Chapter 6: Stranger Danger

"You are so childish. And dimwitted. And hyperactive. And don't even get me started on your fighting style!"

— 8 —

Never in my life have I felt more American than when I walked into a classroom carrying a gun and not a single fuck was given. Somewhere out there in the world an eagle was getting laid, I just knew it in my heart of hearts. If someone cut me I'd bleed red, white, and blue. Or maybe stars and bars depending on how drunk I was.

Of course, team BASS was sitting in the very front and center row of class. I'd staked those out in every class and they were ours to keep, damnit.

"Where were you?" Netflix No-Chill hissed as me and Shadow slid into position, notebooks primed for knowledge.

"Shopping," Shadow said with a thousand-yard stare towards Professor Mustache, whatever his name was. "He took me shopping."

"It was wholesome male bonding," I corrected.

"Pretty sure you made me buy erotic literature."

"Not my fault Vale doesn't believe in carding kids."

"What's carding?" he asked.

"Exhibit A," I said, gesturing to him from Blake.

Blake just sort of looked at us. "I don't want any part of this."

Netflix shushed us as Mustache began his lecture. Even when I was late I was on time. Nice.

Class is what you'd expect. Discussions of Grimm, war stories, and how to use the examples of the former to defeat the later. Then came the part I'd been planning for for weeks now. The moment Mustache wheeled out a caged boar-Grimm and asked who among us was a true Huntsman. My pulse quickened and my palms grew sweaty. Before anyone could raise their hands, I stood up fast and raised mine.

"I am, sir."

Netflix gave me a look and in return I smiled. You might not like me, Weiss, but you might could respect me as a leader and teammate. Tolerate me at the very least.

"Jaune, was it?" Mustache asked pleasantly.

"Yessir, leader of team BASS."

I vaulted the desk and landed before the professor's stage. I trotted up to the caged Grimm while the man was saying something. It didn't matter. I drew my sexy new revolver, my sweet and precious gun I'd dubbed "XO," and popped the cylinder. A speedloader flew from my bandolier and locked into the weapon. I'd cleaned and tested XO here before class. I knew it'd work and what it'd do.

I stuck XO into the cage and fired all six-shots point blank into the Grimm's face. Like I'd expected, a rate of fire that should have pulverized the Terminator's wrist and deafened the classroom didn't even make me wince.

With a little flourish I bowed to the silent classroom. It was hard to keep the shit-eating grin off my face.

Mustache said nothing, merely watched me with raised eyebrows.

"Sir," I said to him, "like heck I was gonna wait for you to release the Grimm and turn things into an actual fight. If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, you obviously didn't plan well enough ahead. We're Huntsman; we fight Grimm. It doesn't matter if we're what's right, what matters is that we're what's left and they are not."

Practiced that before the mirror for days. Even cribbed off Tom Clancy and Einstein a bit. Fuck did I love public speaking and attention. Witness me, mortals!

I expected Mustache to yell at or scold me. Instead he just gave me a small smile. Was that approval in his eyes?

He clapped me on the back and laughed. "Very good, Jaune. But next time you won't have the easy way out like this time. Back to your seat, now."

The shit-eating grin returned as I sat down beside Weiss.

"That was the cringiest thing I've seen," she said in a mortified little whisper, intently staring forwards to avoid meeting anyone's eyes.

Fuck.

Mittens had her palms flat to her temples like the blinders on a racing horse, tunneling her vision straight to the blackboard. Even Shadow was—wait, did Shadow get like four inches shorter and became a faunus?

"Wudn't that bad," I drawled to keep my cool

"Don't talk to me. I don't know you," she said in a hoarse, strained voice. "We've never met. Stranger danger!"

Well then.

I sucked in a breath, puffed up my chest, and fixed my eyes on Mr. Mustache for the rest of the lecture.

None of us, uh, none of us said anything to each other for the rest of the day.

— 9 —

Unable to speak to my team for the foreseeable day or so, I found myself working in the campus foundry. Before I knew it night had come. I slept in hour-long shifts to maximize productivity, waking up to check a mixture or put something in an oven. There were no classes tomorrow, so no harm, no foul.

The foundry had an official name but I couldn't recall it for the life of me. I'd been here too often to ask anyone without it being awkward. It was one of those names where the spelling didn't match the pronunciation. The entire place was sort of a free-range workshop for students to build, modify, and maintain weapons. It had direct access to those rocket-launched gear lockers, too.

