-(=RWBY=)-
Chapter 25
-(=RWBY=)-
Hunted. Hated. Hopeless. Friendless.
Alone, in the darkness.
In being an enemy to the world, Jaune was presently unrivalled.
He leaned back onto the wall of the enormous terminal once used for goods transport to Mountain Glenn. The last time he was here he had been training; now, however, he was hiding, from a world turned hostile, and from friends turned foes. Since the discovery of his identity, he was all humanity's enemy, and that meant going to ground to avoid being found, on pain of imprisonment or death itself.
It was night, technically, though the concept of time had long since lost significance in a place where daylight was ever absent, and darkness, omnipresent.
It was soul-crushing and utterly depressing, as far as hideouts went, but Jaune couldn't think of any good alternatives even now – and certainly not when he had been fleeing in haste, after his identity had been blown by Penny.
After his parting words to her, and after his friend had taken off, distraught, he himself ran like his life depended on it – which, of course, it did. Discarding his White Fang mask, he sprinted across the fields, back towards the farmhouse where he had initially rendezvoused with the Fang, and where his motorcycle was waiting.
It would actually have been faster to run back home using aura-enhanced speed, but that would have tired him out, and left him less able to fight or flee if combat again broke out. On the flipside, he was sure that the inevitable manhunt for him by the authorities would be slow-rolled by Ozpin, at least for a while. And so it was better to use the vehicle – but hurry, all the same.
He reached his motorcycle, and vaulted onto it, before firing up its engines and racing off.
His mind, too, was racing. Even as he navigated the roads, his mind was working furiously. He had to stay in the city – his missions for Watts demanded that much, as the man had made clear when Jaune had previously asked. And yet nowhere in the city was safe, for the manhunt would begin sooner or late. There would be no hiding then, not with his aura signature known to Penny, and her being able to locate him at the standard aura detection range of a hundred meters. She would have to physically sweep the city, and it would take time, but he would eventually be found. To be safe, therefore, he needed to hide in a place whose walls were aura-absorbent. And that meant...
The disused train terminal. Cinder Fall had mentioned that the roof and walls were aura-absorbent – presumably because the place regularly saw tonnes of dust come and go in transit, and aura-absorbent walls helped prevent a terrorist group's dust mage from simply extending their aura into the dust from a distance, and triggering said dust into a devastating explosion. Those aura-absorbent roof and walls, meant to thwart terrorism, could also protect him, by shielding him from any aura-based searches.
After deciding upon his refuge, where he could not be detected by aura sense and subsequently killed or arrested, Jaune worked through other details – like how he could still safely use his scroll to contact Ozpin and Watts while in hiding, and how he could get daily necessities like food and water.
Soon after coming up with some potential ideas on those matters, Jaune managed to arrive back at the parking lot near his apartment. Leaving the vehicle there without bothering to park it properly, Jaune ran for his apartment building.
Mercifully, the authorities had yet to surround the place, which gave Jaune precious time to get what he needed and then get the hell out. His legs pumping, Jaune raced up the stairs to his apartment, and then burst in.
The very first thing he did was put on his armour; his identity revealed to the world, there was no longer any need to sacrifice combat effectiveness for the sake of secrecy. He also transferred Crocea Mors from the mud-brown scabbard he had been using that night over to its original white-and-gold sheath, before strapping the blade back to his waist. And just to have a backup weapon, he slung his training sword – still sharp, though not of Anra steel – over his back. For the trials to come, he would need to be armed to the teeth.
Once the matter of his arms and armour were sorted, Jaune retrieved his personal scroll – he would need it, to remain in contact with Ozpin and Watts. Of course, the authorities could geolocate him whenever his personal scroll – which was legally registered to his name – connected to some mobile network tower. To be safe, therefore, he went dark, disabling his SIM card. For the same reason, he threw away the disposable SIM on his spare scroll – that too was a liability now.
