Chapter 16 – An Eye for Riches
Blake and Jaune discover who's been robbing the SDC stagecoach, but what are they to do with that knowledge?
Jaune had never realized just how much a stupid kid he was until Blake had laid it out in front of him. For so long, he'd truly believed that no one in the world had it worse than him. Kicked out of his dream school, forced to work for a living – absolutely unheard of!
Gods, I'm not even that special. Tons of people have sob stories like me. It's not even a sob story; it just the normal life of a man with a job!
Jaune had spent about a month with this startup company, and that had been enough to make it more valuable to him than the Faunus he had pretended to be caring about. Sure, they weren't going to die if this stagecoach made it over the Big Rock Sugar Mountain Range, but it was spitting on the memory of those who died by helping. He was choosing to aid the SDC in a direct way, while still claiming to sympathize with their victims. If someone had packed a sandwich for General Lagune and claimed to be on the right side of the Faunus Rights Revolution, they would be a hypocrite just as much as Jaune was right now.
Blake was right; they couldn't just complete this mission and wash their hands of it when they finished. They needed to do something. It was a chance to act against corruption and crime, not to aid it.
But I wasn't wrong in what I said before. Blake and I are two kids with barely a full hunter's worth of training between us both. How do we stop this, all while preferably avoiding jail?
Failing the mission sounded like a decent starting point, but that would just have the SDC hiring another team of bandit hunters. They could lie, but that would be revealed when the next stagecoach showed up with its lien payload missing.
Blake was going to steal the Dust from them, but that airship has flown away. The Dust is in Vale, and if we raid or destroy these supplies, it only means that the people in that village lose out. We'd be hurting the ones we're trying to protect.
Maybe it would be best if we stop whoever is bandit-ing the money first and then figure out what to do. Maybe with them in custody, we might have more or better options. Blake is smart; she can think of something.
Unfortunately, Blake seemed just as wrapped up in her own thoughts as Jaune had been for most of the ride. For some unknown reason, she was a bit jarred by their argument.
I hope we're still partners at the end of this. Even if we both said some things we might regret, I don't want to lose my best friend.
Well, the best way to keep her trust was to do right by her ideals. That meant stopping the SDC…somehow. Jaune would do his best to think of something.
They both kept their eyes peeled on the windows, carefully watching for bandits to swarm in from any angle, which made it all the more confusing when the lock of the cargo hold was broken and the lien was all gone.
Blake had wanted to stretch her legs again – for real this time, not to sabotage the stagecoach – and she'd been the one to notice it.
"The lock's been torn right off," Blake said as she inspected the crime scene. "The entire mechanism's missing, like someone with aura just ripped it off. You see the way the metal twists? It was brute strength, not a key or bolt cutters."
Well, crap. Now we've really got nothing to show for this.
"We were watching the entire time," Jaune said. "Did you see anything?"
Blake shook her head.
"Then how did they get to the cargo container?"
Jaune stepped back to get a more holistic look at the situation in front of him. The stagecoach continued to merrily trod along, undamaged. The undercarriage compartment in which they'd been hiding looked like it was a part of the engine, meaning that no one outside should have known that Jaune and Blake were hidden in there.
It's not impossible to think that someone could have slipped by us. If they jumped through the trees, they could stay out of sight. The two questions that remain are how they knew we were looking and how they did all that stuff without us noticing. I might not be super observant or anything, but I'm fairly certain I would've heard a troop of bandits landing on the stagecoach from above and rummaging around in it.
"I'm stumped," Blake said when Jaune looked at her.
Hmmmm. They only took the lien…
Maybe this wasn't something to be solved by looking at it from afar. Maybe he needed to get in closer.
"Blake," Jaune called over to her. "Could you check the nails?"
"Huh? Oh, right." Blake flipped open the hatch and slipped into the box. After a few minutes of rummaging around and checking the containers of materials and supplies, she eventually opened up a box that contained an assortment of hand tools (mostly screwdrivers and hex wrenches), several wound up brown and tan rope piles, and countless unopened cartons of steel nails.
"They didn't take them?" Jaune asked, coming closer to the stagecoach so he could speak to Blake without shouting. "But why not?"
"No clue." Blake's lips curled upwards into a smile. "But if they always take the lien and the nails…"
"…then they might come back," Jaune finished for her. "Good idea, partner!"
