The JNPR dorm room was left in an awkward silence as Jaune left.
“I believe he will come around eventually,” Ren eventually said. “Don’t let it get to you too much, Second.”
Second Thoughts sighed. “I hope so.”
“I hope he doesn’t get into trouble with Professor Goodwitch,” Pyrrha said, nervously glancing at the door, “but I suppose if it’s just us stuck here now… maybe Nora is right. It wouldn’t hurt to hear a bit more about things from your point of view.”
“I don’t know about that,” Second countered. “There’s really not all that much to say that isn’t…”
“Come on!” Nora demanded as she leapt at the semblance, shaking her blue friend vigorously. “You have to tell us something! Do I become Queen of Vale in any of those other worlds?!”
Second hesitated. “Well… I don’t know of you ever becoming queen, but I think you became some sort of royal advisor…”
Nora squealed in excitement.
Pyrrha and Ren paled behind the ginger. Hesitantly, her partner spoke up. “And who decided to make Nora a royal advisor?”
“Well,” Second thought back, “it wasn’t so much that Nora was specifically chosen for a role, it’s more that they didn’t want to break up the group after…”
He hesitated to finish the thought after Ren’s eyes widened. “You must be joking.”
Pyrrha looked confused. “Why would Nora becoming an advisor prevent the group from breaking up? Did one of us get some sort of important position or something? Though even then, I don’t see any sort of royalty agreeing to take us all just to prevent us splitting up…”
“Unless one of us was the Queen!” Nora shouted. “Who was it? Was it Pyrrha? Oh, wait, it must have been Weiss! I can totally see her being royalty!”
Second’s eyes lingered on Pyrrha for a moment too long, and it was obvious they were jumping to more conclusions, but he cut them off. “It was Ruby, actually.”
Nora blinked. “Ruby? That’s sort of hard to picture. I mean, Ruby is awesome, but she’s more of an action kind of girl than the ruling a kingdom type, you know?”
Second laughed weakly. “Yeah, she felt the same way. Sort of got forced into the position, and the rest of you getting into positions that would keep you close to her was her condition for accepting…”
“Teams JNPR and RWBY ruling a kingdom…” Ren slowly said to himself. “That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”
“I think we could do it,” Pyrrha refuted with a smile. “Though it does make me curious. Did Queen Ruby take a King? Or maybe she only held the position temporarily while someone younger in the royal line grew up…”
Second clammed up at that. “Uh, maybe we should move on. I don’t mind a few questions, but telling you guys about potential romance feels… weird. I don’t want anyone thinking that they should get with someone just because an alternate version of them did.”
Ren and Nora’s eyes darted towards each other at that comment, but neither said a word.
“That’s understandable,” Pyrrha agreed. “What else could we ask about then…” It was obvious which scene her mind went to when she frowned and a hand absentmindedly went to where they’d seen Cinder shoot her with an arrow.
Hoping to pull her out of those thoughts, Second launched into a story on his own. “Well, I guess I could tell you about the one where…”
----------------------------------------
Jaune didn’t have any real destination in mind as he stormed off. He just needed to get away from Second Thoughts. Blindly turning down hallways, ignoring everything around him, he walked alone while his mind swirled with the revelations of the day. Luckily his team had let him be, he didn’t really want to blow up at them for something that wasn’t their fault.
So he was surprised when someone called out his name.
“Mr. Arc!”
Jaune flinched at the use of his last name, the threat of Professor Goodwitch having caught him disobeying her orders striking a jolt of fear through his heart, but after that initial moment of panic he actually took a look and realized that it was a different staff member.
“Pro- er, Doctor Oobleck.” Best to ingratiate himself to the man before he could go straight into a lecture.
The doctor looked him up and down, concern clear on his face. “I believe Glynda instructed you and your friends to return to your rooms…. But perhaps you should come with me to my office for a bit.”
Great, he was going to get in trouble even if it wasn’t Goodwitch. “Sir, look, I-”
“Mr. Arc,” the professor held up a hand to stop him, “This is not the beginning of a punishment. I simply suspect that if you are here and not with your friends, then there must be a reason for it. Perhaps one that you might wish to discuss, and preferably not in the middle of the hallway.”
Ah. That was fair.
Jaune nodded, and let the man lead him to his office. Preparing some fresh coffee for himself, Oobleck gestured for Jaune to take a seat, which Jaune gratefully slumped into.
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“Now, I know what must be going through your head at the moment,” Oobleck began gently.
Jaune nodded, but didn’t know how to start talking about it, so he waited for the man to continue.
“The internet can be a frightening place, and has many strange rules. No doubt discovering that you and your friends were in some sort of media has you worried that you’ve been subjected to one particular rule, and-”
“No!” Jaune shouted, red in the face and horrified, “That’s not- why-” he stumbled over his words in his panic, but Oobleck only smirked in response.
“I am only joking with you, Jaune. Nothing like a bit of embarrassment to help take your mind out of a slump, right? You seemed like you needed something to lighten the mood.”
Jaune stared at the man, mouth agape. “You… you know…”
Oobleck rolled his eyes. “I may be old,” he made quotations with his fingers to show what he thought of that assessment, “in comparison to you, Mr. Arc, but I am not so old that I do not know the workings of the internet. Besides, prominent figures like the staff of Beacon are often subjected to-”
“I don’t need to know any more, thank you!” Jaune quickly tried to shut the man up.
