Jaune awoke with a chill in his bones and a frantically beating heart.
A mixture of snarling shadows and the running sun flashed through his head as he opened his eyes to a still dark room. He took a moment to just lay there with his sheets beneath his fingers, he felt the warmth of his body against his bed. Jaune brought up his hands and slapped himself with a snap, cupping his stinging cheeks in the solid sensation of his palms.
"We're getting there," he said with a rush of air.
He sat up on his bed and yawned with all the force of a cat stretching its legs. A second passed, before he threw his legs over the side of his bed and the cold floor touched his toes. The past was in the past now, and all that's left was to take his fears and shove it all up to burn in the great big pyre of determination. Jaune nodded to himself and got up to his feet, the beginnings of a beep interrupted by a swift press of the stop button on his Scroll by his study table. He smirked at the tiny victory, and a quick glance said it was five in the morning.
He did a quick few stretches, pulling a bit on his triceps and quads, then moved his shoulders and hips around for a second or two. Satisfied, he dropped onto his fingertips and toes without a sound and started doing push-ups to a metronome's pace. Up and down, up and down, a strong push up and a clap, "One."
Rinse and repeat.
He kept going until the first signs strain and counted off at forty-one before stopping: one higher than yesterday but two lower than the day before. Jaune pushed off from the ground and started running in place for a minute before shifting to a set of jumping jacks for another. He finished with some more stretches before cooling down to some shuffling motions to keep his body limber and his blood pumping.
A light sheen of sweat coated his forehead and he took off his shirt in front of the mirror: his still growing body wasn't chiseled as hard, but the taut muscles underneath told of the foundations he'd laid towards his goal. He clenched his fist, noting how the tendons pulled against sinew and bone with the rest of his forearm. He further tensed his muscles, hardening the gesture up to his biceps before thrusting his arm forward with resolve. Jaune smiled at the poster next to his wardrobe: All Might with a hearty smile in all his glory against a backdrop of stars and stripes.
If recruitment posters had a standard, then this was it. The United Schools Alliance, Remnant's most elite Hunter association recruited only from the top graduating teams from the four Huntsman and Huntress training schools—and sometimes going so far as to headhunt promising individuals from the preps. They also recommended any promising upstarts to their school of choice should they prove good enough.
Jaune stood with hands akimbo and flexed everything he could before smiling his best smile, flashing a wide grin against the mirror then laughed in his most mirthful and booming from the belly laugh.
"Everything's fine now," he said with all the brightness of the coming morning. "I am here."
All Might—Oro Magri, proud alumni of Beacon Huntsman Academy of Vale—had saved him that fateful day all those years ago, and it was high time he paid the debt forward. The blond took a pair of trainers from his dresser and put them on, gearing up for his morning routine.
"I'll be going ahead, mom," he said to the picture on his drawer.
He was out the door no later than five-oh-seven and blazing a steady path around the village. Jaune breathed in and pushed more strength into his legs, climbing the hill by the Grundle's place and powering through the rest of his sprint. He slowed down on the right turn to a modest jog, his legs burning from the exertion while letting his stamina recover before speeding up again to a run into the cul-de-sac. A few seconds passed and the burning lessened before he dove for the ground and into a series of burpees to further drive the cold of dawn away.
His morning set consisted of a ten-kilometer run every morning together with whatever other aerobics he could squeeze in, followed by a hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups before six-thirty. On weekends without school, he'd usually increase his running and end his exercises by seven-thirty before coming home. A sound mind in a sound body made for a well-balanced Huntsman.
He hopped up and down from the park benches, then did laterals by the fire hydrant the Yves' cat liked sleeping on top of. He did his pulls up on the McGrant's old oak, his push ups with his legs raised on its roots, and his legs locked under the same root for the sit-ups.
It was all for his goal of getting into Beacon and becoming a hero like Oro.
He finished by the time the time the sun came up, six thirty-two according to his Scroll. He kept a portion of his plan constant, but squeezed in more and more with each passing day. Shaking things up and always working smarter was the way to go and keep growing.
Jaune returned to their house with the smell of frying bacon and eggs in the air. He passed by the kitchen and saw the same blue eyes meet his own. "Good morning dad," he said.
