Chapter 5: Every Week is Fashion Week for Me

"Your lack of Drip is Embarrassing."

— 12 —

Years ago, someone once told Coco Adele that everyone's got a latent telepathic nerve in their head. How else, her partner Fox had argued, could people pick out that you were staring at them from across a crowded room? The feeling of being watched meant something. Only high level Aura techniques could really tap into that.

Of course, she'd noted, ever since she started wearing her signature and extremely designer sunglasses, people had grown far less conscious of that. Professor Oobleck, leading Team CFVY—Coffee—on its first outside mission as a sophomore team, had ruined the illusions of her sunglasses giving her some mystical power. He said that human or faunus, people had some enzyme that triggered when someone's pupils were on them. Coco hadn't entirely listened, unhappy with the facts ruining her own self image.

Didn't change the fact that with her sunglasses on 24/7, nobody ever seemed to realize she was looking at them unless she made it stupid obvious. Dark as they were, she could usually stare people down, examine and size them up without them realizing it. A useful tool in dealing with people everywhere she went.

Plus, they were stylish as hell.

Which was why it was more than a little surprising that as soon as she zeroed in on the boy in the gym who had to be Jaune Arc, he turned to look her dead in the eyes. She sucked in on her lips, displeased. Despite the distance between them, she had this vague feeling he was trying to intimidate her. He had this look like he found her presence in the gym, fully clothed in her off-duty finest, subtly hilarious.

Jaune looked away to finish his reps at the squat rack.

When she asked around after him, people had told Coco that Jaune was a scraggly looking blonde boy with a surprisingly trendy haircut. If she had been paying more attention, she probably would have actually known what he looked like better. Yesterday during the food fight, apparently Velvet had been staring at him. Coco had been a bit distracted trying to establish the dominance of her team in any fight, be it against Grimm or food. She hadn't been able to hear the end of it from Velvet. Her teammate had ranted and raved that some blond asshole human had apparently tried intervening on her behalf. Just two days after Velvet had told off some other girl, presumably Jaune's partner, Blake.

The entire thing hadn't sat right with Coco. Which was why she was here, to try to find the boy.

Up close, the description of a scraggly blond started to fall apart. He seemed aware of her, but more concentrated on finishing his workout. The sweat poured off him like a river. The weights over his shoulders weren't the most impressive, until she realized something. He's not using his Aura. Her teammate Yatsuhashi, a complete giant of a boy at seven feet tall, could easily lift a truck. But he needed to fully cowl himself in his Aura to do that. Even Coco needed a subtle burn to carry her weapon, the minigun that folded out of her custom purse. It was too big and unwieldy to be able to aim and fire without.

Jaune wasn't doing that. With a vague impressed click of her tongue, she realized that he was actually working himself out. Not trying to show off. Not trying to work his Aura. But actually working his physical body.

Not a bad body for a boy, either. He was working without a shirt. When he put the bar back on the squat rack and turned to face her, she got a good look at the claw scars running down from his heart down to his groin. A couple of nasty but well healed burn scars across his chest. His right hand, the knuckle in particular, was a white patchwork of shrapnel scars. It gave the impression of someone who had been out there giving it his all as a Huntsman. The only thing he was missing was an ensemble of tattoos to complete the look.

Once again, she was glad for her sunglasses. It prevented her from looking like she was checking him out. Not that she was in that kind of way. Boys really weren't her style.

"I help ya?" Jaune drawled lazily, taking out his earbuds. This close, the thing that struck her most was his eyes. Coco had to reassess the boy. He was using his Aura, just in an intensely subtle way that wouldn't affect anything. She could see a faint glow in the back of his eyes, a color she couldn't quite place. Looking too deep into them bothered her for a reason she couldn't articulate. Even with her sunglasses on indoors like this, she felt an overpowering urge to look away.

He ran a hand through his short blond beard, more a kind of two-week-old stubble that either couldn't really become a beard or was neatly trimmed. Given that he was a freshman, and probably no more than seventeen, the former was probably the case.

