I don't own anything related to the RWBY franchise
Chapter 19 - Perspectives, A Reunion And A Dance
Flashback Scene
Friday night, 11 Pm, Housing Arrangement Number 7, Living Room
Yang's Perspective…
For the last hour and a half, Yang Xiao Long and her Platoon Captain John Freeman had watched the third installment in a movie series centered around a gifted surgeon who almost died in a terrible VTOL crash but was revived as a cyborg with superhuman medicine powers. The movie in question, RoboDoc three, and its following installment RoboDoc four, were both just as ridiculous and corny as they sounded, but for the two teenagers that were currently sitting on the living room couch, they were nothing less than comedy gold.
"Oh RoboDoc…," the pretty young nurse on the holo-screen cooed as she passionately kissed the cyborg doctor on the lips. "Your hands are so… electric…"
"Well, yes, of course they are," the cyborg man replied with a noticeable lack of anything even resembling emotion on his face. "My hands can act as defibrillators after all…"
"Pffft, snicker… " Yang immediately wiggled around the couch and giggled like a little girl as the movie's pun based humor hit her right in her strike-zone. This was exactly the reason why she loved these old holo-films so much… Modern movies just don't offer up the same well-constructed wordplay that the classics always deliver. Speaking of which… Turning her attention towards the man grinning in amusement on the other side of the couch, Yang wiggled her stocking covered feet meaningfully in his lap. "That was definitely a robot-doctor themed one-liner, John. Make with the massaging ASAP."
In the seconds that followed those words, John's hands gently wrapped around the arch of Yang's feet, and she was once again sinking helplessly into the cushions of the couch…
Suffice it to say, RoboDoc wasn't the only man that had electric hands…
There was a pretty good chance that John Freeman didn't actually realize just how intense what he was currently doing really was, especially after all of the far more powerful aura treatments that he'd performed over the course of the week, but the man's massaging hands were releasing gentle waves of aura deep into her body, and he was sharing himself quite a bit in the process. Carried along with the waves of purely physical pleasure that his aura always brought forth, a spine tingling outpouring of his cares, concerns, strengths and weaknesses were filling Yang's body, revealing his character as a person to an extent that would normally take a lifetime of careful observation.
Truth be told, Yang was almost intimidated by how good John's aura "felt" inside of her body, even as she realized that his touch, and by extension his character, was helping her achieve a much healthier, far less slanted view of the opposite sex.
Yang's Platoon Captain cared about her. That much was obvious. The goodwill that he held for her helped fuel the sense of responsibility that he felt in regards to assuring her health and happiness, and those powerful emotions bled into his aura to make it feel… safe…
At the same time, that word… safe… definitely couldn't be used to describe the man himself.
The fact of the matter was that John Freeman wasn't safe. He was charismatic, self-confident, bold and assertive in a way that was destined to land him quite the complicated love-life. At the same time, Yang could feel that her Platoon Captain currently had bigger, far more important things on his mind than romancing the women in his Platoon, and that he wasn't actively trying to impress or seduce any of them into his bed.
For the moment at least… the man was safe…
The supreme irony of her current situation was that Yang couldn't help but be attracted to the intensity of John's focus… Both John and her new partner Blake had that same sense of drive, that same variety of single-minded determination… They were strong… They were driven… They were in desperate need of someone to help keep them grounded, to help them relax, someone like her…
The fact that Yang was attracted to the same set of character traits in two incredibly different people was definitely informative… but it was also just a bit scary…
Either way, for the moment at least, Yang was free to relax and just let her emotions sort themselves out. John's gently kneading hands almost made that outcome unavoidable…
Around the time RoboDoc four was two-thirds over, Yang found herself being lulled into a languid and boneless state of nearly perfect relaxation that had her curling up against her Platoon Captain's side. John didn't seem to mind her sudden closeness in the least, as his only response was to pull the blanket down from the top of the couch and gently drape it across her body.
By the time the movie was coming to an end, Yang was sprawled out across John's thighs, her hair was covering his entire lap like a shiny golden blanket, and she'd never been more comfortable in her whole entire life. Sleep came not long after, with the quiet dialogue of late night infomercials acting as white noise…
3 Hours Later…
Jaune's Perspective…
When a slim but toned pair of arms tightened reflexively around Jaune's waist, he was awoken from a surprisingly comfortable doze reclining back on the living room couch. Over the next half a minute, he blinked open his eyes and then looked down towards his waist, where he found the infamous man-hating beauty Yang Xiao Long asleep and snuggling her admittedly angelic face down into his lap.
Needless to say, Jaune's eyes immediately widened in shock and he only just barely managed to keep his body from tensing up. In the end, he didn't move a single muscle for several minutes in a row. He didn't want to disturb the adorable blonde that was curled around his waist.
When he finally managed to pull together the willpower required to move, Jaune eased Yang's arms off of his waist in a series of very slow and measured movements, slipped off of the couch, shoved his forearms in between the different couch-cushions to subtly get them in under Yang's body, and then drew the woman up from the couch. Soon enough, he was walking up the stairs to enter team RPBY's platoon barracks, where he gently eased the blonde down into her bed.
At first Jaune thought that he'd succeeded. He thought Yang was still asleep. Then he realized that he was wrong.
Yang was staring up at his face from extremely close range.
Jaune very carefully didn't splutter, backpedal or behave as if he was guilty of anything. He knew better than that. Instead, he slowly drew Yang's blanket up the length of her body, gave her a tiny little wink, and then quietly walked out the door.
Less than half a minute later, Jaune collapsed down onto his own bed, where he stared up at the ceiling and fisted his hands in his sheets. Ren's advice about befriending all of his teammates made sense, but he definitely wasn't supposed to be tucking in the Platoon's beautiful blonde at night.
Back there in the living room, John had never even thought about whether or not his actions were appropriate, and that recklessness was going to be a problem. He needed to think before he spoke his mind. He needed to imagine where his actions would lead him before he acted.
He needed to do better.
The fact of the matter was that Jaune was finding himself on the razor's edge of self-control versus temptation far, far more often then he'd ever imagined possible, and he had no reason to believe that his situation was going to get any easier. In little more than a week's time, he'd already grown to appreciate the various personalities and strengths present in all of the women of his Platoon, which actually was a good thing and should be encouraged. What wasn't such a good thing, was the fact that he was also enormously attracted to seventy-five percent of his teammates (he knew better than to view Nora that way).
Monty Oum help him…
Long story short, it was only with the help of the Arc family's mental disciplines and his Semblance that Jaune was finally able to relax his body and fall back to sleep.
Saturday Morning, Housing Arrangement Number 7, Jaune's Current Aura Control Is Approximately 25 Percent…
Pyrrha's Perspective…
With the type of mindless perseverance that comes from long practice, Pyrrha Nikos woke up with her scroll alarm at six Am, donned her bronze armor, grabbed up Miló and Akoúo̱ (her spear and shield), and then walked down the stairs towards house number seven's courtyard.
The morning was quiet, cool and sunny, but then Pyrrha was just tired enough that her surroundings held little interest for her. She wasn't a morning person by nature, even though she was better at handling fatigue than most people. Still… Her bed really had felt especially warm and comfortable this morning…
Even as she quietly mourned the loss of her ultra-fluffy pillow, Pyrrha swung open the front door of the house to take in a view of the courtyard, at which point her morning immediately changed for the better.
