These meetings were… tedious, at the best of times. Whether it was Roman's feeble excuses for why his collections had fallen behind schedule (like she believed that "a group of teenagers keep stopping me" was at all a defensible excuse), or, admittedly, her own associates being bored and immature, Cinder Fall generally knew to expect very little from them. They were a necessity of administrative oversight, not useful as "meetings" in the sense of sharing information and directives, but rather, useful in how Cinder exerted her presence over the assembled bumblers she now depended upon.
However, this meeting was rather, and unexpectedly, different. Oh, the topic was the same tedious nonsense where she merely had to look displeased for the length of the meeting, but then, they had a late arrival. It was Roman's little underling, the one Emerald hated, but her laissez-faire approach to meeting times was less important than what she was wearing.
A powder-blue onesie with a bunny motif.
Now, there were only two things Cinder Fall could be said to "love."
First, the defeat and painful humiliation of her enemies.
Second, very cute things.
On ScrollNet, she followed seven pictures of baby animal accounts, as well as dozens of dogs and cats that had their own dedicated ScrollNet followings. She volunteered at an animal rescue, even though she knew it would tarnish her reputation as a murderous terrorist if she was ever caught. But still, seeing all the dogs light up at the sight of her, ready to take them all on a long walk…. She was a connoisseur of cute, and those jammies… they had the Cinder Fall Seal of Approval.
It even had little bunny ears on the feet!
Now was the question of where the little gremlin had gotten it from. It was obviously too big for her (which, really, just added to the cuteness), which suggested, first, that she'd taken it from someone else and, second, that someone else was an adult. Which were twin plusses in Cinder's books: that meant that there was someone out there who wasn't Roman's little sociopath who wore an adorable bunny onesie who was an adult and, almost certainly, could be easily seduced by Cinder.
And then she would have the onesie!
Roman, however, seemed to be less enthralled with its cuteness. "Oh, no, no no no no no. Neo, for Brothers' sake, I know what this means and you have to give it back!"
Oh? That seemed rather promising to Cinder. While Cinder had her "partners" in this enterprise suitably cowed to cooperate, she knew that they she couldn't push that too far, and acquiring the onesie could cause some... friction. But if it wasn't Neo's, but instead, some third party... that made things easier. Cinder watched closely as the gremlin silently pouted, which, evidently, Roman could interpret as language.
"Why?" he asked, "Because the last time you got a boyfriend, you tried to turn me into the police!" Cinder raised an eyebrow at that, and so did Neo, communicating in their strange pantomime language. "No, it wasn't true love!" he spat.
Their… "argument" continued for a little while. And while Cinder was hoping to get more intel about the inner dynamics of her criminal associates, she was even more interested in learning more about the owner of the jammies… but, alas, that information, beyond that the owner was male, was purely locked behind the silent face of Neopolitan.
But that was enough for Cinder to make a move. She turned to Emerald and whispered, "Acquire the onesie, any means necessary."
"Ma'am, are you sure you-"
"Whoever you have to kill, you kill. Acquire the onesie."
Pyrrha tore across the room in a panic. She had put it back, right? She had to have put it back. She hadn't forgotten it or misplaced it, she was always so careful not to get caught—who else but her even knew about the onesie?
She had started wearing it in secret, digging the onesie out of the deep corner of the closet Jaune had buried it in, having been sufficiently embarrassed by his peers for wearing it before Initiation. Those fools. Those absolute fools. Not only was it by far the comfiest thing Pyrrha had ever worn, the peer pressure meant that she never got the chance to see Jaune looking so adorable in it!
But she contented herself by wearing it in secret.
And it felt amazing! Was it so wrong that she loved the soft onesie that seemed to magically fit her so well, that felt like wearing a hug? A hug from Jaune?
No, they were the fools, they did not understand why it was so precious. They didn't appreciate Jaune and they didn't appreciate his cuddly bunny onesie, not like Pyrrha did.
But even with her mind made resolute, she was no closer to finding it. She couldn't think of where she might have left it other than where it belonged, she was meticulous to a fault, and doubly so with the onesie. She took no chances—getting caught wearing it, or giving Jaune a hint she might be wearing his clothes, hugging herself, and rolling around in his bed, could have apocalyptic consequences.
