Disclaimer: See Prologue.
Chapter 4:
Many days later.
Today was the dawn of the Vytal Festival, and as Teams RWBY and JNPR got closer in the days following the Forever Fall Forest's incident, Ruby and Weiss thought to invite Jaune, and his team, to accompany their own team to visit the streets of Vale and to check out the beginning of the festivities. As every member of Team JNPR hadn't really much to do they agreed.
Thus that was where the group of friends were doing, strolling down the streets of Vale towards the docks led by a visibly excited Weiss. On their way they saw a sign in the midst of being put up, on it could be read in bright red letters, "WELCOME TO VALE!", for all the foreign newcomers from their respective Kingdoms on Remnant.
"The Vytal Festival! Oh, this is absolutely wonderful!" Exclaimed the heiress.
"I don't think I've ever seen you smile this much, Weiss." Ruby frowned in obvious false concern. "It's kinda weirding me out..."
Jaune shrugged her words off.
"Personally I think it's a good sign she's finally letting herself being, well... Herself." He said.
Pyrrha was of the same mind.
"And I think it's wonderful that you trust us enough to speak freely."
At that Weiss's smile grew more and became warmer.
"Thanks guys..." Then she turned towards Ruby. "How could you not smile? A festival dedicated to the cultures of the world! There will be dances! Parades! A tournament! Oh, the amount of planning and organization that goes into this event is simply breathtaking!"
"You really know how to take a good thing and make it sound boring." Said Yang arms crossed with a sigh.
"Amen sister." Added Nora with her own arms crossed behind her head.
"Oh quiet, you two!"
"Yeah, yeah... Remind me again why we're spending our Friday afternoon visiting the stupid docks?" Yang added.
"Ugh, they smell like fish!" Ruby complained while she covered her nose.
At this point Jaune could have sworn he heard someone's belly growl.
'I don't want to stereotype but I'd bet it's Blake." He furtively glanced at her and saw her lick her lips. 'Meh, proof enough.''
Weiss stood akimbo.
"I've heard that students visiting from Vacuo will be arriving by ship today. And, as a representative of Beacon, I feel as though it is my solemn duty to welcome them to this fine kingdom!"
She nodded to herself, as if she needed to convince herself from what she just said, and restarted to walk.
"She wants to spy on them so she'll have the upper hand in the tournament." Blake stage-whispered.
"We gathered that much." Ren said which gave everyone a smile.
This made Weiss turn one eighty degrees.
"You can't prove that!" She scoffed.
Snickering about her reaction, Ruby turned her head to at least attempt to conceal her laugh, but it died an ugly death when she saw the remnants of a crime scene.
"Whoa..."
They all looked down the street and saw a building with a shattered window and the door barred by yellow caution tapes belonging to the Vale Police Force. They looked at each other before Ruby walked over to the nearest detective who was in the middle of writing on his pad.
"Excuse me officier, what happened here?"
He briefly looked at her and the group following her before answering, as if to asses their intentions.
"Robbery. Second Dust shop to be hit this week. This place is turning into a jungle." He answered before walking over to his partner.
"That's terrible." Yang said.
"Dreadful..." Added Pyrrha bringing her hands to her chest.
"They left all the money again." The partner of the first detective said.
"Huh?" Made Ruby.
"Yeah, just doesn't make a lick of sense. Who needs that much Dust?" The first detective said.
"I don't know, an army?" His partner followed.
"You thinking the White Fang?"
"Yeah, I'm thinking we don't get paid enough."
At hearing about the White Fang Weiss had a reaction.
"Hmph! The White Fang." She crossed her arms and pointed her nose in the air with her eyes closed. "What an awful bunch of degenerates!"
"Weiss..." Whispered Pyrrha.
Jaune could sense the air became charged. In negativity.
'Here comes the storm...'
"What's your problem?" Asked Blake.
"My problem? I simply don't care for the criminally insane."
"The White Fang is hardly a bunch of psychopaths." Blake too crossed her arms, focusing on Weiss. "They're a collection of misguided Faunus."
"Misguided? They want to wipe Humanity off the face of the planet!"
"So then they're very misguided. Either way, it doesn't explain why they would rob a Dust shop in the middle of downtown Vale!"
The members of Team JNPR were starting to become uneasy about the situation. Though Jaune had an inkling about Blake's defensive position.
"Hmm..." Ruby interjected, trying to defuse what promised to be an explosive situation between her teammates. "Blake's got a point. Besides, the police never caught that Torchwick guy I ran into a few months ago... Maybe it was him."
