Rogue Huntsman
Bagels
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"Go home, Seraphine," I muttered, flicking the woman's wrist out from its support beneath her head and watching her face fall.
Her drowsy eyes widened, but the muscles in her neck and the recognition in her mind were too sluggish to save herself from the pain of jamming her nose into a wooden surface.
So I saved her the trouble and slid a stack of napkins over for her to fall on and squish her face into.
A muffled thanks was what I got in return.
I swept a clean white cloth across the polished bar before me, cleaning it up to return it to a shining luster. Something the previous owner should've been doing, if he actually took care of his bar in the first place.
Instead, he was unconscious in one of his own booths, someone's panties covering his hair and his dress-shirt ripped in two.
It was two in the morning, my decision to keep the bar open later than I initially decided making itself apparent from my presence actually still lingering here. But I had to call it when patrons started getting too intoxicated to distinguish which way the gravitational pull of the planet pulled you.
A couple of them ended up on the ceiling for a while, only falling down when they sobered up slightly.
My alcohol tended to have interesting effects on people…
"Can I havsh-" *hic* "jusht one mawr?" Seraphine tilted her head up, cheeks flushed beyond even the color of her hair as she dangled an empty glass over the bar in front of her.
Her eyes switched to me, paired with a pout and an attempted seductive gaze.
She ended up just looking like a tipsy puppy stuck on its back.
I took her glass and started cleaning it, pulling the cup away when she tried to grab for it. Her pout intensified before she lunged for the glass again, this time pushing herself onto the bar's counter to reclaim the cup.
"I'll be fine~" she nearly fell over my side of the bar, the only thing stopping her from toppling to the floor was my hand beneath her overturned shoulder, "I promishe."
Her slim arms clutched lazily at my sleeve, trying to pull herself back up from her half-falling, half-bent over position.
One of the patrons just leaving stole a quick glance at her before I turned my gaze to them, watching as they met my eyes, paled, and then dipped out the door.
The squirming woman on my arm was finally accepting her new reality of being stuck when I pushed her back into her seat and finished cleaning the last glass in use. I stashed it away before her eyes refocused on me, turning from thankful, to confused, to confident.
"What'sh wrong, Niro~" she cooed, leaning over her modest bust and crossing her arms on the bar's counter, "Don't want a woman getting touchy?"
"I figured you didn't want a face full of the floor," I replied, folding the cloth in my hands and setting it aside, "Was I wrong?"
She pouted again.
A small gleam of her aura passed over her skin and I noticed her alcohol levels drop. She was burning away the alcohol content in her system.
"It is," her pout turned into a frown, a look of genuine concern and hurt crossing her features, "because I'm not as pretty as Anoel?"
The answer to that question was as simple as a children's addition problem. Of course, even that was too complicated for an idiot to solve, let alone answer.
Besides, addition doesn't apply when looking at mechanical engineering and Dust reactors. Which were both needed to generate enough energy in my levels of care to produce an honest answer to that question.
"You're belittling yourself if that's the only conclusion you can come up with," I replied, turning to regard the owner of the bar once more to see if he had his keys on him.
He didn't.
So I turned around and placed my hand against the wall behind me, tracing its vibrations for a split second before feeling a metallic resonance off to my right.
"A-am I just not pretty at all-"
"Try not to belittle yourself further with more self-conscious false statements that seek attention," I cut her off, stepping over to a set of keys inside a draw. I traced them with my eyes for a moment, slipping my aura over its shape before closing the drawer and making my way around the bar.
"Huh?"
It's the closest thing she was going to get to a compliment from me. But seeing as she was intoxicated, confused, and vulnerable, I decided to find a little entertainment in her dulled consciousness.
"As in, you're stunning, seductive, hard to look away from, and entirely enchanting to anyone who stares for too long," I listed off, making my way over to her and leaning against the bar, "Enticing, elegant, voluptuous."
The list went on. It was like she was designed to poison people with a cloud of lust and pheromones.
"D-do you mean that?" her face grew redder as she tilted her head down, ruby eyes glancing up into my own.
