บท 54: 54
"Jaune?" Pyrrha peeked out the curtain of her house, well it was actually a small manor with a bit of yard space in the front (and PLENTY in the back) that was enclosed by an iron fence.
Where a flood of photographers were flashing their cameras outside after Jaune a mere half hour after posting a video online were congregated.
"Mwah ha ha ha ha!"
"Jauney, Pyr's calling for youuuuu." Nora sang out as Ren helped her fill out a 'character sheet'.
"-aha ha- hm? Oh, yeah. Sorry about that." Jaune grinned sheepishly as if he hadn't been cutely cackling like a cartoon character. "What's up, Pyrrha?"
"Why are there so many people outside my house?!"
"Oh, yeah, that's why I asked to record in your room. Made sure your two Championship trophies were behind me as I was recording to make sure any moron could get the clue."
She saw him puff out his chest as if he'd figured out something big. With his brain that was certainly possible. The only classes Jaune did poorly in at all were history, as if that didn't interest him much at all.
"That was the idea I had, anyways. I made something new, got permission from your dad to post it because I'll just handle the whole production angle as long as he can get me the material supplies, and I'll just scare off whoever's dumb enough to try anything! If they try to mess with you, they mess with me, and if they mess with me, they mess with the Atlas Military! Mweh he he!"
"I- I saw you put together something that looked like a watch. And you forced us all out of the room while you recorded yourself, but I didn't really understand any of it." Pyrrha pursed her lips, feeling slightly inadequate.
It wasn't as if she wasn't smart or anything, but Jaune had a… casual way of accidentally making people feel like fools.
It wasn't ever in a callous or aggressive manner, but he had a tendency to sometimes go off on manic tangents of lines of thought that nobody seemed to be able to follow. Not because of the topics he spoke of, per say, but rather as a result of nobody ever really understanding the science behind most of what he was rambling about. Unless, apparently, he was at Atlus teaching some of the brightest minds in the world. That was an odd thought.
Jaune was smart, but… she liked Jaune. She really did. But he could be a… bit air headed at the best of times.
"Oh, right. I should sync it to you. This all becomes way more believable if you're the one with the original prototype model. So, it's yours now, feel free to keep it."
Jaune flicked his fingers around her wrist, a simple metal band, lined with some softer, smoothed material on the inside, snapped into place.
It adjusted size to fit her wrist on its own, surprising her, as it snugly fit into place. Pyrrha flexed her wrist about, finding it not uncomfortable in the slightest.
The small rectangular face of the watch-like device flickered with a bit of light.
"Registering New User!" A voice that sounded a lot like Jaune's rang out pleasantly.
"Huh?" Pyrrha stared at a small ball of blue light with expressive black eyes was holographically projected from the watch. It looked kind of like a living ball of mochi.
…it was cute.
"Greetings! I am your the VI Companion to the Unit on your wrist! Please feel free to give me a designation at any time! What is your full name, New User?"
Pyrrha was more preoccupied with the glowing form of her body, only her face and hairstyle truly recognizable as a light blue generic outline of a human body formed, adjusting to roughly match her body's physical features a bit better.
"Jaune, why am I naked?!"
"You're not! That's just a rough representation of your body! A model of you that's not even skin colored!" Jaune sputtered, looking pointedly away from her, making it worse somehow! "Nor is there any, uh, y'know! Nothing like that at all!"
Pyrrha didn't find those words reassuring at all as her face flushed as deeply as her hair, her other hand having already risen to hide her hologram projection self.
"That doesn't MATTER! I- p-put clothes on me!"
"Input request recognized. Replicating current outfit."
"Thank you!" Pyrrha let out a sigh of relief as a simple shirt and gym short combo appeared on her model, the feet bare (as she was indoors). "You really need to make it start with clothes on, PLEASE."
"You are quite welcome, New User! That shall be noted for the future! May this unit receive your full name designation?"
"Oh… I'm Pyrrha Nikkos. Nice… to meet you?"
"Thank you, Pirrah Nikkos. Please verify that this is your name."
Pyrrha turned to stare at Jaune as his device misspelled her name via holographic projection.
"It's… well nothings perfect." Jaune defended. "Plus, this is a prototype. It's probably got some bugs. Most of the code was hammered in with Multi-Instance Hyper-Speed Typing, so it's not impossible I goofed something in the intent-recognition software. I's and Y's can be difficult to place."
Something about the way Jaune emphasized words sometimes was weird, Pyrrha noted, but it was part of Jaune's norm, so she didn't question it much.
Pyrrha corrected the spelling made by the strange watch before giving it a name.
