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

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How dare you, just having cat ears does not count as furry
 
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Volume 3, Chapter 2
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    • Chapter 2: DisQrow Elysium
    "Please. I don't need alcohol to make really bad decisions."

    — 3 —​

    He had already forgotten her name by the time he got to his boots. In all honesty, he probably never knew it in the first place. Man as handsome as him can get by far with a girl just using cute nicknames. Classes at Signal, the combat school on the island of Patch, were a little more fluid than Beacon in some ways. He had been trying to enjoy a couple days of freedom out in Vale during a brief Signal break before the old man had given the call.

    Several calls, in fact. The first woke him. The second had forced him to reckon with a fistful of painkillers and an accompanying bottle of speed soda to process the morning. The last he'd been able to answer. His tongue had felt swollen in his mouth, tastes of equal parts cigarette ash and woman. His nose red from the selfsame. He'd put on that smile and answered the line.

    "You're leaving?" she asked. He looked up at her, breasts bare and eyes wide. Human. A little over half his age. Sickening on some level. But the haze of everything else in his system kept intrusive thoughts and self-doubt away.

    She flinched back from his gaze. He couldn't blame her. He saw his reflection in those ember eyes.

    Qrow Branwen. He knew his name this morning. An accomplishment.

    Nothing else was.

    A misery clad simian barely able to tie his own laces together. He was able to lie to himself and say the reasons his armpits were anti-perspirant lakes was the lack of AC in the No-Tell Motel. His black hair had lost its style in the binge, sticking to his forehead. His underwear felt uncomfortable. After digging it out from under the bed, he's pretty sure he put it on backwards in the rush. A scythe of booze preceded him, and he knew the girl saw that before the actual scythe he had carried.

    When she did, she just stared at it.

    "Yeah," he croaked. "Work."

    "I thought you said you were a school teacher," she said, staring at his weapon.

    "Yeah." He tightened his boots like a noose. When he stood, he had to swing his weapon, Harbinger, to activate the materials to neatly fold in over his back. He examined his hands, matching some of the marks around the girl, like on her neck. He closed his eyes and let the warm red light of his Aura wash over him. Balancing out the haze, giving him a clinical awareness of his limbs, mending the damage he subjected himself to every day.

    A trick he had learned far too early in life. Aura helped set limbs and knit the broken flesh. His sister, Raven, had once called it "the great equalizer." In one of her seemingly rare moments of introspection, she said it was what let true warriors shine. Without them, a single mistake or fluke could kill you. With it, those little errors, celestial rolls of the dice, didn't end it. You could power through that, and let the true better warrior win. All Qrow had taken from that, was it meant it staved off cirrhosis of the liver and cigarette lung just another day, undoing the damage of self-harm. Putting that all off until your next hit, your next fix.

    He saw the look in her eyes. Qrow was a Huntsman. He was in the very 99th percentile of everyone living. Aura and Semblance, the mysterious, close-guarded secrets of his trade mythologized him into something more than human. You were more likely to meet the Powers That Be than one like him, those creatures of money and power that really rule Remnant. He knew for a fact, he could come to her and have this girl again. Claim it was a last good luck charm before a mission. Any number of common lies Huntsboys found had worked centuries ago and never saw a reason to stop.

    Ruby and Yang are in danger.

    He cupped her cheek and kissed her, conscious of the taste of liquor on her tongue. "Think of this way, babe. You might be the last person to see me alive. Kinda romantic, huh?"

    She covered her chest with her arms.

    He set a C-note on the motel room counter for her to get a cab, and a couple meals out of. He knew better than to have given her his number when drunk. He knew he'd never see her again. He was doing her a favor leaving her like this. Hell, maybe she'd brag to her friends about the night she spent with a mysterious Hunter.

    Qrow hailed an aircab and paid with a DNA scan to his bank account. It was harder than he had imagined. He was in Catchfire, the bad part of the city. Reputable aircab companies didn't like coming out this way. And the seedier ones didn't like going out near Beacon.

    But find one he did. The tinted windows helped. Too much sunlight otherwise. Sure, he could use the bit of Old Magic in his veins. Twist his body into a corvid and flap to Beacon. But truth be told, he didn't really know where he was. Vale was a big place. And when you drink enough you're in the headspace where you're comfortable with murder, you find it easier not to take the flashy route.

    This high up, he could see the better part of the city. On the horizon, where the world curved into Elysium, he could see Castlereagh, the ancient and oversized Valean naval base guarding the entire sea between Vale and the island of Patch. Beneath him, the smoldering industrial core of the Kingdom, was Catchfire, where a third of all things ever made came from, and where almost eighty years ago a mix of communards—workers and Great War veterans—had risen up to try to overthrow the kingdom. The Last General himself, Wojciechowski, had put that down with an iron fist to preserve the nonsense mess that was post-War Vale. Qrow could still see remnants of the damage, a fact he only half-heartedly ignored trying to find precincts where he'd been arrested before.

    Bugac, Martinaise, Juvignac, Luzençon, and then he lost track.

    The people there in Catchfire were a lot homier to him than a lot of other places. Patch was a little too middle class. Beacon too attracted richer districts. In the nicer parts of the country, he still sometimes heard people smile and say, "Welcome to Vale!" Once someone had said that to his niece, Yang, and Qrow had nearly murdered the man. One of those politely demeaning ways of telling someone you didn't think they belonged in Vale. Yang had her mother's eyes, and Qrow still had a distinctly Mistrali frontier style from his homeland. The people in Catchfire just saw you as another fucker in a dead-end rut. It's why Union-Labor and the White Fang were so strong there.

    A man can't help where he's born.

    He avoided drinking anymore as the aircab passed through the skyscrapers of the commerce district, le Delta, the heart of the financial world. Vanishing up into the clouds. You could tell how much the companies controlled by the height of their penis-shaped towers, stretching as tall as the Ivory Mountain. Just, instead of a rare Grimm infesting the giant corpse of a fallen monster, they were simply filled with bloodsucking parasites. Y'know, lawyers. And while the companies weren't as vicious as the cartels in Atlas like the SDC or IG Farben, they slipped far much easier under the radar with banking and finance and other subtle tools of power that Qrow was too birdbrained to follow and too drunk to care for.

    The aircab wouldn't go further than the airship docks at Beacon. It wasn't one of the better companies. Still, it'd been a smooth couple hours ride. He hadn't woken up from the nap until they hit the ground.

    He shot the old man a text, the gravity Dust thrusters of the aircab firing off and creating a gust of wind that ruffled his jacket.

    You: I'm here. You?

    Oz: I told you I had it handled

    You: Wouldn't have called me if that was true

    Oz: Hospital third floor, conference room

    Not his office? Shit, this really was fucked. He felt his Aura again, using it to ground him. Help control the urge to start sprinting and hopping over rooftops. He convinced it to keep it down to a quick power walk, Harbinger burning a hole on his lower back. He wished he had something to kill to solve this problem. Whatever it was.

    — 4 —​

    Observation was a painful thing. You leave Qrow alone with his thoughts too long, and he couldn't ignore them much longer. Observations on the school. How much had changed since he came here. Seeing how oddly messy it looked today, like people carrying things had just fallen down and dropped it all without picking it up. Not enough students roaming the grounds on the weekend, and the ones he saw seeming too quiet.

    He saw a couple gathered around a fallen girl. He watched with vague alarm as they and a teacher whose name he didn't know helped stir the girl awake.

    The scene distressingly repeated itself a couple of times around campus. Whatever happened, that was it. If he knew where to find Ruby and Yang, he'd be there first to check on them. But he didn't. Only Oz did. And looking at one of the scenes, Qrow nearly missed the boy.

    Maybe a couple hairs taller than Qrow himself. The blond didn't look remarkable. Lean like most students. A week or so old attempt at a beard lots of kids tried before realizing they were too young for it to go anywhere, and shaved it off once they realized girls were laughing at them. He was bridal-carrying a semi-conscious girl with a black hairbow and far too much midriff showing.

    Nothing about the boy himself stood out. Not even the oddly hard, determined look in his eyes.

    No.

    What made Qrow pause and crane his head to follow as the boy passed, was the necklace he was wearing. A little silver cross at a forty-five degree angle. An old and rare symbol, that. One as dear to him as Ruby and Yang. It wasn't the boy's necklace, he instinctively knew, even before the little scratch in the silver Qrow remembers had saved him from the claws of an alpha beowolf once upon a time. His own personal, hand-made good luck charm he'd given to Ruby especially of all people after she graduated her first year at Signal. The girl the boy was carrying was almost drunkenly reaching up and swatting at the necklace in slow motion.

    Qrow watched the boy go, dumbfounded. Why was he wearing Ruby's necklace? A dozen jumbled thoughts ran through his head. Stole it? Ha, as if Ruby would let that happen. A gift? Why? Was he her friend or, dear God, her boyfriend? No way Ruby would have shitty tastes in a boy who looked… kind of like her father, Taiyang.

    "Oh my god," he muttered, turning to go after the kid. He rationalized it as the boy probably knowing where Ruby's room was. And then immediately tried not to think about why a boy would know where Ruby's room was.

    Before the disapproving tsk drew him away from his quest.

    "What, Glynda?" he snapped, knowing for a fact it was her before even having to look at her. "Look, I don't have anything new to annoy you with. Get over it. Who's that kid?"

    She glanced after the boy, and shrugged. Her resting bitch face had long been botoxed into place, Qrow was sure. "No one. Why are you here?"

    He whirled on her, his cape stopping a little after with the inertia. "Old man rings me and lets slip the kids are in trouble, and you think I won't be here?"

    Glynda sighed. "We don't know what happened. Headmaster Ozpin is working on that."

    "Cool, but who's the kid?"

    She made a face, adjusting her glasses. "Your second coming. But never mind him. Since you're here, I presume I can't stop you from where you're going. If the Headmaster has called you here, then you probably know more than me."

    Know? What Qrow knows is that at 6,800 meters tall, the Yeux de Feu Enneigés, better known as "Old Fire Eyes," is the world's tallest active volcano. It has currently devoured at least seven thousand Lien worth of used car parts and one old sextape meant to be used as blackmail, for no reason that Qrow would admit. He is also aware that the failure of '39 single Elysian Codeine to even chart the top twenties signaled the death of disco as a pop culture phenomenon.

    What Qrow didn't know, however, was anything about what the hell was happening. Because no one told Qrow anything,

    Qrow tried to play it cool.

    "How much I know depends. Are Ruby and Yang safe?"

    Glynda shrugged. "We're still working on making sure the entire student body is okay. I'm afraid to say we haven't gotten into the fine details as of yet."

    "Nice. Because I'm only here for those two."

    The woman blinked. "Wait, so you're saying I can get rid of you that easily?"

    Qrow shook his head. "Nah. I'm only here to check on them, and because I needed an excuse to ditch this girl I was with because I think I was too drunk to buy condoms last night. Can you believe how often people will believe 'I can't wear them, I have a latex allergy'?"

    Glynda looked suitably disgusted, the exact response he was going for.

    "Anyways, I always love leaving them wanting more. And because I already spent too much getting here, and Signal doesn't pay me enough to get another cab. And airships don't leave for a while, I'm just going to eventually find my way back into your hair in like an hour or whatever. See ya, hot lips."

    Qrow turned to try to find the boy, only to see him vanishing into one of the dorms. He ignored the suitably pleasant sound of Glynda making a fuss and headed after him. The dorms hadn't really changed much since his time here. Maybe a couple extra microwaves. And everything had this pervasive background smell of hormonal teenagers poorly covered up with antibac.

    He watched the boy step into an elevator, and sprinted to catch up with him.

    "Whoo, made it! Floor number three, please. Or two. Really, just wherever you're going. I can take the stairs back."

    The blond boy instinctively seemed to hold on to the girl in his arms a little tighter. She didn't entirely seem to know what was going on, looking like she was drunk or mildly drugged. That gave him a bad feeling. Almost as bad as the kid's eyes.

    Behind the boy's irises was this faint glow. It was an incredibly subtle use of Aura that almost impressed Qrow. Only professionals or people who didn't yet know how to flex those psychic muscles knew how to do that on his level. Just enough to show off, but not enough to glow in the dark. Useful for keeping some kind of background extra strength going. He used those to help glare at Qrow, refusing to press the button.

    The two of them just kind of stared at each other. The girl seemed lost in her own little world. Damn it, but all of the conversation starters that popped into his head only worked on women! He got the feeling that winking at the kid and flirtatiously asking him if he'd like to see a magic trick, would probably get him arrested.

    Fuck, he was too sober for this. He pulled out his flask and took a shot. "Oh, sorry. You want a pull?"

    The boy looked at the offering soberly. Qrow actually thought he was going to accept the offer that he only made in a kind of jest. Before his eyes fell to the girl he was carrying, and he made a low growling noise. "I'm currently legally forbidden from drinking by order of the headmaster."

    Qrow snorted. "That's hilarious. What the hell did you do?"

    "Well, it began when I asked this random homeless man with a sword on he back why he just walked into my elevator," he said, with this weirdly backcountry drawl that Qrow couldn't place. In shorter bursts it was harder to notice. But longer sentences like that made it impossible to ignore.

    "I mean, it's also a gun," Qrow said with a shrug. "What happened to the girl?"

    She stopped idly swatting at the necklace and looked up at him, squinting, as though she couldn't really see him.

    "One of the first cases. Dosed up to her eyes in benzodiazepines. Croaker thought it might have been a stroke or something and figured it might help."

    "Who is she?"

    "My partner."

    He stared intently at the boy's necklace. "We talking, like, Huntsman partner? Romantic? You got chicks on the side, or…?"

    "As soon as I get access to both of my hands, I'm calling the police."

    "No, no no no!" Qrow said, holding up his hands. "I just, like, thought you might know where Ruby's room is."

    For the strangest moment, the kid looked away, thinking. "Huh. You know, I actually don't. Weird given all the times we've been together. Usually she just kind of finds me and then something stupid happens."

    He squinted at Qrow. "So why is a random homeless person who smells like alcohol trying to find a fifteen-year-old girl's room?"

    "Oh, that? I just know the pipsqueak."

    "And just who the fuck is you?" he asked with a sudden, oddly protective venom. It reminded him of Yang.

