Stranded 003 (Patreon)

The first thing they did was gather all the dead.

It would be all too easy to just leave them there to bake in the sun and let whatever birds and animals have a field day, but these people deserved more than that. When it was all said and done, there were twenty-one people that they pulled up onto the soft sand near the boundary of the beach and the forest beyond. As much as it pained them to do it, they searched each one for anything that could help them. Their need was greater. The dead had no use for material items.

A few of them had scrolls but none of them worked, filled with seawater, the circuitry ruined. They saved them just in case but Jaune didn’t expect much from them. A couple of them were carrying ammunition and so they took that as well but that was it. All they had left were the clothes on their bodies.

It was all very depressing.

They needed to be buried but that could wait. First task completed, they moved back out onto the beach and searched for anything they could use. It was monotonous, tiring work. As the morning passed and they quickly approached noon, the overhead sun blazed with no remorse. Overheating, Jaune pulled off his armor and hoodie, leaving him in his jeans and a simple singlet.

The biggest find they made were several bottles of water and canned, nonperishable food, as well as a single pot and pan. There were a bunch of suitcases with drenched clothes within, a few duffle bags containing folded sheets and blankets and a couple of weapons, giving Blake the ability to defend herself should Grimm appear. It wasn’t Gambol Shroud but it was better than nothing. A spear, a simple rifle and a knife. Beyond that, there wasn’t much. Mostly pieces of splintered wood and warped steel, though they did manage to salvage a large plastic sheet that might prove useful.

It would provide cover if nothing else.

It didn’t take long for his arms and shoulders to turn red beneath the harsh rays of the sun. Retreating under the trees, Jaune felt an overwhelming thirst as he eyed their haul of bottled water. Rationing will be very important in the coming days.

He made sure not to drink too much, too fast. Sipping at a bottle until it was half empty, he offered the rest to Blake when she returned with an armful of mussels and oysters.

“The rocks are covered in them,” she said, setting them down on the plastic sheet. She shot him a grateful look as she took the bottle and tipped her head back, drinking deeply. “Do you like seafood?”

“Thankfully,” he replied. Even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t turn it down. Food was food. His thirst had taken precedence but now that he had addressed it, his hunger made itself known with a loud gurgle.

Blake snickered. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” he thumped down in the sand next to the tarp and reached for the knife they’d found, beginning the long, annoying process of shucking the mussels and oysters, getting them ready to eat. It took some time to fall into a workable rhythm, prying open the shells and peeling out the flesh.

Blake wasted little time, devouring her portion hungrily. Jaune smiled as he watched her, knowing how much she liked fish.

“Good?” he asked.

She swallowed quickly, expression a little embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Jaune waved her off. “Eat up as much as you want. We’ll need our strength – and I know how much you love seafood.”

She blushed lightly. “It’s really good.”

Jaune usually ate his oysters lightly fried in a thin batter but he had no such luxury here. Opening one, he slurped it straight from the shell, tipping his head back as he did. There was a salty tang from the ocean, the sign of its freshness, followed by the slimy, silky slide as it passed over his tongue and straight down his throat. The taste was fine but the texture was unsettling.

“Yum,” he said, and Blake laughed.

“Not used to eating them raw?”

“No,” he admitted. “Are you?”

She nodded. “When I was growing up on Menagerie, we’d go down to the beach every other night and pick some off the rocks. My mom and I. They’d never make it home,” she leaned back, a fond expression softening her features. “We’d eat them all long before we’d get there and then my father would complain, and so then we’d all head back down to get some more.”

He could see the love she had for them, clear as day. Smiling, Jaune continued to pry open shells until there were none left. The mussels were fat and juicy, the flesh tender with that same tang of salt. He ate until he felt satisfied, laying back with a full stomach.

He didn’t want to move. He just wanted to rest here and close his eyes, maybe sleep the entire day away. Now that he had stopped moving, he acutely felt his exhaustion. When was the last time he slept? Being unconscious didn’t count. He longed for his bed back at Beacon, his feather soft pillow and mattress. He desired nothing more.

But he couldn’t do that – they still had work to do. Horrible but necessary work.

Blake must have felt much the same, groaning as they both hauled themselves back to their feet. Before anything else, they needed to bury the dead and so that is what they did.

With so many people, the hole needed to be deep and wide. The sand was soft but it was still hard work. Jaune used his shield as a shovel, the hilt of his sheathed sword as a handle. Blake dug with whatever she could find, starting with her hands before gathering a flat piece of metal from the debris. They dug and dug and dug until their arms screamed and their shoulders cramped. Jaune huffed, wiping the sweat from his brow. It took them hours, the pair taking a break to refuel. Blake scaled one of the coconut palms and cut free a cluster, quenching their thirst on refreshing coconut water and eating the white flesh greedily. The sweet, nutty flavor was rather addicting.

