Chapter Twenty-Six
"Why do I need to be here?" Weiss demanded petulantly.
It was Sunday and, apparently, Pyrrha, Yang, and Ruby had gotten together and planned out a 'basics of the basics' class for Blake, Ren, Nora, and myself.
"I told you, Weiss," Ruby replied, a little exasperated. "We're here because we realized that half of our teams didn't ever go to school!"
The tiny team lead dragged the heiress into the room, where we all sat, sipping our breakfast shakes. The white-haired girl, however, wasn't having it. "Just because I didn't attend one of your common combat institutions doesn't make me some kind of, some kind of rube," she practically spat. "I had private tutors of a quality that far exceeded anything you'd find outside of a Huntsman academy!"
Interceding, I held up a hand, speaking up. "Yeah, that's why you're not here as a student, but as a teacher."
"I. . . what?" the girl asked, turning around, eyes only dropping down to my burned mouth for a fraction of a second, gaze quickly locking on my own without any change of expression.
That was. . . rather nice actually, especially considering Ruby, who'd seen it before, was still staring when she thought I wasn't looking. "You're probably the most classically educated out of all of us," I offered easily. I might be the exception, but my education was about Earth topics, not the multitude that were Remnant specific. "Blake and I were home schooled, and Ren and Nora. . ." I trailed off, trying to figure out how to phrase it
"Never been in a school before this place. Still not sure what all the fuss is about," Nora offered, mostly as a joke, but there was something else to her tone that I couldn't quite pin down. "Least the food's good. Could have pancakes more often though. Mmmmmm, pancakes."
"That explains so much," Weiss deadpanned, before shaking herself, and looking back to me. "So, you want me for my expertise?"
"Yes?" I replied. Did I not make that clear?
"Oh," she said, straightening up a little and smiling to herself, looking over to her partner. "Why didn't you say so?"
"I did. Three times," Ruby shot back, giving a frustrated moan before slumping down on her sister's bed, Yang patting her consolingly.
Nodding to herself, Weiss stepped into the middle of the space. "Well, if' I'm going to teach you. . . Oh, where do I start? Mathematics? Estate management? Political maneuvering?"
"I think Oobleck's class is secretly the third," I offered.
The heiress froze, "It is, isn't it? But, oh, I don't have any lesson plans! Or assessments! Why couldn't you've warned me about this earlier?" she demanded of her team lead.
"Because we figured this out yesterday," the girl replied, rolling her eyes. "This isn't a class, with grades and stuff. We're just making sure we all know the basics. Stuff that would've been covered in school, not stating managers."
"Estate management," Weiss corrected, frostily, "And that is the basics!"
Seeing this spiral out of control, I interceded once more. "What about Aura?" I asked.
"What about Aura?" the pale girl asked.
"Well. . . what is it? Like, what is it actually?" I questioned.
That took the ice princess back. "That's not a basic question," she countered. "Scientists in Atlas are still trying to figure that out, and if they're having trouble, everyone else is still in the dark. Hmmm, no, it's easier to tell you what it's not. What do you think it is?"
Suddenly on the spot, I repeated what I remembered hearing. "Um, it's our souls, made manifest and physical. A fire that is both sword and shield to beat back the darkness of the Grimm?"
The others stared at me.
Pyrrha coughed, embarrassed. "Um, Jaune? I was being metaphorical. It's not actually your soul."
"Actually," Weiss countered, "it is." Now the attention was directly on her, which she didn't mind in the slightest. "Aura can only be activated for living things, and only things with a certain amount of intelligence. People, Faunus, and some animals can all have their Aura awakened-"
"Like Zwei!" Ruby cheered, still lying down on the bed, both hands raised.
"Our dog," Yang explained. "Rubes awakened his Aura."
"He was hurt! And I was nine!" the girl defended herself. "Besides, he's the best of boys, so it's okay!"
Weiss sighed, "You would. As I was saying, they're the ones that can have their Aura activated because they're the only ones that have a soul to awaken. It's one of the reasons that we can't make robots with artificial Aura, at least not yet, because there needs to be something there in the first place."
Given what little I'd heard about Penny from second-hand accounts, her creator had literally cut off a bit of his soul to make her, Weiss's statement was likely accurate and also Penny's Father was surprisingly hardcore. Penny was on my list of people to try to save, but Pyrrha took precedence.
Additionally, as I had to drop my Defenses to let Pyrrha awaken my Aura, one of which protected my soul, there was a good chance that while Pyrrha might've just been repeating what she'd heard from others when she'd explained it to me, she wasn't wrong.
"Okay that's. . . not actually that useful to know, really," I sighed. If I dealt with other things that involved souls, it'd be something to keep in mind, but for now it was academic. "Um, more practically, Aura lets you absorb damage, manifest a Semblance, and enhances your strength," I stated, and Weiss nodded.
