Author's Notes

RIP The Murderess and Her Brain. Job Security had finally surpassed her in terms of views on in spite of being a third of the length so far. She now joins B- Parenting, K, RWBY But Worse, Tuna, Hero, and Villain in that category.

Only the titans (Living The Dream, Origin Story, and The Empty Rockabye) stand in its way, though Job Security already has more followers than all of them (and more favs, except for LTD).

I don't wanna keep beating a dead horse, but it's just so jarring. I'm averaging 1.7k views per chapter, whereas B- Parenting gets about 700. Origin Story has an overall average of 800 views per chapter, and that's including the time that it's been finished and was just accumulating views off of Hero and Villain without any updates.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!


Chapter 17 – New Blood

Is it possible to slide a new letter in between the J and B in Team JB?


It was still impossible for Team Job to spar using their hunter weapons, but Blake expected they would soon be able to afford a more regular subscription to a huntsman gym. Should that fail, they could easily just reserve a wide-open space or even just exit the walls of the kingdoms and duel in the woods outside.

They had another mission on deck – standard Grimm clearing for some tiny village that was being plagued by them, but Benson's airship was having its tires rotated (Blake had no idea how or why), so they were going to have to wait two days until it finished with all of its inspections. The town in question had agreed to wait, as their local militia was able to scare off the Grimm with their handmade pikes, and Team Job were the only folks they could afford.

Having an SDC recommendation, as bland as it was, was going to be what they needed to draw in more and more business. People might not care about what the fishing village of the Lake of Lost Voles had to say about an up-and-coming team of security consultants, but when the biggest company in the world hired them, that would mean something to some…to a lot, actually. Blake despised using that damnable company for clout as they had, but at least she'd managed to get two or three fast ones over them when they had.

However, until those jobs came pouring in, they were still paupers with just under 30,000 lien to their name, so it was sparring in the public park once again. Since swords would draw too much attention, Blake was just showing Jaune some martial arts and hand-to-hand combat.

"Arms up!" she said, kicking at him from the side. "You're too big to out-speed me. Use your advantages."

Her leg collided with his arms and sent him tumbling backwards. "Yeah, but what exactly are those?"

"It's up to you to find those out!"

He had actually just used them, but Blake wasn't going to tell him that. That bulky aura of his, it made kicking him the equivalent of kicking an extra strength plank of wood rather than soft squishy flesh, and he could probably keep it up all day. On top of that, he was physically bigger than most, meaning that he could tank hits like she'd just inflicted without going down instantly. A higher center of mass was costly, but Arc made up with it by having probably forty pounds on her, and even more when he wore his full armor.

Jaune made the mistake of trying to go on the offensive and received a nasty punch to the gut for his efforts, but the gentle giant of a man just shrugged it off and tried again. This time, though, he saw that she was too slippery to be swiped by a single, easily avoided fist and went instead for a bear hug.

So he can learn from his mistakes. That's a good sign.

It felt unfair to drop a shadow clone to get out of Arc's grab, and Blake's pride would never recover if she could only win against this boy by using her semblance when he didn't have his, so she instead thrust out her forearms and shoved them into Arc's own wrists at perpendicular angles. His strength was equivalent to hers, but his entire attention span was on to tops of their bodies, leaving him vulnerable at the bottom.

Blake didn't kick him as much as she slid his right foot further right with her shoe. The sudden change to his base made him lose even more balance as he instinctively tried to lift up his foot and correct his posture, only surrendering even more footing in the movement.

His arms fell away as his brain ceased to be aware of their existence in favor of his legs, and Blake could easily push them back. A single thrusted palm to his forehead sent him flying backwards.

"Yaaaaaah!" Jaune screamed, spinning through the air.

"Woah!" said the civilian towards whom he was sailing.

Crap!

Blake reached for Gambol to throw it and catch him, but they hadn't brought their weapons, meaning there was nothing she could do as Jaune crashed right into the random parkgoer.

Shit! A couple of unlicensed aura users breaking some girl's legs – we'll drown in lawsuits!

Oh, and also it's bad if people get hurt!

But the expected impact never came. Jaune, in spite of easily being a head taller than the girl (aside from the long hat she was wearing), landed right in her outstretched arms.

"Gaaah!" he shrieked, his arms still flailing.

"Wohohoah, down boy." Jaune was unceremoniously dropped to the ground by the girl, though his aura prevented any serious damage. "You alright?"

"W-Whuh? Where…what happened?"

The girl…no, the Faunus girl, for it wasn't a hat on her head but a tall pair of rabbit ears, looked over at Blake. "Seems like your partner sniped you. Lucky thing I was there to catch'ya, eh?"

"Yeah, I guess. Ma'am, are you okay? Blake threw me pretty hard."

Something…Something about this rubbed Blake the wrong way. Apart from the fact that this girl had just casually caught a flying boy out of midair without so much as a flinch, the way she just instantly referred to him as 'partner' wasn't exactly normal.

I mean, it could have been normal, but partner is also a term with a different meaning in huntsman culture.

She was a Faunus…Blake didn't want to let that color her judgment of this teenaged girl, lest she be no different than the racist humans she'd spent most of her life trying to stop, but any agent the White Fang sent to silence Blake would be a Faunus…

"Me? I'm fine, thanks for asking." The girl gave a silly little mock salute at the two of them, then reached a hand down to Jaune. "Her ya go, big guy."

When he took it, she lifted him right back up like he weight no more than a sack of apples. The ease with which she displayed her strength wasn't that of a civilian. It was far too early to do something stupid like attack her, but Blake's guard was raised.

"Thank you for catching him," she called over to the duo. "Now let's continue our spar, Jaune."

"S-So…not trying to sound creepy, but you're Jaune Arc?" asked the rabbit Faunus girl. "Is that you, mister?"

Another point against her favor – if the White Fang had truly tracked down Blake, they would know who she kept company with. The fact that it was a human might have enraged Adam to the point that he would send an assassin.

"Jaune, come over here," Blake said authoritatively, as though she were his mother. It felt wrong to sound so condescending, but he was unaware of the potential danger this rabbit posed. His aura might not have even been up.

Jaune quickly crossed the divide between the two Faunus and came closer to Blake, almost hiding behind her. "H-How do you know my name?!"

"Aura up, Jaune." Blake balled up her fists. "Stay close to me."

"No, no, no!" The girl raised both hands in surrender. "I'm sorry! I'm not trying to be creepy, I swear! I just heard from Ruby that you two liked to train here and the website didn't say where your office was! Please, I'm really sorry!"

Ruby? Wasn't that the girl who Jaune befriended at Beacon or something? And did she say website?

"Are you a client?" Blake asked.

"Are you Team Job Security?" the girl asked back.

"Yes, but we normally do our business electronically," Blake said. The books said that a paper trail, even a digital one, was preferrable to any sort of verbal or handshake agreement that could be reneged on with no proof of it even having existed in the first place.

"I'm not a client, but I do have business I'd like to discuss. Can we talk somewhere?"

Blake looked the girl over. She was wearing cargo pants and a camo-colored T-shirt beneath a gray hoodie that screamed 'trying not to stand out.' Atop her head of long, chestnut hair was a pair of rabbit ears, a Faunus trait so apparent that it would never have been hidden, even if she tried to cover them with the hoodie. She didn't look like much, but neither did Blake.

Assuming she's some timid rabbit because of her trait could be the death of me, of us both.

"Our office is currently being renovated," Jaune said to her. "If you'd like to chat somewhere indoors, we can –"

"Oh, out here is fine. Better, actually. The park has picnic tables. Do you guys wanna talk over some lunch?"

Jaune and Blake shared a glance.

"Sure," Blake said. "We can grab some fast food."

"Oh, I brought some," said the rabbit girl. Turning around, she reached into a cooler that was placed on the ground and pulled out some sandwiches wrapped in plastic. "You guys like egg salad?"


Blake could only cringe as Jaune tucked into that sandwich of his with no regard for the poisons or toxins that it could have been laced with. Not even a lethal concoction – drugging them until they were susceptible to kidnapping would be enough.

Naturally, she didn't touch her own. Velvet, which was either her name or her White Fang pseudonym, was also scarfing down the food she'd brought, which was a good sign, but she could have administered the antidote or only poisoned one sandwich.

Or it's possible I'm being paranoid. Let's see what she has to say.

"So, you mentioned Ruby?" Blake asked. That was the only reason she'd even agreed to hear out this Faunus. White Fang hitwomen tended to not know the names of old chums from their target's single night at Beacon.

