Chapter 25 – We Died Up In The Desert
In which Jaune Arc forgot to pack his metal armor and his plot armor. All stories come to an end.
"…all phonetically pronounced Jaune."
"Even Juanita?" asked Raven.
Jaune's eyes narrowed. "Especially Juanita. So, what about you? Any family? Besides, you know, the obvious." Jaune had a feeling that Raven didn't want to talk about Ruby and Yang as the two of them were sharing stories around the campfire. Jaune had been careful to guide the topic of conversation away from his misadventures at Beacon, lest the truth of his circumstances be revealed.
Sure, there was a chance that Raven would send him on his way if she learned he was of no use to her, but there was also a chance she would mistake it for him trying to weasel out of their one-sided deal and just kill him.
"My tribe is my family. Any who choose to join us, prove their worth, and contribute their value to the whole is one of my brethren."
"How big is your tribe?" Jaune asked. "You make it sound like there's a whole village of you people."
"Currently, we number…ahhhhh, nice try. I'm not going to go around feeding you intel."
"If you won't tell me about the present, could you tell me about the past?"
Raven's eyebrows rose. "What in particular?"
"I was kind of wondering about how you came by the maiden powers. I know from…a source that Ozpin lost track of the last Spring, and I was curious how her demise came to pass. It's ancient history, and I already know you're the maiden, so it's not like it's useful for anything other than satisfying my curiosity."
Raven took a second to ponder his words, then reclined. "I suppose it matters little at this point. And I'd rather just tell you than have Ozpin butt in and start investigating me."
Jaune dug his butt into the sand, getting into a good position for the tale. He had some corn, but there wasn't a microwave for miles, so popping it wasn't an option.
"I had left Oz and his nincompoops about two years prior – roughly the same time you were born, as it happens. The tribe had been ruled by my paternal grand-aunt for some time, and I'd set my sights on replacing her."
"Replacing?"
"Killing," Raven explained. "Brother won't tell you our sordid rituals because he's ashamed to have ever taken part in the family business, but absolute leadership can only be taken through the death of the old leader. Any other position can be seized by a display of talent, but not chieftain. The only downside was that I wasn't sure if I had what it would take to usurp her. There would be no going back once I committed to challenging her – she would kill me to secure her power if I failed. Then, as if a divine act of providence from the Gods themselves, a young woman comes knocking on our gates. She used to be one of Ozpin's, but she grew too tired of his chokehold on her. This woman had heard from Brother of my desertion and sought refuge from the old man with us."
The story was surprisingly familiar to Amber's, and Jaune found himself beginning to lose more and more faith in his headmaster. Draconian measures to keep someone safe could make sense depending on the situation, but when they were so severe than not once but twice did his prodigy girls try to flee and end up losing their lives, only a fool would continue to stick to their guns rather than reconsider how they went about things.
"She was able to prove her strength and secure a place among us. To most, she was an amazingly talented huntress of Beacon, if not something of an enigma in terms of her personal life. I was the only one who realized what she truly was – a maiden. None of the others even knew of the existence of this phenomenal power."
"You didn't tell them?"
Raven looked at him like he was crazy. "When you play cards, do you tip your hand to your enemies?"
"But these aren't your enemies. You said it yourself – they were your tribesmen, your family." Jaune tried to imagine Perry or Nora planning a coup against him and hiding secret powers, but the idea was so absurd that it seemed unrealistic.
Ren, on the other hand…
"Tell that to my grand-aunt, who had grown so afraid of me that she was sending me to spearhead the most dangerous of our raid," hissed Raven. "I had no intention of supplanting her when I returned to Mi– to the tribe with my hunter skills. In fact, it was her idea of sending me to Beacon to get stronger, but once I returned, she saw how far I had come. Her paranoia whispered into her ear that it wasn't worth the risk of keeping me alive, but she couldn't kill me without cause according to tribal laws, so I was simply assigned the toughest, riskiest tasks. I sometimes wonder if the impossible things she made me do were even for the tribe's benefit, or just wild goose chases for me to die on."
Once again, Jaune was reminded of how easy things were for him. Sure, he didn't have aura, but coming to and staying at Beacon was his choice. Perry had never had a complete home simply due to his species, and Raven's relatives marked her for death when she improved enough to catch their eye.
"That's horrible."
"It was to my benefit. Every raid I completed gained me more followers, and my swordplay only improved. Anyways, where was I? Ah, yes, the maiden. All stories come to an end, and hers was no different. She was a quiet girl who tried her best to not interact with us. I think her delicate kingdom sensibilities were offended by our raiding, but never enough to actually make her go back to Beacon. Just goes to show you how far Ozpin drives people away from him. Now, I'm ashamed to admit, but it took me nearly two months to get the idea to kill her and take the powers for myself."
