-(=RWBY=)-

Chapter 16

-(=RWBY=)-

It was almost the end of winter, but not quite so; and as Jaune walked into the campus of the University of Vale, he found the morning air bracingly cold.

As with Beacon, the end of term for the civilian universities was imminent, which meant that the students were split into two distinct masses, each one defined by the pace at which they lived life. One group was in a frenzy, rushing to and fro the examination halls. The other was altogether more languid, being done with the winter semester examinations, and able to swan about on the lawns in blissful relaxation.

Jaune watched all this with less detachment than he would have wished. He was envious, in truth. He missed school, and all it entailed – the joy of freedom without responsibility; the ease at which one could succeed at schoolwork; but above all, the friends to hang out with, and around whom loneliness did not exist.

Suppressing the nostalgia swelling with him before it made him feel too pathetic, Jaune registered as a visitor at the porters' lodge, before heading into college proper.

The University of Vale ran on a collegiate system, and though there was a central administration organizing things like university-wide matriculation and examinations and graduation, the various constituent colleges had plenty of independence, and did everything from hiring their own professors, to running their own student accommodations, to determining their own academic syllabus.

Jaune was on the grounds of one particular college this morning – Ternion College, the old alma mater of Pietro Polendina. The scientist – reputed to be Atlas's finest mind, if not the smartest man alive – was giving a small talk on the topic of cybernetics, and Jaune was here to listen.

Passing through the college's side-gate, Jaune walked out onto the front yard. Stately trees grew haphazard-wise on the lawns, some evergreen, and yet others without leaves, winter having left them bald and their branches bare.

There was still plenty of time till the lecture began, so Jaune took the time to enjoy himself and admire the sights.

When Qrow Branwen had interrupted Jaune's lunch with the Malachite twins last week, he had dropped some parting advice from Professor Goodwitch, about not giving up on education. And while Jaune was certainly not going back to school any time soon, he did end up thinking it would be interesting to sign up for, and sit in on, some of the lectures that the University of Vale organized and allowed public attendance at.

Making his way through the college at a leisurely pace, Jaune came upon the dining hall, and decided to take a look inside.

Slipping past the crowd of students that was starting to gather for lunch, Jaune entered the great hall.

The place was impressive, and looked every inch a dining hall out of medieval history – from the long oak tables stretching from the front doors to the back of the hall; to the gold-framed portraits of dead men powerful in their day adorning the walls; and to the pale-white chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, adding its soft glow to the morning light streaming in from the tall windows.

There was certainly the weight of age and a sense of history to the place – even if it made a strange contrast with the otherwise modern attire of the students and staff.

Deciding not to overstay his welcome, or get in the way of the students queuing for their lunch, Jaune headed back out.

Continuing his exploratory stroll through the college, Jaune passed courtyard after courtyard, and aged stone building after aged stone building, before arriving at the gardens at the rear of the college.

It was a beautiful, scenic place; a vividly viridescent lawn, immaculately maintained and meticulously manicured, surrounded on all sides by wild shrubbery and overreaching trees.

There were worn wooden lawn chairs scattered about, and Jaune padded his way over to one, before taking a seat.

It was nice, to just enjoy the cold winter air, and soak in the silence.

Watts had just given him yet another task, and he had a fair bit to think about.

"A successful political campaign cannot be run without sufficient financial resources, and I fear our faunus friends are having trouble with fundraising. It would help if you could speak to the father of a good friend of yours, and get the Faunus Justice Party the money it needs to secure Miss Belladonna's electoral victory."

Jaune knew exactly what he needed to do, but it was going to be difficult, and deeply unpleasant – not just for him, for her.

It was too fine a morning to be spent worrying, however, so Jaune let go of his troubles for the time being, and instead concentrated on enjoying his scenic surroundings.

And indeed he did so, for all of a minute, before –

"Sa-lu-tations!"

Jaune sat up from his lawn chair with a start, as a loud and altogether too energetic voice assaulted his ears.

Turning his head around, he saw a girl in long black stockings and an old fashioned dress, with short orange hair falling in curls to just above her shoulders.

Despite being somewhat annoyed at the boisterous girl for interrupting his attempt to relax, Jaune made the effort to be polite, as he did replied.

"May I help you?"

The girl clapped her hands together eagerly, and bobbed her head up and down.

