ChapterThree
I'd thought how nice it would be to walk arm in arm through the forest with a beautiful girl. This wasnot the kind of walk I had expected.
"Shit," I swore, running as fast as I could, a pack of demon werewolves nipping at my heels.
I wasn't sure why they'd been attracted to me, when they hadn't been originally, but that didn't really matter right now. At least, with the power of Aura now preverbially pumping through my draconic veins, I was able to keep a few steps ahead.
It'd been half an hour, and Pyrrha still hadn't woken up, but she was getting better, her shallow breaths having slowly deepened. I could keep running, not having Jaune's original stamina problems, and the pack seemed to be thinning out behind me, only four left, so I was pretty sure I was outrunning them. Now if I could only...
A sense of Danger! flashed through my soul as the bushes in front of me rustled, sending me into a reflexive roll as one of the Beowulfs, which I'd thought I'd ditched, came sailing out towards me, claws outstretched, slavering jaws open wide.
"Fuck!" I yelled, seeing the bushes around me similarly shiver, knowing that, while I'd been dodging, they'd been herding me.
Sliding to a stop, I swung Pyrrha's still unconscious form around to my back. Moving her arms around my neck so I could hold her hands in place against my chest with one of my own, my other pulling my sword. I still didn't know how to use the damn thing, not really, but the Talents I bought were supposed to help me learn quickly. I just hoped that'd be quick enough. Arching my wings slightly to help hold my unconscious partner in place, I turned to look at the baker's dozen of Grimm that'd slipped out from the bushes of this small clearing, taken aback by my sudden stop.
"You wanted a fight, we'll fight," I challenged, one of them lumbering forward. It howled, then charged, bringing its arm back in an incredibly telegraphed blow.
Thankful for the announcement of its intent, I stepped inside its guard, slicing through its arm like it wasn't even there, ancient blade passing between the few bone spines that lined the creature's limb and parting shadowy pseudo-flesh. Stepping past the stump as it tried to swing with its remaining arm, I removed that too, plunging my blade through its skull as it tried to bite me, killing it instantly, the red light fading from its eyes.
Yanking the blade out, having to use a leg to brace against its skull as my sword had lodged itself in the white bone plate, I chastised myself. Too long, I thought, and the skull move, while looking cool, had been dumb. They weren't Hollows, I didn't need to break the mask, and doing so had trapped my only weapon.
Thankfully, the others were acting like bad movie ninjas, just shifting back and forth, growling menacingly while I'd gotten back into position. Baby Grimm? I thought, vaguely remembering that they got smarter as they got older. I'd thought the more stilted movements of the first volume's fights compared to the second had been an animating issue, but it was apparently more indicative of inexperience, on both sides.
Another Grimm charged, this one going low, and I jumped over it, sword sweeping downwards, but I'd overestimated my new strength and missed it by several feet. Another Beowolf moved to catch me at the end of my arc, claw reaching up to hit me. I met its claws with my own blade, edge striking between white bone talons, but the sharp edge of my weapon worked against me, the blade passing through its paw and down its arm, its claws raking against my side, though thankfully the blow was blunted by my own Aura.
It still hurt, but it was a phantom pain, a warning instead of true injury, not even tearing my shirt.
Like the first, this one immediately swung with it's other arm in a wide arc, but, learning, I twisted my sword, catching the claws with the flat of my blade this time, my arm straining under the awkward leverage of the impact as it tried to press forward, the tip of my own sword coming down and pressing against my chestplate.
Another Grimm charged me from behind, the heavy sound of its footfalls giving me ample warning, and I lifted the hilt of my sword, the Grim pressing down on me sliding to my left as I went right, twisting around and swinging blindly, catching my new attacker across the snout as it went in for a bite against the girl still held against my back.
Flaring a wing, to shift my balance and turn me into position, I took a step forward, twisting my blade down and towards my center-line, rising it up in a strike perpendicular to my first one, cutting the black wolfman up from hip to shoulder, the flat red of the Grimm's insides already starting to dissolve into shadows as I stepped to the side, slicing another as it closed on what it perceived as an opening.
