I don't own anything related to the RWBY franchise.
Chapter 4 - Exiting Stage Left
One year later...
Due mostly to an obsessive-compulsive need for absolute perfection, it had taken far longer than Pietro had initially thought it would to finally build/grow Penny a body. Nevertheless, just a few days earlier, Penny Polendina had taken her very first steps in a human-esque body of her very own. Well... To be honest, she had stumbled far more than she'd walked, but the moment had been extremely meaningful nonetheless. Despite her truly terrifying learning capacity, the newly created orangette woman currently had all the balance and coordination of a baby deer.
It was adorable.
Of course, Jaune wasn't a huge fan of watching his honorary little sister struggle, but he did have to admit that she was truly gifted at making pouty faces.
"Not fair, big brother! Take me with you!" Penny's brand new orangey red hair flailed around her shoulders as she waved her hands in the air. The ability to express herself using subtle body language was another thing that Penny was finding a bit patchy, with some things coming completely naturally and other things not at all. As a result, she appeared to be trying to force Jaune to understand her frustration merely by being extremely flamboyant about it.
Turning back towards his very visibly upset adoptive sibling with a gentle smile across his face, Jaune slowly shook his head in a soft form of denial. "No can-do little sis. You aren't an artificial intelligence that I can interface with on my scroll anymore. You're a real girl now and you're kind of heavy to boot."
"But, what if you have trouble regulating the aura to your armor's different configurations," Penny whined, her unfeigned concern conveyed perfectly through her beautiful bright green eyes. "I've always helped you control your Semblance when you get distracted or injured. What's going to happen without me picking up the slack?"
"All of your concerns may have been justified a few weeks ago, but how long has it been since you actually needed to save me?" Jaune crouched next to his sister's chair and gave her a no-nonsense look. "How long has it been since I allowed myself to lose control of the armor, Penny?"
With a sigh of frustration and a pout for good measure, Penny finally gave up and answered the question. "Forty three days, nine hours and thirty-six seconds."
That's right Penny, it's been well over a month," Jaune agreed with a smile. "Now. What do you think you should be focusing on right now rather than helping me control my Semblance?"
"Learning to move properly by using my flesh components," Penny answered in a sullen tone of voice."
"That's right," Jaune quietly agreed, while gently combing his fingers through Penny's almost unnaturally soft hair. "Look... We both know that you can prop yourself up in the air like a doll using those cybernetic sword-guns of yours, but you are not a marionette Penny. You're an adorable teenaged girl, and I want you to walk like one."
Even though Jaune was telling her off and just moments away from leaving for a mission without her," Penny still found herself smiling when her brother called her adorable. "Okaaaay," she groaned out as she thumped her feet against the floor. "I just never took into consideration how distracting it would be to actually feel things when I'm trying to move. Imagine trying to dance or run while experiencing an overwhelming amount of new sensory data. It's far more complicated than I thought it would be."
For several seconds Jaune just nodded his head in commiseration. Then, he pointed at himself and smiled. "I do have experience with what you're talking about you know. I still find it extremely difficult to control my aura while moving the armor. The long and short of it is that running, jumping, dancing or fighting, while focusing on other things relies heavily on muscle memory using nerve pathways that you need to build over time. That's why you should be hard at work building those pathways." Jaune arched an eyebrow at his sister, daring her to contradict him.
There was nothing Penny could say. She knew that Jaune was right. She also knew that he knew that he was right. In the end, she just puffed out her cheeks and used Jaune's shoulders to pull herself up to her feet. It was time to go for a walk. Today for sure she would get the hang of it.
With one last comforting squeeze of Penny's shoulder, Jaune made his way towards the corner of the lab that he'd taken over as a living space. He had a cot, a workout space, a desk covered in computer equipment, a mini fridge and a small hydroponics setup so that he could see some greenery. More importantly, he had a virtual reality setup in the corner that allowed him to train in a wide variety of areas, all from the relative safety of the lab. In the end, he needed to be able to train in the lab, because it was risky for him to spend too much time anywhere else.
It hadn't taken long for the well-respected Arc family to put out the word that their male heir was missing. It also hadn't taken long for Pietro to see the pictures that they'd posted and realize exactly who it was that he was harboring. After a very long and tense conversation, the doctor had come to understand why Jaune's seemingly well intentioned and concerned family had locked him away, as well as why he refused to go back. As a result, Jaune hadn't left the lab without wearing full mission gear, helmet and faceplate, since he'd first arrived a year earlier. The fact that he could leave as long as he followed a few simple rules was the difference between night and day for him. Pietro wasn't his jailor. He was a concerned friend and he was only looking out for him.
After slipping into a thick rubbery black skin suit covered in a complex formation of metal plates, Jaune grabbed four heavy metallic circlets off of a rack to snap closed around his wrists and ankles. With his uniform slash costume now in place, he turned towards a futuristic looking helmet resting on the table. While the full-face helmet was superficially similar to something a motorcyclist would wear, it conformed far closer to his skull than something mass produced ever could, and it had a smaller tinted glass faceplate to protect his eyes.
Once you moved past the visual appearance of the helmet however, it was leagues and leagues beyond anything that a cyclist would ever get to wear. This helmet was designed by Dr. Pietro Polendina himself and was made specifically with Jaune's Semblance in mind. It was a mini command center slash heads up display that kept him organized about a wide variety of his own vital statistics, as well as to what uses he was currently putting his aura. Long story short, the helmet was Jaune's baby and he loved it. There was still a chance that he might be able to use his Semblance without the helmet's assistance, but for now at least, he was still reliant on it to keep him organized.
Next, Jaune turned towards a rack that contained a large assembly of different weapons. Over the last year spent in a well-funded military lab, Jaune had amassed a collection of powerful and interesting weapons. No, he wasn't aiming to become a one-man armory or anything. Instead, he'd been exploring his options so that he could eventually construct his own mechashifting weapon. At the moment, he was torn between several different options, but what he did know was that he was suited towards being a tanking fighter using a set of aura powered armor that his Semblance allowed him to operate.
Depending on how he used his Semblance and the bolstered strength that his armor provided him, Jaune could be extremely strong or move extremely fast. None of that changed the fact that he was still the least experienced fighter on Remnant in almost any discipline. No one could be trusted to teach him martial arts because the Arc family had a long reach and very deep pockets. What this meant was that Jaune had spent most of his free time focusing on what real professional Huntsmen actually do in the field to destroy a wide variety of different Grimm.
"Just take the rifle-shield and the knuckle duster saber," Penny called out from where she was wobbling across the room. "At the moment, you're at your best when you keep things simple, and the Grimm aren't going to care how boring you are."