"That still doesn't change the fact that the White Fang are a bunch of scum." That only helped to feed Blake's growing anger. "Those Faunus only know how to lie, cheat, and steal."
"That's not necessarily true..." Yang tried to defend.
And this would have certainly continued for the worst if an event hadn't interrupted the two.
"Hey, stop that Faunus!"
The sudden shout caught the attention of the group who ran to investigate. On the scene a Faunus with a golden monkey tail ran down the length of a boat and leaped on its edge as two sailors were about to apprehend him.
The Faunus looked back at his pursuers and taunted them.
"Thanks for the ride, guys! Haha!" He said while jumping off the boat and hit the dock in a run.
"You no-good stowaway!" Shouted the sailor.
As he used his tail to hang on a lamppost, he peeled back a banana.
"Hey! A no-good stowaway would've been caught! I'm a great stowaway!" Before he could take even one bite, one of the detectives down below throws a stone at him to get his attention.
"Hey! Get down from there this instant!"
The young man hanging upside down on a lamppost dropped the banana peel on the detective's face, who growled in return. Then the monkey tailed Faunus twirls up to crouch on the lamppost, laughing in amusement, and proceeded to leap off and ran away from the detectives.
As he ran past both teams, he winked at an astonished Blake as he was chased by the officers.
"Well, Weiss, you wanted to see the competition, and there it goes..." Yang said as they watched him get further and further away.
"Quick! We have to observe him!"
Weiss, Yang, and Ruby gave chase. Meanwhile Team JNPR stayed by Blake who stood still, lost in thought.
"Hum, Blake you okay?" Asked Nora.
This seemed to make her come back to reality.
"Yes. Sorry, let's go." She then followed after her friends.
The five of them rounded the next corner and found Weiss sprawled onto someone. She looked up at the the roof of a building.
"No, he got away!"
"Uhh... Weiss?" Yang pointed at the girl underneath her teammate.
Weiss finally saw that she fell on a smiling girl, this startled her and made the heiress hastily stood back up.
Upon getting closer to the other half of the group, Jaune's attention was instantly on the girl. He looked flabbergasted.
"Sal-u-ta-tions!" Said the girl.
"Um... hello." Ruby answered.
"Are you... okay?" Asked Yang.
"I'm wonderful! Thank you for asking."
Everyone except Jaune, who still was frozen in shock, looked at each other in bewilderment before Yang spoke up again.
"Do you... Wanna get up?"
It looked like she needed time to think about it.
"Yes!" She finally said as she leaped back on her feet while those close to her stepped back a little. "My name is Penny! It's a pleasure to meet you!"
"Hi Penny. I'm Ruby."
"I'm Weiss."
"Blake."
"Are you sure you didn't hit your head?" Blake hit her side. "Oh, I'm Yang."
"Jaune..." He said absent-mindedly.
"Nora!"
"Ren." He bowed respectfully.
"And I'm Pyrrha." She said while casting a worried look at Jaune.
Any kind of answer the young woman could have offered escaped her mind as, when her eyes landed on Jaune when he presented himself, she went into some kind of trance. Which suffice to say made the resident Cultivator tense in anticipation.
She then took a few steps toward him and stopped when she got almost intimately close to him, her eyes opened wide in wonder and seemingly analyzing every parts of his face. This obviously made Jaune quite nervous.
"Hum, sorry but can I do something for you?" He asked as he tried to make some space between them.
"Your soul is so old..." She said absentmindedly.
This instantly made him cautious and wary of her.
"What do you mean by that..?" He asked while feigning not knowing what she meant.
This seemed to made her realize what she was doing making her back down with worried eyes.
"No- nothing at all! I can't sense anything! Hic!" She answered with a hiccup. "I don't know what came over me! Hic!"
'Yeah... I'll have to disagree on that...' He thought with a mental deadpan. 'Though with the amount of stuff in her body I'm not surprised.'
What he didn't take into account was that the little odd exchange was witnessed by his friends. They all for the most part didn't thought much of it, believing it to be a quirk of the perky ginger head. But a very few couldn't help but to consider what was said.
"So..." Yang started, clearly attempting to move on from the awkward situation. "Maybe we should go on?"
This made Penny recover from her tensed expression, the girl quickly putting on a smile.
"It's was pleasure to meet you!"
"You already said that." Pointed out Weiss.
This made her pause again.
"So I did!"
"Well, sorry for running into you!" Apologized Weiss as they turned around and started to walk away. Jaune couldn't help but keep his focus on her. His mind was restless.
"Take care, friend!" Exclaimed Ruby while weaving her hand.
