Chapter 4: A Rumble in the Broccoli Jungle

"I will seriously pay you to shut up."

"That's not your money."

"But it can be yours for five minutes of silence."

— 5 —

I woke up towards the end of the night to throw up. I sat on the bathroom floor in my underwear for half an hour before mustering the energy to reach the medicine cabinet. I downed a pair of caffeine pills, a daily multivitamin, and my prescription painkillers & antibiotics with a bottle of Amphetamine Cola—consciously ignoring the warning on the cola not to mix it with depressants. Another half-hour and I was able to stand.

Unable to sleep, I grabbed one of my premade meals from the minifridge in the corner. It was Schnee's and the one good thing she'd brought into my life. I shuffled out of the room to find the floor's kitchenette. In none too long the smell of broccoli, a salmon half-fillet, and two strips of uncured turkey bacon waffed from the microwave. Four-hundred-eighty calories and point-eight net carbohydrates made this the breakfast of champions.

As I stood there and ate, I had to wonder what now? I needed a coherent plan of action worthy of a Huntsman.

I knew Roman and the White Fang were gonna be the big baddies in the end. It just made sense. I was in a certain position to save the day and be a hero there. I mean, sure, I could pass the info along to the Headmaster dude or some more competent team, but dammit I wanted to be a hero. Me and team BASS, stars of the show. Oh, and because that would raise several uncomfortable questions I wouldn't be able to answer, I guess.

I had some vague future knowledge I could use. I could track dust robberies and interrupt that one by the docks when the Vytal preparations start. Find that Penny android and tell her she is my waifu but only if she helps me solve crime. And of course get the rest of my team onboard.

Problem is, that's all future stuff. Right now I had no aura, no trust from my team, and a weapon whose use was liable to get me killed. No way to get a safer, better main weapon either. As it were, any attempts to be a hero would probably result in castration, even with the small history of team leadership I had. There had to be some clever workaround to this.

Think, Jaune, think!

"So you're why the kitchen smells of broccoli in the morning!" a girl accused with hatred dripping from her teeth. Her finger jabbed at me like a knife. "And you're naked!"

I stared down the raven-haired girl with the silver eyes in the rose-patterned PJs, forking my broccoli through without any concern. Didn't know she was in these here dorms. Hadn't even seen her since the Emerald Forest initiation, in fact.

"I'm wearing boxer-briefs," I said mildly. "And the fanny pack of justice. What are you doing up this early?"

"No one asks me to share my breakfast this early," she said quickly. "I've only got a limited supply of these things. It's worth it."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you have any idea what it's like heating up a cinnabun only to find out it tastes kinda like broccoli! Do you know what that kind of heartbreak is like, huh?" She clenched hands to her chest, almost panting.

I gestured my fork at her. The speared broccoli made her recoil and retch. "Do you know what it's like to have parents who love you?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Broccoli creep!"

"Cavity cretin."

"I brush my teeth!"

"I can smell your morning breath from here," I said with a snort. "It's like a hoarder's asshole exploded."

"Well it'd be smelling of cinnabuns right now if you didn't poison the air!"

"You're just mad because no amount of squats is gonna improve your boyish booty."

She grit her teeth and jabbed her finger at me as if trying to call down the wrath of Zeus on my ass. "Y'know what, you wanna go, punk? You and me. The gym. Right now. I'll fight you! If I win, you don't get to ruin the microwave anymore."

I put the last bit of salmon in my mouth. "I don't fight girls in training bras. Matter of principle." Mostly because they usually win.

She stepped close enough I felt the heat of her breath. To my surprise she smelled of recently washed linens and faint strawberries. "So it's victory by forfeit, huh?"

"What would I get if I win?" I asked.

"What?"

"If I beat you, what's my prize?"

That gave her slight pause. "I don't know, you get to keep your greens."

"So I get what I already have. Hm, no."

"Well, what do you want?" she asked skeptically.

I finished the last of my breakfast and considered. "If I win, you give up sweets and gotta eat like me."

She stepped back in reflexive horror. "Never!"

At this point people were poking their heads out of their doors to glare or yell at us. The sun was only just peeking through the windows.

"Ruby, what's going on?" a woman said in a tired but friendly 'show me where he touched you on the doll' kind of voice.

Not a woman, I thought as I looked up at her, a girl. But you could've fooled me.