Now that he was older, Jaune didn't miss the same lines running along their jaws except where his pointed upwards, his dad's pointed down. His father's apron was covered in grease stains and faded hearts, the lacing on them coming undone by the shoulders. They were his mother's, and the marinara he'd spilled on it from the Elder knows when was still there. A small reminder of the simpler times. He smiled through the memory and at his old man.
Enciel blinked at the greeting, hands going through the motions of keeping the food from burning before turning to him with a cloud's pace. "Done for the morning?" his father drawled.
His father was away on a mission when the incident happened. Theirs was a common sob story in the kingdoms, and the bittersweet irony of the people the protectors wanted protected most from the things they protected everyone else from getting hurt was not lost on all the widows, widowers, and orphans through the generations.
An hour made all the difference for their family that day, and after Edelweiss had passed… his father was never quite the same since. If old man Grakh's story was to be believed, Enciel cleaned up their entire town on his own that day, felling larger Grimm left and right with Crocea Mors while the rest of the response team focused on rescuing everyone else.
"I'm ready any time," Jaune said. Younger him came to his father for training the moment he was discharged, and the man pushed him hard to the brink everyday since. Enciel only let up after he qualified into Signal, and even then, the man kept driving him always further forward.
His father folded up the stain covered apron like he would Vale's flag before a slow creep of the lips turned into a smile. "Come on, I'm almost done," Enciel said, his voice had iron in it.
Jaune landed on his ass for the umpteenth time before a foot thundered down towards his chest. He shoved himself out of the way with a quick kick against the grass before pushing with his hands and jumping back three steps. His father dashed after him and lashed out with a punch—that turned to two, three, seven shadows as it flew.
The blond squinted at the flickering motions before dodging left where the blur was thinnest, but one of the shadows hit his hip and he was flung back. Jaune hit a tree and the impact shook its trunk as the wind left his lungs. His aura took the brunt of the damage but inertia collected its due. The problem with aura was that it functioned as an inviolable shell. Good, because you can get shot without getting a hole punched through you. Bad, because all that forces needs to go somewhere else. It was a lot like comparing a bouncing rubber ball to an egg. On hitting the floor, the egg would break and the ball would bounce. That said, getting used to having things shaken up with one's aura on was one of the foundations of being a Huntsman.
He hacked for air and shook off his swimming vision in time to roll away from a flying kick, then an elbow drop, then again from what should've been a breakdancing flare except for how his father's leg whistled through the wind. The heaviness from his earlier hit was already starting to fade. On top of protection, aura also helped heal and prevent damage in the broad sense. Huntsmen and Huntresses rarely fall sick, and it's also thanks to their auras how they're able to shrug off otherwise lethal mishaps, like getting stabbed or falling from a few tens of storeys.
"You can't keep dodging forever, Jaune," Enciel said. His body seemed to flicker in the light, each motion carrying with it a subtle lag. "That's not how Vale's strongest Huntsman would do this."
Jaune grinned. All Might had decades to polish his skills and maybe more than two lifetimes' worth of fighting experience—not to mention learning from Beacon and Signal when he was younger. It was a bit much to compare someone who'd only been training for the last seven years to someone like that.
"I don't have to win dad," Jaune said through heavy breaths. "I just have to make sure you don't."
His old man leapt for him and landed with a stomp, Jaune long gone from having jumped away before. However, his father snapped another flickering backhand before he could clear the gap, and he was blown back again, this time face first. Enciel had a toothed grin on against his three-day old stuble. "Good," he said, "it's stupid to stand your ground against a clearly superior opponent."
"I learned from the best," Jaune said.
Jaune kept up his desperate dodging, tanking what blows he couldn't avoid and keeping himself as small a target as possible. It was a tight rope's act of keeping costs to a minimum, and something was bound to give sooner or later.
"Running away won't always solve your problems, Jaune." Enciel charged at him again, but his entire body flickered a meter away from the blond, causing him to hesitate for a moment before leaping to the right. Mid-flight, Enciel grabbed his foot in one swift motion and whipped him hard at the ground.
Jaune bounced with a heavy thud, kicking up grass and clumps of dirt before falling flat on his face. He quickly rolled away, ears ringing and head light and spinning. Jaune pulled hard from within and the dizziness started to come under control, his aura rousing into a rising tide.
His father charged again, this time flickering the entire way—and the distribution of images was wider than he'd ever seen before. Enciel taught him the only truth necessary in battle: if you can't hit hard enough to kill in one blow, then you better damn sure know how to dodge.
But there were also moments where you just had to make a stand.
Jaune grit his teeth and pushed as much aura as he could into his fist before lashing out with a strike. His hand glowed white against the shadows from his father's Semblance and in that brief moment, seven Enciels coalesced into one wreathed in overlapping images.
He hit a wall of a man and Jaune's entire body shook from the impact, his stomach turning where they stood and his head whipping back from the recoil. Enciel stared into his soul where their attacks clashed, a feral expression taunting him to try hitting his father again. Jauned obliged and reared back for another haymaker—
—and the next thing he knew he was splayed back against the ground, eyes to the sky and wit too dull to even remember how he ended up where he did. There was also a nagging pounding from his crown down to his temples.
Enciel entered his field of view with a frown and a Scroll that displayed his and his father's faces. His was greyed out and had an 'X' over it while Enciel had a barely touched green bar under his. In the middle of the two portraits was a number that displayed seven minutes and five seconds left.
"You rely too much on your aura," Enciel said. His father's clinical precision with dealing damage always brought him to the brink of just before his aura collapsed. Both to avoid hurting him, as well as to make sure Jaune could recover a bit before school started physicals in the afternoon.
Jaune's limbs wouldn't listen and he figured he was hit hard enough to jolt his head. "That's still two seconds lower than my record," he said. Tiny victories were all he could get right now, but pile up enough of them and they still added up. "And I know I shouldn't have taken the bait when you taunted me."
"You pick up fast," his father said, "but you're also too eager and confident of your abilities."
Jaune frowned at that, if any, he knew full well how weak he was compared to the Huntsman before him. "I think I was smart enough not to fall for the obvious traps. Or, at least most of them."
"You are," Enciel said, "but you also have to remember that real life won't hold back for you, Jaune. Aura isn't magic." His father stretched out a hand at him and pulled him up from the ground.
Jaune… nodded slowly to that. The point of these spars was to get him accustomed to the heat of battle and train him to always keep a level head. And him losing sight of that was taken care of by the unspoken second point, to beat down his arrogance. There was an abundance of Huntsmen and Huntresses who lost their auras during crucial moments, and not a lot of them lived to tell the tale. He sighed, better learn now than later. "I understand, dad."
The hard lines on Enciel's glare softened into something between worry and apology, lips pressed thin but not clasped. He let out a breath as the shadows stopped their skittering and the mess of colors on his shirt separated into stripes, revealing the colors of the rainbow. "As long as you do, Jaune," he said. "Now go take a shower and get some breakfast, you've still got school."
"Yes dad," he said.
Jaune turned back and started padding his way to the house on wobbling legs. His aura should recover in a bit and repair the rest of the damage later on, this was simply the price of learning and letting things get to his head.
"And Jaune," his father called out from behind.
He stopped. "Yeah, dad?"
"You're doing alright, okay." His old man was scratching the back of his head, his scraggly black hair rustling in the gentle breeze. He put on some semblance of a smile and said, "Just be patient, okay? For me, at least."
Jaune gave him a firm nod and said, "I know, dad, and thanks."
Jaune finished his breakfast, took a shower after, then got dressed in his usual Pumpkin Pete hoody and whatever bottoms he found first. He was out the door by seven forty and running in a pair of khaki shorts and sneakers. Signal was a good twenty minutes away, and with his aura back up to around ten percent he'd make good time before classes started at eight thirty.
His bag was strapped down tight against his back and didn't rattle in the slightest as he tore through the pavement. Jaune's legs flew over the ground, his breathing regular and his aura burning strong within his legs. There were as many ways to use aura as there were ways to dance, each with its own advantages and intricacies. Earlier, he devoted most of his aura to defense and healing, making sure he had a solid wall between him and whatever his father dished out and that he'd walk away from most of whatever Enciel threw at him. This time, he pushed more of it to his legs, reinforcing his muscles and bones beyond normal capacity and using that to run.
The four fundamentals of aura usage were: Ten; to wrap oneself with their aura; Zetsu, to suppress and to help heal; Ren to increase one's aura output; and Hatsu, to release aura outside one's body. Right now, he was using a combination of Ten and Ren called Gyo: he was wrapping his legs with more aura than the rest of his body and increasing how much was concentrated there to increase his running speed.
The sun peaked through the Evergreen mountain range, light beams cutting through the cool morning and illuminating the glass shards in the road. Jaune ran on a path with a million colors and the song of the wind in the air to a metronome of rubber soles and asphalt. Patch was a quiet, scenic little place insulated from the perils of most of Remnant. Like a wall, the Evergreen mountain spanned most of the island's Northern to Western borders that kept both inclement weather and Grimm alike from the mainland.
Jaune ran with a purpose, exerting as much aura as he could control to further cut away from his time limit. Moving to Patch was Enciel's first order of business when he'd asked him for training, a quick decision to make since Hunters made quite a living off bounties. Though he figured keeping him somewhere closer to a stationed population of Huntsmen and Huntresses nearby was also one of those reasons.
The wind was whistling in his ears now, his acceleration messing up his hair. He could already see Signal in the distance and the shadow of a few others like him also taking the more scenic route, though some of the more regular students took the bus. Jaune didn't understand them doing so, since who'd bother riding something so clumsy and slow when you can run almost just as fast and with full control.
Jaune picked up speed, the whistling now a steady hum, powering through the last few hundred meters into Signal before pushing a spike of aura within. He jumped a moment after, feeling the wind under his arms and pass into and out of his clothes. Jaune cleared the school's walls with his hoodie flapping about behind him.
The blond landed with a short roll over the courtyard before recovering into brisk jog and finally stopping. He checked his Scroll, eight-oh-nine and just in time to pick up a quick snack. Growing hunters in training like him burned through a lot of calories in a day, since they fueled both their bodies and auras. Likewise, Huntsmen and Huntresses also eat a lot to compensate for their monstrous energy consumption.
Jaune paid for a pair of protein bars, one for now and another for just before physicals. He then went for his lockers and picked up his books: history, science, and math, plus his grip trainers and dumbbells. Just because he was in class didn't mean he didn't have any time to train anymore.
"Good morning, Jaune," greeted a girl.
He turned and saw Nori Gremburr with her cousin Vida Greiss, the pair of the taller by a head girl in black and purple and the blond pixie in green was a common topic among the guys.
"Good morning too Nori, Vida," he said, already getting started on his grippers.
"Yo," Vida said. The motherly brunette was the more stoic of the pair and usually got Nori out of trouble, which was a common thing she got herself into, as well as served as their class' unperturbable class president.
On the other hand, Nori was the socialite and a friend to everyone she meets. Though her idea of fun sometimes deviates from the norm. "Always the busy bee," said Nori. "anyway, the rest of the class is planning a gift for Mr. Branwen's birthday. We're collecting funds for the party."
"Sure," he said. Jaune fished for his wallet. "How much are we talking about?"
"Ten from everyone," Nori said, "no need for anything too extravagant. And besides, all we really need to do is get Mr. Delmonico to buy us a bottle for the guy."
"Unfortunately," Vida said with a sigh.
Jaune passed the card to the younger of the two, and Vida added it to the rest of the pile from their class. Nori's height was a sore point for her, and no need to drive the point harder.
Mr. Qrow Branwen was their homeroom teacher and Yang Xiao Long's uncle. Normally, one would expect some form of favoritism with such an arrangement, but strangely enough, Yang seems more embarassed by the idea than proud. Though having an openly alcoholic family member probably doesn't count as a badge of honor.
"Thank you Jaune," Nori said before waving goodbye. "See you in class."
Vida bowed to him. "We've still got rounds to do."
Jaune clenched his grippers to a steady pace: squeeze, squeeze, slow close. Rinse and repeat. "See you later," he said.