Inside of her tent, Jane was fiddling with what appeared to be an old slideshow projector. Traces of annoyance were clear in her body language as she seemed to notice something was off with the device. Or more specifically, something was missing.
"Jane."
The sound of the familiar voice of a certain wild man drew her attention. And immediately, she turned around to see that it was indeed him. "Tarzan." she greeted warmly. Seeing him was a pleasant distraction from the frustration she had been dealing with. She immediately noticed Blake at Tarzan's left and smiled to her as well. "Ah, Ms. Belladonna. Wonderful to see you as well." she greeted with equal warmth, drawing a small smile to Blake's face. "Good to see you too, Ms. Porter."
Jane's cheer was soon joined by surprise when she saw the gathering that Tarzan and Blake brought with them. "Oh. And so many others, I see. Goodness. I never thought I'd see so many visitors at once out here in this jungle."
Her words earned herself a wave from Ruby who introduced herself, "Hi! I'm Ruby." Sora followed suit, stepping forward and saying, "Hi there. I'm-."
"Oh. You speak English," Jane exclaimed, her curiosity toward her new guests growing. Not that Tarzan was unpleasant company, but she found it a bit of a relief to be around others who shared her capacity for speech apart from Clayton. "So then. Obviously you're not related to Tarzan."
"She couldn't tell from how we're dressed?" Jaune asked with a raised eyebrow. His inquiry drew a shrug and smile from Pyrrha who simply said, "Well Jaune, from what we've experienced thus far of other worlds, I'd say anything goes." With that fair point made, Jaune took that opportunity for his own introduction. "Uh, my name's Jaune. This is my friend Pyrrha." "Hello." One which Pyrrha joined with an ever so melodic sounding greeting.
And lastly came Weiss who gave a small, formal bow. "And my name is Weiss. A pleasure."
Looking between her curious new guests, Jane's eyes widened with realization. "Ahh, so you must be the friends Blake has been searching for." That statement drew surprised looks from the other four denizens of Remnant, who turned to look at a now slightly flustered Blake. "Aww, Blake! You were looking for us!" Ruby cheered joyfully, jumping at Blake and hugging her. "Whoa! Well uh...yeah. I was really worried about you guys-GACK! Ruby...Can't breathe."
The display drew a smile to the faces of everyone present. Though Sora's smile was laced with a degree of envy. He was relieved they managed to find another of Ruby's friends, but...they still hadn't found head nor heel of Riku or Kairi. He could only hope that Tarzan could truly help them.
"Are you here to study the gorillas?" Jane asked, getting things back on track in a most unexpected way.
"Gorillas?" Jaune and Pyrrha asked simultaneously, the confusion evident in their voices.
"Highly doubtful." Before Jane could elaborate on what she meant, a smug, haughty drawn out voice announced from the entrance of the tent. Sora, Ruby, Weiss, Jaune, and Pyrrha turned curiously toward the source of the voice. It was the very same hunter that came across Donald and Goofy. And the instant he walked into the tent, Blake's eyes narrowed faintly. But that was overshadowed by the moment of cheer that followed.
"Sora!" Goofy cheered as he peered out with Donald from behind the hunter's frame. Blake's glare was soon replaced with wide-eyed surprise at the sight of a cartoonish anthropomorphic dog and duck. "Goofy! Donald!" Sora cheered, rushing toward a smiling Donald, cheerfully linking hands with him...only for both of them to pull away and stick up their nose and beak, and cross their arms angrily as they turned away from each other with a huff. Goofy, Ruby, Jaune, and Ruby looked between Sora and Donald nervously, realizing that they were still mad at one another. Weiss on the other hand simply sighed and shook her head.
Blake looked at the exchange even more confused than before. "Uhhh, what's going on?" she asked her team leader.
"It's uhh, a long story. Let's just say that I... may be partly responsible for this." Ruby answered with an awkward shrug, making Blake even more confused. She wasn't sure what to think, but she felt it was probably best to wait. She definitely didn't want to discuss anything in front of those who weren't exactly meant to know about other worlds.
"A circus of clowns. Not much use for hunting gorillas." the hunter huffed as he walked out of the tent with a dismissive wave.
"Hey!" Jaune and Weiss yelled at him indignantly at the comment. Clowns?! How dare he! Of course, everyone else was offended by the comment, but not as vocally as the mentioned pair.
Jane was more incensed by the last thing he said. "Mr. Clayton! We're studying them, not hunting them. This is research." she indignantly lectured him, though it seemed her words fell on deaf ears.