With a sigh and a shake of his head, Jaune resigned himself to following Penny's advice. He had all of these really cool weapons and yet he always seemed to gravitate towards the traditional arms that an Arc family fighter would use. The Arcs always tended towards using a sword and shield combo, so for a good long time, he'd tried to avoid them. The problem was that he didn't have a lifetime's familiarity with something with a hundred different uses like a machine gun, chain sickle, with blades for magazines... Jaune knew how to block, block and stab, stab, with a sword shield combo just fine, and when you have a high-powered rifle hidden in the spine of the shield, it becomes pretty dangerous for the enemy to try and break away. Better yet, with his armor bolstered strength, Jaune can and had punched a Beowulf's head clear off its shoulders with the knuckle duster attached to his saber. Still... Lame... It was all just so lame. Damn. Jaune was never going to be the cool kid at school...
With one last fond smile in Penny's direction, Jaune affixed the weapons to his back and dashed out of the door. He needed to hurry if he was going to finish his newest assignment with the best possible timing.
The easiest and most reliable way to get accepted into a national Hunter Academy is to go to that Academy's affiliated preparatory school. For Atlas Academy that school is called Ardent Academy. In addition to being Olivia's current place of residence, this school was also the alma matter of all six of Jaune's older sisters. For obvious reasons, Jaune never even considered trying to attend that fine institution. He also had exactly zero intention of applying to Atlas Academy, where four of his older sisters were already among the student body. No. The school that he was interested in applying to was actually in another country. When the time came, he was going to pull together all of his resources and apply to Vale's Beacon Academy. The primary problem with that plan was that he never went to Signal Academy, which is the prep school that Beacon is affiliated with.
With no relevant education on record and no noteworthy achievements to reference, Jaune was currently stacking up rogue Huntsmen kills at the local freelance Guild. Freelance Guilds allow anyone with the desire to risk themselves the opportunity to take on low ranked Grimm contracts for cash. These low ranked contracts don't pay very well, but they're what's available under the law. It's illegal for non-Hunter Academy grads to take on contracts that are higher than a D rank on the danger scale. Still... Jaune needed the experience for obvious reasons and the Freelance Guild was an international enterprise that could vouch for his skills.
With all that being said, The freelance Guild was definitely a rough way to go about getting your name out there, because the competition for contracts was extremely fierce. There's an entire community of dropout Huntsmen and Huntresses that make their living fighting for whatever leftover contracts become available, and Jaune was currently one of them. The main difference between him and the rest of those mooks, was that he had better connections courtesy of Dr. Polendina, had a far more sophisticated education, and he was a gentleman at heart. A little bit of common courtesy will get you surprisingly far when the people that you're dealing with are used to being treated like garbage.
"Oh! Mr. Freeman! I've been waiting for you," the female receptionist behind the counter called out in a cheerful voice. "Come, come here! I put something aside for you." Gloria, the dog Faunus receptionist, eagerly motioned for Jaune to come and sit at the kiosk beside her counter. Then, when he sat down and started removing his helmet, she motioned for him to keep it on. "Sorry John, but now's not the time for you to show the clientele what you actually look like."
With a nod of his head, Jaune pressed a button to retract the glass of his helmet so that only Gloria could see any of his face. His hair was dyed black, and he was wearing custom made, military spec, durable to the point of being nearly unbreakable, dark grey color contacts, as a matter of caution. "Good afternoon Gloria," he began in the smooth tones that he was trained to use as a boy. "I like what you've done with your bangs."
"Oh, I love it when you notice that kind of thing," Gloria gushed, as her dog ears bounced up and down in her enthusiasm. "I'm not sure if my efforts are getting me anywhere though. I don't even know why I bother most days when I consider how most Atlesian's view Faunus." Gloria was an international employee of the guild and she'd been transferred to Atlas about three years earlier. According to her, at first, she'd intended to leave Atlas as soon as a position opened up literally anywhere else, only to have that idea fly out the window when she fell hopelessly in love with her boss.
"Don't say things that you don't mean," Jaune replied with a small shake of his head. "Just the other day I saw the Guild Master, who we both know is not a bigot, staring at you longingly from a distance. I'm pretty sure your efforts are not going unnoticed."
In the seconds that followed that news, Gloria's countenance brightened up again, and she and Jaune began smiling conspiratorially. While Gloria was hopelessly smitten with the Guild Master of this branch, the extremely dense man had never even noticed. More recently, Jaune had begun schooling the Faunus woman in the ways of court debutants, and now she was seducing her boss into an endless string of completely sleepless nights. In return, Gloria usually managed to save him a contract or two that could be completed within an afternoon.
The more convenient contracts that Gloria was providing for him weren't the actual reason why Jaune had come to this particular Guild branch at this particular time however...
Slipping the contracts into the sleeve pocket of his armor, Jaune smiled and motioned to leave.
"Hold it right there scrub," a gruff sounding voice called out from across the Hall.
After pressing the button that returned the tinted visor across his face, Jaune turned around to watch a rather large but chubby huntsman approach. Even as closeted as Jaune's life had been up until this point, he knew right away that he was about to experience an enormously stereotypical and cliché development. He was the "new guy" taking away potential contracts from a more experienced Huntsman. This guy was the older Hunter that was about to run him off by force, and this was the real reason why Jaune was here...
"That's the target, Harold Grey," Gloria whispered, as her ears fell flat to her head. "Aura unlocked with a short-range charging Semblance, but an Academy dropout and a consummate bottom feeder. Doesn't like losing low risk contracts to newbies, so he terrorizes them until they quit. He's a menace, but he's half decent at covering his tracks. The Guild Master wants you to force him into retirement. We've put out the word that you're a brand-new F ranked newbie, finishing several very easy contracts a day. He'll try to pull you aside and show you who's boss. You good for this?"
With a nod, Jaune used his aura to activate a voice altering device in his helmet. When next he spoke, it was with a voice that was several octaves higher than his real one. "Ah! I've heard of you," he announced across the Hall in the voice of a twelve or thirteen-year-old. "You're that Harold Grey guy that everyone always talks about! You're that Huntsman who deals exclusively in Beowulf babies and injured Boarbatusk! I was wondering... Aren't you a little... veteran to be dealing with F level threats. Do you have a bad back or something?"
"Wha, no! That's not true," Harold called out, in a loud and overly offended tone of voice. "How dare you impugn my honor with accusations like that! Why I aughta..."
"Beat up the new kid so that you can take all of his F rank contracts," Jaune finished for the man, in an even louder voice. "Yeah. That seems like your style. No wonder everyone here talks endless smack about you... Harold Grey, the newbie eater... The Huntsman who's more dangerous to new Hunters than he is to the Grimm!"
