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Chapter 6 - Interviews and Interrogations
Slam!
For the fifth time in just as many minutes, Olivia Arc was slammed down into the padding of the sparring ring and then kicked across the room to sprawl against the webbed up cage.
"I know that you're worried Olive," Olivia's trainer barked out as she helped the girl up from the sparring mat. "We're all worried about the young master, and we're all doing all that we can to locate him, but you need to focus on your training right now or your performance throughout Atlas's intake week will suffer."
Olivia didn't even deign to respond to her trainer's inane chatter. The woman had no idea what she was even talking about and she'd never truly understand. She merely parroted the cares and concerns that the Arc family held so tightly and then scoffed about them when they weren't around. Olivia knew the type, and if it weren't for the woman being an A rank trainer, she'd have nothing to do with her. As things were, she merely adopted a ready stance and prepared for another bout. She also prepared to show her trainer the difference between an A rank lackey and a daughter of the Arc family...
An hour later, when her training was finally finished for the day, Olivia dashed through the halls of Arc castle towards her father's command center just like every other day. It was here that salvation lay. It was here that her parents and her sisters panned through thousands of cameras on countless seeker-bots, looking to pinpoint the location of their missing heir.
At the same time, it was also the room in Arc castle that Olivia hated the most...
It was in this room that an overlarge holographic display re-enacted an endless loop of twenty-four hours of camera footage over and over again, and it had been doing so for over eight whole years now.
In this holographic scene, Olivia was just a little girl on a day trip with her brother to a hot springs colony called Birn at the outskirts of Atlas city. They were being attended to by several of their family's vassals and were given free reign to look around at the local stalls and souvenir shops. It was a fun, relaxing holiday, and Olivia remembered being really happy with her brother.
Then it happened.
A mixture of human error and negligence caused the Dust barrier that masked the people of Birn's emotions from the rest of the world to come to a grinding halt. Without the Dust barrier blocking out the passive empathy of all of the Grimm in the surrounding wilderness, every single beast for miles around immediately sensed the anger, sadness, anxiety, jealousy, spite, resentment and other various dark emotions that any large population of humans creates, and then every single one of them came running at exactly the same time.
Of course, the colony immediately alerted every single Huntsman and Huntress within its walls to the problem, including Olivia and Jaune's Vassal protectors, and made sure to have people manning the walls even as they rushed to repair the Dust barrier. What this meant was that they knew that the Grimm were going to attack the walls, but nobody had any reason to believe that it would result in a large scale incursion.
They were wrong.
While none of the Grimm that attacked the colony of Birn were an S level threat, or even a C level one, what they were, was numerous. Almost two million football sized Ant Grimm poured out of the countless heated vents laced within the surrounding volcanic mountain and then poured down the slopes on every single side. Any single Huntsman or Huntress could have made easy work of destroying hundreds of Ant Grimm. Under normal circumstances Ant Grimm are barely considered an F level threat. On the other hand, when over 1,980,000 Ant Grimm began climbing over the walls from every conceivable direction, none of the Hunters manning the ramparts had a semblance with anywhere near enough offensive strength to stop them from breaching the colony.
The Atlesian government swore that the sequence of events that followed would never happen again to another colony. Nowadays, Dust barriers have multiple redundancies and failsafes to keep them from ever failing due to human negligence. A lesson had to be learned and changes had to be made, otherwise what happened that day in Birn would merely be a completely senseless tragedy...
The population of Birn was completely shredded, as they weren't prepared to have their walls breached on such a massive scale and hadn't even begun moving to the safety of the colony's various bunkers. People of all ages and sexes were ripped apart by the ant Grimm's nasty hand sized pincers and endlessly clawing legs, and the Grimm just kept coming like a tidal wave made of black and white chiton armor.
As they "requisitioned" emergency food supplies and water bottles from a local store and then fought their way through the streets towards the nearest bunker, Olivia and Jaune's Vassals proved themselves more than capable of defeating the pug sized Grimm, and their competency is how Olivia managed to keep her cool for the length of time it took both Jaune and her to reach safety.
Or so she'd thought...
Ant Grimm are completely notorious for being able to burrow through almost anything, which is why Olivia and Jaune's bodyguards elected to stay outside of the bunker and distract the beasts away from its walls. Of course, these vassals would've had the right idea if the Grimm host wasn't numbering in the millions, but it was, and the vassals had no idea. They stayed outside of the bunker as the fortification's thick metal doors slid closed and locked in place, and then neither one of them were ever seen or heard from again...
Later that night was when a clicking and clacking started to be heard just outside of one of the bunker's walls, and all of the people huddling inside the fortification began pouring out fear and stress in waves that were palpable even to Olivia. Over the next few hours, this rhythmic banging and scraping sound grew more numerous and louder, and everyone started to understand what they were hearing.
The ants were using their absurd numbers to slowly burrow their way through even the metal and concrete walls of the bunker. They were coming. They were coming, and nothing was going to stop them...
It was during that moment that Olivia first saw a look of defiance growing in Jaune's eyes that would later become a fixture upon his adorable but masculine face. He was thinking. He was planning. He wasn't merely going to sit there and wait for their doom to come for them. Without a word, he grabbed her hand and he moved them next to the door of the bunker. He poured out all of their belongings on the floor and scrutinized them all for several minutes in a row.
With a nod of his head and a small but meaningful grunt, Jaune started wrapping up Olivia's body inside of layer after layer of their clothing, one atop of another, and then he had them drink the contents of several water bottles before cutting them in half from top to bottom. With halved water bottles in hand, he grabbed a large roll of tape from the art supplies they'd bought earlier and he began wrapping her up like a mummy, with the plastic from the bottles wrapped around as much of her limbs as he could manage.
In the end, both Olivia's arms and her legs were wrapped up in plastic and tape until she felt brittle and clunky, but when she confirmed that she could still bend and flex Jaune nodded his head in satisfaction. Next, Jaune wrapped a sweater around her head and shoulders like a turban, opened a new bottle of glue and began pouring it all over the makeshift helmet until the entire bottle was empty. Only then did he carefully lift the wrap from around her head and shoulders and carefully put it to the side.
