So this is my first attempt at a story, I'm not even sure I'm going to post it, but I've had this idea bouncing around my head for a while now. Yes, the 'gamer' fics have been done to hell and back, especially for RWBY, but they are by far my favorite type of story on this site... the good ones anyway. So many of the stories I see either make the character way to OP way to quickly or they have terrible grammar and/or plot developments. If I do post this, it won't be anything like that. I hope so anyway. Well, let's get on with it.

Ok, what the actual fuck?

The continent of Sanus was the biggest known land mass on Remnant, housing the two kingdoms of Vale and Vacuo, with a multitude of small towns and villages in between. In one town in particular, some few hundred kilometers outside of the city of Vale, stood a large house, a small compound in actuality. It sat at the edge of the town of Nordain, with a wall surrounding it, keeping it seperate from its open neighbors, marking it as different. It was by far the grandest building in the village, as well as one of the biggest; all the other houses and shops were far more humble and, at most, were two stories tall, whereas the compound was a gigantic, three story architectural master piece. The shingled roof was made of black tiles and dotted with a few windows that belonged to various guest rooms and bathrooms. The walls were made of finely-cut stone bricks bigger than a grown mans torso and colored a muted brown.

A large slab of cedar wood served as a door, with a rectangular pane of glass located in the middle, the house extending thirty meters outwards on either side. Every few meters was a sectioned window, one on each story, the glass panes seperated by white, painted wood. It was certainly a grand building, but it played a far more important role to the residents of Nordain. It was an unofficial monument in remembrance to Nicholas Arc, the man who almost single-handedly defended the town from one of the biggest grimm attacks in the region's recent history. It had occurred during the Second Great War, just over fifty years ago.

The Suppressionist regime had believed that the best way to combat the Grimm had been to hide from them, suppressing all emotions in an effort to disappear from the Creatures' senses. They reasoned that good things such as peace and happiness didn't last, and that when they eventually came to an end, the negative emotions felt would be all the more stronger for the loss. So in an effort to keep the the global emotional state as neutral as possible, the four kingdoms enforced a type of society that kept people from expressing themselves. After all, what better way to hide from monsters who seek and destroy humanity than to stop being human? Children were taught how to suppress their emotions in schools, adults were made to attend mandatory suppressionist courses and monthly psyche evaluations. Any form of art or music was banned. Dance was banned. Almost all books aside from non-fiction were banned. Wearing excessively colorful clothing was frowned upon and even fined in some cases. Life wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't bright. It was like living your life in a black and white photograph.

The craziest thing though, was that it was actually quite effective. In the first seven years of the Supressionist regime, Grimm attacks on settlements and travelers reached an all-time low, only happening every few months, some places going as long as a year without seeing so much as a Beowolf. For the faunus, it was the closest to true equality they had ever had. Since they contributed to the worlds emotional state, the kingdoms implemented drastic changes and laws in order to improve the faunus' admitably shitty life-style. Tyrannical and oppressive they may have been, but they were also fair. Poverty was practically non-existent. The wealthy's money was used to raise the poor to an equilibrium, and for seven years, the world existed in a state of calm.

And then everything fell apart.

If there was one thing that humans and faunus had in common, it was their rage at having their freedoms taken from them, though ironically, members of the former had no qualms about subjecting the latter to such a thing. As the fifth year drew to a close, discontent at the stagnating society began to brew. People had grown restless and were frustrated of the same routine day in and day out. They were bored. Boredom led some to depression and others to frustration. The frustration led to anger and at the end of the seventh year, the anger led to an all out rebellion.

All the negative emotions people had been bottling up for years exploded all at once. And as the negativity rose, so did the enemy. The low and still falling number of Grimm attacks did an about-face and made a mad dash for the opposite end of the spectrum. News of entire towns and villages dissappearing under the black bodies of the creatures became commonplace, and if you wanted to go anywhere, it had to be by bullhead. It raised your chances of surviving the journey to a whopping

thirty eight percent. If you planned on traveling by land, you might as well carry your tombstone with you, because you were as screwed as an altar boy in the Vatican.

And so upon hearing the reports of a massive horde of grimm consisting of various species making a beeline for his home town, Nicholas had pleaded with his superiors in the Valitian army to send reinforcements, and when they refused, citing that Nordain was a lost cause, he abandoned his post as a luitenant to rush back and co-ordinate a defense against the tide of darkness. He did so just in time.

Nicholas only had seven hours to prepare the town and its residents before the first few Beowolves rushed out of the tree line, followed by Boarbatusks, churning up the earth as they spun. Then came Ursai, then Deathstalkers, then Griffins, at least two King Taijitu's, hell there was even a fucking Gheist wearing the partially eaten corpses of the horde's previous victims. Needless to say, the sight of a Grimm using a veritable mountain of half eaten cadavers as a body, walking towards them, was enough to make some of the towns people pass out, while others divested their stomachs of their earlier meals.

Nicholas however, didn't hesitate, and charged forward while booming a war cry. The sight of the large man clad in silver armor fearlessly charging towards the abyss with sword and shield in hand inspired the rest of the on-duty huntsman to follow, albeit scared shitless. They kept the Grimm from entering the town for over an hour, the sturdy walls of the town forming a natural choke-point they could defend.

