Chapter 35: Interlude - Jaune

Regret was an emotion Jaune was currently struggling with immensely at the moment. He had a lot of things to regret, but mainly it was a toss-up between hating himself for not having started any form of physical conditioning before accepting Lapis' offer and hating the regiment itself.

The reason for his struggle was not solely due to the suffering and pain he was now undergoing for the third day in a row. Rather, it was because he feared where it would lead him if he kept training as Lapis intended for him. It was one thing to train for the purpose of getting strong and competent enough to be the hero he always dreamed of.

Ending up an unhinged power-obsessed manic like his teacher had not been a concern he could have even conceived of without witnessing the madman firsthand.

Not that Lapis' attitude was of any real concern for anyone, really. It wasn't like he was using his ungodly powers for anything beyond amusing himself for the fun of it. But, Jaune really didn't want to end up like him or any of the comic book archetypes that fit the mold of a training freak.

The concerning part in all of this was that even after just three days, Lapis' methods were already changing him. He could feel it with every resuscitation; every cursed healing and swallowed potion.

Every time he strained his body to its breaking point, Lapis would be there to wave his healing hands at him, offer him a couple of "Stamina Potion" and he'd be right as rain to keep pushing his limits. It had been a miserable experience the first maybe twenty times, but with every cycle, Jaune could physically feel the increase in his strength, speed and/or endurance.

The positive feedback loop lessened the pain involved. The fact that he was growing at a visible pace even to him kept him motivated. And after just three days he was already doing insane things like swimming the twenty miles from Vale to Patch while Lapis obliterated any Grimm that attempted to devour him.

How could things have led to this when it had started so simple?

The first day had just consisted of a bit of running and bodyweight exercises. Hundreds of miles and tens of thousands of body-weight reps. Ok, so maybe things had been a little crazy from the start, but how could they not be when the training started at 07:00 AM and ended at 07:00 PM with only a dedicated half-hour break in the middle for lunch?

After two days, the 23 hours of training didn't sound like much, but if you considered that a regular person could make good progress with 1 hour dedicated to the gym maybe five days a week and two to rest, that added up to about a month's worth of gains. It was insane what you could get away with when you didn't need to wait for torn muscle fibers or your exhaustion to recover.

Moreover, this wasn't just 23 hours of moderately challenging exercise to fit with a reasonable training routine. Every moment from the very start was meant to push Jaune to his breaking point. That meant not putting anything less than 75% of his max effort into any one exercise, be it cardio or resistance training.

Once he remembered all of that, it made the slightest bit more sense to Jaune why it was that he was currently 14 miles into his swim while fighting against the twenty-pound weights that constantly threatened to drown him. He'd already needed two Stamina Potions to keep him going and would probably need at least one more to make it to precious land once again.

Jaune didn't even break his stroke as a massive wave broke through the water a couple dozen feet away from him and splashed him for what felt like the hundredth time. It was probably closer to the thousandth Grimm that had been annihilated by Lapis while in the middle of one of their excursions, considering they had taken their runs outside of the Kingdom from the very first day.

Jaune fell into the trance he often found himself in once his body got into the rhythm of exercising. With the island of Patch barely seeming to get closer with every pass of his front crawling strokes, he lost track of how many times he repeated the action before the shoreline suddenly came into view the next time he bothered to look directly in front of him and not just to the side to get some more air into his lungs.

It turns out he didn't need the third Stamina Potion to make it from Vale to Patch.

"Welp, that was a gross miscalculation on my part," Lapis said while holding onto Jaune's shoulder and blasting a terrifying pulse of energy that flash-dried him. "I forgot how long it takes regular people to swim, so the fact that you managed to even cross the twenty miles in just five hours is kind of unbelievable; at least according to my Scroll. Good job."

"How long did you expect it to take me?" Jaune asked, taking the Stamina Potion anyway since he would probably need it to finish whatever next nightmarish exercise Lapis could cook up in his demented head.

"I don't know, maybe two, three hours? In hindsight, it was pretty dumb to compare you, or any civilian really, to myself. Believe it or not, the person who trained me was only a little less demanding than I am towards you. That damn old man didn't even have unlimited potions in stock to give me hope!"

"I feel soo lucky," Jaune snorted.

"You know, that's the closest thing to a complaint I've heard from you so far. What, are you thinking of giving up already?" Lapis asked.

