Before Jacen knew it, nearly two months had passed, and Beacon's first term was set to begin the following week.
During that time, he and Yang had been training physically while they went through the lessons Ozpin had given him.
He informed Ozpin that he had gone over the necessary material, and soon Jacen had a certified letter of recommendation getting him accepted into Beacon.
After finishing high physical training, Yang invited him to a party to celebrate their upcoming trip to Beacon with some of Yang's friends from Signal.
Inwardly, he hoped they weren't going to Junior's nightclub, as it had gotten trashed when they last went there.
Though before they went there, Yang took him into a shop where she often got her favorite music.
The shop was pretty large, with a few patrons at spots elsewhere with headphones where they could listen to music samples.
Seeming eager, Yang pulled Jacen to one of the opening terminals and punched in a song titled "This will be the Day."
"You gotta listen to this," she insisted, placing the headphones over his ears.
At first, Jacen was overwhelmed, but as he listened to the song, he marveled at how the tone resonated.
He even heard himself humming to the song's lyrics; he dared any Bith musician to trill up something this catchy.
"Pretty good beat, ain't it?" Yang asked loud enough to be heard.
"It's one of the best ones I've heard in a while," he replied, removing the headphones.
After they left the music shop, they met up with Yang's friends at a bar, where he saw a completely different side of Yang.
"Heya, what's up," Yang said to her friends, comprised of two guys and two girls who'd looked like something out of a rock poster, or in Jacen's perception, they might have passed for some local punks that lived in Coruscant's lower levels.
Yang was all too eager to introduce him to her colorful assortment of friends.
Her friends challenged him to a drinking contest, which, thanks to Jacen's use of Jedi techniques to ward off intoxication, he managed to win.
"No way," Yang said with a slur as she became increasingly drunk during the contest.
He noticed that Yang's friends seemed to be a bit worried despite their inebriation.
"Another round on me!" Yang shouted to be heard over the loud music.
Despite Jacen trying to enjoy what was supposed to be a celebration, he felt that Yang was going a bit overboard.
"Well, I'll be damned," a heavily accented voice Jacen was all too familiar with suddenly snapped him out of his concern.
What were the odds that out of all the people in Vale, he happened to be at the same bar where Dusky Jones was?
She puffed from her cigarette as she took in the scene, "I din't take Jedi for the drinkin' sort."
She still wore the same clothing Jacen first saw her in Tukson's Book shop.
Yang seemed to look at her blearily, "Who do ya think you are?" She asked in a voice that was equal parts curious and slight annoyance.
Jacen held up his hand when he noticed Dusky eyeing the drunk Yang, "This is Dusky Jones," he said nervously.
Dusky looked Yang up and down, "This yer lil' girlfriend, Jedi?"
Jacen's face flushed with Dusky's question, "It's not like that!"
He saw Dusky give a slight smirk, "Oh sure, keep tellin' yer self that, mate."
Yang unexpectedly tried getting on her feet but fell back into the seat at the table, though her eyes were still fixed on Dusky.
"Had yer self a bit much, love?" Dusky asked in a teasing tone.
Jacen watched as Yang began to shuffle her way toward Dusky, where she poked her finger at Dusky.
"I can still drink you under the table, dust bunny," she said, trying to sound challenging even through her slurred speech.
Dusky chuckled at Yang's nickname for her, then replied to Yang's challenge, "Careful love, I've out drank sever'l guys that were two times my size," she said, putting her hands on her hips.
Jacen didn't want to know where this was going; Dusky then pulled up a chair in front of Yang's table; her friends gave them a wide berth for the impending contest.
"Oi, Jedi boy, why don't I show ya how a real woman drinks," she said, with a flirtatious voice.
Yang was already out of it, and Jacen wanted to stop it before it worsened.
This was part of Yang Jacen feared would surface.
Doubtless, this resulted from how much Raven's apparent abandonment had impacted Yang, which manifested in hard drinking and partying.
"First one to pass out losses, love," Dusky said as soon as the drinks were ready.
"Um, why don't we call it a night," Jacen tried to say, only for Yang to hush him up.
"Imma show this dust bunny that I can go all the way," she said, barely able to keep her head up.