As a fighter, Pyrrha's style was built around a highly analytical approach, relying on the flexibility of her style to identify the weaknesses of her foes and then maximizing their vulnerabilities through technical precision. Every fight was a process of understanding her opponent like a puzzle to be solved, a pathway to victory… that didn't involve just using her Semblance to yank the weapons from their hand and beat them senseless with their own gear. So she had the ability to mentally piece together…
The exact stakes of what failure would mean.
In her mind, she imagined what the consequences might be, weighing the probabilities of how Jaune might respond or what negative outcomes were possible if she…
"I'm sorry Jaune," the Pyrra in her mind said, "I know your onesie was important to you, but I misplaced it and now I can't find it. I'm very sorry."
But Jaune looked confused. "Why… why would you even have my onesie? I'm the person who does all the laundry for JNPR because I'm a generous and giving person who sacrifices more of himself for the cause than anyone else realizes and clearly embodies the true spirit of being a Huntsman?"
Pyrrha blushed. "I… I've been wearing your onesie in secret," she confessed.
"That's unusual behavior. Is this because you have feelings for me?" Jaune asked her, "Even though I clearly have a preference for shorter, more petite girls with caustic attitudes and an overwhelming sense of entitlement? Primarily because they're more beautiful, graceful, and desirable than you'll ever be?"
Every point hit home, and Pyrrha had no response but a meek, "Yes, I… I have feelings for you, Jaune. Very strong feelings. Every night we practice I find myself falling more and more for you, and so I started wearing your onesie to feel closer to you."
"That was very presumptuous of you," Jaune said, shaking his head, "Absolutely not the kind of behavior one would expect of a role model, especially not one about to compete in the Vytal Tournament before the eyes of literally millions of young girls who are, each and every one of them, expecting you to behave like you deserve their admiration."
Pyrrha had no answer. She was utterly crushed by the words Jaune said, words that echoed with so many voices in Pyrrha's mind. Her coaches, her teachers… her mother, all of them seeing what… what a disappointment Pyrrha was.
"Oh, and also," Jaune continued, "Weiss accepted my date. We're getting married on Saturday, so if you could let me know if you have a plus one…"
Yep.
That was the only outcome Pyrrha could perceive if Jaune couldn't find his onesie.
So there was no question, she had to find it. She had to find it just as surely as she had to win all her fights and never make any mistakes and always live up to everyone's expectations! It didn't matter if she had to tear the entire school apart, didn't matter if it pushed her sanity to the very brink, she would find it.
She would find it!
Well, this wasn't what she wanted to see.
Standing out of sight, blending into the shadows, Blake glanced through a crack in the door to watch as Pyrrha tore the room apart. And judging by her frantic searching, she was probably looking for the exact thing Blake was coming by for. That stupid onesie. That stupid, perfect onesie that Blake should never have put on in the first place, because then she'd never have learned how comfy it was.
It was the snuggliest thing she'd ever worn. Like, stupid comfortable, warm and soft and somehow just the right size to be exactly baggy enough on her, while still holding her tight, even though she was a full foot shorter than Arc was. And if she had even an ounce less pride, she would gladly have worn it in public. Hell, she honestly might have started dating Arc just for a chance at the onesie, but she still had enough pride to not do that at least.
But once she'd seen Pyrrha wearing it, and how utterly blissful she looked in it… Blake just had to try. Because it was either super comfy, which it was, or Pyrrha was engaging in some top-shelf perversity, and Blake wanted to get in on that. The former had been immediately confirmed when she tried it on. The latter... well, it seemed to her that Pyrrha's frantic search had some hints to that.
But Blake was careful, and she knew she wasn't going to get anything by inserting herself right into the middle of this. This was something that required finesse and a willingness to delay gratification. Yes, it would be fun to "stumble upon" Pyrrha clearly looking for Jaune's sleep garments and see the most honest girl at Beacon try to wriggle out of it, but this was the sort of thing Blake could already tell was going to turn into something big. Not just Jaune and Pyrrha's relationship, though that was always a spicy little thing, the onesie. It was something so perfectly Jaune, bizarre and out of place in an understated and non-threatening way… so it was basically a better symbol for him than the family sword or the Arc Sigil. Which meant Blake had to pick her strategy carefully to help nourish and develop the situation…
And immediately brought it up to everyone at lunch.
