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Getting to Vale from Beacon was a breeze, for most people. All you had to do was go down to Beacon's bullhead docks and take one of the many airships heading into the city. Easy as pie.
Unless your name is Jaune Arc, of course.
"Are you okay?" Blake was sat next to me, running a hand over my back as I tried not to puke in the paper bag I'd had the foresight to bring. I gave her a weak nod, as I tried to ignore the way everything seemed to sway. I was definitely getting some of that medicine Weiss had suggested when we got down to the city.
Speaking of Weiss, she and Pyrrha were over at the other end of the bullhead, getting some water for me. I didn't have the heart to tell them that drinking right now would only make things worse. They just wanted to help, after all. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to focus solely on the soothing little circles Blake was rubbing into my back.
It helped, and as the dizziness and nausea faded ever so slightly, I turned to look into her golden eyes.
"Thanks Blake."
"Don't worry about it." She glanced away after a moment, breaking eye contact. Just then, Pyrrha and Weiss arrived with bottles of water in hand.
"Hey, are you alright there Jaune?" Ever the diligent partner, Pyrrha came up to me and offered me one of the bottles as she sat down in her seat. I took it, if only to hold the cool plastic bottle to my head, soothing the headache that had been forming for the last couple of minutes. As I did so, Weiss spoke up.
"I just talked to some of the staff, we should be landing in a couple of minutes."
"Good." I grunted as I held back the urge to retch when I opened my mouth.
It was a relief when we finally got to the city, and I took a moment to simply catch my breath after getting out of the bullhead.
"Okay, I'm good." I told them, a smile forming on my lips. "So, what are we doing first?"
As it turns out, breakfast was the first order of business. It wasn't all that early, since getting Pyrrha out of bed before 9 on a weekend was all but impossible. We had made good time getting here, however, and there were still plenty of breakfast places open. With none of us being from Vale, however, team Bastion quickly piled into the first mom and pop looking diner we found. There was ever a corner booth with nice plush red couches that we took for ourselves as we perused the menu.
After a couple of moments, one of the waitresses came over to our table to take our orders.
"Hi, welcome to Denise's. Have you guys decided yet, or do you need another moment?"
"I will have a cappuccino, two sugars and an eggs benedict." Weiss spoke up from her seat in front of me. Looking at the menu again, I just picked something since both Blake and Pyrrha both still seemed like they weren't sure.
"The waffles for me, and an orange juice please."
From there, Pyrrha and Blake ordered themselves some hashbrowns with eggs, and waffles respectively. While we waited for our food, we began discussing all the things we wanted to get done today.
"I just need to pick up some of that motion sickness medication and then I'm good." I told them. To be honest, I didn't really care overly much about what we'd be doing exactly. I was just glad to be spending some more time with the team.
"According to my sister, some Atlas students should be arriving by airship today." Weiss chimed in, and we all nodded.
"We can go see them at the airport later, do you know when they will arrive?" Pyrrha, sitting next to me said before taking a sip of her own coffee.
"3PM."
"Then we have another 4 hours before we take Weiss to go spy on the competition." Blake quipped, earning an indignant look from the white-haired girl.
"You can't prove that!" Blake and I shared an amused look. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who enjoyed riling Weiss up.
"If we take our time eating, and then go to the pharmacy, we'll have about 3 hours left, so what do you all want to do?" I asked, getting the conversation back on track. While the rest of my team thought about it, our food arrived, and we dug in. It was good, the waffles were crispy on the outside and fluffy inside. Weiss said it was adequate, which might as well have been a glowing review from the snobby girl. Pyrrha and Blake both seemed to like it, even if they didn't say anything like Weiss did.
"There's a bookstore I would like to visit." Blake said, bringing us back to our original conversation.
"Of course there is." I grinned at her. That only cost me a little chunk of my aura when the girl kicked me in the shin. When I didn't react to it, she just huffed, but I could see the crooked little smile on her face as she took
"I wouldn't mind stopping somewhere to get some ammo for Miló." My partner piped up in between bites of her eggs, and I nodded along.
"So, bookstore and weapon's store?" I asked.
"Dust shop actually, Milo uses Dust rounds." She corrected.
"Maybe we can just walk around a little as well? None of us are from the city, so it might be nice to explore a little." My suggestion got a round of nods, and the conversation died down a little as we finished our meals with only the occasional comment. Before long, we had finished our breakfast and went out into the city once more.
On our way to the pharmacy, we walked along the Vale River. Apparently, in ancient times, it had been used to transport goods throughout the city, and even all the way to Beacon. Since the advent of cars, trucks and airships, it had become more economical to simply have a single large harbor and dock where freighters could unload cargo to be distributed throughout the city or even the whole kingdom.
Now, the river was just a nice little bit of nature in a city built on concrete and red brick.
On the other side of the water was the residential district, packed with brownstones and townhouses to accommodate the ever-growing population in a walled city with limited space. Here, on the commercial side, the buildings were made in a similar style, but many of the houses had been converted into shops. The bottom floor often becoming a storefront, leaving only an apartment up on the top floors. If the whole building hadn't been converted, that is. There were plenty of large, multi-floor stores that we walked past as well.
Eventually, we made it to the bookstore. It was a pretty large shop named Tukson's Book Trade. It had a dark-brown wooden storefront with frosted glass windows reading TBT, New & Used Books. All in all, it looked like a pretty neat place, and we made our way inside with the little jingle of the bell.
"Welcome to Tukson's Book Trade, home to every book under the sun." A rumbling voice announced as the four of us piled into the store. Looking over the store for the source of the voice, I found a large, barrel-chested man standing behind the counter.
When Blake walked into the store, she simply walked up to the man, giving him a smile. "Hey Tukson."