Blake's suspicious glare was fixed upon Clayton the entire time he was here, and even after he departed. Ever since she woke up here, Clayton just rubbed her the wrong way. In no small part due to his derisive, haughty disposition.
Fearing Clayton's behavior might have brought down the mood, Jane tried lightening it again with a welcoming smile, saying. "Well. The more the merrier. Do make yourselves at home."
Sora and Donald, however, were still looking away from one another with miffed expressions. The awkward silence didn't help as the others uneasily looked between them "Well anyway," Sora started saying, before his statement was finished by- "I'm staying."...Donald of all people.
Sora was surprised to hear Donald say that. Considering how he was against going to this world in the first place, he was certain Donald would be saying him and Goofy were going to leave as soon as possible.
"Sora. Look what we found. Look at this." Goofy said with a chuckle of excitement as he presented the bright colorful block dropped by the gorilla from earlier.
Putting aside his irritation toward Donald, Sora curiously walked toward Goofy to look at the strange object.
"Hey. That looks like that thing we found back in Wonderland." Weiss noted curiously as she and her friends all gathered around Goofy.
"A gummi block. It's the same stuff to build our ship." Goofy explained.
At first Pyrrha believed this meant their ship was broken from crashing, but she soon realized there was another possibility. "Donald? Goofy? Does your King have his own ship?"
"Yeah, of course he does. Why?" Donald answered.
"Well I figured that since you're looking for him, that would mean he's traveling like us. And this gummi looks a bit different from ours." Pyrrha continued.
"So that means..." Sora started saying, realizing what it meant.
"The King could be here. So we've gotta work together to find him," Donald said before glaring at Sora and put a rather rude emphasis on his words. "For now."
"Fine. I'll let you tag along," Sora said with a shrug, sounding like he didn't mind. Until he returned the expression and attitude to Donald. "For now."
There would probably be sparks flying from their eyes and meeting in the middle of each others eye contact if their anger was any stronger. Things were probably going to get ugly.
Thankfully, Ruby chose that moment to intercede and at least throw a damper on things. "Erm, well it's great to have you guys back. Heheh." It seemed to work...somewhat.
"Wha-What do you think you're doing!?" Weiss's indignant, shocked voice rang out as suddenly, Tarzan was unbelievably close to her face, his hands fiddling with the frilled collar of her outfit, and examining the necklace around her neck.
Jaune's eyes flared up indignantly when he saw Tarzan so close to Weiss, making her uncomfortable. "Hey, what do you think you're doing!? Back off!" he said, reaching forward to grab Tarzan's shoulder. Though all he succeeded in doing was making Tarzan turn to him and start examining him just as bizarrely. "Wuh!?" Jaune's face contorted goofily as he felt Tarzan fiddle with his messy hair and tug on the hoodie he wore under his armor.
Ruby stifled a giggle at Sora and Blake's new friend's behavior. "So uhh, is he always like this?" she asked Jane who couldn't help chuckling at the familiar display.
She'd been under his intense, curious gaze more than anyone, so she knew of the awkward lack of awareness toward boundaries very well. "Apparently, Tarzan was raised in the jungle by the gorillas. Communicating with him still isn't easy, but he's learning."
Sora's grumpy attitude broke when he heard Ruby and Jane's conversation. His mind went back to that weird 'Ee-ooh-oo-oo-ah' thing back from when Tarzan and Blake saved him. "So he was speaking in 'gorilla' back there..." he said, running a finger curiously around his chin. He found himself thinking back to that moment all the more intently. "Tarzan said Riku and Kairi were here. Then he said...something I couldn't understand." Sora continued.
Blake gave a nod as she stood beside Sora and said to Jane, "Tarzan said the same thing he said to me when I first asked about my friends, actually. Is there anyway we might be able to find out what he was saying? He doesn't know English enough for us to really ask."
Jane hummed and thought before looking toward the projector she was fiddling with. "Well, one way I've been able to teach Tarzan how to speak is with this. Perhaps if we show Tarzan some of the slides, one of the images will match with the word," she said before looking in an empty box near the machine. "But I've not the foggiest idea what happened to the slides."
Blake sighed and facepalmed herself. "It was probably that little baboon, again." she muttered, drawing a curious look from the others.
Weiss, of course, was incensed at the potential implication. "Oh no. Are we gonna have to search the whole jungle for him?" she groaned, not looking forward to potentially trekking through the wild landscape.
"Fortunately, no. He just likes to take the things from camp and hide them in spots within it. I wouldn't be surprised if he watches from afar and laughs while we walk around seeking our stuff."
