Chapter 7: It's Like We're Too Old to Trick-or-Treat But Too Young To Die
"The shield gets smaller, so when I get tired of carrying it, I can just… put it away…"
— 19 —
"Reminds me of home," Jack said. From their vantage point at the edge of Beacon's plateau, she and him could see what felt like the whole of the Emerald Forest. She suspected tomorrow it might have a new name, however. The Emerald Ash Heap. The fires of both raging inferno and cigarette cherry danced in his indigo eyes.
Hard to believe they'd been out there just a few hours ago. Or how when they'd been evacuated back to campus, the Kingdom of Vale had turned Beacon into nothing short of a forward military base. Pyrrha had seen the row upon row of Vale's self-propelled guns as she'd left the commons and the other students to try to find where her partner had gone.
Like him or not, they'd locked eyes down there when those fires had been a forest. Unless he died, they'd need to have each other's side for the next four years. The very least she could do is try to extend an olive branch. She figured she'd never hear the end of the I told you sos from him after his worried premonitions had turned out to be a skinwalker and Handyman, so maybe she could preemptively kill it with kindness.
It wasn't baseless optimism, either. Jack genuinely seemed to react insufferably whenever confronted. She suspected it was some sort of defense mechanism, as irritating as it might be. He had a lot of defense mechanisms like that, she was coming to realize.
So Pyrrha sat down on the stone lip besides him. She waited for him to continue, already preparing to roll her eyes at whatever weird joke or piece of insanity he was trying to set up.
Instead, Jack merely took another drag on that oddly smelling cigarette. It reminded Pyrrha of a friend she'd had as a little girl back in Argus. He'd been the son of a local mechanic. Try though his grandmother did, his clothes always smelled like his father did, like a mix of motor oil and fine tobacco.
She wondered if he'd grown up to smell like his old man too. He'd left one day for a job and. She and her mother were still waiting for a callback from him.
But Jack said nothing, and Pyrrha had to fill in the silence before it become too awkward for either of them to speak. "Maybe it'd be less homey if you weren't a smoker," she said, wrinkling her nose.
Not direct confrontation, rather her trying to speak his language.
He looked at her as if having just noticed her, then laughed. "Please. This is Vale. Everyone smokes here."
"Sorry, I thought you were Jack, not everyone," she said. "Or was that another lie?"
Jack gave her a toothy, sidelong grin, then flicked his cigarette over the edge of the cliff. "Fine. But only because I like you."
"I'm flattered."
"Don't be. I'm a terrible judge of character." He reached into a pocket of his jacket. It looked oddly clean, at least compared to how dirty and battered everyone else looked. Part of the reason she'd left the student commons was because though she wanted one, she wasn't about to stand three hours in a line for a shower. Had Jack actually taken the time to fastidiously clean himself like a preening bird?
He pulled out a small glass decanter and set it on the stone seating between himself and her. "It's good Patch Scotch. Drink with me."
She cocked a brow. "I saved your lungs already today, but I think rescuing both our livers counts as heroic time and a half."
"Please. Not like you did me any good, Nikki. We got the Shine, remember? Aura."
She eyed him flatly, folding her arms. "Surprised you still have any after today."
Honestly, she was more surprised he had that decanter. How had it not been smashed during the fight today? Had he stashed it away somewhere secret on campus? Either Jack was far more gracefully careful than she'd given him credit for, or he was more devious than she'd imagined when it came to contraband. Neither would really surprise her at this point.
He sighed theatrically. "Look, it's fine. I even got you a little shot glass. See? To celebrate teamwork. Our livers will be fine. The man who made me wanna be a Huntsman taught me that."
Pyrrha eyed him curiously, unsure if he was trying to smooth talk her into a drink or about to say something genuine. Jack's nature made it hard to tell where he was going with anything. He looks back at him from the corners of his indigo eyes. Every moment she spent trying to read him, she knew he was doing it twice as fast on her.
The Handyman had proved that. Jack could act insufferably stupid, but he was as sharp as his knives. He'd sensed a trap back in the forest when even Pyrrha's own Aura couldn't detect any Grimm. And then, after less than a mile of running, Jack had figured out how to beat the Handyman, intuiting a secret that had eluded a generation of dead Huntsman.
