AN: Hey all, guess what? I couldn't stay retired. If you read MoNT, this is the story I mentioned I was most likely to write. It's only going to be five, maybe six, chapters long, and I have four written so far.

I'm not committing to an actual upload schedule here, but I do have most of the story written. I'll alternate between uploading this story or another, secret one I'm collaborating with someone on. Unless we change our mind and post it on his account, which could happen; in that case, I'll let you guys know where to find it.

Without further delay, I present:

The "Why" We Fall Apart
chapter one

"…so after I break into the substation that powered most of Atlas' industrial district and charge up, I go fucking shooting across the sky, terrified out of my mind that I would never make it to Ren in time!" Nora explained excitedly, banging her fist on the table for emphasis. It rattled her three empty and one half-empty pints – which Ren had casually explained earlier that, until Nora hit five, wouldn't even affect her. That had impressed the hell out of Sun; Nora would love Vacuo.

Nora turned to her side and glared at her husband, as if she was still a little ticked off about this story she was telling a decade later. Ren hid his smirk behind his craft IPA, though he met Nora's eyes challengingly.

She couldn't resist telling the story and let him off the hook to turn back to us. "I'm hyped up on more electricity than even I can handle and I might have even levitated – I don't know, okay, that was a lot of juice in me – so I took Magnhild and slammed it on the frozen ground to bounce for miles to make it to him, and… and this bastard—" Nora let out, words failing her as she tilted to dramatically glare at Ren once more, "—was surrounded by Beowolves, Ursas, Griffons, Nevermores, packs of Ravagers, small Wyverns, and some other shit I didn't even see at Salem's fortress. And he's just… sitting there. in the middle of more Grimm than I even saw in the Grimmlands, with his legs crossed and his arms held out in front of him… meditating!"

Jaune and Sun laughed hard as Ren casually shrugged, pretending not to know why Nora was so upset. Blake laughed quietly to herself, which Sun knew because he could feel it from the arm draped casually around Blake's shoulder.

"You're exaggerating," Ren let out, though his cheeks warmed up in embarrassment just a bit, "about all of it. I wasn't in any danger, not with my Semblance."

"Well, you did send out an SOS," Sun pointed out with a cheeky grin.

"Which specifically mentioned that I was fine and surrounded by Grimm, and that you should get an airship ready for when the Grimm clear out," Ren countered firmly. It felt like a rehashed argument from how smoothly it came out. This clearly wasn't Nora's first time telling this story.

"I don't know," Jaune jumped in. "You still sent an SOS—"

"Thank you!" Nora let out exasperated.

"—and you should have known that Nora wouldn't actually read it."

Nora glared Jaune down for that addendum, to which the man made a show of taking a long swig from his own pint and pointedly not looking at Nora. Blake giggled at the childish scene; even a decade later, Nora could bring out the child in all of them. Sun figured this all reminded Blake of Beacon, if the smile she couldn't hide was any indication. Hell, it reminded him of Beacon, and he had spent, like, a semester in Vale pretending to go to those transfer classes before the last Vytal Festival.

"Nora makes it sound like she was the one most upset by that," Ren countered, cutting his eyes at his wife coyly, and continuing before she could object, "but think about it from my perspective. I'm surrounded by Grimm and need evac, and Nora crashes to the ground in front of me like a bomb, which stirs up all of the Grimm, and then I have to focus twice as hard to use my Semblance on both of us. Do you know how hard it is to get Nora to sit still regularly, much less when she's powered up?"

"Yeah, I only ever sit still when I'm on my knees, and even then it's only for a few minutes at a time!"

"Nora!" Blake tried to chastise, only for a laugh to work its way out as she did so. Jaune and Sun found it funny and didn't see any reason to get on to her for it. Ren looked slightly embarrassed by the 'few minutes' part, but if anyone was used to the crazy things Nora says, it's him.

A lull fell over the group after that, but it wasn't an awkward silence by any stretch. When the four of them had come to Argus to spend a Saturday with Jaune, he had insisted on bringing them to this restaurant. It was close enough to the military base that it was accustomed to soldiers and Huntsmen, and the second-story balcony terrace was the perfect mix of an open-air yet secluded environment that they could talk freely. That, and Jaune mentioned that he ate there often enough that the staff and regulars wouldn't freak out if they saw celebrities such as Team JNPR or even a member of the Team RWBY. That had held true so far through the evening, and they'd been there for a few hours now.

"We really should do this more often," Nora let out, saying what everyone was thinking – or really, what the four of them had come there to say. They hadn't exactly planned on saying it so explicitly, but Jaune was dense sometimes, so no one really questioned Nora's need to hammer the point home. The way she cut her eyes at Jaune made it clear to even him that Nora was not planning on being subtle. "Why is this the first time we've seen Jaune in years again?"

The other three's eyes all nervously shifted to Jaune. That nervousness melted away upon seeing Jaune roll his eyes at Nora's comment.

"Wow, took you long enough," Jaune sniped sarcastically, basically confirming that he'd been expecting this at some point. Nora's ire wasn't exactly unearned – fact of the matter was that they were 21 when they marched on the Grimmlands, and they were 31 now. It had been years since any of them had seen Jaune, but that wasn't entirely his fault. Ruby deserved just as much blame for running Jaune off as he deserved for running. "Things have just been busy, Nora."

It sounded like a cop out answer, and, well, yeah, it kinda was.

Ren came to Jaune's defense, though. "Even with the Grimm threat so neutered, Kuroyuri has only stabilized recently. When we first resettled it, Nora and I wouldn't have been able to afford to leave, even for a day or two."

"And how's that going, by the way?" Jaune asked his old teammates. He seemed genuinely curious, and Sun figured that the guy wasn't trying to dodge the question so much as he was a pint or two in and his thoughts were criss-crossing a little. He didn't know it, but no one here was going to let the subject get away.

