Hi guys and welcome to my second fic! For readers who are coming here from A Grimm Future. Don't worry. I'm not leaving the project. I just really wanted to start writing this. To new readers. Welcome! This is a fic based around RWBY set in the modern world. Our main characters are seniors in college, so they'll be a little older and a bit different from where they currently are in the canon. I hope you enjoy it.

It was a wonderful fall afternoon. It was early September in the American South, and this morning a cold front had come through. Which meant that it was just cool enough to leave the windows open and listen to the breeze. The trees hadn't even begun to adopt their autumn regalia. Instead they displayed the bright green of summer. Birds flew in the sunshine while squirrels played in the shade. Everyone was out walking. Some people were walking to class, others were headed back to the dorms. Some people were simply out indulging in the perfect blend of cool and sunshine. If you sat in the sun for a little while you would become pleasantly warm, and then the soft breeze would carry the heat away. Which left in the perfect state to enjoy the last caress of summer and the first gusts of the coming winter. It was a nice day, the kind of day that you find yourself thinking back on during those endless months of grey skies. It was the kind of day you begged for as you hid from the merciless summer sun. And luckily for Jaune, he got out of class just in time to enjoy it.

He stepped out of the artificial light of the lecture hall. Today's lecture had felt longer than usual. Dr. Goodwitch had lectured them about the importance of Sumer and its relation to the early Abrahamic religions. Normally he would have been fascinated by the topic, but today he just couldn't keep his eyes away from the blue sky that beckoned from beyond the windows of the lecture hall. He took a deep breath as he stepped out and put on his sunglasses. He didn't really need them, but he thought they made him look cool. His lecture hall stood on top of a gentle hill. Off to his right was a wide field edged with live oaks. There were quite a few people out there playing frisbee today. He certainly couldn't blame them. Across the field was the massive shape of the campus library. It was a big grey box rudely juxtaposed against the greenery that surrounded it. It was not a pretty building. But then again it didn't have to be. He didn't really like the library all that much. The rest of campus was mostly composed of red brick buildings. They were just as boxy, but somehow the various hues of red made gave them beauty that belied their rectangular stature.

He stepped out with the quickly dispersing cloud of students. Some were headed straight to another class, others off to grab a quick bite before their afternoon classes started. He, however, didn't have to do anything else on Fridays. It was how he had set up his schedule. Or rather, it was how his lazy friends had advised him to set up his schedule. He had taken their advice and never regretted it. Having free Fridays was a treasure he was certain he was going to miss when he graduated. So, for now he was determined to do as much nothing as he possibly could.

Yang and Sun were out on some ecology field trip with Oobleck. So, he couldn't chill with them like he normally did on Friday. Neptune had Latin and Greek back to back until three, so he was out. This meant that Jaune was on his own for at least two hours. He could head up to the computer lab and start working on that assignment for Port if he was feeling productive. But he really wasn't. The sky was too blue, and the air was too crisp for him to go inside. And besides, one of the pleasures of college was forgetting about the massive workload that hung over your head until the last minute. And who was he to deny an American staple?

There was an elementary school on the other side of campus. It was one of those advanced schools for smart kids. When he was a freshman Jaune had hung out near the playground when the kids had their recess and listened to them play. It was honestly one of his favorite memories. But a lone dude staring at a bunch of kids had drawn attention, and he had been asked ever so politely to leave. He doubted the teachers remembered asking him to leave three years ago, but the memory was fresh in his mind. So, he couldn't go listen to the sounds of youthful freedom. What could he do then?

There was a little group of trees where he could see people putting up hammocks to bask in the summer sun in between classes. Jaune had always been leery of hammocks. When he was a kid, he had never been able to get into them properly. Every time he had tried, he had just ended up on his butt in the dirt. He didn't hold against the hammock people though. They were just out to lay in the sun and take a nap and didn't care who looked at them. He respected that, even if he was pretty sure that they were napping in ticking time bombs.

Laying in the dirt had never been his thing either. He had read about people lazily chilling at the base of a tree and whiling away the hours carving wood or something. But as far as Jaune was concerned sitting at the base of a tree or laying on the ground sucked. He had heard that somewhere on the east coast the grass was soft and not full of things that bit you. This was not the case in the South. The grass was prickly and the things that inhabited it were mean. He remembered seeing 'cowkiller ants' for the first time when he had moved here. They were basically black and red ground wasps. Massive, impossible to kill, and with a sting that would ruin your day.

There was a reason people preferred the looming threat of the hammocks to lying on the ground.

So, the ground was out, his friends were out, listening to the kids was out. He just wanted to do something outside. He always felt a little guilty for just going straight to his dorm after classes, and a day like today made him feel especially guilty. What did people even do outside? He could run? Maybe? People ran when they were outside. Well, his dad did anyway.

He thought back to freshman year again. He remembered the dead week before finals when all the classes had been closed and he had been trapped on campus with nothing to do. That was when his computer was broken, and his friends had all been busy studying for finals. He had been practically forced outside then. The way he had amused himself at the time was by trying every single door on campus. If it wasn't locked, he simply went inside the building and wandered around. That had been a good way to kill an evening.

He couldn't really do that now though. Mostly because all the doors would be unlocked. And where was the fun in that? It was only really fun if you got into somewhere you weren't supposed to be.

He started to walk. Maybe his feet would carry him someplace interesting if he let them have the run of things for a while.

They brought him to his car. It was a slate gray Prius. Jaune had bought it off of Flynt when he had gone overseas for his Masters. It had been Jaune's faithful steed for nearly two years now. It was a reliable car. He liked it. Sadly, it didn't really open up any options. The town around Beacon College was pretty small. He could go to a bar or something if he wanted to. But it was noon, and bars had never really been Jaune's thing.

He was quickly running out of options that weren't, 'just go play Breath of the Wild again.'

That was probably a subconscious effort on his part. It was a really good game. But he wasn't going to let his inner hermit conquer his drive to do something outside today.

Hm. He could go crash Sun and Yang's ecology thing. They were basically just touring a forest that the college owned as a sort of nature reserve. The Emerald Forest was one of Beacon's big selling points. It was a large piece of virgin forest that had been donated to the college by some rich guy back during the Civil War or something. Jaune wasn't really clear on the specifics, nature wasn't really his thing and he had just sort of coasted through ecology when he had taken it last year. But wandering around the forest definitely sounded like something that people were supposed to do on nice days. And Oobleck probably wouldn't mind.

The Emerald forest was only a five-minute drive from Beacon campus. And in that five minutes all vestiges of civilization were stripped away. One minute he was driving through a bustling little town. The next he was making his way down a winding road that was barely wider than his car. The little road ended in a lonely parking lot and a large sign proclaiming that everything beyond this point was a part of the Emerald Forest Wilderness Area. That meant no four wheeled vehicles larger than ATV's were allowed in the forest. The airspace above the forest was a no-fly zone. And hunting was strictly forbidden.

The Emerald Forest was managed in partnership with the local forest service. The school was allowed to move small classes through the wilderness and the foresters got to protect one of the last truly virgin forests in the region. Jaune thought it was a really wholesome deal. No one got screwed over and the trees got the protection they needed.

He pulled into the lot and parked alongside the five other vehicles that were present. There was Yang's motorcycle parked next to Sun's old junker of a car. They really couldn't be more different. Sun's engine barely turned over while Yang's bike was nearly completely electric. Jaune thought he was a happy medium between the two. His car was eleven years old, but it was well taken care of. He thought that was pretty emblematic of their friendship.

He pulled out his phone to call Yang and ask her where everyone was. No signal. Well that figured. It was called a wilderness. Jaune supposed he'd just have to hunt through the forest himself. He vaguely remembered going on this field trip last year and the route they had taken. Though knowing Oobleck they had probably wandered off of the trail at the first sign of a passing turtle. It was a good thing that the Professor had the best sense of direction known to man or he and his students would have died out here a long time ago.

