Hey all, I had a small spelling mistake last week where Blake meant to say Jaune's idea of waiting for anomalies to show and then dealing with them was "reactionary" when I obviously meant "reactive". Just a spelling mistake and not a political statement. No need to deep dive into everything lol. I'll go back and change it now.

Glad everyone enjoyed the nods to phasmaphobia lol.

I'm recovering slowly from my shoulder but had half this chapter written in advance, which is a big relief. Same for Raise tomorrow.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 4

If someone had told Blake she'd be spending her night, at one in the morning, skulking around an attic with a flashlight looking for a spider, she'd have laughed at them. First, she didn't care about spiders. Secondly, she was a faunus with perfect night vision. Why would she even need a flashlight? The answer to that was simple – she was desperately hoping the monster would be afraid of the light and therefore avoid her. Jaune was the one who wanted to catch this thing, so she'd much rather it go make friends with him instead of her.

"Right. I'll check the downstairs floors." Jaune said.

"What!?" Blake rounded on him and flashed the light in his eyes, almost blinding him and knocking him off the ladder into the attic. The only reason he didn't fall was because she had her fist in his collar and was holding him up. "No way. You're not leaving me."

"What? It's just a spider."

"That thing is not just a spider!"

Jaune blinked slowly at her. "Are you arachnophobic?"

"No."

"Then what-"

"Jaune, it's a six-foot spider with a near-human face, teeth and glowing eyes that can scuttle across the ceiling at speed and is heavy enough to pin me to the ground." Blake tried to say it calmly, but her voice rose with each word. "One does not have to be an arachnophobe to be afraid of that!"

"So, you are afraid."

"Of course I'm bloody afraid of it!"

"Blake," he laughed. "It's harmless. It's probably more afraid of you than you are of it."

She dragged his face close to hers. "Not scientifically possible!"

"Look," he said, calmly prying her fingers of his shirt collar and then pushing the flashlight out his eyes. "We can't go around and look for it together because it'll just avoid us all night. We need to come at it from different angles and spook it into each other. You don't have to touch it if you don't want to – just flush it out toward me so I can catch it."

He said it so reasonably and so calmly that she couldn't find room to argue. "I just need to scare it to you?"

"That's all you need to do."

"O-Okay. I can do that. I can do this."

She was trained as a huntress, she had fought in the White Fang, she had cut the train and ridden away from that life. She was brave, she was strong… she was alone in an attic in the dark with cobwebs and a huge monster spider that could defy the laws of physics.

"I can't do this!"

Jaune was already gone – the absolute bastard – and she could hear him downstairs calling out in a kind voice, "Here, spider-spider-spider. Come here, boy. It's okay – I'm friendly. Come on. Who's a good anomaly? You are! Yes, you are!"

He was touched in the head. He had to be. Blake swallowed her fear and flashed the torch around again, more to scare anything away than give her any light to work with. The Scarlatina attic wasn't large by any means. It was a collection of diagonal wooden beams upon which insulation and tiles had been laid, with a wooden floor that barely held her weight. Blake kept to the horizontal beams above that, picking her way across them in the confined space that didn't go all that far in either direction.

If it had been empty, she'd have been able to see from one end to the other and it'd be a whole lot less frightening, but Meg, like most people, had taken to using her attic as a place to store things no longer commonly used, and as such there were huge piles of boxes, containers and other things forming plenty of hiding places for her worst nightmare.

Something moved overhead and Blake sucked in a hiss and shone her light up. A tiny spider scurried across a web between two beams. "You'd better not be its child!" she snarled. She'd meant that as a threat to calm herself down but then the implications set in. "Wait, what if you are-? Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. What if it lays its eggs in people? What if there's more than one?"

No. Stay calm. There's no reason to think every spider is a baby of this one. I don't even know if it can breed or if there's a second of its species in existence.

Of course there was nothing to say an anomaly, impossible in itself, needed a second member to make babies, but she was going to cling to reality as much as she could, thank you very much.

