A/N: IMO the next few chapters are gonna be rated E for... exciting! Lul, this is gonna be fun fun fun. Enjoy!
Mirisu wasn't kidding when she said shack.
When Jaune and the hotel receptionist arrived at the shack, Jaune had to stop short for a second, looking at the building.
It was small.
It was old.
And it did not look like a very safe house, which was concerning, since Jaune was relying on it to be a safe house.
"This way." Mirisu said, gesturing for Jaune to follow her, which he did so reluctantly. The purple-haired girl knocked on the door before she stepped back and waited patiently. The door jerked open quickly, and before anyone could react, the point of a spear poked the underside of Mirisu's chin, causing Jaune to pull Crocea Mors out from its sheath in alarm.
Nothing happened for a brief second before the tip lowered itself and a head of red hair popped out from under the doorway.
"Oh thank Dust you're alright." Pyrrha said in relief, sheathing Miló and stepping aside. Jaune let out a sigh of relief before sheathing his sword, berating himself for not noticing that was Pyrrha's javelin and not a random spearhead.
The two entered into the shack, Jaune looking around the interior. The inside was as empty as the outside, with only a bed and a drawer on one side. The walls looked empty, the floor was made of the same wood as the walls, and everything just smelled a little bit off.
Jaune was distracted with any further observations by a loud hiss coming from the corner. Turning, he spotted a cat, all of its hair raised looking at Mirisu before it jumped through a window. Everyone looked at the girl who was twiddling her fingers a little abashedly.
"Animals don't really like me." She admitted, causing a small look of sympathy from Ren and Pyrrha. Jaune pat her shoulder, giving a reassuring smile.
"That's alright, animals don't like me all that much either." It had something to do with the fact that he messed around with the balance of nature, which probably left a bit of a "stench" on him that most domesticated animals tended to avoid.
Mirisu smiled wanly before shaking off the pity, face serious again.
"We need to keep you guys safe until the town folk calm down. You guys should be able to stay here without anyone bothering you." The purple-haired girl said.
"Why not?" Nora asked, head tilting a little to the side in curiosity. Mirisu winced a little before rubbing her arm, looking at the four teammates.
"Well…" She said, before reluctantly saying, "This place is rumored to be haunted."
Eyes widened in surprise as they looked at each other. "Haunted?" The girl waved her arm almost carelessly.
"It's just rumors. You know, screaming and moaning in the shack when there's no one in there and such and such. As you can see though, no screaming, see?"
Jaune stepped back a little, accidentally knocking a metal can over and making a loud clang, causing one of the girls to scream almost hysterically. Everyone turned to look at the red-haired Amazon, who was blushing bright red.
"I—I'm not a big fan of ghosts." Pyrrha squeaked out, embarrassed. Jaune made a small sound of surprise in the back of his throat. Huh. So even Pyrrha was scared of something.
"Anyways," Mirisu drew the word out a little bit before turning back to Jaune, "I'm going to go back and see if everything's calmed back down. I'll be back before nightfall with some more food and some pillows and stuff." Ren frowned a little, stepping forward.
"You shouldn't be outside when it's about to get dark. It would be quite dangerous." Again Mirisu took what Ren said and disregarded it, shaking her head.
"Don't you worry about me, I do this all the time. I know how to keep myself safe." Mirisu grinned coyly. "Thanks for the concern though."
Without another word Mirisu stepped out through the doorway with a wave, disappearing back into the town. The four of them looked at each other for a bit, wondering what they should do with their spare time.
"Why don't we just see what we've been able to gather in the… five or so hours that we've been here." Jaune said, forgetting with everything that happened that they had practically just arrived here. What is it with his luck man?
Pyrrha and Ren looked at each other before shrugging. "We didn't really get anything done much. We tried talking to the people around here but… they didn't seem to be very happy to see us." Pyrrha admitted. Jaune frowned, before nodding and turning his attention towards Nora.
"What about you Nora?"