"Oh, yes. My name is Penny, and it's a pleasure to meet you. I am in search of the 'Dansen Room', where the brilliant Professor Polendina is about to give a lecture. Could you direct me there, please, if it's not too much trouble?"

The Penny girl had a strange, overly formal way of speaking, but more to the point –

"I'm sorry, I'm not a student here. Perhaps –"

"Oh!"

The girl's eyes widened, and she interrupted Jaune as he was mid-sentence.

"You are... Jaune Arc!"

The way she said his name sounded odd – like it was something she was reading off a scroll screen, or like it was a detail she had just presently learnt.

Regardless, Jaune sighed. He was in his usual civilian getup – armour off, beanie on, and hoodie up – but it seemed that was no guarantee of others not recognizing him.

To the girl's blunt question, Jaune gave an equally blunt answer in reply.

"Yes, I'm Jaune Arc. Is that a problem?"

The girl hurriedly started flailing her arms about.

"Oh no, no; but I'm sorry for your loss."

Sorry for my loss?

"Ah –"

Penny's words left Jaune speechless for a couple of long seconds. The idea that anyone would offer him condolences over the events of Rothenburg, rather than supply censure or silent judgement – it boggled his mind.

Jaune's eyes narrowed, as he scanned the Penny's girl face for any hint that she was being insincere –

– but in her friendly, guileless expression, Jaune found neither deceit nor deception; only warmth, and simple human compassion.

Touched over the girl's kindness – and perhaps not as immune to social disapproval as he liked to think – Jaune gave a tired, grateful smile.

"You're kind to say so, Penny."

Feeling the need to do something nice for the girl in return, Jaune added,

"Anyway, I'm also here for the Polendina lecture, and I know the way to the room it's being held at. I can show you there, if you want."

Upon hearing his offer, Penny gave a bright smile.

"Wonderful! Let us be on our way then, Jaune!"

The girl's excitement was infectious, and Jaune found himself smiling as he stood up, and began heading in the direction of the so-named Dansen Room, where the lecture was to be held.

Jaune had managed to take a look at a map of the college while he was at the front lodge, so he knew how to navigate his way to the room in question. With Penny all but skipping along beside him, Jaune led the way off to the side of the lawn, and onto a gravel path that cut through the wilderness and overgrowth that dominated this part of the college campus.

Some of the trees they passed were massive oaks, ancient and gnarled. Their roots and branches alike grew wild and haphazardly, twisting this way and that, going in all directions while seeking out no apparent destination.

Some of these trees could well be centuries old – and Jaune wouldn't have at all been surprised, if an oak amongst those in this grove turned out to be even older than the founding of the Kingdom of Vale.

It was a strange thought to consider, that some of these oaks had been old when the Kingdom was young. And it was stranger still, to realize – that not only had these trees been around since the time when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, but that they would still be growing strong, long after Jaune and the rest of the Arc family was dead and gone.

While Jaune was entertaining these ruminations about history, Penny was growing ever more excited; and her unbridled enthusiasm seemed to boil over, when finally, she broke the silence with an exclamation.

"This is so exciting! It's like we're two friends on an adventure, hunting an escaped convict or some pirate's treasure!"

Her innocent joy brought a slight smile to his face, and Jaune found himself enjoying the temporary company of the strange but spirited girl.

"Sure. Two friends on an adventure."

What came next was something Jaune did not expect. Coming to a dead stop in the middle of the gravel path, Penny turned to Jaune, wonder written across her face, and joy glimmering in her eyes."

"Are we really friends?"

Her words gave him pause.

The overreading of his casual words, and the general strangeness of her behaviour – it made Jaune begin to suspect that Penny was not merely socially awkward, but perhaps suffering from some sort of developmental disorder related to social interaction.

Regardless, he saw no harm in humouring her.

"Sure. We can be friends, if you like –"

"Sen-sa-tio-nal!"

With a million megawatt smile that could light up the dark, Penny stepped in close, and grabbed Jaune's hand so they could shake on it.

Jaune winced, as he found his right hand being crushed under Penny's iron grip; her strength was like nothing human, and utterly incongruous for a girl her size.

On instinct, Jaune activated his aura, and immediately the pain lessened, as his enhanced durability served to shrug off the force being exerted upon his body.

And, unsurprisingly, Jaune could sense that Penny's aura was unlocked. The girl was a huntress-in-training, if her superhuman strength hadn't already given the game away.

