King: And we're back and its a crazy one.

Knox: CoD Zombies, right? Because of the Element 115?

King: Sorry. I tried, but I couldn't come up with a good way to do that. It was so bad, I needed to look up Element 115 just to see what anyone was talking about. Sure, it would be interesting to see Jaune as say... Richtofen (which was the plan) would be cool, I couldn't really get a good story going for it. So, this one is here. This has been asked for since... Chapter 5, holy crap!

Knox: Damn! Took you long enough then.

King: Don't start. Anyway, here we go people. Hope you enjoy.

Inspiration: Borderlands 2

/\

And so began a new world. King felt a chill go up his spine. Oh! Oh shit.

The world opened to show Ozpin, dressed in dark green military fatigues, and Glynda, dressed in ragged clothes with her sleeve ripped away to show her blue, siren tattoos.

Nora groaned, "Oh come on! I want the space magic again!"

Glynda rolled her eyes and sighed. That said, she did like the idea of possessing actual magic. While Ozpin offered some power to her, she chose against it at the time. But, with things progressing as they were, she might have to talk to him about it again.

Between them was a young woman, similar tattoos spread across her arm. Her pale blonde hair was set to one side, slumped with her head. She sat against a large device, having died a moment before.

Ruby looked around the room, not finding a counterpart, "Who is that?"

Ren tapped his chair in thought, "She doesn't look familiar."

Nora was fuming at her continued lack of 'Magic Space Powers.'

Glynda shook her head. "What kind of person does this to his own daughter?"

Ozpin's eyes narrowed. "The kind that deserves to die."

A third figure walked up next to the other two. It was revealed to be Ruby, dressed in a very punk rock style, complete with hair in pigtails. One of her arms was robotic to top it off. She held a sleek, Maliwan submachine gun.

Yang chuckled a bit, "That's a pretty cute look, sis."

Ruby huffed but admitted in her head that she agreed. She especially liked the gun, now knowing what Maliwan weapons were like. Although, she did have a question, "What happened to my arm?"

Ironwood sighed, "It could be any number of things. But I can say that it is rather well put together."

Ruby looked down toward the dead woman. "It still feels kind of… messed up." Her glance moved toward the three-sectioned item lying nearby in the chamber the woman once held. The Vault Key, the item that would give the Hyperion Corporation the power to raze and control Pandora. In order to keep it from being charged and used against them, they had to kill the girl lying there.

Ruby shook slightly, not liking this world already. She knew that tough decisions were going to be prevalent in her life, but this felt wrong.

Glynda placed a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "This isn't on you. She was dead long before we got here. The only one to blame is Jack."

"Who?" Yang asked. "Do we know a Jack?"

No one gave her an affirmative answer. This was a new one.

Weiss, however, thought for a moment, "Well… My father's name is Jacque. It's fairly similar."

"It's possible…" Jaune explained. "Jacque is another version of Jack, like how Jaune is another version of John."

Yang chuckled, "So, we can call you John?"

"No." Jaune deadpanned toward Yang, "My name is Jaune."

"Touchy subject?"

"It was a problem growing up, yes."

Ozpin knelt next to the girl and shook his head in sorrow for her. "Even with what we learned… She didn't deserve this." He stood and turned back to the other two, "No time to rest, though. We need to get the key out of here and finally deal with Jack. Glynda, take the Key to Oobleck and keep it under lock and key. Ruby, you and I are going after Jack."

A small, concentrated flash of light formed behind Ozpin.

"It's time to finish this."

A loud gunshot rang out around the room, accompanied by a hole in Ozpin's chest.

This caused everyone to jump at how abrupt it was, along with how well timed. It was unnerving and they had reason to believe that this 'Jack' had appeared.

Glynda's hand clenched in anger and pain. She never liked seeing people die, least of all someone so close to her.

"OZPIN!" Glynda screamed, seeing her long-time friend die in front of her.

As Ozpin fell, the viewers saw Jaune standing behind him with a wrist mounted gun. "Sup?" He sounded angry beyond anger. He dressed in a tailed suit jacket with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, a yellow shirt and a brown vest. A mask covered his face, distinguishable from his actual face only by the lighter tone and latches. This was the man who became known as Handsome Jack.

This shook everyone again.

Jaune in particular. He'd seen twisted versions before on this screen, but this felt wrong. It was something in this version's eyes that felt off compared to the others.

Mercury, however, chuckled a bit. "What's with that stupid mask? What's the point?"

Glynda charged toward Jaune with her Siren powers activated. "You bastard! I'm going to…!"