Students could check out individual workshops and even materials to use. If they built anything of note they didn't want to keep, they could "sell it back" to the school as soft form of student employment. Apparently there was a market for gear made by Huntsman that Beacon tapped into.

Places like the foundry were real life-savers for students in the same vein as the campus' policy on guns and ammo. I'd originally worried a gun would ruin what little I had left in my wallet. Beacon saw to this as part of tuition or whatever scholarships let students live here. Free of charge they provided everything you needed to clean and maintain your gear plus all the bullets you could carry in whatever calibers you needed. Ever since acquiring my lil' baby XO I'd been grabbing as many .500 S&W rounds as I could with the eventual dream of being able to create an adult ball pit except with bullets.

A man's got needs.

The wound on my chest ached. The painkillers had worn off, but like hell I was going to be impaired for this work. I sated my oral fixation with gum and chain-chewing toothpicks. It helped me focus.

I was using a coffee grinder to turn aluminum foil into a fine powder for the hundredth time. I needed to mix together two parts aluminum powder, three parts iron oxide, and two parts Plaster of Paris. After adding some water I poured the stuff into an ice cube tray, let it sit for forty-five minutes, then ovened it for a couple hours until I had my putty cubes. By then the styrofoam I'd put into the diesel bought last night had dissolved. I poured out the excess gas then stuffed the resulting jelly into a few empty bottles of Amphetamine Cola I had.

"That song is still popular?" someone asked.

I spun around, hissing in a breath. A man in an unzipped suit with slightly too small glasses stood in the doorway to my workshop. This silver-haired dude was a giant. Had to be at least 6'6". Made me feel like a manlet. Shit, he was staff. Headmaster? I didn't know his name off the top of my head.

"What?" I asked, the very height of eloquence.

He entered the room and looked over the fruits of my labor. "You were singing Open Ground All Around while you worked."

"Not my fault it's a catchy song," I said, folding my arms.

It wasn't even a lie. Near as I could tell, Open Ground All Around told the story of two doomed teams of Huntsman surrounded and outnumbered by Grimm nevertheless fighting together on to the bitter end to buy time to evacuate a settlement. It was all set to this junk salsa beat that got into your head, plopped itself down on your sofa, and refused to pay rent. There was totally nothing even slightly off about a bunch of kids singing happily about dying a glorious death. Inspiring, really.

"I suppose not," the Headmaster said. "Is this what I think it is?"

"If what you think is homemade napalm and thermite, then yessir. If not, then no."

He picked up a cube of thermite putty and turned it over in his hand. "Not the traditional weapon of a Huntsman."

I bristled. "If you wanted a traditional Huntsman, you wouldn't've admitted me to Beacon." I didn't know if that was true or not, but it felt like the correct response to give.

The Headmaster glanced over his shoulder at me, a contemplative look in his brown eyes. "No. I suppose not, Jaune."

A pause. I met his eyes and held them. He was here for an actual reason, I just knew it. But the Headmaster didn't strike me as the person to just spit out the beans.

"I understand you've been selling most of this thermite back to Professor Masaryk," he said. "He believes he's overpaying you and that worries him."

"How tragic," I said. "Allow me to play him Despacito on the world's smallest Alexa."

He cocked a brow. "You must be saving up for something special. A gift for a girl, perhaps?"

I shrugged. "For raw meat. Oh, plus some pentaerythritol tetranitrate and cyoclonite, sir."

"You'll have to forgive me, I'm no chemist. Neither are you, according to your transcripts."

"They're the primary ingredients in Semtex, a potent plastic explosive."

The Headmaster nodded slowly. "I find it hard to tell if I've been over- or underestimating you, Jaune. I don't believe I'm the only one in that position, either."

"Never underestimate me. I'm fifth dan at google-fu," I deadpanned.

He didn't understand the reference. I think my phone's default search engine was something called Boggle, which seemed a little on the nose to me. But the cut of the Headmaster's suit jacket suggested a man accustomed to more hipster search engines.

This was going nowhere.

I recalled a comment I'd seen on the episode of RWBY where the Headmaster admitted to "making more mistakes than you could possibly know." The commentator had noted how that phrase took on a whole 'nother meaning in the context of some future season's knowledge. It had been a form of clever doublespeak from the man. He was the kind of person who did this.

