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The Sneaky Snek - Hiss
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"Up you get, asshole." He heard Tai shout loudly, a foot smacking into his shin a second later before he could wake up. Surprised, his eyes snapped open and he hissed in pain, rolling onto his side and holding his hand over the sore spot while he woke up more fully. Snorting a laugh, the man added, "Ruby went to get breakfast for us, and we have an appointment with Oz after that. Something, something, ancient scrolls?"
"General Ironwood wants me to help him against a White Fang attack coming up sometime during the festival." He explained shortly, groaning as he stood and his limbs complained about having slept in his under-armor for so long, the stiff, padded cloth not suited to sleeping comfortably for obvious reasons. Stretching, he went on, "Ozpin has old tomes and scrolls from other Overlords, and is letting me see them so I can be helpful."
"And I'm sure whatever power you get from it doesn't matter at all?" The older blonde man raised an eyebrow and smirked, crossing his arms with the half-joke and half-accusation.
"I won't lie and say it's not part of it, but… I want to help, too." Even if that was just as much to make Ruby happy as because it was the right thing to do, and he knew it. "If he didn't have them, I'd try, but I'd do a lot worse. I have a weak vortex shield, a weak fire spell, and an axe. To fight armed, trained riflemen."
"You did it before." Tai pointed lightly, shrugging when Jaune gave him a sarcastic look. "Worked out pretty well, in the end, didn't it?"
"No, I got shot to hell and back before, remember? I didn't actually fight them all that much." He'd only really run up, spewed some fire, stabbed one and then gotten shot to pieces, really. If not for Ruby and the Minions, he'd have probably died from wounds like that. "I had to heal for what, a month and a half after that? So, uh, kinda don't fancy rushing into rifle fire again, you know? Not if I can help it, at least."
"Hey, just saying." The older man shrugged, throwing him a roguish smile, "I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"
"I can, you know, die?" He tried, working at the sides of his gambeson, undoing the thick, cordy threads that bound it around his chest. Like shoelaces, but dark brown, thick as his fingers and laced up in his armpits.
Loosening them, he pulled the stiff thing over his head and shivered in the cold air, tossing it on the bed and sighing. Standing shirtless, he turned to look at Tai, the man raising an eyebrow at him questioningly, and Jaune added, "Which would make Ruby sad. Very, very, very sad."
"Would it?" The other blonde asked coyly, grinning widely. "Asking for a friend, promise."
"You're an idiot. A tall, blonde, literal stereotype." He accused, the older man grinning, leaning against the wall by the door and crossing his arms. He didn't even bother pretending to deny it, either, which was somehow the funniest part about the whole thing. "What have you got going on, anyways?"
"Keeping an eye on you and my youngest daughter. Making sure you two use both of your beds the way beds in an Academy are meant to be." The man answered frankly, Jaune rolling his eyes at the answer. "Hey, I was a teenager once. Dying is a hell of a motivator to get laid. I would know, I hooked up with my partner… Pretty soon after graduation."
"Yang's mom, right?" He asked after a second to think and remember, more to make conversation than anything else while he swapped his leather trousers out for a clean, Beacon uniform, pair of them. "Ruby mentioned that they were half-sisters a while back, and Yang's older, so…"
"Yeah, it was Yang's mother. She was hot, I was hot, we kept almost dying… Basically biweekly, and that kinda incentivized us a bit to experience life. Fighting monsters, getting shot at, it's all scary as hell and just as dangerous." The man's smile slipped away as memories tugged at him, eyes getting a distant look to them, before they snapped back on him and his bitter, pained smile turned into an almost predatory smirk. "And you're here. Young, blonde, strapping, scarred up, just like me. And you're both fighting monsters, terrorists, almost dying, literally dying in your case..."
The accusation was clear, even to Jaune's apparently story worthy levels of obliviousness.
"I'm not stupid." He answered quietly, "Give me some credit here, Tai. At least a little bit, for old time's sake."
