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I was breathing hard. It seemed all I could do just to get air in and out of my lungs. Cardin smirked at me. He lifted his mace. I rolled to the side to dodge an explosion fueled by that crystal he kept at the end of the instrument. When I lunged at him he blocked with his mace and shoulder checked me easily. It made me drop my shield. I went to retrieve it but he blocked my advance. He hit me with his mace in the side. I felt the impact against my armor. I gathered my bearings and lifted my sword.
"This is the part where you lose," he informed me coldly.
"Over my dead body-" He kneed me in the gut then grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and tossed me easily with superhuman strength. He lifted his mace over my prone form. And-
"That's the match. As you can see. Mr. Arc's aura is in the red. In a tournament setting the official would be free to call the sparring session," Goodwitch interrupted. The disciplinarian walked between us. "Mr Arc, it's been weeks now. Consulting your aura mid fight would allow you to gauge when you should go on the offensive or adopt a more defensive approach. We wouldn't want you to be gobbled up by a Beowulf, would we?"
"Speak for yourself," I heard Cardin mutter. He paced back to the locker room. I sighed and got to my feet. Then followed him. I didn't look at him as I changed. It didn't matter. I could feel his eys on me and him smirking.
During lunch I sat with my friends. I did so quietly.
"Are you alright, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked.
"Who? Me? I'm fine," I answered.
"Jaune, Cardin's been bullying you since the first week of school," Pyrrha kept up.
"Oh please. Name one time he bullied me," I dismissed.
"He shoved you into a locker and locked it from the outside," Yang pointed out.
"He expanded your shield on the way to Oobleck's class so you'd get stuck in the door," Ruby agreed.
"He just stole your apple off your lunch tray." Blake kept up.
"Guy it's not like I'm the only one he's mean to."
Case in point Cardin was currently pulling on the ears of a rabbit faunus in the corner of the cafeteria surrounded by his team. They were laughing.
"Ouch that hurts!" The faunus cried.
"I told you they were real!" Cardin laughed.
"What a freak," Sky chimed.
"Despicable," Pyrrha growled.
"It must be hard to be a faunus," Yang muttered.
"He's not the only one." Blake agreed.
"Look guys, I don't want to make a big thing out of it. He wants attention. Let's not give it to him," I decided.
"I suppose," Pyrrha supplied. "You could always go to the teachers for help."
"Oh I know!" Nora cried. "We'll break his legs!"
"Nora," Ren admonished.
"We can't stoop to his level," I pointed.
"Violence is the only thing people like Cardin understand. It's the language he uses to express himself," Blake pointed out.
"I don't know if violence is the answer," Pyrrha disagreed. "Are you sure you won't go to a teacher?"
"What would they do? What could they do?" I wondered. "Interpersonal disagreements probably happen all the time. And like I said and we observed I'm not the only one he's mean to."
"So he's an asshole on multiple levels," Yang rolled her eyes. "Doesn't mean you have to just take it."
"I think your pacifism is very brave Jaune," Blake muttered. "But I don't think it's necessary or even right."
"Violence is the last refuge of the desperate," I said.
"Interesting phrase from a warrior," Blake disagreed. And she had a point. I was supposed to be a fighter.
I sighed heavily. "I don't fight monsters because it's somehow right. I fight monsters because it's the only way to resist them. They want to eat us."
"Cardin's eating you," Ruby whispered. "Fight back."
I sighed again. I didn't have a good retort for that. This went against the first rule of warfare. Never fight anyone your own size or larger. And Cardin was quite a bit bigger than I was. The truth of the matter was I was pretty helpless. I just didn't want to admit it.
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On the way to science after lunch Cardin knocked my books out of my hands. I bent and picked them up. I glared at him and he smirked at me. Just daring me to do something. I thought about shoving him back and my hands clenched into fists. He just waited with the fucking smirk on his face.
"Do one, faggot," he whispered.
I frowned at the insult. I didn't say anything back. I didn't try anything. It wouldn't do me any good. When Professor Peach came along Cardin walked on in. He put his arms over his shoulders and stretched. God he was huge. He had to be six foot eight and two hundred eighty pounds. Easy. And that was in the school boy uniform. Let alone his armor and mace.
I walked in and sat down. Pyrrha sat next to me. She took my hand and squeezed it for a moment. I looked her in the eye. She'd seen the whole thing of course. She looked furious. I thought Cardin might explode just from the look of sheer wrath she gave him. If they went up against each other in combat she'd make him pay. She was the better fighter. Already Professor Goodwitch was pairing up people to go against Pyrrha in two on one fights. She'd still had yet to lose a single time. She was unstoppable.
Professor Peach began to lecture on the valence electrons on the periodic table. I already knew most of what she was saying and made loose notes. "The first column of the periodic table is very reactive because of its unstable outer shell. In this s orbital there is only one electron. It forms a spherical orbit around the nucleus. All s orbitals are spherical. Naturally as you may have surmised all elements of this type react with water explosively. Elements in the second column also react with water but not as energetically. There is a great deal of potential energy in these metals. Note that hydrogen also forms an element in this table. Hydrogen is a bit tricky. It behaves like a metal in some cases and like a non-metal in others. In the cases of water, methane, and ammonia it strikes an unusual balance of sharing its electron and completely giving it up as metals do."
