Light (Jaune)
Jaune awoke to his alarm, set for six am. He had forgotten to change the alarm after he had left home. At some point, his body had simply collapsed into a chair and passed out. He didn't even know how much sleep he had gotten, though it felt like only a few moments.
As he forced his eyes open, the young bartender took in his surroundings. A small bedroom with an open door leading to a kitchen/living room hybrid, a bottle of water on a bedside table, and a girl with Neopolitan colored hair covered in ice packs.
"Should change them," Jaune muttered to himself, rising slowly out of the chair. He entered the kitchen area and opened the freezer, revealing that it had been shoved full of ice packs. Originally, it was filled with ice cream, but he had taken them into his room to make space for the icepacks. He could return them once the girl was feeling better.
Jaune worked methodically, going from her feet up her legs, behind her back, around her chest, and on her face, replacing the ice packs after wrapping them up with tea towels. The entire time he spoke to her with a soft, calming voice. The girl barely even reacted to his voice, only wincing every so often when he replaced an ice pack on a particularly bad spot.
"It's going to be another cold day, that's winter for you though. Worse for you with all these ice packs covering you up. Let's hope you heal up soon then. I've made sure to keep your ice cream. Had to move it into my room though. I'm planning on stepping out and picking up some medication to help with the burns. Torchwick said he would foot the bill for anything I needed. He seems like an alright guy, even if he would tell me how you got burnt so badly."
Jaune simply continued to prattle on, telling stories about his sisters, about how his father always gave him the worse advice, and how his mother would always give the best advice. He wished she had given him some advice on how to deal with this. The young man then looked down at his scroll. She was only a phone call away, yet he turned away from it. He was determined to succeed on his own.
With a sigh, he turned away from the girl on the bed. "I'll be back shortly. I need to go and get that medicine." He told her, knowing that she most likely couldn't even hear him.
Once the door was closed, Jaune put his back to it, letting his head hit the door. "What have I gotten myself into." He mumbled.
Vale was big. Really big. It had been almost an hour before Jaune had finally found a store that had burn creams, and it wasn't even a pharmaceutical store, it was a gun shop. The young bartender, still in his work clothes, stood outside the said store with a handful of tubes in his hand. He knew he had to get back. He had nowhere else to go. Even if he was working some sort of criminals, his heart wouldn't let him walk away. Someone needed his help.
But at the same time, the person who needed his help may just be hurting others, and by helping her, he causes pain for others. But at the same time, if he doesn't help her it would go against everything he stood for. It would make his attempts to become a hero worthless. Could he help someone who was so clearly a criminal in clear conscience that she may go on to hurt other people?
"What do I do?" Jaune asked no one in particular. Yet, someone answered him anyway.
"Why don't you try talking to them?"
Jaune looked down and to the right. There was a short girl with black/red hair in some sort of combat skirt.
"Pardon?" He asked, dumbfounded that someone had actually bothered to notice him.
"Why don't you talk to them? I couldn't help but notice the burn cream you are strangling. Someone is hurt, right? Why not just talk
to them and ask them to be more careful?" The girl with silver eyes asked, looking up at him as if the world was that simple.
"... It's... Not that simple. I'm not sure if I can. I don't even know them, yet I'm running around Vale like some sort of worried mother." Jaune shook his head. Now he realized what his mother felt like every time he skinned his knee, or one of his sisters got a cut.
"I wasn't even meant to get involved with them. I'm meant to be a bartender." Jaune continued, gesturing at his clothes. "Yet here I am playing nurse to someone who may very well stab me the moment she wakes up."
"Are you in some kind of trouble?" The girl with silver eyes asked, said eyes narrowing slightly.
"No. No. I don't think I am at least. Not yet anyway. It's just. I wasn't ready for this, you know? I'm meant to be serving drinks. Right now I am meant to be collapsed into bed sleeping, not having an existential crisis about helping criminals." Jaune answered, rubbing his temples with his free hand.
"Wow." The girl said, seeming to be taken aback slightly. "That's a bit heavier than I thought it would be." The girl seemed to be getting more and more uncomfortable as Jaune spoke. She began to shuffle on her feet slightly but didn't disengage from the conversation.
"Yeah. Sorry. It's been a bad night. I've barely slept, so I'm not in the best of places at the moment." Jaune apologized to the girl.
"Well. Perhaps you should talk to her. Find out what kind of person she is. She may not want to hurt anyone. She could be just as wrapped up in stuff as you are. You could help her find a way out." The girl then smiled. "I could help."
