Greetings and Salutations! Welcome to the first chapter of a brand new journey! To anyone coming from An Old Fox's New Trick I want to make it clear that this story is not in full swing as of yet. The funding for this story is about halfway there as of posting this. In reality, my teaser didn't portray the most important aspect of this story, that being that it was going to be a story focused on two main characters. Namely one fox and one cub.

So we'll see if adding a little more meat to the bone gives people some hunger. Whereas OFNT is about depression and grief, F&C will be about growth and lack thereof. A much less broken Naruto in this story, one that has lived through his happy family of canon and continued to live on far past that.

If you do end up liking this story and are able I would request that you go to p a treon . com (slash) Faulkner and support my effort's to produce it. Upon request, I have added a tier to my pa+reon that will allow any one person to pay a somewhat hefty sum to start production of this story independent of the normal stretch goal. I'm happy to write this, but I need to know whether or not my audience is interested in funding it.

With that being said thank you for being here! I present to you Chapter one of Fox and the Cub. See you next time! If there is a next time... *dramatic ambiance*

Chapter 1

Startup Difficulties

On a scale of one to ten Jaune would say his hometown, Ansel, was the size of something between a two and a three. It wasn't some hillbilly town in the middle of nowhere, that much was sure. They had multiple grocery stores, an arcade, and they even had three separate schools for elementary, middle, and high school. You just didn't get that kind of treatment in a town that was a size one.

Of course, there were things about Ansel that set it apart from a town that was a four or higher too. Big corporate chain stores had long since abandoned hope of setting up stock in their town. Every time one had tried prior the town had almost unilaterally boycotted it. It didn't matter how low they dropped their prices, that didn't help their sales one lick. The boycott was just a manifestation of the philosophy you only got in small towns.

They looked after their own.

Jaune had never minded knowing almost everyone in the town. That being said he didn't exactly have much to use as a standard of comparison. Other than his father his family didn't exactly get out of the town much at all. They'd visited Vale once when he was still a kid… well, more of a kid than he was now. That visit was in no small part a contributor to his current predicament.

The other key factor was his father. The current scion of the Arc clan was a huntsman and a hell of a good one at that. He had to be to do missions by himself that paid well enough to pay for a family of eight children and a wife. That wasn't the extent of his dad's capabilities though, not by a long shot. They never needed to call a mechanic to fix their car, a plumber to fix their pipes, or a carpenter to install whatever new flooring that Mom wanted installed that year. If there was something that needed to be done, Dad did it. That was all there was to it.

One time when Jaune was seven his favorite toy broke. It was a superhero toy, X-Ray from 'X-Ray and Vav', and the symbol on the plastic toy's chest didn't light up anymore. It might have been a silly memory to some, but he remembered crying to his father about it. Dad hadn't looked at him with pity, but neither was he disappointed with Jaune. His father wordlessly took the toy from Jaune, opened up the right drawer of his desk — a beautiful thing that he cut the lumber for, sawed into the necessary boards, panels and adornments, self-constructed, self-sanded and stained testament to both art and craftsmanship — withdrew a small screwdriver and popped open X-Ray's back.

The toy was small, cheap, and that meant it was both simple in its circuitry and in no way worth fixing. That didn't matter to Dad, he spent half an hour figuring out what was wrong with the toy regardless of whether or not it was efficient to do so. In hindsight, considering what his dad made, he could have bought five of those toys with the money he'd make spending a similar time at work.

It turned out the tiny battery that powered the light up portion was dead. It was a testament to Jaune's love of that toy. Toys so cheap tended to break or be forgotten long before the power source fizzled out. When all was said and done his father told him he owed him seven lien for the cost of the battery. It was a price that hardly mattered to the elder Arc, but to Jaune it was huge. That was two weeks of allowance to fix a toy that barely cost more than that fresh out of the box.

Jaune paid his father.

He didn't realize it, not even now, but that seven lien was a lesson. Everything cost something. Even if it had just been a wire coming loose, a simple problem that could have been fixed without expending a single lien, it would have still cost time. A person needed to decide what in their life was worth their time. Maybe if he understood that lesson Jaune wouldn't find himself staring down death.

