Ugh, before I even begin documenting today's entry some much needed house-cleaning needs to be made.
To those of you who read the original Chapter 15 were probably dumbfounded at the nosedive in both quality and content that went into it. It WAS a weak entry that involved Pyrrha and Jaune and mostly served as a setup to its own (much weaker) standalone story "Peaches". It was my way of venting my frustrations at Jaune wasting time in pursuing the unattainable in Weiss while setting up Pyrrha as a victim instead of doing the right thing and also pointing out that our favorite redheaded spear maiden's sometimes just too nice for her good and should really just gather her courage and go for broke.
And as the reviews in Peaches will demonstrate, it was my stupid attempt at trying to do away with a ship while trying to make Bálor look like God Almighty which if you've been us from the beginning with Coco, he's anything but. I apologize for pissing anybody who thought ill of either entry (whether you bothered to leave a review or not) it was foolish and in the future I promise to try and use better judgment in any and all future story entries, you fine folks deserve better then that.
Well, now that the unpleasantness is out of the way I can get on to today's entry: While I was hoping this would be a more cleaner and less ship-smashy redo to the Pyrrha chapter, there's just not enough hours in the day for me to fully write everything out in a day and frankly I'd like live reactions to how I'm doing every now and again. So this WILL be a new chapter 15, but part of a longer three part epic that will hopefully shut some doors left open throughout the course of "Conversations". (Like determining what the pairing is!)
Disclaimer: RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth, otherwise Arkos really would be a thing (Seriously, I've watched RWBY six times within the first month it arrived on Netflix and a volume at a time since then and even I think Jaune and Pyrrha should just get together, but I'm gonna need some convincing on RenXNora.)
Bálor Moonlight belongs to me (obviously)
Any other outside party referenced in the course of this fic is the property of its respective parent company.
Bálor would be sitting outside on the grass outside of the cafeteria, the sunlight beaming down on his face as he chowed down on a turkey sub from Schnee Subs, this particular sandwich had been delivered to him wrapped in heart shaped wrapping.
Clearly, Weiss was now throwing her hat into Team RWBY's inner skirmish to win his heart.
"I really don't appreciate being bribed like this but damn this sandwich is amazing, it's like it was made fresh..in my dorm room..minutes before I got there." He would shudder and set the sandwich down, backing away from it before picking it up carefully and tossing it in the trash bin.
"That's just BEYOND creepy!" The wolf Faunus would shake his head and walk back inside the cafeteria, welcoming the sounds of laughing students and various other sounds of being around treasured companions.
"Excuse me, Bálor?" Pyrrha Nikos, Team JNPR's red haired maiden of victory would be standing in front of him snapping him out of his present reverie with a polite smile. "I..umm, I have a problem and from what I understand, you're the kind of person who can handle these sorts of things discreetly."
The silver haired Hunter would blink, not exactly sure what she was getting at but nodding and gesturing for her to continue, hoping it wasn't going to end up being something seedy
"You know that the Couples Dance is going to happen soon right?" She would smile hopefully but it would die as she saw the slack jawed look on Bálor's face. "You..you don't know? But I was hoping to ask you to help me get Jaune's attention..maybe if he sees me with another guy he'll get jealous and realize that he cares about me."
He would shake his head quietly before sighing and turning away from the fiery haired Huntress, hiding his face of disgust before trembling visibly
"Pyrrha, this last week has been chaos for me: I've seen partners go at each other like feral dogs over a petty dispute, I nearly lost my best friend because of that fight and I almost couldn't stop it." He would feel her hand on his shoulder and shrug it off angrily before continuing as his voice began to rise in volume. "I've been stabbed twice by the same woman, and I still had the graciousness to forgive her because she wasn't in her right mind. I have three different women trying to butter me up in an attempt to prove how much they "Love me". And you have the nerve, the absolute gall, to ask me to play pretend so you can make Jaune Arc jealous!?"
