Jaune never considered himself to be… anything good really, all those beatings from Mr. Courrier really hammered home how out of his depth he was. Even when practicing alongside one of Mr. Courrier's apprentice/student, whom he assured Jaune, was just as inexperienced as him, he still felt as if he didn't belong.
That girl, Lavs, was a lot better at him during training with Mr. Courrier, so much so that he felt incredibly disheartened when he walked into the training hall for the first time seeing her doing planks with a mountain of weights on her back. He would've fainted right there and then if not for Mr. Courrier grabbing him and forcing him to do the same exercise, he passed out during the plank later though, when he felt some weight being dropped unceremoniously onto his back.
Jaune would repeat to himself constantly that this training was to make him stronger so that he wouldn't be such a burden to his team; Mr. Courrier said that a leader needs to know how to fight too, as without the people to lead, what would a leader have left? Feeling that much more motivated, Jaune now can last at least twelve seconds longer during sparring matches against that girl Lavs.
Mr. Courrier always took Crocea Mors away from him during these spars though, always said that he needed to know how to fight with his fists before he can fight with anything else. He got his ass kicked every time, obviously, it was being grappled one day and knocked out the other day. Mr. Courrier also said some admittedly pretty hurtful things about his character, like the way he was dressed to the way he carried himself, it was really disheartening.
At some points, Jaune even contemplated about dropping out of the club completely, seeing as how he joined the club just a week before the Tournament and after four days of nothing but rigorous torture he was starting to give up. He didn't drop the club though, mostly because he knew that Mr. Courrier would just find him and drag him back anyways.
Now he stood in the locker room, Crocea Mors strapped to his waist as he stared blankly with his mouth open at his locker. Pyrrha placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled, "Are you ready Jaune?"
"Maybe… I think…"
"You should have more confidence in yourself!" Nora slid into the conversation and chopped Jaune on the head, "I thought your training with Mr. Courrier made you stronger?"
Jaune shuddered, "I'd rather not be reminded of that hell again but thanks Nora, I'll… uh… keep that in mind?"
"Good! 'Cause you and I and Ren and Pyrrha needs to win this match or you'll be actually dragged back by Mr. Courrier!" his blood ran cold, "He was in the Announcer's box, talking about how if you don't win then he'll make sure you never walk again?"
Ren shook his head, "Sounds rough buddy."
"It is rough!" Pyrrha looked at him with a concerned expression, "Jaune, what did Mr. Courrier do to you?"
"Yeah! Sometimes we'd find you passed out in front of our dorm in the morning!" Nora nodded vigorously, "You were also mumbling something as well, something like 'I can't take it anymore' and 'I don't want to die' or something…"
Jaune sighed, "It's fine, really guys, I'm fine," he assured his team, "Mr. Courrier's training helped me out a lot! I'm stronger now, I think, maybe faster too?"
Ren stared at him blankly, "Jaune, you activate your Aura whenever someone mentions Mr. Courrier around you."
"Well… that girl Lavs did it too!"
"That's not a good thing man," Ren shook his head, "Are you like… traumatized?"
"What? Ha- No, no!" Jaune waved his hands, "Guys, seriously, can we just… eh… oh look the match's starting let's go!" he ran out of the locker room, forgetting to close his locker in the process.
"So that's why he didn't accept my offer to train him…" Pyrrha sighed dejectedly, "He's been all jittery and scared after he joined that club with Mr. Courrier… and that girl too I guess…"
"Ooh, is our Pyrrha jealous of this girl?" Nora chuckled; Ren just sighed and followed after Jaune. Pyrrha burned a bright red as she shook her head violently.
"Just kidding!" Nora cackled before also leaving the locker room, Pyrrha sighed and also followed her out. Team JNPR walked out to the arena, surrounded by cheering and loud sounds as the people got excited for the upcoming match.
Pyrrha turned to Jaune to notice him with his Aura already up and his gaze locked onto someone above, following his sight, Pyrrha noticed that he was staring at Mr. Courrier, who was also glaring down at him from the Announcer's box.