"Unfortunately, those are the current factors presenting themselves as issues for your walk home. Which means…" I stepped closer and reached an arm around her waist, getting a startled gasp from the woman as I took hold.
That gasp turned into a yelp when I threw her over my shoulder and dangled her there.
"Someone might take advantage of you in your current state if you walked alone."
"C-come on, Niro! I can take care of myself!"
Small fists struck the cloth of my back, but I started walking anyway. This wasn't a night to be walking alone, not when it was prime time for the addicts to be walking around. Additionally, this was around the same time most un-reputable people ran jobs.
"Considering how easily I picked you up and gained possession of your body, I'd say otherwise," I hardly put any effort into that, let alone any aura. She was light as it was, which meant her strength was rather lacking.
As for her aura… she wasted too much of it already trying to push herself onto me through her semblance.
Leaving her with only half now compared to when she started with.
I made my way over to the door and turned for a moment to regard the room. Chairs were toppled and discarded, tables were clean but disarranged, the room was in disarray.
I let a fleeting light of my aura pass from my boots and into the floorboards, turning once I did and opening the door to leave. Behind me, the room fixed itself to the state it was in before I entered several hours ago, closing the door behind me once all the blinds were pulled down.
With a quick turn of the knob, I reached forward and replicated the key I traced earlier, pushing its hardlight edge into the lock mechanism in front of me and securing the door that way.
The bolts twisted, the pistons sealed, the door was locked.
I let the key of aura fade before glancing back over my shoulder, feeling two hands groping my pants and what lay beneath them.
"Change of plans," I stated, pulling her weight forward by the legs and letting her fall with an eep into my arms. I held her upper back and beneath the crook of her knees now, letting her dress settle again before I started walking.
"You have a really nice a-"
"And you have a really nice whiplash face," I interjected, glancing down the dark sidewalk in front of me and catching a shuddering glimpse of moonlight rippling over a puddle in the distance.
It was still raining. Still storming, in fact. But I kept the rain and thunder out of my proximity through a small field of evaporating aura…
At least, until I dropped her off.
I couldn't care less if I got wet.
It was water.
"Whiplash?"
"Yes, whiiiiplaaaash," I mocked before leaning forward and dashing several blocks down, turning the corner there before going several more.
I didn't stop until I reappeared before the stoop of her apartment complex, stepping out from the coverage there before glancing up into the rain-filled dark gray sky. The stars lay just behind the swirling clouds above, but those weren't what I was looking to.
I was counting the windows.
"P-please don't do that again…" Seraphine exhaled, her chest heaving in my arms as she pressed her face into the sleeve of my coat.
Her face was flushed again.
"I did warn you," I informed, turning my attention to a row of windows now that I found the height I was looking for.
"That wasn't much of a warning," she complained, her eyes finally opening again to look around, "I-I'll be fine from here. You can put me down now."
She made a move to lean out of my grasp, but I stopped her.
"I told myself I'd walk you home," I said, pulling her back and readjusting my grip before walking out across the sidewalk, leaving the light of the lobby doors, "Your home isn't the building. Your home is your room."
"Same difference. You don't have to do so mu-"
One glance down broke her retort into silence, causing her to look away in a fluster.
I had other reasons for doing this.
The darkness of an alley soon emerged around us, my black-clad form disappearing in its clutches as I entered the shadows and eventually looked up. I was right where I wanted to be.
With that, I cradled the woman in my arms more solidly and crouched down, feeling her eyes suddenly begin to widen and her mouth open, about to say something-
Before I reinforced the concrete beneath my feet and jumped.
Rain crashed against a disintegrating shield I hovered above us as we rapidly climbed in altitude. The building's windows and its walls rushed by in a blur, tapering off in their sudden passes as we began to reach the height I was aiming for.
Whatever she was going to say got stuck in her throat, and in the next moment, we reached the apex of my leap.
A small platform faded into existence beneath us as I glanced into the window to her apartment. Glowing lime green aura solidified just in time to catch the soles of my boots, the energy dripping down from my glove as I walked forward.
The green-lit pathway connected itself with the sill to her window, small wires soon branching up around the border of its frame before the whole pane opened inward.
