Chapter 22: I’m A Victim

"Well, well, well," Coco's smug voice drew my attention over to her.

I had been in the middle of getting a welcome hug from Velvet when her teammate had inserted herself into the situation. On the one hand, I was annoyed by the fact that Coco's presence seemed to have spooked Velvet into letting go of me and taking her seat to my side. On the other hand, I was not a fan of public displays of affection, so the annoyance was more or less canceled out.

"Only gotten past the first date and already, you two are making kissy faces at each other? Have you no shame?" Coco lightly scolded, like a mother would to her children.

"Coco! Stop…" Velvet whined, probably dying on the inside from internalized shame or something. "It was just a hug," she weakly tried to defend herself.

"A hug? For your boyfriend, you mean, right? That's not just any kind of hug, hun. It might start innocent enough, but who knows where you two could have ended up if I hadn't arrived in time? I bet that if I looked away for long enough, I'd turned back around to seeing you two locking lips or trading—"

"Stop!" Velvet fumed as she reached over the table to forcefully shut her team leader's mouth.

As Fox arrived with Yatsuhashi to sit on either side of Coco, he raise a solitary brow and asked, "What's the matter with those two?"

"Coco's trying and succeeding in embarrassing Velvet," I said in between bites of food. "Jokes on her though, I don't particularly care for public displays of affection, so unless Velvet started it, I wouldn't engage in that kind of thing."

"That certainly sounds like something Coco would do," Yatsuhashi sighed before he started working on his meal.

We ate while making small talk in between bites. Coco, Yatsuhashi, and Fox seemed to be testing the waters with me now that Velvet agreed to date me, but they quickly went back to acting normally once it became clear that I didn't plan on changing how I talked or treated any of them.

When I finished my food, I gave Velvet a quick hug to reciprocate the one she'd initiated when she found me in the cafeteria at the start of her lunch period. I left Team CFVY with the reminder that they could find me at the gym if they wanted to have another spar with me after I added a bunch of restrictions to myself.

Alas, today no one seemed interested in challenging me to a fight. I doubted it was because they were pressed for time, since it was Saturday. The lazy bums probably just wanted to laze around and relax like I did during my rest days. Though, despite calling them "lazy bums," I couldn't fault them for it. Not after hearing from Velvet what their schedule was like.

I chose how hard I make the days for myself, but they were stuck with following Beacon's curriculum. Sure, it'd be a piece of cake for me as I was now to follow and thrive under such circumstances, but I had my bullshit gacha powers to cheat my way past anything the school could throw at me. If all I had was just Aura, it'd be a nightmare to have to deal with school work, training, studying and homework, as well as having to manage all of that while dealing with three people who were virtually randomly assigned to your team.

So, if they wanted some R&R during the weekend, I wouldn't turn my nose up at them and scoff. If I only managed to get a weekly spar with them, then that would be more than good enough to add in a bit of variety between all the Grimm-slaying, physical and spiritual training I did, before factoring in any potential Scenarios I might accept.

When the time to return home arrived, I began what I thought would be another routine run through the mountains and forests leading from Beacon to Vale. Instead, I got about halfway over to my destination before stopping and focusing the entirety of my attention on the presence that had followed me the whole way. With a certain massively Ki-dense raven following overhead, I hadn't dared to put on my eyepatch while making my way to an isolated spot to initiate this confrontation.

Slowly lifting myself up to its altitude with my Ki, I said, "I don't appreciate you following me around, lady. So, if you want something, I suggest you ask up front before I lodge a formal complaint to the big man in the tower."

The raven flapped its wings to keep steady while staring me right in the eyes for a couple of seconds. Then it slowly descended until it went underneath the treetops of the forest. In the blink of an eye, it was replaced by a woman with a Grimm mask who landed on one of the tree branches before she spoke to me.

"So this is the man who outed me to Ozpin." The woman's tone was charged with palpable anger as she pointed her blade at me threateningly. "Did you intend on making an enemy out of me, or are you just too stupid to realize what you have done?"

"I don't know what the hell you're on about," I said as Katayoki's knife appeared in my hand. I started flipping it idly as I added, "What are you mad at me for?"

