AN: Had time to write and felt like getting something out before my vacation starts. (Light Editing and proofreading)

Hope you enjoy!

RWBY

For all its faults, Beacon proved to be competent in adapting to new situations. The flight from the Emerald forest to the academy couldn't have lasted longer than thirty minutes and meant the staff shouldn't have had much time to prepare anything, even if they started early during the initiation test. Nonetheless, the group of twelve was led immediately to the dorm rooms and the highest floor.

Their own floor at Beacon, six guest rooms repurposed into accomodations for their class of the extraordinary, each room for a pair of future hunters.

They've been left unceremoniously by the headmaster and headmistress to figure out who gets which room, both busy with the fallout to the failed initiation. The initiation test would have to be redone for the remaining candidates. This, and the necessity to create a seperate and specialized curriculum for twelve people, gave them a few days of free time to acclimate to the new living space.

That is to say, Jaune Arc would have done so, if he hadn't been kicked out of his own room.

Blake Belladonna asked for privacy in the kind of passive aggressive way that left no room for discussion. Not that he wanted to stay with his partner when the girl started to rifle through her choices of revealing outfits to wear for her first live stream. Half their living space was cluttered by recording equipment, professional lighting and a massive green screen.

Like her animal counterpart, the cat faunus had landed back on her feet after the confrontation with Weiss Schnee. If anything, Blake seemed even more driven to achieve whatever her little scrollnet show was meant to accomplish. The reignited fervor left no place for him today and forced Jaune to look for shelter elsewhere.

And so far, none of his old friends were available.

Dove had been dragged off to a training room by Pyrrha after seizing the dust case without looking back once to Weiss. Unaffected by the continued disdain of her partner, the heiress had her own plans after inspecting the living quarters. She had taken the next transport back into the city with a very confused Sky, who she needed for his expertise on an important purchase.

Apparently, Weiss Schnee had developed an interest in motorcycles.

He passed the room of Nora and Ren, firmly locked and a sign telling everybody not to disturb as they inaugurated the new living space in a very noisy way. Besides not really knowing the two, Nora's description of the process as the 'Bombastic Beacon Boop' left little for interpretation and no desire to get between that kind of action.

On his own again for the first time what felt like an eternity ago, Jaune experienced the familiar sting of boredom. The amount of time it has taken to reach that feeling again spoke well for Beacon and his decision to enroll. Hopefully, this new wave of lethargy was just a small transition period before the next interesting event.

What he saw in front of the room that belonged to Cardin and Russel could be considered interesting, but not the kind Jaune was looking for today. Yang and Ruby stood before the closed door, the boisterous blonde banging her fist against it and the redhead trying to calm her sister down.

"Open the damn door! We can hear you!"

Being close enough by now, Jaune could indeed hear the occasional clatter of metal from the inside over the loud demands of entrance. He recognized what that sound meant and decided to intervene before Yang decided to kick the door open.

Stepping between them, Jaune tried the handle and the door swung inwards.

He held it open for her with an inviting gesture. "Russel doesn't like locks."

Yang blushed, eyes blazing red like glimmering coals. Jaune guessed anger towards herself counted as well as trigger for the color change since she had nobody else to blame for this blunder. Ruby chuckled awkwardly when following after her silently fuming sister.

The room of Cardinal and Russel felt like stepping out of a malfunctioning time machine. Every corner appeared to be out of a different decade or even century. A jumbled mess of random furniture and items that seemed raided right from a landfill, worn and old, but very well-kept to show the fondness the owner had for every piece. Weathered oil paintings hung beside movie posters and while the fridge looked modern, the installed baking oven still used wood as a heat source and had its stovepipe out of a hole in the wall.

Russel was occupied with said stove, fueling it with another log and keeping an eye on the thermometer. The headphones on his head and subtle head bops to an unheard beat explained why he hadn't reacted to the knocking, which calmed the miffed Yang somewhat after realizing she hadn't been ignored on purpose.