Then the first huntsman fell, then the next, and the next. One by one they were cut down or broken or gored, yet the ones able to fight kept fighting, even after they retreated and the town was over-run. As the air grew thick with the black smoke of dissipating Grimm and the smell of used gunpowder, the older, more intelligent creatures seemed to realize they were fighting a losing battle and retreated back into the forest, leaving the younger and significantly weaker monsters to be slaughtered by the remaining huntsman. They had won, but not unscathed.

Many civilians had been found cowering in their homes by Grimm and were killed. A few huntsman still alive at the end of the battle succumbed to their wounds within hours. Nicholas, who had killed more Grimm than any other, was miraculously still alive, albeit missing an arm, his other hand, a leg, several teeth and parts of a few vital organs. Despite his injuries and the noble manner in which he gained them, the Valitian military caught up to Nicholas several days later and court marshalled him for deserting. He spent the remainder of the war in a military prison.

Upon returning home at its conclusion and the Suppressionists defeat, he was shocked to see the veritable mansion the Nordain populace had built as a symbol of gratitude for his bravery. He spent the remainder of his life in the Arc house with his wife and their six children. He had wanted to have more, but well... it was a bit hard to do that when your dick and balls had been chomped off by Beowolf now wasn't it.

After the Suppresionists defeat, a new government had been installed, one that promoted creativity and expression, and as a result, coupled with the fact that the war was over, people grew happier and the Grimm attacks dropped to a more manageable level. Now, fifty years later, as the sun rose over the forest canopy and the birds began to sing, the townspeople of Nordain were reminded that they owed their serene and peaceful lifestyle to the man who used to live in that house.

"KIDS, GET UP OR YOU'LL BE LATE FOR SCHOOL!"

"SHUT UP YOU OLD HAG, I'M A FUCKING ADULT I DON'T HAVE SCHOOL!"

"LILY, THAT'S MY CEREAL. DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH IT!"

"YOU'VE BEEN IN THERE FOR EVER. GET OUT, I NEED TO PEE!"

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU JAUNE!"

"OLD!?"

So it was ironic that his descendants and the current Arc generation were the ones to most often disturb it. Between the sibling rivalries of eight children, the fiery temperament of their mother and said mother's rather... enthusiastic and extremely vocal late-night activities with her husband, it was no wonder there was a sizable gap between the Arc mansion and their closest neighbors.

~Line Break~

Jaune Arc had woken up that morning feeling good, better than anyone had any right to be at 6:30 am on a monday morning. He felt full to the brim with energy, like he could run a marathon and finish feeling more alive than when he started. It was as if his body had cleansed itself over night and he had been restored to peak health.

So good was his mood that he decided he'd be a darling little brother and wake his second eldest sister Claire up. Now Claire was not what one would call a morning person, or a day person really. Not a people person either, or an especially nice person. In fact, Juane had to admit she was kind of a bitch to most people. Having been woken a few minutes earlier by Lily's shouting as she made her way downstairs, she was likely to be extremely irritable and whoever disturbed her next was sure to have their heads bitten off. Jaune was indeed a brave soul.

... Or just plain stupid, considering he was currently drawing a smiley face over her sleeping one with shaving cream.

'Almost done', Jaune mentally snickered as he started to apply shaving cream over her right eyebrow.

'There', he though proudly as he finished, before taking out his scroll and snapping a couple of shots, including a selfie of his incredibly smug face next to Claire's sleeping, foam covered one. 'Now to wake her up and see her reaction. Man I'm going to love this'. He always got the best reactions out of her.

Using the corner of the bedsheet, Juane lightly tickeled Claire under her nose, at the edge of one of her nostrils. Her sleeping face contorted into something resembling a frown - it was hard to tell with it being mostly covered in foam - as she rolled over onto her side, smearing shaving cream all over her pillow.

Claire raised her hand to lazily swat at the fly, or whatever it was that was on her face and disturbing her sleep. Her hand however, upon coming into contact with her face, felt some soft and sticky substance covering it. This was enough for her semi-conscious brain to register that something was wrong as she opened her eyes and looked at her hand. Their was some sort of white, sticky cream smeared over hand, and more on her face by the feel of it. Turning her head, she saw her only brother standing there looking smug and slightly expectantly at her, the same way one watches a volcano on the verge of eruption.

As Claire's bleary mind tried to process what was going on, Juane spied an item of interest on his sisters desk pushed against the wall on the opposite side of the bed. It was a box.

A box of tampons.

A recently opened box of tampons.

A recently opened and partially empty box of tampons.

As one of two males living in a house with five adolescent females, Jaune was very aware of the implications. The smug grin on his face froze as he contemplated just how immensely he had fucked up. 'This... is bad. So very very bad,' he internally panicked.

Jaune watched as Claire caught sight of the can in his hand and realization dawned on her. 'I am completely and utterly screwed,' Jaune whimpered.

Claire's murderous expression confirmed these thoughts. With an inarticulate shout of rage, she threw the covers off herself and made a lunge for Jaune as he desperately scrambled for the door. It wasn't fully open, and the split second spent opening it nearly cost Jaune. Claire's hand reached for the back of his pajama shirt as he darted through the doorway, her fingers brushing against the back of his collar, before she ran face first into an invisible, stretchy and slightly sticky wall.