"Kuroyuri? Things are good," Ren answered. "Just some bandits nearby last month, but nothing we couldn't handle."

"More remnants of Raven's tribe?" Blake piped up, leaning forward in her chair and leaving Sun's arm to rest on it. If that hadn't given away her curiosity, the way her ears pointed straight up did. She would kill him if he called her out on it.

Sun was totally about to call her out on it.

"No, nothing quite so organized," Ren answered seriously. Blake deflated a little, but that was more because it meant that she still didn't have a lead on Branwen's location. No one did. If pressed, though, she'd admit that the bandits not being dangerous was a good thing, even if she felt disappointed. "It's been years since we've encountered any of her old people. Wherever she is, she's not making more disciples, which is good."

Ren and Blake shared a tense look, before Blake finally settled back down. Ren gave her a firm nod to reassure her. If Ren said Branwen wasn't in Mistral, then Branwen wasn't in Mistral, simple as that. That was like half of the reason that Kuroyuri 2.0 was even a thing. Sure, after the ass-kicking that they'd given Salem, the world would have at least a century before she even woke up, and sure, this meant that all kingdoms were now trying to expand into new settlements like crazy, but that didn't mean you wanted to rebuild a failed settlement. That was bad karma or something. The only reason the Kuroyuri Project was ever green-lit was because Ren and Nora lent their personas to support the project - as two of the heroes who marched on Salem's doorstep, they were recognized across all of Remnant. The real reason Kuroyuri was approved was because it's an unofficially sanctioned base of operations to hunt for the Spring Maiden.

Clearing what few Grimm were active after Salem's defeat was Nora's job as Head of Firepower and Defense, and hunting down bandits to try to find Raven Branwen was Ren's job as Head of Security. And both of them had gotten so good at their jobs that there wasn't anything left to do for the past two years, which is how their newborn daughter was conceived – or that's how Nora explained it earlier. Pyrrha Valkyrie Ren was back in Kuroyuri with a babysitter for the day.

"Pffft," Jaune cut into the silence shortly after. "I still can't believe that someone as stuck up as Raven Branwen has kept herself hidden for all these years."

"Yeah, well, she's not the only one," Blake called out, giving Jaune a flat look.

"I haven't been hidden!" Jaune protested with a grin. A chagrinned grin, but a grin.

"It's been a few years since any of us have seen you," Ren jumped in from Jaune's other side. Honestly, Sun hadn't seen Jaune in person since the last medal ceremony for saving the world, which was probably eight or nine years ago now.

For a moment, it looked like Jaune was going to get real defensive about being attacked from both sides, but he shrugged it off. It was all good-natured, he could tell. He probably didn't even disagree that it had been too long.

"I've been busy running a whole military base," Jaune let out, gesturing loosely to the giant boot-shaped island in Argus' harbor. "Argus is Mistral's fastest-growing city and has been expanding outwards rapidly; that keeps us busy. And then there was the process of legally transferring the base from Atlas to Argus control, which was a nightmare – I had to run for mayor and—"

"You ran for mayor?" Sun let out, beating everyone to the punch.

Jaune froze. It was the reaction of someone who was guilty of something and had just been caught red-handed, probably that he didn't want them to know he ran for mayor. The afternoon had just gotten weird.

"T-That's a long story," Jaune tried to dismiss. "Maybe some other time."

"Jaune," Nora's voice sounded off dangerously, as her hand reached around Ren to clamp down firmly on Jaune's shoulder. The poor guy went stiff as Nora tried to snap his collarbone with her grip.

"A-Actually it's not that long, I think I can tell it." Jaune corrected himself. "It's all Weiss' fault. She's the one that wanted Atlas to turn over the base here to Argus, but the mayor wouldn't agree to it for some reason. And since I'm famous for tagging along while Team RWBY kicked ass, Weiss made me announce my candidacy around the sole promise that I would accept the new Argus base."

Everyone stared blankly at him. No one really quite believed that Jaune Arc had ran for mayor. But they all would absolutely believe that Weiss Schnee would try to oust a mayor as a power play, if she really wanted to. What did Weiss care if Atlas gave away this base or not?

"Did you win?" Nora asked seriously.

"Nah," Jaune dismissed casually. His cheeks were still red out of embarrassment though, no matter how much he tried to hide them behind his pint glass. "Didn't have to, and I sure didn't want to be mayor. We just had to make it a credible threat so that the mayor would cave. And he did."

"You threatened a mayor?" Ren asked strangely.

"Weiss politically threatened a mayor," Jaune corrected. "It was in Argus' best interest anyways. Don't read too much into it."

"Don't read too much into Weiss really leaning into her role as the CEO of the SDC," Blake drawled. "Sure thing."

"Hey now, Weiss is nothing like her father," Jaune cut back aggressively. "Or, well, she's all the viciousness of Jacque Schnee but with all the morals of the Weiss we all know and love. Just because she's gotten good at her new job doesn't mean that she's any less the snowangel that we all know and trust."

Blake rolled her eyes at the word 'snowangel' and placated Jaune to show him there was nothing to her words. "I know. It's just fun to tease her about it sometimes."

"And she's not doing it alone, either," Jaune continued, defending Weiss more than was necessary. "She's got Winter there with her, so even if she did go to far, Winter would pull her back."

"Trust me, Blake and I know super well that Weiss is a lot different than her dad," Sun let out to help smooth things over. He wasn't making anything up, either; Weiss was insistent that she support all of her friends, and even after restructuring the SDC, she had plenty of lien to do it with. "I swear she offers to make Blake the head of a department like every other week."

A few mumbled agreements from Ren and Nora made it clear that this wasn't exclusive to them.