Loud, spontaneous laughter, echoed all around the Hall, as over three dozen Huntsmen and Huntresses proved that they really do talk shit about the man.
Over the next ten seconds, Harold took in all of the laughter at his expense with a newly wild expression upon his face. It appeared that until right that second, he'd had literally no idea that he had such a well-known bad reputation. His reaction to the news wasn't pretty. He spluttered, he huffed and he puffed, and his face turned red as he tried to come to grips with the public humiliation that he was experiencing. Then, as if his brain suddenly decided that it wasn't going to take part anymore, he pulled out his laserspear, growled like an animal and started running towards the source of his anger.
Jaune wasn't a huge fan of fighting even poorly trained Hunters because they're generally quite clever and far more skilled than he is. This Harold guy was an Academy dropout, but that isn't to say that he hadn't learned any skills while he was there. Those so far unknown skills were the reason why Jaune had gone out of his way to humiliate Harold before the fight. Angry fighting is stupid fighting, and Jaune wanted to get this done using every advantages that he could engineer.
As Harold's much larger form dashed across the Guild's expansive reception area, Jaune channeled all of his aura down the length of his limbs and into the bands of his cybernetic armor. While the rubber and metal suit that he was wearing was definitely a form of protection, it wasn't actually his reactive armor. Instead, the black rubber suit was kind of the foundation from which his armor could easily attach itself. Penny Polendina's body wasn't the only thing that was comprised of both cybernetic parts and nanotechnology. Jaune's armor was as well.
The thick metal bands that were encircling Jaune's wrists and ankles were actually comprised of hundreds of millions of bacteria sized nanobots. Due to an aspect of Jaune's Semblance, his aura could control these nanobots to an extent that would normally require a bank of supercomputers. A year earlier, Pietro had explained at great length and detail, how Jaune's aura could manipulate extremely tiny matter as well as create or destroy molecular bonds between objects. The scientist had explained that he might be able to manipulate the physical makeup of the things that he touches by filling them with his aura and then focusing on his desired outcome.
For obvious reasons, it had taken quite a few days for Jaune to wrap his mind around everything that Pietro was talking about, and then begin to use that knowledge in ways that were applicable to a Huntsman..
More recently, when Jaune willed his aura to assign bonds between the different groups of nanobots in his armor, they automatically rearranged themselves using his aura as a power source, and then they fused together at the molecular level. Using this special attribute of his Semblance, Jaune was able to manipulate a type of fluid armor around his body that could conform into a wide variety of different body types and tasks.
The biggest drawback for the wicked cool liquid aura armor that Jaune could use was actually right there in its name. The nanobot armor needed his aura to function, and it needed a lot of it. Jaune had such an unbelievably massive reserve of aura in his body that Pietro had initially thought he was receiving fifteen years of the stuff, when in fact it had been taken from him in less than half that time. Nevertheless, if Jaune were to use all of the nanobots contained within all four of his metallic bands, he would run out of aura in just a little over three minutes. Of course, he was pushing that limit on a daily basis by meditating and using every speck of his aura in training, but it was a slow process and it left him completely exhausted.
Needless to say, the nanobot armor wasn't a very user-friendly aspect of Jaune's Semblance... On the other hand, he really couldn't complain about it because it was basically a bonus ability.
If Jaune hadn't spent the last year living in the lab of a world-famous scientist, he would've always thought that his Semblance allowed him to bolster the durability of himself, the things that he touches and other people's auras. If he was especially creative, he may have come to realize that he could heal a person by rearranging a person's cells back to their proper places. That would've been the extent of it though. Jaune wouldn't have had a combat-oriented Semblance at all, which would've been a weakness that he seriously can't afford to have.
Back in the present, Jaune forced himself to act as if he was surprised by Harold's sudden attack, despite the fact that the man's loss of temper was predictable in the extreme. As he took a single step away from the man's rapid advance, the bands on his limbs started to shrink, releasing a dull, matte black substance that quickly grew up his arms and legs. By the time Harold was only three meters away, the black substance had moved to cover Jaune's entire torso, and the bands were only half of their original size. Yeah... Jaune wasn't going to play nice with this guy at all. This Harold Grey was a scumbag who victimized children. He was going down...
The HUD on the inside of Jaune's visor automatically displayed a tracery line both where Harold's eyes were looking and the projected destination of the man's pointed spear. The dashboard computer in his helmet was doing its best to predict what his adversary's target was. It needn't have bothered. Harold's attack was aimed for his heart. Even Jaune, as inexperienced as he still was, could see that right away. As the Huntsman grunted in effort and a faint grey film of aura trailed away from his feet, the man seemed to completely disappear. Then, almost as if he'd teleported, Harold reappeared just a few feet away from Jaune, with his spear blurring towards his chest like a bullet.
Jaune had been waiting.
Straining both his muscles and his aura at exactly the same time, Jaune pushed for the nanobots in his right leg to expand and contract in such a way that they rapidly turned his body at a ninety-degree angle. Then, as Jaune's entire body swiveled both back and to the right with the speed and tensile strength of an Android, he was forced to channel his aura to keep his right leg from snapping in half. Using nanobot assisted speed or strength is extremely hard on your body, and there isn't really anything you can do to lessen the strain. Over the last year, Jaune had gotten used to using his Semblance to keep his body intact, as he subjected it to instantaneous high-speed movements and hard physical contortions.
Due mostly to Jaune's lack of skill while operating the armor, doing so was still a delicate process that required he split his focus into at least two different directions. When he focused too hard on using his aura to protect his body, Jaune tended to lose control of the nanobots and they returned back into their stasis mode in the bands. If he focused too hard on manipulating the nanobots, his body would begin taking blunt force trauma with every single move that he made. Despite all of the training that he'd done over the last year, operating his aura armor was still an extremely complicated juggling act.
The only reason that Jaune ever managed to even begin trying out the technique, was because Penny had been helping him out from within his helmet computer. Her brain is far more versatile than any mere supercomputer could ever hope to be. She'd used this vast cybernetic intellect, as well as her innate ability to connect with the nanobots in his armor, to take over for him whenever he lost control of his Semblance. It was something that she'd had to do a lot in the beginning. At times, it had felt like Jaune was destined to be nothing more than an aura battery being manipulated remotely, but even then, he'd known that it was excellent practice. More recently, he liked to believe that he'd gotten the hang of it... mostly.
