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Stuff in the afterword!
Start Chapter 37
Haven is quiet in all the wrong ways.
That's perhaps the thing that sticks with Jaune the most as he and the rest of their little entourage make their way into its near-silent halls, scanning their surroundings for any sign of complications that might get in their way. Luckily, things seem to have gone to plan, even if the multiple of complications that have sprung up within the last few days are, admittedly, making things rather difficult.
The largest of which being the reappearance of Ozpin.
That had been… well, a bit out of nowhere, and that's perhaps putting things lightly. Jaune still isn't entirely sure what it is that they're going to do about that, given that Leonardo has briefed them on the fact that he can't exactly make any overt moves while Ozpin is here.
Normally, Jaune would almost be rooting for Ozpin, but they do need to get in and get the relic.
Ozpin being there will make that quite a bit more difficult.
"I managed to contact Ruby." Weiss says as she walks beside Ren and Nora. "I told them where I am. As you thought, they're currently in western Mantle. Apparently, they had a rather interesting adventure involving a tiny woman, another tiny but blind woman, and a large robot that vaguely resembled a shoe."
"That sounds… wait, what?"
"I decided, for my own sanity, not to ask any follow-up questions."
Jaune just nods his head. "Yeah, I think you may have made the right choice there."
They make their way into the central chamber of Haven without any difficulty, although Jaune's pretty sure that, given they've had an easy time of things so far, that means things will be getting much harder.
On the bright side, ostensibly, they have only Ozpin to deal with.
Jaune just wishes he had any faith things would stay that simple.
"This," Leonardo Lionheart gestures towards a statue of a woman holding what look to be scales of some sort, "Is the path to the vault. I will open it. You all stand back."
"And where's Ozpin?"
"Waiting back in my office." Leonardo speaks, sighing out as he runs a hand down his face. "It was the best I could come up with in such a short timeframe. Suffice it to say that I doubt this will work for a long period of time, so I'd ask you all to do your best to hurry."
Jaune and Cinder both nod at that, and then Leonardo inserts a piece into the statue. It rumbles briefly, before beginning to move out of the way, opening up an elevator of some sort that will apparently take them to the vault.
"You'd best be quick about it." Lionheart gestures towards it.
Cinder turns towards Raven, who's been stood near the back of their formation this entire time. The woman's eyes are tired, but she nods all the same as she gestures for Vernal to follow along behind her, and the two of them join Cinder and Jaune himself on the 'elevator' down, all four of them hopping the ten or so feet down to the moving platform as it takes them deeper and deeper into Remnant's crust.
They're all silent for quite a while as they descend. Jaune feels that is fair; none of them have anything in particular to say to any of the others. Jaune himself might speak with Cinder had they been alone, but given they're not he decides to keep quiet.
Finally, after what feels like a good five minute descent – Jaune knows, realistically, that it can't have been any longer than thirty or so seconds, but even so it seems quite long – they arrive in an open sort of antechamber.
It is a dark place, with the only real light sources being the leaves upon the trees hanging above them, which glow an iridescent gold. Jaune finds himself marveling at such things in the moment, even as both Cinder and Raven simply step forward, entirely uncaring of such.
"And what am I doing, exactly?" Vernal asks as she steps up to a massive golden gateway, which currently seems closed.
"I would imagine you will simply need to flex your power." Cinder shrugs. "Salem gave no indication it was to be more complicated a thing than that."
Vernal grunts in agreement, even as she steps up towards it, and holds out a hand. Jaune can feel energy begin to affect the room, but oddly, he can't help but think it isn't entirely originating from Vernal.
It's an odd thing, but he supposes that ultimately, it's not terribly important.
Finally, after a few seconds, the gate begins to glow, a design coursing its way across the surface. It seems as if it's beginning to open, and that's precisely when a voice that Jaune has not heard in quite some time calls out to all of them.
"Well, well… I can't say this is how I expected to see all of you again."
Jaune recognizes the voice instantly – it's quite unique – but even still, some part of him either can't accept, or doesn't want to accept, that things have gone so wrong so quickly. He turns towards the sound of the voice, and spots a fifth figure hanging at the back of the room, his hands at his sides, but his fingers primed, ready to spring into action at the slightest movement.
"Ah, you," Raven scoffs, even as she turns towards the man with her helmet still affixed to her face, and reaches towards her sword. "Continue with your mission. I'll deal with this interference."
"Hah… y'know, somehow, I wasn't expecting anything else. What's it been, a year, two? And still the first thing you think to do upon seeing me is draw your sword." The man just laughs.
"You never change, Rae."
