A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

  Time skipping to the Airship Ride to Beacon~

  -x-X-x-

  “Oh god… I think I’m going to be sick…”

  “Hey! Don’t worry so much, you’ll be fine. What’s your name?”

  “… J-Joan… Joan Arc…”

  “I’m Yang Xiao-Long. Just stick with me and everything will be alright! Us blondes gotta look out for each other, after all!”

  “Y-Yeah. I-urk… baargh!”

  “OH GOD MY SHOES!”

  Cole winces, more from the volume than anything else as he watches the bypy between the two blonde women take pce on the other side of the Airship’s deck. Fortunately he’s far enough away that the smell of the vomit from the clear motion sickness that the one blonde is suffering from doesn’t reach his nostrils.

  Technically, everyone who attended Beacon was of age. You didn’t go to a Hunter Academy until you were an adult who could make that informed choice, after all. Everyone on this Airship right now was an adult… but everywhere Cole looked, he just saw soft young people, spoiled by upbringing and cushy lives.

  Oh sure, most of them could probably still take him apart in a handful of moments to be fair. Cole had only had his Aura unlocked for a couple of weeks. And even though Goodwitch had provided him with grueling nightly training sessions for those st two weeks, he knew better than to think he was a match for these prospective students who must have been training for this for the st several years. Yet, anyways. He’d be a match for them soon enough.

  Still, even if they had years of training and what not under their belts, it was obvious they hadn’t spent much time in the real world experiencing real people. For instance… this Joan Arc woman… Cole had seen her getting sicker and sicker the longer they were in the air on the way to Beacon. He might never have stepped foot on an airship like this before himself, but he knew the signs of someone about to vomit.

  The other blonde, Yang Xiao-Long… she’d clearly thought Joan just had a case of the nerves or something, and maybe thought she would make a good friend while she was at it by helping boost the other woman’s confidence. Didn’t seem like she had anyone else on the airship to talk to, and for an extrovert like she seemed to be, that was practically anathema.

  Unfortunately, she’d completely missed all the signs and now, with regurgitated breakfast all over her shoes, Yang beats a hasty retreat from a dejected and despondent looking Joan, who also slinks away from the vomit that nded on the floor with her shoulders slumped and her head held low. Not what Cole would call a successful social interaction by any objective measurements.

  Also not his problem though. As mentioned previously, he’s sat on the far side of the Airship from the altercation, as far away from most people as he can get. Having gone with the hat and sungsses option from Goodwitch, he figures he probably looks pretty unapproachable right now. Unlike the fedora and thin sungss combo that he'd worn as one of Junior’s Made Men, Cole’s new combo is definitely more based on subterfuge.

  A beanie covers his entire head of hair to keep his hair color a mystery, and his new sungsses are all encompassing. Not just bigger, but also swooped back at the sides to touch his skin. Basically, the only way anyone is getting a good look at his eye color is if the sungsses fall off his face entirely. Fortunately, Goodwitch had been teaching Cole how to extend his Aura over the things he was wearing and not just his body, so removing either his sungsses or beanie from his head would require someone shattering his entire aura first.

  And that wasn’t exactly easy, especially since his Sembnce seemed tailor made to make him stronger over time… a lot stronger. They’d tested things out frequently over the st two weeks, meaning that Cole had fucked Glynda more both in an attempt to get her pregnant as well as see what limits his Sembnce truly had. No confirmation on the first thing yet, though Cole’s account was certainly feeling flush by this point. However, on the subject of his Sembnce, they’d learned a lot.

  For one, Glynda never lost the additional aura he’d given her from their first fuck. Instead, it seemed her aura had gone up permanently by that ‘20%’ number. However, subsequent fucking had incredibly fast diminishing returns. The second fuck only increased her aura by around 5% more, and the third fuck by 1%, until eventually, the change was measured in increasingly miniscule decimal points.

