4:30 PM on 2/1/15: We'll always remember Monty Oum for the joy he was as the Almighty Creator of RWBY and Dead Fantasy. Even though his life and his works may come to a close in this world, they will continue to live on in our hearts and in the hundreds of universes that we create.
From Matt Hullum's journal entry on the Rooster Teeth website: "As for honoring Monty… in lieu of flowers or gifts, we ask that you simply do something creative. Use your imagination to make the world a better place in any way that you can. If you know Monty like we do, then you know he would certainly be doing that if he were able to."
Gone.
Ruby first, scorched to a crisp within a broiling cloud of fire of her own doing.
Marco second, the right side of his body just gone.
And most recently, Russel, his head pulverized at the center of the crater that Tifa has punched into the concrete.
"You are in so much trouble!" roars Tifa, every booming footstep sounding like a death toll behind him.
"You're the one who's in trouble," Jaune weakly calls back, "for destroying public property…" Even as he says it, he knows just how horrible of an excuse it is… but in honor of the manliness of his one remaining cherry, he will prevail!
Tifa laughs freely, apparently able to keep up a normal conversation at full sprint when Jaune is already gasping for breath. "I hear the nurses here are great at resetting shattered streets and skulls back to their original, pre-destroyed state. Who knows, maybe they'll even put that mouth between your butt cheeks—where it belongs—when I'm through with you."
"My mouth is just fine where it—EEK WHAT ARE YOU DOING."
{She just threw a car at me. A CAR.}
"Showing to your perverted Director," grunts the girl, "what perverts ought to get for their shamelessness."
"Speaking of putting things back where they belong—" He ducks and rolls as an entire cart of watermelons smashes into an adjacent building, splattering wooden splinters and crimson gore across his face, "haven't you ever heard of sports bras?"
When no furious reply is immediately forthcoming, Jaune hazards a glance over his shoulder, a glimmer of hope rising in his chest that he might actually be outrunning her. …Unfortunately, it's only because not even Tifa can sprint at full speed while hefting an uprooted pine tree over one shoulder.
{A TREE?}
"SOMEBODY HELP—" is all he manages to scream before Tifa plants both feet into the asphalt and heaves the naturally grown spear in his general direction. The force used to stomp a foot through the pavement and launch such a massive object generates a preemptive shockwave so powerful that Jaune is bodily tossed into the air, unable to even dodge the screaming network of leafed twigs and branches ready to ensnare him.
His aura is just beginning to repel the worst of the stabby-stick damage when, without warning, the entire wooden ensemble plunges straight into the ground like a top-heavy arrow. Jaune spots the cause later in the form of a small, bunny-eared girl crouched atop the trunk, her landing momentum having forced the tree downward and away from Jaune.
"Grab my hand!" Velvet shrieks as she surges forward with a powerful kick of her legs. The force of her own pounce disintegrates the bark she'd been resting on, snapping the whole of the tree trunk into two halves that bounce around chaotically, giving the pursuing Tifa {she's still after me—WHY} an obstacle she can't easilypredict and overcome.
Jaune barely snags her hand as she soars over him. She's moving so fast that it feels like she's going to dislocate his right arm—and then she twists around, scooping him up in her arms, and carts him off like a bride-to-be waiting to get his cherry popped. She's much gentler than Penny, at least. Penny had been unforgivingly rough, dragging him through the treetops and through a lake in a piggyback ride from hell. In Velvet's arms, he's practically floating on clouds… until she unceremoniously drops him onto the slanted concrete rooftop of a skyscraper about a half a mile later. He almost rolls of the eave before scrabbling to a stop. "Ack!"
"I'm… I'm sorry!" Velvet braces herself against her knees about ten feet away, panting so hard that she sounds like she's having an asthma attack. "I… I don't carry… often…" Hot blood begins to creep up her neckline as the adrenaline rush is replaced by mortification. "I'm…"
"Thanks for saving my butt back there," he says quickly, before she can dissolve in a stammering puddle of awkwardness. "I'd be six feet under if it hadn't been for you."
"She… she wouldn't really… really kill you… would she?"
"No. But I physically witnessed a traveling buddy's brain dissolve into a cloud of smoke with a punch that created a crater with a six-foot radius. I think that counts as six feet under."
"Oh. I'm… sorry for your friend."
Jaune puts a hand over his eyes. "Not a friend. Just a pervert."
Velvet bites her lip. "I thought you didn't like labels," she finally says. There's a tinge of disappointment in her voice that he's surprised to hear.