"I just don't get why he brought it," Blake said to her friends after subtly sprinkling in hints to turn the conversation towards that fateful onesie, "Jaune's so self-conscious, and nothing about that… thing even suggests heteronormativity."
Yang rolled her eyes. "What did we say about words with more than five syllables?"
"That they were more than acceptable," Weiss shot back, "and that we could stand to elevate our-"
"Yeah, you can elevate my tits, Weiss-cream," Yang replied. "But who knows? Maybe Jaune just likes rabbits, wouldn't be the-"
And suddenly, Velvet was there. "I'm sorry," she said, with an unusual lack of her regular timorousness, "what did you say about Jaune and rabbits?"
"W-weren't you on the other side of the cafeteria?" Weiss nearly choked, "How did you possibly hear the- oh, right, the ears."
Blake looked to her fellow Faunus with sympathy. "Don't worry," she reassured her, "for everything we say about Jaune, he's a good guy—I really don't think he's one of those fetishists."
But instead of relieved, Velvet's ears just seemed to wilt. "Oh… well that's… good, I guess."
She slunk off, but before Blake could bring to the table how weird that had been, Ruby was already grumbling about something else. "Stupid Pumpkin Pete's never sent me my onesie."
"Oh yeah," Yang chuckled, "Forgot about that whole beef. Little Ruby was so excited, she was clipping out box tops for weeks, and then..."
"They wouldn't ship it out to Patch!" she wailed, "It was my first taste of how cruel and uncaring the world is, how much tragedy falls on the undeserving."
Didn't- didn't Ruby lose her mother to the Grimm? As a baby? Blake was pretty sure she'd heard that part of her life's story. But… well, she'd never seen Ruby look more broken up about anything before, so maybe there was something more to the whole onesie deal. More and more interesting…
"But Jaune… you don't think he still wears it, do you?" Blake asked, trying to get the conversation back on track, "Do you think Ren might have talked him out of it…"
"Or is he still wearing it?" Yang said, a grin spreading across her face as she added, "Wearing that bunny onesie on long, lonely nights as he thinks about the girl he can't have, thoughts of Weiss-"
"Please," Weiss said through gritted teeth, "be less gross. For once in your life, just a little less gross."
But then… just as Blake hoped, no, as Blake feared to hope, she saw something… different come over the Ice Queen's face!
"But you have to admit," Weiss quietly added, a slightly tentative edge to her voice, "it's very bold of him to wear that so fearlessly among his peers-"
Her words were cut off by a sudden and familiar squawk, the sound lungs made when they encountered the violent force of a Ruby Rose bear hug—nearly all the bone-snapping force of a Nora bear hug, paired with the lightning-fast speed of her Semblance.
"I KNEW you'd come around on Jaune!" Ruby cried with glee, "See? See? He's brave, in his own way! Nobody else in the world would have dressed like a bunny before going to Initiation, because they'd know they'd get made fun of and beat up and people jump other students in the Emerald Forest all the time, but Jaune didn't even flinch to be his real and honest self! A big soft bunny!"
Blake had to hold back a cackle of glee as she saw all the tendrils of scandal wind through the group. Jaune's onesie had made an impression even on Weiss's frigid heart, but so, too, did it wind around Pyrrha. A love triangle was forming, the most delicious kind of love triangle of all: one where one of the parties was forced to change the direction of their heart! A no that became a yes, just like in Book 3 of Ninjas of Love, where Fujiro…
But as so often happened in Blake's life… imminent victory turned to ashes in her mouth as Weiss simply shrugged.
"Well, if that's the case," she drawled, "I'm pretty sure he threw it out. Didn't Nora say something about setting it on fire? Or… or was that Ren's pink shirt?"
