A/N: I like this chapter. I like it a lot. I hope y'all do too! 3
The four of them crept along the outskirts of the town, making sure that they were close enough to see what was happening along the edge and through the alleys of the buildings, but were far away enough that they could all fade away if any one seemed to be looking for them.
"What do you think Professor Goodwitch is doing?" Pyrrha walked slowly alongside Jaune. The alchemist shrugged, focused on the task at hand, and more intent on finding her than wondering what she was doing
"Well, the sooner we find her, the sooner we can ask." Jaune craned his neck to try and look over a particularly tall building. Jaune was ready to scream. No way of contacting the professor seemed to be working. They had tried calling Professor Goodwitch on their scrolls, which amounted to nothing, and they had already visited the inn to make sure she wasn't waiting for them there. They had almost completed a full circle around the whole town, and still couldn't see anything. There were still a lot of options to what had happened to the witch, and none of them seemed like great options for Team JNPR to explore.
One, the professor could be in the center of the town, which wouldn't really be a smart thing, seeing as how the center was open ground, and the villagers were out searching for their blood. Two, she could be searching for them, and the they could just be missing each other, which would really suck. Or three, Professor Goodwitch could be out in the wilds around the town, which pretty much brought the chances of them finding her down to zero.
Jaune wanted to bash his head in.
"Wait a second." Ren stopped them whole team, standing up straight with a look of inspiration on his face. Jaune grew hopeful, mostly because it wasn't an idea coming from Nora, who wanted to just 'rush in and break everyone's legs'.
"All scrolls are connected to a GPS aren't they?" That was all Ren needed to say for Jaune to piece it together, pulling out his scroll. With a few clicks, Jaune found the GPS program, opening it up and searching for Professor Goodwitch's signal. A white screen popped up, with the words IDENTIFICATION NEEDED. Another curse escaped Jaune's lips. Nora popped in, her head pushing through.
"Lemme have a look." Nora snatched the phone out of Jaune's hands and fiddled with it. However, before Jaune could really protest, Nora handed it back to him with a cheeky smile on her face. Access was unlocked. Jaune looked at Nora with disbelief, unable to imagine her doing something like this. Nora offered no explanation, only smiling her usual smile.
Although Jaune couldn't help but see a bit of a mysterious spark in her eyes.
Jaune pushed it out of his mind, having bigger concerns to worry about. Looking down at the map, a single point slowly blipping on the screen. With a huge grin, he turned to Nora.
"Thanks Nora." The girl saluted, a happy smile on her face. With a nod, Jaune oriented himself towards to marker and set off.
"Let's go!"
The damned blip had disappeared.
Jaune was about ready to throw his scroll against the wall. They had finally made good progress, getting really close before the blip on the radar seemed to just disappear, causing the team to stop and try to figure out what had happened.
"Maybe the scroll ran out of Dust?" Pyrrha suggested helpfully. Jaune snorted, knowing that while that option was plausible, they were Hunters.
Nothing was ever that simple.
"Well, do you remember where it was last seen?" Ren asked, also helpfully. Jaune took deep breaths and thought about it, realising that getting mad wouldn't help them. Nodding, Jaune pointed to the cluster of houses that were shown on his scroll.
"It was around here." Ren nodded, before pointing and sectioning the cluster into four.
"Then we'll split up and cover everything more quickly this way."
Jaune paused for a second, weighing the risks out in his mind, before nodding. Everyone could take care of themselves from any irate villagers. And if there were any more of those… creatures…
"Everyone has their scrolls on them right?" Jaune asked, looking at the other three. They nodded, pulling them out.
"Alright then. If you find Professor Goodwitch or run into any trouble, call everyone else, alright?" And with another nod, Team JNPR split up and went on the search for their missing chaperone.