If I wanted to know why he was here, really here, I'd have to beat it out of him

"Look, sir, lemme level wit' ya," I said with a sigh. "I'm sure you get off on being all mysterious and intimidating like this, but I'm tired beyond me the point of caring. So if'n you wanna tell me something vague and oowoo, just get on with it."

He stood there and silently appraised me. At length he shrugged. "Your accent changed."

"Come again?"

"From the application interviews we conducted. It's changed into one I don't entirely recognize."

"Hadn't noticed," I said with a glower.

"Must be a lot you don't notice. But, I suppose that's bound to happen when you spend your days in here and not with your team. Rather amazing for someone obsessed with sitting at the very front of every class."

It took effort to resist the bubbling urge to ram my fist into his mouth. I stared at him like a cat with its hackles raised.

"It's a 400IQ play I'm gaming at with my team. You wouldn't understand it."

"Of course. That must be it," he said with a thin little smile. "No reason to suspect you won't stop surprising me. For better or worse."

I sucked in my lips and said nothing. The wound across my chest throbbed with every heartbeat.

He moved to step past me only to pause in the doorway. "For someone with such exemplary transcripts, I expected better from you, Jaune."

May your first day in hell last a thousand years and may it be your shortest.

I stood stock still until he was well out of sight.

— 10 —

Expected better. Expected better? Like you're one to talk. You let the White Fang walk all over you because you're useless. Have to get your ass dug out and saved by a bunch of children. Us, as a matter of fact. We'll see how much better you are when Beacon's walls fall like Jericho.

I'll show you better, prick.

How?

Patching things up with my team. Forming a coherent fighting unit. Getting all the glory for being heroes.

In the afternoon I found Weiss alone in the pleasantly climate-controlled gym. The practice dummy whose life she was ruining had an alarming resemblance to my build and physique.

I pressed the end of my cigarette to its ignition patch and sat down on a bench to watch her. This wasn't at all dangerous given the amount of explosives I was carrying.

Strike and riposte. Parry and slash. Pirouette and impale. No motion wasted. Weiss carried herself with the hypnotic economy of motion of a ballerina mid-performance successfully performing open-heart surgery just to prove she could. I could imagine she had a name to her every stance and attack. Names like Crane Connects, Mantis Maims, and Stone Cold Steve Austin Assaults.

Weiss pulled back from the dummy. Her nose wrinkled and she spun towards me.

"Jaune, what the!" She stormed over and swung her sword.

I hissed in a sharp breath of smoke as she sliced the cigarette horizontally in half. It tumbled from my mouth as I threw my back against the wall. "Jesus Christ, you coulda killed me!"

Weiss cocked a brow like I'd just insulted her. "No, I wouldn't have." She sheathed her weapon so she could put hands on hips.

"Least you remembered my name," I huffed.

Her eyes very slowly narrowed. She cupped her hands over her mouth and unenthusiastically called out, "Help, help, I'm being stalked by some guy I don't know."

"That's the spirit, sunshine," I said, lighting another cigarette

She sneered. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"As a matter of fact," I said lazily.

"You know, I hear there's this absolutely lovely cliff on the west side of campus. It's scenic with a great view and plenty of sharp, inviting rocks at the base."

A little smile leaked across my mouth.

"Fantasizing about it too, huh?" she asked dreamily.

"So you do have the hots for me!"

She didn't even dignify that with a reply.

I blew smoke out to the side. After a moment, I stubbed the cigarette out and tossed it into a trash can. Weiss didn't like them, after all. I didn't like them either. I sighed and shook my head.

I expected better.

"Screw it, lemme be blunt," I sighed.

"I think the word you want is dull, and I couldn't stop you if I tried," she said without missing a beat.

I ignored the lip. "You're mighty damn impressive and really know your stuff. I'm jus' kinda comme ci comme ça. I don't like you and you don't like me; there's not much I can see to really change that. But." Something welled up in my throat and I had to force it down. Pride, I supposed. It was an effort to maintain eye contact. "I'd really like your help."

"Really. Really?" Weiss asked. She leaned back and eyed me skeptically. "After all you've done, you want my help?"

"Do you know anyone better at Beacon?"

The corner of her lip twitched upwards. "I suppose not."

"And ain't a team only as strong as its weakest link?"

Weiss chuckled. "Come on, Jaune. At least come up with an original metaphor."