And then they waited, and they waited...
Around five hours later, a small hole appeared in the West wall of the bunker where a hand sized pincer bent and flexed and banged against its surface. It would still be several minutes longer before the Ant Grimm host would actually make it into the bunker, but the time was fast approaching. It was during this time that Jaune put the newly dry, but still rather sticky, glued up sweater helmet back around Olivia's head and shoulders and then thoroughly taped up a strap that went under her chin. When she was as wrapped up as her brother could make her, he forced himself to smile a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and he patted her softly on cheek before turning around and kneeling on the floor. His intention was immediately obvious, and Olivia wanted the contact, so she climbed up onto his back and held on tightly to his chest.
Then the time finally came.
A meter wide section of the bunker wall suddenly collapsed inwards with a splash of concrete dust and the shriek of civilians losing their cool. Those people that thought they would fight ran over to begin stomping at the countless Ant Grimm that were beginning to pour in through the hole.
It wasn't going to work.
Within just the first ten seconds of the breach in their bunker, a man took a pair of pincers around the ankle and his foot was removed clear off of his body with a scream and a large pool of blood. He was just the first. He wouldn't be the last...
Jaune slowly and seemingly calmly sidled over to the metal vault door of the bunker with Olivia piggybacking on his back, leaned them both back against its bulk, and subtly began turning the lever that would open its metal slide. Up until now, the only thing that all of the adults had agreed upon was that opening that door was a death sentence. Jaune hadn't said a word. He never once attempted to argue. In retrospect, it was obvious that he didn't want to give away his intentions...
"I'm sorry," Jaune finally said out loud to all of the people huddling along the walls of the bunker. "I'm sorry that I'm not a Huntsman. I'm sorry that I'm not strong. I'm sorry that none of you are my priority. I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. I suggest that all of you run for your lives with everything that you can."
"Don't you dare touch that door kid," called out a big and burly man from nearby, but he was already too late. Jaune suddenly threw the bunker door wide open in one very swift and sudden movement to reveal that there were well over three-hundred Ant Grimm milling around within just five meters of the bunkers front entrance.
Jaune didn't wait for the Grimm to notice the new entrance. Without a second's hesitation, he was dashing through the nearby Ant Grimm as fast as his tiny legs could move with his sister wrapped around his back. Even as he started hearing some of the civilians behind them scream in pain and or terror, he sprinted out of the alleyway and then power slid into an ice cream shop across the street...
If only their getaway ended up being as clean and as uneventful as just that...
Seventeen-year-old Olivia Arc rapidly shook out her head to dispel the memory as she entered her father's command room, and she carefully avoided looking at the holo footage that followed her and Jaune's actions throughout that day. She was tired of seeing it every single day. She was tired of hearing her father sermonizing about that event, its importance in the grand scheme, and what they needed to do about it. She was tired of fearing for Jaune's safety and not knowing what to do. She was tired of him acting like he was destined to be a great Huntsman or hero. Jaune Arc wasn't a Huntsman...
He was so much more than just that!
Jaune was the type of person who was capable of making the hard choices without losing sight of his goals or wallowing in self-pity. He was the type of person who was creative, smart and charismatic enough to lead and have people follow for all of the right reasons. He was the best that the Arc family had to offer, had a much greater destiny than he could ever understand, and he had to be safeguarded at all costs...
Olivia's face hardened to a stoic mask as she approached a bank of nearby computers and began pouring over anything and everything. She observed Atlas City's closed camera net. She observed the news both local and abroad. She controlled various seeker-bots as they patrolled around Atlas's various Colonies. She searched with a single minded determination that only an Arc sister could truly understand.
Olivia Arc would not stop. She would not quit. None of them would. They'd find their brother. They'd bring him home...
"Hello and welcome to the Vale News Network," a pretty blonde announced from behind a news desk with the letters VNN on the front. "I'm your host Trisha Young and tonight we're going to be talking about a near disastrous pirate raid on an intercontinental Airship travelling over the ocean from Atlas to Vale. According to our sources, an Atlesian Huntsman turned raider by the name of Taylor Teller staged a raid on the ship by smuggling his men in a crate that was supposed to contain luxury hover vehicles.
With the ship at their mercy, Taylor and his crew of raiders apparently attempted to use a shaped explosive to enter the bridge, botched the explosion and destroyed much of the bridge's functionality in the process. Then, when the airship's controls were destroyed, our sources claim that Taylor and his raiders attempted to leave on both of the two lifeboats that the ship contained, but was stopped by Atlesian Superstar Weiss Schnee and an young Atlesian Nobleman with black hair. With us now is our in the field reporter Mrs. Flores.
With that segue completed, the news segment suddenly switched to a dual screen so that a second window could picture a pretty brunette woman standing in front of a massive, banged up Airship.
That's right Trisha," Mrs. Flores began without any preamble. "According to the people that I've spoken to over here at the Vale International Airpad, Taylor and his men did manage to get away using one of the lifeboats, but singer songwriter and Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company Weiss Schnee stepped in with an unknown partner and managed to keep them from taking the second boat. According to witnesses, Weiss Schnee's unknown companion negotiated with the raiders by threatening to destroy both of the lifeboats using an unknown and powerful Semblance. As a result, all of the witnesses that I've spoken to appear to be even more afraid of Weiss's companion than they are of the raiders. Whether or not heiress Schnee's unknown partner was merely playing hardball with the raiders or he actually would've destroyed both boats, no one knows for sure. What we do know is that his tactic worked and he managed to keep a boat for the use of the women and children."
If the Airship had no controls remaining, then how did it make it all the way to Vale," asked Trisha back in the newsroom.
"This is where the information becomes scattered," Mrs. Flores responded as she turned to a bunch of milling around Atlesian elites. "What we do know is that the ship flew through the mountains, that it didn't use the safe and established routes and that it was a very, very bumpy ride... To learn more , we'll need to speak to our contacts with the Vale military as they're the ones who are heading this investigation..."
