RWBY: Dark/Jaunedice

It had all happened so fast.

One moment, he had been walking with his mother and father down the dimly-lit urban streets of Vale, minding their own business. The next, a massive armored tank of a vehicle came rumbling down the streets.

Ten-year-old Jaune turned to face the rumbling that was approaching. He was initially impressed by the vehicle: it was easily a story tall, covered in dark green armor plating, with various Dust-powered guns and turrets. It rolled along on a tank-like metal tread that crushed the stone and asphalt beneath it.

Jaune was just about to turn back to his parents and remark on how cool he thought the vehicle was when he heard his mother gasp loudly.

“Oh my gods!” she said in a panicked tone.

“Quick!” his father said in a raised whisper. “Get him off of the street!”

Jaune felt his mother’s arm wrap around his shoulders and begin pulling him towards the buildings on their left side. Jaune had to jog to keep up with her pace.

“Attention civilians!” a booming voice from what sounded like a mechanical megaphone yelled. “Halt immediately! You are to cease your current actions and comply, via Lord Ozpin’s command, code 1823225!”

“No!” Jaune heard his father shout. “You’re not taking him! Do you hear me? You’re not-” The yelling was engulfed by the rumbling of the vehicle. Jaune’s father continued to shout, but Jaune could not hear what he was saying over the noise.

Jaune’s mother ducked with him into an alley, hurrying him along and panting in fear. Jaune asked her what was going on, but his question was inaudible due to the screeching of brakes behind him. Jaune turned just his head to see the armored vehicle parked in front of the alleyway, and men in white and green uniforms exit. They started to run towards him.

“Mommy, who are they?” Jaune asked, beginning to feel fear and panic himself from these mysterious men chasing after them.

“Halt!” one of the men shouted.

“Run, Jaune!” Jaune’s mother swooped behind him and gave him a gentle, but firm push on the back, propelling him forward. Jaune was confused as he stumbled forward, but he obeyed and began to run as soon as he found his footing.

“Hey, kid, stop!” the man shouted again. Jaune heard his mother grunt in pain, but kept running. He did his best to weave through the tight corners, but he was afraid and dizzy. He always heard the sounds of heavy and fast footsteps behind him, but was too afraid to look back. He rounded a corner, but then heard rapid footsteps right behind him, and then felt a pair of large, muscular arms wrap around his chest.

Jaune could not help but scream in fear as the man picked him up off of the ground. Jaune flailed his legs and kicked, squirming to the best of his ability.

“Hold still!” the man barked, his movement unfazed by Jaune’s resistance. He carried Jaune down another alleyway, heading back towards the street. “Mommy!” Jaune cried out, tears forming in his eyes. “Help me!”

“Jaune!” he heard his mother scream. As the man carried him back out onto the sidewalk, Jaune saw his mother lying on her chest on the ground, several of the men pinning her. She writhed and struggled. When she caught sight of Jaune, her eyes filled with tears. “Jaune!” she bawled.

“Mommy!” Jaune cried back, kicking some more. He reached out to her, but the man grabbed his extended arm and painfully pulled it back.

“No!” his mother screamed. She redirected her attention to her assailants. “You monsters!” she cried in sorrow and rage. “Let him go! Let him go! He’s just a child!”

“Silence!” one of the men holding her down snapped. “You are acting in violation of order codes 10141618 and 1823225! Stop resisting!”

“No!” Jaune’s mother cried. “He’s my son! Do you hear me?! He’s my son!” She craned her neck to look back up at Jaune with her sobbing eyes. “Jaune!”

The back of the vehicle opened, and several of the men aimed Dust rifles into it. The man dragged the resisting Jaune over to the opening, and Jaune saw four other children in the back, their eyes red and their faces full of fear. There was a small girl with brown hair covering her eyes, a Faunus girl with orange-brown hair and deer antlers protruding from her forehead, and a heavily muscled teenage boy with blonde hair that looked a great deal older than Jaune or the others. The man threw Jaune into the vehicle.He landed on his face, and felt a stinging pain as he banged his knee on the hard metal floor. He turned to get into a seating position, looking out at the men pointing guns at him. In the distance, he saw his father restrained by armed men.

“No! Jaune!” he heard his mother scream one last time before the man grabbed the metal doors of the vehicle and slammed them closed, leaving Jaune and the others in near darkness as they heard a lock clink. Jaune strained to get up and began pounding on the doors.

“Help!” he screamed. “Mommy!”

He tried to listen for her voice, but all sounds from the outside were silenced by the thick walls. He jumped in shock when he felt the transport roar to life and begin rolling away.

