"But I didn't do anything!" I wheezed as Goodwitch floated Coco, Velvet and I into the infirmary. I know I had originally decided that running away wasn't a viable option, but my panicked reaction to my mom being called had caused me to reconsider. Goodwitch, it is worth noting, seemed more bored and tired than anything else. Once the initial shock of walking into our situation had worn off she had taken to explaining the particulars of what was to happen next to us with an almost glassy-eyed stare. As it turned out, my assumption that something like this was more common than anyone would like turned out to be correct. Goodwitch was very, very, accustomed to unruly students tearing up parts of the school at all hours. Her ability to perform rapid construction work with her Semblance was one apparently born from many years of experience, rather than innate talent. If anything, she was surprised that it had taken this long for something to come up this year. I could tell she was tired because she was quite open about her speculation that it would be Yang that caused the first incident.
All that is to say, running still turned out not to be a very good idea, because fleeing students, much like construction work, were a scenario Goodwitch had mastered long ago.
"Be that as it may , we are required by law to inform your legal guardian when something like this happens on school grounds." The teacher said with a yawn. My mind ranged suspiciously back to my altercation with Cardin in the cafeteria.
"But nothing happened in the cafeteria!" I objected.
"I assure you Jaune, Cardin's parents were contacted. He was injured after all," she answered plainly.
"So if I can prove I'm not injured right now you'll let me go?" I said, pouncing on her words.
"There is something of a difference between the levels of force involved." She answered, sidestepping my question.
"Miss Goodwitch you don't understand - you can't call my mom!" I begged, what little scraps of decorum I had maintained till now falling away. The blonde teacher didn't bother responding. Instead she floated Velvet, Coco and I through the door of the infirmary and stepped in after us. My thoughts were scattered, and all I could do was think about the life I had built for myself here. The friends I had made and would be taken away from.
"Ah, miss? I think this might just be a big misunderstanding..." Velvet chimed in. She didn't seem all that worried about disciplinary action, but following our fight it seemed like at least some of what I had to say had gotten through to her. Throughout our short trip she had been shooting me guilty, almost apologetic looks, interspersed with annoyed glances at Coco. The other brunette had woken up at some point too, but she remained sullenly silent and apathetic to the conversation.
Each of us drifted onto an uncovered bed, where we were unceremoniously dropped the last few inches with a soft thud. Then Goodwitch began to rub the bridge of her nose in irritation.
"Miss Scarlatina, I realize you do not often find yourself in such trouble, but while the faculty are sympathetic to our students and willing to allow certain things to pass," she stopped to glance at me at this, before returning to face Velvet.
"We cannot, in good faith, allow an event that results in such damage to the school to go without inquiry. And as minors, we are required to inform your legal guardians when opening such an inquiry." She finished. I groaned. I wasn't too worried about being in trouble - there were dozens of witnesses that could attest to my repeated requests for Coco to stop. But the fact remained that even if I squeezed by unpunished, I was going to have to deal with my parents.
I tried to look surreptitiously at Velvet and Coco, gauging their reactions to the news. Velvet's ears were drooping almost comically, and her face was set in a carefully neutral expression with the only sign of her displeasure being the occasional downward curl of her lips. Coco was... actually Coco was doing the same thing as me, only instead of gauging my reaction she mostly just seemed like she was trying to kill me with her mind.
So no allies there then.
When no one had anything to say to her statement Goodwitch sighed and then said;
"Now. I trust you will remain here overnight. If there is another incident while the first one is pending you will all be expelled."
Her piece said, she spun on her heel and marched out. An image of military precision that was ruined by her messy golden hair bouncing along behind her, and her little white rabbit slippers scraping along the ground as she left.
I sat in complete silence, ignoring the curious looks from Velvet and the angry glares from Coco.
'On a scale from one to ten how do you rate the situation?' I asked Archer, genuinely unsure what to do. I didn't want to leave school. I didn't want my parents to show up and yank the rug out from under me. I had friends here. Heck, I had a responsibility to be here. Caster had made it clear to me that not every participant in the war was going to play nice. Innocent people were going to get hurt, and it was only going to get worse the longer the war lasted.
'Well I'm pretty sure the Emerald Forest has enough wildlife to live off of. Good place to hide too.' My Servant answered with a shrug.
'So eleven then.' I sighed.