She had experienced that too often for her taste.

The smile when he noticed them did its part to pacify Yang as well. "Hey guys, what can I do for you?"

"Are you baking cookies?" Ruby asked, noticing the sweet smell coming from the black cast iron monstrosity and the purpose of their visit instantly forgotten.

"My own recipe." Russel answered, opening a bag of flour and measuring three cups worth of the white powder. The process turned out rather clumsy on his part, the content landing in equal measure inside and outside the container.

Yang elbowed her drooling sister in the side to refocus attention. "Where's Cardin? What we want to talk about concerns him too."

"Staff dragged him to the infirmary. I'm listening though, so what can I do for you?"

Jaune chuckled at the thought of Cardin getting a health check. The brunette considered sickness in general and hospitals in particular as signs of weakness. A quick glance to the bed with the bloody sheets told him the Winchester didn't think the barest form of first aid had been necessary before taking a nap.

"We want you two to make amends for messing with us at the initiation test."

This time, he had to suppress actual cackling. Yang might as well have demanded the moon to put itself back together. The two sisters were delusional if they thought getting him to even acknowledge fault was a possibility.

Russel was a different matter altogether. "Fine by me! What would making amends look like?" He opened the fridge and took out a block of chocolate. Obviously self made on a glance, Ruby lost the last sliver of interest in the plan of her sister when faced with a fellow sweets manufacturer.

Yang, unknown to her, was the last person invested in getting even with Cardin and his crew. "You accept? Just like that?"

"Sure, why not?" Russel had to dig deeper to find the carton of eggs behind a six pack of beer. "I can't decide for Cardin, but why wouldn't I try to redeem myself after the stunt we pulled? Doing something wrong doesn't mean you can't feel sorry about it."

An egg slid out his hand and burst on the carpet. A second later, the table had teleported over the mess and Russel continued as if nothing happened.

Being influenced by his unique power once again, Yang spoke through gritted teeth in barely constrained anger. "Start making it up to me by explaining more about your semblance. You seem to have amazing control over it."

"That's flattering, although anybody can be proficient in something when they start early enough."

Nothing flattering was intended so far Jaune was concerned. The interest of Yang didn't go beyond finding a weakness to exploit and countermeasure for future fights. He saw how rattled the brawler had been from being helpless against an opponent that made all her strength meaningless. She would soon realize the blessing of Russel having this power instead of almost anyone else.

For now, the only thing that mattered to Yang was to sate her burning curiosity. "How did you get it?"

Two types of sugar, baking soda and vanilla pods had joined the other ingredients on the table. No scales or other forms measurement utensils though, which meant Russel put them into the bowl mostly through visual estimate.

He ignored the occasional flinch of Ruby when the cookie expert disagreed with certain volumes he used. "That's a longer story. Would you mind me taking care of my baking while I speak?"

Ruby smiled with the brightness of the sun. Amateur or not, cookies were cookies. "No we wouldn't! Not in the slightest! Isn't that right Yang?"

Yang clicked her tongue and nodded, knowing better than to the get between her sister and any form of sugary treat. Only strawberries promised a quicker demise. It didn't matter what he was doing while spilling the beans about his semblance, only that he finally did it without stalling.

"My father and I lived in a small shack at the nearby harbor. The owner knew my father from his youth and let us stay there to use him as a cheap night guard. During the day, my old man worked at the docks as a laborer unloading cargo. I was left at the shack on my own most of the time."

Ruby frowned. "Alone? What about your mom?"

"Left us for another guy with more money."

Yang flinched, earning two curious looks from the guys and one knowing from her sister. Russel returned his attention towards the large bowl in front of him while Jaune kept his eyes on Yang, who listened even more attentively as if put under a spell by his words.

"Dad always came home tired and unhappy. One day I decided to surprise him with a homemade meal. Being a stupid little kid, I tried cooking two cans of beans on the stove and didn't open them because I couldn't figure out the can opener."

