04/20/1999... Early morning before school

Weiss and Blake sat around their normal morning table alone. Jaune sat off at a nearby table where he isolated himself due to a recent cold he picked up. Jaune was wearing the long trench coat that Ruby had talked into buying on the cheap after their movie outing a couple weeks back. Ruby and Yang were nowhere to be seen. The sisters were choosing to not sit with the others for the last several days due to an argument that Jaune and Ruby had.

Jaune had caught ill it was true. Getting sick wasn't something that happened to him particularly often, and this was little more than a nasty cough at best. His cold was not even something he felt was worth skipping out on school for a few days to shrug off. He still didn't exactly want to go out of his way to spread it around though, and thus he opted to sit alone for a couple mornings, and refused to make contact with anyone without washing his hands first.

This proved to be a problem for Ruby, as she would often need, or at least want, some kind of physical contact with Jaune throughout her day. This led to Ruby eventually getting pissed off enough to tell Jaune to leave her alone for a few days. Which in turn led to Jaune getting pissed off at Ruby for not respecting boundaries he's trying to set.

Weiss sighed and thought "and now here we are days later, Ruby and Jaune are still fighting and are more than likely going to break up at this rate."

The idea of two of her friends best friends breaking up was a bit much for her to bear. "Blake?" Weiss said

"Yeah what's up Weiss?" Blake looked over at Weiss with a generally pleasant smile that made Weiss's heart flutter a bit.

"Is there anything we can do to patch up this mess with Jaune and Ruby?" Weiss asked her close friend and crush.

"Leave them be Weiss..." Blake said glancing over at where Jaune is sitting, Weiss looked over at their mute friend and noticed that he looked pretty distracted while he quietly read a book. But except for the occasional cough, he had not done much but sit there for the last few minutes.

"Are we sure that's the best idea we can have right now?" Weiss said with a worried tone to her voice. "I mean leave it be and risk them breaking up?"

"If there going to break up, then let them break up Weiss. It'll mean that then they can be with someone else that makes them happy right?" Blake said putting on a reassuring smile.

Weiss sighed "I know that but... Well they were my first friends since well..." Weiss tapped her legs "So I'm a bit invested in them now."

Blake could only smile and said to Weiss as she put a hand on her shoulder and said reassuringly "Even if they break up, I'm sure they'll find a way to still be friends with us"

Weiss sighed out and leaned back into her seat "I know but-" Weiss wasn't able to finish her sentence before the school bell rang out signaling that they had to get over to their first class already.

10:15 am...

Ruby leaned back in her seat ignoring the fact that her entire class's attention was brought up to the front of the class by someone talking over the intercom. For Ruby the intercom system was a box that people occasionally liked to look at head noises from. Ruby figured if it was important someone would just tell her what was being said.

It wasn't until she noticed that no one spoke to her, and instead the other students seemed to have started to talk to each other with worried looks that Ruby figured something was desperately off.

Ruby looks around until eyes settled on the face of a classmate by the name of Velvet, ruby focused on her mouth to try and see if she could figure out what she was saying.

Velvet seemed to say "... Wait we have to stay in here until further notice?" Ruby couldn't see what the the person she was speaking to said. "They have guns? Jesus I hope no one gets hurt..."

Ruby's face turned concerned as she followed the half of the conversation Velvet what having with the other student in the room Velvet said something only partially caught "... the shooter has a black trench coat on?"

Ruby's eyes shot wide as she felt her heart race in her chest and her thoughts turned to terror "Wait is she saying someone in this school is shooting up the place in a black trench coat?!"

Ruby ended up ignoring the class as a whole and looked with her heart pounding in her chest at the door... "Oh god, Jaune has a trench coat, I hope our fight didn't push him over the edge!"

Elsewhere in the school, Alan Ozpin was in a circle with other teachers, Ms Goodwitch, Mr Ironwood, and Mr Port were all in his office as they had a round table discussion.

"Okay so here's what we know so far. About..." Alan looks at the wall clock "I guess an hour ago, two unknown students waltzed into a high school in Colorado and start shooting everything that moves."

The other teachers in the room gasped and went pale "Jesus Christ Alan, do we know how many are dead so far?" James Ironwood said to Ozpin.