10 Hours after the attack on the Jango, Vale Military base Astro Balto...
Payla Brown sat ramrod straight in her chair, staring at the camera in front of her and sweating bullets. She'd never been a suspect in a criminal investigation before. She'd never been under suspicion before. What about her career? What if she was fired? What about her rent and car payments?!
"How did the boy control the ship," a uniformed woman asked from the other side of an unadorned metal table.
"I have literally no idea," Payla immediately blurted out. "All I know is that the boy had black tendrils coming out of his hands that sank into the controls, and I saw some of the ship's readouts glowing on the inside lens of his helmet. What I don't understand is how he operated an entire airship alone. Even without the damage to the ship's controls, flying that tub is a three person job, with the Captain ordering around a pair of flight control robots that were destroyed in the explosion. Then there's the fact that the Jango is not designed to be maneuverable... like, at all... The Jango's a fat and bloated weapon platform turned passenger liner that's never been turned at anything greater than a ten-degree angle since it was first put into service. The sequence of movements that I saw that kid pull off with that ship, under those circumstances, while also controlling the cannons... Well... It's all so far beyond anything that I ever would've imagined possible that I... I don't even know what to say..."
"...Thank you Ms. Brown... We will be back to release you in a moment..."
11 hours after the attack on the Jango, Vale Military base Astro Balto...
Greg O'Neil accomplished the impossible by somehow lounging in the unbelievably straight backed interrogation chairs as he waved his hands in the air to enthusiastically pantomime the words that he was saying. "And then the Airship went whhaaaaaam and whoooooosh and pew pew as we pelted in between like ten mountain peaks all at the same time, and I was screaming and firing Dust rounds like a madman and... Wow! Just wow!... I've never had more fun in my whole entire life!... ten out of ten would revisit, but only if that kid's behind the wheel... Did you know that we were flying sideways at one point! We were flying sideways on the Jango! I love my Jango but she's a pretty little princess and doesn't like to be manhandled. For obvious reasons, she didn't care for the kid too much..."
"What else do you know about 'the kid,'" the unformed woman asked Greg in a very impatient and long suffering tone of voice.
"He's the man, man!"
"...Other than the fact that he's the man..."
"Every single passenger aboard the Jango would've died if he hadn't been on board," Greg suddenly explained with a very serious look on his face. "That kid... John... stopped the raiders from taking the second lifeboat, he flew the ship through a shitstorm beyond my wildest imaginings and then he fought desperately to keep me in the fight. He and I both knew that my machine gun was our only hope of keeping the riff raff away from the ship, so he fought two Gryphon Grimm to the point of Aura shock, injury and then unconsciousness... He gave everything he had... Sir... Now... Can you explain to me why you're treating John with this level of suspicion? It's plain for literally everyone to see that the kid's a Maidens be damned hero..."
"...Someone will be back momentarily to release you..."
12 hours after the attack on the Jango, Vale Military base Astro Balto...
The chairs that sat in the military debriefing room weren't uncomfortable per se. They did have a cushion on both the seat and on the arm rests, but they were far too straight backed to be at home anywhere but in the room they occupied. Jaune was eager to not be sitting in any of these chairs anymore, but he feared he wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. The chances were pretty good that all of the waiting they were making him do was to soften him up for the interrogation that he was about to receive.
Finally, as if the military execs were reading his mind, two BDU wearing Officers, both women, and an odd man with a coffee in his hand suddenly opened the door and walked into the room.
With the Grimm as a constant threat to all of humanity collectively, Vale and Atlas's militaries were on reasonably friendly terms and relied on each other for support. That didn't mean that Jaune was comfortable when the three military execs quietly sat down across the table from him and commenced with the staring. While Jaune had no intention of setting himself in opposition to these officers, he found that their approach was about as counterproductive as it could possibly get. He wasn't about to grow impatient and spill his guts, and he wasn't all that concerned about their scrutiny. In the end, Jaune just sat there and allowed a vacant expression to grow upon his face. Within just a few seconds time, he was carefully, studiously, bland.
"My name is Brigadier general Howetser," the Officer on the right side finally announced. "This here is Military Intelligence Officer Knott."
"John Freeman," Jaune replied, as if the first two women weren't completely ignoring the man sitting to their left.
"It appears that the passengers of the Jango owe you a debt of gratitude," Officer Howetser continued, bypassing all of the usual chit chat. "A band of raiders of all things, was stowed away inside a crate that was supposed to contain some luxury vehicles."
"I did what I thought was right," Jaune replied in a steady voice. "My aim is to become a Huntsman, so I tried to act like a Huntsman would."
"You did far more than merely that," The high ranking Officer retorted, in what she probably thought was an amused sounding voice. "Your judgment throughout that entire ordeal was impeccable, and was far more impressive than any of the combat skills that you displayed. You caught and threw a hand grenade off of the ship because you knew the exact timing of its detonation, you fought and incapacitated at least sixteen non aura using raider's while utilizing non-lethal force, you negotiated with newly wanted C ranked raider Taylor Teller and his men to facilitate the return of four adolescent hostages, and then through Ms. Schnee you enacted a triage evacuation that would preserve as many family units as possible."
As Officer Howetser was saying all of that, the Officer Knott was queuing up a holographic video projector that began showing camera footage of his fight with the raiders.
Due mostly to the fact that he wasn't being asked any questions yet, Jaune just continued to sit there with his hands on the table.
"Just look at you move," Officer Howetser offered as she looked over towards the projection. "That armor of yours is really something special. So far as we in the Vale military know, that armor is currently under development in Atlas, but would take a computer as big as this base to actually operate. We in the Intelligence Division would love to know how a seventeen-year-old has a functioning version of this armor that can interact directly with the systems of a foreign military airship."
After drawing in a very deep breath, filling his lungs with air and then letting it all out extremely slowly, Jaune steepled his hands and nodded his head. "Hookay. Well... Here's what I think of all this so far... I was under the impression that this was a debrief, where I would explain what I did and why. It appears I was wrong. Am I safe in assuming that the armor is the only reason I'm still detained here?"
