Disclaimer: Don't own RWBY

Chapter Seventeen: Obsession

"Mr. Arc?"

Jaune gazed up from the pages of the book he was reading, looking upon the very frustrated features of Professor Oobleck, "Sir?" he questioned softly. He looked as though he were barely even present for the class and hadn't yet noticed the various looks of disappointment, amusement and frustration upon the faces of his fellow classmates. Sure, most of them hadn't been paying attention either, but the fact that Jaune was being so obvious about it meant the rest of them had to put extra effort into either not listening. For the ones focusing it was a small relief that the class had been stopped even temporarily because it meant they actually had the chance to catch their notes up with the speed at which they were being taught.

"If you're done with your extra curricular activities, here on Remnant we've been studying the strategy of the human and faunus wars," Oobleck rose his mug to his lips and took another sip from his coffee then zipped back across the room, "As enthralling as I am sure the stories of King Arthur are, we are not due to cover that topic until much later in the year and though I commend your enthusiasm, I must ask you to put the book away and pay attention."

Jaune really didn't feel like putting the book away, he felt so close to that ever evasive answer that he'd been searching for, but since he didn't think detention was a productive way to be spending the time he could be reading, Jaune reluctantly closed the book and slipped it into his bag. The moment that the class resumed, Jaune's fingers began tapping against the desk out of frustration, the struggle he was undergoing by not having his eyes upon the pages of the book was almost overwhelming. He could be missing something! Something that would give him the victory he so desperately sought. Why couldn't anyone see that he was just trying to prove himself? To prove that he could be just like they were?

"You'd better focus," Blake hissed to Jaune sternly, "You don't want him to tell you off again do you? You can read the book later."

"Now that Mr. Arc has been kind enough to pay attention, we can resume our lesson."

And so the lesson resumed. With Jaune paying attention to it this time. As much as he wanted the answers to his current predicament, he really didn't want the detention to come along and steal away even more of the limited time he had to research outside of classes as it was. Cutting into an already small slice was a painfully negative experience that Jaune had no intention of allowing. So, if that meant sacrificing time now then he'd, albeit reluctantly, go along with it. Like all things though, the class eventually came to an end and after some further mentions of an upcoming assignment for the class, they had been allowed to go. Jaune stood from his seat and without even uttering a word to his team-mates, leaped out of the room, a sense of urgency in his pace.

There had to be something he could do, some kind of clue that he was missing in one of these texts. He'd looked everywhere else for the answer and by a process of elimination that meant the secret that Acheron kept about Excalibur's power had to buried in here somewhere. He was so close, Jaune could just feel it. The image of the sword upon the page had to be a giveaway of a small amount of insight into how he could force the change of his weapon to suit his ends. It couldn't be anywhere else after all. He would discover this secret and bring an end to that arrogant bastard's rein of victories over him in combat class once and for all. He didn't need to waste time with training, Crocea Mors had all the power he needed and the moment he could pull it out of wherever it was hiding then everything would change. He'd read the book cover to cover and hadn't made any further discovery, yet he still believed there was something hidden here. After all, no one in their right mind would ever hide their most closely guarded secrets at surface level. That was so idiotic that it wasn't even funny.

"This is-"

Jaune fell forward, his head colliding with the table a moment later. Suffice to say that the task before him had long since passed the point of being frustrating, he needed answers and they weren't instantly materializing before him. How was it so easy for the man they'd fought at the docks so long ago? Jaune knew that Crocea Mors' ability was vastly different from the Gauntlets possessed by their strange enemy, after all, his sword, to the best of his knowledge, could not break through a person's aura in a single shot like the gauntlets had. Either way, the ease of which he'd summoned the ability of the gauntlets...how...how had he done it!? He'd been trying and trying to coax the power out of the depths of his sword yet he'd had barely any reaction at all. There was obviously some aspect or trick that he was missing. Jaune hated wishing he could run into an enemy again just so he could try and find out more about this.

Jaune glanced back down at the notepad he had laid open on the desk beside the novel, the pages before him layered in several scrawled words indicating that he'd been taking notes on any small clue that he felt he'd unearthed from the book. Various mentions of the sword were present, yet there was also mentions of other rumored rituals that were said to have some kind of affect on the sword. Whether or not they did anything was up for debate though for Jaune had tried all of them over the past few days and was yet to accomplish anything.

Why did this have to be so damned difficult!?

"Jaune, are you okay?"

