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.

29. Jumbo Jets

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The Name of the Game

a RWBY/The Gamer crossover, SI.

Arc 8: Trainspotting

Chapter 29: Jumbo Jets

---

My peaceful morning just lying in bed surrounded by beautiful women was rudely interrupted by the sound of a scroll going off, to the tune of this universe's Casey Lee Williams equivalent pouring out 'This Will Be The Day.' Cracking my eyes open, I was greeted with my HUD's scroll interface and a picture of Ruby. A glance up and right showed the time to be just after 9am, Saturday morning, and that I had an unread text message waiting for me.

'Why is Ruby calling me this early?' I wondered, cracking a yawn and deciding to find out. Mentally selecting the green 'accept call' button, I shut my eyes again and pulled Melanie closer.

"Morning, Ruby. What's up?" I asked. 'Small wonders,' I mused, the fact that I could take calls in my head without ever having to take out my scroll if I didn't want to never ceased to amaze me on some small level.

"What did you do?!" Ruby yelled, and I winced at the volume. Beside me, the twins stirred and I caught sight of one green eye cracking open in Miltia's face as she observed me. Neo, however, was still sound asleep.

I frowned at that. I hadn't really done anything that would affect Ruby since the last time I'd spoken with her. At least, I didn't think so. Unless she'd somehow found out about my little... altercation with Raven. "Ruby, sweetie, I have no idea what you're talking about. So why don't we start with that? What, exactly, are you asking me here? What's got you upset?"

Ruby made a frustrated noise before I heard her take a slow breath. After a moment, she asked, "Did I wake you up?"

"You did," I agreed. "I was going to sleep in today."

"Oh. Uh, sorry," she murmured, and I rolled my eyes. "Have you checked your messages yet?"

"Not yet." It was on my list of things to do this morning. Somewhere between taking a shower and making breakfast, but before returning to bed and telling the rest of the day to fuck off. We had earned a day off, damnit, and by God we were going to take it!

Ruby, it seemed, was having none of that. "Jaune, check your messages."

I groaned quietly. "Fine. Hang on," I sighed, opening one eye enough to select the section in question. "Huh. Text from Goodwitch. How did she get... oh. Right. From the transcripts." My scroll number was part of the paperwork required to forge my transcripts—when the original Jaune had gone along with Joan's plan to get Hei to make him papers—and Ozpin had gone ahead and done me the favor of putting the faked transcripts into their systems. And while the original scroll with that number was sitting on the bottom of the sea somewhere between Atlas and Vytal, I had kept the same account information and number with the new scroll—that way, as Jaune, I could simply claim someone had stolen my scroll and I'd gotten it replaced if I was ever questioned as to why my scroll had been making calls in Atlas. Opening the message, I began to read aloud, for Ruby's benefit and that of the twins listening in silently, seeing as we'd woken them up.

"To all current students and new applicants for Beacon's fall semester. I regret to inform you," I frowned as I read ahead, both my eyes cracking open. Melanie shifted in my arms, turning her head around to regard me with one eye and urging me to continue as, on the other side of her from me, Miltia lifted herself onto one elbow to shoot me a curious look. Behind me, Neo stirred but did not wake. Seeing that they were awake and figuring Neo wouldn't be bothered either way, I put the scroll on speaker mode—though how it actually broadcast sound when it was in my inventory and I was using my HUD interface, I have no idea.

"I regret to inform you that due to unforeseen circumstances, the start of the fall semester will be delayed until September 20, two weeks hence. The dormitories will be open and current students may return to campus, if they so desire. The staff of Beacon would like to apologize for any inconvenience, yada yada yada," I trailed off. Fuck. This one really was my fault. Well, probably. Maybe. Unless it had nothing to do with Amber, in which case, it wasn't—maybe. Still, I had to ask. "How do you figure this one's my doing?"

"Well," Ruby began, her voice dropping, "Yang and I heard dad and Uncle Qrow talking last night, about an attack outside of Vale and how the school was going to be closed for some reason because of it, until some delivery made it to Beacon. And he mentioned the Fox being involved, so…"

"Is that Jaune?" I heard Yang's voice muffled in the background, followed by something I didn't catch.

A moment later, I could hear the eye-roll as Ruby added, "Yang says thanks for the extra two weeks of vacation." There was a rustling as she covered the scroll with her hand, then turned to yell back, "Some of us were looking forward to going to school, Yang!"

"Oh, god," I groaned, palming my face. "Ruby, are your dad and uncle in the house? Because if they are, and they heard that, then they're going to be suspicious as hell."

"Uhh," the girl hemmed, and I heard the sound of her Semblance activating over the scroll. A moment later, she let out a sigh of relief. "No. Coast is clear." She moved the scroll away and covered it again. "Yang! Be more careful next time!"

I heard the blonde utter a muffled, "Oops. Sorry!" in the background and rolled my eyes, following by Yang telling Ruby to put her scroll on speaker so she could hear.

Ruby uncovered the scroll and asked, "So, what did you do?"

"If you want to talk about it," I began, drawing the little redhead's attention again, "ask me in person. I don't think the others would mind if you and Yang showed up, but let me ask."

Melanie and Miltia both shot me amused looks, shaking their heads, while Neo remained unresponsive. "Will we have to put on clothes?" Melanie asked, a smile twitching across her lips.

On the other end of the scroll, I heard a faint squawk of surprise and embarrassment from Ruby. "Yes, you'll have to put on clothes," I rolled my eyes.

"But we'd have to leave the bed," Miltia added, looking mischievous.

Reaching out to tweak her nose, I shook my head. "Not if you don't want to."

"But then Ruby and Yang would have to join us in bed," Melanie pointed out. A faint squeak came from Ruby's end of the conversation and, judging by the grins on the twins' faces, they knew exactly what they were doing and were intentionally putting ideas in Ruby's head. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. An instant later, Melanie shared a glance with Miltia before both turned their gazes back to me. "Invite them over."

"You're incorrigible." I ignored the girls sticking their tongues out and asked, "Ruby, you catch all that?"

"I-um-buh. I-I-I... But uh... Err—," the girl spluttered for a moment and I raised my eyebrows. I could hear the blush, along with Yang cracking up in the background. "I'LL BRING MY PAJAMAS!" Ruby yelled into the scroll and then hung up before I could tell her that normal clothes would be fine.

'Great, now she's panicking,' I mused, before turning an exasperated look on the twins. "You realize what you've done?"

"Of course," they synced, and I groaned quietly. The little schemers.

"Just for that, you get to pry Neo off of me so I can go get a shower and make breakfast."

The twins shared a look before Melanie rolled over and began attempting to pry Neo's hands out from around my waist. Neo responded by locking her hands together and pulling herself closer to me, before intertwining her legs with my own. "Well," Melanie frowned, looking over my shoulder to where Neo had shifted to bury her face in my back, "I don't think she's going anywhere."

"Neo," I began, trying to get the girl's attention. "Neo, I have to get up."

"Nn," the girl grunted quietly, shaking her head and squeezing tighter.

Sighing, I shot an exasperated look at the twins. "Okay. You asked for it," I warned, a smile twitching across my face. "I guess I just won't be able to go to the store and buy a new tub of ice cream—"

There was sudden motion behind me as Neo partially released me to prop herself up on one elbow and look around blearily. "Wha? Ice cream? What kind?"

"That was cruel," Miltia commented, shaking her head.

"But effective," Melanie countered.

Neo glared at the twins. "Someone promised me ice cream." There was an expectant tone to her voice, and I couldn't help but chuckle.

"How about after breakfast?" I offered.

Neo snorted softly, turning mismatched mint and strawberry eyes on me. "How about for breakfast?"

Rolling my eyes, I offered, "You let me up and I'll get you a bowl." Neo grudgingly disentangled herself from around me and I made good on my promise before heading into the shower where I was joined by Miltia, who had won another round of rock-paper-scissors against Melanie to see who would go first. Freshly showered, I answered a text from Ruby letting her know I would meet her and Yang at the transport terminal before heading out, promising the girls I would be back soon. They had opted to skip breakfast in favor of waiting on Ruby and Yang to get in so we could do lunch instead—all of them except Neo, but then she didn't really seem to count ice cream as a meal. I think it was more that she would always find a way to argue in favor of more ice cream later.

I grabbed my newly finished coat out of the girls' project room and dropped it into Inventory, equipping it in the proper slot and taking a moment to get a feel for it. Despite the size and thickness of the material, it was flexible and weighed almost nothing—that last one courtesy of weight reduction seals. An adjustment of the socketed Dust crystals at the sleeves hidden under a buttoned flap at the inside of the wrist had it set to a comfortably cool temperature, and after a check of the socketed crystals hidden on the other sleeve, I activated the other enchantments meant to be always on. Once everything was properly in place and activated, I updated my 'Jaune' armor set so it would be easily accessible.

Before I left our quarters, I opened up my map and checked the local area, to see who was around. 'Well, that explains why I didn't see Penny—she left early,' I mused, wondering what the gynoid was up to. Since her icon was stopped in what I knew to be a weapon shop—the same one I'd gotten Ascalon from, in fact—I had a pretty good idea.'Looks like Jen's in the medical ward again. I guess she had another evaluation this morning or something.' I considered going down to see her, but since she was already behind closed doors in a session, I nixed that as being a bad idea. Besides, while 'Jaune Arc' was occasionally seen around the base accompanying his sister or other personnel and had been off and on since I'd founded Fox Hunt, I didn't want my civilian face becoming a common sight around here. If someone managed to infiltrate past both the twins and my Semblance's ability to detect bullshit, then I didn't want them being able to say I showed up in my public identity as anything more than a guest, and usually as a friend or relative to someone who was already here. Ruby, Yang, and Blake at least had the much more believable excuse of being groomed for recruitment into Fox Hunt—and both Ruby and Yang had publicly fought 'Shiro' at different times, so I could always claim that's what had caught the Fox's interest. Maybe by the time we graduated, I could just have them recruited straight into Fox Hunt and pay off their mandatory service period or something. Assuming they wanted to.

'Imagine if Cinder somehow figured out Shiro's 'secret identity.' She'd start backtracking and I'd have a hell of a time explaining what I was doing here. If I'm here because I've managed to slip Neo and the twins inside, that makes sense from an infiltration perspective. If I'm here because the Fox hired one of my sisters, who has been mistreated by Atlas, then that might make sense from a personal perspective. But if I'm here because I want to be, and I'm not either plotting something or doing recon for a job? Nuh uh. That stinks of collusion at best, most likely double-cross. I'd like to avoid that.'

The Fox would have cause enough to see to the well-being of someone he was attempting to recruit, but showing more concern than that of a prospective employer looking after a valuable employee would potentially cause people to draw the wrong—or right, in this case—conclusion and assume we were closer than that and that I was involved on a personal level. Barging into her session to check on her as the Fox would be even worse than doing it as Jaune—at least as Jaune I had the excuse of being her sibling. Shaking my head, I decided it would have to wait until I got back.

Switching to my Fox outfit, I passed through the exit for the officer's quarters and took the elevator down, stepping outside and finding the base buzzing with activity—most of it centered on the motor pool. Curious, I made my way towards the building where it was housed, nodding to personnel who stopped to salute as I passed. Stepping inside, I found several of our new AFVs opened up, people scrambling over them with tools in hand.

Stepping off to the side and making sure I was out of the way, I took it all in. A few vehicles in, I spotted a familiar form—short, female and with a set of gray wolf ears poking from a set of holes cut in an olive drab hat. She had exchanged the green flannel I last remembered seeing her in for a uniform, though the overalls remained—in keeping with nearly everyone else working in this section of the base. Even without my Semblance putting her name above her head, I recognized Sid Bloedig—the girl we'd picked up in Stofhol. Considering she was Blake's one example of a successful charity case from that particular mission, she kind of stood out in my mind. ''Charity case,' my ass. No, she was doing fine in Stofhol before we got there. Still, wonder what she's doing here? We had her assigned to working on armor for the troops so her skills would level up and I'd eventually have my own personal armorer.'

She was currently looking the other direction at the moment, so I smirked under my mask as I casually snuck up behind her—with all the noise going on, I didn't even really need the bonus from Move Silent. "Private," I greeted from behind her, causing the girl to jump nearly a foot in the air while letting out a surprised 'Eep!', spin around and level a glare at me. That is, before she realized who had addressed her and the glare dropped off her face as her eyes went wide and she came to attention in a salute.

"Sir! I'm sorry, sir. Uh, you startled me," she explained in a rush, and I chuckled under my mask.

"At ease," I waved her concerns off. "What's going on here? And I thought you were supposed to be assigned to turning out armor?"

Scratching at the back of her head and chuckling nervously, she nodded. "Oh, I am. But we got these things in and the head of the motor pool called for anyone who could hold the right end of a wrench to help get them tuned up and ready. Said something about how warning had come down that we were expecting more Grimm activity and we might get a chance to use them soon."

I did remember issuing that warning, after the Arc twins had overreacted to my message concerning Jen. I just hadn't expected it to happen so quickly. Not that I was complaining. I would love an excuse to test out my new toys. "I see. How are you settling in?"

"I'm doing well, sir. I've made a few friends and I'm really enjoying the chance to work with better equipment than we had back home. The classes required for certifications to advance are kind of dull, but that's mostly because they're covering stuff I already know. I won't get into new stuff until I finish them though, and they're required for everyone, so," she trailed off, giving a 'what can you do' shrug. Someone dropped a wrench under the AFV behind her causing her to wince as one of her ears flicked back towards the source of the sound. "Shit," the girl hissed. "Sorry, sir. I should get back to it."

Nodding, I gestured towards where one of the other mechanics was swearing and nursing cut knuckles. "Carry on, then."

"Yes, sir," she smiled, scurrying off to climb under the vehicle in question.

As I was making my way back out of the motor pool, I caught sight of Angel hurrying over to catch me before I left. I paused to let her catch up, then resumed my walk for the exit. "Sir, I heard Greene procured some aircraft?"

"That's what I heard," I agreed.

"Good," Angel sighed quietly, and I turned to look at her. "When the little one came running in requesting a bird, she almost didn't get one. We've had them all out in rotation, nearly non-stop due to increased Grimm activity. I've since issued orders to keep Foxtrot-1 on standby from now on, but at the moment we barely have the one to spare."

I raised an eyebrow at that. ''The little one?' Is that what they're calling Penny in general or in her 'bastard Schnee' disguise? I know Angel and Jim are at least aware of who's under that particular mask, so it's probably because she doesn't want to just blurt out Penny's name where anyone could hear—thank you, Angel. We really need to come up with names for Penny. And Neo and whichever of the twins is playing as 'Head of Intel' at the time.' It was something I'd have to sit down with the girls and discuss sooner, rather than later. "In other words, we need Greene to get us the new birds," I surmised, and she nodded. "What about the ones we got...?" I trailed off, and she shook her head.

"Vale ATC is keeping track of things now. The only good it's doing us is being able to rotate those with the same identification out for maintenance, refuel, and rearm faster with their duplicates. We can't have two of the same one in the air at the same time," she denied, and I groaned quietly.

"I am beginning to suspect that agreeing to allow Vale ATC to 'help' us with our air traffic in return for granting us control over our airspace was a bad idea."

Angel shook her head. "Not really. It's a trade-off, yes, but in the long run we come off better for it. It's just that in the short term, it's not so great."

"It's hampering our operations." She nodded and I turned a grin on her, unfortunately lost under the mask. "So, let's cheat. Can we repaint them? Change tail numbers or muck with the IFF so they identify as different craft?"

"We could," Angel agreed slowly. "But we're back to introducing the same problem in a different way: too many birds, no paper trail to show where half of them came from."

Humming, I thought it over. "Who keeps those records?"

"I don't know, sir. That's outside my expertise. Sorry," she apologized, and I waved her off.

"I'll put someone on it. We might have to convince someone to do some creative bookkeeping. I'll let you know when I have something," I told her, digging out my scroll and firing off a text to Miltia to look into it for me. What was the point of having a hack tool that could crack government systems if I wasn't going to use it, after all? And even with that, I was still going to need more aircraft. "Okay. You've convinced me."

"Sir?"

I gestured towards the motor pool. "See if we can spare a few people to evaluate some aircraft. Talk to Greene and see if you can arrange to look at what he's offering, and how soon. You have my permission to go out, evaluate their viability, and—if he's not selling us a load of shit—forward it to me. If it is a load of shit, feel free to walk away from it. We'll see if we can talk him into letting us work out billing them over time instead of buying them straight out like we did the other kit. We should start pulling in enough money soon that we can start setting aside enough to do it. Make contact, evaluate what he's got, then give me a couple of weeks to work something out before we approach Greene again, okay?"

"Yes, sir," the woman agreed, a smile twitching her lips upwards.

"Also, I want to try and organize a little... expedition for this coming week. With the Grimm around Vale as agitated as they are, we'll have plenty of targets to test our new gear on. As soon as we've got enough of the AFVs inspected and running, I want to take some of those and some of our air force out and scare up some fun. Maybe work on some sort of demonstration to show we're a viable choice for that contract," I told her, and she nodded.

"I'll speak with the other department heads and start getting things ready."

"Carry on," I waved her off, and she turned and headed back into the base, presumably to start seeing to my orders. Tilting my head skywards, I subvocalized, "Wings," before shooting up and out of the base, wind rushing around me and yanking my hood back. Clearing the buildings, I turned for the transit hub where I would be picking up Yang and Ruby, casting Invisibility as I went.

---

"Jaune!" Ruby cheered, disappearing in a puff of rose petals and reappearing latched around my midsection. "Ooh, cool," Ruby murmured, slipping her arms under the coat and giving a quiet sigh. Despite the fact that it was officially fall now, the day was unseasonably warm. Even Yang, who refused to go without her own jacket, had opted to wear it tied around her waist by the sleeves, leaving her in just her yellow-gold tube top with her emblem on the left breast. Ruby, on the other hand, looked to be wilting in her normal Hunter attire. Wearing a coat should have stood out, but from what I gathered from most of the people around me, their first assumption upon seeing it and the weapons strapped to it was 'Hunter.' Which wasn't far off the truth. Remnant-normal, I reminded myself.

"Ruby," I greeted the girl. "Good to see you too. And Yang." I nodded at the blonde, sending a pair of party invites, which were quickly accepted. Once those were up, I established links next, as a matter of habit.

"Nice outfit," Yang hummed, dragging lilac eyes over my form.

"Thanks. It's not complete yet, though. I still need to pick up my armor. You guys mind if we make a detour on the way back so I can do that?" I asked, earning a shake of the head from the blonde as Ruby pried herself out from around me.

"How is it so cool in there?" Ruby asked, and I grinned.

I gestured towards the exit and the girls followed. "Let's get going," I said aloud, while at the same time sending, 'Climate control enchantments.'

'Like the one on my scarf?' she asked, and I nodded. 'Except yours covers your whole body.'

I nodded again as we pushed through the exit and into the parking lot. "Yep. If you want, we could probably do something about that for you. You too, Yang." Yang's eyes lit up with mischief and she opened her mouth to say something. Having some idea where she was going, I decided to be a little cruel and cut her off before she could. "I'm sure Neo will be happy to take your measurements or whatever is needed."

Yang's mouth closed with a clack of teeth clicking together. Something that was half memory, half imagination flashed across our link—Neo's hands on Yang and the blonde's thoughts and feelings on what Neo could get up to while 'taking her measurements.' I snorted softly and Yang had the decency to blush. "Damnit, Jaune, now that mental image is stuck in my head," she grumbled, a grudging smile creeping across her lips as she did. I noticed Ruby roll her eyes, even as a smile played over her face.

Raising an eyebrow at that, I realized that the little reaper hadn't gotten half of that exchange—Yang was apparently experimenting with the links and had figured out how to send only to me. 'Good for her. She needs more practice with it.' I gestured at the backpacks the sisters were carrying. "What's up with those?"

Yang grinned. "Well, if we're going to be spending the night, we'll need a change of clothes."

"And pajamas," Ruby added. "Also, toothbrushes. We planned ahead."

Shooting the pair an amused look, I asked, "When was that decided? Last I checked, we were only spending the day together lounging in bed."

A smug little smirk teased Yang's lips upwards as she said, "Well, we could always call the others and ask..."

"Don't bother, I already know the answer," I deadpanned. Not that I was complaining about it.

Ruby reached over and patted my shoulder. "I think you're outnumbered, Jaune. It may be time to admit defeat and accept the inevitable."

"Note to self: learn what it takes to bribe the others onto my side," I mused aloud in a stage whisper, earning a pair of laughs for my trouble.

I lead them to where the sedan sat waiting. 'I really do hate cameras,' I mused, slipping into the driver's seat. Ruby claimed the seat next to mine and Yang slid into the back while I got us moving to our first stop. What was the point in being able to fly, or summon vehicles, or other things if you had to account for cameras nearly everywhere you went inside the city? 'Fly across town invisible, drop down into a blind alley, change outfits, summon up a vehicle, drive the rest of the way here looking like I'd been parked there the whole time. Too many steps for a trip across town, just to make sure some government mook who just happens to glance at the city footage doesn't notice. Fuck city-wide CCTV.'

While it was a thing in some places on Earth, it wasn't in the city where I'd grown up and spent most of my life—you could still get away with speeding or going through a pointless red light when no one else was coming, as opposed to those cities where doing that would see a traffic ticket mailed straight to your home. 'I should go out as Shiro and take down the CCTV network. It'd make things a hell of a lot easier for me. Then again, it'd also blind the city in the event of a Grimm attack—which, now that I think about it, is probably the primary reason for having it. Crap.Can't kill the city's defenses just for my personal convenience.I really need a way to come and go from Fox Hunt that doesn't involve changing outfits every time. Pretty sure Raven would be annoyed if I asked her to be my personal taxi service, though. Too bad. Portals would be convenient. I suppose I'll be making 'Dimension Door' or something similar my next big spell target, after true flight.' While spells like Plane Shift or Astral Projection were off the table, Dimension Door should be within the scope of my ability to create, once I had the base INT required. And while I could have just dumped all my points in INT right then, I was still waiting—patiently, mind you—for Beacon to start. Once I started studying, I figured that—like with physical exercise—I would gain points in INT. Dumping points before that would be a waste.

The tail end of the song that had been playing when we'd gotten back in the car ended and a radio host came on the air. "And now for your local news and weather at the top of the hour. Authorities have issued a curfew for all civilians in the areas immediately surrounding the city of Vale due to an increase in local Grimm activity."

I blinked at that, frowning as I turned the radio up. 'Sounds like a patrol may have picked up something nasty. They've been talking about increased activity since Jane and Jean rang the metaphorical dinner bell, but this is the first time I've heard anything about a curfew.'

"Hunter patrols have been increased accordingly, but unconfirmed reports from the field indicate that a recent local addition to Vale's forces—the private military contractor Fox Hunt—has been helping to lighten the load for our Hunter forces. Civilians are advised to remain vigilant and seek shelter should they encounter Grimm. The Vale City Council is now accepting bids for booth spaces at the upcoming Vytal festival, and in town preparations are already beginning to welcome those students showing up early. Negotiations are still ongoing as to the format of this year's tournament. Your three day forecast is as follows. Tonight: partly cloudy, winds from the north at five to ten miles per hour with the occasional gust, temperatures falling into the mid-50s. Tomorrow: clouds increasing, chance of rain 20%, winds—"

"So," I began, as Yang unbuckled her seatbelt, leaned up between the seats, and hit the station selector for the radio, "your dad let you out of the house, since Beacon's been put off?" I glanced to the side and wondered for a moment how, exactly, Yang didn't simply flop out of her top considering the fact that it was essentially a 'boob tube' and she was clearly not wearing a bra. 'Some sort of built in support, maybe?'

"Yep. Thanks for that, by the way," the blonde agreed, a grin drawing her full lips up as she regarded the radio. "What song is that? It's kinda catchy."

"Well it's midnight, damn right, we're wound up too tight…"

"Not sure," I shrugged. It sounded familiar—in the way pretty much all 'instant music' did to me these days. 'Which is the problem. It sounds familiar because I've heard it before, not because it sounds samey.'

Ruby turned an annoyed look on Yang. "I was looking forward to going."

"…we got no fear, no doubt, all in, balls out..."

Yang rolled her eyes. "It'll still be there." Silver eyes narrowed and Ruby's hand streaked out, tapping the seek button and changing the station. 'This Will Be The Day' began blaring from the speakers and I reached out to turn it down. "Hey! I was listening to that!" Yang complained. Something warm and soft—and entirely unmistakable as anything other than boob-flesh—smashed into the side of my head as she leaned forward again to change the station back.

"…Alright sir, sure I'll have another one it's early…"

"Yang, come on, I'm trying to drive here," I complained. "I don't need you trying to give me a black eye with your boobs. And buckle up. If we get a ticket, you're paying it."

"Heh sorry," the girl chuckled, only to glare as Ruby changed the radio back. I frowned as something else I recognized began to play: 'Red Like Roses.' "You brat," Yang growled, disregarding my previous warning and hitting the radio hard enough to cause the plastic to creak. 'I Burn' began playing.

Ruby's hand shot out for the radio again, and a sharp crack of flesh-on-flesh sounded through the car. The small redhead yelped, drawing her hand back and cradling it to her chest. "That's enough," I warned.

"Haha!" Yang pointed. "Ow!" the blonde whined, drawing back her own smarting hand as I smacked her too.

Blue eyes met lilac in the rearview and I sent the girl a no-nonsense look. "Behave." Reaching out, I tapped the seek button. I frowned as guitar poured out of the radio. 'I think that's 'Gimme Shelter.'DidThe Rolling Stones make it to Remnant? If not, is this proof that my Semblance is pulling songs from my memory, or doing something else?' So far, I hadn't run across anything that I could prove didn't exist on both Earth and Remnant, so I'd have to add it to my to-do list. Figuring out if my Semblance was screwing with me when it came to music was low on my list of priorities, however.

"Yaaang, Jaune's being a meanie," Ruby whined.

"What do you want me to do about it?" Yang rolled her eyes.

Shooting the pair a half-amused, half-annoyed look, I threatened, "I will pull this car over."

"Oh really?" Yang leered. "You hear that, sis? Jaune's promising spankings."

I wasn't sure whether to be amused or somewhat horrified as a contemplative look crossed the little reaper's face even as she blushed. "You're incorrigible, and a horrible influence on your sister," I deadpanned at Yang, before sending her my memory of her being spanked by Neo. Lilac eyes went wide as she blushed. Apparently, she had given up on the radio but had decided she'd rather try to occupy the front seat with Ruby and myself, so had leaned up between the seats. At that point, I gave up on convincing her to buckle up. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the position offered an absolutely amazing view of her breasts in that tube top. 'Yeah, not a bra in sight—and apparently she enjoyed that little memory. Has to be built-in support.'

"That's what big sisters are for," Yang countered.

"I blame Uncle Qrow," Ruby shook her head. "With him around as a role model, we were doomed from the start."

The blonde beside me nodded. "Pretty much. So, what'd you do to get the school closed down for another two weeks?"