"Yeah, she's like that a lot," Jaune added on, making it the entire table that Weiss had try to set up with cushy jobs. It was hard to get mad at Weiss wanting to give them all way too much money, but it was still annoying. "I honestly think she might have pulled the stunt with the Argus base to try to buy it for herself and force me to work for her."

"I'm sorry, are we going to skip over the fact that we haven't talked to Jaune in years and yet apparently he and Weiss are going around toppling town governments?" Nora asked loudly.

"Hey, I'm still in our group texts!" Jaune protested lightly. "I haven't just dropped off the face of Remnant or anything…"

"You're not very active in them," Blake joined in. For a split moment, Jaune's eyes cut to her, taking note that she had joined Nora and Ren's side. He relaxed his expression instantly, but Sun had still seen that split second where Jaune looked like he was sizing up a fight.

"I still send memes in them occasionally," Jaune mumbled guiltily. That was both true and annoying. Everyone else used the group chats to keep up with each other and discuss life; Jaune and Yang cluttered that with just some of the stupidest things Sun had ever seen. That photo of Salem photoshopped to have just a massive ass with the caption "bout to plunge into that Pool of Darkness, wish me luck bois" still haunted him. "What can I say, Weiss and I are still good friends."

"That is my point!" Nora let out, slapping down on the table and frightening Jaune. "Why aren't we good friends?!"

"That's not what I meant, Nora," Jaune cut back. He sounded a little hurt by the accusation. "You know that."

"It's been years, Jaune," Nora pouted. "Maybe I've forgotten."

"Alright, that's enough, Nora," Ren cut in. "We didn't come here to make things worse."

One glance at Jaune showed that he had gotten a little defensive, despite his best efforts to let Nora's words roll off him. He tried to present himself as being relaxed, but his back was a little too stiff. He awkwardly fidgeted his hands, idly playing with the fourth finger on his left hand.

"Nora's fine," Jaune dismissed, trying to play it off like it didn't bother him. No one called him out on it, but Sun did feel a little bad for the guy. He probably did have a reason that he hadn't visited his old team, or just a million little reasons, and Jaune did have a point in that it wasn't like they couldn't contact him. The effort had just fallen off on both sides, yet they were all blaming him. "She's not wrong. It's been ages since I've seen you guys. I wish I could post leave for a weekend and come visit."

"You can't even leave for a weekend?" Blake asked, surprised. "Don't you have other huntsmen working for you?"

"Oh I do. That's the reason I can't leave. The moment I turn my back, they'll burn the base down," Jaune let out with a laugh. "Actually, you guys remember Team CRDL, right?"

"WHAT?!" Nora's hands slammed down on the table as she jumped out of her seat.

Jaune just grinned at her.

"You hired your old bullies to work for you?" Blake asked tentatively, not caring in the slightest to sugarcoat things.

"My man!" Sun let out, reaching across the table to offer Jaune a fist bump. Slightly confused as to why, Jaune accepted it. "What a power move!"

Jaune rolled his eyes once he realized Sun's joke. "They're not terrible guys anymore. Pretty decent, actually; Beacon burning to the ground around them kinda sobered them up."

Blake's ear twitched slightly. Sun knew that she had probably ranted to him about this Team CRDL at some point in their past, but he didn't feel exactly confident in his ability to recall details – because he probably wasn't really listening at the time – so he hoped that this topic would die down soon. That ear twitch probably meant something, though.

"I mean it, they're fine now," Jaune doubled down while looking directly at Blake. Sun hadn't been the only one to catch that ear twitch. "I certainly give them enough grief to make up for it, though. No way in hell I'm trusting them to run an entire military base for even a day."

Nora grumbled something about Jaune and excuses, but no one really disbelieved Jaune when he said that CRDL couldn't do Jaune's job. In the brief silence that followed, the waitress that had been standing off in the distance awkwardly finally made her way over.

"Is everybody doing alright over here?" a young blonde woman in her early twenties asked the group. Sun knew he was getting old because this woman was probably 22 and she looked like a kid to him.

"Oh, we're fine, Rebecca," Jaune answered casually, greeting the woman with a laidback smile. His eyes shifted over to Nora. "Some of us are a little excitable. I promise we'll tone down on destroying your tables."

Nora's jaw dropped indignantly, earning chuckles from the rest of the table.

Incredibly, this waitress took Jaune at face value and cut her eyes at Nora too. There was no way that this woman didn't recognize at least one of the members of the group as famous huntsmen and huntresses – the only two more famous than them were Yang and Ruby, really – so she had to have known how dangerous it was to look at Nora as if she were a rowdy child.

"Well, if there's anything I can do for you guys, just let me know," the waitress responded politely, though the way she kept cutting her eyes at Nora undermined it.

"What just happened?" Sun asked, a goofy grin starting to take over his face as he decided whether laughing at the look on Nora's face was worth risking his life.

"Great service here, huh?" Jaune asked, pretending to be oblivious to the peril he was in. "I'm a regular, so the staff aren't all that starstruck by you guys. Rebecca is actually one of the sassiest people I've ever met. I always make sure to tip her extra because I know that, with that attitude, no one else will…"

Blake perked up; Sun could feel it in her body language as she shifted beside him. Nora had, too, locking eyes with Blake for a split-second. They both saw the opportunity to bring up what they'd come here for. Poor, poor Jaune.

"Rebecca, huh?" Blake asked, with just a hint of suggestiveness in her voice.

"She's cute," Nora added on, with zero subtlety. "Nice tits, too."

Jaune caught on immediately and gave Nora a flat look. "She's too young for me, Nora."

"Dude, that is the wrong attitude," Sun chimed in. "There really is no such thing as a hot chick that's too young for you – a-as long as it's legal!" Sun rushed to put that last part in as he could feel Blake's eyes burning into his side. He might be in hot water for saying it at all, but he was betting on his fiancé getting too distracted to remember to be mad at him.

"That's easy for you to say," Jaune dismissed, shooting Sun a look. "Not all of us have a fan club for our abs."