This one backed off as I went for the kill, the others retreating in a wider circle around me. Learning as fast as I was, three of them charged me at once, each one equidistant from the other.
Picking one, knowing the others would be at my back in a moment, I charged, dipping down as I started going for another jump. Seeing me do so, the Grimm started to move in a rising strike that would've hit me, but I flared my wings open, leaping forward instead of up, blasting right towards the monster at a speed it wasn't ready for.
It tried to correct, but it was too late and my wing clipped it's bare side, folding slightly against unnatural flesh as I was yanked to a stop even as the impact took it off its feet. Swinging out with my sword, I didn't bisect it like I'd wanted, but still cut deeply into it, the creature bonelessly collapsing to the ground and starting to smoke.
I'd only killed three, but I was getting a handle on this, even if my wing smarted slightly from the impact. The other two closed, but stopped as a howl sounded in the difference, more piercing than the first one's had been. The Grimm around me turned away, charging off into the forest, leaving Pyrrha and I alone with the vaporizing corpses of the dead Beowolfs.
Feeling a tightening around my neck, it took a moment to realize it wasn't something like repressed panic, but a literal tightening, Pyrrha finally awakening.
"You okay back there, Red?" I asked, letting go of her wrists.
She landed easily, only a couple of inches shorter than I was, stumbling backwards a step as she shook her head, as if to clear it. "I, oh I do believe I made a mistake," she noted, frowning.
"How so?" I asked, turning to face her, though I had an idea of what she meant.
"To activate another's Aura, it takes the usage of one's own, but it is only supposed to be a moment of temporary weakness, not enough to drive one into unconsciousness," she explained, focusing on reciting something she'd learned before to help center herself. "To do so while in the wilds was not the best of choices, I must admit, though," she paused, looking at the dissolving corpses around us, "it is one that seemed to have worked out in the end."
I grimaced, "Eh, kind of. Something howled that way and the others ran towards it."
"An Advanced Beowolf then," Pyrrha nodded, once more on solid metaphorical ground. "We should be off."
"Works for me," I smiled, not moving even as she started to turn away, "Though, I have to ask, as we have not been formally introduced, what is your name?"
She blinked, shocked, then smiled to herself, laughing slightly, "Oh, how rude, my apologies. My name is Pyrrha. Pyrrha Nikos. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance Jaune."
"And I yours," I replied, handing her her spear. "Hopefully this will be the beginning of a long, and fruitful partnership. Now let's get a move on before they come back."
The girl I was going to save from her destined death nodded in agreement, "Lets."
DR
We'd been walking for a few minutes before Pyrrha broke the silence. "If you don't mind me asking, where did your wings come from? I assumed them your Semblance, but your Aura had not been awakened..." she trailed off. "You don't need to explain if you do not wish to. It's just, the designs suggested they are not natural."
Designs? I thought, extending a wing and looking at it. "Yeah, I can see why you might think that," I commented. The backsides were a deep blue, but across the inside membranes ran twisting, ornate designs, repeating in almost like banner-like columns between each bone support of my new appendages.
"But, where did they come from?" she asked again.
I shrugged, trying to feel out the same way I had to deploy them. "I don't know. Magic?" Finding the part of myself that I'd, for lack of a better term, moved to shift my shape, I found that I no longer had three forms, equidistant from each other along a continuum, but four, my current state between the first and the second, though closer to the first than the second. Mentally pushing that setting back to the lowest setting, I felt my body warp, flesh streaming back into my torso in an instant. I knew, instinctually, that I could pull them back out if I needed, the flick a small thing, but I didn't need them anymore. "Like that."
"Magic doesn't exist," she disagreed staring. "I'd say it was a semblance, but you didn't have Aura. I couldn't have ignited it if you had... and I've never heard of a dragon faunus either. You are quite the mystery, Jaune."
I shrugged, taking the lead as we walked through the forest, the trees thinning as we reached the base of a cliff, not the one we'd been launched from, with an ominous looking cave. "Officially, I'm a horned lizard faunus," I offered, getting a nod from her. "But saying I'm a Dragon is just cooler." And also true.