"She might have, she hated that shirt," Yang said with a shudder, "Hard to keep track with Nora and fire, though. Hey, did you see her after Goodwitch's class, after she and Ren had to fight…"
The drama of the onesie was sucked away in an instant as the conversation moved to someone on JNPR other than Jaune… and Blake could tell that among her friends, the response was largely one of disinterest. What she thought she was seeing in Weiss simply wasn't there, nor was there any particular hold with Ruby. Jaune, like Nora, was a member of their sister team, someone worth chatting about, but not someone whose name inspired the… feelings Blake was hoping for.
Didn't really seem like people were biting… oh well, win some, lose some, not every time Blake thought she was stumbling on some juicy gossip turned out to be as interesting as she'd hoped. She was a little disappointed that there wasn't much juice to the whole missing onesie situation, but this was Beacon: some sort of new chaos would surely turn up before she even realized it!
Tragic romance was a point of Valean pride. Doomed lovers who meet once more on the battlefield, men of honor whose hearts yearned for the wives of the man they were sworn to, Huntsmen of feuding families who tried to have a relationship in secret… there were at least three, most likely, very many more, stories about tragic romance that showed up in books, songs, movies, and staged reproductions, and as a proud Valean of proud Valean stock, Neo was a huge fan of the genre.
The fact that they typically had the bloodiest endings was definitely a plus in her books!
But living through one? Neo was fast discovering that she did not like it! It was everything Neo didn't like: things that were not going her way. And it was stupid, too! So what that Roman didn't like him—he didn't even know who he was! Not like Neo knew him…
Jaune…
He was tall, a good feature in a boyfriend, and his last name had only three letters, which Neo considered to be a very courteous and gentlemanly thing to do, and, if she had heard the gossip correctly, he was the four time winner of the Mistralian Regional Circuit, which meant he had a hobby—and with three features that Neo approved of, he was officially marked as Good Boyfriend Material, and Neo had solemnly resolved to die for him.
But seeing as how there wasn't much need for anyone to die at this particular moment, she could stick to other boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, like being on the phone together, late at night, where he'd say sweet things like, "Who is this?" and "Could you please stop calling this number!" as she would sigh happily just to hear his voice. And she was wearing his clothes, like this fursuit he had hidden in his closet—what better way to signal that she was his than to wear this bunny thing?
Except… the world was truly unfair. And so she had been cruelly forced to return the bunny thing to her beloved's room. The snuggly bunny thing. The cute bunny thing. Her beloved's bunny…
She knew she was being followed.
Neo was not an easy woman to sneak up on, but she was distracted by heartsickness (and an appreciation of what looked like a fit of passion that had torn this room apart, Neo was always a sucker for a room trashed in a fit of passion) and so she only now noticed that she was being followed, as she went to return the onesie to the closet.
Disadvantage. It was not a situation Neo should ever find herself in, least of all at Beacon, where even if most Huntsmen were clueless, lumbering oafs who were blonde with way too much hair, they were oafs with guns and swords, and it really only took one lucky hit to put her in a spiral that went down, down, down to a prison cell. She had Hush on her person, but whoever had followed her was keeping just enough distance that Neo couldn't simply slash their throat out with a sudden stroke. There weren't many good options and she had to choose now, so she whirled around with onesie in hand and Hush brandished to see…
Oh, it was just the green haired girl. Neo liked the green haired girl, she was always good for a-
Wait, no! She didn't like the green haired girl at all! She was the total opposite of that! Neo cursed herself inwardly: she was so caught up in how much she was in love with Jaune, she'd briefly forgotten how much she hated people!
"Cinder wants the onesie," the girl growled, unsheathing her weapon, "So hand it over. Nothing needs to get ugly if you just hand it over."
Neo grinned. Just in time for her to have pledged to give her life for her beloved...
Thwarted again and again, Pyrrha found herself in a state of panic. Her projections had, somehow, gotten worse, worse than she thought they could possibly get as now, she foresaw, very clearly, what Jaune and Weiss's wedding would look like. Not the extravagant, gaudy monstrosity people would expect from a nouveau riche family like the Schnees, no, Schnee wealth would be tempered by Arc class and the wedding was a full-on event, with foreign dignitaries and heads of state… and everyone agreeing what a beautiful wedding it was! How much sense it made and… and trending on ScrollNet! White Knight, they were calling it, thousands of people, all across Atlas and Vale celebrating this harmonious fusion of their cultures, with Headmaster Ozpin declaring that it was a vision of what the future could be, a future of peace and prosperity, especially after Argus had been sacked by the Grimm and it was all Pyrrha's fault.