"And I'd like to sit down and talk to you. Hold a conversation."

"If that's some Vale euphemism…" she said threateningly

"Look, Net—Weiss, I don't know you. I don't know who you are, what you like, or even your role on a team." I shrugged. "I just wanna talk. Let me buy you dinner."

That got quite the look from her. "Rumor has it you asked out Pyrrha Nikos."

"What can I say, I got good taste in women and like to hedge my bets." I laughed and shook my head. "But no, I'm being genuine. Near as I possibly can. Blake and Shadow are next soon as I figure out how best to approach 'em."

"Who's Shadow?" she asked.

"Iunno. Still working that out. But for now, what do you say? After that show of yours I watched out there, least I can do is pay for the privilege."

She held up her hands. "Stop, stop, you're going to clog my arteries with all that buttering-up."

"So you comin'?"

"No."

I bit down a kneejerk 'but why?' At the end of the day, Weiss was a girl. The best way to get on their good side was to maintain face and hold frame, be in control of yourself and thus the situation. And while an old friend of mine had attributed that belief to a worrying mistrust of women on my part, I knew for a fact it was better than losing my cool and looking desperate. People hated that, girls in particular.

But for the Good Lord's sake, you prissy German, work with ya boy here.

So I nodded indifferently. "Alright. I'll show up when you're training. I know your schedule and can make it work."

"How?"

"Because I pay attention to things, Weiss," I said sufferingly. "Stuff besides cup sizes, I mean."

Weiss sniffed. "Can you even handle anything with your wounds?"

"I can handle you," I said, rubbing the side of my jaw.

She closed her eyes and let out a contemplative breath. Her fingers traced the bridge of her nose and squeezed. "If it were anyone else, I'd be flattered by the request."

"But?"

"But you're you, Jaune," she said slowly, as if enunciating for a child to understand.

"And you're one of the Ss in team BASS."

"And you're Jaune."

It was hard to hold the frustration back. "I'm trying to fix things and make this team work."

Weiss tilted her head fractionally but said nothing.

"Welp, if'n ya wanna fail your first semester, reckon I can't stop ya, Weiss."

"Are you holding yourself hostage?"

I stepped well into her personal space to stare her down. She exhaled sharply at the gesture, her breathing carrying a faint hint of peppermint.

"You're good and I'm not. I know you have a drive to improve. To be the best. Maybe it's the Atlesian in you or maybe it's the fact that you only decided to become a Huntress to honor your family and try to make up for your father's sins."

Weiss sneered, but I'd hit something. A buried look of surprise leaked from behind her eyes. "Oh, spare me the first year psychosurgery shtick. I'm in that class with you."

"And that because you're in a team with me. So play ball with me because the only other option is taking that ball and going home in shame and losing what shred of daddy's respect you still got going for you."

Her expression soured, which was impressive given how unsweet it already was. "You know you're a creep, right?"

I snorted. "You know you're a bitch, right?"

I met her death glare and held it easily.

"Because I'm so going to want to help you now," she huffed.

"I'm trying to keep you all alive through this oncoming trainwreck, you insufferable waste of German flesh."

I was doing it again. I knew I was doing it again. This is the opposite of what I should be doing. But in the moment it felt so satisfying to say. There's a point where just holding frame is letting yourself be walked all over. Something people also hated. Needed to make this work.

"I've spent seventeen years happily not dying," she said. "Then I meet you and that all goes out the window."

"To be fair, it's a really nice window. French too, I reckon."

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"It's an unfortunate habit of mine."

The corner of her mouth quirked upwards. "Don't quit your dayjob."

"Good. 'Cause my dayjob is team BASS. Glad you're onboard."

Weiss folded her arms and stood up a little straighter. "Bite me."

Why wasn't this working? Ruby had tried reaching out with an olive branch. She'd gotten through to Weiss. What was I doing wrong?

I touched her arm. "Either pretend to be my teammate or drop out, because I am trying here, Ice Queen."

She threw her elbow into my face and pulled her other arm back. "I'll take my chances!"

I hissed and rubbed at my cheek. Even spat out a bit of saliva mixed with blood. Girl had a mean elbow hook.

"Look, think things over, girl. Either we's a team or we's dead," I said, flexing my fingers. I really wanted to strike her. But even with the red swirling through my vision I could recognize how horrible an idea that was. "I'm not asking for you to like or even tolerate me. Just—just think about it, aight? 'S all I'm asking for."