"Two whole months, huh? I take it you weren't the same woman you are now, who throws her allies' corpses around to serve her own purposes."
"We're all young once."
Jaune scoffed and turned around to see if he could dig some more Fire Dust out of his backpack to feed the dying campfire. "If she was a maiden and you were just normal at the time, how did you even kill her?"
"Maidens might possess twice watered down traces of the Brother Gods themselves' power, but they're still human," said Raven. "They don't have their auras raised all the time. Unless they see an attack coming, there's nothing they can –"
Jaune waited a second for her to finish.
"Nothing they can what?"
Raven didn't answer.
"Nothing they can do to stop it," said a different voice.
Jaune turned around with a Fire Dust crystal in hand to see three long shards of ice poking out of Raven's chest. Her hands weakly touched the blood seeping out of her pierced torso, and she tried to say something, but a trickle of even more blood dribbled past her lips instead. She looked up at Jaune, in great pain, and tried to say something.
Jaune dropped the Fire Dust and rushed to Raven's side. Cradling her in his arms, he tried to apply pressure to the wound, but within seconds her lifeblood had escaped her body. Raven's lips were still moving, albeit weakly, and she slapped a hand to his shirt and slowly tugged on it. Jaune picked up on the meaning behind her actions and pressed his ear closer to her mouth.
"Maiden," she whispered. "Daughter."
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and the frail grip on his shirt released.
"I will admit," said the voice from before, "I did not wish for anyone to die today. It would have been optimal to force her into Salem's service, or to transfer the power through the use of a Scarab Grimm, but capturing or containing a maiden of her prowess would have proven too difficult without Tyrian at my side. Her back was turned and her attention on you, so I took the only free shot I would ever get. Her successor can be located at our leisure."
Jaune didn't even need to look up to know who this was. "Are you going to kill me, Hazel Rainart?"
"The Spring maiden has fallen, and my mission is accomplished. Have I any reason to kill you, Jaune Arc?"
Jaune looked down at his blood soaked overshirt, then back to Raven's dead body. "No, you don't."
Hazel scoffed. Jaune had yet to lay eyes on him. "Do you mourn her? Ozma may be my enemy, but she deserted him like a coward. No character, no allegiance – she was little more than a Grimm in human form. The powers she possessed, she did not deserve."
Jaune closed her eyes with his hand, then shut his own in rage. "She had family."
"Family she abandoned. Family she cared little for."
"Family who will be devastated by her death just the same. She may not have cared, but that doesn't mean she wasn't cared for."
Jaune looked at his opponent and immediately understood why everyone spoke of him in fearful, hushed tones. Hazel looked like he was a man in the prime of his prime. His arms were probably thicker than Jaune's waistline, and every inch of them was covered in grotesque battle scars. His face betrayed no emotion as he watched Jaune set Raven down and press sand over her dead body, but in a manner far less lackadaisical than the dead woman had done for her portal-inducing skeletal comrade.
"You would bury her?" asked Hazel.
"She doesn't deserve it, but I refused to stoop to her level. If you're not going to kill me, then it won't matter. If you are, then it won't take more than a minute of our time, and after that we can fight."
A shallow grave in the wilds of Vacuo, next to her own fallen comrade, was soon all that remained of Raven. Jaune knew that the winds of the next sandstorm would probably u̶n̶e̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ unRemnant her in time, but this was more to prove something to himself than it was about her. Hazel patiently waited as Jaune heaped up mounds of blood-encrusted sand over the fallen rogue and drew her name in the sand. It was only temporary, but it was the best he could do in place of a tombstone.
"Raven…Granolawhy?" asked Hazel. "What is that?"
"It's her name."
"HA–!" A laugh that was so rapid it almost seemed involuntary escaped from the enormous huntsman. "Somehow, such ignominy feels fitting for her."
Hazel hadn't left yet, and Jaune had a feeling he knew exactly what that meant. "You aren't going to let me go, are you?"
"What did she whisper in your ear before she died?" Hazel asked. "What could the Spring maiden have told you that was so important?"
"She wanted to apologize for dragging me out here. I wasn't exactly a willing participant in this little adventure of ours."
Two meaty arms crossed in front of a muscular chest. "Did she tell you who the next maiden was?"
"Yes," Jaune said. He knew that if he said no, Hazel would only take that denial as confirmation, so he decided to try his luck with reverse psychology. It seemed very unlikely that a fight was anything but inevitable at this point now that Hazel had guessed his secret.