Honestly, that just made it better.
"Ah, I understand," she nodded, likely not understanding in the least. "Like I am called the 'Invincible Girl'," she grimaced. "Though you should be careful, Jaune. Titles taken in the moment might lose their charm when they define you in the eyes of others."
"Well, I was carrying your ass around for the better part of an hour, so I'm pretty sure that's not what I'm going to define you as," I teased, earning a smile from her. "So," I said, motioning forwards. "The ruins where the relics are in might be in the cave, but I doubt it. It'd be hard to find for everyone else. It's just kind of in the middle of nowhere."
"There's ancient art," Pyrrha offered, motioning towards the caveman level carvings showing a number of humanoid figures with spears chasing a scorpion that was either stylized, or the size of a city bus. Knowing what happened the first time around, I could safely say it was the latter.
Shaking my head, I turned around, "How 'bout we remember where this place is, and if we need to when can come back." She started to follow when we both felt a warm, wet wind blow out the cave entrance, the smell of rot and decay carried out with it.
Pyrrha pulled out her sword and spear, turning back to face the black portal underground. "I do believe that there is something in there," she noted.
"Yeah," I replied, worried about pissing it off as I grabbed her bare shoulder, "And that's why we're leaving."
She hesitated, starting to say "I think you're ri-" before an unnatural hissing roar echoed out of the cavern, sounds like wooden posts striking rock in quick succession hammering down the tunnel towards us.
"Run," I commanded, pulling her with me.
She said nothing, only giving me a sharp nod, following me running back towards the forest. Right as we hit the tree line, the entrance of the cave exploded outwards. A tank sized scorpion Grimm half covered in thick bone armor, so old it had plants growing on it, screeched as it stood in the light, scanning the area and spotting us.
It was an amazing, and terrifying, sight, which I didn't stop to admire as I ran for my life.
Bolting through the forest, while we were faster, and Pyrrha was faster than I was, we needed to thread our way through the foliage the Grimm just bulldozed its way through. For newbies this was a stupid level of difficulty, but if they'd done it in canon, we could do it now. I hoped.
We were forced to split up slightly, running around trees, and the creature focused on me, gaining on me until Pyrrha shot it with her rifle, switching the weapon back to a spear as she led it away from me.
It closed on her as we both moved towards the sound of gunfire and distant voices, hoping for backup, and as it started to get dangerously close I grabbed a fist-sized rock hurling it as hard as I could at the beast to distract it.
The stone didn't hurt it, even as it struck its rubbery black carapace, but it got its attention, and allowed my partner enough time to gain some ground, before once more attracting it's attention as I used my shield to block it's enormous amber stinger, dark purple poison dripping from its tip.
Breaking into the clearing I'd been looking for, I saw a figure in white falling from the sky, flailing in a far-too-familiar panic. "I'll get her, lead it to the others," I commanded, Pyrrha nodding, as I flicked my wings back into existence.
I hadn't used them to fly, but they should let me, and I leapt as hard as I could, Aura assisted strength sending me rocketing upwards even as draconic instincts helped me angle to capture my prey, I mean to save Weiss.
Reaching out, I was able to grab her, holding tight as I flared my wings out to slow us both down, the added weight throwing things off. Even then, we landed lightly enough to stay on our feet. I let Weis go, focusing on what was important as I turned to Pyrrha, who was running back and forth while everyone else just watched, Yang even making a snide comment about how "Now we can all die together."
Before I could say anything, the Death Stalker slammed my partner with the back of an enormous pincer, sending her tumbling into a crumpled heap in front of her 'fellow huntsman'. "Pyrrha!" I yelled, rushing to her side even as Ruby, using her odd combination sniper rifle/scythe, ran forward and shot it behind her, using the recoil to blast off towards the ancient Grimm, the others still just standing there watching.
