~000~

Chapter Six: Bitter Victory

~000~

"That's a big Ursa!" - Speech

'I'm so tired.' - Thoughts

[Game Announcement]

~000~

I don't own RWBY or The Gamer.

~000~

After hitting [Accept] Jaune began his first quest. He didn't exactly know how to get to Vale's dockyards, but just walking to the city would be a start. Jaune wiped off the sweat from his brow and sheathed his sword, walking off the rooftop and leaving the dorms for the docks.

It took him about twenty minutes worth of walking and five just trying to figure out where exactly he was trying to go to to find the docks. Eventually, when he did, he found them to be very drab and cold.

There were metal containers stacked high but there weren't any White Fang members anywhere to be seen. The only ones of note to Jaune were the ones labeled "Schnee Dust Co."

Jaune took the moment to lean back on a nearby container and check how his stats were doing opening the [Menu].

Name: Jaune Arc

Class: The Gamer

Level: 7 (Next Level: 50.32%)

Title: Student/Huntsman in Training

Age: 17

HP: 600/600

AP: 650/650

SP: 600/600

STR: 10

STA: 14

DEX: 10 (-10)

INT: 16

WIS: 11

LUK: 7

Status: N/A

Perks: -Large Aura Pool (+50 AP and increased possible expansion of Aura)

Flaws: -Clumsy (-10 to DEX)

Skill Points: 10

While Jaune was pleased to see he had more Aura and Stamina from leveling (About 50 points more from each level up), he needed to be much quicker and stronger if he was going to stand a chance against actual Faunus who had spent their lives fighting a war against humanity. He decided to sprinkle five points each into DEX and STR.

Jaune wondered about something. If his current strongest attack would use all 10 points of STR previously, and he increased it to 15, wouldn't that mean his swings would be 50 percent stronger now?

While this could be true and his improvement would be gargantuan, his classmates were miles ahead of him. Nora was at Level 23 and wasn't even the strongest student at Beacon like Pyrrha, Yang, Blake or even Ruby.

Bored, Jaune decided to test his theory out. He broke into a full sprint and dashed quickly down the space between the stacks of SDC containers. The improvement in his maximum speed was immense, approximately half as quick now. Still, even though he was slower than his fellow classmates, The Gamer's stat ability was very surprising to Jaune.

He only wondered what his Semblance could possibly be.

The whirring of the Bullhead's engines caught Jaune's attention and snapped him out of his thoughts.

"All right. Grab the tow cables." said a White Fang member when his crew began to undock.

"Hey! What's the hold-up?" said a voice.

Jaune's eyes widened. He recognized the man from the wanted posters and such. It was Roman Torchwick the wanted criminal.

"We're not exactly the most inconspicuous bunch of thieves at the moment, sooo why don't you animals try to pick up the pace?"

Jaune was surprised at this. First, he hadn't heard of humans working with the White Fang, specifically because they were wholly against it. Secondly, he was right, and it was strange that no one was guarding millions worth of uncut Dust.

"No, you idiot! This isn't a leash!" Blake dashed up to Roman and placed her katana at his throat. "Nobody move!"

"Whoa! Take it easy there-"

Jaune appeared as the White Fang drew their swords and trained their rifles on Blake. "Stop!"

Blake's eyes lit up in surprise. "J-Jaune? What're you doing her-"

As Blake was distracted, Roman blew her away with a round from his cane. Roman spun his cane around his hand as Bullheads pulled into the docks. White Fang members turned around to fire Dust rounds at Jaune from their rifles.

Instinctively, he raised his shield to protect himself, the rounds singing off its metal.

Roman fired rounds at Blake as she evaded with backflips and yelled at Jaune. "Jaune get out here!"

Sun drop kicked Roman in the head while White Fang members dropped down from the Bullheads. Jaune raised his sword seeing eight White Fang grunts appear. Jaune kept his shield raised while Dust rounds pinged off his shield, sprinting forward towards Roman and the White Fang.

Jaune flicked a sword off his shield with a parry and countered with a quick [Thrust.] The attack was well placed enough to knock him down into another one of his comrades, taking two White Fang grunts out.

Blake engaged Roman Torchwick while Jaune faced off against multiple grunts. Jaune saw multiple boxes floating from his guard.

[White Fang Guard- LV 4]

Jaune stood his ground, dodging a quick number of shots before rolling under a cutlass slash and countering with a well timed cut of his own. He twisted his body to slip a stab to clock another White Fang guard over the head with the flat end of his blade.

Without even realizing it by staying completely focused, Jaune had defeated four different White Fang members without breaking a sweat. Slipping his head around the hacking when a Grunt ran up to him, Jaune slashed him across the chest knocking him into the air.

The remaining three ganged up on him, taking multiple hits to his Aura, Jaune withstood a few Dust rounds to his arm while a Grunt cut him across the shoulder. Jaune stumbled but a quick [Thrust] while turning his body to shield his other side from fire soon disabled the Grunt that landed clean on him.

Pyrrha's training paid off when he closed the distance with his new speed and knocked the Dust rifle out of the Grunt's hand with his shield followed up by a hack to finish him off.

The last Grunt missed his shots as Jaune's shield blocked them and he just drove right through him with a shield bash to knock him to the ground.

Wiping the sweat off his brow, Jaune turned to see about twenty White Fang guards running towards him all carrying swords when a spiky blonde haired monkey Faunus dropped down from the crates below spinning gun-chucks around his hands, blasting away.

"Hey there!" he said cheerfully, stalling the onslaught as he fired.

"H-Hi." awkwardly responded Jaune as he ran up to his side and raised his shield.

A Grunt deflected the Faunus' shots with his sword before swiping at Jaune with it. Jaune blocked it with his shield while shattering his Aura with a perfectly timed [Thrust.] A quickly improvised [Tear] was enough to disarm another before the Faunus knocked him away.

"You fight well!" the Faunus grunted before kicking a Grunt away and introducing himself. "I'm Sun!"

"Jaune!" the knight dodged a hack and lowered his shoulders to build up power before twisting off his heels and slashing through two Grunts Auras.

Both teens cut through their opponents one by one, the White Fang's predictable and flimsy attacks no match for Jaune's new speed and Sun's off angle martial arts. Jaune finished the last of the group with a quick [Thrust] twisting his hips to set up the next hack which was the power shot. As Jaune's blade sliced the Grunt's aura apart, Sun knocked out the last White Fang member.

"Nice." Sun offered a fist to bump as Jaune was distracted by something more pressing.

"Uh…" Jaune pointed seeing three other White Fang Airships approach from the sky.

The Gatling guns begin to spin and fire towards both of them before a series of spinning blades blocked all their shots. As the Gatling guns continued humming, a loud ringing sound was emitted from metal strings that soon became attached to all three Bullheads when a redheaded girl attacked with her blades.

The girl then willed the Bullheads to crash into each other and soar down into the crates of the dockyard, making the containers fly about from the impact. Jaune and Sun grew surprised when she reacted quicker than they did when a White Fang grunt raised the garage door to a Dock Warehouse.

Before Jaune and Sun could even register what happened, the redheaded girl had attached her blades to the warehouse, flown across the docks and using the pulley momentum tugging on her strings with all she had, kicked right through about twenty or so White Fang grunts in a single attack.

Roman shook his head disappointingly as he closed the door to his Bullhead with his cane and flew away.

[Quest completed successfully!]

[You have gained +1500 EXP from fighting and completing a quest!]

[You have learned Power Strike!]

[You have learned Aura Sword!]

[You have gained +1 LV!]

[You have gained +1 to STR!]

[You have gained +1 to DEX!]

"Uh…" