Author's Notes
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
Could it be? Is it so? It...It is! The new story alarm is going off! Say hello to 'Can I Make it to Summer?'
When Raven Branwen's (now ex-) husband runs off, leaving her alone with a blonde bundle of joy named Yang, she has no idea how a former bandit with no child-raising skills like her is supposed to last on her lonesome. Winter's icy embrace is on the horizon, and without any money or a job, tragedy might follow. With no other option, Raven calls Summer Rose, the leader of the team she quit nearly a year ago, for help in sorting out her troubled life and very troubled family. But she soon finds that there's a lot more she needs to learn from Summer than how to fold blankets or change diapers if she doesn't want her little household to come apart before the year's end.
Together once more, the women of Team Stark must work through their own guilt from the break-up of their team, mutual uncertainty towards who has the rights of motherhood over Yang, and the developing emotions they feel towards one another, all while nurturing a child so young she hasn't even seen her own first birthday.
A fic for the normies, now posting! Be sure to check it out, Rat's Nest.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 37 – The Stealer of the Rye
The master of disaster, Tyrian Callows, does the unthinkable, forcing Team Job into action.
"I've heard many great tales of your tremendous skill," said Mr. Callows, taking his seat and setting down his briefcase next to him. "Word spreads of Team Job's courage, wit, and will."
"I'm pleased to know that our works have been so well received," Jaune said amicably and honestly. To know that their reputation as a nascent quasi-hunter team was good news indeed, and he was happy for Mr. Callows to be the bearer of it. "Now, what can I do for you?"
"It's quite the simple mission premise." Tyrian flicked the latched on his suitcase, letting the top fall flat onto the floor. Out of it, he pulled a medium-sized rectangular object and plopped it down on the table. "I'd appreciate it if you brought me to justice."
Jaune's lips quirked as he inspected what Tyrian had set on the counter before him. It was a loaf of brown bread, still wrapped in plastic to ensure freshness. The logo identified it as the same in-house brand of the grocery store from which Jaune tended to buy groceries for himself and Blake. He had a half-used loaf of the very same bread in his fridge back at home (and yes, refrigerating bread was quite beneficial and made it last much longer).
"Bear witness to my admission; 'twas I who nicked this provision."
Looking down at the break, Jaune tried to make sense of what Mr. Callows was getting at. "You…You stole this bread?"
The man was still all smiles. "A heinous sin. Please, bring me in."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Callows, but I'm afraid I don't understand. Y-You seem to be under the impression that we're police or perhaps, uh, hunters, but we have no actual legal authority beyond that of a regular concerned citizen. I can't…arrest you, if that's what you're looking for?"
"Arrest, nay. Pursue, yay."
Jaune stared blankly.
Mr. Callows leaned in closer, beckoning Jaune to do the same with a single finger. Jaune ignored his own nerves and inched his chair forward.
"I seek a challenge, to put my own mettle to the test. That your talented troupe may suffice is mine hope dearest."
The scorpion Faunus produced a blade from somewhere Jaune couldn't discern, for it was already in the man's hand before he could even process it. Tapping it against the back of his wrist, he allowed purple aura to pulsate against the skin before letting go.
"Oh! You're a huntsman, then. And you want to test your abilities by having us…arrest you?"
He shrugged. "The theft of a loaf is my grand treason. In doing so, I provide the reason."
Okay, now it was starting to make more sense to Jaune (even if it still made absolutely no sense at all). This Tyrian guy had heard about Team Job being great 'huntsmen' and wanted to see if they measured up, likely out of curiosity and a professional desire to train that most if not all huntsmen and huntress' Jaune had encountered exhibited. He'd stolen something cheap from a store to give them a legal justification for trying to arrest him, but it was an action that had no genuine consequences.
Why he'd stolen the bread instead of just offering to spar with them beat Jaune (as did the poetic prose), but who was he to complain about a quirky client's wishes? Hunters could be weird like that – Blake chased laser pointers, Velvet was kinda horny all the time, and Ruby had a weird weapons fetish that still unnerved Jaune.
