I'm not dead! And neither is this story! Not that you'd know it from looking at my last update, but…eh, shit happened. I won't bore you with the details, so let's jump right into it!

"And that's how I got an octopus stuck to my face." Jaune said, trying to pry the animal of his forehead and eyes to no avail. Ruby meanwhile, being the good friend she was, rolled around on the floor laughing so hard her eyes started to tear up.

"Erm, Ruby? A little help?"

"Ahahahaha! Okay, okay. Hang on to something."

Jaune clutched a nearby bench while Ruby worked her fingers underneath the octopus' body. Breathing deeply to psych herself up, the scythe-wielder ready to use her semblance.

"Alright. three, two, one, now!"

Ruby darted back faster than the eye can see, pulling the octopus of Jaune's face with a loud pop and stumbling backwards until she bumped into a sushi stand.

"Sorry!"

"Eh, it's no problem. Wait, are you gonna be needing that?" the chef asked while pointing at the still-squirming octopus in Ruby's hand. The Huntress-in-training shrugged and tossed the creature into his outstretched hands.

"Uh, Ruby?"

"Yeah?"

"Your skin is green."

Ruby looked at her hands and cringed as she stared at her lime green skin, remembering the exciting, embarrassing and quite frankly extraordinary set of events and coincidences that caused her change in pigmentation.

"Yep."

"Can you tell me, uh, why your skin is green?"

"Nope." Ruby said a little too quickly, her face flushed slightly.

"Okay, whatever. Did you win any money?"

"Uh, you first…"

"Sadly no, you?"

"Erm, I actually owe Ozpin and Ms. Goodwitch five dollars each."

Jaune stumbled over his words, wondering exactly how Ruby had managed to become indebted to the two teachers when they hadn't even gone back to Beacon.

"Wha-but…never mind. Where's Cardin?"

The two didn't have to wait long, as Cardin rounded the corner. And by God, it wasn't a pretty sight; his left eye was black and narrowed, perfectly mirror his right one, he was covered head-to-toe in deep scratches, his clothing was shredded and he was missing his left shoe.

"I warned you!"

"Oh for f-"

To their surprise and Cardin's frustration, an Atlesian scientist had followed the ginger. The scientist was an aged man with grey hair and an unkempt beard and carried what appeared to be a wooden staff. He also seemed very pleased with himself and was in the midst of gloating.

"I warned you! But nooooo, you didn't listen to me! 'It's just a rabbit' he says! I always say! I always warn them, but they never lis-

"Oh shut up!"

The scientist scowled viciously before disappearing in a puff of smoke and flame. Cardin pinched the bridge of his brow in frustration and traced one of the deeper cuts along his stomach.

"Geez, what happened to you?"

Cardin looked at Ruby's skin and the pucker marks all over Jaune's face and raised an eyebrow, but didn't bother questioning them.

"I might tell you in a week, maybe a month. I'll probably look back on this moment in the years to come and laugh. But for now, I'm going to preserve what few scraps of dignity I have left and shut my goddamn mouth."

"Right. Did you get any money?"

Cardin chuckled smugly and pulled out a rather thick envelope and flicked it at Ruby.

"Did I ever! That should be about two grand."

"T-t-two grand? How did you get that?!" Jaune asked, eyes wide with excitement.

"Like I said, maybe next week."

Jaune and Ruby exchanged puzzled glances, but chose not to pry, opting instead to get excited over the amount of money Cardin had manage to earn.

"This is great! We'll have about eighteen hundred dollars to spend! What do you guys wanna do?"

Cardin grabbed about two hundred dollars from Ruby and started walking off.

"I'm gonna buy some band-aids…and some new clothes. Text me when you figured out where ya wanna go."

Ruby and Jaune watched the ginger storm off, a noticeable limp in his left leg. The duo considered helping him, but the mace wielder was in a foul mood and would probably brush them off aggressively. Instead, the two hunters-in-training started stroking their imaginary facial hair while thinking of an activity that wouldn't be particularly exerting.

"Bowling." They both said simultaneously.

*CRASH*

The sound of balls knocking pins to the ground was like music to the ears of the two students as they tied up their bowling shoes and giggled mischievously to themselves. Jaune had gone ahead and found appropriately weighted balls for himself and Ruby, but little did Cardin know that Jaune had actually requested the heaviest one in the building for him. He even had to get a trolley to move the thing!

