I don't own anything related to the RWBY franchise

Chapter 16 - Mind Arts, Meditation, Semblances and the Soul

Arc Castle, Eastern Atlas…

"I've gathered you all today to get a status report of your progress in locating my son," Johnathon Arc called out to his assembled family in a very stern and no nonsense tone of voice.

A hush fell over the room as Juniper (23), Petunia (22), Daff (21), Mari (20), Daisy (19) and Lily (18), all 6 of Jaune Arc's older sisters looked down at their hands. Despite the fact that they'd been running security sweeps and seeker-bot patrols of every store, hotel, motel, bar, service, and underworld lair in the entire country for over two whole years, they hadn't seen or heard of anything that seemed the least bit related to their younger brother.

Jaune Arc was gone. Their search for the boy had frisked the entire country to the point that the criminal underworld was in shambles...

The Arc sisters were all far too dutiful to ever admit it, but secretly most of them actually believed that they were only prolonging the inevitable by continuing their search. Jaune Arc was dead. He just had to be dead by now. For all of Jaune's genius, he'd always been far too weak to survive on his own. He would've been helpless out there in the Atlesian wild lands. He would've been eaten by the very first Beowulf that he ran into. Just as their father had always explained to them over and over again, the only hope for survival that Jaune Arc had ever had was to accept their protection and their care… Well, he hadn't, and now the boy was dead.

And it hurt… It hurt so bad...

For the lion's share of the Arc sisters, the worst and most painful part of the entire situation was that their father was completely incapable of seeing the truth right before his eyes. It hurt them to continue the futile searching day after day, and these meetings that their father held once a week were always a special type of torture. Nevertheless, they continued to take part whenever they could spare the time, out of love and familial loyalty. They loved their father. They honoured their brother. They continued the search...

Olivia Arc stared daggers at the various women sitting around her. Over the last couple of months, she'd slowly come to realize that her sisters had all but given up, and she was completely furious with them as a result. In fact, she was completely irate with absolutely everyone in the room, and she could no longer hide the emotion from her face. When she could no longer force herself to even act like she was taking part in the meeting anymore, Olivia's mouth twisted into a tight little scowl and she cast her eyes to the side. That's when she saw it once again, and her breath hitched in her throat. She saw that same damned holo-footage that had been repeating over and over again for years and years on end.

The holo-footage of the death of Birn Colony was arriving at a very familiar scene…

In this scene, seven-year-old Olivia arc was wrapped up like a mummy in a mixture of clothing, plastic bottles, and copious amounts of tape, and her little arms were wrapped tightly around her twin brother's shoulders. She was being piggybacked by a boy that wasn't all that much larger than herself, but her brother was still managing to move with a desperate variety of haste visible in his every movement. After leaving the other occupants of the compromised Grimm bunker to fend for themselves, he dashed into an ice cream parlor, grabbed up a broom and a large can of hard frozen ice cream, and then continued to move out the backdoor of the shop.

In the days following the Grimm swarm, the holo-cameras placed atop most of the buildings would reveal that the Arc family vassals, Lisa Blanche, and Meghan Grise, fought to the death just outside of the doomed Grimm bunker that Jaune and Olivia had been sheltering in, and that their noble sacrifice was the only reason that the area had so comparatively few Ant Grimm roaming around.

There were still hundreds and hundreds of Ant Grimm in every single direction...

From her spot atop her brother's back, Olivia could see scores of Ants moving in upon them as they entered the ice cream shop and then exited out the back. Soon enough, Jaune was swinging his frozen ice cream tub back and forth by the thick plastic handle strapped to its sides to bat aside the odd Grimm that was ahead of the rest. Jaune didn't attempt to stand and fight, but instead he used his weapon as a barrier between the 2 of them and the Grimm as he continued to move down the street.

"Tell me something sister," Jaune panted out as if they were out on a normal morning jog and not in the middle of a desperate fight for survival. "Do you remember where that gardening store from earlier today was?"

Even as she decided that her brother had completely lost his mind, Olivia pointed down the road and then to the right towards a shop that they'd browsed several hours earlier.

Jaune only nodded, waved the ice cream tub that he was holding down at a rapidly approaching Ant Grimm and then grimaced when the plastic container full of frozen cream exploded into hundreds of pieces. The Grimm he'd just smashed into the ground was dead, but so was his weapon… Jaune didn't pause to complain. He clutched at his broom instead as he continued to run down the street.

The swell of nearby Ant Grimm was catching up with every second that passed, like a black and white carpet made of writhing legs and clicking mandibles.

"I want to keep our minds occupied Olive, so I want to play the last letter game," Jaune panted out as he dashed into an alleyway and made several very rapid right and left turns through a complex jumble of buildings. "Don't worry about speaking out loud. Ants are deaf as well as blind. Instead, they feel vibrations through their antennae and they have a strong sense of smell."

For several seconds in a row, Olivia was completely flabbergasted by her brother's request. The last letter game was a game where one person would say a word in a specific category and then their competition needed to say a word in the same category that begins with the last letter of their opponent's word. The winner was the person who managed to say the most words without repeating a word or straying from the category. Olivia and Jaune had played the game several times in the past, but she could hardly believe that he thought right now was an appropriate time. She was shaking from head to toe in fear. She was completely freaking out….

Then Olive suddenly realized exactly what her brother had in mind, and she slowly nodded her face down into the cotton shirt covering his shoulder.

"Okay Olive. The first category is food," Jaune explained, even as he turned a corner to find three dozen Ants completely shredding an old man's lower body. Then he was rapidly backpedaling around the corner, scrambling through a wide open front door and then dashing through the back door of the old man's house. "The first word is cake, Olivia," he panted out. "You know, like that really nice red velvet cake that we had earlier."

"Eclair," Olivia slowly countered in a shaky little voice directly into the flesh of Jaune's shoulder.

"Genius, my twin sister's a genius," Jaune murmured as if the word 'eclair' was the key to deciphering some long lost and forgotten language. As he spoke, he dashed under a recently created hole in a fence, snuck carefully up to the opening of a well-tended courtyard, and then started running as fast as he could across a brick paved street towards the garden store he'd asked about. "My next word is raisin."

"Nachos," Olivia breathed out even as her brother carried the two of them into the garden store and began running down a very wet and humid aisle.

"S'mores," Jaune wheezed out in a breathless little voice as he skidded to a stop at the end of an aisle. Then he suddenly released a loud sigh of relief, and dashed towards a series of large jugs. Without a second's hesitation, he started unscrewing the lids off of every single jug on the display and Olivia was curling her nose at the overpowering smell.

"You know Olivia. Back at Arc Castle, peppermint oil is used as a bug repellant because ants really don't like the smell," Jaune explained even as he overturned several large jugs of the stuff to pour it all down over their heads, shoulders, backs, stomachs and thighs.

