Jaune slowly opened his eyes. He is met with a white room with light shining in on it. He can see a ceiling fan that was turned off. He rubs his eyes awake and sits up and looks around. He realizes his mistake as he felt a sting sensation in his chest. He grips it and falls back onto the bed he was laying on. As he gripped it he noticed that his sweatshirt was missing and that he was topless. He takes a note of his surroundings, and assumes he is in some kind of infirmary but he doesn't know where.
He hears a door open and also hears whistling. He tilts his head forward to see man with a lab coat was walking around with a clipboard in his hands. He took a look at the clipboard and then turned around to a counter and opened up a cupboard. Jaune squinted to see a bunch of medicinal items. The man takes a jar and then turns around and walks towards Jaune, and notices that he is awake.
"Ah, Mr. Arc, you're awake," The man said. He goes over to Jaune and sets the jar he got to the side. "Now then, this might sting a bit." Jaune looked at him with a confused look on his face. The man took out gel from the jar, rubbed his hand together and rubbed it on Jaune's chest. Jaune groans in pain at the slight burning sensation he felt, but at the same time the gel felt cool on his skin which soothed him a little bit. After the man was done applying the gel he went over and washed his hands in a sink.
"Excuse me," Jaune said. "But, where am I? And who are you?"
"Oh where are my manners?" The man said. He dries his hands and walks back to Jaune, his hand outstretched. Jaune shakes his hands. "I'm Doctor Leonardo, I am one of the infirmary staff here in Shade."
"I'm in Shade?" Jaune said surprised. "So, the others, where are they?" Leonardo put his hand up.
"Relax, Jaune, they're fine." Jaune's concerned face was filled with relief, and joy. He didn't know what to think if any of them…
He shook that thought away. "So, if I'm in Shade, where are the others?" he asked.
"Well… to understand that you have to understand how long you've been out." Jaune stared at him with confusion. "Eight years."
Jaune took a second to register what he was hearing. His pupils then shrunk. His breathing got faster and he was starting to panic. However he noticed that Leonardo was laughing. "I'm sorry Mr. Arc, I couldn't help myself. You've only been out for about ten hours, eleven max. That includes when you first passed out."
Jaune let out a sigh of relief. "That was not funny! I could've had a heart attack!" There was a hint of sarcasm in Jaune's voice. For some reason, Leonardo's joking had helped him calm down a little more.
"No you wouldn't have. Besides even if you did you're already in an infirmary so I would have saved you anyway." Jaune and Leonardo share a slight chuckle "Anyway, just let me make sure you are absolutely okay. Being scarred takes some getting used to."
"Scarred?!" Jaune said leaning up, only to grip his stomach again and fall back to the bed. His heart rate goes up from this news, not shocking the doctor.
"Did you forget about the run in with Junkrat?" Leonardo asked. Jaune recollects everything that happened before he passed out. As he does, he nodded his head, remembering Junkrat hit him straight on with his explosion semblance. "Well, the explosion left a nasty hand mark burn scar on your belly. From what I can tell either your aura wasn't strong enough or it was completely depleted when he attacked you. Not to, mention the internal bleeding from all the melee hits you've taken messed up your insides really good. Luckily the people at Yano were able to help at least stop it."
"So… how close was I to…" Leonardo could tell Jaune didn't want to say that word.
"I'd say around sixty-eight percent. You have to keep in mind you didn't really fully heal from the charger attack either. Look I won't go through the details with you. Right now just rest while I do some more tests."
"All right," Jaune agreed.
As Leonardo kept doing more tests, Jaune and him kept chatting. Leonardo was a talker, and Jaune didn't mind that. It helped calm his nerves and slightly ignore the pain he was in. The two learned more about each other throughout each examination. Leonardo was actually a spider faunus that could shoot webs from his mouth, which led him to becoming a field medic due to him being able to patch people up quickly. Jaune talked about his sisters and family, despite them practically disowning him.
"Look your family business is family business, but I highly doubt that every single one of your sisters disowned you," Is what Leonardo said. Jaune couldn't help but smile. Leonardo seemed to be just as helpful, happy, dorky, and goofy as Jaune used to be before Beacon. Once the tests were done Leonardo clapped his hands.
"All right, now then to let Belinda tell you the news."
"What news?" Jaune asked.
Leo just chuckled and shrugged. "Well if I told you now it wouldn't be news now would it?" Jaune chuckled as Leo left the room. Jaune groans and relaxes a little bit. He began thinking of his chances of coming here. He got BRNZ and NDGO captured, and possibly raped. Not only that, he got himself injured so much that they had to stop moving for a time which could've been spent getting to Shade more.
However, another thought popped in his head. What if he was still in the bandit camp? What if this was some kind of trick? He began panicking again but realized that if it was the bandit camp, why would Leonardo do all the tests and heal him when he could've just killed him while he was unconscious.
In truthfulness, Jaune as scared. If he wasn't accepted into Shade, what would he do? He's not strong enough to be a mercenary, and yet he doesn't have anywhere to go to. He could try and find a regular job, but who would hire the biggest fraud in the world?
