Of Heroes and Monsters

Welcome to Beacon(II)

Chapter 7: Friend


Not far from the now defunct dormitory is a grassy field. Away from the building and streets and gray and whites of Beacon Academy is a hundred-meter track of grass, the occasional tree dotted here and there. A peaceful air hangs over the rectangular plains. It is probably a place for the students to come to relax and unwind, to get their minds away from the stress of school and have some alone time to meditate and collect themselves.

It is there Naruto Uzumaki finds himself, strewn out on the grass, watching the fluffy white clouds roll over the sky as he muses over the memories of his clones.

This morning, he created two clones for the purpose of reconnaissance, first instructing them to stay the hell away from Weiss, second telling them to keep an eye out for any red flags and third, tasking them with charting an escape route in the worst-case scenario. Standard procedure. Well, maybe not the first one, but the latter two are things he has his clones do for almost every job.

And right now, he is trying to decipher just what colored flag he has stumbled upon.

Wolfie. Weiss. The girl he just fought, who trashed Junior's club… and who is apparently also wolfie's sister… or half-sister or cousin or something…

Anyway, point is, there are too many coincidences for his liking. And not just that the sum total of his interactions with the coming students of Beacon have been with girls. If experience has taught him anything, it's that these sorts of coincidences are never, ever, a good sign.

Then, there's also…

His fingers press against the skin just under his right eye. Over the thin scar stretching over his eyelid and past the eyebrow. It aches with a dull throb, tracing a sharp pain under the patch of discolored skin. The seal he put over it appears to be doing its job well enough, but from what he can tell, the wound still hasn't healed.

There is something not just stopping his regeneration but actively trying to spread. Almost like a virus.

Fortunately, a combination of the seal he put over it and his regeneration seem to be beating whatever it is back.

'In other words, it should go away as long as I don't push myself too hard,' he thinks, letting his arm fall to his side.

Idly, he wonders if he should be more concerned about the little, silver-eyed girl who cut out his eye. Not that he is concerned, or that he really cares that much at all, but there is a small part of him questioning if it really is okay to just dismiss something like this out of hand.

It is probably the part of him that has come to rely on his near instantaneous healing as a crutch, he concludes.

After all, any normal person would simply lose their eye if it was cut out. A normal person would die if stabbed in the heart or shot in the head. Normal people die when they're killed, unlike freaks of nature like him. So the girl can inflict injuries to him that have the same effects they would have on a normal person without a powerful, healing factor.

So what?

He isn't afraid of death. He hasn't been afraid of dying for years.

Still, it is annoying. Pain is still painful. Whatever the weird girl's power is, it apparently has the ability to cause him plenty of pain.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution. A solution to avoiding wolfie's strange powers, to keep her or Weiss or even Yang from figuring out who he is.

And that solution is to stay as far away from them as humanly possible. A solution he will get right around to implementing as soon as he returns wolfie's weapon to her.

Beacon is a pretty big school, after all. It shouldn't be too hard.

Right?

"Mng-?"

A sound comes from next to him, the sound of the previously passed out girl now regaining consciousness.

"Morning glass jaw."

"Jackass~," Yang hisses, bringing her arms up and stretching in a way that does amazing things to her chest. With a grunt, she relaxes into the grass, spreading her arms, a tired but satisfied smile on her lips. "How long was I out?"

"Like five minutes."

"Oh, nice. Still have a bit before the assembly."

Naruto blinks, squints, staring into her eyes. He isn't certain. It may be because he spent so long staring into those eyes while they were a furious crimson, but he swears the color of her iris is a few shades lighter than before. Closer to a blue-violet than the soft purple they were originally.

He perks a brow and puts a voice to his thoughts. "What's with your eyes?"

"Hm?" she lazily swings her head to the side to look at him.

"They're… They kind of look bluer than they were before."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Mmm~…" Yang makes a thinking face for a second before she shrugs. "Dunno. Never gone that wild with my semblance before, so maybe it's like a cooldown period or something?"

"Is that right?" Naruto says. He sits up and reaches behind her head.

There is a slight pinch. He holds up a single strand of golden blond hair, dangling it over her.

"Hey…" Yang sits halfway up. For a moment, that pale violet goes back to purple and then a slight red before it fades back. Exhaustion pervades her entire form, not just from the color of her eyes but also in the slight slouch of her posture as well as the weak half-glare she gives him, all sending the message she just doesn't have the energy to do better.