Mr. Courrier made a slitting motion with his hand over his neck, Jaune shuddered at this before looking away, seeing this, she walked up to Jaune and patted him on the shoulder, all the while glaring back at Mr. Courrier, who just laughed before turning to talk with Dr. Oobleck and Prof. Port.
Pyrrha didn't like Mr. Courrier at first, and this only solidified her feelings about the man.
"Alright, alright! Welcome everybody back to round two of the teams' bracket!" the Courier spoke into the microphone, this was like that time he performed a stand-up routine at the Tops, good times, he almost died though.
"Our match-up today is team JNPR of Beacon Academy against team BRNZ of Shade!" Oobleck said, adjusting his glasses as he peered down on the Announcer's box towards the two teams, "Are both teams ready?"
The Courier watched as Jaune, that pushover, nod weakly at the question, that kid better win this match or he's never getting to see his team again. The Courier's pretty confident in his teaching skills, if Lavs can land a glancing blow on him during one of their sparring matches and she went through the same training that Arc did? Then maybe that kid will actually be useful in a fight for once.
If he was being honest, watching the blond fool get his ass beaten by Lavs was great fun, although the matches started to get a lot longer over time, since Arc learned something from those matches, "Let the fighting…" the Courier leaned forward, "BEGIN!"
The two teams rushed at one another, a member of team BRNZ lagged behind though, some girl named May Zedong, a sniper for the team. The two teams clashed at the centre, with team BRNZ slowly losing the advantage as they only had three fighting while team JNPR had a powerhouse on their team combined with more melee focused Huntsmen.
Hilariously enough, Jaune ordered the team to retreat and take cover after Zedong fired a shot which missed, bad performance from Zedong there, if he was a teacher at Shade, she'd be forced to do more exercises immediately. The Arc kid did have some plans up his sleeve though, telling his team to spread out while using the arena's biomes to their advantage. A good plan but the whole taking cover part really turned the Courier off about the whole thing.
Maybe it's because he hated matches that dragged on for too long, who knows really, "Looks like Nolan Porfirio is engaging in combat with Lie Ren of team JNPR! How exciting!" Courier noticed that too, kid with the black hair and the pink streak, beaten up by a glorified cattle prod? Unbelievable.
Hammer girl did manage to tank the hit though, immediately sending the cattle prod boy right out of the arena with a good hit to the midsection. Jaune's engaged in combat himself too, against the team leader no less, some other kid with claws.
Jaune blocked a swipe with his shields and pushed forwards, his sword arm holding back, waiting for an opportunity to strike. As the claw kid tried to knee his shield away, Jaune transformed the shield back into its sheathe form, causing the claw kid's attack to miss, making him lose his balance. Jaune used this moment to slash at the claw kid's midsection with his family sword or something, taking out a good chunk of Aura as Jaune continued to go ham on the poor kid, forcing him to pick up the defence.
Heh, good luck with defending against a sword when all you have is a pair of claws and some knee caps to help you deflect and parry blows. The Courier leaned back on his chair, not really paying attention to the other members other than Jaune and the 'Invincible Girl' as people called her.
Hammer kid? Boring, all she did was hit people and be loud. Pink streak? He lost all respect from the Courier when he got beaten by cattle prod boy. This left only the Invincible Girl and Jaune the only ones that he was really interested in.
Invincible girl helped hammer girl start some kind of thunderstorm in the arena, must be a Semblance, seeing as how she tanked that hit from cattle prod boy. Zedong got flushed out of her hiding spot and was ganged up on pretty mercilessly by the rest of the team as they beat team BRNZ down.
When the match ended, everyone cheered at team JNPR's victory, even Lavs who was standing just outside the Announcer's box entrance. Unfortunately, the Jet that the Courier took for the first match ran out before the second match could begin, and he couldn't really just inhale something vaguely drug-like on live TV now could he?
The side-effects of Jet also caused people to develop a sense of apathy for a couple of minutes after the high, it's like an exhaustion period after all the energy and excitement leaked out during the high.
