After the initial shock of…her new appearance died down, Jeanne tried to calmly analyze what the hell was going on.
The first thought that came to mind was to check if this was either reality or an illusion. She had experienced illusions beforehand and knew how they felt by now.
The air was stagnant, unmoving. An illusion would permeate the area of effect with the user's aura. Jeanne couldn't sense any other aura. Most illusions tended to warp a person's senses and perception of reality by just the tiniest of margins. A single shift in a person's mind can cause an entirely new image. It was the reason why Emerald's semblance had been so powerful in fights since the common fighter wouldn't know they were trapped in an illusion until it was too late.
Jeanne could easily differentiate if it was that simple, but she didn't know if that would be the case here. With the relics, Salem might be able to create an illusion as powerful as this without any difficulties.
So…The only course of action left was pain. It was the easiest trick in the book to see if she really was trapped in an illusion. Pain interfered with too many mental processes. Maintaining an illusion through the pain barrier was impossible to do.
If she felt pain, then this was reality. She just needed to find a quick way to do it. There weren't that many sharp objects in the room, but Jeanne managed to find a pair of scissors stashed away behind some papers and books messily stacked on a table.
The scissors were obviously meant for small children since they had the safety edges on them. It wasn't surprising since there were so many younger children than her in the Arc household.
It'd be more difficult to test her theory with safety scissors, but they would work nonetheless.
She flipped the scissors between her fingertips and directly applied one edge of the blade against her skin. As she expected, it didn't even make a dent in her skin.
Nothing was ever easy she supposed.
She tried again, applying a bit more force. A moment passed before she felt a searing numbness spread through the small incision she made on her hand. A bead of blood dripped down her hand and the familiar feeling of pain radiated through her hand.
Jeanne grimaced as she quickly wiped the wound against her shirt, smearing any evidence of a cut away as she shook her head to get the numb feeling away.
Okay, cool. This was reality.
Even so, it made no practical sense to be back in her old home, with her old family. None of them were supposed to be alive after all. They hadn't survived long after the fall of Beacon and Vale. Like everyone else.
Jeanne could feel her fingertips clench into the palm of her hands, digging roughly against her skin as the sole thought of how alone she really was filled her head once again.
"Dammit…You promised that you wouldn't cry again. Don't you dare break that promise," Jeanne whispered to herself, her voice rocking as her ears strained at the unfamiliar voice.
The very feminine voice.
Jeanne let out a frustrated, pained groan. She pushed the palms of her hands through her hair as she plopped back down onto the bed she had just rolled off.
A tired, draught face stared back at her from the confinements of the mirror. It wasn't the exact same face, but it was Jeanne Arc's face.
The same blue eyes and messy blonde hair adjourned her features. It was less defined and less sharp, but Jeanne could pinpoint just how similar her facial structure was to her male counterpart. Such a sudden transformation was shocking, but it didn't do much to deter all of Jeanne's thoughts.
She couldn't wrap her mind around it. She knew that her semblance didn't have any actual properties or known powers, but there were an infinite number of possibilities that could explain what was happening to her.
Hypnosis? Mind transfer? Alternate reality? Time travel?
Speculation would always be one of her strong suits, but, of course, she wouldn't know for sure until she stepped outside of her bedroom door. If that really was her mother's voice that she heard, she'd have to talk with her supposed family, and checked the local newspapers around to gather more clues.
She heavily suspected that her semblance must have had something to do with time. It had been the first time around after all.
Nevertheless, the only definitive and strangest outcome was that she was a girl now.
It wasn't as awkward as she thought it would be, but she certainly didn't know how to feel. Were her emotions going to be more feminine now?
They were girly before the invasion of Beacon, but would they be even worse now? If she had another bout of problems with self-confidence, she swore that she'd lose her damn mind. Relationships and feelings toward other people was a whole different scenario that Jeanne didn't even want to think about it.
She could only imagine how complicated and conflicted that would be in the future.
She had grown up with seven sisters when she was a guy, so her attraction to the other gender had been low to non-existent.
The first time she had liked someone had been Weiss and then Pyrrha right before the latter's death. After the fall of Beacon, Jeanne hadn't had the chance or time to consider those feelings.