All that seen to, Jaune finally turned his attention to packing for his life as a fugitive. Pulling out a backpack, Jaune shoved in two bottles of water, along with some of the food he happened to have in his apartment. From canned tuna to a bunch of bananas to a hunk of cheese Jaune didn't think would go bad, it was an eclectic assortment of food that Jaune dumped into a plastic bag and stuffed into the backpack. Following the food into the bag were clothes and toiletries, even as Jaune doubted that he would have much of a chance to keep clean while on the run. And the final thing he made sure to pack was a blanket that he pulled off his bed, rolled up, and bound to the top of his bag; where he was going, there no beds awaiting.
Jaune gave one last look around the apartment. It had been his home these past few months, and he had grown somewhat fond of it, dilapidated and derelict though it was. Leaving it behind made him feel some melancholy –
– a feeling which he suppressed ruthlessly, knowing as he did that sentimentality was but a distraction, and the indulgence of which was a good way to fail his mission.
He left the apartment without looking back. Hurrying down the stairs and exiting the apartment block, he didn't bother with his motorcycle, instead activating his aura and sprinting off at superhuman speed. Despite the risk of exhausting himself and leaving himself vulnerable were combat ever to break out, Jaune judged it well worth the risk by now; Ironwood would be baying for his blood, and demanding Valean huntsmen forces be activated to hunt the criminal who had slain his soldiers – and Jaune doubted Ozpin could delay the general forever.
The train terminal was somewhat far – perhaps an hour at normal walking pace – but the route to it Jaune knew well enough, having traversed it just yesterday to get there for the training session with Fall.
On his way to the train station, the streets were quiet. There were no signs of a manhunt yet, and that left him greatly relieved.
If Ozpin was helping delaying a manhunt, then they were paying off, as Jaune arrived at the disused train station unmolested and unobserved, albeit well out of breath.
The station was split into two areas – one above ground, and one below. The aboveground area was basically a giant heavy vehicle parking lot, except ten sheltered mechanical lifts were scattered across the place; trucks could drive into them, and be conveyed down to the underground portion of the terminal.
Jaune crossed the parking lot, to the office at one end. Locating the side-door whose lock Cinder Fall had melted to gain them entry for their training session last time, Jaune entered.
It was pitch black inside, forcing Jaune to activate the torchlight function of his scroll.
With that weak and uncertain light, Jaune made his way through the building, eventually coming to a corrugated iron stairwell that led deep underground.
Jaune took the stairs down, one step at a time, careful of his footing and wary of falling.
It took what felt like an eternity to reach the bottom, but the stairs finally stopped going down, and he knew he had arrived at the underground terminal.
Unlike last time, Cinder Fall wasn't here to use her Maiden's pyrokinesis, to summon and sustain a floating flame to light up the dead terminal. This time, there was only darkness, and despite everything – all the horrors he'd seen, and all the crimes he'd committed – there was something about the stygian blackness that left him wary and apprehensive.
Chiding himself for his irrationality – and indeed, for his pusillanimity – Jaune forced him to walk forward, with nothing but the feeble torchlight holding back the shadows.
He couldn't see any of it, but the underground portion of the freight terminal was laid out with the train tracks running through the centre. Freight containers and miscellaneous cargo, like the blocks of steel he had trained his semblance on last time, were neatly stacked on top of each other in neat rows running parallel to the track. The mechanical lifts, whose sheltered entrances he had glimpsed earlier, were at the very sides of the terminal; they were essentially platforms running up and down steel shafts, to carry trucks from ground level down to the floor of the terminal, and back up again.
And facilitating the entire operation of the place were cranes hanging from the ceiling. These served to move freight containers and goods from the trucks to the awaiting stacks and thence to the trains themselves, for transport out to mountain Glenn – and vice versa, for those goods coming in to Vale from the outpost.
All this, of course, was from long ago. Now, the terminal was dead, bereft of all activity and lacking all life –
– save for one solitary soul – his own – for whom this gods-forsaken place was now hearth and home.
At his sleeping spot near the corner, Jaune let his head rest against the wall of the terminal. Down in the darkness, there was naught to do but think – and so he did, his thoughts churning and chasing each other other relentlessly, his mind twisting in and on itself until there was nothing left of him but deep unease and chilling worry.