Jaune banged on the doors more and more until his hands hurt. He screamed for his mother and father until his throat burned. Tears streamed down his face and his stomach churned.

“Please!” He attempted one last, desperate cry. But it was more of a wheeze, as he could not find the strength to keep pleading.

“Shut up!” the larger boy said. “Stop with all the noise!”

Jaune curled up and began to sob. He was so afraid and confused, and he felt more and more nauseous by the second.

“Crying won’t help you!” the boy scolded. “You don’t think we’ve cried enough already? You need to start toughening up now, because where they’re taking us, a crybaby like you won’t survive!”

The Faunus girl whimpered softly, and the other girl turned to face the corner and sat in fearful silence. Jaune was hearing what the boy had to say, but was not able to make much out of it. He just felt so afraid; too afraid to do anything but cry. His stomach felt worse than it ever had before.

“Hey!” the boy shouted at Jaune. “Did you hear what I just said? Stop crying!”

Jaune could not take it anymore. He retched once, then threw up on the cold metal floor.

While the girl in the corner barely reacted, the Faunus girl squealed and backed away, and the boy rose to his feet and took a few steps away from the puddle, seething.

“Fuck!” he shouted. “Now look what you’ve done, Vomit Boy! Now it’s going to smell like shit in here for the rest of the trip! Fuck!”

Jaune gagged down the last bit of vomit, then shut his eyes tightly, just hoping to wake up.

No more kids were picked up for the rest of the two hour trip. The stench in the hold was growing unbearable, and even the big boy found himself gagging. Jaune laid in silence for the whole ordeal, just wishing it would end sooner rather than later.

The vehicle finally came to a stop just as the smell had reached its worst. There were a few moments of silence, then the doors of the vehicle swung open, flooding dim light, cold air, and the sound of crashing waves into the hold. Jaune heard the other children gasp for clean air.

“Ugh,” Jaune heard a man say. It was the same man that had taken him. “One of them puked.”

“Well, just get him and the others out and onto the Bullhead,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “We’ll clean it up when they’re loaded.”

Jaune felt the arms and hands wrap around his chest and abdomen again, and he was quickly heaved out of the vehicle. He was too tired and sick to fight back. As he was brought out, he took the time to breathe in the salty air, and realized they must be at the shore. He looked around to see that they were on some kid of seaside military base, with dim lamps dotted around a landing pad. Jaune heard the older boy putting up a fuss behind him as the man carried him to a Bullhead airship parked on the landing pad. There were other vehicles identical to the one he had just been released from dotted around the landing pad.

Jaune wheezed weakly as the man brought him over to the Bullhead, and then carried him up the ramp into the cargo hold. There, Jaune saw even more children. There were at least a dozen, ranging from around seven years old to late teens. They were either crying or looked as if they had been, and they watched as Jaune was carried in and set on the floor next to a small, orange-haired girl with bright turquoise eyes. She recoiled when he was placed next to her, and did not say a word.

Jaune sat, silently looking at the ground as the other three children were brought in. He did not even bother to look up at them.

“Is that all for tonight?” Jaune heard another man call.

“Yeah, that’s it,” the man who had taken him replied. “They’re ready to go.”

“Alright,” the other man replied.

“Have a safe trip,” the first man said.

“Thanks, you too.”

There was a shaking, and Jaune lifted his head just enough to see the rap raising up and closing the opening. There was light in the hold, but not much. The ship began to shake, and then lifted off of the ground. It then began moving forward, propelling over the ocean.

An hour later, the ship hand landed. The impact of the ship setting down had startled many of the tired children awake, including Jaune, who had to take a moment to remember where he was. In no time at all, the ramp of the Bullhead lowered, and more uniformed soldiers walked on.

“Come on!” one shouted. She stamped her foot, but only a few of the children began to stand up.

She stomped her foot again. “Get up and out of the ship now, or we’ll shoot you!” she yelled.

Jaune groggily stood up, his legs weak. He lifted his head to see where he was going, then began walking towards the opening. Even though he was weak and tired, he was not the slowest one there. The smaller or more tired children were being buffaloed and hurried along by the soldiers. One, a teenager who looked more like an adult than a child, stayed seated even when the soldiers approached him. They began barking orders, but Jaune ignored it and kept walking. As Jaune stepped out onto the solid ground, he heard a few quick, loud gunshots behind him.

Jaune scanned his surroundings. They sky was filled with grey clouds overlooking a miserable-looking grey building. It was three stories tall, and looked like a mix between a castle and a prison. Surrounding its front was easily a square mile of rock pits, muddy wooden platforms, a few small buildings, and a single pillory with a small skeleton still confined inside, all surrounded by barbed-wire fence. Behind the massive building was a forest of dark green trees.

