Jaune(FD) Intelligence B1C13

"I think Azure attacked us."

What? That sounded ridiculous. The guy had been in front of us all the entire time and what would he have been able to do against Heroes like them? Besides, he had been a Peddler. If his Stats were anything like my mom's, then he'd have never been able to actually hurt us.

"You mean he used some kind of ability on us?" Weiss asked. "He used something to make us agree to something we didn't want to?"

"That or just his Charisma," Ren muttered.

"Impossible," Weiss laughed. "How could an NPC have more Charisma than a team full of Heroes? We had a Knight with us for crying out loud."

I couldn't meet their eyes at that. "Why would he do something like that, though?" I asked.

"Are you joking? He did it, Arc, because he's a filthy swindler who wanted our lien. Are you still on his side after what he's done to us?"

"It might be the after-effects of Azure's Charisma," Pyrrha laid a hand on my arm. "It should wear off soon."

Weiss snorted and threw her arms into the air, but my friend's words did little to calm me down. It wasn't the after-effects, or whatever she thought it was. I knew exactly why I found it so hard to believe how Azure had cheated us.

It was because he was part of the Labour Caste. Had I, despite constantly complaining about it, given in to the same classism I hated? I'd trusted Azure not because of merit or anything else, but because of what he was. I'd trusted him because he wasn't a Hero. Because to me, it was only the upper Castes which felt the need to cheat honest people. Gods… I was an idiot.

"You were the only person to become suspicious," Ren said to Weiss. "What was it that made you not trust him when he told us about the hall?"

"It sounded too good to be true. I will admit that even I was excited at the prospect, but it just didn't make sense on an intellectual level."

Intellectual… My head perked up as I called out, "Weiss, your highest Stat is Intelligence, isn't it?"

The Mage turned to face me and raised an eyebrow. "It is," she admitted with a little shrug. "Why?"

"I think I see where Jaune is coming from," Ren interrupted. "It's possible that he overwhelmed us with Charisma, and the only one who had any defence was yourself – and only when his offer clashed with your Intelligence."

[...]

"Like Weiss said, Charisma works on the power of suggestion," the Monk went on, "It can't make you do things you don't want to do, but we all wanted to believe the deal was a good one. We wanted to trust him and he must have played on that. When it came to signing the contract, I would imagine Ruby and Yang were so eager to believe him that his Charisma was even able to trick them into ignoring their common sense."

"Normally it convinces you to spend a little more in a shop," Pyrrha agreed, "Or it makes you trust someone a little more than you normally would. I suppose in this case we were all so desperate to believe the deal was genuine that we defeated ourselves as much as he did us."