The Name of the Game

by literalsin

A man from Earth wakes up to find himself stuck in the body of a fictional teenage boy with an ability that turns his life into a video game and foreknowledge of events to come. What could possibly go wrong? A take on the RWBY/Gamer crossover niche with an SI twist, a focus on world and character building, and fleshing out some of the details RT missed. Rated 'M' for a reason.

21. Moving Day

The Name of the Game

a RWBY/The Gamer crossover, SI.

Arc 6: Every Shade of Grey

Chapter 21: Moving Day

---

'The last camera is down, Jaune,' Penny reported in from the other end of the block.

Pulling out my scroll, I sent a text to Jim consisting of a single word: 'Go.' Putting it away, I dropped Invisibility and made my way into the apartment building, catching a glimpse of headlights rolling down the street as one of our 'company' black sedans drove up and parked. I found Candice's apartment and knocked on the door. I knew it was late, but I also knew she tended to keep late hours so odds of her being awake were good.

Listen picked up the sound of bare feet padding across carpeted floor, coming to a stop in front of the door. I waved at the peephole and, a moment later, the door opened and the woman in question peeked out, clad in a modest nightgown and her hair still damp from a recent bath. "Jaune? What's going on?" A quiet chuckle passed her lips as she added, "This could be interpreted as bad ex-boyfriend behavior, you know?"

I gestured her inside and followed, closing the door behind me. "Go get dressed. Pack an overnight bag with what you think you'll need for a couple of days away. And I need your scroll."

Despite her curiosity, something in how serious I looked had her hurrying to follow my directions, digging her scroll out of her purse and tossing it my direction before hurrying into her bedroom. "What is this about?" she asked through the door, which she hadn't bothered to close behind her.

"Well, let's just say I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be when you called. I'm covering all my bases. Is there anyone you can stay with for a week or two? Also, you'll want to call in to work sick," I added, quickly transferring the data from her old scroll to the new one. Once that was finished, I entered the key command to factory reset the scroll. Much as it would on Earth, the scroll would write over its stored data and revert to factory settings, while still retaining the number assigned to it when she'd purchased it. Once that process was started, I slipped the old one into my side pouch and moved to lean against the door frame as the librarian went about getting dressed.

"How illegal was it and how much trouble are we in?" she asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

I held out one hand and waved it back and forth in a so-so gesture. "Very, maybe. Or not at all, depending on how you look at it… but odds are good that Atlas isn't going to see it my way, so I'll go with 'very.'"

"Atlas? Oh gods, what did you do?" Candice sent me a worried look, pulling a tee-shirt on and grabbing a small bag to begin filling it with clothes.

I winced. "Probably better if I don't say. As for how much trouble we're in… well, not sure yet. Like I said, I'm covering my bases. I've got a friend outside who will take you where ever you want to go. In fact, he's volunteered to host you for a few nights if you don't actually have anywhere."

It was the older woman's turn to wince at that. "I uh... not really," she admitted. "Most of my friends are married with kids, so..."

I nodded in understanding. "What about the new guy?"

Candice rolled her eyes, a look of frustration crossing her face as she answered, "There's not one."

I raised an eyebrow. "You dump him or he dump you?"

"I dumped him because he was an asshole," she ground out.

I whistled. "In a day, though? That's got to be some sort of record."

Fixing me with a glare, Candice was silent for a long moment before adding, "You're an ass, Jaune."

Shrugging, I grinned. "Unrepentant. So, you done?"

With a sigh, the librarian stood and zipped up the bag. "Yeah. Let me grab my toothbrush and some toiletries."

Glancing at my HUD clock, I nodded. "Make it fast, our window is going to close soon."

"Do I even want to know?" she wondered, and I shook my head. "So, who's this guy I'm saying with?"

I thought for a second about how to answer that. "An employee," I answered vaguely, and she snorted from somewhere in the attached bathroom.

"So, you went from cute, helpless kid who barely knew anything about Vale or the world at large, to having 'employees' in all of two weeks? I don't buy it, Jaune," she chuckled. "You need to work on your story. One day, someone's going to call bullshit and you're not going to be able to lie your way out of it."

"So, you were only attracted to me because I was younger. I feel so… so used. Preyed upon to feed an older woman's fetishes," I teased, only to have to duck a thrown bottle of hand soap. "Have I ever lied to you?" I asked, only to be answered with a laugh.

"Yes!" she giggled. "Jaune, I don't know how you do it, but you lie with the truth."

Rolling my eyes as she left the bathroom, I lead us out of the apartment. "I think you're just making shit up."

"Evidence speaks to the contrary," she countered. "So, how long do you think I'll need to lie low?"

I shrugged. "A few days at least, a couple of months at worst."

She locked eyes with me, looking immensely annoyed. "I can't just quit my job."

With a nod, I opened the door leading outside, gesturing her towards the black sedan, with its dark-tinted windows. "I'll think of something. In the meantime," Jim approached, taking her bag as the trunk popped open. "This is Jim."

"Sorry for the trouble," Candice apologized, shaking his hand.

Tossing her bag into the trunk and shutting it, the man grinned. "It's not a bother. My place has been in the family a few generations and I'm the only one living there now. I imagine it'll be nice to have a guest—might make the place not seem quite so big. Now, sir, I believe we're on a tight schedule?"

"Right," I agreed. "Get going. Call me if you need anything."

"So, you work for Jaune? What do you do?" Candice asked, slipping into the car. "Ooh, leather."

"Head of Security," Jim answered blandly, tossing me a wave as he closed the door behind him. As the car pulled away, I dropped into Invisibility and switched armor sets, taking off to my next stop for the night. I would come back in the morning and clean out Candice's apartment, then convince her former landlord to erase her from his or her records through liberal use of mental spells.

---

"Could be worse," I hummed, looking over the video playing on my scroll. On it, two flashes of yellow light danced in a swarm of black. None of the figures were close enough to make out with any sort of detail, even at maximum zoom. Two large streams of black converged on what I knew had been my position and slammed into each other, a sphere of solid black hovering in the air where they met. A flash of red lit up the sphere momentarily—a fireball—and I grinned.

Even knowing what I'd done, I couldn't distinguish it as a Dust effect or my own brand of Aura manipulation. And if I couldn't tell, there was no way in hell someone reviewing this in Atlas would be able to tell. There was only so much a camera could zoom and still retain clarity of picture, and we had been miles out when I was using the flashy stuff. I watched the rest of the video in fast replay, looking for signs of any other slip ups.

The next flashy attack I'd used close enough for them to potentially see had been Flash Freeze. With the grimm between me and their cameras, all they had of that was a flash of light and some visible mist/condensation. Likewise, placement of the Nevermore and myself on the ground, along with the smoke clouding the area from part of their mine field going up during that stage of the fight had obscured their view of my conjuration of some rebar. They had the obvious bright flash of a mid-grade Dust crystal detonating, but not its obvious effects.

Something I found particularly interesting, however, was that their cameras failed entirely to show Sanguine's presence. Oh, you could certainly see the effects of that presence, as in the furrowing around its neck followed by the huge font of black blood gushing therefrom when she'd managed to tear into it, but the cameras failed to pick up the spirit. Useful information to have, in the future. It left me wondering if that was a Semblance thing, or a spirit thing.

Penny, on the other hand, was highly visible. From the moment she stepped out of the tree line, they had eyes on her. Currently they were exchanging communications with someone higher up the chain of command at a furious rate, all of it heavily encrypted. My guess was they were shitting bricks over that situation. I couldn't really blame them. The highly classified AI and its cybernetic body had appeared outside their facility and cut down a giant grimm, operating at a power output they'd likely never tested her at if the low level crystals originally installed in her spoke towards their lack of trust for the fledgling AI. Not only that, but it wouldn't have taken them long at all to go down and check their lab, and find Penny safe and sound there—which meant that somehow, something looking remarkably like their AI's combat chassis, wielding weapons identical to those created for its use, had shown up outside their facility. If I were in charge of that place, I'd be shitting bricks too.

Of course, there was also the least visible but most telling use of my power that they had also likely picked up on by now. I'd mind-controlled multiple grimm in that encounter, turning them against the Nameless and later riding off with their AI on a couple of them. To anyone not aware of my power set, it looked very much like I had some level of control over grimm. The entire fight could be theorized to be a test of that power and later, it getting out of control. That, or an attempted retaliation to their missile attack that got out of hand... and my leading the Nameless to the base didn't look good on that front.

'So, good news! Shiro doesn't look like he can use Dust effects without Dust. Bad news: Shiro looks like he can control grimm and duplicated one of the most advanced pieces of hardware in Atlas, or brought a duplicate for some purpose. Also, stealth tech. It's the only thing that would logically explain the Bullhead showing up out of the blue, to anyone who doesn't know what an ID is. So... if I were on their side of the fence, the chain of events goes something like this: an agent is sent to infiltrate one of their secret bases, using stealth tech to do so. Once there, he either somehow made a copy of their AI and its body, or already had one coming in, neither of which looks good and both of which imply a huge information leak. Upon trying to leave, the stealth tech hiding his ship fails so he makes a run for it. They respond with force when he fails to answer hails. He survives the missile and proceeds to attack the nearby grimm, whipping the already agitated grimm into a frenzy. They then combine to produce a large, dangerous grimm that chases him towards their base... while he rides on a griffon. He fights it over their base, uses his copy of their AI to kill it, then leaves on another griffon with said AI. Yeah, that looks bad.'

I couldn't delete the video—it had been the first thing they'd reviewed and doing so would clue them in to the fact that they had someone sniffing around their networks. Instead, I edited the records for the scroll calls stored on the tower near the facility, replacing the numbers used with two from the base that had frequent calls logged between them during the week. Thankfully, the towers didn't record conversations—at least, not that I could tell—so I appeared to be safe on that front. Maybe. There was no way to tell if someone had gotten to the records yet, so it was best not to assume. Which was why I had taken both my and Candice's scrolls and made my way over to the airport. A quick trip under Invisibility and the scrolls would be taking a one-way trip out of town—one to Vacuo, one to Mistral, and both with just enough juice left that they should fail some time mid-flight. It was my hope that, if someone did follow my trail back into Vale, they would follow one or the other of the scrolls right back out of town. I wasn't relying solely on that hope, however—which was why I was moving Candice into Jim's place for a while, and why I would be digging through my Semblance and Sanguine's notes and adding to the wards in the apartment if I could find something worth throwing up.

Before that, however, there was at least one thing left to take care of. Pulling the chess piece from my side pouch and taking a seat on the roof overlooking the airport, I connected it to my new scroll with a data cable and hummed. Before heading to Candice's place, I'd taken the time to both transfer my data to my new scrolls and wipe the old one, along with testing connecting the chess piece to the old, wiped scroll to make sure Cinder hadn't been mistaken about whether or not it would hack something connected to it by data cable—that, or outright lied. Turns out, she'd been honest about at least that much. However, getting Candice moved was time sensitive, so this was the first chance I'd had to take a peek at what was inside.

'Encrypted flash drive, or some sort of storage medium at any rate. Money says the exploit that whoever made these things uses won't break the encryption they use for their own internal storage, but it won't hurt to try,' I mused, before attempting just that, to no result. 'So, I can't look over whatever it is Cinder had me pull. Odds are good it's a train schedule, but… I know her mind well enough to know she wouldn't leave it at that. She'd use the opportunity to take whatever she could get. What else could have been on that network worth taking? Shipment dates, cargo manifests, maybe personnel records… By comparison, the blueprints for Beacon were theoretically more dangerous.' I chuckled, shaking my head as I thought back to that incident. I'd need to go over those things again at some point to see if I could figure out what it was Cinder was after there. I'd had the thought before, but the only thing I recalled of importance there from the two seasons of RWBY I'd watched had been the CCT tower. Except that was in Vale, not on Beacon's grounds.

'I've still got time on that front,' I decided putting the train of thought away for later. That entire event wouldn't happen for months yet, maybe as much as two semesters—I wasn't entirely certain because, if I recalled correctly, RT had never released a definitive timeline for RWBY. There was an unknown amount of time between seasons 1 and 2, anywhere from a couple of weeks to a full semester, and I had no idea how long of a gap there was between seasons 2 and 3, and now never would. That's what I got for not watching it as it aired, and instead just waiting to torrent a blu-ray release… and then letting it sit in my 'Done' pile for months without watching it. It hadn't really seemed important at the time, with work and whatever else had been going on in my life back on Earth. 'Meh, it can't be helped. It's not like things were going to stay entirely the same anyway, with the whole foreknowledge thing. Hell, at this point, I'm fighting just to keep certain events on the rails. Even just making sure Team RWBY and Team JNPR are formed is kind of up in the air at the moment.'

Selecting Cinder's contact information in my 'Shiro' scroll, I composed a quick text. 'Got a new scroll. Long story short, the old one is sitting at the bottom of the sea now. -Shiro.'

That sent, I sent the data before I could change my mind and convince myself that telling her the chess piece had joined my scroll in the drink was a good idea. Since I couldn't verify what was on the damn thing, would that make me responsible for whatever she used it for? According to what I knew of the law, yes. Morally, by my own standards? Yes. Still, it was that or tell her I'd failed and dispose of it. With that finished, I turned over everything I'd needed to get done to make sure I wasn't missing anything. 'Scrolls replaced? Check. Candice moved? Check. Moving her stuff tomorrow. Call records altered? Check. Video reviewed, too late to delete it but they don't have much anyway. Got Penny a disguise for moving around town while we were on Vytal. Data sent to Cinder? Check. Am I forgetting anything? Ah! Right, do bounded field research and ward the apartment with more stuff.' Standing, I stretched and popped my back before turning towards the apartment. 'I can go home again. Finally.'

---

"So…"

I raised an eyebrow, shooting the redhead across from me an amused look as she looked somewhat flustered. "So?"

Rolling her eyes, she visibly fought down her embarrassment. "This is ridiculous," she grumbled, shaking her head. "Did you ward your apartment?"

Instead of answering, I asked, "Were you home all night last night?" She nodded, and I grinned. "Any uncontrollable urges to jump my bones?"

"Shut up," she hissed, glaring at me. "That's not an image I need in my head. And no."

Putting on a surprised look, I carefully resisted the urge to smirk as I asked, "What image? Neo using her Semblance to look like the twins, after which I spent the night entertaining the three of them? Do you have any idea what a blowjob by triplets looks like, from the man's perspective?"

"Jaune," Jane whined. "Stop. Please. You promised me! Cold turkey."

I rolled my eyes. "I promised I'd honor your request and not put out if your willpower broke, 'no matter what you say' as I recall. I said nothing about not teasing you. And it's so easy. I mean, you'd think I was the elder sibling."

"I have blackmail material," she threatened.

"Nope," I denied, shaking my head. "Doesn't count if I don't remember it."

Leaning back in her chair, Jane smirked. "Photographic evidence."

With a shrug, I mirrored her pose. "Baby pictures are cute, I'm sure the girls would love to see some. And since it doesn't bother me, I'd come out looking all the better for it on the self-confidence front—and as you well know, women find self-confident men very attractive. So, by all means, please do break out the baby photos."

The redhead's smirk spread into the shit-eating variety. "Who said they were baby photos? We have photos of you in that wonderful onesie we went through so much trouble to make for you. With the little lion hood up, no less."

I winced. No amount of self-confidence would get me out of that one—it was simply too embarrassing, too damaging to my image. 'Damn you, Jaune! How could you not have known that was a trap?' I wondered. Quite honestly, if there was any one thing from Jaune's past that could act as my kryptonite as far as my sex life went, it was that thrice-damned onesie—and any and all evidence associated with its existence. She had pulled out her trump card, and now she had me over a barrel. Still, there had to be something I could use… "I wonder what Joan would say about you using that against me like you are."

Jane snorted. "Ah, my naive little brother, whose idea do you think it was? Who do you think suggested we take pictures? You may not have realized this, but our eldest sister plays the very long game, Jaune. She is a master-level tactician and manipulator. She has one blind spot: family—and you, you're the blind spot in her blind spot. However, she's had her eyes on you since you were born. Do you really think it's outside the realm of possibility that she suggested the onesie for your birthday for the express purpose of driving other women away if they found out about it? She loves you and she wants you to be happy—but above all else, she wants you to be happy with her."

I frowned, eyes shifting over the results of a silent Observe. 'I can't tell if she's lying. I mean, she's not obviously lying, but there are so many ways to lie using the truth it's not even funny—I'd know. It's not inconceivable that Joan could try to poison the well, so to speak, in the hopes that one day I (or Jaune, rather) would come to her and ask what he was doing wrong, and she, benevolent elder sister that she is, would take up the burden of teaching her younger brother the finer points of seducing and romancing a woman—and in the process, potentially cause him to latch on to her as his first, in an example of reverse wife husbandry. Husband wifery?But that reads like the beginning of a bad eroge or doujin,' I hummed, thinking it over. 'No, she's pulling one of my favorite tricks. She's speculating—spinning a line of bullshit and giving a vague 'it could be,' throwing in enough truth that the whole thing seems plausible when taken in context.'

"You're good, I'll give you that. You don't even set off my Semblance," I told her, grinning. "But you can't bullshit a bullshitter. Even if you're right, it doesn't really matter." Holding out my hand, palm up, I focused on the spell I'd created that morning. I had considered pulling this one from the D&D source material, but if I recalled correctly, what I wanted was actually a combination of two spells—neither of which I could remember the name of. Instead, I'd fallen back on another genre for reference. I'd wanted something to compliment Neo's own ability with illusions on a small scale, capable of producing both an image and sound—an illusion, or a hologram. What I had gotten had been interesting, to say the least.

