Hey everyone. It's Korzark! Some of you might recognize me as the one who's writing that dumb comedy "The Mystique of Jaune Arc." Here's my attempt at a trope that everybody is absolutely sick of.

I've got a big Author's Notes section at the bottom of the page, talking about why I'm writing this, why it WON'T affect the writing of "The Mystique of Jaune Arc," where I'm taking it, and why this chapter is so stupidly dark and edgy, but without further ado let's start the actual story.

"Honestly, I can't quite understand what makes you so special. I had spent years studying the most dangerous huntsman and huntresses in all of Remnant, learning their weaknesses, creating contingency plans against their inevitable retaliation, but I could never have guessed that a couple of children would prove to be the biggest annoyances."

Jaune screamed in pain. He desperately wanted to clutch at his ears to mute the booming sound that threatened to shatter his eardrums, but his body and limbs were strapped securely to a hard metal table. Beside him, a young woman ignored his screams and leaned over to a nearby table, grabbing a pen and jotting something down onto a clipboard that laid beside it. He couldn't actually see her doing any of this, but past the booming of Arthur Watts's voice, he could hear the nauseating sound of a pen scratching against paper. Jaune knew he would have vomited if he had anything left in his stomach to throw up.

"I will admit that the extent of your group's skill took me completely by surprise. When Cinder arrived at our doors with a missing eye, I assumed that she had simply been careless, unskilled, or both. In hindsight… I was still correct in assuming so, but I quickly learned that her incompetence was not the only factor involved in her embarrassing failure."

From behind the large glass window that looked into the room, Arthur Watts gave a short hand signal to the woman who had now put down the pen and clipboard. With a short nod and salute, she turned to another table, grabbing a syringe from the countertop and sticking it into Jaune's neck without hesitation.

"However, I couldn't allow myself to remain ignorant of the people who had supposedly taken down one of our own - no matter how little faith I held in her abilities - so I did some research. As with all my potential enemies, I learned everything I could about your friend, Ruby Rose."

His vision grew red as he felt a surge of anger flare through him at the mere idea that Watts would hurt his friend, but the red film over his vision quickly faded. His anger still burned hot, but he suddenly noticed that the dim lighting of the room was becoming more intense until he felt like he was staring directly into the sun. He tried to clench his eyes shut, but he was suddenly aware of the thin gloved hands that roughly pushed his eyelids open. Jaune assumed that he screamed again as the visual overload threatened to tear apart his mind, but at this point he could barely register the actions of his own body. If he had screamed, he didn't know.

"When I learned that our mutual friend was able to disable Tyrian, I was certainly surprised. While he may be a ruffian, that crazy man is one of the strongest fighters in Remnant. When he had mentioned Qrow Branwen's contribution to the fight, my surprise faded for a moment, but then I discovered that Ruby Rose and her little posse had destroyed an ancient Grimm. A Nuckelavee! At that moment, I started to become curious. Did the little silver-eyed warrior pull this off on her own? No! Of course not! She had allies to help her out. Certainly they must have been just as strong as her."

Watts paused to take a breath, but Jaune barely noticed. The pressure against his eyes finally eased away and he immediately clenched them shut. His eyelids didn't completely block out the glare of the overhead light. He heard the scratching of the pen once again.

"So I researched her friends too. Lie Ren. Nora Valkyrie. Aside from the fact that they were two of the more talented first-year students at Beacon Academy, there wasn't much to tell. I researched you too, of course. Jaune Arc. Only son of the noble Arc family."

The scratching stopped and Jaune felt the needle enter his neck once again.

"Never had any training prior to Beacon. He didn't even have his Aura unlocked. While he was accepted into the school, he quickly proved that he was a failure, unable to win a single spar that didn't involve his teammates. How dreadfully boring, don't you agree?"

Jaune felt something impact against his midsection. He felt like he should have felt some pain from the blow, but the assault on his ears and eyes was just so much worse. The scratching noise that followed was much more painful.

