Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or any of its franchise.

A helpful guide incase you get confused:
"Dialogue."
'Thoughts. ;)'
[Semblances]

-x-

Chapter 13 - The Normal Life of Dealing with Ex-Criminals and Assassins

The docks of Vale were possibly the most important part of the city. They were what kept the city afloat with all the imports and exports leading to and from Vale, but most importantly, they were responsible for one of the largest ways that Vale resourced Dust in order to fuel the everyday expenses they spend on Huntsmen and Huntsmen-in-training.

With Beacon Academy looming over the city, one can expect that the amount of Dust being used daily is truly astronomical. Add in the fact that they need to protect the city and supply enough Dust for your average Huntsman to restock, there is a need for hundreds of crates of Dust that could each equal the size of my apartment without all the other miscellaneous things Dust is used for.

What I'm trying to say here is that Dust is a ludicrous way to get rich. Mining and refining the mineral is one way, but if your name is not Schnee and it's not Atlas, then you'd have quite a bit of trouble in the industry. Still, whether it's trading it, shipping it, storing it or stealing it all of them have a pretty high chance of striking the proverbial motherload. And the thing with the largest gang in Vale, the Union, is that they pretty much have their fingers in all of those.

They are pretty much a conglomerate at this point if they didn't also want a piece of the drug trade and, from what I'm told, human and Faunus trafficking. Their employment of their so called 'enforcers' were just well paid gangs that they could use for the less savory sides of their business opportunities. While I hadn't found any explicit information, there were enough rumors that whoever they couldn't simply buy out simply disappeared in unfortunate gang violence.

Honestly, I had found so many of those 'rumors' that I was impressed at the news stations for keeping people from panicking too much.

However, the fact still stood that the Union was one of the main cancers in the city. Perhaps that is why they had attracted so much attention from the Reds in any case, and as loath as I am to say it, the Reds were certainly doing more than me at beating them down. The only problem with that was the gangs under the 'employment' of the Union were panicking.

Currently, we were staking out one such problem before they had a chance to do more damage. Despite the small time I had for recon, I had figured enough about the inner workings of their gang with the help of Neo and Miltia. Even if I couldn't read their thoughts, I knew that them panicking could mean more trouble than most violent criminals.

The main problem with this particular gang was that they had situated themselves in the docks, and had run most of the Dust storage and robbery operations for the Union. They weren't particularly violent for the most part, nor were they the most dangerous, in my opinion. Still, if they were pushed to the corner, this gang might start crippling the Dust trade in the docks by stealing more or simply using their stockpiles. And when I said they had most of the Dust storage operations for the Union, I meant that they could effectively blow up entire city blocks with ease if they felt the Reds were threatening enough.

Considering I blew up an entire street just to escape, I'd say that I didn't want to take my chances.

"How many do you see, Miltia?" I asked, turning over to her spot on our rooftop.

The ex-criminal closed her eyes, focusing hard. We had some time to train when I was recovering, but one week was apparently not enough to learn a completely neglected faucet to her Semblance. It was something that intrigued and bothered me as I learned that no one knows every aspect of their Semblance; they needed to train and test it for almost their entire lives to pull out the potential of them.

And the fact that I only needed a single glance was promptly told to be utterly bullshit. Especially, when the Semblances weren't my own. Still, my own growing ego aside, I paused to wait for Miltia to finish her recon as I knew she was getting the hang of piggybacking off of someone else's senses that weren't her sister's.

"At least fifteen grunts on my end." Miltia said, frowning. "I… don't know who has Aura or not. I'm still not used to this aspect of my Semblance. I'm sorry."

I smiled at her, watching as she shrunk into herself in disappointment. "You're fine. You don't need to get it right now; there are plenty of people who don't even realize what their Semblances even do."

"Yeah," Melanie piped in, entering from the maintenance stairs we used to reach the roof of the building we staked out. Her heels clacked on the concrete as she walked over to her sister, and then patted her shoulder while throwing a paper bag in my direction. "Plenty of people have trouble with this type of stuff, and we can't all be like Jaune here. He's a freak of nature."

