Ch. 74 Return to monkey
"I still think I could have stowed away on that train."
A blond monkey Faunus wearing a short sleeved pink, red and green flower print shirt walked through the busy train station carrying a duffle bag.
Many people turned their heads at the sight of him; it was, after all, still quite cold.
"Sun for the love of… I paid for your ticket. Why would you evade the conductor like that?"
A feline Faunus brunette walked next to him carrying her own smaller bag. She also wore short sleeves though she stuck to a black and white colour palette, though more notably she didn't wear a bow.
"... because it's fun?"
Sun grinned at Blake who rolled her eyes at him.
"You're incorrigible. Come on, let's find your team."
"Right! Nep said they'd be here in a few minutes."
"I think I see him already."
"Pfft, no way. He said in a few minutes and he's punctual like that."
"...no, I think that's him over there, blue hair and goggles."
"Huh? Hey, it is him! Neptune!"
Sun took off in a sprint. Blake just rolled her eyes as she slowly made her way over to the two guys hugging it out.
"Man, I missed you so much."
"Hey, missed you too."
"So should I leave and let you boys have your moment?" she spoke up to get their attention.
"Blake! Good to see you, thanks for bringing our wayward leader back. It wasn't the same without him." Neptune spoke with relief and happiness palpable in his voice.
"Uh-huh, so… what did we miss?"
"I'll tell you all about it, you guys won't believe the stuff you missed."
=O=O=O=
Ruby barged into their dorm in a hurry.
"Jaune!"
Both Jaune and Ren looked up from their work. While Jaune was drawing up some designs for Qrow's weapon, Ren was drawing up some possible joint designs for a wooden hand. Nora just looked at the door from where she was laying on her bed with her head hanging upside down.
"What is it?" Jaune asked calmly.
While Ruby was clearly in a hurry she didn't appear to be in a panic or distressed.
"Huge oversight! Like enormous proportions of we forgot about this!"
"Uhhh… what?" Jaune was starting to panic slightly himself despite being fairly certain it couldn't have been anything too bad.
"Jaune, do you know what date it is?"
"Uhh, March the…" and as he spoke the pieces fell into place "...wait, is this about my birthday?"
That made Nora perk up from her bed.
"Birthday!?"
"YES! We missed Jaune's birthday!"
"WE WHAT!"
Nora shot up from her laying spot and joined Ruby in her outrage.
"Guys it's not a big deal really…"
"Jaune did you know it was coming up?"
"Ok, I admit, I forgot and only realised when the birthday card from Saphron and Terra, but it really isn't a big deal, we have way more important stuff on our plate."
"We're celebrating and that's final."
Jaune sighed, prepared to fight Ruby on this. It was just a birthday and he could celebrate it with everyone later when they returned to Noreia.
"Ruby…"
"I'm with Ruby on this, how can you not celebrate your own birthday!"
While Ruby was determined and firm, Nora was clearly on the more upset side of things.
"Guys it's just a birthday."
"There's nothing JUST about a birthday! It's an important day!" Nora exclaimed.
That was when Ren, who had been silent on the topic so far, spoke up.
"Maybe I should have a word with Jaune before… before we say any more."
Jaune was more confused than anything when Ren stood up and just walked both of them out of the door before closing it.
"Uh, what's this about?"
"Two things. Nora is upset and I don't want Nora to be upset for obvious reasons."
"Okay, I don't want to upset her either, but why is she? Upset that is…"
"That's the other thing. Look, you didn't grow up like we did. I have lost my parents later than Nora so I don't have this issue but Nora ended up alone very young… she doesn't know her real birthday… we celebrate it a few weeks before mine but that's probably not the date she was born…"
Jaune was stumped a bit before he regained his composure.
"I see… So I should probably just… agree to celebrate it late?"
"I believe that would be for the best."
As the two turned to walk back into their room, they heard a girly scream a few doors down. They were about to go see what happened when the voice yelled out "Get back here you perv!" and grew distant.
They shrugged and returned to their room to let the girls plan a late birthday party.