"Hey, now. I didn't do shit," I denied. From the passenger seat, Ruby shot me an incredulous look. "Okay, I may have had a hand in it..."

"Spill!" Yang demanded.

Sighing, I recounted an edited version of the story, leaving out little details like the names of everyone involved except Qrow and Penny, references to Amber's Maidenhood, and the like. "So, yeah. That's why. Beacon has a high profile guest and the senior staff are too busy keeping her alive to run the school."

Frowning, Ruby pointed out, "You aren't telling us everything."

"No," I denied. "Sorry. Some things, like the identity of the attackers, it could be dangerous for you to know."

Yang snorted softly. "How's that?"

"Well, suppose I told you who it was. And suppose you ran across this person in public. Do you think you could keep the fact that you know they're up to no good a secret? Other things aren't my secrets to tell. I shouldn't have even told you as much as I have. People knowing there's someone… special hiding out in Beacon would be bad. I'm not saying I think you'll go out and blab it somewhere. Ozpin asked that I keep it secret and I'm still not sure whether or not there are people out there with Semblances capable of pulling things straight out of your mind. Just because we haven't run across it yet doesn't mean it's not out there. If you need to know, I will tell you—I promise. But you don't need to know yet," I denied.

The sisters shared an annoyed look before Yang sighed. "Fine. It sounds like if we screw up with this then someone could die."

"Yes," I nodded confirmation.

"Then we'll trust your judgment," Ruby gave her own nod, crossing her arms and turning her head to look out the window. "We don't like it, but we don't have to like it."

I chuckled softly. "That is a very mature way to look at it," I complimented. "I'm pretty sure it's something we're all going to have to get used to. In a military organization—which the Hunter Corps seems to be based around—you don't always get to know everything. Sometimes, you're told to shut up and follow orders, and you just have to trust that your superiors know what they're doing. It sucks, but there's a reason for it." My HUD showed me we were coming up on our destination. I had more to tell them, but I didn't know how Yang was going to react. "There's one other thing. I'll tell you when we're done here. Your choice whether it's in the car or back at Fox Hunt."

"Is it bad?" Ruby asked, and I shrugged.

"That's hard to say. I wouldn't call it bad per se, just potentially upsetting." I had no idea how Yang would react to the news that her mom was back in town. If she knew that Raven was watching us, even now, there was no telling what would happen. The spot behind and above me where I figured Raven's method of watching to be shifted quickly, moving around in front of me to just off center to my right. Shifting my eyes off the road to regard the spot for a moment, I tilted my head slightly and raised my eyebrows—hoping she could intuit that as me asking if that was okay. Not that I particularly cared if she was okay with it or not, but I'd rather avoid pissing off a woman who could swat me like a bug. The feeling shifted back to its usual position—a non-answer if I'd ever seen one.

As we drew closer to the shop where I'd be picking up my armor, I raised an eyebrow as something interesting on my minimap caught my eye. Six icons denoting people my Semblance felt were important enough to show up on the map or minimap were situated either in the armor shop or in the Dust store next door. Of those six, I only recognized the two in the Dust shop: a purple lotus and a pink hammer with a lightning bolt through it. 'Ren and Nora,' I smiled faintly. Of the other four, only two were even vaguely familiar: a crosshair inside a circle, both gold; a pair of crossed daggers in copper; a brown heart that looked to be covered in stitches; and a fishhook shaped sword under some sort of five-layer shield. I could swear I had seen the circled crosshair and the patchwork heart before, but I couldn't put names to the emblems.

"Who's this?" Yang asked, reaching out and tapping a point in space that I knew would correspond to her own minimap.

"No idea," I smiled, bringing the sedan to a stop in a parking spot outside the store.

"Hmm," Ruby hummed, unbuckling her seatbelt as she hopped out of the car. "I bet they're Hunters."

"Possibly," I allowed, following her lead and locking the car out of habit as Yang slid out and closed her door. "We'll find out in a minute."

"What kind of armor did you decide on?" Yang asked, and I grinned.

"Oh, you'll see," I murmured, heading for the door to the shop and turning a grin on Yang and Ruby, opening the door as I did so. "I think you'll be im—"

"—can't believe school was delay—" a voice was saying at the same moment, an instant before a smaller, soft form ran right into my chest.

A combination of slick footing and momentum sent both of us heading for a spill on the shiny shop floor. At the same time, something tickled my senses—and not one of the ones I'd been born with. Other Auras nearby, unsuppressed and a fair bit above our own, brushed against my fledgling Aura sense, while the girl and the box of things she carried registered to my sense of the surrounding gravity as they began to fall.

There were simultaneous cries of "Jaune!" and "Velvet!" from both sides of the door as we fell. Reflexively, I reached out—both with my arms and gravity—and snagged myself, the girl, and the falling objects. The girl thumped against my chest again as I righted us, while the objects froze mid-air. My eyes tracked down and registered a head of long brown hair, topped by brown 'Rabbit ears?'

"Careful, I just waxed the floor!" the shopkeep called from the counter, entirely too late. I ignored him in favor of the female in my arms. My Semblance helpfully supplied her identity.

Velvet Scarlatina

No Ordinary Rabbit

Level: 62

Something about the title tickled my memory, but I was distracted from figuring out why for the moment. The girl's head tilted up and brown eyes locked with my blue and for just an instant, I felt something brush against Gamer's Mind. "Hi there," I said, my mouth speeding ahead of my brain as it was occasionally wont to do as I wondered at the feeling.

"H-hello," the girl stuttered quietly, glancing down and taking in exactly how close we were, along with the fact that we were still holding onto each other.

Nearby, I heard air hiss and a loud pop! which drew my eyes to another girl—brown hair with a red and yellow dyed bang—regarding us over a pair of dark sunglasses, her tongue darting out and pulling in the remains of the bubble she'd popped with her gum. Dark brown eyes peered over the sunglasses and swept up and down my form as her eyebrows went up slightly. 'Did she just check me out?'

Coco Adel

Supersonic Princess

Level: 61

Sending the girl in my arms a polite smile, I released her and took a step back. "Sorry about that."

"Oh no, it was my fault! I wasn't watching where I was going," the faunus girl denied, shaking her head quickly. Her accent sounded familiar, but I was a little distracted at the moment to bother trying to place it.

"Are you okay?" Ruby asked, popping up at my side, before looking down and frowning at the floor. "Man, this floor is really slick."

"We're fine, Ruby. Right, miss…?" I trailed off, regarding the faunus girl.

"Velvet," she answered the unspoken question. "Velvet Scarlatina."

"Jaune Arc," I returned.

"Ruby Rose!" Ruby beamed at the taller girl. "Are you a Huntress?"

I shifted enough to catch Yang's eyes, the blonde looking amused at her sister's antics. "Ruby, what have I said about fangirling?" I asked, and the little reaper blushed, turning a glare on me as she puffed out her cheeks and pouted—and in so doing went from a natural six to a ten on the adorkable scale.

"Beacon students, actually," the girl with the shades answered for her friend. "Coco Adel." Her gaze shifted to the blonde behind me expectantly.

"Yang Xiao Long," Yang introduced herself. "We're just about to start Beacon, actually."

"'Were.' Past tense," Ruby grumbled.

"I believe this belongs to you," I offered, bringing the pieces of what I now realized was the armor parts to a combat outfit together in front of Velvet. They looked like gold, but that was probably for simple aesthetics. The girl held open the top of the box they had spilled from and I eased them down into place. "And we should probably move out of the doorway, before we have another accident."

"Thank you," Velvet smiled, and I nodded as she finished collecting them.

"Cute," the other nearby brunette murmured under her breath, low enough that I knew she had meant it only for her own ears—though, given the way Velvet's ears twitched towards the sound and how she rolled her eyes, I could have been mistaken. Clearing her throat, Coco turned towards the inside of the store. "FOX! YATSU! We're leaving! We're going to be late for the next flight back if you don't hurry up!"

Velvet and I both winced at the volume, before her eyes tracked to mine and her eyebrows raised in curiosity. My lips twitched as I resisted the urge to laugh. "Well," I grinned, shaking my head. "It was nice meeting you."

"Likewise," the girl returned, and I finally realized where I recognized the faint accent from.

'Oh lord, there really is a Remnant Australia and it wasn't just her voice actress. Well, here's hoping it didn't start off life as a prison colony. Then again, faunus, Menagerie—damn, it really is Remnant Australia,' I mused. "See you around some time," I offered, moving aside so she and Coco could pass by.

"Probably," Coco answered, tossing a wave over her shoulder as they left.

From the back of the store, two young men hurried to catch up to the girls. The first was tall—tall enough that I had to look up—and wearing green armor, looking to be of Japanese ancestry, or the Remnant equivalent, considering Japanese weren't known for being tall. Even by American standards, seven feet was an outlier for height—to the point where I felt like I was craning my neck to check his nameplate.

Yatsuhashi Daichi

Daisy Cutter

Level: 61

The second was very tan and had hair a shade of dark copper. Well, his skin was tanned where it wasn't the lighter shade of scars, which criss-crossed over much of his visible skin—and much of it was visible, given that he wore a dark red sleeveless vest. I noticed, as he neared, that his eyes were milky white.

Fox Alistair

Unseen Blade

Level: 61

While I wasn't entirely willing to rule out some local Byakugan clone—especially given Ruby's own 'dojutsu' as proof that such a thing as special eyes existed in Remnant—I suspected he was merely blind. If it was the latter, I wondered how he got around—hearing would only get you so far, especially on a world like Remnant and even more so in a profession like Hunting. 'Aura Sense, maybe? Or some kind of echolocation using Aura? Being blind would go a long way towards explaining the scarring. That it's that bad means it's either fresh—and they don't look fresh—or was bad enough that his Aura is still healing it.' I remembered hearing somewhere that scars faded to nothing over time, thanks to Aura—so lasting scars tended to fall into one of two categories: evidence of severe wounding, or vanity. I, and likely Fox, were part of the first group. Weiss, with that little scar over her eye marring her otherwise flawless face, fell into the second category.

Beside me, Ruby sucked in a quiet breath while Yang went slightly stiff. 'What's up with them?' I wondered as the pair of boys passed by, the door to the shop closing behind them. Shrugging it off, I headed up to the front counter while the sisters went to look around. "Jaune Arc, for pickup."

"I've got your order boxed and ready. Give me just a moment," he said, turning and heading for the back of the shop.

"Hey Jaune, what do you think?" Ruby asked, walking up with a set of what looked like shin guards and knee protectors in her hands. Bending down, she strapped them to her legs and I hummed in thought as I looked them over. They mostly covered the nearly knee-high boots she wore, but there was enough of a gap between the knee pads and shin guards to ensure flexibility of movement.

"Just the lower legs?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Looking down at the armor, Ruby shrugged. "Well, what would you suggest?"

"Since I can make it all nearly weightless, I'd suggest proper protection for a melee fighter. But what I suggest and what you'll be able to live with are two different things—I know how some people are about their 'Hunter look.' I'd suggest armor for the boots, shins, knees, thighs, gloves with fingers, arm guards and upper and lower arms, maybe elbows as well, and chest and stomach pieces. Also, a helmet," I answered, and smirked when she rolled her eyes.

"So, heavy armor," she summarized in deadpan, sticking out her tongue.

"Careful. Someone's going to take that as an invitation one day," I warned, causing her to look away and blush. She really was too easy to tease. "And armor comes in more materials than just metal. Leather would work for most of it, while allowing you to be light and nimble to fill a scout role without getting wrecked if you take a decent hit. I told you, you wouldn't be able to live with it. So, bare minimum: shins, knees, forearms, gloves, chest, and stomach." I knew she likely wouldn't agree to that, either. She proved me right a moment later.

Crossing her arms, Ruby asked, "Can't I get rid of the stomach piece at least?"

"Sure," I agreed with a smile. She began to smile herself, until I continued with, "If you don't mind your entrails becoming extrails if a beowolf or something gets in a lucky swipe through your Aura. I mean, sure, my Semblance pretty much makes it so my entrails would get vacuumed back into my body a moment later, but I'm still going to wear stomach protection."

"He's got you there, sis," Yang snickered, coming up behind her sister and mussing the shorter girl's hair.

"Says miss 'I'll use my boobs to distract the Grimm,'" Ruby rolled her eyes, earning a mild glare from Yang. "And you're one to talk! At least I have full body coverage and my corset could double as armor."

I knew I should stay out of it, but I couldn't resist. "And yet, it doesn't. Also, the boob-window is a traditional fantasy armor feature. It's great for distracting human enemies… or giving them a target to stick a sword in, or swipe a blade through. But no human or Grimm would go for an easy, painful, and debilitating target, right?" I asked, heavy on the sarcasm. Ruby smirked while Yang crossed her arms over the area in question, though I noticed she did look thoughtful now that I'd put the idea out there. Shifting my gaze back to Ruby, I said, "Even something as simple as a material change and a few additions here and there could work. You could swap most of your outfit for hardened leather cut and dyed the same as your current outfit, then back it up with the same sort of stuff I'm putting on mine and have little to no negative impact on your fighting style while increasing your survivability dramatically."

The little reaper hummed in contemplation, but before we could talk further on the issue of putting melee combatants in proper armor, the shopkeep returned with a large box of armor in his hands. "All polished up and ready to go."

"Excellent. How much do I owe you?" I asked.

He rang up the remaining half of the figure he'd initially quoted me on the job and I quickly paid him, hefting the heavy box of armor in my hands and heading for the door. "Let's get back home and I can see about putting the finishing touches on it."

Yang held the door for me and I stepped outside, heading for the car. As I reached the car and popped the trunk, the door to the Dust shop next door opened and a pair of familiar figures stepped out. Well, I say familiar—they were familiar in the same way Ruby, Yang, Blake, and Weiss initially were, in that I had seen their animated counterparts in another world. "Nora," a young man clad in a green and black Chinese themed outfit groaned quietly, "how many times do I have to say it? Please, stop scaring Dust store owners by asking them what they feel is the best Dust for making squirrels explode."

Lie Ren

Silent Step

Level: 34

"But Renny!" the short, busty orange-haired girl exiting the store behind him whined. "They're evil! They're plotting something. With their beady eyes and their twitchy tails…" She shuddered, incidentally doing interesting things for her chest area, and I wondered just how much of that was real and how much was just her having fun. I supposed I would find out in a couple of weeks, if things went to plan—not about her breasts, but rather whether or not she really was as nuts as she seemed.

Nora Valkyrie

Boop

Level: 34

"Nora," he sighed a sigh of long-suffering. Our eyes met briefly and I winced in sympathy. He shook his head and turned to walk off down the sidewalk, the girl trailing along with him. "What would you like for lunch?" he asked, before quickly adding, "Not pancakes," at the same time his companion answered, "Pancakes!"

Taking in the pair, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. 'Am I sure I can't sentence, I don't know, Yang and Weiss to deal with Nora's… Nora-ness? I mean, I'm pretty sure I could rig the launchers if I really wanted to…'

"Huh," Yang blinked beside me, watching the pair go and incidentally pulling me from thinking on it further.

Ruby shook her head. "Weird."

"You said it," Yang agreed.

I did roll my eyes this time. "Just for that, I'm tempted to make sure you wind up teamed up with them."

"Don't you dare," Yang hissed.

Meeting her eyes as I dropped my box of armor into the car's trunk, I grinned. "You have to admit, time in the dorms would never be boring."

"No," Yang denied.

"I don't know, I think Jaune may be on to something," Ruby hummed, catching my eye as a small smirk flashed across her lips—apparently, she had decided to get in on the act of teasing her sister.

"Jaune, if you do, I will find a way to get us on the same team as you," she countered. "And when I do, I will make your life miserable."

I shook my head. "Nah. I don't see it happening. You can't make a color from our names. The academies have a thing for color names, so you don't often find an academy team that isn't one. It happens, but it's rare, from my understanding." Though, I had to admit, JRNY—or Journey—made for an awesome team name.

"Damn, he's right," Yang grumbled. Frowning, she asked, "Hey, wait a minute. How do you know they'll be in our year?"

'Shit.' I shrugged, sending the blonde a grin. "Lucky guess." I knew with certainty I had failed that Bluff check. I could have said their ages were listed in the information available to me by Observe, but I suppose this is what happens when you're caught flat footed.

"And he did say teams were basically made randomly this year," Ruby pointed out, narrowing her eyes at me and getting in on the interrogation.

"For certain definitions of the word 'random,'" I muttered, causing the pair to exchange a suspicious look between themselves. I needed a distraction, fast. "Well, time to go. Who's riding up front?"

Shooting a smirk at Ruby, Yang dashed over to the front door to the car. "Shotgun!"

"What? No! I wasn't ready! Cheater!" Ruby called as Yang slid inside, slammed the door closed, and locked it behind her. Ruby had gotten there a second too late to stop Yang from locking the door and now stood fruitlessly pulling at the door handle. "Grr. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Strangle. Sister."

I rolled my eyes, dropping into the driver's seat as Ruby finally gave up and got in the back. "You rode up front on the way here," I reminded. "Do not make me turn this car around."

Ruby stuck her tongue out again and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as I drove us back towards the base. 'Well, you know they're comfortable with me, if they've stopped hiding all their bad habits and sibling bickering.'

"So, what were you going to tell me?" Yang asked, and my good mood soured somewhat. "Other than, you know, the whole 'team assignments' thing you're not wanting to talk about."

Idly, I noticed the focal point for Raven's little spying technique had moved in front of us again. 'How is she doing that? Invisible portal? Tiny portal? Some sort of actual Scrying technique? I'll have to ask, if I ever get the chance.' A thought occurred and I blinked. 'What if it's not Raven? Or someone else can do something similar enough that I can't tell them apart. Fuck. I need some way to verify that it's her when she does that. Going to have to talk to her about it.'

"I'm still not wanting to talk about it," I deadpanned. "No, I got a lead or two on that information you wanted me to track down," I began, and Yang immediately turned in her seat to fully face me, the normally boisterous blonde suddenly deathly serious. Behind me, I saw Ruby's face grow pensive in the rear view mirror. I wondered, for a moment, if Yang had told her sister who it was she was looking for. I knew she hadn't wanted me to tell her, so odds were that Yang hadn't yet. On the other hand, Ruby could clearly read the mood. "One of Hei's guys spotted her in town last week."

"Hei?" Yang asked.

I shot her a small smirk. "You know him better as Junior—the owner of the club we almost trashed."

"Ooh, right. Him," Yang nodded. "Well? Go on."

"Right. Well, they lost her—obviously," I shook my head. I couldn't really blame them for losing her—portals would be a ridiculously effective way of avoiding being followed anywhere. "But she popped her head back up the other day. She was involved in that mess I told you about—the attack on that girl."

"'Involved?'" Ruby echoed, shooting a look between me and her sister. "Like, in the fighting...?"

I shook my head. "No. She just pointed me in the right direction. Honestly, the girl who was attacked would be dead now if it weren't for her." Even if she had done only the bare minimum, and only for her own agenda—which I was still worried about, considering I was part of that agenda.

Yang frowned, but otherwise remained quiet as she studied my face. Behind us, Ruby asked, "So, who is this mystery lady? Or do you know?"

"I know," I confirmed. When I did not answer further, Ruby frowned and crossed her arms as she realized she wouldn't be getting any more answers. She wasn't pleased about it, but she didn't press either. I cast a sidelong look at Yang. "There's more." The blonde motioned for me to continue. "I spoke to her, after." There was a sudden look of something like hope in her eyes, and I shook my head. "Just about the attempted murder. I was kind of angry and didn't think to ask—and it kind of devolved into a fight from there. Sorry."

"Shit," Yang sighed, shifting in her seat and turning away.

Seeing she looked upset, I shot a glance at the point in space where I knew Raven was watching from. Slowly, I offered, "I may have a way to get in contact. Is there something you'd like me to pass on?"

There was no reaction from Raven's end, but Yang growled in frustration. "About a million things!" the blonde yelled. "And... and nothing, at the same time. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say?" She clamped her jaw shut before she said any more, so hard I could see the muscles twitching and worried she may damage her teeth.

"Yang?" Ruby asked, shooting a concerned look at her sister before turning inquisitive silver eyes on me.

"If she wants to tell you, that's up to her," I shrugged. "Sorry. I like secrets about as much as the next guy, but I won't spill ones that aren't mine to tell."

Yang shook her head at that. "I... I need to think about this, before I do anything."

"That's reasonable," I agreed quietly. As soon as the words left my mouth, my Semblance popped up a quest completion and advancement notification, causing me to raise my eyebrows. ''A Favor for Yang' completed and moved on to stage two. Huh. Too bad 10k XP didn't put me over the limit. Still, every bit helps.'

Reaching out, I tapped the button for the radio to fill the silence that had fallen over the car. The words of Billy Joel's, 'And So It Goes' poured out of the speakers and I shook my head softly. 'I don't think Yang's in the mood for this,' I mused, reaching out to change the station, only for a soft hand to catch mine a hair away from the button. Looking over, I met lilac eyes as the blonde gave me a rueful smile before shaking her head.

"It fits the mood. Leave it," she murmured, releasing my hand and leaning back in her seat.

---

I equipped my Fox disguise as the base came into sight, thankful for the sedan's dark tinted windows. Pulling up to the gate, I rolled down the window and passed my ID card to one of the guards manning the gatehouse. A quick check later, the large, chain link gate rolled open for me to pass through. As I did, I made a mental note to look into replacing the fencing around the property with something a bit sturdier. 'I kind of want a wall of reinforced concrete and steel gates. It'll mean reworking our patrol routes, cameras, and so on but the added security would be worth it. Thirty foot walls would keep most medium size category Grimm out in the event of an incursion. Expensive, though—it'll have to be after we're getting paid regularly and not just for bounties. Of course, if I do that, I may as well go ahead and set up some areas for an emergency shelter. It'd be good for PR in Vale if we put out that, if worse came to worst, we would offer shelter for the civilians.'

We pulled into the parking garage where I pulled my box of armor from the trunk and stowed it in Inventory. From there, we made our way to the elevator and up to the officers' quarters. I switched back to my 'Jaune' outfit once we were through the final checkpoint and on our side of the salle port. A glance at my minimap showed that Jen had finished her session and was waiting up ahead with Neo, the twins, Penny, and Blake. The faunus girl was at least fairly consistent in making attempts to socialize, for which I was grateful. 'Maybe she won't be quite so closed off as she was in canon by the time we get to Beacon.'

"We're back," I announced our presence as we came into what passed as a living room. Miltia, Melanie, Penny, and Neo were seated on one of the two couches, partly under a light blanket, and clearly still in their bed clothes—not that they actually wore them to bed most days. Blake was seated on the end of the opposite couch, curled up with a book but clearly only half paying attention to it. Jen had claimed my chair as her own, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at that.

"Welcome back!" Penny chirped.

The girls all exchanged greetings and I moved to my preferred chair, regarding the blonde sitting there with an amused look. "You going to get up?"

"I'm comfortable," she denied, and I rolled my eyes. Her lips twitched in what might have been the beginnings of a smile before she quietly added, "There may be room for two."

"Fine," I agreed, seeing what she was angling for. The shorter girl hopped up and I dropped into the chair, only to let out a whoosh of breath as she plopped back down, halfway in my lap. "Comfy? Can I get you a pillow?" I snarked.

"I'm fine," she answered, her voice low and intimate—and leaving me unsure whether that was intentional or not.

Something felt off, however. Looking down, I saw she was clad in tight jeans and what looked like one of my tee-shirts—which wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, seeing as most of the girls tended to steal my shirts these days. No, what was off was that the texture my body was reporting did not match what I saw. Hesitantly, I placed a hand against her hip. 'Light. Thin. Smooth. Feels like silk,' I assessed, moving my hand down to her upper thigh, where the material abruptly stopped and my hand was met with warm flesh. "Problem, Jaune?" she asked, turning her head enough to look at me over her shoulder. I shot her an amused look before shifting my gaze to Neo, who looked to be putting on her best innocent, 'ice cream wouldn't melt in my mouth' look and failing entirely as she practically radiated mischief.

To either side of Neo, the twins looked just as guilty, small smirks twitching at the corners of their lips. Only Penny actually managed to look innocent, which told me she likely wasn't in on whatever mischief Neo and the twins had managed to wrangle my sister into. The gynoid tossing aside the blanket and hopping off the couch to go encircle Ruby in a hug that I worried would crack the girl's ribs allowed me to get a look at what Neo, Miltia, and Melanie were wearing—what looked like silk nightgowns. I had a suspicion, considering what I felt under my hand, that those 'nightgowns' weren't quite what they were pretending to be. I wondered, for a moment, if this wasn't pushing Jen too far. My eyes shifted back to hers and I shot her a questioning look. In response, she shifted back slightly in my lap, showing absolutely no sign that she was bothered by it. 'Okay, then.'

Shaking my head, I turned my attention to the others, where Ruby and Yang had dropped their bags on the floor and dropped onto the couch with Blake, Ruby on the end nearest me and Yang in the middle. "So, movie?"

"I think the general consensus is food," Neo supplied, and I nodded.

"Fine. Pizza okay with everyone?" I asked, getting nods from all around. I began fishing out my scroll and noticed more than one pout leveled my way. "What?"

"You're ordering out?" Melanie asked, gesturing at the phone.

"We thought you were going to cook," Miltia added.

Chuckling at that, I began searching through the local listings for pizza places. "Not today, no. Sorry to disappoint."

Jen shifted in my lap, shooting an incredulous look between me and the others. Finally, she asked, "He cooks? Since when?"

Neo and the twins shared a look while Ruby answered, "Since we've known him?" The way she said it as a question left the implication hanging, wondering why that would be strange.

"Jaune doesn't know how to cook," Jen denied.

"He does," Blake countered, looking up from her book briefly. "Is that strange?"

"I picked it up a while ago," I cut in. "Back when I first woke up. Ate a cookbook and it gave me 'Cooking' as a skill. I've been eating recipes since then. Joan got me a book of family recipes and I ate those, too." It was not a lie—I had specifically done just that in front of Joan, for the express purpose of being able to point back on the event and use that as an explanation as to where I'd picked up the skill. Only three people in the room knew that I could have, and probably did, know how to cook well before then. "Found a place that looks good. What does everyone want?"

Once I had their orders, I shifted out from under Jen and made my way into the kitchen to place the order while the girls talked. Giving instructions for the driver to come to the main gate and leave the delivery there, I hung up and pocketed my scroll before taking up the base phone mounted on the kitchen wall and dialing the extension for the gate house at the front gate. Upon doing so, I discovered that my people were a step ahead of me. Deliveries of food, parcels, mail and the like were to be expected in a place like this and there was already a system in place to handle them—to the point that I could have skipped calling the pizza place directly and just called the department responsible for handling that.

