Here we go


Cover Art: Curbizzle

Chapter 39


Jaune face down the Brother Gods and felt every bit the insignificant spec that he was. These were the founders, the precursors, the creators of all human life, and they were utterly inhuman. Understanding them was impossible, and so was predicting what their response to his little declaration might be, but if there was one thing he was certain of – it was that he didn't care. If they wanted to make the anchors fight to the death, his friends, to sate their sick appetites, then he didn't want a part of it. Let them kill him. He wouldn't stand by and do nothing.

"I won," said Jaune, staring deep into their faces. "I am the last Jaune."

"You were not chosen."

Assholes. Jaune bared his teeth. "And yet here I am. Last one standing. That was your rule."

The beings looked to one another and communicated silently. It was hard not to hate them, to despise them utterly. He'd seen so many good copies of himself die. Bad ones too. They were their own people, from their own worlds, with their own dreams. Calling them copies didn't even feel right. They had friends, hopes, dreams and goals that the Brother Gods had cruelly ignored as they ripped them from their worlds and used them as playthings.

They had forced Leviathan to face death without aura to protect him; they had left Revolutionary to fight his own anchor and die; they had put Grimm – a good man – with the queen of all evil; they had set Ashari to be killed for the crime of loving his daughter; they had dangled an answer in front of Fate's nose, then killed him before he could gain it. Their list of crimes went on, not even including what they had done to Ozma and Salem. It was hard not to hate them, and Jaune couldn't say he was wrong to hate them at all. They were monsters. Gods, sure, but monsters to the human life they had created. At least the Grimm were mindless.

The God of Light looked up suddenly. "No."

The voice boomed, and Jaune took a step back. The God's hand rose and the world shifted. He flinched, expecting death, only to feel golden light sear past him and strike something else. "Arghhhh!" cried Cinder, frozen in the air not two metres behind him with a glass sword in hand. Jaune staggered away from her, stunned.

"We are deliberating," said the God of Light. "You had your chance to win the war and failed. Interfering now shall not grant you victory."

"M-Mine was last!" croaked Cinder. "Null killed the most!"

"The one you call Null slew four. The one who called himself Fate slew as many." Damn it, Fate. Jaune really hadn't wanted to hear it laid out like that. "A victor cannot be decided based on the quantity killed. The quality?"

"Quality?" asked the God of Destruction. "Knight was the strongest. Grimm killed him. Such was worth more than all that Null slew."

"Their battle was the most entertaining," agreed the God of Light.

"Entertaining?" said Jaune, voice thick with emotion. "Entertaining-?" He looked back, noting Ruby's stricken expression. It boiled his gut. "Is that all we are to you? A game? They were real people. They were living, breathing people, and they didn't want to have to kill one another. Grimm didn't want to kill anyone at all!"

The Brother Gods looked down on him with inscrutable silence. The God of Light said, "You were created for no purpose. You have no purpose. I made you, on a whim, to occupy my attention. You are not a game. You were a distraction. A disappointment."

Someone's knees hit the floor. Jaune wasn't sure who. That was it? They… They were just an idle fancy? He wasn't religious, never had been, but he respected those who wanted to be and could understand how some people might feel better believing there was something out there, a life after death, or just something that made them special. There were a few religions around Remnant, and though they different in many little ways, one similarity was that they all depicted their gods or goddesses as loving, caring, parental figures. The gods of those religions always wanted the best of you, or the best for you, even if they didn't intervene in every part of your life. They were meant to be these distant, but ever-loving, entities that cared for you in their own way.

To see, hear and have ultimate proof that it was all a lie was… Honestly, he didn't know what it was. Shocking? Hilarious? Miserable? The only thing he knew was that he was less surprised and more disappointed, and that the disappointment was aimed at the gods rather than those who had faith of loving creators. Humanity had been wrong to assume otherwise, but that didn't mean they'd failed. The God of Light had created them, and, in a way, was their father. To find out he wasn't just an absentee father but an uncaring one left Jaune drained.

"You don't have the right to call us disappointing."

"I created you."

"Then you created our flaws and failures as well."

Though he had no face and no expression, Jaune could feel the God of Light's frown. "No. You were not created to be flawed. You were created to be perfect."

"Then we would be perfect, wouldn't we?" said Jaune. "But we're not – which means either you fucked up and made us this way, or that this is perfection, flaws and all, and we don't need you anymore. Either of you."

"Yeah." It was Yang who took a step forward to stand on Jaune's left, and, to his surprise, Blake who followed to stand on his right. They looked frightened, but also resolved. "Jaune has a point. You made us. That includes Ozma and Salem. Their mistakes were your mistakes, yet you punished them for it."

"It's childish." said Blake. "You blame everyone else for your mistakes."