"I cannot allow the next Spring maiden to fall into that monster's hands. I'm sorry, child."
"Not so sorry that you won't do this, though."
"No. Not that sorry."
"Well, I'm sorry too." Jaune pulled his net gun from his belt and fired in one swift motion. "For this!"
The net shot true and landed on Hazel's head. From end to end, it just barely draped across his shoulders. Hazel gently tore it off his face.
"For this!"
Jaune pulled the pin off one of his Lightning Dust grenade, waited five seconds, and threw it at the giant. It went off with an explosion, arcs of electricity heating up the sand to such high temperatures that it melted into glass.
The dust from the Dust cleared, and Hazel's faded orange aura crackled. However, before Jaune's very eyes, the crackling faded and was replaced by a steady color.
Raven had said that he regenerated aura fast, but Jaune had no idea that she'd meant that fast. His attack had just happened a second ago, and it had to have done some damage – it was a lighting explosion, for Grimm's sake! And yet, here Hazel was, kicking the stirred-up sand out of his shoes as though the grenade had been little more than a static shock from a doorknob. His aura was immediately back to full, and Jaune had a sinking feeling about his odds in this fight.
"Anything else?" Hazel asked, an eyebrow raised.
"F-For this?"
Just to be sure, Jaune pulled the pin out of a Fire Dust grenade and lobbed it at Hazel, to equally disheartening results as the Lightning one.
"May I give it a try?" Hazel asked. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out several chunks of raw Dust.
Jaune knew from Raven's description what was coming next, and he also knew from his lack of aura that he wouldn't survive Hazel's Dust attacks. As the brute stabbed them straight through his tanned skin and into his flesh, Jaune shot on of his grapple-deploy sickles into the sand behind him. A spiked ball of rock materialized above Hazel's head, and Jaune's sickle pulled him out of the way just before he was crushed.
Unfortunately, his momentum did not stop instantly when he was out of danger, and Jaune was sent careening through the sand rather than landing gracefully. Several of his grenades flew off in the fall, as did one of his dirks. The weapons were useless against Hazel, but that didn't mean Jaune was better off without them. Right now, his only chance of survival was stalling for time and surviving until he could think of a way out, and the grenades might have been useful for something. He'd rather use them as smokescreens than have them uselessly strewn across the ground a line along Jaune's path of flight.
Hazel stepped towards him, walking right over the dropped grenades, and Jaune had an idea. Pulling the pin off of one of his Fire Dust grenades, he didn't throw it at his enemy, but dropped it on his location. Jaune shot his sickle behind himself once more and used the retracting button to drag himself away from the explosive as it detonated.
The violent release of energy from his grenade was enough to set off the nearest other grenade, and just as Jaune had been hoping, a chain reaction went off. Bursts of electricity, pillars of flame and stone, hard light flapping about in all directions to form amorphous masses, wrapping, writhing, curling vines being thrown around by violent air – so much mixed Dust ignited at once that it was enough to stop Hazel in his tracks.
Jaune didn't waste the opportunity. Wielding his sickles with both hands, he shot through the desert, swapping back and forth between hands so he could escape twice as fast. His bandolier now held fewer than three grenades – one Plant Dust, one Fire Dust, one Lightning Dust. He still had one of his dirks, his taser, his false StormFlower, his Hard Light shield, and his crossbow, but the rest of his grenades, along with his Rock Dust portable barricade developer, had been lost to the explosion.
The more distance he could put between himself and Rainart, the better. Jaune wasn't sure of what his goal here was – stopping Hazel seemed more-or-less impossible, but without Raven's portals, he had no way to flee either. Perhaps he would be able to get lost in the vast expanses of dunes and dehydrate to death rather than be ripped apart limb from limb at the hands of a monster of a man.
Jaune looked over his shoulder for a split second and saw Hazel running after him at inhuman speeds. Two yellow crystals were pierced into his arms, and crackles of electricity were sparking out of his arms.
Well, scratch the idea of outrunning him, then. I guess he can use Lighting Dust to speed up, and Rock Dust and Ice Dust to form projectiles. I'm guessing Fire Dust makes flames or something. I really don't want to see what he else has packed.
When Hazel was about three seconds away from being close enough to reach out and grab Jaune, Jaune dropped his Lighting and Fire Dust grenades behind him. He wasn't hoping to stop the giant, but the explosion of sand acted as a smokescreen and obscured him from view for a brief second. In that time, Jaune turned at a ninety-degree angle to the left and began to use his sickles to flee in that direction. Hazel continued to pursue Jaune right through the cloud of sand, only to find himself without a Jaune to pursue. He turned around, locked eyes with Jaune, and charged him.