After several moments, the two military Officers nodded their heads.
"I suppose I'll start by addressing your implied question," Jaune began in what he hoped was a business casual tone. "No. I'm not the product of some illegal child recruitment program for spies or anything. Any work I've ever done for the Atlas military has only ever been on a short term contractual basis, and it's never been outside of Atlas itself. For the last year and a half, I've been working under a Doctor Pietro Polendina of Atlas Military research. My name and photo is on the employee register and everything, so feel free to enquire with them. During my time with Military research, I've been of assistance to Dr. Polendina mostly because my Semblance has some rather unique properties. My Semblance is also the only reason why I can make the nanobots that comprise my armor do anything at all. Under normal circumstances, the computation power required to do what I can do would be... Well you said it best. Computer as big as this base."
"You expect us to believe that you're using your aura to operate those unbelievably sophisticated nanobots?" Officer Howetser wasn't as good an actor as she thought she was. She was laying the incredulity on a little too thick.
"Do you guys have camera footage of my fight on the Stern deck against the Grimm?" Jaune knew that they did, and he knew that they'd already watched it, but he also knew that they were ignoring some of that fight's obvious implications purely for their own convenience.
Without a word, Officer Knott cued up the camera footage, and they all watched him fight the gryphons like the tired and desperate seventeen-year-old that he was.
"Why do you think I didn't use the armor during this far more dangerous fight, when I was more than happy to use it against the no-nothing raiders?" After asking the question, Jaune just sat back and stared at the Officers. If they had any intelligence at all then they'd already know that he was telling the truth.
"You wanted to give us some bogus story about your aura powering the armor," ventured Officer Howetser.
"Please don't be intentionally obtuse," Jaune immediately replied, while carefully maintaining a polite tone of voice. "I used well over sixty percent of my rather large aura capacity, while desperately trying to control an entire airship through those mountains. If the suit was powered by electricity or Dust like you three are trying to imply it is, I'd have been fresh as a daisy when I finished piloting the ship. I wasn't. I was exhausted and that much is obvious." Even as Jaune said that, the fight scene arrived at the point where his body was cratered into the wall of the forward deck, causing his aura shielding to shatter. Even watching it after the fact, Jaune couldn't help but wince. He really had taken a hell of a hit.
"You fought this last Gryphon without any aura," the coffee drinking man suddenly announced, from way out in left field. "That flash on the camera footage and the new scar on your face prove it."
In the moments that followed, Jaune just sat there as the sunglasses man tried to stare some kind of response out of him. He was getting the impression that this man was pretty important, and that his importance usually made staring a pretty effective tactic. Well jokes on him. Jaune had literally no idea who he was, so his staring meant nothing to him.
"I was giving you an opportunity to impress me," prompted the sunglasses man in a nonchalant kind of voice. "Fortunately for you, your lack of response is actually kinda impressive."
"I might become more forthcoming once I know who you are," Jaune allowed with an arched eyebrow. "I've lived a pretty closeted existence. I'm not all that current when it comes to notable faces."
"Ah, I see. Well... My name is Ozpin, and I'm the Headmaster of Beacon Hunter Academy."
In the moments that followed, Jaune couldn't quite stop himself from covering his face with one of his hands. Of all the people to have a staring contest with, it had to be the Headmaster...
"Now, now, none of that," Ozpin offered, while turning back towards the video projection. "I don't mind a good old fashioned pissing contest now and again. I do want to hear your thoughts on the fight I'm watching though."
"I was the only person on the ship with any combat training whatsoever," Jaune began, as he saw himself take a claw to the face. "If I didn't fight, even at a massive disadvantage, we were all going to die. I'm pretty sure any Hunter with any common sense would've done what I did..."
You're wrong though," Ozpin drawled, as he shook his head and put down his coffee. "Aura empowered people are capable of bravery, but back in the days of yore, we huddled within our walls as civilization was torn asunder. Before the advent of both dust technology and aura, people didn't fight back against the Grimm."
"I don't buy that for a second," Jaune immediately replied in a surprisingly heated voice. "While three centuries of selective breeding, gene manipulation and modern Hunter marriages have led to people with higher aura capacities and stronger Semblances, mankind has possessed a soul ever since we first became self-aware. I can feel it inside of me just like you can. My soul screams for me to fight back against the Grimm and so did our predecessors'. I'd wager that's exactly what you're referring to when you talk about an advent. You're talking about the day that a group of people fought, and fought and just kept fighting, until their will became manifest upon the world."
After taking a long sip of his coffee, Ozpin put down the mug and arched an eyebrow. "Cute idea. How about you though? How'd you unlock your aura?"
"Fighting desperately, getting badly injured and surviving." At this point, Jaune was about a hundred percent certain that he was being screwed with.
With one last enthusiastic sip, Ozpin put aside his empty mug and rested his elbows on the table. "Interesting story. Which one of your seven sisters rescued you?"
As those words entered Jaune's ears, his entire world came crashing down around him. The cards were revealed and he was holding a single pair of twos. The man knew. Ozpin knew that he was an Arc. Well... Damn. One thing was for damned certain. Jaune wasn't going to stick around to get carted back to Atlas. He had to get out of here, and he had to do it now...
"I'm beginning to think Beacon isn't a good fit for me," Jaune bit out, while staring at those black tinted sunglasses. "I'm beginning to think it might be too... constricting." Turning to the side to address the completely forgotten military men, Jaune arched his eyebrows expectantly. "If you Officers would be so kind as to return my belongings, all of my belongings. I have an appointment at the Atlas consulate. Oh, and I expect the camera footage I'm looking at to stay out of the media's hands..."