"Then let's get searching." Jaune said before leaving the tent.
"Ooooh! It's almost like a scavenger hunt! I used to go on those all the time when I was a kid!" Ruby said before rushing out after him, Pyrrha following close.
"She's still a kid, if you ask me." Weiss said snidely when leaving to help look.
As they searched around the camp for the slides, Blake she felt now was as good a time as any to ask Ruby and Weiss the questions burning in her mind. "So how did you guys manage to find me?" Blake asked, getting right to business.
"Well um...we didn't actually know you were here, Blake. We just kind of...hoped for the best?" Ruby said awkwardly, not sure how to explain it without sounding ridiculous.
"What our leader is trying to say is that our resident spiky haired, key wielding hothead forcefully took control of the vessel we were flying and ended up crashing us on this world, because he wanted to find his own friends." Weiss interjected, rummaging over a typewriter. "Like Ruby said, we didn't even know for sure that you or anyone else was down here. She simply hoped, and that hope turned out to be correct, much to both our joy and our chagrin, as he foolishly crashed us here."
Weiss's explanation, while helpful, simply reminded Blake of the other question in her mind. "What do you mean by 'this world'?" she asked, pushing aside a teacup and kettle, taking extra care not to break them.
"That's...the tricky thing, Blake." Ruby spoke up. "See, technically, these worlds were apparently all meant to be a big secret from each other. But there's been a lot of stuff going on that's...really hard to explain."
"And we know how lacking you are in explaining things, Ruby." Weiss interjected snidely, drawing an indignant,
"Hey! Sora and I saved you from losing your head, you know!"
Blake's confusion was...not exactly cured, but at the very least she had a bit more of an understanding. "So let me see if I have this straight so far." she intervened before the two partners could get into another argument. "There are worlds besides Remnant. When it was attacked by those dark creatures, we were sent to other worlds, and now you're travelling these worlds with Sora looking for his friends and us?"
"That's the short of it. Yes." Weiss said, rummaging around a stack of papers, not having much luck finding their target.
"I think I found one." Ruby said when holding up a thin brown square with a picture on it, having found it from a corner of the table on the ground.
"We found some more over here!" Jaune and Pyrrha called out from a table closer to the edge of the camp
At that same edge, Clayton was keeping a lookout. As he and Pyrrha were passing by, Jaune decided to...attempt striking up a conversation, not that he was optimistic about it given Clayton's rather...taciturn, to say the least, disposition. "Soooo you and Jane are researching gorillas?"
"Jane is researching them," Clayton said in a condescendingly corrective manner. "I'm a hunter. She hired me to protect her while she does so."
Having overheard them, Ruby perked up and rushed to him with gleaming eyes. "Oh wow! You're a real hunter?! That's awesome! Jaune here is training to be a hunter! And I'm training to be a huntress!"
That made Clayton turn his head as to Ruby with a raised eyebrow of disbelief. "Huntress? As in female hunter?" he asked, as if he'd just heard something absurd. The enthusiastic nod from Ruby...made him scoff when he realized she was serious. "Pah. Balderdash. Such a thing is as pointless as Jane's research." he said again, waving her off.
Ruby and Jaune's faces turned to surprise then mild anger. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean?! I've been training my whole life for this!" Ruby protested angrily.
"So have I!...sort of." Jaune protested...though not with as much confidence, given his...method of entering Beacon in the first place. But he was still just as serious about it.
"Precisely. That's a bit gender biased of you, don't you think? And how is what Jane doing, pointless?" Pyrrha asked, her usual air of politeness being heavily tested by Clayton's derisiveness.
A hearty chuckle escaped Clayton as though he was amused by the sentiments of the adolescents. "Oh, to be young and so naïve. It's because gorillas are vicious beasts that will sooner tear your head off than look at you. They are merely animals," As he continued rambling, his words only further annoyed and disgusted his young audience. "The only purpose they serve is being locked away in cages or being made into trophies for hunters like me. It's not like they have 'feelings' or such nonsense."
The instant those words left his mouth, the sound of a thump drew everyone's attention. The sound came from Blake who had found another slide...and had slammed the object it was hidden behind onto the ground. Her bow seemed to flatten down in reflection to her anger as she turned toward Clayton with a vehement glare. The uncaring hunter didn't realize the memories his thoughtless words were conjuring up in her mind, but her friends certainly did.
