Chapter 5: Subquests
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
After Jaune informed his fairy companion of how his "date" with Yang went he'd resumed attending classes, making his way to Dr. Oobleck's class with a strange mixture of relief and disinterest; on one hand he was glad that he probably wouldn't be called out for skipping (the teachers were uncharacteristically lax at Beacon Academy for some reason), but on the other hand History was one of his worst subjects, along with Combat, Gen. Studies, Applied Dust Theory, Social Studies, Assembly Hall….
Shut up, he managed to pass all of his classes! Granted it was often by the skin of his teeth...but still!
"Mercury's Jockstrap, this guy talks even more than the last one!" Kyu exclaimed, her eyes looking like they could pop out of her head at the slightest provocation. "I mean, that fat guy with the mustache rambled on, but this is just bordering on parody!"
Jaune nodded at the Love Fairy's assessment. It wasn't like he really had anything substantial to add anyway, Oobleck's abnormal speed was odd even for Beacon and he couldn't figure out why.
He was sure any effort put to the task would only result in the road to lost sanity.
He glanced around the hall, curious what the other student's reactions were since his invisible hanger-on was pretty much an open book at the moment. That and it gave him something else to focus on that wasn't Kyu's shockingly risqué outfit, but he'd give the first reason if she decided to ask him about it.
Much to his surprise, everyone else seemed to be paying attention to the hyper teacher, with only a few students looking vaguely confused or befuddled. He noticed that Ruby looked utterly flabbergasted, and he felt a little better that he had a friend he could relate to about this. (Not counting Kyu, of course.)
If he looked hard enough, he could almost make out a little bit of drool trailing from her-
"MR. ARC!"
"I wasn't staring!" Jaune cried, startled alert by the teacher's shout. "...I mean, what?"
"I asked you what advantage the Faunus had that allowed them to win at the Battle of Fort Castle," Oobleck explained, "surely you were paying attention to the lesson and not using this class as an excuse to ogle the other students, right?"
The more chuckled he heard, the more he just wanted to melt into his seat.
"Well?" Oobleck urged, "We don't have all day, you know."
"Um…." Jaune wracked his brain for an answer; he was certain he knew the right answer, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was! "What allowed the Faunus to win…," he stalled, "was…" It was right on the tip of his tongue, he could feel it! Something to do with...looking? "...binoculars!"
Now it was full on guffaws that assaulted him.
"Mr. Arc, please see me after class," Oobleck says, a hint of disappointment evident in his voice, "I have some questions I'd like to ask you and MISS VALKYRIE!"
At his shout a girl with perky orange hair suddenly snorted and jerked upright, apparently having been sleeping.
"PANCAKES!" she shouted, before awareness kicked in and she realized she was still in class.
Oobleck turned to the boy sitting next to the formerly slumbering girl. "Please make sure Miss Valkyrie remembers to stay after class, won't you, Mr. Lie?" The boy nodded. "Good." Oobleck then took a quick gulp from his thermos, "Now, can anyone else hazard a semi-educated guess?"
"...and I don't know about you, but a I think some of my Boss's family might be involved; I should probably ask about that," Kyu said, apparently having gone on a rant while Jaune was preoccupied. Now finished, she noticed him looking more glum than she remembered. "What the matter, Playa? You look like you got told to stay after class or something."
Jaune let his head fall onto the desk space in front of him.
"MR. ARC!"
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
"Hey, it could be worse," Kyu shrugged as Jaune sat in the school library, trying to read the assigned history book Oobleck had handed him; "trying" being the operative word because of the constant bleeping and blooping coming from Kyu's Scroll, "you could be stuck listening to that windbag with the mustache."
Not surprisingly, it wasn't much of a comfort.
"What are you even doing anyway?" he asked. She was sitting across from him, so he couldn't tell what all her taps and swipes were for.
Fortunately she didn't leave him to wonder; she paused what she was doing and turned the screen to him, showing a grid covered in many different colored shapes.
"It's called 'CherryPop', and it's super addictive!" she explained, "You basically match the shapes in rows of three or more to score points that fill up a meter. Matching Cherries gives you a huge bonus." To prove her point she slid a cherry shape across the screen, matching it with two more on the other side. Those shapes disappeared and the ones above them fell into the empty space, with new shapes above those. "Wanna try?"
"...no thanks," Jaune said flatly, "I kind of need to write an essay about Fort Castle, in case you forgot."