  Meanwhile, after they recorded Cole’s initial Aura, they started keeping track of the increases for him as well. They were far more static, but also far smaller. They still didn’t know what the first fuck between him and Glynda had given him since his original Aura wasn’t recorded at the time, but subsequent fucks only gave him a 1% boost.

  The difference was his boosts never seemed to get smaller. He always got the same amount of Aura from fucking a woman with Aura, while they got a big initial boost and then increasingly tinier boosts as time went on. Of course, their sample size was still pretty small. Glynda told him she was already hunting for potential women for him to bed though for the breeding part of their arrangement, so Cole figured he’d find out more as time went on.

  Even if he just kept fucking Goodwitch though, it seemed like he would slowly but surely grow more and more powerful over time. The only issue is, once she got pregnant she probably wouldn’t want to have sex as much anymore, at least after she was far enough along.

  Letting out a sigh, Cole leans back against the Airship wall directly behind him. Then, finally, he looks to the side and gives the girl who sat down a couple seats away from him a look.

  “Can I help you?”

  Strangely enough, it’s almost as if the bow on top of the raven-haired woman’s head twitches slightly as she hunches in a bit, pretending to read her book for a moment before giving it up for a lost cause. Lifting yellow eyes to regard him, she purses her lips together briefly before shifting in her seat.

  “…”

  One might think he’s being rude, but as far as Cole was concerned, she was the one being rude. The Airship wasn’t even that poputed. Despite being the rgest vehicle he’d ever been in, there were maybe a dozen people on its deck at most. Apparently, there were like half a dozen of these things ferrying prospective Beacon Hopefuls up to the Academy today, to say nothing of people coming from even further away than the city.

  So then why had this woman sat herself down literally two seats away from him when there were empty seats everywhere and he’d been doing his best to radiate a sense of barely concealed hostility? Cole might have been retively introverted himself, but you didn’t survive as long as he had on the streets by ignoring creeps invading your space like this.

  “… warm…”

  Brow scrunching up in confusion, Cole’s frown intensifies.

  “Excuse me?”

  Seeming to realize what she’d just said, the raven-haired girl’s face pinks up and she hides behind her book a bit more before finally clearing her throat and talking like a normal person. When she’s not at a loss for words or muttering under her breath, she actually has quite a dry tone.

  “Just… trying to get away from the smell.”

  Cole’s eyes dart back to the vomit. He’d noticed her nose wrinkling, but they were far enough away that he still couldn’t smell it thankfully. Weird. Also weird was the fact that she’d definitely sat down BEFORE the one blonde had thrown up all over the second blonde’s shoes. But… whatever.

  If this was the streets of Vale, Cole would either walk away or act with extreme violence to try to chase HER away. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that here. In the end, he just needed to calm down and wait for the trip to be over. Funnily enough, he was experiencing his own mild case of motion sickness right now. It WAS his first time in the air like this after all.

  But unlike that blonde idiot Arc, he knew better then to walk around all willy nilly while feeling so nauseous. Instead, he’d sat his ass down and done his best to stay still.

  Letting out a sigh, Cole tries his best not to let the bookworm’s presence get to him and settles in to wait for them to come in for a nding.

  -x-X-x-

  Bke Beldonna didn’t really know what she was doing here, truth be told. Maybe she should have just gone home to Menagerie instead… but she couldn’t do that. Not just because she couldn’t bring herself to face her parents and their disappointment, but also because of how she’d ended things with Adam.

  Sure, Adam was overstepping his bounds in pretty massive ways and if Sienna found out, he’d almost certainly be punished accordingly. That alone would probably keep him from announcing Bke’s defection to the wider White Fang. But if she showed up back on Menagerie in her parents’ household without so much as a ‘by your leave’, that would prompt questions. Questions she really didn’t want to answer.

  So instead she was here, for some reason. Bke hadn’t trained at any official huntsman schools growing up, and yet she was here at Beacon Academy all the same. Purely by the grace of its Headmistress Glynda Goodwitch, of course. Headmistress Goodwitch, who had deemed her worthy of a second chance. Headmistress Goodwitch… who had given her one job that Bke was already blowing.