Heh. He'd forgot about that. Sun shrugged. That was a good point.

"Oh, please, like you would go home alone if you ever tried spending a night out," Nora drawled, waving off Jaune's words as just whining. "You're tall, not nearly as noodley as you used to be, run your own military base—"

"You ran for mayor," Sun chimed in.

"—You ran for mayor," Nora repeated to drive the point home, "and oh yeah, you're one of the most famous war heroes on Remnant!"

"You're exaggerating my contributions and you know it, Nora," Jaune responded a bit harshly. It felt like a bit of the air was sucked out of the room. They all remembered the day that Ruby had gone off on Jaune about this. The fact that he was bringing it up – and agreeing with Ruby's points? – made things tense. "I was just an Aura battery for you guys. The most helpful thing I did was not get in the way."

Sun's eyes met Ren's, the two men trying to figure out how they were supposed to respond to that. It was no secret that Jaune had never truly felt he'd belonged on the stage they'd all been elevated to, but they had all reassured him for years that he did. Hell, Sun kinda felt like a tag-along to Team RWBY's quest too, but it never bothered him the way that it obviously used to eat away at Jaune.

But only Ruby had ever told Jaune that he wasn't good enough, and she had done it in front of all of them; it had been the first and last time that Sun had ever seen Ruby try to hurt someone.

It worked, that was for certain. The fact that they hadn't really seen Jaune since spoke to that. It didn't matter that Ruby had been grieving the loss of her uncle at the time – Sun was in the camp that Ruby had gone too far.

The solution to this topic turned out to be avoiding it. They'd come out here – well, Sun and Ren had gotten dragged along – to address one problem with Jaune. No reason to get greedy and try to solve all of them.

"So?" Blake asked, challengingly. Jaune's eyes met hers and something unspoken passed between them. Jaune was a little surprised, which Blake pounced on. "The only people who know enough to not to be impressed by your fame are also the only people you're probably not going to try to hit on: us. All any girl you meet at a bar is going to know is that you are a world-famous badass Huntsman war hero."

"Trust me, dude, you have no idea just how awesome of a pick-up line that is!" Sun let out in an excited burst. "You're probably Remnant's hottest bachelor. Even mentioning how you marched on the Grimm Queen's fortress drops panties. Plural."

Everyone looked at Sun funny for a moment.

"Like, enough panties that you might start tripping over them."

"How would…" Ren started to ask, his eyes cautiously shifting from Sun over to his fiancée, before back to Sun. "…you know that?"

Sun coughed into his fist and made a point of taking a drink and not answering that. He wasn't stupid. He could feel Blake tense up next to him, but she and Yang had been dating back then, and a single war hero like Sun was entitled to putting as many notches in his bedpost as he felt like.

He didn't miss being single, and his current sex life was just as good as his previous one, but that didn't mean he regretted any of it. Sun's Vacuoan, after all; it's in his blood.

"Did you guys come all the way out to Argus just to try to get me laid or something?" Jaune asked with a laugh, providing Sun with a much-needed reprieve from being the center of attention.

"Ugh, if only it was that easy," Nora let out in a huff. From the look of surprise on Jaune's face, he hadn't expecting the answer to be yes. "You're just so gloomy sometimes. Honestly, I have half a mind to tie you to a bed and break the springs myself if it would snap you out of it."

Sun couldn't tell if Jaune knew that Nora was messing with him, which made it even funnier as both he and Blake tried to hide their smirks.

Jaune looked to Ren and silently pleaded for him to help.

"Don't look at me," Ren replied verbally. "I'm not going to do that for you."

Jaune let out a disgruntled sign and dropped his face into his hands. "I hate you all."

"Dude, it's been almost a decade since we beat Salem. Have you been with anyone in that whole time?"

"Yes, Sun, I actually have! Jeez," Jaune let out. Sun would have thought that Jaune was actually upset about being pressed like this if Jaune wasn't beginning to blush. Poor guy never grew out of some of that awkwardness.

"Really?" Ren asked, maybe not disbelieving Jaune, but very clearly being skeptical.

"Yes!"

"Well great!" Nora almost shouted. "Now that that part's over, we can figure out how to get you into an actual relationship!"

"Nora," Jaune whined, dropping his forehead into his hand. "I don't need your help finding a girlfriend," Jaune spoke slowly to emphasize how silly it was that he even had to say that. They were 31 and this conversation could have been had when they were 17.

"Why not?" she challenged right back in his face. "You're clearly not finding one on your own."

That was a little more direct and harsher than Sun had thought they were going to be, but he trusted that Nora knew what she was doing. Or, uh, that Jaune was just used to Nora being Nora and would let that slide.

Jaune looked to be struggling to come up with a good way to get out of the spotlight, as the poor guy's face was growing slightly redder by the second. And that wasn't even going to be the worst of it, though Jaune didn't know that yet. "I don't want you guys to feel like you have to try to find someone for me. I appreciate the gesture, guys, really, but—"

"What if we already have someone in mind?" Blake cut him off.

Jaune stopped mid-sentence and stared at her for a few moments as he finally realized the real reason that we'd all made the trip out here. He blinked blankly at Blake a few times to make sure he wasn't hallucinating and glanced around at the rest of them to confirm that, yes, they really did fly all the way out there to talk Jaune into a blind date.

"I don't even know why I'm surprised," Jaune let out, reaching out to grab his drink before slumping back into his chair. Despite himself, a tiny smile formed on Jaune's face. He clearly missed this team dynamic, even if it was designed to humiliate him at the moment. "Okay, fine, go ahead; I'll hear you out. Who do you have in mind?"

Jaune took a sip as soon as he finished speaking, using the mug to hide his red face a little bit.

"Yang."

Beer spilt onto Jaune's shirt as he choked on his drink.