Jaune had taken the brief period of time he had to notch his Wind Dust crossbow and fire a bolt at Hazel. When it collided, a small tornado whipped up around the giant. He roared as sand buffeted his skin and eyes, but only for a second.
His semblance…pain reduction or something, that's it. It's how he can do the Dust stabbing thing in his arm.
Speaking of which, Hazel had stabbed a clear Dust crystal into his arm, and the color in his veins ceased. He punched down into the ground, and the tornado dissipated.
Something caught Jaune's eye, and he fired another crossbow bolt. Sure enough, Hazel stabbed yet another crystal into his arm, and Jaune saw it clearly this time when Hazel pierced himself with a jagged edge.
Suddenly, Jaune knew how to defeat him.
Jaune tossed his last Plant Dust grenade forward and rushed at Hazel. It exploded on the ground, and the vines grew upwards around the absolute unit of a man. Refined, concentrated Plant Dust didn't actually create the plants; it just perfected the environment for any existing weeds, seeds, shrubs, or ferns nearby to the extent that they grew out of control.
If he could get close enough to Hazel while he was restrained, he could do this. With a dirk in one hand, he readied himself to land the first and final blow.
Before he could even respond, Hazel's mouth opened, revealing a small Fire Dust crystal in his lips. He bit down, exploding him in flames and burning away the vines that held him back. A brief flash of his aura, and the flames dissipated.
Jaune tried to back up, but Hazel snatched him by the wrist and held on tightly.
"No more running."
With his other hand, he pummeled Jaune's side, knocking the boy down. Jaune tasted blood in his mouth and desperately spat it at Hazel's face, hoping to blind him, but he wasn't able to hit his mark, getting Hazel's cheek instead.
Guess that only works in movies.
Hazel tore off Jaune's empty bandolier, cast it aside upon realizing it was depleted, and moved on to Jaune's other weapons. The dirk was taken right out of his hands – Jaune's weak grip could never have hoped to keep it from Hazel – and bent at a ninety-degree angle, rendering it useless.
His empty net gun, his sickles, his crossbow and last Wind Dust bolt – Hazel individually destroyed or crushed every single one of Jaune's remaining weapons. He probably could have killed Jaune if he knew about his lack of aura, but he didn't know. He was choosing to destroy his armaments first because, to Hazel, this seemed to be a prolonged duel with a pro-huntsman, not the inevitable beatdown it would eventually devolve into.
Jaune knew that if he didn't keep at least one of his bladed weapons with him, he would never have a chance of killing his opponent. His dirks were gone, his guns were gone, and his grenades were gone. If he lost his knock-off StormFlower, he would die today.
Before Hazel could take anything else, Jaune drove his taser into the man's bare forearm. He started in pain before his semblance could kick in, but that brief moment of his loosened grip was enough for Jaune to kick off of him and slam his Hard Light shield into the ground. A faint translucent wall of pale bluish tint shot up between the two men.
"You can't escape me, child."
Hazel drove a fist into the wall, and it shimmered.
"Fight like a man."
He punched it once more, and it faded for a half a second before coming back on.
Jaune crawled backwards in the sand and felt his body for StormFlower. With the massacre of his remaining weapons, he no longer had the luxury of reaching down to his armed-to-the-teeth body and pulling off some combat implement. Minus the taser, StormFlower was all that he had left, and it would hopefully be all that he needed.
Down to just the weapons that I got from Ren and Nora. How poetic.
Jaune spat more blood into the sand and picked himself up to his feet.
Aura was an impenetrable force field as long as it held, and Hazel seemed to have been blessed with an aura of near-instantaneous regenerative ability. That was probably why Raven, the Spring maiden, had feared him so. He was immune to pain, he could barely be damaged, and his offensive capabilities were some of the best Jaune had ever seen, without even needing a weapon.
However, he was still a human, and all it too was one moment of weakness to kill him. All Jaune needed to do was get a single weapon past that impenetrable force field and into one of Hazel's vulnerable organs, and the fight would be over. A heart, a lung, an esophagus – it didn't matter which.
Now, thus came the tricky part of getting past said aura…
Hazel smashed through the hard light and pounced towards Jaune. Jaune reached for his shoulder, but Hazel slammed his fist into Jaune's stomach before he could come close. He continued the strike into an uppercut, and the impact drove Jaune's entire body flying through the air.
The pain was overwhelming, greater than anything Jaune had ever faced before. Jaune screamed his agony into the sand when he landed facedown, then forced himself to swallow it down and move on. Hazel was coming towards him, and he needed to finish this. Pain and suffering could be felt afterwards. Flipping himself over, he prepared for his second chance.