While the boy and Ozpin were doing their little interview slash debate, Brigadier General Howetser had contacted Atlas Military Research. The boy was telling the truth. He worked for them, and his Semblance was some kind of particle matter rearrangement emitter type yadda yadda yadda. The scientist she'd spoken to hadn't been speaking what she considered English for a lot of that conversation. Either way, the boy had been gifted the tech for services rendered to the Atlas Military, so he was going to get it all back. The last thing they needed was Atlas thinking that they were trying to scalp their research. With a weary nod and some assurances that the footage wasn't going anywhere, Howetser gestured for Knott to escort the kid to the item lockers, and the three of them started moving towards the door.
A little over an hour after leaving the Vale military complex, Ozpin walked into his office at Beacon Academy with a fresh coffee in hand.
As he settled back behind his desk, Ozpin found himself dwelling on young "John Freeman," and his rather strong aversion to being identified. All he'd done was imply that the boy might be the Arc family's prodigal son, and the boy had immediately turned a pale white color as if he'd just received a death threat. One thing was becoming increasingly apparent the more Ozpin thought about it. The Arc family must not have told him the truth regarding the boy's disappearance.
Jaune Arc wasn't merely squandering the family bank account on some kind of worldwide pleasure cruise. Not only had the boy been earning his own keep as an assistant researcher, he was also completely terrified of his family. Case and point, Jaune Arc had just told him, Headmaster Ozpin, to his face, that he no longer had any interest in attending Beacon, one of the best, if not the best, Hunter academies in the entire world. No. The boy wasn't joking around. Ozpin would bet his entire bank account that the boy was about to disappear to Monty Oum knows where, and he wasn't going to wait for something comfortable to take him there...
After taking a nice deep draw of caffeinated goodness, Ozpin came to a decision. Jaune Arc had to be found ASAP, so that the two of them could discuss his options. There was no damned way Ozpin was going to let such an interesting boy end up at Haven or Vacuo Academy.
After pressing a button on his desk, Ozpin waited as a holographic screen rose into place in front of him. After a couple of moments, a man's slightly hung over and unshaven face appeared on the screen.
"This better be good, Ozpin. My head is killing me. I should really be asleep right now."
"It's two o'clock in the afternoon, Qrow," Ozpin pointed out, in a tone that made it obvious the two of them had gone through this before.
"Ah, well... okay then," Qrow Branwen replied, with a noticeable lack of anything even resembling shame in his voice. "Still... It's rare for you to call me up like this. What's up?"
"I just managed to scare off one of the more genuinely heroic young Huntsman applicants I've ever met," Ozpin explained with a sigh. As he spoke, he keyed up a photo of Jaune that he'd taken straight from the Jango's camera footage. "This is John Freeman, and he's on the run, most likely in your direction."
"If this John kid's so brave then why's he running? And why should I get involved in this?" Qrow wasn't a fan of quitters. If Hunter trainees couldn't handle the stress of easy situations such as school or training, then they'd let you down when the shit hit the fan. For that reason, as a teacher at Signal Academy, he tried to avoid letting his students take the easy way out. Being a Hunter is the world's most dangerous occupation after all. If you don't think that you can handle it, then you're right...
"Mr. Freeman isn't running away from the responsibility of being a Huntsman" Ozpin corrected, as he cued up camera footage of Jaune's actions on the Jango. "As you can see, despite his current lack of... finesse, Mr. Freeman is actually rather calm under pressure. I'm under the impression that the boy is actually on the run from his family." The Headmaster was about a hundred percent certain that this approach would hook Qrow into helping. If anyone on earth could sympathize about having a tumultuous family life, than that person would be Qrow. Unfortunately, now he had the man looking to him for answers, and he wasn't sure what he could accurately say. "No, before you ask, I don't know the details behind the boy's family problems," Ozpin admitted as he scooped up his coffee. "What I do know is that John Freeman isn't actually his real name."
"Okay, I'll bite. Who is he?" Qrow didn't like being predictable, so he wasn't a fan of his own sudden interest, but... family. There's nothing more dangerous than family...
Over the next fifteen seconds, Ozpin found a two year old photo of blond Jaune Arc and then placed that photo next to the more recent one. "This is Jaune Arc pre black hair dye, a new facial scar, and some grey color contacts that he may or may not be wearing.
"The Arc family? I gotta admit, I have trouble seeing it." At this point, Qrow was staring fixedly at the camera footage of Jaune's Gryphon fight. "No offense Ozpin, but the Arc family gives off the happy, wholesome vibe if anything. On the other hand, I will admit that having seven sisters all training to be Huntresses would be absolutely terrifying." Qrow suddenly grinned, as he pictured the Arc boy running for his life from seven Yangs and Rubys.
"Like I said, I don't know the particulars," Ozpin repeated. "All I know is that about an hour ago the boy leapt into the back of a moving pickup truck as if he was a prison escapee, after leaving the Astro Balto Military Base. I suspect he's going to try to sneak over to Mistral now that he knows he's been identified here in Vale, which means he'll try to find a boat."
I do agree that this kid's reaction is kinda... dramatic," Qrow allowed, with a hand running through his stubble. "Maybe I'll take this a little bit seriously then. If I go to the docks now I'll beat him there, but are there any other locations I should check first?"
"I'm not really sure to be honest," Ozpin admitted with a rueful shake of his head. "Don't bother with the bars or motels. He'll look for resources and information instead. The boy's both smart and thoughtful, so he won't make most of the mistakes common for his age. If I had to guess, I'd say he was trained from a young age to run a household as a genteel high society type. I watched him call Brigadier General Howetser "intentionally obtuse," instead of calling her an annoying dumbass. It worked too. The woman didn't take offense."
"Well that's definitely not my style," Qrow mused as a sly smile grew on his face. The poor boy will never be able to pull off dashing rogue like I can. He's going to have a hard time attracting the ladies."
"Weiss Schnee... the Weiss Schnee, famous Atlesian pop star and heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, approached me earlier today," Ozpin suddenly announced. "Do you want to know why?" The Headmaster couldn't help the amused smile that was growing on his face.
"Pshaw. Not really," Qrow spat out in a melodramatic huff. "Atlesian women are all prim and proper little ice sculptures. There isn't a speck of romance in their frozen little hearts. I have no idea how they even breed when they have no se..."
