Reincarnation Sucks... Sometimes
Disclaimer: I own nothing except the plot. Jaune x Harem(fem!Ozpin/Ozma, good!Salem, RWBY, Pyrrha, more probably) M for a reason
Summary: Aurelius Aurea d'Arc I, first and only king of Remnant, renowned warrior and magic user, discoverer of Aura, consort of Grand Sorceress Ozlyn the White and the Witch, Salem the Dark. Known as possibly the greatest figure in Remnant's history, and was now reduced to a distant fairy tale. Jaune Arc wakes up with limited memories and a whole new(old?) life in his head. The King has returned, and he has vowed to fix the world that has fallen apart in his absence.
OBLIGATORY: Subjects/fetishes written in this fic do not reflect my personal feelings about them in real life. Fiction is a whole different story.
RS...S
Changed some formatting stuff for easier reading.
Gravity is one of four fundamental forces that exist within the universe. For someone to control any of these forces seems nigh impossible and it spits on the notion of balance and the ever so complicated world of physics. Outside of magic, controlling gravity seems like an unfathomable idea, playing with forces that have shaped reality itself seems like a very bad idea. Multiple sorcerers and scholars advocated for an outright ban on research into these fundamental forces.
If those same scholars were alive today, I would like to point them in the direction of one Jeanne Arc
'WHY AM I FLYING'
Jeanne was a full-fledged Huntress with a good ten years of service under her belt. Had it not been for my newfound companion, the initial burst of gravitic power would have crumpled me into a ball via implosion. Instead of that, I had instead been launched backward, digging a trench into the road as my Aura flashed around me.
My body scrambled to its feet without my input and suddenly my eldest sister appeared in front of me with an invisible burst of speed. I was then surrounded in purple light, hoisted by the collar, and hurled into the sky at Mach 1.
And that is where I am now.
Chère Oum, que ancêtres nous aident!
'What the fuck was that?! Why the hell are you praying to your ancestors?'
Maybe this could have been avoided by not trying to apologize? In hindsight, I probably should have led with an explanation instead of trying to apologize to the mentally unsound superhuman who can control gravity. As Aurelius said earlier, any experience can be a learning one, and by the Brothers, this sure was an experience.
'Am I slowing down? I think we're stopping!'
Not receiving an answer from the King, the purple glow slowly disappeared from around my body and my momentum came to an abrupt stop. And then a black glow replaced it. It felt as if a giant hand of god had suddenly wrapped around my body and started pulling me to the ground and accelerating my descent.
Brace for impact!
The ground came up to meet me in an unpleasant exchange of Newton's second law. At the last second, the black glow disappeared and my body curled into a ball, attempting to lessen the impact as a golden shield surrounded me.
I hit the ground like a meteorite, the ground around me rising in a great plume as my collision with the earth scored a huge divot into the backyard of my sister's house.
Uncurling from my ball of protection, I was instantly accosted by the seasoned Huntress. A purple glow surrounded me again and I found my neck flying into her open palm where it then squeezed down like a vice, the only thing stopping my vertebrate from being turned into dust was the golden light of my manifested soul as it strained against her oxen grip.
The contortion of fury had not left her beautiful face, a steady stream of tears slowly making their way down her cheeks. She looked fully ready to either punt me into the sun or break down sobbing.
"Do you think this is a joke," she started in a deadly serious tone, "If you think you can get away with impersonating my recently dead brother, then you've got some real issues."
A beat passed. Then two. After five seconds of a very dangerous silence, she raised her other hand, already glowing with the power of gravitas.
"Wait!" That wasn't me? Ah, Aurelius is still using my body, figures he could talk through me.
Jaune, say something!
'What do you want me to say?! I barely know her!'
Think of something or else she's going to try to kill you!
Suddenly having control over my mouth, I awkwardly cleared my throat, trying to ignore the hand wrapped around it and the blazing eyes of my outraged sister.
