Jaune opened his eyes, staring wide eyed at a dirty cracked ceiling. "W-where am I?," he said this in his small squeaky voice as he tried to get up only to feel something stopping his movements. Looking at his arms and legs he found that he was bound in leather straps on his legs and arms.
Panic set in at this moment as memories flashed in his mind, Ansel in flames, his home burnt, human shaped figures laying prone in the rubble.His little mind couldn't take it anymore. He started screaming and thrashing around in his restraints, but his little child body wouldn't budge.
"LET ME OUT, SOMEBODY HELP!!! ANYBODYYY!!," he screamed his throat out but no one came. After screaming so much he finally calmed down some, enough anyway to at least notice his surroundings. The room was obviously meant to be found but it wasn't abandoned. Various equipment lay out on some tables, the purposes of them Jaune could not guess.
In the far left side of the room he saw some pretty big tubes, empty except for one which glowed a faint blue, some black goop floating around in there. Every now and then it would violently thrash itself against the glass of the container it was in startling him. This was all run by a generator, and although Jaune could not see it he heard it's electrical hum as it powered whatever the tech was in this room.
Just then he paused after hearing footsteps, slowly and methodically making their way towards him as they echoed down the empty hallways. They finally stopped outside the door to the room, which he now noticed on the far right side of the room, opposite the big glass tube holding that black goo. The door opened and a man walked in.
He had white hair, beard and all including the mustache. A robotic red left eye adorned his face along with a dark metallic right arm, glowing with red inner circuits. "H-hello, are you her to help, can you get me out of this?," Jaune said this in his tiny voice sounding hopeful. For a while, the man didn't say anything, then a chuckle escaped his mouth.
"Help? Well I guess you could say that's what I'm doing. Humans are so frail you see, easily crushed and beaten down constantly by others. Why look no further than the grimm for example, Humans have been confined to the same areas in the four kingdoms for centuries or even longer, beaten down by creatures that run purely on instinct and have no brain of their own. We are weak and easily confined," the man continues rambling on as he moves to a table and grabs, was that a syringe, with a needle attached?
"Sure villages are erected but most fall within weeks, being outside the protection of the kingdom. The ones that survive the longest are closest to the Kingdom. Humans are pack animals you see, and if we leave the pack you get buried. What is needed to overcome this frailty I wonder? After contemplating for so long I arrived at one conclusion, we need to evolve," he walked towards a box after setting down the syringe, the box in question covered in a tarp and shaking violently as he kept up his prattle.
"For this purpose I have contemplated going down many paths, as you can see from my own visage," he gestured towards his robotic arms as he removed the tarp covering this box and revealed a cage , with a monster he recognized all too well as the ones that decimated his home, a Grimm. This one was in the shape of a spider, and Jaune's little ten year old brain just didn't know the name of it.
The sight of it though, sent him into a panic and he resumed his thrashing against the restraint,"What are you going to do to me? Please let me go! I need out of here!!" The man only chuckled, dismissing the boy's yells,"All in due time, young lad, all in due time. Now as I was saying, I tried other methods, hence my eye and arm, but they proved rather inefficient. Human computer programming can do much yes, and it is better than a normal human arm but it is not perfect and tends to malfunction. That is when I switched gears."
He took a other syringe out of his pocket, filled with a clear liquid and injected it into the spider Grimm, making it fall asleep in seconds. As he moved to take the grimm out of the cage he never stopped talking as Jaune hyperventilated,"Why try to make my own programming when the best programming is already there, DNA. If I could somehow fuse the DNA of a human with that of another organism, well the humans could exhibit traits of that organism, abilities only it could possess. And that is what led me to the grimm."
He plopped the spider Grimm onto the table next to the clean empty syringe he had earlier,"Yes it is true that the creatures we call Grimm are not alive in the traditional sense, lacking a soul and all, but after further research I came across something interesting. While they do not have a soul they do have DNA, which means I can fuse them with someone. Oh imagine a human with the agility of a beowolf, or the raw power of an Ursa, not only that but we have the mind to put the ability to use without acting on instinct. And that my dear boy is whated us here." Picking up the syringe, he plunged it into a strange glowing green liquid filling the syringe up a third of the way.
Seemingly satisfied with the liquid amount he continued,"Grimm DNA is too volatile and aggressive to take it out of their body as is. You can see from that example," he pointed towards the glass to be holding the violent black goo,"That's where this liquid comes in. It calms down the DNA within and increases compatibility with the human host, I am proud to announce now that my endless research is at a close. Yes, countless experiments and tweaking, horrible mutations and now, I have the answer for Grimm fusion."
He then plunged the syringe into the spider Grimm and filled it up the rest of the way with the black goo that came out of its body, the same goo as from the tube before. He walked over to Jaune, his eye glinting with madness as he brought the syringe closer to an increasingly panicked Jaune,"My name is Dr. Merlot, and I will make you great."
Before Jaune even had the chance to speak, the now named Dr. Merlot jabbed the syringe into his skin and injected the material in. Pain like not other shot up his whole body, like every single individual nerve in his body was being stabbed violently and repeatedly, followed by being burned. He was sure that he was screaming but he couldn't hear himself over his own pain.