It could have been my knowledge of the source material influencing how Skill Creation interpreted what I wanted, but what I had ended up with was what I believed to be a meta-spell, a single spell with multiple purposes encompassing an entire field—Genjutsu. Yeah, 'illusions' as a generic catchall spell category—and, when I went over my skill tree, I'd learned that my illusory disguise spell had been moved there and listed as a specialized technique. At the moment, the spell itself was somewhat limited: I could cast the technique on anything in line of sight, including myself, and effect up to 5 meters around the target. The illusions it created weren't very convincing at the moment—things like grass poking through their feet still happened—but they would only get better as the skill leveled. That, and as my INT grew higher, since the skill was INT-based. And since the entire thing ran off either my imagination or memory, depending on how I used it, I could produce some pretty convincing images even with the limitations placed on it by its low level.

Above my hand, a scene pulled straight from my memory played out—Jane on my bed, on her hands and knees, face twisted in the ecstasy of orgasm as I took her from behind. With a bit of will the image began to play, in living color, complete with sound. "I'll see your photographic evidence and raise you pornographic evidence."

Hands clenching on the arms of her chair, Jane shifted slightly in her seat and I smirked as her face began to flush. "Okay. You win this round, Jaune. Please turn that off and go away now," she requested quietly, calmly—too calmly.

I raised an eyebrow, willing the illusion's volume to pick up a few decibels as the redhead on my palm screamed in consecutive orgasm. "Problem?"

"Stop tempting me and go!" she growled, grabbing a book at her side and throwing it at my head.

Laughing, I caught the book and dropped it in the chair as I hopped up, allowing the illusion to dispel. Grabbing a notepad beside my chair, I scribbled down my new scroll number, tore it out, and tossed it at her head as I made for the door to her apartment. I couldn't resist taking a parting shot, however. "Fine, fine. And here I thought I'd help you fulfill that rape fantasy you didn't want anyone to know about."

Jane's eyes went wide, and I laughed—I had only been guessing, but now… "You ass, I told you not to put thoughts in my head! I swear to god, if my vibrator runs out of batteries again because of you, you're fixing it."

Opening the door, I looked back at her and shrugged. "At this point, you know what? I think I'm okay with scratching your itch. But you're supposed to be going cold turkey. Have fun wearing that thing down to a nub," I chuckled, quickly exiting and shutting the door behind me. There was a quiet yell of frustration from inside the apartment and something that sounded like another book slammed into the door behind me, rattling it in its frame. "Heh. Too easy to tease."

---

"On— Jaune!" A young voice yelled, and I braced for impact. A moment later, a red-haired missile slammed into my midsection and I spun to bleed off momentum. "What are you doing here? I thought Jeanie was going to pick me up."

"Well, Jean sent me a text asking me to get you—said she was running late." I could only assume that Joan or Jane had sent out a mass text to the rest of the Seven Deadly Sisters, since those were the only two Arc sisters I had texted or given the new number. To confirm that, I asked, "Did they message you or anything?"

"Mm!" she nodded, climbing up on my back. "What happened to your old scroll?"

I chuckled. "Well, it got lost. It could be half way across the country by now, for all I know."

"That sucks. At least you didn't drop it in the toilet," she giggled, and I nodded.

"Yeah, I've heard that happens from time to time. So, got any homework?" I asked, and I felt her shake her head behind me. "Great. Let's get you back home, then. And what do you say to a spar, when we get back?"

"Yes!" she cheered, bouncing on my back momentarily. "Onward!"

"Want to see a trick?" I asked, and without waiting for a reply, hit us both with Invisibility before taking a standing Leap—thankfully, I'd been using it enough by now that Powered Leap's charge time was down to only a second and a half, which was far more manageable than it had been initially. Really, it had only leveled once so far since the Atlas incident, so there wasn't a particularly noticeable difference—it was another skill I needed to level to get the charge time down as much as possible, preferably down to instant casting.

Jun squealed in my ear and I winced, and the noise only picked up when I engaged my bastardized telekinetic flight construct. "Holy shit! You can fly?!" she yelled, and I dearly wished I could see her face right then—her expression was probably priceless.

"Kinda-sorta," I answered, powering us through the city. It was good practice for Telekinesis and some of my elemental manipulation stuff—gravity and wind at least—and she enjoyed it, so I didn't see the harm in it. Besides, it was amazingly fun to be able to fly on my own—even if it was awkward as hell.

I felt her lean up on my back and, a moment later, she asked, "How do you shoot?"

"Huh?" I asked, looking back to see her reaching up and touching the field around us—the solid telekinetic field. I very nearly dropped the technique as I realized what she meant. 'It's strong enough to hold my weight, at least… what are the chances of a Dust round ricocheting against that inside of here, or simply detonating against it? Shit, that could have been bad,' I winced. "Well sweetie, I haven't quite worked out all the kinks," I admitted. 'Maybe some sort of wings only variant? Try to emulate bird wings or something? There are a few options there. Either large, to catch a lot of air, or small and very, very fast like a hummingbird. The second one would make more noise, and use a lot more energy, but it'd also be more maneuverable over short distances. What if I combined the two? Small and fast for maneuvering, large and a broad lift surface for long flights or high altitude? I'll have to see it I can even do it first.'

I had been so caught up trying to mimic technology I had neglected biology. Sure, my ultimate goal there of creating a telekinetic turbofan may lead to something potentially unmatched as far as speed goes, but I wasn't there yet. There were several intermediary steps I'd need to go through first, and in the meantime there was no reason not to change my design if something else worked better. 'Well, back to the drawing board,' I chuckled. "Thanks for pointing that out, though. You might have just kept your brother from blowing himself up on accident."

"So…" she began, voice turning speculative and more than a little manipulative, "what do I get out of it? I helped you out, right? That should be worth at least a date."

I snorted, then shrugged. So long as she didn't expect more out of a 'date' with me than going to see a movie or something, I was okay with that. "Sure. Maybe this weekend, or if not, then next week."

"That's fine," she agreed, and to my amazement, settled down and went quiet for the rest of the trip back to the Arc home. I set us down on the training field behind the house and Jun dropped off my back, running into the house, returning a moment later with practice weapons. I took the wooden sword she tossed me and discarded the wooden shield in favor of my own expanding shield.

"So, you ready for a rematch?" I asked, and she beamed, nodding.

"Ready!" Jun enthused, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Smirking, I expanded my shield, spun my sword once in the manner I'd grown accustomed to with the Blazefire Sabers, and took up a fairly loose defensive stance. "Well, if you think you can beat me now, give it your best."

Jun frowned, green eyes narrowing into a small glare. "My best, huh? Okay then."

BGM Battle Theme – Rhythm Emotion

The wood in her hands creaked ominously as her Aura spiked up violently, shifting swiftly into the visible spectrum as a layer of red energy exploding off her with a bright red luminance, looking for all the world like a pillar of light, that reminded me of something I'd seen before. 'Shit. Looks like she's learned a trick or two.' Shooting her an amused look, I asked, "Who decided it'd be a good idea to teach you Kaio-ken?"

"Kaio-what?" she asked, shook her head. "I don't get it, onii-chan."

"Thought you were done with what?" I asked, and she stuck her tongue out.

Battle commenced and she disappeared for a split second, until Haste caught up as I dumped mana into the skill. She came in low and fast, streaking across the ground in front of me and closing the distance between us. When she neared to within a yard, she kicked herself upward, tumbling into a spin that brought both of her swords around in a pair of diagonal swings aimed at the gap between my shield and sword, at the right angle to pass between both and connect with my collar bone. The way her legs both curled up towards her chest as she turned into her spin told me she'd be finishing the move with a double kick to my chest or shield depending on placement.

I took a half step back, allowing the practice swords to pass harmlessly in front of me before stepping into a Shield Bash as she followed through with her kick, the force imparted from both sending her flying backwards where she landed in a controlled roll. I pressed the attack, Stepping into her range and planting a kick in her chest—enough to knock the wind out of her and send her flying upwards, where I met her with the hilt of my own practice sword in a downward stroke to the middle of her back, sending her crashing back to the ground. To her credit, despite having the wind knocked out of her twice in as many seconds, she executed a roll-out, spinning into a defensive twirl of blades as she kicked herself back and away.

Once she'd regained her feet, she pressed forward into her own assault, leading with a flurry of sword thrusts. My shield rang under the staccato flurry of blows. Even with her increased speed, however, I could still track her movements—more importantly, I could match, even exceed them. 'I shouldn't be too surprised. I expected I'd start surpassing them fairly quickly at my rate of growth, and Jun is stuck in school pretty much all day every day. So, in reality, using this as a measuring stick… The Arc sisters are all well ahead of their peers, supposedly, so I might be about where a proper Signal graduate should be, or at least in the neighborhood. My Semblance is kind of hard to measure, though, since there are so many other options I could use.'

Shaking my head, I reached out and struck quickly, knocking her swords back with my shield and stretching my sword out to catch one of her swords in the middle before swiping hard away. The sword left her hand and spun through the air before clattering to the ground several feet away. The sword in her opposite hand met the same fate as she brought it down in a strike and I parried it hard enough to flick it away. "Feel better?" I asked, and she sighed.

"Sorry, oni—Jaune. It sounded like you were underestimating me," she apologized, and I nodded.

"Understandable. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I really did mean for you to give it your best. I want to see what you're capable of, and I wanted to see how much I'd improved—or hadn't—by comparison. You did really good, though. Want to go again?" I asked.

Picking up her weapons, the girl nodded. "Sounds like fun."

"No, this should be fun," I grinned, collapsing my shield and conjuring a second wooden sword to match the first. "I've been meaning to train my dual-wielding skill."

By the time Jean got home and came to get us, the sun had set and both of us were sweaty and sore in places. "Sorry I'm late, Jaune," she apologized, leading us inside, where a couple of pizzas waited on the kitchen table.

Jean shared both a level and a title with her sister, apparently, which left me wondering if that was a coincidence of them keeping up a similar training routine, or if it was something else. The only other twins I had to compare to were also of the same level, though they bore different titles. I had no way to confirm that, so I shrugged it off—it was just a suspicion, and not even a well-founded one. Remnant was weird, but I didn't think it was quite so weird that I could start picking away at every little coincidence as though they were something more than they really were.

When we'd finished eating, Jean sent Jun up to get a bath and head to bed while we moved into the living room, Jean bringing out a bottle of something clear from the freezer along with a couple of glasses. "So," she began, pouring two glasses and handing me one before taking a seat. "How are you doing?"

I raised an eyebrow, idly taking a sip of the liquor she'd given me before simply rolling the glass between my hands. It was oddly sweet, though it still burned on the way down. I didn't recognize it as anything I'd had before and it didn't seem to have a particularly high proof—as evidenced by my Resist Poison skill not leveling with every drink, unlike some of the liquors Neo preferred. I had the ice-cream themed girl to blame, or thank, for even having that skill. Then again, as I'd said before, I wasn't an alcohol connoisseur—I tended to keep things simple when I chose to drink. So it could have been some Earth-analog, or it could have been something entirely native to Remnant and I'd have never been able to tell the difference. "In what way? You're going to have to be more specific."

"All of it," she deadpanned. "Joan told us what happened—the memory thing, your Semblance. Don't worry, we're keeping it quiet—we aren't telling our parents, either. I mean, how are you adjusting? Have you remembered anything? Are you absolutely sure you're ready to go to Beacon in the state you're in? What's this about you having a girlfriend?"

'Well, there goes keeping that quiet… but then, I trust Joan, and Joan trusts the rest of her sisters, so I suppose I'm going to have to live with it.' I chuckled quietly at her for a moment before beginning. "In the order you asked them… I think the easiest comparison I could make is this: imagine one day, you wake up in a hospital on an alien planet. Oh, the people are human, they speak language you can understand, breathe air, but a percentage of them are gifted with superpowers. In fact, you later learn you were in the hospital because you had been trying to awaken your own superpowers—it worked, but the trade-off is that you know next nothing about the world around you. Now, toss in monsters, magic, and a school for training future superpowered monster hunters and you've got a recipe for about half of all manga and comic books ever produced. I am stuck looking at this world from an outsider's perspective, and from where I stand everyone is some degree of crazy—and I'm crazy for going along with it. It's like I'm living in a fantasy world, and getting stronger, learning to be a better killer, at times it makes it seem less real—until some grimm decides to try to remove my lungs, or nails me to a tree, and I'm violently reminded that this is real."

That I was living on a goddamn death world. I was once again reminded of my recent decision regarding priorities and goals for the future. Finding a way not to die on a world where humanity was undergoing its own little extinction event in slow motion was number one on my list of things to work towards. Number two was getting off this dust ball—I'd been brought here from across the ether, so surely there had to be a way to cross that divide again, maybe even go elsewhere, just in a different way from however I got here since I didn't fancy the idea of pulling another Quantum Leap and leaving people behind. Well, it was a thought, at any rate. Something to put right up there beside 'immortality' as a personal quest: exit, stage left, and take as many people as I could stand with me when I went.

Jean winced. "Yeah, I can see how that'd be… jarring."

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I love it here. I wouldn't trade you guys or my friends for the world. Still, there are days…" I shrugged. "As for your second question: a little. Nothing important. I'm working on it. I haven't really told anyone this, so keep a lid on it if you don't mind?" I asked, and she nodded slowly. "I dug through my Semblance and found something interesting. Name a video game analog to 'memory.'"

She hummed and took a pull of her own drink as she thought on it. "Depending on the game, save files maybe."

"Bingo," I agreed. "I found mine, I think. No, let me rephrase that. I found a couple. An active save file, which I assume is me, and an inactive, corrupted one."

"You, from before?" she asked, and I shrugged.

"Maybe. Possibly. I've got it trying to fix itself now—sort of like checking a file system on a computer, in a way," I admitted. "When and if it ever finishes, maybe I'll be able to get those memories back. I'm not counting on it, but it's a possibility. That's why I haven't told anyone. I don't want to get their hopes up over something that may or may not happen." Frowning, I added, "I probably shouldn't have told you, either."

"Nah, I'm fine," she chuckled, taking up the bottle and topping her glass off, before waving it at me. Looking down, I blinked as I realized I'd apparently drained the glass during the course of the conversation, and with a shrug I held it out for a refill. "So, keep going."

"Mmk," I hummed, wondering for a moment how to answer her other questions. "As for Beacon, well, mentally I'm as ready as I'm going to get. Physically, I could do with some more training, but I should be okay on that front if push comes to shove. I need to start studying things, maybe pick up some books to try and fill in the gaps in my knowledge—but I'm not terribly worried about that. I'll have eight or so hours a day to study… The class schedule at Beacon is eight hours, right?"

Jean chuckled, shaking her head. "Seven hours of study, three hours of mandatory physical training, five days a week. At least, for first through third years."

I winced. "Ten hour days? Are they insane?"

The redhead shrugged. "Beacon is the best Hunter school in the world. They've earned that reputation through hard work. Not only do they teach everything a future Hunter or Huntress needs to know in that line of work, but they also teach a curriculum equivalent to the civilian high schools. By the time you graduate Beacon, even if you choose not to be a Hunter, you'll be prepared to do just about anything else—or go into higher education, whichever you prefer." She shook her head, adding, "Not that you have much of a choice after graduating. There's a mandatory service period, once you graduate and get your license. Usually seven years or so, with deployment rotations at a town or city somewhere—and you don't really get to pick. You go where they need you, and if things get quiet there and grimm activity dies down, they'll ship you somewhere else."

"So, wait," I frowned, thinking it over. "In addition to Hunter-specific courses they have the usual complement of math, science, history and the like? How do they organize that?" The mandatory service thing was not entirely unexpected. Given what I knew, it was pretty obvious they tried to keep teams together as much as possible—both Jane and Joan had said they'd been with their teams from Beacon. That did make me wonder how Jane had managed to get out early. Had they given her the Remnant equivalent of a Section 8 discharge, when her team died? It would make sense—her friend had died, she took some time off to grieve, the rest of her team had been called up, then they'd died as well… I would not be surprised if they had labeled her as 'mentally unfit for duty' after that. I could ask Hei if he'd been given the same treatment, but I sort of doubted that. If anything, he'd probably bribed his way out or done something a bit shadier—I wouldn't put it past him.

"Amazing scheduling," Jean sighed, bringing me out of my thoughts. "You'll be assigned a schedule as a team. The first year schedule goes something like: mornings after breakfast everyone has their first exercise period, then three hours of class, then another exercise period, an hour for lunch, then another three hours of class, then you'll finish out the day with Goodwitch. As for the exact breakdown of those classes, that depends on the day of the week. Some, like math, are only hour-long classes where you're expected to do your work and studying outside of class, and if you have questions there are study groups and older students willing to act as tutors. Others, like history, and Goodwitch's combat class, are two hours—and there's a three hour Dust lab Fridays, assuming things haven't changed since I was a firstie. About once a month, you'll be allowed to take a Bullhead out from Beacon, with second or third year students acting as chaperons, so long as the destination is within about two hours flight time from the school. Of course, that means cutting into time you could put towards study, homework, or clubs in addition to having to find a team willing to babysit. It's easier to just go into the Emerald Forest."

