Day 12
I suppose now's as good time as any to write another entry.
Been a couple of days since I'd last done it. It was strange at first – not scribing down with a quill every few hours or so.
17 years without even thinking about having a diary, and then week and a half – and I'm already addicted. Nice.
Things have been…calm around here, for once. Haven't been inclined to do any exciting staff, like going spelunking (I hope that's the correct term), or dying for a second time.
Almost dying.
No, I've been at my own "base", taking it easy: watching over the wheat I'd planted (the growth rate is still too low, it's absolutely not sustainable), chopping down trees, fishing – mundane things. No excitement meant no undue "distractions" for my brain.
Which meant I finally had an opportunity to think (and brood) over everything that's happened. Don't even know where to begin.
How about the fact that literally EVERYTHING around me is made of cubes? I dig dirt, and very conveniently dig out a 1x1x1 hole without even trying. Or try to chop a tree down, and very conveniently chop a 1x1x1 piece of log out. None of the trees are thicker or thinner than exactly 1m. None of them are round – NOTHING is round – it's all fucking blocks and cubes.
The SUN is a cube!
The only few things around me that are not just purely squares and cubes are the animals, the monsters and me myself. That's it!
It took me a second to notice it, the wrongness of it all, back in the first day. It'd taken me 12 days to finally understand, or come to terms, or something. The scary thing is, it feels like nothing's out of the ordinary. It'd taken a near-death experience to wake me up from this ignorance, to take a good look at the world, and at myself.
And were there things to look at. Like my previous entry, where I (in an agonized state) had written about iron shards and fragments being expelled from my body to make way for the healing process. Even back in that shaft it hadn't taken me take me too long to come to a single conclusion on their origin – my chestplate had literally turned into a point-blank fragmentation grenade. It'd probably been compromised in my previous fights, and I hadn't noticed. Then it'd only taken a single explosion for a protective piece to turn into a trap.
Maybe I hadn't made it sturdy enough – forgivable, considering I'd been my first smithing job. But to continuously forget to maintain it, or to even perform a simple condition check…
That's only a small part, though. Reading through the other pages – I couldn't shake off the impression that I'd started treating this whole thing less as a matter of survival, and more as a game.
Probably because things had finally started going my way; having a taste of genuine success for the first time in a long while - and I took it as an opportunity to act like an idiot. I mean, letting my guard down to write in an unlit, uncharted, openly hostile territory?
I should be dead. I full and well deserve it.
This "resurrection" could have finally been the opportunity I'd been waiting for: a chance to prove that I am able to fight by, and for, myself, not needing to be babied, to rely on the never-ending kindness of my partner, or the support of my teammates, or even the support of our sister team.
Instead, all I did was nearly die again and prove that I am a colossal fake and a screw-up who is way over his head. Not that I needed any more confirmations.
Cardin and Weiss were right after all, it seems.
And I really don't want them to be. For my own sake.
Which is why I've been taking it easy, as paradoxical as it may seem. I've got loads of resources now, there is simply no need for me to descend down there; it'd be senseless, a fool's errand. Exactly something an overconfident – under confident chump would try to do – "to prove himself".
Looking for vain self-gratification, instead of worrying about his own survival.
Besides that, I've also taken a closer look at my equipment – weaponry, mostly. Sword & shield (& axe) is, well, a tried and trusted combination. As basic as it gets – any idiot can pick up a sword and a board and instantly go to work (as was the case with me). Problem was (and is) – you don't have range. It takes a very high amount of skill to work around this weakness; the amount of skill I arrogantly believed I already had.
(Or maybe it'd been a misguided belief that I wouldn't need much skill at all? I can't remember now, and I am not really in the mood to embarrass myself further)
There's probably a reason almost every student had some sort of a gun – either mechashift, or a standard one – range is important, and having an option for combat at range is also important. I'd idiotically believed myself above this (hell, I even declined Ruby's honest and earnest request to help make me a pistol).
Says quite a lot about me, the fact that I'm only considering it now.
Given my absolute lack of knowledge regarding guns and how they work, I decided to settle on the next best option available for me.
Bow.
Easy to craft (barely even needed to look at the creation process guide), cheap, reusable ammo (perfect for a survival situation), packs a punch AND it's easy to maintain.
(A thought just occurred to me – Ruby would probably be in a lot of trouble if her weapon suddenly needed maintenance or repair in the middle of a Grimm-infested forest. That's one (and probably only) reason I'm proud of myself for choosing Crocea Mors – it requires less attention, less complex maintenance and in general is less likely to give up on me in the middle of a fight than a gun-scythe with 50 thousand moving parts)
Shooting a bow wasn't nearly as easy as crafting it. I don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but you need a LOT of strength to pull the string hard enough; not to mention nocking an arrow properly, or trying to aim the thing. It took a dozen or so miserably failed attempts (and one particularly awfully orchestrated shot that had nearly taken my knee off) for the "System" to take pity on me and offer two things: a small walk-through on how to properly do things mentioned above, and a crosshair.
That's right: I have a + shaped crosshair appear right in the center of my vision when I pull a bow out; it's helped me plenty. I won't consider myself a pro, not even an amateur, but after spending some time getting used to the arrow drop (not an archer, but even so I can still tell that the arrow drop is ridiculous for some reason) I can finally hit something at a distance! Even if right now I do need my target to be stationary and the size of a truck. Those are just details. Vale wasn't built in a day, after all.
Yesterday I've spent whole day fishing (seeing as the farm STILL does not want to cooperate); today I was supposed to be getting wood for my shelter. Except the sun is already on its way down and I barely have any logs.
Lost track of time writing this stupid entry.
I miss everyone.