'I have a department that will order pizza for me?' I wondered, shaking my head as I hung up. 'Well, we have a staff mess hall, but it wouldn't surprise me if departments like the motor pool ordered parts, or food, often enough to assign someone else to handle the purchases and deliveries inside the base. I suppose it's a good thing I had Jim round up people who were already experienced with setting things like this up. I'd have never thought of that one on my own.' That was good, as it meant I wouldn't have to micromanage everything—I could let my department heads handle things and occasionally things like this would happen, where someone realized we needed something and did something about it of their own initiative. In all likelihood, they had probably consulted the ranking officers to get approval first, but I hadn't been brought into the loop—meaning one of the twins probably approved it and didn't bother telling me, because it wasn't exactly important. And I was fine with that. I didn't need to know the minutiae of running the place once it got past a certain level of complexity—which it was swiftly approaching.

Shrugging, I made my way back into the living area, where I was fixed with expectant looks. "What?"

"We want to see the new armor," Neo answered. "Need to make sure it'll actually fit on the coat."

I shot her an amused look. "Didn't we say today was a day to just fuck off? No work, no projects, just sitting around the place and watching movies."

"We did, but we still want to see it," Miltia countered.

"Yeah, come on. Give us a show," Yang leered, drawing more than one giggle from the gaggle of girls.

Putting on an affronted look, I huffed. "I am not a piece of meat. I feel so, so… used. Objectified, even."

"Pfft. Yeah, right," Ruby chortled.

"I don't think they're buying it, Jaune," Penny pointed out, and I dropped the act.

"Fine, fine. I'll play along," I grinned, pulling up my Inventory and beginning to equip the new armor set from the feet up. I was met with an immediate groan from almost all corners as they realized what I was doing and rolled my eyes. "What, you expected me to strip or something?"

"Yes," Neo, Miltia, and Melanie all agreed loudly, though I could have sworn I heard more than one other voice mixed in there.

Everything from the waist up save for the gauntlets went over and attached to the coat at points Neo had put in for them, secured by straps and metal clips—while everything from the waist down went under the coat, allowing its open bottom to hang over it. Shifting around, I tested the armor's fit and my range of motion and found my first mistake, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed. Moving my wrists showed that the Dust crystals there were a bad idea given the way the armor pressed them against the bottom of my wrist even through the jacket, pinching them between the forearm guards on top of the coat and the bottom of the gauntlets where they stopped at my wrists. I made a mental note to move them later. The entire set was white with the occasional splash of yellow trim along its lines or edges, along with the double-crescent of my emblem on the left breast of my chest piece. All in all, it looked like exactly what I had designed—power-armor aesthetic, without the power.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't justify breaking out the Halo themed armor I'd stolen from the black site. But one day, hopefully soon, I would have someone reverse engineer it so we could design and build our own for use at Fox Hunt—and then I would be able to use it, or something similar at any rate. Until then, I'd have to settle for ripping off designs from Mass Effect—specifically, the armor I remembered seeing in a few teaser trailers and pieces of artwork for Andromeda, before I'd been brought to Remnant. The entire getup looked like a white and yellow version of what the guy who'd been named as simply 'Rider' by Bioware had used, if it'd been put on around a long coat.

'Not bad at all,' I mused, looking it over. 'Still missing something, though.'

"That is a lot of armor," Blake deadpanned, and I looked up from my inspection to find the others looking me over.

"Looks heavy," Jen frowned.

Nodding at that, I grinned. "Oh, it is. It won't be a problem for long, though. I'll add weight reduction enchantments and it won't weigh more than a couple of pounds by the time I'm done." Humming, I mused aloud, "I should really do that now."

Neo, Melanie, and Miltia all crossed their arms and shot me unamused looks. "No," Melanie shook her head.

"We're not working today," Miltia reminded, a smile crossing her lips.

Neo grinned. "I guess you'll just have to play with it tomorrow."

"I feel like I made exactly that argument, before you told me to do it anyway," I deadpanned. I rolled my eyes, but decided to let them have their way.

"Is that what you wanted me to wear?" Ruby asked, drawing my attention to her incredulous look. "There's no way!"

"I told you that you wouldn't be able to live with it," I shook my head, tapping the armored finger of my gauntlet to my cuirass. "Honestly? If I didn't have the Inventory system and a way to make it lighter, not to mention equipping it ensures it fits right, I wouldn't have bothered."

"So, why so much?" Yang asked, moving around me to study the new additions.

"Other than because it'll set me apart from both Shiro and the Fox, as neither of them relies on this much armor? Because I am sick and fucking tired of things punching through my armor, shields, and everything else like goddamn tissue paper. So, in addition to weight reduction enchantments, I'm slapping on a few other things to make them stronger and then I'm going to power the enchantments with Grade 9 Dust in the field, and fuck anything trying to get through it. I figure, whatever team I get on, I can act in a few different roles. My weapons give me options for long, medium, and short range combat but the armor is for tanking if need be. But with its weight reduced to damn near nothing on top of my powered movement skills, I'll be a very fast tank. Throw in the 'gravity' Semblance I'm going to be pretending to use and it should make for a decent cover," I explained. That reminded me, I still needed to reverse engineer Cinder's dress for the offensive enchantment she had used to turn it into a Dustcaster, so I could do the same with the long coat—only I'd be using gravity instead of fire.

Penny popped up at my side, leaning in close and examining the various pieces. "It looks very sturdy," she agreed, and I realized from the glow of her eyes that she had likely done some sort of scan. Looking up, she pouted. "But not very huggable."

Reaching down, I ruffled her hair. "It does come off," I reminded her.

"No headgear?" Blake asked, drawing my attention.

"Actually, there is," I grinned, selecting the last piece and equipping it. A small, white collar materialized around my neck. "This was the most expensive piece, individually," I explained. Reaching up, I tapped a slightly raised section on the right side and the collar began to swiftly unfold—expanding far beyond its mass and size should have ever allowed. The wonders of Gen 7 storage tech—the same kind that the Arclance used, actually. The entire helmet had unfolded in just a couple of seconds, leaving my head completely enclosed. Like the rest of the armor, I'd lifted the design of the helmet from early trailers of Andromeda. I'd even gone so far as to order another set of glasses like the ones I used as Shiro in order to have the armorer strip the tech out of them and incorporate it into the helmet, giving me more options than my Semblance's built-in HUD. And as I'd told Blake, it had been very expensive—but worth every lien.

"That looks kind of badass," Yang admitted, and I grinned under the helmet.

'I'd hope so,' I thought, reaching up and tapping the button to compact the helmet again. Opening my interface, I quickly made another armor set, before changing over to the version with just the coat. "That's better. Yeah, going to have to get weight reduction stuff on this ASAP."

Our conversation was cut off as the base phone rang. Raising an eyebrow, I moved over and picked it up. Listening for a moment, I grinned. "Someone will be right out," I answered, hanging up and turning a grin on the girls. "Pizza's here. I'll be back."

A quick trip to the salle port as the Fox later, and I came back with a load of boxes held up by Telekinesis. Dropping them on the kitchen table, I watched as the girls descended on them like a school of hungry piranha. "Movie time!" Ruby yelled, disappearing from the kitchen in a spray of rose petals, in the direction of the living room.

"Pajamas!" the twins yelled back, drawing a muffled reply that sounded like, "Oh, yeah," around a mouthful of food.

"Such a kid," Yang rolled her eyes as Ruby's Semblance sounded again, headed for one of the bedrooms, presumably to change.

Neo invading her personal space and taking hold of her chin to pull her face downwards had Yang blinking as she found herself staring into mismatched strawberry and vanilla eyes—now suddenly intimately close to Neo's much shorter form. The blonde's face dusted slightly red at the sudden closeness and I had no doubt that was Neo's intention—that, and planting the image in my head of her closing that distance. Damned tease. "You're still wearing clothes," Neo pointed out. "We have a strict 'pajamas only' rule today."

The blonde raised an eyebrow before shooting me a leer, then turning on her heel and sauntering towards the living room herself—presumably to collect her own bag and go change. I could not help the way the sway of her hips drew my eyes to her ass and upper thighs—I was only a man, damnit. "Don't encourage her," I said to Neo, shaking my head and grabbing my own food as the girls began to clear out, only to find myself blocked by the twins.

"That rule applies to you, too," Miltia grinned up at me.

I blinked. "I do not own pajamas."

The twins shared a look before turning identical leers on me. "That's too bad. I guess boxers will have to do," Melanie suggested.

Rolling my eyes, I focused on Conjuration and called up a simple pair of black jogging bottoms and a blue tee-shirt. Seeing the twins pout, I raised an eyebrow in question for a moment before I realized what was wrong. 'Ah. They want me to play along. Well, I suppose that's fine. I may as well ham it up a bit and get a laugh out of the girls,' I grinned. Grabbing a drink, I went back into the living room and put my plate and drink on the table beside my chair, which was again occupied by Jen.

"Well, you wanted a show," I leered at Yang, before beginning to strip. Beginning to tease my hoodie off, I pulled up Charisma and Intent. While Dating Mode was stuck as an 'always on' passive skill now, I'd found I had at least some control over it—namely, since it ran off of my Aura, the more Aura I used the greater the effect while suppressing my Aura cut the effect entirely. The effect I was going for wasn't the usual combination Aura/Intent slap I tended to use with Killing Intent or even the brute force arousal effect of using it just with Dating Mode, rather I was going for something a bit more subtle—a slow ramp-up to get them worked up, followed by dropping it. It would leave them frustrated, but then, I considered that turnabout for making me strip in the first place.

The blonde grinned, before sticking her fingers in her mouth and wolf whistling at me. "Take it off!"

"Dinner and a show?" Melanie asked, looking thoughtful, before beginning to shift in her seat.

"Needs popcorn," Miltia commented, seeing where her sister was going and drawing a nod from the other twin. Miltia, likewise, looked to be getting antsy.

Neo snorted softly, her mismatched eyes fixed on me as she watched with a grin. Her breath was already coming slightly faster as she warned, "Don't complain, you two—you may discourage him from doing it again."

Rolling my eyes, I tossed my hoodie at her face. The shorter girl caught it, sticking her tongue out at me for the attempt. "Bite me."

Three answers to that came immediately from Neo, the twins, and surprisingly Jen, who I noticed seemed least affected—at least, in the normal way. Where the others all showed at least mild signs of excitement, Jen seemed to have gone somewhat boneless as her eyes went half-lidded and she relaxed. "Okay," from Neo. At the same time, the twins asked, "Where?" while Jen asked, "How hard?"

"My ass," I retorted.

"But Jaune, I do not believe that would be pleasant for anyone involved," Penny piped up.

Throwing the gynoid an amused look, I noticed that even she was blushing faintly—which left me to wonder whether it was the situation or whether she was reacting to my Aura somehow. I clarified, "That was the point, Penny." I took a second to wonder if it would be worth it to introduce Penny to what I remembered of Futurama. Having her tell someone to bite her shiny metal ass would be amusing, but I wasn't entirely sure I should corrupt her quite that badly.

"Stop distracting him," Blake cut in quietly and I glanced over to find her with her book closed in her lap with a finger holding her place between the pages. Her golden eyes were fixed firmly on me, pupils dilated and breath coming faster as a hint of a blush stained her face. Beside her, Ruby seemed to be a even worse off, showing the same pupillary dilation and increased breathing, while her fists clenched tightly into her pajama pants. Of those present she seemed the most affected and I made a mental note that she didn't seem to have the same sort of resistance most of the other girls did due to constant exposure—even Blake had more exposure at this point than Ruby. On the other side of Ruby from Blake, Yang was shifting uncomfortably in her seat eying me like a piece of meat and it was plainly obvious she wasn't wearing a bra at the moment.

I raised an eyebrow at her words but didn't comment—no point scaring her off by singling her out if she was willing to join in the fun with everyone else. I did, however, make her the target of my next projectile, pulling today's shirt over my head and sending it flying across the room to smack into her face. The faunus girl reached up and pulled it off, sending me an unamused look as she did so. There was the sound of someone choking off to my side while Ruby gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as her eyes went wide. I turned enough to see Yang sitting down her glass and coughing, but her lilac eyes were locked on me.

"What?" I asked, wondering what those two were on about. There had been an abrupt shift in the mood somewhere and I wasn't sure what had brought it on. Allowing my Aura to drop, I asked, "There something on my face?"

"No, Jaune," Neo sighed, and a glance at the couch where she and the twins were seated showed three annoyed expressions turned towards the other pair of sisters in the room. "Your chest."

Blinking at the girl with mismatched eyes, I glanced down. "What? This?" I asked, gesturing at the scars situated between and partially across my pectorals, down nearly to my stomach. While the edges could be clearly identified as claw marks in a four claw drag pattern, the middle was a mess of criss-crossing scar tissue. There were no gouges or furrows where muscle or meat would be missing—which I could probably thank my Semblance for—but the texture, especially in the middle, was a bit rougher than the skin around it and it was definitely lighter in color than the rest of my flesh.

"What the hell is that?!" Yang asked, her voice sounding rough from having almost drowned herself recently. Every set of eyes not belonging to myself, Ruby, or Yang herself turned to glare at the blonde.

"Well, I believe they're what happens when someone gets hurt. I think they're called scars," I deadpanned at the blonde. For a moment, her expression shifted to exasperation before her eyes refocused on the skin in question. "Can't believe you two haven't seen this yet," I muttered quietly, shaking my head. "They were there when I woke up in the hospital. You can't see it, but there's a matching set under my hair—you'd feel it if you touched my scalp. They're just scars. Not a big deal."

Gesturing towards the scar in question, Yang asked, "How can you say that?"

Rolling my eyes, I said, "My Semblance turns most aspects of my life into a video game. In most games, you get to pick and choose your scars—and in those, there's usually a way to remove them if you're not happy with your choices. I didn't exactly get to choose, but I figure there's a way to remove them out there somewhere so I'm not exactly worried about it. Besides, it's not like they're impeding my ability to function or causing me pain. They're pretty much superficial." A thought occurred and I chuckled softly. 'I suppose not all chicks dig scars.'

"Actually, you're wrong," Blake pointed out quietly from beside Ruby, who still looked horrified. I'll admit, I couldn't tell if I should feel a bit hurt at that look being directed at me—I was reserving judgment until I figured out if she was horrified at me or for me. Meeting Blake's eyes, I gestured for her to go on. "While advancements in medical technology have lead to being able to perform reconstructive surgery, it's very expensive and resources are limited, so it's typically reserved for the most severe cases—leaving it out of the reach of most normal civilians and Hunters. In other words, the people most likely to be hurt by Grimm or those who would need it most," she began, before slowly adding, "For those who can use it, Aura heals pretty much everything but lost limbs. Though, supposedly, given enough time someone with a powerful enough Aura could regenerate a missing limb. It just doesn't happen, because it'd take years and the people with that kind of Aura available tend to be Hunters and they can't be impaired or out of commission for that long."

"You can regrow limbs?" I asked, incredulity clear in my tone. "Okay, that's cool. So, what's the big deal? Also, starting to feel kind of uncomfortable here. Mind tossing that back?" I gestured towards the shirt and Blake pitched it back at me. Catching it, I pulled it over my head as Miltia picked up the explanation.

"It's a social stigma thing. It's not something you see in civilians—it's mostly in Hunter culture, and then only in inexperienced ones," the red-clad twin explained with a pointed look at Yang and Ruby. "Aura flash heals most things and what it doesn't—either from being too severe or from running out of Aura—will heal as you replenish your Aura or over a longer period of time if it's bad enough. For something to actually leave a scar on someone with an active Aura, it tends to mean one of a few things depending on the type and placement of the scar. If it's small and superficial but highly visible, then you're making some kind of personal statement or it's a badge of honor, a memento, or something along those lines. You're choosing to keep it and actively preventing your Aura from fixing it—which it would eventually, given enough time. Something like yours, though…"

Melanie picked up where her twin left off. "It's a sign of weakness and/or stupidity. You fucked up bad enough to get grievously wounded and you were too weak to heal it properly." The girl shifted her glare from Ruby and Yang to meet my eyes, her expression softening as she did. "Older Hunters know that's bullshit, for the most part—except for the most self-absorbed and the idiots. Live long enough and eventually something or someone is going to give you something to remember them by."

"It's not like we hid it from you," Neo jumped in, and I sent her an amused look as she looked somewhat flustered at the moment. "We know the situation, but even before that we didn't really care."

"I guess that explains the thing with Fox in the armor shop this morning," I murmured. Gesturing towards where Yang had joined her sister and Blake on the other couch, I asked, "So, what's up with them? You'd figure with Tai and Qrow around, that wouldn't really be a thing…"

"We're right here, you know," Yang grumbled, holding Ruby against her side. I noticed the younger girl's expression had shifted from horrified to ashamed, and she was sending me the most pitiful look I'd ever seen at the moment.

A quiet voice answered with a single word and it took me a moment to realize it was Jen, as she had been quiet since Yang had first said something. For a moment, I wondered why, before I realized that with no 'Lust Aura' active, she'd lost her mellow. "Signal."

I shot her a questioning look, but it was Blake who picked up that trail of logic. "Yang, Ruby, and your sister are the only ones here who have had an 'official' education as a Hunter."

A laugh escaped me as I sent the faunus girl an incredulous look. "Peer pressure?" I asked, before almost doubling over in laughter. "Really?"

Neo's mental voice drew my attention. 'Not everyone here is immune to peer pressure, my love. You have to remember, they're just teenagers—and girls at that. They don't have the experience you, or I, or your older sisters do to shrug it off. Even the twins would probably fold to the right influence.'

'Oh, right,' I sent back. Put that way, I could see it made sense. Put another way, it was like finding out that I had a debuff to Charisma when applied to certain situations or with certain people, if they knew about it. Considering how much I loathed any sort of stat debuff, I was going to be looking into a way to fix it at some point even if it didn't bother me on a personal level. "Well, if it'll make you feel better, I'll keep my shirt on."

Penny chose that moment to pipe up. "Organics are weird," she muttered under her breath, and I caught Blake's ears twitching and eyebrows going up out of the corner of my eye. "Don't worry, Jaune! I'll still like you even if you're ugly."

"Thank you, Penny," I sighed, palming my face. There was more than one source of stifled giggling at that. Shaking my head, I shifted my attention back to Yang and Ruby, but not before muttering a parting shot of, "Laugh it up."

Yang made to say something before her teeth clicked as she shut her mouth. Melanie sighed in disappointment, shooting another irritated look at the other pair of sisters on the opposite couch. "And that's another reason we didn't bother mentioning it. We happen to enjoy shirtless time."

"We didn't want to make you self-conscious," Miltia clarified. Her gaze shifted to follow her sister's and her own displeasure was plain to see. "We'd just sort of gotten used to it and forgot it'd be a big deal for some people."

The sound I'd come to associate with Ruby's Semblance echoed over the room and the girl herself nearly knocked me over in a shower of rose petals and wind as she slammed into my chest and wrapped her arms around me, crying quietly as she buried her face against my chest and sobbed apologies, though I couldn't make out half of it through her mewling. I think she was equal parts sorry for me getting hurt and for making me feel bad about it. Which, in turn, made me feel like a bit of a heel because I wasn't here when it happened and I really didn't feel bad about it.

"Hey, whoa, it's okay. Ruby, I'm not mad at you," I consoled the girl, reaching up to stroke her hair and returning the desperate hug.

"If—if you want to kick us out, we understand," Ruby got out quietly, muffled as it was against my chest. I shifted my gaze over to Yang, where lilac eyes met my blue, regret clear in her expression—though she said nothing to contradict her sister.

Raising an eyebrow at the blonde, I gestured towards Ruby in my arms and asked, "What?"

Yang sighed, lilac eyes turning away as she quietly answered, "Ruby's never had many friends. She's kind of a prodigy, and a bit awkward, so you can guess how that went over with most of the people in her classes. You're probably the first people who just didn't care about any of that."

"So you're worried we're going to tell you to go away?" I asked, and the girl in my arms nodded. "I'm not the kind of asshole who ditches his friends over a simple misunderstanding. Just… don't act all weird over it," I sighed. "Like I said, it doesn't bother me. Is it going to be a problem for you?"

Ruby shook her head quickly against my chest and Yang sent me a small smirk, regaining some of her typical confident demeanor. "It's not a deal-breaker." Her expression shifted to slightly worried as she asked, "Anything else in the 'need to know' category?"

Sending a look at the twins and Neo, the trio exchanged a glance between themselves. The twins shrugged while Neo shook her head minutely. "There are a few things, but nothing I would call 'need to know' and none of it that we really need to get into today."

I released Ruby and pushed her gently towards the couch. The girl shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen, where the faucet turned on and I heard her blowing her nose. I moved to sit down and Miltia turned an amused look on me. "Forgetting something?" she asked. When I raised my eyebrows in question, she said, "You're still dressed." From her tone, I could tell she was trying to lighten the mood, so despite not particularly feeling like it any more, I went along with the suggestion.

"Be right back," I said, heading into the bedroom long enough to change into the clothes I'd conjured. Padding barefoot across the living room, I dropped down into my chair as soon as Jen hopped up, only for her to drop back onto me again. Wanting to change the subject, I asked, "So, what movie are we watching?"

Neo hummed, putting her plate on the table before moving over towards our entertainment center. "I'll pick something."

As she moved, I noticed her 'nightgown' slowly changing—growing more and more sheer as she crossed the living room and losing material here and there as though it were evaporating. 'Or more like glass shattering,' I realized, as she got close enough for me to get a good look at the effect. 'She managed to scale down or refine the 'break' effect of her illusions shattering. Maybe her Semblance leveled? That'd be nice.' All those thoughts couldn't distract me from the fact that her outfit was practically transparent as she bent over and studied a stack of movies.

"Ah ha!" the short, curvy girl cheered, twirling around and causing the 'skirt' at the bottom of her outfit to flare upwards. "Found one!"

"Uh huh," I muttered quietly, my eyes glued to the show she was putting on.

A spray of rose petals announced Ruby's return as she dropped back onto the couch she had been sharing with her sister and Blake—her eyes still red and slightly puffy, but she looked better. "So what movie are we watch...ing…" the girl trailed off before murmuring a quiet, "Eep."

Beside her, Yang sat frozen, taking in the scene. I couldn't say I blamed her as I finally managed to pry my eyes off of Neo and take in what she and the twins had set up. Neo, Melanie, Miltia, and Jen all wore similar negligees, though in Jen's case, it looked as though she had borrowed one of Neo's. Jen was short, but not nearly as short as Neo, and a bit more well-endowed and curvier overall as well—so where the negligee fit Neo perfectly, it clung to Jen like a second skin, left her breasts looking as though they might pop out if she inhaled enough, and was so short that moving wrong would have left her exposed for the world to see. It was lewd in a way that it shouldn't have had any right to be, to the point where it would have been less lewd for her to have gone naked. She shifted slightly in my lap and I nearly groaned as I had to remind myself that I was the one who said I would be keeping my hands off. Harmless flirting or occasionally letting her sleep in my bed was one thing, but having her on my lap grinding her firm ass against my erection through the thin fabric of her panties and my own cotton boxers and jogging pants was going to be torture.

"Well, shit," Yang sighed, sparing a look at her attire—a loose yellow spaghetti strap top and a set of gray shorts that stopped about halfway up her thighs. "If I'd have known it was that kind of pajama party I'd have brought mine."

"Yaaaaang!" Ruby half-whimpered, half-whined, blushing from the tips of her hair all the way down and clad in her black tee-shirt and pajama pants.

"Don't worry, sis, I'm pretty sure they've got something in your size," Yang smirked at her sister, who couldn't seem to decide whether she wanted to bury her face in the couch cushions or strangle her sister.

Looking down at her own, by comparison, very tame robe—what I thought was supposed to be a short kimono of some kind—Blake hummed thoughtfully. "I need to go shopping," she muttered to herself. She loosened the belt and shifted slightly, allowing one shoulder of the garment to slide down her arm and exposing her cleavage. Shifting her legs drew the end of the robe up, exposing a very generous amount of her pale, creamy thighs in the process. Looking up, gold eyes met my blue with a look I couldn't quite place before she snagged a slice of pizza and stuck her nose back in her book while occasionally peeking over the top to take in the drama unfolding.

Sighing, I palmed my face and gestured towards the light switch, hitting it with Telekinesis and casting the room into darkness. "Neo, remind me to discuss this with you in private later."

"Somebody's going to get a spankin'," Melanie taunted. I think only Ruby missed the way Yang blushed at that as she shifted in her seat.

"Oh dear. No. Anything but that," Neo retorted in a completely flat voice as one corner of her lips twitched up in a small smirk.

Penny chose that moment to ask, "Jaune, why does it seem like that is something she wants?"

"Because it is," I answered, noting there seemed to be an echo coming from the twins, Yang, Blake, and Jen—along with a strange whining sound from Ruby's general vicinity.

---

It was very late—or very early—when credits rolled on the last movie of the night and I yawned, stretching a bit but careful not to stir the sleeping form laying against my side. At some point in the evening we had moved from the living room to my bedroom, as it had the largest available bed. The bed was a tangle of mostly female bodies and limbs as the girls had piled up to watch one last movie before we called it a night. A glance at my HUD showed it to be after two in the morning—which went a way towards explaining the softly snoring blonde drooling on my chest and pinning my right arm. Jen had been asleep for at least the last hour and didn't look like she'd be waking any time soon.

"I think that's enough for tonight," I muttered quietly, looking around to see who was still up.

"Yeah, I'm beat," Yang agreed. "And Ruby's out like a light."

"More of the same tomorrow?" I asked, and I felt the bed shift for a moment before the glow of a scroll lit the room.

"You mean today," Melanie corrected from my left.

Putting away her scroll, Miltia said, "We don't really have anything scheduled, but…"

"But we're getting restless," Neo supplied from somewhere near the foot of the bed, and I raised an eyebrow at that.

"What do you mean, 'restless?'" I asked.

It was Blake who answered, her voice coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Yang, also near the foot of the bed. "Aura makes people more inclined to be physically active."

"Yeah. A day or two of not doing anything is about the most anyone with a normal level of Aura can stand before getting bored and restless," Miltia added.

Melanie nodded. "It's not like some sort of inability to focus or relax, just more of an abundance of energy. You want to get out and do things more, but you're not forced to. Which, from what we understand, works out well for the various Hunter training schools. It's easy to convince students to get out and run through obstacle courses and the like if the alternative is sitting in a classroom."

"Oh, Dust. Anything to get out of class," Yang groaned quietly. "I've heard the schedule at Beacon is worse than the other academies—which are worse than the initial training schools like Signal. I'm already dreading it."

"It'll be fine," I waved her off. "Besides, you signed up for it voluntarily. You don't get to complain."

"I can totally complain," Yang shook her head.

"How about we finish up crafting projects? It's a nice middle ground between doing something and taking a day off," Neo suggested, and I snorted softly. I happened to enjoy long weekends of doing precisely fuck all. Hell, on Earth, I'd have killed for a week or two off of work to do exactly that. Then again, I had been ridiculously busy since first waking up in Remnant. Would Aura leaving me restless explain some of my drive to constantly find something to do—aside from knowing that if I didn't, bad things were coming down the pipe and I would be unprepared for them, that is? Or was it simply that, unlike on Earth, I wasn't constantly fatigued and mentally drained, and left with the sort of mind-numbing stupor and headache at the end of the day that only dealing with idiots could produce? 'I believe the quote goes, 'This job would be great if it weren't for the fucking customers.''

