[RWBY] RWBY Shorts

[AJ_Talon]

The early morning light was soft and golden over Beacon's grounds. Most students were still asleep, but Pyrrha Nikos had slipped out quietly with Mia in tow, the little girl still yawning in her arms.

"I thought we could have some time just for us before everyone else wakes up," Pyrrha said gently, setting Mia down beside her bright red tricycle. "Does that sound nice?"

Mia rubbed her eyes, still sleepy, but her ears perked up when Pyrrha gave the tricycle a gentle push. "Tricycle!"

Soon Mia was pedaling with growing excitement as Pyrrha jogged alongside, giving her little pushes to keep her moving. Giggles replaced the yawns, and before long Mia was laughing brightly, wind tousling her blonde curls.

"Faster, Auntie Pyrrha! Faster!"

Pyrrha laughed, obliging with another gentle push. "You're getting so fast!"

Later, they settled on a blanket in the grass with a big coloring book. Mia concentrated hard, filling in a dragon with bright reds and oranges.

Pyrrha colored beside her, choosing a soft purple for the sky. "Purple is a fun color, don't you think?"

Mia wrinkled her nose. "It's boring."

Pyrrha giggled. "I like it. It's calm and pretty."

Mia pouted but kept coloring. After a quiet moment, Pyrrha asked softly, "Are you happy here, Mia? At Beacon?"

Mia looked up with a bright smile. "I'm super happy! I get to see Papa every day and all my aunties! I just want Papa to be happy too!"

Pyrrha's expression softened. "I want that too. I want Jaune to be very happy."

Mia beamed. "Does that mean you'll be my new mama? With all my other mamas?"

Pyrrha blinked, caught off guard. "Why… why do you want so many mamas?"

Mia shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because more mamas means Papa is extra happy! And then I get lots of little siblings and everyone is super happy!"

Pyrrha stared at her for a long moment, then smiled gently, a touch of melancholy in her eyes. "That might mean other kids get more attention than you sometimes."

Mia blew a loud raspberry. "I'm fine with that! As long as everyone's happy!"

Pyrrha reached over and gently brushed a curl behind Mia's ear.

"You have a very big heart, little one," she whispered.

Mia just grinned and went back to coloring her dragon red.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Blake waited outside the daycare with her arms crossed, trying not to look as nervous as she felt. When the doors opened and Mia came running out, the little cat Faunus girl's ears were perked and her smile was bright.



"Auntie Blake!" Mia squealed, throwing herself into Blake's arms.



Blake caught her easily and lifted her up. "Hey, Mia. Want to go somewhere special with me?"



Mia's eyes sparkled. "Special?"



Blake smiled. "My favorite tree on campus. It's really tall. We can watch the birds."


- - -



A few minutes later they were high up in the branches of an old oak that overlooked the courtyard. The wind rustled the leaves around them. Mia sat securely in Blake's lap, staring out at the sky with pure wonder.



"Birds!" she whispered, pointing as a flock of little sparrows wheeled past. "They're so pretty!"



Blake watched her, heart aching in that familiar, complicated way. She tried to wait. She really did. But patience had never been her strongest virtue.



"…Mia," she said quietly. "Can I ask you something?"



Mia turned to look at her, ears twitching. "Uh-huh?"



Blake swallowed. "I heard you asked all the other girls to be your new mama. Ruby… Yang… Weiss… Pyrrha… even Glynda and Velvet. But you never asked me."



Mia blinked, genuinely confused. "But I do want you to be my mama! When we met Granny Kali and Grandpa Ghira! I like them lots. I want them to be my granny and grandpa forever!"



Recalling her parents... She felt guilt rise up like vomit. She closed her eyes.



"I..." Blake sighed. "Well... Maybe you shouldn't."



"Why?" Mia asked.



Blake's ears flattened under her bow. She looked down, voice soft and rough.



"I'm sorry. I just… I hurt my family for a long time. I was angry. I ran away from my parents. I joined a bad man… a man I cared about a lot. He lied to me. Used me. And I did a lot of bad things with him. Then I met you and your papa, and I really like both of you. I want to be a family again. But I'm scared. Scared I might hurt you. Or him. Or anyone who gets close to me. I don't know if I can—"



Smack.



Mia's tiny hand landed firmly on Blake's cheek.



"Stop being dumb!" Mia declared, frowning fiercely. "You're super dumb! You can be my mama too if you want! Cause you don't wanna be bad anymore! You wanna be good!"



Then she threw her arms around Blake's neck and hugged her tightly.



Blake froze for half a second… then the tears came. She buried her face in Mia's hair and hugged her back, shoulders shaking just a little.



"…Thanks," she whispered.



Mia patted her back like she was comforting a big sad cat. "You're welcome."



After a quiet moment, Mia pulled back, still holding Blake's face with both hands.



"But I don't want Uncle Sun to be sad!" she said seriously. "But I want another mama… Can I have two dads?"



Blake stared at her.



"…Um… well…"



Mia waited patiently, ears perked, as if this was a perfectly reasonable request.



Blake opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.



"…We'll… talk about that later," she finally managed.



Mia nodded, satisfied. "Okay! Can we watch more birds now?"



Blake let out a soft, watery laugh and pulled the little girl closer, resting her chin on Mia's head as they looked out over Beacon together.



"…Yeah," she murmured. "We can watch more birds."

 

[AJ_Talon]

Yang pushed open the door to the JNPR common room with Mia perched on her hip, the little girl chattering nonstop.

"—and then Hawk said the blue crayon was the bestest for drawing explosions, but I told him red is way cooler, and then we played Starlight Rangers and I got to be the pink one and he was the red one and—"

"Whoa, slow down, kiddo," Yang laughed, setting her down. "Save some energy for dinner."

Jaune looked up from the stove, where something smelled deliciously like pasta and herbs. The rest of RWBY and JNPR were sprawled around the common room — Ruby and Nora on the floor, Weiss and Blake on the couch, Pyrrha and Ren at the table.

Jaune's face lit up the second he saw his daughter. He wiped his hands on a towel, scooped Mia up, and spun her once before hugging her tight.

"There's my girl! How was daycare, kitten?"

Mia beamed. "I have a boyfriend now, Papa!"

Jaune froze mid-hug. Everyone's eyes were on them. Blake's jaw dropped.

Jaune's eyes narrowed.

"…No you don't."

"I do too!" Mia insisted, bouncing in his arms. "His name is Hawk! He's my super boyfriend!"

"No. You don't. You're way too young for a boyfriend."

"He shared his juice box so we're boyfriend and girlfriend and he's gonna give me a Starlight Ranger decoder ring so we can get married!"

Jaune choked on his spit.

"MARRIED?!"

Yang immediately stepped in, hands raised. "Easy, Jaune. Easy! They're just playing!"

Weiss cleared her throat delicately. "Yes… I'm sure it meant nothing. Children say these things all the time."

Nora cracked her knuckles, eyes gleaming. "Want me to break his kid's kneecaps?"

"NORA!" Ruby yelped.

"What? I'll do it! No smooth player is making the moves on our Mia!" Nora said defensively.

Ren hid his smirk in his teacup.

Jaune actually looked like he was seriously considering the offer. Ruby, Weiss, Pyrrha and Yang immediately scowled at him.

"Jaune!" they said in unison.

"What?!" he defended. "I wasn't going to!"

Mia clutched his shirt. "Don't hurt my boyfriend!"

Jaune looked down at her, jaw set. "Only if you don't have a boyfriend."

"I do!"

"You don't."

"I do!"

"You don't."

"I DO!"

"You don't."

Mia pouted harder. "When can I have one?"

Jaune thought about it.

"When you're thirty."

"THAT'S NOT FAIR!"

The tantrum hit instantly. Mia's face scrunched up, tears welled, and she started wailing at full volume while kicking her little legs. Jaune sighed, carried her over to the designated timeout corner (a small cushion by the wall), and set her down gently but firmly.

"Timeout. Five minutes. No boyfriend talk."

Mia sobbed louder.

Pyrrha frowned and walked over, resting a hand on Jaune's arm. "Come now, Jaune… it's just a silly game for kids. That boy doesn't know what he's doing any more than Mia does."

Yang crossed her arms. "Yeah. Chill out, Vomit Boy. She's four."

"It's just harmless fun," Blake emphasized, "No need to worry... Yet."

Jaune stared at the wall for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh.

"…Fine."

He turned back to the corner cushion and his miserable daughter.

"Mia? You can come out of timeout if you stop crying."

Mia sniffled dramatically, wiped her face with both sleeves, and toddled over. She looked up at him with big, watery eyes.

"Okay… Can I have my boyfriend?"

Jaune's expression softened. He knelt down, brushed her bangs back, and muttered,

"…Maybe."

Mia's face lit up like a sunrise. She threw her arms around his neck.

"Yay! I love you, Papa!"

Jaune hugged her back, already regretting everything.

From the couch, Nora whispered loudly, "I still think we should break the kid's kneecaps just in case."

Ruby groaned. "Nora, no."

Yang just smirked at Jaune. "You're so screwed when she actually hits dating age."

Jaune buried his face in Mia's hair and groaned.

"I know."

 

[AJ_Talon]

The Schnee mansion's private training hall echoed with the sharp ring of steel on steel.

Weiss—barely fourteen, hair in a tight braid, Myrtenaster still feeling oversized in her grip—lunged forward with a textbook-perfect thrust. Fafnir parried it effortlessly with Knarra's flat, the high-frequency blade humming low as he guided her strike aside without effort.

"Footwork," he rumbled, voice like gravel under ice. "You telegraph the feint. Again."

Weiss reset, cheeks flushed with exertion and determination. She circled, glyphs flickering beneath her feet for balance, then exploded into a flurry—slash, riposte, glyph-assisted pivot. Fafnir blocked each blow with minimal movement, his cybernetic wings folded like a cloak, red eyes glowing behind his face mask.

"Good speed," he allowed after deflecting her final overhead strike. "But you fight like you're afraid to commit. A real enemy won't wait for perfection."

Weiss lowered her rapier, breathing hard.

Fafnir stared at her.

"We can take a break," he said, as though unsure of the words. Weiss shook her head.

"Again," she insisted.

Fafnir inclined his head—and froze as the doors swung open.

Jacques Schnee strode in, pristine suit untouched by the chill of the hall, expression thunderous.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, eyes fixed on Fafnir. "I explicitly forbade weapons training for Weiss. She has classes—!"

"She asked," Fafnir interrupted, voice flat. He sheathed Knarra with a soft click. "Said she wants to learn how to fight. Properly."

Jacques's jaw tightened. "And you thought to indulge her?"

Fafnir met his gaze without flinching. "I swore to protect this family. My clan's way—teach the young to defend themselves. If she wants the skill, I'll give it. Better she learns from me than dies ignorant."

Weiss stood silent, rapier still in hand, watching her father with wary defiance.

Jacques exhaled through his nose, pinching the bridge. The silence stretched, cold as Atlas winter.

Finally, he waved a dismissive hand.

"Fine. Supervised only. And if her grades slip even a fraction—"

"They won't," Weiss said quickly.

Jacques's eyes flicked to her, something unreadable passing across his face before the mask of control settled back in.

"See that they don't."

He turned and left without another word.

Fafnir watched the doors close, then looked down at Weiss.

"Again," he said simply.

Weiss reset her stance, a small, fierce smile tugging at her lips.

The steel rang out once more.

 

[Sliverhero]

He man and rwby crossover.

By the Power of Grayskull


Jaune Arc had always hated flying.

It wasn't the motion itself, It was the feeling of helplessness. The very idea that if something went wrong, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it except sit in a cramped metal seat and wait to find out if today was the day he died. He'd spent the entire flight from Arcadia to Vale with his hands clamped on the armrests, knuckles bone-white, pretending he wasn't sweating through his hoodie, and to his hidden shame dealing with his motion sickness. At least there is barf bags if he needs them.

The woman beside him had tried to make conversation early on. She was friendly, Middle-aged, traveling for business, noticed he looked green around the gills and offered him a mint. He'd mumbled thanks and swallowed it without tasting it and spent the rest of the flight staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He is a bit embrassed that he couldnt respond much to her.

He was seventeen. He was on his way to Beacon Academy. He had forged his transcripts, lied to his family, and cheated his way into the most prestigious combat school on Remnant.

Not to new to anyone that knows him, he was absolutely, catastrophically terrified. The airship was a commercial transport, one of the smaller ones that ran the coastal route from Anima's northern settlements down to the city of Vale. It wasn't fancy. Rows of seats, a narrow aisle, a couple of overstuffed overhead compartments, and a window on every third row. About forty passengers total. A pair of hired Huntsmen sat near the back, professional-looking types in practical armor, their weapons leaning against the wall beside them. He hopes he will look cool as them once he successes in his dream.

They are the security for the route. Grimm didn't usually hit commercial flights this close to Vale, but the shipping companies had learned the hard way that "usually" wasn't good enough.

Jaune had counted six other people who looked like they might be students heading to Beacon. Young, fit, carrying weapon cases. He'd considered introducing himself. Making friends before they even arrived. That's what a real Huntsman would do, right? Be confident, charismatic and natural like the heroes pf stories he heard as he was growing up. Instead he'd sat in his seat and said nothing and felt like a fraud. Now the ship lurched.

Not a turbulence-lurch, Not a normal-lurch as if they were turning and needed to adjust, but a wrong lurch, the kind that came with a sound like someone taking a sheet of metal and folding it in half. The lights then flickered as this happened he could hear passengers gasping in fright. The intercom then crackled.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your..."
Suddenly the intercom died, then the lights died. Emergency strips along the floor flickered on, bathing the cabin in dim red. Jaune's stomach dropped. Then the screaming started, and it wasn't coming from inside the cabin.

He pressed his face to the window. For a moment he saw nothing but clouds and the darkening sky, sunset was painting the horizon in shades of orange and pink and then a shape moved across the glass. It was black, massive and wrong.

Somehow a Beowolf had clung to the hull directly outside his window. Its bone-white mask stared in at him with empty eye sockets that somehow still felt like they were looking. Its lips peeled back from blackened teeth in a snarl that vibrated through the glass.

More shapes started to appear, dozens of them. They swarmed over the airship like a living blanket, claws scraping against metal, weight shifting the entire vessel. Jaune to his horror saw an Ursa Minor pull itself up over the trailing edge of the hull, its bulk alone enough to throw the ship into a steep bank.

The cabin tilted. Overhead compartments burst open and luggage rained down. A man near the front shouted something Jaune couldn't hear over the noise. One of the Huntsmen in the back was on her feet, shouting orders, her partner already firing out a shattered viewport, the sharp sound of his rifle barely audible over the shriek of tearing metal.

Then the floor fell out from under Jaune.
Not metaphorically but literally. A section of the hull beneath the row he was sitting, was simply torn off, peeled away like a sardine can lid, and suddenly there was no floor and no seat and no airship, just open sky and a howling wind and Jaune Arc tumbling out into nothing.
He screamed the whole way down.

As he was falling he was able to make a glimpse of the airship and saw flying grimm lifting other grimm towards the airship.

Then the forest rose up to meet him. Branches whipped his face, his arms, his sides each impact a bright flare of pain that he'd feel properly later, if there was a later. He hit a particularly thick branch chest-first and the air left his lungs in a single, explosive wheeze. He spun, tumbled, crashed through a second layer of canopy, and slammed into the ground with a force that drove him a foot into the soft forest earth.

He lay there, Just lay there not knowing if pain means he is alive or dying. The world was a blurred smear of green and brown and pain. He could hear things, the distant whine of the airship's engines, the crack of gunfire, the howling of Grimm somewhere above but it all felt far away, muffled, like he was hearing it through water. All he could think is 'Get up'. But his body didn't move. His mind continues, thinking, no, hoping that he will move and get up.

Finally his body rolled onto its side. Then to his hands and knees, he starts to stand up but is swaying like a drunk. His backpack damage but at least it's still strapped to his back. Crocea Mors was still at his hip. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts and his ribs screamed with every breath and his vision kept sliding in and out of focus.

But he was standing, and can move and now something just landed in the tree above him. Jaune looked up. A Beowolf crouched on a thick branch maybe fifteen feet up, its head tilted, those empty eye sockets fixed on him. It made a sound low, rumbling, almost like a purr and dropped towards him. Jaune dove sideways. The Beowolf hit the ground where he'd been standing, its claws sinking deep into the earth. It turned toward him with a liquid, boneless grace that made he scream. He then did the smart thing and run.

The forest was old growth, massive trees with trunks as wide as cars, their canopies forming a near-solid ceiling far overhead. The undergrowth was thick in places, open in others. The light was fading fast, the last orange of sunset giving way to a deep purple twilight. Jaune crashed through it all without plan or direction, guided purely by the primitive imperative to put distance between himself and the thing chasing him.

His legs burned, his ribs were on fire. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass. But the Beowolf was behind him, he could hear it, the heavy pad-padded of paws on forest floor, the snapping of branches and that was enough to keep him moving.

He burst through a wall of ferns into a small clearing and nearly collided with a second Beowolf. He skidded, changed direction, nearly fell, kept going. The second Beowolf joined the chase. Then a third appeared on his left, paralleling him through the trees, not attacking yet just running with him, herding him.

They were hunting him, not killing him but actually Hunting him. Driving him somewhere, or just drawing the kill out, savoring it. He read that Grimm could do that. They fed on negative emotion fear, pain, despair and a terrorized prey animal that ran until it collapsed produced more of it than one that was simply killed quickly.

The realization made him run harder, which of course only produced more fear, which only attracted them more. It was a feedback loop, an oncoming death spiral. But maybe just maybe even with his upcoming death, he hopefully pull enough grimm away from the besieged airship that they can survive. Then something strange happened.

It started in his chest, a warmth small, barely noticeable, like swallowing a sip of something hot. He almost missed it beneath the adrenaline and the pain and the fear. But it grew, quickly. Spreading from his chest to his shoulders, down his arms, through his core, into his legs. Like his blood was being replaced with sunlight and to his surprised he started to feel his pain and wounds to slowly fade away.

A Beowolf lunged at him from behind. He felt the wind of its swing a split second before the claws raked across his back.
Jaune stumbled forward from the impact but the claws didn't bite. They glanced off. He looked over his shoulder and saw a faint shimmer in the air around his body, like heat rising off summer pavement, barely visible in the dim light.

He had no idea what what happened. He didn't know it was it was his newly unlocked aura that saved he. He didn't know that every living person on Remnant carried this shield of light in their soul, waiting to be woken up. He didn't know any formal techniques or the meditation practices or the activation phrases that combat schools taught for Aura.

But once awoke his body knew no, his soul knew what to do with it. That part of him, hat had refused to roll over and die, the part that had gotten him to his feet in that crater, the part that got to run even when his mind was telling him running was hopeless. Its that part that woke up.
And it came out sideways, because of course it did. Because Jaune Arc had never done anything the right way in his life.

The aura didn't coat his body evenly. It blasted outward, uncontrolled, erratic, a sudden flare of light and force that pulsed out from him in a wave. It wasn't a shield. It was a shout. A beacon. A bonfire in a dark forest.

The Beowolf behind him took the brunt of it and was knocked flat. The ones on his flanks stumbled, shaking their heads, snarling in confusion.

But the pulse kept going. Radiating outward through the trees, through the darkness, carrying with it every ounce of fear and desperation and stubborn refusal to die that Jaune Arc possessed.

Every Grimm in the area felt it, and every Grimm in the area turned toward him, even the ones in the sky. "Fuck, I made it worse," Jaune gasped, still running, he even noticed he was faster. "I made it alot worse."

More howls in the distance. He can hear them getting closer and closer. The forest was coming alive around him with black shapes and red eyes and the sounds of predators on the move. He could hear Ursa crashing through the underbrush now, heavy enough to shake the ground. Something large was moving through the canopy above, Nevermore, maybe, its feathers scraping against branches.

He was dragging the entire local Grimm population behind him like the tail of a comet.

The ground sloped sharply downward. Jaune half-ran, half-slid down the incline, loose rock and dirt skidding under his boots. At the bottom was a ravine, a rocky, dry creek bed and at the far end of it, the cliff face rose up in a wall of gray limestone.

And there, at the base of the cliff, was a cave.
Not a small cave, not a crack in the rock. But an actual cave, it was thirty feet wide, twenty feet tall, an opening so large it looked almost deliberate. Stalactites jutted from the top like fangs.

Jaune didn't choose it, but his legs chose it for him. He was running before his brain registered the option, plunging into the darkness of the cave mouth with the sound of Grimm howling at his back.

The darkness was total. For a few horrible seconds Jaune was blind running on pure momentum, arms outstretched, feet slapping against smooth stone. Then his eyes began to adjust, and he realized it wasn't quite as dark as he'd thought. There was a faint luminescence here, to him it was probably something in the rock, maybe, or some kind of bioluminescent growth on the walls. It was barely enough to see by, casting everything in a dim blue-gray light like the world's worst night vision.

Jaune started to notice that the tunnel was smooth, unnatural smooth. The walls had been carved, that was obvious even in the dim light. The ceiling was arched, The floor was level no uneven paths. This wasn't a natural cave. It had been built, he doesnt know why.

He ran anyway, because the Grimm were still behind him. He could hear them in the tunnel, their claws on stone, snarling echoes bouncing off the walls in a confusing cacophony that made it impossible to tell how many there were or how close they were.

The tunnel then widened, and the ceiling rose. The walls fell back, and suddenly Jaune was in a cavern so enormous that the far walls were lost in darkness. The faint light was stronger here, coming from somewhere deeper in, and it was just enough to reveal the scope of what he'd stumbled into ancient ruins.

Massive stone pillars rose from the cavern floor, some intact, some broken, some lying on their sides like fallen soldiers. Archways connected walkways that no longer led anywhere. Collapsed stonework was scattered everywhere blocks the size of cars, carved fragments, the skeletal remains of what must have once been an enormous structure. And at the far end of the cavern, rising from the rubble like a monument to some forgotten god, a castle, or the half of one that was still standing.

It was built into the back wall of the cavern, its remaining towers reaching toward the ceiling. The stonework was gray and ancient, covered in carvings that Jaune's dim light couldn't resolve into anything meaningful. Entire sections had collapsed, the left side was almost completely gone, reduced to a slope of rubble and what remained looked like it had been battered by something enormous and violent long, long ago.

But the face of the castle, the central section, the main facade was still intact.

And it was dominated by a skull. A giant skull. Jaune couldn't tell if it was carved or real, some kind of fossil, maybe, or something stranger, to his amazement but it was still part of the building. The jaw formed the main gateway. The cheekbones were buttresses. The eye sockets were windows, dark and empty, staring out across the ruined cavern.

It should have been horrifying. It was. But it was also the only shelter in sight, and the sound of Grimm was getting louder behind him. Jaune ran toward it. He crossed the cavern floor, dodging around fallen pillars and jumping over debris. The Grimm were pouring into the cavern behind him now, he could see them in the tunnel mouth, a dark flood of bodies and red eyes and they were fast.

He hit the slope of rubble leading up to the castle's gateway and scrambled upward, loose stone sliding under his boots. A Beowolf lunged at him from behind. He didn't think, he swung Crocea Mors backhanded without looking and felt the blade connect with something solid. The Beowolf yelped and fell away. Unfortunately in the process he last the grip of his sword and it fell down into the darkness surrounding the castle. Jaune curses but he knows he has to keep moving.

He crested the rubble slope and passed between the skull's massive jawbones. The gateway beyond was dark and gaping, and Jaune plunged through it into the castle's interior without slowing.

Inside was a shambles, collapsed hallways, rubble-choked rooms, fallen beams. But to his surprise he can feel that there i something here thats when he sees it. A light. Faint, pulsing, blue-white, coming from deeper inside the structure. It wasn't much, but it was the first non-threatening light source Jaune had seen since the ship went down, and something about it pulled at him. He followed it. Of course the Grimm followed him.

The corridor was narrow enough that they couldn't all come at him at once, which bought him time. He could hear them behind him, snarling, growling, the scrape of claws on stone. But the passage twisted and turned and occasionally narrowed to the point where only one or two could fit through side by side.

The light grew brighter., Then he was through—into a circular chamber, domed, surprisingly intact compared to the rest of the castle. The walls were covered in carvings. Figures in armor. Scenes of battle. Symbols he didn't recognize. And in the exact center of the room, on a simple pedestal of gray stone. Is a sword, Jaune skidded to a stop as if he is pulled towards it.

It was an odd-looking thing. The blade was broad and straight, thicker than a typical longsword, almost crude in its construction. The crossguard was wide and plain. The grip was wrapped in old leather. The pommel was a simple round orb. The whole weapon had a heaviness to its look, a sense of solid, uncompromising weight that had nothing to do with its actual physical dimensions.

And it was glowing. Faintly, pulsing, that same blue-white light he'd been following. The blade hummed with it, not an audible sound, exactly, but a vibration he could feel in his bones.

Behind him, the corridor filled with growling.
Jaune looked over his shoulder. The lead Beowolf was squeezing through the doorway, its shoulders scraping the stone on either side. Behind it, more shapes jostled and snarled. Red eyes filled the passage.

He looked back at the sword.

There was no time to think. No time for strategy or planning or any of the things a real Huntsman would do. There was only the door full of monsters at his back and the strange glowing weapon in front of him.

He grabbed the hilt, then he world stopped.
Not slowed down. Not shifted. Stopped. Like someone had pressed pause on reality. The growling cut out mid-sound. The pulsing light froze. The air itself went still, neither warm nor cold, just neutral, like being submerged in nothing. He could a beowulf in mid ponce frozen in the air. jaune couldn't move. His hand was locked on the sword's grip, his fingers frozen in place, his body a statue. But he could still see, still think, still feel and what he felt was the sword. It was... asking him something.

Not in words. In impressions. In feelings. In sudden, vivid flashes of understanding that appeared in his mind fully formed, like memories that weren't his.

Who are you? The question wasn't hostile. It wasn't gentle either. It was appraising the way a master craftsman might examine a piece of raw material, turning it over, looking for flaws, measuring its worth.

"I'm Jaune," he said or thought, or tried to say. In this frozen place, the distinction didn't seem to matter. "Jaune Arc." Why are you here? "The Grimm. I was running. The ship crashed and I..."

No...Why are you HERE?The question was different this time. Deeper. It reached past the surface-level answer and into something underneath, the real reason, the one Jaune barely admitted to himself.

"Because I'm trying to be something I'm not," he said, and the admission felt like pulling a splinter out of his own heart. "I lied my way into Beacon. I faked my transcripts. I don't have any real training. I just... I didn't want to be the only one in my family who wasn't a hero. I didn't want to be useless."

And yet you run toward danger, not away from it.
"I was running away. I was running away the whole time."

Were you?

Images flashed through his mind, not his memories, but the sword's. A towering figure in white and gold armor, swinging this very blade through a horde of shadow creatures. A castle, whole and magnificent, its skull-face gleaming in sunlight. A world of magic and wonder and terrible beauty that was nothing like Remnant.

This power has been wielded by warriors, by kings, by heroes. It has also been wielded by fools, by cowards, by those who had no right to hold it. The difference was never strength. The difference was never skill. The difference was this: when everything was taken from them their weapons, their allies, their hope, did they still stand?

The frozen world around Jaune seemed to tighten. The question pressed in on him from all sides. Your weapon is gone. Your allies are gone. Your hope is nearly spent. Do you still stand? Jaune thought about running. The thought was right there, bright and clear and tempting. He could drop the sword. He could try to dodge past the Grimm. He could hide in the rubble and hope they lost interest.

He could surrender. "I don't know if I can beat them," Jaune said quietly. "I don't know if I can do anything. But I'm not going to just lie down and let them kill me. If that counts as standing... then yeah. I'm standing."

The pause that followed felt like an eternity compressed into a single heartbeat.

You will do.

And then a second presence. Different from the first, not the vast, ancient appraisal of the sword itself, but something warmer. Softer. Unmistakably feminine. It brushed against his consciousness like a hand on his shoulder.

"By the power of Grayskull," the voice whispered, and there was something in her tone, amusement, tenderness, a strange kind of irony, as if she knew exactly how absurd the words would sound. "Say it. Say the words."

Jaune blinked in the frozen void.
"By the... power of Grayskull?" he repeated, feeling deeply, profoundly confused.

The voice didn't correct him. The sword didn't correct him. The void simply waited.

He drew a breath, not a physical one, since his lungs weren't operating in any normal sense here, but a spiritual one, a pulling-together of everything he was and everything he had and everything he wanted to be.
"I HAVE THE POWER!"

The words tore out of him in a voice that wasn't his, or maybe was his, amplified and deepened and resonant, a voice that belonged in thunderstorms and avalanches. Light exploded from the sword, a column of blue-white fire that blew through the doorway of the chamber like a cannon blast.

The lead Beowolf simply ceased to exist. The two behind it were hurled backward down the corridor, their bodies slamming into the walls with enough force to crack stone. The rest of the pack, the ones still squeezing through the doorway, the ones filling the corridor beyond, were hit by the shockwave and scattered like leaves in a hurricane.

And from the heart of the light, a figure emerged.
He stood seven feet tall. His body was a monument to power, every line hard, every angle sharp, every muscle defined beneath armor that was white and gold and covered in designs that looked like they'd been inspired by the carvings on the chamber walls. A red cape hung from his shoulders, heavy and regal. His hair was blonde but bright almost white-gold, catching the fading light of the transformation like a halo. His eyes blazed blue-white.

He looked down at himself.

He looked at the sword in his hand, which now felt like an extension of his arm rather than a separate object.

He looked at the corridor full of Grimm that were already getting back to their feet. "What the..." His voice was deeper. Richer. It echoed off the stone walls. "What the hell?"

An Ursa Minor broke though the tunnel and charged him. Shards of stone flung everywhere. It was enormous, easily twelve feet of muscle, fur, and rage, but it might as well have been a child for all the threat it posed. He sidestepped its charge with a casualness that would have been insulting if the Ursa were capable of understanding insult, and brought the sword down in a vertical strike.

The blade passed through the Ursa's spine like it wasn't there. The creature split into two halves that hadn't even finished falling apart before they dissolved into black smoke.

Three Beowolves came at him in a pack. He swung once, a wide horizontal arc and the sword cut through all three of them in a single line. They didn't even have time to register the hit before they were gone.

A Boarbatusk, the largest Grimm in the group, lowered its head and charged, its bony armor plating gleaming. He planted his feet, raised one hand, and caught it. The impact created a shockwave that blew dust and debris in a perfect ring. The Boarbatusk hung in the air for a fraction of a second, its momentum utterly arrested, and then he threw it. It flew out through the skull gate of the castle, across the cavern, and disappeared into the darkness of the far wall with a crash that echoed for ten full seconds.

The remaining Grimm, fifteen, maybe twenty, a mix of Beowolves and a few smaller Ursa looked at what had just happened to their packmates. Then they look at jaune and to their senses they only saw death. And so they ran, they fled from something they cant understand. Grimm, which did not feel fear, which did not retreat, which existed only to destroy life, ran like cowards. They poured out of the castle, across the cavern, and into the tunnels, and the sound of their howling faded into nothing.

He stood in the ruined corridor, sword in hand, breathing hard, surrounded by dissolving black smoke. The power was intoxicating. He could feel everything, the stone beneath his feet, the air currents in the cavern, the heartbeat of small animals hiding in the rubble. He felt like he could punch through the cliff face and walk to Vale. He felt like he could fight a Nevermore bare-handed. He felt like he could do anything.

Then the light began to fade.The armor dissolved into motes of white and gold. The muscle receded. The cape vanished. Jaune shrank, seven feet down to five-nine, the white-gold hair darkening to its usual dirty blonde, the blazing eyes dimming to their normal blue. His body reverted to its familiar, unremarkable proportions, and the sudden absence of all that power was so jarring that his legs buckled and he dropped to one knee.

The sword of power hit the stone floor with a heavy clang. In his normal hand, it was almost too heavy to lift.

He knelt there for a long moment, staring at his hands. Normal hands. Thin wrists. No armor, no power, no glowing eyes. Just Jaune. "I..." He swallowed. "What just happened to me?" No answer. The chamber was silent and dark. The carvings on the walls stared blankly.

He reached for the sword, grabbed it, and nearly pulled his shoulder out of its socket trying to lift it. He ended up dragging it by the crossguard, the blade scraping a groove in the stone floor.
"I'll figure it out later," he told himself. "Survive first. Figure out later. That's the rule."

He dragged the sword out of the chamber, through the corridor, over the rubble, and out through the skull gate. The cavern was empty. The Grimm were gone. Faint moonlight filtered down through whatever opening he'd originally fallen through, illuminating a path back toward the cave mouth.

The climb out of the cave system took nearly an hour. The sword was agonizingly heavy. His body was a catalog of injuries, cuts, bruises, probable cracked ribs, muscles that were going to be screaming at him tomorrow. But the Grimm were gone, and he was alive, and that was more than he'd expected an hour ago.

The crash site was still burning when he emerged from the tree line. The airship had come down hard about a mile east, a crumpled wreck of metal and wire, half-buried in the forest floor, fires still flickering in the wreckage. Emergency flares had been set up in a rough perimeter, and a small cluster of survivors huddled near the still-warm engines.

Seven people. Maybe eight. Jaune counted as he approached. Injured, shellshocked, but alive. One of the hired Huntsmen, the woman was still on her feet, her arm in a makeshift sling, a pistol in her good hand. Her partner was nowhere to be seen.

She spotted Jaune coming out of the trees and raised the pistol before lowering it. "Survivor?" she called out. "Yeah." Jaune's voice was hoarse. He was aware that he looked like he'd been dragged through a forest by a pack of animals, which, in fairness, he had. "Got thrown clear."

"You hurt?" "Maybe? I think I'm okay."

She gave him a once-over. Her eyes lingered on the torn jacket, the one with claw marks across the chest where the Beowolf had raked him and the unbroken skin visible underneath. She frowned slightly but didn't say anything about it.

"What's with the sword?" she asked, nodding at the thing he was dragging behind him. Jaune looked down at the sword of power. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Family heirloom," he said.

She stared at it. It was the size of a small person, covered in cave dust, and looked absolutely nothing like any weapon she'd ever seen. "Okay," she said, in the tone of someone who had already used up her daily allotment of energy for questioning things. "Sit down. Rescue ships'll be here by morning."

Jaune sat. He leaned the sword against a piece of debris. He stared at the broken moon, both pieces of it, hanging in the sky like a shattered plate and felt the phantom echo of that power still humming somewhere deep in his chest.

I have the power.He said it silently, to himself, like a secret, Like a promise. He live up to the legacies of the previous users from that vision.

Another part of Remnant: location unknown

He did not know how long he had been frozen.

There was no way to measure it. No reference points. No ticking clock, no rising sun, no heartbeat to count. There had been a single moment of terrible clarity, the cold rushing in, his body locking in place, his scream dying in his throat and then an eternity of nothing. Not sleep. Not death. Something between. A void where thought was impossible and time was meaningless and the only sensation was cold, and the void
Then suddwnly there was warmth.

Faint. Distant. Like the first ray of dawn on the far side of a long, long night. It seeped into the void, melting the edges of the ice, and with the warmth, came sensation first in his fingers, then his hands, then his arms, spreading through his body like fire through dry kindling.

The ice cracked.

He gasped, a sharp, involuntary inhalation that was more reflex than biology, since the lungs that would have drawn that breath had long since rotted away. His body jerked. His hands, bone-white, clawed, familiar pressed against cold stone.

There was more cracking and the ice that had encased him shattering, falling away in jagged pieces that rang against the floor like broken glass. He straightened up, and the motion sent more ice tumbling off his shoulders, his back, his skull.

Skeletor stood in a rough, natural cave that was not his throne room. The disorientation hit him like a physical blow. He swayed, one hand shooting out to brace against the cave wall, and it took him several long seconds to reorient himself. His body was stiff wrong like a machine that had been shut down for too long and was struggling to remember its own functions. His magic was a dim ember where it should have been a roaring fire.

"How long..." His voice was a rasp, unused, the vocal cords equivalent of rusted hinges. "How long was I..."

He couldn't finish the question. He didn't have the answer. The void had erased any ability to track time.

He reached for his power, the dark magic that was as much a part of him as his skull, and felt for Snake Mountain. For the connection he'd always had with his fortress, the bond that let him feel its stones as extensions of his own body.

It was there. He could sense it. It was below him, deep below, Buried even. The realization made him go very still. Snake Mountain, his fortress, his seat of power, the symbol of his dominion was underground. Entombed in earth and stone and root systems, hidden away like a dirty secret. As if the world itself had tried to bury it and forget it existed.

"No."

He reached down through the bond, through the stone and dirt, and grabbed his fortress with both hands of his will.

"NO."

Above ground, the forest didn't so much explode as rearrange itself. Trees toppled. Boulders launched skyward. The earth split along a jagged fault line that ran for nearly a mile in either direction, and from the wound in the planet, Snake Mountain rose.

It came up slow at first, the peak breaking the surface like a breaching leviathan, stone and black metal and serpentine architecture emerging from the torn earth. Then faster, the main body of the fortress surging upward, shedding tons of soil and rock and the roots of trees that had grown over it during its burial. The snake-shaped pillars emerged, their carved fangs dripping with mud. The main keep rose, dark windows blinking open like eyes adjusting to light after years of darkness. And finally the observatory at the peak, the skull-shaped dome that crowned Snake Mountain, broke free and pointed its empty gaze at the sky.

The shockwave flattened a perfect circle of forest for a quarter mile in every direction. Dust rose in a column that was visible for miles.
Skeletor stood at the summit, his purple cloak whipping in the wind, and threw his arms wide.

"YES!" His voice was coming back now, stronger, louder, fed by the rising power of his reconnected fortress. "YES! I HAVE RETURNED! YOUR MASTER LIVES AGAIN!"

He laughed, a wild, triumphant, slightly unhinged laugh that echoed off the mountainside and rolled through the forest like thunder. Somewhere in the distance, a flock of Nevermores took flight in panic. Grimm that had been drawn by the commotion paused, their instinctive aggression warring with something they didn't understand, a primal recognition that the thing standing on the mountain was not prey.

The laughter died as Skeletor tilted his head back and looked at the sky. He saw the moon, or what remained of it. It was shattered, Not one moon but a cluster of large fragments floating in loose formation, surrounded by a haze of smaller debris and dust. The pieces caught the starlight in a way that scattered pale light across the landscape below, beautiful, in its way, but profoundly, unmistakably wrong.

Skeletor's jaw dropped open.
He stared at the broken moon for five seconds... Ten... finaly Twenty seconds. His skeletal hands, still raised in triumphant posture, slowly lowered to his sides.

His eye sockets narrowed. He looked away from the moon and turned his gaze downward, to the land itself, the dark forest, the unfamiliar terrain, the wrong-shaped mountains on the horizon. He reached out with his magic, thin and rusty as it was, and tasted the world.

And he froze, not from cold that imprisoned him this time, but from recognition. He knew this world. It was... impossible, but this world was Eternia. It had to be. The bones of it were right the lay of the land, the position of the mountain ranges, the shape of the coastlines far to the east that he could feel through the stone beneath his feet. The geography was correct. The fundamental architecture of the planet was the same. This was Eternia. But it's wrong now.

It was like looking at a painting that had been left out in the rain. The shapes were there, the composition was recognizable, but the colors had bled and faded and the canvas was warped and everything that had once made it magnificent was now dull and thin and diminished. The magic of the land, the vibrant, pulsing, alive force that had once saturated every stone and river and breath of wind on Eternia, was barely a whisper. A mare shadow of a shadow. As if the world's splendor had been systematically taken from it. Stripped away. Smothered under something heavy and cold and suffocating until what remained was barely recognizable.

Skeletor's clawed hands trembled at his sides not from weakness, not from cold, but from something that might have been fury and might have been grief and was probably both.

"This is Eternia," he breathed. "But diminished. Ruined. Something... something took it. Something smothered it. The magic, the life, the, this world should be singing and instead it's barely whispering."

He closed his eye sockets and reached deeper, past the thin, anemic magical residue that coated the land like dust, down to the bedrock of the world itself. And there, buried deep, almost too faint to detect, he found it.

The heart of Eternia. Still beating. Still alive. Faintly, weakly, like a dying ember buried under ash. But there.

And as he stood on the peak of his newly risen fortress, as his own dark magic seeped back into the stone and soil of the land he had once sought to conquer, he could taste it.

Returning.

Slowly. Incrementally. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction. But returning. As if his very presence his will, his power, his existence in this place after so long absent, was acting as a catalyst. A spark in dry kindling. The land remembered him, and the memory alone was enough to stir something that had lain dormant for longer than he could calculate.

His eyes opened.

"This is Eternia," he said again, but this time his voice was different. The bewilderment was gone. The shock was gone. What remained was something cold and sharp and hungry. "My Eternia. Broken. Diminished. Smothered. But mine."

He looked at the shattered moon with new eyes. Not confusion now. Not horror. Assessment. The moon was broken. The magic was fading. The world was a shadow of what it had been.

Which meant no one was strong enough to stop him.

The grin that spread across his skull was not a pleasant sight. It was the grin of a predator that had just realized the fence around the sheep pen had fallen down.

"I can feel it waking," he murmured, flexing his fingers, feeling the land's magic respond to the motion like a dog pricking up its ears at its master's whistle. "Even now. Even with my power barely kindled. The land remembers its master. And as I grow stronger, so will it. As I rise, so will Eternia rise, under my hand."

He turned from the edge of the summit and strode toward the entrance of his fortress, his cloak snapping behind him. His boots rang on the obsidian floor. The walls of Snake Mountain hummed around him, responding to his will, eager and hungry after centuries of silence.

"Let the moon be broken," he said, his voice echoing through the stone corridors. "Let the magic be thin. Let this world be a dim and pathetic husk of what it once was. It doesn't matter. All of it, the land, the power, the splendor that was stolen from it, it will all return. And when it does, I will be the one holding the leash."

He paused at the threshold of his throne room still half-buried in rubble, but clearing rapidly under the push of his magic, and placed one hand on the doorframe.

"This world was taken from me once. By He-Man. By the Sorceress. By every fool who ever stood in my way." His grip tightened. Stone cracked under his fingers. "They won't get the chance again. By the time anyone realizes what's happening, Eternia will be mine every inch of it, every spark of its faded glory, every last drop of power wrung from these broken stones and this shattered sky."

He stepped inside his throne room and let the darkness swallow him. "And I will start," he said softly, "by finding whoever just touched the Sword of Power."

Somewhere to the east, in the ruins of a crashed airship, a blonde boy in a torn hoodie sat with his back against a piece of warm debris, staring at a sword that was far too heavy for him to lift for the moment and wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

He didn't know he was being hunted.

Not yet.

 

[AJ_Talon]

The Arc family farmhouse table in Radian was heavy with the rich, hearty spread of a proper summer lunch—fresh bread still warm from the oven, thick stews, and platters of garden vegetables that Lilac had helped harvest that morning. Team RWBY and JNPR sat scattered among Nick, Isabel, Lilac, and the quiet presence of Orchid Arc, who tapped away at her computer at the far end of the table without looking up.

Nick leaned back in his chair, a familiar mischievous glint already lighting his eyes as he regarded the girls.

"You know… while you're here, ladies… I was wondering if you'd be willing to do some taste testing for us?"

Ruby tilted her head. "What kind of taste testing?"

"Well… I mean, our hospital does make a fair amount of money, but we're all trying to make more cash for the farm. Sooo… we're trying some new foods! Stuff I ate all the time as a kid that Lilac and Tangy think might be luxury goods!"

Weiss's eyes narrowed with polite interest. "Oh?"

Jaune nearly choked on his water. "Wha? This is news to me too!"

Isabel walked in from the kitchen just in time to hear it, her expression already long-suffering. "Oh dear, Jaune, I wonder why that is…"

Jaune winced a bit, as Ruby and Pyrrha frowned. Still, Isabel did smile warmly, which softened her rebuke.

Lilac only smiled, calm as ever. "Well, we're always trying to expand, Jaune."

Yang's grin was pure challenge. "Anything spicy?"

Nick's answering grin was wider. "Yes!"

Nick was already at the cabinet. He snatched down a jar of deep, angry red salsa and held it aloft like a trophy. "Who wants to try some of the Super Hyper Hot Salsa I made with Papa Shirou?"

Jaune's eyes went wide with pure, remembered trauma. "Oh no… dad, don't tell me… you and grandpa—"

"This is made from peppers we harvested in the jungles of Vacuo!" Nick declared proudly.

Isabel's voice rose. "You told me you went there on a Grimm hunting expedition!"

"I can do two things at once! It grew on the grounds of a former insane asylum!"

"Honey… that's still not a good sign…"

"And it's rated at least fifteen million on the Scoville Scale!"

Yang slammed a hand on the table. "Challenge accepted!"

"NO YANG!!! IT'S A TRAP!" Jaune nearly vaulted across the table.

Yang only laughed, tipping her chin up. "Nothing's too spicy for me~!"

Nora bounced in her seat. "I wanna try too!"

Chips were poured. Yang wasted no time dipping one deep into the lethal red sauce and popping it into her mouth. For half a second she chewed with pure bravado.

Then her face went scarlet.

"HA! I can… take… anything… I…"

"Yang, drink some milk," Ruby said worriedly. Yang shook her head, even as her hair lit up.

"N-No... I'm... Fine... This... Is nothing...!"

"You're literally on fire," Blake observed.

"I'm fine...!"

Jaune was already thrusting a carton of milk at her. "JUST CHUG THE MILK YANG!!!"

"NO! M-Milk… is for quitters… Give me another chip!"

He leaned right into her space, voice low and deadly serious. "Yang… drink… the… milk."

Yang twitched.

Five seconds later, she was in the corner, guzzling water and milk like her life depended on it, eyes watering, cheeks still burning. Isabel only sighed and muttered something about an emergency bed on standby.

Pyrrha straightened, determined. "I'll try it next!"

"NO!" Jaune barked.

Nora had already stolen a chip. "NOM!"

Silence.

Then Nora exhaled a perfect little tongue of actual flame.

"UWAHHHHHH!"

Orchid blinked. Nick applauded.

"HAHA! AWESOME!" The tall bearded man cheered.

Jaune stared. "…Well… that's not entirely unprecedented for her…"

Ren, ever prepared, calmly pulled a fire extinguisher from under the table and fired into into Nora's mouth.

"Haaa... Thanks Renny!"

"You'll get used to it," he deadpanned.

Jaune turned on his father. "Dad… maybe we can put up the salsa… you've proven your point I think."

Nick laughed it off and produced a small tin instead. "Okay, okay… maybe not that… Oh! Who likes caviar?"

Weiss's hand rose immediately. "I like it!"

Pyrrha nodded. "Yes, I am fond of it."

"Well… WE MADE SOME!"

Jaune squinted. "Wait, how? We don't have any tanks for fish to spawn in—"

Ruby blinked. "Wait, what's caviar?"

"Fish eggs!" Weiss answered.

Ruby looked faintly horrified. "Why would you eat those?"

Yang, still recovering, managed a hoarse, "Why do we eat chicken eggs, Ruby?"

Nick puffed up. "No no! These… are escargot caviar!" He opened the tin to reveal pearly white spheres. "Snail eggs."

Ruby's voice cracked. "SNAIL EGGS?!"

Nora leaned toward Jaune. "Jaaaune, why is your dad committing food crimes?"

Jaune only shrugged, fond and resigned. "In his defense, he actually knows what he's doing… he just likes to push boundaries."

Weiss considered the tin with new interest. "Hm. That's actually rarer than fish caviar… I'll try it."

Pyrrha's quiet smile followed. "As will I."

Sour cream and crackers appeared. Weiss took a measured bite, then hummed. "…Huh. It's actually pretty good, if a bit common tasting."

Nick beamed. "I'm super common!"

Lilac's voice was soft and certain. "No, Father. You're one of a kind."

Isabel's quiet agreement carried across the table. "That's for sure."

Jaune muttered into his glass, "And thank the Breaker for it…"

Yang leaned sideways toward Pyrrha, voice low enough that only the redhead caught it. "Maybe not too unique if Nick's physique is a hint of the future, eh P-money?"

Pyrrha went scarlet. "I don't know what you're talking about… and besides, you were looking too!"

Yang's grin turned wicked. "Oh, so you're saying he's open market! Then I'll just go stake my claim!"

"No! I didn't say—" Pyrrha shoved a cracker piled high with caviar straight into Yang's mouth. "OH NO YOU WERE SO HUNGRY YANG HAVE IT ALL!"

"MMPH!"

Ruby, chewing thoughtfully on her own sample, only shrugged. "Huh… this isn't too bad!"

Nick clapped once. "Okay! Lilac… bring out the pâté!"

Lilac returned with a plate of soft, perfectly formed meat patties that looked almost elegant.

"But…" Nick held up a finger, eyes sparkling, "I can't tell you what it is until you eat it! But it is meat!"

Jaune's suspicion was instant. "Dad… at least a hint."

"Lamb."

Jaune relaxed. "OH… well that's not too bad."

A little later, after the pâté had been sampled and found perfectly respectable...

"So, what's the surprise?" Weiss asked happily. "What part of the lamb is this made from? It's not the liver, I know that much."

Nick grinned broadly as he popped another loaded cracker into his mouth.

"Lamb brains!"

Silence. Weiss turned green.

"Excuse me please... I'm going to go be violently ill out back."

"You're excused," Isabel said wryly, as Weiss fled out the door. Retching sounds were soon heard. Nora and Ren shrugged, and continued eating.

"Food is food, and this is yummy!" Nora declared.

"Indeed," Ren nodded.

"It is a delicacy in Argus," Pyrrha added, "I might help advertise for it?"

"Wonderful!" Lilac cheered, clapping her hands together. Jaune beamed at Pyrrha.

"Thanks Pyr. That's great!"

Pyrrha blushed heavily and nodded. Yang and Ruby scowled. Blake smirked a bit, enjoying the show and the pate'.

Weiss came back in, blushing.

"Ah... My apologies," she said quickly.

"It's not for everyone!" Nick declared. "Now... The last offering! ICE CREAM!"

He produced two tubs of ice cream that looked innocent enough. Everyone was wary though. Lilac beamed.

"I helped with one of them! It's Lavender Honey Flavor!"

"Oh, that sounds lovely!" Weiss said with a smile. Lilac opened her tub, and it was a pleasant purple flavor.

"Yeah!" Ruby said, "And the other?"

Nick grinned and pulled his tub open. It was practically glowing with how bright red and orange it was.

"Menagerian Death Pepper Flavor!"

"Seriously, Nick?!" Isabel demanded. Nick pouted.

"What? It's super good! And a challenge of bravery!"

Blake's ears flattened. "Menagerie? Sir… Menagerians won't eat those peppers!"

"Which makes anyone who has some even braver!"

All of RWBY and JNPR went for Lilac's ice cream... Save for one.

Yang, still determined to reclaim her dignity, dove into the glowing ice cream without hesitation.

"YANG!" Ruby cried.

"Th-That was just a fluke! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED! Plus it's ice cream, how hot could it be?"

The answer, it turned out, was very.

Yang's face went from determined to panicked in seconds. "I'm… I'm fine…!"

Weiss's voice rose in pure alarm. "YOU'RE LITERALLY ON FIRE!"

"THAT'S MY SEMBLANCE!"

"THAT'S WORSE!"

Nick took a serene spoonful of the same ice cream. "Mmm… I don't know what your issue is, this is great!"

Jaune stared at his mother. "Mom, have you checked dad's taste buds for… irregularities… or just general presence?"

Isabel's smile was soft and long-suffering. "It's just him, sweetie. I ran the test at least four times. His taste buds can take the heat better."

"I don't know if 'better' is the right word, Mom…"

"You have the same, you know," Isabel drawled.

Jaune shook his head.

"Yeah but I'm not a glutton for punishment," he muttered, as Yang washed down the spice with more milk. She glared at him, her competitive fire flaring again despite the lingering heat. "What…? You think you can handle hotter food than me?!"

"Wha—I didn't say that!"

"Then you try it!"

"I didn't say—"

Nora started the chant. "TRY IT! TRY IT!"

Yang didn't wait. She shoved a spoon full of the Death Pepper Ice Cream straight into Jaune's mouth.

Jaune chewed once. Twice. Then blinked, thoughtful. "Huh. It is spicy… but the good kind."

And then—without breaking eye contact—he caught Yang's wrist, guided her melted ice cream-slick fingers to his lips, and slowly licked them clean.

The table went very quiet.

Yang's face flushed a deep, burning red that had nothing to do with peppers. Weiss's cheeks pinked. Pyrrha's hand fluttered uselessly near her mouth. Ruby's silver eyes went wide. Blake only smirked and quietly opened a notebook, scribbling something that looked suspiciously like notes.

Yang's voice came out high and strangled. "What the—HOW?!"

Pyrrha's was soft with pure admiration. "Oh my… amazing, Jaune!"

Nick's laughter boomed across the kitchen. "HAHAHA! My boy's tasted so many hot things!"

Yang only turned a deeper shade of crimson.

Jaune sat back, tongue still tingling, and muttered to no one in particular, "I think my taste buds burned off…"

Yang, in a snap decision, punched him while blushing up a storm.

"A-ASS!"

"OW! WHAT?!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

A Tale of Two Sisters

- - -

The dressing room mirror was fogged with steam and the scent of cheap powder. Athena Nikos—barely twenty, still carrying the soft swell of pregnancy beneath the tight corset of her costume—stared at her reflection as if it belonged to someone else. The girl in the glass had wide, frightened blue-green eyes and short red hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. She looked nothing like the rising star the tabloids were starting to whisper about.

Peleus stood behind her, tall and aristocratic, his hands gentle on her shoulders. His voice was warm honey, the same voice that had convinced her to sign with him two years earlier.

"It's for the best, my love," he murmured, thumbs tracing small circles against the fabric of her robe. "A child right now? It would destroy everything we've built. The studios don't want a pregnant ingenue. They want Athena Nikos, the face of the new Mistralian golden age. One year. Maybe two. You give her up quietly, we focus on your career, and when the time is right… we'll have our family on our terms. A proper legacy. Not some rushed mistake that chains you to mediocrity."

Athena's hands trembled as they cradled the curve of her belly. The baby had kicked earlier that morning—strong, insistent, alive.

"I… I don't know if I can," she whispered.

Peleus's smile in the mirror was patient, paternal. "You're an actress, Athena. The greatest one I've ever seen. This is just another role. Play the part of the woman who chooses greatness. The world will thank you for it. I will thank you for it." He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her temple. "And when we're on top, when the Nikos name commands respect again, we'll have as many children as you want. This one… she'll have a better life with a proper family. Not the scraps we can offer her now."

She wanted to believe him. Gods, how she wanted to believe him. The alternative was poverty again—waitressing, bit parts, the same cycle that had nearly killed her mother. So she signed the papers. She let them take her daughter while the anesthesia from the delivery still clouded her mind, and she told herself it was temporary. A scene that would end when the curtain fell.

The guilt began immediately and never left.

At first it was a quiet ache during long shoots. She would stare at the script and see only the blank space where a child's laughter should have been. She hired the first private investigator in secret, paying him from her own modest savings while Peleus was away on business. The man found nothing. Closed adoptions. Burned records. Dead ends.

Years passed. Athena threw herself deeper into her roles. She became the tragic heroine, the seductive villainess, the iron-willed matriarch—anyone but the woman who had given away her firstborn. Peleus proposed. They married. And when Pyrrha came—perfect, healthy, with that same spark of fire in her eyes as the first—Athena swore she would never make the same mistake.

But the fear followed her like a shadow.

She hired more investigators. Different ones. Paid them in cash. Met them in dingy cafés wearing disguises that would have made her laugh if she weren't so desperate. Every dead end carved another piece out of her. She began staying in character longer after wrap. It was easier to be the composed professional than the mother who had failed her first child.

Then came that night.

Athena sat alone in her Argus penthouse, the city lights glittering coldly through rain-streaked windows. The latest investigator—a hard-eyed Faunus woman with a lizard tail tucked under her coat—slid a thin folder across the marble table.

"Miss Nikos…" She hesitated.

Athena opened it with shaking fingers. Photographs. Records. A little girl with dark hair and burning amber eyes being taken in by the owners of the Glass Unicorn—a lavish but notorious establishment that doubled as an orphanage for "troubled" children. The girl had been renamed Cinder. She had survived. She had lived.

For one fragile moment, hope flared in Athena's chest so brightly it hurt.

Then the woman spoke again, voice flat.

"The Glass Unicorn burned down three weeks ago. Arson, they're saying. Most of the staff and children didn't make it out. Your daughter… Cinder… is presumed dead."

The folder slipped from Athena's hands. Papers scattered across the floor like ashes.

She didn't scream. She didn't cry. Not at first.

Instead, she felt something inside her shatter—clean and final, like a mirror breaking. The woman who had once dreamed of redemption folded in on herself. She reached for the nearest persona she knew by heart: the grieving widow from her last film. The lines came easily. The posture. The distant, elegant sorrow.

It was safer there.

Peleus found her hours later still sitting amid the scattered papers, smiling the serene, tragic smile of a character who had just lost everything on screen. When he asked what was wrong, she told him it was nothing. Just another scene she was practicing.

Inside, the real Athena screamed until her voice gave out. She never quite found her way back.

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

How It Happened – Part 2



Sleep, in his state, had proven impossible, and existing, being cognizant was an experience of such like that no words existed to truly describe. But approximately, it was absolute darkness. And yet it held more in common with the afterimage and memory of light that comes to a man's vision when he shuts his eyes too tightly.



Whitley could, for want of a better term, feel his whole body in this endless ocean that only vaguely recalled light. He could feel fingers that must have been burned and broken off curl, and limbs that he no longer had would move according to an alien logic that he felt did not shift what passed here for his position.



First, Whitley tried exercising within his own mind, learning to move his inner limbs. His left arm came first. And then his right. His abdomen came last, following his legs and toes. A roll of his neck and he was half-swimming half-gliding in the endless black with nothing but the flickering memory of light to guide him.



The feeling of floating, flying, and gliding was, for what it was, euphoric. Soon Whitley was cutting through the void in a reclined half-sitting pose with his legs leading the way, at least, that was the best description of his posture and sensations, or his memories of posture and sensation, that he could apply.



After a while, it ceased to amuse him. And he was forced to, once again, confront the nature of his situation. A brain in a jar, though Amzel took umbrage with the insinuation. So many experiences were forever denied to him. He'd never eat food again. Sleep would probably be an ordeal in and of itself, and as pedestrian as this foremost concern was, he would never quote-unquote 'get laid.' Not only had he forever failed to secure the foremost objective and concern of everybody thereabouts of his age, he'd never be a father. Meaning that the Schnee bloodline would have to continue via his sisters.





Whitley did not need to imagine his sisters' responses. As soon as the thought came up the nails-on-chalkboard cacophony of Weiss' filled every corner of the black expanse. Whitley gritted his teeth in raw anger and prepared to shout for all he was worth when the picture of his other sister popped into his head.



Mercifully, the thought of Winter deafened and diminished the laughter immediately. The less that Whitley focused on the sibling that thought him as a pest, and the more he focused on the sibling that was a near-complete stranger to him. The more the laughter abated, only to be replaced by the cutting chill of Winter's namesake.



She had broken off contact with him years ago when she first left for Atlas. The finger-count of conversations that they had since then were more in the nature of conversations with the Schnee family as a unit, and Winter's team. And Whitley had half-forgotten the substance of each as little besides polite perfunctory and a trio of aspirants trying to make a little kid feel included. "Great, this is my life now." He muttered, 'not that it could correctly be called a life.' He added, more silently.



And in the wake of that silence, he noticed something. He controlled the expanse. The void responded to him. A hypothesis was forming in his head, and he could feel the void around him contorting to oblige it. He could not see, but sense streams of thought flowing, down from upward, always relative to the orientation of what he perceived to analogize his body.



An experiment then. He needed certainty. Trying to will himself back into happiness might be worth a shot.



"Weeeeee-e-eeheheheee… hahahaha…" Whitley was walking on air, or rather, he was gliding through an endless froth of his own euphoria again.



Perhaps he had been a touch too successful. But this proved one thing, he could regulate his mood manually. Whitley Schnee had a natural knack for doing this. Putting his emotions in a box and sticking them in some proverbial cognitive closet before fetching them as his rational mind deemed them needed. Now he could go even further. He could make and unmake his emotions as-needed. His next test of this came by plunging himself into misery and, as soon as he could muster up the will to mobilize himself, yanking himself back up into joy before cutting all of the threads into neutral.



This was astonishing. This was baffling. This was confounding…



Like that, Whitley conceived of a test far more devious and final. One that should push his apparent mastery of his mind to the utmost.



He held in his mind first the image of his father, Jacques. He immersed himself in the permanent basecoat of unease and quiet, skittish fear, mixed with the more overt terror and dread he felt at the man's ever-present displeasure. Legitimate admiration at the deft competence with which Jacques, climbed into his current station and kept ahead of both the world's Dust markets and the very long, long list of people who wanted him dead was befouled by the stink of love's decaying corpse and cast over by the shadow of affection, Whitley rationally understood that it was mere pittance, and entirely counterfeit at that, but it was a truer and more abundant love than he had ever received from anyone or anywhere else.



Whitley mimicked breathing and, while holding the memory of Jacques clearly in his mind dismantled those feelings one by one as easily as he might have tapped the backspace button on his Scroll.



He rebuilt those feelings, and then destroyed them again. He banished Jacques from his mind but held the feelings. He held Jacques before and around him, but did not permit himself to feel anything for the man.



He discarded his thoughts of Jacques entirely and moved onto Willow. His feelings with regards to her were much simpler. Disappointment at a woman who had spent most of his life face down in a ditch full of vodka.



Winter was equally simple. Family in name only. The two had not had anything to do with one another since she set out for Atlas at 17. That was… eight years ago? It hardly mattered. All of the frigidity between them when they had last seen each other, all of the arguments between himself and Weiss where Winter always took her sister's side. All of those moments of fear at the silent, disinterested contempt of an Aura-wielder, like being trapped with the crocodiles at the zoo, Whitley submerged himself in the feelings of his childhood before flicking them off and on and off and on again as though he were playing with a light switch.



Then came the ultimate trial. To prove to himself that he had it in him, if nothing else, Weiss. His younger older sister. He didn't remember how it started. Whitley could no longer remember exactly when he and Weiss had started building that pit between themselves. Nor could he remember a time when both of them were not fanning the flames that spewed from it as if their lives depended on it. That stuck-up, conceited, moronic, self-righteous cunt could kill him at a moment's notice. She could pierce his heart, open his throat, or split him from gullet to groin the minute she decided he was worth the bother. He knew that, she knew that, he knew that she knew that, and she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew that. Whitley, on the other hand, could only be smug and insolent when he dared. And he had built the mask he wore for most of his early adolescence no that fact, having long ago made peace with the fact that at the very least, he'd earn a disfigurement for his trouble.



There was a crackling, dark fire that rose up inside of him every time he thought of Weiss. And even now, it was radiating through the expanse, baking his every thought with incandescent rage.



And in the next instant, it was all gone. Gone. Gone like a bad dream. He could picture her ponytail and her singing voice without adding some remark about the former's level of maturity or calling the other overrated. He could admit to himself at least here in his own head, that on the merits, his sister was an excellent singer. Not that he would ever enjoy hearing anything from her except for silence. But he could objectively, and without resorting to insults to make himself feel better, unequivocally acknowledge a genuine accomplishment of a person he hated.



Then, in the distance, they appeared. Green-white streams that looked like waves breaking on rocks, these too pouring down from some utmost summit could be seen in the reaches of the expanse's distance. As they closed in Whitley permitted curiosity to overtake fear as he was enveloped.



And then came the light.



Light, shapes, the glare from the ceiling light above him. Color. Whitley had again found light and color. Whites and sterile gray-blues of the walls and ceiling ahead of him were contrasted with the darker gray of the floor, and the off-gray/green of whatever metal slab or tilted dais he had been propped up on. More than that, Whitley saw people.



He could see in depth, and he could see in detail, it felt like he had two eyes again, two eyes more powerful than those he had been born with by a factor of at least ten. The periphery of his vision was filled with a heads-up display. A translucent blue circle that pinged with little red blips every time someone in the room moved near the bottom left, a small pictogram of a white-green head atop a grayed out human body on the bottom right, and scrolling words across the top that read 'Stark Arms ATCE: Activate. Unit integrity = Green. Hardened neural uplink = Green. Hardened processor uplink = Not Found… Retrying… Not Found… Retrying… Not Found… Continuing startup without processor unit. Switching to Internal CPU… Internal Processor… = Green. Subroutine check 1… Green. Subroutine check 2… Green. Sonar uplink = Green. CCT uplink = Green = Radar uplink = Not Found. Video recorder = Active. Black box = Active…' And on it went.



"So, tell me, Warrant Offizier, did you enjoy the flight over?" The question, put to him in the accented voice of General Amzel, pulled his attention from the readout. It had come from the rightmost man of the assembled crowd, a man about his father's age or a few years senior, but in much better shape. Gaunt faced, he had eerie blue eyes and a gray beard at odds with the bright orange curls poking out from under his officer's cap. He had a crescent-shaped scar that traced the outline of his left eye socket, starting at the cheek, running up his nose, and curling around over his eyebrow. Strapped to his waist Whitley noted a sawn-off shotgun about the length of the man's upper leg, and a thick, heavy sawback blade folded over an S-shaped handle and fixed to it with a sturdy looking hinge.



"I kept myself entertained." Whitley responded. "You must be General Amzel." He inclined his head. The eyebrow that the general's scar wrapped around went up. "Amzel, sir. Where are my manners. I guess the journey had me out of sorts, your pardon, sir." Whitley reiterated. That was right. Military rules, decorum, and bearing would be expected, going forward.



Amzel nodded. "As your general officer let me be the first to welcome you to the Jotun Complex, home of the Special Construction Training Corps, of which you are now a part, and classified, off-the-record projects of beyond-next-generation warfare, which, you are."



"I was hoping you could tell me about that." Whitley pressed. "What exactly will I be working on?" He couldn't exactly move. He could only speak certain thoughts through some sort of a microphone attached below his eyes, or cameras, he supposed.



"You will be assisting us in developing the next generation of military exoframes." Amzel explained. "Very fortunate for all parties involved. You could imagine the difficulty of finding somebody banged up enough to test a full cybernetic conversion body, and not a single wounded soldier we found was willing to accept the risks of full conversion over a mere cybernetic prosthesis. Being blown to smithereens in the middle of Atlas, as you had been, saved us from shelving the whole project. And of course, you get to live." The general added as an afterthought.



Exoframes. Full cybernetic bodies piloted by brains in life support units. It was a discussion of considerable frequency in the various online forums in his areas of interest. Technology and economic boards, for instance, things that lent him insight into the social media marketing teams' blind spots often speculated about them. Business strategy too. That bunch was waiting on a signal for early investment. Some sign that something was going to slip out of the bowels of an R&D startup or a military research institute and into broad daylight.



While this told him where he would be allocating his pocket change, the wildest speculation came from the wildcatting forums. That was where the results of backyard and rooftop experiments not known for control group quality, intermixed with anecdotes of dubious sobriety and veracity, were reported and speculated on. Suggestions and comments were deposited, and results were compared with the hopes of conjuring up the next standardized Grimm-stopper.



Whitley found discussing these things as a means to de-stress in the late hours, and had begun forming his own theories on the matter, enough for mild participation in some theories about how to squeeze the magical 5.5 kilojoules at the muzzle necessary to guarantee a one-shot to the body on any common Grimm the world over out of an intermediate cartridge, one that could cycle through the standard assault rifles and carbines of the world without compromising on the fire rate or accuracy, but could match the battle, survival, scouting, sporting, and everyday carry rifles that made life outside Remnant's biggest walled cities possible for anyone besides a Huntsman.



The particular sort of speculation, of pushing the limits of weapons, only bore the most tangential relevance here, but he enjoyed ruminating on it.



Whitley cut that thread of reminiscence when he noticed the stares. "Excellent. Where may we begin? I cannot move anything but my head at the moment." He announced with all of the glib of his father.



"We will begin with this." The general said, as he produced what looked like a computer's circuit board or a graphics card. "This is the Apogee system. It is the key to the Infantry Cybernetic Exoframe project. It is also the other half of your cranial housing."



"Other half?" Whitley asked.



"A security measure," Amzel replied. "Your casing's processor is only half-complete, barely functional, and hardly running on anything more than the static electricity of your brain. The other half of the computer itself is right here. And it represents the foundation stone of the entire ICE project. It never left Jotun-2"



"I see," Whitley replied. "Capabilities?"



"Theoretically, it will close the Aura Gap." Amzel replied without missing a beat.



"Closing the Aura Gap?" Whitley replied again, certain that if he still had a tongue, it would be dripping with physical incredulity.



The Aura Gap was the raw, nigh insurmountable difference in combat power, mobility, versatility, and adaptation that an asset with Aura had over an asset without. An individual Huntsman or Specialist couldn't be brought down by a normal soldier. Ideally, you had to match them on even footing, with your own Aura, or send somebody who could. Failing that, a company, armor, walkers, and with air support on standby would be the instrument of choice in bringing down an Aura wielder. And that was no sure thing. A battalion would not be out of line if none of them had Aura or Semblances of their own depending on the circumstances.



An Aura-user could outmatch and out-maneuver infantry, could out-think machines, could outflank armor and artillery, or could pluck gunships from the sky, and that didn't even fully encompass the X-factor that was the Semblance.



"You would pardon my skepticism, Sir." Whitley replied.



"HAH!" The General laughed back. "Skepticism is always welcome in the halls of science, Warrant Offizier. But I promise, this Neural Processor will give you an edge over all but the greatest of Aura wielders."



Whitley minded the taxonomy. Neural Processor. Thy typical cortical implant that was called a Neural Uplink.



"So, it is a second brain then, one that would sync to me?" Whitley hazarded a guess.



"Nothing so anemic, Whitley, if two brains outthinking one was all it took to surmount the Aura Gap, it would not exist. Do you know how fast information travels via the nervous system?"



"I cannot say that I do, General, no." Whitley replied…



"Thirty-five meters per second," Amzel answered, "and would you care to guess how much information that the human brain can process in a second?" He followed up without missing a beat.



"A gigabyte, maybe?" Whitley offered a completely arbitrary figure.



"Not even close." The General taunted. "Ten bits. Ten bits on average, of the one hundred and twenty-five megabytes of information your body absorbs in that same time. The theoretical maximum of an average brain is around sixty, but genetic aberrations who can do seventy or eighty are not unknown to medical literature."



"Now, Warrant Offizer, tell me. Doesn't that sound pathetic compared to your brain's two-and-a-half petabytes of memory? Your eighty-six billion neurons connected with each other a hundred trillion times over? They don't sound like they're doing too much, do they?"



"No, sir." Whitley responded. The two-point-five petabyte figure was a bit more commonly known and Whitley was priorly aware of it.



"Inside those thirteen hundred cubic centimeters of brain, you have enough storage space to index the whole CCTnet. Three hundred million hours of audio-video information." Amzel was building to something.



"So, what would you do if you could run your brain as though it were such a magnificent computer in truth? Hmm?" The general finished as he jiggled the device in front of Whitley's cyber optics.



"What would I do indeed?" Whitley assented. "So how much more processing power does it give me?"



"Suppose, for instance, that you could process nearly point-seven-two gigabytes per second, And, perceive two hundred and fifty-six. Would you consider that impressive?"



"I would." Whitley replied. "The raw sensory data and computational prowess would be unmatched." The advantage was self-evident. Information asymmetry. To know in an instant, to solve for so many of the small, incalculable variables of every heartbeat… Such a device would let even someone such as himself anticipate anything that even a Huntsman could do, and therefore counter, before the follow-through.



The only problem, Whitley noted, was the absence of reaction time. All the planning in the world would amount to nothing if it could not alter the inevitable. History, and even modern life were so full of men who thought they could overcome death, the Grimm, or plain human fallibility only to make utter asses of themselves in the attempt. Unless…



"Spectacular, General. But I see a single problem." Whitley admitted.



"Oh, do tell," the general replied, playful mischief in his voice seemingly confirming the growing suspicion in Whitley's head.



"Transmission speed, all of the information in the world does no good if it comes too lately to be acted upon. If, for instance, I know in advance where, say, an Aura-infused Dust blade will come from, that will not help me dodge or deflect it in the least, unless I know far enough in advance to move first. And against Huntsman-level enemies, the timeliness window closes quickly. But I assume you brought up neurological transmission speed first for a reason." Whitley surmised, watching as the general's smile broadened and his eyes narrowed to pinpricks.



"Excellent, excellent, Warrant Offizier. Exactly." The general replied, as his voice shot up in pitch. "Thirty-five meters per second is not satisfactory. Not for the amount of information that you're processing, and absolutely nowhere near any good for the time in which you will need to act. So instead of the usual pseudo-nerves, we're using a special sort of high tensile strength fiber optic cables. Do you know how fast information passes through fiber optic cables?"



"Near-instant." Whitley said. "Nearly." The General affirmed. "Sixty-six-point-sieben percent lightspeed, to be exact. Mach five hundred und eighty-three thousand. Two-hundred-thousand kilometers per second. Your reaction speed will be five-point-seven million," the general's tone went low as he whispered his emphasis lowing himself to the camera that Whitley was looking at him through, until he saw nothing but the madness that shone in his moon-scarred eye, "times that of a normal human."



Whitley was sure that if he had eyes left to bulge or pop at the sheer scope of the number as it set in, they would have. Had he still a heart, it would be firing like an engine. And he was sure that his brainwave activity was going wild on whatever monitor that they were using to pay attention to that.



Then he remembered that it was within his power to calm himself manually. He commanded his excitement to ebb. Not all at once, but it drained. And at the trough of neutrality, Whitley noticed another detail that euphoria would have otherwise flung him over.



"And my brain? My cognitive processes are still confined to the limits of my organic hardware." Whitley responded. "None of these proverbial hardware updates will improve on the hard limits of my own brain."



"Ordinarily not, but the difference between the Apogee system and every neural processor uplink and every other cortical implant is perfect integration. You see, the amniotic fluid on the inside of your brain case is not only nutrient rich, and fully oxygenated, it is full of superconducting colloidal fibers. In time these microparticles will become stuck to, and fuse with, your neural dendrites. This will allow your nerves to send and receive signals faster. Moreover, the inside wall of your brain case has a number of fibrous protrusions of the same material that will enable the computer system to share cognitive processing and load data. In short, the Apogee unit, once installed and fully integrated will not so much as process the data for you, as it will become an extra lobe or superstructure for your organic brain. The upside is that with each fluid replacement, your own brain's processing and reaction times should compound. The downside is that with each fluid replacement, the line between your brain and the machine will blur, and eventually cease, with the module becoming as much a part of your brain as your frontal cortex, or cerebellum."



Whitley caught the caveat that General Amzel had tried to smuggle in at the end of his explanation. "So, when does my brain stop counting as an enlisted man, and start counting as military hardware or property?" He asked.



"Good question. We will see what the Project Overseer und that jurist who hides in his shadow have to say." Amzel answered, his voice flat and noncommittal. "Now, you're going to feel a lot of pressure, but you should be fine." The General said as he moved toward Whitley's casing with the Apogee unit.



'Wait,' Whitley thought, the chill of unformed panic spreading across what passed for his underside, 'Pressure is just the doctor-word for pain.'



And like that, the whole black void within his cranial housing flooded with white lightning.

---

Count wrote a continuation.

And this is the second chapter in a row where I managed to light every one of Whitley's nerves on fire. This is not going to be a thing every chapter.

I'll get this posted on SB in short order. But now that Dragonslayer week is over, I felt that it was right to work on something non-Dragonslayer again and was able to bang this out.

Thoughts, feedback?

Also, @AndrewJTalon, nice work on the Cinder & Pyrrha snippet.

 

[AJ_Talon]

The surprise came in the form of a tall, broad-shouldered man with the same warm blond hair as Katy and the same easy, slightly crooked grin that Mia had inherited.

Mercer Sith Junior stood in the courtyard of Beacon with a travel bag over one shoulder and a small, carefully wrapped package under his arm. When Jaune stepped out of the dorm with Mia on his hip, Mercer's entire face lit up.

"There she is," he said, voice rough with emotion. "There's my favorite little niece."

Mia blinked, then her ears shot straight up. "Uncle Mercer!"

She practically launched herself out of Jaune's arms. Mercer caught her with a deep, booming laugh and spun her around once before settling her against his chest.

"Hey, troublemaker. Missed you."

Jaune smiled, tired but genuine. "Didn't know you were coming."

"Surprise visit," Mercer said simply. "Had a few days free. Figured I'd come see the little spitfire and make sure Beacon hasn't corrupted her yet."

For the rest of the day, Mercer took Mia into Vale.

They rode the tram with the windows open so she could stick her head out and feel the wind. They bought ice cream (Mercer let her get the biggest cone the shop sold). They visited a toy store where he bought her a small wooden sword and a matching shield "just like Papa's." They fed the ducks at the park, and Mercer made ridiculous duck voices until Mia was laughing so hard she nearly fell over.

Every time she laughed — that bright, unrestrained, pure sound — Mercer went quiet for a second.

It was Katy's laugh.

Almost exactly the same.

He never said anything about it out loud. He just kept making her laugh again and again, as if he could somehow bottle the sound and take it home with him.

By the time they returned to Beacon in the evening, Mia was half-asleep against his shoulder, sticky with ice cream and clutching her new wooden sword like a treasure.

---

Before he left the next morning, Mercer asked Jaune for a private word with the girls.

RWBY and Pyrrha found themselves in an empty classroom with the door closed. Mercer stood with his arms crossed, looking every bit the protective older brother.

"I'm not gonna sugarcoat this," he said. "Katy left that little girl in Jaune's hands, and by extension… in yours. You're the closest thing she has to aunts and a mother figure right now."

His eyes moved from Yang to Ruby to Weiss to Blake to Pyrrha.

"I need you to promise me you'll look after her. Really look after her. Not just when it's convenient. She's all that's left of my sister, and I won't have her growing up without people who love her the way Katy would've wanted."

One by one, they nodded.

Pyrrha's voice was soft but firm. "We will. I swear it."

Yang cracked her knuckles. "Anyone tries to hurt her, they'll answer to me."

Ruby nodded hard. "She's family."

Weiss straightened. "She will be protected. You have my word."

Mercer's gaze lingered on Blake last.

"And you," he said, voice quieter but sharper. "I've heard the stories. I know what you used to be. I'm not here to judge the past… but I am keeping an eye on you. If you ever put Mia in danger — even by accident — you and I are going to have a very long conversation. Understood?"

Blake met his eyes without flinching. "…Understood."

Mercer held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded once. "Good."

He turned back to the group.

"Take care of her. That's all I ask."

---

Later, Mercer crouched down in front of Mia one last time, adjusting the little wooden sword on her back.

"You be good for your papa, okay?"

Mia hugged him tightly around the neck. "Come back soon, Uncle Mercer!"

He closed his eyes for a second, holding her just a little tighter.

"I will, kiddo. I will."

When he finally stood and walked toward the airship, he didn't look back until he reached the boarding ramp. Then he glanced once more at the small group watching him leave — Jaune with Mia in his arms, and the five young women standing protectively around them.

Mercer allowed himself a small, quiet smile.

Katy would've liked them.

He stepped onto the airship and didn't look back again.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Jaune: "Professor, what did you call me for?"

Ozpin: "I need you to come up with contingency plans."

Jaune: "Contingency plans?"

Ozpin: "Yes, to defeat your teammates if they go evil or get mind controlled."

Jaune: "Huh? Why?"

Ozpin: "You have a fantastic strategic mind, Jaune. I'm sure you can do it."

Jaune: "So there are people who can mind control my friends? Shouldn't we focus on stopping them?"

Ozpin; "Oh we will, Jaune, we will. But if they get control of your friends first, it may lead to their deaths if we can't stop them non-lethally."

Jaune: "Shouldn't we have a contingency for me too, then?"

Ozpin: "Oh if you're turned evil we're all fucked, Jaune. It's just a case of a sniper round or a bomb in a birthday present for you. We have to get more creative with the others."

Jaune: "... I don't know how to feel about that."

Ozpin: "Good!"

Blake actually has plans like that for everyone including herself.

Jaune: "Plans that aren't just porn."

Blake: "... Now I have to start over."

Jaune: "Seriously why did you start making these?!"

Blake: "If I ever went evil again... You'll need to put me in bondage. And probably keep me at a low level of stimulation, just on the edge and calling me a worthless Faunus slave and-!"

Jaune: "OKAY, I'm good. Don't need to hear anymore"!

 

[AJ_Talon]

About Damn Time

The Beacon vehicle garage smelled like oil, hot metal, and the faint ozone tang of Dust. Bumblebee sat in the center of the concrete floor like a sleek black-and-yellow predator waiting to be let off the leash. Yang was already elbow-deep in the engine, golden hair tied back in a messy ponytail, a smear of grease across one cheek.

"Hand me the torque wrench," she said without looking up.

Jaune passed it over. He had been relegated to "toolbox guy and occasional extra pair of hands," which suited him fine. Watching Yang work was its own kind of education—precise, confident, completely in her element. Every so often she would glance at him like she was about to say something important, then close her mouth and go back to tightening something with more force than strictly necessary.

He was, she had decided, the densest, most frustrating, most endearing idiot on the entire continent.

"Okay," Yang announced at last, wiping her hands on a rag. "She's ready for a test run. Valley road. Low traffic, good curves. You coming?"

Jaune blinked. "Me?"

"No, the other tall blond standing there looking useful. Yes, you. Hop on."

She swung a leg over Bumblebee and kicked the engine to life. The motorcycle purred like it was happy to see her. Jaune hesitated only a second before climbing on behind her, big hands settling carefully at her waist.

Yang grinned to herself. Perfect. Nowhere for the dense idiot to run.

- - -

The valley road unspooled beneath them in long, sweeping curves. Wind whipped Yang's hair back into Jaune's face. His grip on her waist stayed polite for the first ten minutes. By the fifteenth it had grown a little firmer, a little more natural. She leaned into the turns harder than she needed to, just to feel him adjust and hold on.

"You're quiet back there," she called over the engine.

"Just… enjoying the ride," Jaune answered, voice close to her ear. "You're really good at this."

Yang's heart did a stupid little flip. Say something, Arc. Notice something. Anything.

They never got the chance.

The Beowolf pack came out of the treeline without warning—six of them, drawn by the engine noise and the two living Auras cutting through the afternoon. Yang cursed, braked hard, and killed the engine. She and Jaune were off the bike in the same motion.

"Left side!" she barked.

"On it!"

It was messy, fast, and perfect.

Yang's fists lit up with fire. Jaune's shield caught a lunging Beowolf and turned it into a perfect setup for her haymaker. They moved like they had been practicing for weeks instead of hours—her aggression, his timing, the easy way they covered each other's backs. When the last Grimm dissolved into black smoke, both of them were breathing hard, standing almost chest-to-chest in the middle of the road.

Adrenaline still sang in Yang's blood. She turned to say something cocky—

—and Jaune kissed her.

It was brief. Almost clumsy. Just a quick, firm press of his lips to hers, warm and startled and real. Then he jerked back like he'd been burned, face going scarlet from the neck up.

"I—sorry! I'm sorry. I got caught up in the moment. That was— I shouldn't have—"

Yang stared at him.

Then she grabbed the front of his hoodie with both hands, yanked him down, and kissed him back properly.

This one lasted longer. This one had intent. When she finally pulled away, she left him dazed and still very red.

"About damn time, idiot," she said, voice rough with laughter and something softer.

Jaune's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "…Yeah?"

"Yeah." Yang bumped her forehead lightly against his. "I've been trying to get through to you for weeks.I was starting to think I'd have to draw you a map... Or kick your ass."

A slow, disbelieving smile spread across his face. "I've been… Um... Well... I was thinking of... Working up to it. Didn't want to mess things up."

"You almost did by taking so long." She poked his chest. "But you get points for the dramatic post-Grimm timing. Very heroic. Very you."

Jaune's hands found her waist again, surer this time. "So… does this mean I get to keep riding with you?"

Yang swung back onto Bumblebee and patted the seat behind her.

"Get on, partner. We've still got a whole valley to finish. And next time you kiss me, maybe warn a girl first."

She paused, glanced over her shoulder with a grin that was pure sunlight and mischief.

"…Or don't. I kinda liked the surprise."

 

[AJ_Talon]

The old guardhouse at the edge of Arcadia had been carefully remodeled into a cozy little farm shop, its thick stone walls now lined with shelves of preserves, smoked meats, and fresh baked goods. Tourists drifted in and out, drawn by the warm smell of woodsmoke and the hand-painted signs advertising everything from pickled vegetables to game meats. Nick and Isabel led Teams RWBY and JNPR inside, the bell above the door chiming softly. Orchid was at the shop counter, looking bored.

