Author's Notes

Some people actually managed to guess the client just from the chapter summary last time. Hats off to you folks.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!

Chapter 14 – To Consult and Protect

Jaune and Blake discover the dark side of not being able to hand pick their own missions when a new client solicits their services.

Jaune couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Blake this angry. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her angry, period.

The scary part was that whenever she snapped, he couldn't tell if it was because she was truly angry with him for changing the website to advertise specifically for non-Grimm missions or if he was just close enough to be the lightning rod that attracted her misdirected anger.

"We, um, we don't have to take the job," he offered, doing his best to melt into the seat on the airship. "D-Do we?"

"It could be considered discrimination if we don't," Blake hissed, her ears behaving more catlike than Jaune wanted to acknowledge. "So yes, Arc, we do have to take the mission."

"K-Kay. Sorry for asking."

If Blake heard his apology, she certainly didn't react to it.

It was truly tempting to just stay out of the way, but if Blake was like this when they got to their client…

It's my job to liaise with our customers, because they're more likely to respond positively to a human face than a Faunus one. And knowing what I've heard about the SDC, that's truer now than ever.

That meant that it fell within Jaune's range of responsibilities to calm Blake down, or at least somehow guarantee she didn't bite the heads off of the SDC workers when they got there.

"Blake, uh…"

She turned away. Every inch of her body language was screaming 'not in the mood for it, Arc.'

"Um…look, I know now's not a good time, but…well, I…alright, honesty is the best policy. I want to make sure you're okay with doing this missi– poor phrasing! Poor phrasing, I'm sorry, please don't look at me like that!" Jaune felt himself sweat profusely. "I know you're not okay. B-But, are you so un-okay that you'd rather I do it solo? I mean, I can if you want me to."

"It wouldn't change a thing," Blake said. "The SDC would still get their mission done and their bandits stopped, regardless of if you or I do it."

"Well, th-the fewer bandits there are, the b–"

"Actually, never mind what I said before. If I leave it to just you, the mission might not get done after all."

Ouch. Jaune was fairly certain his aura had measurably dropped from that one.

She said we need to do a mission that's actually security related. Well, we waited nearly two full weeks with nothing coming in, and the SDC was the only person to reach out to us. We're not yet developed enough to have the luxury of picking and choosing which clients we take. I know Blake's upset about having to work for the SDC, given how they're known to treat their Faunus employees, but I have a voice in this company too.

The problem was that she hadn't actually asked to not do the mission. He could just imagine, though, that she would lose her mind in rage when they actually got to their SDC contact if this was how angry just thinking about them made her.

"I'll be the one to talk with them," Jaune half-said, half-demanded.

It got no response from Blake, and Jaune desperately hoped that signaled an implicit agreement with his terms.

It was an extremely long and extremely unpleasant airship ride for the rest of the way, spent entirely in an uncomfortable silence for Jaune and a barely concealed rage for Blake.

The reason it took so long was because they needed to go the full way around the snowcapped peaks of the Big Rock Sugar Mountain Range. Their client, an SDC mining village on the other side of the mountains, was located there due to it being one of Sanus' largest discovered Dust deposits. According to the information they'd been given so far, the mountain range's intensely cold temperatures caused airships' engines to stall, meaning that there was no other way for them to get there other than flying the full 4 hours around to the edge of the range, making a wide U-turn around it, and then flying all the way back. As the crow flew, it was only about fifty miles to the SDC village, but their airship traversed a distance of nearly four hundred miles from start to finish.

"This is gunna cost you kids extra," said Benson, the pilot. "M'real sorry, kiddos, but I can't fly for nigh a full day for the same cost of a quick ol' jaunt."

"We understand," Jaune said. This mission was less about the money and more about making sure that Ozpin had no grounds on which to sue them, so extra costs wouldn't be a problem.

"I'll give ya double punches on yer card," he said back. "Seems only fair."

It's just one mission. Blake doesn't like it, but she's grinning and bearing it…you know, minus the grinning part. I'm sure I can accept it as well, especially when the alternative is bankruptcy at best and jail time for fraud at worst.

When they actually arrived at the walls of the village, there was a 30-something year old man in an SDC branded long-sleeved zip-up jacket and jeans waiting outside to greet them. He had on a baseball cap with that world-famous snowflake on top, and there was a binder in his hands. Shifting to hold it with one hand, he stretched out the other towards the two kids.

"Ah, you're here. Team Job Security, correct?"

Blake's tongue was probably at risk of being crushed into paste from how tightly she was holding it, so Jaune stepped forward and shook the man's hand. "Yes, that's us. I believe you've been having some trouble with bandits?"

The man nodded and opened up his binder. "Quite so. Please, walk with me; I'll explain as we head to the stagecoach."

Making sure to place himself between Blake and the dude (who, in spite of working for a scummy company, was probably the most polite and professional client they'd had yet) as they walked through the snow alongside him along the walls towards the rear of the village.

"As you know, airships cannot fly through the mountain range due to icing issues causing their engines to stall unless they enter extremely high-altitude flight paths, which tend to require specialized equipment whose cost rarely justifies the benefit."

