I don't know how many years it's been but I'm finally here with chapter three. Hopefully, there is a bit of a quality increase because I've expanded my writing talent a little due to working on an actual book, got writer's block for that one but whatever, and I decided to come back to this, after I remembered it existed, to keep myself from getting burnt out on it. Anyway, enjoy guys.
Jaune stood on the metal pad as Ozpin went on about how teams would be formed, much to Ruby and Yang's disappointment, and the goal of this test. He didn't hear exactly what was said, only catching the jist of Ozpin's words, because he was too busy scanning the small valley of trees, mapping out any paths he might take, and keeping an eye out for places Grimm would likely be.
"YEA!" The ginger girl's scream of excitement dragged Jaune from his thoughts as she was launched off the cliff when the pad under her feet was revealed to be a launchpad, the same one currently under the feet of each prospective future student.
The boy with the pink streak in his hair was next and, unlike his friend, he didn't seem to care much either way about being launched from the cliff.
"Hey Professor Ozpin." Jaune called as the other students were launched off the cliff one by one into the forest down below, leaving only Ruby and Yang for now.
"Yes, Jaune?" Came Ozpin's calm reply as he raises his mug to his lips, watching as Yang got launched from the cliff as well.
"I hate you." Was Jaune's follow-up, voice as deadpan as the look on his face, as Ruby was launched from the cliff with a small excited look on her face, though she gave Jaune a small, quick wave before she disappeared from his sight with a 'thunk' from the launchpad.
"You'll get over it." Was the last thing Jaune heard from Ozpin, as calm and collected as ever, before the launchpad sent Jaune high into the air over the forest with its own 'thunk'.
"Well, that fucking hurt." Jaune gasped as he sat up from the small crater he left in the ground after his 'landing'. Muttering under his breath, Jaune stands and begins to make his way north to hopefully find the place Ozpin said to find, not noticing the butterfly that lands near the red pool at the bottom of the crater.
"Wonder who my partner is going to be?" Jaune asks himself as he walks, thinking over the people he had seen the day prior.
"I could see myself working well with Ruby. Her speed would let her get in and out with quick hits while I draw the attention of the Grimm. Yang might be good too, depending on how fast she is. If we have a similar speed we would be able to swap in and out of a fight, like a tag team." Jaune's voice carries through the trees as he ponders strategies with his potential teammate.
Cutting through the trees into a clearing home to some rubble and pedestals, the first thing Jaune notices is that the other students, minus Ruby, who he can hear above him for some reason, are being attacked by a swarm of Beowolves and Ursa with a Death Stalker closing in and a Nevermore circling above. A flash of red on the Nevermore catches Jaune's attention causing him to look up to see Ruby clinging to the Nevermore just before she lets go to drop into the middle of the other students, seemingly discussing strategy based on what he could faintly hear, while fighting off the swarm.
Drawing Crocea Mors, Jaune steps to join the fray when he notices the Nevermore rear its wings back in preparation to launch its feathers toward the students distracted by the other Grimm surrounding them. Knowing their aura won't block everything Jaune rushes forward calling out a warning, panic coursing through him for his fellow initiates.
"LOOK OUT, ABOVE!" Yells Jaune, pointing towards the sky with his sword, catching the brief attention of the group who quickly notice the danger and split off in different directions.
However, the attack didn't come, because the Nevermore had a new target, Jaune. In the brief moment Jaune let his panic spike, he had drawn the attention of every Grimm in the area. Due to the thought that the attack would be sent toward his friends and the rest of the group, the others thinking the same, no one was prepared for the assault of large, razor-sharp feathers to rain down on Jaune instead.
They were even less prepared for the sight that accompanied the deadly rain, the sight of the feathers tearing through Jaune like he was paper when his aura was supposed to at least block some of the damage.
Jaune could feel the hole in his chest from the feather sticking through him, impaling him to the ground, and dozens of cuts and gouges across his body from where the multiple razor-sharp edges of the other feathers had caught him.
"Well, that's not good." Jaune chokes with a small laugh as the swarm of Grimm begins heading towards him, though the laugh isn't one of panic or despair. It's one of some unknowable feeling to those who hear it, never having heard one like it in their widely varied and historied lives.