When she thought they got far enough from the startled Penny, Yang gave her opinion.
"She was... weird..."
"I think she was funny!" Said Nora.
Pretty much everyone consented to the formers opinion, at least to that much, except Jaune who was still lost in thought and Weiss who had yet to abandon her search for the Faunus.
'So Atlas has the technological means to detect a soul's age... The question is why would they need this..?'
"Now, where did that Faunus riff-raff run off to?"
Penny suddenly appeared in front of a surprised Weiss.
"What did you call me?"
Weiss looked back and forth in shock wondering how the young woman could have moved like she teleported herself and Yang had the tact to at least look apologetic.
"Oh, I'm really sorry, I definitely didn't think you heard me!"
"No, not you." She walked through the group and tilted her head down to Ruby. "You!"
"Me? I-I don't know. I, what I, um, uh..."
"You called me 'friend'! Am I really your friend?"
"Uuuum..." She looked over Penny's shoulder as her teammates made motions to deny her while Nora made thumbs-up and Pyrrha and Ren stayed unhelpfully neutral. Jaune just kept on looking wierdly, in Ruby's opinion, at Penny. "Y-Yeah, sure! Why not?"
Ruby's teammates comically fainted, Nora happily clapped her hands, and Penny looked overjoyed and laughed.
"Sen-sational! We can paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys like those two over there!"
At the mention of Jaune and Ren, Pyrrha remembered Jaune's state and looked at him. He still looked unblinking at Penny.
"Jaune?" She shook him and this apparently was enough to shake him awake. "Are you alright?"
"Huh? Hum, yes. Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts." He answered. At least if being lost in ones thought repeating a single sentence in loops counts. 'Seriously thought, what the hell is going on in Atlas!?'
Meanwhile Pyrrha and Jaune's quick talk, Penny had tackled Ruby on the ground.
After the reaper got up she groaned to Weiss as she brushed herself off.
"Ow… Is this what it was like when you met me?"
"No... She seems far more coordinated."
"So..." Started Yang. "What are you doing in Vale?"
"I'm here to fight in the tournament."
"Wait, you're fighting in the tournament?" Rhetorically asked Weiss.
'She's going to do what!? What are the high-ups in Atlas thinking!?'
"I'm combat ready!"
'I bet you are! Seriously what are they thinking making normal students face some- Oh. Oh... I see. Makes sense I guess. Irresponsible but I can understand their objectives...'
Jaune had guessed that Atlas, if his hunch was correct, aimed to make use of the tournament as some kind of trial run for the artificial girl before him.
"Forgive me, but you hardly look the part." Said Weiss.
'Oh trust me she does...'
"Says the girl wearing a dress." Blake pointed out.
"It's a combat skirt!" She crossed her arms.
"Yeah!" Supported Ruby as she sped over to Weiss who held out her hand which Ruby low-fived.
"Wait a minute." She walked over to Penny and took hold of her by the shoulders. "If you're here for the tournament, does that mean you know that monkey-tailed... Rapscallion?"
"The who...?"
Weiss held up a poor drawing of the criminal-in-question. "The filthy Faunus from the boat!"
'Wait, when did she-? Oh I give up...'
Off to the side Blake was getting even frustrated.
"Why do you keep saying that?!"
Weiss turned her attention from Penny to Blake.
"Huh?"
"Stop calling him a rapscallion!" She walked over to Weiss, genuinely angry. "Stop calling him a degenerate! He's a person!"
"Oh, I'm sorry." Weiss released Penny and motioned to objects around her. "Would you like me to stop referring to the trash can as a trash can? Or this lamppost as a lamppost?"
'C'mon Weiss, even for you that's a low blow...'
"Stop it!"
"Stop what? He clearly broke the law. Give him time, he'll probably join up with those other Faunus in the White Fang!"
Blake growled, her fist clenched.
"You ignorant little brat!"
At this Weiss looked offended, but when Blake walked away from her, she followed.
"How dare you talk to me like that! I am your teammate!"
"You are a judgmental little girl."
"What in the world makes you say that?"
"The mere fact that you would sort that Faunus boy with a terrorist group solely based on his species makes you just as much of a scoundrel as you believe him to be!"
Sliding up to her sister, Yang looked uncomfortable. Team JNPR felt the same. Even if Jaune's attention was halfway to Penny.
"Um, I think we should probably go..."
"Where are we going?" Penny asked smiling as she popped up behind Ruby.
"So you admit it! The White Fang is just a radical group of terrorists!"
"That's not what I meant, and you know it!"
The argument kept on going on. Eventually Penny, understanding the argument was more serious than she thought, went her own way.