"Blake." The man grunted, "These friends of yours?"
"Yeah. They're my team from Beacon."
"Hi!" Pyrrha waved over to the man from next to me. Narrow hazel eyes surveyed us for a moment, pausing on Weiss a little longer than Pyrrha or me. When Blake gave the man a little nod, though, he smiled.
"Nice to meet you all, the name's Tukson." He said, waving.
"Jaune." I told him before asking, "You have any comics?"
While most of my time was spent either training or in class, there were still plenty of times when I didn't have anything to do, and vegetating on my scroll was getting old. I hadn't brought any of my old comics with me to Beacon, but it couldn't hurt to get a couple of new volumes. When Tukson pointed me over to a stand filled with them, I immediately began looking through them for anything interesting.
Pyrrha, Blake and Weiss, meanwhile, went over to some of the shelves to find themselves some reading material as well. When I'd found a couple of X-ray and Vavs that looked like they could be worth a read, I went up to the counter, where Tukson was filling in some paperwork.
"I'd like to take these." I told him, and the man promptly bagged the volumes. Only, when I went to take out my wallet, Tukson held a hand up.
"It's on the house." The man said, keeping his rumbling voice low.
"I can't just take these." I tried to protest, stubbornly putting the lien on the counter.
Tukson pushed the money back. "You can, and you wil." His already narrow hazel eyes turned into slits as he continued. "All I ask is that you take care of Blake for me. She can get in over her head sometimes." As he said it, he flicked his eyes over to the shelves in the back, where the rest of team BASN was still looking around. "Don't tell her I said that. She'll kick my ass." The man told me with a little grin.
I matched it. "Alright, but only this time!" I told him, and I meant it. The older man simply kept his grin on his face as he nodded, and I narrowed my eyes at him. He was mocking me, I just knew it.
I couldn't get mad at him, though. It was a relief to know that there was someone out here that was looking out for Blake. The girl barely ever talked about her life before Beacon and avoided conversations about it like the plague. And I was pretty sure the others had noticed it as well.
I didn't have any more time to contemplate it, though, as the girls came up to the counter to have their own purchases rang up. With a wave and a shout of goodbye to Tukson, the four of us stepped back out into the streets of Vale carrying our Tukson's Book Trade bags with us.
Next up was the dust store Pyrrha wanted to visit. According to the map, there was one called Gathering Dust not too far from us, and we made our way there in short order. As we rounded the corner onto the shop's street, though, we quickly noticed that something was off.
Up ahead, a group of people in uniform were gathered around one of the storefronts, putting up tape and signs around the place. We would have probably ignored it, if only the store they were cordoning off wasn't the very one we'd been looking to visit. As we got closer, the scene got clearer.
The glass storefront was smashed, the lights were out and the inside looked almost completely empty. Out front, a couple of people wearing plain clothes were surrounded by VPD officers in their blue and grey uniforms. Walking up to one of the policemen, I asked, "What happened here?"
"Dust robbery kid, it's the fourth one this week." The man said, glancing over at us while he finished sticking some more police tape to the shop's wall, finishing the police cordon. "You huntsmen or something?" He asked, glancing at the weapons we had on display.
"Not quite, Beacon students." I told him, and the man grunted in response.
"Do you have any idea who's behind these robberies?" Weiss piped up from behind me, and I couldn't help but perk up.
"Hmmm. Torchwick probably, wouldn't be the first dust store he's hit. Or maybe the White Fang, they've been more active 'round here recently." The man finished, grumbling something under his breath that sounded distinctly like fucking animals. I was about to say something, but Weiss beat me to it.
"It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the White Fang was behind this." She said, "What's one more crime to add to the collection?"
"Excuse me?" Blake, who had been quiet until now rounded on the heiress.
"What?"
"Don't you 'What' me! The White Fang are just misguided Faunus looking for a better life, they're not all criminals you know!"
"What do you mean they're not criminals? Of course they are, otherwise, they wouldn't have robbed this dust shop." Weiss said dismissively waving the increasingly angry Blake off.
"You don't even know if they did this?" Blake shouted, "The officer just said that it Roman Torchwick has been robbing dust stores in the area, it could just as well have been him!" Blake shouted, her breathing getting a little heavy as she lost her temper.
"Why are you getting angry at me?" Weiss said, confused. "The officer also said that the White Fang has been more active in the area recently."
"Yes, but that doesn't automatically mean that they did this!"
"Of course not, but they are criminals, and they are in the area." Weiss said, "It's only natural to suspect it was them."
"Oh yes, only natural to suspect the Faunus if a crime happens, right?" Blake said, sarcasm all but dripping from her voice.
Looking to Pyrrha, she looked just as worried as I felt. "Can you take Weiss to the airport? I'll take Blake to the pharmacy. I think a little time to cool off should help." I told her. Knowing that I would be useless at calming Weiss down anyways.
Pyrrha just nodded, a little frown forming on her face. "Okay."
Moving over, I gently put a hand on Blake's back, and the girl almost flinched away from it. "Come on Blake, let's go get something for my motion sickness, alright?" The girl, flushed in the face and still breathing heavily, nodded, coming along with me as Pyrrha took Weiss into the opposite direction.
It was too bad that we had to split up when this whole thing was about spending time as a team, but better this than having Weiss and Blake come to blows in the middle of the street.
'How the hell am I supposed to fix this?'
A/N: The first chapter in the White Fang Arc, which is the first major arc in the story. Let me know what you guys think, and as always, have a good one!
Anyways, have a good one!
If you guys want to talk about the story and get direct responses from me, or just chat in general, you can join this Discord at: b7JaQcpuc7
You can read up to 4 chapters ahead on: (Chapter 21 should be posted in a couple of hours. Sorry for the delay.)
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