I don't own anything.
I clenched my eyes shut as ice-cold water ran over my back, still unused to the shower in our dorm. It heated up quite quickly, though, filling the bathroom with steam. I managed to suppress my groan as I felt my muscles loosen up after fighting Grimm in the forest all night. I did my best to keep quiet, though. It had still been dark out when I finally made it back to the dorms. And while I might not need sleep, the same couldn't be said for my new teammates.
It had been a good night, though. I hadn't quite managed to get another level, but I wasn't far off. It had mostly been Beowolves, and not even particularly strong ones, but they had been roaming around in large groups that still dropped a good amount of Dust. I wondered, for a moment, if initiation had killed a lot of the stronger Grimm in the area, and if I'd have to wait for more to come.
I had to wonder if that was lucky or unlucky. On the one hand, it meant less Dust. But on the other, I wasn't exactly keen on facing something like that Deathstalker again. If I had to face something like that alone, I was dead, Chitin Shield or no. Speaking of the spell, it had worked like a charm.
Before, I would still take damage from particularly strong enemies, even through my shield. The single Ursa I had found in the forest tonight hadn't been able to dent my aura through the spell at all. I wasn't sure how well it would stack up against something the Deathstalker, or even an Ursa Major, but it was still a huge improvement.
I quietly mourned the loss of comfortable heat as I stepped out from under the shower, but if I didn't do it now, I would probably stay under the spray until it turned cold. I'd gotten in trouble at home more times than I could count for the exact same thing, and I somehow doubted that someone like Weiss would take that any better than my sisters had. And the less said about Blake's possible temperament, the better.
'Who are yo-' I shook my head to clear the memory. I may have dried the small of my back a little harder than I should have, but the hot feeling of friction of my skin got rid of the cold ghost of Blake's gun barrel. Whatever got the job done, I guess.
Soon, I was dressed, clad in the Beacon academy uniform that I had been provided after initiation. It looked good, crisp white shirt, red tie and blue waistcoat, all under a black blazer and matching pants. I almost didn't recognize myself when I looked into the mirror. I had always been scrawny, my frame reflecting the attributes on my stat page. But just like those stats, I had filled out in the last month, and it showed.
I gave my reflection a smile, a wink and some finger guns before turning around and walking back into the main BASN dorm. Through the window, I could see that the sun was just starting to peek out over the horizon, bathing Vale and the Emerald Forest in golden rays. For a place filled with bloodthirsty monsters, it looked positively radiant in the early morning light.
It was almost seven now, and none of my teammates looked to be stirring just yet. After another moment, I just decided to bite the bullet. 'Pyrrha first.' I walked over to her bed and had to suppress my laughter at the scene that met me. Pyrrha Nikos, the invincible girl, a peerless fighter in our generation, was cocooned in her sheets. She was wrapped like a burrito, only her blood-red hair fanning out over her pillow as she breathed softly.
For a moment, I contemplated taking a picture of her, but I decided against it. If I wanted to get breakfast before class, I needed my team to wake up soon. Reaching out, I softly shook the girl's shoulder. "Hey Pyrrha, wake up. Come on, up you get."
"Mhhhmmmm ten more minutes." My partner murmured, as she turned over, squishing her face into the pillow.
"Come on, wake up Pyrrha. We have to get ready for class" For a moment, I thought she was turning around to pull back into the blankets, but I was pleasantly surprised when bleary emeralds met my eyes.
"Jaune?"
"Hey Pyrrha, it's almost time for class, you should get up if you want to get breakfast later." I told her, smiling at the groan that left her lips. She didn't try to bury herself back into the bed, though. Instead, she threw off the covers, revealing her red and white flannel pajamas.
"Thanks for waking me." She told me, grabbing one of her own uniforms along with a little toiletry bag before she slipped into the bathroom. Moving on to the next bed, I did much the same with Weiss. The white-haired girl wasn't in quite as amusing a position as my own partner had been, simply lying on her side as she breathed softly into her pillow.
"Hey Weiss, time to get up." I told her, my hand moving out to shake her shoulder. Before it reached her, a pale hand snapped out from under the covers, grabbing my wrist and holding my hand away. Twin chips of ice met my own darker blue eyes as the SDC heiress glared at me through narrowed eyes.
"What the hell are you doing Arc?" The amount of vitriol the girl could muster up this early in the morning was more than a little surprising, but I rolled with it. She must not have been a morning person.
"It's time to get up, we have class soon, and I wanted to get breakfast as a team. Pyrrha is in the shower right now. Could you wake Blake?" I asked her as I extricated my wrist from the death-grip she had on it.