John Freeman was completing a very fast-paced and precise set of sword Kata in the shade of a nearby tree, which most likely meant that he'd started well over an hour earlier because these movements tend to start at a slow speed and then accelerate over time. The man was a consummate early riser who trained like the best of the best, daily, correctly and enthusiastically.
Unbeknownst to the redhead Hoplite, a large and happy smile started growing clear across her face as she bounced down the stairs and began moving in her Platoon Captain's direction.
It simply couldn't be helped.
John Freeman was… he was just so fun!… He loved training, he enjoyed self-improvement, he actively sought out new challenges, and if the feelings being channeled into her body through his daily aura treatments were any indication, he thought that she was special because she felt the same! The man celebrated aspects of her character that had always alienated her from her peers in the past, and he had the self-confidence required to see her skills for what they truly were, the fruit of a lifetime of hard effort, rather than some sort of divine gift.
Suddenly and intensely, a desire to hug John's face tightly to her chest washed over Pyrrha, merely because he made her feel so… normal. Oh sure, Pyrrha hadn't missed the fact that John really did have an exceptionally high opinion of her, but she'd also noticed the fact that he wasn't dehumanizing her as 'The Goddess of Victory' in his mind. Ironically, John was actually holding her to a much higher standard than the fan-boys/girls that she'd met over the years, but that was only because he fully expected her to become a far more versatile and well-rounded individual over the next four years. He expected her to evolve both as a friend and as a leader just as much as he expected her to grow stronger as a Huntress…
Wow… Just, wow! John Freeman really did have a hug coming his way. Not today of course. No, definitely not… but someday very soon!
As she arrived under the leafy foliage of the tree and took in John's sweat-damped body, Pyrrha found herself wondering just what kind of upbringing granted a person the kind of quiet self-assurance that her Platoon Captain seemed to exude from his every pore. He was always so calm and in control…
If only that calm was yet another thing that the two of them had in common…
Truth be told, Pyrrha lost quite a bit of time at the beginning of the week worrying on John's behalf, because at the time she considered his ingrained self-confidence seriously misplaced. Beacon Academy is one of the best and most competitive Hunter Academies in all of Remnant, and yet John was freely admitting to having almost no training at all regarding the very basics of aura control.
The man's admission had sent a chill of unease coursing up and down the length of Pyrrha's spine. She couldn't even imagine being that unprepared and vulnerable...
By the time combat classes started on Monday morning, Pyrrha was all but certain that John's school life was about to unravel into a hellish nightmare of unanswered beatings and nearly constant humiliation. Try as she might, she wasn't able to figure out even a half decent reason why Professor Goodwitch was barring the boy from wearing his reactive armor. She also couldn't figure out why John was so enthusiastic about the restrictions that were being placed upon him. Even after their first combat class ended, during which time John managed to make easy work of Shale Pine, Pyrrha still found herself expecting the boy to get demolished by the more capable trainees that would follow, such as Ochre, Hawthorn and Coal…
Except of course, none of those beatings ever ended up happening…
What happened instead, was that John Freeman noticeably and visibly enjoyed every single second of his first week at Beacon Academy, even during those times when the odds were stacked up against him. What's more, the man had reacted to all of the opposition that he faced during their combat classes with such an impeccable mixture of intelligence and ice-cold-cleverness that the rest of their class started to believe that he was merely slowing himself down on purpose…
Without a doubt, John's ability to learn, adapt, and then survive in new, foreign and hostile environments was one of the most impressive things that Pyrrha had ever seen in her whole entire life. She couldn't even imagine how she'd have reacted if their circumstances were reversed. Maidens help her… One of the primary reasons why Pyrrha was so unbelievably well-trained in the first place was because she was trying to compensate for her own character defects. She was absolutely terrible at fending off feelings of inadequacy and her sense of shame was less than a millimeter away from her comfort zone.
Speaking of being outside of her comfort zone… Pyrrha quite literally had no idea how to have a normal social life, which of course meant that this past week had been enormously stressful for her, even after taking into consideration how friendly Nora was and the fact that both John and Penny were determined to help.
What John Freeman would likely never realize was just how much inspiration Pyrrha was taking from his mental resilience and flexibility, as she pushed herself beyond all of the psychological barriers keeping her silent, afraid and alone.
Around the time that Pyrrha finished mentally thanking the man, John finally noticed her walking across the lawn in his direction, and his entire countenance instantly brightened up in response. He was happy to see her. He liked her, and not just a little bit. That much was completely obvious.
And just like that, Pyrrha suddenly felt herself feeling very, very social for the first time in… ever… She wanted to talk to the man. She wanted to get to know him better and have him get to know her in return… Unfortunately, there was a reason that she was awake at this Gods awful time on a Saturday morning, and John would likely welcome the experience…
Pyrrha suddenly hefted Miló and Akoúo̱ in a ready stance and gave the man a very significant look. Of course, the wide and grateful smile that John gave her in return had her blushing even as the man cracked his neck and drew up his shield.
"Good morning Pyrrha," John quietly offered even as he began strafing to the right and assessing the positions of her arms.
The reason why Pyrrha didn't reply with words was because she was far, far too busy enjoying the look in John's eyes. They were the eyes of a tactical fighter dissecting their opponent, and they gave her the chills. Instead of saying anything at all, she quickly moved to clash with the man, swept her spear in its shortest form down at his head and then followed her attack with several more stabs and a sweep of her shield. It had to be said that she was currently moving at only two and a half times civilian norms, but for John, who was still very new to this level of rapid movement, he was already having to focus quite a bit to match her step for step. As she'd learned to expect from the man, over the next twenty to thirty seconds, John's sense for the speed that they were moving at visibly improved, and he started poking at her defences with clever little chops, stabs, and slashes that had her picking up the pace.
For the fourth day in a row, Pyrrha marveled at John's ability to perceive his opponent and begin moving in ways specifically designed to be a pain in the butt. It wasn't as if he was figuring out her movements to the extent that he was tearing open her defences or anything, but the way that John tended to make her extend herself that extra inch or two away from what she considered good form or pull away when she'd intended to push never failed to make her smile in enjoyment.
Of course Pyrrha's enjoyment always reflected in her excitement, and her excitement always reflected in her speed. In that way, you could always tell how happy Pyrrha Nikos was with her sparring partner based on how fast she was raining blows down upon their body. It was no surprise to her that very few people voluntarily sparred with her on an ongoing basis.
John Freeman was so damned durable though… It was almost as if he was made for her…
Very suddenly, Pyrrha's movement speed grew faster by a significant margin, and John's eyes widened in surprise.
Pyrrha wasn't surprised in the least… Instead, she was very, very excited...
Within the next ten minutes, Pyrrha found herself moving well over five times the speed of a civilian, and John's limbs were a blur of desperate movement trying to fend her off. Normally, they'd still be moving somewhere around four times the norm so that John could more easily acclimate, but Pyrrha had run out of self-control at some point and she was flying around her opponent with a manic and happy smile on her face.
After slashing her shield down at John's knees, Pyrrha turned to kick his shield aside and then she used the rapid series of sweeping kicks that followed to conceal a quick use of her polarity Semblance. In less than a split second, her Semblance allowed her to draw her metal spear around her back at a rapid rate even as she dashed forward to shield-bash John using both of her hands. Then, when the man managed to sidestep the full weight of her shield, she grabbed up her spear and stabbed at him from a location that should've been physically impossible to arrange.
Fwoosh… Thump… The sound of displaced air was immediately followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground.
Pyrrha's stabbing attack… had missed…
No. Wait… That wasn't what happened...