With a dull thump of displaced air followed by a sharp cracking sound, Harold's charge attack came to a very sudden end. He and everyone else in the Guild Hall stopped and stared, because they couldn't quite believe their eyes. The F ranked newcomer had dodged Harold's surprise charge attack as if he'd had all the time in the world. He'd also snapped Harold's laser spear in half over his knee in a move that looked so simple a baby could've done it. As Harold took a few staggering steps back and looked down at his broken weapon, the F ranker just continued to stand there with a puzzled tilt to his mask.
"Wow," John the F ranker said, in an impossibly casual tone of voice. "You're really just not cut out for this Huntsman stuff are you Harold? That was the single most predictable attack that I have ever seen. Are you sure you don't have culinary skills or a green thumb or something? This occupation just doesn't suit you..."
Scoff! Guffaw!
Giggle... Snicker...
Bwahahaha!
The Guild Hall exploded into childlike laughter at Harold's expense, partially out of relief that the kid was alright and partially because they couldn't stand Harold. While everyone had witnessed the F ranker move in a blur of absurd speed, it was far easier for everyone to believe that Harold was just weak and no match for a kid. It was either that or they sit back and look at their own weaknesses as Huntsmen and Huntresses. No. The kid was good, sure, but Harold was weak and they all knew it.
Faced with even more laughter and the prospect of social suicide via retreating from an F ranker, Harold bellowed like an Ursa and threw his entire body at the kid. He threw a haymaker punch followed by a triplet of fast paced jabs, but he never made contact with his target. The kid was reacting so fast it was like he lived on another plane of time altogether. Soon enough, Harold was screaming in rage, panting for air, and raining down a blur of furious punches.
Whelp... Everything was going exactly to plan so far, which of course meant that Jaune's body was currently taking a high gee force beating. The entire point of the plan was to make defeating this Harold guy look like child's play. The problem with that plan was that Jaune wasn't a better fighter than Harold in the first place. He was just an untrained sixteen year-old kid. What this meant was that Jaune was relying a little too much on nanobot assisted speed, and his aura was taking a beating as a result. Well... Fine. It was time to get this over with.
After jerking and jiving his way through another savage series of punches, Jaune suddenly threw up his left arm, caught a hold of Harold's next punch and manipulated the nanobots in his hand to tighten it into a vicelike grip. Then, long before anyone had a chance to notice Harold's newly pained expression, he moved in to capitalize on the man's distraction. He had a plan that he'd worked out far in advance...
A Hunter's unlocked aura generally blunts physical impacts kind of like a science fiction forcefield. It protects its owner by dispersing the force of a blow throughout the entire body. What this typically means is that taking a punch still hurts, but nowhere near as much and not in a localized area. Taking a punch feels more like experiencing a harsh spike in air pressure that beats against your skin, muscles and soft tissues. It's not a pleasant sensation at all. A secondary protection that an active aura provides is that it reinforces the durability of a Hunter's skin, bones and muscle tissues.
It's this second aspect of having an aura that's frequently overestimated in the extreme. While on the one hand, it can be extremely difficult and time consuming to punch and kick away at a Hunter's aura until your blows actually cause them physical damage, breaking one of their bones is merely a very tricky application of strength. If, for instance, you can grab ahold of an enemy's arm or leg and then generate extreme amounts of torque with no buildup whatsoever, breaking that limb isn't actually all that difficult. The only thing stopping this outcome from being commonplace is that very few people on Remnant have that kind of absurd compression and tensile strength. Well... Jaune did. He had physical strength in spades, but only when he had the time, the concentration and the aura necessary to call upon it.
This was about to become one of those occasions...
Even as Jaune pulled Harold's struggling form close and ducked down under the man's armpit, the black matte layer of his suit seemed to flow further up his body, where it thickened over both of his shoulders and the length of his arms. In the time it took for Jaune to reposition himself with Harold's arm extended out over his shoulder, the muscles of his shoulders and arms seemed to bulge and ripple with newly grown muscle mass. The rubber and metal suit covering his lower body was suddenly revealed as he committed all of his resources towards his abs, shoulder and arm muscles.
Jaune was ready. It was time.
With a grunt and a rapid downward heave, Jaune snapped Harold's arm just above the wrist, then again at the elbow, and then he finished the movement by harshly dislocating that same arm at the shoulder. In the end, when Harold's knees finally met with the wooden floor of the Guild Hall, it was so that he could commit his entire attention to a pain filled scream. The older Huntsman definitely hadn't predicted this outcome, and tears streamed from his eyes as he cradled his newly shattered elbow.
The task that Jaune had agreed to undertake wasn't quite finished yet. The nail still needed to be put into this particular coffin. With that in mind, the F ranker stood above Harold and looked down at the man, with his masked face cocked to the side in puzzlement. Then, he asked the question that he'd designed in advance to be as humiliating as possible. "Ummm, Harold... You do have your aura unlocked, don't you? That... shouldn't have been possible... I mean, I know I'm awesome, but I'm not that awesome. You're kind of... a lot more fragile than I expected..."
Snort! Giggle! BwahahahaX40!
The Huntsmen and Huntresses occupying the Guild Hall slammed their fists down into their tables as they laughed so hard tears came to their eyes. Harold Grey was finished as a Huntsman and everyone present knew it. The man was a laughingstock, and since he was a mean-spirited bully, no one had any intention of showing mercy.
Turning back towards a carefully unsmiling Gloria, Jaune pointed down at Harold and then back at himself. "Uhhh, I didn't mean to do it, but I think I just broke one of your Huntsmen... If it makes you feel better, he did just try to stab me in the heart with that spear of his."
"I wouldn't worry about getting in trouble," Gloria responded in a very professional tone of voice. "Mr. Grey there just attacked you in front of at least forty witnesses. It's not your fault that he... isn't very good at it..."
Bwahahahahaha! It was a good day to get drunk at the local Freelance Guild. The Hunters present were all highly amused.
"Furthermore," Gloria continued, cutting through the laughter like a hot knife through butter. "While we at the Freelance Guild will pay for Mr. Grey's hospital bill, we expect him to take that as his severance package." Gloria gave Harold a very scathing look when he opened his mouth to protest. "Not a word out of you, Mr. Grey. Or do you want us to take all of the camera footage that we just collected of your failed murder attempt to the Police? You seem to be laboring under a misconception that we at this Guild see far too often. The Freelance Guild isn't a dive bar. It's not a biker gang. This is an internationally accredited Hunter agency, which means our employees' behavior directly reflects upon us." Gloria gave the rest of the Guild Hall's occupants a meaningful look. What she'd just said was meant to be heard by the rest of them as well.
All of the sudden, the humor in the Hall dimmed significantly, as all of the rough looking people filling the room looked around themselves at the various cameras speckling the walls. More than a few of the local Hunters really had been pushing their luck in the Hall, and now they were beginning to regret it. Even worse, several of them had majorly disrespected that scary Faunus receptionist... Several people began to feel a headman's axe on the back of their necks, and they broke out in a cold sweat.