"So, in truth, it's more like twelve hour days if you count breakfast and lunch, if not longer depending on whether you get up early to go at the beginning of breakfast," I pointed out, and she nodded. If I recalled correctly, Nora was something of a pancake fiend. Odds were very good we'd all be getting up early every day Beacon served pancakes, whether we liked it or not.

"Plus clubs, which are not mandatory but are encouraged. Students are highly encouraged to engage in training in their spare time, especially team training—to the point where, if you can't turn in homework because you were too busy training the night before, the professors are likely to excuse it entirely and give you an extra day to turn it in. Except Goodwitch. Goodwitch doesn't give homework, in the classical sense. She'll give you the whole speech the first day, but she only ever gives one homework assignment—considered a permanent assignment: survive. Grow stronger, smarter, wiser, and survive. That is Beacon's combat instructor's primary lesson."

"Clubs?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Such as…?"

"The usual," Jean shrugged, and when I sent her a deadpan look, had the decency to look sheepish. "Right. Sorry. Let's see… swimming, track and field, martial arts, swordplay, gunplay, tracking, collecting, crafting, literature, and a lot of others I didn't really pay attention to. They're there mostly to prevent burnout and give you some time to yourself, while also providing some practical skill training. There are always fliers posted on the physical message boards and on the school network, with descriptions of each club and usually a list of their members, sometimes with photos or videos of their accomplishments. Similarly, the school network also provides a list of older students who have volunteered as tutors for certain subjects—either one on one, or for groups.

"So really, if you count study time and club time for the average student as around two to three hours a day, you're looking at fifteen hour days. Assuming you actually have study or club time every day and don't use your weekends for that, so as to not exhaust yourself. Aura doesn't exactly fix mental exhaustion after all—burnout's a real problem, especially since once you get into Beacon the only way to drop out is massive physical injury or death, or murdering a classmate or civilian. It's part of the whole 'need more Hunters' thing. The council subsidizes your tuition and dorms, so you're obligated to finish schooling and a mandatory service period after graduation to pay that back. And if you've burned out? You're likely dead before or soon after graduation. In other words: take some time to yourself if you feel like you need it."

She snapped her fingers as though just remembering something and added, "Oh, right. I should probably warn you about the drills."

I blinked, sending her a confused look. "Drills as in… fire drills?"

"Something like that. More like invasion drills. Starting some time after your first month, you'll start getting them. Sometimes, they're school-wide, other times they're team specific—or include a few teams. If it's school wide, the sirens will go off along with students' scrolls, followed by an announcement by either Ozpin or Goodwitch broadcast over the scrolls and PA system: 'this is a drill, all students assemble in such-and-such place.' Usually either in the ballroom if it's a simulated invasion of the school, or the landing pads if it's a simulated invasion of Vale. That's for the large-scale stuff, though. For small scale stuff, your scroll will go off—loudly—and one of the professors will tell you to assemble either in the Operations room or directly on the Bullhead platform. For your first year, that's where they end. From your second year onward, you'll be sent on actual missions and if you're called like that outside of normal mission assignments, assume it's always an emergency.

"Drills can and will take place at any time, day or night—before, during, or after class. The first drill of the year is always school-wide and always during class, so the teachers can explain what's going on and hand-hold students about where to go and the like. After that, it's fair game. I made the mistake of getting on Goodwitch's bad side one week. After a week of 3a.m. drills, I finally begged her to stop—it was that, or my team was going to kill me. After that, she switched to trolling me specifically at random—I swear, she had cameras in the dorm room or something, because it was always as soon as I stepped into the shower," Jean sighed, taking a moment to slug back the last of her glass.

"On that note: don't piss off Goodwitch. Don't let her cool exterior fool you. She's got a low tolerance for bullshit and she's downright vindictive. And regardless of what everyone thinks, she does have a sense of humor—petty, cruel, and vindictive… but a sense of humor it is. You don't want to be her amusement for a few weeks—trust me."

'Note to self: piss off Glynda. I could use a challenge.' I grinned, already wondering what sort of trouble I could cause the beautiful blonde. I had a few things in mind, and with my Semblance most of them couldn't even be traced directly back to me. I'd have to test, but I believed I may just have found an unorthodox use for conjuration. It was something to keep myself amused with later, at any rate. "I'll keep that in mind."

Apparently seeing some tell as to my intentions, she snorted. "Your funeral. Now, answer the last one."

"What one was that?" I asked, scratching at my chin in seeming thought. Jean turned a flat look on me and simply stared. After a full two minutes of this, I finally gave it up as a bad job. "The rumors are true. I have a girlfriend."

"How'd that happen?" she wondered, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. "I mean, you were always so socially awkward…"

"Well," I began, my voice taking on a solemn tone. "When a man and a woman love each other very much…"

"Ass," she rolled her eyes, cutting me off with a giggle. "That is not what I meant and you damn well know it."

I faked a put-upon look. "What's with everyone calling me an ass today?"

Jean's hand twitched towards what looked like a remote control beside her chair before stilling—clearly, she'd just made her Will save not to throw it at my head. "Maybe—and this is just a thought—it's because you're an ass."

"Tautology."

She failed her second Will save and I had to dodge a thrown remote control. "Quit dicking around, Jaune. I know you're trying to distract me. Now, talk."

"Fine," I grunted. "I lied. I don't have a girlfriend. I have…" The twins and Neo made three. I wasn't sure what to count Joan as, but I may as well add her to that count. Candice didn't count any more. Jane… was trying to quit cold turkey, but I gave it till the end of the week at best. I hadn't bedded Ruby, nor did I intend to push things much further than her comfort zones, but it seemed reasonable to assume it would happen at some point. Being her only male friend, and one she was attracted to even if she hadn't said anything about it yet—it was just a matter of time. A year or two, maybe three—that seemed a reasonable amount of time for her to get over her shyness, mature a bit, and to put her into what I'd feel comfortable with having a relationship with, at least compared to the other girls. That was all assuming, of course, that she hadn't found someone else by then. Though, when and if Ruby and I ever got together, given how she felt and knowing my luck, Yang would likely not be far behind—assuming Yang hadn't found someone either.

"Four," I answered.

"Why did you take so long to count?" Jean asked, a knowing look crossing her face.

"Because it's complicated," I grunted.

Laughing, the woman across from me hopped up from her seat, crossed the distance between us, and plopped down beside me on the couch, making one more round of filling glasses. "Do tell."

I rolled my eyes. I knew her type. She ate up other people's drama like her own personal soap opera. "I don't think so. You're enjoying this too much," I denied, smirking.

"Yeah, I can see why you'd be kind of hesitant to talk about it," she nodded, talking as though I hadn't just shot her attempt at fishing for information down. "After all, you've slept with two of your own sisters. How's that work, by the way?" she asked, and as soon as I opened my mouth, a grin twitching at the corner of my lips, I found her finger over my lips. "No, don't. I walked right into that one. I meant, specifically, with the memory thing."

"Like I said, it's complicated," I mumbled out around her finger still pressed on my lips, before she removed it.

Jean shrugged. "Fair enough. So… what sort of faces did my sister make?"

I blinked. "What." I realized which sister she meant—she referred to Joan and Jun by name, but Jane was always 'my sister.' 'My twin,' in other words. "Why would you want to know that?"

"It's a long, long story. Very long story very short, we made a bargain and she's failed to hold up on her end," she shrugged.

I very nearly resisted the urge to facepalm. It was a close thing, but in the end I just couldn't help it. 'I swear. This world. Some days. God damnit. And damn you, Monty and RT, for screwing with the series until it was nearly unrecognizable to sanitize it. What else did you bastards change? …Please tell me it's not some rule 63, gender-bending bullshit. If Ren is a woman when I get to Beacon, I quit. Game over, man, game over.'

Shaking my head, I drained the last of my booze and put the glass on the table, well out of reach of Jean and her watchful gaze. I'd suspected from the start, but now… Yeah, she was trying to get me drunk, and she was working herself up to asking something she figured it would take getting a few drinks in me to ask. In that case, I may as well just cut to the chase. A smirk crossed my lips and I held out my hand, using Genjutsu to conjure the same image as before—that of Jane bent over, quietly wailing in ecstasy as I was keeping the volume on this one down for fear of Jun overhearing. Beside me, Jean was silent. A glance over at her showed her skin flushed and her pupils dilated as they were glued to the image floating over my hand—yeah, she was definitely interested.

I let the memory play out across a change of positions before Joan rejoined us in the image. Beside me, Jean whimpered quietly, squirming against my side where she'd slowly closed the distance between us while watching. Suddenly, I closed my fist, dispelling the image. "Those the kind of faces you wanted to see?"

"Y-yeah," she gulped quietly. Taking a deep breath, she carefully reached forward and put her glass on the coffee table before turning her attention back to me. She shifted, straddling my lap as her hands went to either side of my head and she leaned in, bright red hair settling in a curtain around our faces and green eyes locked on my blue. A nervous chuckle passed her lips before she closed the distance the rest of the way and our lips met. Her tongue darted out and I met her in the middle. 'Well, she is the bolder of the two,' I silently assessed, another smirk working its way onto my lips as my hands grasped her waist, squeezing gently and pulling her closer, and earning a contented sound of pleasure in the process.

I didn't bother marking how much time passed that way, but we were both out of breath when she pulled back, smirking like the cat that got the canary and washed it down with the cream—a look I'd seen more than once, recently. "So…" she dragged the word out. "I'm bored. Wanna fuck?"

I laughed outright, causing the woman on my lap to break into her own giggles. Little did she know, I was just pulling back to deliver the punchline. Or rather, I had been, until my Semblance decided to remind me of its presence.

A quest has been updated!

Romancing Remnant: Taste the Rainbow has been unlocked!

Four of the Seven Deadly Sisters now have shown an interest towards you. Romance the others to collect the full set!

Success: increased closeness with the Seven Deadly Sisters, up to +7 additional love interests (depending on how many have already been romanced), title, unknown. Failure: decreased closeness with the Seven Deadly Sisters, loss of up to 7 love interests, title.

I blinked, then groaned. "What's wrong?" Jean asked, raising an eyebrow.

"My Semblance is acting in bad taste," I deadpanned, before facepalming as I realized I had likely only encouraged it with that comment.

The redhead rolled her eyes before a leer spread over her face. "I know a way to take your mind off of it…"

"Let me think about it," I hummed, before my grin returned. "Nope."

"Great, let's take this to my roo… wait, what?" she asked, her brain catching up to her mouth. "What do you mean, 'nope?'"

Taking her by the waist, I shifted her off me and stood, bending down enough to kiss her nose and earning an annoyed look in the process as she tried to snag my lips with her own and missed. "You're too drunk to sleep with."

"I am not!" she protested.

"Really?" I asked, holding a hand behind my back and subtly casting an illusion on it before holding it up. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

She blinked, counted them, then blinked again in confusion. "Seven? What…"

"See, told you," I chuckled. Bending down, I picked her up into a bridal carry. "Come on, let's get you to bed."

"So you are coming to bed with me?" she asked, and I shook my head.

"No," I denied. "I'm putting you to bed. There's a difference. One implies I'm staying, the other does not. This is that second one."

The redhead in my arms pouted. "But… but… Jaune," she whined. "That's not fair! You slept with my sister! You're just going to blue-ball me like this?!"

I shrugged. "You should have thought about that before you tried to liquor me up. Little did you know, my Semblance thinks being a drunk is degenerate and won't actually let me get anything beyond buzzed any more before it steps in." It had allowed me to drink Neo under the table before, and the girl could drink like a fish when she had a mind to. It was what had lead to developing Resist Poison, after all. The end result was, after some testing, discovering that getting well and truly drunk was impossible without my Semblance fighting back—and the harder I tried, the further the skill leveled. "Come back when you're sober and then we'll talk."

"Fine," she grumbled, relaxing in my arms. "Come by tomorrow."

I shook my head. "I'm busy tomorrow. I'm busy the rest of this week, really. Today was a rare day off, mostly to recuperate from the past couple of days. You'll be staying in town a while after you're done here?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "My sister promised to get me a key to her place. I'll probably crash there since, you know, cat's out of the bag on her not hunting any more. Someone has to make sure she's not going to do anything stupid while 'working.'"

"Like her little brother?" I snarked, earning an elbow to the gut. "You're all so violent."

"You enjoy it, you masochist," she countered.

Shrugging, I pushed open her bedroom door with the toe of my boot and made my way across her room, easing her onto the bed before reaching down and removing her shoes. "I'll lock up on my way out."

"You're not even going to tuck me in?" she asked innocently—an act if I ever saw one.

"And give you another chance to try to wheedle your way into my pants? Nope." Rolling my eyes, I headed for the door. The idea was in her head, though—and with the rest of the week to stew in her own juices over the imagery I'd provided, she was sure to try something as soon as she could.

I dodged a pillow thrown at my head, laughing as I made good my escape. "Ass," I heard her call after me as I shut her door.

'She's going to be fun to play head games with,' I mused, already thinking on how I could get under her skin. Until then, I had problems of my own to deal with. Namely, she'd gotten me riled up and I had some frustration I needed to work off. Well, with three bedmates willing and eager at the apartment, it wouldn't be a problem for much longer tonight.

---

"So, Jaune, we wanted to talk to you about something," Melanie began, molding herself to my side in my chair after she and her sister had ambushed me the moment I'd gotten out of the shower, having only just recently finished my night's training with Penny, after taking some time for fun with the twins and Neo before they went to bed themselves. Penny had asked to go out on her own for a while once we'd finished. I'd agreed, but that didn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye on her with my map, just in case—I wanted to give her her freedom, but I also knew how much trouble she got into in canon. My thoughts returned to the present as Miltia hummed in agreement and I twitched slightly, glancing down to meet the girl's green eyes at the level of my lap.

'Gee, it's almost like they want something,' I mused, shaking my head. "You know, if you wanted a favor, you could have just asked instead of trying the old 'ask in the middle of a blowjob' routine. Not that I'm complaining about ambush sex first thing in the morning," I chuckled, reaching down to stroke the red-clad twin's head as I felt her smile around my shaft.

"We talked it over with Neo, but she told us to ask you," Melanie continued, for all the world looking completely oblivious to her sister's actions. "We think the gang is done."

I blinked, shifting my gaze from Miltia to Melanie, sending her a questioning look. "How so?"

"Without the drug trade, there's barely enough profit to stay afloat—let alone expand. Even having unofficially absorbed the Red Hand and with our expanded territory, we're not doing as well as we'd like," she admitted.

I shot a glance down to Miltia, but the girl's eyes were closed now as she'd slowed her pace enough for me to listen and concentrate without being entirely distracted. "And you figured this out in the last week or so?"

"Yeah," Melanie nodded. "Wasn't hard. We had the figures for the last few years to go by as a baseline. If we keep on as we have been, we'll stagnate and start losing money and men."

"But you two already have an idea, otherwise you wouldn't have ambushed me," I pointed out, and she nodded.

"We drop the gang shit and go legitimate. We've got men with fighting experience—most of the ones that have stuck around are either Hunter candidate washouts, a couple of former Atlas military, or some who have been in long enough to have experience. On top of that, we've got weapons, vehicles, armor… you get the idea. We think we should sell our services out to the kingdom, as a private militarized force for eliminating grimm or doing guard patrols, that sort of thing." Digging into a pocket, she pulled out her scroll. "I could show you the projected numbers, if you'd like?"

"I'll take your word for it," I shook my head. "So, you want to turn the gang into a PMC? I take it the market isn't exactly saturated with similar groups?"

Melanie shook her head. "We did some digging. There are three small groups that operate in the Kingdom of Vale, and a few other groups scattered across the rest of the kingdoms. Most of them are composed of fewer than one hundred fighting men each, plus support personnel. The kingdoms allow them to operate and take on various contracts. We're still looking at the list of available contracts, but we've worked up a few we could take on as sort of a proof of concept—easy jobs better suited to a larger force, as opposed to the sorts of jobs Hunters are normally assigned to, though there is some overlap where PMCs are used as backup for Hunters."

"What's wrong with Vale's military, that they aren't doing this sort of thing?" I wondered, and Melanie sent me a confused look.

"What military? The Kingdom of Vale doesn't have a military. They've relied on Atlas since the last war. On the other hand, Vale produces the largest number of Hunters, and our Hunters tend to be of better quality than those from other kingdoms, so it sort of balances out," she shrugged.

"No, it really doesn't," I countered. "Even against grimm, Hunters seem more like… a specialized unit you'd send into the field for recon, or quick target elimination. Against armies of grimm you would, ideally, want your own opposing army—preferably with air support and heavy artillery."

"There aren't enough people for that," Melanie countered. "Or rather, there aren't enough willing volunteers. We had a military at one point, but service wasn't mandatory and there weren't enough volunteers to keep it operational, so the Kingdom of Vale folded their forces into Atlas, and in exchange Atlas provides military support for Vale."

I blinked, then palmed my face. "So, in other words, Atlas rules Vale in all but name."

The twin nodded slowly. "It's not an unfair assessment."

Humming, I asked, "Who supposedly does rule Vale?"

"An elected council of twenty people, with the headmasters of the Hunter schools and a liaison from the Atlas military serving as advisors. Why?"

"Because," I murmured, slowly scratching Miltia's head and getting a pleased sound in response, "I want to make sure Atlas isn't going to take some unknown PMC popping up poorly and respond with violence."

"They shouldn't, but we were planning to look into getting any required licenses needed to operate inside the Kingdom just in case," she admitted.

A thought occurred—something I wouldn't have necessarily balked at before all of this, but now that it had gone from theoretical to not just practical, but easy, I was leery of going down that route. Still, it had to be asked. "How well-protected are they? How hard would it be to get to them?"