"Thanks, Melanie…" I groused, taking the sandwich Melanie got for me. Was it a breach of whatever contract Roman wrote up for them to be my bodyguards? Maybe, but stakeouts were much more boring than you'd think.

Taking a bite, I felt a poke in my side before finding Neo pointing out to the warehouse we were watching. It was stationed right near the water, and a couple shipments of Dust apparently had arrived and were waiting to be stored. All that did was clog up most of the barren area with two story tall stacks of rectangular, metal containers of various colors based on the Dust inside. Several men were roving between the stacks, guarding them and probably taking stock of the ones they could get away with using for themselves.

"What do you want?" I asked through my bites. Neo frowned and poked me again. "It's not time now. These guys are just the grunts; the leaders are easily able to recover their numbers if we attack now, so we're waiting for their boss."

Neo pouted, pointing again. I squinted into the distance, finding a blurry figure on top of a wooden crate that elevated him above a large square of space in the middle of the Dust containers. "That's not him, Neo. His Semblance doesn't fit with what I remember, but he is a sort of lieutenant."

The miniature assassin frowned again, and I tried to remember if that was a bad frown or an annoyed frown. One led to attempted murder while the other could be calmed down with a bowl of ice cream. So, I bit the bullet and hurried to finish my sandwich.

Neo's gaze snapped to me as I finished. "Don't worry. Based on what we've seen, their boss man should come tonight to check the shipment." Neo's expression visibly brightened, and I stared at her hard. "Don't kill anyone."

Her shoulders slumped.

"How do you even hold a conversation with her?" Melanie broke into what seemed like my one man act.

"Neo's pretty transparent, all things considered." I said, wondering how I was translating her actions myself. "You just need to know what to look for, I guess."

The white themed twin shrugged. "Guess if you can read shit like Semblances, then reading assassins should be pretty easy. So are we finally fighting or what?"

I frowned as her tone seemed a little strained. "Yes, soon. But are you ready to fight? You're a little tense."

Melanie clicked her tongue, scowling. "I'm just a little antsy, okay? It's weird doing things like this."

"Like this?"

"You know," she gestured angrily at the docks. "All this shit, I mean. I'm just not seeing the uh… virtue or whatever in taking these guys out if it means fighting the Reds."

I sighed, realizing that she's been bottling this in for a while. "Sorry I couldn't see the way you saw it."

"Don't you dare apologize for that." She hissed before looking at Miltia and seemingly calming down. "Just… how do you do it? I've seen the places the Reds have hit, I know they can be terrifying, but you fought them. And now you're going against them just to what? Help people? It sounds ridiculous."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you did agree to help protect me or whatever." I said, feeling a bit more defensive about this whole situation. "I wasn't the one who asked for help; you guys already knew I ran into them before this whole thing. I don't want to fight the Reds as much as any normal person. It's why we're trying to stop these guys before the Reds get involved."

"Well, what happens if they attack before we even do anyth-"

"Mel." Miltia cut in, resting an arm on her sister's shoulder. "It's alright. Just say you're worried. Jaune understands, right?"

I blushed a bit at getting so agitated before an important operation. Getting angry at someone who was just scared over a perfectly reasonable worry isn't how I expected this to go. "Sorry, yeah, I understand. I guess I'm a little stressed over this whole thing, too. I've been on my couch for a week, and the news channel didn't help at all."

Melanie winced, backing down from her previous attitude. "Yeah, I guess hearing about the Reds is never a good thing…" she paced a bit before turning back to me. "Look, Jaune, I'm sorry too. I know it feels like we're just here watch over you -and we kinda are; you make the stupidest decisions sometimes, so don't argue. But I didn't sign up to fight the Reds out of the goodness of my heart like you. I know you worry about your family, and I worry about Mil, so I wanted to bring up the fact that-"

"I'm not getting Aura." I said quickly. Personally, I felt like I should have seen this line of thought crop up. Melanie and Miltia were the first people to learn about most of the ins and outs of my powers while I rested on the couch, and subsequently, they were the first people to begin using their Semblances by following my input.

