Chapter 10: I Wrote This Before Posting V2 Chapter 4

"Hello, my name is Ozpin."

— 21 —

"This is what?" Weiss asked Deputy Headmistress Goodwitch, not sure that she was hearing right. It made it hard to keep a smug smile off my lips.

"This is it," she said, arms folded over her considerable chest. "You three are free to go. And I sincerely hope you don't do anything that warrants coming back here."

Even Blake had perked up, her eyes going to me, sitting there silently in the back of the detention hall or whatever the fuck you called this place. I could see the question bubbling up on her lips.

"Have you seen the rug burn on my knees?" I asked mildly. "I took one for the team. Or several, if we're going by inches."

"Mr. Arc!" Goodbitch snapped, whacking the front desk with her riding crop wand thing.

"Okay fine," I said, holding up my hands. "It was two, not several. He made me promise not to tell."

I could tell I was going to have a fun evening, one way or the other. All the while, the headmaster was planning something more devious to afflict me with. I supposed I couldn't blame him. It didn't stop me, but I supposed.

The rest of my team, two girls and one ambiguous shadow person, were all too happy to excuse themselves to enjoy their weekend. What was left of it. Which would probably be a lot more than normally, considering how I wouldn't be there.

I reached out to touch Blake's wrist as she passed by me, and to her credit she paused instead of instinctively slapping me away. "Tuna, remember? See if you can't convince them to come with. Please?"

"There will be no talking while you are in detention, Mr. Arc!"

I put my hands together in a prayer gesture towards Blake. She sighed, and gave me a forced little half smile. More than it should have, just seeing a friendly expression from her melted my heart. It made it easier to tell myself I'd done the right thing, which was a kind of self-congratulatory high I needed to get through my evening with Goodwitch.

This was why I was fighting. Crawling my way back up to human status with Team BASS one person at a time. Whatever happened to me, the idea of even a vaguely positive expression towards me from someone like Weiss or Shamrock hardened my resolve. Like what was between me and Indigo, only one I earned rather than stole by bodyjacked some poor kid.

I could do this. I could be Ozpin's bitch for them. Even pretend like this school drug therapy would help me. Just for little shreds like that.

That was the last I saw of my team for the entire night.

Which sucked. Because try as I might, I couldn't make anything interesting of sitting in silence without my scroll for eight hours. I expected Goodwitch to maybe mock me, taunt me, or ask insulting questions about my bad behavior. She was subtle like in her combat class, in which I was still informally banned from actual sparring.

Most of that class was theory and tactics. Actual spars between students were rare. Or, when they were called for, took the form more of active demonstrations of the day's lessons than a couple of kids trying to kill each other. That alone was pretty much the entire reason my grade in the class was "Not Failing." Credit where it was due, she might hate me, but she was so anally by the book that she wouldn't actively fuck me over.

Goodwitch was just silent tonight. Working on paperwork, or sending emails or whatever it is vampires like her get up to when they're not busy being lawyer-like, bloodsucking parasites on society. I needed to ask my non-Indigo sister about that one, being that she worked in education. Last I heard from her was when a student bit her and she was worried about becoming a werechild.

In the end, I think I'd achieved boredom Nirvana, astrally projecting myself into the fourth dimension, a magical land of girls with jiggle in the right places, complete with an adult ball pit filled entirely with unspent rounds of ammunition.

I came to with a sound like the door closing. Goodwitch step out or something? Sleeping was against the rules here (I tried), so phasing out hardcore as the best I could do. Apparently even teachers had to tend to their own outside business.

"Like how dad used to eventually get bored of watching us in the corner and left," he said.

There's a certain sound to one's own voice. You get used to the horrible way it sounds coming from your own head. It's why sometimes you can't recognize yourself in a recording, all the while cringing knowing that it's undeniably you. I'd gotten so used to having Miles Luna coming from my mouth I nearly didn't recognize the boy talking to me.

Jaune Arc, clean-shaven and without the way I'd cut his hair, gave me a sad kind of smile. Sitting backwards in the chair in front of my desk, arms lazily hanging in front of himself.

"Sup?" he asked.

I blinked. "I preferred when my hallucinations were hot girls, at least."

Jaune shrugged an arm. "You said it yourself once. The mind does some pretty neat things when stressed out, like seeing things." It was so weird hearing that voice without my Southern accent anymore. "Bet it was Indigo that pushed you over the edge. All that guilt and anguish."

"I feel great."

"When we lie, we only hurt ourselves, buddy," he said, wagging his finger at me like a pendulum.

I sighed, slumping slightly. "Aight, then. Skipping over the denial phase you were expecting, I'll go straight to the part where I ask if you're here to scream at me to get out of your head."

He tilted his head in confusion. "Why would I do that?"

"Because I stole your body. Tried to cut your face off at one point. Generally ruined your rep. Made Indigo cry." I shrugged. "That sort of general laundry list whenever you have a psychotic break."

"Taking it like a champ, huh?"

"Asking loaded questions in a condescendingly friendly way, huh?"

Jaune laughed. "Nah, man. I mean, I dig the enthusiasm. But I didn't drink all that milk growing up just to go nuts and vanish. There's enough of whatever we are in you that—" He grimaced. "Well, y'know. Not sure where one of us starts, one of us ends. Think it's more, like, a smoothie! Stick a straw and suck and you're tasting the strawberries and bananas both."

"I don't like your delicious metaphors, blondie!"

"Still doing the keto thing?"

I shook my head. "No, that was back in Brockton Bay. Or college. Now I just eat whatever the fuck I want, but in moderation. If at all." I paused. "Wait, how you know that?"

