White Sheep

Chapter 26

Here's the next chapter of White Sheep.

Beta: College Fool

Cover Art: Kegi Springfield

Chapter 26

Mercury leaned back against the marble pillar and asked himself, not for the first time, how he'd gotten into this situation. It wasn't just Beacon itself, or his allegiance to Cinder Fall. Those things could be explained away with a sense of rationalism. No. It was the face he was outside in the early morning watching another young man run around a field while a bunny-eared faunus snapped pictures on her camera.

"I'm not sure why you wanted me come with you, Velvet." he said. "I thought the whole point of me asking you was because I might make it suspicious." He waited for a response, but there was none. The older girl didn't even turn in his direction. "Velvet?" he repeated. When there was still no response, he reached out to touch one of her ears. "Velvet!"

"Ha- what!?" Her head flicked back, as did her ear away from his finger. It had been surprisingly soft, yet stiffer than he'd expected. "Were you talking to me?"

"Yes," he sighed, and repeated the question. This time, she listened.

"W-Well, I thought it would be weird if I did this on my own," she explained. "If they saw me and asked what I was doing, I wouldn't have an excuse to give. If they see me now, I can say the two of us were out practising photography or something."

She took a quick snap of him, either as an example of maybe some evidence she could show to support that claim if she were asked.

Hm. Not bad. For a normal person, she was sneaky. He wasn't here to help. He was here to cover her back if something went wrong. Nothing more than an alibi. Mercury chuckled. He could respect that, he supposed, especially if it meant he got to sit back with a cute girl instead of work. He shrugged and tilted his head back once more, leaving Velvet to her task. She seemed determined to fulfil his request, taking way more pictures than they really needed.

"It looks like he's training Jaune," Velvet whispered. "There doesn't seem to be anything else going on. It's mostly just a lot of running."

Mercury hummed. That was what he'd gotten from the situation, not that it had been hard to figure out. Early morning training was early morning training, after all. Maybe they'd all been paranoid for nothing. This was a school. Training was what you did. "Maybe I overreacted," he said. "I guess we don't need to keep doing this if it's nothing suspicious."

"Eh!?" Velvet spun to face him, her ears suddenly drooping down a little. "N-No, I think we should continue. It's better to be safe, right? What if there's something more to this and you miss it and Jaune gets in trouble? I think we should do this every day."

"Every day...?" He winced at the thought. "I'm not sure we need to. "Branwen is just training him. No harm, no foul."

"But... but what if there's more to it than that?"

Mercury raised an eyebrow to his new companion, but she seemed to gain new life and nodded her head frantically. "Don't you think it's strange that a huntsman would pause in his career just to train a single person? Doesn't that seem odd to you?"

"Well..."

"And not even his own nieces. I know he's doing some with Ruby, but Yang is nowhere to be seen, and it's obvious his real plan was just to work with Jaune." Velvet adopted a suspicious expression. "Don't you think that's a little unusual? Why go through all that effort? Why Jaune? Why so suddenly?"