Ozpin pauses bringing his mug to his lips and looks down at the tablet on the small table between himself and Glynda, the sound of the laughter not matching what he sees on the screen. The sight of a young man impaled and dyeing, the laughter of a madman who was about to be enjoying himself immensely.
"Glynda, ready the response team." Ozpin's voice was calm as ever, despite the image on the screen, causing Glynda to glance at him with a questioning look on her face even as she was already halfway through sending the response team where they needed to go, though Ozpin's next words confused her even more.
"Don't deploy them yet though."
"JAUNE!" Ruby's worried cry died on her lips as she and the others rushed toward Jaune and heard his laughter, the sound of it giving them pause.
"Alright Nevermore," Began Jaune as he lifted his sword and cut through the feather pinning him to the ground. "Let's clip those wings." Finished Jaune as he pulled himself off the feather, the hole in his chest seemingly not a bother nor his gouges cut in his flesh that seemed to be smoking instead of bleeding. Pulling the part of the feather still in the ground out with hardly a grunt and propping it over his shoulder, Jaune revealed a grin that made everyone's blood run cold as his eyes tracked the Nevermore while it circled above.
"Jaune, what-" Is as far as Ruby gets before Jaune takes aim with the quill of the feather from his shoulder and throws it hard enough to rustle the hair of everyone present. The quill once again impales something, this time the throat of the Nevermore that it belongs to, the sight causing Ruby to freeze alongside everyone else a few feet away.
The group now gets a good look at Jaune, seeing that what comes from his wounds is, in fact, smoke. The same black smoke that comes from a wounded Grimm.
"Alright, before anyone asks. No, I have no clue why I'm not dead or why I have Grimm smoke instead of blood, it's been like this for a long time. No clue why it happens or when it could have started." Jaune quickly explains while ignoring a small aura of Grimm smoke beginning to surround him. "Right now, we have a bigger problem." Jaune adds as he points with his sword to the swarm of Grimm surrounding them.
The group, realizing that now isn't the time for questions, readies their weapons and turns to face the surrounding horde. Though Ruby can't help but express her concern for her fast friend.
"Jaune, are you sure you're ok?" She asks, glancing at the smokey hole in his chest where she can see through his chest to the back of the red-haired woman with the spear and shield.
"I'm good Ruby, let's just focus on getting out of here yeah?" Jaune says with a small smile as he glances at her before readying Crocea Mors, getting a nod of reluctant agreement from the short scythe wielder.
At her nod, Jaune smiles a bit wider just before the swarm of Grimm attacks and they all retaliate. "Hey, since we are all here for a bit, why don't we introduce ourselves?" Jaune calls out as he cuts through the torso of a Beowolf before thrusting his sword back up through the bottom jaw of an Ursa. "I'm Jaune Arc and I have no clue why I'm not dead." Jaune's lighthearted, but dark, joke doesn't land as well due the the hole in his chest bleeding smoke but it does still manage to draw a couple of chuckles from those around him.
"Well donut boy, you know who I am but to those that don't, I'm Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's big sis." Yang calls out with a small wave before she dodges under an Ursa swing and uppercuts it hard enough for its head to explode causing its body to fall back and crush a Beowolf that was behind it.
"Aww, now I want donuts. Ren, can we get donuts after this?" The ginger calls out, getting a nod from the boy with the pink streak in his hair, now known as Ren, as he shoots a few charging Grimm in the legs setting up the ginger girl to charge in and send them flying with a literal explosion from her giant hammer, turning the swing into a pose as she rests the hammer on her shoulder. "Yay! As for introductions, I'm Nora Valkyrie and that's Lie Ren, but everybody just calls him Ren. Now let's break some legs!" Nora cheers as she turns and golf swings an entire Ursa up and into the backline of the swarm of Grimm.
"Not cool you two," Jaune calls, somehow sounding offended and pouty even as he decapitates a Beowolf. "Just because I have a hole you can toss a ball through in my chest doesn't mean I'm a donut." Jaune pouts, getting a laugh from Yang and Nora while Ren chuckles quietly. "Ruby, you don't think I'm a donut, Right?"
