Chapter 3: I Miss My Cocoa Butter Kisses

"That's good advice, but don't tell me what to do."

— 6 —

"Who are you, really, Jaune?" Blake asked, not even sure how she really got here. Where here was. Just that she was lying down in a dark room, a bed, and Jaune was standing up above her. He looked like he was trying to walk away.

When she spoke, he tensed, and turned to face her.

He regarded her solemnly. An expression on his face that wasn't entirely readable, but that on some unconscious level she recognized as belonging to an entirely older, more haggard face.

"I'm currently in-between names," he said softly. "Which means I'm just the same asshole as before, Blake. I'm your partner. I'm sorry about what happened. But," he added with a smile that was equal parts genuine and forced, "I promise to make it up to you by buying twice the amount of tuna sushi for you?"

She smiled up at him, belatedly realizing she was lying in her own bed. Uncomfortably sweaty and fully dressed. Jaune must have brought her back here. "You always know just what to say."

"Do I?" he asked, like this was news to him. He ran his hand through his baby beard. It was starting to grow on her as much as it was him.

Blake nodded. "How else do you know how to always say the exact opposite?"

He laughed, sitting down at the foot of her bed. A bit too close for her comfort, but she wasn't about to make a fuss. They'd been closer before. "Oh c'mon. I ain't that bad."

"Yeah. You're worse."

All he could do is grin. "Scared the shit out of us back there. Scared me."

"You scared me," she said. She reached up to pull her hairbow off. Her ears enjoyed the chilly night air. Was it that late already? "Tell me you're okay. After all that, I'd kinda hate if you had another seizure or whatever."

Jaune looked over her in a daze. "You… after all that, and you're thinking about me? How I'm doing? Jesus Christmas girl, you're the one who got hurt. You and like all the school. I don't matter here."

"…You matter to me." Blake had to admit, though saying it like that felt embarrassing. She couldn't look at him after it tumbled from her mouth. One of those things she felt you didn't need to say if it was true. You showed it, by being there, by caring, by helping your jackass partner reach into his soul and find himself.

Blake swallowed. It took efforts to make the words she knew she should say come out.

"I… don't really know what I saw. But you're hurt too, I think. We both have our demons, I guess. Worse than just Grimm. Your Simone, my Adam. I've just, I don't know, been letting them rule me. I came to Beacon to become better. But instead, I find myself just being the girl I ran away from. And the only person around me trying to actually get better is some drunken jerk. You're not very good at it, but it's impossible not to see. I think you do care about things in a stupid, immature way. But that's more than a lot of people."

She forced a smile, cheeks hot. "Do you know how embarrassing it is when Jaune Arc is doing better than you? I just," Blake sighed. "I hate talking this much. About anything, especially this. Just, like, just smile and pretend that all made sense and wasn't too sappy?"

He blinked at her like he was just waking up from a bad dream. Finding his mother there to hold him and rock him back to sleep. She reached to take his hands and close his jaw with them, before they slid up to hold his eyes. Just gripping the edges of his face.

"I didn't do anything but make it worse. You are a good person, Blake. You trying to do your best to be better, is why I want to be better. I'm a bad man just wishing he was as worth believing in as you are."

She allowed herself a sly little smirk. "You're quoting one of my books. What'd I tell you about pandering to me, Jaune?"

"Do it, and often," he said with a half-cocked smile.

Blake threw her bow at him. He caught it, taking a hand away to reveal wet, reddened eyes. He sniffled. Gave a choking kind of laugh.

"This is why you're the worst," she said confidently. She sat up just so she could fold her arms at him.

"You ain't seen the half of it yet, Blake."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Can I ask your forgiveness before I do this?"

She shook her head. "No. But when has that ever stopped you before?"

Jaune grinned. He reached out to take her hand. His fingers felt hot as they tightened around hers. He pulled her forwards. Up into a sudden hug. She didn't like it, not at first. This touchy-feely garbage was for her books, not real life. But after a moment, she willed herself to relax. To, almost reluctantly, hug the boy back.