I knew what my, Jaune's Semblance was. Semblance was, to put it simply, the unique ability that all Aura users possessed, turning every Huntsman into a low-level X-man. Jaune's was the ability to reinforce the Aura of others, especially the healing aspect of Aura. I didn't know how to do it, but figuring out what it was was most of the problem, and as I picked her up, carrying her slightly to put the injured person on the other side of the other fighters from the enemy, and tried to feed her my own ability.
Unlike before, I couldn't do it, whatever technique there was to it not clicking in my mind, but she still stirred, not really hurt, just dazed. "Pyrrha, you okay?" I asked, even as the fighting continued behind me and I heard the distinctive crack of ice being flash-formed.
"I am well," she agreed, smiling, taking my proffered hand to stand up, even as Weiss berated Ruby in her 'it's not like I like you' way. "The others, oh, it has been taken care of," she observed, the plane-sized Grimm raven overhead flying away, the Grimm scorpion's tail stuck in the ice even as it tried to pull itself free.
"Yeah, at least for now. So, look more like an ancient ruin?" I asked with a small smile, indicating the circular stone courtyard we now stood in, faded, half-destroyed walls encircling it, and crumbling pedestals dotting the area, upon which each sat an oversized gold chess piece.
"That it does," she agreed, looking around. A black glow encircled the horse piece, pulling it to her open hand, and she offered it to me.
"A Knight for a Knight?" I asked with a grin.
She smirked right back, "You are quite unconventional in your moves."
A cawing-shriek from overhead got our attention. "I think it's coming back," I announced to the others as they stood around. I pointed towards the huge Nevermore as it circled back around, the insectile murder-beast still trying to free itself even though everyone else seemed to have dismissed it as a threat.
"Look, there's no sense in dilly-dallying," Weiss informed me. "Our objective is right in front of us."
"She's right," Ruby agreed. "Our mission is to grab an artifact and make it back to the cliffs; there's no point in fighting these things."
I held up my own piece, wiggling it for emphasis, while the youngest girl nodded, jogging over and grabbing a golden Rook.
The ice started to crack as the Grimm scorpion started to free itself, Lie Ren calmly stating "Time we left," and with that we were off, heading for the cliff-face, running through more ancient ruins as fast as we could, the enormous bird passing by overhead, its shadow overrunning us easily.
Feeling Pyrrha grab my arm as the creature wheeled around to stand atop a tower directly in front of the cliff, with a thin stone walkway leading from it to the clifftop, I followed her lead to take cover, lest the creature shoot another volley of feathers, each one a biological ballista bolt.
However, the Grimm scorpion had freed itself, busting out of the forest and putting us between a rock and a hard place. "Let's go," I said, charging forward, shield at the ready. I might break my arm deflecting a bolt, but it'd be better than getting pierced by one.
"Nora, Distract it!" Lie Ren commanded, the Nevermore launching a hail of feathers, but spread wide as it tried to hit us all, the bolts easily dodged. Pink missiles launched over our head to provide flak cover, driving the bird away.
Running for the tower, it was held up over a seemingly bottomless abyss, mist shrouding the bottom over a hundred feet down, the bridge held up by incredibly tall stone columns. It was not the place anyone wanted to fight, especially people who had just joined the academy!
"Go, go!" Pyrrha commanded, stopping and taking a knee, using the divot in her buckler to brace her spear as it mecha-shifted to a rifle, shooting the Scorpion and making it flinch to protect its many eyes instead of snapping Blake, the girl in black that had partnered with Yang, in half.
Following her orders, I kept moving, but the Nevermore came in low and fast, head-butting the stone bridge that we were running on, and the bridge gave way first.
Throwing myself forward as the stones below me fell, I barely made it to solid ground, struggling to my feet as Pyrrha, and Lie Ren still shot at the scorpion on the other side of the destroyed bridge, Blake thrown to the ground beside them.
"Nora," I stated, knowing the girl would be right behind me. "They need help, the others can take the bird."
"Let's do this!" the pink-clad girl agreed, holding a grenade launcher that, a few minutes ago, had been a hammer. I really needed better weapons.
Looking at the fifty foot gap, ready to extend my wings, I asked, knowing the answer, "Can you make the jump?"