"H-Here spider…" Blake's voice wobbled only a little. "Good little abomination. W-Where are you? I-If you're up here then there's a perfectly open hatch to downstairs you can escape through to go bother Jaune instead."

Something spindly caught her eye and she flashed it aggressively. The green, fake Christmas tree that had been stuffed up in the attic stared back at her, reflective tinsel still hanging from some of its branches. Blake let out a huge breath of air and forced herself to keep moving, keeping as much distance between herself and any hidden little nooks as possible.

I should have told Jaune to check the attic.

As she thought it, a loud crash came from below, followed by a "Skreeeee!" and a "It's okay! It's okay! I'm not gonna hurt you!"

On the other hand, never mind.

Faunus ears didn't mean faunus hearing and she wondered if she could pretend hers was especially bad and stay up here til it was all over. Maybe close the hatch as well, curl up into a ball and wait until it was all over.

"Blake!" Jaune yelled. "Get down here and help me!"

No such luck. She considered again ignoring him, but the guilt got the better of her and she headed for the ladder. Maybe it was one of those things where the more she saw it, the less it would frighten her. If it wasn't actively killing Jaune when he was on his own, it probably was harmless. Or, well, not aggressive. All those teeth could do a lot of harm if they wanted to.

Hopping down to the second floor, Blake closed the attic hatch and crept to the staircase. She perched at the top, hesitating and then flinching when a black blur skittered past the downstairs on spindly legs. The wooden creak and click-click-click of its hardened feet tapping on the floor echoing across the house. Not a second later, Jaune came sprinting past the bottom with his coat flapping behind him.

"Stop running! Argh!" He skidded to a stop, panting and placing his hands on his knees. His face peered up the stairs as she came down, flushed red and coated with sweat. "It's – huff – fast. Faster than you'd think. Or I'm less fit than I think."

The sound of chairs being knocked over from the kitchen had Blake ducking and Jaune wincing – they'd be blamed for any damages the house sustained after all. With a tired groan, he hobbled over and pushed the door open, only to squawk and fall back as six foot of body and legs barrelled into him. The spider ran Jaune over, knocking him down to the floor, then came charging at Blake with glowing eyes and molars spinning in its circular, wide-open maw. It reared up at her, chittering loudly and flailing its long legs at her. It didn't attack her, but the threat was clear, the monster rising up as tall as it could and screeching, driving Blake back and back until she hit the wall. Rather than run past her to the stairs, it darted to her left and did the same again, hissing and clicking and pushing at her but never actually touching her.

There were, in hindsight, many things she could have done. Run, dodge, scream, dive, use a clone to take the hit. Blake's mind only had so much room to cower, however, and her emotions had already been on the edge of breaking. When subjected to abject terror, people reacted in different ways. Some cried, some broke, some fled. Blake was a former terrorist. No stranger to fear, she'd been indoctrinated to react a certain way.

So it was that even as she opened her mouth to scream, her right fist came swinging out and clocked the beast in the side of its jaw. The spider-monstrosity stumbled to her left, landed awkwardly on four of its legs and hunched low, staring at her with its glowing blue eyes."

"Skreee… Skreee-Skreeeeeee!"

It skittered past her, up the staircase and away, making loud and mournful sounds as it did. Blake, stood rooted in place, fist smarting, looked at a stunned Jaune on the floor and asked, "Did it just whimper at me?"

"I told you it's more scared of you than you are of it." Jaune stood and dusted himself off, even as Blake sincerely doubted his words. He had no idea the depths of panic she could reach. "And you did smack it."

"It was coming right at me!"

"Was it? It looked to me like it was trying to herd you."

"H-Herd me…?"

"Yeah. It was trying to push you around without pushing you. Like a sheepdog would." Jaune rubbed his chin and waved for her to follow him. "It's too fast to chase. Let's take a break. I might have an idea."