"Salem broke the rules. To resurrect the dead-"

"Is that something she could do at all?" asked Blake. "Wasn't it one of you that brought the dead back? She didn't do anything."

"Misled." said the God of Destruction. "Tricked."

Ren spoke up. "Isn't that your fault for getting tricked in the first place?" The silence sad it all, but Ren wasn't done. "And, in a way, isn't it impressive that your creations managed to trick you at all? I'd have thought that would be new and exciting."

"We did not will it."

"You didn't will who would win this war either but left it in our hands. You're open to the idea of letting people have free will, so why did you lash out so much when Salem showed hers? You could have just said no. You didn't have to curse her."

"A cure to the curse was offered," said the God of Light.

"You mean, you brought Ozma back against his will and told him he had to kill the woman he loved," said Pyrrha, sadly. "That's not a cure. That's a curse. You punished him for things that weren't even his fault. That's not fair."

"The human definition of fairness is flawed. As humans are." The God of Light sounded annoyed, if such a being could feel that emotion at all. His words were faster, rushed, and louder. "You cry that it isn't fair how your families die to Grimm when you force them outside the walls. You argue that it isn't fair people die of disease while also hoarding wealth and spending it on passing fancies instead of medical research. You say it is unfair that there are only two weekends in the week, when you invented weeks and could change them at any time." His voice rose. "I created a world for you; I populated it; I made you. Is it fair, given all that, that I am expected to receive nothing?"

It wasn't.

Jaune's mouth opened and closed, shocked to silence, as he contemplated the thought. All those religions with perfect, fatherly gods had the perfect divine being who made them, protected them, and then sat around watching them for eternity without ever expecting anything back. Oh, some of them received prayer and worship, but most just loved unilaterally. Maybe that wasn't entirely impossible, because a god wasn't human and maybe an inhuman entity would be fine just loving and watching – maybe it was enough. It obviously wasn't for the God of Light, and Jaune couldn't say he entirely disagreed with the idea.

"What do you want?" asked Weiss. "In an ideal world. What would you want? Worship? Love?"

The God of Light didn't answer.

"You don't know what you want," said Ruby, shocked. "Do you?"

"We were not created. We were not designed. We simply were." The God of Light looked to his sibling. "We simply existed, alone, in an unending and infinite darkness. The void held no answers, nor questions, nor anything at all."

"I found purpose in destroying that which my brother creates," said the God of Destruction, sounding not at all violent, destructive or chaotic. Maybe Jaune imagined it, but the entity almost sounded guilty. Or pitying. "He creates; I destroy. If he does not create, and I cannot destroy, then there will be nothingness."

"So, you created Remnant." said Jaune.

"A world," agreed the God of Light. "A race. Others, born without purpose, to see if they might discern what that purpose was."

"You want answers." said Blake. "That's your goal. Then Remnant – us. We're… what? A lab test?"

"Experiment."

"Then why this war?" asked Yang. "Why make everyone fight? Why leave after Salem and Ozma? If it's an experiment then surely what they do is something to be watched. You can't just leave when the experiment doesn't go how you want it to. That's against the rules."

"It's not scientific," said Weiss, gently correcting Yang. "It's not a control group if you interfere, because you're skewing the results."

"We needed an answer," said the God of Light. "We have waited, patiently, for thousands of years, across hundreds of alternate dimensions, watching and waiting for some resolution. There is none that suffices."

"Neither Salem nor Ozma claim victory," said the God of Destruction. "Neither tries. The status quo continued, unending, until the world is claimed by the sun. Humanity is content to wait, to do nothing, to merely exist." He sounded frustrated. "Where is your drive? What is your purpose? Why do you not seek it?"

The God of Light finished his brother's questions with, "Where are our answers?"

Jaune didn't have them and, looking back, he wasn't sure that anyone else there did either. He hadn't put any great philosophical thought into the meaning of life and all that. He'd be the first to admit he was a pretty selfish guy – he wanted to be cool, to be a huntsman, to find a girlfriend and live a good life. He wanted to make his parents proud, get by and be able to look himself in the mirror and feel proud of what he saw. Those were all pretty selfish concerns, even if they weren't bad by any means.

He'd just never cared for a divine purpose or anything bigger than him. He wasn't sure any of his iterations from the other worlds had either. They'd all been focused on their troubles, their friends or their families. Fate had been willing to kill for the people he loved; Magnis had already fought and bled for his; Knight had a kingdom to rule; Grimm wanted to do the best for his mother. Their reasons were wide and varied, but none cared to look beyond what was immediately in front of them. To a pair of beings that stood alone and apart from everything and everyone, Jaune wasn't sure what to answer.

"Maybe your purpose is to look for a purpose," said Ruby.