"Now... Mr. Freeman. If you would come with me, I think the Guild Master will want to debrief you on everything that just occurred." Gloria lifted up a velvet cord next to her desk and motioned for him to precede her into the back.
After putting on a show of acting nervous, Jaune followed Gloria out of the room. Sure enough, as soon as the two of them were in the back service hallways, Gloria's reserved professionalism relaxed and Jaune pulled off his helmet.
"That was masterfully done," Gloria enthused, with ears bouncing happily. "I thought that the Guild Master was demanding the impossible of you, but once again, you've managed to adhere to every stipulation that he made. You provoked Harold into attacking you first in front of the entire Hall, immediately disarmed him to keep property damage to a minimum, and you humiliated him to an extent that I can hardly believe. I'd venture that Harold will never again set foot in any of the Guilds, let alone one of ours. Either way, we now have all of the evidence that we need to bar him from any of our branches."
"I'd suggest you also send the camera footage to the Police as a precautionary measure," Jaune suggested as they walked into the Guild Master's office. "Harold will be feeling pretty cornered right now, which makes him likely to do something both foolish and dangerous."
"I've already sent the camera footage to a local Police Commissioner that I golf with," the Guild Master, Mr. Gears, offered with a grin. "They'll keep an eye on the man for the next few weeks. I don't want to arrest Harold for an attack that we specifically engineered to have happen, but I don't like releasing angry and desperate aura users into the wild."
As they settled into a pair of comfortable chairs, Jaune and Gloria both nodded their understanding.
"Well... You wanted me to vouch for you to Headmaster Ozpin, and I will because you've earned it," Mr. Gears announced, in a newly businesslike voice. "I've forced several extremely sensitive tasks on you since Polendina first introduced us, and you've come through for me every single time... There's just one thing that I can't yet explain to Ozpin when I'm asked. Neither Gloria nor I can figure out why a talented young Atlesian like yourself would want to go so far afield..."
Very suddenly, Jaune knew without a single doubt in his mind that both Gloria and Gears knew exactly who he was. What he didn't know at the moment was how he should react to this new knowledge... Slowly but surely, he started pulling his helmet towards his body as he glanced furtively around the room. For all he knew, his sisters could be waiting in the closet or preparing to belay in through the window...
"And that reaction is basically all the answer that I needed," Mr. Gears drawled, while waving his hands in a calming gesture. "I gather that the story the Arc family has spread to the media about you joyriding the countryside and squandering their money is a little... less than genuine?"
After about ten seconds where Jaune just stared at Mr. Gears, he drew in a deep breath and licked his newly dry lips. "While the members of my family are without a doubt wonderful people in most regards, they have trouble being... rational... where my safety is concerned. They would rather repeatedly shatter both of my kneecaps than allow me to endanger myself in any way shape or form."
Mr. Gears and Gloria both turned to each other, as sudden understanding dawned on their faces.
"You don't hate your family," Gloria hedged, in a hesitant little voice. "You hated being a captive of their extreme devotion. That's..."
"Hard," Mr. Gears finished sympathetically. "I suppose you know how lifelong aura training can affect..."
It can make you stubborn, inflexible and obsessive," Jaune finished while pressing the heel of a hand to his temple. "Yes, and yes, it sucks. I do love my family. I really do. Every single one of them... I just never want to see them again."
For several moments, all three occupants of the office just sat there digesting those words.
"My original question still stands though," Mr. Gears pointed out, mostly to fill the silence. "What reason should I give Headmaster Ozpin to justify you crossing the ocean instead of going to Atlas Academy."
After a few moments where Jaune had literally no idea what excuse to give, a small smile slowly slipped onto his face. "Tell Ozpin that I've been assigned as a certain heiress's secret bodyguard. Even if it happened over half a year ago, it's still technically accurate."
"Wait, what? The heiress is going to school in Vale?" Gears suddenly leaned in and began whispering as if all of the walls had ears. "This is the first I've heard of this. Her father will..."
"He doesn't know," Jaune immediately replied, with a shake of his head and a serious expression on his face. "Look, please don't ruin this for her. For obvious reasons, the heiress has my sympathies, and her horizons are in desperate need of some broadening."
"Monty Oum," Gears whispered to himself. "Now I know why you're leaving the country. You're getting away from the devastation the heiress is going to leave behind..."
"Will it work? The excuse I mean." Jaune had literally no idea how this Ozpin guy worked.
"Ozpin's school is a true meritocracy," Gears explained, as if he was talking to himself. "The Headmaster won't really care about how important the heiress is back here in Atlas, he'll only care about how important your excuse is to you. If you lie to him, he'll know it. In fact, it's one of the things he's most famous for."
"I guess that means the ball's in your court," Gloria pointed out with a mischievous smile. "How important is the heiress to you Jaune? As I recall, you were quite dedicated during that particular assignment."
Turning towards the rather daring receptionist, Jaune gave the woman a look that said the words "do you want me to discuss your love life?" Then he grinned when Gloria's ears wiggled in alarm and she abruptly looked away.
The ever-dense Mr. Gears didn't seem to pick up on Jaune and Gloria's interplay. Instead, he was drumming his fingers on his desk, deep in thought. "I think the excuse will work," he allowed, when he finally returned his attention to the room. "It's a plausible reason for you to be there, if indeed the heiress is going to attend beacon. It won't mean that you'll be exempted from testing of course. If you don't go to an affiliated Prep School, you get tested. Tale as old as time..."
"Did you watch that fight just now," Gloria asked, as she gestured back at the Guild Hall.
"I did and as per usual I was impressed," Gears allowed in an offhand manner. "The problem isn't the test, but rather what comes after that. I somewhat doubt Jaune will be allowed to wear what looks like military tech in the halls of a school. At the very least, he won't be allowed to wear the bands under his uniform during daily classes." Turning towards Jaune, Gears steepled his hands and just bit the bullet. "Are you completely ignorant when it comes to martial arts, Jaune? I just slowed down your fight using our camera playback software. I hate to say it, but I only see a fiercely determined amateur..."
Ouch. The man's words hurt more because they were true...
At first, Jaune just nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders. Then, when Gloria and Gears continued staring at him, he knew that he needed to explain. "I uhh, umm, okay. Growing up, my family went out of their way to keep me from learning anything that was even remotely related to Grimm hunting. Since I broke free a year ago, I've learned how to use my Semblance... the tech I mean. On the other hand, finding a martial arts trainer that I can trust has been..."