Nora shook her head. "I got nothing." Jaune grit his teeth, a little frustrated. Now, on top of trying to figure out what happened in the village, he had to make sure the town didn't try to lynch them for doing their job either!
Jaune could feel the edges of a headache creeping up on him.
"Okay… so basically, we have nothing. Alright then. Wonderful way to start a mission." Jaune said flatly, before settling down and resting the back of his head against the wall.
"Well, maybe Professor Goodwitch will find something." Nora said suddenly, causing Jaune to snap forward, remembering their chaperone.
"Professor Goodwitch! Do you know where she is?" Jaune asked Nora. With the help of an experienced Huntress, maybe they would get out of this yet. Nora smiled sheepishly though, answering his question before she even said anything.
"No… all I know is that she called me and told me to meet up with you guys and that she needed to do something."
Jaune bit his tongue, wanting to scream at something. It was getting to the point where he just wanted to lie in bed, not even bothering to do anything. Taking a deep breath, Jaune tried to gather up his thoughts, trying to plan up the next steps.
"Okay. First things first. We can rest here until Mirisu comes back. After that, we need to find Professor Goodwitch, who I'm pretty sure will have a better idea of what to do afterwards than I do." Jaune said. The other three nodded, settling down and not bothering to talk, Ren closing his eyes and almost slipping into a meditative state while Nora slumped back and fell asleep pretty quickly. Pyrrha opened up Miló to its fullest form and started to clean the pieces, keeping it maintained.
Jaune, with nothing else to do, hunkered down beside his partner and idly watched her clean her weapon, taking note of the complex machinery that made it work.
Never let it be said that Jaune wasn't smart however, and while a part of his mind was simply relaxing and watching Pyrrha, another was still trying to fit the puzzle pieces together, although he was probably missing dozens of pieces.
Why did the Grimm attack? Well, apparently they were attracted by the fountain in the square right? Well, if that was the case, why did the Grimm attack now, when that fountain's been in Ravenwood since the beginning of its founding? And did the burning of the Archives have anything to do with the Grimm attack?
Jaune needed more information, and the only source he could reliably get it from was in the middle of an angry town, trying to get information of her own.
A sudden movement, or lack of it, made Jaune turn his attention back towards Pyrrha, who had stopped what she was doing and had raised her head up high, a frown visibly marring her face.
"Is there something wrong Pyrrha?" Jaune asked. Pyrrha tilted her head to the side, and slowly turned around, as it she was tracking something outside of the hut.
"Do you hear that?" Pyrrha asked in a low whisper, causing the hairs on the back of Jaune's neck to rise a little. Straining his ears, he tried to listen in and see what Pyrrha was talking about. All he could hear was the gentle wind outside, as well as a few crickets chirping. But… was that…?
Breathing?
Jaune stood up slowly, leaning forwards to get closer to the doorway. Yeah, he was certain. There was shallow breathing coming from the other side of the doorway. At this point, Ren had snapped out of his trance and quietly woken Nora up, all four teammates tense. Jaune gripped Crocea Mors and slowly drew it out, the sword rasping as metal touched metal. It wasn't the loudest sound, but it was unmistakable to anything else, and was enough for whatever it was that was on the other side of the door to hear it.
A lot of things seemed to happen at once during that moment. Pyrrha used her semblance to open the door, jerking it wide so that whoever standing there would be caught unawares. Ren drew StormFlower out and pointed it towards the doorway, waiting a split second to see what it was before opening fire. The windows on the shack seemed to cave in on themselves, shattering loudly and distracting team JNPR just long enough that a furry blur was able to speed into the shack before Ren could let loose even a single bullet, yowling and jaws aimed at Jaune's neck.
Luckily, Jaune was blessed with enough of a reaction time to allow him to bring his automail arm up to protect his throat, the creature latching onto the arm.
"Gah!" Jaune gave out a battle cry that sounded a lot like a panicked yelp, and tried to shake the beast off. Pyrrha, ever the conditioned warrior, had screamed in fear when the beast attacked before she unleashed a bullet from Miló into its hide.