"This is gonna be great!" the silver eyed girl managed to wheeze out between laughs. The giggles only intensified as Cardin walked through the door as soon as she finished tying her own shoes. His deep blue eyes scanned through the lanes until he found his fellow leaders and started to limp in their direction.

"Aren't those clothes a little too big for you?" Jaune asked as he saw that the ginger's new long-sleeved shirt and pants would make for a better fit for someone on the border of obesity.

"Yeah, but everything else I found was way too small." He responded, absent-mindedly plucking at the belt holding up his pants.

"Fair enough. Anyway, you're up first."

Cardin nodded and walked up to the alley and looked at the bowling balls present and, considering that one was yellow and the other as red, figured that that the pitch-black one was obviously meant for him. He moved to pick the ball up, but Ruby and Jaune started chuckling in a very unnerving manner.

"What?"

"Nothing!" the two responded simultaneously and a little too quickly to ease Cardin's mind. The ginger looked at the ball in front of him and chuckled lightly.

"C'mon guys, what did ya do to it?"

"Use it and find out." Ruby snickered, despite her best efforts to refrain from laughing. The mace-wielder narrowed his eyes suspiciously but decided to go with it anyway. Perhaps pranks were a hazing ritual of sorts or maybe they only did it on people they considered friends. Ruby and Jaune for their part, were either expecting him to fail to move it in any meaningful way or barely lift it and try to bowl anyway, with hilarious results.

What they did not expect him to do was pick the ball up without any apparent effort and knock down nine of the pins on his first bowl. Their jaws all but hit the ground as Cardin stood there, cursing his poor luck before walking down to the seats and waiting for the machine to return his ball.

"I still don't know what you did to it…"

"Um, h-how was it?" Jaune asked, still shocked by the ease with which Cardin lifted it.

"What do ya mean?"

"You know, was it…heavy?"

"Oh. Well, it was actually a little light if I'm being honest. Do they have anything heavier?"

"Th-that was the heaviest they've got!"

Cardin's eyes narrowed, as he stared at Jaune, obviously deep in thought. Eventually, he began to laugh so hard that he doubled over and started slapping his knee.

"Ahahahahahahaha! Okay, I know what you were going for now. Seriously, did you guys really think that would work?"

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Ruby huffed indignantly.

"C'mon guys, you've seen my mace. Considering that I'm not using recoil or anything, just my strength to swing it. And that I can swing fast enough with it to deflect bullets…"

Cardin picked up his ball, once again not even bothered by the weight and easily picked up the spare and took a moment to let out a very unsportsmanlike celebration before walking back and taking his seat and smirking confidently.

"Yeah. That ball's a toothpick in comparison. You're up red."

The silver-eyed girl winced rather aggressively at the nickname. The mace-wielder didn't understand why, but was polite enough not to pry into the matter. Cardin watched, to his great amusement, as Ruby took a step to far, slipped on the oiled-up alley and promptly threw a gutter ball.

"Hey Cardin?" Jaune asked quietly, voice full of hesitance.

"Hmm?"

"How did you get so strong?"

"About six years of high-protein dieting and strength training."

"Oh..."

The blonde looked off to the side with that look on his face. The one where his lips were set in a determined line, but his eyes were narrowed as if he were about to cry. Cardin remembered a time when he took a sadistic joy out of that look, but now it just made him feel uncomfortable.

"Hey Jauney, listen to me. I'm gonna tell ya a little secret."

JNPR's leader looked at him expectantly, looking slightly less dejected. Cardin sat up straight with a groan and stroked his face, trying to find the right words to explain his 'secret'.

"Okay, listen. It really doesn't matter how strong you are. What matters is how you apply that strength. Like, I could show you this trick where if you were to cup your hand and slap me in the ear, my eardrum would burst because of air pressure."

"Then why did you do the six years of whatever."

"Oh. Well, my favourite teacher used a mace, he offered me private tutoring and I had easy access to a gym at the time, one thing just kinda led to another. Besides, I think you'd be better off with a balanced fighting style."

"That's what Pyrrha keeps telling me…"

"Hmm."

Cardin stared at the blonde, deeply consumed by his own thoughts. He was, however, vaguely aware that Ruby had managed to knock over somewhere around eight pins on her second bowl, so good on her for that.

"Hmm. What do…?"