No one even dared try at the fear of losing someone the very next day. Some people tend to say to live in the moment and to the fullest. But, some people can't do that. They can't throw out all their worries and love who they want without a care in the world.
Not when they were hunters and huntresses. Not when they had to protect and save the world. They were not given the chance to explore what they wanted.
Instead, they all dutifully embraced their fears, rightfully maintaining their personal distances from each other until they were murdered.
Jeanne never had the chance of try with Pyrrha. Not even for a moment.
She was a girl now. If her hunches were correct, then it'd be a bridge to cross when a situation arose.
Moving on, appearance-wise, Jeanne didn't know what to think. She supposed that she was pretty, but that was hard to say. Her body was a lot less developed than the girls had been at Beacon. If anything, it was a lot like Ruby's when they had all first met. It either meant that she was underdeveloped, or she was simply young. Her age was another question that she wouldn't be able to answer unless she stepped out that door.
Her mom or what she supposed was her mom had called her Jeanne earlier. Her parents had always doted on the fact that they'd call her Jeanne if she had been born a girl.
Being a girl and the personal baggage that it brought didn't bother Jeanne much though. Those were all things that she could work out and rant about later. If she had to, she'd swallow whatever pride she had left and have a nice long chat about the birds and the bees with her parents, but something else worried her a lot more.
How would being a girl affect her combat style? She may have not been as strong as she was in the future, but most of her fighting revolved around the training that she did.
It was mainly defense-orientated, but all her physical attacks had relied on the strength that she had gained throughout the years. It was a fighting style that supported the masculine form of a developed man. She knew, from personal experience, that the girls from team RWBY and JNPR had been breathtakingly phenomenal in their combat styles and abilities.
But, how did a person's combat and ability change if they turned from a boy into a girl?
All that experience would basically be for nothing if she couldn't fight at all like she used to. She'd have to rework herself from the ground up if that was the case. Depending on just how far back she went, she might have enough time to do that before she started Beacon. Each passing thought evolved into another set of questions and problems.
Jeanne never learned the full story of the maidens or relics until it was far too late. Even with the information she possessed now, there were a variety of actions that she could try. The actual location of either fairytale was out of her mind. Ozpin in Oscar's mind never saw the need to tell anyone where they had been originally.
It was a fact that peeved her off to no end, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. She had no clue where Ozpin or Qrow would even be to tell them what she knew. Even then, time traveling stories were fallible and she'd be called a lunatic and thrown in the nearest local prison for being some washed-up mentally ill teenager.
The concept of fairytale and unimaginable powers had been the norm for all of them, but the possibility of time travel had always been a singularity that had been ruled out by Ozpin. It wasn't possible. Otherwise, many would have done so already.
Finding and telling anyone that could make use of the situation wouldn't be a playable move. She was still just a child and had no reputable source backing her up.
Stupidly annoying, but even these types of things had a dumb system of politics revolving around them. Jeanne could only hope that she would be able to get them to believe her when she became a student at Beacon Academy.
…She could try telling her family.
Nope. Jeanne shot that possibility down as quickly as it arose in her mind.
It'd be even worse if she tried to tell her family what was going on. She could only imagine the sheer wrath of terror that they'd bestow on her for talking about her stupid dreams again. If they believed her, that would almost be an even worse scenario. Gods…Why did everything have to be so insanely complicated? Was it too much to ask for just an overpowered combat semblance and not one that sent her all the way back in time?
All the events that Jeanne had been through once, she'd have to relive. But, the second chance might be all that she needed. She'd just have to make the right choices and carve her own path.
Fate didn't throw her a bone the first time, but she sure wasn't going to be idling around and waiting for a treat like a loyal dog would.
But before all that, her first challenge was rapidly approaching.
Her first encounter with her supposed family.
Jeanne took in a deep gulp, hesitating slightly as she moved towards the door of her bedroom. It was a small, narrow doorframe. It was such a tiny little thing that separated her from her still sane, calculating thoughts and the very crazy reality that would await her on the other side of the door.
She'd have to be brave. Fearless.
It's what Pyrrha had taught her. It's what Ruby had enforced. It's what everyone had died for.
Her hand slowly reached for the door handle, grasping the cold metal knob with a shaking hand. The teen pulled the knob to the right and backwards, pulling the door back as a cold breeze tingled against her skin.
It was at that moment that she realized her first mistake.