His body started glowing, half pulsing white while the other half was red as the two forces clashed and then.... Jaune woke up with a jolt and a gasp, arms sweaty and hands clammy with terror. He got up so fast he startled some of the other nearby passengers on the bullhead he was currently aboard, each fellow teenagers competing with him for a place in Beacon. He got up and after smiling apologetically to the people he startled, walked towards the window of the bullhead.
He was feeling queasy from his motion sickness, and the dream he had sure wasn't helping matters. Taking a few moments to calm himself he contemplated to himself,'That dream again, I haven't had it in a while, it happened so long ago. I wouldn't have minded if I never got it again. Its memory I don't like to relive.'
He looked out the window to distract himself and had to admit, the view was beautiful with the jingle of skyscrapers that was the city of vale and the greenery of the Emerald forest in the background they were currently approaching on their way to Beacon.
Jaune was momentarily distracted by the chatter of 2 girls, one blonde that dressed and looked every bit the part of the tomboy she very likely was and another more adorable black haired girl with red on the tips of her hair, currently being crushed in a death grip within the arms of said blonde girl. She was wearing somewhat gothic attire in a red hooded cloak. They talked a bit about the black haired girl going to Beacon early and he heard her mention something about not wanting to be the bee's knees before he tuned them out, not wanting to eavesdrop. The memories associated with the dream he had came back to him as he let his mind wander: the restraints, the lab, the crazy mad scientist and his syringe plunging into his skin. The pain that followed never left his memory, always following him, a mocking reminder of the lab rat he was. He remembered being rescued shortly after by a huntsman who later adopted him, the guy busting down the door and apprehending Merlot in the midst of Jaune's pain. Trapped in his memories, it was only someone accidentally bumping into him that made him aware that the bullhead had landed. He made his way out of the infernal floating tin can and made his way onto the landing Bay for Beacon.
He barely made it fifteen steps out before he heard yelling. Looking towards the commotion he saw the adorable black haired girl from before, standing awkwardly and looking apologetic as she was chewed out by a girl with white hair and white clothes. She was shaking a bottle of dust that with his enhanced senses he could see was cracked and leaking dust with every shake.
Seeing what was about to happen as Little Red Riding Hood was about to sneeze he acted quickly and made a gesture with his hands, his middle and ring finger coming down to the middle of his palm and a sticky white line shot out of his wrist, attaching itself firmly to Red's back just in time for him to pule her over to himself as she sneezed, narrowly avoiding the explosion of the dust the white haired girl was carelessly shaking about.
"Are you ok, sorry I pulled on you like that, but you could've been in real trouble there for a bit," as Jaune said that the girl looked at him a bit in surprise before shaking herself out of it. "No thanks for helping me out there, I know what could have happened if that situation continued. My name is Ruby Rose, nice to meet you," she smiled as she said this.
Jaune smiled back,"Hello Ruby, I am Jaune Stephen Arc, aspiring huntsman," he cut his speech short with a frown, gesturing to the white haired girl who was making her way over with a scowl on her face," while I would love to continue to talk, it seems we have some company heading over."
Ruby nodded and both of them turned as the white haired girl reached them."Of all the irresponsible nutbrained things to do, slamming into a suitcase full of dust is pretty high on that list. Do you know how much that cost, or how easy it is to activate." Ruby tried to interject multiple times as the girl rambled on, but there was simply nowhere to intercede.
Deciding that enough was enough Jaune spoke up,"I am sorry to be rude and interrupt but if I am not wrong she did apologize and she is not the only one who made a mistake," he pointed at the broken bottle of dust still in White's hands,"It is highly dangerous to wave around dust, especially when it's causing is in such a condition. Had I not pulled Ruby here back, you could have very well blown a hole into the concrete of this plaza."
Weiss blushed a bit at the truth of the remark before adopting a more soothed look on her face after having a couple moments to cool down,"Yes, I may have made an error in the way I handled that dust there. But still she needs to be more careful, this isn't something to play around with, this time it was ok but next time it may not be. Who are you by the way?"
Rolling his eyes at having to introduce himself for the second time in 5 minutes he held out his hand to her,"Jaune Stephen Arc, may I know who I am speaking to as well?"
This white haired girl raised an eyebrow in confusion at that,"You're joking, you really don't know who I am?" Jaune shook his head in confirmation,"This is my first time meeting you, why would I know who you are?" The girl responded in surprise,"Well if you must know I am Weiss Schnee." She said this with pride, obviously expecting recognition at least a little bit anyway.
Jaune recognized the name Schnee, but admitted he did not know the girl,"Nice to meet you Weiss, I am sorry to say I am not familiar with who you are, but I am aware of a Schnee Dust Company bearing yolur last name." Weiss gasped in shock but then covered it up quickly,"Likewise, and yes the company is one of the world's largest producers of dust in the world and I am the heiress of it,"she looked proud for a moment before her face formed a bit of a frown, as if a bit down about something. Shaking her head before looking at her watch she snapped her finger at the men who Jaune and Ruby now noticed were putting her fallen luggage back on her dolly and motioned for them to start moving,"Well it was nice meeting you Jaune and, er Ruby? Anyway I must go now, and get to the auditorium for that speech, I'll see you another time."
She left real quick after that and Jaune and Ruby just stared awkwardly at each other for a bit before Ruby started,"Sooo, what now?"