He tried to play it smart this time, rolling to the side when Hazel kicked down onto where he had just been laying, but it didn't work. Before he could lay a finger on the big guy, the other size 40 boot landed on his leg and broke it.
If the pain from the punch had been bad, then this was ten million times worse. Jaune couldn't hold back the howl of misery as Hazel flung him down the face of the sand dune.
"Know that this gives me no pleasure, boy. You chose this lifestyle, and now you must pay the consequences. Beacon shall fall, and with it, Ozma's instruments of violence. There is no escape from her. There is no escape from Salem."
Jaune coughed up a mouthful of sand – at least the part that he hadn't swallowed. He tried to pick himself up, but his leg was snapped out of place at a horribly odd angle, and the reality of the situation sank in.
There isn't going to be some perfect way I can get in close without taking a hit. I'm going to die here.
This wasn't like the other times. No rocket locker was inbound. No backup was on its way. Jaune was alone in the deserts of Vacuo with a maniac, and he had no way out but death.
I'm actually going to die here.
But at least I can take down this guy with me.
He did nothing to stop Hazel as the elder huntsman grabbed Jaune's shoulders and hefted him into the air. Face to face, the two men stared down one another for a second. Then, Hazel opened up his fist into a flat palm and drove his fingers straight into Jaune.
Jaune felt the wet trickle of blood coming out of his stomach before he felt the pain. Hazel's hand had broken his skin and pierced into Jaune's stomach. If the blood loss didn't kill him, the equivalent of a stab wound from the giant's hand itself would.
It didn't matter though. While Hazel had been distracted killing Jaune, Jaune had been busy grabbing hold of one of the many Dust crystals in the big guy's shoulder.
Aura was an impenetrable force field, but only when it was intentionally raised by the user. If they, for some reason, chose to lower it around any body part – say, the patch of skin where they were going to stab themselves with a Dust crystal and didn't want to have it shatter against their full aura instead – then that body part was no longer protected. Hazel had riddled himself with Dust crystals, none of which had crackled with his orange aura when he injected them into his person, meaning that he'd essentially given Jaune tons of holes past his aura, right into his insides.
As Hazel's hand came out of Jaune's body, Jaune pulled out the Dust crystal and stabbed StormFlower into the wound. Like Raven, Hazel hadn't been expecting it, so he hadn't known to raise his aura in that particular spot at the time.
The aura sealed around the weapon, but the barrel of the gun was already past the skin. Aura protected the outside of your body, not the inside. Jaune tilted the gun slightly so that it was aiming towards Hazel's heart.
"When you get to hell, give my regards to Raven Granolaw–"
Hazel flinched before Jaune could finish the epic one-liner, and Jaune accidentally pulled the trigger too early in his panic.
The thing that huntsmen and huntress often forgot, due to their immense durability and near indestructibility, is that the weapons they used – sub-machine guns, Dust shotgun gauntlets, high-impact sniper scythes, mechshifting hammers/grenade launchers – were incredibly powerful. They would wreak untold havoc against bodies that didn't have built-in defenses, if given the chance. Typically, however, they were only used on powerful Grimm or against other hunter's aura, meaning that such wanton destruction was rarely ever seen and existed only in theory.
Jaune, a human without aura, was fully aware of what weapons like that could do to a person's body, because he'd spent nearly a month trying not to be on the receiving end of those weapons.
A sub-machine gun pressed straight into a human body at point blank range packed quite a lot of force. A single bullet would have torn through Hazel's body, leaving behind a gaping hole, and Jaune held down the trigger until the entire magazine was empty. When he fell to the ground, it was not because Hazel had let go of him. It was because Hazel had been split in half diagonally across his chest, and his upper torso was no longer connected to its lower half or his legs.
Jaune raised a hand up in victory.
"O-One more win – cough – for the Citron…"
He collapsed into the sand as his blood painfully began to pour into the desert beneath him.
Velvet did not, in fact, burst through the ground in a rabbit burrow to save Jaune in exchange for an exclusive interview.
The Citron Commandos didn't fly to Jaune's rescue in an tacky airship spray-painted gold with his name written on the side named the Citron-copter.
Raven didn't reveal herself to have only been faking her death and open a portal to a community-run hospital where Jaune could get medical aid.
The power of his love for Nora or his friendship with Perry and Ren didn't mystically heal the wounds he'd sustained.
His aura didn't self-unlock from the immense stress of having to fight a near invincible huntsman warrior, spontaneously pulling him back from the brink just in the nick of time.
There was no miracle coming to save him. Jaune understood this and made himself comfortable as he prepared to die here in the wasteland that was Vacuo. Seriously, fuck Vacuo.
