Jaunedice
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The arena was once again being occupied by two students.
One Cardin Winchester and the other being Jaune Arc but calling it a fight would be an overstatement.
The blonde's attacks were sloppy and too easy. All Cardin had to do was to simply take a step back in the right moment, Jaune didn't stood a chance.
In the higher stands, this was obvious for his team leader. Ever since the school year began, the blonde knight had been behind his peers by a long shot in all the assignments, not only in the physical, but also in the academic side. He was starting to become a weak link, and it was time to do something about it.
Turning her sight to her other teammates, that were seated next to her. "We have to do something about him, or he'll be a deadweight."
Pyrrha nodded silently, she didn't enjoy talking bad about other people, but she couldn't deny the facts. "I'll talk with him."
The heiress shook her head in negative at the offer. "No! we're a team; we'll talk with him in our dorm as soon as this over."
"And then what?" Ichigo asked her curiously.
"That depends on him."
As soon as she said that, Cardin finally reduced Jaune's aura to the point where the professor intervened.
"That's enough Mister Winchester." She said, making him stop his attack, with Jaune falling on his knees for exhaustion.
"Mister Arc, you need a better strategy than letting yourself being beaten up." The stern woman said to the blonde knight who slumped his head while mumbling dishearteningly.
"I just figured, if he was stronger than me, then I could've let him tire himself out against my shield and then attack."
"That strategy takes a lot of time, where in a real fight, time might not be a luxury and that's only viable if you can counter effectively." Goodwitch retorted sharply, just crushing the spirits of the knight even further, almost a whole month in this academy and his progress was lackluster at best. "Don't forget that the Vytal festival will start soon, and you will need above average marks in order to participate in it."
000
Almost all the members of team WIAN were amazing. Jaune was aware of that, kind of hard not to.
There was Weiss Schnee, the snow angel. She was smart, skilled and beautiful. Pyrrha was nigh unstoppable in fighting and she had the top marks in academics. Ichigo was powerful and fierce, and to be honest he sort of scared him a bit, and the glare didn't help.
And then, there was him; the boring, normal, weak Jaune Arc.
Everything looked more glamorous in his dreams, he imagined that he would arrive, meet a nice girl, woo her with his confidence and while not being the strongest huntsman, he would still be the hero he always dreamed he could be.
He would stop being the little boy that had his hair pulled into pigtails, or the kid everyone assumed to be uncapable of achieving his dreams, he would be a man.
Instead, he felt like he hasn't advanced at all, he still felt like the boy that ran away from home.
Honestly, he had been considering to just throw the towel, he wasn't in the league of any of his teammates, nor the rest of any of his fellow students to be honest.
Jaune envied his fellow students so much! He wasn't proud of it, but a little part of him did felt that way.
With those depressing thoughts, he arrived at the dorm of his team and in entering he found the rest of his team waiting for him.
Well not all of them; Ichigo was on his bed reading something in his scroll, Pyrrha was standing while clutching her bicep while directing him a sheepishly look, Weiss on the other hand was sitting on a chair while directing him her known sharp look making him sweat a little.
"Take a seat. We have to talk." The heiress said, with her tone leaving no room for debate.
Quickly obeying her command, the team leader stood up and began talking. "Jaune, ever since the year started, you'd been behind all of us by a wide gap. Why?"
The blonde knight fidgeted under the glare of the heiress before responding. "It's just too hard."
Weiss rolled her eyes at the childish answer, before retorting. "Whatever the case, you are a member of this team and I won't stand for deadweights. Are you willing to do anything about it?"
Pyrrha immediately barreled in trying to play pacifier. "And of course, we will help you. There are many ways we can-"
"You think I need help?" Jaune asked her, almost hurt at the thought.
That question caught even Ichigo's attention from what he was reading and gave the blonde an incredulous look. "You think you don't?"
The red-head stepped in again. "There is no shame in asking for help, after all if you were admitted, then you must have potential, just like us."
