Class. Eat. Combat.

Study. Spar. Die.

Snack. Bed. Become dead to the world for nine hours.

Rinse and repeat.

It becomes readily apparent that sparring to Pyrrha means raise pain threshold as quickly as possible. That's the only explanation for the torment that she puts him through. He is dying. Very slowly, but definitely crumbling into tiny pieces of pathetic as her lance repeatedly pockmarks his chest plate with more dents and holes than a slice of swiss cheese. Even his recently maybe-Miltia-provided Legs Plus One power-up can't outrun Pyrrha's projectile javelins in the few instances he's tried to flee.

Jaune blames her merciless spearings on why he can't focus on Ruby's physics homework.

"You've got to split the airborne projectile's movement in three separate vectors: its original forward inertia, gravitational force, and variable factor z. ...See, it's the problem of the lance-sword-axe triangle: even if she doesn't chuck it at me, Pyrrha's lance still has a way longer reach than my sword does. Oh yeah, by the way, the projectile's vectors are all independent of each other. Newton's law of inertia operates independently of the force of gravity, and then you've got to adapt for random issues like air resistance or wind speed or opposing aura or whatever. Y'know, we've only done hand-to-hand so far, but I can't even get a hit on her before she's skewered me to the ground. Hey, stop getting distracted!"

"Look who's talking," Ruby grumps. "And I just wanted help with schoolwork."

"Fine, fine. If it helps, I can draw a diagram…"

"Pictures! I like those. See, visuals I can understand. Why can't I just rely on eyeballing the battlefield though? Did mathematical calculations help you at all during your ultimate comet strike of a final special move?"

Jaune chokes. "You—you were watching?"

"No, but Sun showed Yang, and she wouldn't stop spontaneously exploding into giggles yesterday, so I finally pestered her to let me see. Sun said he's going to swing around sometime and see if you're really made of rubber or something. Even I didn't think a body could bounce that high."

"I… I…"

"Hey, maybe that's why you're practically indestructible!" she exclaims excitably. A small light of mischief, reminiscent of Sun's, glimmers behind her silver eyes. "Your semblance must make your body squishily resilient. Oooh, we totally have to test this!"

"What?" His everywhere still hurts. "Me fight you? No!"

"Having a single sparring partner is no good," she emphasizes, plowing right through his protests. "You can't take full advantage of the weapons triangle that way. See, that's why I'm perfect for the task! Crescent Rose is totally an axe! Swords over axes, right?"

"No. Nonono. Ruby, your weapon is an impossibly huge axe mounted on the end of a super long lance with a gun glued on because why not. You cannot reasonably argue that Crocea Mors has any advantage over Crescent Rose."

Ruby stares up at him with gigantic, wobbly, pleading eyes. Her mind-numbing cuteness overload is immediately offset when she offers, "What if I use my smaller practice blade? It's only sharp enough to cut fruit. Maybe fingers."

"Nope."

"Okay, what if I disable the sniper function? Less spinning velosiwhatever."

"Rotational velocity."

"Yeah, that, and folding the barrel in half decreases my reach too."

"Ehhh…"

"Com'on, Jaune, you're killing me! Literally! Please, I just want to spar with you!" The wibbly-wobbly irises are back again with a vengeance—

{NO. RESIST.}

Tiny, glittering tears emerge from the corners of her eyes.

{We've lost him, captain.}

"If you really think you can help me…" he concedes.

"Sure I can! I totally helped you out before initiation, remember? And I've been watching you and Pyrrha fight."

Jaune starts. He specifically chose an area hidden from the prying eyes of his peers so as to not reveal his relative incompetencies. "Wah?"

"Don't look at me like that," she scoffs. "Maybe nobody from Dragon can see you when you spar on the dormitory rooftop, but I can see you two fine from Phoenix dorms."

{…Oh.}

"Anyways, I was saying that maybe Pyrrha's waiting for you to realize it on your own, but I'll totally tell you all your problems up front."

"Gee, thanks."

"Like how it's your own fault that you can't get a hit on her. … Y'know, 'cause once you start moving, you don't change or switch things up. You go straight forward until you stab your target, and then you turn around and do the exact same thing over and over again. Fighters like you are waaaaay too easy to predict and manipulate."

He feels his (figurative) hackles rising defensively. "It worked for Russel."

"So it worked for you during the war. You had a partner covering your back, right? Or maybe you were the distraction and they were the killing force." Though her tone remains playful, a glint of steel flashes in her eyes. "Either way, it's not a solid battle technique for one-on-one battles, especially since we're training to be solo Hunters. That's one of the reasons why Sun and Yang came up with the Hunting idea."

{"So how soon is soon?"}

{"Probably not until the Hunting."}

Whoa whoa whoa. Hunting. Ruby knows about the Hunting. In fact, Ruby is practically his in with Sun and Yang when it comes to information. Which is probably Jaune's greatest advantage right now, stuck within a combat academy.