"That sounds good. We could work on something for Yang and Ruby, while we've got you here," Melanie agreed, and I rolled my eyes. Of course, it could just boil down to the girls wanting to play with new clothes. Well, I couldn't exactly fault them. I still needed to finish up the work on my new armor. If Beacon hadn't been pushed back, I would have spent part of today doing that and working on the Ribbons. Then again, I suppose that was bullshit—the girls had wanted their time off, regardless of whether Beacon was starting or not.

"Jaune, don't you have active quests?" Miltia asked.

"Where'd that come from?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

The girl shot me an amused look. "It's something I've been wondering for a while. Humor me."

"I do," I agreed. "I've got a few I haven't read the details for. I've been putting it off."

I felt something shift against my left leg and looked down to see Yang had rolled over onto her stomach and was regarding me with lilac eyes. "So, don't keep us in suspense. What are they?"

Rolling my eyes, I opened up my quest log and sorted the quests there by completion and priority, with active quests at the top and in descending order of importance. "Mai—" I cut myself off and nearly face-palmed as I remembered that half the people in the room weren't aware of that quest and the others weren't fully in on the details. "Skipping that one."

"Is that…?" Neo asked, and I resisted the urge to groan as I nodded. Thankfully, she hadn't said more on it.

"Is that what?" Blake asked. I felt the bed shift slightly before golden eyes popped into my field of view over the curve of Jen's body.

Frowning, I wondered how to word it so as not to give too much away. "Remember me getting dropped into the living room with a sword through me?" I asked, and she nodded. "It was just before that. Someone important got hurt and I'm supposed to fix it. I told Ruby and Yang a bit about it this morning. I can't share all the details, unfortunately."

Humming, Blake shot a glance at the twins and Neo, who did not look as though this was new information to them. Biting her lip as she considered a moment, she finally nodded. "I won't push, then."

"Thanks," I murmured, moving on to the next. Looking over the rest of my active quests, I frowned. 'I'm not going to tell them about Romancing Remnant. I don't think they'd appreciate that one. Likewise, things like Blake's loyalty quest. And I don't think Yang wants me to tell everyone here about the next stage of her quest for Raven.' Looking up, I said, "There are a few more. Path of the Rogue, for instance. It's stuck in holding until I get out and do more black market jobs, then it'll probably advance again because this one seems like a fairly long quest chain."

"'Black market jobs?'" Blake echoed quietly, and I shrugged.

"Mostly deliveries. Pick up unknown cargo, deliver unknown cargo to buyer, that sort of thing."

Blake frowned. "That seems kind of shady."

I shot her a deadpan look, going silent for a full five seconds before she got the message and looked away, uncomfortably reminded that she had no room to talk given her activities with the White Fang. Once the message was delivered, I continued. "Maybe, but it paid the bills for a while and it's useful for infiltration and information gathering, not to mention training. Aside from that, I have one named 'Picking up the Tab.' That one says to go pay Hei a visit and pay him for the damages Yang's bar fight caused—"

"Hey! You were involved in that too, mister," the blonde countered.

I continued on as if she hasn't interrupted. "But I don't remember getting that one. Or accepting it. What the hell? Weird. Then there's 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,' which is my quest to get Sanguine to one of her extremes on the progression scale. And 'Damsel in Distress,' which is glitched as still active, because the girl that was attacked isn't dead yet but is comatose. And I shouldn't really give out details for the rest of that."

"Why not?" Yang asked, shooting me a suspicious look.

Shifting my gaze to the blonde, I asked, "Would you want me giving out personal, private details regarding things you want done if I were doing something for you?" The girl paled and shook her head quickly. "Thought not. Aside from that, there's The Great Hunt, which essentially says to track down and kill at least one Nameless-level boss for each type of Grimm. Similarly in that vein is Kaiju Killer, which wants me to track down and kill Kaiju-class Grimm. The Nameless was a Kaiju-class, so I assume there's a reason those two are separate and not just rolled into one quest—probably the first is based on level and the second on size category. How many types of Grimm are there? I ask because I've got another one to track down and kill at least one of every type."

"A lot," Neo answered with a frown. "New types are being discovered every day."

"Nothing else you can tell us?" Miltia asked, and I looked over and caught her eye, finding a small smile on her lips. Her expression plainly said they knew I wasn't telling them everything, but that they understood—not everyone in the room was ready to hear the full details of my Semblance, or the sort of things it could do, including scrying out details of someone's life that they wouldn't want revealed. Miltia was, thankfully, crafty enough to disguise it as simply teasing, however. "Perhaps about that first quest? It sounded interesting…"

They weren't satisfied with what I'd shared, so I should probably give them something a bit more interesting to focus on. Thinking it over, I shrugged before opening up my Inventory. "Nope, but I found a particularly shiny bauble in Atlas. Pretty sure it's a key item, but my Semblance isn't really labeling it as such." Sticking my hand in the Inventory window, I fished out a small, angular shape. I held it up for the others to see and in the process bathed the room in a wave of soft, multi-colored light that looked like the light off a properly lit Christmas tree—save that it moved and shifted in random patterns, as though the light source were under water. The shifting was due to the fact that the object in my hand was shifting constantly under its surface—the exterior of which had reshaped into something resembling a sphere about the size of a tennis ball at the moment, if a sphere had been composed of countless angles and faces.

"Shiny," Neo murmured, reaching out and taking it. "Mine now."

"What is it?" Miltia asked as Melanie swiped it from Neo and examined it closer.

"I believe Jaune called it a Prismatic Dust Core. My father desperately wanted one for his research, but Atlas never allowed him access," Penny supplied quietly, and I blinked as I realized she had been silent the entire time. Shifting a bit, I tried to figure out why, and found the gynoid serving as Ruby's full body pillow, given that the little reaper had wrapped all of her limbs around Penny, squid-like. 'That explains that. She didn't want to wake Ruby up.'

"Yeah, that's what it's tagged as in my Semblance. Though, it's kind of a mouthful," I admitted.

"You said Atlas had it?" Melanie asked, and I nodded. "Where? Where you found Penny?"

"No," I denied. "The PDC was at a Schnee mining operation. They were doing readings on it, but I didn't stick around to check out the results."

Blake shifted again and I caught sight of her eyes, looking faintly luminous in the soft light—in the way a cat's eyes look at night. "This came from Schnee?" Her lips twitched into a faint smirk. "I wouldn't mind taking away more of their toys…"

"So, what's the shiny rock do?" Yang asked, having taken it for herself.

"Fuck if I know," I shrugged. "Other than change shape and size, I've got no idea. It's why I say it's a key item—games are notoriously bad about that sort of thing. They give you a McGuffin, tell you it's valuable, then never reveal what the hell it does."

"A McMuffin?" the blonde asked, and I rolled my eyes. "You do know that for the rest of us, life isn't a game, right?"

"Party, Now It Is," I deadpanned, shooting the girl a party invite as a reminder that that could change at a moment's notice.

Yang declined the invite and stuck her tongue out before passing me the crystal back, where I stowed it in Inventory again. Neo picked up where Yang had started. "Yang's right, though. It's not like it was just waiting in the world for you to pick it up."

"You're right," I agreed. "Doesn't mean it's not a key item."

I could almost hear the eye-roll as she countered, "Now you're just arguing to argue."

A grin made its way across my lips. "You know me so well." Glancing at the time in the corner of my HUD, I yawned. "I think it's bed time." When no one moved, I rolled my eyes. "This bed isn't big enough for all of us."

"Sure it is," Yang countered.

"You're not going to win this argument, Jaune," Miltia giggled, and I sighed.

Shaking my head, I gave it up as a bad job. "Fine, fine. Just don't blame me if you wake up stiff tomorrow."

"I don't think we're the ones who are going to have to worry about waking up stiff," Neo smirked, and I groaned softly as Jen decided to shift at that moment, her breasts moving against my chest as her bare legs shifted to pull my left leg between them. It was going to be a long, long night.

---

I woke up to the feeling of a soft hand wrapped around my hard shaft. Cracking open my eyes, I skimmed over the update text that morning—some minor improvements to the Guild interface that weren't important enough to memorize or really delve into—before trying to figure out who had gotten handsy. Looking down, I found a head of straight, blonde hair under my face—Jen's head buried in my chest, one arm and both legs wrapped around me, while the other hand was down the front of my conjured jogging pants. Or at least where those conjured pants had been, considering that they seemed to have mysteriously vanished. It took a moment to figure out why, given the distracting nature of the hand in question, but I eventually remembered that conjured items tended to have around a twelve hour time limit on them at this level. A glance at the time showed it to be after 10 a.m. and I noticed that the bed was empty, save for us. 'I slept in,' I mused. 'I slept in and the girls didn't. Even Neo is up. That's kind of surprising. I didn't even know I could do that. I figured them moving around would wake me up, or Gamer's Body would eventually kick in and have me awake at a certain time or something. More proof of biology trumping weird Semblance shenanigans? But what about the opposite, where it allows me to stay up for days at a time with little to no consequence?'

Shrugging mentally, I checked the minimap to see where everyone was. Blake, Penny and Neo were in showers—Blake in her own, Penny and Neo sharing mine. I raised an eyebrow at that—Penny had quickly become a very touchy-feely girl and loved attention, so I wasn't too terribly surprised that she would share shower time with the others. And knowing Penny, it was entirely innocent of the kind of touching that tended to go on between myself and the twins or Neo when we shared the shower. Shifting my focus from Penny and Neo, I saw the Malachite twins, Ruby, and Yang were all in the kitchen—and judging by the smell, there were pancakes cooking. My stomach growled and I shook my head. I would need to get up, soon.

"Do we have to get up?" a soft, low voice asked, and I realized that Jen was awake.

"At some point," I agreed. My lips quirked up in a mischievous grin and I intentionally made my dick jump in her hand. "Comfortable?"

The blonde's answering squeeze killed any notion I may have had of embarrassing her. "Very," she said softly, shifting her head slightly back and forth, rubbing her face on my chest. Rolling my eyes, I pulled up a bit of Intent and Charisma—enough to be noticeable at her range, but not enough to hit the entire Officers' Quarters. The blonde wrapped around me practically purred, melting in my arms. "Mmm. Keep doing that," she murmured, her voice hitting that sultry range that ran straight to my dick, as hers tended to do quite often I'd noticed.

"Only if you'll take your hand out of my pants," I countered.

"You're not wearing pants," Jen was quick to point out.

I rolled my eyes. "Touche. However, as much as I enjoy it, I don't want blue balls."

She groped the balls in question before removing her hand. "I could—"

"No," I denied, reaching down and running a hand through her hair. "I'm not going to take advantage of you like that. If you still feel that way when we fix what's been done to your head, ask me again."

She tilted her head up, blue eyes regarding me with curiosity. "Not going to try to talk me out of it?"

"Went through that with Joan. Didn't work," I deadpanned, and she gave a soft laugh in response. It was a nice laugh—sexy and unintentionally sensual, and a little giddy. "You feeling okay?"

She hummed, closing her eyes for a moment. "A little giddy, a little horny, and happy. Well rested, too."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Still having problems sleeping?" It seemed to be a fairly obvious thing, given what I knew had happened to her, but I wanted to confirm it.

Jen nodded. "You have no idea how much this helps." She paused for a moment, before adding, "We won't be able to do this when you're in Beacon."

"Why not?" I asked.

"You won't have time," she deadpanned. "Joan and the twins never had time to leave the school, except on the weekends—and then they were wiped from classes."

"I'll make time," I promised. "I've already promised I would. You've got a place here. If you're here when I come to visit the girls, they aren't exactly going to complain about one more person sharing the bed. Besides, once the shrink gets you medically discharged and you're hired on with Fox Hunt, I'm thinking I'll make you my personal escort-slash-bodyguard—one of, anyway. That way, there's always a reason for you to be around. I'm sort of working with Ozpin and his little group now, so it wouldn't be out of the question for me—the Fox, that is—to have you liaise with them in my place if I'm busy. Meaning you'd have an excuse to be at Beacon, from time to time. And hey, while you're there…"

"I might as well stop by and check up on my little brother," she gave a faint smile, nodding. "And if I timed it right, spending the night wouldn't be out of the question."

"See? Problem mostly solved," I grinned. "I'm pretty sure I can convince whatever team I wind up with that letting you camp in our dorm for a night or two a week isn't a terrible thing. You may have to part with some training or something to make it worth their while, though."

"I'd be fine with that," Jen agreed, settling back down and inhaling deeply through her nose. "You smell nice."

I sniffed myself and shook my head. "I need a shower."

The blonde in my arms shrugged, before making a languorous stretch, her body pulling closer to my own as she did. My bathroom door opened, letting out a small cloud of steam, along with Neo and Penny. "Oh good, you're up," the ice cream themed girl grinned, before crawling onto the bed. Her towel fell off halfway to me and she wound up sprawled naked over both me and Jen as her lips claimed mine. "Mm. Good morning."

"Morning," I returned, when she pulled away.

A teasing grin crossed her lips as Neo's mismatched vanilla and strawberry gaze met Jen's blue, before she leaned down and planted her lips on the blonde woman's. "Just so no one's jealous."

"Does that mean I can have one too?" Penny asked, drawing my attention to where the gynoid was finishing drying off—wrapped in a towel and only a towel.

With her hair damp and ruffled and the red left on her skin from the heat of the shower, she looked pretty much indistinguishable from a human—which was the point, I supposed. Doll joints would kind of give things away, after all. 'Still, emulating a blush response? That's a lot of effort to go through for something like Penny—a project that, near as I can tell, was supposed to be some sort of combat gynoid. And yet, evidence speaks to the contrary: blush response, simulated nervous system mimicking all five senses, skin and hair that feel mostly real unless you're paying attention, working reproductive organs… As a combat platform, that's a lot of wasted energy. Hell, aside from her strength, all of her weapons are externally mounted. As an infiltration unit, however, it'd be perfect. What was her 'father' planning for her? I get the feeling that whatever it was, I'm not going to like it. And I'm going to have to set aside a weekend at some point to do some deep dives into Penny's memory core with her. Not sure how that's going to work, what with Penny's mind being a computer. Mental spells can't target her, but maybe I can figure something out with the connection between us.Either way, she'll probably need someone to hold her again until she can calm down.'

"You certainly can!" Neo grinned, rolling off the bed, bouncing up, and planting a quick peck on the ancula's lips. A moment later, her usual outfit materialized around her body and she shifted slightly to adjust the fit before heading for the bedroom door. "I think I smell pancakes."

"Oooh, pancakes," Penny echoed, equipping her own clothes and following quickly on Neo's heels, the door closing behind her.

Jen blinked before shooting a faintly amused look my way. "Seems like Neo has figured out how to manage Penny," she commented, and I nodded.

"Penny's not hard to deal with once you figure out that she's ridiculously easy to please." Giving my own stretch, and noticing how the girl in my arms pulled herself tighter to me as I did, I cast a glance at the door to the bathroom. "So, are you coming?"

Jen blinked before raising one fine, blonde eyebrow. "Are you asking me to shower with you?"

"I didn't want to presume, but I kind of figured you'd enjoy it," I told her.

Jen glanced away, considered it for a moment, then nodded. Taking one of my hands, she sat up and pulled me towards the bathroom. "Wash my back for me? And my hair?"

"Sure," I agreed, willing to give her excuses to reach out or be close if it helped.

Once we were finished, we joined the others for breakfast and headed to what passed as our project room. While the girls set about sizing Yang and Ruby for outfit modifications, I pulled my new armor and jacket, along with Cinder's dress out of Inventory and dug out my kit for creating Bounded Fields, Enchantments, and the like. The room went suddenly quiet and I blinked before looking up to find the others staring at me. "What?"

"Jaune," Yang began, looking unsure how to put what she clearly wanted to ask.

Blake beat her to the punch by asking, "Why do you have a woman's dress?"

I rolled my eyes at that. Of all of them, Neo looked the most amused—clearly she recognized whose dress it was. "Cause reasons," I answered evasively. A smirk threatened to break out but I ruthlessly crushed it as I stood and held the red, gold, and black piece of material up to my chest. "What do you think? My color? Would it make my ass look fat?"

Once everyone had settled down from the ensuing giggle fit, Yang asked, "Hey Jaune, got a minute? Can we talk?"

Before I could answer, Neo shot Yang an annoyed look. "No, it's fine, I'm totally done here."

Yang had the decency to look sheepish. "Sorry," she apologized. In response, Neo made a shooing motion towards the door.

"Sure," I nodded, putting the dress down and following the blonde outside, to curious looks from the others. "What's up?" I asked, when she lead me up into the retractable hangar above our quarters—which was about as far away and as isolated as one could get without going outside or leaving the bounded fields around the place.

"About my mom," she began, then hesitated and shook her head. "No, actually, I'm sorry—about yesterday."

I rolled my eyes. "It's fine, Yang. No harm, no foul. Now, what about your mom?"

Heaving an irritated sigh, the blonde asked, "What's she doing here? I mean, she hasn't been around in years and all of a sudden she just decides to show up?"

Frowning, I leaned against the hangar wall and crossed my arms over my chest. "That one's my fault."

Lilac eyes narrowed on me as Yang asked, "What do you mean?"

I took a moment to figure out how to word what I wanted to say without giving away too much. "I can't go into the exact reason, but I can tell you that it was official Hunter business. The issue is still outstanding, I believe, so I think she'll be hanging around a while."

"And she can't be bothered to see her kids?" the blonde ground out, and I shook my head.

"Sorry Yang, I can't give you much insight into her reasons for that." I got the feeling that Raven didn't really appreciate me asking, either.

Yang began to pace, and I noticed the room getting warmer as her Aura picked up, beginning to cause some of her hair to start taking on that weightless quality it had when she used her Semblance. "Where is she, then?!"

Sighing quietly, I shrugged. "I've got no idea. In town, somewhere, but I can't track her. She doesn't show up on my map."

"Then how were you planning to contact her?" she asked, spinning around and leveling a red-eyed glare on me.

"Because I can contact her, sometimes. Usually when she's snooping on me. When she's paying attention and feels like listening."

Moving to close the distance between us, the blonde stepped into my personal space and said, "Call her now."

I shook my head. "I can't. Have you figured out what you would even say to her?" I asked, but I suspected I already knew the answer. 'And at the rate she's going with this, she's either going to implode or explode and wind up hurting either herself, or someone around her. At this point, it'd actually be better for her to just get it out of her system rather than letting it build. And better me than, say, Ruby.'

"How about, 'where the fuck have you been for the last ten years,' for starters?" Yang spat. "Or 'did you forget our scroll number?' Better yet, 'why did you abandon me?!'"

And that was the true heart of the matter, wasn't it? Ruby at least had the knowledge that her mother loved her and that Summer was dead and not simply off somewhere, doing God knew what, but obviously something she felt was more important than taking care of her kid. If I had to guess, Yang seemed driven to either convince her mother to return, or get closure—it was what made the most sense, given what I knew of her situation and comparing that to what I knew of people in general. I'd heard the same story time and time again on Earth. Parent seemingly abandons child, child grows up to resent parent, child seeks out parent who left, and the child is usually left with nothing like the answers they were expecting.

The problem with that was, I didn't know if there was any closure to be had. I hadn't pieced together much, but the impression of the woman I had was that Raven was driven, mission-focused, and didn't do anything without a goal in mind. 'Who knows what the hell runs through that woman's head, though,' I mused. She simply played things too close to the vest to be able to read much off her—especially where her personal thoughts and feelings were concerned. Even Observe came up blank half the time—the other half giving 'helpful' little readings of her emotional state like: bored, hungry, sleepy.

Aloud, I asked, "What if you don't like the answers?"

"What do you mean?" Yang asked quietly, and I elaborated.

"I mean, do you really feel that any answer she gives is going to make you feel better? And what if there is no answer? What then?" Sighing, I softly added, "Yang, throwing a tantrum at your mother the moment you see her isn't going to convince her to come back and stay. Hell, depending on why she was gone, it may just convince her you don't want her around."

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?!" Mt. Xiao Long erupted, her Aura exploding around her as she brought her hands up. Reflexively, I dumped mana into Haste and tracked the path of her descending fists—preparing to shield if I needed to. It turned out that I didn't, however, as I saw where she was aiming. An instant later, the hangar rang like a struck gong as Yang's fists slammed into the metal wall to either side of my head. I grabbed her wrists and pulled, dragging her bodily against me as I pivoted and traded places with her, shoving her back against the wall. "Let go!"

"Not until you settle down," I denied, and the blonde in my arms began to struggle, trying to throw me off. Weight and leverage gave me the advantage, but a bit of subtle gravity manipulation might have helped it along.

After a whole lot of fruitless thrashing and screaming, she went limp in my arms and her Aura went out like a candle in a stiff breeze. I loosened my grip on her wrists and she slowly pulled them out of my grasp, before draping her arms around my neck and dropping her head on my chest as she began to shake. Carefully, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into a hug. It was with a quiet, hollow voice, scratchy with tears that she asked, "Why doesn't she want anything to do with us?"

"I don't know, Yang." Thinking it over, I quickly came to a decision and added, "But I'll do what I can to find out."

"Thanks, Jaune," she murmured, in between a sniffle. Sighing, she pulled away and wiped at her eyes. "We should get back."

I nodded, gesturing towards the door. "Any time you need to talk, I'll listen," I offered, and the girl turned a watery smile on me in answer.

Though I know the others surely noticed the wet spots and rumpled state of my shirt and the red around Yang's eyes, they didn't say anything. The absolute last thing we needed was Ruby jumping to the wrong conclusion, but thankfully she didn't. Instead, the little reaper pulled her big sister into a hug and pulled her off to the side to have a quiet conversation of their own. Retaking my preferred spot, I went back to work. Pulling up the patterns I needed to do, I set to work on the armor first. I had the requisite level of Sewing to modify the coat and reverse engineer Cinder's Dustcaster design now, but getting the armor wearable ranked higher on my list of priorities. With any luck, I would get both done today. If not, there was still time before Beacon started, given the new commencement date. I tuned out the noise around me and settled down to work.

I spent the day finishing out setting up the enchantments on my gear and, once I was done with that, started adding a set for the girls. Normally, this would have involved the twins and Neo sitting around in the nude and trying to distract me while I worked, leading to bedroom fun later—but with our guests, and other factors, we couldn't exactly do that. So, whichever girl was getting her clothes modified at the time got to wear a robe while I worked. Thankfully, it didn't take nearly as long to do theirs as it had to do mine—between my armor and coat, and all the enchantments I'd added, it had taken a while there. The girls all had less material to cover for the most part and not much in the way of armor or accessories to modify.

Additionally, reverse engineering Cinder's Dustcaster enchantment had taken a fair bit of time, as had getting it onto the upper part of my jacket on the inside, where it wouldn't be seen. It was the most complex pattern by far, and not adding it to the girls' outfits cut down the time I had to spend on each by a lot. I would add it later, if they wanted the option to use their clothes as a Dustcaster, but for the moment they didn't really need it—and, realistically, their outfits just didn't have enough material to stack that on top of everything else. I made a mental note to suggest adding more clothes, later. Even just a short jacket would be enough, on top of everything else, but I would prefer long coats simply for the fact that, like my own, it would act as an extra layer of light armor. Then again, maybe I'd get lucky and they would consider an outfit change at some point, shifting to something more practical. Well, it was something to bring up with the others, once Ruby, Yang, and Blake had some time at Beacon and some experience under their belts. I was hoping one of the teachers would do the job for me and convince them that turning down options for keeping their insides inside was dumb.

It was some time after dark when Melanie and Miltia finally pulled me away from my work—though, more likely, they had watched and waited until I'd finished the last outfit because they knew interrupting while I was working on this was a bad idea. As soon as Melanie took her dress back and equipped it, I found myself dragged out of the otherwise empty work room—the others having departed at some point. As it turned out, they had left to go see to basic needs—specifically, silencing the growls of empty tummies. I hadn't even realized I'd worked straight through lunch until the smell hit me and my stomach voiced its own complaints. A nice meal and conversation with friends and loved ones rounded out the end to an otherwise quiet day, and I went to bed that night the most relaxed I'd been in days—a couple of days doing fuck all had been exactly what I'd needed.

---

Monday morning rolled around with more minor Semblance updates and my scroll chiming a text notification—the black one, specifically. Frowning, I looked at the ID and was only mildly surprised to find it was Qrow. Rolling my eyes, I attempted to get out of bed to head to the bathroom while I sent a reply, only for two sets of arms around me to tighten and pull me back down. One of those turned out to be Jen, again—spooned against my back. The second, however, caused my eyebrows to run towards my hairline. There must have been some nighttime shenanigans involved, because I distinctly remembered going to sleep with Miltia in my arms. Instead, I had woken up to find Ruby had taken her place—or had been put in her place.

A look around showed that for the second time in as many days the others had left before I'd woken up as well. A quick check also showed that I was naked again, thanks to evaporating clothes. I made a mental note to start equipping boxers under my conjured clothes and went about equipping something to prevent Ruby from having an embolism should she wake up at the most inopportune time possible. 'There's always the possibility that she's faking sleep,' I mused, which drove me to check for that. Sighing quietly as I found that she was still asleep and not just feigning sleep like Jen, I opened the message.

'Meet me for coffee. 9am.'

I blinked at that and shook my head. 'So, something about Ozpin's group.' Thinking over my reply, I frowned. 'I should probably give him a heads up about the train job, while I'm at it. It'll make for a decent show of faith on my part and it won't cost me much—assuming he keeps his mouth shut about it.' With that in mind, I sent my reply.

'Sure, as long as there's a shot of bourbon in that coffee.'

That done, I set about extricating myself from the grasp of the two girls in my bed. Tilting my head back slightly to look over my left shoulder, I turned my attention to Jen first. "I've got a meeting I need to get to. It's kind of urgent," I whispered. A moment later, I felt her nod against my back and her arms loosened. Shifting my gaze to Ruby with her nose buried against my chest, I debated how to go about this. On the one hand, I could just wake her up—it's not like she was naked, or doing anything the others hadn't done before. On the other hand, odds were good that she would be very embarrassed—and while she was absolutely adorable when she blushed, I felt I could probably handle it better than that. Shaking my head, I subvocalized "Sleep" and carefully loosened her arms from around me before sitting up.

Bright blue eyes set under a messy mop of long, blonde hair regarded me when I shifted my gaze to Jen. "Would you do me a favor?" I asked, and she nodded. "Keep her company till she wakes up?"

"Sure," Jen agreed, reaching over and pulling the smaller girl into her arms as I moved out from between them. I noticed that even in induced sleep, Ruby went right back to clinging to the closest warm body. "Where are you going?"

"Her uncle sent me a text. He wants to meet up for coffee—which is code for he wants to talk about Ozpin," I answered, heading for the shower. A quick scrub later, I walked out in street clothes and found Jen had closed her eyes again, but was still awake—as evidenced by one eye cracking open to track me. I paused as I took her in, thinking for a moment before asking, "I think he's on our side—or at least that our goals line up nicely. Would you mind if I told him about you?"