"No… Not really. Like, not until I get into Beacon at least. I can handle your training," Jaune lamely said.

"Good!" Lapis smiled as he patted him on the shoulder. "Now let's get something to eat before hitting up the nearest gym. We'll work on adding a few dozen pounds to all your maxed-out reps and I'll teleport us back to Vale at the end of the day."

"Of course you will," Jaune gave him an exasperated look. "Jeez, man, is there some sort of power you don't have? Super speed, strength, endurance, flight, explosions, forcefields, sensing, and now teleportation… I wouldn't be surprised at this point if you told me you could turn into a Grimm or copy other people's Semblances."

"I can kind of do both. I have a transformation that most people would think passes for a Grimm, but it really isn't, and I can steal or seal away Semblances if I want instead of copying them."

"Bullshit!" Jaune reflexively called out, "There's no way freaking way you have close to ten powers that each could make someone the main character in a comic."

"You doubt me? Your teacher!" Lapis dramatically pointed at Jaune. "After all the bullshit you've already seen me do?!"

"Grimmification and messing with Semblances is too overpowered to be a real thing," Jaune ignored his teacher's outburst. It wouldn't be the first time Lapis did something ridiculous to make a point. Though, he was sincerely hoping the man was joking this time around.

"Witness me!" He said before turning into a Grimm… thing.

"Huh," Jaune was a lot less intimidated than he anticipated given how uninvolved the transformation appeared.

Usually, in comics and TV, there was a big power-up sequence, with the ground shaking, lightning flashing, or some other physics-defying phenomenon preceding a transformation like Lapis'. Instead of any of that happening, Lapis had just kind of changed outfits in the blink of an eye, died his skin a paper-white tone, adopted some sort of tribal tattoos... And lost his heart?

"Is that hole real?" Jaune asked as he carelessly moved to poke his finger through the cavity in Lapis' chest.

"Of course it's real! Why does everyone always doubt me?!" Lapis kicked at the sand rather childishly. "At this rate, I'm really going to end up having to blow up a mountain just to be taken seriously," he muttered under his breath.

"Alright, alright!" Jaune sighed. "I believe you already. Not that there's really anyway you could prove you have the power to manipulate Semblances with just me around, but if you're already this broken. Why the hell can't you be any more busted?"

"See, I knew there was something special about you, kid," Lapis beamed as he flickered over to Jaune's side and wrapped a shoulder around him. "You're one of the few with faith, a truth modern marvel in this bleak and terrible world."

"Why—" Jaune tried to get away from the side hug, but found it literally impossible to budge Lapis' body in its current state, "—are you like this? You're even more random and unhinged than usual today." He gave up on trying to regain his freedom.

"Huh? Oh," Lapis let go of him and turned bashful, "Yeah, that's probably just cause I'm a Shadow Clone. The original would probably never live down acting like I just did and all my previous incarnations have done in your presence. But, we— Shadow Clones, that is — don't have to worry about that because our limited lifespan and the nature of our existence make us entirely free from any possible inhibitions."

Right, right… The Lapis in front of Jaune right now wasn't the "Real, Original Lapis," it was just a perfect autonomous clone he made to serve as Jaune's trainer. Every day a new incarnation of this clone would come to oversee Jaune's training, but it wasn't actually Lapis himself who was present. The implications of there being multiple incarnations of Lapis who were summoned on a daily basis were only now sinking in.

Of course, they were going to end up behaving strangely when compared to the original True Lapis. If they weren't, they'd probably be constantly living in existential dread and likely turn hostile to their creator. Making the clones free from inhibitions and utterly fearless probably played an integral role in keeping them useful.

Still, that didn't help paint Lapis in a great light, considering this was what he might actually look like deep inside. Possibly; maybe; only one version of him, anyway.

"Ah shit, here we go again with another ambush," Lapis sighed as he slowly lifted his hands up and framed them into a rectangle which he looked through with the one eye he kept open while his tongue slipped out to the side.

"Wha—"

The whistling of a distant gunshot cut Jaune off before he could ask what Lapis was talking about. The next thing Jaune knew, his transformed teacher was standing exactly where he had been, but his hands closed faster than he could react. When Lapis opened them again, there was a large metal fragment in his palm.

"What the hell is this? Fifty BMG?" Lapis asked as more gunshots rang out and his hands flickered before various vital spots on his body to stop them from being hit.

