Many Faced Mage: And the Face of Today is? Rouge Hunter!
Talk about having some very interesting stuff. Where the hell did he get all of it?
Re: Jack has been doing mercenary work for 4 years or so whenever he was letting the heat die down from his most recent White Fang op, so he's bound to pick up odds & ends along the way. Like in Naruto, in "Remnant-356", age is not a prerequisite to traveling and making money. Hell, Kakashi Hatake graduated the Ninja Academy at 5 and became a Chunin at 6… And while a diploma from a Combat School or a Hunter Academy is nice, it isn't the only way to get jobs in that sort of market, I imagine.
Blaze1992: Trying to keep track of all verses being used here is taxing.
Re: Perhaps, but it's better than flooding the story with OCs that no-one will remember.
That, and it's a way for me to draw attention to IP I personally enjoy. Even long-concluded series like Märchen Awakens Romance.
Anime PJ: These last couple of chapters were a lot of fun. Really liked Azure - like, as a well-crafted parody of light novel harem protagonists, not as a person. He's a right nob, but that makes it really fun to see him get shit on. His fight with Jack was very entertaining. As much as I love a well-balanced fight scene, there's just something inherently appealing about watching an asshole get his shit kicked in totally one-sided. And the knowledge that his harem are all just feeding his delusions to get something out of him is just icing on the cake - bloody hilarious.
[This message has been truncated due to length]
Re: Well, given people tend to go into shock when 30% of their epidermis gets burned away (learned that from Toriko~ still one of my Faves~), Jack wouldn't exactly tackle a known fire-user without adequate protection. In Toriko, Toriko himself went up against a fire-user who was infinitely more-potent than Azure, and due to lack of adequate protection, he had to brute force his way through Starjun's [Burner Knife] by flat-out regenerating his epidermis "as-quickly as it was being burned away" when his [Fork Armor] failed him; an effort that obviously burned through calories at an exponential rate.
In a contest between Starjun from Toriko and Dabi from My Hero Academia, there really isn't any contest; of course, "Planet Busters" in Toriko have to "bust" a Planet Earth that's 659x the volume of our Earth (that's CANON btw), so that's really a foregone conclusion.
But now I'm rambling.
Azure's origin story was a poke at the "Light Novel protagonist" in a more obtuse way than I've been setting up Vincent Valentine to be. It also let me do a little worldbuilding, which I always have lots of fun with. Jaune once mentioned a "Spruce Willis" movie to Weiss, but we never really get into what people do for fun in Remnant in the Canon beyond watching teenagers with gun-swords fight one another, which is why I always try to sprinkle little tidbits here and there. Make the world feel "lived in" which is what keeps my most-loyal readers coming back for more.
Most of Jack's loot were Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild references, as well as Xiaolin Showdown, but there'll be one or two more trinkets from other series I like as well. Ruby getting "nom'd" by that Mimic was also tons of fun to write, because she just seems like the sort that'd haphazardly open a treasure chest without realizing it might flat-out attack her~ Anyone else on her team would've been more-cautious just because "it's Jack's, so what's the catch?".
As for Coco, she's a second-year by the time we meet her in the Canon, so I just felt like it was necessary to write in a little bit of what she was like when she started out at Beacon. And giving someone close to the cast a "personal stake" in things really helped the events feel more important as I was writing them out instead of it feeling like an "isolated incident". A person is only as strong as the mistakes they're able to rise above, so her having one of those "wakes up in his bed" scene changes that she's genuinely ashamed of, seemed like the sort of thing that could help shape her into a more-confident version of herself.
superpierce: So I was rereading the chapter that explained the world beyond the four kingdoms and I just want to understand in the Grand line are most people their stronger than in One Piece Canon? Because from how it was described the natives sound like their crazy strong compared to at least a native of the Four Kingdoms
Admittedly, this was a PM, not a Review, but it was interesting-enough I thought I'd answer it here in case anyone else had the same inkling.
Re: The way I've framed the Grand Line in the "Slayerverse", is that between the occasional rogue Sea King, not to mention the other wildlife (some of which would be Toriko-style "Ingredients"), Grimm wouldn't be as-big a threat to them as they are to the people of Remnant. In Remnant, Grimm attack animals, but in the Grand Line (and the New World by extension), animals attack Grimm. And sure, that Kaiju-sized Leviathan from Volume 6 was pretty big, but many Sea Kings are bigger, and I imagine it wouldn't endure a dedicated broadside exchange with a Pirate or Navy vessel for very long if it overstayed its welcome.
Not to mention, because of the "wanderlust" you'd find out there, whereas in Remnant everyone "postures" behind their walls (never knowing there's a part of the world they don't have to "settle"), the average person would be stronger out on the Grand Line than in Remnant. In Remnant, civilians are fodder, while on the Grand Line, let alone the New World, the Grimm are the fodder.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, however… From a narrative standpoint, Salem doesn't concern herself with that part of the world because the Relics are all in Remnant, and if she gets her hands on all four of those and triggers the Brother Gods' "Final Solution", it's an "instant win" for her. Why conquer a region of the world where Ozpin has no influence, nor knows she's a tangible threat to their way of living? Sure, she could try, just for the hell of it, she's certainly immortal-enough to play the "long game" and maybe surround Remnant with enemy nations… but it's just as likely she'd piss a lot of people off and push them into Ozpin's waiting arms.
