Professor Arc

Chapter 37

It was with nervous looks around that Jaune waited for Velvet to meet him. What the others at Beacon would say if he was found meeting a student out in town on a weekend he wasn't sure, but experience told him it would end badly either way. In all honesty he was surprised she'd agreed at all. He'd banked on the favour she owed him for saving her life, even if it had never been something that had been said out loud.

I'm acting more like Roman every day, sheesh. So, he'd already started to extort his students for favours outside of school – and didn't it sound bad when said it like that – but now here he was mentally tallying up any others he might be able to call on. The list was slim, unfortunately. Or was that for the best?

Velvet had been his only real option, even if he wasn't sure if she'd ever been on dates or anything in the past. She was the oldest student he knew, however, so it was a better bet than most. His second best source would have been Yang, but then again... yeah, probably not the best person to ask for advice on another woman. "The worst being my mother of course..." That would have been a harrowing phone call, especially considering Juniper would have hounded him for details on the girl. How old was Glynda anyway? He didn't have the balls to ask. In her thirties he had to assume, it was hard to tell since she shared that ageless quality with Ozpin. Come to think of it, Peter and Bart looked fairly good for their apparent ages too. Was that an effect of aura?

"Professor!" The voice carried out over the shopping mall, turning more than a few heads and leaving Jaune with hunched shoulders as he resisted the urge to call back. Velvet had clearly seen him anyway, since she was making her way over. Why she'd brought Pyrrha along he didn't know but... oh no...

"Well, well, well," Coco Adel lowered her sunglasses just enough to peek over the top. "Good to see you again Arc. You haven't been avoiding me, have you?"

"Of course not," Jaune lied. If his path had coincidentally changed whenever he'd seen her in a hallway then one could rest assured it was because of a sudden appointment in the land of elsewhere, which lay within the Kingdom of unspecified. "I wasn't aware you would be coming along Miss Adel, nor you Pyrrha."

"Neither was I," the redhead whispered.

"Call me Coco," the brunette laughed, wrapping one arm around Velvet's shoulders and the other around Pyrrha's. That, at least, was a welcome sight, even if Pyrrha seemed to disagree, squirming nervously. "Anyway, Vel hit me up after she heard your little problem. If you want help preparing for a date, then I'm your best bet."

"And what do you want in return?" Jaune sighed. Coco grinned and flicked her shades back up, tilting her head in a manner that almost looked arrogant but just managed to stop short of. It looked well-practiced and stylish, along with everything else about her.

"Oh, do you think you've got something I'd want?"

Jaune flushed, especially when she wet her lips. Yeah... he could still remember how she'd taken his first kiss, pressing him against a wall outside a teacher's office.

"You've got nice moves, or so I see from your fight, but you're not my style. Consider this one a freebie. Or is it that you want me to demand something?" Gods, it shouldn't have been possible that in a situation where a student had pushed a teacher up against a wall and made out with them the teacher would be the one feeling embarrassed. Didn't she even care about how they'd last met? "So hit me up Prof, what are we working with and what for?"

"I have a..." he hesitated for a second, "I'm not sure if it's a date or not... in fact I only even thought of it because some of my colleagues keep calling it that." Peter hadn't been able to shut up about it all week, with Jaune waking up each morning to fresh advice on his scroll. Apparently Peter's idea of help was to sign him up to some dodgy advice service. "Either way, I'm going out with Miss Goodwitch later this evening and... well I've got no decent clothes and no idea what to do..."