John had dodged backwards with enough desperate force that he'd tripped and fell onto his butt just a split second before Pyrrha's attack arrived.
How... in... the... hell...
Pyrrha's high speed movements immediately slid to a stop as a mixture of surprise and confusion made her completely forget about the spar that they were having.
She couldn't figure it out.
John would've been far too slow to dodge that particular spear thrust even if he was a proficient enough martial artist to do so, which he wasn't. Not yet anyway... Instead, the man appeared to have known about her attack ahead of time… but… how? How did John predict that her spear would come stabbing at him from an oblique angle that started from a concealed location behind her back? Much, much more experienced fighters had tried and failed to anticipate that exact move in the past…
There was only one conclusion that made any sense, and only because of who it was that Pyrrha was sparring against… She stared down at John with a newly serious expression on her face.
It didn't take long for John to catch on to the sudden intensity of her gaze, at which point he started staring right back up at her.
"How long have you known," Pyrrha suddenly asked without any preamble.
"By the end of our second spar," John quietly admitted.
"How?" Pyrrha needed to know exactly what clues had revealed her Semblance so that she could do a better job of hiding them from her opponents in the future.
"It's not something you did, Pyrrha. You never gave away any noticeable tells," John immediately assured with a small but meaningful shake of his head. "I figured out your Semblance by accident, when what I was really trying to do was get to know you better. I was watching you very, very closely as we sparred, and I found myself wondering about that armor of yours... The armor that you wear every day in all of our spars and combat classes is the world famous 'Goddess of Victory' armor, which at first I found… odd... Considering your current desire to avoid any and all notoriety over here in Vale, it would've made a lot more sense for you to rebrand yourself, change your image, hang up the armor... but you didn't... You wear that armor every single day, even though it makes you stand out like a sore thumb..."
Even as she nodded her head at the accuracy of John's conjecture, Pyrrha found herself amazed at the massive leap of logic that his current line of reasoning represented.
"The next thing that I noticed was that your weapons, Miló and Akoúo̱, are specifically designed to maximize your mobility," John continued as he slowly rose back up to his feet. You can use your rifle-spear to spontaneously launch your body in any direction that you desire, and your rebounding shield techniques even allow you to change directions in midair. You're fast, highly agile, and more often than not... airborne... While keeping all of these things in mind, it didn't make much sense to me that you would wear so much heavy metal wrapped around your arms and your legs…"
Once again Pyrrha nodded as John put together the different clues, and she began to see how he'd figured her out.
"So you see," John concluded in a newly quiet and serious tone of voice. "The armor that you're wearing doesn't make sense psychologically, nor does it make any sense physically. The fact of the matter is that the armor you're currently wearing doesn't make much sense at all... Unless…"
"Unless the armor allows me to push for extra speed and strength using a Semblance that applies to metals," Pyrrha slowly finished, amazement clear to hear in her voice. Then she paused and some, but not all, of the intensity returned to her expression. "I've never used my Semblance on you though… Today was the very first time that I used it, when I pulled that trick with my spear. I'm sorry about that by the way. I was just having a lot of fun…"
By this point John was shaking his head and a smile was growing across his face. "Don't apologize, Pyrrha. You've been immensely patient while sparring with a much, much weaker opponent. I'm happy that you're having fun because so am I, and I look forward to our daily sparring sessions..."
"H..How did you know that I was going to use my Semblance though," Pyrrha persisted as a bright red flush started heating up her cheeks.
"It was subtle, but I managed to catch on to an unusual intensity growing in your eyes," John replied while staring into her eyes again as if to demonstrate his point. "Of course, I didn't know anything for certain, but I was keeping an eye open for unconventional attacks, and then I couldn't find your spear..."
"You… really are, a dangerous man," Pyrrha whispered just loud enough to hear.
"Not quite yet," John corrected with a small feral grin on his face. "But since my sparring partner is absolutely incredible, I'll be very disappointed with myself if I don't get there over the next few months."
For the Maidens only know what time since the first day they met, Pyrrha found herself blushing as she turned away and drew in a very deep breath. John Freeman wasn't very good for her heart. Her body was reacting as if the man had just professed his undying love for her, when all he'd really said was that she was a good sparring partner.
"Do you want to take a quick break and just… talk? After all, I really do want to get to know you better," John suddenly ventured from behind Pyrrha's back.
Oh, Maidens help her…
Turning back in John's direction, Pyrrha found the man dropping cross legged at the base of the tree and placing his weapons gently on the grass. "What do you want to know," she asked as she mirrored his posture just a few feet in front of him.
"Many things, both immensely important and completely mundane, but first, I think I'll start by learning your favorite food," John announced with great pomp and circumstance.
With an amused smile and a small shake of her head, Pyrrha leaned a little closer to the man sitting in front of her and then whispered as if they were exchanging secrets. "I refuse to tell you that… I can already tell that you're going to bribe people with your cooking at the very first opportunity…"
The immensely warm and affectionate smile that John gave Pyrrha in response to her prediction was so sweet that it hurt, so new that it was surreal, and so unexpected it made her heart skip a beat. Once again she tried to stop it from happening, failed, and then subvocalized a moan of long suffering as her face flushed a hot and vibrant red.
With every single moment that the two of them spent together, one thing was becoming increasingly obvious to Pyrrha Nikos. John Freeman made her normally very obedient body feel... uncooperative…
Still… She really did enjoy that smile...
Jaune's Perspective...
Over the next hour, Jaune and Pyrrha alternatively sparred and talked about whatever came to mind, during which time Jaune was continually surprised by just how down to earth, open and… it had to be said… adorable, the redhead hoplite really was. Pyrrha was the product of a very strict and regimented upbringing, and she was using her newfound freedom to explore brand new aspects of her personality every single day. Jaune found everything about the woman's current situation enormously relatable, which made it easy for the two of them to share their newfound likes and dislikes, hobbies, etc and then grow closer at a rapid rate.
Unsurprisingly, Jaune really liked Pyrrha. She was a perfect mixture of cute, innocent and badass that Jaune found enormously compelling. It didn't hurt that she was extremely easy on the eyes, even though he wasn't supposed to be paying attention to such things…
By the time Jaune and Pyrrha were finished their sparring for the day and were sharing a bottle of water on a bench in front of the house, the rest of their Platoon was slowly filing out onto the lawn with varying levels of despondency and or enthusiasm on their faces. At first, Jaune was surprised by his Platoon's more than stellar attendance, as he'd never made any demands that anyone train with him on their weekends off. It was only after Weiss, Yang and Ruby all asked him if he was going to be performing his aura treatment like every other day that he finally understood what was truly fueling everyone's work ethic...
Of course, Jaune wasn't going to complain about what motivated his Platoon. Not when the end result was that they all intended to train as hard as professional athletes every single day.
When Penny, the last person to arrive, ambled up to Jaune's side from the South entrance of the courtyard, Jaune arched an eyebrow at the woman before nodding his head in sudden understanding.
"I spent the night visiting daddy," Penny confirmed directly into Jaune's shoulder after wrapping her arms around his waist.
"What time were you forced to wake up this morning so that you could aura dash back here through the forest," Jaune asked even as he hugged the orangette in return and channeled a current of aura into her body.
"Early enough," Penny breathed out with a sigh of contentment. "Completely worth the effort though… This has become an essential part of my morning ritual."
"The hug or the aura," Jaune asked with both a smile on his face and amusement in his voice.
