Ch 68: Jaunedice (6)

The roaring of the Ursa Major had attracted the attention of Team RWBY and the other members of Team JNPR.

"Did you guys hear that?" Ruby asks, concerned just before the fleeing members of Team CRDL run past them.

"Ursa! Ursa!" Russel warns as he runs. His eyes focused behind him on the lookout for any pursuit he ends up running into Yang.

"What?!" Yang is utterly unfazed by the young man running full speed into her and lifts him up by the front of his shirt before he can fall to the ground, "Where?"

Mohawk holds his hands in the air in surrender as he points back in the direction they had come, "Back there! It's got, Cardin!"

"Jaune!" Pyrrha drops her jar of sap as the implication of what Russel just said hit her.

"Yang! You and Blake, go get Professor Goodwitch!" Ruby immediately switches into leader mode and orders her teammates. Yang tosses Russel to the side, and after a nod from her and Blake, the two take off to follow their leader's orders.

"You two, go with them! There could be more!" Pyrrha orders Ren and Nora as she, Ruby, and Weiss deploy their weapons. After a quick nod from the two, the three huntresses-in-training take off running towards the danger.

They arrive just in time to see the Ursa Major jump over a fleeing Cardin and deliver a powerful claw strike to him, knocking him back and down.

"Crap! Crap, crap!" Cardin cries to himself as he tries to crawl away, no longer possessing the presence of mind to take the time to even climb back to his feet.

"Oh, no!" Pyrrha gasps at the sight.

As the Grimm looms over its helpless victim, it raises its paw and swipes its paw down, intending to finish Cardin off. However, instead of the soft, yielding feeling of its claws tearing through Cardin's flesh, its claws clang against cold, hard tempered metal. Jaune had dashed in between the Grimm and the downed man and blocked the blow. As Cardin and the girls watch on in surprise, Jaune and the oversized bear Grimm struggle with each other for a moment, before Jaune, with a great effort, pushes it back and lands a clean slash on its unarmored chest. Unfortunately, the strike is too light to cut all the way through the Grimm's hide, and Jaune is only able to wound it, not kill it.

Wanting to take advantage of the gap created by the wound the Ursa Major had just suffered, Weiss raises her Myrtenaster into a ready stance as she prepares to charge in to help.

"Wait!" However, Pyrrha raises her hand to stop her, wanting to see if Jaune can take care of this on his own.

The Ursa reels back from the blow a few steps before regaining its balance. As it does, it sends a heavy right paw crashing down towards Jaune. Jaunce rolls to his left, under the swinging claw and dodges, but the Ursa Major follows it up with a low sweeping strike from its left paw. Jaune dodges again by jumping into the air, but this time he has made a mistake. While Jaune is still hanging in the air, the Grimm sends a fast right jab his way and knocks him to the ground. Jaune rolls with the blow, at least he has learned how to take a hit from all the times Cardin beat him up in practice, gets right back on his feet, and charged back into the fray. He leaps into the air to deal a sundering blow to the giant Grimm but is swatted out of the air by it like an annoying gnat.

As Jaune raises back to his feet, he looks down at his scroll, he had remembered Glynda's advice and attached it to the inside of his shield so that he could see it during battle, and sees that his Aura is blinking red. He decides to ignore the rest, and arguably the most crucial part, of her advice and, instead of adopting a 'more defensive strategy' to stall for time till backup could arrive, charges at the Grimm once again with an angry battle cry.

As the young huntsman-in-training and the giant Grimm bear reach striking range of each other, time seems to slow down. Jaune is putting all his strength behind a swing aiming for the Ursa Major's neck while the Grimm is bringing its heavy right paw down on him. Whoever landed their blow first would win, and the other would die. The Grimm had the advantage of gravity, and, as Jaune put all his focus on his attack, his shield, which could have saved his life by blocking the blow, fell out of the way, leaving him wide open and vulnerable. Seeing all this from the shelter of the trees, Pyrrha raised her hand towards her leader. She had long ago marked Crocea Mors with her Aura and was able to easily use her Polarity Semblance to shift Jaune's shield up and into the path of the life-stealing paw.

As time returns to normal speed, the Ursa Major's paw skids across the surface of the shield and over Jaune as it forces him down on one knee but leaves him unharmed. Using the gap, his surprise defensive move created, Jaune leaps up from his crouched position and lops the Grimms head clean off. The deadly creature of Grimm falls to the ground dead and soon begins to dissipate into black smoke and ash.

Seeing that her leader is safe and unharmed, Pyrrha smiles and turns to leave.

"Wait, where are you going?" Weiss asked as she saw Pyrrha leaving.

"Yeah! We gotta tell them what happened!" Ruby agreed, the two teams had long ago shared what each of their Semblances were, so they knew what had happened, but they couldn't understand why she would want to just leave like this after saving Jaune's life.

"We could…" Pyrrha agrees but then smiles as she continues while looking at Jaune's straight back as he sheaths Crocea Mors at his waist, "Or perhaps we could keep it our little secret?" As she turns around to walk away once more, Weiss and Ruby exchange a look and a smile of understanding. They also appreciated the sight of their friend having regained some of his confidence.

Jaune walks over to a still sap covered Cardin and offers him a hand up.

"Holy crap, Jaune!" Cardin says as he accepts the offered hand with a smile and is lifted back to his feet.

"Don't ever mess with my team - my friends - ever again." Jaune warns Cardin, still gripping his hand, as he stares him dead in the eye, "Got it?"