I'm really going to die.
He wheezed blood and watched as it mixed into the sand, pooling up in a gross red and yellow paste.
I didn't know I could actually die.
Laughing hurt his lungs, but it was too funny to not be amused by. Jaune was the weakest human to have ever attended Beacon, but he'd done so many marvelous feats of heroism that he'd actually started to believe in his own made-up superpowers. The notion of dying hadn't seemed real to him when he'd stepped through that portal with Raven. Death had been like a faint echo several miles away, a light under the crack of the door to the next room over, something he intellectually knew existed but was impossible to conceive of as actually happening. It was a sad, sad thing that other tragic people experienced, not him. Never Jaune.
This had to have been the bloodiest Beacon-sanction first mission ever undertaken. Raven the pro-huntress mentor, Jaune the bright-eyed student, Hazel the outlaw villain – three participants, and three bodies. He idly wondered if that Tyrian Callows fellow who was supposed to show up would do so now to finish him off, but it would be the same outcome even if he didn't. Even if Jaune's wounds decided to seal themselves up just for funsies, he would starve to death in the desert before he could find his way to civilization.
Actually, I think I'd dehydrate first. Or overheat. Sunstroke, heatstroke…so many different strokes.
Jaune had cheated death for long enough as it was, so he guessed it was only fair that he eventually had to pay the price for his arrogance. He'd wished to come to the dazzling Beacon Academy, become a hero of legend, and get a cute girlfriend. All three of those pipe dreams had somehow come true despite Jaune's own shortcomings, and now his time had come. The fable was over.
Jaune sat down in the sand as death finally caught up to him.
Raven said it best.
All stories…
All stories come to...
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No no no no no no no no no.
Never.
Not happening.
No.
NoNoNo.
No way.
No chance.
Just no.
Not in a million years.
Absolutely not.
Read my lips: N. O.
No, Jaune would not be giving up so easily. He'd only just begun his life, and he refused to sit down and lie in the sand as it ended. Saving himself may be impossible, but he'd be damned if he didn't at least put up a fight before he faded away. He was the Citron Champion, the partner of Perry, the beau of Nora, the leader of the amazing Team Juniper, the best friend of Amber.
He was the hero of his own story, and he was going to do his best to keep defying the odds and cheating death and pulling miracles out of his butt.
He was Jaune Arc, and he was going to die.
He was Jaune Arc, but he did not want to die.
Hazel's body was now little more than ground beef, but his coat was mostly intact. Picking himself up from the sand in which he lay, Jaune took it off the dead man's corpse and began to search through it for a scroll. He briefly thought of Raven and how little respect she had for the dead, but he shook his head and dismissed the thought of any similarities after a moment's pause. Hazel was a cold-blooded killer, perfectly content to kill Jaune and apparently also blow up Beacon or something in the name of this Salem person. He deserved no respect, even in death.
There was no scroll in his coat, so Jaune reached into his pockets next. In the left, nothing. In the right…
Bingo!
Jaune dialed a number he knew by heart, because it was his own.
Amber picked up. "Look, whoever you are, now really isn't a good –"
"Oh. Sorry. I'll call back lat– cough. Oh, I really don't have enough strength to make jokes right now. Amber, I'm in Vacuo. I'm dying, and I really could use some help."
"Jaune! In Vac– where in Vacuo? We can come and rescue you if you tell us where."
"No clue."
"Look for a street sign or landmark."
"Landmark…sand dune to the north, sand dune to the south…Hazel Rainart's mangled corpse to the east. Actually, I've got no clue of which way any cardinal direction is, and I'm just making them up."
"Y-You killed Hazel? Actually? How did you – never mind. Look, I can't find you without any landmarks, but is there any way I can help you. What are your injuries? Maybe I can tell you how to treat them."
"I've got a hand-shaped hole in my gut. And unless you can tell me how to teleport, I'm going to die of heatstroke."
"Jaune, how did you get into this one?" Amber's voice quavered as she spoke, true fear seeping in. Jaune regretted calling her – he could have just died like a man, and instead he'd chosen to burden her with his final moments just for some self-validation.
But if I hadn't, she'd never know what happened. She gets closure, I guess?
"Raven's portal-ed me here, and we –"
"Raven!" Amber exclaimed. "That's it! Can she take you back?"
"She's dead. Oh, and if I do die, Raven chose her daughter as the next Spring maiden. T-Take care of Team RWBY."
Amber fell silent.
Jaune went on. "Amber, you've been the best friend I could have ever asked for. Thank you so much for everything you did for me, and for just being by my side when I –"
"Jaune. You're in the middle of nowhere in Vacuo, right?"
"Right."