"It's all a hug big brother... your arms... your aura... all of it," Penny corrected while burrowing her face deeper into the t-shirt over his chest. "So good… I don't know what I'd do without you…"
Due mostly to the fact that Penny was repeating that line at every single opportunity for a very specific reason, Jaune only responded by combing his fingers through her ultra-long and wavy orange hair until he was finished refilling her aura capacity. Then he squeezed her body just a little bit tighter before pulling away and gesturing towards the rest of their Platoon. "I suppose you're already sick of running, but we were all about to jog to the gym facilities."
"I'm good to go," Penny reassured her brother with a bright smile and a series of small energetic hops.
Nodding his head, Jaune turned towards the rest of his Platoon and then smiled at what he saw. Everyone was just finishing up their various stretches and were ready to head out. "Alright then," he called out in a business casual tone of voice. "While we run to the gym, I'm going to have us try out a few squad formations and practice using clock times to convey directions. These are relatively simple techniques that'll give us an advantage during Oetger and Shaw's first few training exercises..."
Saturday Morning, Immediately Following the Morning Workout, Housing Arrangement Number 7's Courtyard
Lie Ren's Perspective…
As he settled down in a lotus position on a shady patch of grass in front of housing arrangement number seven, Lie Ren sighed in a rare bout of audible contentment. With their first week at Beacon coming to a close, he could finally say with absolute certainty that both he and Nora were truly starting to feel at home.
It wasn't the creature comforts of their current living arrangement that was making them feel so welcome, because truth be told Ren and Nora had very rarely ended up having to rough it without a bed or the basic amenities. Rather, it was the sense of knowing that made Beacon Academy… better… special… The two of them knew when and where their next meal was going to be served, they knew exactly where they were going to be sleeping that night, they knew just who it was that they could trust to provide them both assistance and support.
Even Lie Ren, as quiet and antisocial as he knew he was, was well-aware of just how important it was to be surrounded by trustworthy people. You don't grow up in the outer wilds without seeing the ruinous cost of deceit and betrayal. Colonies live or die based on whether or not the people living within their walls can pull together or not, and Ren had seen both outcomes for himself on several different occasions.
In that sense, something truly amazing was currently happening within housing arrangement number seven, and Ren could see that much more and more with every day that passed. Platoon number one currently contained an Atlesian Heiress that was legitimately interested in growing closer to her peers, a self-aware blonde bombshell that was actively trying to smooth out her roughest edges, a shy and squeamish international superstar that was noticeably breaking out of her shell, and a young woman even more quiet and intractable than Ren that was beginning to learn to rely on those people around her…
Ren could only shake his head at what he saw happening all around him, and wonder just how much of these developments their Platoon Captain specifically planned to have happen.
Their Platoon Captain… John Freeman…
Well, suffice it to say, they definitely could've ended up with worse than John Freeman. The man was well-informed, well-intentioned, well-funded, intelligent, unbelievably hard-working, enormously supportive, and unrelentingly reasonable. He never pushed… He didn't have to…
John Freeman was very, very good at ensuring the cooperation of young women, apparently as a bi-product of having several sisters, and an exceptionally sophisticated upbringing that he was currently afraid of talking about.
Ren probably would've cooperated with John's directions either way, but then the man proved that he deserved his loyalty when he somehow managed to see right through Nora's endlessly bright facade to identify the concerns that were hidden underneath. It was official. The man was an honest to Gods leader, rather than some self-centered kid that was only posturing as one. He was worried about their health, psychology and development. He was taking care of the logistics behind their training and missions. He wanted them to succeed, and be as safe as possible while doing so…
Needless to say, Nora's new wardrobe was the single pinkest thing that Ren had ever seen in his whole entire life… It was beautiful because of how happy it made Nora.
As if summoned from the direction of Ren's thoughts, John Freeman was suddenly walking across the grass in his direction, causing the Mistralian boy to arch his eyebrows at the man in silent question.
"I've noticed that you have a daily meditation practice," John began with a nod down towards Ren's current lotus position. "I'm not bad at meditating, but I'd be very grateful if you'd teach me how to reach deeper in a spiritual sense. There's an aspect of my Semblance that will only become useful to me if I'm able to strengthen my soul.
After only a single moment where Ren stared up at his Platoon Captain's face, he gestured down at the grass a few feet in front of his knees.
Saturday Afternoon, Beacon Bus Shuttle Terminal
Penny's Perspective…
When Jaune Arc boarded the twelve o'clock bus shuttle heading into Vale, Penny was already sitting in the back row wearing a large black hoodie to conceal her face and her bright orange hair. She was spying on her brother. She wasn't going to sugar-coat her current actions in her mind. She had every intention of tailing the man for the entire afternoon.
Over and above the fact that Penny's soul was created using the amalgamated aura of two very kind and considerate men, she also had over a hundred terabytes of information regarding values, morals and ethics downloaded directly into her brain… Every single one of these data files had their own set of guidelines that hinted at what the morally correct decision should be in a wide variety of different situations.
Every single one of these guidelines were urging Penny not to trespass upon her brother's privacy…
Long story short, Penny's current behavior was keeping her from the peace of mind that being perfectly moral and ethical always seemed to bring her. She was being a bad girl, and in doing so, she was causing herself some anxiety… Oddly enough, Penny was all but certain that her brother would actually approve of her current immorality. While Jaune did think that it was important to do the right thing whenever possible, he also wanted his sister to exercise all of her options, not just the options that her core programming deemed acceptable...
At the moment, good, bad or indifferent didn't really matter all that much. Penny Polendina was entirely committed to following through with her current course of action.
Jaune Arc, Penny's big brother, was scheduled to visit Doctor Pietro Polendina, her daddy, for the first time in well over a month. Not only that, but they were meeting without inviting her along, which could only mean that they intended to talk about her… She wanted… no… She needed to know what they were going to discuss regarding her. She was well aware that the men in her life couldn't be trusted to be completely forthcoming with her. They both cared about her with a powerful intensity, and they worried about her feelings to an almost annoying extent.
With her mind made up and a plan of action in mind, Penny allowed Jaune to believe that she was going to spend the afternoon learning more about popular culture with Nora and Yang, simply by nodding along at breakfast when both girls talked about heading to Beacon's mixed media store. Then, when everyone split up to go their separate ways, she gave everyone the slip, changed into one of Blake's more gothic sweaters, and moved to the shuttle bus terminal to await her brother's arrival.
Sure enough, at twelve o'clock noon, on the dot, Jaune Arc strolled casually onto the bus shuttle, and took a seat with a book in hand to pass the time.
Penny forced herself to keep her eyes trained on the scenery outside as the VTOL shuttle rose up off of the ground and careened over the forests surrounding Beacon. Not looking in Jaune's direction was always a bit of a challenge, which was actually pretty interesting considering just how much information her other senses fed her about his movements and mental state on an ongoing basis. While the chemical composition of Jaune's pheromones were currently conveying that he was a little bit fatigued by a fractured night's sleep, they also noted that he was well fed and watered, and that he was in excellent physical health. Even more importantly, Jaune's breathing, heart-rate and the aura that she could feel gently pulsing off of his body, all indicated that he was currently at ease in an emotional sense.