If she remembered correctly from her Lost History Studies, Jaune meant yellow in Old Mantle so that's what it would be. It sounded like Jaune, anyways, might as well be named after him. Right?
"Your name will be Yellow." Pyrrha decided.
Nora snickered at Pyrrha, making her blush.
Her eyes told Pyrrha that she knew exactly why she named it that. Pyrrha just shook her head back. It was just because it shared his voice! Really!
"Wonderful! This Unit will now respond to Designation: Yellow." The ball of light with eyes even seemed to change its color from a blue to a soft canary yellow. "Would you like me to monitor or analyze your bodily health? Or use me as an assistant to interface with your Scroll?"
Pyrrha blinked.
"Is that what you do? Give me a health check-up?"
"I am Miniaturized Health Operation Monitor Unit 001! MHOM for short! The Creator of this Unit has declared that the H is silent!"
"Jaune, nobody is calling this their mom." Pyrrha heard Ren snort from the side softly. "That's awful."
"The joke is that you can always snap back at it with a 'Yes, mom' or 'No, mom' for fun! It's funny!"
"That's weird, Jaune." Pyrrha giggled as Jaune's sister Robin shot the thought down. "Yellow said it can link up to Pyrrha's Scroll, right? What if she had to call her mom? Her actual actual mom?"
"Uhhhhh. Ok you're right. I'll fix it with the later models, I guess. I suppose I should have just named it Medi, short for Medical Assistant or something. Guess that would be cuter." Pyrrha snickered as she saw Jaune mope to the side as her new strange watch (it could tell time after wirelessly linking up to her Scroll) rattled on and on about something. "Nobody appreciates my jokes."
"So once again; why are there that many photographers outside the house?" Pyrrha met Jaune's bright blue eyes as she pointed out the window. Super blue. Like the sk-
"User Pyrrha, please do not neglect your health. You are: mildly dehydrated, lacking restful sleep, and your heart rate is elevated."
Pyrrha blinked confusedly as she looked back at Yellow.
"Heart rate resolving to normal levels. Might this Unit suggest some water and a nap?"
"...Jaune your MHOM is nagging at me."
Trivia stuck out her tongue when she tasted Jaune's bitter coffee.
"I warned you it's not tasty." He snickered, sipping at his hot mug of liquid caffeine. "I've had to deal with a lot all day and I haven't slept because of the time zone difference. It's like I've been up all night, but I can't willingly keep pushing this off either. Once this mess is over I'll catch up on some extra sleep."
Ugh, he's not going to listen to us when we tell him that this much caffeine is really bad for him. Neo grumbled, mothering worriedly about Jaune's lack of sleep. Sleep is important at his age, or something, isn't it? Shit, let's finish this quick and force him to snuggle and sleep.
That was something Trivia could get down for. She wanted more damn snuggles.
Jaune still owed her a whole lot more snuggling from the bullshit of leaving her behind when he went off alone to fight someone and came back covered in blood. It wasn't that she thought that he couldn't handle it alone, but she was his Partner, not some damsel he had to protect!
That and Jaune being taller than her now let her experience being the little spoon. That was actually really enjoyable.
"Alright, alright. I'd be happy to get some sleep too. Not like I like staying awake for over twenty four hours." Jaune laughed at her, tilting the side of his head, causing the side of his head to bump and rest against the top of hers.
It was an odd gesture, but Trivia leaned into it, enjoying the soft bit of affection anyways. Jaune was wearing that wig of his, just in case anything happened and their invisibility shattered.
"Alright. We're at the gates. No talking at this point. Let's go in silently." Jaune tossed his empty mug in the air, the ceramic cup dissappearing from her sight as Jaune's Semblance activated.
Trivia nodded. That wouldn't be a problem for her, but being unable to understand Jaune fully would be a small issue. His mind always seemed to race at a kilometer a minute. Though she'd gotten pretty good at reading his intent, she'd never reached the same proficiency that he had at reading hers.
Jaune let out a small amused huff of air from his nose, gripping her hand just a bit more tightly, their laced fingers squeezing over each other's knuckles.
It's fine, he says. Neo muttered softly, her thoughts aligning with Trivia's own. As if that doesn't change the fact that we want to be able to read him like he reads us. Selfish.
But maybe they were both pretty selfish in their own ways. Wanting to be able to read his emotions like he read theirs was pretty selfish as well.
Maybe that's why they were two peas in a pod.
They wandered around the campus, Trivia just silently noting the various places where she, in another life, in a world where she'd never met Jaune might have been.