Okay, the Hunting. If Ren, Sun, and Yang are all involved in this Hunting, then this must be related to freshmen initiation. Probably is freshmen initiation. He's got the general gist from Pyrrha and Nora that it's a battle school's version of social networking, as well as serving as a pack-recruiting ploy, but other than that, he doesn't know much. He can literally feel the cogs clicking in his own mind as it whirrs to life, planning on how to best milk the info cow that is Ruby the Mouse.

He's got to broach the topic carefully. Keep it vague to avoid scaring her off. Focus on people instead of the event itself. "So… Sun and Yang… they're like you when they want to hone their one-on-one tactics?"

"Sort of. That's not exactly the reason, though, since there won't be much fighting at all," Ruby chirps obliviously. "No weapons allowed! Personally, I think it's all a ploy to put a special somebody in a tight spot…"

He doesn't hear anything after weaponless. Weaponless freshmen. Fighting… no, probably running. Massive droves of freshmen scampering away from their seniors. Where to? And why? The upperclassmen have had plenty of opportunities to evaluate fighting technique in individual battles. Is this an endurance test? An assessment of ninjatastic evasion skills? Or an excuse to single out faunus and beat them up?

{Weiss.}

That… could actually run both ways. Ever since the iceberg disaster, Weiss has gained just as much infamy as popularity. She's had devoted groupies lined up from before the school year even started, but generally, her name invokes scorn and respect in maybe a three-to-one ratio.

He can't help but think that, if he hadn't literally thrown a wrench in her snowflakey machinations, Weiss Schnee would have been worshiped among the student body for complete control over her Familiar.

Is that why Sun and Yang planned a weaponless freshmen initiation? To get "justified" revenge on the heiress Schnee for freezing over half of campus? Would they really do that?

Putting aside concern for the isolated ice princess for now, Jaune focuses on how to best survive attacking Rooster Teeth groupies or indignant anti-perverts or agents tasked to maintain Order. Traveling with a group would make the most sense from a self-preservation point of view.

He should ask for Ruby's company right now while he has the chance. After all, as Yang's adorable younger sister, Jaune reasons that others are probably hesitant to pick on her. And they definitely wouldn't try to recruit her, assuming Ruby is already in Yang's pack. Ruby is definitely the one to get on his side for this Hunting.

Along those lines, Nora would be a good idea too, already being in Ren's pack. He doesn't have a doubt that Pyrrha's got his back. Maybe introduce Penny to all of them, if she'd be willing to show herself. But then he'd practically be asking for their protection, and he doesn't think his pride could take it, being the single guy in an entourage of female bodyguards.

But having two guys protected by a gang of gals…

Why doesn't he have any guys in his pool of associates? Um. Russel? Yeah, Russel sounds like a similarly-experienced combat buddy. What about Cardin? Though he still might be caught up in the Malachite bodyguard thing. Not to mention that he wouldn't have a need to be protected…

"Jaune? You're really starting to freak me out, Jaune-y. This baby carrot is almost all the way up your nose and you still haven't responded."

Oh. There does seem to be a carrot up his nostril. Probably from the small pouch of snacks that Ruby's procured out of nowhere. Where are all these snack bags coming from?

Never mind that; he plugs the empty nostril, aims, and—

Ruby's head twists to the side so quickly to evade the orange projectile, he's surprised she doesn't snap her own neck. "If I'd known you were actually going to do that, I'd have loaded you with more ammo."

{Okay, now awkwardly transition into recruitment tactic.}

Problem is, if he begins recruiting for his big escort team by starting with Ruby, he'll reveal his information-milking manipulation before it's even started. Really, if anybody should be recruited last, it should be Ruby. At the same time though, he'd feel much more safe if he could ensure that Ruby was on his side, instead of teleporting away like the speed demon of a Mouse that she is.

And then there's the problem of having a large group in the first place. Ruby's effectiveness is drastically lowered if the pace is ridiculously slow. He'll have to keep the team small. So maybe four faunus at max. He's pretty sure that Pyrrha has his back. That leaves him with one male and one other female to surround himself with, and then he'll approach Ruby about joining Team Jaune. Erm, never mind. Maybe something less conspicuous. Like an anagram composed of the first letters of their names or something. Yeah. That sounds like a brilliant, original plan.

For now, however, he needs a way to keep Ruby close. He could offer to tutor her on all her future physics lessons… yeah no. Ruby appears to have completely forgotten about said homework. In fact, she's slowly sneaking another baby carrot out of her snacks bag…

"We should set up a couple future dates," he blurts. When Ruby stifles a squeak, he hastily amends, "I mean, calendar dates! For sparring. And evasion tactics. You've got speed on your side, right? Teach me how to run away better!" {And how to not die in a weaponless battle!}

Ruby's Magic Moe irises gradually return to their normal size. "Calendar dates," she murmurs. "So how 'bout bright and early in the mornings? Since you already spend your nights sweating it out with Pyrrha."

