Notes at the end.

Chapter 3: It's on again

He ran. Unsure for how long, or how fast, or how far. He ran. The sword felt heavy in his hands, heavier than it should. He gradually slowed down, however. Until he fell to his knees, somewhere in the middle of a forest. The sword and sheath falling under him, he collapsed onto his hands, out of breath. His heart beat faster than it ever did before. He closes his eyes and tries to catch is breath. Tears fall at a slow rate and nearly dry up upon contact with the ground, but small sobbing beneath coughs and pants could be heard.

He tried to stand up, but could only sit down, leaning against a tree, cradling Crocea Mors in his arms. But Just ahead of him, he hears a small snort, and a puff of air. Opening his blackened orbs, he finds a Wolf-like creature in front of him, a Beowulf, as his father mentioned to him once.

Again, his breathing became heavy as his heart pounded. Frozen by fear, Jaune grabbed the hilt of Crocea Mors, and let the sheath fall, revealing the blade. Grabbing it with both hands, the boy rose to his feet. His legs are shaky, and his feet hurt, but he stands his ground. The grimm scratches the ground beneath it's paws and snorts again, this time leaning forward at the same time.

Growls could be heard around Jaune and the Beowulf but neither cared, staring at one another, with the human barely holding up the sword.

The Grimm let one last snort out before charging straight at the boy.

Before either could react however, three gray blurs zoomed from behind the Grimm, and three from behind the boy. They all pounced on the Grimm, six objects, thirty-six claws, and seventy teeth, all sunk into the Grimm.

It stopped in it's tracks, letting out a pained scream, before collapsing, as the six wolves tore into it's false meat. The boy let out a relieved sigh, and let the sword down, dropping his guard. It soon returned once the snarling continued, directed at the boy. Panicked, he put his sword up, and aimed at the wolves. The closest one lunged, aiming for the boy's throat. Jaune didn't dodge, but rather he fell to his right, heaving the sword up, and slicing the Wolf clean through it's stomach. Off balance, Jaune staggers to kneeling on the ground, the sword stuck in the ground. Wasting no time, another wolf Jumps in, lunging at the boy.

This time, the boy's only attempt at retaliating, is to stick out his arm to protect himself.

The Wolf's teeth sink straight into the child's left arm. Letting out a scream of pain, the boy thrashes around, being dragged by the wolf to the others. In one more desperate attempt to get away, he swings the sword at the wolf, which only barely manages to avoid a fatal strike, but gets the sword stuck in it's leg.

It lets go of Jaune, who stands up, only for another wolf to bite Jaune in the right arm.

This time, the boy collapses completely, going limp. His breathing gets slightly softer, as he starts to close his eyes.

'Is… is this it?' The boy thinks, his thoughts somehow ragged.

'No.'

"No." He says softly, opening his eyes.

"I WON'T!" The boy's eyes snap open as his arm glows a soft white, and he pulls himself towards the wolf, headbutting it. The wolf yips in surprise, letting him go. The boy grabs onto the sword and yanks it out of the other wolf, cutting deep into the back of another's neck.

The first collapses, it's leg unusable, and the other locks up, it's nerves severed. Two of the other wolves quickly back up from the boy, snarling. The third, however, is obviously the alpha, and the most damaged, with it's right eye scarred shut, or missing entirely, and it's front left leg missing entirely. It glows a faint black before it snarls, and lunges at Jaune.

The boy readies himself, and blocks the bite with the flat of the blade. The wounds on his arm already start to heal with a white aura covering it.

The wolf doesn't miss a beat, however, and turns its head right. Jaune's arm jerks as the wolf flips him over. Lying on his back, Jaune rolls away, and kneels towards the wolf, which goes in for another bite. The boy heaves the sword, and attempts a downward strike at the wolf. It bounces off it's fur, the black aura holding. Off balance, Jaune tries to balance himself, with his sword above him. The wolf grabs hold of Jaune's left leg, and leaps back, dragging him with it. Falling down, Jaune brings the blade onto the wolf's head, shattering the aura. The wolf drops Jaune in surprise, the boy's own aura dropping in the attempt to heal the injuries on his arm. Almost completely healed, The boy jumps back, leveling the sword at the wolf. It snarls one more time and jumps at the boy, Jaws wide.

The boy's eyes widen as he grits his teeth, lunging at the Wolf. The blade passes between the maw of the wolf, and the teeth through the guard of the blade.

Teeth sink back into Jaune's arm, and the blade through the wolf's gullet. The two don't move until the Wolf lets out a defeated whimper, and collapses. Jaune pulls the blade out of the wolf's mouth, both it's, and the boy's blood dripping off of it.