All of his thoughts were put to an end when the door opened again. He turned and Belinda walking over to him, with Leonardo behind her. She was wearing a dark blue vest with the gold buttons, and a white t-shirt. She wore a skirt that matched the vest color with long black translucent socks with black dress shoes. Her hair was still in a ponytail with the tips dyed light blue. She takes a seat next to Jaune's bed and asks "How are you Jaune?"
"Truthfully? I feel like I got stomped on by a goliath, and my chest feels like I've been thrown into a lava pit."
"On the bright side at least you have a cool story to tell!" Leonardo said. This caused Jaune to smile a little bit and Belinda to smirk.
"Well then, I guess we should get down to business," Belinda said. "Are you ready for your evaluation?" Jaune took a deep breath. It's better to get it sooner rather than later. He nods his head and Belinda begins. "Well, you had a hard time controlling the two teams," She started. Jaune's heart sank a little. "Half the time you were too timid to demand respect, you got yourself injured fighting a charger, you got all of them kidnapped and possibly raped, got half of them under mind control, and put them in so much danger that it was a miracle that no one got killed.
Jaune couldn't move. He didn't realize all of the mistakes he made throughout this entire initiation. Every reason stuck to him. Every reason why he was a failure, a fraud, nothing. His family was correct into thinking that he would amount to nothing. Fortunately Belinda wasn't done.
"However," She said. "You kicked Dew out of the way to save her from a charger, you were able to command them on a battlefield of twenty some grimm, you focused more on survivors of a camp instead of supplies, the respect you gained was from the others realizing that you are a hunter, not someone trying to hurt them, accidental or with intent, and you were able to escape from the bandit camp using the limited knowledge that you had on the bandits."
Jaune looked up at Belinda, hope in his eyes. Did he actually do it? "Now I don't have any room at the moment… but I'm sure I will find somewhere for you to lay your head." Jaune's hopeful eyes turned into ones filled with joy. "Jaune Arc, welcome to Shade Academy."
Those words echoed throughout Jaune's head. He didn't realize he was leaning up until he fell back into the infirmary bed, his big signature grin on his face. He lets out a slight chuckle. "I… can't find words for how happy I am," Jaune said.
"I couldn't imagine," Belinda said. "Besides, you've exceeded my expectations Mr. Arc." Jaune turns his head and raises an eyebrow to her.
"Why's that?"
Belinda looks to the ground for a second and takes a deep breath. "I wasn't expecting Picaro to be raided."
"What do you mean?"
Belinda clears her throat. "When I left all of you in the desert, I put all of you in a location that no matter where you would go, you would find a settlement. Yes, you would have to fight a few grimm but that's to be expected. However I did not expect a settlement to have been raided and destroyed by the bandits and grimm. They were to tell you where you were so that you could travel the desert back here. I expected you to fight mostly our desert grimm, maybe a bandit scout or two, not get captured and have to escape a bandit camp. For that, I am sorry."
Jaune could tell that she truly was sorry for putting Jaune in that situation, and honestly, he should have been mad. In a way, she made him kill someone, she made him have to suffer the near raping, and she was the one that put all of them in danger. Yet, he couldn't blame her. It would be the same for blaming Ozpin for his transcript being leaked, when he could never have expected them to become public.
"Well, at least I know more about Vacuo," Jaune said with a smile on his face. "Honestly, maybe it was for the best that this happened. I mean, I know the huge differences between Vale and Vacuo, and yeah it will take time to get used to it, but I'm somewhat glad that things happened the way it did."
Belinda raised her head and grew a small smirk on her face when she saw Jaune smiling. "I was right," She said. "I will be proud to have you as a student here."
"Well then," Leonardo said. "Now that Jaune's in, I think it would be a good idea for you to find a room for him, and to tell the others he's fine, right Belinda?"
Belinda sighs and stands up. "I guess I can't put it off any longer. Is he okay to stand up and walk around?"
"Okay is debatable, but he can do it."
"Smartass."
The two of them share a chuckle. Jaune could sense that the two are old friends, probably on the same team or something. "Yeah, he'll just be sore. Oh and wearing shirts is going to be a pain with the burn scar. While the disfigurement will stay with you forever, the burning sensation will only last about a week or two."
"Anything else I need to know?" Jaune asked as he slowly leaned up. He was still in some pain, but now that his body was used to being awake, the stiffness and pain wasn't as surprising. He stood up and began moving around a little bit more.
"Well, other than what I said, not really. Just the usual 'don't work too hard' crap."
"Good to know. Where's my sweatshirt?"
"Ah I'll go get it." Leonardo went off and grabbed Jaune's sweatshirt. Once he gave it to him, Belinda and Jaune left the infirmary. As he walked the halls with Belinda, it finally dawned on him: Jaune Arc was a student of Shade Academy.
To be continued.
So this is it for Arc 1 everyone! I'm sorry this chapter was a little shorter than usual but I hope you all enjoyed the arc as much as I did writing it. Now it might be a while before I post the next chapter but this story is still going to be running. See you all in little bit.