When in Vacuo

Jacobs groaned, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he trudged towards the gate. Last night he had stayed up late teaching his daughter the starting steps to molding aura to enhance one's strength. She had made good progress after he had stayed up late instructing her. 'I'll feel better as soon as I get some coffee brewing in the barracks.' As he came upon the gate, the sun's weak pre-morning rays illuminated two figures standing by it. 'Must be in a hurry to be up this early' he thought idly.

As Jacobs got closer, he was able to hear their voices whispering fervently.

"What the hell?! Why did you wake me up so early!?"

"Aww. Is the old man's age catching up with him?"

"I'm not old, damn it!"

"Check your hair again old man, looks like some silver's creeping in…"

The man with a red cape draped from his shoulders growled menacingly.

"Oh sorry. Did I hit a nerve?"

"You were so professional last night."

"That was before you challenged me to a drinking contest."

"You're just mad I beat you!"

"…"

"Ha! I knew it, I…"

Jacobs coughed politely, interrupting the man before he could continue. Both men started slightly and looked at Jacobs. Rubbing the back of his head with a bemused expression, Jacobs asked, "So I assume you guys want to head out?"

Both men nodded in unison.

"Alright, just let me get this gate open…" Jacobs strode over to the gate, unbarring it to let it swing open. The men glanced at each other and strode out of the gate, resuming their discussion in lowered tones. Jacobs with a start finally recognized one of them as the man he had let in yesterday. 'Funny; I thought he was alone…' Shrugging, he walked over to the guard house to start brewing some coffee and relieve the night watch.

Xxx

Qrow glanced over to the young man running next to him, sand spitting up under his feet from the impact of his feet. After they had left the gates, they had quickly used a map and compass to orient themselves. Then, they started their journey to Vacuo where they could take a bullhead to Vale. Until then they had to travel the old-fashioned way: Sand Walking. Sand Walking was an interesting art: while in principle was simple, in practice it took a great deal of skill to pull off.

Most Hunters used their aura to enhance their bodies a large amount for short periods of time, but with Sand Walking, the goal was the opposite. In Sand Walking, you had to concentrate a low amount of aura to your legs, focusing on increasing the power of each footfall and absorbing the recoil after. The goal of this technique was to allow the user to run at high speed across vast stretches of land. The challenge was keeping the aura usage sustained and consistent. If one screwed up, they would either end up blasted away or crashing face first into the sand. Neither were pleasant options.

Qrow himself had learned how to Sand Walk in his third year at Beacon, when his team had been called to do a mission in the Outlands. When they got there, they discovered that they would have to travel a fair distance to get to the village they needed to deliver supplies to. Their guide had quickly taught them the basics and then left them to try on their own and become adept at the skill as they headed towards the village. Sand Walking was a skill that Qrow had not used for a long time, and it showed. Jaune seemed to easily lope across the ground with the bare minimum of effort. Jaune had long, effortless strides, disproportionate to the sand flying away from each impact upon the ground.

Qrow shook himself out of his thoughts and glanced up at the sun. The sun had reached its zenith in the sky and its harsh rays scorched the land below. With a slightly rasping voice, due to having not drunk from his canteen for a while, he called out to Jaune.

"Should we stop soon?"

"No, if we plan to get to Vacuo within the day we need to maintain this pace."

"We won't stop for the night?"

With a shake of his head, Jaune replied, "Not much point in that, we're close enough to the city to make it within the day." Flashing a smirk, he continued, "Your age finally catching up to you, old man?"

Snorting, Qrow responded, "Not a chance…"

"…" with a smirk, Jaune waited.

Realizing what he had just said, Qrow scowled, "Screw you, I'm not old damn it!"

"They say hearing's the first thing to go in old age, which is good! Then you won't hear anybody laughing about your ridiculous cape."

"I'll have you know this cape is…"

Qrow trailed off as he stopped and held up his hand. Cupping his ear, he looked around.

Jaune paused and pulled back his hood, releasing his golden blonde hair. Cupping his ear, he channeled aura to ears modulating it carefully. The sensation that hit him was like the world had been on mute, and he had only now just turned on the volume. The sound of the wind blowing sand, the sparse vegetation rustling, Qrow's suddenly loud breathing, the gurgle of bodily fluids… these sounds assaulted his ears all at once. Jaune concentrated on tuning each sound out individually. There was something, but…

Qrow and Jaune both leapt into the air just in time for a monstrous black creature to burst from the ground. Sand cascaded around creature's scales that were the color of obsidian; they did not glint in the sun, they seemed to suck in the light. What could loosely be deemed as the head of the creature was a gigantic maw filled with thousands of ivory teeth. Letting loose an earthshaking roar, the creature titled its maw towards them, despite the lack of eyes on its head.

'Sand Wyrm'

Oddly in sync, the airborne men reached for their weapons. Qrow's sword glinted silver- grey, its clockwork hilt clicking madly away. Jaune's weapon, on the other hand, was a massive marbled black blade with a single edge gleaming silver. The red hilt contrasted against the golden guard of the broadsword that was approximately 6 feet in length and with the width of the blade being around a foot.

Jaune was the first to move, bringing his sword about to slam down onto the carapace of the Wyrm, causing a chilling screech of pain to emerge from the beast's hideous mouth. Qrow landed farther back and watched with interest as Jaune began to take apart the beast with fast, economical strokes. The Grimm didn't stand a chance as it was sliced to bits. Letting out a wail of death, it collapsed, causing a cloud of sand to rise into the air and disperse.

"Interesting, I see we didn't hire the wrong person." Qrow glanced at his companion appraisingly.

"…"

Staring up at the wispy clouds that floated through the sky, Qrow put his hands behind his head. 'He did well against the grimm, but what will happen when it's another human…?'