"Impossible," finished Gears with a knowing look on his face. "All the best ones already work for the rich, and would love to ingratiate themselves with your parents. I... see. Well then. Here's what we're going to do periodically for the next six months..."
Six Months Later...
Looking out through the bedroom porthole on a massive intercontinental airship, Jaune took in the clouds and the rolling ocean far below. While he still wasn't a huge fan of air travel and the things that it tries to do to his body, mastering the use of his Semblance was helping him keep his guts where they were supposed to be. All things considered, Jaune had a very convenient ability. His Semblance allowed him to resist status debuffs caused by external stimulus like dizziness, disease, heatstroke, poison or hypothermia. It wasn't as if he could avoid weaknesses caused by serious underlying issues such as starvation or blood loss, but superficial problems like motion sickness really weren't an issue anymore. He was able to force his body to remain at what he thinks of as a physical baseline. Long story short, Jaune's nearly crippling nausea while flying was officially a thing of the past.
During this flight in particular, Jaune's main problem didn't have anything to do with his body. It was the fact that he kept having to sneak around like a rat in a kitchen. He hadn't anticipated the fact that the heiress was also going to be on this flight for the exact same reason as him, and he really didn't want to be discovered. He didn't want her to notice him and then jump to one of several very unwelcome conclusions.
Truth be told, he should've known that the heiress was going to be on this flight. It was only half a month before Beacon's intake process after all, and commercial intercontinental travel isn't all that common. These passenger airships come complete with two unbelievably powerful dust cannons, which are completely necessary to keep away giant airborne Grimm such as Nevermores. Since these massive cannons take up a lot of both space and fuel, these ships aren't a very cost-efficient business model, which means that they aren't common and they aren't cheap. Jaune had spent three quarters of all the money that he'd ever earned from every contract that he'd ever completed just to get on this flight. The heiress... Well... She probably only used a single week's allowance...
"I'm the one who sacrificed more to be on this flight," Jaune ranted into his scroll. "I should at least be allowed to walk on deck like a regular customer. But nooo. I'm stuck down here like a stowaway."
"But Jaune, you are allowed out on deck," Penny pointed out, in a mercilessly cheerful voice. "It's you who's decided to skulk around without anyone else's input."
Instead of responding to Penny's so called "common sense," Jaune just grumbled and stuck his tongue out at the scroll's camera. After several moments where Penny took Jaune's weird face as a challenge and attempted to make several weird faces of her own, he sighed and sat down on his bed. "Come on Penny. You were present in my scroll when that particular mission came to a very sudden end. You know exactly how that went down."
Well, yeah," Penny allowed, with a comically embellished roll of her eyes (She was practicing emoting, and all of the little nuances that make it appear natural). "The heiress was angry because she felt betrayed. I'm pretty sure she'll have calmed down by now. It has been almost a year after all. Besides... Aren't you just assuming that she'll even remember you? From what I recall, she was a very busy and important young lady, and you were just some no nothing Stage Hand."
And with that passive aggressive little comment, an amused grin finally returned to Jaune's face. Penny was right. He was a B character at the most in the heiress's memories, which meant that it should be okay for him to go out and partake in the buffet. With a salute and a wink, Jaune indicated that he was going to hang up and get a move on. Within the next couple of minutes, he was going to lose scroll reception anyway, which is why he'd called Penny in the first place. From this point forward, he'd have to use a landline scroll to call Atlas from, which would make their tendency to chit chat at random intervals throughout the day quite a bit harder.
Penny winked back, but it was mostly to find out if she was capable of doing so. Isolating the movement of her right eyelid from her left was still a difficult prospect.
After ending the scroll call, Jaune slipped a black suit and pants combo over his wrist and ankle bands. Unlike the cost of the flight, he didn't consider buying the suit a waste of resources, since he was already seventeen years old and unlikely to grow much taller. He was already six foot two inches tall, so he would never be considered short, but he'd also never be the tallest guy in the room. Oh well. If his many sisters had taught him just one thing, it was that a person's physical size had very little to do with how dangerous they are. With one last look in the cabin mirror to rearrange his tie, Jaune drew in a deep breath and stepped out the door. It was time to get some food.
It was around three Pm by the time Jaune arrived at the airship's expansive Dining Hall, which meant that the buffet tables were already swarming with people. After standing at the side of the room, waiting for an endless line of people to pass, he just gave up and moved towards some of the more secluded foods instead. A little bit off to the side were small bowls of hummus with some flatbread chips. Between that and some fruit, Jaune figured he'd survive. Moving over to a nearby wall, he leaned against it and observed the rich and famous gorge themselves to bursting.
"What in Oum's name are you doing here Stage Hand?" The words were little more than an angry hiss.
Turning to his right, Jaune suddenly found himself face to face with an old acquaintance... of sorts. Platinum white hair, short, petite but somehow curvy, beautiful blue eyes, heart shaped face with a faint pink scar accenting her left eye, white dress with red piping. It was Weiss Schnee, aka The Heiress. She'd been codenamed that during the briefing where General James Ironwood himself had explained what Jaune's cover identity would be. Well... Damn. She'd remembered him after all... This wasn't good.
"So help me Maidens, Stage Hand, I will dispose of you personally if you're here to spy for my father." Weiss was becoming more and more angry with every second that he failed to respond.
Snapping out of his surprised daze, Jaune allowed his muscle memory to carry him through a completely legitimate courtly bow. "Good evening, Ms. Schnee. I'd be quite happy to discuss both my intentions and my destination with you. Would you care to step out onto the stern side balcony with me?" Jaune was hoping that by acting like a well to do gentleman, he might remind Weiss of their current audience. He was no longer a person worthy of notice by the socialites filling the banquet hall, but Weiss definitely was. She couldn't afford to lose her temper in front of all these people, not to mention their camera scrolls.
"Ah... Fine. I get it. We'll step outside, but no funny business. I already know that you can't be trusted." With only the smallest trace of anger still in residence on her face, Weiss turned and marched out of the nearby door.
Moving quickly to flank the heiress, Jaune kept his head up and his eyes straight, acting as if he was every inch the diligent young lordling. If he must be seen walking next to the Schnee heiress, then he'd be damned if he'd ruin her reputation. Later at Beacon, he imagined that they'd both get to relax a little, but right now the Atlesian upper crust were watching and he intended to act the part. Soon enough, they walked out of a well-appointed main hallway onto a well heated external deck area. Jaune wasn't quite sure how the technology worked, but the ship had several open-air deck spaces that all had ground level air pressure and very little wind.