The red headed spear maiden would frown as the silver haired Hunter continued to bark in her face, not expecting the young man who was otherwise all smiles around the halls of Beacon to nearly explode at her.
"I wouldn't come to you with this problem if I wasn't so sure that Jaune would be asking Weiss to this dance, despite rumors to the contrary stating that she was planning on asking you."
Bálor would facepalm upon hearing this and shake his head in disgust at the thought of being trotted in alongside the heiress like some damn show puppy. "Pyrrha you know I have nothing but the utmost respect for you, as a fellow Huntress and as a woman but I'm begging you..this is NOT the way to go about doing this." He would pat her shoulder gently, looking into her emerald eyes with reassurance before heading off to his classes for the day.
Bálor would be staring down at the sketch pad in front of him as he stared at the various ideas for a new weapon, the battle with Blake having taught him a dangerous lesson in over-reliance on his Semblance. He had been at Beacon for long enough that he had made pretty good friends with Team JNPR and RWBY, enemies in Team CRDL (whose leader had finally managed to make a proper return to classes as well) and Professor Goodwitch who seemed to have finally given up her endeavor of trying to get him expelled. The two months at the Academy had given him a new outlook on who he was as an individual: He wasn't just a weapon that would be randomly dispatched at someone's discretion, he had his own dreams, his own wants. And as he looked down at the lectern where Professor Port stood rambling on about how he had valiantly fought his way through a herd of Boarbatusks in only his second mission as a Hunter, he wanted very much to get out of class sooner rather than later.
"I've done a lot in these past two months, but I'm still carrying around HIS legacy instead of making my own." The silver haired Faunus would stare at the drawings in front of him: An axe that would double as a crossbow complete with Dust-tipped arrows, two pistols that fired Dust rounds as well as a jacket with bandeleros to carry said Dust rounds. He would shake his head in frustration and tear the paper out of the sketch pad, crumpling it while muttering obscenities under his breath and packing up his things even though there was still twenty minutes left in the class, if he was ever going to find a way to shed off the last vestiges of his own past and move forward. The silver haired Faunus would start making his way down the long stairway up, glancing back at a clearly distracted Pyrrha Nikos who was simply staring down at her notes in a daze.
"She's really hung up on this dance isn't she?" He would tap his chin in thought before making his way back to his seat, sitting down and mulling over her offer.
Would it really be so bad to help her out? It's not like there would be any intimacy between them, as attractive as the redheaded spear maiden was he had his eyes on someone else in that classroom and the dance might be just the place for him to kill two birds with one stone, when class finally let out he would start making his way towards the object of his affection only to feel something trip him up mid-step and send him tumbling forward and down the many stairs while everyone looked on in surprise.
"I don't know who did that but they're SERIOUSLY gonna regret it!" Bálor would roll quickly while protecting his neck to the best of his abilities, after having watched wrestling for so long he had somewhat discerned a relatively safe way to take a bad fall.
But as he finally hit the bottom he found that just because he could take a bump, that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt any less.
"Gah, did someone get the license plate number of that truck?" He mumbled while staring up at the faces of the few people who were still there, including an all-too obviously pleased Cardin Winchester whose face had been wrapped up like a mummy due to the injuries he had received during their sparring match sometime ago.
"Don't even THINK we're close to even mutt!" He would say as he hobbled his way out of the classroom with the help of his crutches while the wolf Faunus glared at his retreating back, cursing the fact that he had let the arrogant Hunter live.
"We need to talk." Bálor would groan as Lie Ren and his partner Nora stood over him, the latter had a goofy smile on her face before kneeling down to tap the tip of his nose with a "boop" before helping the fallen young man back to his feet with the Gunslinger's help.
"Oww, tell you what..help me get rid of this splitting headache and I'll talk about whatever the hell you guys want." The silver haired Faunus would blink a few times just to try and get read of the double vision plaguing him, whilst Nora and Ren shared a hopeful glance at one another as they helped walk him out of the room.
