AN: Lols. So if any of you read the few reviews I've gotten recently, somebody asked me why I said it was Jaune that was the main character and not an OC. I don't think that person knows about OOCs? Or something? Lols
I was right about the Boombatusk! Whoo! Go me!
But the new episode was a bit underwhelming. I think my expectations were a biiiiiiit (fuckton) too high :P
I donno, it just had a bit of a rushed touchy-feely feel for me. And too much of Ozpin creepin on Ruby. Cradle-robbers, anyone?
That and Porp seemed… competent near the end? It felt off, man. Totally unlike what I expected, although the fighting with the Boombatusk was about what I thought it would have been.
Begin
A full week and a half passed afterwards with no further news on Roman Torchwick's whereabouts or the activities of his terrorist soldiers. Life went on, somehow, as not everybody had the intelligence or insight to see further than the fact that Torchwick had his hands on a small army's supply of the most powerful substance known to man in his hands.
Rumor had spread like wildfire about what the man would do with it.
Some even surmised that he was simply crazy, and had done what he did to prove nothing more than the fact that he could do what he did.
Ren worried the most out of all of us, even asking me for some help on tweaking with his twin bladed pistols, dubbed the Jade Dragons.
Ruby also seemed rather distracted as she had told us the way she had met Ozpin and Goodwitch: a chance confrontation with Roman Torchwick himself.
Yang had actually screamed her head off about how irresponsible that was, making Ruby break into tears in apology. Apparently when she had told Yang about her stopping a robbing of a Dust shop, she never included to mention that she had fought against one of Vale's top five criminals. Luckily for both the sisters and their team mechanics they had quickly hugged and made up, both girls bawling their poor eyes out.
I had given them eyedrops for their puffy eyes as well and the following morning their eyes showed no hint of having cried in the first place.
But that was also what led us to our current predicament.
"Yang… what do have to say for yourself?!" Weiss snapped as the older blonde knelt in seiza apologetically.
"Sorry…" she had an apron on over one of her orange tank tops and jean short-shorts, but all of it was splattered with burnt batter and flour. She had even tied her hair back, an action she personally despised.
I looked into the kitchen to see Nora skating about on the batter coated floors with her bare feet like a figure skater.
A triple axel?!
"I thought you were the one that was mad about Yang ruining the oven in the first place. What are you doing just staring there?!"
"Sorry Weiss!" I stood at attention as she stomped angrily towards me, Yang gave me an apologetic look behind her.
"I can't believe this. This was a good oven as far as middle class tastes and points of view were concerned, and is a very popular model. Replacing this will take at least ten thousand Lien and we've only got the 4800 Lien from turning in the Mulchkin quest twice for both teams and a measly 600 Lien from all that stupid communal clean-up service we were forced to do in the Vale Residential District on Friday. To fix this will be cheaper if you can do it yourself, but I don't think even you knows anything about commercial domestic products, do you?"
"N-no…"
"And Nora! Stop dancing in the - WHAT IN THE NAME OF DUST ARE YOU DOING?! You're kicking up batter everywhere! Stop - HOW CAN YOU DO A DOUBLE LUTZ?! WHAT IS THIS?! Go wipe your feet off and shower right now! I can't believe this! Where is Ren? He's the only one that can keep an eye on her to begin with!" the thin girl fumed as she sent Nora upstairs, flinging a towel after the energetic girl.
"You've really turned out to be a big den mother somehow, haven't you?" Yang snickered before a pillow from one of the nearby couches flew into her face, knocking her over.
I thought so too, Yang. I've just gotten better at not saying stupid things.
Slowly, but surely, this Jaune D'Arc doth grow!
"Hey guys, guys! We - whoa… what… what happened to you Yang?" Ruby stared at her sheepish looking sister.
"Your sister blew up our kitchen trying to make whatever she was trying to make, and ruined our stove-oven." Weiss growled, "And now we're going to have to empty all of our clan funds to fix it!"
"We could turn in the weapon maintenance coupons we won from Team CRDL and the buffet vouchers for something to get our stove and oven fixed." Ren came out of the kitchen, a small bucket full of burnt food mixed in wet slop. "We can just clean the mess ourselves and we can use the burnt and half cooked food scraps as compost for gardening."
We all stared at him.
"That's surprisingly economical." Weiss held her chin between her thumb and index finger, thinking deeply. "Is this a part of your Eastern blood? I've noticed that you really have similar thought processes and work ethics as some of father's advisors. They're of Eastern descent as well."
Ren sweatdropped.
"I'm sure it's just a coincidence. It's called recycling. It used to be more common before the war, I hear. It means to reuse things in either ways that they weren't originally created to serve or repurpose them so that they can serve their basic functions again. Even though Vale doesn't know what that means half the time, we do recycle glass and plastics, right?"