"Hey guys! We found the last one!" Sora called over from the other side of the camp. In his waving hand was another one of the slides they were looking for. "You mean I found the last one." Donald corrected, jumping up and snatching it out of the boy's hand, earning a frustrated growl from Sora as he marched to Jane's tent. Goofy, feeling more and more uneasy by the tension between the two of them, followed after them anxiously.
Though thoroughly irritated, the young huntsman and huntress in training decided that Clayton wasn't worth the aggravation. So they followed after Sora, Donald, and Goofy back to Jane's tent, with an understandably sour taste in their mouths. Blake in particular was utterly infuriated. Whether he realized it or not, Clayton's words brought back...very bad memories for her. Even if they were directed at actual animals, the bigoted discrimination and heartlessness was still present in his voice, and still just as grotesque as any other human that she and all others like her were discriminated by. Clayton noticed her scowl and raised an unconcerned and uncaring eyebrow before she finally stormed away.
The hunter huffed as they marched off, muttering with a derisive smile and a shake of his head, "Women. How typical."
Along the way, Ruby noticed the scowl on Blake's face and immediately became worried. She had an idea of what it was that made her so upset. But she wouldn't dare say anything about it out loud. Ruby and her whole team knew how important it was to Blake, including how much she'd prefer it be hidden from others. So for now, they focused on Jane and the slide reel.
The first showed a huge, shining castle with a sky partly filled by clouds. The city that surrounded it was filled with lush floral terrain stretching along its borders. Goofy noticed that Sora suddenly seemed...oddly transfixed by it. "What's wrong, Sora?"
The question broke Sora out of his stupor as he turned to Goofy with dazed confusion. "What? Um... nothing." he said, looking back at the image. Ruby noticed it as well and wondered what it was about this image that caught Sora's attention enough to make him space out like that. In Sora's own mind, he wondered. 'This place... It just looks so familiar. But how? I've never been off my island.'
Eventually, Jane continued on with the rest of the slides. The same process happened with the rest of the gathered images: A gentleman proposing to a woman with flowers, an elderly woman holding a baby up in her hands, a fully grown gorilla on all fours, a large sea voyaging ship with large white sails and two men wielding rapiers with protective gear as they looked ready to duel each other. After the last one, Jane turned the machine off. "Well, Tarzan?"
"Where are my friends, Riku and Kairi?"
Tarzan turned to Sora, who looked almost desperately at him, and stared back in silence. He finally responded with an apologetic lowering and shaking of his head. Sora's face shifted with shock, and Weiss sighed with frustration. "None of those slides helped. What a waste of time."
"Hey, I thought-"
"That leaves just one place." Sora's words were interrupted by Clayton as he made his entered the tent, much to Blake's chagrin. "Young man, we've been in this jungle for some time now. But we have yet to encounter these friends of yours. I'd wager they're with the gorillas. But Tarzan refuses to take us to them."
Jane's brow furrowed at Clayton's implication. He was already on thin ice with her after his recent statement of hunting the gorillas. "Really, Mr. Clayton. Tarzan wouldn't hide-"
"Then take us there!" Clayton interrupted, marching up to Tarzan who looked at the hunter with an uncertain gaze. "Take us to the gorillas. Go-ril-las." he enunciated, as if mocking Tarzan's lack of basic human language. Something both Jane and Blake were irked by.
Despite his reluctance to listen to Clayton, Tarzan shifted his gaze toward Sora. The boy's eyes were filled with hope that Tarzan knew something that he could help him find his friends. Sora's eyes held a purity similar to that of Jane's when she and Tarzan first met. And it was that purity that ultimately led Tarzan to his decision...as he nodded in affirmation.
Jane's eyes widened with surprise, not expecting Tarzan to acquiesce. "Tarzan...Are you sure?"
"I have to agree with Jane, Tarzan. These gorillas are your family. Are you sure it's alright to risk them like this?" Blake said warily, trying to be subtle about how little she trusted Clayton.
The wild man looked at Blake with a grateful smile, seeming to understand her concern, before he turned to look back at Jane. "Tarzan go see Kerchak." Tarzan replied.
"Kerchak?" Jane and Ruby asked simultaneously.
"He must be their leader. Perfect. I'll go along as an escort." Clayton stated ever so smugly. "After all, the jungle is a dangerous place."
That final statement would have been more poignant coming from anyone else. But the instant Blake saw that toothy smile touch Clayton's face, her eyes narrowed with suspicion once again. Her bow seemed to shift ever so faintly again as well too. She already didn't like Clayton's attitude, but now? She was certain he was up to something. And whatever it was, it couldn't possibly be good.