"Oh, I… well, yeah, right?" He tries to get a read on her. Labels? Yeah, labels. Labels like Jaune, the god of chaos. Russel, the pervert worshiper. Weiss, the ice queen. He had vowed to Penny that he'd fight to see past those labels, hadn't he? "Yeah, well, Russel gave away our hiding spot because he was perving over some girl's rack. She promptly punched him in the face. And, well, I hope the nurses can find the pieces of his shattered skull and put him back together."
"Labels… sure, they're there for a reason," concedes Velvet. "But as we mature, we're m-meant to outgrow those labels. So don't force Russel back by, by labeling him."
"…Do you have a label you're trying to push past?"
Velvet flushes red. "I… I already have. I…" She tugs on an ear nervously. No, she's actually tugging it down in demonstration. "I was a bunny girl. And, in the human city I lived in during the war, that label put me in a bad place. It didn't help that I looked like a vulnerable teenager at the time either."
One part of him doesn't know what to say. The second part is panicking because he doesn't know what to say. The third part picks its jaw off the floor, because {she's not a teenager? Just how old is she then?}
"There's not much you can do when your label has a basis in truth, right?" She laughs bitterly. The gesture is so at odds at the shy girl impression he has of her that it throws him for a loop. "I am a Rabbit and that's… not something I can escape. That's… why I joined the White Fang."
The fourth part shuts up shop, because all parts of Jaune's mind can agree that he really doesn't like the White Fang. The last part of his mind reminds him in a tiny voice to put those recently dug-up remembrances to rest, however, because it's not like he can snarl at the girl who just saved him from death by pine tree. He settles for an eloquent and strangled, "Um."
Velvet anxiously tugs at her shoestring tie. "I wasn't with them for long," she blurts. "The White Fang, they're toxic. I made some of my closest friends there, friends who taught me to fight for myself; but after a year, Yatsuhashi picked me up after a mission and we deserted. …I think you'd like him."
"Wha?"
"N-Not like that! I meant… you remind me of him. I don't know if… if you remember me from the airship ride over here, before school started. You didn't even know me, but you showed that you cared even then. And then… that other time."
Jaune definitely remembers her; true enough to her label, her ears make her a little hard to forget. He remembers that she timidly ignored him up until he felt the need to puke up his intestines. If that was a positive impression in Velvet's eyes… Jaune can't really complain.
"So, I… um." Velvet's complexion darkens a shade of crimson. "I travel a lot faster by air. W-Would you l-l-like to travel w-with me?"
He could definitely use a companion. A super-fast companion with killer kicks, definitely. "Sure!" he grins.
She holds out her arms and stares at the tiled rooftop. Any second now, her entire head is going to explode into flames. "O-O-Okay."
Jaune peers over the edge of the roof. Uh. That's got to be at least ten stories. How did Velvet get all the way up here with him in her arms? "Wow. That's a long drop."
"As. As long as no upperclassmen throw cars or trees at us, I can make the j-jump."
Jaune turns to stares at Velvet in blank confusion. What's got her nerves all tangled up? "I don't doubt that," he chuckles awkwardly, "But I'm not sure my legs are ready to do that…"
Light, he swears he can see the level of red shooting up through her once coffee-colored ears. He half-expects the tips to light up like sparkly fireworks. She gulps once, very visibly, before extending her forearms out even further and quietly whispering, "I'llcarryyouifyouwant."
Oh.
Oh.
"Er. I can make it to school on my own, thanks," he blurts {ohLightthisisembarrassing}. "Thank you for saving me from evil pine trees thrown by the bustiest upperclasswoman ever, but it's really not necessary for you to carry me all the way to school and I think I'll go now."
Velvet nods once, squeaks, "Meep," and bounds so quickly off the rooftop that a shockwave of air wallops Jaune in the face. She flips in midair and alights upon the building across the street—and then she's gone.
Hm. He's stuck on top of a building with no way of reaching ground level besides jumping. Again.
{What goes around, comes around.}
Jaune steps off the rooftop again and hopes that his aura and Leg Power +1 kicks in by the time he hits the earth so he doesn't shatter all the bones in his legs.
Ouch doesn't even begin to describe what he's feeling.
He feels… he feels like his butt just got three new cracks in it.
