Mors finds Jaune at the combat arena, getting beat up by three training dummies. A glance was enough to know the bots were set to high difficulty. Perhaps the conversation with Pyrrha has left the blond feeling like he needed to prove himself, even if it was to no one in particular.
"Oof!" A relatively hard hit sends the knight sliding to the edge of the arena's ring. The bots, being on hard mode that they are, don't relent. Jaune barely has any time to bring his shield up before all three of his opponents jump in and pound away at him. The blond's Aura took much longer to fall into the red than one would normally expect, even with improper shielding, but it did eventually. The bots stopped unceremoniously.
"Good work. You're doing great. Keep up the training." Come three synthetic voices.
Mors decided it's a good time as any to sit down next to his battered friend, who glances at him and groans.
"Not you too… Look man, it's been a long and hard day, and I've just had a serious fallout with the nicest person on this planet. I have absolutely zero energy left for these kind of talks, nil, zip, nadda. Can you just…leave me alone? Please?"
"...I've heard your conversation with Pyrrha."
"..." Jaune turns his face away from Mors.
"Cardin was there too."
The knight bolts up to look at Mors, completely terrified. Mors takes a deep breath.
"I was trying to convince him to drop his beef with you when you guys walked in… Actually I was beating him up…" He cringes at his friend's expression "Yeah that was why I made the stupid decision to stay silent and wait till you leave. The bomb was dropped too fast for me to knock Cardin out. So he heard, and I had no choice but letting him walk. I would've k-…I'm sorry dude."
Jaune stares at him for a while. Then, with resignation on his face, the guy plops back onto the floor.
"Can't seem to get mad at you, man. Couldn't even tell myself it was your fault. Prolly just my punishment from the universe for trying to be something I'm not meant to be, I dunno."
"Guess I'll pack my stuffs tonight." He mutters bitterly.
"I…don't think Cardin's going to tell on you." He shrugs at Jaune's glance of disbelief. "I…beat him up pretty bad. He's… afraid of me. If he tells, nothing's gonna hold me back from tearing that guy a new hole, so he's not gonna risk it without a good reason. He'll…prolly still blackmail you, though. He knows I can't get involved."
"Great…Instead of one big rip it's gonna be endless drag out pain." His blond friend groans again. "But I guess I should count my blessings. I'm still gonna be here apparently, though maybe I really shouldn't be…" His tone turns sullen "Here I am getting my bum saved again, getting babysat by you; if not, Pyrrha."
"I don't think I've saved you from anything. But hey, think of it as you owing me once. Save me when you get stronger and we're cool."
"...I know you're trying to cheer me up and all, but can you please not?" Jaune sits up and speaks, a little heat in his voice "You know anything that's gonna give you trouble is sure as heck can't be handled by me! Don't patronize me!"
"I swear to you I wasn't. Look man," He sighs "Headmaster Ozpin's told me to not tell anyone, but since I know your secret…" Jaune looks away. "I don't have Aura, and I'll prolly never have one."
"...Excuse me?"
"I don't have Aura, can't."
"...You serious?! But isn't Tsvestok like…a ton? Literally? You're saying you're swinging it like a stick just by…"
"Muscles and bones, yeah."
"Monty Oum Mors, what did you do? A thousand pushups everyday? Drank protein shakes for water when you're thirsty? Got genetically enhanced by some sort of experiment in Atlas?...Are you actually an alien?"
"Something closer to the first one" He shakes his head at his friend's baffled expression. "Point is, I'm actually not very sturdy against us Huntsman's level of damage. Shit hit the fan, and I'll prolly be first blood. Believe me when I say you'll find me in a bad spot a lot more than you might think." Mors pats Jaune's shoulder "And I'm counting on you to get me out, you're my leader now."
"...The scars…" The blond mutters and look at Mors, who shrugs "What have you been through, man?..." His lips slowly retract into a thin line as the reality of fighting Grimms without Aura sinks in, most likely thinking about what he would've been like if Pyrrha hadn't unlocked his Aura. "How many close calls have you had?"
"...Many."
"Sorry."
"Me too, friend." Mors cranes his neck to stare at the ceiling. "But well, I've gotten a team, two in fact, to look out for me now, so it's not so bad. You guys will be great huntsmen and huntresses, surpassing me one day, not too distant actually." Sounded a bit arrogant there, but somehow fake humility feels even more pompous. When Jaune remains silent, Mors looks at him. "That included you."