"No need, I'm already up." My third and final teammate interrupted, and I couldn't help the little shiver that up my back at her voice. I did my best to ignore it, stepping away from Weiss bed to disguise the reaction.
"Right. Uhm, I'll just wait out in the hall while you guys get ready." I said, eager to get away from the amber-eyed girl. The fact that I wouldn't have to deal with an angry Weiss for a little while longer certainly didn't hurt.
Walking out of the dorm, I took a seat against the wall and grabbed my scroll. Checking the timetable we'd been sent the night before, I checked my classes for the day, and I was pleasantly surprised that we would be starting the day off with combat class.
8:30 – 10:10
Combat – Prof. Glynda Goodwitch
1.14B
10:20 – 12:00
Chemistry – Prof. Blanc Trudeau
2.03A
12:00 – 13:30
Lunch
13:30 – 14:20
Grimm Studies – Prof. Peter Port
1.10A
14:20 – 16:00
History – Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck
2.05B
As far as school days went, it was pretty tame. Around 6 hours of actual class, a small break in the morning between Combat and Chemistry and then a rather long lunch break. As far as schedules went, it wasn't nearly as bad as my last year in Ansel's high school had been.
A loud crash sounded out, and I looked up to find the source. The sound had come from team VLYR's dorm, which was right in front of our own dorm room door. Walking over, I knocked on the door lightly, ignoring the strange sounds coming from the other side of the door.
Both their door and my own opened at the same time. Ruby's sister, Yang stood in front of me in her own Beacon uniform – and damn if she didn't wear it well – while Pyrrha walked out of our own dorm, ready to start the day. Maybe it was some kind of psychic link between partners, but the redhead perfectly said what I was thinking.
"Are those bunkbeds?"
"Ah, eheheh. Don't worry about it?" Yang couldn't have sounded more uncertain if she'd tried.
"Combat class is simultaneously the simplest, and the most difficult class you will get during your stay here at Beacon Academy. There is no theory, no test and no exam for my class. Instead, you will be judged and graded on your performance in the ring." I could almost feel the relief sweep through the room when Ms. Goodwitch revealed that there wouldn't be any exams. The relief was short-lived, though, as she slammed her riding crop into her desk, sending a loud cracking sound through the room.
"It is for this reason, that I will not tolerate any fooling around in the ring. You will follow the rules set before any spar to the letter, or you will face punishment." She let the silence drag on for a moment, simply staring down a room full of rowdy teens, almost daring them to speak up before she continued. "This is the class in which you are most likely to be injured. During my tenure, not a single student has received a grievous injury in the ring, and I will keep it that way. Now, can Mr. Jaune Arc, and Mr. Cardin Winchester make their way down into the ring."
My heart hammered away in my chest as I stood from my seat. Seeing how big the guy I would be fighting was, I couldn't help but wonder what exactly they had been feeding the guy. Cardin Winchester was tall, a little taller than I was, and a whole lot wider too, even with the extra mass I had gained since I'd began leveling up. He looked over at me, too, his brown eyes meeting my own blue orbs. Cardin had a hawkish nose, which made it look like he was always looking down his nose at you. Or maybe he was just looking down his nose at me, who knows?
I tried to smile at the "Good luck." I got from Pyrrha and Ruby, as I made my way down for the first sparring match of the year. At the bottom of the stairs, I met Cardin and Ms. Goodwitch in the center of the ring. It was a circular patch of packed earth in the middle of the classroom, probably because of how easy it was to repair something like that after more destructive matches.
"I will go over the rules once more before we start." She said, loud enough that her voice carried up to the raised seats arrayed around the ring. "The match starts when I say it does, not a second sooner. There are 3 ways to win, or lose, a match. The first is a ring-out. If you are pushed out of the circle at any point of the spar, it is an instant loss. The second is lack of aura. I will link your aura meters up to the holoscreen behind me, when your aura drops below 30%, you lose. And finally, you can surrender at any point in the match. It goes without saying that this results in an instant loss. Is that clear?" She asked, nodding when we signaled our assent.
Stepping back, she counted us off. "Ready? 3, 2, 1… Begin!"
Before I knew what was going on, Cardin was upon me. I barely got my shield up in time to block a heavy two-handed hit from his mace. It caught the edge of the shield, pushing it down towards the ground and shaking my arm in the process. A quick glance at my aura bar showed that it had taken a small sliver off. It was barely a single percent, but it made me more than aware that Cardin might just be stronger than me.
I stabbed forward with Crocea Mors while he was still distracted, but he backed off a little faster than I expected him to, making it a glancing blow at best. Taking a look at Cardin's own aura bar on the screen, it was down by around 5%, definitely a positive exchange for me, then.