"I'm going to tell you anyway," Ozpin loudly called out, to interrupt what was sure to become a very vulgar string of words. "Ms Schnee explained that she was in my office because she wanted to prevent "a grave injustice," as she called it, that was being perpetrated by the Vale military. She claimed that an old associate of hers had been detained by the military for unspecified reasons. She claimed that her associate saved the lives of everyone aboard the airship that brought her to Vale, by making use of some sophisticated armor, and that for all of his efforts he'd been arrested without even the benefit of being formally charged with a crime. She claimed that her associate was a gifted young Huntsman trainee, and someone that I should take a personal interest in. While Ms Schnee spoke to me, she tried very hard to look both prim and proper exactly like you describe, but her knuckles were white, her breathing and heart rate were elevated and her pupils were dilated. Young Ms Schnee was worried. She was very, very worried about this associate of hers. Do you know who it is that I'm referring to, Qrow?"
Qrow didn't reply with words. He just rolled his eyes as loudly as he could.
"Jaune Arc's genteel behaviour isn't going to hurt his chances with the ladies," Ozpin assured with that amused smile back on his face.
"Did you want me to go, or do you want to keep monologging at me?" Even as Qrow said those words, he was pulling on his gear and straightening out his hair.
"Don't let me stop you," Ozpin allowed in a gracious tone. "You're a sore loser."
Click...
By the time Qrow swiveled back towards the Holoscreen of his landline scroll, the call had been ended.
With the last word won by default, Ozpin leaned further back in his chair and took a long pull of his coffee. At his age, one had to take enjoyment in the little things...
Within just minutes of walking out of the military base, Jaune found himself lying hidden in the back of a pick up truck. The driver hadn't noticed when he'd run up behind the moving vehicle and then leapt into the truck bed without making it shake too much. Now all he needed to do was smuggle his way onto a cargo ship on Vale's West coast, and he could be on his way. If Atlas Academy wasn't a possibility and Beacon was a no go, then the only other really famous Hunter Academy would be Haven Academy over in Mistral.
With every lost opportunity, Jaune found himself one step closer to the worst possible outcomes. If his identity ended up being discovered over in Mistral than the only Academy left would be Vacuo Academy. If Vacuo didn't work out, he'd be forced to carve out a life for himself out in the wilds or something. What's worse, Jaune's Semblance and abilities had all been caught on the Jango's cameras, which meant that he'd be that much easier to identify from this point forward.
Just the day before, Jaune had mocked Taylor Teller for being revealed as a raider by both witnesses and cameras. How ironic... His identity had been outed at exactly the same time.
Two hours later, as if by some miracle, the truck that Jaune was hiding in entered a sizable colony called Anvil that was situated on Vale's West coast. This was the colony that Signal Academy was located near and it was also a hub location to catch a ferry to a half dozen smaller island colonies. Ending up here was too good to be true. It was suspicious. Jaune had no reason to believe that he was suddenly the lucky kind of guy, so he decided to err on the side of caution. He leapt off of the truck right after it passed through the colony's Dust barrier and rolled directly into the din of a nearby alleyway.
After rising back to his feet and pulling up the hood of his dark grey sweater, Jaune attempted to blend in with the locals that he found leaning against the alleyway's walls. He wasn't successful. It's difficult to act casual with a rifle-shield and a saber strapped to your back. Even in an alleyway full of teenaged gang members, his most recent combat training seemed completely obvious to everyone, which meant that dozens of eyes were following his every movement. This wasn't good... It was time for Jaune to start generating ideas... Where could he gather some intel while heavily armed and armored? He couldn't just stash the weapons. It was essentially guaranteed that he'd never see them again. Think...
After suddenly turning towards one of the local teenagers, Jaune pointed at the boy, making him freeze in place. "Where's the local dust and munitions shop?"
The boy's arm pointed at the far off exit of the alley and then he flicked his index finger to the left. "Three blocks."
After nodding a quick thanks at the taciturn boy, Jaune scanned everyone else in the alley and then started moving. It appeared that no one here had an active aura, which meant that none of them were of any real threat.
"Hey, wait right there you...!"
"No one will respect you for a fight that you lose," Jaune interrupted, without ever looking back. "Think very carefully about what you do from this point forward."
For five slow seconds, Jaune just stood there and waited. Nothing happened. No one moved. The unknown person who'd called out to him appeared to have backed off. Good.
The next ten minutes were quite nerve wracking for Jaune, as he made his way down a well appointed and highly frequented street towards the colony's only dust and munitions shop. At first, Jaune had walked with his hood up, but since the day was both sunny and warm the hood had made him stand out as extremely suspicious. After dropping the hood, the scrutiny that he was receiving died down just a little, but people were still aware of the weapons strapped to his back. In a world as dangerous as Remnant, weapons weren't all that uncommon or even frowned upon, but Jaune was still a teenager and nobody knew who he was. It was no real mystery why parents pulled their children to the alternate side of the road as he moved by.
With an internal sigh of relief, Jaune finally entered a store called Frank's Dust & Munitions Store. Whatever the name was, this was a Hunter's shop like you can find in every colony throughout the entire world. It sold everything from clothing to armor, weapons to guns or even a mixture of both, and it stocked every kind of Dust conceivable to power the stuff. This was really the only place where Jaune could talk to someone who wouldn't be put off by his armaments. It also carried a product that Jaune was in desperate need of. The store carried backpacks. Not the teenaged kids walking to school variety, but rather the "I have a long way to walk and a million things to take with me" type of bag. It was long past time that Jaune stop carrying visible weaponry everywhere that he went. In his defense, he hadn't thought that he'd find himself on the run again.
"How can I help you," a disheveled looking man who radiated danger called out, in what sounded like a sarcastic tone of voice. Jaune wasn't all that concerned. For some reason, the owners of these weapon shops were almost always an odd mixture of extremely capable and equally disgusting. Instead, Jaune smiled at the man as he walked casually towards the counter.
