Volume 5: Before The Truth Will Set You Free, It'll Piss You Off
Chapter 1: 101 Ways to Cook a Human
"There are two types of people in the world. Avoid them both."
— 1 —
When I opened the door to room #27 in the Fishery, following the invitation text from Ruby, I expected to find her hard at work. Nerding over weapons. Maybe lost in her own little world of death and bullets.
What I didn't expect to do was find her gyrating her hips, dancing to the music on her headphones. Deaf to the world, her cape wrapped around her hips like a sweater. She was mumbling the words to her song, using her scythe as an air guitar. I cocked a brow as she tossed the weapon into the air like a baton, flailing her arms like a complete dork. When Ruby spun to face me, she didn't freeze up, didn't go red and stop. She just broke out in a smile as she caught her spinning weapon.
"Jaune!" she said giddily, her grin stretching from ear to ear. She was breathing just a little heavily. "I can't hear you. Join in on the fun!"
Ruby held out her hand to me. I set my bag of goodies to the side and, without thinking it over, kicked the door shut and took her hand. She kept moving like she had absolutely no rhythm, so I twirled her around and pushed her back. Ruby gave me a frantic look when I pulled her back. I tried asking her what she was doing, until she lit up with her Aura and kicked up into the air. Having no idea what to do and just honing in on a couple years of improv college theater, I held her hands and pushed up.
She landed on the ceiling, eyes wide like she couldn't believe this had worked. When she didn't fall, she laughed. A frenzy of kicks erupted. She shook her head like an old school hair band, her sweat dripping down on me in the hot room.
Her headphones fell off her wet head. I grabbed it in my off hand, and Ruby dropped to the ground with me. When she landed, I held her up to me like the tango, and swung her around. She leaned back, holding onto me. Until she reached forwards to grab her headphones, laughing up a storm.
"What the hell you vibin' to, girl?" I asked, already feeling the sweat on my neck.
She clicked something on her headset. The light on its side died, and the radio on the table came to life, blasting some hard, energetic rock with this weird Southern, kind of bluesy feeling. Not something I expected from this world.
"Radio Free Conspiracy Theory!" she said happily.
"Holy shit, they got Alex Jones here too!"
"Who?"
I shook my head. "Nah, don't think on it much, hombre. Just, didn't peg you the conspiracy theory type."
She wiped the sweat off her brow. "Ha! As if. World would be so much cooler if even a bit was true. Where's the wendigo Grimm putting human meat into my fast food? They keep talking about a super serum that makes Huntsmen, but I haven't been given it and I'm totally the best, most coolest Huntress out there." Ruby shrugged for effect.
"Then why you listen to it?"
Ruby lowered the radio's volume. "Because they're like modern-day fables," she said seriously. "Only instead of the hero getting the girl, or defeating the giant monster, at the end of the day all the hero can do is watch helplessly as big pharma puts chemicals in the water and gives everybody massive mommy milkers. Just like Uncle Qrow says sometimes."
I snorted despite myself. "Mommy milkers? Jesus, girl. Never thought I'd heard that from you. You are the weirdest girl I know."
"I'm the only normal one left," she said, sticking her tongue out. "Maybe it's you. You're weird sometimes too. In fact, you're mostly pretty weird. Like how you keep using made-up words like vibin' and hombre and, uh, I can't think of others right now, but you do it all the time. I just nod and pretend you make sense. So no matter how weird I am, you're way worse. It's kinda cool that way, you and me." She seemed to think there was something awkward she just said, and gave me this forced smile as she spread her hands. "Now that is pretty weird, Jaune."
"If you say so, mija. But, still." I made a gesture like feeling an ample chest I didn't have. "If that bit were true, then I think Yang's already a victim."
"Nope. Because if it were true, you'd have them too. It's in all the tap water."
I puffed out my chest, sore from today's gym workout with Cardin. I started flexing, making my pecs jostle.
She held out and shook her hands, laughing. "Oh my goodness, they've got you too! We're all doomed!" Ruby looked around conspiratorially, before leaning in and saying sotto voce, "But for real, where do I sign up?"
"Maybe one day when you are older and start having a boob window in your outfit."
She blew through her lips. "Please. I need the goods to pull it off. And I've tried. When I was younger, I asked Yang how come she had them and I didn't, and she said it was because she took a supplement called Lactaid. So I went to the store and bought a hundred Lien worth of it all and just chugged."
"And how'd that work out for you?" I asked, shaking my head.
"That was around the time I actually looked at the package and it turns out that Lactaid isn't for boobs, it's for lactose intolerance. So I spent the rest of my money buying milk and drinking it because I'm pretty sure I would die from lactose super tolerance without it. Stupid Yang and her lies."
I snorted. "At least she's sticking to puns these days instead of pranks."
"I guess. Now my only hope is just to drink tap water and hope big pharma is actually putting chemicals in the water like the radio says they are."
"You're really into that conspiracy shit, ain't you, Booby Rose?"
She cracked up giggling. It was like she couldn't stop herself. Was pretty damn infectious, too. "It's mostly, just, they have some really killer rock music in between the stories."
"Funny," I remarked, leaning on the weapons table with the radio, "I'd always reckoned you more an anime music kind of girl. Pop music and all that stuff."
"Pfft, nah!" she said with a dismissive gesture, like spitting to the side. "Have you seen the way I dress? What part of me screams pop music? It's rock and roll all day, baby!" Ruby pumped her fist.
I shook my head with a pleasant sigh. "Well, looks like a girl were workin' her up an appetite, all that dancin'." I went over to my bag. "Here, as per our arrangement. Fixin's for fashion and function."
I pulled out the wrapped up plate of deep-fried pâte à choux dough, lightly dusted with cinnamon sugar. Before I could explain what it was and start asking about how we were going to work on my weapon, Ruby was gasping, eyes wide as saucer plates. She turned into a storm of rose petals, and the next moment she had tackled the plate and was hitting the ground with a roll.
"Jaune! Jaune! What are these?" Ruby destroyed my carefully prepared seran wrap and dug into them. She didn't even swallow before talking. "Whoa, they're still warm. And they're sho good!"
"A lil' treat from where I'm from," I said, just watching her fucking destroy the pastries. "Beignets, New Orleans style. One of them Southern comfort foods I refuse to eat because they'll make me fat."
Powdered sugar around her mouth like cocaine, she kept eating. "Yeah. Thish was a good deal. Weapons and good fashion for food." She destroyed a third one. "Y'know what, Jaune? It's decided. We're getting married and you're becoming my househusband. You will never cook for anyone else, so long as it's not, like, broccoli or whatever. You're dead to me if you try to make me eat that crud."
"How we finna get married?" I asked, hands on hips. "We ain't even dating."
"Simple!" she said, popping to her feet. She wiped the sugar off on her cape and grinned. "The classic loveless marriage where I only use you for your cooking and life insurance. Then, bam! Eighteen-year-old widow. Cute and tragic! I could make the all-black-in-mourning combat skirt look work."