    Qrow panicked. "Uh, me? It is not yet time to reveal my name."

    Nailed it!

    "Blake?" he asked the girl, who seemed mildly annoyed to be included in any kind of conversation. "Can you dial 911?"

    She just kind of squinted at him. Before making a noise like a cat trying to go back to sleep.

    Qrow held up his hands. "Don't! She's my uncle. I mean, her uncle. Ruby Rose. Uncle Qrow. With a Q because my parents couldn't spell."

    Technically, it was his own problem. The first time he was ever asked to write down his name when he was trying to get into Beacon Academy, he had actually spelled it with a Q by mistake. Partially from the illiteracy of his home tribe, Branwen, and partially because his first written language was Mistrali Kanji, a script which didn't exactly pay as much attention to exact spelling as much as it did the character strokes. It had just been too awkward in the 30 years or so since then to legally get the problem fixed. And in any case, everyone had begun pronouncing it with a Q. Don't ask him how he knows that. Because out loud, they sound exactly the same. But somehow, he knew.

    The boy looked at him for a very long moment, examining the way he dressed more than anything. "So you're the one who taught her that germs were like pissing on people?"

    Qrow snorted. "Me and Taiyang, yeah. Her dad. Honestly a miracle the girl didn't come out anymore fucked up then she actually is, way we raised her."

    He blinked. "Huh. Y'know, being raised with two dads does explain a lot of things."

    "You know enough about her that a lot of things need to be explained?" he asked quickly. "I mean, no, her dad and I are just friends. They're my nieces, Ruby and Yang. And I'm just here to make sure they're okay. Figured you'd know something."

    Qrow didn't miss the hint of a dark expression when he mentioned Yang. Like there was something painful in that. He suspected that, like so many other boys, he had tried to ask Yang out, and been savagely rejected. He had taught the girl to have exceedingly high standards on purpose, just to keep her away from the kind of charms he used on the daily. Figured it was the least he could do for the girl to keep her safe without a solid female role model in her life to teach her to avoid men like Qrow.

    "Why?" he asked sharply.

    "Because the pipsqueak gave you my necklace," he said.

    For the first time in that conversation, the boy's protective hostility seemed to melt. He looked down at the cross hanging from his neck. "She likes me. Gave it to me for protection. Good luck."

    It was worse than he feared.

    Qrow sighed. "Look, kid, I know how it is. I was your age too once. Back when dragons roamed Remnant and the law required hot girls to wear tiny miniskirts until feminism came around and taught them that maybe they could wear whatever they want."

    "I too wish for a return to the 50s or whatever," he said sarcastically.

    Qrow frowned. "It's 51."

    "Really? What century?"

    "The… current one?"

    The boy sighed. "Man, I'm just happy y'all still use things like Tuesday. I might could reckon I'd be completely lost without them."

    "Are you getting second-hand drunk from my presence? Because my therapist tried to tell me that was a thing, but I'm pretty sure she was being metaphorical, and I'm pretty sure I was trying to sleep with her so I wasn't really listening."

    "Okay, Lucifer."

    "Okay, trendy modern kids' reference I don't understand."

    "You're not supposed to. Saying things that no one understands is kind of my thing. Lets me feel smugly superior to everybody else for being insane."

    "I can relate. Wimble flamble, zimble zamble, I'm here to talk to you about fucking my niece."

    "Hey, I take it back," he replied blankly. "Can I have a shot of that shit?"

    Qrow offered him the flask without thinking. Well, the kid was talking to him. That was a start. If only he would start pressing elevator buttons. Qrow just took the liberty of pressing all two of the possible floors, and hoping the kid would just leave once they got to his.

    He took a pull, only to spit it out all over him. "DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK!?"

    "Kid, not cool! This was some expensive Patch scotch!" He angrily gestured the flask at him. "And for the record, Ruby's already well aware that latex allergies aren't real."

    "They're very real!"

    He threw his hands up. "Well I made her believe they weren't and now it's too late to take back my lies!"

    The girl in his arms scowled at nobody in particular.

    "First Yang, and now you! Why does everyone think I'm trying to get into Ruby's rose? Does no one but me seem to realize the kid is, like, fifteen?"

    "Big pharma has been letting their chemical waste dump hormones into the water for decades now. It's why kids grow up so fast these days."

    The elevator dinged onto the second floor. No one got off.

    "It's not like that!" the boy said. "Not for her or any other girl here."

    Qrow blinked. Quietly, he said, "Oh, you're gay. Whoo! That is a relief, let me tell you."

    "No!" he said back, looking like you would throw his hands into the air if not for the girl he was carrying back to her room. "Literally the straightest motherfucker there ever was. So straight that I don't even like girls, because having the hot for someone who likes dick would be the epitome of homosexuality."

    "I think using the bigger word there makes it disparaging in this day and age," Qrow said. He shook his head. "But you don't have to pretend you're not trying. I get it, a bunch of teenagers off on their own for the first time in their life. I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't do it, or threatened to kill you for it or whatever. I get it, really, I do. I just, I don't know, want to make sure she's safe. Physically and, like, her heart. I guess?" He reached out to try to put what he imagined was a fatherly hand on the kid's shoulder, reassuring and masculine.

    "The girl is just my friend."

    Qrow's smile began a clockwork-like tick until it was upside down. "Wait. So you're telling me she finds a boy she likes so much she gives my necklace too, and you fucking friendzone her! Gods almighty, kid, that's fucking cruel!"

    "Girls in training bras don't belong in the date zone!"

    "Oh God, you know what kind of bra she wears too!"

    The elevator dinged onto the third floor. Standing before them, looking slightly out of it, was his niece, Ruby. The same distant expression that most of the recently awoken students had after whatever disaster had befallen. She looked up at the two men in the elevator, and Qrow could physically see the gears behind her eyes turning.

    Up until the point where she turned into a storm of rose petals and the next second was tackling him.

    "Uncle Qrow! Oh my goodness, Uncle Qrow, what are you doing here?!" Her getting this excited was downright painful. The blond boy was already trying to figure out a way to negotiate the elevator doors with the girl in his arms, and the two people who had joined him in the small vertical closet.

    "Jaune! Jaune!" she said, practically bouncing in place as she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him towards her. "That's my Uncle Qrow! He's the coolest and most awesome and best Huntsman I know! I mean, maybe there's my dad, but my dad doesn't have a scythe, and I'm pretty sure you need at least a scythe if you really want to be cool. Jaune. Jaaaaaune!"

    He could see it clear as day. And it hurt to watch. The friendly excitement the two seem to share. Well, the one she had, and the vaguely terrified way he looked up at Qrow as he tried in vain to escape Ruby.

    "Ruby!" the boy named Jaune said. "We've already met, and we already hate each other."

    "I mean, I was just trying to offer you friendly advice," Qrow huffed. "You're the one who spat out my scotch."

    Ruby seemed to interpret that and the worst way possible. She put her fists on her hips and glared at Jaune. "What did I tell you about drinking? The doctor said that it was killing you, and if you kill yourself, I'll kill you first! I made sure you had too much luck to die."

    Oh my God, the kid really is me.

    Which raised several uncomfortable questions about Ruby's taste in boys. Namely, that they looked like her father, and acted like her uncle. He was aware that girls with daddy issues often wound up looking for men like their estranged or abusive fathers. But Qrow was more than reasonably sure that that did not fit Ruby's description.

    "No, no, I only use that to—" He made a painful, whining noise. "Ruby, look, my partner Blake is one of the first people who got hurt by whatever happened out there, and I really need to get her to bed to rest. Could you please explain to your uncle that we're not shagging?"

    She made a face. "What, carpets?" Her eyes went to the floor. "Pretty sure they use linoleum here."

    "No, no, I mean—an item."

    "Does your partner need a thing or something?"

    "I mean, he thinks we're partners."

    "Oh." She turned away from Jaune. "Uncle Qrow, his partner is the Blake girl he's carrying. We're not even on the same team. Which is probably for the best, because I'm pretty sure everyone on my team hates him. He's kind of a weirdo but I like him. Mostly. I guess he's kind of okay for someone who likes broccoli." At this point, refusing to understand had to be a conscious effort on Ruby's part.

    Qrow found it equal parts endearing and annoying. He just found himself smiling at the pipsqueak, not really wanting to ruin this. For a girl who had to be one of the most competent murder machines he had ever met, she did have this naïve streak to her. Something he was vaguely convinced was on purpose. Like a part of her had willfully refused to grow up.

    Jaune compressed an uncomfortable noise in the back of his throat. "Your uncle is trying to give me the safe sex talk about you because he thinks we're dating."

    Ruby just kind of stopped. Failed to load. Stood there in place like someone had just ripped her soul out of her chest. Ruby.exe had bluescreened and required a full restart. Her head swiveled from Jaune to her uncle, cheeks rapidly flushing with a hot wave of blood.

    She inhaled once, deeply, through her nose. And let it all out with the most ear raping scream he had ever heard in his life.

    "NO! NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! UNCLE QROW HOW COULD YOU, AAAAAAAAAH!"

    Jaune used the distraction to slip past her. Mostly because she was busy trying to throttle her uncle.

    "IT'S NOT LIKE THAT. I HAVE A REPUTATION! HE IS A PERSON AND I AM A PERSON AND SOMETIMES MOUTH WORDS PASS BETWEEN US AND I JUST DON'T WANT HIM TO DIE FROM A BAD CASE OF THE STUPID BECAUSE HE KIND OF REMINDS ME OF YOU."

    "Ruby!" someone screamed, sprinting into the little common area with the elevator. Yang, of course. A bit of toothpaste in her mouth from how she had just rushed out of the bathroom. It looked a bit like rabies foam.

    Which seemed to fit her, given the way she surveyed the scene, saw her little sister screaming, and Jaune trying to run away. Qrow saw his little firecracker go full mama-bear murder mode as she clenched her fists and just started after the boy at a dead sprint. He was lucky to say he's never been on the end of a look quite that hateful in his life, which was impressive given how many women wanted him dead for one reason or another.

    The only reason why Jaune seemed to be able to make his escape and survive was the sudden storm of roses tackling Yang.

    "YANG! UNCLE QROW IS HERE BUT EVERYTHING IS WRONG AND HE HAS MADE EVERYTHING WORSE AND HE THINKS I'M BEING LEWD WITH A BOY AND NOT IN THE HAND HOLDING WAY BUT IN THE SEX WAY!"

    Oooh, baby. Qrow had this feeling like he had pretty much ruined his niece's day. But, honestly, it was a worthy price to pay for making sure the two girls were safe. If they were good enough to have a full-blown panic attack on the one hand and then try to murder a boy on the other, chances were good that they were okay.

    But just in case they weren't, he started rapidly hitting the first floor elevator button.

    — 5 —​

    The evening light filtered in through the office as the elevator arrived. It was a shame Qrow's buzz was starting to fade. As Oz stepped into the room, he was reminded why he hated dealing with the old man while sober.

    "You do so like appearing where I least want you," Ozpin said evenly, stepping in and past Qrow. He was looking at his scroll, using a tool to monitor the Aura of registered students on campus. Luckily, Qrow was an expert at reading backwards text from the far side of a scroll. Oz was looking at a team called BASS. Their Auras all looked fine.

    Qrow stood up off the desk. His sweat-soaked, backwards underwear had been sticking to his ass. "Tried finding you in the clinic. You weren't there."

    "Funny," Oz said without meaning it. "I was there for hours talking with Croaker and tracking down the origin of what happened."

    "I got distracted checking up on my nieces. They're doing great, by the way. Yang's only tried to kill one boy and I think Ruby needs therapy now, but, y'know." Qrow shrugged. Before his eyes narrow dangerously. "You gonna tell me what's going on."

    Oz adjusted his glasses, looking down through them at Qrow. "No."

    Qrow scoffed, pacing around the desk. "C'mon, Oz. I'm too close to sober for the mysterious old codger gag. Either tell me or I'm setting up a hammock over there by the ferns and won't leave till you talk."

    "Ruby and Yang are fine. You observed it so astutely yourself," he said, evenly. Always evenly. It felt so fake. "I have the situation handled."

    A laugh. "Oh, yeah, sure. You call me in a panic. The HuntsHub thread I've been watching about all the news from this is already starting to make local news. All the kids are KO'd. Was it some radical Semblance trigger? Magic?"

    He could see the line of Oz's jaw tightening. "Qrow, I have it handled."

    "Oh, yeah. So you're just going to do nothing and let people talk all they want about it without answers."

    "We've already established a plausible cover story about CCTS microwave radiation."

    Qrow snorted. "Nai, I don't even know what that means and I can tell it's beowulf shit. So it's not some overpowered Semblance, then?"

    "No. Nothing like that."

    "Hey, look, answers!" Qrow laughed. "Look, Oz, I respect your hustle most of the time, but right now?" He gestured out the window. "Please tell me you're doing something so I can sleep easier at night."

    "You drink yourself to sleep."

    Holding a hand to his chest in mock offense, Qrow spun on his heels to face the old man. "J'accuse! I only do that because how much I worry and care. You know how much a nuisance I'll—"

    "A pawn without king or queen," Oz said. "That's what I'm dealing with right now."

    Qrow sighed heavily. "Oh, wow. That old line. Ever try, y'know, saying what you mean? Radical concept, I know. At least tell me you're solving it."

    He said nothing.

    "Good gods, Oz!" Qrow threw his hands up. "If it's her, gimme a hint."

    "It's not."

    "Then?"

    Silence.

    Qrow grit his teeth. "Fuck's sake, Oz! We can't help you if you don't tell us shit! This is exactly how you got Summer killed!"

    "I'm handling it."

    "Are you? Are you?" Qrow laughed mockingly. "You promised next time would be different. You'd talk to him. Work with me. Never let that shit ever happen ever again!"

    Ozpin hissed, slamming a fist on his desk. "I don't have any damn answers for you, Qrow!"

    The outburst was so sudden, so out of character, that for once Qrow was left speechless. This had never happened before, even when he had pushed Ozpin. He wondered if he somehow went too far. If he was being worse than usual because of his worry for Yang and Ruby. They'd never been a factor in his issues with Ozpin until now, not really. Would he have taken Ozpin's answer as gospel before, just like Raven alway mocked him for?