The Gods turned to her. "Explain."

"Um." Ruby stepped back nervously, but when they stepped after her she realised there would be no escape. "I… It's just… Maybe this is your purpose. To create, explore and try to figure things out. To be researchers. If you were to have a purpose, then it'd make sense if that purpose was hard to find, or even impossible."

"An impossible purpose is pointless."

"But a life without a purpose would be even more pointless, right?"

They stood, shocked.

Jaune saw her point. "Ruby is right," he said. "You actually don't want to find the answer because then there won't be anything left to work towards. If you're this passionate about finding the answer to why you exist, then what will be left when you do? What will you do after that?"

Nothing. That was the obvious answer, and the one the Brother Gods had come to. If they completed the only thing they wanted then there would be nothing left for them after. "In that case,"said the God of Destruction, "What is the point of leaving Remnant alive?"

Yang jumped in. "What's the point of killing us?"

"Satisfaction."

"But you still want to work toward your answer, don't you? Even if it's a hundred million years away, you'll be more excited the closer you get – and who knows, you might find your purpose and discover it's something else to get interested in. Having us alive, as experiments of whatever, is better than starting from scratch."

"You also need more," said Weiss. "More experiments. Bigger sample sizes. Control groups."

"We have alternate Remnants."

"Those are still the same people, though. The same species."

"The same Jaune's," said Pyrrha. "Who, despite all their differences, still had almost the same motives as one another. They were so similar that the war ended in a draw. Weiss is right. You need different worlds with different species, different people and different conditions. That way, you can keep expanding and keep experimenting, and it won't even matter if one or two go off the rails like we did. You'll have loads more to keep you interested instead of making you sit and watch us for thousands of years."

"More…" The God pondered, head tilting, and Jaune wondered if the prospect interested him. He was sure Weiss and Pyrrha were just trying to distract the gods; push them away, off to some other project, so they'd leave Remnant alone. He couldn't say he disagreed. "Stating again would set us back."

"It wouldn't be starting again. Just… starting more."

"More work," said the God of Destruction.

"More things to destroy," said Blake. "And more for your brother to create."

"You seek to manipulate us," said the God of Light. "We are not unawares."

"Is anything they're saying wrong though?" asked Jaune. "Motives or not, it's still good advice – and let's face it, you're not getting what you want here. This war hasn't gone anywhere for you. All it's proven is that all those Jaunes, despite their backgrounds, were the same. They were all willing to lay their lives down for what they believed in. Good or bad."

"Are you willing to lay yours down?"

"Jaune, no!" cried Pyrrha.

"I am if that's what it takes."

Knight, Fate, Leviathan, Barista, Warchief, Grimm, Revolutionary, Headmaster, Agent, Hunter, Magnis, Ashari and even Null. They were all him; they were all different aspects of him, different parts of his mind, body and soul. Jaune was surprised to discover he believed that, and even more surprised to face down the gods, unflinching. He might not be the best, or even good compared to his friends, but he knew what was right and what was wrong, and he wasn't going to let them die. He would never live with the same regrets Fate had to.

"The war ended inconclusive. Let it be concluded." A ring of fire burst up across the floor, racing between Jaune, Blake and Yang and forcing the two of them back. It rose up, burning hotter than normal fire and catching Jaune in the centre with Cinder. "Claim victory and we shall depart your world to form another, and we shall take our lingering curses with us."

"That's not fair!" shouted Pyrrha.

"Life is not, as you well know, and yet here you stand. If his purpose is to die for his teammates, then let him face it. This is a battle that has existed across many universes, and one that many of those you called iterations faced in their time, in their worlds, in one form or another. You might call it destiny."

Destiny. Fate. Jaune sucked in a breath and picked up his sword, watching Cinder as she dropped to her feet, under her own power once more. He brought his shield up, eyes hard and heart racing with the knowledge of so many resting on him. Cinder was stronger than he was, that much he would freely admit, but she was also exhausted, injured from Headmaster's explosion and running on the dregs of her aura. She also didn't have the maiden's power that Fate had spoken of, thanks to the efforts of Xiong. It was not an impossible battle.

"And what do I gain from this?" shouted Cinder. "Grant me power when I win! I want strength!"

The God of Destruction nodded. "It will be so. If you win."

/-/

Cinder was fast, skilled and vicious. Her first salvo of arrows slammed into his shield and she used the moment of him being pinned in place to hurl a fireball at him that engulfed his whole body, burning at his eyes and skin. Jaune heard her land to his left, adjusted and started running that direction with his shield up, taking two more arrows meant for his chest and throat respectively. He lowered the metal just enough to see over the top, readied his sword and slashed for her body.

