Chapter 22: Raven Branwen
In that moment, he doesn’t really have a choice. While he could have rejected Raven’s proposal, it’s quite obvious that whatever Summer told her, or whatever Raven Branwen herself came up with in the privacy of her own mind, he’d only be making matters worse. At her heart, the deposed bandit leader was a craven coward.
Her so-called ‘strength’ was a pitiful and flimsy display. She was certainly quite the capable human, and her powers as the Spring Maiden only made her more so. However, being strong wasn’t just about being powerful. Her courage fled her the moment Raven came up against someone she knew she couldn’t defeat like him or Salem. In the face of their monstrous power, she crumpled like a house of cards.
Everything about her right now screamed terrified to him. But she wasn’t terrified to serve him with her body… she was terrified he would refuse her. Even with whatever Summer had told her, it was abundantly clear, at least to Jaune’s senses, that Raven was grasping for anything. If she could offer him her body, then she could become useful to him. And then he would keep her around. At least, that’s what her thought process seems to be.
Slowly standing up, Jaune watches as Raven flinches at the movement, her head lifting so she can sneak a peek at him.
“… Very well. Rise.”
The deposed bandit leader gets to her feet, and immediately he can tell he’s already made the right call. There’s a relief to her that wasn’t there before. Once again, it might have been something Summer said to her… but hey, if selling out her body to him is the way the craven coward of a woman gets her peace of mind, Jaune can work with that. So long as he gets what else he really wants at the same time.
“Go ahead and strip. Slowly. I have some questions for you to answer as well at the same time.”
Fidgeting, she nods after a moment, before beginning to remove her clothes. Before Jaune can start in on the interrogation, however, Summer saunters past her and drops down to her knees in front of him. He blinks, glancing down at the blind woman, but she just smiles up in his general direction while opening his pants with her aura and extracting his cock.
Her hands go to her chest and between her legs and she rubs herself through her clothes, even as she takes his member into her mouth, sucking him off right then and there.
Summer’s actions haven’t just taken Jaune aback, but Raven as well. The deposed bandit leader froze up at the sight of her former teammate just going for it like that, but when he finally puts his red eyes back on Raven, she flinches and hurries herself along. Revealing more and more of her body to him, the black-haired woman bites her lower lip, even going so far as to show off.
He can admit it… she has a killer body. Personality could use some work, but in terms of looks, Raven Branwen is an impressive specimen. Similar to Summer in a lot of ways, especially in tone and athleticism. But then, to be fair, Raven had to be strong, always. Especially if she wanted to control a bunch of unruly bandits.
That said, that brought them to his first question.
“Why did you attack Shion?”
Raven flinches at the sound of his voice, even though she seems to have no issue having bared her chest to him. Her breasts bounce and jiggle as she doesn’t even bother covering them up. And yet, she hesitates to answer his question. How curious. Only for a moment though, before seeming to realize that he’s not going to take silence for an answer.
“… We were paid to.”
Now that’s a bombshell. Jaune’s eyes widen a little at that. Bandits were… paid to attack Shion? Did that mean… no, surely not, right?
“You were paid to? By whom? Vale? Atlas?”
It was the Kingdom of Mistral that was provoking war right now, there was no denying that. In spite of him pulling the Grimm back, and nearly the entire planet being free for the taking, Mistral had turned their attention towards their neighbors. It could have been a time of peace and prosperity for all of the Human Kingdoms of Remnant, a time of growth as they spread out in all directions.
They weren’t penned in anymore, but what was the first thing they’d done in spite of that fact? Turned on each other, rather than taking advantage of the boon he’d given them all. So… if it turned out that Vale or Atlas were trying to use Mistral’s own bandits against them, Jaune wasn’t sure how he would feel. On the one hand, Mistral had started it. On the other, the villagers of Shion were innocent. Pyrrha and her platoon were practically kids, as green as they obviously were.
But Raven surprises him.
“I don’t… I don’t know. But… I also don’t think so.”
Eyes narrowing, even as Summer’s tongue slips along his glans, her lips sliding up and down his cock, Jaune grunts.
“You don’t think so. What do you think, exactly?”
Raven hesitates again, and Jaune sighs and rolls his eyes.