"Didn't you sneak into Beacon Initiation with no training or any Aura defences whatsoever?" Tai asked in counter, eyebrow raised meaningfully as he did. Jaune grimaced and, probably to sell the point even further, the older man added, "And with nothing but a battered old family sword and shield, without even any real armor, to protect you?"
"Okay, okay! Point made, Evil's sake, point made..." He wasn't the brightest, at least in making the big decisions. He could accept that critique at the very least, and he'd been working on it.
But telling and showing were different, and he could stomp and rave all day that he was getting better, but Tai would only really buy it when he saw it. Instead, he decided on a different approach, "Ruby's better than me at that kind of stuff, really. Planning for things, I mean."
"Always been like that." He nodded, sighing sadly but somehow smiling through it. Even that, though, seemed oddly… Sad, in a way Jaune didn't understand. "Her mom always said that a Huntress needed to be able to plan. So, when Ruby got old enough, and said she wanted to be a Huntress, I made sure to teach her like Summer would have wanted."
"It worked. She's… A bit shy and nervous about basically everything, but she's also one of the smartest women I know." The man nodded, watching him for a long time before, finally, Jaune reached up to play with his hair anxiously. "Gnarl says she, uh, that she… Loves me, too, a-apparently. I didn't, you know, realize because I'm not that bright, but I plan on talking to her about it."
"I didn't know you had a desire for suicide, Master!" He rapped a knuckle against the gem and the Minion sighed agitatedly, "Fine, fine, I'll pick out a nice headstone for your stupid self."
"Okay, so I'm going to ask really nicely why you're mentioning this to me?" Tai finally ground out, sliding down the wall and raising an eyebrow sharply at him. "Because, see, I was in a good mood. And we were getting along. And now you're bringing this up. Don't we have, like, a small war to be planning for? And how does Gnarl know anyways?"
"Gnarl has been around for a very long time. Longer than just about anything except the Grimm, I think. He's not been wrong about, well, anything yet, so..." Jaune sighed and shrugged, sitting on the bed and staring at the floor for no other reason than not to look at the other man. "If she feels that way, though, I… Want to actually take her out. You know, on dates and stuff."
"Yeah…" The man drawled out, "And that answers my question… How?"
"Look, I know this is a really weird situation for everyone, and I know me and Ruby kind of… Happened, but I want to do this right." Jaune explained simply, agitated in a way at Tai for being agitated at him. Which he didn't know whether to chalk up to the Gauntlet or just the overwhelming amount of crap going on right now in his life. "If I'm going to go out with her, I want to at least ask you first."
"You want permission to actually date my daughter?" The man asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But you didn't think to ask before kissing her?"
"I mean, I didn't exactly get the chance." He pointed out sharply, looking up and jabbing a finger at the other man almost accusingly. "And she asked, and I was… Not right, yet. I was still dealing with everything that happened, to Emilia and the camp. Still am, really, but… But that's not important. I'm asking now, because it's the right thing to do."
"Mhm, I guess that's fair… Bullshit excuses, but fair too." The man nodded slowly, lips pursed in thought while he looked the young Overlord up and down. Finally, the man sighed and shrugged, "Fine. Not like Ruby'd listen if I said no any damn way, right? So you can have my blessing, or whatever you're after. Just… Don't fuck up, yeah?"
"Not planning on it." He nodded, glad to have this particularly awkward conversation coming to a close. "I just wanna make Ruby happy, and take care of my people, you know? That's all I want."
"I can understand that, yeah. She deserves to be happy, and if you do that for her…" Hr shrugged, grunting as he pushed himself up from the floor and stood, one hand on a hip and the other pointing at him threateningly, "But if you lay a hand anywhere on her that is normally covered up by a bikini, I will cut off your fingers and castrate you. With a spoon. Or I'll do worse."
"W-What could be worse?"
"I'll tell Yang you slept with her innocent little baby sister." The man said ominously, smiling at the little joke. Or what Jaune hoped was a joke, since Yang already terrified him. Turning, the Huntsman waved a hand at him and sighed, "I'm going to go hang out with Qrow. See if he needs any help. You need me in your little White Fang mission?"