Well, well, well, if it wasn't the Self Insert herself, Pyrrha Nikos, the most totes amazing girl at—

You're not funny or charming. You think you are, but you're just an asshole.

What petty defiant spite I felt at the moment fled me like whales before the harpoon. I looked from Pyrrha to Ruby, my thoughts turning to auras and how the campus' resident Olympian had activated Jaune's once upon a canon.

Hey, Jaune, what was that whole spiel last night about fixing your assholeish ways and making friends and trying at least to reach the laziest possible definition of Huntsman? Amazing how it only took six hours for you to get right back to your one talent in life, getting under women's skins.

"He called me a boy!" Ruby accused before I could stammer out an explanation.

Pyrrha looked at me with a motherly expression that calmly demanded I spill my side of the story for her to judge. I found myself deeply conscious how I was just in underwear. I lied to myself that she was just as revealing in her form-fitting pajamas.

"I think I know you," Pyrrha said. "Wang, right?"

I struggled to meet her eyes and force a smile. "Ah, it was 'Fiendish Dr. Wang,' actually. A-and I was only saying that at orientation because the guy who was asking looked like the jerkish bullying type I'd rather not give a real name to."

"Not a fan of bullies, I take it?" she said with the kindest little gotcha smile I'd ever seen.

Ruby grinned like a child spoiled by both parents during a nasty divorce. Amazing how she also treated Pyrrha like the only adult here. I don't even know what she was winning here but I hated her for it.

My cheeks flushed. "Broccoli is awesome. That's a hill I'll die on." I awkwardly shuffled to put my plate and plasticware in the kitchen garbage. I could feel Pyrrha's eyes on me the whole time.

When I turned around, I saw Ruby spraying cherry-scented breath freshener in the air around the microwave like some sort of exorcism. She sniffed the results of her ritual and didn't seem pleased.

I tried to think of something smooth to ask Pyrrha. Turn this de facto interrogation into a conversation. But somehow "Hey, can you turn my aura on after I've insulted your teammate?" just felt like the entirely wrong thing to say. I realized that I really didn't know anything about this girl. Put me on the spot and I probably couldn't even describe the personalities of anyone from Beacon in any way that felt genuine or accurate.

Who's Weiss? Some prissy perfectionist with just the right amount of casual racism to be rustically quaint instead of worrying. Blake? I don't know, cool and reserved but dedicated and defs not hiding a dark secret. Those were just the ones I was living and working with. To say nothing of Shadow Person; I didn't even know what they had going on beneath the hood.

In my weeks at Beacon had I ever even tried to have an actual conversation with anyone here?

"So, what is your name?" Pyrrha asked, folding her arms. It broke the awkward silence I'd created just standing there.

A list scrolled through my mind before the truth somehow slipped out. "I don't know."

My own words made me wince. After all, if something bothers just don't think about it. Whatever name I thought was mine I'd discarded as a crafted lie long ago. The memories of two or three lives that sometimes I personally doubted ever happened rattled around in my skull.

The words of a girl maybe or not I'd known once bubbled up from some abscess in my hindbrain, running addict's fingers down my spine.

You know just enough to be dangerous, not enough to be useful.

"But, ah," I tried, "I'm sure your name could jog my memory."

She smiled like she was about to tie a noose around my neck. "I'm Pyrrha. Team VYPR."

I swallowed. "Reckon I'm Jaune, then. Leader of team BASS."

"Mm," she hummed. "Jaune. Difficult name. I can see what took you so long to fish it from your mental lost & found."

The comment left me dumbstruck. An idea had clobbered me over the head. A devious scheme to solve one of the more pressing issues on my to-be-a-not-dead-hero list.

"That's genius," I breathed.

She tilted her head. "Hm?"

"Look, look, Pyrrha, I'm sorry to cut this short, but I gotta be somewhere all the sudden," I said excitedly, jogging past her and back to my room. "I'll buy ya dinner later to make up for it, promise!"

"Did—did I just get asked out?" Pyrrha said at a loss.

Ruby snorted scornfully. "Say yes and then order five of the most expensive things on the menu."

a/n: This was originally part of chapter 3, but got split off because I learned a long time ago that you want to keep your focal characters to a minimum per chapter to maximum a focal character's impact, usually one or two when you're just trying to build character instead of getting into deep plot and action. EG, Ch1, Blake; Ch2, Blake/Weiss; Ch3, Shadow Person/Blake; Ch4, Actual Trash/Only Correct Waifu Pyrrha