"Suit yourself," Kyu shrugged, resuming her quest to "pop cherries".
Jaune sighed as the bleeping obnoxiously started up again.
After a minute Kyu suddenly slapped her forehead.
"Crap, why didn't I think of this earlier!" she exclaimed. "Dude, we should totally find you a study partner!"
Jaune looked up from the text, blinking. It actually made sense to share the workload with someone else; they could compare notes, answer each other's questions (presumably), and having multiple brains meant that-
"It's the perfect opportunity for some 'snuggling', if you know what I mean!~" she said, looking frantically around the library. "You don't happen to see any cute but dorky Honeys with low standards around here, do you?"
...he should have known better by now.
"Oooh! How about that one?" Kyu suggested. She pointed at another table a few rows away, where a girl with short orange hair was staring intently at a textbook even thicker than the one Jaune was reading from.
"You mean Nora?" he asked. He recognized her immediately, her being on his Team and all, and wondered what Kyu was talking about: Nora was loud, exuberant, random as random could get, and apparently prone to getting bored quite easily, if her episode during Oobleck's lecture was anything to go by. And while Jaune wouldn't go right to "cute" (Ruby was actually closer to his definition of the phrase), her near perpetual smile and positive attitude gave her an appeal that he could really define, if you could get past the randomness.
"Dorky" and "low standards" though? He'd never really gotten that impression from her.
"Yup!" Kyu nodded, popping the P, "I did some research while you and Blondie were having your little rendezvous in town, so as to better help you find a mate-"
Jaune did really like the implications of having a "mate"...
"-and not die a virgin!"
Jaune felt a little smaller inside at the thought of dying old and alone.
"Or you'll become a powerful wizard when you turn 30, but I wouldn't put any faith in that rumor."
OK, now this was starting to get a little ridiculous. "Is there a point to this?" he asks.
"Yeah, it's that you should go over and talk to her!" She reached over and slammed his book closed, the sound echoing through the room. "You need a Study Buddy and you need a girlfriend, so this kills two birds with one stone!"
Despite her using the phrase "study buddy", Kyu once again had a good point.
"...you're not going to give up until I do this, are you?" he sighed, to which the fairy nodded resolutely. He stood up, "Fine, I'll go ask her."
"That's the spirit! Just remember, you don't want to appear too smart or she'll think you're asking her out of pity, and you don't want to appear too dumb or she'll think there's nothing in this for her." Her advice given, she gave him a pat on the back and told him "Now go get her, Tiger!"
After taking a deep breath Jaune made his way over to Nora's table, rehearsing how he would broach the subject of being study partners. Hey girl, want some smarts to go with those looks? was out because that would imply that Nora wasn't smart (she'd gotten into Beacon, after all.), as was So...I kinda need a tutor, a. because he was plenty smart himself, and b. that wasn't what he wanted right now; he just wanted someone who could help him come up with what to write, and could maybe talk about the subject matter with them.
OK, he decided, just walk up, say hi, and ask her if she minds working on this assignment with me. It should be easy, were on the same team after all, right?
Yeah, this'll be fine.
"Hey Nora!" he said as he walked toward his teammate, waving jauntily, "What's-"
Without looking up from her textbook, which was propped upright on the table, Nora held up a finger Alonso directly in Jaune's face.
"Silence!" she declared, "This is a really intense part I'm at!"
This...was not the response Jaune was expecting. Granted, it wasn't the worst case scenario where she outright told him to buzz off, but it still threw him for a slight loop. After all, what could be so intense about a history book?
Shrugging, he sat down opposite the ginger Huntress and tried to think of something to do while he waited for her to finish.
He didn't have to wait that long, since his Scroll decided to buzz a few seconds after he sat. He pulled it out and saw that he'd gotten another text message, this time from Ruby.
It read #Hey Jaune! What's up? I just gave my Sweatheart a new coat of wax, and she's gorgeous now! Take a look!#
And that was it. There wasn't even an attachment with it or anything.
The Scroll buzzed again as another message was received, again from Ruby.
#Oops, forgot to actually send you the picture. Here you go!#
He tapped the attachment icon and opened the Scroll to its wide mode to view the picture.
Sure enough, it was a picture of Ruby's combination scythe/sniper rifle in its scythe form, held up by the girl herself; she was holding it upright with one hand so the blade hung over her head, with the other hand propped on her hip. She cut a rather triumphant image, and it reminded Jaune of some of the paintings of his ancestors he'd seen.