{She's fifteen, only fifteen...}

"Yeah. Don't forget to bring your practice blade. If you have to separate body parts, I insist pinkies-only."

"O-oh. Yeah. Um. How… 'bout we start the day after tomorrow? I… Yang wants me to, um, do something."

The smaller girl is actually really easy to read. Like an open book; she's too honest. A good thing in this case, because it highly implies that something more important that sparring is going down tomorrow morning.

To a trigger-happy Mouse, what could be more important than battling? What kind of early morning event could her older sister possibly have planned?

…He needs to recruit that escort team today.

{"Fake it till you make it."}

That hadn't been his own thought, had it? He'd been too busy giving himself a panicked pep talk, flooding his own mind with inspirational battle-prep quotes, to really take note of it then.

And the tuck-roll that had saved him from impaling himself on the Thrush's beak. The power that involuntarily forced him to keep fighting against Weiss. The dodging slide that had positioned him right underneath Ruby's slashing scythe and in the perfect place to counter her long-ranged attacks. Those hadn't been his own movements either.

He could look at this conundrum in two ways. Either he could properly freak out over the mysterious puppetmaster forcing him into actions he has no control over… or he could fake it until he makes it.

Really, everything that's happened so far to him has pretty much been only to his benefit. Ghost-Miltia unblocking intangible pools of energy in his soul. Penny popping in randomly to help him out. Battle techniques beyond his experience or control. Even the weird-almost-dream of a sorta-familiar-in-a-unfamiliar-way Cat putting him to bed on the first day of school. He's had a lot of help so far making it through his first week at Zodiac Academy. Even if all his assistance was gifted without his permission, why should he reject it? As long as he makes the commitment to grow into the figure he's currently projected as—a brawler who pulls random techniques out of nowhere, a death-wish Lemming with all the resilience of a Cockroach, a god of Chaos—then accepting these impossible gifts might be permissible.

Fake it till you make it.

He definitely could lose the master of perverts label, though.

"Hey Russel? I need your help."

"Anything for you, Sir Jaune!"

"Sir Jaune. That's got a good ring to it. Lemme tell you upfront though: us teaming up? We're doing this to survive. Continued existence is the priority here."

"Understood, sir."

"Are you sure? That means absolutely no hitting on the ladies we may or may not encounter. Got it? It would defeat the entire purpose, because they are deadly. You will die."

"Y-y-yessir."

"Pyrrha, what do you know about hand-to-hand combat?"

"Well… I have to admit, when it's possible to summon any sort of ferromagnetic object into my hands, I've hardly found myself in a situation that's required weaponless battling."

"…Oh. Erm. Uhhhhh."

"Perhaps we could ask a friend to instruct the two of us."

"Us?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought that it would be a great idea if we started out on, eh, the same skill level… and learned together."

"Yeah. Okay! We could, um… ask Ruby! She's got to know something about hand-y fighting. Or at least know somebody with hand-y experience. Y'know, since Yang is her older sister."

"Hm. I suppose you're right."

"Jaune! I… I wasn't sure if you… and, um Pyrrha… were calling for me…"

"I'm holding up a giant sign with your name in huge block letters. How is that not a call?"

"That's… so archaic, it's almost hilarious. But why didn't you just use our scrolls?"

"Security reasons. I dunno, maybe Yang fields your calls and would protest to you sneaking out of your dorm in the middle of the night to meet up with me."

"But there's at least fifty other dorm room windows that face Dragon dorms."

"But unless you had binocular vision and were specifically looking for a big sign with red letters—ah, never mind. Listen, Ruby, I made the big sign; could you at least humor me for maybe five more minutes?"

"If you don't mind me intruding, what Jaune—what we are trying to say… is that we would appreciate if you could point us in the direction of a possible instructor of hand-to-hand combat!"

"Tomorrow morning, right?"

"I told you, Jaune, tomorrow is—eep!"

"Ruby! Are you alright? I am so, so sorry if the request is uncalled for. Jaune, you didn't tell me—"

"No, it's not… Jaune, you… *mumble grumble"

"What's that? I couldn't catch that."

"Tomorrow… there's… did you forget already?"

"Forget what?"

"I… I… okay, I'll see you tomorrow."

"…Jaune? Ruby didn't seem… exactly comfortable. And she scampered off awfully fast. You didn't corner her into something she wasn't expecting, did you?"

"I think… she'll be fine. She's the one who suggested meeting in the mornings in the first place."

"..."

"Oh hey, by the way, do you think you could make like a dulled-down practice spearhead? You really don't have to poke holes through my chest guard every night. Really, I insist."