She had to find the onesie. She had to find it, return it, and stop this nightmarish future from coming to pass. She could explain everything later, she had a publicist and she knew her publicist had someone they kept on retainer for hiding bodies, so anything could be cleaned up so long as she got the onesie back!
She returned to the JNPR dorm, even though she hadn't found it before… maybe it was in the walls, that was something she hadn't checked! She could simply… tear out the walls! Tear and tear and tear until she found the onesie and everything would be fixed and everything would be better and no one would be disappointed in-
"I knew Emerald wouldn't be enough to get it from you," she heard a sudden, cold voice ahead of her, "But now it's two to one and you know you cannot stand against-"
The voice was cut off by a sudden clamor, one Pyrrha immediately identified as the sound of Valean steel—judging from the reverberations, an umbrella-based trick weapon (her level of training and experience meant she knew most standard Huntsmen weapons by ear)—meeting glass… likely shaped via a fire related Semblance into a weapon, and raced to the source of it, only to find… three students she kind of recognized as Mistralian visiting students, all of them with their weapons drawn. And between them…
The onesie.
Her eyes narrowed. She looked from woman to woman, seeing them size her up. This was not a situation that could be solved by talking, she knew, but she supposed she owed them the courtesy.
"So," she began, reaching out with her Semblance to feel all the metal surrounding them. Seems she would be tearing down the walls anyway. "I suppose you can explain why my partner's property has been missing all morning?"
"Shit…" the green-haired bitch said, suddenly rethinking whether she was willing to die for Jaune… which was probably a lie! She was probably more in love with Jaune than any of them! "Ma'am, this is escalating, we need to-"
But the black haired girl, the one with the trampiest dress allowed at Beacon, just glared at Pyrrha. "It doesn't belong to you, little girl," she sneered, "Just like he doesn't belong to you."
Fury rose in Pyrrha's breast as she heard those words. How… how very dare she imply…
But implications were only words. Words had no weight compared to blood.
And Pyrrha was he odds-on favorite in Remnant's most prominent bloodsport.
"Do you believe in Destiny?" she asked.
"If you mean my Destiny to possess this onesie..." her eyes narrowed, "Absolutely, bitch."
Her hands burst into flames, Pyrrha magnetically ripped a length of pipe from the wall to serve as an improvised club. It was no Milo and Akuou, but with these bitches standing between her and Jaune's love… err, his onesie, she had more than enough. It all came down to this.
Time to win.
"Man, we've been spoiled," Yang grumbled as she stretched her arms out in a yawn, "Two weeks ago, fighting the White Fang. That guy with the... the electric eel guy with the zappy Semblance. Last week, fighting Roman, stopping him from robbing the Museum of Natural History. This week… nothing. Nada. Zip! No action whatsoever!"
But the only response she got from her partner was a shrug.
"We could use the downtime," she said, "We've got a big test-"
"Oh, don't act like that," Yang scoffed, "Like I wouldn't spot Weiss with black hair dye and gold contacts—c'mon, where's the real Blake, the Blake with the Red String Board who's all about sneaking off and seeking out danger even when her friends are constantly trying to hold her back. I know my partner… you're cooking something, what is it?"
But unexpectedly… Blake's shoulders just slumped. "I thought I had something," she said, "but thinking about it more… honestly, I think it was all a big nothing. Nothing worth following, at least."
Yang was a little curious about that, she knew that Blake chafed under too much supervision, but her Big Sis nature meant she couldn't not keep tabs on Blake. She knew about the Board and Blake's obsession with the White Fang, Roman, and the mysterious Third Party Blake hypothesized was bringing them together… but she also knew that Blake was keeping tabs on other things. Things a little healthier for a teenage girl to be keeping tabs on. From Yang's perspective, she was keeping an eye in particular on boys, and while she was dancing around putting that attention on Sun… maybe something had happened, but not as Blake hoped?
But there was no sense pushing the issue.