The blonde frowned before giving a small shrug. "What will it get us?"

"Sympathy, for one," I answered, and before she could open her mouth to protest, I held up a hand. "The man's got two nieces just a few years younger than you—Ruby and Yang. He's also one fourth of Ozpin's inner circle. If he shares it with them, Ozpin and Goodwitch will likely also be on our side. The fourth guy, Ironwood, is high in Atlas command—hell, you've probably heard of him. Either this will be a wedge between them, opening room for me to work, or it'll get us unanimous support from Ozpin's group if Ironwood is a decent man and is unaware of the Specialist project. Either way, it's win/win for us."

"That seems… cold," she quietly assessed. "The kind of thing I saw in training—not something I'd expect to see from you."

"Probably," I agreed. "I know I can be a manipulative bastard, but at least I keep it all pointed externally, for our benefit. Someone has to. Can you live with that?"

There was no hesitation whatsoever as she answered with a quiet, "Yes."

"Okay. The Sleep spell I hit Ruby with was pretty under-powered, so it should wear off in a few minutes, if you want to wake her up." Taking in their forms, I grinned and added, "But if you want to stay in bed a bit longer I don't think she'll mind terribly. I'll be back soon."

Leaving the room and glancing at my HUD, I checked the time and winced—I was running late. Finding the others, I traded quick 'good morning' kisses with Neo, Melanie, and Miltia—and gave Penny a peck on the forehead when she pouted about being left out, as well as waving goodbye to Yang and Blake—then told them I was going out to take care of some things and made my way out for the stairs leading to the hanger above us. Equipping my Fox gear, I set the hangar to cycle open and closed, cast "Wings," and took off across town under Invisibility.

Almost unsurprisingly, it wasn't too hard to find a blind alley down on the docks where the bar Qrow wanted to meet at was situated—the cameras on most of the street it was situated on having long since been smashed and never replaced. The bar itself was situated within sight of one of the largest sea-side docks in Vale, making it a prime piece of land for anyone catering to the two primary things sailors were looking for when they came ashore. I bet money that if I looked, I'd find a brothel nearby as well. Even in Remnant—even in Vale—you couldn't escape man's oldest trades, and prostitution was safer by far than war in this world where war was sure to attract Grimm. On the other hand, odds were good that any such establishment would be well hidden from the public eye, to protect the reputations of both Johns and whores—meaning if I were looking for one, it might be more difficult than I'd initially thought. 'Or I could just follow the first horny sailor to step off a ship and see where he goes,' I mused.

Dropping down, I checked to make sure the coast was truly clear before swapping out of my Fox set to my new Jaune set—complete with long coat, armor, and weapons. Shifting around to get a feel for it again, I grinned. "Oh yeah, that's a lot better." I could move easily now that the weight of the armor wasn't forcing me to use my Aura to lift it.

Walking out of the alley, I made my way to the door and pulled it open. Looking around, I frowned at the setup—roll-up metal door, small open area, a couple of small tables in the corners, and a single bar with stools set up along it running the width of the building. If it weren't for seeing the man sitting at the bar, I would assume I had the wrong place.

Qrow looked over his shoulder as I neared and nodded. Making my way over, I took a seat on the stool beside him as the bartender started heading our direction. Qrow looked over my gear and hummed. "Nice outfit. It's missing something, though."

"Nah, I don't think I could get away with both a long coat and a cape," I retorted and he rolled his eyes. He had a point, however. Even with the full ensemble, it still looked like it was missing something. 'Something to offset the white and yellow,' I mused, making a note to ask Neo and the twins later, before a thought occurred. 'I was planning to make a ribbon anyway out of that silk I bought the other day, since I'm pretty sure I'm done with the testing phase on those—and I need to make some for the girls anyway. I could wear it outside, instead of hidden inside the coat as I'd intended. Wear it like a belt or something.'

The bartender speaking pulled me out of my thoughts. "What can I get for you?"

"Just a soda, I don't really care what kind," I answered, drawing an amused look from Qrow as the bartender shrugged and went away. "What? It's too early for alcohol and I don't drink coffee or tea."

Qrow rolled his eyes. "You and Glynda would get along, then—assuming she could reach deep enough to find the stick and remove it from her ass."

"And Ozpin loves his coffee, so I imagine that drives her nuts," I surmised, and he nodded. "But I'm assuming you didn't text me just to talk about your coworkers' bad habits." The bartender came back with my drink and I thanked him as I took a sip. Being that this was Remnant, finding something that tasted like a Dr. Pepper was proving kind of difficult. The drink I'd been handed tasted like someone had combined RC and Coca Cola and used cane sugar when processing it—so, while a bit odd, it wasn't entirely unpleasant either.

"Yeah," Qrow drawled, waiting until we had that section of the bar to ourselves again. He opened his mouth and I held up a hand before looking around to make sure I wasn't being watched. As I had so many times before, I focused on a spell I already knew—Silence, in this case—and made an effort to twist it into something new. A moment later, I felt the new spell snap into place and was rewarded with a spell creation notification, letting me know I'd just created the spell Muffliato, which would allow the caster to create a sphere of space that would muffle and distort all sound within to listeners outside and leveling it up would eventually allow it to completely silence the area within it from outside listeners. Humming as I tried to recall where I'd heard that spell name before, I gestured for Qrow to continue as my paranoia had been properly appeased for the moment.

"What was that?" Qrow asked as the spell settled into place.

"Everyone outside of about a meter won't really hear us now," I explained. The man raised an eyebrow at that and I could tell he was filing the information away for later use. While the thought was on my mind, I added, "Also, your choice of venue sucks. Seriously—back to a non-existent door, small, too well lit, nowhere to have a truly private conversation. And how does he keep the place temperature controlled given that it's open to the elements? How is this place even a bar?"

Chuckling quietly, Qrow said, "I'm friends with the bartender. He owes me one or two, so I drink for free."

I rolled my eyes. "That does not refute my points."

The older man shrugged and got down to business. "Thanks to that stunt with Amber, we're having to call in favors with a few people. One of them is the fourth leading member of our little… drinking club. James Ironwood. Big wig general in the Atlesian Navy, but an old friend of Oz. He'll be showing up in a fortnight and we want you there."

I blinked, running the timing over in my head before saying, "Goodwitch sent out an email to the students saying Beacon had been rescheduled for Monday two weeks from now. Your General Ironwood—"

"He's not my anything," Qrow cut in, and I rolled my eyes at that, continuing as if he hadn't interrupted.

"—Is supposed to be showing up around then. So, you're taking delivery for Amber's stasis pod on the same day the students are going to be coming back into Beacon?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Best time for it. Bring it in boxed in nondescript cardboard packing boxes in the morning when the fresh meat is getting their 'Welcome to Beacon' speech and it just looks like Atlas is bringing in a new shipment of tech. Oz being on fairly good terms with them helps, so that kind of thing is actually pretty common. Between all the brats and the stuff they're bringing with them, no one who matters will notice," he explained. It made a certain amount of sense—the students couldn't really go asking what it was because it wasn't their business. If they were using a freight elevator in the tower instead of one of the main elevators, everyone would assume it was going into the basement level of the tower where they likely kept the armory and not the sub-basement level.

Then again, why put the armory in a basement? And especially under the tower? If I were going to store Dust and weapons for students to use, I'd keep it in a central, easily accessible location far enough from any nearby buildings that if it did happen to explode, it wouldn't do any damage. 'Note to self: figure out where they keep that. It could be under the tower, or like much of the rest of Beacon the armory could be directly connected to the underground bunker, so they could take an elevator down from there.'

"Fair enough. So, what do you need me there for? Also, you realize that requiring me being there as the Fox means 'Jaune' has to disappear for a few hours," I pointed out.

Qrow shot me an amused look. "I figure that shouldn't be too hard for you. And the meetings are kind of mandatory. Believe me, if I could get out of them, I would most of the time," he admitted.

"Mandatory for whom?" I asked, frowning at that. "Everyone? Wouldn't that be a lot of people showing up with no real explanation as to why? Or just the four of you? In which case, why include me—or am I that far in?"

"Everyone locally who can make it. And disguising it as something else is easier than you'd think. Either as staff meetings or parent-teacher conferences, when they're this big—since most of those involved are either on staff or have kids in Beacon. That's if anyone even bothers with any sort of cover story. As the headmaster of Beacon, it wouldn't really be all that strange for Ozpin to call in a group of other Hunters to advise, or make suggestions, or pretty much anything related to his position and the curriculum—which would include gathering intelligence about Grimm movements in the field." Taking a pull from his cup of coffee, he grimaced before adding, "As far as your other question, I don't know yet. Haven't really had much of a chance to talk to Oz about you—or anything, really, since he's been shut in. Hell, Glynda is the one who called the meeting, technically—though I assume Oz told her to."

Frowning and thinking back to that conversation, I asked, "What about Ruby?" Seeing his confused look, I elaborated. "Her eyes. Ozpin was supposed to fill you in on what he knew."

The man nodded slowly before reluctantly saying, "Oz had some contingencies in place, in case of emergencies. I got access to copies of what he had."

"Let me guess, more secret shit like the Maidens?" When he failed to answer, I sighed. "Better she know now than go in unprepared. Right now, she's got a loaded weapon she has no idea how to use beyond the basics. It's not safe—for her, or anyone around her. If ever there was a case of needing to know, this is it."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Qrow drawled.

"Un-complicate it. You know how she is better than I do. Now that she knows it's there, she's not going to stop playing with it until she figures it out," I started, only to be cut off by a quiet growl.

"I don't want to hear a lecture on playing with things you don't understand from you, of all people. Kid, you have no idea the world of shit you have found yourself in."

Chuckling quietly, I nodded acquiescence. "You don't know the half of it," I murmured.

That only seemed to piss him off more. "I don't want to drag her into something she is in no way ready for—"

"Bit too late for that, isn't it?" I shot back, raising an eyebrow. "Ozpin already has his eyes on her. She's already in. When has ignorance ever kept someone safe?" Shaking my head, decided to bring the topic back onto safer ground and asked, "So you don't know exactly what the meeting is about?" Red eyes bored into the side of my head for a moment before he shrugged and turned away. "And it's definitely not just a meet-and-greet?"

"Probably not."

Sighing, I shot him an annoyed look before deciding to drop it. Either he didn't know, or he did and he was being irritating on purpose because I'd pissed him off—or just because it was who he was. In the first case, there wasn't much I could do about it. In the second, the best thing to do would be to make sure he could take no enjoyment out of trying to frustrate me. I had years of experience dealing with friends exactly like that, so I changed the subject. "So, I've got a job in the middle of the week. Not one hundred percent sure on the date and time yet, but it's coming."

"And?" Qrow asked, leaning forward slightly on his stool, suddenly all business again.

I took a slow sip of my drink and waited just long enough for him to start looking annoyed again before I answered. "All I know for sure is that it's a train. I think it's bound for Vale eventually, but I'll probably intercept it well before it gets here. No idea what she wants with it, though. I do know that at the same time, she's borrowing one of mine to help spring Torchwick, so we'll have to deal with that clown running around Vale again soon."

"She can't get her hands on whatever it is," Qrow warned, and I shrugged.

"Maybe, maybe not. I'll poke around and figure out what its cargo is before I make a decision one way or another. If it's something too dangerous, I'll make sure there's an 'untimely accident' or something. If not, well, it'd be more useful to look competent and be relied upon than to fuck up a simple job and lose the trust I've gained so far. And I'd need a damned good excuse, too. Pretty sure I could manufacture one, but I'd rather not have to." I could probably draw in some local Grimm and get them to wreck the tracks or something, or take out a bridge, but if I didn't have to then I wouldn't. I certainly wasn't going to tell Qrow that I already knew what the cargo was—I didn't think he'd appreciate me handing Cinder a train load of money.

"Fine," he grunted. "What about Torchwick?"

I shook my head. "There's nothing I can do about that. If Neo intentionally fucks it up, my cover's blown—and she's sending two of her own to go with Neo. I expect he'll be back in town by the end of the week at the latest."

"Any more good news?" Qrow asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

I considered for a moment before nodding. "Yeah, there's one other thing. What do you know about Atlas' Specialist program?"

Qrow blinked, frowning slightly as he shook his head. "Not much—just that they're using it to crank out stronger Hunters."

"If by 'stronger Hunters' you mean 'brainwashed puppets,' sure," I nodded. Red eyes narrowed and he motioned for me to continue. "Ever seen Dust in the indigo color spectrum?"

"Rarely," he admitted, a disgusted look crossing his face. "And never for anything good. Why?"

"One of my sisters went to Atlas Academy—"

Qrow raised an eyebrow at that, asking, "Why?"

"Three of them went to Beacon. They figured if they had three in the other big academies, they could come home and compare notes and cross train. The youngest would get the most benefit out of it—and me, if I'd ever shown any aptitude for the Hunting thing before my accident. But once they were through, they could pass all of that on to their kids…" I trailed off and he nodded, seeing where I was going.

"The Arcs are already pretty well-known in the Hunter circles even outside of Vale for being ridiculously strong. If that worked, the next generation would be… well, they could pretty much name their terms for working for someone," he admitted. "I take it something went wrong?"

"Yeah. The one who went to Atlas was fast tracked through all their stuff, then 'promoted' to the Specialist program. She assumed that it was some sort of elite training program—and to an extent, she was right. Except they don't really tell you about the brainwashing and body modification going in." I continued, giving him a much abbreviated version of Jen's story.

The older man hummed, thinking it over for a moment before saying, "I can see why they would snatch an Arc. She was the only one within easy reach and if she later went back to Vale, they would have a mole. Are you sure she's not a mole?"

"I'm sure. I'm working on deprogramming her, but I'm sure she's not going to turn of her own free will." Which reminded me, I needed to have another session with Jen soon. I was in uncharted waters, when it came to this stuff—nearly everything I knew about mental programming I'd picked up from fictional sources, and most of those were concerned with getting the programming done as opposed to breaking it. I had no way of knowing if I was supposed to try to fix everything at once, or if I was supposed to take it slow. On the one hand, if I went to fast there was the worry that something important could break. On the other hand, if I went too slow and their programming was good enough, it could reinforce itself over time and any good I'd done could 'fix' itself by the time I tried again. Worse, once I actually started—since, I had only even viewed her memories once so far—I would have little in the way of ability to tell how far along I was in helping her. If I actually trusted someone else to do this, I would have handed it off to someone with more skill in the field than myself in a heartbeat. But I didn't trust anyone else with it, and Jen only trusted me to handle it, so it was my responsibility.

"How?" he asked, and when I raised an eyebrow in question, he clarified with, "How are you deprogramming her?"

I shot him a deadpan look. "I'll figure something out, but suffice it to say that I'm not trusting my sister to someone with a mental Semblance in this state—so if you know someone and are offering, thanks, but no thanks."

Thankfully, he dropped that line of conversation. "We knew there was some shady stuff going on in Atlas, but this…" Qrow shook his head. "I assume you're telling me for a reason?"

"I want it shut down and burned to the fucking ground," I answered quietly, my tone completely flat as I said it. I may have accidentally leaned on Killing Intent a little, if the few other patrons deciding they had somewhere else to be were any indication. "I don't care who does it, but to be honest, I kind of want to put the match to it myself."

Qrow glanced at the door as they left and shot me an annoyed look. It passed after a moment, though, and he turned thoughtful. Eventually, he said, "I'll see what I can dig up."

"Then that's about it. I'll let you know if anything else comes up. We done here?" Qrow nodded, making a dismissive motion with his hand and I stood, dropped ten Lien in cash on the bar, and left to head back to Fox Hunt.

---

After returning home, we went back to the project room. My goal for the day was to complete the Ribbons, so I could start handing them out to the girls. My original intent had been to supply Ribbons for myself, the twins, and Neo, but given that we had some extra time between now and when Beacon started, I figured I would go ahead and do an entire batch of eighteen: three for the Malachite twins and Neo, four for Team RWBY, four for Team JNPR, and seven for my sisters since I knew that if I gave one to any of the Arc girls the rest would probably be annoyed that they didn't get one as well. I suppose it was a good thing I had gone back and gotten more material recently.

When I was finally interrupted, it was shortly after midday. 'I lost track of time,' I mused, shaking my head and tracking down the source of the distraction. The girls had been good about letting me work while they did their own things, so it hadn't been one of them. I looked over as the base phone in our workshop rang again. As I was the nearest, I pushed myself up out of my chair and made my way over to answer it, stretching and popping joints as I did. "Officers' Quarters, Fox speaking."

"Sir, we've found something we think you should see," Jim said, cutting straight to the punch. "You said you were looking for a field test for our new equipment, and I think we've found one."

"Okay, I'll be down in the conference room in a few minutes." Hanging up, I turned to where the gathered girls had all paused in their work to see what was going on. "Apparently, they've got something worth seeing. I'll be back in a few."

Switching to my Fox outfit on the way, I made my way through the checkpoint and downstairs, to the conference room. While I waited for Jim and Angel to show up, I looked around and frowned. 'We really need to get a proper Operations Room built. Turning one of the buildings on the property into a command center needs to be our next big project. I don't want meetings to be in the barracks forever.'

"What's the SitRep?" I asked, as soon as they had taken their seats.

"One of our pilots observed a dust plume moving in the direction of Vale, several miles out past the mountains during a patrol. He went to investigate and found this," Opening up her scroll, she touched something on its display and made a flicking motion towards the top of the table—which had, at some point after the last time I'd been in here, been replaced with a newer model. Personally, I had liked the wooden table just fine, but then, I was allergic to over-complicating things with technology that didn't really need it. It was something I had picked up from years of working as a technician—a distinct loathing for people who tried to replace perfectly functional equipment with new, cheap, flashy, gimmicky crap. Then again, we hadn't had equipment like this on Earth. Smart phones just didn't compare to a scroll's capabilities, and we were only just figuring out interactive surfaces for office equipment like tables. Here, we had holographic tables that could cast information from someone's scroll to display it in three dimensions as a floating hologram above the table.

Humming, I studied the images that had appeared floating over the table. "That's a lot of Grimm."

"It's a land-based swarm," Jim assessed, and I raised an eyebrow under my mask at that. "Numbers are estimated at between seven and eight hundred, but more are converging as they get closer to Vale. This group appears to be primarily made up of smaller Grimm—mostly Beowolves and Stalkers. There are some larger Grimm they probably collected on the way, though—Deathstalkers, Ursa and their larger variants, and a few King Taijitu. The biggest threats we're tracking are the pack of Goliaths moving at its center." The image over the table switched to a close-in shot of the group in question.

Studying the images, I asked, "And you think this would be a good test to deploy some of our new hardware?"

"Yes, sir," Jim nodded. "We've got a dozen working AFVs and ammunition and fuel enough for all of them."

"Good ammo, or trash? I remember the last time we tried to hose down a Goliath, it didn't go so well," I pointed out. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the pack we'd opened up on, in fact—even with the pretty good bit of distance between where we'd encountered those and where these were now. I wondered for a moment if the smarter, older Grimm could remember that sort of thing and hold a grudge. That was before I remembered the old saying, 'an elephant never forgets.' 'Shit.'

The pair traded looks before Angel grinned. "We have since corrected that oversight, sir. Though, we are running low on high-grade Dust now."

"I'll see about refilling our supply soon," I nodded. "What's the terrain look like?"

Angel tapped away at her scroll for a moment before more images sprang up above the table. "Currently, the enemy forces are advancing across flat, open land. However, they will soon make it to the foothills, here," she changed the display again, showing what looked like a large expanse of terrain where the plains tapered off into forested hills, and from there into mountains. "Based on their direction of approach, the best place to set up an ambush to intercept them would be here, at this natural bottleneck, where the road narrows and many of the other trails start becoming impassable."

I frowned at that, reaching out for the image and zooming it outwards. 'So, there's the main path through the mountains from this side and the terrain around it is difficult at best. The next path through is a good forty miles to the north. Why do these two expect them to take the trail, though? They're Grimm. Grimm are stupid. Why wouldn't they just follow a straight-line path to the city? Or… are they not as stupid as I'd thought. Deer and other animals will always take the path of least resistance, even if it means taking a winding path versus moving in a straight line—it's why, when you spook one, they'll wheel around and run for the nearest game trail as opposed to just running in a random direction.' Wanting to make sure, I decided it wouldn't hurt to ask. "Why this road? There's another, easier route further to the north. Barring that, why use the trail at all when most of them probably wouldn't have a problem crossing terrain that would be nearly impassable for people?"

"Path of least resistance," Jim answered, confirming my suspicions word for word. "It's something people have learned to exploit over the years. If you cut a path through the forest, Grimm will be more likely to use the path if they're trying to get somewhere."

"Doesn't that mean the roads are about the most dangerous place to be, between cities?" I asked, and the pair nodded.

Angel added, "It's part of why new villages or towns sometimes don't survive long. Someone makes an oversight and forgets to put in proper defenses and the roads provide an easy path straight to their town for any traveling Grimm."

"So, they're coming up the road because it'll be easier for them. Let's take advantage of that and set up traps," I supplied, and they nodded. "Why wouldn't they just turn around or scatter at the first sign of human resistance?"

"Sometimes, they do. Not often, though. No, for the most part, finding people actively resisting them tends to goad them into moving faster towards the defenders in question," Jim grimaced. "It's one of the reasons why some people are convinced that Grimm are some sort of divine retribution for something people did in the past. Grimm will prioritize killing a single human over a hundred, or a thousand, or more Grimm losses. And that's why Hunters tend to be so effective. The combination of Aura as a lure and a person actually killing Grimm tends to focus their attention on the Hunters. Then again, in a city like Vale, that wouldn't necessarily be true. Too many potential targets. You'd be guaranteed to see most of them break off to pursue other people rather than chasing after a Hunter or group of Hunters. A breach is always nasty and never comes without civilian casualties."

"I see," I murmured, filing that away under the heading of 'Grimm behavior' for later study before gesturing at the hologram to indicate they should continue.

Angel began adjusting the hologram. "They will be forced to cluster up and slow their approach, before making it to the next area of interest."

The hologram shifted again and my lips twitched into a grin, already seeing its potential use as an ambush site. "A canyon with high, steep walls."

"Yes, sir. Roaches check in, they don't check out," Jim smirked.

"So, send a few Bullheads to drop men with heavy weapons up on the top of this thing, looking into the canyon below, plant some mines at the mouth of the canyon, and set up our AFVs on high ground on the opposite end of the canyon and turn the whole thing into a meat grinder—and that's after trapping the pass leading up to it to high hell and killing them when they're forced to cluster up?" I asked, getting nods from the pair. "Sounds like fun. If you'll start getting our people en route, I'll round up our guests and we can head out."

"One more thing, sir," Jim drew my attention. "We've had a few requests for interviews from the local news stations. This may be a good opportunity to get some free PR."

I considered it for a moment before nodding. "Do it, but only under the condition that we are allowed to inspect and edit or remove any footage of sensitive material. And make sure they understand that we aren't going to wait around for them on this. Also, that they have filming rights to this operation only. Nothing more."

The pair stood, saluted, and quickly left to see to making it happen. I waited until I was sure they had left and the minimap showed no one nearby before turning my chair around to regard the spot in space where I knew Raven to be watching from, which had begun following me again as soon as I'd stepped out of the Bounded Fields surrounding the officers' quarters. "You want in on this?" I asked. I wanted more time to get to know the woman—I needed to figure out what her interest in me was and I couldn't do that without observing and interacting with her. I was hoping she would let something slip, or just come out and say, but she didn't seem the type to let something like that get out easily.

I was somewhat surprised when a slip of paper materialized in the space in front of me. Reading the note, I rolled my eyes. "You can wear a disguise."

Another slip of paper dropped into my lap and I took a moment to read it, before frowning. 'How the fuck does she know that?' I wondered briefly, before shaking my head. She must have overheard me explaining my Semblance at some point—or enough to get the gist. "Give me a minute to test something."

Sending a quick message to the girls to let them know I was testing something with my Semblance, I dropped party before throwing an invite to Raven. "Party, Raven Branwen, Hit Accept," I muttered, manually inviting her by name since she wasn't here to invite by using focus commands. Her profile image appeared on the left side of my HUD, along with HP and MP, and I frowned as I noticed her level was still listed as triple-question marks while her Health and Mana/Aura levels didn't actually have numerical labels. 'Well, that is bullshit.' Apparently, if they were above a certain threshold, even being in party wouldn't allow my Semblance to accurately estimate their level.

Selecting her image, I focused on the name listed and was rewarded with my Semblance giving me the option to edit, or even hide details. As I was doing that, I noticed her image had changed while I was playing with my interface. Her hair had been pulled up into a high ponytail and her eyes had shifted from red to blue. In addition, she now sported what looked like a dark gray scarf or something similar that covered her lower face and looked like it would double as a hood. 'Not a horrible disguise,' I admitted. It was simple, but would be effective for what I had in mind. For a moment, I wondered what she would look like with lilac contacts as opposed to blue. 'Pretty much Yang with black hair and a flat expression, at that point. Still sexy, though.'

Shooting a glance back at the point in space, I said, "Give me a name."

Another slip of paper. 'Rook?Oh for fuck sake.' I groaned and turned a deadpan look on where she was watching from. "Really? Really? Well, at least now I know where she gets it from." Shaking my head, I said, "At this point, I'm waiting on you."

I didn't have to wait long before a red and black portal opened and the woman in question stepped through. "Nice outfit," I admitted, looking her over. She had traded out her Japanese-themed outfit for a dark green jacket, brown shirt, and tight black pants in addition to the scarf. She wore pretty basic armor in a more modern style—shin guards, knee pads, chest piece, and gauntlets—and carried what looked like a pole weapon on her back, with some transformation tech shoved into it. A closer inspection showed it to be some sort of sniper rifle/polearm combo, with a Dust blade on the end making it something like a glaive—similar to Ascalon's own fully deployed form. "Go out in disguise often?"

"For work," she agreed softly. "And sometimes, the best disguises are the ones that are too obvious and so get ruled out by default. As you probably know."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled. Making sure my Semblance wouldn't give her away, I pushed out of my chair and headed for the door, and from there to the elevator. "Well, let's go tell the others we're going hunting." As we stepped into the elevator, I shot her a glance and smirked under my mask. Calling up Conjuration, I offered her a mask—dark gray with dark green highlights in the shape of a wolf's face, with forward facing ears and a longer muzzle than the fox masks. "Here. This will help."

One dark eyebrow quirked upwards as she regarded the mask, before shrugging and slipping it on, then pulling up the hood of her scarf—which, now that I'd had a chance to see it from front and back, I could tell it was long enough to function as a short cape. "Does this make me 'Green Wolf?'"

"Ha ha ha. Haaa. So funny," I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I blame you for Yang. It's genetic. Has to be."

"You don't seem to mind," she retorted, and I turned an amused look on her, before remembering it'd be lost under the mask.