"We don't know, we have anywhere between five and thirty victims as of now.. Last I heard the Local police started to breach the high school to take the shooters out."

"Okay so we need to keep an eye on kids here in case any one of our students get the idea of committing a copycat shooting here" Glynda said to the group. "That means we need the names of all students with a history of any serious violence, self harm or mental instability to be watched by teachers."

"I agree, I don't like it but I agree." Mr Port said out loud as well.

James leaned over to Ozpin "Your future stepson is going to end up on that list you know."

Ozpin could only nod in understanding before he spoke. "Make sure we handle this with kids gloves, if any student to put on that list is a possible danger to themselves or others. We don't want to unintentionally push them towards either violence towards a student or staff member. Or push them to the point where they inflict harm to themselves."

The small group of teachers gathered in Ozpin's office broke off, Ozpin made a plan to have an emergency school Assembly. but First he had to make a couple calls. "Yes Sheriff? I'd like to request a couple of your deputies to be stationed at the school for the rest of the day." Alan paused as he listened to the person on the other end of the phone. "No we have had no specific threat made against the school at this time i'm just playing it safe for now."

The sheriffs office agreed to dispatch a couple deputies to lurk around the school for the day, much to Ozpin's relief. afterwards he got to work.

Eventually the school was able to have an emergency building of the staff and students in the school, as the throng of students flooded into the schools gymnasium Jaune, now coat-less walked in to the Gym and quickly found a comfortable spot on the floor near Weiss and Blake. As Jaune silently coughed he pulled out and popped in a cough drop into his mouth to try to keep himself from coughing the entire Assembly.

Weiss looked at him and asked "Do you know what's up?"

Jaune pulled his notepad and wrote out a note for Weiss and Blake 'I'm guessing it has something to do with that shooting in Colorado this morning. I was listening to the new on AM radio during class to try and learn what happened.'

"What did you learn?" Blake asked Jaune.

'It's bad Blake. I guess they confirmed dozens injured, maybe 15 dead' Jaune wrote out as he handed the note to Blake to read

"Man, holy crap..." Was all Blake could muster out as a look of shock crossed her face.

Just as Ozpin took to the stage Yang and Ruby game and sat down with them ruby took one look at Jaune and signed [Uh, hey, so I kinda got the hell scared out of me earlier today]

Jaune just raised an eyebrow at her

[I didn't hear the first announcement and well... I only caught something about a black trench coat and shooting.] Ruby said as she folded her arms around herself.. [I don't know what I was thinking but Velvet was at least nice enough to explain what was really going on.]

Jaune just shook his head [Your dumb sometimes you know that?]

Ruby leaned forward and signed out [Yeah, I know...]

Ozpin explained on stage to the gathered student body what happened. he revealed that there was a confirmed 15 deaths at a High school no one sitting around the auditorium had ever heard of anything one the scale of what had happened at that Colorado high school before that moment.

"Did you guys see that we have a couple sheriff's deputies outside the school?" Yang asked he group. "Guess they must be worried about something like that happening here?"

Weiss shook her head in confusion "Do they seriously think that could happen here? At this small of a school?"

Blake looked forward with a fixed gaze "I do... I think it's very possible." Which caught her looks from everyone not Ruby.

Ruby no having heard Blake's comments was was lost in her thoughts pulled on Jaune's sleeve hand signing [Hey, uh... I wanted to apologize]

Jaune looked off to the side and nodded [Yeah I guess I might have overreacted as well, I just didn't want-] Jaune interrupted himself to cover his mouth as he coughed into his arm [Well I didn't want you getting sick as well.]

Ruby rubbed her eyes and signed [Just don't break up with me okay?]

Jaune shook his head [I wasn't planning on it, I just needed a day or two to shake off this cold . Your being really paranoid about this.]

Ruby sighed out [I guess I am... You know outside of Yang though your kinda the best thing that's happened to me.]

Jaune internally grimaced at her words, concerned that she still seems to becoming dangerously dependent on him emotionally, but externally he just smiled and signed [Hey, I'm not going anywhere on you, relax okay?]

Ruby nodded [So what's Ozpin saying?]

