Alba Longa (Rewritten)
Alba Longa
In Mistral, they had a saying: the city teaches the man.
It was a saying that was somewhat on Pyrrha’s mind as she and Jaune rode the antiquated train down the tracks to Jaune’s hometown.
Judging by the failure to invest in the railway line, and by the fact that there were less than a half-dozen people in the carriage besides themselves, Pyrrha thought it was fair to say that this area wasn’t hugely popular with visitors.
Jaune glanced past her out the window. Perhaps he was looking for signs of the countryside that he recognised, signs that they were drawing near to their destination. His eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, found her face for a moment, but then looked away.
And then he turned his entire head away, depriving Pyrrha of the sight of his eyes, and leaned forward to rest his forehead upon the back of the seat in front of them.
Pyrrha reached out, and the golden bracelet on her wrist glimmered in the light coming through the somewhat grubby window.
“Jaune,” she murmured.
“I’m fine,” Jaune said softly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, I just…” Jaune trailed off. “Okay, maybe I’m not fine, but … it’s not something that you can help with, more than you already have. More than you already are, just by being here.”
Pyrrha left her hand in place upon his shoulder, but nodded and whispered, “Alright.” She let him be other than the lingering presence of her hand.
He was right, after all; there wasn’t anything more that she could do for him right now. He had confessed to her at least some of what was bothering him, and if and when the time came to confront those things, then she would support him with everything she had, but until that happened … she did not have Sunset’s semblance, to fight Jaune’s inner battle for him.
She wasn’t certain that Jaune would wish her to do so.
Her mind went back to that saying: the city teaches the man. Or the town or village, as the case may be. Jaune hadn’t even given her so much in the way of details to work out exactly how large the place he hailed from was. But it had made him, just as Mistral had made her, and that made Pyrrha curious.
What sort of place had produced Jaune Arc, the boy who was so tormented by insecurity but who had also not hesitated to hurl himself on Cinder to try and protect her? The boy who would have been one of the great warriors in the world if only he could have fought with the strength of his heart, but who unfortunately was condemned to try and fight with his somewhat less overwhelming skill at arms? The man who had arrived at Beacon possessing so much aura yet been so completely ignorant of aura at a time when most of his peers were already mastering their semblances?
What sort of place had produced these contradictions? What sort of home had taught him so many lessons that had stood him in such good stead at Beacon, yet had failed to teach him so many of the basics that he needed to survive there, and that without mentioning the lessons that he had needed to unlearn at Beacon?
They had all arrived at Beacon as products of their environment: Ruby’s effortless kindness and truly fearless — not always in a positive sense — courage; Sunset’s bitter, prickly self-regard; Pyrrha’s courtesy and loneliness combined; you could look at her and at her teammates and if you knew their stories, then you could see how they had been written to that point, to be who they had been when first they had begun to walk those hallowed halls at which point they had all, slowly, began to become something else in addition to what they had been before. But what environment had produced Jaune Arc?
He had given her some of the answers already by confessing to her some of his concerns: a place distrustful of outsiders, a place that might not welcome her; parents who had not believed in him, who had, if they had not been actively cruel, had not nurtured him as he deserved and might have wished.
Pyrrha wondered if, in that, he was more unfortunate than her. Yes, her own mother had pruned and gardened at her dreams, directing her towards the field that was most suitable for a daughter of the House of Nikos and of most interest to her mother as a former tournament fighter; yes, her mother had pushed her relentlessly to success and excellence in that field. But she had never told Pyrrha to just give up, never told her that she would never be worth anything, that her dreams were hopeless and her destiny would be forever beyond her reach.
There was only one member of Team SAPR who held Lady Nikos in fond regard, and that was not Pyrrha, but nevertheless, she could not help but feel that she had been more fortunate in her parent than Jaune had in his. At least she hadn’t had to sneak away in the dead of night without any idea what she was doing.
It occurred to Pyrrha that, if it hadn’t been for her, Jaune would have died during Initiation.
He would have … her mind recoiled from even trying to consider what would have become of Jaune.
She reflexively tightened her grip upon his shoulder, making Jaune wince in pain.
“I’m sorry!” she cried, pulling her hand away as though he had burned her.
Jaune looked at her. “It’s okay,” he said, his tone light. “I mean, is everything okay?”
“I … I was just…” Pyrrha hesitated. ‘I was thinking about how I saved your life’ seemed unbelievably arrogant. ‘I was just thinking about how you almost died’ sounded rather gloomy, at a time when Jaune seemed gloomy enough. ‘I was just thinking about how unprepared you were to go to Beacon’ was just cruel. “I was just thinking about Initiation,” she murmured.
It sounded weak and feeble, even to her ears.
“Yeah,” Jaune said softly. “Yeah, I … Initiation. Huh.” He glanced down, then looked back up at her. “Yeah, I got lucky there, didn’t I?”
Pyrrha said nothing. She didn’t know what to say. She had no idea how she ought to reply to him.
Fortunately, Jaune continued, “Ruby told me that if my Dad had bothered to teach me anything, then I would have been better prepared. I mean, that’s obvious, but I would have been able to stand, maybe not as your equal, but more than I am.”
“Ruby is wise, sometimes,” Pyrrha murmured, while at the same time, she couldn’t quite restrain herself from thinking that she could have told him that if he had asked her.
“But…” Jaune trailed off, a chuckle falling from his lips.
“What is it?” Pyrrha asked.
“Nothing,” Jaune replied. “I mean … I was thinking that maybe, if I had been trained, and if I had been prepared then … then you wouldn’t have had to save my life, and who knows what would have been different? Maybe we wouldn’t have ended up together. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that maybe—”
“It all happened for a reason?” Pyrrha suggested.
Jaune smiled, his eyes brightening as he did so. “Maybe. Or maybe not. It sounds kind of stupid, now that I say it out loud.”
I don’t think that it’s stupid at all, Pyrrha thought. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said, taking his hand. “I mean, what with an eager boy and a tournament champion teaming up like this … it is almost enough to make you believe in fate, don’t you think?”
Jaune flashed his teeth at her, as bright as the sun outside. “Huh. I’d never thought of it quite like that, but now that you mention it … I suppose it is.” He reached out and took her hand in his.
Pyrrha smiled at him. “So, is this the way you came to Beacon? On the train, I mean?”
Jaune nodded. “Part of the way. There’s a late night train; it’s supposed to be disembarking only, but nobody stops you from getting on if you want to. I took that part of the way, and then boarded the skyliner with all the other students from outside of the city, like Ruby.” He tried to smile, but ended up grimacing. “I wasn’t in the best shape even before I got on the airship.”
Pyrrha nodded. “You’re doing great.”
“I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would, as I was afraid I would,” Jaune said. “Maybe … maybe it’s because I’m not alone. Maybe it’s taking the edge off.”
“Happy to help,” Pyrrha said.
“I appreciate it,” Jaune said. “Hey, Pyrrha?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like me to show you around just a little bit, before we head to my place?” he asked. “There’s not a lot to see, but…”
He was stalling. She knew that, and he probably knew that she knew that, but if he didn’t want to go home right away, she wasn’t going to force him, and she had just been wondering what the place that had reared Jaune Arc was like, so Pyrrha said, “That sounds wonderful. I’d like to see a little of your home before we get to, well, your home.”
Jaune nodded sharply. “Thanks. For coming.”
Pyrrha squeezed his hand. “It’ll be alright.”
“The train is now approaching Alba Longa,” the voice over the intercom announced. “If you’re leaving us here, please ensure that you have all your belongings with you.”
