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Requested by:
Scrublord Yoda
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"Feel the need to say it, little lord." Roman sighed, shaking his head wearily. "This is not a good idea."
"Well, I'm glad you're so self-aware." Jaune chuckled darkly, bringing the hilt of his sword in, closer to his waist.
It was a simplistic stance, feet planted evenly apart, waist low, sword tugged in and held point level with his opponent's head. But he wasn't certain how Roman would fight just yet, or what else he could do with that cane of his. So the most adaptive of stances was the most prudent of them, at least for the moment.
"I was meaning for you and your little import of a friend over there, but…" Roman sighed, spinning his cane around his wrist and catching it by the handle. "Well, I tried, at least. No one can say I didn't, so… Neo!"
The sound of metal on metal screeched behind him as the small woman attacked his Shield, but he didn't dare to look away from the rogue in front of him. The last time he'd turned his back on him, he'd gotten shot for it.
Roman backed away instead of attacking him, eyes locked on Jaune's own and cane spinning around his wrist with expert ease. His steps were even and sure, too. So Jaune figured that he wasn't just a thief. But he obviously wasn't a Hunter either, a licensed, trained man would make far more working against the Grimm than stealing. But a Frontiersmen, someone not properly licensed, couldn't...
But one with a particular set of skills might make for an excellent thief.
"Well, here goes the start of a really bad day. Blink and you'll miss it!" Roman suddenly said, pitching his cane into the air and shoving a hand into his pocket. As the cane came down, Roman caught it in one hand and leveled it at him while the other wheeled around, hurling a little disc at him.
"Jaune, that's a flash-"
The trapped spirit's words were cut off in a blinding flash that left his ears ringing and eyes watering, before something slammed into his chest. He staggered back for it, before a harsh thrust slammed home in his stomach and a fist crashed against Jaune's jaw. He let himself fall back from the blow and brought Mort Noir in front of him in a wild swing for space and felt it catch as it passed by. Then he felt it be yanked up as a boot slammed into his stomach and nearly drove him off his feet.
Growling, he tightened his grip on Mort Noir's grip and felt the familiar, gentle thrum of magic flowing through his partner. Snarling, he brought the sword around and stabbed it down, into the ground at his feet. He felt the wall of fire erupt in front of him, forcing his assailant back and buying him the time he needed to catch his breathe and blink away the stars he was seeing.
"-fire! Why is it always gods-damned fire?!" He heard Roman curse as his vision came back and he lifted his sword again.
The wall of fire between them was thin, but hot enough to make Jaune sweat even a couple feet away. It stretched from one end of the road to the other, too, scorching concrete and asphalt alike, and setting a tree on fire in one of the road-side planters. Jaune could barely make out Roman's silhouette through the fire as he backed away and raised an arm. It snapped down and the fire suddenly bloomed around an explosion of icy cold that swept out in a wide circle, smothering the fire and leaving trails of crawling ice and frost along every inch of the road for several feet around.
"That was expensive." Roman sighed, kicking a little silver ball about the size of Jaune's fist away up the road with a frown. Spinning his cane around his wrist again he asked, "Don't suppose you know what an emergency Dust release bomb is, do ya, Rusty?"
"Rusty…?" Roman blinked and looked pointedly to his sword, and Jaune growled. "No, I don't."
"Oh, 'course not." The thief growled, "Didn't even get it for you… Gonna have to sneak some more Ice Dust out of the supply."
""Assuming you'll get away?"
"Kid." Roman laughed, shaking his head and turning, holding his cane with the barrel resting in the crook of his arm, shielding his torso, "I always get away."
"We'll see about that." Mort hissed in his ear, "Partner, get behind him. Let's see how many of those Dust thingamawhatsits he has."
This time, Jaune started things off, lunging forward and to the side as another of the man's flare rounds careered past him and exploded in the air. Jaune closed with him before he could bring the weapon around to bear on him and Roman scowled for it, taking his weapon in both hands and raising it over his head to catch the powerful swing Jaune brought down on him. He twisted at the hips and dropped one side as the two pieces of metal slammed together, letting his blade screamed along the cane and into its crooked. Using his stomach on the flat for leverage, he tried to steal the sword away, and then slammed an elbow into Jaune's nose when he held on and held his ground.
Even through Aura, a hit like that, right on the soft of the bridge of his nose, hurt. It forced him back, but he had the presence of mind to at least stagger to the side. Cradling his face, and not for the first time wondering why he didn't wear a proper full helmet, he turned and brought his tremoring sword behind him in a wide arc. Fire bloomed along it and spread, forming a wall at the end of the street that made the surprised, but scarce, onlookers scramble away in panic.
They were more than far enough to start with, but he wasn't about to stop them from getting away from a fight.