Jaune sauntered into the tree line. There was a narrow gravel path that snaked its way down a pretty steep incline into the valley that made up most of Oobleck's research area. The forest itself continued on for miles, but Oobleck tended to keep all of his ecology stuff to this little depression. In the middle of the valley there was a seasonal lake that was home to some sort of rare salamander that Oobleck spent most of his time studying. At the center of the seasonal lake was what Oobleck termed an 'enduring pond' which held a single ancient cypress tree. The whole place gave off a really peaceful vibe. It was like a forest from a fairytale. Not the scary German ones or whatever, but like the ones your mom told you when you were a kid. The old fairytales were creepy. He was in the middle of taking a western myth and mythology course with Dr. Ozpin and so far most of the morals that the stories held were things like, 'don't kill your stepson and then feed your husband blood soup made from your stepson.' Jaune was pretty sure that those were the sort of morals that most people didn't need reiterated. At least, no one he knew needed to be reminded not to perform child sacrifice. Maybe the people of the past were just way more hardcore than Jaune was.

He gazed out over the forest and looked for anything that wasn't green. Ideally, he'd spot bright blonde hair, which would be a dead giveaway for either Sun or Yang. What he saw instead was a bright shock of white toward the center of the valley. That was good enough, pine trees didn't usually wear white. And unless Oobleck's salamanders were really something special they didn't wear white either. Which left only Oobleck and his class.

Jaune slowly made his way down the hillside and into the forest. He wasn't in a rush, it's not like the class could slip past him when he was on the only road in or out of the valley. And the forest was nice. The sun cut through the pine needles and created little pools of light all across the forest floor. Jaune could hear birds chirping in the distance. There wasn't any wind down in the valley. The air was calm and cool. His footsteps were muffled by the pine needles that coated the forest floor. This is what nice days were for. A quiet walk through the forest. There wasn't really a path once you got to the bottom of the valley. There were little crisscrossing deer trails, but there wasn't anything put into place by the hands of men. All of the deer trails converged on the lake, which was also where Jaune had seen the flash of white. So, he made his way down the narrow paths, occasionally stopping to bask in the little pools of sunlight. It was cold in the valley. Not enough to really bother him, but he was sure Yang was praying for a jacket right about now. Jaune had never really understood why girls were always cold. Was it a body temperature thing? Maybe it was because they didn't have as much hair as guys did. All he knew was that girls were always cold, and Yang was no exception. Even though she'd probably clock him if she heard his traitorous thoughts.

He smiled at the thought of his friends as he stepped out into the clearing that housed the little pond. It wouldn't turn into a lake until the rainy season started. Which was soon, but not yet. What the lake left behind in the dry season was an expanse of mud and puddles. Which was where the salamanders the Oobleck studied lived. On any given ecology field-trip it was usually a safe bet that you would find several grumbling students wandering around in the mud in search of the elusive salamanders with Oobleck at their forefront on his hands and knees practically sticking his nose in the mud. It was a comical sight. And one that Jaune was hoping to come across. What he found was something completely different.

/-/

There was a girl in a pure white dress standing out in the middle of the mud flats. As Jaune looked at her a chill rolled over him and he felt the hair on his body raise in alarm. The girl wore a long white cocktail dress and heels. Her hair was as white as snow and her eyes were as hard as ice. She stared at him and he stared at her. She was beautiful. All of her features were perfect. Jaune looked at her and couldn't find a single flaw. It was like someone had ripped the platonic form of beauty from its place in the stars and placed it in the middle of a muddy field. She was breathtaking.

She stepped toward him.

Jaune opened his mouth to speak but couldn't find his voice. Instead of words he let out a gasp of misty breath. He was freezing. He tried to hold himself, to back away from the strange girl. But he couldn't move. He was frozen in place as she stepped toward him again. He watched her place a perfect foot not quite on the mud. It was like she knew the motions of life but had never fully mastered them. Her movements were stilted and stiff. And gravity didn't move the folds of her dress like it was supposed to. With every step she took she was exactly the same. A sculpted angel eternally trapped in a single moment. But there was something more than her unnatural stillness. Something twisted. Something hateful. Something wrong.

That was the only way he could describe it. The world around her recoiled from her touch. She moved without a shadow, shunned by the light of the day. She was an outsider. Something foreign to light and life. Something the natural world hated. Something it feared. Jaune knew that in his gut. And the longer Jaune stared the more he noticed the little things. Her skin was too smooth. There was none of the telltale softness of body hair or fat. It was like she had been carved from stone by an amateur artist who thought he knew what a beautiful woman should look like. All of her angles were hard. And her dress didn't hang from her body. It would be more accurate to say that her dress was her body. She stared at him with eyes that were not eyes. The colors were wrong. Too blue. Too alien. There was no flash of recognition in them. She was not looking at him like a curious girl seeing a strange man. She was looking at him like a predator that was stunned by the fact that its prey was too stupid to run away.

