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Chapter 14 - Physical Education

The first day of classes at Beacon Academy came bright and a little too early for Jaune, as he'd been a little too excited to get what anyone would call a restful night's sleep, but he was still determined to begin following a daily routine now that he had the benefit of a reliable schedule and a bed to return to every night. The alarm programmed into his scroll went off at 5:30 Am, at which point, he pulled on a Beacon PE t-shirt, some shorts and a pair of running shoes, and started running fast paced laps around the two-hundred meter long perimeter of housing arrangement number seven's courtyard.

By the time 6:00 Am rolled around Jaune's body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and he was pushing himself through a light form of his daily exercises with a happy smile on his face. He didn't yet know what variety of physicality the day would bring, but he did know that a little bit of light exercise would warm up his body and get him started on the right footing. The scroll in his pocket was loaded up with a boatload of high beat per minute music that was pouring out through a wireless set of headphones, which is why Jaune wasn't immediately aware of the people exercising at his sides. Yang Xiao Long, Pyrrha Nikos and Nora Valkyrie were pushing themselves through their various morning exercises, each with their own style and area of focus.

While Nora was actually exercising in a very similar fashion to Jaune, Yang was bouncing around again with her skipping rope held in her taped up hands, and Pyrrha was moving around a five meter wide area with her shield and spear a blur of rapid movement.

All three women were wearing a skin tight set of spandexy Beacon PE gear that was forcing Jaune to re-evaluate exactly what was considered modest in women's workout fashion. While he might have just assumed that both Yang and Nora were going out of their way to dress provocatively, he seriously doubted that Pyrrha Nikos would do the same. The woman was both shy and reserved, and wasn't likely to wear clothing that was considered risqué.

Long story short, Jaune was going to have to grow used to seeing this kind of scene from now on without reacting in any way shape or form. He was the Captain of Platoon number one. He couldn't afford to be perving on over eighty-five percent of the people that he was supposed to be leading, which meant that he needed to exercise some self-restraint...

At around 6:45 Am, Jaune was finished with his morning exercises and was walking back into the house with Nora, Pyrrha and Yang trailing just behind him. It was only when they were on the stairs leading up to the third level that the three girls suddenly dashed past Jaune on all sides and he heard two doors slamming shut at the end of the hall.

The girls had rushed ahead of him to claim their spots in the available showers...

While both of the third floor bathrooms featured two stalls so that multiple people could shower at the same time, the bathroom on the right side of the hall had a blue male icon printed on it that was being completely ignored. The reason that the girls were happily disregarding the gender specific bathrooms was because they'd all collectively decided the day before that it'd be extremely inefficient to wait for each other when there was an unused bathroom just across the hall.

Back when the discussion was actually happening, both Jaune and Ren had agreed with the rest of their Platoon, because it would take forever for everyone to shower if they were all forced to make a line.

Of course, now Jaune didn't know what to think of the matter because he was pretty sure Yang was naked inside of one of the shower stalls in the men's bathroom, which was going to make the next few minutes a bit of an adventure...

After knocking at the door of the men's side bathroom, Jaune just barely cracked open the door and then called inside. "I'm about to come in with a towel and a change of clothes and go straight to a shower. Are you in a stall?"

"No worries. I'm hidden and I'm in no hurry," Yang called out with a very amused quality to her voice.

With a sigh and a nod, Jaune moved into the bathroom, made a beeline towards a shower, closed the stall door, and made quick work of scrubbing his body. Then he was throwing his undershirt and boxer shorts over his still slightly damp body so that he could shave his face and brush his teeth, all while the smell of feminine shampoo tickled his nose, and Yang hummed a little tune in the background.

All of the sudden and for seemingly no reason, Jaune shivered as if someone had walked on his grave... One way or another, this arrangement was eventually going to get him killed...

A split second later, as if summoned by his growing paranoia, Jaune's greatest concern suddenly became a reality and he reacted the only way that he knew how. The door into the bathroom instantly crashed open as a groggy young woman threw a bathrobe to the floor, and Jaune immediately threw a towel up over his head in self-defense. By the time Blake Belladonna caught on to the fact that she'd just exposed herself to her new Platoon Captain, she found the man standing in front of the sink with his entire head concealed underneath a towel.

"Whoever you are, please be more careful in the future," Jaune requested in a very calm and controlled tone of voice. "I won't always be alert enough to instantly blind myself when I hear that door open..."

Jaune had definitely just caught a glimpse of a sexy little black bra and panties set that went really well with Blake's black ribbon. Blake knew it and he knew it. They both knew it... Now all that Jaune could hope for was that Blake also knew that he wasn't at fault for their current predicament.

In the seconds that followed, Blake silently moved into the shower stall and turned on the water without ever saying a word, and Jaune made his way back towards his bedroom to put on the rest of his uniform.

The crisis was averted, at least for now...

Once Jaune was dressed and presentable enough to play the part, he moved back down the hallway to the intersection outside of the different squad barracks, and rousted the rest of his Platoon. "Time to get up everyone. We can't have the top ranked Platoon late for their very first day of classes. According to the itinerary, There will be a brief orientation by Professor Goodwitch before Professor Port's class, which means we need to be at the Auditorium for 8:30, and we're going to want to eat something first."

Over the next few seconds, a red blur zoomed past Jaune on its way to the bathroom in the form of Ruby, Penny stumbled awkwardly up to his side blinking fatigue out of her eyes, and Ren shuffled by as if he resented everything to do with the waking world.

"Good morning," Jaune gently whispered down to his little sister, as he was well aware that Penny generally didn't feel too hot immediately after waking up in the morning. The girl used all of the downtime that she had when her body was unconscious to either alter or delete her military programming, but the process generally meant that her rest was a little less efficient than normal and her mornings were usually a little bit rough.