He was about to die specifically because of the boons and pitfalls that came with living in a small town. Jaune had wanted to be a huntsman like his father, only his parents refused. No matter what Jaune said his father's response was always the same. "Being a huntsman is about doing. You don't get that."

Jaune didn't get it then and he didn't get it now. That didn't mean his dream changed, though. The only difference was that now he knew he'd have to do it without the blessing of his parents. So he'd resolved himself to take the Arc family sword, Crocea Mors, along with what was both the scabbard and shield that went with it. Still, a weapon and shield did not a huntsman make. Jaune didn't have the experience, ability, or credentials a student at Beacon would need to get in. So in an act that demonstrated some moral malleability, he had paid someone to have those forged.

After he'd sent those into Beacon he'd had to volunteer to get the mail every single day. If his parents knew that he'd applied to a school for huntsmen… his father was slow to anger, but that just made it all the more harrowing when the Arc patriarch achieved such a state. Jaune's jubilation when the acceptance letter arrived was almost enough to sell him down the river by alerting his father itself. All that was left at that point was to make it to Beacon.

The reason being such a small town was a problem was that they only had one bullhead pilot that did any outbound flights. He was a nice guy and a family friend. So close a friend to the Arc family that he knew all about the situation. To cut a long story down to size it meant that taking a bullhead out of Ansel to get to one of the Beacon drop off points — a place where a larger aircraft would ferry students to the academy — was a bust.

So in the night while his family slept he claimed Crocea Mors and set off on his adventure. The plan was simple; travel the twenty-five miles towards the next town on foot and take a bullhead from there. Jaune assumed that the task would be as simple in practice as it had been in its conception.

It hadn't taken more than a second of staring into the glowing red eyes of a beowolf for him to regret that assumption more than any other in his life. There was a road from town to town, that was true, but it was a road that cut through a forest. His mother had told him many times not to venture too close to the forest as he had grown up. As he grew older the years passed by peacefully, more and more time that had passed without a single incident of a grimm attack in or around the wooded area. It was made apparent on his first night that his conception of the forest road's peacefulness had been greatly exaggerated.

There he stood, sword drawn and shield held out to create a barrier between him and those demonically glowing eyes. Crocea Mors felt foreign in his hand as the weight of its shield was always trying to drag his left arm towards the ground. He had no idea how his father fought so comfortably with a shield that felt so heavy.

The beowolf looked on-edge. Jaune didn't know why he thought that. He had no idea what they looked like normally, but that was just was some corner of his brain thought. The creature had been sprinting when it ran right by him, doubling back only when it noticed the blond petrified in place. Grimm are attracted to human fear. Jaune standing there trying not to hyperventilate was more than enough to override whatever had sent the beast scrambling in the first place.

The beowolf pounced at Jaune. He thrust his shield out on instinct as his brain confused it with his sword arm. Having no martial prowess to speak of combined with the utter terror that racked his brain was not a combination conducive to orderly thinking. The creature used its claws to latch onto the top of his shield, its maw gaping and snapping as it attempted to create a toothy vice around Jaune's face.

He should have held onto his shield and rammed the wolf into any one of the hundreds of nearby trees, pinning it between to objects so he could impale the beowolf with his sword. That was the type of thinking a veteran of the sword and board might have had. A novice was more likely to scare, tossing his shield away to build momentary distance from the assaulting predator. If Jaune's position on the spectrum hadn't been made clear in abundance by that point his choice of response certainly did.

"Get away from me!" He shouted pointlessly, throwing his shield away and the beowolf with it. Nimble as the creature was it landed on the ground completely unharmed, charging him once more without a moment's hesitation.

Jaune wasn't trained to deal with grimm. No matter how much he begged his father he'd been refused. Every single time he asked his father would be told that he wasn't ready yet. Down to the very day before he ran he'd been told he wasn't ready. As Jaune swung his sword in a wide arc — the beowolf dodging effortlessly to his flank as it leaped for his jugular — he only wished that his dad has chosen differently.

