Chapter 22 – The Disconnect
Jaune finds himself against his first non-Grimm opponent and begins to question the disconnect between his level and his teammates'.
Unlike the SDC mission that Jaune and Blake had run all that long while ago, the bandits that were plaguing the town of Temecula had actually been seen, and a few of the militia members who'd seen them were even able to give a rough description of the perpetrators.
"It was six people, round 'bout your age," said the man who'd gotten the best look at them. He gestured to Velvet. "Prob'bly closer to the lass, if I had to guess. All young men, and all lookin' the same."
"Dark hair for four, blonde on two," said a woman with paws. "Otherwise, they were just a couple of young boys that looked roughly similar. Not one among them too tall or too stout."
Velvet nodded intently. "What kinds of weaponry did they use?" she asked.
Jaune himself leaned in the doorway of barracks, content to take a backseat on this one. The village miraculously actually had a Faunus mayor, and three members of the armed peacekeeping force with whom Team Job was currently speaking were actually Faunus, implying that there was no need for him to fulfill his usual role as team leader.
It's weird to think about. Blake and Velvet know what to do better than me, meaning that the second racism ends, so does my value to the team. I'm barely a huntsman, and I can't balance the books or manage our resources or instinctively know how contracts work. I literally need anti-Faunus discrimination to keep existing, or I lose my relevance.
Hypothetically, if the world became a place of equality and social harmony, Jaune would be out of a job, but everyone knew it was a long time before that was going to happen. Still, it kinda sucked to have to depend on the charity of two real huntresses because they weren't taken seriously.
On that note, they were leading the investigation here. Several citizens of Temecula had been harassed by bandits when they'd ventured out into the woods alone to chop wood, hunt food, or harvest resources. Most of them had been assaulted and robbed for literally everything they had on them down to the socks, but one of them had been close enough to town to raise the alarm, leading the militia forces to arrive in time to drive them off.
"All six of 'em were armed with knives," said the Faunus lady. "But they weren't hunting knives…one had a switchblade, but the other five looked like they were waving around butcher's cleavers. I saw handguns on their hips, but none of them used them."
"'Twas a bit queer, that" said an older guard. "We had spears best suited for pokin' Grimm to death – nothing compared to their pistols. We only outnumbered the crunks by three, but they could have loaded us full o' Dust faster'n a spring hare."
Velvet turned to Blake. "Sounds like limited ammunition, or perhaps a fear of outright confrontations?"
She nodded in agreement at the other Faunus. "Grouped up bandits tend to be cowards. If they only go after single citizens, I'd wager they want to minimize risk to themselves. Maybe they could win the fight with their sidearms, but why risk it when they could run?"
The villagers had decided that it would be safer to pool together their money and hire Team Job to handle it rather than take matters into their own hands. After all, if those bandits did decide to break out their big guns (which, in this case, meant small guns), professionals who could take a few shots and come out breathing would be much safer.
"Was there a particular time of day or region they would frequent?" Blake asked.
See, that was the kind of thing that Jaune wouldn't even think to bring up. It wasn't that he couldn't comprehend it or something, just that he would probably have thanked them and then walked into the forest to hopefully bump into the bandits by chance.
I need to critically think more. Learning how to fight is one thing, but planning a fight in advance could spare me a lot of heartache if I do. Think of the who, what, when, where, and why – we know who, Blake just asked where and when…that leaves what and why.
Why was obvious – bandits wanted some easy money and decided to rob people for a living. As for what…I got nothing.
The militia had already filled Jaune's time in on the details of where the attacks had taken place, so there was nothing left to do but thank them for the info and head on out.
"Best of luck, hunters," said the elderly man.
Jaune considered correcting him, but he somehow doubted that people this far out from Vale would actually care for the distinction between Team Job's security consultants and a real team of hunters.
"If the attacks are as regular as you describe, we should have them in custody within two days' time," promised Blake.
They exited the barracks building, but Blake stopped Jaune before he could start leaving the village.
"I think our best bet is to lay a trap when the sun sets," she explained to the others. "One of us goes into the forest with a, I dunno, basket so they can start pretending to harvest wild berries or something, and the others lie in waiting. We know when and where the attacks take place."
"And then what?" Jaune asked.
Blake shrugged. "Then we catch them."
"Uhhhh…they have guns?" Jaune asked.
"Yeah, but only handguns and handheld knives," Velvet said, as though that weren't something to be worried about.
"Look, you guys, I get that we can take a hit and keep walking. But what if they have their auras unlocked as well?" Jaune was a little surprised that he was the one advocating for better, more thorough planning. "They outnumber us two to one. It just seems like a waste to blow our advantage and rely on out-skilling them."
