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I was, for the record, not tired of waking up with Ruby taking care of me. I was not. I was tired of being shot and stabbed, but not the rest of it. The rest of it was awesome.

I was in a real bed as opposed to our tent this time. Ruby was in the bed next to me and she stirred slightly in her sleep where she clutched my arm. I sighed looking at her. Fuck she was dangerous. She was just sleeping there with her bangs down over her face and her arms around one of mine. Her lips looked so pink and soft and barely parted.

I started to sit up. Poking at the bandages and stitches in my chest, I winced a little. She stirred with me, her eyes blinking open as I rose.

"Don't touch it!" She shouted-whispered as I twirled a sitch and gasped. Oh yeah, none of that analgesic stuff. What was I? A pussy?

I almost passed out from the pain, though. My vision tunneled and I swayed back into the pillow.

The blades left deep marks which even my armor and aura wouldn't prevent from forming scars. She shoved my hands out of the way and placed her own there instead. "Does it hurt?"

I groaned. Her fingers were cool and my chest felt inflamed.

I was lucky he hadn't decided to open fire with the weapon point blank. That would have turned my torso to hamburger and I doubt whoever Ruby found to put me back together could handle that much gut-shot.

Not because they were a bad surgeon. It would have probably just have been super lethal.

I nodded. "I'm not super comfortable." I confessed. "What happened?"

"I cut his tail off while you had him, uh, distracted." Ruby said with some venom. "He ran off but there's no way that he'll be recovering without help and I sent word out once we arrived."

"And our prisoner?"

She tapped the tips of her pointer fingers together. "I had to let her go. I needed the speed to get you here." She sounded like I was going to be upset with her over it. Over saving my life.

"Which is?" I wondered.

"Higanbana."

"Thank you. Ruby. You saved me again."

Silence met me before…"I put you in danger. Didn't you hear him?"

"I heard him laugh. He was nuts Ruby."

"He was here for me."

"So am I."

"Butt! Stop being sweet for a second and listen to me!" She protested. "He worked for whoever Cinder is actually working for. This is serious business."

"Ruby, these people were always your enemy." She chewed her lip. "That makes them my enemies, too. Plus Cinder's friends are absolutely against us. Nothing has changed except we know one of their faces."

"I suppose…except he didn't work for Cinder. He works for someone else."

"And I don't work for Ozpin. Just you. A different beast is all, Rubes."

"He was a monster." I nodded along. He was, that Tyrian. He could have killed me but he was having too much fun torturing me.

I was ever so grateful.

"Let's stop him next time," I decided.

"Do you really think we can?" Ruby asked. I nodded. He hadn't been invincible.

"He took us by surprise and we don't have any real team attacks which use both of our semblances. Speaking of, did you catch his semblance?"

She shook her head. "He never used it. I'd recognize his weapons though. I gave the village a description but…"

If they weren't hunters or had a hunter's mindset they might not really get why that was important.

"Sounds like you took care of everything."

"Right. So you just rest now. You worked so hard for me. Let me look after you for a bit."

What? Had she missed the last few months of constantly saving my life? Her lips pressed softly against my cheek and then she moved them against my lips and she sighed a little next to me.

I felt her relax next to me on the bed and wrap her arms around me gently. I couldn't help but unwind either. Muscles ached and bruises throbbed but I hardly felt either as I slowly let her pull me back down.

I found my anesthesia when she slipped her tongue into my mouth and one of us moaned softly. She smirked and I knew it must have been me. Her lips turned up against mine. She was having a little fun taking care of me and who was I to take that from her? I chased her tongue back into her mouth and she wrapped her lips around my muscle and sucked gently. I moaned again. It had been a bait. She made me chase after her.

She pulled back suddenly. "Jaune there's been something I've been meaning to tell you. It's about my eyes."

"Okay." I'd seen them, they were fantastic. "What about them?"

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Have you ever really tried to relax? I mean to squeeze all the relaxation you could out of a time period and just let the people who profess to care about you look after you while you heal and rest and try and figure things out. What an unbelievable nightmare.