The teens went through the shop, peering at the items for sale.

Weiss stopped dead in front of a display case. "Fried Squirrel?!"

Nick only grinned, completely unbothered, as he offered them all some squirrel kebabs. "It's gamey, but it's great!"

Ruby stared at the skewered creatures with pure betrayal in her silver eyes. "But they're so cute!"

Yang wrinkled her nose, waving a hand in front of her face. "Ugh, the meat stinks!"

Nora, already chewing, offered a cheerful thumbs-up around a mouthful. "Om nom nom… No complaints!"

Ren took a measured bite of his own squirrel-on-a-stick, expression thoughtful. "When you live on the road… you learn to make do. Honestly, it's better seasoned than anything I was able to make."

Jaune chewed his portion with the calm of long practice. "I mean, it's not even the weirdest thing I've eaten either."

Weiss eyed him warily. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is the weirdest?"

Jaune's smile turned deliberately mysterious. "I'm keeping that a secret."

"Oh come on!" Ruby protested.

Yang had already wandered deeper into the shop, eyes wide as she took in the rows of glass jars. "Wow… look at all the stuff… they have… and all the pickled stuff… I didn't know you could pickle eggs… or beets… or asparagus?"

Ruby's attention snapped to a different shelf. "Oooh! Sooo many cookies!"

Jaune gently caught the back of her cloak before she could dive in. "Down, Ruby… maybe we'll get some for later."

"What's this 'Sith Farm' shelf for?" Blake asked.

"Oh, our neighbors the Siths sell a lot of their goods here!" Jaune said cheerfully, "They're our friends and have been for a thousand years!"

"A thousand years?" Blake asked in shock. Jaune nodded.

"Yeah! Cait Sith, the Faunus Thief of Albion, joined my ancestor Jeanne D'Arc and helped her defeat the Witch Queen of Argus! When she became queen of Radian, she made him a Duke!"

"A duke?" Blake snorted. "You made him a duke?! I don't believe it!"

Blake opened her mouth, clearly about to say something else, when Weiss scowled.

"Blake, so help me Breaker, if the next words out of your mouth have to do with Faunus and oppression, I'll tell Mister Arc how much you love working with the cattle dogs, and he'll make sure you're always with them."

Blake's ears flattened. "No! I was going to ask—"

A drawling voice cut across the shop.

"Well, well, well! If it ain't some Menagerian Pussy come around!"

Jaune groaned. "Mercer!"

A young farm cat Faunus man with a sharp grin, a leather jacket and a swagger walked up. He pulled Jaune into a hug. "Hey, Jaune, you keep shooting up like a weed!"

Jaune straightened, already moving into damage-control mode. "Uh, this is my friend, Mercer Sith Junior." He quickly introduced the others, though Mercer's attention remained fixed on Blake.

"And you… Menagerian Pussy… here to lecture us, I take it?"

Blake's eyes narrowed. "Wha—How did you—?!"

Mercer smirked. "You literally look like Blake Belladonna, princess of Menagerie."

"I'm not a princ—I mean—Who? What's Menagerie?!" Blake recovered quickly, ears twitching. "And there can be no princess of Menagerie because it is a republic!"

Mercer waved a dismissive hand. "Uh huh, which is why Ghira's been voted in as Chieftain for, what, almost ten years now?"

"Because he has been voted in by the populace, that's just it! And it's only been six years, not ten!"

Mercer's tone turned sharper. "Bah! I'm not lettin' some princess come here and tell Faunus we're being oppressed when your father's ruling with an iron fist!"

Jaune stepped between them, hands raised. "Hey guys! C'mon, let's all just have a nice day here at the market… please?"

Mercer paused, then huffed. "Hrm… Fine, Jaune. For you."

Blake's ears pinned flat. "You obey him even now?!"

Yang's voice rose in alarm. "Blake, no, nonono—"

"Mercer, hold back—!" Jaune started.

"DAMNIT BLAKE!"

Mercer's temper flared. "I WAS GONNA DO IT TO BE POLITE BUT IT SEEMS YOU'VE ALL THE MANNERS OF AN ALLEY CAT!"

Ren, ever dry, murmured, "Alley cats at least didn't start arguments unprompted."

"NOT HELPING, REN!" Jaune snapped.

Blake's chin lifted. "At least I removed my collar!"

Mercer's voice cracked like a whip. "THERE WAS NEVER A COLLAR T' BEGIN WITH YA DAMN PUSSY! WE WERE DUKES!"

"AND WHAT ARE YOU NOW?!"

"FARMERS AND NOT TERRORISTS!"

Isabel's voice cut through the shop like a blade of pure maternal authority.

"MERCER SITH JUNIOR! ARE YOU GIVING OUR GUEST A HARD TIME?!"

Mercer wilted on the spot. "…No, Ma'am."

Isabel folded her arms. "Good! Then you'd better apologize."

"…Sorry…"

"That's better."

Blake's lips twitched into a smug little smirk.

Jaune didn't even look at her. "You next, Blake…"

Isabel's gaze shifted. "Yes. Blake, please apologize."

Blake mumbled something unintelligible.

Isabel's tone sharpened just enough. "Blake…"

"…Sorry…"

"Good! Now, let's keep shopping, shall we?"

The tension eased as the group drifted deeper into the shop. Ruby's eyes lit up at another display. "Ooh, pheasant! Pheasant pheasant pheasant! How does it taste?"

Jaune answered without missing a beat. "Like less good chicken."

Isabel's head snapped around. "Jaune! It's not less good chicken!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

Later...

Yang: *snort* "You have to come with contingency plans to stop us if we go evil? What kind of assignment is that?"

Jaune: "It's a special assignment but I'm working on it."

Blake: "I am working on it. I have many such plans ready. Including for you, Yang."

Jaune: "Blake, please, this is my assignment, not yours-"

Yang: "And how would you stop me if I went evil?"

Blake: "After I seduced you-"

Yang: "BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHA! AHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAA!"

Blake: "... After I seduced you-"

Yang: "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Blake: "Stop laughing!"

Yang: "Haaaa... Seriously Blake? I'd have to lose my right arm before I ever thought of sleeping with you!"

Blake: "... While I was seducing you-"

Yang: "FAILING to seduce me-"

Blake: "My clone would sneak up behind you and hit you over the head!"

Yang: "... Seriously?"

Blake: "A sudden enough strike can overwhelm you before you get powered up."

Yang: "With what? A frying pan?"

Jaune: "A nerve strike would probably do it."

Blake: "Huh, good point."

Jaune: "Yeah, like right here." Precise nerve strike to Yang's neck

Yang: "URK!" She collapses like a doll

Jaune: "Oops... Um... My mom's medical training sometimes comes in handy..."

Blake: "Hmmm..."

Jaune: "Stop thinking weird sex thoughts! It's just to render someone unconcious painlessly-STOP IT!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

Neo had mostly just been watching.

Cinder's orders had been clear: no harm was to come to the little Arc girl. Not yet. Not while they still needed their cover at Beacon. So Neo observed from a distance, silent and amused, as the tiny blonde Faunus tore through the academy like a one-girl natural disaster.

Then Mia tried to ride her tricycle down the stairs.

"WHEEEEEEE!"

Neo's eyes widened. Dear gods, this girl is going to get herself killed.

In a burst of shattered glass and rose petals of broken light, Neo appeared just in time. She scooped Mia out of the seat and shattered away again as the tricycle bounced, flipped, and tumbled the rest of the way down with a series of loud crashes.

Neo and Mia stared after it in silence.

"…Woooah," Mia breathed, eyes sparkling. "So cool!"

Neo just stared at her.

"Oooh! I wanna do something else cool!" Mia declared.

Neo blinked.

Later that same afternoon, Mia somehow convinced someone (Mint still wasn't sure who) to tie a scarf to a ceiling fan. She swung on it with pure joy—

"WHEEEE—!"

—and nearly sailed straight out an open window.

Neo caught her again, of course. This time she held the girl at arm's length and formed a simple sign with her Semblance:

You're quite the daredevil, aren't you?

Mia grinned. "That sign means nothing because I can't read!"

Neo looked at the floating letters, then at the cheerful little idiot in her arms. She tossed the sign over her shoulder with a silent sigh.

You're lucky you're cute.

Mia just giggled. "Heehee…"

---

A few weeks later, the adventurous spirit had vanished.

After the Beowulf incident, Mia had become quiet. Subdued. Neo found her sitting alone on her bunk in the JNPR dorm, knees pulled up to her chest, staring at nothing.

Neo shattered into the room without a sound, settled beside her, and gently pulled the little girl against her side. She placed a bowl of strawberry ice cream in Mia's lap.

Mia hesitated… then her sweet tooth won. She took a small spoonful.

Neo gently stroked her hair.

"…Papa's training with Grandpa," Mia mumbled. "He wants to be a hero… He asked me to be brave." She looked up, eyes big and uncertain. "How do you be brave?"

Neo gave her a small smile. She tapped a finger lightly against Mia's forehead, then against her heart.

Mia tilted her head. "Huh?"

Neo rolled her eyes playfully and pulled out her scroll, switching to the text-to-speech app.

"Learn what you can," the calm electronic voice said, "and always follow your heart."

"I don't know how to do that," Mia admitted.

Neo typed again. "For the first one: learn from your family and from school. Book smarts and training your body. As for following your heart… do what you always think is right. No matter what anyone else tells you."

Mia thought about it for a long moment. Then her face brightened.

"…I wanna eat ice cream!"

Neo's smile turned into a full gigawatt grin.

"Exactly."

---

When Neo walked Mia back into the common room a little later, Yang's eyes narrowed the second she saw them together.

"Hey," Yang said, frowning. "Wanna tell us when you're hanging out in the Booger's room?"

Neo gave her a smug look, leaned down, and pressed a quick kiss to the top of Mia's head. A new sign floated beside her:

Just practicing.

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

Neo's grin turned positively Cheshire as she stretched. The sign changed.

For becoming Stepmommy.

(She had switched back to silent signs so Mia wouldn't understand. It was still too soon for that particular conversation.)

Pyrrha's smile was calm… and just a little terrifying. "I don't think you'll need to train for that."

Neo silently giggled, pulling Mia into her lap and petting her hair while the girl continued eating ice cream. Another sign appeared:

Ah-ah-ah. I don't think that's wise.

Before anyone could escalate further, Ruby blurred across the room in a flash of rose petals and snatched Mia right out of Neo's lap.

"Want cookies with your ice cream, Mia?" Ruby asked brightly.

"I SURE DO!" Mia cheered.

Neo pouted, holding up her scroll one last time. The text-to-speech voice chirped:

"Welp. There goes my fun. Bye-bye, Mia."

Then she shattered away in a cascade of broken glass and light.

"Awww!" Mia called after her.

Yang ruffled the little girl's hair. "It's alright, Mia. You don't need to worry about her."

But Neo, already gone, was smiling to herself in the hallway.

She wasn't done practicing just yet.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Ruby had been vibrating with excitement for three days straight. "Comic Con Vale! It's the biggest one this side of Mistral and they're doing a full Starlight Brigade panel! Jaune, you have to come with me. Yang too!"

Jaune had caved immediately—mostly because Ruby's puppy eyes were lethal, and partially because he'd caught Yang trying (and failing) to sneak a worn Starlight Knights figurine back into her drawer when she thought no one was looking. He knew that look. He'd seen it on Orchid's face a hundred times.

Which was how Yang found herself being physically dragged through the convention center doors on a sunny Saturday afternoon, one arm hooked through Ruby's and the other reluctantly linked with Jaune's.

"I can't believe I let you two talk me into this," Yang grumbled, adjusting her sunglasses. She was dressed in her usual leather jacket and shorts, trying to look as unbothered as possible. "I'm only here for moral support. And maybe to make sure Ruby doesn't buy the entire dealer's room."

"Lies," Ruby sang, already bouncing toward the first booth. "You used to love this stuff! Remember when we'd stay up late watching Starlight Brigade reruns and you'd do all the transformation poses with me?"

Yang's face went bright red. "Ruby! That was like… ten years ago. I was a kid."

"So was I!"

Jaune glanced over with a small, knowing smile. "Nothing wrong with that. My sisters Verdy and Coral still build working replicas of half the mecha from that show. Orchid has an entire shrine to the limited-edition figurines."

Yang shot him a betrayed look, but there was no real heat in it. "Traitor. You're supposed to be on my side here, VB."

"I am," he said softly, squeezing her hand where Ruby couldn't see. "That's why I'm here."

The convention floor was a chaotic explosion of color—cosplayers in elaborate armor, vendors hawking everything from custom Dust-infused prop weapons to indie comics about Grimm-hunting heroes. Ruby vanished almost instantly toward a booth selling weapon props, leaving Jaune and Yang momentarily alone.

Yang's shoulders tensed as they passed a large Starlight Brigade display. A group of kids were reenacting the famous team pose, complete with glowing wristbands. She looked away quickly.

Jaune noticed. Of course he did.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. Fine." She crossed her arms. "Just… I used to be really into this. Like, really into it. Before Dad... Before I had to start taking care of Ruby full-time. I had the full collection of comics, the action figures, even a crappy homemade costume I wore to one of the tiny local cons back in Patch. Then life got… real. Raising a kid, training, punching bad guys. Nerd stuff felt like something I had to grow out of."

Jaune leaned against a pillar, watching her gently. "Sounds familiar. Katy used to tease me about how much I loved those old knight errant stories my dad told. Said I was going to get myself killed trying to be a hero instead of staying home and fixing tractors with her and Mercer."

Yang's expression softened. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Turns out you can do both. Being a Huntsman doesn't mean you have to give up the stuff that makes you happy." He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a small, familiar box. "Here. Brought something for you."

Yang opened it curiously. Inside was a brand-new Starlight Brigade enamel pin—the golden phoenix emblem of the team leader, polished and gleaming.

"I saw you eyeing that old one in your room," Jaune admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Figured it was time for an upgrade. And… maybe it's okay to let that part of you out again. Even if it's just for today."

Yang stared at the pin, then at him. Her cheeks were pink, but her eyes were suspiciously bright. "You big sap."

She clipped the pin to the lapel of her jacket anyway.

Ruby reappeared like a red tornado, arms full of merch. "Yang! They have the new volume of Ember's Edge—the one where the fire specialist goes full power! You gotta read it with me!"

Yang opened her mouth to protest… then closed it. She looked down at the pin, then at Jaune's encouraging smile, then at her little sister's hopeful face.

"…Fine," she muttered. "But only because Jaune bribed me with emotional support."

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of laughter. Yang dragged them to the mecha model contest (quietly geeking out over the articulated joints with Jaune, comparing them to Verdy and Coral's latest disasters). They watched the Starlight Brigade panel, where Yang found herself cheering along with the crowd during the climactic transformation sequence. Ruby nearly cried with joy when Yang joined her for the group pose at the end.

At one point, a little girl in a makeshift Yellow Starlight Knight-inspired cosplay (complete with yellow scarf and gauntlets) ran up for a picture. Yang froze for half a second—then dropped into a perfect combat stance beside her, grinning wide.

"Looking good, kid. Keep punching those monsters!"

The girl beamed. Yang's smile stayed long after she left.

Later, as the three of them sat on a bench sharing oversized pretzels, Yang leaned into Jaune's side.

"Thanks," she said quietly, so Ruby wouldn't hear. "For… pushing me a little. I didn't realize how much I missed this. Being able to just… enjoy stuff without feeling like I'm slacking on my responsibilities... Or being, ya know..."

Jaune slipped an arm around her shoulders. "You're allowed to have both, Yang. The badass fighter and the girl who secretly loves cheesy sentai shows. I like both versions."

She looked up at him, lilac eyes warm. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He brushed a stray hair behind her ear,. "Besides… I think the nerdy side of you is pretty hot."

Yang's grin turned wicked. "Careful, Arc. Keep talking like that and I might fall for you~."

Jaune coughed and went bright red.

"Ah... Uh... Um..."

"Or maybe," Yang whispered, leaning in, "I already have."

Ruby, thankfully distracted by a booth selling cookies shaped like weapons, missed the way Yang pulled Jaune in for a quick, stolen kiss behind her back—soft, sweet, and full of promise.

By the time they left the con, Yang's jacket was covered in new pins, her arms full of bags, and her smile brighter than it had been in years.

She was still the unstoppable Yang Xiao Long.

But maybe—just maybe—she could be a little bit of a dork again, too.

And with Jaune beside her, it felt like the easiest thing in the world.

 

[dogbertcarroll]

Cluck Like a Chicken

Jaune struggled but Scarlet and Sun held him solidly in place. "This isn't funny guys!"

Neptune smirked. "It's not meant to be funny, we have a serious question and you are going to give us a serious answer."

"And you had to pin me to a wall to ask it?" Jaune demanded.

"Yes, because otherwise you would just duck the question," Sage said with a shrug.

"So you are going to torture the answer out of me?" Jaune asked, eyes widening in panic.

"Don't be silly, everyone knows torture doesn't guarantee truthful responses," Sun said, tightening his grip.

"Yeah, we have a much more reliable means of getting you to answer truthfully, whether you want to or not," Neptune said smugly. "Sage, hit it."

Sage stepped in front of Jaune and his aura flared in a repeating pattern. "Jaune, relax and be at peace."

Jaune just stared at him in disbelief not noticing his muscles going slack while the others all closed their eyes.

"We are all friends here, there is no need to be afraid, while we are a bit enthusiastic we would never really hurt you," Sage assured him as his aura pulsed like a heart beat.

"I suppose that's true," Jaune agreed his eyelids drooping a little.

"So relax, let go of everything that is holding you back, your worries, your fears, your restraint," Sage said in a calm soothing tone.

"Yeah," Jaune agreed straightening up as if he'd just removed a heavy weight from his shoulders, his aura beginning to pulse in tandem with Sage's.

"Jaune... I'm a friend, you can trust me, tell me which girl on the two teams in your harem is the one you are interested in?" Sage asked intently.

"And why can't you let another brother get some?!" Neptune demanded before he could answer, only to get smacked in the back of the head by Sage.

Jaune's eyes snapped wide open and unseeing while his aura blazed like a sun. "Let another brother get some? I'm not the one standing in your way, you are. You chase after anything in a skirt, not able to focus on one girl for longer than an eye blink, have no sense of commitment, don't even really see them as people so much as mobile platforms to carry their curves around."

Sun and Scarlet went flying as he flexed his aura. "The girls are not my harem, much as I wish they were, and each should demand your full attention and affection."

Neptune's aura dropped by a tenth and he rolled with the backhand that sent him tumbling along the ground.

"Each and every one of them is unique and awesome," Jaune said stepping forward as Sage tried pulsing his aura faster, trying to break Jaune out of it, only to get a foot to the gut that folded him over.

"Really the fact that you only put the bare minimum of effort to gain any of their attentions is an insult!" he growled out his aura dancing on his sword like flames.

"When did he get his sword?!" Neptune cried out.

"And as some of our instructors have said, 'Insults are training opportunities!"

An Hour later

Glinda entered the training room and shook her head at the damage and the demolished team, while Jaune snored softly as he laid on the ground, head on his arms, peacefully asleep.

After she'd gotten everything repaired and the teens sent on their way Ozpin entered. "What excuse did they give?" he asked curiously.

"A test of Sage's hypnotic semblance gone wrong," she replied, shaking her head.

"Technically true but misleading," he said with approval.

"And they have somehow managed to forget that we have cameras in here recording everything in case of accidents," Glinda said dryly. "The recording will no doubt cause even more relationship turmoil among the students, but there seems to be little that does not."

"Erase the recording," Ozpin said, "I think things will go smoother if certain facts are not know at this time."

"Gladly," she agreed, feeling a small surge of satisfaction at the thought that her bet on Yang winning Jaune would be much more secure now.

Ozpin nodded, his plans to insure their were strong future wielders of the silver eyes bloodline combined with the number of children the Arc family tended to produce making the future seem that much more secure... as well as his bet on Ruby winning the blonde himbo's heart. He'd bet quite a bit after all.

 

[AJ_Talon]

- - -

The amusement park lights were still glowing in the distance when they finally stepped off the last tram into the quieter streets of Vale. The night air smelled like fried dough and summer. Yang stretched her arms over her head with a satisfied groan, the motion pulling her shirt up just enough to show a strip of toned stomach before it fell again.

"Hey, y'know this trip to the amusement park was pretty fun!" she said, grinning sideways at Jaune. "Plus, that restaurant was really awesome. Expensive too."

Jaune's ears burned. He had checked his Scroll balance three times before making the reservation and once more after paying the bill. "Y-yeah. I had to save up for it. Y-you really liked it, though…?"

"Hah! Of course I did!" Yang threw an arm around his shoulders and jostled him. "This has been one of the best nights of my life! Ten out of ten, for sure!"

Jaune's heart hammered so hard he was half-convinced she could hear it. He swallowed, planted his feet, and stopped walking. Yang took two more steps before realizing he wasn't beside her anymore. She turned, still smiling, only for the smile to slowly fade when she saw the serious look on his face.

"Yang." His voice came out rougher than he wanted. He reached out and carefully took both of her hands in his. They were warm and calloused from gauntlets and tools. "I-I think you're the most wonderful girl in the world. You're smart, funny, and really pretty. A-and I want to make every day this special between us."

Yang's lilac eyes went wide. "Jaune…?"

He squeezed her hands like they were the only solid things left in the world.