Pyrrha glanced out of the window. The countryside continued to roll past them uninterrupted. It was pleasant countryside to look upon — the grey mountains that shielded Vale’s eastern flank from the most dangerous of the grimm loomed large and jagged in the distance, while closer to the train tracks, verdant forests, a mixture of conifers and deciduous trees whose leaves had not yet begun to turn to gold, covered the world; red squirrels danced between the branches of the trees, badgers watched the train pass by, and Pyrrha could have sworn that she had even seen a stag watching from out of the cover of the trees — but considering that they were imminently approaching the stop, Pyrrha would have expected to have seen more sign of human habitation by this point.
And then the forest cleared out, the trees cut down and all evidence of them cleared to make way for a vast expanse of farmland, a sea of fields from which sprouted wheat as tall as Jaune or maybe a little taller, swaying back and forth in the wind as it stretched onwards towards the mountains. Pyrrha could see a farmhouse, mostly by the smoke rising out of its chimney, surrounded by such fields of tall wheat, and as the train rattled and belched its way down the track, sounding ever more sickly as it began to slow down, so Pyrrha could see other fields filled with wheat, maize, corn, and grain.
A farming town. I suppose that does explain why Jaune does well in plant science.
Jaune rose unsteadily to his feet, holding on to the seats behind theirs as he began to make his way towards the doors.
“Jaune,” Pyrrha called as she too got to her feet. She indicated his bag, containing amongst other things the broken fragments of Crocea Mors, in the overhead space above their seats. “Don’t forget your belongings,” she said, with a slight smile.
Jaune smiled back, sheepish and embarrassed, and reached up — almost toppling over as he reached for it — to pull his large and well-stuffed holdall down and sling it over his shoulder.
Pyrrha’s cases were too large to have been stored in the overhead space, and so, adjusting her cape so that it fell evenly off both her shoulders, she walked to the end of the carriage and pulled both cases out of the baggage rack where she had placed them.
They went out into the little space before the doors, waiting for the train to stop so they could disembark. Outside the door, through the open window that let a breeze into the train and made her ponytail dance behind her, Pyrrha could see that a few orchards — apples, peaches, and plums — interspersed the cereal fields, along with fields that bore neither wheat or grain but seemed to be growing strawberries and gooseberries. Sheep and cattle grazed here and there, while horses ambled about in wide enclosures.
The train came to a stop, and Jaune fumblingly opened the old-fashioned door before stepping down from the train and onto a narrow platform. His face was pale; being back on solid ground had clearly not abated all the nervousness that he was feeling about being back here.
The platform on which they had alighted was not quite large enough for the entire train, and the drop from the rearmost carriage to the ground looked too considerable to be attempted without aura, which might explain the reason why nobody was attempting it. The station itself was modest — with only a single building of red brick on the platform on which Jaune and Pyrrha stood and a narrow, wrought-iron bridge across to the other platform — but not without a certain charm: flower beds awash with all the colours of the rainbow decorated both platforms, and in one wooden bed, violets had been arranged in such a way as to spell out the words ‘Welcome to Alba Longa’ against the otherwise bare soil around them. A public house sat not far away, and Pyrrha could see some older gentlemen sitting at the tables outside, grey-bearded and pot-bellied, wearing flat caps and dark greatcoats. Some of them were smoking pipes, others were playing chequers, nearly all of them had a drink to hand.
There were other buildings she could see as well, houses she supposed, but not as many of them as she had expected and not so closely packed as well. Every house appeared to have a garden, although none of those gardens seemed to have much to stop the sheep and the goats from wandering in and out and between the houses wither they would, eating as they went.
“Home sweet home,” Jaune murmured as he took his bag out of Pyrrha’s unprotesting hands and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t look particularly thrilled to be back.
It wasn’t what Pyrrha had expected, but that by no means made it bad. “So,” Pyrrha said, “where does my tour begin?”
If there was one word to describe Alba Longa, it would probably be ‘bucolic’; in all honesty, Pyrrha had not expected that such rural, rustic places existed in Vale; she knew that Mistral was full of villages — although none of those that she had visited as part of those publicity tours had ever seemed quite as chaotic as Jaune’s home — covering the length and breadth of its vast territory, but she had always thought of Vale as a place of cities, a kind of second-rate Atlas if that wasn’t too insulting a way of thinking about it — it probably was, in all honesty — but now that she thought about it some more, now that she was confronted with the actual fact of a rural Valish village, she found it so obvious that she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about it before. Of course they had such places. Everywhere had such places.
Although probably, they were not as disorganised as this place. Some of the fields were fenced off, others sprawled out unmoored and unbordered while children with their arms full of stolen vegetables darted into and out of the tall wheat as irate farmers cursed their names; cattle lowed in the town square, the fat and contented-looking creatures shuffling around an equestrian statue worked in bronze of a hero with a sword very similar to Crocea Mors raised to the sky in one hand — Pyrrha considered asking Jaune if it was his ancestor, but decided after a moment’s thought that the reminder might just make him even more nervous than he already was and that it would probably be for the best not to burden him any further; sprawling mansions that seemed to have risen, higgledy-piggledy, over many generations sat side by side with rough wooden shacks.
And yet, for all its rustic chaos, there was a charm and beauty here as well. The town sat hard by a lake that glimmered under the light of the sun, and houses raised on wooden poles sat out in the water itself, while piscine faunus swam between them. The apples that grew on the trees were large and red and juicy, the peaches were swollen and ripe, even the lemons and limes growing in the gardens of the large estates looked inviting. The grass was, for the most part, ill-kept, thanks to the grazing animals, but there were a few white picket fences enfolding gardens with well-tended lawns, and Pyrrha could see the gardeners at work there — in particular, towards the south end of town there was a golf course and a bowling green that looked particularly well-maintained, backing on to a large building that might be the only stone structure in the entire community.
With the sun high in the sky and the breeze cool on her cheeks, the place had a soft, inviting atmosphere to it which made her feel quite comfortable here.
There were only a few shops, all of them clustered together down the same stretch of street — as much as Alba Longa had streets; they were not paved and were little more than dirt — a greengrocer advertising all local produce, a butcher's where a man with a straw hat and a striped apron gave Jaune a cheery wave as they walked by, a small bookshop with some comic books displayed in the window.
One thing that Pyrrha noticed after a while was that people were giving her — giving both of them, but her more than Jaune, possibly because they recognised him even after he had been away for some time — strange looks. Pyrrha was used to having the eyes of the world follow her wherever she went, but these gazes that she was getting now from the farmers and the field hands, from the herdsmen, from the idlers outside the inn, and from those sitting on their porches in their rocking chairs, were different from the looks that she normally got. These were not the looks of people awed by being in the presence of a celebrity; rather, they were the looks of people who weren’t sure if she was altogether to be trusted or not.
“Is everything alright?” she murmured. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No,” Jaune said quickly. “It’s just … I probably should have thought about this, but what with Miranda coming home after the Breach, it’s probably a safe bet that everyone knows where I went.”
Pyrrha frowned a little. “So they know you went to Beacon? I don’t understand; is that a problem for the whole town, not just your family?”
“I…” Jaune began, but trailed off quickly. “How do I explain this?”
He led her to a very large and sprawling oak tree, the eaves of which spread out in all directions, casting a shadow over the earth as the sunlight could only enter in small patches mottling the ground. Beneath the eaves of the great oak tree, they sat, resting their backs against the gnarly bark. As they sat, she found that she had a better view of Alba Longa here than from anywhere else in the village, with all the wooden houses and the fields spreading out towards the woods beyond, and all the people and the animals in between.