"Jeanne, this is going to sound really crazy but I died, lost a bunch of memories, met my past incarnation, came back to life with him in my head, woke up in the morgue, found my way here and now you're choking me canyoupleasestopitkindaisstartingtohurt!" The rushed explanation only caused the fury on her face to melt into an angry frown, the tears wiped away by her other hand.
Progress.
Oh dear, that was quite possibly the worst delivery you could have made.
'You put me on the spot, what was I supposed to do but not tell the truth?'
I figured we'd break it to her more gently but you just dumped it all on her.
'I... expedited the process? Look, as long as she's not trying to kill us anymore, right? That's a good sign.'
Her glowing hand lowered but the grip around my neck had not abated.
"I'm not so desperate as to believe whatever excuses you've come up with. Jaune didn't even have Aura and you have enough to survive a drop from two miles in the sky, with assisted velocity, and come away with more as well as the fine-tuned control to not let enough of it leak to initiate a Frenzy."
The cold analysis had me stumped.
'How do I refute that?'
Not a clue, but figure something out! Tell her something only she'd know or something.
"And to my knowledge," she continued. "Jaune didn't normally apologize frequently."
Jeez was I some sorta asshole before I died?
"He'd say he was sorry for it but never really mean it, he was always a bit standoffish and rude, always a bit angry."
Guess I was an ass. She was starting to tear up now- and she's crying now.
"Before that he was kind, always wanting to be the hero a-and all of us filled his head with stories o-of being a Hunter and even after what dad did to him, he kept his dream, even after he changed, he was still my brother."
I believe you made it worse.
Ignoring the King, a memory rose to my mind, a younger version of the blonde currently choking me with a book in her hands, me in her lap, regaling fairy tales of the previous Arc ancestors and our family's history. I found that I was back in control of my body.
"He was still my brother!" she repeated. "And now he's gone!" Her grip slackened, dropping me and she immediately brought her hands up to her face, crying fat, ugly tears into them.
"I'm sorry, Jaune, I loved you and you still couldn't let me be your hero," she sobbed. "Why couldn't you let me be there for you?! Why close me out?!"
I sighed at my eldest sister as she had a breakdown in grief and regret.
"Jeanne," I started. "It's not your fault that-"
Her head snapped up, and decades of experience leaped into my mind. The power of my soul bent to my will as a golden barrier erupted into existence as a beam of gravitation force tore through the space in front of me, launching me backward into a tree. In an instant Jeanne was on top of me, straddling my waist. Her golden hair hung around her like a halo, manic red, and puffy eyes looked down at me as tears streaked down her face. Despite it all, she was beautiful.
We sat there for a good twenty seconds, looking into each other's eyes before she spoke.
"I want to believe you," she whispered. "I really, truly want to believe that miracles do happen." She was glowing, why was she glowing?
Half of her was glowing a bright lilac, the air around the half gently gusting away as if repelled. The other half of her was glowing a dark black, a void seemingly starting to grow around her. The power continued to rise and the respective halves continued to grow with power.
Jaune, I am about to unseal some magic, use whatever time you have in her windup to dredge up the memories in order to use the right type to counter whatever shit she is about to throw at you,
'Why can't you do it?!'
Every experience is a learning one.
Bull and shit.
I dipped deep into the recesses of my mind, time dilating around me as I rushed through the decades of memories from my past life. A couple sticks out to me that I might want to come back to later, notable ones being wives, daughters, and kingly persona. Reaching the magic section, I figured I should start with protection before disregarding it completely. An attack of this caliber would more than likely shred any shield. There were too many options and too few at the same time. While countering a gravity semblance with gravity magic sounds cool, fighting fire with fire only ends up with a bigger fire and Vale should probably stay on the face of Remnant. Temporal magic sounds really cool but I only have limited memories and most of it is from a woman named Oz-something attempting to teach me it. Same with a couple of others like seasonal magic and spacial.