The bow vanished into particles of light, swirled about her hands and formed two curved swords. The first caught his sword, while the second thrust under his guard and toward his kidneys. He swayed aside at the last second but was left unbalanced and unable to stop her knee crashing into his side and extending into a kick that sent him sprawling. He landed, rolled, came up on his knees and ducked behind his shield as another arrow threatened to take his eye out.

This was not an even fight. It wasn't a fair fight. That was intentional. It had to be a test of some kinds from the gods; what that test was for, he didn't know, but he didn't have to. All he had to do was win. He saw his chance as Cinder over-extended, lunging with his sword for her stomach. It was at the last second that he caught her panic turn to glee.

Cinder slid around him as he went for her opening, kicked him in the back and launched herself off. He heard the twang and felt the impact as an arrow buried itself in his back, striking through skin and muscle to imbed itself in the left side of his back and knock him to the floor.

"JAUNE!" screamed his friends.

"Ha ha ha!" crowed Cinder. "I've done it. I win." She turned to the Gods. "Give me my power!"

The Gods did not move. "It is not yet over," said the God of Destruction.

It hurt – fuck, it hurt – but Jaune pushed down with both hands and staggered to his feet. His aura was blinking, his scroll telling him he needed to surrender or retreat or risk real damage. Ha. A little late for that. He reached over his shoulder, gripped the arrow and tore it out his back. Cinder could have manipulated it otherwise and might even have been able to make it dig into his body. He let the glass shatter on the floor and rolled his painful shoulders.

Cinder sneered. "You should have stayed down."

Jaune umbered forwards and slashed for her throat. Cinder parried, flicked her sword up and ducked under his shield as he rammed it for her head. Her other sword caught his stomach, cutting into his body and sloshing blood to the ground. Spinning, she kicked him back and drove her other sword into his gut, through his body and out his back. Jaune stumbled away, agony rearing through him, and Cinder responded by kicking the pommel of the weapon stuck through his body, driving it deeper even as she launched him away. He landed hard on his side and didn't move.

"Now!" huffed Cinder, panting slightly. "Not is is-" A groan echoed and glass fell to the floor in a tinkling cascade as Jaune dragged the sword out his body. "You must be joking."

He was bloody, rasping, trembling and pale, but he gritted his teeth and yanked it the rest of the way out, spilling more of his lifeblood on the ground. Jaune stepped on the weapon to shatter it, then trudged forward, eyes flat and face set.

"How are you still alive?" asked Cinder, fire alighting in her hands. With a roar, she sent it hurtling toward him. "WHY WON'T YOU DIE!?"

"Because I have a purpose," Jaune found himself saying, almost against his will. He kept moving, walking through the flames that licked over his body and singed his hair and coming out the other side smouldering, charred, but still moving inexorably forward. "Because they didn't stop until they were dead. None of them did." His hand tightened around his sword, which rose in the air as he came close to her. "And neither shall I."


It's been a while since I did an omake so here's one that while I would have loved to include for the fun of it, is actually a little too cruel to actually take seriously. It's amusing as a non-canon omake however.


Omake:


"You need to experience things as a human," bullshitted Yang. She just wanted to say anything, anything at all, to get the Gods off their backs. "You know, have an experiment where you live normal lives among us. See what it's like to grow up around people."

"For what purpose?"

"To learn. To experiment. To better understand."

"To be weak and vulnerable."

"Not necessarily. Make yourselves invincible or something but hide away your god powers and let yourselves think and act like human children. What's the harm in trying it? It's, at best, eighty to a hundred years. No big deal. You can pick yourselves some parents that'll keep you safe."

"Very well. We shall select a protective scion." They pointed, and Jaune staggered back. "You shall be our father in this test."

"Wait, WHAT!? I don't even have a-"

Blake clutched her stomach, dropped to her knees and vomited suddenly. Weiss and Ruby leapt back, alarmed, but Yang only looked down at her partner, to the gods, then over at Jaune with widening eyes.

"W-What?" said Blake. "Why me!?

"Almost every other version of the man we have selected is mated to you." The God of Light cocked its head to the side. "Is that not the case here as well?"

"NO!"

"Oh." The God of Light shrugged. "Oops."

"Jaune, you stupid blonde bastard!" screamed Blake. "I'll kill you for this!"


Notice: Due to an awards ceremony that I have to organise, foot questions over and chair in September, I'm going to be taking the week starting Monday 12th – Sunday 18th September off. I'll be back Monday 19th. I'd definitely rather be writing fanfiction than doing this as it's always so painful and I hate – well, it's less the public speaking and more the stress of the organisation. People call you at all hours with questions; prize winners say they suddenly can't make it; stuff goes wrong with parking; inevitable errors on Eventbrite. The usual. It's just a long, long week of stressful work so I won't have time to write.


Next Chapter: 27th August

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