"You Jaune?" she asked, affecting her typical air of cool detachment. It helped smooth over that weird urge not to look him in the eyes.

"No," he said, putting his earbuds back in. It looked like that was some kind of insanely corny joke that only he understood. Annoying.

She reached out a hand to grab his wrist, stopping him from going deaf to the world. "So you're not the hotshot leader of the up-and-coming Team BASS? The boy who got to the relic in the heart of the Emerald Forest half an hour before anyone else did? Who led the assault against the White Fang at a Dust store for the hell of it? And who utterly mopped the floor with Cardin Winchester and managed to get away with it?"

The boy gave her a kind of smile as he ran his fingers through his fade haircut. "Damn. When ya put it like that there, you could even pretend I'm cool. There was mitigating circumstances that, in hindsight, turn all of that from being cool into plum retarded, Coco."

Behind her sunglasses, she cocked an eyebrow, impressed. "You know my name."

He snorted. "Heard me some high siddity chica were asking after me. Figured she'd be smart enough to realize it were my partner, Blake, a girl wanted."

A subtle insult at her. And playing himself down. At least she was pretty sure that's what he was saying. The boy spoke in a bizarre accent, and used a phrase that Coco didn't recognize in the slightest. She had heard about that too.

In any case, Coco frowned as he turned to walk away towards the showers. She didn't like following after people, exactly. But the way he seemed to be trying to avoid her activated some old prey chasing instinct that humans have had ever since they were little more than monkeys.

"I'm here about Velvet," she said.

He leaned his head back, looking over his shoulder to grimace at her. "If you want to yell at me for getting involved with bidness idn't mine, get in line. The queue for women who hate me starts at your left, my right."

She pursed her lips. "No. She won't thank you, so I'm going to."

Hands in the pockets of his workout shorts, he paused for just a moment. "A girl shoulda kicked Cardin's ass herself."

Another odd way of phrasing things. Jaune was referring to Coco in the third person to her face. An Atlesian student from her class had once explained that Atlesians occasionally talked like that to people they felt were inferior to them or were trying to make go away. She could almost believe that was what the boy was trying to do, except his tone didn't really match that. It felt to her more like some kind of weird dialectical thing. Wherever the boy was from, it was probably somewhere deep out in the Grimm Wastelands.

Whatever the case, Coco wouldn't be intimidated. Not even as she kept pace with him into the boys' locker room. "Your partner can probably tell you that Velvet isn't exactly the most… welcoming of people trying to stand up for her. My first day of this sophomore year, I nearly killed Cardin until she got angry at me for it. She's a little too independently minded. Besides, after hearing her rant about how much she hates that you stepped up for her against him, I needed some time away from my team."

"Didn't do it for her," he dismissed. "My partner got upset about it. I did it for her sake. Velvet losing one of her bullies is just a happy little accident."

"So, you're not just the compulsive white knight sort?"

Jaune opened his locker, grinning. "Miss me with that shit. Just the right thing to do." Then, after a hesitation: "I been places ochyen mal. Places so corrupt the only acts you can commit with a clean conscience are nihilistic. Beacon ain't like that, and I don't want it to feel like that to someone like my partner."

From anyone else, something that dramatic would have made Coco laugh. It sounded like something straight from a noir drama. But in that moment, coming from Jaune, she believed him.

Coco decided in that moment that, whatever rumors she might have heard about the boy, she liked this Jaune Arc. Which made it all the funnier that he didn't seem to want her around.

"You might want to avert your eyes," he said, taking out a towel. "I'm in need of a shower right now."

She couldn't help but give a small chuckle at that. With her sunglasses on, he couldn't possibly know that she wasn't exactly looking at him. His eyes bothered her just a little too much. But suddenly, everything clicked into place for her.