'Thank Oum for shrinkwrap,' Jaune grinned as he watched his sister run face first into the sheet of sticky plastic he had stretched across the doorway in anticipation of a reaction like this, smooshing the rest of the shaving cream all over her face and into her hair, the white foam contrasting sharply with her black bob-cut. 'And thank you past self for having such excellent foresight.'

The plastic only bought him a second though, as with another shriek of rage, Claire wiped the cream from her blue eyes, tore through the plastic and chased after an already running Jaune. While Jaune was taller and had longer legs, he was only fifteen and still rather scrawny. Claire on the other hand was a twenty two, a fully grown adult woman. A fully grown adult woman who was gaining on him. Jaune risked a look back and his heart nearly stopped. Claire's positively deranged face looked back at him from three feet away. Jaune felt a burst of panic that only a sibling running from an angry, much scarier sibling could feel.

'Too close, too close, too close,' Jaune chanted in his head, while out loud he rythmically repeated a single word.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-" Still swearing Juane turned his head forward and felt the panic intensify as he saw Holly standing outside the locked bathroom door... which was ten feet in front of him. His swearing intensified. He was running too fast to stop, and if he crashed into her he would really hurt her. Holly, Lily and Tulip were rather small for their eleven years of age. At the speed he was running he would break her. More importantly, Claire would catch him and drop kick his ass off this mortal coil, not only for his earlier prank, but for hurting one of the triplets. She was as abrasive as sandpaper and blunter than a hammer to the balls, but she loved her family more than anything.

That didn't mean she wouldn't throw him through the window for hurting the cuter members. She'd done it before.

Jaune was all but pissing himself now. He couldn't stop or Claire would catch him and kill him. He couldn't keep running or he would hurt one of his beloved sisters and Claire would still catch and kill him, only she'd do it by defenestration. Neither of those where an option. He had to do something. Anything.

"-FUCK!"

With a final, loud expletive, Jaune planted his left foot on the ground just in front of Holly's alarmed, diminutive form, lifted his right foot and spun. Time seemed to move slower than usual as he executed a near perfect pirouette around the young strawberry blonde. As he was turning, Jaune ended up facing Claire and Holly for a few split-seconds, and saw identical impressed and surprised looks on their faces. If he had the time he'd be impressed with himself too.

Jaune had always been a little clumsy, and since puberty had hit, he'd gotten even clumsier on account of his body parts growing rapidly and out of sync with each other. The impossibly graceful move he'd just pulled off should have been outside of his abilities, but Jaune didn't stop to contemplate this. He had a chance now and he was damn well going to take it.

"Swear!" he heard Holly's voice call out behind him, referencing his earlier cursing.

Jaune was nonplussed. Between his impressive bout of dexterity, nearly crashing into her because he was running scared shitless from their elder sister and said elder sisters enraged and cream covered face, that's what she chose to focus on?

"You can bite my ankles for it later, half-pint!" Jaune shouted over his shoulder.

Not a second later he heard heavy footfalls behind him as Claire got over her surprise and resumed chasing her prey, but Jaune knew her efforts were in vain. At this pace he would reach the staircase before her, then it was just a simple matter of sliding down the bannister to the second floor, doing the same to get to the first, getting into the kitchen where his mother was cooking breakfast, and he was safe. No matter how scary Claire was, she didn't stand a chance against Vanessa Arc, especially not in the kitchen.

Jaune grinned as he turned the corner and came up on the staircase. He was safe. He was free. He was falling. One moment he felt like galloping stallion and the next it was as if the connection between his brain and his body had been severed. With dull thud Jaune's head painfully connected with the wooden floor. Sparks erupted in front of his eyes and he heard something ring in his ears before gradually fading away over a few seconds.

"Jaune!" He heard Claire's suddenly very concerned voice calling from a few feet away, her previously mentioned familial affection making itself apparent. "Are you okay?"

Jaune shook away the sparks and gingerly felt the spot where his head had impacted the floor. He winced; he'd definitely have a goose egg there tomorrow. Other than that, he felt fine. The sparks and ringing in his ears were fading, and after a few seconds had completely disappeared. His body felt like it did

"Yeah, I think I'm fine, just going to have one hell of a bruise later," he said.

"You sure? That looked like nasty hit to the noggin," she asked, before snorting. "Seriously, you go and pull a stunt that looked like some hardcore Black Swan shit and then you go and trip over your own feet. You're such a klutz."

'That's not what happened though,' thought Jaune while glaring at her. He'd been running as fast as he'd ever been, and then he was just suddenly... dizzy. His vision had warped, his senses had shut down and his body had just failed and went limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. 'What was that?'

Well, I think we've learnt a valuable lesson today, haven't we brother dearest?" asked Claire, her grin turning sinister, causing him to eye her warily. He was still lying spread-eagled on the ground, if she chose to attack he was done for.

"And what's that?"

"Karma's a bitch. My bitch."

~Line Break~

Routine meals for the Arc family would have been big enough for a family gathering by anyone else's standards, but for them it was normal. Feeding a nine person family - ten when Diana came home on the weekends - required a lot of food. The majority of the family was currently sitting at the large, pine table, the only ones absent being Diana, the eldest, who was studying at a culinary school in Vale, and their father and husband, Malcolm, who normally spent his mornings in the forge behind the house.