    All Qrow could do was croak out a, "What?"

    "I don't know what it is, Qrow," Ozpin said in that same frustrated tone. "But whatever it is, it's safer under my thumb than let loose into the wild for her to use. And either I have some control over it, or it's a rogue element I have to kill. I will protect those under my care from it no matter the cost, however."

    "You… holy fucking shit, you're serious? You don't know."

    The old man swallowed. "It wasn't a Semblance. That's one of the few things I'm sure of. Just like how I'm sure it wasn't done by something entirely human, merely the danse macabre wearing a human face. It began in the hospital and smelled of the Old Magic."

    Qrow licked his lips. "It's a student."

    Ozpin stared at him, until finally collapsing into his desk chair. "One I have considerable leverage over so long as it believes I am none the wiser. So I'm going to use a proven track record to keep it controlled." He smoothed over his ruffled suit jacket, and suddenly looked so old, so haggard. "It's the only palatable option until I have no other choice. Until I know what to do with this thing of nightmares in my court."

    "…And when you have no other choice, Oz? What if she finds a use for it first?"

    Those eyes of his like ice, so cold it was impossible to tear your gaze away within it ripping out a part of you. Like licking a frozen pole.

    "I kill him."

    "Him?" Qrow asked.

    "What's one more dead child to a man like me, Qrow?" He sighed heavily. "…even if he is my own flesh and blood."

    Qrow's tongue felt heavy and swollen in his dry mouth.

    The old man reached out and took Qrow's hip flask. He didn't resist as he mixed it with an old, long-cold cup of coffee. With a pained sigh, he drank the entire thing in one pull. Lamely, Qrow took it when it was offered, feeling somehow violated by the entire scene.

    "You are dismissed, Qrow," he said with the kind of dead finality that not even Qrow at his most pissed could refuse. "I'll see to it no harm comes to your nieces like I always do. I will not have another Summer on my hands no matter the cost. You can set your watch and warrant to that."

    Qrow stared at Ozpin for a long moment. He'd never seen the old man like this, ever. Never even gotten him to talk this much when he infused him and his sister with the old magic of corvids. Whatever this was, this was something new. Something different.

    Something terrifying.

    He downed the rest of his flask to wet his desert-dry mouth and left.

    a/n This chapter was sort of practice from a RWBY / Discow Elysium crossover fic I want to do, suitably called DisQrow Elysium. Qrow writes like a V1 Jaune that has his shit a little better put together to me.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • yoooo jaune is a fucking old one lets GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    The Great D'Orleans, son of the King In Yellow.
     
    So the goat was a bust...how's about a couple of doves? Old Ones love the taste of pretty chicken.

    ...or was that T-Rex? Get those confused, tbh.
     
    pingas plight said:
    yoooo jaune is a fucking old one lets GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    The Great D'Orleans, son of the King In Yellow.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Jaune confirmed for being an eldritch abomination by Ozpin himself, less go! DaBaby mode full throttle!

    Orion Ultor said:
    So the goat was a bust...how's about a couple of doves? Old Ones love the taste of pretty chicken.

    ...or was that T-Rex? Get those confused, tbh.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    The only Great Old One is Jaune. Or at least whatever evil thing from beyond the stars that brought him here to talk to girls and help them work through their issues.
     
    Volume 3, Chapter 3
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 3: I Miss My Cocoa Butter Kisses
    "That's good advice, but don't tell me what to do."

    — 6 —​

    "Who are you, really, Jaune?" Blake asked, not even sure how she really got here. Where here was. Just that she was lying down in a dark room, a bed, and Jaune was standing up above her. He looked like he was trying to walk away.

    When she spoke, he tensed, and turned to face her.

    He regarded her solemnly. An expression on his face that wasn't entirely readable, but that on some unconscious level she recognized as belonging to an entirely older, more haggard face.

    "I'm currently in-between names," he said softly. "Which means I'm just the same asshole as before, Blake. I'm your partner. I'm sorry about what happened. But," he added with a smile that was equal parts genuine and forced, "I promise to make it up to you by buying twice the amount of tuna sushi for you?"

    She smiled up at him, belatedly realizing she was lying in her own bed. Uncomfortably sweaty and fully dressed. Jaune must have brought her back here. "You always know just what to say."

    "Do I?" he asked, like this was news to him. He ran his hand through his baby beard. It was starting to grow on her as much as it was him.

    Blake nodded. "How else do you know how to always say the exact opposite?"

    He laughed, sitting down at the foot of her bed. A bit too close for her comfort, but she wasn't about to make a fuss. They'd been closer before. "Oh c'mon. I ain't that bad."

    "Yeah. You're worse."

    All he could do is grin. "Scared the shit out of us back there. Scared me."

    "You scared me," she said. She reached up to pull her hairbow off. Her ears enjoyed the chilly night air. Was it that late already? "Tell me you're okay. After all that, I'd kinda hate if you had another seizure or whatever."

    Jaune looked over her in a daze. "You… after all that, and you're thinking about me? How I'm doing? Jesus Christmas girl, you're the one who got hurt. You and like all the school. I don't matter here."

    "…You matter to me." Blake had to admit, though saying it like that felt embarrassing. She couldn't look at him after it tumbled from her mouth. One of those things she felt you didn't need to say if it was true. You showed it, by being there, by caring, by helping your jackass partner reach into his soul and find himself.

    Blake swallowed. It took efforts to make the words she knew she should say come out.

    "I… don't really know what I saw. But you're hurt too, I think. We both have our demons, I guess. Worse than just Grimm. Your Simone, my Adam. I've just, I don't know, been letting them rule me. I came to Beacon to become better. But instead, I find myself just being the girl I ran away from. And the only person around me trying to actually get better is some drunken jerk. You're not very good at it, but it's impossible not to see. I think you do care about things in a stupid, immature way. But that's more than a lot of people."

    She forced a smile, cheeks hot. "Do you know how embarrassing it is when Jaune Arc is doing better than you? I just," Blake sighed. "I hate talking this much. About anything, especially this. Just, like, just smile and pretend that all made sense and wasn't too sappy?"

    He blinked at her like he was just waking up from a bad dream. Finding his mother there to hold him and rock him back to sleep. She reached to take his hands and close his jaw with them, before they slid up to hold his eyes. Just gripping the edges of his face.

    "I didn't do anything but make it worse. You are a good person, Blake. You trying to do your best to be better, is why I want to be better. I'm a bad man just wishing he was as worth believing in as you are."

    She allowed herself a sly little smirk. "You're quoting one of my books. What'd I tell you about pandering to me, Jaune?"

    "Do it, and often," he said with a half-cocked smile.

    Blake threw her bow at him. He caught it, taking a hand away to reveal wet, reddened eyes. He sniffled. Gave a choking kind of laugh.

    "This is why you're the worst," she said confidently. She sat up just so she could fold her arms at him.

    "You ain't seen the half of it yet, Blake."

    "Oh yeah?"

    "Yeah. Can I ask your forgiveness before I do this?"

    She shook her head. "No. But when has that ever stopped you before?"

    Jaune grinned. He reached out to take her hand. His fingers felt hot as they tightened around hers. He pulled her forwards. Up into a sudden hug. She didn't like it, not at first. This touchy-feely garbage was for her books, not real life. But after a moment, she willed herself to relax. To, almost reluctantly, hug the boy back.

    Neither spoke. Just this long, physical moment between two broken people finding some kind of comfort with each other. Knowing just how screwed up the other one was inside, and smiling past it as friends.

    Like Blake said, it was all a bunch of stupid, annoying, cliché, meaningful touchy-feeling garbage.

    She broke the silence. "For the record, if anyone walks in and sees us, I'm gonna scream."

    "Don't reckon I'd have you any other way, Blake," he said with a sniffle. "Pardner."

    — 7 —​

    You'd think some mass incident on campus grounds would cancel classes for longer than a day. But it was a miracle anything at all got cancelled. More like they were just making sure it wouldn't happen before school was back in session.

    Blake wondered if part of that was to make sure all the bodies had been found. Don't misunderstand, no one died or got seriously injured. A couple trips to the nurses because students had fallen at unfortunate angles without being able to bring up their Aura was the extent of the damage. Like Weiss. Hilariously.

    She sat at the dinner table, still absently rubbing at her bruised cheek. It ruined her prissy façade of physical perfection in a way Blake couldn't help but love. If she didn't know any better, she'd say Jaune did it to her. He'd been the one to recover Shamrock and their partner back to the dorm, since he seemed least affected by what happened.

    And truth be told, she reckoned, as she looked down at her meal with too many silent Xs to be able to pronounce, she suspected this entire thing was his fault. Hers and his. She didn't understand it, but she'd have to be an idiot to avoid the obvious connection. She recalled the way Jaune's Aura had soaked into her arm and Aura like leaking tie dye.

    There'd been a boy of maybe fifteen or sixteen, dressed like a Vacuo desperado. He'd smiled and waved, looking far too eager to say something. Only for the girl with hair nearly as white-blonde as Weiss to squeeze his shoulder and shrug. He'd sighed and gave Blake an apologetic smile.

    Then there was a man whose age she couldn't place, looking maybe early twenties, but moving with a kind of flamboyant eagerness when he spoke. Made her want to think he was far younger, or gay. Blake thought she liked him least. The crisp, starched uniform he wore looked like the Royal Valean Mobile Infantry she and Adam had spent the better part of a year fighting. People who made dancing faunus of frontier villages with napalm and air assault drops. Blindly loyal to that bastard, Colonel B.T. Kornilov.

    She suspected it all meant Jaune had some sort of multiple personality disorder he was struggling with. Maybe that was the real reason he was in therapy, not the drinking. Although the drinking was, yeah, a huge issue.

    Almost as big as the entire, well, the thing that had affected campus. It was her fault as much as his. Something she did with Jaune's Aura had caused the entire blackout incident on campus. She still wasn't sure how to bring that up with Jaune. She wanted to talk about it, but she felt the bus for anything on that topic, about those other faces, came and went last night.

    But of course, fret for Grimm, and there they are.

    Jaune didn't so much sit down beside Blake as he did just kind of collapse. His tray of something that Blake couldn't pronounce clattered on the table. He looked like he'd just come out of the shower, wearing a tight undershirt and sweatpants instead of the usual jeans and hoodie.

    "What's poppin', slime?" he asked.

    "Slime?" Weiss asked, somehow making it sound like an insult. "I swear to God if you did something to the shower…"

    "Well, if you want to bring God into this, I'm happy to say this time around I didn't do anything He would disapprove of." He thumbed over his shoulder. "Just gym shit. I kind of can't go back there because I accidentally told Ren he has a nice cock when I walked in on him in the showers there, so, yeah, it's the room for me."

    Shamrock looked up from where he was lining his top hat upside down with cards. Probably some kind of trick he was working on. "I know. You keep telling us that like we're going to laugh."

    "If I repeat something enough times, it becomes funny!" Jaune insisted.

    "No," Weiss said. "What's funny is—" She hesitated, evidently not thinking this retort through. Just trying to snipe at Jaune by rote reaction.

    Blake remembered the last time the team had all been together in the cafeteria, chatting away. Before that had devolved into arguing. She really didn't want that again. On a weird level, she wondered what Jaune would say in her position. Granted, he was right there. But Weiss and Shamrock already seem to be primed to go at him on principle.

    "Funny how we didn't really get hurt that bad when that, you know, whatever happened," Blake said, pathetically.

    Weiss side-eyed her. "No thanks to any of you."

    "I mean, Jaune was the one who found you both and brought you back to the room," she said, trying to get a feel for what it was like sticking up for somebody. It didn't really feel very rewarding. She just got this mildly surprised look from Jaune. But he was stupid if he thought she wasn't going to try something like this. The two of them hadn't really been through much, but on some level, it felt profound.

    She still hated him, of course. But he was her partner. Definitely her new favorite teammate. But that wasn't a high bar to set when you had people like Weiss on the team. She'd happily work with him to put her in her place.

    "Oh yeah," Weiss said. "Remind me to buy a black light. I need to check my dress for anything he left behind when he touched me."

    "The only thing that touched you was the tree when you fell down from Heaven," Jaune said pleasantly. He dragged his finger down from his eye, mirroring her scar. "It's why your face is so fucked up."

    Blake snerked.

    "My face is gorgeous!" Weiss said, standing up sharply. "The scar just adds character!"

    Jaune looked like he was about to fire back at her something to destroy her confidence. Blake would be lying if she said she wasn't looking forward to it. In hindsight when she thought about it, it was kind of funny the way he fought with Weiss. Just so long as he didn't try anything stupid on Blake herself, she could live with her partner running his mouth like an idiot. But instead, he seemed to catch himself, and just frowned with the shake of the head.

    "It is," he said seriously, which genuinely seemed to throw Weiss off.

    It took her a moment to figure out what to say, and she seemed to find a way to take it as an insult. "I know it is. That's why you keep staring at it. Half the time I feel like I should be asking you if you want some help or something."

    He shook his head. "No. Although I do have this nude art class coming up and we need a model."

    Weiss gagged. "If I ever catch you even trying to draw me naked, I swear to God I will take my LouBoutins heels and castrate you!"

    Blake felt her ears flattening. "Guys, can we not right now? It's too late in the evening to fight."

    Jaune sighed deeply. "Yeah, good point. I'm just trying to egg you on, Weiss. Sorry."

    Hearing him apologize was still a weird feeling. Blake got the sense that he didn't actually know what the word meant. Like someone who spoke a foreign language just repeating a known word in the correct context without understanding it.

    And honestly, someone like Weiss didn't deserve apologies. She needed to be taken down a couple pegs.

    Blake gave the girl in white an expectant look.

    Weiss just curled her lip and gave an aggressive shrug. "What? I'm not sorry. I didn't do anything wrong. Blake, it's Jaune."

    Blake really didn't know how to reply to that. What was she supposed to say? Oh come on, he's not that bad? Something about that just struck her as weird, forced, and vaguely creepy for a reason she couldn't place. Just not the kind of thing you say. She kind of wanted to stand up for him, but in this case, she genuinely didn't know what to say.

    She caught herself bitterly thinking that Jaune probably wouldn't have her side in this kind of thing. But, that wasn't true. That was before—well, everything.