I made my entry there, passing into her darkened bedroom in silence and resting her on the bed.
She didn't have much to say.
She just laid there on her elbow, watching me leave.
I stepped back out into the rain, this time ignoring the need of a nullifying shield as thunder slowly rolled in again. My clothes immediately dampened and grew soaked, and once more the sound of the storm above circulated through the electrified air I breathed.
"Take care of yourself, Seraphine. And don't worry about your neighbor. His screams will be short," I spoke into the room, pulling down the rim of my cowboy hat as I took my leave.
The pane of the window sealed closed once more and repaired itself, the platform beneath me receding from her perch as I transitioned to a few windows down.
To the room adjacent hers.
Once I reached that window, I kicked the pane in with a crash of shattering glass and strolled inside. The room itself was abnormally warm, scented smoke drifting around the ceiling before spilling out into the rain.
My eyes then traced the darkness and found a man with wide eyes and flushed skin, a cold sweat running across his bare chest and arms as I watched him fumble and fall from his bed.
"W-what the hell?!"
"Please don't speak of my home in such a way," I replied, letting my voice carry itself into the darkness of the room with a low, demonic whisper, "It's good to see you, Bart. I'm not exactly due to take you for another three months and nine days, but I figured I'd stop in early. Just for you."
His eyes went even wider, "S-SATAN?!"
I was here for information in accordance for a high-paying job.
He was going to give that intel to me.
The act was just to mess with his baked mind.
The first light of dawn crept in through their dorm room window, slipping over the disheveled confines of a set of beds on the left side of the room.
Its warm rays were enough to pull Arex from her sleep, even though she only managed to get a solid four hours of it. The rest were either spent worrying about Kitsuki, struggling to sleep through the storm herself, or due to her mind mentally slapping her in the face every time Kitsuki moved her tails.
Which, while the kitsune slept, happened surprisingly often.
And given the fact the three appendages were wrapped tightly around Arex's bare legs, thighs, and, sometime during the night, even managed to fold and bend around her waist and the juncture between her legs…
Any small movement was enough to jolt the girl awake.
The kitsune was the one who was supposed to be quivering in her tails, not her.
Deep orange eyes slowly opened as Arex tried not to move, biting back the urge to squeeze her legs together as she let out a shuttering breath. She kept it quiet, but the air in her lungs expelled on its own when she finally recognized how close she was to Kitsuki's own frame.
She… wasn't really thinking about that last night. All she wanted to do was get the kitsune to bed and help her sleep through the night, especially with a storm raging around them. But now?
What was she supposed to think?
Kitsuki's sleeping face lay comfortably before her own, small nose pressing against the side of hers as she rested and breathed silently. The headphones the girl put on the kitsune's ears were displaced slightly, only playing through one ear while the other lay pressed into the bed next to her pillow.
The kitsune had to have shifted some time in her sleep to slide closer to Arex… leaving her pillow behind in favor of whatever comfort she could find against her.
Her silken white hair lay in a slightly tousled cascade down the side of her face, rolling messily over her pale shoulder where Kitsuki's sweater laid loosely open, cloth riding down her arm in her curled position.
Arex bit her lip and choked on a held breath when Kitsuki stirred slightly, ungodly soft tails tightening and shifting in their hold around and between her thighs as the kitsune tucked her elegant chin slightly.
Two bare legs then curled up as well, and it wasn't until then that Arex realized Kitsuki's lithe legs were entangled with her own, squeezing softly around her burning skin beneath the covers.
H-how did she get so close?! Arex's mind was running rampant, treading waters she really shouldn't be treading as a permanent fluster washed over her cheeks.
She needed to get out of that bed… now.
But how?
She was entangled, ensnared in the adorableness of her partner and trapped in her sleeping grip. The kitsune not only had Arex's legs encased in the fluffy domain of her secured tails, but the beautiful creature before her also rested on top of one of her wings.
What was she supposed to do about that?!
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Her burning orange eyes kept flicking back and forth, thoughts attempting to string together to form some sort of escape strategy. She was able to get most of her mind under control, but some of her thoughts remained particularly focused to the fur brushing against her panties.