Neither spoke. Just this long, physical moment between two broken people finding some kind of comfort with each other. Knowing just how screwed up the other one was inside, and smiling past it as friends.

Like Blake said, it was all a bunch of stupid, annoying, cliché, meaningful touchy-feeling garbage.

She broke the silence. "For the record, if anyone walks in and sees us, I'm gonna scream."

"Don't reckon I'd have you any other way, Blake," he said with a sniffle. "Pardner."

— 7 —

You'd think some mass incident on campus grounds would cancel classes for longer than a day. But it was a miracle anything at all got cancelled. More like they were just making sure it wouldn't happen before school was back in session.

Blake wondered if part of that was to make sure all the bodies had been found. Don't misunderstand, no one died or got seriously injured. A couple trips to the nurses because students had fallen at unfortunate angles without being able to bring up their Aura was the extent of the damage. Like Weiss. Hilariously.

She sat at the dinner table, still absently rubbing at her bruised cheek. It ruined her prissy façade of physical perfection in a way Blake couldn't help but love. If she didn't know any better, she'd say Jaune did it to her. He'd been the one to recover Shamrock and their partner back to the dorm, since he seemed least affected by what happened.

And truth be told, she reckoned, as she looked down at her meal with too many silent Xs to be able to pronounce, she suspected this entire thing was his fault. Hers and his. She didn't understand it, but she'd have to be an idiot to avoid the obvious connection. She recalled the way Jaune's Aura had soaked into her arm and Aura like leaking tie dye.

There'd been a boy of maybe fifteen or sixteen, dressed like a Vacuo desperado. He'd smiled and waved, looking far too eager to say something. Only for the girl with hair nearly as white-blonde as Weiss to squeeze his shoulder and shrug. He'd sighed and gave Blake an apologetic smile.

Then there was a man whose age she couldn't place, looking maybe early twenties, but moving with a kind of flamboyant eagerness when he spoke. Made her want to think he was far younger, or gay. Blake thought she liked him least. The crisp, starched uniform he wore looked like the Royal Valean Mobile Infantry she and Adam had spent the better part of a year fighting. People who made dancing faunus of frontier villages with napalm and air assault drops. Blindly loyal to that bastard, Colonel B.T. Kornilov.

She suspected it all meant Jaune had some sort of multiple personality disorder he was struggling with. Maybe that was the real reason he was in therapy, not the drinking. Although the drinking was, yeah, a huge issue.

Almost as big as the entire, well, the thing that had affected campus. It was her fault as much as his. Something she did with Jaune's Aura had caused the entire blackout incident on campus. She still wasn't sure how to bring that up with Jaune. She wanted to talk about it, but she felt the bus for anything on that topic, about those other faces, came and went last night.

But of course, fret for Grimm, and there they are.

Jaune didn't so much sit down beside Blake as he did just kind of collapse. His tray of something that Blake couldn't pronounce clattered on the table. He looked like he'd just come out of the shower, wearing a tight undershirt and sweatpants instead of the usual jeans and hoodie.

"What's poppin', slime?" he asked.

"Slime?" Weiss asked, somehow making it sound like an insult. "I swear to God if you did something to the shower…"

"Well, if you want to bring God into this, I'm happy to say this time around I didn't do anything He would disapprove of." He thumbed over his shoulder. "Just gym shit. I kind of can't go back there because I accidentally told Ren he has a nice cock when I walked in on him in the showers there, so, yeah, it's the room for me."

Shamrock looked up from where he was lining his top hat upside down with cards. Probably some kind of trick he was working on. "I know. You keep telling us that like we're going to laugh."

"If I repeat something enough times, it becomes funny!" Jaune insisted.

"No," Weiss said. "What's funny is—" She hesitated, evidently not thinking this retort through. Just trying to snipe at Jaune by rote reaction.