    Besides, she told herself, if she did join Weiss against Jaune, that would mean Weiss would win. And Jaune would probably find a way to use how she had let him hug her as ammunition.

    Telling herself that helped nurse her pride.

    Blake just shrugged. "Maybe just lighten up a little?"

    Jaune met Blake's eyes, giving her this little species of smile. She replied with a gesture halfway between a nod and a helpless shrug. The whole thing just felt somehow fake to her. Uncomfortable. Like she should be doing more, but anything more would be inauthentic.

    Weiss folded her arms. "Since when have you two been buddy buddy?"

    Jaune said, "She's my partner." As though that was all that needed to be said.

    Weiss made a tired go on gesture.

    He just stared at her, idly forking at his rather meager dinner.

    "Really? You're not going to follow that up with some crass remark? I can see it in your eyes; you want to make it."

    Blake had this sudden uncomfortable feeling like Jaune was going to explain everything that had happened between the two of them. Just vomit out words like an overeager puppy that can't contain itself. She squirmed in place.

    Instead, the boy just took a long sip from his glass of water. "No. I wouldn't do that to her."

    "You do it all the time to us!"

    "Not me," Shamrock said, putting on her hat.

    Jaune regarded Weiss seriously. In that way that was still relatively new to him. It was an expression that somehow didn't belong on his boyish face.

    It belongs to an altogether older boy, she thought, thinking of the soldier Jaune person thing she'd seen.

    "I'm not doing it anymore."

    "And asking me to pose nude for an art class?"

    "Was just a joke, obviously," Blake mumbled, staring intently at her lap.

    "And here I thought jokes were supposed to be funny," Weiss huffed.

    Blake took a steadying breath, and then looked up at Weiss sharply. "Like you'd know funny if it jumped up and bit you. I don't think I've ever seen you laugh."

    "Because you're not funny, either, Blake."

    She felt her face scrunching up before she realized she was doing it. She had that face like the night they had dragged Jaune home. Not that she knew why that line in particular seemed to be about ready to set her off. But God, she really wanted to tear into the ice queen all of a sudden.

    Under the table, Jaune bumped his leg into her. She remembered where she was, and that getting angry here would just probably make things worse. She felt the ears hidden under her hairbow flatten in defeat.

    Jaune just gave her a reassuring little smile. But in not replying to Weiss, the ice queen seemed to take this argument as a victory. Bitch. Exactly how Jaune expected to get Blake to help him convince the girl in white to join them on some kind of team-building exercise, she didn't know. Frankly, she thought it was a lost cause.

    Then again, she had thought Jaune a lost cause. Between him and Weiss, she had been ready to just cut her losses. Abandon this dream of Beacon. Then, a whole bunch of nothing happened that for some reason felt more meaningful then she reckoned it had any right to. She'd never activated someone's Aura before. She just kind of lost herself in the moment, and the words tumbled out.

    Blake wasn't feeling hungry anymore. All she could do was prop her head up on her elbow and look out at the cafeteria. Students. Some faunus. Most were human. Although, on some level, she wondered how many students were faunus in disguise. There was a saying among her people. Your life is all ears. Meaning someone born with an easy life by comparison to others. Certain animal traits could be easily hidden by common accessories. Her old friend, Ilia, was completely human passing unless you caught her at the right moment. Blake's hand reached up to her hair bow and scratched idly. Beacon may have been something of a progressive icon for its open acceptance of faunus, but that really didn't mean anything if people like her had to hide her basic biology just to fit in without bias or bigotry.

    Something that the girl over there with the bunny ears was dealing with.

    She saw it out of the corner of her eyes first. Blake didn't know the girl's name, but she did recognize those long rabbit ears. Though she didn't remember how, she believed the girl was a sophomore. She was just trying to navigate the cafeteria, when a boy nearly twice her size came up to her and grabbed one of her ears.

    "Whoa, I told you they were real!" he said. "Hey, I bet you could tie these together. Is it true touchin' ears makes your animal types all hot under the collar?"

    "Ow!" the girl said, trying to shrink away. Her teeth were grip, eyes frantic. But the grip on her ears kept her from getting far. "Let me go!"

    "Oh hey, obligatory Jaundice arc," Jaune said with a certain grimness, staring at the scene.

    Weiss didn't seem to give it more than a passing glance. She seemed more annoyed at the scene they were making than anything else. Blake saw a few other people staring. Most of the nearby team VYPR were watching with distaste. But no one was doing anything. As if just glaring at racist bullying would solve it.

    Then Jaune said something that nearly blindsided Blake. "Them who say nothing in the face of evil are complicit in it." Accounting for the accent, it was word-for-word what Adam would say.

    The urge in her legs to get up and do something suddenly evaporated. She just watched the scene unfold with a certain sense of helplessness. Just, this sense that actually getting up and doing the right thing would somehow be the wrong thing. Her mouth felt dry.

    The faunus girl managed to twist out of the boy's grip, but in doing so dropped her tray of dinner all over herself. One of the boy's friends pointed and laughed, calling her a ditz.

    Jaune was looking at Blake strangely. He just nodded, which he must have thought meant something. But Blake just stared back at him, confused. So he put his hand on her back and gave her a firm push. The weakness in her legs gave her nothing to resist. She stumbled to her feet. Nearly colliding with the taller boy with the build like a northern Mistrali wrestler.

    "Whoa there, dollface," the boy said, and she distantly remembered his name was Cardin. To her surprise, he reached out to catch her before she fell.

    She gave Jaune a scathing look, before her attention snapped back to Cardin. "As if!" she said. As if what? It just sounded like the thing to say. She pushed away from him, knowing he'd never even pretend to put on that nice act if he knew what was under her hairbow.

    "Hey, I was just being nice, girl," Cardin said, frowning. "Looked like you were about to fall there. No need to be a bitch."

    "I'm good," she said, feeling an urge to go somewhere. Do something. She saw the faunus girl disappearing down a hallway to the bathroom, and suddenly had a direction. She pivoted from the racist asshole and stormed off after the girl.

    — 8 —​

    But as soon as the bathroom door behind her closed behind her, and she saw the girl there crying as she tried to wash off her shirt in the sink, she suddenly found all her courage evaporating. She just stood there, ears shrinking under her hairbow.

    The girl turned to her, and Blake wanted nothing to do but to apologize. Say she went through the wrong door. And just run away. It'd be so much easier. This wasn't her problem, exactly. The girl looked like she hated Blake just for seeing her like this.

    "Hi," Blake said weakly, pathetically.

    What would Jaune say if she just chickened out now? That bastard was the reason she was here, facing the bunny girl down. I'm a complete fraud, she thought, finding herself unable to say anything else. Faunus rights, faunus respect, was her pet cause. Her raison d'être, as they'd say here in Vale. Weiss sickened her and put her into a place just like this girl was in. And now that she was facing it head-on, Blake didn't know what to do.

    The girl sniffled. "What do you want?" she asked. The sophomore had an accent when she spoke. It was a lot cleaner than Jaune's, though like his, Blake couldn't place it

    What would Jaune say in my shoes? Gods, thinking of him for inspiration for her own problems. Blake felt like the lowest of the low right now.

    Blake swallowed. "I saw what happened."

    The girl rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, of course you did. Who didn't?"

    Her heart hurt. Her tongue felt dry and swollen. "I, I didn't mean anything by it."

    "Look!" the girl said with a sudden ferocity. "If you're here to tell me sweet nothings and that it'll all be okay, I've heard it all, okay? I don't need it from a stranger too."

    Her anger helped. Gave Blake something to rally herself around. She stood a little taller. "What's your name?"

    "What does it matter?"

    "I don't want to keep thinking of you as that faunus girl who was bullied. I want to know your name. You deserve to be thought of as a person like anyone else."

    The girl glared for a moment, before the heat left her. She went back to trying to wash her blouse with sink water. "Velvet."

    Blake nodded. "Velvet. That's a nice name."

    "I don't need a white knight," she said.

    "What?"

    Velvet rolled her wet eyes. "I've seen it before. And I don't need it. I can handle those bastards myself."

    Blake took a step forward, and froze. "Why didn't anybody do anything for you back there?"

    Velvet laughed without any humor. "Gee, there's a mirror here. Why don't you ask it, huh?" She sniffled. "Look, it's nice what you're doing, I get it. But I can handle this myself."

    "But you shouldn't have to!" Blake said, thinking back to why she first joined the White Fang. The promises Adam had used to sweep her off her feet. "What they did was wrong, just a bunch of racist jerks picking on you because they don't think anyone cares. Well, I—I care!"

    "Great. Racism is solved. Bullying is over. Some random girl saw me get harassed and cares."

    That hurt Blake more than she would have thought. She flinched back, searching for words. "Faunus are just people too. No different than humans with slanted eyes or black skin or blonde hair."

    "Wow, you've really thought this all out. I'll ask Professor Oobleck to give you a medal for being one of the good humans."

    Oobleck. Beacon's caffeine-addicted history teacher. And someone who did seem to genuinely care about fau—

    Stop it. You're getting distracted.

    For a moment, she thought about removing her hairbow. Showing off her ears like she had with Jaune. Because then Velvet would see they're really on the same side. Both faunus. Blake understood because…

    …she'd never really been in Velvet's shoes, had she?

    For a single, horrified moment of shame, she remembered growing up in Menagerie with her father. Surrounded by other faunus in their own little republic, where humans only showed up to trade, and even those were generally incredibly friendly towards faunuskind. It'd only been once she left home that she saw how her horribly people around the world were treated. But by then, she'd taken to wearing her hairbow. Hiding her ears. Just being another human girl in their eyes.

    My life is all ears.

    Blake realized that, on a very real level, she had no idea what Velvet was going through. She'd never been on the receiving end of real racism, petty or otherwise. She'd just seen it in the laws and casual speech of humans who thought she was one of them. That alone had made her angry enough to want to change things. Try to save her people.

    But here, looking at the very reason she dedicated herself to fighting, she just felt like a fraud. A fake. And she didn't know how to handle it without violence.

    Adam Taurus was wrong. Humans and faunus could live together. Coexist as equals. And they could do it without killing each other.

    But right now, she didn't know how.

    "I'm sorry," Blake said.

    "Yeah," Velvet said, and sniffled.

    Blake opened the bathroom door and ran away, like she always did.

    — 9 —​

    She didn't know how long she'd been gone. Her scroll only had the one text from Jaune the entire time.

    Jaune: Wanna talk about it?

    She found him in the dorm common room, his face to the stovetop. It was too dark to see for anyone but a faunus. At first she panicked at the way the burner was on, until she saw him stand up, a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth. Her night vision fixated on the cherry of the cigarette. He took a long drag, staring at her. It wreathed his face in shadows invisible to a normal human. Some abstract part of her realized he was smoking a Nine Lives, her father's old brand. They were far cheaper than most brands because they lacked the packet-mounted fire Dust ignition patch most Valean tobacco came with.

    "Shit," he said. "I was just trying to light up to help stay me awake."

    "So you're smoking? Again?" Blake snapped with more angry care than she would have imagined possible of her just a few days ago.

    "Stole 'em from the physician while he was treating you," he admitted around a mouthful of smoke. Hands in his pockets, he just shrugged. "Figured it'd be more efficient and short-lasting than chugging an amphetamine cola."

    There he went again, using the full name for the generic type of energy drink. A weird quirk of his. She stomped up to him and, lighting up with her Aura, grabbed the tip of the cigarette and killed it. She threw it into the sink to dispose of.

    She turned back around to face him, hands on hips. And the idiot was just smiling at her.

    "Happy to see you're more pissed at me than whatever was taking you," he said idly. "You wanna talk about it?"

    Blake opened her mouth, and nothing came out. The smell of her father's favorite brand made it hard to think of anything but home. She let out a low growl and leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded.

    "I don't know."

    Jaune nodded in understanding. The back of his eyes had a faint glow of Aura. "If you don't wanna jaw, I don't wanna know."

    Something about that offended her. "But it was—you're a jerk, you know that? You just pushed me out there, leaving me without backup, and then I had to talk to Velvet alone, and I just!" She covered her face with her hands. "Gods, I'm a fraud."

    She felt him at her side, leaning against the counter with her. Arms folded in thought. "You wanna make it up to Velvet by breaking Cardin's legs?"

    On some level, she thought it vaguely odd he knew everyone's name when even she didn't. But she dismissed that thought as just being another mystery not worth thinking on. "How would that help? Are we just gonna defeat racism through violence? Prove the White Fang right?"

    He shrugged a shoulder. "You're right. It's symptomatic. Reason chemo works is it kills the whole body and just eighty-sixes cancer by little Bob Ross happy accident. Not a good tool for society, metaphorical or otherwise."

    "What's chemo?"

    Jaune looked a little lost there. "Don't matter none, I guess." He compressed a noise in his throat. "I'm just saying, I look at Cardin, and I think of me when I was younger."

    "What do you mean?"

    He closed his eyes. "Used to hate faunus myself."

    "You?!" she gasped, taking an unconscious step back.

    He nodded. "Was… stupid. But at the time, it made sense. How I was raised mostly. Racism is a self-perpetuating little bugbear. People don't like being wrong. They find science and facts that prove they's right. Just living in my own little online bubble gave me lots of what I thought was proof. You can tell them all the facts and it don't mean nothing to them. Lots of people on the pro-faunus side are just as retarded as those against it. Easy to destroy them with facts and logic and feel like you're on the right side of science and history."

    She bit back bile. "What changed?"

    Jaune sighed. "I met faunus who proved I was wrong. Met ones I was forced to respect as better people than me. Who were the kind of people I wanted to be, as leaders and warriors and whatever. And when I was in a position to be a leader like them, I found I cared for them different folk too as equals, and found the idea of doing anything but disgusting. When you see me, do you see some human trying to act in charge?"

    "No. I see my partner, I guess."

    "Human is just part of my condition. Same as you're my partner, Blake, who just happens to have a pair of cute ears a-hidin' under her headband. Don't make no difference to me; I care about you all the same."

    Blake aggressively stared at her feet. It vaguely felt like he was hitting on her, which wasn't a pleasant idea. But she knew him enough to just chalk it up to his slightly chauvunistic manner of speech. She supposed she could look past at it for the rest of his sake.

