A/N: Sorry it's been a while. Team JNPR are back, as are our villains. Enjoy!
The past three hours have been the best and worst of Jaune's life.
The third time The Huntress stops him from falling off a roof, it starts getting mortifying. He's not much of a hero if he can't even walk on a sloped surface. She's patient, and to be honest that makes things worse, because he knows that he's an embarrassment.
All the same, he's a superhero.
He is a superhero.
Jaune Arc, the nobody with seven older sisters who all went on to far greater things than were ever expected of him, is a superhero.
He gets a Bluetooth earpiece, and he gets to listen to the heroes' terse conversations about petty crimes, and The Huntress lets him drop down behind a burglar to cut off his escape route once. And it's basically perfect.
The first hour or so of patrol is surprisingly simple. Petty criminals tend to surrender when The Huntress drops down in front of them, seemingly from nowhere, surrounded by clouds of red. She barely has to fight, usually just handcuffing them to nearby street signs and leaving them for the authorities.
The Huntress turns around and looks at Jaune, and speaks to him for the first time since he became part of the team.
"I never asked your name," she says.
"Um, Jaune Arc. Of the, uh, noble and ancient Arc family." Maybe that sounds cool. Or maybe not, considering how terrifying The Huntress still is.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. I am Pyrrha Nikos." She's still giving no indicators of her emotions, which is easy in a full-face mask.
"The pleasure was all mine," Jaune says, because he's pretty sure he saw in an old movie that it's how you're supposed to respond.
Pyrrha. He's seen that name in an old history textbook, some Greek general or something. It doesn't seem to fit The Huntress. Then again, The Huntress is a force of nature; he can't think of a name that would fit her.
The Huntress – Pyrrha – takes a running leap and lands fifteen feet away on the other side of the street. Jaune tries to do the same thing. He proceeds to fall fifteen feet before abruptly stopping. He cranes his neck to see Pyrrha's spear pinning him to a wall by his hood.
"Thanks," he says. "Um, what should I do now?"
There's a light pole four or five feet away. He could probably jump to it, but actually climbing up might be difficult. The ground is only – too far away to fall. And his hoodie is slowly tearing, so he can't stay here for very long.
The Huntress is ignoring him and looking toward the far end of the street. Bars and corner stores are still open, garishly adorned with neon signs. There's a man standing in the open at the next corner, shouting something. Probably just crazy.
Pyrrha stalks across the roofs, approaching Crazy Guy.
"Should I be following you?" Jaune asks, raising one hand to turn on his earpiece. "Um, over."
"Yes."
All right. Jaune turns again, trying to look for footholds. There's a windowsill a few feet down, but he'll have to drop that distance first.
The wooden wall is the first to give out, sending him and the spear tumbling toward the ground. Jaune tries to land on his knees and one hand, the way superheroes are supposed to, but ends up hitting the ground face-first. He picks up the spear and jogs toward Crazy Guy.
"They said I could not use fireworks! They told me that harmless and pretty explosions were illegal!" he rants. "But now, Roman Torchwick is here to change that! Let the show begin!"
"That's his supervillain thing? He wants to set off illegal fireworks?" Jaune asks. "I mean, he sounds pretty harmless."
Crazy Guy points a cane at the nearest building, and half of it explodes into flames. Jaune inhales some of the dust, coughs, and shrugs.
"Never mind, he's pretty dangerous."
A blur of bronze flies past him and through the neck of a person behind him. Sparks light up from the stump of its neck.
"Robots too?"
"Throw me my spear, then evacuate the civilians," The Huntress orders him.
Jaune throws the spear. It's six feet above Pyrrha's head, but she leaps and catches it out of the air.
She is so cool.
Right, evacuate the civilians.
People are flooding out of nearby businesses. Screams of panic fill the air.
"This way, civilians!" Jaune shouts, gesturing like a traffic warden.
A quiet sigh emerges from his earpiece.
"Get them out of the building Torchwick destroyed. Now."
Jaune shoves his way through the crowd, wishing he could jump onto roofs.
The building is a three-story apartment block. Most of the third floor is caved in. Jaune picks his way over the rubble. There are enough pieces of blunt steel poking out of the walls that he might be able to climb up them.
Just like rock climbing, Jaune. You can do this.
Another firework shoots past his ear, into the second floor of the building. There's a scream, then silence.
Jaune forces himself to keep climbing. Don't worry about the explosions or the robots or the supervillains. Just keep moving. There are people who need help.
The floor joists are mostly intact, and Jaune balances on one, leaning against whatever rubble he can reach. There might still be people alive here.
There's a little girl huddled in one corner, face buried in her hands. The floor between them looks ready to collapse.
Jaune keeps balancing on the floor joist, approaching the girl. At the sight of him, she cries harder and shrinks back into the corner.
"I'm not trying to hurt you," Jaune calls. "It's too dangerous to stay here."
He pushes his hood back and smiles at her. Slowly, she wipes her face on her sleeve and begins crawling toward him.
He scoops her up in one arm when she reaches him. Thank god she's light; he wouldn't be able to bridal-carry an adult like a comic-book hero while getting out of here.
Most people seem to have left the street, leaving room for The Huntress to fight. She leaps onto the second floor of the building to avoid an explosion, then hurls her spear at Torchwick. He dodges, but barely, and aims his cane again.
Jaune flattens himself against the one wall still standing as a series of smaller explosions wrack the building below him. The Huntress leaps in a blur of red to the ground, barely out of Torchwick's reach.
Jaune winds up falling the last ten feet off of the building, but he manages to land on his feet this time. He sets the little girl down and tells her to run.
Pyrrha isn't losing, per se, but she's far from winning. Torchwick and his robots are spraying the street with bullets that she's barely dodging.
Jaune could run out and try to stab a few of them. But that's the most idiotic plan anyone has ever thought in the history of idiotic plans.
He leaps down, making too much noise for a superhero, and lands between several robots. This is a slightly less stupid plan, probably. Hopefully.
Torchwick turns and fires at him, and he flattens himself against the ground.
For several long moments, there's nothing but bright light and heat and he's pretty sure he's going to die. But then he's not dead. The three robots closest to him are now heaps of scrap metal, his hair is on fire, and he succeeded.
By the time he's not actually on fire, just in pain, Torchwick is gone. The Huntress is leaning over him.
"That was brave," she says. "That was a terrible idea, but it was brave. Thank you."
The Huntress just called him brave, and thanked him, because he saved someone. Jaune tries to stand up. The Huntress shakes her head and picks him up like he weighs nothing.
"I'll take you back to base," she says. "I need to inform the other heroes of this attack, and you need medical care."
Jaune Arc is a hero.
His precious Pumpkin Pete hoodie will never be the same, and he nearly died, but he's a hero. And that's all that matters.