"You should be more careful with your strength, Penny. Civilians without aura aren't as durable as us huntsmen. They can get badly hurt if we're careless during our physical interactions with them."

The mild rebuke dimmed Penny's smile, and she brought her hands to her mouth to gasp.

"Oh, no! My apologies, friend Jaune! I promise to be more careful in the future. I hope I didn't hurt you."

Jaune shook his right hand, any remaining wisps of pain already fading away.

"Don't worry, I'm fine. Come on, let's stop standing here."

As he led them further down the path, cutting through the copse of ancient trees to get to their destination, he tried to make some small talk.

"So, what school are you from?"

Beacon was Vale's finest Huntsman Academy, as was Signal its best primary combat school, but those two alone could not train all the huntsmen the Kingdom needed to hold the Grimm at bay, and there were plenty of other schools around to make up the difference.

"Atlas Academy, friend Jaune!"

Jaune wouldn't have guessed so, given Penny's sunny disposition made, and how strongly that contrasted with the military discipline and aloof demeanour the Atlesians liked to with the cultivate in their students.

"Are you here on your end of semester training mission, Penny?"

Though Beacon felt like an eternity ago for Jaune, the first semester was still not over, and there were two weeks to go before the start of winter break. For some of the teams on longer, month-long missions – as Rothenburg was meant to have been – they would still be out in the field, or wherever their mission had taken them.

Penny was taken aback by his question, and appeared strangely reluctant to answer – which puzzled Jaune – but in the end, she said,

"Yes – hic – I am here on the semester's final – hic – training mission."

Penny started suffering inexplicably from a bout of hiccups, which made Jaune ask, with some concern,

"Are you fine?"

"Oh yes, friend Jaune. Worry not – I occasionally suffer from hiccups for no good – hic – reason."

"If you say so."

Shrugging, Jaune let the matter go, and they continued walking towards the destination building at the back of the college. As they walked, Penny seemed to return to normal, her hiccup attack going away as suddenly as it appeared.

The two wound their way out of the woods, and onto a courtyard that led to the building where the lecture was being held. Penny was happy to chatter as they walked, and Jaune was happy to let her.

She went on upon how wonderful Vale was, and how excited she was to be here, and Jaune made nodded politely and made affirmative noises at appropriate junctures – not because he was disinterested, but because there was just far too much to respond to.

Penny reminded Jaune of Ruby, in her cheerfulness and naivety, in her innocence and the way she was happy-go-lucky.

Nonetheless, the thought of Ruby – as well as the rest of team RVLY – brought an internal wince to Jaune. His team had been decently close to Ruby's, enough so that they would have all been comfortable calling each other friends – which made it difficult, to have to ignore the constant calls and messages Ruby kept sending his way.

No doubt she wanted to ask him about whether what Ozpin was telling the world was true; about what truly happened at Rothenburg, to have led to the death of one teammate and the disgrace of another. And, knowing Ruby, she would probably want to reassure him that he had done nothing wrong –

– which was precisely why Jaune was keeping his distance. The whole image he was striving to project to Watts; the story he was trying to sell; and the lie he was attempting to tell – they all involved the idea of him being bitter at the world, and alienated from everyone else.

That helped make the notion that he would sell out the world to Salem a plausible one, and it was far too great a risk, to have too many friends, and to appear too well-loved. After all, if he had such friends, and cared for their well-being and safety, then he ought not be killing huntsmen and hurting humanity – or aiding the Queen of the Grimm, no matter how much he hated Ozpin.

Hence, Jaune held his silence, and kept his friends in the dark; a small sacrifice, in the grand scheme of things, and an insignificant price to pay, compared to everything else his mission had asked of him.

"– the cafes, the monuments, the opera houses – they're all so fun to visit! My father brought me –"

Penny was still going on about Vale with all the enthusiasm of a tourist, as Jaune and her ascended a flight of stairs into the college building that was their destination. The Dansen Room itself, where the lecture was to be held, was on the ground floor, and with a crowd already milling about outside it, it wasn't at all hard to locate.

Jaune continued to listen to Penny's chatter, occasionally interjecting with his own comments, until eventually –

A excited murmur began rippling through the crowd, and Jaune turned around.

Professor Pietro Polendina was easy to recognize, and impossible to miss. A portly older man with dark skin and a crown of white hair, the professor was sat in a mechanized four-legged wheelchair.

