Plastered Paradox

Chapter 13

When the four of them stepped through Raven's portal, they found themselves back in her camp, surrounded by bandits. Jaune blinked, then after a moment's hesitation, raised his arm and gave them a small wave.

"Hey, guys. Knock over any more orphanages while we were away?"

The bandits took one look at him and then retreated, clearly wanting no part of a Jaune that could actually fight and wasn't stuck in a crashed airship. The only one that stayed behind was Vernal, who stood there with her arms crossed, looking very unimpressed.

"Where's the boss?" she demanded.

"On her way," Jaune offered. "In the mean time, look, I brought you someone who's just as good. I call him Raven at home. Say hi, Qrow."

"Hello, angsty teenager," Qrow greeted. "I take it you're friends with Cinder?"

Cinder rolled her eyes. "As if. I would destroy her in a fight."

"Oh, is that a bet?" Vernal asked, uncrossing her arms.

"No, it's a promise."

"Look, can we put aside these petty differences and instead focus on the killer joke I just made?" Jaune asked. "Seriously, referring to Qrow as Raven at home is funnier than you people are giving it credit for."

"It'd be better if he wasn't a traitor," Vernal growled. "Why even bring him here, anyway? Did he not tell you he's not welcome here?"

"No, he didn't mention that, but then again, who's going to stop him?" Jaune asked. "You? Any of these other backwoods hick jokers? Don't make me laugh."

Raven stepped through the portal a second after the words had left his mouth. She took one look around the camp, then crossed her arms.

"I have returned," she announced. "And it'd be an understatement to say that I'm disappointed. Seriously, did you all raid anyone while I was gone, or just rest on your laurels?"

"I mean, you're the leader," Vernal protested. "It's kinda hard to come up with a plan when you're not involved."

"Seriously? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You guys can't come up with plans of your own?"

"No, because you insist on being part of all of them, since you don't like the idea of people having fun without you. I can respect that on a certain level, but you have to understand that it kinda makes things hard whenever you run off to do… whatever it is you were doing."

"Oh, right." Raven cleared her throat. "This is just to let everyone know that I have attained my goal. I now have a conquest of my very own. This basically means I have the biggest dick in the entire tribe, therefore nobody can even think of challenging my position. And before you ask, it was quite easy to do, all I had to do was entice a man and then best him in combat."

"Really?" Vernal asked. "Who is it?"

"That be I," Jaune said.

Vernal looked at him, then back to Raven, then back to him, then back to Raven. After a moment, she shrugged. "Meh. I can kinda see it. I mean, he does look a lot like-"

"If you say he looks like Tai, I'm going to cut your limbs off and turn you into a Vernal nugget, then leave you in the woods for the Grimm to find," Raven threatened.

Vernal wisely chose not to finish her sentence. Instead, she looked back to Jaune. "So, why are you idiots and Raven here, again? I thought you were on a quest to find a new family for your not-daughter and also get Raven laid, or something. I take it that neither part of that went well?"

"We succeeded in half of that, at least," Jaune pointed out. "That's kind of a passing grade… you know, if it's your senior year in school and the professor doesn't want to deal with you so he just gives you a passing grade to kinda kick you upstairs and make it so you're someone else's problem and he never has to deal with you again."

"Speaking from experience?" Cinder deadpanned.

"Hell yeah, I was a terrible student until I got to Beacon."

"What changed?"

Jaune thought back to the Fall, and how in just a few years from now, Cinder would have been standing atop Beacon's tower, putting an arrow through his best friend's heart.

"I'd rather not get into that right now, actually," he said. "Instead, why don't we focus on what's important? Namely that while Raven was out getting laid-"

"You mean femdomming you," Qrow pointed out.

"-Out getting laid, Vernal here probably received a certain visitor," Jaune explained. "Did you, Vernal?"

"Yup," Vernal confirmed. "Big woman dressed like a stereotypical weaboo with a southern accent. The sheer audacity of her design offended all five of my senses so badly that I had no choice but to remember her."

