Chapter 29 – Later

Velvet tells her story, and Blake has to wrestle with some uncomfortable truths about herself and her teammates.

"How in the literal fuck does an airship cost less than the weapons tune-up?!" Velvet exclaimed as she received the receipts after Blake finished thoroughly reviewing them. "Only fifty thousand lien!"

"That's why I was so surprised by your guys' prices," Jaune said. "Mine was so much lower."

Blake hadn't expected it to be so cheap, but she was aware that airships often sounded more luxurious in one's head than in reality. People assumed that every private airship was a rich person's fancy toy, but advances in technology in the past century had really expanded the market into a range of availability.

The airship industry was no different than ships and boats that sailed the open seas. Militaries like Atlas and industries like the SDC owned massive cruisers, liners, and warships, and no one could match such things in size. One step down were personal yachts that fancy folks went out and bought as status symbols or power trips; Blake wouldn't be surprised to learn that the majority of what Jaune had seen two days prior were similar in nature as toys for the higher class.

Lastly was the Gala Canary that they had bought, basically the aeronautical equivalent of a motorboat. It wasn't something that a typical citizen could buy with the average minimum wage salary, not when it was more than a year's rent for most folks, but a company like theirs could afford it without breaking the bank.

Jaune had vanished off the face of Remnant for a day and a half and returned with an airship, though Blake was embarrassed to admit that she hadn't even noticed how long he'd been gone until he was already back. At the time, she'd been so concerned with sealing the deal on the property and wrestling with the decision of whether or not to get the AI holographic assistant that was offered for a five thousand lien markup (she'd decided not to, since they already had a secretary/greeter in the form of Jaune). But either way, Jaune was back now and with an airship he'd dubbed the 'Job Hunter' in tow.

Team Job Security was now a real company, or at least it had transformed into something that resembled one. It had all the characteristics of a security firm – transport, weaponry, an office, security consultants – but not a single, clear, identifiable qualification.

Whatever it is that they were doing, though, it was working. They had been hired for another mission even after raising their rates by 150%, and Blake was feeling hopeful about the future after that.

Velvet was a trained pilot, having taken the Beacon course that all second years had to, so she was their resident flying ace. Still, Blake insisted that both she and Jaune got their licenses, just in case.

"I don't see why," Jaune called out to her above the hum of the Gravity Dust engine. "If Velvet can fly it, there's no point in having us learn how."

"Jaune, you remember why we hired her?" Blake knew that Velvet couldn't hear her or Jaune form the pilot seat unless they yelled; the weird engine afforded them some privacy back in the rear. "The reason you asked to get another employee?"

"Well, yeah. It was because…oh."

It was because if anything happened to Blake, Jaune would be on his own and in danger. The same logic applied here, for if anything happened to Velvet, they would either be trapped in the woods with no way to fly home or, Gods forbid, falling out of the sky in a cheap sailboat tin can.

"We can get our pilot's licenses in between missions," Blake said. "You're good at learning, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

It was difficult for Blake to tell if the smoothness of the flight was due to the novel engine configuration or because they were flying a brand new bird, but it certainly was less turbulent. According to Jaune, the Job Hunter was cheaper to fly than its Wind Dust counterparts, though he admitted that it was probably a bit of a weaker engine. They might have trouble carrying substantial cargo if they ever decided to, but one human and two Faunus wouldn't be trouble.

Blake looked over at the cockpit through the small porthole in the door. It was just high enough to see the tips of Velvet's ears twitching every now and again, as they were prone to do.

"As much as I liked Benson, I think we've got a better pilot now," Jaune said, looking with Blake at the porthole. Apparently, he attributed their evenness of flight to her skills.

And yet, Blake couldn't help but wonder if she was reading too much into the way his eyes lingered on the cockpit as he praised Velvet.

"Jaune…look, I don't mean to beat a dead Nuckelavee, but are you…you can tell me if you are…are you the father?"

Jaune met her with a look of utter confusion. "The what?"