"Yang Xiao Long—will you let me be your boyfriend?"

Silence.

A streetlamp buzzed overhead. Somewhere far off, a car horn sounded.

"…Y-Yang?"

Yang's face stayed blank for one more heartbeat.

Then she snickered.

The snicker turned into a chuckle. The chuckle grew into full, bright laughter that made her lean forward and rest her forehead against their joined hands for a second.

"Heh. Is that why you've been nervous all day?"

Jaune blinked. "…What?"

Yang collected herself, still grinning like he'd just told the best joke she'd heard all week. "Jaune, you big goof! C'mere—"

She yanked him into a crushing hug before he could finish the sentence. The air left his lungs in a startled "Oof!" as strong arms wrapped around his ribs and golden hair filled his vision.

"We'll always be besties!" she declared into his shoulder, completely missing the way his entire body had gone rigid. "You didn't have to do all this for that!"

"B-but, I—"

"And I promise." Yang pulled back just enough to beam at him, hands still on his shoulders. "You'll always be my favorite boy friend as well."

Jaune's brain blue-screened.

"W-what?!"

"And who knows?" Yang continued, completely oblivious, already planning his future for him. "Maybe we'll finally get you some girl friends, too? Cuz otherwise your mom's gonna go nuts trying to find you a special somebody!"

Jaune stared at her.

The expensive dinner. The carefully chosen park tickets. The speech he had practiced in the mirror for a week. All of it had just been filed under "Best Friend Doing Something Nice."

He let out a long, quiet breath that was half laugh and half surrender.

"…I won't give up, Yang," he said softly. "I won't give up."

Yang punched his arm lightly, still radiant with friendly affection.

"That's the spirit!"

She turned and started walking again, already chatting about which roller coaster they should try next time, completely unaware that the boy beside her had just poured his heart out onto the sidewalk and was now quietly gathering the pieces back up for the next attempt.

Jaune followed after her, hands in his pockets, a small, stubborn smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Next time, he told himself.

He'd just have to be clearer.

Or louder.

Or maybe bring a sign.

Pyrrha Nikos, his partner, slid out of the hiding spot she'd chosen to watch over the date and easily matched his pace.

"She didn't get it?" Pyrrha asked, sympathetic. Jaune nodded, a small sigh escaping his mouth.

"No… But, ya know… Blonds, huh?"

Pyrrha smiled knowingly.

"Oh yes. I know."

 

[AJ_Talon]

Birdbrained

It started in the middle of a perfectly normal sentence.

"—and then I told the guy if he looked at my bike like that again I'd—"

Yang never finished the threat.

One second she was standing in the courtyard outside the dorms, gesturing emphatically with a half-eaten protein bar. The next there was a soft poof of golden light, a startled squawk, and a small, fluffy, bright-yellow bird where the brawler had been. The protein bar hit the ground. The bird flapped in mid-air for a second, looking deeply offended by gravity, then crashed into the nearest bush with an indignant cheep.

Jaune, who had been roped into listening to Yang's rant while carrying books from the library (Yang had made him), gaped.

"…Yang?"

The bush shook violently. A tiny golden head with fierce lilac eyes and a crest of feathers that somehow still looked like it wanted to punch something poked out. The bird glared at him. Then it opened its little beak and let out the most aggressive, high-pitched CHEERUP he had ever heard.

Jaune dropped his books.

"Oh my gods. Oh my gods. You're a bird. You're actually a bird." He dropped to his knees in front of the bush, hands hovering like he was afraid she might explode. "Okay. Okay, don't panic. I've got this. I've read about this. Sort of. There was a whole chapter on accidental faunus transformations in that old textbook—wait, no, that was different. You're not a faunus. You're just… bird."

The Yang-bird hopped out of the bush, puffed up to twice her size, and pecked his finger hard enough to make him yelp.

"Okay! Noted. Still you."

He carefully scooped her up in both hands. She was warm and ridiculously soft, all golden down and tiny angry talons. She immediately tried to bite his thumb.

"Hey—ow—stop that. I'm helping." Jaune stood, cradling her against his chest like she was made of glass and explosives at the same time. "We're going to my room. No one else needs to see this until we figure it out. And you're not flying off. I mean it."

Yang-bird made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a scoff.

Getting her upstairs without being seen was an adventure. She kept trying to wriggle free, then settled for shredding the edge of his hoodie with her beak while muttering continuous tiny complaints. By the time Jaune kicked his dorm door shut behind him, his sleeve looked like it had lost a fight with a very small lawnmower.

He set her on the desk.

She immediately knocked over his pencil cup.

"Yang."

Cheep. (Unrepentant.)

He sighed and started improvising. An old scarf became a nest. A bottle cap of water. Crumbled bits of the protein bar she had been eating earlier (she attacked those with extreme prejudice). Every time he tried to gently pet the top of her head she either leaned into it for half a second or attempted to remove a finger.

"You're really bad at being a helpless animal, you know that?" he told her, sitting on the edge of the bed so they were eye-level. "Most people would be freaking out. You're just… still trying to win a fight."

The bird paused mid-preen, fixed him with one bright lilac eye, then fluttered up and landed on his shoulder. She shuffled sideways until she was right against his neck, then tucked her head under his jaw with a tiny, exhausted little trill.

Jaune went very still.

"…Yeah," he said softly. "I've got you."

He spent the next two hours like that—talking nonsense, offering snacks, gently detangling feathers when she got them stuck, and pretending he wasn't completely melting every time she made a soft sound against his throat. When Ruby knocked to ask if he'd seen Yang, he panicked and claimed she was "in the shower, long story, don't come in." When Nora tried the door later he had to pretend to be napping with a very judgmental yellow bird glaring at him from the pillow.

At some point Yang-bird fell asleep on his chest, tiny body rising and falling with his breathing. Jaune stared at the ceiling, one hand carefully cupped around her to keep her from rolling off, and whispered,

"You're still the scariest person I know. Even like this."

The bird made a sleepy little noise that might have been agreement.

She turned back at 3:17 in the morning with another soft poof of light and a lot of limbs. One second there was a bird. The next there was a full-sized, very naked, very confused Yang sprawled on top of him.

They stared at each other.

Yang's face went through seventeen emotions in two seconds and settled on horrified realization. She then yanked his hoodie off, making him yelp, as she pulled over her body.

"…If you tell anyone," she said in a deadly whisper, "I will end you."

Jaune, bright red from the collar up and trying very hard not to look anywhere he shouldn't, only managed, "I—I built you a nest."

Yang buried her face in his shoulder and groaned.

"I hate this bullshit so much."

"…Do you want the rest of the protein bar?"

She lifted her head just enough to glare at him. Then, reluctantly, she started laughing—quiet and helpless and warm against his neck.

Jaune carefully pulled the blanket up over both of them and decided that, all things considered, this was still one of the better ways the day could have gone.

"... So... Um... When can I get my hoodie back-?"

"Shut up VB."

"Right, right..."

 

[AJ_Talon]

What Kind of Person

---

Yang had been digging for months. Years, really.

Old mission reports at Beacon, quiet questions asked in the wrong parts of Vale, snippets from a drunk Qrow. Every lead on Raven Branwen ended the same way: smoke, dead ends, and the same bitter taste in her mouth.

Jaune found out the way he always did—by blundering into it by accident when he asked what she was looking for in the archives of the library. Out of... She didn't know, exhaustion maybe? She told him.

He didn't say much after. He just sat with her in the archives, his own errand forgotten, and said, simply:

"My family knows how to find people who don't want to be found. If you want… I can ask."

Yang had been skeptical. The Arc name was respected, sure, but Raven was a phantom. Still, she nodded once.

She shouldn't have underestimated them.

Aunt Irene (the one with the quiet eyes and the even quieter reputation) and Uncle Brand (financial genius and bruiser) made a few calls, pulled a few old favors, and three days later the Branwen camp was surrounded before the sentries even finished their morning coffee. The rest of the Arc Clan—Nick with that easy smile that never reached his eyes when family was threatened, Isabel with her doctor's calm, even Nana Arturia standing like a queen who had once commanded battlefields with her husband Shirou, he of Unlimited Blade Works —took Raven without a single shot fired.

They brought her to Radian, and Yang and Jaune traveled there. They landed at the airship port, and made it to the Arc Farms.

They held her in the yard behind the farmhouse, not roughly, but firmly enough that the message was clear: she wasn't leaving until Yang said so.

Raven's red eyes burned when Yang finally stepped forward.

"... Mom?" She whispered.

"You wanted to see me," Raven deadpanned. "What do you want?"

Yang hesitated. She felt Jaune at her back. She sucked in a breath.

"... Why? Just... Why did you leave us?"

Raven snorted.

"You and your father were weak," Raven said, voice sharp as her blade. "The only way to get strength is to take it. Join the tribe. Take what you want. We had a great empire once—until Vale crushed us with their logistics and their self-righteousness. Our path is the only way to survive in this dark world. There is no hope of victory... Not against the darkness. Just survival. That's all. If you wouldn't join me... I had to let you go."

The words hung in the air.

Yang stood there for a long moment, golden hair stirring in the breeze. Jaune's hand settled gently on her shoulder—not holding her back, just reminding her she wasn't alone. She sucked in a slow breath.

She clenched her fists, tensed as though for a fight.

Then she looked her mother in the eye and said:

"You know what? Thank you."

Raven blinked. "What?"

"Thank you." Yang's voice was steady. "I know exactly what kind of person you are now. And if you weren't that kind of person, you never would have left. Mom never would have met Dad. I never would have gotten Ruby." Her throat tightened, but she kept going. "And I love her. I love my mom. So… thank you."

Raven's face became unreadable.

Yang lifted her chin.

"Now do what you do best," she said quietly. "And leave."

The Arc family members released her. Raven stood free, staring at her daughter for a long, silent beat. Something complicated flickered behind her eyes—anger, calculation, maybe the faintest trace of something else. Then she drew her sword, carved a swirling red portal into the air, and stepped through without another word.

The portal snapped shut.

The yard was very quiet.

---

Later, after the family had given her space, Yang sat alone beneath the big oak at the edge of the property, knees pulled to her chest. The tears came quietly, the kind that had been waiting years for permission.

Soft footsteps approached. Jaune hesitated a few feet away.

"Hey… are you okay?"

He immediately grimaced and dragged a hand down his face. "That was stupid. Of course you're not—"

Yang shook her head. A small, watery smile pulled at her mouth. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and looked up at him.

"You asked your whole family to drop everything and hunt down my mess of a mother," she said. "You stood there the entire time and didn't try to fight my battle for me. You just… stayed."

Jaune opened his mouth, closed it, and settled for a helpless little shrug.

Yang stood. The distance between them felt smaller than it ever had.

"I appreciate everything you've done for me, Jaune. More than I know how to say." She took a breath. "So… would you want to go on a date with me? A real one. No competitions, no family conspiracies, no crisis. Just us."

Jaune's eyes went wide. Then the brightest, most disbelieving smile spread across his face.

"Yeah," he said, voice soft. "I'd like that. A lot."

Yang's smile steadied. She reached out and bumped her fist lightly against his chest.

"Good. Because I'm done waiting for the universe to hand me good things. I'm taking this one myself."

 

[AJ_Talon]

Nana's Wish

Jaune paced the hallway outside the hospital room like a man waiting for a battlefield report. His great-grandmother, Queen Artoria Pendragon — the legendary Saber Queen herself — had been admitted after a sudden collapse. The doctors said it wasn't immediately life-threatening, but at her age, every scare felt like it might be the last.

He needed her to believe he was okay. Happy. Settled.

Which was why he was currently standing in front of Yang Xiao Long, looking desperate.

"Please, Yang. I know it's a huge ask, but… can you pretend to be my fiancée? Just for today? Nana keeps worrying that I'm going to end up alone and useless. If she thinks I've found someone like you, she might actually rest."

"Why me?" Yang asked, raised eyebrow. Jaune coughed.

"Well, um, I would have asked Pyrrha but she's doing work with her agent and mother today and she couldn't get back in time. And Ruby..."

Yang clenched her fist. Jaune nodded.

"Yeah, exactly. Weiss... Yeah. I don't know Blake well enough, Nora..." He shook his head rapidly, and put his hands together as he bowed his head.

"Please Yang? I-I just... I want her to know I'll be okay if... If anything..."

Yang stared at him for a long second, arms crossed.

Then she grinned, slow and dangerous.

"Fiancée, huh? Bold move, VB. You sure you can handle me playing the part?"

Jaune's face went red. "I—I just need her to see I'm doing okay. You don't have to… you know… go full method acting or anything."

Yang's grin widened. "Too late. I'm committing."

"Oh man..."

---

They made it to the hospital in Vale, moving quickly from the receptionist desk to the intensive care ward. Jaune squeezed Yang's hand as they got to his nana's door.

"Let me go in first," Jaune said. Yang nodded. He entered the plainly decorated hospital room, Yang pausing at the threshold. The windows were open, letting in fresh air and warm sunshine.

Artoria Pendragon looked smaller in the hospital bed, hooked up to beeping sensors, but her green eyes still held that ancient, regal sharpness.

When Jaune walked in, she brightened.

"Jaune, my dear boy!" she said warmly, voice a little weaker than usual but full of love.

"Hey Nana," Jaune said. "How are you feeling? Where is everyone else?"

Artoria snorted.

"Oh, I'm fine. Just fine. Everyone else was hovering too much. I had them go off, handle things. I don't need nursemaids! The worst part? These barbarians won't let me have my tea! Can you imagine? What is the world coming to? No sense of propriety, no sense of tradition-"

"Or taste?" Jaune joked. He moved forward, pulling away briefly from Yang. He pulled a small thermos from under his armor plate with a smile. He handed it to his Nana, who took it from him gratefully. She beamed.

"Oh Jaune… You're so sweet." She looked over at Yang, lingering in the doorframe. "And who is this lovely young woman?"

Yang stepped forward with surprising grace, slipping her arm around Jaune's waist and leaning into him like they'd been together for years.

"Hi, Your Majesty. I'm Yang Xiao Long. Jaune's fiancée." She gave Artoria a bright, genuine smile. "It's an honor to finally meet the woman my fiancee admires so much… And a total badass!"

Artoria's eyes sparkled with delight. "Fiancée? Oh, Jaune! You've been holding out on me!"

Jaune laughed nervously, one arm awkwardly around Yang's shoulders. "Y-Yeah… Surprise?"

Yang played her role perfectly. She fussed over Jaune, straightened his collar, called him "sweetheart," and told Artoria embarrassing but endearing stories about how "reliable and kind" he was. At one point she even kissed his cheek.

Jaune's face stayed permanently pink the entire visit.

Artoria watched them with soft, misty eyes. "You two look so happy together. That's all I ever wanted for you, my sweet boy. To find someone who sees how bright your soul is."

Yang's teasing expression faltered for just a second. She glanced at Jaune, something softer in her eyes, before turning back to Artoria.

"He's a good one," she said quietly. "I'm lucky to have him."

"I…" He gulped and nodded, "I'm… Luckier."

"Well, you're good at sweet talking," Artoria chuckled, "You got that from your great-grandfather, you know."

"Nana," Jaune groaned. Yang giggled.

"I'd like to hear it!"

Artoria beamed.

"Well, it all started with my knights and dinner…"

When visiting hours ended, Artoria squeezed both their hands.

"Thank you for making an old woman very happy. Take care of each other."

---

The moment they were out of sight, Jaune let out a huge breath and turned to Yang.

"Thank you. Seriously. You didn't have to go that far."

Yang smirked, but there was a faint blush on her cheeks. "What can I say? I'm a method actor." She nudged him with her elbow. "Besides… it wasn't entirely terrible. Your Nana is awesome… And you make a pretty decent fake fiancé, VB."

Jaune rubbed the back of his neck, smiling shyly. "You were amazing. Nana really loved you."

Yang was quiet for a moment, then bumped her shoulder against his.

"…We should probably break the news to her eventually that we're not actually engaged."

Jaune laughed. "Yeah. Probably."

They started walking toward the airship docks side by side. Yang's hand brushed his.

"Hey, Jaune?"

"Hm?"

She gave him a small, surprisingly gentle smile.

"If you ever need a fake fiancée again… you know where to find me."

Jaune's heart did something complicated in his chest.

"I'll keep that in mind."

And for the rest of the walk, neither of them pulled their hands apart.

---

Back in the hospital room, Artoria Pendragon smiled knowingly as she sipped her smuggled tea.

"Ah… young love. They'll figure it out eventually."

 

[AJ_Talon]

Jaune knocked politely on the door to Professor Goodwitch's office, Mia's small hand clutched tightly in his. The little girl bounced on her toes, still buzzing with energy from seeing her papa after his long training mission.

"Come in," Glynda's crisp voice called.

The door opened. Jaune stepped inside, still a little travel-worn, the short blond beard he'd grown during the week of woodland training with his father neatly trimmed but unmistakable. Mia waved enthusiastically with her free hand.

"Hi Miss Glynda! Papa's back!"

Glynda looked up from her desk… and froze.

Her eyes locked onto the beard. For a brief second her professional composure cracked. A faint flush colored her cheeks. She quickly lifted a stack of papers, holding them just high enough to half-conceal her face as she cleared her throat.

"Mister Arc. Welcome back." Her voice was carefully controlled. "I see your training was… productive."

Jaune smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. Dad put me through the wringer. Thank you, by the way—for looking after Mia while I was gone. And for all the other times you've stepped in. It really means a lot."

Glynda lowered the papers slightly, her expression softening despite herself. "You're very welcome. I… enjoy taking care of Mia. She's a bright child."

Mia tugged on Jaune's sleeve and pointed at his face. "Papa has a fuzzy face! I don't like it!"

Jaune chuckled. "I might shave it off. Everyone else seems to like it, though. What do you think, Professor?"

Glynda's mind promptly betrayed her.

In her head she was no longer in her office. She stood in a warm kitchen, heavily pregnant, wearing a simple apron over a soft dress. Strong arms slipped around her from behind. Bearded Jaune pulled her gently against his chest, pressing a slow, tender kiss to the side of her neck. She leaned into him with a happy sigh, one hand resting on her rounded belly. A slightly older Mia ran in and hugged both their legs, laughing.

"Uhhh… Professor?"

Glynda blinked hard, the fantasy vanishing. She straightened, cheeks still faintly pink.

"It's… ahem… perfectly acceptable," she said, voice a touch higher than usual. "Just keep it neat."

"Yes, ma'am."

Mia made a dramatic face. "Still yucky and scratchy! Especially when he kisses me!"

"Awww…" Jaune lifted her up and nuzzled her cheek with the soft beard. "Come on, I'm keeping it soft."

Mia giggled and squirmed. "It tickles!"

Glynda stared.

The second fantasy hit harder. She was his wife now. Jaune had her pressed gently but firmly against a wall, one hand on her waist, the other tilting her chin up. His bearded face was close, voice low and warm as he kissed her thoroughly—

"Uh, Professor?"

Glynda's eyes snapped back into focus. Her face was redder than before.

"…Get out of my office, Mister Arc."

Jaune blinked. "But—"

"OUT!"

Jaune wisely didn't argue. He adjusted Mia on his hip, gave Glynda a slightly bewildered but polite nod, and retreated toward the door.

Mia waved cheerfully over his shoulder. "Bye-bye, Miss Glynda! Love you!"

Glynda waited until the door clicked shut.

Then she slowly lowered her face into her hands and let out a long, muffled groan.

That beard was going to be the death of her.

 

[AJ_Talon]

In a universe where Yang is a dog faunus, she has some issues one Saturday morning. Jaune hopes to resolve it... With a walk!

Written with @brinkleberry .

Dragonslayer, One-Shot, Fluff.

The Walk

Saturday morning light filled the shared common room, turning the kitchen island golden. Most of Team RWBY and JNPR were sprawled across the couches in various states of half-awake breakfast existence—Scrolls out, coffee in hand, the usual low murmur of conversation. Yang sat alone at the island with her back to them, methodically working through a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Her golden dog ears were relaxed, angled slightly back, and her fluffy tail hung in a loose, content curve behind the stool.

Jaune leaned against the counter, drying a mug, and watched her for a second longer than necessary. A slow grin spread across his face.

"Hey," he said, loud enough for the room to hear, "you guys wanna see something cute?"

Every head on the couch turned. Weiss looked up from her tea. Nora paused mid-bite. Blake's ears twitched with interest. Ruby and Pyrrha both leaned forward.

Jaune's grin widened. He kept his eyes on Yang's back.

"I was thinking of going on a walk later."

Yang's left ear flicked once. Then both ears tilted, just a little, toward the sound of his voice. Her tail gave the tiniest, almost invisible twitch. She kept eating, determinedly casual.

Jaune's voice stayed light. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go take a walk soon."

The tip of Yang's tail began to sway. Slow at first, then a little faster. Weiss clapped a hand over her mouth so hard her eyes watered. Nora's face lit up like a festival.

"That's great!" Nora stage-whispered, stars in her eyes.

Blake smirked over the rim of her coffee. "And after that, Jaune?"

Ruby was already giggling into her pillow.

Jaune hummed like he was considering the day's schedule. "After that, maybe I'll play some basketball."

Yang's tail kicked into a steady, happy wag. The motion was so vigorous the stool creaked. Pyrrha covered her smile with one hand and whispered, almost reverently, "That's adorable."

Ruby, never one to miss an opportunity, added brightly, "Maybe we can all get some food after that?"