"Yeah. I'd heard about you guys, and word got around that she personally knew you, so I just asked if she might know where I could find you."

"And…you were just waiting for us? In the park?"

Velvet nodded. "Only since this morning. If I couldn't find you that way, I would've tried elsewhere, but it all worked out."

"Dhwaang," Jaune said, wiping some egg salad from his cheek. He swallowed before speaking. "You must really wanna hire us."

"Ehhhnnnhhh." Velvet took another bit from her sandwich after emanating that uncomfortable sound. "Not…Not quite. You see, I'm…well, obviously, I'm from Beacon."

This was starting to sound less and less like a White Fang assassination attempt, but the danger wasn't passed just yet. "Did Ozpin send you?" Blake asked, finally feeling comfortable enough to accept the free lunch.

"The headmaster?" Velvet really seemed surprised to have been asked. "No, I've never even met that guy aside from speeches and one award ceremony. It's just, word gets around. Team LTUC might be a bunch of blowhards, but they're a year above…above my old team, and I heard on the grapevine that they said you guys were good about hiring Faunus."

There was a lot to unpack there.

Firstly, the fact that they were apparently a common name in Beacon made Blake a little uneasy. She knew Ozpin was aware of Team Job, but she'd never intended to become sort of pariah among the real hunters.

Second, the way this girl talk about her 'old' team at Beacon was a little concerning. She said that Team LTUC, who Blake believed were fourth years about to graduate, were a year ahead of her, meaning that Velvet was a third year. That wasn't the age of someone who was about to leave Beacon the normal way, which was graduation.

Thirdly…

"Hiring? You want a job?" Jaune asked incredulously. "With us?"

Velvet nodded vigorously. "I brought a resume. It's mostly empty, but I do have two and a half complete years of Beacon under my belt as a member of Team Coffee. Quite decorated, I might add."

She bent over into the cooler and pulled out a stack of papers. Taking two from the top, she handed them to Jaune and Blake each.

Blake didn't even read the resume. Jaune seemed to be poring over it like he was…well, like he was Blake with a fictional book, but it didn't matter what qualifications Velvet could boast.

"We're not hiring at the moment. And I think you might have made a mistake – we aren't hunters."

"No, I know that, ma'am. You're…You're security consultants." Velvet seemed to be unsure of exactly how to phrase her words properly. "You aren't…but you do…but it's okay, because…I'm…I'm not licensed."

"If you don't mind me asking," Jaune said with a curious glance between the resume and the girl, "why not?"

Blake did mind him asking, because they didn't need to ask Velvet any questions when they didn't need to hire her in the first place, but she allowed her to answer if only to satisfy Jaune's curiosity.

"I'm…I'm a dropout, sir. It's not because of poor schoolwork or troublemaking; I just couldn't stay in school any longer."

"…why not?" Jaune asked. "I mean, I'd like to respect your privacy, Velvet, but I think we need to know if we're going to consider hiring you."

Okay, that was far enough. Blake tapped Jaune on the shoulder, forcing herself to smile. "A word…boss?"

That was essentially their codeword to communicate to one another that whatever they had to say wasn't something that present company could hear.

"We'll just be a moment," Jaune said as he sat up from the picnic table. "Excellent sandwiches, by the way."

"Oh, uh, thanks. I bought them myself." Velvet tapped the edges of her stack of resumes to the table to even them out. "Please, take all the time you need. Er…I'll just stay here, sir."

Blake led Jaune five picnic tables over, a suitable distance to ensure that Velvet couldn't hear them. As soon as she was sure they were able to converse freely, she shook her head.

"Jaune, I don't care how good the sandwiches were. We aren't hiring. We barely break even on every job, and her salary would come out of our pay."

Jaune glanced back at the rabbit girl. "We talked about raising our rates. You were the one who said that we were probably more likely to get jobs now that the SDC's gone and hired us. This would be a good justification for why we can bump up our prices. Three hun…three security consultants instead of two. A 50% increase in our staff, so we hike the prices by 50%."

"Or, and I know this might sound crazy, but we could not hire her, hike the prices by 50% anyways, take that money for ourselves, and not live out of a hotel."