I rubbed my chin, pretending to consider it. "What do I get out of it?"
Ruby's eyes flashed impishly. "You can call my dad Daddy too."
"You do make a compelling argument," I said, nodding.
"You're so easy to manipulate," Ruby said in a matter-of-fact tone. "This is why this marriage is gonna work so well."
I held up my arm and the sword sheathed on it. "Speaking of manipulate, I got some weapon nerd stuff I wanna ask about for us to delve into. It's why I agreed to come today. That, and, like, the rest of my team be busy."
"With what?" she said, chewing another beignet. She set the plate down just to use her cape to wipe the sweat pouring from her forehead.
"Dunno. Ozpin wanted to talk to 'em," I said with a shrug. "They didn't know much, and didn't seem too concerned, so I wudn't neither."
"Hmm. I think he's doing that with my team, too," she said. "Wants to talk in an hour or so. I think it's about team stuff or whatever, since classes are back for the semester and stuff. I dunno." She clapped her hands. "But, that means we have a timeframe to work with!"
I rubbed my forehead. Christ, but did the Fishery need better AC. The sweat was starting to drip down like a Lil Jon song. "Yeah. Wanna look into something called an Aura Actuator or something."
She gave me a look. "Where'd you get one of those?"
I shrugged, leaning on the table with my hands on it. "Think I got me one in the old family sword. My dad used it and, well." I looked off to the side. "Made the sword here get all elemental, fire and ice. Ya know how?"
Ruby looked so thoughtful it was almost out-of-character. "They're rare. Old. Expensive. But if you're got one." She blinked, stars appearing in her silver eyes. "Then that's so cool! I've always wanted to tinker with one of those! They're tied to Aura and sort of, like, it's complex. They don't really make them anymore. They're ancient and mostly just passed down generation to generation. But first!"
She pulled out a measuring tape. "This'll be quick, I promise. I'm really good with clothes and design, but I need your measurements first. I have a notepad here to write them down and everything."
I held up a hand. "That's fine, but I'm gucci on the fashion. Me and Coco do that."
Ruby gave me a look. "Yeah, but you don't have a cape. And your colors are way too bright. It'll only be a minute. A very awkward minute, but still a minute."
"Uh, no capes, please," I said, shaking my head.
"Blasphemy!" she said. "All the coolest Hunters have homemade capes. There's me, my mom, Uncle Qrow, and also me."
"You mentioned yourself twice."
Ruby nodded seriously. "That's because I'm so cool I deserve to be on that list that much. Maybe even a third time."
I made a noise, folding my arms. "I don't know. I'm still uncomfortable with capes. They have this pretty unfortunate connotation in my mind."
She gave me a tired look. "C'mon, Jaune. What if I made you one with a drama clasp? Well, we'd make it together, since I'm teaching you. But that's just semantics."
"Drama clasp?"
With an oddly blank expression, she reached down to the cape she had wrapped around her waist. She tugged on it once with a little twist, and it just fell to the floor, leaving her in just a skirt and tank top.
"Voilà et drama! Lets you pull off your cape for that extra flare when you need it. And it means that if people try to grab you by it, it'll just fall off without strangling you to death. It's the only way to really make a cape work in combat."
Rubbing my arms, I just looked to the side, thinking. She took the time to put her cape back on.
Suddenly, a really odd idea struck me. Which I wasn't sure I was comfortable with, but somehow felt like the right call. Like it were the entire purpose behind it in the first place. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the feather. That glistening, pristine feather that never seemed to lose its shine even all these weeks after I got it. Her eyes went wide as she looked it over.
"Whoa, that's pretty!" she cooed. "What bird did that come from?"
"A certain bird of my feather," I said dismissively, putting it away. "Somehow wondering if you can make this here part of the drama clasp. I don't know. Design the cape around it."
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Hm. Yeah, that's possible. We could kind of build it into a necklace. Or a broach? Make the chain here ourselves, design it so it won't get lost. Only problem is it might share space with that really cool necklace you have."
I tapped at my bling, the old gift from her I was seldom without. "I'm sure we can find a way to make them complement each other."
Ruby nodded. "With my know-how and your ability to cook food, it's a surefire thing! But enough talking. I have to get these measurements in so I can get to work in that super cool Aura thing." She pulled on the measuring tape for emphasis.
I looked it down at myself, at my trendy t-shirt and jeans. "There's a problem with that. How exactly are you going to take my measurements while I'm wearing clothing?"
Her jaw slackened. "I, uh—okay, well, shoot, I didn't think of that." She whined. "How are we supposed to work on clothes if I don't know your measurements?"
For a moment, I just looked at her, and she somehow deflated. She was just holding that tape like it were a shoebox filled with a dead pet. Once, I had found a duckling out in a park, abandoned by its mother for some reason. I must have been only nine years old, but I decided to adopt the duckling and try to raise it. It became quite clear that it had been abandoned because there was something wrong with it. Within a couple of days, it stopped eating, and one of its legs didn't work right. It just kind of swam around in the bathtub, flipping itself out of the side and righting itself with buoyancy. Until eventually it just died one day and we had to bury it out back. I like to imagine we gave it a happy life for those couple of days, the way it followed us and peeped.
Then my dog dug it up and ate it the next day.
Looking at that expression, I kept thinking of the way Qrow talked about Ruby. How he'd do anything for her, and how she meant the world to him. How I owed him more than a couple of solids for helping me get off Patch.
"If Yang walks in," I said reluctantly, "I expect you to shield me with your body so you die and not me."
I can almost see the question mark visibly bubbling above her head. Before it turned to vague alarm as I removed my weapons and took off my shirt. Of all the things she could have done, suddenly giving me this expectant look and waving me to go on struck me as oddly hilarious. And for some reason going along with it, I undid my belt and let that drop.
Ruby eyed me like a piece of meat, nodding to herself. She whistled. "Alright. Wow. Absolutely no fear or sense of shame. I can see why they made you a team leader, Jaune. Mad respect."
"Just get it over with."
She extended the tape again and walked over to me. It was an uncomfortable level of closeness to the girl. Especially given my rather compromised state. But it wasn't like I especially cared. Training in the Army, you have to get used to showering naked with your bros. It's only awkward at first. Afterwards, it just becomes routine, the flopping of dicks, and our unfortunate habit of singing marching cadences together while washing.
"Hm. Now that's a katana," she said with an impish look.
I rolled my eyes. "God, it's painfully obvious you were raised by Tai and Qrow."
"Funny. Most people have no idea," she said. "They kinda think I'm just, I don't know. Whatever, I guess. But I'm way more special than that! I'm a super special girl!"
"What, like, are you retarded?"
Ruby fixed me with an even, almost tried expression. "Yes, Jaune. I am retarded." She reached up to grab my ear, smiling dumbly. "For some reason I still put up with you!"
"Ow, ow, watch it!"
She cracked the tape. "With pleasure!"