=O=O=O=
When Blake went off with Neptune to get everything settled with the transfer to the academy, Sun decided to take a shortcut to his dorm room.
Since Neptune said they still had the same one, Sun saw no issue with using the same shortcut he always did. Very early on in their stay here the boys managed to break the window latch making it impossible to properly secure the window closed and so Sun decided that rather than having someone fix it, he'd turn it into a feature.
As he approached the side of the dorm building from the outside he walked towards the third tree from the left like always and jumped up into its branches. The window was already opened too so no worries about somebody fixing the latch either.
As Sun leaped onto the window sill he took in the sight of his team's dorm room… except what he saw wasn't his dorm room but a different room entirely and a girl he vaguely recognised as a senior getting changed.
As the girl screamed, Sun leaped back out the window, into the branches and onto the ground and started running. The girl gave him a head start as she fixed her clothes but that wouldn't do him any good if he didn't haul ass right now.
"Get back here you perv!"
The gears turned in his head and he just couldn't figure out what went wrong. He definitely counted the right tree, he wasn't dumb enough to mess up counting to three. And Neptune said they still had the same room so what gives?
It wasn't until the girl came back into view chasing after him that he stumbled upon a solution. Not to the problem of how he got into this mess, that could wait, but how he might get out of it. Blake.
It just so happened that Blake and Neptune were just walking out of the administration building when he started approaching it.
"Blake! Help!"
As he ran up to her, an armed and royally pissed girl on his heels, she did what any Huntress worth her salt would do when a no good miscreant ran up to her. She tackled him to the ground before he could do something ridiculous like climbing her shoulders to hide from the threat.
"Sun… what did you do?"
"This perv tried peeking on me!" the girl chasing him spoke up, pointing a blade at the downed Sun.
"I swear it's not my fault! I took the shortcut I always do to get into my dorm room and I ended up in the window of hers. I have no idea how that happened."
As Blake tightened her hold on him, forcing his arm into a very painful position a groan sounded from Neptune.
"Blake, let him go… he's an idiot not a perv. This probably isn't actually his fault this time… well I mean it kinda is, but not intentional. Sun, you know how I told you the school nearly burnt down?"
"Uh… yeah you did say something like that."
"Well that tree of yours that you used as a shortcut caught on fire. We had to cut it down and the new headmaster used his semblance to grow new ones."
The girl that chased Sun down realised what happened even before Sun did.
"Wait, are you saying this idiot didn't notice he was climbing a different tree?"
"Neptune! Why didn't you tell me the tree was in a different place!"
"How should I have known the first thing you'd do is something dumb… Wait, no don't answer that. I really should have seen that coming actually."
"In my defence I do stuff like this all the time." Sun defended himself, though Blake pinched his arm in annoyance.
"Phrasing, Sun."
"What? I climb trees all the time?"
Blake groaned as she helped lift him up from the ground before holding him in place and nodding at the girl.
A slap echoed in front of the admin building and a red handprint was now visible on Sun's face. "And be glad I'm willing to leave it at that." she said before turning away and walking back to the dorm.
"Man, you're lucky. Pretty sure Valerie would seriously hurt you if she caught you before Blake did."
"Wait, you know her?"
"Of course I do, I know all the girls in our dorm wing."
Blake narrowed her eyes at Neptune.
"I'm starting to think she slapped the wrong guy."
"That's what I've been saying!" Sun exclaimed.
"You shut it, I'm not done with you yet."
"Yes Blake…" he deflated.
=O=O=O=
"Are the candles really necessary? Wouldn't the cake be enough?"
"Of course you need candles, otherwise it's not a birthday cake and just a cake."
"How did you even get a cake from the cafeteria?"
"Weeeell… we may have brought it in from the city…"
"When did you do this… Ruby, did you run all the way to a bakery and back?"
"Mayyybe?"
"Unbelievable, both of you… And the balloons? Wait, no don't tell me I've decided I don't want to know. Ren, would you light the candles please?"
