Chapter 123: Destination

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Destination

"I was so worried I couldn't stand it, but now I think I'll have a leg up on the—"

"Mom already made that joke," I said with a smile, shaking my head as if in disappointment. In the end, I'd left my mother and grandmother to sort things out alone and I hadn't wanted to be the third wheel to Ren and Nora, so I'd made my way up to Onyx's room and fixed his leg. The older Hunter was standing and stretching, rolling his new leg in small circles before balancing on it.

"Aww," Onyx groaned, making me chuckle as I looked around his hospital room. In most ways, it was pretty much the same as everyone else's, but there was a marked difference between his, Ren's, and my mother's. Unlike the latter two, whose rooms had been barren, the table beside Onyx's bed was stacked high with flowers and candy and colorfully, if crudely, drawn get-well-soon cards. Ren didn't have any family to speak of besides Nora, who'd pretty much been stuck to his hip during his entire stay thus far, but as for Mom…well, I suppose it was to be expected that she wouldn't get anything. I'd known I'd be able to heal her eventually and had focused entirely on that, but my sisters…

Well, like I said. It was to be expected.

"Did your daughter make those?" I asked, nodding my head at the table.

"Hm?" Onyx asked, lifting an eyebrow as he followed my gaze. "Ah, yeah. She comes by every day, after school lets out. With any luck, I'll be able to surprise her today and pick her up instead."

"There shouldn't be any problems checking out," I said. "The lady at the front desk knows what to expect from me, so you'll probably just accept it if you say you're good to go—I mean, your leg is right there. Might be some paperwork to fill out, but nothing that should take you too long, I don't think. School doesn't let out for about five hours yet and I can't imagine anyone inflicting that on someone fresh out of the hospital."

"You'd be surprised," Onyx assured me. "Though it really depends more on how you got into the hospital. There was this thing up in Atlas that I'd tell you about, except I'm not allowed to tell you about it."

I chuckled at that and my smile widened.

"Thanks for the heads up before," I told him, inclining my head. "It turns out I'll be travelling some after all."

"Ah," Onyx's voice fell and he paused in changing into the clothes he'd been keeping in a bag in the corner. After a moment, his desire to be out of a hospital gown seemed to overcome everything else and he switched into comfortable looking black pants and a floral print T-shirt that made me suspect his daughter's involvement. When he finished, he cracked his neck and looked at me over his shoulder. "Where to?"

"Mistral," I said. "To my Grandmother's."

"Ah," He said again, face scrunching up in thought. "Yeah, I vaguely remember hearing that your mother was related to the Big Bad Wolf. Didn't seem much like the type of thing she'd want anyone asking about, so I never did."

"Probably for the best," I nodded. "My family is pretty dysfunctional."

"Plenty of that with Hunters," He shrugged.

"Mm."

"You got any plans for what you're gone do over there?" He asked. "I only ever spent a little while in Mistral, but while it's a creepy place in a lot of ways, it's easy to have a good time there, too. I guess that's what you get when your run by…"

He gestured vaguely.

"Yeah," I agreed. "And sort of. I have some ideas, but most of them are works in progress. A lot of unexpected things have been happening lately and it's kind of hard to plan things out the way I'd want to, but I've been talking with my family and friends a lot about it. Whatever happens, I'll work something out."

"Well, with skills like yours, you shouldn't have any problems getting by," Onyx laughed a bit and stretched again, probably glad to be out of bed. "With your skill at healing alone, you could probably set up shop and let the money roll in. And I know you can Hunt pretty goddamn well, too. Your grandmother might have to smooth a few things over, but you could do just about anything you wanted, once you had a little time to set everything up."

I hummed quietly, the sound acknowledging.

"You want me to help you check out?" I asked.

"Nah, you don't need to bother," Onyx shook his head. "I'm sure you've got a lot of things you'd rather be doing than helping me with paperwork."

"Not really," I said. "I've just about run out of things to do but I need to wait until Mom's done. Might as well help out a friend, right?"

Onyx snorted at that, eyeing me for a moment.

"Yeah, I suppose that would be an issue for you," He said. "If you become a healer fulltime, you'll probably spend a lot of your career being bored. I guess there's nothing worth watching on TV this time of day either, huh?"

I shifted my attention away from the boring news broadcast I'd been only distantly been paying attention to in order to quickly scan the other frequencies, checking. Most children were in school and most adults at work, so a lot of channels weren't airing anything of value. There were a few interesting videos that people in houses near the hospital were streaming, but even then, I wasn't all that interested.

"Not really," I said before tilting my head as I felt the door to my mother's room open. "Although it seems Mom and Grandma are done talking. I can still stay if you—"

"Go," He rolled his eyes. "Like I said, don't worry about it. I've been getting buried up to my ears in paperwork since the day I entered Beacon; I'll be fine."