Little fucking monster.
"Is that scar on your cheek new? I kind of don't like the bald face, but maybe I only see it now because you shaved?" she asked, arms wrapping around me. Then Ruby tsk'd. "I see you've got more work done on the tattoo."
"I've had time and some spare money lying around," I said. "Aura makes it easier to get over the skin irritation of getting ink injected into you."
All I could do was look up and away, trying not to pay attention to her. She was getting annoyingly handsy and, if I'm being honest, wasn't really good at figuring out measurements. I have been taped before for a weight in the Army, during my brief phase of being fat after the plague hit. They only measured your waist and your neck if you were a male, subtracting the latter from your former to get your approximate BMI or whatever. It wasn't a very efficient system, and I'm pretty sure they always measured me as being less dense than I was. The point was, I wasn't sure Ruby needed to keep taking measurements down my neck all the way to my thighs inch-by-inch. But that she did, writing them down in her notebook.
I just had to awkwardly stand there, occasionally moving my arms out away, listening to the radio in the background.
"Folks, you ever wonder what you put in your body?" the rather animated male DJ was saying. He had a rather deep, somewhat gruff voice and an accent that sounded somehow Midwestern. Maybe from Missouri or the Remnant equivalent. I'd served some time at a duty station there.
"And no, I'm not talking about the time you and your buddies woke up in the local diner parking lot after getting into that old bottle of crow and whatever you found in your old uncle's garage," he went on. "I'm talking about the food industry, the whole damn system from pasture to platter. They say you are what you eat. Well, I've seen some documents from fans of the show. Documents straight out of the sci-fi horror show we call reality. I'm not about to go all vegan on you, but the bio horror experiments run by big pharma, big food, and big Schnee we call the Valean food industry has a lot more disgusting additives, a lot more dangerous ones, than the corn syrup based burgers and drinks we're slugging down on a regular basis. It's all about what they don't want you to know, and what they do want you to think. A handle of corn whiskey is cheaper than a counseling session. And a painkiller prescription is cheaper for an insurance company than routine doctor appointments."
Somehow it felt right to me that Weiss was implicated in at least one conspiracy theory. I should really ask her about those.
Although exactly how my teammate factored into a conspiracy involving the food industry was a little beyond me. If I had to guess, it would be processed foods and the involvement of Dust. Back on Earth, petroleum had been an inherent part of food processing and corn, and Dust served a similar role to petroleum on Remnant. All flesh is corn, as the mangled phrase went, with a majority of the calories modern Americans consume one way or the other coming from corn, either corn byproducts, or corn-fed livestock. But now here I was, getting completely sidetracked by insane conspiracy theories involving a world I didn't even properly understand and relating it to my own mistrust of big corn and petrochemicals. It was kind of addictive, just trying to put it all together in your head.
"I think I can kind of see why you listen to this," I said as if in a daze.
Ruby finished getting my hip measurements and stood up, running a hand through her black hair. "It's funny," she said simply. "Just wait until they get back to the music. Until then, I just focus on letting it rot my brain and turn my thinking bits into mush. Helps me kind of just zone out and get to work or do whatever."
Ruby rubbed her hands together like getting dust off them. She consulted her notebook one last time, and seemed satisfied with that. "Anyhow, want to learn how to mess with your weapon?"
"I guess, although I imagined it would be kind of weird." I pulled my pants back up. But my shirt was somewhere on the ground and I really wasn't feeling like bending over after a day of chest and core in the gym. Also, this room was damn hot and I was more comfortable like this. "Learning how these fantastic contraptions actually work and demystifying them."
"How is that weird? That's the best part! It's all about learning how your baby operates, how it functions, how to take it apart and reassemble it, and then use it to kill monsters."
I made a so-so gesture. "It's kind of like, like, taking a shower with a girl. You ever shower with somebody?"
Ruby hugged herself. "Uh, no."
"Well, it's like that. At first you go in thinking it's going to be all hot and sexy and cool. But then as you're showering together, you're watching her soap herself up. You start getting a mite bit concerned. She's all I'm done, let's have sexy time, and you can help but think Uh, no, bitch, you missed a spot. You missed several spots! And suddenly you're thinking that all the times you've been physical with her, she's been this awful washer. Completely ruins the relationship."
"Well, I shower great. Total rub-a-dub land. And no," she said with a wink. "You don't get to join me and verify. Just because you're my husband doesn't mean we don't have personal boundaries."
I rolled my eyes. "I want a divorce."
"I want alimony."
With a sigh, I picked up my sword and put it on the workbench. "This is going to be the longest hour of my life, mija."
— 2 —
Weiss Schnee sat across from the headmaster, with all the poise of a dancer at rest. It wasn't that she looked intimidated or worried to be here. If the purposely uncomfortable chair was bothering her, it didn't show. It was just that she naturally had all the grace of someone befitting her class and station, like someone built for total body theater instead of being a Huntress. She had the form down perfectly and everything. The only thing that ruined that veneer of perfection was the scar across her left eye, and the healing injury over her eyebrow. Weiss might look like a dancer, but she was a fighter.
Ozpin supposed you had to be in this lifestyle. Beacon chose its candidates carefully, to a certain extent at least. If someone developed an aura and wanted to attend, odds were they made it in. It wouldn't do to have superpowered teenagers running around without training or an understanding of who and what they were. That was a recipe for disaster. And it was strictly against Beacon's policy to let disasters go free. Most of the people who washed out of the academy did so because they died, which, in the grand scheme of things, was a preferable thing to society than letting them wander around angry without direction.
In Shade Academy, the Huntsman school in Vacuo, their philosophy emphasized individual strength. Teams from that school more or less ended up as four very skilled people who happened to be in close proximity, as opposed to Beacon, where a team was supposed to be greater than a sum of its parts. So the question here became, where did this lithe dancer fit into that whole?
Finally, the girl stopped thinking on her answer. She had been given all the time in the world to come up with one, letting Ozpin think of how to lead this conversation when it came to it.
"I think Shamrock is perfectly acceptable. It's taking me some time to get used to them, but we make a good pair. They're crafty and thoughtful in ways I wouldn't usually consider. They're incredibly good at blending in wherever they are in ways I just can't accomplish. It's why I'm trying to pick up as much as I can from them, and teach them what I know in return," she said, with a faint accent that was nearly imperceptible by design. A perfectly poised use of the language without stuttering or repetition. Perfect grammar. No hesitation.
"Given your background and rather infamous name, have you found that an obstacle?" he asked.
There! A slight glance to the side. A fractionally uncomfortable shift in the chair. There was something to this line of thought.
Slowly, the girl nodded. "Yes. If you think I'm ignorant of what my family does, you're wrong, sir. Have you ever heard of 'The sins of the Father'?"
"I have, yes."