"Are you offering?" He asked, letting his voice carry a bit of his hopefulness in it. He could handle it, with some new magic boosting himself up, but to have an extra set of Huntsman level hands on duty would make a hell of a lot of things easier. "Because if you're offering, I certainly don't mind paying for you to help with the Grimm that'll come when the fight kicks off."
"I'll send you my bill to, uh, pass off on your midget." He nodded and pulled the door open, "Don't worry, I'm not that- Oh hi, Ruby."
"Eep!"The girl staggered by him, the foot she'd raised to kick in place of a knock missing and flopping against the floor loudly. "H-Help! Catch! Do a thing!"
She staggered in, bouncing on her heels and trying to catch both her balance and the tray of food she'd brought, the two blondes panicking and rushing to catch her. Tai got there before Jaune, since he was closer, and Ruby laughed awkwardly while he took the food and gave her a stern look. Turning, he laid the tray on the desk and sighed like someone who had suffered for far too long while Ruby waved at Jaune excitedly. He returned the gesture awkwardly and she grinned, clearly excited to finally see him for the first time in a couple of days.
And there was the anxiety again… Joy.
"You guys enjoy your food, I'm heading out for real now." Tai called, turning to grin knowingly and point at Jaune, sitting on the bed once again. "Remember what we talked about, yeah? I'll be waiting. Lemme know when we have to get out there and mess some morons up."
"G-Got it." Because the damn fight with the Fang was what he meant, obviously. And he was a Grimm in disguise, too. Once the man had gone, he licked his lips and looked to Ruby, trying his best to quell the anxiety he felt. "So, uh… How have you been?"
"Bored, stressed, catching up with classes, and avoiding letting Weiss kill me with extra credit assignments." She answered cheerily, looking a bit haggard now that he looked close enough. Nothing more than a slight tiredness to her eyes and a bit less pep in her step when she stood up and bounced, literally unfortunately for Jaune and his hormones right now, over to the food. "Brought bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches, some Atlesian Toast, a few fried eggs… Didn't know what you'd like, so just grabbed a few things."
"It, uh, it sounds good but I wanted to talk." She squeaked at the words, turning to look at him in a small panic, and he raised a hand, laughing awkwardly. "N-Nothing bad, just… I was wondering if you wanted to actually, you know, go out? Like, officially, I mean, as my g-girlfriend."
"O-Officially? L-Like, out and out, officially your girlfriend?" She asked, leaning on the table in front of her and then grinning wide when he nodded. Spinning, she launched at him and he barely got out the surprised swear before the Ruby shaped missile smacked into his chest and bowled them both over the edge of the bed in a glomp that was as much a hug as a grapple. Peppering his face with kisses, she stammered out a, "Of course, you idiot."
And he laughed, hands on her hips holding her comfortably against him, the anxiety from before gone. Finally, her kisses landed on his lips and she melted against him, the blonde rolling over on the floor so she was under him, her legs wrapping around his waist for no other reason, he knew, than to be close to him. His free hand slid up along her back, tracing along the curve of her spine, and settled in her hair to play with it and hold her there and he finally relaxed fully.
This was so much simpler than worrying about how she felt about him… She'd tell him eventually, and he wouldn't pressure her. He could wait.
"Oh!" She pulled away for a second, hair falling around her head and tickling his face, silver eyes bright and energetic once more. The haggardness was gone, now, which made this even better for Jaune. She let herself lay against him, Jaune's heart hammering at the softness he felt pressing into his chest, and she asked, "What should we do for our first real date?"
"I, uh, I dunno. I didn't actually think about it..." He shrugged, Gauntlet moving to the small of her back comfortably. She wasn't near heavy enough to bother him, and with her legs straddling his she mostly held herself up anyways, so he felt find doing that. "Maybe we could… See a movie? Get dinner?"