The two teams returned to Beacon's dorms.
Some time later, in late evening.
As it turned out, the argument kept going until late in the evening. As she felt out of her depht, Ruby asked Jaune if he could stay near to provide advices if she needed it. He accepted and told the rest of Team JNPR to wait for him in their dorm room.
As Yang and Ruby continue to observe, with Jaune propped against the wall in the by the door, time passes from afternoon near the docks to nighttime in their dormroom.
What followed was a sad exchange from two persons on the same side who each came from different walks of life with two drastically opposite points of views.
The tension in the room rose, and things that wouldn't be said in calmer situations were shared.
Things such as the Faunus in hiding revealing more from her past than she intended to originally, or at least not in this way.
Silence dropped down on the room again. A surprised Weiss backed away slowly, and Blake realized her mistake as she looked around at her teammates.
'So she admits it. I did had my doubts... It's interesting.'
"I... I..." She dashed out to the door, but Jaune bodily stopped her.
"Jaune let me through."
"I will, if you want to go it's your right, but first I want you to think hard about what you plan to do."
"I need to get away! Away from..."
"I understand. But think about it, you were about to head out, in the night, without anything but the clothes on back. Do you have even any Lien on you to get a place to stay the night? At least take some of your stuff, make sure that you have what you could need.
If you go like this I can tell you that at least Yang and Ruby will be worried to death about you, not even counting us from JNPR. And she might be upset right now, but I also know that a certain heiress will be worried..." He said while said person crossed her arms and looked on the other side." So please..."
Blake took a moment to think about it then nodded and went to pick some of her stuff. Yang was about to say something but Jaune signaled her not to.
When Blake was done he freed the way. She opened the door and started to go, but stopped a moment. Yang and Ruby hoping she was about to change decision awaited what she would say or do.
"I'll make sure to stay safe so don't worry..." Then she was gone.
After a moment nothing happened until Yang reacted.
"Why did you let her go?" She asked, her fists tightly wounded at her sides, clearly frowning with eyes both upset and worried.
This sight made him sigh. He felt like he was doing this even those times.
"Yang... You would have me make her stay through force against her will..?"
This made her flinch as struck and back down, but she was still clearly distraught, so Jaune tried to alleviate her worries.
"At least with my way you know she's not out there without anything and that she'll be relatively safe."
"But…" Began Ruby. "We should I have said something, no?" She said feeling visibly guilty about her inaction.
"Oh Ruby..." He put one hand on her shoulder. "Ruby, why do you think I said nothing while they exchanged all these words? Because I knew they both needed to get it out of their systems. Now that it's done, you can only allow them to think about what was said and process it. And if for that Blake needed to get away for a moment then we had but no other choice than to respect her wishes... In the long run, cooler heads will prevail." He saw she was still worried and sighed again, knowing he'll have to do more to alleviate her worries, even if it'll make him commit more than he intended to in the first place. "If that can make you feel better know that if it gets serious I'll have a way to find her later on." Her eyes took on the sheen of hope.
"Your Semblance?"
"Yes." This really was a convenient explanation, he thought. And now to sell it, the Arc way... "I give you my word as an Arc." And thus he was now honor bound.
After doing his best to help the girls of RWBY, Jaune went back to his dorm room. Upon entering he was met by the worried faces of his teammates. With a shake of his head Jaune explained what happened, leading his team to hope the situation will get better.
A little later, as they were all in bed, Jaune couldn't help but to think about that strange girl, Penny, and what her existence meant.
Two days later.
The weekend passed without any sign of Blake. As they got more worried, Ruby and Yang decided yesterday that they wanted to make sure she was alright, so they planned to take the remaining members of Team RWBY back to town to at least try to locate Blake. Team JNPR decided to give them the time to put themselves back together, but promised them they'd be there if the girls were to need anything.
A bit before the time the girls had planned their excursion, Jaune decreed it a good time to make true on his word, and so made his way to Vale on his own to try to locate the wayward Faunus. After exiting the dorm building, he went to the aerial docking bays and took one of the first Bullheads of the day for Vale proper. Good news, it allowed him to ascertain that his motion sickness was gone!
Upon arriving, Jaune located an empty alleyway off to the side and jumped on the roof of the next building.
As he didn't want anyone seeing him jump from roof to roof in broad daylight, and attracting unwanted attention in doing so, Jaune made use of another ability of the Spiritual Sense called Perception Manipulation. While at his level it wasn't enough to make him totally invisible, it at least allowed him to blend enough with his surroundings to become a mere afterthought to anyone who could see him by happenstance.
