Author's Note: I'm not sure quite where all the inspiration for this is coming from, but I'm not about to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Here's the next chapter.

Chapter 4: Rabbit's Foot

Lie Ren quietly observed the fighters in the arena as they circled like jackals over the last morsel of meat. To his left, Nora was screaming G-rated obscenities at the bulkier of the two while Pyrrha cheered more moderately for her partner on his other side. In the row in front of them, Team RWBY was also egging his leader on in their own unique ways.

It was the second week of classes, and Ren had been very pleasantly surprised by how much he was enjoying himself. His time at Oasis in Vacuo had been adequate, he supposed, but Nora's...enthusiasm deterred all of the other students from attempting to befriend her and, by extension, himself as well. Not that he was complaining or anything; Nora was more than enough for him. It was just...sometimes he wished that he could have had a less exuberant companion.

His arrival at Beacon had granted him just that. His new teammates were both amazing in their own right. Pyrrha Nikos was polite to a fault, and incredibly kind to just about everyone she met, but Ren had seen her fight before and he knew that beneath that genuine goodness was a fierce warrior just waiting to be unleashed. Jaune, on the other hand, was a bit of a goofball, but his heart was definitely in the right place. When he offered to buy the team dinner at the end of the first week so they could get to know each other better, Nora had demanded pancakes and Jaune, bless him, hadn't even batted an eyelash and took them to a cozy little diner in Vale that boasted of all-you-can-eat flapjacks and more proper dinnertime fare for the rest of the team.

The all-female team across the hall from them was starting to grow on him, too, though he wasn't quite as comfortable with them as he was with Pyrrha and Jaune just yet. When the two teams got together, Ren was most content to sit with Blake, who was likewise quiet and reserved. It was the closest thing to kinship he'd felt in quite a while, doubly so because Blake's partner Yang could give Nora a run for her money in terms of sheer, mind-boggling energy. Weiss could be a little demanding of them at times, nagging at the group about schoolwork ("Nora, what is this chicken-scratch you call writing? Do it over, and try to make it halfway legible!"), but Ren realized after a few days that it was just her odd way of showing she cared about them. Then there was Ruby, the cute little button of a leader whose skill with her scythe rifle far exceeded anything he could do with Stormflower. It was a little emasculating, but spending so much of his life with Nora had pretty much neutered him before he could even pronounce 'seminal vesicle', so that wasn't really an issue.

Really, Ren couldn't find much to complain about at Beacon. He had more friends than he'd ever had in his life, his life-long partner was thriving in the attentions of her new female companions, and he finally had a male buddy he could esca—er...unwind with away from Nora.

Except Jaune was a bit strange himself. Despite having qualified for the prestigious academy and even being selected as Team JNPR's leader, the guy was insanely clumsy. It was like he managed to find every crack in the floor to trip over, every loose floorboard to crash through, every post and table leg and banister to stub his toe or bark his shins against. Ren was honestly surprised Jaune had lived past his infancy, even if he felt immediately bad for thinking that.

Actually, as Ren watched Jaune drop his shield and stumble just in time to dodge a blistering swing from Cardin Winchester's mace, a niggling suspicion began to form in his mind. During the Initiation, Ren had been very impressed by the blonde's tactical initiative, using the Nevermore's ranged attacks to injure the Deathstalker, and then come up with a risky plan on the fly when Ruby was endangered, even taking the blasted thing down by himself.

His technique was sloppy, his style non-existent, and yet when Jaune did fight he made every little bit count. He sometimes pulled off sneaky and imaginative ploys that had even caught Ren off-guard a few times during practice spars that utilized Jaune's ridiculously overdeveloped situational awareness.

But the point was, Jaune's performance as a warrior was a bit lacking, and it seemed that it was only through the devil's own luck that Ren's leader ever triumphed. Even while he was thinking that, Cardin slammed his mace into the ground, activating its explosive component. The resulting blast tore chunks out of the arena floor and accelerated them toward Jaune at high speeds.

To his credit, Jaune was quick to move laterally, keeping his shield up. One of the flagstone pieces went low, though, and hit Jaune's knee with a sharp crack. With a muffled groan of pain, Jaune went down, arms flailing. The sword in his hand was sent flying off to the edge of the ring, but the shield went the other direction, straight into Cardin's unprotected face. The bigger man went down like a brick building, his mace falling from nerveless fingers.

"The winner is of the match is Jaune Arc," Professor Goodwitch stated, stepping toward the center of the arena with Crocea Mors in hand. She presented it to Jaune, who hesitated a beat before grasping the hilt, and thanked her quietly. "Well done, Mr. Arc, though perhaps you should spend a little more time in the training rooms to work on your evasion."