From the moment he'd stepped off the roof, he knew he'd land safely. Not two hours ago, he'd jumped from a moving train and fallen eight stories to alight perfectly in the street. He purposely landed on his head during his fight with Russel, for Light's sake, and that had to be at least four stories, right? His natural instinct was going to take a while to readjust to Leg Power +1, so all he had to overcome is the fear and his legs would take care of the solid earth.
His legs were not equipped to handle the sudden sheen of black ice that flash-froze the entire street two seconds before he hit the ground.
He landed on both feet. His knees flexed to absorb most of the momentum, but just a little extra kinetic energy kept traveling down his spine, ending in his butt. His legs couldn't take it all. He tipped backwards. His legs flew straight into the sky and he slammed his butt so hard into the ground that he spontaneously farted out of all four cracks.
And then he writhed around on the ground for a while in holey, mother-of-Monty levels of pain.
He might have been out for hours, Jaune doesn't know. All he's aware of when he returns to the world of the living is that it is significantly darker. Storm clouds race overhead, obscuring the previously warm morning sunlight; eddies of wind and frost whirl down the sidewalk, hit a large buffer in front of Jaune, and pass to either side of him, leaving him relatively sheltered.
Sheltered by… the bulk of Cardin Winchester.
"You okay there, buddy?" the guy says.
"I…" Jaune scrambles back for all of two inches before his bruised bottom rudely reminds him that it's about to split a new one. "Um. Hi!"
The huge guy sticks out a huge hand. Jaune stares at it apprehensively until Cardin growls, "I swear, if you don't drop the kicked puppy impression, I'm gonna slap you."
Jaune whimpers once before taking Cardin's hand. Sure, the guy offered to dry-clean his jacket once; that doesn't erase the terrifying first impression Jaune has of the armored Boar looming above him on the airship, a predatory grin on his face. He's even wearing his armor now, though Jaune spots glimpses of the school uniform through the chinks in the metal plating.
{Huh. Is that cheating?}
His butt complains a little more, but he makes it up in one piece. He shies away slightly when he notices Cardin checking him out—at least until Cardin cranks his glare up to eleven.
"I was gonna ask if you were still in one piece," he snarls, "but I shouldn't have bothered." With that, he swipes a discarded street sign off the ground, tosses it up into the air, and catches it before whirling away in one motion (nearly knocking off Jaune's head with the twisted metal butt of the improvised weapon).
"Wait!" Jaune just barely catches Cardin by the elbow. He expects the action to at least halt the Boar's progress; it's unfortunate that he underestimated the man's mass—and thus momentum—versus his own, because Cardin doesn't slow down in the slightest. On slippery ice, than means that Jaune is yanked forward, trips over his own feet, and quickly prepares to faceplant the ground.
At least until Cardin whirls around and catches him, causing Jaune to smash his nose against the Boar emblem of Cardin's chest plate instead. Face hot in embarrassment, he paws Cardin's lower torso (because seriously, this guy is tall) as he attempts to pull himself back to his feet; however, the black ice seems determined to maximize the awkwardness of the situation, as he remains effectively running facefirst into the guy, with only his frantic hands preventing him from re-kissing Cardin's abs.
{At least you know how Kairi felt that one time…}
After about two seconds of horrified embarrassment, Cardin finally hauls Jaune up by his armpits, pretty much picking him up like a stiff mannequin and positioning him in a solid standing form.
Jaune immediately blurts, "We're fine, right?"
"Whaddya talking about?"
He makes sure the soles of his feet aren't going anywhere without his permission before ducking his head and mumbling, "Uh, you and me… we're good, right?"
"I saw your moaning, butthurt body in a skanky alleyway. Now lemme just give you a little advice—"
"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT."
"Cool it, butthead. I'm pulling your leg. I really came to, out of the goodness of my heart, check if you were still alive. Now you tell me if we're good."
"Well, the last time I saw you… you were about to throw a chair at some anti-Stray lady, so I told you to punch me in the face instead."
"I didn't do either, now did I."
"Well, technically…"
"That was a lovetap, technically."
"Have I failed to mention that I bruise easily?"
"I'm sorry, did you want me to kiss it better?"
"I appreciate the love, but I'll pass." Jaune brushes traces of frost off the seat of his pants. Cardin seems like an okay guy. So far. Maybe. "So… if you were wondering how exactly I ended up—"
His companion bites back a bark of a patronizing laugh. "Oh, I just assumed you jumped headfirst from the top of a building and knocked yourself out. Nothin' less than I'd expect from a Lemming."