"Help? How?" Jaune asked, flabbergasted at the offer from such a small, young girl.
Suddenly, without warning, she pulled out a giant mecha-shift sythe. "With Crescent Rose."
Jaune panicked, with rather good reasons. "Whoa! Is that a sythe?!"
"It's also a customizable, high impact sniper rifle." The girl stated rather proudly, a smirk playing on her lips.
"A wha?" Jaune answered, rather idiotically.
"It's also a gun," Ruby stated, deflating slightly as she cocked the gun portion of the weapon.
"Oh. That's cool. But I don't think you can help. My boss said that I am free to go whenever. I'm not really from Vale, so if I don't work there, I kinda have nowhere else to go. Meaning I would have to leave Vale and go back home. At least for the first few months until I get some money saved up."
"Oh. Well, if you need help, I'm only a scroll call away." The girl said brightly, trying to bring her cheer back up. She gave Jaune her scroll number, then parted ways.
"Thanks, Ruby. I think I may just take your advice and talk to her. What's the worse that can happen, she tries and stabs me?" Jaune half-joked, laughing nervously.
Dark (Neo)
Neo never knew it was possible to be both hot and cold at the same time. Not to this degree anyway. Every in of her skin was either one extreme or the other. Parts of her felt like she was still inside that blazing inferno, while other parts felt like she had been shoved inside her freezer.
Somewhere, somehow, she knew someone was talking to her. Prattling on about anything and everything. Hot parts became cold, cold became hot. The mute managed to pick up a few things. The words father, mother, sisters were repeated a lot. It seemed like whoever was talking to her was telling stories about their family.
She tried to listen. To ignore the pain and pay attention. The distraction would have helped her. But she couldn't. Her body wouldn't allow it. Everytime the pain faded and she started to pay attention, she would move the slightest amount, causing her entire body to flare up in pain once more. It was a never-ending cycle.
Eventually, the voice left. She was left alone. That's when the other voices started. Not the voices of people, but voices in her own mind.
'Kill the bitch! She hurt us! She hurt ROMAN! Kill her!'
'Rest. Build strength. Train. Do not allow her to humiliate us again.'
'MOVE! FIGHT! KILL! SLAUGHTER! BURN!'
Neo shook her head ever so slightly, causing the pain to flare up once more. The voices in her head were always telling her to do the same things but in different ways. All except for one. One that was always quiet, and could barely be heard.
'Sleep. Hurt. Worry later.'
'Yes.' Neo thought. 'That one sounds fine.'
Neo awoke to the opening of a door. She instinctively went to grab her weapon, causing her to scream wordlessly in pain. Tears stung at her eyes as the cooling effect of the ice packs on her had long since faded.
"Are you alright?" Someone called, worry clear in their voice.
The mute girl cracked open her eyes for the first time in what seemed like forever. What met her was a pair of baby blue orbs and a mess of blond hair.
"Here." The person before he put his hands on her shoulders, barely touching her skin. "Don't try and get up. If you need anything, I'll get it for you."
Neo tried to roll her eyes at the young man, but stopped halfway, as the effort was just too much for her. Clearly, he did not know that she was mute.
"Would you like some water?" He asked her. She nodded ever so slightly, causing more pain to erupt from her neck and head. The next thing she knew, a straw was put to her lip.
After taking a long drink, and already feeling slightly better, Neo tried to move again. This time she did her best to ignore the pain. To pretend it didn't exist. To fight past it as she had always done in the past. But this time, there was someone to stop her from pushing herself too far. The young man that gave her water put his hands on her shoulders again, a bit more forcefully this time.
"You're not leaving this bed. Not for at least a few days."
This caused Neo to glare at the young man. Then to realize something else. His hands were on her shoulders. Her bare shoulders. Moving her eyes downwards, she noticed that all she was wearing was a sports bra and the upper half of her pants, the rest being cut away.
This instantly sent her into a panic. Almost naked with a stranger in her room put the mute into fight or flight mode. And like hell she was going to run. With the speed only a trained fighter could pull off, she punched the young man right in the jaw. Her aura'ed fist dislocating his jaw.
Unfortunately, this also caused her skin blisters to all erupt, and pain to flare all over her body. The momentum of the punch carried her out of the bad and straight onto the ground, hitting her head on the bedside table, breaking her already weak aura once more. The blond yelled in pain, causing two sets of feet to rush into the room.
It was the Malachite twins.
"What the fuck Neo?!" One of them yelled. Neo didn't care to check what one it was.
One of them went to the blond's side, while the white one, Melanie went to her side.