So the way to handle Jack was to think faster and with your gut. Strike him before he can conjure up some clever workaround to you. If she was going to stoop to his level, she would do it her way.
"This Huntsman, was he a hero of yours?" she asked.
Jack snorted. "Something that that." He poured them both small drinks of the golden-brown liquid. "He said me that if you can slash yourself and heal it with Aura, then you can do the same innerly. Lungs, clean 'em. Liver, detox it. The likes of us don't need to worry about the long-term."
A pause.
"Even if we couldn't do that," he said slowly, even thoughtfully, picking up a glass and handing it to her, "it's not like Huntsmen usually live long enough to die of cancer. Ain't a luxury we get."
Pyrrha didn't even realize she'd accepted the drink until she was holding it. Neither of them drank. "He mustn't have been a very good Huntsman if that's what you think of being one. Why even become one?"
Jack looked away, out towards the forest. He idly rotated his little glass. He set his jaw, then let out a breath, shoulder relaxing Moonlight mixed with fire in his eyes. "Where I'm from— Catchfire, this piss-all district out here in Vale—only thing that mattered, matters is power. Used to think that was just Catchfire. That out there, in the nicer parts of the cities where ghetto orphans aren't allowed, things are different. People help each other. Where I grew up, folks care more about how much money you got, how big your body count is, or how big of a cock you can swing around."
He shook his head, staring into his drink. "Then I went out to the part of town which had a functioning fire department. Sure, the window looks nicer, the streets a little clearer, the fake tits a little better made. But brush it off, maybe give it a good spit-shine, and you find it's all a thin veneer. Only difference between Catchfire and polite society is that polite society dolls it all up better. Power is power everywhere you go. What matters is knowing how to swing it."
Pyrrha frowned. "So you… followed your hero's lead. You became a Huntsman because you wanted to strong, be powerful. You wanted to matter."
Jack didn't react, not at first. She knew she'd struck something. He buried it well, but right now, in a moment of honest, she could see it. The important part was how Jack felt he mattered. She'd seen something in him, past that caustic, devil-may-care screen he put up.
If he mattered because he was a hero to people, that'd be enough for him. She could work with this. Help guide him in the right direction, the direction she knew he needed.
At length Jack made to shook his head, but stopped. He shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know about you, but coming here just seemed like a smart call. I worked for it. But, I don't know."
"Do you promise to tell me when you do know?"
He flashed her a smirk. "Hey now, wheedling folks for info is my shtick, Pyrrha. Buzz off."
"You called me Pyrrha," she said, gesturing at him with the hand still holding the drinking glass. That mattered. It was less dismissive than his Nikki nickname. 'Nikki' kept her at arm's length. 'Pyrrha' meant something. She knew it
"Did I?" he said with mock surprise. "Now that is an occasion worth drinking to, ain't it?" He held his glass up to toast with her.
"Don't get your hopes up."
"C'mon, Nikki, don't be the first pretty girl in my life to refuse a free drink," he said. And just like that, she could practically see his defensives dripping back to life. His façade creeping up in the way he smiled, the way his eyes twinkled.
She could play that game too. In a roundabout way, it might be the key to getting him to open up to her again.
She coyly turned her glass around before her eyes, examining it. "I'm a girl of many firsts, Jackie boy. I aim to impress after all."
"And what if I said a sober girl can't impress me at all?" he asked.
"I'd say I'm not trying to impress you."
"Hm! So I'm not the only one who tries to seduce their reflection when they're all alone." He pretended to wipe sweat off his brow. "Whew!"
Pyrrha cringed, scooting back an inch down the stone railing from him. "If I take the shot, will you promise to never put that mental image in my head ever again?"
Jack laughed, holding his glass up for her to toast. "Please, Pyrrha. You and I are a team now. Partners. You're gonna need a lot more than one. Be glad the first drink's free."
Against her better judgement, she clinked glasses with him and downed the Scotch all in one go. She had a frightful feeling that Jack was right on the money…
—20—
Tired.