Jaune didn't expect to be saved. He'd hoped, sure, but the road was seldom traveled and the chance that a rogue traveler in the middle of the night being huntsman trained only slimmed the already anorexic odds further. If there was a god it was clear that he delighted in presenting the unexpected. The beowolf was killed in the middle of its jump so fast that its deceased body was still carried forward by the momentum. It wasn't killed by a gun, for there was no sound of a shot having been fired. It wasn't felled by a combatant in melee, as far as Jaune could tell he was alone with the beast. There were only two things present that had not been there before; a small, cylindrical hole through the creature's skull…

And a pencil embedded firmly into the ground.

"Whoa!" Jaune shouted in alarm as the beowolf corpse knocked him to the ground. In the video games he'd played growing up when you killed a grimm their body just dissolved into nothingness in an instant. Jaune realized the actual process was much more gradual as pieces of the beast flaked off and disappeared. He also learned that grimm bled, and their blood was black. The blood oozed slowly from the creature's skull. It was like watching sludge coming out of a pipe in the way that clumps of it would roll out, retaining a semi-solid form as it cascaded onto his hoodie.

"Sorry about that." A voice apologized, pulling Jaune's attention from the morbid scene that was quite literally on top of him. "Got tired of dealing with those little critters so I scared em off. Guess I chased one right to you. I didn't think anyone would be traveling these roads at this time so I didn't check. My bad."

His savior — though it didn't feel quite right to address someone as such when they solved a problem they created — was a blond like he was. He was actually a similar height to Jaune as well. The similarities between the two extended to the distinct blue color of their eyes… weird. The most obvious of differences was their age; Jaune was still a teenager whereas the other man looked to be in his early thirties. A white and red cape cowled cloak over his shoulders partially concealed his orange and black striped top. Although his pants were normal enough in that they too were black to match his color scheme his shoes were not. Jaune couldn't help but notice the toeless shoes and find them a bit out of place for a forest expedition.

It was an odd thought to have with a dissolving beowolf atop his side as he lay somewhat crushed under its weight, but the man was so blasé about the whole situation that it had a vaguely calming effect. The man picked up the disappearing grimm and threw it off to the side, alleviating the burden from Jaune's ribs. "I got to it before it could do anything to you, but you okay?"

"Y-yeah." Jaune's voice hitched embarrassingly. The man gave him a reassuring smile as he offered an outstretched hand. More than a little ashamed at his pathetic display Jaune hastened to take the hand in order to stand level with the man. "Thank you…?"

"Not a prob- ah! That was an implied question!" Recognition flashed across the man's face. "That was you trying to ask for my name, right?"

"Errr, yes?" Jaune answered awkwardly. What a weird guy.

"Name's Naruto," Naruto informed him. "And…?"

"Jaune." He answered, much to the pleasure of Naruto. A broad grin of satisfaction stretched across the elder blond's face.

"It worked! You understood it was an implied question too!"

"Uhhhh…" Jaune had no idea what he was supposed to say to that.

"Sorry, sorry. The language here is a bit new to me." Naruto admitted unreservedly. "I got the words down pretty well, but the nuance of conversation is pretty challenging."

"No problem," Jaune said. Naruto's way of speaking felt a bit wordy for someone learning a language. 'Nuance' wasn't exactly a commonplace word for day to day use.

"You don't talk much, do you?" Naruto observed. Jaune was a little abashed by the directness. It took him a few moments to realize he'd only answered using short responses the whole time.

"Sorry! I just- I guess I'm a bit freaked out." Jaune smiled bashfully. "I'm not really used to grimm encounters. My heart is still racing!"

Naruto chuckled fondly. "Not a problem. I don't think civilians are used to fighting anything like that."

"I'm actually a huntsman in training at Beacon." Jaune frowned. Technically he wasn't now, but he would be in two weeks. Even more to the point, he wasn't really a huntsman at all! He would be, though. He'd make sure of it.

Naruto's eyes changed in that instant. The color of eyes changed to a dull yellow as his pupils changed to a bizarre bar shape, the rims of his eyes turning orange in the process. "You're definitely a civilian. The energy that huntsmen have is pretty weak, but you don't even have that. What's it they call here… aura?" Naruto paused as he considered. "Yeah, aura. You don't got any of that."

"Aura? What's that?" No, seriously, what the hell was that? Jaune had no idea. Was that some sort of weapon or tool that huntsmen had?