"Morning," The girl breathed out in reply as she wrapped her arms around Jaune's waist and snuggled into the return hug that he gave her. "Will you help bathe me today?"

"No can do little sis," Jaune replied with an amused shake of his head. "Even biological siblings don't do that with each other after they turn four or five years old."

"But my body's only seven months old," Penny pointed out in a hopeful tone of voice.

"It's a seven month old, eighteen year old's body," Jaune corrected.

"Ah... I see... My female form is far too alluring for you to view platonically," Penny concluded as she drew herself up to her full height, winked playfully at her brother, and then started walking far more gracefully down the hallway.

Jaune didn't reply at all to any of Penny's teasing. If he did, he'd immediately end up lying and Penny would know right away. Penny was only wearing a pair of tiny neon green spats underneath a baggy t-shirt that she'd stolen from him back in the lab, and the combination was disarming in the extreme.

One thing was immediately obvious. Penny Polendina was teasing him on purpose and having a really good time at it. He suspected that being around Yang must already be having an effect on her...

"Is Ren in the men's bathroom right now," Weiss suddenly asked as she emerged from the PRWN barracks, with towels, toiletry, and several shampoos in hand.

"Yes, but Nora should be out of the women's side any second," Jaune answered as he checked the time on his scroll to keep his focus trained away from the platinum white haired girl's sheer little nightgown.

"Thank you... for the wakeup call and for being so well organized," Weiss murmured, as she continued moving down the hall towards the bathroom.

As simple as a thank you would've been for anyone else, coming from Weiss, with her Atlesian upbringing, that had been one hell of a gesture. Jaune wasn't a huge fan of being so easy to please, but he still found himself smiling as he moved down the hall towards his bedroom and his book bag.

The scattered crowd of students that showed up for Professor Goodwitch's orientation was only about twenty percent of the first year class, but that still meant that the Auditorium contained just over sixty people. Most of the people present were members of the top five ranked Platoons, and they all spent quite a bit of time staring at Platoon number one with varying levels of curiosity, admiration and even some noticeable hostility. Chief amongst the haters were the members of Platoon number two, with the most obvious example being team CRIS's squad leader Cardin Winchester.

"I'm going to make you regret all of the unwarranted attention you're getting, you worthless, overhyped, little piss-ant," Cardin whispered to Jaune in passing as he slammed their shoulders together.

Several members of Platoon number one heard the boy's words and gave Jaune looks of both sympathy and solidarity. Jaune merely waved their support off as being much appreciated but ultimately unnecessary.

Rather than being all that upset, Jaune was beginning to wonder why Cardin Winchester was going so far out of his way to act like a stereotypical douchie antagonist character... The boy was flouncing around with a level of arrogance that was palpable, pushing people around with a casual form of disregard, and sneering at everyone as if they were gum stuck to his shoe. He was also making sure to stare in Jaune's direction while giving him a maniacal smile that was growing larger by the second.

It all just seemed so... juvenile, petty, and most egregious of all... counterproductive...

Quite a few of the other boys in the first year class were also trying to act tough with each other, with the intention that the local girls might find them strong or impressive, and while that motive didn't actually excuse their poor behavior, it did at least explain it. Cardin, on the other hand, was an equal opportunity asshole, who was disrespecting the female population just as much as he was the men... Needless to say, Jaune had no idea what in the hell the teen was hoping to achieve...

Well, whatever the boy's motives were, it was becoming increasingly obvious to Jaune that Cardin Winchester was a mustache twirling, tying up damsels and throwing them on train tracks, old timey, cartoonish villain character. Needless to say, Jaune immediately decided to keep track of his movements at all times during the tour that they were about to complete. He also started looking up whatever information he could find about the boy on the search engine programmed into his scroll. The extreme narcissism being displayed by Cardin doesn't just spring forth from a vacuum after all. The boy had to have come from some kind of important family over here in Vale...

"Good morning everyone," Professor Goodwitch called out as she marched into the room and took in all of the amassed students. "Well, without further ado, let's complete a quick tour of the main school building so that you'll all understand where the various resources are as well as how to use them."

Over the next twenty minutes, Professor Goodwitch hustled everyone throughout the campus's main building, showing them the various classrooms, the gym, the dust lab, the engineering bay, the library, the shooting range, the VR rigs, and finally, the rocket-lockers that could rapidly transport their belongings to their locations.

According to Professor Goodwitch, an app keyed to a GPS locator residing within their Beacon provided scrolls would be able to summon a rocket-locker to their location in case of an emergency. Jaune found the devices fascinating, but he also found it disturbing that their locations were being tracked by the school through their scrolls...

Oblivious to Jaune's thoughts and aiming to stay on schedule, Professor Goodwitch suddenly rounded the corner at the end of the hall, and disappeared from sight.

Of course that was the exact moment when Jaune caught sight of Cardin Winchester in his peripheral vision, sprinting directly at him from his right hand side. A powerful surge of adrenaline immediately flowed throughout his veins as he realized that he was currently under attack.

All of the other members of Platoon number one also noticed Cardin dashing full speed towards Jaune, but none of them were in a position to intervene before it was too late. Ruby actually did begin dashing back down the hallway to knock the larger boy off course, but as fast as she was, she'd noticed Cardin's intentions just a little too late.

As he instinctually saturated his entire brain with an enormous amount of aura to speed up his thoughts and slow down his perception of time, Jaune saw that Cardin was aiming to shove him into an open rocket-locker and then send his body flying off to Maidens only know where. Then Jaune took in the larger trainee's face and saw that his expression already contained a malevolent form of glee over what he was about to do, and the reality of his current situation fully solidified within his mind. Cardin Winchester planned on victimizing him in order to make himself look big, strong and important in comparison, which meant that reasoning with the boy was never, ever going to work...