Grinning maniacally, the girl slammed her weapon into me, throwing me backwards on the bridge, laughing to herself as her weapon shifted back to a hammer.
"Nora, you don't need to-" I started to object as she leapt, smashing the hammer down on the lip of the remaining bridge, breaking the section we were on and throwing me towards our partners.
Starting to fall, she flipped the giant hammer, so she was standing on it's enormous head, and clicked a trigger, firing an explosion that sent her sailing towards the huge Grimm insect.
As I brought out my wings, turning my cartwheeling spin into a controlled flight, I turned around just in time to see the girl leap back from the creature's stingers after slamming it dead center with her weapon, stumbling right into Blake and sending the other girl falling off the bridge and into the mists below.
However, even as I finished my turn, Blake sent her weapon, a combination submachine gun/shortsword on a long ribbon, out, hooking on the tower and sending her swinging towards the Nevermore like a cattier Spiderman as it circled around, engaging the Grimm bird instead.
Focusing on our target, I dropped behind the ancient Death Stalker, slashing through one of it's black legs with all my strength, the unarmored appendage hard like wood compared to the barely there flesh of the newborn Beowolfs. I still cut through it, barely, wracking my brain as to how the hell they'd killed this thing before.
It shrieked, spinning around to face me, as I yelled, "Off the bridge. Ren, Stinger, Pyrrha, to me!" I remembered, I just hoped we could pull this off.
Ducking low, I held my shield as a car-sized pincer tried to cut me in half, skidding off my shield instead. Ren led the others as they ran for its back, jumping on one of the Grimm's still intact legs, then a nearby column, before launching himself for it's tail, catching himself on it and shoving a pistol at the point where amber stinger met black flesh, opening up with full automatic fire.
Pyrrha slid under it as it shrieked, shifting her rifle to a short sword and cutting into its softer underbelly, grabbing my offered arm to swing herself up and around me to bury her weapon, shifted to a javelin, in one of the creature's many eyes.
"Ren, jump," I commanded as the creature started to flail, throwing the other man off, and he sailed between stone archways and onto the grass.
"Ren!" Nora cried, shooting another grenade at the creatures back. It tried to turn, and I cut off another leg, the swing of it's pincers knocking me back a dozen feet as it tried to reorient itself, its stinger wiggling, barely held on.
"Pyrrha, Stinger!" I yelled, getting a "Got it!" as I continued, "Nora, up and over!"
The girl understood, shifting her weapon back into a hammer and slamming it down on the ground, pulling the trigger once more to arc over the Death Stalker as Pyrrha tossed her shield, Captain America style, ripping the stinger free, sending it to fall and pierce the white bone shell covering its armored head, lodging there but not deep enough to kill it.
Stepping back, flapping my wings in an awkward leap to get under Nora as she fell, I commanded, "Nora! Nail it!"
The pink-clad girl grinned, twisting to bring herself to land lightly on my upraised shield, sitting on her hammer as she touched down. I threw her back up with all my strength as she triggered it again to help her rise even higher.
At the apex of her arc, she shifted position, shooting her weapon upwards to fly down far faster than gravity could move her, coming down so hard on the Death Stalker's head that its legs gave out, the stones around it shattering. Hanging there as the moment started to even out, she fired her hammer once more to shove the stinger that little bit deeper and launching herself back as the ground crumbled, sending the creature falling into the abyss. Pyrrha's spear was knocked loose and easily caught by her as, with mournful roar, the enormous Grimm insect disappeared from sight.
We turned to see the other four fighting the Nevermore, Yang standing in its open beak, holding it open and shooting shells from her gauntlet shotguns down its gullet. Jumping away, the monster tumbled and smashed into the wall, scrabbling to its feet and shrieking in anger.
Pyrrha lifted her rifle to take a shot, but I pushed it down, answering her questioning look with a calm, "They got this."
Sure enough, what ripples I'd made weren't enough to change their fight as Weiss froze its tail to the ground, holding it in place as the others got ready.