Tired.
Tired
The word played on loop in Jaune's head, sometimes set to a jaunty beat. Like someone had plugged a broken record into a carousel's speaker system.
Tired. Tired. Tired.
Every muscle he possessed played choragos to that exhausted feeling. A near deafening dirge that could just as easily lullaby him to sleep as to dying on his feet. He felt like he'd flayed himself alive and then neglected showering after a solid week of gym class. His sheathed sword felt like a lead ball trying to tie him to chain gang.
Jaune was holding his head. How long had he been doing that. He blinked, and his dry eyes stung. Another round of blinking and he realized he wasn't where he started. Not entirely. He wasn't sure if that was because he's falling asleep on the move, or if he was starting to hallucinate.
Already the shadows here in the Beacon commons were alive. If it got too dark and he didn't look at them, his peripheral vision conjured up crouching Grimm and tangled vines. He'd seen them, start awake, and then realize it was just his mind screwing with him.
The Beacon commons. Same place the student body had spent last night locked in. Of course, none of the students had dorms. Rules were four students a room (and he'd thought it'd be bad enough if it just you and your partner!), and since initiation was canceled, technically this year's crop of student didn't have fully established teams. Oh, and something about proper Huntsmen teams and Vale military forces had converted the dorms into barracks. Right now Beacon wasn't an academy for future Huntsmen and Huntresses. They'd turned it into a major military base with an academic paint job. All because of whatever had been happening out there in the forest today.
But finally, after wandering through the commons, he found what he was looking for. Without a door, he just knocked on a nearby wall.
Ren didn't move. He just sat there, legs crossed, looking out the window. Was he asleep? Nora, who'd been leaning against the wall beside Ren, looked over at Jaune. Her smile looked force. "Oh, heya, Jaune. It's Jaune, right? Or Jon. John? Jean?"
"Stop spelling my name wrong," Jaune said with a sigh, waving a hand at her.
Nora made a face.
"Just wanted to check on you two. Ren awake?"
She looked at her partner, then slowly shrugged. "For certain values, I guess."
He didn't know what that meant, but didn't press it. "Alright. I just wanted to check on you guys. I—look, I'm no therapist. I'm barely even qualified to put on a sock puppet show for sick kids. But I know you and that thing back there—"
"A Nuckelavee," Nora said, casting Ren a nervous glance. Ren didn't stir.
"Yeah, that. I know you must have history. You're both from Mistral, right?"
"How—" Nora paused. Shook her head. "Yeah, he and I both."
Jaune looked away. He really didn't know what to say. He's not even entirely positive why he's here. It just felt like the right thing to do. He couldn't just take a shower and go to bed, not without this. But now that he was here, well, what?
"It bothered you. Both of you," he said softly. It was stupid. Just state the obvious and hope Nora thought it was deep or caring. "I guess I wanted to make sure you were, well, okay is the wrong word." He stole a glance at Ren. "At least no deeper into a mental breakdown."
A vice-like grip overcame Jaune. He nearly coughed as Nora squeeze him into a hug. "Thanks, tough guy," she said, taking a step back. "I think Ren needs some rest. And if he sleeps like that, then the crick in his neck come morning will serve him right not not using the floor like a normal person!"
Jaune hesitated. "Your scrolls. Numbers. Some way to contact you." Chloe might not like it, but as far as Jaune was concerned, the four of them might as well be a team.
Nora and him exchanged contact information. He made sure she spelled his name right in her phone (she'd tried titling him "Pants Boi" at first).
"Yeah. You need anything, both of you, don't hesitate to call me," he said.
Nora smiled. "Yeah, will do, Jaune."
"You take care of Ren, yeah?"
She laughed. "That's, like, my full time occupation. Someone's gotta keep that goofball grounded in reality."
Jaune simultaneous believed her and thought that was utter bullshit. Funny how that worked. He made to leave.
"Wait, where ya going?" she asked.
He didn't know. So he made up the most likely thing. "I'm gonna find a teacher. Maybe that Headmaster guy. See if I can't help out somehow. I feel so useless cooped up in here like they expect me to lay eggs."