With all of that being the case, Jaune suddenly realized that there was only one really appropriate way of responding to Cardin's intentions...

After spontaneously crouching low as if he was aiming to re-tie one of his shoes, Jaune braced his legs, swerved his entire torso in the direction of his attacker, and then delivered a devastating uppercut punch directly into the larger boy's balls. Jaune hit Cardin hard, he hit him fast, he poured a metric ton of aura into the muscles powering the blow, and he followed through with all of his might in order to completely pulverize the boy's testicles up and into the bones of his pelvis.

Jaune held absolutely nothing back. It was one of the hardest punches that he'd ever delivered in his whole entire life...

Needless to say, Cardin was extremely lucky that his aura field spread out the force of Jaune's blow throughout his inner thighs, ass and stomach, or he'd immediately have lost all ability to use his reproductive organs.

What happened instead was that Cardin released a high pitched, pain filled squeak, as his feet were launched clear off of the ground, causing all of his forward momentum to make him flip up and over Jaune's back, and send his newly upside down body crashing into the bank of lockers. Then the boy was slamming head first down into the floor just a foot away from the wide open rocket-locker, and he was clutching desperately at his testicles with both of his hands.

With a cold and merciless brand of efficiency, Jaune immediately launched back up to his feet, yanked Cardin's head up off the floor by the back of his highly gelled hair, and slammed the boy's face down into the bottom of the nearby rocket-locker. Next he grabbed a hold of the wide open locker door, reeled back, and began front kicking the door closed against Cardin's head over and over and over again. With every scrap of aura that he contained powering the muscles of his back and legs, Jaune slammed his foot down into the metal hemming in the boy's head, bending and cratering both the door and the opposite wall of the locker into a misshapen shell wrapped around every inch of the boy's skull.

While an aura field can and will shield you from blunt force trauma, the effectiveness of that protection is significantly reduced when it comes to crush damage, because the pressure being applied by the two opposing forces colliding inwards can't easily be distributed throughout the body. By the time Jaune was finished kicking the metal door into a very lumpy "C" shape all around Cardin's head, he'd rung the boy's bell hard enough that his eyes were swimming and he was struggling merely to stay conscious...

With the grizzly deed accomplished, Jaune stared down at Cardin's newly stunned and twitching body for just the briefest of moments, calmly turned around, and then started walking away. Rather than looking upset, Jaune's expression was that of a man that had just done something distasteful, as if he'd been forced to throw out a particularly sticky and rancid bag of garbage...

For several moments in a row, the shocked silent members of Platoon number one continued to move down the hallway with Jaune as if nothing had ever happened at all. Then they all seemed to lose a battle of wills within themselves and they turned back to look at Cardin's weakly floundering body...

"You're a complete barbarian," Weiss whispered in a breathy voice that sounded both appalled and... excited...

"Yep, that was brutal," Yang casually agreed with what might have been a grin trying to grow upon her face.

"Platoon number one, I'm creating my very first team rule, right here, right now, because I don't want my most recent actions to be misunderstood," Jaune suddenly announced in an extremely serious tone of voice. "We aren't going to be showing mercy to bullies... None... We have much bigger, far more important goals to focus our attention towards than fending off the local thug leaders and their cronies... If someone starts giving you a hard time, I expect you to immediately let me know. If I can't get the troublemaker's Platoon Captain to get control of the situation, then we, all of us, as a Platoon, will very thoroughly bring an end to the matter, once and for all..."

"Yeah! We'll break their legs," Nora enthused with a fist pumping up in the air.

"Yes... Yes we will," Jaune agreed with a simple nod of his head.

"You aren't worried about whatever retaliation Cardin might attempt," Blake suddenly asked as she moved in to look Jaune in the eye. "I know that boy's type. He's not going to change so easily..."

"If Cardin's behavior doesn't improve, and I highly doubt that it will, I have a plan to deal with him in the long term," Jaune assured. "I merely wanted to discourage the boy from targeting me in the hallways."

After casting one last glance back at Cardin to find the boy slumped back against the rocket-locker like a bag of hard-soiled laundry, everyone in Platoon number one slowly nodded their understanding. Cardin Winchester wasn't likely to attack Jaune without a numerical advantage ever again...

"... And I returned to my village with the beast detained, and my head held high in pride," Professor Port flourished to end yet another very long and self-aggrandizing story that took up a huge amount of their lecture time... Truth be told, the contents of the man's stories were always worthwhile. In this most recent story, Port managed to fight off a Beowulf as a child because he'd used the tools at hand and the location of his attack to their best advantage and he'd won against all odds. It was a very useful message. It was also boring in the extreme...

As the Professor droned on and on, recounting every tiny little detail about his beard and muscles and how the ladies loved him, Jaune composed and sent a text message to the various members of his Platoon on their scrolls.

When Port tells a story, attempt to answer these questions:

What Grimm is Port hunting?
Is the Grimm a pack creature, an ambush hunter or a heavily armored type?
What subclass is the Grimm? (minor, major, alpha, legend) How do you know?
What are the Grimm's offensive strengths and weaknesses?
Are there visible holes in the Grimm's armor that can be pierced?
Does the Grimm favor a type of attack?
Does the Grimm's attack open it up for a counterattack?
How would you best exploit or create weaknesses in the Grimm's defenses?
What tools or techniques would make destroying the Grimm easier?
How can you use your Semblance or weapons to their best effect?

These are some, but not all, of the questions that we should all be asking every time we encounter a new variety of Grimm, and we should always avoid a direct frontal assault until we've answered them.