The way he was using his Aura. The fact that he was trying to make her go away by threatening to get naked as she watched. Jaune was legitimately trying to intimidate Coco. Like, for real. She had been getting that vague sense this whole time, but now it fully hit her, and she couldn't help but laugh.

Jaune frowned. "I'm serious. I have absolutely no sense of shame. I will seriously look at you in the eyes and get naked."

Coco shook her head, still smiling. Of course the boy was bothered. That macho male pride in action. Behind her sunglasses, her eyes glinted with amusement. His attempts to shake her off were hilariously amateurish. It was obvious to her, the more she talked with him, that Jaune was trying and failing to be cool.

Worst part, for a moment, she'd nearly believed it. But when he tried to be serious like that, it all fell apart. He just wanted to be alone with his pride.

Like hell she'd give him the pleasure.

"Go ahead," she said with a shrug. "You're not carrying the right equipment to interest me. Tried it once. Huge mistake. And you look like you'd be about a, hmm, medium mistake at best."

He regarded her gravely. "That so?"

Coco leaned forwards, lowering her shades. It was a habit she had picked up for people shorter than her, which included most girls and boys. There was a reason why she wore high heels to keep her at about six foot even. And given the cut of her top, it usually threw people a little off their game. Jaune, however, was still an inch or two over her. About the same height as her partner, Fox.

"Nothing a veteran like me hasn't seen, boy."

She expected that to intimidate him right back. Instead, to her intense surprise, he wrapped his towel around his waist and dropped his pants. She laughed again as he made his way into the showers, wearing nothing but that towel and his sidearm. Coco did admittedly have the courtesy to not follow him in.

"I get it, Coco. You're trying to play nice with me because I helped out your teammate on your behalf, indirectly," he said as the hot steam leaked out from the showers. "But you're better off thanking my teammate, Blake. She was the mastermind behind this. I'm just the dumb muscle."

"Oh?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow in amusement. Even though the only one who knew she was doing it was herself. "I like how you've gone from never meeting me before to suddenly knowing all about how I operate. Very charming. I bet a boy like you gets all the girls by knowing just how they tick. They probably call you something like the pussy whisperer."

From within the showers, the boy huffed. "You can drop the senpai shtick."

For a moment, she was vaguely offended. Senpai. A Mistrali word for upperclassmen. Despite one of her teammates being from Mistral, she hadn't learned it from Yatsuhashi. It was one of those rather cringy words from those animes they exported from the country. At least usually it was. But she didn't get the sense he was using it like that, even though in context that would be appropriate, given that she was technically both an adult and his upperclasswomen.

He was using it in the sense that she had learned from Yatsuhashi. Senpai. He had meant in the term of a senior caregiver of sorts, a handler. A kind of false sense of friendliness you gave to an inferior. The exact kind of way that they used it in the Yakuza. Given his accent, she somehow found it wildly inappropriate that he was using terminology from the Yak. It made it all the more impossible to pin down where the boy was from.

Coco reappraised Jaune. Just slightly. "Aww, look at you. You think it matters to me what you think."

"Yes, that is how traditional human interactions go."

"Funny. I thought most of your interactions ended with you punching people. Like Cardin. Speaking of, I've decided what I'm gonna do with you."

"Allow me to enjoy my self-flagellation in peace?" he suggested hopefully.

She adjusted her shades. "Nah. I'm adopting you, Jaune Arc. You are now mine. I'm gonna write my name in you."

Jaune snorted. "I believe there's a word for that. Sugar momma."

"Sugar sista," Coco corrected with a wink. "I'm not old enough to have kids."

"I had one of those once," Jaune said, seeming to open up slightly. "Not the kids part, the other. She was an elderly church-going black lady who adopted me to give me food and stuff from work. The dream of every white boy."

"Only thing I'm gonna feed you are straight facts until you're the second coming of Coco herself."

"Jaune too speaks in the third person to become cooler."

"You're already getting it! First step is to stop being so mopey, kid."

