After Coby and Lori finally made their way to the armory. (with the help of a couple of students) they saw all of the gear for the mission laid out on a large stone table. Dr. Suzuki was already at work and had taken the firearms apart as well as the comms gear. When Coby checked the part of the table that the climbing gear was laid across. This was where he would have expected to find his brother. While Bud was a jokester he was still a competent climber and could spot a faulty part from a lightyear away. ( an act he once performed over a video conference from Cybertron to Earth ). In spite of it being his forte, Bud was absent. As was Ms. Rose. now Coby began to wonder how long it would be until her sister noticed that she had disappeared with his brother. That would not be his problem. Just his revenge for sicking Lori on him.
"Where is Ruby?" Yang said realizing that her baby sister was not here.
"Last time I saw her she was running off with that other blonde guy, the one who looks like a Viking," Nora said blissfully unaware of the monster she may have just unleashed. For while Yang was being patient with her anger and wasn't going to rip Bud's throat out on the spot she still needed to have a very serious talk with him. After which she would most likely judge him unfit for her baby sister and tell him to get lost if he valued his testicles.
"I think they were heading towards the gardens," Pyrrha said. While she wasn't unaware of Yang's rage she did somewhat share it.
"I'll go find them," Jaune stated as he headed for the door. He was very aware that Yang choose to follow him but he did not care. If Bud was found doing anything that would warrant Yang's really rather wrathful rage then so be it. Yang seemed calm but those who knew her also knew that she was not flaring up yet in order for it to have a greater effect when she did.
Jaune was the first one to reach the gardens and once he opened the gate and stepped inside he closed it behind him almost as fast as he could. Unfortunately, it wasn't fast enough and Yang was in the garden. Jaune needed to act fast if he wanted to keep the delicate ecosystem that was the Beacon gardens.
There before them laying against a tree were Bud and Ruby. Bud had his left arm up behind his head and Ruby seemed to fit a little too perfectly into the slot that this made. They both lounged there and were feeding each other orange slices. Slices they were carving with their respective weapons. Ruby was somehow using her scythe to cut small pieces of oranges and Bud was using a strange tonfa style blade that like an ordinary pocket knife folded into a slot that ran along the underside of his forearms.
Understanding that while Bud did need to be spoken to Yang was going to skip straight to the kill, kill, kill part Jaune needed to act fast and keep Yang from igniting her hair in a garden of highly flammable, and highly prized flora.
Jaune brought his right hand up in a violent backfist to Yang's jaw. This, in turn, lifted her chin enough for him to tiger punch her in the throat and then slam his right palm into her left ear. It would hurt like hell and she would be angry for days but it was the only way he could think to shock her entire body long enough for him to throw her in the nearest coy pond. Now that Yang was stunned and off balance Jaune to grab her in a fireman's carry and throw her into a pond. He thought that this would be the end of it but he soon learned that no good deed went unpunished.
…
Bud was strangely happy. He and Ruby had tried to find the armory but ended up getting lost and ended up in the gardens. But that was alright. After all, Coby and Dr. Suzuki were the smart ones he was just an adventurer. They would be fine without him there. Soon he and Ruby were relaxing by a tree. He didn't know when she ended up with a handful of mandarin oranges. she was soon trying to cut one up with her scythe. A sight that Bud could only laugh at. After all the years of traveling the cosmos (a little under four to be exact), he had seen some odd weapons. From Backstop and his horn to Metroplex and his ax. All the way to time he meet a man who claimed to have weaponized a spork, a plastic spork no less. All of that and he had never seen anything that was quite like the sight of this girl and her oversized gardening tool. On top of all of this, he just had this feeling about her. He couldn't explain it but he knew he wanted more of whatever it was. So this lead to him flipping out one of his tonfas in order to cut one of the miniature oranges into several slices. He offered to share them with her and soon enough they had finished the first one. When it came time to cut the next one she waved him off and after a bit more thought she managed to successfully sever the small fruit into many slices. Then she took one and handed it to Bud. Bud then tried to put the sliced flora into his mouth while simultaneously bringing his left arm behind his head. However, he had forgotten that he still had the blades extended and quickly shot his left hand back in order to not cut his own neck by accident. This did, however, result in him dropping the orange chunk he had been given. thankfully, however, Ruby caught it while giving off a small giggle at the antics of her mildly clumsy companion.
"Let me help," she said as she held the orange out to him. After a brief moment he opened his mouth and she gently placed the fruit inside. Bud had eaten a wide variety of oranges. They were his favorite fruit after all and even his favorite flavor of soda. But in that moment the one slice of fruit she feed him left them all behind while it still moved on at a speed that seemed to exceed light itself. He returned the favor and cut an orange before he held a slice before her own closed mouth. With a slight blush, Ruby opened her mouth and Bud gingerly set the small wedge into her mouth. She closed and began to chew. The smile that spread across her face told Bud she had the same reaction as he did. In all the days to come, he would never forget that smile.