"Yeah, well, I don't care. All I need to know is what she told you guys."

Vernal crossed her arms with a frown. "That's on a need-to-know-"

"Oh, just tell him," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "Believe it or not, this is actually important. I know that it's coming out of Jaune's mouth so it probably seems really stupid, but believe me, this actually affects the Tribe in ways I can't even begin to share with you."

"You would know a lot about Jaune's mouth, wouldn't you?" Cinder asked.

"Boo," Jaune said, giving her a thumbs-down gesture. "Next time you want to make an oral sex joke, you need a better lead-up to it – foreplay, if you will. See what I did there? Now there's an actually funny joke."

Ignoring the insanity around her, Vernal said, "She didn't tell us much, just said that she could use some new foot soldiers and we were welcome to join her, provided we betrayed you. We refused, of course, but she tried to entice us by mentioning that you were having so much trouble getting laid that you were basically an incel. That's embarrassing, of course, but nobody believed it, so she left after finding out we couldn't be convinced."

"Haha, yeah, who would ever think that?" Raven asked. "I mean, come on, me? An incel? Get the fuck out of here. That's ridiculous."

"Yeah, what next, are they gonna accuse you of accepting pity sex from an ally and then passing it off as you actually being a super-sexy dom?" Jaune asked.

"That'd be ridiculous, though. Wouldn't it, guys?"

"Yeah, who would even do that?" Cinder asked.

"No idea, but it'd be pretty embarrassing," Qrow agreed.

Raven grit her teeth, her face flushing red. "As I was saying," she said, "we just wanted to make sure that Salem's little lapdog didn't get you guys to sign on or anything like that."

"Nah, we told her to fuck off," Vernal answered.

"Good. I raised you well, then."

"Yeah, we don't work for free. I made sure to tell her that."

"Good to hear you've got your priorities straight," Cinder deadpanned.

Vernal ignored her, instead turning to Jaune. "So, you got beat up by the boss, eh? How's it feel to lose for once?"

Jaune shrugged. "Eh. It's a nice change of pace, to be honest – I get tired of winning all the time. I even developed a unit of measurement for loss – I call it a Raven. One Raven is equal to a single massive loss. So me losing to Raven and then being femdommed by her would technically count as two Ravens."

"Eugh." Vernal shuddered. "Forget I said anything; I don't need to know anymore."

"Aw, come on. You really don't want to hear about how I game over'd inside her, over and over again? It's actually quite-"

"Enough!" Raven announced. "Vernal, I need you to hold down the fort here."

Vernal blinked, surprised. "You're leaving again?"

"Yes, I am. We have to go save Remnant."

"Wow, that's very altruistic of you… a little too altruistic, if you ask me. Are you really the real Raven?"

"You realize that if we fail, the world is gonna get turbo-fucked, right?" Jaune asked. "That's kind of a good incentive for her to sign on with us."

Vernal shrugged. "Personally, I'd still ask for payment up-front, but you do you, I guess. No skin off my bones. You all headed back to the city?"

"Yeah, we've got a headmaster we need to deal with."

"Do we really?" Qrow asked, surprised. "I thought we already discussed this."

"We did, but to be fair to me, I didn't say we were going to kill him," Jaune insisted. "We might kill him, though. Depends on if there's a Seer under his desk or something."

"Whatever," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "Let's just get out of here, already. We're burning daylight."

"Yeah, we are," Cinder confirmed. "We're burning daylight the same way Raven burned all the skin off Jaune's-"

"Stop," Jaune pleaded. "I'm begging you. Let's not go there."

Cinder gave a small pout, but didn't argue as they all set off for the city again.

They reached the city soon enough. Once they were there, they made an immediate beeline for Lionheart's office.

