Beacon Dining Hall, a few hours after the match between JNPR and Blanc/Yang

The two teams and Blanc sat at their typical set of tables, laughing and joking around, mostly about Blanc's face when he'd surrendered to Pyrhha. "It's really not that funny. There's just something about messing with, or even threatening to mess with, a man's junk that you just don't do." Blanc was still red faced, though Ren and Jaune had stopped protecting their crotches. "I'm truly sorry Blanc, that hadn't been my intention." the red haired victor spoke.

"So, what, your intention was to impale him then?" Yang piped up. "I honestly hadn't really thought that was a possibility; he still had plenty of aura."

"Well, if there's anyone getting impaled..." Blanc stopped Yang, pointing out Ruby. "Innocent ears."

"But then how am I supposed to make a joke about Jaune..." Blake wisely slapped her hand over her partners mouth. "Forget she said anything... did you just lick me?" The group of teens laughed and joked, the topic changing rapidly and devolving into multiple conversations. It buoyed Blanc's soul; his childhood had been spent training and alone. He'd had no friends and had never had playful experiences, especially not with his mother as she was. Even Weiss was a bit playful, in stark contrast to his memory of the woman.

After dinner, Blanc asked Jaune to join him at the firing range. Ruby was intrigued, and Pyrrha was rarely not with Jaune. Team RWBY had planned to use the weekend to prepare for their team match, but not that evening, so Yang decided to come along as well. Nora and Ren left so spend time together, while the Blake and Weiss left separately. Yang claimed it was to see Sun and Neptune. They stopped by his rooms to pick up the Boltors he'd made for Jaune and himself, then headed for the firing range.

Friday night wasn't a big night for the range, but there were still some students there. Blanc took one of the weapons, inserted a magazine, then a shock dust crystal to power the electromagnets. "This is a Boltor; this replaced the standard dust rifle used by the Atlas military. It fires small metallic bolts at a high speed; about 6 rounds per second. The magazine contains 60 bolts, so about ten seconds of continuous fire. The bolts are pretty cheap and easy to make, and so are the magazines. It uses a lot less dust than using dust rounds and is equally effective, especially against grimm."

He stepped up to a firing booth, brought the weapon to his shoulder, aiming down the spine of the weapon, and fired a short burst. The 15 centimeter bolts shot out, firing in a line across the target. They could see the shots because of the florescent fins at the back of the bolts. It was quieter than the gunfire from other weapons; the Boltor had a small hum from it's electromagnets, but the bolts struck with great force, punching through the target and penetrating the wall behind it. "It should be capable of penetrating most grimm bone."

He fired another burst, and the bolts landed fairly close to each other. "There's force back on your shoulder, but it lacks the recoil of a firearm because of the way the bolt is propelled with electromagnetic coils rather than gunpowder." He put the weapon down on the bench and stepped back, gesturing Jaune forward. "Go ahead, give it a shot." Jaune seemed nervous. "I've never fired a gun before. Of any kind."

Before Blanc could step forward to help, Pyrrha went up in his stead, helping him shoulder the gun correctly, telling him how to aim down the sights, and other things someone new to such weapons would need to know. Blanc smirked a bit, then grinned at Ruby's overtly eager desire to fire the gun herself. "I've got dibs on the next round." By then, the few other students in the firing range had begun to notice the bolts in the target, and wandered over to see the new weapon being tested.

Jaune's first firing did not go so well. He was shocked by the force on his shoulder and dropped the gun the first time he fired it. The second time, he emptied the magazine when he didn't release the trigger, most of the bolts flying into the air, dropping somewhere in the emerald forest beyond the range with any luck. Blanc sighed as Pyrrha fretted and the other students at the range chuckled at his naivete. "Here, let me help. First, change your stance; be a little less rigid and space your legs further apart." He changed the magazine for Jaune, showing him the release and where to insert the next magazine. "Okay, now turn so your body... yeah, like that." He moved Jaune so that he was facing sideways, not quite perpendicular to the target. "Okay, brace the gun against your shoulder and along your torso, so you can hold it comfortably. Left hand out to steady the other end. Yeah... now, lean your head down over the sights. Now, unlike most guns, this isn't going to kick up much, just back. There's no propellant, so no heat. All of the force is going to be straight back against your shoulder. That means the recoil is going to bounce it around in whatever direction you don't support it well, so grip the other end tight to keep it from going out of your control."