"The fuck do you think you're doing! You want to get yourself killed or something! How is Jaune?" The last bit seemed to be directed at her sister, Miltia.
A loud pop could be heard, a very girly scream, then she answered her sister. "Dislocated jaw. First time too. Best it hurts like hell."
"I-i'm fine!" the blond, now known as Jaune, told the pair of twins. Though he did so without moving his mouth in the slightest.
"No your not. Go get some ice for your jaw." Miltia told Jaune, pushing him away from the room. Once the boy was outside, they twins turned on Neo.
"What the fuck girl?" Melanie asked, grabbing Neo rather painfully by the arms as her sister, without a word spoken between them, grabbed her legs and flung her into the bed. "Was that about?"
Neo rolled her eyes slightly, then gestured down at her body with her eyes.
"O-M-G" Melanie said, shaking her head.
"That was us. We would have taken more off if Jaune hadn't stopped us. Said some bullshit about keeping your decency or something. Look. You're burnt. Badly."
"Lucky your not fucking dead really."
Miltia glared at her sister for the comment. "Jaune, the blond who's jaw you just dislocated, was asked by Torchwick to keep an eye on you. To keep you safe until you heal."
Melanie chose this moment to interrupt again. "Basically, aura is doing jackshit. You're going to be doing this the hard way. Whatever you got hit with was some serious crap. Play nice with blondie, or I'll be looking after you. Trust me, neither of us wants that."
Neo gestured with her eyes towards her closet. She wanted her clothes back on.
"Can't do that. It would irritate the burns and make things worse." Miltia told Neo, shrugging slightly as she did so.
"So suck it up, princess," Miltia added.
With that, the twins left the room with a warning to not kill the help. Neo couldn't help but roll her eyes. She wouldn't kill him. Perhaps knock him around a little once she was feeling better, but not kill him.
Once Jaune entered, he did so slowly, almost like he was afraid of being hit again. It was an excusable fear. Neo raised a single eyebrow at him. Just daring him to say or do anything.
"H-hey. Umm. Sorry?"
This surprised Neo. He didn't even do anything other than helping her, yet here he was apologizing to her for being hit. The mute decided to put him under the weird but harmless catergory.
"Look. I'm not entirely sure why you hit him, but I can take a good guess. Growing up with seven sisters kinda helps with those things."
Neo stared at him for a long moment. Eyes wide as she tried to imagine eight little her's running around. It would be amazing.
"I should have covered you up some more. I am sure it was rather startling to suddenly wake up and find that you have some guy you never met before leaning over your half-naked body. B-but don't worry!" Jaune had raised his hands in the air defensively. "I'm not some kind of pervert or anything. It's just with the burn, well, I had to get to them somehow."
Neo watched the young man keep talking. His voice was slowly getting faster and faster, his body slowly becoming more and more animated. It was rather amusing.
"Well, I went out and got some burn cream. Then you hit me, so the twins took me aside and told me about your, well, problems. You know, talking." Neo glared lightly at the young man, more to see how he would react than in any disdain. "S-sorry! T-touchy subject!"
"B-but w-well, I ki-kinda have to-to-to, you know, apply th-the cream now. I-I promise I won't do anything weird! But if I don't do it, y-your burns will take even longer to heal. A-and Roman said to look after you, th-this is the best way I know how!"
Neo merely nodded slightly. She had gathered what kind of person that Jaune was. A bumbling, but well-meaning, idiot. "Y-yeah. I gu-guess I'll get started?"
Jaune slowly, carefully walked over to Neo, and she watched him like a cat with a mouse the entire way. Once he was by her side, he took a tube out from his pocket and began reading the instructions.
"Massage into affected areas twice daily. Alright. Simple enough. I think I will need a few more tubes if I am going to be doing this twice daily." Jaune told the mute, laughing nervously as he did so. Nero merely laid there, waiting for him to get started. Internally, she braced for a lot of pain.
As his hands approached her legs, her feet being mostly unaffected, Neo closed her eyes and bit her lip. Yet, when his fingers touched her skin, instead of a rough kneading of the cool paste, as she expected, it was a soft, almost angelic, rubbing and pressing. It was as if someone was applying the paste with a feather instead of hands, then rubbing it in with water.
Her mouth opened and she silently moaned with pleasure. Both from the massage and the cool cream removing the long felt burning feeling from her body. It took two hours and fifteen tubes. It was two hours and fifteen tubes of pure pleasure. Perhaps the next few weeks wouldn't be so bad after all.