Blake remembered the last time the team had all been together in the cafeteria, chatting away. Before that had devolved into arguing. She really didn't want that again. On a weird level, she wondered what Jaune would say in her position. Granted, he was right there. But Weiss and Shamrock already seem to be primed to go at him on principle.

"Funny how we didn't really get hurt that bad when that, you know, whatever happened," Blake said, pathetically.

Weiss side-eyed her. "No thanks to any of you."

"I mean, Jaune was the one who found you both and brought you back to the room," she said, trying to get a feel for what it was like sticking up for somebody. It didn't really feel very rewarding. She just got this mildly surprised look from Jaune. But he was stupid if he thought she wasn't going to try something like this. The two of them hadn't really been through much, but on some level, it felt profound.

She still hated him, of course. But he was her partner. Definitely her new favorite teammate. But that wasn't a high bar to set when you had people like Weiss on the team. She'd happily work with him to put her in her place.

"Oh yeah," Weiss said. "Remind me to buy a black light. I need to check my dress for anything he left behind when he touched me."

"The only thing that touched you was the tree when you fell down from Heaven," Jaune said pleasantly. He dragged his finger down from his eye, mirroring her scar. "It's why your face is so fucked up."

Blake snerked.

"My face is gorgeous!" Weiss said, standing up sharply. "The scar just adds character!"

Jaune looked like he was about to fire back at her something to destroy her confidence. Blake would be lying if she said she wasn't looking forward to it. In hindsight when she thought about it, it was kind of funny the way he fought with Weiss. Just so long as he didn't try anything stupid on Blake herself, she could live with her partner running his mouth like an idiot. But instead, he seemed to catch himself, and just frowned with the shake of the head.

"It is," he said seriously, which genuinely seemed to throw Weiss off.

It took her a moment to figure out what to say, and she seemed to find a way to take it as an insult. "I know it is. That's why you keep staring at it. Half the time I feel like I should be asking you if you want some help or something."

He shook his head. "No. Although I do have this nude art class coming up and we need a model."

Weiss gagged. "If I ever catch you even trying to draw me naked, I swear to God I will take my LouBoutins heels and castrate you!"

Blake felt her ears flattening. "Guys, can we not right now? It's too late in the evening to fight."

Jaune sighed deeply. "Yeah, good point. I'm just trying to egg you on, Weiss. Sorry."

Hearing him apologize was still a weird feeling. Blake got the sense that he didn't actually know what the word meant. Like someone who spoke a foreign language just repeating a known word in the correct context without understanding it.

And honestly, someone like Weiss didn't deserve apologies. She needed to be taken down a couple pegs.

Blake gave the girl in white an expectant look.

Weiss just curled her lip and gave an aggressive shrug. "What? I'm not sorry. I didn't do anything wrong. Blake, it's Jaune."

Blake really didn't know how to reply to that. What was she supposed to say? Oh come on, he's not that bad? Something about that just struck her as weird, forced, and vaguely creepy for a reason she couldn't place. Just not the kind of thing you say. She kind of wanted to stand up for him, but in this case, she genuinely didn't know what to say.

She caught herself bitterly thinking that Jaune probably wouldn't have her side in this kind of thing. But, that wasn't true. That was before—well, everything.

Besides, she told herself, if she did join Weiss against Jaune, that would mean Weiss would win. And Jaune would probably find a way to use how she had let him hug her as ammunition.

Telling herself that helped nurse her pride.

Blake just shrugged. "Maybe just lighten up a little?"

Jaune met Blake's eyes, giving her this little species of smile. She replied with a gesture halfway between a nod and a helpless shrug. The whole thing just felt somehow fake to her. Uncomfortable. Like she should be doing more, but anything more would be inauthentic.

Weiss folded her arms. "Since when have you two been buddy buddy?"

Jaune said, "She's my partner." As though that was all that needed to be said.

Weiss made a tired go on gesture.

