Jaune's Awesome Store
It just wasn't Ruby's day. Almost everything went wrong today. And when stuff went wrong Ruby did what any sane huntress in training did. She sneaked out in the dead of night to buy a chocolate chip cookie or two from a fast food chain.
She was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk in the restaurant's parking lot, nibbling at the large cookie slowly, savouring the rare alone time she was rarely afforded as the leader of team RWBY.
That is, she was enjoying it right up until a bright yellow van drove out of the drive through and parked right next to her. Ruby sighed. The way her day was going, this was some idiot trying to harass her or something.
When the driver side window rolled down she was greeted by the sight of a blond guy in sunglasses. He looked scraggly and his hair was tied into a ponytail, but the sunglasses were the thing that stood out since it was the middle of the night.
"Hi, uh… you alright?"
"Just fine."
"Really? Cause the last time I ate fast food in a parking lot… No, actually I do that every day. Point is I don't think people doing that are in a good spot in life."
"Just… had a bad day is all." replied Ruby with a grimace on her face.
"Alright, just thought I'd ask."
"Do you always talk to random strangers?"
"Way I see it, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Plus it's kinda my business model."
Ruby sighed. If she wasn't confident in her combat ability she would be gone by now.
"You do realize how sketchy you look, right? A guy in a van trying too hard to look cool?"
"Hey what do you mean trying to look… OH! Right the glasses. Forgot about those."
"How did you not notice you're wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night."
"You know, it's probably easier for you to just take a look." said Jaune, handing her the sunglasses, revealing his deep blue eyes.
Ruby hesitated for a moment, but as they say in for a lien.. she was already talking to this weirdo anyway.
When she put them on everything went white for a second and for a moment Ruby thought for sure she had made a huge mistake. But the next second her view cleared up and she couldn't help but look around the apparently sunny parking lot.
"Pretty cool right?" the blonde called out to her, clearly amused by her confusion. "Sunglasses! When you look through them everything looks like it's the middle of a sunny day. Ya like them?"
"I uhh… what? How?"
"Eh, it's one of the less cursed items in my store."
"CURSED!" Ruby took off the glasses so fast they nearly hit the asphalt if it wasn't for the blonde's quick reaction.
"Oy, no need to break my merchandise. If you don't like them I'll keep them. These are quite useful when driving at night."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN CURSED!"
"No need to yell! What do you think normal sunglasses do? Well these do the opposite. It's better than that toothbrush that makes your teeth rot. That one I'd never give to anyone. Well unless someone specifically wanted it for the ability."
"What? Why?"
"I don't know, like a greedy dentist maybe? Dunno, point is I'd never give you something dangerous without telling you."
Ruby was speechless. She was trained to hunt Grimm, literal creatures of darkness, but somehow cursed items were a little too much, even for her.
"Ok… Maybe I should start from the beginning. I'm Jaune Arc, the owner of Jaune's Awesome Store. Due to my semblance, the places I live in turn into bigger on the inside mazes filled with cursed curious and trinkets. My solution? I live in this van, sort through the items and sell them through a totally legit business. I even pay my taxes on the sales."
It took Ruby longer than she'd like to admit to sort through all that. So long Jaune had time to put his sunglasses back on and reach into his glove box for what looked like an ordinary notebook filled with illegible scribbles.
"Um… ok so you sell cursed items out of a van, right?"
"Yup."
"So like, say I wanted to buy those glasses, how much would they be?"
"Eh, I operate on a pay what you want model. That way nobody can get angry at me for ripping them off or something."
"I uh, ok… what else do you have?"
"What are you looking for? The van is much larger on the inside so there's a lot of stuff in it."
"I'm a huntress so…"
"Yeah I could guess. Not much I can sell you weapons vise, most of those are truly cursed and really dangerous to its wielders." Jaune flipped through the notepad of scribbles for a few seconds. "Yeah, no. Best I can do is the dagger of healing. You stab someone with that and it heals their wounds. Problem is the stab wound isn't included in that. Could be useful if someone is like bleeding out or something and you stab them somewhere harmless, like in the leg or something."
"I uhhh, I'm not sure I want that one."
"Figured. As I said, you'll need to be more specific."
"I don't know? Can't you give me some examples?"
"I have a lot of stupid stuff so… I guess I can give you a few examples of things I've actually sold to people. Like a scarf that kept you cold. That one was pretty cool I guess, pun intended. Then there was a metal flask that endlessly produced alcohol, the catch was it tasted absolutely vile. But apparently if you have enough issues you'll drink almost anything alcoholic. A pair of shoes that had almost no traction so they could be used to kinda skate along the road. A coffee press that removes caffeine from your coffee, I believe the guy uses it in his café to make really good decaf. A pen that writes in your blood, that one is a bit morbid, but it doesn't hurt so unless you write a lot with it you won't even notice. A razor that makes your hair longer after being shaved. You know, barely useful stuff."
Ruby was understandably still lost, but at the same time she felt like this was an opportunity she didn't want to miss. She thought about it for a hot minute before she remembered why she even came all the way here. After all, she still had the paper bag with the cookies.
"Do you have anything to do with cookies or strawberries? Or like anything to do with deserts? Something along those lines?"
"Sure, let me see here. A cake knife that takes away all the flavour, a cookie jar you can't take the cookies out of, a toy oven that burns anything cooked in it. Ah, how about this one, an infinite bottle of strawberry milkshake that makes you thirsty when you drink it. Not great for quenching thirst but it doesn't dehydrate, you just feel thirsty. Well it doesn't hydrate you either. It's basically the experience of drinking a strawberry milkshake with no benefits in exchange for feeling thirsty afterwards."
"That doesn't sound too bad?"
"Eh, it can be a bit addictive and it's not really all that useful either. You want it? It's yours. Though it might take a while to find it. Last time I saw it it was in a fridge on the third subterranean level. Not too bad honestly. Give me like fifteen minutes."
Jaune just got up from his seat and went into the back of his van, leaving Ruby alone before she could give an answer. And true to his word, in just under fifteen minutes the back door of the van opened revealing what looked like a full sized living room that couldn't possibly fit in the van. And that's ignoring the stairs going both up and down from this level. At this point Ruby was fairly sure either Jaune was telling the truth or she would wake up any minute back in her bed at Beacon.
"As I said, pay what you want."
"I uh, I only have 50 lien on me."
"However much you feel it's worth, that's the price. You can return the item at any point if you don't want it anymore but don't expect me to give you a refund."
Jaune handed her the glass bottle filled with milkshake, together with a business card.
"Well, it's getting late. I'm gonna eat dinner and go to sleep, but before that do you need a lift somewhere?"
=O=O=O=O=
By the time Ruby got her bearings again she was already back at the airport waiting for a bullhead back to Beacon. She could have sworn that she had the weirdest dream that ended with her getting into a total stranger's van that was bigger on the inside. Except she still had the cursed bottle of strawberry milkshake and his business card.
When Ruby looked at the business card it simply read "Jaune's Awesome Store" in gold lettering with a scroll number on the back of it.
=O=O=O=O=
Author's note:
Happy holidays! I was sitting on this oneshot for a while now, but I wanted to give y'all something extra on top of Arsenal of Arc.
This Jaune doesn't exactly have his life together, but he has a place to stay… He gives me real Shaggy from the 2002 live action Scooby-Doo movie vibes. Played by Matthew Lillard? No? Anyone?
This is probably going to stay as a caffeine fueled one night one-shot unless people really like it. If I continue, it'll likely be a bunch of loose instances with Jaune at the centre without much to connect them.
But for now this is a oneshot and I hope you enjoyed it.