"I'm Frank," the man explained in a deadpan tone. "That means what I say goes. I don't sell to the underaged and under-qualified." The newly named Frank pointed at a nearby sign. The sign explained how very harsh fines were levied on munition shops that sell to the underage. It further explained what the exceptions were. If you were a Signal student then you were good to go, otherwise you'd need to be either nineteen years old or a card carrying member of a guild.
With an understanding nod, Jaune proffered the man his Freelance Guild ID. He was a D ranker at the moment, but his low level had more to do with the amount of time that he'd put in than his capabilities. When he really had to do so, he could destroy Grimm closer to the B side of the spectrum. Granted, that was with the element of surprise and using the full power of his reactive armor. Either way, his D rank status wasn't a very accurate portrayal of his skills. That was fine. Jaune wasn't looking to stand out. He merely wanted to prove that the man could do business with him.
"Ah, a freelancer. Young, dumb and full of... enthusiasm," the shop owner drawled out, before returning the ID. "What can I get for you?"
"Black and red Dust to fill my rifle-shield clips to start, but I'm going to browse for a bit before I choose anything else." As he spoke, Jaune scanned the room, looking at the shop's various wares as he planned his next move. He needed to find a way to... Ah! there it was... Moving around the room, Jaune slowly made his way towards a Hoplite sword and spear combo that was obviously Mistralian in origin. Then he forced his face to take on a lost expression as if he'd never seen anything quite like it.
"You're clearly not a big fan of arena fighting, are yah kid? That's a recreation of the Mistralian Goddess of Victory's spear and shield. It's a top seller." The shop owner gestured sloppily at a cardboard cutout of a beautiful redhead wearing both bronze and red armor and a tiara. The cutout featured the Name Pyrrha Nikos, Goddess of Victory. Then the man gestured at a rack filled with cheap knockoffs of the woman's famous weapons.
"This arrangement is definitely versatile," Jaune admitted, as he studied one of the spears and saw that it mechashifted into a very powerful rifle. "Someone who knew what they were doing could use this spear to move around pretty quickly. This arrangement sells out a lot?"
"I don't know about a lot," Frank hedged, leaning back against his counter. "It's a popular item."
"You have an arrangement with a supplier?" It was a weird question to ask and Jaune knew it, but he continued to look around the store's various products as if he'd meant nothing by it. During this time, he picked out an overlarge backpack that would be able to hold everything he owns including his weapons.
"You have an interest in supply?" At this point, Frank had a lopsided smile on his face.
"No, but I do have an interest in this arena that you're talking about," Jaune immediately deflected as if he was merely curious... Over her next few minutes, as he looked around and waited for the shop owner to get bored and potentially offer more information, the sound of a radio news program coming from behind the counter caught Jaune's attention, and its contents gave him the chills.
"Yesterday afternoon over the Abyssal Ocean between Vale and Atlas, the passenger airship the Jango was attacked by raiders under the command of newly wanted C ranked raider Taylor Teller. Sources say that famous singer songwriter Weiss Schnee and an unknown black haired Atlesian elite that was travelling with her intervened when the ship was heavily damaged and the raiders attempted to take all of the emergency lifeboats..."
With the words "unknown and black haired," Jaune drew in a very deep breath to keep his relief from appearing on his features, and then he wrapped up his shopping as quickly as he dared. Knowing the news media, it was only a matter of time before they managed to steal or bribe a copy of his photo away from the military. He needed to be on a boat headed to Mistral long before that happened.
Returning to the counter with the backpack in hand, Jaune also put down a wide variety of preserved foods and a small but powerful water filter. To his surprise, the dust clips that he'd asked for weren't sitting on the counter yet. He didn't want to be rude, but he did arch an eyebrow in Frank's direction.
"So, tell me kid. What are you running from?" Frank was scrutinizing Jaune's survival equipment as if it was some kind of prime time television mystery.
As alarms bells went off in Jaune's head, he released a steady flow of his aura into the bands on his wrists and ankles. Within just a fraction of a second, he felt the nanobots begin crawling their way up his arms and legs, towards his torso. Thankfully, he was wearing jeans and a hoodie today, which meant that none of his preparations were visible to the shopkeeper. Jaune only needed to stall for ten more seconds and then he'd be at fifty percent of his armor's maximum power output. He could stall for time merely by responding to the man's question. "You made several very large assumptions to arrive at a question like that. I like to be prepared, that is all. Now... Are you going to sell me that Dust?"
The man suddenly stood up straight and waved his hands in a negating motion. "Now, now, calm down, I'm not trying to..."
Behind Jaune, the front door to the shop opened with a jingling noise, interrupting the shopkeeper.
"Uncle Qrow! What in the world are you doing here?!" A teenaged girl wearing a black and red combat dress was staring at "Frank" with visible hero worship in her eyes. Then her expression warped into one of surprise as a blur of motion flew towards her.
By the time, the younger girl was done asking why her uncle Qrow was present in the shop, Jaune was already dashing towards the front door. He didn't worry about the items that he'd picked out, he didn't look back, and he didn't hesitate. He moved. Within just a split second, he was dashing past the girl and sliding sideways towards the still closing door.
"Ruby," Qrow called out in an urgent tone. "That boy's a shoplifter! Slow him down!"
As Jaune just barely squeezed through the closing door, he was moving at such insane speeds that his Semblance was the only thing keeping his body together. That's the reason why it was so very shocking when the younger girl suddenly appeared right next to him, keeping pace with him as if he was moving at a normal jog. Then she was sweeping what looked like the butt end of a scythe at his face, and Jaune was jumping away with all of his armor bolstered strength.
For the next ten seconds, Jaune found himself flying up diagonally through the air and clear over the roof of a nearby ice cream parlor. Looking down at where he was about to land, Jaune's eyes widened in alarm. By some cosmic fluke, he was tumbling down into someone's junk filled back yard. Well... Damn. After crashing through the roof of a rusted up old car and crashing out of the passenger door, Jaune rolled through a pile of jagged scrap and then bounced back to his feet. Even with his aura armor protecting him that fall had hurt, but Jaune was back up again and moving towards a distant alleyway. That's when he saw it, and his heels dug twin trenches into the sandy earth. The man, this Qrow person, had just walked out from behind a nearby building. He was twenty feet in front of him and barring his exit.