At least that's how I like to look at it. Reading UQ Holder by Ken Akamatsu really influenced how I want to portray "Immortals" in this story. It's also interesting to consider that while Ozma and Salem are immortal in Remnant, there's plenty of worlds out there where that same immortality could be easily circumvented. Hell, there're Immortal Hunters in UQ Holder that could probably one-shot Ozma and Salem both, and they aren't even Primary Antagonists.
Okay, that went a little longer than anticipated. On with the show!
*NEW WORLD*
It was another bright and beautiful day at Beacon Academy. Ruby Rose was in the bathroom, brushing out her hair and letting her team get a couple extra winks when she heard-
"Ruby!"
"Jack?" the girl asked looking up.
"Hey Ruuubyyyyyyy!"
"Jack?" Ruby asked, realizing the voice sounded a little quiet. "Are you far away, or are you inside something?" she asked checking under the sink. "Is this a camera?" she asked checking the brush. "Is everything a camera?"
"Ruby! The bedroom, Ruby! Come to the bedroom!"
"Jack? Jack, where are you?" she asked stepping out of the bathroom, looking around the room yet seeing nothing out of place.
"Look on my bed, Ruby," the voice told her.
"Are you invisible and you're like, going to burp on me?" she asked seeing nothing out of place apart from a chicken facing the wall.
"Turn the chicken around."
"What, I'm gonna touch it and you're gonna tell me it's some kind of alien dick or something?"
"Turn the chicken, Ruby. You're not gonna regret it. The payoff is huge."
Groaning, the girl picked up the chicken, and turned it around so it was facing her.
"I turned myself into a chicken, Ruby! I'm Chicken Jaaaaack!" the chicken suddenly spoke up. "Boom! Big reveal, I'm a chicken. Think about that. I turned myself into a chicken! Wha-wha-wha-what're you just starin' at me for, sis, I turned myself into a chicken, Ruby!"
"And?" she asked with a shrug like that were perfectly normal.
"And? What more do you want tacked on to this? I turned myself into a chicken and nine-eleven was an inside job?"
"Was it?"
"Who cares, Ruby? Global acts of terrorism happen every day. Uh, here's something that's never happened before: I'm a chicken. I'm Chicken Jaaaaaack!"
Ruby paused, looking at him confused as though what he said was perfectly normal. "Are you going to, I mean, you know, is this the first part of some magic trick?"
"I don't do magic, Ruby, I do science. One takes brains, the other takes dark eye liner," Chicken Jack said raising a feathered brow.
"Well, um, can you fly?"
"I wouldn't be much of a chicken if I could."
"All right, well, do chickens live forever or-"
"Ruby, stop digging for hidden layers and just be impressed. I'm a chicken."
"I-I'm just trying to figure out why you would do this. Why anyone would do this," Ruby stated trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
"The reason anyone would do this, if they could, which they can't, would be because they could, which they can't," Chicken Jack stated. "Now Ruby, there's something really important I need you to do for me."
"What is it?" Ruby asked.
"I need you to wake up, Ruby."
"What?"
"Wake up, Ruby. Wake up, Ruby. Wake up!"
*NEW WORLD*
"Uwagh!" Ruby yelped as she sat up in bed.
"Oh good, you're finally up."
"Jack! You're not a chicken anymore!" Ruby gawped.
A moment later she realized embarrassingly that she was the last on her team to wake that morning, as opposed to her dream where she had been the very first.
" . . . You realize you were dreaming that, right?"
Ruby looked around to see she was in bed, blushing up a storm as she scratched the back of her head. "Oh… heheh… Right…"
"Why the heck were you dreaming he was a chicken? Was he your guardian animal or something?" Blake asked as she adjusted her bow.
"No… He just turned himself into a chicken for the same reason anyone could, which they can't. It was because he could, which they couldn't," Ruby replied.
" . . . That's it, no more cookies before bed, young lady," Yang chided.
"NOOOOOOOOO!" Ruby wailed to the heavens.
*Thock*Thock*Thock*
"Hey, do you mind? I'm languishing here!" Ruby moaned as Jack hammered a nail into the wall a little away from the ensuite door with the stock of his shotgun/axe.
"Sorry, sorry," Jack said completely unapologetically as he set his weapon down. A moment later, a framed doctorate was hung by the nail, its recipient leveling it out with an app on his Scroll. "There. Perfect."
"I still can't believe that's a legitimate doctorate…" Weiss deadpanned as she eyed the cream-colored document in its simple black frame.
"What's not to believe?" Yang asked resting an elbow on the heiress' shoulder. "It says 'College' and 'Poultry Science' right there."
"Yes, I can read that! I'm just saying, it sounds really absurd when you aren't looking at the document in question," Weiss hummed. "Are there any other doctorates you happen to be hiding from us?"
"Hmmmm. Nah, just the one."