A primal part of his mind screamed at him to run. To get away from the girl as fast as possible. Some dim ancestral memory told him that he was inches from a fate worse than death.

She stepped toward him.

And like that the spell was broken. Jaune gave in to instinct and ran as fast as he possibly could. The sun was gone now. The air was bitter in the night chill. Above him the moon rode high in the sky and cast a dim light across the forest. Gone were the friendly trees and summertime birdsong. They were replaced by grasping sentinels and the pounding of blood in his ears. A frigid wind swept across the valley, forcing him to shield his eyes as he ran away from the monster that hovered over the lake. He stumbled through the undergrowth. Slipping on pine needles and skidding across slick mud. He fell. He didn't slow down for an instant. He scrabbled forward on his hands and knees as terror coursed through his body. He didn't feel the cuts on his hands. He didn't notice the wet mud that clung to his shirt. All he felt was gut wrenching fear as he regained his footing and sprinted up the gravel path toward his car. He didn't dare look behind him. He could feel her there. Like a winter wind threatening to bowl him over.

He shot from the tree line and ran across the parking lot, his feet thumping wetly with each step. He felt the car unlock under his hand as he wrenched the door open and slammed himself into the driver's seat. He locked the doors and slammed the ignition button. His headlights blinked on and gave him a dim view of the shadowy forest. She was right there. Reflecting off of his headlights like a porcelain doll. She stared at him.

She stepped toward him.

Jaune threw his car into reverse and slammed the gas pedal. A rational part of his mind told him that he had never driven backwards at any speed before and he certainly wasn't a stunt driver. The rest of him didn't care. He wanted to be as far from that girl as physically possible as quickly as possible. He jerked forward in his seat as he spun the car around to face the road. He didn't care. He couldn't see her anymore and that was all that mattered. In fact, he could barely see beyond the hood of his car. His headlights seemed dim. The forest was close on all sides, like it was reaching out to suffocate his only path to salvation. He flicked his brights on as he roared towards freedom.

He hunched over the wheel and stared out to the road, desperately trying to predict the twists and turns. He couldn't touch the brakes. He couldn't give up speed. If he gave up speed, she would catch him. He couldn't let her catch him. Every fiber of his being told him that if she caught him it was over. Everything was over is the worst way it could end. He skidded around a corner and felt his car jerk up on to two wheels. He didn't care. If he died in a crash, it would be infinitely better than what would happen if she caught him. His wheels came back to the earth with a sickening crunch and he picked up speed again. It was so dark outside. Inside his car his clock glowed softly. It told him it was midnight. Like it was supposed to. Inside his car light was following the rules. But outside. Outside his car the rules didn't seem to matter anymore. Somehow, he knew this was her doing. She didn't want him to escape. First, she had taken away the sun. Then she had taken the moon. Now all he had was the dim glow that came from his headlights. Outside his car was her world. A world of frigid darkness. He was shivering. His teeth were clattering uncontrollably. He could feel the muscles on his arms and legs spasm as they fought for desperate warmth.

He spared a moment to flick the heat on to full blast before he returned to his hunched position over the steering wheel. He was almost out. He knew that it only took five minutes to get home from the forest. And his clock told him that five minutes had passed. He couldn't tell where he was. But he knew the time. He knew he had been moving fast. In his heart he believed that she couldn't take time from him. Even in her world she had to obey the rules. She could take light and warmth, but she couldn't take time. It was this sole fact that kept him sane as he sped through the cold dark.

/-/

Sun woke up to someone hammering on his door. He buried his head in his pillow and pretended that the banging wasn't happening. Someone hammered on his door again. A frantic patternless tattoo. Sun buried his head deeper into his pillow.

"If they do that again I'll get up." He mumbled to himself as he very consciously enjoyed the warmth of his blankets. He knew that whoever it was would knock again. And he knew that he would have to abandon the sweet warmth of sleep to deal with whatever had landed outside his dorm. The knock came again, louder and more insistent. Sun groaned and rolled over to look at his alarm clock.