Jaune smiled and interlocked his fingers. "A couple quick questions, before we begin."
"Ask away. Answer, I may."
"Our current rates are 25,000 lien, with a limit of one week of service maximum or the completion of your mission. Do you find this acceptable?"
Tyrian answered by handing Jaune a debit card and offering him another sing-songy riddle. "Funds are something I do not lack. I'll pay your fees if you attack."
Ringing up the card in the machine Blake had gotten for them, Jaune found that it did have the account balance available to hire their services. Tyrian politely accepted the card back and spirited it off to somewhere unseen, perhaps the same place he'd kept the knife.
"And just one minor thing, that's more of a pre-emptive security measure. As a huntsman, are you in any way associated with Beacon Academy?"
Mr. Callows just shook his head and retrieved the loaf of bread off the desk. "Nary a relation to the institute of education."
"Alright, then. I'm happy to announce that you, sir, are Team Job's newest client."
"A cause for elation; a great celebration." Mr. Callows rose up from his chair and outstretched a hand to Jaune, which was taken and shook. "I'll inform you of my whereabouts when your team is convened. May you all have the best of luck in stopping the bread archfiend."
"So…why didn't he just do the normal thing and ask to pay for a spar?"
"Far be it from me to judge a client's choices," Jaune said to Velvet with a wry smirk. "But in reality, this dude was weird. You know how some hunters get really quirky with the outfits and weapons and mannerisms? Well, this guy had put all of his stat points into the last one. Every other sentence he said rhymed with the one before it."
"I dunno," Velvet said. "A lot of folks I knew back at Beacon were oddballs, but none of them were straight up insane like that. And he stole bread? Why? He's hired us to stop him, and we would even without the bread."
Jaune shrugged unsurely, though he did have a bit of a guess. "I'm not 100% on this one, but I think this is part of the game to him. For whatever reason, he sees himself as this daring rogue, throwing down the gauntlet to his enemies in the form of a bread loaf. He doesn't want a fight; he wants a chase, and he wants it to be a flashy, showy performance. If a thirty-year-old huntsman pays three teenagers to 'bring him to justice,' I'm guessing he's in it for fun, not for actual improvement."
Jaune had no idea if Velvet had zero clue what he was going on about or if the weirdness of Mr. Callows' request wasn't vibing right with her, but she didn't ask any more questions after that, at least about the job itself.
"When's Blake coming in?"
"She's going to refuel Gambol Shroud on Dust and bring some spare Gravity for you and the airship," Jaune explained. "We bought in bulk for the farmstead for that time-traveling bro or whatever he was, and she's been lasting off of that for the past few missions, but it ran out on the border of Vacuo, so now we've got to start refreshing out supplies."
Jaune proudly patted Crocea Mors on his hip, silently thanking it for not ever costing them extra lien for refuels. Maybe swords were just better like that.
He had yet to even test out the new weapons Velvet had bought for him, though it had only been two missions since then, so no real opportunity had arisen. The cacti Grimm fields really required nothing more than any standard blade, and the Vacuoan Sulfur Fish had been handled easily enough with Crocea Mors.
Maybe I can, I dunno, coat the arrows of my crossbow in pufferfish venom and stun Tyrian to get us that win. Or, wait, would he not like it if we won? Does he want to be challenged, or is he looking to inflate his own ego? I know he can pay us, but I've no idea what he actually considers a 'Mission Accomplished' from us…crap.
It also dawned upon Jaune that his new weapons needed suitable names. Crocea Mors had one, so his dirk and crossbow deserved to be known as more than just 'Jaune's dirk and crossbow.'
"So, about Blake." Velvet gripped her right elbow with her left hand, the arm in front of her pressing against her now visibly enlarged tummy. "I…I wanted to…well, thanks for getting us through that, Jaune. I look back, and I have no idea why I was so obstinate when she had a genuine reason for being mad at me. I brought it up, so it should have been my responsibility to make sure she – th-thank you. It's Blake I should be telling this to, not you."
Jaune patted her on the shoulder. "Chin up, Vel. I'm sure she's just as torn up about it as you."