Nora snerked. "Well, if you got anything come morning, give us a ring."
"Will do, Nora," he said.
Back to his lonely thoughts. God, he was coming to hate being left to he, himself, and I. Today had been—well, like nothing he'd expected. Sure, Jaune knew it'd be hard. He didn't come here expecting the easy life. No, that's what his parents wanted for him. Maybe if they'd ever listened to him, he'd know.
Jaune had asked his father about being a Huntsman. Growing up where he did, they'd occasionally gone camping. He'd gotten good at it. Sometimes a noise would inspire silence in the whole of the forest. His father would unseath Crocea Mors, the very weapon weight down Jaune's belt right now, and go slip off into the thicket
Killing Grimm, Jaune always knew. Dad had been a Huntsman, and a damn good one from what he gathered.
"Daddy, what's it like killing Grimm?" he'd ask.
"Hell of a thing," Dad replied. Those were always his answers. Vague, meaningless one-liners, like he was working out of a book of action movie one-liners that only sounded cool in your head. And always Dad would have this distant look in his eyes that made some part of Jaune ache, even if he couldn't understand why.
"Daddy, why do you glow like that?"
"So that nothing hurts me ever again."
"I don't want anything to hurt me ever again."
"Good. Means you won't need to glow."
"Stop bothering dad, Jaune," one of his many older sisters would say.
Screw you, Saphron. You ran away the first chance you got. You never cared for Dad's life or anything but yourself. The first chance Jaune got, he totally and not at all illegally borrowed Crocea Mors and left for Beacon. In one day he'd learned more about Huntsmen and Grimm than he'd learned in seventeen years as the son of Huntsmen.
Jaune bumped into someone, snapping from his thoughts.
"Ah, boy who pantsed me!" Ruby said quickly, holding her hands up and shrinking back apologetically. "Sorry, didn't see you there."
Jaune sniffed. Not at her accusation, but her smell. Ruby smelled like she'd just went through a pit fight against an entire department store's perfume section. Even with a change of clothes into her PJs, she still looked grimy. Like she'd decided to skip the line for the girls' showers and pray perfume was an adequate substitute for cleaning herself.
Part of his head instantly cranked out a way to turn her pantsing line into a way to hit on her. One of Dad's genuinely good pieces of advice was that girls liked a guy with confidence, after all. But her smell strangled that thought in its crib. Honestly, he preferred the way the cigarettes of his sister Indigo smelled to this.
"No, it's my fault, I wasn't paying attention to my nose," he said.
"I thought no one would notice!" she shouted, pressing herself back against the wall. "That line is like hours long, and I couldn't find a garden hose outside!"
It took him a moment to realize what he said wasn't a false compliment about the perfume, but a direct insult. Stupid, stupid!
"No, no, not what I mean," he said, holding his own hands up. "You smell great. Like adventure, and fire. And cologne you could make a homemade flamethrower from. That's, like, that's hot."
He could feel a part of himself dying inside.
Worst part was, Jaune couldn't tell which of the two was more mortified.
"Your teammates!" he tried asking her.
And at the same time, she said: "Hi you've reached Ruby Rose, I'm not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep." She looked about ready to break down.
He take a step back, then rallied himself. "I mean it, your teammates—"
"BEEP," she shouted.
"Ruby!"
"BEEEEEEP!"
"I'm sor—"
"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!"
Jaune threw his hands up. "Did you all make it out okay after the Nuckelavee!?"
Although still pressing her back against the wall, Ruby stopped trying to pretend it like she was an answering machine. Instead it she was giving him a suspicious look.
"If you try to take their pants off too, I'm calling the police."
"None of you even wear pants," he said.
"Because of people like you!" she declared, stabbing a finger at him.
Jaune had no face. "Believe me," he said flatly, "that chastity belt you call a personality will keep me well at bay."
Harsh? Yes. Overly bitter? Yes. Satisfying to say? Hell yes.
"Hey!" she hissed, holding herself like he just punched her in the ovaries.