"There are additional techniques that one can use with pure Aura manipulation, but most don't spend the time and effort to use develop them," Weiss agreed. "And no, I cannot use them myself. My Semblance is so complex that it absorbed a great deal of my time in learning to wield it proficiently, as there is far more to it than just 'move fast'," she commented, shooting a disdainful look at Ruby.
Ruby, the picture of maturity, stuck her tongue out at the other girl.
"Alright, so, stupid question," I put forward. "If it's so useful, why don't we activate everyone's Aura?"
From the looks I received, it was a stupid question. "Okay, obviously a bad idea," I gave, "but why?"
"The Grimm," Ren stated, voice quiet, but carrying.
"Okay, why," I reiterated. "Shouldn't having Aura help fight the Grimm?"
Weiss, who'd looked at Ren when he made his declaration, visibly surprised, refocused on me. "Grimm are attracted to negative emotion. I know you know this, Jaune. Aura, when it's activated, magnifies the effect. Small groups are normally not enough to draw the Grimm. The first stage, when population size starts to become an issue, is usually around two dozen people. Before that, as long there aren't too many sources of negative emotion, Grimm attacks will be incidental. Of course if enough people are emitting negative emotions, even in a small group, it will draw a few, but only from a mile or two around."
I sat back, listening, never having actually heard of any hard numbers, or even hard-ish numbers, on why they didn't just give everyone superpowers.
"After around two dozen people, you will start to draw Grimm, but only from a few miles around. . ." she trailed off. "Actually, I'll be right back."
The not-albino darted out of the room, returning a moment later with a wide silver disk. "I didn't think I'd need this, but Winter insisted I pack it. She was right, as usual," the girl commented, though, despite her inwardly directed recriminations, she smiled warmly to herself, her expression smoothing out to her normal professional demeanor as she looked up. "All right, this is a town," she stated, a screen popping into focus, showing us all a map, the town a small dot in the middle of a vast forest.
"And here's the Grimm," she added, hundreds of dots, many grouped together, popping up. "And basic migration patterns." The dots were now moving, some aimlessly, some in vague circles, some with purpose off the screen, others coming in from elsewhere on the map with similar speed.
"Now, let's assume they did a basic check, which they don't always, but they hired a Huntsman team to clear out the area. That means the Grimm that were around the town would've been brought in and eliminated," Weiss said, the black dots in a small circle around the town winking out of existence. "And they'd make sure there's no larger Grimm sleeping nearby, but they didn't do enough to scour the area." Half a dozen red dots, of varying sizes, appeared on the map, all of them still. "Now let's add two dozen people, assume standard emotional patterns, and, there."
A blue circle appeared around the town, but the cleared area of Grimm was four times as big. "Now, let's assume you have a single Huntsman for defense." The circle nearly doubled.
"I'm sorry, what?" I asked, not following what just happened. Was she saying a single huntsman was the same as twenty-four people?
"I'll get to that," Weiss informed me. "Now, nothing changes." Time sped up, and some dots representing Grimm slowly wandered towards the town. When one hit the blue circle, they started to get closer, sometimes pulling the ones near it, sometimes going on alone, reaching the town and disappearing. "It's only a few Beowulf and Creep packs, a single Ursa, and a small flock of Nevermores. Easy enough to handle for your average licensed Huntsman. They don't even need walls. Without the Huntsman. . ." the circle shrunk, and the simulation ran itself again. "A single pack of Beowulfs, a few solitary Creeps, and the Ursa. They might be able to fight them off without Aura, though if they lose someone to the Ursa, then the circle will expand and pull another Beowulf pack," the circle expanded for a moment, but enough to pull in another dozen dots, "which could kill more, making things worse. . ." the circle spiked again, even wider, pulling in three more large groups, "And then the town is likely destroyed."
"Now again with the huntsman, but they have twenty more people," Weiss explained, the circle expanding, but not that much changed as the simulation ran again. "At this point, they don't need walls, but when you have closer to a hundred. . ." the circle expanded, almost touching one of the red dots, and pulling in more and more of the wandering groups. A large surge hit the town, and the circle blinked out, the people dead. "But with walls," the group of black Grimm dots hit the edge of town, and were eliminated, not all at once like before, but quickly over time. "Any town that's over a hundred and fifty people and doesn't have walls, is a deathtrap, unless there's a disproportional amount of Huntsman, but then you're in a firebreak town, which can be just as bad if you're not careful. There's a reason we don't use them in Atlas."
Blake, who was looking bored, peered over at the screen. "What if it's a hundred Faunus instead?"
Weiss typed something on her scroll, and the wide circle of how the town's emotions would pull the Grimm shrank to the point it was almost invisible. "Faunus have a lesser effect on Grimm, exerting less than ten percent of a normal person's influence."