He just stared at her, idly forking at his rather meager dinner.

"Really? You're not going to follow that up with some crass remark? I can see it in your eyes; you want to make it."

Blake had this sudden uncomfortable feeling like Jaune was going to explain everything that had happened between the two of them. Just vomit out words like an overeager puppy that can't contain itself. She squirmed in place.

Instead, the boy just took a long sip from his glass of water. "No. I wouldn't do that to her."

"You do it all the time to us!"

"Not me," Shamrock said, putting on her hat.

Jaune regarded Weiss seriously. In that way that was still relatively new to him. It was an expression that somehow didn't belong on his boyish face.

It belongs to an altogether older boy, she thought, thinking of the soldier Jaune person thing she'd seen.

"I'm not doing it anymore."

"And asking me to pose nude for an art class?"

"Was just a joke, obviously," Blake mumbled, staring intently at her lap.

"And here I thought jokes were supposed to be funny," Weiss huffed.

Blake took a steadying breath, and then looked up at Weiss sharply. "Like you'd know funny if it jumped up and bit you. I don't think I've ever seen you laugh."

"Because you're not funny, either, Blake."

She felt her face scrunching up before she realized she was doing it. She had that face like the night they had dragged Jaune home. Not that she knew why that line in particular seemed to be about ready to set her off. But God, she really wanted to tear into the ice queen all of a sudden.

Under the table, Jaune bumped his leg into her. She remembered where she was, and that getting angry here would just probably make things worse. She felt the ears hidden under her hairbow flatten in defeat.

Jaune just gave her a reassuring little smile. But in not replying to Weiss, the ice queen seemed to take this argument as a victory. Bitch. Exactly how Jaune expected to get Blake to help him convince the girl in white to join them on some kind of team-building exercise, she didn't know. Frankly, she thought it was a lost cause.

Then again, she had thought Jaune a lost cause. Between him and Weiss, she had been ready to just cut her losses. Abandon this dream of Beacon. Then, a whole bunch of nothing happened that for some reason felt more meaningful then she reckoned it had any right to. She'd never activated someone's Aura before. She just kind of lost herself in the moment, and the words tumbled out.

Blake wasn't feeling hungry anymore. All she could do was prop her head up on her elbow and look out at the cafeteria. Students. Some faunus. Most were human. Although, on some level, she wondered how many students were faunus in disguise. There was a saying among her people. Your life is all ears. Meaning someone born with an easy life by comparison to others. Certain animal traits could be easily hidden by common accessories. Her old friend, Ilia, was completely human passing unless you caught her at the right moment. Blake's hand reached up to her hair bow and scratched idly. Beacon may have been something of a progressive icon for its open acceptance of faunus, but that really didn't mean anything if people like her had to hide her basic biology just to fit in without bias or bigotry.

Something that the girl over there with the bunny ears was dealing with.

She saw it out of the corner of her eyes first. Blake didn't know the girl's name, but she did recognize those long rabbit ears. Though she didn't remember how, she believed the girl was a sophomore. She was just trying to navigate the cafeteria, when a boy nearly twice her size came up to her and grabbed one of her ears.

"Whoa, I told you they were real!" he said. "Hey, I bet you could tie these together. Is it true touchin' ears makes your animal types all hot under the collar?"

"Ow!" the girl said, trying to shrink away. Her teeth were grip, eyes frantic. But the grip on her ears kept her from getting far. "Let me go!"

"Oh hey, obligatory Jaundice arc," Jaune said with a certain grimness, staring at the scene.

Weiss didn't seem to give it more than a passing glance. She seemed more annoyed at the scene they were making than anything else. Blake saw a few other people staring. Most of the nearby team VYPR were watching with distaste. But no one was doing anything. As if just glaring at racist bullying would solve it.

Then Jaune said something that nearly blindsided Blake. "Them who say nothing in the face of evil are complicit in it." Accounting for the accent, it was word-for-word what Adam would say.