So after activating his Spiritual Sense and pushing it to its current maximum, a radius wide enough to encompass one and a half block, he then calibrated it on Blake's energy signature to filter out the rest.
'Not much but if I go fast it should compensate...'
Thus he went off, and with a clever application of Qi and Aura, he managed to swipe a couple dozen blocks by the minutes.
'Still going to take time. Sigh...'
A while later.
A couple of hours later Jaune had only done one-fourth of Vale, even at full speed, this really wasn't the biggest Kingdom of Remnant for nothing. It would take days for a normal person to cross on foot without transportation!
Knowing the girls were in the Residential District, he decided to go full west towards the seaside of Vale. He first started with the northern part of the Commercial District, quickly checked the Upper-class District, even if he had really doubted Blake would go there but better to be safe than sorry, then did a complete one-eighty and headed back to the southern part of the Commercial District. After completing it he then decided to head to the Agricultural District passing by the Residential District.
And It seemed that it was a good idea for luck finally smiled on him as he found her completely in happenstance.
'Oh finally thanks the Heavens... I genuinely was concidering to buy a sword big enough to fly on. It would have burned my mental energy like crazy, not to mention I would have nowhere to store it besides my back, but I was getting really frustrated...'
He hoped on a neighboring building and focused his Spiritual Sense on her. It appeared she wasn't alone.
'Is that the monkey Faunus of last time? Huh, small world...' He had a brief thought about his journey throughout Vale. 'Never mind that...'
Down in the cafe below him, Blake and the monkey Faunus were seated around some beverages.
"Finally, she speaks! Nearly two days and you've given me nothing but small talk and weird looks!" Blake gave him Sun a glare. "Yeah, like that."
She rolled her eyes before closing them, then took a deep breath and looked back at him, her eyes brimmed with sadness.
"Sun... Are you familiar with the White Fang?"
'So that's his name, good to know, was getting tired of calling him a Faunus in my head...'
Sun answered in the affirmative, with less than flattering words to qualify them.
"Of course! I don't think there's a Faunus on the planet who hasn't heard of them. Stupid, holier-than-thou creeps that use force to get whatever they want. Bunch of freaks, if you ask me!"
She took a sip of her drink while listening until she dared to say what weighed on her heart.
"I was once a member of the White Fang."
'Nothing new so far...'
Sun however promptly went cross-eyed at that declaration and managed to choke on his drink, making him put it down and wipe his mouth as he held up a hand to process this information.
"Wait a minute, you were a member of the White Fang?!"
"That's right." She nodded. "I was a member for most of my life, actually. You could almost say I was born into it..."
She then went into telling her story as a Faunus and a member of the White Fang, under the unjudging eyes of Sun, and the listening "ears" of Jaune.
'Interesting. I already had an idea from Doctor Oobleck's classes and what I managed to find on my Scroll, but to have the testimony of someone who was born into it gives me more insights. In the end from what I can tell both parties, the humans and the Faunus, are equally at fault, with the humans with the more wrongs on the diplomatic sides and the Faunus with the violences...
But sadly, when all recourse of talks fails its oftentimes the only solution, it's a sad and ugly fact of life... But the White Fangs way of approaching this war of them changed from a want to be heard to an outright thirst for blood for the sake of violence, and that's when they went wrong in my opinion.'
"So, I left. I decided I no longer wanted to use my skills to aid in their violence, and instead, I would dedicate my life to becoming a Huntress. So here I am, a criminal hiding in plain view, all with the help of a little black bow." She wiggled her cat ears beneath it in demonstration.
Sun took some time coming to terms with this.
"So... Have you told your friends any of this?"
At this question Blake merely looked down in shame and said nothing. Going back to stay silent for a couple of minutes, just taking some sips from her tea.
Jaune decided he had heard enough and went to look for the rest of Team RWBY.
But not before leaving behind an Astral Projection of himself, yet another ability from the Spiritual Sense. At his current level Jaune couldn't astralise a much more tangible form of himself, but for what he wanted to do, it was plenty enough to tail the two Faunus and to keep a metaphorical eye and ear on them.
A few moments later...
After a couple of dozen of minutes of looking around for Team RWBY, Jaune quickly realized in retrospect he had lost time for nothing while he could have just called Ruby with his Scroll, and that he should have stayed with the two Faunus.
He had overheard through his Astral Projection that Sun, after hearing how Blake wondered about where an operation of the White Fang would happen, told her that the offloading of a shipment of Dust belonging to the SDC, or otherwise known as the Schnee Dust Company, was a likely place.
