Jaune went to knock on Ferro's room when he hesitated. They had gotten into a fight over Ferro going to a training academy. Ferro wanted to go and train with his friend from school who he referred to as M.
Jaune refused to allow it. There was no way that he was letting Ferro get into the business that killed his parents. Not that Ferro knew that. There were some things that a twelve year old was simply not ready to learn.
After a moment of thought he knocked but when he got no answer he opened the door slowly expecting to see Ferro napping but instead he saw an open window and open notebook on the desk.
Jaune had an idea about where Ferro had gone. "If you won't let me train them M's mom will." he had yelled before slamming the door to his room. Jaune took the threat as a hyperbole but it seemed he was wrong.
Checking the notebook he saw that the front page had an address on it right under the name. Emmy's house.
"So M is actually Emily, well now I know why you never told me that," Jaune thought aloud before plugging the address into his scroll and running the half mile to the girl's home.
The front door was open so he knocked on the doorframe and made sure to knock loudly.
"Come in," a voice called from the kitchen. It was clearly a woman and must be the one that belonged to Emily's mother. He followed the voice and found Emily's mother cleaning out her oven which happened to have bent over a very immodest angle that Jaune promptly turned away from.
"I'm sorry about the intrusion ma'am but I think my son may be here." he saw trying to both keep an eye on the woman without openly leering at her. This resulted in him half watching her out of the corner of his eye just enough to see her rear end move a bit one side and then the other as she worked to reach an odd spot in the oven.
"You must be Ferro's father?" she asked leaning a little further into the oven. "I kinda figured he was on the run but I didn't want to spook him so he's in the training room with Emerald."
Jaune had to do a spit take at the girl's name "did you just say your daughter's name was Emerald?"
Having finished her work in the oven Emerald's mom reached her right arm up and with a cheap prosthetic arm she placed the rag on the stove top and pulled herself upright.
"Well yes I did, why you sound like…" as she turned to face him they both froze. Cinder Fall was standing in front of Jaune Arc talking about how their kids were playing in the other room.
They both overcame their shock at about the same time and acted. Jaune grabbed a loose rolling pin and Cinder grabbed a cast iron grate from the stove. Using the grate like a shield she bashed the inside of Jaune's right arm making him drop the rolling pin and planting a push kick into his chest sending him stumbling back across the kitchen and backing into the island.
He saw a bag of flour that had yet to be emptied into it's jar he grabbed the bag and threw it at Cinder who used her right arm to block it but in doing so bursting the bag and spraying half the room in the white powder which was just what Jaune wanted as it allowed him to grab on of the large chef's knives from the block and thrusting at her left shoulder making her drop the grate and try and catch the arm.
She went for an arm throw but only succeeded in giving Jaune her back. Now he had snaked his left arm under her left armpit and was trying to use both of his hands to stab the knife into her chest.
With her robotic hand she swatted the blade out of Jaune's hand but soon found that Jaune had both of his arms under her's and was seconds from tossing her across the room and planting her into the floor until.
"Daddy, what are you doing?"
Was heard making both adults stop and turn to see Ferro who was rightly confused to see his father with his arms wrapped around Emerald's mom.
Before Jaune could answer a little girl with black eyes and hair came up behind Ferro and once she saw what was happening she started yelling. "Mother I have told you about this, Ferro is my best friend don't try and hit on his dad."
Her words made both of them realize two things. Nobody was winning this fight now, and their current position was an awkward one that when seen by an untrained eye made it look like they had gotten into some sort of food fight and wound up cuddling afterwards.
This made Jaune try to step away but Cinder took issue with her daughter giving her orders. So she looped her right arm over Jaune's right elbow and grabbed his left hand making sure that unless he was willing to cut off his left hand or right arm he wasn't getting away.
"And what if I don't, are you going to ground me, spank me," the implication of the way she said the last bit was lost on the children but not on Jaune who was still trying to get away without looking too weird.
Realizing that she had no way to actually back up her threats Emerald decided to escalate instead. Quickly grabbing Ferro by his collar before walking away and dragging him back into the training room.
Once they were out of sight Cinder let go and Jaune recoiled back and almost went back to fighting but stopped when he saw that Cinder was calmly walking over to the pitcher of lemonade at the table.
Pouring two glasses she handed him one and said. "Well I suppose now we need to talk about what's next."
"What's next is I call the cops and you spend a few weeks in jail before you wind up in an Atlas gas chamber." Jaune snapped ignoring the glass he was offered.
She slowly sat down in one of the chairs and muttered. "That's fair,"
He could see the pain on her face but he made sure not to let it get to him. She killed Pyrrha, she needed to die and all that his son had done was make sure that he didn't do it himself.
"What about Emerald?" she asked "what is going to happen to her?"
Jaune hadn't thought about it much but he knew that answer. "She'll wind up in foster care and hopefully after a name change she'll get adopted."
"I can't let that happen," Cinder said brokenly standing back up and shifting into a fighting stance.
But now it was Jaune's turn to behave unexpectedly. "You care about her don't you?" he asked, astonished at the notion.
"She's my daughter, how can I not love her." Cinder answered not attacking but not moving out of her defensive stance.
"Ferro speaks very highly of your daughter." Jaune said stepping back and picking up the glass he had neglected moments earlier. Taking a long sip from it he continued. "I need to think about this. If you're the woman I think you are, you'll leave before I've made up my mind and you'll leave the girl behind."
With that he left heading to the training room where he found Ferro trying to wrestle with Emerald and Emerald enjoying wrestling someone who had no idea what to do. "Ferro, we're leaving" he ordered. There was hesitation in the boy's eyes but he did as he was told and followed his father back home.
Once they had gotten inside Ferro looked at his father and in a somber tone asked him. "You were fighting with M's mom weren't you?"
Ferro didn't know of his father's warrior past but he was smarter than he let on. He was smart enough to know a fight when he saw one.
"Yeah I was," Jaune answered hoping that Ferro had no more questions but knowing otherwise.
"Why?" the boy asked.
"That is an answer that you aren't ready to hear yet." Jaune said knowing that Ferro wasn't going to like it but praying that his son would respect his choice.
"I didn't know you could fight?" Ferro replied thankfully changing the subject.
"I wasn't very good at it." Jaune lied trying to salvage as much of his son's view of him as possible.
"Where did you learn?" Ferro asked.
Jaune knew where this was going and ended up scratching his beard reflexively. "Not at a combat academy" he answered. Before Ferro could say anything Jaune added. "And neither are you."
Ferro made a sound that could be best described as a whine."But dad, I wanna be a hunter and how am I supposed to do that without training?"
Jaune wanted to say that all you would need to do is run away and hope to find a partner that happened to be a four time world champion that was also in love with you and willing to train you but he ended up opting to simply say. "You aren't going to be a hunter. That job has killed too many good people."
"Like who?" Ferro asked, calling his father's bluff.
"Like my entire family." Jaune answered sadly. During the war Tyrion found out about Jaune's family and set about killing them all one by one.
The way that he answered made Ferro think that Jaune blamed hunters for his family's death. Letting the talk go he waited until later and when he got a minute he logged onto the family computer.
The internet search bar seemed to taunt him as he typed in the words.
Jaune Micheal Arc Huntsman