Chapter 4: Terror
The wind cut at his face while he sprinted towards the battlefield. He had no idea how things had got this way as he began to notice the sea of blood covering the grass he stood on.
To his left, Pyrrha's mangled body lay there missing an arm and still bleeding. Nora and Ren lay on top of each other ridden with claw marks and teeth marks alike. He turned around, and let whatever was left in his stomach come out. He then turned back around and looked to his right where he saw the remnants of what was team RWBY. Weiss was cut in half with dried blood covering her. All that was left of Blake was her upper half, her lower half was out of sight and probably eaten or destroyed. Yang lay on the ground, or what he assumed was Yang since all that was there was a charred corpse.
He heard a cough from Ruby who was missing her left leg as well as her arms, Jaune rushed towards her with tears streaming down his face as he asked.
"What do I do, Ruby? How did this happen?"
"This is all your fault, Jaune, you're the reason we all died here." The armless redhead said with dead eyes as Jaune responded crying out.
"But I'm not dead, I'm alive right here!" Ruby just responded with a laugh before dying right before him. Jaune looked down at his own body noticing that he was missing his right arm at the shoulder, and that he had a giant hole in his chest. Looking up to his horror, he saw his own dead body laying on the ground right in front of him. All he heard was screaming as he collapsed onto the blood at his feet.
Suddenly, he felt something shake him. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into lilac orbs that he recognized as Yang's. He realized that he was just in a nightmare, and promptly began to sob into the other blonde's chest as she comforted him. She waited, knowing he would tell her what happened when he was ready.
He got all of the tears out of his system before sitting up, shaking his head, and trying to shake the thoughts of his nightmare out of his memory. This was to no avail, because when he closed his eyes to gather his thoughts the images of his dead comrades plagues his mind. He ceased crying, but clung tightly to Yang until the images left his head.
"Sorry for waking you up Yang." Jaune said sheepishly.
"Jaune don't worry about it, what I'm worried about is what made you scream like that in your sleep?" The fiery blonde asked. Her concern for him was prominent in her tone.
"Nightmare" Jaune whispered still clinging to Yang as he felt a cold sweat break out. She gave him a look that told him to he needed to elaborate. He took a breath and prepared himself to repeat what he had just saw.
"Everyone was dead. You, Ruby, Pyrrha, everyone, and it was all my fault I was the reason they died. It was so realistic I could've swore it was real, then I saw my own dead body laying on the ground." The knight finished quickly, not wanting to dwell on the subject any more than he had to.
Yang just responded by running her fingers through hair once again, comforting him. The images didn't leave his mind, but he began to relax before he suggested that they start to descend towards the ground since the sun had begun to rise. The blonde responded by putting him on her back and starting the climb down slowly.
Once Yang reached the ground Jaune hopped off her back and stretched the muscles he had been neglecting ever since he passed out.
"My aura healed me up pretty fast, I feel like a million bucks!" Jaune said loudly pulling out his sword and swinging it around a couple times before asking. "Who packed the food for the trip, anyway?"
"Ren, the master chef, of course." His fellow blonde responded with a laugh.
"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear." the knight said gesturing to a tired looking Ren followed by an energetic Nora. "She keep you up all night, Ren?" Jaune asked.
"You know the answer to that, Jaune." Ren deadpanned as he began to set up and make breakfast.
The smell of the delicious breakfast being made soon brought everyone together as they began to wake up. Pyrrha and Blake were the last people to show up. Much to the chagrin of Blake, Yang began to tease the two about what they were doing that took them so long. Her snide remarks caused Pyrrha's face turn as red as her hair. The grumpy feline retorted with her own teasing, commenting about how she could 'say the same to them'. This surprised Yang and further embarrassed a red faced Jaune who just continued to look down at his plate.
"Meow! This kitty's got claws!" Yang responded, not fazed at all from the teasing.
"Anyway we're talking about tall, blonde, and-" Yang paused as she noticed Jaune drop his shoulders as she began to tease the other blonde. I gotta stop doing that. She chided herself before adding "Jaune's too nice to take advantage of a tempting girl like me." Yang finished smiling at Jaune who perked up at the compliment. After that, everyone ate their breakfast in silence, basking in the warming temperature as the sun rose higher. When they finished eating, Ruby stood up and cleared her throat to catch everyone's attention.
"Alright friends yesterday was pretty rough, but today is a new day and we should put yesterday past us if we want to finish this mission. That being said we will be taking it slow so we can have all our energy tomorrow when we will reach our destination. So make sure your things are ready because we'll be heading out in 15 minutes. Thank you." Ruby finished before sitting down and continuing conversation with an Weiss who looked annoyed at being up so early.