"Again!?" Roman snapped, waving his cane at the wall of flames and adding, "And why is every asshole that bothers me using fire?!"
"You know what they say." Jaune shrugged, taking his sword in two hands and leveling it on the man. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What, can't handle the heat?"
"Okay then." Roman growled, "No more Mister Nice Criminal."
This time, Roman took the lead again, thrusting the end of his cane for Jaune's face. He batted it aside with his sword and brought his weapon down to cut up, but the man slammed into him halfway through the swing, shattering the momentum and forcing Jaune back. Roman let off a shot behind him that lit up the street like he'd dropped a brand new sun in it and Jaune grimaced against the spots that swam in his vision. A fist slammed into his jaw again, this time backed by metal, and he staggered back a step into the heat of the fire.
Snarling, he dropped his shoulder and lunged forward, just clipping the man as Roman let him slip by. He heard a little pop as his vision cleared and he felt a half dozen little hits along his back. Turning, he thrust his sword the way the shots had come from and felt Mor Noir thrum again, spewing a gout of fire that swept over Roman as the man shrieked in surprise, panic, and a bit of kind of satisfying pain.
"Jaune, watch your-"
Mort's words were cut off as Jaune felt his entire body swallowed up in pain, forcing him to a knee as the Fire Stream died out and Roman stepped forward, waving the smoke away and patting at his long white coat where it had caught. In his other hand, he held a little device with a small red button Jaune recognized as a signaller. After a few seconds, the pain cut off and he nearly collapsed to his hands and knees while little discs scattered around him. He recognized those, too.
From his time in the Schnee Dust Company's mines, once upon a time. Discipline Disks…
"I thought you were bad." Jaune growled as he forced himself onto sore legs. "But Discipline Disks?"
"Hey, I happen to like the irony of an anti-corporate like moi using Schnee junk to knock out their thugs so I can rob 'em." Roman explained matter of factly, straightening his coat with a hand and pitching the useless signaller away. It was a cheap little thing, Jaune knew, so he supposed Roman didn't care about losing it. "Anyway, is this about the time you swap with your little girlfriend over there?"
"No." Jaune growled, "Why?"
"Because I disagree." Roman answered, just before something slammed into his back and hooked something around his throat.
Using it for leverage, Neo wrenched him to the side and threw him, gagging, into a light pole. He pushed off it and turned, touching a hand to his head as his Aura flickered and flared. It came away bloody and he turned, looking up the road to where Pyrrha lay in an armored heap on the road. Her shield was a foot away, embedded in a tree planter, and her spear had been left in another tree's branches, but what drew his eye was a splash of crimson on the pavement beside the woman.
He snarled and snapped his sword to the side as it shook in his hand and fire crackled along its length, and Roman laughed.
"Whoa, whoa there, Lord of the Fireflies. Calm down, she isn't dead." The thief laughed, shaking his head and fishing a cigar out of his pocket. As he pressed it to his lips he paused, cocked his head and asked. "She is breathing, right, Neo?"
The woman cocked her head to the side, looked up the road, and then held up her hand and shook it side to side in a 'more or less' motion. Then her fingers started moving, flowing into familiar shapes, 'She's as tough as I remember, at least. Didn't recognize me though. So that was nice.'
"Good. Great, even!" Roman laughed, holding out the cigar and asking. "Say, mind lending a-"
"What do you mean, Pyrrha doesn't recognize you?" He asked, pacing to the side so he could get in the way if they went for her. The small woman blinked, pink eyes flashing white, and looked to Roman as Jaune said. "My aunt is deaf, Father taught us all Sign."
"Huh." Roman blinked, holding his cigar out for his smaller partner. "Well, that's awkward. Neo?"
The girl smiled, took it, and cracked it in half. Then she threw it and Jaune's eyes watered as smoke poured out around him. Coughing, he staggered away, waving his hands wildly to try and clear the smoke. But it wasn't really in a hurry go anywhere, and was making his eyes water, so he had to find his way out, which wasn't too hard.
But by the time he had, Roman and Neo were both gone.
"They got away…"
"Bigger problems right now, Boss. Bigger problems." Mort rasped in his ear, sounding drained as the wall of flames died out at the end of the road. With the barrier gone, a quartet of police officers rushed up the road, blocky handguns in their hands. "Check on Pyrrha, please and thanks?"
"Mhm." He nodded, turning and limping on a suddenly very sore, and adrenaline free, leg to get to his partner.
The blood beside her wasn't a pool, as he'd feared, but rather a splash that came from a deep cut to the inside of her thigh. He knelt and pressed a land to the soft flesh and didn't find any more flowing blood, so she didn't seem about to bleed out from there. She had another long and shallow cut on her forearm that wasn't bleeding much at all, and a nasty bruise and gash on her forehead.