The beast unlatched itself and gave a pained roar, bounding off and through the window before Ren was able to spray a hail of bullets onto the monster. All of this happened so that that Nora simply stood there, war hammer ready and waiting, unable to contribute at all to the brief scuffle.
"T-that wasn't a ghost!" Pyrrha sounded almost relieved that something tangible had attacked them. Jaune lifted up his sleeve, wincing at the torn cloth.
"No. Definitely not a ghost."
Pyrrha let out a sigh of relief and put away Miló. "Oh thank Dust for that." The blonde alchemist raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah. Thankfully it wasn't a ghost, but a dangerous beast that could have killed us. Yay."
At least Pyrrha had the sensibility to look a little ashamed for that remark.
"What was that anyways?" Ren asked, keeping StormFlower in his hands. Jaune turned to look at him, frowning. Pyrrha also looked uncertain, but kept her eyes on their leader to see what he would say.
"I've got no idea." Jaune confessed, not sure why they would expect him to know the answer, seeing as how he's probably the least knowledgeable about monsters amongst them. There should've been a bit more discussion going around, but any attempts were cut short by a loud growl, as another beast pounced through one of the windows. This time however, Team JNPR was prepared, Ren firing a few shots at the beast. The monster squirmed in pain and collapsed, unmoving.
The four of them stopped moving, stopped breathing in fact, as they watched the prone figure with disbelief. From the largest to the smallest, killed Grimm were to disappear, almost dissolve into the air. Yet, as the four pairs of eyes looked at the felled creature, the only thing it really did was… well, all it did was lay there.
"That's… impossible." Pyrrha sounded as disbelieving as the rest of them felt, pulling out her weapon as if waiting for the being that lay in front of them to come alive again and try to attack them once more. Nora, being the brave soul that she was, crept up close to the beast and poked it with her finger, curious to see what would happen.
Still nothing, even though Nora was exposing herself.
"So… not a Grimm then?" Jaune asked, not sure who he was expecting to answer the question. A bigger question popped in his mind however: If not Grimm, then what?
"I've never known of anything besides Grimm that would attack a human inside of a house for no reason." Ren observed, adding his opinion into the mix. Jaune nodded, agreeing with the calm-headed boy and adding another thought as well.
"And I don't know any kind of animal that can blow all the windows apart either." The blonde boy said grimly.
Jaune got closer to take a closer look, observing the absolute strangeness that was laying in front of them. It looked… sort of like a lion, almost, except patches of its skin seemed shaved off. A few parts of the fur seemed completely off color, seemingly black instead of the typical yellow-orange that you'd expect. And the tail… Jaune reached out with a couple of fingers to touch the tail and shivered at the feeling of dry scales, like a snake's hide.
Looking closer, Jaune couldn't help but feel as if someone had tried to take several animals and fuse them together, creating this amalgamation of a beast. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jaune remembered that he had encountered such descriptions before, in a book that he read years back, but couldn't remember the name.
"Did someone sew a snake tail to a lion?" Ren asked. Jaune didn't ned to turn around to know that Ren's face was contorted into a look of disgust, Ren being a lover of animals. Jaune shook his head, pointing to the place where the tail and the body met.
"Look here. No stitches or signs of stitches. If you look closely, it actually looks like the two… almost melted together." Like when Jaune tried to fuse together a candle and a rubber ball once, the two meshing together messily and creating a clear line that showed they weren't of the same composition.
Was that the answer?
Was there something concerning alchemy here? Was that why Jaune had felt unsettled this whole time, because there was something happening that involved his sacred art?
Jaune needed more answers.
Standing up, he looked at the others around him. "Change of plans," Jaune said, his voice for once portraying the commanding tone that was necessary for leading a team, "We're moving out now, and we need to find Professor Goodwitch."
Jaune turned and strode out the door, face angry. No one messed with his Alchemy.
"We're finishing this mission now."