Malcolm wasn't the only blacksmith in Nordain, but he was the only technician and weapon smith. The other one almost exclusively did decorative work. Due to him being the only person the on-duty huntsman could go to to get their weapons repaired, maintained or altered, and in addition to their mom's job as a rail engineer, the family could afford their ungodly food quota.

Seriously, Jaune shouldn't be the string bean that he was. His thin frame was a bit of sore spot for him.

'Huntsman aren't skinny,' his dad would say every time he brought up his desired career path. According to him, huntsman also weren't wimpy, soft, completely useless at any form of combat, irresponsible, barely passing math, etc. The fact that all of that was true never stopped Jaune from determinedly declaring that he would be a huntsman one day, and this in turn never failed to spark a shouting match between the two. There was a significant strain on their relationship as of a month ago after a particularly bad argument.

Jaune just couldn't understand why his father wouldn't support him in his dream. All he wanted to be was a huntsman. Ever since he'd heard the stories of his great grandfather and his bravery, that was all he ever wanted to be: the hero, the savior, the knight in shining armor who swept in and saved the day.

Of course he'd outgrown thoughts such as these, but the desire and feelings they had invoked never left; they still burned strong, flaring greatly whenever his father condemned his choice. Jaune was glad he wasn't present at the moment.

Vanessa sat at one end of the table, while the other was where Malcolm usually sat. She looked nearly identical to Claire, though her black hair was usually pulled into a ponytail as opposed to Claire's bob-cut, and her eyes were brown. Their temperaments were also very similiar, though their mother had had about twenty extra years to mellow out a bit.

Messing with her was still tantamount to signing your death warrant.

To her left and right were the triplets and Macie respectively, the youngest of the bunch. The triplets- Holly, Lily and Tulip- had celebrated their eleventh birthday two months ago and were all identical; they all had strawberry-blonde hair, their mothers brown eyes, and unlike the rest of the family, tanned skin. They were an outgoing, social trio; the amount of friends they had had over for their birthday party/sleepover had actually filled all the guest rooms in the house, and that was with them sleeping on the floor.

Practically the only thing that differentiated them were their chosen hobbies, of which they were extremely good at. Tulip was the star athlete of the middle school she and her sisters attended, with a strong inclination towards swimming. The amount of gold that littered the mantle above the fire place was enough to make a dragon blush and shift uncomfortably.

Holly liked to dance. She'd started around Macie's age-eight-and had swiftly gone through hip-hop, ballroom dancing, and was currently trying to master ballet, which she found more difficult than the other styles she had tried.

Lily... well she was a bit different. If you couldn't find her in the house, you'd find her in their fathers forge. She wouldn't be swinging a hammer anytime soon, especially with her small frame, but under her fathers tutelage, she had learnt to take apart and reassemble small appliances and basic electronics... and a few guns. Their mother was not happy with that last one, but even she had been impressed at the sight of an eleven year old wisp of a girl strip, clean and reassemble an assault rifle the size of her torso in under five minutes.

Macie was the youngest of the bunch. She had smooth auburn hair that framed her cute little face, with big, violet eyes that would brim with tears at a moments notice. Those 'moments' were usually the instances where she got caught with her metaphorical hand in the metaphorical cookie jar, though was a literal case of her doing that once. She was an adorable little angel. Jaune was 90% sure of that. The other 10% was still wondering how one 'accidentally' set their brothers bed on fire after he had denied her cookies, especially when he was sure he'd locked his door when he'd left that day.

...Meh, he was probably just imagining things.

Jaune sat on the other side of Macie with Saffron on his right. He honestly loved his sisters with all his heart, but out of all of them, he was closest to Saffron. She'd been born at the beginning of January, and the night she'd been brought home from the hospital was the same night that Jaune had been conceived. You'd think that after going through the hell that is child birth for the third time, one wouldn't be so eager for another pregnancy, but Jaune's parents had wasted no time in doing just that and eight months and two weeks later, he'd popped into existence. They weren't twins, but they were in the same year at school and they sure acted like it some times; and as they both looked like gender bent versions of one another, they were often mistaken for twins.

Claire sat on the other side of the table next to Lily, munching on her toast as she fiddled with her laptop on the table in front of her. Claire had gone to a graphics engineering school after she had graduated, had then gotten a job for a kids cartoon channel, and she still lived at home. This was a source of many arguements between Claire and her mother, though Vanessa had yet to kick her out. Jaune suspected his older sister just didn't want to leave her family.

As the siblings finished up breakfast and went to go grab their school bags, their mother turned to him.

"What was all that screaming about earlier? It sounded like someone had let a Boarbatusk loose up there."

Holly giggled as she tried to stuff her ballet pointe in next to her school books.

"Claire was trying to kill Jaune, so he was running from her and he nearly killed me, but then he did a pirouette around me and nearly escaped her, but then he fainted like a wuss," she jabbered in an excited rush, before frowning as she realized her shoes weren't going to fit. She eventually shrugged and removed and discarded her maths textbook to make room.