She wasn't wearing any clothes.
Jeanne immediately shut the door and let out an audible sigh.
"Right, right…Clothes. You can't mess that up on the first day here," she exclaimed.
The girl moved to the closet on the opposite side of the room, opening the wardrobe and examining the contents with a scrunched eyebrow.
Yeah. Being a girl was going to be more complicated than she thought.
After spending an inappropriate amount of time on her wardrobe, Jeanne finally closed the door behind her and stepped into the hallway outside of her room.
Most of the clothing in the closet had been too girly too wear. Skirts, stockings, and shorts were all out of the picture the second she glanced at them. She might be a girl now, but she hadn't a slightest clue on how any of those matched or worked.
A fight for another day.
Jeanne eventually settled with a comfortable pair of pajamas and a simple shirt that had a graphic design of ducklings on them. It wasn't the most intimidating of a person meant to save the world, but she supposed they looked…cute enough to fit the bill?
Ugh. She was going to have to compliment Yang the next time the two of them met.
The rest of the hallway was deadly quiet. She supposed that the rest of her sisters were still sleeping. It was the early hours of the morning after all and she could smell the freshness of baked bread and scrambled eggs down the stairs.
Mom was preparing breakfast.
When was the last time that had happened? It was the day before she ran away from home and to Beacon. When she thought about it, the reality came back crashing down on her. This was going to be the first time that she saw her family in years.
Jeanne had plenty of time to come to terms with it, especially since death had been no stranger in the last few years of fighting Salem and her allies.
She personally had to create the graves for Nora, Blake, Ruby, Weiss, and Yang. They never did retrieve Ren's body, but the sentiment was the same. Heartbroken would be the simplest of ways to put how she had felt at the time of each death, but each death only solidified her will. Constant loss made a person stronger. They were less susceptible to emotional pain.
But even then…Jeanne couldn't stop the faintest hint of a tremble in her body.
What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to act? Would it be too weird? Would they call her out?
She was going to see her family again for Oum's sake. Their appearances were muddy in her mind. She could associate a voice, a personality…but, a face? It pained her to say it, but she couldn't even remember what they looked like. The paladin had never imagined how everything quickly fell apart. Nor did she imagine that running away from home would be the very last time that she'd ever see or talk to any of them ever again.
Jeanne paused at the top of the staircase, looking down at the ground of the first floor. She could hear the jovial laughter shared between her mom and dad: Perpetua and Nicholas Arc.
She strained to hear their conversation, pushing her head closer towards the kitchen as she descended down a step or two. The words were hardly audible, and she couldn't even make sense of their sentences. But, their voices matched perfectly in her memory.
Jeanne didn't need to see them to know that the two people down the stairs were her mother and father. Turning minutely, she made to move back up the stairs again.
She overstepped her range, dumbly moving as if she was still in the body of her much older and taller male counterpart. The slip was almost comical as she practically did a complete 360 turn and then took a complete nosedive down the stairs.
Her head and the floor had never been close friends, but the resounding echo that blasted through the first floor from the impact certainly made it seem like they were close buddies.
"Ow…" Jeanne groaned loudly, her hands moved to rub against the side of her head that had banged against the floor.
If the scissor experiment didn't certify that this wasn't an illusion, then surely this did. She thought she finally moved past her stupid clumsiness, but now she'd have to fix that again. Curse these stupid girl legs!
The loud bang immediately shut the conversation up between Perpetua and Nicholas. Their shuffling feet and movement instead replaced their banter.
It didn't take them long to find Jeanne sprawled out against the floor. The staircase was right next to the kitchen after all.
"Oh Jeanne, you're up! You're never awake this early…" Perpetua admitted as she was the first one to reach her.
Jeanne slowly glanced off of the floor and at her mother.
Her mother hadn't changed a single bit from what she remembered of her. Perpetua was a middle-aged woman, but looked as if she hadn't aged a day after her mid-twenties. Jeanne supposed it had something to do with her semblance, but she never did find out why her mother looked perpetually young.
Perpetua had similar long-flowing hair like herself with oceanic eyes that shone brighter than the morning sun. The two of them looked akin to the bone, although that rang true for all of the Arc daughters.
Jeanne let out a breath that she hadn't realized that she had been holding, too overcome with apprehension to immediately answer her mother.
