(A/N) Greetings, readers.

Here is a chapter.

It is early.

More at the end.

That is all.

Jaune awoke in his bed.

Sensation returned slowly. Touch came first; the soft, familiar feeling of his mattress, his sheets, his pillow. Then smell and taste: more specifically, the dryness of his mouth and the more-than-slightly foul stench of his own breath, feelings he acknowledged right around the time the migraine kicked in.

The unfortunate youth didn't wait for sight and sound, instead stumbling blindly toward the door that led to the bathroom and then to the toilet. Flinging up the seat, he collapsed before it and promptly disgorged the remains of last night's dinner, as well as the... "refreshments" his father had so kindly provided during their conversation last night.

A hangover, Jaune noted absently, continuing to dry heave into the toilet bowl. Sight had, thankfully, returned to him, the spirits last night having not rendered him blind, and soon he would be treated to the auditory aspects of his... 'worshipping the porcelain throne'.

No, Jaune decided, he was not in a good mood this morning.

A few minutes later, mouth rinsed thoroughly and teeth brushed for good measure, Jaune wandered his way out of the bathroom just in time to appreciate how his oh-so-kind father had left his curtains wide open. Coincidentally, his room happened to face east. Also coincidentally, the sun happened to rise in the east. A fact his eyes were rather violently protesting about.

Jaune not-so-patiently yanked the curtains closed.

Having shut the curtains and emptied his guts, the sixteen-year-old found a half-empty bottle of water and downed it, feeling the slightest bit of life return to his body.

Jaune was never going to drink again.

"Fuck you, alcohol, and fuck you too, dad." He groaned, flopping backwards onto his pillow. His voice was all raspy too. What a great start to the-

"Now, now, young man. I believe your father was trying to teach you a lesson."

"GAAAH!" Jaune swore under his breath as he stood frantically from where he had fallen off the edge of his bed in surprise. "What the hell?! Who- where- what the..."

The voice made no reply.

Breathing heavily through his nose, Jaune promptly scoured every inch of his room for hidden alcoves where the owner of the voice he just heard could be. He was not imagining things! Sure, he got nightmares of war and death and stuff, but he absolutely did not hear voices in his head!

After a few minutes of futile searches, Jaune finally calmed down enough to note that his hangover had mostly subsided. The question of why, Jaune figured, having regressed to rational thought once more, was likely his newfound aura.

Now that he thought on it...

He hadn't had a single vision last night. Not one.

He was finally free of his curse.

Jaune sagged in absolute relief and rejoiced, until a terrible thought struck him. A terrible, terrible thought. Not so much a thought but a memory, of the awakening of his aura...

The voice he'd heard, just then...

"Oh no..." He breathed.

"I'm afraid your suspicions are correct."

"AAAGH!" Jaune jumped again, thankfully missing the upholstery this time. "Who the hell are you and why are you in my head?!"

"That is a rather long story, and one that should not be explained while still in one's pyjama bottoms."

"Oh, it's a long story is it? I think it can be summed up by saying my Semblance has DRIVEN ME INSANE!"

"Jaune? Why are you yelling, sweetie?" A feminine voice called up the landing. Jaune stiffened.

"E-Everything's fine, m-mom!" He called back falteringly.

"Okay!" A note of doubt could be detected in her voice, but his mother left it be.

"Okay..." Jaune hissed through gritted teeth. "I'm going to shower. I'm going to get dressed. I'm going to go downstairs, eat breakfast with my family, and there will be no voice. Not one! No disembodied voices for Jaune Arc, no sirree - Jaune Arc doesn't hear disembodied voices. Jaune Arc is a normal, teenage-"

"Jaune! Are you going to use the shower or what?!" A different female voice called through his door.

"CAN'T A GUY GET ONE GODDAMN MOMENT OF PEACE?!" Jaune roared in abject frustration.

"No! Get in the shower now or don't shower at all!"

"AAAARGH!"

Indeed, Jaune's day had not started well at all.

"Is everything alright, Jaune?" His dad asked as he staggered his way down the stairs. Jaune sent a baleful glare his way and said nothing. "Come on now son, I'm sorry! Look, I made a nice big plate of bacon and eggs for you!"

Jaune took one look and turned away, swallowing thickly.

"No thanks. I'm good." He muttered.

"It's not polite to turn down someone when they've cooked food for you, Jaune." His father continued, face twitching oddly. Jaune sent him a half-nauseous look askance through his eyelashes.

"It's also not polite to throw up on someone's shirt, but I'm sure I'll find a way if you bring that near me." Jaune threatened, making his way across the room but keeping a good margin between him and the (admittedly, on any other occasion) delicious looking food.

"Where are you going?" A strange shift in his tone drove Jaune that much closer to trying to clobber the man with the family sword.

"Outside. I think I need some... fresh air." Jaune gritted out, and as he slammed the door behind him, he could swear he heard his father's laughter.

Jaune sat outside in the Arc garden, thinking. His mood had subsided now, mostly; the hangover had faded to a distant ache, and he could see his father's point now; all things in moderation.

"Jaune."

