Chapter 6: Anyone Else Find It Kinda Weird Miles Luna Thinks Yang is Perfect GF Material?

"Hmm, looks like we have an audience. This must be kind of embarrassing for you, huh?"

— 13 —

Some hair of the dog felt like it was all I needed this morning. I couldn't tell if I was shaking from the cold or bloodloss. Probably both. Plus the entire ordeal from last night. There's a thing called empathy drain. Emotionally and physically exhausting just to try to feel for other people and help them.

A sick part of me felt smugly happy that the fight between the girls had cracked Blake. For the first time since I met her, I felt like I had something to offer. Not a shoulder to cry on, exactly. But just a way I could connect to her. Try to actually level with her on a real human level. I knew Blake had her problems. Just a little stress and she'd been ready to leave team RWBY and run like she always did. The fact she made it this far with team BASS was a miracle in and of itself.

I just needed to find a way to reach Weiss at some sort of breaking point. Sure, Blake might not like me, but I felt we had connected. I needed something like that to happen with Weiss if I was ever gonna have any hope of at least meeting her halfway.

Really, it just went to show why any romantic future with the girls was both impossible and insanely creepy. Oh sure, I was in anime now. Isekai'd over here. Why shouldn't I use my sexy protagonist powers and intimate knowledge of just how to solve all their problems to get my own harem of supermodels?

Because they were still children. Experiences and trauma aside, my teammates were broken kids. At most, I was maybe 24. Even if my body and hormones were all 17, the sheer experience gap with people I had over them, at least when sober, would make any relationship between us inherently one-sided and abusive. I had more lifetime to draw from than they could possibly have.

Still. Felt good to help Blake. Even though I wasn't the team leader anymore, I had some sense of obligation to them. They were my team, for god's sake. I recall the angriest I'd ever been in my life. Well, angriest I'd ever been while sober. No one had done anything to me, but they were fucking over someone I cared for, that I had a responsibility for.

The lightskin soldier I mentioned in my story. No one had given him guidance once he got to our fort but me. So when he needed someone to go help him get his wisdom teeth removed, I was there for him. The teeth were in so deep they needed to remove part of his jawbone to get at them, and they were hurting him like hell.

The pharmacy on post just happened to be closed that day for an anti-extremism standdown all day, a fact we only learned once we made the long drive back to base. So we go off post to a CVS, only to be told to wait for two hours for them to get my soldier his painkillers. And all this time, the surgery was starting to affect him. He was bleeding all through his Covid mask, the pain mounting. Two hours pass and we get told, whoops, sorry, CVS doesn't take Tricare, the free healthcare provider all soldiers get. So we speed off to a Walgreens, the only other pharmacy in the area.

By this point, my boy is just gushing blood. I practically need to hold him up and walk him to the Walgreens counter. This big fucker is starting to choke on the blood, and is crying with pain. He can't speak. I have to be his voice to the lady at the counter. She can't get the meds for a long time. I nearly murder her trying to demand she deal with this now, first and foremost. The soldier under my care is crying in pain and we're getting a fucking run around all day. I refuse to leave the counter until we get handled. Maybe I was being a bit Karen, but you don't leave your brothers in arms to suffer.

It takes us twenty minutes of glaring and haunting the Walgreens to get seen. My man is in tears. There's blood everywhere. He can't talk. I get him to his room, ensure he gets his codeine, and leave him to go punch holes in the barracks wall.

I had become my sergeant, the man I looked up to most in the Army. The man I wanted to be most like in the world. An NCO who'd kill for you, who'd walk into the captain's office without an appointment, close the door behind him, and chew his commander's ass out. He was this big black man from the LA ghetto, who joined the Army after throwing away his college scholarship after, and I quote, "discovering white women and drugs." He was the kind of leader I wanted to be. The efficient go-getter who can get away with anything and has his officers in mortal terror.

It was funny, in a fucked up way. Where I grew up, how I was raised, I never would have imagined a man like that would be my own personal idol. But someone like him was the leader a team needed. The kind of man team BASS deserved to have. The kind I would be for them just as soon as the Old Man let me.

Fuck you for taking that away from me, Ozpin.

"Jaune?" Blake asked, sitting next to me in class. I'd been whiteknuckling my pen without realizing it. To be fair, hearing even the faintest notes of concern in her voice threw me off. Made me forget entirely what I was thinking about.

I smiled at her. "Just thinkin' how unfair it is there's no good sushi joints around here. Ain't had a spicy tuna roll in ages."