Her mother, Carmel, had wanted her to attend this school. When she'd been hesitating over Beacon, she'd sung her praises at both Trivia herself as well as her alma mater. She'd told her that she'd be perfect for it. That she'd learn and grow to be a true lady here.
She wanted to use us, she meant. Neo's eyes flashed over her own, as she and Trivia grit their teeth together. She must have loved the fact we'd asked for Huntress training all those years ago. We would have been such a perfect tool for her if we'd just been more obedient.
Trivia's eyes hardened.
She didn't see it then. But she did now. Any love Carmel Vanille had for her daughter was superseded by how she could benefit from her daughter's abilities. She'd definitely viewed Trivia properly as a daughter before. A long, long time ago. But her mother's eyes didn't anymore.
Was it strange that as rebellious as she'd always been that a part of her missed that?
Juniper berries crawled on her lip, the scent of spiced pine and fragrant fruit filled her senses. Jaune squeezed her hand reassuringly.
Trivia stopped in place for a moment, closing her eyes as she raised the hand she held, letting the back of Jaune's warm hand rest against her cheek.
It didn't matter. All the love she'd never received in full she had now. She'd fight for that with every gram of her being.
And we won't lose it to anyone. Neo declared. Ours. It's ours.
Trivia nodded, taking a deep breath and turning to Jaune with a small smile, feeling her heart hammer rapidly in her chest.
She grinned as he flushed, not quite meeting her eyes.
Kehehe. He's so cute.
Jaune tried to not let his heart beat out of his chest as he led Trivia further into the campus. They'd check for any CCTV or onlookers before they invisibly opened any doors, or attempted to anyways.
With the way that their opponents had managed to reverse engineer Atlas tech. That itself wasn't super impressive, as all they'd done was make their own copy of something that existed, but someone had managed to help miniaturize it on top of that.
If anything that was the real threat here. Could you even trust your eyes to spot the real hidden cameras when the simpler larger CCTV systems were also layered over that? Were any of them dummies? How many if so, and…
Well it might be possible that the person that managed to make all that wasn't the one that came to this school to install it all. It was pretty specialized tech in those pins.
Honestly it was very possible that he was being over worried.
But being focused on his goals helped ignore Trivia and Neo both layering over each other, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.
Gods, ever since that assassin, something was wrong with him. Like something inside him had jarred loose and not clicked back into place properly. Or maybe he was just finally going through puberty? His dad always said that since he was always surrounded by pretty girls he'd have a tough time for… something.
He'd always sort of avoided that topic. As if he'd dreaded it. Something about birds? Bees? Both? The hell was that about?
It was weird. He'd never been so… aware of the color of his friends' eyes before. Pyrrha and now Trivia. When he made eye contact he could feel his heart beat rapidly, hammering in his chest. Just wanting to stare.
Was he sick?
He should test himself with a MEDI bracelet later. Right now he had to focus. Even if it was something serious, he'd put it to the side while more important things were happening.
Avoiding the occasional group of girls that were spending their weekends hanging around campus (they even had tea rooms just for socializing, seriously, rich people were weird), they'd found the wing of the school where much more of the administrative side of things seemed to lay.
He'd even stumbled by an unmarked room, disguised similarly to one of the general use supply closets around the school that he'd seen a flicker of light flash from under the doorway. A peek with a periscopic camera showed a man sleeping at his desk, a multitude of screens displaying cameras looking over hallways of the Academy.
Well at least they'd found the security room. The question was whether or not this room included the hidden pin cameras.
He whipped out a pair of R Rarity Equipment: Rebreather, passing one over to Trivia who just nodded and clipped it over her mouth, a brief hiss of air releasing as it vacuum sealed into place. It was just strong enough to hold without causing any real discomfort.
A metal spray can filled with harmless, but powerful sleeping gas was next, a long thin tube of plastic pressing into the nozzle.
Jaune stuck it under the door and pressed on the button on the top of the can.
Almost silently, it faintly hissed a large amount of sleeping gas under the doorway into the security room. He and Trivia looked at each other, his heart still acting kind of funny when he met her eyes, nodding and waiting for a half minute before stepping inside.
They'd done this before.
Or, more accurately, they stepped inside after using an Autopick that Jaune had made. sure, Trivia could have easily picked the lock as well, but he'd rather she focus on her Semblance, just in case.
Cold compressed air hissed into his mouth and lungs as Jaune stepped inside, Trivia following silently behind. There was some curling mist at their feet from the sleeping gas, but that would dissipate and become inert as it degraded into mere carbon and a bit of chloride soon. Traceless.
It would look as if the floors had just been bleached and disinfected well, although a bit dusty.