"Hey Blondie. We're talking to you over here." Coco's acerbic voice cut through my thoughts. Thinking on it, she had probably been trying to get my attention for a little while now, but I had been too focused on my problems and getting Archers opinion to notice. Of course, I also just plain didn't like Coco, so it wouldn't surprise me to find I had just filtered her out as unimportant since it wasn't like she was actively attacking me.
"Oh now you want to talk." I snapped, frowning at her. To her credit, she had the good graces to look embarrassed - for all of one second. Then she scowled at me like I was her mortal enemy. Which was a sentiment I was quickly growing to agree with.
"Well if someone wasn't waging a secret war on our bounded fields -" she barked angrily.
"Those were yours? You had your Servant try to kill me!" I complained, standing up and pointing an accusatory finger at her.
"They were ours, and we were just doing what the book said! 'A good Magus defends their workshop.' " she said, standing to jab a finger into my chest. It stung my bruised ribs and inflamed my already substantial anger. A good Magus? A good Magus? That was just insulting. Velvet I could accept being weaker than, but Coco? Yeah, like I needed the girl that had cast all of no spells and just shot at me for a solid minute to comment on my skills as a practitioner.
"Did this book of yours also include a page on murdering people!? This is a school not a private laboratory! Were you just going to kill any Magus that set foot on campus?!" I said, voice growing louder as I went. I lowered my head to look the shorter girl dead in the eye.
"As a matter of fact the answer to both questions is yes!" Coco growled. I was momentarily taken back by the bold declaration, before the shock morphed in to disgust.
"I see you left Ozpin alone." I whipped out, and was gratified when Coco blinked in confusion and surprise, the anger falling off her face.
"Oz...pin...?" She squinted at me before the rage returned and she lunged forward, headbutting me and leaving us growling incoherently into each others faces for a ten count.
"Um." Velvet mumbled, distracting us enough that we both spun to face her at once, eyes alight with indignation and rage.
The timid Faunus girl was holding a leather bound journal up in front of her, its cover clearly worn with age. On its front, in neat gold lettering were the words 'A Treatise on Prana Manipulation' followed by two smaller lines of text I couldn't make out from where I was standing. The little bag she kept on her at all times was at her side, its top open and the contents clearly having been just rifled through. It didn't escape my notice that at least one of the objects in the bag looked like a bottle of blood.
"You had a freaking manual the whole time?" I yelped in abject horror.
"Well..." Velvet said, trailing off.
"Of course we did you hulking idiot. What moron would activate their circuits without guidance and then blindly stumble about manipulating their very life energy?" Coco jumped in sticking her chest out proudly and somehow managing to look smugly down at me despite our difference in height.
"The kind that beat you with one spell!" I snapped at her. Sure my early forays into Magecraft had been haphazard and dangerous at best, but I had a teacher and that was more than these two could say. A teacher who forgot to teach me half of the safety precautions and admitted to be a horrible Magus but...
"You... wait. You genuinely had no idea what you were doing? Ha...haha...hahahahaha!" She crowed, beginning to laugh at me so hard that tears began to appear in her eyes.
"We found it in the library behind some old maps in our first year." Velvet admitted sheepishly. She ignored the mocking laughter of her team mate, but was wincing and deliberately wouldn't look at Coco while she spoke.
"That's so unfair! And you can shut up I still beat you!" I complained. No wonder Velvet was destroying me when we fought. Even if she'd only been practicing reinforcement that whole time - which she clearly hadn't - she'd probably still be good enough to obliterate me in a straight fight.
A thought occurred to me and I paused. Pointing at the little book.
"Seriously though, you were willing to kill me over something in a book?" I asked.
"No!" Velvet refuted instantly.
"I just wanted Assassin to fight your Servant! He said you'd kill me in my sleep!" She explained, turning a bright red.
"Of course he'd think that, it's what he would do! He's Assassin." I decried. Velvet seemed to predict that answer because she had already opened her book and flipped it to a page with a diagram and some text on it.
Wordlessly, she turned the book over to me, and I took it, glancing down at the page in curiosity. At first I couldn't tell what I was looking at. The picture looked like a single man on his knees, with a network of string coming out of his back in an almost wing like pattern. My eyes panned to the wall of text on its left, and I began to read out loud.
"The nervous system can be made to function as an addendum or a replacement for proper Magic Circuits. However the process is extremely risky, and potentially lethal. You can subvert many of these risks by removing much of someones nerves and... turning them into... a living... battery..." I slowed in my narration, my gaze flicking back to the diagram with a newfound horror.