The Scroll buzzed with yet another message from Ruby.
#I hope it turned out good, I had a bit of trouble getting my Scroll to stay upright to take the darn thing in the first place… Xp#
Jaune chuckled and replied #Dont worry, it turned out great.#, sending it on its merry way, tucking the device back in his pocket.
No sooner had he put his Scroll away than Nora slammed the book closed (announcing "Finished!" as she did) and carelessly tossed it behind her, accidentally hitting another student with it. She focused on Jaune, "So what can I do for you, oh fearless leader o' mine?"
"Uh, well," the scraggly haired Huntsman in training said, "I was just wondering if you wanted to-"
"Sure!" she blurted out before he could finish asking the question.
"...um...OK then? Should we stay here, or…?" he asked; things were not going quite like he assumed they would, and it was throwing him off.
Nora leaned in close, looking deadly serious. "Jaune," she said, "I have literally spent hours reading that boring old textbook." Oobleck's class had only ended an hour ago. "I NEED to get out of here and do something fun!"
Well, so much for studying. He wanted to get the assignment over and done with, but Oobleck did say he had until tomorrow to turn in the essay, so maybe taking a little time to unwind would do him some good.
"So then where do you want to go?"
Nora didn't respond. Instead she got a manic twinkle in her eye and grabbed him by the arm.
Not again!...
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
From inside team JNPR's room, the sounds of pitched battle could be heard.
"Mogar is totally invincible!"
"No he's not; X-Ray and Vav would beat him with the power of reluctant teamwork and parkour mastery!"
"Mogar can literally turn into a bear! When you can do that, all other arguments are invalid!"
"And Vav is 'British', what's your point?"
Despite the slight bit of boiling blood, Jaune was actually enjoying himself. Not to say that he didn't enjoy hanging out Pyrrha, Ruby and Yang, but his last two dates involved a lot of harm to his person, and Yang's date was more mentally draining than he would have expected. (Not to mention he was probably going to develop early onset carpal tunnel syndrome.)
But talking about comic books? Yeah, he was all over that!
If only Nora wasn't so insistent on being wrong….
"Turns! Into! A! Bear!" she insisted, "Argument! Invalid!"
"That doesn't even make any sense!" he protested. "And why do you even like Mogar comics anyway? He's just an overly violent meat head who goes around killing people for no reason-"
Jaune suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of Nora's grenade launcher/battle hammer.
Well, so much for not getting injured this time….
"Thems' fighting words, Jauney-boy!" she declared, "I wasn't aware you wanted your legs broken so badly."
Jaune gulped.
"But!" she added, "I'm willing to show you mercy if you take it back."
Jaune nodded rapidly, "Yeah, sure, I take it all back; Mogar's the kindest, sweetest guy there ever was! Cross my heart and hope to die!"
Now, some might see this as being spineless, but liked living too much to care.
"I totally get why you like him!"
Nora continued holding him at 'nade point for a few seconds longer before casually tossing her weapon onto her bed. She headed over to the girls' dresser and begs an rifling through one of the drawers. A moment later she pulled something out and headed back to Jaune, shoving the object in his face.
"Read it," she demanded.
"Uh, sure," said, slightly muffled do to having his face smushed. "What if it?"
Nora withdrew the object, holding it before her reverently. "It's Mogar Vol.1," she explained, "the first seven issues of the groundbreaking comic series, collected into one hardcover volume."
She sounds like a commercial, he thought.
"I've had this since forever," she continued, "and it's one of my most prized possessions." She then thirst the book into his hands, "Now read it."
"Wha- ...are you sure?" he wondered, looking at the tome he now held; it was slightly faded, with numerous dents and almost as many scratches on the cover. The spine of the book wasn't in much better condition, looking like it would only take one good tear to rip it off. "Aren't you afraid I'll break it?"
"A little," she admitted, "but that's the best way I can think of to show how awesome Mogar really is."
Oh. OK, I guess it wouldn't hurt to-
"Besides, making sure you don't break it is Magnhild's job!" She reached over and grabbed her weapon again, shifting it into it's hammer form.
Jaune chuckled nervously.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Kyu couldn't help but squeal as she peeked around the door into JNPR's room. She normally left Jaune to his own devices when on a date, remaining relatively close by to step in if things started to go south of course, but purely as an observer; she wouldn't directly interfere so long as the dates went smoothly, and so far they had been.
