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"You consider us friends, right?"
Ruby Rose suddenly said a rather obvious thing one day, while she and Jaune Arc were walking to the cafeteria for lunch. The rest of their teams had gone on ahead while the team leaders (that was them, by the way) got a quick talking-to by Profe-(AHEM) Doctor Oobleck. Nothing serious. Unless you considered responsibility over others to be serious.
"Huh? Of course I do," Jaune answered casually.
Ruby grinned and did a happy little twirl. Obviously something was on her mind, but the young man was nowhere near qualified to probe that little minefield.
Ruby was the very first person at Beacon that Jaune had met properly (after watching her nearly explode in a Dust cloud, that is). While it was disappointing that they ended up on different teams, that didn't exactly make them enemies. They stayed close like this, a fact the boy was eternally grateful for.
Although… hanging out with Ruby did come with the occasional Fear For One's Life™. At seemingly random times, Jaune would feel a powerful bloodlust from… somewhere nearby. But whenever he looked, he only ever saw Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's older sister, or his own teammate Pyrrha Nikos. And there was no way they'd be out for his neck… right? Right?
"So, um… this might be a silly question… and I don't mean it to be weird or anything… but, um…" Ruby stopped to boop her pointer fingers together. It was kind of her signature look, one that had already garnered her a fan club on campus. "…What am I thinking about right now?"
"…?"
"Youknowwhatnevermindthatwasastupid-"
"You're hungry, right?"
Well it was lunchtime, and her stomach had been growling all during their last class. Only someone paying exactly zero attention would have missed such obvious signs. And besides, this was Ruby he was talking to – he had a one-in-four chance of guessing her mindset at any given moment. She was usually thinking about food, fighting, repairing Crescent Rose or being lazy in her dorm room. Growing up in a household with seven sisters can give one quite the insight into a teenage girl's mind.
For some reason, her eyes went wide once he gave his answer. She seemed… stunned. "How did you…? Waitaminnit-"
Jaune just tilted his head as Ruby squeezed her eyes shut, looking either like she was concentrating really hard or really trying to get rid of a fart. Hard to tell with her.
Eventually she relaxed, looked at him again and said, "How about now?" Her smirk was different from before, almost the same as right before one of their sparring matches.
"Easy. You're thinking about taking me on in a sparring match."
The smirk fell along with her jaw as Ruby stepped back, her eyes haunted. Was it really so shocking that he knew his friend's mannerisms after a year together at Beacon? Compared to his sisters, Ruby was almost simple.
Clearly he was guessing right. For once. Still, Jaune held off on a victory grin on account of the fact that Ruby looked more distressed than this situation would normally call for.
"W-W-What n-n-number am-m-m I thinking of?" She stuttered, still somehow amazed at what was nothing more than pure coincidence.
Number? This one would be pure chance. Odds were good she was thinking of the number four – kind of a big deal in a Huntsman Academy what with four years and teams of four students – but as this was clearly wigging out the poor kid, Jaune pulled a number out of his ass to try and diffuse the situation.
"One."
Shock and horror… it didn't work.
Ruby's face went beet red as she gave an adorable squeak. She turned and damn near tripped over her own feet before zipping away in a flurry of rose petals. Another signature move of hers. If the petals left behind ever stuck around, this would be the moment when her fans rushed out of the nearest building to scoop up every one of them.
Instead they slowly faded away, leaving behind a confused Jaune Arc to head inside by himself. "Lucky guess," he shrugged.
If he had the slightest inkling what sort of chaos was ready to be unleashed, he would have gone after her right then and there.
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The next day…
Jaune was stepping out of the shower when the door opened to admit Lie Ren, the third member of his team after himself and Pyrrha. Normally this was not an issue – team JNPR was strangely comfortable around each other – but Ren looked more agitated than usual. He shut the door behind him and gave Jaune a serious, slightly distressed look.
Jaune, it should be noted, only had a towel to hide his Dignity.
"Jaune," he said in a quieter-than-usual voice. "You spoke to Ruby yesterday, did you not?"
"Uh, y-yeah… Is she upset? She seemed upset." Jaune himself hadn't told anyone about the encounter, but considering her reaction, it only made sense that Ruby likely ran straight to her sister. "Or is Yang… looking for me…?" he added with a gulp.
Ren stepped closer, grabbing Jaune's damp shoulders and getting far closer than he had before. "I want you to tell me exactly what you said to her, and what she said to you. Leave nothing out."