"Good news, Lionheart," Jaune announced as he threw the door open and stepped inside. "We found the Spring-"

He immediately paused upon seeing what was going on in front of him. Lionheart was sitting in his chair, but he was being choked to death by a manic-looking scorpion Faunus, who was laughing evilly in sheer glee at what he was doing. Jaune blinked.

"...Sorry, are we interrupting something?"

"Kill… him…" Lionheart managed to gasp out.

"On it!" Qrow growled, pulling his sword and stepping forwards.

"Now, hold on," Jaune said. "We need to ask ourselves if it's really worth saving Lionheart or not. I mean, we still don't know if he's actually in league with Salem. It's possible he's actually an agent of hers and this is totally a setup, in which case we should absolutely let this dude choke him to death."

"Ass...hole…" Lionheart grunted, his face rapidly turning purple.

"That's crazy!" Qrow protested. "Jaune, we can't just let Lionheart die! I'm telling you, he's a very valuable member of Ozpin's inner circle, and-"

"I'm pretty sure he's still got those embarrassing photos of you at the Nondescript Winter Holiday party," Raven chimed in.

"On second thought, sure, let's let the crazy guy ice him for us and then pretend we got here a second too late to save him."

Cinder rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. There's a man being choked to death right in front of us. This should not be nearly the moral quandary that it's turning out to be."

"I still say he's a traitor," Jaune said, crossing his arms. "We just don't have proof of it yet."

"Jaune."

"Fine, fine. But don't say I never gave you anything."

With that, Jaune pulled out his sword and threw it. It soared through the air, hitting the man Jaune already knew to be Tyrian square between the eyes. His grip slackened enough for Lionheart to break free, which he did, tearing Tyrian's hands away from his throat and collapsing onto the ground on all fours, gasping for breath the entire time.

"Ooh, new foes!" Tyrian gasped gleefully. "Oh, happy day, happy day! My mistress will be most pleased when she hears of your demise!"

"Whatever, dude," Jaune commented. "Are you gonna fight, or-"

That was as far as he got before Tyrian launched himself at him. Jaune reached for his sword to parry the incoming strike, only to remember that he'd thrown it about thirty seconds ago. His brow furrowed.

"Well, that move didn't work. At least it looked cool."

Tyrian made impact, sending Jaune flying backwards into the wall. He hit the wall back-first, then fell to the ground. The breath was knocked out of him, but he managed to pick himself up quickly enough to catch Cinder, who was the next one to come flying towards him.

"Aw~" he cooed as Cinder winced in pain as he cradled her semi-conscious body. "Her first asskicking… they grow up so fast. Someone should take a picture."

"Fuck you," Cinder grunted. "Are you going to get in there and help out?"

Jaune turned his attention back to the fighting. He saw Tyrian narrowly miss Raven's throat with his wrist-mounted blade, and in the same motion, knee Qrow in the balls. He couldn't help but furrow his brow.

"Damn, they're getting their asses beat out there."

"Yes, they are," Cinder replied. "Shouldn't you do something about it?"

"I mean, if you insist."

Jaune unceremoniously dropped Cinder; she hit the ground with a small exclamation of pain, but he didn't pay that any attention. Instead, he rushed into the fray, scooping up Crocea Mors as he ran. He arrived just in time to interrupt a slash from Tyrian that would have cleaved straight through Raven's Aura.

"Mind if I cut in?" he asked as him and Tyrian locked blades.

Tyrian let out a bark of maniacal laughter. "Ha! Ooh, this one is a charismatic fighter, too! What's your name, stranger?! I'd like to remember it when I kill you!"

"Well, the ladies call me Jaune Arc," he said. "My mom calls me Jauney… and you're neither, shitbag. You can call me Please, as in 'Please, don't kill me too hard! I promise I'll stop being evil!'"

Raven rolled her eyes. "That's super lame, Jaune."

"Alright, I admit that it sounded better in my head, but at the same time, nobody asked you."

Tyrian suddenly lashed out with his stinger, forcing Jaune to break the lock and leap back. As he landed, Qrow struggled to his feet, looking very discombobulated.