"Hey! It's not like I do this on purpose! …Well, that one time against Russel—but that's not the point! The universe is out to get me, I swear… the timing of all those panty shots couldn't be anything but divine intervention."
"Do I look like I care about your obsession with panties? No, I do not."
{I do not—oh, what's the point.} "What I'm trying to say," Jaune gasps, "is that landing would have been perfect if that freak winter storm hadn't hit right before I touched down. How does that even happen?"
"This, comin' from the guy who flash-froze himself for a week."
"I didn't do that on purpose either, for the record." He catches himself. "Hold on, you're saying Weiss did this?"
"I'm not sayin' that she did it. I know." Cardin emphasizes his argument by pointing straight up. For a second, Jaune thinks he's gesturing at the storm gray clouds above their heads, the white specks dancing on icy breezes over the rooftops and drifting slowly into the street. Then he notices the colossally ginormous spearhead jutting straight into the heavens, casting a shimmering, glacial-blue sheen across the entire town.
{Huh… Was that supposed to happen?}
Weiss froze the arena around the Lake of Zen on accident, because he messed with something he really shouldn't have. This splinter of ice is significantly more structured, almost elegant—but was the winter storm around it really necessary? And seriously, she might be a prodigy, but where is she getting all the power from? She'd have to be carrying around a huge Dust crystal to store that much energy…
"Why?" is all he manages to croak.
"Melanie," grunts Cardin, "has always considered Weiss a company rival. I shoulda known that she'd choose today to let Miltia loose."
Jaune makes a dive for Cardin's elbow before he gets out of range, this time anchoring himself to the guy's disproportionately large mass instead of trying to stop him. He thusly does not embarrass himself on Cardin's body; in fact, he only slips slightly and clunks his forehead against a forearm guard, and since that's chainmail, it doesn't even hurt (his confidence) that much. What's on the tip of his tongue pushes past the humiliation and explodes into Cardin's earspace: "You have to tell me: just who is Miltia?" He casts his eyes away from Cardin's face as vivid memories streak through his consciousness, of the gunshot, of white energy blossoming out the back of Melanie's skull. "…What is she?"
Cardin raises his forearm to steady Jaune's wobbly feet. "I told you to stay away from her," he warns.
The blonde falters. "I… Melanie and I were on the same train… until she used Miltia to destroy our car and sprinkle us into the city below the tracks, which is not how I wanted to start this morning. But Cardin, please! If you know anything about why Melanie had to shoot her twin sister out of her head with a fake gun, you have to tell me!"
Cardin shakes himself free of Jaune's grasp. "The only thing I've ever needed to tell you is that she's dangerous and you need to stay away from her."
"I've been hearing her voice in my head!"
That stops Cardin in his tracks. It takes him a second, but when he turns around, he doesn't say what did you say or are you crazy, but, "How long has it been happening?"
"That day you cleaned up my jacket for me. …Is this something you expected?" He almost succeeds in keeping his voice neutral. "Because as far as I know, having invisible friends has done wonders for my sanity."
"I…" Cardin chokes. On his words. Or maybe his own spit. "I thought I was going mad until that day."
That stops Jaune's brain for a second. "She? Miltia? In your—? You too?"
"No, I didn't… I don't know. I've been… relivin' a past life recently. Things I didn't like thinking about too much that came to mind anyways, whether I wanted it or not." Cardin covers his face with his hands briefly. When his fingers slide away, his expression has hardened with determination. "It turned out alright though. Reminded me of some things I need to do before I leave."
Jaune senses a whole 'nother story behind Cardin's words, but he's got more pressing matters to take care of, like: "The fact that you're totally okay with me admitting that I've been hearing another person's voice in my head says that you know more about the Malachites' business than I do. So you have to tell me: what happened to Miltia? What's going between her and her sister?"
"Melanie had me along on a need-to-know basis," the brunette rumbles, "which I was fine with. All I needed was the paycheck, and she needed me to keep my mouth shut."
Jaune takes half a second to pat his own brilliant mind on its figurative back before whipping out his keen observation (okay, maybe not so keen, because he did overhear Melanie firing him by phone on the train car): "You've been using past tense," he crows triumphantly. "You're not working for Melanie anymore, are you."
Cardin nails him with a glare so furiously hot that it should have vaporized the ice around them.
"And I'm sorry about that!" he quickly amends. "But if she's not paying you anymore, that means you're not bound by her contract, right? You have to tell me if you know something that I don't!"
Cardin begins to take steps forward, dragging Jaune along like a rag doll. "I don't know anything," he repeats.