Throwing her arms out over the Stern deck railing, Weiss looked back over her shoulder to give Jaune a dirty look. "Your sophisticated gentleman act just now only serves to prove my suspicions, Stage Hand. You're a spy. You work for my father."
In an attempt to slow things down a little, Jaune took small, casual steps up to Weiss's side, and then he drummed his fingers lightly upon the railing. "I can appreciate what this must look like to you, Ms. Schnee, but I assure you that I'm not actually a professional spy. I've done undercover work, yes, but spies are entrenched in a military chain of command. I'm not. I'm a freelancer, which means I have no further obligations once my contract is completed. No one, including your father, has any authority over me."
A likely story," Weiss pointed out, while rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. "There's absolutely no reason for me to believe a single word that you're saying."
"I found out that you were planning to go to Beacon well over a year ago," Jaune admitted, turning to lean sideways on the railing. "If I was a spy for your father, you'd be going to Atlas Academy right about now."
"Pshhhh. You lie. No one knew about my plans back then. There was only one other person that I spoke to..." As Weiss's words suddenly died in her throat, she started to look completely furious. "You didn't?"
"I did," Jaune replied, with a completely deadpan expression on his face. "I bugged your hotel rooms. You gave me no choice really. You kept running off in the dead of night with no guards or protection whatsoever. I needed to make arrangements to be present at whatever bar or nightclub you planned on sneaking off to, and while I realize that you're angry about how I infringed upon your privacy, that's not actually my point. Yes. I heard your scroll conversation with Winter. I've known about your plans, and I didn't tell your father."
"I hate you," Weiss whispered with extreme gravity in her voice.
"I know," Jaune allowed in an equally quiet voice. "But I don't - work - for your father."
"You're no better," Weiss spat, with her hands balled up at her sides. "On your own initiative, you disregarded my privacy, broke into my rooms, rooted through my belongings, installed listening devices, repeatedly lied to me, and you aren't even apologetic."
"I did my job," Jaune replied in an even tone. "I protected you, and I helped take down a Terrorist aiming to make a statement out of you."
While Jaune really was apologetic, he also wanted Weiss to see the reality of their situation. She seemed determined to forget that there was a reason for his actions.
"I don't need protecting," Weiss snapped back.
"How were you going to protect yourself? You didn't even know you were a target," Jaune immediately argued.
"You could've told me," Weiss hissed, as she stopped closer and shoved Jaune's shoulder.
"No. No, I couldn't," Jaune slowly whispered as if the words physically hurt him.
"Why? Why couldn't you?" Weiss stared at Jaune's face now, willing him to tell her the truth.
"Because you were the bait." In a moment of unbelievably unwise honesty, Jaune admitted to one of his greatest shames in a completely candid tone of voice. It felt cathartic. It felt like a release. Then it felt like a hard slap to the face, as Weiss let him have it with all of her strength. She was clearly an aura user. The slap hurt, and it forced Jaune to grab onto the railing to keep from sailing over. After bouncing back as quickly as he could, Jaune spent the next few moments straightening his suit and fixing his tie.
"You – are – a - monster," Weiss enunciated carefully, her voice as cold as ice.
Hey now... That wasn't fair. Weiss clearly had no idea what it's like to be young, penniless, inexperienced, and trying to build yourself a new identity. She also seemed to think that Jaune was the person who originally thought up the plan, which he wasn't. General James Ironwood had that dubious honor. Worst of all, Weiss appeared to think that he didn't care about her wellbeing, and she was wrong. Why did she think he'd gone to such intrusive and awful lengths to spy on her in the first place? He'd absolutely hated using her as bait, and had gone off the deep end arranging multiple rings of both protection and observation as a result.
After opening his mouth to try to explain himself, Jaune suddenly clenched his teeth, lunged forward, grabbed Weiss around the waist, and bodily threw her over a dozen feet down the deck.
BOOOOM!
A gout of fire followed by a cloud of smoke billowed around Jaune's huddled form as he shielded his face, head and neck from shrapnel. He hadn't had the time to jump away from the thrown explosive, so he'd been forced to take a hard hit to his aura levels. The front of his suit was both cut to ribbons and singed, but that was the very least of his concerns at the moment.
A man in a black skin-suit with a red bandana covering his face was leaping out of the smoke, even as he lobbed a second grenade in Weiss's direction. Then the man was moving again. Pulling out a machine gun, he screamed like a lunatic and dashed into the airship proper.
The brand of explosive that was currently flying towards Weiss had a two-bounce detonation or a three second timer. Theoretically, Jaune had the time required to intercept it... Bring it on... Leaping sideways through the air, Jaune managed to catch the explosive and throw it out over the railing.
BOOOOM! The section of deck just above the explosion protruded up and out, breaking apart a long segment of railing.
Falling into a roll, Jaune sprang back to his feet and scanned the rest of the stern deck. Now that he was listening for it, he could hear dozens of small explosions scattered throughout the entire airship.
"I will literally kill you if I'm the bait again," Weiss snapped, as she jogged up to Jaune's side. Despite her words, they settled into a two-person cover formation as if they could read each other's minds.
"I had no idea that you were even on this flight," Jaune defended, as Weiss's weight settled against his back. "I'm a paying customer, and I'm just as surprised as you are." Looking over his shoulder, Jaune just shrugged helplessly when Weiss gave him a disbelieving look. He'd lied to her several times in the past, so he really couldn't blame her.
"Are you armed at least? My weapon, Myrtenmaster is packed away in my cabin." Running over to a nearby section of railing, Weiss snapped off a thick length of metal that had nearly been sheared off in the explosion. Turning back around, she was just in time to see the boy angrily remove the shredded remains of his tie.
"My weapons are in my cabin as well," Jaune explained as he scanned the doors to the deck. "I'm not helpless though. I'm wearing the same reactive armor I wore the day my cover was blown. My armor protects me and enhances my physical stats, but it takes a lot of my aura to operate. I suggest we avoid senseless fighting as we move towards the Bridge. That's where the raiders will be focusing most of their attention."
With a small harrumph noise and a few swings of her makeshift weapon, Weiss started moving towards a nearby service hatch.
"Weiss..."
The heiress's face snapped back to look over her shoulder as John called out to her using her first name. She glared angrily back at him even as the two of them sidled up to the service hatch.
"Despite the fact that everything I just said to you is true, I do feel guilty for my past actions," Jaune whispered as he slipped past Weiss and studied the service hatch. "What I'm not sorry about is taking that protection contract... I may not have liked most of the orders that I was given, but I did enjoy getting to know you." As he spoke, one of Jaune's hands flattened over the hatch's locking mechanism and a black matte substance flowed from his hand into the keyhole. Soon enough, with an audible clicking noise, the hatch was unlocked and Jaune was crawling his way into the rather cramped little hallway. It was only because he was straining his senses to their maximum that he heard Weiss grumbling somewhere behind him...