“So this is it,” Jaune said. “Where I grew up. What do you think?”
Pyrrha leaned against him, resting her head against his shoulder. “I think it’s beautiful. It’s so—”
“Peaceful?” Jaune suggested.
Pyrrha paused for a moment, thinking it over. “Yes,” she said. “I can see that.”
“This is the kind of place where you can go your whole life without ever seeing a huntsman.”
Pyrrha looked around, looking now with the eyes of a huntress instead of a tourist or a girlfriend. Besides the thick woods, the lake would act as a barrier to any grimm coming from the west — non-aquatic grimm didn’t like the water and couldn’t swim — while notwithstanding the sheer fact of the mountains that warded all of Vale from the east, the woods were thick, and the north and east of Alba Long was ringed by seven hills which might have been better used as watchtowers but would offer some barrier to incursion anyway. And they were quite some way from the edge of Valish territory, so this town would be unlikely to be the first to feel the sting of any grimm incursion. Yes, she could see how it was possible that this place had dwelt for some time untroubled by the creatures of grimm, and if it were so that people here had never seen a huntsman before, then it would explain why they, one of whom was known to everyone — this was clearly the kind of place where everyone knew the business of all their neighbours as well as their own — to have gone away to become a huntsman, had attracted the kind of looks she had gotten here.
“I see,” she murmured.
“Do you?” Jaune asked. “Because it’s not just that people can go forever without seeing a huntsman; it’s that … it’s that they’ve gone for so long without seeing one that they’ve forgotten why there are huntsmen in the first place.”
Pyrrha sat up. “What do they think? That because they can’t see the grimm that the grimm don’t exist?”
“Maybe,” Jaune said. “I’ve never heard anyone put it quite like that, but it feels like that. This place … it wasn’t until I left to come to Beacon that I realised just how small and isolated this place is. I mean, you’ve come all the way from Mistral, and Ruby and Yang are from an island off the coast, Sunset and Weiss came down from Atlas — and before that, Sunset came to Atlas from another world altogether. There are people in Vale from all over the world and even beyond, but here, there’s practically nobody who wasn’t born here, and the ones that weren’t all knew someone here before they moved; it’s like you need a letter of introduction before you can live in this town. The only time there’s any real contact with the outside world is at harvest time, when the cargo trains come, and the excess crops get sold to Vale.
“I didn’t just sneak away to Beacon in the middle of the night because nobody here believed that I could do it … I did it because nobody here would have even believed that I, or anybody else for that matter, needed to do it. Things here go on the way they always have, and it seems like that’s the way they always will.
“It’s so weird, coming back here knowing … everything that we know. There’s so much darkness out there, and they can’t even see it.”
“Maybe that’s as it should be,” Pyrrha said softly.
Jaune looked at her like she was a little unhinged. “You really think so?”
“If everyone is fighting to protect the world, then what is really being protected?” Pyrrha asked him. “We don’t fight because we love the violence, and with respect to … to my mother and to certain others of my people, we don’t fight to win eternal glory for ourselves either. Surely we fight to protect … places like this.” She gestured to the town spread out before them. “If they can live in such peace that they think that what we do is pointless, then doesn’t that prove that we’re succeeding?”
“I guess,” Jaune said, although he sounded less than totally convinced. “Wouldn’t you like a little credit, though?”
“I’ve had credit enough, personally,” Pyrrha said. “I’m happy to just do what the world demands of me.” She paused for a moment. “Maybe we can’t stop Salem, but we can defend this way of life, even if it doesn’t value us at all, and right now, that feels like enough to me.”
Jaune was silent for a moment. “I think I might still like a little credit,” he muttered. He grinned boyishly. “But I guess protecting home is pretty good too.”
Pyrrha smiled. “Speaking of which, are you…?”
“Not quite yet,” Jaune said as he leaned back and closed his eyes. “Can we just sit here for a couple of moments?”
“Of course,” Pyrrha said as she rested her head upon his shoulder once again. Like him, she closed her eyes. “So, apart from the fact that nobody saw the need for you to become a huntsman, what was it like growing up here?”
“Not always great,” Jaune admitted. “But not always bad, either. I … the problem was always me more than it was this place.”
Pyrrha frowned. “I’m sure that isn’t—”
“I’m the one who didn’t fit in,” Jaune went on, cutting her off. “I’m the one who wasn’t the right kind of person—”
“There is no such thing as the right kind of person,” Pyrrha said, softly but firmly all the same. “Except, perhaps, for those that others conform to their vision of what the ‘right kind of person’ is.”
Jaune was quiet for a moment. He didn’t look at her. “I guess … I can’t say that I was really happy here. That’s another reason why I left, if that doesn’t sound too selfish of me.”
“Not at all,” Pyrrha assured him. “Unless choosing Beacon over Haven was selfish of me.”
Jaune nodded. “I … don’t have the best memories growing up here,” he said, “but at the same time, I can’t bring myself to hate this place. I maybe hate a couple of the people here, but mostly … I mean it wasn’t all bad. There were some good times too. Soon, everyone will probably start getting ready for the harvest festival; that’s a festival where they celebrate bringing in the harvest, well, I mean, obviously, it is … they actually chase the cattle out of the square, and the whole town comes together to celebrate another good year; it’s like a big party, with dancing and singing and games … and guys getting into fights when they’ve had too much cider.”
Pyrrha giggled, covering her mouth with one hand.
“The strawberries must be getting ripe about now,” Jaune said. “In fact, a lot of things will have to start being gathered in soon, but I always liked it when it came time to pick the strawberries; they’d let all us kids help out, and they wouldn’t mind too much if you ate a few or even took some home. It’s … this is the kind of place where everyone knows your name.”
“Which is why everyone is staring at you,” Pyrrha said.
“Exactly,” Jaune said. “They all recognise me, and yet at the same time, it’s like none of them know me at all.”
“Because they see what they want to see?” Pyrrha guessed.
“Not exactly,” Jaune replied. “It’s more like … this kind of place, where everyone knows everyone, this kind of place can be hard if you don’t fit in. Like Miranda … or like me. Because once people know that you don’t fit in, that you’re not what’s expected of you, not what they want you to be … that follows you everywhere; there’s no getting away from it; there’s no one who has no idea who you are and so just treats you … like a stranger. Instead, they all have a fixed idea of who you are: little Jaune Arc. It’s what I’ll always be to them, but … I feel as though I’ve changed so much since I went away, since coming to Beacon, that I’m just not that person anymore, if I ever was. I’m just not sure if they’ll ever be able to see that.”
Pyrrha felt that he must be specifically thinking of his family, and so she said, “I’m sure you will. I’m certain that you’ll show them.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because you came to Beacon with no knowledge, no training, not even your aura activated, but you didn’t let any of that stop you,” Pyrrha reminded him. “That isn’t the behaviour of someone who gives up or takes no for an answer.”
“I think … I hope you’re right,” Jaune said. He took a deep breath. “And I think I’m ready now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Jaune said, although he moved a little slowly as he got to his feet. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
He led her to one of the largest houses in the town, one that, like many of the large houses in Alba Longa, looked as though it had been built not all at once but in fits and starts and stages over several generations. It was built of painted wood — or it looked that way on the outside anyway; it might be like Mistral, where the houses had antique-seeming fronts, but Pyrrha doubted it — and much as it looked like a house of many different parts jammed together, so too was it painted in many different colours, as many colours as the rainbow in fact, each part of the house bearing a different colour splashed onto the wood with little regard for how it harmonised or didn’t with the rest of the house. A picket fence, likewise painted in myriad colours, surrounded a modest garden with gladioli growing just behind.
