Chapter 87 - Jaune vs Second-Hand Embarrassment


"... are you sure you've thought this through, kid?" Jaune asked, looking with muted horror at the girl who was apparently a cross between Blake, Arthur, and him, as she seemed determined to make the same mistakes he'd made, just before Beacon. "Like, absolutely sure about this?"

"Yes, I'm sure, Sir Huntsman." Blake nodded confidently. "I know what I'm giving up by doing this-"

"I'm very sure you don't..." Jaune murmured under his breath.

"But I am prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to end the lamentations of the Lord and the suffering of my people." Blake continued on passionately, not having heard him. "Besides, what's the worst that could happen? I die?"

"Not even close..."

"If I do nothing, the Burgundians and the Normans would come for Domremy eventually anyway!" Blake concluded. "At least this way... at least this way I can try to make a difference, rather than sitting helplessly by and waiting for my turn to come!"

"..." Jaune couldn't help but avert his eyes from Blake, fighting down the stirrings of something that could be charitably described as feeling moved. Oum, had he ever been this bad?

Even so, though... even if she had a point...

"What about your friends and family?" Jaune challenged, remembering his own regrets. "Do... do they at least know what you did? Did you at least manage to... settle your affairs with them?"

"... I couldn't." Blake shook her head. "There was no time; the Lord showed me that Orleans was falling. And if I'd told them about what I was about to do, they'd have stopped me. They'd never understand..."

Ah, teenagers.

Wait, wasn't he still a teenager?

Should he count the 4 years he'd spent being frozen?

Oum, now he felt old.

Was he going to complain about young whippersnappers on his lawn next?

"Did you at least leave them a note?" Jaune pressed, after a deep sigh.

"... I can't read or write." Blake admitted.

"Wait, what." Jaune blinked.

"Well, it's not like reading or writing would have helped me with farm work or prayers!" Blake defended, cheeks burning.

"What about reading the signs on the dust-damned road?!" Jaune pointed out.

"... I was just going to ask for directions..." Blake muttered quietly, unable to meet his incredulous gaze.

"Ask for directions... from strangers, in a war-torn land?!" Jaune demanded, in complete and utter disbelief.

"Well, my parents always said, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet..." Blake's voice trailed off.

"Somehow, I don't think that's what they meant." Jaune's voice was remarkably level, an impressive feat considering that he was desperately asking Oum to strike him with lightning, or have a hole appear under his feet.

"..."

"Do you even know how to use that sword by your hip?" Jaune accused.

"... I can learn!" Blake tried. "It's just a sword, right? Can't be that hard..."

Jaune's eye twitched.

"Yeah, kid, I think you should go home." Jaune finally said.

"What?!" Blake's jaw dropped. Had the Huntsman just ignored her passionate speech, that she'd poured her heart and soul into?!

"Kid, trust me on this one." Jaune advised, firmly but gently. "I can help with the war, but you'll regret not at least saying goodbye to your family, and I can't help with that. Go back home, before it's too late."

"Uh..." Blake scratched her cheek nervously, unable to meet his eyes. She'd have argued about, but there was something about the tone of his voice that caused her to hesitate. At the same time, though...

"About that..."

Jaune's ears perked up as he heard footsteps, and he immediately turned to Blake, demanding: "What did you do?!"

"There she is!"

"There's the horse thief!"

"Teach you to steal our supplies!"

"Get her!"

"I... may have been hitting their supply carts, while making my way to Orleans..." Blake reluctantly admitted, taking a few steps back as she watched them pointing and shouting in her general direction.

Jaune groaned, and buried his face in a hand.

So, not only was this version of him an illiterate idiot who'd stolen a sword she didn't even know how to use, and was planning on asking random strangers for directions in the middle of a war, but she was also a wanted criminal who'd been messing with a hostile army?!

Had he been this bad?

"So, uh... what exactly is, a landing strateg-EEEEEHEEHEEHEE!"

"Of course I do. Do YOU know what Aura is?"

"Pyrrha! This is not the relic! It's not!"

... okay, maybe he was being too harsh on her.

As the four armored men drew close to them, Jaune sighed, and stepped forward, placing himself between Blake and the soldiers.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" Jaune asked, knowing that being polite cost but a few words, and could save as much as a life (or so his mom said).

"Stand aside, knight." The leading soldier snarled. "You are harboring a traitor and a thief!"

"... traitor?" Jaune turned back to Blake and raised an eyebrow. "... Blake..."

"... it's a long story." Blake murmured, shrinking further behind the hunter.

She wasn't a traitor, as far as she was concerned, really!

... but it was also technically true, since she was acting against the interest of the Burgundians and Normans, who were currently occupying the capital of France.

And most of the country too.

And had already propped up their own puppet claimant to the throne of France...

Jaune sighed deeply once more, before turning back to the men, and said: "Look, whatever she's done, I'm sure it can't be that serious, right? She's just a little girl, after all..."

"She's cost us over three score of horses!" The leading man roared furiously.