I could not for the life of me sit still. I was going stir-crazy in 'safe' Higanbana. I was just supposed to let Ruby handle things and try and focus on just getting better but in the end I found myself pacing the small hotel room and narrow city streets over and over again.

And Higanbana was for the most part truly safe. It had high walls and guards with good discipline. Some of them even had their aura unlocked. It was maddening.

My only saving grace was Ruby who had the energy to keep me from being bored out of my skull. She even asked me one early morning with bright eyes and a finger to her lips, "Jaune?"

"Mhm." I wondered. Her voice was a certain timber that made me want to reach out and grab her.

"Can we go on a date?" She finished. She could have asked me to stab myself with that tone and expression and I would have. A date, though?

A date.

A date. Of course. We were a couple after all. She would want that kind of thing. But what would that kind of thing look like?

It looked like me listening to her gush about my semblance and weapons over ice cream which she fed me, because I was hurt.

"Your semblance is actually wild Jaune. Really."

"Really, really?" I asked.

"Just imagine how you can force your enemy into some of your traps."

"My traps?"

"Please, it's how you fight. You make people think they're safe and then you surprise them. That was true even before you unlocked your semblance."

"I do?"

"You play mind games and think about it this way. The moment you start charging your semblance your opponent is in disadvantage. If they let you charge it, then you're winning. If they approach you to stop you from charging it, then they're still playing your game and you're still winning."

"Huh. I think I have to stand still to charge it."

"Even so you can force the enemy to approach you or you'll get better kill and movement options." She nodded with her words and glowed as we walked through a park together.

She had loved the idea of enlightening the guards with aura and had taken to doing three or so a day while I healed. I wanted to step in and do more but she shut me down.

We found a small place which sold these little treats with sherbert in them. Ruby chirpily ordered for both of us while I just watched her move and talk.

We took a rest together, over the next few days it was some of my favorite times, just strolling through the Animatic courtyards and gardens in public places.

"Plus you are always forcing the enemy to approach you or you'll be even harder to deal with. You don't need a gun if you can fight like that either. Though…"

"I don't like guns."

"You have hers still." I looked down. I still had Viriscient's gun. I pulled it from a belt and handed it to her.

"Here. You take it," I said.

"Why me?"

"You'll get more out of a sidearm than I will." I returned with a shrug.

"Still…" she took it anyway and looked at it both ways before flicking it apart. She quickly took a look at the internal mechanisms and hardly turned her nose up at it. "It is nice… is it really okay to use it? I mean it was a bandit's."

"If it's by you then it's not a bandit's anymore." I shrugged. "You could always take it apart and see how it works.

"I think I'll keep it then." She smirked. "Also, you're implying I can't tell how it works."

"You're right I should know better." I earned a quick cold kiss for that, ice cream still on her ruby lips.

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Ren and Nora were waiting for us back in GaiLong. Nora raced out and hugged me with surprising gentleness. Despite my promise I was a few days late to the rendezvous. "What happened to you?" Nora had to wonder. I was bandaged but able to walk enough to make it from Higanbana.

"Scorpion dude. Like the woman who killed Pyrrha, we'll talk later," I quickly fired. "I don't suppose you managed to kill the monster in the last few weeks, we never saw it ourselves." I gripped Ren's arm and pulled him into a hug.

Ren shook his head, withdrawing from my embrace. His eyes never left my bandaged chest. "No, we never encountered it. However, we learned of the existence of bandit hordes. Groups led by Khans. Then we came across several dens."

"I thought they were Khatuns?" I had to wonder, surprising Ren.

"They're the same thing," he explained. "You fought them?"

I nodded and Ruby answered. "There was a small group of them. They were unrelated to - uh" she gestured at me, "this."

"Thanks Rubes," I sighed.

"Well… unless you count when one of them shot him in the back of the head."

I rubbed the spot in question. "A lot's happened." but then again not that much. We'd accomplished little.

