estoria | [OPEN] Infinite in distance and unbound by death

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Infinite in distance and unbound by death

Who: Jaune Arc & You
When: IC: 7/18 - 19
Where: Various
What: Jaune can't even die properly and now he's out and about - strangely better than ever.
Rating/Warning: None!

ʜᴏsᴘɪᴛᴀʟ.

[ The last thing Jaune remembers is coughing up blood, his insides slowly rotting away while his weird immune system (read: Aura) tried fighting against it. Whatever Clarke gave him to drink also seemed to change him slightly, but that effect seems to have worn off by now.

Now, three days after apparently dying in one of the most painful ways, Jaune can be seen walking around the hospital. A strange sense of deja vu hits him as he recalls being bound to a hospital after his previous interlude experience, too. That time, he didn't die, though, and recovery was a little slower, which... makes this all the more strange. How does recovering from death make him feel better than ever?

In fact, should anyone decide to visit him, expecting to find him bedridden or hooked up on some IV, then they're in for a surprise. Jaune is walking around in his hospital garbs, greeting some of the staff members he recognizes and helping patients who are worse off than him.

You may find him doing various things as he waits to be discharged, from doing wheelies in a wheelchair that wasn't meant for him, cursing at the vending machine because it doesn't serve patients for free, or telling jokes to a group of patients who are probably high on painkillers. ]

...I looked at his burger, and then I said-- I said, man, you're gonna need a bigger mouth!

[ The audience laughs. ] I love these guys...

[ Alternatively, if your character is also hospital-bound, they could be sharing a room! ]

ᴠɪᴠɪᴅ.

[ Hospital shenanigans outside, Jaune isn't left unaffected as he appears on the surface. He's always been okay with the concept of dying-- or rather, he always knew what he signed up for. If there ever comes a day in which he needs to give up his life for the people he wants to protect, then that's just what a Huntsman is supposed to do. Which is why it bothers him so much that he got killed the way he did. It felt pointless. Why did his Aura, which is supposed to be a manifestation of his own soul, not fight back hard enough?

Could it be that he just didn't train hard enough? He's aware that he skipped more Aura lessons with Pyrrha than he should have, focusing on improving his swordplay instead. Now that she's gone, he needs to practice every department more than ever. Skill, Aura, leadership, teamwork... and what better place to do all that than in a game of ViViD?

So if your character is up for some gaming, they'll find themselves randomly paired with Jaune, who seems more focused and determined than usual. ]

Hey.

[ (If you choose this prompt, I'll try and write a unique scenario for every thread!) ]

ᴀᴄᴀᴅᴇᴍʏ.

[ Look, training isn't just about getting stronger physically! Education is important, too, which is why Jaune is quick to return to school so soon after his recovery. LEARNING IS IMPORTANT.

Haha, just kidding. It's only half a day later and he's involved in a food fight inside the cafeteria. Even though he normally doesn't do well in these, it's nice to be reminded of home a little.

Jaune flips one of the tables and jumps behind it like a barricade. There's a slushy dripping across the side of his face as he counts his "ammo" (just random food particles). Your character can either be hiding with him or firing from the other side. ]

Alright! I got seven nuggets!! [ He... eats one of them mid-sentence. ] --Six nuggets. And a carton of chocolate milk. Augh, where's the mashed potato?! I need it, I need it now!

sᴀɴᴄᴛᴜᴀʀʏ.

[ Normally Jaune doesn't spend too much time in the sanctuary, the place can get a little too tinfoil-hatty for a guy who naively takes everything at face value. More than that, he sometimes starts feeling strangely ill if he hangs out in it longer than necessary. It's probably just him, though.

He also figures there's going to be another mass gathering here in the coming days, assuming there were other people who got kidnapped as well. If not, then he needs to at least tell some of his friends about what happened. What if he randomly dies again without sharing everything he knows?!

This all sounds well and urgent, but if you happen to see Jaune in the sanctuary, he'll just be... mopping the floor and cleaning the walls. What? It's therapeutic! ]

More pizza leftovers... I wonder if we can order McCeres for the next group meeting... n-not that I, y'know, dislike pizza or anything. ... Also, why am I talking to myself.

ᴄʜᴜʀᴄʜ.

[ Jaune isn't religious by any means, and the building itself isn't dedicated to any particular god. What he does like about this place is the sense of community, as well as the idea of keeping faith and hope strong.

Jaune wonders if he started a trend here or if it's just normal thing that happens, but ever since he put up a small photo of a missing Pyrrha on the walls, others have been doing the same. Eventually it became a memorial wall for those who have fallen or gone missing from Cerealia, with Jaune even updating Pyrrha's status from Missing to... well, resting in peace. Around her picture are the names of his other friends carved: Sousei, Tenka, Peko, Zack, and many more. Rapunzel is the latest addition, and there was also Weiss' name, but it's been crossed out. Twice. ]

It looks like this place still isn't done with me yet, huh. Man, this is gonna get confusing...

[ Quietly, he wonders if anyone would even add him to this little shrine if he doesn't come back someday. It's not like he talks about this special place with anyone. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ athena usually pays a visit to the sanctuary once a week to check on the document she's placed there. not a lot of people hang out there, it's true. though upon arriving and looking at the basket where people leave their cerevices, she blinks curiously. there's somebody else inside.

she doesn't think too much of it and just enters. hopefully it's not anybody ceres-related who's inside and is invading the colonists' privacy. ]

Hello— oh, Jaune! What... exactly are you doing?