At my waist, Miltia jumped slightly, while Melanie smirked—also seeing exactly where I was going with that thought. "Not well enough. We could puppet them, if you wanted."

I shook my head. "Save it as a last resort. I don't mind doing that to scum like the Red Hand, but… Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? How likely is it these councilors are exactly the same sort of scum, just getting away with it legally?"

"Very," Melanie deadpanned. "So, is that a yes or a no?"

"Have you got a list together of things we'll need?" I asked, and she tilted one hand from side to side in a so-so gesture.

"We have a general idea, but we don't have a lot of the specifics. We know we need a new base, since what we've got isn't going to cut it. We'll also need to recruit some more people—we're thinking around fifty to start with, unless someone has a better idea of what we'll need. We were going to ask our two former military members if they had any ideas on that front," she admitted.

Well, it would be a good start at any rate. I didn't really see a reason to deny them, either. In fact, having my own private fighting force could come in very handy. And with the Red Hand in my pocket, I could continue to use them for Cinder's gang-related things as an unknowing patsy. That brought up another, obvious problem. "Cinder's going to get suspicious is we suddenly disappear."

"True," Melanie murmured, shooting me an annoyed look. "That's your fault for getting involved."

"Yes, it is, dear," I grumbled. "It'll require a little extra work, but how about this: we move the gang out of Roman's old place. I get the Red Hand to send some men to replace them and have them assume the old gang's duties, and occasionally Neo, you, or myself make an appearance to keep things running smoothly. On the PMC side—which needs a name…" I trailed off, hoping she had a suggestion, but the girl shook her head. "We'll come up with one later. On the PMC side of things, I 'retire' as Shiro so I don't visibly have that identity running the PMC. Maybe hand it over to the Fox. All else fails, could just use mental spells on the old gang members aside from Jim and Angel to smooth that over. Neo's her own walking disguise, so having her visible as a co-leader wouldn't be a problem. As for you two, you could wear wigs if you're together, or you could just show up one at a time so no one figures out there are two of you."

"It could work," the twin admitted.

With a smirk, I nodded. "Okay. Do it. Start by finding us a new base of operations."

"We already had something in mind," Melanie purred, her lips meeting mine as her sister resumed her attack, drawing a quiet groan from my lips and sending my eyes rolling up in my head.

I mustered enough focus to pull away from Melanie's lips and ask, "What do you think of a group movie night, tonight or tomorrow?"

Miltia hummed in agreement, causing a full body twitch on my part, and Melanie nodded. "Sounds fun, but we want you to ourselves tonight, so make it tomorrow. Who's coming?"

"Me, soon, if she keeps that up," I groaned quietly, and the white-clad twin giggled. "You two, Neo, Penny, maybe Ruby and her sister if Yang wants to come."

"Since Neo isn't around to ask, I'll ask for her: is she hot?"

I chuckled, nodding. "Yeah. Blonde. Long legs. Big tits," I held my hands up to demonstrate.

"Sounds fun," Melanie nodded. "But enough talk. Talk later, play now."

"Works for me."

Melanie rolled her eyes. "God, just shut your mouth and fuck us already—or better yet…" There was a short flurry of motion from the girl as she yanked her dress over her head before leaning forward and pressing one of her small breasts in my face, and I got the idea. I suppose there weren't many better ways of being made to shut up. "Big tits aren't everything," she moaned quietly as I went to work.

---

It had been two days since my return to Vale—making it Thursday, day sixteen of my stay in Remnant. Things had mostly settled down for the time being, since the Atlas debacle. I knew it was just a lull in the storm, however. There were still things I needed to do before Beacon, opportunities I could play to my favor, people I could meet and influence… women Neo would probably try to convince me to add to my growing harem. I'd taken the break for what it was worth, but now work called again. That morning found us seeing to the twins' idea of making the gang into something more.

Standing in the basement of the gang's soon-to-be former hideout, I hummed as I took in the details and changes. Where before, it had been a poorly lit and cluttered room mostly used to collect junk, now it was a clean, organized armory. Standing racks lined the walls housing a large collection of weapons—assault rifles making up the majority of the volume. That is, military grade rifles capable of full-auto fire—as opposed to the mentality that any gun capable of semi-auto fire, took more than a 'ten round clip,' and was black and scary was an 'assault rifle.' In addition, there were several larger actual machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and pistols. Each type of weapon had its own set of racks, so there was a good deal of empty space on those racks that needed filling—which I made a note of for later.

In addition to the racks, a stack of organized wooden boxes lined the back wall, each labeled with its contents. Opening one, labeled '556,' I whistled. Inside each box were several plastic tubs, each listed as containing 1,000 rounds. There were twenty tubs to the box, a row of ten stacked two tubs high, meaning each box of that caliber held around 20,000 rounds. I knew that different rounds were different sizes, so of course there would be fewer shotgun rounds present than 556 rounds, and fewer still grenade rounds—still, it was a fairly impressive cache for only a few days worth of work babysitting the auto-reloader.

Along with the weapons and loose rounds, I found a set of lockers, currently unlocked, containing filled magazines for every weapon there. And all of it was cataloged in a small binder, which I took a moment to glance over before shaking my head. "You've done good work, Jim," I handed the binder back to the man.

"Thank you, sir," Jim acknowledged, stowing the binder on a nail set in the ammunition locker.

"It's a damn shame I have to tell you to tear it all down and move it." I turned back towards the stairs, suppressing a chuckle at his expression. Well, starting today, I could honestly tell Ruby I hadn't been lying about making this gang into something better than it had been—even if it was the twins' idea.

"Sir?" he asked, with that poleaxed look most subordinates get, when given orders to undo hours if not days of their hard work. I knew it well, having worn it myself more than once, due to the poorly thought out decisions of upper management. After a moment, his expression shifted to one of contemplation. "This is about the meeting today?"

"Got it in one," I nodded, boots thumping on stairs that creaked and felt like they would give way and my foot would punch through one at any moment. Sure, I was wearing my full 'Shiro' loadout, adding at least an extra 40 or so pounds to my weight, but still—the floors were rickety and just more proof the building should have been condemned years ago. The place really was just falling apart, and that was part of the reason for what was coming, aside from a need for more space. Taking in the room above and everyone gathered there, I met Neo's eyes. The ice cream themed girl nodded in answer to my unspoken question and I moved to the front of the room. Neo stood to my right, with Jim taking his place to her right, while the twins took their places on my left.

"Okay!" I clapped my hands once, getting their attention and silencing quiet conversations. "Look around. Everyone you see here is what's left after Roman decided he'd prefer the climate elsewhere. We're down to under twenty people who felt we were worth sticking around for and we're headquartered in a run down, rotted out apartment building in one of the shittiest neighborhoods in town. Let's face it, this place could burn to the ground and property values here would only go up."

There were scattered chuckles and I nodded. "Things can't go on as they have been. We," I gestured between myself and the girls, "have had some time to go over everything here and we've come to some conclusions. Roman's gang is dead and there's no putting it back together. And that's a good thing. Sticking around here, doing the same things he was, will lead to failure. Adapt or die, as the saying goes. So, first order of business: we're moving out of this shit hole. The Malachite sisters have been kind enough to find us something better suited to our needs, in a better location. Over the course of the next few days, we'll be moving our operations, equipment, and so on to the new location. Jim will be handing out assignments once we're done." The girls had gone so far to draw up work schedules and had, by now, sent the information to Jim's scroll.

It hadn't been hard at all for the twins to convince me of the merits of this plan—especially given their surprise attack. The new location was based in the Industrial district, away from most of the gangs' turf wars. This would have been counterproductive—given that industrial sectors tended to be a favorite for illicit dealings on Earth—except for a few mitigating factors. Firstly, we weren't going to be a gang any more. Secondly, in Remnant, with space at a premium they couldn't just let viable buildings and plots of land inside the walls sit empty for years on end. The only 'vacant' areas like that tended to be owned by the gangs themselves—Roman owned a number of them himself, in fact.

I'd given the twins a list of requirements for the new place and they had done marvelously in meeting them—among those requirements was a large parking lot and a flat roof, preferably one that already had a helipad, with roof access leading below and elevators. Of particular note, I'd requested there either be no skylights or if there were, that we would be sealing them before we finished moving in—because fuck people like me, pulling the Batman infiltration route. When we were done securing the place, I wanted it proof against me as a baseline—nothing short of creating an ID should allow anyone easy access, and I'd be cutting off that route with wards as soon as possible. That, or finding a way to cut off everyone but myself from creating an ID there. It was part of the defensive suite of wards I was looking into for the apartment, in my renewed paranoia after the Atlas incident. Though, it wasn't paranoia when they really were potentially out to get me.

I'd already showed Angel what I'd collected from Atlas and she was chomping at the bit to get behind the stick of one of the armed craft. Since it cost me no mana to leave a summoned vehicle deployed, I could summon up the armed Bullhead and Razorback and leave them parked in the parking lot and on the roof of the new place—prepped and ready for quick deployment. And, being properly paranoid, I'd made sure to check my new acquisitions for tracking devices, transponders, and the like—since I knew the various military forces of Earth would have kept their own equipment lojacked, there was no reason to assume that that rule had changed upon coming to Remnant. Thankfully, while there was a transponder in each of the vehicles I'd taken from Atlas, they had been disabled—and since I hadn't done it myself, I had to assume it was my Semblance. Some part of the process of eating a vehicle, most likely. So, wouldn't matter if we were across the city from our assets when, with one call, we could have a team in the air and on-site within five minutes, which was considerably less than our previous response time.

"Secondly: we're going to be recruiting." Actually, that wasn't entirely true. While I was perfectly willing to take volunteers, at the moment I was more intent on collecting conscripts. I would be going around to the other gangs in town later and pulling the same stunt with them that I had with the Red Hand—that is, brainwashing their higher ups and subverting control of their gangs. From there, I would separate out the good from the bad—useful people who were still decent would wind up being offered jobs in my PMC. The trash that tended to hang around most gangs, on the other hand, would either be pressed into service as cannon fodder or used as disposable ground troops for use on Cinder-related gang activities, depending on whether or not they knew which end of a gun to point at a grimm.

"With Beacon nearby, not to mention Signal, Siren, and so on, Vale doesn't particularly lack for Hunters or prospective Hunters. The problem is, those Hunters can't be everywhere. And, as you no doubt are aware, the kingdom of Vale does not have an armed service—they rely on their Hunters to deal with grimm and, if the situation gets bad enough, call on Atlas. There's a very large gap there, just begging to be filled. What we propose is turning this outfit into a private military company. As a PMC, we can contract out our services to the city, or the nation itself." There was the possibility that, if we proved not just effective on the battlefield but cost effective, the council of Vale could start using our group as a private police force—slowly replacing their own government contracted police. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine, really—our men would already be patrolling the city and surroundings for grimm, so why not give them the authority to make arrests as well, should they happen upon a crime in progress? And after that, why not just go ahead and give them the authority to pursue criminals in other ways typically reserved for police and specialized police units, like SWAT? "We'd be fighting grimm, yes, but we'd be getting paid to do it."

Taking a look around, I said, "Anyone who doesn't want to be involved, feel free to leave now." Giving them the choice here was risky, but then, I had a contingency plan in place for anyone who didn't join up—namely, mental spells to make sure they wouldn't be remembering anything about the group if they did decide to quit. It was that, or asking the girls to make a note of the quitters and making sure they got fitted for a pair of cement shoes before they could spill their guts, and I would rather not kill them if there were other choices. I waited a minute, then turned to the twins. "Girls?"

Melanie drew out a remote control for the portable hologram projector they had set up in front of the room. "These are our figures from last year—both officially and what Roman skimmed for himself." The hologram clicked on, displaying a spreadsheet and a line graph. "Fifteen percent of the take off the top for himself wasn't really all that bad, considering most gang leaders tend to take a good deal more. Still, the take itself was... lackluster, to say the least."

Beside me, Neo snorted softly and, under her breath, commented, "Sums up a lot of parts of Roman's life."

I winced at the low blow while Melanie forced down a smile and continued. "It's part of why Roman cut the operation down to the size he did—maximizing profit by reducing the workforce and increasing the workload per individual. Most of that money went into properties across the city—which, while not terrible investments, were not great either."

Taking the remote from her sister, Miltia flipped to the next slide. "And these are the projected figures we would be pulling in as a PMC." She advanced the slide again. "Our expenses outfitting ourselves as a PMC: the new headquarters, more weapons, armor, vehicles, Dust, personnel, and training. As you can see, we'll make all of that back and then some within the first year. More, if we get adventurous. If we work with the Hunters, we can help to clear out and secure, even take back areas around Vale that have either fallen to grimm or are currently suffering incursions. Even without Hunters, we can still patrol and clear areas closer to home. Of course, the more risky the mission, the larger the payout. Clearing areas like this, for instance, would net us a tidy profit," she advanced the slide to a large, detailed map of the kingdom of Vale.

A red dot circled a gold-colored area that had been labeled as taken over by grimm. "This is one of the largest continuous stretches of land in Vale and was, at one time, the breadbasket of the country—producing much of our grain. Clearing this would earn us enough, in one job, to pay for all of that and then some. It can't be done all in one go, simply because of the sheer size of the area. Well, no, that isn't entirely true. It could all be done in one go… with enough high grade fire Dust. The problem is, they want arable farmland when we're done—not a self-lighting, glass parking lot.

"What we can do, however, is put in a bid for a job that just went up. The Vale council is coming up for reelection and someone is getting ambitious and looking to wall the entire area in, then clear out the inside. The job would be to guard work crews working on building the wall—of which, there will be a couple dozen, so we won't be the only group working on this, but we will be the largest. By the time we get to the third or fourth area, we probably will be the only ones working on it, considering we're planning to buy out the other groups with the money we make initially to rapidly expand our numbers.

"From what plans have been released, they plan to expand the area in hexes. Wall in a hexagonal area spanning a hundred or so miles, clear it, then build another connecting it and so on so that it's more difficult for grimm to move around freely. And for all of this, we will be the only ones on the job, once we've bought out the other groups. This contract isn't scheduled to start until next quarter, so we've got a few months to prepare until then, but it's a large job set to last a few years—with rotation on crews every three months—and we would like to try to take it once we've done a few smaller jobs and gotten some experience under our belts so we know what we're doing. Think about it: money from guarding the building crews, then money from clearing inside the walls, then being paid to check previous hexes on a regular basis as the work progresses forward to ensure flying grimm or tunnelers haven't gotten in and started nesting, and we'll be doing it for long enough that if we find out who is being ambitious to get on or stay on the Council and get in their good books, we could be the sole contractors for a lot of this for years. Assuming we don't screw up somewhere, we could be financially set for a long, long time off this job alone—and we won't be taking just this job, so we should be doing extremely well for ourselves. Then, once it's complete, the other kingdoms are going to look at what's been reclaimed in Vale and they're going to want to start doing their own expansion and reclamation projects—and guess who will be number one on the short list of people with experience doing exactly that."

"Vale might even have us try to clear out and take back Mountain Glenn, depending on a few factors—how long it takes, how many men we have, and so forth," Melanie continued as Miltia left off, "Other than that, we'll basically just be offering extra security for Vale. Patrol the city, report grimm sightings, kill them if they get too close, that sort of thing. We would also be expected to respond in the event the city falls under attack by grimm. It shouldn't happen, but if it does, we'd be right on the front lines and helping to secure and protect civilians."

A hand went up and I found our pilot looking on with an amused look. "Questions?"

"Yeah, boss. I think I speak for everyone here when I say we don't really care what we're doing, so long as it makes money. If it's legitimate and won't get us arrested doing it, that's great. But we didn't really care about the danger of cops before, so do you think we're worried about grimm when we've got air support, a small mountain of weapons and ammo, and license to hose anything that doesn't walk on two legs down with full-auto fire? Yeah, I get that some grimm are immune to bullets but we wouldn't be under orders to throw our lives away against something like that—the tactical retreat is a perfectly valid response to something you can't kill with what you have on hand, and if you're right about expanding this thing as big as you're talking, odds are good we'll have something on hand that will kill that kind of grimm by then. Really, all I want to know is what it's going to pay me—same as everyone else here."

"Fair enough," I nodded. "Melanie? Miltia?"

The pair traded an amused look before Melanie flipped through several slides. "Pay scale based on the job, as a percentage. Having a larger force obviously means less pay to go around, but it also means less risk. We're looking to start out with a force of fifty or so. Half the money goes back into the business. As our only combat pilot at the moment, Angel, you will be expected to select and train a group of at least three others to pilot, assuming we don't come across anyone else with that skill set. You'll be paid to train new pilots separately from your pay for active duty—which is listed there," she pointed. "Now, these aren't specific to everyone here and are just for individual ranks and roles, but you get the idea."

There was some murmuring amongst the group as Angel conferred with the other men. Finally, she said, "Well, it's better than what we were making. What about hazard pay?"

"If you see combat, our contract stipulates that our pay is to be increased based on the number and type of grimm encountered and killed," Miltia answered. The slide changed again. "And for those of you worried, the contract also stipulates that anyone killed on the job will have all their final expenses taken care of, in addition to a payout to the next of kin."

There was some more talking amongst the men before Angel, who had apparently become their spokesperson, grinned. "When do we start?"

"Now," I answered, giving Jim the go-ahead.