It must have been late afternoon when the final body was rolled into the mass grave, and they then proceeded to cover them in sand. Not only was it physically sapping but mentally and emotionally. Jaune felt like a wreck, almost at the end of his rope. This was not the sort of thing he envisioned he would be doing when he dreamed of becoming a Huntsman but reality was different from fairy tales.

With that horrible business dealt with, they started construction on a shelter. Once again, Blake scaled up the coconut palms but this time she hacked branches lush with leaves free of the trunk to use as a roof. Jaune walked further into the forest to chop thicker branches for a rudimentary frame. Since it was so big, he sliced the plastic sheet in half; one part was for the floor while the other would be thrown over the a-frame he was going to build to further protect them from any rain should it come.

They worked in silence, consumed by their thoughts.

It didn’t take long for them to build something decent. It was small, only two meters wide and even less in height but it would protect them well enough. They used stripped down palm leaves as ties to secure everything in place and even some of the smaller pieces of debris from the ship to strengthen it. This late in the day, the sheets and blankets they had found were now dry, having hung for hours in the sun on an old petrified trunk half buried in the sand but the seawater had left them feeling gritty.

Jaune wasn’t about to complain. He was just glad to have something to help keep warm when night fell. The days may have been hot but the nights on the ship had shown just how quickly the temperature could drop.

“What’s for dinner?” Blake asked, some humor returning to her voice. She still looked a bit stressed but he couldn’t blame her. At least her mood had recovered somewhat.

Jaune smiled. “How about fish?”

Blake perked up at that. “How are you going to catch them? We don’t have a rod,” she rubbed her chin in thought. “Are you going to spear them?”

“The tide is out,” he pointed. The ocean had receded quite far, exposing many of the rocks and reefs closer to shore. Within those rocky outcrops were isolated pools. “Nature might have done the work for us.”

He was right. It took a little bit of searching but it didn’t take them long to find fish that had been trapped by the lowering tide, confined to the lagoon until the waters rose again. Unfortunately for them, some of them wouldn’t get to see that happen.

At this point, catching them would still be difficult for regular people but they were Huntsmen-in-training, their reflexes and speed far superior to those of civilians. Working together, they cornered the panicking fish and snagged them with lightning-fast grabs, tossing them onto the beach where they flopped around helplessly. They were decently sized, their scales shimmering with an array of colors beneath the late afternoon sun. Four in total, they fist bumped for a job well done before taking their catch back to their shelter.

“I’ll handle the fire,” she said. “You get those ready.”

Years of camping with his family readied him for moments like these. Using the knife they’d scavenged, he sliced open each fish and pulled out their innards, tossing them away in the sand before taking the edge and scraping the scales off each side. Jaune had spent countless hours watching and helping his father do this very act, preparing the fish his dad caught for their large family. Ten mouths to feed meant a lot of fish that needed prep.

He was very thorough, running the knife down repeatedly until no more hard, translucent flakes peeled away, leaving the outer flesh of the fish smooth.

While he did this, Blake gathered wood and dug out a small fire pit, arranging the wood in a log cabin style, building up level by level. Taking the tip of the spear they’d found, she used the sharp edge to cut thin strips for kindling, placing them in the center hole. Jaune expected her to start attempting to make a spark but instead she reached into her satchel. Pulling out the last remaining lightning dust cartridge, she carefully opened the top and gathered a small pinch of the refined power.

Lowering her hand between the wood, she sprinkled it in and then flared her aura. The dust fizzled and ignited at once, sparks of lightning leaping eagerly from the tips of her fingers and the kindling instantly ignited. Seeing his gobsmacked expression, Blake laughed.

“That’s a nice trick,” he commented.

“A certain haughty heiress taught me that one,” Blake stared as the flames began to spread, licking at the small wooden structure she had built. Her mirth transformed into a somber smile. “Fire dust is preferable but I’m all out of that.”

Jaune sighed softly.

Whittling down some sticks into a sharp point, they skewered the fish and hung them above the fire. Soon their small camp was filled with the smell of roasting fish, the skins charring nicely. Jaune made sure to turn them often, getting an even distribution of heat. When the inner flesh was white and flakey, flowing with juice and the skin blackened nicely, he pulled them away.

Blake yelped as she burnt her lip in her eagerness. Jaune chuckled, blowing on his fish long and hard. She pouted at him, an adorable expression mixed with the way her cat ears tucked down against the top of her head.

“Shut up,” she said, following his example.

