Author's Notes
All in all, these last two days have been good days. Finished a future chapter from this story I'm satisfied and giddy with. Got myself a job interview. Pulled Apple Pie in Arknights. Finished KH3:ReMind DLC completely. All around a productive last two days.
Also, uploaded the another message from Kohaku to Blade right after this chapter at the same time. Be sure not to miss it.
Chapter 17: What a prick!
"So, there we were, in the middle of a thunderstorm!"
"It was sunny"
"Surrounded by ancient Drakes."
"They were infants."
"Dozens of them!"
"Two."
"When a lightning bolt struck me and granted me the powers of a vengeful god! With a single swing of my thunderous Magnhild, I bashed the Grimm into oblivion, collected their scales, and sold them for millions!"
Currently sitting at the cafeteria, each member of JNBR, RWPY, and KVKC found themselves reacting to Nora's story and Ren's corrections. Mytyl, Yang, and Lola hung to each word. Weiss and Blake politely ignored the excitable ginger. Ruby, Kohaku, Jaune, Pyrrha, and Lumen politely listened. Copen was catching some shuteye next to his still full plate.
GV's eyes narrowed. "Nora, you're doing this on purpose."
No room for a question was found in GV's accusation.
Ren came to the rescue of his childhood friend. "No, this is a recurring dream of hers for the past week. You are probably the reason she's having it in the first place, though."
"Charmed," GV deadpanned.
"You know," Ruby said, "you could just ask Miss Goodwitch to match you against Nora as soon as possible. Get it over with. Like ripping off a bandage."
"No, no, it's ok. But thanks for the advice," GV responded as he poked at his remaining food. "I'm holding hope that I'll figure something out by the time I need to fight her."
Nora rubbed her hands, a maniacal gleam on her face. "Yes, yes! Hold onto that hope. Nurture it. And once it ripens… I'll harvest it!"
GV shuddered at that. Starting to feel sorry for her partner, but not enough to keep her from laughing, Mytyl interfered. "Give him a break, Nora. He's barely getting any sleep at night as it is."
GV wasn't happy with the implications of that sentence. "That's because Copen's nocturnal lifestyle keeps me awake. How can the two of you sleep?" he asked Mytyl and Kohaku.
"Sister," both of them answered. Then looked at each other.
"I'm Copen's sister," Mytyl elaborated.
"My sister also keeps odd hours," Kohaku explained.
Copen mumbled from his place on the table, clearly not as unconscious as he led people to believe.
"The Boss says to stop whining and buy a sleeping mask," Lola translated, as another mumble from Copen was heard. "Or failing that, ask Ruby for hers. He's sure she would gladly lend it to you." Another mumble. "And Mytyl, stop reteaching Lola weird things. I am not 'Boss'."
Ruby let out a flustered "Eeep!"
"Care to repeat what Ruby would or would not gladly do, Boss?"
Silence reigned over the table as everyone waited for Copen's response to Yang's challenge. When none was forthcoming, Lola took the initiative out of her own volition. "I believe the Boss is choosing to exercise his right to not incriminate himself."
"Yang, let it go," Ruby pleaded. "You tease me just as badly."
"Ruby, we've been over this. I'm your sister. It is my duty and privilege as an older sibling. Copen is not your brother, ergo he doesn't have that."
"She has a point," Jaune, the foremost expert in siblinghood, chimed in.
Copen turned his head to stare at Yang. "That can change. Ruby, what's your price?"
Yang snorted. "Pfft, you cannot just buy people like that."
"Yeah, what she said. There is not enough money to buy Ruby Rose!" Ruby, ever the loyal sister, proclaimed proudly.
Weiss coughed.
…
"So, Copen. Kamizono, right?"
"Ruby!" Yang said scandalized.
"You heard Weiss," Ruby defended herself. "Think of all the weapon mods I could buy by simply calling myself Ruby Kamizono."
Their conversation was cut short by obnoxiously loud laughter coming from a few tables away. Not happy laughs, but mocking cackles celebrating someone's misfortune. Several students, including the members of Team KVKC, RWPY, and JNBR, caught the last seconds of Team CRDL tripping a first-year classmate, making a mess of food out of the victim's meal as it smeared across the floor.
An audible sigh was heard from Mytyl. After the team leaders' dinner fiasco – which they later found out was Cardin being a racist prick to the second-year leader – Cardin's already brittle façade broke and his aggressive and violent behavior took Beacon, or at least the first years, by storm. Every other class he mocked, jeered, or otherwise insulted at least one classmate. And his team was quick to follow his lead. Luckily, KVKC and RWPY, being the top teams, were spared the physical confrontations. Team JNBR was also mostly spared, if only by their association to KVKC and RWPY.