And of course, Blake didn't do the sensible thing anyone else with a lick of common sense would do, maybe call the police, her professors or even her teammates in backup, no, not even one of those things. She decided she'd go on her own with a person she had absolutely no prior battle experience with as back up.
'Sincerely, I'm starting to wonder who about these four girls is the most troublesome...'
Hence why he now ran double time in the direction of the Industrial District to the docks where they went to, which would take him at least a good twenty minutes to reach at top speed. This Kingdom was really big...
Through his Astral Projection currently standing as a silent and invisible observer besides Blake, Jaune could see that the self-proclaimed investigator lied alone in wait atop a high position on a rooftop out of sight overlooking the SDC's shipment. Sun had actually left for a moment to get something to eat for the duration of their improvised stake-out.
'At least she's got enough common sense in her for that.'
Sun wasn't absent for long as he came back a handful of minutes later. Jaune was roughly three-quarters of the way there and seriously considered to buy that one supplementary sword.
"Did I miss anything?" Sun got her attention by landing to her side.
"Not really. They've offloaded the crates from the boat. Now they're just sitting there."
"Cool." He held out one green apples from the stack in his arms. "I stole you some food!"
'A good thing Weiss isn't there to see that. I wouldn't trust her to not lord this over Blake's head.'
"Do you always break the law without giving a second thought?" She asked as she gave him a questioning look.
This made him counter her point defensively, leading to quite the nasty glare from the ex-terrorist, which quickly made him back down.
'Sigh...' Jaune couldn't help but to bemoan the scene.
However right after Sun's tactless comment, the gentle breeze of the evening suddenly started to pick up around them in a strong wind. As they looked up they saw a Bullhead's searchlights flashing around for a landing spot, it descended in the middle of the cargo containers and extended a ramp from where a black hooded individual with a recognizable metallic fanged mask came out of.
"Oh no..." Lamented Blake.
'Sorry Blake...'
"Is that them?" Asked Sun quietly.
Blake stared at the bloody wolf on the back of the man's outfit.
"Yes... It's them."
The White Fang soldier turned to the other White Fang members coming from the aircraft, and motioned with his rifle.
"All right, grab the tow cables!"
Back on the rooftop the two of them looked on the event, Blake with disappointment and Sun in empathy to the girl.
"You really didn't think they were behind it, did you?"
With anguish Blake stared sadly at the scene.
"No. I think deep down I knew. I just didn't want to be right." She closed her eyes out of despair, only to open them suddenly when she heard a new voice.
"Hey! What's the holdup!?" The soldiers looked up as a man came down the ramp, clearly not dressed as a White Fang member and certainly not even a Faunus. It was Roman Torchwick, and he gestured widely at the group of extremists. "We're not exactly the most inconspicuous bunch of thieves at the moment, so why don't you animals try to pick up the pace?"
"This isn't right." Started Blake in agitation.
'Why do I know she's going to do something stupid again?'
"The White Fang would never work with a Human. Especially not one like that." She then stood up and unsheathed the katana part of her weapon, Gambol Shroud, before she walked off the edge of the roof.
'Called it, sigh...'
This most definitely alarmed Sun and Jaune, who was mere minutes from reaching them.
"Hey, what are you doing?!" Exclaimed Sun.
'Ah shit...'
Blake fell to the ground in a crouch, then continued on to hide behind one of the containers, as she peeked around the corner she saw Roman berating a White Fang member holding a coil of rope.
"No, you idiot! This isn't a leash!" As he looked around distracted, Blake suddenly appeared behind him and held her blade at his throat. "What the- Oh, for f-"
As he rolled his eyes and was about to swear Blake cut him off.
"Nobody move!"
The White Fang soldiers readied their guns and equipped their swords in response. Seeing this Jaune brought his Astral Projection closer just in case.
"Whoa! Take it easy there, little lady."
As the White Fang closed in on her, Blake used her free hand to remove her bow, making the ribbon fly away in the air as her Faunus ears were revealed to the world.
"Brothers of the White Fang! Why are you aiding this scum?"
The White Fang members lowered their weapons a little at this development, unsure of what to do, when Roman laughed uncaring of the situation.
"Oh, kid, didn't you get the memo?" He smirked.
"What are you talking about?"
"The White Fang and I are going in on a joint business venture together!" He gestured.
"Tell me what it is or I'll put an end to your little operation." Blake threatened her teeth gritted.
Suddenly, the air is filled with more turbines blowing the wind wildly around the holdup.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a little operation..." Said Roman with smugness as he looked up.