Then, the hair explodes into a tiny cloud of smoke. Naruto smirks, letting the blade of grass held between his fingers drop to the ground.

"Gotcha."

She lets out a small snort, smiling as she smooshes a hand against his cheek, as if to try and wipe the smirk off his face. Failing that, she lets herself fall back down onto the grass, making herself comfortable.

"So what now?"

"I was thinking of fixing you up and then going to the assembly thing."

"Couldn't have done that while I was passed out?"

"Healing you or going to the assembly?"

"Healing."

"Because I need to use a seal to do it and I don't really like the idea of putting a seal on someone without their permission. Even if my damn clones don't seem to think the same way…"

The last part he mutters to himself. Seriously. Aren't shadow clones supposed to be exact copies of him? Then again, that his apparent clones all seem to have their own, differing personalities probably says more about him than anything else…

"Seals?" Yang furrows her brow. "You mean like that stuff from those ero-books?"

"What- That's… it… I mean…ngh…"

Naruto can feel the heat gathering in his cheeks. He pinches his eyes shut, all too aware of the busty blond's gaze on him as he covers his face with a hand and resists the urge to summon his mask. It takes a moment for him to regain his bearings, in part because he actually knows exactly what she is talking about and because they can be used that way and because he knows how to use them that way and damn it you shitty old toad, you and your crappy book series.

It's no wonder everyone thinks seals are either ninja voodoo or porn magic.

Finally, he gathers the courage to remove his palm from his face and look her in the eye. "Look, it's not like that okay?! Seals don't…! I mean, you can, but- look, that's not what they're supposed to be used for okay?!"

"So it's not going to make me super horny?" she asks with a leer and a wiggle of her brow.

Naruto returns a flat glare, one made all the less effective by the faint blush over his cheeks.

"Do you want me to heal you or not?"

"Come on whiskers, don't be such a stick in the mud!" she grins. "After all, you did bring me all the way over here so we could be all alone, pounding me and working my body until I just exploded."

"Yeah, and then you rolled over and passed out."

It is a small victory, but one he will take nevertheless. She shoots him a slight glare and turns away with a small pout.

"You just got lucky…"

"Whatever," Naruto rolls his eyes with a smirk. "So? You good if I put a seal on you?"

"Sure, sure."

Naruto takes a paintbrush and a bottle of ink from his jacket, positioning himself over her exposed stomach. Yang squirms only slightly, the ticklish feeling of the wet brush tempting her to giggle, something that would surely be painful for her as beaten and bruised as she is.

"Hey, thanks."

"Hm?" Naruto perks a brow, not looking away from his work on the seal over her stomach.

"For sticking around and doing this."

"Don't worry about it," he says in nonchalant tone, dipping the brush back in the ink. "There's probably going to be some sort of field test tomorrow, so I'd feel bad if you failed because you were too sore from getting your ass kicked."

"Who got their ass kicked? I got in way more shots than you did!"

"Sure, you did," Naruto smirks. He pokes the side of her stomach. "Now which one of us is flat on their back?"

She scoffs and winces. "This going to take very long?"

"The seal's easy enough. It's the part afterwards that's a bit more tricky."

"Tricky?"

"For me. You just have to tell me if you feel anything weird. The idea is basically that I'm using this seal and our auras to trick my healing factor into thinking your body is mine. It should be fine, but everyone's aura is different, so I don't know if yours will have some weird reaction to mine or something. If something's off, you'll notice before me."

"Mm." she gives a grunt of affirmation. "Mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What's a cute, little, baby ninja like you doing around someone like Junior?"

"There's actually nothing about the first part of that sentence that doesn't piss me off," Naruto notes with an irritable expression. "First, not cute. Second, just because I'm not huge and full of big, hard muscles like you doesn't mean I'm little."

"Excuse me? I am not full of muscles."

"Third, I'm fifteen," he says with a smirk at her offended look. "And fourth, I'm not a ninja. Trained by ninjas. Probably better at ninja'ing than most ninjas. But no, I am not officially a ninja."

"So, how'd you end up here? You said you didn't just come here for me, right?"

Naruto takes a moment. Quirks a brow as he comes up with the appropriate response.

"I beat up a teacher."

"Really?"

"Yup. Apparently, Ozpin was so impressed he invited me to come to his school."