"Whether you agree or not, that was my first opinion of you. You were so… civilian. At first I thought that you were boring, but when you proved that you had the ability to survive - when you thwarted our plans and avoided death for so many years - I became more and more interested in you. How could a civilian survive the grandest war in the history of Remnant? I thought to myself, 'There must be something special about this Jaune Arc fellow,' and for the next four years I grew more desperate to find out if that was true. Well… I suppose 'desperate' is the wrong word to use. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I was 'intrigued' by you."

The scratching noise stopped, but was quickly replaced by a frantic buzzing.

"In either case, I never could truly understand how you survived in this war for so long and unfortunately, after today's events, I never will. I suppose that whatever kept you alive for so long - whether it be luck or some strange ability to twist fate - couldn't last forever. However, let no one claim that I do not repay others for what they've done. I do get dreadfully bored when things always go my way, and your existence was a puzzle that entertained me for many a year. For that, I give you my thanks."

Jaune could hear the buzzing coming closer.

"Some would claim that what I'm doing right now is torture, but in reality it is just my way of letting you make your own mark on Remnant. If I had killed you immediately, would you be remembered as the first person to nobly volunteer themselves as the first test subject for the soldier enhancement drug that will take the entirety of Remnant by storm? No. You wouldn't be remembered at all if you were just a simple casualty of war. Really, I'm doing you a favour."

Jaune vaguely understood that his left fist was being forced open. He couldn't focus past the horrendous buzzing. In a few seconds, he vaguely understood that his left pinky was no longer connected to his hand. There was a brief moment of silence as the buzzing died down and for a moment, the only thing that Jaune could hear was his own screaming.

Watts gave an exaggerated sigh. "In hindsight, I suppose I should have tested the pain killers before the stimulators. I can't tell if you're screaming because the pain killers were ineffective or because you feel like your eyes and ears are imploding."

The needle came again.

"In any case, I suppose I should explain what's happening to you. It wouldn't do if you simply assumed that I was torturing you for fun. As a man of science, that isn't quite what I do. Needless pain is something that nobody benefits from. Well, except for Tyrian, perhaps."

The pressure on Jaune's right arm and leg disappeared as the straps binding him to the table were undone. A small part of him wanted to lash out in an attempt to hurt whoever was around him, but all he could think about was escaping the pain. He clapped a hand against one ear to mute as much sound as he could. It didn't help.

"I had a vision. A vision of an army with the power of gods. A drug that could easily produce the soldiers for this army with a simple injection. This drug will be the object that will bring about the destruction of Remnant. Enhanced hearing, enhanced vision, resistance to pain, maximal aura production. While I have the individual drugs that can induce these traits, I wasn't sure about the dosages to give my soldiers. I don't know if this concept is familiar to you, but the human body is quite good at understanding what's best for it. There's a reason why we don't have hypersensitive hearing or vision. Our brains wouldn't be able to handle the overload of stimulus and our minds would try to reject it, leading to an intense feeling of pain. Do you understand the logic behind this concept?"

Watts paused, allowing Jaune's screams to echo around the room. He smiled and nodded to himself.

"It's been a while since I've had such a good student."

The straps on Jaune's left arm and leg were undone and he clasped his hand to his other ear. It didn't block out the sound of Watts's voice.

"In order to find an effective dose, a doctor will usually try to find the lowest possible dose they can give without harming the patient, but will still exhibit some of the intended effect. They do this by starting from the lowest dose possible, then slowly escalating until they see any changes in the patient. This process can take anywhere between a few days to a few months. That is quite a long time period to wait and I am a rather impatient man, but fortunately I am also a man who cares not for paltry things such as ethics. I prefer to go in the opposite direction."

The last straps around Jaune's body and head were undone. He knew that he ought to lash out and try and cause as much damage as possible, going out in a blaze of glory, but all he could think about was trying to curl into a ball and escape from the pain.

"By giving the highest possible dose that won't kill you outright, I can make much easier calculations based on your current performance. As I mentioned before, I am not doing this out of a desire for needless violence. I'm doing this for the sake of progress. Septum. If you will?"

Jaune felt himself being dragged off the table by the scruff of his shirt. His heels crashed onto the floor, but his upper body remained elevated.