In moments Ruby was slingshotted forward, riding her scythe, firing off rounds to boost her even faster, catching the enormous creature by the neck as it broke free from the ice, slamming it against the cliff wall, standing vertically as her momentum countered gravity.
A line of blue-white glyphs ran up the mountain, the movement enhancing ones Weiss used to 'dash' forward, and Ruby took off like a shot, dragging the titanic Grimm kicking and screaming up the cliff-side, firing her weapon again and again to keep the Nevermore rising, digging a furrow through the solid rock of the cliff face as she did so.
Reaching the top it caught on the lip, and, screaming, she fired a final shot, the scythe acting as a guillotine, beheading the Grimm completely. The head three times her size came with her to land on the clifftop beside her, the headless body slowly fell down the mountain, missing what was left of the ruins, and falling into the ravine and out of sight, crashing with a thud that reverberated under my feet, just a little, several seconds later.
"Like I said," I remarked, grinning at the sight, "good for finishing strikes."
"That she is," Pyrrha, sounding as awestruck as Nora and Lie Ren looked, even if she kept her face blank.
DR
It was several hours later, with time to wash up and get lunch, that we all stood together, waiting for the teams to be called. Pyrrha was my partner, and a better partner I couldn't ask for, but I couldn't wait to get to work with Nora and Lie Ren. This was still school, though one with a much more interesting focus than the ones I went to, but it was one where we'd theoretically have free time. It was assumed that we'd have four years of training, but this world was one on the edge of collapse, and I knew, if I did nothing, Beacon would fall before winter.
I wished I'd watched more of the series, but I'd stopped after the train attack that was hyped up did absolutely nothing and Jaune 'killed' an Ursa, a bear Grimm, with the laziest animations of the entire series while everyone else was moving in beautiful dances of death. Everything was reset to zero, the show was still treating him like he was a complete loser, and I was out.
That meant I was going to need to push my team hard, and myself even harder. Maybe I could warn them, hell, maybe I could even warn Ozpin when the time drew near, after the dance and after Cinder had made her first move, when he might believe me.
It wasn't going to be easy, but I was a Motherfuckin' Dragon, and that had to count for something.
Cardin, the racist asshole, had his team (CRDL, pronounced Cardinal) made official, and I got ready for my team (JNPR, pronounced Juniper), to be called forward. The headshots of the next team appeared on the screen over Ozpin's head, and I wasn't one of them.
"Ruby Rose, Lie Ren, Weiss Schnee, Nora Valkyrie," the headmaster announced, as they all moved to the stage. "The four of you retrieved the White Rook pieces. From this day forward you will work together as... team Rowan." Their pictures shifted, revealing the letters RRWN. "Led by... Ruby Rose."
I clapped along with the others, on autopilot as I'd been doing so for the last dozen teams, even as Yang hollered encouragement and my mind worked frantically. Oh shit, I realized, I grabbed the wrong piece. When I'd gotten there, Nora and Yang had already stowed theirs, and I'd assumed that Nora would've chosen the knight, given her predilections towards riding Grimm for fun.
Following Pyrrha, we walked to the stage, I tried to think of how I could make this work. I could, as I'd planned on training both teams, but Lie Ren and Nora had a much further way to go than Blake and Yang, and I'd planned on having the time to help them personally.
"Jaune Arc, Blake Belladonna, Pyrrha Nikos, and Yang Xiao Long," the headmaster announced, as we stood in front of him. "The four of you retrieved the White Knight pieces. From this day forward you will work together as... team Aubergine." Their pictures shifted, revealing the letters ABYN. "Led by... Jaune Arc."
The centuries old reincarnated Wizard of this world's mythology, who created the four seasonal maidens, who was the eternal enemy of the queen of the Grimm, and who was one of the few true magic users of the setting looked over his glasses at me and commented, "I'll be looking forward to your progress."
"Um, yes sir," I stammered, suddenly very nervous.
He raised a single eyebrow, turning to face the student body as a whole as he announced, "It looks things are shaping up to be an... interesting year."
I found myself nodding along, thinking, You have no idea.