judging from something Ruby mentioned when he interviewed her after her mission.

    To say nothing of Ruby's text. Ozpin could read everything a student sent on a Beacon-issued scroll; students consented to it there on page seven of the end-license agreement they all agreed to have read. He still couldn't wrap his mind around just how horrifying it was to read Ruby and Jaune flirt about apparently sleeping together.

    Jaune Arc: Fuck you​
    ​
    Ruby Rose:;) okay when?​
    ​
    Jaune Arc: use the leftover money to buy condoms​
    ​
    Ruby Rose: I'm getting strawberry flavored ones​

    Because really, how else was he supposed to interpret a text between a descendant of one of his past lives and one of the last Silver-Eyed Warriors left in the world that read like that? It would be less raunchy if they were sending each other nude photographs. Which Ozpin would also be forced to look at as he continued to monitor Ruby and Jaune.

    Ozpin felt the world around him shrinking. The noose tightening. To the point where, for just a moment, he contemplated killing himself. Seriously thought it over. In the hopes that when he emerged behind a new pair of eyes, the playing field would have leveled itself out back to something he could manage.

    But the thought vanished quickly, leaving him with a hot sense of shame.

    It was all just… so much.

    He couldn't account for this. Couldn't make sense of the way the world was going around him. When assassins had struck at Amber, his previously chosen Fall Maiden, there was almost something comforting about it. He had fretted and feared, but it was proof that business was as usual. Salem's newest agents were acting like they always did, time and time again. The faces changed much like his own, but the goals never did. Seek the Maidens, acquire the Relics, and use them for reasons he had almost stopped caring about since the first time she murdered him.

    There was comfort in the routine. In the knowing. A certain ça ira to working towards and against the only thing he had known since the Number on his arm read 2.

    Salem was almost predictable. He touched the tattoo under his arm. She and him had been like two celestial objects, drawn into each other's gravitational well until they would inevitably collide once and for all in a blaze of destruction; that had been the case for seventy-three faces.

    But Jaune?

    Even if Salem kept her emotions guarded, he knew her well enough to recognize it in her eyes from the video. She had been just as surprised to see him as he wasn't. The boy was just as unexpected to her as he was to Ozpin.

    He stood and went to a radio. It was almost an antique. But the old things were familiar, comforting. And he felt an urge to tune into the classics.

    Ozpin was halfway towards reaching into a cabinet for an old glass of bourbon, before remembering he'd traded it to Croaker in exchange for allowing Coco to leave the hospital early. It was better for her mental health that way; he knew how she operated, and how poorly she would handle being caged up. He allowed himself a small laugh and went for something on the bottom shelf.

    Until the next song came on the radio.

    And he heard that fucking song. As if, wherever she was, the woman he once loved was mocking him. Finding yet another way to play a new version of an ancient song on a station Ozpin enjoyed. To torment him with memories he could never fully forget. The language changed, the instruments changed, the genres changed, but over the millennia the tune and meaning remained the same.

    Ozpin remembered those words in a language that no longer existed, a soft hum choked out between quiet sobs. Her voice, as she stroked his hair, feeling the sweat soaking through his clothes as he laid his head on her lap. Once upon a time, she hadn't known what music was. Didn't know what dancing was. Didn't know the first thing about being a human being.

    That fucking song had been something he learned from his mother, a woman so long dead he couldn't even remember her face. He'd played the song for Salem on a lute, and realized he might truly love this girl when he saw how wide her gorgeous blue eyes were, how awestruck her smile grew, and how enraptured she was by an instrument months out of tune as he played with it by the campfire the night he'd rescued her from her lonesome tower.

    Ozpin remembered Salem trying to sing it. She'd never been any good at it. She'd been adorably bad at so many things, but it never stopped her from trying and enjoying the learning, and it was why he had loved her. She'd been so earnest in her naïveté. And when the deathly fever shuffled him off this mortal coil for the first time, it had been all she knew how to do.

    Stroking his hair, her tears falling onto him as he rested his head in her lap. As she sang the song softly, and he died in her arms.

    He didn't realize he was channeling his Aura until his grip shattered the bottle of alcohol. It's splashed all across his jacket and pants. Ozpin stepped back in surprise, nearly slipping on broken glass. He bumped the table and the radio fell over. The old thing hit the puddle of alcohol hard. It let out a ferocious squawk as the liquid got inside, the volume going high enough to nearly blow the speakers.

    Ozpin lunged to pick the antique up and cut his finger on broken glass. He hissed, trying to stop the sound. All it did was scream in fried electronics as he tried to lower the volume. Nothing worked. He punched it. And then hit it again, and harder, before just smashing it against the ground. It broke apart in a frenzy of old wood, copper, and whatever was left of the broken bottle of bourbon.

    He stared at the mess for a very long moment. Alone in the silence, his pants stained with golden brown liquid, his shoes sticky, and his favorite antique radio destroyed.

    It hit him all at once. "GOD DAMNIT!" he screamed, kicking at the broken pile of junk. Stomping at it until the glass was powder and shoes ruined.

    Ozpin stumbled back to his desk and collapsed.

    He couldn't deal with his students. He couldn't deal with the military or Ironwood. Couldn't do anything about a geopolitical crisis he had allowed to happen. And now he couldn't even enjoy a fucking song. He was losing control over everything, and he didn't know how to stop it, and nothing had ever been like this before, and he just didn't know what to do. It was just all so many tears in the rain, everything he had worked for for so long.

    His hand shook as he reached for his cup of coffee. There wasn't much left, but maybe something could help. Of course, he found it cold and worthless. He put Aura into his hand and threw the cup as hard and far as he could in a random direction. It hit one of the walls, smashing into more debris he'd have to clean up, its black contents spewing across a wall-mounted calendar.

    As the coffee ran down the wall, he stared at the mess. His own actions stained a physical representation of his own future, right there on the calendar, from the scheduled school dance, to upcoming missions. All of it soaked through and black.

    Something dawned on him. He stood up and went to the soaked bit of paper and pulled the month away to February. That was the month between mission seasons. December was the semester break, January held the first batch of missions, then a month to recover and study, followed by intermittent missions again in March and April, until the year ended with the Vytal Festival.

    It was weeks away on a weekend, but there it was. The school dance, a rather vapid waste of time that he nevertheless maintained so as to never forget that his students were still children. They enjoyed this kind of thing. It was good for spirits and morale and it made them happy. And occasionally it helped separate the wheat from the chaff; there was usually at least one pregnancy resulting from this that removed someone from next year's starting semester.

    Ozpin stared at the calendar, and thought. Part of the reason he didn't know what to do with Jaune was because he couldn't figure a way to get rid of him discreetly. He had stayed out of administrative trouble and he couldn't remove him that way, to say nothing of how it would mean he would be free at the end of the day; merely sidelining him until he caused some future disaster outside of Ozpin's control would almost be a worst case scenario. Jaune hadn't died on a dangerous mission. And he was almost constantly surrounded by people like Ruby or Coco or the soldiers he worked with during his detention.

    Ozpin wondered. Ask Team CFVY and BASS to help organize that stupid dance. Get them involved and put them out there, all in one guaranteed place, and have a surprise problem go off in the CCTS tower requiring his help.

    The idea was stupid. Ridiculous. Almost cartoonish levels of silly. But with just the perfect amount of moving parts where he could almost feel like he was back in control of his academy.

    With just a careful mastering of events behind the scene, he could fulfill Sousan's desire for the IT team and orchestrate a moment where Jaune would be alone. He would be completely separated from his teammates, his friends, and his allies, in a place where no one would suspect Ozpin. Where he could finally confront the boy safely.

    Where, if he needed to kill Jaune once and for all, he could properly ensure no one could tie the sudden disappearance back to him.

    And if they did suspect him, Ozpin was sure that by then, no one would have any doubt that he had done the right thing.

    Ozpin would make sure of that.

    If all else was lost, it might not even matter. Because when all else failed, when he did everything he could, he could rest comfortable in the routine, the habit. For these violent delights always had violent ends.

    Ozpin could always put on a new face and make the Number on his arm read 74.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • CupswithsomeDude said:
    Man, if it's not one thing it's certainly another. This is a really human Ozpin.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Sort of my biggest goal. I like to imagine that despite it all, Ozma is still a very flawed human being at the center of it. He's the kind of person I could imagine myself becoming in his shoes. He's not evil nor a master manipulator or anything. He has his traits, he's not always a good person, but he's still acting with the knowledge of a human being in the now. And his human side is what leads to him making such gross errors.

    He's relatable, in a painful kind of way. And that's why I want to get across.
     
    Fuck, I'm really expecting for one of the chapters to end or start with Jauneric waking up in a strange place and running over to a mirror while ignoring everything around him and seeing a new face.
     
    Last edited:
    Volume 7, Chapter 8
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 8: Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights
    "The times, they went and changed when I looked away. It's like one second I was in my kitchen making hamburger helper, then I blink and five million people are dead.
    And that's not including the people I wished would die."

    — 16 —​

    "It's nothing that you need to have,
    "Cuz when I leave yo ass, boy,
    "I's gon' leave wit' half!"

    As was usual when Velvet's alarm went off, someone inevitably threw their pillow at her. It was the impetus to spring out of bed before they could hit her. This time, it was Fox, who was usually more accurate than that.

    She stuck her tongue out at him. During the barrage of groaning and upset noises of people waking up on a Saturday morning, Velvet found time for the bathroom.

    "Why this early?" Coco groaned.

    "Because it's a special day!" Velvet said.

    Coco propped herself up on one arm, the strap of her nightshirt falling down her shoulder. "Special days usually begin at least eight in the morning. It's still legally night."

    "Hardly. See?" Velvet pointed out the window.

    "No," Fox said telepathically, the only voice she heard that didn't sound groggy with sleep. She wondered if it was possible for a telepathy to sound groggy; it certainly conveyed tone and emotion right.

    Velvet tsked. "The school dance?"

    Coco blinked one eye and then the other, a typical covert Hunter sign for I am being held against my will please send rescue.

    "Just because you don't want to take it seriously doesn't mean I don't," Velvet said.

    Yatsuhashi let out a long groan. "Let me just get breakfast and I'll be right behind you."