And as a sign of just how important he was to Atlas, the man was accompanied by a huntsman. The tall thin man with pale skin and strange tattoos was one of General Ironwood's elite specialists, Jaune did not doubt, and it was clear he was there solely to protect the primary reason for Atlesian technological superiority.

Where the huntsman was cold and aloof, however, the professor himself was warm and kindly. Raising a hand in greeting, he said to the crow of assembled students,

"Sorry to keep you all waiting. Your professors detained me, with interesting conversation and good food."

The man laughed heartily as he patted his stomach, and the crowd joined him in chuckling.

"Come, come."

Everyone filtered into the room, and Jaune and Penny took seats at the back.

The professor began fiddling with his scroll, to link up with the room's AV system and to set up the slideshow presentation he wanted to show his audience.

As he did so, the whole room waited respectfully; where ordinarily, students awaiting a lecture might have looked at their scrolls or chatted with each other, here they were quietly and expectantly attentive.

It was well-deserved respect. Pietro Polendina was a genius, and the scientific advances he had wrought – in weapons technology, and in cybernetics, and in understanding aura itself – were not merely immense but utterly revolutionary.

There was, after all, a reason why the man's name was in every school textbook, whether civilian or huntsman.

For all that aura allowed superhuman feats, and for all that semblances were endlessly varied in their effects, there were limits. As every aspiring huntsman learnt in school, semblances affected the external physical world via the pushing of aura into elements and objects, after which said things could be manipulated – air set afire, metal moved, or sand and dust turned to flowing glass. At the same time, people's auras, unlocked or otherwise, powerfully and automatically prevented the intrusion of foreign aura into the body. Hence, semblances could never directly affect other humans or faunus, and even a huntress as powerful as Glynda Goodwitch, with a semblance as broken as telekinesis, could not just crush another person's brain with a thought. Clothes and weapons, of course, were fair game, and Jaune had seen Goodwitch immobilize students that way. Pyrrha had done much the same with Polarity, against opponents who lacked sufficient aura mastery to prevent her from seeping her aura into their metal weapons.

This inability of semblances to directly affect people's bodies was the so-called Polendina Limit, named after the man who proved its existence through rigorous scientific investigation. Even semblances with mental effects turned out to work via physical channels that the users themselves did not understand – such as illusion semblances using complex aura constructs, or emotion-manipulation semblances producing mind-altering chemicals.

Such knowledge mattered when it came to huntsman-on-huntsman combat, as when Jaune himself fought Neo. Knowing that she wasn't messing directly with his head, and couldn't alter his sense of pain the way she could manipulate light or sound – that informed his strategy to retaliate the moment her sword touched his flesh. Had Jaune not understood the situation correctly, and instead second guessed his own strategy, out of the fear that any pain was merely a hallucination and that Neo's strike could come from other directions...

Well, I'll be dead.

And so it was with a straight back and with undivided attention that Jaune sat in his chair, and awaited the start of Professor Polendina's lecture.

He did not have to wait long, for the professor had no trouble firing up the room's presentation screen – to display a charming picture of a female-looking robot – before beginning in earnest.

"Now, students, and guests from outside the university, I understand you are eager to listen to me talk about and explain some of the latest and most exciting research me and my Atlesian colleagues are doing on cybernetics. However, before we move to that, I want to focus on what it all means."

The professor gestured animatedly as he spoke.

"As some of you might have heard, we are very close to making a breakthrough on being able to transfer minds into android bodies. Before we make such a breakthrough, however, we need to understand how it affects society, and how it changes what it means to be human – or faunus.

"Of course, this marvellous technology, once developed, can help fatally injured huntsmen or civilians with incurable diseases to escape their dying bodies – and to live on as androids. Not an attractive idea to many people, perhaps, but it is certainly preferable to dying.

"There are limits to this, naturally. No one cheats cheat death forever, and this technology will not allow people to live the rest of eternity as androids. For reasons we do not yet understand, aura disintegrates over time, and whether your body is flesh and blood, or steel and oil, won't change that. It won't."

Jaune found himself nodding along.

This was another well-known fact about aura; those who lived beyond a century could well be fine physically, but inevitably, their souls began to degrade and fade – and they would slowly go insane, before finally death came.