Before she could finish, Jaune slapped a heavy collar around her neck, forcing her body to go limp and her powers to betray her. "Language…" Ozpin turned back to Ruby, his mismatched blue and green eyes filled pure rage. "What's that old saying? 'Don't pick a fight with a man with nothing left to lose?' Well, I'm going to show you how much you have to lose! And I've got the most powerful Siren on Pandora to do it!" He pulled Glynda up in front of him by the collar. "Now, Glynda. Kill the Vault Hunter. We have a date to keep with the Warrior."

Glynda's body moved against her will, but not without a fight. She screamed in pain and her tattoos glowed a bright purple in place of her usual orange. Ruby was surrounded by a bubble of energy before blinking away.

Ruby panicked, "Am I dead?! What just happened?!"

Jaune growled. "You phaseshifted her… I told you to kill her! Not teleport her away!" Jaune tossed Glynda against the ground.

Ruby sighed in relief, but it was short lived.

Sun's sigh was not so relieved, "Another Psycho-Jaune…"

Neptune nodded, "It was going to happen again eventually."

"I know, but still."

Jaune growled and walked over to the Key, picking it off the ground. "I still need to charge the Key…" He turned back to Glynda, "And now I have the most powerful Siren on Pandora to do it."

Glynda's breathing was heavy from the collar's effect on her powers, "Fuck you. You try to act all high and mighty, but you're just a manipulative bastard that turned his own daughter into a battery."

This shook Jaune more anything so far. The Arc family was always a close-knit group and the idea of someone genuinely doing that to a family member was completely foreign to him.

Jaune's eye twitched before he kicked Glynda in the side. "You shut your mouth! You don't know anything!"

"I know plenty…"

"Do you?! Did you know I had a wife?"

"I heard that in an Echo…"

"Yeah. But you killed my girlfriend earlier. How do you suppose that happened?"

Yang felt her body fuel with anger. She hated cheating more than most, a side effect of her abandonment issues.

"I always figured you were just a scumbag." Glynda smirked.

"My wife died. Torn apart by atoms when Angel's powers first manifested."

Yang's anger shattered into shock.

Jaune continued, "Everything I did was to keep her safe!"

"By locking her up in that chair?"

"You think she'd have been better off out there?! On Pandora! Where everyone is a bloodthirsty bandit that would rather shoot you than say hello?! She accidently killed someone that cared about her! How do you think she'll handle people actually trying to kill her, or worse?! I wasn't going to subject her to that hell! I had to keep her here for her own safety!" Jaune's anger subsided. "What's the point? A bandit like you could never understand."

This got the parents, and parental figures, in the audience to feel a chill. A part of them could feel understanding for that sentiment. Though, they also realized they shouldn't go that far.

Jaune put the Key in a digitized bubble and dragged Glynda with him to a transport at the top of the bunker. "When I wake the Warrior, I'll finally fix that. I'll have the power to finally bring order to this planet." He tossed Glynda onto a hexagonal pad and she disappeared into digital bits, with Jaune following soon after.

Glynda fell out onto a ground of hot stone. Jaune dragged her toward a system nearby with a large archway. He hooked Glynda to a makeshift device similar to the one from the bunker. Glynda started to float up as her powers were funneled between a deposit of Eridium, through her body, and into the Key.

Jaune flipped a couple of switches on his console. "There. Now, just get to charging that Key, 'kay?"

Glynda screamed in pain, but had enough power to turn slightly toward him. "Go fuck yourself, you monster!"

"Monster?" Jaune stopped his work. "Monster? Tell me Glynda, who's the monster here? Is it man that did everything in his power to keep his daughter safe on this shitty planet?! The man that wants to bring order and make this planet safe?! So people don't have to worry about getting stabbed or shot whenever they so much as peak outside?!"

Sun sighed, "I'm all for freedoms and personal autonomy, obviously, but that's a little too overboard."

Ilia scoffed, "Assuming he's telling the truth. We've all heard it before."

Blake shook her head. "Considering what we've seen of this planet in other versions, I don't think he's wrong."

Ironwood nodded, "An entire planet of anarchy."

Jaune's shouting continued, "Or, Glynda, is the monster here the one that cut a bloody path across Pandora for her own personal fortune?! The one who killed people for looking at her funny! The one who I came to on Elpis!" He pointed up to the sky, toward the large moon with his company's satellite hoovering over the surface. "The one I asked for help to save that damn moon and everyone on it?! The one who stabbed me in the back despite our only conversations being about saving lives?! Which one of us is the monster here, Glynda?!"

The image of the Psycho-Jaune fell away to show a desperate man. They saw a man who lost everything that was important to him. And what's more, they saw a through line. It was as if they saw everything Jaune had experienced to turn him into what they saw. Betrayals and pain on a planet designed to break you down to your most basic.