"How many of these do I have to catch before you realize that's not going to work Ms. Little Red Riding Hood?" Lapis asked before he seemingly gave up on catching the bullets and just let them harmlessly crash against the bone-white shade of his skin in his transformed state.

Tracing a path towards where Lapis was looking, Jaune saw the slightest hint of red hidden between the trees several thousand feet away, where the beach turned into a forest. It was a wonder to him how Lapis expected whoever it was, way the hell over there, to be able to hear him.

"You know, Jaune" Lapis said, drawing the blond's attention, "This show of trust in me is very appreciated and all, but I think you need to get your survival instincts checked. I wouldn't let you get hit by any of these bullets and the sniper seems competent enough to not hit you by accident, but that doesn't change the fact that you're completely vulnerable to getting one-shotted by any of them."

Jaune let the words simmer at the back of his head, but he didn't really take them to heart as he watched Lapis begin breakdancing his way into blocking the bullets that for whatever reason still kept being shot his way. Weren't snipers supposed to have small-capacity magazines? Jaune wasn't counting, but he could have sworn dozens of bullets must have been shot by this point.

As he was considering the logistics of how many times the sniper must have reloaded, he was distracted by a bullet having shot past Lapis and into the sand behind him. Looking at the transformed man, he didn't look injured, so it was a wonder how the bullet managed to—

"Ah, right, because you have a hole in your chest," Jaune nodded to himself as if he had just solved one of life's greatest mysteries.

"And now she's propelling herself over here," Lapis sighed as he flipped a knife he brought out of absolutely nowhere.

Lapis blocked the blur that made its way right in front of him before materializing into a scythe-wielding girl. It was ridiculous how Lapis' barely foot-long knife was effortlessly holding back the leverage of the nearly six-foot-long scythe.

"This is not the best way to greet someone, you know?" Lapis said as he rotated the wrist holding his knife and managed to unbalance the girl.

"Ah! It talks," The red-caped girl yelped as she fell on her butt.

"What the hell do mean it?! I'm a perfectly normal— Ok, maybe slightly abnormal, but still totally recognizable humanoid male and I demand to be recognized as such! You just have to look past my Grimm-like appearance and focus on the fact that I'm perfectly capable of talking things out like a civilized person."

"What? I'm confused," the girl said as she scrambled on the sand to stand up. When she finally managed to get on her feet, she asked, "Are you a bad guy or not?"

"What do you think?" Lapis rolled his eyes at her. "Can't you tell I'm totally evil by the way I'm standing here and talking to you while not putting up any effort into attacking you back?"

"Is that a trick question?!" She transformed her scythe into its gun form.

"Oh my fucking…" Lapis returned back to his normal appearance and made a show of presenting himself. "If this doesn't clear your doubts then I swear to all the Gods that may or may not exist that I'll smack you if you decide to continue attacking me."

"Oh, um. Sorry…" The girl quickly folded her scythe-sniper thing into a manageable and compact block of metal as she shrunk in on herself.

"Yes, yes, you're forgiven. Come on, Jaune. This was a fun little side quest to stop for, but we should really get something to eat before we continue your tortu— I mean training," Lapis said, chuckling to himself as he began to walk away from the coastline and further into the island.

As the girl turned to Jaune with an alarmed look, the blond-haired man sighed and said, "He's joking. Well, sort of. That's what he calls my training. Although, to pretty much anyone else it probably would be considered some kind of torture."

"Do you need me to call the cops, or…"

"No, it's fine. I need it if I hope to be good enough to get into Beacon next year," Jaune said.

"My sister's going to Beacon next year! Are you in Signal Academy like us, because I don't think I've seen you?"

"Uh, no. I don't go there. That's kind of the whole reason why I need this crazy training. Lapis is getting me ready despite having almost no training, prep knowledge or my Aura unlocked yet."

"Well, uh, good luck with that."

"Jaune! Come on, already," Lapis said while kicking his legs up in an overexaggerated manner to simulate running in place. "What. Are. We. Going. To Eat! If you don't decide in the next ten seconds, I'm going to choose the furthest goddamn restaurant from our current position and make you sprint the whole way there!"

"Ah, crap. Crap! Anything is fine. I don't really care what we eat!" Jaune yelled as he ran over to catch up to Lapis' retreating figure.