The urge in her legs to get up and do something suddenly evaporated. She just watched the scene unfold with a certain sense of helplessness. Just, this sense that actually getting up and doing the right thing would somehow be the wrong thing. Her mouth felt dry.

The faunus girl managed to twist out of the boy's grip, but in doing so dropped her tray of dinner all over herself. One of the boy's friends pointed and laughed, calling her a ditz.

Jaune was looking at Blake strangely. He just nodded, which he must have thought meant something. But Blake just stared back at him, confused. So he put his hand on her back and gave her a firm push. The weakness in her legs gave her nothing to resist. She stumbled to her feet. Nearly colliding with the taller boy with the build like a northern Mistrali wrestler.

"Whoa there, dollface," the boy said, and she distantly remembered his name was Cardin. To her surprise, he reached out to catch her before she fell.

She gave Jaune a scathing look, before her attention snapped back to Cardin. "As if!" she said. As if what? It just sounded like the thing to say. She pushed away from him, knowing he'd never even pretend to put on that nice act if he knew what was under her hairbow.

"Hey, I was just being nice, girl," Cardin said, frowning. "Looked like you were about to fall there. No need to be a bitch."

"I'm good," she said, feeling an urge to go somewhere. Do something. She saw the faunus girl disappearing down a hallway to the bathroom, and suddenly had a direction. She pivoted from the racist asshole and stormed off after the girl.

— 8 —

But as soon as the bathroom door behind her closed behind her, and she saw the girl there crying as she tried to wash off her shirt in the sink, she suddenly found all her courage evaporating. She just stood there, ears shrinking under her hairbow.

The girl turned to her, and Blake wanted nothing to do but to apologize. Say she went through the wrong door. And just run away. It'd be so much easier. This wasn't her problem, exactly. The girl looked like she hated Blake just for seeing her like this.

"Hi," Blake said weakly, pathetically.

What would Jaune say if she just chickened out now? That bastard was the reason she was here, facing the bunny girl down. I'm a complete fraud, she thought, finding herself unable to say anything else. Faunus rights, faunus respect, was her pet cause. Her raison d'être, as they'd say here in Vale. Weiss sickened her and put her into a place just like this girl was in. And now that she was facing it head-on, Blake didn't know what to do.

The girl sniffled. "What do you want?" she asked. The sophomore had an accent when she spoke. It was a lot cleaner than Jaune's, though like his, Blake couldn't place it

What would Jaune say in my shoes? Gods, thinking of him for inspiration for her own problems. Blake felt like the lowest of the low right now.

Blake swallowed. "I saw what happened."

The girl rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, of course you did. Who didn't?"

Her heart hurt. Her tongue felt dry and swollen. "I, I didn't mean anything by it."

"Look!" the girl said with a sudden ferocity. "If you're here to tell me sweet nothings and that it'll all be okay, I've heard it all, okay? I don't need it from a stranger too."

Her anger helped. Gave Blake something to rally herself around. She stood a little taller. "What's your name?"

"What does it matter?"

"I don't want to keep thinking of you as that faunus girl who was bullied. I want to know your name. You deserve to be thought of as a person like anyone else."

The girl glared for a moment, before the heat left her. She went back to trying to wash her blouse with sink water. "Velvet."

Blake nodded. "Velvet. That's a nice name."

"I don't need a white knight," she said.

"What?"

Velvet rolled her wet eyes. "I've seen it before. And I don't need it. I can handle those bastards myself."

Blake took a step forward, and froze. "Why didn't anybody do anything for you back there?"

Velvet laughed without any humor. "Gee, there's a mirror here. Why don't you ask it, huh?" She sniffled. "Look, it's nice what you're doing, I get it. But I can handle this myself."

"But you shouldn't have to!" Blake said, thinking back to why she first joined the White Fang. The promises Adam had used to sweep her off her feet. "What they did was wrong, just a bunch of racist jerks picking on you because they don't think anyone cares. Well, I—I care!"