Russel stirred the cookie dough in the bowl with a small smile. "Long story short, my father comes home to see me and every inch of wall, floor and ceiling smothered in red sauce."

Yang and Ruby couldn't hold it down any longer and laughed. The picture of a little Russel standing wide-eyed and dripping with exploded beans was just too good. They both had similar stories of mischief from their childhood and could relate to getting into trouble with their father.

Jaune did not join in the laughter.

He already knew the story.

He knew how it ended.

"Then he took a wrench from his toolbox and beat the shit out of me."

The giggles stopped and both sisters waited for the punchline of the joke, the conclusion of what really happened after he obviously exaggerated for comedic effect.

Russel wasn't smiling anymore."Hit me square in the mouth halfway through and smashed all my teeth. That's where my preference for candy bars and other sweets started. They are easy to eat and don't require much chewing."

Horror dawned on the faces of both girls when they realized what kind of story they would have to hear. Most disturbing of all, Russel spoke still in a conversational tone as if talking about what movie he'd seen on the weekend, not the horrific retelling of his father assaulting him.

"It hadn't been the first time my dad took his frustration out on me, but something had pushed him far enough on that day to make me believe he would actually end my life. I didn't want to die and then he stopped, or better said, I made him stop."

He took a big spoon and put blobs of dough on a baking tray. His whole concentration went into making them equal size and failed miserably in an instant. This failure frustrated him more than the abhorrent story of his past.

"Six year old Russell had no idea what a semblance was. I didn't know a lot of things besides the four walls of our little shack where dad kept me locked up when he went off to work."

Ruby and Yang glanced first at Jaune, then towards the open door of Russel's room while he smashed the block of chocolate into chunks and sprinkled them on top. The door wasn't just unlocked, it missed a lock entirely on a better look. Somebody had crudely ripped out the deadbolt from the locking mechanism.

"I still had no idea how to use my powers on command, but the threat of harm would motivate me to learn real quick. It took me a few dozen more close calls to finally get the hang of it."

Russel turned around after inspecting his work with a satisfied smile, before squatting down in front of his oven to see how the batch inside was doing so far. Deeming them done, he put on oven mitts and pulled them out for cooling.

"Life got better after that. He came home, drunk and pissed from his shit job, hurling insults at me as an appetizer before getting to the physical main course. I usually let him vent his anger with a few punches, before turning him off and putting his body on the couch."

The paleness on Yang's face was only matched by the flour on the table. She tried to imagine an existence as a literal punching bag and couldn't when the mental boogeyman turned into a furious portrayal of her father Taiyang Xiao Long.

Her mind couldn't fathom the possibility of getting hurt by him.

Ruby's complexion in contrast could be described as sickly green as she asked the one question burning on her tongue. "Where is your father now?"

The next prepared batch was shoved in the oven and Russel set the timer on his scroll. "Dead. Took a wrong turn at the harbor and fell piss drunk in the bay. A fisherman found his bloated body two weeks later at a nearby beach."

No anger or satisfaction was visible on Russell's face. Just stating the fact of his father's demise in similar fashion to somebody proclaiming the sky was blue.

"That meant two weeks alone in a locked room devoid of food and heating in the middle of winter. Unlocked my aura from the hunger pains and frostbite, which gave me enough strength to break the door and break a frozen toe clean off from kicking." For emphasis he wiggled one foot, making the missing middle toe underneath the sock obvious. "That's pretty much how I unlocked my semblance. Do you want to hear some more anecdotes from relevant moments of my life?"

"I think we took enough of your time..." Yang answered in an attempt to be diplomatic about her burning desire to get out of this room.

"Nonsense, it's no bother to me. Although Ruby might be a bit too young for certain parts."

What could be more graphic than child abuse, his father drowning and almost starving alone as a six-year-old? Yang suppressed a shudder and Ruby looked close to forgo all pretense and just run away.

Jaune had pity on them and stepped in. "The two have offered to help me with an errand in Vale."