That last sentence looked like it punched the air out of the young knight, to a point where he whispered his next words. "I wasn't admitted."
"What?" Weiss asked in apprehension, internally begging that she heard wrong.
"I CHEATED!" Jaune yelled catching the rest of the team of guard. "I got a hold of some fake papers and snuck my way in."
The whole room went quiet at the declaration.
Ichigo was the first to broke it. "Okay, but were you at least trained in how to fight, right?"
The orange-haired teen had figured that maybe the blonde wasn't used to fighting other humans since most of the huntsmen work was against Grimm, but to his dismay, the knight shook his head in embarrassment.
"At least you were trained in the basics?" Another shook was the response, making Ichigo resist the urge to pull his hair, but before he could say anything else, the team leader spoke.
"Then Why…" Weiss said in a very quiet tone that was so unlike her with her hair hiding her eyes, that alone raised many red flags. "Why… Why are you here?"
And yet somehow, all of the warnings went over the blonde's head. "For so long I wanted to be the hero. My father, grandfather and great grandfather were all heroes! I'm tired of being the hopeless loser that can't defeat a Grimm on his own, the one that stays behind while the others are fighting for their lives or the one that is terrified when everyone else is having fun, I WANT TO BE THE HERO!"
The room went into silence again, but this time it was a sorrowful one.
"Jaune." Pyrrha whispered in sadness, she wanted to comfort him, but she didn't know how. Being uncapable of achieving a dream wasn't something she was familiar with.
But her musings were interrupted by the heiress.
"A hero? A hero that doesn't know how to fight? A hero that does nothing but follow me around like a puppy!?" She asked with her voice growing even more hostile. "A hero that doesn't even know how to hold his own DAMN SWORD!?"
She finished with a shout and finally revealing her eyes, and they were so dark, the she looked like she was actually considering murder.
"All of us spent years training and refining our skills and you think that you can just skip it!" The heiress demanded with rage in her voice. "You think this is a joke?"
"No, I…" The blonde tried to speak but Weiss was having none of it.
"SILENCE! Jaune you… you…" Weiss tried to say before she restrained herself.
"I have to go." She uttered before leaving the dorm without another word.
The following silence was an awkward one. No one knew what to say, until Ichigo sighed in tiredness. "Let's just call it a day, Arc we will talk about this tomorrow."
No-one disagreed, given that everyone was too emotionally exhausted.
000
The next day was the weekend Ichigo had taken Jaune out to talk with him, Pyrrha figured that she should help keep her team together as well, so now she was walking through the school, looking for her team leader, until she found her in the library.
But she wasn't reading, flipping the pages at record speed, clearly in an attempt to distract her mind.
"Um, Weiss!" The red head called, getting the attention of sender.
"What can I help you with, Pyrrha?"
"Well… I was wondering if…"
"You're wondering if I'm going to report Jaune to Miss Goodwitch?" The heiress cut off the champion, before the latter nodded.
"To be honest I thought you were going to do that, with you being a girl scout and all."
Pyrrha scratched the back of her head in embarrassment at the assumption, before she responded. "He's a good person that has a dream."
"A Grimm won't care for any of that." Weiss retorted.
"I can help him, I can train him, he has potential and you know it too." The champion said, but the heiress was still not convinced.
"And how long will that take him? The mid-term missions will begin sooner than we'll know it and if he gets hurt or die because of his lack of experience or training, it will be on me!"
While the fact that Jaune had skipped over years of training and discipline did get on her nerves, the real cause of the turmoil was the knowledge that she was leading an unprepared teammate. She was well aware of the responsibility she was carrying, as a leader she was the responsible for the well being of her team. Winter had told her stories of many young cadets that had gotten over their heads and paid with their lives.
She didn't want that for the blonde, while he had being irritating at first, when he finally realized that she wasn't interested in him, he respectfully backed off, but was still amicable enough. She didn't want to be responsible for his death.
"He won't! I'll protect him!" Pyrrha argued.
"If you're protecting him, then how are you going to protect yourself?" Weiss countered, with the champion just letting a defeated sigh.