Okay… this was getting weird.
Jaune tried to recall as much as he could while Ren stood with him in the bathroom, only one of the two boys dressed. Ren listened and nodded with each word. Jaune was just busy trying to keep one hand over his Dignity. Now was not the time to let it hang.
After Jaune finished, and just as Ren opened his mouth to speak, a booming crash echoed from the room outside. This was followed by a cackling laugh and the voice of teammate number 4, Nora Valkyrie, calling, "Where are you Renny-Wenny? Mama Nora needs to talk to you! NICE AND GENTLE-LIKE!"
Ren grew pale as he mouthed 'Not one word.'
Jaune gulped.
After an agonizing few seconds of silence, Nora's heavy footsteps pounded back out the door and down the hallway. Ren let loose a breath, cracked the door open to peek outside, then turned and said, "Avoid Pyrrha for a while, Jaune. Whatever this strange illness is, I think everyone in the school has it."
"Illness…?"
He ghosted out through the crack before Jaune could ask for more details. And something told him those details might be really, really important later.
And he would be right.
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For the next few days (at least it felt like days, it might've been a few hours)Jaune was the only member of team JNPR that could be found. Pyrrha was on the move pretty much all the time, and no one seemed to know where she was or where she would be, and Ren and Nora were… uh… busy. Yeah, we'll go with busy. (Busy blowing holes in the campus-)
Ren called it an 'illness' and that's pretty much what it looked like. Everywhere he went, Jaune saw various girls either chasing down boys with weapons drawn… or with little hearts floating over their heads. 50/50 chance either way.
No wonder he warned Jaune to keep away from Pyrrha-
"Jaune?"
"!"
…Huh. So that's what adrenaline tastes like.
Jaune's head turned slowly, his neck creaking like a rusty hinge, as he turned to see Pyrrha Nikos standing right behind him. Where she'd some from or how she got behind him were unimportant questions. More pressing was the fact that she had her spear and shield out and ready to go.
Just before panic set in, Jaune noticed that Pyrrha was not in a fighting stance. She only held her lethal weapons in her hands. As a result he did not immediately run away screaming. She likely would have chased him down out of instinct.
"H-Hey, P-Pyrrha…" His hand hovered over his pocket, ready to grab his Scroll and dial the number for his weapon locker at a moment's notice. He kept his eyes on his teammate, ready for anything.
Pyrrha took an uncertain step forward. "I've… been looking for you."
Jaune took half a step backwards. "I've been right here the whole time. Kinda like you shoulda been, you know… I mean, we are still students… and there's classes… and stuff…"
"I had to gather my courage," she said with a bit more conviction, stepping forward again. "I needed to know… I need to know… I… I… Jaune…"
"Pyrrha…?"
"… … …What am I thinking right now?"
Rather than respond, Jaune fell over backwards, legs splayed out comically.
What. In the Blue Hell. Was going on?
Before he could stand back up to ask, lots of things happened all at once. He glimpsed Pyrrha leaping through the air, spear aimed right at his Most Valuable Assets™, followed by a blur of red… a disturbing sense of spacial disorientation… and then he was upright in the doorway of the nearest building.
Ruby had saved him… by turning him into rose petals along with her. Since when could she do that…?
"Get out of here!" She shouted over the clunk-clunking of Crescent Rose unfolding. "I'll hold her off!"
He turned and stumbled away, too numb to even ask anymore, as Ruby ran out and started an impromptu sparring match with the student labeled as the 'invincible girl' by everyone else. At least he knew she was smart enough to do what she said, which was only to hold her off.
Jaune really didn't want to think Ruby was going to get hurt because of… of… whatever the hell was going on.
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One week later, Beacon was at war.
With itself.
Jaune found himself holed up in the ballroom with the dozen or so refugees that found their way there, most of them guys. The notable exception was Professor Goodwitch, who claimed to be hiding out with them for the peace and quiet, but grew notably pale anytime Headmaster Ozpin was mentioned. Whatever was keeping her from going out there and stopping the war in a matter of moments (as would be expected) it must have been bad.
Occasionally someone pulled out a Scroll and discovered, via Lisa Lavender on the news feed, that most of Vale was having the same sort of problem (read: crisis) as Beacon – women were randomly going crazy, either chasing men down with the intent to kill/maim/incapacitate them… or the intent to do other, less-than-appropriate-for-TV things right out on the street. It was sheer pandemonium.