It wasn't long before Jacen's fears were confirmed, and soon enough, Yang had dropped her head on the table, having barely gotten through a second glass.
Dusky raised her fist in victory, "Sorry, love, but you'll have ta try 'arder next time."
Her ears twitched as a bottle was thrown from across the bar; she quickly ducked her head and then turned to see who had tossed it.
"Get outta here, you long-eared freak!" An incredibly drunk man said in a harsh tone of voice.
"This is a bar, not a zoo!"
Jacen saw Dusky glare at the man, "Oi, why don't I cut out that tongue of yours so you don't spoil the atmosphere," she said, reading to draw her knife.
The man gave a rude gesture with his hand, "I'd like to see you try it, thumper."
Just before Dusky could do anything, Jacen used the Force to pull the man from the end of the room to a chair in the back just within Jacen's reach.
"What the hell!?" The man had enough time to say before Jacen waved his hand, saying only one word, "Sleep."
With that, the man was out like a light, with Jacen sighing in relief.
"Not bad, Jedi," Dusky said from behind.
"Now move," she had her knife out, but Jacen turned to face her squarely.
"You'll do nothing of the sort," he said, adding just enough authority in his voice.
Dusky huffed and seemed to be prepared to jump at him, but eventually, she put her knife away.
Inwardly, Jacen was grateful that despite Dusky's appearance and personality quirks, she had the professionalism of a soldier, which gave her a rugged sense of honor.
As if to punctuate that, she tossed a few liens on the table next to the unconscious Yang before lighting her cigarette.
A look passed across her eyes that Jacen couldn't decipher, but it seemed a hurt mixed with regret.
As she walked past Jacen, he heard her say, "Might wanna get yer blonde friend home, mate," she said.
"A girl will do crazy things when they're in pain."
Something in the way she said that raised a question, which he doubted Dusky would answer, so he watched as she left the bar.
Jacen let out a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding, then turned toward the table where Yang struggled to get back up, and her friends were trying to support her.
"Is she always like this?" He asked as her friends tossed Yang's arms around Jacen's shoulders.
Yang's friends agreed unanimously that Yang often stayed out late and got blackout drunk.
He felt Yang wrapping her arms tight around his neck, and when he tried to move toward the door, Yang tugged closer to him.
"Please don't leave," Yang was muttering in a drunken stupor, but from the tears forming in her eyes, Jacen had the impression that Yang was trying to keep who she believed to be Raven from leaving.
Alternating, Jacen carried her on his back, carefully not to move her too quickly; a warning in the Force told him that Yang was probably moments away from releasing the entire contents of her stomach over everything.
Sure enough, Yang made an unmistakable gagging noise, and Jacen quickly redirected Yang to a nearby trash can, where she inevitably vomited.
"Dank farrik," he said aloud, covering his eyes with his hand, then went over to Yang, patting her on the back.
Yang convulsed as another gage made her vomit into the trash can again.
To think this same person who could take down an entire nightclub and help him unlock his aura was also a distraught girl whose only answer to her abandonment issues was to get black-out drunk.
Many people demonstrated self-destructive behavior whenever circumstances were terrible, as he'd nearly done when on the run from the Empire, knowing that everything he fought for no longer existed.
He'd probably have found himself in some filthy dive on Nar Shaddaa, where he spent every night at a shady bar with an addiction to death sticks, if he thought it would make him forget the pain.
After she'd finished, he carried her back to her bike.
Anyone else wouldn't know how to start it let alone ride it, but luckily Jacen wasn't like everyone else.
He laid his hand on the bike and let the Force flow into him, giving him insight.
From his early years, he was notedly one of the few with the rare gift of psychomatry, a skill which let a Jedi see things by touching particular objects; in doing so, they could also see what secrets such objects held.
In the hands of a master, such as the famous Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, it could be used as a great tracking tool, yet there was danger in handling weapons wielded by someone who'd murdered as it would lay a Jedi bare to the Dark Side.
Though Jacen was hardly a master of this art, he often used it to learn the basics of something, such as how to ride a bike he'd never used before.
He made sure Yang had her arms around him tightly as he started the bike, and they sped off.
Dusky had been walking for a while, still fuming over the event in the bar earlier.