"We couldn't see the from the undercarriage," Blake pointed out. "Unless we want a rerun of earlier today, we're going to need to get a better vantage point. If we hide out in the forests and watch the stagecoach from afar…"
Jaune nodded. "Let's do it."
For some reason, Blake looked a little squirrely at that. "Um…what…what do you want to do?"
"What?" Jaune asked. "You just said we need to put some distance and watch it from –"
"Y-Yeah, but…do you agree?"
"I…sure? Yes?"
Was she testing him? She'd done it on missions before, but this was a bit of a weird test. Blake had already described the best choice they had. Did she maybe want him to add something of his own to prove he could think independently and come up with ideas?
"Maybe, just in case, we get one person to stay in the stagecoach," Jaune offered. "We have two pairs of eyes, and we can optimize them with two vantage points…I guess?"
"Sure, then. We'll do it. Where do you want to be?"
"Well, I'd prefer to be outside and in the thick of the action, but strategically you're probably better suited to –"
"I'll take the carriage, then." Blake hopped off the stagecoach and started to crawl into the small space beneath it. "Keep your eyes peeled, Jaune."
Okay, it was officially weird. Blake was the better huntress of the two of them. Jaune may have wanted to be the one in the cool spot, outside and fending off bandits, but logically it made more sense for her to be out there and for him to be in there.
Maybe she knows something I don't? I don't like making this many assumptions about Blake's reasoning, though.
It was too late now. She'd sealed herself in, and he needed to get into position. There was no telling when the bandits would return, and Jaune didn't want to risk being seen and frightening them off.
"CA-HAW! CA-HAW! CA-HAW!"
Before Jaune could even abscond into the woods, a bird flapped out of the skies and flew right through the still open roof of the stagecoach that Blake had just come out of.
"What?"
The bird hopped once to angle itself towards him, and Jaune realized it was no bird.
"CA-HAW!"
Its beak and face were covered in bone.
"Blake!" Jaune rapidly rapped his knuckles against the undercarriage. Leaning down, he stuck his face in front of one of the one-way windows and waved violently. "Blake, get out here!"
"CA-HAW!"
The Grimm bird, a rather large Nevermore that wasn't quite big enough to shake off the title of Juvenile, dug its beak through the open box of and shook it violently. The tools were strewn about the cargo box, and several loops of rope wrapped around the Nevermore's body as it threw them randomly, fishing about for whatever it sought.
When one of the boxes of the shiny steel nails spilled open, the Nevermore didn't hesitate to scoop them up in its beak.
"CWA-HWAH!" it screeched at Jaune once more, this time with a mouth full of nails, then began to fly away.
The door of the undercarriage space was just opening up when Jaune realized that their 'bandit' was about to get away.
He didn't want to abandon Blake, but she was a veteran huntress who could chase after him. Losing their only lead would be disastrous. Jaune ran after the bird.
There's no way I can chase something that flies! What do I do?
The rope…it was still wrapped around the bird! Putting all of his speed into a quick sprint, Jaune raced forward and dove ahead to catch the rope that was dangling from the Nevermore's body.
He caught it in one hand and grabbed hold of a nearby tree to stabilize himself in the other. Overhead, the Nevermore began to screech like a maniac and flap about wildly, but that only seemed to tangle its body up more in the coiled rope.
"Jaune!" Blake cried. She'd finally gotten out of the box and was racing over to join him. "What's the pro…wait, is that a Grimm?"
"Help!"
Blake flicked her weapon off her wrist and aimed it at the Nevermore's body. Jaune anxiously waited for her to pull the trigger as it flailed about and dragged him around from the sky, but the bullet never came.
"How did you catch a Grimm?"
"It flew into the thing to steal the dudes!"
"The…The nails? It stole them?"
Jaune nodded. "Shoot it!"
Blake continued to finger her weapon's trigger, but she held off.
"Jaune, I think we should follow it!"
"What? Are you crazy?!"
Blake shook her head. "If it stole the nails, it probably stole the lien as well! We can get it back! Magpies have been known to hoard shiny objects that catch their fancy back at their nests. The Nevermore is probably doing the same."
"It's not a magpie! What if it tries to kill me?!"
"I've got Gambol aimed at it, and you have your…your…o-okay. We'll kill it."
The sudden change in Blake's stance caught Jaune by surprise. "What?"
"If you think we should kill it, then I'll shoot it."
The bird jerked over to the side, and Jaune was nearly thrown off his feet. Blake raised her gun once more and took aim.