After everyone subtly pulled out their phones and read the contents of Jaune's text message, Platoon number one pulled out their pens again and started dissecting the various Grimm present in Port's youthful exploits. Over the next half an hour, Port told three more stories, and all of them featured a new type of Grimm that no one on Platoon number one had ever encountered before.

Port really was an experienced Huntsmen and Professor; he just had all of the delivery of a mime at a convention for the blind...

"... Monsters... Demons... Creatures of the night," Port eventually declared in an overly dramatic tone of voice. "The Creatures of the Grimm are known by many names. What most don't care to remember is that these names are also broken down into subclasses such as minor, major, alpha, and finally ancient. Every Grimm species on Remnant has variants that show characteristics of these classes, and they make a huge impact on the size, durability and ferocity of the Grimm in question. Now... I have... in this box... a Boarbatusk..."

The class immediately started sniggering, mostly because the contents of the box had been making them nervous and now they all felt a little bit stupid. Jaune wasn't so amused. A simple Boarbatusk wouldn't make for an effective lesson, which meant that there was more to this Grimm than anyone knew.

"Does anyone care to exterminate the Grimm inside of this box?" Professor Port looked amused at this point.

"I will, sir," Weiss immediately called out with a hand straight up in the air. Then she was moving down the aisle.

"You got this Weiss," Pyrrha called out as the heiress descended down the stairs.

"Fight well," Blake added with a small Platoon #1 flag in her hand.

Everyone else in Platoon number one hooted and hollered in support as the Atlesian pop idol made her way down towards the Professor and the large crate at his side.

"Ask the right questions before attacking," Jaune called out just as Weiss returned to the auditorium floor from the weapons lockers. Then he smiled when Weiss turned back towards her Platoon, smiled at everyone's support and then subtly nodded in his direction.

With a happy laugh and a downward swing of a blunder-axe, Professor Port suddenly slammed open the cage door containing the Grimm and an almost pure white blur of tusks and scrabbling legs came flying out from the darkness within.

Right away, everyone in the class could see that this particular Boarbatusk was very different from the norm. The soft, fleshy, black bits that are present in most Grimm were almost entirely missing and the telltale weak point that could usually be found on the beast's belly appeared to be covered in an inch thick plate of bone. What's more, the boar Grimm was nearly twice as large as usual, had an extra band of spikes protruding from its sides, and was moving quite a bit faster than usual.

Weiss never attempted a frontal assault on the beast as it dashed in her direction with a fine red mist trailing away from its six red eyes. Instead, she used her launch-pad Glyphs to bounce to the side and began circle-strafing around the beast as it dashed in her direction. As a result, she easily avoided its first attack despite the fact that it was very different than normal and far more powerful than anyone expected.

This higher variant of Grimm didn't merely have a forward roll attack like all of the other Boarbatusk that the class was used to, complete with an easily exploitable weakness. This Grimm rotated in a three-hundred and sixty degree axis just as much as it did forward, which allowed it to turn on a dime and made the spikes on its sides rotate through the air like saw blades.

After launching herself through several quick laps of the rapidly spinning Boarbatusk, during which time she stared at its movements, armaments and attack, Weiss suddenly nodded her head in understanding, changed the Dust chamber that she was using within Myrtenaster, and then waved her sword down at the beast.

A hailstorm of blue Dust beams transporting a wave of super frigid air slammed down into the Grimm, freezing it's exposed armor and unbalancing its rapid rotation to the point that it flopped onto its side. Next Weiss activated an anti-gravity Glyph that floated the flailing Grimm up into the air even as she sent another wave of her blue beams to create a thick layer of ice all around its armored sides. Finally, with a third almost casual wave of her sword, Weiss suddenly created a double gravity Glyph directly above the Boarbatusk's body which sent the beast careening down the five meters that it had floated up off of the ground.

When the Boarbatusk's body slammed down into the auditorium floor with a hard jangling noise mixed with an almost wet splatting sound, the impact instantly shattered the thick layer of ice coating its entire body, and ripped off several plates of it's bone armor in the process.

The fight was essentially over...

With a snarl of both aggression and triumph, Weiss immediately launch-padded herself towards a newly revealed gap in the Boarbatusk's heavily armored side, and she slammed Myrtenaster hilt deep into it's heart.

Over the next few moments, the newly revealed 'major' variant of Boarbatusk disintegrated into a black mist and the members of Platoon number one went wild. Weiss had made exterminating that Grimm look easy enough that a baby could've done it, but everyone present in the room knew that such wasn't the case.

Weiss Schnee was just that amazing.

"Excellent work, Ms. Schnee," Port enthused with a happy laugh and a wave of his axe. "It's clear to me that you've been listening very carefully to what I've been saying thus far."

"Yes sir," Weiss agreed with a happy smile and a bounce to her step. Then she was moving back up the steps and rejoining the rest of her super excited team.

When the bell to start their double length second period chimed throughout the auditorium, the various pews that had surrounded Professor port's lectern slowly rose further up into the air to create an elevated viewing platform circling an arena in the center of the room. Combat class with Ms. Glynda Goodwitch was starting with all of the pomp and circumstance that it called for, and the Professor was walking into the center of the room with the demeanor of a consummate disciplinarian.

With a wave of the blonde Professor's hand, a large hologram suddenly grew into place along the north side of the auditorium, spanning from the arena's massively vaulted ceiling down to the top of its barrier wall. The hologram was a list of the first year classes' names, faces, current aura level, current point value, and... class ranking...

At the very bottom of this ranking list, in very last place, was one John Freeman. He was currently the lowest ranked student in their entire year with a whopping zero points next to his name.

Well, shucks...

As disconcerting as it was to be the last placed student in their whole entire year, Jaune's current low rank actually answered a question that he'd been a little too preoccupied to ask just the night before. Professor Goodwitch wasn't barring the use of his armor because she was a sadist. No. She clearly had no intention of having him get completely flattened by powerhouses such as the people in his Platoon, without ever allowing him the use of his Semblance.

