Aura and the Soul

(AN: This is where my explanation of aura somewhat differs from the canon aura. I'll be using these rules as a baseline since aura wasn't thoroughly explained in the show. So I'll add a bit of an original idea and HxH elements to it as well. So get ready for an exposition dump :D)

A few days after their visit to the Xiao Long household, Gray stands in the middle of his room, figuring out how to get in a comfortable pose. He closes his eyes, clearing his mind.

'Breath...' He inwardly thought. With his first word, he inhaled slowly and waited a moment before exhaling in the same slow and calm manner.

'Clear...' On his second word, he removed all thoughts in his mind, good and bad. This took a huge effort to do, as every single thing clouding his mind was of his plans in this new world. So many scenarios he has yet to plan for. How much should he influence the personalities of the main characters? At their age, they would still have no complete sense of personality yet, and Summer hasn't died yet, as painful that was to think of.

His first impression of Ruby's mother was of someone that could be relied on. Someone that just permeates kindness naturally, and at the same time she's firm and strong. Someone who could also be depended on. He had no idea if it was a sixth sense or the side effect of an experienced user of aura, but he knew that Summer could only mean good.

After what seemed to be almost an hour passed in his mind, he got ready for the third and most important step of this "meditation". He kept his mind calm, blank, and unmoving as best as he can, blocking out even his excitement of what he was about to do.

The first and second steps were only a prerequisite for the final step. He breathed in deeply this time, the serene air around almost faltering, and at once he released it.

RAGE, HATE, REGRET, ENVY, BURDENS, and Determination all come to a boiling point as his expression twisted from a quiet and tranquil demeanor to a distorted face filled with all those mixed emotions and memories rising up in his mind, and screaming through grit teeth. All of this emotional baggage resulting in him nearly passing out. Like a sudden tidal wave crashing on a low tide.

He slumped down, sitting on the floor. Mentally tired from the stunt he tried to pull off... again. Sixth time's the charm, and now that he had more experience due to the many other failures, he had more of a grasp on unlocking his aura. He felt it getting more unclogged with each attempt he made.

He looked at his arms with a slight blur in his vision. He could make out a grey-ish, almost silver, sheet of glowing light enveloping his arms and smiled.

'Fina'-f*cking-lly' He then drowsily dropped the rest of his body on the ground making a light thud as he did, passing out with a small smile on his face.

During Gray's studies of Aura, he found a few chapters in a book relating to the ways of unlocking one's aura.

Aura, in Remnant, is found in any living creature, excluding the Grimm. Aura, in the most basic of terms, is described as the manifestation of the soul. The soul, as mentioned in the book, is the core of ones' being and houses the aura reserves of a person, and replenishes it, if need be.

Alongside those two concepts, comes the term "spirit". Spirit, in Remnant terms, is the emotional aspect of a person. In more complicated exposition, the spirit is more of a conduit for ones' aura to be used. An essential part of the three, hence another reason why the Grimm don't possess an aura. Since the Grimm are confirmed to have no Aura and no Soul, their spirit is an incorporeal waste of space. If a being lacks a soul, they lack an aura. If they don't have a spirit, aura can't be utilized without it going volatile. And if they're soulless... then just look at those hate filled monstrosities that roam the entire planet.

'These three concepts are shown on a more philosophical view point, and cannot be ruled out by science.' is cited on Gray's notes.

A person's aura can be unlocked by one of two ways, the book states. The first, and most common, is having someone with an active aura unlock yours. The applications of this method varies with an individuals' skill in aura. The more control one has over their aura, the less painful the process of unlocking the subject's aura nodes.

Aura nodes are the points on the body where aura flows from. Aura nodes are, in a way, clogged but not blocked. Meaning that aura still leaks from the body, just not visible to the naked eye.

Immediately after the unlocking of a person's aura nodes, they will be able to freely control their aura with a calmed mind and strong instinct.

The second way to unlock aura is to undergo extreme mental, emotional, and/or physical stress(cough*Ren*cough), but that way is known to be somewhat damaging to ones' mind, as they should have both an overwhelming emotion and the willpower to direct it to their own aura nodes or could just leave the person traumatized in some cases.

So far, those were all the notes he could gather by reading through the book during this past week and skimming through it again this time to ensure he didn't forget anything important. Granted, the legibility could be improved due to him still not being used to his new body yet. He wrote all the major and minor points of the book and reviewed it again but there were no notes on what he experienced at that time.

Since his mind had been "transported" to his now very young body in Remnant, there has been a foreign feeling in the back of his mind that slightly distracted him a slight bit. It was subtle, but when he actually focused on the feeling, it made him feel euphoric and unnerved at the same time. It's like the feeling of drinking three espresso shots, while feeling slight prickles of energy all the while. But at the same time, when it lies dormant in his system, it feels like a fully drawn bow ready for it's arrow to be released. Potential energy just waiting to explode. It felt great. He was not sure if what he was experiencing was his aura waiting to be awakened or not. Maybe his body or soul has much latent potential to be explored.