"If they had aura, they wouldn't carry standard weapons like pistols and cleavers – hunter-level foes typically fight using longer blades to maximize their reach or heavier duty firepower." Blake flared up her aura against her skin to show Jaune. "Remember, they live in the woods, alone and unprotected. If they were aura-unlocked, it would attract Grimm like there were no tomorrow, and one doesn't fend off Grimm using the kinds of weapons that licensed civilians can purchase."
"Plus, they probably wouldn't have fled from the militia if they knew they could beat them," Velvet added in. "I think we're safe, Jaune."
"If it makes you feel any better, we won't make you be the bait," Blake promised.
It actually did make him feel a little better, for more than one reason. He'd arguably played the role of bait in anywhere from two to four of Team Job's past five missions, and Jaune felt like it was time to share the wealth. Plus, a tall, strapping lad like him was less likely to be jumped then the diminutive young Faunus women…especially when the criminals were male young adults.
"I remember that we jumped into danger in the Lake of Lost Voles, so let's not do that again," Jaune requested. "How far will we be from the bait, and how long will we pretend before we give up and try again later?"
"I can take six guys at once," Velvet offered nonchalantly, batting her hair. "At least, long enough for reinforcements to arrive if they have to hide far away. Make me the bait. I'm a master bai–"
"Ah-ah-ah!" Jaune shook his head before she could go any further. "Fine, you're the bait."
"I think hiding at a distance isn't the way we should go about this," Blake stated. "If we could somehow blend into our environment, we could stay close without being seen."
"Disguises?" Jaune asked.
"I was thinking just covering ourselves in a pile of leaves or something," Blake said. "It's just six bandits, Jaune. They won't sniff us out from a mile away or something. We're not fighting an elite squadron of specialists or something."
Well, she wasn't wrong there. Temecula hadn't had trouble before this, indicating that this was a relatively new problem, which meant the bandits were inexperienced and likely testing the waters. If they could stop them early on, they might end this problem before it ever truly began.
As the weevils and ants crawled across Jaune's neck and shoulders, Jaune gained a new appreciation for the non-bait roles and just how difficult they could be. He and Blake had covered themselves in a thin layer of branches, leaves, and other forest floor droppings while Velvet chopped down a tree. They'd considered having her harvest fruits or mushrooms, but if she was being scoped out by robbers and raiders, they might begin to wonder why she didn't move from this spot after gathering everything of value.
The risk is if they decide they don't like the axe she's got and move on. We only have the element of surprise once before they recognize our faces as real fighters and not village militia.
But were they real fighters? Jaune might have had all the essential components of a huntsman – aura, sword and shield, basic training – but he had never won a fight against another person before. Granted, it was only against Blake and Velvet that he'd ever sparred, and if he somehow won, that would be a travesty, but the point remained that Jaune was yet to be truly blooded. He'd defeated Grimm before, but never an intelligent being that could think against him.
Will I win? Or will I just be a burden on the team?
It would be humiliating to have to be saved by the girls against ordinary bandits, and Jaune would never be able to live with himself if someone got hurt because of his incompetence.
Velvet hacked away at the tree, her semi-rhythmic thuds making the only noise within the forest as she kept at it. Jaune had learned from his mistakes in the Lake of Lost Voles and had asked her to whistle or hum a recognizable tune as she worked – nothing suspicious to an outside observer, but a clear indicator that it was her chopping the wood and not someone else who'd stolen the axe and picked up where she left off in order to trick Blake and him. She'd chosen the Pumpkin Pete commercial's jingle, something Jaune would recognize anywhere.
He couldn't see anything aside from the mound of leaves and tree trash that was piled up above him, but his nerves were about to explode from excitement. Even after nearly thirty minutes of waiting with no indication that anyone was in the vicinity but the three of them, his blood was still flowing just as quickly as when they'd started.
"Heads up," Blake whispered to him from her nearby little pile.
He had no idea how she heard whatever early warning sign of the bandit's presence that she did, but as a few seconds rolled by, the crunch of fall leaves beneath the boots of newcomers filled the empty forest, competing with Velvet's chopping and the up-tempo humming in tune with it.
"Hello, m'lady. Isn't a poor, defenseless girl like you a bit far from home?"
The chopping and humming stopped, and Jaune heard what he presumed was an axe dropping to the ground from where Velvet was posted. "Am I?"
A different voice spoke next, but it came from roughly the same location as the first. "I think you aren't where you should be. You're in the Rattling Nocturnes' turf, and nobody wants to tussle with us."
"Rattling Nocturne's?" Velvet asked.
Then, the sound of presumably six grown men pretending to hiss like rattlesnakes filled Jaune's ears, and any doubts he had about his own self-worth evaporated like vapors as he got a good listen at what real failure at life sounded like.
This is so cringe.
"We're the kings out in these parts," said another voice. "Society can't tell us what to do anymore now that we've shed it like old skin. We make the laws here, and you're trespassing, female."
