Jaune checked his bag one more time: basic medical supplies, a canteen of water, several vials of miscellaneous dust and his scroll. Satisfied that he was prepared, Jaune pulled the bag over his shoulders before donning a black cloak. So flatly packed was his backpack that the fabric barely bulged, meaning it could keep doing its job and break up Jaune's outline.
With the hood pulled up and a new moon, Jaune's face was completely hidden by shadows. With this get-up, he was completely anonymous...highly suspicious, but anonymous. Crocea Mors had been carefully wrapped in a light cloth. It would smother the sounds of clinking metal, but be torn easily by the shield's deployment.
Everything was ready for tonight's expedition.
Breathing carefully and quietly, Jaune slipped past Ren's sleeping form and into the hotel corridor. Glancing left and right, he found that he was utterly alone. It was about eleven o'clock; mostly everyone was in bed, and he had the next five hours to himself. It was about time Jaune dealt with the problem he could solve most immediately - Torchwick and his White Fang associates.
A week had passed since initiation. During that time, Jaune had sparred with Pyrrha nightly, and had basically picked up where his training had left off. Ren had also been coaching him in the use of his aura, though that was going more slowly - while Jaune had become much better at guaging his own aura levels, and had even begun to make progress imitating Ren's wide-area aura technique, he was no closer to consciously controlling his newfound Semblance.
Or at least, what he thought was his Semblance. That was still unclear...what was clear, however, was that Torchwick's operation was in full swing. Three Dust stores had been robbed in the last seven days, and law enforcement was 'baffled'. Jaune knew that, if he could locate the criminal's base, he could drop the wrath of Beacon Academy and the Vale Police Department on them like Magnhild's older brother.
So, he had suggested to his team that they spend the Friday evening and Saturday of this week in Vale, where they could shop for supplies and weapon upgrades, as well as spend time together in a somewhat more relaxed setting. Jaune legitimately wanted this to happen - after all, though they had spent most of the past week in each other's company, Ren and Pyrrha still hadn't progressed to the point where they could work in complete tandem.
Nora had, of course, managed to ingratiate herself with the red haired warrior in the span of a day. No surprises there. However, Ren's stoic and quiet nature required a dedicated effort to get through, and Pyrrha's unwillingness to come over as pushy to someone she'd be fighting alongside for years to come made it unlikely that she would make that jump on her own. So, Jaune had (with some advice from Nora) decided to make the relaxed weekend trip to the city a reality...while in the back of his mind, schemes and plots unfurled slowly, taking root and reaching for the light of fruition.
It had come to a head tonight. In the morning, Jaune would be taking his team around the town, and hopefully establishing the connection between Ren and Pyrrha which would truly bring team JNPR together as a unit. For now, however, he was taking a leaf out of Blake's book, and taking to the shadows. Moving along the corridor with light steps, Jaune took his leave through a carefully opened window. He'd noted as they approached the hotel that the building directly opposite this window was in poor condition, and the wall had a large number of missing bricks.
Jaune was sure that he could make the jump from the building's third floor to the hotel's second, which was where his team were currently sleeping, which offered him a method of return. He was slightly less sure that he could clear the jump from this window to the handholds on the wall, though. Gathering his courage, and muttering a quick prayer, Jaune pushed off the window sill and sailed to the wall, his hands slotting perfectly into his targeted holds and his feet terminating his remaining momentum. After that it was simply a matter of moving from handhold to handhold on the way down, until his feet touched the ground and he could move ahead with his plan.
The most logical assumption was that Torchwick was established in a place which wasn't frequented by the police, or Vale's more scrupulous citizens. So, Jaune wandered the back alleys of the city's warehouse district, eyes and ears stretched to their fullest as he searched for...something. The issue there was that Jaune had no idea how large Torchwick's operation would be, or even if anyone would be occupying the base at the moment. Even assuming they were, they might simply be too smart to allow any evidence of their location to escape into the outside world.
So, Jaune would have to be smarter. Deciding to try a new angle of approach, Jaune examined the alleyway in which he currently stood, and soon found a side-street which had been sealed off with a wall. Moving toward it, Jaune pushed off the corner where the perpendicular walls met, giving him enough height to grab onto the wall's top with his left hand. Attaching his right as well, Jaune hauled himself up, quickly moving to stand beneath the eaves of one of the buildings sandwiching the wall, keeping his balance with utmost care while he worked out his next move.
Tilting his head back, he examined the roof's lip. Jaune shuffled forward slowly, until he was just out from under the eaves. Gathering his legs beneath him and desperately trusting his training to keep him from falling, Jaune leapt, and managed to get his forearms onto the building's roof. A moment's scuffling and exertion had him standing atop the structure, and he moved across the sloped tiles to the raised line which denoted the building's centre. From there, he stood tall, and examined the expanse of identical buildings before him.