Shrugging, I said, "She's fun," I admitted.

"'Fun,'" the woman echoed. "Well, you do seem to enjoy pulling her pigtails."

I chuckled at that. "For all the fuss over her hair, she sure loves having it pulled."

"Bringing up my daughter's almost non-existent sex life won't make me uncomfortable. But by all means, continue if you like," she countered.

Raising an eyebrow at that, I hummed. "Is that so? So, how do you know she doesn't have much of a sex life?"

"The same way I know you are the only one she's been intimate with," the woman shrugged.

There was only one explanation that made sense. "So, you have been keeping tabs on them."

"I never said I didn't," Raven denied. "You inferred that."

I was tempted—sorely tempted—to ask why, if she kept tabs on her family, she couldn't be bothered to visit every once in a while. However, at the end of the day, that was a conversation she needed to have with Yang, not with me—and if I pushed, odds were good she'd simply leave. 'That she's willing to go along with this harebrained scheme means she's willing to give me some leeway—or maybe just really does want to see her daughter. Daughters? Does she see Ruby as her own? Hell, was she even around for Ruby? I've been kind of running under the assumption that she wasn't, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm going to have to ask Yang at some point. Either way,this may be a 'take what you get and be happy' situation. I suppose we'll find out.'

"One more thing," I turned to meet her eyes under her mask. "You've been using portals to spy on me this whole time, right? There aren't two people spying on me?"

Raven considered it for a moment before answering, "I have, but I can only account for my own actions. If someone else is keeping tabs on you, I am unaware of it."

"Well, shit. That's less reassuring than I'd hoped," I sighed. "I don't suppose I could convince you to stop spying on me?"

"No," the woman denied.

Opening the door to the project room, I found the girls had gone back to their work while I had been out. Met with several sets of stares, I reached up and pulled off my masks, dropping the illusion over my face as I did. "So, who wants to go hunting? Well, I say 'hunting,' but in this case it's more like 'killing,' since we know what it is we're after and where they'll be."

"What's the situation?" Melanie voiced one of the two questions on everyone's mind, as every set of eyes had shifted off of me and focused on the masked form behind me.

Neo was the one who asked the other question, as she sent, 'So, who's this?'

"A swarm of Grimm is making their way towards Vale," I answered. "This is Rook. She'll be joining us for this op." To Neo, I replied, 'Raven Branwen. Let's keep that between us and the twins for now, okay?'

'Yeah, I can see how that might not go over well,' Neo mused, eyes shifting over towards Yang, who was eying her mother—though she didn't know it—with a look of amusement.

Yang snorted softly. "Where'd you pick this one up?"

"Too easy," I deadpanned. Yang's mouth opened for a moment before closing with a click of teeth as she took on a look that said she knew I had her there. "So, who's in?" Given that I was speaking to a room full of women who were either Huntresses in training, an active duty Huntress, or girls who had always wanted to go to Hunter school, every hand in the room went up. "Great. Neo, Penny, and either Melanie or Miltia—we need you 'in uniform' for this as we're going in an official capacity. Also, Ruby, Yang, and Blake—you'll need to change clothes. We can't do anything about your weapons right now, but your 'Hunter' look is way too identifiable. Jen, you as well."

There was some complaining from the girls, save for Jen, but they understood that getting filmed in their Hunter gear would give the game away to anyone who saw it. Luckily, we had uniforms in their sizes already made. The weapons, though, were a problem. We didn't have much in the way of 'generic' weapons aside from the stuff I'd looted, and certainly nothing that would qualify as a Hunter's weapon. 'Well, all else fails, they could always say they were being scouted by the Fox and he offered to let them wear uniforms to at least offer that much anonymity.'

'By the way,' Neo sent, drawing my attention. 'We talked it over amongst ourselves and decided on names for our Fox Hunt alter egos. We think you'll like them.'

I sent back, 'What'd you come up with? I'll show you how to edit your display information so it'll show up to everyone who can actually see it.'

'For the twins: Garnet Doublet for whichever one of them is in their Fox Hunt uniform. For our Head of Intelligence, Atra Dawe,' Neo began. Seeing my questioning look, a small smirk twitched at her lips. 'Dawe. Jackdaw. As in—'

I resisted the urge to facepalm, knowing it would give away our silent conversation. 'That is bad. Almost as bad as Raven calling herself Rook. Only almost, because at least there's no blatant connection there.'

'It's not that bad,' Neo protested.

'So, what's she called with the mask on?' I sent in question.

'Magpie,' the girl answered.

I snorted softly. 'Neo, dear, that is exactly as bad as Raven calling herself Rook.'

Neo stuck her tongue out, ignoring the commentary as she continued explaining, 'We took a page from your book on separating identities. So, we all have two layers of cover there—the 'public' faces of Fox Hunt and the 'private' faces under those masks. And none of them connected to us. 'Garnet' is actually the least protected that way, but she doesn't officially head any departments or anything. We could get away with saying she's our personal assistant.'

'My paranoia is rubbing off on you,' I deadpanned, but I couldn't say I was displeased over them taking proper precautions.

'Penny's is Jacqueline Snow. She really wanted to pick a name beginning with 'J,' and you can probably guess why.'

'Cut her some slack,' I mentally sighed, glancing over at the gynoid, who had already changed outfits. I guessed she had already made an armor set for this particular ensemble, to have changed so quickly. I had to admit, based on what I'd seen of Weiss in canon, she looked every bit the Schnee—white hair pulled into a low pony tail, dress going down to her knees, knee high boots that ended in short heels, a long jacket ending around mid-thigh, and a white Fox mask with red highlights identical to my own. The clothes were, of course, also white. The only thing missing from the outfit was a proper weapon—which she, Neo, and the twins had assured me they were having built.

Neo sent me an amused look and added, 'With the mask on, she suggested her handle be 'Snow Fox.''

I palmed my face. 'Well, at least it fits. So, what about you?'

'Saved the best for last,' the sent the mental impression of a smirk and I rolled my eyes. 'Yin Huli.'

Looking over, I shot her a deadpan look. 'My Chinese is a little rusty.'

'Is that what that's called on Earth?' she mused, before answering the unspoken question. 'Silver Fox.'

Blinking, I turned it over in my head before nodding. 'It's good, but damn if it doesn't make me want to kick myself for making a sentai team of Foxes.' A moment of inspiration struck and a grin twitched my lips upwards. 'Do me a favor? Make your eyes silver when you use it. If you ever run into Ozpin in that getup, it'll drive him nuts.'

Neo shot me a questioning look before her eyes traced over Ruby, and understanding dawned. 'Yeah, I can do that. Should be fun to screw with his head.' She considered for a second before a wicked smirk crossed her lips for the barest of moments. 'Well, if you're putting in requests, you're going to have to supply me something to work with.'

'What do you mean?' I asked, sensing a prank or something along those lines potentially brewing.

'Oh, nothing much. Just some memories of women from Earth,' she answered innocently.

I didn't buy it for a second. Considering what I knew of her Semblance, I asked, 'Does it matter if they're real?'

'Real, animated, doesn't matter. I just want a larger group of samples to work with so I don't have to constantly either copy people or manually alter my features to get things right,' Neo explained.

'Works for me,' I shrugged, tossing her a link and beginning to feed her memories.

When everyone had finished getting ready, I passed out freshly created masks to the girls who needed them. By the time we were done, I nearly groaned as I remembered Raven's earlier comment. I wouldn't hand out masks that weren't customized to their wearers, so Jen, Ruby, Yang, Blake, and Miltia each had Fox-style masks with different colors—silver, red, yellow, black, and green respectively. And while Miltia had her own bloodline mask, Melanie was already 'in uniform' as our Head of Intelligence, so Miltia couldn't use it if we wanted to keep up the illusion that there was only one of them—likewise, Miltia would be primarily using the ranged magical attacks she'd picked up while Melanie would be using her boots and gloves when the fighting started. When I factored Penny, Neo, and myself in there were eight of us in total wearing fox masks, plus Raven and Melanie.

'It really is a goddamn sentai team worth of Foxes,' I mentally groaned, looking them over. Shaking my head, we headed up to the roof where Foxtrot-1 was waiting. I found Angel leaning against the hull and shook my head. "You don't have to chauffeur me around, you know?"

"It's part of the job description, sir," she denied, a small grin playing over her lips as she did. "Is this everyone?"

"Yeah," I agreed as the girls began to file into the Bullhead. "How are we getting the AFVs on-site? It'll take a while to drive them through the city."

"Air lift," Angel answered, gesturing for me to get in. I took one of the jump seats, which I noticed happened to be between both Jen and Penny. I wondered if she had already begun assuming the role as part of my security detail. I made a mental note to talk with Penny and Jen about it later, once we could officially take Jen on, to let them know they'd be partnered up for that.

"You can do that?" I asked as the woman climbed into the cockpit.

Angel nodded, pulling on her headset as I did likewise. "Bullheads were designed to be multi-purpose VTOL aircraft. Troop transport, cargo transport, fire support, Search and Rescue, and so on."

'So, they fill the roles that different types of helicopters fill on Earth,' I mused, nodding. "Okay. Get us moving. Our first stop is going to be our contacts with one of the local news stations."

"Roger that," she agreed, before switching to external comms and cutting us out of her conversation to our flight controller and likely, Vale Air Traffic Control.

"Where is the AO?" 'Rook' asked, drawing the attention of everyone present.

"South east side of Vale, a canyon on this side of a narrow pass through the mountains," I answered.

Raven, or Rook rather, nodded before leaning back in her seat to observe the others, supplying, "I know of it. It was a defense and training outpost before the war."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "It's not any more?"

"No," she denied. "It was shelled with mortar fire. There wasn't much left and after the war, I suppose the King didn't feel like rebuilding—and since his passing, the council has never bothered to."

'So, kingdom defenses aren't what they once were,' I mused. An idea began forming and I grinned under my mask. 'I'll take a look at the place. It might be a good idea to have Fox Hunt scout out all those little passes through the mountains around Vale and make sure they're secure. And if not, it would be a good idea to fortify them ourselves. It'd keep out Grimm, and I'll bet it would cut off more than one land-based smuggling route. Walls, cameras, and automatic defenses like turrets would be enough to give us an early warning and slow down anything coming this way if we didn't want to man them. Otherwise, throw in a couple of outposts on top of all that and have people rotate through on watch. Hell, open them up to Hunters as rest stops and we'd have them on hand if shit hit the fan. Definitely something to bring up at the next staff meeting. Now, how to buy the land to do all of that and convince the Council to let us police the lands of the Kingdom when we're something like a for-profit non-governmental organization. Ugh, red tape alone could tie this up for years—let alone building up the funds for it.'

A few minutes later, Foxtrot-1 began descending as the engines spun down before it bumped to a stop and settled down. I stood and moved to one of the side doors, hesitating a moment before turning and shooting a glance at 'Rook.' A smirk crept onto my face as I hit the door controls and the girls began piling out. "Ruby, Yang, why don't you stick around and keep our guest company for a few minutes. I'm sure she would appreciate some news from home."

'Rook' tensed and blue eyes narrowed at me under her mask as she hit me with a laser-focused burst of Killing Intent, letting me know I'd managed to successfully annoy her. Yang pounced on the information, shifting her gaze between me and her estranged mother. "What do you mean?"

"How's your father?" Raven asked, apparently deciding that taking charge of the conversation was the lesser of two evils, now that I'd opened that particular can of worms.

Ruby and Yang exchanged a look before Ruby asked, "You know our dad?"

"Mm. I've worked with Tai before," the older woman admitted quietly. I slipped out of the Bullhead and hit the door control to close it up as she added, "I… knew Summer, too."

'You are a bastard,' Neo sent to me, not bothering to try to be heard over the noise of the engines as they spooled down, and I shrugged, my eyes tracking to where Blake, Penny and Jen had fanned out ahead of us. I figured we would have been safe from Blake's curious ears, but it was just easier this way. Besides, Penny, with her built-in noise filters and the like, could probably pick out the sound of a pin dropping over the noise, so would have been able to follow our conversation regardless. And while I trusted Penny not to betray my secrets intentionally, she did occasionally slip accidentally. Miltia and Melanie joined Neo and I as Neo continued. 'Please stop irritating the woman who has already made it painfully clear she has no compunctions against running a sword through your guts.'

'We would be displeased if she managed to finish the job,' Melanie added.

Miltia continued with, 'It'd be a shame, too, because you've kind of grown on us.'

Shooting the girls around me an amused grin, lost under the mask, I shrugged. 'But it's fun.'

'Ass,' the three synced and I laughed.

"Okay," I shook my head, slowly wiping the smile off my face. "Game faces on. Let's do this."

I strode through the group towards the other side of the helipad we had put down on atop the Channel 5 building—well, I say helipad, but it was more a generic VTOL landing pad. A look around showed there were two other VTOL craft up here already—both bearing the Channel 5 logo—and one of them was being loaded by a short woman in a long yellow and black leather jacket and a taller woman wearing a ball cap and a windbreaker. There was a constant breeze up this high, tugging capes, cloaks, and hair around as the girls fell into formation with me—Neo and Melanie, in her Head of Intelligence outfit, to either side of me with Jen and Penny flanking us and Miltia and Blake bringing up the rear. The pair had continued loading their vehicle, but from the occasional glance they threw our way I knew they had been aware of us since Angel began our approach to set down—there was no way they hadn't heard us coming. On spotting the jacket, I resisted the urge to laugh—Yang would have killed to have one like it, I was sure.

The shorter woman looked up as we grew closer, drawing an inch long metal cylinder from her pocket—also marked with the Channel 5 logo—and pinning it to the collar of her coat. The taller one—deeply tanned and wearing a ball cap with her long, curly hair pulled into a ponytail and sticking out of the back—took out a small digital camcorder and moved to the side to get a shot of our group and the woman in the leather jacket. The short one was Caucasian, maybe—though I'd have pegged her as being at least partly Asian of some sort, considering her features. Her straight black hair was highlighted with blonde—however, given that this was Remnant, I wasn't entirely certain that it wasn't some naturally occurring alternating pattern—and cropped in a short pixie cut. Dark, almost black almond eyes were set in a heart-shaped face and she stood a good head shorter than me so couldn't have been more than 5'5". Her eyes traced over us, taking each of us in individually and the group as a whole—lingering a moment each on Penny, more specifically her white hair, Melanie and her Nevermore mask, and myself. "April Yellowjacket, war correspondent and military liaison for Channel 5 News. You're the representatives from Fox Hunt, I take it?"

I was silent just a half-beat too long, enough to begin to unnerve her and the girl with the camera before nodding. "We are."

"You're him, right?" she asked, and I raised an eyebrow under my mask. "The one who put all this together," her hand gesture took in both our group and the Bullhead behind us, and I took it to mean she was implying Fox Hunt as a whole. "The guy the police are calling the White Fox?" I nodded and, before I could get a word in edgewise, a smile that was more like a leer spread across her lips before quickly smoothing into something more like a smirk. "So, what do you say to a little exclusive interview before the show, hmm?"

"No," Neo cut in, drawing the older woman's eyes her way. "This is a time-sensitive operation. We're on the clock."

"I understand," April nodded. "After, then."

"Under a few conditions," Melanie countered. "Our original request to review and edit your footage remains in place. All interview footage will be subject to the same review process. We will keep copies of all the video taken and if it is later found that you or your network is guilty of creative editing in order to further an agenda, we will release the original, unedited footage and your network will be taken to court for slander."

The woman hummed quietly, considering the terms before turning to her cameraman, who shrugged. Finally, she turned back and nodded. "Deal. If you'll send Prissam, my partner and pilot," she gestured at the taller woman who lifted a hand from her camera and waved, "the flight plan we'll get into the air and be right behind you."

The light on the camera shut off and April spun on her heel, stalking towards the back of their VTOL. Agitated buzzing filled the air for a moment and a faint blur drew my eyes to her back, where a long, nearly transparent set of wings stirred and pulled down tightly against the jacket. My eyebrows went up as I traced them to a pair of slits set in the back of the jacket between her shoulder blades—difficult to see at best, as they were disguised as simple folds in the leather. 'Insect-type faunus?' I wondered. Shrugging it off as something interesting to consider later, I turned around to head back to our own craft. I couldn't help but notice that enough of Blake's golden eyes were visible under her mask to track her line of sight—right back to the only other Faunus on the roof.

'That's got to be a bit on the nose. Blake goes on and on about Faunus being oppressed and yet here's a Faunus who is a fairly successful field agent for the largest news station in Vale, dealing directly with Hunters.' Well, the largest local news station anyway. Like Earth, I'd found the stations tended to be divided into levels of local or national depending on their focus and intended audience. Channel 5 was Vale's equivalent to the local news affiliate and focused on local issues pertaining to the City of Vale and surroundings, whereas VNN—Vale News Network—was the equivalent of CNN, and as such focused on national level news. Though I suppose I should say 'kingdom level' news, considering where I was. To my knowledge, we had yet to get any offers of interviews from VNN or similar stations—we simply didn't rate that sort of attention yet.

Our group headed back to Foxtrot-1 while the reporter and her assistant boarded their own VTOL—a stubby looking, boxy thing that looked like a helicopter without rotors, complete with skids on the bottom instead of retractable wheels like our Bullheads. As we entered, I caught part of the quiet conversation taking place between the trio we'd left behind—Raven was telling some story about her brother wearing what sounded like either a skirt or a kilt and I filed it away in the mental blackmail folder I was building against Qrow for later use.

I noticed that, as soon as they caught sight of Ruby, Yang, and Rook, the other girls immediately picked up their own conversations, apparently going out of their way to give the trio some privacy. Even if they didn't know who she was, they could see that something was going on. I wasn't too surprised, considering Neo and the twins at least knew who 'Rook' really was and how important this was for her, even if Raven would never admit it—so the other girls likely picked up on that. The woman's voice was light and amused, sounding more relaxed and even energetic than I'd heard it in either of my encounters with her. 'Yeah, I'm going to have to find a way to get those three together again on a regular basis. Before that, though, I need to do something about that reporter—she's a tricky one, I can tell.'

Shifting my attention to Penny, I sent, 'Penny, how's your radio gear?'

The ancula's gaze shifted to me as she sent back, 'What do you mean?'

'You can detect and block radio and network traffic coming from the Channel 5 VTOL, right?' I asked, and she tilted her head a moment—possibly to attempt just that—before nodding. 'Okay. Keep an eye on them and if they start trying to broadcast, shut it down please.'

'Okay, Jaune. Will do!' the girl agreed before turning back to her conversation with the twins.

That potential issue taken care of before it could become a problem, I leaned back as much as I could in the uncomfortable jump seat as Angel circled back to Fox Hunt to pick up the last AFV we had left behind long enough to have our meeting, and from there we rose ponderously into the sky and made our way south east. Closing my eyes, I let the girls' conversations wash over me. 'They get along pretty well. That's good, because the last thing this group needs is petty in-fighting and drama.' I knew I probably couldn't avoid it forever, but I would enjoy the relative peace while it lasted. After all, even if this was an entirely different world, the girls were still human—or close enough, in the cases of Blake and Penny. At the moment, we were all still just sort of getting used to each other—learning each others' habits and the like. It was that 'new couple' or 'newlywed' phase that pretty much everyone went through at some point, where everyone was still on their best behavior and not quite sure where the boundaries were—walking on eggshells, almost. Eventually, someone would say or do something to upset someone else. It was as inevitable as the tide. It couldn't be avoided, but it could be managed.

The easiest way to do that was by doing exactly what I was right this moment—absolutely nothing. By leaving them to their own devices, they could talk and get closer naturally without me leading the conversation. If they became friends on their own, without it feeling to them as though I had forced things along, they would be much less likely to hurt each other so badly as to fracture the group later on and would be more willing to make up with each other without my intervention. It was a sneaky bit of psychological manipulation, if looked at from one angle—namely, that I was knowingly allowing it to happen and encouraging it, for my own benefit. On the other hand, it would have happened naturally on its own and it benefited everyone else involved as well, so I wasn't entirely to blame for it—meaning I didn't feel guilty at all for taking advantage, in this case. 'Besides,' I silently added, 'even if Neo, the twins, and Joan remain the only ones I'm in a relationship with, I still need RWBY—and having Beacon's best rookie combat team actively antagonistic towards us would be annoying.'

Some time later, Foxtrot-1 jolted slightly as it descended, pulling me out of digging through my Guild menu. We jolted again before the headsets crackled. "We're here, boss. Where do you want to set up?"

Hopping up from my seat and pulling off the headset, I moved into the cockpit and dropped into the empty co-pilot's chair. Casting a look outside the windows, I pulled on the headset above me. "Circle the block and let me get a look," I told her, and our pilot nodded before climbing to a higher elevation and setting Foxtrot-1 into a short circle around the canyon. As Raven had said, I spotted the blasted and burned out ruins of what had once been a small outpost, situated on the Vale side of the canyon and built partly into the walls of the canyon itself. I could tell there had once been a wall, or more likely a gate, on the Vale side of the canyon with a bunker or barracks at the bottom and an outpost at the top—possibly connected through the canyon walls by an elevator. 'Ruined, now. But if there are other setups like this, they could be used to our advantage. Besides, it's not like it's entirely beyond repair. It'd just take some work and money.'

"There," I pointed to a ridge above and slightly to the side of where our Bullheads had begun dropping the AFVs and their crews, along with soldiers. It had a good view of the entire canyon and would be an excellent place to both stay out of the way and provide ranged magical fire support from. Though, given that our group was full of melee combatants, I had a feeling that we wouldn't be staying there for long.

Angel hit the door controls and we hopped out as she passed over the drop site, before she dropped off the AFV being carried under her Bullhead. Then, she pulled the aircraft around to join the others in landing around the area as there was still time remaining before they would need to take up stations for air support. "How are we doing this?" Neo asked, drawing my gaze back down to the group around me.

"Well, first, I'll re-party us," I began, tossing out party invites and establishing links between those of us not already linked—the only one not linked in being 'Rook.' Once that was done, the girls focused on bringing up the buffs they knew already and could keep running without running out their Aura. No one was quite up to my own ability to leave my buffs running full time simply because they were self-sustaining and had leveled to the point that the passive draw on my MP never outpaced my MP regen rate—at least, until I made a new buff and had to juggle things until my skill levels caught up and things balanced out again. "Personally, I say we set up here and wait for the Grimm to come through to this side of the canyon. Our AFVs and Bullheads can probably keep up with them for a while, but eventually the Grimm will likely start pouring out faster than they can keep up." I pointed down towards where several groups of men were setting up near where the AFVs had organized into groups with overlapping fields of fire. "That's where our mortar crews come in. Neo…?" I asked, sending her the mental image I wanted.

"Oh, nice," the girl grinned, before we began throwing up a combined illusion/Genjutsu. In this case, I was using her Semblance and my own spell as a visual aid, overlaying the field below with details only visible from our perspective. AFVs were highlighted in red, mortars in yellow, and lines for fields of fire and areas of effect were drawn indicating where each AFV would be firing and where the mortars were aiming.

"That's not even half the canyon," Yang pointed out and I nodded, but Ruby beat me to the punch, already having assessed the layout and figured out what I intended.

"That's where we come in," the little reaper pointed out, gesturing towards an area that had been highlighted in white, extending from just outside the field of fire from the mortars back to the AFVs. "We'll have to pick off anything that makes it out of the first kill zone, if the people on the ground don't get to it first."

"What happens if they make it past that?" Blake asked.

"Then the people on the ground start dying," Rook deadpanned.

"Is there anything our more experienced Hunters would like to add, or suggest?" I asked, turning my attention to Jen and Rook.

All traces of the girl I had woken up with this morning were gone as Jen—or was it the Specialist, Sierra?—assessed the plan. "It's a solid plan, sir."

That I couldn't tell if that was just Jen getting into character for when she would be acting as my personal bodyguard or if that was Sierra responding to a superior officer was somewhat worrying. I shot a look at Rook and the older woman hummed, looking around our group before casting a long look down on the hardware and people gathering below. After a moment of thought, she began, "You've got a good deal of firepower gathered down there and the terrain is in our favor. Assuming we're even needed, I suggest you divide us into teams. Team 1 stays here and provides long-ranged fire support. I'm not sure of your individual strengths or weapons, so I can't make the call on who should be in each team."

"That's fine. So, Team 1 is a sniper team," I supplied, and she nodded. "What about the others?" I gestured for her to continue.

"Team 2 would take up a position with the rest of the fire-teams below, acting as mid-range support. Team 3 would be our melee fighters, cleaning up anything that gets into knife range," Rook suggested. "You wouldn't want to deploy them very far, otherwise they're cutting off fields of fire for your fireteams. Go out, intercept anything that crosses this line," she pointed at the line closest to the fireteams on the ground, "and get back before being out there becomes a problem."

Thinking it over, I looked to each of the girls, weighing their strengths and skills before making a decision. Casting a glance at Rook, I asked, "Just so I'm sure, is that a sniper rifle or what?"

Ruby's attention, I noticed, immediately focused on the weapon in question and I could feel her fangirling over our link. "It's a semi-auto sniper rifle that compresses into a carbine. I'll be good at any range."

I raised an eyebrow at that. 'Raven is willing to let me decide where to put her, instead of telling me where she's going to go? Well, considering she's in disguise, I suppose I shouldn't be too terribly surprised she's willing to go that far.' Putting it aside as a question to answer later, I turned to Jen and asked, "What about you?"

Jen reached behind her back and drew her weapon. My eyebrow twitched slightly as she gave it a very familiar spin before it came to rest where I could observe it. Idly, I noticed Ruby's internal fangirling go up a few notches, but she managed not to let it spill over into verbal squeeing. On the surface, it looked like a sword and some sort of motorcycle had produced an illegitimate love child. The whole weapon came in at around four feet in length, handle included. The blade was silvery and reflective, double edged and coming to a base at what looked like a futuristic v-twin engine of some sort where the hand guard would be—each side of the V roughly four inches long. "I give up. What the hell is that? And how is it even remotely balanced for fighting?"

Jen's thumb flicked out, hitting a button near the handle, and I heard a faint whine as the engine spooled up before it tapered off into the inaudible range. A flick-and-twist motion saw the blade split in two down the middle, opening up slightly and revealing a short barrel. The handle elongated, split, and folded into a short stock and pistol grip, while a small hand guard extended forward to cover enough of the lower half of the blade so she could hold it with both hands. "Sword and energy rifle," Jen answered, before shifting the weapon back to its base form and shutting off the engine. "I needed something to back up my Semblance and cover gaps in it. This gives me range and a melee weapon if I run out of Aura."

'Key word there being 'if,'' I noted. Thinking it over, I made my decision. "Okay, Neo, Miltia, and Ruby are with me on Team 1. Team 2 will consist of Blake, Yang, and Rook. Melanie, Penny, and Jen will make up Team 3."

"What? But my whole thing is that I hit things!" Yang protested, and I rolled my eyes.