"Most societies have realized that's a dead end. At least, that's what they pretend," she said. "In theory, we all understand you can't blame somebody else solely for the action of another. That's why the more bleeding hearts insist on forgiveness and understanding. Why they look at bias towards the poor or faunus or outside ethnic groups, and try to see the individual. Look at me, and most of the time all they see is my name. As if I were Schnee Weiss and not the other way around like how they order names in the Boarisch country of Solitas or parts of Mistral. Family before the individual."
"But you're Weiss first."
The girl hesitated. "I'm both. Weiss Schnee. They're together in a way you can't really separate. I can't change that. It was how I was born. I'm not ashamed of that, but I am ashamed of what the name has become. What people believe it stands for because of my father. How people assume the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree by virtue of blood. They don't realize that I'm me, not the sum of expectation. I know what my family has done, and I know that one day I'm going to inherit the position from my parents. That's a simple fact and not ever going to change. What they don't consider is that because I know what's going on, I have the power to change it. Moreover, that I will change it. I wouldn't be here if I thought everything was perfectly fine. If I thought nothing needed to change and my family's course was correct. Even my team seems to have trouble grasping that. Or at least, they used to."
"But now they've gotten to know the real you?" Ozpin asked, adjusting his glasses.
"It wasn't easy. Partially because I didn't know what to change in myself to be where and who I wanted. Shamrock didn't comment on it, but they're from Vacuo. They have an entire litany of idioms related to my family in a negative context. Blake, too, always saw me for my family first. It was hard not to want to defend myself. I know what we do is wrong, but they're still my family, and I'm the only one who can change it. Blake and I took a while to understand each other. To be frank, I'm still not sure we really do. I understand why she feels the way she does, and these days I think she knows why I feel the way I do."
"And how much would you say you know about Blake? How do you feel she is as a teammate?"
Her eyes narrowed fractionally towards him, an expression he found somewhat surprising. Taking him off guard just slightly. "I know about as much as you do. She's a faunus, and she used to be involved in some pretty terrible things with some pretty terrible people. She has to live with that regret and try to overcome it. Even if we come from entirely separate worlds, we have that in common. The only difference is that she made the choice and I was born into it."
Ozpin considered Weiss. "Did she tell you or did you manage to figure this out yourself?"
Weiss shook her head. "No. We had a fight. Who she was came out, and she later told me in detail. We talked about it a lot. I don't really think it's something anyone could just figure out. Except maybe Jaune."
He cocked an eyebrow. "He just figured it out himself?"
The expression on her face was thin and uncomfortable. "Yes, sir. He does that a lot. He somehow managed to figure out what she was and who she was all on his own without her telling him, so she tells me. I would have thought it was ridiculous, except for the fact that I've seen it myself."
He leaned forward fractionally. This was what he wanted to know. He felt the tattoo on his arm itching slightly, the Number. "What do you mean by that?"
Once again, the girl looked to the side. With an almost uncharacteristic sigh of thought, she said, "It's uncanny. Like, Jaune can just look at you and know everything about you. He can intuit things he shouldn't be able to know. You can think you are being close-lipped and guarded with yourself, but he seems to see right past that. I barely talked to him, and he figured out my problem with my father. Tried to use it against me. He can make a casual joke, revealing how he knows that I used to be an opera singer for my family, what I used to consider as fun before we met, or understand exactly how I'm feeling and use it as a lever. I've never met someone who at the same time came across as an idiot, and yet was that impossibly perceptive. It almost makes me uncomfortable, the way he just knows things, and the way he knows how to use that against people for better or ill. It used to be mostly for ill, like he just wanted to get a laugh by showing off what he could figure out."
The way she was speaking now, she was losing some of her grace. Something about this deeply bothered her, and Ozpin could relate. Half of the things the boy had told him, he couldn't tell if he was just making random jokes, stabs in the dark, or subtly implying that he knew far more than he should. Ozpin remembered how he asked him a question once, and Jaune told him that a genie in a lamp had given him all the answers. How he jokingly referred to Ozpin as a wizard. Phrases and expressions that could be entirely innocent, if peculiar, but taken together spoke of someone who knew far more than he had any right to, and liked to show it off with plausible deniability.
Calculated, in a word.
But knowing that he didn't do this just against him, that it was also with his teammates like Weiss—what did that mean? Knowing about Ozpin made a sort of sense. But he couldn't connect the dots to being able to do it for someone like her.
"So you're saying he's manipulative and not good as a leader?" he asked.
She considered the question in an uncomfortable silence. "I don't know. Jaune hasn't officially been our leader in months. But it doesn't stop him from acting like one, and it doesn't stop us from continuing to follow along. It's not so much manipulation as just understanding, I suppose. Part of that is his relationship with Blake. The two of them are, what's the word, codependent? I feel like he can do his own thing, and she'll just go along with it. Like she is slowly becoming him, listening to what he says, wanting to do what he wants to do. The two of them are attached at the hip, which doesn't really make any sense to me. They used to completely hate each other. Things changed, and now here they are, almost inseparable. When he has an idea, when he wants us to do something, she wants to go along, and with two of them insistent on it, we go with them. Ever since he stopped being completely irreverent and taking things seriously, everything's changed. I can almost respect that level of effort and dedication."
Slowly, he found himself tapping on his desk. This wasn't exactly the information he wanted, but he supposed it was what he wound up fishing for. He had been on Jaune's case for poor leadership abilities since the start. The only reason he had put him in charge of the team was because he had gotten the correct chess piece at record pace, and seemed to have accidentally gathered up his team at the very start. Ozpin wasn't in the habit of reshuffling his team decisions in the first semester. Good chances were, a poorly functioning team would be forced to work together, or die. Come the second semester if they made it through, they might reexamine a poorly functioning team. But by all accounts, both those of the teachers and now those of Team BASS, the team seemed to actually be functioning very well. It wasn't the best or his favorite of this year by any metric, an honor which belonged to TEAM VYPR, which included the incredibly valuable Ruby. But that didn't make this team one worth overlooking, especially not one with such an interesting cast of potentially worrisome characters.
"'We' meaning yourself and Shamrock," Ozpin said for clarification.
Weiss nodded. "Honestly, I don't think I could do that. Shamrock likes to blend in. None of us used to get along. The only thing we had in common was that we hated Jaune. When that fell apart, I don't know. When he talks, we wind up listening, and in the end we tend to do what he wants us to. That's why we've been doing so well as a team in class. The boy is obsessed with this place and it's getting worse. He's always doing something, and usually dragging us along. "We would probably be in the gym practicing together as a team if you hadn't called us all in for this conversation. We've gone from the bottom of the ratings to doing admirably as a unit, enough that I'm proud of us. I suppose that's about the best definition of a leader you can get in this situation. I don't think Blake could do that. Shamrock never could even when they tried playing peacemaker. I myself—well."
Weiss compressed a sigh. "I'm just me. Make of that what you will, sir."
Slowly, he nodded. "I will. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak with me. You have been most helpful. Unless there's anything else you would like to add, that concludes our meeting."