Two more Bullheads are shown hovering above the heist, and as Blake watched in horror, Roman smiled and manages to fire his cane at Blake's feet, resulting in a large explosion.
On instinct Jaune surrounded Blake with his Astral Projection and overloaded it with his Qi which took the brunt of Torchwick's attack. Sadly in doing so, because of his current level and lack of proper control in the ability, followed by taking the strong of the explosion's backslash, an excess of Qi from the reserve in his Dantian bled through the unstable projection resulting in leaving him winded from the ordeal.
Blake and indeed Torchwick himself looked on in surprise at the shape in the form of a young man in white superimposed over her body that disappeared not unlike Aura does when broken.
"What the-?" Shaking the thought off Roman kept on attacking Blake who, having taken advantage of the former's surprise, managed to put some distance between her and Roman's continued attacks, his flaming missiles destroying cargo behind her as she flipped and used her Semblance to dodge then retreated behind more containers.
"What was that?" She asked herself, as Roman kept on hammering her position.
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty..." His taunt was interrupted when a banana peel lands on his head, causing him to toss it aside then he looked up and growled at the assailant, eyes widened in rage.
"Woo-hoo!"
Sun leaped from the container above Roman and dropped down on the criminal's face feet-first, rolling up he readied himself to fight.
A few distance away from the docks.
Lying in a alleyway, his body raked by pain, for Jaune it was unnecessary to say that he had known better moments. He was barely able to think complex thoughts, his breathing was labored and it felt like his veins were on fire.
'Must… Be... My… Meridians...' He thought between spikes of pain. 'I pay... Wanting... To go above... My station!' "Argh..!" He coughed blood.
Jaune's Meridians had overloaded from the forced flux of Qi caused by the bled of his Dantian through his overcharging of his Astral Projection. Damaging his body in the process.
'I've got to... Heal myself... Aura... My Aura... My Aura..!'
Closing his eyes, Jaune focused on the power coming from his soul.
After a few harrowing moments, Jaune's spasms steadily eased for then slowing down until they eventually stopped. He regained enough strength to sit up against a nearby wall to catch is breath.
"Oh man that was rough..." He exhaled.
'I'm impervious to damages coming from the outside world at a certain extent, but I'm still very much vulnerable to self-inflicted damages through improper uses of my Cultivator abilities... Lessons for the future I guess, even if I already knew it, eh, eh...' He chuckled weakly. 'Haven't felt this vulnerable for months, shows I'm still way off from being a true Immortal...'
After taking a deep breath, both to spyche himself up and to recirculate his Qi, Jaune slowly tried to stood back up on somewhat shaky legs. He instantly went back on the ground.
'I must be a bit more winded than I thought...'
So he helped himself by focusing his Aura throughout his body.
A few minutes later he stood up back in fighting condition with the exception of his Qi.
'I'm not exactly running on fumes, but I sure as heck am not back at one hundred percent. Maybe ten, twenty if I'm generous, if I'm especially generous...' He shook his head to clear his thoughts and then looked up. 'Let's see if I'm good enough to at least do this.' Taking a deep breath, he flexed his legs and did a measured leap on the roof he missed to land on earlier.
'Alright, that went fine, more than fine even, thanks Aura, seriously if I had this in my past life I would have been nearly invincible.'
With that thought he headed toward the great cloud of smoke that certainly could be seen all the way from Beacon.
Some moments later.
The spectacle that greeted Jaune was chaos. Pure unadulterated chaos.
Taking advantage of his enhanced brain Jaune took the time to analyze the battlefield at his leisure.
'So we still got Blake and Sun, good it's great to see she's fine, I'm glad I've at least helped her- Wait, wouldn't she have been fine with her Aura now that I think about it..?' Grumbling and not wanting to know the answer at that question he moved on. 'Then we've got Torchwick, the White Fang, three Bullheads, Ruby, Penny- Hang on, what? Oh, I see, they must have followed the smoke like I did.' He looked at Penny and saw her weapons in action. 'Hey! Why does she get to have so many flying swords! Wait a sec...' He looked closer and realized they were controlled by wires. 'Alright, for a moment I was about to call hacks.'
Then he turned towards Blake and Sun's position and saw they were facing against Torchwick.
'They seems to hold their own against him, true they could use some help but I wonder if I shouldn't let them handle him on their own... Not like they're in real danger anyways he's clearly holding back his punches. Must don't want to dirty his perfect record of thief with the stain of murder. Adding myself to the fray could make him become desperate enough to change his mind, and while I'm sure he couldn't hurt me I can't say the same thing for them, Aura or not... And it would let me keep a low profile for any future entreprises... Also I can't always be expected to hold their hands for everything, they did put themselves into this situation after all... Yeah, that's what I'll do, I'm fast enough anyways to step in if things go seriously south.'
