The high of being alive didn't go away for a few hours, but eventually Jaune began wishing he hadn't survived, at least not in his current state.

According to someone dressed up as a doctor, he had bypassed a natural limit that everyone was confined to. Throughout the doctor's lecture, Jaune had nodded his head absently, pretending that he knew and understood any term that the doctor had used. As a result, all that he learned from the doctor was that his soul didn't know where his limbs were, and because apparently people's bodies believed the soul over the mind, he had to convince his soul that he still had limbs before his body would listen to his mind.

So for a few hours, Jaune - someone who had absolutely zero training and had absolutely no knowledge of how Aura operated - tried to coax his Aura into his hands and legs. It was a thousand times harder than he thought it should be.

How come I could cover things I was holding with ease, but I can't force it into my fucking hands?

Of course, he knew why. The doctor had informed him that as long as he believed he had hands but his soul didn't, then his body would resist. Supposedly, he needed to separate the concept of his hands as a part of his body for it to work, but that was practically impossible for Jaune, a boy who could see that his hands were still attached.

"Are you still struggling?" Yang said, having opened the door to his room while he was focusing on his hands.

Jaune groaned. "You just ruined my focus! I almost had it!" He hadn't even been close.

"Sorry!" She smiled. All of her troubled emotions were absent from her face and voice. Yang had stopped by in between every class and even for lunch. And every time she stopped by, slowly but surely, the face she wore gave her the appearance of a laid-back girl without a care in the world.

Jaune only knew that she was faking it when he caught her staring at the bandages wrapped around his neck when she thought he wasn't looking. Her eyes had been coldly hollow. "Sure you are." He rolled his eyes. He didn't mind that she was wearing a mask. If she wasn't going to bring up his request to die, then he wouldn't pry into her business.

"Cheer up! Can't you see I've brought you something?" She asked as she walked forth.

He hadn't particularly paid attention to her since her arrival, mostly because he was still trying and failing to move his hands. So he didn't pick up on the fact that she was holding a tray of food in each hand. "Didn't we just have lunch?" He asked.

"Dinner time." Yang shrugged as she placed the trays on the side table of his medical bed. Her eyes darted to his limp hands. "You, uh, get anywhere with all that?"

Jaune glanced at a clock on the wall. "It's been nearly twelve hours and I can't even twitch a finger." He stared at his hands for a second, and then he shifted his gaze a little further beyond. He stared at his immobile legs without uttering a single word.

"Well, that's a shame." Yang pushed forward in the conversation before it could lull. "So you don't mind, right?"

After sighing. "Go ahead." He gave his permission and watched as Yang placed his arms and hands in special casts that were supposed to ensure his limp hands didn't rot away. Another thing he found hard to wrap his head around.

After successfully clamping them closed. "There we go!" She exclaimed before she sat down in her chair. "So, how are you feeling?" Yang asked, her voice slightly louder than usual. "Are you fine with more visitors?" Her question was asked and then she mouthed 'say yes,' as she nodded her head towards the open door to his room, something she usually closed after she walked in.

Jaune let out a rather silent sigh before he cleared his throat - which had healed rather quickly, so no marks remained of his request - before he gave his answer. "I'd love more visitors. It's rather boring here." While the first part wasn't entirely true, the second part was.

"That's great! In that case, meet the rest of our team!" Yang said, her words more directed towards the door to his room than at Jaune himself.

And then, rather awkwardly, Red and White walked into the room. Well, Red walked in and White limped in behind her. Jaune didn't focus on which emotions they were wearing, mostly because that would probably be more awkward than pretending everything was fine. And regardless of mostly everything, he really didn't care for their transient emotions. Currently, he was still weighing the pros and cons of restarting.

"H-hey," Red stuttered, her eyes downcast.

White's eyes darted around his body, but she avoided looking at his face for a moment.

"Oh, hey! You're both fine, that's great!" Unfortunately another pro was added to the scales, the cost of his situation had been White's life, and until she either died or proved that her life didn't matter then he didn't mind never walking again. A part of his mind was vehemently insisting that she didn't matter, that he needed to be a Huntsmen to survive. He smiled at the two girls. "I'm Jaune Arc, and I am glad to see you girls again."

"I'm Ruby Rose." Red was still looking at the floor.