It had been a full day, but the events of the night before still bothered him – he could not help but wonder if there was anything he could have done to avoid the situation he now found himself in.
Get to the rendezvous faster, so the mission can start and end before Penny arrived? Help the White Fang load the dust, so they could get out more swiftly? Defeat Penny himself with alacrity, and withdraw before she could complete her aura analysis?
There were a thousand and one things, all of which he could have done, to avoid his current predicament –
– but only with the benefit of hindsight, and not on the basis of the information he had at that time.
Hindsight – that most accurate of views, yet also that which was least useful. As ever, thinking back on what might have been was a fruitless enterprise.
Or so Jaune told himself, at any rate. And as for the other big catastrophe of the night...
Five men and women were dead, the Ace Ops having lost their lives at Jaune's hands.
The night was still fresh in his mind, and Jaune could remember, vividly, how each and every one of Atlas's best had died. Marrow Amin had been first to fall, atomized by the immolating flames of Jaune's semblance. Clover Ebi had been second to go, his head split in half by a surprise attack. Elm Ederne was third, her stomach spilled open by a feint and a lunging slice. Then there was Harriet Bree, Jaune's singing sword cutting into her long before her incoming fist could return the favour. And finally there was Vine Zeki, his whirling attacks unable to hit an evasive Jaune, and unable to stop him from closing the gap and putting a sword into the man's chest.
Closing his eyes, and exhaling a breath, Jaune felt regret knot his own chest.
And yet...
He had seen worse, done worse, been worse. And on reflection, Jaune found that what he regretted was not so much not the killings themselves, which were for the sake of his mission and the good of the world, so much as the necessity of those killings. It didn't have to be the case, that the greater good required the deaths five good men and women – except combat realities, petty grudges and dirty politics led Watts to demand so, leaving Jaune choice but to agree if more lives were not to be lost, against the Queen and the apocalypse she wished to cause.
These ruminations are pointless.
The past could not be changed, and nothing could ever resurrect the dead. The river Styx, once crossed, stayed crossed, for the ferryman only ever went one way.
Jaune turned his mind to more practical matters.
He raised wary eyes to the ceiling of the terminal, before glancing around at the walls hidden by the darkness. He couldn't make out a thing, of course, it being pitch-black underground and him being forced to turned off the screen of his scroll to conserve power. However, the ceiling and walls were out there somewhere, the concrete out of which they were casted having been infused with rare aura-corroding Grimm liquid as well as dust, to form a barrier that resisted aura.
If the ceiling or walls had been damaged – if there were large cracks, or if sections had just fallen out – then his hiding place would not be totally proof against aura-based detection, and he would eventually be caught once the huntsmen started sweeping the city and noticed a suspicious aura signature deep underground.
This risk made Jaune grimace – even as he tried to remind himself that said risk was minimal, if not infinitesimal. The terminal wasn't that old, and it was highly unlikely that there would be large cracks, let alone whole missing sections in the concrete. And besides – when the huntsmen swept the city, they could well miss an aura signature underground, especially if they were focused on the residents in their apartments. And, of course – Jaune now felt stupid for not thinking about this earlier – aura detection worked in straight lines. Even with an alert huntsman passing by above, and even with damaged ceilings or walls, so long as huntsmen, hole and Jaune were not lined up just right – and that would be a vanishingly unlikely coincidence – Jaune would remain hidden.
I'm safe...
... probably.
Jaune's thoughts wandered, after that – before settling on the most unsettling matter yet – the matter of his friends.
Ruby, Nora, Ren and Yang – all of Team RVLY would be shattered, and Ruby most of all. They would think him a murderer, a terrorist, and a traitor – to humanity in general, and to them in particular, for betraying their friendship and their trust. Perhaps they would merely be shocked and confused, at first – but then they would grow hate him; of that, Jaune was sure.
And as for Blake – Jaune was deeply worried for her. Given their friendship, and given the events at her final campaign rally, Blake's public image was tied to his. The revelation that Jaune was working with the Fang would utterly destroy her reputation and her political career – not least because she was herself was faunus, and the daughter of the White Fang's founder.