As Jaune should've expected right from the very beginning, Glynda intended to have him start from the very bottom ranks of his year, fighting his way up through a gauntlet of increasingly powerful trainees with every fight that passed even as she trained him in the proper use of his aura.

The woman was a Goddess of tough love style efficiency and methodical improvement, and Jaune Arc was enormously impressed...

In the moments following Goodwitch's reveal of the class rankings and John Freeman's status as the last place trainee in their entire year, dozens of students all around the room sniggered at the recently made famous captain's newly revealed loser status. This wave of sudden amusement at John's expense caused all the members of Platoon number one to immediately turn in his direction, aiming to offer all of the sympathy and commiseration they could offer. Then their eyes immediately grew wide in surprise at what they saw developing on their Platoon Captain's face.

John Freeman's current expression was a nearly perfect mixture of unbridled excitement and an almost manic variety of feral determination. What's more, the boy was staring down at their very stern, cool and unconcerned Professor, as if the woman was one of the Maidens sent straight from the heavens.

No one in the entire auditorium understood what to make of John's expression, except that he was inexplicably overjoyed with his current last place status, and that much was obvious...

Across the room, Cardin Winchester caught sight of John's half wild expression of brutal enthusiasm, and he felt a small shiver crawling up the various segments of his spine. Then he grit his teeth into a terrible little scowl and gripped the armrest of his pew seating until the segment of metal bent in half.

Jaune was so wrapped up in the martial arts montage that he was about to put himself through, he never even noticed the mixed laughter and sympathy that was being sent in his direction. He was far too busy figuring out what aspects of his Semblance he could still use without his reactive armor or any creative chemistry within easy reach. Then his thoughts were interrupted when Professor Goodwitch suddenly began addressing the class.

I do not take requests in this class," Goodwitch began in a very no-nonsense tone of voice. "The spars that happen in this class will adhere to a strict hierarchy based on the point system that denotes your current rank. You will not be allowed to fight anyone that is more than ten places above or below your current rank."

When Nora started waving her hands up in the air like a lunatic, Professor Goodwitch sighed in long suffering and then gestured at the hyperactive girl.

"What factors went into deciding our current point value," Nora asked with enough enthusiasm that she almost fell from the stands towards the arena below.

"Very good question," Ms. Goodwitch allowed, as her expression softened. "Your current point value in my class is what you earned in the hours after you successfully completed the Initiation Test. Every single minor Grimm that you destroyed after surpassing the bare minimum quota awarded you one hundred points towards your current point value. If you managed to destroy a higher variant of Grimm then you received one-thousand points. If, by some miracle, you managed to destroy an A ranked Grimm you were awarded ten-thousand points."

For the Maidens only know what time that day, Platoon number one found themselves the recipients of hundreds of stares from every conceivable direction, as the rest of the first year class took in their Initiation scores. The lowest score present in all of Platoon number one was Lie Ren, and the boy's score of 27,600 still managed to nearly triple the highest score present in any other Platoon. Not only that but, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long's current point value was a completely ridiculous 346,300, implying that the two girls had destroyed well over three-thousand Grimm all by themselves...

The absurd point value made sense to Jaune, because Blake and Yang had been awarded the point value for every single Grimm that was destroyed by both Blake and himself up on the wall, followed by the hydrogen/oxygen explosion that he'd created. While it would be difficult to say exactly how many Grimm the two of them physically destroyed while fighting up on the ramparts, that explosion at the end easily incinerated at least two-thousand piled up Grimm, several B rank Minotaurs and three Goliath Grimm...

All things considered, Jaune figured that 346,300 points was probably the Professor's conservative estimate. The real point value was probably quite a bit higher than that... Needless to say, he was highly amused by both the look of embarrassment/chagrin growing on Yang's face and how Blake was slowly but surely attempting to sink down into the unyielding padding of her seat.

Down in the arena, Goodwitch was gesturing for everyone's attention to return back to her explanation. "After every fight that occurs within this class, the winner will take half of the defeated trainee's point value, will climb one rung up in the rankings, and will be guaranteed another fight during the next day's class," she explained with a smile that was both cool and somehow violent at exactly the same time. "If you lose, then the opposite will happen. You will forfeit half of your current points and will drop one rung in the current rankings. The points that your platoon holds as a whole at the end of the month will denote the sophistication of the VR rigs that your housing unit will receive, so fight hard for the good of yourself and your teammates."

The class was a chaotic mix of boiling excitement and trepidation by now and everyone was waiting to see who would fight first.

"I'll be calling up two people from every grouping of ten similarly ranked trainees in the order of first to last place," Professor Goodwitch explained as she addressed her data scroll and the list of people that was resting in her hands. "What that means is... could Ms. Xiao Long and Ms. Belladonna please join me down here in the arena?..."

Over the next three and a half hours, Yang managed beat Blake by a very slim margin in a spar that lasted almost fifteen whole minutes, and then another thirty something fights followed in a rapid series of flashing weapons and loud "heeyahs." While most of the fights had been relatively quick, there was still only fifteen minutes left in the four hour long class when Jaune's ranking group was finally coming up and they were all waiting to be chosen.

"Will Mr. Shale Pine and Mr. John Freeman please come down into the arena.

After a brief trip to pick up the weapons that they'd stowed in a bank of nearby lockers, Jaune and a very wiry boy by the name of Shale returned to the arena and stood about five meters apart.

"You are both well aware of the rules," Goodwitch announced with her usual formality. "You are to immediately stop attacking your adversary when the monitor on their wrist indicates that their aura has dropped below ten percent. You will stop attacking your opponent immediately if I tell you to stop."

