1:00 PM

-️-️-️-️*-️-️-️-

The plants in the garden have no equal. These flowers are guaranteed to stun anyone who sees them for the first time.

They stand in great contrast to most of the rest of the academy, which is mostly a generic "grey" color. One of these flowers moves from its normal place, picks up a stick and begins to uhhhh… leave it on the ground? And go into the academy?

Ok, he's not really a flower. But he might as well be with all the growth that he has gone through. There have been several attempts to cut him down, but, like a plant rooted in the sidewalk, he finds a way to grow back. Although the clippers remain pointed at his neck, one can not refute his resiliency.

But will he get the chance to stun his onlookers? One can only wait and see. But as he goes though the line and picks up 2 mouth-watering tacos, the future sure looks a little more colorful.

Our resident flower sits down in the lunchroom, but this go-around he is not alone. Yatsuhashi, the resident keeper of flowers, is with him.

"Hey Yatsu. Where's Nora?"

"She had to talk with Ren right now."

"Understandable, He was probably worried about her all day."

Yatsu nods in affirmation. What he doesn't tell him is just how many texts Ren had sent.


The Ren/Nora relationship was supposed to be strained because of TBC's craziness, and Ren wanting to keep her safe from them. This was very, very badly done. Honestly, it might be even worse of an attempt than Pyrrha's 'love' is.


Yatsu is having, as usual, something of his own design. What is it this time? Well, how about a plate of shredded chicken, mixed in with a bit of salsa? Simple, but very effective.

Jaune looks over at the dish with wonder. That sure looks good…

"You can not have this one. Remember, you owe me some cooking!"

Oh well. Guess Jaune has to settle for the consolation prize of some good tacos. He begins to eat one. A flood of flavor quickly overwhelms his taste buds. A smile breaks out on his face.

"You look like you are enjoying the tacos."

"Yep, they are good. You should try them!"

"No thank you. Cooking not only gives me tasty food, it also gives me peace."

Who's to argue with that?

"Oum dammit!" Laughter immediately follows. Jaune looks over and sees a peculiar sight;

Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Blake, Pyrrha, Coco, and Velvet are all over at one table, each with straws in their hands. All but Weiss and Velvet are currently laughing their asses off, Weiss because she drew the longest straw, and Velvet, who is currently glued inside her scroll watching something unknown, with her straw clearly bent from stress.

Weiss leaves the table and begins walking.

Jaune on the other hand is diving hand first back into his taco.

He gets several good bites in before a draft of cold air comes up on his back. He doesn't notice at first, but Yatsu looking up over him piques his attention.

"Weiss? What are you do-"

"Hand over your lunch."

"Wha- No! No way am I gonna do that!"

"It would be the best thing for both of us if you hand it over."

Jaune can not respond before she takes it, leaving him with only a single bite remaining from his original taco. Meanwhile the Schnee is walking away, still with a grumpy look on her face despite achieving her goal with minimal resistance.

The anger within him for letting this happen begins to bubble up, but then he notices the little bit of taco left in his right hand. He eats it, and the flavor flows through his mouth once again, pushing the anger to the back of his mind for now.

"That really just happened…?"

"It looks like it did."

"This sucks…"

"That it does. But this is your chance to prove that you are better than them. If you stay above their level, they will eventually realize they are running into a brick wall, and quit. And then you will be the victor."

"Somehow I doubt that…"

Jaune looks over at them and sees, as before, all except Weiss and Velvet in various states of happiness, clearly having just cheered.

"Do not worry. Focus on yourself, not on them. You can not change them, you can change you."

Jaune pauses to process what he has said for a moment. After a while, though, his brain just accepts it and moves on.

"Thanks Yatsu. You always have something thought-provoking to say."

"You are very welcome. But I must tell you, you still will not be having any of my food."


Your blonde-haired friend that you've recently made just got bullied by that ice bitch you've seen a couple of times. Said ice bitch just stole his lunch, and you have some of your own lunch that you could share with him to cheer him up and show how good of a friend you supposedly are. Do you give him some of your lunch?

A. Yes

B. No

-≻ C. Realize that you don't actually have any choice in this matter, not even because of a plot reason, but because the person controlling you doesn't know how to write a plausible scene.


Jaune doesn't really care. Having something to distract from them is enough of a reward. The rest of the lunch flies by and he leaves, ready to continue with the day once again.

But still no scroll…

There's only one place he can go to get a new scroll, which is the Headmaster's office.

With a bored sigh, he turns down that direction.

His office is surprisingly far away, but the walk feels shorter than it truly is. Jaune enters and sees Ozpin going through papers again. That stack is only a few inches tall this time, allowing Jaune to easily see his hands moving at breakneck speed to go through them.