"Oh, yeah, sure," Jaune drawled, still sputtering from his spit-take, "that won't be setting me up for failure or anything."

"Have a little faith in yourself," Sun chimed in.

"I will have an appropriate amount of faith in myself, thank you," Jaune sassed back, earning a pronounced eye-roll from Nora for his dramatics. "I was prepared for you to say something crazy that at least made a little sense, like Weiss. At least we're close, even if she's too focused on her work. Where the hell did you get the idea to say Yang?"

"Hey, it could work!" Nora protested.

"Nora, Yang is the single biggest celebrity on Remnant," Jaune countered. Which was true. Ever since Ruby went public with the whole Salem story, they had needed to really capture the public eye, and Yang was born for that sort of spotlight. Ruby was the face of the team that beat Salem, but Yang was the personality that stuck out. Now, she ran around Remnant doing all sorts of advertising gigs, talk shows, interviews, promotions, you name it. Hell, when the kingdoms agreed that they needed to encourage more babies being born, Yang made some serious lien being the face of a 'go have more sex' campaign – something Sun thought Yang would have done for free. Allegedly, she had posed mostly nude in a spread for that campaign, but Sun would never admit to having seen those pictures. Not that he needed to. "She gets paid to travel around Remnant and be popular. Yang has been voted Remnant's hottest Huntress five years running now!"

And it would be eight years running if Weiss hadn't campaigned so hard for Winter that one year. Yang was still a little pissed about that.

Sun elbowed Blake in the side playfully, earning a low growl from his fiancée. The highest that she had ever peaked at was #2 – to Yang – and that had mostly been because the tabloids found out that Yang and Blake were a couple at the time. If a busty blonde badass bad girl Huntress captivated the minds of Remnant's male population, then a busty blonde badass bad-girl Huntresses having sex with another badass Huntress who was also a catgirl blew those minds.

"If Yang wants a good time, she can go anywhere and get anything she wants. How am I supposed to compete with that, Nora?"

"…you look like Tai. Maybe she has a daddy kink?" Nora answered with a shrug. She cut her eyes over to her own husband. "I know I do."

Sun tried to wipe that image from his mind, but was too slow.

"What the fuck, Nora?" Jaune let out in an exasperated huff. He seemed to be in a similar state as Sun. "I'm serious, how the hell do you think this will go?"

"Jaune," Blake called out forcefully, getting tired of this dragging on. She had to repeat his name even more forcefully before he finally looked up at her with a serious expression. "It could work."

Jaune hitched, and a little bit of uncertainty flashed on his face. If anyone here knew Yang, it would be Blake.

"Isn't she your ex?" Jaune asked Blake sincerely, not just trying to change topics. There was a slight edge to Jaune's voice, but that was just him being defensive about this whole thing.

"I-I mean, technically, yes," Blake answered a little bit awkwardly. Her cheeks actually began to heat up a little, and Sun grinned at that. "Yang and I broke up because we wanted different things. I wanted to slow down and avoid the spotlight, and Yang… wanted the opposite. That was the whole reason. We didn't stop dating as much as we downgraded to…"

"Partners with benefits?" Nora asked suggestively, waggling an eyebrow at Blake.

The look on Jaune's face was priceless.

"Y-Yeah," Blake mumbled. She was doing her best to own it and not get embarrassed, but Nora was making that hard. "Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. We've done that off and on for a few years now."

Sun could see the gears turn in Jaune's head as he thought about that, before looking to Sun in confusion. Sun and Blake had been engaged for half a year now and dated for over one before that.

Sun gave Jaune a slow, subtle nod to let him know what was up. He topped it off with a wink for good measure.

Jaune's mouth went agape.

"I… I feel like I need to shake your hand, Sun," was all Jaune could find the words to say.

"S-So yeah," Blake coughed to get their attention. She was pretty red in the face by this point. "Yang and I are still close—"

Nora sniggered, which made Blake hitch as she cut her eyes at her.

"—enough for me to know that this could work."

Oh, right, they had been talking about setting Yang and Jaune up. Sun had gotten distracted with a few memories there for a second. Whipped cream, collars, blonde hair, and kitty ears all flashed in Sun's mind. Gods, as much as Sun hoped that this whole plan to set Jaune and Yang up would make them happy, he was really going to miss threesomes with objectively Remnant's two hottest Huntresses. He knew that Blake had warned him that once they were officially married the threesomes would stop permanently – and what the hell kind of incentive to get married was that? – but still he felt a little regret over ending it before it was absolutely required.

Oh well. Jaune was going to owe him big time for this.

Jaune sat there, struggling to form words for a few moments as his mind was being pulled in so many different directions right now. "How would… that even work?"

"Yang is…" Blake took her time with her words, speaking carefully. "…having a change of priorities. She's done the 'travel the world' thing for years now. It finally hit her that she's in her thirties now and she doesn't have much to show for it."

Jaune wasn't stupid. "Yang is ready to settle down?"

Blake nodded. "Honestly, if this had happened a few years sooner, I'd be wearing a different ring…"

"Hey!" Sun protested jokingly. He knew Blake didn't mean anything by it, mostly because that was his joke she just stole.

"So Yang is ready to retire from excitement and have a boring life, so you naturally chose me?" Jaune asked sarcastically, with a smile returning to his face.

Nora giggled ominously, which did not go unnoticed by Jaune. He looked around for an explanation, settling on staring down Blake with a little bit of concern showing.

"That's not exactly why we chose you. You two do have history together as comrades, we already mentioned that you have the same taste in stupid memes, and it's not like you guys don't get along. Those are good places to start too."

"But?"

"But…" Blake trailed off. "Yang…"

"She's baby crazy," Nora cut in, unable to wait any longer.

Jaune looked at Nora like she grew a third eye. It wasn't until he noticed that Blake wasn't correcting her that his expression changed to one of shock.