“Whenever a part of the house needs to be repainted, Dad just picks one of us and gets us to do it,” Jaune explained, “and we each had our own favourite colour, so … here we are.”
The gate was not locked, and Jaune pushed it open and held it for her as she followed him in. There was a porch with a swing but no one there, and no one was at the windows to see them as they walked down the dirt path through the front garden to the golden door.
Jaune hesitated in front of this door as though it were an alpha grimm, squaring his shoulders as he stood still, his arms hanging by his side.
Pyrrha said nothing. It wasn’t her place to say anything. This … this was Jaune’s battle, and she was confident that he could win it without her help.
But she did take his hand in hers and smiled at him to remind him that she was there if he needed her.
Jaune squared his shoulders, breathed in, and knocked on the door. His hand made a solid series of thumps upon the painted wood.
There was a moment of silence from the other side of the door.
“Please be Saphron, please be Saphron, please be Saphron,” Jaune muttered.
“Just a second!” someone called from inside the house.
“Kendal, great,” Jaune moaned quietly.
The door opened, revealing a young woman a few years older than Jaune and Pyrrha, dressed in a rough homespun green tunic and pants with a green-brown vest worn over the top. She had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Jaune, and like Jaune, her hair was cut short and somewhat untidy, although instead of falling down over her forehead, it stuck out in a series of mild spikes in front of her in a way that reminded Pyrrha somewhat of Rainbow Dash.
The girl stared at Jaune, her eyes widening as she took him in as though she wasn’t quite sure that he wasn’t a dream.
“Jaune?” she said, revealing as she spoke that she was missing a couple of teeth. “Is that you?”
Jaune smiled nervously. “Hey, K—”
“You’ve got some nerve showing up here, you know that?” she demanded.
“Kendal, I—”
“What, do you think that you can just creep away in the middle of the night with only a note to tell us where you were going, then say nothing for months and then suddenly just show up and everything is going to be okay?”
“I called Mom—”
“You didn’t call me, you big jackass!” Kendal yelled. “I spent two whole weeks searching the whole area around here for you in case you’d wandered out into the woods and gotten lost or something.”
Jaune took a step back. “You thought I couldn’t even find my way to Beacon? To the train station?”
“No, no, you do not get to turn this back on me after what you put me … what you put all of us through,” Kendal said. “I had to hear from Miranda Wells, Miranda Wells, if you please, that you weren’t dead in that big battle up in Vale. Miranda Wells! Why, I could just … come here, you!” She reached out for Jaune.
Pyrrha grabbed her wrist — gently, so as not to hurt her, but firmly all the same. “I understand that you have reason to be upset,” she said, “but please, don’t hurt him.”
Kendal looked at her as though she were only now noticing Pyrrha’s presence, which might even have been the case. “Hello,” she said. “You’re new … although I do feel as though I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
Kendal frowned. Pyrrha, not wanting to bring Pumpkin Pete’s Marshmallow Flakes into the conversation, held her peace.
She also let Kendal go, her point having been made to her own satisfaction. She didn’t know exactly how Jaune’s family had treated him, because he didn’t go into details. He said that they had not been cruel to him, but she was not exactly inclined to take any chances on the subject.
Kendal continued to stare at Pyrrha, even as she rubbed her wrist with her other hand. “Well? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Jaune?”
“Right!” Jaune yelped. “Pyrrha, this is my sister, Kendal … one of my sisters; Kendal, this is…” He took a deep breath. “This is my girlfriend, Pyrrha Nikos.”
“Hello,” Pyrrha said.
Kendal smirked. “Let me guess: you’re an only child aren’t you, Pyrrha Nikos?”
“That’s right,” Pyrrha said uncertainly.
Kendal’s grin became something approaching savage. “Then I’ll forgive you for not realising that what’s about to happen to my brother isn’t going to hurt him.” She reached up and grabbed Jaune’s hair. “It’s just going to humiliate him a little!”
Jaune squawked in alarm as Kendal pulled his head downwards. The two struggled, and from the fact that Jaune was losing, Pyrrha guessed that he had deactivated his aura — doubtless because he didn’t wish to actually hurt his sister any more than she wished to hurt him. Soon, Kendal had gotten him in a headlock, and she held him there as he squirmed in her grasp, rubbing the top of his head vigorously with her fist.
“You feel that burn?” Kendal demanded. “That’s my heartburn from when I thought you were dead!”
Jaune groaned. “Come on — ah! — Kendal, get off! Come on, you left!”
“I go away, and then I come back; that’s completely different!”
“I went … and now I’m back; isn’t that the same thing?”
Kendal released him. “Back for how long?” she demanded.
“A few days,” Jaune said. “Dad’s birthday.”
“That’s going to be fun,” Kendal mutered.
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” Jaune said.
Kendal grinned. “Don’t worry about it, little Jaune,” she said, in spite of the fact that Jaune was over a head taller than her. “If it gets too rough, you can hide behind me, just like you used to.” She folded her arms. “So, you actually made it to Beacon, huh?”
“Yeah, I made it,” Jaune said. He struck a pose, one hand on his hip, the other jabbing his thumb towards the centre of his chest. “You’re looking at Jaune Arc, huntsman in training.”
A huntsman in training who has done things that many grown huntsmen would shrink from, Pyrrha thought.
Kendal snorted and glanced at Pyrrha out of the side of her eyes. “And you’re dating this loser because? Are you guys at Bea— aah!”
“What?” Jaune asked.
“That’s where I saw you before: on the new picture!” Kendal yelled, pointing at Pyrrha. “You’re one of his teammates aren’t you?”
“Mom put the picture I sent on the wall?” Jaune asked.
“Of course, Mom put the picture up on the wall; Mom puts all the pictures up on the wall,” Kendal said. “God, River is going to be so insufferable.”
Assuming River is another sister, why would—?
“Please tell me that you didn’t,” Jaune said.
“Of course we did,” Kendal said. “Me, River, and Saphron. Aoko picked someone at random, Violet insisted that it was none of the above, Sky said that we were being ridiculous, and Rouge said that we were being irresponsible and childish … but then she made a pick anyway while Sky wasn’t around.”
“Oh, God,” Jaune whimpered.
“Um, what did you do?” Pyrrha asked.
“Jaune sent Mom a picture of himself with three hot chicks and a cute girl,” Kendal said. “So we—”
“They had a pool on which of you, Sunset, Blake, or Ruby I was dating,” Jaune groaned, sounding as though he wanted to sink into the floor and never reemerge.
Pyrrha’s mouth formed a little O of surprise. She couldn’t really find a reaction to that news because it was all just so outside of the normal realm of her experience. She wasn’t sure if she ought to be embarrassed, shocked, upset, or defensive; she wasn’t sure if, indeed, she ought to feel anything at all. “Oh,” she said.
“Kendal?” someone called from inside the house. “You’ve been at the door a long time, who is it?”
Jaune sighed. “How bad is it going to be in there?”
“Well, Dad’s not home right now,” Kendal said, as though that was a good thing. “But on the other hand, you did run away without telling us, and you have a girlfriend now, so on the whole … it’s going to be like you never went away.” She grabbed Jaune and pulled him inside.
Pyrrha felt that she had been left outside, forgotten. Certainly she had not been invited in.
Although that might not have been an oversight.
Nevertheless, Pyrrha entered the house after them, hoping that the Arcs would forgive the discourtesy.
Kendal dragged Jaune by the arm into a long hallway, lit by warm orange lamps that cast a soft, inviting glow reminiscent of a log fire onto the wood-floored room. Pyrrha followed as Jaune was brought down the hall and into a spacious dining room. The walls were wood-panelled, with red curtains on the windows and a real fire burning in the grate.