Soon they were both reclined against the tree. Ruby laying against Bud's side as they continued to feed one another oranges. Though neither one could explain it their current situation simply seemed right. And so they stayed there. But all good things must come to an end and this one came to a swift one when a couple who Bud had assumed were boyfriend and Girlfriend simply by the way they walked started to fight the second they were in the garden perimeter. The boyfriend blindsided the girl and after three brutal cheap shots, he threw her into one of the ponds. This was something he couldn't allow to go on.
"He dirtbag," he said as he grabbed the man by his right shoulder. While his left hand turned the man to face him his right hand was already in the act of hooking around and making a beeline for this scumbag's head. He was however countered seamlessly with a hard elbow to the jaw while his other hand dropped under his arm and made his entire side explode in pain when it landed a vicious punch to his kidney. Next, his foe dropped under his arm and as he slipped past Bud he drove his left knee into bud gut. Now Bud was afraid if he lost then this man may attack Ruby and he could not allow that. Taking the chance to throw a hail mary attack he dropped his upper body down as he twisted shoulders so that he was in the act of having his right side facing the ground to having his left side face the ground. As he turned his shoulders he also twisted his hips and brought his right leg up in a kick that landed cleanly on the side of his enemy's head. While his foe staggered back Bud quickly got to his feet and took a fighting stance. Out of the corner of his eye, bud saw Ruby run to the woman who had been attacked and this relieved Bud as it meant she wasn't trying to get involved in this fight. Then he felt his opponents right hand connect with his nose and he felt it break. Bud quickly returned his focus to the fight that was at hand and did so in time to see a sliding kick to the inside of his right knee that landed just on the side of his kneecap. He was thrown up and into the air in one swift motion. He landed in a heap on the ground and the last thing he saw was his enemy's boot rapidly falling towards his head in an ax kick
…
Ruby was in tears. The guy she was happily eating oranges with less than a minute ago was now lay unconscious on the ground. She had run over to him and began to try to wake him by shaking him and softly calling his name. But it was to no avail he was completely out. Then she felt him moving and looked to see Jaune dragging Bud over to the pond that Yang was finally coming out of. The mere sight of Jaune caused a fire to ignite in Ruby's stomach. This was his fault. If Jaune and Yang hadn't been fighting then bud would still be okay.
"Let go of him!" Ruby's voice was less of an angry tone and more of a glass shattering screech. When Jaune seemed to have ignored her she cried out once more. "Let go of him you monster" even as she said the words she knew she would regret them. This whole stupid problem was happening because of a misunderstanding. Jaune thought that Yang would burst into flames in the garden if she saw her and Bud eating oranges together. So he decided to strike preemptively in order to limit the amount of fire damage that was done. However, Bud didn't know Jaune and didn't really know Yang so he just saw some guy beating up a girl. Then he tried to help and just got hurt for his effort.
"Let him go," she screamed once more. But to no avail, Jaune kept moving ever closer to the pond. Then she realized why. He was going to kill Bud by drowning him. It was at this time that Ruby began to think that while Jaune may not have wanted the gardens to be burned he may still want to kill Bud for the same reasons as began to try and fight Jaune only to be dismissively blocked and gentle set aside. When she tried to kick him again he calmly grabbed her by the leg and carried her over to a tree he then pinned her cape to the tree and left her to dangle four inches off the ground. thankfully her cape was modified to loop around her armpits so she wouldn't be strangled by the action. She pulled and pulled on the knife that held her cape to the tree but it did her no good as the blade wouldn't saw Jaune finish dragging Bud to the pond and she felt the tears flow anew. Her cries to stop had become nothing more than a unintelligible wail of distress. That too ceased when she saw Jaune swiftly dunk Bud into the pond before yanking him back out coughing and sputtering. Then Jaune carried Bud over to the tree were Ruby was hanging out and dropped him on the ground before pulling out the knife holding Ruby's cape while saying. " I thought you might want to drop by."
Ruby couldn't believe it Jaune had just beaten up her friend and was now making jokes about it. She didn't have to seeth for long as she saw her sister rising from the pond. Normally the steam that was rolling off her hair in a constant wave would concern her but right now Ruby was hoping that the anger would be focused on June and that she would get to watch Yang beat the crap out of him.
"Jaune what did you…" she was cut off by a sudden "Pfft". Slowly she turned to look behind her and there sticking out of the back of her right thigh was a small dart. She stared at it for a moment before all at once collapsing to the grass in a heap. When they followed the trajectory of the dart back to its source they saw Jorge standing thirty feet away with a CASACOM in his hands.