"Yang?" he asked incredulously. "…wants kids?"

"Is that so crazy?" Ren asked, lending his whole 'voice of reason' thing to the situation. "Nora and I are trying for our second one now. Sun and Blake have started talking about it too."

Jaune's eyes whipped to Sun, more surprised than anything.

"Hey, we're planning on waiting till after the wedding, but…" he shrugged. If that motivated his fiancée to up their weekly quota, he wasn't going to say anything. "If an accident happens before then, we're not going to complain."

"All Yang sees are her closest friends settling down and trying to have families, while she's alone on the road," Ren finished his thought.

"Plus, she had a bit of a crisis about it," Blake added on coyly. "She told me that she can't ever truly outdo her mother until she has a kid of her own."

"Yang wants to be a mom just to spite her mother?" Jaune asked, before quickly changing his tune. "Actually, that makes sense. I'm with her on that one. Anything to spite that bitch is a good idea in my book."

Jaune got a couple of funny looks at that – not because he didn't like Raven, because they all didn't. It was just odd how strongly he apparently felt about the issue.

And he doubled down on it.

"I do admire how Yang handled the situation with her mother, though."

That got even more confusion from the group, because—

"Yang put a personal bounty out on her mother," Blake cut in. "She says that she'll keep it up until someone finally finds what rock Raven's hiding under."

"Good," Jaune spat out, before finally backing down under the weird looks he was getting. "Sorry. Just thinking about that woman abandoning Yang as a child infuriates me."

Jaune idly played with that ring finger again, which only Sun really noticed, and even then only because Sun had been playing with the ring on his own finger at the same time. It struck Sun odd that Jaune did the same thing, but didn't have a ring.

"That's part of why we think you two could work. You getting so worked up over that tells me you'd be a pretty good father," Ren jumped in. As the only father in the group – and even then, only a father of a year so far – Ren's recommendation carried the most weight. "That, and we've seen you with your nephew. You're a natural with kids in the way that all future great dads are."

"I'm not sure that's a complement…?"

"It is," Blake jumped in reassuringly, noticing that Jaune was starting to push back just a little.

"You've always wanted to protect us because we're your family," Nora added on in a much more serious tone than Sun was aware she could talk with. "You can't tell me that you wouldn't be awesome with your own family now."

"I…" Jaune couldn't find the words to say. He was awkward, sure, but there was something else in his eyes that Sun couldn't quite place. This was a bit more than just him being put on the spot.

Jaune shifted around in his seat a little, before picking up his glass to take a drink. As his fingers curled around the handle, Sun's eyes went wide.

There was a tan line on Jaune's ring finger where he had been playing with a non-existent ring. As if, until recently, he had a ring there.

Suddenly, that look in Jaune's eye made sense: panic. Fear, even.

"We're not going to force you into it or anything," Sun reassured, trying to gauge where Jaune's head was at with this new information. Had Jaune been married and divorced without them knowing? If that was true, Sun could understand Jaune's hesitance to open up or look for something new. He felt bad that they were doing this to Jaune now.

"I mean, if you guys really think it will work, I can at least try," Jaune let out, giving in to the pressure. Sun wasn't convinced from the way Jaune said it that his heart would really be in it, though. It sounded like he was just getting them off his back, but Sun guessed that the guy deserved that, so he kept his mouth shut. He was confused. "Funny enough, Yang's actually going to be here Monday. I hired her to put my men through some drills and test our defenses. If you think you can somehow convince her to go out with me while she's here, then go for it."

Jaune grinned a little bit, thinking that he had them beat with how short of a timeline they had. Once again, Nora's snigger began to tip him off that something was up.

"…that's the thing…"

"What's the thing, Blake?"

"We actually talked with Yang about this first," Blake answered a little awkwardly, "and let's just say that we came out here to warn you ahead of time."

"Warn me?" Jaune's voice hitched.

"Does the term 'high impact sexual violence' mean anything to you?" Nora asked, leering at him. "Because it's about to."

"I'm sorry, I swear that I heard that wrong."

"Yang is already on board with the idea," Sun warned Jaune. "We figured that you needed to know that ahead of time. I don't think that she's planning to be subtle."

"Pffft, more like she might try to impregnate herself on the first date," Nora let out with a childish giggle. She was loving this. "Before dinner."

"Nora."

Jaune shook his head in disbelief, not really sure what to make of any of that. He was pretty sure that Nora was kidding.

At least, until he made eye contact with Blake, who shrugged awkwardly. "She really is baby crazy, Jaune."

Jaune stared at her blankly.

"You really think that Yang is going to try to get me to knock her up so that she can trap me in a family…?"

"No, she wouldn't do anything so manipulative. She's not her mother," Blake countered.

"I never would have implied that," Jaune answered firmly.

"This is still Yang were talking about. She's not going to just settle right into popping out kids immediately. There would still be time to date and mess around. It's just…" Blake paused for a moment, making sure she had the right thing to say. A little bit of color returned to her cheeks. "Yang's a celebrity. We're all celebrities. That makes dating hard, and Yang has it made up in her mind that of her limited dating pool, you're the first choice, and she's not planning on letting that slip away. And trust me, Yang knows how to make you beg for more."

Again, the look on Jaune's face was priceless. He looked over to Sun for a second opinion.

The monkey Faunus just winked at Jaune again.

Jaune held his temple in his hands, trying to process what was going on. "You know, maybe this is why I don't come visit."

Jaune hated mornings. Nothing good ever happened in the morning. No one ever went out to get drinks in the morning, they never got laid in the morning – or at least he didn't – and they never got to take a nap in the morning. Those were three of Jaune's favorite things and they didn't happen in the morning, not to mention that you're just so tired in the morning. He'd have thought that after years of being a Huntsman, he'd have gotten over feeling lousy if he got up before 9 am, but nope. Idly, Jaune wondered if their attack on Salem would have failed if they hadn't attacked in the afternoon. He bet it would have.