Still, that didn't mean she couldn't get her kicks watching her adorkable charge fumble about with the creatures of the opposite sex.
She was something of a voyeur that way.
After briefly glaring at the author for that remark she turned her attention back to Jaune and his date, who was looking over his shoulder as her read, pointing things out occasionally.
"Welp, I think it's safe to assume this is an unqualified success," she mused, pulling her HunieBee out of her cleavage, "Time to update the ol' blog! ...heh heh, whoever invented Hammerspace boobs was a genius!"
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Kyu's Naughty Confessions blog })i({
Snugly Study Buddies. XD
Guess who's back, sexy people? Kyu})i({'s back, and she's got another hot, juicy love scoop for all y'all, fresh from the scene of the crime!
So it started with Vomit Boy (*snerk!*...sorry, I think I got it out of my system now, I promise. /-D) doing a major fail in class like a bawse! I mean, how did he even come up with 'binoculars' anyway? Regardless, he got assigned extra work because of it, and guess who he ran into in the library when he was doing research in the library?
No, not Misty Peaks, as mind blowing (And other things….giggity. /-D /-D /-D) as that would be.
It was his teammate Nora! You remember, the girl that was sleeping through Speedy MacSpeedington's speedy lecture? Yeah, she was there too, studying for her own whatever. So at the wise advice of his beautiful, ravishing advisor in matters of Love (=^w^=), he asked her if she wanted to be Study Buddies, only for her to turn the tables on him and drag him off to her room.
And before you ask, no, it didn't lead to Snu-Snu, as awesome as that would have been (TwT)...Instead they talked about comic books, which lead to them having a huge Nerd off. Which was boring until she showed him her special book. (Again, nothing sexy like I was hoping for…) Then they started reading it together, which just lead to more nerd speak, so I'm gonna leave them be for now and check back later when they start speaking English again.
However, I think I can safely say that those two hit it off, and that more nerdy dates are in their futures (Nora = Hearts x2)
Now let's get to those sweet, sweet comments! \(^w^)/
XBossLadyX says "Miss Xiao-Long is certainly a blessed young woman." Hells yeah she is! I mean, did you see dat rack on her? Girl could win prizes at the county fair with those mellons!
Cypher DS asks "If Yang chaperones any future meetings between Jaune and Ruby, does that make it a double date?" That's a really good question, Cypher, but it's not a date if the other person is only there to keep you from having fun. So no, it doesn't.
That said, it would be interesting to see those two fight it out over his affections like he was a piece of meat. Maybe in the future when they all get closer? We'll see.
*sigh*...Trixie Dinglebells}{ asks "Hey Sugarbutt (_T_), ever notice how the Great Goddess keep assigning you to these hopeless, bottom-of-the-barrel losers? Do you suppose it's because you'll relate through your shared patheticness? [...] Oh-ho-ho-ho!" (-w-*)...well, DINGLEBERRY, maybe it's because I'm so good at what I do that Venus gives ME the jobs no one else can handle! Remind me again, how many assignments have you been given above C grade? As in, C for [word deleted]! So "(_X_)" with sugar on top!
Moving on to less SKANKY subjects, (not that)_blu_gurl says "Gamer chicks represent! Put those chauvinistic pig dogs in their place!" Well, I wouldn't necessarily call the Playa a "chauvinist pig dog", but go right ahead and keep taking pride in being a gamer girl! Just don't turn into a FemiNazi… (BT dubs, still waiting for pics of that cosplay!)
THEMistypeaks says "Kind of a shame that Yang girl is wasting her more…marketable 'talents'." I'd comment on that if I weren't busy squeeing over the fact that THE Misty Peaks is reading my blog! Xp Xp Xp! OMFG girlfriend, I'm like, your BIGGEST fan EVAR! Call me, we should totally do lunch sometime! (You like hot dogs, right?)
And finally, OG_Cupid says "The ladies love me, Sugardust; you're just jealous!" Yeah, cuz I'm going to be jealous of a 3000 year old midget with braided armpit hair, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude.
And that's it for now! Be sure to vote on my poll for who you think Lover Boy should date next, and keep sending me questions!
In the meantime, I'ma go do some more research until Nerd and Nerdette are done nerding. ~,~ See you sexy people later! })i({