He sits down and waits. Ozpin sees him early, leaving his stack aside for now.

"Hello Jaune. What do you want?"

"I need a new scroll…"

"A new scroll? What happened to the old one?"

"It got lost somewhere. I looked for it all through my hospital room and couldn't find it. And now I'm locked out of my dorm so…"

"That is quite unfortunate. I will get your new scroll prepared. Sit here while I get it ready." Ozpin gestures to a nearby line of seats on the wall, which Jaune immediately goes to.

He sits down and stares at the stack of paper, now standing motionless on the desk. Unfortunately, he can't read any of it.

After a while of waiting, and a thorough counting of imperfections on the ceiling [#CURRENT NUMBER OF PAGES IN WIKI# to be exact], Ozpin returns with his brand new scroll in hand.

"Here is your new scroll. Most of the data successfully transferred over. Be sure not to lose this one, as the next one you lose comes out of your pocket."

Jaune stopped paying attention at "Here" and is currently scrolling through all his apps and settings, making sure everything is right where he left it. They even got his home screen background! It is a picture of Saphron making a silly face.

"Jaune, I understand your interest in your new scroll, but I do need you to leave my office."

Has he sat there that long? He looks up and sees that it has been around 10 minutes.

"Oh shit, sorry!" He runs out of the office and speeds down the hallway straight to his dorm, pushing his scroll up to the lock. The sounds of the motor moving to unlock the door is music to his ears.

He runs in and jumps onto the bed, now prepared to check the final, arguably most important thing of all…

"Dammit! Curse you data backup!"

He has to redownload that Grimm Wars 2 DLC. That's the next few minutes out the window. He hits the download button again, waiting for that progress bar to move to the right.

While he is waiting, he thinks about his new weapon. Just what will it be? He hasn't decided yet. He does have some ideas of what it will be though…

No gauntlets. Not after ...that. They would be almost impossible to use anyway.

Nothing without a shield. He really likes having a shield to wave around as a defensive tool. While he does have armor, a good shield can block almost anything, and it can be used as a sneaky offensive tool when he wants to surprise.

It must contain the remnants of Crocea Mors. Jaune really, really wants to uphold the Arc legacy, and making a weapon from scratch just doesn't cut it. Even if the sword and sheath are bent beyond usefulness, at least using the metal from them will not only be cheaper, and not only help keep up the legacy, it will also be a nice touch, something unique to him.

And, the most important thing;

It must use dust.

No way in hell he is not using Dust. That stuff is just way too powerful. It opens up way too many paths for him. While a straight-up sword is nice, Dust just puts his attack power at an entirely new plane of existence.

But now comes the impossible question; what the hell does he buy?

There's a near infinite set of possibilities. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

But for now, Grimm Wars 2! With the new DLC finally installed, Jaune does the one thing that almost everyone who is playing this game has done, tame a tiger and ride on it. YEAHHHHHHHH!

He's killing it out there riding that tiger. Those Grimm have nothing on this mastermind. I could watch this all day. Wait what are you doing, no don-


Another 4th wall break. They are fun, but only when used in small doses. This fic is the exact opposite of 'small doses'.


UPLOAD COMPLETE!

It took several hours to gather all of the data from the offending scroll.

Lots and lots of stuff is in this massive data pile. It's all easy to sort through though, thanks to the advances of technology and the lack of any encryption on these school-owned devices.

Let's see, we can ignore the Download folder, ignore most of the apps, what about this pictures folder?

...Oh damn. That sure is a high concentration of abs and muscles. Let's get out of there…

Well, we do have the messaging app. There is where everything probably is.

The data gets opened and combed through. None of the names stand out... Well damn. The only choice is to go through everything and see what's u-

!!!!!

Is that a Jaune dartboard? What the hell? And a picture of a look-a-like getting tarred and feathered? Just how far does this go?

Luckily there is a convenient message counter:

Yang - 785 messages
Pyrrha - 714 messages
Ruby - 682 messages
Blake - 520 messages
Coco - 491 messages
Weiss - 228 messages
Velvet - 0 messages

And the last two ones, dated last night…

It's gonna be so funny seeing the look on his face!
That was probably the best idea yet!

What idea? This data heap is closed off for now. Off to the cameras…

(A/N: I'm bad at names.)


This was a cliffhanger. For what, I have no idea. Not even my epilogue contains any information on what this was going to be. This is where the crack characterizations of earlier come to blows with the seriousness I was pretty much all in on by this point. I knew I wanted this to be a group that was becoming obsessed with Jaune, but this was the worst way to do it. Maybe it was because of the Pyrrha being a full on official psychopathic Yandere idea being canceled off that I had when making this, redirecting the dumbassery to the ending section, but regardless this last bit is pretty out of place by this point in.