And it didn't help that everyone else didn't seem to be suffering as much as he was. Everyone he passed on his walk to his office were all cheery, making sure to greet him with "Morning sir!" or "Good morning, boss!" It was infuriating. It was not a good morning; there was no such thing as a good morning. All these military types that he associated with were used to being up and working far earlier than 8 am – sorry, you have to say 0800 or they 'didn't understand' what you meant, the jackasses. The only thing that kept the people he passed by from laughing at how dead to the world Jaune looked was that he would personally oversee their training that day if he caught them.

Whatever, he made it to his office. His automatic coffee machine was pouring his drink as he walked in. It was on a timer, had its own reserves of ground coffee that would last for a week, and ran on Wi-Fi so that whenever Jaune's scroll came within 50 feet for the first time each day, it began pouring his coffee. The only thing it couldn't do was saturate the drink with sugar, which was the only way Jaune could force himself to drink the stuff. Jaune hated coffee, but gods did he need the energy boost it gave him.

Jaune had barely made it into his chair when his office door opened.

"So, how'd your weekend go?" Cardin Winchester asked, pretending like he had no clue what Jaune had to deal with that Saturday.

"It was fine," Jaune mumbled, staring at the coffee in his hands and wondering if it was worth the hit to his Aura to drink the stuff while it was still nearly boiling.

"Everything go well with your old teammates?" Cardin asked, with a layer of seriousness hiding underneath that stupid chipper tone he put on because he knew how much Jaune hated being awake this early. "Anything we need to worry about?"

"Mmmm," Jaune hummed noncommittally as he scalded the inside of his mouth. Aura flooded in to relieve the pain. He did this every morning, and part of himself wondering if the pain helped wake him up. The other part just wondered why he didn't set his coffee machine to make the drink earlier so it could cool before he got there. "I'm not awake enough for this yet. Give me a status update first, then I'll tell you how it went."

Cardin rolled his eyes but complied. This was pretty routine, honestly. He looked down at the report he had printed out earlier and began to summarize it.

"Dust stores look fine. As far as funding goes, we're still under the budget, despite Sky's… incident last week."

"Fucking dumbass," Jaune growled under his breath. "How do you forget to close the door to the industrial-sized freezer in the barracks' kitchen? It weighs like ten pounds."

"I still want to know how long he's been stealing snacks like that," Cardin added on. "We should make a rule about that."

"Already working on it," Jaune replied, shaking his mouse to knock his computer screen out of screensaver mode. Jaune never deleted a browser or window until he was ready to never see it ever again, so after a few seconds he found the draft of the order he'd been working on. "I think I'll just keep it simple. Anyone caught stealing food has to fight me."

Cardin shrugged. He'd only been on the receiving end of that once, but that was enough. Jaune fought dirty as hell.

"As far as personnel, it looks like you were right: no one requested any of their leave for this week," Cardin continued.

"Of course not," Jaune commented, enjoying his vindication for that prediction. "We run a base full of soldiers, and the hottest woman on Remnant is coming to visit."

"If a nice pair of tits is all it takes to motivate the men to come to work, maybe we should invest in more…"

"Are you suggesting we hire more female combat instructors, or some strippers?" Jaune asked, eyeing Cardin suspiciously. "And before you answer that, I'll remind you that you're married."

"…both?"

"Just finish the report," Jaune grumbled, diving back into his coffee.

"As of five minutes ago, Xiao Long is on schedule to land in the airfield at 0830."

"What was that?" Jaune asked, shooting Cardin a glare.

Cardin sighed, annoyed. "8:30 am."

"Hmmm?"

"8:30 am, sir," Cardin elaborated, sounding like a teenager who was being harassed by their father to be respectful. "Asshole."

"Good enough," Jaune smirked, feeling just enough coffee in his system to be able to smirk up at Cardin.

"Her Bullhead will land at 8:30, and it looks like you're already scheduled to give an all-hands address at 9 am?" Cardin's voice change from declarative to imperative as he read the schedule.

"Yeah, that was me," Jaune confirmed. "I'm planning on introducing Yang to the guys. Figure I'll let her spar someone in front of them to show them – for their sake – that she shouldn't be messed with."

"I feel bad for the bastard who gets called up for that."

Jaune made a show of drinking from his mug, despite it being empty. Cardin caught on quickly.

"What did I do wrong?"

"Yang requested you."

"Fuck."

"Indeed," Jaune said absentmindedly. "Anything else on the report?"

"Nothing worth noting," Cardin responded, flipping over the sheet just in case. "So, how'd the weekend go?"

"Walk with me," Jaune replied instead, rising from his chair and motioning for Cardin to follow him out the door. It was close enough to time for Yang's bullhead to land, so they were heading to the airstrip. "It was strange."

Cardin looked at Jaune funny at that single descriptor.

"I enjoyed it a lot. Still miss those guys. Ren and Nora have a kid now," Jaune started, before realizing that Cardin didn't really care about those details. "They were obviously a little upset that they hadn't seen me in years."

"What'd you tell them?" Cardin asked gravely.

"Nothing," Jaune replied easily, enjoying the confusion on Cardin's face. "I didn't have to come up with an excuse. They were after something else."

Cardin's head whipped out across the airfield, towards the dead center of the military complex, to the maximum-security section. "They know about the…?"

"No, they don't know about Creation, not that it would concern me too much if they found out. I trust they could be convinced not to tell Oz," Jaune reassured Cardin, who wasn't too convinced about that last point. Jaune might not have been able to convince them, but Weiss sure as hell would if he failed.

"What, then?"

"They… are trying to set me up on a date," Jaune explained with a silly grin. "Yeah, I know, and we were all so worried when they said they were coming to visit."