"Hello children," he said as he made his way over to Yang's sleeping body. In one practiced movement, he reached down and plucked the dart from her thigh. "Jaune before you ask. This dart and the others you will find in the trunk in the safehouse Saint lead you to contain a highly potent sedative. In order to avoid going into details that you don't want to hear. The short of it is that there is no way to OD somebody with these. Because they contain micro bacteria that generate the sedative. And I designed the bacteria to eat the sedative once it reaches a certain concentration and to maintain that concentration. The best part is that the bacteria measure the concentration not volume so it can in theory work on most anybody. That being said they are ludicrously expensive to make so don't use them lightly. You have one full mag of them and if you need more just let me know." with that Jorge calm started to walk away before stopping and realizing the children needed some kind of explanation. " back when team STRQ still existed Tai and Raven had major anger control problems so I made these and gave a bunch to Summer for when one of them got out of hand"
Jaune calmly picked up Yang and went over to Bud and Ruby "let's get back to the armory." they rose and with Ruby's help, Bud managed to make his way to the armory. Once they were there Jaune passed Yang off to Pyrrha and grabbed Bud from Ruby before he told her that he needed to have a word with young Mr. Hansen. Ruby wanted to argue but Jaune's words left no such room. She reluctantly left Bud alone with Jaune.
"Listen well Hansen" Jaune said as he pressed Bud up against the wall and ground his knee into Bud's side. "That little girl in there is practically my sister. As such if you ever hurt her I will beat the Hell so far out of you that saint Peter mistakes you for the Messiah and then I'm gonna beat all the Hell back into you so that Peter personally send you straight to Hell for impersonating God. at which point you will have been returned to me because once that happens I am Hell and you will be my only resident."
With the requisite speech given Jaune released Bud to go and join his brother in the armory. As they stepped into the armory they were created by Coby who had just finished checking the remaining detonators.
"Jaune" Coby said " only Weiss's detonators were sabotaged. And the work that was done to them while exceptionally simple was in fact done to a masterful level. Only someone who had a very, very extensive background in explosives. And even then they would need access to the gear and a reason to hate you."
Naturally, everyone looked at Weiss as it was her family that made the detonators so she could have someone rig them to fail. And she didn't like Jaune back when this all happened.
Jaune had only one question for the time being. "So, who oversaw the preparation and security of my team's gear."
Looking at the logs Luke stated that the page pertaining to the three days leading up to the operation were removed.
"Well then," Jaune said "this leaves us with a new problem then. Cause there is only a short list of people who could do this and most of them are on my team.. Luke pull up the list of all students who are proficient with explosives and cross it with the list of student armorers"
After a moment of searching Luke had a name "Chad Hajullaf" he said. " he was the armorer who was volunteering when the team's gear was being prepped. His file shows that he is an outspoken anti-Faunus protester. And he would have had no reason to sabotage the gear as we were going to attack a White Fang base. He has no motive."
Jaune knew that Chad a rigged the gear but he couldn't tell why. "I am going to talk to him. Where can I find him."
Luke looked back to his datapad and tapped a few times before he turned his head back to Jaune and said: "he is in the secondary armory, he is next door."
Jaune thought for a moment before saying " everyone needs to return to their dorms." the looking to the tech experts he said " you four can go wherever you want as long as it is within reason. I just advise that you leave this wing and stay away for a few hours." everyone filed out in an orderly fashion and left Jaune to tend to his thoughts. As he wandered about the armory he selected a grenade that he knew of. It was a flashbang grenade. It contained a binary charge that was set to go off one almost instantly after the other. The outer charge was composed of lightning and air dust. It would provide the flash and the inner core was pressurized fire and air dust. When THAT charge went off the fire dust would superheat the air dust and under the pressure, the inner core's container was designed to withstand would lead the air dust to split on a molecular level. This would in effect cause a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder in the room. It was effective against aura protected people and was cataclysmically desolating on an unprotected person. So far no one who had been caught by one had ever seen or heard again. It had two words written on the side of it shining thunder. It seemed fitting for its purpose. As he kept walking he noticed that everyone forgot about Yang who was still peacefully sleeping in a chair. Worrying that she may have some type of hearing damage from what he was about to do Jaune placed a pair of ear protectors on Yang's head. Then he made his way to the adjacent armory he used another piece of gear he took from the armory. A small flexible fiber-optic camera. They were commonly called snake cams for their ability to snake in and around corners and under doors.
By running the camera under the door Jaune saw that Chad was in the armory alone and that he was working on at an edge grinder so that he can sharpen some manner of a blade. Grinning Jaune opened the door more four inches and tossed in two of the shining thunders and closed the door. There were two deafening booms and Jaune as he drew his revolver Jaune only had one thought before he began his interrogation. "I haven't done a job like this since Durant."