Now I could write something witty or smart but I'm just going to drop the chapter and be done with it.
Chapter 4 School times Part 1
A week had passed and I've gotta say I am reminded of why I hate hospital settings, fuck me was I ever happy to be leaving that damn room.
A week of laying in bed, shit a brick I just wanted to grab my glock and shoot myself to end all this patient waiting.
But it wasn't all bad… to an extent of course.
my time had been shifted between being moderately bored to the supposed class notes Ruby had shared with me to surfing on my newest form of technical distraction, my Scroll.
it was like an Iphone but… better like android better but worse than android… if that was ever possible which it is… god fuck all I don't know how to explain it any better than that.
all I ever did was just look up some random tidbits online… ok fine I looked at people who were smart enough to make a speedrun history of Remnant and let me tell you this place made nevada to a very very small margin just barely better.
Furries are a thing-sorry I mean "Faunas" are a thing, god no matter which universe I end up in I'm alway going to end up finding Furries, fortunately Nevada's version were crazed people wrapped up in straight jackets but that was probably me trying to keep myself sane from the first interactions I had with that specific type of enemy.
Regardless Racism is a thing… so bad in fact that I was seeing a very very basic alagory of Nazi's forming within the Faunas species called the white fang… hold on, is that allegory the right term?
Shit I don't know regardless they were a nice peace filled protest group quickly turned terrorist group-ISIS sorry no it's ISIS not Nazi's fuck me why am I like this?
Back to it White Fang bad and I see myself taking them on either sooner or what I am begging to be later cause I have more pressing matters to deal with.
School.
Letting out a tired groan I slowly rubbed my temples as I was still dealing with the inner turmoil of being in school.
The turmoil was rather simple seeing as I kinda promised myself that if I ever did go back to school that I would take it seriously but since I am here I'm wondering if this actually counts seeing as I didn't actively choose to go into this school.
"Jackson, are you ok? You look a little angry." Hearing Ruby I paused in my thoughts and just let out a tired sigh.
"It's nothing, just… trying to take all of this in and it's-" I paused for a couple seconds as I waved my hand out gesturing to the wide expanse of a campus the two of us were walking through. "-Just a lot to take in you know?"
"Yeah I was like that last week when Yang and I got here, don't worry you got the best partner to help you along." Ruby expressed rather confidently, something that surprisingly put a light chort in my throat.
"Yeah fine oh great leader, now I just need some fresh clothes." I mumbled under my breath while I lightly tugged against the collar of my new uniform's shirt, I had removed the tie and left the top two buttons undone.
Not one for uniforms but if I have to wear it I am going to be wearing it my way.
"Oh Yang can help you with that, but I think you're going to have to wait until the weekend for a shopping trip." Ruby quickly spoke up, I was surprised but I didn't try to question it as I more or less used to her guessing what I was thinking.
As the two of us walked through the campase Ruby chose to show me around while she walked me to our shared dorm room, a dorm I was going to have to share with three teenage girls… how ecchi shounen is atypically annoying.
Something I had a week or so to come to terms with with Ruby telling me random little tidbits of our… supposed team's new shenanigans to Nurse Tsune, someone who was very adamant to give me the Birds and Bees talk as well hand me a box condoms while leaving me a fair warning not to get my team quote on quote "Pregnant".
She unfortunately came back thirty minutes later to see me midway through blowing another condom balloon… I got through a third of the box before she quickly snatched the box off me and ruined my fun.
Ruby also wondered where I got the "balloons" from and asked if she could get any for the dorm and I told her where she could get some more immediately.
To say Tsune was done with my shit would be an absolute understatement.
"And this is your locker… I already put everything inside and I did a little extra." Ruby exclaimed as she showed my locker in a room filled to the brim with various lockers.
"Quite the tech on this thing." I noted as I opened the locker as Ruby had told me that I could unlock by either a code or my scroll, inside I was happy to see my weapons sat inside rather nicely along with some of my other things like my Sunglasses, Hat and Bandana.
"Well they are Rocket lockers, by the way be careful of Cardin he shoved Jaune into one a couple days ago in the middle of a tour and sent him in the middle of the Emerald Forest." Ruby explained as I raised an eyebrow as this was the first time she had told me this.
"And why are you telling me this?" I asked while picking up my glock and pulled the slide inspecting it.
I frowned as I saw the pistol was different, it looked… nicer, no wait it looked cleaner.
"Cause that's him over there." Looking up I turned to where Ruby was pointing and saw four teens casually making their way over, two of them looked rather dull while the other two were rather definitive with the shortest of the four having a big light green mohawk on their head and other was rather tall, maybe an inch taller than me and was built rather burly… is that the right word.