"... look, I'll pay for any damages caused, and make sure she gets back home." Jaune suggested, ignoring Blake's protests. "Just drop it, alright?"

"Not good enough." The soldiers refused his offer. "She comes with us."

"... well, it was worth a try." Jaune murmured, shaking his head even as his hand fell to the hilt of his sword. "Last chance. Back off, and let us go."

The soldiers immediately drew their weapons, sensing that something was wrong, but they refused to back down.

There was a tense moment, as each waited for the other to strike.

Then the soldiers made the first move, trusting in their superiority of numbers and full plate armor against the sole knight's breastplate and sword.

Jaune spared a last sigh.

He really wasn't in the mood for this.

Sure, he could just step aside...

But there was no way on Remnant that he'd simply let a young, naive, and misguided girl get taken away by clearly-hostile-and-armed strangers.

Especially not when her main crimes seemed to be due to a mixture of Arthur's ideals and his idiocy.

Well, he'd try not to kill them, at least; he didn't exactly know the full story, after all.

As the first blade neared him, he quickly drew his sword and flicked his scabbard into it's shield position, before smashing it into the metal blade and shattering it.

A polearm came swinging at him from the side.

Jaune casually sliced the bladed head off of its shaft, before taking a step forward and shoving the hilt of the sword into the man's gut.

Before the other two could react, Jaune channeled his Aura into his blade, and the men around him immediately backed away fearfully, murmuring about witchcraft and sorcery as they saw a blade simultaneously frozen and on fire, with lightning arcing down its length.

"LEAVE." Jaune commanded, exaggeratedly drawing his sword into a guard position with a flourish.

The men were already fleeing, tossing crosses and any other objects they had on hand at the warrior warlock, knowing they weren't paid nearly enough to deal with that.

Jaune just rolled his eyes at the treatment, and sheathed his sword, before bending down to study the objects they'd thrown in his general direction.

"... that was amazing!" Blake exclaimed, after she spent a moment processing what had just happened. The holy hunter apparently had a flaming sword! "What was that? Are you an angel?"

"... how did you even come to that conclusion?" Jaune wondered drily, even as crushed piece of paper caught his eye.

"Angels have flaming swords, according to what the priest told me!" Blake replied confidently, like it made total sense.

"..."

Oum, had he been that gullible and naive?

...

He really didn't want to know.

"Well, I'm just a normal human being." Jaune finally answered.

"Uh huh..." Blake couldn't keep the skepticism from her voice.

Normal humans couldn't emit a holy light at will, or heal with a touch, and normal humans definitely didn't have a sword that could burst into flames!

"It's true." Jaune rolled his eyes. "The sword is magic, though."

"And where did you get a magic sword?" Blake pressed, curiosity winning out over caution. "Can I also get one?"

"Killed a dragon." Jaune shrugged, before holding up the paper. "Anyway, does this look familiar?"

Blake squinted, scrutinizing the parchment.

There were large squiggles and a bunch of smaller scribbles, but more importantly...

"Is that... a drawing of me?" Blake tried.

"Yep." Jaune confirmed.

"... why would the Normans have a drawing of me?" Blake asked, after a moment of waiting.

"Well, it says here that you're a wanted criminal." Jaune answered drily.

"..." Blake's jaw dropped, and her face paled. "... my parents are going to kill me..."

"If the Burgundians and the Normans don't get you first." Jaune supplied helpfully.

"... thanks for reminding me about that." Blake huffed, even as she sat back dejectedly, and bitterly complained: "There's no way I'll be able to do what I've been doing so far if there's a bounty on my head, let alone reach Orleans! Now what do I do?"

Jaune took a second to look down at the black-haired girl, as she begun praying for advice.

Oum, she just looked so lost and dejected...

Just like how he'd been, at the start.

In that moment, he saw himself.

On the rooftop with Pyrrha, sobbing over that dead body in Skyrim with Yang, when he'd first woken up in the Capital Wasteland...

... damn it.

He couldn't let her make the same mistakes he had...

... but he didn't have the right to deny her dreams and force her to go back home, did he?

Even worse, he'd be spitting in the faces of every friend he'd made across all the different worlds he'd been to.

Both the ones who had helped him... and the ones he'd helped.

Rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, he sighed, and finally said: "Jaune."

"I'm sorry?" Blake peeked an eye open.

"My name's Jaune." Jaune repeated, introducing himself. "And I'm not even twenty, so stop calling me "sir", kid; it feels weird! Just... just call me by my actual name when we're travelling together, alright?"

"..." Blake's dark blue eyes slowly widened in realization, before they began to sparkle with moisture. "Does... does this mean...?"

"Oum, how much longer are you just going to stay down there?" Jaune averted his eyes awkwardly. "We still need to figure out where Orleans is, kid."

"Ohthankyouthankyouthankyou!" Blake did her best impression of Ruby. "You won't regret this, I promise, Mr. Jaune!"

"I already am..." Jaune groaned.