Sure there are some… minor details… missing, but that is pretty much what got him into Beacon, isn't it? It definitely wasn't because of his 'good heart' or any sentimental crap like that. He's sure that whole spiel Ozpin gave about him showing 'mercy' to wolfie and the witch is just lip service.

"Hm." Yang purses her lips, rolls the bit of information around in her head. For a moment, she says nothing. Then, she gives him a smile. "So this is like your big break, huh?"

"… Something like that." Naruto says with an unreadable expression. He finishes the seal with one last stroke, putting away the brush and ink bottle. "There, that should do it."

It is a double-layered spiral, painted in ink over her belly button. To a seal master's eye, it is a conversation matrix layered cleverly within a filtrate class and a double-reverse feedback method with an internal array suited primarily for ease of access. To the untrained eye, it is a seemingly indecipherable mess of scribbles in the vague shape of a swirl, the shapely and toned stomach beneath far more worthy of note.

"Alright," Naruto holds his right hand over the seal, his left hand clasped around his wrist. "Tell me if anything feels painful or off, okay?"

"Got it."

Aura flows from the pit of his stomach, creeping up his shoulder and over his arm. It pools into his hand. He coaxes it into the outside, a swirl of ink on his palm acting as a bridge.

It is as if there is gasoline mixed into the ink. The swirl on his hand and the swirl on her stomach both ignite into brilliant gold, a heatless flame catching over the ink.

Naruto frowns. Furrows his brow in concentration. A chill washes over him, the contrast between the warmth pulsing through his hand and the cold filling the rest of his body causing a needling sensation to creep up his arm. The ache in his right eye becomes a slight pinch. He squeezes the eye shut. The pinch then becomes a stab and a warm wetness begins to bubble up beneath his eyelid.

'I figured that'd be the case…'

Still, he doesn't break his technique. Holding his hand over her stomach, he continues to channel aura into the seal. Soon enough, the flame fades and the seal vanishes into her skin. Naruto lets out a sigh. His aura retreats. He pulls his hand back, clenching and unclenching it into a fist to get some of the feeling back in it.

"You done?" Yang asks, propping herself up on her elbows.

"Yeah, that should be good."

"Whoo-!"

Yang smiles, all but bouncing to her feet as her eyes return to their regular shade of soft purple. She looks to her hands, flexes and touches her muscles, feeling none of the soreness or exhaustion from when she first woke up. Her hand comes to rest on her stomach, a soothing warmth radiating from under her palm.

"Wow, this thing works fast…" With a teasing smirk, she turns back to Naruto. "Hey, I thought you said this thing wasn't supposed to make me su-"

The words die on her lips when she sees the trail of red leaking out from his right eye.

"Oh my god," Yang rushes to crouch down next to him. "What's wrong? Did I hit you too hard? Is your eye okay?"

"I am fine." Naruto grins, sounding not at all concerned by the blood dripping from his right eye. "See what I did there?"

With the slightest smile, she gives him a flat stare and perks a brow. "Really?"

"What? Not a fan?"

"I'd say your puns leave a lot to be desired."

"Oof. Think that one hurt more than the punches."

"Not the best punchline, eh? But hey. Seriously. Your eye okay?"

"It's fine," Naruto waves away her concern, wiping the blood off on his sleeve. "I don't have anywhere near the control needed to use actual healing techniques, so I just use seals and my own healing factor to compensate."

He puts a hand over his eye, making sure to completely cover the scar. An array of ink and symbols appears over his face, centered over his right eye.

"Let's see… I'll just sack functionality to increase the power to the containment and suppression nodes."

The array of seals shifts and morphs, the ink crawling seamlessly over his skin. Soon enough, the symbols settle and fade back into his skin. Naruto removes his hand. Blinks his right eye. The blood is gone and the scar is still there, but now a milky sheen covers the iris.

"Yeah, so basically I just trick my healing factor into thinking someone else's body is part of mine and piggyback off of that," he continues his explanation. "But, the problem is I have to shut down my own healing factor or else it'll think their body is mine and will try to heal it like it's mine. And that can get kind of messy."

"What, so I'd grow a dick or something?"

Naruto closes his right eye and gives her a one-eyed deadpan. "That, or it'd trigger an auto-immune response where your body treats the newly healed parts like a foreign entity and attacks them."