There was something wrong in the air. Jaune wasn't sure what it was, but something was making the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and he couldn't help but constantly look behind him; he was sure that there was someone watching him. In fact, the paranoia that he had so carefully cultivated for years was going haywire, and Jaune had Crocea Mors constantly out. He even chose to deploy the shield that he hated so much, reasoning that it would at least provide another avenue of defense in case there was a sudden ambush.
Jaune wasn't sure how his teammates were checking the house, not wanting to think about how Nora was dealing with it, but with a quick clap of his hands, Jaune was able to create a second doorway to enter through. The first few houses he looked through were empty, nothing of use to him, before he stumbled into a family having their dinner. After an awkward few words from Jaune were exchanged, he slowly walked out of the house, changing the doorway he made back into a solid wall.
After that incident, Jaune had learned to be more careful, transmuting a few inches of a house's wall and creating a physical tremor that Jaune used to see if there was anyone inside the houses.
The process was lengthy, as he was still holding Crocea Mors in both his hands, and the vibrations that he used wasn't something he was really adept at, only able to gather conclusive evidence that no one was home after doing it several times.
Placing his hands on the latest house, Jaune shifted the walls once more, an invisible ripple moving through the house. This one was a little different from all the other ones. As he had moved closer and closer to the building, the feeling in the air only got more and more intense, to the point where he almost wanted to run in the opposite direction. Every house around this one seemed pretty much abandoned, where Jaune didn't even bother to scout out the last few houses. This one though, Jaune made damn sure that it was empty. And even then he wasn't sure if he wanted to enter.
The ripples that Jaune received back were different as well, he was not sure if it was the house or whatever strangeness was happening that was affecting his alchemy. But for whatever reason, he was receiving signals that made the house out to be bigger than it actually was.
He reasoned that he wasn't used to using the skill. He clapped his hands once, wincing at the echo that rang through the narrow streets and placed his hands flat against the wall, creating a doorway for him to enter through. Jaune made sure that his grip on his sword was secure and closed his eyes briefly, letting out a breath before pushing against the door gently, letting it open soundlessly to reveal the inner room.
It resembled a living room, really, with a comfortable dark blue couch, along with a television and a coffee table covered with a purple cloth. It resembled a living room because, well, it was one, something that didn't really relieve Jaune's nerves at all. Stepping into the space, Jaune's eyes slowly scanned the room, making sure there weren't any bogeys hiding in the shadows. As the sun was slowly sinking, the light in the room wasn't optimal, but wasn't really something that bothered Jaune particularly.
With the apparent notion that the room was supposedly empty, Jaune lowered his sword and shield a little bit, turning to look around at the house. There wasn't really any sign of Professor Goodwitch, but Jaune was intent on finding out why the house was so… creepy. After all, the tension in the air was something that resembled alchemy but… more. Or less.
Jaune needed more information, and he wasn't going to do that by standing around. He grimaced a little, knowing that he didn't have a choice but to look at everything more carefully, and closed his eyes, activating something that he hadn't used in a long, long time.
When he opened his eyes again, the right eye had changed, from the light blue that it usually was to a yellowish tint, ringed in purple. Jaune stood still, not moving as his brain got used to the change in signals, as his eye turned on its light sensitivity mode, letting Jaune see more clearly in darker areas. It also categorized objects and made more subtle parts of the room clearer.
Kneeling, Jaune looked carefully at the couch, trying to see if there was anything that he could glean from it. It was a nice looking piece of furniture that was for sure. In fact, it looked rarely used, but also showed evidence of having been bought for longer than six months or so. Sweeping his gaze towards the television, he found a layer of dust on the machine, but concluded that it was also rarely used, as the layer of dust on the front of the screen wasn't much different than the one of the back.
Jaune didn't understand. Who had a living room that wasn't used, but still had very nice and expensive furniture? Jaune looked downwards at the floor, trying to see if there was anything he could gleam there.
Even then, there was nothing but a thin, even layer of dust that made Jaune think that no one had stepped into the room for a very long time. Jaune moved away from the living room, entering what looked like a kitchen. Again, sparsely decorated, but anything that was there seemed very well-made, if not well-used.