For Miltia, that had the added effect of her learning how to gather information using her parasitic senses. However, Melanie learned about the fact that I had been using their Aura as a proxy for my own healing. With her newfound parasitic Aura, Melaine grew increasingly reluctant about the fact that I didn't have an Aura even when I could use her own powers to gain one.

Sighing, I turned back to the docks to watch for any actions that I missed in the time we spent on our little pity party. It turned out to be nothing unusual, but the air was too awkward for me to say anything about it. Instead, I focused on Miltia's Aura, pulling on the warmth inside her as a distraction to whatever it was that I was running away from.

[Single-target parasitic perception. Activatable shared perception.]

I moved closer to the lip of the roof, flexing the link on her power. With ease I peered through the perception of the people with Aura below. The lieutenant had stood out within my Aura sense, and I could see the dark area of the docks in front of me.

He was standing on top of a large crate of Dust, directing several unpowered members of their group as they moved their ill begotten goods into a nearby warehouse. I didn't understand why they thought it was a great idea to have the Dust that they stole be stored in the same area that it came from, but I also considered that the Union was probably laundering their Dust to a certain degree. Still, I wouldn't say I was ever good at economics, nor would I think that I knew more of the intricacies of robbery.

All I paid attention to was the fact that they would hurt a bunch of people if the Reds pushed them.

There honestly wasn't much to see through his eyes. The distance between us was large enough that most of the parasitized senses were blurry and incomplete. However, I was able to get a headcount of all the grunts running in and out of the maze of Dust containers, so I tried to memorize their paths as best as I could through the blurry vision I had taken. It took a bit of changing whose senses I was seeing through but I was able to put together a rough plan of attack in the chance the leader showed up.

And I hoped to any god he showed up or else Neo might be the end of someone… maybe several someones. Honestly, as nice as it was to have her on my team, I'd rather not babysit a bloodthirsty assassin while trying to limit casualties.

"Hey, sorry about bringing it up again." I paused in my plans as Melanie's heels clacked up behind me and the ex-criminal stopped beside me to watch the grunts mill about.

"It's fine."

"No, its not fine. I just-" she growled, combing a hand through her hair as if there was a particularly stubborn knot in it. "I'm not good with apologetic shit. Mil is always the one doing it, but I know I messed up a bit. I wanted to just let you know that. Honestly, I'm still kinda pissed at you for hurting her… However..."

I turned to look over at her. Melanie had probably been holding this in for awhile, and while I did understand she had some reservations, I already felt like we were friends. Though, that could just be the bedridden Jaune talking as he was fed by the three beautiful girls.

"However," she continued after collecting her thoughts. "Watching you fight in those recordings, and fighting you myself, I think you really are nuts for going without Aura. I don't know whether to respect you or call you an idiot."

"Probably both." I offered, trying to steer the conversation away.

She laughed, pulling on her hair again. "Yeah, I guess that works. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that I know you want to be this 'hero' or whatever, and… I don't know, I just can't see it myself. I probably can't be a hero, if that's what we're going to do. Neo would run at the first sign of trouble, Mil and I wouldn't be far behind, but you… you'd be running at it with whatever crazy idea popped into your head."

"If you're worried, then its okay to run away."

"That's easy for you to say." She swatted my shoulder, and I buckled a bit under her strength. "Except, Mil would be sad if you died so early, so we have to look out for your crazy ideas. It would help if you had Aura." She flinched as she realized what she was bringing up again, but her gaze moved to the docks. "Can- can you tell me why you don't want to, though? Wouldn't you be able to save more people or whatever with Aura?"