Glynda groaned from the Eridium flowing through her, "You're a fascistic prick that just wants to control the planet! Yang was right, you do have control issues."

Jaune shot Glynda's torso, to the lower left side and away from vital organs, the effects healing her as quickly as he shot her. "You shut your damn mouth! Just charge the Key and…"

A loud explosion forced his attention away. Ruby had arrived with a giant skeptical. She leapt down onto the stone, the new angle showing the viewers that they were surrounded by lava. Ruby glared toward Jaune. "Jack… It's time to finish this."

Jaune turned away from Glynda, pure hate in his eyes but a smile on his face. "You're a little late. That Key will charge, and the Warrior is going to wake up. I'll use its power to fix this shithole of a world. But first, I'm going to avenge my daughter." He disappeared and three copies appeared after a moment, two of them being hard light holograms that could help him fight.

Ruby gushed over the weapons, but still felt bad. "I don't like this one…"

Ruby raised her mechanical arm and a large robot digitized into form. A large torso with bladed arms floating in front of her, a death bot she designed and built herself. A small series of letters labeled it as [C-ROSE].

Ruby's gushing overriding her previous statement, "That's Crescent Rose?! That's so cool!"

Ruby fired her weapon while her bot put work into the clones. Jaune was putting up a decent fight, but Ruby was hardened by Pandora's hellscape. Even with his technological advantage, Jaune was being pushed back. Ruby and her robot soon broke down his shields and knocking him back, covered in his own blood.

He struggled to stand, looking up to the Key. It had reconnected, a sigh that it was complete. "I'm not going to die here! Not after all this!" He slammed the Key into place and Glynda fell next to him, a bubble forming around them.

The earth around them shook and lava shot up from its resting place. A giant claw of stone grabbed onto the archway and pulled up the massive body. It was a giant reptilian creature made of rock and magma, towering over everything else on the planet. As it roared out, lava slipped between its stone fangs onto the stone.

"Is that the Warrior thing?" Ruby shook in her chair.

Jaune got up onto his knees, shouting out to the beast, "WARRIOR!" With its attention on him, he gave it its command. "Kill."

Ozpin's eyes narrowed, "It seems so."

The Warrior roared and rose a claw into the air before slamming it onto the stone, causing the lava around it to rise up in a burst. Ruby dodged the falling molten rock and fired a few rounds up toward the Warrior, only for the bullets to bounce off its armored body. The Warrior swung its tail toward Ruby, knocking her into the air. Her robot flew up to catch her and found the tail knocking them both down to the ground again.

Ruby growled and swapped her weapon with a large rocket launcher. She fired a shell and knocked the armor on its chest loose, giving her an idea. "Crescent Rose! Attack the chest!"

The robot reared its arms up and charged a wave of energy before firing it out in a massive bolt of energy, knocking the Warrior off balance.

Ruby jumped up and cheered, "Yes! Show that thing who's boss!"

Jaune roared, "What are you doing, Warrior! Don't let them get to you like that! Duck and weave!"

The Warrior roared and slammed its tail into a stone pillar, knocking large stones toward Ruby. With her distracted, it lowered itself back into the lava around it. When it reappeared, its chest had reformed to normal. Rearing back one large attack, however, Ruby capitalized by breaking the chest stone again. This allowed Crescent Rose to charge up toward the Warrior's exposed weakness and slam a set of energy claws into the beast. The Warrior was knocked back and swung its body around to get the robot off its chest. As it did, Ruby grabbed a sniper rifle from her Echo's digitized storage and leveled the gun toward the giant. After a moment to line up her shot, she fired the first bullet in the chamber toward the beast, over Crescent Rose's shoulder, and straight into the Warrior's chest. The bullet ricocheted off the stone body within and tore up the Warrior from the inside.

Ruby jumped up in her chair, "YES!" A shot like that was too awesome not to celebrate.

As it roared in pain, Jaune slammed his fists on the energy bubble protecting him. "NO! NO! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!"

Glynda had to laugh, if a bit weakly. "Then you haven't been paying attention. Vault Hunters have a knack for doing the impossible."

Ruby was still celebrating the shot.

Yang sat back and grinned, "That's pretty cool. Maybe we're Vault Hunters." She looked over to her team. They did do a lot of things that most students didn't dare to in their year.

The Warrior fell onto the stone, its body dissipating slowly. Ruby was breathing heavily before she smirked.

The bubble fell away and Jaune fell onto the stone beneath him. "No… This can't be happening! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!"

As Crescent Rose disappeared, Ruby walked up toward Jaune and Glynda. "It's over, Jack."

Jaune coughed, blood falling onto the stone. "I can't die like this… Not on this damned planet!"