Jaune got Yang's attention who filled them in on what Ozpin was saying. Yang signed out [Uh, he's saying that were going to have deputies on station on campus for a few days and in the future they might need to install metal detectors around the entrances.]

Jaune shook his head while Ruby made an "oof" noise to herself. Yang signed out for Ruby's benefit [Yeah, I think we all better brace ourselves, I get the feeling were in for some serious changes around here.]

The trio nodded and tried to pay attention to the rest of the Assembly.

Later on that Evening, Jaune was goofing around on his computer waiting for one of the girls to log on. Jaune had a long sit down conversation with his mother about the events of the day. Mina just wanted to make sure he wasn't shaken up to bad. the TV nearby was turned on to the news as it seemed to be stuck in a cycle ot replaying footage taken from around the events of Columbine high school.

"I'd bet that's not how you wanted to end up on the map huh?" Jaune thought to himself.

As Jaune continued to watch the news, he heard a noise from his computer that caught his attention. When he looked at his monitor he saw that he had received a new friends invite from someone called HAMMERGIRL83.

Jaune quickly accepted the friends request and before he could even fully open a chat window he was flooded by messages

HAMMERGIRL83: JAUNE!

HAMMERGIRL83: JAUNE!

HAMMERGIRL83: JAUNE!

HAMMERGIRL83: GUESS WHO IT IS!

DARKKNIGHTARC: Ah holy crap that's a lot of beeps! I'm guessing since your breaking the land speed record of typing and you know my name I'm guess this is Nora?

HAMMERGIRL83: BINGO! You win the prize!

DARKKNIGHTARC: And you found the caps lock key. But let's back this conversation up a bit and allow me to ask. HOLY SHIT NORA! How are you? I haven't talked to you in almost a god damn year!

HAMMERGIRL83: It's been alright Jaune. Were all shook up over here because the news has been on about the shooting in Colorado today. But Ren and I settled in with Ms Nikos at their house a few months back.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Yeah I heard all about that, it was right around the time of the divorce right?

HAMMERGIRL83: Well we had been kinda couch surfing with Mr Lionheart up until that point.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Jesus I move half a state and it all goes to hell over there!

HAMMERGIRL83: Hey don't give yourself to much credit, your not the only who made our foster parents sell weed on the side

Jaune winced out.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Jesus Nora, I thought I was having a hard time of it over here.

HAMMERGIRL83: Nah you had it rough as well. Just in a different way.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Yeah, I guess we all had. How is Ren?

HAMMERGIRL83: He's sleeping right now.

DARKKNIGHTARC: That's fair, it's kinda early though isn't?

HAMMERGIRL83: Lets just say he's had a few challenges in the last year.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Tell him if he needs to talk i'll make the time for it.

HAMMERGIRL83: Well he's still pretty guilty about... Well you know.

DARKKNIGHTARC: Yeah he's not the only one.

Jaune noted there was a pause for a second before Nora spoke up again

HAMMERGIRL83 So yeah, I have news!

DARKKNIGHTARC: Okay but remember I told you not to name your first born after me.

HAMMERGIRL83: No, not that kind of news...

DARKKNIGHTARC: Let me just sneak in real quick then that my mom is pregnant and is getting married in June.

HAMMERGIRL83: Okay, well that would explain why Sam said we had to be moved over there before than!

DARKKNIGHTARC: What?

HAMMERGIRL83: What?

DARKKNIGHTARC: Did you say your all moving here in June?

HAMMERGIRL83: YEAH! Sounds like just in time for the wedding.

Jaune thought "Not to mention right around the time Ruby's going to have her operation."

HAMMERGIRL83: So yeah, I got to log off for now! Talk to you later!

DARKKNIGHTARC: Try to say hello more often than once every ten months!

Nora logged off without another word, Jaune leaned back in his seat with a smile on his face thinking "Looks like we're putting the band back together."

The rest of Jaune's evening went past peacefully.

So I kinda remember being about 17 when Columbine happened, so a lot of this chapter was vaguely written from what I remembered from that day.

But with this chapter I more or less have several story arcs ahead of me that should carry the story till the end of 1999. I guess at that point this becomes a "Early 00's AU?"

Either way, I don't have much else to say tonight except thanks again for reading, and I'll see you all next chapter.