    Jaune finally looked at her. "Cardin thought you were just a normal girl, yeah? His first reaction when he saw you looking like you was finna fall was to try to catch you."

    "Yeah, but he was a complete prick about it."

    "You did wound his pride. Boys still gonna be boys."

    "And that excuses it?" she scoffed.

    He grimaced. "No. But it adds context. Like him being a bigot. No one likes to think of themselves as a bad person. Thinking you was a normal girl, he tried acting the good person to you. I gotta believe there's some good in him."

    "Really, Jaune? Really?" she snapped. "How could you say that! Gods, I thought better of you than that!"

    Jaune flinched, but still tried hard to look casual. "You want to change people's hearts and minds about faunus, right?"

    "Yeah, and?"

    "Means that most people out there are like Cardin. They think they know right, but they know wrong. Change ain't an easy thing. Takes someone willing to learn sometimes. Most other times, it requires a good ass kicking with the hard facts that prove you ain't the good person you done thought you was."

    She folded her arms, silent.

    "Ain't a boy out there same as another," he said. "You just kick Cardin's ass for wrongthink and he'll double down. That's why the White Fang today is wrong. How many people who didn't care before now hate faunus because of a couple violent assholes and grifters?"

    Blake looked away, uncomfortable. "So how do I save Velvet? I tried to say something there, but she told me to basically stop and go away. That there wasn't anything I could do to help."

    "Then don't save her," he said with a shrug. "She don't wanna be saved. Do it for yourself."

    "So that's your magical know-it-all human advice, huh?"

    Jaune grinned. "No, just a recommendation. My actual advice for this situation is simple. It's about tailoring to your audience. We do actually kick Cardin's lily white ass, but respect him for fighting back. Don't spit on him or scorn a motherfucker for what he done. Offer him a hand up when he's on the ground and treat him as an equal."

    It was the worst, most cathartic piece of advice Blake had ever received.

    "And we use that experience as a springboard for figuring out how to reach out to Weiss."

    Scratch that. That was the worst advice ever. Gods, Jaune was going to get them all killed, wasn't he?
     
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    • Last edited:
    pingas plight said:
    has it? GIRL, our mister d'Orleans is the FATHER of gestalt-existences.
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    It's a dog eat dog world out there, and Jaune's is the nuttiest.

    I sort of liked how I feel this was the cloest to an "I am an SI" you'lll likely ever get. Most of th time, in stories those are boring and add nothing. Here, I focused more on the emotional impact, but didn't really explain things. Blake knows something is really fucked with Jaune, but can't entirely place it.

    my boy, at this point, i think he realized his deathlessness, being a protag, and is therefore abusing the shit out of it
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    It's a good thing this is a story about introspection and empathy being the keys to victory instead of raw violence. Except how they're going to use violence again Cardin, but then RESPECT HIM afterwards and make a friend.
     
    Volume 3, Chapter 4
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 4: And Then What?
    "The best way to solve your problems is to create more problems until you are dead."

    — 10 —​

    Jaune's fist hit Blake's face. Her Shadow clone faded to dust. Jaune didn't have time to react as Blake swung a leg behind his and shoved him forwards. He hit the ground hard. The glow in his eyes intensified, his body shimmering as he used the recoil of the bounce to launch himself back to his feet like one those toys meant for children to beat on.

    He threw his shield into her face. Her Shadow caught it, launching her down into a crouch. Blake jumped into Jaune, using her sheath as a bludgeon to thwack him upside the face. His Aura came up a little too late, letting most of the impact knock the living piss out of him. It sent spit and a distressing amount of blood to go flying from his mouth.

    "Jaune?!" she gasped, only for him to grab her collar and shoved her forwards. Before she knew it, she was falling onto her back, with him on top of her. She had a sudden, terrifying mental image of him land face-first into her chest. His grip slipping and hands landing somewhere way too erogenous.

    Instead, he collapsed onto her, left hand on the right side of her collar, and the reverse true with his other hand. Putting all his weight on her carotid artery and vena cava. Choking her out even with her Aura. Blake started to see spots quickly.

    She slapped the mat, yielding. And for another horrified moment, she imagined him loosening his grip, but keeping her pinned. Looking down from atop her. Her panting and looking back up at him, nearly helpless. A scene straight out of one of her romance novels. The ones Jaune had been reading just to mess with her. It would have almost been easier.

    Instead, he rolled off her without giving it much thought to how close they'd just been. He stood and held a hand out to her to haul her to her feet. She accepted, the spots fading from her vision, and for a moment was oddly self-conscious of just how much bigger he was than her. Every time she fretted over something untoward happening, it never happened. During the hours sparring and practicing, Jaune had had plenty of chances to cop a feel and play it off as just training. She wouldn't have even been able to argue, exactly, but the problem hadn't happened.

    He let out a breath, wiping the sweat off his brow. "How was that?"

    Blake licked her lips. "You're a lot more of a grappler than a swordsman," she decided. "But you really need to work on getting your Aura up faster. How's your mouth?"

    He spat out a mix of blood and saliva onto the floor. "Dad used to hit me worse."

    This was the way Adam taught her to fight. Brutal and relentless. He'd been fast and deadly, but not able to take many solid hits. She'd focused on avoiding being hit, retaliating with blows from unexpected directions even if they didn't result in the most solid of connections. She wasn't sure if the way she fought was an emulation of him, or because their own weaknesses were similar. Jaune wasn't as fast, but he seemed tankier than her by a Menagerie mile. And not taking into account Aura, definitely a lot stronger than her. She had a worrying feeling that trying to practice with him would be playing against his natural strengths. Even if he was picking up on how to avoid being hit pretty quickly.

    Speaking of.

    Counting on him not predicting it, she flicked her wrist and twisted her weapon, Gambol Shroud, into its firearm state. She quickly fired a round towards his leg. Glowing with a no-color light, Jaune slid millimeters away from the bullet, and in the same motion had his revolver in her face, the barrel nuzzling against her cheek.

    Blake nodded. "Better at dealing with bullets, too. That's progress."

    Jaune holstered his sidearm and sighed. "I'm reckoning shooting people is the sort of escalation students don't usually slink to. Figuring it's finna be a more physical affair. Do Cardin even got a gun?"

    She shrugged. "I think he's got something in his mace. I don't know a Huntsman who doesn't have a ranged option." A pause. "Except you, sort of. There's really nothing fancy in your sword?"

    He walked over and picked up the shield he'd thrown at Blake. "Not near as I can tell me none." He activated his Aura. "Think I feel sommat in the sword when I try to flex my soul at it. Don't know what it means me none, though. Really hard to explain. More a vague instinct than tactile sensation."

    "There's some devices that react to Aura," she said thoughtfully, eyes going over the training room in the gym basement. Not a popular destination on a Wednesday night, it seemed. "I forget what they're called, but they're expensive. Usually have something to do with Dust."

    Jaune sheathed his sword in the shield, shaking his head. "Means nada a mi," he muttered. "Not like I can afford much in the way of Dust, anyhow."

    "We could always steal from Weiss' stash," Blake suggested with an impish little expression.

    "Oh, please. Have you seen her skin care shit? Weiss keeps her stuff locked up tighter than that chastity belt she calls a personality. Especially the stuff that used to be mine!"

    Blake bit down a laugh. "Yeah, sorry about that. We just kind of assumed everything we didn't know was some kind of drug when we tossed your stuff out."

    He gave her a flat look. "You really didn't know what cocoa butter was?"

    She shrugged, looking away. But still smiling. "Do I look like the kind of girl who uses shaving butter?"

    "It's also skin moisturizer!" he huffed. Then, running a hand over his face: "Only reason I'm working on this beard is because I kept nicking my face without the stuff. All Jaune had was a frickin' straight razor."

    "Oh, Jaune talks about himself in the third person."

    He blinked, like he realized he'd just made some gaff. "Jaune has always talked in the third person. It makes Jaune far more mysterious."

    "Keep telling yourself that," she said with a friendly roll of the eyes.

    "If Jaune lies hard enough, he'll believe himself. That makes all his lies true."

    She walked up to him and flicked him on the forehead. He popped up his Aura to block any damage. "Don't quit your day job."

    "Ow!" he said. "It ain't my fault. Gangsta rap made me do it. I'm highly impressionable."

    "Oh sure," Blake said. "You ready to call it a night?"

    He glared at her. "Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow we kick Cardin's ass."

    "You really think we're ready?"

    Jaune nodded, the back of his eyes glinting with Aura in that way he kept liking to do. "Worst come worst, better he kick my ass out there than you kicking my ass here."

    She leaned towards him, resting her chin on her fist mockingly. "Aw, what's the matter? Embarrassed?"

    He put a hand on her head and pushed her away, rolling his eyes with his whole body, exasperated. "Just because I'm a reformed gamer and no longer racist don't mean I can't have me my sexist pride."

    "Gotcha. After we beat Cardin's bad habits out of him, I'll put you on the chopping block. Force feed you respect women juice."

    "I liked it better when you only mocked me about things that didn't matter, like my drinking or dick size," he said with a frown, hands in his pockets.

    Blake rested hands on her hips. "Only one of those things actually matter, Jaune," she said seriously.

    "See, you say that, but you can tell a lot about a guy by his junk," he said, leaving the training mat. "Cardin has small PP energy. It's why he doesn't wear a cup to protect himself. So punch that as a first resort."

    "Let me guess, you're the opposite."

    Jaune smiled at her, shaking his head. "Nah, I got a medium PP. It talks to ghosts."

    Blake wanted to stick her tongue out in disgust, but the line was so stupid she actually laughed. "I hate you."

    He winked. "Feeling's mutual, girl."

    — 11 —​

    This was the worst idea ever. Why the hell had she been convinced to do this? As she sat there at the cafeteria table, uncomfortably unable to eat her food or do anything but squirm in place, she watched as Jaune left her.

    He placed his hand briefly on her shoulder, and winked. "Just be there when I need you."

    And then her partner left to go deal with Cardin. It was just her at the table with Weiss, not really paying them any mind without Jaune bothering her, and Shamrock, just practicing more cards tricks in his frumpy old tophat. Neither of them seemed to care about what Blake and Jaune were about to do. And maybe that was for the best.

    Blake felt as though she should start this, but had no real idea how to. She just kept thinking about Velvet, and the way she had yelled at her. All but called her out as being completely useless. A sympathetic face that couldn't do anything to really help. And as she watched Jaune walk up to Cardin, the same feeling crept through her veins. Giving her a feeling like she was sinking in quicksand, but somehow all internal.

    They started by talking. Cardin had been doing something, distracted by running a comb through his short brown hair. He seemed a little surprised when Jaune showed up. Blake couldn't exactly catch most of the conversation. She just saw the way that Cardin held out his comb, and seemed to be discussing it. Something about his hair, she presumed.

    "I wonder how it's like dealing with your hair when you have animal ears," Jaune said. And Blake felt a touch of indignation at the word animal. But she had to bite it down, pretending like she wasn't staring at the two boys talk intently.

    "I don't know, man. Probably sucks. You ever notice how most hair care products say not for use by faunus?" Cardin laughed. "At the little shop on campus, the only stuff I've seen actually marketed for animal people is stuff that kills lice. I was half tempted to buy it when I touched that bunny girl."

    Jaune nodded. "Honestly, that was kind of fucked up. It's pretty sad that you're bullying Velvet, a girl dying of ligma."

    Cardin snorted. "Wait, who's Velvet?"

    Seriously? Seriously? Cardin was making her life a living hell, he didn't even have the courtesy to know Velvet's name.

    Then again, I didn't really know it either.

    "Ligma balls!" Jaune said, and threw a sucker punch with his shield arm straight into Cardin's mouth. He enlarged the shield in the motion, the tip of the heater shield expanding and stabbed into the taller boy's cheek. Taken by complete surprise, he didn't bring up his Aura. Cardin stumbled backwards with a spurt of blood.

    He swung his foot behind Cardin as he stumbled, reaching out to shove his face forwards and trip him onto his back. Exactly like she trained him to do.

    But Cardin flared his Aura and braced himself. He didn't fall. Instead, he rammed a fist straight into Jaune's center of mass. Jaune nearly doubled over. Only reason he didn't was the way Cardin grabbed his shoulders to steady him, just so he could headbutt her partner. She wasn't sure whose blood was whose.

    Jaune rammed his fist low into Cardin's groin. And at that point, Team CRDL, Cardin's men, finally took offense. Sitting on the far side of a nearby table, they stood up to help their team leader.

    Oh shit, oh shit, oh double shit!

    Blake looked around desperately for something to do. She felt so rooted in place. Not far away, Velvet was sitting with her team, glaring with an unreadable expression at the fight. Why couldn't Blake do something? Why did she want to run away and hide when her partner, Jaune, was about to get killed all because of her personal vendettas?

    Jaune said he'd always be there for her. When he'd said it, she'd almost laughed it off. Just some alcoholic simp trying to ingratiate himself to the people who hated him. But seeing this here, as Jaune and Cardin exchanged bloody blows, she felt like a piece of shit.

    Simp. Gods. That was one of Jaune's words she'd picked up. She was picking up a lot from him. And it felt like she wasn't giving anything back, from stupid words to actual actions that mattered.

    Jaune was doing what he said he would for her. And she was just sitting here, terrified.

    No.

    She grabbed her tray of food and, with a flash of Aura precision, hurled it at team CRDL. The tray hit one of the boys in the face, the food going flying.

    A saucy sandwich hit nearby Ruby, who'd been engrossed in a conversation with her sister, Yang. The little girl stood up sharply. "Who threw that? It was you!" And just threw her box of juice at CRDL, which missed and hit someone else. The new person reactively threw his food at someone else.

    The words left Blake's mouth before she had time to regret ever thinking of them. "Food fight!"

    "Food fight!" Ruby echoed, throwing something at someone else.

    It took all of three seconds for the entire cafeteria to erupt into a warzone. Fruits, vegetables, and whatever a tomato technically was started flying. Sandwiches hit students. Styrofoam trays filled with ratatouille hit Weiss, who screamed with rage.