He turned off the water. The boy was a fast showerer, almost like he was afraid that some other boy would come in and see him. Though she could barely see it with her fogged up lenses, she saw the towel on the wall of the shower get pulled down to his side.

A moment later, her shades were gone. She nearly sneered in sudden anger, until she saw Jaune standing in front of her, idly wiping the fog away on his towel before offering them back to her.

She took them back with a frown.

"I figured a cool Huntress would waterproof her shades. What do you do when it rains?" he asked, stepping past her.

"See, this is your first lesson, Jaune," she said. "If you deny your problems hard enough, they go away. Like rain. Water can't stop me from designer shades. That's letting nature win."

"I know. You might as well roll over and let the Grimm get you."

She snapped her fingers. "Now you're cookin' with Dust!"

"As opposed to every other plan of mine," he said.

Coco shook her head. "Ah, yes. The hallmark of the ideal team leader. Something didn't go how I planned, better fall on my sword." She put her hands on her hips, and just stared at him.

Jaune rolled his eyes. "My sword is made of foam and kitten dreams. I'll bounce back."

She tapped on her chin. "Alright, getting better. Like water off a sky eel's back. The bad guys pretty much crushed your cocks and pumped your pussies. But so what?."

"That's… one exceedingly vulgar way to phrase it."

He had a point there, for once. It probably was way too vulgar. But Coco couldn't help herself. The kid looked way too adorable when you finally managed to make him uncomfortable. She found herself just smiling as he tried not to look at her.

"You really think you're the first team leader to screw up out there?" she asked. "Nah. Even the headmaster was a complete screw up when he was our age. How do you think he learned how to be in charge except by failing his way upwards? You have to learn to take yourself less seriously and realize that, kid."

The boy sucked in on his lips and didn't reply. He just kind of put on underwear and a pair of jeans from a brand she didn't recognize. He removed his towel when he was decent, and put on a tight black shirt with the words Grimm Grips Is Online on it. It was some band, she was sure.

She couldn't not notice his belt. It was a kind of rigger's belt popular in the Royal Army. A paratrooper's belt, moreover. Stylish and incredibly useful. Use it for fashion, for securing loads, or as a tourniquet out in combat. She wore one just like it. Put together with his boots and the fact he was currently armed, and it gave Jaune the look of an off-duty soldier. A Huntsman trying to look chic but ready for a fight at any given moment.

Eventually, he looked back towards her and said slowly, "Why is it that every girl in my life is either exceedingly mean or just incredibly sarcastic towards me?"

Coco couldn't help herself once again. She threw her head back and laughed. At him, not with him. The damn kid just looked like a kicked puppy and it was pretty much the best part of her day. Her partner, Fox, had gotten completely used to this kind of thing by now. He just shrugged it off whenever she tried something. Jaune, though? He was a breath of fresh air. Perfect bait with his whole macho shtick.

She swayed her hips side to side for effect. "Well, being that I'm a girl, I think I can professionally say that it's because you take yourself too damn seriously. It's pretty funny trying to see you act cool and just fail at every conceivable junction. You really can't play off the tough guy macho act very well."

He folded his arms tightly. "I'm totally a very tough and cool guy. I don't take myself that seriously."

"Uh-huh," she said with a motherly nod.

Jaune made a kind of scowling scrunchie face at her. "For the record, my thoughts are full of funny moments. I'm pretty much a walking fountain of funny, self-deprecating thoughts where I think about my failures and try to become a better person through humor."

"Okay, Spruce Willis."

He tried gesturing at her, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth right. It looked like he was flailing out a cobweb or some kind of ghost. All Coco could do was shake her head, and pull her beret down to cover her eyes to give him a moment to recover himself.

"Look, I already have seven sisters," he finally said, stomping one foot like a toddler having a tantrum. "I don't need me another one. Plus I think I have a sexually-confusing thing for blondes, so I'm gucci."

She grinned. "Too bad."

"Three bad," he countered, eyes narrowing.