Blake nodded her head towards the cockpit.

Note to self – never call it the cockpit in the presence of Velvet.

"I said no, jeez." Jaune scowled at her a little. "It's not even possible. She's four months pregnant."

"Yes, but…"

But he and Velvet seemed like they were closer than he and Blake.

But Blake had left them unattended for hours at a time on the farm, with no adult supervision.

But Velvet had told Blake in confidence that she might be interested in pursuing Jaune.

Actually, for that last one, she just made sure that she and I weren't overlapping on one another's choice of boyfriend, so to speak. She never actually said she planned to date him; she just wanted to make sure that there would be no muscling in on my territory.

"I don't get it," moaned Jaune. "You both keep aggressively assuming that I'm dating the other. I thought I put a stop to this back at the farm."

"Yeah, but I still have no idea where the baby came from…rather, who it came from," Blake admitted. Velvet had told her that her pregnancy existed (well after she'd told Jaune, given how he'd clearly had time to process it by the time Blake was informed), but she'd withheld all other information about it.

Was she planning to carry it to term? To give it up for adoption? Was she going to request maternity leave or, worse yet, retire as a huntress? Was there a Mr. Scarlatina in the picture, hidden behind the scenes? These were questions that Blake felt like she, as the leader of Team Job, deserved an answer to. She would support Velvet no matter what choices she made, but the sooner she knew what that choice was, the better she could start planning for it.

"I barely know anything myself," Jaune said. "I mean, she told me first, but I think it was because she was doing it one at a time, not because she doesn't like you or something."

Blake didn't like admitting it, but that had been eating at her a little. Sure, Jaune was approachable, and sure, Velvet might have been interested in him romantically or sexually.

But Blake was a woman. Blake was a Faunus. Blake was a huntress, an actual huntress and not a f̶r̶a̶u̶d p̶h̶o̶n̶y apprentice like Jaune. She had everything in common with Velvet that two young people she need to form a connection, but Velvet…

It's not her fault. I chose this. I told Jaune to make himself the approachable face of the company while I stayed behind in the shadows, and this is just a byproduct of my own machinations.

"We can just ask her," Jaune said. "She's been pretty nice about everything so far. If we make it clear that we don't mind if she says no, then –"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea." Blake sighed. "Let's just…we'll talk about this later."

Asking might be the fastest way to get a straightforward answer, but there was one big problem with it. If they did the polite thing as Jaune asked and promised Velvet she could decline their questions regarding her situation, she might just take them up on that offer.

Another day, another implicitly-biased-but-never-explicitly-acknowledging-it town. Jaune took point when they met with their point of contact, but this time Blake and Velvet were at least allowed to tag along behind him, so perhaps they truly were making progress towards racial harmony.

Not every job that Team Job took on was a glamorous one, and this was firmly in the 'not' category. The Hydrust Salt Flats, an extremely dry and arid region that was just to the north of their client's mercantile outpost and wilderness hotel, was in need of a Grimm clearing, but this job involved no glorious combat or high stakes action.

"It's…It's a cactus?" Jaune asked, prodding one of the Grimm plants with his sword. "I thought Grimm were animals…?"

"Grimm take many forms," Velvet explained, placing a hand on Jaune's shoulder and pulling him away from the Grimm cactus before he could touch it. "These are Tubercules. Professor Peach taught me about them in Beacon on a mission one time. They're sedentary, functionally defenseless Grimm that don't move more than an inch a year, making them mostly harmless, but they do have decent pricks."

She was right about that. The meat of the cactus was black instead of green, but the spines were bony white and looked like they could pop a hot air balloon. They were interspersed with a distance of a few feet between them, and they continued on all the way to the edge of the mountain range that heralded the end of the dry, cracked surface of the salt flats. This place was littered with too many of them to count, but Blake expected it to be in the tens of thousands.