Jaune nodded and checked his scroll, which said 1:30pm. "We left at 9am this morning."

The man's eyes stayed on his binder as he nodded. "Now, in order to operate our mining village, we've set up a stagecoach to transport Dust into the city and ferry resources back our way. It's –"

"Hold on a second. A stagecoach?"

Jaune had seen those mountains as they'd flown overhead. There was no way some sort of rickety wagon was going to be making its way over that climb. It was probably a sheer 50 degree incline at points, and the ground was made of solid ice at others.

The man smiled and shook his head. "Not an actual stagecoach. We merely use the term due to its connotation. Our vehicle is actually a six-legged automated drone with spiked toes that can traverse harsh terrains and endure inclement weather – think of a spider droid, but in place of a turret, it's got a vault on top where either Dust or living supplies are stored, depending on the direction of travel. You'll see it in just a moment.

"Our problem is…rather perplexing. The stagecoach has consistently made it to Vale without incident, with the Dust shipment unmolested, but on the return journey, it's been robbed. However, not completely robbed. The lien is missing, but other materials like food, medicine, rope, treated lumber, paper products, and clothing are untouched."

"White Fang?" Blake asked abruptly.

"We don't believe so," said the man. "We considered the possi…ahem. We considered the possibility but discounted it."

Jaune couldn't help but notice that the man had stuttered only when he'd looked up and noticed Blake's appearance.

"How so?" she asked. "If they wanted to hurt the SDC without impacting the mining community, taking the profits while leaving the food would be a way to do so. You'd lose money, but the Faunus would still get to eat."

The SDC guy, who was a human, seemed about as uncomfortable as Jaune was right about now. "Yes, but the Dust we exported wasn't stolen. The White Fang is well known to…to…to utilize Dust, and this robbery has transpired consistently during the past five stagecoach round trips. That implies that the perpetrators have means of tracking it and thereby have intentionally chosen to take exclusively the lien."

"Meaning it's someone motivated by money and nothing more," Jaune intuited. "Bandits."

It couldn't be Grimm, since there were no people involved and no reason for them to be attracted. That left pretty much the only other big threat that plagued Remnant.

"Presumably," said the SDC man. "Furthermore, no mask was left on the crime scene to claim credit, as is typically done. We have no conclusive evidence, but banditry is our prevailing theory. I should also point out that, during inventories, it was noticed that in addition to the lien that was missing, the stagecoach's supply of nails was also missing. We don't know what to make of that. Do…?"

"It means nothing to us either," answered Jaune. "But we'll keep it in mind. Thank you for bringing it up."

The village was a big rectangle shape, and as they rounded their second corner, they came upon what Jaune assumed was the stagecoach and several people working on it. As the man had implied, this was no wagon.

When the guy had said spider droid, Jaune imagined eight spindly daddy-longlegs poles sticking into the ground and moving around awkwardly. The actual stagecoach had only six legs, but each of them was probably about the full height of Jaune before the joint and just as wide. They were reinforced with thick plates or armor, and the joints that connected the lower leg to the upper leg were ball joints. At the center was a large body of machinery that Jaune assumed was the engine, as well as a large, clear chamber that the cargo would be stored in. The work crews were doing something to the bottom, and there was a large metal box a few meters away from them. The whole thing was a good twenty feet tall, enough to make an Ursa Major feel shrimpy.

"We'd like to have you ride along with it during the next round-trip journey," explained the man. "If and when the stagecoach is attack, as it consistently has been up to this point, you'll find the perpetrators and…stop them, as you see fit."

"Stop them?" Jaune asked.

"As you see fit," the man said, looking away.

"Why didn't you just have us load onto the thing in Vale?" Jaune asked. "We flew all the way out here, but you said it's most likely to be attacked on the way back, right?"

"The SDC will comp you for your flight," the dude said, as though that was an explanation, and then he just went on. "The stagecoach doesn't exactly have proper seats since it's not meant to be a vehicle for personnel transport. To resolve this, we're outfitting a climate-controlled sub-chamber that can be attached to the engine's underside. It has a series of omnidirectional viewports with one-way, bulletproof glass, internal lighting, and a simple release mechanism to let you exit when you need to intervene. We can have it ready within the half-hour."

"Sure. My partner and I will await your indication that it's ready." Jaune nodded in the direction away from the village. "Miss Belladonna, I'd like a word."

Blake's scowl grew at that, but she had the wherewithal to look away and not let the SDC guy see her. While he and his people began to finalize their work on making the stagecoach rideable, Jaune and Blake moved over to the edge of the wilderness to have their conversation in private.

"Okay," Jaune said. "You're pissed."

"Yeah, no shit! Jaune, do you not get what they're asking us to do? Can you not comprehend that the SDC is asking us to kill people?"

"No, I get that. But we can just capture them and hand them over to the police when we arrived in Vale."

It sounded like it might be difficult, but if they were able to overpower and restrain the bandits, they could drop them off in Vale and be done with it.

Actually, we'd most likely encounter them on the way back from Vale, but we can still make it work. We'll tie them up, throw them in the vault, and fly them back on the airship as prisoners. Assuming there aren't hundreds of them, we can just stow them in the extra seats or even lying down on the floor. We can make this work.