'Damn, if I had spacial I could make an infinite space in front of me so it'd never hit, only look like it's slowly getting closer.'
Cool thoughts for later I finally stumbled on a special type of magic I seemed well versed in. Suppression and isolation magic, or taking your opponent's attacks and taking away the dangerous stuff.
I came back to the present and Jeanne was fully glowing purple and black.
"But I know better," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
In a burst of speed, she was multiple meters away. I scrambled to my feet, set my stance, and reached into my stores of magika, bringing it to the forefront of my hands. In response, Jeanne's colors flashed before coalescing into a singular glowing purple dot just above her fingers in a pinching motion.
Forgotten energies swirled into my hands, small blue vortexes appearing just above my palms as I prepared to erase her technique.
Our eyes locked.
A second passed.
Jeanne's hand raised, a vacant expression on her face as her eyes opened wide. Her fingers flicked forward.
I will take this moment to the grave, counting it as the first time I truly, truly feared for my life.
The small dot flew forward before exploding into a huge ball of unstoppable gravitic force, tearing a massive trench in the ground as it raced towards me. At this moment I knew for sure that if this hit, no amount of Aura or magic, or bullshit reincarnation full restores will keep me alive. This thing will simultaneously crush me down to atomic levels before pulling me into the infinite in an infinite loop of deletion.
I raised my hands in response, the small vortexes expanding into two hand-sized black holes rimmed with blue. An unstoppable force met an immovable object and neither yielded.
As the purple technique that defied physics slammed into my deletion magic, I immediately felt the strain on my weak body. The soul was willing but the flesh would give sooner or later. The power of her semblance would eventually wear away at the physical willpower needed to maintain the suppression magic. I needed to end this quickly.
Dumping even more power into the black holes, I felt them gape even wider and I began to siphon the two energies composing the technique. One of the energies was pure repulsive force, positive in power, and what allowed her to blast me around and create trenches using me as the shovel. The other energy was refined negative space, negative in power, and it created an extremely strong pulling force, only refined to such a ridiculous degree that it manifests negative distance and forces reality to literally fill in the blanks by drawing things together at almost light speed.
The technique that Jeanne just used was a perfect and careful balance between the two, such that they were two sides of the coin and the ball I was currently trying to absorb was the exact middle of the coin. This affront to the laws of the universe is not only one of the most destructive forces seen since the Brother Gods but a ridiculously dangerous thing to throw around in the middle of Vale.
What the FUCK is she thinking using something like this in a kingdom?! If we weren't here to stop it then this would have carved a path directly into the rest of the residential district and beyond until it ran out of power or imploded on itself!
'I don't know and frankly, I don't care, cuz right now I need to stop her.'
The ball slowly started to decrease in size, the energies feeding the void I'd been maintaining. I had to be careful to absorb the exact same amount of energy or else the technique would become unbalanced, causing either the equivalent of a nuclear blast or a black hole to happen in the middle of Vale. If either were to become unbalanced, it would spell doom for everyone.
The ball continued to shrink, eventually becoming about the size of a large beachball. Risking a glance at Jeanne, I could see that she still had a vacant expression on her face. She seemed to be lost in her own world, not a scratch on her hoodie nor a speck of dirt on her pants, unlike me who was covered in scratches and torn clothes from being dragged around like a ragdoll.
The energies siphoned away completely at the same time. I immediately canceled the magic and dropped to my hands and knees panting. The physical toll used in order to maintain that erasure void had left me weak. Looking at Jeanne again, I found her looking directly at me. And she started to glow again.
'Fuck.'
Fuck.
The glow built for five seconds and I closed my eyes and waited for the end. And then it stopped. Jeanne stopped whatever she was charging up and simply looked at the ground, her hair hiding her expression.
Muscles screaming in protest, I hoisted myself to my feet and slowly shambled my way over to her. She looked up as I got closer to her, the listless expression marring her beautiful face. I approached her at arm's length, and she didn't react.