Jaune made his way to Pyrrha, wanting to catch up with his amazonian partner since he hadn't talked to her since the first fight. He waved at her and she moved to be closer to him.
"How're you doing Pyr?" Jaune asked, looking at his partner. She didn't respond. He carefully tapped her shoulder, confused as to why she wasn't answering. "Talk to me, Pyrrha. What's going o-" The knight was unable to finish because Pyrrha had punched him in the gut. He doubled over. When he looked up he finally noticed the tears in her eyes. He tried to ask his question again but she began to scream at him.
"Do you know how it felt watching you almost die twice!? Not knowing whether you were alive was terrifying! My best friend bleeding out, then charging back in and almost dying again!" She stopped talking wiping the tears from her eyes and staring Jaune down.
Jaune truly didn't think about how his actions would cause his friends to worry, but now that he reflected on what happened yesterday he realized how that could cause his friend's distress.
"I-I-I mean Pyrrha, you know what kind of person I am... and you definitely know that I couldn't live with myself if I let anyone else get hurt because of how weak I am!" He responded, keeping his tone even and steady so he didn't set her off again.
"I know Jaune, but I couldn't bear losing you, I just hate seeing you get hurt like that." The redhead said quietly.
"I'll try not to worry you as much anymore. I'm really sorry, Pyr." Jaune said, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly and standing up. He then walked over to the scythe wielding leader of the group who was analyzing a map. He studied the map silently over her shoulder as she made marks and dashes on it trying to figure out the best route to take to get to their destination.
Suddenly Jaune got a great idea, and with a mischievous grin he yelled, "Boo!" successfully scaring the living shit out of Ruby. She responded with an "Eep!" and turned around to punch Jaune. She began yelling about how one of these times she'll pull a scythe on him.
Jaune just laughed it off and got himself situated on the other side of the map from Ruby in order to help her map out their path for the day. This basically consisted of him nodding and making small suggestions as she drew and erased paths towards their destination marked with a big red X. When everything was planned out and they were folding up the map, Jaune patted Ruby on the back.
"You really got your shit together as leader Ruby, keep up the good work." This earned him a blush from Ruby at his random compliment. She looked up at Jaune and was surprised to see that he had bags starting to form under his eyes. She figured that either he just couldn't sleep last night or the mission had started to get to him. Either way she decided to bring it up for the sake of their mission.
"You sleep alright Jaune?" She commented, not sounding too serious so she didn't alarm him.
"Yea, I'm fine Ruby. Don't worry about me, let's just worry about the mission." Jaune said, using his best fake smile to properly convince her that everything was alright, like he always did at home when teachers would ask the same. Ruby frowned. She wasn't satisfied with his answer but he was still right about focusing on the mission. She let him go and yelled for everyone to gather up their things so they could get going.
As everyone assembled, Ruby quickly started messing around on her scroll before looking up to see the group was all assembled around her waiting on her to finish. Seeing as they were waiting on her, she cleared her throat once again to get everyone's full attention.
"Alright guys, so to reiterate we're taking today slowly so we can all be at 100% for the end of the mission. Jaune and I mapped out our course of action and destination, which I have marked on your maps that I just sent to you on your scroll. We'll get there around dark if we just walk with a moderate pace, so we just take it slow, set up camp, then sleep and wake up at 8 a.m to finish the mission. Any objections or ideas?"
"Just one," Nora said cheerfully "Snack breaks, especially pancake breaks." Everyone groaned collectively and favored starting off towards their destination rather than responding to her.
The walk was pleasant, both teams enjoying the good weather and calm marching towards their destination. Still, they were caution as to not catch unwanted attention from the wildlife. In fact, their good spirits helped keep the creatures of Grimm off their tracks since they were attracted to negative thoughts.
With Ruby leading the pack, she walked confidently, consulting her map every so often to make sure she was leading everyone the right way. While doing all that she was also thinking about the actual leader of the mission who seemed to be hiding something from both of their teams. She had told herself she would wait till the mission ended, but her curiosity got the better of her as she thought of a plan of action to figure out what he was hiding. She was about to go ask him herself when she remembered that she had told him she wouldn't pursue anymore during the mission.
She mentally checked Jaune off of her mental list of who she could ask. Next up was Pyrrha. However, Ruby knew that the amazon was head over heels for the blonde and figured that Pyrrha would probably tell Jaune that Ruby had been asking questions about him the first chance she got. She was crossed off of the list next.