"N-No! Wait! Why are you…what's going on?"
"You're a valued member of Team Job, Jaune," Blake said, one eye closed as she tried to line up a good shot. "I need to listen to you more."
"No! Don't listen to me! Blake, why are you suddenly all subservient every time I say something dumb?"
Blake took her eyes off the Nevermore and looked directly at Jaune as he was pulled about on the end of the rope. "I don't want to keep treating you poorly, Jaune! You're my friend, and I've been treating you like a diversion or bait or a…a…a human shield! I won't make you humiliate yourself by being tossed about by a Grimm on a rope if you don't want to!"
Well, Jaune didn't want to, but Blake had actually been right about following the Nevermore back to its nest. Grimm weren't animals, but they did have animalistic traits – fish Grimm swam, Beowolves packed up and obeyed the Alphas, so it logically followed that a thieving magpie of a Nevermore might have a treasure trove of precious objects stored up somewhere. Plus, they literally had it on the ropes here. Blake could shoot it at her leisure if anything went wrong.
"I've changed my mind! Let's have it lead us to the stash!"
"Jaune, you don't have to –"
"Blake, we can talk our stuff out later, when I'm not on the end of a rope being yanked around by a flapping featherhead! Let's just…we'll chase it first, okay?"
Blake swallowed and nodded at Jaune. "Okay."
Jaune let go of the branch he'd been holding onto for support, and he was immediately pulled off his feet and thrown to the ground. The Nevermore kept flying, dragging a tag-along Jaune with it, but the extra weight slowed it down enough that Blake could keep up. Her gun was out, but she was no longer pointing it at the Grimm.
After two minutes of his aura being shredded against the twigs and pine needles of the forest floor (they weren't yet at the snowy part), the Nevermore stopped flying forward and started trying to fly upwards.
"Jaune!" Blake called, catching up mere seconds later. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Jaune said, rising up in the air. The Nevermore was flying upwards to furiously that he was actually being picked up off his feet.
"Take my hand!"
Jaune grabbed hold of Blake, and she held anchor him down by grabbing the nearest tree. This nearby tree also happened to have a rather sizeable hole up near the top of it, Jaune just so happened to notice. A sizeable hole with a glint of light coming from within…
"I think we found the nest," he grunted, straining to hold himself down. "If you're ready, you can take the shot…"
Blake had to let go of Jaune's hand to go over and grab her gun from where she'd dropped it to save him from being lifted away, but he nodded to let her know he approved. She dove for the gun, and he slowly began to rise off the ground, about three inches per second.
Blake sniped the Nevermore with two shots, and Jaune dropped out of the sky by about a foot. It was still enough of a fall to make him lose his footing and drop to the ground in a silly heap.
"Jaune!"
"I'm okay, I'm okay."
"S-Sorry."
Looking himself over, Jaune couldn't see exactly what she was so sorry about. His aura was still pretty high, and aside from a nice coating of sticks and leaves, he was otherwise unharmed.
"Sorry about letting you be dragged about," Blake said.
We did agree to talk it out when the Grimm was dead and the danger passed. I guess that's now.
Jaune decided to put and end to this, whatever it was. "Blake, I agreed to it."
"Yes, but it wasn't pleasant. I know you want to be a huntsman, but every mission, it seems like I treat you like a sidekick when I slay the Grimm. I don't want you to feel humiliated or emasculated."
Truth be told, he wasn't feeling like that. He'd actually felt pretty proud of himself for the success he'd had in the past few missions, though he could at least see where she was coming from.
What was truly humiliating was what he had to admit to Blake next. "Blake, the truth is, I am a sidekick."
"Jaune, I'm so –"
"But that's okay. I'm training to be a real huntsman. I used to think that it would be easy – I was gonna watch you on our first mission and just do the same movements, and that would be all there was too it – but I've been in the field enough times now to know that I kinda suck. And, yeah, I want to be a hero, but that's why we're training, right?"
"R-Right. But I haven't been treating you right. And that's going to change. I promise, Jaune."
Blake really looked beat up about this. Jaune had no clue what brought on this sudden change in her personality, especially since she'd been fiery and irate about how poorly he'd handled the SDC earlier in the afternoon.
"Blake, we had an agreement. I would be the face, you would be the business. I would take the training, you would take the money."
"An unfair agreement!" Blake spat out. "You're being swindled, Jaune, and I'm ashamed at how long I let it happen."