"Pretty sure that if that's true, it means you're doing something wrong," I said, but rose obediently. "But if you say so. Take care, Onyx. Hopefully, we'll see each other again someday."

"Hopefully," He agreed, turning to face me fully. "But really, Jaune…you take care of yourself, okay? I owe you one for the leg, so if anything happens…"

"I'll keep that in mind," I promised. "If you or your daughter ever needs help, you know who to call, too. I'll try to remember you even when I'm ludicrously rich and famous."

He laughed again but extended a hand for me to shake, which I did. Then I left and ambled on down to my mother, to save her a trip up the stairs.

"Mom," I greeted as she turned the corner that led to the stairwell.

"Jaune," She blinked once but recovered quickly. "I didn't keep you waiting too long, did I?"

"You didn't keep me waiting at all," I answered. "I was just talking to Onyx upstairs, but I sensed you coming and headed down. You and Grandmother settle things?"

She sighed slightly, looking over her shoulder.

"More or less," She said. "Though saying we settled things might be a bit of an exaggeration. I'm fairly sure everything was decided long before we started talking. Would I be correct in assuming you already know everything?"

I made my smile demure at her words.

"Well, saying I know everything might be a bit presumptuous," I mused. "But…"

She snorted at that and rolled her eyes.

"Saves me from having to explain everything, at least," She said. "When I first woke up, I figured…"

"I know," I replied. "That's why you called Grandmother, right?"

"Yes, I suppose it was," She sighed deeply. "But…going back to Mistral after all these years…."

She shook her head.

"It can't be helped," She muttered under her breath. "But are you okay with it, Jaune?"

"Its fine," I assured her. "Location isn't really an issue for me, given everything, and it's not like I couldn't just swim back to Vale if I needed to. But really, Mistral's probably the best place to be now, anyway. You, Grandmother, Violet, Indigo, Olivia…I even made some friends last time I was there, who I can go and catch up with."

She reached up to bat me on the head.

"I'm glad to hear that, at least," She said, ruffling my hair slightly. "Did anything important happen while I was in bed?"

"Not too much," I said, lying right to her face. Plenty had happened, but most of it wasn't stuff she'd benefit from knowing. "We—the girls and I, I mean—had a Hunter's funeral for dad. I figured you and I could have one of our own once you were okay, but we were playing around and it seemed like a good time for it. We didn't quite scour the city to the bedrock, but we gave it a pretty good shot. Inside Naraka, of course. Beyond that, though…"

I shrugged.

"I was kind of focused on practicing my healing, though," I continued. "I told the others about what I've been doing the last few months and then threw myself back into my training until I got results. I talked to Grandmother and Ozpin a few times about the Mistral stuff, but other than that, I was busy working on my healing."

Her smile turned a bit sad at that.

"Thank you for all the hard work," She told me, patting my head again. "Sorry I made you go through all the trouble."

"It wasn't any trouble at all," I shook my heads at once. "And besides, with this power, I'll be able to help a lot of people. Everything I had to go through to get it is worth it because of that."

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"Yeah," Her smile became at once wider and sadder. "I figured you'd say that."

She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.

"We never really got to talk about it, did we?" She asked at last. "Your father, I mean. I—"

"It's okay," I said gently. "I spoke to lot of people about it and…more than that, I was the one he spoke to last. I'm mad about what happened and sad and I miss him, but no matter what happens, I'll keep fighting to protect people, just like he did. So…you don't have to worry about me, Mom. Even in just this last week, I've gotten stronger. I'll be okay."

"Jaune," She whispered, hugging me tightly. "I…already know all of that, but…"

This time, I was the one to put a hand on her head.

"Yeah," I smiled softly. "I know. But we have time, so you don't have to force yourself to talk about it, alright?"

She blinked away several tears and nodded quickly.

"Yeah," She said. "Alright."

Then, taking another deep breath, she stood up straight.

"We have to get ready to leave soon," She stated, probably more to herself than anything. "We'll have to make arrangements for the house, the mail…Ozpin already knows, but I'll need to—"

"No need," I shook my head. "Grandmother and I already handled all of that."

She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose, annoyed at herself.

"Right," She nodded. "Of course you'd have thought about that. Everything's done then?"

"We can leave whenever you're ready," I confirmed. "Or we can stay a while longer, if you'd prefer."

"We'll leave soon, then," She muttered distractedly, as if making notes in her head. She turned her head slightly to stare out the window with a slight frown, mulling something over and then nodding to herself. "Yes, that's probably for the best. We'll make the final arrangements tonight then, after I talk to a few people."

"Okay," I accepted. "Shall we check out, then?"

"Yes," She whispered, tone still absentminded until she paused and looked at me again. "You said you'd become even stronger this last week?"

"Yeah," I said, tilting my head slightly. "Quite a bit stronger, in fact."