I held out my arms wide, silently asking for a hug. Her eyes glinted as more tears rose to them. As she rushed into my arms for a hug, her soft curves molding to my body, I was assaulted with years of scenarios exactly like this, just reversed.
Me, younger, running into my favorite sister's arms after a long day at school.
Me, slightly older, running into her arms as she graduates and becomes a full-fledged Huntress.
Me, older still, running into her arms as she came home one day missing a teammate.
Me, older again, running into her arms after being rebuked by a father refusing training.
Me, older, reluctantly giving her a hug, trying to stifle the feelings of jealousy and inadequacy as I figured I could take on some Grimm on my own.
Her, a day later, having lost her brother and gotten him back within 24 hours.
The silence wasn't overbearing, no words needed to be communicated between either of us, the two of us basking in the comfort of each other's presence.
I figured I needed to at least reassure her so she wouldn't try to rationalize this as a dream.
"My name is Jaune Arc," the words flow into my mind. "I am 17 years old, born on May 30th, XX63 P.G.W. I was pronounced brain-dead on January 29th at 4:23 PM.
Distantly, I wondered where the hell this information was coming from.
"My favorite color is saffron. Out of all eight children, I was the best at cooking, being put in charge of it after you accidentally imploded the oven. At the age of seven, I was used as the dress-up doll for all of you because I looked girly enough to pass for another sister. You, Jane, and Jen taught me how to dance, insisting that it was important for future footwork as a Hunter. You told me when you graduated, that you would be the bestest hero you could be, just for me. That to you, I was your hero, and you'll always look forward to coming home because I'll be there waiting for you."
Jeanne was shaking in my arms, not hiding the fact she was sobbing into my shoulder.
"Jeanne... I'm so sorry. I'm back, now. I'll explain everything to you, I promise."
She pulled back slightly, a radiant smile starting to pull from the corner of her lips. "Jaune, you can't even begin to understand what went through my mind when I heard about what you did. When the doctors couldn't..."
She shook her head, dispelling the thoughts. "I seriously considered joining you, y'know? If only for the chance to see you again."
'Holy shit, what? She was fully ready to kill herself to see me again?' Did she seriously love me that much?
My expression must've shown on my face because she giggled slightly.
"Don't worry, it doesn't matter anymore. After all, you're here now," why was her face so close now? "I thought I'd never get to talk to you again, see you again, have you with me ever again."
Her arms slowly encircled around my neck. "Jaune," she was so close, her warm breath ghosting across my lips, our noses almost touching.
"I love you."
She leaned forward, her soft lips pressing against mine with an unexpected gentleness.
'WHAT'
Hmm. Equally strong genes. I approve.
'WHAAAAAT'
R&R and all that jazz. I like feedback. Sporadic updates.
PS: Feel free to PM/comment with questions and stuff, I'll probably answer
Answer to why mindwipe: Jaune as of now has no bias or rose-tinted glasses of the world. Growing up with a family of kickass Huntsman would definitely romanticize a lot of things and Jaune with Aurelius' memories could make his own opinions depending on his past life. Times change after all.
Answer to Salem and Oz(lyn(pin(ma))): Salem is bad rn but she's not in the right 'mindset'. Idk if to make oz a guy and freak Jaune/Aurelius out when he gets to Beacon or not. I'll figure it out but I'm open to suggestions.
Answer to why king not act kingly: Imagine your just a normal dude and then you die and get a cool ancestor king reincarnation. All of a sudden becuz of him you have the need to lord your supposed superiority over everybody despite the fact you are not a king. I imagine it as a persona you can use whenever he needs or feels like it. It'll come in handy when dealing with Weiss or diplomacy.
Jaune x sister? Y not. READ OBLIGATORY ABOVE
-Discount Gojo is still Gojo. -
Have a nice day/night/week/life.
-Spice