[Year 076 AGW (After Great War)]
[The frontier town of Domremy.]
In the largest house in this small frontier town, a family rose from their beds as usual.
Isabella Arc, the matriarch of the family, was busy in the kitchen, making food for the massive family along with her eldest three daughters, Jade Arc, Kitrino Arc, and Saphron Arc.
"Saph, go and wake up the others."
"Ok, mom."
Isabella Arc headed towards the master bedroom while the 11-year-old girl, Saphron, headed upstairs to wake up the rest of her siblings.
The first room she reached belonged to the youngest child of the Arc family, Azul Arc, who was only 5 years old.
Opening the door revealed a room decorated with bright blue and pink colors all across the room. With stuffed toys and dolls thrown about everywhere.
With an exasperated sigh that looked odd on a child like her, Saphron walked past the stuff on the ground and woke up the small bundle on the Pumpkin Pete-themed bed.
"Azul, wake up. It's morning."
"mm, five more minutes"
"Come on, Azul. You've got school."
"Hmm, I don't want to go today."
Saphron smirked before using her trump card.
"Then, I guess you will not be showing off those earrings that Uncle Juniper and Jaune made for you to your friends?"
And just like that, the youngest child of the family snapped open her eyes in panic and jumped on her bed.
"No! I will go! I am up!"
Saphron laughed as she helped her sister prepare for the day ahead and picked the right clothes to accompany the silver earrings with a blue stone embedded in them that Jaune, the fifth born of the family, and Juniper Arc, who was originally called Jaune Arc in another time unknown to the rest of the Arc family except Isabella and Nicholas Arc, made for the youngest.
With the youngest now ready, Saphron headed towards the next room, which revealed a place filled with electronics of all kinds and a shelf full of books way above what a 10-year-old should be reading.
Thankfully, the fourth born of the family, Verde Arc, was already up and had prepared for the day ahead. Despite what her room's appearance might say, she was a girl who liked to keep things in a certain order, although said order was only understandable to her alone.
The bespectacled girl turned towards her older sister with a scowl on her face.
"…Did you have to make Azul shout like that, Saph?"
"Judging by your irritable mood, you were up all night again, weren't you?"
Verde simply looked away from her sister, trying to hide the guilt in her eyes, but failed due to the fact that her sibling knew her very well. Her passion for all things technology was well known throughout Domremy, and her habit of staying up throughout the night to see live telecasts from the opposite side of the world, Atlas, was also very well known throughout the Arc household.
"Who was on the show this time?"
"….Dr. Polendina. He was talking about a new revolutionary prosthetic technology and a new development in Scroll technology-"
"Stop, stop. I don't want to hear that, especially when you will no doubt drag me and the others to see the recordings on the weekend anyway."
Verde pouted at her older sister, behaving like a child of her age should and not like how she tried to portray herself in front of outsiders.
"Fine. Let's go."
"You go down first, I need to wake up the twins and see if Jaune is already up or not."
Verde walked out of the room and downstairs while Saphron continued walking to the last two doors.
She opened one of the doors to find that the Twins, Nero, and Bianco were already up and were just about to leave the room.
"You two are up by yourselves? What's the matter?"
"Well, Dad's going to come back from his mission today, right? So we wanted to go out before school to pick up a gift for him."
Saphron just smiled at the twins' words and let them go down while she headed towards the last door.
Unlike with the rest of her siblings, Saphron knocked on the door first. This was because she knew her brother the best, and if he was already up, there would be no answer from the other side.
Sure enough, despite waiting for a minute, there was no response.
With a familiarity born from the same pattern over the past year, she headed downstairs and out the back of the house, leading to the large clearing that acted both as the backyard and training space for her parents, uncle, and, for the past year, her little brother.
Just as expected, she found her uncle and little brother seated in a meditative position in the clearing, wearing simple training pants and a simple jacket that did nothing to protect them from the environment.
Since Jaune was still just an 8-year-old who was going to turn 9 years old this month, Juniper did not allow him to do any heavy training. Instead, he focused on training Jaune on Aura control and trying to find his semblance.
Saphron remembered clearly when Uncle Juniper had brought up the topic of training Jaune for his dream of becoming a Huntsman. Her parents, who were always willing to do anything that Uncle Juniper asked, firmly refused. While Uncle Juniper did not show any outward reaction, the way his eyes narrowed and an invisible, suffocating pressure enveloped the room was enough to show his displeasure.
Soon, the adults sent the children to their rooms and sat down to discuss, while Saphron, along with Kitrino, who was the adventurous daredevil of the family, secretly tried to eavesdrop on the conversation.
Of course, they were busted nearly immediately, but whatever the adults discussed, it resulted in the victory of Uncle Juniper, since they allowed Jaune to train for his goal.
"Jaune! Uncle Juniper! Breakfast's ready."
At the word, Breakfast, Uncle Juniper was like a shark that smelled blood as he sprang from his sitting position, while Jaune rose hurriedly from his seated position, trying and failing to imitate Uncle Juniper.
For some odd reason, Uncle Juniper treated Mom's food like a gift from the gods and almost never missed it for anything. Even when he went out on missions, which only happened twice in the past year, he would carry a massive backpack filled with her food stored in Dust-powered containers.
Saphron shook her head at the rare childish behavior from her kind and serious Uncle and headed inside.
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(POV Jaune/Juniper)
The past year I spent with my family was one of the most painful yet happy ones I can think of in many decades.
When I first arrived back at Domremy and saw the younger versions of my sisters, I once again came close to breaking down in tears, but held back since I knew that they would be creeped out by a grown man whom they had never met crying while staring at them.