She really needed a shower after she got out of this.
Not that she needed one, but she wanted one. She barely worked up a sweat last night working with Ruby in the forge room. Without a need for her Affinity, working by the forges rejuvenated her more than exhausted her.
And after that? She burned all that collected energy in her mad dash to get back to their room. Even that didn't push her body, so she wasn't in need of a shower.
She just needed an excuse to get out of the enticing grip of heaven's gate right in front of her.
But even that didn't sound so convincing…
She could always wait until Kitsuki woke up, but she couldn't bare the embarrassment that would follow if a conscious Kitsuki was suddenly aware of all this too. Of all the actions she took in the innocence of her sleep.
And then there were her eyes…
The golden-orange sunsets she really struggled to look away from. They were akin to the swirling flames of a burning ocean, enkindled in a sea of blazing waves and enwreathed in golden shining crests.
How could she ever look away from that?
For those to open so close to her own, with her lips already so close to grazing the soft lips of her partner, she knew she would ultimately lose the internal struggle not to close that distance.
But…
Arex closed her eyes again, trying to calm the throbbing of her heart.
She couldn't.
Not after last time.
She couldn't put Kitsuki through a risk like that. And that's not even taking account whether or not the girl before her was even remotely interested in girls at all.
Arex took a slow breath, silently letting it out in a soft sigh before thinking through her exit strategy again. The embarrassment in her irises switched to a deep, darkened blue, a color only drawn up from the emotions she actively repressed.
Even if a relationship was possible, Arex didn't want to hurt Kitsuki. She couldn't live with herself if she hurt anyone else again.
Not like last time.
Those dark blue eyes hardened in resolve for one fleeting moment, their gaze taking in the girl before her one more time before she slowly took in a new breath of air.
With it she tapped into her Affinity and slowly spanned out a heat across the surface of the bed beneath them, bringing it to a comforting wave of soothing warmth.
It was the best way she could trick Kitsuki's slumbering mind into thinking she was still in contact with Arex's body.
With that, the girl slowly lifted Kitsuki's sleeping frame up ever so slightly… then gently withdrew her flexible wing from beneath the girl's side. When she regained possession of her appendage, she reached down between her legs and started delicately slipping out of the confinement of Kitsuki's tails.
The soft fur and tiny twitches were a temptation too hard not to think about, but she pushed through those thoughts and finally pried one tail from its sealed grasp against the front of her panties.
That was the most dangerous of them all.
She reached for the second one that lay twirled around her leg, but as soon as she touched it, its furry tip rolled and flicked while the girl next to her shifted in her bed.
Arex froze.
Her eyes slowly turned to see Kitsuki curling into the area she just vacated by sitting up, the kitsune pulling the pillow she found there into her arms and clutching it to her chest. Two white fox ears mildly twitched and fluttered for a few more seconds…
Before even those grew still again and Kitsuki's breathing grew shallow and even.
Arex released the breath trapped in her throat and gently slipped out of the grasp of the last of Kitsuki's tails. With those out of the way, the winged girl untangled her sensitive legs from the toned, elegant limbs of her partner and flexed her wings.
She didn't want to shift the bed by crawling across it, so she pushed the morning air beneath them downward and lifted her light frame from her bed's covers. The temperature in the air in front of her suddenly rose to accommodate the movement of air, Arex changing it to create a small updraft to prevent any rushing wind from touching Kitsuki's light skin.
With that, she brought the hem of her blanket back up to Kitsuki's exposed shoulder and moved away, landing softly on the floor just before the foot of the bed.
It wasn't until then that she finally let out all the pent up breaths she'd been holding in and relaxed her shoulders.
Not a single strand of frost white hair on her partner's head was disturbed, thankfully. The updraft in the room died off a few moments later, the silence of the morning lingering ever more as she quietly padded her way over to the box of spare electronics that still lay on the floor.
She reached in and pulled out a backup black scroll, booting it up before standing again. She didn't want to stop the music playing from the one she left on the nightstand. The one Kitsuki was still listening to.