He moved to the living room, collecting a few cushions he and the monster had knocked around in their earlier chase. The room was still in one piece miraculously. Blake busied herself helping to set the sofas again, if only to calm herself down. The spider was silent upstairs, doubtless hiding once more. When Jaune was satisfied with the room, he took a seat on one sofa and laid down, letting Blake take the single seater in the corner.

"Are you okay?" she asked. His coat was scuffed, his collar undone, and his tie was hanging loose. There were little scratch marks all over his shirt. "You look terrible."

"It's just the outfit. I haven't got so much as a scratch. You?"

Terrified, heart racing, but all things considered absolutely fine. "It hasn't touched me."

"It hasn't." Jaune said. "And you know, that's literal. It's not afraid to knock me around or push against me, but it refuses to touch you. Even in the bedroom, it went along the ceiling rather than through you. Do you know what that means?"

"It hates women?"

Jaune stared at her.

"No?" she guessed.

"If it hated women, it wouldn't be squatting in Meg's house. It also would have attacked you. No, I think this thing is more used to women than men. I think it was trying to protect you."

Blake stared at him. "What…?"

"Think about it. Let's assume this thing came to sentience here. It's clearly one of a kind and has chosen this as its home. Meg lives here, a single, divorced woman with no husband or boyfriend. The spider makes this its home but doesn't hunt people for food, so it has no reason to want to hurt her. It does have reason to be afraid though, so it comes out at night to inspect the person its sharing a house with when they're asleep."

Blake paled, imagining the huge thing perched over Mrs Scarlatina's sleeping form as it had Jaune's. That was nightmare fuel she didn't need. Jaune, of course, looked thrilled to keep painting the picture.

"It takes in her face as she sleeps and convinces itself that this person is okay. They're not a threat to it. Then when her daughter comes back, it's surprised to find another person in the house, so it goes and explores them as well. That must be why Velvet heard it so keenly."

"And since Velvet probably looks a lot like her mother, it doesn't freak out." Blake said. It made a little sense if taken from the point of view of an animal. Not a dog – she had enough reason to hate it – but maybe a cat. "Are you saying it thinks I look like Mrs Scarlatina? We're nothing alike."

"Not to human eyes you're not, but we don't know how good this thing's vision is. I bet all humans look pretty much the same to it bar for a few differences. Maybe it's hair length, smell or pheromones – or some psychic signature it's reading. I don't think it can tell the difference between faces well, but it can definitely tell the difference between genders. Or it thinks I'm a completely different species entirely."

Because the anomaly didn't have the knowledge of man or woman. It was working on what little information it could work out after coming to existence, and so it saw her and judged her as the same species as Meg and Velvet but saw Jaune and decided he was something else.

"You're the stranger here," Blake realised. "Which is why it dislikes you so much."

"Which means!" Jaune said.

"I'm the key to catching it…" Blake finished miserably.

"Exactly. It's terrified of me and, if we stick to that logic, the display we saw in the kitchen might have been it trying to steer you away from me. It wasn't attacking you; it was trying to protect you."

Should she feel guilty for punching it then? Probably, but she really didn't. Good intentions did not a six-foot spider to the face forgive. At the very least she understood why it looked so startled to be attacked for its efforts. No. I refuse to feel sorry for this thing. I refuse!

"What's the plan then?" she asked. "Because I doubt it'll follow me into the van because I ask, especially not after I hurt it."

"No, I think we've burned that bridge now. Both of us. The thing will probably want to stay hidden from us until Mrs Scarlatina comes back. She's the one it trusts, and that's why it must have been freaked out by me in her bed. It's trying to protect her…" Jaune trailed off. "Wait, that's it! I've got a plan!"

"I'm not going to like the plan, am I?"

