Chapter Three: A Meeting
A year and a half into his training, Jaune started to take up traveling.
Not every major disaster or Grimm based catastrophe happened within sight of his house after all. As a Hunter, he felt that it was his duty to go out and find those in need, wherever they may be. There had to be some people in the world who could use his help after all. And while his family were against the idea of his going out on his own, they relented once he told them that he would stay in touch and call them everyday.
One day he was idly walking through the woods when he came across a small village, just near the boarders of Anima. Curious and a bit hungry for something other than little woodland creatures, Jaune had visited the place. And as it turns out, the little village of Beckton had a problem. Namely, bandits.
A bandit tribe had set up camp close by, and were pillaging the neighboring villages for food and Dust. To make matters worse, the fear and negative emotions ended up attracting various forms of Grimm to their village. With all of their efforts spent of beating away the Grimm, the villagers feared that they would be unable to protect themselves when the bandits eventually attacked.
The people of Beckton sent several messages to various Huntsman Stations, hoping to employ a Hunter that could help solve their problem. Unfortunately for them, the Hunters they had hired were arriving much later than expected. They believed that by the time their help arrived, it would be too late.
So Jaune decided to help them out.
Beating back the Grimm was easy enough to do. None of them were that strong, and it usually took him no more than a single punch for him to kill them. The bandits were another story. They seemed to have realized that they were being followed and had erased most of their tracks, making it harder for Jaune to find them through conventional means.
Fortunately for Jaune, he wasn't the most conventional person. His training increased his strength and speed immensely, but it also increased something else: his senses.
So instead of wasting time trying to find the bandits with his horrible tracking skills, he simply focused on his hearing while in the middle of the woods and tried to listen for their heartbeats. And after several false starts he was slowly but surely able to figure out where they were.
He arrived in the middle of a clearing and immediately got ambushed on all sides by knife wielding children.
Apparently the adults and children of the bandit tribe decided to split up in order to draw his attention. The kids would lead him back towards an isolated clearing while the adults would go back and assault the village. Their reasoning was that even if he defeated all of the kids, he still wouldn't have enough time to go back and save the villagers.
Jaune was a bit horrified by this, and made sure not to hurt the kids too bad when he knocked some of them out. He knew logically that it needed to be done, but he still felt a bit horrible when he knocked a bunch of kids around. Yeah they were trying to stab him, but they were still kids! They probably didn't even know any better.
That did leave him with a bit of a dilemma though. He didn't want to leave a bunch of kids behind in a Grimm infested forest... but he still needed to save the people in the village. Ultimately, he decided to leave a few conscious to defend themselves and ran as fast as he could back to Beckton. He didn't even bother dodging the trees in his way and simply plowed through them.
He arrived at the village just in time to see a bunch of adults exit a... was that a red portal? How did a red portal get there?
One woman who was wearing a Grimm mask that reminded him of the White Fang was holding an incredibly long red sword. With a single swipe the portal disappeared.
He kinda wanted a sword like that. It would save him a lot of time on running if he could just open up portals to wherever he wanted.
"Step aside, boy," the woman said. At her side the other bandits readied their weapons. "This does not concern you."
"You guys are the bandits, right? Then it does concern me." He readied his fists and charged.
Though he couldn't see it, Jaune could tell that the woman was smirking. "So be it."
The ensuing fight was one of the more challenging fights in his career as a Hunter, though that was as expected. The thing about most enemy Hunters that Jaune interacted with was that each and every one of them seemed to have a special ability or fighting style to go with their unique look. He wasn't exactly sure why, since his parents had never really explained that aspect of Hunter culture to him. Nor did they explain what the hell "Aura" was, or why Hunters seemed to get so worked up about it all the time. Maybe it was another word for Dust?
Did every Hunter have a superpower of their own? If so, then what was his superpower? He hoped it was something cool like being able to fly. It would save him time on running everywhere.
So for most of the bandits he was able to power through. Their superpowers, while varied, weren't really able to affect him much. A few good punches and they were out for the count. No, it was the portal woman he was having the most trouble with.
She just kept using her sword to portal around the place. Every time he almost seemed to get his hands on her she would disappear into a portal and reappear somewhere else. It didn't help that she kept throwing these weird red bombs at him every few seconds that blew everything up, making things hard to see and giving her more time to escape.
At one point he did manage to break her mask, revealing her face for a good few seconds before she tried blowing him up again. It was honestly starting to piss him off. He didn't want to hurt her, he just wanted to knock her out and bring her to the authorities. But with every second that she disappeared only to reappear somewhere far away he was becoming more and more tempted to just beat her up.
Hopefully his sisters would never find out about this.
But after a while, the woman started to get visibly tired. One wrong misstep and Jaune was finally able to get his hands on that stupid sword. It shattered in his grip and he was able to get a good look at the woman's shocked face before he struck out with his fist. Unfortunately, his aim was thrown off when he was yanked back by an invisible force, the shockwave of his fist leveling a good portion of the forest instead of breaking the woman's jaw. Another pulse and Jaune found himself flying backwards, hitting several trees along the way.
When he finally stood up, no worse for wear, the woman was gone.
"I think I still have that mask and some of those sword bits back at my apartment. I tried to make a portal sword out of it but it didn't work."
Yang could feel a headache coming on. She wasn't sure if she wanted to punch this guy into next week, destroy everything around her, or just go home and call it a day. She settled on calling this guy out on his bullshit. "That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
The guy looked insulted. "It's true! Why would I lie?"
"I dunno, maybe to impress a beautiful young woman like myself?" She batted her eyelashes at him and he blushed harder. She smirked before getting back to business. "Look, I don't have time for games. Just tell me where your boss is or else," she cracked her knuckles, "this might get ugly."
"I am telling the truth though! And I can't fight while I'm on the job, or else my boss will fire me." The guy paused. "And my sister would kill me, since she's the one who got me this job in the first place."
Yang growled and fisted a hand in the guy's shirt, yanking him down to her level. "Look buddy, you're really starting to piss me off. Just tell me where Junior is before I-"
"You looking for me, Blondie?" She turned around to see a tall man with a beard and red sunglasses walking towards her. "Because I don't appreciate underaged punks like you causing trouble in my club."
Yang grinned at him, mockingly raising her hands in the universal sign of peace. "Chill, Junior. I just wanted to ask some information."
Junior arched an eyebrow. "Funny, I don't feel like giving any today. Kid, do your job and get her out of here."
"Uh, boss, wouldn't it be easier to just give her the information? I mean, she's probably a Huntress. She could cause a lot of damage to the club when she resists."
"Did I ask you for your opinion?"
"Uh -"
"Then shut it and get her outta -"
Yang, having heard enough, immediately punched Junior in the sternum, sending him flying across the club and crashing to a glass window. Almost immediately the music stopped and random bystanders started screaming and running out of the club, trying to get away from the ensuing fight. Out of seemingly nowhere a bunch of guys in identical suits started running towards her direction, each of them armed with all sorts of knives and axes. they were too far away to be a threat to her now, so she decided to take out the closest guy in her way.
She whirled around and sent a flying kick directly at the bouncer's head - only for him to catch it with one hand. He sent her a confused look. "Is this really necessary -"
She wrenched her foot out of his hand and punched him in the face. He didn't even bother dodging and flew into the air before landing on his feet, completely unharmed. "Huh. You're a sturdy one, aren't you?" She unveiled her Ember Celicas and got into a fighting stance.
The bouncer, on the other hand, just gave her a disbelieving look. "Are we seriously doing this?"
She didn't answer, instead launching herself at him with a flying punch.
"Aw, man. I'm so gonna get fired for this."