Fish really was the best when it was caught fresh. Even without any other ingredients, no herbs or spices or sauces, the taste was exquisite. Jaune devoured the first one hungrily, carefully avoiding the bones. He picked every piece of flesh he could off the frame, sucking the fatty juices off his fingers before annihilating his second one. Blake was much the same, uncaring of how she looked as she inhaled her meal with gusto. They followed it up by cracking open another coconut, sharing the water to wash everything down and eating the white flesh for dessert.

All in all, a pretty damn good meal.

“Maybe we should get stranded on random islands more often,” Jaune joked.

Blake gave him a tender look. “I’m glad I’m not alone.”

He met her gaze. “Yeah.”

They had each other. Being alone would have made the experience even more harrowing. After all the death, it was nice to have someone he could lean on if he required it. Someone to talk to to fill the silence, a helping hand in whichever way he needed.

“We’ll get through this,” he said, and he believed every word. “Our teams will search all of Remnant if they have to. For us, for Weiss and Ren. We just have to wait and look after ourselves until then. They’ll come.”

“I know,” Blake looked up at the sky. It was beginning to darken slightly as evening approached, the endless blue slowly morphing into a deep, rich purple. “And I choose to believe that Weiss is still out there. Until I see her body, I refuse to accept that she is gone.”

“Blake…”

“You feel the same way, don’t you?”

He did. His mind told him that her chances of survival were slim, just as theirs had been. They were extremely lucky. But his heart disagreed. It believed with every fiber that Weiss was out there somewhere. Maybe she wasn’t here with them, on their island – but maybe the currents had taken her elsewhere.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I do. Weiss is still alive. I know it. And Ren – the ship survived. I’m sure the Kraken was defeated. He’ll be worried sick about us.”

“We’ll have to apologize to him the next time we see him,” Blake promised.

“We’ll take him somewhere nice. He’ll kill me for telling you but he – ah, really likes tabletop games. Like Remnant: The Game and RPG stuff.”

“Really?” Blake looked surprised. “Ren? Lie Ren? We are talking about the same person, aren’t we?”

Jaune snickered. “Yeah – he tries to keep it on the downlow. Even Nora doesn’t know. But whenever we get together and play board games, he is super into it. He just doesn’t show it. There is this event they hold in Vale every year – he wants to go but last year, the Vytal Festival lined up with it and this year, we are out here, so he missed it. We should take him next year, make an entire weekend out of it.”

Blake beamed. “That sounds great. I – uh, might also like those types of things.”

Her cheeks pinkened under his knowing look.

“Makes sense,” he quipped.

Blake scowled at him. It was a pretty funny look with her red face. “Oh? What do you mean by ‘makes sense’, huh?”

Jaune held up his hands. “Woah, hey – no judgment. It isn’t a secret that you are into – you know, stuff. Like anime and manga, light novels – it doesn’t really surprise me that it extends to tabletop games.”

Blake crossed her arms. “I don’t like anime. I just like a few shows, that’s all.”

Jaune hummed. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” Blake huffed. “I don’t just watch any show. It has to be sophisticated,” at his amused look, she doubled down. “Don’t look at me like that! It needs to be a story driven plot with well developed, well rounded characters with motivations that make sense. Something that has a bit of mystery is a plus. I enjoy when the show creators can be clever and misdirect the viewer with good storytelling without resorting to convoluted reasonings.”

She was getting worked up about this. It reminded him of Ruby whenever Weiss got on her case about her more childish hobbies. But…

“I’m pretty sure I walked in on you watching a magic girl anime one time,” Jaune mused aloud. “Aren’t those shows for children?”

Blake looked seconds away from striking him, outraged at his words. He instinctively leaned back as she glared hotly at him.

“That magic girl show is only one of the best pieces of television to come out of anywhere in forever! A show for children? A children’s show?” she shook her head in disbelief. “No mere children’s show deals with such mature themes while maintaining that illusion of innocence that slowly crumbles over the course of the series, eliciting such feelings of unease and dread as the mystery unfolds before your very eyes! No mere children’s show would put the overarching plot and integrity of the story above that of the characters! No mere children’s show would dare craft such intricate, full backstories for those same characters only to crush them beneath their heel!”

She was really into this stuff, wasn’t she?

“The tragedy of it all was… sublime,” she sighed, no doubt recalling the first time she witnessed this masterpiece. “The flawed nature of people, how ugly we can be… but also how righteous, and resolute, and pure we can be. Two sides of a coin. We are both and cannot be without the other.”

Jaune thought this sounded pretty heavy. “So that’s why you watched it, then?”

Blake blinked at him. “What?”

“For all that stuff? The mystery and the nature of people, and uh – our duality?”

She opened her mouth and then shut it again, no words forthcoming.