"Stop running kid," Qrow demanded with his hands up in front of his chest. "I just want to talk to you!"
Turning to look over his shoulder, Jaune saw that same scythe girl from earlier and a new girl in yellow running down the alleyway in his direction. All of the exits on ground level were blocked, so it was time to think vertical.
"Don't do it kid," Qrow warned, with his hand near a sheathe on his hip. "I don't want to hurt you, but I'm way stronger than you, and I'm not afraid to bump you on the head."
"Bounty hunter huh? So it's come to this..." Reaching to the side, Jaune put both of his hands down on top of the junker car that he'd just crashed through as if he was surrendering and preparing to be searched.
The man, this Qrow, didn't appear to be fooled as he immediately threw his chain scythe, attempting to loop the chain around Jaune's torso and legs.
At exactly the same time that Qrow threw his scythe, Jaune ripped the vehicle's back door clear off its hinges and threw it at the man like a frisbee as hard as he could. Even as the door smashed into the scythe in midair, causing both projectiles to ricochet off to the sides, Jaune was leaping up into the air again and withdrawing his weapons as he flew towards a nearby rooftop. One or two rounds of lead shot from some sort of shotgun started pinging off of the side of his armor, so it was safe to assume that one of the two girls was taking pot shots at him. It was probably the blonde girl's weapon. If that red girl's scythe contained a firearm at all, then it definitely wouldn't be a shotgun.
Grabbing the roof of the house that he'd leapt towards, Jaune vaulted to the right and then started leaping from roof to roof like a sneak thief from a movie. He could only hope the fact that he was leaping an average of seven meters from one rooftop to the next would allow him to shake his pursuers. He only had something like eight minutes of aura remaining at the fifty-percent power output that he was maintaining around his lower body. In order to give himself some extra time, Jaune had already allowed most of the nanobots covering his upper body to withdraw back into their bands. He needed the surplus aura to push for as much distance between himself and that Qrow guy as possible. He didn't know much about the man, but what he did know was that he was high ranking. What that meant was that fighting was a waste of both time and aura.
At the end of the first street, Jaune ran out of houses to jump to, which meant that he needed to transition across the street to head in another direction. Bolstering his leg armor to make his muscles bulge with synthetic strength, Jaune launched himself into the air and then used the time that he was airborne to take a look around. What he saw caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end.
The smaller girl in red was easily keeping pace with him at street level, where she was scouting so that Qrow and that blonde girl could keep up on a motorcycle. Turning his head back to where he was about to land, Jaune braced his legs, leaned forward so that he could roll, and then crashed right through a patch of roof that was weakened by both time and mold. After crashing through the slats covering a layer of rotting beams, Jaune slammed through a brick wall on the second floor and then through yet another wooden floor back to ground level. In the end, he found himself tenderized like a side of beef, laying submerged under a large pile of rubble, and wondering where the hell it had all gone wrong. He was also scrambling to power up his armor at a hundred percent for the first time in quite a while.
"Ummm, uncle Qrow... Isn't this level of bad luck a little too much to pile upon a shoplifter?" Despite her words, the smaller girl in red skipped around the fantastically destroyed warehouse with a wide and happy smile upon her face.
"Yeah Qrow. You pretty much ruined this guy's whole day. Get it? Cause this building's in ruins?" The blonde girl who entered the room next also didn't seem all that concerned.
"You know what's worse? This kid isn't even a shoplifter. I just have some business with him." Qrow was staring down at the waist high pile of bricks and broken lumber with only the slightest amount of guilt in his expression.
"Uhhh, well that's... a thing," the blonde breathed out, while giving the rubble pile a second look. "Disregarding the fact that we just helped you assault a kid for no apparent reason, shouldn't we get him out of there?"
With nods all around, Qrow and his young companions started moving aside the debris. That's when they saw it and they all suddenly froze in place. Underneath the lumber, scrap metal, bricks and cinder blocks, was a hole that revealed a basement level to the warehouse. The hole had been carved out of a foot thick slab of both cement and rebar by what appeared to be claw marks...
"Woah... Did that boy have claws this entire time? I don't remember seeing any." As the blonde turned back towards her two companions, the ground that they were standing on suddenly started shaking and the entire building started falling in on them.
Outside of the warehouse, Jaune had just sliced his claws through every load bearing pillar on the ground level cutting them into several pieces in a blur of barely controlled speed. He wasn't going to let that Qrow guy keep hunting him, so he'd occupy the man's attention with something more... pressing. With all of the supports severed and the building teetering in place, he braced his back against the very solid concrete foundation of the building next door, poured all of his strength into his legs and his back, and then kicked against the side of the decrepit warehouse with both of his feet. Spiderweb cracks webbed outwards in every direction as the entire building swayed about four feet away and then teetered back towards him. With a second massively powerful double kick the entire worn out building finally erupted into chaos.
Within the next five seconds, Jaune was slipping down a random sewer grate at the end of the street.
During those same five seconds, the entire ancient and roughed up warehouse imploded into a million pieces of rubble.
For about half a minute after the building's collapse, nothing happened. Then a large amount of metal, wood and bricks, suddenly erupted away from the side of the rubble pile and Qrow walked out from within the hole. The man clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, and he released several wrath filled breaths of air.
"Umm, uncle Qrow? You do remember that it was us that were attacking him don't you?" The red wearing girl emerged out of the same hole that Qrow just made, Looking none the worse for wear.
"It's the principle of the matter, Ruby," Qrow growled out in response. "That kid one upped me, he one upped me! I can't just let this stand."
A second hole exploded out of the side of the junk pile and the blonde emerged from it at a jog. Turning in place, she caught sight of the black haired girl, and then dashed over so that she could fuss over her. Only when she was certain that the wiggling girl was okay, did she allow herself to calm back down.