  She didn’t exactly know why the young man sat a couple seats down from her was so special to the Headmistress. She hadn’t been told anything except that she was to keep an eye on him and protect him with her life. Also, that she was to do everything in her power to wind up on a team with him during initiation, but not to get too close before then lest she rouse his suspicion.

  … Yeah, she’d kind of thrown that st part right out the window, hadn’t she? Her excuse that she didn’t want to smell vomit girl’s regurgitation was a pretty bad one considering she’d crept closer even before the incident happened without realizing it. It was just… w-well, there was something about this Cole that drew her in like a moth to a fme. Or perhaps, given her faunus heritage, like a cat to a particurly sunny rock.

  He radiated warmth that Bke was unaccustomed to, and she’d spent most of her life around people who had their Auras awakened. There was just something about his presence that had her creeping ever closer, until she was way too close for comfort. And yet, she couldn’t back away now. That would be even more suspicious.

  And so they spent the rest of the ride in slightly uncomfortable companionship, with Bke pretending to read her book until they finally dock at Beacon. Cole is immediately on his feet after that, prompting her ears under her concealing bow to twitch in response. But Bke doesn’t move. She lets him go on without her, figuring it would be better if she gave him some space and stayed out of his way for a while.

  Eventually though, after a couple minutes, Bke collects her things and steps off the Airship. Beacon Academy stands tall and proud right in front of her, a huge monolithic structure watching over the city of Vale down below like it’s earnest protector or something.

  But Cole himself… Bke has to keep moving in order to find him. When she finally does, well, she’s grateful for the bow concealing her faunus features, because without it, her cat ears would go ft on her head. In fact, Bke barely resists the urge to hiss as she sees him helping Weiss Schnee of all people with luggage.

  Seriously?! She left him alone for five seconds and he went and found the Schnee Heiress?! Where did she even come from? Why was she here at Beacon? Goodwitch should have told her about this! Admittedly though, part of Bke knows she wasn’t entitled to that sort of information. It’s still something of a shock though and she finds herself reacting in a somewhat… impulsive way.

  “-seriously don’t know who I am?”

  “Should I? Just thought I’d help out since you seemed to have so many things.”

  Closing in and hearing that, Bke doesn’t hesitate to interject.

  “Weiss Schnee.”

  Both Weiss and Cole turn towards her at that, with Cole juggling the suitcase he’s taken from Weiss in his hands.

  “Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company.”

  With a growing smirk, Weiss puffs her nonexistent chest out and straightens up.

  “That’s exactly right! See? She knows who I am! I’m not weird for thinking that I might be recognized on sight, thank you very much!”

  Cole hums in response, his eyes hidden behind those sungsses of his hiding most of his reaction. And yet, Bke gets the impression that he’s somewhat… nonplussed by the rich heiress. So then why is he helping her out in the first pce?! Maybe he didn’t know. Bke knows she should back off, but she can’t help herself… she says it.

  “Yes. You and your family, as well as your company, are quite infamous for your poor treatment of faunus and cutthroat business practices. I would be surprised too if someone didn’t recognize you on sight… if only to know to stay away from you.”

  Looking to Cole, Bke delivers the final blow to Weiss while not even gazing in her direction.

  “You could do much better for friends than her.”

  Then, because really she’s said what needed to be said and has already WAY overstepped her mission statement, Bke turns on her heel and walks away before Weiss can recover, leaving the Schnee Heiress sputtering behind her in disbelief and outrage.

  Quickly getting out of sight, Bke then hops up into a nearby tree with a proper vantage point of the two she left behind, curious to see what will happen next and whether Cole will take her advice or blow it off to continue schmoozing the rich heiress.

  Warm as his presence might be, Bke needed to know what kind of man he truly was deep down. And you could tell a lot about a person from their brown nosing.

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