6

"Come on, Jauney, just one more time!" Nora crowed happily, clapping and jumping from leg to leg excitedly while she watched him, "I know you can do it, just try harder! And remember to lift with your legs, or your spine will probably break in two~!" "Come on Jauney, if you can't even lift two hundred pounds without a problem, how will you ever move to lifting my personal weights?"

"I believe he is trying, Nora." Pyrrha said lightly, sitting on the bench next to where his head lay and watching him, waves of worry coming off her in the distant background. "He is simply not as strong as you, so this shall take much more time than you might presume." "Poor young man. My own strength training wasn't even close to this level."

"'M fine, guys." He grunted, squirming under the ginger to offset the weight he was trying to push up as she sat on his lap, her legs crossed and smiling down at him with that vicious excitement. "Jus' heavy is all."

"Nora, I think we should let him rest." Ren added quietly, amusement present in his thoughts and voice echoing off the otherwise empty weight room's walls. "He is obviously not at your strength level. We don't want him hurt." "I am surprised he could lift it at all, honestly. The wonders of Aura…."

"I guess…." She said quietly, reaching out to take the massive weight from him casually with one hand while hopping off him, making the man's efforts look like nothing. She tossed it onto a mat casually, turning to look back at him with a bright smile, "Still, you did better than I thought you would~ I'm impressed." "Thought your arms would snap off with that much weight~"

He grunted and sat up, panting heavily and groaning, "Oooooooh, I regret everything about talking to you right now." He said lowly, arms hanging almost limply at his side while he panted lightly. The ache began to fade quickly, his Aura healing the damaged muscle tissue rapidly and strengthening them, almost like normal exercise on triple speed.

"Oh, you have no idea how much you'll hate me tomorrow~ Today was just me seeing what you could do." She said coyly, turning to look over the weights in the room with an ever-growing, almost evil, grin on her face, "Might need more weights in here for us though~" "Not enough for me to make him as string as I wanna try and do... Might use my personal stuff, eventually."

"I hate you. So much. I can't even put into words how much I hate you right now." He groaned, standing up and letting out a long breath, reaching for a towel to wipe his bare chest clean of sweat. "And why am I not allowed to wear my shirt again, Nora?"

The ginger turned to the redhead with a grin and a raised eyebrow, and the redhead returned it with a smile and a raised brow of her own before Nora answered, "Because we say so of course~" "Pyrrha owes me so much~"

"...It isn't my fault I wish for a nice view, and don't wish to challenge Nora for Ren." "Do you require rest before continuing, or are you well enough?" "Please be well enough…" He accepted the water bottle she offered, using the excuse to turn around while he drank and hide the flush in his cheeks; though she seemed to not notice it anyways. Probably assuming that it was just the head and stress of the exercises.

"As long as I don't need to lift any more weights, I'll be fine, Pyr." He groaned, giving Nora a wary glance, "And you need to learn human limitations."

"Umm, Jauney, I am human." She said coyly, head tilted to the side like a curious dog.

"I stand by what I said." He said petulantly, turning from her giggling face and looking at Ren, "What do you have in store for me? Running a few hundred miles? Kicking the ceiling?"

"No. Meditation is where I am going to start you, actually." "It's where I started, after all." Ren corrected simply, smiling at him and gesturing at a pair of mats set across from each other a few feet away. Jaune raised an eyebrow at him curiously, but the other man simply walked to his mat and sat down, gesturing to the other for Jaune to join him.

"I thought we were going to be doing speed training?" Jaune asked in mild surprise, sensing the other man's amusement as he sat down, visible only by the slightest of smiles. "We're not going to run or something? I-I mean, that's what would make sense to me."

"I said that too, when I started my own training. My teacher made me run for five hours straight, until I collapsed. Do you know what he asked me the next day?" "How fast can you run right now, boy?" Ren paused for a moment, smiling thinly at Jaune and waiting for an answer he couldn't give without raising questions he dreaded to have asked. Questions he didn't know how to answer properly. "He asked me how much faster that had made me. I said I couldn't run anymore, and he answered by saying that was the point. Then he made me meditate with him."

Jaune sighed and sat across from him, shifting uncomfortably on the mat and watching Nora clean up the equipment, throwing weights onto her shoulder that he had struggled to even shift earlier in the day, and jogging across the room happily. "She's… odd."

