Professor Arc

Chapter 34

Jaune left the infirmary feeling like a zombie. Yang had tried to break the news lightly, but it still struck him with the force of a freight train. Thankfully she'd taken his expression at face value, no doubt understanding that the sudden knowledge that his lover was a criminal would shake him.

He'd taken hold of that excuse as best he could and run with it, apologising and backing out of the room, all the while saying he didn't know where Neo was and hadn't seen her before he left Beacon. It was the truth in a sense, since Neo could have been anywhere at this point and she had been absent in the run-up to him leaving the school. But that didn't do much for his emotions, which were flip-flopping inside of him at that very moment.

Neo... she had tried to kill Yang.

A week ago he wouldn't have believed that. Sure Neo was a vindictive little piece of work, but cold-blooded murder? Jaune's eyes clenched shut, trying to ignore that gruesome memory from Misenwood. He knew better now, that she could and would kill if she felt there was a reason to. Perhaps he should have known from the start, considering that she was Roman's closest ally. And he hadn't gotten where he had by being Mr Nice Criminal. But that had always felt distant... murky, like the fact that it may or may not have happened meant he needn't think of it. This was Yang, his friend and someone he genuinely cared about, someone he wanted to protect.

He couldn't let that stand. He couldn't just... brush it under the rug and hope it stayed away. Jaune had no idea what Roman or Neo planned, but he wasn't going to let it mean the death of his students. I need to confront her, he realised, the thought not a comforting one given the girl in question. It couldn't be helped, however. Neo was his responsibility now – and didn't that sound all sorts of terrifying? Either way, her actions reflected on him, which meant he would need to take her to task and make sure nothing like that happened again. He just hoped she wouldn't kill him too.

Right now he needed to find somewhere to sit down, a place he could collect his thoughts and try to figure out what he was supposed to do. He needed peace and quiet.

He didn't need Cinder Fall dragging him into a room by his collar. He didn't need a lot of things really, but Jaune could only sigh as he once again received all of them.

"Hello Jaune," the equally-deadly but far more vocal criminal purred. It sounded like she caressed the words with her tongue, doing all sorts of interesting things to his body before his mind could chip in and remind him of just who this person was and the things she had no doubt done. "It's been such a long time. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back."

Running away would have been a nice choice, Jaune wanted to say. Come to think of it, why had such a thought never crossed his mind? Misenwood was in the middle of nowhere. He could have stayed there if he wanted to. But he'd instead done his duty and come rushing back to Beacon at the first opportunity, right into the mess he'd left behind.

"It has been a while," Jaune said, more because he knew he had to say something and it sounded innocent enough. "A lot of things seem to have changed."

She smiled, in that annoying manner that said she knew more than he did (not a difficult task). Her fingers gently unwound themselves from his lapel, dragging down his chest as she stepped back. Not enough to give him the room to escape, he noticed, but enough to make it look like it. She was still stood too close, enough that her legs almost brushed against his.

"They certainly have," she said, "The dear General's arrival made quite the stir for the populace. It hasn't been the easiest of transitions for us teachers. Why, I've even started to hold lectures on Atlesian politics, just so that the students can have a grounding in what is happening here." And of course he'd need to check with team RWBY to see what the content of said lectures was. He could just imagine her writing it off as an invasion attempt or something.