I sighed, pulling up my thoughts. If I was going to explain myself, I might as well just bring it all out. "I honestly didn't know what my plan was when coming to Vale. Sure, I wanted to do something; I had these powers ever since I knew my name, and I just felt like I had a responsibility for it. Maybe I wanted to be one of those heroes in the stories I read. Fighting dragons, beating bad guys, and saving the girl at the end of the day. But I do know that I want to help people. Aura feels like a… not a crutch, but more like I was cheapening something sentimental."

"Aura? Sentimental? Are you crazy- wait, never mind. I've heard weirder reasons for stupider things." Melanie smiled, looking over her shoulder at an attentive Miltia. The red-themed twin had apparently been listening with rapt attention, too.

"I guess it does sound a little weird out loud." I huffed. "Its just… Huntsmen use Aura to protect us. They're heroes no matter what they do, and me getting it to beat bad guys more easily feels a little… cheap."

"I think you're doing more than just that. Besides, don't heroes do exactly what you're doing now? You're being a damn hypocrite with that logic."

I laughed a bit, feeling weirdly comforted by her reasoning. "To tell you the truth, my dad always told me I couldn't be a Huntsman. He wasn't too hard about it, but he really made me understand that I'm not a hero. You could say I'm just being a bit selfish right now. Still, I won't say something stupid like I'm going to save everybody, but if they're in front of me and I can do something, I'd probably try to save them."

"That's…" Melaine was frowning, her heels tapping along the roof in what I knew was agitation. "Your dad seems like a bastard."

"I still love my parents. Don't get me wrong." I hurriedly waved, trying to get her to understand. "He's just a little strict, but he's just trying to protect me. After all, Huntsmen rarely have happy endings… Though, if we're still talking about Aura, then not now. I don't need Aura to help people, and I really didn't know about it till a couple days ago. If anything, I'd want to get my Aura after I make it into Beacon. It'd mean I made it, in some way."

Melanie sighed, her heels clacking against the roof. Behind her, Miltia had gone back to sharpening her claws more than usual, and Neo looked like she was going to stab someone. "Fine, I honestly don't know what you're thinking, but I'm sure it makes sense in your head. Just… I'll kill you if you drag Mil into one of your suicidal stunts."

I smiled at the threat to my life. It was unneeded as I would already be dead before I pushed Miltia into a situation like that. Still, Melanie's more abrasive attitude was more comforting than her trying to sound apologetic.

With that, we finally dropped the issue in lieu of silence. She knew I could proxy off of Aura with her Semblance in case I needed it, but that would cause my versatility to take a dip. It probably wouldn't be noticeable. Still, I felt like her motivations were more aligned to the fact that she planned to run away with her sister at the first sign of trouble that they couldn't handle. There was a worry that I wouldn't be able to protect myself without her Semblance.

Again, I felt a bit coddled with their insistence to protect me, but I couldn't just order them to leave me alone. Roman was paying them to be my bodyguards. They wrote up a fancy contract and everything. Even if it felt more like I was just their paycheck that only functioned when alive.

Of course, they were important maybe-friends of mine that I would protect.

It was just my luck that instead of spending this night in relative silence and awkward conversation, a Semblance that I had been looking out for had entered my range. Idly, I pulled on the warmth, feeling the information filtering into my head.

[Limited self-controlled biology. Multitasking.]

I had already known that mental-type Semblances tended to get rather insane, but this one was up there with Rouge's Semblance. The first main function of it was being able to control every facet of your body from moving each eye independent of each other to forcing other organs to beat like a heart. Hell, I could even control my own cells dying with nothing more than a thought. Of course, all of this was limited to being within my own biology, but even that was rather insane with the amount of things I could do. Normally, all this would be impossible for someone to keep track of, but the second aspect of this Semblance made it possible for someone to simply do as many things as they wanted at the same time.