Yes… Penny's brother was in nominal condition, which always served to make her happy… except the emotion that she was currently experiencing was somehow far, far more complicated than simple happiness. Emotions were usually easy to label, except of course when they weren't… When Penny first explained to Jaune that she sometimes felt several different emotions that blurred together in an endlessly complicated, wiggly mass, or single emotions that swelled within her chest with an almost painful intensity, he smiled proudly at her, hugged her tightly, and informed her that she was experiencing nothing less than 'the human condition.' He also bought her a pair of teddy bears and some chocolates, and then explained that fun/relaxing pastimes and delicious foods would usually help her cope with life's more difficult emotions.
As it turns out, Penny quite enjoyed seeking out relaxation. She especially enjoyed relaxing with her brother. Of course, Jaune was also the source of the lion's share of the more intense emotions that Penny had ever experienced, which is why seeking relaxation with him tended to have mixed results. He usually did manage to make her feel really good in various different ways, but he also made her feel absolutely everything with an intensity that caused her heart to flip flop in her chest.
Being human was complicated, and Penny was still getting used to it...
When the bus shuttle finally settled down in Vale Colony, Penny's very philosophical ruminations suddenly came to an end as her attention returned to the here and now. Jaune was already on his feet and moving towards the bus shuttle's exit hatch with an enthusiastic but purposeful expression upon his face.
Really, really handsome… Wait, stop! Get your head in the game Penny!
After rapidly shaking out her head, Penny sifted through the various information contained within her databases in order to rapidly familiarize herself with how tailing someone was usually accomplished. Then she was surprised to find out that she wasn't going to be able to use the military's more conventional methods. Under normal circumstances, professional spies tail a person by working in teams of at least three, with only a single person keeping the target within visual range at any one time.
Penny was going to need to find another way, which is why it was a good thing that she was a trainee Huntress rather than a spy. She was going to take a far more vertical approach, which was mostly possible because of exactly who and what she was…
Penny Polendina was blessed with both a loving father and a doting brother that spent an entire year toiling day and night to perfect every tiny little aspect of her body right down to the cellular level. It wasn't arrogance that made Penny regard her current body as flawless in every single particular. Instead, it was the intense pride and appreciation that she felt whenever she thought about all of the time, effort and genius that went into her creation… She'd watched the two men work from within the lab's many cameras, and just remembering the care and devotion that went into growing, fabricating, and transmuting her current form into existence made her feel both warm and bubbly inside.
It also couldn't be denied that her body really, truly was… perfect...
Penny's silky smooth, well-toned, and shapely female form was far stronger, faster and more flexible than a normal human could possibly hope to become without the use of aura, because the nanites residing in her every organ, vein, nerve, bone, and tissue, optimized her performance in thousands of different ways. She also healed at an amazing rate for exactly the same reason, her bones were a nearly unbreakable unobtanium composite, and she could boost her senses at will in order to observe her surroundings with a preternatural level of clarity.
Perfect. Her body was perfect. There was just no two ways about it.
The most miraculous part of being given all of these amazing gifts was that Penny's body was still mostly human, and incorporated every single one of the normal biological systems that everyone else enjoys. She had a nervous system, a set of lungs, a heart, veins, arteries, glands, nodes, a stomach, an intestinal tract, kidneys, a bladder, reproductive organs, and everything else that made up your garden variety human female. In fact, her body was so incredibly well fabricated, her unobtanium bones housed real human bone marrow for the purposes of creating new blood for her bloodstream.
Not only was her body a miracle of scientific genius and Semblance abilities, but she also ended up inheriting a Semblance all of her own!
Having both aura and a Semblance was a truly profound and meaningful part of Penny's existence because it was nothing less than tangible proof that she did indeed have her very own soul… It was also extremely interesting... Penny's Semblance ability had somehow retained the same functionality that it was originally designed to have back when her body was going to be nothing more than a metal shell filled with wires and nanotechnology.
Her Semblance was twelve neon green laser-swords…
Penny's original robot body was supposed to carry these laser-swords within her lower back and they were supposed to be attached to her body by a series of razor wires. Now that Penny was mostly human, she actually formed the swords in the palms of her hands when she released thousands of nanites from within her body and then filled them with her aura. Another difference between her Semblance now, as opposed to its original design, was that the razor wires that were originally supposed to attach these swords to her body were gone, replaced by a series of intangible threads made up entirely of her aura.
Penny Polendina didn't just have four limbs… She had sixteen… and twelve of them were over ten meters long.
While Penny could plant her actual feet on the ground and raise all of her laser-swords up into the air to float around her body at her direction, the proof that these swords were actually attached to her body rather than levitating was that she could also plant them on the ground and then use the threads to lift herself up in the air. Jaune tended to say that her ability reminded him of a marionette doll, but Penny was well aware of what the skill really looked like. It was like she had twelve spider limbs that could carry her around in the air (only far less creepy because they were invisible)…
During a battle, Penny could plant half of her laser-swords into ground up to a circumference of about fifteen meters, and then she could fly herself around like a ghost by flexing her invisible aura limbs. Long story short, she was a three-dimensional fighter that could attack from both the ground and the air at will…
Outside of battle, Penny's Semblance allowed her to be very, very mobile when moving around, even in tight environments such as forests or cityscapes.
Well, Penny was about to use the full mobility of her Semblance to follow her brother from rooftop to rooftop, so that she could stay out of sight and spy on his activities. Truth be told, she wasn't actually all that worried about losing line of sight of Jaune because he was currently wearing his reactive armor bands, and the nanobots contained inside of them replied to a type of latent signal that her body could create. The armor he was wearing was a beacon that she could follow for well over a Kilometer, which is why she was mostly tailing the boy for the fun of it.
Jaune Arc was an extremely interesting young man and Penny was extremely interested in him. She wasn't deluding herself on the matter. She knew it, her brother knew it, Pietro knew it, Platoon number one knew it… Everyone knew it.
Now Penny wanted to know what Jaune and Pietro had to say on the matter when she wasn't around…
Over the following two hours, Penny observed Jaune from a distance as he checked in on his new bolthole property to give feedback and directions to the contractors, took a cab to a hat store in the west-end Market District, and then walked about four Kilometers to the South to a car dealership that dealt in very, very fast vehicles.
At first Penny couldn't quite believe what all of her advanced senses were telling her, but that sensation didn't last long because she knew her brother very, very well. Within only an hour and a half of arriving at the car dealership, Jaune Arc bought three high-end motorcycles similar to Yang's, one black/orange for Ruby and Penny, one white/red for Weiss and Pyrrha, and one green/pink for Ren and Nora. Next, Jaune bought himself a jet black hover-bike, which was a very interesting purchase… Penny didn't think that Jaune even had a license to drive normal vehicles, let alone the far more complex and hard to test for hover varieties.
After recalling every aspect of the conversation that Jaune and the car salesman had just finished having using her eidetic memory, Penny suddenly realized that there had been a conspiratorial quality to her brother's voice the whole entire time. With a nod of understanding, she pulled out her data scroll.
Aha…
Jaune had just skipped an enormous amount of red tape (as well as several legal matters) merely by paying double for every single vehicle that he'd just purchased. Penny also noticed that once again, her brother had purchased all of the vehicles using Goodwitch as an intermediary.
Finally, with the three motorcycles set to be delivered to the garage bay of his bolthole property, Jaune hopped onto his brand new hover-bike, and then piloted the machine out of the dealership with the ease of long practice.
"He must've learned to pilot all manner of vehicles in virtual reality back in the lab," Penny murmured to herself as she flew across the city at Jaune's back. Of course, while it looked like she was flying, what she was really doing was moving her laser-swords in a blur of absurd speed to slam them down against the rooftops, ledges, balconies. etc that she was careening over, and she was being kept aloft by her aura threads. Even then, as Penny soared through the air like some kind of comic book superheroine, she couldn't help thinking that hugging Jaune tightly from behind on his hover-bike would be a really fun way of getting around…
Ugh…
The conversation that Jaune was about to have with Pietro was extremely important, because Penny was well-aware of what emotion it was that she was feeling for her adoptive brother, and she wasn't alone in that realization. She knew very well that she was supposed to avoid feeling the way that she currently felt for hundreds of years if at all possible, but she felt it now anyway and it simply couldn't be helped.
Penny seriously didn't know what she'd do without her brother…
Saturday Evening, Vale Colony Residential Area, Doctor Pietro's Apartment
Jaune's Perspective…
When four o'clock rolled around, Jaune knocked on the door of Pietro's apartment with a small grin on his face because of the small and mundane digs that the man was choosing to occupy. Oh, sure Pietro had never been into living lavishly or anything, but to see someone with the vast resources and prestige that his patron had access to living in a one bedroom apartment was just a little bit surreal.
That feeling suddenly became that much stronger, when the scientist actually opened the door to his apartment, and Jaune's eyebrows rose up to his hairline in extreme amounts of surprise. A woman, a very pretty twenty something year old woman, was standing at Pietro's side when the man opened the door, and she quickly kissed him on the cheek before nodding cheerfully at Jaune and walking towards the elevator.
"My my my," Jaune quietly breathed out with a mixture of amusement and happiness in his voice. "You're quite a hit with the ladies over here in Vale…"
"From what I hear from Penny, we have that in common," Pietro laughed as he gestured for the boy to bring it in and give him a hug. Soon enough the two men were hugging it out, and lightly slapping each other's shoulders with ear to ear smiles on their faces.
"I've spent just as much time being disliked as I have making friends, but I'm starting to believe that my mixed reception so far has more to do with being a teenager than my personality," Jaune corrected.
With an amused shake of his head, Pietro gestured towards the dining room, where a table was fully laden with food that was clearly not cooked by him (Pietro's cooking always looks more like a chemistry experiment).
"That woman is quite the chef," Jaune pointed out as he settled into a chair at one side of the table. "Will you tell me her name?"
"Sherry Truce," Pietro replied with a smile. "My neighbour, friend, and… well you know…"
"I do know," Jaune immediately agreed. "I'm very happy for you."
"D'ohhh enough about me," Pietro rattled off while blushing and waving his utensils in front of his chest. "From what I've heard, you've achieved a great many things since you left Atlas a month ago. I'm very proud of you."
"It has been quite the busy and important time for me," Jaune agreed with a shrug.
"Will you tell me the entire story," Pietro requested with a grand gesture in Jaune's direction. "Your storytelling skills trump Penny's overexcited ramblings, and hearing about your thought process during these events always appeals to me."
With a nod and a pre-emptive sip of ice-water from a nearby glass, Jaune launched into his story and described the following things:
-The airship to Vale
-Weiss Schnee
-Taylor Teller and the raiders
-The destroyed airship controls
-The Vale boundary mountains
-Payla Brown
-Greg O'Neil
-The Gryphons
-His new scar
-The Vale Military
-Ozpin's questioning
-Anvil Colony
-Qrow Branwen
-Ruby Rose
-Yang Xiao Long
-Getting caught by Qrow
-Patch island colony
-Taiyang Xiao Long's so called 'training'
-Beacon Academy
-Pyrrha Nikos
-Beacon's Initiation Test
-Blake Belladonna
-The Grimm Swarm,
-The Wall
-The gravity barriers
-How well Jaune's constitution suited fighting Grimm swarms
-The success of his aura transfer to Blake
-Yang, Weiss, Pyrrha, Ruby, Ren, Nora and Penny defending the wall
-The division of Jaune's aura particles within his body
-The hydrogen explosion
-Jaune's training with Blake, Pyrrha and Goodwitch
-All of the combat class spars that Jaune took part in during the first week.
When Jaune finally finished running his friend through the events that had happened over the last month, Pietro's head was tilted to the side and he was giving him an extremely incredulous look.
Jaune just shrugged in return. He was well aware of how unlikely all of the things that he'd just said were.
"That's a… It's a lot to unpack, Jaune," Pietro finally began before pausing again to draw in a deep breath and shake his head in a rueful manner. "For now, I think I'll just say once again that I'm very proud of you, because I'm still reeling about how much has happened to you in only a month. A part of me thought that Penny was just over-excited over being reunited with you when she rattled on about you doing all of these impossible things."
Rather than shrugging again, this time Jaune merely nodded his understanding.
"Speaking of Penny being over-excited," Pietro slowly added after placing his utensils down upon his empty plate. "You aren't doing a good enough job of keeping her at a distance."
"I unceremoniously abandoned her by crossing the Abyssal Ocean to Vale," Jaune countered with a long-suffering sigh. "You can't seriously be suggesting that I haven't tried my very best."
"No. I'm merely pointing out that you're failing," Pietro immediately replied with a very serious expression on his face. "My daughter's smart enough to know exactly what you're trying to do, and she has no intention of letting you succeed. She loves you…"
At first, a small emotional hiccup was the only sound that Jaune made as his hands rose up to his hair and his elbows rested on the table. Then he drew in a very deep breath and sighed it out in one very long exhale. "I know," he finally admitted. "She isn't being subtle about it. She keeps repeating that same line of hers over and over again..."
"I don't know what I'd do without you," Pietro whispered as if to himself.
"How goes the stem cell and telomere research," Jaune suddenly interjected as his face re-emerged from within his hands.
"It's become my number one priority and I'm making progress every single day, but I'm not quite there yet." At the tail end of those words, Pietro suddenly gave Jaune a very hard look. "Jaune Arc, you tell me right this very second. What are your intentions towards my daughter?"
"To keep her company for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years," Jaune replied equally seriously. "Look… Pietro… I'll never allow Penny to sacrifice her immortality for me, but if we do manage to pull this off…"
At this point, Pietro's stare was intense enough to peel paint.
"I love her Pietro," Jaune suddenly announced both loudly and with feeling. "The feeling is deep, abiding and passionate enough to keep me warm even when Penny isn't around. Of course, I also love her enough to do what's necessary to keep her safe, but I… I…"
"I'm a world class genius," Pietro suddenly interrupted as he rose to his feet and rounded the table to press his hands down into both of Jaune's shoulders. "I won't let it come to that Jaune. I'll figure this out."
"So, I…" After swallowing heavily, Jaune gestured at Pietro and then himself. "I have…?"
"What? My blessing?" Pietro asked in an extremely incredulous tone of voice. "Good Lords Jaune, who else would I give it to? Above and beyond the fact that Penny loves you, you're also the only man I know that I can have a normal conversation with."
"Our conversations have far too much science jargon to be considered normal," Jaune corrected even as his eyes became wet with unshed tears and he rose to his feet to give his friend another hug.
When the two men finally settled back down at the table again it was with twin businesslike expressions on their faces.
It was time to talk shop.
"I am indeed doing my part to plan out a way that your Semblance can increase the longevity of a human being," Pietro announced as he steepled his hands on the table. "Are you doing your part Jaune? Are you improving your ability to visualize and manipulate smaller matter like the chromosomes or genetic material contained inside of your cells? Have you learned how to engineer your body at the genetic level?"