Sadly, the CCTV system was a bit of a bust, even if the security guard dozing off was also a Spider, marked by the tattoo hidden under a black compression sleeve. There was nothing incriminating or important here.
Jaune memorized his face and marked him with a Shadow. Just in case.
Additionally he slid a USB device into the computer that manned the whole system, downloading a worm virus that would operate at ring zero kernel to allow him to access the system remotely. Naturally he took back the device and hid the evidence.
He gestured with his fingers a little X in the air, signaling that while he'd gotten something out of this, it wasn't what they'd come looking for.
They stepped back out of the disguised supply closet (yeah, as if it wasn't SUSPICIOUS as all hell that your security system is monitored in a disguised room) and began to gaze about looking for any other clues.
Maybe the headmistress might have something? It would be hard to maneuver and use the school without her knowledge.
If Jaune recalled correctly, her name was Beatrix Browning. Her mother had been the original founder of Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy For Girls, which doubled as a finishing school for girls who'd become adults at the age of seventeen.
Or that's what the woman claimed, at least. Paperwork with the city of Vale implied that it was more likely that she'd made up that 'prestigious' history a bit and had formed the school herself though it was true that her mother seemed to have owned the land and building beforehand. It was a believable lie, at least.
Her profile shot that he'd ripped from the internet had been that of a tall woman. Maybe about 180cm. Thin and tall with fair skin (possibly from being Aura awakened) and a slightly dull grey-blonde hair, most often swept up into a beehive hairdo. Jaune wasn't sure how often she wore it, but her picture had shown a bit of glimmering gold powder on her skin, dark eyeliner with smokey eyeshadow on her lavender eyes and a deeply red lipstick.
Trivia had looked at her and compared her to a runway model. Her descriptors had been that she looked smart, sexy, and a little dangerous.
Jaune was never sure about how to judge a person's appearance without seeing then in person or via video call, however. He knew that he'd become far too reliant on his ability to read people's intent from the Ring of Conditional Victory. He'd simply had it for almost all the years of his life he could remember, it was too much a part of his very being now.
That made him pants at getting that kind of information from mere static photographs. He was lucky Trivia could help round out his weaknesses.
Unfortunately there was no campus map online that they could take advantage of, as this was an invitation based school, though one could still apply for it with 'proof of pedigree' and such nonsense.
But Jaune now had access to every camera (hidden or not) on the campus of Lady Browning's from his Scroll.
It wouldn't take him too long to spot her or the doorway to her office, hopefully.
Trivia pulled him to the side, her body pressing against his, making him lose his train of thought as a few girls passed by, smelling of fashionable and expensive perfume. Though these scents weren't particularly strong, smelling similar but not the same as Trivia's (though she didn't wear anything to a stealth mission), the few conflicting scents flashed against his sensitive nose all at the same time that made his nose scrunch.
Jaune was pretty sure it was the Bloodline Awakening Tonic that had caused that, rather than his Faunus heritage specifically.
Trivia booped a finger against his nose, giggling silently as he waved her off, feeling a smidge embarrassed.
"Lady Beat!" One of the girls that passed them called out. "Looking good today, as usual. Going on a date?"
"Miss Evans." A stern but surprisingly soft voice replied coolly, "Remember to not refer to me as such when not in the presence of your true peers."
"Ah, I know, I know. Security and all. It's fine, we're all amongst peers at the moment, right girls?" Evans, a red haired girl elbowed her friends and they both nodded, though Jaune could tell they were rolling their eyes at their friend/leader. "Nobody else is around either. Unless you got people in the walls, Lady Beat."
"You never know." The tall woman smiled, her ruby lipstick colored lips twisting teasingly. "There might just be."
"Gaaah. You're a scary woman. I only hope to be half as intimidating when I'm older." Evans laughed as she gave a polite curtsy and turned to her friends. "Come on girls, we have our own plans to get to."
"This mixer of yours better not involve anything untowards, Miss Evans."
"Erk. W-we won't, Lady Beat!" Evans spoke a bit too quickly, clearly planning on bending the rules-
Weird.
Specifically, both Beatrix Browning and the Evans girl seemed to focus on rules in terms of bending them to their convenience rather than breaking them. Like that was their shared motto, or way of life? Something that Beatrix Browning taught. Ah.
Pretty much all of her pins had to be refilled manually. It was impossible to send out a camera like that without power. She must have been picking and choosing people that she actually used for her network, though it would be possible to have a pin passively active for a few years without using it as a recording device.
It must have been a network of inner disciples and a wider net of random, outer students.
And Beatrix Browning… she was a woman that had her hands bathed in blood. Whether recently or not wasn't of a concern. She was a woman that killed and would kill for her own benefit. Judging from the callouses that she hid well, just not effectively enough against Jaune, she must have been a fencer type.