Speak of the devil...

"Hey dad." Jaune sent a slightly exasperated grin at his dad over his shoulder. The man lumbered around the bench and sat beside him, looking out at the fields and forests that made up the World Outside the Walls.

"The view's beautiful, isn't it?" His father spoke. "Untouched by humans or faunus... humanity has a habit of screwing up everything it touches."

"... Yeah, pretty much."

"Do you know why people don't just unlock everyone's auras, Jaune?" His father asked. Jaune turned, to face his own deep blue eyes staring right back at him, but older, wiser.

"..." Jaune waited for his father to continue.

"Surely, we could beat back the Grimm if we just used everyone at our disposal... we probably could." His father sighed and sat back. "It's what would come after that scares people. When you have a society where half the population has superpowers, opinions and loyalties become a hell of a lot more significant."

"Like the White Fang." Jaune's town was pretty cut-off from the world, but he knew of the group's spiral into terrorism.

"Few of the men in the White Fang have their aura unlocked, but yes. There'd be war, and it would be brutal on a scale never before seen. No, it's better this way, having Huntsmen trained and vetted by the academies, even if it means a slow, pitched fight against the Grimm to reclaim the world."

"They stop the malicious ones from gaining power." Jaune realised.

"Yep. You got it, son. Huntsmen operate under different laws, and the legislation for aura-unlocked individuals is... sketchy. Aura-users are always stronger and faster than civilians. They prevent accidental manslaughter by regulating and restricting the aura-user's freedoms with regard to self defence; if you have the power, surely you can use it to nonlethally subdue your adversary, right?"

"Not always." Commented the boy.

"Not always." Echoed his father. "Which is why you need to learn to fight, Jaune."

Jaune turned, an expression of surprise on his face. His father stared wearily back.

"I'm not encouraging you to become a Huntsman, Jaune. But the law is clear: there are fewer protections afforded to aura-users and you need to be at least competent in a fight." His father took a breath. "You didn't ask for any of this, but we have to make the best of what we have, and now that means getting you into fighting shape. There's nothing... nothing I'd hate more than if something were to happen to you, son."

Jaune stared back with wide eyes, before giving in to his heart's command and embracing his father strongly. He felt warm arms encircle his back and let himself relax just that little bit more - he could finally be around his family again.

Some time later...

Jaune took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He had successfully retreated to his room after parting ways with his father without arousing undue suspicion. The door was shut and the crack was padded with pillows. It was what he planned on doing next that was difficult.

"So..." He spoke, and sure enough, he heard a reply.

"Hello."

It was... odd. The voice was strong and confident, yet oddly distant, with the faintest of echoes. Jaune likened it to something of a... benign possession, by a ghost; a presence, watching, experiencing what he did. Guiding his actions, perhaps. He could feel the ripples of emotions in his mind, suppressed and well-hidden but clearly not his own.

"... I have several questions." Jaune continued.

"I will answer them to the best of my ability."

Jaune sighed. "You said your name is Professor Ozpin."

"It is indeed." No sense of a lie.

"As in, Headmaster of Beacon Academy, Ozpin. Who is apparently dead."

"The very same."

"And you're what... a ghost?" Jaune threw his hands up in exasperation with the whole thing, resigned to the likelihood that he was, in fact, insane.

"I am cursed, Jaune. When I die, I reincarnate into the mind of someone like me, to continue the fight against the enemies of Humanity. To put it simply, we share a soul now."

"Cursed? How the hell did you end up cursed?" He paused a minute. "Actually, you can explain that later, along with everything else you're not telling me." The teenager had been enlightened by his loving and caring father as to the intricacies of aura earlier that day, and he was still trying to reconcile it with what he was learning. "You're telling me I have your aura now."

"The amount, yes, without any real distinction between the two. The sheer amount you now possess is, quite frankly, terrifying."

"Really?" Jaune asked in curiosity. "I have a big aura?"

"The Arc family is renowned for their warriors and their superb aura capacity. I myself was the headmaster of Beacon Academy, a position, not to brag, that requires an immense degree of aptitude. Put them together..."

"Well, that's one point to insanity..." Muttered Jaune, sighing and sitting down on his bed. An important thought occurred. "How did you- I mean..."

"Die?" Ozpin sounded vaguely amused, perhaps by his hesitance. "I was murdered. Quite brutally, in fact, by a man named Hazel. Hazel Rainart."

Jaune's eyes widened. "Murdered."

"This man is also now likely searching for my reincarnation - you."

"Ohhhhh... shit."

"Indeed. We haven't much time to waste."

"Woah, hey, I need more details than that Prof." Jaune's eyes narrowed. "I'm sick of not knowing what's going on. You have the answers. Spill."

Ozpin sighed. Then, he began talking.

He weaved a tale of magic, maidens, gods and the Grimm-Queen Salem. Because, apparently, humanity did have a sentient, malicious enemy beyond the monsters that roamed the dead-zones, magic was a thing, and Ozpin - and now Jaune too, evidently - was a soul-hopping wizard.

"That's..." Jaune trailed off. "I can see why you don't tell people, you'd have entire governments wetting themselves in fear, but..."

He could hardly believe what he was hearing.

It shattered his perceptions of the world as he knew it. Six or seven months ago he would have never believed in any of it. But the visions... Jaune mulled it all over in his head (the bit that wasn't currently under occupation by the Wizard, that was). Months of fear, fatigue and mental anguish had a way of distorting one's view of what was real or fiction... and it made too much sense, in a weird way.

"It's a lot to take in. I too went through the same confusion."

"Yeah? And what about the visions?" Jaune demanded resentfully. "What the hell were those about? Did you get them, too? They've been screwing around with my life for months!"

"Regrettably, they were because of me. An unforeseen side-effect of the soul-transfer. They are the memories of previous hosts - mostly, you received mine and my predecessor's. Unfortunate, really, given that before Beacon I was the King of Vale. You likely saw my memories of the Great War."

The Great War... that would explain a lot. The primitive technology, the mass, pitched battles... it was all coming together.

"You must understand, you are the oldest host I've ever had; your age and... mental development, combined with your immense latent aura... the merging of our souls was a slow and quite difficult one."

Jaune sighed. "... One more thing. How exactly did you end up being killed? Because I want to stay far the hell away from that until I'm good and ready."

"... Salem utilised the terrorist faction White Fang as a scapegoat to stage a sudden assault on Beacon Academy. Normally this would have been suicide, charging into a fortress of highly trained aura-users, but... She knew, somehow, the very day my deputy and Huntsmen staff were scheduled to go on break, leaving me remaining to defend the Relic. There was a traitor in my ranks... I was ambushed by Hazel and another."

Ozpin's voice was dark. It was clear to Jaune that such betrayal had struck him quite hard, even for a hardened, millennia-old wizard - he found it likely Oz had vetted his allies intensely for the prevention of such a situation.

"I can give you access to the memory if you really want to see it. I managed to stall and injure the two long enough that a close colleague and ally of mine, a man named Qrow, could arrive, intervene and helped drive them away, but I was poisoned and weak... I did not survive. I suspect that Beacon has been in high alert for the last six months." Ozpin sighed again, sounding every bit as old as he claimed to be. "Your town is isolated, and it's likely the news was suppressed to prevent negativity among the populous. Most likely, I died of 'natural causes'."

Jaune kept silent, considering what he'd heard.

Ozpin continued. "I don't normally pressure new hosts quite this quickly... but the war is coming to a head, and we must be there when the enemy make their move. I need your help, Jaune. I cannot fight without you."

"And you're working for the good of humanity. You want me to be the hero."

"Yes." Ozpin stated frankly.

Heroism. The selfsame concept he'd grown so disillusioned to over the last 6 months. War, genocide, slaughter, torture, subterfuge... those were the things that made 'heroes'. No, Jaune had decided he didn't want to be a hero, he wanted to be alive, thank you very much - and then, this had happened.

But if what Ozpin said was true, then he had one hell of a responsibility... his family, his dwindling pocket of friends... his species. It had fallen to him to save the world.

Well, wasn't that ironic.

Ozpin, hearing Jaune's internal monologue, chimed in with his own two Lien. "One often meets their destiny on the road they take to avoid it, Jaune. You have a grave duty to uphold now. Make your father proud."

"... You're never going to try and influence what I do, understand? We're going to have a long conversation about boundaries, since apparently you're now a permanent fixture."

Ozpin was silent for a telling moment. "Very well."

He wasn't being truthful. Jaune could tell. Something would inevitably occur to influence his judgement... and wasn't that a terrifying thought.

But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that - right when he had finally found himself free from the constant visions (or "episodes" as his father had colloquially taken to calling them), this magical entity had seen fit to place the fate of the world on his shoulders, and now he had to leave them all behind.

Jaune's heart sank. He'd already made up his mind and it hurt to admit.

"... Tell me what I have to do."

(A/N) Ho-o-o-oly shit.

I did not expect the response I got when I drafted the first chapter while waiting for the UFC's Khabib v. McGregor fight. 12 hours in, more than 45 follows and 30 favourites... I may be an Englishman but I'm no Coeur Al'Aran.

That said, to everyone who took the time to favourite, follow and/or comment: thank you so much! It means a lot to have people tell you your work is great and even more so to get this kind of success out of the blue.

To respond to a few commenters' questions, I have slightly altered the reincarnation cycle. This is AU, stemming from the point Ozpin was killed; there will be some serious butterflies coming off that. Jaune isn't taking and of Oz's shit this time around, and he's determined to know what he's walking into.

As for the pairing... if there will be one, it will be decided by where the story takes me. If it wasn't immediately obvious by my earlier statement, this was never meant to extend beyond a one-shot; I'm still hashing out ideas, so the option is there.

IMPORTANT: Would you prefer frequent, shorter chapters or less frequent and longer ones? Let me know in a review!

Enough from me, however.

Leave a comment, favourite, follow... as a wise man once said, REVIEWS ARE THE FUEL TO THE FIRE THAT IS MY CREATIVITY.