"Then without a doubt, you must be quite a bit stronger than me now," She mused and then stood on her tiptoes to kiss my forehead. "You really did grow up fast, didn't you? Jaune…."

Lunch and dinner that night were pleasant affairs, at least for me. My sisters barely spoke to my mother and she didn't say much to them either, though she obviously wanted to, but I spoke to everyone over the course of the meal. We had a large meal that night to say our goodbyes and made arrangements to stay in touch and meet each other later. As Hunters, they were all used to separating for vast lengths of times, and so didn't make a big fuss about it. It wasn't quite a cold or casual occasion, because they also realized that anything could happen, but…well, they didn't show it in big ways. We were all together, having fun, and that was enough.

And the next morning, we left. Not all of us, of course; most of my sisters would stay for a few more days until arrangements could be made to travel back to Atlas and Vacuo—but since we'd been planning this out for several days already, the trip back to Mistral was easy to set up. We left in the same ship my grandmother had arrived in and were in the air by the time the sun started rising.

Whatever my grandmother claimed, I knew it wasn't a coincidence that the airship was just large enough to fit all of us and so did my mother, but neither of us mentioned it. Violet took up watch near the front, her body now almost entirely back to normal, while Olivia seated herself in the middle with her power slowly unfurling from her skin. She wasn't using it to do anything yet, but she seemed prepared to, just in case.

It was a good mindset, but I wasn't worried. While there was always the chance that an unkindness of Giant Nevermore would happen upon us, to say nothing of the worse creatures that ruled the skies of Remnant, I wasn't especially worried—this airship was packed full of enough firepower to trivially slaughter just about anything we were likely to come across in a routine flight and I'd sense anything we couldn't long before we actually encountered them. I wouldn't say we were completely safe, because nowhere in Remnant was that, but we were as safe as could be reasonably expected. Indigo seemed to share my opinion, because she'd fallen asleep in the back of the airship, shadow curling around her.

After a moment, I followed her example and slipped, for the first time in quite a while, into a meditative state. It was something I'd fallen out of the habit of doing lately, simply because the benefits were now relatively minor compared to the sheer amount of MP I could already regenerate—it just wasn't worth the time or effort of falling into a trance when going from zero to full took less than a minute. Still, with little else to do, I took the chance to Accelerate as much as was sustainable, made sure all the other skills I maintained constantly were functioning as they should, and let my awareness expand.

The world my meditation revealed had changed since the last time I'd seen it—but then, I had become accustomed to that at this point. Figuring it was most likely because of my Extrasensory Perception and the other passive skills I'd gained lately, I accepted it easily and took in the differences.

It was…more, for lack of a better word. The patterns of energy, the shifting motions of the world, the breadth and depth-the sheer scope of it all had grown. My mind expanded through the open sky to touch the land below and sink deep into the earth. As I did, I felt the wind on my skin and the titanic motions far beneath the ground. At once, I felt myself standing beneath shaded trees, amidst the clouds in the sky, in fields open to the rising sun, and in the hidden caverns of the earth below. I could sense it, not simply in massive patterns of energy, but as if I was there in truth. I could see it, smell it, feel it all, though very little left an impression on me. In the slowed time of my Acceleration, the world turned sluggishly, with monsters and beasts alike almost holding still.

But it went beyond that. I reached farther than I ever had before, using senses that were now so much sharper. For all that it seemed as if I could feel everything, my mind didn't focus on anywhere in particular, but rather exploded from my body in a wave that seemed to carry me from horizon to horizon. I heard voices and whispers that were so small even I struggled to notice them, but after a moment it just didn't seem to matter. Power flowed through the entire world in a circuit that I was but a part of—but I played my part well and in an instant the beating of my heart matched that of the world's. I felt it encompass me entirely, like I was a drop of water that had fallen into the sea, and yet I remained separate from it, retaining myself thanks to the Gamer's Mind. If not for that, I could imagine myself being subsumed and losing track of the world. With my skills and the form of enlightenment they granted, I could have remained that way for weeks, months, or even years, doing nothing but listening to the crashing flows of the world around me.

A part of me considered it, but only briefly. While such a state would allow me to grind the skills I kept around myself persistently, it would do little for my Active skills, nor would it allow me a chance to find and invent new ones. Even beyond that, I couldn't afford to simply drown myself in the soul of the world when there was so much to do—and I could grind my persistent and passive skills as easily while awake as I could like this. Although it was peaceful and relaxing, it wasn't worth it.

For the moment, however, it was nice and interesting and new. My awareness slipped into the sky and the earth, the rivers and trees, the light and the shadows, and it flowed as easily into me as I did into it. For a moment, I wondered if this was how my Elementals felt and considered asking them about it later.