Ah--

[ Jaune looks down at his mop before answering. ]

...c-cleaning. [ Kind of true. It's not his whole purpose. ]

Wwwwwhhhhhat are you doing here?

[ Did she come here expecting to be alone? HMM. ]

I waaas going to check the document— [ and she's walking towards a rather thick binder left on one of the tables now, and she holds it up. ] I wanted to see if nobody's vandalised on it, or anything. . .

[ she bites her lip though, as she sits down, and then looks back at jaune. ]

You were hired to clean the place?

No, I just... I wanted to be here for a while. There are some friends I'm hoping to find here.

[ Specifically group 7. ]

...Which, I just realized how depressing that is. [ Cleaning for free when he could have been paid to do it. ]

--wait, does that really happen? The vandalism, I mean.

[ athena frowns at that. it's true, it's actually kind of sad. ]

Did you text them or something to meet up here, then? [ because... it's even sadder if jaune is just waiting here on his own without actually telling anybody. ]

And it hasn't happened yet, but you can never be too careful.

That... would've been difficult.

[ In more ways than one, but mostly because nobody would believe a text from a dead guy. ]

Haven't they told anyone yet? The free candy van?? [ The what? ]

[ she cants her head, not really getting what jaune meant. ]

Why would it be?

[ ???? ]

And what van?

[ Well, there's no better time and place for this conversation than now... ]

Athena, a bunch of us got kidnapped in a van! We had bags over our heads, and got dropped off... somewhere, I-- I'm not sure where exactly.

Just-- be careful, okay? The candy, it's not free!

[ Wait, there wasn't even any candy. ]

Hey...

[ okay, what jaune said made no sense, but she can't help but try and ask-- ]

You... You weren't kidnapped on the 15th, were you?

[ Jaune has to think about that one for a second. He never thought to remember the date, or ask how long he was dead for. ]

15th... 15th... let's see... that was the-- y-yeah, I think so. It was the day after the 14th, which was the season premiere of Million Dollars But.

[ Jaune, stay on topic-- ]

W-Wait, why do you ask?

[ okay, she sort of gets it now. jaune was kidnapped by a candy van????? whatever that means... weird. . . she closes her eyes for a brief period and takes a deep breath. ]

There were a lot of us who were taken. Either by that weird robot we saw on our CereVices a few weeks back, or by some other being.

Where were you taken?

There were others?!?

[ Jaune finally drops the mop and decides to sit down. This thing just got bigger... ]

We were in some kinda... sewers. Don't ask how a van got there. It looked like we were trapped, but, that dead end was just a weak wall. Athena, did you-- were you there, too? I saw several tunnels...

I don't know where we were then... I was with Miss Maya, Mr Han, and Illidan. [ illidan doesn't get a "mister". ] We were falling for a long while, and then we hit the ground and the whole room was dark.

It didn't seem like the sewers, that's for sure.

That... makes as much sense as I expected. [ Because Cerealia. ]

Was everyone with you okay?

[ The most important question before all others. ]

Miss Maya, she-- [ she pauses and puts a hand to her chest. it looks like it's a difficult topic for her to talk about. ] she disappeared when she touched a ledger. I thought she had died.

But she didn't, she was sent to the Nexus Code. [ which is also terrible. she's so afraid of being sent to the nexus. her fear of it is almost the same intensity as dying. ]

We all made it out, though. It turns out we were at the bottom of the CERES tower.

[ Jaune would have cared about returning to the Nexus code once upon a time, but he no longer believes that Pyrrha resides in it. Not a post-volume 3 version anyway. ]

The... bottom? You mean like, below ground? How did you get out?

We blew a hole on the roof of the thing— the, um, the library.

[ she kind of feels like there's something bothering jaune, though... ]

So, what happened when you got kidnapped?

Oh. Yeah, we blew a hole in our wall, too.

[ NO BIG DEAL, RIGHT? That seems to be the popular way of doing things around here. ]

Only, that... that wasn't how we-- how the group got out. There were these weird beeping noises that lead us to a building. Yeah. This was still underground... ish. [ He's going to assume that if they came from the sewers. ]

What was in that building?

[ may as well get as much information from jaune as she can. ]

I'll give you one guess. It starts with "R" and ends with "obots".

[ And before Athena can or is about to say it-- ]

Robots. Yeah! They had these weird... stop signs. Someone clearly didn't want us finding that place, y'know?

[ Now guess what the group did even after that. Guess, Athena! ]

[ YOU DIDN'T ASK HER TO GUESS??? ]

And? What happened next? Did they start attacking you, or what?

A bunch of guard dogs attacked us. Go figure, right? Once we took care of them, there was another set of doors. And... that. That was it.

[ That story sounds definitely incomplete. ]

[ ???????? ]

So, did you go through any of those doors?

I didn't make it that far, but... yeah, I'm pretty sure they did.

I know, it's not much in the way of useful information...

Hey, Jaune... [ her voice is soft, now, careful not to tread too heavily. this seems like a sensitive topic? ] Did you—

[ die? ]

sanctuary.

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