Arslan was shaking by the time she went to her dust class . Bolin was more shaken than her, and for good reason. She had witnessed him almost die from what should have been a normal spar. She had witnessed Jaune unleash the wrath of god in what should have been a normal spar. It was an exhilarating fight that left the class on edge. It felt like it was out of a cgi intensive movie, but much more real. Arslan shook her head, trying to bring herself to a calmness that had fled her. Everything was ok, it had come to pass. That fight was over.
Arslan put on the thin rubber gloves to protect her from the crystals. It was important to keep yourself safe during dust experiments, as they were often prone to exploding. She took her seat next to Reese, her lab partner and resident dust expert. Reese gave Arslan a side eye, noticing that she seemed shaken. Reese leaned over to her, poking her lightly in the shoulder.
"You good, Ars?" the skater said, concerned. "You're normally already reading the instruction packet by now."
Arslan took a breath in, reaching for the three ring binder. "I dunno, it's just…" She sighed, struggling to find the words. "I saw Jaune- jaune-" letting out a defeated sigh, she closed the three ring binder. "Do you think Jaune would have killed him?" Reese whistled lowly, taking a couple seconds to think.
"I-" She started, before pursing her lips. "I think that Jaune could have killed him. I think he could kill any of us, if he wanted to."
"That does not ease my nerves, Reese." She sighed, opening the book again. They were supposed to conduct an electro gravidic ion chamber. It was the same reaction that most electronic rail technologies functioned off of. Raiguns, High speed trains, and other cool things that could only be found in Atlas. Although Arslan remembered vaguely reading that Ironwood intended on getting a direct high speed railway to Vale from Argus, but hadn't heard about that in a while.
Reese unceremoniously dropped the kit of dust onto the lab table. Arslan looked up at her.
"Reese! Be more careful! You can't just man handle dust like that!" She snipped at the skater for her carelessness. Reese scoffed lightly, waiving it away.
"Relax, Ars. it's perfectly safe." She reached inside to pick up one of the capsule sealed vials. "See? Seal's unbroken, and it's safe in its box. It's not going to explode or anything." The vial was returned to its slot. "So, what we doing today?"
Arslan looked at the binder, scanning over their instructions. "We're suspending metal in the air." She deciphered. Reese leaned over, already reaching for the various instruments and apertures they would need.
"Uh huh, right." Reese said. She had already set up the odd cage like contraption that was often used in small scale dust experiments. "Is it vial A or B that gets wired up?"
Arslan raised an eyebrow, not sure why she expected anything else. Reese knew her way around dust far better than most. It made lab rather boring, actually.
"Its A." Reese nodded, attaching the plug in to the vial's deposit. The cage cackled to life as the lightning dust ran through it. Reese leaned over to peek over Arslans shoulder at the instructions. She nodded, taking the dust crystal and put it in the center of the cage. It hummed, floating there ominously as the surrounding electric charge activated the crystal. Arslan nodded in approval at the success. Taking the vial of iron filaments, she opened it. As the open vial moved closer and closer to the metal cage, more and more of the scrapings floated and flew to line the rails. They floated and flowed along the beams, under the effect of the magnetically charged metal cage.
"Arslan, Reese. Forging ahead as always, I see." The lab monitor said, looking at their progress. Arslan nodded, noticing that the rest of the class was just setting up the cage system.
"Indeed. Reese is very good at it." Arslan said as she wrote down the various observations and notes necessary. She would have to turn it in later today.
"Have you reversed the current?" the monitor asked, looking at their project. Reese shook her head.
"Not yet, sir."
He nodded, before walking off to watch another group. Reese looked at her partner. "You want me to go ahead and switch the vials?" She asked the lioness. Arslan shrugged.
Reese switched the charge, swapping vial A for B. The inversely charged vial was hooked up, and the filaments reversed their direction. Arslan leaned back in her seat, pondering the contraption. On a whim, she closed her eyes and allowed her semblance to activate.
"Oh, that is new." She said as she looked at the dust charged cage.
It was painted in color. Much like Jaune, it poured out color. The gravity dust crystal in the middle radiated a strong royal purple color. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes. She had to make sure that she wasn't seeing after images from combat class. Nope.