    "No, it has to be now!" Velvet said, stomping a foot. "I want to get to the ballroom and start scoping it out and get planning. Lay down the law before the other team helping us does it first and refuses to play ball."

    "Breakfast," he said again unmovingly.

    Velvet rolled her eyes. "Alright, fine. Grab a to-go plate for me or something. I've got to stake our claim!"

    She quickly got dressed and left. No one but her seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. About a week ago, Professor Ozpin had put Teams CFVY and BASS in charge of the school dance. Apparently it had something to do with him being on a long recovery period after Montluçon, which gave them time. Velvet had already suspected her team would have been voluntold for the job, and had been counting Coco going out of her way to get the team assigned to a mission without asking anyone. Sure, she hoped Coco wouldn't, but Velvet knew better. But it turned out, getting injured in the line of duty really put a damper on Coco. She almost seemed reserved.

    But the point was, Velvet was actually getting the chance to run the school dance. She had done the same thing back at Pharos Academy before, which was incidentally where she first ran into Coco. Velvet had more or less gotten into a club that did logistics and planning while she tried to find her niche. It turned out dances were fun and making them work doubly so.

    So here she was. Or there she was going, at least. She suspected the 'gung ho, take no prisoners and ask no questions and just do whatever they wanted' attitudes of Team BASS meant one of them would probably have the same idea she did. She needed to get there first and establish seniority.

    It was really the only thing to do.

    Her fears were nearly confirmed when she ran into those assholes outside the dorm. With the sun still about an hour away and everything bathed in lamp light, she nearly broke out into a sprint to beat them.

    Until she saw Blake spreading her legs to the side and bending forwards. She had an uncomfortable expression.

    "Like this?" she asked, wearing what looked decidedly like winter running attire.

    "I am not doing that," Shamrock said, shaking her head. His head? No, Velvet distinctly remembered Shamrock was a girl. She just looked kind of androgynous.

    Jaune stood in front of them, arm stretched above his head. And then he repeated the gesture Blake was doing.

    "I think it's called the sumo stretch or something," he said. "But I like to think of it as the Jack-O. You really want to limber your legs up before going for a morning run. Stretch out your quads, hamstrings, and other muscles I don't know the name for but know how to stretch and exercise."

    Blake watched as he demonstrated how flexible he was. Jaune was limbering everything up, looking like something between a competitive fighter and someone about to demonstrate being able to break out of a pair of handcuffs. Blake was paying a little too much attention.

    "Can I just power walk?" Shamrock asked.

    Jaune leaned far enough forward so that his elbows were on the ground. "No. We're going to go at a baby pace. Nine minute mile for maybe just three miles. Once you three get used to it, we'll try to up the pace or the mileage."

    "It's not so bad, I think," Weiss said, her sports leggings the tightest of all. "I think I pulled something near my groin after being forced to run the ten miles last week."

    Their team leader smiled wide. "Yeah. And if prissy little Weiss can get into cardio with me, so can y'all. I'm fucking pumped. Y'all got no idea how long I've been waiting for running partners."

    Blake lost her balance and wound up using her face as a third leg. Probably because she was too busy ogling her partner and not focusing on keeping balance.

    "Gee, I wonder why, Jaune." Blake looked back through her legs and her eyes met Velvet's. A moment later she sort of rolled forwards and landed in a kind of tangled mess of limbs that could have been considered a crouch if Blake had any elegance at all.

    "Velvet?" Blake asked, instantly scowling. One of her teammates took up a flanking position next to her as if they were actually going to fight. "What are you doing up so early?"

    Just at the tone, Velvet felt herself heating up inside. It did wonders for the first week of February. "Taking my job seriously. Or did you forget what the professor asked us all to do?"

    "No need to be snotty about it," Blake said.

    Velvet ran one of her hands pointedly over her rabbit ears. "We don't have long to get this planned out. I'm sure there's some groundwork to do. I want to get started early and see the battlefield."

    "I mean," Jaune said, "hang some streamers, get a disco ball, have an open mic night. No need to make an MOS out of it." He seemed to realize he said something stupid. But when he corrected himself, it wasn't to suddenly take things seriously, it was to say, "I mean, no need to make a whole career outta hanging ribbons."

    Velvet compressed a sigh. "This is why I'm getting there early to make sure that your weird disco ball ideas don't ruin everything. We're in this together, so let's play ball."

    "But not disco ball?" Jaune asked innocently.

    "Yeah, uh—no," Velvet said, arms folded. "Just, I don't know, do your run and get breakfast or whatever, and then meet me in the ballroom. This is my team's show, and I'm calling the shots, so let's just make this work, okay?"

    "You don't have to be so rude about it," Blake said.

    "Your team isn't very good at following directions, and I'm worried," Velvet said. "There's already enough international uproar. We don't need to cause another one by making it a disaster for all these foreign exchange students."

    Weiss looked thoughtful for a moment. "Do you really think that would be a problem?"

    Velvet threw her hands up. "I don't know. All I know is the country's gone crazy, I can't call my dad to make sure he's okay, and there's more shaking sabers than a sausage party. Forgive me for being a little concerned about accidentally causing a war!"

    "You have a dad in Atlas?" Weiss asked, surprised.

    "The human one," Blake said, eyes narrowed.

    Velvet gave Blake a very tired look, gesturing a wrist at her very human partner. Blake scowled, but Jaune didn't seem to catch the implication. He wasn't very smart.

    "What does it matter if he's human?" Velvet asked. "We poked a thing in Montluçon, probably accidentally pissed off all those Grimm due to that scary white lady, and now my dad might die if it leads to war. Are we all on the same page here why I'm so determined that this event with all of these foreign students goes off without a hitch?"

    Shamrock leaned against the dorm building wall. "We did our best in Montluçon, all of us. You can hardly blame us for it turning into a shitshow."

    "I—" Velvet stopped and ran her head down her face. "Look, there's pretty much no way I can vent about what happened, and our role in it, that wouldn't just be me pointing fingers at you in silent condemnation. So let's not, please? Just do your whatever and show up to help me, okay? Good!"

    Velvet quickly just excused herself without bothering to keep talking to the freshmen. It was like everything they did was somehow calculated just to get on her nerves. As if they knew how to push her buttons and were doing it on purpose to see how far they could get with her. She almost would've preferred what Cardin used to do to her. At least it wasn't ambiguous and he quickly lost interest.

    She actually hadn't seen him in a while. She wondered if he'd forgotten how to breathe and just died when she wasn't watching.

    The long walk to the ballroom helped calm Velvet's nerves. It was a wing of the Susebron Student Center near the tower at the heart of the academy. The building was very big. Velvet remembered spending her first year sleeping inside the massive room nearly two years ago. It reminded her of somewhat happier days.

    She got in and found the light switch. She enjoyed the sound they made overhead flicking on one after another in a row. The room was as big as she remembered it, with the massive Valais windows, and stage, and the balconies overlooking the whole thing. She read somewhere that when the academy was new, it served as a kind of convention center to show off the wonders of the post-war world. It lasted only a couple years. Until the Catchfire Revolution brought an end to hope and optimism.

    Velvet spent the morning going over the room, making notes on her scroll. Everything from how many people could reasonably fit in, to how many decorations they would need and where they would look best, to the chairs and tables collecting dust on the second floor and how she could use them.

    She lost track of time.

    Until Coco and the rest of the team came in with breakfast. Velvet sat down at one of the tables and opened the styrofoam tray.

    "Saints, I needed this," Velvet said. "Thanks, guys. Coulda been a bit faster. I was getting hungry."

    Coco shrugged. "I needed to drain the giant coffee machine dry first."

    "Was it enough caffeine?"

    "No!" Coco said. She didn't offer to sit down with Velvet or anything. In fact, it was hard not to notice the way she seemed to be keeping her distance from the rest of Team CFVY.

    "I love what you've done with the place," Fox said, hand on his hips as he stared up at the ceiling. "I'm presuming you made changes. I can't see them, but I have faith in your ability to redecorate. Just so long as you didn't use the color gray."

    Velvet sipped at her somewhat lukewarm coffee. "You don't even know what gray looks like."

    Fox tilted his head. "I think I do. It's basically just the color blue, but more."

    "Why blue?" Yatsuhashi asked.

    Fox shrugged. "Depression is blue. And gray makes me feel empty. I saw it back in that fake world thing."

    Coco self-consciously pushed her shades up tighter. She didn't say anything.

    "Did you get much work done?" Yatsuhashi asked Velvet.

    Velvet tossed her scroll to him before going in for some toast. Applying red Forever Fall honey to the slice, she said, "I made notes. We'll need to set up the stage. And that's the list of the decorations I think'll work. We'll need to run it by Professor Goodwitch for budget reasons."

    She used her plastic knife to cut bits of banana onto her toast. They weren't fully ripe, with just a hint of blue remaining in the peel. "Shouldn't be too hard. We pull this off," she said around a mouthful of food, "and they'll be talking about this year's dance in every Huntsman academy for years to come."

    Yatsuhashi looked impressed. "There's a lot of notes here. You sure you even needed us?"

    "I'm used to doing the lion share for group work," Velvet said.

    Coco frowned. "That's not true. Don't say that. We came out here to help you, but seems you already did most things yourself."

    Velvet let out a breath. "Some of the logistics, yes. We still need to decide on appropriate music, a theme, and all that other stuff. Food, drinks. Do we get a band, ask around for student musicians, or play from a speaker? Oh gosh, what if what we like in Vale is bad taste in Mistral. Do kids from Atlas even know how to have fun? Do you think fun will piss them off?"

    "Easy, easy, Velvet," Coco said.

    "I'm sure even people from a glacial wasteland know what fun is," Yatsuhashi said, handing her scroll back. "You really shouldn't worry too hard."

    Running her hand over her ears, Velvet said, "Worry too hard? I can't worry enough. There's so many little pieces and moving parts and it all has to come together right. Especially when it comes to Atlas."

    "Why you bending over backwards for those guys?" Coco asked, adjusting her shades.

    "Because we're on the brink of war?" Velvet said dubiously.