The soldiers pushed Jaune and the others forward, into a crowd of children, weeping and screaming. They were all funneled through an opening in one of the fences, led right to the giant building in the center. Jaune could not have thought of a more miserable place if he tried.

Before he knew it, he was inside the cold, grey building in what appeared to be some kind of hall or audience chamber with an elevated stage at the end. Soldiers lined the edges of the room, guns in their hands. They kept the flood of victims from going into the hallways that branched off from the large room.

Jaune looked around, and all he saw were either cold walls or crying kids. Then a loud noise startled him and many of the others, and he looked to see what made it.

There was a small, elderly woman standing on the stage, adjusting a microphone to stop the feedback that had rung out a moment earlier. She had dark skin and slick-ed back grey hair, and wore strange, blue-tinted glasses. She rested on a dark wooden cane with a blue skull decoration on the top.

“Hello all!” she said in a loud, cackling voice. “I am Headmaster Calavera. Many of you, no doubt, are wondering where you are. You are on the island of Patch, off the coast of Vale. Welcome to Signal Academy.” She smiled cruelly. “You are here because Lord Ozpin needs the best of the best to serve in his elite. Huntsmen and Huntresses. And we intend to mold you into the best of the best.” She tapped her cane. “You may be upset and confused at the moment, but I assure you, everything we’ve done here, we’ve done to ensure you are as powerful as you can be! Forget your families. Forget your friends. Release yourselves from the burdens of love and relationships. There is only Lord Ozpin, and whatever forces he deems necessary to ensure safety in Remnant. This is your home now, and we are the authority in your lives.” Her smile widened. “Now, shall we begin?”

Jaune slowly raised his stick to block the incoming attack. His opponent’s stick hit him in the face, knocking him back. Jaune raised his stick again, and attacked, hitting his opponent in the side before smacking him in the face. The child held his nose as it began to bleed, and began to cry. A soldier ran in and grabbed him, pulling him quickly away from the sparring platform. While Jaune was happy he won, he felt sorry for how his opponent would be punished for losing.

“Well done, Arc,” the headmaster remarked, looking down from her observation platform. She grinned as she tightened her frail fingers around her skull-tipped cane. “Next!” she called.

Jaune stepped down the shaking, rugged stairs of the sparring platform. As soon as his feet hit the ground, they were almost immediately sucked into the cold, wet mud. He strained a bit to pull his boots from the ground, staggering back to the gravel pits as the next two children stepped up.

Jaune staggered over to a mound of rocks, where August Caspian was sitting. He and Jaune had been put in the same living quarters together. August looked up at Jaune with sad eyes.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“I won,” Jaune said solemnly as he sat on a stone next to August. “I think I broke his nose.”

“You don’t sound too happy about a victory,” August said.

Jaune shook his head. “I just know that poor kid’s gonna suffer for losing.”

August shrugged. “That’s how it works in here. Even after two years of training, you still look out for others?”

Jaune lowered his head. “Not as much as I’d like to anymore,” he replied. He looked out at the field of children, who were either breaking rocks with pickaxes, sparring on platforms, wrestling in the mud, or sitting alone. It was dangerous for Jaune to even be talking with August.

Then, Jaune saw someone he had never seen before sparring on one of the platforms. She immediately caught his eye, attracting his attention away from everything else. She was throwing a much older teenager off of the platform. When she stood straight after her victory, Jaune felt time seemingly slow to a halt. She was beautiful. He watched as she brushed her long red hair from her face. The soldier watching her fight dismissed her, and she walked off the platform, facing Jaune. She had bright green eyes that Jaune could notice from a distance. She was very tall, though she looked to be around the same age as Jaune.

August noticed Jaune staring and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “What is it?”

“That girl,” Jaune said, not taking his eyes off the girl as she walked over to the gravel pit and picked up a pickaxe. “Who is she?”

August leaned forward to try and get a better look at who Jaune was staring at. “Who, the blonde?”

“No, no,” Jaune said. He pointed towards the girl. “Her,”

August adjusted his gaze. “Oh, her? That’s Pyrrha Nikos. Lots of gossip going around about her. They say she’s won every brawl so far, and that she can kick the ass of pretty much any fucker in here.” He leaned in to Jaune. “Word is that she wasn’t taken like the rest of us. Her parents gave her away. Something about ensuring their social status with Lord Ozpin’s elite or something like that.”

Jaune felt a feeling he had not felt in years. It felt like an actual positive emotion. There was some kind of magnetic pull about this girl, and she seemed to be a single glowing ember in the cold, dark waste.

“She’s beautiful,” Jaune finally said aloud.