There was little hope for Blake. Her chance to make a difference, to advance the cause of faunus in a world that treated her kind with indifference at best and hatred at worse – that was all dashed.
Jaune could, perhaps, try to soften the political blow – by persuading Weiss to speak up for her. No one sane could doubt that the Schnee hated the Fang, and so if the Schnee heiress publicly affirmed her trust in her friend, and assured the public that Blake did not approve of, know of, or support the White Fang or Jaune, then Blake could perhaps ride out the storm.
Of course, this would require persuading Weiss to help someone she saw as an unreformed terrorist, which would be difficult at the best of times.
Weiss...
Pain and longing, dread and dismay; these feelings gripped his heart, and squeezed it in a vice.
How long would it be until they could again see each other, and be together? Jaune would be a fugitive, and they would be apart, for however long the mission took. A month, for certain; a year, more like; and a decade, even.
Impossible. Unacceptable.
Jaune stood up, and began pacing around in agitation, his breathing uneven.
By hook or by hook, Jaune would try to meet up with Weiss at the winter solstice, to visit that frozen waterfall in Atlas, as they had promised each other once upon a time.
All the hatred of the world, would not stop him, nor keep them apart.
Now I sound like a lovesick fool... and perhaps I am.
All the same, having that solstice visit to look forward to – it was something that would sustain him, in the dark days ahead.
His mood lightened, Jaune finally managed to break out of the prison that was his obsessive, spiralling thoughts.
And those unhealthy musings finally behind him – at least for now – Jaune turned to action.
He needed to get in contact with the men whose manipulations he had been caught up in. Also, he was out of food, and, even more critically, out of water. He needed to get more of both, immediately, or else risk death by either starvation or dehydration – and wouldn't that be an inglorious way to go?
Using his scroll – which was already low on power – he lit up the darkness, and went to collect his backpack. Then, he began navigating his way to the terminal stairwell, to head back up above ground.
After so long in the darkness, his eyes hurt when the light of the shattered moon finally fell upon his face. But even so, Jaune felt a genuine relief. It was depressing being in absolute darkness, where even an iota of light was denied him, and seeing the soft glow of the moon after that was liberating in a way words could not express.
With his aura sense active and his eyes alert, Jaune kept a lookout for anyone in the immediate vicinity – there were none, thankfully – before hurrying on his way.
His first destination was a community centre not too far away, where there was free wifi. Ensuring that his beanie covered his distinctive hair completely, and pulling his hoodie down as low as it would go, Jaune set a fast pace towards the community centre.
It being well past midnight, the streets were deserted – something Jaune was thankful for. Walking as quickly as he could without seeming suspicious, Jaune passed industrial warehouses as well as rundown apartment blocks, until he arrived at the community centre – a new-ish looking building painted a bright, cheery orange.
Not wasting a single second, Jaune quickly pulled out his scroll, and connected to the public wifi. There was a log-in page, where one was required to provide one's email address – which Jaune supplied, in the form of a throwaway that couldn't be tracked back to him. That done, he quickly opened up his onion routing browser, and navigated to the email dead drop.
There was a message from Ozpin waiting for him, and Jaune didn't hesitate to retrieve and decrypt it.
The message was sobering.
[I hope this finds you well, Mr Arc. The revelation of your identity and the ongoing public manhunt for you is unfortunate; however, as I am sure you understand, the mission is all-important, and must continue no matter the dangers or difficulties you will now experience.]
[To make your life easier, allow me to advise you as to how the authorities plan to track you down. Professor Polendina, in a stroke of genius that is most inconvenient for us, has invented a handheld aura-simulation device that can generate a facsimile of your aura signature, using data gathered by his daughter. With it in hand, huntsmen sweeping the city can compare your aura against any aura signature they encounter – allowing them to identify you in your hiding place.]
[If, as I suspect, you are in the Mountain Glenn terminal, you will be safe. If you do have to travel out for missions or to retrieve supplies, however, do so after midnight once the patrols have ceased – refer to the appended document for the timing, routes and rostered individuals for this week's scheduled manhunt. Good luck, Mr Arc – and keep your wits about you.]