"How did Hazel get there?"
"Huh. I hadn't thought of that." Jaune scratched at his head. "That is queer, now that you mention it."
"I'm serious. If he took an airship or something, it'll still be there. There might be a chance you can get to someone who can help."
Jaune had pushed himself up before she even finished the sentence. Standing on his one remaining leg, he looked around, only to realize he was unlikely to see it. The only thing he could still make out in the desert was the trail of destruction from the various weapons he'd employed in the fight. Clutching his wound to apply as much pressure as he could, he began to hop on one foot back towards his and Raven's campfire.
"Amber, I'm going to try and find the airship. If I can, will you be able to talk me through piloting it?"
"I will, Jaune, I will. You just find that airship. I'll take care of the rest."
It was slow going to hop all the way back on one foot, traversing the entire distance he'd covered before using his grapple-sickles, but his leg was entirely busted. Several times, he fell over and probably aggravated his injuries, but with the tantalizing prospect of actually surviving it all now entrenched in his mind, he pushed on.
Raven's body was still covered in the mound of sand he'd made for her when he got back, though the name he'd written for her tombstone was gone, blown away by the winds.
Jaune desperately tried to remember the direction from which Hazel had been coming from when he ambushed Raven. There was no guarantee his mode of transport was that way, but it seemed unlikely that Hazel had trekked through the desert halfway, then turned nintety-degrees and made it the rest of the way.
Hazel had attack Raven, and she'd fallen, and he'd…she was…Hazel was…
Which way? Was it that…or…no, not that, it had to be…?
The mental picture he'd built up of the fight didn't seem right, and every time he tried to visualize it in his head, it grew blurrier. More and more blood was coming out of his stomach wound.
Jaune clenched his teeth and shut his eyes.
Hazel hit me with his first Dust attack, and I sickled backwards to escape, meaning that…that…he had been standing in the opposite direction of where our fight took us. That must've been where he'd come from.
More blood came out of his wound, and Jaune groaned.
"Still there, Amber?" he said weakly.
"I'm with you all the way, Jaune." Her voice broke. She knew what was coming just as well as he did, but both kept up a brave face for the other's sake. "All the way. I…I love you, Jaune. You've bee– you are my best friend."
In spite of it all, he was proud of himself. He'd made the right call to send his team the other way back in Iyun, he'd left Amber in Perry's safe hands, and he'd made Remnant a better place. In the month he'd been a̶l̶i̶v̶e̶ a student at Beacon, he'd probably done more good and put away more bad guys than some hunters did in a lifetime. It didn't matter that he wasn't real…that didn't matter.
He'd set out to become a huntsman.
He was proud that he'd made it.
He surprisingly did find a bullhead, though it was way off his present course and just barely visible in the distance. He must've been off in the direction he'd been going by nearly thirty degrees when he'd set out.
The ship was unlike any he'd ever seen before. It vaguely reminded him of the sleek design of Atlesian robotics, like the paladin, but it was…it was…
It was.
Yeah.
Jaune's good leg gave out as he hopped up the loading ramp, and he was forced to crawl the rest of the way. His head was feeling super light, and his skin was starting to look very pale.
Amber called out his name, and Jaune weakly managed to tell her that he'd made it onto Raven's airship. She said something that sounded happy, but Jaune didn't have the wherwirth… witherwa…the mind to think about whatever she said.
"Okay, first you need to find the ignition," said the lady on his scroll. "It should be a stick, like a manual transmission automobile."
Jaune laughed around for the stick, but there weren't…wait, there was two. No, the other number. One.
He pulled it.
"What's next, mom?"
"Jaune, it's me, Am…o-okay. You need to get some elevation. Are there any screens saying 'Auto Take-off Sequence' or anything similar?"
Jaune found the screen almost very fast away, but he couldn't read the things.
"What do?"
"Enter the cruising altitude. Do…3,000 feet."
"No keys."
"Tap the screen. A keypad will come up. Just tap it and i-it'll come up, Jaune."
Jaune hit hand into, into, on the thing. Again and again. Numbers…he hit hand one more, three more, two more.
Ding!
"Okay. You're in the air. I can hear the engines through the feed. If there's an autopilot, it should have the locations of the nearest airports in any of the kingdoms onboard. Just select one, and you'll fly straight there. You don't need to do anything else – just find the autopilot system and tap Vacuo. Or Vale. Or anything."
No find. No tap.
"Jaune?"
Too weak.
Too hurt. Head hurt.
Fall. Fall to floor.
"Jaune? It won't go until you press the – Jaune? Can you hear me? You're not responding."
Red floor. Spreading. Flowing.