Blanc stepped up next to him, opened another case, and pulled out a second Boltor. "Okay, so shoot like this." He put himself in the same stance as Jaune, snapped the rifle up to his shoulder in a well practiced move, quickly leaned his head over the to see down the sights, and fired a burst in a four to five round staccato until he emptied the magazine, keeping all the bolts within a small area on the target downrange. "Quick pull and release; it doesn't have a single-fire mode so it's going to fire a burst of at least three shots; usually more like four or five. Don't hold the trigger down; start slowly, fire then adjust, and repeat until you get the hang of it." Blanc reached into a bag and pulled out several more magazines, put them near Jaune in the firing booth, then stepped back.

Jaune's fire steadily improved; he had the stance mostly right and got the hang of firing in bursts. He had more trouble controlling the shot spread, but Blanc knew that would take practice. The Boltor was never going to be accurate enough for more than mid-range fighting. The nature of the bolts meant that Pyrrha's semblance would be able to alter or control their path, or even stop them completely perhaps, but their thin nature, along with the large amount of acceleration from the magnetic coils meant not just a lot of force and energy delivered to the target, but a lot of pressure, which allowed it to pierce armor. "You shouldn't use this against human targets; Aura will stop it of course, depending on how strong, and obviously the bolts are affected by magnets or the gun couldn't fire them, but they're intended to penetrate and they will. If you fire this at someone, you're trying to kill them, understand?" Jaune nodded. He had emptied a further two magazines before stepping back.

Ruby had already picked up the other Bolter and was having a great time stitching letters across the target. "This gives me an idea of improving my baby!" Blanc waited until she'd set the rifle down to talk to her. "I don't know if you'll be able to do that; the coils are bulkier tan the shaft of Crescent Rose and you can't fire dust rounds with them, just ferrous material like the bolts." She looked a bit disapponted, but seemed to accept the limitations.

Pyrrha had since picked up the second rifle, fit it to her shoulder, and began firing bursts of bolts herself. The nature of her own weapon allowed her to compensate for the differing recoil easier than Ruby had, so she seemed to pick it up more quickly. "It has quite a kick, even as quiet as it is." Blanc nodded. "The magnets don't make a lot of noise, and as they're coils, the force is continuous. Most of the noise you hear is the bolts hitting near the speed of sound when they exit the electromagnetic field; if the wind is blowing the wrong way the bolts will pass the sound barrier and you'll hear a loud crack. There's no heat, no powder, and the barrel doesn't warp from continued use. The shock dust crystal will drain over time, however."

Jaune turned to his son. "You made this for me?" Blanc grinned. "One for us both, actually. It's impractical to use the Opticor against smaller targets. The bolts are easy to make, as are the magazines, and I've got many more back at my place so you can practice more later." He reached out and clapped Jaune's shoulder. "This isn't intended to help you with sparing matches; I was serious when I told you that using it against a person would likely kill them." The promise to be careful was left unspoken. Jaune put the rifle back in the case Blanc had brought it in, along with two full magazines, and closed it up. Blanc swept the emtpy magazines into a carrying bag, put the second weapon back in it's case, and told them he'd see them later. "I've got to get a plan together for my semester final in combat class. You guys have something in mind for yours yet?"

Jaune looked at Pyrrha, then nodded back to Blanc. "I think we have it covered." When Blanc looked over at Yang and Ruby, they looked more sheepish. "I wouldn't wait if I were you guys." Yang smirked. "We're gonna have it together by the end of the weekend. But, I'm free tonight..." The others took the hint and walked off together, leaving the two alone as the others at the range went back to their previous firing booths, most packing up to leave themselves. "Yang... I... I really need to study."

"Then I'll help you study, and we can be together."

