The Old Man is Everywhere (One-shot)

The Old Man is Everywhere

After getting their food, team RWBY and Team JNPR sat at their usual table.

Jaune started the conversation. "I have to bring this up. Doesn't the old man seem to be everywhere." He said, referring to the old server in the cafeteria.

"You think?" Nora asked, almost not concerned as she ate her food.

"You typically don't pay attention to him because you think he is an 'extra'." Ren stated and quoted the one word Nora used at some point to describe the old man.

"Now that I think of it, your right Jaune. I've seen at the dust shop I go to for weapons magazines." Ruby remembered all the times she saw the old man when she wanted to see the latest release.

"He was at café I went to a while back." Blake recalled her sighting of the old man during her runaway incident. "Sun also mentioned that he has great customer service at a noodle shop."

"I've also seen him working as a librarian." Ren added.

"He also works as a janitor... that old man seems to be everywhere." Yang said.

"Just asked him if your curious about why he seems to be everywhere." Weiss said as if she was hardly interested in this topic.

"It seems to be the best option." Pyrrha said.

Then both teams started talking about different things as the ate.

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At some point later in the day Jaune saw the old man doing his duties as a janitor. He figured now would be a good time to ask about him.

"Excuse me, do you have a moment." Jaune called out, gaining the old man's attention. "My friends and I have seen you working in various positions both in and out of Beacon and are wondering why you seem to be everywhere."

The old man took a seat somewhere and gestured Jaune to sit with him. "I guess you could say I was a bit inspired by someone I knew in the past. I found it a bit inspiring, yet unbelievable that a single man can could acquire and maintain 32 jobs. I still believe that it should be impossible to work 32 jobs even with resourceful time management. Even more so since he was the most racist person I know."

"Can't really say I'm surprised about hearing the typical human hate against Faunus." Jaune heard about it from home, he witnessed abuse from the few ventures out in Vale, and he certainly recalled the remarks Cardin made in the past and now. Both his family and himself don't support that behavior.

"Oh no, he wasn't a human. He was a Faunus." The old man revealed.

"...Wait, a Faunus?!" Jaune was surprised.

"Yes, a Faunus. After the first few exchanges I seen him had with Faunus, I started to think that maybe Faunus were more racist than humans because Faunus hate Faunus too, but that's solely based on what I personally observed. I'd did confront him about it eventually, but that was after I established a friendship with him. Let me tell you about some of his interactions with both humans and Faunus." The old man proceeded to tells Jaune a few stories about the most racist man he ever met which took quite a bit of time. Most of Jaune's free time to be exact.

After a few stories, the old man eventually got to the reason why the apparent self-species hater, why he supports humans despite their hostility to him, and his family upbringing. Apparently the most racist man in Remnant claimed to be human despite being raised by a foster Faunus family which wasn't pleasant because of his foster father who always singled him out and beat him for anything that went wrong at home.

Not that Jaune was actually awake to hear most of it.

The old man just now found out that the blonde knight slept through his stories. He sighed. "Kids these days." he grumbled before lightly shaking the boy's shoulder. "Hey kid, wake up. You're gonna be late for class."

"Nngh... late?" Jaune looked at the time on his scroll. "LATE! I only got five minutes!" Jaune got up and sprinted towards the class that he would most likely be late for. "Nice talk, sir."

"Not that you heard most of it. You even missed the part where I found out Ruckus' biological father had his Faunus trait physically removed to be human. The man had thought he had some rare disease or mutation." The old man was finished with his job at Beacon. Now he had to start his next job as security at the Airship Transportation Center.