He needed to wait until they got closer to Velvet to spring the trap, but Jaune was already starting to get some vibes from these guys.
"You're gonna have to pay the toll for slithering through our land, unless you wanna have a problem."
"But I don't have any money, you group of big, strong men," Velvet said. "All I have is my body."
Blake's pile of leaves groaned.
Are you serious, Velvet? Right now?
"Well aren't you in luck," laughed one of the bandits. "That just so happens to be the toll."
Velvet made a little squeaking noise, and Jaune heard a belt buckle clink. "Oh, fuck yeah, we are so –"
The plan to wait could get effed (hopefully before Velvet did). Jaune rose out of his pile of leaves and stuff that he'd been hidden in and raised the sword and shield of Crocea Mors in the direction of the bandits.
"Freeze! You're all under arrest!"
Blake came out of her own pile shortly thereafter, doing a neat backflip right over the heads of the bandits and landing behind them. In less then a second, they were caught in a triangle of three security consultants.
"W-What the hell is this?!" screamed one of the bandits. "Who are you people?"
"Gods-damned clamjammers, that's who they are!"
"You're under arrest!" Jaune repeated, ignoring Velvet. "Surrender, or we will be forced to…to use force!"
It wasn't his smoothest delivery of a threat, but the bandits all lifted out their knives.
"You're messing with the wrong –"
A Hard Light hammer, hurled from the direction of Velvet, impacted the legs of the bandit who chose to speak. Unfortunately for him, he didn't exactly have the protection of aura that would enable him to take such a hit, and the leg snapped. Jaune winced; he could see the tip of a fragment of bone sticking out.
"Oh shit," Velvet cursed. "I…I didn't realize you guys were that flimsy. None of the people back in Beacon ever –"
"Beacon! They're huntsmen!"
"Rattling Nocturnes, assemble!"
The five remaining bandits formed into a neat little circle around their fallen comrade, all hissing at Team Job. Jaune took a good look at them and began to figure out what their problem was.
One of the bandits had an eyepatch on, but he bit his lip and flipped it upwards onto his forehead, revealing a perfectly good eye underneath. Two others had lip and nose piercings, and one of them was literally wearing a fedora.
He's pretty much in uniform.
"H-How do we take them?" Blake asked nervously.
That got a few vicious grins.
"Alive, that is."
The smiles faded.
"Fist of the Eternal Shadow Dimension!" screamed one of the boys. He charged straight towards the unarmed rabbit Faunus doing what looked like a mixture of martial arts katas and undergoing an epileptic seizure.
Velvet caught his fist in one hand, then squeezed down on it. The flesh cracked underneath the pressure of her grip, and his hand snapped, the phalange bones sticking out in several places.
Horrified, Velvet let go of the hand as the man fell to his knees.
"FUCK! I DID IT AGAIN!"
"Velvet, please stop!" called Jaune. "Self-defense arguments only go so far in a court of law."
"I…I never realized how flimsy normies are! Huntsmen and huntresses and take hits like that with a smile! S-Sorry!"
The remaining four bandits were now all back to back, pressing into one another for dear life as the faux hunters closed in on them.
"Seriously, what do we do?" Blake asked. "We have to take them down somehow, but I don't wanna hit them if they're that easy to break."
"We can't use our weapons," Jaune pointed out. If the blunt force of Velvet's hammer was enough to snap their limbs, then Jaune really didn't want to find out what the bladed edges of two swords might do.
Think, Jaune. How do we use a 'normal person' amount of force on these guys?
He cleared his throat. "Uh…hey, Nocturnal guys…can you do us a huge favor and knock each other out?"
One of the young men stepped forward, his trembling fists raised in a boxing position. "T-The Rattling Nocturnes are true alpha males! Never shall we bow down to society's –"
"Shut the frick up, Vernon! I don't wanna die!" The other bandit threw his knife down and dropped to his knees. "I surrender!"
"Get rid of the gun too," Jaune commanded from behind his shield. "Kick it to me."
"It's a replica! My mom's boyfriend bought it for me on my birthday!" The surrenderer tore off the holster in its entirety and let it flop to the ground next to him. "Please don't hurt me! I confess! We're from Vale, we've only been camping here for a week now!"
Jaune guessed that explained that. This wasn't a real tribe of bandits like he'd been fearing, just some edgy twenty-somethings who thought they were hot potatoes.
"Jaune, I say this with love, but you're the least experienced of the three of us," Blake called over to him, her gun pointed at the guys. "How do we knock them out without accidentally killing them? You probably know more about how normies work than me or Velvet."
Velvet or me, the A Language Arts student in Jaune longed to say.
"Don't kill me!" another one of the weeb-bandits broke down in tears saying. "I-It was the others, they did all the bandit stuff and the pot brownie sales and the cyberstalking! I never posted those loli images to the message boards, it was all Isaiah!"