"Anything is fine? I guess that means we'll be making that sprint a reality," Lapis taunted.

"No! Damn it, why can't I think of a single type of food? Patch-ean? Vale-itian? Are those even a thing?!" Jaune was beside himself with grief as the idea of having to sprint across the entire island and probably make his lunch at least an hour overdue became more and more likely with the passing of time.

"I'm going to need the name of a restaurant in five seconds or you're done for, my guy!"

"That's not fair! You have my damn Scroll." Tears threatened to leak out of Jaunes eyes. How was he supposed to pick a restaurant when he had given up his Scroll to Lapis so that it didn't get irreparable water damage while swimming his way over from Vale?

"You could go to Chef Chen's," the red-caped girl from before said as she effortlessly kept up with Jaune. "It's my household's go-to Mistralian takeout and pretty close to town's entrance from this side of the beach."

"Yes! That! Chef Chen!" Jaune said in between breaths as the breakneck pace of his sprint made it almost impossible to talk.

"Hmm… Alright, but it's going to cost you, Jaune. Why don't you thank your savior by treating her and asking her to join us," Lapis narrowed his eyes at Jaune as he looked between him and the interloper.

"I don't care! Please, Ms. Friendly Badass Sniper Lady. I really, really don't want to run across this entire damn island," Jaune said as he was really starting to feel the ache in his muscles from his earlier swim. Who knew it would be so agonizing across his entire body to break out into a run after a 20-mile swim when he hadn't gotten a Healing treatment from Lapis?

Probably the unhinged incarnation of the man. Why else would he want Jaune to go through it so adamantly?

"Ok?" The girl said, looking… Jaune couldn't really describe it as he was too busy trying to not to think of anything beyond keeping up with Lapis' established pace.

"Alright, I have the address," Lapis said. "And, would you look at that? It's only four-odd miles away. Let's see…" The man manipulated his Scroll for a few seconds before speaking up again, "In comparison to the sixteen-ish miles you would have had to run, this is barely even a warm up."

"Warm up?! What the hell do you call that swim from Vale?!" Jaune yelled.

"Your morning training, my dear pupil," Lapis mimed a sage and ancient voice. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single…" The accent was lost as he broke character, "Wait, that's the wrong proverb. The point is, we're barely getting started."

Jaune kept his thoughts to himself as he focused on completing the run. At the pace they were going, he only needed to last about twenty or so minutes. When Lapis finally started to slow down, Jaune fell into his training trance once again and crashed into him to bring himself back out of his tunnel vision.

As Jaune lay panting on the floor and staring up into the sky, right in the middle of the sidewalk, Lapis' face slowly came into the side of his vision.

After a couple seconds of letting Jaune catch his breath, Lapis said, "You know what? I'm feeling generous today, so if you can manage to get back on your feet before a minute passes, I'll call our training day off thirty minutes early."

Immediately, Jaune began to fidget in vain to try and pick himself off the summer-sun-warmed concrete floor. When he realized his arms felt like they were made of jelly and his legs had the structural integrity of a wet paper, he rolled onto his back like a turtle and struggled pathetically to get up on one shaky knee.

"Ooh, tough luck," Lapis said as Jaune was stuck between lifting himself up from one knee and stopping himself from collapsing in on his trembling body. He grabbed Jaune's shoulder and flooded his body with his "Healing Light" and almost instantly returned Jaune to a fighting-fit state.

Now only mildly exhausted from the 4-mile sprint and whatever else he'd exhausted of his Stamina from the swim over, Jaune could pick himself up rather easily. The blond-haired man still had a few issues understanding how a "healing power" could resolve his exhaustion problem better than stamina potions could.

The way Lapis once tried to explain it to him was that if he could think of himself as a video game character then his stamina would be permanently lowered by his torn muscle fibers which, after being healed away, would allow him to return to his actual current stamina level. It sort of made sense, but then again, not really, so Jaune considered it another one of his trainer's myriad bullshit powers.

"Right, so I'll have one of everything," Lapis said to the man behind the cash register. "And you guys?" He added after looking their way.

"One of… Everything?" The cashier asked.

"Yeah, one of every item on the menu for me. Keep that separate from their order," Lapis said.

"Special combination meal number fourteen with a ginger ale for me please!" The girl said.

"Screw it, two of those, then. I'm sure it'll be alright," Jaune sighed.