"Yes, she is." Ren agreed, watching her for a moment as well. Jaune turned his head slightly, angling towards him more, and sensed contentment amid the noise of the academy. "Nora, I need you and Pyrrha to leave Jaune and I alone. Meditation requires… peace." "And you don't bring much peace…"

"O-kay~ Ren! Whatever you want, just give a yell~" Nora chirped happily as she lugged her weights further away from the group, with Pyrrha in tow, letting them practice in semi-peace across the room without bothering the two young men.

"I was hoping they would leave entirely, but this is good enough I suppose." Ren muttered, straightening his posture and turning back to Jaune without even a minor sense of annoyance, despite his words. "Have you ever meditated before? In any way?" "Unlikely, but I need to ask anyways. If only to correct whatever any teachers before have mistakenly taught him."

"No. I've… never tried it before, actually." Jaune admitted quietly, rubbing his thumbs together embarrassedly for a moment, "Sorry."

"Don't be. It is easier to fix problems before you have them, after all." "A least, sensei always said that. I wonder what he would say to Jaune about this? How would he explain it?" Ren said simply, smiling at him brightly and taking a seat on the ground, crossing his legs and resting his palms on each knee comfortably. "It's also an exercise in Aura control and a way to find and refine your Semblance. Focus inside yourself, maintain your breathing, and try to move your Aura."

Jaune crossed his legs, and did his best to mirror Ren's pose before closing his eyes and breathing as calmly as he could manage. Sitting as still as possible, letting his mind slip away for a bit and letting his Aura free, after a few minutes of trying. His semblance had a radius to it, he found rather quickly. About thirty feet in every direction, with more detail to the front where he was facing, and less to the back. Simple nuance from behind him, and outright thoughts and physical sensations to the front.

He felt the presences of his friends' minds more easily than before, reading thoughts and emotions without even glancing towards them. It was effortless to do. Ren's serene, calming presence and content feelings, comfortable with himself and his space. Pyrrha's anxiety, undercut by a previously hidden tentative joy, thinking about himself and Nora. He caught images of the girl sitting on top of him, and a flash of… something he couldn't identify. Nora was bubbly excitement through and through, happy to be alive and simply existing. Her thoughts bounced from thing to thing, first weights, then training, then Ren, and finally pancakes before he turned his attention away.

He felt all this in a rush of sensation and awareness, the echo of the same feeling all around him. Unlike before, it wasn't chaos and disorganized rabble that assaulted him relentlessly. It didn't cause a headache for him now, a fact that surprised him greatly. Curious, he reached out to another's mind. A young Faunus, staring at her feet while several men heckled her, pulling at her ears. He felt himself grow angry in the distance, but it was drowned out by her patience and understanding. She… well, she wasn't okay with what was happening, but she was more concerned for the young man than with herself. The leader of the group was just as odd. Angry, but not at the woman. At himself, and constantly questioning what he was doing, and why.

"Help…. Me…."

Pain, confusion, loss, regret, and a dozen more painful emotions drew his mental eye. Far down, below him and everyone else. In the earth and below the stone, drawing him down.

"Jaune!" He flinched, flailing and half leaping into the air before falling back down, panting heavily and sweating more than he had when he'd been lifting the weights. "Jaune, are you okay? Is your illness acting up? Do you need a nurse?"

Pyrrha was kneeling next to his head, resting a hand to his cheek and looking him over in panic, the emotion rolling off her in waves that made him suddenly nauseous and dizzy. "W-Water…." He croaked, surprised by how thirsty he was.

Ren and Pyrrha looked to Nora, who tipped an affirmative and took off to the cooler across the room, rummaging for a cup of some kind. Ren returned his eyes to Jaune's face, "You were panicking when I came out of my trance. What happened?"

With a jolt, Jaune realized he couldn't sense anything. Not even the base background emotions, or thoughts. "B-Bad dream." He grunted lightly, Nora sliding to his side with water and offering it to him, the young man decided on a half-truth, to help his guilt. "I saw a girl, and she was… alone. In pain, and I saw a… I don't know, a pod or something."

(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

Ozpin's mug fell from his hands, shattering on the floor of his office, and both James and Glynda turned to look at him in shock. His eyes were locked onto a Scroll in his hands, which shook lightly, and Glynda strode across the room to him quickly, eyes worried. "Ozpin?"

James joined them a moment later, looking worried in a much more reserved fashion, "Ozpin, talk to us. What is it?"

"I need you both to do me a favor." He said calmly, closing the Scroll and setting it on the desk, "Find me every scrap, record, and rumor about Jaune Arc. Every single one."