"I'm actually kind of jealous," she continued. " It took me ages to get my pirouettes like that, and then you go and do it without even trying."

"Yeah, well you're lucky I did half-pint; if I had run into you at that pace I would have sent your skinny butt through the wall," said Jaune, who was waiting by the door.

Holly glared at him as she shouldered her bag and walked over to where Lily and Tulip were standing and watching with small grins.

Then she grinned a grin that did not belong on an eleven year old's face. "Oh, and Jaune said a swear. Lots of swears actually."

Jaune added onto that tally as he mentally cussed out the little traitor, though he knew she had landed a critical hit. Holly 1 - Jaune 0.

Jamie's mom turned to him with a smile that promised punishment. "Jaune?"

Jaune glanced at Saffron for help, only to see folded arms and a shit-eating grin. She was enjoying this too much to help out. 'Et tu, Saf?' Jaune thought, feeling slightly betrayed.

"When one is fearing for their life, one tends to use profanity to express said fear and to demonstrate the amount of danger to others in their vicinity. It's basic evolutionary trait, really." Jaune chose his words very carefully. If he could get his mom to smile he was in the free and clear.

The corner of her mouth twitched briefly. Yes!

"And what would one such individual have to do to acquire said life-threatening danger, hmm?" she asked.

From her place at the table, which was in the dining room just to the right of the front door, Claire scoffed as she tapped away at her keyboard. "The idiot covered my face with shaving cream while I slept, and when I chased after the moron I ran face first into some cling-wrap he'd stretched across the doorframe."

"Trust me, if I'd known it was that time of the month I wouldn't have gone near you," Jaune grumbled. "Ow!"

Every female in his immediate vicinity had reached over and given him a not-so-gentle smack, excluding Macie of course. The little bugger dished out her punishment in a much more subtle way.

"What's that time of the month?" she asked with a cute head tilt, and Jaune was promptly smacked again for mentioning something like menstruation in front of the 'baby' of the family.

"Hey!" Jaune exclaimed as he held up his arms to ward of any further attacks. He eyed Macie suspiciously. 'Did she do that on purpose?' He took in her wide eyes and inquisitive smile. 'Of course she didn't, what was I thinking? I mean look at the little angel,' he mentally cooed.Still, Jaune couldn't help but feel slightly on guard.

"Look, can we just go? We're going to miss the rail if we don't leave soon."

"Sure sweetie," said Vanessa as she opened the door and held it for them as they filed through. "With the amount of stupid things you've done today so far, I'm not sure we can afford to deprive you of your education," she teased.

Claire smugly added her two cents from the dining room. "I think it's safe to say that intelligence is not a flower that grows in Jaune's garden."

Jaune deadpanned in her general direction through the wall that separated the entryway and the dining hall. She was trying to out-sass him? Him?

"Come talk to me when you have a garden, sis," he replied without missing a beat. With that, he followed his siblings out the door, giving a satisfied smile at hearing his mom and Saffron's laughter and the indignant sputtering from behind him.

~Line Break~

There were three ways one could get into Nordain, each being used to varying degrees. The least used way was by bullhead, which, due to its sky-high cost, really just carried huntsman to and from Vale as their shifts changed every few weeks.

The second was by road. Not the safest method of travel, as you had a decent chance of running into some Grimm. It was mostly merchants who traveled from town to town, selling the newest products and tecknology from the capitol, that used this method. They usually hired a few huntsman or arua-awakened mercenaries to gaurd them.

The last method of travel was by far the most popular. The rail system. Extremely fast, the chances of a Grimm attack were none existant, and it costed next to nothing, since it was a government facility. It was this system that the youth of Nordain used to travel to Shion, the next town over.

Nordain had the basic things a town needed to function. A few apothecaries for the sick, a shelter in the event of a Grimm invasion, a communications tower, various shops that provided goods to the public, etc. One thing it did not have, was a school. Shiord was significantly bigger than Nordain, and had both a highschool and a middle school. And so every morning, the kids would pile into the rail cars and settle in for the half-hour journey to Shion.

This was where Jaune was, currently sitting in his window seat and watching as the green foliage of the forest blurred past outside. He was frowning; he wasn't feeling too good. Actually that wasn't the right way to describe his current state of being. He felt perfectly fine; perfectly healthy. In fact, that strange liveliness he had woken up with was acting in full force, he felt great.

But there was something else now. Ever since that weird... shut down he'd had this morning, it was as if his body had been out of sync with his mind.

It was hard to notice at first. It had been small things, like when he'd reached to grab the salt at breakfast, only to find it in his hand, having grabbed it with out realizing. Or when he'd gone to butter his toast, he saw that he'd already done so. At the time, he'd dismissed them as moments of inattentiveness, but now he could feel his thoughts fogging up, slowing. There was a clear disconnect between his mind and his body, which seemed to be reacting to his thoughts a few moments before he'd even thought them. It was extremely disconcerting, and left Jaune wondering if his earlier Liverpool Kiss with the floor had done more damage than he'd thought.

'If ever there was a human version of lag, this would be it,' he mused to himself.

His head turned towards Saffron across from him without reason or his consent, and only a second later did he understand why.