"No! No! No freakin' way!" Bálor would be fuming as he sat with Ren and Nora out in the courtyard, holding an icepack to his head to alleviate the headache he was still dealing with thanks to Cardin tripping him up as he was leaving Professor Port's class. "I already have plans for that night already, and despite rumors to the contrary they don't involve Weiss!"
Ren would sigh and shake his head while Nora was busy looking through a bridal magazine while listening to something in her headphones.
"First of all, what you're really planning to do that night and how Weiss Schnee figures into it are two things I'd rather not know about." The raven-haired Gunslinger would say this bluntly while pointing a finger at the wolf Faunus accusingly. "Secondly, you owe me a solid for convincing Nora to convince Yang to shutdown Dragon Pancakes Productions!"
The silver-haired young man would groan at this statement; for while most of the student body loved the fact they had had a DustTube channel anyone could upload footage of their hilarious pranks to at any given moment, Bálor was one of the few who had lobbied hard for its removal. (Mostly because of his "Ice Bucket Challenge" video)
"And lastly, because I've just about had it up to here with Jaune constantly coming up to me for advice about trying to get Weiss's attention!" Ren would hold a hand as high above his head as he could get it, trying to illustrate both the authenticity of his point and just how bad things were in the JNPR dorm.
Bálor would sigh and roll his amber eyes at the continued and over exaggerated gesture, were he not busy trying to hold the ice pack in place he would've pounced on the Gunslinger and head butted him.
"I'll tell you what I told your friend Pyrrha this morning, this is not the way you go about solving a problem like this!" He would slowly get to his feet and try and get the blood pumping once again, accidentally kicking aside the magazine Nora was still reading. "You're just gonna need to convince one of them to do something about this, and since Jauney boy's pretty set on winning Weiss over, you're going to have to convince Nikos to grow a pair and just lay it all out on the table." The wolf Faunus would begin to start heading back into the cafeteria but stopped once he heard laughter coming from behind him, with a growl of annoyance brewing in his throat he turned to see Nora who had been silent for the entirety of the conversation now laughing casually.
"It's amazing how you can offer up such rock solid advice about another person's relationship while ignoring the problems in your own." She would smile before retrieving the bridal magazine and literally skipping her way back to the dorm while humming a tune. Dumbfounded, and at a loss for the normally quirky girl's sudden burst of wisdom, Bálor would look to Ren for an answer.
"She means that you're basically an idiot for ignoring the problematic little love triangle you not only helped instigate but are also refusing to solve, Ruby and Yang both seem to harbor the same feelings for you while I'm betting deep down you have no clue what you really feel for either one of them." The raven haired Hunter would stand and leave the silver-haired Faunus standing alone as he left to head inside and catch up with his partner.
So ends Part 1 folks, as expected this is sort of a setup chapter to the events preceding and including the Couples Dance so I tried not to pack in too much too soon.
Now to let you behind the curtain a bit (those of you who don't care to know about the man behind the fic are free to go)
0.O Wow that's more people then I expected lol
Seriously though guys,I started writing Fanfiction to get back my confidence as a writer and ever since I made the unpopular decision to begin "Peaches." I was flooded with a lot of justified flak towards the fic for its shameless and sloppy style plus my lack of understanding in all things "Arkos", and while some folks did step up to offer sage advice (LadWatcher especially) most were quick to fire off with insults and the dreaded "Mary-Sue" term. While this may not mean much to some of you, as a person who lives with depression this was crippling to me. I almost gave up on writing all together and were it not for my good friend and faithful idea guy Knight7572 suggesting I take a breather and step away for a bit, this fic may have ended on a very flat, very spite filled note.
I never intended to disrespect anybody: Not the fandom, not the shippers, not Monty Oum, and certainly not you my faithful readers. And if there was ever anybody who was offended by this story, Peaches, or anything I've written please know that I truly and humbly apologize from the bottom of my heart.
Please stay tuned for Part 2, and above all else review and PM. Let's just try and leave "Peaches" out of it.
Because it's being discontinued.