Honestly, I was a little intimidated by the fact that I could now track almost every single blood cell in my body at the same time and still have enough thinking space to watch the sleek, black car pull into the clearing where the gang lieutenant already was. I connected myself to the lieutenant's senses, and I found myself staring at the blurry figure of a slim man. The supposed boss of the gang didn't look like someone who had such an insane Semblance; he only wore a nice suit from what I saw, and there were no signs of having a weapon of any kind.

To be honest, I slightly expected it. Multitasking was such an insane ability that I was half sure he didn't even know he could do something else with his Semblance. He didn't look like he spent his days training, and slightly reminded me of someone who would rather stay behind a desk than someone who got down and dirty.

However, that didn't mean I underestimated him. I made that mistake on my first night out.

"Neo." I spoke, trying to listen in on what the gang boss was saying. He had received orders from the higher ups in the Union, and they would be needing more Dust. Expected, but I rather criminals not have large amounts of explosives at their call. "Make an illusion. Cover all of us; we're going for a silent approach."

Neo bounced with joy at the order, and I felt her Aura pulse. Melanie, Miltia, and Neo vanished from my sight in the next second. I didn't panic, nor did the rest of the squad. It was only recently that the assassin could hide people under separate illusions after I had told her she could create more than one at a single time.

Still, I had my Aura sense, and could easily pick out the three under their cover. I knew Miltia had connected her senses to her sister as I clapped softly, dragging their attention to me. I dusted off the lip of the building, and the Aura in their heads dipped in what I felt was a nod.

We all moved to the edge of the building and made to jump to the ground. The three with Aura didn't hesitate to jump the four stories, landing on the ground with only a soft thump that announced their presence.

I took a bit more conservative approach as I swung my legs over the side of the building, staying as close to the wall as possible before dropping. The fingertips of my right hand burned a bit as they held close to the brickwork, and my hand caught the lip of a windowsill. There was a moment where my muscles tensed, individual strands screaming as gravity tried to pull my arm out of its socket. However, I had been keeping track of them with my multitasking, choosing to let go at the exact moment before damage was done.

Before I knew it, I had landed on the ground without even stirring up dust. The entire ordeal had bled off all my momentum, and had only taken a scant few seconds to finish.

My unwilling heroic accomplices were looking around, trying to find me. Neo had seen me, but chose to play along with the others as she knew I could tell what they were doing. We stayed under Neo's illusion in order to not be spotted by anyone nearby, but we still needed it for the rest of the operation. I calmly walked up to them, letting my footsteps be heard in order to not startle then dangerous females.

"We reach the clearing in the middle in ten minutes." I told them, monitoring the Aura's of the lieutenant and boss within my senses. They hadn't begun to move, but I doubted they would be gone anytime soon. The Union had ordered quite a bit of Dust, after all. "We go with Divide and Conquer before we rendezvous to fight those with Aura."

"Try not to kill them, please." I tacked on, looking directly at Neo who slumped in disappointment. It was like training a puppy, really. A violent one with appalling skills in assassination, yes, but no one cares about that.

They finally nodded silently, choosing a path through the maze of Dust containers. The colored metal was larger up close now that I was finally on the ground. It was more colorful than I thought it would be, and I honestly wondered what anyone was thinking about having a bright yellow and blue be the colors they chose to mark highly explosive material.

Luckily, I was spared from paying too much attention to the colorful walls as I found my first target. One of the members of the gang was walking alone, a clipboard in one hand and a rifle slung over one shoulder.

I rushed him immediately, one part of me already managing my steps to be as soft and silent as possible. Neo's illusions kept me invisible, but a sufficiently powerful blow from either him or me could ruin it. As such, I didn't hit the man. My hands wrapped under his armpits, snapped behind his head and I used my momentum to drop the both of us to the ground.

His face bounced on the solid floor, and I silently apologized to him in my head. Honestly, I meant to choke him out, but I wasn't confident enough in doing that without getting hit myself with how big he was. In the end, I made sure he wasn't hurt too bad before trussing him up in zip ties before moving on.