The Faunus murmured something to herself that sounded like 'Manage three', 'no walls', and 'coo-coo ana', but I couldn't make it out.
"Go back to the first town, the one with two dozen people" I directed Weiss. "What if there's a full Huntsman team?"
The circle was nearly as large as the one with a town of a hundred people.
"Is there a difference between a Faunus and a Human with Aura?" I asked, trying to pin down what the ratios were, and Weiss shook her head.
"Animals with Aura seem to have an influence equal to an unawakened person," the heiress informed us. "And the large amount of differences between people means there's no evidence of Humans or Faunus having more or less Aura when it's activated, which is what determines the range of influence."
"So, if you have the hundred people town," I started, pausing as Weiss brought it up. And you awakened the Aura of every one of them?"
The circle covered half the map.
The red dots started to move, the Grimm around them not heading for the town, as the lone ones did, but gathering around the alphas. Hundreds of black dots seemed to swirl around each red dot, and while one headed for the town, the others moved around their target, linking up, turning the map around them black.
"The first attack, fought off," Weiss narrated, as the circle grew, nearly to cover the map, more and more Grimm being pulled in. "But if they aren't Huntsman, just civilians, they'll win, but with losses even with Aura."
The first alpha hit, the forces breaking through the wall, though taken out. "The second attack, a small Tide. Heavy losses have been taken. You can't see it on this map, but the circle has grown larger, the negative emotions of those with Aura reaching further out."
The third group approached, barely deterred, but before they could reach the city Ren's voice, stressed and thick with emotion, commanded, "Stop."
Weiss flinched, but paused the simulation. Looking at him, Nora leaning over and wrapping an arm around the boy, realization dawned on the heiress' face, and she asked, quietly, "You're from Kuroyuri, aren't you?"
He nodded, and Pyrrha winced, but the others looked confused.
"It was a town made from people who wanted to leave Mistral," Weiss informed us, "and then became a case-study on why widespread Aura activations are something to be avoided." Taking a deep breath, she shifted back to what I was starting to think of as her 'teaching' voice. "In large cities, Aura activation is more allowable," she gestured around us, "because the defenses there can handle the larger Grimm attacks. That's why combat schools are either located in cities or are heavily defended."
"But Beacon isn't," I argued. There was a dividing wall between the campus and the wilderness around us, but compared to Vale's it was tiny, and barely manned.
Weiss paused, brows knitting in thought, before she shook her head. "You're right. That's. . . I wonder why I never noticed that. There must be a reason. I'll need to look into why, but later." Breaking out of her thoughts, she looked back up at us, "Kuroyuri's citizens left the city of Mistral, made their own town, and acted like they had more defenses then they did. We don't know why, but they activated everyone's Aura-"
"For safety," Ren interrupted, more emotion in his voice then I'd ever heard from the laconic boy. "but. . . maybe for other reasons. You can work harder, longer if you have Aura. Semblances help as well. I was. . . young. I wasn't told why. They had the money to clear out all the Grimm before they started. It worked. For years. But more people came. Bandits weren't a problem. And. . . then the Grimm came back. It was a few at first. Then more. Then. . ."
"A Tide," Weiss nodded, understanding. "But then how did you survive it?"
"Your Semblance," Ruby gasped in horrified realization, and Ren nodded jerkily, shuddering, before he all the color leached out of him, and his breathing evened out.
"Yes, there was a Grimm Tide, much larger than the one we faced a few days ago," he stated, with an almost robotic amount of calm detachment that sent chills down my spine, and Nora winced, holding him tighter. "During the attack, my parents were killed in front of me, as were many others. Nora was an orphan who had wandered into town days previous, and who I had tried to help. With my parents dead, I felt I needed to save her, even if I died in the attempt. I discovered my Semblance that night, using it to protect both of us until morning, by which time most of the Grimm had left. We scavenged what we could, but, even with Aura, I was not strong enough at that time to bury what was left of my parents. We left, and I awakened Nora's Aura, to help her survive as well. It was the same mistake my parents made, but I did so when I wasn't using my Semblance, out of fear of losing her as well. Without it she would have died several times over. I-"
"Ren. Enough," Nora pleaded, holding him tight, and he turned to look at her, expression serene, and nodded, color starting to leak back into him.
"I apologize," he stated formally. "I lost control."
Looking to the others, they all looked as off-balance as I felt. "It's cool," I offered, lamely. I'd known he was an orphan, but not how he'd become one, and didn't really know what to say. "I mean, it's understandable that you'd be upset. Um, right, so, that explains it then. Yeah. Dumb question."
Pyrrha chimed in, "Maybe we should call it for today. Weiss, maybe a lesson plan would be better in the future. Do you require some assistance?"
"I, yes!" the girl quickly agreed, seizing on a safe topic. "Let's go to the library!"