“Nothing that comes out of your mouth will cause me to kill you, Raven. So long as you answer my questions truthfully and to the best of your ability, I will not harm you.”
He’s being mostly honest. Frankly, Jaune can’t say there’s NOTHING Raven could say that would cause him to kill her. He just doesn’t think she’d say one of the handful of things that would. As it is, his words seem to hit home with the deposed bandit leader, because she hesitantly nods, before glancing to the unconscious young woman recovering behind him.
“I don’t think it was Atlas or Vale… because the stuffy old man who purchased the tribe’s services looked a lot like her… and the job was to make her look good, to let her and her platoon drive us off after a bit of fighting.”
That gets Jaune’s attention. His eyes widen slightly, as he takes in what Raven is saying. In turn, the now-naked older woman freezes under his gaze, as if afraid he’s going to go back on his word. He’s not… but he wouldn’t be lying if he said the temptation wasn’t there. Ah, but in truth, he wasn’t all that angry at Raven, necessarily. He was far angrier at whoever this man was. A relation of Pyrrha’s, perhaps?
Glancing over at the unconscious young woman, Jaune tries to decide if he thinks she’s culpable or not. He hadn’t really gotten to know her very well, so it bears consideration. Was Lieutenant Pyrrha Nikos involved in some scheme of fraudulent valor, where her and her squad of soldiers fought off an entire bandit tribe on their first assignment, likely receiving acclaim and recommendations for successfully doing so?
… He just didn’t think it sounded like Pyrrha. Maybe he was being foolish, seeing as he barely knew the girl… but still, it didn’t feel like her. That didn’t mean someone else couldn’t have set it up FOR her, without her knowledge. In fact, that was all too likely, if Raven was telling the truth. Jaune suspected she was, but at the same time… it didn’t really add up, did it?
Ah, but he’s gotten lost in his own thoughts and ignored Raven for the last few moments, and now the deposed bandit leader looks afraid he’s going to bite her head off any moment. Grunting, Jaune gently draws Summer back off of his cock by her hair, something she allows easily enough.
Sitting back, the blind woman fingers herself brazenly, even as Jaune walks over to Raven, who trembles in fear… but also some form of anticipation. Hmph, a craven coward AND a woman with a defeat fetish? Eh, maybe not, but it’s clear some small part of Raven is eager to serve. Seizing her by her arms, Jaune pushes her over to a nearby table occupying one side of the medical tent, before lifting her up onto its edge and knocking her legs apart. They spread willingly for him, and Jaune grabs one of her tits casually, giving it a good hard grope as he brings his cock to her slit.
Before he penetrates the shivering huntswoman, Jaune cocks his head to the side and smiles thinly.
“Is this truly how you want to make yourself useful to me, Raven Branwen?”
Stiffening, the cowardly woman bites her lower lip and blushes, staring down at where they’re about to be joined in silence for a long moment before hissing out her response.
“Yesss…”
Well then… Jaune thrusts forward, taking her right then and there. Raven cries out as he punches up inside of her, her innards wetter than he would have expected. Her arms and legs eagerly wrap around his body, trying in vain to draw him in further. But she’s not strong enough to do so. In the end, he moves at his own pace, starting off slow. After all, he still has questions for her.
“You say you were paid to raid Shion to make Lieutenant Nikos look good. You were paid to let her drive you off, yes?”
“… Y-Yes.”
“But that’s not what happened, is it? Why?”
Raven hesitates again, but Jaune has already decided not to hold it against her. Still, he doesn’t fuck her any faster, wanting to hear her response before they go much further. After all, it doesn’t add up. If the Branwen Tribe was supposed to lose, why had they been on the verge of winning before he intervened? Certainly, none of the bandits he’d seen had seemed to know they were supposed to fail and be pushed back… which meant Raven hadn’t told them. And that meant she’d never intended to honor the deal from the very beginning.
“… The payment offered was an insulting amount. But the man… the man had a point. He said… he said times were changing, and we needed to be ready to adapt. He said… if even someone like his daughter, with a bright future ahead of them, could be conscripted into the army, then it was only a matter of time before we were hunted down and either killed or conscripted ourselves.”