"I hadn't realized that recycling applied to anything other than the breaking down and reusing of glass and plastic. Hmm. Interesting…" Weiss then frowned. "That seems an awfully sad waste of of privileges, though. After that we would only have the cleaning and the free private use of the Beacon Academy training rooms without having to reserve one beforehand that Jaune won from that heavy lifting challenge."
I felt a phantom pain in my shoulders as I rubbed them with a grimace.
"It was a good thing we were allowed to use aura… picking up the Terramod-Class Carrier was a bit… much… even with Pyrrah and Yang helping, I was the one that had to carry the bulk of the weight."
"That couldn't be helped. You were the one that can make giant aura armor to use as supports so we could lift the thing in the first place."
I shivered.
"Yeah, but now Sov wants to have arm wrestling matches and stuff with me all the time. He's a good guy, but he'll break me like a china doll."
"Yeah, thanks for getting him off my back for a while." Ren slyly grinned at me. "I have less a chance against him than you do."
"Oh screw you Ren."
I sighed heavily.
"Well whatever. We have a C Rank Qualifying Mission that determines if our Clan can take further C Ranks, so let's just get this set up so we can build a financial base so that Weiss won't nag at us."
"How rude! I do not nag!"
"Yeah! She just mother-hens you to death."
Weiss narrowed her eyes, flicking the Dust cylinder load-out before Dust casting and making Yang float in the air, devoid of gravity.
"Excuse me?"
"He he nothingpleasedon'tkillmeWeiss?"
Yang fell to the ground with a loud thump as the the heiress 'hmph'ed through her nose before strutting off.
A half hour later we were all dressed in our battle attire, now all equipped with a small hexagonal patch on our left shoulders that proudly displayed an ornate white wing shedding small feathers in a pitch black sky, the shattered moon colored in ruby red shown at full waning - the shattered lunar fragments scattered like scattered rose petals. Pyrrah had even picked up a small armband just for the purpose of matching the rest of us.
Only Ruby's tended not to show so well because of her red cloak.
The issue came with transportation.
"I'm flying by myself and that's final. I refuse to get on that thing."
"I'm sure your motion sickness can't be that bad." Blake told me encouragingly.
"...No, it's pretty bad…" Yang sheepishly glanced at be before Ruby poked fun at her for having stepped in some of my vomit on the ride to Beacon.
"Why do we have to take the shuttle?! It's shakier than the transport Dustplane we rode to get here!"
"It will be fine." Pyrrah gave me an encouraging smile. "If you want, then you can just float in midair using your aura while we're in the shuttle. That way, you shouldn't feel nearly as affected."
"...Maybe… but if that doesn't work, I'll just be higher up for a wider spray if I get sick. I don't really want to do that."
"Look, it'll have to do. The shuttle's leaving in five minutes and we brought barf bags for you." Ruby said, holding up large plastic baggies, "Come on, Jaune."
I whimpered.
It helped but half way there I became too sick to levitate, but a sudden pain in the back of my head and everything went dark.
"Ughhhh." I groaned, opening my eyes. "What happened?..."
I was staring at the sky, my head on a pretty comfortable pillow, only for me to turn my head to see Yang smiling sheepishly at me, an angry looking Ruby and Weiss next to her. I turned my head the other way to see a slightly red Pyrrah smiling at me.
"Gmorning?... Where are we?" I groaned as I got up, rubbing the bump at the back of my head. "Why was I using Pyrrah's lap as a pillow?" I yawned.
Turning around I saw Pyrrah try to hurry to put the bronze colored thigh armor back on as quickly as she could, an embarrassed look on her face.
"Sorry… I might have accidently knocked you out…"
Why am I not surprised that Yang would do something so impulsive? It's so darn Yang-like that I can't even get annoyed.
"..." I stared before sighing. "Lets agree next time to get a tranquilizer or make me fall asleep with a Dust spell or something next time instead of supplying my head with more physical trauma than it's already suffered, ok? Jeez, I need to cure motion sickness with herbal remedies, somehow…"
People were staring at us from across the streets, whispering and taking pictures on Dustnet Mobiles.
"Why are we the Vale monkey show right now?" I asked the others.
"Apparently our Emerald Forest Initiation's Grimm Encounter was publicized by your brother just yesterday." Yang flicked out a holoscreen on her mobile before projecting commercial that was one of the top ten most watched on the holonet next to Roman Torchwick's recent threat video against Radish Corp and a bunch of kittens jumping rope. "It has our whole Clan and gives a bunch of student stats next to the video. Heck, there's a mixed music track added onto it too."
I groaned as I saw a close up, slow motion, 360 degree clip of my aura armor forming in parts as they assembled, every individual piece locking in with one another, over my body in mid motion before my right fist grew to the size of a mid-sized van and smashed a Death Stalker in the face.