"Oh, oh!" She bounced excitedly, which drew a lot of Jaune's willpower to keep himself under control, "We could go see the new Man-Spider movie? Oh! And there's a shop downtown, it has some new experimental MS tech stuff. Can we go see it? Please?"
"We can do whatever you want, Ruby." He chuckled, grinning widely at her excitement.
"Good." She nodded, grinning and resting her forehead against his comfortably, "Because I want more kisses from my new boyfriend."
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"Alright, so, this is a rather awkward meeting." Gnarl started, standing in front of the elevator's exit and looking up at the tall, silver haired man, "I know you don't like me anymore than I like you, or your oh so good little school."
"It is more than a simple school. Beacon Academy is the most prestigious Hunter Academy on the continent." Ozpin argued quietly, the low voice carrying just as much heat as if he'd been shouting the small, ancient Minion down. "You are at least correct in stating how I dislike you, though I would say you undersell it a touch."
"Whatever you say. Tell me, how much land have your 'Hunters' managed to secure again?" Gnarl asked, leaning forward and grinning toothily up at the man. Ozpin could only really scowl in response, folding his hands in front of him atop his cane. "Now, do you want to try and Magic measure, or do you want to help me find something useful for my Evil Lordship?"
"I want you to leave back to your Tower…"
"Ah, good, and you will do what against your little pest control problem then?" Ozpin sighed at the barbed question, the Minion chortling at how easy it was to nettle the old man. "As I thought. Now, we have much work ahead of us, so shall we get to it? Or would you prefer to squabble like the children you teach?"
"The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish." The old man said simply, turning and leading the man through the personal library in search of what could be useful in the fight against the White Fang. "I have many scrolls and tomes on armor enchantments Overlords in the past used. Young Mister Arc seems adept as he is. Perhaps those would be the most useful?"
"We will just have to see, I suppose." It would be a great start, really, augmenting and crafting better arms and armor for him. If he could find a weight reduction enchantment, that would let him wear heavier armor without losing any of his mobility. Or perhaps something to augment his physical strength? "We have much to do, Headmaster, so let's get it done. There's Evil that needs doing, and the White Fang happen to have volunteered themselves as first on the corpse pile."
"I regret this already…" The Minion just cackled in response to the Headmaster's words.
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Cinder returned to her dorm to find Emerald and Mercury, as per usual, at each other's throats. Arguing about something stupid until she slammed the door shut behind her and they flinched, glancing to her and then breaking away from each other, headed to their beds in opposite corners of the room before she could even order them there. Seated on their beds, Emerald straight backed and staring at the floor like a cowed child and Mercury leaning against the wall with a leg hanging comfortably, at least looked respectful enough and like they knew she didn't approve of their squabbling. They were children, immature and lacking, but at least they knew their place.
Neo, though, just sat on her own bed opposite Cinder's, legs crossed and blanket wrapped around her visibly snickering form.
"We have a new goal, one apparently more important than our previous one." She started simply, ignoring the needle-like gaze of Neo, following her as she walked to her bed. Sitting and making a show of crossing her legs, she met Neo's sharp, threatening gaze, and added, "And you have met him, I suspect. Based on what information I've managed to gather already, at least."
The small woman's hands flashed in front of her rapidly, forming signs and figures in easy, practiced motions that even Cinder struggled, if only just, to keep up with, "Who've I met that could be more important than whatever you've had us working on? And what about Roman? We aren't leaving him in Atlas' hands."
"Of course not." If only because of how thoroughly he could sell them out, if he were to discover her 'betrayal' as he would no doubt put it. "If this objective blocks us getting to our former one, then you will have complete leave to break him out. I won't raise a single word in protest against having a… Moderately useful asset working again."
Neo rolled her eyes, but signed a single question, "Where did I meet whoever this is?"
"At Mountain Glenn." The woman answered simply, smiling like a predator who'd caught the scent of wounded prey. "He wore a heavy gauntlet, clawed fingers and with a single, bright gem set into the back of the hand. According to the White Fang, he swept in, impaled a Faunus and then spewed fire from his weapon. Then he and young Ruby Rose simply… Vanished, into thin air."