Weiss sucked in her lips and glared at me. She didn't say anything as I left her to her lonesome.

— 11 —

I expected better from you.

I expected better from you.

Get out of my head, Headmaster! I'm trying, okay? Weiss was a bust. But she's difficult. I can do this. I can figure this out. I know what to do. Exactly what to do. I'm just working on what that exactly is. Shadow, who knew what they liked. Blake was part-cat, which meant if she was anything like my cats, all I had to do was grab her ass and she'd fall in love with me.

But that was all theory. Stuff for later when I calmed down.

Right now I was angrily stalking the streets of Vale without my armor. I'd been at this all day, just trying to get my head on straight. The sun was only just threatening to turn in for the night. There'd be light for the next hour or so, not good light but light all the same. At least this wasn't campus, this was somewhere away from team BASS.

I expected better from you.

Maybe you could've told me what you expected! It's not like you gave me an itemized "How To Be a Team Leader" checklist when you gave me this job. I'm trying.

So what do you do when you lack direction? You fake it till you make it.

Figured a walk through Vale might help me think. I needed some time away from Beacon. For purely practical reasons. I'd gotten over most of my existential dread minutes after finding myself on Remnant. I needed solutions, not angst. Times like this usually called for angrily lifting weights to work out the frustration, but with the wounds on my chest I couldn't do that. That alone was driving me mad.

There was only so much ground I could cover in a day. I'd hit a bar where I learned about a suburb of Vale built around the beached ruins of a titanic Great War era dreadnought. I found a magazine shop where I ordered a chemistry catalog from which I could buy pentaerythritol tetranitrate and cyclonite because in the cruel dystopia of Remnant there is no Amazon. I'd even made an embarrassing stop at a maid café locally renowned for its progressive policy of hiring faunus girls, all in an attempt to see if I could learn something about the White Fang (and subsequently had a frog-girl in a maid costume nearly strangle me for "racial profiling").

The flashing of police lights caught my eye. I followed them to patrolmen still wrapping POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape around a Dust shop with broken windows. I jogged up to the officers.

"What happened here?"

The cop glanced over his shoulder and grunted. "I'll give you three guesses. First two don't count."

"White Fang?" I asked. The slowly gathering crowd of looky-loos and their own questions and flash photography drowned out my question. It didn't matter. I knew who'd done this.

"They're waiting for the detectives to be sure," someone in the crowd politely informed me. "Robbery just happened like half an hour ago. My bet's on the White Fang too, 'cept this place is tiny. Makes me think it's all saiku."

"Cry your pardon?"

The man gestured vaguely as if unable to find the correct word. "Y'know, like a karakuri. What they do. And just as lethal."

Professor Mustache had used that word once in one of his lectures in an offhand reference to something Grimm-related but not actually Grimm. He'd glossed over it as being tangential to the story he'd been telling. I supposed the term may just have been local jargon I simply wasn't familiar with. There were a good few local idioms and references I couldn't follow due to a lingering sense of culture shock.

I tried to get a better look at the shop. It didn't strike me as anything too unusual. A relatively mom-and-pop place like the guy suggested. Except there were clearly security cameras in and around the store. That gave me an idea. I took out my phone and googled security camera footage of recent Vale dust robberies. I wasn't positive what I was looking for, but it felt right on an intuitive level. The same sort of intuition where you grab a coat on your way outside on impulse and then it rains despite waterworks not being in the forecast.

The search came up depressingly void of videos, neither on any local versions of YouTube or LiveLeak. In fact, all I got were articles and police press statements. A quick scan of those noted how the Vale police force was withholding video evidence from the public as a matter of "public safety," with some online articles speculating that this was a bizarre attempt to prevent copycat robberies and so isolate who's actually behind the lion's share of recent dust theft.

I needed the footage from his place. I didn't know why, but I felt it was important in my gut. I was onto something. Like, if I got my eyes on some detail here, I'd see something I'd missed in the show and be able to do… something.

Of course, I wasn't about to just break a police barrier with all these cops and civilians here. But oddly without my armor pads on, no one took notice of me. No one cared I had a sword, shield, and a revolver on my person. Nor anything else under my coat. I could slip out of the crowd without incident.