I already knew pretty much all of that. I sketched the polarity of the compounds she listed within my notebook.
"Dust is different from the periodic table. We shall delve deeper into dust within your later semesters. Suffice to say that much like hydrogen the substance behaves like metals and also as compounds. Sharing unstable orbits of axions and anti-axions. It exists beside and above the periodic table. It is something else entirely."
I knew most of that too. I'd even studied Mang-Yills theory. The geometry of particle physics. The fundamental proposition of Mang-Yills theory was that physics was an emergent property of geometry. That was to say that physics emerged naturally out of the geometry of the universe. For example, it's difficult to imagine a universe where pi doesn't relate the circumference of a circle to its diameter. So as far as we know the fundamental constants of this reality are baked into geometry somehow and physics just pops out. With chemistry and biology built on top of it as emergent properties of physics in turn.
Emergent properties were a funny thing. Take for example Langton's ant or Conway's game of life. Simple rules for how geometry behaves and out pops complicated behavior. It may be that life and the soul are simply emergent properties of chemistry and biology. But the energy of the soul, the matter or energy summoned by it seemed to be different entirely and it has to come from somewhere. Perhaps that's where dust comes in. Dust interacted with aura and the soul. It seems to have energy beyond its mass. But dust was very mysterious. Nobody had any good answers for it. Nobody had any good answers for how the soul did what the soul does. I rather doubted I was about to figure it out right now. I do not know whether it is impossible to know. However, I know that it is impossible for me to know right now.
The soul and a semblance was the ultimate answer to the question. Who am I? And when you take in dust you change the answer to the question. The answer becomes in part lightning or fire or water. It becomes in part that on top of everything it was before. The soul was a complicated business with no good answers but where Ruby had her speed and Weiss had her glyphs I wondered what I would have. Who would I be? When would I falter? You could draw a lot of inference into a person's life based on the nature of the power their soul unleashed granted them. Would my power be as explosive as Yang's or as subtle as Blake's where the true power lay in the ability to bewilder her enemies and harass them with shadow? I wasn't sure. I didn't know myself well enough to really understand or comprehend.
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When science ended Cardin knocked me to the ground. He grunted and walked away. Pyrrha, who I suppose had been waiting for me outside of class, helped me to my feet.
"Thanks," I said.
"You know, I really will break his legs," she murmured with a raised eyebrow.
I sighed. "No. He's not worth it."
Pyrrha held up a finger. "I have an idea. Come with me." She dragged me along with superhuman strength.
We walked out onto a balcony on the roof of the dorm. I stroad out towards the edge and looked down.
"Pyrrha I know I'm going through a hard time right now but I'm not that depressed. I can always be a farmer or something."
"No! That's not why I brought you up here!"
"Huh?" I wondered.
"I know you're having a tough time right now. And you're not the strongest of fighters. I want to help you. We can train up here where no one can bother us. After class," she clarified for my addled brain.
"You think I need help?" I asked.
"No! No that's not what I meant," she kept up. I flinched away from her as though struck in the mouth with a goddamn tree branch.
"But you just said it," I pointed out despondently.
"Jaune everybody needs a little push from time to time. It doesn't make you any different from the rest of us. You made it to Beacon. That speaks volumes for what your capable of."
"You're wrong. I don't belong here."
"That's a terrible thing to say. Why would you say that?"
"I mean I didn't earn my way in. I didn't really get accepted into Beacon. I got my hands on some fake transcripts and I lied and cheated my way in." I confessed. I threw my hands up in the air.
"What?" Pyrrha wondered. "But why?"
"Because this is what I've always wanted to be!" I shouted. "My grandfather was a warrior. A hero. I wanted to be one too."
"Then let me help you," she murmured.
"I don't want to be the damsel in distress. I want to be a fucking hero! I'm tired of being the idiot stuck in the tree while his friends are fighting for their lives! Don't you understand?! If I can't do this on my own, then what good am I?!"
She tried to place a hand on my shoulder but I brushed her off.
"I don't want your pity." I grimaced. "Leave me alone."
"If that's what you think is best…" she whispered. She walked away. I watched her go in her plaid schoolgirl skirt.
Then I was alone… or so I thought. Cardin climbed up the roof. The last person I wanted to see.
"So Jaune you snuck into Beacon," he observed with a fucking smirk.
"Cardin!" I exclaimed.
"I couldn't help but overhear the two of you from my dorm room." He folded his arms and looked down at me. All the confidence in the world on his face. "I didn't expect you to be such a rebel."
"Please, don't tell anyone."
"Jaune come on. I'd never rat out a friend like that."
"A friend?"
He put me in a headhold. I choked. "Sure. We're friends now. Just so long as you're there for me when I need you." He released me. "Speaking of, I don't think I have time to do the reading OObleck assigned us. Think you could take care of that Jaune old buddy? That's what I thought. Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."
He climbed off the roof.
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-WG