Jaune exhaled. The news about Professor Polendina's invention was not a pleasant one; with it, the manhunt could sweep the city far more effectively.
Then again...
Since this was such a foolproof method, upon failing to find him they would conclude that he had long since left the city. And with that, the manhunt would be called off –and hopefully he would have greater freedom move around Vale by then.
That was something to look forward to. Regardless, Jaune composed a reply to Ozpin, assuring him that he was still firmly committed to the mission, and also thanking the headmaster for the vital information supplied. He also requested that the headmaster get in touch with Weiss, and help coordinate a similar dead drop arrangement so that the two of them could communicate even in his exile.
Once the message was encrypted and saved to the dead drop's draft folder, Jaune posted on Warbler, on an account being monitored by the headmaster's computers.
Ozpin was clearly up and awake, for almost immediately, a reply came.
[I am glad your commitment has not wavered, Mr Arc. I will certainly help you establish secure communications with Miss Schnee, even if it will take time to do so safely. In the interim, I will give her your regards.]
That satisfied Jaune well enough. And with the discussion with the man who had his true allegiance successfully concluded, Jaune turned his attention to the man who did not.
He could not reach out to Watts via conventional messaging apps, let alone make an ordinary call or send an SMS – those depended on having a scroll number, and the moment Jaune activated the SIM card registered to his name, he would be geolocated and hunted down by a pack of ravenous huntsmen. Instead, Jaune set up a new, untraceable email account, with which he used to email Watts at a throwaway the man had provided him – for use in eventualities such as this.
There was nothing much for Jaune to say, except to assure the man he remained committed to their agreement, and doing so in a way that made himself seem all the more angry and resentful at a world that now hated him.
No one could seem more ripe for recruitment into the Queen's inner circle than him – which was precisely what he and Ozpin wanted.
The email sent, Jaune disconnected from the public wifi, and left the area. There was no sense in waiting around – Watts would not necessarily respond any time soon, and there was danger in lurking about even if the huntsmen were not currently out in force. If some street toughs appeared and tried to rough him up, the subsequent altercation could notify the authorities as to his presence in the area.
His next destination for the night was a small Mistralian supermarket within walkable distance. Jaune knew of the place from having tagged along when Ren brought Team RVLY there for grocery shopping. Since he cooked, and fairly often at that, the raven-haired boy wanted to pick up some spices and condiments from home; that, plus the supermarket stocked really cheap pancake batter, all the better to satisfy Nora's insatiable cravings.
Jaune tried not to think too much of the friends had abandoned – tried, and failed. It was only once he reached the Mistralian enclave within the industrial district, that he managed to push his lost friendships out of mind, and make himself focus on the task at hand.
The enclave was a rather distinctive place, not least because of the large traditional Mistralian gate located at the entrance to the enclave. Stradding a road, the gate had at its top a deep-blue plaque inscribed with golden Mistralian glyphs; the surrounding body, meanwhile, was jade-painted wood, even as the roof was a medley of ornate tiles on which serpentine dragons and other mythical creatures danced.
Jaune passed under the gate, and went through the empty streets of the enclave towards the supermarket, which he found tucked away on a side-street.
Located on the first floor of a shophouse, the supermarket was really old-school, but the old Mistralian couple who ran the place took security seriously – they had cameras inside, the scroll number of the retired huntsman living nearby, as well as the obsessive tendency to check and recheck the locks on the doors when closing shop.
Burglarizing senior citizens wasn't Jaune's idea of righteousness, and definitely not an action befitting the proud name of Arc, but needs must, and so Jaune got to it.
He headed down a nearby alley and swung around to the narrow street behind this row of shophouses, to come to the back door of the supermarket, one doubtlessly used for the loading and unloading of goods.
Retrieving a large one lien coin from his wallet, Jaune used his semblance to vaporize it, before reshaping the hot gas into two distinct shapes, before drawing the temperature down to turn the metal solid again.
What was left were two thin pieces of metal, one with a triangle-shaped end, and another with a hook for a head – lockpicking tools, in short, ready and fit for purpose.