Blanc gave her a look like he didn't trust her. "Just studying?"

She looked shocked. "What kind of girl do you take me for?" He said nothing, continuing to look skeptical. "Fine, I was planning on bedding you tonight."

He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. "Hun, I'm... I'm not ready." She hugged him back. "I know. I was just going to see what happened. I can keep myself in control. I promise, I'll just help you study. If anything else happens, it'll be you who starts it. Okay? I just... I want to spend time with you."

Blanc leaned back out of the hug, smiled, then took her hand and lead her off to his place. "I trust you."

Blanc's room, Friday evening

Studying with Yang was a different experience than he expected. Yang was a party-girl at heart, having fun, playing games and making jokes, but when it was time to work, she worked. They started with Obleck's History of Remnant class. Using the syllabus as an outline for the material to cover, Yang quized Blanc about the various time periods, including the color war, the faunus uprising, and even the great political shift which saw Vale and Atlas more aligned while Mistral and Vacuo, enemies in the color war, found common ground. For Blanc, history was the most difficult subject; so much of the world was different when he was growing up; the world was basically united against a common foe, and the ideas of Mistral and Vacuo as different political entities were barely acknowledged. Parts of his memory included historical events that hadn't occurred yet, like the coming fall of Beacon and the beginning of what had been cynically called 'The Last War'. History wasn't something important to him when growing up, he'd been no general, and while he'd been of great importance to the war effort, especially at the end, he was more a weapon than a leader.

Yang's knowledge of history was surprisingly in depth. She'd taken a liking to history as a byproduct of trying to find out more about her mother. She'd never shared much about her mother with Blanc, not in the future, nor did she now, but she made for a good tutor, with the added incentives that being his girlfriend meant. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, Yang's word regarding his body was not to be trusted. What had started with stroking his arm had moved on to his thigh. Pecks of reward to his cheek became kissed along his jaw and hickeys on his neck. Blanc was not immune; whatever else he might say about it, his body responded to her touches and kisses with unrestrained memory.

They showed remarkable restraint by finishing the syllabus before beginning to make out on his couch. Yang sat on top of her lover, grinding her pelvis into his as they kissed, his shirt removed and her hands roaming his chest. "You are such a bad influence on me, Yang. What would my mother say?" She laughed. "Right now, I think they'd both want in on the action." Blanc stopped. "Gross. That's like me talking about you fucking Tai."

"My dad is kinda hot, if you didn't notice. Much like me." It was playful banter and they both knew it; Yang didn't harbor sexual thoughts about her father any more than Blanc did about either woman he would have called a mother. Yang, however, knew that Ruby found her erstwhile future 'step-son' sexually attractive, and suspected Weiss did as well. The only saving grace was that Weiss didn't know he was her biological child; the idea was a bit far-fetched. "Yang, I really do need to study. You promised." Her panties were soaked and her shorts were beginning to dampen as well, but she complied, climbing off Blanc with a long kiss and settling herself in another chair. "Fine. Fine... you're right. I'm sorry." Blanc shuddered, his erection evident through his loose slacks, then sat up and reached for his Botany material.

Botany for hunters and huntresses involved many things; from identifying poisonous plants that could be used against grimm, to making remedies and anti-bacterial agents for injuries, to identifying which plants were good for food or could be used to supplement aura. The latter involved animals as well, and a bit of campfire cooking as part of Botany at Beacon was really survivalism for the times when hunter parties would spend long times out in the field. They needed to know how to setup camps, post lookouts, collect food and prepare it, all with possible grimm attacks in mind. In the field, a huntress always had to be prepared. They did this under the guise of studying Remnant's botany, simply by tradition. Everyone knew it was far more than just studying plants, and botany at Beacon did not include serious study of plants for scientific purposes. There were classes for such on campus, but they were upper-year classes and only for specialization. Not every hunter or huntress solely went on hunting missions. Many ended up living in communities outside the cities, defending them when necessary but also performing other work most of the time. It was a tradition formed before the advent of common air travel, but even so, the distances required to travel from the cities to some of the places humanity inhabited, in smaller towns and villages on the outskirts of civilization, and the frequency and speed of grimm attacks, required that hunters be close by to elliminate or at least hold back attacks until reinforcements could arrive, either from militia, kingdom militaries, or the hunters who stayed on running missions as a career. Usually only the best teams of a particular graduating class stayed together and became careerists; most hunters and huntresses either went solo out into the communities, or as pairs with their partners. Unsurprisingly, most that stayed as pairs were also in relationships.