A memory flashed on the screen. It showed a very young Jaune hiding away inside a home of some sort. The wall opened next to him to show another room, a large shadow formed across the far side. The shadow was that of his grandmother, holding her favorite disciplinary weapon, her buzzax.

Glynda stiffened remembering the buzzaxes they'd seen, "Why would she…"

Port sighed. "It would seem this version of Mr. Arc was an abused child. A regrettable phenomenon of life."

Oobleck nodded, "It would explain his demeanor as well. Without any sense of control as a child, he would likely try to force it upon others."

Salem clutched onto her chair in anger that anyone would treat a child like that.

"I've lost too much!"

A new memory showed Jaune's wife disintegrating from their daughter's powers. Jaune was reaching out to her, only to find empty air.

Tai felt that one. A little too much. He knew the pain of losing a loved one, though he knew it would hurt even more having to see it.

"I've come too far!"

The memory for this was an old, rotund man (not Port) standing behind a desk. This man, who called himself the Meriff (mayor and sheriff put together)…

Cue a chuckle at how dumb that is.

… had just tried to shoot Jaune in the back. Jaune had tracked him down as a betrayer that sold out Hyperion's moon base. Despite it, Jaune was going to let him live. A flash and the Meriff was against the glass window behind him with blood splattering ouward.

"I can't die here!"

The next memory showed Jaune standing in a control room on Hyperion's moon base as Yang, Ozpin, and Glynda sabotaged his work, causing massive destruction and damage to the base. Everything destroyed in the pursuit of his death. This was before the era of Jack, when he was just a Hyperion programmer trying to save the moon from destruction at the hands of the militaristic Dahl corporation.

Qrow groaned, "I think I see what's going on… What turned him into that."

Roman nodded, his hat obscuring his eyes, "No sense of trust because everyone around him was trying to kill him."

"I saw the end! I'm suppose to wake the Warrior and bring order!"

The memory showed Jaune sitting in a throne in another vault. It showed him the future, the Vault Key, even the Warrior. To him, it was his destiny. However, Glynda had appeared and seared the symbol of the Vaults, the arch, into his face, scaring him for life.

Mercury nodded, "That explains the mask then."

The memories faded and showed Jaune again. "Not at the hands of some bandit! I could have saved this planet. I could have restored order! And I wasn't supposed to die to some CHILD KILLING PSYCHOPATH!"

Ruby held up a Jakobs revolver, a powerful hand cannon designed for massive damage dealt.

Jaune swayed, his blood loss creeping up on him, "You're a savage… You are a maniac!" His voice became more pained, rage filling him. "YOU ARE A BANDIT! AND I! AM THE GODDAMN HERO!" He silenced as a bullet flew through his body and ripped apart what life he had left.

Everyone heard a ringing in their ears with this. But none more so that Jaune. All it took was five words. Five words that shook him to his core. I am the goddamn hero. Jaune always wanted to be a hero, to live up to his family name, to protect people. This, however, forced him to fear what would happen if he ever took it too far. If he ever formed a hero complex and a need to force peace on others. He thought he'd seen everything that could haunt him on that screen. Then, he heard those five words.

Ruby placed her weapon away. Qrow and Raven ran into the area, slowing from shock at what they saw. As they ran over to help Glynda walk, Ruby looked down toward Jaune's dead body.

Glynda called back to her, "Hey! You coming, Killer?"

Ruby shook her head. "I'll be back later. I have something I need to do first."

"Don't take too long." Glynda was walked off by her old comrades, leaving Ruby alone.

Ruby walked over to Jaune's body and knelt down next to him. She was silent, looking down toward Jaune's blank eyes.

Ozpin took a slow breath, "A moment of introspection then?"

Ruby huffed and stood again. "I hope you burn in Hell, hero," she said mockingly. She kicked him down onto a lower surface of stone as the lava started to rise.

Ironwood sighed, "Or not."

Jaune's pocket watch was knocked open, showing a hologram of Jaune before he became Jack. Before Pandora, before Sirens, before it all. He had his daughter on his shoulders with his wife by his side. It was the last time he could genuinely smile.

This… this hurt. It reminded them all that anyone could become a monster. Anyone could be broken down and anyone can fall if they weren't careful.

The lava rose, slowly enveloping Jaune's body. As the flames licked at the watch, the image started to short out, the image shaking before shattering. This was end of an era on Pandora. Pain led Jaune to Hyperion, betrayal turned him into Jack, and death was the result of it all.

The screen went black again, ending the viewing.

Jaune shook in his chair, needing deep breaths to keep it together. A hand placed on his shoulder made him jump. He looked over to see his team, looking toward him in concern. Something about them calmed him better than anything else on Remnant. He let out a breath and smiled. He would make sure he never turned out like that, and an Arc never goes back on his word.