"Okay. Good to know you won't be surprising us on that front any time soon."
"Maybe, but the day is still young," Blake hummed nonchalantly.
*NEW WORLD*
Classes that day imparted them with yet more knowledge to add to their growing stockpile, but it was blatantly obvious to Teams RWBBY and JNPR that Jack's duel against Azure, where he won no less, was still the hot topic on everyone's lips. It was only by the sheer weight of his reputation that none of them were directly pestered over the whole debacle, though Jack and Weiss as a pair were shot looks that ran the gamut between contemplative, judgmental, envious, and so-on.
Suffice it to say, the rumor mill was running at full blast, and Weiss wondered just how warped and twisted they would become by the time they made their way to Atlas.
Maybe her sperm donor would have a brain aneurysm and die?
A girl could always hope~
*NEW WORLD*
"LUNCH TIIIIIIIIIME!" Nora whooped as Teams RWBBY and JNPR got out of second block, the ginger attempting to leave everyone in her dust while her "Pancake Prettyboy" held her in check.
"Uuuuugh… I can't wrap my head around anything in Dr. Stein's lectures…" Ruby groaned, visually wilted. "How are you so-good at being such a nerd, Weiss?"
"Being academically gifted does not make me a-"
"NERRRRRRRRRD!" Yang called out bombastically.
"I'm right here, you know. You don't need to shout," the heiress sighed, letting out a groan as a pair of upperclassmen from another course giggled in her direction. "Gods, do these people not have anything better to do than gossip?"
"I'm sure someone out there is writing steamy fanfiction about the two of us," Jack shrugged unabashedly, Blake's bow shooting bolt upright before she stashed the little black book she'd been scribbling into.
"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind…" Weiss deadpanned as they got in line for their food.
"Hey, something that's been bugging me since yesterday…" Yang hummed idly. "Where was your robot maid when we were being attacked by that… thing?"
"You mean Momo?"
"You can not be serious…" Weiss deadpanned.
"You named your robot. Which was also a thing."
"Ugh…" the heiress groaned, realizing he wasn't technically un-right about that assertion…
"As for where Chachamaru went, I waved her off to sweep the hall since our room was filled beyond capacity."
At this, Team JNPR chuckled awkwardly. Between the nine of them, the room was pretty packed…
"As for Codsworth, he went of simping."
"Robot butlers do not 'simp'," the heiress huffed.
"What robot butler were you looking at? 'Cause Coddy was simping like a thirsty man in the desert," Nora chirped merrily.
"So what wound up happening to 'Momo' anyway?" Jaune spoke up.
"Oh, I left the little guy with Vincent. Said it was a real page-turner," the Faunus shrugged. "Still, I wonder where he saw a Monster Book of Monsters that he knew to rub the spine…" he said tapping his chin.
"And you didn't think to get it back?" Blake questioned.
"Why would I? I've already read that thing cover to cover, and he didn't seem to mind holding onto it in the long-term, anyway."
"Um…"
Ruby, Blake, and Yang couldn't exactly fault him for that, since they too had used Vincent's room as a dumping ground for multiple items of a certain… dubious nature.
"So we're just going to up and ignore how weird that all was the other day?" Jaune asked, everyone nodding in resignation. "Okay, just checking."
The two teams eating their midday meal, willfully ignoring the gossip being murmured in Jack and/or Weiss' general direction, it was Jaune who broke the silence first.
"Uh… Jack…? I think you have guests…" he said pointing over the Faunus' shoulder, a little red in the face. Jack, looking over his shoulder, was greeted by the sight of two young women around their age making a bee-line toward them, eyes locked on him.
"Oh boy! New friends!" Nora chirped merrily.
One was a girl around Ruby's height with a lithe, slender body more "girlish" than womanly, her skin a darker shade of tan. She was clad in a black tight-fitting top that went up to her neck and stopped below the ribs, a red padded vest over that, brown boots, and a pair of denim cut-off shorts that accentuated her wide hips and thigh gap. Her hair was a deep chocolate brown spilling down past her face leaving her maroon cat-like eyes exposed, her shoulder-length messy hair flaring to the sides at the back of her head. Poking out of her hair without an ounce of shame were a pair of cute cat-like ears with white fluff.
What looked eccentric on her were the collapsed Francesca-style axes hooked to the bandoleers on each thigh, her hands up to her elbow and shins up to the knee covered in bandages, while long tally-marked scars ran up her arms and legs past her elbows and knees.
The other girl was her polar opposite. Standing at half a head taller than her partner, she was all woman, all glamorous, and shapely in an almost sinful way. Her right eye was an icy gray, the left covered with a black eyepatch with a beauty mark poking out for all to see, a pair of blue wireframe glasses with rectangular lenses perched on her nose, and her hair a beautiful shade of silver and styled in a high ponytail going down her back. Her attire consisted of a blue pleated skirt no longer than Weiss' own, an immaculate white button-up shirt with two stripes running vertically, revealing no less cleavage than Yang displayed on the reg, and black high-heeled boots with pointed toes. Thrown over that in stark contrast to her stylish threads was a worn long-coat in a shade dark brown, the fur lining around her cowl's end a lighter shade. Dangling from her neck was a tarnished silver crucifix on an equally tarnished chain, something one dressed so-stylishly would only wear if they chose sentimentality over fashionability.