The dust was glowing in a way that she had never seen before. It bounced and reflected, clearly fractured through the crystalline structure of the magic rocks. Something that was wholly unlike Jaune's miasmatic solid aura, but still similar. Reese looked at Arslan with no small amount of concern at her shift in expression.
"Ars, you good? You seem a little-" Reese started, but was cut off by Arslan speaking.
"Is the dust supposed to have color?" the lioness asked her. She couldn't help but blink at that question. It was something she would expect out of Nadir, not the level headed and serious Arslan.
"Uhh… yes? I'm not sure if that's a serious question or not." Reese responded, shaking her head. "If you mean with your semblance, I have no idea."
Arslan leaned forward, taking a better look at the dust. "It's never had color before. Or really ever triggered my semblance." She shook her head. It has to be jaune. She thought, linking the sudden introduction of color to dust and the sudden introduction of color to her world. She closed her eyes, letting out an annoyed sigh.
This was going to give her a headache, wasn't it?
It had been a couple days, and Arslan was right. The loose threads of unconfirmed connection plagued at the back of her mind. She had discussed the situation with her team. Bolin feigned apathy, but treated it as more solid evidence to his "jaune is bad" theory. Not evil, just bad. Arslan didn't understand the whole mentality. Reese of course found it interesting, but ignorable for the most part. "Sure, dude's got a weird semblance that fucks with yours. Cool, but nothing you have to worry over, right?" She had said after the third time Arslan had bothered her for an input. Nadir seemed the only person as invested in the puzzle box in her brain as she was. She had brought it up with him once, and he had come back a day later with a rather large spreadsheet detailing "every logical option available". Options ranged from the likely (semblance) to the impossible (straight up magic).
She wasn't sure how, but the pink haired gunman had managed to rope in a rather enthusiastic Sun Wukong as well. She was alerted when she got several pings on her scroll from the monkey.
Yo. There was a slight pause. I (ear emoji) abt ur (brain emoji) problem. Another break. Abt J-man. Arslan moved to put her phone away, but was pinged several times more. I hve some (100 emoji) ideas.
Some real (brain emoji) (Lightning emoji). Arslan assumed that meant something along the lines of brain power. So here she was, in the school library with Nadir and Sun. That sounded like a recipe for disaster of several orders of magnitude more than she was willing to deal with. She had a book on dust theory and Aura theory in front of her, while Sun was teetering with a very, very large stack of seemingly every book even remotely related to the subject at hand.
"Oum, Sun, what are you going to do with all that?" Arslan asked him, unsure how he was going to go through all that information in a reasonable time. He just shrugged, dropping the stack into the table. The table creaked under the strain, but the old fashioned wood held strong for now. Nadir pulled out a white board in a rare display of initiative.
"S-so, let's start with what we know." he said, pointing to the board. "What do we know about Jaune?"
Sun raised his hand eagerly. "Yes, Sun?" Arslan asked the monkey faunus.
"We know he was expelled from Beacon, and that he walked here." Sun pointed out. "He also speaks Feral." he tacked on to the end. Nadir nodded, writing it on a sticky note and stuck it to the board. Arslan shook her head.
"What? Of course he speaks Feral. He's a faunus." She argued. "I fail to see why a faunus speaking feral is unusual."
Sun shook his head. "He's not though! I've been watching him, and he literally does nothing that any normal faunus would do. He doesn't notice heat cycles, he doesn't react to smells, nothing." he crossed his arms. "I know what you say, but he's not a Faunus. There isn't any proof."
Arslan groaned, knowing that Sun was wrong. "You don't have to have visible traits to be a Faunus." She sighed. "There are plenty of traits that aren't visible." Sun leaned forward.
"Oh? And what traits are those?" He asked her. She gave her an exasperated look
"Fangs?" She said, baring her teeth at him. Sun shrugged.
"Ok, fine. But he doesn't have any fangs, so we can cross that out." He said. Nadir took the dry erase marker, writing out FANGS. He then crossed it out immediately after. "What else could he have that we don't see?"