Jaune's smile was entirely too large,

/-/

I really don't like this plan, Blake thought as she crawled into Meg's bed wearing baggy flannel pyjamas. They weren't hers, but stolen garments from the nearby dresser that were a little too big for her and much too frumpy. The smell of the perfume she'd borrowed a spritz off from the bathroom was much the same – eau de middle-aged, single woman.

Fighting past the uncomfortable feelings of wearing clothing stolen from another woman's private drawers, Blake crawled under the sheets and laid down. Then she took her hair and started to shape it upwards, drawing out two long locks of black hair and sliding her hands up them until she'd shaped them somewhat like ears.

No one with human eyes would be fooled – they were too long, too thin and now she had six ears if she counted her human and cat ones – but they were going off the basis that the anomaly couldn't tell the difference at a distance. It had gotten all up in Jaune's face after all. Blake had made it clear that if this resulted in it doing the same to her, Jaune wouldn't have to worry about disappointing his father because she would murder him first.

I can't believe I'm doing this. Why am I still working at ARC Corp? I could run away – I'm good at that!

Where would she go? What jobs could she apply for? Very little. That wasn't what really kept her around, though. She could make it out in the wilderness if she wanted, or head back to Menagerie. No. What kept her from doing that was the very real fear that she might stumble upon another anomaly and not know what to do. The world was suddenly a lot scarier than it had been, and Jaune, for all his stupid ideas, was one of the few people on Remnant that knew what to do about that.

For better or worse – and it was mostly worse – she was stuck here.

In what was possibly the most dangerous of jobs imaginable, with the least qualified person imaginable, in a bed wearing someone else's pyjamas and playing bait for a monstrous spider.

"This is karma for my being a terrorist. I just know it is."

The door creaked open slowly and Blake took a deep breath. The creature entered, crept slowly to her bed and she felt the mattress press down at the end. Its dark form crawled up her own until it was knelt over her, at which point it struck!

"Rarghhh! Arghhhh! Garghhhh!"

"Noooo!" Blake said loudly but not too loudly. They didn't want the neighbours to think there was anything going on. "Noooo!" Blake whined, making very pitiful attempts to knock her attacker off. "No! Ah! Help me! Ahhhh! Noooo!"

"I'mma get you!" Jaune threatened, punching to the right and left of her head. He made growling and angry sounds as he thrashed about on top of her. Blake, meanwhile, made sure to flail her arms out in as close an approximation to helpless thrashing as she could manage. "Rarghhh! Arghhh!"

It was not convincing.

Jaune couldn't have savaged her if he wanted to, and she sure as hell wouldn't have laid there and took it. The words didn't even make sense, nor did the actions, but Jaune was convinced the anomaly wouldn't know the difference. As long as she sounded distressed, it would believe she was.

"Nghh! Ahhhh! Noooo! Get him off me! Nooo!" One of Jaune's fists caught her hair and pulled on it when he drew back. A few strands were yanked from her scalp. "Ow!" she yelped loudly. "Jaune!"

"Shit!" he hissed, cringing at the three or four strands caught between his fingers. He looked contrite. "Sorry!"

"That hurt!"

"I said sorr-"

It was impossible to know if her honest yelp had drawn it or if it wasn't already on its way from their terrible acting, but the door slammed open, and six feet of black chitin and glowing eyes came racing in screeching angrily. "Skreeee!"

The spider threw itself onto the bed and crashed into Jaune, knocking him completely off in one go. He went crashing to the left, while Blake flattened herself to the mattress and tried not to scream as her `assailant` was replaced with something far more terrifying, even if it thought it was protecting her. Eight legs stabbed down on either side of her as it positioned its bulk protectively – and horrifically – above her.

In a display of bravery, duty or plain stupidity, and Blake knew why she believed, Jaune responded to the threat display not by surrendering or staying down, but by growling dangerously back and reaching a hand out to grab Blake's exposed ankle.

That was all he did – grab it – but he might as well have drawn a knife from the anomaly's point of view. It hunkered down for a moment and then propelled itself off the bed, launching its body at Jaune and carrying him to the floor. Jaune let it, not that he could have prevented it, and shouted, "Now Blake! Now!"