"Heh. Vel." She smiled brightly. "I'm glad no one's quitting, not when I'm finally starting to feel like a real member of the team."
Mr. Callows had said that he wanted an advanced warning when Team Job was assembled, sort of a notification that the game was afoot, so they couldn't actually start hunting him down, but Velvet did have plenty to explain to Jaune about the apprehension of rogue huntsmen, dangerous criminals, and aura-enhanced bandits. Jaune knew a lot about Grimm after having read the book Blake gave him on them cover to cover, but he was a tenderfoot when it came to anti-human or Faunus combat. Sure, he might know how to swing a sword someone's way, but the actual aspects of tracking, creating a perimeter, and de-escalation were utterly new to him.
Velvet explained some of the basics as best she could in the limited time they had, going over topics like how to determine your opponent's aura based on visual cues and what information was available to the public that could be used to follow someone. When people said paper trail, they usually meant it in a digital sense, as one could crack open a commercial search engine and find out a lot of information on where someone was solely based on a scroll number. It turned out that area codes weren't the only clue, as the rest of the numbers weren't randomly assigned either.
"There's no way to get an exact address based on the number, but landlines, those that still exist in the modern day, will end in 1-4 for private addresses, 5-8 for registered businesses, and 9 for other government businesses."
"Huh, I never noticed that." Jaune's own personal scroll ended in a 5, but it wasn't a landline. On the other hand, the Team Job Security office phone ended in a 8, so Velvet was right on that count. "We have no way of knowing if Mr. Callows' scroll number is a landline."
"No, but –"
"It's still useful to know," Jaune finished for her, nodding. "I get that."
"A lot of people don't," Velvet said, tucking a lock of hair behind her human ear. "Back at Beacon, if you told people something wasn't going to be on the test, they'd forget it faster than a moth under a lightbulb."
"A moth under a…"
Velvet's cheeks started to turn red.
He couldn't help but chuckle a little. "I take it your metaphor game isn't all that strong?"
Velvet's eyebrows slanted slightly. "Meta…wait, i-it was a simile…hah! Who's the fuckboi now?!"
"It was a metaphor," Jaune calmly reiterated. "And I don't recall calling you an eff-boy."
"Simile! A comparison using like or as or than! Get got, biatch!"
"All similes are metaphors," Jaune stated. "One's an umbrella category that encompasses the other, much like rhombuses and squares. Or rectangles and squares. Parallelograms and squares, quadrilateral and squares…"
Velvet sucked in her cheeks. "Man, sounds like squares are the real bottom bitches. I guess the student has become the teacher."
"I think I'm still the student when it comes to anything hunter-related," Jaune admitted. It was difficult to be ashamed of his inexperience when he'd never really had a chance. In his eyes, he'd done nothing wrong, so not being a pro-hunter off the bat was no fault of his own.
"You're learning fast, though," Velvet said. "Are you and Blake still training?"
Jaune nodded. "One hour every night after work at the gym. If you'd like to join…"
Velvet smiled forlornly. "Not at the moment. I think we're both still raw from last mission's disagreement, and we need some time to cool down. At the very least, us intentionally spending time together in our free time is the opposite of productive."
When Blake arrived with a large case of Dust, so big she had to hold it in both hands, Velvet made herself scarce in the back room of their office space. Jaune repeated the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Callows and his bizarre job, making sure to remind her that it all paid the same no matter what.
"It's probably not the weirdest thing we've done, letting some rando huntsman test himself against us," she admitted when he finished. "What's weirder to me is the idea that we're so popular that people are talking about us."
"It's been, what, ten missions so far, that we've completed? And none of them have even had a tint of failure. We've been running all over Vale and its settlements. If he's a hunter who frequents those places in his own time, it's reasonable to believe that he'd have heard the name mentioned here or there."
"Is he a huntsman, then?" Blake asked.
Jaune nodded in assent. Then, he paused for a second.
Mr. Callows never actually said he's a huntsman. In fact, when I asked him point blank, he made some rhyme about the bread theft. He had aura, so I just sorta assumed, but maybe he's just a warrior or something? Local militia, or a traveling sellsword? A…heh, a 'security consultant?'