"By the way... I thought you wanted me to return home?" Blake pointed out, blinking as she recalled his earlier words. "What changed your mind?"

"Even if I could convince you, it probably wouldn't be safe for you to return home now." Jaune rolled his eyes, tossing aside the wanted poster. "And letting you go off by yourself would probably make me guilty of murder by negligence, so..."

Seriously, he'd have been screwed if he'd run into even a single Grimm before he'd made it to Beacon (or before Pyr had unlocked his Aura)...

"The Lord truly has answered my prayers!" Blake was too thrilled at the prospect of simply having company and assistance for her mission to save the people to care about the implied insult. And the fact that he was a "normal human" (and totally-not-an-angel-or-something) with a magic sword who could scare Burgundian soldiers just by glaring at them was just icing on the cake!

"I'm pretty sure he had nothing to do with this..." Jaune murmured under his breath, remembering how he'd ended up here, before shaking his head. Looking back at the enthusiastic ravenette, he chuckled, and warned: "Don't count your lucky stars just yet, kid. I'm not letting you get off that lightly."

"Are you saying that you want payment from me?" Blake asked, already reaching for her coin purse.

"... if I was in this for the money, I'd have just handed you over to the Normans, kid." Jaune pointed out. "No, I meant, I'm going to make sure to at least teach you the basics, before we get to Orleans."

"You're... going to teach me?" Blake echoed in disbelief.

"You'd better believe it." Jaune nodded, vowing to once again make sure she didn't end up like he had (i.e. surviving solely by sheer dumb luck). "Reading, writing, survival skills, swordplay... whatever I can teach you before we get there."

"..."

"It's not going to be easy, so if you want to turn around and go back now-"

"I don't!" Blake rejected the notion forcefully. "Please, teach me everything you can! I can do it, no matter how hard it is!"

"... yeah, well, that's what I thought, too." Jaune couldn't meet her hopeful eyes, and instead opted to begin walking down the road, in the opposite direction from where the soldiers had approached. As Blake followed behind him excitedly, he groaned, and hoped she wouldn't regret this.

First things first, though...

"Don't you have anyway to cover up your face, Ms. Criminal?" Jaune pointed to the wanted poster behind them.

"Oh, right!" Blake quickly pulled out her travelling cloak.

"So... why did they call you a traitor?"

"Well, you see..."


Author's Note: And one more short chapter, as the adventures of Blake-Jeanne and Jaune begin.

I'll be honest; Blake's... well, Blakey-ness is pretty minimal right now. Sure, she's Blake in that she's a revolutionary who's hitting supply convoys right now, rather than trying preaching and gathering an army (presumably, Blake-Jeanne has a lower Charisma than actual-Jeanne would have), but one of the core features of early RWBY Blake was that she was a former terrorist hiding in plain sight, torn between her ideals and loyalty to her cause (equality) and the reality of the situation (i.e. her actions were doing little to advance her actual cause, and the White Fang were starting to hurt innocents).

Here, well... there's little of that internal conflict, since this is the start of her journey, and she's doing it by... well, doing what Jaune/Jeanne did.

And to the people who would prefer I stop desecrating the established FATE canon and leave the characters as they should be... I mean, I don't disagree, but that's kind of the entire original premise of this story - Jaune getting isekai'd to different worlds and meeting different RWBY versions of the characters within them.

Don't get me wrong, though; I do think that seeing Jaune inside the Nasuverse with their canonical characters would definitely be interesting (like Jaune and Artoria, for example; god, for an unplanned crossover that was surprisingly fun to do)... but that isn't this story. Someone should totally write it, just like someone should go and write that RWBY/Bleach crossover I teased/faked-out back in Chapter 67, but this story has its hands tied by its original concept. Such a waste, though... Jaune x Artoria would be a pretty interesting dynamic (though in any other story it'd probably be the reverse of what it is here), and I do stand by what I said, that Bleach and RWBY would be a fascinating crossover.

As for Jaune... well, there's really only so much a person can take, and Jaune's probably gone past that limit a few jumps ago. To put it in perspective... at the end of the Camelot arc, Jaune was finally settling down, and preparing to accept that there would be no more jumps, and that would be his life from now on. After all, he'd been there for 18 months, as opposed to the few months he was in Skyrim, the Capital Wasteland, and the Mojave Wasteland each.

He was slowly working through the pain of what he'd lost by sharing them in the form of stories, glorifying the achievements of his friends (and reassuring himself that they were total badasses who could get shit done without him).

And then, in a single moment, his hidden doubts and insecurities (Can I really stay here forever? Is there anything more for me to do?) are drawn out and amplified, and (manipulated or not) he makes the choice to leave. Now he's in a place he doesn't recognize, desperately trying to rationalize what the hell just happened...

And then he runs into a girl who seems determined to dive head first down the same path he's now regretting, whose every action seems to remind him of his mistakes.

I hope you can understand why he might be a little bit of a dick right now, to put it lightly.