Fanfic / The Second Choice

Art by Mysterywhiteflame

"The life of a huntsman or huntress is harsh, painful and often filled with sorrow. For every hundred people you save, there will be many more that you cannot – that you could not possibly have gotten to in time. That kind of pressure is enough to break many people, but I say that it is better to fail ten if it means saving a hundred. It is better to try and fail, saving many along the way, then to have never tried at all. To me, for taking this first step, you are already heroes. Each and every one of you."

—General James Ironwood, Headmaster of Atlas Academy

The Second Choice is a RWBY fanfic written by Coeur Al'Aran. Its first chapter was released on September 24th, 2022, and the fic is complete as of September 2nd, 2023.

When aspiring huntsmen and huntresses fill out their applications, they are given the option of selecting another Academy to send it alongside their preferred choice. In the case of Jaune Arc, he decided to send his faked transcripts to both Beacon and Atlas.

Where Beacon had not unexpectedly rejected him, Atlas accepted him. Thus, Jaune is now among the ranks of Atlas’s newest students. With a team comprised of jazz musician Flynt Coal, energetic cat faunus Neon Katt, and secret android Penny Polendina, his path to become a huntsman will surely be an interesting one.

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Tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny: In the final chapter, JCKP decides to pay back the Ace-Ops for springing their last assessment on them a week early (causing them to fail) by 'running counter-ops' even earlier on the next one (read: setting up an elaborate prank ending with all the Ace-Ops almost literally tarred and feathered, then cuffed) because good soldiers must always be on guard and it's best practice to stop the enemy before their plan happens instead of after. Ironwood can barely keep his composure while taking the report only to laugh at it with Winter after everyone else is out of the room.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In canon, Jaune barely interacts with Flynt and Neon outside of training with them a few times. Here, they're set to become a team alongside Penny.
  • In canon, there is no indication of the exact nature of Ironwood and Penny’s relationship. Here they share a close bond, with Ironwood acting as Penny’s Honorary Uncle.
  • In canon, Jaune (along with RWBY, Nora and Ren) had a strong working relationship with the Ace-Ops before things went south, forcing them to become adversaries. Here, Jaune has a much stronger and more positive relationship with the Ace-Ops, even taking lessons from them alongside his team with the hopes to one day become Specialists themselves.
  • Jaune's team and RWBY don't initially become friends except for Penny and Ruby, and things steadily get testier as RWBY's cowboy attitudes cause problems for JCKP's covert operations. Things improve later on as Ruby starts taking leadership pointers from Jaune and both teams help each other out in certain ways. By the end both teams are on friendly terms, although Jaune's prudence and suggesting that Neo should be left to the authorities instead of themselves still rubs Blake the wrong way, with her attitude in turn still exasperating Jaune.
  • In canon, Neo gained an intense hatred for Ruby due to believing her to be responsible for Torchwick's death. Here, that vendetta is transferred to Jaune, who is responsible for Torchwick's death (albeit unintentionally, due to having caused the train he was driving to crash and kill him). Even by the end of the fic, her hatred of him and desire to kill him remains strong, to the point she tries to take a flight to Atlas to try and kill him (an act that ensures she will fail and get caught by Atlas authorities).
• Adaptational Intelligence: Jaune goes to Atlas having already learned about Aura even if he doesn't have it unlocked, whereas in canon he made it halfway through Beacon's Initiation before even learning about it.
• Aesop Amnesia: In Chapter 24, RWBY gets their asses handed to them in a spar with JCKP due to them splitting up and trying to fight solo, something Goodwitch tears into them for. Chapter 35 has Jaune reminding Ruby that Yang would've fared better had someone stayed behind and offer her backup rather than let herself get nearly killed just to honor her request of a one-on-one fight against Neo.
• Alternate Universe Fic: Jaune's forged transcripts are rejected by Beacon at the start of the school year, and he instead gets accepted into his "second choice", Atlas Academy, where he ends up on a team with Penny, Flynt Coal and Neon Katt.
• And the Adventure Continues: The fic ends with Team JCKP still training in Atlas Academy and planning for their next assessments, and the fight with Salem still going, but Salem's plans have been dealt a massive setback with Beacon and Ozpin still intact. The last scene is General Ironwood calling a meeting to further plan the war against Salem (right after he coordinates a plan to ensure that Neopolitan, who has been confirmed to be on a Bullhead to Atlas to continue her vendetta against Jaune, will be swiftly apprehended without ever getting close).