"What an ass," Yang scoffed. She made a point of turning away from CRDL. They were not even worth their attention.
"This has been going for three whole weeks now. Shouldn't the teachers, like, do something?" Kohaku asked as she saw her classmate, the victim, scurry away from CRDL as quick as possible. That was another thing. CRDL, for all their peacocking, were stubbornly cemented among the better half of their year combat wise and could back up their flaunting. None of the other teams felt confident challenging them and they were smart enough to avoid the few teams that could just turn around and break their face in one quick swoop.
"Kohaku," Copen caught his partner's attention, "we are, for all intents and purposes, a military academy. Not to the level of Atlas, but still. Unless someone steps way out of line, the faculty expects us to deal with our problems."
"Surely blatant racism falls under that," Blake, setting her book down, joined the conversation.
GV shook his head. "Hearsay."
Jaune elaborated, "Cardin mouth off in front of a teacher once. And he still has detention with Oobleck over that. He has been careful to not act up in front of teachers since then." He drank from his glass before continuing. "At least he doesn't bother us."
Everybody just stared.
"What?" Jaune asked, seeing the disbelief of his friends.
"Jaune," Mytyl started, "we just came out of a class where Cardin humiliated you for answering Oobleck's question correctly."
Jaune blinked. "So?"
"He probably didn't call you a… animal lover, to put it politely, because Oobleck was there." Blake explained delicately, wincing at the insinuations behind her own words as well as the first phrase that came to mind before softening the blow.
Jaune rolled his eyes.
"Did… did you just rolled your eyes at me?" Blake asked disbelievingly.
"Blake, if I was insulted by what people don't say, that would be a pretty miserable life. Look at Weiss-"
"Choose your next words carefully, Arc," Weiss hissed in warning.
Somehow, Jaune managed to be both intimidated and unfazed in equal measure. He pushed forward. "Like I was saying, look at Weiss. She probably evaluates my contribution to the gene pool on a daily basis. And I always come short. She doesn't say it though. I'm not going to be offended by what she feels in her cold, desolated, ice fortress of a heart."
Weiss was about to berate Jaune. Then her brain caught up and she reconsidered. "Turnabout is fair play, I suppose."
"What about how Cardin pushes you every time he passes you by the hall?" Ruby, bless her genuinely worried heart, asked.
That worry was lost to Jaune as he blinked. "What about it?"
Everyone present groaned – except Ren, Weiss, and Pyrrha, who had better control of their outward emotions. Ren responded this time. "Jaune, please tell me you are not really this dense."
"It's the truth!" Jaune insisted. "That's just Cardin being unpleasant. He's unpleasant to everybody. Has any of you actually been bullied in school before?"
Nobody responded. Jaune expected that. Just look at them!
"Trust me. I know bullying and Cardin is not bullying me. He is just being an asshole to anyone in the general vicinity." Jaune paused, before rubbing his chin in deep thought. "I suppose there is a case for labeling that a kind of bullying," he finally conceded.
"Please! Let go!"
The plea caught the group's attention. To nobody's surprise, Cardin was tormenting another student. What was surprising, however, was the object of said torment.
"Oh, that's not ok," Yang growled.
"Isn't that-" Mytyl was cut short as Jaune and, to people's mounting surprise, GV, stood abruptly; Jaune glaring daggers at Cardin and GV's face set in an arctic scowl.
"What do you think you're doing!?" Weiss gritted through her teeth while grabbing Jaune by the sleeve of his hoodie.
"Cardin shouldn't get away with his racism," Blake defended her partner's apparent action.
"Then why don't you jump to the girl's defense?" Weiss snapped, not letting Blake get a word in before continuing, "I'll tell you why. Because you would make things worse. Worse for the girl, worse for you, for us; take your pick. What are we to do? Tell Cardin to stop? Yeah, that'll help. Attack him? We cannot just start a fight with every cretin out there."
Blake wanted to disagree, but as much as she hated to admit it, Weiss had a point. Hunters are meant to be paragons of justice. Just talking to Cardin wouldn't work. And violently handling the trivial maladies of society – and Cardin's brand of bullying in a combat school setting was trivial in the grand scales of things, regardless of the underlying cause – was a slippery slope. If you could justify violence in this case, why not anywhere else? And when you were a Hunter acting against a civilian, things could get very ugly, very fast. Their only alternative was to drag a teacher to intercede. But by then, as GV mentioned, Cardin's actions would be lost to the sea of 'hearsays'.