I began to skim the book. Page after page went by, the world around me falling away as my thoughts began to race. Whoever wrote this book was either extremely thorough about their theoretical research - or a monster akin to Caster. Oh, the whole book wasn't about gruesome torture - it really was a huge list of ways to move prana around - but that didn't mean much in the face of how painful some of this looked. I skimmed past some information on dust, spent a moment to read about the use of blood, and entirely passed over the litany of ways to mutilate the human body. Towards the end of the book there was a sizeable section on something called a Tantric Ritual, and I got about three pages in before realizing it was about sex, and that the pages were heavily earmarked.
A hand shot out and closed the book in my lap, and I looked up to see Coco standing in front of me, no longer laughing. She was looking down on me with a haughty, smug expression that did nothing to hide the faint blush on her face. She must have realized what section I was reading because she - for once - didn't say anything to me. I glanced between her and Velvet both of them blushing furiously and couldn't help but start imagining it as the implications set in.
Velvet started to reach for the book, closed and in my lap, and I shifted slightly away from her.
"Best uh... best to just leave that there for a minute." I gingerly said. Velvet's hand recoiled away from the book so fast she must have been using reinforcement.
"S-sorry." She offered lamely and I shrugged, too embarrassed to open my mouth lest something even worse spill forth from my addled mind.
"Virgin." Snickered Coco, though she wouldn't meet my eyes.
'It's like your awkward first time, only it's just the bad parts and none of the pay off.' Archer chortled in the back of my head.
In my quest to look literally anywhere but at Velvet or Coco, my eyes fell on the cover of the book in my lap. I was closer now, and could make out the black lettering under the title.
A Treatise On Prana Manipulation
By Juniper Arc & Nicholas Flamel
I felt my eye begin to twitch, and the tension in the room ratchet up a level. My mind skipped back a step to the Tantric Ritual pages, and all the aged notes scribbled in the margins. Then even further, to my observations on the clearly amoral nature of the writers. Suddenly I felt sick, and all but flung the book at Velvet so I could scamper to the garbage can.
"Oh don't be such a baby." Coco called after me.
"Shut up." I croaked between hacking coughs.
"You don't understand - that, that book. It was written by my Mom and Dad."
There was a silence followed by Coco's amused drawl
"Your dads a lucky man then. Your mom left some notes on how you can use your - " Coco began, clearly intent on torturing me, apparently assuming the reason for my sudden disgust was because she thought I had imagined my mother having sex. That part had thrown me, and it certainly would have ruined my day on just about any other occasion.
But the real reason I was sick to my stomach was because the more I thought about it, the more I began to hear the lines about gruesome mutilation in my moms chipper but commanding voice.
Coco continued to list bits of advice my mother had apparently left in the book, causing Velvet to turn redder and redder with each passing moment. Archer remained silent, simply appearing next to me, unable to do much more than reassure me with his presence. I think at some point he tried to say something to me, but I barely listened. I just stayed at the garbage can.
The rest of the night went by in a blur, and I'm not ashamed to say I didn't get any sleep. Coco continued to needle me, and Velvet did her best to mitigate her... girlfriend? fuck buddy? magical partner in crime? But really I had neither the time or energy to think about them. I retreated to a corner of the room and conferred with Archer.
'What do we do?' I asked, well past the point of panic. I had reached a sort of frantic zen state where I was desensitized to bad things happening. The school could have exploded around me at that moment and I would have just taken it at face value. Not because I didn't care but because I was now actively expecting everything bad that could happen to happen. There was a detachment in that feeling, a degree of distance between me and everything going on around me that simultaneously made it really easy not to care, while also being the only possible way I was going to find a solution to my problems.
Yeesh and Archer just lived his whole life like this. What a nightmare.
'Holding pattern.' Archer said after a moment of thought.
'We know you're Mom is a Magus. Probably you're Dad too. We know they're almost definitely going to come for you at some point, but we don't know when. Probably not for a while though so -' Archer mused aloud.
'Ansel is like a day away by train. They'll be here by tomorrow night tops.' I supplied, not sure how he had forgotten this already.
'Yeah but Jaune, in the month I spent at your house with you, they didn't come home once. I only really got a decent look at your Dad when we were leaving on the very last night. Chances are good they're out on a mission, no where near civilization right now. It will take a while for them to get back, let alone for someone to actually contact them.' Archer answered sternly.
'...huh. Never thought having bad parents would finally work for me.' I said. I had been trying for levity, but even I could tell the words had come out sounding more bitter than anything else.
