Chapter 8

Jaune cracked open his eyes, then shut them quickly to as he was blinded by an unnaturally intense beam of light. He couldn't hear anything, save for a dull ringing in his ears. He braced himself, then tried looking again. Everything was too blurry to make out. He couldn't move his limbs. His neck ached when he tried to turn right. There was something wet in his mouth. It tasted metallic. Blood.

His back was killing him. His legs felt prickly. He was having trouble breathing. There were echoes of…something coming back to him. He felt his heart thumping against his ribs. His fingers twitched. He tried to focus on the noise, whatever it was. It sounded urgent. The light was getting dimmer, and he felt like scratching at his throat. His stomach twisted this way and that, and he swore his intestines were constricting into themselves. His head started to throb.

He could hear it now. Shouts. Screams. Moans. They were crying. Who was crying? He didn't know.

"–d. Kid, you still with me? Just hang in there."

A flash of annoyance ran through him. Who the hell was calling him 'kid'? He felt like he should have known who it was. He croaked out something resembling a curse at the voice.

"On three. One, two, three!"

All of a sudden, he could breathe normally again. He took in a gulp of air, before groaning as his chest started to burn.

"Woah, woah. Take it easy, there."

This voice was different. Still familiar. Less annoying. Slowly, his vision stopped swimming, and he found himself looking at Detectives Burns and Heyman. Red and black stained their white shirts. Detective Burns had one eye closed under a trickle of blood, and part of Detective Heyman's exposed left arm had blisters dotting angry brown patches of his skin. Jaune tried to wave them off, then started hacking as his throat closed.

"It looks like your aura was shattered," said Detective Heyman. Jaune wanted to tell him 'no shit', but was too busy getting some more oxygen into his body. Then he noticed his surroundings.

Everything was fucked.

There was rubble all over the place. Countless Grimm were weakly clawing their way in an aimless direction, twitching on the floor, or just plain dead, disintegrating in suffocating clouds of smoke. Gunshots rang out, with the few who were lucid and on their feet dispatching the creatures that still dared to draw breath. But there were other bodies. Bodies of people.

Jaune saw a man, face covered in burns and his clothes layered in soot, clutching at his torso where a metal beam had pierced him straight through. He appeared conscious, but only barely.

There was a lady hunched over another person, having shielded them from the blast that had knocked Jaune out earlier. The skin on her back had been almost literally ripped off by heat and fragmentation. Yet she remained still. She was crying out in pain, but she kept holding herself over whoever she'd been so desperate to protect.

A leg was lying not too far away from Jaune. It'd been cut off at the mid-thigh. He found its owner propped up against a bench. He'd lost everything beneath the waist, leaving chunks of meat and pieces of bone sticking out where his groin should have been. But he was smiling, trying to comfort another man who was holding his hand and weeping in sorrow.

He saw a girl shuffling back and forth. One of her legs was limp. Every now and then, she'd crouch down and feel about the floor. He didn't know what she was looking for, but judging by her increasingly desperate screams, it must have been important.

There was a young man lying flat on his back. Someone was trying to administer CPR to him. But their arms were trembling, botching the chest compressions and most likely just bruising and cracking his ribs without achieving the circulation that he desperately needed.

There were so many of them. They were in so much pain. They were suffering because of him. Because he'd told Ozpin to let the ships fire. It was him…all him…

He had to move.

Not listening to the two officers, Jaune sat up and pushed through the wave of nausea that hit him to get himself back on his feet. The ground shuddered, as a building on the streets outside started to fall, its foundations sundered and unable to keep holding it up. There was a tremendous crash, and a wave of dust swept through the area. Jaune grunted and shut his eyes, blindly throwing out an arm to find something to keep himself steady. His elbow hit something sharp, and he whimpered.

When the dust settled down, he kept walking – to where, he didn't know. Absentmindedly, he became aware of his scroll, which had miraculously remained intact, continuing to relay information. He fumbled with it, not knowing what exactly he wanted to do with it, but desperate to get someone's attention. His fingers shook, accidently patching himself into multiple frequencies, one after the other.

"–pated. I say again, the superwave has dissipated. Raptor Flight, set up an overhead pattern around Avanti. Keep further hostiles away from the LZ."

"This is Hammer 3-2, we've got a visual on…holy shit. Let's move it people. Go! Go!"

"Watch Master. Be advised, we are popping green smoke to mark our location. Need CASEVAC birds here ASAP. Over."

The smell of scorched earth, infrastructure, and flesh hit him like a truck. He kept walking. Then he started running, stumbling, wobbling.

"The whole fucking building's gone down on Argyle Street! We'll have to circle around. Over."

"Clover 1-Actual, this is Clover 1-2, I've got a critical casualty here. If we don't get him to a combat surgeon in ten Mikes, we're gonna lose him. Over."

"Shit! Stragglers at our eleven! Open fire! Open fire!"

The sensations were too much. He tripped, then started dry heaving.

"Watch Master, this is Otter 3. We're low on ammo and have sustained over 50% casualties. We cannot, I say again, we cannot continue pushing to Avanti. Over."

"2-2! Set up a blocking position on the southeast! 2-3 has the north! Grax! Ivan! Get the 37A2 up here to cover our right flank! Let's go! Let's go!"

"Strike Team JNPR. This is Hammer 3-2. We're about to come through the ground floor now. Do you read? Over."

A hand landed on his shoulder, and he saw Pyrrha, bleeding from a cut across her forehead and her face stricken with grief.

She said something, but he couldn't make it out. His ears were starting to buzz. His peripherals grew darker. He didn't want to think. He didn't want to feel.

When she pulled him into a hug, he recognised it was as much for her own rattled state as it was for his. Initially, he tried to squirm out of it. But after a few seconds, the fight left his muscles, and he let the tears fall. She was crying too. He screamed into her shoulder, not even sure what he was yelling. She might have been doing the same, but he couldn't tell. His clothes and armour felt so heavy. He wanted to undo the straps on his shield arm, but didn't have the strength.

In the last few moments, before he slipped into unconsciousness a second time, Jaune willed himself to listen again. He was responsible for this. He needed to hear the sounds of death and destruction he'd allowed Atlas' ships to wreak on their city. He didn't care if it'd been necessary. He needed to hear them suffer.

And so, he listened to the desperate shouts and anguished cries. He listened to the crunch and clatter of falling debris. He listened to his and Pyrrha's sobs as they surveyed the devastation around them. He listened to the sound of roaring jets and thundering boots heralding the arrival of Atlesian troops. He listened…

And then he let go.

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