— 3 —
"So you need to hold it like this," I said thoughtfully, Ruby hovering over me like a mother hen. Which was quite an accomplishment when I was a foot and some change taller than her. "And then you pull this lever and—"
The scythe of Crescent Rose collapsed in on itself with a dangerous, sharp motion like a guillotine. Anyone with their fingers caught in that would have had a really bad time. Most of the mechanisms were internal. At least they would have been if Ruby and I hadn't removed the side to reveal them all. I watched with fascination as gears and other miscellaneous mechanical accoutrements worked in a perfectly oiled silence to turn the scythe into a rifle.
Ruby could, clapping her hands like this were a golf tournament. "You've got it!" she said. "You have no idea how long it took for me to make that actually work right. Uncle Qrow helped with some of the design. He gave me his weapon as reference, but I didn't really like how it was a pistol grip. The caliber was a little too small scale." She spoke quickly in rapid fire excitement, and if not for my bizarre ability to understand fast talk, I probably would have been lost. "I figured, my weapon is going to be really good up close. Why do I need to double that up? So I went all for the long range heavy caliber. It's legally an anti-materiel rifle. At first it killed my shoulder, but I got used to it."
She flexed her arms, looking a bit like she was trying to imitate a malnourished uterus. People who tried flexing like that always looked like a uterus to me for some reason. I mimicked the gesture with one arm for effect. She reached forward to squeeze my bicep, and gave a satisfied nod. If the genders had been reversed, it probably would have been a gross violation of personal space. But why did a boy go to the gym if not to be ogled? The answer was to get complimented by your fellow dude bros.
"Yeah, I bet if you figure out how to stand, you could shoot it too," she said. "See, the entire weapon is built around the barrel. All the parts and gears around it help anchor it. I use a hydrophobic oil to lubricate the gears, meaning they'll stay smooth and functional even if it gets wet. It's occasionally been a problem in swampy environments."
"What if you start shooting too much and the barrel begins to melt?" I asked, touching one of the gears. My fingers came back slick with a fluid I couldn't tell it was a black or orange color in this light.
"As you see, the side panel is pretty easy to remove. I actually carry a couple extra barrels when I go out hunting. They're pretty heavy, but they used to make us carry backpacks in Signal for land navigation reasons. I'm used to it. Headmaster Ozpin once said it was one of the most dangerous weapons ever created, and that was pretty much one of the proudest moments of my life." Ruby absolutely beamed.
Watching the mechanisms as if in a trance, I reversed the function. The blade popped out once more ready to reap the harvest.
"You sure know a lot about this stuff for a fifteen-year-old."
"I'm not fifteen," she said offhandedly.
I looked up at her from where I sat on the workbench. "Wha'?"
"My birthday is the 31st of October. It's the 8th of January. Do the math."
"So you're sixteen?"
"I guess."
"How has nobody corrected me whenever I give you the wrong age?"
Ruby shrugged, tucking her hair behind her ears. "Time is fluid. Who knows what day any day really is?"
"Since when have you been a philosopher?"
"Oh, that." She waved a hand. "I read that on the back of a box of Pumpkin Pete cereal. Y'know, my partner, Pyrrha, used to be their official spokeswoman. Or mascot. I'm not really sure. She says she still has guilt at night over all of the childhood diabetes she has indirectly helped cause."
I just blinked, shaking my head. "I'm surprised I didn't learn this earlier. I figured a girl like you would have her one hell of a sweet sixteen party."
"I don't know. I never really liked parties. So what if I'm sixteen now? It's just a number."
"I don't like anyone saying age is just a number in the context of children."
"Oh, please. The laws don't even make sense. Why is being eighteen an adult? Why isn't it younger, or older? I've met plenty of adults who still don't have things figured out enough to be adults. And I've met kids who have things figured out better. Look at you."
"Which one am I?"
"You're Jaune. You're cool except how you get in your feelings too much sometimes. But you can also cook, and my dad claims to be an adult but he always burns the pasta. So make of that what you will."
"I'm not sure my ability to make spaghetti should be what separates the boys from the men."
"But people want to wait for some stupid number to decide when I'm an adult? I kill giant monsters for a living. People around me are going to die and that's just a fact of my life. I have a responsibility to save people. I'm supposed to be able to figure out how to do that, and then figure out how to live with it no matter which way it goes. The average 'adult' is still trying to figure out what the best time to cook microwave popcorn is. The only difference between me and them is they can legally star in porn and I can't."
I snorted, spewing some of the water I have been drinking. Coughing, I tried to get a hold of myself. Just so I could try and tell, "Jesus Christ, never suggest yourself in porn ever again! Part of me doesn't even know how you know that exists."
Ruby gave me a flat, almost annoyed look. "I'm sixteen, not five. Besides, my uncle doesn't know how to use passwords on his computer. I've seen things I can't unsee."
"And let me guess, the therapy you needed from that is why you're so good at talking to people?"
Rather than laugh it off, she looked to the side. Eyes lost in thought, she said, "It's more like—people around me always seem stuck somewhere. Sometimes it's a math problem, and sometimes it's just life itself. I always thought the worst enemy out there wasn't the Grimm or, like, the high fructose corn syrup industry that the radio talks about. People's biggest enemy is always themselves. Sometimes you just need someone outside to give you the push you need to see it."
"I think that's what really makes people an adult or not," I said, biting back a sudden craving for nicotine. "That ability to realize you are your own worst enemy. Not to let it get to you, but then to work with it. Try to overcome yourself. Realize you are a colossal fuck up, and them's just the works. But you can do something about it, because the only thing you really can change is yourself at the end of the day."
"Change. Things we can and can't control," she said thoughtfully.
I waited for her to continue, honestly interested to see her take on this. For what should have been a conversation about weapons and oiling up gears, we were getting into something I kind of liked. For as many people thought of Ruby as a kid, when you pushed her, she said things like this. Did stuff a little out of the norm. It made her worth paying attention to.
Ruby looked like she was having trouble talking. "There's a million stars, seven planets, five continents, four Huntsman Academies, and what are the odds you get stuck with that one person for the next four years? What are the odds that my parents met, when you think of it like that? So the very first lesson this school teaches you is you can't always control the hand you're dealt. That's how Pyrrha explained it. 'You have to banish expectation, soak in the moment, and adapt.' "
Slowly, I nodded. "Yeah. It's not like any of us asked to be here."
She stood up sharply. "There's things we can't control. There's things we can control. As Huntsmen, we have to know the difference. If all you do is obsess over the things that have happened and you can't change, why are you even alive? The world is a scary place and we alone have the ability to go out there and help people, change lives, save it all. That's what my mom did. She never gave up. Never let the weight of the world get to her. Up until the moment it caught up to her, she was always in the moment, always looking forward to the next moment."
I rubbed my hands together, slick with sweat and bits of gun oil. "Is that way you don't give up? It's not the people around you, so much as you're just unwilling to consider it all?"