He let his perception of time go back to normal, he couldn't keep this form of enhanced perception forever without emptying out his reserves of mental power after all, and saw that the three Bullheads he noticed earlier were about to come around from the skies and open fire on the battle, he was ready to step in but saw that Penny had the same idea, so he stepped back to observe her in action, while keeping his Spiritual Sense on the other three.
He watched as she merely formed a shield with her swords to counter the bullets and launched two others into the wall behind her, using them to pull herself back with their strings.
When her swords swirled around her again, she commanded them to open their points which built up a large glowing ball of green light. With a punching action, several bright lasers cracked the pavement when they fired at the transports and sliced each one in half, causing several of the White Fang members inside to fell and letting Ruby and Jaune watch as Bullheads crumbled in pieces behind her.
'Ok. Note to myself not to piss her off, I'm not sure if I should try to tank that, especially if it's what it does to what it looked like to be military grade armor plating.' He gulped. 'Made me think of a dragon I met a long time ago...'
She then aimed her swords at the remaining Bullhead holding the crate of Dust, shot her swords into its frame and pulled back on their wires, tugging the aircraft with them.
"Whoa... How is she doing that?" Ruby said in awe.
'Huh, I totally forgot she was there, she's not doing much so it's understandable. To be frank me neither...'
Jaune remarked that Roman had noticed that Penny had the Bullhead under her control, that turn of event must have made him change his priorities for the thief turned around a ran towards his last remaining transport.
And he ran away just in time because the girl pulled with all her might on the strings, the aircraft crashing into a stack of crates causing an explosion as a result, and Jaune bet that if she had the opportunity Torchwick's craft would have been the next on the list.
'Overkill Penny, overkill... I'm glad I'm not the one who's going to pay for all of this.'
As Roman escaped from the whole debacle, Jaune could hear one last sentence from him before the thief closed the Bullhead's door and was too far out of range of his Spiritual Sense. "These kids just keep getting weirder..." At that he closed the doors with his cane, and the Bullhead's jet throttled up, flying away from the lost battle.
Later Jaune had relocated away by the sight of the handful of police cars that arrived at the docks, he didn't want the extra attention, and merely looked on from afar undetected through his Perception Manipulation where Ruby, Blake, Sun, and Penny were seated on boxes in silence. That is, until Weiss and Yang appeared on the scene.
The reunion of Team RWBY went as he pretty much expected it to go, with explanations from a nervous Ruby and Blake, acceptance from Weiss, and reconciliations from the girls.
And most importantly excitement from Ruby.
"I'm still not quite sure about how I feel about you!" Said Weiss to Sun who laughed nervously.
'That's the Weiss we have come to love...' Smiled Jaune with pride at how far the all girl team went.
"Hey, wait a minute... Where's Penny?"
At that Jaune looked at a receding limo, who picked up Ruby's new friend under the watchful eyes of Atlas Military officials.
'I guess it validates my suspicions about it being Atlas…'
Then came the time for the students to head home and as they were escorted back to Beacon's aerial docking bays Jaune realized something.
'I'm going to have to go back on foot don't I..?' He thought while watching the cars containing his friends getting farther from him, then at the distance he'll have to cross. 'I really want a flying sword...'
A/N:
So, I'm going to directly come forward and say that I have some reservations with this chapter. I don't think it was necessarily bad, but it sure could have been a LOT better.
My issue is that when I went to start this chapter I had absolutely no idea how I could make events go in a way that would have both kept key events of the show, Blake's revelations about her past in the White Fang, her running away and Roman escaping for his next major moment, all the while adding my own twist to it.
I aim to follow canon as CLOSE as possible, at least it's lore and it's characters, Jaune being a special case of course, and to a certain extent while giving it my own twist and mixing in the journey of a Cultivator. But with this chapter I drew complete blanks at how I could make it deviate while staying close enough to canon to fit my plans.
Hence why I mostly reused what the original creators back at RT produced, and I'm seriously not happy with myself for doing it. But it was either doing this or wasting time running in circles wondering what to write and lose my will to write.
But I want to write dang it!
So yeah, I decided to go with this wierd roundabout way. I apologize if it could have upset some people...
Though maybe I'm being to hard on myself. It's just that I don't want people feel like I've wasted their time...
Anyhow, I hope at least this chapter was entertaining enough.
Hopefully the next one will be easier.
Fyr out.