"The real hazard is the aerosol discharge, though," Velvet explained. "When you chop 'em in half, they release a cloud of thousands of micro Grimm spiked spores that add up and bleed people to death. As long as we have raised auras, there's nothing they can do to stop us from slicing them to bits. That's why they need us, or I'd imagine a client would just stick them with his pitchfork and uproot them."

Blake had already raised her aura, but she was pretty certain that she was Jaune's go up as the worlds came out of Velvet's mouth.

Cautiously, Blake drew her sword and approached the nearest cactus. It did nothing in response – no ominous shifting, no spikes pointing her way, no jumpscares. With a single slash of the blade, she cut it clean in half and immediately leapt away.

As Velvet had warned her, a thick spray surged outwards in all directions from both open faces of the cut Tubercule Grimm, as though it was a balloon that had been filled with smoke. None of it came anywhere near Blake, raised aura or not.

Velvet stepped up to the dying Grimm and waved her hand through the smoke. "It's harmless, you guys. Each Grimm has thousands of spores, but they're so small that they only do about a millionth of a percent of aura damage."

"You're saying…that this entire field of Grimm is going to cost less than a single percent of our aura?" Jaune asked incredulously.

Velvet nodded. "It's huntsman-only work, but most would see it as beneath them. The only reason we're even taught about them in school is because they're afraid we might waste time on them instead of dangerous Grimm if we don't recognize them during the middle of a fight."

"I guess…we just raise auras and chop?" Jaune drew Crocea mors.

Blake nodded. "Let's get chopping."

It all pays the same, Blake reminded herself as she brushed sweat off her brow and raised Gambol Shroud for the ten millionth time. They'd been methodically clearing out the Tubercules for just shy of an hour now, after Jaune realized that it would be more efficient for them if they moved in parallel rows next to one another.

He was swinging Crocea Mors in tune with some humming he was doing, having learned to pace himself and not chop with reckless abandon. Blake was used to long, repetitive workloads, having often handed out flyers for hours on end at early White Fang rallies, so this was nothing new to her.

Given how quickly they tore through the field, Blake estimated that they would be able to finish it off before nightfall, which would save them having to come out here again, but it meant a long hard day of work ahead of them. Still, there was no risk in this mission of failure – the Grimm were rooted down and would offer no resistance to being massacred.

The cacti were surprisingly light, not at all like tree trunks. They had a certain springy sponginess to them that let her sword carve right through them with ease. Honestly, the most exhausting part was just the amount of walking they had to do, exacerbated by the hot sun.

For some reason, Velvet had refused to borrow Jaune's dirk and was uprooting the cacti with her bare hands and snapping them. As always, the rabbit girl was insisting on never using an actual weapon other than her camera, and the Hard Light Dust costs alone would eat through Team Job Security's entire bank account if she broke out an ethereal sword or scythe from Anesidora to chop down every stem, stalk, or root. Blake might have complained about the inefficiency of Velvet using her own two hands if she weren't somehow moving faster through her row than Jaune and Blake were in theirs.

She really is a good huntress. Hiring her seems to have proven to be a good call…so far.

Blake was mostly sure that her reticence was professional uncertainty and not personal curiosity regarding the baby, even though she knew for a fact she was feeling both to a degree.

Velvet was ahead of her, so there was no risk in sneaking a peak. She hadn't noticed before, but when she knew to look at Velvet's stomach for signs of growth, it wasn't difficult to see them.

"Heya, Velvet," Jaune said, breaking their silence. He glanced over at Blake, chewing on his lips, then back to the rabbit who was in front of them both. "You said you might be willing to tell us about your, ah, situation later. Is now a good time?"

Blake shot him a dirty look, but he just shrugged.

This fucking guy. He's getting too big for his britches if he thinks that he can…

…can…

…can what? Ask Velvet a question? Ignore Blake's instructions otherwise? She may have been the team's leader, but she really had no way to police his personal behavior, nor did she possess the right, e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶r̶e̶c̶i̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶d̶d̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶e̶p̶e̶n̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶k̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶.