• Artistic License – Military: Self-admitted in the author’s note for chapter 1, as Coeur has never been in the military. Thus, most of Atlas Academy’s school structure will take inspiration from the likes of Final Fantasy VIII's Balamb Garden and other assorted military anime.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Discussed by Ruby to Jaune and Ciel about how detrimental this is to her team at times. While Weiss tries to follow through on being supportive, Blake falls into Aloof Ally and would turn her back on Ruby's suggestions if it goes against her current goals. Yang on the other hand exploits her status as older sibling to ruin Ruby's leadership momentum and make her backtrack on some of her plans.
• Badass Creed: As per the norm for a Coeur Al'Aran story, a new character gets to help Jaune unlock his Aura with a unique chant of their own. Here, it's Penny's turn.
  For it is in our birth that we shall reach for humanity. To this, we shall become protector and weapon, to serve and defend with no regard for our safety. Unyielding and infinite, untouched by life or death, let the first spark of this new soul reach out and touch yours, so that we might find common ground.
• Brandishment Bluff: During his team's first evaluation, Jaune distracts the opposing teams by declaring he will use his Semblance and striking a pose. Obviously he knows that he hasn't unlocked his and nothing will happen, but they don't, and they waste precious seconds responding to an attack that doesn't exist.
• Brick Joke: Penny has an utterly mortifying conversation with her father about what's in her search history. The conversation concludes with her requesting he never go in there again and her father readily agreeing. Later in the story, Penny tells Neon she can show her how to delete her scroll's search history when Neon gets paranoid about Penny hacking into it.
• Chick Magnet:
  • Jaune gains the attraction of Penny for being the first to approach the former and treat her like a normal person, while at the same time also getting the attention of Ciel for his work ethic and being able to see past the Ice part of her Sugar and Ice personality to befriend her.
  • Later, Ciel lets him offer a dance to Weiss as comfort after she gets stood up by Neptune during the Beacon dance. Weiss is touched by the gesture, especially since she'd been abrasive toward his team and even called him a coward earlier, and she blushes when he platonically compliments her attractiveness and how Neptune is missing out. In a bit of Dramatic Irony, given their early canon interactions, she even wistfully wonders if he'd have been her actual date if he'd joined Beacon instead of Atlas. It helps that he Cleans Up Nicely in his formal Atlesian dress uniform.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Failing an Atlas team assessment doesn't mean you've flunked out of the school. What it does mean is you're going to lose that luxurious, awesome dorm suite and get shifted to communal barracks living conditions until the next assessment - where you can try to get it back. Ironwood notes that grades and skills have shot upwards with the tangible rewards for hard work as opposed to a simple letter grade.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jaune, Penny, Neon, and Flynt get ambushed during the Initiation right before they reach the extraction point. Between them having run for their lives from another ambush, Neon already being dangerously wounded, and the newest group having camped the extraction since the beginning, the "fight" lasts for about three minutes and ends with all four of them hopelessly stomped into the ground, just in time for Initiation to end.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: JCKP go into their group spar with a specific coordinated plan; RWBY just expects to individually fight until they win. The latter's poor fighting cohesion costs them the match, as the former immediately isolate their opponents with smoke and gang up on the weaker members first. Jaune and Flynt both get eliminated in the process — RWBY and especially Yang are just too strong as combatants to let them win unscathed — but they nevertheless control the fight from beginning to end for a strong victory.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Atlas Academy and its military demands discipline and order from their students and troops in order to maximize efficiency in combat. Vale, as Jaune learns the hard way second hand from RWBY, prides itself on their independence and almost chaotic structure to their lessons in training Huntsmen. This is the main driving point behind the rivalry between Jaune's and Ruby's teams, as Jaune wants to approach the White Fang situation in a rational way to minimize casualties, while Ruby and her teammates are more annoyed that they got minorly inconvenienced as opposed to regretful for breaking the law in the first place. Weiss, Blake, and Yang even goes as far as accusing Jaune and Penny of suggesting they should act like cowards instead of doing the right thing when they suggest getting proper authorities involved with the case.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Torchwick was prepared for the Mountain Glenn train to crash at the end of the line in the middle of Vale. He was not prepared for it to crash early because the tunnel was suddenly collapsed halfway through. He doesn't end up walking away from the wreckage alive.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Jaune sees evidence of Penny's arm being mechanical in Initiation, and thinks it's a little weird she's freaking out so much over someone discovering she has a prosthetic but promises to keep it secret to calm her down.