Pyrrha had just approached Jaune, though unable to see his frustrated expression, she could tell that he was more than a little disappointed with how his search for answers was panning out. The general bad posture and slumped shoulders being at the top of the list of dead-giveaways.

"I'm fine Pyrrha. I just need to look a little harder to find what I'm missing, that's all."

"Well, if you're sure...Yang, Blake and I wanted you to know that dinner's going to be ready soon in the dorms if you'd like to join us."

"Thanks Pyrrha, but I think I'll eat later. I've got a lot of work to do."

"Oh," Pyrrha said dejectedly, "That's...that's okay Jaune, just remember that we're all here if you need any help okay?"

"I will remember, thanks Pyrrha. I need to get back to work though."

"Of course," Pyrrha bowed her head, then turned away from her leader. The young woman's dejected expression was highlighted by the soft glow of the ambient light within the room but she merely shrugged her shoulders and walked straight back out of the library the way she came.

"Well?"

Pyrrha sighed upon seeing Yang practically leap out of the bed the moment she re-entered the dorm room. It was to be anticipated, but still, the fact that she'd been unable to secure the desired result had her feeling a little more guilty than she should. Luckily for Pyrrha she was saved from having to answer the question in the ensuing moments when the brawler realized that Pyrrha had returned to the dorm but the leader of ABYN was nowhere in sight.

"You didn't find him?" Yang asked her quietly.

"I did," Pyrrha rectified, "but he just said that he had work to do and would eat later. I think Ren was right, we've been too soft with Jaune when we're all training together and it's done him no favors. It's all...well and good that the three of us want Jaune to improve but I guess being too gentle with someone isn't how you get them to improve."

"It's my fault," Yang said softly, "Everytime we went into a training session all I saw was the sadness I caught in his eyes the night we were on the rooftop after he was attacked. I kept seeing that and by extension what he looked like after taking a direct hit from those Gauntlets and I couldn't-"

"We're all to blame," Blake cut her off, "I'm also guilty for using my own moves to redirect Jaune's and correct them rather than teaching him how to create his own moves and flow. The mistake of that is for someone with as little combat experience as Jaune has is he'll go into every fight thinking that his opponent will do the same thing. We've been training his fitness and everything like that...but Ren was correct, we've not been preparing him adequately for real combat."

"And now," Pyrrha sighed, "He's forced himself into a position where he thinks that Cardin is so good, so far above any skill level he could possibly possess that he's willing to do anything to obtain a win over Cardin no matter how cheap it is. While that blade is an incredible weapon with vastly untapped power, Jaune forcing the power out instead of obtaining it naturally not only upsets the balance of things but it also cheapens any victory he might have over Cardin should he succeed in finding the method to the quickest route."

"What are we supposed to do? It's not like we can just ask him to train with us, he's so far gone into his book that it's next to impossible for us to get him out of it."

"We'll have to come up with something," Pyrrha sad, "If we don't, this is only going to get much, much worse."

"And," Blake put in, "The longer we leave it, the worse it'll get, believe me."

"He's gone from acting like a leader to acting like- I really want to smash Cardin's head in."

"No Yang," Pyrrha said, stepping in front of her friend quickly, "You can't do that."

"And why not?"

"Because, Jaune has to fight his own battles sometimes or he'll never grow. It's like Ren said, we have to be his team-mates as well as his friends not one or the other. He'll never get his head out of that book if we're not going to do anything about it. We have to pull together for our leader."

x-x-x-x-x-x-

Another day, another collapsed Jaune Arc with his face planted in the desk at the back of the library while he snoozed on unawares of the world around him. His hand trembled slightly as once again words rang through his mind, 'Find the pieces. You must be the one to find the pieces of Excalibur.'

Jaune's eyes slowly peeled open as the back of his hand groggily rose to rub up against them in an attempt to shake even a tiny amount of the exhaustion from his countenance. He heaved a sigh, then pushed himself back into being fully upright once more. He'd fallen asleep here again? Well, that wasn't hardly surprising. Ever since he'd caught a flash of inspiration to try and discover the secret to summoning the blade agan, he'd been primarily been working from here and it stood to reason that was part of the reason he was always finding himself reawakening here. He couldn't expect the girls to haul his ass back to the dorm every time he fell asleep like had Yang had that one time.