"Yeah right. Didn't you just beat Cardin up? You know I can't even touch his toe nail, right? How do you suppose I 'surpass' you?"
"Trained by me and maybe Pyrrha. Dick move to her, by the way." Grimace. Ugh. "Come on dude, every Huntsman is trained by someone. What do you call what we're doing here, at Beacon? Getting helped by more experienced Huntsmen, how's that different from what I and Pyrrha are offering? And what does doing this by yourself even mean anyway? Like do you wanna invent your own fighting methods or something?"
"I don't know! Okay? I don't know… All I know is everyone sees me as some bumbling loser you either pity or look down on. You know what the last letter my parents sent me said? That I don't have to try so hard, that it's okay if I wanna give up, pack up and go home. Even my mom and dad didn't feel like I can't handle this!" The blond angrily brushes his nose "I just…wanna prove it's not true, man. To myself, at least. That I can be a hero, too."
Mors swears the propaganda bullshiterries has hyped up this occupation way too much. Here is a boy who is absolutely technologically gifted, a talent he thinks is much, much more constructive to society than being good at whacking something to death, and yet the guy keeps basing his worth over his fighting capability. Wasting a perfectly good talent in trade for another body to throw at an unrelenting enemy.
Such is the world they live in, he supposes, where there are monsters that can render everything you've achieved meaningless. What good is hacking some computers when the Grimms come and take away everything you have? Naturally, those who can oppose such an oppressive presence are object of idolization.
Well, who is he to reject a person's dream?
"I guess I get it. And self betterment is an admirable motivation, I suppose. But why does that equates to not receiving help from me or Pyrrha? It still needs your effort and dedication to follow the training. There's not really a shortcut you know? No matter who or what you learn it from, fighting is something that takes either a very long time or very intense training to get good at. Talents can only help so much."
"You're behind with the people here, who's spent most of their lives training hard for combat. If you wanna catch up, you'll have to work thrice as hard as others. You'll basically can only get there on your own." He stands up, pats down his pants and holds out a hand for his leader. "No shame in receiving a few pointers along the way."
Jaune takes his hand and Mors pulls his buddy up. He's considering Mors' words. That's good. The big student pats the blond's head a few times then jerks his thumb towards the locker room.
"I brought my tools. Can you pull the schematic?"
"...Yeah…Man, I really should apologize to Pyrrha shouldn't I?"
"Yes, yes you should, you literally pulled a Weiss on her back there." Jaune screams into his hands. "And you know, she'll prolly forgive you with a smile and apologize for something totally not her fault."
"Ey ey ey you're supposed to cheer me up, not making me feel like the worst human being in the universe!"
"Something in life you gotta protect at all costs, brother, like Pyrrha's heart of gold."
"...Yeah okay fair." First genuine laugh of the day. More of a faint chuckle but that's progress. Jaune falls silent for a couple of steps, he then asks, gingerly "So…You are not disappointed? That I cheated to get in here? Your team leader is a fraud?"
"Haven't my attitude so far clearly shown how much I care about that stuff and how disappointed I am?"
"Geez okay. Where do all these sasses come from? I get it." Jaune smiles lopsidedly and knocks on Mors's arm "Thanks man."
"Don't mention it." Mors grins back. They walk in silence, but it is much lighter now.
…
…
"You really think I can get better?"
"...Can you wake up at five tomorrow?"
-REST-
Jaune groggily, unwillingly, wakes up to someone shaking him gently. He's vaguely aware that there's a reason he should prolly wake up this…Oum there hasn't even been daylight yet...early, but cannot for the life of him bring himself to care.
"I'm up…go away…be with you in ten minumhghb"
"Jaune…"
Pyrrha!? Jaune's eyes fling open and snap onto the crimsonette hunching by his bed, looking every bit miserable as he expected her to be. The girl is most definitely not a morning person, though not for the lack of effort to go to bed early on her part. Pyrrha and morning just don't mix. It is prolly the Invincible Girl's only weakness.
And yet here she is, valiantly trying to fight back sleepiness. It's not really working, but still, A+ for effort.
"Pyrrha uh…maybe…you and I can have another training session in the evening? You don't have to go with me and Mors now…"
"No no no I am…huuuuahh…alert. You don't have to worry about…huuuahh…me…huaaaap…" He can tell she's already warming up to his suggestion, if her glancing back at her bed means anything. "I promised I would train…huuuuhh…with you guys."
"Jaune and I are just gonna do some exercises in the morning" Jaune bit back a startled manly yelp when Mors whisper talked out of the literal Void. The dude's all dressed up and ready to go. "The actual training should be done in the evening, when our strengths have recovered and everyone are fully awake."
The girl swats weakly at Mors's chest and grumbles incoherently.
"Alright…please huuuuurgh...moderate yourselves. I will huaaap…definitely be with you in the evening." With that, his partner staggers back to her calling nest, dead to the world as soon as she hits the mattress.
Pyrrha in the morning is one of team ALVMN's closely guarded secret wonders.
.
.
.
"So…what do we do, coach?" Jaune takes in a lungful of morning air as he asks his training buddy. Vale is well on its way into fall and the air is a bit chilly as a result. Mors is a bit underdressed for the temperature, but the dude is from Atlas.
"We'll run around the campus for a few laps, do some push-ups, there're monkey bars for pull-ups over there...uh then sit-ups, then squat, let's see if you can do one legged squat with Aura, uh…pull-ups again then wall sit for a bit. Then we'll practice a bit with a training sword."
"Holy Oum man! I'm gonna be dead before breakfast!"
Mors scratches his head, looking a bit uncertain.
"You won't? You have quite a lot of Aura, so it will keep your body from breaking down." Well that's a comforting thought. "We'll go at a pace which the average people here will feel a bit strained to complete, which uh means you'll get pretty exhausted by the end. But once you recharge your Aura and it brings you back to normal, you'll actually get really noticeable results. It's part of the reason why Aura people are stronger than common folks, their trainings are more effective. Or so I gathered."
"Okay. Doesn't sound too exciting, but fair."
"Uh…Just so you don't feel like you're exercising without a purpose. I'll do a brief explanation. Uh…so…almost all of intensive physical activities require uses of the core muscles we're gonna cycle through today, especially those from your stomach down, which is your foundation. With strong foundation, even without skills, you are already pretty tough. As most of the forces we generate come from the ground."
Mors taps one feet onto the cobblestone
"Lots of people here didn't particularly work too hard on that though. I guess they usually trained the foundation to a certain standard, then focus more on honing a specialized skill, letting the rest just grow naturally with experience. It's less stressful, less risky and more motivational that way. Let's stretch while I continue."
And stretch they do. For a giant slab of a human, and all that claim about ultra dense bones and muscles. Mors is surprisingly flexible. Not Blake's level of flexibility but enough to make Jaune painfully aware of how stiff he is.
"Anywho, ghh…the running will serve two purposes: to raise your overall stamina and more importantly, letting you practice using the core muscles we're training. We won't go around an obstacle. Rather, try to climb, vault over, or leap over them. Getting used to using your body will help picking up and pulling off techniques a lot easier."
"Wait so we're doing Parkour?"
"There's a word for that?! I called it Running And Sometimes Overcoming Obstacles. RASOO for short…" Lord he pities whoever will be this guy's future children, if the mother won't interfere, the kids are going to be stuck with some horrible names for the rest of their life. "I didn't know! Okay? You can't fault a man for not being able to come up with cool names! Look, you understand what we're doing? Let's just get started okay?"
"Sure, let's do RASOO." Jaune snickers. He's so gonna tell Ruby.
"Yeah…we'll see if that grin's gonna stay till halfway through today." Mors grumbles as he takes off towards the dock area. He moves fast, not so much that it's impossible to keep up with, but Jaune still has to pump his legs to maintain the distance.
Already, he knew he's gonna be a pile of heaving mess by the time they're done. He's made up his mind, though. He'll push through any kind of hellish training thrown at him to get stronger, to earn himself some worth as a Huntsman. He's prepared to push his body to its breaking point, then some more. That, is an Arc promise to himself.
.
.
.
It came sooner than he had expected.
True to Mors's words, Jaune started to feel exhausted shortly after they began, around the fourth lap. Jaune's Aura kicked in and did its best to fix him as he went on. That sustained Jaune until halfway through the routine, in the middle of the sit-ups; at which point Jaune experienced his Aura broke for the first time. It was one of the most terrifying things to witness in this world, right up there with clowns and acid spewing alien. Instantly he was a thousand times weaker than just a sneeze ago; or maybe it was more like all the strength he took for granted left all at once.
Yet Mors didn't let him stop. Not until he truly lost control of all of his muscles.
Jaune's lying on the stone pavement, stuck in an unresponsive body that only knows pain. Every inch of his body is screaming in protest. Occasionally, a part somewhere (he can't feel anything very well at this point) twitches involuntarily and he winces at the cramp. The knight feels incredibly sleepy, cobblestone is fine, he's gonna catch some Zs and be up before class…
"Hey, stay with me. Breathe." Mors squats down and pats gently on his chest, but in this state it might as well has been an elbow dive. Jaune sucks in a large gulp of air at the pain.
Oum he hates this orge of a dude so much right now! This is wayyyy overkill for payback of him justly laughing at Mors poor naming sense. He makes sure his opinion of the guy known by sending the harshest glare he can muster at his tormentor.
It was swiftly ignored. Dammit!
"I'm clocking your Aura recovery rate so we can have a better sense of slotting time for morning exercise. If yours is a fast type, which I think you are, we can afford to start a bit later in the morning."
Jaune wanted to complain about Mors's definition of exercise, which is more like masochism in his dictionary, but it came out as disjointed gasps and gurgles. Nevertheless, the guy caught on, and even had the decency to look apologetic.
"It's tough, I know, I've been here. But this is how I trained to get this far, and I want to get you to be as physically strong as me, maybe even more with Aura. So…hang in there, okay? Aura is pretty amazing, you won't feel as bad by as soon as next week."
Of course, that they're gonna up the intensity the moment he's gotten used to this monstrosity was left unsaid. But he appreciates the effort to keep him motivated. It's okay, he was prepared for hell. Though he didn't expect hell to be so bad, but Jaune has made a promise.
That was why he wrestled with himself to stand up as soon as his Aura came back up and begin slowly fixing his body, nodding at Mors to continue. Fifteen minutes, faster than the average forty-five to an hour, nowhere as fast as Ruby's four, but also nowhere as fragile, according to Mors.
He has what Mors called a "Cat 4 Aura", which is supposedly really cool. Cat 5 being the Aura quality of legendary figures in history, good and bad.
All that good name couldn't keep him from being absolutely dead on his feet by the end of their routine, though. For the second time of the day, his 'top tier' Aura broke, again. Lord, he's gonna do this everyday! Jaune prays to Oum's Aspect of Will he won't have to go bald in exchange for power or something, but he does feel like his hair is gonna fall out what's with this much exertion. The blond hastily runs his fingers through his hair and breaths a subtle when his hand came down free of any golden strand. Calm down my paranoid brain!
At least he gets to practice with sword now. That's ought to be a bit more exciting.
"Kay let's do some weapon training. Here." Mors throws him a plastic sword. Jaune catches it and stumbles at the thing's unexpected weight. This thing has to be at least three times as heavy as Crocea Mors! His overworked Aura once again rushes through his body to support the sword. He groans internally, workout isn't over, seems. Jaune sends questioning glances at his friend.
"So that sword is seven kilos (15.5 lbs), a bit heavier than your actual weapon. But the extra weights do serve a purpose. Two, actually. One is to work your sword swinging muscles. More importantly though, is that the small flaws in form can be emphasized to be apparent so we can hammer them out. Here, it'll be clearer once we get into practice."
Mors walks over and starts guiding Jaune into a stance, a pretty standard one he usually see in comics and movies.
"Feet apart…knees bent…one hand near pommel, one near guard…sword tip at throat level…Kay, you'll want to wind your sword back and cut down across like this." Mors makes a diagonal cutting motion from his right with his hand. "Then go back to neutral, then swing down from the other side, then vertically, then horizontally from right to left. Then we'll do them again but reversing the directions. That's uh…eight swings. After that, one handed stroke with each side. We'll get to stabbing once you get these twenty four basic sword swings down, which is a bit more complex."
"Dude...I'm like...really behind as it is. Do we have to take baby steps like this? I mean, you're the coach but...I dunno… I think I can swing my sword pretty decently…"
"...I guess it does seem inefficient and boring with this method. But to tell you the truth, this and a little more is all the formal training I had received." Mors shrugs at his stares of disbelief "The rest of them are experiences, and I'm not sure how to teach you that. I can give you a few pointers, sure, but you gotta get the basics down first. Hey, don't make that face, you also got Pyrrha, remember? She'll take up the advanced parts. And really, don't underestimate the basics. Every fancy technique with a sword eventually boils down to some combination of these eight slashes and a few stabs. You can feint, you can block, you can parry, you can do twirls and stuff, but when you strike, you'll almost certainly use one of these basic strokes. I want you to practice until every offensive swing you make is executed in perfect form naturally and you can transition between them flowingly. That's basically half of fighting already."
"That's a lot of hype over swinging a sword?"
"One good hit is worth a thousand small cuts, man. You notice how Cardin tended to shrug off a lot of your attacks?" Jaune cringes at the mention of his tormentor. Oh yeah...he's prolly gonna get blackmailed today...joy. The reminder of his humiliating defeats at the other boy's hand doesn't exactly help him feel better, either. "Oops, sorry, dude." He shakes his head telling his friend to move on. Mors scratches his neck and falls silent for a few seconds. Seems he lost his momentum in talking.
"...Anyway, lemme show you what one good swing feels like." Mors gently takes Jaune's sword hands into one hand. "A good form strike is pretty heavy, more than you might think, as it comes from your entire body. You know how some people have seemingly heavier blows than normal? The heavy hands? They simply have good forms." Mors puts another hand onto his shoulder, again, softly. "Your opponent will usually has to deal with those kind of strikes; either parry, block, or dodge, which puts them on the defensive. If they just tank it, which is how it often goes with Grimms, they'll suffer pretty significant damage. And enough of those, and they're down." The bigger guy steps in close behind Jaune, way too close. Mors's front is basically glued to Jaune's back, and he can feel the dude breathing down on his head, which is eerily faint. Now hold on...
"D-dude, I know you mean well and all, but uh...isn't this a bit uh...intimate?"
"...I'm flattered you feel that way about me Jaune but let's focus on training for now eh? We'll discuss our feelings for each other later, maybe behind the school's garden."
"Smarty pants."
"You made it weird first."
"...Okay fair." Jaune grumbly concedes. "Fine, do what you want with my body."
"Ugh. Where are all these sasses when you talk to literally anyone other than our team and Ruby?"
"L-low blow man! Being socially awkward has nothing to do with my charisma! Be-besides, hidden charms aren't meant for all to see!" Suddenly, he is aware of how they've been holding the weird position a bit too long. "Forget all that. Just show me what you wanted to show!"
He can kinda feel Mors shrugs. "Kay. Lift your arms up here. Breath in." He complies. As he did, the other guy took a moment to adjust his wrists angle, something about blade alignment, then move that hand onto his other shoulder. "On three, tense your arms, slash down and breathe out as forcefully as you can. One. Two. Three."
A lot of things happened all at once on that third count, but for a split second Jaune can feel a…'flow'...of movements, of sort. Right before he counted three, Mors kneed Jaune's own knee joint on his back leg, making him instinctively pushed against the ground with said leg. As soon as he did that, with ridiculous strength, Mors pushed his entire body down, making him pushed even harder back. Then, as Jaune blew air out through his nose, he could feel his stomach tensed up, and some sort of…force…born from his leg shot to his torso. Then, with one hand pushing Jaune's sword side shoulder forward, and the other pulling the one on the opposite side back, Mors guided him through the swing. The sword crashed down like a meteorite, unleashing the unexpectedly tremendous force somehow built up in his body.
He heard the plastic sword literally tore through the air as if it was going through thick liquid, not the air he hardly noticed was surrounding him everyday. He could feel how powerful that single strike was; maybe it was the slight gust of air rushing in to fill the vacuum in the sword's path that gave him that feeling, he doesn't know, this is some next level stuff. Jaune stares at the sword in his hands, not having moved from the pose he made at the end of his…'true strike'.
He didn't know he could make such a violent motion.
"Pretty cool, right? Gonna take a while before you can get the hang of it tho, prolly. It's gonna be a bit of a grind, but it'll make learning advanced stuff much easier."
Jaune nods with a purpose. He can kinda see it, how he can get stronger. If he thinks about it, the things Mors has taught him were so obvious it was weird he couldn't come up with it himself: Just exercise and practice. It was how Mors was so confident with his method, and the intensity he'd never imagined of how it was carried out that gave him a sense of direction, the Fraud Student supposes...Actually, the most important thing he has gotten today is the mindset. He's been thinking like a normal human. While in fact, he should have been thinking like a superhuman, what Huntsmen are.
With the excitement he felt back when he first got his Aura unlocked, Jaune eagerly tries to redo the beautiful sword strike he did earlier. Of course, he is careful to follow the same steps as Mors has shown. Inhale foot, abs, exhale, shoulder, arms!
"YAH!"
And it was the return of Jaune the Wimp.
A/N
To Guest: I'm not sure how much stronger is 4 times normal human his size...But I'll say Mors is pretty strong, on par with Yang and maybe even more. Think of him as a glass cannon that keeps shooting even as it's breaking apart.
RnR~