That earned me a skeptical look. I didn't miss the vague twitch of her headband. "Must really like tuna."

Weiss hissed at us to shut up. Being at the front of the class, if we talked, it looked a bit obvious.

Yeah you be a bitch now. We're gonna get along one day as a team even if it kills me. Which it probably will. And I'd deserve it.

Now that I thought about it, sushi actually did seem like a good idea. This world had tuna, but what about other fish? Truth be told, I wasn't even positive what the meat was. I hadn't exactly seen a large industrial chicken or cattle farm anywhere in the show. In person, all I'd basically seen had been the forests around Beacon and the greater city in the distance.

It made me wonder if this world had a unique fish. Sushi bait that would taste even better than the tuna, California rolls, and imitation crab an American like me was used to.

Of course, to get there, I needed money. Sushi wasn't exactly cheap in America. Unless you went to a gas station, but then you got what you paid for. Ain't nobody got time for that AIDS fish.

Money had been the half sane, half drug crazed reason why I had tried to go after the White Fang. A completely incoherent and nonsensical excuse to try to become the protagonist or whatever. The reality was, if I wanted money, I needed to do actual work. Only place I knew how to do that without signing up for a proper nine-to-five was pulling shifts in the Fishery, making more bizarre high explosives and selling them back to Professor Masaryk.

Who was conveniently the teacher heading our last class that evening.

Most every student had come to Beacon with their unique and weird weaponry already built during their time in a combat school or fighting out on the frontier or whatever. The classes in the Fishery were less about how to build new weapons and more about fine tuning and adjustments, giving a sort of free period to be a weapon nut.

Naturally, students like Ruby loved the class.

"There! Faster transformation!" Ruby proudly announced, holding out her gigantic scythe to me. Before my eyes, the weapon shifted forms, becoming a kind of gigantic sniper rifle that by any logical estimation should turn her arms to gelatin if she ever actually used it. Anime logic was a hell of a drug.

Feeling somewhat emasculated, I held out my shield and made it turn into a sheath and then back again. "I made my sword a little sharper."

Her eyes lit up. "Ooh! How?"

"I didn't. But I'm pretty sure if I believe in it hard enough, the Grimm won't be able to tell the difference."

She rubbed her chin, but then slowly started nodding, as if that made perfect sense. The girl was an aficionado, someone deeply passionate about her work. Even if most of the engineering was beyond me, it was enjoyable enough just to be around someone who cared this much about something. She made talking about a tool of mass destruction sound like a comic book geek enthusing about her favorite issue of Spider-Man.

"At least what you got is stylish." I paused. "Crescent Rose, I mean," I said, trying to prove that I actually listened to her. "Fits your goth lolita aesthetic."

"Told you I'm cute!"

I put my hands in my uniform pockets, shaking my head. "And just like that, the good vibes is ruined."

"We could make it better," she said seriously. "Just maybe add a rose or some crosses to your shield and boom! Instant cool and cute mode."

"I could dig a cross, but I ain't the artistic hand."

Ruby examined me a moment, hands on her hips. She snapped her fingers and said, "Then I got the perfect middle ground." Ruby reached into her shirt and I felt a wave of bad vibes. A moment letter she pulled out an honest-to-god crucifix necklace, if at a slight angle that'd make Saint Peter cringe. She held it out to me. "Here!"

"Your necklace?"

She nodded. "Yup! My uncle Qrow gave it to me for good luck, but I think I got everything I can from it. You keep getting hurt, so maybe you need it more than me. Plus then you'll finally be cute and cool like me. We'll almost be matching!" She winked.

The idea of gifts at all still made me anxious. Still, not wanting to ruin the moment, I reached out a hand to accept it. "I… thanks, I guess. This drip mint, girl. I don't really know what else to say."

"Promise me if it doesn't work and you do need to go to that Croaker guy again, you'll take me along. And only when we got Professor Port's class."

I smiled toothily. "It's a deal, pipsqueak."

— 14 —

When class ended, that was it for the day. I decided to stick around and reserve a workshop and a couple materials. It was a lot easier to operate this kind of thing when you were sober. It was about the only time I was on the level before I'd been banned from my sweet, sweet fire water.

It wasn't hard to make thermite. Not with the materials I was able to check out. Building more of the putty in the workshop I had reserved for myself, I couldn't help shake the feeling like I could probably make a lot more money if I invested Dust into this. The problem was, my chemical knowledge was a schizophrenic mix of the Anarchist Cookbook and the Poor Man's James Bond. A handful of materials I had somehow been able to get away with building back when I was a kid before my mother found out and kicked my ass.