Kicking herself up on the bed, Blake grabbed the sheets that she'd had over her body and, with a swing, cast them out over the wild melee taking place beside her bed. The white fabric cast over the spider and Jaune both, trapping them beneath it. Then, she stood there, biting her knuckles as man and giant spider wrestled beneath the white fabric.

"BLAKE!" Jaune howled. "HELP!"

"I-I helped."

"Please, sir, can I have some god-damned more!"

How could he be sarcastic at a moment like this? Blake didn't know and wasn't sure she wanted to. Instead, she took a deep breath and firmed her resolve, flagging as it was. With a visible tremble and a deep inhale, she bent her knees and launched herself atop the mass with a battle cry more frightened than passionate. "Ahhhh!"

The landing was not quite as soft as the bedding made it seem. Her chest squashed painfully flat against the thing's back, and she locked her arms and legs around what she assumed was its body. The spider couldn't actually get its legs up above or behind it, and so flailed around helplessly at the sudden weight on its back. In her mind, she'd imagined she would bear it down, squash it between Jaune and her, and that he'd be able to maybe grab the ends of the sheet and pull them together, bundling the thing up.

It was a good plan, a lovely plan, but Blake couldn't have lovely things – that was the only explanation for why it didn't work. Instead of being flattened down, the spider took her weight in stride. To be fair, it had eight legs to distribute it across. That didn't mean it was any happier about the situation than she, however. It screeched and bucked, and Blake hung on for dear life, convinced that as horrible as this was, she'd rather be on top of it than beneath.

Plus, she had the cloth sheet between it and her, meaning that if she clung on hard enough, she wouldn't have to see or touch it and could therefore pretend really damn hard that it was a fluffy unicorn or something, and not six feet of pure nightmarish evil.

Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.

The spider bucked again but couldn't shift her. Her chin was planted atop its head, preventing it from biting or grabbing her, and Jaune was wrestling with its legs. Or he was until one of them knocked into his stomach. He gasped and let go, and the thing wasn't prepared to ignore that chance. It jumped off Jaune, carrying Blake and the sheet through the air with a wail, until it landed with a soft crunch on the bed again. Then, still covered by the white sheet, it decided it was time to run.

With Blake on its back.

"Jauneee!" she wailed as she was carried out the room, essentially kidnapped, by a giant spider. "Your plans suck so much!"

"Blake! Don't let go!"

The bedroom became the corridor and Blake continued to wail as she was bounced along on its back as they skittered away from her only hope. Every step it took was a bouncy affair on its back, but she was too scared to let go. It might not have been aggressive before, but it might be now they'd attacked it like this.

"Jaune, I swear if this thing takes me back to its web and lays spider eggs inside me I'm going to come back as a ghost and haunt your ass!" she shouted. "Save me! Save me now!"

"I'm trying!" he shouted, skidding out the door and chasing after them. His heavy shoes clacked along the carpet, alerting the spider and sending it skittering blindly the opposite way. "Damn it, slow down." Jaune huffed and puffed as he chased after them. "It's so fa- Blake, look out!"

Huh? Blake had kept her head down for the most part, the better to cling onto the beast, but she raised it in time to see a door fast approaching. Her mouth dropped open, eyes bulging, and her mind worked just a little faster to remind her that the spider had a sheet covering its body and likely couldn't see where it was going. Luckily, her instincts worked faster still and threw her aura up a mere fraction of a second before they impacted the door heads first.

The spider slammed flat against it with a meaty thud, while the crack of Blake's aura-reinforced skull against the wood was a louder noise. Moving at speed, the spider's back end kept going even as its front stopped, making it push up off the ground and, by extension, flatten her against the door.

Then it dropped, with her on top of it, and the two of them landed in a tangle of bedsheets, bodies and far too many legs. Blake let out a quiet moan, while the anomaly let out an equally stunned and slow hiss.