'Buck up kid. Long as I'm here there are really only six other people that can truly hurt you.' Archer chuckled. I just gave him a flat unconvinced stare.
'Far as I can tell, Remnant doesn't have any of the threats I'd usually associate with true danger. No Dead Apostle Ancestors, no ORT, the moon is half blown up so your safe on that front...' he trailed off with a shrug.
'You know, I believe you but do you have to sound so strained when you try to comfort me?' I answered weakly. He gave me an annoyed glare but couldn't deny my point. Even though he was clearly trying to make me feel better, he was obviously terrible at it. It was like he was constantly resisting the urge to shrug, tell me to nut up or shut up, and then vanish.
I chose to take it as a sign of our growing friendship that he didn't do any of that, even though he obviously wanted to. I couldn't blame him really. He had been pretty honest about what lengths some Magi would go to, and it was plain to see that he wasn't all that surprised by the contents of Velvet's book.
'Believe it or not, this is still pretty tame for a Grail War.' Archer said after a moment.
'That doesn't make me feel better.' I answered, eyeing Coco and Velvet across the room. The two had put their heads together and were whispered something I couldn't quite make out. If I was lucky, I mean really lucky, they were trying to come up with terms for an alliance. After a pregnant pause I asked;
'Hey... do we have to win the war? I mean if all the Servants just agree to stop-' I put forth hopefully. Honestly, I was having a hard time seeing most of the Masters and Servants I encountered as bad guys. Obviously Assassin was nuts, and Caster was villain if I'd ever seen one, but Rider, Saber and Archer all seemed like fairly reasonable, if not necessarily nice people. If we could all just agree not to kill one another then -
'Seven more are summoned and everything goes to shit. It's been done.' Archer said bluntly.
'...Oh.' Was all I could really say in response. Despite the bleakness of the conversation talking to Archer was just... calming. Like his sheer unflappability was contagious. I wasn't stupid enough to think he'd be able to bail me out of every possible problem that could come up, that would just be naive. But the lonely man in red somehow felt more like family than any of my actual sisters at times like these.
'Hey Archer?' I said finally.
'Mmm?' The white haired man replied, his eyes now narrowed and trained on Coco and Velvet.
'Thanks. For being here and all.' I said. Archer jerked like I had slapped him, spinning from his stoic standing position to pin me with an annoyed glare. We locked eyes for a moment, and despite the severity of my present situation, I slowly raised a hand into the air, and marked a tally on the board.
'You little -' Archer snapped his hands stretching out in a strangling motion before he was cut off by the door opening, and Ozpin stepping inside. He looked haggard, like he hadn't had any sleep in a while. Dark bags were under his eyes, and the usually bland expression he maintained was tainted by the slight downturn of his lips, the very beginnings of a frown.
"Jaune. I'd like to see you in my office. Miss Goodwitch will be handling Miss Adel and Miss Velvetina." He said sternly. And I do mean sternly. Which was pretty creepy given how apathetic the man usually sounded.
"Uh..." I said, looking around the room. Coco and Velvet had retreated a step to stare with wide eyed panic at Ozpin, and Archer was watching the older man like he would a poisonous snake. I wondered why Coco and Velvet were so distressed when they hadn't seemed all that bothered by their punishment prior to this. Then I remembered. This would be the first time they would have met Ozpin after being told he was a Magus. And given their - possibly justifiable - fear of other Magi, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they probably now viewed the entire school as enemy territory.
" ." Ozpin said again, more forcefully this time when I didn't immediately jump up to follow him. I winced, and this time complied, lurching up and trailing behind him as he spun on one heel and sped up the halls.
It didn't take long for us to reach the elevator up to Ozpin's office, and the moment the doors shut behind us, the aging man sagged, like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"I apologize for how brusque I might have seemed Jaune. The last few days have been... trying." He said with a sigh and a sip of coffee.
"I can understand that sir. With everything that happened at the Forever Falls, there must have been a lot of fallout." I said, sympathetic if nothing else. Ozpin and I weren't friends. In fact, I was less inclined to trust him now than I was before I had found out he was a Magus and all that entailed. Before I might have simply believed him my Headmaster, the man responsible for raising generations of Hunters. In another life I might have taken his word as gospel. But now...
"Hmm? Yes I suppose that was something of a headache as well." He mused.