As Jaune and his adversary Shale nodded their understanding, he took the opportunity to check out his opponent's mental state. Shale looked like his fight or flight instincts were beginning to run wild. He was shaking where he stood, breathing heavily and staring at Jaune as if he was his mortal enemy.

Jaune could work with this. The boy wasn't likely to attack him right away, which meant that he could take the time to probe him for more information...

"Fight," Professor Goodwitch suddenly barked out in a very loud and commanding tone of voice.

As he instantly dashed to the left, Jaune pulled his hand out of his pocket and withdrew some miscellaneous rocks that he'd brought along simply to screw with whoever his opponent ended up being. Then, after throwing the rocks in a loose grouping in Shale's general direction, he mechashifted his shield into its rifle form and slid to a random stop.

As Jaune had suspected might happen with an opponent as keyed up as Shale, the boy immediately pulled out his twin pistol-knives, and cut the rocks into dozens of pieces when their velocity suddenly slowed to a crawl in the air.

And just like that, the boy had given away the utility of his Semblance.

Mr. Shale appeared to have a Semblance that slowed incoming objects. Depending on how slow he could get an object, how much mass that object could have or how many people the boy could offer that same protection, his Semblance could be extremely useful, but it appeared that this boy merely used it as a defense mechanism or a panic reaction. It was too bad really. It was wasted potential.

After growling in anger, presumably over his own overreaction, Shale immediately launched himself towards Jaune, and began throwing dozens of knife slashes at him at an extremely rapid rate. It was immediately apparent to the both of them that Shale was a little bit faster than Jaune so the boy's face took on a look of feral glee at having found an easy opponent. Then the rail thin boy started growling in increasing amounts of frustration because Jaune was dashing backwards every single time he approached, and he was waving his sword haphazardly in the general direction of his face.

Soon enough, the audience in the stands started laughing uproariously at Jaune, because he was persistently retreating backwards to slip away from Shale's attacks, and he was waving his sword wildly at his opponent's face as if he was nothing but a panicking beginner.

Over and over again this pattern repeated itself. Shale would attack with a fast pace flurry of stabbing knives, and Jaune would break off while slicing his sword in the direction of the boy's eyes to create distance.

It was only after about two and a half minutes of this routine went by that the laughter taking place in the stands slowly came to an end and a stony silence took its place. Something that the audience hadn't noticed until around that time suddenly became far too obvious to miss.

Shale's aura levels were decreasing with every single random swing of Jaune's weapon towards his face, as Shale flinched and then used his Semblance to slow the sword down, wasting a huge amount of his aura in the process.

Jaune's plan of attack was boring. It was cheap. It was shameful.

It was making Professor Goodwitch honest to Oum smile for everyone in the Auditorium to witness...

"Fight over," Goodwitch loudly called out when Shale's aura finally dropped down into the red. "Winner, John Freeman."

"But professor," Shale immediately called out in an outraged tone of voice. "That boy never even came near me!"

"Which is why you absolutely must learn how to control when and under what circumstances your Semblance activates," Goodwitch pointed out with zero sympathy on her face. "In less than five minutes' time, your opponent just forced you to drain your own aura pool down to ten percent by making you slow down a series of blows that would never have hit you!"

After flinching away from Goodwitch's words like a whipped dog, Shale nodded his head in a begrudging form of understanding and then slowly turned away.

After receiving a simple, silent nod of approval from Professor Goodwitch, Jaune trailed behind Shale as they walked back into the locker room and began stowing their weapons in the lockers provided.

"I'm gonna get you for disgracing me," Shale suddenly growled out as he turned to stare at the side of Jaune's face.

After drawing in a very deep breath, Jaune turned to face Shale directly so that he could give the boy a very frank and candid look. "I did what I did just now because I think you have a lot of potential that you're currently squandering. If you learn to control your Semblance, learn to use it to slow large and lethal attacks, and learn to use it to protect not just yourself, but your teammates as well, then you'll become an extremely valuable member of any Platoon."

At the tail end of those words, Jaune suddenly stepped quite close to Shale and dropped the timber of his voice to little more than a feral growl. "On the other hand, if you ever threaten me again, I'll make sure that your potential is never realized. This isn't a game Shale. This is real life, with real consequences. If you give me reason to believe that you're truly a threat to me, then I'll straight up make you disappear... poof, gone. I know exactly how your Semblance operates Shale... You don't have the faintest clue about mine."

After jerking back in surprise at Jaune's radical change in demeanor and then stumbling backwards multiple times at the murderous intensity in his voice, Shale quickly backpedaled towards the door and then bolted out of the room.

"Just a child," Jaune whispered to himself as he locked up his gear and then straightened his uniform over his foundation suit. Soon enough, he was marching back out into the auditorium, walking up the stairs to the stands, and rejoining his friends amidst a sea of extremely curious stares.

"That was even more brutal than what you did to Cardin with the locker," Yang pointed out, this time not even trying to hide her amusement.

"It was a very... John Freeman type plan," Blake added in a voice that was almost but not quite a whisper. "You used only five percent of your aura, and you never exposed yourself to even the slightest amount of risk..."

"I might not have won at all if I didn't exploit that boy's weakness," Jaune admitted with a small shrug of his shoulders. "Shale had a small but noticeable speed advantage on me."

"Maidens John, you're way more athletic than that little boy," Weiss immediately scolded with a voice that sounded far more concerned than it did angry. "What I mean is, forgoing the use of Semblances, those ridiculously well-trained muscles of yours should be giving you a speed and strength advantage over almost anyone in this room. You absolutely must learn how to properly channel your aura."

This time Jaune only smiled in response to Weiss's words, but the smile was knowing enough that everyone started giving him curious looks.