The boy turns around, and faces the two wolves, holding the blade in one hand.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH!" The boy releases the sound from his mouth, inhuman and loud. Victorious. The remaining wolves whimper a little bit, before running off.

Breathing heavily, the boy slumps over, somehow still on his feet, before he hears a shuffling from behind him.

Turning around, Jaune finds a beowulf behind him. Six feet taller than the boy, and bony plates of armor all around it.

It wasn't just a beowulf, but it was an alpha beowulf. The boy fell back onto his back, unable to move his body at all. Small tears formed in his eyes as he looked in horror at the beowulf. It opened it's maw and… It's head fell off in a small blurr of gold and white.

Twelve days into Jaune's walk

Waking up with a start, Jaune turns around to his surroundings, finding that he was fortunately back where he set up camp the previous night. Wearing his armor, with a sleeping bag wrapped around him and Siopi in his arms. He shakes his head and stuffs his sleeping bag back in his bag quickly and takes a sip from his flask, checking the time on his scroll.

'Seven twenty. Early enough, I suppose.' The champion's eyes lock onto a small black bird, staring directly at him. Upon first glance, the Champion waves it off, but widens his eyes when he comes to a realization. He gets up and aims Siopi at the Crow, a cold look on his face.

"What the hell are you?" He asks it. At first, the Crow turns it's head, as if understanding what he was saying. Jaune Narrows his eyes and shoots the Crow, the bullet ricocheting off of a Red aura. The bird caws and flies away quickly, ascending into the sky. Jaune grits his teeth and watches the bird until it disappears in the sky.

'It even had it's aura unlocked.'

Jaune quickly stamps out the cinders of last night's fire, and takes out his compass, adjusting it slightly. Taking a glance at his surroundings, he inspects the tree he leaned up against, and lightly nods, taking out his Notebook.

"Day 12- Woke up this morning with the fire still smoldering slightly. Oak wood burns nicer than Pine, as it turns out. But pine needles still make better Kindling. I had a dream last night, well, more of a memory, rather, but it was when I was running away. The first time. It's been a while since I've had a dream about that, being honest. But it unsettles me, for whatever reason. Kinda an eventful morning, considering I found a crow that somehow possessed a human soul. As to how that is, I have absolutely no Idea, and it concerns me. I might find out more later, might not. Still just heading Southwest." Jaune puts his pen back in the bag and kicks at the ashes, finding no orange bits. He nods and heads towards Vale, weapon in hand and bag over his shoulder.

A not so distant town away, thirteen hours later.

A little girl ran from the wrath of her father. He was about thirty, and the girl couldn't be older than twelve. She didn't stand a chance.

"Dumb bitch!" he shouted at her, his fist connecting with the girl's face.

"Damien please!"

"Shut up!" The man backhanded his wife, the woman collapsed, holding onto her face.

"You couldn't survive out there if you wanted to!" The man turns back to his daughter and snarled, his gnashing mess of teeth, both present and missing. Already balding, he's leaning on his cane, with his other hand around a flask.

"Then I'll be better than you!" Another smack echoes across the room, as the little girl's form hits the ground again.

"Don you think you can do that! I was lucky to get away with my bum leg, you bitch!" The man rose his cane and hit the girl on the head, letting tears start to fall.

"Cryin' already? You wouldn't last a minute in that forest! I'm nothing compared to the grimm!"

The girl cries more, but it wasn't due to the pain, it was because of something else.

She got to her knees and looked up at her father, and through gritted teeth said:

"Nothing can be worse than you." Damien squinted his eyes and kicks her in the stomach, leaving her to crumple up on the ground.

"Dumbass bitch… Go in that forest if It's that bad here!"

"Please, Calm down Damien."

"Piss off!" The girl on the ground hiccuped, before she got to her feet and bolted out the door.

"Samantha!" Her mother called out to her, to no avail. She ran out onto the street, the sun starting to set.

Running past the houses of the small village, she heads straight for the front gate, which opened to let in a group of Hunters.

She ran right past them, the Hunters either too wounded, or too exhausted to chase after her.

"Girl! There's a Grimm nest out there!" One of the guards yelled, attempting to chase after her. She ducks under a low hanging branch, the guard just vaulting over it. Breathing heavily, she takes a sharp left, the Guard following close behind her.

Samantha looks behind her for a brief second, before tripping on a rock, and tumbling down a small drop off, before falling in a river. The guard stops at the embankment, and looks down, seeing the little girl float downstream.