"You don't have to tell us if it makes you uncomfortable," Jaune went on. "It just seems like we have a lot of time on our hands. If you'd prefer, I could tell my own st –"

"It's fine. Now that the big secret's out, there's really no need to hide the little details."

Velvet stopped breaking down the cacti, but she was so far ahead that there was no risk of her falling behind.

Her hands reached across her tummy, gripping the opposite sides of the bottom of her shirt, and she lifted it, raising the shirt up.

"Woah!" Jaune shouted, holding up a hand to block his view. "Don't need to see your badonkas, Vel!"

Blake also averted her eyes as more and more bare skin was revealed. "If you could cool it on the rampant whorishness, that'd be great."

"Relax, you guys. I'd never flash you unless you wanted me to. I'm just showing you how far along I am. You can look."

Mmmmm…I really don't want to…

Against her better judgment, Blake peeked.

Velvet had stopped lifting her shirt when her stomach was exposed, thankfully keeping anything above the xiphoid process covered. Without the covering of her shirt's fabric to obscure it, the size of her bulging belly was now even more apparent. If there were any questions about the pregnancy's legitimacy, this quelled them all.

"I said four, but it's probably closer to five months now." Velvet lowered down her shirt and tucked it in. "I'm keeping it, and I'm going to be a mother. That's already been decided. As for maternity leave, I think I can keep working for a lot longer. As long as my aura doesn't break, it'll keep boosting me and preventing any complications, so there's no need for anything like maternity leave for months."

"But you do need regular checkups," Blake said.

Velvet nodded and started snapping the Grimm cacti again. "I do."

"And you will need time off to take care of the baby once it's born.

Again, Velvet nodded in agreement, though she was looking a little uncomfortable with where this conversation was going. "Mm-hmm."

"How'd it happen?" Jaune asked. "If you don't mind sharing. A-And, uh, leaving out the saucy details."

Velvet shrugged. "It's no crazy story or anything. My boyfriend at the time was Vytal student from Shade who'd come for the tournament last year but stayed at Beacon as a transfer until the year ended. We knew it would end when he went back home, but we both figured we could have a little fun while he was here."

"Have a little fun," Blake repeated aimlessly.

"Look, we didn't just fuck," Velvet harshly scolded. "We sparred, we went on dates at the tournament festival, we had picnics…and we also fucked."

There was a sharpness to the typically pleasant girl's tone that made Blake immediately regret how flippantly she'd phrased it. "I…s-sorry."

"I'm not a bad person or something," Velvet mumbled. "I always take care to make sure no one gets hurt. It was my dumb choice to not use protection, not his, so I'm the one who's handling this. My ex doesn't even know what's…what's become of me. He's older than I am, so it's not like I took advantage of an adolescent kid."

Blake wasn't sure if keeping the knowledge that this transfer student boyfriend of hers was to be a father was still ethical, but she did have to admit that Velvet was good for her word otherwise. She'd taken great care to make sure that Blake wasn't interested in Jaune before making any moves, and as promiscuous as she'd acted in the time Blake had known her, Blake could only recall it having been consensual. She did say that she didn't try to get a discount from the blacksmith, and she'd never said or done anything to make anyone she flirted with uncomfortable.

"My ex-boyfriend wasn't the type to get tied down," Velvet explained, pressing her boot onto a cactus and knocking it down by shifting her weight forward. "I know what you're thinking – he deserves to know. But I know him better than either of you, and I know that the stress of it would be worse for him. He had another girl lined up for himself back at Shade, and we agreed when we started that he and I weren't going to catch feels. If I saddled him with a baby, child-support, and all those responsibilities, I'd be ruining his life. He might have to drop out of Shade, and he's the leader of his team, and…" Velvet pressed a hand to her forehead and ran it along the top of her head. "It's better this way. Even if I sometimes resent that he gets to stay on Team Mascarpone when I had to leave Team Coffee."

"I'm sorry," Blake said again.

"It's not your fault." Velvet chuckled. "It's mine and mine alone."