"Got you!" Jaune was there a second later, flipping the thing over and tying the bedsheet shut around it, pinning its eight legs together out the end so they couldn't escape. His job done, he stood and wiped his brow. "Phew. Nice work, Blake. You blinded it and led it into a door to stun it. Nice plan."

"N-Nice plan…" Blake mumbled from the floor, still dazed. Her head was spinning so much she didn't even complain when Jaune rolled her over and ran his fingers through her hair. "Y-Yay for me. I… I did a plan."

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Enough to strangle you with."

"Yeah, you're fine." He grinned. "Good work, Blake. Anomaly secured."

/-/

Meg Scarlatina arrived back home to see a van pulled up, with the same young woman from the night before hunched against it, sat down on her bottom with her knees clutched to her chest, face pale and ears flattened unhappily to her black hair. She was a stark contrast to her superior, who aside from looking a little ruffled in his suit, was smiling and dusting his hands down with a satisfied look on his face.

She wasn't sure she liked what that meant.

"So," she said, trying to sound conversational and not sceptical. "Any ghosts?"

"None at all, ma'am."

"Really-?" Not that she'd thought there would be, but she'd been almost certain they'd claim there was, if only to scam her. It surprised her they were this upfront about it not being paranormal. "Oh? There was nothing, then?"

"Oh, there was something alright," the girl said despondently. "There was something alright…"

"Our cameras found the culprit to the noises and sounds you heard," the man, Jaune, said. "It turns out you were close with your first estimate, Mrs Scarlatina, but not quite in the way you imagined. It was indeed an animal loose in your house."

"It was? What was it? We had pest control looking for rats and couldn't find any."

"It probably ate them," the girl mumbled.

"Ate them!?" Meg gasped.

Jaune shot the girl a firm look and then said, "Ahah, my assistant is joking. I'm sure there weren't any rats for it to eat. You had a spider problem, Mrs Scarlatina."

"A spider…" Meg wasn't used to being so unimpressed, but this was just a little too anticlimactic even for her. "You're saying all that noise was caused by a single spider? What was it doing, tap-dancing on metal?"

The girl laughed brokenly.

"It wasn't a small one." Jaune said. "I think it was a tarantula that someone must have had as a pet."

Meg blanched. That changed things. She'd thought they meant an itty-bitty little thing, but she'd seen pictures of tarantulas as large as her hand and shivered at the thought of one loose in her home. "H-How big was it?"

"Too big." Blake whined.

"Quite large." Jaune said in a calmer voice. "Forgive my companion, she had the dubious pleasure of having it crawl over her body while she was taking a nap."

Meg looked at the poor girl pityingly, not even wanting to imagine what her own reaction would have been to waking up to a huge, furry spider crawling up her body. She liked to think she would have just screamed, but fainting wouldn't have been off the cards. That explained why the girl looked so shaken, and why her hair was an absolute mess. "I'm sorry to hear that. Did you manage to get rid of it?"

"It's out and we're sending it to a wildlife centre to be rehomed," he said. "You don't have to worry about it anymore, Mrs Scarlatina."

"That's great." Meg smiled. "I feel like I owe the two of you an apology. I was so sceptical and…" To be fair, she still was on ghosts, but at least she could say this was worth it. "Even if it wasn't ghosts, I'll pay in full. You've put this to rest and I can sleep easy again. If there's anything else I can do-"

He held out a gloved hand. "No need, ma'am. We're happy to be of service. Right, Blake?"

"Never again," the girl wept. "Never again."

Poor girl. The spider must have really spooked her.

/-/

Jaune bundled the monstrosity, still in its white blanket, into a room in his office and slammed the door shut. Immediately, she heard quiet hissing and the sounds of far too many feet clicking about the floor. She could only assume there was no window inside, or the thing would be out in the crowded city causing a collapse of all secrecy along with a fair few heart attacks. It was a miracle they'd gotten it from the van to the office anyway, with Jaune carrying the bundled-up bedsheet over one shoulder like a demented Santa Claus who kidnapped children instead of giving them gifts.