And then there was the little detail that the Faunus being bullied HAD to be second-year or older. Otherwise they would recognize her as a classmate. She should be able to stand for herself. And her doing so, within reason, could be spun as self-defense. At the very least it would give Cardin a pause if his victims could pick him up and throw him across the room.
Jaune hesitated, seeing sense in Weiss's words. GV did not, as he made his way towards the bully. Jaune blanched. "I'm going to stop GV from doing something we'll regret."
-o-
GV glared at the scene in front of him. At Cardin and his stooges abusing their power. At the girl letting it happen. Then back at Cardin, whose eyes hadn't left him ever since his approach was noticed.
"Hey there, Volt, how may we help you?" Cardin faked a friendly smile. A slight pull from his right arm elicited a yelp from the faunus girl, whose ears were still in Cardin's hands. If nothing else, GV would respect Cardin's gall on keeping up with his bullying in front of him. It had to be gall. There wasn't enough stupidity in Remnant to rationalize his actions.
Before GV could answer, he was pulled back a bit by Jaune, who was quicker drawing words. "Now, now, Cardin. Surely there are better uses of your time than tormenting people… right?" Jaune sounded unsure.
GV hadn't notice his blond friend arriving to his side. Jaune's attempt to defuse the situation, and the pleading side glance the knight was giving him, tempered his ire, ultimately forcing himself to calm down. He was in Beacon due to Ozpin's benevolence. Throwing that out of the window for… this, would be spitting on the man's face. Setting his face back to cold and uncaring, GV spoke.
"Lowering yourself to harassing civilians? Surely you can at least have some class and pick on someone in your own weight class."
Cardin raised an eyebrow. "Civilian?"
GV was glad to elaborate. "She is not in our year and surely a second year or older would not stand and let themselves be tormented by some preppy upstart like you."
Ignoring the barbs against him, Cardin focused on everything else and grinned at the insinuation regarding his victim, happily letting go of the faunus's ears. "Ha! You are too right, sparky. It's unbecoming of us real Huntsman to harm those we are sworn to protect." Cardin mockingly conceded, standing up and non-threateningly approaching GV. "But shouldn't civvies be aware of the dangers of being around Huntsmen? Maybe we should escort her to safety, out of Beacon. Of course, you can come with us. Ensure her safety too, as the big, good Huntsman you are."
GV didn't care for Cardin's mocking him, but now the birdbrained idiot was goading him. Perhaps a little show of force was in order…
"Cardinal, let it go."
GV was brought out of his musings by a new voice. Kohaku walked between him and the bully. "Don't you have better things to do? Like training? Would be embarrassing if only Russel could claim a win against me."
Cardin smirk shifted to a scowl upon the girl's arrival. Russel placed a hand on his chest, more as a gesture to back away than to actually push him back. "Come on, Cardin. Let's bail out of here," the boy implored his leader, who grunted and signaled the rest of CRDL to follow.
With the confrontation fizzling, the cafeteria and its onlookers slowly returned to normal. Kohaku sighed in relief, glad her intervention actually worked. "Crisis averted," she muttered, before turning to GV and starting to berate him. "GV, what the hell was- Hey!"
GV didn't stick around, briskly exiting the cafeteria, face etched into a scowl and not even registering if his friends attempted to stop him. And some of them did, with Ruby and Nora calling out his name. Mytyl, on the other hand, simply sighed, wondering if this was going to become a recurring thing.
"I'll check on him," she said despondently, standing up and giving Weiss a look.
The heiress was caught off-guard. "What?"
Mytyl kept eye contact for three more seconds before picking up hers and GV's tray and making her way towards a trash can, then after GV.
-o-
It took some scouring, but Mytyl finally tracked GV to a training room. She found him in one of the bleachers, twiddling with the pendant he always wore. She had seen the chain before, but the actual pendant was always beneath his clothes and away from sight. She couldn't get a good look from a distance, but she still noticed the glint from the gemstones incrusted in the metal jewelry.
Now, how should she approach this? From the short time with her partner, she got the image of him as unflappable. To see him step up for Velvet was a pleasant surprise. She expected GV to simply ignore the events entirely.
Less pleasant was when he ripped through Cardin and Velvet in equal measure.
What elicited such a strong emotional response? Why her normally even-tempered partner attacked the victim of the situation? There is a story there and Mytyl was itching to hear it. Making sure to make enough sound to catch the boy's attention without startling him, Mytyl approached her partner and sat next to him. GV spared her a glimpse, quick to hide the pendant before going back to his meditation. Yet another story she wanted to know. Still, it was a good sign he didn't sent her away or walk out himself. Then again, she expected him to flee and if today taught her anything, it was to expect the unexpected.