"Yeah, that sounds pretty bad…" Yang mumbles with a worried look, poking her stomach. "So, did everything…"

"You're fine." Naruto dismisses her worry with a casual shrug. "That's what the seals are for. They're basically twenty-something layers of safeguards to shut everything down if it starts to go wrong. Besides…"

He makes a troubled expression. Looks away. Yang gives him a questioning look.

"What is it?"

A cough. "It… seems like since your semblance is based around transforming energy, it's fairly easy for your aura to absorb mine and distil what's needed from it to use as its own. My elemental affinity is wind and my aura is a bit… different than most people's. I'd be willing to bet your affinity is fire and, given the typical interaction between those two elements when used in conjunction, it is likely that it augmented the natural inclination of your aura due to your semblance."

"So, what you're saying is that I'm reeeally good at taking you in."

"And that's exactly what I was trying to avoid saying."

"Oh, I know," she grins.

"Right." A sigh. "Now hey, serious talk for a second."

His voice drops a pitch. His gaze sharpens. It is a near imperceptible change, but one enough to make Yang all too aware of how the boy in front of her took her at her best and still had the aura to spare to heal her afterwards.

"I'm not here to rip off your head or anything but trashing the bar of an information broker really is the best way to paint a target on your back. Junior's a shit but he's not a petty shit so he probably won't hold a grudge. You got lucky on that front. But if you had done this in say, Mistral or pretty much anywhere in the Elemental Nations, you'd have bounty hunters and ni-njas breathing down your neck for the rest of what'd probably be a pretty short life."

Naruto squeezes his eyes shut. Tries to ignore the heat gathering in his cheeks, hoping against hope that the older girl hadn't noticed the slight crack in his voice. He cracks open an eye, only to come face to face with a merciless grin and a wordless promise of endless teasing to come.

"I'll try not to make it a habit." Yang manages to squeeze out, doing her best to keep a straight face.

"G-good," Naruto grunts, squeezing his eyes shut, rising to his feet. "Anyway! I'm going to go to the assembly! You can rest here or go or do whatever you want, as long as you know not to pull that crap again!"

"Nah, I'm good, I'll go with you." Yang stands, all smiles as she slaps a hand against his back. "So, what'd you think?"

"About what?"

"My semblance, stupid. Isn't that what this whole thing was about?"

"You did beat up some of my frie-," no, that is not the right word. "Acqua-," not that either. "You beat up the people who are sometimes marginally useful to me."

"Your… friends?"

"Acquaintances."

"Friends?"

"Associates."

"Friends."

With an annoyed grunt, Naruto shoves his hands into his pockets and turns around. He begins to walk away, only for an arm to sling around his neck and yank him off his feet.

"Aw~!" Yang gushes, trapping the younger boy in a one-sided hug. "I'm sorry I beat up your friends~! I mean, I'm still going to get you back for that nipple twist, but no wonder you were so angry!"

"Who'd be friends with those losers?! I-I just wanted to see your semblance! This has nothing to do with them, I don't care, I don't! Get- get off!"

He pauses in his struggling to give her a questioning look. "And what do you mean 'get me back'? You already punched me in the face. Repeatedly."

"And you punched me in the face, repeatedly! Come on, it'll just be a light tap."

"… if I say no, you're just going to randomly punch me in the balls, aren't you?"

Yang gives him a wide smile.

"Ugh… fine. Can you at least wait until we get to the auditorium? That way I'll have an excuse for not being awake during that stupid assembly."

"Alright."

As if to make sure he won't run away, Yang tucks Naruto under her arm and begins to make her way back to the courtyard, carrying him like a sack of potatoes towards the main building and his final destination.

"Oh yeah, speaking of which, how come it never really felt like I was hitting aura whenever I punched you?" she asks. "You took it like it was nothing so I didn't really think much about it, but what's up with that?"

"That's cause I use reinforcement."

"Rein-what? Is that like the tree-walking thing?"

"Not really… I'd say the whole thing with tree walking is closer to how you guys use the recoil from your guns to move around. As for reinforcement…"

Naruto squints his eyes in thought. Taps his chin. He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, to figure out how to explain it in a way even someone like him can understand.

"Let me put it this way," he begins, raising one finger. "The way you guys use aura in the Kingdoms is called shielding. It's not a very intuitive name, honestly I think it'd be better if they called it 'armor', but that's beside the point. The idea is that you form a 'shell' around your body that acts as a shield against attacks. Which, I'm guessing is where they got that name from."