Yang's tail went into overdrive—full, sweeping wags that made the fluffy golden fur blur. She was still trying to eat. The fork in her hand had stopped moving.

Jaune opened his mouth for one more casual comment—

—and Yang's hand shot back, grabbed her own traitorous tail, and pinned it against the side of the stool. She twisted around on the seat, face scarlet, and fixed him with a glare that could have melted steel.

Jaune immediately put both hands up in surrender, laughing. "Sorry, sorry. I can't help it. It's really cute."

"Yeah, w-well," Yang muttered, ears flat with embarrassment, "I'm trying to eat here."

The couch dissolved into poorly hidden snickers and whispered commentary. Yang turned back around with as much dignity as a blushing dog Faunus could muster and finished her breakfast in pointed silence.

Later, when the others had drifted off and Jaune was alone at the sink washing the last of the plates, he felt a gentle tug at the edge of his shirt.

He turned.

Yang stood there, ears angled shyly downward, tail giving tiny, hopeful little swishes she clearly couldn't stop. She wasn't looking at him. Her face was still pink.

"…Still up for a walk outside?" she asked, voice quiet.

Jaune's brain short-circuited so hard he was pretty sure he saw actual cartoon hearts.

SO CUUUUUTE—

He managed to keep his voice only mostly strangled. "Y-Yeah, sure! Give me a second!"

Yang's ears perked. Her tail gave one big, unrestrained wag before she caught herself and forced it still. She still wouldn't meet his eyes, but the smallest smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

She suddenly held something out.

Jaune looked down.

A worn collar and leash.

He stared.

Yang's expression was carefully neutral, but the tip of her tail betrayed her. "…It's Zwei's."

Jaune's mouth opened. Closed. He knew exactly what she was doing—escalating the joke he'd started. He could have shut it down. Instead he tilted his head.

"Well… how will people know you've had all your shots? I mean, there might be a leash law."

Yang's ears flicked. For a second she looked like she might actually put the collar on just to win.

Then she snorted, tossed both leash and collar into the sink with a clatter, and pointed at them.

"For when you get back. Clean it. You're already doing the dishes."

"Isn't that a chore you mainly put on Ruby?"

"Yeah, but I feel bad."

Jaune gave her a teasing grin. "But not bad enough to not put it on me?"

Yang grinned right back, already heading for the door with her hands in her pockets. "Nope. Meet you outside!"

Jaune sighed theatrically at the sink. "Work, work, work…" Then he dried his hands and followed.

Outside, Yang was leaning against the wall of the dorm building, one boot hooked behind the other. When she saw him she pushed off and smiled.

"Yo. Where to?"

Jaune considered. "Well… I was thinking… the Initiation cliff?"

Yang's tail immediately started wagging harder. That was the furthest point from the school! That's so much walk time! Huzzah! "I can get behind that."

"You're going to be in front though," Jaune said, then immediately regretted the attempt at a joke. "You know, for a walk and… uh…"

He groaned at himself.

Yang narrowed her eyes, shifted her weight to one hip, and crossed her arms. "And…?"

"Annnd… h-hey! Let's just get going!" Jaune grabbed her hand and tugged her forward before he had to explain the extremely lame dog-walking joke. Yang rolled her eyes but let herself be pulled. Just this once.

They cut across the Beacon grounds, past the training fields and into the older ruins that ringed the cliffs. Ancient stone walls and half-collapsed towers rose around them, overgrown with moss and wildflowers. The air smelled of pine, pollen, and distant rain.

Jaune, ever the history nerd when he got going, gestured at the weathered stones. "This all used to be a Quitalan fortress city thousands of years ago. I think it was called Lumens. Oobleck was talking about it yesterday in class. Like, can you imagine having to fight the Grimm without Dust? Just shield, sword, javelin, Aura, and courage? And building all this without machines was amazing…"

He looked like a little kid again, eyes bright.

"And over there, that's some of those…" He does a double take when he notices his friend wasn't with him anymore. "Yang?"

Yang had gone quiet.

Jaune glanced over. "…What?"

Yang was sniffing the air, nose wrinkled. "…Someone shit here. Not too long ago. Like, not an animal, an actual person."

Jaune's face fell. "Way to ruin the moment."

"Sorry, huh? Something about Oobleck?"

He sighed, then laughed in spite of himself.

"What?" she said, blinking.

"I'm serious! I swear I was listening!" she added quickly, ears flicking upright in protest.

Jaune only grinned, slow and teasing. "Uh huh."

"I was!"

"Oh look," he said lightly, pointing past her shoulder, "is that a squirrel by that Doric column?"

Yang's ears perked hard on top of her head. She forced herself to keep her eyes on him anyway. "…N-Nuh uh."

"Two squirrels," Jaune continued, completely deadpan. "And they're talking shit about you."

"You can't talk to squirrels," Yang muttered, though her eyes had already narrowed with suspicion. "You wouldn't know that."

"They're always talking shit. They're squirrels. They're bastards—" He leaned in conspiratorially. "One has a tennis ball!"

Yang whipped around so fast her hair swung out behind her.

There were two squirrels. There was absolutely no tennis ball.

When she turned back, Jaune was already laughing so hard he had to brace a hand on his knee.

She punched his shoulder.

"OW!"

"You dick! I believed you!"

"Hey!" Jaune wheezed, still laughing. "I only lied about the tennis ball!"

"That was the part I cared about!"

He wiped at his eyes, trying (and failing) to sober up. "All right, all right… sorry…"

Yang huffed and crossed her arms, ears still angled back in residual embarrassment. "Hmph! How about I mock you? 'Look at me! I'm a human! I build civilization and contemplate my mortal existence and pay taxes!'"

"You do all that too," Jaune pointed out.

"Not taxes. Only bitches do that."

Jaune snickered. Then his eyes suddenly lit up. "Heh… oh hey! A butterfly!"

He took off after it down the path.

Yang threw her hands up. "Now who's playing fetch?!"

"I think it's a Ratzer's Ringlet!" Jaune called over his shoulder, already half-jogging. "They're super rare!"

Yang rolled her eyes and followed at a more leisurely pace, hands in her pockets. "Really? I thought it was a butterfly."

"It's a kind of butterfly!"

She let him go, content to trail behind and simply breathe. The air out here was better—cleaner, full of pine and sun-warmed stone and a hundred little scents she didn't have names for. Liking walks had nothing to do with being a dog Faunus, okay? It was just… a good way to clear her head. Experience new scents–SIGHTS! New sights! Yeah, that was it…

Jaune was still narrating ahead of her, voice bright with genuine enthusiasm. "They're super rare and they follow Remnant's magnetic field and they pollinate flowers and can dodge bats—"

A bird dove out of nowhere, snapped the butterfly cleanly out of the air, and flapped off without ceremony.

Jaune stopped dead. "…Dick."

Yang caught up and watched the bird disappear with a shrug. "I guess that bird is faster than a bat."

"Stupid bird…" Jaune grumbled.

"Ah well. Plenty of butterflies in the sky, as they say."

"Yeah, I know… and I guess I'm just being… immature. It was really cool—" His voice suddenly jumped as he rushed forward. "OH LOOK!"

Yang's ears and head snapped up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash. She spun around, ready for another squirrel, another tennis ball, another lie, dashing after him—

—and then the trees fell away.

They stepped out onto the open cliffs.

The valley stretched out beneath them in a wide, green sweep. White-capped mountains framed the far edges. Vale itself gleamed in the afternoon sun, a scatter of white and glass under a sky so blue it almost hurt to look at.

Yang's voice came out quieter than she meant. "…Nice."

"Yeah…" Jaune said beside her. Both of them silently sat down next to each other.

A beat passed.

"I can't imagine a better sight…" he added softly.

Yang glanced over—and realized he wasn't looking at the valley at all. He was looking at her.

She did a double take, then broke into helpless giggles, one hand coming up to cover her mouth.

"C-Could you… be any more corny…?"

Jaune didn't answer with words.

He simply held up the crumpled little bag of candy corn he had apparently been carrying this entire time.

Yang took one look at it and completely lost it—snorting, wheezing, nearly doubling over as the laugh punched out of her.

"Oh my… oh my gods… where… how long have you been holding on to that?"

"Don't ask. I tried carrying a corn cob in a plastic bag but… that didn't uh… work out." He shrugged and tossed the bag of candy corn over his shoulder. "Ah well. Got the bit done. Mission accomplished."

Yang's head snapped around so fast her ears bounced. She watched the bag arc through the air and land in the grass.

"A-Anyways, yeah. Corn on a cob, in a plastic bag, got me really weird looks and would've been awkward carrying everywhere and—… Yang?"

Jaune does another double take when he notices she was gone… again.

A second later, she crawled back beside him, holding out the bag of candy corn to him.

"Here ya go! You dropped this."

Jaune stared at the bag. "…Well… it's really no good. And it's candy corn, so nobody is going to want to eat it."

He tossed it again.

Yang's eyes tracked it the entire way. She was already moving before it hit the ground.

"Anyways, yeah. I'm still kind of bummed about that butterfly. It was a really rare one, and–…"

He stares at her, at her bright eyes and wagging tail… and the bag of candy corn in her hands. He takes it from her, and while looking her in the eyes, he throws it behind himself… again.

Yang tries not to watch it fly through the air, but Jaune could see the way her gaze would break, just a bit. "…You're not gonna go after it?"

"S-Shut up."

Jaune waits. Yang waits. She stares into his eyes, trying to fight the urge to go fetch get the bag. But eventually…

"…I'mgonnagogetit…"

Jaune smirks. "Sorry, wha? I didn't catch that–"

"I'MGONNAGOGETIT!"

He watches her go, a helpless smile tugging at his mouth. "Heh… so cute…"

"I HATE YOU BY THE WAY!" Yang yelled over her shoulder as she snatched the bag up for the second time.

"And so immature," Jaune murmured fondly, shaking his head. "She hasn't changed…"

"YOU SUCK!"

While she was busy he spotted a particularly straight, sturdy stick half-buried in the leaves. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It really did look like a sword.

Yang stomped back, grumbling, candy corn bag clutched in one hand. She plopped down beside him without meeting his eyes and thrust the bag out.

"Here… your stupid candy corn…"

Then she noticed the stick.

"…Cool stick. Looks like a sword."

Jaune smiled down at it. "It is really cool… No, no. It's silly. I'm eighteen. I shouldn't get excited over a stick."

Yang looked at him like he had grown a second head. "You kidding? It's a stick that looks like a sword. That's awesome!"

The sincerity in her voice made him soften. "Well… it is pretty awesome." He glanced at her. "I'm glad you're smiling again, Yang. You were a little down for a while…"

Yang's ears drooped. She curled in on herself a little. "It's… it's silly. Actually silly this time, unlike that stick."

"Well… I can listen."

She mumbled something toward the ground.

"What?"

"…I had a dream," she admitted, voice small, "where I was a cat Faunus."

Jaune snorted. "What?!"

"I know, right?! Why would I dream something so stupid?! Dogs are way better than cats!" She stiffened, ears flicking upright in panic. "BUT I'M NOT A DOG! I just… think they're cooler!"

"They're way cooler," Jaune agreed easily.

He reached out and scratched gently behind one of her ears.

Yang's whole posture changed. "Right?!" She sat up proudly for half a second before the words started tumbling out again. "But then I went out for a run and the universe decided it'd be funny to make it rain only during my run because the second I got back it stopped raining, then the mailman decided to be a little shit—did you know Beacon has a mailman? That's crazy, do you realize how big this place is?—then this other dog Faunus from Shade tried to get on my treadmill when I wanted to finish my workout even thought everyone knows that one is mine and we both got kicked out and—"

She stopped mid-rant the moment his fingers found the perfect spot. Her eyes fluttered shut.

"Ooooh, yeahhh… that's the spot…"

Jaune chuckled. "So cute…"

Yang only hummed and tilted her head to give him better access.

"I brought jerky," he said after a while. "You want some? Tangy's trying to push this new product with her PMC, but it's beef."

"Yyyyyyessss…." Yang's voice was pure bliss. One of her folded legs twitched and thumped once against the ground before she could stop it.

Jaune opened the package and handed her a strip. She took it, gave it a long sniff while he kept scratching, then frowned.

"There's more than just beef in here, is there?"

"Maybe lamb?"

"Ah! That would explain that other smell!" She took a bite, chewed once, and immediately spat it out. "PTUH! EW! This tastes nothing like what you just said! How do I smell beef and lamb but taste dish detergent and earwax?!"

Jaune sighed. "Well, this sucks. Tangy's going to murder this guy for shitty jerky."

Yang paused. "…Oh wait. I forgot. I hate jerky."

"She still might kill him."

A beat of silence.

"…You stopped scratching."

Jaune smiled, soft and fond, and got back to it. "Work, work, work…"

Yang's eyes closed again, a small, content smile on her face. Then they snapped open. She smells something. Her ears perked straight up.

"Hey Jaune, look!"

A butterfly—one of the same rare-looking ones from earlier—drifted down on the breeze and landed delicately on the tip of her nose.

Yang went cross-eyed trying to look at it. She stayed perfectly still, tail sweeping slowly back and forth through the grass. After a moment she closed her eyes and beamed, the expression bright and unguarded.

"Hmm… butterfly…"

Jaune made a quiet, strangled sound in the back of his throat.

SO CUTE—

He kept scratching behind her ear while the butterfly rested on her nose and Yang's tail wagged in lazy, happy arcs.

She was really glad he had made that joke earlier.

 

[dogbertcarroll]

Puppy Dog Silver Eyes

"Ruby you need to stop," Yang said hiding the trace of jealousy she was feeling.

"Yes, it is completely unfair," Blake agreed with a glare, not hiding a thing.

"What is?" Ruby asked confused.

"Using puppy dog eyes on Jaune," Yang said firmly. "He has seven sisters and somehow is still completely vulnerable to them. It's unfair to him."

"And racist!" Blake added, as the group ignore her, not wanting to hear whatever crazy theory she came up with this time.

"I'm also worried he doesn't actually have a limit to what he will do under their effects," Pyrrha said, having called them all together to stage an intervention and cursing herself for never having developed the ability.

"If you want to be treated as an adult you can't use wide eyed looks to manipulate men," Weiss said firmly.

"What if it's an emergency?!" Ruby demanded.

"If it's an actual emergency sure," Yang said, "but if it isn't I'll... mess with the sights on Crescent Rose."

"You monster!" she clutched her baby to her chest, her voice filled with horror.

The fall of...

The city was in flames, explosions were going on all around them as the civilians panicked. Low on aura and ammo both, team RWBY paused to catch their breath as a locker slammed into the ground near them and a near concussed Jaune stumbled out.

Seeing the calamity surrounding them and recalling what Pyrrah has said, Ruby having no options and rapidly developing PTSD grabbed Jaune and stared up at him wide eyed. "Fix please!"

"How? What?" he asked confused.

Ruby waved a hand at the chaos surrounding them. "Fix please!" Her eyes glowed with silver light.

Jaune's posture stiffened as the silver light mixed with his aura and he straightened up, his eyes regaining their focus.

Half an hour later

The entire city was deathly silent, everyone staring around them in shock, bits of grimm dissolving as white fang members had been inserted into them... rectally, causing a mass exodus of both grimm and terrorists.

Jaune looked completely warn out as he leaned against a wall, Pyrrah laying with her head in his lap, unconscious.

Ruby turned to look at Yang cautiously while clutching her scythe. Yang nodded once and Ruby relaxed.

"I still say it's racist," Blake muttered under her breath.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Glinda looked at Ozpin. "The power of the silver eyes?"

"Maybe?" he shrugged in complete confusion. "I'm going to go drink until I reincarnate far from here."

 

[AJ_Talon]

Something I threw together this morning in a bit of mad inspiration. It's very rough but I hope you like the idea. I'm just using some of my world building for once:

---

Beacon Academy – Vehicle Range, Outer Training

The Unicorns stood in a neat row of six, bipedal silhouettes against the late-afternoon light. Each was a lean, reverse-jointed machine of layered composite and Dust-infused panels, sensor mast rising like a single proud horn. The 30 mm chin turret camera tracked the approaching students with idle curiosity. Fold-down troop benches hung folded against the flanks like folded wings.

Professor Goodwitch stood in front of them with her riding crop, expression already exhausted.

"These are Egil Motor Company FMP-ATST Mark II 'Unicorn' light scout walkers. Two crew: pilot and sensor/gunner. Mechashift legs, thirty-millimeter chain gun, hardpoints for whatever Ordinance decides to hang on them today. You will learn the basics of walking, turning, and not falling over. That is the entire lesson."

Ruby's eyes were sparkling hard enough to power a small city.

"They look like the cutest little death giraffes—"

"Rose."

"—with guns."

Goodwitch pinched the bridge of her nose. But, needs must.

"Teams RWBY and JNPR will pair off. Pilot in the left seat, gunner in the right. You will remain inside the designated training lanes. You will not attempt mechashift sprint mode. You will not fire the primary weapon without express permission. You will not—"

Nora was already halfway up the boarding ladder of the nearest Unicorn.

"—climb the machines before I finish speaking."

"WOO! I shall be the Unicorn queen!"

This was going to be a long day.

---

Unicorn One

Ruby's hands flew across the controls the moment the hatch sealed. The cockpit smelled of warm metal, hydraulic fluid, and new paint. The mechashift indicators glowed soft cyan.

Weiss sat stiffly in the gunner's seat, headset already on, fingers hovering over the targeting suite like it might bite.

"Ruby, the manual clearly states we begin in crouch mode and walk forward at no more than—"

The Unicorn unfolded to full height with a hydraulic whuff. The sensor mast rose. Ruby's delighted squeak came through the intercom.

"Look how tall we are! Weiss, we're nine meters!"

"I am aware of the height. Please return us to a sensible posture."

Ruby's foot twitched on the throttle. The left leg took an experimental step. Then another. The gait was surprisingly smooth—mechashift joints compensating for her uneven pressure.

"See? Easy! It's just like riding a really tall, angry bicycle that can shoot Grimm!"

Weiss's targeting reticle drifted across a training dummy three hundred meters away. "The chain gun is currently safed. Do not—"

Ruby leaned the walker into a gentle turn. The reverse-jointed legs pivoted with a springy grace the manuals had promised but no one had believed. The Unicorn danced a little circle in place.

"Hm... My dad made me do ballet for a month! I wonder if I can do a move from that!"

Weiss's voice climbed an octave. "Ruby Rose, if you make this machine pirouette I will personally—"

The Unicorn pirouetted. Almost.

"RUBY!"

---

Unicorn Two

Yang cracked her knuckles inside the pilot gauntlets.

"Alright, Blakey. Let's see what this big tin chicken can do."

Blake's ears flattened under her headset. "Yang. The instructor said walk. Simply walk."

"I'm gonna walk! I'm gonna walk hard!"

The Unicorn's legs hammered the packed earth in a heavy, aggressive gait that made the entire frame shudder. Mechashift actuators whined as they tried to keep the center of gravity from pitching forward. The chin turret jerked with every impact.

Blake's sensor display flashed proximity warnings. "You are exceeding recommended stride length by forty percent, Yang!"

"She's got claws, Blake. Look at those claws. I wanna stomp something."

"We are not stomping the training dummies."

Yang's grin was audible. "We're stomping them!"

A training pillar thirty meters ahead suddenly looked very stompable. As did the trees.

Blake reached over and physically slapped Yang's throttle hand. "No."

"Yes!"

"No-!"

Yes!"

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

---

Unicorn Three

Nora's laughter filled the cockpit the instant the systems came online.

"REN. REN LOOK AT THE LEGS. THEY BEND THE WRONG WAY AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL."

Ren, already resigned, calmly brought the sensor suite online and began mapping the training range. "Nora. Soft inputs. Think of it as a very large, very expensive—"

Nora punched the mechashift sprint toggle.

The Unicorn launched.

Hydraulic legs compressed and released like coiled springs. The machine bounded forward in a series of explosive leaps that the designers had intended for short obstacle hops and emergency acceleration. Nora treated them like a personal trampoline.

Ren's calm voice never changed pitch. "We have left the designated lane. We are currently airborne. We are still airborne. Nora, the ground is approaching."

The Unicorn landed in a crouch that dug both clawed footpads a full meter into the dirt, then immediately sprang again.

"I AM THE UNICORN QUEEN!"

SMASH!

"... THE UNICORN QUEEN IS UPSIDE DOWN!"

Ren sighed.

---

Unicorn Four

"Okay. Okay. Left foot, right foot, left foot—why is it leaning? Pyrrha why is it leaning?! It shouldn't be leaning!"

Pyrrha's voice was pure professional warmth. "You're applying uneven pressure on the right actuator, Jaune. Ease off the right pedal just a little… there. Better. Now try a gentle turn."

The Unicorn took three careful steps, then listed hard to port. Jaune overcorrected. The machine performed a slow, dignified pirouette that ended with both legs crossed at the ankles.

They stood there, locked in a mechanical knot, sensor mast tilted at a sad angle.

Pyrrha cleared her throat. "That… was very close to a successful turn."

Jaune groaned.

"Well... Uh... Hang on... Let's look at the manual..."

They poured through it.

"Um... Let's see... Oh! This could work!" Jaune tried to reverse the actuators. "There we go-!"

The walker spun around violently, staggering like a drunken giraffe.

"NO NO NO-!"

"Calm down Jaune-!"

They ended up with crossed legs again... Just in the opposite direction and the loud sound of screeching metal.

The entire cockpit filled up with alarms, then the power systems went offline, leaving them in pitch blackness and silence.

Pyrrha licked her lips.

"... It could be worse?" Pyrrha offered.

From the gunner's station she calmly began cycling through recovery procedures while Jaune buried his face in his hands.

---

Twenty minutes later the training range looked like a war zone visited by a particularly chaotic god.

Ruby and Weiss's Unicorn was stuck halfway up a gentle slope, legs locked in a triumphant but nonfunctional "hero pose" because Ruby had tried to recreate the exact stance from an old Atlas recruitment poster.

Yang and Blake's machine stood in the middle of the training field, the only one that had made it. The training pillars were all destroyed, along with several trees. One foot was stuck in a tree. Yang was still arguing that it had "looked at her funny." Blake had disabled the throttle and was refusing to re-enable it.

Nora and Ren's Unicorn was currently upside-down in a drainage ditch, legs kicking weakly at the sky like an overturned beetle.

Jaune and Pyrrha's walker had somehow managed to walk itself into a perfect 360-degree spin and then freeze with both feet together, looking for all the world like a nine-meter-tall ballerina mid-plié. Pyrrha was gently coaching Jaune through the uncrossing sequence while the chin turret drooped in apparent secondhand embarrassment.

Glynda Goodwitch stood at the edge of the range, riding crop tucked under one arm, watching the chaos with a thousand-yard stare.

Behind her, two instructor Unicorns powered up, ready to begin the long afternoon of recovery operations.

Ruby's voice crackled over the open channel, bright and unrepentant:

"Professor! Can we go again once we get unstuck? I think I almost had the pirouette!"

Weiss's answering scream of pure despair was the last thing the range speakers broadcast before someone mercifully cut the channel.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Jaune and Ruby were sprawled on the common room couch, a laptop balanced between them, when Penny walked in with her usual cheerful stride.

"Hey, Penny," Jaune said, glancing up with a smile.

Penny beamed. "Hello, Friend Jaune! Friend Ruby! What are you watching?"

Ruby grinned, eyes sparkling. "Transformers!"

Jaune nodded. "It's, ya know… old-fashioned, but still awesome."

Penny tilted her head, curiosity clear in her green eyes. "Query: What is Transformers?"

There was a beat of silence.

Then Jaune and Ruby both gasped in perfect unison, looking at her like she had just admitted she had never heard of cookies.

"You don't know Transformers?!" Ruby cried, already scrambling for the remote.

Jaune sat up straight, looking personally offended on behalf of robots everywhere. "Penny… we need to show you. Right now."

Penny blinked, still smiling. "Is it educational?"

Ruby grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down onto the couch between them. "It's life-changing."

Jaune queued up the first episode of the classic series, practically vibrating with excitement. "Okay, so there are these giant robots from another planet called Cybertron. They're divided into two factions: the Autobots, who are the good guys, and the Decepticons, who are the bad guys. And the coolest part? They can transform into vehicles and other things!"

Penny's eyes widened slightly. "They change their physical forms? That sounds… efficient."

Ruby bounced in place. "Right?! And the leader of the Autobots is Optimus Prime! He's the best! He's strong, and kind, and he always does the right thing even when it's hard!"

Jaune nodded vigorously. "He's basically the perfect hero. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings!"

Penny considered this carefully. "I believe I will enjoy this."

As the familiar theme song began to play, Jaune and Ruby both leaned forward like kids on Christmas morning, while Penny watched with rapt attention.

Halfway through the first episode, Penny turned to them, still smiling.

"Friend Jaune, Friend Ruby… these Autobots remind me a little of Hunters. Protecting others, even at great personal cost."

Jaune grinned. "Exactly! That's why it's so cool."

Ruby leaned against Penny's shoulder. "Just wait until you meet Bumblebee. You're gonna love him."

Penny's eyes never left the screen. "I already do."

 

[AJ_Talon]

The hotel room was quiet except for the soft hum of Fafnir's cybernetic systems. The grim cyborg enforcer stood near the window with his arms crossed, silent and intense as always, watching his young charge with glowing red eyes.

Whitley Schnee, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth across the expensive carpet in front of his desk, looking thoroughly miserable.

Fafnir's deep, gravelly voice finally cut through the silence.

"Lord Whitley. You were supposed to finish that report an hour ago."

Whitley spun around, cheeks already pink. "I! Can't! Help it!"

Fafnir tilted his head slightly, his wings shifting a bit around him like a living cloak. "Why?"

"She won't leave my head!" Whitley snapped, running a hand through his white hair in frustration.

"Who?"

Whitley hesitated, then muttered, "…Ruby Rose."

Fafnir was silent for a moment. Then, in that same flat, mechanical tone:

"Shall I kill her?"

Whitley's eyes went wide. "No!"

Fafnir's eyes narrowed. "Why does she vex you so?"

Whitley threw his hands up. "I… I don't know."

Without another word, Fafnir accessed the hotel's security network. A holographic projection of Ruby Rose appeared in the middle of the room — smiling, silver eyes bright, Crescent Rose resting on her shoulder.

"This her?" Fafnir asked.

Whitley's face softened and pinkened for half a second before he caught himself. "…Yes."

Fafnir examined the image clinically. "She's a Huntress. Your age. Physically fit. Capable with her weapon." He paused. "You don't want me to kill her?"

"OF COURSE NOT!"

Fafnir made a small, knowing sound. "…Ah."

Whitley's head snapped up. "Ah? Wha-What is that?! What's 'ah'?!"

"Ah."

"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! THAT'S A LOADED 'Ah'!"

Fafnir's expression didn't change, but there was the faintest hint of amusement in his tone. "You like her."

Whitley's face went nuclear red. "NO NO NO NO! I-I didn't—HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY COME TO THAT CONCLUSION?!" He pointed an accusing finger. "I don't like her! She's… common! Beneath my station!"

Fafnir remained unimpressed. "And yet you care enough to object to the simplest solution."

Whitley was practically vibrating with embarrassment. "Listen here! You're just—just my father's attack dog! You have no idea what I'm feeling or who for!"

"Uh huh."

"DON'T YOU UH HUH ME!" Whitley continued pacing, voice rising. "Listen here! I was not thinking about—about her beyond how infuriating she is!"

Fafnir's eyes glowed lightly. "What color are her eyes?"

Whitley's expression went soft and distant for a moment. "…Silver. Like the moonlight…"

Fafnir smirked with his eyes.

Whitley froze. "Wait a minute-Th-THAT MEANS NOTHING!"

"I see," Fafnir said. "You want her for your mate. Good choice. She's young, but she will grow into a mighty warrior. Give you formidable children." He paused thoughtfully, studying the holographic image more closely. ".50 BMG is a very effective caliber, and her ability to utilize the recoil to her advantage speaks well of her… physicality."

Whitley's face was now roughly the color of a tomato. "SILENCE! I—I have no interest!"

Fafnir stared, stoic and silent.

Whitley coughed.

"But… if I did… hypothetically… Like her..."

Fafnir stared. Whitley coughed again.

"How would I… ahem… court her?"

Fafnir straightened. "In the Dragon Tribe…" He suddenly threw his head back and let out a terrifying, mechanical roar that rattled the windows. "RAWWWWRRRRRR!"

Whitley stared. "…I yell at her?"

"That is not a yell! That is a roar!"

"So… I roar at her?"

Fafnir looked almost offended. "You do not roar! WOMEN roar!" His eyes went far away. "And they claw at you… and hurl heavy objects…"

Whitley blinked. "…What does the man do?"

"He reads love poetry to her," Fafnir said simply. He thought for a moment and added: "He ducks a lot."

Whitley rubbed his temples. "Um… I don't think I want to court her like that…"

Fafnir snorted. "Then go to her door on your knees. Beg like a human!"

Whitley stared at him, completely deadpan. "I am a human."

Fafnir was unfazed. "But if you courted her like a Dragon Tribe, she would never seek to divorce you! She would respect your strength and poetic aptitude!"

Whitley hesitated. "…What if she hits me with an object?"

Fafnir's eyes glowed with absolute certainty.

"That is why you duck."

Somewhere across Vale, Ruby Rose sneezed and had no idea why.

@CountvonBarnOwl

 

[AJ_Talon]

Jaune and Ruby were sprawled on the common room couch, a laptop balanced between them, when Penny walked in with her usual cheerful stride.

"Hey, Penny," Jaune said, glancing up with a smile.

Penny beamed. "Hello, Friend Jaune! Friend Ruby! What are you watching?"

Ruby grinned, eyes sparkling. "Transformers!"

Jaune nodded. "It's, ya know… old-fashioned, but still awesome."

Penny tilted her head, curiosity clear in her green eyes. "Query: What is Transformers?"

There was a beat of silence.

Then Jaune and Ruby both gasped in perfect unison, looking at her like she had just admitted she had never heard of cookies.

"You don't know Transformers?!" Ruby cried, already scrambling for the remote.

Jaune sat up straight, looking personally offended on behalf of robots everywhere. "Penny… we need to show you. Right now."

Penny blinked, still smiling. "Is it educational?"

Ruby grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down onto the couch between them. "It's life-changing."

Jaune queued up the first episode of the classic series, practically vibrating with excitement. "Okay, so there are these giant robots from another planet called Cybertron. They're divided into two factions: the Autobots, who are the good guys, and the Decepticons, who are the bad guys. And the coolest part? They can transform into vehicles and other things!"

Penny's eyes widened slightly. "They change their physical forms? That sounds… efficient."

Ruby bounced in place. "Right?! And the leader of the Autobots is Optimus Prime! He's the best! He's strong, and kind, and he always does the right thing even when it's hard!"

Jaune nodded vigorously. "He's basically the perfect hero. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings!"

Penny considered this carefully. "I believe I will enjoy this."

As the familiar theme song began to play, Jaune and Ruby both leaned forward like kids on Christmas morning, while Penny watched with rapt attention.

Halfway through the first episode, Penny turned to them, still smiling.

"Friend Jaune, Friend Ruby… these Autobots remind me a little of Hunters. Protecting others, even at great personal cost."

Jaune grinned. "Exactly! That's why it's so cool."

Ruby leaned against Penny's shoulder. "Just wait until you meet Bumblebee. You're gonna love him."

Penny's eyes never left the screen. "I already do."

Click to shrink...

Penny: "Hmmm... This episode where a human romances Powerglide is intriguing!"

Jaune: "Oh, that one..."

Ruby: "That one was super weird! They keep hinting at human/Transformer romance a few times in almost all the shows, except for the Beast Era cause, ya know, humans weren't evolved in that show."

Jaune: "Yeah..."

Penny: "Do you not like the idea of robots and humans having a romantic relationship, Friends?"

Jaune: "Er... I mean, it's a matter of scale, Penny! Most Transformers would, ya know... Crush humans since they're so much bigger."

Ruby: "Unless they use Pretender shells!"

Jaune: "Yeah but that was a gimmicky toy tie in and never worked right... If they were the same scale it would work better."

Ruby: blush "Though... Ya know... I kind of like Bumblebee... Cause he's so bright and cheerful! I really like him in Prime and that universe cause he grows up into a leader and... Stuff..."

Penny: "Do you like any female Transformers, Friend Jaune?"

Jaune: "Oh... Uh... I think Blackarachnia in Beast Wars and Arcee in Gen 1 and Prime are pretty awesome."

Penny: "You like the heroic girl and the bad girl?"

Jaune: "Why are you interested, Penny?"

Penny: flush "Simply curious!"

Ruby: *flush* "Oh hey! This episode has Hoist going to Ivywood to become a movie star! Let's watch this one!"

Penny: "The quality of these episodes changed markedly as things went on."

Jaune: "They get even weirder before the movie."

Penny: "What happens in the movie?"

Later...

Penny: sobbing "OPTIMUSSSS!"

Jaune: "Yeah... It was pretty shocking to me when I was a kid and I saw it-RUBY WHY ARE YOU CRYING?!"

Ruby: sob "OPTIMUSSSSSSS!"

 

[AJ_Talon]

Scientific Method

The underground laboratory at Evernight Castle was a mess of glowing green tanks, half-dissected Grimm, human and Faunus corpses, and ancient relics that refused to make any sense.

Doctor Arthur Watts slammed a thick, glowing tome onto the workbench and glared at his colleague.

"Our mistress ordered us to figure out how to unlock these ancient magical relics, Merlot! We can't show up empty-handed!"

Doctor Merlot didn't even look up from the microscope. "Speak for yourself! You haven't lifted a finger to help me analyze these devices!"

Watts scoffed. "I have! They remain unforthcoming!" He grabbed one of the smaller relics — a sealed metal cylinder covered in faded Ozymandian runes — and tried twisting the top. When that failed, he slammed it against the lab bench several times.

Merlot finally glanced over, deadpan. "Oh gee. Why didn't I think of that."

Watts threw his hands up. "Oh, why do I bother with this magical mumbo jumbo?!" He flipped open one of the ancient tomes and began scanning the pages with pure disdain.

Merlot adjusted his goggles. "Because it's real and actually works?"

"Ugh… That's the most irritating part!" Watts snapped. He jabbed a finger at a page of faded script. "Honestly, are you saying if I read from this spellbook—" He rattled off a string of Ozymandian "—something will happen?! Magic is a force only our mistress commands! She should be handling this research!"

Merlot smirked. "Well, why don't you tell her that, hm?"

Watts scowled. "I'm just saying, a witch doctor like you is better suited to dealing with this nonsense and… what's wrong with you?"

Merlot was staring past him, mouth slightly open, one finger pointing.

Watts slowly turned around.

The corpses on the tables were sitting up.

Then they swung their legs over the side and began staggering toward the two scientists with blank, hungry expressions.

Watts' eye twitched. "…It worked?!"

Merlot leaned forward with pure scientific interest. "It… certainly seems that way… Fascinating…"

The reanimated corpses lurched toward the nearest cages, seized the lab rats, and began eating them with wet, disturbing noises. Once finished, they slowly turned their empty eyes toward Merlot and Watts.

Watts took a careful step back. "…Do you think they're going to eat us?"

Merlot adjusted his goggles again. "Most likely."

Watts didn't need to hear anything else. He spun on his heel and sprinted for the exit.

"In that case—!"

Merlot's eyes went wide. "WAIT FOR ME YOU COWARD!"

The two of them bolted down the hallway as the newly risen undead began shuffling after them, still chewing on the remains of the lab rats.

Somewhere deep in the facility, an alarm began to blare.

Merlot, still running, managed to shout between gasps, "Still! You must admit! This is the most productive research session we've had all week!"

Watts didn't even look back. "I HATE THIS JOB!"

- - -

Why yes I was a fan of Knockout and Starscream's interactions in Transformers Prime. And having Merlot and Watts being a similarly chaotic, snarky duo was a fun idea. I hope you enjoy.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Lie With your Soul In the Grave

---

The vault chamber was quiet except for the soft, rhythmic hum of machinery and the faint, labored beeping of monitors. A sharp contrast from the insanity outside. An insanity they were hoping to stop.

Amber lay inside a coffin-like life support unit, barely alive. Tubes and wires kept her breathing, her Aura flickering weakly behind the reinforced glass as Ozpin worked to transfer the remaining Maiden power into Pyrrha. Jaune stood guard near the entrance, Crocea Mors drawn, eyes scanning the shadows.

Pyrrha stood in the power transfer unit next to Amber's chamber, hands clasped tightly, trying to stay calm.

Then an arrow whistled through the air.

It struck the glass of the life support unit and buried itself in Amber's chest.

Her body jerked once. The monitors flatlined. The light in her eyes faded.

Ozpin, Pyrrha, and Jaune spun around.

Cinder Fall stood in the doorway, bow still raised, a calm smile on her face.

Ozpin's cane lowered an inch. "Cinder…? What have you done?!"

Cinder's smile widened just slightly. "Father… Mother sends her regards."

Ozpin's face went pale. "…No…"

"You took me in," Cinder continued, stepping slowly into the chamber. "Made me your protege... But all the time, Mother was guiding me. Making sure I didn't get in too deep… And now? She has returned… and I am her instrument."

Pyrrha's voice cracked. "C-Cinder…? I don't understand—!"

Cinder's golden eyes flicked to her, her smile mocking. "Of course you don't. Neither of you do. I had to fight my way to the top. Claw my way to survive—"

Ozpin's voice was quiet, but the disappointment in it was cutting.

"I took you in… You were incredible. You surpassed all my expectations…"

Cinder's expression didn't change. "…She took me in first."

Ozpin's hands tightened on his cane. "…I loved you. Like a daughter."

Cinder's smile turned almost gentle.

"That made it easy."

She looked at him one last time — the man who had given her a home, a purpose, a place to belong — and something in her eyes softened for the briefest moment.

Then her Aura erupted into roaring flames.

Fire spiraled around her body as the full power of the Fall Maiden awakened, black and orange light casting long shadows across the vault. Heat filled the chamber in an instant.

Cinder's voice was calm, almost sad.

"It was never my choice… None of us have one. We must in the end… obey our natures."

She raised her hands and unleashed a barrage of fireballs.

Pyrrha and Jaune threw themselves aside as the blasts tore through the chamber, scorching the walls and floor. Ozpin stepped forward without hesitation, cane raised, meeting Cinder's flames head-on as the vault filled with fire and the sound of battle.

---

This would be complicated to set up... But Cinder being a long term mole who gained Ozpin's absolute trust and then betrayed him, with a lot of scenes of her interacting with the main characters and showing what she can do, gaining their trust and admiration... And then this knife in the back? It could have explained everything Cinder accomplished and make Ozpin look like, not an idiot, but rather someone blinded by a person who had become like a daughter to him.
This also makes Salem far more insidious and presents a contrast with the White Fang and Grimm attacks-Rather than using brute force to destroy Beacon, she uses her knowledge of Ozpin's psychology to make CInder into the perfect Trojan Horse.

 

[AJ_Talon]

Penny's steps were slower than usual as she returned to her dorm. A small social misstep earlier in the day had left her feeling discouraged — something that, for a girl still learning how to be human, hit harder than she liked to admit.

She opened the door… and froze.

Standing in the middle of the room was a towering figure of red and blue metal, glowing optics fixed on her with quiet dignity.

"Hello, Penny."

Penny's entire body locked up.

"GASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSPPPPPPPPP!!!"

She pointed with both hands, eyes sparkling with pure starstruck joy.

"H-HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME, OPTIMUS PRIME?!"

The figure's voice was deep, noble, and somehow perfect.

"I am Optimus Prime. And I have come across the multiverse to encourage you."

(Behind the helmet, Jaune Arc was sweating bullets while Verdy, Coral, and Ruby frantically worked the exo-suit's remote systems from the next room.)

Penny's hands flew to her cheeks. "S-SENSATIONAL! H-HOW? WHY?"

"Because you need encouragement," Optimus replied solemnly. "One hero to another."

Penny let out a high-pitched squeal of pure delight. "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

She launched herself forward and hugged the towering robot with all her strength.

"URK—!" Jaune's voice cracked inside the suit as the metal plating groaned under the force of Penny's affection.

Penny didn't notice. She squeezed tighter. "I appreciate it so much, Friend Optimus Prime!"

Optimus carefully patted her back with one massive hand. "Well… I am glad. We all get tired and discouraged sometimes. You have friends to help you through it though." His voice softened. "Never forget that."

Penny sniffled happily. "I am thankful for your words of wisdom, Friend Optimus Prime!"

"You're most welcome, Penny."

He turned slightly, still trying to maintain the noble posture.

"I'm going to turn into a truck now."

That was the exact moment a Dust grenade flew through the open window.

BOOM.

Optimus was blasted sideways with a realistic metallic CLANG, landing hard on his side.

"ARGH—!"

Penny's scream could have shattered glass. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Cardin Winchester skidded into the doorway, eyes wide. "HEY! GUYS! Are you okay? A Dust grenade went wide—"

He froze at the sight of the fallen Autobot leader.

"…NOOOOOO!" Cardin dropped to his knees in pure horror. "NOT AGAIN!"

Penny pointed accusingly, tears already forming. "YOU KILLED HIM!"

Yang, who had been watching from the hallway with a bag of popcorn, shrugged. "To be fair, he'll come back."

Inside the suit, Jaune was trying very hard not to say "ow" out loud.

"Urk… It's okay… It's minor…" Optimus managed.

Cardin was nearly in tears. "I-I'M SO SORRY!"

Penny clung to the fallen robot. "I'M SUPER SORRY!"

Optimus raised one hand weakly. "Now now… accidents do happen… But I should go and get Ratchet to fix me up."

Penny nodded frantically. "YES OPTIMUS PRIME!"

A sudden flash of bright Dust emitters filled the room, blinding everyone for a few critical seconds.

When the light faded, Optimus Prime was gone — only an open window and a faint trail of sparks remaining.

Penny stood in the middle of the room, still sniffling, waving at the empty air.

"Goodbye, Prime…"

Cardin slowly got to his feet, looking completely lost.

"…Why was he visiting you?"

Penny wiped her eyes, then suddenly looked indignant.

"…I'm not a robot!" Hiccup.

Cardin blinked. "What?"

Penny blinked back. "What?"

Outside the window, Jaune was already sprinting across the rooftops in the half-destroyed exo-suit while Ruby, Coral, and Verdy cackled over the radio.

---

You know who to blame for this. But I thought it would be fun and I hope you enjoyed.