Five hours later, when the first day of school came to an end, Jaune walked through the halls of the administration building, following a series of directions that had been sent to his scroll during last period's Dust engineering class.

Jaune was in Beacon staff territory at this point, so every once in a while, the odd male Professor popped out of their office to look at him before disappearing just as quickly. It appeared that Goodwitch had informed her co-workers of Jaune's arrival ahead of time. It also appeared that what few male colleagues the woman had were extremely curious about him. Their interest was actually pretty understandable. Jaune had managed to score both Goodwitch's time and her attention. Judging purely by the blonde Professor's extremely cool and aloof demeanor, the men that were currently staring at the back of his head were probably dying to know just how he'd pulled off such a miracle.

Jokes on them, Jaune had absolutely no idea...

A quick elevator trip up several floors of the tower had Jaune entering a very large and well-appointed office. The office had hundreds of glass windows, flanking massive amounts of floor space, bordering an impressive wooden desk, containing dozens of sophisticated computers. It was a workspace fit for a God of ultra-productivity.

Jaune suddenly dedicated himself towards having an office exactly like this one someday...

"Thank you for being on time," Professor Goodwitch called out as she rose from her seat and rounded her desk to a large, rather familiar chair sitting in the center of the room.

It was a haptic chair. It was a VR rig. The only difference from the norm was that it had hundreds of wires attached to it that Jaune had never seen before...

"Please take off your clothing down to your underwear and then take a seat," Goodwitch asked/ordered as she gestured down at the chair. "Quickly please. I have a theory that I want to confirm."

"Yes Professor," Jaune immediately replied as he pulled off his tie and then unbuttoned his suit and vest. Within no time at all, Jaune was stripped down to a pair of black boxer briefs and was sitting down in the strange looking haptic chair.

"Before you take part in the simulation that I've prepared for you, I need to apply all of these very special electrodes to your body," Goodwitch explained as she crouched next to his seat, picked up a dense mass of wires and began meticulously affixing them to Jaune's body.

"These electrodes will discern what I'm doing with my aura when I fight and move," Jaune brainstormed aloud.

"Exactly," Ms. Goodwitch quietly agreed as she affixed hundreds and hundreds of sticky pads to Jaune's head, face, neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, back, thighs, legs, calves, ankles, feet, arms and hands.

"Is my Semblance really that much of a liability when it comes to achieving a normal variety of aura control," Jaune suddenly asked as he stared down at his entirely too gorgeous mentor.

Goodwitch instantly stopped moving at Jaune's question, even as her hand was pressing an electrode down against the top of his thigh.

"Mr. Arc... Jaune Arc," Goodwitch slowly enunciated, reminding Jaune that she already knew exactly who he was. "You've only had access to your aura for a little over two years now. Most young huntsmen trainees don't see noticeable amounts of improvement in the application of their aura for nearly five years. Even then, the things that these normal trainees are able to accomplish with their aura are usually extremely simple and weak. Your Semblance has allowed you to keep up with Beacon level Hunters and Huntresses that've been training since they were children. Your Semblance is not a liability."

"I... see," Jaune responded with a grateful smile on his face. "Thank you for explaining that to me. I don't yet know what normal looks like for a Huntsmen trainee. I don't fully understand what I've missed."

"That's what the two of us are going to be doing in this very room," Goodwitch murmured as she returned to applying the electrodes.

About two minutes later, Jaune's entire body was completely covered in a very well organized web of wires and he was slipping a VR Headset up over his head.

"This simulation is called the Kobayashi Maru, and it will be filled with danger in every single direction right from the beginning," Goodwitch explained as Jaune's back settled down into the chair. "It will behoove you to begin channeling all of your aura through your entire body right away so that you can start running and defending yourself."

"I understand," Jaune agreed as his perception of the world suddenly changed, and he found himself in a twilit clearing in what looked like Forever Fall Forest. Looking down at his hands, he saw that he was holding his rifle-shield and knuckle-duster-saber. Then he saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of red glowing eyes out in the darkness, and his eyes expanded to the size of dinner plates.

In the next moment, Jaune was channeling his aura down and throughout his body, and he was sprinting out of the clearing in the direction that was the least riddled with eyes. Soon enough, Jaune was bouncing from tree to tree as if Taiyang Xiao Long was after him, and he was firing Dust rounds right and left to throw off the Grimm that were coming in from his sides.

The Grimm just kept coming from every single direction all at once, and running was only partially effective. When a wall of advancing Beowulf's emerged directly in front of him, Jaune cut his way through their numbers and then continued to dash through the trees. The delay had cost him though. Hundreds of Grimm were right on his heels.

Jaune was never going to get away. Claws were slashing at his ankles and thighs from the sides as more and more Grimm joined the chase. Then Jaune saw a cliffside wall and he immediately sprinted in its direction. His aura was being bled out from behind. He needed a wall at his back. He needed to make a fight of this.

Sliding to a stop in front of the sheer wall of the cliff rising up into the sky, Jaune turned around and confronted what had to be the front ranks of a swarm of Grimm of all types that were emerging from the trees.

Jaune was going to die.

Jaune was going to raise all hell before it happened.

"Bring it on," Jaune whispered to himself with a twirl of his mono-molecular sword and a punch to the unyielding metal of his shield.

Then the Grimm were upon him and Jaune spent the next ten plus minutes hacking, slashing, firing Dust, slamming beasts aside with his shield, dodging, blocking, and being eaten.

More than anything else, Jaune experienced a whole lot of being eaten. Teeth chewed on his arms and legs, talons and claws raked his arms, thighs and back, and stingers slammed down against his body. Amidst all of this, Jaune continued to fight and move and struggle, until finally, his aura completely ran out, his arm was almost immediately bitten off right at the shoulder, and then his head was melted by a Sulfur Fish's acid filled stinger.