"Yes, and you've got Ember Celica and a bunch of ammo, which gives you a mid-range attack. Melanie can't use her mid-to-long ranged stuff at the moment and Penny doesn't have her weapons yet—and we don't want her to have to use her swords, because that'll give things away. Melanie's faster and more agile than you, Penny's stronger than you, and she can use my Plasma Blade so there's that. Jen's Semblance, if it can do what I think it can, should be overkill at close range." I'd seen her float things using green energy before, and given the color—well, if it was anything like my initial assessment of her being a Remnant Green Lantern, then it really was overkill.

Yang either didn't realize or couldn't help bleeding off upset and disappointment over the link anyway, even with the explanation. "Look, odds are that if anything makes it into melee range, we're going to need to regroup anyway, and then you'll get your brawl."

The blonde brawler cheered up somewhat. "I can live with that."

Something down below caught my eye as the last of the troops were dropped off. One group in particular stood out from the others. Their weapons and armor were less uniform and their levels were higher than the average of those around them—though in the 25 range, they were lower than our group. "Who are they?"

The twins turned their attention to me and I could feel the smugness radiating off them over our link. "Remember that side project you gave us?" Miltia asked, sending a mental image of the one in question.

'The thing about trying to level mages and other things,' I realized, and nodded. "Yes…"

"That's them," Melanie finished for her sister. "They're not much right now, but they've got potential."

I nodded, making a mental note to inspect them after the battle. "Alright, go get into position while we wait for this shindig to kick off."

Seeing that the last of the groups had gathered, I opened my menu and navigated to the section I had been looking over earlier. Under the Guild Menu, I found a tab labeled 'Active Parties.' Selecting it, I grinned under my mask as I found the button I was looking for. Selecting it, I was rewarded with a prompt.

Would you like to make a Raid Group? Yes/No

After checking to make sure my Semblance wouldn't give away our names, I selected Yes and was then asked to choose which parties would be joining mine. Choosing all of those in the vicinity, I waited as my Semblance sent out invites. As people started accepting—first Angel, then Jim, followed by other groups over the course of the next minute—my Semblance began highlighting group positions on the field. Angel's party, for instance, was composed of all of the pilots who would be circling over our heads like mechanical buzzards waiting on the meal they knew would be coming once the action started. I didn't bother linking them with Telepathy—I could issue commands to the entire group through my Semblance as the Raid Leader in the same way I could in a party and my radio was already set to the command channel. I didn't need to give orders to every individual soldier—just to the unit leaders. But then, as I had seen firsthand recently, sometimes it was best to just leave them to their own devices—I'd hired people who knew more than me in this field for a reason, and it wouldn't look good to start tossing out orders if I didn't know what I was doing. With that done, I kept an ear on the radio and settled in to wait.

Comms chatter pulled my attention almost immediately as someone said, "Sweet Dust, where'd we dig up someone with a TacNet Semblance?"

There was more than one round of questions along those lines before the channel went silent and someone cut in—older sounding, and with more steel in his voice than I'd heard from pretty much anyone else since getting to Remnant. "That's above your pay grade. Cut the chatter and focus on the mission."

I snorted softly, rolling my eyes. 'I'm surprised no one's asked that before. And is that how they see it? I suppose the party system fits the definition of a tactical network. Still, that's a thing, and apparently both fairly rare and likely very useful and/or valuable—meaning there's probably at least one more floating around somewhere. If I had to guess, being the more successful military, likely Atlas. Have to keep an eye out for it. If it works even remotely like mine, it could be dangerous to run up against.'

As it turns out, waiting for the enemy to make its way to you is both incredibly dull and nerve-wracking at the same time. By the time the muffled echoes of the first explosions reached our ears, almost everyone was on edge. The only ones who seemed not to be were Raven, Jen, and Penny. Raven was to be expected, being an experienced huntress. Jen had a problem feeling much of anything these days, so I couldn't really count her—well, unless I was in very close proximity, it seemed. And Penny? Penny was just happy to be spending time with us.

My own nerves, on the other hand, were not just a product of waiting around. There was something in the air—I could almost smell it. The air felt heavy and hard to breathe. I had felt this before, of course, but only once had it been worse—namely, when I had been in Atlas. Mountain Glenn had been a close second, but I was pretty sure that most of the Grimm in that dead city were underground and that if they had been drawn up to the surface by my fight with Raven, it would have been an entirely different story. The difference was, I didn't have Gamer's Mind set on Active now, which would have allowed me to ignore it. It wasn't even a mental effect or status ailment—it was just the natural consequence of so many Grimm gathered in one place.

Comms chatter picked up as guild members began reporting the enemy's advancement through the pass below the canyon, funneling into the kill zone. I opened up my map and winced when I saw the tide of red dots swarming up to us, but as we had expected, the terrain forced them to cluster together into a line, making them easy targets. Keying up my mic, I asked, "This is Foxtrot Actual. Do we have a count?"

It took a moment, but eventually someone came back with a final total. The swarm had grown from under 1000 to over 2500 as they were joined by other, smaller groups making their way here from other directions. It wasn't as many as there had been in Atlas, but it was still a lot. 'Well, good news is, this means everyone's getting a level or two, probably.'

I chuckled quietly before checking in on everyone. Now that the action had drawn closer, the anxiety was gone, but many of the girls were getting antsy and impatient for things to start—reminding me once more of the fact that these girls were all, to a one, fighters. Pulling myself from my observations, I turned my attention to the girls on the ridge with me. Ruby had set up Crescent Rose in a prone position and was aiming into the mouth of the opening on the south end of the box canyon.

The redhead barely looked recognizable without her iconic red and black dress, clad as she was in one of our Fox Hunt uniforms—but then, that was the point. Somehow, I had even managed to convince her to leave the hooded cape at home. She had kept the red scarf, however—and I had to admit, the splash of red against the mostly brown uniform looked good. Considering what the uniforms were based on, Ruby looked the part of a shorter, more adorable Mikasa when she wasn't wearing the red and black mask. Yang had cleaned up nice in her own uniform, but of the two Ruby sold the look while her sister wore it uncomfortably at best. Yang had never really seemed like the 'uniform' type anyway, even from what I remembered of her in her Beacon uniform in the series. Yang had, of course, insisted on her own colors for her mask and hadn't taken 'no' for an answer.

Miltia sat beside the little reaper, likewise in a uniform, her scroll out and looking over something I couldn't make out from here. The uniform she wore was standard fare for the women in Fox Hunt and identical to those Ruby and Yang wore, while her mask was green with white highlights. Her long hair had been pulled back into a set of orange twin-tails held up with bells courtesy of one of Neo's illusions and my Conjuration. She had also added a set of mismatched light green and blue contacts to try and further separate her from Melanie playing the role of 'Atra,' who had left her hair long and loose. Miltia had suggested adding a tail to add to the disguise, but I had veto'd that idea when she'd told me exactly what kind of tail she had in mind—and had only gotten her to agree on the understanding that she would be using it at some point in the near future and most decidedly not in public.

Neo stood near me, her mask up and resting atop her head at the moment and wearing a bored look—though she had had the foresight to apply an illusion to her face in case anyone looked our direction. Currently, Neo was wearing a face pulled from my memories—specifically, a version of Teletha Testarossa of Full Metal Panic! fame adapted to real life as opposed to animation. She had, however, taken my suggestion about copying Ruby's eyes a step further and copied her hair coloration and adapted it to her look as well—so instead of simply Tessa's silver hair, what she had was a blue-to-silver blend that looked like a combination of both Tessa and Kaname. I had to admit, Neo mostly had the build to pull it off—though she was a few sizes larger in the chest area than the girl she was emulating. Unlike Ruby or Miltia, Neo's uniform included the full long coat, while the Fox-themed mask sitting atop her braided hair was silver with white highlights. 'Well, I did request silver eyes,' I mused. 'I'm almost afraid to see what she does with all those images of women she wanted, though.'

I had even taken the time to summon up Sanguine so she could benefit from us killing so many Grimm, and the spirit sat on her haunches, her tail occasionally twitching as she actively broadcast her boredom and annoyance over our link—both of which were aimed firmly at me, seeing as I had forbidden her from leaving our position unless absolutely necessary. I didn't exactly want some trigger-happy grunt mistaking the spirit for a Grimm—and it would be an easy and justifiable mistake to make. However, that she was now aware and cognizant enough to feel both bored and annoyed, and blame me for it, was probably a good sign.

Seeing my attention, Neo smiled before asking, "So, what are we doing? Just spamming AP Round at everything downrange?"

"Pretty much," I agreed. "You and Miltia should be able to hit things from here—especially if you aim for the largest groups. If they get closer to our ground forces, I'll glass the area in the middle with AOEs."

We went quiet after that, waiting for the Grimm to make it through the pass—a pass our men had trapped to hell and back with explosives. Over the course of ten minutes, I counted at least twenty explosions as our forces reported in where each was so that everyone not looking at a copy of my Semblance's map could tell how far the Grimm had gotten. Despite the effectiveness of such preparations whittling them down, they had the numbers to replace them and Grimm were incapable of being demoralized for the most part. Worse, the ones running into the claymores that had been set up tended to be smaller, faster Grimm that made up the leading edge of the horde—as well as not clustered up so the claymores weren't taking out many of them. The biggest and strongest of them were mostly plodding along in the middle of their group.

'I was wrong,' I thought some time later, a wry grin crossing my face as I watched a constant stream of Grimm pour out of the mouth of the pass and into the canyon, only to be mowed down by full-auto cannon fire from one of our AFVs. A line of red connected the vehicle and the Grimm, laser-like, and where it touched Grimm exploded into plumes of flame and clouds of black mist. A call over the radio announced that that particular AFV was beginning to run low on ammunition—and I saw the first streaks of blue mixed in with the red: different Dust types used the same way as tracer rounds on Earth. As soon as the first AFV ran dry, the call came over the radio and the second AFV in the line opened up on the mouth of the pass. None of the handful of Grimm that had managed to slip into the canyon made it more than a few steps before a new line of red and fire cut them down. Below, a pair of people exited the first AFV from the rear and began reloading it from the supply of ammunition that had been moved up behind each. 'Us being here is overkill. Hell, more than about three to five AFVs is probably overdoing it. We brought twelve.'

"Jaune," Ruby asked from nearby, laying beside her weapon and looking down its scope, "Are we even going to get to shoot anything?"

I shrugged, though she couldn't see it from her position. "Maybe. Honestly? I hope not. If we're not needed, then that means our first real test for Fox Hunt is a success. It means we can act without Hunters as backup if need be." The smaller girl made a quiet sound and I raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Aren't you worried that you might put us out of a job?" she asked, turning and meeting my eyes. "I enjoy shooting Grimm, but I kind of need the money if I want to keep shooting them."

"Ruby, sweetie, Fox Hunt was never meant to replace Hunters. If we didn't need hunters, I think Vale would still have a standing army. We fill a gap and add some more resources to throw at the 'Grimm' problem—which isn't something we should be looking at as a career choice anyway. A career implies long, stable employment—and in this case, that implies keeping the Grimm around so we have some justification for our existence. If I could wipe out the Grimm in a single stroke right now, and in so doing put myself out of a job, I wouldn't hesitate. They're too much of a threat to sentient life on Remnant to deal with them as anything but what they are—a genocidal plague in desperate need of some plague control. If Fox Hunt can deal with Grimm without the aid of Hunters, that's good—it means that when you call us, you're actually getting your money's worth. You're not calling a bunch of red shirts to come and act as Grimm fodder—you're calling in needed backup, to come and bail your ass out of the furball you've found yourself in." Aside from that, I wanted my forces as strong as possible, to deal with the likes of the White Fang and Cinder if necessary, but I wasn't going to say that out loud.

Miltia piped up from nearby, looking up from her scroll. "We're getting a steady stream of EXP. It's not much, given how it's divided amongst the entire raid group, but it's not zero either. And I know it's not exactly free EXP either. Between fuel and ammunition costs, this little stunt is going to set us back a bit—the EXP isn't worth the cost of supplies. The Lien left down below may make up for some of it, but not entirely. The bounty for killing all of this should about make up fuel and ammunition costs though."

"But that still leaves us forking out combat pay," Neo pointed out.

Miltia nodded. "Yeah. We're not going to break even on it. However," she pointed towards where the civilian camera crew had set up with a view overlooking the action, on the far end of the canyon from where the Grimm had made their approach and with their own guard detail of Fox Hunt soldiers—and halfway across the canyon from us by design, so they wouldn't be able to overhear anything, "That is worth it even if we weren't making a profit here."

"I know, I know," Ruby muttered, shaking her head before pulling away from Crescent Rose and rolling over onto her back to look at me. "Still doesn't make it any less boring."

My lips twitched into a grin under my mask. "If you think sitting up here watching Grimm get mowed down by fiery death is boring, I hate to see how you're going to feel about being stuck in a classroom at Beacon all day."

Ruby groaned quietly, wincing. "Don't remind me. I'm dreading that part. Just… don't tell Yang. I don't want to hear the 'I told you so.'"

The radio squawked something I missed and Neo held up a hand to silence us. "Did you catch that?"

"No, what's up?" I asked.

"Larger stuff is starting to come up the pipe. Looks like Ruby may get her wish," the ice cream themed girl grinned.

"Yes!" Ruby cheered, rolling back over and putting her eye to the scope again. Below, I spotted the first group of Ursai break through the mouth of the pass and into the canyon. Crescent Rose opened up, boring a round into the eye socket of the one in the lead, and then the noise from below tripled as our ground commander ordered three AFV positions to open fire. "Nooo!" Ruby whined, her legs kicking in frustration.

Neo and Miltia giggled and I valiantly resisted the urge to laugh. "Were you expecting something different?" Neo asked, and Ruby tilted her head enough to stick her tongue out at the older girl.

"One's broken through," Miltia pointed out, drawing our attention to where a particularly large and armored Ursa had somehow made it out of the crossfire. By the time Ruby had adjusted her aim, I heard the hollow thump of a mortar being launched, and then the area immediately around the Ursa in question exploded. "Never mind. I spoke too soon."

"Rrr," the little redhead grumbled, and this time I did laugh.

More poured out after it—Ursai, Deathstalkers, King Taijitu, and more. Of those that managed to make it past the initial crossfire from our AFVs, none made it outside of the mortars' field of fire. Over the course of a bit over an hour, not once were any of us actually required to step in. By the time the final Goliaths were squeezing their way out of the passage in single file, we had finished nearly everything else save for a few stragglers at the back that appeared to be losing interest and wandering off now that the majority of the horde had been neutralized. Focused fire from our AFVs and a few mortars dropped on their heads finished off the last of the Goliaths and I opened my map to see about getting our men to fan out and take out the stragglers before they could cause trouble elsewhere.

"That's weird," I murmured, my eyes immediately drawn to the almost black color of the map and the Spirit density reading.

"What?" Miltia asked, drawing my attention off the map momentarily.

"Normally, when you kill Grimm, Spirit density goes down—mostly because you're absorbing it, partly as EXP, partly as Spirit, while the rest dissipates. It's why when we clear areas out, Spirit density tends to drop to nothing and Grimm won't spawn for a while," I answered, before gesturing at my map. "It's gone up instead. Last time I saw something like this…" I blinked, closing my map as I sent out a Raid-wide command to stay alert. Where people below had begun to relax, they suddenly snapped back to full combat readiness. It was not a moment too soon as the oppressive feeling in the air swelled suddenly and black blood began to drip from a point in space above where most of the Grimm had been killed. Black mist, the stuff Grimm tended to dissolve into upon death, swirled through the air, collecting into a single point. A sphere of black formed and the AFVs opened fire—not that it did any good, as they seemed to simply pass into the black sphere and disappear. Seeing that there appeared to be no effect, the order was given to hold fire for the moment.

"What is that?" Neo asked as I began layering on shields.

"A 'Nameless' level Grimm. Black nameplate, raid-level boss," I answered shortly. "I don't have an official classification, yet. Kaiju size class, though."

"So, big and strong," the girl surmised, and I nodded. "Sounds fun."

I shifted my gaze to meet her eyes, about to tell her that she and the others wouldn't be getting involved, only to stop as I saw the look there. I realized that this was going to be one of those times where if I asked them to stay out of it, they were going to be more than a little annoyed—and hurt. "Fine," I grunted, turning as movement from the surface of the orb of black liquid caught my eye. "We'll see what it is and decide where to go from there."

White bone broke the surface of the bubble, slicing outward and resolving as a long and thin curve with a sharp looking point on the end, followed by a second, slightly shorter curve of bone set just under the first. A moment later, a third and fourth bone broke the surface before the entire bubble popped, exploding into a shower of black blood and mist. A low rumble echoed through the canyon as the sphere's contents dropped to the ground. What stood in the canyon resembled a Goliath, if that Goliath had been sized up several times its actual size. It towered about fifty feet high and was covered at the top, sides, and legs with the kind of bone armor seen on most larger Grimm. Its ears appeared to be oversized, even for an African elephant if that's what it was based on, and it actually took me a few moments to figure out why as my eyes found its nameplate.

Jumbo Jr.

Ain't Never Seen A Goliath Fly

Level: 85

'Where have I seen that name?' I wondered for a moment, before the memory surfaced and I had to try hard not to palm my face. "Really? First Yogi and now Dumbo? Fuck you, Remnant," I groaned quietly. Around us, the din of automatic weapon fire resumed as the AFVs resumed fire.

"What is it?" Miltia asked, and I shook my head.

"Doesn't matter. I'll tell you later," I waved her off, knowing I wouldn't exactly be able to explain it to Ruby and the others without spilling the secret about where I'd come from—and now was not exactly the time or the place for it. Instead, I took in how the battle below was shaping up. "Looks like our weapons aren't exactly working," I assessed, glancing at its health bar and seeing it had dropped maybe one percent under the assault from everything being thrown at it. I had to give my ground forces credit—they hadn't hesitated to open up on the new threat, assess the situation, and apply more firepower when it seemed that what they had was ineffective. Still, at this point, they were just wasting ammunition.

"Its armor is too strong, and it's smart enough to turn its armored flank towards the AFVs," Ruby pointed out.

Neo frowned as it began moving. "Where's it going?" The beast had begun lumbering across the canyon. "The only thing over there is—"

"The stream," I muttered as it stuck its trunk in. After a moment, it turned its head and pointed its trunk at one of the AFVs, and the air cracked as a line of water moving at supersonic speed crossed the distance and connected the Grimm with its intended target. The vehicle rocked from side to side on its wheels for a moment before the attack cut off, revealing a large dent in its armor that looked more like what I'd expect an impact from an explosive or something to look like. The Grimm stuck its snout back in the water and I shook my head. "Yeah, no more ranged attacks for you," I growled, channeling mana and casting, "Flash Freeze."

Ice spread, freezing that section of the stream solid for several yards around the point of impact. Dumbo jerked its trunk out of the water and shook its head, before opening its maw and drawing in a huge gulp of air. It pointed its trunk at the same AFV it had initially targeted and blew, sending another crack echoing across the canyon above the sounds of gunfire. A couple of solid chunks of ice punched into the vehicle—one hitting the damaged area and breaching the vehicle, while the second hit an undamaged section nearer the front and exploded into ice shards. The oversized Grimm shuffled a few steps upstream and made to stick its trunk into the water outside the range of my first Flash Freeze. Not wanting to give it any more easy ammunition, I shifted my target further upstream and cast a Wall, focusing on the shape I wanted. The water downstream stopped as the stream began spreading across the canyon floor outside of its normal path. It made an attempt to snort up more off the canyon floor, but apparently decided against that when it got a snout full of mud.

Seeing it moving away from the displaced stream turned swiftly spreading mud slick, a plan began to form and I cast a glance at Ruby occasionally taking pot-shots when she caught a glimpse of something not covered by armor. "So, Ruby, still want something to do?"

"Absolutely," the girl grinned, grabbing her weapon and kicking up to her feet. "What's the plan?"

"It's a three-phase plan. First, I'm going to go piss it off and draw it away from our people. Then, we're going to work on getting that armor off. Lastly, everyone's going to blow the shit out of it," I summarized.

The little reaper bounced on the balls of her feet and nodded. "I love simple plans. What am I doing?"

"Well, you've got the most important part," I chuckled before opening a private comm channel to our group. "Okay, Penny and Jen are going with me. We're going to draw it off. Everyone else, stand by." Switching channels, I selected the ground team's frequency. "Ground fireteams, prepare to cease fire and wait for my signal to resume." Next, I changed over to Angel's frequency. "Foxtrot-1, Foxtrot Actual. Pull your wing back and prepare to engage, but hold fire until I give the word."

"Copy that, Actual," the woman replied.

Turning to Neo and Miltia, I said, "We're going to knock the armor off it. When it comes off, light it up. Okay?"

"Got it," Neo agreed, while Miltia nodded.

"Wings," I cast, before turning and casting the same on Ruby. "You've got about three minutes to figure that out before I'm going to need you," I warned her, earning a nod in reply as she hovered a few feet off the ground and began trying to get a feel for the new pseudo-appendages. "Word of advice: don't try to make any sudden stops at speed, or you'll wind up hurting yourself."

That taken care of, I took off for the canyon, spotting Penny and Jen waiting below. Hitting them both with the flight spell, I said, "Pretty sure this thing has more tricks up its trunk than tossing a spray of water around. Penny and I are going to lead it up away from the ground forces. Jen, you can make shields with your Semblance, right?"

"Yes," she answered quietly.

"Okay. Good. How quickly can you adapt to flight?" I asked, and the woman hummed before closing her eyes.

The wings twitched and she lifted off a foot before shifting around from side to side. "I'll be fine."

I didn't bother questioning if she was sure or not. Between the two of them, Ruby was squishier and Jen was an experienced Huntress. The Arc girl was far more likely to survive any direct hits and wouldn't be moving at the speed I expected Ruby to. "You're running interference. Try to keep yourself between its trunk and our Bullheads, and keep a shield up at all times," I ordered, and the blonde nodded. "Okay, let's go."

I took off with Penny hot on my heels and Jen trailing at the rear of our formation and quickly sent the order to temporarily cease fire. The valley went dead silent for a beat before the sound of chirping birds filled the silence. A Plasma Blade spun up in each of my hands and, catching on, Penny brought up her own as we neared the Grimm. "Down the sides!" I yelled as we neared and the gynoid nodded, shifting to its right flank as I took its left. As we shot by it, both of us swung, dragging the blades down its armor. A glance back showed the armor had barely been scored where the blades had passed, but that didn't particularly matter. What did matter was that we now had its attention. Intending to keep it, I took aim and tossed both of my blades in a pair of Strike Raids, sending them circling under the beast. Dumbo roared and black blood splattered over the ground as the blades passed under its unarmored underside. I knew that most armored creatures tended to have the least armor, sometimes even no armor, on their undersides, and this Grimm appeared to be no exception.

It took off into a running charge at us but we zipped ahead faster than it could run, pulling up and climbing skyward as I tossed out an AP Round behind me, only to see the spell splash off its armored face mask. Seeing it couldn't catch us on land, those massive ears spread and dust kicked up around it as they thrust downward, pulling it ponderously into the sky as I'd suspected it would be able to. As it rose, I noticed that, in some weird effect of Grimm ignoring physics—it flew strangely level.

"Looks like we've got its attention. Now to hold it," I sent to the group. Going over my list of spells, I hit it with Observe and grinned. 'Okay, I think I've got it.'

A subvocalized "Rage" followed by "Taunt" had it seeing red and focused solely on me as I began leading it up. Over the wind rushing around me, I heard one of those great, heaving intakes of breath signaling it was getting ready to attack. "Scatter!" I yelled, and the gynoid at my side jinked away. An instant later, a trumpeting blast of sound slammed into me like a city bus and sent me tumbling upwards head over heels. Spots danced in my vision and my ears rang. For a moment everything was silent as my ear drums had been damaged irreparably—my enhanced hearing having suddenly become a liability, though I suspect my ear drums would have ruptured even without it. And then Gamer's Body kicked in and I could hear again. A glance at my HUD showed it had taken a good twenty percent off the top of my HP, through my shields—two of which had popped under the assault.

'Again?! God damnit!' I cursed internally as I recovered. I was unamused to see that all of my defensive spells had leveled off of that—at least twice for the highest leveled spells—along with Physical Damage Resistance, which had hit 25 and given me the skill evolution notice before leveling twice more. I didn't exactly have time to carefully read through and pick what I wanted, however, so I skimmed as quickly as I could between the available options, which essentially boiled down to increased critical resistance, increased penetrating resistance, or a lower level of increased resistance to all types of physical damage. 'Fuck it, resist all the things,' I decided, hastily picking an option as I jinked out of the line of fire again.

"Ah, shuddup," I ground out, casting Silence and shaking my head when the debuff refused to stick. 'Of course it'd be immune to having one of its ranged attacks shut down.'

"Jaune!" Penny was yelling nearby and I shook my head to clear out the residual dizziness—realizing, with a glance at my HUD, that it was some sort of disorientation debuff. Thankfully, whatever the debuff was passed quickly—shortly after Gamer's Body kicked in, which meant it was likely a purely physical effect and wouldn't last long on me. That it worked at all though made some implications I didn't exactly have time to ponder, but I knew they could only be bad.

"I'm fine," I answered, thankful we were far enough away that no one would hear. "Just stay out of its range."

And speaking of range, a glance down showed the oversized Goliath had closed the distance between us and looked to be lining up another shot. Considering that I'd been about a hundred yards away from it when I'd been hit with the first one, I didn't want to try my luck tanking a blast from it at less than that. Dumping gravity and wind elemental Mana into my wings, I resumed climbing and began taking evasive action—occasionally jinking to one side or the other to make sure it couldn't keep a steady bead on me. I recast my shields on top of that, knowing that if I didn't then the next hit would do a lot more than leave me stunned and hurting all over.

The Grimm's trumpet-blast sounded behind me again and just its passing through the air nearby rattled my bones and teeth. 'It disperses,' I realized, 'Meaning it's not a burst or a line, but a cone type attack. I shouldn't be surprised—I mean, it's sound—but that it actually behaves like sound is surprising, since half the elemental shit in Remnant doesn't behave like the element it claims to be.And there's dropoff in damage due to distance and other factors. The water and ice were air-propelled projectile attacks, so they'd behave differently from sound and wind. Of course, that also means that it's most dangerous up close—it'd probably one-shot any of us except Raven and Jen, and maybe Penny. And that long trunk gives it the ability to cover its blind spots pretty well. You'd have to be standing pretty much right behind it in order to be out of its line of fire.'

With that thought in mind, I made a couple of quick addendums to my improvised plan and sent what I wanted done to Ruby. 'Okay, it's high enough and it's good and pissed at me. Time for phase two.' Sending orders to Penny to pull back and Jen to get into place, I opened a channel to Angel and broadcast, "Engage the target, but watch for friendly targets in the kill area."