"Wow," Cardin let out with a laugh. "That's just funny. They have no idea, do they?"

"Nope. And they're not any closer than they were," Jaune confirmed. "That's not even the best part."

"What is it?"

"According to Blake and Nora, Yang has her eye on me. They came to warn me that Yang might make it her mission while she's here to bang me." Well, they had said that Yang was looking to settle down, but they very heavily implied that she was prepared to bang me into submission.

"Bullshit."

"That's what I said," Jaune laughed. "They were adamant about it. I told them that I would do my due diligence and take Yang out to dinner – which I would have done anyway as professional courtesy for coming here and kicking your asses."

Off in the distance, a blip appeared on the horizon, that slowly grew into the shape of a Bullhead.

"You know this doesn't end well for you, right?" Cardin asked.

"I'm sure Nora was exaggerating about just how forceful Yang's gonna be." Or just how desperate she really is, for that matter. "I'll be fine. We'll go to dinner, and after spending an hour with me, she realize that she's the least turned-on she's ever been in her life, and I'll escape anything awkward happening."

"Uh huh."

The Bullhead flew closer. Jaune didn't appreciate the lack of confidence from his second-in-command.

"I'm going to go do anything else but be here when she lands," Cardin announced, picking up his mace and walking off.

"Yeah, you do that," Jaune called back, rolling his eyes. He'd thought about calling Cardin a coward for avoiding Yang like this, but Jaune had to admit that there was no flaw in Cardin's logic.

The Bullhead took another minute to land, and when it did, Yang strutted out the back like she owned the place, rocking her own personal brand of aviators.

Immediately, Jaune noticed something was up. Yang looked fantastic, far more so than anyone coming to be a combat consultant would. Instead of her normal long-tailed combat jacket, she wore a shorter black leather jacket that looked like it wasn't big enough to even be zipped up. That looked like the point, because the low-cropped orange tee with her logo on it that Yang wore was both tight-fitting and also made her tits look even larger than usual. I swear, has Yang ever heard of a sports' bra? Below that – and it was harder than Jaune would have liked to admit to move his eyes any further down – Yang wasn't wearing combat pants like when he'd last seen her, but had gone back to the short-shorts she wore at Beacon. That left a lot of skin exposed, starting with the lower 60% of her thighs and not stopping till you got to the combat boots, which went up just past her ankles. And from the labels he recognized, everything Yang was wearing was top of the line designer fashion for Huntresses, and probably cost as much as his whole wardrobe.

And she was grinning at him as she watched him look her up and down.

"Eh, I've seen better," Jaune called out antagonistically, knowing that trying to deny that he was looking was stupid.

"I seriously doubt that," Yang let back, still grinning, as she stopped a few feet in front of him. She looked him up and down deliberately, making no attempt to hide her returning the favor. Jaune wore a white Atlas officer's coat – though since Argus' base wasn't under Atlas control, that was for style more than anything. He left it unbuttoned, allowing it to partially conceal Crocea Mors at his waist. Beneath that, he wore a tight blue muscle shirt that matched his eyes, with a V-neck just deep enough to let Jaune's chest breath – and he caught Yang's eyes linger there approvingly. That tucked into black combat pants which in turn were tucked into combat boots like Yang wore, except probably half as expensive. All told, he looked pretty good, though he wasn't the one to have come up with the outfit. "Not bad, for a noodle. Just don't throw up on my shoes."

"Ha. Ha," Jaune drawled. They remained in a silent stand-off as they stared each other down, with Yang sporting a smile that made Jaune just a little nervous as she watched him from just over the rim of her aviators. She looked like a cat watching a mouse play, just waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Blake… may not have been wrong.

After a few seconds, they each laughed off their silly fake standoff and embraced, with Yang making no effort to angle in from the side and instead pushing her chest right up against his.

"How've you been?" Jaune asked while they hugged.

"Save the pillow talk for later," Yang teased, earning an eye-roll from Jaune.

"Fine," Jaune huffed. "We'll catch up over dinner tonight. Sound good?"

Jaune felt something weird on the side of his neck. Something hot and wet, but that was all he could tell before a shiver worked its way down his spine. Honestly, his first instinct was wondering if he'd been shot and that was blood trickling down.

"Sounds delightful," Yang purred playfully in his ear, before abruptly pulling away from the hug. "Are those the boys I get to play with?" she asked, motioning behind her to where some of the men had begun to gather for the all-hands meeting.

"Uh… yeah, that's them."

"Well let's go," Yang said, with a playful cadence in her voice that made Jaune uneasy. She took off walking ahead of him, and Jaune could have sworn that she was trying to dislocate her hip with how much her ass swayed in front of him. She must have known he was looking because she laughed at his reaction.

Jaune brought his hand up to his neck, wiping away the moisture and finding that it wasn't blood. Did she… lick him? Jaune had been licked by a woman before, sure, but he hadn't been expecting it while standing in an airfield. Nor while clothed, for that matter.

Gods above, this was going to be a long day, wasn't it?

Yes, Jaune, yes it is. And the day after will be longer.

I don't plan on writing ANs much for this story, but I'll put one here just to summarize the background info:

The time skip is around 12 years ahead of where we are in the show, as of V7. That makes most the cast 31, Ruby 29, and Oscar 27, give or take a matter of months. In this story, Salem wasn't killed, but they got as close as they could. The world now knows about the Queen of the Grimm, and who it was who kicked her ass. It will take Salem decades, if not a century, to get close to her previous strength. In the meantime, the world is taking advantage of almost no Grimm threat. Huntsman are less needed as warriors and almost needed more as celebrities to inspire the repopulation efforts.

Some of the main cast, obviously, are better at being celebrities, and some of that main cast have fallen away from everyone else. This story is about the latter, and more specifically, why.

Oh, and there will be a companion scene that goes up on my other account at some point... :D