"So… this is where you wandered off to, Jack," the Human of the pair greeted in a smoky voice, lazily rolling an unlit cigarette between her fingers. "I have to say, love the uniform on you. I wonder how it'd look… in a pile at the foot of my bed~"
*Spurt*
*Splat*
*Sploot*
While his peers were spit-taking around him, Jack set his utensils down before rising to meet his visitor, the two standing practically nose to nose as the two sized one another up, the smaller girl off to the side eyeing the Faunus' meat-heavy lunch.
The next moment much to everyone's shock, Jack began to unashamedly fondle the silver-haired woman's breasts. Doubly-so because she looked completely nonplussed.
"Rushia, why are there teeth marks on your left can?" he asked as he fondled said can. "And what happened to your eye?"
"Cannibal midget in a briefcase," the now-named 'Rushia' answered matter-of-factly with a completely straight face as Jack handled said breast.
Her response of course was enough to drop the jaws of those whose jaws had yet to drop.
"What the hell have you gotten up to while I wasn't around?"
"All kinds of bullshit," the shorter girl grumbled. "You going to eat that?"
"And if I told you I was?"
*Growrrrrrr*
" . . . Fine, go treat yourself," he said as the girl stared up at him with wide, pleading eyes, the Faunus handing off his Student ID to his fellow who readily bolted off to the buffet line.
"Um… Jack…?" Blake blinked.
"Rushia Ishikawa, Marin Shirato," he said pointing to the Human and Faunus girls respectively. "Old friends of mine from my bounty hunting days."
"Ah, I see…" Weiss nodded. "It's always… nice meeting Jack's friends and family."
"Yeah. Things are never boring at least~" Yang grinned.
"So, what brings you to Vale?" Jack inquired as Rushia took a seat beside him.
"Oh, just a bit of work is all. Figured while I was here, I'd see how you're doing. I've heard quite a few stories about you, now that you aren't bouncing around all over the place," the silver-haired woman replied.
"I've had my moments, I admit," Jack replied, Weiss pouting at how-relaxed the Faunus was acting around this woman. "If you ever need some extra muscle, you know where to find me."
"I might just take you up on that," Rushia smirked. "In fact, I might just decide to take you back with me. After all…" she said trailing a finger down his chest before, in a move that shocked everyone, she full-on grabbed his crotch. And not like Yang did to Junior, but instead fondled it. Sensually. In front of everyone. "I'm going to need you in one piece if you're going to fulfill your… contractual obligations to me," she said in a sultry voice to his ear, just loud-enough for the two teams to hear.
"What on Remnant is this woman talking about?!" Weiss demanded as she slammed her hands on the table, red as a lobster.
"Rushia isn't interested in other men, so she got Jack to agree to be her baby-daddy," Marin said with a completely straight face as she set her tray down and ate, the jaws of everyone at the table falling to the table in shock.
"WHAT?!" Yang and Weiss gawked, both slamming their hands on the table.
"What? It's like a breeding contract for race horses. What's so hard to understand about that~?" Rushia asked coyly as she continued to fondle 'Jack Jr.'
"What the hell were you doing that that came up in contract negotiations!?" Weiss demanded.
"Killing people for money in Mistral," Jack answered plainly, completely nonplussed by the fondling of his genitals. "It was completely legal."
"How is killing people for money LEGAL!?" Pyrrha cried out in shock.
"Well, in some cases, criminals are either too dangerous to imprison or their crimes would make them too high-profile to tout about through the judicial court system. The nature of their crimes would cause a massive influx of negativity that'd draw in the Creatures of Grimm, so sometimes the Council will put bounties on people's heads so that they're taken out of the equation and still get punished," Jack stated.
"C-Can't the p-p-police take care of those criminals?" Ruby asked as she put her hands over her eyes. Junk-fondling in-person was way more extreme than anything Yang had stashed under her mattress.
She wasn't looking for porn! She was looking for cookies!
Yeah. Cookies.
That was the reason…
Cookies…
"Have you seen law enforcement in this Kingdom?" Rushia asked as she pointed to the holo-TV, a news segment portraying another of Roman Torchwick's high-profile crimes playing at that very moment. "If they can't even catch some two-bit thief, what makes you think they could capture the real trash out there?"
"But… why Jack?" Blake felt the need to ask.
"Well for one, the sex is always great," the silver-haired woman purred sensually, causing everyone to blush. "Also… he isn't concerned about damaged merchandise," she said in a somber tone.
"What do you mean by 'damaged'?" Ruby asked. Off to the side, Yang wilted a bit, knowing about Rushia beforehand to a degree; though now of course she had a name and a face to go with the implied story.
"Uh-uh-uhhh~" the silver-haired girl chided. "A girl's gotta have some secrets, you know~?"
"Hey Jack."
"Yes, Marin?"