"I never noticed how many individual pieces went into your armor. That's… well… that's a lot." Blake replayed the 360 degree clip, pausing at moments to get a closer inspection.
"I wanted to make armor without seams or weak points. It wasn't easy, I can tell you that." I shrugged before sighing. "I put a lot of thought into the armor designs."
"It's your aura, you made designs?" Weiss asked, her interest obviously piqued.
"Well I didn't just get it from anywhere. I memorized it by heart and practiced summoning, attaching, combining, and dispersing it so much that it's become a second instinct. Two years of training in bitterness and anger worked surprisingly well for me, as depressing as that sounds."
"Still, that is quite impressive. It's a feat that nobody else can do, after all." Pyrrah smiled.
"Ozpin's still dead… It even states me and Ruby as the team leaders, ergo also Clan leaders, as well as all of our student ranks. Is he trying to make us his personal trophy students now?"
"You think that's bad? Look, my baby sister has a fan club. They're promoting it in the comments."
"What?!" Ruby flushed as she tried to grab the mobile from Yang's hands as the elder sibling gleefully projected windows, making Weiss and Nora laugh heavily at the younger girl's embarrassment as fanart of all sorts and confessions of thirteen year old girls' undying loves appeared.
"What the… most of these are actually teenage girls. I guess being two years younger than the normal acceptance age makes you a big role model." I chuckled. "Isn't a bit weird that some of these girls are saying they want to bear your children?"
I ducked as Ruby jumped over me, a flying scissor kick aimed where my face had been just a second ago. Thank you for your training, Yang.
Hmmm.
I pulled out my mobile as well as I flicked it open, finding a dozen fansites for Ren just by searching for his name.
"PFT! Hey Ren! Guess who they're calling 'The Lotus Prince' and 'Our Heart's Jade Dragon' on the Dustnet. Oh heavens these names are cheesy as hell."
A dark aura drifted of Nora in angry pink droves.
"Nora…" he tried to placate her, "I'm not responsible for this… I didn't do anything!"
"Rennnnn~ I'm your best friend… riiiight?~"
"Of course you are. Did you even have to ask?" Ren replied quickly with mild fear, obviously never having seen his childhood friend in such a state. Heck, nobody in Ala Alba could have seen that coming.
It was messed up how oddly funny a jealously angry Nora was.
"Well… I hope that becomes a thing…"
What a terrible thing to say Blake… funny, but terrible.
"Hmmm. I wonder if there's anything on me?... Oooh. Oh. Wow. Erm. That's a lot… where the heck are these… how did… OZZZZZZZZ! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MAKING A FANPAGE ON ME?! This is a violation of privacy! Why are all my old childhood photos doing up on here? Are you kidding me?!"
"What's that?" Ruby asked, eyes shining, "You have childhood photos online?"
"Oh shut up." I groaned as I slumped to the ground. "He's going to give me indigestion and I'm too young for this…"
I looked up to see the girls all shuffling through photos together.
"What kind of friends are you?! Are you demons?! Are you Grimm in disguise?!"
"Awwwwww! It's little Jaune in a cat costume."
"NOOOOOOOOO! RUBY DON'T DO THIS TO ME!"
"That is really cute. Look at this one." Blake prodded her team leader as she showed a different photo on her mobile.
"Oh my goodness. Are you wearing a dress?" Yang broke out into tears of laughter as she glanced at that one over her sister's shoulder.
"NOT THAT ONE! MY MOM WANTED A DAUGHTER AND I WAS THREE! COME ON!"
"Oh, but Jaune, you made such a cute little girl." Weiss snickered as she slid her finger across her holoscreen. "Ooh, look, his dog's pulling off his swimming trunk here. It's in his lakeside photos section."
"...Kill me now."
"This is what we call karma, Jaune."
"Screw you, Ren. Screw you…"
I couldn't stop them. Together they were an unmovable force as they downloaded ALL the pictures. Each. As in every one of them had every single photo that Ozpin had put up on the Dustnet. I had never thought that any of my photos had been embarrassing (sans the forced cross-dressing when I was three, but come on, I was three) until today.
A brisk walk later, we arrived at our job contact location in the commercial district on the corner of Katashiy and 4th street. Monochrome and concrete buildings surrounded us on all sides, gleaming silver and rough stone stood like well sculpted molars in the industrial maw of a sleeping beast. Or something like that, but the dominating effect was easily negated by the sounds of music, flickering of neon-Dust lights, and both the smells of food and old tobacco littered the streets.
"Good. You're that up-and-coming Clan, right? The Ala Alba? I saw that initiation video of yours and I was certainly impressed. Didn't think you'd be the ones to respond to this request." a grizzled looking old man greeted us at 'Ten/Ten Weaponsmith'. Our mission was to protect his shop, family, and merchandise until the end of Sunday when he finished his product for the Vale Police Department and help them take the munitions and equipment to the armory once finished.