The guard grits his teeth and shakes his head, walking away from the stream.

Samantha resurfaces a short time later, being swept away by the current at a rapid rate. Struggling to stay on the surface, she takes a breath anytime she can, even if she doesn't necessarily need it.

Submerging below the surface one more time, Samantha gave up, Letting her body sink down lower in the river.

'He was right. I didn't even last a minute.' She thinks, closing her eyes as she loses conciousness.

Later

She woke up with a start, the feeling of dried mud on her face, and just about everywhere else on her body. She sits straight up and coughs, hunching over and vomiting on the bank of the river. She coughs water out of her lungs and pulls herself up on the grass, breathing heavily. She wipes the mud out of her eyes and tries to look around.

It's well past sunset, the stars being visible through the trees above her. Samantha puts her head in between her legs and breathes heavily.

'Don't cry. That'll only-' She doesn't even get to finish her thought before she hears a scraping behind her. Her head snaps around to find a boarbatusk swiping it's hoof on the rocks on the other side of the river. She manages to hold in a scream as the boarbatusk approaches.

'The river is too deep. It'll get swept away. Right?' She thinks to herself, getting to her feet. Just then, The boarbatusk leaps into the river, not even sinking up to its belly.

"Or not." Samantha says aloud, starting to run away from the boarbatusk. The word 'run' couldn't explain what she was doing. She was more shuffling along while the boarbatusk got out of the river, scratching its hooves on the rocks below. The boarbatusk jumped in the air and began to spin, becoming a blur fo black and white. It bounces on the ground lightly at times, creating sparks trailing behind it.

Samantha's eyes widen as she looks behind her to find the Boarbatusk zooming at her. She feints to the left, the creature narrowly missing her, and crashing straight through a tree. It doesn't look fazed in the slightest as it gets up and charges at her normally. Samantha hears a slight click noise, and looks ahead, to find a brown and black gun barrel aimed straight at her face.

"Get down." a voice says. She didn't need to be told twice, or once for that matter, seeing as she collapsed at his feet. She struggled to look at him, as a single shot rang through the woods and in her ears. She winces as she tries to maintain consciousness, and the sound of a thud could be heard next to her.

She looks to find the boarbatusk sliding next to her, with one of its eyes replaced with a blank red spot. It twitches, and a very fast clicking sound is heard as another shot is fired, directly where the shot before was, now with smoke flowing through the eye.

She tried to say something, or even move, but was too exhausted to even do that. She could only look up as the figure twirled its gun and put a different form of it on its back. She passed out again as soon as it reached its hand out towards her.

Jaune was slightly indifferent about the situation he was currently in. He still had a month and a half until he would arrive in Vale, and another week afterwards until Initiation…

But who knew how long this would take? He watched from the opposite side of the fire as the girl in front of him slept in his sleeping bag. When he found her, she was exhausted and freezing. Not to mention being chased by a Boarbatusk. He squinted at the fire and sighed, looking up into the canopy of trees above them.

"Why's it always the kids?" He looks back down and watches warily as the shadows seem to move around them.

'I should probably get her home. If she has a home, that is. Her home might have just been invaded by Grimm for all I know. But I didn't see any fires around, or recieved a distress signal on my scroll… I just hope her home isn't far. I don't wanna deal with her for too long.' Jaune's thoughts drift to different matters, as he twirls the spent cartridges from earlier between his fingers, before placing them in his bag.

He takes out his notebook and looks at the girl in front of him, before shrugging and starting to scribble something out. After about twenty minutes, he looks to the girl, and then his notebook and purses his lips, shrugging as he puts the notebook back away.

LunaSolis in hand, he rests it on his lap and meditates, clearing his mind of thought and negativity.

'It's going to be a long night.'

Short chapter, I know. The next chapter will be longer, and kinda be the "Blue/yellow trailer" Honestly, I think Jaune's color should be Blue, seeing as Yang is already yellow, that's just my opinion, though. This chapter was mostly an introduction into the first "Arc"... Heh.

As a response to reviews, Thank you for being so positive! And I guess I'll try to avoid listening to the fanbase on theories, until I researched myself, that is.

Next chapter is the first time we'll see Jaune actually Fight, rather than straight-up kick people's asses.

I should probably state here that I changed Jaune's semblance. Its nothing flashy at all, though, and I won't explicitly state it until later down the line, but you might be able to figure it out on your own.

Also, The flashback sequences won't happen every chapter, but they will occur for some time.

Ight, Imma head out.

"You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control."

Megan Chance