"I see… another time then." Russel said with a smile that the sisters could only return a lot more stiff. "The cookies are cool enough to eat. Take some for the road?"

Lumpy, unshapely beige chunks of baked dough in different sizes were presented to them on a metal tray. Chocolate pieces of various sizes poked out of them, some half as big as the cookie. Yang made a face and Ruby immediately gave her sister a shove in the side with an elbow in a mirror of hers earlier.

Russel didn't mind. "They taste better than they look. Went through my whole stash of store bought sweets during the test and money is tight at the moment. I can buy something better next time."

Ruby's glare at her sister could have melted steel when she took a cookie and silently urged Yang to do the same. Both took a hesitant bite and chewed carefully, until the flavor exploded all over their taste buds. What they lacked in visual appeal, Russel's cookies made up in taste hundredfold.

"They are better than mine. How are they better than mine? I live and breathe cookies!"

Yang reached for another cookie but Ruby shoved her sister out of the way to start shoveling them down her mouth. Any further attempt to approach the plate was met with ghoulish growls between bites. One such growl made Ruby choke on crumbs going down the wrong pipe. The coughing girl took the presented glass of cold milk from Russel like a divine gift, downing it in one go and a large white moustache as an aftermath.

"I would advise you to slow down a notch. Small pieces of happiness should be savored when possible."

They parted ways soon after, Ruby holding a paper bag filled to the brim with baked goods and the weirdest feeling in her gut. She had just heard one of the most messed up childhood stories imaginable and at no point during the narration came the urge to comfort Russel. Not because she didn't care, Ruby cared a lot, but because not once the redhead felt it was necessary. Russel Thrush was either the greatest actor alive, or he somehow really managed to overcome his trauma astonishingly well.

Ruby wished she could talk about anything concerning her mother with such levity.

A silent five minute walk brought them out of the dorm building and towards the landing docks for the academy transport ships. Jaune didn't tell them to follow him, let alone acknowledge the two doing so for the whole trip. But finally, even Jaune's patience seemed to be spent as he addressed the two nervous sisters without looking at them with a hard edge in his voice

"Russel is the nicest person you will ever meet. When he starts to like you, the guy won't hesitate to give you everything he has and apologize it can't be more. Keep that in mind and don't take advantage of his kindness."

"Shouldn't I have accepted the cookies?" Ruby asked, clutching the paper bag harder.

Definitely not what he had meant. Ruby's hesitation to accept such a small favor spoke for her good character and alleviated his worries enough for the hardened look to soften. "No, you can keep the cookies. Just don't ask him every day for more. Otherwise he will never stop making them for you, neglecting himself to the extreme. His hospitality has no breaking point."

Yang huffed, much less cowed by the display of overprotectiveness. "How does a choir boy like him end up with an asshole like Cardin?"

"We are all assholes in different flavors, Yang. Russel is just too compassionate to leave us." Jaune saw the ramp for one of the bullheads open, signaling its invitation to board and imminent departure to the city. "Now excuse me, I actually have somewhere to be in Vale."

He was in a bad mood already, so it couldn't get much worse by taking care of a few unpleasant things he had postponed thus far. Some loose ends in the city had to be taken care of before Jaune could fully focus his attention on Beacon.

Yang stepped in his way. "Then It's only fair that we actually help you. We used it as an excuse after all."

"It's getting dark and my business is in a really bad part of the city." Jaune said curtly, hoping she would get the hint and leave him be.

No such luck when dealing with Yang Xiao Long. "I think we can handle it. Isn't that right Rubes?"

"Yeah, no problem!"

Jaune held back the snide comment on his tongue. Five minutes ago, they couldn't handle hearing about messed up stuff and now Yang willingly walked into the cesspool epicenter of Vale with her underage sister. A better man would have stopped them, Russel certainly would have in a heartbeat.

"Your choice."

Yang Xiao Long evidently only learned through falling on her face.