Three in the morning. Someone was beating on his door like a garage-band drum set at three in the morning. Sun reluctantly rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of pajama pants. He was still too tired to be angry. It was mostly a simmering resentment at the world for deciding to inconvenience him at three in the freaking morning. Maybe it was an especially zealous pizza guy. Who was also a cute girl. Sun distracted himself with these fantasies as he shuffled toward the door.

He unlocked the bolt and chain and pulled his door open. It didn't occur to him to check who it might be. And it certainly never crossed his mind that the person on the other side of the door would mean him harm. He just didn't look at the world like that. But whatever he had been expecting, the man on the other side of the door wasn't it.

Jaune was standing there. The first thing Sun noticed was that Jaune was wearing his sunglasses. Which was weird because, again, it was three in the morning. That fact would not leave Sun's mind as he took in the sight in front of him. Jaune's shirt was torn and covered in mud. His hair was wild, and he was bleeding from a cut in his forehead. His jeans were muddy and soaking wet. And Jaune was shivering. Violently.

Sun's mind went from dozy to alert in less than a second.

"Holy shit, dude!" Jaune collapsed at the sound of his voice. Sun grabbed him under the armpits and gently dragged him over to the couch. He carefully laid him down and took a second to consider what was going on here. His best friend was covered in mud and blood at three in the morning. And he was freezing. When Sun had grabbed him, it been like hugging a snowman. Really freaking cold.

"Are you alright, man?" Sun asked as his mind raced with questions and solutions to the problem that was currently bleeding on his couch. Jaune moaned.

"Yeah that sounds about right." Sun patted his pocket for his phone. It was still in his room.

"Look, you stay there. I'm gonna call Yang and we're going to take care of you okay?" He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. It wouldn't help Jaune if he started freaking out. Sun ran into his room. The reality of the situation was beginning to set in. There was a very real possibility that Jaune was dying on his couch. He yanked his phone off its charger and scrolled through his contacts. The phone rang.

"Yang, you better fucking pick up. Now is not the time for you to ignore me." Sun paced back and forth in his bedroom. He had to do something for Jaune. He was cold. Sun knew how to fix cold. He grabbed his comforter, still warm, and ran back out into the common area. The phone was still ringing. Jaune was where he had left him. He had curled up into a ball on the couch and a wet spot was starting to creep its way out from under his shivering friend. He was going to have to get Jaune out of his wet clothes before he wrapped him in any blankets. He was taking of Jaune's shoes and socks when Yang finally picked up.

"It's three in the morning." She said bluntly. "This had better be good."

"Jaune is bleeding on my couch!" Sun tried not to yell. He really didn't want to piss off his neighbors. He was lucky that Neptune was a heavy sleeper, or he'd have to corral him too.

"You found him!?" Yang had no such worries. Sun was pretty sure he heard Blake complain in the background.

"Sorta," Sun moved to the other shoe, "he just showed up at my dorm. He's soaking wet and he's bleeding."

"I'll be there in ten." Yang said firmly. "Should I bring anything?"

Sun thought about it for a second. What could she bring that could help him unfuck this situation? Ideally, she'd bring a healthy Jaune with her and he'd just go back to bed. But that probably wasn't happening.

"Bandages, rubbing alcohol, and food." Sun listed in rapid order. He had to clean the dirty cuts and wherever Jaune had been probably hadn't had a buffet.

"I'm on it. Blake is coming too." Sun heard crackling over the phone as Yang shifted. She was probably getting dressed.

"Sure. Whatever. Just get here. The door is unlocked." Sun threw the soaking socks across the room as he contemplated Jaune's jeans.

"I'm going to need both of my hands to take off his pants. I'll talk to you later."

"What-" Sun hung up the phone.

Sun had Jaune's pants nearly halfway down his legs when he started thrashing and moaning.

"You could not have chosen a worse time to start that." Sun informed him as he abandoned the soaking jeans and moved to hold Jaune's shoulders down. Jaune was mumbling something. The same thing over and over and over.

"Shescomingshescomingshescoming-" Sun could barely make out what he was trying to say. It was like Jaune's face was paralyzed and he was desperately trying to speak through it.

"Yeah, dude, Yang's on her way." Sun tried to reassure him. "She's bringing food and medicine. But before she gets here, I need you to chill." That was probably a poor choice of words.