None of them showed even the slightest glimmer of life. No lights at all. Squinting, as if that would suddenly reveal some as-yet undiscovered clue, Jaune kept scanning...but there was no sign of clandestine criminal operations. He sighed, admitting that he'd probably need more than the ability to get on a roof to uncover a major underground network. However, since he was up here, perhaps he could make the most of the situation.
The blonde eyed his surroundings, noting the distance between buildings and the width of the street. He hesitated for a moment as his better judgement wrestled with the sudden desire to sprint across the rooftops. Though the battle was bloody, a compromise was achieved - Jaune moved at a careful pace across the tiles, keeping quiet and minding where he put his feet. He worked like that for hours, stopping every few buildings to strain his senses and examine his current area more closely.
He found absolutely nothing. Disheartened, team JNPR's leader slumped, taking a seat on the tiling of his latest platform.
Pulling his right arm free of his backpack, he retrieved his scroll. It was now three in the morning. Time to head back to the hotel. Sighing, Jaune replaced the device, then resettled his backpack as he stood. He examined the skyline around him, getting his bearings, then headed back in the direction of the hotel. This trip had been a failure, true, but at least he had established that they, in all likelihood, weren't here. That was something.
Neopolitan watched from behind an illusion as the black-cloaked figure moved away across the roof tops, her hands crossed and resting on her umbrella. She'd been standing there since before the cloaked figure had reached the rooftops, after one of their White Fang sentries had made them aware of a highly suspicious individual in the warehouse district.
Her illusion had made the warehouse seem to be the twin of the one next door, utterly removing the possibility of discovery. It was, perhaps, paranoid to believe that their more mundane security measures would fall to a single person...but paranoia ran rampant in the criminal underworld, and Roman Torchwick was no more immune to it than any other.
He'd given Neo explicit instructions not to kill them, whoever they were. They could be police or, even worse, a Huntsman or Huntress. Killing one of them would expose Neo and, by extension, Roman and their operation, to an unacceptable degree of risk - it would bring their ilk from all over Remnant to Vale in search of revenge. That was the last thing they needed. So, pink and brown eyes kept a steady gaze on the retreating cloak until it vanished below the skyline. The illusion fell away after another minute. The White Fang needed to be able to make their way back, after all.
Still, Neo almost wished that, whoever the figure had been, they had managed to breach the illusion. She hadn't had a decent fight in a long time, and she was getting bored.
Jaune was back at the hotel half an hour later, having returned via the side streets which had led him away. He climbed up the wall using mostly the same handholds he remembered from hours previous, until he was able to stand atop his...what, probably fiftieth rooftop of the night? He was beginning to tire; it was just as well that this was his last exertion of the night...well, morning.
Gathering his legs beneath him, Jaune sprang into the open air, arms extended forward. His hands caught the window sill, the glass pane still left open from his exit, and once again his feet stopped him from swinging full-on into the wall. Jaune pulled himself into the hotel, landing on the carpeted corridor with a soft thump, and closed the window behind him. He pulled off the cloak, shaking his head at the sensation of finally being freed of the hood.
He moved over to the room where he and Ren were sleeping that night, and gently slipped the room key he'd been keeping around his wrist into the lock, moving inside with a minimum of noise. He wrapped the backpack containing his supplies in the cloak and stuffed it into his bag, moving mostly by touch in the darkness, and then re-donned the plain t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms which had become his nightwear. Finally ready for bed, Jaune slipped between the sheets and went out like a light.
A minute passed, and Ren's eyes opened. He had been woken first by what his team leader obviously thought were surreptitious movements as he dressed and left the room hours earlier. The key turning in the lock when Jaune made his entrance had woken him for the second time, and Ren had tracked his leader's movements around the room using his aura and hearing.
Once he was sure that the blonde was fully asleep, he stood silently, and made his way over to Jaune's bag. A moment's feeling was all it took to find the backpack within, and a quick finger-tip analysis of the contents revealed what Ren recognised as a rather versatile kit. It could have been used for quite a few different purposes. Of course, the hour at which the operation was taking place, and the dark fabric Jaune had donned, reduced the possibilities somewhat.
Either his leader had been moonlighting as a criminal (and Ren dismissed that idea as soon as it appeared. Judging character was a survival skill for him, and he knew that didn't fit with Jaune at all), or he had been scouting. Of course, Ren had to wonder what he could possibly be searching for...
He shrugged to himself in the dark as he returned the cloak and backpack to their original wrapped state, placing it carefully back in the bag. Everyone was entitled to their secrets, and everyone had their own personal missions. He wasn't going to throw stones at that glass house.
He was back to sleep in moments.
Author's Note
This one ended up a little short; I've come to the realisation that the following day, which was originally going to flesh out this one, is a chapter in and of itself, and if I try to attach it to this one, the final product will probably be the longest chapter to date – a challenge which I currently lack the time to take up. Instead, as I've said, the day's events will be their own chapter.
I hope you enjoyed reading this even partially as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have any comments or criticism, please leave it as a review. Enjoy your day!