"Schnee, Weiss Schnee." White's previous ice cold voice was gone, replaced by a hollow tone. Jaune blinked as a pair of eyes that seemed to be frozen stared into his own. He heard the tap of her metal crutch as White moved closer to his bedside. "Thank you for saving my life." Her tone belied her claim of appreciation, as there was absolutely no emotion in her words.

Jaune stared into a face that didn't display anything. All he learned was that White had a scar over an eye. "It's the least I could do. I was just paying you back for helping me."

White blinked. "Ah, yes, my help." She paused. "I wouldn't be one to boast about my abilities, but I can't say I have ever experienced a fuck-up that excruciating in nature." Her speech continued without any inflection. "Not only did I somehow screw up a simple glyph, but I had done so at the cost of my entire Aura. And if what Ruby claims to be true, then at the cost of my life as well."

Ruby had moved over to stand behind the seated Yang, and her eyes were still directed at the floor.

"My life?" White repeated without any emphasis. "My life, the life of Weiss Schnee, all used up in a single mistake. Who knew it would be that easy?" Her question went unanswered as she continued. "Did you know that the White Fang has placed a bounty on me? Apparently I'm worth half a million Lien to them dead, and a full million alive. My father has made it no secret on how much he has spent on me, and he has claimed that I could buy my independence for roughly three million Lien."

Jaune began to feel confused, the topic of his previous attempts - and matters related - began to become fuzzy, and his thoughts were consumed by his current attempt, his current life. The empty way this girl was talking about something that sounded like a serious matter started to make him feel nervous.

"Perhaps it was because there was a tangible price on my life, but somehow I began to think of myself as worthy of those numbers. It hadn't even crossed my mind that physically, I was as mortal and fragile as everyone else. That my life was not in any way unique." White closed her eyes. "From the start of the day to the end of it, Weiss Schnee had only been a single misstep away from death, and when she placed a foot through death's door, her entire life flashed before our eyes." White dropped her crutch and grabbed Jaune's head before she fell.

Jaune was forced to stare into bottomless chasms that were surrounded by frosty blue ice. His heart pounded in his ears.

"Our earliest memories take place in a garden. We had been but a toddler, mindlessly chasing a butterfly. Our soul had been untainted by the world around us. We've seen how pure white our soul once was, and how years would destroy something so fragile. And yet never once in her life did Weiss ever think even about death. Her broken soul would simply be reforged with every crack."

Jaune felt his breathing stop as Weiss' words began to fill his mind.

"A fragile soul, shattered by a simple mistake. She thought herself familiar with the cold, with the isolation, how wrong she was. Death was unlike anything in the realm of the living, indescribable to anyone still alive, and yet I have seen her, and yet I have felt her embrace, freezing to the flesh but scorching to the soul."

He felt his mind going numb.

"Jaune, I have seen her face, the face of Death, and then you pulled me back, you yanked me away, you ripped us apart. Jaune, I am alive, thanks to you. I am no longer dead, thanks to you, Jaune. And yet I know Death, and I know that one day Death will welcome me back with open arms, for that is the fate of all those who walk this world."

He couldn't hear his heart beat anymore as Weiss leaned in, her lips not even an inch from an ear as she whispered.

"And yet, Jaune, did you know? Did you know that there are those who walk this world that she can not have? Why? Jaune, Why? Why would anyone defy death? Defy destiny?" Weiss blinked and released Jaune's head. The room's air felt burning in comparison to how cold her hands had felt on his skin. "Anyway, basically thanks for saving my life, and now I have a different perspective in regards to it." She finished her speech as she bent over and picked up her metal crutch. "I owe you a favor worth roughly three million Lien, if you ever need help, just ask." And she limped out of the room.

About a minute passed before Jaune felt like moving. "What the fuck?" He muttered, confusion was firmly constricting his thoughts. "What the actual fuck was that?" This time he directed his question towards the two girls who had remained silent for that entire conversation.

Yang shrugged. "Aura Exhaustion is a dangerous thing, and Weiss wasn't as lucky as you were. Not only does she have light brain damage, but apparently she lost her entire Semblance." After she was finished speaking, she scooped up some food with a spoon. "Now, open wide!"

Jaune ignored her attempt to feed him. "Seriously? Light brain damage?"

"Apparently her emotions are stunted, and her face is having difficulty expressing what little she does feel. Doctors are hopeful for a full recovery within a decade or two. Now open wide." She wiggled the food in front of his mouth.