"Neither do you," Raven snarls, even as she fully draws her blade, and angles it at the intruder. "Brother."
Qrow Branwen says nothing as he draws Harvester from off of his back, and switches it into its scythe form. Jaune can't help the way that he swallows on nothing, entirely unsure as to how he's now meant to navigate this scenario.
"Qrow? What are you doing here!?" He finds himself asking with no small bit of panic as the vault door behind him gradually cracks open.
"I suppose I could ask you the same thing, kid," Qrow says with a sad little laugh. "But I've a feeling I already know. I'm sorry you got roped in with Salem, but I'm sure you can tell that you're not exactly batting for the right team out there, no?"
Jaune could see that, yes. Unfortunately, Jaune has been having difficulty convincing Cinder of those same truths, and he isn't exactly willing to leave her behind. Communicating such isn't exactly feasible in that small period of time however, given the whole… well, everything currently happening around them.
Jaune doesn't want to fight Qrow, though, and he doesn't want Qrow to fight them, either. That seems like a simple enough set of goals, but then, things have a habit of not really working out for him.
"Qrow, I… I don't–"
"Don't, kid," Qrow says, shaking his head and giving him a smile, despite everything. "I'm pretty sure I get the picture already. You don't have to explain yourself to me."
That… that's a weight off, even if it doesn't solve their immediate issues.
"I'm going to ask that you give me and Oz the Relic, however," Qrow states, even as he steps towards them, his scythe still primed, trained not on he or Cinder, but on Raven. "That kind of power can't go falling into Salem's hands. It simply can't."
Jaune's actually entirely cool with that, but given he's fairly certain Salem wouldn't be, he's not exactly sure where that leaves them.
"Salem will expect the Relic," Cinder chimes in for the first time, stepping forward. "We don't exactly have any options here."
"Well, you're the only people in this little vault, aren't you?" Qrow says, shrugging his shoulders. "Is it so odd that somehow, the great and powerful Qrow Branwen managed to sneak the Relic out from under your noses, and escape before you could catch him?"
Jaune is actually thinking about it for a brief moment before Raven Branwen steps in front of them, letting loose a sneer as she looks her brother dead in the eye.
"An excellent idea, Qrow. However, I don't think I'm going to allow that to happen."
"Huh?" Qrow cocks an eyebrow. "What's even your stake in this? I'd have thought you couldn't have possibly cared less."
"You mean that I would want to have to accept a mission from that… that woman, and then fail her!? No. I don't feel like having to live with a target on my back for the rest of my life. So I'm afraid I'll be curtailing this little agreement."
Cinder is the only one of them all who seems entirely conflicted. Jaune himself is almost set on letting Qrow take the Relic, and saying they failed to obtain it. Raven, on the other hand, is herself set on making sure the Relic gets back to Salem, if only so that the woman will not bother her or her tribe again. But Cinder seems caught, and for good reason, Jaune can't help feeling.
She's served Salem all her life, grown to fear her more than any other. She knows more than any of them the power that she wields, the depths of her true strength. She knows more than any of them that Salem is not an opponent they can defeat.
And yet here Jaune is, looking to put an even greater target on their backs.
"Jaune…" Cinder speaks under her breath, her voice shaking. "This is… we've already perturbed Salem slightly with our actions in Menagerie. To further derail her plans–"
"We can't afford to let those plans come to pass." Jaune fires back. "The entire world can't afford it. And her having one of these… these Relic things… I don't know how bad that is, but if she did all that she did in Beacon in order to get one, her possessing them can't possibly be a good thing."
Cinder just stares at him, her lips gradually curling inwards.
"That…"
"Oh, enough of this!" Raven suddenly snarls, before charging towards her brother, her sword blazing a path through the air.
Qrow catches it along the edge of Harvester, and suddenly a battle is on.
Just then, the door behind them finally opens, revealing a seemingly endless expanse of desert, and in the center, atop a plinth, rests the Relic of Knowledge.
To say that Jaune feels caught in that moment is a tad bit of an understatement. On the one hand, he genuinely does feel as if the Relic should go to Ozpin. And yet that's becoming less and less likely by the moment, especially as Raven proves just how skilled she is as she begins to gain an actual advantage over her brother.
And Jaune realizes that they don't have a choice; not really. Ozpin is here, Leonardo had communicated such to them, but he's not here with any real numbers. He's got Qrow – that had not been known to them, but then, Qrow can quite literally turn into a bird, so that tracks – but if Jaune had been a betting man, he'd have said that's all he has in terms of backup.