I miss my family, first and foremost. Saphron, Rouge, Noir, Blanche, Bleu, Violette, Verte – my loveable, insufferable sisters; Genevieve and Nicholas Arc – my loving, overly protective parents. Funny how not even half a year back I constantly wished for even just a moment of reprieve from my sisters' attention (having five older sisters was as much a blessing as a curse – maybe more of a curse, even), or how I argued with my father that being a Huntsman was my calling.
Yet now I'd sell the whole world, burn on a stake willingly, just to hug and hold any one of them; to admit to my parents that they were right and beg for forgiveness.
To not be so alone.
I miss my friends too, from Beacon. Not a lot of them, to be honest – either I hadn't had that much time to "confidence" myself into being someone's friend, or didn't try hard enough, or maybe both. It's just been RWBY, really. And even then, only like half of them, at best.
Still can't help but miss them.
I miss Ruby – a girl so cheerful and optimistic she could probably talk a Grimm down (if she didn't kill them on sight, of course). Someone just as dorky as me, a leader like me, someone who's open about her own insecurities.
I miss Yang – a literal walking sunshine-inferno, able to lift the mood in the room with her mere presence and a pun (those I miss to, probably unlike everyone else). A girl bent on finding more and more ways to tease and flirt with you until you're a stuttering, embarrassed mess (as I had been, quite a few times); though I know she never meant ill: she'd teased some random guy in our year once - he hadn't taken it well, and Yang, Ruby's words, wasn't herself until she'd managed to properly apologize. Ruby had also said all of her teasing and flirting and stuff was just her way of warming up to somebody. And I'd been prime target for her, after her own team…
I miss Weiss, obviously. The Snow Angel, a pristine shard of our shattered moon that's fallen to ground and taken form of the prettiest girl ever. Not only prettiest, but also smartest, most graceful, skilled and then her voice. Such intensity, such power, such presence in such a small frame.
How could I not fall in love with her?
And, now that I think about it, how could she ever fall in love with me? I was, and am beneath dirt compared to her. I have no idea what I'd been doing wrong.
("All you need is confidence, Jaune". Sure, I faked it – but she probably saw right through that. And as for real confidence – where would I fucking get it, having been babied for most of my life? My family is still everything to me, but they'd be getting a legit earful from me about this, had I had the opportunity).
I miss Blake too, I guess. I mean, we haven't talked much (at all), and she always seemed in the background, but that doesn't mean I didn't notice what she was like – a real ninja. Very subtle, very quiet, very unimposing (and also very sarcastic, if she wanted to be); you could sit next to her and completely forget she'd even existed next to you in a few minutes. She was also very calm too – I had never heard her raising her voice at anything really.
Except for that Bunny Girl – Velvet was her name, I think – and a couple of times in Oobleck's class during Faunus stuff discussions. Then she was downright vicious, and, honestly, scarier than Yangry Yang.
I didn't know her all that well, but I would still gladly have her here. Or anyone from RWBY, for that matter.
Above all else, however, I miss my team. Team (J)NPR.
Pyrrha Nikos. Lie Ren. Nora Valkyrie.
My best friends, alongside Ruby. People, who I'd have watching my back, or trust unconditionally.
People whose trust I have broken. And broken their team apart now, too.
There's a lot of ironic stuff about team Juniper. Ironic how the great Pyrrha Nikos, the Invincible Girl, had been paired up with literally the only guy on Remnant who hadn't known about her. Ironic how the same guy had been named the leader of the newly formed team, despite being the least fitting man for this role. Ironic how it never bothered his teammates. Ironic, ironic, ironic.
Ironic how they'd offered me help so many times, but only now I seriously think about it. It only occurred to me now what an absolute halfwit I had been. I thought accepting help would make me weak, and yet not accepting it only made things worse. The "System" guy helped me to understand – if I hadn't accepted his help, his tips, I'd be gone on the first day. Bring matters back to Remnant, every single student and Huntsman there would be too, without somebody's help. Either dead, or not a Huntsman at all. You aren't born skilled, you become skilled. Ruby didn't start out skilled. Cardin didn't start out skilled. EVEN PYRRHA DIDN'T!
Talented? Maybe. But not skilled. They've all had help in the beginning. My beginning just so happened to be a whole lot later than theirs, and yet I still refused.
Cannot believe I had to quite literally DIE to get this simple concept. Maybe Headmaster wasn't as smart as he made himself out, having assigned an idiot as a leader.
Maybe, had I myself been smarter I'd still be with my friends right now, as little as I deserve them.
Too many maybes. I would tell myself to move on, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon.
Godsdamnit, I miss everyone so much. And I can only hope they're doing well without me.
On an unrelated note, saw some lights in the distance while chopping up some wood in taiga. It had turned dark quickly, however, so I didn't press on to check it – didn't want to risk. That's a matter for another day.
P.S: All this reminiscing brought back a whole lot of old memories. Thoughts too. A few in particular stand out:
Blake seemed to change her whole demeanor when there was any kind of talk about Faunus – very defensive, righteous, even vindictive – a far cry from a normally quiet girl.
Then there was her bow. I swear, it had a life of its own – twitching in random directions, drooping and rising; used to think it was just sensitive to wind droughts and whatnot.
And then the fact that she always seemed to pay some fragment of attention whenever someone of our group decided to go into whisper-mode – almost as if she could hear everything.
Now that I think about these things together…Those are pretty hefty coincidences. The self-moving bow, the hearing, being defensive about Faunus.
Was Blake a Faunus herself?
Another thing I won't get to confirm.
Not entirely happy with this chapter, but it could be worse I guess.
EDIT 2020-12-07: retconned the original entry about mobs and Jaune being blocky in shape. Now everyone's nice and round.