"Alright! Work crews. Half of you get to help haul that shit up from the basement and get it moved. The rest, go over the upper floors here for anything of value. We're getting this done today. Hop to it, people," he yelled, and they began moving.

I made eye contact with Angel and gestured her over. "Sir?"

Beside me, Neo smirked. "You're now in charge of our air force. Congratulations on your promotion. Now, get us a list of what you need."

"You want a list? Okay. Men, first and foremost. Flight crews—at least three people per bird, then triple that so they can work in shifts, so nine flight crew members per aircraft if you want eight hour shifts round the clock. You could drop a crew, but you'd either have to have each crew run one double shift or sacrifice hours of flight time. Also, we need an experienced aviation mechanic, in addition to another mechanic for our ground vehicles if and when you get them, plus crew for them. My suggestion there is to pick up a couple of surplus APCs and AFVs for moving troops around in large numbers and providing ground support, evacuation, hardened mobile shelter against grimm—that sort of thing. The council probably has some still mothballed somewhere collecting dust from when this kingdom had its own military, that they'd be willing to have taken off their hands. They'd be old, but old doesn't necessarily mean they won't work." Turning, she whistled at Jim nearby and waved him over. "Weren't you a jarhead?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah, what's up?"

"Think you can put in a few calls? We need a motor pool," Angel supplied.

"Sure, I'll see what I can find," he agreed. After a moment, he asked, "Boss, you said you were looking for volunteers, right? I know there's plenty like us who've done their time and left the service, only to get shit on by the government. Civilians don't like hiring us, so things aren't great for them. There's a lot of grunts out there that would gladly jump all over the chance to get back in the field at the kind of pay you're offering."

I traded a look with Neo and the twins, who nodded agreement. "Make the call."

"As I was saying," Angel continued. "Not much of an idea on numbers there, but at a guess, three or four per AFV or APC. I'd hold off on setting anything in stone until we get someone to run our motor pool who actually knows what they're talking about. We need more aircraft, as well. The Bullhead and Razorback are good troop transport and CAS models, but they can only carry between eight and twelve troops. If we're going to be fielding people in a hurry, we need more birds, which means more flight crew, and more ground crew—or larger birds of a different model. Again, all that on top of a few APCs and AFVs to keep on site if we're planning to go out and secure grimmlands. We'll also need somewhere to store the machines and work on them, so a hangar, and an airfield. Don't we have an airfield already?" she asked, and I nodded.

"Yeah, with a couple of hangars. We can convert it to our needs," I agreed. "Is that a thing for the motor pool, or should we look into getting someone more specialized?"

Humming, Angel added, "Probably need a small engineering corps, sir, for planning and construction of structures like that."

In other words, at least another half-dozen. The idea of starting small was quickly going out the window, with the sheer number of people required for each job. 'Well, it'll take as many as it takes if we want it to work.'

"Other than that?" Angel asked, drawing me out of my thoughts. "Modifications for what we have and plans to modify future aircraft. My personal recommendation? Mount at least one .50 BMG behind the sliding doors on the Bullheads, and at least one at the back of the Razorback so it can fire when the tail is open. I'd prefer one Ma Deuce or gatling mounted in each door and one on the tail for each Bullhead, and cutting a couple of slots in the sides of the Razorback so we can add guns there. It'd mean more flight crew per machine, but it'd provide a hell of a lot more firepower than the nose guns alone could provide. This way, at least, they could do double duty as true CAS gunships and drop-ships. Unless you're planning to acquire purpose-built gunships just for that. Also, if I had a wish list, rockets would be on it. And mortars carried in the APCs. Also, if you can find some, AFVs mounted cannons for taking out swarms of airborne grimm."

"Well, you wanted more weapons anyway, sir," Jim shrugged, grinning. "And as the saying goes, there is no such thing as overkill..."

"Only 'Open fire' and 'Is it dead yet,'" I shook my head. "What are your thoughts on laser weapons?"

"Damned expensive," Jim deadpanned.

Angel nodded, adding, "Useful, if you can get your hands on one. There are beam weapons mounted on the larger ships and they're amazingly effective, especially for pinpoint strikes from a distance—but railguns are preferred. If you were looking to make one of the Bullheads dedicated air support, a beam weapon or two wouldn't go amiss. I'm not going to say no, but you'd need another crewman to run it, something to fuel it, and it'd take up space that could otherwise go towards something that doesn't generate massive amounts of heat when you use it. Atlas equips most of their spider tanks with those, but the AI on those things sucks and they work better if a person is at the helm."

"I have some spare parts that just so happened to come off a couple of those," I grinned. "Eh, if we find a use for them, fine. If not, that's fine too." I turned to the twins. "Do we already know the name of a supplier for all of this?"

Melanie rolled her eyes while Miltia shook her head and said, "No, but we can do some digging. Though, if either of you already know someone, that'd help," she suggested looking towards the two former members of Atlas armed services.

"Maybe. I'll make some calls and see what I can find out," Jim agreed, Angel nodding alongside him.

"Sooner the better," I urged, and the man nodded. A thought occurred, and I asked, "A group like this would need some sort of support unit, right?"

"Rear echelon," Jim supplied, with a nod. "They're responsible for managing supplies, that sort of thing. Also, we'd probably want some sort of intel or analysis group, to go over info gathered in the field. Why do you ask?"

"Just a thought, for now. We'll see how things shake out in the next week or so, and I'll let you know then," I shrugged. I couldn't justify just handing out a job to someone who may or may not be qualified, but then again I sort of owed it to Candice at this point to at least try. If she was qualified, and interested, well then we would see. Gesturing towards the door outside, I began walking. "Come out back and I'll get you the Razorback, and you can go ahead and move it over. I'll leave the Bullhead behind for when you get back."

---

As we stepped outside, there was a small flash of green light particles and Penny appeared at my side, walking in step with me. The Ancula was not wearing her default outfit—instead, she'd substituted the dress for the clothes I'd picked up for her in Vytal: tight black pants in the style my older sisters—at least, the ones I'd met—favored, knee-high black boots, a dark purple long sleeved shirt, a gray tactical-style vest, a neck gaiter matching the shirt to cover her lower face, and red contacts. Her hair had been temporarily dyed the same dark shade of purple as her shirt and pulled up into a different style, but like my Shiro disguise, it appeared to be semi-permanent and reusable given that she could just equip the entire outfit. In all, it was intentionally similar to my work clothes, so that she could travel with me in the open and not stand out while in the city and anyone who saw us would see the obvious resemblance in dress and make their own assumptions. With certain factions having complete, unfettered access to the city-wide CCTV network, I wasn't taking any chances.

I blinked at her sudden appearance, one eyebrow creeping towards my hairline. "So you can summon yourself to me?"

"Yep," she agreed, popping the 'p.' "Neat, huh?"

"It is," I admitted, then winced as a thought occurred. Looking around, I spotted the camera overlooking the alley—destroyed, some time ago by the look of it. "Where'd you 'port from?" I asked her, already knowing I wouldn't be that lucky.

"Behind an ice cream shop in the commercial district," she answered, pulling up the map and tapping the location to set a waypoint, which showed up on my map.

Pulling it up and looking it over, I groaned—it was in view of no less than three cameras. Well, at least the good news was that she was in disguise. "Penny?" I asked, getting a questioning hum in answer. "Would you do me a favor?"

"If it is within my ability, I would be happy to, Jaune," she beamed.

"Great," I nodded. "No more summoning yourself to me, unless it's an emergency. I know it's not something Atlas can tie back to you, since it's a Semblance-granted ability, but to be on the safe side, let's not take any chances there, okay? Because if you happen to be wearing your normal clothes and 'port to me when I'm in view of a camera, it'll look really, really bad."

"Ooh," she winced, then nodded. "Okay, Jaune. I won't."

"So, what now?" Melanie asked, as Angel took the Razorback up with a full load of men and equipment to move to the new site and I summoned up the Bullhead.

I turned to look between Neo and the twins. "Leveling?"

The twins shared a look and shrugged. "Sure, why not?" Melanie asked.

"We could use the levels," Miltia agreed. "Where at?"

"Stuff around here is kind of low," Melanie pointed out, and I nodded.

Pulling up my map, I zoomed out and looked for somewhere worthwhile. "Penny and I have been running into that problem lately, the last couple of nights. Mobs around here are great for training skills off of, but terrible for grinding levels. I was thinking Forever Fall. Any objections?"

"Actually," Neo sent me an apologetic look. "I've still got some stuff to take care of, if you don't mind?"

"I don't mind. Do you need some help?" I asked, and the ice cream themed girl hummed, shooting a look at the twins.

Something seemed to pass between the three girls before the twins traded a look between themselves before shifting their gaze back to me. "Actually, we'll help her," Melanie decided.

"Sorry, Jaune. Another time?" Miltia asked, and I nodded.

"Sure," I agreed, regarding the trio a moment before asking, "Anything I can help with?"

"Nope!" came three answers simultaneously. "Girl stuff," Neo grinned.

Melanie nodded. "You'd be bored to death."

Beside her twin, Miltia shrugged. "Unless you're in the mood to try on clothes for us, or watch us try on clothes?"

"Appealing as that idea is," I began, earning rolled eyes and a soft snort from the trio in question, "I'll have to decline." I did not feel particularly inclined towards volunteering myself as a life-sized dress up doll for three girls who made their own clothes and who knew I was down one set of armor, since what I'd worn up to Atlas had been damaged nearly beyond repair. As I understood it, the trio all made their own outfits and only bought pieces from stores to modify, or disassemble and reverse engineer—aside from underwear, apparently. I was not stupid, though. The odds of them actually doing anything related to clothes was slim—they were up to something. However, with my Semblance telling me I had their loyalty, short of doing loyalty missions, I wasn't really worried. I'd jumped to conclusions before, and there came a point where I'd have to trust them outside of my sight—it seemed like the right time, so I wouldn't pry.

Penny, bouncing on the balls of her feet beside me, turned her temporarily red gaze up to meet my eyes and suggested, "We could go find that nice girl you introduced me to the other day and see if she wants to go."

"Yes, go play with Ruby," Miltia suggested, making shooing motions with her hand. "We'll catch up with you later."

Watching the trio walk off towards what I supposed was Neo's apartment, I turned to Penny and shrugged. Well, I say 'supposed,' when the truth was I knew exactly where her apartment was now—I'd gone out of my way to follow her on my map, then swung by her place under concealment just to check afterwards. I justified it as needing to know where Neo lived in the event of an emergency, but really, I'd be lying if I said that had been my primary reason at the time. As I said, I was going to have to start trusting them at some point—they'd done nothing to convince me I shouldn't trust them, so far. "Well, that settles that." Pulling out my scroll, I put in the call, leaning against the brick wall of our soon-to-be-former hideout as I listened to it ring.

It picked up on the fourth ring and I heard a minor din in the background, something that sounded like video game music. "Uh, Jaune! I didn't expect you to call. That is, um…" She sighed, just loud enough that I could pick it up over the scroll before it seemed she recovered. "Sorry, you surprised me. What's up?"

As I started to reply, whatever recovery Ruby had managed was blown as a light, male voice in the background asked, "'Jaune?' Who's that?"

I could hear the teasing grin as Yang answered, loudly, "Oh, nobody important. Just her boyfriend."

"Oh, her boyfriend. Okay then," the man in the background acknowledged.

"As I was saying. Want to—" I began, only to have to yanked the scroll away from my ear as the man in the background shouted, "HER WHAT?!"

"Boyfriend," Yang happily answered.

"Yaaaang!" Ruby whined, and I palmed my face. If she'd meant to deny it, that response had all but guaranteed further teasing. It pretty much screamed 'tease me' to anyone looking to see what sort of reaction they could get out of her.

"My baby girl has a boyfriend? What's his name? Where does he live? Who is his next of kin?" the man, presumably Taiyang asked, and I winced as I realized where that line of questioning was going. Where did I live, so he could come fine me, and who was my next of kin, so he could inform them after he'd killed me. Couldn't say I blamed him, really—I was an older sibling myself, on two worlds, and understood familial loyalty fairly well. I already had plans worked up for terrorizing Jun's future potential suitors, once she matured out of her little crush and started seeing other boys as dateable. That, and looking for plots to bury said potential future boyfriends, should they do something distasteful—or otherwise lay their filthy hands on my sister before she was thirty. Yeah, that seemed like a nice, round number for her to get married at.

"Daaaad! It's not like that!" the little reaper denied, and I rolled my eyes.

"You are so easy to tease," I mumbled, apparently not quietly enough however.

"Jauuune! You're supposed to be on my side!" the girl whined again, and I had to mute the scroll so she couldn't hear my laughter.

In the background from Ruby's end, I heard Taiyang quietly conversing with his eldest daughter for a moment before suggesting, "Why don't you invite him over, Ruby? I think I'd like to meet him."

There was a scuffling sound as I assumed Ruby covered her scroll's mic with her hand. "So you can scare him off?"

"Yes," Taiyang confirmed, and there was a loud smack of flesh on flesh. "Ow! Yang, don't abuse your father," he chastised. A moment later, he added, "I mean… no? I won't scare him off?" he asked, likely at some sign from Yang herself.

Ruby uncovered the scroll and I heard her groan quietly. "Jaune, would you like to come over and meet my dad?"

"Sure, why not? He sounds like a decent guy," I chuckled, and she gave a wordless little mewl of a whine.

"You heard all of that?!"

I rolled my eyes, pushing off the wall and summoning up the unarmed Bullhead next to the one waiting for Angel to come get it. "No, I just imagined it up," I countered.

"Oh ha ha. You think you're funny, but you're not," the girl denied. "So is that a yes or a no?"

"I'll meet you in twenty or so," I confirmed, dropping into my seat as Penny started the craft. "I'll put down in the field where we first met, if you want to meet me there."

"Sure. See you soon," she agreed, and the call disconnected.

"Outfit change," I warned Penny some twenty-odd minutes later as she brought the Bullhead in for a landing in a cleared field on the island of Patch, before subvocalizing my own armor change into my 'Jaune' outfit. Looking down, I hummed as I took it in. 'I really need to do something about this outfit. At the very least, replace the jeans with some black BDU-style pants or something.'

Beside me, Penny's own stealth outfit was replaced with her default outfit, as she'd taken my advice on how to use the armor sets to heart. "Why are we changing clothes? I thought I wasn't supposed to wear this in Vale."

And didn't that bring up another problem? If Penny was going to be following me around—and I had a suspicion that's exactly what she'd be doing—then she'd need more disguises. At least as many as myself, plus one: one for when Penny was in public with 'Shiro,' one for 'Jaune,' and one for the Fox, plus her original. If she decided to show up at Beacon in her Shiro-themed infiltration outfit and started talking to me as Jaune, that could cause problems. No, we were going to need some degrees of separation between our respective identities. In fact, like my own alternate identities, she would also be needing different weapons and fighting styles to go along with them. I nearly groaned at the prospect of figuring that out, before I realized I didn't necessarily have to—I had at least three women in my life who made their own outfits and would probably love to have Penny as their personal, life-sized doll. The weapons and combat styles, on the other hand—well, I'd ask around. She couldn't use her puppet swords/lasers or her battle armor with her other outfits, so we'd have to figure something out.

"Well, we're technically not in Vale. We're on Patch," I countered, and she shot me an amused smile. "However, more specifically, there are no cameras here. None. Not a goddamn one outside of Signal's campus and training field. Did some digging after the Roman thing—"

"By which, you mean you asked the twins," Penny clarified as we exited the Bullhead, leaving it in place so I wouldn't have to summon it again should somebody be watching. Despite the fact that she was being a smartass—I think, because I wasn't entirely sure yet whether she was that way naturally or whether some of my snark had rubbed off on her—she still had a point, even if she didn't know it. If Penny, who had been with me for less than two full days, had picked up on that fact then I was probably using the twins a bit too much for that, they might just get the wrong impression and start thinking I was only using them for intel and sex. I made a mental note to do something nice for them soon.

I continued as though I hadn't heard her, because snark didn't deserve a response and would only encourage further snark, "And I found out that the people of Patch hate the surveillance state the city of Vale has become—not to mention Atlas. They're kind of like Vytal that way: a few years behind because that's how they prefer it. And thirdly, because as far as I know, Ruby's dad has no ties to Atlas so you're relatively safe here. Well, beyond being a teacher at Signal and likely being on speaking terms with Ozpin, but then probably ninety percent of the Hunters in Vale are also on speaking terms with Beacon's headmaster. On the other hand, Yang doesn't know I'm Shiro, so—"

"Jaune! Penny!" Ruby greeted and, a moment later, a small explosion of rose petals announced her presence invading my personal space with a hug, before she quickly detached herself and latched onto Penny the same way. Ruby really was a very touchy-feely person, once you got past the social anxiety and she got to know you—if I was reading her right. Not that I minded, at all. Ruby was adorable and all but melted under the least little show of physical affection, which told me she was a bit starved for touch and/or attention. Of course, at the moment, I was probably still in that area where she wasn't entirely sure what she should do or what she could get away with. I knew better than to push someone like that away unless it truly bothered me, as it would only set back whatever progress had been made with them. That, and to be quite honest, while I wasn't a touchy-feely person by nature, I made exceptions for cute girls.

