Chapter Text
Blake's POV
The girl woke up with a start.
She was in a small room. The only furniture in it other than the bed was a table with two chairs, a small dresser, and a curtain haphazardly hiding a tiny shower.
What happened? She grabbed her head, feeling a headache coming on. The last thing she remembered was finding a tunnel, and… she looked up, to see Jaune sitting a few feet away, studying her.
"Hi Blake."
"JAUNE!" she leapt to her feet, intending to throttle the blonde for capturing her, only to run smack into an invisible wall.
'Sorry… I don't have handcuffs, and metal's kinda heavy, so my prison is plexiglass." He tapped his knuckles on a thick piece of glass she hadn't seen.
"Wha- prison? What is this?" that impact had done nothing for the headache, and she slowly crawled up.
"Oh, you know, the prison where I keep criminals I find, like crooks, or thieves, or spies scouting out my secret bunker."
How was this bunker a secret? He literally left a gigantic hole leading to its entrance!
"So, are you gonna tell me why you're here? Or," he pulled out a drum magazine machine gun that looked older than her mum but was somehow bigger than the one Coco had. "Do you want to die?"
She swallowed. "Uh… I'll tell you why I'm here?"
"GREAT!" He carelessly tossed it aside, letting the gun clatter noisily to the floor. "Start."
"Wait, you attacked me. Shouldn't I get an explanation first?"
"Well Blake, I would, but a certain spy came snooping around my secret bunker-"
"It's not a secret."
"It was until you showed up. Anyway my now not so secret bunker, so I kind of need to settle that first.
"It was an accident. Happy?"
He looked to the side. "That the truth?" Someone stuck their fist out and did a thumbs up. "Great."
"Who was that?"
"No one." His expression made it clear that he did not want to elaborate.
"Well then can I get an explanation?" Her stomach rumbled. "And some food?"
He sighed. "Fine, I promise to bring you something to eat and explain, but only if you promise not to attack me."
She huffed. "Fine."
He pressed a button, and the plexiglass slid up. He arched an eyebrow at her, but when it became clear that she wasn't going to jump him, he nodded and walked away, motioning for her to follow him.
They walked down several corridors. She honestly had no idea how he had managed to dig this much tunnel in a few days, but it was honestly sort of scary. Worse was the fact that he closed every door on the way,
They passed by another door. Blake only had time to glimpse a gigantic bomb the size of a bus before he slammed it shut.
"Ignore that."
Finally, they entered a rudimentary kitchen. There stacks of canned food everywhere, and the stove looked like it would explode if she looked at it funny.
Jaune waved for her to sit, before setting down bottled water and heading to the stove. In a flash of fire so large her vision went white the stove started, and Jaune started emptying cans of soup into pots, humming.
Blake had never seen Jaune cook, and what little faith she had in his theoretical skills faded fast as a sour, metallic smell filled the air.
"Uh Jaune, what is that?"
"Fish. Don't worry it's not poisoned. "
Ok, there went all the faith she had in not being poisoned. She stared at her fingers. If only the White Fang had taught her to induce vomiting!
He pushed a bowl of the slop in front of her, before picking up what looked like a vastly more appetizing plate for himself.
"Eat."
She stirred at it dubiously. It was fish, and she could see tiny chunks of vegetables, but the whole thing was a dubious shade of green and thick enough to be glue. Slowly, she picked up a chunk and swallowed it.
"Erghh!" A disgusted sound tore its way out of her throat. Frantically she pawed for the bottle of water, downing most of it in an honestly futile attempt to wash away the taste.
"What the hell was that?" She gasped, pulling out her fork and stabbing at Jaune's plate. To her anger the meat he was eating tasted absolutely normal, a little salty, but normal.
"It's brined fish." He didn't seem too bothered by her scooping up mouthfuls of his corn and meat, instead pulling her bowl over and taking a sip. "I thought you liked fish."
"It's disgusting!"
"And it lasts 35 years when kept in the right conditions."
"Arrgggghhhh" She looked around the room frantically, seeing a few cans stacked in the corner labelled canned juice. She frantically popped one open and chugged it down, savoring the slightly artificial mango taste, not even caring about the juice dripping down her throat and clothes making her look like some sort of fetish model. She ignored Jaune's outraged cries about wastage, not stopping until the can was drained.
Gasping, she looked back at the blonde, who was staring in shock and a little bit anger at the puddle of juice on the ground.
'So, are you going to explain?"
Velvet's POV
"You know, technically Faunus aren't human."
Velvet froze. She had decided to eat lunch in the gardens today, sort of an impromptu picnic, only to find a giant hole and Jaune apparently somewhere hidden in the bushes.
The surge of irritation and anger she felt at hearing that was tempered only by two things. One, he wasn't wrong, Faunus technically weren't human, and two, this was Jaune. He was likely using the less offensive, more literal meaning rather than the one used by racists.
"And this is relevant how?" Was that Blake? Huh, she didn't know they were close.
"What? Don't you get it?" She heard the scraping of metal on metal. "That means eating Faunuses isn't cannibalism."
Wait what.
"Yes. So in a survival situation, eating a Faunus is perfectly fine and doesn't violate our morals, same thing for Faunuses eating humans."
"So what you're saying is, if I brought Velvet here, you would try to kill her and eat her?"
"What? No, of course not."
She breathed a sigh of relief.
"I would preserve her first, she's too big for me to eat in one sitting. You know, can the meat, turn the innards to sausage, maybe dry the ears." He said it casually, like he was discussing what to eat for lunch rather than his plans to kill and turn his schoolmate into jerky. "Then I'll eat what's left."
"So why don't you want to eat me?"
"The only problem is that carnivores and omnivores don't taste good. Meat eaters normally have tough, bitter meat. Herbivores by contrast usually have flavorful, juicy meat. You eat fish all day, you would taste gross."
The only problem?!
"By contrast, herbivores often have flavorful, sweetened meat. Luckily she eats so many vegetables huh?"
With slowly dawning horror, she looked down at the package of salad and tomato soup she was going to have for lunch.
"Can you picture it Blake? She's a Huntress in training like us, she's definitely got muscle. Her meat, pan seared and dipped in herbs." the faint sound of sucking up saliva could be heard. "It would be delicious…"
Tossing her package away, Velvet turned and ran, deciding to take Coco up on her offer to go to a steakhouse.