"Just give him a chance Weiss, who knows? He might surprise you."
The heiress just kept herself quiet, mussing in her head, how much she wanted to talk with her sister in order to get advice, but calling Winter would make her feel weak and reliant. She could only trust her gut on this.
'Let me be doing the right thing.'
000
Ichigo had taken Jaune to a small restaurant in Vale where they could talk. Pyrrha was too introverted and the team leader was still gathering herself, therefore the duty to talk about the elephant in the room fell on to him.
"All right Arc, start from the beginning; how did you got yourself into this mess?" He asked while taking a sip from his drink.
The blonde thought in silence for a few seconds before he responded. "I'm from a small farm town called Ansel, the kind of place where you could live your whole life and never see a Grimm. I grew up hearing stories about the huntsmen, about how they are the elite warriors against the monsters of darkness, and I wanted that, I didn't want to live my life being ordinary and normal, but my father refused to train me, saying that I just didn't had it in me, then one day I met a traveler that carried fake transcripts on him that took most of my allowance and I sent them, it was more of a shot in the dark than anything else, I didn't really expect it to work, then surprise, it did. It was a chance I couldn't let pass, so I took my family sword, left a letter and sneaked out, and… you know the rest."
Ichigo spent a few seconds in silence digesting the story, before asking a question. "And you didn't think not being trained, wasn't going to be an issue?"
"I had no idea how dangerous the Grimm are, I had no idea the difference of a trained student. I had assumed that I could simply be the support given that I have always being resilient, but everything I have seen ever since I left Ansel, it's almost like I'm in a whole different world altogether."
"Why are you still here then?" The orange haired teen asked, taking the blonde by surprise with his bluntness. "You already know you're out of your league and you're in a complete alien territory, but your still here. There's something you want, power, glory?
"I want to prove something." Jaune responded.
"What? To prove to your old man that he was wrong about you?"
"No." In that moment a rare scowl appeared on the usually goofy knight's face. "I care about my dad, but ever since he spat on my face like that, I stopped caring about what he thought. I want to prove to myself that I can be a man, a huntsman, a hero. That's the only thing I want."
In that moment, the eyes of the blonde were with power and resolve, a fact that the orange-haired teen didn't miss.
"Keep that fire." Ichigo instructed, taking Jaune by surprise. "I'm pretty sure Weiss doesn't care about the fact that you didn't had formal training, I only trained in Oscuro for about a year, so qualifications are not everything and she knows that. She's just upset that you're not giving your all. That fire you just had when you told me of your dream, keep it."
"But what if I lose?" The blonde asked with fear.
"Then don't." The response was so blunt, and yet for Jaune he might as well being talking about a complex math equation. "If you have a problem, fix it. If you're weak, train. If you're afraid, act."
"Just like that?" Jaune squeaked in surprise.
"Yep!"
000
Hours later both male members of the team returned to Beacon and found in their dorms the other two members waiting for them.
"This is your chance Arc, if you want to be a man, then start by facing your leader." Ichigo whispered to the knight who nodded in understanding before taking a step forward, getting the attention of his leader.
"Weiss, I know you don't think I belong here, and you're right, I don't. But I want to ask you for a chance to prove that I can be better, a chance to prove that I can be valuable member of this team. I will study, I will train, I will do whatever it takes."
With his speech done, Jaune kept himself quiet, while waiting for a response from the heiress, luckily, he didn't have to wait long before she got up from her seat.
"From now on, you will take lessons of fighting from Pyrrha in the roof after school, with Ichigo as your sparring partner, and I will help you with the academics before sleep." Weiss stated, with the blonde arching an eyebrow in contemplation.
"Actually, I was planning to do it on my…" But before he could finish, the heiress cut him off with a bite in her voice.
"You want to prove yourself? those are my only offers! Take it or leave it."
"Fine." Jaune accepted, knowing that he wasn't going to get anywhere.
The End
Deaths Remnant – Thanks a lot, I hope you like this.
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