It would be the right thing to do; he could spend more time with the blonde and hopefully get around whatever leftover distrust and resentment that Jaune had for him and besides, the ginger kinda owed him one for saving his life in Forever Falls. However, offering his services carried a rather high risk of getting his shit kicked in by his teammates. Even now, the blue-eyed boy could remember that almost predatory look Nora would give him whenever they were in eyesight of each other.

"Ah, screw it, might as well."

"Hey Jaune."

"In a minute, I need to concentrate." Jaune responded, moving up to the bowling alley and practicing the movements several times before letting go of the ball cautiously, causing the ball to roll forward at a very slow pace.

"Really?"

"I'll play the game at my own pace, thank you in "

Cardin raised an eyebrow at Jaune's defensiveness and leaned back into his chair, arms folded, and watched the ball very slowly roll its way down the alley. Ruby managed to sit still for a whole two seconds before announcing that she was going to go get food and drinks.

"An arthritic, eighty year old could get to the other end of the alley faster than that ball."

Eventually, however, the ball made contact with the front pin and proceeded to knock down the rest of them for a strike.

"Oh, you've gotta be shi-"

"Oh yeah! In your face Cardin!"

"Hehehe, alright, I was wrong."

Jaune sat down and smiled triumphantly as the screen above them flashed a bright red X. The ginger took a moment to compose himself before turning to Jaune and prepared to offer his expertise.

"Hey Jau-"

"Look what you've done you goddamn animal!"

The two hunters-in-training looked over to the middle alley and saw a very irritated looking man with a sizeable stain on his shirt grabbing an owl Faunus by the wrist.

"I'm sorry! I-I didn't mean to!"

"Pfft! Yeah right! Maybe me and my boys here should teach ya some respect!"

The other five men stood up and, although neither Cardin or Jaune could make out the fine details, they all appeared to be burly, tattooed men in their forties with unkempt facial hair. Cardin wouldn't be all that surprised if they perpetually smelled of cigarettes and alcohol.

"Hey Cardin, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"The one on the left looks like a little like my dad?

"What?! No, we should-"

"Relax Jauney, I'm just bustin' ya chops. But yeah, let's do something about this."

The two hunters-in-training walked over to the group of men, who had managed to incite a nervous breakdown in the young Faunus. Jaune cleared his throat, surprisingly managing to keep up a look of confidence as the ruffians stared at him with murder in their eyes.

"Erm, listen. Do you think you guys could-"

"Whaddaya want pipsqueak?"

"Oh, erm…it's just-"

"Let him go."

"Yeah, that."

The thugs started to exchange looks that varied from amused to insulted before taking a few steps forward each. Jaune looked a little nervous, but nevertheless stood his ground and stared up at the leader of the group. Cardin meanwhile, simply stood still, wishing that he'd brought his weapon with him.

"What are you gonna do if we don't?"

"Then we'll have no choice but to make you"

The ruffians looked to each other again before bursting out laughing, with some of the more obnoxious ones deliberately slapping their knees and not bothering to try and contain the specks of spit that flew out of their mouths.

"Really? A pipsqueak like you and a guy who look like he just got hit by a truck are gonna stop us?! You guys couldn't beat a defanged puppy!"

Once again, the biker gang wannabees laughed obnoxiously. Jaune stepped forward to confront the burly men but was held back as Cardin gripped his shoulder and shook his head.

"Uh, Cardin?"

Almost faster than the blonde's eye could follow, Cardin darted forth and shoved the leader into one of the others before stepping forward and delivering a vicious elbow into the rightmost one's temple, knocking him out. One of the two still standing charged forward, but Cardin sidestepped and slapped him in the ear with a cupped palm, causing him to fall to the ground and scream in pain. The scrawniest member of the group, terrified of how easily the mace-wielder had dispatched his friends, made no effort to defend himself as Cardin punched him in the solar plexus before tripping him up, leaving him winded and gasping for air. The ginger finished the very brief, very one-sided fight by turning to the two he knocked over at the start and stomping on their heads once each to knock them out.

"Hrmph. Not so tough now, are ya?"

The other bowlers immediately broke into cheers and applause once it was clear the thugs wouldn't be getting up. Cardin tried to play it cool at first but eventually allowed a big, goofy smile to spread across his face before bowing for the crowd. Cardin looked around the room at the approving and admiring faces and, for the first time in a while, knew what it was like to be accepted.

"I could get used to this…"

So what antics do you think the three got up to while trying to earn money? Put your ideas in a review and I'll announce the winners next chapter (Hopefully sometime before Volume 3 debuts...)!