"That'll be 69,420 Lien and 1,738 Lien respectively," the cashier said.

Lapis handed over a 100,000 Lien card and after declining the change, the cashier decided to forgo taking Jaune's money for his food.

"Tch, so much for this being a punishment," Lapis squinted at Jaune menacingly.

"Why are you even eating? Aren't you a clone?" Jaune asked.

"Food still tastes good," Lapis rolled his eyes, "and it's not like the original really cares with all the money he has lying around. It's about the experience, not the calories."

"Sorry, I can't help but ask if you're like a secret solider experiment thing? First with the Grimm thing, now with the clone talk and endless wealth. What the heck are you?" Their plus one asked.

"I'm a lot of things, but not anything you just described. I don't keep my existence a secret, otherwise I wouldn't be openly talking about it. Nobody's experimented on me… unless you want to count my powers, but I don't. Also, I'm nobody's soldier to command, though, I might kill off a bunch of Grimm and handle bad guys if they get in my way."

"Right now, though, I'm just acting as Jaune's teacher, because I owe his dad and having a pupil to teach is an amusing experience that the original can appreciate," Lapis said. He then dramatically pointed at her as he loudly asked, "What about you!? Who the hell are you to be butting in on our business in the middle of a random Wednesday when you look like a high school sophomore?! Are you some kind of delinquent, skipping school?"

"What? No! I go to Signal Academy and the school day was canceled because of an emergency situation taking place at Beacon over on Vale. Most of the combat teachers and a few members of the administrative staff had to go help out and sort out whatever issue's going on over there so school out until at least Friday."

"Those lazy pieces of… What the hell do they so many people for?" Lapis muttered to himself. "I already resolved everything before the sunrise."

"You were at Beacon?" The girl asked.

"Yeah," Lapis scoffed. "I got word that it was under attack right before it could be considered early morning. So, I went over there, stopped the attackers, put out the burning buildings and healed everyone I could before dawn. There's a bunch of property damage leftover and around thirty-ish casualties, but no Grimm or traitors to mankind to fight against, so I don't understand why they're drawing so many people in from around the world. Ironwood and his help from Atlas are one thing, but even teachers from this little island are being called over? For what?!"

"Woah, woah, woah. Rewind back a bit. What do you mean traitors to mankind?" Jaune asked.

"I don't really feel like talking about it for the hundredth time so you'll just have to wait for Ozpin to figure out how he's going to present the situation. I'm sure he'll have something to say about the attack by the end of the day."

"Wow. So, you're like a real deal hero, then, right?!" The red-caped girl asked with eyes that literally glimmered.

"What? No, definitely not, " Lapis frowned. "I found out that the assholes who launched the attack did so because of me and to try to get leverage against me. And, because I didn't prepare as best as I could, I didn't have enough resources to help out everyone who got caught in the crossfire. Thirty-two people died because of me."

"The attack on Beacon was to get at you? Why?" The girl asked.

"You've already seen a bit of what I can do when you tried to attack me," Lapis' frown was firmly etched on his face. "That is literally less than a fraction of a percent of the total power the original me has when he's not splitting his energy up to sustain us clones. These "traitors" I mentioned didn't like the fact that someone as powerful as me had already hindered their plans and captured one of their members, so instead of going after me they went after the people in my life."

"That is literally straight out of the plot from Issue Twenty-One of X-Ray and Vav," Jaune said.

"The one where we follow the duo in a serious universe, with actually competent villains and supervillains? Where X-Ray dies in the first part and Vav becomes an antihero who fights for revenge moreso than comedic justice? Eh, I can sort of see it," the girl said.

"Right? Lapis is totally like that version of Vav if you replaced the crude humor with unhinged rants and a chaotic good alignment. Oh, and if you made Vav totally broken with like five more powers that he always has hidden away on top of whatever nonsense he reveals just to amuse himself."

"Wow, and he's training you to be like a sidekick?!"

"Probably not," Jaune immediately denied.

"Ha!" Lapis laughed.

"Aw, crud. That would have been classic for a serious Vav."

"Hey, I'm not a comic book character! I'm as real as you and Jaune," Lapis defended himself.

The cashier called out to the group, letting them know that Jaune and the girl could eat their order while Lapis could get started on his. From there, the conversation remained inane as Jaune and the girl, who eventually introduced herself as Ruby Rose, continued to annoy Lapis by comparing him to fictional characters.