Jaune snerked, turning his chair over so he could face me without awkwardly spreading his legs out like a stripper. "Dude, same head, remember?"

"I don't like it when people watch me masturbate! Only God can do that without it being gay."

"Says the guy who keeps talking about Ren's cock."

"It has a very artistic curve to it," I huffed.

"Uh-huh."

"This is your body, and your hormones!" I said. "I can't be held responsible for what it does."

"But I can blame you for ruining my shot with Pyrrha."

I frowned, leaning to the side. "So you know how I ruined the future too?"

He gave a so-so gesture. "You got drunk once and began rambling about all the ways you ruined the team comp and now Pyrrha doesn't love you. Thankfully it was while you were huddled alone in the shower, so one one really heard you but us chickens. I know about as much as you've said. And a bit about the past, too."

"You know you sound like a creep spying on me, yeah?"

He laughed. "If anything, I sound like the physical manifestation of some loser's inner demons."

"Well, uh!" I stammered. "You sound like, y'know, some total chode's inability to confront his past actions."

"You do realize we're the same person, right?" he asked. "I mean, you're basically just my very worst traits pumped up to eleven and fueled by alcohol, right down to our suspiciously similar daddy issues, guilt complex imposter syndrome, and desire to be a leader despite kinda sucking at it."

I looked away. "Like how all my worst traits lined up perfectly with Greg Veder when I was him. Because I was Greg."

My psychotic episode shrugged helplessly. "We do share a couple of souls between the three of us. I would know. I've had time to chat with the neighbors." He rapped his knuckles on his forehead.

"Could my own psychosis please stop having its own schizophrenic conversations with itself?"

"I mean you started it," he said sardonically. "You murdered Simone and yet she's still here."

"I was never Simone. Just Greg, Specialist d'Orléans, and now you."

Jaune nodded. "No, but the stuff she and the Simurgh did to your old head are. Wish I coulda had a quirky overpowered girlfriend like her. Shame that Eric never existed, I think. I'm still trying to piece that one together. Unkillable giant monster fried your skull, made you think you were a self insert so you wouldn't question all the new, weird behavior she programmed into you. Right, Eric?"

I stared up at the ceiling uncomfortably. "I don't really vibe with that name anymore for that reason. Army used my last name only, and Simone calling me Eric started ringing hollow after I found out what I was. I still don't even think Eric was ever real, just a convenient framing device for whatever keeps fucking with me."

"Wanna talk about it? I mean, it's our head, and I'd like to try figuring out what the heck is wrong with me too."

I snorted. "Thanks, but pass. I have a therapist I'm fucking with for this sort of thing."

"Not like I knew what my better half was doing," Simone Morgan said, leaning up against Jaune, back-to-back. She examined her nails. "I actually thought you were Eric."

"…I'm done with this overly used hallucination gag now," I said with the blank finality of a guillotine.

She rolled those grey eyes of hers, standing up. Jaune was gone, abandoning me to the wolves. "Oh, c'mon, Eric. I mean look at me, I'm an anime girl now! Literal waifu with a knifu."

I stood up. "Ms. Goodwitch!" I yelled. "Miss Goodwitch! I'm talking in detention and having a psychotic episode. Ms. Goodwitch!"

Simone stalked towards me, hips moving side to side like Marilyn Monroe. She was still wearing that tight white dress I'd bought her once upon a time. "I'm not that bad. I did forgive you in the end, didn't I?"

She reached out to touch me. And though I knew she wasn't real, her hand was. Gripping me with a kind of desperate, worried strength. I felt the limb go numb at her fingertips. "Eric?"

"No!" I shouted, stumbling backwards and tripping over my chair. I scurried back up to my feet, accepting a hand up from a cowboy leaning back with his feet up on Goodwitch's desk. My old face was on the other end, a fifteen year old boy I'd spent the better half of a year as. Revolver on his hip, he was still wearing that white T-shirt with the glitter and unicorn stickers signed "Vista's #1 Fan."

Greg Veder flicked his cowboy hat up to look at me apologetically. "Don't look at me, kemosabe. I'm just here as fanservice." He held out a hip flask to me. "Need a drink?"

I stole it from him and drank the Jack Daniel's within dry. The whiskey made my nose run. I threw the flask to the side and grabbed his revolver. XO appeared in my hand, and I fired a round through his heart.

The revolver was shaking almost too much to hold as I whirled, pointing it at Simone. She stood there, hands behind her back, frowning with concern.

I cocked the hammer back and fired, fired, fired until XO was empty. I screamed, the sound choked back as the blood from my nose gushed across my mouth and down the back of my throat.

I coughed, spewing blood all over my body and desk.

"Mr. Arc!" Goodwitch shouted, rushing over to my side.

I collapsed face-first to the ground, starting to shake. And bleed. Spit, mucus, and blood mixed in a pool, and I couldn't breath. My body convulsing as I tried to reach out and grab something to steady myself. Only to find my limbs weren't responding.

"Oh great, you're having a seizure!" Goodwitch said, as I felt myself rising into the air. Her Semblance at work. "Oh no, don't you die on me! You can't escape punishment that easily!".

It was the last thing I heard.

a/n Like Jaune's past self Greg Veder aka Void Cowboy said here, this chapter is a bit fanservice-y. Elaborating on the last Self-Insert adventure Jaune here was on. Y'know, where he went up against the fate-controlling eldritch horror that led people to the worst possible destiny, and got romantically involved with her. A beautiful little murder-suicide still fresh in his memory. But because this chapter is a bit too close to a dream sequence for my liking and doesn't stand very well on its own without the next chapter, well, *checks watch*