I don't own anything.
I secured my shield to my left arm and loosened up my wrist holding Crocea Mors idly. In front of me, Ms. Goodwitch was stood, face impassive and riding crop in hand.
"I will go over the rules of this spar once again before we start. The match starts when I say it does. The conditions for a victory are a ring-out, reducing the opponent's aura below 30% and finally surrender. I would also remind you that explosives are not permitted in the ring." The severe woman finished, throwing a rather pointed look at my opponent.
Her piece said, I moved to my end of the ring, and my opponent for the day did the same. I took a deep breath, cast Chitin Shield, the black sheen suddenly appearing over my shield as Ms. Goodwitch started her countdown.
"3… 2… 1… Begin!"
I immediately brought my shield up and angled it to the right, parrying the massive maul that had been sailing at my skull. The hammer crashed into the ground, cracking the dirt floor of the arena and sending chunks of earth flying. I barely felt it when it impacted my shield.
Crocea Mors jabbed out, landing a glancing stab at my opponent's side before I took a step back, dodging a sideways swing of her hammer. While she was overextended, I moved in, but the girl twirled away from the blow before spinning and attempting another swing that I smacked aside, though she moved away before I could counterattack.
Nora Valkyrie was a fearsome opponent in the ring, and the orange-haired girl had won all but two of her spars. One to Yang, and one to Pyrrha. And yet, I was holding my own. No, I was winning.
Nora was strong, probably slightly stronger than me even, and nimble too. But she wasn't very fast. And with Chitin Shield to negate her strength advantage completely if I used my shield, I was in command during the fight.
She went for another sideways swing, this time for my right side, but I saw it coming from a mile away. I stepped into the two-handed swing. Either she would hit me with the haft, which wouldn't do much, or she had to step back to try and readjust but doing so would mess with her footwork and take power out of the swing.
A bad choice either way, and as the haft of Magnhild hit my shoulder, I ignored the slight drop in my aura to deliver a heavy shield bash straight into Nora's face. The girl stumbled back slightly, though it hadn't damaged her through her aura, it did put her off balance.
She tried to recover and make space, but I didn't let her. I stayed in her guard and pushed forward, stabbing, slashing and even just outright punching the girl when I was too close to properly use Crocea Mors. Steadily reducing her aura and pushing her back to the edge of the ring.
With Magnhild being such a long weapon, she usually held the range advantage in fights. But that was the thing, if I stayed close enough, Nora could never actually damage me properly. What little awkward hits she managed to get me with did virtually nothing to my aura, and for every hit she landed, I got 2 or even 3.
Her aura was probably nearing that 30% mark now, but I didn't risk looking at the meters. I didn't want to risk letting up on the pressure now, not when I was in command like this. With a grunt, I shoved her back one last time before lunging forward, Crocea Mors' tip ramming into Nora's aura in a flash of pink.
"Winner Jaune Arc!"
I let out a huff, taking deep breaths as a little laugh bubbled up in my throat. I'd won.
Oh sure, I had won most of my spars before. Only really losing out to the better fighters in class like Yang and Pyrrha. But Nora was one of those top fighters, and I'd won. Looking at my aura bar, I had well over three quarters on my own left. It hadn't even been all that close.
Still laughing, I stuck out a hand towards Nora, who was still on the floor with Magnhild in hand. The orange-haired girl took it with a laugh of her own. "You've really gotten better Jauney-boy. But you better watch out, next time I'm gonna break your legs!"
The fact that the girl could say something like that with absolutely no hesitation only made me laugh harder. "Sure thing Nora, but don't expect me to go easy on you either." I shot back as we walked back over to the professor who was fixing the cracks in the arena with her semblance.
"Ms. Valkyrie, your strength speaks for itself, but I would suggest looking into a way to keep distance from an opponent without the use of your grenade launcher. This is a major weakness that can be exploited should you ever run out of ammunition." The woman said as we approached.
Then, her green eyes turned to me. "Mr. Arc. Good work today." She said, and I felt something warm bubbling in my stomach as she spoke. It was the same feeling I got when Port complimented me on a good kill in the forest, or when I did well on a test. It was pride, I realized distantly. "You negated the advantage of Ms. Valkyrie's longer weapon and exploited her lack of mobility to keep her on the back foot. Keep this up, and you will become a fine Huntsman yet."
The smile didn't leave my face as I sat back down with my teammates.
"Well fought Jaune." Pyrrha told me.
"Adequate." I don't need to tell you who that one was. In contrast to her words, there was a light smile on Weiss' face as she said it. Well, it was more a small quirk of her lips, but that might as well have been a shit-eating grin for the white-haired girl.
Blake, though, was far more subdued. She was generally a pretty quiet person, so that was to be expected, but that wasn't it. She looked exhausted. There were bags under her eyes, visible even through her makeup, and her golden eyes were a little duller than I was used to from her.