"The fact that you're eating like the stereotypical protagonist in those Mistralean comics is not helping your case," Jaune said, indulging in the opportunity to antagonize Lapis and not have it the other way around for once.

"Laugh it up now while you still can," Lapis snorted as he inhaled a stream of noodles, "Once I'm done with this stereotypical meal, we'll see how well you can handle a classic training montage."

Lapis' words quickly shut Jaune up and made him start sweating as he could already feel ten generations of his muscles that had yet to even form, ache from the depths of his soul.

"How bad could it possibly be?" Ruby asked before taking a sip of her soda. "At Signal, I train for at least three hours a day and my sister who's a senior tells me there are days where her class goes at it for the full school day."

"Do you really want to come along and find out?" Lapis looked at her strangely. His expression then turned devious as he chuckled to himself sinisterly and continued saying, "Yes… It would be great if you came along to maybe give Jaune a bit more encouragement. You wouldn't even have to participate, just being around and sharing your honest opinion on how far he still has to go to be good enough to make it to Beacon would be great."

As Jaune flashed his teacher a look of utter betrayal, Ruby said, "Sure. I mean, it's not like I have anything else to do with school out. I was planning on hunting some Grimm for the rest of the day to practice my techniques, but following you guys has been fun so far, so… why not?"

"Good, good," Lapis grinned maliciously as he speedran eating the rest of his food. When he was done, the group went to the nearest gym to get Jaune started for his post-lunch training.

"Alright, champ, let's start with the calibration process for… Eenie, meenie, money, moe… Deadlifts to start it is!" Lapis said as he loaded up a barbell with 200 lbs.

When Jaune pulled the weight, Lapis added another ten pounds until Jaune could barely pull 245 lbs. Lapis then dropped the weight down to 190 lbs and demanded Jaune continue doing reps until he literally couldn't anymore.

After 11 reps, Jaune nearly collapsed before he dropped the weight. Lapis healed him and the cycle for the next hour was set. 11 Reps, heal, catch his breath and repeat. When 11 Reps increased to 15 before total failure, Lapis added 5 extra pounds.

After thirty minutes, the initial 190 lbs increased to 200 lbs and a small pool of sweat — and maybe one or two tears from the sheer exertion of it all — had formed under Jaune.

"Uh… Is that safe?" Ruby asked as Jaune continued to pump out reps like a well-oiled machine; his sweat-covered skin glistened like one too.

"Sure is!" Lapis beamed at her. "And if the Healing Magic doesn't work then the Potions definitely will."

"Speaking. Of… Can I. Have a. Stamina. Potion," Jaune grunted in between reps.

"Once you're done with that set, sure," Lapis said before reaching into his inner jacket pocket and pulling out a vial of green liquid.

When Jaune dropped the barbell, he caught the Stamina Potion Lapis tossed his way and downed it in a single gulp. "Ugh, I had the sour apple taste of these things," he muttered before tossing the empty vial back.

"Be glad these are my personal concoctions and not the Uncommon Grade trash the Gacha Gods usually give me. Not only do those inferior potions only heal ten percent instead of the fifty mine are capable of, but they taste like battery acid."

Jaune continued to add another 15 lbs to his working weight for deadlifts before moving on to Squats.

"I take back what I said about you. You're definitely evil," Ruby said as she moved away from Lapis. "No good and sane person would move from deadlifts straight into squats like this. If you can cheat the recovery time then at least give the guy a break by working on his chest or arms."

"Where's the fun in that?" Lapis asked. "It's because we can cheat that I'm making him develop his lower body and back the most. That's the key to a solid foundation."

"More like nightmare fuel for everyone who works out," Ruby huffed.

"Do you deny my results?" Lapis challenged her, "Two days ago, Jaune couldn't even squat one-fifty and now look at him."

"R-really?!" Ruby balked as considered the implication. Right now, she was watching Jaune rep out over a dozen 200+ lbs squats. To have gone from not being able to lift 150 to the display he was putting on right now in just two days was…

"That's crazy! Even beginners with no training experience who can take advantage of newbie gains take months before they can add fifty pounds to their working weights."

"What do you think all the healing and stamina quenching I'm subjecting poor Jaune into is simulating? Be honest, do you think he can get strong enough to put up a fight with your sister at the pace he's improving by the end of the year?"