Jaune repressed nearly his entire conversation with Weiss, and her life on the pro scale weighed a lot less now.

After Yang finished feeding him, she gathered the dinner things. "It's been fun. See ya tomorrow! Sweet dreams and all that." And she left.

A few seconds after she was gone, his attention drifted to the last girl in his room. "You aren't as fucked up as Weiss, right?"

Ruby's eyes shot up and met his gaze. "That's not nice! She is just having some trouble with her emotions. She's fine otherwise."

"Ruby, did you somehow fail to notice how she spoke about herself in the third person? I don't see how emotions are related to that."

"It's fine." Ruby looked back down, and she flipped up her hood. "She's fine."

Darn, I guess Weiss' state weighs heavily on her mind. What else could we talk about?

Flashes of scenes nearly forgotten went through his mind. "Hey Ruby, do you want to be friends?"

"Huh?" Silver eyes peered up, nearly concealed within a red hood.

"Someone I knew once told me that strangers were just friends you haven't made yet." He couldn't recall the memory of actually being told this, but he could faintly recall saying this to another Ruby. "Want to be friends? We could talk about weapons, or like… craters… or whatever." Faint memories were confusing without context.

"Really? You want to be friends?" Hope glimmered in her silver eyes.

"Yeah, you seem like a nice girl. Who wouldn't want to be friends with you?"

It was him. He didn't want to be friends with her after about an hour of listening to her ramble about the mechanics of guns. In his entire life, he has fired one gun, his uncle's revolver. Once on a new year's eve, about three years ago, his drunken uncle allowed him to fire his gun. Jaune aimed at a tree and pulled the trigger. The recoil snapped his trigger finger and the exhaust gas burnt his hands. Ever since then, he's decided that guns weren't cool.

"—ed bolt-action was cool and all, especially when it came to accuracy, it just wasn't for me, because I realized fairly early on that I wasn't the type to patiently wait for my aim and target to line up, also I had to use a lower caliber bullet than I would prefer with a bolt-action because the super high recoil would constantly chip my blade, I did briefly consider learning how to fold steel to be thicker, but well, being in the forge was never actually fun, I vastly enjoyed assembling than manufacturing, anyway, so the bolt-action mechanics actually didn't need that much maintenance, which sounds like a good thing, but another thing I learned from that prototype was that I really loved maintenance, it really let me familiarize myself with my weapon, I know it sounds corny, but sometimes it feels like my weapon is just an extension of who I am, like it's just another part in the whole that is Ruby Rose, but I know that most people consider that a dangerous thought, apparently a passage in a scripture advises against identifying with an 'object not of the flesh', but well, that definition had loosened up ever since people first invented prosthetics, anyway, it's still frowned upon outside those circumstance so that why I named her Crescent Rose, and then I placed a mental barrier between us, I know it's Ruby Rose's creation and not an actual piece of myself, so the bolt-action prototy—"

An hour, nearly a full hour, of this had turned Jaune's brain to a gooey mush that was about to leak through his nose and ears. "Ruby?" He weakly called out. "Got any advice for removing a barrier?" He raised his cast covered arms. If he had to suffer for an hour, then at least he could learn something, anything, even the slightest bit useful to him.

"Oh, uh…" Ruby trailed off as she closed her eyes.

Silence, blissful silence.

Jaune also closed his eyes, nearly falling asleep in the process.

"Ah! Got it!" Ruby startled him awake. "You were wearing sleeves and gloves, right? Then just mimic the sensation of your Aura flowing through those."

A single blink and then he remembered how it felt when his Aura had covered his clothing. A sharp buzz traveled along his reconnected nerves as his fingers twitched. "Oh." Jaune let out a low laugh. "Thank you, Ruby." He repressed any thoughts of not being friends with the young, rambling girl. "Please, keep talking."

"Really!?"

"Yes, I'd love to hear more."

"Okay!" She practically squealed. "Okay, uh where was I? Oh, wait, nevermind, uh do you want to hear about how I discovered that if I applied the principles of Gyroscopic Spin drift to my Semblance then I could shoot past my previous top records in every category?"

"Absolutely." Jaune kept his eyes open as he learned all about something he could've lived a full life without ever hearing a single word of.

At least I'm alive.

With the prospect of regaining the use of his body, the cons scale was unsurprisingly light.