Ruby, meanwhile, is dashing and dodging around using her semblance in combo with her scythe to cripple the movement of the Grimm, cutting entire limbs off with each pass while remaining untouched due to her speed. "Not entirely." She offers weakly. "Maybe a window?" She continues, getting Nora and Yang to laugh even harder. Realizing she just made it worse she stops on an Ursa's head just long enough to give Jaune an apologetic smile before she swings her scythe down into the Ursa's chest and fires her gun into the ground to use the recoil to launch her up into the air, causing the blade to tear through the Ursa's chest up to and out of its head before disappearing in a flurry of rose petals once more. "I'm Ruby Rose, by the way. Nice to meet the rest of you."
"Hello Ruby, I'm Pyrrha Nikos." Comes the chipper voice of the bronze-clad redhead as she uses her shield and spear in tandem to simultaneously block a swing from an Ursa and stab it in the mouth, the tip of her spear poking through the back of its head. "And Jaune was it, the fact you can survive a hole in your chest like that is different, yes, but I don't think it makes you that different. A semblance can be a lot of things." Pyrrha says reassuringly even as she spins her spear in her hand to bring the now rifle to her shoulder and fire a few shots into the thinning horde of Grimm.
Her consoling remark is met with a small scoff from the white-haired girl as she summons a symbol on the ground that immediately explodes into a large ball of fire. "Semblance, Pyrrha?" She asks almost disappointed. "Whatever is going on with him is not a semblance, that much is for sure. There has never been a recorded semblance that does anything like what's going on with him. Much less the fact that he is spewing smoke like a Grimm instead of bleeding." She continues as she pauses and performs a small curtsy to the group as a pillar of ice shoots out of the ground to impale a few Beowolves that jumped at her the moment she had her back turned. "Should need no introduction but I'm Weiss Schnee, the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company."
"That much is obvious heiress." Is the cool, almost immediate, reply from the girl with the bow in her hair as she seemingly gets bit by a lunging Beowolf but disappears only to reappear behind it as she stabs her swords through its chest. "But as you said, there hasn't been a recorded semblance like that. Just because something like it has never been recorded doesn't mean it can't exist." She continues as the blade on one of her swords folds down to turn it into a handgun before she throws it and uses the ribbon coming from the end of it to wrap up an Ursa, the blade embedding itself in the Ursa's flesh to lock it in place, and keep it still so she can easily dash forward and behead it. "I'm Blake by the way."
"Nice to meet you all, current situation aside." Jaune calls out while parrying the strike of a Beowolf into the lunge of another to stab them both.
"Na donut boy, I'd say the current situation makes this better." Yang calls out, knocking an Ursa off it's feet so Nora has an easy shot at its head, blowing it off with a swing of her hammer.
"You would Yang." Ruby deadpans as she passes her sister to dropkick a Beowolf in the side and send it into one of Weiss' glyphs just before it explodes.
"We are still getting donuts, right Ren?" Nora asks with an innocent curiosity in her voice despite the fact she is now sitting on the shoulders of an Ursa with the shaft of her hammer across its throat, choking it out as it tries to throw her off.
"I did say we would do that Nora, we just have to get through this and team assignments first." Ren replies as he palm strikes a Beowolf in the chest and causes its back to explode outwards, the spines in the Beowolf's back creating makeshift spears that stab through numerous Grimm behind it.
"Oh, Shit!" Jaune's voice suddenly cuts through the sounds of Nora now calling Ren a liar because he didn't mention having something to do first before getting donuts. "Thank you ren. Quick, who was the first person I met the eyes of?" Jaune continues, ignoring Ren pulling a cookie from his robe to pacify Nora for now. "I totally forgot about that." Jaune says to himself as he pauses to try and focus on remembering who he locked eyes with first, either not noticing or caring about one of the final few Beowolves lunging at him.
Ruby, seeing this, dashes in front of Jaune and cuts it down despite the seeming evidence that the beowolf wouldn't have actually injured Jaune all that much. "Jaune, are you ok?" She asks as she turns to look at him, her silver eyes glinting with worry.
Standing so close to Ruby, Jaune finally gets a good look at her eyes and, for the second time in his life, feels a deep primal fear well up inside of him.

All right, that should clear up chapter three. Not sure when the next chapter will be out but it shouldn't take as long as this one.