And for some odd reason… everyone in the ballroom decided it was Jaune's fault.
The poor boy found himself tied to a chair as various people came up and asked him the same questions Ren did back in the bathroom, along with a few others as they thought of them. Thankfully he was more completely dressed this time, though still tied up.
What did you say to Ruby Rose? Nothing, it was just a conversation between friends.
Why did you imply you could read her mind? That had nothing to do with it. He just knew her mannerisms.
How did you guess the number right? Pure, dumb luck.
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? African or European?
After a day or so of nonstop interrogation, the doors of the ballroom opened to admit Fox Alistair and Yatsi- Yat- the other guy from team CFVY. The Bigger Guy held a thin book in his hands as he declared, "We've found the answer, everybody!" The book was called The Complete Guide To Men, by someone named Saffire C.A.
They'd been hunting for clues, and it didn't take the pair long to discover that the book was literally in every single dorm room on campus, sometimes with multiple copies, and that it was not actually a guidebook of any sort – it was a romance novel. A trashy romance novel.
Bigger Guy said, "Both Coco and Velvet read this book a few weeks ago, when someone recommended it to them. Apparently it's a hot item among the girls right now."
Jaune said, from his seated position, "What's that got to do with everyone going crazy?"
"Read it for yourself and find out."
The cover had an image that depicted a young woman, blonde-hair and blue-eyed of course, surrounded by four men who would best be described by the word delicious. Everyone in the room took turns reading from the book over the course of the next few days (though Glynda avoided the thing like it was diseased, muttering about how 'she wouldn't give him the satisfaction').
And no one could quite believe what they read.
Rather than try and write another story within this one (which would be so 4th-wall-breaking I might summon Deadpool by accident), we shall summarize the contents of the book herein:
Our Noble Heroine, dubbed June, sets out from home in a fantasy world to find some forgettable MacGuffin or other (A sword? A ring? Who cares by this point?) Along the way she encounters a group of strapping young men who all fall head-over-heels in love with her right away (though it's painfully obvious which one of them she'll end up picking by the end). This world was clearly based on reality, as the group are basically Huntsmen out to kill Grimm, but reality was put on hold when the author described Grimm as friendly and able to be tamed. Yeah right. Anyway, the group go on their merry way, having a short adventure and killing a few unfriendly Grimm (a redundant redundancy) before finally finding the MacGuffin in question and accomplishing… whatever it was she set out to do. And yes, she ends up with Hunk #1 at the end, to nobody's surprise.
However… and here's the problem… every single male character in the book was written with a particular… 'ability.'
"How in the… what kind of moron actually believes that guys can legit read girls' minds?!" Cardin Winchester growled into the silence. "I've heard of people confusing fantasy and reality, but this is pushing it."
"I'm the closest thing you can get to that, and even I can't read whatever I want like these guys can apparently do," Fox gestured vaguely forward. For those in the audience who don't know, Fox's Semblance allows him to communicate via telepathy with anyone. There are some limits, but that's the gist of it.
Big Guy said, "I know there have been other books released like this before, but this is the first time anyone's taken it so seriously."
Numerous eyes gazed upon Big Guy with open suspicion.
"Coco reads them," he put his hands up in defense. "She has kind of a problem."
"You said it was popular with girls," Jaune spoke while still tied up. "Do you think… Ruby might've read it?"
Fox said, "I'm pretty sure she's the one who recommended the book to Coco and Velvet in the first place. Why?"
Jaune hung his head in despair. "That means this really is my fault. I guessed what she was thinking and made her believe the mind-reading thing was real. She must've panicked and started the rumor herself."
One other detail of the men in the book was that, while they could all somewhat read the mind of all the women, only the four Hunks could read the Noble Heroine's intentions and emotions like an open book. They even had an excuse for it – they claimed that it was the literal Power of Love. Only men who felt Real Love for a woman could do such a thing. Lazy writing at its finest.
Somehow… the girls of Beacon decided it was real. That men really could read the minds of girls. And then they took it upon themselves to… test each and every one of the guys to see how they really felt.
No wonder Ruby panicked.
No wonder Pyrrha flew into a murderous rage when he resisted.
No wonder Ren had been running for his life (although to be fair, running from Nora was a regular event).
Jaune sighed as they finally untied him, weary of this madness. They still didn't fully grasp the situation, but they all agreed that it was clearly his fault (though you couldn't pay him enough Lien to understand why). Somehow he had to fix it. Somehow he had to help everyone understand that it was only a book. Only a fantasy story.