As Ren did so, Jaune looked around the room. To say they were attracting attention would be an understatement as many people were eating their dinner right now and took team RNJR's shenanigans as entertainment.
Luckily as Ruby and Nora urged him to blow out the candles, the cafeteria suddenly got a lot louder as team SSSN, now complete with their leader, entered the room. A part of it was their conversation, but a much larger part was the female population of Haven fangirling over Sun's return.
Jaune blew out the candles wishing with all his heart for a normal day or two where nothing went wrong and nothing too interesting happened.
Nora cheered and Ruby gave him a kiss on the cheek, both of which were now completely ignored by the rest of the students in the room.
As Ren took the cake knife away from Nora and started serving, the boys made their way to their table and sat down next to them.
"Hey guys!"
"Hey Sun… SUN!?" Jaune exclaimed as he realised who he was speaking to.
"Sup!" Sun grinned at them.
"Holy shit, you're back!"
"Yup, so is Blake but she's talking with the headmaster right now. Something about considering her options. What are you celebrating?"
"I missed my birthday and my wife and teammates wouldn't let it go…"
"Hey man at least you've… got… cake…" Sun went silent for a few seconds as the new info seeped in. "Wait! WIFE?"
"Yup, let me reintroduce you to my team leader and wife, Ruby Arc-Rose."
"Uhhh, hi…" Ruby piped up shyly as the attention suddenly shifted to her.
"You two got married? How?"
"We were dating while at Beacon and one thing led to another, we nearly died, realised life is short and here we are."
"You're missing the part where you did it by accident." Ruby pointed out with a smug grin.
"Okay, I meant to propose, but Vale's laws on huntsmen's weddings are still on the books and I've never heard of them. Romantic gesture and her dad wanting to kill me combined into us getting married."
"Oh man, I'm glad I didn't goof like that."
That remark prompted a loud groan from Neptune and Sage as Scarlet pumped his fist in the air. Sage handed over a 20 Lien card and Neptune passed him 50 Lien. When Scarlet looked pointedly at Jaune, it suddenly clicked in Ruby's mind what that was about.
Jaune took out a 20 as well looking over to Sun.
"Are you sure you didn't marry Blake?"
"Um, yeah?"
"Drat. You win this time David."
"Guys, I don't get it, why would I marry Blake?"
"Are you saying you wouldn't?"
"AAH! Blake! How long have you been here?"
"Just came in… What is this about?"
Neptune's brain was going a hundred miles an hour trying to think of an excuse. Unfortunately for him… "The boys were betting on whether you and Sun would come back married or not?" …Ruby immediately sold them out.
Blake shot the guys a pointed look, before smirking, sitting next to Sun and leaning into him suggestively.
"Hmmm, well my parents seem to like you… what do you say, Sun?"
Sun's eyes immediately went wide "You mean, you'd consider it?"
When Blake nodded her assent he smiled wide and leaned in to whisper in her ear.
"I would love to. Let's talk about that later…" then leaned back and continued in a louder voice "...it's Jaune's late-birthday party, wouldn't want to overshadow the birthday boy!"
Ren placed a plate of cake before Blake and she was about to thank him when another blonde sat down at the table, accompanied by her partner.
"Did somebody say birthday? Ruby, you wouldn't be trying to hide cake from me would you?"
"You mean, take your portion for myself? I would never."
"Dad's birthday when you were nine…"
"THAT WAS ONE TIME!"
As the table descended into laughter, Jaune had to admit, this was a pretty good birthday party.
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
A Sun focused chapter, how fun! I do hope you forgive the frankly terrible chapter name, but I found it fitting. Still for a chapter revolving around Sun it still had a bit about Jaune and Nora in particular. Their outlook on birthdays is very different. To Jaune it's a lot more about being with his family, his sisters and parents. To Nora it's something she knows is important but doesn't quite know why...
As for me... well my sleep has been pretty bad lately. Either I can't sleep because of the heat or I wake up throughout the night. Sleep deprivation sucks y'all.
But hey if you want to support me you can do so on P a treon . com (slash) OlympianScribe
Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch. 75 A lucky break