Combine that with the whole White Fang meet-up thing and the Courier already has a lot on his plate for the Festival. A lot more than cheering for some team that won or something. The Courier stood up and opened the door, motioning for Lavs to come inside, which she reluctantly agreed to. As she walked past the Courier, he slipped something into her back pocket.
"Alright! Now that was a fun match wasn't it?" if Oobleck could tell that his enthusiasm was gone then fuck him, "Another Vale victory! No surprise there, what is a surprise though is that we're going to have another special guest in the Announcer's box today, outside of me of course."
"Your next special guest is Lavs Greenhorn! The second Faunus to ever have the role of an Announcer in a Vale-hosted Vytal Festival!" Silence, "The first one being me of course, see ya!"
As the Courier ran out of the Announcer's box, he heard one of the audience members ask 'Faunus?' before he got out of earshot. A few minutes later, even louder cheering erupted from the arena as the Courier ran out of the Colosseum and towards the Bullhead bay, boarding one and immediately descending down to Vale in order to meet up with Adam.
Running through the Festival, the Courier made his way towards the location that Adam sent him, some kind of abandoned building with a basement. Making his way down the dingy stairway, the Courier knocked on the closed door, after a few seconds, he could hear the locks being released and the door swung open.
Entering the dimly lit room, the Courier walked farther and farther in, wondering how large this room really was before shrugging and continuing to walk, it probably wasn't even a room, probably a really wide hallway or something… Finally entering the hideout, the Courier was met with a table with a light bulb hanging on top of it, casting a harsh light down on the map splayed over the surface of the table.
On the other side of the table stood Adam, who quickly approached the Courier, "The Mentats," he demanded, holding a hand out, "Give it here."
"Yeah, yeah," the Courier dropped three packets of Mentats on Adam's hand; he pocketed two and opened the third one, swallowing a few tablets before putting that away too, "So what's the big deal, I know you didn't call me here just so that you can get a refill."
"Get to the map and I'll explain everything," the Courier walked over to the map, it was a map of Vale with a bunch of incoherent scribbling and markings all over it, all drawn in a different colour, "You know of this woman, Cinder Fall, right?"
"Yeah? Saw her once or twice, turns out she's a student at Haven or some shit like that," the Courier furrowed his brows, "Didn't trust her shit one bit, she looked like she was thirty, how no one in the staff picked up on that was beyond me."
"Before I continue, how the hell did you get inside Beacon in the first place? And as a faculty member too?" Adam narrowed his eyes underneath his mask, hands itching to draw Wilt.
"Relax, bull boy," he sneered at that, "The old Headmaster just saw something interesting in me apparently, don't know what though. We can discuss this later; let's just get back to the plan."
"Sure…" Adam flipped the map over and pointed at where the Festival's currently taking place, "Fall wanted the White Fang to cause some chaos in Vale while the bitch went off and did her own things, didn't give us much of a plan really, more like a draft."
"An incomplete plan?"
"If you can even call it a fucking plan, just vague directions and ideas about what we're supposed to be doing," Adam sighed, "What's interesting though is the timeframe we're supposed to execute the plan, it looked too specific."
The Courier scanned the map, "Hold on a minute, let me check the Festival calendar…" he pulled up his Pip-Boy and scrolled to the Notes sections, "It looks like she wants you to start the plan during the… singles bracket of the Tournament? You're right, that is too specific…"
The two stood over the map in silence before the Courier spoke up, "So are you going through with this plan?"
"Fuck no," Adam growled, "This plan's a fucking suicide mission, we'd lose more reputation if we ever even attempted it. Vale's one of the better places for Faunus to go to so if we were to do the shit that Fall expected us to do then that would set back decades of White Fang work."
The Courier nodded, Adam continued, "That's why I made another plan for this," he pointed at one of the nearby Bullhead bays, "Roughly two to three hours before Fall's plan, we evacuate the White Fang using these Bullheads, disguised as civilian Bullheads of course."
"So you plan to just leave Vale?"