"We're making money," Jaune said. "It's slow, but we are. Honestly, at this point, we can probably afford to start renting an apartment if we stayed as roommates. I feel like we're only still in the hotel because we weren't sure, but with the SDC recommendation –"

"We don't need a third wheel, Jaune." Blake was irate that she even needed to explain this to Jaune. "You and I have completed every mission that's come our way without her."

Jaune raised his eyebrows with an uppity look that Blake couldn't say she approved of. "Really?"

"I mean, yeah! Were you not there? We were fine!"

"Was I fine, Blake? Was it fine when I got dragged by a squid Grimm into an undersea cave with no light and almost no air? Was it fine when I had to stay behind at the top of a tree in a sinkhole because you needed to get more 'ammo?' Because I didn't feel fine."

He did have her there, but it wasn't like she hadn't gotten him out of those scenarios. "You…You survived."

"I did, but wouldn't it have been better for us to have someone watching our back? She's a real huntress, assuming her resume isn't B.S." Jaune sighed and put a hand on Blake's shoulder. "I'm not trying to guilt trip you…well, I am a little. Blake, you know you'll be fine, but I only have you to rely on. If you trip when running to save me or get sick on a mission or fumble your sword or whatever, I die. A safety net couldn't hurt."

Blake wasn't sure she agreed, but she had just wrestled with the poor way she'd been treating him back on their last mission two days ago, and his only request was to have his opinion treated seriously as long as it wasn't asinine. Well, he actually had a point here.

"But we can do better than some Beacon dropout."

"Blake, we are Beacon dropouts. Who else do you think would apply to our loophole of a company? A real, licensed hunter?" Jaune clicked his tongue. "That would actually probably be worse, since Ozpin could say we're trying to act as hunters and not security consultants. And don't you have some sort of pity boner for poor Faunus?"

Blake scowled at Jaune. She cared about her people, but there was a difference between doing her best to help them and risking her own wellbeing for a half-huntress who could probably get a better job elsewhere. Not to mentioning, phrasing it as a pity boner for the Faunus was kind of rude.

"Look." Jaune held out his hands. "We take her on for a few days. No, wait, let's do it for the next mission. If we don't like her performance, we say it's not working. Why not give her a chance?"

Both of them looked over at Velvet, who was doing her best to watch them without looking like she was being overly nosy.

"She's a Beacon dropout," Jaune said, pursing his lips. "You and I both know that's not an easy place to be."

Jaune was more or less admitting he was doing this with sympathy on the mind by saying that, which was never a good way to run a company, but she could find no way to refute his argument that a second trained hunter would improve his life expectancy.

And I do know personally how hard it is for a Faunus to find a job in the city. Velvet's only qualification is her time in Beacon, meaning her only option is to hunt Grimm for a living, but she can't without a license. We might be her only choice.

Loathe as Blake was to admit it, she was starting to truly want to hire this kid. Her heart was saying to show some basic compassion for a fellow Faunus, even if her brain was telling her to think of the finances and just how poorly this could go.

In the end, her heart won out. Blake hadn't devoted ten years of her life to fixing the state of Faunus oppression, the last four as a terrorist agent, if she listened to her brain first and foremost.

"We'll hear her out, but both of us have to agree to hire her, and both of us can say we want to fire her if the next mission doesn't go well."

Jaune just laughed in a jolly manner at that. "Don't worry, Blake. Velvet's cute rabbit ears will never displace the spot your kitty ears have won in my heart. You'll always be my favorite Faunus."

"Shut your sandwich-hole, you idiot," Blake commanded. "Let's just go back and interview our first candidate."


Coming Soon: Dropouts

Velvet Scarlatina is interviewed for the opening that Team Job didn't even know it had.


Author's Notes

New character unlocked.

We've finally found our newest member of Jaune's Coffee whoops I mean Job Security, and it's none other than Velvet Velvetina the Velvet Faunus. Careful viewers (careful being defined as 'able to read the tags') will have noticed that her coming was foretold in the ancient texts.

By the way, before people start getting worried that the dynamic will be ruined when Jaune and Blake start a hiring spree and hire the entire cast of the RWBY show: they won't. Velvet is their only employee (assuming the interview goes well, but, like...are we seriously expecting it to not?). I do have an unwritten chapter idea for an intern arc, but that's one of those things where I said I might keep writing this fic when it ends by adding a new self-contained mission on its own, only if I feel like it. It's not guaranteed to show up, and it maybe never will.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!