"But I can't rest," he reminded himself firmly, "Not until I discover the secret. Not until I have what I need to beat him!" He hated it, he hated feeling just as worthless and pathetic as he had before he came to Beacon. Powerless to do anything against the bully that had chosen him as the prime target. In that respect, life at the academy wasn't too different from that of his home life. He reached down grabbing at his stomach, clenching it tightly as he tried in vain to prevent the nausea from swirling around inside him. The hand not gripping Jaune's stomach clenched into a fist and trembled violently against the surface of the table.

"This is your fault," he snapped down to the sword strapped to his belt, "If you did your damned transformation when I'm in danger like you're supposed to then we wouldn't be in this position. I wouldn't look incapable again."

Jaune sighed, then fell forward, "And now I am talking to an inanimate object. What's next on the list of Jaune Arc needs to be checked into a facility?"

"Talking to yourself is usually a good one."

Jaune's head rose, shifting all around as he tried to locate the source of the sound. Yet even after a few moments it didn't seem like he was any closer to solving the mystery of who'd spoken until he was met by the familiar face of Yang, glaring at him through violet irises.

"Oh, hey-"

"Enough," Yang said simply, "This has gone on long enough, Jaune."

The Arc's cerulean pools immediately narrowed at the brawler's words, heat rising through Jaune's chest upon those words been spoken and his fist clenched tightly to go along with that feeling, "You don't know what you're talking about," he snapped.

"Oh, I don't?" she threw right back at him, "Are you or are you not sitting in the library day in, day out reading the same book cover to cover and getting angry when each read through gives you nothing but the same result?"

"That's beside the-"

"Besides the point?" She countered agan, "Then tell me, Jaune, what point are you supposed to be seeing? The point that your obession with Cardin is blinding you to the progress you're making or the fact that you're pushing away everyone around you in favor of some stupid grudge match!"

"You of all people have no right to snap at me about grudges!"

Violet threatening shifted into the deep hue of crimson and immediately her left hand crossed over her body and clenched around her right-wrist as tightly as she could hold it. Despite the trembling of the two arms, she turned her rage-filled eyes back upon her leader, she went to open her mouth then shut it right after, turning on her heel. Yang stomped out of the library, the floor rumbling beneath her feet. Jaune fell back against his seat and heaved a sigh.

There was no way that wasn't about to come back and bite him in the ass. Why couldn't Yang see that he needed to find this power so that he could finally put Cardin in his place? To bring that bastard to his knees and have him admit that Cardin, in fact, was the one who was nothing compared to Jaune not the other way around. They hadn't heard what he said, they couldn't understand the frustration he felt. That's why he had to obtain the power, to show Cardin the truth. He wasn't nothing. He would make Cardin believe in the power he had even if he hadn't been able to convince his father before he came to Beacon, Jaune wouldn't let this situation end in the same way that one had. He refused.

Yang, on the other hand, returned to the dorm. Her hair was practically blazing by the time she reached it and though it took every ounce of effort she possessed, Yang opened the door normally rather than punching it open, she didn't need to be paying repair costs after all and stormed into the room.

"Still no luck?" Pyrrha asked her softly.

"He's being so...so insufferable! I can't stand it!"

Yang finally unleashed her anger, punching the air so hard that the mere heat that passed off her, that it felt like the entire room had been dunked into an entire pool of lava, "We're supposed to be his friends, his damn team-mates."

"Yang, calm down!" Pyrrha beseeched, trying to get through to her friend, "This isn't going to help us or him in the long run and we have to approach this differently. Please-"

"Maybe Yang has a point."

"Blake?"

"Blakey?"

The dark-haired young woman sighed, "It's clear that words aren't getting through to him. He'll agree with something and then just go right back to what he's doing, wanting nothing but the answers he's been seeking and letting nothing intervene even if it's hell itself. Maybe we're going to have to show Jaune that he doesn't need that power to keep up."

"And how do we do that exactly? We're not getting him away from those books any time soon."

"For now, Yang, cool off. Take a distract yourself with some Ninja Madness," Blake said quietly, her golden eyes narrowed with determination. This entire situation was proving more difficult than she first anticipated and Pyrrha was right. Outbursts were not the best way to handle a situation like this. They tended to make the person on the other end become defensive and inclined to justify why they had to continue down the path they were on rather than trying to find a path that led away from the thing that was harming them in the long run. Blake couldn't blame Jaune, not really, defeat could make people do horrible things. Being beaten down and trodden could change even the most beautiful souls into something unbearably ugly.

'Adam.'