"Do you not know what agreements are? It's where we agree! Blake, I like things the way they are. I'm getting better every day, and Team Job Security is getting more and more missions because we've both specialized in our respective fields. We had a deal – when I beat you in a spar, we equalize our payments. To me, it's completely fair."
Blake didn't seem all that convinced, kicking at her heels as she was. "I just want you to feel like you're a member of the team. Not just…not a…not a human."
"I am a human," Jaune said dumbly, before realizing what Blake meant. It wasn't particularly clear out of context, but taking into account how she'd been ranting about the way the SDC treated her own species, it made perfect sense what she truly meant.
"Okay," he said. "Just…treat me like an equal, and I'll do the same, okay? You don't need to let me call the shots when I'm making poor choices, nor should you censor yourself so I can speak first." She'd nearly cost them the mission by letting Jaune decide who stayed outside of the stagecoach to compensate for her own authority over him, and it benefitted neither of them to have that kind of mindset on the team. "We're student and teacher, but we're also partners, right?"
Blake thought it over for a second, then nodded. "Partners."
"Now, then. Partner." Jaune looked up to the top of the tree that the Nevermore had been trying to escape into. "I think we have a nest to loot."
Blake had crawled up to the top of the tree and thrown stuff down to Jaune, resulting in them accumulating a rather sizeable pile at the base of the tree. The missing lien was there, but there was also a lot more than lien.
When Jaune finished tallying up the spoils, there was 820,000 lien, enough nails to build a house, several shellfish shells (specifically those of the abalone), two ball bearings, a single earring, eighteen obsolete arcade tokens, and a long strand of holiday tinsel. The mystery of the SDC's missing money was solved, as well as a lot of other things that their thieving Nevermore must have stolen from elsewhere.
"I feel like I might go blind just looking upon this many shiny things," Blake said.
"It is quite bright," Jaune concurred.
"I guess we'd better bring this stuff to the stagecoach," Blake said, gazing out at the money. "Might take a few trips."
Jaune shook his head, quite forlornly. "Unfortunately, no, we can't. The stagecoach was destroyed by the bandits."
Blake nodded in agreement, then paused and furrowed her brow. "Eh? P-Pardon…?"
"Fortunately, we took care of them, as instructed. I don't think that ruthless gang of, shall we say, fifteen heavily armed bandits, will be plaguing the next stagecoach the SDC builds, will it? Hope it's not too expensive."
Blake looked at Jaune, then back down at the money. "O-Oh. OOOOOH. Oh, okay. I think I follow."
Again, Jaune just shook his head. "I don't think you do. It's not our money, Blake, but it's not the SDC's either. I'm sure you must know some Faunus charity. We can fly back around on Benson's airship and collect it without the SDC ever knowing."
Jaune had been right. There was no way two children could stop a multi-trillion lien corporation in any significant way.
Blake had also been right. The SDC couldn't be allowed to just win here, not when they were so vile to their workers.
But that didn't mean they couldn't find some way to make the SDC writhe from within the restrictions of their abilities. Over 800,000 lien was going back into the hands of the people who deserved it, and while that might not have meant much to the shareholders of the SDC compared to their total profits, it might make a world of difference for the Faunus who needed it.
Just for laughs and giggles, Jaune was also going to tell the SDC that the price of their airship rental was double what it actually was, since they'd offered to comp them for it. It was just another way to bleed those bastards dry.
We can't stop them, but that doesn't mean we can't screw them over as much as we want. They'll never know the difference and will think this was a job well done.
Plus, I think Blake's gonna enjoy getting to trash their stagecoach.
Mission Complete: SDC/Big Rock Sugar Mountain Range
Client Review: [we kindly ask that you please leave a review for Team Job Security, thanks!] [5/5 stars]
Current Holdings (lien): Ⱡ 23,600
Current Holdings (assets): Benson Airship Rental punchcard (five punches)
Current Holdings (realty): none
Employees: 2
Coming Soon: New Blood
Is it possible to slide a new letter in between the J and B in Team JB?
Author's Notes
Would it even be a Job Security if they didn't find a way to screw over their clients at some point?
Blake was wrong, but so was Jaune in a sense. Sure, he wasn't at fault for what they were doing, but that doesn't change the fact that they were directly aiding slavery. They had no choice, at least until they did.
Team Job grows ever closer. I have no doubt they'll be fucking in no time (Rat's note: they won't).
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