"Correct, we'd do more damage to our rep if we stayed in Vale; the next best thing would be establishing another sect in Mistral," Adam grinned, "Fall doesn't know about this plan, so we're home free as long as we do it right, that bitch's not going to take any more of my Faunus away from me."
"Alright, I can see the vision here…" the Courier rubbed his chin, "I won't be leaving with you all though, I still have a lot of things to do."
"Are you going to try to stop Fall or something?"
"And become a Faunus hero saving Vale? Hell yeah!" the Courier laughed, "I also can't just leave now can I? I still have a job at Beacon and all that."
"Right, well we do have a problem that only you can solve here and seeing as how you're staying back…" Adam pointed towards some corners around the bay, "There are cameras here, here, and here. I had some of my White Fang members hack into these things, see where the footage gets sent to and here's the weird part…"
"The footage's mostly sent to the police precinct, yes, but also Beacon's Headmaster's Office for some strange reason…" Adam turned to look at the Courier, "You're faculty right? And I know that you can be stealthy too, make your way into the office and fuck up the camera systems, I'll ping you via Scroll to tell you when to disable the cameras."
"You got it," the Courier snapped his fingers, "Anything else?"
"No."
"Alright, see you later Adam, maybe in Mistral."
"Yeah, maybe in Mistral…"
The Courier walked out of the hideout and into the street, breathing in the Vale air as he finally got out of that musty basement. He checked the time and the calendar, it's just about the end of the teams' bracket, he cursed at the fact that he missed two matches but shrugged it off after realizing that it's from teams that he didn't really care about, and he needed to hurry back before the intermission ends and the doubles bracket begins. The Courier mused about how much running he's doing the past few hours, back and forth from the training hall to the Announcers' box and basically everywhere in the Festival at this point, it'd be funny if it weren't so maddening.
Making his way back to the Festival grounds, the Courier saw his 'good friend' Qrow squaring off against some kind of older clone of that Schnee girl he beat up during sparring matches. The woman looked pissed at Qrow; the Courier could tell that this is going to be the beginning of some fight… Hell, there's even a little crowd forming around the two.
The Courier, in his twisted bullet-addled mind, decided to play a little prank on his number one moonshine customer by sneaking behind the drunkard while he babbled on about Ironwood selling out and whatever. Qrow made some pretty damning accusations at the man, which was a dick move because the Courier thought Ironwood was pretty cool.
So, while crouched behind Qrow, the Courier waited until both of them drew their weapons before grabbing Qrow by the waist and suplexing him to the ground, inadvertently destroying his Aura in the process, "Whoops," Qrow laid dazed on the ground looking up angrily at the Courier, "Sorry about that, I'll give you three bottles of moonshine in Ozpin's office after this."
The anger was gone in an instant, "Deal."
In the side lines, Ruby gasped as she watched her favourite only uncle get suplexed by one of her favourite teachers who taught her about specialized bullets, while Weiss just stood there confused at what just happened.
Meanwhile, Winter Schnee watched in confusion with her rapier out as somebody wearing overalls suplexed Qrow Branwen right in front of her. Winter then noticed Ironwood and Ozpin approaching the commotion and quickly sheathed her rapier.
"Alright, everyone, everything's fine here," Goodwitch dispersed the crowd of students and glared at Qrow and the Courier, the former laying on his back in the middle of a crater while the latter crouched over him, "What happened here?"
The Courier quickly whispered to Qrow, "You say nothing and you'll get five bottles."
"Deal."
"Do I need to repeat myself?" Goodwitch crossed her arms, the Courier noticed Ironwood saying something to Winter but they were too far away to pick anything up on.
"I tripped and fell," Qrow said, smiling as a trail of blood trickled down the side of his mouth, "Ouch."
Surprise! The White Fang's not going to be participating in Cinder's plan. The reason why is because Adam wised up after taking those Mentats, his thoughts are more logical while making plans that involved the Faunus now.
Unlike the virgin jealous ex Adam, we now have the chad drug-addicted logical plan-maker Adam.
Anyways, thanks for reading!