Various rural knickknacks and curios sat on the mantelpiece, although the thing that Pyrrha noticed most was the thing that wasn’t there: the place upon the mantelpiece reserved for the absent Crocea Mors, the stand where it had sat in pride of place until Jaune had taken it. Its absence — and the presence of its resting place — seemed to act as a silent reproof to him for what he had done, or would do when he noticed it.
The farthest wall from where Pyrrha stood in the doorway was covered in photographs, but they were too far away for her to be able to make them out in any amount of detail at all. A long red sofa sat between the two windows. There was an immense amount of space in the room surrounding the long dining table that sat in the centre of it, around which a quartet of women and girls were gathered, setting it for dinner.
“No, Saphron, the starter set goes on the outside; how could you forget that?”
“Since we don’t have starters every night in Argus.”
“River, a couple of those cups are cracked; we’ll use the willow-pattern ones instead. And where’s Sky?”
“We’re twins; we’re not a hive mind.”
Three of the four were being marshalled by the last and oldest of them, a woman who looked, in fact, as though she might be old enough to be Jaune’s mother, although it had to be said that she had aged quite gracefully if that were the case. She was wearing red, with a string necklace around her neck adorned with seven sparkling gemstones in the colours of the rainbow. She was continually gesturing with her hands as she directed the actions of the others and corrected their mistakes.
“Better set a couple more places, 'cause guess who found the way back home!” Kendal announced cheerfully, gesturing at Jaune with both hands.
All four women stopped what they were doing. Someone dropped a cup which shattered on the floor. A handful of spoons clattered onto the table. Four pairs of blue eyes widened in astonishment.
“Jaune?” the eldest of the women, the one in red who might be his mother, murmured.
Jaune laughed nervously. “Hi.”
“Jaune!” shrieked a young woman in violet, whose hair, worn in a pixie cut, was not the golden blonde of her brother and sisters and possible mother, but more of a sandy brown colour. She led the charge towards him, closely followed by the others, questions issuing from three out of four mouths.
“What are you doing here? How long are you staying?”
“Are you coming back for good?”
“Now, now, girls,” said the older woman in the red blouse. “Let’s not overwhelm him in his first few minutes back. Especially since I think Kendal has been doing a little of that already.”
She gave Kendal a knowing look and a slight smile.
Kendal replied with an unabashed shrug. “I said what I needed to say.”
The woman in red, her feet concealed beneath a wine-dark floor-length skirt, glided through the others, who made way for her, until she was standing in front of Jaune, looking up at him. “You’ve gotten taller.”
Jaune blinked. “I have? I mean, I … I have.”
The woman in red nodded, before she enfolded him in a hug. “Welcome home, Jaune. We’ve missed you.”
Jaune put his arms around her and rested his head upon her shoulder.
Pyrrha smiled, as did the Arc sisters, the girl in violet especially. Even Kendal was smiling, although after a moment, she coughed into one hand and gestured at Pyrrha with her thumb. “Like I said: two extra places for dinner.”
The woman in red opened her eyes and noticed Pyrrha. “Oh, please forgive me for not noticing that we have a guest.”
“That’s quite alright, Mrs. Arc,” Pyrrha said, as she bowed her head respectfully.
She was greeted with an absolute silence, broken only by the sound of someone sniggering.
As the silence continued, Pyrrha began to wonder if she hadn’t made some kind of faux pas.
“Um, Pyrrha,” Jaune said. “This isn’t my mother. This my eldest sister, Rouge.”
Pyrrha’s face snapped up, even as she could feel it starting to burn bright red. “I’m so sorry; I should never have—”
“That’s quite all right,” Rouge said, with laughter ringing in her voice. “I am the eldest by quite a way; you’re not the first to get the wrong idea. And I am technically a Mrs. Arc, even if I’m not the Mrs. Arc of the house, so you weren’t even wholly wrong. Besides, I sometimes feel as though I’m more of a mother than a sister to these monkeys.”
“Offensive to monkeys, don’t you think?” Kendal asked.
Rouge gave a ‘you see what I mean’ look as she held out her hand towards Pyrrha. “Rouge Mead Arc. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss—?”
“Pyrrha,” Pyrrha said, as she took Rouge’s outstretched hand. “Pyrrha Nikos.”
Rouge’s smile was soft, gentle and inviting. “And what brings you to our home, Miss Nikos?”
“Jaune’s got a girlfriend,” Kendal said in a sing-song voice.
The girl in violet gasped. “A girlfriend? Seriously?”
“You’re the redhead in the picture!” yelled one of the other girls, wearing a blue tank-top and her hair tied back in a ponytail with an equally blue ribbon. “I won! I totally called it!”
“Why don’t you say it louder,” said the one wearing a tan vest over a burnt orange top. “I don’t think we’ve scared her enough yet.”
“And these are some of my other sisters,” Jaune said, sounding as though his entire life was a river of unending suffering. “Violet, River, and Saphron.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Pyrrha said. River was the one in blue with the ponytail, also the one who had correctly identified Pyrrha as Jaune’s girlfriend over Sunset, Ruby, or Blake; Saphron looked like a younger version of Rouge, with the same haircut of just-below-the-shoulder length, except that she was more informally dressed with a tan vest over an orange top, and pants and boots instead of an A-line skirt; Violet was the one with the sandy hair and dressed from head to toe in the colour of her name, whose eyes narrowed as she stared at Pyrrha like a bad smell.
“Have we met before?” River asked.
Pyrrha blinked. “I don’t believe so, no.”
“When would you have met her before?” Kendal demanded. “You have literally never left home in your entire life.”
“Don’t say it like that’s a bad thing,” River replied. “I just know that I’ve seen her before, we all have.”
“On the picture that Jaune sent home,” Kendal pointed out.
“No! Before that! I kept telling you, ever since Mom put that picture up on the wall, I’ve seen her before.”
Pyrrha held her peace. If they hadn’t worked it out, she wasn’t going to enlighten them. In this place, in this company, she didn’t wish to be the Pumpkin Pete’s mascot or the Invincible Girl or the Princess Without a Crown or anything else. She only wished to be Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune’s girlfriend.
Thankfully, Jaune seemed to recognise that fact and kept quiet too, for which she was very grateful.
“Anyway,” Saphron said. “You could also call me Mrs. Arc, Mrs. Cotta-Arc, if you really wanted to, although Saphron will do just fine. If you need any help with anything, just ask me.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Pyrrha said.
Saphron shrugged. “I’ve had to show one newcomer around the family already, so I’ve had more practice than anyone else. So, you’re a huntress?”
“In training, yes,” Pyrrha said.
“I can’t say you’ll be universally popular,” Saphron said. “But you have my respect and my thanks for taking care of my brother.”
“We take care of one another,” Pyrrha replied, but even as she said it, she didn’t miss the awkward looks on the faces of River and Rouge — Violet’s expression remained overtly hostile — as though they didn’t agree with Saphron’s sentiment but were too bound by manners to actually say so. She remembered what Jaune had said about the people in this town and their general attitude of dismissive low regard towards huntsmen.
Nobody here would have even believed that I, or anybody else for that matter, needed to do it.
Nobody including his own sisters?
Violet folded her arms. “Is she really your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Jaune said.
“Really?”
“Yes, is that so hard to believe?”
“Hmph,” Violet said. “I don’t like her.”
“Violet!” Rouge snapped. “There’s no call to be rude.”
