Ninjas of Love

A Trip To Town

"Hold on, shouldn't one of us at least know where we're going?" Kerian asked Charlie apprehensively. "Probably." Charlie answered, continuing to walk along whilst staring at the gravelly clay of the ground. As he tapped his shimmering metal quarterstaff on the ground, kicking up a pocket of dust, he walked into something and was knocked back, mildly winding him and knocking him onto the dusty floor. "Woah man, you alright?" Evidently Charlie had not hit something, but had instead hit someone.

That someone was taller than Charlie and Kerian- about six feet, one inch (if Charlie had to guess)- and had an unkempt mop of dirty blond hair atop his pale white head. His entrancingly deep blue eyes stared right into Charlie's soul and sent a Mexican wave of shivers up his vertebrae. "The name's Arc. Jaune Arc." The blond answered suavely, belying the fact he was dressed in black, canvas high tops: blue, faded denim jeans; and a black hoodie bearing the emblem of popular Valish cereal mascot Pumpkin Pete- a grey rabbit.

"Oh- I'm Charlie Copson!"
"And your friend's name is?"
"Kerian Furry. Pleased to meet you, sir!" Kerian yapped enthusiastically, extending his hand toward Jaune. Jaune slowly and apprehensively took it in his own and shook it. Rather more willingly, Jaune then put his hand out toward Charlie, who shook it firmly. "So, what brings you guys to Vale, I've never seen you around before?"
"Well, we're actually from Vale. Patch, to be precise. Fresh from Ipseity effin' Academy for the Vytal Festival." Charlie replied confidently, punching the air so as to appear less clinically depressed. Jaune looked at him with a mixture of bemusement and intrigue. "So," the blond-haired boy posed a question to neither Charlie or Kerian in particular, "you guys are staying at Beacon Academy, I presume?"
"Indeed we are." Charlie and Kerian replied in unison.
"Then I suppose that I shall see you two around." Jaune replied, delivering a pair of finger guns to the two members of Team BECK.

The two members continued along the beaten track- a dusty clay track- to the city of Vale (a rather confusing name for a city in the country of Vale, especially when Vale was not a city state, but the author digresses), where Charlie hoped he would find some kind of menial job that would allow him to scrape a living and shut Weiss up. Hell, if he was really lucky, Kerian would weasel his way into one too, so Weiss really would have no reason to complain about the two.

The first building the pair passed in the suburbs of Vale City was a bookshop, whose sign read "Tukson's Book Trade". Inside the book, there were two customers, one of whom was a dark-skinned woman with bright green hair (the other was a man with black hair and clad in monochrome), but both were confronting the sideburn-sporting proprietor. "Maybe not." Charlie said to himself, as Kerian was walking next to his friend with his headphones in.

The next shop along was a nightclub, advertising itself through a scarlet red neon sign reading "Junior's Club". Below this was an A4 piece of paper deciding who was and was not allowed into the club. Charlie knew exactly who the face printed in all eight spaces on the paper was. None other than Emmie's friend/ girlfriend/ he didn't quite know what anymore, Yang Xiao Long. As much as he was intrigued by the barring of yang, and the blacked-out squares where windows presumably once were, Charlie dared not enter lest he be instantly kicked out or worse forced to socialise with other club members.

And then, on the right, he saw a dingy, brown building that once had a sign, but the lettering had long since fallen off. A "t" and an "l" lay on the floor, but the rest of the letters had, Charlie assumed, been taken by some edgy, angsty teen using it as part of a scrying mirror or whatever it is kids got up to these days. However, there was a legible banner along the front brick wall of the edifice. "Darts competition, huh?" Charlie mused, loud enough to wake Kerian from his music-induced walking coma.

"Wait, what did you say, Charlie?"
"I said that there's a darts competition in that very suspicious building."
"I'm not sure it's a good idea, it looks very.... dodgy."
"Well, if we do die, tell Weiss I think she's a bitch."
"But I'll be dead too."
"Whatever, we're going in to win it. Even if we don't earn money, we can use it as a springboard to another job." Charlie decided.
"Fine, but I've got a bad feeling about this.