"You alright, man?" Jaune asked.

"No," Qrow said. "This guy's attacks can penetrate directly through Aura."

"Yeah, they can. Sorry; I should've mentioned that."

"Yeah, you probably should have. I just took an Aura-enhanced knee directly to the twig and berries."

"Ouch. Everything still in place down there?"

"Certainly doesn't feel like it."

"My condolences. I vote we get revenge by attacking him all at once."

"Vote vetoed," Raven announced. Then she let out a yell and leaped back into the fighting, only to get smacked backwards into a wall with ease.

"Okay, now that the dead weight has been dealt with, the two of us can kick ass," Jaune announced. "You go right, I'll go left."

Qrow nodded, and then they rushed in after Tyrian, trying to catch him between their two incoming attacks.

Alright, Jaune thought to himself, it's Tyrian we're fighting, here. He's probably one of the only people short of Salem herself who could probably take me on and live. The guy knows what he's doing. My anticipation: he's going to do the insane thing and knee Qrow in the dick again, and then focus all his effort on me. I know because that's what I'd do, because it'd be funny. Let's see how right I am.

As it turned out, he was very right – that was exactly what Tyrian did. At the last second, he managed to bat away Qrow's sword with his stinger, then knee him in the junk. At the same time, he blocked Jaune's incoming sword strike. Qrow fell to the ground, clutching at his balls, and Tyrian clearly thought that'd be the end of it, except he'd forgotten one thing.

Jaune also had a shield.

"Think fast, chucklenuts!" Jaune called.

"Wha-"

That was all Tyrian managed to get out before Jaune threw his shield, and the pointed edge struck him square between the eyes. Tyrian recoiled from the strike, and was left wide open for Jaune to rush in and close the gap. His sword flashed through the air, and by the time it was done, Tyrian's stinger had been separated from his lower back.

Tyrian let out a scream of pain and rage as his new stump spurted blood. Jaune, meanwhile, picked up his shield and slid it back onto his arm, then placed himself protectively in front of Qrow, who was still on the ground in a fetal position and singing in a falsetto.

"You," Tyrian growled, pointing at Jaune. "You… how dare you…!"

"Lighten up, man," Jaune said. "Look at it this way – at least nobody will be racist towards you anymore."

"You think this is funny?!"

"I think it's really funny, actually, especially since the exact same thing happened to you the first time around, only like ten years later. Hey, did you guys know that a scorpion's anus is located in its stinger? If this guy's anatomy is anything like a real scorpion's, that means he's gonna need someone to build him a new asshole. Why don't you go crawling back to Watts and tell him you broke your asshole and need a new one, Tyrian?"

Tyrian blinked, surprised. "How do you know so much about us?"

"Why, you told me, of course," Jaune replied.

"I did not! You are lying!"

"Uh, no I'm not. You totally told me. Do you not remember?"

Tyrian grit his teeth angrily. "Do not try and out-insane me, you foolish man! Another Huntsman tried to do that once – once!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jaune said. "You just said it yourself – you're completely insane. Telling one of your enemies crucial information about your allies is just the kind of thing that an insane person would do, especially if they didn't remember doing it afterwards."

"Stop it!" Tyrian cried, clutching at his temples. "Get out of my head!"

"I'm living there rent-free, bro. Sorta like how you live at Salem's castle – you know, like a stinky NEET."

"Do not speak the goddess' name!"

"What, Salem?" Jaune questioned. "Ol' Mommy Salami herself? The MILF of monsters? The GMILF of Grimm? Hey, next time you see her, pass along a message for me. Tell her that if she ever feels lonely, I'd be happy to keep her company for a night, she's just gotta blow the cobwebs out of there first."

Tyrian let out a screech of rage and launched himself at Jaune; Jaune blocked the incoming strikes with his shield and waited for his chance to strike, then lashed out. This time, he took Tyrian's right arm.