    The sudden storm of food meant Team CRDL couldn't get to Cardin and Jaune without going through a sudden warzone. Blake even saw a few tables go flying.

    But those were all three seconds Cardin had to wail on Jaune. Her partner had gotten a few good hits, but Cardin was big.

    Blake found her legs and dove forwards, cartwheeling through the hail of cafeteria debris to land beside Jaune. Cardin looked at her with surprise as he was about to bring his mace down on Jaune. She smiled, all teeth, as she grabbed Jaune and activated her Semblance. His weapon hit where they'd been a second ago, shattered the shadow clone of her and her partner.

    "Took your time," Jaune mumbled, and spat out blood.

    Unlike Jaune and Cardin, she didn't usually carry her weapon on her while in school uniform. Most students kept those in their rocket lockers. But today, she and Jaune had come prepared. She took out Gambol Shroud and extended the whip.

    Jaune grabbed it without thinking, and Blake jumped to the side. Even through the hail of food, she knew how to avoid a hit. Adam had taught her that much. Cardin didn't seem to know who to try to kill. Focusing on her was his mistake. She swung her weapon, and the whip launched Jaune straight into Cardin's ugly mug shield-first.

    He dropped his mace. Jaune picked it up and swung it straight into the boy's side. Cardin doubled over. With an Aura-assisted flip, Blake kicked him right under the jaw. Spit and blood went flying. She could almost see the stars in his eyes.

    From the far side of the cafeteria, someone had already built a fort out of tables and chairs. "I'm queen of the castle!" a girl challenged to the entire wreck of a room. The Mistrali looking boy near her looked like he wanted to just up and die from embarrassment.

    Blake couldn't blame her. Seconds were all it took for this entire place to go to the dogs. Which, now that she thought of it, was probably another anti-faunus term. Not that it mattered. The chaos had already consumed the entire student body, from the seniors down to the freshmen like her.

    She was only too glad it meant no one really noticed how serious she and Jaune were getting on Cardin.

    "Justice will be swift!" Ruby cried out. "Justice will be painful. It will be delicious!" The crushed juice box she threw mixed with a storm of cutlery Pyrrha was using as a kind of shield to stop team VYPR from taking damage. Sticky, juicy forks and knives went flying as Pyrrha lost her focus.

    Blake swung her weapon up, Jaune still holding on. He curled up behind the shield, letting the utensils hit him. They recoiled off, raining down onto a stunned Cardin fast and hard. He put up his Aura, but it was death by a thousand cuts. Literally. Jaune pulled on Blake's whip, using it to spin end-over-end to deliver the back of his boot to Cardin's forehead on the way down with enough force to overthrow a small government.

    Someone went flying through one of the stone columns holding up the vaulted cafeteria room. Now broken masonry joined the storm of watermelons hitting everything and ruined almost everyone's uniform. With all the dust and food gore, Blake just knew the laundry rooms in the dorms would have a weeks-long waiting list just to get to a machine.

    It was a miracle the only thing she had on her uniform with a bit of blood. Then again, she knew from experience that blood didn't wash out very easily.

    Half-stumbling, Cardin took a swing at her. She sidestepped it faster than he could move, wrapping her whip around his arm. With a solid tug, Cardin fell forwards straight into her knee. The boy twice her size collapsed onto all fours, barely conscious. Until Jaune grabbed his mace off the ground and battered him face-first into the ground. There went the last of Cardin's Aura.

    Blake stood there, panting. Fingers sweating. Her cat ears twitched under her hairbow. They'd done it. She and Jaune, as partners. Took out one of the biggest, meanest bastards in the freshman year. And all it took was a bit of training, teamwork, and enough collateral damage to utterly destroy the school cafeteria.

    She looked down at Cardin, and felt her hands shaking. This… this wasn't enough. Cardin was a complete racist fuckwad. He deserved far more than a simple bloody nose and wounded pride. She wanted to run her sword through his Aura-less torso. Pin him to the ground, nail him to a cross like they still did out on the frontier to criminals. This was too good for that bastard. If he knew Blake was a faunus, he'd be trying to ruin her life too.

    She whiteknuckled Gambol Shroud, staring down at him. She had to do more. To hell with Jaune saying they needed to respect this prick. Cardin had to pay. For herself. For Velvet. For all her people. She—

    Jaune put his hand on her shoulder, and smiled. The feeling sloughed off her like a snake shedding her skin. What was she doing? How was what she wanted any different than what Adam had done? Gods above, she and him really weren't that different. She wanted to say they were, but for a moment there, able to gloat and rub it in, what had she been about to do?

    And then what?

    Blake's knees felt weak all the sudden.

    What if she did brutalize Cardin? Maybe even kill him in a moment of blind bull rage. Where would she stop? Does she go out and shoot up the first store she sees that refuses to serve faunus? Firebomb a human-only school? Go back crawling to Adam in tears, saying he was right?

    "The White Fang is right because they tell us we're wrong," Adam had once told her, trying his hand at cooking dinner in camp. And failing. Badly. "What did the protests do? We only got token rights because men like your father fought in a Revolution and won. Who the hell are the humans for telling us we're fighting oppression the wrong way? Nobody in history has even broken their chains by appealing to the better angels of those keeping them in irons. Be real, Blake."

    And then what?

    Blake had kept asking herself and then what until she cut the cord on the train and left Adam and her old life behind.

    She hadn't left because she'd had some revelation. Hadn't suddenly come up with a genius way to refute Adam and the White Fang. She left because it had felt wrong for reasons she couldn't really explain at the time, only attempts to justify after the fact. Saying that being terrorists would just get all faunus killed. Or agreeing with Jaune that terrorism would only make people hate her people.

    But faced with Cardin like this, where had her mind gone? Back to the way Adam had seen the world.

    That's why she left. She hadn't given Adam the chance to talk her out of it. She had made her choice and executed it. Left him and that life behind her and ran away to Beacon. Because she was terrified Adam would change her mind once and for all.

    And now what?

    Blake shivered against her will.

    "You kicked ass!" Jaune enthused with a boyish smile.

    "So did you," she said, so very quiet. Her mouth was dry.

    "No, I kicked face. Big difference."

    With a smile she didn't entirely feel, she pushed Jaune away playfully. Sending him right into the path of a rogue flying turkey. Blake watched it and laughed as he tried to pull his head out of the turkey's ass. And as soon as he did, Jaune's entire face fell.

    Blake spun to follow his eyes, as did the rest of the entire cafeteria. She hadn't heard Glynda Goodwitch slam open the main doors and storm in over the roar of screams and clattering of food. She waved her riding crop in front of her, stopping a hail of fruit from hitting her with her telekinetic Semblance or whatever it was the Deputy Headmistress of the entire school could do. Gritting her teeth, she waved it again.

    She watched as the woman's incredibly powerful ability forced all the projectiles in the room to the ground. Everything else, the misplaced trays and plates and tables, all took to the air. The castle of tables dismantled in front of Blake's eyes, sending the girl who had been atop them falling to the ground with a surprised yelp.

    The air filled again with everything in the room. The column someone had destroyed reassembled itself as Glynda put the fragments back into place.

    "Shit!" Jaune hissed, and instead of trying to run for cover and escape like so many other students were, he went to Cardin. Flaring his Aura for a second, he hefted the boy up onto his feet. "C'mon, you dumbass. We gotta get out of here!"

    Cardin, still dazed, was at least able to get to his feet. But without his Aura strong enough to support him, he had to lean mostly on Jaune. The boy's face was a patchwork of bruises and cuts. On an abstract level, Blake felt betrayed as the boys limped away for somewhere beyond Glynda's view, using the storm of debris in the air for cover. Almost reluctantly, she followed at a vague distance. All the way out of the cafeteria down a side hallway towards the bathrooms and another one of the building's exits.

    "Dude," Cardin said. "Why?"

    Jaune snorted. "You might be a complete asshole half the kids here wanna kill, but you're not enough of an asshole to deserve Ms. Goodbitch."

    Rubbing his bleeding face, Cardin gave a single barking laugh. "Thanks, I guess. Jaune, right? Or John. Jeans? You're wearing jeans so that feels right."

    Jaune flicked the boy's forehead, right on the still swelling bruise on Cardin's forehead. Cardin yelped in pain. "I'm Jaune. And you can thank me by having some common sense."

    "What?"

    "Velvet."

    "Who?"

    "Bunny girl senpai," Jaune said, holding out the mace for Cardin to take.

    "Oh." Cardin sniffed, still rubbing his wounds. He took his weapon back with an almost thoughtful expression. "Why do you care about some animal?"

    "Bitch got her a name," Jaune said. Blake, standing in the shadows of the hallway, pursed her lips with distaste. "You really think you can pull that shit and not get murdered eventually? I saved your life back there. You pack one fuck of a punch, bro, but some white knight or simp was bound to try to stand up to you eventually."

    "I coulda taken 'em," he muttered. "We're Huntsmen. Survival of the fittest out there."

    "And yet I was able to knock you on your dick."

    "Which you punched me in!"

    Jaune rolled his eyes. "Weird. Thought you were a girl. Didn't feel no dick when my fist hit."

    Cardin scowled, raising his fist to punch Jaune. The boy just stared back at him, and Cardin relented with a sigh. "I guess you ain't bad in a fight too. You and your girlfriend both."

    Jaune punched him in the shoulder. "Man, you really think I could score with a girl like her?"

    Cardin appraised Jaune for a moment. "Dunno, man. Maybe the hot but quiet bookish type just ain't you? You just gotta look off campus. Babes flock to guys like us out there in the real world. I could show you and—bam. World changed."

    "Only reason you're saying that is cuz the babes here see you being a prick and assume the worst. Half of them want to kill you. Really, I'm out there saving your ass. But I'll take you up on the offer. Provided you learn how to stay alive out there, bro."

    "Please. I was winning that fight at first."

    "Yeah, but I was winning at last. Probably woulda won if your team actually had your back like my partner do."

    Cardin made a noise in his throat, looking away. "Up for a round two?"

    Jaune looked over his shoulder, towards the main cafeteria. His blue eyed landed on where Blake was lurking, and she smiled. "Maybe not till the heat dies down, bro. Team BASS versus Team CRDL. Ass kicking of the century."

    "Nah. You got too many girls on your team."

    "I know, right? The bitches in this school is nuts."

    Cardin nodded. "Hot, though. Who's that girl in white on your team?"

    "Racist rich bitch. Unless you got more money than her, no dice, Jack."

    "Hey, she knows how the world works."

    Jaune shook his head. "Not enough to know it's going to break her down and destroy her. Same as you if you keep up them attitudes."

    "About what, faunus? Please. Like anybody cares."

    "I care," Jaune said firmly. "I don't wanna see how bad it's gonna go when more than just me and my baby fists get pissed at you. You tried to help my partner when she was a-stumblin'. There's a good guy in you somewhere."

    "I'm a good guy everywhere."

    "Then maybe stop picking on girls half your size? You're white knight bait. Some homo trying to score a crumb of pussy by trying to fight you because you're making yourself a target."

    Cardin, to Blake's surprise, actually seemed to consider that. At length, he sighed. "I don't really care what some wannabe weaklings think of me. But if a runt like you can knock my cock in, I don't know. Maybe."

    Jaune put a hand on Cardin's shoulder for a moment. "Hell yeah, Cardin. Maybe focus on getting your team to back you up faster. Next time I decide to kick your ass, I want a challenge, brah."

    "Your ass is grass, Jaune."

    He laughed. "Toss me your number. I think you know the good places in town to unwind after this kinda shit."

    "Dunno. Face is a bit messy right now."

    "Bitches love bruises and scars. We're Huntsmen, remember?"

    "I guess so, bro."

    Blake bristled. She wasn't even really sure what she was watching. In a matter of moments, the two boys had gone from trying to kill each other, to almost seeming like friends. She genuinely did not understand what was going on. How it had even happened. It was like all it took was standing up for Cardin and then being a pair of chauvinistic pigs to become the best buddies all of a sudden. The two of them had even started making plans to hang out and try to score with girls.

    She felt a hot wave of anger, and didn't know what to do with it. Jaune had said that the way to go forward was to respect Cardin for fighting back. But this conversation—she didn't know.

    How was this supposed to give them inside knowledge into how to talk and deal with Weiss? Did he expect Blake to just go up to Weiss one day, beat the shit out of her, and then start talking about their ex-boyfriends together and how much boys suck? How on Remnant was that ever going to work with Weiss? Oh yes, let's talk about dresses, and painting our nails, and how small Adam's dick was—now we get along as besties and you're no longer a racist.

    And then what?

    Hell, even that part of the plan didn't really work. Cardin was still a racist. Still a bigot, and hadn't apologized. She didn't even think he felt remorse over it, not exactly. Only seeming to concede that going against Velvet was wrong because she was a smaller girl, and people were going to get angry about this. The boy hadn't really changed his mind, just learned that the way he was going about things was wrong. Not on a deep soul searching kind of level, but on a basic practical one. Bringing Cardin up from being a racist prick, to just being a chauvinistic prick.

    How did this help anyone?

    She hated this. She hated Cardin. She hated Jaune. She just wanted to reach out and strangle them both. Things had been made perhaps marginally better for a Velvet, but the problems underlying it hadn't been fixed.

    Blake had lost herself so much in her angry thoughts that she hadn't noticed that the two of them were suddenly alone, her and Jaune.

    "What the fuck was that?" she demanded. "How does this fix anything? Why are you friends with Cardin now! You're both just assholes and—"

    Jaune stepped forward, joining her in the shadows. And wrapped his arms around her. She was so shocked and surprised she nearly activated her Semblance on reflex to escape. In a soft voice, he said to her and her alone, "It's a stupid, confusing world out there. There's no such thing as one big act that solves everything. No grand gestures to make the world a better place. Sometimes, the best you can do is a little human touch. And you're just as human as me. Probably more."

    Blake sniffled in rage. And—and—and—

    She couldn't hug him back.

    There had been a scene in one of her books. The hero had come to the heroine in a moment of weakness. An intense conversation. When suddenly he had hugged her, and unable to stop herself, she had hugged him back. Just melted in his arms. It was a powerful idea. The idea of two people touching, and just melting all your problems away in that moment of connection.

    Melting.