August eyed him, cautiously and disapprovingly. “Careful, Arc. Remember, all we have to give we give to Lord Ozpin. It’s dangerous enough that you and I aren’t at each other’s throats like every other bastard in here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jaune said quickly, both trying to calm August’s nerves as well as shut him up. Jaune watched as the girl broke a large stone in half with her pickaxe.

August got up. “I’m going to go practice on some of the younger ones. Stay out of trouble,” he warned before marching off.

Jaune sighed as he looked at Pyrrha. What a lovely name. As soon as he noticed August had left, he felt the urge to go talk to her. After all, what was the harm in at least introducing himself? He felt a touch nervous, but finally found the strength to stand up and begin walking over.

Jaune quickly raised his sword to block the incoming attack. His opponent’s mace slammed into the blade, causing Jaune to recoil slightly. He crooked his head to keep the blood that was trickling down from his forehead from getting in his eyes as his opponent, the same boy that had yelled at him for vomiting eight years ago, pressed harder, attempting to break Jaune’s defense.

The boy leaned down with his bruised and bloodstained head until he was inches away from Jaune’s face.

“This is the part where you loose,” he said quiet enough for only Jaune to hear.

Jaune pushed back, throwing the boy off-balance. He then dropped down and swept his legs, causing the boy to fall on his back. Jaune leapt to his feet, and stabbed his blade at the boy, stopping mid-lunge in order not to end his opponent’s life. The smallest tip of the blade was embedded in the boy’s neck, just deep enough to draw blood. The boy looked up with fearful eyes.

“Please,” he mouthed. “Please let me win. You know what they’ll do to me if I lose.”

Jaune did not care. He pressed the blade closer, causing the boy to flinch in pain.

“Break!” a soldier commanded. Jaune obeyed without hesitation and pulled his blade back, sheathing it. The other boy pressed his palm against his neck to slow the bleeding as a soldier pulled him up and dragged him, looking despaired and afraid, off the platform.

“Dismissed, Arc,” Headmaster Calavera mused. Jaune saluted the retired Huntress and marched off of the platform. He stopped to see who was sparring next. He watched as Nora Valkyrie stepped up with a sledgehammer, facing off against some other girl with a short blade and a flimsy shield. Jaune scoffed, then marched off.

He tromped through the mud, now knowing all the places to step to avoid getting stuck. His legs had become muscular and strong from walking on the same treacherous ground for eight years.

“Psst!” a voice ushered him. Jaune turned his head to see a finger beckoning him from behind one of the barracks. He smiled and, after checking to make sure the coast was clear, snuck back.

“I saw that fight against Winchester,” Pyrrha Nikos said. “Excellent work.”

Jaune shrugged. “I bet you could have done better,” he said.

They paused for a moment, then stepped closer to one another. Pyrrha moved her hand towards his, and he gently took it.

“It’s almost graduation,” Pyrrha said, looking into Jaune’s eyes. He had grown significantly taller than her over the years, forcing her to look up to see his face. But she did not mind.

Jaune nodded. “Soon we’ll be legitimate Huntsmen and Huntresses,” he said. “We’ll be able to serve Lord Ozpin in whatever ways he sees fit. It will be going from this mudhole to the highest honors.”

Pyrrha nodded back. “But there are dangers. Romance is strictly forbidden between Huntsmen and Huntresses.”

Jaune stood firm. “My loyalty lies with Lord Ozpin, but the one thing he will never make me do is stop loving you. We’ll work together, and keep our love a secret. And then, once we’re done with our duty, we’ll leave and live together.”

Pyrrha giggled skeptically. “Oh really? And where would we go?”

Jaune paused for a moment, then looked past Pyrrha to the horizon. He turned her around gently and pointed. “Out in the countryside. We’ll settle down in a grassy plain, with woods nearby. We’ll get married in the forests of Forever Fall. Then we’ll have a baby.”

Pyrrha was silent as Jaune talked. Even after he finished, she said nothing. He looked down at her, put off by her silence.

“What?” he asked. “Do you not like it?” He then noticed that Pyrrha began to tear up.

“I love it,” she said. “It sounds like the most wonderful thing in the world. But it’s impossible.”

Jaune leaned down so that his face was parallel with hers, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Not if we work together, it’s not. We’ll do our duty. We’ll fight for Lord Ozpin. And then when we’re done, I’ll take you to the countryside, where we’ll live for all our days. I promise.”

Pyrrha hugged him. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

Jaune hugged her back. “i know you will,” he said.

Pyrrha sighed. “Oh Jaune. I can’t believe when I first met you, I punched you in the face!”

Jaune laughed a bit. “I had it coming,” he said.

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