"Calculations will be much simpler once we have the appropriate data from your drug trial. Most of the tests we can do are simple. For the auditory and visual enhancement drugs, we can run some simple scans to observe the extent of stimulation on your auditory and visual cortices of your brain. For the pain killers… admittedly I was not in the best mood when I started your testing. I designed the pain killers to be effective against external pain - not internal - after all. Ah well. I can always run more trials in the future. Perhaps I can capture someone else in your little group of friends to volunteer for testing."

Jaune felt the collar of his shirt tighten as he was dragged unceremoniously across the room.

"And of course, there's the Aura stimulator. For a while I had been confused on how to accurately measure effectiveness of this particular drug. While I could measure the quantity of Aura that a person had in their body, I've learned that this is not necessarily the best measurement of the person's ability to use said Aura. There was also the possibility of forcing the patient to undergo a series of skill-based tests, but I don't imagine you would be very cooperative."

There was a sharp jerking motion on his collar. For a short moment, Jaune almost felt peaceful as the sensation of weightlessness overtook him. That illusion of peace was shattered as soon as he hit the ground again. A clattering sound indicated that something heavy and metal had followed him and landed directly in front of him. Despite the fact that the harshness of the sound itself made him want to vomit, it somehow sounded familiar.

"And then I thought to myself, what better way to test the effectiveness of Aura in combat than putting the patient into a combat scenario?"

Jaune reached forward to grab Crocea Mors.

"In any moment, the Aura stimulator should be taking its effect. I wonder. Will it grant you enough strength to defend yourself from a single Grimm? Or perhaps it will be too effective, overloading your body and killing you instantly."

When he heard the familiar growl of the Beowolf, Jaune tried to push himself off the ground, only to find that he could barely lift his arms off of the floor, let alone his body.

Jaune's hands gripped the hilt of Crocea Mors tightly, but he still could not stand up.

"Ah well. Never let anyone say that I am a needlessly cruel man. My cruelty is incredibly necessary for progress."

Jaune did not hear these last words.

A strange feeling took over him as his Aura enveloped his body.

It reminded him of the time when he had first learned about the existence of Aura. He remembered the script too.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality." The sound of his own voice brought a smile to his face. "Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death. I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee."

It reminded him of a more peaceful time. A time when he hadn't known about the horrors he would face in the next five years. It seemed so long ago.

He opened his eyes.

"Hello, Pyrrha." He said looking directly into his old partner's emerald eyes. "I guess this is it, huh?"

He closed his eyes.

White.

All he could see was white. His entire world was white. He could remember nothing but white.

…

No that was wrong. It took a few moments for him to recognize it, but there was something else he could remember. Pain.

He remembered it. It was an ever present part of his life. Sometimes he felt more pain and sometimes he felt less pain, but he couldn't remember the last time that he had rested his body for long enough to be completely rid of it.

He remembered his body now. It was hard to forget about it when it had been with him for his entire life, and he could not understand why he had forgotten about it until then. He tried to move, but when pain coursed through his entire arm at the twitch of his finger, reminding him of its presence once again, he decided that there was no need to test his theory. Yes. He had a body.

What else did he have?

Why was it so hard to remember?

He swam through the haze of thoughts that struggled to form in his mind.

Who was he? It only took a few seconds for him to remember. Jaune. Jaune Arc. It felt comforting. It was his own name. He was a huntsman.

A nagging thought in the back of his mind suddenly spoke out, reminding him that he technically was not a huntsman. Technically, he was a huntsman-in-training who had not even been able to complete his first year of hunter training during his stay at… Beacon? Yes. Beacon. It brought a smile to his face for some reason, even through the pain that blossomed across his jaw at the slight motion. His stay at Beacon had been so short, but he felt a strange comfort in remembering the place. No, that wasn't the case, was it? The place itself had little meaning.

He felt a happiness that he couldn't explain whenever he thought about the place, but that wasn't because of Beacon itself. His happiness was a product of the experiences that he had there and more importantly, because of the people he met.