Well that solidified one thing for Jaune. This woman was a villain.
His eyes hardened.
He'd have no mercy for a villain. At least none for those he couldn't use to instead do more good. Gods it was weird that he had a thief on-call in Roman.
Fuck it. At most once exception per Kingdom if he could curtail as much crime as he could. He had his limits. He had to strangle crime down as much as humanly possible with as few compromises as he could manage!
He was idealistic, not a moron. He was thirteen now and in four more years he'd be an adult. As much as he enjoyed being a kid, he had to grow the fuck up when it came to the important things.
Jaune froze as 'Lady Beat' seemed to turn in their direction, looking about for a moment as if she'd briefly sensed his excitement (bloodlust) before frowning and turning in another direction.
He and Trivia shared another quiet look before they silently trailed after her.
She didn't head off towards her own office however, stepping around it towards a secluded supply closet. Another disguised room.
When she'd opened the door and stepped inside, Jaune got a brief look at the more sophisticated looking computer system than the general security room. When he'd gotten down on his knees to observe what she was doing with a periscope cam, he could even see that it went as far as using facial recognition software to act in lieu of a password.
Jaune grinned as he let a pair of Shadows slip from his own shadow into the darkness of the room, melting into the dark environment.
This wouldn't be an issue for Trivia, at least. Not at all.
He turned to Trivia, giving her the 'ok'.
They had the lead that they needed.
This was always the boring part of their missions.
Still…
She watched as Jaune sat on the ground, eyes glimmering excitedly as he leaned over, swapping between three different laptops and scribbled notes onto sheets of clean printer paper held together in a simple three ring binder.
He said the lines of notebook paper tried to keep him in a box, or whatever nerdy thing that Jaune was on about.
"I have to think outside of the box." He'd declared once, "So outside of the box that it becomes its own shape. Like a sphere with a box inside of it so I can figure out every angle, every detail so perfectly that I can't mess up even if I tried!"
He was a dumbass, but he was their dumbass.
It's like watching a squirrel try to decide which tree is the best to hide his acorn in. Neo cooed as Jaune leaned from side to side as he typed rapidly into his three laptops, looking up at 'Lady Beat's' information network to double check something. Ah, he's such a nerd. Such a fucking nerd, but he's cute when he gets like this! I just wish waiting wasn't so boriiiiing.
If they were back at the flat or even at Roman's warehouse, she could be hugging him from behind, or even sitting in his lap, pressed against his front, but noooo. They couldn't leave their current situation. That's why she had an illusion over the doorway as she stood, pressed up against it, keeping guard.
There was a silent alarm that would activate if this door was propped up for too long, but Jaune had disabled it for now, ready to reactivate it after he left.
She didn't understand why they were doing this right here under the nose of the enemy, though, even if she also thought it was funny how easily they were getting away with it all.
Like she enjoyed the irony and got the humor of it, but Jaune had a whatchamacallit installed in her system here as well. He could just access all of it from the safety of their love nest (flat) enjoying a warm cup of cocoa and snuggling as his arms wrapped around her and his fingers got to clack away at his keyboards.
Sure he said it was because this way they could interface while being sure that the villain in question Lady Beat couldn't accidently see that there was someone else messing with her side of the screen, but Trivia could tell that as true as that was, Jaune was enjoying the thrill of getting away with his 'hero' work right in the stronghold of their enemy.
They really weren't that different.
She supposed they were lucky that as this seemed to be the Headmistress, or should she say, Spymaster and Head Assassin's office, she'd done the foolish act of putting all of her eggs in one basket.
This computer that acted as her information network doubled as her workstation for keeping track of everything clandestine.
That was also part of the reason why they were still here, she supposed.
Jaune was additionally downloading everything on the system to an external SSD (whatever that was) the size of an assault rifle magazine (clip? Trivia was never sure of the difference) that he claimed could store eight hundred terabytes of data.
And apparently he'd hook it up to something so that they could also siphon a copy of the feed of all information coming in going forwards.
More nerd shit that Trivia didn't really care to understand, as Jaune enjoyed handling that side of things. What she found boring, he could find joy in. That worked, as that meant that they could do more crazy and fun stuff together.
Was it fair to Jaune? From an outsider's perspective maybe not.
But they were little jigsaw pieces. A slew of weird curvy edges that only fit perfectly right with each other.
Sure, Jaune was more versatile, making connections with others in ways that she never could, but in the end Trivia and Neopolitan were the only ones that he'd ever be able to return to, in the end.
They completed each other.
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