"Great. Racism is solved. Bullying is over. Some random girl saw me get harassed and cares."

That hurt Blake more than she would have thought. She flinched back, searching for words. "Faunus are just people too. No different than humans with slanted eyes or black skin or blonde hair."

"Wow, you've really thought this all out. I'll ask Professor Oobleck to give you a medal for being one of the good humans."

Oobleck. Beacon's caffeine-addicted history teacher. And someone who did seem to genuinely care about fau—

Stop it. You're getting distracted.

For a moment, she thought about removing her hairbow. Showing off her ears like she had with Jaune. Because then Velvet would see they're really on the same side. Both faunus. Blake understood because…

…she'd never really been in Velvet's shoes, had she?

For a single, horrified moment of shame, she remembered growing up in Menagerie with her father. Surrounded by other faunus in their own little republic, where humans only showed up to trade, and even those were generally incredibly friendly towards faunuskind. It'd only been once she left home that she saw how her horribly people around the world were treated. But by then, she'd taken to wearing her hairbow. Hiding her ears. Just being another human girl in their eyes.

My life is all ears.

Blake realized that, on a very real level, she had no idea what Velvet was going through. She'd never been on the receiving end of real racism, petty or otherwise. She'd just seen it in the laws and casual speech of humans who thought she was one of them. That alone had made her angry enough to want to change things. Try to save her people.

But here, looking at the very reason she dedicated herself to fighting, she just felt like a fraud. A fake. And she didn't know how to handle it without violence.

Adam Taurus was wrong. Humans and faunus could live together. Coexist as equals. And they could do it without killing each other.

But right now, she didn't know how.

"I'm sorry," Blake said.

"Yeah," Velvet said, and sniffled.

Blake opened the bathroom door and ran away, like she always did.

— 9 —

She didn't know how long she'd been gone. Her scroll only had the one text from Jaune the entire time.

Jaune: Wanna talk about it?

She found him in the dorm common room, his face to the stovetop. It was too dark to see for anyone but a faunus. At first she panicked at the way the burner was on, until she saw him stand up, a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth. Her night vision fixated on the cherry of the cigarette. He took a long drag, staring at her. It wreathed his face in shadows invisible to a normal human. Some abstract part of her realized he was smoking a Nine Lives, her father's old brand. They were far cheaper than most brands because they lacked the packet-mounted fire Dust ignition patch most Valean tobacco came with.

"Shit," he said. "I was just trying to light up to help stay me awake."

"So you're smoking? Again?" Blake snapped with more angry care than she would have imagined possible of her just a few days ago.

"Stole 'em from the physician while he was treating you," he admitted around a mouthful of smoke. Hands in his pockets, he just shrugged. "Figured it'd be more efficient and short-lasting than chugging an amphetamine cola."

There he went again, using the full name for the generic type of energy drink. A weird quirk of his. She stomped up to him and, lighting up with her Aura, grabbed the tip of the cigarette and killed it. She threw it into the sink to dispose of.

She turned back around to face him, hands on hips. And the idiot was just smiling at her.

"Happy to see you're more pissed at me than whatever was taking you," he said idly. "You wanna talk about it?"

Blake opened her mouth, and nothing came out. The smell of her father's favorite brand made it hard to think of anything but home. She let out a low growl and leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded.

"I don't know."

Jaune nodded in understanding. The back of his eyes had a faint glow of Aura. "If you don't wanna jaw, I don't wanna know."

Something about that offended her. "But it was—you're a jerk, you know that? You just pushed me out there, leaving me without backup, and then I had to talk to Velvet alone, and I just!" She covered her face with her hands. "Gods, I'm a fraud."

She felt him at her side, leaning against the counter with her. Arms folded in thought. "You wanna make it up to Velvet by breaking Cardin's legs?"