"I have cravings. Satisfy them," the cat-like girl said bluntly as she held her tummy, causing everyone's jaws to drop once more.
For Yang and Weiss they almost fell out of their skulls altogether.
*NEW WORLD*
"So when she said 'cravings'… she was talking about fried chicken?" Yang asked as they made for their next class, Rushia and Marin tagging along because they'd gotten visitors' passes.
"What else would she be talking about?" Jack asked, Yang and Weiss both shooting a significant look at Rushia. "This and that are totally different."
"So you say," the two of them said in stereo.
"Oh? Didn't take you for the prissy schoolgirl type~" Rushia chuckled, linking his arm with hers.
"I am not prissy," Weiss and Yang pouted before shooting a look at one another.
"So how-exactly did the two of you meet?" Ren inquired.
"Some slimeball in Mistral hired the three of us out for a pair of jobs; that being for Marin and I to take him out, and him for us," Rushia began.
"Of course, as soon as we found out we were all hired by the same guy, and that he was probably after all of bounties from the Undernet, we all decided to team up together and take him out," Marin nodded.
"He even unlocked our Auras for us as an insurance policy," Rushia hummed. "That and because he did rough us up a little before the jig was up."
"Pyrrha, why're you blushing like that?" Jaune asked.
"Well, um, you see… Unlocking another person's Aura is considered rather… intimate… if it isn't between family members," the red-head said tapping her fingers together, Jaune holding his confused look for several seconds before he finally got it and blushed beet red.
"What's the Undernet?" Ruby blinked.
"It's basically like the Interweb, but for bad people," Yang stated. "If netsites are like tennis balls floating in a pool, and the search engine is like a silk ribbon being dragged about, and keywords or domain names are like spikes or hooks or velcro meant to catch that ribbon, then netsites in the Undernet are like billiard balls below the surface."
"Sooooo… crime stuff, basically," Jaune hummed.
"Pretty much. The sort of thing that, if you find out about by accident, you'll get killed over," Weiss stated curtly.
"So basically Kriegslist for Saturday morning cartoon villains?" Nora blinked.
"Oh if only that was as-bad as some of them got," Ren sighed.
"Hard to believe we were talking about fried chicken a minute ago…" Weiss deadpanned.
"At least our school days aren't boring," Yang sighed, shooting Jack a look as he chatted idly with Rushia and Marin about a world she'd barely even dipped her toes into
*NEW WORLD*
Roland's class to follow was just as-rigorous as it always was, but what truly surprised everyone was that Brick's class afterward had been upended; by Roland.
"Sir? Why're we here?" Weiss asked as they stood in a training ground well away from Beacon grounds.
That in of itself wasn't cause for worry, but what was, were the vaguely human-like noises coming from past the tree line, deep in the shadows.
"As I'm sure you're all aware, one of our own greatly embarrassed the HIT first-years at Beacon," Roland began, shooting Ruby a significant look. "Hunters can only do what they do because we have the trust of the people. That trust has been damaged, so we need to make reparations."
"What… kind of reparations?" Ruby asked, half-wilted as everyone who'd seen a news feed in the past week shot her significant looks.
"Brick."
"Coming!" the bombastic Hand-to-Hand Combat instructor bellowed as he trundled through the tree line, massive legs flattening shrubbery underfoot as he came into the clearing with a length of chain in his hand, a metal crate under his other arm. Trailing behind him, bags over their heads and all linked together at the ankles by shackles, wrists bound in thick manacles, were half-as-many as the first-year students. All of them were wearing grungy leather clothes and animal skins, their attire predominantly green, brown, black, and even red.
"Who are these people?" Terrence asked casually.
"Bandits, raiders, and highwaymen all slated for summary execution," Roland answered, a sharp intake of breath sounding through most of the gathered students. "For today's assignment, two members of each Team will step forward and save the Kingdom a significant amount of money."
"You… You mean…?!" Jaune gawped as the color drained from his face.
"As I said in class, trust is the most-valuable commodity between a Hunter and those they've been sworn in to protect. Similar to gratitude, trust is a currency that can rapidly depreciate in value if it isn't properly maintained," Roland said in a non-answer as Brick lined his prisoners out across the field in a line, driving stakes through the chain links into the ground with his bare thumbs, literally pinning them in place. "The method and the member isn't important as long as proof of death can be provided. You have until the end of class to complete this assignment. Any Team who doesn't meet their quota… will be expelled."
"WHAT?!" Ruby squawked, feeling the world around her shatter.
"Don't think I won't do it, or that it won't stick. Ozpin might have this weird obsession with preserving your 'innocence' while you're under his care at Beacon, but the fact of the matter is, the sooner you confront this facet of your work, the better-off you'll be," Roland said as a pair of staff members brought out a table, he and Brick emptying out the contents of the latter's crate across it, revealing a collection of small arms, knives, and cleaning supplies.
"W-W-Wait! You can't do this!" Jaune cried out, moving forward to try and free the prisoners only to freeze in his tracks as Brick took hold of his giant engine block/hammer.