"...I don't really know," Ruby frowned. "You're completely ignoring the natural progression of things, so I'm not really sure. Sure, his physique is probably going to be as good as it gets if he continues with this crazy regiment, but Huntsmen fights are usually decided by fighting experience and technique."

"Ooh, that might be a slight problem," Lapis lowly said. "Swordsmanship I can teach, but I haven't really bothered with Aura Control or other Aura-based techniques. I should probably try to pick those up one of these days."

"You can't just pick up Aura techniques! Those take a lifetime to master," Ruby all but yelled.

"Is that so?" Lapis smirked as he closed his eyes. When he opened them, his eye color had taken a crimson tone, and out of his pupils had phased out three commas which slowly revolved around his pupils. "Well, go on and show me a technique you think I won't be able to just pick up."

Ruby took a hesitant step away from Lapis which Jaune could understand as even he was unnerved by the appearance of Lapis' eyes. After a second, though, she recomposed herself and did as Lapis asked. Her red aura flickered to life around her before it faded from most of her body and gathered into a bright and solid shield that covered his torso.

"This is an Aura Shield. It's an application of Aura Control to manipulate the natural forcefield Aura grants people to make a stronger defense for a smaller area of effect," Ruby said. Beads of sweat started forming on her forehead as the bright aura that wrapped around her torso shrunk down into an inch-thick plate that only covered her neck.

"The faster and smaller you can compact the shield, the better your technique," She said before releasing the Aura Shield and taking a deep breath. "It's taken me years to get good enough to compact all my Aura small enough to cover just my neck and supposedly that should be good enough to stop even an Ancient Death Stalker from piercing through with its scorpion tail. Not that I'd ever manage that with how slow it takes me to get it this small…"

"Interesting," Lapis said as he fell silent. He healed Jaune up and then closed his eyes before a mass of black Aura exploded out from around him. In the span of ten seconds, his Aura condensed into itself obscuring the parts that covered Lapis more and more as its area shrunk to half his body.

"Damn, this is pretty hard," Lapis grit his teeth before bringing out even more Aura which somehow shrunk the already compact and opaque Aura Shield even further. He managed to make it condense into a veil that covered his torso much like Ruby initially did before giving up on the progress and sighing.

"I get the feeling I was doing it wrong and didn't want to risk using up too much power and popping myself. Oh well," Lapis shrugged.

"Holy frigging crap!" Ruby whisper-yelled, "That was good enough to pass the graduation requirement for Signal! Was it really your first attempt?!"

"Yes, but if you recall the eyes, I was cheating so it's not really all that impressive. Just forcing the compression with a boatload of Aura doesn't make for much of a technique," Lapis hummed, "Hmm, I should probably practice this in between healing Jaune."

For the next hour or so, that's what Lapis did. Apparently, his progression was unbelievable if Ruby's constant surprise and reactions meant more than mere pageantry. Jaune could believe it when towards the later half of the hour Lapis was the one giving Ruby pointers instead of it being the other way around.

As Jaune moved on to work his upper body with dips, Ruby "taught" Lapis how to use Aura Sense. After another hour passed, Lapis would somehow achieve exemplary mastery of the technique and share his insights with Ruby before the cycle would repeat four more times.

While Jaune pumped out thousands of weighted dips, shoulder presses, hamstring curls and calf raises, Lapis mastered the art of Channeling Aura, performing Body Augmentation, Accelerated Healing, and Aura Recovery. Somehow, in all cases, he would take less than an hour to be good enough to teach Ruby and keep her immensely grateful with his benign-sounding tips.

"How am I preventing any loss during channeling? Probably because I'm keeping the flow as a complete circuit to and from my knife instead of just pushing all my Aura into the weapon. It's the same for Body Augmentation, just speed up the circuit as much as possible to amplify the effect to your limits."

"Why is my Accelerated Healing much brighter even with lower output? I'm pretty sure the efficiency is determined by how high you can maintain the frequency. See how it's flickering slowly and weak now, but the faster I make it, the brighter it gets?"

"Aura Sensing is kind of easy when I have Ki Sensing and Pesquisa to draw experience from. Unfortunately, there's no real trick to it besides getting used to entering the right state of mind as quickly as possible. My only advice for getting better at it is timing how quickly it takes you to enter the Aura Sensing state and repeatedly going into it while focusing on the feeling. I guess, getting better control of all the other techniques that use Aura would help make this kind of training go by faster, but I'm not really sure since I can't get any faster than I already am."