"So, it is ignorance then," She hissed hatefully before sheathing her sword, but still kept her hand on the handle as she explained, "I'm guessing you're not a part of Ozpin's little in-group. It figures you wouldn't know what would befall me, if he were to find out that I am the Spring Maiden."

"You're making even less sense than before," I tossed my knife and let it dematerilize back to my Inner World as I tried to parse through the meaning of what she was trying to say.

"I'm not stupid. Before you even arrived to expose the fact that I was spying on them, I had already used my Semblance to make a small portal near Qrow inside the office to hear the entire conversation. You are the reason they found out I have the Spring Maiden's powers and since they know now, they'll do everything they can to seize that power back. They know they can't force me back into their suicidal group, so they eventually resort to killing me for the transfer to go through to someone that will."

"Can I get, like, all the other context that's missing before I respond to any of that?" I asked as kept a keen eye on her for any sudden moves. She could be telling the truth or just baiting me to lower my guard and I was not about to make that mistake again.

The Grimm-masked woman stayed silent as she continued to face my direction before she huffed and asked, "I wonder how much it is that you don't know. You don't know about the Maidens, but do you know about the Grimm Queen? The Relics? Surely you must at least know about magic considering you have it yourself!" She grew more aggressive with every shake of the head I gave.

"I'm not sure about all that other stuff you mentioned, but what about—" I emphasized, "—magic? Not really sure why you consider that important, but whatever."

"Clearly, you have a lot to learn, but I care not for your complete understanding. The only relevant points you need to be aware of are that only the four Maidens are the ones with the magic to take possession of the Relics. The Grimm Queen, Salem, wants those Relics and will do everything in her power to get to the Maidens and bring the Relics together. Now that Ozpin knows I'm the Spring Maiden, it will only be a matter of time before he or one of his cronies lets that information slip and I become one of Salem's prime targets."

"And you're afraid of her." I deduced, completely ignoring the fact that she had brought her blade out again as I asked, "What is she, a Titan Grimm or something? I can't see why you'd be scared about some boogeyman I've never heard of. Grimm Queen? How tough is she?"

"Salem has absolute immortality and can command all but the Titan effortlessly. I've seen her get petrified, vaporized, annihilated and cut to ribbons, yet she came back from all of those things after, at most, a few seconds to completely reform her body. She's unbeatable and has had thousands of years to build up a personal army of Grimm with hundreds of thousands of Alphas as grunt-level fodder."

"A challenge, then," I nodded my head, impressed, "Why hasn't she just won already, then? If she could just overrun the world with Grimm of that level, even the four kingdoms would get destroyed in a year's time."

"Have you not been paying attention? Only the four Maidens can get to the Relics she wants. I don't know what she plans to do with them. She wasn't exactly forthcoming with giving me all the details of her plans when I came face-to-face with her. But, she did tell me enough to realize what a fool I'd been for following Ozpin," she sarcastically said. "Speaking of that old bastard, he's the one who facilitates the process of inheriting the Maiden powers, for the most part, anyway, so he's the one to go after to seek the Maidens themselves. Which is why, him knowing about me will end terribly!"

"Well, he must be doing a good job if he's managed to hold out against this Grimm Queen for however long that's been his job. I'm struggling to see why this is an issue you can't just hide away from by rejoining Ozpin," I said. "If this Salem entity isn't willing to just drown the world in Grimm to get to you, how is she a threat? You say she's been around for thousands of years, yet this is the first I've heard of her and I've looked into all the most dangerous Grimm that have ever been documented."

"Don't you get it? She's a mastermind; the manipulator behind the scenes. The world does not know about her because it suits her purposes of setting up exactly the right scenario in which to take the four relics in short order. Ozpin and the people in the know can't let her presence become public knowledge because the fear and desolation that would strike in the world population would only feed into the Grimm Pools she uses to build up more of her army."

"Meanwhile, I know she has human retainers on staff to do her bidding discretely. I don't know who they are, so now that the fact that I'm a Maiden has been leaked to Ozpin, I have to constantly look over my shoulder and be on the lookout for them aiming to capture me. I refuse to join that suicidal maniac in his pointless shadow war against Salem, so I also have to look out for Ozpin and his allies for when they inevitably hunt me down to regain the Spring Maiden's powers," she hatefully said. 