"Can and will. The writ is right here," Roland said holding up an official looking document, on paper, with the Valian Council's seal on the bottom and a number of signatures. "None of your names will be divulged to the public. However, it wouldn't be hard for someone with the right connections to find out who among you has been expelled by the end of today."
At that, Shin Shaitan's words rung through their heads. At least for those who'd heard them as the story replayed itself over and over in the news cycle.
"Clock's ticking," Roland said as he set down a timepiece that looked disturbingly like a bomb timer, set to hit zero at five minutes before class ended. "I'll leave you to your work. Oh, and Jack."
"Sir?"
"As your reliability is not in question, you're being exempted from today's exercise. If Team RWBY finds itself expelled, you can transfer over to any Team that remains, go the rest of the way solo, or take the accelerated course and earn a technical degree that'd enable you to join the workforce immediately," Roland stated holding up an electrical document, Ruby, Weiss, and Yang taking a sharp inhale while Blake's eyes narrowed. "For any Team that does manage to complete this assignment, you're free to take early leave for the day. But if and only if, you manage to do what needs doing."
"Heh, lucky man," Terrence said patting him on the shoulder. "If your Team totally flubs it, wanna try with us again? There's been a few… adjustments made since I joined," he said looking at Dominic, Ian, and Rudolph who all cowed under his gaze. "I promise, there won't be a repeat of what happened last time."
"I have more faith in my team than that," Jack huffed.
"Well, you've certainly got more faith in them than I do. Isn't that right, Little Red~" the older teen smirked before he went over to the table, making a show of perusing the provided weapons before grabbing a large knife and humming a tune as he walked over to the line of prisoners. They were all crying out behind the bags over their heads, but in all likelihood they had been gagged beforehand.
"This… This isn't right…" Pyrrha shuddered as Team DIRT's newest member swaggered over to the farthest prisoner on the right, grabbed him by the throat, and plunged the knife deep into his chest in a single powerful stroke.
"Oh, what's the matter, little Miss-tral Regional Tournament champion? Afraid to get your hands dirty?" Terrence asked as the prisoner struggled under his grasp in vain, clothes staining in a spreading pool of red before he grew still, choking out his final breath. "What, do you think the people will still love you if you let bandit and raider scum kill them with impunity?"
"H-Hey! That's enough!" Jaune called out.
"Quiet, bitch. The ones of us that actually earned our way here are talking," he said shooting Jaune an absolutely hate-filled glare, the sheer malice rolling off of him causing those with less steel in their spine to take a step back. Even Terrence's own teammates weren't exempt from this. The only ones not buckling under the pressure exuded were Jack, Blake, Ren, Nora, Cardin, Rushia, and Marin.
"It's true that Ozpin might have been foolish to admit Ruby to Beacon so-early," Jack idly mused, the girl looking up at him with hurt in her eyes. "But by the same measure, he's also stated that it's up to them to take 'the first step'; to free themselves of their ignorance. It took massive steel balls to admit, in front of goddess and everyone, what prompted him to fake his way into this school."
" . . . Fair enough!" Terrence hummed with a clap of his hands, letting the slain bandit fall to the ground, knife still protruding from his chest, the pressure he'd exuded vanishing. "Besides, getting his dick broken by a seventy-year-old librarian, I'm sure he's more than suffered enough~" he hummed as he walked back to the table, grabbed a sidearm, and lobbed it at his remaining teammates. "Come on. Let's finishing things up so we can get to the homework Lilith gave us. Daylight's burning."
While Jack's former teammates all debated who would do the deed, Team CRDL in a heated discussion of their own with Cardin brandishing his mace, Teams RWBY and JNPR huddled together.
"You don't think he'd really expel all of us… would he?" Yang asked worriedly.
"If we lose the trust of the people, we might as well be," Blake stated. "Despite the romanticized opinions some of us have about this line of work," she stated matter-of-factly, Ruby refusing to meet her eye, "what he said was the truth. If we lose the trust of the people, the people will refuse to hire us out, and our careers will have ended before they'd begun."
"I… I'm not sure if I can do this…" Jaune whimpered.
"Jaune," Ren said, his tone forcing the blond to meet his eyes. "Didn't you say you wanted to change? To grow beyond your old self and his broken penis?"
"Did you really have to tack that on at the end?"
"Sooner or later, you'll have to decide what's more-important; your clear conscience, or the lives of your teammates."
"But… these are people he's asking us to kill."
"Would it be easier if they were Faunus, then?"
"It isn't about race!" Jaune shouted, his outburst sounding across the field. "It's not…" he whimpered.
" . . . I'll be back in a minute," Ren said getting up, walking to the table.
"No, Ren," Nora said putting a hand on his arm. "Leave this one to me. It's about time that I step up too. So I can protect you someday."
" . . . Alright," Ren hummed as he stepped back, Nora brandishing her war hammer and walking over to the line.
Those of Teams RWBY and JNPR who were still squeamish to the whole affair flinching as Nora's war hammer and Cardin's mace came down in a spattering of gore and broken bone, once they stepped away to clean their weapons, the talks resumed.
"Are the lives of a couple bandits really worth our careers?"
"Weiss?!"