With everyone pairing off, I started to think of what I should work on next, when I realized Yang had something to me. "I'm sorry, what?"
"You, me, rematch," she said, with a bit of forced bravado and cheerfulness. "Unless you're scared." Give me something to do, went unsaid, but not unheard.
I felt myself smile, able to do something myself, even as I glanced at Ren and Nora. I wanted to say something to help, but I knew that, at this point, there wasn't anything I could say, so I just nodded to her. "Bring it."
DR
A week of classes passed, and things started to calm back down. Trying to use my sword and shield, I completely lost my spar with Yang after Weiss' 'class', which had mollified the girl's concerns over her own fighting ability. Out of my room, I'd taken to wearing my mask, and a trip to Peach had turned into a weekly appointment to help reduce the scarring. She'd made the call to eliminate the interior scarring in the moment, but the injury had set now, and she'd warned me I'd likely be a Senior by the time it was effectively gone. The mask had passed without comment by most of the students, though I attracted quite a few stares at lunch when I had to take it off to eat, the table around us clearing out, my own team sitting with me in a show of solidarity that I really didn't know how to respond to.
I'd suggested just eating on my own, but, surprisingly, everyone objected to that, except for Ren, who remained silent. Combat class passed by without my getting called to fight, but I was directly told that I was still 'healing', along with a few other students who'd been worse off than I was.
Wednesday's afternoon trip was cancelled while the school still 'investigated the cause of the Grimm Tide', despite knowing it was me. Glynda had given me a blood red flag to infuse with my Fire, and I'd spent an hour a day doing so, the material seeming to drink in the flames.
Without a Wednesday afternoon class, Pyrrha made good on her promise to make sure we enjoyed each other more often than weekly, and had scheduled a training hall to, as she put it, blushing, 'practice your skills, with both your swords."
That had been a good afternoon.
Now it was Saturday, Weiss was excited about tomorrow's class on 'scroll usage', and Yang and I were once again facing off in another training hall.
"Not gonna use your sword?" Yang teased, closing in on me, punching but pulling it right before I could block, shooting me point-blank with her shotgun. It was one of almost a dozen new tricks she'd pulled on me today, having been hard at work to improve herself, and it showed.
"I wanna have a fucking chance of winning," I growled, leaping forward, claws outstretched, only for her to fall backwards not bothering to try to catch herself, firing her gauntlets and getting away as a leg snapped up in a kick.
It missed me by several feet, and she didn't land smoothly, rolling over and, flailing a little, as she stumbled to her feet.
Of the dozen new tricks, only about one in three actually worked, but, still, it showed initiative.
Charging her, having been told by Yang herself to not to wait for to recover, since she needed to practice that too, I was almost on her, hands outstretched, but had to jerk forward as, borrowing a move from her sister, she shot her weapon to the side, arm parallel to her chest, shoving her into a spin that brought her foot literally whistling around. I took it on a pauldron, her shin impacting me instead of the reinforced toe of her boot, and while I was pushed to the side, she yelped in pain, going back down again as she likely felt the agony of a bruised or broken fibula.
This time, when I charged, I flared my wings into existence, flapping them to give me extra speed. She started to recover, shoving herself up, but right into my path, and we slammed into each other, going down in a tumble of limbs, punches, and gunfire.
However, when we stopped, she was on top, sitting on my abs, one hand holding mine down while the other pointed her shotgun at my face, her firing of it aborted at the last second. "Got ya," She smirked.
I raised an eyebrow, and ran taloned fingers over her exposed stomach, just under her bellybutton, the blow I'd aborted enough to disembowel anyone without Aura. Her smirk, however, just grew and before I realized what she was doing she'd leaned forward, the motion all wrong for a headbutt, and she was kissing me, pressing herself against me.
It was warm, and enjoyable, but as much as I wanted to return it I couldn't.
Shoving her off, she grabbed me, bucking backwards as I reflexively rolled with her, finding myself on top of her, between her legs as she laid on the ground, hair splayed out. "This works too," she smiled, and reached up for me again, but I held her back.
"No," I said, and she paused, looking confused and hurt. "I, damn it. I. . . I'm with someone," I told her. I'd promised Pyrrha I wouldn't tell anyone about us, but I wasn't looking forward to explaining this without mentioning who it was I was dati-
"Pyrrha, right?" Yang asked, not letting go, smiling up at me.
My brain froze for a moment, "Um, who told you that."
"Pyrrha did," she informed me, her smiling now taking a teasing edge. "She didn't tell you, did she?"
Ignoring the blonde brawler as she pulled herself tight to me, working her hips along my quickly hardening self, I focused, nearly growling out, "What was she supposed to tell me?"
Yang laughed, her body shaking in ways that really didn't help my focus. "That we decided to share you, silly!"
". . . what."