"I was the only boy in a family of girls, Ruby. Believe me, I've seen it all. Nothing you say or do will really phase me." Not really true, but the lie somehow made him feel better. Heck, it was mostly true if you thought about it in the right light.
"Wait," she said slowly. "We talking being accused of things, or the girls without pants part?"
Jaune just stared.
"Because both of those raise serious questions!"
He tossed his head back, making an exasperated face. "Look, Ruby. Let's start over, okay?"
"So no pulling my skirt down this time?"
"Deal. But let's not rule out the future."
"So it's back to square one!"
Okay, fine. That was his fault. He should've known that would happen. He didn't really have a follow-up to that, but she seemed to interpret his silence as him staring her down.
Ruby deflated. "Okay, I'll be good."
He let out a long, agonized sigh. "Hi there, short and quirky girl I've never met before, I'm Jaune Arc and I like swords."
She snapped her fingers. "Hiya, Jaune. I'm Ruby Rose and I have thorns. Do not invade my personal space, as indicated by my sweetheart, Crescent Rose. In fact, please keep your hands and arms inside the Jaune ride at all times."
Screw it. Jaune could work with this. He was too tired to try doing any better.
"Ruby," he said carefully. "I'm trying to see how other students are doing. We're practically locked up and the rumors from the other students don't paint a pretty picture You and your friends were there with mine. Are you all okay?"
She compressed a breath. Hands on hips, she looked away. "I mean, I guess so. We stuck around after that big Slayer guy picked us up. My sister sprained an arm. Sucks for her, but she'll be fine. And the Ice Queen remains subzero, so that probably means she's fine. I was on my way to find them. Wanna come with? You can check on them."
It was a weird offer. Jaune told her as much.
Ruby shrugged. "Hey, well, I can wonder the halls with the Grimm I don't know or the one I do." She elbows him playfully. "C'mon, you're looking lonely."
Mixed. Freakin'. Signals.
"No, just on a mission," he said. "None of us are organized. I'm trying to make sure we're all good."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh great. You've become class dad. That's the worst thing."
He repressed an urge to say something like Ooh, I like that, just call me daddy. That'd just be creepy. So he put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "Alright. Might as well try to network with the other teams."
— 21 —
Jaune wasn't where, but he'd found a little plastic box of wooden toothpicks. In lieu of gum to chew or coffee to chug, chewing on those helped keep him awake. Ruby was saying something, but it was hard to heard all of it. He was replying mechanically, by rote.
"Yeah, my sheath and shield are the same," he felt himself saying. "The shield gets smaller. When I'm done holding it, I can just set it up on my arm. It's like it's not even there anymore." How exactly it worked was beyond him. Dad had never really let him get to know or explore Crocea Mors. He'd been forced to snatch it from over the fireplace at night and train in the backyard to VidHub tutorial videos on his scroll.
Another of father's failures, he was coming to think of them. He grit his teeth, breaking his toothpick. He spat it out into a trash can and brought out a new one to chew.
"Wouldn't it weigh the same on your arm, though?" Ruby pointed out.
"I think of it as bicep training instead of hand training," he said, not even trying to make the lie sound good.
Ruby made a face.
The two passed a pair of students. Jaune recognized one of them as that Manlius Maximus dude from the airship. He was walking nearly hip-to-hip with a bombshell redhead with legs as long as today felt and a bandaged up right arm. The two looked stylish, like they were trying to make every motion double as a pose, like something from an action movie poster. The only sounds the pair made were from low, calm conversation mostly covered up by the clacking of the knife the boy was rapidly twirling between his fingers.
Jaune envied them.
"It's why we can't stay here," the redhead was saying, keeping her eyes forwards, her voice low. "Bring this up with the Headmaster."
"I'm right behind ya, Nikki," he said with a small smile. "I don't fully get it, but you haven't lead me to my death in at least four hours. I think I can spot you this."
"I'm being serious."
"Same. I just got some misgivings about Headmaster Ozpin," he said, a touch uneasy. "Going up to him like this."