But then I realized there was no point in doing that when they were already here. Our souls would be one until they met their ends and so they were with me always. I felt my heart beat along with the pulse of the world and became aware that they had been with me all along. Levant danced through the skies even as her arms embraced me from behind, while Xihai coursed through the rivers and settled in the puddles and dew, swimming beneath my feet. Vulturnus flicked through the earth and sky alike, potential more than reality, and Suryasta stood with him, a fire waiting to happen. Even so, they stood at my shoulders, watching as I did for a moment and a path. Ereb walked beside me in the caverns of the earth, rested with me beneath the dirt, and climbed with me to the mountain peaks, standing still whenever I saw him, yet always in motion between my thoughts. Even Crocea Mors was there, though he stayed close, in the hull of the airship and the weapons of my family.

We didn't say anything because we didn't need to, but we saw each other now and our gazes, if they could be called such, were acknowledging. I stayed with them—or perhaps they stayed with me—when the airship took us over barren wastelands and beaches and then the sea and throughout the rest of the trip that followed. I kept track of the time absently, altered as it was for me, but remained aware that we were moving and getting closer to our destination. When, through a combination of the airship's travel and the turning of the planet, we were facing away from the sun, I distantly sensed that we were close and opened my eyes.

And when I did, I saw my Elementals watching me, all of them spirits within the ship. For a moment, I thought that they'd returned the moment I'd awoke, but realized just as quickly that that wasn't the case. What I saw before me now were just the parts of them that were small enough to stay beside me, within the limits of my power. That was true, if somewhat less so, of what I'd felt out there—that had been them, too, just…more of them. Pieces of them that I had never been able to see, parts of a greater whole. When my skill with my Elementals improved, I wasn't making them stronger, as such, I was merely drawing upon more of them.

Obviously, I told myself, somewhat annoyed I hadn't fully realized it until now. As it leveled up, Summon Elemental didn't make the Elementals themselves stronger, it merely allowed me to summon more Elementals which I happened to be able to shape into a single, more powerful form. Even the name of the skill should have told me that. Only a small fragment of their awareness was here with me, compressed down to a human scale and time frame, while most of them was scattered throughout the elements they embodied. It was both humbling and amazing to realize that as I looked at them and I smiled at them all.

When they smiled back, I felt certain that they'd seen me out there, as I'd seen them. I guess that no matter where I went, they were watching over me.

"Awake?" Violet asked, looking back at me. Gou was standing at her feet, allowing her to scratch his ears and looking like a normal dog if one ignored the fact that were going through a spot of turbulence and yet the motions of the ship completely failed to move him. Noticing that I was awake, he turned back towards me, trotting my way and absently leaping into my lap to sniff at Autumn's blossom. My daughter was wrapped tightly around my chest, quietly enjoying herself as she fed upon the Aura I expended—a fair bit over ten million MP thus far. She was squeezing me hard, I noted; tightly enough that she would have left marks in steel and horrific wounds in a normal human. Was she having a bad dream?

"Wasn't asleep," I answered, stroking her petals absently. "Just meditating."

She pondered me for a moment before shaking her head.

"I'm actually not sure if that's a joke or not," She said.

"It wasn't," I assured her, removing my seatbelt and ignoring the turbulence as a matter of course as I rose. Turning my head slightly to the side, I looked at my grandmother who was hard at work on her scroll. "Grandmother, there's a herd of Goliaths less than thirty kilometers from the walls of the kingdom."

She kept working for a moment, but I knew she'd heard me by the slight frown that crossed her face. Looking into her scroll, I saw her bring up a file on Grimm movements in the area and check it over, but I finished reading it before she did.

"Thirty to fifty is the norm," I told her.

She nodded once, reading the file for herself before typing something. Towards the front, Violet looked at us both with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Do you think something's wrong?" My grandmother asked, not mentioning what happened the last time we saw a Goliath or bringing up the possibility of a repeat incident.

I shrugged.

"They aren't moving particularly fast, either, so probably not—and if they tried anything, they'd be noticed by the sensors in the pass. But they are there." I said. "And I do kind of hate Goliaths."

"How many?"

"Three," I said, double checking. "It's a smaller herd than normal."

She closed a window and typed a few words in a document, probably more to do something while she was thinking than anything else.

"Could you kill them all and catch up to us?" She asked.

I cracked my neck and nodded.

"Then do so," She gestured dismissively, glancing towards Violet once, who nodded. "Return before we get near the city."

"Got it," I answered, going to the doors of the airship. I saw the pilot look up to glance quickly at us and knew that Grandmother wouldn't have him do that unless she trusted him completely. "Open this for me, would you?"

"Sir…" He whispered quietly, risking a look back.

"Do it," Grandmother commanded and a moment later the hatch was opening. I controlled the air absently to keep the open door from making a disturbance and stepped into open air a moment later.

Time to get some exercise, I thought, marveling at how things changed.

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