While Blanc was studying, Yang's thoughts had drifted off. To her knowledge, her father had only had two relationships, one with her mother, and one with Ruby's... except that her dad said he'd never been with Summer, and she didn't really have a reason to think he was being dishonest, despite everything else. Thinking back, she can never remember more affection between them than kisses on the cheek and hugs. Summer had been affectionate with both of them, and she'd never felt slighted in the way that she knew Ruby sometimes felt about her dad, but Qrow had always shown a preference for Ruby. Yang had loved those times; it allowed her to soak up affection and time with her father without feeling guilty about taking it from Ruby, whom she loved dearly. Regardless of the reality of their situation, Ruby would always be her sister in her mind. But she wondered about her dad; why had he never found any other woman to love? She knew Qrow had dalliances; he didn't bring them by the house in patch but she'd heard about them while her dad and her uncle had been drinking together after Ruby and her were supposed to be in bed, asleep. Thinking about the women described, other than about how much of the description had to do with hair, tits, and asses, the common theme between them all was that they were all different, but none like Summer, and perhaps now she understood why. But she didn't understand why her father continued to remain lonely when it was obvious that her mother wasn't going to come back. Raven had quit them, supposedly taken up with another man, and yet her father sat at home, raising their child and his niece, and pined for her. She wasn't sure if that was romantic or pathetic. Maybe it was both.

"You okay there, babe?"

She turned her attention back from her thoughts, and put the unused 'Botany of Remnant' book back in her bag. "I was just thinking about my dad." At his queer look, she responded quickly. "Not like that, you pervert. I was thinking about how he's been alone all these years. He never dates. He never has hook-ups even. Why do you think he does that? I mean, I know he's an objectively attractive man and there are definitely women on Patch who are interested in him. He's polite but he doesn't respond."

"Well, you don't know that he doesn't now that you're gone, but... I think he's afraid." Yang looked at Blanc, confused. He'd expected a bit of anger but was glad she was hearing him out. "Raven really hurt him; I'm sure you understand that because while different, she really hurt you too. I think he's afraid to try again and risk it happening again."

"So you don't think he's waiting for my mom to come back?" He shook his head. "I think he knows she's not. I've only talked with him briefly but he doesn't seem like the type to let someone walk all over him like that and wait patiently for more abuse." She nodded; that sounded like her dad more than pathetic thoughts that he was waiting on a woman who'd made a family with him and then left him holding the bags while she went out and did whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted. "Do you... do you think I'm like her?"

"I don't know her. But I don't think you could do what she did. But... we do need to talk about this."

She was confused again. "What do you mean, my mom? My dad?"

"We need to talk about us. You don't really understand, but... I need to know you're going to be okay when I'm gone. I can't keep doing this, being with you and working my way into your heart when I know I'm just going to tear you apart. I need to know you won't be afraid like your dad." She got up and in his face. "You're not going anywhere. I'm not going to let you go. You aren't going to die."

"Yang." She grabbed him. "No. I don't want to talk about this like it's inevitable."

"It is. You have to understand that." She stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself, angry but wanting to make sure she didn't lash out at him like she had the last time. "No, you don't. Why do you keeping saying that?"

"This power I have? It's maddening. You don't really understand, I know. It wants to be where it's supposed to be; right now that's Amber but when she passes on it'll be Pyrrha. To leave me, I have to die."

"Well, you don't have to just give it what it wants." He sighed. "It's not really... I don't know how to explain this. Before I left, I had to use the fall maiden's power, a lot. Like, you would have thought I was a god I was using so much power a lot. It drove me mad. Literally. I spent a week ranting crazily and destroying things randomly with lightning and wind and rain and cold until finally I made it a deal."