"So, how're things going?" I asked the girl as she turned and took off towards her family's cabin. Out of habit, I added Ruby to the party Penny insisted on keeping up when she was active—which seemed redundant, since she was technically already in party being that she showed up to my Semblance like Sanguine did, in the battle pet slot, but wasn't really. Being in party meant she had the same party-level privileges that anyone outside the party leader also had—the ability to invite new party members if I set it to allow it, the ability to mark targets, and so forth—as opposed to being in the battle pet slot, which didn't allow most of that. I also suspected it probably had equal parts to do with her wanting me to see her as more than equipment, and the fact that she craved social interaction more than anyone I'd ever met.

Next, I set up a low-level telepathic link so we could practice using it to pass along information and the like, since it was entirely too useful not to use once we got to Beacon. Telepathy as a spell didn't work on Penny, but it would have been redundant anyway—testing had proved that, similarly to Sanguine, we already had a continuous link so long as she was active. The only downside there was that Penny couldn't initiate or be brought into a link with anyone else—meaning verbal communication only between Penny and Ruby or anyone else, unless I wanted to act as a relay. We had discovered that, while Penny could go inactive in a sort of suspend mode and retreat into my Inventory, she didn't like to—at all. I didn't mind letting her run around and do her own thing instead of just… essentially sticking her in a pokeball. Penny wanted to be her own person and I was happy to let her.

Shooting me a look over her shoulder, Ruby asked, "Can you help me hide a body? It doesn't have to be in one piece."

"I'm not helping you hide your sister's body," I denied. "Besides. You think you've got it bad? I've got seven of them." Well, I didn't have it bad, per se. There was just the eldest that wanted to have my babies, and the youngest that wanted to be a bride, and the second oldest who was conflicted on the whole thing, and her twin who wanted to even the score and see what all the fuss was about… Okay, not bad for certain uses of the word. I'm sure Jaune, the real Jaune, would've had fits if he knew what I'd gotten up to with his sisters.

"Why would you need to hide your sister's body?" Penny asked. "Has she expired since Jaune spoke with you?"

"Not yet," Ruby groused, and I reached up and poked her in the ribs. "Eek!"

Grinning down at her as silver eyes met my blue, I shrugged. "She only does it to get a rise out of you. It's the privilege of elder siblings to tease their younger siblings mercilessly for entertainment." Ruby pouted, and I continued, lips twitching up into a smirk. "It is the privilege of younger siblings to retaliate, mercilessly. I suggest a well-played prank or two. Cellophane over the toilet seat, or an irritant in her panties. I'd suggest shaving her head, but I have a feeling she would genuinely kill me if she found out I suggested it and you carried through with it." My own payback against the Arc sisters for the onesie would be coming, at some point. Maybe I could negotiate them into disposing of the evidence.

"She really would," Ruby nodded. She hummed, looking at me sideways momentarily before asking, "Have I ever told you how much she loves her hair?"

I resisted the urge to wince. I'd slipped up there, just a little, knowing more than I probably should. 'Roll for bullshit,' I mused, thankful that Ruby wasn't quite so used to the telepathic link yet that she could pick out things as well as I could. Then again, I had stats and a more mature mind aiding me—I should be surprised she could use it as well as she did. "She seems like the type, given how long it is. I've known girls who spent hours a day trying to get that look." I shot her a sidelong glance and hummed.

"What?" she asked, blushing slightly under my scrutiny.

I shrugged. "Just wondering what you'd look like with long hair."

Her blush increased threefold and she began twiddling her fingers. "Shut up," she finally mumbled.

Ruby lead us to a path through the woods, though it was more like a trail worn into the ground and underbrush than a real path, and we fell into a comfortable silence as she lead us towards her home. As the woods began to thin as we neared the clearing surrounding the cabin, I asked, "How bad is this going to be?"

"Eh he heh," Ruby laughed, so obviously forced that I winced. "I don't know. This has never happened before."

Behind me a pace, Penny hummed. "Surely it will not be as bad as you fear, Jaune? I have observed no untoward actions in your interactions with Ruby and surely her father must be happy that she is making new friends?"

"It's a father's prerogative to make sure the man courting his daughter is worth it and not a creep, degenerate, criminal, or otherwise undesirable," I informed her, a small smile crossing my lips as I did. And if the father wasn't available, that duty fell to the oldest child, preferably the oldest male child.

"But Jaune, you are a cri—" Penny began, but was silenced as I reached out and covered her lips with two fingers.

"Shush, you. Remember what I told you about brain-to-mouth filters?" I asked, and she nodded. "Install one," I deadpanned.

"I tried. I could not find a suitable package," Penny countered.

"Make one from scratch." In front of me, Ruby turned around to walk backwards, crossing her arms behind her head as she locked silver eyes with my blue and a knowing smile crossed her features. "Don't you start, either."

Miming a zipping gesture, Ruby's smile went just a little wider. "I didn't say anything. Nope. Not a thing."

I rolled my eyes, opening my mouth to retort when a flash of motion in the corner of my vision caught my eye and, at the same instant, my detection skills pinged a threat. Between the girls and Penny, I'd spent enough time recently moving in formation without speaking that it was pretty much reflexive on my part to issue orders via a combination of telepathy and the party system. With only a rough direction and speed to work with, I sent the order to Ruby and Penny to spread out and flank the projected point of impact—namely, right where I was standing. My shield came up and expanded as I turned to face the fast moving threat, drawing a saber into place from my side as a shout reached my ears. "DYNAMIC ENTRY!"

'What,' I had an instant to think, before a weight slammed into the center of my shield. 'Oh god, please tell me there isn't a Gai or Lee equivalent on Remnant. I don't think I could handle that.'

Reflex took over where thinking momentarily faltered and I squeezed the trigger on my shield, shoving in a Shield Bash and at the same time swinging my Blazefire Saber out to catch whatever—whoever—had impacted my shield as I forcibly threw them off. The shotgun built into the shield went off, a white-tinted hail of double-aught red Dust pellets erupting out from the center of it as I shoved, my sword coming forward and hitting nothing but air as a large, yellow-and-brown form shoved off my shield and flipped over the sword strike and in the process shoved me back a good foot and off balance. At the same time, I sent the command, 'Cover fire.'

A trio of retorts from Crescent Rose sounded back to back as the world in front of me lit up green with laser fire as I hopped back, spinning my Saber around into rifle mode and taking aim at where the attacker should have been. A low whistle from nearby drew our attention to where a tall blond man with an obvious family resemblance to a certain blonde brawler stood, leaning up against a tree and I got my first good look at him, and his level.

Taiyang Xiao Long

The Broken/The Pugilist/Hunter Trainer

Level: ?

"Kids these days are scary," he grinned, pushing off the tree and stuffing his hands in his pockets. I almost missed his words as I saw something I hadn't seen before—a title rotating between three selections in a steady, three second interval. I'd seen secondary titles, but I'd never seen someone with a primary title that changed every few seconds. Still, they all told a different story about the man before me.

To my left, Ruby's eyes went wide as she shot a look down at the rifle in her hands, back to where Taiyang had been standing, then to the man himself—realizing that she'd reacted instinctively, with no hesitation whatsoever, and had trusted me to check our target first. "Dad? What? I.. uhh…"

Reaching the girl, Taiyang reached out and ruffled her hair. "You did fine, kiddo. That's exactly how you should react to an unknown threat. Though," he turned raised eyebrows on me, "it looked like you guys were pretty familiar with each other, to anticipate how you'd all react like that."

"We um… we've been practicing?" Ruby tried, and I chuckled, spinning my saber down and sheathing it while disengaging my shield. Beside me, Penny's marionette swords found their way back into their storage compartment and, following our lead, Ruby put away her own weapon.

"Is that what you call it?" an amused voice asked, and I turned to find Yang poking her head outside from one of the cabin's doors. "Sounds like I'm missing out."

"Yaaaang!" Ruby cried, shooting a glare at her sister.

I rolled my eyes at the siblings' antics, closing most of the distance between myself and Taiyang. "Jaune Arc. I'm Ruby's friend," I offered the man my hand, turning an amused look on Yang as I added, "Or boyfriend, depending on who you ask."

Yang stuck her tongue out and I turned my attention back to Taiyang, who I noticed wasn't attempting to crush my hand into paste as I'd expected him to. My knuckles didn't even pop before he released my hand. "Yeah, so I'd heard," he chuckled, shooting his eldest daughter an amused look before turning his gaze back to me. "So, how are your parents doing?"

I blinked, shaking my head as I realized the obvious—of course Taiyang Xiao Long would know the Arcs, for a variety of reasons, the least of which included that he'd likely taught a few, if not most of my siblings at Signal. That of course begged the question of why I—or Jaune, rather—hadn't been sent to Signal or Siren, but I could put off answering that until later. Unfortunately, I had no real answer for his question, so I rolled with what had worked so far. "Couldn't really say," I shrugged. "I don't know if they told you, but there was an accident a couple of weeks ago."

"Your dad told me," he confirmed with a nod as he gestured towards the house. "Please, come in."

The sisters lead the way and I followed them inside, where Taiyang gestured for us to take a seat at their kitchen table. "How bad is it?" the man asked, dropping into a chair.

I shrugged, doing likewise as Penny plopped down beside me. "I'm still figuring some things out. Oh," I gestured towards the gynoid on my left, "This is Penny."

"Hello," the ancula greeted with a smile as Ruby took a seat beside her.

Taiyang Xiao Long, as it turned out, was not what I had been expecting. I had expected, to put it simply, an absentminded buffoon. I should have known better, given what I knew about his former team, his wives, daughters, and brother-in-law. Oh, he was still a bit of a dunce at times, but everything I saw lead me to believe he played that up either for laughs or specifically so people wouldn't take him seriously. He liked to play and joke around, but when it was time to get serious, he was all business—something I got an up close example of after he somehow convinced the sisters and Penny to go play some loud fighting game, without ever really asking them to give us privacy. After that, it was about what I expected from an overprotective father interested in interviewing one of his daughter's male friends—mostly mitigated by the fact that he knew my father, or Jaune's father, rather.

"How are they doing?" I asked, once I was fairly sure he was through with his interrogation. "I haven't heard from them since, well…" I tapped the side of my head.

Taiyang shrugged. "Ah, well, you know," he began, only to wince when I shook my head. "Right, sorry. They're worried, but at the moment there isn't much they can do. I don't know the specifics, but the assignment they're on is pretty important. What I can say is that I've been friends with them for years and your parents are good people, Jaune. Maybe… not the best parents in the world, but then I don't know your situation so I couldn't say. I know they think the world of you, though."

"More important than serious, potentially lasting damage to their only son?" I asked, a disbelieving expression crossing my face momentarily. The man across from me winced and I shook my head. "Sorry. I'm not trying to drag you or anyone else into that mess. I was lead to believe they were just taking a break from us. Though, given the whole 'grimm' thing, you're probably right. It very well could be more important. I'll reserve judgment until I speak to them myself."

There was a problem there, though. On the one hand, I'd heard Joan arguing with them myself. I knew she, and at least the other two eldest Arc sisters, believed their parents were simply taking a break from their responsibilities for a while. On the other hand, here was a man who had no real reason to lie to me, and a friend of my father's, telling me the Arc parents were actually doing something important. So, a few possibilities existed. It could be that the Arc sisters were mistaken, possibly because the Arc parents had lied to them about what they were doing so they wouldn't worry needlessly. Or, optionally, Taiyang could be lying to cover for Jaune's parents. There was always the possibility my sisters were lying, but I had my doubts—there was simply too much genuine anger there for that. Maybe it was some combination of the possibilities—either way that still wouldn't excuse everything else I knew about their parenting style and general neglect towards their son, based on what I'd heard.

Blowing out a quiet sigh, I put the thoughts away for another time—I didn't have enough information at the moment and even if I did, I couldn't confront them on it if they weren't around to confront. Apparently mistaking my frustration with the situation for frustration at my parents, Taiyang chuckled. "This is why I gave up hunting for the most part and started teaching. I didn't like leaving the girls home alone to worry. Not after… well," he shrugged. "The world is a dangerous place and I realized my place was at home, making sure my girls were safe from those dangers. Though, maybe with Yang and Ruby both going off to Beacon this year, I could pick up a mission or two…"

"Miss the excitement?" I asked, smirking. If daughter took after father in this instance, and both Yang and Ruby were adrenaline junkies, I could see it.

"Maybe," the blond nodded. His gaze shifted towards the girls' bedrooms, where we could hear the sounds of their fighting game. "I don't suppose I could ask you to look after them for me, where I can't? Ruby, well, if you've known her more than a day you have a good idea of how she is, and Yang, she acts tough, but…"

"I'd planned to anyway," I answered, pushing myself up out of my seat. "Speaking of. I'd like to borrow Ruby and see about going out to Forever Fall and killing some grimm. Yang, too, if she wants to go. Also, I was going to invite them over for movie night—sit around, eat pizza, watch a few movies…"

Taiyang nodded. "I expect them back by midnight, Mr. Arc."

"Midnight tomorrow?" I asked, tossing him a grin as I made my way towards the back of the home where I knew the girls to be.

"Yes, technically," Taiyang chuckled, and I blinked before realizing what he meant and rolling my eyes.

I found the trio of girls involved over what looked like a Street Fighter clone of some sort. I would have called it a battle, but it would be more accurate to call it a slaughter. Penny had apparently completely dominated both Yang and Ruby, but then, that was almost expected of an AI. Chuckling as Penny finished off Ruby, to the girl's wail of despair, I waved as they finally noticed me. "Yo."

"So, did dad threaten you with a shotgun wedding?" Yang asked, grinning from ear to ear.

"Nope," I shook my head. "He approved. In fact, he suggested we should be wed as soon as possible. You and Ruby go put on something pretty and we'll go find somewhere to elope."

"Wha—?" Yang blinked, lilac eyes going a bit wide, before shifting over to lock onto her little sister as her expression went carefully neutral.

Beside her, Ruby had at first paled completely white before color returned with a vengeance, as she blushed from the tips of her hair all the way down as far as I could see, silver eyes going wide as they tracked between me and Yang and back twice. Finally, she managed to squeak out a response, though it was so quiet it was almost subvocal. "Okay."

I blinked, eyebrows climbing towards my hair. "What." Shaking my head, I palmed my face and sighed. "It was a joke, Ruby."

"I—I knew that!" she yelped, hands flailing in momentary rage, indignation, and embarrassment.

"Aww. But I wanted to see a wedding," Penny whined, and I rolled my eyes.

"No, no weddings," I denied, before turning a grin back on the siblings. "He did tell me I had to have you both home by midnight, though. Growing girls need their sleep, after all, and I wouldn't want to keep you out past your bedtime."

"Just what are you implying there?" Yang growled, as Ruby spoke over her.

"He said it was okay?" the red-clad reaper asked, and I nodded.

"Whenever you're ready," I agreed, gesturing towards the console.

The two sisters traded a look before shifting their gaze to Penny, then back to me. I blinked upon seeing matching smirks upon their faces. "How about one more match?" Yang suggested.

"Yes, one more," Ruby nodded. "Penny, that's okay right?"

"I do not see why it would not be, Ruby," Penny beamed. "Will you, Jaune?"

My eyes tracked between the ancula, the sisters, and the console for a moment before I shrugged and pushed off the wall, moving to sit down in front of Ruby's telescreen. "So, you want me to pick up a game I've never played before and play against Penny, who beat the both of you—veteran players, who've been playing this game for how long?"

"Six months," Ruby whimpered, her battered pride speaking for her. "It's not fair."

"At all," Yang nodded. "Now, show us what you've got, Jaune Jaune."

I shrugged, already scrolling through character selection and pulling up moves lists. "Sure, why not?"

'It's essentially no different from any other fighting game. The control scheme is pretty much Playstation standard. Moves are, as with most games, a mixed bag. Really, the choices just boil down to super chain combo high-damage bullshit like Penny's using, or short combo, fast but weak damage characters on the other side of the spectrum. Ruby favored a character in the middle of the range for that, but it didn't work—obviously, because Penny's got the combos memorized and can spam them in pretty much at controller response speed. I'm not going to be able to beat her at that—don't think I could have back in my prime for fighting games, and it's been a few years… Oh well, what's the point of a fair fight anyway?' I grinned, finding a character selection I could work with: female, low damage, high speed and agility, with a few surprises mixed in amongst the combos.

"What. The. Hell," Yang growled, eyes a beautiful shade of red a little under five minutes later. "I thought you said you'd never played this? How did you beat her?!"

"Soundly," I deadpanned, powering down the console. "Penny's got eidetic memory, or close enough, so one look at the combo list and she can stomp you with them all day long. Right?"

The ancula nodded, smiling and apparently not butthurt at all over being beaten like a rug. "Yep!"

"But you can't chain together a combo if someone else's character is fast enough to interrupt it. Once you're in a corner, or stuck in an animation, you're pretty much at the mercy of the faster player/character combination," I shrugged. They didn't need to know that this wasn't exactly a new thing for me—nor was the way I'd won.

"Button mashing doesn't count," Yang grumbled, and I snorted quietly.

"It did better than you, didn't it?" I snarked. I stood and helped Penny up before turning to Ruby and Yang. "So, we ready? Yang, are you coming or staying?"

Yang's irritation seemed to vanish instantly as a leer crossed her face. "Well, gee Jaune, when you ask nicely like that I can't help but want to come for you."

"Yang," Ruby sighed, rolling her eyes.

"What?" the blonde asked, putting on an innocent look. "My baby sister can't handle a little bit of harmless innuendo?"

Pushing herself to her feet, Ruby dusted off the bottom of her skirt and shot an unamused look at her sister. "It's never harmless with you."

"I wouldn't exactly call it little, either," Yang smirked, bringing her hands up to cup her breasts momentarily to illustrate her point.