"Another case concluded!" Jaune said, sounding far too happy for her liking. Blake shivered at the sound of the thing's legs clawing at the door. "And without killing the anomaly this time. We've both protect the secret of anomalies and defended the poor thing. Mrs Scarlatina would have surely tried to kill it if she had found it."

"We're not keeping that thing here, are we?"

"Well, yeah. Where else am I supposed to keep it?"

"A containment facility?"

"First of all, we don't have any. Secondly, this is the Containments Office – the clue's in the name. Thirdly, it's alive. It'll need feeding. We can't just lock it up somewhere and throw away the key. That would be cruel."

"I'm not living with that thing." Blake said, crossing her arms. "I draw the line here, Jaune."

"Since when do you live in my office…?"

"Not the point!" she snapped. "Either that thing goes, or I do."

"I mean, shouldn't you be renting your own place anyway? I've given you your first month of wages." He made a good point and left her grumbling. "The spider has to stay, Blake. If you're looking for a place to room, I can have a talk with the landlord here. I can promise you the spider won't be coming through the walls to get you."

Joke or not, Blake glowered at him. On the other hand, she did need an apartment and it was weird to sleep on Jaune's sofa for the rest of her time here. She'd much rather rent a place far away from giant spiders, but then again staying close by would be convenient for work and would mean she had Jaune on hand if she found any anomalies in her home. Surely there wouldn't be any other nasties so close by to the ARC Corp office.

"Fine, but that thing stays locked up when I'm around doing work."

"Just think of it like a cute and over-eager puppy."

"I hate puppies."

"Man, you're just a walking bag of stereotypes, aren't you?" Jaune said with a roll of his eyes. "I'll keep it away from you, fine. One of us needs to do the paperwork and file the report while the other calms it down and figures out what it eats-" Jaune paused, watching her slam ass-first into his office chair and grip the desk's edge so tight her knuckles turned white. "I'm assuming that means you want to do the paperwork."

"You assume correctly."

"Right. Just let me log on for you." He typed in a password out of view, then turned the laptop back around. "Just write the report as a text file for now. I'll submit it later and you show you all the IT stuff another time." He moved to the fridge in the kitchenette and brought out several vegetables along with some minced meat. "I'm going to go housetrain our new pet."

"It needs a name," Blake said.

"I was thinking Timmy."

Blake stared at him. "That is entirely too disarming a name for so horrific a creature. Also, I meant the anomaly needs a name for the records."

"Oh right. How about The Friendship Spider?"

"How about no?" Blake replied. "Eight-legged abomination?"

"The House Spider."

"Nightmare Incarnate."

"Blake…" Jaune groaned and clasped his face. "Not every anomaly is evil-"

"But so far every anomaly is terrifying!"

"What's terrifying about this?" Jaune asked pointing to the globe.

"Everything!"

"You're so dramatic. Call it the Guardian Weaver," Jaune decided, "because it spent its time guarding the Scarlatina family and wanted to protect them. It didn't mean them any harm and spent every night patrolling their house. With any luck, I can convince it to guard our office as well."

Blake imagined walking into the office to the eight-legged evil wearing a collar and hissing at her before skittering forward to see who she was. A visible shudder ran through her body, at which point Jaune opened the door and went through, closing it behind him as the thing screeched and no doubt murdered him. Except that it wouldn't, because she couldn't possibly be that fortunate, and there was no way she was getting out of this thing being a part of her life now.

