RWBY: Remnant's Blond Bard

Chapter 3

Don't fix what isn't broken.

It was an old saying, but apt in his situation. While every bit of Jaune's gamer knowledge told him spreading out his stats was a better idea in a videogame, his experience in the real world had been more along the lines of specialism being kind.

And it made sense, didn't it?

School was generalist but everyone who got into a good job went to a university to learn a specialist skill. A doctor was good at medicine; an actor was good at acting; an accountant was good at putting people to sleep. A jack of all trades was a master of none and doomed to end up in some mediocre job somewhere.

So, the obvious thing to do was continue levelling his Charisma.

His morning had become a routine by now. Wake up, remove earplugs, open window, let in the bird that Jaune had named "Doom" on account of it being a doomsayer, and pour some seed out on his table so it'd be too busy stuffing its beak to continue screaming about how the end of the world had yet again been averted. Leaving Doom to eat, he took a shower, dried off and came back out to see a splotch of white on the floor, and Doom preening his tailfeathers on the back of his desk's chair.

"What have I told you about pooing on the floor!?"

"I cast my waste into the void."

"The void of my bedroom!"

"No one bird can claim dominion of the sky. Not even a featherless, flightless bird like you."

"This isn't the sky! It's my bedroom! And I'm not a bird!"

"We are all—urk!" Doom croaked as Jaune's hands closed around him. Stomping to the open window, he hurled the bastard out, watching him squawk and right himself before flying back to his tree.

"If you're going to be a filthy bastard then you can stay outside!" Jaune yelled.

Another, rounder bird landed on his windowsill, looked up at him and asked, in a deep voice. "Wanna smash?"

Jaune smashed the window shut and locked them out.

It tapped on the glass. "Lemme smash..."

Speak with Animals had been a mistake.

In so many ways.

After wiping up the bird poo so his mother wouldn't think he'd left it for her (a death sentence even his Charisma wouldn't get him out of), he headed on downstairs for breakfast. Nicholas was back again, in a rare moment when he'd managed to take a week off work to just relax with the family. He'd been in a good mood of late, which Jaune couldn't help but think was because he'd stopped asking his father for training.

"Morning Jaune." Nicholas waved him to the table. "So, your mother tells me you're picking up the guitar."

"Hm." Jaune answered between mouthfuls of food. "Learning it."

He wasn't sure what he'd expected but the quest implied he should just pick one and then be rewarded. That hadn't been the case, so he assumed he needed to learn to play it as well. Which made sense.

Sort of.

Having full knowledge of how to play a guitar being dumped into your head would have been stupid, but then so was having full understanding of animal language, so he wasn't quite sure where his Semblance drew the line when it came to what was reasonable and what was not. Maybe it was that he wasn't allowed to be granted things outside of a level up or the acquisition of a perk.

"How is that bird you're domesticating coming along?" asked his mother.

"Poorly. And I'm not domesticating it. It's just a pain in my ass that won't go away – and you won't let me cut the tree outside my bedroom down."