Team JNPR. Nora Valkyrie. Pyrrha Nikos. Lie Ren. All together the three of them made team JNPR… No, of course not. That was silly. It felt strange to think of those three without including himself. J for Jaune Arc. N for Nora Valkyrie. P for Pyrrha Nikos. R for Lie Ren. Team JNPR in its completed form. He couldn't stop his smile from spreading and once again, his face grew hot with a dull pain, but he didn't mind it. He didn't mind experiencing a little pain if it meant that he could remember his family.

He frowned as a terrible thought took over his mind. Where were they? Where was he? What was he doing in this white void?

His head started to hurt and he motioned to raise his hands to clutch at it, but found that he couldn't move them. He decided to forget about clutching his head for now. He had more important things to focus on. The answer came to him faster than he had expected.

He had been captured by Arthur Watts.

He had died.

He heard a soft click come from somewhere to his left. He turned his head to see what it was. He instantly regretted the action when pain flared through his entire upper body, but he was too tired to let out a cry.

He saw a splash of colour in the otherwise white world. Black, purple, yellow. The mass of colour moved closer towards him. He stared at it for a few seconds before realizing that those colours made a person. It took a few seconds before he recognized who it was. The sight of her made a melancholy smile spread on his face.

"Hello Professor Goodwitch," he said. He was surprised to hear the raspy and broken voice that barely came out, but he didn't care.

At the sight of his old professor and her familiarly stoic expression, Jaune let himself relax completely. He was never a particularly religious person, but now that his dead teacher's spirit had come to guide him from beyond the grave, he had no choice but to accept it.

"I see that there is no need for me to introduce myself, though I am surprised that you are referring to me as Professor." Professor Goodwitch's mouth moved, so Jaune couldn't help but think that those were her words.

Jaune chuckled. The thought of it almost amused him. Even after four years, he couldn't dream of speaking to the professor without the giving her the respect of an honorific. It would have been a slander to her memory and, even if he didn't care to admit it, the woman's strict nature still intimidated him.

"It really is good to see you again, Professor," Jaune said truthfully. If he were to be completely honest, he would have expected Pyrrha's spirit to be the one guiding him into whatever afterlife awaited, but the familiar face was still comforting.

Professor Goodwitch didn't offer any sort of reply, and Jaune could see her face changing expressions, but he didn't feel lucid enough to want to make the effort in interpreting what emotions were running through the Professor's mind. Instead he focused his attention on simpler things, like the soft click coming from behind the woman.

It was the sound of a gently closing door, he realized. Another set of colours entered the white world. Black and green.

"How is our latest patient, Glynda?" The man's voice was eerily familiar. Jaune looked up at him, moving only his eyes to save his neck the trouble. His confusion grew when he connected the voice to his appearance.

"Oscar?" The two other occupants of the room froze, but he barely noticed. "No, you can't be here. You can't be dead."

He reached up with his hands to clutch at his head in an attempt to stop the incoming headache. Professor Goodwitch made to flourish her weapon, but Oscar remained as he was. No wait… He wasn't Oscar. No, he was, but he wasn't. Jaune groaned, unable to understand his own confusion.

"My name…" he heard from beside him. He assumed it was the familiar man. "My name is Ozpin and I am the headmaster at Beacon academy. Tell me, who are you?"

He froze at the sound of the familiar name.

"Professor Ozpin?" he asked, letting go of his head so he could look into the man's eyes.

"Yes. I am, as you put it, Professor Ozpin. Why did you call me Oscar?" Despite the man's neutral face, he couldn't help but feel a hint of threat creeping into his voice.

"Wait, that doesn't make sense." Jaune stated, ignoring Ozpin's question. "I thought your soul was inside Oscar's body. How can you be dead?" He paled at the thought. "Did… Is Oscar dead too?" He clutched at his head again. If Oscar was dead that meant that there had been an attack against the Valean Defense Headquarters while he had been off on his mission. Who else had died?

"I assure you that I am alive," Ozpin spoke out, interrupting his thoughts. "And you are alive as well, thanks to the medical staff here at Beacon Academy."

He stared at the man, shocked at the absurdity of the statement, but something caught his eye. The shape of the white door. The bed that he was laying in. The fact that he was covered head to toe in bandages and had tubes sticking out of his wrist. He looked to the other side to see an IV drip and a small console that made a rhythmic beeping noise whenever it registered the beats of his heart.