"Four and I'll throw in a fifth for free."

"What are we haggling over again?"

Coco shrugged. "Dunno. But you're not being all mopey, so it's working. I mean, I get how you feel. I see it in plenty of people in your shoes, including once or twice in my heels. You screwed up. But who hasn't in your position? There's been people whose screw-ups have cost millions of lives. The Great War only began because some loser in power screwed up. Compared to that, what are you? Just a little lost puppy trying his best."

"I'm a big brave dog. Maybe some kind of Doberman."

"You're a schnauzer."

"Compromise and settle for a labradoodle?"

"Deal." She held out her hand to shake, and to her delight, he actually took her hand.

"It's the beard that makes you a labradoodle," Coco said. "It's just so fluffy it makes me want to pet you."

"Coco, no."

"Coco, yes." She reached out and tousled his short blond hair. He glared at her like a petulant child. "This is what you get for violating my personal space and touching my shades, kid."

"I'm pretty sure talking with you has significantly shortened my life span. Which is cool. I didn't want to be alive anymore anyways." He turned away from her, towards one of the side exits out from the locker room. Coco kept up with him.

"It's called an object lesson Jaune," she said. "Stop taking yourself so seriously. If you screwed up, live with it. Learn from it. Then one day maybe you can actually be cool instead of pretending."

"Yeah, but for all I've tried, my highest accomplishment is that one of my teammates actually views me as a person." He made a flippant gesture at her with one hand. "I tried doing right by my team: Weiss and Blake and Shamrock. All I did was get them fucked over. I tried doing it again, and all I got was crucified. I think I get this landmark victory with Cardin and my partner gets tears of rage from what I thought was my best work yet. Shit's just fucked all the time."

Coco shrugged. "So?"

That somehow seemed to offend him. Gesturing with a little more flamboyance, he said, "So now I'm basically the headmaster's bitch for all the eternity. I don't know what I'm doing here. And apparently as you're so fond of pointing out, I'm not very good at faking it until I'm making it."

"I know," she said seriously, and he frowned at her deeply. "But I got a lot more experience than you. I kind of see myself in you, except I was way cooler, a lot prettier, and could pretend better."

"Yeah?" Jaune said, sounding like he was asking despite his desire to shut her up. Not that he could make her.

"Velvet is independent because she's used to people letting her down. Fox is good, but he sees being a Huntsman as just a means to an end. Yatsuhashi is basically a self-conscious brick wall. Headmaster Ozpin likes to assemble unlikely heroes together. Part of being a Huntsman is learning to deal with that. Doubly so if for whatever reason he thinks you'd be best in charge. He might be a mysterious old bastard, but I've come to trust his judgment on that. I mean, Goodwitch trusts him, so that speaks volumes."

Jaune's lips curled. "I don't trust him. Feel like every time we talk, the old man is hiding something from me. Don't reckon he trusts me none."

"From the way it sounds like you've acted as a leader, can you blame him?"

With a look of disgust, the boy shook his head and pushed open the door to the outside. He didn't reply.

She followed him out of one of the side exits into the open evening air. Coco liked it better out here in any case. Unlike the rest of the school, the architecture in the gym was obsequiously modern, and had ceilings that were way too low. It gave her a vague sense of claustrophobia compared to the rest of the campus. Like the time when she was a little girl, and got locked in a cabinet for hours on end before someone had found her. It was why she preferred to work out on her own, outside.

"You can only be as good of a leader as you let yourself be, kid. If you give up after just one or two failures, then you don't deserve the position in the first place."

Jaune spun on her. He looked like he was about to yell at her, before he bit his tongue down and just sighed in defeat. "Look, Coco, you weren't there. I wudn't exactly the best person when I showed up here."

Coco put her hands on her hips, regarding the boy. "So what's stopping you from being better?"

"What?"