"Ow," Jaune commented as Tyrian landed a ways away, clutching at his second new stump in disbelief. "Hope that wasn't your jerkin' hand, because that would really suck. Guess you're gonna need Watts to build you another one of those, too."

"You…!" Tyrian breathed. "Who… who are you...?"

"I'm just a guy trying to make his way in the world," Jaune answered.

Tyrian went to respond, only to wince and clutch at the stump where his arm once was. He turned his attention back to Jaune, giving him a harsh glare. "This isn't over," he promised.

Then he jumped out the window. Jaune rushed over, intending to chase him down, but Tyrian had already disappeared into the throng of people outside. He let out a muttered curse, then looked back to the rest of his group.

"How are you guys doing?"

"Demoralized," Raven grunted. "I haven't had my ass kicked like that since… well, a few days ago with you. Why didn't you just beat him up?"

"My competency is directly inversely proportional to how sober I am," Jaune told her. "I am currently very sober, therefore I am not nearly as competent as I would be otherwise. I probably should have asked to borrow Qrow's flask, but now I'm glad I didn't, because I think he kinda needs it."

"He kept kneeing me in the dick…" Qrow wheezed as he rose to his feet again, still clutching at his junk, his face contorted into a grimace of sheer pain. "Why did he keep kneeing me in the dick…? That's just uncalled for… and with attacks that can ignore Aura, too…"

"My condolences," Jaune said. "Cinder, how you doing?"

"About as well as can be reasonably expected, to be honest," she said, moving to stand next to him. "I'm not dead, which is a positive, I guess."

"That's always a positive, Cinder. Hell, that's how I measure the success of any operation – did anyone die? No? Then we're good."

"I can get behind that."

"Alright," Jaune announced. "So we're all present and accounted for-"

"Ahem," came a voice from off to the side.

"Oh, right. How you doing, Lionheart?"

Lionheart perked up at being included. "Oh, well, I'm fine, thank you for-"

"Just kidding; I don't care."

Lionheart slumped down, disappointed.

"So, what now?" Raven asked.

Jaune brought a hand up to his chin in thought. "Hm… well, I suppose the fact that Tyrian was trying to kill Lionheart means he probably isn't a traitor yet, which is unfortunate, because now I have to plan around his presence here instead of just installing a figurehead or something."

"I wasn't aware you actually planned these things out," Raven commented.

"I plan out everything, it's just that sometimes my plan is retarded and doesn't work."

"Like what happened with Rachel's interrogation and you straight-up telling her where to find Summer?" Cinder asked.

"Man, I'm never gonna live that one down, am I?"

"Nope," Qrow said. "Now then, what do we do now that we've successfully fended off the psycho?"

"We?" Raven echoed. "Last I checked, that was almost entirely Jaune."

"Yes, we – my balls are swelling up like balloons, I feel like I'm owed at least some of the credit for it."

"It's okay, man," Jaune said. "You can borrow some of my clout, just enough to get laid with a bar wench… you know, just as soon as you can actually get it up again."

"Much appreciated," Qrow grunted. "If you all don't mind, I'm gonna go lie down and ice my crotch while you all decide what to do next."

"Giving 'em the ol' Atlesian Sunrise, eh?" Jaune asked. "Probably a good move. We'll come get you once we think of anything."

Qrow nodded appreciatively, then limped out of Lionheart's office. Once he was gone, Lionheart turned towards Jaune and said, "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know, sit there and keep being useless," Jaune said.

Lionheart's brow furrowed. "But… I'm the headmaster of Haven. Don't I deserve some respect for that?"

"No," Jaune said flatly.

"What? Come on. I just want to feel included."

"I could always include you straight into an early grave like we were originally planning," Raven commented. "Hell, that'd probably make things easier since we wouldn't have to worry about you turning traitor."

"On second thought, I think I'm content to sit here and watch over my students," Lionheart said. "Would you three like a room? We have some unused dorms you can borrow for the time being."

"Now you're speaking my language, Cowardly Lion," Jaune said.