"Probably just excited for the winter weather. You know how all the kids get when it's this this close to the winter solstice," Nicholas suggested.
The man's voice was broad. Powerful. It suited a hunter of his caliber, even if all Jeanne knew were stories from his prime. The man had been retired when she had fled to Beacon Academy the first time after all.
"I suppose you're right. But, why are you on the floor, honey?" Perpetua exclaimed.
Rats.
"Did you fall down the stairs again? I know how clumsy you are, but you need to be more careful, you hear me?" Perpetua added as she crouched beside her daughter to personally check on her.
Jeanne shifted her face away so that their eyes didn't meet. It had been forever since she had been nagged like this. She hadn't realized that she had missed it.
"Did you hurt your head? Poor baby…Breakfast will be ready soon. I'm sure you'll like that, mhm?" Perpetua added.
Jeanne slowly nodded her head, glad that the bangs of her hair were now obscuring her face from her two parents. It had been slow at first, but she was finding it a little difficult to blink away the slightest of tears that had begun to form.
"Sheesh…Why aren't you talking?" Perpetua wondered, shaking her head lightly as she checked Jeanne's head and found no actual injury. Satisfied that her child hadn't been hurt, she rose back to her feet.
"Now, now…Jeanne's probably just sleepy. She must of just woke up. How about you keep making breakfast and I'll make sure that she's alright, yeah?" Nicholas confirmed with Perpetua.
The two shared a look with each other, like they had dealt with many of these types of situations before. They knew perfectly how to handle one of their children that weren't responding.
"If you say so. Call me if you need anything," Perpetua conceded before she turned around and stalked back into the kitchen to handle the rest of mornings preparations.
"Of course, dear."
The sound of moving footsteps rang closely to Jeanne's ears yet again as the heavy presence of her father knelt beside her.
"What's up? You really aren't up this early," Nicholas prodded Jeanne lightly, wiping the bangs of his daughter's hair off her face.
Jeanne swallowed profusely, trying to fight past the tightness that had taken her neck into a chokehold. She moved her right arm to her eyes, rubbing it to wipe away any tears that had slipped out. She hoped that Nicholas would just think that she was wiping the sand out of her eyes.
It had only taken a few moments for her resolve to come crashing down. What a joke. She'd have to be stronger than this if she wanted to achieve the ending she wanted.
If things were like this, she would end up crying whenever she met with someone that had died in the initial timeline. For a first impression, that would suck immensely. But, for now…She'd enjoy the moment. She had plenty of time to sort through the complex bundle of emotions swirling through her head.
Doing it all in one go probably wasn't healthy anyways.
Jeanne twisted her head to gaze into her father's eyes as she took in his appearance as well.
Nicolas Arc was powerfully built. He may have been a retired hunter, but it was still evident that he hadn't slacked off in his training and physicality. With broad shoulders, a chiseled face, and warm brown eyes the man was good-looking definitely. He hadn't inherited the same genes or semblance as his wife, so there were a few wrinkles etched into his face due to his age. His brownish hair had begun to be tangled with a few specks of white, but they were barely noticeable unless a person really tried to spot them.
It was an accurate representation of what she had looked like before she had jumped back into the past, although she had been much younger and more physically built as Jaune Arc.
Jeanne scrunched her nose up, visibly shrugging her shoulders as she pulled herself into a sitting position with her knees against her chest.
"Nothing. I just…" she trailed off.
What could she say? That she was too overcome with emotion? To them, she was just their normal daughter that had gone to sleep last night and fell down the stairs in the morning. Anything too far-fetched would cause Nicholas Arc to start spewing his crazy fatherly speeches and dote on her for the next thirty minutes. It seemed as if her body had an appropriate answer for that as her stomach decided to growl loudly. A small smirk flashed across her features as she let out an exaggerated sigh.
"I'm pretty hungry," Jeanne admitted at last. For them, it may have only been a few hours since they had last eaten. But, she could hardly recall the last time that she had a properly cooked meal.
If she was being honest, she was actually a little excited. Her memories of how her mother's food tasted were a little blurry, but she remembered that the food had been some of the best ever.
Although that may just be nostalgia kicking in.