"These men have probably raped and pillaged across the Valian countryside, and you'd defend them?" the heiress hissed furiously. "Pfeh! And just as I was beginning to think Ozpin wasn't mistaken…" she said bitterly, tears welling up in Ruby's eyes as her heart began to break.
Yang for her part couldn't even refute the heiress' words. Not because they weren't wrong, but because she herself had already taken a life, and to say otherwise would make her a colossal hypocrite.
" . . . I'll be back in a minute."
"B-Blake…?" Ruby sniffled.
"I want to become a Huntress. And I'll fight for that dream. Question is, will you?" she said looking sidelong with a stoic face, eyes of resolved golden amber meeting quavering silver before she brandished her own weapon. Pressing the pistol to one of the bandit's foreheads, she pulled the trigger, spattering brain and bone all over the ground before she kicked him onto his back, unloading two more rounds into his chest before walking over to where Jack was standing with Rushia and Marin.
"Pyrrha?" Jaune blinked as the red-head got to her feet.
" . . . "
"Pyrrha wait!" he said grabbing her by the wrist, the red-head about to shrug him off before he said- "A leader doesn't ask people to do what he won't. I'll… I'll do it."
"You will?"
"You will?!" Cardin asked incredulously.
"It isn't ideal… but then again, the world isn't an ideal place… And it's like Weiss said, these men have probably raped and pillaged across the countryside," he said as he got to his feet, knees knocking together as he drew his sword from his side with trembling hands. "If I'm ever, ever going to regain the people's trust, I need to do it now!" he said steeling himself for what needed to be done.
"Well…" Jack hummed aloud. "No-one will be able to call you a chicken ever again."
"Assuming he actually follows through," Rushia hummed idly.
"Can we go eat now since you don't have to be here?" Marin asked, Ruby and Blake shooting her cross looks.
"I'll stick around for half an hour. If they still haven't come to a decision by then…"
" . . . Jaune, wait up!" Ruby said getting to her feet, brandishing her Crescent Rose.
"Ruby?"
"You were absolutely right. A leader doesn't ask people to do what they can't. I have to step up. I should've stepped up. If I had… If I had, that girl's mom wouldn't have died."
"Ruby, that wasn't your fault."
"Yeah, Rubes, you couldn't have known," Yang added.
"Maybe not directly, but the fact that I could've acted, but chose not to… That's always going to haunt me. I could've clipped him in the leg, stopped him from running, but when I thought about what that might've done to him since he didn't have Aura, I froze. I can't make that mistake ever again. Not when there are people counting on me. Mom… Mom wouldn't have hesitated. She never talked about where her work took her, but…"
" . . . Glad I'm not doing this alone," Jaune hummed, Dominic executing his prisoner off in the background before Team DIRT all walked off, Sky finishing things off with a halberd strike to the chest before his team too began to leave. "Come on. Let's get this over with."
"As long as we want to be Hunters… it'll never be over…" she said somberly, the two of them stepping up to the last of the prisoners, standing side by side as Jaune raised his sword, she leveling her sniper rifle.
*SPLURT!*
*BANG!*
"Congratulations. You all pass," Roland hummed idly as Jaune planted a shoe on his bandit's chest and tore his sword free. "You might make decent Hunters after all."
"Ruby, Jaune," Jack said as he stepped forward, cleaning a bit of blood spatter from Ruby's face with a rag. "Good work. I'll make you the best fried chicken you've ever had to celebrate."
"I'm not very hungry…" Ruby whimpered.
"Just wait 'til you smell Jack's chicken," Marin grinned, she and Rushia completely nonplussed by what happened there that day.
*NEW WORLD*
"Well, at least he didn't ask us to dispose of the bodies!" Yang said looking on the brighter side of things as they all hiked through the Emerald Forest once they'd had a chance to clean up.
"Yeah, this time around," Blake hummed.
"Yeah… Right… That…" Yang returned, the memories of that particular episode coming back to the fore.
You never forget your first body-disposal, after all.
"What exactly did you all get up to while Jack and I were gone?" Weiss asked.
"Nothing!" Ruby, Blake, and Yang all shouted.
"So you're going free range with your chicken?" Rushia asked. Unlike the others who had gone all-casual in their attire, in addition to large rucksacks, all she'd really changed was her footwear.
High heels and loamy forest soil typically weren't a good mix.
"OH! I finally got the joke!" Nora called out. "Cravings' can be a euphemism for se-!"
"Yes, Nora, I think we all get it," Ren said clapping a hand over the girl's mouth.
"So is Jack's fried chicken really that good?" Weiss inquired.
"Oh yes, Jack's fried chicken is very good~" Rushia said as her eyes trailed downward.
"Stuff it, cow-tits. She was talking about food, not Jack's coc-"
"Yes, my fried chicken is that good," Jack said clamping a hand over Marin's mouth before she could finish that sentence. "I do have a doctorate."
"I still can't believe you're a legit doctor," Jaune grumbled as they broke into a clearing, a large slab of rock with rounded corners the size of a picnic table waiting for them; an obvious rendezvous point for those that knew the lay of the land.