    Blake couldn't do that. She couldn't hug him back. She couldn't melt in his arms like he was the answer to her problems. Blake wasn't that kind of girl. And Jaune wasn't that kind of boy. His touch wasn't some kind of electric feeling; it didn't make her feel hot under the collar. Nothing like those romantic books of hers when the two heroes hugged it out and made nice. All it did was make Blake feel small and helpless in a way which made her want to run away all over again. Jaune was just the asshole she had to suffer with for the next four years of her life. Everything about him was awful. An alcoholic, a chauvinist, barely competent in a fight, a font of bad ideas, and the only person in a long time that she ever really connected with.

    She hated him. She hated herself. Hated how she just let him hug her. Hated those angry, hot tears in her eyes. Hated the way she didn't stop him from wiping them away on the sleeve of the school uniform.

    "You were awesome out there. We did a good thing, you and I. As a team, as partners," he said in that same tone. From anyone else, and any other situation, she would have almost thought he was patronizing her. But like so many other stupid, dumb lines, it somehow came across as painfully genuine. Someone who wasn't that good with words trying his best, and meaning it all.

    "I don't know how this will help with Weiss," she said. "She's just awful. Why is she even on our team?"

    He was still holding her. "Because."

    And that seemed to be all he knew on the topic. No answers, no smart remarks, no witty insults. Just a blank statement that was as true as any of the two of them could manage.

    "I want to go home," she found herself saying. Just muttering it under her breath as if hoping he couldn't hear her.

    He gave a single little laugh. "I do too. But I don't know where my home is anymore. If you weren't here, where would you be?"

    Blake didn't have an answer.

    "We're stuck in this little hell together, you and I. All we can do is work at it. Make this place our home. Make our team our family. I told you I'd have your back no matter what. Even if you don't believe me, even if you don't want to have my back, I'll be there for you."

    "I know."

    He smiled warmly, a little expression that somehow went miles. "The longest journeys start with a single step. The best ones start with you tripping and falling onto your face. Doubly so if there's cute girls involved to watch and make fun of you."

    At long length, she found the effort to push him away. "You're the worst partner I've ever had."

    "Worst partner you've ever had so far."

    Blake didn't know why, but that actually made her laugh. And maybe at times like this, just being able to laugh in the face of everything that was wrong was the only victory she was ever going to get. The only way she'd ever feel better about herself. Losing herself in the casual stupidity of a friend.

    Blake could live with that.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Eric d'Orléans said:
    Blake didn't know why, but that actually made her laugh. And maybe at times like this, just being able to laugh in the face of everything that was wrong was the only victory she was ever going to get. The only way she'd ever feel better about herself. Losing herself in the casual stupidity of a friend.

    Blake could live with that.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    bro is the ship charting the path? :o
     
    Volume 3, Chapter 5
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 5: Every Week is Fashion Week for Me
    "Your lack of Drip is Embarrassing."

    — 12 —​

    Years ago, someone once told Coco Adele that everyone's got a latent telepathic nerve in their head. How else, her partner Fox had argued, could people pick out that you were staring at them from across a crowded room? The feeling of being watched meant something. Only high level Aura techniques could really tap into that.

    Of course, she'd noted, ever since she started wearing her signature and extremely designer sunglasses, people had grown far less conscious of that. Professor Oobleck, leading Team CFVY—Coffee—on its first outside mission as a sophomore team, had ruined the illusions of her sunglasses giving her some mystical power. He said that human or faunus, people had some enzyme that triggered when someone's pupils were on them. Coco hadn't entirely listened, unhappy with the facts ruining her own self image.

    Didn't change the fact that with her sunglasses on 24/7, nobody ever seemed to realize she was looking at them unless she made it stupid obvious. Dark as they were, she could usually stare people down, examine and size them up without them realizing it. A useful tool in dealing with people everywhere she went.

    Plus, they were stylish as hell.

    Which was why it was more than a little surprising that as soon as she zeroed in on the boy in the gym who had to be Jaune Arc, he turned to look her dead in the eyes. She sucked in on her lips, displeased. Despite the distance between them, she had this vague feeling he was trying to intimidate her. He had this look like he found her presence in the gym, fully clothed in her off-duty finest, subtly hilarious.

    Jaune looked away to finish his reps at the squat rack.

    When she asked around after him, people had told Coco that Jaune was a scraggly looking blonde boy with a surprisingly trendy haircut. If she had been paying more attention, she probably would have actually known what he looked like better. Yesterday during the food fight, apparently Velvet had been staring at him. Coco had been a bit distracted trying to establish the dominance of her team in any fight, be it against Grimm or food. She hadn't been able to hear the end of it from Velvet. Her teammate had ranted and raved that some blond asshole human had apparently tried intervening on her behalf. Just two days after Velvet had told off some other girl, presumably Jaune's partner, Blake.

    The entire thing hadn't sat right with Coco. Which was why she was here, to try to find the boy.

    Up close, the description of a scraggly blond started to fall apart. He seemed aware of her, but more concentrated on finishing his workout. The sweat poured off him like a river. The weights over his shoulders weren't the most impressive, until she realized something. He's not using his Aura. Her teammate Yatsuhashi, a complete giant of a boy at seven feet tall, could easily lift a truck. But he needed to fully cowl himself in his Aura to do that. Even Coco needed a subtle burn to carry her weapon, the minigun that folded out of her custom purse. It was too big and unwieldy to be able to aim and fire without.

    Jaune wasn't doing that. With a vague impressed click of her tongue, she realized that he was actually working himself out. Not trying to show off. Not trying to work his Aura. But actually working his physical body.

    Not a bad body for a boy, either. He was working without a shirt. When he put the bar back on the squat rack and turned to face her, she got a good look at the claw scars running down from his heart down to his groin. A couple of nasty but well healed burn scars across his chest. His right hand, the knuckle in particular, was a white patchwork of shrapnel scars. It gave the impression of someone who had been out there giving it his all as a Huntsman. The only thing he was missing was an ensemble of tattoos to complete the look.

    Once again, she was glad for her sunglasses. It prevented her from looking like she was checking him out. Not that she was in that kind of way. Boys really weren't her style.

    "I help ya?" Jaune drawled lazily, taking out his earbuds. This close, the thing that struck her most was his eyes. Coco had to reassess the boy. He was using his Aura, just in an intensely subtle way that wouldn't affect anything. She could see a faint glow in the back of his eyes, a color she couldn't quite place. Looking too deep into them bothered her for a reason she couldn't articulate. Even with her sunglasses on indoors like this, she felt an overpowering urge to look away.

    He ran a hand through his short blond beard, more a kind of two-week-old stubble that either couldn't really become a beard or was neatly trimmed. Given that he was a freshman, and probably no more than seventeen, the former was probably the case.

    "You Jaune?" she asked, affecting her typical air of cool detachment. It helped smooth over that weird urge not to look him in the eyes.

    "No," he said, putting his earbuds back in. It looked like that was some kind of insanely corny joke that only he understood. Annoying.

    She reached out a hand to grab his wrist, stopping him from going deaf to the world. "So you're not the hotshot leader of the up-and-coming Team BASS? The boy who got to the relic in the heart of the Emerald Forest half an hour before anyone else did? Who led the assault against the White Fang at a Dust store for the hell of it? And who utterly mopped the floor with Cardin Winchester and managed to get away with it?"

    The boy gave her a kind of smile as he ran his fingers through his fade haircut. "Damn. When ya put it like that there, you could even pretend I'm cool. There was mitigating circumstances that, in hindsight, turn all of that from being cool into plum retarded, Coco."

    Behind her sunglasses, she cocked an eyebrow, impressed. "You know my name."

    He snorted. "Heard me some high siddity chica were asking after me. Figured she'd be smart enough to realize it were my partner, Blake, a girl wanted."

    A subtle insult at her. And playing himself down. At least she was pretty sure that's what he was saying. The boy spoke in a bizarre accent, and used a phrase that Coco didn't recognize in the slightest. She had heard about that too.

    In any case, Coco frowned as he turned to walk away towards the showers. She didn't like following after people, exactly. But the way he seemed to be trying to avoid her activated some old prey chasing instinct that humans have had ever since they were little more than monkeys.

    "I'm here about Velvet," she said.

    He leaned his head back, looking over his shoulder to grimace at her. "If you want to yell at me for getting involved with bidness idn't mine, get in line. The queue for women who hate me starts at your left, my right."

    She pursed her lips. "No. She won't thank you, so I'm going to."

    Hands in the pockets of his workout shorts, he paused for just a moment. "A girl shoulda kicked Cardin's ass herself."

    Another odd way of phrasing things. Jaune was referring to Coco in the third person to her face. An Atlesian student from her class had once explained that Atlesians occasionally talked like that to people they felt were inferior to them or were trying to make go away. She could almost believe that was what the boy was trying to do, except his tone didn't really match that. It felt to her more like some kind of weird dialectical thing. Wherever the boy was from, it was probably somewhere deep out in the Grimm Wastelands.

    Whatever the case, Coco wouldn't be intimidated. Not even as she kept pace with him into the boys' locker room. "Your partner can probably tell you that Velvet isn't exactly the most… welcoming of people trying to stand up for her. My first day of this sophomore year, I nearly killed Cardin until she got angry at me for it. She's a little too independently minded. Besides, after hearing her rant about how much she hates that you stepped up for her against him, I needed some time away from my team."

    "Didn't do it for her," he dismissed. "My partner got upset about it. I did it for her sake. Velvet losing one of her bullies is just a happy little accident."

    "So, you're not just the compulsive white knight sort?"

    Jaune opened his locker, grinning. "Miss me with that shit. Just the right thing to do." Then, after a hesitation: "I been places ochyen mal. Places so corrupt the only acts you can commit with a clean conscience are nihilistic. Beacon ain't like that, and I don't want it to feel like that to someone like my partner."

    From anyone else, something that dramatic would have made Coco laugh. It sounded like something straight from a noir drama. But in that moment, coming from Jaune, she believed him.

    Coco decided in that moment that, whatever rumors she might have heard about the boy, she liked this Jaune Arc. Which made it all the funnier that he didn't seem to want her around.

    "You might want to avert your eyes," he said, taking out a towel. "I'm in need of a shower right now."

    She couldn't help but give a small chuckle at that. With her sunglasses on, he couldn't possibly know that she wasn't exactly looking at him. His eyes bothered her just a little too much. But suddenly, everything clicked into place for her.

    The way he was using his Aura. The fact that he was trying to make her go away by threatening to get naked as she watched. Jaune was legitimately trying to intimidate Coco. Like, for real. She had been getting that vague sense this whole time, but now it fully hit her, and she couldn't help but laugh.

    Jaune frowned. "I'm serious. I have absolutely no sense of shame. I will seriously look at you in the eyes and get naked."

    Coco shook her head, still smiling. Of course the boy was bothered. That macho male pride in action. Behind her sunglasses, her eyes glinted with amusement. His attempts to shake her off were hilariously amateurish. It was obvious to her, the more she talked with him, that Jaune was trying and failing to be cool.

    Worst part, for a moment, she'd nearly believed it. But when he tried to be serious like that, it all fell apart. He just wanted to be alone with his pride.

    Like hell she'd give him the pleasure.

    "Go ahead," she said with a shrug. "You're not carrying the right equipment to interest me. Tried it once. Huge mistake. And you look like you'd be about a, hmm, medium mistake at best."

    He regarded her gravely. "That so?"

    Coco leaned forwards, lowering her shades. It was a habit she had picked up for people shorter than her, which included most girls and boys. There was a reason why she wore high heels to keep her at about six foot even. And given the cut of her top, it usually threw people a little off their game. Jaune, however, was still an inch or two over her. About the same height as her partner, Fox.

    "Nothing a veteran like me hasn't seen, boy."

    She expected that to intimidate him right back. Instead, to her intense surprise, he wrapped his towel around his waist and dropped his pants. She laughed again as he made his way into the showers, wearing nothing but that towel and his sidearm. Coco did admittedly have the courtesy to not follow him in.

    "I get it, Coco. You're trying to play nice with me because I helped out your teammate on your behalf, indirectly," he said as the hot steam leaked out from the showers. "But you're better off thanking my teammate, Blake. She was the mastermind behind this. I'm just the dumb muscle."

    "Oh?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow in amusement. Even though the only one who knew she was doing it was herself. "I like how you've gone from never meeting me before to suddenly knowing all about how I operate. Very charming. I bet a boy like you gets all the girls by knowing just how they tick. They probably call you something like the pussy whisperer."

    From within the showers, the boy huffed. "You can drop the senpai shtick."

    For a moment, she was vaguely offended. Senpai. A Mistrali word for upperclassmen. Despite one of her teammates being from Mistral, she hadn't learned it from Yatsuhashi. It was one of those rather cringy words from those animes they exported from the country. At least usually it was. But she didn't get the sense he was using it like that, even though in context that would be appropriate, given that she was technically both an adult and his upperclasswomen.

    He was using it in the sense that she had learned from Yatsuhashi. Senpai. He had meant in the term of a senior caregiver of sorts, a handler. A kind of false sense of friendliness you gave to an inferior. The exact kind of way that they used it in the Yakuza. Given his accent, she somehow found it wildly inappropriate that he was using terminology from the Yak. It made it all the more impossible to pin down where the boy was from.

    Coco reappraised Jaune. Just slightly. "Aww, look at you. You think it matters to me what you think."

    "Yes, that is how traditional human interactions go."

    "Funny. I thought most of your interactions ended with you punching people. Like Cardin. Speaking of, I've decided what I'm gonna do with you."

    "Allow me to enjoy my self-flagellation in peace?" he suggested hopefully.

    She adjusted her shades. "Nah. I'm adopting you, Jaune Arc. You are now mine. I'm gonna write my name in you."

    Jaune snorted. "I believe there's a word for that. Sugar momma."

    "Sugar sista," Coco corrected with a wink. "I'm not old enough to have kids."

    "I had one of those once," Jaune said, seeming to open up slightly. "Not the kids part, the other. She was an elderly church-going black lady who adopted me to give me food and stuff from work. The dream of every white boy."

    "Only thing I'm gonna feed you are straight facts until you're the second coming of Coco herself."

    "Jaune too speaks in the third person to become cooler."