Receiving an affirmative, I shifted around and hurled a Fireball in Dumbo's face, following it up with another Taunt. Circling around us at half a kilometer out, Angel's air wing shifted as one to turn their nose guns inward, and twelve pairs of red streams lit the Grimm up from all sides—small fireballs exploding on and around Dumbo as the Dust rounds detonated. Up above it, the air was already starting to heat up, and I had a moment to wish for my duster jacket and its shiny new climate control enchantments before the Grimm leveled its trunk at one of the Bullheads and blasted out an attack. Jen was there in a blur of green Aura, a faint shimmer of green rippling in the air as she absorbed the blast, but considering that it hadn't even budged her at that range, I highly doubted it would have even damaged one of our machines. Just to make sure, I ordered them to pull back another hundred meters and to keep even with it if it tried to close with one of them—with its poor acceleration, that wouldn't be a problem for even the slowest of them.

Drawing its attention back to me, I lured it higher. 'Penny, I've got something for you,' I sent to the ancula. As she approached, I Conjured up a thick slab of steel with a handle on the end and passed it to her.

"What's this for, Jaune?" she asked, and I grinned under my mask.

Shaking my head, I pointed upwards. "You'll see. Now, start climbing. Get a few hundred feet above it—enough to accelerate into a powered dive, but not so far that it's going to take long to catch up to it when it falls."

The little redhead tilted her head slightly, asking, "It's going to fall?"

"That's Ruby's job," I nodded. "Now, get."

"Okey dokey!"

I rolled my eyes as she headed up, wondering idly if Ruby and Penny weren't bad influences on each other. The sound of another trumpet blast and my shields being slammed with an impact drew my attention back down. At this distance, the effect was much lessened and I really only had to worry about the noise hurting my ears. Heat filled the air, along with the stink of cooking Grimm. A closer look at its armor showed that it was starting to turn a dull cherry red from the heat. It would have to be good enough. 'Ruby, you're up. Commence Operation Dumbo Drop.'

'I can't believe you're calling it that. I mean, seriously, I have no idea where 'Dumbo' is from but even I can tell it's a bad pun and you should feel bad,' she sent back incredulously, and I snorted softly at the tone as I caught sight of her ascending—a faint red Aura around her as she rocketed upwards. Her natural speed carried over in the air and the girl became a red streak through the air as she quickly caught up and passed us. She passed close enough for the boss to attempt to track her, but by the time it got its trunk around and a blast of sound heading in her direction, she was well outside of its range. 'Ready!'

"Cease fire," I ordered Angel, and our air wing cut their fire a moment later. I tossed out a quick Heal-chain and HoT to bring me back up to full and hopefully keep myself from being one-shot, before trying to get its attention again. "Hey, fugly!" I yelled, throwing out Taunt again before spinning up AP Round. Taking aim, I began tossing out volleys of lightning element spells as it turned its focus on me once more. 'Now!'

With its attention on me and the bright flash and cracking of spellfire going off around it, the Grimm was entirely unaware of what was going on above it. I cast a glance up in time to see Ruby flip over and line Crescent Rose up behind her. I did not even want to guess how many G's she pulled as she turned her upwards climb into a tight loop, adjusted her aim, and accelerated downwards in a powered dive. I picked up the pace of my fire and focused on landing as many hits in the Grimm's face as I could as she neared. By the time she hit it, Ruby was little more than a line of red leaving behind a contrail of rose petals. I had a moment to wonder if she'd actually hit it as she blasted by the thing's head, before the oversized ear on the left side of its head—furthest from where I had been firing off AP Round—exploded in a shower of Grimm blood and smoke before starting to dissolve. There was a second there where its black eyes met mine and I caught a glimpse of the malignant intelligence driving it before those eyes widened in an expression of surprise. And then it tilted over to the left and began to fall.

I dove after it, tossing out several quick casts of Flash Freeze, which hit its armor with a godawful shriek of whatever the material was made of and great billows of steam wherever they struck as the superheated armor began to freeze over. 'Penny, hit it!'

I couldn't track the gynoid's own descent as I drew even with the oversized Goliath, forced to close range after one of my spells missed because they moved too slowly to close the distance in time. As my Mana drained away, I switched over from Flash Freeze to the cheaper and much faster AP Round, using ice elemental mana. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and the air rang like a struck gong as Penny slammed into the tumbling Grimm's back—the girl's monstrous strength coming down on it and sending it rocketing towards the ground.

The boss may have come off the worse out of that exchange, but it clearly didn't intend to go down alone, as it began blasting off its trumpet wildly. Sheer, dumb luck saw its wild tumbling rotation line up just right to bring Penny into its field of fire. I didn't really have time to think about what to do as I reacted, dumping Mana into Haste and dropping into Flash Step. I wrapped my arms around the smaller girl and made to drag her out of the blast radius, but Haste Perception showed we weren't going to make it. Mana began to spin up around us as I shifted my shields around, already casting, "Kait—"

The world went dark.

---

"That was stupid," someone was saying, and I groaned as I cracked my eyes open, attempting to assess my situation. I hurt all over and my HP was sitting at less than ten percent, but I still had all my limbs and I wasn't bleeding out. Movement above me drew my eyes to a masked face I didn't recognize immediately. 'Who wears a wolf—?' I wondered, before I remembered that I'd made that mask this morning.

"Where's Penny?" I asked quietly, attempting to sit up, only to find the older woman's hand on my chest pushing me back down.

"Should you be moving?"

There was no real concern or worry in her voice, telling me she was likely simply trying to prevent me from further injuring myself. "I'm fine," I ground out, rolling away and stumbling to my feet. There was something off about my field of vision, and I felt air on my face—more than I should, with this disguise. Frowning, I brought a hand up and checked my mask. 'Yup. Broken,' I assessed, conjuring up a replacement and swapping them quickly. A glance around the battlefield gave me the answer to my earlier question.

Penny had closed in and was using her smaller size to maneuver around the giant Goliath, always keeping just outside of the range of its trunk, using some length of metal I didn't recognize to occasionally bash the thing and keep its attention while fire from the others and the occasional burst from one of the AFVs got tossed in on whatever side she wasn't occupying. Our group had settled in along the outskirts of the fight, outside the range of its ranged attack, in order to take potshots.

"Why is she in that close?" I murmured, not really expecting an answer.

I was a bit surprised when Raven supplied one. "Your plan to bombard it from range fell apart when it switched targets and started trying to destroy your armored vehicles. She got close to distract it."

A quick count turned up three fewer AFVs than we'd started with and I frowned, looking around in an attempt to spot them, since the battle had moved some distance through the canyon from where we'd been set up originally. The first damaged AFV was where the crew had left it, after it had been cored by ice. That one may be repairable, but wouldn't be rejoining the battle today. A smoking trail of metal confetti and the occasional glimpse of something wet and red on it gave me an idea of what had happened to the second AFV. 'Must have taken a shot from that thing pretty much point-blank to get that effect.'

The third destroyed AFV looked as though it'd been hit by a meteor. The top and right side were crushed in and scored, and a path lead through the middle of it to the ground below, effectively leaving it cored through the middle. I didn't see any bodies nearby and it wasn't on fire, so I assumed the crew got out okay. A look at the front showed the barrel had been broken off somehow. I blinked, before my eyes tracked back to Penny, where she proceeded to beat the boss in the back of the knee with what I now realized was a gun barrel.

"You're lucky," Raven said, gesturing towards the AFV. "Your shields took most of the impact from the blast and the landing."

'That's how we survived, then,' I mused, imagining the structure of my overlaying defenses. A.T. Field's double barrier hovered outside Mana Shield's own double spheres, and Kaiten should have rotated between the two. Kaiten wasn't fully up when it hit, but the A.T. Fields were in place. 'It hit the flat wall of my A.T. Fields and instead of getting splattered, that energy went towards tossing us away at gunshot velocity.'

"Well, they say luck is its own talent," I answered the older woman distractedly, casting my eyes back to the battle. A snort from beside me momentarily drew my attention to her, but when I shifted my gaze to look, she gave nothing away and I was left wondering if I'd actually heard it. Shaking my head, I looked at the HP bar over Dumbo's head. "Looks like they've nearly finished it off. How long was I out?"

"A minute, at most," Raven—or Rook, rather—answered absently. "You can thank your sister and 'Snow' for that, but I think most of the damage is just the difference between it having armor and not having it. How did you know it would break?"

"Because I've physics'd one nearly to death before, pretty much the same way," I deadpanned, throwing a HoT on myself and dropping down to the ground before focusing on Meditation. If I could get my HP and MP back up, I could rejoin the fight and not sit here feeling useless as I watched the girls do the work for me. "Why are you here and not helping?"

I could hear the amusement in her tone as Rook answered, "Because your second in command asked me nicely to kill anything that tried to touch you while they stuck to the original plan. Did you tell her…?"

"Yes, but only Neo and the twins. I trust them to keep their mouths shut. I'm kind of surprised Yang and Ruby haven't figured it out," I said quietly. If Raven had any thoughts on the matter, she did not say. I turned back to watching the battle as Penny swept around the Goliath's front again. It opened its mouth to inhale for another of those trumpet blasts and the girl's hand darted out, sending something glowing red into its gullet as she rolled back under and then away from it. Dumbo reared up to stomp her flat and I smirked as a flash of red light could be seen faintly through its chest area, followed by a muffled explosion. It brought its front legs crashing to the ground, sending out a shock-wave and tearing up the earth around it, but by then, Penny had made it to the other side and had leapt up to straddle its back and rain down blows along its spine. The Goliath's attack was strong enough that the AFVs around it rocked on their suspensions and a few men lost their footing briefly, and even I felt the ground under me jostle slightly from my position, but no one was really close enough for it to do any damage.

Running along its back, Penny brought the barrel she was using as a bludgeon down and jammed it into one of the Grimm's massive eye sockets, lodging it there and ruining the eye. The trunk came up and the girl jumped—not away, but towards the trunk. Hands wrapping around the appendage, she jumped out from its face, planting her feet on one of the tusks and stretching it out to its full extension. I had a moment to wonder what she was doing before the air cracked as a streak of red zoomed down towards the Goliath. A shower of black blood painted Penny as Ruby severed its trunk on her fly-by—an arc of red Aura sweeping out from the point of contact in what was obviously an Aura Strike, which she'd used to extend the reach of the blade to cut through the trunk completely—before Crescent Rose fired again and sent her angling away faster than her wings should have allowed her alone. As though that was the cue they were waiting for, our close-range fighters rushed in and began laying down damage.

"Looks like it's winding down," Rook pointed out, and I nodded. "Usually they're trickier than this."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "You've seen these before?"

The woman shrugged. "If you mean the 'birthed from thin air' thing then yes, a few times." She paused and seemed to consider for a moment before asking, "Do you intend to rejoin the battle?"

"I had, but it looks like they can handle it," I shrugged. "I'm not the kind of guy who needs to be the one to take all the credit."

"Perhaps not," Rook murmured, before pointing at the camera crew. "But you may have backed yourself into a corner there. If you appear weak, then all your work to craft a reputation for yourself will be undone."

I groaned quietly before pushing myself back up to my feet. I wasn't fully recovered, but half would have to be enough. "Fine. Let's do this." Surveying the landscape around the fight one last time, I picked a likely spot in view of the camera and dropped into Flash Step, reappearing near the front line. Walking out, I made my way towards the boss while pulling up Mana and focusing on what I needed to do. I wasn't trying to create a spell, so much as I was going for raw elemental manipulation here, so it should theoretically be easier—maybe. 'Pull back,' I sent to the group, before dumping the Mana I'd accumulated into the ground around the Grimm.

The thing was moving erratically now, trying to track and spear the fighters around it with its tusks and having no luck, as all of our front line fighters were too agile for that. As it shifted to face me, it apparently recognized me—or my earlier Taunts had made an impression. It bellowed and broke into a lumbering charge. Dumbo had barely made it five yards before the ground broke under its feet, the soil loosened to the consistency of something more akin to quicksand. It sunk in face first, its rear following swiftly as it tried to plow through, only to find that I had spent most of that Mana making sure the sinkhole was deep enough to prevent exactly that. It had sank in up to its neck by the time it got close enough to attempt to swipe at me with its four tusks.

Instead of moving out of range, I walked forward, moving between the slow moving tusks and to a point where it couldn't tilt its head enough in any direction to hit me. A Plasma Blade spun up in my hand as the bloody stump of its trunk swung up trying frantically to bat me away. My arm snapped out and the remainder of the trunk was severed at the base as the dissolving chunk hit my shields and bounced harmlessly to the ground. Pulling the Plasma Blade back, I rammed it home into the thing's one good eye as it kept its hateful gaze on me until the last moment. I extended the blade, feeding Mana into it until the Grimm stopped moving and black mist began to steam up off of it as my Semblance announced its demise by awarding us EXP. At the same time, I got a notification that the guild had leveled and was given the option to assign points. A glance at the list of available perks had me selecting one that would enable auto-loot and deposit items into the guild bank—meaning no more having to pick up drops. I would need to get the perk for money later, however, which meant we were still left picking up lien and drops off the ground since the perk wasn't retroactive. That was going to be a problem with our reporter friends hanging around, though.

I canceled the spell and turned to regard the gathered men and women around me. "Party's over. Let's clean up and go home. Leave the drops, I'll get them once our guests are gone."

As the dust settled, it finally, truly sank in—what we had accomplished here. What I had done. And what it had cost—and would continue to cost. I had gathered together a competent band of well-armed individuals into an independent fighting force, not beholden to any one nation or kingdom. We had proven that we could take on most normal threats and, with a little help, even something that would typically warrant calling in a team of Hunters—probably closer to three, if I were honest with myself, given the need to make sure none of the Grimm escaped and the fact that even if a single team could wipe out that many at once they would potentially be left too tired to continue fighting for a while afterwards. It had only cost the lives of some of those men and women under me, and would likely continue to do so the longer we were active.

I should have felt good that I had managed to craft a tool that could be used to keep the people of Remnant—and Vale in particular—alive when the Grimm inevitably started crawling out of the woodwork. All I really felt was vaguely ill at the sight of the bloody pulp left over of those of our group who had been killed—something that couldn't even be gathered and put into a proper coffin. Hell, we weren't even going to try to gather enough to send them back to their families. They would be given a Hunter's funeral—a term I'd come across at some point here that essentially meant that the survivors would gather the pieces and see to it that what was left went on a pyre.

Before we could leave, there was still something that needed to be taken care of. While everyone else was busy, I signaled Penny and took off into the air. 'What about our guests?'

'You were right, Jaune. They've been trying to send a stream of the fight since shortly after the battle began,' the gynoid answered and I rolled my eyes under my mask. My lips twitched up into a smirk as Penny added, with just a hint of pride and smug satisfaction, 'Their attempts have been unsuccessful.'

'Good job, Penny,' I chuckled quietly.

'Does this mean I get a reward?!' she asked, darting ahead a few feet and turning around to fly backwards as she turned her gaze on me. Most of the effect was lost, due to the mask, but her mental voice sounded hopeful enough that there was no doubt in my mind that she was making some absolutely adorable hopeful face under the mask.

'Sure,' I agreed. 'Later, though. For now, we have to deal with them.'

'Aww. Okay,' Penny pouted.

"Why isn't this working?" the yellow-and-black clad reporter growled, slapping the side of a computer that was accessible now that the sides of the Channel 5 VTOL had folded up and out, creating a weather-resistant awning for the crew's use.

"Ms. Yellowjacket," I called, causing the woman to start and spin around, wings buzzing into a blur as she about-faced. The expression on her face was that of a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar as she met my eyes, but it only lasted a moment before her wings stilled and she dropped a foot to the ground and a tight, strained smile crossed her lips.

Penny and I touched down across from her and I held out my hand. "I'd like to go ahead and collect those recordings now."

"Uh, sorry, we're having a bit of technical difficulty," she hemmed.

I tilted my head slightly to the side, my voice taking on an amused tone as I asked, "Oh? Yeah, I've heard some of our equipment is having some problems transmitting out of the canyon. That's okay, though. We'll just go ahead and get what you have here, please."

"April?" the other woman asked quietly, cradling one of her cameras protectively against her chest.

The Faunus woman's expression shifted from irritation to realization, then back again and she sighed. "I see. I suppose I underestimated you. I take it that any equipment we use to record our interview later might also suffer the same transmission errors?"

"It's very likely," I agreed with a nod, before gesturing with the hand I still held out. "That is, if we have time for an interview. I am a very busy man."

April chuckled quietly, a rueful grin crossing her lips as she shook her head. "I see."

"Do you, Ms. Yellowjacket?" I asked. Quietly, I added, "I like to see that good behavior and acting in good faith are rewarded. Likewise, bad behavior and betrayal are punished. You've already attempted to circumvent our deal once. For that, there will likely be a bit of a delay in getting those recordings back as we make certain we're extra thorough in our care and handling of them. That is, if you provide me with them now. If I have to take them from you—and make no mistake, I can and will—you will not be getting them back and we will not be doing business with Channel 5 again. What you've got there is dangerous—to yourself and everyone else in Vale."

"Is that a threat?" the woman asked, crossing her arms under her small breasts and I rolled my eyes. Beside me, Penny's head tilted up to track between me and the reporter and I sent her a non-verbal order to stand down—no need to jump the gun.

"No, it's a statement of fact," I denied, crossing my arms over my chest. "I'd like to continue doing business with you in the future. Your network and you in particular. I think you've got spunk. You're not afraid to stand up for yourself. There is a time and a place for that, however. This is not one of those times. I'm not exaggerating when I say that what you've recorded today could be disastrous if it were released to the general public."

April snorted softly. "You mean the fact that Grimm can spawn out of thin air? That information would make my fucking career. So what do you have to offer that's worth that?"

'Jaune, is that what they call 'extortion?' Penny asked over our link.

'It is,' I sent back.

"Your life," I deadpanned. I paused a beat to let that sink in—and give her just a second for the implied threat to sink in. "Along with the lives of, well, pretty much all of humanity. At the very least, those within the City of Vale. If people knew that this could happen, they would panic—or they'd be angry that their government hid it from them, because it's very likely that they already know. Can you imagine it? A Channel 5 exclusive: local private military contractor group Fox Hunt kills horde of Grimm threatening Vale… only for a massive Grimm to spawn from thin air after the other Grimm were killed. Aired prime time in the highest billed slot, with the largest potential number of viewers. All of those viewers—all over the Kingdom of Vale and beyond, because there's no way this won't get picked up by the national and international stations as soon as it airs—shown that sometimes, when you kill Grimm, worse Grimm spawn. All of them left feeling betrayal, anger, and panic at the news that not only have they always been in more danger from Grimm than they've known, but that their government, the Hunters, Beacon, and so forth have lied to them for years. All for their own good, of course. Because they couldn't be trusted to handle the truth calmly, rationally, like adults… Imagine what putting a match to all of that sentiment would draw down on Vale."

Seeing both the reporter and her assistant had gone pale, I asked, "Now tell me, is your career worth that? Because I don't want to be the one responsible for that. Do you?"

Across from me, dark eyes closed and the woman's jaw and fists clenched, before she hissed out a sigh. "Give him the disk."

"Are you sure?" Prissam asked, and April spun to shoot her a glare.

"Yes I'm sure," the shorter woman hissed before stalking off towards the back of the VTOL. "All the copies, Prissam."

"Yes, ma'am," the taller woman reluctantly acknowledged before thumbing a switch on the side of her camera and ejecting a small metal square. Penny took it and slipped it into one of the pockets of her jacket. "Come with me, I'll get you the one out of our other camera and the backup stored on board the VTOL."

"Thank you," I told her after she'd handed me the last copy—at least, I suspected it was the last copy, considering I'd hit her with a subvocalized Charm while her back was turned. I considered allowing the spell to break, but thought better of it. I'd rather have these two on friendly terms, and if her partner liked us, April was more likely to cooperate as well. Turning to the taller girl, I said, "How about we meet you at your station and provide an escort to our base? Then we can get your partner her interview and then you can be on your way. We'll be in touch when we're finished editing the footage for both." When she nodded, I shifted my gaze to where April had her back turned towards us. Subvocalizing another Charm, I turned and headed for our own transport, Penny following a step behind.

"Could that really happen? All of Vale, wiped out because people got angry?" Penny asked, and I shrugged as we took flight.

"Grimm are attracted to humans in general, but strong negative emotions draws them like sharks to blood. By that logic, it seems that a large enough shock to the psyche of a people in any given town or city could cause what amounts to a collapse," I reasoned.

"Would people really react that way, though?"

I turned an incredulous look on the smaller girl before I remembered who I was talking to and where I was. "Sweetie, people get angry when their favorite television show gets cut off. Mass media has always been the best method of influencing a large group of people, and with television broadcasts occurring at the same scheduled time every night and day, you can bet that something like this would piss them all off simultaneously—and this is an order of magnitude more potent than someone's favorite show being interrupted. Humans were never rational animals to begin with. We're always one bad day from snapping. Give a large enough group an excuse and you'll see rioting in the streets."

"That does not sound like fun," the girl admitted, and I nodded.

"No. It's not," I agreed quietly, before focusing on more immediate tasks. We still had cleanup to do, picking up loot, I needed to inspect our 'irregulars,' and the thing I had been trying to avoid thinking about—gathering the dead.

---

A soft knock at my door followed by it opening caused me to look up and I blinked as golden eyes locked with my own. My Fox mask was off at the moment, but I had my illusions up over my face so I wasn't exactly worried about someone walking in on me. "Yes?" I asked, one eyebrow going up slightly at the sight of the dark haired faunus girl slipping into my office and closing the door behind her.

She looked around, humming quietly before saying, "I didn't know you had an office."

I shot her an amused look before turning back to my screen, fingers ghosting over the keyboard as I typed. A glance at the clock in my HUD showed it to be late—or early, depending on how you looked at it. Considering the interview I'd given April had only lasted an hour, once I'd escorted Raven somewhere where she could open a portal home without being seen on camera—or by her daughter and… half-daughter? Step-daughter? Now there was an interesting conundrum—I had been sitting in this chair staring at the screen before me for a few hours, trying to decide if the words I had there were what I needed to say, and what the families who would be receiving them needed to hear. "Neither did I, until I asked."

I knew she hadn't come by simply to state the obvious, but I wasn't really in the mood for guessing games. That wasn't to say that I couldn't guess, however. Besides, I knew that if I was quiet I could out-wait her and she would eventually give in and say what was on her mind. When she finally did break the silence, I glanced at the clock to see that she had lasted all of five minutes attempting to stare me into submission before finally giving in. "What are you doing?"

"Typing out letters to the families of the eight men and women who died under my command," I deadpanned. Glancing up, I saw that had silenced her, and followed it up with, "Then, I have to sign the forms approving posthumous promotions and medals for the dead and dispersal of funds to the families of the dead." I wasn't certain private armed services actually did the posthumous stuff, but the reasoning behind it was simple: it cost me nothing but money while gaining me, and Fox Hunt by extension, both goodwill and good press with both the families of the deceased and the media when word inevitably leaked. It would also lend us an air of professionalism we desperately needed to have if we were going to secure the contracts within Vale and move forward from there. That I was doing each individually, and myself, instead of having some secretary type up a form letter probably said something more about me than I cared to look into. It had been a long day and I wasn't particularly in the mood to dissect my personal motives for doing it.

The girl was silent for several long moments and I almost disregarded her presence as I went back to my typing before she spoke up again. "It's not your—"

"Don't finish that sentence, Blake," I cut her off softly. Golden eyes narrowed and I met her glare with a steady, cool look of my own. I had already spoken with Raven about exactly this subject before she left. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but the woman had been entirely practical and realistic on the subject. She hadn't offered any empty platitudes and she hadn't tried to convince me I wasn't responsible. By that same note, she had also flatly told me that there was a fine line between taking responsibility for something that went wrong and attempting to take blame for more than I was responsible for, and I found myself agreeing with her.

I had brought them together, I had put them on that battlefield, and I had gotten them killed—but I had not lead them into a battle with something they weren't equipped to deal with and I had no control over how Grimm spawned. At least, not outside of an ID, but she didn't exactly need to know that detail. The point was, I could blame myself for putting them in the situation, but I shouldn't be—and wasn't—so full of myself as to think I could control every variable in the field, especially when it came to Grimm. Now that we had definitive proof that sometimes larger Grimm could spawn when enough small ones were killed fast enough in one area, we could plan ahead and deal with it accordingly—even Raven had not been entirely sure on that detail. She had seen it happen before, but according to her, it was fairly rare.

The young woman across from me crossed her arms under her breasts and frowned, before slowly nodding. "Fine." Looking away, she quietly added, "Adam never did this."

"No?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, and she shook her head.

"No. But then, I suppose 'your son or daughter died while attempting to steal a shipment of Dust' doesn't have quite the same ring to it as 'died defending Vale from an incursion of Grimm,'" she snarked.

I nodded, a small smirk twitching at the corners of my lips. "Not even in the same ball park."

"So, why?" she asked, and when I sent her a confused look, she elaborated. "Why do it yourself?"

I blinked at that before answering slowly, as though speaking to a child, "Because I care about my people."

Blake shot me an unamused look, asking, "Did you even know their names?"

Shaking my head, I admitted, "No. But not knowing them personally doesn't mean that I don't care for them as part of this organization. You don't know every faunus in Vale, but you'd feel pretty shitty if you banded together a bunch of them to go kill Grimm and some of them died on your watch. They are—or were—my responsibility." I frowned, glancing at my screen a moment before saying, "I cannot even give these people the comfort of bringing their family members home in a box, so they can have the closure of giving them a funeral. A few letters is the least I can do."

The faunus girl once more lapsed into silence and I ignored her as I went back to my work. Finally, she stood and made for the door. I glanced up as it opened and she paused. "You're not what I expected."

"Should I take that as a compliment?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in question.

"I'm not sure. I'm still trying to decide," the girl shrugged, before slipping quietly outside and closing the door behind her.

Sighing quietly, I hit 'Print' and leaned back in my chair as my laser printer spooled up and began spitting out paperwork—what I had would have to be good enough, because I didn't think there was some perfect way to say, 'I'm sorry I got your loved one killed.' I would sign those and stuff them in envelopes, and my secretary—I had a secretary—would see to having them mailed tomorrow, while the rest of the documents would be sent wherever they needed to go. 'I think I'm done with this. That just leaves authorizing repairs, replacements, and so on. Maybe I can foist some of this off on Neo and the twins,' I mused, a small grin tugging at my lips at the thought of subjecting the girls to the horrors of paperwork. 'And I'm still waiting on Cinder to call at some point this week. Well, at least a train heist should be fun. I'm still not sure about sending Neo with Emerald and Mercury, but I'm pretty sure Cinder knows that if anything happens to Neo and they come back without her, I'll kill them—so I don't think that's going to turn into a double-cross.'

My scroll chimed and my HUD popped up an alert as a call came in. I blinked as a familiar face popped up beside the number, along with a name. I winced and accepted the call. "Jaune," a familiar voice greeted, entirely lacking the affectionate note it usually held. "Where are you?"

"Uh, hi Joan," I answered awkwardly. 'I knew I was forgetting something important.' I had not called her since she'd left town, or texted, or even sent word that we had moved out of the old apartment. 'Well. I'm boned.'