Oobleck smirked again, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Good. Now, why don’t we get into what’s actually bothering you?”
Yet again, Jaune hesitated.
The professor sighed. “Jaune, I understand that some topics are difficult to discuss, but I think you’ll find that people deal with their issues much better if they’re able to discuss them with others. I assure you, nothing you say will leave my office if you do not wish it to.”
“I just… am I an idiot?” Jaune asked.
Oobleck looked confused, clearing his throat as he adjusted his glasses. “Young man, I think you’ll find that all young people are idiots. It comes with being young. That’s why I work here, so I can take first years like you and mold you into huntsmen and huntresses that aren’t idiots. However, I don’t think that’s quite what you mean, so… in terms of intellect, your grades could use some work, but they aren’t abhorrent. If you mean in terms of naivety, you are perhaps more trusting than most and might lack a certain level of what might be called street smarts, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Some, including myself, would argue that those who are not so jaded, can see the good in the world, can be the best of what our school produces.”
Jaune frowned at the doctor’s description of him, but didn’t argue it. It lined up with what he had thought while asking. “So I am too trusting, then…”
“I wouldn’t jump straight to that assessment, Mr. Arc,” Oobleck argued. “Some level of trust is necessary, lest you become paranoid. Though I am guessing that you now believe you’ve been too trusting of a particular person. He is a person in your eyes, is he not?”
Jaune’s frown deepened as Oobleck hit the nail on the head. “Should I think of him as a person? We’re not real people to him.”
Oobleck hummed. “I see. You believe that despite all of the time that the two of you have spent together that he still views you as nothing more than a fictional character? You think that despite having lived among us for so long, having physically interacted with the world since the Breach, that he sees Remnant as nothing more than a setting for a show?”
Jaune scowled. “Of course I do! You’ve seen how he acted all this time!”
“Not all of it, no, but I believe I’ve seen enough to get a decent understanding. Tell me, Jaune, am I correct in assuming that you consume a lot of media? Or at least, that you did before coming to Beacon?”
Of course he did. He hadn’t exactly had time for comic books recently, but he still enjoyed them. Jaune nodded.
“I thought so. Now, if you were reading a story, and based on a spoiler you’d read online, you believed one of the main characters was going to die soon, how would you react?” The question was apparently rhetorical, because Oobleck didn’t give him time to respond. “Would you be annoyed? Perhaps a bit anxious, knowing what was coming? You might even be excited for the upcoming action, and then a bit sad once it happened.”
“So because Second freaked himself out hard enough to send me into a coma, I’m supposed to believe that he sees us as real people?” Jaune asked with an annoyed tone. “If he really felt that way then he shouldn’t have let things get to that point in the first place!”
Oobleck took a sip of his coffee. “We’ve all heard his reasoning for doing otherwise, Jaune. None of us can say whether he was right or not to try avoiding the butterfly effect. Not definitively, anyway.”
“I can’t trust someone who’s been lying to me for so long!”
“And that’s fair,” the professor responded.
That threw Jaune off. “You… what?”
Oobleck raised an eyebrow. “Did you expect me to disagree? I’m in a similar situation with Ozpin, you know. Things that I thought were true for far, far longer than you’ve known Second have suddenly been revealed to be carefully crafted lies and omissions. As things stand, there is little trust between him and I, especially after I worked with the others to arrange the situation with the Relic.”
That took a bit of the wind out of Jaune’s sails. “The others… seemed so quick to accept everything…”
Oobleck gave him a disappointed look. “Jaune, you and your friends have just had a lot of life changing information dumped on you. People react to that sort of thing in different ways, and they may prioritize some parts of it over others. You must also consider that despite evidence to the contrary, they may still see Second as little more than your semblance. Though with recent revelations I’m sure that view will quickly disappear.”
His expression morphed into something more gentle. “Regardless of that, though, you shouldn’t concern yourself with their reactions, at least not on this matter. You’re talking about your personal relationship with Second. My problems with Ozpin are my own, and I likely have them for different reasons than General Ironwood has his problems with the man. Your problems with Second Thoughts are personal to you. They are something that the two of you are going to have to work out together, because there is no one size fits all solution. I would suggest that once we’re done here, you take some time to-”
The professor’s words were interrupted by his scroll going off. “Ah, my apologies, Mr. Arc.”
Stepping away for a moment, he answered the call. “I’m in the middle of something at the moment so if-” He paused. “You're certain?” Jaune couldn’t see his face, but he could see the way his shoulders fell. “I see. I’ll be out in a moment.” He ended the call.
That didn’t sound good. Jaune’s frustration with Second faded, quickly replaced by a sense of unease. “Is something wrong?”
Oobleck quickly gathered up his things and started ushering Jaune out of his office. “I’m afraid something urgent has come up, so we’ll have to cut things short. Please think on what I said.”
Something urgent? Jaune’s mind raced, thinking back to everything they’d seen in Jinn’s answer. “What is it? I can call my team and-”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Arc,” Oobleck stopped him as he locked his door. “You are a first year student, and Beacon isn’t under attack. You and your friends are to stay put.”
He placed a hand on Jaune’s shoulder, giving him a serious look. “Rely on the professionals, Jaune. It’s our job.”