Within just a few seconds, both Jaune and Olivia were completely doused in the powerfully minty and sticky oil and were dripping all over the concrete floor.

"Okay, we probably smell pretty bad to the Ant Grimm at this point," Jaune sighed out with a somewhat relieved expression on his face. "Now that we've made it hard for the Ants to scent us out, whatever fear or unhappiness we might be feeling is the only thing that'll draw them in our direction. I want you to do something for me Olive. I want you to close your eyes, hug me tightly, and focus your entire mind on a really, really happy thought." Even as he said those words, Jaune peeked his head out towards the aisle and caught sight of the swell of Ants from earlier spilling into the store.

"I… I can do that for you," Olivia whispered as she burrowed her face down into the side of Jaune's neck and tightly closed her eyes. "I… I love my brother! I love my brother. I love my brother so so so so much," she started repeating like a mantra over and over again.

"I love you too lil sis, and that's exactly what I'm going to be focusing on," Jaune assured her with a slight hitch to his voice that proved he meant every single word. Even as he said those words, he was cracking upon the last jug of the oil, moving them further down the aisle to where a ladder led up to a loft area of the store, and was pouring the oil all over their legs to slowly puddle beneath their feet.

Later on, Olivia would come to understand that her brother was prepared for the two of them to flee up the ladder if his plan didn't work, but that he needed to find out if the peppermint oil was going to be effective.

Over the next half a minute, as the clicking and clacking of the Ant surge grew steadily closer and Olivia focused her entire mind on the boy that she was hugging, she felt Jaune draw in an extremely deep breath to swell his lungs to capacity, and then let it all out very, very slowly.

And then Olivia knew exactly what her brother was doing...

Jaune Arc was currently becoming a tyrannical dictator towards the inner workings of his own mind. Unlike Olivia, Jaune simply couldn't afford to close his eyes or look away from the incoming Ants, so he was exerting extreme amounts of control over his emotions instead. The specific cadence of his breathing was the clue. The breathing was the physical cue to the beginnings of an old family mental exercise. Jaune was actively willing himself to become far braver than any sane human can possibly hope to be. He was forcing his mind into a placid state of extreme calm with every scrap of willpower that he possessed. He was making his mind completely invisible to the Grimm.

Olivia's heart immediately swelled with pride at how strong her twin brother really was. What he was currently trying was an extremely difficult and esoteric mind art that required a completely absurd level of mental discipline. In response to his efforts, she focused on the pride that she was feeling to the exclusion of all else… and then she began hearing the clicking noises moving off into the deeper recesses of the store.

The swell of Ant Grimm that had followed Jaune and Olivia all the way down the block, were flowing seemingly aimlessly down the central aisle of the store, and were scurrying in a circle around the general area that the two of them were standing in. The Ants didn't know where they were at the moment, but they did know that they wanted to avoid the peppermint oil pooled all over the floor.

Jaune's plan was working. It was working!

If only getting away from the swarm ended up being that simple...

10-years-later, back in the Arc Castle command center, 17-year-old Olivia Arc knew better than to just assume that her twin brother was dead. Jaune Arc was a bonafide genius. What's more, he was a survivor. If anyone on all of Remnant could pull through with zero training and just the clothes on his back then that person was Jaune… And no, she didn't give a damn about how her newfound conviction was a direct contradiction to what she'd always believed in the past.

Olivia Arc hadn't given up. When she had no luck finding her brother locally, she shipped dozens of seeker-bots across the ocean and she broadened her net several times over.

Jaune Arc was still alive. Olivia could feel it, and she was the one that was going to find him...

Beacon Academy, Wednesday Morning, 3rd day of school, 5:30 Am, Jaune Arc's current aura control is approximately 10 percent…

While jogging across the campus in a loose but impressive formation, the amassed members of platoon number 1 talked back and forth about their classes, their teachers, the news, and whatever they'd watched on the living room holo-monitor the night before. While at first, some among their number had been both tired and a little bit grumpy owing to the fact that it was only 5:30 in the morning, as soon as they actually started moving, they all woke up and started feeling much better.

At this point, Ruby was bouncing around as energetically as ever, and Penny was taking in her surroundings with eyes filled with their normal boundless curiosity.

Ren looked determined to take part rather than happy, but he was moving with the same variety of ease and confidence as he always did, and he was dealing with Nora's irrepressible enthusiasm with the same level of care and patience that he always did.

Weiss appeared just as cool and dignified as always, and barring some kind of intervention from Pyrrha or Jaune, it was unlikely that she'd ever attempt to look anything else. It was her social caste's complete unwillingness to appear anything less than their absolute best at all times of the day that drove Weiss to sleep in until just before classes started in the first place. Immediately after rising from bed in the morning, Weiss was expected to become perfection personified, and the psychological burden of such an absurd expectation was heavy in the extreme. All Atlesian noblewomen highly value their beauty sleep, even if all they're really doing within the curtained confines of their beds is checking out cat memes on their data scrolls...

As much as Jaune was technically an Atlesian Noble exactly like Weiss, he was lucky that his family had always celebrated function over form. They were a hardworking, hard-fighting Hunter family, so they'd never bothered shackling Jaune with an image obsession that would've made living his life completely impossible…

Once again, as was often the case when Jaune thought about his family, he marveled at how bizarre, twisted and contradictory their thought process really was, but that was old news and he preferred not to dwell on it…

In the meantime Platoon number 1 rolled into Beacon Academy's gym facilities to find the overlarge room quite a bit emptier than it had been just the day before.

It appeared that most of the boys that were filling the gym the day before had given up on using the work-out space as a stage to display their impressive work ethic. The men and women that were present today would most likely be the people who came every single morning, and they were far less concerned with what Jaune and his Platoon were doing.

Jaune made sure to smile broadly at all of the people present in the room as he'd most likely grow to know them pretty well in the days to come, and then he set about helping the less physically active members of his Platoon get set up with appropriate weights and machines. While Jaune fully intended to heal everyone's ripped up muscles immediately after the workout ended, which would essentially make muscle strain and soreness a non-concern, there was no sense in risking an injury for no apparent reason. Ruby especially, had never lifted a single weight in her whole entire life, so Jaune had her performing floor exercise circuits such as squats, crunches, push ups and sit-ups rather than attempting any actual weight-lifting.

It had to be said that Ruby was acting just a little bit pouty over being "treated like a little kid" as she put it, but she did nod her understanding when Jaune explained how unwise it is to just launch directly into a hard weight-lifting work-out routine.

Over the next hour and a half, as Jaune completed a very thorough full-body work-out using his new 10 percent aura control, a couple of things became increasingly clear.

The fact that stuck out right away was that the first 5 percent of aura that Jaune unlocked the day before most likely represented the largest gain of raw power that he was likely to experience, as it had allowed him to nearly triple his baseline muscular stamina and double his raw strength. When he'd pushed himself to his limits once again today with his newly attained 10 percent aura control, he'd found that while his stamina had doubled once again, his strength had only multiplied by 1.5. It appeared that Jaune wasn't going to continue doubling and tripling his strength with every 5 percent of aura that he gained, but that he could still expect to experience significant improvements on a regular basis.

Considering the fact that Jaune's current 10 percent aura control allowed him to become 2.5 times stronger than he'd been when he woke up on Monday morning, he had a hard time being anything other than extremely happy with his current level of improvement. It also tended to indicate that Jaune was going to become quite a bit stronger than normal when he finally achieved a normal Beacon Academy Trainee's level of aura control.

If for instance, Jaune were to continue gaining the same amount of strength that he had so far with every 10 percent of aura use that he gained from this point forward, Jaune would end up with a body that could channel aura to gain up to 15 times its baseline strength. Unfortunately, that outcome was rather unlikely… Judging by the plateauing that he could already see happening in his strength gains at the lower percentage improvements that he was currently making, the chances that Jaune's improvement would continue to be that dramatic were slim. Still… Considering the fact that most veteran Hunters peak at 6 times their normal baseline attributes and most S rankers push their entire careers to get themselves somewhere around 7 times…

Jaune might very well become exactly what Blake had called him the other day… A monster of raw strength and stamina…

Time would have to tell...

The second fact that Jaune found out through the use of one of the gym's turbocharged high speed treadmills was that his movement speed and agility was also being bolstered by approximately 2.5 times its baseline norm, which would be a huge game changer if he ever managed to maintain all of his current aura control in a fight…The number one thing that Jaune could do to improve in that regard was continue completing those Katas with Blake every single night, and continue increasing the speed that they moved while performing them with every single repetition. Likewise, Pyrrha's sparring sessions would end up being completely invaluable, because they'd give him a chance to iron out all of the kinks that came with all of the newfound speed and strength.

As Jaune's drive to continue improving caught fire and then exploded within his chest, he found a wide and irrepressible smile growing unbidden across his whole entire face.

Of course, by the time everyone in Platoon number 1 had finished their workout for the day, they were all pretty damned sore, as they'd all exercised quite a bit harder than they'd dare to under normal circumstances. All eight of Jaune's teammates were aware that they were about to have their torn muscles fully healed and then bolstered through the use of Jaune's Semblance. What this meant was that they could all work out to the point that they could barely move and then have Jaune immediately bring them back to full combat readiness. It was an advantage that very few other teams attending Beacon could lay claim to, and it would've been a huge advantage even without Jaune bolstering their bones and muscles in the process.

Long story short, Platoon number 1 was about to experience an unprecedented explosion of improvement when it came to both their stamina and raw physical power…

But first, they were all going to need to hobble their way back towards housing arrangement number 7… It had been a mistake for Jaune to perform the aura exchange in the gym's changing rooms the day before. Some of the noises that the girls had released had been very… provocative…

As they walked towards the house, Yang moved up next to Jaune and gave him a rather intense sideways look. The woman clearly had something to say. Furthermore, the blonde was visibly struggling to find a civil way to say it.

"I had no idea that my aura was going to have that effect on you," Jaune began with a sideways glance in Yang's direction. "Penny… allowed me to believe that it's... pleasant."

"It is pleasant… very… pleasant, and Ruby's determined to go through with it either way," Yang pressed out through clenched teeth. "We fought about it for nearly an hour last night even though I know it'd be dumb to pass this up. I… I want you to take it easy on her."

"Do you have any suggestions about how I'd go about doing something like that," Jaune asked in a scrupulously serious tone of voice.

"No… No, I don't." With a sigh, Yang turned away from Jaune and scratched at the side of her face. "Just… be gentle with her, or I'll give my dad an extremely vague explanation of what you're doing and let him settle the matter." After freezing in place as if she'd just felt a chill run down her spine, Yang sighed heavily and then looked back over her shoulder. "I… I don't know why I just threatened you... Of course I won't tell my dad. Just… Please be gentle." Then Yang was picking up her walking pace and rejoining the rest of team RPBY.

"If you do figure out a way to decrease the… sensations caused by your technique, I want you to do the same thing for me as well," Weiss suddenly added from a few meters back and to Jaune's right.

"I'll be casting my aura throughout your body using my Semblance in order to bolster your constitution at the cellular level," Jaune described along with a small sigh of frustration. "I'm not sure why you ladies think I'm going out of my way to make my aura feel like anything at all, but I assure you that I'm not."

The only response that Weiss made to Jaune's words was a small nod of understanding.

"Actually there's something that I need to speak with you about before we complete any changes to your body," Jaune began as he turned his attention back in Weiss's direction. "As a by-product of the changes that I'll be making to the density of your bones, muscles and tendons, you'll eventually become almost a third heavier than you are right now. While the changes will make you physically faster and stronger than you are right now, I wanted to ask you whether or not they'll hinder the use of your launchpad Glyphs?"

At first Weiss only shook her head in the negative, but then, when Jaune didn't stop looking over at her, she quickened her pace until she was walking at his side. "My launchpad Glyph is a mixture of anti-gravity, anti-mass, anti-friction, and a powerful instantaneous movement Glyph, which means that weight and mass are essentially irrelevant to how fast they can make a person move. In fact, any added mass that you can give my body will only make me hit my intended target harder when I land."

Jaune immediately smiled in unconcealed relief. "I'm glad to hear that there won't be any complications keeping you from taking part."

"What about you John? How heavy are you right now?" Weiss looked a little bit out of her depth at this point, presumably because she wasn't used to treating the people around her like equals.

"Before I altered my body constitution, I weighed about 150 Pounds, which is on the lighter side of the spectrum for a man of my height, but that made sense because I have a very low body fat percentage," Jaune explained with a shrug. "I weigh 225 Pounds now…"

"That's… quite a bit more than one third," Weiss slowly pointed out.

"Yes, I've altered my body to an extent that would take me several years to replicate with anyone else," Jaune explained with a nod.

"Depending on how talented a Huntsman or Huntress is at channeling their aura, they might be able to boost their strength and speed anywhere from 3 to 6 or maybe even 7 times its baseline," Weiss began in a speculative tone of voice. "Yesterday, with the use of only 5 percent of your aura, you were just as fast as Aiden Ochre channeling every scrap of aura that he contained. Granted, Ochre isn't strong, but still…"

"My baseline speed and strength is much higher than normal outside of very specialized professional athletics like powerlifting or track sports. I also think that the changes I've made to my body constitution have made my muscles especially receptive to receiving aura." For the second time in just as many minutes, Jaune found himself shrugging. While he was only telling the truth so far as he knew it, it all sounded so grandiose that he was feeling just a little bit embarrassed.

"Any day now, you're going to become powerful," Weiss pointed out matter of factly.

"Most likely, yes," Jaune agreed in an equally candid tone of voice.

"I don't know what circumstances led to your current lack of training, but uniquely gifted men like you almost never just appear from among civilian families," Weiss continued, after slowing down her walking speed to drop even further away from the rest of their Platoon. "You're almost certainly the son of a high level Huntsman and Huntress. Not only that, but the way you act, your carriage and mannerisms… John… You're Atlesian nobility…"

After slowly allowing his eyes to pan over towards the platinum white haired woman walking at his side, Jaune stared into her icey blue eyes as he drew in a very deep breath. "I'm not going to tell you not to speculate Weiss, but whatever conclusions you come to need to stay with you. I'm not secretive by choice. I promise you that I have a compelling reason…"

"Will you trust me with the details," Weiss asked with an expression that was just shy of pleading.

After several moments passed, Jaune slowly nodded his head, but then he held up a finger. "I will, but at a price… Pyrrha wants a social life. I want you to cooperate."

Weiss immediately arched her eyebrows almost up into her hairline.

"I wouldn't be demanding this of you if I didn't think that you'd benefit from it. I know how strict and uncompromising you are with your time," Jaune continued.

"You're still being a busybody," Weiss pointed out in a voice that was almost but not quite petulant.

"Yes, but now you've made me your Platoon Captain, so I'm merely doing what's expected of me." For a single moment, Jaune allowed some amusement to show upon his face before he adopted a more serious expression again. "Look Weiss… The people in Platoon number one are going to be living in close quarters with us for the next four years. You're not going to be able to keep up all the Atlesian formality that whole entire time. Even if you could, I don't think that you should. This is your chance to have some fun, to develop some really meaningful friendships, to experience everything that life has to offer…"

"I do plan on returning to Atlas though," Weiss pointed out. "I fear that I..." The heiress's mouth slowly closed as she floundered for the words.

"You won't forget how to act formal," Jaune assured when Weiss's explanation died in her throat. "It's like riding a bike."

"I fear that going back to Atlas will hurt me," Weiss suddenly admitted in a very hurried outpouring of words.

Weiss's words immediately caused Jaune's mouth to drop open in surprise. It wasn't that her admission wasn't relatable, because of course it was. What was surprising was that she'd admitted it at all. Weiss's sudden vulnerability was devastatingly effective because of how unexpected it was, and Jaune found himself clenching his hands to keep himself from hugging the woman. Instead, he shook out his head, turned around, and walked backwards directly in front of her.

"You intend to change the SDC," Jaune pointed out in little more than a whisper.

Weiss merely nodded as she waited for Jaune to get to his point. She already knew that he knew about her plans.

"Return the SDC to being a company that your friends can be proud of visiting," Jaune continued.

"That might take… years, decades even," Weiss argued.

"You're wrong Weiss. It can't take that long. It can't afford to," Jaune replied with an extremely serious expression growing across his face. If our Professors are correct, then the world is facing an imminent Grimm war. We're training to confront an honest to Oum mankind threatening crisis, and by mankind I mean both humans and faunas. A hundred years ago, humans and faunas worked together to beat back the Grimm, and even then we just barely managed to pull off a stalemate…"

"I agree that the world's in a tough spot, but I don't see what this has to do with the SDC," Weiss replied, confusion visible upon her face.

"If you don't wrest control of the Schnee Dust Company from your father before the war starts and things start getting really, really bad, the SDC will eventually be seized by the Vale, Mistral and Atlesian militaries in a bloody and wasteful series of conflicts," Jaune predicted with a cold and brutal voice.

"Gasp!… They wouldn't. They couldn't. The SDC employs hundreds of thousands of innocent people," Weiss breathed out in a teeny tiny little voice. "It would be a waste of both people and resources…"

"The way I see it, the various governments involved won't think that they have a choice in the matter," Jaune immediately corrected. "The SDC's worldwide Dust monopoly drives up the cost of procuring Dust to nearly twenty times its market value, and your father's business practices are dividing mankind into two warring factions during a time when they absolutely must become united. If and when a full scale Grimm war does begin in earnest, every single man, woman and child on all of Remnant will need to pick up a weapon, a tool or a med kit, in defense of their neighbors. Society will no longer be able to condone anything that gets in the way of that unity."

"Then you think peace is actually possible between faunas and humans," Weiss asked in a very quiet voice. Both Jaune and Weiss knew how often the White Fang had targeted her and the members of her family in the past. The fact that Weiss understood why they were doing so didn't do much to change the way she felt about them…

"If humans and faunas can't even band together to fight for their very survival, then mankind will be completely annihilated," Jaune finally breathed out in a very quiet voice. "I believe that peace is possible, Weiss. I have to. I'm not brave enough to believe in the alternative…"

Weiss shivered, and it was hard to say whether it was because of the subject matter or the unnervingly dark realism present in Jaune's voice.

Without ever even thinking about his actions, Jaune suddenly reached out and gently gripped Weiss's right forearm in a mixture of consolation and apology. Then, when he remembered just how wildly inappropriate he was being by Atlesian standards, he was surprised that the woman hadn't yet batted away his hand. The heiress clearly desired some form of reassurance. She was going to get it… "For what it's worth Weiss," Jaune began in a very calm and confident tone of voice. "When the time eventually comes to wrest control of the SDC from your father, you're going to have my full support every step of the way… In the meantime, I really do want you to live every single day to its fullest and make as many memories as you possibly can…"

Weiss didn't reply to Jaune's words at all this time. Instead, she stared at him exactly like Blake always does, as if she was weighing him with her eyes.

For the next five minutes, as they walked back towards house number 7, Weiss didn't say a single word, and Jaune was just as happy to let her have the time.

At some point during the slow walk back to housing arrangement number 7, Penny idly suggested that Platoon number 1 should find themselves a massage table and have it set up in their storage room. She claimed that she'd received 'John's' aura while receiving a back massage in the past, and not only had it made the transfer more efficient, but her brother was absolutely fantastic with his hands.

Of course, Jaune had zero recollection of this 'back massage' that Penny was referring to, but he lacked the willpower to deny his sister something so simple when she was having such a fantastic time screwing with him. Not only that, but all of the women that had already received his aura in the past seemed to readily accept the idea as if it were merely common sense.

The exact details of how the ladies of Platoon number 1 managed to locate and retrieve a professional quality massage table would never end up being revealed, but the speed with which they managed to do so was absolutely astonishing. Jaune barely had the time to complete a very normal aura treatment with Lie Ren (who squeaked just a bit while it was happening but seemed completely unfazed after the fact), and then the ladies were all marching back into the house with the table in hand.

As all of the female members of his Platoon lined up in the living room that adjoined the storage room, Jaune simultaneously felt an impending sense of doom similar to that first day in the bathroom, and a growing suspicion that he was completely surrounded by perverts. That second thought would never, ever be safe to say out loud, so Jaune merely screamed it into the depths of his soul as he opened the door to his new 'work room,' and beckoned in his first volunteer. Even though Platoon number 1 left the gym before 7 Am specifically to make time for this process, if he wasn't careful they were still going to end up running late to classes.

Due mostly to the fact that she was the person with the closest relationship to 'John' and because this arrangement had been her idea in the first place, Penny was the one to go first. After walking into the storage room and closing the door behind herself, she sat on the edge of the table and gave Jaune a very happy smile.

"Why all the pageantry," Jaune immediately asked.

"Team building exercise," Penny responded just as quickly.

"I'm supposed to be somewhat uninvolved with everyone if I want to be an effective Platoon Captain," Jaune pointed out.

"You were always intending on bolstering your teammates' bodies to make them safer in the long term, and knowing that your aura is enormously pleasurable would never have been enough to change your mind," Penny confidently countered.

"Your bones are made of an unbelievably durable unobtanium polymer. Not only that, but your body is supported, bolstered and repaired by the nanites residing within your blood. Your body makes mine seem weak and fragile in comparison." By this point Jaune had a wry smile on his face. "Why oh why Penny, am I trying to bolster you with my meagre abilities?"

"You're not. You're letting me bask in your aura as I receive a back massage, and you're allowing me to maintain an appearance of normalcy," Penny admitted even as she slowly dropped backwards onto the massage table and rolled over onto her stomach. Soon enough, she had her face placed within the doughnut extension built into the table and her arms were laying down in their little cradle. The woman was even wearing one of his old tank tops to reveal a lot of neck, back and shoulder to his touch. Long story short, Penny Polendina knew exactly what she was after, and she proved it in the next instant by completing a look-back over her shoulder. "Pleaaase, big brother… You promised."

"Who is it that's teaching you these feminine wiles," Jaune breathed out even as he stepped up to the bed and dropped his hands atop Penny's shoulders.

"I know you think it's Yang, but all the really useful knowledge comes from Blake's books," Penny explained with a smile in her voice.

"What would Pietro say if he found out that you were reading smut," Jaune asked with a small shake of his head. In an almost perfect contradiction to his words, Jaune also chose that moment to start kneading out the muscles within Penny's shoulders and releasing a gentle flow of his aura throughout her body.

"Ninjas of Love is a critically acclaimed fantasy series with hundreds of thousands of devoted fans all over the woooorld," Penny defended even as her voice unraveled into little more than a throaty little moan.

"Please tell me that you're moaning on purpose to tease me," Jaune whispered with a noticeably plaintive quality to his voice.

"Sorry, no can do," Penny whimpered as her entire body squirmed and trembled atop the table. "This was a far better idea than I ever even imagined it would be, and I always knew that it'd be amazing."

That same sense of impending doom that Jaune had felt just a few minutes earlier suddenly came back with a vengeance as he thought about little Ruby sitting out there in the living room right next to her overprotective elder sister...

30 minutes later…

After enduring a mentally exhausting gauntlet of whimpering, moaning, keening, groaning, gasping, panting, nyahing and mewling noises, coming from a series of women that squirmed, twitched, and wiggled under his massaging hands in ways that had his self-control frayed to its very limits, Jaune eventually found himself standing next to Yang Xiao Long over a nearly comatose Ruby Rose. Yang had decided that she'd receive his aura treatment second after Penny so that she could shower and then return to watch over Ruby. Unfortunately for Jaune, Yang's presence didn't seem to do anything at all to keep Ruby from having a rather… extreme reaction to his aura.

Long story short, Jaune was all but certain that he'd just taken part in the younger woman's sexual awakening...

"I… I wasn't trying to… I swear," Jaune whispered in a vain attempt to get ahead of Yang's anger.

Yang's eyes slowly drifted up from Ruby's newly limp and languid body towards Jaune's deer in the headlights expression, at which point she closed her eyes and sighed out the entire contents of her lungs. "I know, but I also know that I'm going to end up punishing you for this. Please don't take it personally…" Then Yang was moving in on her sister and patting her gently on the back. "Time to go Ruby," she murmured in a soft and soothing tone of voice as she leaned in to help her little sister up into a sitting position. "We need to get you showered before classes."

"Yeah… Shower. Good idea," Ruby breathed out as she slid bonelessly off of the massage table and then allowed her sister to draw her from the room. "Thanks John," the red tinted girl softly called back before disappearing out the door…

"Just one more person," Jaune breathed out as he leaned back against the table. "Just one more and I'll be done for the… day…" At the thought that he'd be repeating all of this the very next day, and every day following that, for however long it took to get everyone's body up to speed, Jaune felt a bead of sweat dripping down his temple.

"Are you ready for me," Weiss suddenly asked from the threshold of the room.

"Yes, please come in," Jaune replied, acting completely on autopilot. Then he rose to his feet, turned around, and saw that Weiss had changed out of her workout gear into a small white halter top and equally tiny shorts, presumably to give him access to her neck, shoulders and lower back.

"You look a little… ruffled," Weiss pointed out as she walked up to the table, and then crawled up its length to lay stomach down across the sheet covered foam of the mattress.

"I… yes. I've…" Jaune suddenly paused in his response when he caught on to the fact that Weiss was amused.

"I have business with you, so I waited to go last. I've been sitting just around the corner for the last twenty minutes." At this point, Weiss looked like she wanted to grin but was trying to focus on the task at hand. "Suffice it to say, it's no mystery to me why you might be feeling a little… out of sorts."

"I have to believe that I'll become used to this at some point," Jaune mused as he eased down onto a stool at the head of the massage table and addressed the heiress face to face. "What business do you have with me?"

"I'm going shopping and then to the movies with the girls of our Platoon this weekend," Weiss announced in a no nonsense tone of voice. "I'm fulfilling my end of the bargain, and I swear on my honor that you can trust me to keep your secrets. I want to know just who and what you are not because I don't trust you because I do, I just… I want to know."

For a very long moment in time, Jaune just stared at Weiss without saying a word. Truly, he wasn't hesitating because he didn't trust Weiss. He was only wondering if telling only Weiss was unprofessional because it gave off the appearance of favoritism. Then he realized that he was worrying over something that was already a moot point. Everyone on the entire Platoon already knew that he was extremely fond of his adoptive sister, and there was nothing that he could do about it…

Finally, with a small nod of his head, Jaune pulled out his scroll, cued up a photo, and then dropped the little device down into Weiss's outstretched hands. The photo was of a blond Jaune Arc, pre his escape from Arc Castle. Despite all of the life experience and strength that he'd gained since the photo was first circulated by the Arc family, it was interesting how similar he still looked to that extremely isolated teenaged boy…

"Gasp! The prodigal son… the wastrel," Weiss whispered with a hand covering her mouth.

"I actually prefer that second nickname to the first because the first one implies that I'm going to return to Arc Castle someday, and I'm not," Jaune described even as he moved up behind Weiss's back and dropped his hands onto her shoulders. He didn't begin channeling any aura yet, but he did start easing away a small knot that he could feel between her shoulder blades.

"The Arcs have been looking everywhere Joh… Jaune," Weiss exclaimed as she looked up over her shoulder at her new Platoon Captain. "They care about you so much… Why are you hiding?"

"After you and I finish here, we need to shower and then leave for breakfast," Jaune replied with a gentle tap to the back of Weiss's elaborate ponytail. Lay still, so that I can complete the aura treatment, and I'll tell you a story."

When Weiss obediently dropped her face down into the cradle of the massage table, Jaune began releasing a gentle flow of aura into and throughout her body, focused the lion's share of his attention on what he needed to accomplish inside of her. Then he began reciting his story completely on autopilot. "He didn't sugar coat it, nor did he make it worse than it really was, he just explained his childhood, the Ant swarm, his imprisonment, his isolation, the collar, his escape, and his eventual landing in Pietro's lab. He didn't speak of Penny's origins because they weren't his story to tell, but he did describe living in the lab with her, training, and learning about his Semblance.

"So, you, you only started training, two… two years ago," Weiss haltingly panted out as her back arched up towards Jaune's fingers, her toes curled and kicked out behind her, and her hands slapped weakly against the mattress. "Just two years with an aura, and, and you're… you're... you…"

"I'm satisfied with the improvement that I've made in the time since my escape, but I'll always wonder what I could've achieved if I'd been allowed to train from a young age," Jaune idly admitted, his eyes tightly closed and his focus beneath Weiss's skin.

"You would've become nothing more than a hammer," Weiss choked out, as a cascade of powerful sensation caused her to twitch and shiver from her head to her toes. "You would've treated every problem as nothing more than a nail to be pounded into the ground. You're better off the way that you are. You're… You're so much better!…"

"It was a good thing that Jaune was already ending the aura treatment because Weiss's impassioned words had his eyes snapping open in surprise. Up until that moment, he'd always believed that Weiss Schnee and compliments were mutually exclusive concepts. Then he saw how the platinum white haired woman was squirming under his hands while insistently rubbing her inner thighs together, and he realized that his aura was affecting the heiress just as powerfully as it had Ruby.

Weiss Schnee was currently a hot tangle of limbs...

For a single prolonged moment in time, Jaune's mind went completely blank as his eyes raked over every single inch of Weiss's red flushed, sweat shined, and shivering body. He watched her flounder weakly against the table as if she was being tortured to death with overwhelming amounts of pleasure. He bit at his bottom lip as he allowed himself to take it all in... Then Jaune started drawing in a very, very deep breath in order to regain control over his mental faculties, and he pulled together what remained of his self-restraint. Over the five to ten seconds that followed, Jaune slowly eased away the aura that he was channeling deep into the heiresses body, gently drew his hands away from her back, and then sat back down on the stool at the head of the table.

Jaune wasn't a perfect gentleman… He'd never truly believed that he was, but this… this had felt like a test…

As Weiss's breathing regulated and her red flushed face drained back to a normal looking blush, she slowly peeked up to look Jaune in the eyes and then she immediately dropped her face back down into the massage table's cradle. For several moments in a row, neither of them did or said anything at all. Then it was Weiss that suddenly broke the silence. "You're much better off the way you are," she quietly repeated.

Then the Atlesian pop idol was rising up to a pair of somewhat shaky legs, and she was making a beeline up the stairs towards the showers.

Beacon Academy, Wednesday Morning, 3rd day of school, Second Period Combat Class with Professor Goodwitch, Jaune Arc's current aura control is approximately 10 percent…

"Fight!"

Down in the arena, Jaune immediately started dashing to the right around an opponent by the name of Clay Hawthorn, who was holding a large warhammer/flamethrower mixture and tracking his movements from a standstill. Weiss almost snickered at this Clay boy's misfortune. He simply had no idea… Mr. Hawthorn was about to fight the scion of the Arc family, a true monster in the making…

"You look quite happy this morning," Pyrrha quietly pointed out, even as she micro-twitched in response to Jaune's first probing attack down in the arena. Pyrrha's words were quiet even though the two of them were sitting in the front row with most of Platoon number 1 milling around a few rows behind them.

Weiss had to hand it to her new partner. Pyrrha knew how to be discreet when speaking of personal matters with an Atlesian, but that wasn't the reason why she'd answer the question with anything more than a noncommittal shrug of her shoulders. No. Weiss had made a deal with Jaune, and she was going to deliver her side of the bargain. "I feel good today," Weiss explained to start. "John's aura really is quite energizing, and the treatment helped me get over a few lingering trust issues."

"John cares… about all of us I mean, and wants us to succeed, and you can feel that in his aura," Pyrrha agreed.

Weiss had no intention of explaining the conversation that she and Jaune took part in during her aura treatment or how much it had meant to her that he finally put all his cards on the table. Instead, she merely nodded her head as Jaune finally began his attack in earnest and the arena rang out with metal hitting metal.

After parrying aside the sharply pointed end of Clay's warhammer, Jaune slashed his sword across his opponent's ribs, ducked under a return kick that the boy sent towards his face, delivered a hard triplet of sword slashes into the boy's stomach and thighs and then smashed his shield into the side of his face. In the seconds that followed, Clay Hawthorn ragdolled across four meters of the arena floor and his aura levels dropped from 91 to 54.

"It's hard to even compare Jaune's fighting today to what it was like on Monday," Pyrrha pointed out with a smile.

Weiss restrained herself from replying with any enthusiasm because she was an Atlesian and old habits were hard to kick. One the other hand, she didn't even try to keep a satisfied smile from growing across her face as the two of them settled in to watch what was beginning to look like a very one sided little fight.

But that was the moment when things started getting… weird.

The next time Jaune closed in to exchange a series of blows with his opponent, Mr. Hawthorn started pivoting to aim the muzzle end of his flamethrower directly at his face, and instead of moving even closer to avoid the danger entirely, Jaune launched himself backwards instead. As a result of his panicked reaction, Jaune ended up having the aura field around his legs cooked by a powerful gout of red Dust fueled fire.

After landing about five meters back and skidding to a stop on newly melted shoes, Jaune's eyes visibly widened in alarm at his own reaction and he violently shook out his head. Then, with a mouth clenched in a mixture of determination and self-recrimination, the man began dashing in towards his opponent again with his weapons at the ready.

Not even three seconds later, when Clay launched a relatively slow, telegraphed and easily avoidable warhammer blow directly at Jaune's face, the man was leaping backwards with so much desperation that he landed on his back and skidded three meters across the floor. He gasped in a mixture of surprise and shock, visibly broke out into a cold sweat, turned as pale as a white sheet of paper, and stared down at his newly trembling hands.

Jaune was scared. No. Jaune was completely terrified.

Nobody in the stands really knew what to make of Jaune's current outbreak of cowardice, but Weiss and Pyrrha were completely flabbergasted. They'd seen Jaune fight against odds that would've reduced an A ranker to sweating without a single trace of hesitation. They couldn't even fathom why he might lose his nerve right now during some no nothing spar.

"It hurts doesn't it… the fear I mean," Clay suddenly called out as he swung his hammer from side to side and advanced on Jaune like a stalking predator. "It steals your breath, it saps your strength, it frays your nerves, it causes all manner of psychological debuffs. You see, my Semblance can actually cause a few different emotions to grow out of control, but I always end up relying on fear. Anger's too dangerous, confusion too unpredictable. Fear though… Fear I can work with… You have my sympathies Mr. Freeman, you really, really do… but this is the end of your little winning streak…"

As he spoke, Clay Hawthorn loomed over Jaune causing the boy to flinch, jerk back, and flounder to move his body. Judging purely by the way that he was scrabbling his forearms against the ground beneath his back, Jaune wasn't going to be able to move or dodge. He stared up at Clay as if the boy were a legendary class Grimm, and was reduced to drawing in extremely deep and desperate lungfuls of air as if he was having trouble merely remaining conscious.

Both Weiss and Pyrrha found themselves tightly squeezing the armrests of their seats as they leaned forward over the railing and stared down at their new Platoon Captain. They willed the man to move, to do absolutely anything at all...

With a small triumphant smile, Clay slowly drew his warhammer up well above his head, turned its face so that the spiked side would land the blow, and then heaved the weapon down at Jaune's head with every ounce of his aura bolsters strength.

Crump!

"Gasp!" By this point, both Weiss and Pyrrha were up on their feet.

At the very last second, Jaune had rolled his body a single foot to the right so that the spike of the warhammer just barely missed him and penetrated a foot into the ground instead. Now he was holding onto the firing mechanism of the warhammer's flamethrower with a grotesque looking smile growing clear across his visibly fearful features.

Without a second's hesitation, Clay immediately released the haft of the warhammer and tried to leap away. He tried to dodge.

He was far too late.

When Jaune depressed the trigger that would release the flamethrower's payload, Clay's entire upper body was immediately engulfed in a violent outpouring of flames that knocked him clear off of his feet and left him flopping around the floor in a bid to smother the flames. In the meantime, Jaune shakily rose back up to his feet, slowly pulled the warhammer's spike out of its hole in the floor, threw the weapon clear up into an empty patch of stands, retrieved his weapons, and then began moving in the direction of his opponent.

When Clay finally managed to put out the last of the flames burning at his aura field and singeing his clothing, he immediately caught sight of Jaune moving in his direction, and his mouth dropped open into an "O". "Ha, how did you trick me?! How are you moving like that?! You should be completely petrified right now! No! You are petrified right now! I know you are! I'm still releasing the pheromones that induce terror!"

"Yes… I am… afraid," Jaune haltingly admitted in a haggard and heavily burdened tone of voice. "Every Hunter… will feel… this way… at some point. It's vital to learn… control." Even as he groaned out those words, Jaune continued drawing in extremely deep breaths, filling his lungs to max capacity and then letting it all out very, very slowly. With every single repetition, Jaune's complexion improved and the trembling in his body decreased. By the time he'd moved up to stand directly over Clay, he was almost completely back to normal, was twisting the sword in his hand to test out his dexterity, and was slamming the sword pommel against his shield. Then he was raising his sword up high above his head and he was giving Clay a very meaningful look.

Clay Hawthorn didn't have his weapon anymore. Clay Hawthorn's Semblance wasn't having the effect he was used to. Even if he did decide to change the emotion that he was attacking his opponent with, it would take far too much time to pull off because his aura was already at 29 percent.

With a sigh, Clay Hawthorn patted the ground at his side three times in a silent form of surrender.

"Fight over! Winner John Freeman," Professor Goodwitch immediately called out.

When John reached out to help Clay back up to his feet, the boy's eyes widened in surprise, but he did end up taking the offered hand and the two teens walked out of the room together.

"Mr. Freeman is right," Professor Goodwitch suddenly announced as the audience watched John's rank and point value climb for the third time in three days. "All of you, every single one of you, will one day find yourselves so overcome with fear that your muscles will lock, your mind will stall, and your lungs will freeze up in your chest. For that reason, there is an elective in fourth year that is completely devoted to achieving control of both your mind and your emotions…"

"John was a lot more polite to this Clay guy then he was to those other boys before," Ruby noted from somewhere behind Weiss. "Is it because Clay didn't talk smack?"

"I think John intends to invite Clay over to our house to train us in overcoming extreme fear," Weiss suddenly announced. "Does anyone dare to bet against me?"

Nobody said a word. Nobody disagreed. Weiss's idea sounded exactly like something that their Platoon Captain would do...

24 Hours Later…..

Beacon Academy, Thursday Morning, 4th day of school, Second Period Combat Class with Professor Goodwitch, Jaune Arc's current aura control is approximately 15 percent…

Thursday morning's combat class was turning out to be a rather auspicious occasion for one John Freeman. Today, for the very first time, he was finally high enough in the bottom of the class rankings that he was about to fight a woman.

Breccia Coal was his newest opponent's name, and Mistralian culture was her game. Breccia was so damned Mistralian she'd managed to turn herself into a walking stereotype, with the Kama/Katana/rifle mixture on her right hip, and the honest to Monty Tessen (war fan) on the other. To picture a Kama, all one has to do is picture an axe only with a scythe blade on the end instead of the normal rounded cutting surface. Tessen were folding paper fans but with the paper replaced with razor sharp metal slats. All in all, it was as if Breccia was originally aiming to be a cross between a Samurai and a Ninja, but then she suddenly decided to throw in a rifle just for kicks.

Jaune wasn't going to judge. The woman knew what she wanted and that was to be commended… Okay fine, he was going to judge just a little bit… What a weirdo...

Another thing worth noting about Jaune's newest opponent was that Breccia was just as dismissive of him as any of his other adversaries up until this point. She sniffed at him when they ran into each other at the bottom of the stairs, and then she scoffed at him when he pulled out his admittedly very beaten up weapons. What was interesting about Breccia's behavior was that Jaune was currently riding a three day winning streak, and yet she didn't seem the least bit concerned. What this probably meant was that her Semblance packed quite a punch.

Unfortunately for Jaune, it was still way too early in the year for him to have learned the utility of anyone's Semblance from the sidelines. He was merely going to have to approach this fight with great caution and see what he could glean...

"Fight," Professor Goodwitch loudly called out.

When Jaune immediately started dashing to the right, so did Breccia. Apparently she'd seen enough of his fighting to know that he liked to poke around, and she wasn't having any of it. With a snarl of aggression and a strong aura dash, the woman was closing in on Jaune like a bullet and he was pouring on the speed in response.

As a result of having 15 percent of his aura unlocked, which allowed him to use 3 times his baseline attributes, and because both Blake and Pyrrha were putting a lot of time and effort into his training, Jaune was able to perceive and keep up with Breccia's katana as it careened towards his neck. When Breccia's sword was only a foot away, he eased back just half a foot to dodge the tip of the blade, punched the girl in the nose with the pommel of his sword, and then sawed his blade down the length of her right arm. Of course neither of his blows had the strength of his entire body behind them, but his opponent was momentarily stunned by pain and surprise, and was sent cartwheeling backwards to regain her balance.

Jaune could tell right away that Breccia hadn't expected him to be faster than her, and that she was completely furious with him as a result. She was red in the face, she was panting in anger, she was unfolding her fan… Wait, what? Jaune immediately leapt backwards and lobbed a few of his pocket rocks in Breccia's direction even as she waved her fan through the air. The way that she'd pulled out that fan was with the demeanor of someone operating a cannon. The fan was her primary weapon, the katana/rifle was the backup...

Low and behold, even as Jaune flew at least five meters back through the air, the rocks that he'd just thrown at Breccia started vibrating in the air before exploding into sand that shook and shivered as it floated to the floor. Jaune immediately drew his shield up in front of his face and upper body.

It didn't do him much good...

The air… The very air all around Jaune vibrated as if he was experiencing seismic activity in the air or millions of tiny blast waves cascading off of each other. The violently trembling air pounded against Jaune's aura field like thousands upon thousands of little blows that depressed his aura field inwards against his body from every single direction.

Yeah… Ouch.

Breccia's Semblance hurt like hell, it blurred Jaune's vision as it applied pressure to all of his soft tissues, and it forced him to his knees when he landed from his jump. Then, of course, a foot was slamming directly into Jaune's nose, and he was being kicked clear across the arena like a soccer ball.

Women and revenge… No quote immediately came to mind, but Jaune figured there oughta be one... Then he realized that he'd just had his bell rung a little too hard, and he needed to re-focus back on the task at hand. Even as he landed into a messy roll and then sprang back up to his feet, Jaune was pulling up his weapons again and trying to generate some options.

Breccia Coal appeared perfectly happy to watch Jaune freak out over receiving an attack that he couldn't block. She fanned her face with her Tessen as she slowly walked in his direction, and the shit eating grin on her face wasn't the least bit pretty.

Think Jaune… Think!

The air vibrations in Breccia's attack reminded Jaune of the methods that the Atlesian military uses to destroy massive ocean Grimm. Explosions that happen underwater transfer a type of pressurized force through the medium of the water, and then the water itself crushes nearby Grimm. Breccia's attack was similar but with vibrations instead of pressure, and the wave of her fan was somehow acting as the explosion.

Thankfully for Jaune, he'd spent quite a bit of time the night before trying to figure out how he would stop someone from poisoning him with a nerve gas like Mr. Hawthorn had the day before, and those musings might have given him an answer for his current predicament.

It was time for some five star world class acting, and it was time to make use of his Semblance.

After affecting a very nervous expression on his face, Jaune rubbed the back of his head like a dolt, and began taking small but noticeable steps back away from Breccia. In turn, Breccia saw Jaune's newfound reluctance and began prowling after him like a cat playing with its food. Jaune took four steps back, Breccia advanced 5, they continued this pattern until Jaune's back impacted the arena wall and he was prevented from retreating.

Breccia was amused. She twirled her fan in her hand as she moved up to within three meters of Jaune.

Jaune pulled up his weapons again, but he did so with noticeable hesitation on his face as if he didn't think it would do him much good.

Breccia drew back her fan, preparing to end the boy standing in front of her. Then she noticed something. A faint yellow tint was floating around Jaune's body in a dome like an egg. With a snarl, Breccia immediately realized that her opponent was up to something, and she waved her fan as hard as she could. The entire section of wall behind and to the sides of Jaune's body spider-web cracked and the floor shook like they were experiencing an earthquake.

Too bad for Breccia, Jaune was completely untouched. He'd used his Semblance to collect a large portion of the air around his body into a skin, and then he'd used this skin to create a space, a void, a vacuum of nothingness in a dome shape around his body. Breccia's attack was a transfer of energy. She cast vibrations through the air and those vibrations grew as they bounced off of more and more air. All Jaune had done was remove all of the oxygen and nitrogen from an area in a circle around his body so that the vibrations would have nothing to impact against. He'd created a 'shield' of nothing in place around his body, and he'd rendered Breccia's Semblance essentially harmless.

Breccia stared at Jaune as if she couldn't quite believe her eyes.

Jaune moved.

In the shocked stillness that followed Breccia's failed attack, Jaune immediately leapt towards the woman, and slashed his sword down towards her weapon. No. He wasn't aiming for her fan. She could keep it. Jaune slashed his sword down towards where the hilt of Breccia's katana met its blade, and the versatile bladed weapon dropped to the floor in 2 separate parts

Very suddenly, Breccia only had her Tessen fan, which was a very inefficient form of bladed weapon, while Jaune had a sword and a shield and a noticeable speed advantage over her.

The fight that followed was completely brutal… Jaune hacked and slashed at his opponent using his speed and reach advantage, while she screeched in anger and attempted to cut out his eyes. A little less than a minute and a half later, Jaune was finally finished hacking Breccia's aura out from under her, and Professor Goodwitch was calling the fight.

"Fight over! Winner John Freeman."

Platoon number 1 cheered both loudly and happily from their section up in the stands, and Jaune waved back at them as he leaned against the damaged arena wall.

"Tomorrow will mark John Freeman's fifth fight in a row in the 330 to 340 ranked group," Professor Goodwitch suddenly called out in a no nonsense tone of voice. "Who among the trainees in the 320 to 330 rank will fight Mr. Freeman to take his points and deny him his advancement? This is a very rare opportunity to volunteer in my class. I don't often see a trainee advancing this quickly."

"I will," a cheerful sounding woman called out from the stands.

"Ms. Flourette," Professor Goodwitch called back with trace amounts of surprise in her tone. You are ranked 320th. Are you willing to risk trading ranks with Mr. Freeman?"

A wide and amused smile was the only response that the young woman gave in return, and Jaune was suddenly reminded that the fights were only going to get that much more difficult with every day that passes...

Author's note: The next chapter will be submitted in 2 weeks on the 4th of July.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you then!