It would be entirely unrealistic for Jaune, Cinder, and Raven – he supposes Vernal is there too – not to mention the other six or so members of their little group, to lose the Relic to those two on their own. And that's discounting the fact that Raven has no intention of losing it at all. As things are, them somehow failing to acquire the Relic would simply be too suspicious.
And it's then that Jaune finally makes up his mind, with a quiet sigh of acceptance, and a shake of his head.
"We'll take the Relic." He says to Cinder, and she nods back at him, even if she doesn't look entirely pleased with such a prospect.
They pass by Vernal – who makes no efforts to get in their way – and step into the odd… dimension that is the Vault of Knowledge.
It is indescribable to stand within. It truly feels, to Jaune, at least, that both he and Cinder have traveled to some other world. And yet, just behind him lies the entrance back to Remnant, back to the bowels of the earth. Somehow they stand in a vast desert, staring up at a blue sky above them.
Cinder steps forward first, placing her hand on the Relic cautiously, as if thinking it might explode at a single touch.
Defying expectation, however, the Relic of Choice simply… does nothing.
Jaune finds himself cocking a surprised eyebrow.
"…Wait, really?"
"It appears inert." Cinder comments, picking the lamp – or, well, Jaune thinks it's supposed to be a lamp – up, and actually shaking it. It produces no noise. "Or, at the very least, I've no idea how to activate it."
"That's…"
"Troublesome, yes." Cinder sighs. "Hopefully Salem herself will have better luck with it."
"Or hopefully she won't." Jaune mutters, and Cinder does nod her head.
"We should be leaving. The longer we spend here–"
"The more we risk letting Ozpin call in people who could strip the Relic away." Jaune says, before getting briefly caught in his head wondering if that would be such a bad thing after all. "I just…" He groans. "This whole thing leaves a crappy taste in my mouth."
Cinder frowns, but doesn't seem like she can offer much in the way of comfort.
"I am not entirely thrilled myself, but I've no idea what else there is we can do."
"I…"
And then Jaune thinks of something, at the very least, that he can do, and his mind is suddenly running laps trying to figure out all of the logistics.
And Cinder just stares at him uncertainly.
"You've got that look in your eye like you're about to do something foolhardy.
He gives a breath of air at that. "What? I don't have a 'look'."
"You completely do."
"…Really?"
"Mm. You do this," Cinder crinkles the bridge of her nose, then, seemingly unsatisfied with said crinkling, manually manipulates the muscles of her face so that her forehead crinkles as well. "See, this is your 'I'm thinking of something dumb' expression."
"Hey!"
Cinder just shrugs. "Take it up with yourself, I only communicate what I see."
"…Okay, hear me out–"
"No."
"What? Why!?"
"Because if you tell me what it is you're about to do, I'll likely disagree with it." Cinder states, shrugging her shoulders. "So instead, simply do it, and ask my forgiveness after the fact."
Jaune sort of stares at his soulmate, entirely uncertain as to how he's meant to take that.
Eventually, he settles for a quiet, resolute sigh, and just going, "Okay."
So as they step out of the chamber, back towards the battle between the two siblings, Jaune does the one thing he'd wanted to do. He stands firm, sucks a big breath into his lungs, and then he shouts,
"Summer Rose is alive!"
This has the unintended effect of causing Qrow Branwen to Raven's blade to the side of the face, sending him careening to the floor of the antechamber, even as Raven stares at him with hatred in her eyes.
"W-Wait, what the hell did you say, kid!?" Qrow shakes his head. "What do you mean–"
"Inside of Evernight, deep in the bowels of the castle, Salem keeps an experiment that she calls the Big Bad Wolf." Jaune states, ignoring the way that Raven's knuckles are rapidly growing white around the hilt of her blade. "But I saw her. It could speak. It said Ruby's name. Salem claimed that it was Summer Rose underneath the blackened Grimm exterior… and I believe her."
Qrow seems shellshocked, a bit closer of a reaction to what he'd expected out of Raven Branwen some few nights back. Said woman looks… well, she doesn't look happy, that's for sure, as she brings her blade up, and points it directly at him.
"Boy, I don't know if you hear the words coming out of your mouth, but–"
"Rae!" Qrow screams, shaking his head as he pushes himself to his feet. "Rae, listen– forget all this– this garbage; Summer's alive! Do you hear him!?"
"And you believe that story?"
"I– Yeah, Rae, I do believe it. Jaune's a good kid, he wouldn't just make shit up like this!"
Raven sneers.
"You never know someone. Not really."
Jaune finds himself angry at the woman yet again, and her words… well, he can't help but use them for his own benefit.