Pyrrha didn’t know what to say. Nor, it seemed, did anyone else either, until someone else walked down the stairs and into the room from the other side. This newcomer was most definitely not an Arc; not only did she lack the blue eyes shared amongst the other sisters, but her skin was dark instead of fair, and her hair was black as coal; she was dressed in a light blue jacket over a dark blue top, and she wore a pair of spectacles with red frames resting on the tip of her nose.
“I hate to complain,” she said, “but all of this yelling makes it hard to get Adrian to sleep.”
Saphron winced. “He’s not upset, is he?”
“No,” the other woman said, “but he might be if you don’t all calm down. Oh, hey, Jaune, I didn’t realise you were here.”
“He just got back,” Saphron explained. “Hence all the yelling.”
“Ah, I see,” the other woman said, as she walked towards them. She glanced at Pyrrha. “Pyrrha Nikos?”
Pyrrha winced. “Yes, I have that honour.”
“Terra Cotta-Arc,” Terra said. “I’m Saphron’s wife.”
“I’m Jaune’s girlfriend,” Pyrrha said.
“Ah, I thought it must be something like that,” Terra said, as she shook Pyrrha’s hand. She whispered, “Get out now, while you still can.”
Pyrrha chuckled. “Your accent … Argus?”
“Very good, most people can’t recognise it. But I suppose you spent enough time there at Sanctum Academy.”
“Enough to recognise what Argive sounds like; not Atlesian or Mistralian, but a kind of mixture of the two.”
“Do you know her?” Violet demanded.
“Do we know her?” asked River.
“How come I don’t know her?” inquired Saphron.
“Only by reputation, apparently not, and because you haven’t assimilated into Mistralian culture enough,” Terra replied, pointing to Violet, River, and Saphron in turn. “Pyrrha is the champion of Mistral and graduated top of her class from Sanctum Academy.” She didn’t mention Pumpkin Pete, or indeed the crown that Pyrrha was without, but merely smiled. “The howls of outrage when she decided to go to Beacon instead of Haven shook the walls of Argus.”
“I think that’s a little bit of an exaggeration,” Pyrrha said.
Terra shrugged. “If column inches in the editorials could talk…”
“I suppose they care about such things in places like Argus,” Violet declared airily.
“Vi, don’t,” Kendal said sharply.
“Don’t what?” Violet demanded.
“Don’t talk out of your—”
“Both of you, stop it,” Rouge said firmly. “You’ll embarrass the family in front of Terra and Pyrrha.”
She really did seem more like their mother than another sister, Pyrrha reflected as she noted the way in which Violet and Kendal both obeyed her, both falling into cowed silence and refusing to meet one another’s gaze. The room settled once more into an awkward silence.
Why do I feel as though my being here has caused more harm to Jaune than good so far?
“So,” Jaune said. “Uh, Rouge … how’s Ruben? Where’s Ruben, for that matter?”
“What is Ruben?” River murmured.
Rouge glanced at River for a moment before her eyes flickered back to her brother. “He’s … fine,” she said softly. “We are … both of us are fine. He’s out back, chopping some wood for the fire.”
“Not that he’d help set the table anyway,” Kendal muttered.
“It isn’t man’s work,” Rouge said, with a touch of reproach in her voice.
“Say men who don’t want to do the work,” Kendal replied.
“Leave your outside ideas in the outside, where they belong,” Rouge declared. “Don’t bring them into this house.”
“Anyway,” Jaune said loudly, “where are Sky and Aoko?”
“Aoko has a deadline to meet, so she gets a pass on helping set the table,” Rouge said. “Sky—”
“Is going to kill you,” River said.
“She’s upset, huh?” Jaune asked nervously.
“She is actually going to kill you,” River said. “Or at least throw you in prison.”
“Why would she—?”
“JAUNE ARC!”
“Here we go,” River muttered.
Another Arc sister had appeared at the foot of the stairs, wearing a blue shirt with the collar undone and a pair of dark trousers; her hair was cut just above the shoulder, and she was wearing a law enforcement badge on her left breast.
“Sky—” Jaune began.
“I ought to put you under arrest right now,” Sky declared as she strode towards him.
“Arrest me for what?” Jaune cried.
“Grand larceny of a priceless antique, for starters,” Sky said. “Did you at least bring the sword back?”
“Well, uh … kinda,” Jaune mumbled.
“What do you mean, 'kinda'?” Rouge asked, putting one hand on her hip.
“It, uh … it got a little … broken,” Jaune admitted, looking down at his shoes.
“Destruction of property!”
“Give it a rest, Sky,” River sighed. “And just admit that you’re happy to see Jaune, and then admit that I’m awesome because Pyrrha here is Jaune’s girlfriend, just like I said, hah!”
Sky turned a glare on Pyrrha. “Pyrrha, huh?”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Pyrrha said, holding out one hand.
Sky didn’t take it. In fact, she looked at Pyrrha’s hand as though it was filthy. “So … you’re one of Jaune’s teammates as well as his girlfriend? You’re a huntress?”
“A big shot huntress, by the sound of it,” Saphron added.
“That is correct,” Pyrrha murmured. “I mean I am Jaune’s teammate, his partner … in every sense. And I am a huntress at Beacon Academy. I’m not sure that … Terra praises me beyond my desert.”
“Hmm,” Sky murmured wordlessly as she advanced on Pyrrha. She came so close to her that their faces were practically touching. Sky seemed to be examining her from all angles. “Well, you may be a huntress, but I’m the sheriff in this town, so don’t go causing any trouble, okay?”
“I have no intention of causing any trouble at all,” Pyrrha said, wondering what it was that she thought a huntress did that she needed to issue such a warning.
“You did that when—”
“Violet,” Kendal growled.
Sky nodded curtly, before rounding on her brother once again. “A note? Really?”
Jaune wilted visibly under the gaze of so many sisters. “I wasn’t sure that you’d let me go if I told you what I was planning.”
“We wouldn’t,” Rouge said with absolute honesty. “But that’s not an excuse for going behind our backs about it.” She smiled. “But at least you’re back now.”
“And you’re never going away again, right?” Violet said, closing the distance between the two of them to grip tightly onto his right arm.
“I don’t think that’s the plan,” Saphron said. “Right, Jaune?”
“No,” Jaune admitted. “I’m only here for—”
“Jaune? Is that you?”
The woman who had now appeared through a door that, from the brief glimpse that Pyrrha had of it before it swung shut, led into the kitchen, was almost certainly Jaune’s mother; she was obviously middle-aged, plump with lines appearing on her face; she had Violet’s sandy hair rather than the gold hair of most of her daughters, and streaks of grey appeared here and there upon her locks. A ring sat upon her finger: a decorated band of gold, too far away for Pyrrha to make out the exact nature of the decoration, with a glittering emerald set upon it.
Her eyes were as blue as any other Arc's, however, and they appeared to be welling up with tears.
Just as they had made way for Rouge, so now all the girls, including Rouge, made way for her.
“Hey, Mom,” Jaune said.
“You came,” Mrs. Arc said. “Just like I asked.
“Just like you asked,” Jaune said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
He bent down to allow his mother to plant a flurry of kisses on his cheeks, and nobody dared snigger or smirk while it happened.
“My baby boy,” Mrs Arc said. “You came back. You came back to me.”
Jaune smiled. “Mom, there’s someone very special that I’d like you to meet.” He turned towards Pyrrha, gesturing towards her with one hand. “This is Pyrrha: my teammate, my partner … and my girlfriend.”
Pyrrha bowed from the waist, bending down forty-five degrees, gripping the edges of her skirt with her hands and pulling it out on either side of her. “It’s an honour to meet you, Mrs. Arc. Pyrrha Nikos, at your service.”