It had been a couple of days since Tukson had died, and Blake was relentless in her search for clues. She had been spending day and night combing through news reports, papers and articles to find something, anything that could lead her to the person who had murdered Tukson. And the longer we didn't find anything, the worse it got.
Even as tired as she was, though, she gave me a smile and a nod before her head dropped back onto her hand as she closed her eyes and waited for the class to be over.
"That was amazing Jaune!" Ruby crowed, the little reaper sitting just two seats over, though no one was occupying those. The rest of team VLYR sitting with her. Nora went over to regale Ren with the tale of a fight he had just witnessed, and he bore her excited babbling with practiced ease. Even so, he shot me a nod over the girl's shoulder, and I nodded back.
And Yang, well, the blond brawler had a huge smile on her face. "Hah! Good fight Vomit boy, maybe I should request you again next class if you can give me that kind of show!"
I was still so high from the fight that I responded in kind. "Bring it!"
"Oh I will, don't you worry about that." She said, and I swore that I could see smalls flickers of fire in her hair. Well, that was mildly worrying. I didn't let it bother me, though, as I sat down in one of the empty seats between Pyrrha and Ruby.
The rest of the class flew by in a flash.
After combat class, the eight of us went to lunch together, laughing and joking all the while. When we got there, Ruby and I went to sit at our table so no one else would come along and take it. With so many of us, there weren't a lot of tables in Beacon's cafeteria that could seat us all together, and it was always annoying when one or two people sat at one of the large tables so we couldn't use it without displacing them.
"Hey Pyrrha, can you just get me a turkey sandwich?" I said, "Oh and a lemonade." I added quickly.
"Sure, Jaune. I'll be right back."
"So, how'd it go with your team? You all seem to be getting along." I asked, dropping my backpack and sitting down opposite my fellow team leader. My smile dimmed, though, as I saw the way she was looking down. I narrowed my eyes slightly. "You did talk to them didn't you?"
"I'msorryIjustcouldn'teverytimeItriedIstartedtalkingandthentheyaskedwhatwaswrongandIcouldn'tdoit!" I blinked at the word vomit the younger girl had just rattled off, but I got the gist of it.
"Ruby, come on!" I cried out, before softening. "This was really bothering you, you have to tell them." I told her, and she wilted even further. Almost shrinking into herself.
"I know." She mumbled, "It's just so hard. Every time I try, they just look at me and I lose my nerve."
"I know it's hard Ruby, but you can't keep going on like this." I told her. "You're going to tell them tonight." I told her, and when she went to say something I held up a finger. "Ah. No arguing, tonight you're talking to them. And afterwards, you're going to come find me, and you can tell me all about it." When she nodded meekly, I let out a quiet sigh of relief. I hadn't known if that was going to work, and I wasn't all that keen on forcing her to confront the issue, but she really needed this. Just letting it drag on and fester would only make things worse and make for a huge blow-up fight at some point. I'd had and seen enough arguments with my sisters to know that much for sure.
Soon after, our teams returned, and we had our meals in peace. Well, as much peace as you can have while sitting at a table with Yang and Nora anyways.
"Jaune!" A red blur rocketed into me, a thin pair of arms wrapping around me. Looking down, I found myself looking straight into Ruby's mirror-like silver eyes. The girl was wearing her signature red cloak over her school uniform, and the cloak's bottom hem wrapped around my legs as she gave me a bear hug. Or what counted as a bear hug from a girl that was so much shorter than me anyways.
I felt the smile forming on my face as I saw that she looked pretty happy too, the talk must have gone well. But I had to ask. "So, how'd it go?"
The grin that split her face was all the answer I needed. "It went great!" She gushed. "They didn't even know they were doing it, and then they said sorry, and then they said they were gonna work on it. So everything is good now!"
I felt some of the fatigue that had been building up leave me as I set Ruby down and we walked back to the dorms together. I had been sat in the library for the last two hours, looking through newspapers with Blake and I felt like I'd read more news in the last few days than I had in the whole rest of my life combined. I'd needed a break, so I was going to head into the forest, but a chat with Ruby would do just as well. Besides, it was nice to connect with my first friend at Beacon a little more.
Ruby felt like the 8th sister I didn't have, and I couldn't help but ruffle her hair as I set her back onto the ground. "Hey!" She cried out, but I doubled down and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head as she tried to straighten her hair out. When she got it all sorted back out, she glared at me. It was adorable, and I couldn't hold in my laugh. It only made her pout harder.
And for a moment, I wasn't thinking of criminals and murder, or killing monsters or even homework. I was just spending a moment with a friend.
Hey guys, we get some more Ruby interaction here, let me know what you guys think.
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Have a good one!
Anyways, have a good one!