Arslan blinked, really racking her brain for something. She was coming up blank, unable to think of a trait commonly hidden by clothing. Hidden by clothing… Arslan flushed, her eyes widening in terror as she realized her only answer. "Uhh, Urm. Ah." She started, her mouth flopping like a fish as her brain came up with rather uncomfortable images of a scarred torso and tight pants, hinting at the unknown appendage underneath it. The lioness desperately tried to think about something else. The trees at home, the fish in the temple ponds, something. Anything. But her brain kept on going back to that mental image. "How do I say this? Uhh, His, ah, his… thing?" Arslan managed to get out, beet red and steaming. Sun furrowed his eyebrows, confused.
"His thing? You mean he might have, like, a big ol' dog knot down ther-OW!" Sun started, and Arslan couldn't let him finish lest the mental image complete itself. She threw the book infront of her at him, knocking him square in the jaw with it. He teetered back, almost falling out of his chair. His tail wrapped around the leg of the table, cementing himself to regain balance.
"Alright then, moving on: You said you had some weird reaction with your semblance?" Sun changed the topic, saving Arslan from her own tratorious mind. She was currently hiding her face away in her hands, steam pouring out of her ears. She nodded from her hidey hole, not ready to face the world just yet. She was still banishing those thoughts out of her head.
Nadir added that Jaune glowed according to Arslan's semblance. The dust was a separate note. He connected them with a red line, noting the obvious connection of Arslan's semblance acting strange with them.
Arslan added that he had some form of elemental control, and that he didn't make noise when he didn't want to, which seemed to be all the time. Those two were put off to the side of "weird and unexplainable" underneath the stuff related to Arslan's semblance.
They sat around for a moment, thinking about what else could go on the board. Nadir added his odd payment method to the other side. That was labeled as "explainable" and contained the note about his exodus and his ability to speak feral.
"So." Sun started after a bit of silence. "What else do we know about Jaune?" He asked them, and they stopped to think for a moment. They came up blank for a while.
"He's an alcoholic?" Arslan suggested, not sure if it was either relevant or her place to share. "Ok. Correction. He drinks Alcohol." She softened. Sun raised an eyebrow, but handed the sticky note to Nadir anyway. It was put under explainable. "Alcoholism?" it read. The first attempt, which was alcoholic tendencies, was scratched out.
Arslan scratched her head, looking at their conspiracy board. There wasn't much on it. And what was on it seemed unconnected at best. The only solid link they had was the evolution of Arslan's semblance.
Which in itself was interesting. Semblances were known to evolve under particular situations and with the growth of that person. Arslan just didn't understand why her semblance had evolved now. She felt the same, and couldn't pin any particular moment that would have been a monumental shift in her soul. While she was doing that, Nadir was making another sticky note.
"He skips particular classes."
Sun leaned forward, squinting at the post it. "Really?" He asked, disbelieving the paper. "He's in all the classes I share with him."
Nadir nodded. "Yeah." he said. "You only share one class with him, WETFTIs. He always is in that one. But he hasn't been in combat in approximately five days." Arslan shook her head, disbelieving what she had heard.
"No way that the fight was five days ago!" She said, standing up. It was far too vivid in her brain to not be so many days ago. Nadir shook his head, denying her.
"No, Arslan. Today's Tuesday." He said. "It's been five days. I know it was… tense, but it has been a week."
Sun leaned back in his chair, looking at the board. "Hey, isn't the name Arc, like, a really big name?" he asked, a sudden conniption coming to him. Arslan shrugged.
"It was." Nadir confirmed. "The name was historically that of a powerful warlord family along the modern Vale Mistral border. They founded the city of Orleans, among other things. The last Arc of note, however, was Arcturus Silvas Arc in the War. He was in combat from 1990-1995. He would be promoted during the first battle of Largnogh to brigadier general, and climbed the ranks from there. He died in the early 2030s via suicide after a tramatic flash back." he rattled off, reciting a history text book he had read once. Sun blinked, rolling his head around in a shaking maner.
"Thank you, Nadir." he started, his voice laced with sarcasm, "For that lovely information. You could have just said it was an old war name." He sighed. Nadir gave a small, shrinking shrug, much like a turtle.
"You asked…" He trailed off. Arslan sighed, returning the two boys to track.
"Thank you Nadir, it was relevant. But you said he skips classes?" She asked him. He nodded vigorously.