He and Jaune made eye contact and nodded at each other. Jaune never knew why guys did that. He himself did it by instinct. If he had to guess, he thought it meant "Yes, we have made eye contact but it neither hostile nor homo, I wish you well on your day."
Ruby looked at the guy, made a little laughing noise, and waved. "Heya, Indigo."
Wait, Indigo? Manlius Maximus had a girl's name? Or at least the same name as Jaune's sister. The hell?
"It's Jack," not-Jaune's-sister said. He balanced the tip of the knife on one finger. "Good to see you're not dead, Ruby. And that you got good taste in boys." He winked at her, but nodded Jaune's way.
"Hey!" Ruby snapped, looking a little flustered.
The redhead with Jack rolled her eyes. "Trust me, you'll be much happier in life if you ignore most things he says."
Jack nodded. "Or adopt a hip flask of scotch. Whichever is cheaper."
"Nah, it's cool," Jaune said easily. "Personally, I can't find any girl attractive who likes me, since that's a dead ringer she's got poor judgement."
Jack barked a single laugh, and then both pairs had passed each other in the hallway.
"Friend of yours?" Jaune asked Ruby.
She snickered. "Hardly. Him and my sister Yang were flirting and it was just the cringiest thing."
Jaune suddenly imagined an alternate reality where instead of Jack meeting Ruby and that blonde—Ruby's sister—apparently, it had been Jaune. He saw himself swaggering up to them, trying to act suave, then vomiting all over their shoes.
In hindsight, getting stuck with that ass Cielo might not have been the worst thing in the world.
They stumbled upon a window with a sill large enough to lay across, all in a little nook made from bookshelves. Someone had hung a sign reading "Fort Kickassia: Your Authority Not Recognized" from one of the shelves.
The one girl in black whose name he didn't know had her back to the window, eyes closed, a book open in her lap. Weiss, the girl in white with the hair to match—hot stuff for an ice queen, Jaune thought—was trying to arrange a number of books into a mattress.
"Ruby, there you are," the girl who must've been Yang said, grabbing Ruby in a hug. Half a hug, at least. One of her arms was in a sling. "What took you so long?"
"Long line for the showers," she said. "Right, Jaune? This is Jaune, by the way."
"Quiet," book-girl grumbled from the window.
Yang shot Jaune a look. "Why were you in the showers with my sister?"
Jaune met her scowl with an even look. "I will have no part in your tangled web of lies, Ruby."
Yang sniffed, slowly looking around until she was glaring at her little sister. Judgmentally. Ruby just grimaced and tried to laugh it off, and it didn't work. It gave Jaune an oddly warm feeling in his chest.
Weiss looked over her shoulder. "Wait, is that my perfume?"
"Nope!" Ruby said.
"Ruby!"
Jaune sighed, raising his hand. "Look, not her fault the cologne I let her borrow from me smells like your perfume. It was all they had at the gas station outside the bullhead hub."
Ruby nodded vigorously.
He hoped this would earn him some brownie points in the next life, especially given the look the hot ice queen was giving him. He wasn't sure if she believed him or if the topic was getting too weird to advance.
"So, Ruby, made a friend?" Yang asked, taking a step back.
"Sorta," she said.
"I'm here checking on the rest of freshman class. Trying to see who's still alive enough to go do… something," he said. "I can't be the only one feeling stir crazy in this building. People out there are going stuff, Huntsmen and soldiers, and we're just stuck here with no clue what's really going on."
Jaune was making it up as he went. "So I wanted to see if anyone wanted to come with me, try to offer to help the Headmaster and the staff. We're freshmen Huntsmen, not just random people off the street given weapons."
Even though before today and that thing Chloe did to him, that's pretty much what Jaune was. Still is, really.
Weiss undid the tie holding her ponytail in place. Girl looked good with her head spread out like that. Really good. "Jaune, right? No offense, but what can we do they can't?"
"We can talk like we're not quitters for starters," Ruby said, earning her a scowl. "What? It's true."
"If they needed us, they'd get us," Weiss said, pursing her lips.
"Please shut up," the girl at the window moaned, shutting her eyes harder. "My head's killing me."