It was nearing 7:00 PM when Lapis finally called off Jaune's training for the day. The extra hour or so since Ruby had taught him the last of the Aura techniques she knew had been spent discussing everything she could think of that was relevant to becoming a Huntress that she had learned at Signal.

"Well, this has been an enlightening experience. Not only did I get all these nifty new techniques, but I also got all these notes to systematically dump on Jaune as his homework. Now I feel like I owe you," Lapis told Ruby as both of them watched Jaune chug what must have been his fifteenth half-gallon jug of water and hundredth king-sized protein bar since he had begun his gym training around midday.

"What?! I'm the one who should owe you. Who knows how long I would have had to practice to get my Aura Control as good as I got it after talking to you for a little while?" Ruby insisted.

"If you say so," Lapis shrugged before turning to Jaune and asking him, "Ready to go back to Vale?"

"Ugh… More than anything," Jaune lethargically said. He was really craving a hamburger or three.

"Alright," Lapis nodded. He and Jaune traded goodbyes with Ruby before using a couple long-distance knife throws as warp points via Lapis' teleporting trick.

With a single thrown knife, they left the island of Patched and appeared a couple hundred feet above the ocean between them and Vale. Three throws later and Vale's territory appeared underneath them. Two throws after that and Lapis had taken them in the general vicinity of the downtown area where Jaune would be staying with his family for the next two days before their vacation ended.

"Same time tomorrow?" Lapis asked to which Jaune begrudgingly nodded.

"Cheer up, champ," Lapis patted his disciple on the shoulder, "You only have to endure this kind of soul-crushing lifestyle for the next ten or so days. I'm not going to demand you follow the twelve-hour regiment when you go back to finish your remaining half-year of high school."

"Hallelujah," Jaune weakly cheered.

"Don't worry, we'll still have the weekends to have our full-day escapades and then the two-month break after the initiation starting November to round you out. But, in the meantime I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I plan on unlocking your Aura in two weeks if you manage to stick with the program for that long," Lapis said, both breaking Jaune's heart and rebuilding it with hope and determination.

"You're going to need all the time you can get to practice those Aura techniques I picked up today. Unless of course, you happen to have some sort of cheat like me to help you along with the process. Also, there's swordsmanship which you mentioned wanting to also pick up despite having no experience. That alongside Aura Control is going to drastically cut into your physical training so we need to go all gas no breaks on that aspect while you still can."

"Whatever you say, man," Jaune lamely said. He really just wanted to get away from Lapis and eat himself into a coma.

"See you tomorrow then," Lapis snorted before disappearing into a plume of smoke.

Alone at last, Jaune dragged his weathered body to the nearest restaurant and ordered a meal to go. He didn't dare sit down and risk being unable to stand back up despite his health and stamina being well above critical levels; it was his mental capacity that was running on fumes at this point.

When he finally got his meal, he left for the hotel he would be sharing with two of his older sisters. Because of the large size and wealth of his family, his parents were sharing one room, a trio of his sisters were sharing another, the twins took a third, and the remainder which included him were shacked up together as well.

It was just like the good old times, only a million times worse because he'd much rather have his own room, and not have to put up with the inconvenience of staying up late at night due to them wanting to watch TV, or being woken up early due to them wanting a full makeup treatment that required blow dryers and electric razors. Good sleep was supposed to be paramount to the muscle-building process, but fortunately, he could get away with less thanks to having access to the walking, talking cheat that was his teacher.

Although, ever since he'd started training with Lapis, the struggles he'd had to put up with while sharing a room with his sisters for their family vacation ceased to be when he simply dropped dead on his bed the second after he finished eating and taking a shower.

His two eldest sisters could decide to hold a rave in their room and he would probably sleep through it. That was precisely the reason why he left his sports watch on his wrist and set the alarm to give him a "moderate" shock about half an hour before he was due to meet Lapis the following day.

Anyone who paid close attention to the watch would think it was either bugged out or completely broken as it currently showed that Jaune had traveled hundreds of miles, sustained dangerously high heart rates for seemingly half the day, and burned an excess of 338,000 calories. The truth was, it was slightly more insane than that.

But only slightly.