"Are you okay Jaune?" he heard her ask, but her lips hadn't moved. He'd only heard what she said now, but she had spoken when his head had still been turned to the window. It was like watching a movie with the audio playing a few seconds behind.

"I'm not sure, I'm feeling a little out of focus," he carefully replied a few seconds later. "That hit to the head might have been a little harder than it felt."

Saffron paused and looked at him with a concerned frown. "Should we swing by the the hospital? The girls know how to get to their school from the station."

After processing the sentence, Jaune shook his head. "No, I don't think it's that serious yet, I'm just having trouble focusing. If we miss the first few periods of school to go to the hospital, they're going to call mom. Mom is going to want to know where we are and if she finds out we're at the hospital, she will freak."

"She might have good reason to. A hit to the head could be serious Jaune."

"Well it doesn't feel serious. Look, let's just go about our day and if it doesn't clear up or it gets worse, you can drag me to the doctors by my ear, okay?"

She fixed him with an intense stare for a few moments, her big sister instincts making a rare appearance, before nodding slowly. "Fine, but if I get called out of class to take your unconscious ass to the hospital, I'll do so while wearing it as a slipper, got it?"

"Don't pass out or you'll lodge your foot so far up my posterior I'll be tasting shoe leather, got it." Jaune nodded, a shiver going down his spine. Why were all his sisters so violent?

The train arrived at Shion station a few minutes later and crowd of students in white and blue school uniforms disembarked. Macie took Tulip's hand and, along with Holly and Lily, walked off to the middle school that was just down the road from the high school. Both were a short walk from the station, for conveniences sake.

Jaune and Saffron joined the crowd of teenagers that were making their way to a large, well maintained building, with an equally well cared for sports field just next to it. Large windows lined all three stories of the brick walls, and if one looked up they'd be able to see a railing lining the roof. Technically, students weren't allowed on the school roof, but it was never locked and hardly ever monitored so you had a pretty good chance of getting away with it.

As the pair walked to their lockers, which were conveniently located next to each other, Jaune could feel his mind syncing back up with his body. There was still a delay between the two, but he could feel it growing shorter. He felt a little relieved at this; he'd played it off earlier when speaking to Saffron, but he couldn't help but be concerned himself. No matter what anyone else said, having your mind lag behind your body after hitting your head was never a good thing. Now that the lag was fading, he felt more comfortable, less anxious. Maybe today would turn out alright, even if it was a Monday.

"Hey, Jauney boy, wait up. You have something of mine."

'I just had to fucking jinx it, didn't I? Thought Jaune with a silent groan. Looking to his right, he could see a scowl adorning his sisters face, and realized a few seconds later that he was wearing one too. He smoothed his features as fast as his temporarily impaired faculties would allow. When dealing with Corduroy Pike, it was best to show as little agression as possible, it was only an invitation for him to respond in kind.

Turning, he and Saffron were greeted with a cocky smirk that practically lived on the tanned boys face. Corduroy, or Cord as people called him, was synonymous with bad news. He was known throughout school, Shion and Nordain for being an aggressive delinquent with a more than a few confrontations with law enforcement under his belt. His father was one of the few permanently based huntsman in the region, and a good one too, so he never really got more than a sharp slap on the wrist for all the shit he caused. His father had taught him how to fight properly, and he seemed to take that as permission to use those skills on anyone that pissed him off. He'd started more than a few fights, and won all of them.

He both looked and acted like a thug. 'Cord' wasn't just a shortening of his name; he was incredibly lean and packed with layer upon layer of dense muscle, giving people the impression of a dense steel cable for reasons they couldn't quite put their finger on. He probably would have been a star athlete for Shion high, except he didn't have half a shit to give about getting involved with school activities. His hair hung down around his neck in copper colored strands, framing his slim face. His dark eyes had a near constant malicious glint to them and his aforementioned smirk showed off slightly crooked teeth. He wasn't especially tall, Jaune actually had a few inches on him, but he had an intimidating aura about him that gave people bad vibes.

Jaune was ashamed to say that somewhere down the line, he'd become this degenerates personal whipping boy. It had started when he had first arrived at Shion High School; Cord was standing by the front doors, waiting to ambush any of the new students who looked like they'd be fun to mess with. Jaune had been unfortunately punctual. He'd ended up without lunch money and a slight bruise where Cord had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

The day after that the same thing happened. When he started being packed lunches instead the food would end up in his hair or on the ground. The situation just got progressively worse from there: doing his homework for him, 'loaning' him money, the occasional beating or public humiliation. If it had been televised in a cliché TV series or movie, Cord had done it. Jaune had tried going to the teachers, but all they did was give him uncomfortable looks and muttered something along the lines of talking to his parents.

It was more like they nervously informed his father, Sage Pike, about what was going on and he intimidated them into letting the matter slide. He was a very influential man in the region, and while not as bad as his son, Jaune had heard he could be a right bastard.

So the teachers let it slide, and once Jaune figures out why, he pretty much gave up. There was no way he was telling his parents what was happening. His mother might actually kill Cord and his father and his dad... he'd be proving him right. He'd be proving how weak he was.

And so Jaune endured, hating himself for it, and here he stood.

"You do have it, right?" asked Cord the malicious glint in his eye shining out like a beacon to Jaune.