"And though I hate to ask any guests of ours for any favours, I believe that the most polite thing that you could do right now would be to introduce yourself." Ozpin spoke up once again, reminding Jaune of who he had been talking to.

He took a good look at the pair in front of him. Now that both his head and his vision were clearing up, he could see that both of the professors were standing. Professor Goodwitch had her riding crop in a white-knuckled grip, and though Ozpin didn't seem to show the same outward concern, he knew from the way that he held his cane that it could be at his throat before he had the time to blink.

"My name is…" He said hesitantly, half expecting the world to crumble around him if he acknowledged his crazed theory. "My name is Jaune Arc."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "Jaune Arc, an uncommon name," he mused. "That may have been something that I would have said a few days ago, if I hadn't met with a young student with the same name."

Jaune gave him a weak smile. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what day is it?" Before Ozpin could speak, he added on a short afterthought. "The full date, please."

"Today is the eighteenth day of September in the 1032nd year of the Remnant calendar."

Jaune gave Ozpin a weak and uncertain grin. "Are you sure it's not the 1037th year?" When Ozpin gave no sign of answering his question, Jaune sighed. "How am I going to explain this?" he mused out loud.

Okay, so I'll start this off by saying that this story will NOT affect the release of The Mystique. If you go to my Author Profile, I have a short explanation on my writing process for The Mystique but to give you a short version, I can only write The Mystique when I'm in the comedy writing mood which is not as often as I like. Therefore, the release of The Mystique is dependent on random mood swings, rather than the amount of free time I have, so writing another story will not affect The Mystique in any way.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let's talk about this story.

There are two types of writers. Outline writers plan out their story beforehand, and will often know exactly what will happen in a chapter before they actually write it out. Discovery writers just put their pen on the paper and write away. The main reason why I wanted to write this story was because I wanted something that I could write with my brain turned off. I'm an outline writer by nature, and I wanted to give myself the opportunity to just write about this simple and overused concept and let my writing just take me to unexpected places.

I want to say that this story won't be taking on the same dark and edgy tone that is seen in this chapter, I can't promise it. I wasn't expecting this chapter to be so dark either, but my brain decided the most logical way for Jaune to have his Semblance activated was for someone to manually stimulate his Aura for him. And that led to the idea of drugs, and that led to the idea of torture. Somehow.

Since I hadn't intended for this chapter to be dark, and I'm making it a point to allow my writing to wander into whatever direction it pleases, I can't say what exactly will happen in the future chapters. If I see a particularly interesting idea in a review, or if I think of a really interesting idea that would otherwise shift the entire story arc, I'll probably just take it and run with it.

I'm excited to make lots of mistakes and lots of discoveries along with you readers. Hopefully you'll stay strapped in with me on this wild adventure of mine and hopefully this will turn into something good. Eventually.

Some super unimportant notes/trivia about the chapter itself:

I used Watts as the main antagonist of this chapter because he's referred to as Doctor. To be honest, he seems like the type of person to have his doctorate in something like Political Sciences (Fun Fact: Arthur Watts was the name of a pretty big Legal Advisor in the UK) rather than something medical, but I also liked the idea of him being a mad scientist who refused to do any of the mad scientist work himself.

Watts is also a unit of power, though most of you already knew that, so the whole idea of aura manipulation also fit.

His little assistant was also someone I put in for fun. She does all the dirty work while Watts sits behind a screen and watches. Her name is also Septum which means seven. I thought it'd be cool to give her a number name that doesn't relate to any colour. It's pretty much a replacement for her original name of "Unit One."

This is also probably the only time I will ever use the knowledge from my Pharmacology degree in my writing.

The section after the semblance activation was actually a part of the "Chapter One" that I did for a version of this story where Blake was going to be the time traveller that I wrote around a month ago. I just changed She to He and was done with it. I was considering going with a route that was similar to the beginning of "Remnant's Reclaimer," but Blake was too injured to be conscious in the original and so was Jaune, so while Jaune did reappear in the JNPR dorm (which is why he saw a "vision" of Pyrrha before he passed out), the first actual interaction he had was while he was half-dead and in the infirmary.