Xxx

Vacuo was a city that stood on the edge of the desert, guarding the lush forest that stood behind it. The sun was barely peaking over the peaks of the mountain, shedding its final rays onto the city and illuminating and shadowing the buildings that stood tall in the city. As Qrow and Jaune walked down the streets, they looked through the various panes of glass that showcased each shop displayed.

"Look, you can't keep wearing that cloak! It's a dead giveaway!"

"I know! But do I really have to wear that!"

"It's a perfectly fine piece of clothing!"

"It's a red cape!"

"I know! Isn't it sweet?!"

Groaning, Jaune smacked himself in the forehead. 'I swear if the man wasn't the representative of my employer…'

Ignoring the man's rants about how "awesome" capes were, he slipped into one of the stores. Qrow, finally calming down from his rant, minutes later looked around and sighed as he realized Jaune was gone. Spotting a glimpse of blonde hair in the crowd of shoppers, he moved towards it. The crowd of shoppers was surprisingly large, given that it was evening, 'Must not shop so much during the day due to the sun…'. Qrow slipped through the crowd and found Jaune, this time dressed in a brown hooded jacket with cream sleeves a red silk scarf wrapped around his neck. Jaune was also now wearing dark grey pants with tawny brown leather sandals. Holding a pair of cloth shopping bags over his shoulder, he gazed at Qrow, smirking slightly.

"Be honest, how much of what I said was empty air?"

"Eh? Did you say something?"

Sighing in despair at his unsuccessful attempt to convert Jaune to the glory of capes, he gestured for Jaune to follow him.

"We'll stay at a hotel tonight and we'll leave on a bullhead to Vale tomorrow morning."

Giving a nod of acknowledgement, Jaune followed Qrow through the twisting city the street lights that provided a soft gold illumination as the sun finally surrendered and fell past the mountains completely.

Xxx

The following morning, Jaune and Qrow boarded the bullhead to Vale. As the rumbling ship rose into the air, Jaune and Qrow sat back in their reserved cabin.

"So now that we are in private, we should work out the details of your backstory…"

"…" Jaune cocked an eyebrow.

"As you're going to be a student, you need to have come from somewhere. So, we've created fake records for you. You're going to be a previous student from Dusk academy. You requested to join Beacon and, due to your outstanding combat abilities and grades, were accepted in.

Nodding in thought, Jaune replied, "Seems like a good enough cover story; there aren't any actual students from Dusk attending are there?"

"No, all of them are moving on to Shade and, better yet, we got the headmistress to sign the necessary documents. So, by all intents and purposes, you attended and graduated."

Jaune's gaze sharpened slightly, "How influential is your group exactly?"

"Enough," Qrow smirked and leaned back in his chair, "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, The Great Qrow can be incredibly persuasive when the situation calls for it…"

"…"

"Don't give me that look!"

"…"

"I'm a talented, charming, and handsome hunter!"

"…"

"I hate you."

"… They don't really send you on the missions that require subtly do they?"

"I am totally subtle!"

"…"

"Oobleck had to prepare for class."

"…"

"Don't look so smug!"

Xxx

It took nearly four days for the bullhead to arrive at Vale. When the ship finally touched down at the sky docks, it was getting to be late afternoon. Stepping out into the afternoon sunlight, Jaune and Qrow blinked rapidly, acclimatizing to the new level of light. With a jerk of his head, Qrow gestured for Jaune to follow him. Sliding through the crowds, they made their way towards a hotel building.

Stepping into the hotel room, Qrow turned to face Jaune.

"Well I know you'll miss me terribly but I've got to go now. There's some stuff I still have to get done."

Snorting, Jaune turned to survey the room. It wasn't the lap of luxury, but it was more than serviceable as a place to rest for a couple nights.

Qrow continued, "The bullhead for Beacon is arriving two days from now. You'll need to get there by yourself and be ready for a small initiation. Meanwhile, we want you to scope around town and look for any hints of possible dust storage. Be careful out there; we don't really know who's behind this."

"I'm a big boy; I can handle myself."

"Right."

Jaune turned, slightly surprised at the lack of response to his jab.

Qrow stared at him seriously, "Be careful Jaune. This is serious business; you can get away with looking around somewhat because you're new in town. It makes sense that you would explore a bit, but if these people think you're looking around too inquisitively …"

"I get it, I'll be careful."

"Good, take care of yourself Jaune."

"Don't worry about me, old man… Take it easy out there- wouldn't want you to break a hip."

Smirking slightly, Qrow walked out.

Xxx

Jaune was bored.

As he wandered through the city of Vale looking through the stores to see if anything would catch his attention, he pondered where the dust robbers could possibly be. He had already wandered through the industrial district and then realized how long it would take to search the massive place. He had given up and decided to look through the stores to see if there had been any large dust shipments coming in. It turned out searching that way was even more useless, given how much technology ran on dust; at any given time, multiple stores were expecting large shipments.

This lead to his current boredom.

With no reasonable strategy in sight to try and locate these thieves, he decided that at least wandering around the city would be interesting enough. It was then he realized how utterly boring people were. As a Sand Walker, he had not spent much time in cities; instead, he spent his time wandering the wilderness. Thus, whenever he entered a village, it was a new exciting thing each time. Now having spent a day in town, he realized why he was distinctly out of his element. There were no grimm.

Every day in the desert, there were grimm everywhere, ready to come and end you, so there was a need to always be on guard. Here in this city, everything was too peaceful. The grimm were locked safely outside, and the people could ignore their threat.

Sighing again, Jaune looked desperately into a pane of glass, hoping for something, anything to happen.

His reflection stared back at him forlornly. Sighing, Jaune decided that there was only way to alleviate his boredom. With a determined look, he went off to find the nearest bar.

Author's Note: Edited for grammer