"Son of a bitch!" called out the guy with the broken hand, writing in pain. "I'll fuck your mom, you virgin beta chud!"
"Jaune! How do we nonlethally take out a non-aura user?"
Jaune thought it over for a moment. It was evident from Velvet's accidental overdoing of it that bonking them on the head wasn't a reliable plan. The huntresses in his party were too strong for their own good and were used to bashing Grimm or punching other aura users, meaning that they could accidentally concuss these bandits if they messed up. Without any rope or handcuffs, they couldn't restrain them, and there were too many of them to reasonably drag all the way back to town by the arm.
If we knock them unconscious, I think we could each carry two bodies. So how do we get them unconscious?
"GRAAAAAH! RATTLING NOCTURNES FOREVER!"
One of the bandits grabbed the dropped knife of his companion off the ground. Dual wielding it in one hand with his own in the other, he charged towards Blake, stabbing wildly into the air as though she were right in front of him the moment he started running.
The cat Faunus kicked him in the chest as soon as he got close enough to slash against her aura. It sent him flipping over himself twice, and he landed on the ground groaning in agony. Jaune winced as he noticed that the man's two knives had actually stabbed right through the palms they'd been clutched in.
"Do you guys really not know how to handle normal people?" Jaune asked.
"I do, but I don't know how to fight them!" Velvet complained.
"Same!" said Blake. "Ad…my old teacher would always train me to fight like my life depended on it! There was never a need to hold back."
"Uh-huh," Velvet confirmed, nodding. "Professor Goodwitch drilled it into our heads that we weren't to ever go easy on a Grimm, because it would be our undoing."
Crap. They can't hurt us because we're aura-users, and we can't hurt them because they aren't. This really is a good old-fashioned Mistrilian standoff.
Three of them were already down, taking Team Job from outnumbered to evenly matched, but Jaune really didn't want to overdo it with the other half of the gang if he didn't absolutely have to. These guys were packing knives, which could be lethal weapons, but to say that they would be lethal when used against him or his partners was a straight-up lie.
"I'll say it again – if you guys knock each other out, I can promise you won't be harmed," Jaune said. "A fair trial, public defenders – you said that you're citizens of Vale. You'll get the works, but only if you come quietly."
"Bullshit!" said one of the guys. "You'll kill us like you killed Isaiah, Lucien, and Cristo the second we let our guards down!"
"Velvet, can you make a Hard Light rope?" Blake suggested.
Velvet shook her head. "It wouldn't last if they struggled."
"Wait, doesn't Blake's weapon turn into a rope?" Jaune asked.
Both Jaune and Velvet turned to look over at their third teammate. Gambol Shroud was in her hands, compactly shaped in the form of a gun. Her eyes widened as she looked down at it. Letting out a long sigh, Blake held out her gun and shifted it into the hook and ribbon form.
"Sorry," she meekly apologized.
I guess I really do have something to contribute to the team after all, Jaune thought as they handed the bandit squad over to the local militia.
It wasn't their job or within the scope of their jurisdiction to arrest people, but the Faunus mayor of Temecula had the right to do so provided a citizen of his township had witnessed the crime. It was a part of Vale's laws to empower local leaders to ensure the safety of their town, and it was just enough to get Team Job off the hook in terms of responsibility.
Jaune's fears before had been partially true – he wasn't on par with the girls – but that didn't mean that they didn't need him around. He wasn't just their human shield; he could also be their bridge to the world of normal people, crossing a gap that he had never realized was so wide. Blake was ex-White Fang, and Velvet was a huntress of Beacon, presumably meaning she'd lived most of her life apart from the regular citizens of Vale. Jaune was their resident 'normal person.'
Maybe that's why I'm so good at liaising with clients. I grew up in a normal village, I went to high school, I didn't spend my childhood training in a separate sect of society – I have more in common with them than either of the huntresses do.
It was also a little alarming just how disconnected his two companions were, at least when it came to civilians in combat. To Velvet, it was a completely normal attack to throw a massive hammer into someone's legs, and Blake hadn't hesitated to send a man holding two knives tumbling down. It made sense to them, because they were used to fighting aura-users who could take it, but at least the part of Jaune's brains that protested at it were still intact. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a pro-huntsman just yet might not be a bad thing.
Mission Complete: Temecula Bandits
Client Review: They were good kids, and they did a decent job, but they might still have a little way to go. [3/5 stars]
Current Holdings (lien): Ⱡ 30,690
Current Holdings (assets): Benson Airship Rental punchcard (seven punches)
Current Holdings (realty): none
Employees: 3
Coming Soon: A House is not a Homestead
Team Job's newest employer turns out to be a bit of a curiously unpleasant fellow.