"Was there... something else happening?" I asked cautiously. I didn't really want to know what would bother Ozpin so much that he would consider the Forever Falls incident a mere 'headache', but I had a feeling I was going to find out. Before he had the chance to further elaborate, the elevator dinged, and the doors slid open to reveal Ozpin's office. It was a spartan affair. A single desk, some chairs, and walls lined with bookshelves. It wouldn't have been all that outstanding - the view from the top of the tower aside - except for the two people already present in the room.
"Get the hell off me you crazy bitch!" A man in dirty black jeans and wearing a disheveled grey shirt cried out. He had black hair, styled back with what looked like way too much gel, and the top three buttons of his shirt were haphazardly undone. He was leaning back on Ozpin's desk, though not by choice it seemed. In front of him was a tan skinned woman with brown hair that had turquoise tips. She was wearing a black kimono with a fire pattern sewn into it, and had one knee pressed firmly between the mans legs, pressing him back. One of her hands was roaming carelessly under his shirt while the other was pulling at a fistful of red fabric that had been wrapped around the mans throat, but that looked like it was actually supposed to be a cape.
"But beloved, we have yet to seal our vows! Yet to even kiss!" The woman cried in outrage, pulling more strongly on the cape, while the man, who had a single hand underneath the strangling implement and was desperately trying to keep it from choking him strained to hold her back. Not that it did him any good. He was practically shaking with effort, but she was no more inconvenienced than she would have been fighting with a puppy.
"Amber I swear to god, I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but we are not in a relationship!" The man screeched, his free hand causing parts of the desk to splinter where he pushed against it.
"You saved this life and now you have to take responsibility for it! I'm trying to be gentle!" The woman all but yelled in his face.
"Ahem." Ozpin faux coughed, drawing both the man and woman's attention. The man turned his gaze on us with a look halfway between relief and hatred, but the woman... the woman looked at us and for a moment I got the distinct impression I wasn't looking at a human being. Her eyes were golden with slit pupils, and the manic grin she bore was somewhere between insane and predatory. There wasn't really any expression at all on her face when she saw Ozpin and I beyond that. Her eyes darted across both of us, before returning to the man she was presently strangling, and then sighed.
"Apologies beloved. It would be inappropriate for anyone to be witness to our consummation." she pouted, before releasing the man and stepping back. He staggered forward with a ragged gasp, untangling the cape from around his throat and rubbing at it gingerly.
"Ozpin." he growled after a few moments, grabbing one of the chairs by the desk and falling into it as though he hadn't just been strangled half to death for a kiss.
"Qrow." Ozpin answered, stepping forward and around the desk so he could take a seat. I just stayed by the elevator, shuffling about and unsure of what to do next. I really didn't want to go anywhere near that woman. Said woman was standing a half step behind the chair Qrow was in, watching her cranky possibly lover through half lidded eyes and completely ignoring Ozpin and I.
"Well? You just gonna stand there kid? I haven't slept in two days, so I gotta say, I'm not feeling super patient right now." Qrow growled, waving me forward.
I took a few tentative steps forward, before making it within arms reach of the woman - Amber - when her gaze shot up to me. Her eyes looked more normal now but there was still something decidedly alien about her. Something that screamed apex predator. I gulped once, then nervously walked in a circle around her to reach my seat, watching her the whole time. She just smiled knowingly at me before turning her gaze back on Qrow.
"Well that's not creepy at all..." I mumbled, and Qrow shrugged. It wasn't a shrug that said he disagreed with me, or one that said 'what can you do?' it was a shrug of resignation. That single motion told me everything I needed to know about how Qrow felt about his present situation.
"So, Jaune, I'm sure you're wondering why I've called you here." Ozpin began.
"Because you need another errand boy to bite the bullet for you probably." grumbled Qrow, heedless of whether he was interrupting or not.
"...be that as it may. Jaune, I need you to go with Qrow for a few days. I realize you are not a fully licensed Hunter, but I am willing to allow this to count as work experience. An apprenticeship of sorts." Ozpin continued, gliding past Qrow's comment. I guessed this wasn't a new conversation for the two given the familiarity with which they spoke.
"That... doesn't really explain why you need me." I said shooting a surreptitious glance at the woman. I also didn't want to be anywhere near this guy if he was going to have whatever the hell she was following him around day and night.
"This is a mission of a somewhat more mystical nature. Qrow is also a Magus, but his theoretical knowledge is somewhat lacking, and I am presently unable to leave Beacon." Ozpin admitted without plainly, setting his mug down on the table with a shrug.
"Juniper's kid huh? Makes sense." Qrow conceded.
