Ch 38: A Little Black Kitty (1)

"Are you feeling any better, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked as they entered the nurses' office.

"Ah ho hu," Jaune groaned from his bed as he clenched his stomach in pain.

"There, there." Yang walked over and started petting his head soothingly, "It's ok, the big bad sparring class is over. You're safe now."

"Really!" Jaune suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, completely missing Yang's sarcasm. Weiss, Blake, Ruby, Yang, Ray, Pyrrha, and Ren all looked at the joyful Jaune in disappointment, but it was the bubbly Nora who twisted the knife in deep.

"Yeah! Don't worry." Nora said, flinging one of her arms around him with a grin, "You can show everyone what you're made of during tomorrow's class. Now come on, let's go get dinner. Pancakes always cheer me up."

"Oh, hu hu. Why?" Jaune moaned and cried as Nora dragged him by his hand behind her as she half skipped, half marched off to the dining hall.

"Well, he's got to face the music eventually." Blake said before walking after the two.

"Why is he even here?" Weiss asked, following after.

"Living a dream." Ray answered with a shrug walking beside her.

"A dream that will get him killed at the rate he is going." Yang muttered worriedly behind them.

"Then we just have to help him become strong before that happens." Ruby said.

"That's right." Pyrrha clenched her fist in determination.

"As his teammate, I will do my utmost to support him." Ren promised as he shut the door behind them all.

######

That night, after dinner, once all of them had returned to their dorm rooms for the night. "Alrighty then, I guess it's about time I unpacked." Ray said out loud to his empty dorm room. Even though he would be the only one sleeping here, he had still received the same standard dorm room all the other first-years had been assigned with their teams.

It was a large open room big enough to comfortably fit four people and their things, if they weren't excessive, with a large bay window directly across from the door and two medium-sized walk-in closets to the right and left. The communal showers and toilets were situated in the middle of the hallway on each floor, with the boys' and girls' across the hall from each other. Each room also came furnished with four twin-sized beds, four simple desks and chairs, and four sets of double row wall mounted shelves across the front wall.

To start with, Ray unpacked his clothes trunk and hung everything up in the right closet. The left closet he left empty for now besides placing one of the desks and chairs at the back. After performing a quick scan of his surroundings with his Aura and Semblance to check to ensure no one was coming or monitoring him, Ray removed the false bottom of his trunk to reveal a weapons case, a Dust terminal, Remnant's version of a desktop computer, a black hard plastic brick with multiple different ports, and a 2-by-2-by-1 sealed box all carefully packed in molded shipping foam.

Ray quickly moved everything into the left closet and used his Semblance to break the door knob's mechanism connecting it to the latch, effectively locking it. Now anyone who wanted to get it could only unlatch the door by using his or a similar Semblance to manipulate the mechanism inside the lock. It wasn't much, but with that and the excuse that the door was broken, it would be enough to keep any innocent snoopers out. As for the not so innocent… well, no reason to be polite.

His secrets relatively secure, he locked himself in and proceeded to unpack. He first set up his terminal on the desk and set its programs to covertly break into the Beacon communication system and reestablish connections to his secret accounts he had left drifting in cyberspace. Wraith was being reactivated.

Soon, influential people across Remnant would be receiving word that after all traces of him had disappeared for a few days without warning, again, one of the most feared mercenaries in Remnant was once more open for business. Of course, that didn't mean he would start moving any time soon.

Wraith's active cycles had always seemed to loosely follow the schedule for the school year. When school was out, he would be his most active, appearing and completing jobs one right after the other. When school was in session, Wraith would limit his activities to cyberspace. Where some argue, he was even more dangerous. However, there would also be exceptions to that rule every year, so no one could say with certainty what jobs he would take. Only that most of them were in Vale.

Not to mention, no one had ever successfully ordered Wraith to take a job. All anyone who wanted to use his skills could do was leave a request with payment transfer details on a secure black site and hope he would take it. Those who tried to force the matter soon found there were no traces and fewer clues about who Wraith was, and those who persisted tended to be found dead in their beds shriveled up like a mummy.

Maybe Li'l Miss Malachite, the leader of Spider Lotus that many suspected Wraith worked for, could, but she never had. And she never would, because she knew that she was merely the face and the head of human resources for Spider Lotus. The real power behind them was Wraith and the information network he'd given them. An information network they had leveraged to rise from a well-respected gang in Minstrel to spread across all of Remnant become one of the most well-connected and influential criminal organizations there was. She was only in charge of the grunts on the streets.

While his terminal worked, Ray reached for the rest of his stuff to start hanging up the battle outfit he used as Wraith and do some spot maintenance on his weapons. However, he had to cut that short as he sensed someone approaching his door. Ray exited the closet and locked it behind him as he heard someone knock on his door.

"Ray, can I come in?" It was Blake.

"Of course, you're always welcome here." Ray said with a smile as he opened the door and motioned her in. "Sorry for the mess. I just started unpacking."

"Leaving it for after our first day of classes might have been a better idea than trying to do all of it in the morning and nearly being late for our first class." Blake joked.

Ray laughed, "So what's up, Blake?" and perched on the edge of one of his beds as he asked.

"I was wondering if I could get those earplugs you mentioned at lunch."

"Ah, yes." Ray dug around in his miscellaneous trunk.

"Here we are." Ray pulled two unopened packs of earplugs out of the trunk and tossed them to her. "They're in packs of 14 for human ears, but two should last you long enough for you to order some custom ones."

Blake froze as she caught the packs, "I don't-"

Ray raised his hands to cut her off, "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I have no reason to push you or tell anyone else. As far as I am concerned, you are my friend and I trust you. Everything else is details."

Blake nodded and took a seat next to him on his bed, head down, looking at the tab on the box lid she was fingering.

"Since when?" She asked quietly.

Ray smiled and leaned back on his hands, "Amai yume no chīsana koneko" means 'Sweet dreams little kitty' in one of the lost tongues." He answered, alluding to what he had said to her before going to sleep their first night at Beacon.

"Racist." Blake mumbled but didn't really seem to mind that he had called her a little kitty.

"I'm hurt, Blake. I remember a time, almost eight years ago now, I guess. I was out hunting Grimm behind my family's back, as usual. When I came across this White Fang trade caravan that was on its way to Vale for the 36th Vytal Festival, they were under attack from a bunch of villagers from a village they had just passed by. Those Faunus hadn't done anything, and even when those Humans were firing live rounds at them, they refused to fight back and continued to try and negotiate with them and make them see reason. Though they certainly had the strength to stop them by force. But the villagers refused to listen and just kept on attacking. Now those guys were racists. A disgrace to Humans everywhere."

Ray fell silent as he reminisced over the memory alongside the girl beside him.