"Look, from one team leader to the kid she now owns, I have to say, you're lacking that confidence and backbone you need to be a good one. I see potential in you, a lot more than you're giving yourself credit for, I think. But you have to learn there's a difference between pretending like you have an idea what you're doing, and actually using that as a smokescreen to learn how to do it for real."

"Ah, cool. Nut up or shut up. Thanks, Dad."

She laughed. "When you put it like that, maybe. But I'm serious. What you need is to follow someone who knows what they're doing. Someone who can help you out."

"Had me one once, Sergeant Raney. But that was a lifetime ago. Before I went ahead and fucked my life up and wound up here."

She put her hand on her chin, thinking. "It's obvious to me you've got balls. Pretty sure I saw them back there anyhow."

"This is the part where I ask for an adult, but I'm pretty sure you are one."

She lowered her shades just to wink at him. "Yeah. And I've been doing this Huntsmen team leader thing for a year. To date, no one's died under my watch. And team CFVY is the best team the school has right now. That's why I owe you one and am going to, like, tattoo my name onto you or something. You just need some tats to complete the look you're going for." Coco shrugged.

Jaune reached into his pocket and withdrew a cigarette. "I got enough psycho bitches in my life. Give me a light and we'll call it even."

She frowned thoughtfully. "Got one to share?"

It looked like he couldn't tell whether to be surprised or begrudgingly respectful. But he did pull out another cigarette. In exchange, she pulled out a little vial of fire Dust. All she needed was one little speck. She put it into her hand and snapped her fingers, activating her Semblance, Hype. What would have been a quick and short-lived little burst of fire, became a powerful light with the added effect of her special ability.

She lit him up. Then, when he had it in his mouth, leaned up towards him to light hers against the cherry of his. It had the desired effect of making him uncomfortable, their faces that close together. She saw the reflection of his Aura as a glare in her sunglasses.

Fucking adorable.

"Now I owe you another for the cigarette, hot shot," she said, lowering her shades and willing herself to look into his blue eyes. "You're not escaping me that easy. Not if there's a chance I can't take credit for the next time you and your team make the local news."

"I'm really never going to get rid of you, am I?" he whined.

"Not even in your dreams. And I'm told a lot of boys have me in their dreams. And enough girls to make it worth it. So you have my permission in case you find me wandering around in your head." She rapt her knuckles against her forehead.

Jaune regarded her for a long moment, dragging on the cigarette. She could see him thinking it over, probably going through some kind of insulting, mocking thought process in his head like he claimed to be doing. Thinking back on all the friends or enemies or whatever that inspired him.

She hated it.

So she reached out and flicked him on the forehead. Coco always imagined what it would be like to have her little brother at school with her. It would probably be exactly like this. If she could be a good team leader, she could totally be a good surrogate sister who made sure to abandon Jaune at only the most hilarious moments. He would learn all the best ropes from her. Her own little project.

"Ow!" he said.

"Stop doing that. You're being all mopey and serious."

"I was thinking it over! It's my hobby!"

"Ah, perfectly normal for any broody teenager. You work out and brood. Do you actually have a hobby?"

"No."

She rolled her eyes. "Get one. You can't be a well-rounded Huntsmen if all you do is huntin' stuff. Ruby makes weapons, I dig my fashion, and Velvet is a photographer. You need to do something else or before all this consumes you."

"How do you know about Ruby?"

Coco shrugged. "Kid's team is hot stuff. Now, are you going to stop thinking it over and just get to the part where you agree, already? It's not like you actually have a choice."

He glared at her for a very long moment. Before his shoulders just kind of slumped. With a low sound almost like a growl, he said, "Hit ya boy up with a number, Coco, I guess."

She grinned. Oh yes, she was going to have fun with this one. Consider it her own little pet project. Take the up-and-coming team and turn it into her very own little thing. Plus, that Weiss girl on his team was one hell of a looker. She wouldn't mind having a little more time around that.

But for good measure, she gave Jaune a friendly slap on the ass on his way out.

Game. Set. Match, Jauney boy.