"Jaune, are you sure you can't help me with that thing I asked you about earlier?" Ruby asked, eying her sister as her hands twitched as though imagining themselves around Yang's neck.

I shook my head. "Sorry, Ruby."

"Aww," Yang grinned. "Isn't she just so adorable when she gets angry? So feisty! Like a puppy."

'Speaking of,' I thought, glancing around and finding a sleeping ball of fur piled up on Ruby's bed. 'How can Zwei sleep through this racket?'

My attention was drawn back from the dog when Ruby smirked. "Yeah, well, so what if they're bigger? Boobs aren't everything." She may as well have shouted her thoughts, however, as they came through loud and clear momentarily over the link I'd all but forgotten was there, an image of the twins flashing through my mind.

Yang hummed in thought before turning a curious look on me. "Not a boob guy, huh?"

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. "I never said that. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Oh?" Yang asked, jumping on the perceived opening to attempt to rustle my Jimmies. "So, you consider yourself a breast connoisseur?"

"Full member of the FBI," I countered, and seeing her confused look, grinned. "Female Body Inspectors," I clarified. "We don't discriminate against breasts of nearly any size."

"'Nearly any?'" Ruby, Yang, and Penny all echoed.

"There is such a thing as too much," I nodded, before gesturing towards the door. "Now, come on. Time's a wasting."

Yang and Ruby exchanged a look and Yang smirked, tossing over her shoulder as she padded out of the bedroom, "My, someone is in a hurry to get us out alone in the forest, all to himself."

I opened my mouth to retort, only to pause as I caught sight of the half expectant, half resigned look that flitted across Ruby's face, briefly. More than that though, a thought and the emotions behind it crossed the link I'd set up earlier. I hadn't intended to use it for snooping, but it was almost expected that some unintended things would slip through. 'This is the point where he leaves me behind and takes Yang.'

Meeting Ruby's silver eyes, I grinned and nodded towards the door. "We could leave her, if she keeps that up," I suggested.

Silver eyes blinked and a flood of relief hit me that I knew wasn't my own. "No, that wouldn't really be fair. Let's go."

---

"You want me to what?" Ruby asked, looking around the empty field—tall grass going yellow-gold with the coming change of the season and swaying slightly in the breeze—where I'd put us down, out on the outskirts of Forever Fall. Nearby, a gravel road ran into the forest beside a train track, though there was no traffic on it at the moment.

Leaning against the Bullhead, Yang crossed her arms over her chest and asked, "Yeah, could you explain this again? I think I missed something."

I shot Yang an amused look. "Sorry, I suppose I should start near the beginning. Ruby can see things she shouldn't be able to."

Yang snorted. "What, like ghosts?"

I turned away, hoping she missed any lapse I may have made that would have given away my thoughts on that matter. Namely, that given what I knew, that was a very real possibility now. Instead, I answered with, "Things that don't belong in the normal world. Have you ever heard of an Illusion Barrier?"

"Nope," Yang shook her head. "What is it?"

I sighed, moving away from the sisters and Penny and further into the field. "It'll be easier if I just show you. Ruby, I'm going to make an empty ID around myself. See if you can get in." To Penny, I sent an order to focus on her surroundings and share her senses—essentially allowing me to see through her eyes in the same way I could with Sanguine. Better, really, given that Sanguine didn't have cybernetically enhanced eyesight and hearing, along with built in infrared and a few other things.

"Okay, Jaune," the girl nodded, looking on intently.

Focusing on Create ID, I made a field around myself roughly two meters in diameter. From my perspective, the others vanished on the other side of a faintly visible barrier hanging in space in an area describing the ID. From the outside, from Penny's perspective, space in a two-meter wide sphere around me seemed to waver for a moment before I vanished. "Huh. That's something you don't see every day," Yang commented, pushing off the VTOL and moving over to where I'd been standing a moment ago. She paused just outside where I knew the barrier to be and waved her hand through the air. "That's… odd. Feels kind of like static. Ruby?"

"I see it," the smaller girl confirmed. "It looks like a sphere-shaped mirror, just sort of sitting there half in the ground. I can't see in, though." She moved closer and reached out a hand, fingers ghosting across the surface and, from where I stood, leaving ripples against the inside of the bubble. From outside the barrier, Penny's own sensors picked up a distortion in the area where Ruby's fingers played across the barrier but not much further outward.

"I wonder why I cannot see it," Penny mused aloud, moving closer and running her own hand through the space the barrier occupied. "I can vaguely sense it, but not really do anything with it. Jaune, should I not be able to enter it from the outside, since I am in party?"

Yang blinked, turning to regard the ancula with raised eyebrows. "'In party?' What do you think this is, some sort of game?"

Ruby, behind her sister, held up one finger to her lips in a shushing motion towards Penny while, at the same time, I did pretty much the same thing over our connection. "Oooh, right. Sorry," the gynoid winced.

Shooting a look of suspicion between her sister and Penny, Yang asked, "Wait, I was just joking. Is there something going on that I should know about?"

"Ehh he heh… Nope!" Ruby laughed that fake little laugh, then froze up as Yang's scrutiny suddenly increased ten-fold. "Erk. Right, I was supposed to be trying to get inside!"

"Now you wait just a minute—" Yang began, hands going to her hips as she stared down her sister. Ruby, however, had no plans on sticking around as the girl hopped to her right, passed through the barrier with a ripple of space, and disappeared. "Damnit! Get back here, Ruby!" Narrowing her eyes, she rounded on Penny. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

"Why Yang, I have no idea what you mean," Penny smiled, putting on her best innocent face.

Inside the barrier, I sighed. "Come on, we'd better go bail Penny out before your sister finds a way to convince her to spill."

Beside me, Ruby raised an eyebrow. "You can't just make her forget?"

"I could," I shrugged. "I'm not going to. It's your sister, for one thing. For another, I won't do that to friends over things that others already know. Also, we're going to have to tell her once we get to Beacon anyway. May as well do it now, so it's not a surprise."

"I suppose you're right," Ruby acknowledged with a small sigh. "I had just thought, maybe…"

"Maybe we'd have a secret just between us?" I asked, and she nodded.

"You know I'm running around as three different people. She doesn't, yet. I'm sure it'll come up eventually—it'll have to—but for now, she needs to know," I pointed out, and Ruby nodded. "Besides which, you need practice. We're going to figure out the secret of those eyes."

"My eyes?" Ruby raised an eyebrow and I grinned.

Poking her in the side and drawing an annoyed look, I smirked and gestured towards the barrier around us. "Try to break it. If you can, I'll tell you what I know."

The little reaper threw me a confused look. "How?"

I rolled my eyes. I was beginning to believe that Ruby was more of a tactile learner—theory would only go so far with her. I knew the type. "Don't worry so much about the how. Just break the damn thing."

"'Do or do not,' huh?" Ruby chuckled. "Okay then!" Reaching under her cape, she unholstered Crescent Rose and allowed it to unfold. Pulling back, she yelled and swung at the barrier. Along the path her blade traversed space itself was rent, visible from both inside and outside the bubble, which collapsed entirely a split second later. "That was… actually really cool."

"Yeah," I admitted.

We were immediately set upon by Yang while Penny threw me a helpless look. "I am sorry Jaune, I tried to stop her."

I shook my head as Ruby dodged back away from her sister. "It's not your fault, Penny. Yang's hardheaded."

"Hey! I resemble that remark!" Yang growled in my general direction.

"Yep," I nodded before asking, "So, what's got your panties in a twist?"

"Ha ha," Yang huffed. "Joke's on you, I'm not wearing any."

Ruby palmed her face. "Yang. Yang, stop. Too much information."

The blonde shrugged. "I'm not the one who decided a 'combat skirt' was a good idea," she countered her sister before a sinister smirk stole across her face. Reaching over to Ruby, she quickly flipped the edge of her skirt up.

"Gah! YANG!" Ruby screamed, quickly snapping her skirt back into place with a blush that went all the way down. "Not in front of Jaune," she mewled.

"Plain white with little dogs? Gee, Rubes, that's so mature. Risqué, even," Yang snarked before focusing lilac eyes on me. "So. Spill, mister."

I shook my head, successfully resisting the urge to palm my face over their antics. 'She has nice thighs, though,' I admitted—they were at least on par with the twins. I shook my head, pushing away the mental image. 'Gah! Ruby. This is Ruby. I'm not supposed to perv on Ruby. …I blame the twins, conditioning me to liking girls of that build.' Putting that can of worms aside, just because I planned to tell Yang didn't mean I had to make it easy. "Spill… what, exactly?"

Yang shot a look between me, her sister, and Penny. "Let's start with her," she pointed at Penny. "Who is she, where'd she come from?"

"But Yang, I have already been introduced to you. Did you forget?" Penny asked and Yang rolled her eyes.

"You gave me a name," the blonde pointed out. "And that was about it. But I can tell, Ruby already knows."

There was something wrong with this picture, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Frowning, I hit Yang with Observe and went straight to the emotional state information: confused, worried, anxious. It wasn't anything that I couldn't see already. I considered hitting her with Read Thoughts, but that was dangerously close to crossing that line I'd self-imposed about abusing that particular class of spells. Yang being flaky wasn't grounds to cross that line—I'd have to make do, like a normal person. "Okay," I said, drawing Yang's attention back to me. "I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you. I'll even answer some questions if you want. But you've got to answer one for me. What are you so worried about?"

Yang's mouth opened and closed, lilac eyes suddenly finding the ground very interesting as she lost her usual bluster. It took her several attempts to get out something approaching words, but it came out as less than a whisper that died before it left her mouth. Stepping closer, I asked, "What was that?"

The blonde brawler's hands clenched into fists, but her usual burning anger was missing. Taking a deep breath, she closed the distance between us, her lips brushing my ear in interesting ways as she whispered, "I don't want to be replaced."

"Well, what did she say?" Ruby asked from nearby.

My eyes tracked from Ruby to her sister, where they locked with Yang's, and the pleading expression there that I didn't need fancy mental spells to read the thought behind it: 'Please don't tell her.'

I paced away from Yang, heaving an exasperated sigh and running a hand through my hair in frustration. Six words was all it took to call into question everything I thought I knew about Yang Xiao Long. 'Really? It's the twins all over again—both sets—except these two haven't figured it out. Well, no, I take that back. They have, individually. They just haven't told each other. Okay. I can work with this, I think. Still, is it something in the water? No, these two really do have reason to have latched onto each other so hard. Then again, so do the Malachite twins. If I recall correctly, the Arc twins are the only ones who just decided they were going to share a husband some day. This place, I swear.'

A sharp gesture at the ground and a flexing of Conjuration summoned up a metal folding chair and I dropped into it. "Okay. I think I get it now." Another gesture and three more chairs joined the first in a small circle. The girls needed no further prompting on that front and I met eyes with Ruby. "Don't worry about it."

Ruby shot a curious look at her sister before shrugging. "Okay."

"Penny's from Atlas," I began, and lilac eyes focused on my own blue. "She's a friend. If you want to know anything beyond that, ask Penny. If she wants to tell you, she will, but I shouldn't be giving out her secrets—it's not fair to her."

Shooting a look between the gynoid and myself, Yang nodded. "Okay, I suppose that's fair," she allowed. "What about the rest?"

"Party," I deadpanned, at the same time triggering the focus command to invite Yang.

"What the hell?!" Yang jumped, knocking over her chair and falling on her ass in the tall grass. "What the hell is this?"

"Gee, Yang, I didn't realize Signal would let you graduate if you couldn't read," Ruby teased, giggling.

Sitting up, Yang eyed me for a moment before reaching out and tapping the 'Yes' button, and an instant later her profile picture appeared under Ruby's. She seemed to recover some of her usual attitude as she smirked. "Now it's a party."

"Yang," Ruby sighed, rolling her eyes.

"So, that's your Semblance?" Yang asked, ignoring her sister. On my nod, she hummed. "Not bad. So, it works like an RPG or something? Levels, skills, spells, all that jazz?" I nodded again and she continued, asking, "And we get some kind of benefit from being in your party?"

"EXP, levels, skill points, skills. Permanent as far as we can tell," I confirmed.

Yang pumped a fist, bouncing up onto her feet—which did interesting things for her chest area, I'll admit. "Sweet! Count me in." She blinked twice before a sly look crossed her face. "So, this is your plan for when we get to Beacon, huh? Are you angling to get us all on the same team? Is Penny our fourth member?"

"No," I denied, shaking my head for emphasis. "Ideally, I was going to let nature take its course and hope things fall as they may but that leaves too much to chance." And even as I said it, I realized it was true and not just a natural roll for bullshit. Doing that really would leave too much to chance. I couldn't rely on the whims of 'fate' and a certain headmaster to see the teams I wanted assembled. Hell, there was no telling who Jaune would have wound up with in canon if not for Pyrrha taking an interest. "As for Penny, she's not going to Beacon."

"It would be bad," Penny confirmed with a nod.

"Why?" Yang asked, and Penny looked to me for confirmation.

I shrugged. "Yours to tell, Penny, not mine. I don't own you."

For a moment, the chagrined look the gynoid sent me made me think she'd like to debate the finer points of that argument, but she apparently decided against it. "Yang, if Atlas found out I was in Vale, they would surely stop at nothing to recover me. As I understand things, the headmaster of Beacon is on friendly terms with people highly placed in the Atlesian chain of command. It would not be long before my existence was discovered."

"Okay. 'Atlas bad,' I get it," Yang nodded, and Penny and I shook our heads.

"Not necessarily," I countered. "Just in this instance, more trouble than we want."

After a moment considering it, the blonde shrugged. "You don't want to tell me, that's fine. So, Beacon. What's up with that? You don't want to be on a team with all of this?" she smirked, hands running up her sides from her waist to her breasts, emphasizing those features.

Ruby snorted and I sent the younger girl an amused look. Yang saw, however, and nodded—taking on a sage expression. "Oh, I see how it is. So, how long have you guys been screwing?"

I rolled my eyes. Ruby, on the other hand, immediately paled and then blushed darkly. "W-w-we… we're not— We haven't… I'm still a…" Her hood came up, hiding her face as she turned away.

"That was mean," I sighed, turning a light glare on the blonde. "She's going to be like that the rest of the day."

"Totally worth it, though," Yang countered, looking entirely too smug. "She'll snap out of it in a minute."

A tug on my shirt sleeve drew my attention to Penny, who quietly asked, "Jaune? What is 'screwing' in this context?"

Yang's eyes went wide, obviously having heard the gynoid and I held up a hand to forestall any reply on her end while simultaneously palming my face. 'Oh gods, no. Please, please tell me I'm not going to have to have 'the talk' with Penny. That's just too much.'

Well, there was no way of handling this delicately, so I may as well be blunt. "Coitus. Sexual relations. Synonyms include: screwing, banging, fucking, and a list of others a mile long that you're just going to have to pick up over time."

"Ooh," Penny nodded. "I see. That is what you were doing with the Malachite siblings and Neopolitan," she said. Across from us, Yang's expression shifted to something approaching poleaxed.

"Wait, what? Siblings, and another girl?" she asked, and I sighed quietly before nodding—there was no sense denying it, and honesty had served me well so far. "At the same time?" she continued, and I shot her an amused look.

"Yes, Yang. Simultaneously," I deadpanned.

"Huh," she hummed, her eyes taking a long, assessing look up and down my form for a moment. "I suppose I could see it," she murmured, almost too low for me to hear. For an instant, her gaze shifted to her sister and an expression I couldn't place crossed her face, then she shook it off and sent me a smirk. "So, are they hot?"

I considered not justifying that with an answer, but Penny derailed my train of thought before I could come up with something sufficiently snarky. Penny had been studying myself and Ruby, turning her gaze back and forth between us as though trying to work something out, before she finally asked, "Why are you not 'screwing?' Ruby is a healthy, pretty young girl entering her reproductive prime—"

I struck quickly, covering the ancula's mouth with my hand. "Penny. Shush. Look at what you've done," I pointed at Ruby, who looked to be having a small fit, and Yang who was having fits of her own—of laughter. "Tact. Learn it. Use it. Please."

"Okay, Jaune," she nodded, looking abashed. "Ruby, I apologize if my words have caused you discomfort."

"No, it… it's okay, Penny. Really. I understand," Ruby mewled, still sounding rather pitiful to my ears.

The gynoid nodded, though Ruby couldn't see her with her head hidden in her scarf, hood, and cape as it was. Turning to me, Penny took it upon herself to announce to me, and everyone present given that she had continued at the same conversational volume as before, "Also, Jaune, I feel I should inform you that I am also fully functional in that manner."

"'Fully functional?'" Yang echoed, her laughter dying down as she eyed the gynoid speculatively. "Heh. I've never heard a girl proposition someone like that before," she chuckled. "So, why wouldn't you be?"

Ignoring Yang for the moment, I blinked, a confused look crossing my face as I turned to meet Penny's eyes. I at least had the tact to try to keep our conversation quiet, as I leaned forward to whisper, "Wait, you mean… you can reproduce?"

"That is correct," Penny confirmed.

"So, your biological components…" I trailed off, and she nodded, understanding my implied question. This time, I did face-palm. "Penny… why? Why?"

"Based on what I have managed to decrypt of my backup memories, Dr. Polendina felt it would help me become more human," she took the cue and whispered.

I sighed, shaking my head. "I'll have to get you to tell me more later." Turning to the pair of Yang and Ruby, I asked, "You two done yet?"