'If I could unlock all of my aura nodes now, this could be a REALLY productive way to use my time. I'm in a child's body for crying out loud. And the way I literally made an essay and summary on that book for aura may draw suspicion. So training my aura in advance could help a lot. As the xianxia novels say "It's to build a better foundation." That's what they said right? Right, and I feel like asking my mother would draw even more suspicion to what they think I'm doing.' Was what he thought when he came home from Summer's place.

He decided to use the second method of aura awakening, thinking it would be best, since he knew he could control the emotions that riddled his mind from time to time.

Now here he is, sleeping on the hard wooden floor, glowing with his own grey aura, and happy to finally achieve his first step in the road to becoming a huntsman.

...

Some time after Gray's aura deactivated on it's own after he passed out, Titania and Tial are wondering why several beowolves and a pair of Ursai decided to interrupt their afternoon training session.

The ursai are Grimm that take on a bear-like appearance but keep the same characteristics as the beowolves. The notable differences between them are that they have larger and stockier bodies making them have stronger attacks and a more resilient defense with the cost of maneuverability, and the bone spikes on their limbs are replaced with smaller bone plates that serve as extra armor for the Grimm beast.

The couple draw out their weapons. Tial equips his pair of black tonfa. Since he was only in the middle of a training session, he decided not to bring his actual weapon and now settles with hard wooden sticks as his weapons. He now inwardly regrets that decision.

Titania brings out a sidearm strapped to her waist, a standard atlesian pistol, directly aiming at the beowolves that are now circling around them.

"There usually aren't this many that arrive at our front lawn in the middle of the day."

"What do you think is going on?"

"Maybe they sympathize with the pain of your training." Titania joked.

"Ha ha. Very funny." Tial said sarcastically.

In truth, both of them don't know the reason why this pack of Grimm decided to just gather round the area of their house. It didn't matter though, as both of them got into their stances with their backs facing each other.

"6. Just a bit of company, but not enough to be considered a crowd." Titania smiled and activated her aura. A sheet of glowing silver aura covered her body before settling as a faint glow. Tial did the same, but with his aura being an olive green color that also wrapped around his weapons.

The beowolves snarled at them while an ursa charged towards the huntsmen.

The ursa lunged at the huntress, only for her to already be out of the way, with Tial taking her place. With a split second, Tial positioned his feet and delivered an aura concentrated high kick to the beast's chin, stunning it for the time being.

He then dropped his tonfas and raised both of his arms over his head, making his hands and forearms create a very visible sheen of light, circulating with energy.

With a low shout, he smashed the head of the ursa, mutilating it's head with several small parts of the bone flying around.

Titania, now out of the ursa's range, becomes the new target for the small group of 5 beowolves that hurried themselves towards her. Once one of them were close enough, it tried to bite her, only to fail with her making a quick side step and hit it on the side of it's bone covered face with pistol in hand.

Using this to time to counter, she pointed at the cracked part of the beowolf's face and fired at will.

It showed slight resistance and tried to cover it's face only to be too late and drop dead on the ground.

Three of the beowolves saw this as a chance to attack and clawed at her with bad coordination. She simply jumped back and landed bullets on their torso and head areas, causing visible damage to one of them and killing the other two.

The last, yet to be damaged, beowolf actually managed to land a hit on her left arm while she was busy with the "bait".

It caused a wound with the severity of a simple scratch, with slight trickles of blood coming from the now clotted wound.

"That's it. I'm done playing." She announced, her brows now forming an angry look on her face.

The beowolf roared at her, standing on it's hind feet, it reached a height close to 7 feet tall. She assumed that this was the current alpha of the small pack, which was good, since she was about to pummel this wretched creature to death.

Beowolves are known to travel and hunt in packs, the smaller packs are less likely to have an alpha among their ranks. Alpha beowolves tend to look more menacing and stand at least 10 feet tall. The notable differences being: all alphas tend to have more white bone armor on their torso area and almost always stand on their hind feet when fighting an opponent.

The beowolf in front of her seemed to only be a rather strong regular beowolf that looked to have some experience to it's figure, as a few scars can be seen on it's arms and back.

The fuming huntress focused a very high amount of aura to her fists and legs, leaving the rest of her body with less defensive capabilities. She sprinted to the beowolf, arms to close to her chest in a boxing stance.

It roared once again and launched a claw, trying to slash her. She quickly weaved out of the way. The sound of the beowolf's side cracking was the only thing heard before it was sent flying towards a tree, almost snapping the trunk in half. It lied there for a few moments before slowly dissolving into thick black smoke.

Titania breathes deeply and exhales, letting go of her anger. She turns around to see Tial sitting on the porch, sitting comfortably on wooden rocking chair.

"Please don't mind me, I'm just watching the view." He said nonchalantly.

It seemed he already killed the other ursa, as it was lying on the ground as well, slowly evaporating into black smoke like all the other Grimm that were killed in this 'small scuffle'. She grabbed her pistol and put it back into it's holster before heading to him.

"Well did you enjoy it at least?"

"A bit more than I liked. Still feel bad about that tree though." Tial looked at the tree that the beowolf landed on. The trunk was snapped and for the most part, it looked ready to almost fall down. "Maybe you could send it flying over to Taiyang if you want."

They both shared a small chuckle.

"My bad."