"Jaune? Did you start the autopilot? Jaune? JAUNE?!"
All stories come to an end.
tl;dr Jaune wins by clipping through Hazel's hitbox but then he dies or something yo wtf
Next Chapter: Hey Sold Sister
In which I lied to you.
Author's Notes
Yeah, I could barely believe that crap either, even as I was writing it.
N̶O̶T̶E̶:̶ ̶T̶H̶I̶S̶ ̶I̶S̶ ̶N̶O̶T̶ ̶T̶H̶E̶ ̶E̶N̶D̶ ̶O̶F̶ ̶T̶H̶I̶S̶ ̶F̶I̶C̶,̶ ̶S̶O̶ ̶K̶E̶E̶P̶ ̶F̶O̶L̶L̶O̶W̶I̶N̶G̶!̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶c̶e̶r̶t̶a̶i̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶p̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶V̶e̶l̶v̶e̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶o̶b̶i̶t̶u̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶p̶i̶l̶o̶g̶u̶e̶/̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶J̶u̶n̶i̶p̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶u̶n̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶2̶5̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶p̶t̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶d̶o̶?̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶f̶e̶l̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶t̶a̶s̶t̶e̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶j̶o̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶v̶i̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶d̶o̶w̶ ̶N̶o̶r̶a̶,̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶p̶o̶n̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶m̶m̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶(̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶s̶u̶i̶c̶i̶d̶a̶l̶)̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶(̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶g̶n̶a̶n̶t̶)̶.̶
̶N̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶D̶e̶b̶b̶i̶e̶ ̶D̶o̶w̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶r̶o̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶.̶
̶W̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶A̶r̶c̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶p̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶r̶m̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶f̶i̶c̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶v̶o̶w̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶e̶a̶s̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶.̶ ̶H̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶g̶u̶y̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶w̶e̶a̶k̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶R̶W̶B̶Y̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶A̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶I̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶,̶ ̶b̶o̶t̶h̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶b̶a̶d̶,̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶o̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶d̶d̶e̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶o̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶(̶s̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶m̶b̶l̶a̶n̶c̶e̶,̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶-̶h̶u̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶l̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶,̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶f̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶c̶r̶i̶p̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶r̶p̶)̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶I̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶v̶e̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶r̶i̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶e̶a̶k̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶s̶l̶a̶p̶s̶t̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶d̶y̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶d̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶k̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶e̶v̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶e̶n̶v̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶a̶u̶r̶a̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶A̶r̶c̶ ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶s̶ ̶S̶a̶l̶e̶m̶.̶
̶S̶o̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶J̶a̶u̶n̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶e̶?̶ ̶W̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶a̶j̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶l̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶i̶a̶l̶o̶g̶u̶e̶ ̶f̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶h̶a̶v̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶M̶y̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶l̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶s̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶I̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶m̶e̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶l̶w̶a̶y̶s̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶n̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶H̶a̶z̶e̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶e̶f̶t̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶m̶a̶t̶c̶h̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶r̶i̶c̶k̶s̶ ̶(̶t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶I̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶e̶r̶t̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶F̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶D̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶F̶o̶x̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶i̶t̶e̶m̶s̶)̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶n̶e̶.̶ ̶W̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶'̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶i̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶'̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶1̶0̶0̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶ ̶C̶i̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶w̶a̶y̶s̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶k̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶e̶v̶i̶t̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶i̶c̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶r̶m̶o̶r̶/̶p̶r̶o̶t̶a̶g̶o̶n̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶I̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶m̶i̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶d̶y̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶?̶ ̶N̶e̶a̶r̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶g̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.̶
̶S̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶A̶m̶b̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶s̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶s̶y̶c̶h̶o̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶(̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶H̶a̶z̶e̶l̶,̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶E̶m̶p̶t̶y̶ ̶S̶e̶a̶t̶)̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶u̶d̶d̶e̶n̶ ̶b̶u̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶e̶t̶e̶r̶m̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶v̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶p̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶e̶v̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶j̶u̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶s̶t̶a̶i̶n̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶S̶o̶m̶e̶t̶i̶m̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶r̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶'̶R̶e̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶E̶n̶s̶u̶e̶s̶.̶'̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶t̶ ̶A̶m̶b̶e̶r̶'̶s̶ ̶s̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶T̶e̶a̶m̶ ̶R̶W̶B̶Y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶S̶p̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶a̶i̶d̶e̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶.̶
̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶,̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶1̶4̶0̶,̶0̶0̶0̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶V̶o̶l̶u̶m̶e̶ ̶2̶.̶
̶H̶a̶p̶p̶y̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶c̶r̶i̶m̶e̶!̶