"Some sort of energy that huntsmen have. Not too sure what exactly it does yet, but I do know it makes them stronger." Something that all huntsmen had that he didn't? Was there something he'd missed? "Point is that you don't have it."

"Y-yes I do!" Jaune stammered.

"No, you don't. Trust me, I'm looking right now." Naruto pointed at his eyes. Jaune almost choked on his own spit as he tried to swallow. He didn't even know what aura was, but somehow Naruto could see it! Was that Naruto's semblance?! Could every huntsman just tell that he didn't have this aura stuff as soon as he got to Beacon?

"Please don't tell anyone!" Jaune begged as he bowed his head, hoping such an action would move Naruto to keep his secret.

"Why the hell would I tell anyone?" Naruto asked with clear bewilderment. "None of my business."

Jaune released a sigh of immense relief. "Thank you."

"Still," Naruto started, piercing Jaune's heart with nervousness once more. "Why don't you tell me what's going on while we walk. Maybe I can help."

"Walk? As in together?"

Naruto laughed. "Well, yeah. Plenty of those black puppies running around. After seeing how you handled the first one I'd feel pretty guilty if I left you and it came to a second encounter. Where you headed to anyways?"

Jaune wasn't sure whether or not he should answer. The fact that he really didn't want to run into another beowolf on his own ended up being enough to sway him. "Muspel. It's the next town over."

"You were gonna head all the way from this town to the next? I can't tell if you're brave or stupid. Guess I would know; gotta be a little stupid to be brave." Naruto chortled, enjoying a private joke.

"I didn't think there were grimm in this forest." Jaune defended himself reflexively. "There hasn't been a single incident for years."

"No such luck. There's about three of them within a mile of where we are now."

"How do you know that?" Jaune asked in utter bewilderment. Naruto just shrugged.

"Just a talent I have. Anyways, let's get moving. I'm escorting you at the price of one full story on what you're doing and why you're doing it."

Jaune didn't have much choice but to give in. Three bewolves within a mile of where they were was three too many.

"Fine." Jaune acquiesced. He wasn't thrilled to be telling his story to a stranger he just met, but if it kept his dream alive… so be it.

An orange blur shot through his vision like a bolt of lightning. Quickly climbing and circling Naruto as it moved further and further up his body. The orange thing came to rest on Naruto's shoulders, red eyes staring directly into Jaune's.

"You scared the rest of them off?" Naruto asked. Jaune wasn't sure what he was saying, but it became apparent he was not the conversation partner Naruto had in mind.

"Good. Make sure you shoo any others away from the towns. I don't want anyone dying because you were too lazy to chase some pups down."

And then there was silence.

"Don't give me that look. You're the one who said you wanted to do it. Not my fault you got bored."

More silence.

"Stop complaining." Apparently, that ended what we conversation Naruto had been having, as it was Jaune he addressed next. "The fox is named Kurama. Keep it a secret but he can talk."

Oooookaaayy. This guy is crazy. Jaune thought to himself. Apparently his thoughts shown through to his face a little too clearly; Naruto looked irritated as the fox… laughed?

He's not crazy, brat. A low, sonorous voice boomed inside Jaune's head. Well, not in the way you're thinking at least.

"Get going, you pain in the ass." Naruto groused as he swatted the fox off his shoulder. "I don't want to see a single black puppy from here til Muspel."

Bastard. Jaune heard the low voice once more as the fox took off into the forest. Was that the fox's voice? Kurama's voice?

"You know those things are called beowolves, right?" Jaune asked automatically. Something about hearing Naruto calling them puppies just felt so weird that he couldn't help but say something.

"Huh, got it." Naruto remarked as he picked up his pencil off the ground. He withdrew a small notebook from a satchel at his side and began to write as he spoke. "Black puppies are called beowolves. Thanks."

Jaune sighed for what felt like one too many times that night. This was not how he had expected his grand journey of becoming a huntsman to go.

"Anyways, let's walk and talk." Naruto insisted as he threw Jaune's shield straight at him. The youth fumbled awkwardly as he tried to catch it, making Naruto laugh, which made Jaune scowl. "So you want to be a huntsman?"

"Yeah…" Jaune admitted with yet another sigh. "I want to be a huntsman."