"The Guardian Weaver," Blake began to type, "is an anomalous creature found in the house of one Meg Scarlatina…"

/-/

Jaune proved as good as his word and not two hours later she had a small apartment for a fairly reasonable – by Vale's standards anyway – monthly rent. It was a small thing with a single bedroom, bathroom, living area attached to a kitchen, but considering she only owned the clothes Jaune had bought her, her prior outfit being unsalvageable thanks to all the blood, it was enough. The landlord was a tired looking man who Jaune assured her he had chosen specifically for his lack of interest in his tenants, and sure enough he didn't care for her being a faunus, her job or a reference from a previous landlord. She had money; he had an apartment for her. Simple as that.

Blake got down on all fours in the bedroom and peered under the bed. It was clear. Standing, she approached the wardrobe and pulled it open, then shone her scroll inside in every corner. She then stepped in and out, closed it and wrenched it open again for a second look.

All clear.

The bathroom was plain white and slightly dusty but otherwise free of mildew of limescale. Blake eyed the toilet and reached out with one hand to pull the handle down. It whooshed aggressively, and she leapt back, drew Gambol Shroud and pointed it at the porcelain throne.

"What are you doing?" Jaune asked.

"Checking for anomalies."

"Blake, anomalies have existed forever, and you never once encountered one. The chances of one being in your apartment are astronomically small. If they weren't, we'd have no chance keeping it all secret."

"Small chance does not mean no chance." Blake prodded the toilet seat with the barrel of her weapon before accepting it wasn't carnivorous. She reached into the shower and turned it on, leaping away from the spray of water like a startled cat.

Jaune sighed and stuck his gloved hand under it. "See. Water."

"It could be acid that only affects skin."

He rolled his eyes and stuck his head under until his hair was wet. "Ahhh," he said sarcastically. "I'm melting. I'm melting."

"Jaune, if I let my guard down and get eaten by my bed, it'll be my fault." Walking out the bathroom to said bed, she prodded it with one foot. "It doesn't matter if I didn't know anomalies existed before – I do now. Anything here could be alive." Crouching on her heels, she picked at the blanket with finger and thumb and peeled it up. "This blanket could be just waiting for me to fall asleep, then suck all the moisture out of me and leave me a desiccated husk."

"Would it make you feel better if I swapped sheets with you?"

"It'd make me feel better if you did a full sweep of the apartment with me," she said pointedly. "Take the kitchen. Make sure the microwave won't kill me when I'm not looking – and don't forget the fridge."

"You know, the Guardian Weaver would protect you from any other anomalies-"

"I would rather be killed in my sleep then wake up to that thing cuddling with me." Blake gave him a kick to the rear to get him moving in the direction of the kitchen. "Less talk, more inspection. I've not had any sleep and I'm not having any until I know for a fact this place is normal."

/-/

"Sir." Ozpin looked up from his desk at hearing Glynda speak. His deputy looked troubled, which boded ill for his own happiness at a productive morning. He set down his pen, already suspecting. "It's happened again, sir. Another complaint."

"And the security measures we put in place?"

"Nothing on the cameras, sir, but I trust the student in question not to waste my time with something like this, and she appeared very distressed-"

"No need to reassure me." Ozpin held up a hand to forestall her. "I trust your judgement, Glynda, and I will always side with the students in a matter such as this. The complaints have come too regularly to be dismissed out of hand, and the matter is troubling indeed. If the cameras and sensors we've put up have failed to detect anything, I dare say this is out of our expertise."

"Then what shall we do?" she asked. "I refuse to ignore this, sir."

"I will not ask you to." Ozpin's hand was already reaching for his cane. "Leave the matter to me. I know of a specialist in issues such as this, and I'm convinced this kind of work will be right up his alley. Put my meetings on hold, Glynda. I shall be in Vale if anyone needs me."

This chapter may seem a little rough around the edges. It's mostly because of my shoulder and arm. Anyway, Blake successfully captures her first anomaly. Good for her! The last one was a kill, so it didn't count.

Good job Blake! You're killing the new job!

Also, a hint as to next chapter to finish.

Next Chapter: 9th May

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