"Not yet. I keep trying every night just before bed, but manipulating matter that small is still far too complex to be done with any consistency. Thankfully, I've accidentally discovered a technique that I'm pretty sure will help me improve my success rate," Jaune replied.
"By accident?" Pietro wanted an explanation. That much was obvious.
"Yesterday, I was in the midst of losing a spar, and I needed to perceive exactly how I was being attacked," Jaune explained with a shrug. "In my desperation, I activated every part of my brain at exactly the same time by manipulating my nervous system using my Semblance. In doing so, I very briefly managed to give myself a level of cognition that I've never experienced before. The elevated state of cognition was powerfully hard to accomplish and the hyper-perception that I experienced nearly overwhelmed me, but it worked and I immediately saw the gimmick behind my opponent's Semblance. I'm going to begin practicing this technique, and I hope to be able to perceive smaller and smaller matter as a result."
"It's a good idea," Pietro slowly acknowledged. "Complete mind mastery though… Woah."
Once again, Jaune merely nodded because, yes, woah…
"Okay, well then, here's what I want you to keep in mind while you're practicing," Pietro began as he leaned in over the table and rested his chin on his forearms….
Laying on her back up on the roof of Pietro Polendina's apartment building, an orangette by the name of Penny was leaking copious amounts of tears even as her mouth wobbled up into a smile so wide it actually started to hurt her cheeks.
"He… He finally admitted it" she whispered to herself, her voice containing a completely inexpressible level of both joy and elation.
It took almost half an hour, but Penny eventually managed to pull herself back together so that she could begin making her way back towards Beacon Academy. She needed to reunite with her Platoon-mates in order to take part in their night on the town.
Penny currently had a lot to celebrate….
Saturday Evening, Vale Colony, Shipyards
When the Jormangund, a heavily fortified and offensively capable Atlesian freight liner, finally finished its long and perilous journey across the Abyssal Ocean and up the obscure and endlessly winding flows of the Snakehead River to Lake Vale and Vale Colony, it immediately began depositing hundreds of metal crates into the various warehouses that were scattered throughout the shipyard.
On any given day, hundreds of thousands of tons of food, tech components, Dust, Natural resources, etc, were itemized for dispersal in a very tedious process that took several days.
It was because of this barely organized chaos that the event happened without anyone noticing.
In the days to come, the question that the workers of the shipyard would ask, was why had the side of a large, empty and completely undocumented metal container, had a large hole burnt out of its side with what appeared to be a welding torch...
What no one would ever find out, was that several dozen 1.5 meter long spider-esque, segmented robots had scurried out of this newly created hole in the container, broke off into half a dozen smaller groups and then silently slinked away in different directions. Any camera's that might've caught what was happening suddenly stopped operating, as if they were the target of some kind of EMP field...
Within merely a matter of seconds, the small fleet of foreign robots scampered over the various walls of the shipyard, and then filed down into the nearest sewer grates...
Saturday Night, Vale Colony, Junior's Nightclub
Jaune's Perspective…
When the sun set beyond the barrier walls of Vale Colony, the city fought back against the encroaching darkness with a nearly endless array of holograms on every single building picturing everything from soap to condoms, the newest movie stars, and posters of the most famous Huntresses that the world had to offer.
As an example of this, a completely massive hologram of Pyrrha Nikos selling a cereal brand named Pumpkin Pete's, dominated Jaune's peripheral vision as he queued up in the line to enter a nightclub called Junior's. Then he was standing still enough that he could actually study the hologram in question and he realized something that had him shaking his head. The marketing people that had taken Pyrrha's image had edited it with their graphic design software, apparently in an attempt to improve upon her features… They'd achieved the exact opposite. The fake Pyrrha that he was currently looking at had absolutely nothing on the original.
Of course, this bastardized version of Pyrrha was most likely the version of her that she was trying so hard to leave behind, and that knowledge only served to make Jaune more determined to help.
It was only 9:15 Pm at the moment, which is why Jaune was already at the front of the lineup by the time he was finished with his thoughts, and he proffered his Beacon ID over to the bouncers as proof that he was legally an adult. After the two red-tied men checked the contents of the box that he was carrying and patted him down to make sure that he wasn't carrying any weapons, he was allowed inside of the building, and he was walking to the North-East side where he'd made arrangements to meet his friends.
"John!"
"Dude!"
A wide and happy smile grew across Jaune's face as he saw Payla and Greg waving at him from a booth table near the back corner of the bar, and he moved in their direction with fast paced and eager steps. "It's great to see you guys again! I wanted to thank you both back there at the Wall, but I…"
"Passed the hell out… again," Greg interrupted in a knowing voice filled with just a hint of amusement. Then the man was moving in and was slapping his hand down into Jaune's shoulders in a friendly and enthusiastic manner.
"Yeah, not a fan," Jaune agreed as he returned his friend's somewhat rough greeting in kind, started receiving a hug from Payla around the waist and then laughed about the mess that they were making in the aisle. Then all three of them were moving into the booth with Payla and Greg sitting side by side, and Jaune was grinning at the two of them without any reservation.
Payla and Greg were hilarious… but only because they were a couple now. Super uptight and nervous Payla Brown was romantically involved with unbelievably laid-back and carefree Greg O'Neil. Oh sure, Jaune was quite happy for the both of them, but he'd have to admit that when he tried to locate them separately and found them living together instead, he'd barely believed his eyes.
"How… when," Jaune asked as his eyes tracked back and forth between the two of them.
"After the Airship," Payla began.
"Before the Airfield," Greg finished.
"And how is it…" Jaune began.
"We… balance out," Payla offered.
"It works," Greg added.
"Wow… You guys are completely adorable," Jaune enthused.
While Greg only laughed at Jaune's words, Payla blushed, waved at a waitress and then gestured that they needed some drinks. The distant woman nodded and then disappeared to grab a new tray of beers and cocktails.
In the meantime, Jaune retrieved a box that had dropped to the floor at the side of the table when they met and formed a dogpile in the aisle. "Go ahead and open the box you two. I've been meaning to get this to Greg for a while, but I changed my plans when I heard that you two were an item."
When the two civilians opened the box, they found two gender appropriate cowboy hats sitting at the bottom, one black for Greg and one white for Payla.
Greg looked highly amused.
Payla looked confused as all hell, and she looked to her boyfriend for answers.
"Back on the airship, just after the cavalry arrived, I ran over to wrap up John's wounded face," Greg began with a laugh. "Unfortunately, I was only fast enough to hear the man mutter something about owing me a cowboy hat before he passed the hell out.".
"I did bring it up again in the med bay," Jaune immediately corrected.
"Yeah, but that part's nowhere near as funny." As he spoke, Greg slipped the black hat onto his head and then turned to Payla for her opinion. He was going to have to wait. Payla was slipping her own hat onto her head and was trying to look at her reflection in a glass full of beer.
They needn't have worried. The cowboy hats suited both of them really well and they wore them for the rest of the night.
Just as Jaune had thought, he really did like both Greg and Payla, and they had a really good time as they drank and talked about the minutiae of their lives. Jaune explained what Beacon was like and what he was learning, while Greg and Payla described how they were making a living installing gravity barriers around the colony's walls for the military. Apparently, the job was somewhat monotonous, but it paid well and it was worthwhile because it helped ensure the safety of Vale's population.
Jaune took the opportunity to relay a plan that he had for his Platoon in the future and how he wanted his civilian friends to help him make the most of it.
There were smiles all around the table by the time Jaune was finished with his explanation.