"Hey doc, can you help a girl out?" Nora suddenly asked lowering her skirt. "See, I got this rash on my-"
"He's not that kind of doctor," Marin huffed. "Trust me, I've asked."
"Well you're no fun," Nora said pulling her skirt back up.
"So… what all are we going to look for?" Ruby hummed aloud.
"Food."
"We know that, doofus," Blake huffed. "What she means is, what specifically should we look for?"
"Fruits, veggies, hopefully some wild poultry," Jack hummed as he took a knee, scraping some dirt from the ground before bringing it under his nostrils and taking a sniff. "Survey Corps says-"
"The who?" Jaune blinked.
"The people who go out into the Frontier and sniff out resources," Weiss huffed. "The Council or private businesses can hire them out to map out the unexplored regions. Arguably just-as if not more-dangerous than what we're going to school for."
"It is a big world out there…" Pyrrha hummed.
"As I was saying, the Survey Corps pointed out that there's wild Cuckoo around here. Solo, they're only around Capture Level 2, but a whole flock can quickly get into the double digits. The low double digits to be sure, but still double."
"Cuckoos are just really big chickens, right?" Jaune asked.
"What Professor Peach failed to mention, was that if you don't kill them in a single stroke and they call out to their friends, you're basically fucked," Jack cut in, getting up in his face with a finger extended. "And if any of you set off those clucking time bombs, I'm going to leave you here."
"What, you scared of a few chickens?" Nora giggled.
In response, Jack pulled up some nearby shrubbery, revealing a human skull with what looks like peck-marks on it.
" . . . Okay there is no fucking way that wasn't set up in advance," Jaune muttered after a hushed silence.
"Oh how I wish it was…" Blake said as she walked by, knowing that the effort therein would've been disproportionate to the potential payoff. "So, we leave the chickens to you, and the rest of us forage for side dishes?"
"Yeah, pretty much," Jack said looking down at his Scroll. "Where the heck is that guy?"
"What guy?" Blake asked, the foliage parting behind them with a loud *KWEH!*, Jack's giant golden Chocobo stomping out of the woods, Vincent astride his back, a pair of giant woven baskets mounted on each side of the saddle. "V-Vincent?!"
"Well you sure took your sweet time," Jack hummed the RA's way.
"Sorry about that. The Equestrian Club hasn't worked with Chocobo for a while, so they had to dig the bridle out from the back of the storeroom," Vincent answered as he gripped the reins. Unlike what was used for horses, this one didn't come with a bit; which made sense since a metal rod and a beak weren't a good mix.
"Goldie! Look how big you got!" Marin beamed, the giant bird leaning its neck down and nuzzling the cat-girl, already familiar with her, and then at Rushia who was trying not to get bird-floof on her clothes.
"Remember Professor Peach's lessons and I'm sure you won't spend the night sleeping off food poisoning," Jack said as Marin buried her whole head into the giant bird's floof. "Happy hunting. Try not to die as food."
"And wouldn't that be ironic~?" Nora grinned.
*Grooooar*
"Ursa!" Ruby and Jaune cried as the bear-like Grimm, a faux Major, stepped out into the open, everyone brandishing their weapons before Rushia stepped forward, a Beretta M92G Elite II in her hands.
"Hey sister, I hate to break it to ya, but you're going to need something waaaaay bigger than that if you wanna kill a-"
*Bang!*
*BOOM-SPLAT!* -sounded the Grimm as Rushia's pistol round struck its belly, blowing the thing completely in half and scattering faux entrails all over the woods behind it.
"What… What… What the fuck…?!" Nora gawped as she (and everyone else) stared incredulously at Rushia's tiny sidearm, and then at the massive trauma it'd just inflicted.
"Hand-made ammo, plus my Semblance~" Rushia smirked with a wicked glint in her eye as the Ursa evaporated incredibly-fast from the staggering over-kill.
"Jack… I'm scared of your sex-friend," Jaune whimpered as Rushia blew the smoke from her gun barrel.
"As you should be, Jaune. As you should be," Jack grinned patting him on the shoulder as another Ursa came out of the woods, Marin pouncing forward and bifurcating it from crown to groin with a single swing of her Francesca axe. "Time's wasting, people! Let's form into pairs or threes and meet back here in… an hour. We'll extend our trip until those baskets are filled or I get my hands on enough Cuckoos to feed the lot of us."
"Whoo! Fried chicken party!" Nora whooped as she grabbed Ren and ran off.
"Blake, watch after Goldie. And the new guy while you're at it," Jack instructed, sending a wink her way once the others entered into chats of their own around the "Round Table" landmark.
To Be Continued…
*NEW WORLD*
AN:
Rushia Ishikawa and Marin Shirato are from the manga trash by Kenji Yamamoto, a darker manga I enjoy greatly, and exactly the sort of title that Jack would be right at home in. This crossover in particular's been in the books for a long while, and I'm stoked to introduce these two to those that don't know them~
Just don't read their manga if you're squeamish to gore and/or body horror.
On the opposite hand, if you greatly enjoy anatomically correct (read: graphic) cross-sections of the human body, by all means, go for it ;)