Every room following that was the same deal. Dusty, almost never used, but was carefully placed to make the house look homely. There was something that Jaune was missing, but couldn't find. Walking around the house, Jaune was practically pacing, chewing on his lower lip to try and find an appropriate answer.
It was when Jaune started to tap his foot when he stopped that he started to notice something. When he tapped his foot against the kitchen floor and the living room, he could hear a slight difference. It wasn't very obvious, but there was enough of a difference for Jaune to latch onto the idea that he had found something interesting. Using the a small variation of the vibrations test he used earlier to see if the house was clear, Jaune sent the wave downwards and around, to see if there was anything unusual about the floor.
Ah ha.
Jaune scurried over back to the living room, staring at it. There was something in this room that he hadn't found yet. Walking around and tapping his foot every once in a while onto the ground, making sure that he wasn't missing anything.
But every time he did so, there was the same noise, distributed perfectly across. He was still missing something. And so, Jaune resorted to the long and arduous process of looking at the floor inch by inch, trying to find a scuff, a mark, anything that Jaune could investigate.
Finally he found it.
For something that wasn't used very often, it was strange to find faint track marks near the table, as if it had been dragged repeatedly back and forth across the floor. Jaune grabbed the tablecloth and flipped it over, to look through the clear glass of the coffee table.
He almost yelled in excitement as he found a trap door underneath. It was small, but it certainly was there. Casting away any caution that he held onto his mind, Jaune pushed the table aside and pulled the trapdoor open, revealing a ladder that seemed to delve into the darkness underneath the house.
Taking a deep breath, Jaune started to descend quickly, one foot down after the other, and when he could find the floor again, he took a small hop, straightening up before standing still again, only seeing dark shapes. Sure his modified eye could see a lot better than most, but it still needed a little bit of light to function.
Uncertain of what to do, Jaune took a step forward, only to be flooded with lights, as some unknown command lit the place up, temporarily blinding Jaune and making the headache caused by using the eye to get even worse.
After Jaune was able to adjust to the light, he dropped his hands, looking at what was before him.
A laboratory.
No.
Jaune wasn't going to call this a laboratory.
As he turned and looked at the dozen of cages with animals, some Grimm, some not, not dying, some not, he saw things that he wished he could unsee.
There was a myriad of animals that looked like someone had taken parts of other animals and sewn it onto them. Some of them started to moan and cry, almost human-like as the lights startled them. Some sounded human, some sounded… not so human.
And Jaune wasn't sure which one made him more scared.
So many cages that he couldn't even count them all, and every one of them so different. Jaune was sure of one thing though.
They were all suffering.
Jaune's attention was caught by a large cage in the center, which held what he was looking for.
Professor Goodwitch.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be anything different about her, a few injuries, her blouse seemingly a little more ruffled than before, a few scratches in a few places, but overall, she seemed alright.
Hurriedly, Jaune pulled out his scroll, getting into contact with his teammates and trying to ignore the rattling of the cages and the cries of the animals.
As the line picked up, Jaune looked at his group with a bleak expression.
"You all need to come here now. I've found Professor Goodwitch and… and some other things."
They could hear how grim Jaune sounded, and looked ready to sprint to him. Pyrrha nodded first, asking, "Where are you right now Jaune?"
"I'm close to the northeast of my sector, at the house where—"
The scroll shut down, the call cut off completely. It might have been bad service. It might have been the outstretched black spike that had suddenly appeared above his shoulder, piercing the scroll in his hands and rendering it useless, as well as nicking him a little in the shoulder.
Jaune had barely begun to comprehend what had happened when the shadowy spike almost disappeared, receding backwards.
Jaune whirled around, sword in hand as he faced his opponent, who raised her claws, smiling grimly.
"Hello Jaune. I was sure I asked you to stay in the shack." Mirisu purred, licking the trail of blood from one of her claws.