“Oh, please dear there’s no need to stand on ceremony around here,” Mrs. Arc said. “And no need to call me 'Mrs. Arc' either; 'Ma’am' will do just fine. So you’ve come all the way from Beacon with Jaune?”
“I have, ma’am, yes,” Pyrrha said.
“Then I guess we’ll need two more places at the table,” Mrs. Arc said. “Rouge, will you arrange that?”
“Of course, Mom,” Rouge said.
“Jaune, I still have a few things to finish off in the kitchen before your father gets home; will you come and give me a hand?”
“Uh, really?” Jaune said. “But, uh—”
“I’m sure that Pyrrha can manage without you for a little while, and we have so much to catch up on,” Mrs. Arc said.
Pyrrha gave Jaune a smile and a nod to indicate that she would indeed be fine, even though Violet was looking at her like a lioness that had wandered into a herd of gazelle, and Sky was actively sizing her up.
Nevertheless, Jaune looked reassured as he followed his mother into the kitchen, which was the main thing. They did have a lot to catch up on, after all, and Pyrrha wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. This was, after all, Jaune’s family and Jaune’s visit. She was just here to support him.
She wished that she had a way of making the more hostile of Jaune’s sisters understand that.
Violet continued to glare at her. River looked apologetic while Sky seemed suspicious. Rouge’s look was guarded, while only Saphron and Kendal seemed truly friendly in the way they looked at her.
Rouge turned to her sisters. “Anyway, as we’ve been told, we need to add two places to the table, so Kendal, if you’ll give me a hand.”
“If there’s anything I can do—?” Pyrrha ventured.
“Oh, no, of course not,” Rouge said, as though the idea were ridiculous. “You’re our guest; just relax and let us take care of you.”
“If you don’t need me—” Sky began.
“Who said I didn’t need you?” Rouge asked.
“If you don’t need me,” Sky repeated, putting additional emphasis on her words, “I’ll keep Pyrrha company while you’re finishing up.”
Rouge looked at her, and some unspoken words seemed to pass between the two of them. “Very well, that sounds like an excellent idea.”
“Great!” Sky said jovially. “Pyrrha, if you’d like to come with me?” She gestured towards the hall from which Pyrrha had first entered the dining room.
Pyrrha didn’t know exactly what Sky wanted to talk about, but she couldn’t help a slight feeling of a trap here. It sounded absurd, put like that; this was Jaune’s family, after all, not some pack of bandits in the wilds of Mistral.
Nevertheless, that feeling was with her.
And yet, because this was Jaune’s family, she smiled all the same and said, “Of course, lead the way.”
“I will,” Sky said as she led Pyrrha out of the dining room, into the hall through which Kendal had first dragged Jaune, and then out onto the porch. The sun was beginning to set by now, and the air was starting to cool. The breeze was chilly on Pyrrha’s face as she and Sky Arc stood under the porch and the sky began to darken around them.
Sky leaned on the wooden railing separating the wooden porch from the garden.
Pyrrha hesitated, waiting somewhat awkwardly for Sky to say something. She presumed that Sky wanted to say something, but Jaune’s sister seemed reticent to actually say it. So Pyrrha reached for some small talk to fill up the time.
“This is a beautiful town that you have here.”
“It’s a nice town,” Sky said. “With nice people in it. People like Jaune, before he got taken away.”
“Nobody took your brother away,” Pyrrha replied.
“Sure they did,” Sky replied, still not looking at Pyrrha. “Those comic books that Mom and Dad shouldn’t have let him read, the stories about great-grandpa that people shouldn’t have told him. Dreams of glory and adventure in far away places. They took Jaune away.”
“There’s nothing wrong with dreams,” Pyrrha said. “Sometimes, they can inspire us to be better people.”
Sky didn’t respond to that. She still didn’t turn away from where she leaned upon the porch rail. “My dad was a huntsman once.”
“I know,” Pyrrha said.
“But he gave it up,” Sky said. “To raise a family, to live here, in the town that our family established, here where our roots are. He realised that family and belonging were more important than gallivanting around the world. He tried to teach his children that.”
“What Jaune does is important,” Pyrrha insisted. “Very important. For some people, I’d even say that it’s vital.”
“Why?”
“Because not everywhere is as lucky as this town when it comes to not seeing a grimm in years,” Pyrrha said, and she couldn’t help but let a touch of coldness into her voice. “Do you think that the creatures of grimm are a myth just because you’ve never seen one?”
Sky snorted. “Can I call you Pyrrha or do you prefer Miss Nikos?”
“Pyrrha is fine,” Pyrrha said softly.
“Have you ever killed anybody Pyrrha?”
“No,” Pyrrha murmured. At least, not to my knowledge.
Sky’s voice was quiet. “Has Jaune ever killed anyone?”
Pyrrha swallowed. “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid so.”
Sky stared at her for a moment in mute astonishment, before she turned and punched the railing beneath her.
“I wasn’t happy about it either,” Pyrrha said, as she recalled her mortification at what Jaune had been forced to do because she had abandoned him. “I’m sorry, I should have taken better care of him—”
“Jaune doesn’t need you to take care of him; he has us, his family,” Sky snapped. “And don’t you dare say anything like ‘I’m his family’ or ‘his team is his family’ because you’re not; you’re just the people he works with in a job he shouldn’t have!”
Pyrrha said nothing. She could not find it in herself to be angry at Sky, as much as Sky was plainly furious with her. Her wrath came out of love, and Pyrrha could not censure her for that. She thought that Sky was wrong, but she wasn’t going to argue the point with her in her own home.
Sky took a deep breath. “I’ve been sheriff of this town for two and a half years, ever since Sheriff Pearl decided to retire. In that time, I’ve never even had to draw my gun, let alone shoot it. And my baby brother is a killer.”
“There’s a difference between murder and defending yourself in battle,” Pyrrha said.
“He shouldn’t have been in a position where he had to defend himself,” Sky said. “This is a nice town, a peaceful town; maybe some other places have to send their kids off to fight monsters, but not us, not here. Jaune should be throwing up after drinking too much at the harvest dance, not getting into situations where it’s kill or be killed.”
“And what about those other places?” Pyrrha asked, trying to keep her tone courteous even as it firmed up. “People are alive today who wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Jaune; are you willing to condemn them to death just so that he can be safe? Have you even considered that this is what Jaune has chosen to do with his life?”
“Don’t talk to me like you know Jaune better than I do,” Sky said. “You’ve known him for months; I’ve known him for his whole life.”
And yet, you don’t seem to have any respect for him to make his own decisions, Pyrrha thought, but bit her tongue in saying it because it would have made an ill guest of her to actually give voice to it. She remembered what Jaune had said about people who had known him as a child only seeing him as a child; apparently, it had affected his family, even if he hadn’t been explicitly referring to them.
“I know that Jaune is a good man and a good huntsman,” Pyrrha said. “I know that, in time, he could be great, if he continues to work hard and believe in himself. And I know that he has done a lot of good in the world, and will do so much more good in the world.”
She hesitated over saying more, but she felt that even though it might verge upon rudeness it had to be said nevertheless. “More good than he would do here, as nice a place as this seems to be.”
Sky’s jaw tightened with anger, but she appeared to master it with a force of will.
“Saphron said that you were some kind of big deal. Is that right?”
“I … have a certain reputation, in some quarters,” Pyrrha said quietly.
Sky snorted. “Well, that may be at Beacon, in Vale, out there; maybe people hang upon your every word and whatever you say goes, but if you thought that you could waltz in here—”
“That isn’t why I’m here,” Pyrrha said.