After sneaking down the length of the service hallway to where it opened up into an electrical room, Jaune and Weiss saw that there was a machine gun wielding raider leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. Judging by the chatter happening over the woman's radio, the raider was just a single cog in a much larger machine, and she was taking the opportunity to take a load off.
Leaning back into the darkness of the access tunnel, Jaune looked at Weiss and pointed at a bank of generators in the middle of the room. He indicated that Weiss should go to the right and circle around the long way while he directly confronts the woman. While he didn't know what Weiss's Semblance is, it was safe to assume that she didn't have the abundance of aura that he had. Of the two of them, he was probably better suited to tanking some machine gun fire.
With a roll of her eyes, Weiss crouched beside John, formed a pearly white glyph in the tunnel behind them, and then launched across the room like a cannonball. Before the unknown henchman even had the time to raise her weapon, Weiss had cleared the distance between the two of them and was smashing her metal rod into the side of her head. As it turns out, the raider wasn't an aura user, which was immediately obvious due to both the goose egg on her skull and her instant loss of consciousness.
As was probably Weiss's intention all along, Jaune was stuck still and staring at her from his spot in the access tunnel. Not once in all of the time that he'd been hunting and training in the last year, had he seen such a flashy Semblance. It was both highly visible and stylistic and yet Jaune couldn't figure out what it even did. That white design in the air didn't look like it was a short distance dash Semblance, even though that's what it had just done. In the end, Jaune just gave up on figuring it out, rose up to his full height, and stalked across the room.
Take the woman's weapon," Weiss prompted in a smug tone of voice. "Judging by your half-baked plan just now, it seems I'm going to have to be the offensive power between the two of us."
Despite the fact that Weiss was verbally abusing him, Jaune happily accepted the machine gun and checked it out to see what kind of Dust rounds it held. When the time finally came to use his Semblance, he wanted to be as close to full strength as he could possibly be. He also saw that Weiss was enjoying showing him who's boss, and he didn't mind letting her have her moment. Still... There was something that he wanted Weiss to think about...
Picking up the raider's radio, Jaune turned up the volume and held it up between the two of them. Over the next ten to fifteen seconds, they heard four raider lieutenants ordering another twelve raiders to tie up all of the passengers and crew and stow them in the Dining Hall. These lieutenants consistently referenced their boss, someone called the Hound, as if they were threatening their own people into obedience.
"Do you want to waste all your aura fighting all of these small fry before we meet these lieutenants and their oh so scary leader?" Jaune's question wasn't an attempt to belittle Weiss. There was a chance that she was some kind of genius Huntress or something, and could overpower all of the raiders in a straight up fight. If that was the case, then hooray for her. If she wasn't up to it however, he was going to need her to fight a little bit more conservatively.
After several seconds where Weiss looked halfway tempted to claim that she'd be fine, she finally relented and shook her head.
"Okay then," Jaune continued as he yanked a few more dust magazines off of the unconscious raider's belt and then trussed her up using some nearby duct tape. "What you just did was worthwhile because I'm definitely not underestimating you anymore. Nevertheless, please don't waste your aura on these low-level henchmen. As the bigger, more physically imposing guy holding the weapon, I'll act as a distraction. By working together, you can whack these raiders on the head without all of the magical pyrotechnics." When Jaune finished speaking, it was Weiss's turn to just stand there blinking at him. She appeared to want to find a problem with what he was saying, but couldn't, and was annoyed with him as a result.
"Fine," Weiss finally all but spit out, before turning away and moving towards another access tunnel.
Jaune drew in a relieved breath as he followed the woman into the access tunnel. Then, almost immediately, he was forced to avert his eyes. Weiss was bending forward quite a bit under the low ceiling, and she was wearing her signature flared out combat skirt...
"You said you were following orders during your contract. Who's orders?"
Weiss didn't look back when she asked her question, but Jaune wasn't foolhardy enough to speak directly to her panties. He continued to look at the floor as he figured out what he could say. "I can't answer that question for more than one reason, but I can confirm that it wasn't your father."
"Okay then, it was General Ironwood," Weiss continued, with extreme confidence in her voice. "That's too bad. I always thought that he was a halfway decent human being."
Operating under the assumption that Weiss was currently trying to trick him into confirming a theory, Jaune still needed to say something before his lack of an answer became an answer. After trying to hum in a noncommittal way and leave it at that, he almost ran face first into Weiss's butt. Turning in place, she crouched down in the tunnel and looked back at him. Damn... She wasn't going to move again until he gave her a response. Drawing in a breath to stall for time, Jaune stared back into Weiss's glacial blue eyes. "I'll say it again Weiss. I'm not allowed to answer that question. I will say that whoever created that plan did so with several dozen redundancies in mind. I have the misfortune of being the bodyguard that was spectacularly revealed to you. What you didn't find out about were the two dozen plus other people that were working alongside me."
"So you were the only spy that was terrible at his job, huh?" Weiss's sadistic smile made it clear that she was enjoying the idea of him being incompetent.
"Well, sure," Jaune admitted with a careless shrug of his shoulders. "But I'm also the only one that actually did anything." Of course, as soon as those words left his mouth, Jaune fervently wished that he wasn't so unbelievably stupid.
"Oh, how can I forget," Weiss immediately drawled, as she leaned back against the access tunnel wall. "After tackling me clear off of a stage mid concert for no reason whatsoever, you were immediately dragged out of the venue by security... Very heroic."
In the moments that followed Weiss's words, Jaune focused his entire attention on readjusting the strap of the machine gun around his shoulder. It was all he could do. There was nothing that he was willing to say in his own defense. He definitely didn't want Weiss to ever learn about the high caliber sniper round that the Terrorist had fired at her during that particular concert, or the fact that the bullet had been moving at such an absurd velocity it ended up punching a hole clear through his future tech aura armor directly into the meat of his shoulder. Weiss was already upset enough about being used as bait... Jaune didn't think that it was wise for her to learn exactly why he'd tackled her, because then she'd also realize just how close she'd come to having her head explode into fine red mist. No... He couldn't tell her... Not right now. Not when he needed her cooperation.
In fact, having Weiss never learn about any of it would definitely be for the best.
Finally, at long last, Weiss just gave up, rolled her eyes and started moving again. "You really are completely hopeless, aren't you?... Well, let's go. I want to get this over with."
Nodding his acceptance, Jaune obediently followed Weiss's white lacy panties down the tunnel. After her attitude just now, he didn't feel any guilt whatsoever at enjoying the view.