"-shescomingshescomingshescoming-" Sun got the feeling that Jaune wasn't going to be reasoned with right now. He was a veteran of handling people who were having bad trips and knew when to just abandon reason and move to action. All he had to do was keep talking. His voice should calm Jaune down while he finished stripping him. Sun let go of Jaune's shoulders and moved back to his pants.

"It's gonna be alright, dude. You'll be warm and happy in no time. You just have to work with me." Jaune just kept mumbling. Sun wasn't sure that he was even registering his words. That was fine. Jaune didn't have to understand him. He just had to hear him. The jeans fell to the ground with a wet thump. Jaune started thrashing again.

Sun got the feeling it was going to be a long night.

/-/

"We've got some tortilla soup from last night!" Blake called from across their apartment.

"That'll work!" Yang called back. She was currently digging through a pile of dirty clothes in a fruitless attempt to find her keys. Blake always told her to take everything out of her pockets before she tossed her clothes in the laundry pile. But Yang was always way too excited to be home and pantsless to heed her warnings. She usually paid the price for her cavalier attitude in the late mornings before she went to class. Not at three AM. That was going to be her excuse the moment Blake started to say, 'I told you so.'

Was it bad that she was planning her excuses in advance? Probably. Would it be so much easier to just empty her pockets before she took off her pants? Almost certainly. But then Blake would win. And Yang didn't lose.

Except for right now. Because she absolutely could not find her keys.

"Is it cool if we take your car? I don't want the soup to spill in my saddlebags." Yang called out as she gave up her search and pulled on a pair of clean jeans.

"Sure." She could hear Blake's shit eating grin from two rooms away. That was fine. Blake could have this momentary victory. The greater goal was more important than their little argument over pants etiquette.

Yang stepped out into their living room and watched Blake finish packing a lunchbox with soup and rubbing alcohol.

"We don't have any bandages." She said as Yang stepped into the room.

"We could bring them some pads?" Yang suggested as she picked her jacket up off of the couch and threw it on over her tank top. It was a nice leather jacket. She couldn't really wear it in summer or spring. But winter was coming, and it was getting cold outside. Although somehow all the guys could just walk around in shorts like it was nothing. She hated them.

"You want us to bandage our bleeding friend with a pad?" Blakes eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She as old fashioned like that. Her parents had raised her to be a, 'lady,' which meant the even mentioning pads in front of men was forbidden. Yang's dad, on the other hand, had raised her to be pragmatic. And to punch anyone who looked at her funny.

"It's better than nothing," she said, "would you rather teach Sun to wash blood out of his clothes? Because that's our other option."

Blake grumbled in response and Yang savored her small victory.

"If you toss me the keys I'll run out and start the car while you grab the pads." Blake didn't have her shoes on yet. She had rolled out of bed the moment Yang had relayed Sun's list and started packing. She was good like that. Focused.

The keys flashed as they flew across the room. Yang caught them and made for the door. They could pick at each other all they wanted. But that didn't change the fact that Jaune was bleeding on Sun's couch. She couldn't wait to hear the story behind that one. When they had seen his car in the parking lot, she had been ready to call the police and start a county wide manhunt for him. But Sun had told her that the police didn't accept missing person's reports until forty-eight hours had passed. Which was stupid. How many people had died because the police didn't feel like getting off their asses and doing their job?

Yang managed to work herself up on the short walk from their front door to Blake's car. She got flushed and hot when she got angry. Almost like her head was on fire. When she was younger other kids had laughed at her when she got angry. Which of course had only made her angrier. And that had followed the chain of inevitable causality to a black eye and a call home to her dad. Who had only laughed and asked if the other kid had deserved it.

She loved her dad. Though she recognized that he might not be the best parent.

She felt the car shift as Blake got in the passenger seat. Yang waited until she was buckled and situated before she put the car in drive. I was always weird to drive a car after a couple weeks of only driving her bike. She leaned when she turned the wheel, and everything felt so slow and wide. But Blake didn't really drive if she could avoid it. That was one thing Yang had never really understood. Bikes and cars were the essence of freedom. You could just get in and go wherever you wanted to. Yang loved to be in the saddle. If she had her way she would drive across the entire world and explore every little nook and cranny. Blake thought driving was stupid and stressful.