"But you'd know that, wouldn't you, Raven?" Jaune says, stepping towards her slowly, steadily, his steps accenting his words as they clacked down on the stone beneath him. "After all, I'm sure Summer thought you were her teammate, and yet, when she needed you the most–"
It's an almost instantaneous thing, the speed with which Raven closes the distance between them. Her blade is about to connect with the side of his neck before Cinder catches it with one of her summoned blades, pushing Raven back with a furious breath.
"What the hell are you doing, Rae!?" Qrow rushes in, trying to get in between the two of them. "I thought you two were supposed to be working together or– Just what the fuck is going on here!?"
"She doesn't want me to say that she's known for years that Summer was alive!" Jaune shouts, feeling that same righteous fury from a week or so ago, when they'd first argued within Raven's tent, filling him again. "She's known ever since she went missing exactly what happened to her, and she never told anyone!"
There's a look of abject betrayal on Qrow's face that hurts Jaune to see. It hurts more than he can accurately describe, especially because in his moment of need, when Jaune had needed help to rescue Cinder, Qrow had been there for him.
And now, jaune understands that he really can't be there for Qrow. Because Qrow is with Ozpin, with Ozma, and they are with Salem.
Qrow understands because he knows him.
Ozpin likely won't.
So Jaune gestures towards Cinder, and she seems to get the point. She follows along behind him as they dash past Qrow, Raven, and a stunned Vernal, who seems entirely okay with being a completely background character if it means she stays out of the fight happening here.
Which Jaune has a feeling will soon heat up a bit.
"Hold onto me," Cinder says as she straps the lamp to her waist, and Jaune does as asked, wrapping his arms around her torso. "I'm going to get us out."
As Cinder is saying that, Jaune pays attention to the way that Qrow stands up, looks towards him, and gives him an almost absent nod. Then, the man turns back towards his sister, and, with a simple flick of Harvester, carves a groove in the ground at least an inch deep.
"Well, Raven," The man mutters, even as Cinder channels fire into her limbs, into the ends of her arm and her legs, and begins to rise out of the antechamber.
"It seems we have a lot to talk about."
And that's the last Jaune sees of them.
/
They don't stop to talk to Ozpin, to try and explain what it is that's happened to them, and why they're doing what they're doing. They don't stop to try and bail out Leonardo, who is, likely, to be detained by Ozpin and the rest of the Huntsman and Huntresses Jaune can only assume will soon swarm the area. They stop only to make sure that each and every one of them is accounted for before Cinder nods her head, signals for them to follow, and begins tracing a path through the backstreets of Mistral.
It takes them a good two hours to be sure they've escaped any potential fallout from being discovered at Haven. According to the news that Weiss is able to receive looking around at her scroll, Leonardo Lionheart has been brought into custody. Qrow Branwen, along with his sister, are both missing, though they're both suspected alive, given that Ozpin apparently has Qrow's aura synched up to his scroll, and it's still intact.
As for them, however, the news is rather vague. A team of huntsman and huntresses had broken into Haven with the help of Leonardo Lionheart, and taken something from within the building. The news speculated what could have been worth such effort – and while some were more on the money, wondering if they'd taken an object of historical significance, a few that suggested they'd stolen Mistral's 33rd Vytal Festival trophy had Jaune chuckling just a bit, even if such is weakened significantly by the overall… everything of the evening.
They had the Relic of Knowledge. They'd won.
It doesn't really feel like it, though, given that a win for them here means a win for Salem. A win for the darkness of the world.
…Something needs to give. It can't be them, and yet he knows that Cinder isn't going to just accept turning on Salem, not when such means putting every single member of their little band into jeopardy. Or, well, mostly himself, but he's sure that Cinder at least holds a small torch of worry for the others as well.
Still, the way things are going, it has to be soon.
What Jaune really needs is… is a push. Something he can use to jumpstart the process of escaping from Salem's clutches, something that will convince Cinder of the necessity.
Something big, but preferably not too big.
…
Jaune can't help but feel like he's said something wrong.
/
And deep within the depths of hell, a fading darkness lifts its head as a touch of crimson swirls into being.
End Chapter 37
Yo.
this is the same message as on Paved, but I have officially (I think) finished writing Paved with Bad Intentions. Wrote the ending a few days ago. I think it's pretty good!
If you're fans of my other story, I hope you enjoy it! In more relevant news for this story, you should know that that we will be returning to a weekly schedule for a while!
I say for a while because I'm starting up college again in like... 2 weeks? So yeah, hopefully it won't be too much work, but eh, I'm planning ahead in case it is by letting you know that said weekly schedule might disappear again soon.
Have a good week!