Jaune tenaciously keeps his arms wrapped around Cardin's elbow. "Let me tell you what I know," he offers as his feet drag along the ground, "and you can fill in my blanks. So Miltia's a spirit who may or may not have a physical form. She's appeared to me thrice, by the way, and she was different each time. There was that one time at the beginning of school, when she seriously could pack a punch and was wearing red then. Then as a disembodied voice here and there, especially strong that day your unwanted memories stopped, which—coincidence?—was the day you threw a fit during class. Then, this morning, when she came out of the back of Melanie's head as her inner Grimm instead of an animal, and had all the personality of a blank sheet of paper. Same color too. Does that sound about right?"
"I don't know."
"Fine. Let's start with our first encounter. To anybody from the normal world, Miltia was a perfectly normal faunus girl, wouldn't you agree? Maybe a bit on the shy side, a bit compassionate since she offered to open my chakras, but she could hold a fight with her claws. Nobody could have known that she was just a spirit, and not actually a Sheep… except for you. You'd already been her guard for a while. Did you notice anything different about her then?"
"I don't know."
"There has to be something! You had to have touched her at some point, right?"
"I don't swing that way."
"Please, Cardin! I've got a couple spaces here and there that just need to be filled—"
"Now we're talking." The brunette flashes him a wicked grin. "I'll fill up your holes, alright."
{Nope. Nope!} "Mooooving onward. After that first contact, I hear Miltia's voice on and off, the clearest time being that one day that you say your mysterious memory recall stopped. This is pure conjecture, and by no means do I think this is the whole truth; but gathering from my and only my previous experiences, maybe Miltia managed to somehow spirit-hop from Melanie's soul to yours, and then yours to mine. If that's even at all possible. Maybe it works like a, maybe a harpoon? She buried herself hilt-deep into your mind or your soul or whatever; she appears to you more often and you get flashbacks. Then she anchors herself to me more strongly, and that's why I get a split personality that teams up with my sarcastic subconscious to wreak havoc on my confidence."
The look Cardin gives him suggests that Jaune just sprouted a new head. "Will you believe me if I tell you that I didn't hear anything after at hilt-deep?"
"Urk. Stop that."
"Then believe me when I say I don't know anything."
"Nope."
"It's true." Cardin stares straight ahead, his body apparently moving on autopilot. He doesn't slow down in the slightest, even though he's dragging a human-sized elbow-leech along the icy ground. "Since you've already talked it out with yourself, I'm not giving you anything new when I say that Miltiades Malachite is a part of Melanie's mind. All I was told is that she's only supposed to come out as Melanie's Familiar when Melanie shoots her out with the evoker. I was hired because Miltia was appearing on her own anyways. If she came out, I was to take her back to Melanie without anybody else seeing." Cardin closes his eyes too long to be a blink. "So, of course, the first time she breaks free, you're there to spot her immediately. Just like that, I failed. The job was all downhill from there."
{…Oh.} Against his better judgment, some idiotic part of him pries, "Anything you can tell me about Miltia's behavior as a spirit?"
"I don't know and I don't care," he snarls. "The spirit-hopping is freaky and, boohoo, it's happenin' to you, but I uprooted what was left of my empty life to attend this academy for the job, only to be fired two weeks into the semester! At this rate, I'll never get out of Menagerie!"
"So you do think it's possible for Miltiades to have hopped—"
Cardin yanks his arm forward, whipping Jaune around until they're literally face to face. "I think it's time for you to get off. In fact, you should get back to school as soon as possible, if you're really all that eager to visit Sun tonight."
"Why would I—?" It's only then that Jaune notices Cardin is heading downhill. As in: not towards the academy. In the opposite direction, in fact. He's making a beeline straight for the center of Weiss' lovely snowstorm: the huge ice pillar. "What are you doing?"
"Getting my job back." He gives Jaune a final shake. "This is your last warning…"
"I need answers!"
"I need money. If you don't have that, you can get bent for all I care."
Ouch, the cold shoulder. Or, more appropriately, the cold elbow. Though it soon becomes the cold ground as Cardin finally dislodges Jaune, who gracefully belly-flops to the icy asphalt.
"If you won't tell me," he yells at the Boar's back, "I'll just get them myself!"
Cardin doesn't turn around. He just raises one fist in a fond farewell—at least, until Jaune shakes snowflakes from his lashes and he catches sight of the brunette's one-fingered salute.
Okay. Cardin is officially a butthead.