The drive to campus was short and the roads were abandoned because it was three in the morning. Yang was going to have a long talk with Jaune after this was all taken care of. She intended to very forcefully remind him that bedtime was sacred, and she was only very grudgingly surrendering it on his behalf.

"Sun's room is on the fourth floor." Yang said as she eased the car into a good parking space. Campus was practically abandoned right now. They had a four-day weekend coming up. Which meant that most of the freshmen had gone home to their families and the parking lots in front of the dorms were practically barren as a consequence.

"I know where Sun's room is." Blake responded. "We hang out there literally every day."

"Yeah. I'm just making sure everyone has all the information." Yang did that when she was excited. It was just a habit to reiterate any and all information that might be useful in their current situation. Jaune had said that she would be great at competitive video games. Blake just told her that she also read all the road signs out loud when they were out on a drive.

It wasn't her fault that some people didn't appreciate having up to date information about the road that had been closed for the last four months. It was still closed, by the way.

They moved quickly across the parking lot and into the dorms. Theoretically the entrance to the dorms was locked by a set of doors that could only be opened by a key-fob. And all the secondary entrances were barred by password locked gates. In reality students hated remembering passwords and couldn't be bothered to get their key out of their pocket. So, most of the side gates were propped open or just plain broken. Yang and Blake went through one such gate and started running up the stairs two at a time. By the time they reached Sun's door fifteen minutes had passed since they had woken up.

The burst inside to find Jaune wrapped in a blanket on the couch and Sun very carefully boiling water on a hotplate.

Sun looked up as they entered and his eyes immediately focused on the items Blake was carrying,

"Is that a box of maxi-pads?"

Yang could feel Blake stiffen beside her. She stepped forward before her awkward half tried to make excuses.

"We didn't have any bandages and didn't think there was time to go to the store."

Sun nodded at this. He was a pretty laid-back guy. But he was also obviously tired and running on adrenaline.

"I'm boiling water for tea." He explained, gesturing to the little pot full of water like it explained everything that was going on. Yang was pretty sure that this was not the most relevant detail to the situation they were in.

'That's great. What's up with Jaune?" Yang gestured to the shivering pile of blankets that took up most of the couch.

"I got him calmed down a few minutes ago." Sun reported. That told her literally nothing about the situation.

"That tells me literally nothing," she said, "why is he bleeding and soaking wet?"

"No idea, dude." Sun shrugged weakly. "He's not in a really talkative mood right now."

"Well then fucking guess!" Yang was starting to lose her temper. She got that Sun was tired and out of it. She was tired and out of it too. But he was the one who brought her here. He could at least tell her what was going on. She felt a hand on her shoulder before she could go any further though.

"I'll warm up the soup and figure out what's up with Sun." Blake said quietly. "Why don't you go and check on Jaune?"

Yang calmed down instantly. Blake always had that effect on her.

"Yeah. I'll go check on Jaune. Give me the rubbing alcohol and the pads."

"He's naked under those blankets." Sun warned. "The only places he has cuts are on his hands and face."

She noted the pile of wet clothes by the couch and filed that away under questions to ask later and potential blackmail material.

"Why is he wearing sunglasses?" She asked as she stood over Jaune.

"He'll swing at you if you get anywhere near them." Sun responded from across the room. The microwave hummed as Blake warmed up the soup. Great. Now she was hungry.

She squatted in front of her shivering friend and opened up a pad. She doused it liberally with rubbing alcohol and pressed it tightly to the cut on Jaune's forehead. This seemed to shock him back into the real world. She could see his eyes focus on her from the other side of his sunglasses.

"Hey, man." She said softly. It was like she was a completely different person. One second, she had been ready to repeatedly acquaint Sun with her boot. Now she was Mom.

"H-hey." He said weakly. He was still shivering but he had already noticeably calmed down.

"What happened?" She asked. She knew that she probably shouldn't make him think back to whatever series of events had landed him naked and bleeding on Sun's couch, but she absolutely needed answers.

"There was a girl…"

With the Covid outbreak I think I'll be getting plenty of time to write these. I will however warn you, dear reader, I am physically incapable of keeping promises and meeting deadlines. That's a promise. But I am also very determined to write these. My stories will be finished. That is also a promise

Don't think about it too hard