My experience with explosives began in middle school, truth be told. I think I was around eleven. That had actually been an attempt to brew my own homemade alcohol during lunch period. Using only bananas, old Gatorade, and yeast, I had managed to create a dangerous biological weapon that bred E. coli like it was going out of style. The end result was that I destroyed the school bathroom and rendered the boys unable to shit in peace without threat of anal diseases for the next week.

The only reason I hadn't gone into explosives when I signed up for the Army was because military intelligence sounded more bougie. And guaranteed me a lifetime with all ten fingers. Plus EOD was pretty hard to get into, but that's another story.

Mix the right parts up with a bit of water in ice cube trays. Bake for forty-five minutes. Enjoy melting literally fucking everything. Please commit arson responsibly.

I still needed to order pentaerythritol tetranitrate and cyclonite. Which I can only do through a mail order catalog for some goddamn reason. with that, I could get to making plastic explosives. A little sticky semtex would go a long way. And it'd almost certainly sell well back to the school, even if they had genuinely no idea what to do with it. By the time I was done, Beacon would be on the ATF's watch list.

I sighed and took out my earbuds. Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I figured it wouldn't hurt to take a quick water break. Not like there was much I could do with my thermite in the oven. I didn't entirely trust the water from the sink here to drink.

When I opened the door, I nearly ran head first into the chest of a boob goblin. Her lilac eyes widened. I only knew they were lilac and not Targaryen purple because every fanfic author constantly reminded me. She flinched, trying not to drop several vials of Dust and a box of unloaded shotgun shells, and only wound up awkwardly juggling the stuff before grabbing onto them.

"Whoops!" she said. "You didn't see that. I did not almost drop all that Dust and blow up the Fishery. That would be crazy. How dare you accuse me of being crazy!"

Yang Xiao Long. Miles Luna's perfect girlfriend idea. I recalled once reading an author's note in some fanfiction about her. The author was trying to argue that the Yang we see in the trailer and the Yang we see in the show are two completely different girls. The one the audience has the most familiarity with is a lot more reserved than the flirtatious party girl ready to just destroy a nightclub on a whim. Also less dick grabbing.

I regarded her solemnly, trying to figure out which of the two Yangs would be the real one here. Her skin had a look of airbrushed perfection, striking me as somehow racially ambiguous despite the blonde hair. Lips glossed so they looked perpetually moist. Curves in improbable locations that made me seriously worry for the strength of whatever bra was holding them up. She wore a tank tank emblazoned with the logo of some band called "The Wytches," revealing her navel.

It didn't feel to me like she had just been walking by when I opened the door. Wasn't even really dressed for the Fishery. More like she had been looming outside. The hallway was wide enough that you didn't have to be pressed up to the workshop door just to get by. My eyes immediately scanned my surroundings for easy escape routes.

On some level, I felt like I should have returned her tone. Acted the fool or something. Return to my old ways. She kind of felt like the perfect bait for that. But I also knew that she was no Cards, not some fellow weirdo I could easily get along with with a wink and a flirt. Call it a sixth sense.

She smiled up at me. Taller than Blake, though not by much, I still had a good solid hand above her. This close, I was practically looking down at her. I was coming to think at about 6'1-6'2", Jaune was one of the taller students here. Pyrrha only got to 6' in rather high heels. Even Ren, who I always imagined to be pretty tall, was just 5'9". Not even king of the manlets.

The girl spoke first when I didn't, and with a frown. "Where's your shirt?"

"I got hot. I'm sure you know what it's like." It was irresponsible of me, but I had removed it. Trying to work in the heat of the Fishery in the school uniform was a death sentence. That jacket was all scratchy heat. It made me wish for winter.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from her reaction, but the one she gave me caught me off guard. Yang gave me a vulpine grin that reminded me of another blonde I once knew. It didn't look like she was happy. More that she had sensed blood. And judging by the caliber of her teeth, this was a bigger bloodbath than menstruating women fighting for dictatorship of the hot tub.

"I guess you just like to work naked."

I didn't like where she was going with this. And I knew she was going somewhere. This almost sounded rehearsed.

"Call it an unfortunate hobby."

Yang tapped at her cheek, arms still filled with the shotgun shells and dust. "It's a better hobby than most."

"Like doing cocaine or talking to girls."