So, she started downloading the digital image of her scroll's playlists she kept online and re-imaged the stock scroll in her hand. While that was cloning, she made her way over to her dresser and pulled out a change of clothes, paired with a change of underwear as well.
As soon as she did, she opened up a new drawer and withdrew a clean black towel, taking it with her as she crossed the room and snuck past a sleeping Anoel in her own set of twin beds.
With a quiet click, she was inside the bathroom and leaning against the locked door. Her raven hair fell in strands before her still flushed face, but she didn't bother to brush them away.
What… what got into her last night?
Her bright eyes traced the dark room as she slowly slid down the closed door, sliding to the floor before resting her head back against its surface.
She didn't even hesitate…
When she got that message, she just bolted. She didn't even worry about people seeing her wings. She did a minor scan of her surroundings, but she didn't even think to do the same with her dormitory before rushing in and up the stairwell.
What if someone saw her?
What if someone… saw her wings? What then?
Black wings like these weren't indicative of any avian faunus race most would generally know. They weren't even akin to the wings possessed by the rarer of bird faunus across Remnant and its four kingdoms.
They were thin, sleek, their color as black as obsidian and as soft as an angel's feathers. They were hers… and they belonged to a race so close to extinction, she might as well be from the last bloodline that still lives.
It was a sport to hunt them by now.
Since when did the scientific community engage in the art of hunting subjects for experimentation…? She knew exactly when. But it wasn't just them.
The general community wasn't at fault.
After the fall of the lost fifth kingdom of Kerillor, in the southern oceans of Remnant, most of her race had already been killed off. Kerillor was their sanctuary, their new home.
But when that got destroyed, it took the majority of her race with it.
Now, over the countless years following Kerillor's destruction, her bloodline remained in hiding. But even then, the other lineages slowly dwindled and disappeared.
Anoel and Arex were all that was left of the Phoenix race… as far as they knew.
And yet, despite the fear of being exposed, she threw those thoughts aside to fly to her partner.
Sure, the hunts haven't taken place for a century now, especially due to her bloodline remaining perfectly hidden in the societies of the remaining four kingdoms. But… she was still incredibly apprehensive about her wings.
Even if no consequences arose from revealing them… there was still that small chance of sparking that insatiable intrigue in the DNA of her dying race.
However small it may have been, it was there.
And she's always been careful.
But last night?
She closed her eyes, her wings falling softly to the floor as she sat there in darkness. She didn't bother turning on the light when she walked in, leaving it off in the daze of her own thoughts.
The heart she could've sworn she'd locked up after her last experience beat rapidly in her chest, still running rampant from a few moments ago in her bed with her partner.
I… I can't… She couldn't feel that way. She promised herself she'd never feel that way ever again.
She had to at least try to keep that promise… for her partner's sake.
One of her wings reached up and flicked on the light, illuminating the room before her as she remained still. The beating of her heart began to finally calm down, lowering from its rampant elevation as she slowly opened her eyes.
She wanted that shower now. It was the best way to clear her fogged mind out of its mess of thoughts.
I was done with all the jobs I had available.
All of them.
In just one night, I completely well over 300 paid endeavors and racked up a stable profit as a result. That was my secondary objective. My main objective was burning time while I could.
But even that fell through.
I could stay in Vale… But there was something I couldn't ignore at Beacon.
A large brown bag of bagels lay clutched over my shoulder, the crunch of the material rapping solidly against my back as I walked down one of Vale's sidewalks.
Its direction easily led me to the airship docks to take me to Beacon. There, I'll just hitch a ride on top of one of the aircrafts.
It'll save me the trouble of jumping to Beacon physically.
Anoel and Arex both liked cinnamon bagels, so that made the purchase rather easy. Kitsuki on the other hand… I grabbed an assortment to try and make my best guesses. With any luck, she'd actually favor cinnamon as well, which meant all the extras I bought for the girls would pay off.
Not like lien mattered, anyway.
To my liking, the streets were fairly empty this early in the morning. The sun was still taking its time climbing the horizon over in the distance, so the light it threw down on the buildings around me was at least something intriguing to look at as I walked.