The next man I ran into was a smaller build, and I safely choked him out without having to resort to anything too dangerous. Still, I began to move faster and faster as I got my wits about me and began to get into the swing of taking out random mooks silently.

I was monitoring the two Aura users of the gang at the same time, finding that they were just talking about inane things now while waiting for the final counts for Dust to come in. It was enough to let me release Miltia's Semblance in lieu of something that made my time a little easier.

[Single-target parasitic Aura theft. Activatable shared Aura.]

The link of warmth connected to me and I brushed against Melanie's own reserves. Miltia and Melanie's Auras filled my body through the link, and I was once again hit with the wonderful feeling that was Aura.

It was like all the little aches and pains of simply existing were being repaired. Of course, it wasn't doing that -my internal monitoring pointed that out. Aura was weird to me as Melanie's Semblance didn't really explain what Aura was, and it only allowed me to take Aura from others. Still, I didn't need an explanation to figure out some of the key facets of it after spending some time with it.

For one, the energy simply flowed through the body like some sort of secondary bloodstream. If left alone, the energy would choose to clump towards the heart and head, and it took a bit of effort the further you wanted the energy to be controlled from those locations.

Aura also had no outright offensive applications. Everything about the energy was purely made for defense. It was a shield that protected both the external self and internal self from damage, and any superhuman feats done by those with Aura were simply them forcing their bodies beyond what its normally capable of while Aura protects them from hurting themselves too bad. Of course, there was the tradeoff that you only had so much Aura for protection; the more Aura that stopped your body from trying to tear itself apart, the less you had to protect yourself from outside attacks and vice versa.

Lastly, there was the healing aspect of Aura. I had originally assumed it was just that, healing. However, my internal monitoring through multitasking was telling me a different story. Instead of rebuilding muscle fibers stronger and faster after they were damaged, the cells were simply being forced back to a couple seconds before being introduced to Aura. It was less healing and more correcting damage that was dealt.

Worryingly, my multitasking was finding that the cells that were being changed into cells that were different from normal. There wasn't enough to make a large enough physical difference, but I constantly changed them back to the originals in a bit of a panic. I only had a few seconds to take a peak at what was going on, but I pinpointed a bit on what the cells were doing, and I felt a chill down my spine at the implications on what Aura was correcting.

My gender.

It would have taken around a year or so before there was any change at the rate they were going, but the fact that the Aura was trying to change my gender was something more than a bit scary. And I felt like I knew exactly what was going on. I was using the Aura of two girls, so it made sense that their Aura corrected any perceived damage back to what their own bodies were.

Silently, I put that little piece of information in the back of my mind, vowing not to tell the twins. They're own Aura's had mixed enough through their life of crime that they were probably biologically similar in almost every way. I just made sure to keep a portion of my multitasking reserved for stopping my cells from becoming like Melanie or Miltia's.

I had reached my next fork through in the maze while I was having a bit of a panic about Aura, but I wasn't caught unaware. Multitasking could let me have a mental breakdown and I would still be able to function on the mission. However, I was caught flat-footed by the scene in front of me as I turned the corner.

Standing over a downed gang member was someone other than my friends, holding a machine gun pointed at the grunt's head. I was moving before I even began processing the situation.

The intruder's fox ears perked up in my direction even if I had been trying to be as silent as possible. Their body swung towards me in a jerking motion that struck me as untrained. They clearly panicked as they saw no one in the path I was coming from, and their first instinct was unfortunately to shoot indiscriminately.

I cursed at their carelessness. We were fighting in the middle of highly volatile explosives, and this guy has the bright idea to start blasting away.

My mind was busy calculating the paths of every single bullet the moment he began panicking, and I felt stifled by how much distance there still was between us. Obviously, his senses were good enough to pick up on me. Yet, that didn't translate to pinpointing my exact position.

Fifteen bullets would hit or spark along the Dust containers on either side of us in his panic. I was lucky that the maze was a bit cramped, so I didn't need to move very far to reach each one before they accidentally struck the Dust. No part of me wanted to take the chance that the containers would insulate the material from the gunshots.