But little beyond that, which was a relief.
He collapsed on the curb beside the woman with a groan and raised his voice, "Hey, can we get a medic or two over here? Or… Maybe five."
"Hnnng." Pyrrha groaned, curling up into a tight ball beside him. "S'loud…"
"Sorry about tha-"
"Jaune! Pyrrha!" A shrill, worried voice called out, cutting him off. He turned with a sigh just in time for Weiss, dirty and with her skirt torn, to slam into him, her arms around his neck. He felt her shudder against him before she pulled away, kneeling beside him, and asked, "Is Pyrrha-"
"She looks fine to me, aside from a few cuts." He answered quietly, still taken off guard from the sudden affection. Blinking it away, he raised his chin as a white-uniformed medic got to them and asked. "Mind looking over my partner?"
"She's the worse off." The man answered frankly, tugging the woman's legs open so he could get at the cut. After a second, he said, "Superficial. I'll clean and bandage it, Aura should see to the rest. I'm not even seeing anything that serious anywhere else… Well, except her head."
"Concussion?"
"Most likely, Hunter." The man answered with a nod, "I'll have her handled. See to the Blues, would ya?"
"Right… The cops." He sighed, trying to stand. When she saw him moving, Weiss shot to her feet and offered her hand, pulling him upright when he took it. She hovered beside him, a hand ghosting over his lower back, presumably in case he fell, while he limped over to the officers. Sheathing Mort Noir, he introduced himself, "Lord Jaune of House Arc. This is Weiss Schnee."
"ID?" The older of a pair that came to talk to him, while the other looked over the dead Faunus and the fifth went to bother the working doctor, said. They both offered him their Scrolls and he nodded, asking, "So what the bloody hell happened here, then? Half the street looks like a bomb went off."
"That's… My fault, really." He sighed, grimacing and trying to ignore his aching leg. Why it even hurt so bad, he had no idea, but Weiss saw it and pressed against his side, offering her shoulder for him to lean on. He hated to need it, but he let her take some of his weight and started, "See, I came into town to pick up something when these thugs got in our way-"
"Yeah, the Schnee told us that much." The officer grunted, cutting him off. "Just skip to when she left, alright?"
"Alright…" Jaune sighed. He could already see this was going to be about as fun as getting tazed had been… Oh well. "Well, once she took off I went after Roman while my partner, Pyrrha Nikos, tried to fight his partner."
"Roman has a partner?" The younger officer muttered, fishing out a pad of paper to take notes on. "That's new… Describe her?"
"Uh… Petite?" Jaune answered unsurely, flicking a look to the small woman beside him and then turning back to the officers. "Kind of like Weiss, body-wise-"
"I will choose to take that as praise."
"Y-Yeah, well, uh… Yeah." He swallowed nervously, more than aware of how dangerous commenting on a woman's figure was. And comparing it to a criminal's? Yeah, maybe that had been a bad plan… Regardless, "Anyway, she had pink and brown hair, but I didn't fight her. You'll have to talk to my partner about-"
"She was a couple inches shorter than me, with long hair colored pink and brown." Weiss stepped in to offer, "She wore a pair of brown pants, white boots, and a white coat of sorts. She carried a parasol as well, which hides a rapier or some other kind of thin blade. She's the one that killed the Faunus lying there."
"Useful…" The older man murmured, "Mind sitting with an artist? A sketch might let us hunt her more easily."
"She's also deaf." Jaune added when Weiss nodded, "I, uh, caught her Signing."
"And come to think, she never spoke, either…"
"That's useful, too." The officer nodded, turning back to Jaune, "Now, keep going with what happened here?"
"Alright…"
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Initially, I planned on having Neo and Pyrrha's fights included. The reason I decided against it was because Neo is unchanged, while Roman has a bit of Batman in him, if you squint. So exploring Roman was more fun than it would have been having Neo just… Do the thing she does in every fight.
Hope no one minds, either skipping her to save her fight for later or my tweaks to Roman.
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Grannster 10 :
Yes!
Smokey Panda :
Hope you enjoyed it!
Sebine :
Oml.
Steel Black Wing :
I would argue Pyrrha was equally flawed in the original show. Her flaws were just… Kind of boring, if that makes sense? She was kind to the point of hurting herself, super sacrificial, and super bound to duty. All of which are kind of boring, and typical, but make sense for the story RT/Monty wanted to tell.
Mine is still sacrificial, but less so. And she's MORE bound by duty. She's also just as kind, but it's watered down. I'm rambling, but what I mean is that I'm glad you enjoy her and the story!
H (Guest) :
Jaune cares about Faunus lives, so he's not going to let them being killed go. Further, if he just walks away, there's a real chance Roman or Neo could pursue Weiss. So they have good reasons to fight.