Salem with her magic, and Ozpin with his ability to reincarnate, were possibly the only two humans in history to have escaped this fate. Whether the former retained her sanity through the centuries, however, was up to debate.

And honestly, who's to say Ozpin's sane either?

Jaune hadn't been feeling particularly charitable to his former headmaster ever since the start of the infiltration mission, and his thoughts reflected as much.

Professor Polendina was still speaking, after pausing for a while to let the implications of his previous words sink in.

"Those are the practical consequences of the marvellous technology we are developing. But what are the philosophical consequences, hmm? Forget the technology itself for now. Say some huntsman has a semblance that lets him transfer minds between bodies. You, young man –"

The professor gestured towards a student in the front row.

"– if this huntsman transferred your mind and aura into your friend –"

Polendina waved at another young man on the front row.

"– who would you be? The person with your mind, but your friend's body, or the person with your body, but your friend's mind?"

The student gave the hypothetical some thought, before answering confidently –

"The person with my mind, sir."

"Indeed!"

Polendina started navigating his wheelchair about, in what appeared to be his version of pacing. And as he paced, he spoke.

"Because really, what we are, is this thinking, feeling being, yes? I have a body; I am my mind. The people we are, from one second to the next, from one day to another, depends on maintaining the same memories and personality and beliefs and desires – on psychological continuity, if you will. But not so fast!"

The professor was very animated by now, as he held one hand up, as if to stop everyone from getting ahead of themselves.

"Did you know, students, that even if half the brain were destroyed, consciousness remains? Hemispherectomy is in fact a rare but largely successful treatment for brain tumours that cannot be removed by conventional surgery, or by the best healing semblances. If you had your left brain hemisphere removed, you would still be conscious after the operation, and you would remain psychologically continuous with the person you were before the surgery – you'll have same personality and the same memories. In short, you'll be you. Except –"

Professor Polendina held up a single finger, and the silence dragged as he held the room in suspense.

"– what if we didn't destroy the removed brain hemisphere, but transplanted it to another body? Then that body would wake up as you, too, with your personality and memories. Would there be two of you? But how would that work? If you Number One is the same person as the old you, and you Number Two is also the same person as the old you, then Number One and Number Two are the same person as each other – but that's impossible. What if the hospital fed One but not Two? One would be hungry while Two would be full – so are you simultaneously both hungry and not hungry?"

The room started buzzing as the professor posed his question. Jaune himself rubbed his chin thoughtfully; the paradox made his head hurt, but he couldn't deny that it was interesting.

More worrying, however, was what this all implied, about the sort of morally questionable experimentation Atlas was up to. Watts himself had been an Atlesian scientist, before his faked death but actual defection; and who knew what Atlas had allowed him to do, back then – and indeed what Atlas was still doing, now.

Regardless, Jaune had no time to think more about the issue, for the professor was on a roll, and continued developing the problem for his audience.

"I can see many of you are stumped. Not to worry – the same problem has stumped the greatest philosophers in the world. One solution they offer is to say that personal identity has to be unique. You as an individual only continue to exist if you don't 'branch out' into more than one person; if you do, then neither of the two people that come out from the brain hemisphere transplant really are you.

"But I think we all agree that this isn't satisfactory. What do you say? You, young lady, what do you think?"

The professor picked out the girl seated next to him, on the side opposite to Penny. She looked startled to have been singled out, but recovered her equilibrium swiftly enough, and gave a thoughtful answer –

"I... don't think it's a great solution, professor. Because surely whether a person in the future will be me should depend only on how that person relates to me – whether they can remembering being me, and so on. How can I stop being me just because some other person is created?"

The professor was clapping with joy by the time the young woman was done speaking.

"My dear girl, you hit the nail right on the head."

From the deep frowns all around, however, the rest of the room – and Jaune counted himself amongst their number – weren't quite following matters. The professor seemed aware, for he backtracked, and said,

"All this is rather abstract, so let's make this all concrete. Let's say we successfully develop this mind transfer technology. And let's say you're dying of incurable cancer, so doctors use the technology to transfer your mind into an android. However, unbeknownst to you, a rogue scientist keeps a copy of your mind data, and then a year later, in a secret lab somewhere, made another copy of you with another android body. If you took the idea a person only continues to exist if they are unique, and there hasn't been any 'branching out', then you have to say that you as an individual stopped existing the moment your clone was created – which is absurd. How could your continued as an individual and as a person depend not on things like what memories you have, and what personality you possess, but what's happening somewhere else, half the world away?"