"Have what, Cord?" ground out Saffron from beside him. It had been difficult convincing her to keep what was happening from their parents, but once he explained his reasoning, she reluctantly agreed. Mostly due to what he said about their dad, she'd probably help Vanessa kill the turd given the chance.

She had her arms crossed in front of her and was leveling an acidic glare at the still-smirking teen in front of them. Jaune didn't like Cord in the slightest, but Saffron detested him. She called him a violent, sociopathic, IQ deficient thug who had yet to discover the wonders of shampoo; all of which was true...

"Hey baby girl, how's my golden-haired goddess doing today, hm?" Asked said greasy moron, his voice suddenly turning smarmy.

...but none of that grated on her nerves as much as the fact that he wouldn't stop hitting on her.

"Call me that again and I'll string you up on the flag pole by your testicles." Saffron's tone was glacial. "Now answer me, what is Jaune meant to have for you?"

Cord gave a big grin and threw his arm around Jaunes suddenly stiff shoulders. "Him and I came to an arrangement on Wednesday you see. Ms. Clemen gave us a few pages of questions to do for homework, and Jauney here generously offered to to help fill in everything I'd left out for me."

'Which was everything,' thought Jaune to himself. Saffron's eyes widened slightly while Cord's suddenly narrowed. 'Whoops,' thought Jaune two seconds later as he heard his voice say what he'd meant to be a private thought. 'Maybe that wasn't as 'to myself' as I'd thought.'

He really hadn't meant to say that. This could be bad. Cord was like a gun with a hair trigger - one wrong move could lead to a violent outcome. Why had he said that? It must be the lag. His body was just spouting what ever his mind wanted to say without screening it first. He had to tread carefully here.

Cord's grip around his shoulders tightened threateningly. "Well yes, but seeing as we settled on this arrangement without you being hurt, I'd say it was a fair agreement, wouldn't you? We wouldn't have to go back on that would we?"

His intimidation tactics, while crude and unoriginal, still worked on Jaune, if for no other reason than he knew the other boy could and would follow through on them. He'd been on the receiving end of a few of Cord's 'light' beatings before, and honestly, they were dangerous in a life-threatening sense. Though the instances in which these beatings had occurred were rare, each time they'd happened he'd walked away with a severely bruised face and torso, along with split lips and bloody noses.

Jaune also remembered what had happened to the only guy Cord had ever fought seriously. The only reason he hadn't been arrested after beating the guy into unconsciousness was because the other guy had pulled a knife and attacked him first, so everything Cord had done to him afterwards was technically considered self-defense. Jaune was pretty sure he was still in a coma.

Jaune was legitimately scared of him. So what if he was a wimp? So what if he allowed himself to be bullied? So what if he did the guys homework for him every now and then? His pride wasn't worth the beating it would cost to keep it. It wasn't like he could fight back...

Jaune hung his head, feeling shame course through him. His dad was right, he was weak.

"No, we won't," he muttered, digging through his bag for the four pages of biology questions that he now wanted to rip up more than anything. He didn't look up, he didn't want to see the concerned and disappointed gaze he knew Saffron was giving him.

"Good, I don't think you could afford to hurt that pretty face; give the girls more of a reason to say no, huh? Oh! It looks like someone beat me too it," he said, spotting the light bruise on his head from this morning.

"He he. Beat. See what I did there sweetness?"

'Sweetness' looked like she was about to go for the throat.

Cord then spoke to Jaune, looking Saffron up and down with a leer. "You have such a beautiful sister Jauney, I can't wait until she finally gives in to me and I can make her scream."

Jaune froze in the middle of handing him the papers. 'That's my sister. That's my fucking sister and he's eyeing her like she's some back-alley whore he plans on commissioning.'

A cold, icy rage swept through Jaune, like he'd been plunged into the waters of Northern Atlas. He could deal with Cord harassing him, but if he started on Saffron, his sister, he would fucking murder him.

'Who the fuck does he think he is? Who the fuck gave him the right to-'

'You did.'

The thought came out of nowhere and cut through his mental rant. He was the one not doing anything. He was the one who never did anything. Others had stepped up to Cord before and while they hadn't come out unscathed, it was he who was being picked on... who was allowing himself to be picked on.

The cold anger intensified, but this time at himself. 'I want to be huntsman, to help people, and I can't even stand up for myself. Am I really just going to stand here and watch this fucktard ogle my sister?'

With each passing moment his rage grew. His blood pumped hot and loud in his ears, causing them to ring.

'Fucking hell no! I'm not going to prove dad right. I will be a huntsman! I will help others! I will not be a fucking coward!

He turned to Cord, the homework clenched in his fists. 'And I'm going to make good on that last part right now,' he thought, both utterly terrified and incredibly excited.

He lifted his hand and tore the papers in half.

You know when you're left in class without supervision and everybody starts talking and shouting over one another to be heard, but then the teacher walks in and everybody goes silent except for that one kid who keeps on shouting for a few moments before realization dawns.

That moment of silence occurred exactly as the paper tore, allowing the the sound to carry out to students around them, gaining their attention. Of course their attention only gained more attention and before long the small corridor was silent and staring.