"Don't say that just yet. Lots of guys been ruined by talking to girls."

I nodded in agreement. "Worse yet, sometimes it results in creating more girls. It's basically a self-defeating task."

Yang laughed. "That's a new one."

"If you think I'm trying to hit on you, I'm not. I'm trying to avoid you. I just want to go to the bathroom." Any time I sounded like the reasonable one, you knew shit was fucked.

Yang didn't move.

I stepped around her and she put her arm on the door to block me. So it was finna be this way, huh? I side-eyed down at her, trying not to scowl. To maintain my manly frame. Those lilac eyes held mine, the smile on her glossy lips like a knife wound. I had a sudden rush of anxious energy, like I got when trying for minutes at a time and failing to tongue out a bit of food stuck in my teeth. I wanted to shove her off, a little flare of temper.

I realized the feeling came in tandem with a sudden nicotine craving. Last time I'd been working the Fishery, when Ozpin came in and pretty much ruined my day, I'd at least been able to stay calm chain-chewing toothpicks and nicotine gum. Only chewable thing I had left was old wintermint.

With a breath meant to calm myself, I reached into my pocket. Yang tensed just slightly enough for me to see. I shook out a stick of gum before offering her the pack. She considered it a moment before accepting. One arm cradling the Dust, it meant she had to open the way for me.

I casually stepped past her and set off down the hall. I half-expected things to end there. I wasn't the type of boy to chase a girl. Wasn't the way you won a girl. Automatically made you look desperate. Yang apparently didn't get that memo. A moment later she was walking beside me, chewing her gum loudly.

"Really just gonna walk away and ignore me?" she asked. The annoyance in her voice made it hard to keep a neutral face.

"I pride me myself on providing babes a unique experience. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."

"Aww, you do like me!"

"I'd like you better from a distance." I wondered if this was how Weiss felt talking to me. The world was about to break apart at any moment if I kept being the level one.

"Right, right. You only like being naked around kids."

Hold the fucking hotline. She mean Ruby? I stopped to stare at her, a dozen thoughts of what to say stumbling through my head. The winner said trying to defend myself or getting upset would just look guilty. To deny is to admit.

"Lemme guess," I said. "You think I'm a creep, because girls talk. That about sum 'er up?"

"I see you lurking around her," she said, with just an edge of protective hostility. Her eyes kept their color at least. "She tells me last time you met you were naked, and she didn't go to class at all that day."

"The fact a girl didn't elaborate means she got more a sense of HIPAA than Beacon do," I said mildly. "A mite bit sad, that."

Yang scowled. "What's sad is you creeping on my sister. What are you, like, twenty? What are you even doing at Beacon?"

I ran a hand through my stubble. It'd be a beard before long if I didn't do nothing about it. "You and Ozpin axin' boff," I muttered. "Look, I don't fuck wid a bitch in training bras."

She grabbed my arm, tight, and I had to fight down a kneejerk reaction to punch her. She'd just Aura up; it'd probably break my fist. Before she shattered my spine with a punch her own. The flash of red in her eyes convinced me she'd go that far.

"Don't talk about my sister that way!"

"Lemme alone," I said tersely. "I gotta go knock out a piss."

"I'll knock the piss out of you!"

I chewed my gum in thought. "Please," I said, affecting a more collected exterior than I felt at all. Because hoo boy, I felt just a bit fucked. She could lock me in a room and start reaching for her strap-on and I'd be less afraid. "If anything, Ruby is like my bratty adopted kid sister, and that's as far as it go."

"Oh, so she's your sister now? Real imouto type, huh?"

"We live in a world where Fat Morty never wished to make incest porn mainstream, so I think we's good, honeychile."

Yang twisted my arm, shoving me against the wall. I hit it hard. She grabbed me by the chain Ruby had given me, and I bent forwards to prevent her from breaking the clasp. "Listen here, jackass."

"No, you listen here!" I spat. "Kid and me is just friends. Kinda. I guess. Barely even sure she tolerates me. But that's still better than most people! My name taste like sardines to 'em Besides." I grabbed the necklace and her hand, pulling her an inch closer so I could stand back up. "I grew up with, like, seven sisters. Ain't nothing I literally ain't already seen. It's a fucking miracle I didn't turn out gay. Though I do gotta admit Ren's got a nice cock."

The door to a nearby workshop slammed open, and a pint-sized redhead was glaring murder into me. "You keep your hands off my man!"