"You got it, Professor," Jaune replied earnestly. He limped back up the stairs while Goodwitch called the rest of CRDL to take their leader to the infirmary to check for concussion.

"Nice work, Jaune!" Pyrrha was the first to congratulate her partner when he got to them, and he rubbed the back of his head, a nervous tic Ren had made a note of almost as soon as they'd met.

"It was nothing, really," he demurred modestly.

"I'll say," Weiss simpered from in front of them. "You really need to work on your technique, Jaune. You can't always rely on dumb luck to win you the day."

Ren almost spoke up in favor of his leader when Weiss' words registered. Could it really be that simple? he thought to himself as the other members of their group began to talk among themselves about Jaune's match. Hadn't Ren just been pondering on Jaune's incredible fortune in just about everything he'd seen of the blonde boy thus far?

Could Jaune Arc's Semblance possibly be centered around luck?

Jaune sighed to himself as he idly mixed his pea and carrot medley in with his mashed potatoes, ignoring the over-cooked hamburger on his plate. Since Initiation, Jaune had felt a strange sensation within himself. It wasn't a particular body part that he could point to, just his being in general. There were times when he felt rage unlike anything he'd ever felt before, even on...that day, and contempt for everyone around him, even his friends. It was getting to where he had to make an excuse and flee his companions for fear of snapping at them viciously for no reason.

At first, he thought it might just be homesickness, but disregarded that idea almost immediately. He hadn't been to the Arc family home in over a month and a half, and while he missed the place dearly it had never felt so intense before. It couldn't be that his new friends' personalities were irritating him. Some of them even reminded him of his sisters a little bit, which was more of a relief than anything else.

Then came the fight against Cardin. It was the first actual match Jaune had been called down for, and he had been nervous, wondering if all the self-taught forms from half-burned books and sparring bouts against Ren would be worth anything. But when the battle had begun, all of that vanished, replaced by a smoldering anger that had caught him off-guard.

His attacks had been no more skilled than before, but they held behind them a furious strength that had scared him, and concerned his opponent, if the curious frown on Cardin's face had been anything to go by. And for a brief, horrifying moment after he'd knocked Cardin out, a part of him had urged his body to take up Crocea Mors and ram it down into the enemy's throat.

And so, Jaune picked at his food and generally had a miserable time feeling sorry for himself.

"Jaune?" He lifted his head up off his hand and looked at Pyrrha. "Are you okay?"

He sat up straighter and pasted a grin on his face. "Of course I'm okay! Why wouldn't I be? Are you okay?"

Again with that stupid tactic of repeating the question. Was he just doomed to be an idiot for the rest of his life?

"It seems like you're kinda...not okay," Ruby piped up with a worried look in her silver eyes.

"Is this about Cardin?"

Jaune frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"He's been bullying you," Blake pointed out flatly, taking a bit of her tuna melt.

Jaune blinked several times. "Really?" he asked, and there were sad nods all around. "But I've been bullied plenty of times as a kid," he protested. "I think I'd be able to tell when someone's bullying me."

"What about that time when he tried to use Crocea Mors to get you stuck in a door jamb?" Yang said.

"You mean when I accidentally activated the shield mode and beaned him over the head when I tried to close it?" Jaune clarified, wincing. He had immediately felt bad for the guy and offered up some of the bruise cream his sister June had shown him how to make as a child.

"Or the time he almost shoved you into your rocket locker?" Nora added.

"No, see, that was Sky's fault," Jaune explained patiently, wondering why his friends didn't get it. "He was messing around with his poleaxe and hit Cardin by accident. He stumbled into my locker and his fingers must have hit the key pad in just the right spot because it took off right after it closed." That had been really embarrassing, and he'd had to change his combination from 1-2-3-4 so as to prevent the same thing from happening again.

For some reason, Team RWBY and the majority of Team JNPR all traded exasperated looks.

"Look, whatever's on your mind, you can talk to us about it," Ren finally spoke for the first time all lunch.

"Yeah, we're your friends!" Ruby smiled at him, and his lips quirked up of their own accord. "That's what we're here for!"

"Thanks, guys," he said, "but I'm fine, really."

A muffled cry of pain turned his attention away from them and behind him. Team CRDL had gathered around a brown-haired young woman whom Jaune vaguely recalled as sharing History class with him. The cause of the whimper was immediate; Cardin was pulling on one of the large, brown rabbit ears sticking up from the girl's head and chortling to his friends about how he'd told them they were real.

That terrifying rage from earlier pooled in Jaune's gut and turned to acid that burned his guts at seeing such a blatant act of cowardice.