She let the silence simmer a bit as she carefully chose her words. Her father had been adamant about overselling the value of silence to her. Mostly to help her cope, but it was a lesson she took in candidly whenever presented with these situations.
"Want to talk about it?" An invitation. GV could accept her helping hand or he could refute it and that'd be that. No prodding, no stubbornness. Now all that mattered was patience. Let GV either accept or decline. A minute passed. Then another. It seemed GV expected her to leave if he remained silent long enough.
'Oh, you sweet summer child,' Mytyl couldn't help but think with amusement.
A third minute passed before GV broke, sighing and turning to face Mytyl. "What is there to talk about?"
"How about what happened in the cafeteria?" Mytyl offered. Was GV really going to play dense? He should know better.
"What you saw is what happened," GV said factually, "Cardin was harassing someone, I went to stop it."
"And I can respect that." Mytyl opted for a hard stare to her partner, forcing eye contact. "But also attacking Velvet? That is a harder pill to swallow."
GV hummed, breaking eye contact. "So, her name is Velvet…"
Mytyl opened her mouth, but close it. GV doesn't realize who he mouths off to? She tried again. "GV, she is part of Team CFVY. You know, the same team we are going shopping with tomorrow?"
A wince from him. Sunday was shaping up to be the nicest, most awkward hangout in the history of Beacon. Or at least the history of this year.
"And this, GV, is why silence is golden while speech is silver. Why did you imply she doesn't belong in Beacon? You should know better than this."
That really was the crux of it. Idiots went about how faunus didn't belong in the same general vicinity as humans. How they were inferior. Naturally, that includes not belonging in places such as the Academies. And now GV went and said that Velvet herself didn't belong. She didn't think GV meant it like that, but it doesn't change his words and how people might interpret it.
"There are people out there who are powerless," GV said with a fierce scowl on his face. "People who are unable to defend themselves and to whom bad things happen. And you're telling me a Huntress, someone who is supposed to be a paragon for everyone, a defender of the weak and destitute, is not even able to turn around and walk away? You expect me to place my faith on someone like that?"
His reasoning was… not what she expected. She hadn't anticipated him to be mad because someone didn't live up to his expectations. No, because someone didn't even try to live up to them. But there was a huge problem with GV's vision of what constituted a Hunter.
Mytyl carefully measured her tone. "I don't think many students share your view on Huntsmen and Huntresses. They don't attend Beacon because they want to be 'paragons' or 'defenders'. I know I don't," Mytyl casted her eyes down, "at least, not entirely."
When measured against GV's righteous reasons, hers – to be able to travel world while able to defend herself – felt… trivial and shortsighted.
GV calmed down a bit, the passion from his little speech winding down. "Everybody has their own reasons to attend Beacon. I don't expect them to be entirely selfless. Mine aren't. But I expect them to stand up for someone in need when faced with adversity, even if that person is themselves."
"Soooooo," Mytyl singsong, a recent memory coming to mind, "I guess Jaune is your favorite non-Mytyl human too, huh?"
GV snorted, recalling Lumen saying something similar. "I respect his dedication to 'being a hero'. And yes, he standing up with me bumps him up on my list."
"Well, hopefully Jaune managed to do enough damage control to make your apology less painful."
GV's body tensed at that. "Do I have to?"
Mytyl sent him a look. "I will not rehash this conversation. In fact, I expect you to actively engage with her and be nice. That's an order," she dictated with finality before standing up and stretching her arms up. "We can worry about what you'll say later. How about some light sparring? No weapons and no Semblances. We could both use a little polish on our hand to hand combat."
GV nodded. "I could use the distraction," he said, leading them both towards the practice arena.
"Careful, GV, a girl might get the wrong idea if you tell them they're distracting," Mytyl cheerfully said as she fell into a basic combat stance opposed to GV.
He did not respond. In fact, he just kept staring at her, as if deciphering some secret etched on her face. Heat crept up her face. Maybe she went too far with her teasing? It just felt natural to do so around him.
"GV?"
That snapped him out of his stupor, eagerly taking his own battle stance. "Never mind. Spaced out there for a bit. Just for the record… I'm aiming for the face."
Mytyl's eyes widened in panic. "Wait-"
-o-
"Checkmate."
"HOW!?"
Lumen was… she was not sure. Dumbfounded? Outraged? Stumped? Confused? Surprised? All of the above and more?