"Reinforcement could be considered the opposite. Rather than defending with a layer of aura outside of your body, reinforcement is channeling aura through your body, packing your muscle fibers and bones and cells with aura. In addition to increasing your durability, it also gives a boost to your speed and strength."

"Huh. That sounds pretty useful. How come they don't teach that in the Kingdoms?" Yang asks.

"A couple reasons. One is that reinforcement has a much higher learning curve," Naruto explains. "Shielding is simpler to use. People reflexively tense up when they are about to be hit. Building off of that instinct isn't very hard and forming the 'shell' takes some getting used to but is relatively easy. On the other hand, with reinforcement, it's not as simple as just shoving as much aura into your body as you can. You need to have at least a basic understanding of muscle, bone and tendon structures because if you don't, you're likely to injure yourself by reinforcing the wrong parts too much or too little."

"What about when your aura breaks?" Yang asks. "Or does that not happen with reinforcement?"

"You're right, it doesn't. Reinforcement splits the strain between the body and aura where shielding puts the burden almost entirely on one's aura. By the time your aura breaks, if you're using reinforcement, you're probably already dead."

"And that's another reason," Naruto continues. "If your arm gets chomped by a grimm and you're using shielding, your aura may break and you might end up with a bruise but that'd be it. If you're using reinforcement, on the other hand, you're probably losing the arm. To put it simply, while reinforcement and its external counterpart, enhancement, have more offensive capabilities, they don't offer anywhere near the defense of shielding. It's the reason why ninjas have upwards of four to five times the rate of deaths and career ending injuries than huntsman do."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "Four to five? Damn… no wonder…"

"Hm?"

"Ah, it's just… all my dad's old, ninja pals are dead," Yang says in a sad tone. "Well, except for one, but… they don't really talk anymore. He puts flowers out for them every year."

"Flowers, huh…" Naruto mutters under his breath. He lets his gaze fall, for a moment pondering over his own words, over the statistic he had remembered for whatever reason. The man who told it to him looked very much like he does now. White hair. Scar over the one eye. There is a part of him that cannot help but find the similarities amusing.

And in his mind, he counts.

'Yeah… five is about right, isn't it?'

"Hey, so uh… you think it'd be worth it for me to learn that reinforcement stuff?"

A voice pulls him from his thoughts. Naruto looks up at the speaker.

"Eh… I'm not sure," he admits. "I'd need to know the details of your semblance to be sure."

"Oh yeah, so what'd you think?" Yang asks with a smile. "Of my semblance, I mean. My dad says it's just like a giant, temper tantrum, but I don't think it's that bad."

"A temper tantrum?" Naruto blanches. "No way, your semblance is awesome! It's insane how much stronger you got while we were fighting! And the way your hair glows like that… it's amazing. No wonder you got so angry when I pulled out one of your hairs. I've seen a lot of fire based semblances, but they're all so dark and destructive… yours… it's one of the most beautiful one's I've ever seen."

"That's, uh… wow. So you've really got a thing for semblances?"

"Eh, yeah," he says with a sheepish chuckle. "I mean, isn't it just so cool, having some power based on part of your personality? Something unique and special to you? It's just… I don't know. I've always loved seeing new semblances. Ever since I was a kid."

"Huh, déjà vu…"

"What?"

"Oh, uh, it's nothing. I mean, you do the whole 'catching on fire and powering up' thing too, right? So it's not like my semblance is really all that special or anything…"

"Sure it is! Call it splitting hairs or whatever, but my strength is just… whenever I finally run up against something stronger than me, there's nothing I can do. But you, it's like as long as you can keep fighting, you'll just keep getting stronger. Who cares if getting angry is what it takes? So what? Get angry! Get mad! Anger that's… something you can control. In the end, that strength is all yours… it all comes from you. The power to turn your pain into strength, that's… it's got to be one of the best semblances ever."

"You really think so?" Yang says, somewhat embarrassed by the younger boy's glowing praise. "Well what about you? I bet your semblance is really something too, right?"

"My semblance…" Naruto plasters on a smile, does his best to not let his inner thoughts show on his face. The urge to summon his mask returns, this time for an entirely different reason, and all he can do is scratch at his cheek to resist.

"The only thing my semblance can do is hurt the people around me."