"I remember." She signed simply.
"Tell me about him, please, young Neo." She asked politely, leaning forward with her hands on her lap. Of course, she knew Neo would remember. The girl was like a fly to honey when it came to a good fight against someone that could dish it back. The epitome of a sado-masochistic killer, so Cinder had to bait the trap just right for this particular fly. "I need to know what he can do, since we're going to capture him for my boss. She has… Questions for this young man, who she only referred to as ' the Overlord'."
"The hell kinda name is that…"
"The kind that has my mistress calling me personally to direct me to dealing with it." She snapped, turning hard eyes on the cyborg. He flinched under her gaze, and she added for effect, "Someone who wields the same kind of power, seemingly, as I do. Someone who can summon monsters of his own to fight for him. Does that answer your question, Mercury?"
"Y-Yes, Ma'am." He chirped back, face pale from her sudden ire. It was like he never learned…
"Good boy." She chirped back, sliding from cold and chiding to warm and coercive in the same breath. Effortless, for her, or at least she knew it would look like it. "Now, Neo, please. Anything you know that could help us when we end up fighting this… Overlord? Anything at all?"
"He had monsters with him, too." She signed quickly, eyes suddenly lighting up as though on fire. "Small, green things. They skittered around the room like spiders and leapt on the White Fang. Cut them up with their bare claws like it was nothing. Went down pretty easily, though, from what I saw."
Like a fly to honey.
"Uh, Ma'am?" Emerald started, voice layered in anxiety. Cinder looked to her and, taking that as an invitation, she said, "I saw someone with a gauntlet like that a couple days ago. Here, at Beacon."
"Oh? I see." Well, that's… Convenient, to say the very least. Still, Salem had said that the Overlord's abilities could threaten even her power. And that meant that her team was, to say the very least, not equipped to deal with them. "Very good, Emerald. Neo, please, find him and keep an eye on him. Subtly."
"I can do that." She signed with one hand, chin resting in the palm of the other. "You don't want me to attack him?"
"My… boss wants to make contact with him first. Attempt some manner of amenable contact, before attacking him. If his power could be brought around to our side..." She didn't fill in the gap, mostly because she would never be able to. She didn't know anything about him beyond what everyone here did. But the human mind could fill in the blanks well enough, she knew. "So, for now at least, shadow him. Find any routines he's established, let me know, get close to him, perhaps."
"And if he fails to see that we're the best choice, then you can do whatever you like with him." She saw the toothy grin spread across Neo's face and waved a hand at the door, smiling thinly herself. "Go on, I know you're eager to see our new… Person of interest."
The small woman leapt from the bed and was out the door a second later, no doubt intent to stalk the halls until she found him.
"Emerald, Mercury.." She said sharply, turning to look between the two children to either side of herself. "I believe there are two likely candidates for the old bastard to try and make the next Maiden. One of our bullheaded friend's moles in the Atlesian military told us that background checks have been run on Coco Adel, Blake Belladonna, Pyrrha Nikos, as if there'd be anything untoward there, Ruby Rose and Velvet Scarlatina. Go to each, spend some time with them, see if they have been called to a meeting with Ozpin."
Whichever was going to be the next Maiden, they needed to put a stop to it.
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Dr. Killinger :
Make me a tin foil bowler hat, yeah? XD
Masta of Bitches :
Wait until next chapter then. XD
Human Dragon :
I update in a cycle. This will always come out after DDDK until that story or this one finishes.
Akuma-Heika :
It's a mix of a lot of things. Stress from everything, being distracted with learning all this stuff, and also the worry over the Gauntlet's influences. Ruby wanting things because the Tower pushes her to it is one thing, Ruby wanting it because she genuinely loves Jaune is a different one.
Not unwelcome, as shown here, just… A thing.
Drackith :
Maybe.
Mangahero :
Glad you enjoyed it enough to binge. XD