Cardin looks back at Jaune with an apologetic look on his face but can't seem to get any words out as Jaune turns and walks away. His team had abandoned him, while this weakling he had constantly bullied had stood up for him and saved his life. Perhaps it was time for him to rethink some of his life choices, Cardin thought to himself as he watched the now straight back of Jaune Arc walk away from him. He would never forget that feeling of helplessness and fear or this weird feeling of loss that he couldn't place or understand.

######

Later that night, Jaune is standing alone at the place on the roof of the dormitory that Pyrrha had shown him before in his uniform, looking out at the distant green lights of Beacon Tower. As he stands there in silence, a voice calls out to him from behind, "No Cardin tonight?"

Pyrrha walks up from behind him to stand next to him at the edge of the roof, "I thought you two were best buds?"

"Pyrrha… I'm sorry. I was a jerk! You were only trying to be nice, and… I had all this stupid macho stuff in my head-" Jaune turns to her and apologizes, but before his apology can turn into a self-debasing rant, Pyrrha cuts him off.

"Jaune! It's okay!" the two smile at each other, reaffirming their friendship before Pyrrha continues, "Your team really misses their leader, you know."

Pyrrha turns and starts walking back towards the door, "You should come down! Ren made pancakes~" She informs him with a light trill at the end before continuing in her usual tone, "No syrup, though - you can thank Nora for that!"

"Wait!" Jaune holds out his hand and calls out to her. Pyrrha turns around at his call to see her leader looking decidedly embarrassed.

"I know I don't deserve it after all that happened, but… would you still be willing to help me… to help me become a better fighter?" Jaune asks her. Pyrrha turns her back to him, and a worried Jaune doesn't see the satisfied smile on her face as she looks at something in the shadows beyond the open door. Pyrrha turns back to him, walks briskly up to Jaune, and pushes him to the ground with a light shove.

"Hey!" Her leader whines as he lands on his tooshie.

"Your stance is all wrong." Pyrrha informs him in an evaluating tone as she stands over him with her hands on her hips, "You need to be wider and lower to the ground." She offers him her hand, which he graciously accepts, and they continue to hold hands after she pulled him to his feet, grinning at each other.

"Ray got it right on the money." Pyrrha said with a small laugh breaking the moment.

"Huh? What? Ray?" Jaune blinked at Pyrrha in surprise.

"Yeah, he had already told me way back after our first sparring class that you would reject my help at first. Because 'Boys have a lot of stupid macho stuff going on in their heads at our age', his words. And I should just offer my support and stand by you until you were ready." Pyrrha explained.

"Almost, I'm glad to say Jaune came to his senses even sooner than I had predicted." Ray's voice sounded from the door leading back into the dormitory, and Pyrrha and Jaune turned, still holding hands, to see him walking out of the darkness of the unlit stairwell and into the light of the moon with a smile on his face.

"Umm, thanks, Ray." Jaune said sheepishly as he realized it wasn't just Pyrrha who had been watching over him. All of his friends that he had been pushing away had been there for him, ready and willing to help. If only he would have the courage to accept.

"Oh, don't thank me." Ray shook his head and nodded at Pyrrha, "She's the one who did all the work and will be training you. I just got the ball rolling."

Pyrrha lowered her head to hide her slight smile. She knew he had been doing a lot more than just that behind the scenes, but also that he would never admit to it as he didn't see making those kinds of effort for his friends as something worth mentioning.

"Also, you don't need to worry about Glynda and Ozpin learning about your transcript." Ray told Jaune as he held up his scroll.

"How did you- No, what did you-" Jaune was afraid to ask as he exchanged worried glances with an equally concerned Pyrrha.

"They already know." Ray cut his question off short to inform them with a grin.

""WHAT!"" Jaune and Pyrrha shouted in surprise.

"Yep*!" Ray confirmed with a nod and a laugh as he popped his 'p' and then looked at Jaune with a mock scolding look, "You're not exactly a criminal mastermind, Jaune. Shortly after our initiation exam, they figured out that your transcript was faked but decided to let you stay anyways because of the potential they saw in you. It's written right here in your student file in black and white. It's not like your taking away someone else's spot after all. So few people even try for the Huntsman exam, let alone pass, that Beacon alone could house the entire population of all four academies without any problems." Ray walked up to Jaune and Pyrrha and held out his scroll to show them.

"Then why didn't-" Jaune tried to ask indignantly, but Ray cut him off again.

"'Why didn't I tell you before?' Hmmm. Because that *tap* wouldn't *tap* have solved *tap* the real *tap* problem. *tap* *tap* Now would it?" Ray told him in a lecturing tone as he tapped his scroll against Jaun's nose like a master disciplining his disobedient puppy.

"Haaaaahhhu. I guess not." Jaune admitted with a sigh, still a little annoyed at Ray for letting him go through all of that with Cardin for no good reason.

"By the way," Ray's confident smile growing into a teasing one, "how much longer are you two planning to hold hands."

""Wahh!"" Pyrrha and Jaune released their hands and jumped apart so fast that Ray had to laugh.

"Haha. Well then, I see my work here is done." He turned around to walk back into the dorm with a wave, "I'll leave you two lovebirds to your training-date. Hahaha." While he would love to stick around and tease them a bit longer, he had his two favorite twin assassins waiting in his room to be unwrapped.

As Ray's teasing laughter faded into the night sky, Jaune and Pyrrha stole fleeting glances at each other, faint blushes reddening their cheeks.

*cough* "So," Pyrrha eventually said to break the awkward silence, "Shall we try working on your stance again?"