She gave me a sideways look. "Jaune, are you trying to turn my inspirational thoughts into more sad sack stuff? I'm starting to get this really sad feeling around you and I don't like it. Stop it. This is your final warning. There will be no sadness on the Ruby train."
Shaking my head, I set her weapon to the side. "No. This is just one of those things I unironically like to think about. I think you and I are kind of alike. Part of me thinks that's kind of why we get along. That, and for some reason you just tolerate me and my broccoli."
"I do that because I'm a saint," Ruby said in a matter of fact tone.
I gave her a skeptical look. "So, when I get you like this, I'm just trying to see how you tick. Honest."
"I tick the same way as the gears in my weapon. That's the way I built them. That's the way they're designed. That's their purpose. A gear that can't do that is worthless. You have to replace it."
"And what happens if the next gear starts to break down? You replace that one too? What happens when you've replaced everything to fit the same function?"
"You're wondering what happens when you replace every part of yourself, if you're still yourself."
I made a so-so gesture.
"That's the nature of weapons. That's the nature of people. We're never the same person day in and day out. We change, we grow, we evolve, and we improve. Just because I'm a better version of myself doesn't make yesterday's me any less me. It doesn't make the me of tomorrow different either. I want to be the kind of girl the young me would look up to. The kind of girl people like you or Uncle Qrow need. The kind of girl my mom would be proud of."
"Wherever she is, I'm sure she's proud of you," I said, fondling my necklace. "You're a complete fucking weirdo, but you're someone worth knowing. Wouldn't want to spend my time with someone who wasn't."
She looked away, and I couldn't tell if her cheeks were red from the praise or just the heat of the room. "Now who's making it weird?"
I held up my hands in mock defense. "I'm sorry for trying to be nice to you. In the future, I shall relentlessly bully you."
Ruby laughed once. "I'd like to see you try!"
I made a sour puss. "Your hair is dumb. Take that!"
Ruby gasped, holding her hand over her heart. She made choking noises as she stumbled back, like she'd been shot. "Oh no, my hair! My one weakness! How did you know!"
I raise my hand to the air, cackling. "I read it on the back of a cereal box!"
"Curse you, bizarrely informative box of cereal! I never should have revealed my deepest fears to you, Pyrrha—you shared them with Pumpkin Pete! Whoa—"
In her theatrical stumble backwards, she actually stumbled over my sword on the ground. I lunged forward to catch her by the sleeve and hold her back.
"Easy there, mija."
"My hero," she said, rolling her eyes.
"You can pay me back for my heroics by helping me figure out this Aura Actuator."
Her silver eyes lit up so brightly I nearly had to hold a hand up to block the light, metaphorically. I still think I was the only one who routinely made the back of his eyes glow with Aura.
"Holy crap, finally! I thought we'd never get to it!"
— 4 —
Blake Belladonna sat across from Ozpin and sighed. Even knowing she was a faunus, the girl seemed to prefer wearing that hairbow of hers. It was even more curious concerning the fact that her team appeared to know what she was. It wasn't like she could hide it from him even if she tried. Routine medical work and blood examinations would have revealed she was faunus in any case. Even beside that, Ozpin wouldn't ever have really cared. Beacon was just that: a beacon. They accepted all kinds of people as a matter of principle. They were more openly tolerant of her kind than other places, even if Vale was fairly progressive on the racial matter. She wasn't the only girl that did this. He knew Cards Adler of Team ICWN preferred to wear a braid to hide the feathers atop her head, her little cockatoo crest or whatever. The fact that people like her felt the need to hide who they were always struck a cord of unease with the man. It spoke of a society that liked to pretend it was progressive overtly, but behind closed doors the people who would have been affected by prejudice knew better than to flaunt who they were.
"All things considered," Blake said, "I think I'm becoming pretty happy with my team. It was rough going at first. Extremely rough, I mean. Shamrock was kind of like a shadow on the wall. Weiss was pretty much my opposite, everything I stand against, in a way. And Jaune was, well, you know."
"But in the end, you got along," he said, trying to steer the conversation.
Blake nodded. "It was rough waters. A war of inches, someone once told me. Not long ago it felt like coming here with a mistake, almost; the way my team just didn't click. Weiss was still a bigot, but getting to know her… I don't really forgive her for that, but I understand how it happened. I do think there's a good person beneath everything she's been through. She wouldn't be here otherwise. And she's determined to examine what's wrong with her and try to work on it. I can respect that, even if we don't see eye to eye on most things. She's from an entirely different world, one I'll never know, and one I don't want to know.
"Meanwhile, you have people like Shamrock. Their entire existence is just strange. They're a boy, they're a girl, they're neither, they're everything. They like to remain quiet; observing people, making notes. Occasionally voicing an opinion when you least expect them to say something. Usually some kind of armor piercing question or observation you wouldn't have considered. They have that ability to just be outside of the norm, and that gives them pretty good insight into all of us. And that's how they fight: You can almost forget them and you don't see them coming, even though they're right there, wearing that hat of theirs and that suit and standing out if you squint your eyes and focus. People don't do that, and they know it. I think it hurts them. But when you put them to a task, they're all the way up for it. They want to fit in with the rest of us. And as we as a team are improving, so are they, and I really couldn't ask for anything more."
"What about Jaune?"
She shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "He's my partner, friend, and even if he's not our team leader he's still the closest we really have to one."
Ozpin adjusted his glasses, waiting for her to say anything else. When she didn't, he said, "That's almost a terse description."
Blake shrugged. "I don't know what else you want me to say about him. I presume you're keeping a close eye on him, with the therapy appointments and whatever. I know he's come to talk to you personally a couple of times. There's probably nothing I can say you don't know."
He made a show of shuffling the paper on his desk, as if that was giving him some kind of insight. "I'm told you used to hate him."
"Yeah," she said, almost sharply. "He used to be a complete jerk. Irreverent and lost in his own little world. Just doing whatever because he thought it was funny or productive, and he just sucked. There's no two ways about that. No way to mince words. But whoever he's trying to be, just like Weiss, I can respect it. He's… driven, I guess, in a word. Driven. Of all the people I've met in the world I would call that word, he's the only one I don't hate. Not anymore."
"Driven," he repeated, arching an eyebrow. "It sounds like you almost respect him."
"I guess. I don't know what else you'd feel for someone who went from what he was to who he is. I watched it happen and I still don't really know how he did it. It used to be he was the only thing uniting the team, because we all hated him. We all wished he wouldn't be here. Didn't even know how he got into the school. But he turned that all around, and now he's, I don't know. I think I know him better than anybody, and he still surprises me sometimes."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking off to the side. Off towards the window overlooking the school. "And what surprises me more is that no matter how stupid it is, it always seems like the right thing to do."
"So you're saying you're close to him?"
"I guess." Blake stared at him.
"I know a couple of people have described you two as codependent."