Yang and I stared at her until she seemed to get the message. Nora Valkyrie blinked at us, drinking in the scene. Before she closed the door and went back to, I don't know, figuring out how to turn pancakes into a grenade round or whatever.

The whole scene kind of ruined the mood. Which I was thankful for. A bit of the fury had left Yang's eyes.

"Just friends? Like a little sister?" she said with mistrust in every syllable.

I snorted. "And I hate my sister," I said, momentarily forgetting I was Jaune and the seven sisters. On Earth, I'd just had the one. "Still got her back no matter what."

She let me go, putting her free hand on her hip as she looked up at me. "And that's all?"

"Please. Only thing I'm tyna fuck be the world."

Her face twisted. "You have a way with words. You know that?"

"I've been accused," I said, looking away.

"Ugh."

That gave me the confidence to say, "Here I was a-thinkin' you'd be happy she finally made some friends."

"With anybody but you!"

That stung. More than it had any right. I thought back to the first time I met Ruby, fighting with her over a microwave. I was still that person, but, I wasn't. Not the same. I was better. Getting better. I had to believe I was.

"Please, like you're some saint," I hissed, fists balling. I couldn't help myself. Not before those judgemental eyes. It was the wrong thing to say and I couldn't stop myself. "I saw me the way you ditched her day one! Just playing Montero with your old friends, leaving your baby sister to her lonesome. You really is your mother's daughter!"

I moved before I'd even consciously recognized how her eyes went red. Old combat conditioning halfway between flinch and pre-emptive dodge. Her glowing fist hit the wall right where my face had been, denting the metal with an audible groan. If I hadn't, I'd be dead. I knew it with a certain chill straight down my spine that made my knees nearly buckle.

Somehow I had the presence of mind to grab the bandolier of Dust she'd dropped before it hit the floor and killed us all.

"How do you know that? How fucking dare you!" she seethed, teeth bared like a Beowolf.

I tried not to hyperventilate. To meet her eyes despite the way my heart made me shudder with every beat. My hands shook like I were going back through withdrawal.

"Because when you care about someone, you fucking pay attention. You listen to them," I said. I swallowed, unable to prevent myself even if it made me look weak. "I made a joke about having parents that loved her, and saw it bothered her. So I asked around. Your old friends knew things. I connected the dots."

It was… plausible, at best.

From her inward hiss of breath, I knew she believed me.

"Them things you done heard about me might be on the money," I said, cold as her fire. I thrust the bandolier of Dust to her. "But I'd never hurt me the kid anymore than you, Yang. If just one person like her is willing to give me a second chance, I owe her everything I could and more. Shit like that I'd sooner die than betray. If I'm lying, then kill me where I fucking stand."

She just stood there, fuming. Breathing hard. Her breath smelled like burning coal, hot and dry.

Yang snatched the bandolier from my hand. "I don't have time for a creep like you!"

I was all too happy to see Yang huff off down the hall. Before I knew it, I was sliding down the wall until I was on the ground, clutching my knees to my chest. I let out a noise I told myself wasn't a shuttering half-sob. The air hitched in my throat. I grabbed and held Ruby's necklace like it were the only thing keeping me alive.

Maybe it was.

I tried thinking something mocking. Imagining scenarios in my head where I got the last laugh. Where I'd played that better and Yang and I came to respect each other as friends because of Ruby. Each fantasy seemed more ridiculous than the last.

It was just that, I couldn't blame her. I wanted to hate Yang so badly it hurt, but I couldn't. She was right about me. Everyone was right about me. But I was working on it, fuckit. I dug this grave but I'm lying in it. Blake, Blake almost seemed willing to listen to me. For fuck's sake, she had asked if I was okay this morning.

Acted like I was a human being.

I'd probably been worst to Blake of all people as her partner, and she was willing to ask. Ruby gave me her necklace as a sign of care. I could do it. I wasn't just some drunken trainwreck in a Jaune-shaped sleeve of human flesh. I could be a fucking person!

Two people were willing to care about me. Willing to believe in me after what I did.

I would do anything for them.

"You said the same thing to me once," Simone said, leaning over and offering me a hand up, the marks where I strangled her still on her neck. "Remember how that turned out?"

I drew XO and fired a round right through her ghost.

Shakily, I got to my feet and holstered the smoking revolver.

I needed to… I needed… I had to…

…finish this batch of explosives to earn the bread I needed to treat my team to something nice.

Baby steps, Jaune. But baby steps were all I could manage.