As always, it was Kitrino and Saphron who broke the silence with their curiosity and slowly formed the way for the rest of the siblings to start talking to their new 'Uncle'.
Yes, Dad, Mom, and I came up with the cover story that I was their uncle since we did not have any intention of telling them the truth for various reasons.
While the children were curious about this new 'Uncle' that they had never heard about, just as the children they were, they quickly forgot about it and instead focused on asking me about my life as a veteran Huntsman like their father.
Ever since then, I spent all my time in the Arc household, taking only a couple of urgent missions that Ironwood asked of me to deal with a particularly dangerous Grimm and a gang of dangerous criminals in Vacuo that called themselves 'The Crown'. Of course, after seeing that they were much more dangerous than previously expected, I hunted them down and killed them all, not letting any of them escape. Despite two of them being licensed huntsmen and the other two being Shade Academy drop-outs, they were no match for someone like me who spent decades battling monsters beyond their imagination. Not to mention, they were still only 19-year-old people who had little experience fighting superior foes, thanks to the fact that they always relied on their extremely powerful semblances.
One of them in particular, Jax Asturias, had a very dangerous semblance that allowed him to mind control people. By the time I got to him, he was already in the process of mind-controlling a lot of criminals and huntsmen-in-training alike for his stupid goal of restoring Vacuo's monarchy with himself as the King.
Thankfully, his mind control was quite trivial for me to handle. If it were that easy to break my will, the Cat would have long since broken me with its manipulations and words. Aside from that, my evolved semblance, which I simply called 'Amplification', also helped boost my mental capacity, making me immune to Jax's semblance.
Aside from these two missions, I maintained my income through the patents that I made alongside Polendina for the advanced Scroll that I got from him back when I was 19 and a new type of Prosthetic that was originally created by Dr. Polendina in the future.
While I originally refused to receive any kind of compensation for things that I never invented in the first place, Polendina convinced me to do it, probably in gratitude for providing him with the blueprints for Penny that Ruby and I got from him in the future, so that Ambrosius could resurrect her in a human body.
With no worries for my immediate survival, I started focusing on my long-term goals.
But the first order of business was to start training my younger self so that he would be ready to face the future.
While I expected Dad and Mom to be reluctant to agree, I was dumbfounded by the sheer panic and desperation in their rejection of training Jaune.
It was only later that night, when we sat down to talk like the adults that we were, that I finally understood their worry. While Dad's worry for his son was justified, it seems that my brief and surface-level explanation of the future had only caused this worry to turn into full-blown terror for my parents.
Thankfully, I managed to change their minds after explaining the many good things that happened to me in the future and getting their reluctant acceptance to start training Jaune.
When I arrived at the dining table, I found that Jade, Kitrino, and Mom were already done setting the table and were waiting with the rest of the girls for Jaune and me.
Without wasting much time, I directly started eating the food presented to me by the god of cooking, my mom.
Seriously, after all the stuff I ate in the Ever After to survive, I can say with certainty that Mom's food is beyond godly.
Of course, being the bitch she is, reality chose this exact moment to mess with me.
Just as I was about to indulge in the heavenly delicacies, my scroll rang with a particular chime that I associated with Ironwood.
"…This better be important, James."
"Juniper! We have an emergency. I need you to mobilize immediately. I have already sent the nearest Bullhead under Atlas control to Domremy."
"Calm down and act like the general that you are, Ironwood. Now, tell me exactly what is happening."
"The Summer maiden has gone missing, and we suspect She Is responsible for it!"
"….Shit. ETA until Bullhead's arrival?"
"20 minutes. Also, it is currently nighttime in Mistral, the location where the Maiden went missing. So pack things for nighttime operation."
"Acknowledged!"
I cut the call and walked back into the room to find Mom looking at me with a worried expression.
"…You have a mission again?"
"Yes. I need to go immediately."
"Is it really that important? You can leave tomorrow, right? I mean, Nick is arriving today."
"….It is a Specialist mission."
Immediately, Mom's face went pale as she understood my words. 'The Specialist Mission' was a codename that Mom, Dad, and I developed to inform each other in the presence of other people about problems related to the future that I was trying to change.
"…I'll start packing your food. You go and get your equipment."
Without wasting time, I ran upstairs to my room and started packing my gear.
Wearing the same kind of leather pants as the ones I wore in The Ever After and a simple black shirt underneath, I started putting on my armor.
This new armor was something that Polendina made based on my rusted armor from The Ever After. While it looked exactly like my rusted armor, albeit without the rust, it was actually made from the same kind of metal as the ones used for heavy-duty Huntsman weapons, known simply as Aura Steel by the common folk.
Putting on the helm, I strapped my weapon to my back. A simple Sword and Shield-Sheath that was created based on the designs I gave to Polendina from my version of Crocea Mors that the Blacksmith stole from me before blasting me through the portal. The designs also included all the upgrades that Dr. Polendina of the future made for me before the fall of Atlas.
While Dad had originally wanted me to take the Crocea Mors as my weapon until Jaune was ready to go to Beacon, I refused his offer.
There was no way I was going to sully this version of Crocea Mors with the blood of innocents as I did with the original.
That is why I had Polendina make this weapon for me. I did not even name this weapon since I knew it would not last long enough to be named if my plan for the future succeeded.
With my armor and weapons in place, I ran back down to find my backpack already filled with food and other supplies that I would need for any kind of mission and environment. Since Mom was a former Huntress, it was normal for her to know how to prepare supplies like this in such a short time frame.
"..Be careful out there."
"I will."
Time to go save a Maiden.