"I'm starting to see why you're mad at me, but… What exactly is it that you hope to accomplish by following me and telling me all this information?" I asked, getting to the heart of the matter at hand. She made it sound like I had ruined her life and yet she hadn't just gone straight to trying to kill me. Instead, she had dumped all this information on me.

"You are an anomaly," the woman begrudgingly said as she took her hand away from the handle of her sword and took the mask off her face. "I heard it all before those fools realized I was listening in on them. Lapis Lain, the man with unbelievable powers, inhuman strength, and the largest Aura pool upon having his unlocked. I've seen an inkling of your power from what you showed in the school's gym and on the way back on foot. So, I know you have what it takes to make my situation, the slightest bit less dire."

"You want me to join you?" I looked at her like she had grown a second head.

"I'd say you owe it to me!" She aggressively spat. "Now that my life has been rerouted to a strict set of paths that only lead to certain death."

"Yeah, no," I shook my head disdainfully at her.

Who the hell did she think she was, making demands out of me for something that wasn't even entirely my fault. Was she blind to the fact that none of this would have happened had she not tried to spy on Ozpin? Sure, I'd be open to help her out if she needed it, but only on my terms and because I felt bad for unknowingly uprooting her life without trying to.

"Look lady, I'm a free agent. The only side I take is my own. I do what I want, when I want and that's not going to change just because you want it to," I said while staring her down.

"Is that so? Then you are of no use to me," She said as she unsheathed her blade once more and took a fighting stance.

I rolled my eyes at her theatrics before adding, "I still feel bad about unintentionally ruining your life or whatever, so I'll offer you two solutions. One—" I raised a finger, "I make you a Potion to transfer the power of the Spring Maiden on to another person so that you lose the reason you're being targeted."

"The only way is to die. Even if you managed to find a way around that, no one else would believe it until they see it and if you go to Ozpin to decide who gets the powers while I'm still alive, he won't want that news to spread to Salem. She'll still find out, but there's no telling how long it would be and I'd be even more at risk without the Spring Maiden powers to fight back. If they capture me just to find out I'm not the Spring Maiden, they'll kill me just to get rid of a loose end."

"Ok, then, option two is to accept your summons for help against any forces she sends out against you. That's what you want from me in the first place, yeah? You mentioned your Semblance utilizes portals, so just use one of those to bring me over whenever you're confronted with someone trying to get at you for your powers," I said. That way, even if I was being inconvenience by having to help her out, I'd still be getting Gacha out of the ordeal.

"That…" Raven grimaced like she was at odds between accepting the offer and being disgusted by the fact that she didn't want to. "Very well," she sighed heavily before putting her swords away, yet again, before hopping down the tree branch to approach me on the ground floor.

"Great! So are we done here or…" I stopped myself from talking as she continued her approach to the point where we were within reaching distance. I kept my guard up, looking to counter any sudden blade slashes or Ki attacks, but wasn't at all prepared for her to pull me into her and drop the mother of all tongue-wrestling kisses on me.

"Mm!" I pushed her away and asked, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

The utterly shameless woman licked the trail of saliva that he rebounded on to her lips when I broke off the kiss. "What are you mad at me for?" She mocked me with my own words in a whinny voice.

"You're the idiot who suggested this. My Semblance works by making portals to people I've made an emotional bond with. This was the fastest way to achieve that," she said while drawing her sword and forming a red rift in space. A moment afterwards, an identical rift appeared next to me.

"What are you, five? You could have warned me first," I wiped my mouth before looking at her with disgust. Did I just get molested by this cougar bitch?

"And given you the chance to say no to remain faithful to your bunny girlfriend," She ruthlessly mocked me, "I don't think so." She huffed and made another portal before saying, "Remember your promise and don't be surprised if I come to get you at odd hours of the day. There's no telling when one of these unhinged maniacs will try to take me down."

"Whatever, lady," I was so done with her, I waved her away and turned to leave without waiting for her to cross the portal.

"My name is Raven Branwen, boy. You'd do well to remember that," she called out and in response, I just gave her a middle finger without turning back.

"Hmph," she let out a huff before crossing her portal and finally leaving.

What a piece of work. I almost couldn't believe I agreed to help her.