I, Jaune: Or, The Context-Insensitive Semblance

Summary: A petty, self-obsessed kid who is suspiciously similar to Jaune Arc finds out that he is Jaune Arc. Armed only with having watched two-three~ seasons of RWBY, a history of substance abuse, and about two years experience with Information Technology in the United States Army, he and team B.A.S.S. (Blake, Arc, Schnee, & Shadow Person or something—I don't know, I never learned their name) must survive as the world's least competent B-team. But don't worry, he's done this once before, and it's only ended in tragedy once!

If you're looking for insane crack, you're half there. But if you're looking for a sort of dialogue-heavy character study of your favorite waifus under the influence of someone charitably best described as "a loose collection of character flaws," you're in the right place. The following is serious crack with heart dealing with drug addiction, socioeconomics, past failures, and making amends to people you've hurt, as well as a deconstruction of the SI genre. Enjoy a cast of broken, neurotic weirdos up to their eyes in trauma and psychoses trying their best to be Huntsmen!

Edited by people who actually know RWBY inside and out. Which now includes me.


Volume 1: DumB.A.S.S.

Chapter 1: Sniffing Vicodin in Vale

"Ah, great. Where am I supposed to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?"

— 1 —

After the first time I defecated myself landing a fall that was apparently entirely survivable here, I found myself with the nickname "Bowel Blaster" and honestly considered killing myself. The problem is when I jumped I survived again with only a few nasty bruises to show for myself. I believe the new nickname was "Colon Cosmonaut," but I had begun to ignore the street children by this point. I hated being bullied by tweenagers.

It was a moot point in any case. I only broke two ribs when I hit the ground in the Emerald Forest. You'd be amazed what a boy can survive here with a hastily improvised parachute made of duct tape, rain tarps, and a few guns you stole from some cute sophomore chick.

And hey, my skinny jeans were poop free!

Now if only I could get all this blood out of my eyes. If not for these heavy duty painkillers I'd taken in preparation before the launch, I'd probably be in a lot more agony. I'm sort of an expert at surviving things like these. Done it before, in fact. Poorly.

Around the time I was trying to escape from under the gun-parachute, I realized the sniffing wasn't from my possibly broken nose. Something big was outside there. I scrambled up, coughing a fit until I was standing in the naked sunshine.

I was there at the relic place with all the chess pieces. Parachute power, bi-yatch! Now, sure, the ramshackled ropes tied me up like the world's least enthusiastic mummy, the parachute was tangled in the ruins' pillars, and there was a giant black murder werewolf here to give me a prostate exam, but ⅔ ain't bad.

We locked eyes.

"Sup?" I said.

"Top of the mornin' to ya, laddie," it roared back at me. At least I like to imagine it was a jaunty Irish greeting lost somewhere in communication and not a primal howl of Grimm hatred.

I was already ducking back under the canvas of the parachute and crawling for all I was worth.

Grimmbles the Wolf slashed the duct tape and rain tarp parachute canvas and got its claws stuck. It decided to just go direct and crawl under the tarps with me, twisting itself through all the pointless aborted rope knots I'd tied trying to make this abomination. All the while I struggled to get my parachute back off my back—oh god no, crawl around the stone pillar, blondie, crawl for your life!

Slashing, gnashing, grabbing, and biting, the werewolf crawled after me like a paraplegic with a blood vendetta. I threw the pack off just as the wolf snapped its huge mouth where I'd been a second ago. It bit the backpack and decided to just up and swallow it whole and smile toothily at me. Yeah, big man on campus, huh, Grimmbles?

I smiled back and tugged on one of the strings under the parachute. The roar of automatic fire exploded from above us. The werewolf had just enough time to look confused before the guns sent the chute speeding through the air, with the backpack lodged firmly in its stomach. It flailed in the air like some kind of living balloon animal.

Laughing, I stumbled to my feet and wiped more of the forehead blood from my eyes. "Ha! That's what you get! The Colon Cosmonaut is the ultimate aeronautical engineer, bitch!" I cried out, shaking my fist at Grimmbles as I think it crashed through some girl.

Whatever. Jaune d'Arc don't got him no time for protagonists. Not like I'd met anyone I could recognize since coming here. I am a lone wolf. The non-Grimm-flying kind, that is. One who at least pretended he followed the laws of physics, I'm saying.

I grabbed a black pawn from a stone pedestal. I even took a selfie with it. I was the first and the best at Beacon.

Of course, looking at the selfie, I realized I had a large gash over my gut from the Grimm's claws. The only reason I wasn't a gelding was because I'd had the foresight to add a jockstrap under my armor. Protect ya dick, guys.

Right now the grievous wound only hurt a little bit. Without my painkillers I'd probably be feeling like I'd won a season pass to Auschwitz.

I reached into my medkit and pulled out two tablets of what I thought was oxycodone. At least that's the way the street kid I'd bought them from described them to me. Then again, I was pretty sure this kid was trying to sell oregano, so it was a miracle the painkillers worked at all. I downed them with a shot from a hip flask of whiskey I was keeping for just this reason. Hard not to die when you don't have an Aura, but, eh, a boy's gotta make do.

I curled up into a very heroic ball and waited for one Hiro Protagonist to come upon me. Or whichever RWBY boob goblin I'd hit with the flying Grimm. Not like I remembered the order. Maybe it'd be Thirst Bait or the Self-Insert.

Every blink of the eye seemed to last longer and longer as the narcotics cozily clawed at my consciousness.

Another blink. Longer. Longer. Dream drugs, eh? It was all… all…

Ugh.

Coming back from the dead can be rough. In the United States Army, rather unexpectedly for a fighting force, they teach you that dying is bad. My old Sergeant once gave me a practical demonstration. "It's a war crime to go back and double tap the wounded," he recounted from experience, forcing me to do push-ups because I'd unhelpfully informed him that Orangutans could invert their dicks into sexholes for other apes. He picked up his heavy boots still laden with Afghan dust. "But it's cool to step on they balls when walking over them. If they flinch, it's legal to shoot them."

You're supposed to fight dirty. Win by any means. Follow the vague letter of the rules instead of their spirit, with the loosest possible interpretation. Only the dead fight fair.

I'd died a couple times getting here, so I guess the lesson never took. The worst part was screaming into the mirror at a face I didn't recognize. Drinking stolen whiskey until this seemed like the new normal, all the while looking at Jaune's—at my—fingers like they were toys I didn't want anymore.

Because I didn't.

PSYCHODYNAMICS INTEGRITY TRAINING: INTRODUCTION—The human mind does interesting things under extreme stress. Hallucination, personality displacement, the irrational belief that you will be able to save yourself and everyone you love, Jaune. We will teach you not to use these as blind animal reactions, but as moves in a game.

Maybe I was some teenager in a mask. Maybe some soldier working IT. Maybe I was Jaune after a crippling psychological break, and everything I thought I knew about myself was a post-hoc fabrication to make sense of this insanity.

Memory is a funny thing. Looking back, it's a messy, patchwork quilt of notable events. Not always, strictly speaking, connected. Say you go to work every day. You might remember interesting events at your job, novel experiences, but do you remember your every commute there? Do you remember every instance putting yourself to bed and waking up afterwards? Every little thing bringing you from point A to point B.

I had no idea who I was beyond a stuttering of interesting experiences over an indeterminate time frame spanning three faces, the latest was this sleeve of human flesh named Jaune Arc. This wouldn't be my first time.

"Oh God, no," a girl groaned, and I jerked awake with a start. "You?"

When I opened my eyes this time and saw black, I lunged to safeguard my wallet. I rolled to the side, my chest wet with cooling blood.

I blinked the sleepy haze and saw a disapproving girl in black standing above me. I searched around and she was alone. Just me and her black hairbow.

I sniffled. "Sorry, Mittens. I, uh, I was raised in the Deep South. Just a reflex."

Jesus. Foot meet mouth. Why do I always say shit like that? If my old Sergeant heard me say that, the man would fucking kill me. He was one of those tough bastards from the bad part of LA, too, a veteran of Afghanistan, the Philippines, and African black ops.

She looked at me like, well, like I was me. "You're bleeding, Jaune. Badly."

"Yeah, I left my tampons at home," I said with a sad shake of the head.

"You're still bleeding, asshole. Which purse has the medical supplies?"

"The red one. Some of us actually have some taste, Mittens." I flashed a smile. "The medkit's in the fanny pack."

Despite the face she made at me, she didn't waste any time getting out the fanny pack and going for my antiseptic gauze.

I grunted slightly. "Thanks, Mittens."

She pursed her lips and helped me wrap my stomach up. "Stop calling me that."

"Hey, where's Thirst Bait?" I asked.

"I'm not going to reply to that."

Damn, girl was already onto me. Like hell I could give up.

"Y'know, Tits-a-Flappin'," I insisted with a vague gesture. My blood-soaked hand spattered drops of red all over the place. One landed on her cheek. "Pippen Longtitties. Ringing any bells, Mittens?"

"Yang?" she finally said in that 'wow, I am so reserved' voice of hers.

"Yeah, the girl with the Ying-Yang Twins on her chest," I said with a nod. "Whatever her name is."

Her nose wrinkled. "You're disgusting, Jaune."

"And yet you still recognized her just from her breasts," I said, gesturing at her.

She very conspicuously did not answer that. Instead she tugged at the bandages. "There. You're okay. Can you walk?"

"Only if my newest teammate in the nice stockings helps me back to a nurse," I said with a smirk.

Mittens made an uncomfortable groaning noise in the back of her throat. You could tell she was weighing the worth of suicide versus spending the next fours years on a team with me. I think suicide was winning out.

It was a fantastic start to my career at Beacon.

I was going to need a good first day, too. After all, I'd accidentally read something on the wiki about Beacon blowing up in three semesters or something. Needed to do something about that. If only I'd finished watching season three.


a/n: Although you don't need to have read it to enjoy this, and I recommend you don't since it's a different fandom and dead, this is canonically a sequel to I, Greg: Or How a Self-Insert Destroyed The Wormverse. Some references and alcohol withdrawal hallucinations will make more sense with it as background context.