"That's not the point!" Blake snarled at Jaune. "That man doesn't care what we do! He'd be just as happy if we ended whoever's doing this."

"What do you want me to do, Blake? You said we can't turn down the job."

Blake growled and kicked her foot into the snow. "I was wondering why they hired us and not licensed hunters. It's the SDC; they certainly can afford it, given their mountains of blood money. They didn't want us to start from the kingdoms because they want to minimize witnesses, Jaune, we aren't hitmen. This is wrong."

"No, Blake, it's not wrong, because we won't kill them." Jaune looked back at the SDC workers, who were in the process of welding the box to the bottom of the walker. "What could we do to stop this guy and his buddies? Turn them in for hiring us to stop bandits? Arrest them ourselves? They were out here before, probably being unethical corporate bastards for years now, and they'll be out here no matter what we do."

"Oh." Blake threw her hands down in mock satisfaction. "Oh, you're right. How stupid have I been? We can't stop all of the evil in the world, so we may as well give up and profit from it. That's a very human attitude, though I guess I'm not surprised to find it coming from a human like you." Her lip curled in disgust as she looked at Jaune with the same look she gave the SDC people from before.

"Well, what the heck do you want me to do?" Jaune begged wearily, exasperation getting the better of him. "We can quit, but they'll just hire someone else who'll actually use lethal force. And even if they don't, the only net change we'd make is keeping a few more bandits out in the world as opposed to behind bars where they belong."

"The SDC is worse than bandits, Jaune. I know you don't care about the Faunus, but I do."

"Blake, I don't bury my head under a rock or something. I know people die in the mines, but we don't have the –"

"Die?" Blake shook her head. "Some die, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that people have to live in those tunnels. Good men and women, innocent Faunus who've done nothing wrong, they have to spend their entire lives suffering in the darkness and swallowing the Dust fumes and breaking their backs for the kind of money you spend on…on…on snacks! It's borderline slavery, and I refuse to have anything to do with it!"

Rubbing his forehead, Jaune turned away from her for a second. It was starting to take its toll on him to be so thoroughly abused by someone who he saw as a friend, even if he knew she was right.

"…okay," he said, turning back to her. "Then…Th-Then I'll go tell the guy we won't take the job."

That only seemed to make Blake angrier, and she forcefully pushed him away from her. "Fuck you, Jaune. You know as well as I do that we don't have any other options, so fuck you for offering that when you know we can't just 'not take the job,' and fuck you for making me be the one to say it."

At this point, Jaune really didn't know what he was supposed to say or do to calm Blake down. She seemed hellbent on being angry at him no matter what side Jaune took.

He wanted to snap back at her and remind her that this wasn't exactly his choice to be in this situation, but Jaune didn't have that luxury. Blake was the real huntress, and she was his teacher. Though he played the boss in public, she was the one who knew the industry and called the shots, and he just went along for the ride.

There was nothing else for him to say, so he just sighed, turned back around, and left her. Blake stayed behind to pout in solitude while Jaune watched the SDC crew modify the stagecoach for the next few minutes.

When they finished adding the undercarriage, the man waved at Jaune, even though he was only a few feet away.

"It's ready when you are, sir. Simply enter through the door and close it behind you."

Jaune stuck his head inside and looked around. As promised, there were several windows on all of the walls. The ceiling was lit, and it was rather warm inside in spite of them being in the snow outside. Aside from the rather low hanging ceiling, it actually looked rather comfortable in there.

"How do we open it once we're in?" Jaune asked, popping back out.

The man swung the door over and tapped a large handle on it. "The backside of the door has a switch. Simply lift the lever up and the door will open of its own accord. It's spring-compressed and may require two hands to operate."

Everything seemed in order. All that was left was the hard part.

"Blake," Jaune called. "Ready when you are."

Stomping over, Blake brushed past Jaune, bumping right into him with her shoulder as she crawled into the small space. Jaune uncomfortably followed in after her.

I really hope she's not going to be this mad at me when we're both crammed together in such a claustrophobic space for the next few hours.

"Excellent," said the SDC operative. He placed one hand on the rim of the door. "The stagecoach is loaded with Dust and will be leaving immediately. I wish you both a successful hunt."

The door shut.

Coming Soon: Saboteuse

The trip from the SDC back to Vale might be through cold, snow-capped mountains, but that doesn't stop tempers from burning out of control.

Author's Notes

All of the characters will be getting their 'interpersonal conflict' arc. Today marks the beginning of the inaugural one, between our dual protagonists Jaune and Blake.

We'll be seeing Blake's side of the story next chapter. Mostly, she's pissed and letting her anger out onto the nearest available human, but she does have reasoning for not wanting to work for the SDC.

In this fanfic, the SDC (among the Faunus) is known for its bad reputation. Some people have argued that we never see the SDC do anything evil so maybe they aren't so bad, but it's supposed to be common knowledge in the securityverse that they're THE Faunus rights violators, the equivalent of Enron and Blizzard and Nestle combined or something.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!