Frowns changed to nods and looks of understanding, as the point was driven home. Jaune too, got the point, though his head really was throbbing from all the over-thinking.

The professor, meanwhile, seemed to be wrapping up this part of his lecture. Jaune was not unaware of the irony, that he was now looking forward to the very scientific and very technical part of the lecture as perhaps the less mentally taxing bit of it.

"So that's the problem. I don't claim to have an answer, but perhaps the right way to think about it is – so what? All we care about is surviving into the future, and as long as there's someone psychologically continuous with present me – with the same personality and same memories – what do I care whether that person is technically identical to me or not? Just some food for thought."

The room lapsed into pensive silence, as everyone present absorbed this insight from the smartest man alive.

Jaune however, was frowning – deeply so, with his brows almost painfully furrowed.

The whole lecture had been extremely abstract and philosophical, and while Jaune had certainly learned a lot, he also found it somewhat suspicious. The professor had clearly given the matter a whole lot of thought, and it just didn't strike Jaune as plausible that a scientist – even one as brilliant as Pietro Polendina – would do that, rather than just dismiss abstract philosophizing as inconsequential navel-gazing –

– unless –

– unless these weren't theoretical questions for him, but an actual ethical dilemma he was facing, because –

– because Atlas had already cloned people, in the exact same manner Pietro Polendina was now discussing as mere hypotheticals.

And as for why Atlas would do such a thing...

The answer came, so obvious, so patent, so utterly self-evident.

Atlas loved its combat robots, from the older Atlesian Knights to the rumoured new Paladin prototype – and for good reason, for these AI-piloted mechs allowed terrorists and Grimm alike to be fought, without needing soldiers and huntsmen to risk their lives.

The problem there, of course, was that the mechs were ineffective against the Grimm, whose skin and armour resisted conventional weapons even as they were easily pierced by aura-imbued swords and bullets.

Now, however, with the ability to copy minds into robots – and indeed, to do this as many times as desired with but a single huntsman as the original template – one could create an army of aura-capable android huntsmen, each one capable of destroying Grimm with ease even as their metal bodies protected them from any significant physical harm or risk.

It was literally inhuman, and utterly dystopian, and...

... also exactly the sort of scheme Ozpin would – with Ironwood's input – come up with.

The worst part of it, however, was that Jaune could not say they were wrong. Despite his instinctive revulsion, Jaune saw the logic in such a plan. Undeniably, it would help save lives, by protecting civilians from the Grimm even while sparing vulnerable flesh-and-blood huntsmen from needing to fight on the frontlines. And it wasn't as if anyone had to be forced to participate in the copying process; Ironwood could doubtlessly find some brave and patriotic volunteer willing to undergo the procedure.

Of course, none of this would matter of Salem got a hold of the Relics, but still, any help in the eternal fight against the endless tide of monsters was welcome.

Jaune shook his head, trying to get rid of his mounting headache.

It was all too much; ancient magics on the one hand, and godlike technology on the other – Jaune couldn't wrap his head around the full implications of it all.

"Friend Jaune. Are you alright?"

Penny's voice cut through the painful haze that had descended upon his mind, and prompted Jaune to shake his head once more, before looking at his new friend.

"I'm fine, Penny. I was just thinking."

"What about?"

She looked genuinely curious.

Not wanting to explain the whole complicated matter – and doubting if anyone else would believe something that could not help but sound like an insane conspiracy theory – Jaune deflected.

Smiling slightly, Jaune said,

"Just thinking about sentient androids and how they might already be here."

Penny looked shocked; her eyes widened, and her head jerked back, even as the girl herself seemed to fall into a daze. Jaune found it all quite strange, but then again strangeness summed up Penny in a word.

Turning back to the front of the room, and to the presentation, Jaune found himself unable to focus.

Instead, he thought back to Rothenburg; to his partner; to Pyrrha; and to the way she died, a hole blown right through her stomach.

If only that had been an Atlesian mech, smart or otherwise, then Pyrrha would still be alive.

And that decided Jaune.

If a vague moral feelings and amorphous disgust stood in the way of saving lives...

... then so much the worse for his feelings.

Not a single thing had changed his mind since Domremy, and he was always going to prioritize saving lives – even if the means were ugly.

-(=RWBY=)-