"Sure, Jaune Jaune," Yang grinned, apparently having decided to drop her line of questioning. Her gaze shifted between Penny and Ruby again before she broke down into laughter once more. "BAHAHahaha!"

"Yaaaang!" Ruby yelled, mortification nearing critical levels apparently.

"Right," I groaned, deciding to pick up where I'd left off anyway. "I asked around—some of my sisters went to Beacon, so I didn't really have to go far on that front. Turns out, Beacon assigns teams through trial by combat. The headmaster and headmistress launch prospective students off a cliff into the Emerald Forest on the other side of Beacon from Vale, where students are given some sort of task to complete that will determine how teams are formed. The initiation changes every year, but Ozpin's only got four or five variations he uses. This year, it'll probably be retrieving chess pieces… though, I should back up a step. Whoever you first meet eyes with in the forest will be your partner, so that's half your four-man squad right there. The other half is determined by the trial—in this case, probably by picking like chess pieces." That much, I really had taken the time to confirm—it would have been bad if I'd gone in expecting to gather chess pieces and had, instead, been met with something I wasn't expecting. 'At least it's not a bell test.'

Yang had, by then, stopped laughing and righted her chair and sat back down. Her expression was all business as she said, "So, then we just make sure Ruby and I are the first ones we see. You find a partner, then meet up with us and we'll pick out matching chess pieces."

"That could work. Yang and I can use our weapons to choose where we want to land," Ruby nodded, hood back down and scarf pulled away from her face, slipping easily back into the conversation now that she was no longer in immediate danger of being teased to the point of unconsciousness—or, knowing Ruby, exploding in a small fit.

"No," I denied. "I think you're missing the point."

The sisters traded a look and Ruby asked, "What is the point, then?"

I smirked. "The point is, we have almost a whole day to figure out who we want to be partnered with. The initiation starts the day after we get there and lasts as long as it takes. The night before, the new students will make camp in the ballroom."

"So, what? A giant sleep-over?" Yang asked, and I nodded.

"Make sure you bring your jammies," I grinned, and the blonde laughed.

A smirk crossing her lips, she asked, "What if I sleep naked?"

I rolled my eyes at the same time Ruby nodded. "She really does."

"Well," I shrugged, "Then I'm sure everyone there will enjoy getting an eye full."

Yang opened her mouth to retort, only to close it slowly. "No, I don't think I'd like that. Damn. Point, Jaune."

"I think the point Jaune meant to make was that you would have most of the day and that night to scout out partners and teammates," Penny chimed in, and I nodded.

"Bingo. Make friends, scout out the talent, figure out who seems like the best fit. Though, to be fair, you may still wind up being partnered with someone else," I added. "There's that 'luck' factor you can't really account for. What you should keep in mind though is that you shouldn't limit your search to a total of four people. With eight, we've got two full teams. Ruby and Yang, you could be on the same team together with two others who compliment your style, while I find my own team. With eight, we could potentially cover more of our individual weaknesses, have a wider variety of skills available, and of course have more options for cross training between teams."

Yang frowned as a thought occurred and she asked, "How many people can you party?"

That was actually a really good question, and one I didn't have an answer to—I hadn't had occasion to test for an upper limit yet. So far, the most I'd tried was four including myself. I needed to figure that out soon. "Not sure. Four at least. Eight wouldn't be unreasonable, depending on the system in question. Full raid groups can go for hundreds of people, but I'm not actually sure that's possible. We'd have to test at some point." Standing up, I dismissed my chair and stretched. "In the meantime, back to what we came here for. Ruby, try creating an ID."

"A what?" the red-clad reaper asked, standing as well as I dismissed the rest of the chairs. "Oh, you mean the uh…" she gestured vaguely and I rolled my eyes.

"Illusion Barrier. My Semblance calls it an Instant Dungeon, or ID, but only because I can decide what's inside of one I think," I clarified. "So, I suppose you'd actually be creating a generic Illusion Barrier if you couldn't decide what you wanted in it. Either way, go ahead."

"Where?" she asked, and I shot her an amused look. "Right. 'Do or do not' again."

"So, what's this going to do?" Yang asked me, watching her sister's face scrunch up in concentration as she closed her eyes.

"Not sure," I admitted. "Ruby, eyes open."

"Wha—?" the girl asked, opening her eyes and turning to look at me. However, the moment her eyes opened, my detection skills pinged and for a moment I saw a sphere roughly twenty meters across form directly in front of the girl before it disappeared—invisible to the naked eye. Or at least to mine, as Ruby's gaze immediately shifted to the place where I'd seen the barrier form. "Wow. I did that?"

"You did," I agreed, moving towards the sphere with my hand extended. I felt static brush my fingers and my Semblance popped up an alert telling me it had detected an unlocked Illusion Barrier. "Awesome. It worked. Congratulations, Ruby."

"Thank you," the girl blushed, toeing the ground with one foot. "Oh! I got a popup for it, too!"

I blinked, turning to meet her eyes and asked, "What did it say?"

Silver eyes tilted up as she remembered. "That I'd unlocked the skill Create ID. Also, that my 'Silver Eyes' trait had been unlocked and is level one."

"Uh… do this," I began, opening my menu and directing her to set her own menu visible so I could read it and interact with it. Once she did, I tapped through her menus until I found the Skills section and selected the Silver Eyes trait. 'Still vague, but it has updated. So, she can 'see the unseen,' which I take it to mean see anything Spirit related like Illusion Barriers, enter Illusion Barriers, and now create and destroy them. It really is like a damn dojutsu,' I thought, then went about setting Ruby's menus back to being visible only to her. "So, I said I'd tell you what I know. That right there was about the gist of it. You've got some special power related to your eyes that lets you see things you shouldn't and manipulate Illusion Barriers. No idea what else it can do, but I suppose we'll find out together as you level it. And speaking of, now destroy it," I continued, and she shot me a confused look. "Break it, make another, and repeat until you get the hang of it. We'll spend a few minutes doing that, then we'll move into the woods and see about finding something to kill for some EXP. Maybe work on some skills, while we're at it."

"Like what?" Yang asked, and I smirked as I met her eyes.

"For you? Meditation," I chuckled, before adding, "Actually, both of you."

Lilac eyes narrowed and Yang's hands went to her hips. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Meditation gives passive and active bonuses you're going to want. It's honestly one of my most useful skills, just for the stat boosts." A thought occurred, and I allowed a smirk to creep across my lips. "There's just the matter of payment, for services rendered."

One golden eyebrow went up and Yang took on a suddenly seductive air. "Oh?" she asked, drawing the word out a bit.

"Yeah. I'm thinking something in yellow and black to ride," I nodded, and the blonde actually blushed for a moment, before she regained her balance. "Your bike."

Yang's seductive expression faltered, before falling entirely flat. "What."

---

I screamed down the streets of Vale on Bumblebee 2.0 with a hot blonde molded against me, acutely aware of two firm, warm, soft globes of flesh pressing into me through only a couple of layers of clothing. Yang squeezed tighter as I took a sharp corner, looping us back around towards the airfield where Ruby and Penny waited. It hadn't taken much convincing to get Yang to load up her precious bike into my Bullhead for transport. Convincing her to let Ruby ride with me, however, was another story—and the reason why I currently had the busty blonde pressing her tits into my back. Coming to a stop, I dropped the kickstand and killed the engine. "So?" I asked, shooting a smirk at the blonde over my shoulder.

Yang slipped off the bike, a little weak in the knees as her legs trembled. "I came," she breathed quietly, likely not for my ears as she shook her head before meeting my eyes with a grin.

I took the opportunity to shoot down any plans she may have had of simply playing that off. "I told you I knew what I was doing."

"Okay, yeah, I suppose so," she admitted, then blinked as she realized what I'd meant, even as my smirk widened. "Walked right into that one," she muttered, rubbing sheepishly at the back of her head and blushing. "What? I like my bike, okay?!"

"You sure it wasn't the company?" I teased, and she shot me a glare.

"Anyway, I guess I won't worry you're going to get her killed if I let Ruby ride with you," she forced out, trying her best to fight her blush down and mostly succeeding.

Rolling my eyes, I popped my back and nodded towards Ruby and Penny—Penny showing up as visible only to us, given that I'd hit her with Invisibility before we'd landed since I'd yet to get her another outfit. "So, who's riding where?" I asked, and Yang snorted quietly—I had a feeling I knew exactly where her mind had gone.

"I'm with Jaune!" Ruby declared, disappearing in a spray of rose petals and reappearing at my side, already in the process of slinging herself over the seat behind me.

Penny—having changed outfits again on the Bullhead, despite knowing she wouldn't be seen anyway—pouted, before moving towards Yang. "I am disappointed, but I will ride with Yang."

"I'm sorry Penny," Ruby apologized, but that did nothing to convince her to unlatch herself from around my back. "Maybe next time?"

The gynoid nodded and Yang slipped on the bike in front of her. "So," Yang asked, "where's this place we're going?"

"North end of the Residential District, on the river," I told her, starting the bike under me. "Just follow me." Calling up my map, I selected the apartment and closed it, watching as my HUD laid out a blue path along the road in front of me towards my waypoint. Reaching down, I turned on the radio.

BMG Image song – Johnny Cash, Ghost Riders in the Sky – Unlocked!

"Works for me," I chuckled quietly. The first strains of guitar poured out of the speakers and I slipped on my glasses, gunning the engine and peeling out off the airstrip, Yang following close behind.

At my back, Ruby squeezed tighter and hung her head over my shoulder to see. "I think I like this better than riding with Yang," she admitted quietly, barely audible over the wind, radio, and whine of the engine. With our link still up, it wasn't hard at all to tell what she meant—her thoughts had turned down decidedly more mature avenues, and mildly disturbing for me, the moment I'd taken off. There was a reason girls loved bikes, after all. And on that note, I made an effort to suppress the link without actively shutting it down—I didn't need to know she was thinking those sorts of thoughts.

Yang pulled up alongside me and I heard Penny cheering even over the rest of the noise. "Someone's having a blast," I chuckled. Yang's eyes met mine and she grinned, before pulling ahead. I rolled my eyes, reaching out with my Aura and redirecting the wind around us into a more streamlined shape, then lightened the bike with gravity. Throttling up a bit, I waved as I blew past the blonde, leaving her in our dust, Ruby laughing in my ear the entire time.

It wasn't a particularly long drive back to the apartment, and while it wasn't as fast as going as the crow flies, it was just as fun—and a nice change of pace, from my Batman/Spider-man routine of swinging, gliding, and parkour. Ruby started squirming less than halfway into the drive and I had a quiet laugh over her predicament—she'd need a change of panties at this rate. 'Well, she's about the same waist size as the twins—she could always borrow some of theirs.'

We pulled into the apartment's underground parking garage and I found a place for Yang to park. Killing the engine, I slid off the bike and offered Ruby a hand down. I had to catch her when her feet hit the ground, as they nearly gave out under her. Beside us, Yang chuckled. "Problem, sis?"

"No!" Ruby hissed, and made to walk for the elevator only to cringe slightly and shift around before adopting a less than casual gait.

"That was mean," I chastised the blonde, who shrugged.

"She's got to grow up some time," she quietly countered, before continuing, "I'd hoped it wouldn't be for a year or two, but it seems that's not the case. I suppose it's time."

My copy of her bike disappeared into light particles as I dismissed it and followed after the red-clad reaper. "She'll be fine."

Lilac eyes met mine in a sidelong glance as Penny hurried past Yang to join up with Ruby, holding the elevator open. "I like you, Jaune. I'd hate to have to hurt you, if you hurt her."

"Furthest thing from my mind," I denied. A teasing smirk crept up my lips as I asked, "So, you like me, huh?"

"Eh, you've got a decent ass," she shrugged dismissively, though I noticed a bit of color creeping up on her cheeks.

We joined Ruby and Penny in the elevator and I hit the button for the top floor. A short ride later, I handed Penny my keys and waved them towards the apartment, while I headed the opposite direction. Knocking on Jane's door, I leaned against the door frame and waited. A few moments later, the redhead—clad in a tank top and shorts, and barefoot—answered the door. "Movie night with the girls. I'm cooking. You in?"

The slightly shorter woman chuckled, a smile crossing her lips. "Sure, why not?"

Stepping into a set of house shoes, Jane grabbed her keys and locked up, then followed me across the hall. Opening my apartment door, I found Yang, with Ruby and Penny to either side of her, facing off against Neo and the Malachite siblings. Well, 'facing off' was a bit strong. More, there was an obvious air of awkward silence. Thankfully, it seemed to break the moment the door opened. Observing the six girls, I shook my head. "Right, introductions. Yang, these are Melanie and Miltia Malachite, Neopolitan—though she prefers Neo—and my sister, Jane. Girls, this is Ruby's elder sister, Yang. So! Taking votes on food now. All in favor of pizza, say 'aye.'"

"Aye!" Ruby cheered, followed by the twins and Neo.

"All in favor of hamburgers?"

Yang and Jane both gave an 'Aye,' followed by another vote by Ruby. Turning to the little redhead, I raised an eyebrow. "I don't know how it works where you're from, but generally you only get one vote."

"Weeell, I'm changing my vote!" she countered, grinning.

I sighed. "Seems we have a tie. Penny?" I asked, and the gynoid shook her head.

"I am not sure about either," she admitted. I thought she'd stop there, but she continued with, "Having never had food until recently, I can not say I have a preference, Jaune."

I palmed my face as Yang turned her attention on the gynoid and made to ask the obvious. "Don't bother. At this rate, she'll likely just tell you anyway, if she keeps saying things like that," I sighed. 'Well, there was probably a good reason she was kept isolated in canon—namely, she's not ready for interaction with the outside world. Though, I have to admit, she's learning.'

"Well, with Penny abstaining, we still have a tie. My house, my rules, we'll decide by coin toss," I shrugged, digging into my pocket and conjuring a quarter. Pulling it out, I flipped it and caught it. I looked to Jane, as the safest option there. "Call it."

"Tails," she shrugged.

Checking the coin, I dropped it in my pocket and made my way towards the kitchen. "Tails it is. We can do pizza next time. Since team Hamburger won the coin toss, team Pizza picks the movie. That work for everyone?"

There was a small chorus of affirmatives and I nodded. "Great. Now, out of my kitchen. Except you," I caught Miltia's eye. When the others had left, I moved close enough to speak without being overheard. "Mind doing me a favor? Well, it's really a favor for Ruby," I asked, she Miltia shook her head. "She might need a change of clothes. You're about the same size, so I figured…"

Miltia raised an eyebrow, turning to shoot a questioning look at the little reaper. "She looks fine to me."

"Panties," I deadpanned, quietly, and her mouth formed a small 'o' in understanding, before shifting into a wicked smirk a second later.

"Why Jaune, what did you do?" she questioned, and I rolled my eyes.

"Wasn't my fault. Not directly," I mumbled. "Motorcycle. Apparently, she and her sister share that trait."

"Huh," she hummed quietly. "Well, that is interesting…" She shifted her gaze between me and the younger girl momentarily, then smiled. "Okay," she nodded, walking away and catching Ruby by the elbow, quietly leading her out of the room to my bedroom—though, given how much time the girls spent there, there were days I may as well say 'our,' since both the twins and Neo had clothing stored there on a semi-permanent basis.

That taken care of, I was left alone with my thoughts for the moment. My mind turned back to the scene I'd walked in on. 'Well, it could have been worse. A little awkward, but it's not like a fistfight broke out. Question is, how am I supposed to manage female friends without the girls thinking I'm looking for replacements?' I wondered, then chuckled as I realized something. 'Right. Remnant. I should be more worried about Neo and/or the twins trying to convince women to 'join up' than them getting snippy about me spending time with other women.' I opened my refrigerator and started taking out ingredients, shifting aside slightly as a slightly shorter form reached over me and began helping. Looking over, I saw Jane smirking at me.

"Trouble in paradise, little brother?" she asked quietly, moving over to the cutting board with vegetables—onion, lettuce, and tomato.

Digging out an orange bell pepper, I passed that to her and moved for the spice rack to dig out my spices. "Dice that, please," I told her, my mind returning to the subject of the Malachite siblings, before adding, "Not really, but while I've got you here I may as well pick your brain. Any suggestions for managing a multiple-partner relationship? I'm worried the twins may be feeling a bit like I'm just using them for sex and job related things."

"Are you?" she asked, and I shook my head.

"I wouldn't say so," I denied. "But feelings and reality are two different things."

Jane snorted softly, which quickly became a giggle. "Well, realizing that is half the battle done. Find some way to show them you care. I don't really know them well enough to offer suggestions, sorry. Other than that, you could always try reading Ninjas of Love."

"Ha ha. Smartass. I'll have you know, I've finished the first book and moved on to the second, and have yet to see anything about that—the original protagonist and his two lady friends already seemed to be in a stable, settled relationship," I countered. "And 'do something nice for them' was already Plan A, as it were."

The sound of fast strokes of a knife passing through vegetable matter sounded from the cutting board. "Yeah. Try book three or four. Only the first two are really true sequels. The rest are set in the same universe, and occasionally the author brings all the casts together, but they can pretty much be read in any order beyond that. And if you'd already come to that solution, then do something about it. Aside from that, I don't really know. Sorry I can't help more. My luck with relationships hasn't exactly been the best in the world, as you know. But if you need someone to talk to…"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Thanks, Jane."

She hummed softly. "What are sisters for?" A smirk stretched across my lips and she quickly added. "Not that, you ass."