"You... you made a deal with a magical power? Come on..." He stood up and took her hands, his book falling to the ground and closing from where he'd tried to keep his page. "I made it a bargain. It's not really... it's not like it's a separate entity but more like the collection of previous holders of the power have their memories and like, a kind of collective personality from them all, which sort of exist in it. I can't really explain it well. You can't talk to it, but it can kind of talk to you in your dreams. It can manipulate them, make them say things to you, and if it wants, it can make you dream while you're awake. I guess it's more smooth when it's with someone for whom it's intended. Ruby said so, anyway. It hated me; it was trying to drive me crazy and cause the other people to kill me so it could leave and go to the next recipient. I'm not sure who that is; we never knew. So, I made it a deal. Calm down, help me come back here, and I'll make sure it gets to the intended recipient in Pyrrha. The madness stopped, no more destroying things, and when I needed the power to come back far enough to reach the right time, it helped me do it. It won't do that again; if I use the power it's going to extract a toll I don't think I can pay and remain sane."

"But you've got it right now, and Pyrrha's right here. Well, nearby. Why aren't you dead if that's what it wants?"

"It's patient. So long as my intention is to hand the power over, it'll accept it and wait. But if I decide that hey, I'm going to go back on my word and stay with you and have a family? Yang, it'll destroy you and everything around me for kilometers and I'll go completely insane until someone kills me. Babe, I have to die. I've accepted it. I... I need to know you can accept it and move on, or we need to stop, right here and right now. I can't risk leaving you a broken shell of a person, afraid to love again, or waiting for me to return when you know I can't. I need to know you'll have a life beyond my death. I need your promise."

She grabbed her bag, marched toward the door, and heard him sigh as her hand took the knob. "I understand."

"No, you don't. You don't understand shit. Fuck you for this Blanc, but I'm not done with you and I'm not ready for you to die. You act like you've got some terminal disease but this isn't over yet. You didn't promise it you'd die, just that you'd get it to the rightful place. Well, how were they going to get the power to Pyrrha from Amber?" He honestly didn't know and hadn't thought about it. "I've... no idea."

"We're going to find out. See, you don't have to die. Maybe you just want to." She turned the knob, opened the door, and left. He watched her go, then closed the door behind her, going back to study. But while she was angry and hurt, he was happy for once. Like when she'd saved his life from suicide over what Salem had done to him, she'd given him hope. He felt the grumbling from the maiden's power, but she was right; he'd only ever promised to make sure it got to the intended recipient, not that he'd die doing it. He'd just assumed. He picked up his scroll and sent Yang a memo.

"Thanks for giving me hope. I love you." He got a heart icon back, but it was enough to know that things were going to be okay between them, and that perhaps for the first time in his life, he saw a future beyond saving the world.

I apologize for how long this took to get done. I struggled with a lot of it, had some writer's block, and even wrote another short fanfic to get some of that out. This fic needs to go certain places for the plot, but I've been trying to let the characters just be themselves and let time flow without me pushing them. Unfortunately, I need to get past the end of the semester for the next big plot section to occur, which will be over their winter break and outside Beacon, at Patch, The Arc family home, and at Pyrrha's family in Mistral. A lot of that will be fluff but not all of it.

The next chapter should have the combat class semester finals. I'm mostly stuck trying to think up characters for the two teams I created to fight RWBY and JNPR. I've got most of what will happen between Blanc and CFVY, so the next chapter should be full of action.

Finally, if you're one of those people who doesn't like pathos, this fic won't be for you. It's right up in the description; yeah, it's angsty. The lead is an OC who's been abused in about every way possible, who has the responsibility for saving all of humanity placed on his shoulders, and has grown up with the idea that fulfilling his role in life means dying at the right place and time. If you'd be happy under those circumstances, you need to be committed. Poor Blanc; he gets a shitty fictional life just so I can save a fictional Pyrrha. I'm such an asshole.