"Normally, I can handle a few of them delinquent gang members by myself, but this year's a bit more dangerous and the police forces want a little more and significantly better hardware than they normally do after the Torchwick and Radish Corp fiasco and a good thing too. Finally feels like they're taking their jobs seriously." the man snorted. "But the issue lies in that I've become a big target until the VPD gets their order. Afterwards they should know better than to deal with me in a confrontation. It'd be a waste of resources."
"Don't worry, sir! Clan Ala Alba won't fail you!" Ruby saluted cheerfully.
"Just call me Tennyson." the weaponsmith chuckled. "My daughter's quite the fan of you and your sister there, you know. She entered Signal earlier this year because it's a combat school that makes you forge your own weapons and found out that you came out of there and she got all pumped up last night about somebody so close to her age already in line to become a Huntress."
Ruby winced slightly as she chuckled nervously.
"She dual wields a pair of ninjato at the moment, but that might change soon, gyah ha ha!"
I think if it wasn't for Yang traumatizing her, she'd have been all excited for this.
Live and let learn?
"How is the production going by the way? Knowing the status of development might be important to the protection of the product itself." Ren asked as he looked around the large store.
It displayed a large number of weapons of all kind, many were unfinished mecha-shifts, showing potential customizations on small white boards scattered all throughout the store. Prices and estimations on project completions called out for purchasing in friendly green and red letters.
Ruby looked conflicted as she obviously would have just liked to run about the store, just looking at all the equipment and imagining all the ways that the different weapons could possibly be finished.
Nora had no such qualms.
"Ren! This one looks like your mom's old halberd! I remember when she'd chase after us with it when we stole the spring rolls from the kitchen. Good memories~ except that she's spank us with the flat of the blade, that wasn't so fun. But in a way it was because we got punished together. It wasn't so bad because you were there. He he~ Oh look! This battle-axe looks like a butterfly! Awwwww! That's so cute! Or maybe like auntie Goldman's kissy faces, ewwwwww..."
"Nora."
"Yes, Ren?"
"Calm down."
"Okie dokie!"
"So she's your girlfriend, eh, boyo? I thought you two seemed close. Follow me, kiddos. I'll show you what I've been hammering away at in the old forge." Tennyson chuckled, purposefully not letting the childhood duo defend their positions as singles.
Some odd chill ran down my back at the thought of him bringing up relationships about me, so I thought that it would be best to keep a low profile about romance at the moment. A natural protective instinct, maybe?
Further inside the store, behind the employees only door was a set of stairs leading to the residential area above the store, all privately owned by Tennyson himself, as well as a large forge and workshop.
Dozens of simple, but well designed swords were laid out, like a bizarre semblance of a one man mass production system, ranging from rapiers to broadswords with a triple Dust infusion system, oddly similar to Weiss's own Myrtenaster, although much less elegant and certainly much more inferior materials. They were solid weapons, very strong and capable of dealing strong blows, however in sheer quality they paled in comparison to the weapon of the Schnee heiress. Also, in metal cases around the workshop in both open and empty containers, there were pistols, shotguns, and rifles laid out in much smaller quantities than the simple officer swords, with a small slot for crystal input to charge bullets with a Dust attribute. A large open wooden crate also revealed many uniforms with reinforced kevlar and Dust treated chainmail, both incredibly tough and feather light, sewn into the clothes.
"Impressive." Blake spoke as she turned about the - did her bow just twitch?
Must be my imagination.
"These swords aren't… bad… but they are only middling quality and very limited in the level of aura and Dust that can be channeled." Weiss said as she picked up one of the somewhat clunky rapiers and twirled, giving two quick thrusts into the air. "They are, however, quite well crafted. Especially considering the time crunch you must have been suffering from."
"I have my pride as a citizen of Vale, girlie. This is for the protection of not just me daughter, but all my neighbors and all the children to come. We can't let Torchwick believe he can just get away with what he does."
Yang smiled as she turned towards me.
Meeting her eyes I nodded.
"Yeah. Clan Ala Alba! For the future of Vale, we will protect 'Ten/Ten Weaponsmith', Tennyson and his family, and his shipment for the Vale police force with our lives. Right now, Beacon Academy or not, we are Hunters! We are Huntresses! For the Clan and for the continuation of peace in Vytal!"
My seven friends, allies, and new family all cheered excitedly.
Not because of some stupid credential, not because Ozpin shoved this assignment onto us, but because we want to protect the smiles of the future, we would not fail.
We could not fail.
We will not fail.
End
AN2: Just warning you all that my updates might slow down now because I'm visiting home. I'm not stuck in my empty apartment waiting for my roommates to join me for school writing because I wanna see RWBY episodes or because I'm lonely.
Please review and remember I'm always available for suggestions or questions!