"Well, we'll just have to make our own fun!" Yang said with a grin, "Hey! You know Bolin, from Haven? He has a crazy thing for Pyrrha and he's apparently getting super jealous of, get this, Jaune. He thinks they've got a thing on the sly going on, but I think we can make up some corroborating evidence and see if, maybe, we can get them to…"
Yang's words trailed off as she turned the corner and saw what was in front of them.
Chaos. Utter… chaos.
Yang thought of herself as a hellraiser, a girl who trashed clubs and got in fights at the drop of the hat, but what she saw before her was like a warzone had broken out in Beacon. Random fires crackled merrily among the shattered trophy cases, bullet holes and rough chops from swords and axes marked up the walls and floors and the ruined banisters. Yatsuhashi was busy sending some random Mistralian student through a splintering banister to make it more ruined, a Vacuan student with a sniper rifle was firing at an Atlesian student with a cat tail, Emerald was there, dueling with Neptune who seemed to be asking her out while they fought, there was Cardin getting his ass absolutely stomped by Fox who was pretty much just kicking him while he was down, and just… everyone was fighting everybody!
It was a dust-up that went beyond a dust-up and honestly made Yang wonder if this was a fight, a riot, or if they were actually at war… and at the heart of it, naturally, was Pyrrha.
How easy it was to forget that polite, patient, pushover Pyrrha was actually the foremost expert on violence in their age bracket, only to be reminded as Yang saw her now, looking so alive in the middle of a brawl, armed only with a length of pipe, that Yang had to stop and gawk at… did she have her hand on some kind of blue… what he hell, was that the onesie? The onesie they were talking about at lunch time? Pyrrha had one hand on a sleeve, some girl from Haven, the spooky one with the killer legs, what was her name, Cinnamon? That wasn't it, but she had the other sleeve. And then a third girl, a girl shorter than Weiss, had a hand on the leg and… and all three were very much trying to kill each other while also doing their damnedest not to stretch the garment out.
How had they not heard any of this while walking through the halls?
And there was Ruby! In a rush of rose petals she came in on a charge to furiously slash at the silver-haired guy, the hot one from Mistral, who seemed just as fucking bewildered to get attacked by Ruby as Yang was to see it!
Normally, seeing her sister in a fight would push aside all thoughts: kin was kin, and if Ruby was slashing at someone, that someone was about to eat a knuckle sandwich. But Yang was discovering that it was possible to genuinely be too overwhelmed to respond at all, and right now, she couldn't take in even half of the scene in front of her. Who were these people, what was going on?
"Okay…" Blake said, making a half step to the left to let two shurikens whiz past her, "Maybe… maybe it wasn't all a big nothing…"
Yang put up her fists, but she was still too much in a daze to even know how to throw a punch, much less who to throw a- okay, well, Skye got close and that was just a reflex response to seeing his douchey face, she clocked him good and dropped him like a sack of potatoes, but it wasn't like… she wasn't in the fight when she was still trying to take in the absolute scale of the battle! Coco swept in, laughing as she opened fire on… everyone as someone threw the Atlesian guy in the fedora, the one who had some sort of beef with Weiss, down from a balcony!
And then they heard a voice thundering from behind them.
"NO! NO MORE!"
All eyes turned to the one person who could interrupt the newest World War as it was erupting: a furious Professor Goodwitch, riding crop in hand and practically smoking with fury. "I had to explain to three idiots I call colleagues that there was no secret treasure map written on the inside of a Brothers-damned bunny onesie, and I know for a fact they're only pretending that I convinced them so they can go after the onesie once I'm not looking."
"They're welcome to try and take it!" the dark haired Mistralian in a super hot red dress (Char?) snarled, "I'll burn all of Vale to the-"
"An excellent suggestion!" Glynda cried, and with a flick of her crop, she telekinetically snatched a small satchel of fire dust from the girl's belt and flung it onto the onesie—which immediately burst into flames.
"NOOOOOOOO!" a chorus of voices cried as the onesie was swiftly reduced to cinders. In an instant, nothing was left before their horrified eyes, their minds still struggling to process that it was gone. For… for whatever reason they cared about it. But it seemed like they cared about it a lot. A while lot.