"He's a big jerk." Ruby exclaimed while I just shrugged and quickly went back to my glock where I quietly removed the suppressor with a couple of twists.
"Well well well boy's if it isn't little miss prodigal shorty what are you doing here?" Hearing a rather condescending voice I immediately chose to ignore it in favour of grabbing and stashing pistol magazines in my school coat as I wasn't planning on not lacking even while I was in a supposed school for future protectors of the world.
Stashing my glock's suppressor along with a couple of mags in my coat I quietly slipped my glock in the back of my pants waistband and quickly threw my hat and sunglasses on before I lightly SLAM'D my locker closed.
"Oh who's this?" The sarcastic nature of his voice caught me as the guy who was staring at me gave a rather sinister looking grin.
"This Cardin… is Jackson, MYYY PARTNEEER."
Ruby, why did you say it in that way? And especially in a proud way like that.
"Oh this is him!?" Cardin the tallest I quickly figured, quickly started to laugh. "Oh wow so he's the one sleeping right through the first week of class, alright alright tell me something I heard you took a beating from a beowolf the size of a chihuahua this true?"
The following laughter echoed through the locker room as I gave the ginger haired teen along with his lacky's a raised eyebrow.
Really? This is funny to you? Jesus Comedy has fallen rather low in this world if this is what gets people to laugh that hard.
"Shut up Cardin, for your information he killed a Nevermore!" Ruby seemed rather quick to come to my defence but I quickly grabbed her shoulder and lightly pulled her back just before she stepped any further forwards.
"Ease up you, let's just go to the cafeteria as I haven't had a real fill while I was in the infirmary." I had quickly changed the flow to pull Ruby away from falling for this guy's rather… pathetic attempt to get a rise out of me.
"Yeah you two better go get your fill of milk maybe that'll fix that height problem you got there Shorty." Cardin loudly exclaimed, Ruby looked ready to be pulled back into it but I quickly stopped it by throwing her cloak hood over her head.
"Come on you, just ignore em." I said pushing the smaller girl in front as she seemingly in a reluctant fashion just chose to walk along with me.
"Fine, but I told you he was a jerk." Ruby spoke as I could just barely hear that pout in her tone of voice.
"I'm not denying it, but it's not my problem and you shouldn't make it your problem." I exclaimed as the two of us finally walked out of the locker room.
"But they're the ones who are being jerks." Ruby pouted rather cutely as she obviously didn't like or take any real heed of my current advice.
"Don't worry bout it, if he causes any more problems I'll deal with him." I said bluntly as I felt my hand twitch at the possible prospect of dealing with such a… "Jerk".
Argh just thinking about calling someone a jerk is off putting.
The tour took us around the academy and I had to say… I was getting flashbacks.
"And this place is another classroom we take history here, don't know why we have to take it but Blake seems to like-oh Blake is my sister's partner and they are a part of our team… by the way we are a team now." Ruby explained as she seemed rather excited about being a part of a team.
"A team… didn't you tell me this earlier? Also a highschool with teams, gotta say that's… original." I said with a rather blunt fashion, my attention shifting from Ruby's tour guide bit and to the surrounding school itself.
The outside was something but the inside screamed prep school, I mean the uniform was a give away but this place was just an eye opener, who in the hell would pay for all of this? I mean this carpet who the hell would put carpet in the middle of a school?
Continuing with the tour Ruby finally showed me the cafeteria and I was greeted with another team that Ruby and the rest of the team befriended and also solid food that actually looked good.
I had quickly gone about stuffing a tray of various foods that I was close to devouring from the buffet itself but I had decency to not do so.
When I finally sat down I looked around and saw the new friends Ruby had made were staring at me with wide eyes.
"Get your own food." I said before quickly going about devouring my stack of food.
"So you are… Jackson correct?" Hearing the question I paused in my eating to look at the red head who looked rather uncomfortable.
"Yeah you're the guy that went woosh boom and blamoooh!" The lighter toned redhead loudly exclaimed as she looked rather excitable, it was a lot more to handle than what Ruby had as I just shrugged and went back to eating.
"Haha… yeah sorry about that I guess he wasn't kidding when he said he was hungry, I should've taken him here sooner." Ruby admitted, I glanced to my side and saw how embarrassed she looked and I fully paused in my eating and swallowed the food I had stuffed into my mouth.
"My body had consumed a lot of my own body weight in order to produce the energy and force I needed to take on those… grimm." I had hesitated at the last second but in my defence I was still put off by the idea that monsters that disappear after you kill them was rather stupid.
"The infirmary wouldn't allow me to put the weight back via solid food so I had to wait to be released, I would've been out sooner but I didn't have my… Aura unlocked until a day or so after I woke up." I further explained as Aura was a new thing entirely, something I chose not to think about cause it's entire thing kinda made my head hurt.