Nicholas let out a laugh, patting Jeanne's back with his hand as he helped his daughter to her feet. "Of course, you are! You didn't eat anything last night, did you? You were up so late talking with Autumn and Violet. The three of you passed outside and we decided to just put you in your beds for the night."
"Yeah…" Jeanne responded. She hid a grimace, quickly nodding her head in agreement to Nichola's story.
She hadn't remembered a single thing about her interactions with any of her family members as a girl. She was going to have to be really evasive around them until she got the big picture of all their dynamics. Autumn and Violet were names that were familiar to her though. Those were the names of two of her sisters. Both were in her age range, just a year younger and older respectively.
It'd make sense that the three of them would spend all their energy doing girl things – whatever that was.
"It was really tiring…I forgot to have dinner," she added after another moment's hesitation.
"Well, breakfast still won't be ready for a few more minutes. How about you go round up the rest of your sisters and I'll go help your mom with the rest, yeah?" Nicholas inquired.
"Oh…Okay. I can do that," Jeanne proclaimed with a slow mock salute at her temple and a tiny smile. Her dad returned the gesture with a wink before he turned and trotted into the kitchen.
Jeanne dropped her hand back to her side a moment after, the smile quickly shifting into a small frown.
Her sisters, huh? Waking up her sisters had never been a fun task. But, she supposed, that she wouldn't really mind doing it this time around.
Surprisingly enough, the girls had been a lot more receptive that Jeanne had remembered. Was it because she was a girl too now? If so, that was definitely one plus in this situation. None of her sisters had tried to tackle her straight out of the bed or throw their Scrolls straight at her face to shut her up.
Other than herself, none of the other sisters seemed to be any different. It was a little surprising, but it was a constant that Jeanne was happy about. She could just use old information and hopefully get by using that. It wasn't like her family talked about the past frequently, so any suspicions wouldn't even rise if she was lucky.
Jeanne sat at the middle of the breakfast table, an array of chairs going around the table in a circular fashion as the rest of her family members each took a seat.
Her seven sisters were all of different ages. She wasn't sure how old everyone was since she didn't know the date yet, but she could still tell who the youngest and oldest were.
Lily Arc. With bubbly round cheeks, the youngest of the seven had round blue eyes and a messy bob head of blonde hair. Mom's good nature definitely rubbed off on her because she hardly ever made a fuss or cry about anything. She was a bit quiet, but she did love playing with her older sisters.
Sage Arc. Although a little mischievous, her pranks and jokes never went past a kindergarten's level. She was pretty innocent, but all kids her age were. Her hair was twisted into a ponytail and she had the same brown eyes as Nicholas did.
Willow Arc. The girl was only a little older than Sage, but she still acted childish. She was the loudest of the bunch and always wanted to be heard by everyone around the table. Nicholas always scolded her for being so loud, but it's all in jest and Willow never did try to be more sophisticated. Her skin was lighter, and her pink eyes were largest than the rest. It almost seemed like she was a character from a comic book or cartoon with how wide her eyes could get.
Autumn Arc. She was a stubborn and short-tempered teenager. If it weren't her parents, then she absolutely refused to listen to another soul. It was a bit frustrating to deal with at times, but she did care about her sisters even if she did have a tough time showing it. Autumn had a few freckles speckled across her face with matching oval glasses and long hair that fell to the small of her back.
Jeanne Arc. She was in the middle of the lot. Supposedly the classically clumsy and naïve, good-natured teen or at least that's what everyone else in the Arc family thought. They hadn't had the faintest clue of what she really was like now, but she didn't dream of messing up that illusion.
Violet Arc. If their ages had been the same, almost no one would have been able to distinguish between her and Jeanne. The two were very alike in almost every way. The single difference was that there were brownish streaks that swirled through Violet's hair, but both were the underdogs of the Arc family. They weren't the oldest, so they couldn't tell the youngest what to do and they were practically forced to do whatever their younger sisters said.
Roselyn Arc. Deadly silent, a loner, and was always the person that sat at the back of large crowds. She thought that she was better than most people, so she never made any friends because she believed that they'd slow her down. She really doesn't speak unless spoken to, always quietly reading with a book in hand.