Blake shifted uncomfortably in the chair and stiffened. "He's my partner. The first person I locked eyes with down during initiation after he came crashing through. I support him and he supports me. That's how partnerships work. It's kind of the same way we all support Weiss and Shamrock. Whenever they need help, we have to be there for them. We're all in this together. When Weiss is trying to figure herself out, I have to be by her side and support her. There's nothing peculiar about that."
"You're shifting the topic."
Blake folded her arms, looking defensive. "What even is the topic? You wanted to know how the team is doing. We're doing fine. Better than fine. We're moving up in the rankings. We've been doing great in our occasional field exercises out in the forests. Our study groups are some of the best and I know a couple other teams are asking for our class notes." She made a face. "Mostly Weiss'. Jaune has some of the worst handwriting I've ever seen, and Shamrock isn't the best with grammar. But we wouldn't even be getting that far unless we had someone to push us."
"That person being Jaune," he said, before reaching for his cup of coffee. Extra strong black, naturally dry processed. The way it was harvested gave it a vaguely fruity aroma, a bit like a coffee smoothie even without any sugar or cream. In a couple of his past lives, he had been severely lactose intolerant; although his current body was perfectly fine with it, as were most Valeans of the modern day, he still tended to avoid dairy as a matter of course. Just one of those weird old habits of his he couldn't entirely shake.
"It's not just him," she said, and he knew she was trying to shift the topic again. It was like on some level she was averse to talking about her partner in the same way that that boy had some chip on his shoulder whenever he talked to Ozpin. He had to wonder if the boy's outlook was rubbing off on his teammates. "Weiss is striving to find what's wrong with her and build on it to be a better person. Shamrock is working out who they really want to be, who they actually are, underneath all of that shape-shifting. I'm doing my best to make up for the person I was, to be the person I want to look up to. The kind of girl who can go back home to her family one day and be proud of who she is. When you put us all together and figure out how to make us work, we're actually a team. I wouldn't have it any other way."
"And Jaune's role in this?" he asked.
"He's the team's Jaune. Just like I'm the team's Blake." The girl shrugged. "It's how we fit into this puzzle called Team BASS."
This wasn't working. "So if we decided to reevaluate our punishment of the boy and reinstate him as team leader?"
She perked up slightly. "It wouldn't change anything. We'd still have the same dynamic. We'd all still be the same people we're working on being. Weiss would be focused. Shamrock would be adaptable. I would be me. And Jaune would be driven." Blake seemed to consider something. "He would probably just take the official role and run with it. Maybe attend some kind of team leader meetings or whatever. But it wouldn't change anything, titles or official roles or whatever."
He sipped on his coffee. "I think that concludes our meeting. You've been very informative in assessing the current standing of your team. Unless you have anything else you'd like to add, feel free to take your leave and send in the next student waiting outside."
— 5 —
Ruby sat with her legs crossed on the table, the radio playing in the background, her body still damp with sweat. Eyes closed, she rested her head against my sword, which she held tip down in her lap. The position reminded me of a stripper who had passed out from a crack overdose midway through a dance routine.
"It's there," she told me, her eyes still closed. Her body glowed with a soft light. "If I didn't know it was here, I wouldn't have sensed it. You've got to have a really sensitive Aura to just notice it like you said you did." Her Aura died down; Ruby opened her eyes with a smile. "Of course, I'm almost sure you're halfway to being a savant, the way you're always using your Aura in your eyes like that. So I guess it makes a little bit of sense."
Leaning up against the door, chewing on a toothpick to sate my oral fixation, I gave her a mild look. "Savant being?"
She gave a lackadaisical shrug. "Someone who's always using their Aura. Non-stop permanent mode. I'm not really sure it's real, though. Mostly in legends of blind Huntsmen who pick up some pretty advanced perception techniques. Being sensitive to Aura and Grimm more than is normal. Like a psychic, only real."
I didn't know how much I liked that idea. It was a little bit too Brandon Sanderson for my tastes. "So I'm basically becoming a mutant because I like the vague burn of Aura? And it's affecting why I so easily tell there's some funky with my weapon?"
She shook the sword for good effect. "Could be, but there's probably an actually better explanation than mutation or whatever. I mean, if your father could do this sword thing like you said, it might make sense for you to be able to notice it. You know it's there. I wouldn't know it's there unless you told me, which you did, so I do."
I paced across the room. "I still don't really know what this thing is. Aura Actuator. How'm I supposed to use it if I don't know what it is?"
Ruby shrugged. Idly kicking her legs on the table, she said, "I'm not really sure what they are either. People don't really build them anymore. You mostly just find them. It's kind of like Dust but without Dust."
I gave her a look. "How does that make any sense?"
She stood up and stretched her arms over her head. Setting Crocea Mors on the table, she said, "It's like." Ruby put her hands on her hips, scowling. "It's like it's got a bit of Dust as needed, but it burns Aura for fuel. You have to reach out and really connect with it to make it work. So you'll be burning your Aura reserves, but keep the Dust."
The one toothpick I'd been chewing broke. I tossed it into the trash and produced another one to munch on. "Wouldn't that break the second law of thermodynamics? At least as far as I understand Dust and thermodynamics, it would."
"What the heck are thermodynamics?"
I held up my hands. "Nothing, nothing, forget I asked. Just—if it's some kind of wonder technology, how come no one makes it anymore? Why do you have to delve into ancient ruins to find them?"
"Who said anything about ancient ruins?" she asked, wiping her forehead off on her cloak. The only saving grace about this room's heat was that it was a dry heat. You could actually sweat it off with the heat from the furnaces. "It's more like stuff you might find in grandpa's attic. They only stopped making them because everyone who knew how to make them died."
"Killed by Grimm, huh?"
She gave me a look like I were retarded. "What's with you and jumping to conclusions today? No, no Grimm at all. They all got killed by communists."
For some reason, that made me laugh. "I'm sorry, I just didn't expect that. I expected wonder and adventure and lost secrets, not political assassination."
She folded her arms. "I mean, I guess it could have been the Royal Army who killed them. It's kind of a chicken and an egg thing. Huntsman urban legend. Whatever the case, the company that invented and made these things didn't survive la Commune du Vale and the aftermath. If you bought one before they were all executed, then you have one. But mass-produced technology doesn't tend to survive good for seventy years or however long it's been. It gets lost or broken or whatever. That's why they're so rare."
I reached out to take my sword from the table, getting a feel for it once more. I was so used to carrying it on my arm that I felt like there was something wrong when it wasn't weighing me down on some level. If I felt with my Aura, even just a little bit, I could definitely sense something I couldn't properly articulate. I just didn't know what to do with this. It was kind of like the feeling of finding food in your teeth, then licking at it for hours without being able to dislodge it. You needed a toothpick for that. And unlike the wooden ones I was currently chewing, I didn't have a toothpick for the soul.
"So how do I make this thing work?" I asked. "I want to shoot monsters with a flaming sword."