I mean it was like I knew what it was but also I had no clue what it was at the same time, hence my head hurt whenever I thought of it.
"Wait, you didn't have your aura unlocked during the initiation?" The guy with pink highlights asked, his tone was quite clearly one of surprise.
"No… why is it a prerequisite or something?" I asked before taking another bite out of my food and then continued with my thoughts. "Don't see the problem I've done… well no I don't think that counts, neither does that time with the… that show maybe… no I guess that whole machine debacle is the closest I can get to the initiation."
"The machine debacle? What happened to what machine?" The blonde guy asked as I could see he was rather invested with me all of a sudden.
"Eh don't worry about it, I killed it and I shouldn't be seeing that thing pop up any time soon." I waved my hands to emphasise the point across.
"Oooo was it like some reality bending type of machine that if killed you had to do an entire loop of time in order to keep the fabric of reality together?" The ginger haired girl asked as I just paused entirely and slowly stared at the girl.
…
…
…
The girl seemed to quickly drop her head and I quickly went back to eating, during the short conversation I had managed to get through a third of my food on the tray.
"Uuuuuuuh ooooookay, well I'm Jaune," the blonde introduced themself. "That's Pyrrha." The red head. "Ren" Pink highlights "And well Nora" and the ginger girl.
…
…
…
"Weeeeeell this has been great come on Jackson I think it's time for me to show you our dorm." Ruby quickly spoke up and I just looked at her and then back to my tray, gesturing to it with one hand.
Ruby gave me a frown that said that it was time to go and I frowned before reluctantly placing my fork down on the empty portion of the tray.
"Sigh, right fine, sorry team-"
"Juniper."
"-Juniper, best I go then." I said giving Ruby a small thankful nod before taking the rest of my tray and the two of us moved to the exit, not before dumping the rest of my food away with great reluctance but I could see Ruby was rather adamant for us to leave rather quickly.
When we were a good distance away from the cafeteria I watched Ruby move and kicked me right in the shin… the metal shin.
"Aaah! that hurt!" Ruby yelped as she hopped around lightly on her other foot while grabbing her hurt foot.
"How hard is it to remember I'm a quadruple amputee with cybernetic prosthesis?" I asked, reaching down and pulling my pants leg up to show my prosthesis.
"Well I'm sorry but that entire thing back there was more awkward than my first day here!" Ruby complained, hopping around until I quickly reached over and grabbed her arm helping her keep balance. "Why were you so cold to everyone?"
"I'm sorry I like to eat my food in silence." I pointed out rather casually, I mean it was the same thing back at base but I admit every now and again I liked to hang around with others for a meal or two.
"Well… you could've been nicer." Ruby pouted as she finally placed her foot down, I quickly guessed her Aura had done it's job at healing her little owie.
"Sorry I'm not a social butterfly… what about the rest of our team, they're gonna be like team Juniper?" I asked but the tilted head of Ruby told me that I needed to provide further context. "I mean with the amount you told me about your sister and her partner, are you sure if they are comfortable with having a guy in their dorm room?"
"Oh that, they'll be fiiiiiiine, well Blake didn't seem to care but Yang took a little time to convince so yeah I say as team leader you are A OK Jackson." Ruby poked her tongue out of the side of her mouth while giving me a thumbs up, quite the pose.
"…Your confidence in your sister is incredibly misplaced." I plainly pointed out, my memories of my time in the infirmary coming back as I heard Nurse Tsune silently complain about Yang and her explosive temper and she had already put a good couple of second years in the infirmary for a day or two.
"Ah no it isn't, trust me I'm your partner and she's my sister." Ruby said with further misplaced confidence that I just chose to leave alone.
I was in the belief that actions spoke louder than words and I had a feeling Yang was also in the same mind set.
When Ruby finally showed me to our shared dorm I watched as she opened it up revealing a rather large room with four beds… well two bunk beds to be exact… I mean I got the bunk bed on the books but the one hanging on ropes gave me an immediate sense of danger.
"Yeeeeeaaaah forgot to tell you about the bunk beds we did this on the first day too." Ruby spoke up as she walked into the room.
Following inside my eyes turned to one of the other residents on the bottom book bed, this probably the first time I was seeing this person as they wore the school uniform, they had long black hair, with a rather large black bow sitting on top and their eyes were a bright amber yellow that was very reminiscent of cat's eyes.
She laid on the bed reading a book and just lowered it enough to look in my direction before pulling the book up, covering her face once more showing a clear disinterest.
"Blake it's Jackson, Jackson this is Yang's partner Blake!" Ruby loudly introduced as I heard the door to our dorm close, guess I forgot to close it.