    "You're already getting it! First step is to stop being so mopey, kid."

    He turned off the water. The boy was a fast showerer, almost like he was afraid that some other boy would come in and see him. Though she could barely see it with her fogged up lenses, she saw the towel on the wall of the shower get pulled down to his side.

    A moment later, her shades were gone. She nearly sneered in sudden anger, until she saw Jaune standing in front of her, idly wiping the fog away on his towel before offering them back to her.

    She took them back with a frown.

    "I figured a cool Huntress would waterproof her shades. What do you do when it rains?" he asked, stepping past her.

    "See, this is your first lesson, Jaune," she said. "If you deny your problems hard enough, they go away. Like rain. Water can't stop me from designer shades. That's letting nature win."

    "I know. You might as well roll over and let the Grimm get you."

    She snapped her fingers. "Now you're cookin' with Dust!"

    "As opposed to every other plan of mine," he said.

    Coco shook her head. "Ah, yes. The hallmark of the ideal team leader. Something didn't go how I planned, better fall on my sword." She put her hands on her hips, and just stared at him.

    Jaune rolled his eyes. "My sword is made of foam and kitten dreams. I'll bounce back."

    She tapped on her chin. "Alright, getting better. Like water off a sky eel's back. The bad guys pretty much crushed your cocks and pumped your pussies. But so what?."

    "That's… one exceedingly vulgar way to phrase it."

    He had a point there, for once. It probably was way too vulgar. But Coco couldn't help herself. The kid looked way too adorable when you finally managed to make him uncomfortable. She found herself just smiling as he tried not to look at her.

    "You really think you're the first team leader to screw up out there?" she asked. "Nah. Even the headmaster was a complete screw up when he was our age. How do you think he learned how to be in charge except by failing his way upwards? You have to learn to take yourself less seriously and realize that, kid."

    The boy sucked in on his lips and didn't reply. He just kind of put on underwear and a pair of jeans from a brand she didn't recognize. He removed his towel when he was decent, and put on a tight black shirt with the words Grimm Grips Is Online on it. It was some band, she was sure.

    She couldn't not notice his belt. It was a kind of rigger's belt popular in the Royal Army. A paratrooper's belt, moreover. Stylish and incredibly useful. Use it for fashion, for securing loads, or as a tourniquet out in combat. She wore one just like it. Put together with his boots and the fact he was currently armed, and it gave Jaune the look of an off-duty soldier. A Huntsman trying to look chic but ready for a fight at any given moment.

    Eventually, he looked back towards her and said slowly, "Why is it that every girl in my life is either exceedingly mean or just incredibly sarcastic towards me?"

    Coco couldn't help herself once again. She threw her head back and laughed. At him, not with him. The damn kid just looked like a kicked puppy and it was pretty much the best part of her day. Her partner, Fox, had gotten completely used to this kind of thing by now. He just shrugged it off whenever she tried something. Jaune, though? He was a breath of fresh air. Perfect bait with his whole macho shtick.

    She swayed her hips side to side for effect. "Well, being that I'm a girl, I think I can professionally say that it's because you take yourself too damn seriously. It's pretty funny trying to see you act cool and just fail at every conceivable junction. You really can't play off the tough guy macho act very well."

    He folded his arms tightly. "I'm totally a very tough and cool guy. I don't take myself that seriously."

    "Uh-huh," she said with a motherly nod.

    Jaune made a kind of scowling scrunchie face at her. "For the record, my thoughts are full of funny moments. I'm pretty much a walking fountain of funny, self-deprecating thoughts where I think about my failures and try to become a better person through humor."

    "Okay, Spruce Willis."

    He tried gesturing at her, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth right. It looked like he was flailing out a cobweb or some kind of ghost. All Coco could do was shake her head, and pull her beret down to cover her eyes to give him a moment to recover himself.

    "Look, I already have seven sisters," he finally said, stomping one foot like a toddler having a tantrum. "I don't need me another one. Plus I think I have a sexually-confusing thing for blondes, so I'm gucci."

    She grinned. "Too bad."

    "Three bad," he countered, eyes narrowing.

    "Four and I'll throw in a fifth for free."

    "What are we haggling over again?"

    Coco shrugged. "Dunno. But you're not being all mopey, so it's working. I mean, I get how you feel. I see it in plenty of people in your shoes, including once or twice in my heels. You screwed up. But who hasn't in your position? There's been people whose screw-ups have cost millions of lives. The Great War only began because some loser in power screwed up. Compared to that, what are you? Just a little lost puppy trying his best."

    "I'm a big brave dog. Maybe some kind of Doberman."

    "You're a schnauzer."

    "Compromise and settle for a labradoodle?"

    "Deal." She held out her hand to shake, and to her delight, he actually took her hand.

    "It's the beard that makes you a labradoodle," Coco said. "It's just so fluffy it makes me want to pet you."

    "Coco, no."

    "Coco, yes." She reached out and tousled his short blond hair. He glared at her like a petulant child. "This is what you get for violating my personal space and touching my shades, kid."

    "I'm pretty sure talking with you has significantly shortened my life span. Which is cool. I didn't want to be alive anymore anyways." He turned away from her, towards one of the side exits out from the locker room. Coco kept up with him.

    "It's called an object lesson Jaune," she said. "Stop taking yourself so seriously. If you screwed up, live with it. Learn from it. Then one day maybe you can actually be cool instead of pretending."

    "Yeah, but for all I've tried, my highest accomplishment is that one of my teammates actually views me as a person." He made a flippant gesture at her with one hand. "I tried doing right by my team: Weiss and Blake and Shamrock. All I did was get them fucked over. I tried doing it again, and all I got was crucified. I think I get this landmark victory with Cardin and my partner gets tears of rage from what I thought was my best work yet. Shit's just fucked all the time."

    Coco shrugged. "So?"

    That somehow seemed to offend him. Gesturing with a little more flamboyance, he said, "So now I'm basically the headmaster's bitch for all the eternity. I don't know what I'm doing here. And apparently as you're so fond of pointing out, I'm not very good at faking it until I'm making it."

    "I know," she said seriously, and he frowned at her deeply. "But I got a lot more experience than you. I kind of see myself in you, except I was way cooler, a lot prettier, and could pretend better."

    "Yeah?" Jaune said, sounding like he was asking despite his desire to shut her up. Not that he could make her.

    "Velvet is independent because she's used to people letting her down. Fox is good, but he sees being a Huntsman as just a means to an end. Yatsuhashi is basically a self-conscious brick wall. Headmaster Ozpin likes to assemble unlikely heroes together. Part of being a Huntsman is learning to deal with that. Doubly so if for whatever reason he thinks you'd be best in charge. He might be a mysterious old bastard, but I've come to trust his judgment on that. I mean, Goodwitch trusts him, so that speaks volumes."

    Jaune's lips curled. "I don't trust him. Feel like every time we talk, the old man is hiding something from me. Don't reckon he trusts me none."

    "From the way it sounds like you've acted as a leader, can you blame him?"

    With a look of disgust, the boy shook his head and pushed open the door to the outside. He didn't reply.

    She followed him out of one of the side exits into the open evening air. Coco liked it better out here in any case. Unlike the rest of the school, the architecture in the gym was obsequiously modern, and had ceilings that were way too low. It gave her a vague sense of claustrophobia compared to the rest of the campus. Like the time when she was a little girl, and got locked in a cabinet for hours on end before someone had found her. It was why she preferred to work out on her own, outside.

    "You can only be as good of a leader as you let yourself be, kid. If you give up after just one or two failures, then you don't deserve the position in the first place."

    Jaune spun on her. He looked like he was about to yell at her, before he bit his tongue down and just sighed in defeat. "Look, Coco, you weren't there. I wudn't exactly the best person when I showed up here."

    Coco put her hands on her hips, regarding the boy. "So what's stopping you from being better?"

    "What?"

    "Look, from one team leader to the kid she now owns, I have to say, you're lacking that confidence and backbone you need to be a good one. I see potential in you, a lot more than you're giving yourself credit for, I think. But you have to learn there's a difference between pretending like you have an idea what you're doing, and actually using that as a smokescreen to learn how to do it for real."

    "Ah, cool. Nut up or shut up. Thanks, Dad."

    She laughed. "When you put it like that, maybe. But I'm serious. What you need is to follow someone who knows what they're doing. Someone who can help you out."

    "Had me one once, Sergeant Raney. But that was a lifetime ago. Before I went ahead and fucked my life up and wound up here."

    She put her hand on her chin, thinking. "It's obvious to me you've got balls. Pretty sure I saw them back there anyhow."

    "This is the part where I ask for an adult, but I'm pretty sure you are one."

    She lowered her shades just to wink at him. "Yeah. And I've been doing this Huntsmen team leader thing for a year. To date, no one's died under my watch. And team CFVY is the best team the school has right now. That's why I owe you one and am going to, like, tattoo my name onto you or something. You just need some tats to complete the look you're going for." Coco shrugged.

    Jaune reached into his pocket and withdrew a cigarette. "I got enough psycho bitches in my life. Give me a light and we'll call it even."

    She frowned thoughtfully. "Got one to share?"

    It looked like he couldn't tell whether to be surprised or begrudgingly respectful. But he did pull out another cigarette. In exchange, she pulled out a little vial of fire Dust. All she needed was one little speck. She put it into her hand and snapped her fingers, activating her Semblance, Hype. What would have been a quick and short-lived little burst of fire, became a powerful light with the added effect of her special ability.

    She lit him up. Then, when he had it in his mouth, leaned up towards him to light hers against the cherry of his. It had the desired effect of making him uncomfortable, their faces that close together. She saw the reflection of his Aura as a glare in her sunglasses.

    Fucking adorable.

    "Now I owe you another for the cigarette, hot shot," she said, lowering her shades and willing herself to look into his blue eyes. "You're not escaping me that easy. Not if there's a chance I can't take credit for the next time you and your team make the local news."

    "I'm really never going to get rid of you, am I?" he whined.

    "Not even in your dreams. And I'm told a lot of boys have me in their dreams. And enough girls to make it worth it. So you have my permission in case you find me wandering around in your head." She rapt her knuckles against her forehead.

    Jaune regarded her for a long moment, dragging on the cigarette. She could see him thinking it over, probably going through some kind of insulting, mocking thought process in his head like he claimed to be doing. Thinking back on all the friends or enemies or whatever that inspired him.

    She hated it.

    So she reached out and flicked him on the forehead. Coco always imagined what it would be like to have her little brother at school with her. It would probably be exactly like this. If she could be a good team leader, she could totally be a good surrogate sister who made sure to abandon Jaune at only the most hilarious moments. He would learn all the best ropes from her. Her own little project.

    "Ow!" he said.

    "Stop doing that. You're being all mopey and serious."

    "I was thinking it over! It's my hobby!"

    "Ah, perfectly normal for any broody teenager. You work out and brood. Do you actually have a hobby?"

    "No."

    She rolled her eyes. "Get one. You can't be a well-rounded Huntsmen if all you do is huntin' stuff. Ruby makes weapons, I dig my fashion, and Velvet is a photographer. You need to do something else or before all this consumes you."

    "How do you know about Ruby?"

    Coco shrugged. "Kid's team is hot stuff. Now, are you going to stop thinking it over and just get to the part where you agree, already? It's not like you actually have a choice."

    He glared at her for a very long moment. Before his shoulders just kind of slumped. With a low sound almost like a growl, he said, "Hit ya boy up with a number, Coco, I guess."

    She grinned. Oh yes, she was going to have fun with this one. Consider it her own little pet project. Take the up-and-coming team and turn it into her very own little thing. Plus, that Weiss girl on his team was one hell of a looker. She wouldn't mind having a little more time around that.

    But for good measure, she gave Jaune a friendly slap on the ass on his way out.

    Game. Set. Match, Jauney boy.
     
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    • our man: You fool. The Social Link is already being forged. As we speak, my might is quintupling. Soon, the Power Of Friendship shall become blinding in me, more powerful than even Ruby's; and then, all shall be mine. "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." "When the enemy is relaxed, make him salty. When full, use Purse Cutter. When settled, use Squall." I have learned from the great warmasters Technoblade and Sun Tzu themselves; "And as the sun rises, howl to Remnant 'I am the survivor'; and lo, you have become the victor." That shall be what the historians write down as my quote. Pray that I forget your transgressions, lest I befriend you when you are at the depths of despair, and force you to become the glory you are destined to be.
     
    Broldakka said:
    Yes Perfect! this chapter was great!.
    GIVE ME ANOTHER!
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    Hell yeah! I actually have all the way to midway through the next volume of chapters all written. It's how I can keep my consistent Thursday/Sunday post schedule. I have lot half the story written and just waiting for them to go live. Over on the Discord I enslave my friends who join us to help give feedback on all the newer shit I haven't posted but am writing. You ever wanted to see Weiss struggle with a mild eating disorder? Or Blake punching Weiss in the face? Or Taiyang fearing for his daughters when he realizes Jaune is hot? Stick around and comment more. It's the fuel that keeps me going.

    Altho I might be slower these next 2.5 weeks. I'm hopefully going on a Pass back home to Tennessee starting tomorrow and ending Monday.

    And oh yeah, I was sentenced yesterday for 14 work days of hard labor after work. Remember that criminal incident Jaune mentioned doing back in V2CH1? With the vending machine and going to the hospital. Yeah this was my punishment.

    pingas plight said:
    our man: You fool. The Social Link is already being forged. As we speak, my might is quintupling. Soon, the Power Of Friendship shall become blinding in me, more powerful than even Ruby's; and then, all shall be mine. "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." "When the enemy is relaxed, make him salty. When full, use Purse Cutter. When settled, use Squall." I have learned from the great warmasters Technoblade and Sun Tzu themselves; "And as the sun rises, howl to Remnant 'I am the survivor'; and lo, you have become the victor." That shall be what the historians write down as my quote. Pray that I forget your transgressions, lest I befriend you when you are at the depths of despair, and force you to become the glory you are destined to be.
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    Click to shrink...
    I read that like two times and don't know what the hell I just read. But I think it's how Coco and Jaune are now friends, and she's gonna help him be a better leader/NCO type like he dreamed off, and also is the reason he gets a sleeve tattoo
     
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