This was not the way he had trained to use his semblance, combat being first and foremost on his mind. However, Cinder Fall had demonstrated at their training session how much utility there was in applying one's powers creatively, and that was well worth emulating.
Jaune inserted the tools into the keyhole of the supermarket's back door, the triangle-shaped end of one tool prodding in to push the lock pins up – so that they aligned with the cylinder rather than blocking it from turning – even as he used the hook tool to apply rotational pressure – so that the pins and holes did not perfectly match up, and ensuring that any pin pushed up would stay up.
After some fiddling, the lock turned, and Jaune exhaled in satisfaction.
That had gone well – the lockpicking itself, of course, which he had picked up from the Malachite twins, but also use of his semblance. He was drawing a far smaller fraction of his aura now, to fuel these minor applications of his semblance – a significant improvement from when he had first gained his pyrokinesis; back then, he had to draw down a good tenth of his aura reserves for any use of his semblance, however minor, with whatever aura not utilized just dissipating and going to waste. The improvement, Jaune suspected, came from being in life and death battles where he needed his semblance but was lacking the necessary aura reserves – for as the old saying went, aura bloomed in the heat of battle, as did semblances flower at door's death, on the precipice between this life and the next.
Regardless, the improvement in the efficiency of his semblance was welcome – and made what came next far easier.
Recalling the position of the cameras in the supermarket – pointing down and across the aisles with no blind spots at all – Jaune pushed down on the handle of the back entrance, and entered.
He found himself in a backend storeroom, with a staircase to the right leading up to the second floor where the old Mistralian couple would be living. Wanting to prevent trouble for himself and wincing at the idea of accidentally striking terror into an elderly couple, Jaune strove not to wake them – by keeping absolutely silent, even as he moved on from the storeroom to the supermarket proper.
Before entering, he summoned his semblance once more, and warmed the air in the room – so that he could, through the heat sensing implicitly granted him by his semblance, make out what was air and what was not.
In particular, it allowed him to make out the distinctive shapes of the security cameras hanging from the ceilings, and to pick out the thick tubing covering the wires carrying power to and data away from the cameras.
Applying far more finesse and precision than he was typically used to, Jaune used his semblance to vaporize whatever wires were within the tubes, before cooling everything back down into hardened slag.
The cameras were disabled, with no one left the wiser. Jaune doubted the destruction of the cameras would be noticed any time soon, if ever – small store owners didn't have the time to watch hours of pointless video feed, and would only ever check the footage if and when an incident like alleged shoplifting occurred.
Summoning a weak flame to hover around his head, Jaune glanced around the supermarket to take stock – and then started shovelling stuff into his backpack, subject to the need to not take too much of anything, which would make it obvious that someone had been stealing.
He prioritized drinks, dehydration being a greater threat than starvation, and dumped large bottles of unsweetened jasmine, oolong and roasted tea into his bag.
Then he moved on to food; making a short trip to the counter to grab some plastic bags, he then went through the shelves grabbing a selection of Mistralian canned food, from stewed pork to fish in black bean sauce, and from boiled quail eggs to braised peanuts.
Having been in a rush when he left his house, he had forgotten to get one utterly critical thing – his scroll's charger – and so he headed back over to the counter, where he had earlier spied one lying about.
He plugged his scroll in, allowing it to charge. While it was tempting to just grab the charger and go, it would have been pointless to do so, since there wasn't any electricity down in the terminal – leaving little justification for the risk he would be taking, in possibly alerting the owners to his break in.
It would take an hour and a half to fully charge his scroll – a long time.
Well, there's nothing to do but wait.
Slumping down to the ground beside his bags of stolen food and tea, Jaune rested his head against the counter.
Is this my life now? Skulking in the shadows, furtive emails at midnight, and shameless stealing to survive?
He supposed it was. And more than that, he mused –
Daylight is for the guiltless. Those like me, burdened with enormities, deserve the darkness.
-(=RWBY=)-
A/N: Probably moving to a monthly schedule with longer chapters to compensate. I'm about to help to start a non-profit, and as you might imagine that's not leaving much time for writing.