“Then why are you here?” Sky demanded.
“Because Jaune invited me to meet his family,” Pyrrha declared, and however ill-advised it might have been, she could not help but add, “to have someone here who is on his side.”
A growl of wordless anger escaped from Sky’s throat. She took a deep breath. “This,” she said, “is our town. An Arc founded this town; in this town, we are the big deal, so I am going to give you fair warning: Jaune is going to be staying here with his family, and you are going to be heading back to Beacon by yourself.” She turned away, approaching the door with one last disdainful look in Pyrrha’s direction. “So don’t bother to unpack.”
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i like the way you portrayed jaune sisters.
and btw i wanted to ask this a few chapters ago but are all members of the main rwby cast going to ponies when they go to the portal.
Yeah, hey, uh, Sky? No. Fuck off.
Yeah, just try it, Sky.
Them gonna kidnap Jaune...!
Laughing out loud in surprise and astonishment at Sky's absolutely impossible statement would certainly be rude... but I wouldn't blame Pyrrha if a chuckle or two slips out.
Jaune, staying home after everything he's been through? No, Sky has NO idea who Jaune is anymore. Maybe it's been only a few months, but Jaune is not anything like the foolish boy that left home. It's like when Merry and Pippin returned to the Shire at the end of the Lord of the Rings. Jaune has been unalterably changed by his experiences in Beacon (and Mistral, and Mountain Glenn). There's no going back for him. He's a hero, and a grown man who's made his choices.
Poor Sky though. Realizing the truth is going to hurt.
Pyrrha really isn't the sort to laugh in her face. But the pity Pyrrha will probably feel instead won't go over well either.
Good luck with that, as if Sky could stop Jaune from leaving again. And she is pretty selfish for a supposed to be sheriff, family ties or not. Their little haven is an exception, not the norm. The Grimm threaten all life, they are simply lucky enough of haviing the privilege to live in a small patch of land with no way to access it easily. And Violet seems to hold a grudge against hunters and huntresses as well. I wonder what kind of character Jaune’s father is, he should have the most sympathy for his son’s dreams and situation, as an ex-hunter himself, though until now they talk about him like the main reason Jaune only left a note behind was most likely his father to begin with.
Sky you are under no authority to keep Jaune at Alba Longa against his will, and quite frankly, you can't physically compel him either. You have a right to be upset, but not to override his own free will and desires.
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As opposed to what, humans? Other Equestrian species?
Yeah good luck with that lol
Sounds like one or two of the weakest grim could destroy this entire village.
He ran away once, big sister or no, he WILL do it again. Besides, if you do somehow keep him, Sunset will come calling and she isn't as nice about things as Pyrrha is.
Sky is lucky that Sunset did not tag along as well, she is highly possessive things that are hers. Including her teammates
When Pyrrha gets back to Beacon and Sunset asks her how it went she's just going to bow her head in shame and be like, "I tried not to be rude and ended up going full you toward his entire family."
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Though I have the feeling that something akin the first real Grimm attack on the village since forever could very well happen. And after they had to be rescued by Jaune and Pyrrha, those “hunter outsiders”, then they have to acknowledge that “Jauny boy” isn’t the same child anymore most of them think he is, still. Then they see firsthand just how much he has truly changed and that the world isn’t a peaceful paradise.
Biggest eye-opener ever.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no.
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I just imagined Sunset coming all the way to the village just to say the possessive sisters to the face that Jaune is a part of her team and what she thinks of them, having “the guts” to keep her friend away from SAPR.
So when is the grim attack coming.
Oh, I see! Jaune's home is like the Shire, just like Bilbo Baggins' own great-great uncle was a renowned warrior unlike most of his people, and so was Jaune's own great-great-grandfather who wielded Crochea Mors. Very fitting connection!
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And, uh, excuse me Sky? If you are saying that Jaune cannot leave as he wishes, then that is custodial interrogation and as such you must formally arrest him. However, as a sheriff, you clearly know that under the law, you must have reasonable, articulable suspicion if not actual evidence in order to make an arrest. And you already stated that the only charge you could bring against him is the destruction of property (which is effortlessly contested as a registered huntsmen weapon being damaged in battle). So unless you want to destroy your brother's life by labeling Jaune a criminal, you have no legal authority to detain him against his wishes! Tai Xiao Long knew he couldn't keep his daughters from becoming huntresses, and neither can you.
Jaune Arc was given the opportunity to leave once. After he killed a White Fang terrorist, he could have walked away from this life by his own choice. But he chose to stay for his friends. He refused to abandon them then, and he won't abandon them now! He is not the same little boy Sky knew that thought it would be like a comic book. His reasons to fight today are now far greater. And just as both Jaune and Bilbo were told by a wise old wizard, if you ever return home, you won't be the same. This wisdom is something Jaune realized just before he knocked on the front door. He, Pyrrha and the rest of SAPR have changed since they arrived at Beacon. And those changes have been for the better.
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Like an attack staged by Dr. Merlot?
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No, like literally anything thing attacking, such as from over those hills Pyrrha thought ought to have watch towers.
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That last bit makes me wish Sunset came along with them :P
Um is D-man alright cause I am hearing laughter and something about a stupid sky? Yeah you see it's like this. Pinkie pulls out a projector to show what happened. See he was reading the chapter and really likes how Jaune's hometown and family was portrayed and then he read the end of chapter and had to excuse himself. Ok let me see this end. Pool starts reading then reaches the end.
....Excuse me but I'm going to go join D-man and I don't want innocent eyes to read some of the things that I will say about Sky. Hold on just need to leave Nora a note and I'll join you guys aaand done, now to the laughing of Sky's foalish remark and how it will bite her back later.
Good luck with that one, sister.
No one seems to remember that Sky just learned that her brother has killed someone, and she doesn't want it to happen again.
The Shire! Jaune comes from the Shire! I love it!
... please don't burn it.
The Scouring was a great chapter but there would be no triumph if the Grimm came here.
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The fact that Sky is motivated by love for her brother is her biggest redeeming feature at this point, but it doesn't change the fact that she's going about it in the worst way possible, and by making these decisions without consulting Jaune himself she's revealing how little respect she has for him as a person.
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Yeah, her actions are more likely to widen any rift between Jaune and his Family... especially if any other members of the family are in on this (which it seems like they might be). I have a feeling that Sky is use to telling people what to do... and that this family is use to just pushing Jaune around. honestly I have a feeling that Jaune would have left this town one way or another, even if he couldn't become a hunter, I don't see him staying here.
Its going to be interesting when they try to Bully him into staying for his own good (or just assume that when they tell him he is staying, he will) and he just starts heading to the train.
Ah, family drama. Love it.
Ah. A bro-con.
As for that last bit: like hell.
Yeah, watch Jaune shoot Sky down on that and start running again.
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Jaune is a hobbit confirmed!
Hah! Jaune actually comes from the Shire! Oh that’s too good!
I find this depiction of a rural town a little odd. I have lived most of my life in tiny backwater towns and I can assure you, the more rural you get, the greater the support of blood sports. Some of Pyrrha most fanatic supporters would come from farming villages like this one. Also, I disagree with their view on huntsman. Just because you don't see the threat of Grimm as real doesn't mean you dislike huntsman, it means that you are so far removed from the horror, blood and pain that you overly romanticize them. People would either see huntsman as pro athletes, akin to pro-wrestlers, or larger than life heroes who never loose and fight for truth, justice and love like the heroes in movies and novels.
How was she supposed to know? :V
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Lol yeah she probably will go full sunset and i would love to read that part