"You were shot?" Ren wondered.

Nora leaned in. "You were stabbed!"

"Yeah. I was shot and stabbed."

"You know if you had a gun…"

"Nora…" I sighed. "I don't like guns."

Ruby gave a soft sigh, falling back from beside me. "Haven is a lot further than I thought, plus we've made almost no progress on the bandits."

"Ruby," Ren got her attention. "How long did you think this was going to take?"

"I don't know, okay." She waved her arms. "I grew up in a small area, I've never been this far from home."

"Right." I agreed. "But how long?"

"Maybe like-uh two weeks," she endeavored.

"What?" I exclaimed. I was planning this multi-month campaign against her enemies and she really didn't have any idea of the time frame. I breathed, taking a step back, Ruby's eyes were wide like I was going to snap at her. I wasn't. I was on her time table. It made no difference to me whether she wanted to take two weeks or two months or even a year. "Ruby we haven't even found the Knuckleavee, let alone the bandits, this Vernal."

"Vernal is…?" Nora cut in.

"Khatun Vernal is an enemy. She's using human sacrifices to lure the Grimm around. She's a genius."

"She's a monster." Ruby emphasized at the same time I called her a genius. I raised my hands in surrender.

"I only meant so far as she was a monster." Ruby's nostrils un-narrowed at me. "At any rate we have no idea where she is. We had a prisoner from her gang but she's gone now."

"The real question is why we weren't told about the bandit groups. The leaders should have known about them." Ren interjected. "They left us out to dry."

"Not really. We should have known. We need to consider awakening some of his men, but now…" I trailed. I didn't trust him any more than before despite my attempts to reassure Ren.

The meeting with my friends didn't last long enough, guards were fast to take me back into the heart of the city to talk to Beifhing. There was work to be done again and Beifhing needed my attention as much as anything did. Ruby lost confidence in her ability to make the right decisions here and passed it along to me in quiet whispers.

"No, no you do it," she murmured.

She really needed to stop that. She was so smart.

Beifhing greeted me like an old friend. Not that I had much experience being greeted by old friends to compare to, but he- well- he was friendly enough to make me feel bad. Not enough to actually start trusting him, though, nothing crazy.

"Arc-San, I am relieved to see you alive."

I nodded along. "Not always so lucky with your huntsmen?" He frowned at me, shaking one of my hands in both of his, stopping mid shake at my words.

"Too many young kids..." He murmured. "Come in, we must talk."

I told him about the bandit tribes and the disappearance of other villages. His response shocked me, however. "Evacuation may be our only choice."

"Are you nuts?"

"Arc-san don't you remember when you yourself brought up evacuation."

"As a bad idea. As a bad, bad idea."

"Surely if you awaken some of my men and you yourself help us we can evacuate all the way to Mistral."

I frowned considering it. Did he not see my wounds or was he just being polite? I was really in no shape to defend anyone, especially myself and I really wasn't comfortable splitting my party again. I regretted doing that almost as soon as I did it. I still wasn't sure if he was trying to kill me.

"How would we evacuate?" I played along.

"Well, the current plan would be to use the trains." The fucking what? "Bandits destroyed the rails but we've been repairing them for months now. We think it may be time to abandon GaiLong and use them to set up new safer lives in Mistral."

As though I had a choice. Ruby would be all for the idea, if that's what the people wanted. All of the people. "There must be a faction of you that you can't convince to leave." It was a statistics game. Not everyone would want to go. Some groups would be content to take advantage of the open houses here. "Plus the panic. You need to give me more time. I can beat this 'Vernal' and the monster."

"Do you have a new plan?"

"I'm going to use myself in my current condition as bait." Not really. I was going to use Ruby's concern for me. It was cruel. I deserved to suffer for the idea and I would. I was. I would just self harm on the road and let my friends' worries call the monster.

"We have a plan, Arc-San. There is a wedding in two days' time."

"A wedding you say…"

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-WG