"Hi." Blake just turned the page of her book as I quickly recognized her disinterest was more than just an obvious show.
"Charmed." Was all I said looking back at Ruby as she seemed to sheepishly chuckle as the interaction was clearly not something to her liking.
"Come on this here is your bed, the bathroom is over there, warning if possible you better get to it first before Yang as she takes foreeeeever to shower herself." Ruby explained, showing me the obvious look of the room.
"Is my baby sister telling lies!?" Hearing the call from said bathroom my eyes turned to see the door swing wide open and reveal a rather well… is there a word for being both curvy and fit? Cause those thighs and abs tell me there is.
Not that I am into them but they were two of the first five things I noticed when this girl revealed themselves.
The other three were her long golden mane of hair pulled back into a high ponytail, those purple eyes of her and the last well… chesticles comes to mind.
"Oh it's that guy who saved my sister, what? never seen someone of my hotness?" The blonde exclaimed as she gestured to herself, which to be fair to me it was hard not to stare as she was wearing fucking short shorts and an orange sports bra.
"Yaaaaaang! Put some clothes on!" Ruby yelled out as she was quick to throw a big hoodie at the blonde.
"Guh? Why are you jealous of me or something?" Yang joked casually throwing the hoodie on with little fuss. "Also since he's bunking with us hes going to be seeing us whether you like it or not."
There was something off about that last bit, the way I saw her eyes seemed to flash red for the briefest of moments and the look she gave me.
"I'm not exactly comfortable with living with a guy." Hearing Blake speak more than a word seemed to catch everyone's attention, another page turned and she quickly continued. "No offence but how can we trust you not to do anything in our sleep?"
This seemed to catch Yang's attention as I saw the red in her eyes but this time her eyes stayed red, a clear incling in my head as well as obvious deduction told me that I had to nip this now or else I'd find myself in some random ecchi-esc shenanigans.
"Uh I… you know I've never had to actually defend myself in this manner, hold on give me a second here." I said, holding a finger up and then turning around to think.
"Take your time." Yang's tone told me that was a clear lie with how restrained she sounded.
"Well… Laziness comes to mind, I can't exactly be bothered to do anything and also there is the age difference… wait is there an age difference?" I quickly asked, turning my head around, looking at Yang, Blake and then Ruby. "Hold on, how old are you girls?"
"You do know it's rude-"
"Do I look like I give a fuck?" I quickly jumped in between Blake's sarcastic jab. "Answer the question."
"Well I'm fifthteen." Ruby quickly spoke up and immediately I made a sound of disgust, this seemed to get a response as the girl looked at me with wide fearful eyes. "What!? I was enrolled early, why is there something wrong with my age?
"Ignoring the clear panic you got there Ruby, yes I'm not interested in someone not in my age group." I said with a shake of the head, I mean I did look like just a second or so but that age range had me reeling back immediately.
"Well, we're seventeen." Yang said as I could see her tone had shifted from anger to light annoyance? Shit I don't know but she at the very least sounded like she had an attitude.
"That's not exactly better you know right?" I threw back folding my arms watching how Yang seemed to widen her eyes, the red immediately shifting back to a surprised look, confused purple.
"And why's that?" Blake asked the seemingly right question.
"Simple, you lot are not exactly twenty and up, you know the same range someone that's Twenty six should be looking for in a… partner" I had no real word to look for but I chose partner instead of using words like 'Lover', 'GF', or my personal favourite 'Waifu Material'.
"But wait aren't we partners?" Ruby quickly asked.
…
…
…
"I… I am not going to clarify, seeing as I think your sister can explain it better than I can, but short answer not that type of partner Ruby." I quickly answered as I saw the two older girls slowly catch up, Blake immediately shoving her head back into her book while Yang looked flabbergasted.
"You're Twenty Six!?" Yang yelled out, clearly not believing for a second… also I am kinda glad Ruby closed the dorm door. "You look like you're at our age, the hell do you mean you're twenty six!?"
"…What?" My eyes immediately narrowed before I quickly power walked to the nearby bathroom.
Unfortunately and I don't know why but the infirmary didn't put a mirror in my ensuite bathroom so I had to use whatever metal surface I could get to check my face which led to some rather amusing Carnival mirror illusions.
As soon as I looked at the mirror my eyes widened in absolute shock as gone was my old tired face that was covered in fresh scar's the medical tubes couldn't exactly heal and instead of an old face what I saw was a young teenaged face, a face I hadn't seen since I was seventeen.
…
…
…
"WHAT THE FUCK!?"
Chapter 4 end
Jericho: Don't worry what 10 less years. At the very least you're now a protagonist. Good luck and happy trauma dumping… haha
Amvmaster:… Sorry my friend is once again deprived of sleep.