The only people around this early were a couple students from the Academy and a small plethora of people too strangled by their work to realize they were sleep deprived.
Unfortunately, Vale's workers haven't unionized yet so we could bring in monkey labor and make things easier on all of us.
It's a shame, really.
Monkeys come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Like that white-haired carbon sandbag at Beacon, he'd do a great job with that kind of work.
Unless he was too privileged to do even that-
The sound of shattering glass and crumbling bricks suddenly ripped out into the quiet streets of Vale as a storefront exploded in front of me.
A rising dust cloud billowed out from the collapsing building as the black figure of a teen came crashing out of its structure. The person bounced and tumbled across the street before digging claws into the asphalt of the road, scratching themselves to a halt before hitting the sidewalk.
Of course… think of the devil, act like the devil, and lo and behold… he shall appear.
The usually white-haired carbon sandbag from Beacon now crouched on the street in front of me, looking like a discount black silhouette from an amateur anime that couldn't waste the effort to animate extras in the background.
Only, this thing was armored, had claws, and brimmed with glowing details.
All of which weren't worth the mental energy to describe.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked lowly, watching as his gaze quickly switched to me.
"U-Um… You must have me confused for someone else…"
He had the audacity to think I didn't recognize him… and I had the restraint not to just deck him.
"Assuming that level of senseless ignorance of others can get you killed, Dante," I replied, watching as he stood straight up again and stared at me. But that stare soon snapped to the crumbling of bricks emerging from the destroyed storefront.
A new figure walked out. Probably the one who threw Dante through the store in the first place.
Damn… I wanted to congratulate him and give him lien for a job well-done.
The figure stepped out in a black cloak, a porcelain mask residing on his face resembling that of what he probably thought looked like a dragon. Most would agree.
Pale skin, shoulder-length decently messy black hair, heh… I'm actually caring to take in his appearance. He deserves at least that much for punching Dante through a building.
He wielded a bone-encased longsword, almost ancient yet still retaining a mortally lethal sharpness and a ferocious body of harrowing design and detailing. It was designed to rip into flesh and bone, to savagely cut down any foe that lay before him.
My lien's on him. But, unfortunately, the sandbag has armor now. So… he'll probably lose.
"You two on a date?" I asked, glancing between the two as their masked faces turned to regard me.
Dante just threw his arms in the air like he was innocent before pointing behind him, "Honestly, I just went out to buy milk when this guy came out of nowhere."
My eyes then leveled on dragon guy.
He just simply waved at me, "Hello there!"
I'll let the kiddies play.
With that, I started walking, "You two have fun. I hear ferry rides are quite romantic at these early hours of the morning."
"W-Wait, you're leaving?! You can at least help out a bit you know!" Dante attempted to get my attention, his glowing eyes turning to me again as I walked past him on my sidewalk.
"Not my problem," I replied.
The crunching of my brown bagel bag continued as I slowly left their vicinity.
"Thanks a lot you jerk!"
"Well, well…" I felt the dragon mask's eyes on me again as well as I waved over my shoulder, "He's certainly a strange fellow…"
"I'm not the one cosplaying a dead lizard in the middle of Vale." I let my voice carry itself to him as I left them behind, hearing a hearty laugh from him as I kept walking.
Now… I wonder if my team's hungry.
I bought a lot of bagels.
Niro's good mood is going to slowly get degraded down once again as he makes his way back to Beacon. But of course, like I said, he'll start to build an immunity to its poisonous air.
So, over time, he'll act less and less angry. But until then, he shall remain Niro! This chapter helped show off his more... lenient, humorous, and easygoing side. He had a good night. Going anywhere near Beacon easily ruins that mood.
*cleverly skirting around the whole segment involving Arex and Kitsuki in bed*
Heh… yeah, that was adorable. I hope.
But I wanted to get something across. Arex is seriously repressing something. Like, majorly. So, whether or not she's actually developing anything for Kitsuki doesn't matter. To her, anyway.
Until then, a certain sister has every intent to tease Arex to no end about it.
For now, Favorite and Follow.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP