Jaune
Jaune felt an armored fist connect with his right cheek. Crocea Mors fell to the ground as he stumbled and soon found himself seeing stars.
"Hah…" Came the dissatisfied sigh from his attacker. "Come on, Jaune. Keep your guard up. What's the point of having that shield if you don't use it?"
It took him a brief moment to get his bearings.
That same armored fist that had knocked him down was now held in front of him as an open palm. Jaune grabbed the hand and dragged himself up. Charlie was hard on him, but it was good practice, so he couldn't complain. That Charlie was willing to help train him for free was already good enough for him.
They probably made for an odd pair, sparring in the middle of a park in downtown Mistral. Although, with how many times Jaune found himself hitting the dirt, it probably looked more like bullying than sparring. No matter how hard Jaune tried, he couldn't even land a single hit on the other boy. It was a bit embarrassing, honestly, since Charlie hadn't even felt the need to draw his sword again since their first spar.
Charlie was strong, that much was obvious.
Jaune was pretty tall for someone his age, a little over six feet. Charlie looked about five-eight on a good day, but it didn't feel like that. A mess of black hair with white streaks covered his head while a pair of piercing eyes loomed over him, as if a king were looking over his subjects. Charlie looked the part of a knight in every sense of the word, while Jaune looked more like a vagrant in comparison.
Jaune had honestly been a bit unnerved the first time they met.
He had been practicing by himself in the park when Charlie sat down, crossed legged against a tree, watching him like a hawk. Charlie hadn't said a word the entire time he had been practicing and pretty soon, he found it hard to concentrate. When Jaune finally worked up the courage to ask what he wanted, Charlie had beat him to the chase. "You want to have a spar?" Jaune didn't know how to respond to that initially, but eventually agreed. He had always heard that having a training partner was better than practicing alone after all.
Needless to say, Jaune hadn't stood much of a chance.
That had been the first and last time Charlie had drawn his sword. Ever since then, Charlie had shown up every day for the past month and they would spar. Charlie would give him some pointers afterward and he'd incorporate the advice into his daily training. One thing led to another, and pretty soon Charlie had basically become a mentor of sorts and told him he'd make sure that he would be ready for Beacon. Jaune had improved a lot since he had started sparring with Charlie, although he still wasn't anywhere close to the other boy's level.
Jaune didn't know why Charlie was helping him, but he wasn't going to kick a gift horse in the mouth.
"Hey, Jaune." Charlie's voice was easygoing as usual.
"H-huh?" Jaune tried to regather himself, having suddenly broken out of his stupor. "What's up?"
"This is probably going to be our last training session for a while."
Jaune blinked in surprise at that.
"What? Why?"
Charlie didn't immediately respond to his question and instead closed his eyes. His brow furrowed as he put his thumb under his chin and hummed to himself, as if he were deep in thought. Charlie could be a bit strange like that. Jaune fidgeted a bit at the silence, but after another couple of seconds, Charlie opened his eyes again.
"You don't start at Beacon for another six months, right?" Charlie asked with a little tilt of his head.
"Yeah." Jaune nodded at that, still unsure where the conversation was going. "The upcoming fall semester."
"Mmm… Yeah, I got some things I need to take care of before the semester starts." Charlie replied with a light hum. "Honestly, I probably should have gotten started with those errands earlier, but I wanted to make sure you weren't going to be a complete liability at Beacon."
Jaune couldn't help but wince a bit at that.
Charlie was always honest to a fault, sometimes brutally so. He knew that being able to last at Beacon was going to be a stretch; he had forged his transcripts just to get in for Brother's sake. But even so, he wanted to at least try to chase after his dreams.
"You should be able to put up a half decent fight now though." Charlie continued unperturbed. "At least against your average schmuck, anyway."
"… Gee, thanks for the bout of confidence, Charlie."
The other boy just shrugged.
"Hey, just being honest. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."
"Rome?" Jaune furrowed his brow. "What's that?"
"... Nevermind. Just keep practicing what I showed you, alright?"
"... Yeah, sure." Jaune replied, still a bit bewildered. Charlie could be strange like that. "Thanks for all the help though. I really appreciate it."
"Eh, don't worry about it." The other boy waved off. "... Hey, by the way… Wind Path's supposed to be near here, right?"
Jaune raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, it's to the north. A few hours drive away." He explained. "You headed up there?"
"Yep." Charlie replied, popping the 'p'. "Figured I might as well go find Raven while I'm still in Mistral."
Jaune wasn't sure who Raven was, but then again, it really wasn't any of his business either. He'd only known Charlie for a month or so, and Charlie never really talked about himself much. He wasn't sure if Charlie thought of them as friends or not, but he'd like to at least think they were, so he couldn't just let him go with no warnings. Wind Path was a dangerous city after all, and even though Charlie was strong, he couldn't help but be a little worried.
"You should be careful when you get to Wind Path, Charlie. It's not exactly the safest city."
The boy in question just laughed in response.
"Pfft… Yeah, alright, I'll take that into consideration." Charlie replied with a cocky grin. "I'm the one they should be worried about."
Jaune frowned.
"I'm being serious here. There are a lot of criminals that like to stay there."
"Worry more about yourself, Jaune." Charlie said as he playfully punched him in the shoulder. "The next time I see you, you better be able to land at least one hit on me, alright?"
"... Yeah, alright." Jaune answered with a nod. "It's a promise."
"I'm going to hold you to that." Charlie lightheartedly replied as he walked away. "Try not to get kicked out of Beacon!"
Jaune couldn't help but wince at that as he watched Charlie's back disappear into the concrete jungle of Argus. Charlie was right though, he still had a lot of work to do to catch up to even the average Beacon student. He picked up Crocea Mors and got back into the stance Charlie had shown him earlier.
He took a deep breath and practiced his sword strikes once again.
Author's Notes- Chapters are going to be short because I wanted to try writing something I could finish in one session for once. Updates will probably be more frequent than my usual stuff, but then again, that's not saying much, haha.