She tapped her chin. "I don't know. It's all a bunch of voodoo really. All I have are some guesses that I kind of want to test out. I think it's supposed to be some kind of emotional component or an attachment. It's your soul, after all."
I gave the sword an experimental swing away from her, trying to feel for the little device inside of it. "One of my souls, at least. What kind of emotions are we recommending?"
"How should I know?"
"You're the genius underage prodigy who still can't star in porn," I said, turning to face her. "Figured if anybody would know, it would be you."
Ruby beamed. "That's the most condescendingly insulting bit of flattery I've ever received. I'm going to write that down in my journal."
"You have a journal?"
"No, but I should. Maybe I'll make it a blog. Journals always sounded so cool to me, but I could never find time to write one down. Maybe the voyeuristic rush of sharing all my innermost thoughts with random online strangers will help me overcome this natural problem."
I gave her a look. "That word choice was entirely out of character for you."
Ruby shrugged. "The inner machinations of my mind and its thesaurus are a mystery." She snapped her fingers, shaking her head. "But stop distracting me. I'm going to guess we want you to get angry or something. Maybe get jealous? Strong negative emotions because this is a sword and people tend to be angry when they swing swords."
I looked down at my weapon. "Yeah, no dice, mija. I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but I'm not a very angry guy."
"Bull. You started yelling at me when I threatened to throw away your broccoli back when we first met."
"Honestly, I was having the time of my life. I'm good at picking a vibe and going with it. I used to do improv theater."
"So that's why you were into my dad!"
"Those two facts may or may not be related." I reached forward and bopped her on the top of the head with the pommel of my sword.
"Ow! This is domestic abuse!"
I laughed. "See? Even when I'm trying to hurt you, I can't help but feel fond things towards you."
Ruby stuck her tongue out at me. "Not even when I go full little sister mode?"
"No, not even when you are self-aware." I smiled.
She folded her arms, pouting. "Well, what about something that makes you feel all cool and tough? Some chant that's all you and right before you give the bad guys what for?"
I focused on my sword, holding it out. Pressing my Aura into my hands, trying to will it into the sword, I said the first, most stupid thing that popped into my head. "I am the Bone of my Sword."
Nothing. Ruby was staring. I tried waving it around and thinking more anime thoughts into it. "Plus ultra! Believe in the me that believes in you! Water dragon breathing! Uh, Make America Great Again?" I swung the sword even harder.
"Alright, no, that's just weird. Stop doing that. I'm gonna have secondhand cringe nightmares about that for weeks."
I shrugged with a grimace. "Sounded cool in my head."
"Yeah no. But if being cool is totally beyond your abilities, what about joy or excitement? What if you try to connect with the sword while you're feeling great? Having a fantastic time?"
Uncomfortably, I thought back to where my father had managed to make the sword work like that. Just kicking the raw shit out of me. Beating me into a bloody pulp. Shoving me into the fireplace and letting me burn. Something about him just feeling fantastic, like he's got a regular old stiffy popping under the hood, all while he was murdering me, made genuinely uncomfortable. There had to be more to this than just raw emotions. Maybe a situational connection. Maybe it was like Aura itself; it was just a muscle you needed to work out day in and day out for it to be anything of value.
Still, it wasn't like I had any other option. Didn't seem like anybody really knew how to operate this old piece of technology. And I definitely wanted to have this kind of edge in combat.
Plus, a flaming sword is just cool. I wasn't really too sure how effective it was, but damn if it wasn't stylish and delicious. The kind of weapon that would get me all the bitches.
With a sigh, I asked, "Alright. La joie. Whatcha got in mind?"
The smile on her face was nothing but dopey. She reached over to the radio and said it on high.
"…with traffic backed up for the excavation of a 70-ft statue of the late King Ozymandias for purposes of veneration or perhaps ritual re-sacrifice. Resident of Solnitzy, be sure to fill your left pants pocket with burnt horehound. And if you're going to work today, make sure to bring that umbrella."
I made a face as the radio blurb ended and it moved on to the next song. She slapped her thighs like you were trying to bring a dog to her, and just pointed at the ground. Hesitantly, I set Crocea Mors on the concrete, letting my Aura up. Now that I was so deeply aware of the device, even from a vague distance I could kind of sense it. But I had no idea how to make it work.
Looking downright manic, Ruby brought her finger to her lips as some music started. It began with a kind of chorus. Almost like reciting a poem
When old King Mantle came
to conquer fair Valais
la Dame de Fer did proclaim
"Let's make the tyrant pay!"
And as it erupted into some kind of folksy country rock music, Ruby held her hands to me. "C'mon!" she said. "Dance with me, monkey. You're a great dancer. Let's celebrate this through some kind of ancient war dance!"
I made a face as I took her hands. "Really?"
"Yeah, you're surprisingly not bad at dancing. You should totally come with me for the school dance later on this year. I can blame all of my mistakes on you."
She leaned back, and I swung her around. It really didn't match the music very much. It was just Ruby kind of wildly flailing around as I held on to her for dear life. More for her sake than mine. When she activated her Aura, the girl was a goddamn bullet. And honestly, I wasn't much better. Just moving with her alongside the music which didn't fit. Enjoying being a completely pointless dork with a girl who was somehow worse than me.
I tossed her into the air, and she turned into a storm of rose petals. They landed right behind me and shoved me forwards. I collapsed onto a table.
Ruby hissed. "Crap! I was trying to do that ballerina spin thing on you, but you're too big and heavy. Stop being big and heavy."
I stood up and dusted myself. No real damage. Personal force field to block any actual hurt. It was just a mild sense of annoyance at her. Scowling at her quickly, I took her hand and pulled her in close. All before putting my hand on her hips and lifting her above my head.
Ruby laughed, making a pose kind of like a dolphin with down syndrome. I balanced her on one hand.
"I'm on top of the world!" Ruby said.
"Yeah, no. I'm going to sink that ship right quick!" I said with a laugh.
The door opened. Ruby fell down, and I caught her in my arms. Even though in hindsight, I could have probably just let her fall on her face and she'd probably be fine. And really, as Yang stepped into the room, I probably should have just let her fall on her face.
"Ruby, you're gonna be late," she said around a mouthful of smoothie she was drinking. She paused, sucking in on her empty straw and making that really awful owl noise. Seeing both of us in vague states of undress, me without a shirt, and Ruby wearing a crop top that was only barely better than a bra. Fallen down in a sweaty tangle of limbs with me in what should have been a private workshop.
Ruby panicked, flailing awkwardly and slapping me across the face in her attempts to move into a protective position between me and her sister.
"Yang, it's not what it looks like," Ruby sputtered. "And in my defense, we're married!"
Well, fuck.
I probably should have kept my mouth shut. Really, it was the best thing possible. Just stand there in silence and let Ruby explain everything. But if I had done that, I never would have learned that sheer, existential fear-boner-inducing terror could make an Aura Actuator work.
So anyways, yeah, that's why I said, "In my offense, I fucked your dad, and now you're grounded, young lady."