    Everyone looked around. Except Fox, who was just kind of staring in no particular direction. He seemed to sense something was wrong, and proceeded to pretend to look really concerned about something.

    "I don't think it's that bad," Coco said. "I was hanging out with Weiss last Friday and she didn't seem like she was worried about the world ending. She seemed more concerned with making a cake. And if anyone would be screwed over by a war, it would be her."

    Velvet put her fingers in her mouth and pulled her lips to the side. "Stiff upper lip. I doubt she'd tell you if she was worried. Probably wouldn't even tell her team. If war happened, she'd be fine. She is a VIP. But me?" She threw her hands up. "I can't even talk to my dad anymore. That last package he sent me, do you know what it contained?"

    Yatsuhashi folded his arms. "It was a letter telling you he was proud of you and to be brave. And hard light Dust. Maybe it's the last you're ever going to get."

    She hissed inwardly. "Rhetorical question, Yatsuhashi."

    He looked away. "Sorry. I thought you were asking."

    Velvet cupped her hand over her mouth and breathed into them. "So I can't talk to my dad. I don't know if he's okay or not. He might be a prime target to kill in a war. And also, my weapon relies on hard light Dust, which I can't really afford on a student's non-existent salary, and I'm not going to get unless my dad can mail me it. So I'm on a timer that goes somewhere between becomes completely useless as a Huntress and maybe my dad dies. And so what I'd really like is that this party, which is going to involve students from all four kingdoms, doesn't piss off the kids from Atlas. It's a wonder they haven't been ordered back home. Maybe it's a ploy. They want something to go wrong so they can claim it's an issue."

    "Atlas or Vale?" Yatsuhashi asked.

    "Yes," Velvet said.

    Coco frowned thoughtfully. She shuffled back and forth where she stood. "Yeah, but it's just a dance. What could possibly turn into a diplomatic incident or whatever?"

    "What if someone from Atlas gets involved in a date rape?"

    Fox blinked. "Okay, first of all, whoa, that's a really dark place to go. Two, it's a really poor assumption of everyone's character here. And C, I don't think a bunch of students doing anything could possibly result in a war. I don't even think it's really going to happen. Back home, the tribes used to rattle their sabers all the time to get what they wanted, but no one actually wanted to go to war. It's about pretending like you really mean it this time, and that you will go to war, but neither side really wants to do it. They just want to look tough and save face and try to get their way."

    Velvet sighed. "I don't know. But I'm just really worried. There's so many things going wrong that I can't control; and the idea that maybe I can't have some control here; and if I don't keep things in line, things might go hardly wrong—that doesn't freak you guys out?"

    Yatsuhashi sat down beside Velvet. "It's dumb to panic over stuff you can't control. It's terribly unhealthy, too, to start seeing control over them where there is none. It leads to madness."

    She made herself smile. "Maybe. But what if? It's like the world's ending out there, and we're just here, planning a party? What if, guys?"

    "No," he said simply, like that was just the complete end of the conversation, that entire line of thought. "You can control setting up a party plan. But you can't control—"

    Something banged up above. Velvet nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up to see Professor Ozpin standing on the balcony above the ballroom, looking down at them all.

    "Professor!" Velvet said, springing to her feet. She hadn't heard him enter.

    Fox looked off in the wrong direction. "Hm. Was wondering when you were gonna reveal yourself."

    Professor Ozpin stared at Coco, and both adjusted their glasses in reflection of each other. "The end of the world is a curious little fear for a Huntress to have," he said calmly, looking each member of Team CFVY over. He was impossible to read. "For something so grave, people do enjoy throwing it out like seeds cast over a field. Yet every time, the field has proven barren. The grain never germinates, no matter how much we plough, no matter how much blood we use as fertilizer. It's always the same."

    He moved for the stairs and climbed down slowly. "We're Hunters. Two dark ages, a dozen End-Times, a Wild Hunt, the Paingod of Chollor, a Great War, and the Catchfire Revolution—we're still here. Remnant still stands. And Hunters still have monsters to hunt." He reached the bottom and ran his finger along the bannister. Examining the dust on his finger, he said, "This dance isn't a place for us to worry. It's an event for you students to forget for a night. To relax and be children for just a night in our brutal lives."

    Velvet found herself gritting her teeth. "So, what, I'm supposed to just not worry because war or not, there's still gonna be Grimm out there?"

    Professor Ozpin seemed genuinely surprised by her. When he walked up to her, she suddenly felt so very small. Even with her rabbit ears standing on edge, Beacon's headmaster towered over everyone but Yatsuhashi. But where Yatsuhashi seemed to try to make himself seem smaller and take up less space, Professor Ozpin almost relished his size, his presence.

    He leaned on his cane, looking down at her fractionally. "Do you suppose people would trust Huntsmen if all they knew was killing?"

    Velvet cocked one of her ears. "I'm not following."

    The man shook his head mildly. "No, I suppose you wouldn't. And that's exactly why we have to do this, these events like this silly little party, this social gathering, this normal night. There used to be a time when people didn't trust Hunters. They were freaks and outsiders on the fringes of society, killers of beast and Grimm for coin alone. You can still find people with that impression here and there in the high wilderness. Where instead of Hunters, they go by older names like slayer, witcher, ronin, hashashin, and a dozen other local varieties. But each of those is a name to be feared, not someone you ask for help."

    He walked towards Fox, regarding the boy idly. "Presume you didn't become a Huntsman for good reason. Presume you did it just for coin. For power itself. An outsider at the fringes of society, someone with inhuman abilities, poorly understood by those who need your help. Could you trust that man?"

    Fox actually looked back at him dead on. "No. That's just a mercenary. I've known the type."

    "And that is why this little dance is so important. For all the horrors and pain our kind endures, we must never lose sight of why we fight. Sometimes money is a factor. Sometimes vanity. But most importantly of all, you should be fighting for the person to your left and right. You should be fighting for those little moments where you aren't a killing machine, you're just a person. It's a dangerous business in this world, leaving your front door. People need to know that the ones who make it safe for them are people just like them. Not transient monster killers, but people, with emotions, and beliefs, and convictions, and friends."

    "And this dance is to remind us that we're people?" Coco said.

    Ozpin smiled at her. "Exactly, Coco."

    Coco tightened her lips.

    "Hunters, at the end of the day, must never lose sight that they're still people," Ozpin said. "The four kingdoms have put great effort into rehabilitating our kind from killers on the fringes, to people like us. This dance is a night for every one of us, all the guests from the corner jungles of Vacuo to the polar caps of Atlas, to come together and forget our grim duty. To remind us that we're people. And that sometimes the greatest things worth fighting for, are the simple joys of knowing friends, of being a person.

    "That is why I entrusted this dance to you. Oh sure, the school faculty could have handled it all, but that makes it impersonal. This is an event for Hunters by Hunters. Everyone will be there, everyone has to be there, or else the object lesson doesn't hit home."

    "Being a bit on the nose there, huh?" Fox said.

    The headmaster spread his hands. "After what you saw, I think it bears repeating. Your team gazed into the maw of oblivion, and came out swinging. I can see the way you are all still tense in your own ways."

    Coco in particular tightened her lips.

    Even the professor seemed to notice it, although he tactfully didn't comment directly. "So I need all of you to relax. I need you to create an environment where every student here can relax. Where we are all safe, we're all happy, and most importantly, we can all be stupid together for a night. To remind us of the real reason why we keep fighting, why we risk it all. If I have to be a little blunt with my hammer to get the point across, so be it. It is worth saying again and again. I trust you all to do this. Everyone here on campus will be there, mark my words. And I think it'll be fun!"

    The members of Team CFVY exchange glances. Except for Fox, as usual. He seemed to somehow know exactly when someone was looking at him, purposely so he could look at a completely random direction. His little smile gave it away. But Velvet knew he understood.

    Velvet took a long breath. "I understand, professor. We won't let you down. Thank you for choosing us for this."

    Her response seemed to surprise him. "Oh, me? No. My old system was to just draw names from a hat. I thought it was funnier that way. But it turns out assigning random people to an important duty and hoping for the best tended to lead to disaster. Hilarious disaster, yes, but it rather undermines the point of the entire event. Professor Goodwitch is the one who actually recommended you specifically, and I'm not nearly suicidal enough to go against her better judgment."

    Velvet made a face. "She recommended all of us?"

    He raised his eyebrows, nodding. "Yes."

    "Even the members of Team—"

    Jaune Arc kicked open the door to the ballroom. "Kick the tires and light the fires! How exactly can we pretend to be helpful today? Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."

    Instantly, the friendly, vaguely absent-minded expression on the professor's face darkened to something unreadable.

    Velvet jumped to her feet. "You!"

    Weiss poked her head into the room, examining the door. "Unnecessarily dramatic. If you break the door, you're paying for it."

    "Mr Arc," the professor said, voice intoned. "I would rather prefer you not cause damage to my school."

    "Oh, it's gucci, mane. The trick is to turn the doorknob before you kick it down. No damage at all!" Jaune said simply, his team funneling in behind him. For the first time in Velvet's life, she saw Jaune actually wearing appropriate winter attire, instead of just trying to look like the next best thing away from naked. The only thing that ruined it was that he didn't zip his jacket up, leaving it entirely open face.

    Coco stood a little more rigidly, staring at Ozpin. When her attention fell on the leader of Team BASS, she almost looked apologetic. She just kept adjusting her sunglasses, her smile looking fake.

    "Hey, Coco," he said with a wave.

    Coco took a step in his direction, away from the rest of her team. Although not before glancing and everyone else first, especially the professor. "Hey yourself, kid. Finally decided to show up."

    Weiss rolled her eyes. "We would have been here sooner, but someone kept hogging the bathroom."

    Blake scowled. "I had to put on makeup."

    "It's a dance planning session, not a hot Saturday night date, Blake," Weiss said. "Some of us actually needed to shower too."

    "You spent like half an hour in there after me," Blake said.

    "I had to use skincare products. Why do you think I chose to go last? Because I knew I would take a lot of time and didn't want to inconvenience anybody else."

    Jaune fistbumped Coco. "I'm slowly learning why my team doesn't go out running together. I'm not used to long lines for the bathroom."

    Coco cocked a brow. "Get a pair of ovaries. You'll get used to it."

    "In my next life, remember?" he asked, snapping his fingers at her.

    Ozpin snapped his head towards Jaune, obsessively pushing up his glasses as if he was Coco. He gave everyone the side eyes, as if seeing if they were sensing anything weird or something. Velvet met his eyes and frowned in confusion.

    "Man, I'm feeling left out," Fox said. "Why isn't anyone greeting me? You would think I would be the center of attention, just hanging over here by the side, in silence, brooding and stuff. But no!"

    The girl who looked kind of like a garish circus ringmaster put a hand on her hip and sighed. She looked like she was trying too hard to advertise that she liked alternative rock or something. Girl was probably covered in tattoos under that get-up.

    "Welcome to the club, Fox. We've got jackets," she said.

    Fox frowned at Shamrock. "Every friend group really does have one of us, doesn't it?"

    Shamrock made a strange gesture with her left hand. "I prefer to just watch the fireworks and eventually be there when someone has a mental breakdown and comes crying to me and my incredibly mentally stable shoulder."

    He snapped his fingers. "Damn, I wish I was mentally stable."

    "I offer coaching lessons starting at fifty lennies an hour," she said simply, tucking her hair behind her ear.

    "Do I get a discount for being handsome?"

    She scowled. "You are blind. How would you know if you're handsome or not?"

    Fox grimaced, sucking in air through his teeth. "Everyone knows the most attractive thing a guy can be is completely unaware of how attractive he is, and I have no idea. It's the perfect crime."

    Velvet picked at the last bits of her breakfast, trying not to stare at Blake, who was staring at her. Or at least, Blake was pretending not to look at Velvet, in the same way Velvet was pretending to look at her. When Blake wasn't watching her partner bullshitting with Coco, at least.

    Yatsuhashi elbowed her. As strong as he was, it was more or less just vaguely brushing up against Velvet.

    "Hmm?" she said, chewing the now cold food.

    "You're tense," he said.

    "They're very loud all of a sudden and I have great hearing," she said.

    He very obviously wasn't buying the lie. "Let it go, V."

    Velvet scowled. "Since when have I had the nickname V?"

    Yatsuhashi awkwardly sucked on his lips. "I mean, it sounded a lot better in my head. This felt like the kind of time for a comfy friend nickname."

    "I want a cooler nickname," she said with a wink.

    "Don't put me on the spot like this; I'm not good under pressure!" he said, holding up his hands and grimacing, but it was too goofy an expression to take seriously. They both laughed.

    Ozpin cleared his throat. He was already standing several paces away from anybody else, as if he had been slowly backing away when no one was watching. "Well, with everybody here, I scarcely think I'm needed any more. Just remember why we're doing this. Everybody will be there at this dance, without exception. Make it count."

    In the least enthusiastic voice that Velvet had ever heard, Jaune just up and said, "No, don't leave, you're so sexy, ahaha."

    Everyone just kind of stopped what they were doing and stared at him. The range of emotions ran the gamut. Most of his own teammates were just rubbing their eyes, as if they completely expected this behavior from him, and didn't know why they thought he would behave any better.

    Professor Ozpin coughed. "I'm going to file that away in my repressed memories drawer, Mr Arc. Thank you for your concern."

    "Oh, I'm not concerned. I don't think of you. I tend to forget you exist half of the time," Jaune said with a shrug.

    The professor stared for another long minute. And then he just kind of turned around and walked away. Really fast. But the direction he turned was the long way to the next door. So everyone just kind of watched him leave, power walking an awkward distance away in silence.

    "What?" Jaune asked.

    Weiss took a very long, very pained breath through her nose. "Okay! Moving on from that!"

    Jaune waved a hand. "No, no, go back, I think I was the center of attention and didn't realize it."

    "Moving on!" Weiss said sharply.

    "Like to party stuff," Blake said, gesturing at the empty ballroom.

    Yatsuhashi nudged Velvet. Holding her scroll up, Velvet said, "Yeah, I've got the basics for that."

    "Theme, music, number of guests?" Jaune asked.

    Velvet tried not to scowl as he interrupted her. "I was hoping we could figure that out. We can look up student rosters to see who'll be there."

    "What about tickets? Not everyone's gon' buy."

    "No tickets," Velvet said. "Everyone on campus is invited. We're all supposed to at least show up, you know?"

    "Okay, I got the theme," Jaune said, cracking his knuckles. "Estoy en mi salsa. Let's wow 'em wit' an Ybor City, lil Habana tropical island vibe. Frilly dresses, suits, salsa music. Make it classy. Just like back home."

    "We didn't agree to that," Velvet said, tapping her foot. "We all need to figure out food, drinks, logistics, theming, music, the whole wazoo."

    "C'mon, who'd say no to turning a stale ball into Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, Velvet?"

    "For one, me," she said, staring him down. "I don't know what that means, and some weird niche theme would probably suck."

    "I don't know, an island theme sounds fun," Blake said.

    "Wishing for a homey mood, are we?" Velvet asked, and she saw the barest twitch from Blake's hairbow. Jaune was giving them both a weird look.

    "We're thinking about this wrong," Fox said, holding up his hand. "Velvet, what do you have so far?"

    Velvet took a breath, looking at her scroll. "Mostly figures for chairs, some food, setting up the stage, a timeline. Broad strokes stuff. We have a month to get this going, and that's really not a lot of time, logistically speaking."

    "We should break up into groups and focus on certain aspects," Coco said.

    Weiss nodded. "I like the sound of that. I'm good with logistics, I think. It'll be good practice for my future plans. If you get me the number of students, I can maybe figure out how much food and drink to order."

    "That sounds kind of fun, too," Yatsuhashi said, awkwardly shifting in place.

    "Yeah, yeah, divide and conquer," Jaune said, pounding a fist into a palm. "I'm dead set on a really out-there theme. Coco, you have an eye for style and are scary enough to reel me in if I go too far. You wanna work on that conmigo?"

    Coco adjusted her shades, looking thoughtful. "Sure. Sounds fun. Maybe we can even do some field research to see what works best out in the real world."

    "Alright, me and Coco on the theme. Weiss and Yatsuhashi on the things that go in peoples' mouths. Shamrock, Fox, you two are standing in awkwardly close proximity; what y'all thinking about?"

    "Music?" Fox said with a shrug.

    Shamrock shrugged. "Sure. I got a good ear. You wanna, Fox?"

    He nodded. "Yeah. But in exchange, I want those mental stability pointers for free."

    She tsked. "Damn. Well, I guess I have no choice. It's a deal."

    Velvet's spine went rigid. As she and Blake met each other's eyes, "But that leaves Blake and I. And I already thought we'd do this democratically as a pair of teams!"

    "Yeah," Blake said, in the same tone as Velvet, which only made Velvet want to grind her teeth. "Besides, what else is there to do? Theme, music, and food are already covered."

    "Venue supplies," Yatsuhashi said. "Chairs, tables, plates, the stage. That sort of stuff."

    Velvet shot her partner a glare, and he shrugged apologetically.

    Coco adjusted her beret. "Alright, you two can work on that. Seems like Velvet already has most of that done in her time this. Should be easier."

    Blake bit her inner lip, arms folded. "I mean, I guess?"

    Velvet let out a long sigh. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Just follow my lead and we can make this easy."

    "Team effort," Blake said.

    Waving her scroll, Velvet said, "But I already got this mostly covered. We just need a student headcount and funds requisition."

    "Sounds like it's settled," Shamrock said. "Jaune and Coco, me and Fox, Blake and Velvet, Weiss and Yatsuhashi."

    "Yeah," Coco said. "Meet back up in a week and see what we've got. Play it by ear. This'll be fun."

    "Bet," Jaune said.

    "Mm," Velvet hummed, lips pursed to the side.

    And there were muffled agreements from the rest of the people.

    But Velvet knew better.

    This was going to be a disaster. And everyone was going to blame her in the end when that happened.
    a/n Update schedule might change due to work scheduling and my escapades with women in the irl. Stay tuned, dear reader!
     
  • Threadmarks
    • I can just imagine D'jaune and Ozpin to be mid "incredibly tense and manly jojo standoff" in the server room just in time for cinder to come walking in to plant the virus.
     
    Volume 7, Chapter 9
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 9: She is Young, She is Beautiful, She is Next
    "Why did she ask him to do something he barely understood when she could have done it herself? Women."

    — 17 —​

    Uncle Qrow once told Ruby the only reason to sneak out of your room past midnight was a late night booty call or the bathroom. In either case, the purpose was to make use of that thing between your legs.

    Ruby didn't especially think that was true. Mostly because in this particular case, she was sneaking out to steal the last bits of Blake's birthday cake from the fridge. She intended to use her mouth for that. Although in a roundabout way, it would wind up being used for the bathroom, so maybe her uncle had a point. Unlike Pyrrha, who did not have a point. Even though Blake had plenty of birthday cake and other snacks left over, and for the past week it seemed like nobody had been going into the fridge and taking them out, Pyrrha had very firmly told Ruby it would be rude to eat the cake anyways.

    But that was dumb. Sure, Weiss' cooking could best be described as "edible in prison," but prison had a way of lowering everyone's standards and making you desperate. Her Dad once went to prison. That was where he got his tattoo from, which he told her a strapping young lad in Vacuo had the other matching half of. Now, mind you, he had gone to prison in a foreign country as part of a mission, but who was she to judge?

    Just like how nobody should judge Ruby for going out to try to snag a bit of that really awful cookies-and-cream cheesecake.

    Two slices, really. It was the middle of the night and she was hungry. And she didn't get a chance to have dinner. Ruby and Nora had been tinkering with their weapons in the workshop all night.

    She had just plated them up when she noticed the light from the common room. Usually, the lights in the dorm stayed off at night, which Ruby thought made opposite sense. You would think the lights would be on at night, when people needed them, but no. Aside from the little light beneath the microwave, people left things dark at night.

    Ruby poked her head into the common room and found Jaune hunkered down in front of her console, poking at it and a controller. The boy had this way of looking like a misfit toy when he was all alone. As if he didn't belong anyway, and he was subconsciously unable to shake the knowledge. It was in the way he spoke with this bizarre accent Ruby had never heard before. The curious sleeve tattoos he had running up his left arm, with symbols and poetry known only to him next to scars and more recent burns. And most of all, the dumb little faces he made to himself when no one was watching.

    Jaune only seemed at home when he was with other people. It was the only time he belonged. And it wasn't because he suddenly became normal. It was more that he managed to drag everyone down to his stupid level. That's why everyone said Team BASS was hostile and cliquish. As someone who knew Jaune and liked to hang out with him, Ruby could see how easy it was to go down to his level and just lose yourself in the stupidity.

    He held the controller upside down, shaking it as if to bring it to life. When that didn't work, he jerked his head to the ceiling and made a compressed grunt, like someone trying to scream in frustration without waking up someone mere feet away from them.

    If it were anybody but Jaune, Ruby might have continued to stand there. She probably would have agonized over whether or not she should interrupt him, if she wanted him to know she was there, or what he would think if he found her slinking around at night stealing cheesecake.

    But this was Jaune. His opinion of her almost didn't matter, in a way which really mattered. She felt like she could do anything, and he would just roll with it.

    Plus, Jaune was still wearing her cross necklace as if it had religious significance to him.

    "You really don't know how to play video games, do you?" Ruby asked, sitting down on the couch to eat. "Also, my console. You do not have my permission to have fun."

    Jaune didn't seem startled, which she had been hoping for. All he really did was squeeze the controller a little harder, which she saw mostly in the tensing of the veins running up and down his arms. "What are you, my mom?"

    "Wife," she said, fork in mouth. "And unless you're suffering from some severe psychological issues, I wouldn't recommend confusing the two."

    "So, you're saying if I developed some kind of mental illness, you'd be my mom?"

    Ruby poked at the cookie crust of the cheesecake. "Oh, no. I'm a busy girl with an important life to live. If you get a mental illness or like cancer or PTSD, I'm divorcing you and moving on to a younger model."

    "I feel so loved."

    She shrugged helplessly. "My entire frame of maternal reference is dying or running away. Really, I'm just a product of my environment."

    He managed to turn the TV on and then sat down on the couch, opposite her. He hesitated before saying, "You're surprisingly cool with that."

    "Hmm?" she asked, fork in mouth.

    He made a gesture, leaning forwards slightly. "Mom stuff, I mean." He paused, fidgeting with the controller in his hands in a way that, for some reason, gave Ruby sinewy strands of anxiety for him. "I keep thinking it's the kind of thing you never talk about, or never even think about, but then here you are, making a joke about it. I almost think it's morbid."

    Ruby licked the bits of cheesecake off her fork, giving her time to think. "It's… I mean, yeah. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it just feels like the funniest thing I can say. I didn't know my mom very long, but I knew her enough to know that if the only thing thinking of her ever did was make me sad, then she would feel awful. I kind of think wherever she is, she's a lot happier knowing that I can make jokes about it. Kinda make sure that her memory makes me smile instead of making me want to cry anymore."

    "Mm," he grunted, looking out towards the window. Although he turned his head from her, she could sense the distant look in his eyes. Lost in some memory she didn't want to pry into.

    Ruby let out a breath. "Okay. Momentary bit of post midnight heavy self-reflection over. The heck are you still doing awake?"

    "I was working in the tower. I don't get called every weekend evening anymore. But the soldiers there wanted some help with some network stuff. The guys made me some coffee early into the shift and it still hasn't worn off. So I'm awake and just trying to kill that until I can fall asleep."

    "The big communication tower has soldiers in it?"

    Jaune shrugged. "I guess. It's kind of a messy thing. Used to be this international partnership. Now it's just Vale. There's some worry I might need to get asked to help during the night of the dance because they predict something going on there. It's a little vague."

    "Well, that just means I need to get on my dance with you before you get called away."

    He looked towards the window. "No offense, but I was planning on using that little time with Blake."

    "And what better way to establish my dominance than stealing you from your partner?" she asked with a wink.

    He looked at her from across the couch, expression a bit more serious and thoughtful than she was used to. Ruby thought that maybe joking about messing with his partner had somehow crossed a line. Those two did seem pretty close. And she knew from eavesdropping on their super personal conversation together, apparently in some kind of confusing emotional mess.

    Instead, his expression slowly shifted to something more discerning. She almost felt he was drinking her in with his eyes and didn't like the taste. If anything, it was because Ruby was made with all natural sugar instead of the artificial sweeteners he preferred.

    "Ruby, why aren't you wearing any pants?"

    She looked down at herself, then scowled. "What, so you can go around half naked with your tiddy out, and I'm not allowed to sneak out of my room in the middle of the night with a t-shirt and underwear? Do you think girls sleep wrapped in clothing and fully dressed?"

    "My team is coed," he said mildly. "I'd sleep naked if I dormed alone."

    Ruby finished her cheesecake and set the plate aside. "Send pics."

    He cocked an eyebrow. "For pleasure or profit?"

    She fluttered her lashes, putting a hand to her chest. "Jaune, you are my boywife. I own your reproductive rights. Now send nudes. I'll keep one copy, and sell the others. We'll split the profits towards a new console."

    "See, that's the difference between us: I have something people want to see," he said, turning his nose up fractionally. "If you got it, you can flaunt it."

    "I'm plenty cute! Crack an egg on me and it'll sizzle!"

    Jaune frowned. "You're the kind of girl your boyfriend would have to awkwardly explain to his friends 'I mean, she's got a really great personality' before he introduces you to them."

    "Got a lot of experience handling your boyfriend, I take it?"

    "Ask your father," he said.

    Ruby rolled her eyes. "Just hand me the other controller already. While this is still a conversation and not a hostage negotiation."

    He handed one to her, upside down and backwards. She gave him a stupefied look before using it to turn the console on and setting herself up as player one when the game loaded in.

    "How did you do that?" he asked, still holding the controller wrong.

    "I pressed this button. Turns itself on and loads me in. Wireless controllers. Have you really never played one of these things?"

    He shifted the controller, and was now holding it sideways. "No? Video games is boring. I was hoping to play them in order to bore myself to sleep. Reckoned it might could be faster than waiting for the caffeine to withdraw."

    "You're boring."

    "Says the girl with the red hair who only wears red." He gestured at her with the hand holding the controller. "Because, ring ring, Weiss' sense of fashion called. She wants her creative bankruptcy back!"

    Ruby snorted. "I mean, getting rid of that prissy haircut was creative. What do you got against your teammate?"

    "Nothing. Love her to death," he said so completely matter of factly that it was almost startling. Like with his partner, it was like he would close ranks and defend his teammates regardless of the context. "It's just, her name means white, and all she wears is white. That would be like me accidentally pissing in my boxers and going 'Yes, I am sticking with my color naming theme.'"

    "What color does your name mean?"

    "Yellow, I think. It's Valais. My sword also means Yellow Death, which I think is more than a mite bit weird. I don't really think of yellow as being a deathly color. White and maybe black, perhaps. But Yellow Death sounds like a terrible hair metal band."

    Ruby put her finger in her mouth just to make a popping noise with her cheek. "If it's a bright yellow when you pee in your undies, that means you need to drink more water."

    He looked at her dubiously as she scrolled through the menus of her game. "Who am I to question the underwear judgment of the girl without pants?"

    Ruby scooted towards him. "Oh, please. Like you're one to talk. You are literally one chill breeze away from being a walnut. Your sweatpants could not be any tighter. I honestly think you would look more modest if you were naked."

    "Your vile harlotry shall not persuade me to disrobe."

    "Already mostly naked."

    "You or me?"

    Ruby rolled her eyes. "I think between the both of us, we have exactly half a wardrobe." She nudged him with her elbow. "Also, stop just sitting there and sign in as player two already. One v. one me. I already have my character picked out."

    Jaune shifted his position on the side of the couch, looking at his controller. "Okay, so real talk, I ain't playing witcha—how?"

    She sighed heavily. Leaning over his body, she collected the controller from his hands, set it the right way up, and turned it on.

    "Personal space, personal space!" he whined.

    Ruby continued leaning against him, staring him down. Establishing dominance.

    He pushed her away. "Back, you. You are literally just begging for someone to walk in and have a comically unfunny misunderstanding of the situation."

    "Nya!" she grunted. Ruby aggressively poked at his arms, getting around his defenses, proving that he was helpless before her onslaught. She went for those veins that kept sticking out, as if she could poke them back into his skin so they stopped aggressively existing at her.

    "No, not my innocent biceps!" he cried out. "You're going to pop my arm nipples. How, then, will I feed my young?"

    Ruby snatched the controller away from him, still way up in his personal space. "But for real, you're holding that thing so wrong it's actually embarrassing. Here, I can teach ya."

    "But will you have to charge?"

    She made a face. "Iunno. The free market of goods and ideas presupposes that you have something I want." She gestured with the controller. "You got nothin'. All I need is a worthy opponent."

    He frowned almost comically, shoulders slumping. "The best I can do is button mashing and screaming like a little girl."

    Ruby shrugged shoulder. "I shall groom you into the perfect gamer, like a racehorse."

    "I think it's a bad omen to mention gamer and race in the same sentence. Grooming too, while we're at it. That entire sentence was just ew."

    She sighed, rolling her eyes. Leaning over him, she took his hands and put them on the controller. As she explained the basics of how to actually hold the thing, showing off buttons, telling a little stories of combos, and giving him the rundown on how to actually be a normal human being with normal hobbies, Jaune seemed to get the hang of it. When it was done, he was still holding the controller like his hands were numb, but good enough.

    "You really don't have any respect for personal space, do you?" he asked mildly, leaning over to grab something off the floor beside the couch.

    Ruby blew air through her lips. "I wrote my name on you like a drunk uncle on white snow. So of course I don't, not with you!" She winked.

    But she nearly jumped in surprise when he swung a blanket around and covered them both.

    "Here," he said, maneuvering himself so that the blanket wrapped around his chest and kept his arms free. "Stay warm. Stay woke."

    She gave him a skeptical look for a long moment, and then just settled in beside him on the couch. She didn't need to stare at her hands to know how to operate the controller. "You know, it's weird. One moment it's like you don't want me to violate your personal space like I'm a frat boy and you're a drunk college girl, and the next you throw a blanket around us."

    He navigated through the character selection screen. "The female body is sinful. If I keep you covered under the blanket, I can pretend like you have a penis, and therefore it ain't gay for you to touch me."

    Ruby snorted, choosing her character. And then selected the random stage option before Jaune had a chance to figure out what was going on. "Oh, please. You're, like, the gayest guy I know."

    "I'm so straight I turn women gay with my sheer heterosexual energy."

    She pretended to lower a pair of sunglasses at him, like Coco would do. "Give me a single shred of evidence you're not gay."

    He puffed out his lips, hands on hips. "Well, you got me there, Ruby!"

    She laughed as the level began. And instantly, she was air juggling his character. Absolutely mopping the floor with him and this fighting game. Jaune just kept smashing the kick button and it didn't really work. Ruby used her character's Semblance and scythe to avoid getting melee damage and repeatedly stabbed him from behind.

    "Oh, you would pick the scythe character," he said with a pout.

    Ruby tried not to look too smug when she smiled up at him. "She's my favorite character, actually. In my opinion, when you play her in story mode, she has the best dialogue and the coolest arc. She's actually based on a copyright free interpretation of my uncle."

    Jaune's character kept jumping in the air and kicking, and missing. It looked like he was having a stroke. He grabbed a healing item from a random drop and it was about the only thing keeping him in the fight.

    "Your uncle is in a video game?" he asked.

    Ruby adjusted herself and the blanket, mostly so that she could easily elbow Jaune and keep him on his toes. "Sorta. It's Soul Hunter. Sometimes really important and famous Hunters can get their likenesses on merchandise."

    "I'd buy the officially licensed Qrow life-sized blow-up sex doll," he said. "With detachable penis and kung-fu grip!"

    Perfect time to elbow him! "No, dummy. I mean, like in video games or comics. There's this cheesy Vytal Festival game that they make every year as a kind of commercial tie-in. The best students of the year who compete actually show up in the video game, if they license your likeness. You give them a little bio, some information on your moves. But they're never accurate, I find. Most Huntsmen don't really wanna give away their Semblance details. And most of the time, the kids in the game are trying to make themselves look a lot cooler than they are."

    Ruby tucked a bit of loose hair behind her ear, and then continued to kick the boy's butt. "I've always wanted to be in a video game. Thought it would be cool to have my own merchandise. Last year, Team CFVY actually got into the game, and I actually liked playing Velvet. She jumped around and was super flexible."

    "Why don't we play that game?" he asked. "I would be down for anything that let me take out my annoyance with Velvet by giving her the old Watership Down."

    "It's a yearly release; it's not as good as Soul Hunter, which has an actual development cycle." She frowned. "Also, what do you have against Velvet? I thought you and her team fought side by side all throughout that city."

    He held up his controller at her. "You're turning me back into a gamer. Racism is the logical next step."

    Ruby scowled, elbowing him again. "That's not funny, Jaune. Velvet's nice. And whenever I ask her, she always has solid music recommendations."

    Jaune died in-game. He compressed a sigh, looking out the window. When Ruby poked him, he kind of just fell backwards, head lolling over the couch. His eyes seemed to glaze over as he looked up towards one of the air vents.

    She could see the way he didn't really want to respond to that. From the way the muscles around his face twitched, he was clearly trying to think up a way to justify himself. A way to actually make sense of his own opinions. Ruby didn't interrupt him, waiting for him to reach his own conclusions.

    "It's complicated, Ruby. Coco? Yeah, I can fuck with that. Can't fuck me none with the rest of her team. There's no vibe." He sat forwards as the next level loaded in. "I actually have nothing against faunus."

    "Your only problem is with women, right?"

    He snapped his fingers happily. "Bet. I don't hate Velvet because she isn't human. I hate her because she is a woman."

    With her hands occupied, Ruby did the next best thing. She leaned over and bit him on the shoulder.

    "Ow, Ruby!"

    She blew raspberries at him. "I'm a woman too!"

    "How about I bite you too?"

    She hissed like a cat, arching her fingers into claws. "If you bite me, I will reach out and pop your nipples like zits!"

    He assumed a defensive posture, which was kind of awkward when they were both side to side under a blanket. "I will individually boil your kneecaps!"

    She jumped up, standing there on the couch. "I will frame you for my murder, when in reality I will disappear to begin my new life as a tulip in Menagerie!"

    Jaune grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. She ended up falling all over him in a tangled mess of limbs. "I will make you pay taxes," Jaune threatened, every syllable dripping venom and pure malice.

    Ruby gasped, disappearing into a storm of rose petals only to reappear wrapped up tight in the blanket. "You wouldn't!"

    He snatched the blanket back from her so he could drape it over himself. "Legally speaking, if you die, whoever inherits your stuff has to pay an inheritance tax, I'm pretty sure. Naturally, I'm forwarding the bill to a tulip in Menagerie."

    She rubbed her chin. "Do I even legally own property? I don't really have a house or a motor carriage or any stock assets."

    He poked her. "I'm pretty sure your scythe counts as property. If you die, I'm going to inherit it as your lawful husband, and then use Crescent Rose as actual farm equipment."

    Ruby slapped her chest, gasping again in horror. In fact, she didn't gasp enough. She held up her finger to pause for time, allowing her to inhale and exhale enough for at least two more dramatic gasps. "Pwease, siw," she said in some kind of weird baby voice. "Don't do that to Cwescent Wose. Pwease. I'll do anything, mistah!"

    Jaune inched his head back fractionally, giving her one hell of a look of horror. "Never take that tone of voice with me ever again and I will consider us equal."

    She snapped a pair of finger guns in his direction. "Yo, it's a dealio, cat." She looked over at the TV and made sure her character pushed his off a ledge and killed him.

    "Ruby!" he snapped. "I was going to win that battle."

    Ruby sneered, laughing at the soft fragility of virtual human life. "Jaune, you suck at the art of the deal. I was at least expecting, I don't know—something funny in return. You gave up at the first offer. You never do that. You're supposed to double down and see what you can get out of it."

    He leaned back into the couch, giving her the side eye. "I recall a certain little precious minx telling me that I had nothing to offer her, and she has nothing to offer me, thus."

    Ruby suppressed a scoff. "Who the heck says thus anymore?" She shook her head. "Actually, nevermind. I was trying to make a joke. I forget where I was going with it. Jerk!" She bumped her shoulder into his, but he was frustratingly very solid.

    "She forgor," he said.

    She narrowed her eyes and repeated in a slightly more throaty voice, "Forgor."

    A third person made a noise from the doorway. Coco of all people was standing there. Jaune might look like a misfit toy when it was all alone, but Coco looked like her own skin was something she didn't want. She had been walking with a slight slumped posture ever since getting back from Montluçon. The bags under her eyes made her look perpetually exhausted, the kind of tiredness you could fall into where sleep became impossible as a result. The look didn't suit Coco.

    She looked over the room, the expression behind her eyes almost like there was a momentary lag between her brain and what she was seeing. Or that maybe she needed to manually digest everything she saw before conscious thought clicked in and she understood. Not that she was really following along what she was seeing.

    If anything, Coco looked like she really needed a hug. Anything to make her smile and stand up straight again. As it was, it looked like the only person who was hugging her was herself, and it wasn't nearly enough to give her the confidence to merely exist in her own skin.

    "Am I interrupting something?" Coco asked with the scratchiness of someone who had just woken up.

    Jaune scowled. "Oh, great. Another half naked girl showing up in the middle of the night when I'm trying to have alone time."

    Still hugging herself to stay warm, Coco made a face. "I'm wearing a nightshirt. And a hat. You're legally still fully dressed when you're wearing a hat. But for real, what are you two doing?"

    Ruby tightened the blanket she was wearing. "What are you doing? This isn't even your floor."

    Coco shrugged, walking into the room. She moved with the careful kind of coordination of someone under the influence trying to feign sobriety. Or maybe someone for whom walking was painful. "Honestly, I couldn't sleep. I was hoping to steal your console and see where the night took me. Didn't expect to see you two."

    "Do you know how to play Soul Hunter?" Jaune asked.

    "A little."

    As soon as she was in range, Jaune grabbed Coco's hand and pulled her down onto the couch. She landed between and somewhat on top of both him and Ruby with an, "Oof!" It looked like the way she bent had hurt her back more than she was letting on, but she grit her teeth and tried to play it off like she hadn't just been hurt. Ruby felt a pang of worry.

    "Ruby," Jaune said, projecting his voice like some kind of announcer. "This is my son and surrogate, Coco. She might also technically be my adopted sibling; our relationship is weird and mildly incestuous. She will be playing the role of Jaune kicking your ass in tonight's episode."

    Coco looked like she wanted to adjust her sunglasses, but wasn't wearing them at this hour. It almost seemed to throw her off. She tried to settle in, and Ruby threw the blanket over her so all three of them were in a tight little blanket bundle. And to give Coco the kind of warmth where she wouldn't need to hug herself.

    "But I'm a girl, not your son?" Coco said.

    Jaune didn't look convinced. "Impossible. I actually like you, and it's impossible for me to like a girl. Therefore the only conclusion is that you have an honorary penis."

    "Ooh!" Ruby said, clapping her hands together. "How do I get one of those?"

    Coco looked down at the controller Jaune had thrust into her hands. "I don't know. I guess either go to a sex shop, or wiggle your butt on some boy's lap while secretly carrying a pair of scissors."

    Ruby examined her hand, making little scissor motions with the fingers. With an impish gleam, she smiled at Jaune. Before ducking under the blanket to crawl over Coco, she said, "Jaune, hold still. There's not enough room on this couch for three of us. I'm borrowing your lap!"

    The boy grabbed one of the pillows off the couch and threw it right into Ruby's face. "No horni!" he said.

    It didn't help at the moment she stepped on Coco, the girl flinched, kneeing her in the chest.

    "Ow, watch the boob!" Ruby hissed, sitting back and rubbing her injury.

    "Sorry," Coco said quickly.

    Jaune glared self-protectively. "Don't apologize to her, Coco. You can't injure that which she does not have. That would be like saying you hurt my feelings. Impossible!"

    Ruby bared her teeth like a monkey about to strike. "How dare you besmirch my tactical tiddy! My easily snuggled honkers! My, uh, perfectly proportioned cat's meows! These super duper palm-fitting—"

    Jaune threw the other couch pillow at her. "Why does everything with you have to get weirdly sexual? Yang's right."

    Ruby frowned as hard as she could.

    Coco just looked to the left, and then the right, between the both of them. "What the… is this the kind of shit you get up to when I leave you two alone?"

    "We don't typically let her out in public for a reason," Jaune said.

    "I'm not being weird!" Ruby huffed. "At least I'm wearing a shirt. You're just naked. If I was being weird, I would be like, uh…" She snapped her fingers at Coco. "Dang, girl, I see why they call you Coco! With that pair, you've always got milk for your coffee!"

    Coco stared for a long moment, before awkwardly laughing out a, "Okay, what the fuck?"

    Despite her tone, it was good to see Coco smiling. Almost like she was gaining a sliver of humanity again.

    Ruby sucked in on her lips, trying to frown. It resulted in a weird twisting of her mouth. Her cheeks felt hot and flush, a sensation running down her chest and almost to her stomach.

    "See what I mean?" he asked.

    "I'm perfectly normal!" Ruby said, throwing her hands up. She was almost breathing heavy.

    In a matter of fact tone, Jaune, "Ruby, I no longer feel comfortable in your presence."

    She scowled. "That's because I'm twice the man as you and at least three times the lady."

    Jaune did some finger math. "Hm. The numbers check out!"

    Coco, continuing to look completely lost and mildly afraid, said, "Wait, so where does that put me on the mathematical lady scale?"

    "We already established that you are a boy," Ruby said, puffing up one of her cheeks.

    "Coco is exactly one times the man," Jaune said. "As an honorary boy, this is the highest rank she can achieve. Perfectly average."

    Coco folded her arms. But despite what the gesture might apply, she looked like she was relaxing, becoming more and more at ease as the bullshit and stupidity mounted. "I feel like this scale is rigged. I'm not about to get involved in something I can't win."

    Ruby realized Coco already had a character selected. She quickly chose her own character and set up a stage. As the two of them started fighting with their characters, Ruby said, "Actually, good point. Is it even possible to win as a boy?"

    Jaune shifted beneath the blanket they were all under. "Bet. I have won. You will find no higher ranked boy than myself. My mere presence turns women gay because they realize they will never have a chance with such a real man."

    Coco was actually giving Ruby a run for her money in the game. "But didn't you agree to come back as a girl next time, Jaune?"

    It was a subtle thing, but Jaune looked uncommonly confused for a moment. In a way which Ruby thought was peculiar. He almost looked like he had said something he never should have, maybe during a drunken blackout. It was in the way his mouth hung open slightly, his eyes went distant. Then his neck twitched fractionally, and he seemed to remember something. The look of mild worry faded.

    Ruby had to wonder what that was about. Why he almost seemed to panic at a reincarnation joke. It was a pretty common religious belief out in Mistral.

    "I only said that to give you hope that there is a universe out there where you have a shot with me," Jaune said.

    Ruby hissed as her character died. "No! How dare you defeat me!"

    Coco laughed at Ruby, which only made her sulk. To Jaune she said, "And let me guess, in a world in which you have tits, you'd still 'choose' to be straight, right?"

    Jaune snorted. "Ew, no."

    "Aw, so you do like me," Coco cooed, mockingly trying to pinch his cheek. It was such a friendly and physical gesture that, for a moment, Ruby wondered if Coco was snapping out of the funk she had been in since returning from the mission.

    A vague part of Ruby felt jealous Jaune was somehow the one dragging Coco out of the pits instead of her. But a bigger part of her was just happy to see Coco acting almost like her normal old self.

    He brushed her off. "No. See, if I am a girl who is straight, then that means I like dick, which is gay. But being a lesbian is just another word for gay. There is literally no reality in which I'm a bitch and not gay. Miss me with that gay shit."

    "You really like asserting you're straight, huh?" Coco asked.

    Ruby glanced at the two. "It's, like, his one joke. Someone probably laughed at it once and he's never been able to replicate that high."

    "Hey!" Jaune whined, scrunching his shoulders and frowning.

    "Also," Ruby said, getting a Final Ultimate Combo and killing Coco's fighter, "he hates all women, so he'd probably kill himself if he was a girl."

    "I don't hate all women," Jaune said, putting a hand to his chest as if offended. "The good ones get to become honorary boys, like Coco, Blake, or Cardin."

    Coco leaned back, giving the boy a skeptical look. "Cardin? What, was that douchebag born a girl or something?"

    Jaune shook his head. "Nah, my bro was just born a massive fucking pussy. I've had to slowly inculcate him with the ways of men. Such as no longer being a bitch who bullies Velvet. He is on the cusp of finally earning his man card. I shall be the one to lead him to that promised land of testosterone, where the forests are made of gym equipment, and everyone's blood type is protein shake."

    "I thought you didn't like Velvet," Ruby said.

    Coco self-consciously adjusted her beret. She cleared her throat and continued in vain trying not to lose the fight against Ruby. The girl was closing up again, and it made Ruby swallow.

    "I said I hated her not because she was of a different race, but because she was a woman. Very important difference, Ruby."

    After she let out a long breath, Coco said, "Look, Jaune, I get how you don't like Velvet because she and your partner don't get along, but she's really not a bad person. And it's, I don't know, kind of a dick move to talk bad about her like that."

    He ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I—I know. But it's still really annoying. I get how we probably should work past it, but I don't really understand what will make us all click together. You and I vibe really well."

    "Mm, because I adopted you without your consent," Coco said. "You're basically my protégé; how you do out there reflects back on me. Also, you're stupid in an endearing, mentally handicapped puppy kind of way."

    "My spirit animal is some kind of dog."

    "I believe it." She sniffed and rubbed her nose on her forearm.

    He shook his head. "But what I'm getting at is, I don't really have anything in particular against your team. I just don't like it when they're mean to my partner. So I figured, why not, smash them together and hopefully something will work. Why do you think I paired her off with Velvet when we were trying to figure out who should be planning what part of the dance? Velvet and Blake, Shamrock and Fox, Weiss and that giant boy with the inexplicable feminist agenda, and you conmigo."

    "Yeah, was wondering about that," Coco said. Then, grimacing: "I was going along with it, but it seemed like you were enjoying how much Velvet and Blake didn't want to work together."

    Jaune sighed. "It's complicated. Our teams don't get along, so pairing off one from each seemed like the smart romcom-type solution to our problem. I mean, not for you and me. I think you're cool as heck. Appreciate our time together, girl." He elbowed Coco playfully.

    "Thanks," she said uncomfortably, shoulders unsteady.

    He winked, giving a thumbs-up.

    Coco swore as Ruby defeated her. She handed her controller to Jaune, who picked a random character and was battling Ruby within moments.

    "Man, I keep winning, and I'm not getting nothin' for my trouble," Ruby whined.

    "I have nothing to give but my freedom," Jaune said, giving a truly pathetic but spirited attempt to beat her this round.

    "So, what, it is going to be some kind of slave for a day shenanigan?" Coco asked, scratching her head under her beret. She grimaced mildly.

    Ruby choked. "Uh, ew. First of all, we've all read fanfiction. So no. Secondly, I don't personally believe you can own another human being, and I'm not about to violate my moral integrity just to flex on Jaune. Very tempting, but no."

    Jaune shot her a skeptical look. "I like how you can unironically say 'first of all' when it's clear you haven't even had a single sentient thought in the first place."

    "Being self-aware is overrated," Ruby said. "You of all people can appreciate that."

    "I have reached Heaven through violence, and thus I am perfect and am in no more need of character development."

    Ruby stuck her tongue out. "Yeah, well, you can develop by losing to me!"

    "I've never lost anything," he said dangerously, leaning forward to focus on the game.

    "That explains how you kept your virginity!"

    "It takes one to know one," he said. "But I don't know you at all!"

    Ruby tilted her head in confusion. "Are you implying I sleep around or that you've known the touch of a woman? I'm having trouble believing either."

    "I make room between myself and any woman for my Lord and Savior."

    "You're touching Coco. All of our legs are touching. There's literally no room between us."

    "Honorary boy, remember? My God be gucci with that. It ain't gay to touch your vaginabled bros."

    "Never known the touch of a woman, got it!" Ruby said with a wink, and proceeded to wallop his character in the game.

    Coco rubbed her eyes. They looked tired, with mild bags beneath them. Every time Ruby looked at them, they somehow looked worse, deeper. "I like how you can be really mean to each other but it's clear you don't hate each other. It makes me feel somewhat less awkward to be weirdly jammed in the middle of you two."

    Ruby bumped Coco's leg with her own. "You should hang with us more often. We've got remarkably less sexual tension than your traditional group of coeds. We'd have fun together!"

    "Less, but not none?" Coco asked with a little laugh. "Because I think Jaune's got a point that anything involving girls is gay."

    "Hollaback!" Jaune said, pumping his fist.

    With a roll of the eyes, Ruby said, "Stop being difficult. I know it's stupid, but it's fun. You don't hang out very much these days anymore. You've been kind of distant lately since you got back from your mission. I swear I've only seen you the one time at the party. Plus, it's kind of funny just how confused and worried you are just hearing us talk."

    Coco's lips pursed ever so slightly. And Ruby wondered if she had somehow said something wrong. She was trying to encourage Coco. Maybe lighten her spirits. Ruby knew that as things were going with the three of them, they could probably just lose track of the week-night until the sun came up. She had only been out to steal some cheesecake, but here she was, for maybe an hour, maybe longer, who knew?

    But as soon as she made reference to Montluçon and her being distant, Coco almost seemed to freeze in a way.

    Ruby looked at Jaune, as if trying to ask him for help. Sure, she'd honed onto something bothering Coco. But she thought after the way Coco had relaxed, this would be a lot easier. Instead, she felt like she was drowning, and shoving Coco's face under the water for good measure.

    The words blurted out before she could control herself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to say something wrong," Ruby said quickly.

    Coco pulled her head back fractionally, as if tasting something bad. "What, wrong? No, it's—you didn't do anything wrong."

    Jaune had set the controller aside, looking at them both. He said nothing.

    Ruby's mouth operated without her consent. "I know I say too much, or the wrong thing, and it happens a lot, I'm sorry. I was on a date not long ago, and at first it was really awkward because I thought maybe I was with something wrong, so I tried saying something, but it only made things worse and more awkward and it was a total disaster, and I would be lying if I said it was the first time that ever happened to me, and now it's happening again, but not a date, just trying to hang out, and I've made things weird and awkward and I'm sorry and I keep talking, and there's obviously something bothering you and I don't know what to do about it and help me—"

    Coco put a hand on Ruby's shoulder, startling her into silence. "Ruby, I'm okay. It's okay." And then, after a brief pause: "You go on dates?"

    Ruby felt her cheeks going flush. "Are we really going to focus on that right now?"

    "I mean, for some reason I just—I don't know. Doesn't seem like you."

    "Look, a boy in class I didn't really know asked me out, and it was kind of too awkward to tell him I didn't know him, so I went along with it. But it was just really weird, and I didn't know anything about him. Nothing in common. It's kind of like, if we're not BFF material, why would I want to date you, y'know? Also, he ordered bananas on his pizza. Who does that? I'm pretty sure that's illegal."

    Ruby folded her arms, shaking her head. "But I see what you're doing, Coco. I screwed up, and now you're pivoting away from what I was worried about and focusing on me, so that we're not focusing on you."

    Coco shrank back slightly, back straightening. She made that motion again where she was going to adjust her shades, but wasn't wearing them this hour, and that seemed to distress her almost as much as Ruby pointing out that she was clearly bothered by something. "It's fine, Ruby. I'm not upset. Things are going great for me. It's just—"

    She paused, turning to Jaune. He made a face that said don't involve me with your lies.

    Coco did it anyway. "I've got a lot on my plate. Yeah, I got hurt a bit. But I mostly just focused on getting back into class, and the stress of trying to figure out a theme for the school dance with Jaune. Which I actually had an idea for!"

    Jaune cocked a brow. "Lay it on me."

    She licked her finger as if about to turn a page. "Field research, remember? We should go out on the town. A couple of clubs and parties. Hit up the latest fashion and music."

    The boy's face was slowly hardening as she talked. "You say that, but I don't know. I'm not really a big party and club and drinking kind of guy. Not anymore."

    Coco slapped him on the back, blowing air through her lips. "Oh, c'mon, Jaune. I've been meaning to get back out on the town, take some pictures, look good for the crowd, and I could use a plus one. It's legitimate field research; we can probably bill it back to the school."

    "Coco," he said warningly.

    "Don't be a baby, Jaune. How can you be the most extra yet boring person I've ever met at the same time? You hit on Professor Ozpin one minute just to see his reaction, and the next you're telling me you're incapable of going out in public like some kind of hunchback your parents kept in an attic growing up."

    Jaune looked like he'd pinched a nerve. Slowly, voice more than a little bit creaky, he said, "I guess. I can be your designated driver. If you even have a ride."

    She tsked. "Of course I have a car. We can take it into the city. Hit up some places. Figure out what people like today, and then plan the dance team around it. The hottest and greatest in Valean culture."

    He continued to look unhappy, but was clearly biting his tongue.

    Coco turned back to Ruby, smiling. "Look, see? Biggest worry handled. I'm going to offload all of my responsibility onto Jaune and then take credit for his sober revelations. Isn't that right?" She elbowed the boy.

    "I am nothing if not a slave to circumstance and the terrifying women around me," he said in a tired voice.

    But Ruby knew better. What she didn't know was what to do about this. Coco was doing that thing again to completely avoid the problem and act like she was in control, was perfectly comfortable, and everything was going her way. Ruby didn't know how to help. It made her feel like she had something eating away at the back of her heart.

    All she could do was hand her controller to Coco. "Here, you go kick his butt. Pretty sure it was improving my mood before you got here. I'm sure it'll help put the rest of your worries to bed."

    Coco frowned. "You planning on leaving us?"

    "I don't know."

    "Nah, stick around. Maybe you can give Jaune some pointers." Coco unpaused the game and picked up where Ruby had left off.

    "I guess," Ruby said, meeting Jaune's eyes. Not knowing what else to do, and feeling like she had blown her shot at getting anything done, she settled down under the blankets, leaning against Coco and watching the TV.

    And that was just how things were for the rest of the night.

    Ruby didn't know when she fell asleep. Maybe she never did. She had vague memories of Soul Hunter and Coco talking about the best clubs to go to in Vale. It was all kind of hazy. A weird little part of her thought it'd be endearing if they all eventually fell asleep together on the couch, mostly so she could bully Jaune into cooking another Short Morning type breakfast for her when she woke up.

    Instead, she came too in the middle of the night with that uncomfortable feeling of plaque on her teeth like she always had when she fell asleep after eating any bit of cheesecake and not brushing.

    Jaune crouched before the console, putting it and its controllers away for the night. She stared at him half-asleep for the longest time.

    "Something's upsetting Coco," Ruby said.

    He sighed. "I know. Has been since the caves in Montluçon. Girl doesn't put up nearly as good of a front to the people who know her as she thinks she does."

    She wrapped herself tighter in the blanket. "What should we do?"

    He made a so-so gesture. "Usually, this is the part where I talk to my team and we'd sort it all out. I'd imagine her team has to do the same for her. No way they don't realize something's up if a buncha yahoos like us can."

    Ruby nodded. "I'm going clubbing with you."

    He looked back at her with a look of mild amusement. "¿Como se pasa?"

    She scowled. "Obviously, something's bothering her, and I think we're the only two people who can do something if her team isn't. I'm not just going to let this go. So we're going to take her out to a party or whatever, she's going to relax and have some fun, and when she doesn't expect it—bam! We come together as a united front and ask her what's wrong and help her. Deal?"

    "Are minors even allowed into clubs and discotheques?"

    Ruby paused. "We can work something out. I'm a Huntress. My sister used to get into clubs all the time. There's nothing Yang can do that I can't."

    "She can breast boobily down the stairs?"

    Ruby shot him a look that was evidently a lot harsher than she had intended. "Jaune, I'm being serious. Stop making immature jokes about it. Coco is hurting, and I think we're the only ones who care. Maybe something's up with her and her team and we can get to the bottom of it. If you won't do it, then I will, and I'll have you know I am completely incompetent and will almost certainly make Coco worse. Are you willing to have that on your conscience? Because that's what I'll do if I'm going to do this without backup. This is a threat!"

    He regarded her for a very long time before standing back up and stretching. "You remind me of a girl I once knew named Dinah. She said that blackmail was the purest expression of friendship. Then she kidnapped me into an ice cream truck and made me fight a giant werewolf blender man."

    "I like her style; can you introduce us?"

    Jaune chuckled. "Lord have mercy, I will not. I'm happy with the friends I have now staying away from the friends I had then."

    "And the friends you have now are going to start shrinking unless we help Coco. So are you with me or not, Jaune?"

    He sighed to himself. "Yeah, Ruby. You know I can't resist one of your stupid ideas."

    "Good husband. Smart husband," Ruby said, nodding to herself in content. "I shall feed you only the finest of oats this time in my stable, while whispering sweet nothings into your ear to keep you from startling."

    "Pfft. You barely my bottom bitch."

    "I'm tip top biatch," she said, turning her nose up into the air. "Now carry me back to my room. I'm comfortable in this sushi roll blanket and want to start drama with Yang when she sees us together again."

    He shrugged. "I think at this point she's grown numb to us."

    Still snuggling in the blanket, Ruby sat up. "I know. It kinda sucks. It used to be fun finding something that bothered her. Did you two have a talk or something? You mentioned a talk when we were making the cake."

    "You really shouldn't try to push Yang away. She's trying her best. I low-key respect her for being as put together as she is. In the same kind of way I respect the surprising way you're coherently held together."

    "Don't lecture me about respect when you're in a funk yourself."

    He frowned. "I'm feeling great."

    Ruby rolled her eyes. "Please. You've been acting extra… you lately. It's some weird self defense mechanism, like just making up references or whatever. You only do that when something's still bothering you."

    "Do I?"

    "It's about Blake, right? I know it was a private chat, but I almost couldn't not overhear it, and I just don't know what you were thinking and there's no way you're both happy with how it turned out."

    His lips tightened fractionally. "I handled it, Ruby. Let's not get into it. And it's very personal, thank you very much."

    "There's an embarrassingly obvious amount of feelings involved between you two. Are you just, like, afraid of commitment or something? How does that even make sense when being a Hunter is a lifelong thing. I just don't get you sometimes."

    "Ruby," he said sternly. "That's enough. I got this covered."

    "What, you think I'm just gonna focus on one friend's problems when—oop!" She squeaked as he picked her up, then tossed her over his shoulder like a log.

    "C'mon, short round," he said with a long sigh. "We can brainstorm how to fix the Coco Adel once we've gotten some good sleep. One problem at a time. I handled my Blake thing enough to continue on. Coco's the one really hurting."

    Ruby frowned as he carried her. Everything around her just liked avoiding problems, and it sucked. So for the moment, she sighed and relented. "Alright, fine. But only if you make me breakfast. It's part of our deal. You promised."

    One problem at a time, Ruby supposed. It would have to do. Until Ruby solved every problem in the world, or died. Whichever came first. Or seemed the most fun, really.

    "Wanna invite Coco?" Jaune asked,

    "You know it! Also get Weiss to make sure you eat."

    "Bacon, eggs, and biscuits n' gravy it is."

    "Pancakes for Nora."

    "I'm only feeding my friends, not the entire dorm. Nora can go lick Ren's nipples for sustenance or whatever it is she does to keep her figure with her horrifying diet."

    And so the two of them talked until they got to her room. He gracelessly unrolled her onto the floor and pushed her into the room.

    Ruby could barely sleep that night. She was filled with too much excitement and determination to figure this problem out and solve it for herself and her friend both.
     
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