"Long ears," she scoffed.
It was that kind of thing that gave weight to the White Fang's views on humans treating Faunus like low-class creatures.
Yet, she recalled what Jacen had done; that Force power of his was incredible for how versatile it was.
However, Jacen didn't seem willing to use it to kill the man; he'd simply waved his hand, telling him to sleep.
Perhaps she'd revealed too much with her last words to him.
"A girl will do crazy things when they're in pain," she said aloud, even as she winced with a lingering image that she'd tried so hard to repress from her mind.
The sound of movement caused her to stop and move her hands toward the two curved weapons on her back holsters.
"Oi, come out, or I'll flush ya out," she said.
The form of two individuals suddenly emerged, but it was clear that they weren't just around for a friendly chat.
When they got closer, Dusky's eyes widened as she recognized the uniforms bearing the unmistakable mark of the White Fang, with its blood-red colors representing the worst aspects of the new order of things.
"Well, well," a tall, heavily muscular man with downward curving horns wearing a mask over his eyes with his sleeves torn, holding a mace-like weapon.
"I can't believe we just found the legendary Bloody Dusk."
The second one, a more petite man with a pair of fox ears, stepped from behind her.
"What a disappointment you are," he said in an almost serpentine voice dripping scornfully.
Despite her apprehension, Dusky continued to show that she wouldn't be intimidated, "Ya want me to remind you how I got that name, mates?" She said with both curved weapons drawn.
The big one cracked his knuckles, "You got a lot of nerve thinking you could just walk away from our cause," he said, his voice filled with anger.
"First things first, Dusk," the fox-eared one said.
"I'm sure she didn't just disappear on her own, and lately, we've been noticing a dip in our former brothers and sisters," his voice began carrying the weight of someone who wanted to drive home the point of what happened to those that left the White Fang.
Dusky noticed that he had a small bag around his waist and was caressing it as though it were a precious pet.
"First, you're going to come with us, even if we have to beat you within an inch of your life," he said with every ounce of sadistic pleasure.
"Then you're going to explain to Kin Onyurio who else has slipped from under our noses and the one orchestrating it."
Like these green-gilled guppies could bring down a veteran with several years of experience under her belt.
At the same time, she suspected that members of the White Fang would eventually make an appearance, but she was insulted by the fact that they'd sent these inexperienced flunkies.
"I expected eithe' Adam Taurus or ev'n Sienna Khan, but this is a pathe'ic excuse for a pair I've ever seen," she finished looking at the big one shaking with impudent rage.
"How dare you insult us!?" He shouted.
Perfect, the big dumb one is mad; time to show them how she earned her name.
She stomped her foot on the ground and vanished, only to hop out of nowhere to take the fox-eared one out first.
He never had time to turn around entirely before two of Dusky's weapons struck him in the head, making him stagger backward.
"You bitch!" He shouted only to be screaming at nothing when he turned around to see Dusky's fist coming into his face knocking him into a nearby wall.
She deftly caught her weapons and looked at the big one with a look that made him freeze, "The dusk of this day will be your last," she said, uttering the same adage she spoke to Jacen.
The big one began flailing toward her with his mace drawn, but she flipped onto her back then, using her arms as leverage, brought her foot into the big one's gut, making him double over in pain.
Shots rang out, and she turned to see the fox-eared one holding a gun and some whiplike weapon.
He was bruised with a bit of blood leaking from his nose where she'd struck him.
"I'm gonna rip your ears off and-" he didn't have time to finish before Dusky appeared in front of him, then, having pulled her knife out, gave a quick stab to his chest with enough force to shatter his weak aura and plunge the blade into his heart.
She pulled it out and watched as he fell dead on the ground.
She noticed the bag around his waist had been torn during their brief engagement, and when she looked closer at it, her face darkened.
"You traitor!" The big one managed to get back up and, once again demonstrating his tactlessness combined with a lack of subtlety, proceeded to charge at her, only for her to toss both of her curved weapons at him, one hitting him in the foot to freeze it in place via ice dust. The other one hit him with lightning dust.
She caught both of them and continued to throw them back, not even bothering to entertain this big dumb brute with a response.
Dusk had fallen on him and his companion; she was ready to end it.