I stalked forwards, ducking behind my shield with just my eyes and the tip of Crocea Mors peeking out from over the shield. When he went for another hammer blow with his mace, I was ready for it. I smacked it aside with my shield, leaving the bigger boy overextended. Crocea Mors flashed out again, and I expected Cardin to have another nice chunk taken out of his aura.
What I didn't expect was for the boy to let his mace go, spin under my sword and simply punch me in the nose while my shield was still too far to the side to block. The blow didn't do much damage to my aura, only bringing us down to about the same percentage, but it did knock me back.
It gave Cardin enough time to pick his mace back up before slamming into me again. This time, he didn't even bother trying to hit me with his mace. Instead, he shoulder-checked me in the shield, pushing me back and off balance. While I tried to regain my footing, I lashed out with my sword, but it was a weak hit, and it simply skittered off Cardin's armor.
I blocked another hit from his mace, took another 10% off his aura with a stab from Crocea Mors, only to be knocked off my feet again by a mule kick. It was infuriating. Mostly because I still had much more aura than him. Maybe I was hitting harder, or he simply had that much less aura than me, but every time I landed a blow, it took a significant chunk out of his meter. Meanwhile, even full-on hits that got past my aura didn't even do as much as the glancing blow I'd landed in that first exchange.
Sure, he was hitting me more than I was hitting him, but I still had the advantage. Was he trying to wear me out? Did he just enjoy knocking me around? Or was he just hoping that he could disarm me if he knocked me to the ground properly? I couldn't tell, but if the spar kept going like this, I would win.
The thought was exhilarating, and as Cardin's aura entered the yellow, I couldn't help the smile that came over my face, even as Cardin bulldozed right through a weak stab to bowl me over again. I rolled out of the way of a kick and got back to my feet, and put my shield up to block another heavy two handed swing from his mace. It had too much momentum behind it to parry, but I could block it just fine, even if it took a little aura with it. I was still in the green. I stepped forward again, regaining the distance that his attack had pushed me back, ready to stri-
"Winner by ring-out, Cardin Winchester!"
'What?'
Looking down, I blinked at the floor under my feet. I was standing inside of the ring, but so close to the edge that a single pace would take me out of it. A single pace that I had just taken forward again. Fuck.
"Mr. Winchester. Good work, recognizing that exchanging blows with Mr. Arc and finding an alternative way to win the bout. In the future, I would work on some defensive options, though, if the fight had dragged on longer, or if Mr. Arc had caught on, you would have been in trouble." The burly brunette nodded at the teacher to show he understood before he took his mace and walked off the stage.
"Mr. Arc." She turned to me. "You had the advantage in terms of Aura capacity, and with your shield you had all the tools to win this match. You have to be more aware of your surroundings in the future. There is no telling what consequences the equivalent of a ring-out could have in the field. Take this as a learning experience, I expect to see some improvement by your next spar."
'Fuck.'
"Yes Ms. Goodwitch." I moved off the stage, my head hanging low as I made my way back to my seat. My first spar at Beacon, and I had lost.
A/N: Hi everyone! I already know that many of you aren't going to be happy with how the spar turned out for Jaune, but that's kind of the point. There's not going to be any improvement from him if he doesn't lose. As for how it happened, I want to head off a couple of questions before I even get them. Jaune is level 32 at the moment, Cardin is around level 34-35 (the equivalent, it's not an exact science for anyone but Jaune). Their stats are distributed rather similarly as well, Cardin is simply a little bit faster and stronger due to the level gap. The biggest difference is that Jaune has way more aura. They both would have a similar Mind stat, but Jaune has twice as much aura as anyone else with the same stat would have. I know many of you have been saying that I nerfed him because he doesn't have insane aura reserves, but he does. If he didn't, he would have died 10x over already, he's simply fighting stuff that's way above his level for the most part.
As for how Cardin managed to herd Jaune into a corner like that, you have to keep in mind that Jaune hasn't fought a single person in years. His family has been trying to stop him from becoming a hunter for years, they wouldn't have sparred with him, and aside from that he has been fighting mindless Grimm in forests. That's nothing like fighting people, and it's not like there's a ring-out in the wilderness. So, despite knowing that a ring-out was a possibility, it didn't occur to him that Cardin had been trying to knock him out of the ring.
Someone also asked if Jaune is weaker than his canon self, because he couldn't tank hits from the Deathstalker in initiation. He's actually stronger, though not by a huge amount (at the start of initiation, he's way stronger now). He can't tank hits from the Deathstalker because I made it way stronger than the one from canon to compensate for the fact that they're fighting it 8v1 instead of 4v1 because there was no Nevermore. I hope that clears things up.
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave a review and as always, have a good one!
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