Blake sighed, then retreated to the bed and climbed in, she turned over onto her side to make the silent indication that she was done for the night. Yang moved off to the bathroom to take the shower that Blake had suggested and Pyrrha also retreated to her bed, though she didn't pull out Ninja Madness as Blake had suggested, but instead plugged in her headphones and turned it to a song that she liked, settling into prepare for sleep. Though she was turned away from the team's dorm, Blake's mind still ran rampant as she wondered why Adam's name rushed to her mind when she was thinking about the situation with Jaune? Had it been a simple comparison of the way Adam's obsession with wanting to destroy humanity had stemmed from the horrible things they'd put him through, put all faunus through was eerily similar to the obsession Jaune had seemingly developed overnight in regards to his hatred for Cardin?

Jaune wasn't a monster.

His reasons were different.

Then why did the route he was going down pain her so much?

Why did Jaune falling to this obsession with that book cause her so much concern?

x-x-x-x-

Wind passed across the area, making the figure's obsidian locks flow against them. His bulky appearance towered over all of the people in the vicinity, including the man standing slightly in front of him outfitted in a simple business suit. The man in the suit folded his arms and looked back to the larger one, a sigh rolling off his lips, "It seems that tip-off was nothing more than a waste of time. Doctor Merlot won't be pleased that we didn't find anything here and I have no desire to return to him empty handed."

"Hn," the larger figure spoke, "If there is nothing here I should think that the Doctor would be more infuriated should either of us attempt to lie to him, Yuri. Even if we do not physically return to him it is better that we relay the truth to him through a scroll call rather than trying to keep secrets from him. You know that he values loyalty above all else from his followers."

A sigh rolled of Yuri's lips, but he nodded, "I know. Unfortunately, I know this all too well."

"Then why bother even vocalizing the thought of with-holding the information from him in the first place?"

The man, now identified as Yuri didn't respond to the question, which the first man took as an answer in itself. He reached into his trench-coat and then removed his scroll and punched a few buttons. Moments later, a voice filled the area.

"Malach? Yuri?"

"Greetings, Doctor," Malach answered, "We have some...troubling news."

"The piece is not in the location from the information we were given, correct?"

"Your assumption is correct, Doctor. There is nothing here but sand...Why did it have to be sand?"

"Malach, this isn't the time for your complaints. If the piece of excalibur is not there this means one of two things. Someone found it before you and Yuri did which is highly unlikely, or, more likely. The prisoner that gave us that information was lying to try and save his own skin which I am far more inclined to believe."

"What would you have us do then?" Malach continued.

"For now? Return here, I have decided that the time is now ripe for us to start planning another move. One related to finally claiming the piece of Excalibur that we know for certain the location of. We must begin strategizing immediately if we're going to obtain it given the location."

"Of course. and Yuri?"

"Yuri's not to return, I have another task for him in Menagerie."

The man named Yuri tilted his head slightly as a bright turquiose tail finally unfurled from around his waist and swished against the air as if batting away an invisible insect of some kind, "You want me to return home, Doctor?"

"Aye, it's come to my attention that the white fang might be concealing another piece of Excalibur. Those disgusting animals have no right holding such a distinguished piece of human history. I am sure that King Arthur is rolling in his grave imagining his glorious weapon in the hands of such vile creatures. Oh...I apologize, Yuri."

"Fear not, Doctor," Yuri said, without a hint of anger upon his face, "No one hates those things more than I. One day, I hope that your experiments to finally bring an end to the Faunus gene bear fruition so that I may become human and erase this abboration I am forced to call part of me. I shall head to Menagerie and look into the case of the piece of excalibur being hidden there immediately."

"Good work, Malach, return home. We have much to do."

"As you command, Doctor Merlot."

End Chapter.

As you can probably tell, I struggled to write this chapter and rewrote it several times. If it comes across as one of the weaker ones of this story well, that's why. There's going to be a little break on this fic while I work on my other stories for a little while. This is also to give me some time to work out the best way to pull Jaune out of this mindset he's in. I apologize, but the way forward doesn't seem entirely clear to me right now and I'd like to step away from Unexpected Team until I can work that out.

My main focus will be switching to My Life as a Teenage Conduit, this story is very similar to Unexpected Team with the major difference that it's going to be more grounded and Jaune's power will take a secondary spot to the bond of Team ABYN. I feel like the Excalibur aspect has entirely taken this story over and until I'm satisfied that ABYN can become the main focus again I need to go on HIATUS from this story.

I apologize and I hope you'll all come to understand my decision in time. I have no intention of abandoning this fic, but I just need to re-evaluate my thoughts.

Thank you all for the support and I'll see you again sometime soon I hope.