'I will not be a coward,' Jaune repeated, albeit weaker than before. He could feel the stares of nearly forty students on them. Nonetheless, his anger spurred him on. Layering one half of the torn paper on top of the other, he tore them again, right in front of Cords stunned and incredulous face.

Jaune allowed the pieces to flutter to the ground, before getting as close as was heterosexually acceptable, and glared murderously down at someone who scared him shitless.

"Look at her like that ever again, and I will do to you what the Beowulf did to my grandfather, understand?" He asked, doing a pretty good impression of said creatures growl.

Cord was to stunned to respond, and so just stood there gawking as several seconds passed.

...

...

...

"...You're going to chomp his-?"

"Well of course I'm not going to bite his bloody balls off myself," Jaune snapped at the brave random that had spoken. "I'll find someone willing and I'll pay them to do it. Probably a hobo, they're desperate, and they have fewer teeth. It might make it more painful for the bastard."

The utter bizarreness of the statement ensured a few more seconds of silence as it was processed, and it's speaker critically judged, but Jaune was on a roll and he wasn't stopping. The ringing in his ears rose to a crescendo.

"I'm done done being scared of you, you jackass moron! If you want to spout of a scene from some highschool drama over and over, day after day like a damn parrot, well then you can go fuck yourself Polly, because I'm through playing the part of the weak, helpless victim, and my sister will never, ever, play the part of the slut like you want her to."

Jaune inhaled, "If you fuck with me again I'll fight you, and if you come near Saffron again, she'll kick your balls into your chest cavity while I go find a desperate enough homeless person to remove them completely. Let's see how intimidating you are when you can only threaten us lowly peasants in falsetto, great lord Eunuch."

At this point Jaune was panting from the exertion of unloading all of his anger in one, loud tirade. It was as if someone had fired a gun next to his ears they were ringing so loud. His peers looked stunned; Saffron looked like she couldn't decide on whether to be proud of him or to gawk like the rest.

"You think you're so high and mighty up on your pedestal, don't you? Well I've got new perch for you birdie," Jaune thrusted his middle finger in front of Cord's face. "Swivel on it."

He barely dodged the fist that flew past his nose. Cord had evidently gotten over his shock and had thrown a straight punch at his face with a look of apoplectic rage. By some miracle he'd been able to move his head to the side in time.

'How on earth did I avoid that?' Jaune's eyes widened as he felt the displaced air brush his cheek. If Cord had wanted to hit him, he would have hit him, he was much faster than Jaune.

'So why- Sweet Fucking Oum!' He hastily leant back, allowing Cord's follow-up right cross to whizz in front of his face, before hastily backing up. The enraged teen let out a wordless, guttural roar, his oily, coppery hair flying around his face as he let lose with a low kick, aiming to knock Jaune off his feet. It would have worked against anyone else, and it should have worked against Jaune, but yet again he managed to see it coming and mostly dodge it, only receiving a glancing blow. He dodged the next one as well, and the one after it. Cord seemed to get angrier with each miss, and the crowd seemed to get more excited.

'Am I actually doing this?' Thought Jaune in bewilderment. He couldn't believe it! He was actually surviving in a fight against the Corduroy Pike! Granted he wasn't actually attacking, just retreating in a slightly coordinated and experienced looking manner, but that was more than most people would have accomplished.

'I'm the most badasserest badass that ever lived, dodging death by the skin of my teeth. Oum above couldn't stop me now, I'm the greatest, the best, the most-" his swiftly growing ego was promptly knocked on its ass as Cord used his head for the first time since he in the fight.

Knowing Jaune would dodge it, he swung a overtly telegraphed haymaker at the taller boy. As expected, he swayed his head around it and to the right, and faster than anything he had thrown before, Cord lashed out with a lightning jab at his head.

'- I am the most idiotic moron that ever lived. Fucking jinxed it,' he had just enough time to think before a brick-like fist slammed into the spot between his eyes.

The blow sent him sprawling. He lay there on his back, staring blankly up at the ceiling. The ringing in his ears was now too loud, too real, actually turning into an audible, recognizable sound. The sparks that had danced in front of his eyes that morning reappeared in greater force, dancing and twirling in his vision.

Jaune heard how the crowd clamored, how Saffron was shouting frantically at him from the side and how there was shouting from further down the hall as the teachers finally arrived.

The sound, like elevator doors opening, drowned all of it out.

Ping

As if this was the cue to lose his sanity, Jaune began hallucinating. The sparks in front of his face coalesced into floating blue square, with bold text written covering its surface.

'What-'

Percussive recalibration successful. Function(Component/Skill/'Gamer's Mind'/upload) complete.

Jaune felt the last split second delay between his body and mind disappear, and saw the text in the floating window change.

'-the actual-'

Congratulations, you have received and assimilated the Gamer's Reality, granted to you by a ?. You now possess a reality altering ability to help you achieve your greatest desires.

Once all queued notifications have been read, the tutorial will commence.

'-FUCK?'

AN: So like I said, my first story. Constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated, along with ideas for this story. I've got a good idea of where I want to go with this, but suggestions will be seriously considered.

Now I don't actually know what a flame is, but I believe they're considered bad. If so, please don't be a jackass and send one. So yeah, if this gets some good feedback I'll post another chapter, might post one regardless, but anyway, See you.