And Jasmine Arc. The crazy outgoing one described her best. Her energy was a never-ending flow. The girl was always cheerful and optimistic about any situation that was thrown at her. She was the oldest, so she most of her time helping mom and dad with the chores around the home. She was an identical twin of Roselyn, so the two looked exactly the same and were a perfect blend of their mom and dad. They looked sharply feminine with traits that would describe them more as beautiful than just pretty like the rest of them. It was almost surprising how different the two of them were. Then again, there could only be so much similarity between eight sisters. They were just a huge agglomeration of personalities all tucked at the breakfast table.
Even before Jeanne fully tuned into the conversation, the loud and almost mindless chatter of her family had been a little uncomforting. The last time that she could relax and chat like this had been almost years ago after all. With that in mind, Jeanne decided that she'd just listen…for now.
"Yay! Pancakes again!" Sage said gleefully. She was the first to express her happiness at the meal and the small child immediately started to amorously stuff bites of the fluffy food into her mouth.
"Hey, no fair! You're eating mine too!" Willow immediately protested as the two sisters spent the next few moments taking pieces of pancakes off of each other's plates.
"No, go awai! Eat yer owhn!" Sage retorted as she ultimately took her own plate of pancake and slid her chair an inch to the side.
"You started taking mine first!" Willow protested with a frown.
"Poopy head!"
"Forehead girl!"
Jeanne raised a hand to her ear, closing one of her eyes. She had forgotten how loud those two could get, especially when they didn't agree on something. Fighting over pancakes happened to be their most frequent disagreement.
Autumn, who was the closest to the two of them, eventually stood up and rested her hands on both of their heads once the yelling progressed to an almost unbearable point. She lowered her head to be straight in the middle of the two sisters.
"If you two don't shut your mouths, I'm going to chuck your flipping pancakes at the nearest garbage can that happens to be Violet's mouth!" Autumn proclaimed with an almost too gleeful smirk.
"Hey! I am not a garbage can!"
"Oh, shut it, you indispensable food cretin!" Autumn brushed Violet off easily with an off-ward glance before looking back at Sage and Willow. "Got it?"
"Y-yeah…" Willow said first, calming down immediately as she settled for the remaining amount of food left on her plate as she continued to eat at a turtle-like speed.
"Sowee Autumn," Sage apologized with a frown as she plopped back down onto her seat.
"Heh heh…Let's try to be nicer everyone, mhmm? Mom and dad are already stressed enough," Jasmine stated, finally acting as the sole mediator as the eldest sister.
"Oh, don't worry about your old man! Lily is just a bit of a handful at the moment…" Nicholas trailed off, the father of the Arc family having a dumbfounded look on his face as his youngest daughter somehow managed to find a way to tangle up her diaper with the tablecloth and napkins.
The sole man of the family tried unsuccessfully to untie the gigantic knot that fused Lily and the table together before a very unsettling yellow liquid started to spray all over Nicholas.
Only a second passed before Nicholas began to scream indignantly. "Honey! I need some help here!" he called out for Perpetua who had returned to the kitchen to get the milk bottle for Lily.
"Oh dear…Lily is peeing on you again?" Perpetua exclaimed with a faint amount of amusement in her voice as she returned, as if this was just a normal occurrence in the everyday lives of the Arc family.
She rushed over to her husband, shooing the man away so he could clean up in the nearest bathroom as she began to take care of the mess that Lily started.
"Man…This was my favorite shirt too," Nicholas complained weakly as he strutted off and out of view for the rest of the daughters.
"I'll help clean the mess! You can just worry about feeding Lily~" Jasmine said in a sing-song voice as she stood up and retrieved a few napkins from the table and went to clean the unsightly mess that was now on the floor.
"Thank you, Jasmine," Perpetua said with a smile before plopping the milk bottle into Lily's mouth who began to suck greedily as any baby would.
Jeanne flinched when she felt an elbow dig into her sides, her eyes growing as she spun her head wildly to look at Violet.
"Are you okay? You haven't said a word today…" Violet said, a look of concern etched into her features.
"It's just Jeanne. She's probably just too stupid to make a comment on anything," Autumn proposed as she returned to her seat, now taking her own food as everyone started to calm down.
Violet rolled her eyes. "Yeah right…You two had a pretty long talk yesterday about that one guy you saw at the shops."
"Oi, shut it! I don't want mom or dad to hear you blasting your mouth off about that," Autumn blurted out, a small redness spreading through her cheeks as she semi-angrily drank water from her glass.