For some reason, Lionheart didn't find that nearly as funny as he did.

The three of them marched into the room, and Jaune was blindsided almost immediately.

"Dibs on the shower," Cinder announced.

"Damn it," Jaune said. "Fine, but don't use all the hot water."

"You kidding? I'm setting that thing straight to lukewarm and then warming it up with my Semblance."

"Must be nice."

"Oh, it is."

With that, Cinder disappeared into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her. The sound of running water filled the room not long after, followed by steam billowing out from under the tiny crack in the door. Jaune, for his part, simply picked the nearest bed and collapsed on it, closing his eyes and intending to get some rest.

He was completely unprepared for Raven to take a seat next to him.

Jaune's eyes opened and he looked up at her from his spot lying down on top of the covers. "Yes?"

"Just a question," she said.

"Shoot."

"Last night… were you only doing that because you knew I needed a conquest?"

Jaune blinked. "...That's a loaded question," he ventured. "There's no good way to answer it."

Raven rolled her eyes. "Oh, just answer the question, you moron. I promise, whatever the answer is, I won't be mad."

"Alright, if you insist. Yeah, I liked it. Hell, I liked it a lot, actually. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Raven said hurriedly. "Just wanted to know if it was as good for you as it was for me."

"I mean, I'm a guy," Jaune pointed out. "It's pretty damn hard for us to fake it, you know. If we're not having a good time, trust me, you'll know about it for yourself."

"How reassuring."

"Hey, you asked. Was there a point you wanted to make?"

"Just forget it," Raven said gruffly. "I'm going to sleep."

"Alright, sure," Jaune said. "Try not to fight any more Grimm in your sleep, by the way – between the sex and your dreams, I barely survived last night."

"Asshole."

Kept you waiting, huh?

In all seriousness, sorry about the delay for this one, guys - it was supposed to come out a lot sooner, but I had to do a lot of editing to clean this chapter out, along with some of the future chapters, because I wasn't satisfied with how they turned out. But it's back now, and it only took, what, a month? Yeah, I know, that ain't great, but I'll be updating this one regularly again now, count on it.

Now then, announcements. I've been working on a few other things as well - they're both vanity projects, but one's also a passion project of mine that I've wanted to do for a long time. The first is a Resident Evil comedy one-shot; I'd explain more, but that'd probably be spoiling it, so instead I'll just say that despite it being for a completely different fandom, I'm not planning to stop writing for RWBY any time soon. I've still got a bunch of stories to finish here, plus some more I'd like to write at some point, too.

The second project is yet another RWBY story idea that came to me. It's either going to be a really long one-shot or maybe a two-shot or three-shot. In either case, it won't be super long. It's featuring a very rare Jaune pair that I've wanted to write for a long time, involving a Rule 63/genderswapped male character. I'll give you a hint: They appeared in one of the earlier chapters of Problems With Dating the RWBY Girls. Unfortunately, that's all I can give you for now, since that story is still very much in-development, though I hope to be finishing it in the next few weeks.

Past that, I don't have much else. Thanks for reading and sticking with the story even through the month-long delay, I really appreciate it. Special thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, and especially special thanks to everyone who's supported me by buying my original book on Amazon, I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. And, naturally, there will be more original stories further down the line; I'm working on two now, in fact, the first of which should be coming out within the next few months. And, of course, I must reiterate that I'm not going to stop writing fan fiction just because I'm writing more original fiction. In fact, I plan to write much more for both. You ain't getting rid of me that easily, lol.

That's about all I've got. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I'll see you all next time!

Enjoy my work and want to help me out a bit? You can support me, as well as read more of my writing, over on Amazon. My first original story is available for purchase now, you can find it by going on Amazon and searching for 'I Accidentally Summoned the Demon Queen' by John Haruspex. The story is available now for three bucks in ebook format (or free with Kindle Unlimited) or twelve bucks in paperback format, if you prefer physical media.

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