"Jaune!" Pyrrha hissed, grasping his hand. Blinking, Jaune looked down and saw that he'd clenched his fists around his steel tray and bent the edges all out of shape. Releasing his grasp with a short intake of breath, he let it out shakily and stood up.

"Sorry, guys, I've lost my appetite," he apologized, stepping out from around the bench. "I'll catch up later."

Jaune forced himself to ignore the scene occurring less than a meter away from him and felt like the worst sort of person imaginable for doing so.

Of course, that was when he tripped on thin-air. He fell forward, but his tray went in the opposite direction. A full hamburger patty collided with Cardin's face, followed quickly by a metal lunch tray. Sky was nailed in the ear by a large clump of mashed potatoes while Russel and Dove were both peppered with peas and carrots.

There was a breathless moment of stillness broken only by Jaune's scrambling attempts at regaining his feet. When he turned around and saw where his lunch had gone, he felt the blood drain from his face.

"Oh, shoot!" he gasped, reaching into his utility belt (because it wasn't a fanny pack, dammit!) for some wet wipes. "Cardin, guys, I'm sorry about that. I really need to watch where I'm going..."

He duly handed out the wipes and began to dab at the ketchup dripping onto Cardin's breastplate. "Arc," Cardin gritted out in a voice of thoroughly forced calm. "You're lucky that I know just how incompetent you are, or I'd have pegged this as a malicious attack on my team."

"It wasn't, I'm just a clumsy idiot," Jaune pleaded. He already felt like a jerk for causing his classmate so much strife, and to add on to it even when CRDL were acting like dinguses (dingi?) just made him feel even lower. "Gah, why can't I catch a break?"

Cardin snatched the packet of wipes from Jaune's hand and began cleaning himself up. "Come on, guys, let's get cleaned up before next period," he snarled, and the others, who were also in the process of removing foodstuffs from their person, followed after him.

Jaune watched them go with a mix of disappointment and relief. Disappointment in that Cardin was obviously furious with him, and relief that he'd prevented an even bigger scene than before from breaking out.

"Um..." Jaune turned to the rabbit Faunus, who was wringing her hands together nervously. "Thanks...for making them stop. I'm Velvet."

"Oh, uh, no problem," Jaune replied, rubbing his neck self-consciously. Were all Huntresses so beautiful, or was it just this batch? "I didn't actually mean to do that, though. I really am just a clumsy idiot." He chuckled disparagingly at himself.

"Whether or not you meant to doesn't matter," she argued meekly. "You still got them to quit bothering me. So, thanks. And I don't think you're an idiot..."

"Well, I...uh...guess you're welcome?" he said with a nervous grin that she returned in kind.

They stood there for a while before Velvet tucked a strand of hair behind her human ear and said, "Erm, I've got to get ready for class. It was nice to meet you, and thanks again. Bye!" And with an awkward wave, the Faunus girl quickly made her egress.

Sighing, Jaune stooped over to pick up his tray, only to straighten up immediately when he felt a hand impact his rear end forcefully.

"Wha—!?" he yelped, spinning to find Yang smirking at him.

"Nice moves, Lady Killer," she chortled. "Ruby, Weiss, me, Ruby again, and now that bunny girl? Are you making it your job to help out damsels in distress?"

Massaging the spot where Yang had spanked...slapped!...where Yang had slapped his ass, Jaune shot her a dirty look. "Why, you jealous?"

Both his and Yang's eyes widened at the unexpected response, but she recovered more quickly, grinning like the cat who ate the canary. "Oh, so you can return fire, eh? Now this makes things more interesting."

Jaune cast his eyes heavenward, asking what he'd ever done to deserve such divine punishment.

After-Action Report: Not much to say about this chapter. I thought about dropping the whole Jaundice arc into a single big chapter, but I'm really enjoying these little updates. It's a lot more liberating than I'd thought it would be, and I don't have to worry about making my readers wait so damn long (seriously, there's a story I've got on my profile that hasn't been updated since 2013).

Jaune's bad feeling is something influenced by his Semblance, but not a part of it. We'll call it a lucky/unlucky accident. Ren's starting to piece together the odd happenings surrounding Jaune, and Cardin is slowly growing more frustrated with Jaune not just ignoring his bullying, but actively assisting him when the fallout hits. I'm not sure what to do with Cardin at the moment. There are a few paths I could take, the most obvious being keeping him as an asshole and inadvertently becoming fodder for Heart of Gold's Semblance shenanigans. I suppose we'll see.

And to all my readers, I'm so very sorry for that horrible pun in the chapter title. I've recently been using songs as chapter titles, and I remember listening to this one a while ago. With Velvet's introduction, I just didn't have enough self-control to stop myself.

Also, a big thanks for everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed this story so far. I hope you've enjoyed it so far. Have a great day, everyone!