On some level, she thought it vaguely odd he knew everyone's name when even she didn't. But she dismissed that thought as just being another mystery not worth thinking on. "How would that help? Are we just gonna defeat racism through violence? Prove the White Fang right?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "You're right. It's symptomatic. Reason chemo works is it kills the whole body and just eighty-sixes cancer by little Bob Ross happy accident. Not a good tool for society, metaphorical or otherwise."

"What's chemo?"

Jaune looked a little lost there. "Don't matter none, I guess." He compressed a noise in his throat. "I'm just saying, I look at Cardin, and I think of me when I was younger."

"What do you mean?"

He closed his eyes. "Used to hate faunus myself."

"You?!" she gasped, taking an unconscious step back.

He nodded. "Was… stupid. But at the time, it made sense. How I was raised mostly. Racism is a self-perpetuating little bugbear. People don't like being wrong. They find science and facts that prove they's right. Just living in my own little online bubble gave me lots of what I thought was proof. You can tell them all the facts and it don't mean nothing to them. Lots of people on the pro-faunus side are just as retarded as those against it. Easy to destroy them with facts and logic and feel like you're on the right side of science and history."

She bit back bile. "What changed?"

Jaune sighed. "I met faunus who proved I was wrong. Met ones I was forced to respect as better people than me. Who were the kind of people I wanted to be, as leaders and warriors and whatever. And when I was in a position to be a leader like them, I found I cared for them different folk too as equals, and found the idea of doing anything but disgusting. When you see me, do you see some human trying to act in charge?"

"No. I see my partner, I guess."

"Human is just part of my condition. Same as you're my partner, Blake, who just happens to have a pair of cute ears a-hidin' under her headband. Don't make no difference to me; I care about you all the same."

Blake aggressively stared at her feet. It vaguely felt like he was hitting on her, which wasn't a pleasant idea. But she knew him enough to just chalk it up to his slightly chauvunistic manner of speech. She supposed she could look past at it for the rest of his sake.

Jaune finally looked at her. "Cardin thought you were just a normal girl, yeah? His first reaction when he saw you looking like you was finna fall was to try to catch you."

"Yeah, but he was a complete prick about it."

"You did wound his pride. Boys still gonna be boys."

"And that excuses it?" she scoffed.

He grimaced. "No. But it adds context. Like him being a bigot. No one likes to think of themselves as a bad person. Thinking you was a normal girl, he tried acting the good person to you. I gotta believe there's some good in him."

"Really, Jaune? Really?" she snapped. "How could you say that! Gods, I thought better of you than that!"

Jaune flinched, but still tried hard to look casual. "You want to change people's hearts and minds about faunus, right?"

"Yeah, and?"

"Means that most people out there are like Cardin. They think they know right, but they know wrong. Change ain't an easy thing. Takes someone willing to learn sometimes. Most other times, it requires a good ass kicking with the hard facts that prove you ain't the good person you done thought you was."

She folded her arms, silent.

"Ain't a boy out there same as another," he said. "You just kick Cardin's ass for wrongthink and he'll double down. That's why the White Fang today is wrong. How many people who didn't care before now hate faunus because of a couple violent assholes and grifters?"

Blake looked away, uncomfortable. "So how do I save Velvet? I tried to say something there, but she told me to basically stop and go away. That there wasn't anything I could do to help."

"Then don't save her," he said with a shrug. "She don't wanna be saved. Do it for yourself."

"So that's your magical know-it-all human advice, huh?"

Jaune grinned. "No, just a recommendation. My actual advice for this situation is simple. It's about tailoring to your audience. We do actually kick Cardin's lily white ass, but respect him for fighting back. Don't spit on him or scorn a motherfucker for what he done. Offer him a hand up when he's on the ground and treat him as an equal."

It was the worst, most cathartic piece of advice Blake had ever received.

"And we use that experience as a springboard for figuring out how to reach out to Weiss."

Scratch that. That was the worst advice ever. Gods, Jaune was going to get them all killed, wasn't he?