“Or was it because it was cute and sparkly at the beginning, and then it got really hardcore and awesome and you couldn’t stop watching?”

Blake pointed at him dramatically. “You’re teasing me.”

Jaune grinned. “Maybe a little.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes. “Well – you read stupid comic books, so ner~!”

He laughed at the childish taunt. “Hey, I’m not judging it. You’re the one that got upset.”

“I’m not upset! And you made a very rude assumption.”

They continued to bicker about their hobbies for close to an hour, swapping from subject to subject while teasing each other and all the while, things actually started to feel normal. They might have been on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, with no way of getting back home and with two missing friends but for that glorious hour, they were back at Beacon, sitting in their common room as they talked about nothing.

The tension of their situation bled away, leaving Jaune feeling much more relaxed. He wasn’t the only one, the stiff line of Blake’s shoulders beginning to slump as an air of normalcy fell upon them.

They made sure to keep their campfire going, stoking it and building it up with more firewood. As night descended upon them, billions of stars filled the void above their heads, a river of sparkling gems upon a black canvas. As their voices petered out, they simply lay back on their arms and stared up at the starry sky, struck by its beauty.

You didn’t get views like this in any of the cities and on the ship, Jaune hadn’t taken the time to appreciate it. Work was always on his mind, protecting the ship and its cargo. A mission that they had failed in the end.

It did remind him of the night skies from home, though. Just as full and striking but different. It made sense, his home on the northern plains of Sanus was in a whole different hemisphere to where he was now.

“We get skies like these on Menagerie,” Blake suddenly spoke up, voice soft. “Even in Kuo Kuana, there is barely any light pollution. It might be the biggest settlement we have but it’s more like the villages you find outside of the kingdom walls, not the sprawling cities like Vale or Mistral. Sometimes I’d lay awake at night and just stare out my window in awe for hours and hours… I’d be so tired the next day and my parents could never understand why.”

“You’ll have to show me, then,” Jaune said and when she turned her head towards him, he smiled at her. “We’ve just taken a detour but there is no way I’m missing out on visiting your hometown. And I’ve got to meet the wonderful people who raised such an amazing daughter.”

Blake arched an eyebrow. “Amazing, am I?”

“In a lot of ways,” he said before smirking. “Not all of them are good.”

She gathered a fistful of sand and threw it at him.

After a while, Blake gathered one of the blankets and rolled it out inside their shelter, giving them something to lay on. Rolling another one up tightly to use as a makeshift pillow, she crawled inside. Jaune removed his armor and followed her in after ensuring the fire would continue for some time.

There wasn’t much space but they could lay shoulder to shoulder just fine. Without the sun, the air held a definite chill to it. Their fire warded off the worst of it but Jaune knew that in a few hours, things would get cold. Aura could beat back the chill but that only helped when you were awake.

The blanket would help and Jaune had his hoodie. He wasn’t worried about himself, though.

Blake no longer wore the shorts she favored during their first year at Beacon, substituting them for a pair of snug black pants that did a wonderful job of showing off her slender legs and pert ass. It was her top that was the problem. The crop top left her entire midriff bare, showing off her amazingly toned tummy and narrow waist but doing nothing to keep her warm. The upper-chest was also a series of criss-crossing straps that left much of her collar exposed. She usually wore a long white coat with it but when reacting to the Grimm attack, she had obviously forgotten to throw it on.

He wasn’t sure how long they lay there in the dark, the only light coming from their fire outside. The flickering orange hue allowed him to make out the outline of her kitty ears as they twitched, and the bare shoulder that peeked out from beneath the blanket. The temperature dropped rapidly until even beneath the blanket and with his hoodie, he could feel its bite.

“Blake?” he whispered.

There was a moment of silence interrupted only by the popping of burning wood.

“Yeah?” she replied quietly.

“Are you cold?”

She shifted.

“Yes.”

Making a decision, he shuffled towards her and pressed into her back. Blake stiffened at the sudden contact but quickly melted back against him, his arm looping over her body. Their body heat melded together as he hugged her, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head. Her ears were soft and furry against his skin, a little ticklish as they flicked. He could smell the barest hint of shampoo, overpowered by the sea.

“Is this okay?”

She nodded, her arms looping around his own and pulling it against her chest. He tried to ignore the softness of her breasts or the way her behind slotted perfectly against him, their bodies coming together like two puzzle pieces made for each other. “Yeah.”

Beyond just the comfort afforded by her warmth was the reassurance of experiencing the touch of another person. After the day they’d both had, that reassurance was priceless. Blake snuggled back into him with a breathy sigh and he tightened his hold.

“Goodnight,” he said softly.

“Goodnight,” she answered just as quietly.

Curled around her warm body, Jaune found himself quickly falling asleep.