"Not for that," Blake said. "For…For…"

It was becoming clearer and clearer why Velvet had gone to Jaune first. Blake had never done anything overt, but like the humans at the mercantile that had employed them for this job, she'd judged Velvet in her heart. It was little things, unkind words here or there coupled with judgmental glances whenever Velvet did something that Blake herself didn't personally approve of, that added up over time to make her feel less welcome.

I was the one that put up the barriers between us. Velvet might be jokingly crude at worst, but it's her choice who she dates or sleeps with, and I have no right to insult her for it.

At the time, she'd felt thoroughly justified – Velvet had flirted with Benson, and Blake had called her a freak. Velvet had revealed her pregnancy, and Blake had shamed her for it. Velvet had grabbed her shirt and showed her stomach, and Blake described it as…it was impossible not to cringe at her own words from moments ago.

Looking back, Velvet hadn't really done anything to warrant such toxic invective. She was a nineteen-year-old adult who went the extra mile further than most people to not hurt those she involved in her antics, and that wasn't Blake's place to judge. Not after some of the lines she'd crossed with Adam back when only one of them was underage.

Blake was still in the middle of an apology to Velvet, and she needed to say something to finish it.

"I'm sorry for…"

"It's fine," Velvet said, smiling faintly. "Let's get back to the cacti, shall we?"

It wasn't really fine, as a matter of fact, but dragging it out would only put Velvet on the spot for Blake's own closure, so Blake gave her an answer by raising Gambol Shroud and mowing down two Tubercules in a single swing.

"There's one thing I don't get," Jaune said, hacking at his own cactus from far behind the two girls. He'd evidently gotten distracted by Velvet's explanation of her backstory and lagged behind.

"What's that?"

"You dropped out of Beacon because you of scheduling, right?" he asked. "You couldn't do classes and be a huntress while also having a baby and all the responsibilities that come with that."

Velvet nodded. "That's right."

"But…how will you be a security consultant if motherhood has the same time commitments and scheduling issues?"

"W-Wehehell, uhhhh…I, uh…"

Blake wasn't sure why Velvet was suddenly so bashful about the topic. She'd been fairly bold regarding her life choices even when they weren't the best, and she certainly never seemed ashamed of her own actions, for better or worse.

"I, uh, may have gotten an insider tip from Ruby that it really was just you two, and I may have exaggerated just how big I thought the company was when I joined."

"What?" Blake asked.

She kept her face forward, facing the cacti ahead of her so that she needn't turn back when answering them. "So, I knew it was just you guys, but I pretended I thought it was bigger."

It clicked in Blake's head when she realized the implications of Team Job being a cozy little company of three, where everyone was everyone's personal buddy. Is she saying that she played us?

"Why?" Jaune asked.

"You see, the reason is…u-um. It's kinda difficult to explain without, uh…yeah. Honesty is a lot harder than they make it…mmm." Velvet gulped nervously and wiped her cheeks. "Whew, is it hot out here, or is it just me?"

Blake intervened to explain before the rabbit Faunus could stutter herself into an early grave. "She was counting on befriending us and taking advantage of our closeness to not be fired, Jaune."

Velvet bit her lip and squinted anxiously, finally finding the courage to turn and face them, albeit timidly.

"I-Is it working?" the rabbit asked.

Mission Complete: Hydrust Salt Flats

Client Review: They did a good job clearing the flats of the Grimm, but they finished at night and the notification that the mission was complete woke me, so I took off one star. Also, I took off another star for each of the Faunus that they sent, but returned a star because there was a human on the team. [3/5 stars]

Current Holdings (lien): Ⱡ 98,100

Current Holdings (assets): Job Hunter airship

Current Holdings (realty): Team Job office (Vale branch)

Employees: 3

Coming Soon: Want a Break from the Bad?

Repeat after me: I need a vacation.

Author's Notes

Backshot backstory, I guess? There might be something wrong with me.

Some people mentioned how odd it was that Velvet though she was signing on to a big company but didn't mind when it turned out to be a little one. I guess those people can see the future.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!