"Uh huh. You just don't want dad to take out Crocea Mors and butcher the guy you might have a crush on," Violet admitted with a smirk as she looked back at Jeanne. "Remember?"
"Uh…The guy at the shops?" Jeanne said at last, desperately searching for some type of memory. Her sisters never spoke to her about any of this stuff when she was Jaune, so she had no idea what they were talking about.
She didn't even know that Autumn could like people.
"Yeah! That cute guy with the yellow hair and purple eyes! It was a little weird seeing someone like that out here, but a lot of tourists do come for the views," Violet elaborated with a faint shrug.
"Whatever. I just said that he looked cute, okay? You don't have to make such a big deal out of it, you human trash can," Autumn exclaimed as she casually flipped Violet off.
"Tch, you're so rude…" Violet muttered. Her practical twin looked at Jeanne again with raised eyebrows, not intending to leave her out of the conversation. "So? Do you remember?"
Jeanne sighed, slowly shaking her head. "No…Not really. Sorry."
"Like I said, she's too stupid to make a comment!" Autumn injected her earlier point with a haughty smirk.
"Eh…I guess you're right," Violet conceded before she finally started to eat.
Jeanne blinked. Her eyes slowly traced over each individual member in the Arc family. They really hadn't changed at all from what she remembered.
She really couldn't pinpoint how she was feeling. Joy? Sadness? It was complicated. She had left this life behind and never got the chance to come back to it.
Leaving them behind had hurt, but she never imagined that she'd never see their faces again. Realizing that they had all been slaughtered was even more painful. No, it was breaking.
Jeanne couldn't even react properly to their words because she was afraid that all of her emotions would come out at once.
It was the reunion with her family that she had always wanted, but not the one she had expected. The unfamiliarity of the situation uncomforted her, especially when Autumn and Violet were asking her about boys.
Ugh.
The paladin spun the fork in between her fingers, the movements swift and precise to a crisp. The flexibility in her hand had increased, so it seemed like she wouldn't lose too much practical skill.
"Ahem!" the easily recognizable voice of her father sounded as Nicholas returned to the scene. "So, I don't remember how many of you remember, but we're heading out to the town today! They're having their founder ship anniversary and it'll be a great trip."
"I'm not going," the second eldest daughter said. Roselyn had already finished her meal, having stood up and was ready to leave right before Nicholas had returned.
Jeanne had almost forgotten about Roselyn, but that was not surprising. The girl was unbelievably quiet while everyone else was a chatterbox on the loose. She was mainly locked in her room and read different books, almost never actually interacting with the family other than meals.
"Oh alright…It'll be lots of fun though…" Nicholas started before watching the retreating figure of Roselyn who quickly marched up the stairs. A small sigh escaped from his mouth before the man clapped his hands together again.
"Anyways, we'll be leaving shortly after breakfast, so eat well! It's going to be a long day," Nicholas said with a smile as he returned to Perpetua's side, giving a light kiss to her cheek.
"Yay! A trip!" Sage said happily as she raised her hands to the sky.
Violet let out a laugh, flicking a piece of pancake at Autumn's head. "Hey! If you're lucky, maybe you can meet Mr. Cutie again," she teased her sister.
Autumn gritted her teeth, raising her fist angrily towards Violet. "Do you want to fight?"
Jeanne angled her chair backwards as the two of them exploded into another verbal argument. It was silly, really, but their relationship was as comparable as Sage and Willow's.
Her face darkened a little as she turned her head to look at the door that lead to the outside.
It was another door that separated the outside world and the far more comfortable illusion of peace inside the Arc home. Once she stepped outside, it'll become extremely obvious what her semblance had done.
One way or another…
Jeanne would truly be starting her journey on the other side of that door.
She just hoped that she'd be ready this time.
Author's Note
That's chapter 2! Some people may not like the OCs with Jeanne's family, but this is an important arc to get through before we even get to Beacon. This won't last long compared to the overall size of the story, so yeah!
Some people are also asking if only Jeanne will be genderbent or if everyone else will be too. I'll only say that some people will be genderbent and some people won't, but that only applies to team RWBY and JNPR. Anyone outside of those teams will still be the same.
Anyways, please leave reviews on what you liked about the chapter and what could be improved. Thank you!