His daughter… Pyrrha, perhaps? Her soldiers HAD seemed to have a serious case of hero worship for her, beyond just a Lieutenant and her platoon. They’d been shocked he hadn’t known who she was. So what… Pyrrha’s father had tried to hire bandits to make his baby girl look good, and had almost gotten her killed in the process? Still…
Beginning to move faster, letting Raven know he was enjoying her body and wasn’t upset with… her offering to him, Jaune nevertheless continues the interrogation as he fucks her.
“What was your plan then? What was the true plan?”
Shuddering beneath him, tits bouncing with the force of his thrusts as the table she’s sat upon bounces and jars as well, Raven averts her gaze as she explains.
“Mistral… isn’t safe anymore. But if we were going to go elsewhere, we needed… more people. The p-plan was to s-steal a few villages on the way out of the Kingdom, and settle in the wilds… a new territory, bereft of the Grimm and the Kingdoms in general. An end to banditry…”
Jaune scoffs at that, and grabs Raven by the jaw, letting her know she’s not going to get one over on him that easily.
“An end to banditry, brought about by resorting to slavery?”
Raven flushes, looking a little panicked as she talks through his squeezing of her jaw.
“Nnngh! N-No! S-Serfdom… not s-slavery! The Branwen T-Tribe has always prided itself on strength! Everyone can b-become strong… was going to let the Lieutenant and her s-soldiers join as w-warriors, once we got where we were going! Needed farmers though t-too!”
She could dress it up however she liked, but ultimately, her plan was quite clear to him. It was… a very basic, simplistic plan at that. Precisely the type of plan that Jaune would expect a cowardly bandit leader like Raven to come up with, in fact. Taking a contract from Pyrrha’s father, only to turn around and stab him in the back by plotting to steal his money, his daughter, and a few villages worth of people on her way out of the Kingdom? Yeah, that sounded right to him.
He had the full picture now, he supposed. The only thing left to do was decide what to do next and-
“P-Please… please, I can be good. I can be useful to you. I’m yours. All of me is yours. You can have my womb… I’ve given birth before. I can do it again, f-for you…”
Jaune blinks, not sure whether its his silence that prompted such an offering, or whether Raven’s own arousal is getting the better of her. One thing is for sure though, looking into her eyes… he can tell she’s deadly serious.
-x-X-x-
Pyrrha had been awake for quite a while. Not the entire time, but long enough to hear the bandit leader who had so easily defeated her, tell Jaune Arc that her own father was the reason the people of Shion had been in such danger. Laying on her cot, Pyrrha couldn’t see everything as clearly as she might have liked, but she could see enough, as well as hear enough, to know something very odd had happened while she was unconscious.
Not only was her wound tended to, and as a result of her aura, almost entirely healed, but Jaune was fucking the bandit leader… and the older woman sounded both scared and aroused at the same time. Which… she supposed it spoke well of Jaune, if he could pleasure a bandit leader… but she would have expected HIM to be the scared one. Instead, it seemed as though he was interrogating the other woman, and successfully at that.
Pyrrha had no small amount of pride in her own skills, but she’d been completely destroyed by the bandits’ leader. Demolished in a few short minutes, really. It had been a humiliating, disgraceful defeat.
Maybe that was why Pyrrha was feeling such arousal, at hearing Jaune talk down to the woman who had defeated her. Maybe that was why she found herself surreptitiously moving a hand down between her legs, as she cautiously and subtly spied on the two of them going at it. She shouldn’t have been. She really shouldn’t be touching herself, especially when she’d literally just found out her own father had paid the bandit tribe leader to attack Shion. And yet, here she was all the same. And she-
Pyrrha Nikos goes still, as a hand suddenly lands upon her head, fingers gently brushing through her red hair. Slowly, she tilts her eyes up to see another woman kneeling beside her, petting her head and touching HERSELF to the sight of the two going at it. Or rather, not the sight… because, Pyrrha realizes, the woman is blind. H-How had she known where Pyrrha was?
“Shhh, quiet little one. His Majesty has a choice to make…”
The voice, less than even a whisper, is clearly meant for her and her alone. Pyrrha flushes, as her eyes dart back over to Jaune and the bandit woman fucking on the table. Oh heavens… what HAD she gotten herself into?