Vengeance flicked out from behind me, catching the furthest bullet from me before it hit. Phantasmal pieces of glass shattered around my form, finally revealing me as I threw myself in front of four more shots. They felt like painful bug bites as they ran into the twin's pilfered Aura.

My limbs moved like animated snakes as I controlled them separately with multitasking. Bullets crashing into my arms and legs as I threw myself into their paths before they could hit the containers. I grimaced as a bullet hit above a nerve cluster on my Aura. It stung a bit more than the rest, but it was worth it so long as I avoided the probable explosion.

The intruder was panicking even more now. Honestly, I was probably an odd sight as my arms and legs moved disjointedly to block the idiot's bullets, but that didn't stop them from continuing to shoot at me.

I weathered the assault now that his aim improved with my appearance by throwing almost all my Aura protection into external defense. His gun clicked empty, and I was already moving, having counted the exact amount he had left.

I moved Vengeance into a backwards grip, holding the blade like one would a throwing spear. Its tip blunted with my input, and I switched all the Aura I had from external defense into an internal one with the help of Multitasking making the transition as smooth as possible while my body moved.

Vengeance shot out from my grip like it had been fired from a rifle. The blunted weapon slammed into the intruder, earning a pained wheeze as the Faunus was sent flying into another Dust container. He collided with a resounding clang before sliding down as Vengeance clattered on the concrete.

I rushed him, arriving next to the Faunus in a matter of seconds. He was struggling to breathe. Not because he was injured too bad, but because my attack had winded him badly. I spared him no second glance as I tied him up with zip ties and stuffed his mouth with his shirt so he could scream.

With the immediate problems settled, I was allowed a bit of silence to process the singular thought that had been running in the back of my mind with multitasking. While the Semblance was insurmountable in processing multiple things at the same time, that didn't mean I was able to cope with it while fighting.

I took one more look at the tied up Faunus. He was dressed in a uniform of some kind with primarily white hues. Most importantly, was the bone white mask that covered his eyes and nose. A mask that reminded me eerily of the ones on Grimm.

"Damnit." I cursed.

It was inevitable in this case, but the whole thing annoyed me to no end. This was supposed to be an easy mission. However, it would make sense that a gang that was a cornerstone in the Union's Dust trade would be targeted. The fact that we were dealing with a gang that was known to discriminate in their business practices, and particularly went after Faunus businesses, was just another nail in the coffin.

[Single-target parasitic perception. Activatable shared perception.]

I switched Melanie's link for Miltia's and I immediately connected our senses. Miltia and, by proxy, Melanie stopped as they were suddenly looking through my eyes. I would have to repeat the same thing with Neo now that I was no longer under her Semblance, but she probably had an idea after my illusion expired.

"There's been a change of plans." I spoke quickly, hoping we still had time. "The White Fang are here."

-x-

Honestly, this chapter was supposed to be longer. I wanted more fight scenes in there, but I decided that the next one is crazy enough that this chapter would be too long to add everything in this chapter. In the end, we sadly get a cliffhanger. Big sad.

As for the intricacies of Aura. The anime didn't really explain the mechanics exactly, so I changed it here while trying to keep the basis as similar as I could. The specifics will all be gone over through the course of the fanfic, though. I will say that Aura is both passive and activatable (Can that really be a thing?). It passively goes through the body, but mainly stays around the heart and head. Why? I'll explain later. People can 'activate' it to more actively protect their extremities; though it more along the lines of controlling it. The healing being correcting is also something so that people with Aura cannot simply gain "greek-godlike" bodies through training-healing spam. They can train and get stronger, yes. However, the correcting hinders gains more than helps.

I'm trying to force Jaune into every situation where he learns something that expands on his previous knowledge. Aura and all its background is just one of those things. Idk, I like my own interpretation of Aura, but I'm open to suggestions.

As always, Enjoy!