It didn't really matter. The guy was too polite to be something scary like an axe murderer, so Jaune didn't really mind whatever line of work he got up to in his own time.
"I guess I'll go ahead and text Mr. Callows to let him know that we're ready," Jaune mumbled.
"Yup."
"Velvet's here, by the way. She's just sorting papers in the back." Jaune really had no idea what she was doing back there, or even if they had any papers. In all honesty, the only space they needed was the front lobby to discuss things with clients; their single back room was more of an avenue of escape or a place to go when they needed to pretend they were doing something.
Also a place for the Faunus to hide if I need to be the human face of the company, but I prefer to not have to think about that.
"Yup," Blake said. "Yeah…"
Jaune lowered his voice, given how Velvet was barely ten feet away. "You…wannna, maybe, go talk to her?"
"Um…maybe. Is that really a good idea, right now?"
It was rare to see the normally stoic Blake so phased by something. There was nothing blatant like tears or puffy red eyes, but her composure was cracking in little ways that only he noticed with his eye for detail and above average memory. The bow behind her ears was improperly folded, with the left side having been tucked in the wrong order, leading to a crease that stood out. Furthermore, her wrist-glove-ribbon things were on the wrong arms, and the fingers that they nearly covered would fidget every ten seconds or so.
"I just think you guys will eventually need to bury the hatchet. I mean, are you still mad at her?"
"No, but she's probably still mad at me."
Jaune desperately wanted to tell her that Velvet was pretty much calm as a cucumber at this point, but that felt like overstepping. If they both asked to avoid each other, then it was unfair of him to relay secret messages to one side or the other about how their teammate was faring.
He did have one trick left, though.
Taking out his scroll, he texted Mr. Callows to tell him that Team Job was ready to begin chasing him. No sooner than he'd tapped the button did a set of coordinates appear in response to it.
I guess that means he was just waiting with his finger on the send button with a pre-typed up message? That or he's a tech wiz who could schedule a DM, but I didn't get the vibe from that dude.
"Well, I guess we're on the clock, so…VELVET!" Jaune called out. "Come on out here."
The mission was an override, as there was no way for them to keep avoiding one another when they were on the job. Short of Velvet wearing a mask, they were going to have to work together for this, since Jaune alone wasn't going to be able to challenge a full-fledged huntsman, or whatever Mr. Callows was.
Jaune and Blake's little Faunus minion popped out of her rabbit hole with a bashful look on her face, the same one that Blake seemed to have on her own face.
"So, how was the eavesdropping?" Jaune asked. He had no idea if Velvet were actually listening in, but the idea of her not trying to spy a little bit as they talked about her just one room over was unrealistic.
"I…I…I…"
"V-Velvet…"
Jaune watched as they continued their little back-and-forth for a minute or two before giving up and losing his patience.
"Let's play a little game," Jaune said. "Since neither of you are ever going to actually get around to it if I don't literally force it, let's have everyone who ISN'T sorry raise their hands."
Neither girl raised her hand.
"There we go. You've both admitted that you're sorry, so there's no more pride or ego to get in the way of actually talking it out." Jaune stepped towards the front door and unlatched his crossbow. "I'm gonna go buy some pufferfish venom. I expect you both to have kissed and made up with one another by the time I'm back."
Coming Soon: The Huntsman Store
Team Job's going to need more than blood, sweat, and tears to complete their latest mission, and there's only one place they can get it.
Author's Notes
Well, I messed that one up. It should have been Blake's POV, not Jaune's, but I was already halfway through the chapter when I noticed, with no way to retroactively swap it out. Jaune was the one talking to Tyrian, and I just kept going, so I guess we're getting double Arc. Maybe I'll do two Blake POVs or something? I don't know.
Edit: I do know since it's the future. It's two Blake POVs next.
It's fun to write Tyrian. If you look carefully, you'll notice that all of his riddles are actually not in iambic pentameter. A little Easter Egg for all the fans of Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the Rat's Nest.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!