"Seven sisters," Jaune said as he resets the board.
"That's not an explanation!" Lumen called out.
"She is not wrong. You use that excuse for a lot of things," Blake commented from her bed. Jaune and Lumen were not so quiet as to exclude everyone in the room.
Jaune shrugged. "Can't you envision a set of events involving seven sisters that would lead me to becoming a good chess player?"
"Well, yes. But-"
"Ah ah ah," Jaune stopped her with a raised hand, "you just admitted that my excuse is a good enough explanation. If you believe otherwise, the burden of proof lies with you. Using hard evidence, no conjectures."
"Is that how it works?" Nora asked Ren, who was trying to not get involved and failing miserably.
"In this case? Sure. Blake and Lumen are accusing Jaune. It's up to them to prove Jaune is lying."
A knock on the door halted the conversation. Leaving the pod on his bed to contemplate the meaning of losing to a meat puppet, Jaune went to answer.
"GV? Mytyl? Your face looks… puffy."
GV nodded. Mytyl greeted Jaune with a nod and a lightly swollen face. "GV can be rough but is good fun." Seeing the looks of confusion on everybody's face, and hearing GV's cough, she elaborated. "We sparred, he kept aiming for the face. I should be fine by tomorrow. The wonders of aura," she finished with an airy tone and slowly waving her hands in an arc in front of her.
"Mytyl!" Lumen flew to her master, "Jaune keeps beating me at chess and it creeps me out!"
Looking at the little robot currently being hugged by Mytyl, then at Jaune, before returning to the little robot, GV just had to ask, "Aren't you supposed to be an advanced AI?"
"Seven sisters' worth of experience playing board games?" Mytyl ventured a guess.
"See! Mytyl agrees with me."
Blake narrowed her eyes. "I still cannot tell if you two are screwing with us or not."
"I assure you Jaune and I are not doing any grievous ill towards you," Mytyl said with a candid smile.
"That's not reassuring?" Nora asked, unsure of how to interpret Mytyl's words.
"You're doing regular ill then," Blake accused the lavender-haired girl after carefully parsing through her exact words.
That earned Blake a roll of eyes, Mytyl's smile never leaving her face. "If you say so. At any rate, the burden of proof lies with you, not us. I'm beat, literally, and going to call it a night. 'Nite, everyone," she waved at the residents of Team JNBR. "Good night, Jaune," she winked at Jaune before turning around and leaving, her partner following behind.
Closing the door of the dorm, upon turning around Jaune was met with the piercing, thousand-yard stares of his teammates.
"Are you guys okay?" Jaune asked.
Nora answered, but not to him. "I'm not the only one who's starting to find Jaune's and Mytyl's interactions a bit creepy, right?"
"They have to be screwing with us. They just have to be," Blake insisted.
"Never before have I been so glad about my Semblance and my exposure to Nora's brand of craziness." Ren concluded, opting to lie on his bed and go to sleep.
Author's Notes
This scene originally happened on a weekday, both in canon and in this fic. But then I realized I cannot have Mytyl and GV missing classes just because.
ASSUME GV SPOILERS BELOW!
Anyways, I would call this a GV-focused chapter. I originally intended for GV to use advanced Vacuan intimidation techniques like Kohaku did in Chapter 3, but after some time it ultimately evolved into what you read. Also, in this chapter I noticed that my characters interactions have been mostly across the RWBY and Gunvolt division and rarely within each respective franchise. You would think that would make sense. That's half the point of crossovers. But within the GV cast, relationships are very skewed across canon and I anticipated to make more interactions between them. They are a team, after all. It's something I must work on.
In the ASG canon, only Copen interacts with all other three members of KVKC. Everyone else only interacts, to any appreciable degree, with Copen.
GV meets Mytyl thrice if I remember correctly. Only in one of them they exchange words (kind of, sort of). The other two times Mytyl was being the most Mytyl-thing in the Gunvolt universe.
The closest thing Kohaku has been to meeting GV in canon is being Blade's sister. And if – and that's a big IF – Kohaku met Mytyl, it was while Mytyl transcended being the most Mytyl-thing in the GV universe and became a conceptualized meta-idea of what being Mytyl in the GV-verse means.
Lola and Lumen, while more advanced than I anticipated due to their comic relief potential, still have some space for development in their AI. Still, Lumen only interacted with GV in canon (kind of, sort of) and Lola has actually met every single GV character shown so far, except Lumen (kind of, sort of) at least once and can share stories about them.
I just realized Gunvolt subscribes to the Kingdom Hearts School of Character Creation.