"Give it a rest," Weiss went out in a loud whisper that didn't seem to really help anything.
"I for one can't," Jaune said lowly. "Pretty sure if I stop moving, I'll die of exhaustion. And if I gotta go, I'd rather die standing, out there, doing my best."
Where was this coming from? Sure, most of that was bravado, just trying to sound bold and brash. Be all cool and leader-y. But another part of him was convinced that at this point he'd actually go through with the lie, like he was peer pressuring himself to jump off Mundane Bridge into Hero River. It was equal parts the Jaune he knew and… the Jaune that Chloe insisted on believing in.
Goddamnit, Chloe, this is all your fault.
Or maybe this was Jaune in a crisis. Before tonight the only crisis Jaune had known was pouring a bowl of Pumpkin Pete's only to find out they were out of milk. When he thought about it, he'd had a level head for a long time now. Sure, he'd been internally close to a panic attack as soon as he stepped onto the airship to Beacon, but it didn't seem like anyone had known. To people around him, he'd kept a cool, level head out there during the worst of the fighting in the Emerald Forest.
Jaune wasn't sure which was which.
He chose to believe he was just a super secret hidden badass all along. It made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
"Besides," he said, "at this point in our lives, it's not like we got anything better to do. We're at the point where we're too old to trick-to-treat but too young to die. And if I can't be a hero getting candy, then maybe I can put that energy to figuring out whatever weird thing is going on out there, yeah?" He shrugging, trying to seem casual.
"I can still trick-or-treat," Ruby said happily.
Jaune shot her a look. "Stop undermining me. I'm trying to do a speech about doing the right thing, whatever the right thing may or may not be. At least go above and beyond and get some recognition for being awesome. Something."
"Okay, okay, yeah," she replied with a sigh. "I think I'm with you here. Yang?"
Yang made a let-down face, lifting her slung arm. That seemed to be answer enough.
"Blake, Weiss?"
"No!" Blake moaned from her window, covering her head with her arms. She laid down in a sideways fetal position along the oversized windowsill.
Weiss was… just staring at her and Jaune. She glanced at Blake, then to Yang, before her gaze fell on Jaune. He cooly held her gaze with a casually little shrug. At length she grit her teeth. "Look, Ruby, you're my partner, and I…" She shook her head side-to-side as if trying to dislodge water from an ear. She sighed. "Look, alright, sure, if you're this stupid, I can't have you dying on there the moment I take my eyes off you. I don't trust Jaune to do that."
"Thanks for your vote of confidence," he said dryly. But he doubted anyone but Ruby even believed such a poorly told lie. Still, he'd let Weiss keep her pride if that's what she needed.
Yang pursed her lips with worry. "Guess me and Blake can hold down Fort Kickassia." She didn't sound happy about that in the least. "Just be safe, okay, Rubes?"
"Pff, safe," Ruby dismissed. "When am I ever not safe?"
Yang gave her a flat look. "You nearly drowned in a bowl of cookie mix once."
"Oatmeal raisin!" Ruby corrected loudly, prompting Blake to growl. "Sorry. But yeah. Oatmeal raisin is evil and I can't be blamed for that day."
Yang scoffed in the back of her throat, eyes rolling.
"Gimme a minute to fix my hair and get out of these PJs," Weiss said, staring at Jaune. "That means go away, by the way."
"Yeah, scoot. I need my real clothes too," Ruby said, elbowing Jaune away.
He nodded. "Yeah." Hands in pockets he left the little fort and idled near the end of the hallway. The girls hung sheets to enclose their case.
He leaned there against the wall, chewing on a toothpick, thinking. The wall wasn't really comfortable, but it made him feel cool. It's what someone who actually knew what they were doing would do. And if you can't make it, fake it! And fake it Jaune could.
Until a girl shoved a large paper cup of coffee into his hands.
"Here," Chloe said, hefting a machine in her arms. "I've only got so long before they realize I've stolen the coffee machine."
"Oh my god, this isn't coffee, this is dirt!" someone screamed from further on in the building.
"So short before they realize," she amended.