Gasp!

Jaune hauled in deep desperate lungfuls of air as he allowed the sensory confusion caused by experiencing a violent death to ebb away. That... had sucked.

"Your body constitution is really well suited to fighting the Grimm," Goodwitch pointed out as she withdrew the haptic helmet from Jaune's head. "There are several different ways that you can improve from an offensive standpoint, but you still survived that Grimm swarm over four times longer than most trainees do."

"Yes, I noticed that I can take a beating while I was up on the wall," Jaune agreed as he wiped a hand over his newly sweaty forehead.

"Now we will watch a playback of what you just did on this holo-monitor, and I will superimpose a red light over your body to designate where and how powerfully you are channeling your aura," Goodwitch explained.

Jaune nodded as he turned towards the nearby hologram and watched his own doomed efforts.

Over the next twenty minutes, one thing became incredibly obvious.

Jaune really was micro-managing his aura, and in a really, really noticeable way. When he used his right leg, a red swell of aura instantly shot out from his core to fill it. Then, when his right leg was up in the air, the aura that he'd filled it with withdrew back into his core. Jaune did this over and over again with every single part of his body, and Goodwitch's use of the word casting suddenly made a lot more sense to him. Jaune was using his Semblance to cast his aura from his core into whatever limb he was currently making use of.

Jaune quite literally didn't have any normal aura control at all...

"Maidens..." Jaune whispered as he saw the way that he was directing his aura all around his body in extremely rapid fits and bursts that allowed him to move in ways that were similar to a normal Huntsmen, but at a disadvantage. No wonder he was always a step behind... He was having to cast his aura into the limb that he was empowering even as he moved...

"There can be no doubt that you're a genius Jaune," Goodwitch pointed out with no specific inflection in her voice. "The amount of intelligence, concentration and willpower that would need to go into accomplishing what we're currently looking at is astronomical. You're manually directing every aspect of your aura control to power the various muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, and synapses of your body in very specific ways even as you move through extremely high speed movements. What we're looking at right now is absolutely remarkable..."

"I've always found that fighting is more taxing on my mind than it is on my body," Jaune slowly admitted. "I always thought that feeling was just my lack of experience forcing me to divide my focus in too many directions, but Taiyang repeatedly told me that I was thinking rather than doing. Now I understand what the man was talking about, even though I'm certain he didn't actually understand my dilemma..."

"Well, now's the time for you to finally begin learning normal aura control," Goodwitch announced as she queued up the holo-monitor to show the current state of Jaune's body. "You saw how the red light indicates the current location of your aura, correct?"

"Yes, Professor," Jaune immediately replied.

"I want you to fill your entire body, every single inch of it, with a low level of aura," Goodwitch explained as she gestured at the monitor. "No need to force yourself to burn a bright red in the hologram, but I want your entire body filled with aura, and then I want you to relax. Accomplishing those two things at exactly the same time is the hallmark of traditional aura control."

"I see. I'll begin now," Jaune replied with a nod.

After about five seconds passed Jaune spread out his aura throughout his entire body and then he closed his eyes in an attempt to relax. It wasn't easy. He still felt his mind focusing on the where and the intensity of his aura, and he was having trouble withdrawing that focus.

Then a hand slipped down onto his shoulder followed by a second on his other shoulder, and Jaune shivered from head to toe. Ms. Glynda Goodwitch was rubbing his shoulders from behind...

Monty Oum and his Maidens...

"Your aura is slipping Mr. Arc," Ms. Goodwitch remarked as Jaune's aura started slipping back towards his core. Then her hands began moving again when Jaune managed to smooth out his aura again. "Relax Mr. Arc... Focus on things other than your aura even as it rests throughout your body. It's not going to fight you or what you want from it. It is you... Focus on the view outside of the window, focus on the sound of my humidifier, focus on the seat beneath you, focus on my hands on your shoulder. Try to relax..."

Glynda Goodwitch's hands running up and down his shoulders was perhaps the least relaxing thing that Jaune had ever experienced in his whole entire life, but it was definitely distracting, and that was kind of the point. Up on the monitor, a low current of Jaune's aura was dwelling within every inch of his body, despite the fact that his entire attention was hyper-focused on the woman's unbelievably soft hands smoothing up and down the muscles of his neck, shoulders and upper back. He felt his entire body temperature rising and he didn't think that it was his aura that was doing it. Time slipped by without him ever even realizing it.

"We will repeat this lesson tomorrow, but only if you manage to defeat your opponent in my class again," Glynda quietly announced as she very slowly drew her hands away from his body. "I was quite pleased with your quick thinking today, but you shouldn't expect all of your fights to come so easily..."

"No Professor, I won't Professor," Jaune agreed as he began peeling off the electrodes and rising back up to his feet.

"Two things before you leave," Professor Goodwitch said as she moved towards her desk and grabbed up a small box. First thing, these four bracelets will gently vibrate if they're filled with aura. I want you to wear a band around both of your wrists and ankles, and then I want you to live as much of your life as possible with these rings vibrating. Go about your business with a small amount of aura flowing throughout your entire body at all times. Do your homework, complete your daily workouts, talk to your friends, go to the movies, focus on other things, but keep these rings vibrating at all times."

At first Jaune merely nodded, but then he looked back at Goodwitch and arched his eyebrows. "And the second thing Professor?"

"When we're all alone in this office, I expect you to call me by my first name, and I will call you by your real name, Jaune," the newly named Glynda announced with just the tiniest amount of something resembling bashfulness on her face.

For the second time in less than a minute Jaune merely nodded his ready acceptance, but this time the reason for his lack of a verbal response was entirely different from before.

For the first time in quite a while, Jaune Arc had been rendered completely speechless.