• Exact Words: Winter points out in the debriefing after the Initiation that she never outright said that winning or losing depended entirely on which teams got the intel out first - the students simply saw that there were more teams than there were laptops and came to believe that. In fact, the entire Initiation was a test of their character, and the students who attacked each other to get the intel are dismissed since they ignored the key phrase of the rules: they are acting as Atlas agents, and students willing to attack each other just to achieve their objective are not capable of that. She also points out that even if they assumed a team needed to get the intel out to win, she never said that a team wasn't allowed to escort another to the extraction zone and that doing so would have counted as a victory.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: A one-on-one variant. Pietro is the father to a robot daughter who he animated with part of his soul. He finds himself having to give her The Talk just like a normal one which is something he never saw coming. On Penny's part, she has to deal with her father having gone through her browser history and wanting to talk about her discovering boys.
• Fake in the Hole: During a training exercise, Jaune pulls off one of his gloves and uses it as a hand grenade to distract the enemy team.
• Fantastic Racism: Neon gets jumped during the Atlas Initiation because she's a Faunus even though she doesn't even have the intel everyone is searching for yet.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Penny's loud personality and lack of social skills start to grate on the nerves of her three new friends after some conversation. After they include her because she was sitting alone at dinner, Flynt and Neon are more than happy to leave her to Jaune, with the excuse that Jaune spoke to her first. Jaune is briefly irritated at being thrown under the bus, but never outright pushes Penny away either. She gets better as time goes on.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Well, there are layers. Jaune and Penny become Famed In-Story for rallying Beacon's students against Atlas's compromised war machines and a homicidal criminal, getting publicly awarded medals and being incorporated into Atlas's freshman curriculum the next year. But Team JCKP's actions leading up to that are still classified, so nobody outside the military knows the attack would have been exponentially worse if not for them taking down Torchwick and hamstringing the White Fang. They themselves are still just students, so even they aren't told the full story of what kind of chaos and destruction they averted with their heroism.
• Green-Eyed Monster: When Pietro runs diagnostics on Penny in Chapter 28, he finds that her internal tags for Ciel have her labeled as "backstabbing bitch" in addition to "friend," "ally," and "confidant." When he asks why, Pietro finds out it was because of jealousy about Ciel asking Jaune out to the dance—much to Pietro's dismay since he has absolutely no idea how to deal with a daughter grappling with budding attraction and the associated intense feelings.
• Honorary Uncle: General Ironwood is one to Penny, who even calls him "Uncle Ironwood".
• Improvised Weapon: Warden's team hacks a Beacon rocket locker and uses it to shoot down an armed Bullhead at the docks fight. We later find out it's Cardin's.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the drastically different circumstances, Jaune's Aura is still unlocked by his red-headed, green-eyed partner during his Academy's Initiation. The parallels increase when she also develops an unrequited crush on him, and even starts growing her hair in a ponytail by the end.
• Internal Reveal: Chapter 27 has Jaune finally come clean regarding his transcripts. Rather than react with negativity as he feared, Flynt and Neon become even more impressed with Jaune's Badass Normal and Awesomeness by Analysis skills, aided by his downplayed Instant Expert traits. Shortly after, Penny also shows her Robotic Reveal, while assuming that Jaune knew the entire time.
• It's Personal: Following Roman's untimely death, Neo goes out of her way to make JCKP's lives a living hell, even if it goes against Cinder's plans. During the entire attack on Beacon, she attempts to kill Jaune multiple times, even drawing him to her by kidnapping another student to hold hostage, and makes it clear to him that she wants him to hurt just like she is hurting from Roman's death.
• Killed Offscreen: How Cinder meets her end, being slain by Ozpin, Ironwood, and Qrow during the attack on Beacon.
• Literal-Minded: Penny doesn't quite get figures of speech, and starts to panic when Jaune explains breaking a promise as crossing their heart and hoping to die.
• Loophole Abuse: Subverted. One of the teams in the Initiation simply waits at the extraction zone to ambush whoever tries to come back with the intel; Jaune's group ends up being their target, and they snatch the intel to claim victory at the last second without ever actually putting in effort. However, the entire test turns out to be a Secret Test of Character that removes everyone who attacks other students just to win the objective, so that team is one of the ones cut from the school. On the other hand, Winter does point out one "loophole" that would've worked had it been tried - if a team had escorted another to the extraction zone, they would've been accepted as well.
• Mêlée à Trois: As Jaune's group flees an ambush during the Initiation, all of them have the misfortune of running into another ambush from a team camping the extraction zone. It soon becomes a free-for-all between the three sides, though Jaune's group is easily taken out first and it becomes a battle purely between the two ambushers.
• Mission Control: An entire Atlas Intelligence team is on-hand to assist JCKP while they're performing their covert mission in Vale, providing intelligence, supplies and support in the field. The overall team lead, codename "Warden", is the spokesman for the group.
• Not a Date: Ciel takes the opportunity to hang out with Jaune alone in Vale, claiming it as just another of their typical hangouts as fellow team leaders. Some moments of uncharacteristic awkwardness and a Crush Blush hint at ulterior motives on her part, however. And she also conspicuously chooses not to say anything when Sun calls their hangout a date.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Jaune is once again unaware of the growing attraction a green-eyed redhead partner with a name beginning with "P" holds toward him, although a bit more justified in this case thanks to Penny's awkward behavior confusing Jaune or making him dismiss things such as her hugging him tenderly from behind as an awkward and platonic attempt to comfort him. By the end of the series, he still hasn't figured it out - which Ciel, Neon, and Flynt lightly mock him for.
  • He also later misses the hints Ciel's started to become attracted to him as well, though this is also justified thanks to her usually semi-formal manner and Sugar-and-Ice Personality. They are implied to be dating by the last chapter, mostly thanks to Ciel being forward enough to finally get it through his head.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Team RWBY puts themselves at the forefront of Vale's attempts to root out the White Fang and Torchwick, and Ozpin tacitly allows and eventually goes along with it. Team JCKP are literally acting as agents of Atlas's government to secretly conduct their own investigations into the same targets. The fact that neither party is talking to each other means they interfere with each other's work. This culminates in JCKP scouting out and sealing the tunnels to Mountain Glenn... just in time for RWBY on their canon student mission to come barreling down the track. The train crashes into the cave-ins, and all on board are seriously injured or killed in the wreck.
• Robosexual: Penny's budding feelings for Jaune have led her to search for fictional representations of romance between AI or robots and humans, pornographic and otherwise. Much to her mortification, Pietro eventually stumbles upon her Embarrassing Browser History during routine diagnostics.
• Secret Test of Character: Flynt notices that after Atlas spent a full day encouraging the students to mingle and form teams, the students that grouped up are separated as much as possible during the actual Initiation, and he concludes that they must be testing whether the students will stick with the pre-made teams or just ally with the first person they see. The entire Initiation also turns out to be a test of character as well, as the students who actively attacked others are dismissed even if they successfully retrieved the intel they required. For her part, Winter disagrees about it being "secret" — she laid out all the rules and objectives exactly, and told them in plain language how they would be expected to conduct themselves. If they assumed she did all that just to add flavor to their competition, then it's their own fault.
• Serious Business: The members of Team JCKP (especially Neon) take their advanced dorm room and sleeper pods very seriously, to the point of working extra hard to make sure they can keep them.
• Shout-Out: Jaune compares the idea of holographic training rooms with robotic enemies to the Z-Men academy.
• Socially Awkward Hero:
  • Owing to her unique circumstances, Penny doesn't leave the best first impression on Jaune, Flynt, and Neon. Ironwood takes note of this and allows Penny the chance to join them as a team so she can learn firsthand how to act like a functional person. The only condition he gives is that she keep the truth of her origins a secret.
  • And in accordance to early RWBY canon, Ruby finding herself having to escort Team Jackpot alone when they visit Beacon is painfully awkward, to the point Jaune tries his best to put her at ease.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Present in Atlas vs. Beacon's training methods. Shown best in the fight between Teams RWBY and JCKP. RWBY are the Warriors, being comprised of high-tier fighters with individual styles and shooting for one-on-one fights whereas JCKP, the Soldiers, are less skilled but go into combat with a coordinated plan of attack and support one another in the fighting.
• Sole Survivor: Winter is this of her student team. They investigated a soldier's death and didn't realize that another soldier had killed the victim and made it look like the Grimm had done it. He panicked and tried to kill them as well, poisoning the leader and shooting another. The third took her own life after the fact, unable to deal with the loss. It's part of the reason Winter is so supportive of JCKP once they accept the Warden missions in Vale. She's determined not to see it happen again.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • To JCKP, Team RWBY is this due to their rampant vigilantism making their espionage mission much harder than it should be. This comes to a head in Chapters 22 and 23, where, despite still being undercover and being able to clean up RWBY's messes, Jaune calls them out for their blatant disregard for getting proper authorities involved regarding the White Fang, with even Neon and Penny jumping in on this.
  • JCKP in the finale becomes this to Cinder and by extension Salem. JCKP manages to keep their cover as Atlas students (mostly) intact and "accidentally" finds the train tunnel to Mountain Glenn and seals it just before Torchwick tries to breach Vale. This prevents the Grimm from getting in the city and kills Torchwick; this in turn wrecks Cinder's plan involving Amity and fostering unrest, causing her to be killed in her improvised assault on Beacon since she can only rely on hacked Atlesian robots to distract everyone. Because of one first-year team from Atlas that she likely never heard of, Salem's goal of gathering the Maiden powers has been pushed back decades, and the Huntsman Academies are now even closer than ever before (except for Haven Academy, where Leonardo Lionheart is about to be ousted from office for pushing back against the huntsman exchange program).
• Spared by the Adaptation: Because she is nowhere near Beacon when it is attacked, Pyrrha survives the story and becomes the new Fall Maiden.
  • Also Ozpin, Ironwood, Penny and Neo as of the last chapter.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Ciel comes off as very cold and aloof at first, but after becoming friends with her through mutual exercise and team leader activities, Jaune begins to realize she's actually affable beneath her outward demeanor. Chapter 14 implies this was due to being bullied and considered a weakling when she was younger. In the same chapter she also lies and claims her concern for Jaune is actually Penny's to keep up the front — something Jaune later figures out when he goes to thank Penny for said concern only to be met by the latter's confusion — and she almost slips and admits Jaune is a friend.
  • Winter is this as well, maintaining a stiff and professional demeanor at nearly all times. She will also take time out of her day to talk one of her students through a low point over tea and snacks to help them recover, as well as joke around subtly with people she trusts like Ironwood and other Specialists like Clover and Marrow.
• Taking You with Me: Neo proves fully willing to die during the attack on Beacon if it means Jaune dies with her, holding him down as an Atlas mech aims its guns at them both. Luckily for Jaune (and much to Neo's frustration), he gets away alive.
• The Talk: Pietro finds himself having one with Penny after he stumbles onto her Embarrassing Browser History during routine diagnostics that strongly indicate a growing (and even sexual) attraction to Jaune. Pietro finds it doubly awkward because 1) he wasn't expecting he'd have that kind of talk with a robotic daughter, and 2) said daughter's soul was crafted from his own, so he's slightly disturbed at the possible implication that technically his soul is crushing on a teenage boy.
• Water Wake Up: Everyone in Team JCKP gets one courtesy of the Ace-Ops when they get their first evaluation after agreeing to try out for Specialists training.
• What If?: Jaune sent his faked transcripts to Beacon, but in this story he chose Atlas as a reserve school on his application. Therefore, he is rejected from Beacon yet accepted by Atlas. Jaune befriends Flynt Coal, Neon Katt, and Penny Polendina on the first day he arrives. This assures that Team FNKI will not form and that Penny will not team up with Ciel Soleil.
• Villainous Breakdown: By the end of the Vytal Festival, Neo tries one last time to kill Jaune by firing Roman's cane at the bullhead he's on, which does nothing but shake it about. As it takes off back to Atlas, the narration points out that if she were capable of it, she would be screaming in rage.
• You Are Not Alone: Winter makes it a point to say this to Jaune after one of the Warden operations goes bad and JCKP is ambushed by the White Fang and Cinder, escaping by the skin of their teeth. She affirms that she and Atlas as a whole is fully behind their team and will do whatever it takes to make sure they have the support they need.

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