"Yeah. he told me yesterday over chess that he couldn't find a use for some of them." He admitted, wringing his hands together. Arslan knew that fidget, and realized that he was probably really uncomfortable being up there. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her prayer beads. A length of harsh twine with decently sized wooden geometric shapes, each face engraved with a symbol to represent the chapters of the first testament. She looked down at them, and gently held them out for Nadir.
"here. " She offered. Nadir looked at her confused but grateful, gingerly taking the beads to twist in his hands. She went back to her thoughts as Sun somehow sidetracked Nadir into talking about the Arc Dynasty, which had long since faded into little more than historical obscurity. Arslan wondered what Jaune was doing if he wasn't in his classes.
Jaune was hunting, as he indeed wasn't in class right now. He had found the pathway to the other side of the mountain that Haven was built on. To the west at the base of the mountain was the city of Mistral, with its glowing gilding hiding away the poor and despot. But to the east?
That is where his prey lay. A vast swamp, halted and diverted away to the coast by the odd mountain ridge. This great swamp was host and home to many dangerous grimm, all of which were mere entertainment to distract Jaune from thinking.
It wasn't working as well as Jaune wanted it to, though. While hunting was keeping a base level of his brain whirring, the rest of it was allowed to think. He thought about how… tense everyone had been. Everyone had started walking on eggshells around him, sending whispers behind his back and in hushed corners of the hallway. They spoke of power, of strength, of terror and fear.
Jaune hated it. He hated that he had been cast out, exposed and spoken about. He hated the feeling that he was noticeable. He was frankly wondering how his seething hate hadn't attracted any grimm yet. It was practically boiling inside him, eating away at him and churning in his gut.
He knew this feeling. He had felt it churn and bubble under the surface for a long time back when he was in Beacon Academy. It sat hidden away behind a tense laugh or a disarming, but awkward smile. Back when he was far, far over his head and drawing in the feeling behind closed doors and hidden side halls. He marched through the swamp, pulling his boots from the thick muck. It squelched and schlorped, the franky uncomfortable sounds almost drowned out by the hiss of cicadas and the chirping of birds. Clearly he wasn't deep enough into the forest, as that must have been where the Grimm were. There weren't any wild animals where the Grimm roamed. Something about their aura forced animals to migrate away from them. Jaune couldn't help but notice that there was a completely different species of dominant tree here, being much squatter and more windbent. He thought it odd, considering he had yet to feel any particularly harsh breezes yet that would explain such swooping branches. There were some more broadly found bushes and flora around at the bases of these trees, clusterings of vines and moss draped over their boughs. He continued to march on, heading deeper and deeper into the swamp, seeking something to sooth his wrath.
Eventually he would find something rather interesting in the depths of the swamp. A tree, very similar to the rest of them, sat on a slightly raised hill. It had the same bent and sweeping branch structure that every other tree had, but it marked the start of something new in the mangrove forest. A field of Orchids decorated the branches instead of the usual nestings and vinework. Jaune approached cautiously, inspecting the flowers with interest. He had yet to see this particular species of flower anywhere in Mistral. He approached the trees carefully, stepping on roots and solid stones to have sure footing.
Then the rock he had stepped on moved from under him. With a wet ruffeling sound of displacing muck and mud, the rock he was standing on rose up from the depths of the swamp.
"Oh shit." Jaune said, looking up at the large Grimm. "A crab."
Indeed. B responded. A crab.
Krrrab. A accented, rolling the r as he rolled his hands with a flourish. He apparently liked the way it tasted in his mouth, because it bared repeating several times. Krrrab. Krabbb. Kraaab. Krrrab indeed.
Krab indeed. So, another chapter, another god knows how long. We also get to see the first meeting of the Jaune Investigative Conspiracy group. Sun remains Sun. The big thing though this chapter is Arslan's changing semblance, which should lead to some conclusions. I'd like to think that I gave some characters that are not Jaune and Arslan some actual screen time here, but I will probably have to have a scene without those two in it at all. After this next chapter, we will be moving into the first mission arc. That will be a lot of fun, and a lot of opportunity to explore and grow some characters.
A is just vibing to the idea of Krab.
Please do leave a comment, review, idea or conspiracy theory in the comments. Or heck, even an fan cannon. A fan-fan cannon, if you will. I think they would be fun to read.