Ruby wondered again who she could ask, before facepalming at the realization that she had forgotten about her own sister, Yang. The blonde duo had spent quite a bit of time together on the mission. She found Yang and asked bluntly,
"What's Jaune hiding?" A look of shock flashed across her sister's face before she regained a cool composure and answered with her own question innocently.
"What are you doing poking around in his business, Cutie Patootie?" Ruby pouted because Yang knew that nickname annoyed her but she still called her it just to upset her.
"We need Jaune to be in a good condition for the end of the mission. We have no idea what we're up against and he can't be hindered by other things that aren't the battle." Ruby replied keeping her voice quiet so the others wouldn't hear what was going on. Yang realized Ruby wouldn't stop until she got a good enough answer.
"All I can say is Jaune was a little shaken up this morning but he's fine now, so just calm down, Ruby. It won't affect his fighting." And with that Yang walked over towards her partner and started chatting with her, leaving Ruby to her own devices. Said redhead racked her mind for things Jaune would want to hide from everyone.
6th toe, sickness, self doubt?
During her thinking, Ruby managed to stumble through some bushes and ended up staring right at the back of a beowolf. She froze in fear, certain that she looked exactly like a deer in headlights.
Suddenly, she was pulled backwards by an unseen force and ended back up on the right side of the brush with a concerned heiress staring her down using her best 'we'll talk later' face.
Motioning to the whole group, Ruby pointed to her right with her other hand on her lips, telling the group to be silent. The calm that had settled around them was violently yanked away and replaced with a sense of danger and urgency as they quickly jogged as far away from the Grimm as they could.
Seeing that they were out of earshot Weiss began to scold her.
"What were you doing out there, are you trying to get yourself killed?" Not letting Ruby answer the question she continued, "How many times do I have to tell you not to be a dunce and do things like that? The answer is a lot!" She snapped before calming down and finishing thoughtfully. "We care about you, and we don't want to see you get hurt. We would only blame ourselves."
"I know Weiss, I'm sorry I'll try harder not to worry you as much." Ruby replied before darting away to avoid anymore scolding from the Ice Queen. While Ruby ran ahead again, Weiss walked over to Pyrrha, who nudged her with a playful smile on her face.
"Sounds pretty similar to what I said to Jaune earlier, are you an eavesdropper, Ice Queen?" She teased a blushing heiress who began to try and defend herself.
"How dare you insinuate that I, Weiss Schnee, would eavesdrop on a conversation between friends and then steal a line from said conversation." She used her best glare to try and convince Pyrrha, but the glare only made the Mistral champion laugh more. She walked towards the embarrassed heiress, who was so flustered she stomped away, yelling curses as she did so.
The rest of the walk went on without a hitch as the group came upon their destination, a grassy clearing adjacent to a lake. It looked beautiful to everyone, especially with the dazzling sunset dancing color off the lake's surface. The group would have liked to bask in the sight for longer, but unfortunately, duty calls.
Ignoring the view, they began setting down their bags and setting up tents for everyone to sleep in. They all appreciated the thought that Ruby put into picking the spot. It was a great spot for them to keep watch since there was only one way for creatures to enter the campsite. That was through roughly 200 yards of grass after exiting the woods. This would give anyone the time to acknowledge the threat and wake others up to kill it silently so to not alert anything else of their whereabouts. Jaune complimented said red haired leader on her choice of location with a pat on the back. Ruby responded to this with a smile and a "Thank you!" clearly appreciating the compliment. She was suddenly distracted as she rushed away, yelling at Nora who was trying to hammer a stake into the ground with Magnhild.
With eight pairs of hands to help, the setup went by quickly and soon they were ready to get some sleep so that they were prepared for their final day of the mission tomorrow. First however, they had to determine who was taking watch and since they were waking up at 8 am sharp and it was approaching midnight, they had to decide quickly. Jaune volunteered to be first, followed by Ruby, Yang (no one was brave enough to wake Yang up from her beauty sleep besides Ruby), Ren, Blake, Nora, and finally Pyrrha.
With the order known, the seven hunters and huntresses went off to bed, leaving the blonde knight to reflect on the mission as a whole. He wasn't sure how he'd done it, but he survived to his second year at beacon and had made a lot of new friends. Jaune smiled to himself and looked back out into the forest, continuing his watch for anything that may want to make it's way towards their current base of operations. He felt a rush of overprotective for the friends who were sleeping peacefully around him, and he decided that he would not let anything bad happen to them, not on his watch.
Sorry for the delay guys, this chapter was a transition chapter, and boy was it a bitch and a half to write. You see I knew where to start this story and where I want to go, but getting there was hard to write, but I got there and here I am and at least I got like 3k. Thanks for reading, hopefully the next chapter is faster to come out cause I know what I want to do. Bye!