A little less than an hour later, most of the drinks were gone from the table (Greg was a good drinker), and Jaune was rising to his feet because the next round was on him. He weaved through the club's occupants towards the main bar, leaned back against its varnished wood and scanned the room as he waited his turn.
And that's when he saw the pack of them moving in his direction.
Team MMAD, aka team Marigold, aka team Madness as they were being called by most of the school, were walking up to Jaune in a line, kind of like how a pack of Beowolves would. Within just a few moments of catching sight of them, Melanie Malachite, Miltia Malachite, Aurora Snow, and Dove Bronzewing were encircling Jaune against the bar and staring at him like he was an extra slice on pizza day.
"Can I help you," Jaune asked, in a Hail Mary attempt to prevent what was sure to become a huge pain in the ass.
"Well, you could explain to us where you get the balls required to go anywhere alone when you're so damned weak," Melanie responded with a sniff.
"On the other hand, that's probably not important as we're about to teach you that particular lesson ourselves," Miltia added as soon as her twin sister finished.
"No hard feelings," Aurora Snow interjected in an aggressive sounding growl. "We have no choice but to coexist with Cardin, and he has a boner for you a mile long. "We're going to have to break you for him…"
"And you're not concerned about being caught on camera and getting arrested," Jaune asked merely to buy time to activate forty percent of the reactive armor around his wrists and ankles. While the bouncers had indeed frisked him for weapons, they'd never even looked twice at the black bands that were wrapped around his limbs.
"Miltia and Melanie smiled at that question and then shook their heads. "We're staff… Every single red-tie in this room works for us. You've made a critical error in judgment coming here…"
"Four against one," Jaune asked with an eyebrow arched up near his hairline.
"Two on one," Miltia corrected, looking aside at her sister. "We won't need anyone else." As the girl said those words a, she dropped her hands down into a pocket in her very elaborate combat dress and then pulled them back out again to reveal that she was carrying her weapons. Miltia's weapons of choice were claws that she wore like a pair of gloves. At her side, Melanie smiled like a cat cornering its prey as she clicked her bladed heels together and stepped wide for the room required to kick.
A tightly knit group of red-tied Security Guards suddenly formed a quickly expanding circle all around Jaune and his aggressors, proving once and for all that he was definitely in a hostile environment. Well… fine. Jaune was wearing his reactive armor for the first time all week, and he wasn't that same boy from the first day of Taiyang's training. Hell, Jaune had trained with Pyrrha Nikos just that morning, moving at the speeds expected of the best in their class, and compared to her, these girls just couldn't hope to measure up…
Then Miltia moved to stand behind Jaune and he was forced to turn aside to keep both girls in his peripheral vision, and he realized that his self-talk was just that… talk. He didn't have a plan yet, and until he did, he was fighting at a disadvantage…
It was in that moment that Jaune came to a decision. He needed to practice using the elevated state of cognition that he could use by activating every square inch of his brain at exactly the same time. Well… Now was as good a time as any two give it a try…
When Miltia suddenly released a loud snarl of aggression, it was actually Melanie that attacked from Jaune's other side, sweeping a bladed kick at his head that had him ducking even as his armor finished covering his entire torso. As Melanie's blade-shoe grazed a single hair on his head, Jaune pushed her foot faster through her kick aiming to disrupt her balance, turned to react to a blur of movement at his back and swept an armored elbow back to slam Miltia's hand away from his neck. Then both girls were swerving to the opposite position that they'd started in, and they were giving Jaune twin looks of intense surprise.
"You really have been holding back in the combat classes," Miltia accused in a furious sounding voice.
"We thought that rumor was bullshit," Melanie added even as she swept another kick in towards Jaune's back and then disappeared when he started turning in her direction.
"We've been holding back in the sparring as well," Miltia added as she moved seamlessly with her sister to keep Jaune's body stretched to the limit to keep both girls in sight.
Over the next half a minute, Jaune moved like a madman merely to block the perfectly choreographed blows flying at his torso, head and face, his fully activated brain flying through trajectories and arcs and parabolas, as he aimed to figure out the extremely odd fighting style and Semblance that these girls appeared to be using. On the bright side, his armor allowed him to move faster than either of these girls, and his hyper-optimized brain allowed him to perceive everything that was happening around his body in an increasingly painful but crystal clear variety of slow motion.
During the second half of that same minute, all of the Atlesian dance training that Jaune had received as a pre-teen actually started paying off in a major way, when he found himself almost unconsciously avoiding attacks that appeared to be a complex fusion of interpretive dance, ballet, Swing, Tai Chi and Krav Maga. The girls did have a fighting style… It was just extremely obscure and enormously rhythmic in nature…
From that point forward, Jaune found that he could generally predict the girls' movements with enough accuracy that he could block their attacks despite the fact that it was almost impossible to keep them both within his line of sight. The girls were gifted dancers. They must have grown up loving ballet and post-modern and swing, and these dance styles were infecting their fighting style to an absolutely absurd degree.
Despite the fact that the twins were currently doing their level best to maim him… it was still just a little bit cute…
With a small, slightly mischievous smile on his face, Jaune moved to start giving both of these girls exactly what they wanted, mostly because the alternative was to completely destroy the bar and endanger his civilian friends. He ducked and sidestepped and swiveled and bent and turned, as he eased a clawed fist up and away from his face, and then pressed close enough to a sweeping kick to turn it into a tight little pirouette instead, and his tactics worked because neither of these girls could help themselves. They were dancers through and through... It was a huge part of their identity…
Jaune Arc danced with the Malachite sister's even as he completely diffused every single one of their attacks, and for several minutes in a row, it was only the people observing from the outside that had a single clue…
Melanie shrieked in frustration as she once again attempted to sweep a slicing dance-esque kick at her adversary only to have him pull off what looked like a tango move in return when he closed, grabbed her by the thigh and then turned to place her directly in the way of her sister's next claw attack.
Miltia stopped on a dime just a split second before her claws would've hit her sister even though she should've had no idea what was happening on the other side of Jaune's body…
And that was the moment when both of the Malachite sister's visibly realized that 'John Freeman' was fucking with them. He'd completely figured them out. He knew how they moved…
"So you girls are empathically linked," Jaune remarked with a small nod of his head and a casual smile on his face. "Cool Semblance... Cool fighting style too... Look, I'd much rather just dance it out with you two than keep fighting and endanger all of the civilians around us... Any interest in putting aside the weapons?..."
After staring dumbstruck at Jaune's friendly and seemingly unconcerned demeanor for several seconds in a row, Miltia and Melanie growled as they turned towards their teammates and all of the Security Guards that were surrounding them in every direction, and then gestured for every single one of them to move at exactly the same time. "Don't just stand there you idiots! Get him!"
"Ooohhh, this looks like fun! I think we should join in too," a bright, feminine and unbelievably confident voice suddenly yelled out from well outside of the perimeter being made by Miltia and Melanie's goons.
The voice immediately caused all of the Security Guards in the room to bodily flinch in painful remembrance.
All of the red-ties, Miltia and Melanie and every other club goer that was standing helplessly at the sidelines immediately turned towards the front door of the club.
Every single female member of Platoon number one were walking into the club, looking like supermodels in their tight little cocktail dresses… In a perfect contradiction to the class and sophistication of the dresses that they were all wearing, every single woman standing in the doorway was cracking their knuckles, and smiling menacingly down at every red-tie in the room…
The cavalry had arrived… The reckoning had begun…