It wasn't real.
"Is there anything in that book about the author?" Jaune asked Yatsu- the Bigger Guy, who was still holding it. "Maybe I can contact them and work something out… like a restraining order."
The Bigger Guy flipped open the back and shrugged. "Nothing much. Coco asked me to look into it before everyone started going nuts, but I didn't find anything – I think this name is a fake."
Fox said, "You mean it's a Pen Name?"
"Fake name, fake address and bio, fake everything. Saffire C.A. doesn't actually exist."
Something about that name tickled the back of Jaune's brain. "Lemme see it again," he snatched the book and checked a few key pages.
June, the protagonist, wasn't very remarkable (aside from being perfect and the object of every man's affections, that is). Hunk #1, however, seemed a touch more realistic – tall, with dark skin, dark brown hair and dark eyes. Obviously the author had a clear image in mind when describing his face, because even little details like the angle of the eyes and the tilt of the mouth were pointed out.
Details that Jaune recognized.
… … …You have got to be kidding.
He flipped some more, scan-reading for a certain word. He eventually found it – 'unconscious' – but it was spelled unconcious. Four other places in the first half had it spelled the exact same way. He only knew two people who'd never figured out how to properly spell that word, and one of them was Nora. She definitely didn't write.
"This was self-published, wasn't it?" Jaune asked nobody in particular.
Fox answered, "Yeah. Printed and shipped out of somewhere in Mistral."
Jaune slammed the book shut and growled, "I need to make a call."
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The next day, Argus…
Terra Cotta-Arc grunted as she shifted the bags in her hands, pulling out her keys to unlock the door to her home. She had to move quickly before her fingers grew too numb from the weight. Once the door was open, she stumbled inside…
Only to find her wife lying on the couch, Scroll in hand, looking very disheveled and weeping. Her tears flowed like little waterfalls.
"What is it? What happened?" Terra didn't bother hiding her panic at the implied problem. Whatever could have caused her true love to break down so-
"Jaune's threatening to reveal me to the woooooooooorld! ! !"
Terra fell backwards, somehow not breaking anything in her bags on the way down.
Saphron Cotta-Arc (or Saffire C.A. for those who didn't figure it out yet) was a writer who did not want a spotlight on her life. At all. When she started writing part-time, both she and Terra agreed she should use a fake name to deflect attention since her stories were strangely popular. And they usually starred parodies of the two of them as the main characters.
Because why not?
A few minutes after she recovered, both women sat on the couch together. Terra stroked her wife's hair as Saphron lay her head in her wife's lap. She'd just finished explaining the situation, and it was nowhere near as bad as it first looked.
"So you're saying… that your latest book caused a panic at Jaune's school… and in Vale…"
"I swear I never meant it to go that faaaaaar!" she sobbed, close to hysterical.
"And now he wants you to print an apology letter of some kind to make it all stop?"
"If I don't, he'll tell everyone his sister writes trashy romance noveeeeeels!" Saphron's normally beautiful face was flowing with comically large tears, making Terra's pants wet. "How'd he even figure out it was me in the first place?!"
"I told you to have the thing edited by someone else…" Terra tried to calm her down, but to no avail.
"You have to help me! Terra! Terraaaaaaaa!" Saphron darted up and clung to her wife's shirt like her life depended on it.
The dark-skinned woman sighed, then smiled and planted a kiss on her wife's forehead. "Fine, silly. I'll go brew some tea, you get the computer fired up."
"Terraaaaa! I love yoooooou!" she wailed into Terra's chest.
The patient woman sighed again, patting the woman's head. "Knock it off or you'll wake the baby."
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Three days later, everything had calmed down (because I don't feel like stretching this out anymore).
All the girls collected themselves and apologized, repairs were made, Goodwitch handed out an absurd amount of scoldings (a personal record, she would later boast), and everyone lived happily ever after. It all settled down rather quickly, and no one really knew the details of what happened.
Jaune seemed to know, but he didn't much feel like talking. Especially because both Ruby and Pyrrha spent the better part of a day apologizing to him personally, making him feel even more guilty than when they were trying to kill each other.
Rumors began to spread of a letter from popular romance author Saffire A.C. about her latest book, one in which she chided her fans for taking it too seriously and officially apologized for starting so much chaos. She seemed to have taken the issue personally, but no one could reach her for comment.
And Jaune never tried to guess anyone's thoughts ever again.
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=^..^=