A final attack of her lightning-charged weapon made the ram Faunus drop his mace.
"You're gonna pay for this, Dusk, you hear me!?" He shouted with more self-righteous indignation.
Time to shut him up permanently; giving her foot another stomp on the ground, she again vanished and reappeared behind him, slitting his throat with her knife.
She watched as the ram Faunus died, then turned her attention back to the bag his fox-eared companion carried.
She wasn't mistaken for what she saw in that back.
Inside that bag, like a collection of grizzly trophies, were ten pairs of hands, hands that belonged not to human adults but children.
Another sickening memory resurfaced from her last mission as a soldier for the White Fang and collided with an even more unpleasant memory from when she was a child in Vacuo.
The smell of gun smoke, dust, and blood thick in the back of her mind.
These two were examples of how far the White Fang had fallen; their hatred of humans so consumed them due to their oppression that they marked any human, whether they directly committed actions against the Faunus or if they were completely innocent.
They even saw children, small and perhaps the most innocent, as future enemies because of who their parents were.
After she got rid of the bodies, she'd have to tell Tuskon that the Fang was beginning to send its people to Vale and that soon they'd have to relocate elsewhere.
Briefly, she considered whether to ask the Jedi boy for assistance, though she barely knew him from the wild story he told Tuskon about being a commander in something called the Clone Wars.
She shook her head, "It ain't his problem," she said as she began to find a clever way to get rid of the bodies.
Yang woke up the following morning with a throbbing headache.
How much did she have last night?
She looked around to see that she was back in her room back home; she didn't even remember how she got there.
A knock at the door made her clench her head, "Why's it gotta be so loud?"
Inwardly, she wondered just how her uncle Qrow managed to overcome these hangovers.
"Come in," she said, expecting it to be her dad, but it was Jacen entering with a tray and a noticeably messy appearance.
"Um, I made breakfast," he said sheepishly.
An equally messy Ruby appeared from behind him.
"I helped," she said, sounding too proud of herself.
She laughed at the state of both of them, "By helped, you mean you got yourself covered in flour?"
She saw Jacen and Ruby exchange glances before Jacen sat the tray down, which had a stack of pancakes and bacon.
"I hope it's not too late in the day," Jacen said, rubbing the back of his head nervously.
Looking at him, he definitely could have passed for Ruby's older brother, especially from the hair, if nothing else.
Yang held her head again as her headache persisted, inwardly she was ashamed, "I'm sorry you had to be the one to get me back home," she stopped as she looked at Jacen with a bit of a grimace, "Wait a minute, you had all those drinks, how come you don't have a hangover?"
She saw Jacen shrug, "As I said, the Force gives me a lot of versatility; among those is how to negate intoxication," he explained.
Of course, it was part of his unique ability.
"What I would give to have that on hand," she stopped as sudden shame seemed to take hold.
She must have looked awful last night.
She stopped her musings as Ruby came beside her with a hug.
"Now come on, Yang, you need to eat something," Ruby insisted, trying to feed her.
"I can do that myself, Ruby," she said, giving Ruby a playful pat on the head.
"After breakfast, I have to head back to Vale," she heard Jacen say.
Ah, she almost forgot as she looked at her calendar with the day circled for Beacon.
He needed to get his stuff ready as she did.
"Well, hopefully, we end up on the same team," she said, holding up her fist.
Jacen seemed confused by the gesture, "Um, you're suppose to bump your fist into mine," she said.
Were these Jedi warriors so rigid in their ways that they didn't even know what a fist bump was?
Jacen's momentary confusion ceased, and he returned Yang's gesture, "We'll see what happens."
The sound of Skipper screaming from downstairs caught his attention.
"Ruby, you mind helping me pick Skipper up from whatever just fell on him?" He asked, and Ruby got to her feet with her hands on her hips.
"Hold on, Skipper, help is on the way," she said, trying to sound heroic.
Yang watched both of them leave the room and head downstairs.
Despite her shame, she was overcome with the excitement of attending one of Remnant's four major Huntsmen academies.
As if noticing the breakfast on the table, she began powering through it, knowing she'd need all the strength she'd need to get ready to make her next step to becoming a huntress, and maybe finally be able to find Raven after all these years.
END