Down the street and into an alley, I stole a potted plant, dumped out the dirt and daffodils, and shoved three cubes of thermite into the pot. I drew a foot of magnesium wire from a spool, stuck it into the thermite putty, and lit it. I'd booked it all the way back into the crowd by the time the thermite ignited, showering the alley with hissing sparks and lighting up the evening street.

"It's them, it's the White Fang!" I shouted. That stirred the whole crowd into shouting an panicked agreement. It may have been terribly irresponsible, but it felt like the thing to do at the time. Either way, with a showering of thermite sparks and a panicked crowd, the officers who'd been sealing up the crime scene drew their weapons and advanced down the street. Not a single eye wasn't on them or the geyser of sparks.

And that left an opening for me to slip under the police line and leg it into the dust store while everyone had their backs turned. I ignored the anxious roar of my heart and the cold sweat on my back and beelined for an employee's only door in the back of the shop. I was glad for my gloves as I slipped into the back rooms.

I found the security room. It was actually just a PC and two monitors in the corner of the break room. The delayed on-screen footage showed me dart into the store and back here. That's not good.

The computer was password protected, but a helpful sticky-note on the monitor listed username and password both. I got in and got to the recording software. It only went back about three days before automatically getting deleted to save space. I plugged my phone in and downloaded the last two hours of footage, occasionally skipping around the video to make sure it's what I wanted. Guys and gals in masks. Some hushed conversations. This was good security footage, actually.

When I had what I wanted, I tried to delete the last five minutes to erase evidence of my involvement. But while I could download certain time slots, I couldn't delete them. At least not in an easy way I could see. Only option was delete the entire day's footage. Because tampering with a crime scene in a way that could benefit a major terrorist organization was so smart.

Screw it. Vale's police were useless. Only plucky teenagers with oversized weapons could save the day. I deleted the day's footage, unplugged my phone, and sprinted out the building's rear fire exit. And then kept on a-running until I reached a metro station three blocks down.

Vale's metro system looked downright Soviet. Station entrances even had huge blast doors. I couldn't tell if the doors sealed from the outside or within. If you ignored all the brightly glowing advertisements on the walls, it almost reminded me of a crypt. Utilitarian and built to last. Rumor had it Vale possessed a secret Metro-2 line like in Moscow for military and government use. Given the underground city beneath Mountain Glen and the abandoned metro line that connected it to Vale proper, it was a rumor I could believe.

After checking the station to make sure I hadn't been tailed, I let myself relax. A pair of children nearby played with action figures made to look like Grimm while their mother read a book. A graying man in an old suit was fumbling with a smartphone. Some girl about my age was idly drumming fingers against her purse to music from her headphones.

Just a perfectly normal, perfectly human place.

I plugged in a pair of earbuds and leaned against a pillar to watch my stolen footage. Faunus in Grimm-inspired masks smashed the window and grabbed dust. They were practically window shopping, just looking around until something worth taking struck their fancy. It didn't look professionally organized with clear-cut goals and objectives in mind. I didn't even see Roman anywhere, but I supposed he couldn't micromanage every little heist.

I was still watching as the subway arrived and I got on. A short girl with fox ears poking out from her hoodie seemed to be their leader. The White Fangers—White Fangists?—kept glancing at her. At one point she grabbed one of her underlings by the wrist and spoke loud enough for the camera to pick up.

"Hey, so, I'm not trying to be that guy or like that boss, but if this is how you handle Eishundo tomorrow, we're dead. So could you please stop sucking and be useful? Sorry!"

Who's Eishundo? I tried to recall any members of the White Fang or Roman's legion with that name. I found the only name that came to mind was Cinder, and even then I barely had half a clue who or what she was.

As I was thinking, I got off at my stop and happened to glance up at a map of Vale's civilian subway network. My eyes followed the periwinkle line and stopped.

Eishundo-Esztergom, Eishundo-Abercrombie, Eishundo-Susebron. All prominent metro stations with bizarrely culturally mismatched names. Eishundo's a street, isn't it? I tabbed away from the footage to look up dust stores on Eishundo Boulevard and hit paydirt. That had to be what fox-ears had meant. Tomorrow night they were going to hit that place.

I was gonna stop them.

It was just, like, maybe—aw Christ.

I can't do this alone.

a/n: Is there a doctor in the audience? Because Jaune really needs to get that malignant tumor he calls an ego looked at. And oh hey look, actual plot direction that's not "just talk to a girl." Imagine that!