Silence follows his admission. The reason why is obvious enough. Him, who apparently has a semblance that negatively effectives those around him. Her, in close enough proximity to be considered 'around' him. Naruto glances away, mentally berating himself for the slip up.

"Oh, you don't need to worry about anything." he is quick to reassure her. "I usually have my aura sealed off and that suppresses my semblance. So that… that…"

Naruto trails off as he feels a sensation on his cheek. The very same that woke him up from his nap earlier. And in a flat voice, he responds the very same way he did before.

"What are you doing?"

"Aw, you don't purr?" the grin is audible in her voice. With the arm not holding him up, Yang strokes the whisker marks on his cheeks.

'And this is why I wear that damned mask,' Naruto thinks with a twitchy expression. 'No wonder that girl with the cat ears wanted to hide them under that ribbon… I should probably apologize to her if I run into her again.'

"No," he answers in the driest tone he can muster. "No, I do not. You know I'm not a faunus, right?"

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Hm," the hand stops stroking his cheek. Yang smiles at him, flipping her hair back. "Well, semblance or no semblance, you're still crazy strong. It's no wonder you got into Beacon so early! What about a weapon? You use any weapons?"

"Sort of? I can't really turn them into a gun, but I got these I guess."

He holds up an arm and summons his chains. Yang looks the aura constructs over. Perks a brow. Her smile widens as she regards the chains with interest.

"Oooh, kinky."

"Is this going to be a regular thing with you?"

"Are you going to stop calling me big and full of muscles?"

"Nope."

"Well there you go."

"What do you want me to call you then? Boob-zilla?"

"You could always just go with 'Yang', but 'big sis' works too."

"Boobs it is."

"Big sis!"

"No."

"I'd also accept 'Onee-chan'."

"Not even if you paid me."

As if just remembering something, Naruto tilts his head up. He flicks his wrist and the chains shatter into motes of light, the light coming back together into the shape of a three-pronged knife. "Oh yeah, I can also do kunai."

"Psh, that's not a weapon," Yang rolls her eyes in an exaggerated manner. "Your glowing, kitchen knives might be considered weapons in the Elemental Nations. But here? In the Kingdoms? We don't consider it a real weapon unless it can 'at least' transform into a gun."

Without looking away, Naruto twirls the knife in his hand, its form bursting into golden flames and those flames forming into a simple pistol. He raises the small handgun, one of his still-blond eyebrows rising as well.

"That's more like it! How's that work anyway? Can you just make any weapon you want?"

"Pretty much," he says, letting his arm fall and dispelling the glowing gun back into aura. "I just usually don't do anything other than knives and chains because it's not really worth the effort."

"Mmm… what about a scythe?"

"You mean like this?"

Naruto raises his hand, gold and shadow shaping into the form of a giant, flaming scythe, one easily taller than him.

For a moment, Yang regards the aura construct.

"Sooo~, yeah! I've got a little sister, cute as a button, bit of a nerd, kind of got a thing for weapons. You two should talk! She's going to be attending Beacon this year too. I bet the two of you would make great friends."

The scythe shatters back into light and nothingness. "Well, that depends. How little are we talking here?"

"Fifteen."

'Lies.' "Oh, I meant her boobs."

"Careful, whiskers," Yang smirks.

"We're here."

"Urk-"

Indeed, the doors to Beacon's main hall looms before them, a steady stream of students walking past them, making their way into the building. It is royal and regal, the whole of the prestigious huntsman academy stretching out before them. Past the front venue are towers, spired buildings connected by arches surrounding a central high-rise, lights and revolving gears visible past the glass walls of the headmaster's office.

The shining Beacon. All in all, it reminds him of a castle.

Or at least some sort of prison.

"So, whiskers," Yang lets him down, stepping in front of him, cracking her knuckles. "Any last words?"

"Uh… have mercy?"

"Nope."


AN: New chapter. It's a bit shorter than I'd like, but it was either 5k words or 10k and as I said, I didn't have as much time to write this week. Editor side is saying there isn't enough progress, but I'd rather make the story more coherent as a whole instead of focus on weekly turnouts.

Things to address about the last chapter. Do know that I read all reviews and I have seen the complaints about certain parts. For one, hopefully the character's reaction should make more sense in a chapter or two. For the other…

Rather than ask questions about the chapter, I'll ask people to spare a second or two to vote on the poll I have on my profile.

Edited 9/3.