Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you haven't seen up to V3C12, I would not recommend reading this. By the same token, this is going to make A LOT more sense if you've seen up to V3C12.
Chapter 1: "Wake Up, Jaune"
Jaune woke up in a fog. Not a literal fog, Well, actually there was something in the air... now that we're keeping track. So maybe it was a literal fog after all. "You win this round... weather." Either way, the young huntsman-in-training was unaccustomed to waking up under such strange circumstances. He couldn't force his mind to put more than a few scattered thoughts together before he drifted off into thinking about something else. His vision was blurry, as it usually was in the morning, but it wasn't morning. It was still very dark. The only light came from a series of small slits right in front of his face. "Where... am I?" he blurted out, unsure of exactly who was going to hear the question, much less answer. "I... this... can't be my bed." It was at this moment that Jaune's attention was drawn to the intense pain in the back of his head. He attempted to raise his arm to find the source of it, but didn't get much further than a short twitch before his hand smashed into something cold, something metallic. It gave way, whatever it was... seemed like a door of some kind. It creaked as it opened no more than a few inches, then abruptly slammed back to it's original orientation. "Ok, definitely... not my bed. Also, why am I upright?"
Having been awake now for a minute or so, things started to become more clear. It definitely wasn't foggy, there appeared to be a dissipating smoke. His recovering sense of smell could deduce that. There was a cold breeze blowing through his 'face slits', which he still didn't understand. "Seriously, what's going on? Why am I in a cold, metal box... outside apparently... in... the middle of the night...?" His brain raced to catch up to the... three whole thoughts he had just strung together.
"Ok Jaune, you got this. Just open the bed...door...thing. That's it, one step at a time." His arms felt like Jell-o, but flailing them in a direction that was generally in front of him seemed to do the trick. The metal door swung open, revealing that he was, in fact, outside... in downtown Vale. "This makes less sense now than it did five seconds ago...awesome."
He knew that the literal fog had turned out to be smoke, which had pretty much vanished by now. "Weather's got nothin on me!" he thought triumphantly, unsure why exactly he had just claimed victory over weather. The figurative fog was a little less forgiving. He couldn't remember, for the life of him, how he got into this situation. Running through the checklist of things he knew for sure, Jaune calculated that he was in downtown Vale, at night, in the cold, in an upright metal box with a now-opened door. Of course, there was the small matter of the sharp pain in the back of his head. His response times were still very sluggish, and his legs felt about as Jell-o-y as his arms, but nonetheless, he decided to make an attempt to emerge from the rocket locker.
"ROCKET LOCKER! That's what this thing is! That clears up... three... of my several thousand questions for the world right now." Outstanding from the list of issues not immediately resolved by this revelation was the Jell-o legs. Jaune tried to take one step out of the locker, and promptly stumbled down the small pile of rubble at the base of his pod, landing hard, on his hands and knees against the cold asphalt. This was a stance Jaune knew all too well. He used it in almost every fight, right before getting trounced by his opponent. Nonetheless, the familiarity of the thought comforted him greatly, mostly because it was actually a thought. Memories were beginning to trickle into his mind. Looking up, he recognized that something wasn't quite right with Vale, but he remained unable to place a finger on it. It was at the exact same moment that his nose started to burn from some, apparently, still lingering smoke.
Raising to a kneel, Jaune shook his head, and rubbed his eyes, still trying to force his brain to give up the secrets it was keeping from him. He couldn't figure out the fog that was clouding all of his thoughts, "It's like… pea soup in my brain. No. I don't really like pea soup. It's more like Ren's pancake batter. That sounds better, yeah… my thoughts are cloudier than Ren's pancake batter. I'll bet my brain is delicious." With his newfound pancake brain theory in place, Jaune slowly, but surely, got himself up.
As the seconds passed, the monotonous ringing in his ears gave way to new sounds. He hadn't been able to detect them until now, but there were what seemed to be a series of loud drumming noises that formed no particular cadence. Jaune attempted to cup his hand to his ear to try to get a more conclusive reading on what he thought he heard. What actually happened was less graceful. His equilibrium was still off, ever so slightly, but enough so that his cupped hand brushed against the, now apparent, swelling behind his ear. He recoiled from the pain that he had somehow forgotten mere moments before. Something felt different now… aside from the pain. Kneading his fingers with his thumb, Jaune realized that there was moisture where there previously hadn't been. Upon further inspection, he found blood. It was exactly where he had bumped his hand into his head.
"Wait, What? I can't even count how many times I've been stuffed into a rocket locker. Nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, I don't usually black out from it. It's more of an inconvenience really." The confusion was almost palpable. Then, a few more neurons started to fire. "I guess I couldn't protect myself with my aura after I hit my head? That makes… some sense... Aura! That's right, 'ol Jaune picked up a thing or two from his training. All I've got to do is activate it, and my head should heal up in no time."
Jaune hadn't actively kickstarted his aura since… ever... really. It usually protected him passively, but whatever happened in that rocket locker did a real number on him. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes "Ok, no problem. All I've got to do is remember what I learned from all of those nights on the roof with…Pyr… … … … " and the fog was gone.