Chloe looked good. Not just in the physical sense. By nature she was a well-built if not exactly tall brunette with a loose, shoulder-length ponytail. The thing here was, she looked clean. Like she's been one of the rare girls to not only snag a shower, but somehow enjoy a trip to the washing machine. He imagined that's why she's vanished the moment the bullhead had brought them back to campus. The girl was vain like that.
She'd probably found some way to make money by barricading the showers and charging admissions for "VIP Fast Passes." It seemed in-character of Chloe.
Jaune eyed the coffee she'd gifted him, then took a slug. He cringed. "Black."
"What, you want cream? I'm a miracle worker, not a miracle itself," Chloe said, leaning up against the wall with him. She took out the full pot of black gold and drank from it straight.
"Still, thank you, Chloe."
She winks. "My pleasure, man. When I find a coffee, I'mma take a coffee. Which might be excessive here in Vale, but." She shrugged.
"There not much coffee in Vacuo?" he asked.
"Eh, depends on where ya from," she said. "I'm from a kraal called Kuraçao. Sort of outskirts of main Vacuo proper. Locals there made coffee from this weird nut that grew on cactus." She stuck out her tongue and gagged.
"So, you're basically from the Vacuo boonies," Jaune said, nodding to himself. "Explains your accent."
"I don't got an accent, you're the one who talks funny, Mr. Vale Man," she said with a huff. "I'll have you know I totally come from a noble lineage of foretrekkers and homesteaders."
He laughed and took a sip of coffee. "Which is why you have so much to prove here, right?"
She puffed her cheeks. "Çies, man, enough about the past. Future time. Heard you were making friends and allies. Networking."
Yeah, really artful dodge there, Chloe.
Jaune nodded. Took another sip. Black it might be, but damn did he need this. "I think everyone we met out there in the woods, they're on sid if we need them. Me, Ruby, and Weiss were going to team up to see if we couldn't offer to help the Headmaster. Do some good. And maybe earn us his praise."
"Fanciest way of brown nosing I ever heard and—waaait a minute, you managed to snag the Schnee all on your own?" Chloe demanded, grabbing his shirt.
"Her partner's crushing on me," he lied, getting a snort from Chloe.
"Still, we got the Schnee on our team! We need a name. Jaune Arc, Weiss Schnee, Ruby McLastName, Chloe Weaver. What's a color from that?"
Jaune pushed Chloe back. "No, those two already formed a team with two other girls."
"Yeah, but they're not official," Chloe said, moonshards in her eyes. "We can still build a team to our liking."
"But they've chosen each other. Besides, we met Ren and Nora. They should go with us."
"They're nobodies!" she huffed. And that Ren guys seems super unstable."
Jaune gave it some thought. "I don't know. I get a good feeling about those two. Us and Ruby's team together?" Jaune shrugs. "I think doing this nights will get us noticed. We're going to the Headmaster and insisting we can help, not just rest on our butts. We're go-getters."
Chloe pursed her lips, but gave in with a sign. "I like how you think, Jaune. I hate you. It's great."
"Weird. That's exactly what my ex-girlfriend said about me."
"Can't imagine why," she said, shaking her head.
"Is that coffee?" Ruby said, appearing in a suddenly burst. Holy hell, she was fast. Where had she even come from? Weiss was only just getting out of Fort Kickassia. "You're my best friend, person girl!"
"But no cream or sugar," Chloe said, and Ruby deflated.
"I don't like you anymore, person girl," Ruby said, dejected.
Jaune shook his head. "Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, this is Chloe Weaver. Chloe, likewise." He downed the rest of his entire cup of coffee. "Now c'mon, ladies. Let's go jump off a bridge together."
a/n: The bois are back. Also, look at Jaune go. He's being a proactive little bean. I, Eric, have been wanting to do more Jaune stuff for a while now. I liek him. I'm also hoping the Pyrrha/Jack scene from her POV helped establish her thoughts and her reasons for why she's acting like she is.
Remember how we originally wanted to remain broadly on track with canon? Pretty sure we've broken that idea. Canon is broken, rocks fall and everyone dies. But hey, it's fun!