Ruby finally broke the silence. "Wow, that thing burned fast."
And they all had to agree, it… kind of did.
"This was for a cereal giveaway, right? Like… for kids?" Yang asked, looking at the smoldering remains of what had once been a full-body covering.
Jaune wasn't sure why Velvet suddenly needed to talk to him privately, but he figured she wouldn't have asked if it wasn't important. Still, he felt like he didn't really know much about the girl: she and him had a mutual issue with Cardin, but outside of that, he wasn't really sure they'd ever had a real conversation.
He did get the feeling that his friends were trying to make something happen between them, though. The sort of well-intended meddling Jaune knew all too well from being a country boy with seven sisters. How many conversations had Jaune had with Pyrrha where she was so obviously trying to get him to stop going after Weiss and start noticing other girls—not overtly said, but basically implied in so many words—who might be more appreciative? Jaune wasn't ungrateful for the advice, but he sometimes wondered if he should just tell Pyrrha that while he appreciated her taking an interest in his social life like she had with his combat ability, he wasn't about to try and get a relationship going just because he "saved" Velvet from a bully. That just felt… crass. The Huntresses of Beacon were remarkable women who deserved so much more in their relationships than some childish fantasy of knights and maidens. Pyrrha, if anything, had been the woman who'd opened his eyes to how wrong he was!
But even if he didn't doubt Pyrrha would have all sorts of restrained, innuendo-laden questions for what happened in their conversation… Jaune was happy to have one with her. She really was an exceptional Huntress, and her formidable restraint should not be confused for weakness! Jaune had no doubt…
Huh.
Jaune had arrived at the meeting place, in one of the unused dorm rooms that pretty much just had a bed and a non-functioning lock, and Velvet was there, waiting for him… not dressed like she normally was in her combat outfit or her Beacon uniform. She was… she was more dressed like she was on her way to a hot date. A… really hot date. Considering the heavy makeup, the prominent jewelry, and especially the outfit that seemed to be mostly not an outfit and instead, an excuse to show off just how much of her skin could instead be covered by fishnets.
After everything with Weiss, the last thing Jaune needed was a reputation as a lecher, so he put all he had into being as gentlemanly as he could and not look at how much skin his classmate was showing. But… it was difficult, especially as she crossed, then uncrossed her legs, showing off how the pattern of fishnets drew the eye to appreciate her long, slender legs and think about things other than how they gave her the strength to spring nearly a dozen feet in the air…
Jaune was from the countryside and so city fashions—and city mores—were often something he had to adjust to. He certainly could hear his mother's voice in his ears, furiously scandalized that a woman would even think to go out dressed like that, and he could hear Saphron's voice in his ears, snickering that city girls literally did just wear lingerie out in public and that he had to step out of the nest and see it for himself like she had. Neither voice gave particularly helpful advice, so Jaune carefully shut them out, kept his eyes up and reminded himself, if Velvet did have a date… it was probably not best to take up too much of her time.
"H-hey Velvet," eyes up eyes up eyes up, "what, ah, what did you want to talk about?"
It might have had something to do with… whatever it was that seemed to have happened today. He'd gotten a notice that the dorms were "closed for repairs," without a lot of clarity and nobody really explaining what that might mean through the usual gossip channels.
There'd really not been a sign of anyone all day, really, which was odd. But then he saw Weiss who told him that, today, her team was doing something "too stupid to explain," so it was probably just the regular Beacon craziness.
Though, uh, Velvet had a way of making it hard for Jaune to think of anything other than her as she slowly got up from the bed and strode towards him… really, really closely to him…
"I'm sorry about what happened to your bunny onesie..." wait, what? Something had happened to his onesie? "But if this one bunny could do anything to make it all better..." she said, slowly pressing herself closer to him, their bodies practically touching… but Jaune wasn't really listening.
"I'm sorry, what happened to my onesie?"
Thanks to Renarde for feedback on this work!
Had some debate about whether or not I could authentically tag this Jaune/Neo, but I think Neo would pretty strongly be of the opinion that there's no actual requirement in a relationship that your True Love knows who you are or that you're dating. And who am I to question Neo?