"You knew my Mom?" I asked hesitantly.
"Oh yeah. I don't there was a male in our age group who didn't-" Qrow paused when the woman gently laid her hands on his shoulders. He tilted his head back to look at her, only to find her smiling down at him, with her brows furrowed.
"- also... go to school here..." he finished lamely, and I shivered at the Amber's nod of approval. She didn't, I noticed, remove her hands from his shoulders though.
"If you're quite done?" Ozpin added, tapping a finger on the desk gently to draw our attention back to him.
"I don't know if I wanna get involved in anything too crazy after the Falls sir." I said honestly. And it was true. I needed a damn break. Some freaking down time. Maybe take a day off to paint my shield or get someone to build a mechashift into it.
"Are you sure about that? I'm given to understand you were quite adamant that no one call your parents over last nights events." Ozpin prodded and I froze. Was he...?
"Really Oz? Threatening a kid now?" Qrow drawled disapprovingly.
"No wait. Can you... can you make it so they don't get brought in?" I asked tentatively.
"I could." The grey haired man admitted, now drumming his fingers on the desk faster and faster.
"What about school? I can't just disappear..." I tried again, hoping I could squeak by without having to commit. I should have probably tried an excuse that didn't involve school when dealing with the guy who ran the school, but I just couldn't think of anything else.
"That should be no problem. Officially, you will be suspended for the duration of the mission, Ansel is close enough that it could be believed that you have traveled there." Ozpin stated, pulling a sheaf of papers from his desk and push them across the wooden expanse to me.
"Just sign there and you're punishment can begin."
I stared at the paperwork, not really taking in what it said. Did I really have a choice? I mean, my parents could probably take me from here but... they wouldn't kill me like another Servant would... right?
"What about Servants? If we run into something like Caster again we're all going to die." I tried again.
"As though I would ever allow anyone to separate my beloved and I." Amber suddenly spoke up, snorting derisively.
"I might not be a match for every Servant in the war, but their Master's will burn all the same." she continued, turning her reptilian gaze on me in a chilling approximation of a comforting smile.
"I assure you, I had planned to hunt and kill every other Master in this war regardless. You have nothing to fear from such scum."
'Scale of one to ten?' I asked Archer over our link, gulping to cover the sudden terror I felt in my gut.
'Twelve.' The white haired servant answered, appearing beside me for but the barest of moments before Amber vanished, appearing in the space he was about to materialize in. The golden particles dispersed and I felt Archer flee the room in a panic. Amber sniffed the air like a dog, and squinted at the space behind me in annoyance before gliding gently back to her position beside Qrow.
'Nevermind. There is no unit of measurement we could reasonably use here.' Archer chimed in from wherever the hell he had fled to.
Great. Just... Great.
-ooo-
So I hurt my wrist last week, just to compound my tendon strain, and writing is really hard for me right now. Update speed has obviously slowed down as a result, but I'm gonna try and stick with it, even if I have to type one handed or like a grandma one key at a time.
Some things with Amber here, or rather, Kiyohime!Amber - She's insanely powerful. Basically a Servant with an infinite mana battery in the form of the body she stole, the fact that she's Berserker, and also the Spring Maiden - which itself is a whole other slew of powers and mana resources. I won't say she's the big bad of the fic because she's not, but I will say that I think there has to be some trade off for how unstable and hard to control a Berserker usually is.
In other news, I'm super annoyed by this hurt wrist deal because I was going to dump a handful of new story ideas at once just to gauge interest, and I wanted to take the time to keep trucking away on this fic. I watched Spiderverse the other day and am in a Marvel mood so the next thing from my is probably going to be another chapter of For Someone's Glory - probably on the weekend, assuming my painkillers hold for that long. I was also considering adding a bit to the end of my chapters where I answer questions in the reviews but to be honest I find that pretty annoying when other writers do it so I'm kind of on the fence about it.
I also understand that I might have picked up the pace plot wise in recent chapters, and not everyone is happy with that. I get that, and do want to sort of slow things back down again, but have to admit that I do have certain story beats I need/want to hit to keep things moving along. This next bit, in addition to the bit at the Forever Falls is pretty much where the major divergence from RWBY canon occurs timeline wise. The White Fang obviously aren't the big evil anymore because Saber is running them, Torchwick isn't afraid of Cinder because he has Saber backing him up, and in lieu of them we have Casters army of anti-aura dolls. We'll see how that works out.
Anywho, that's all from me, and as always
Thanks for reading.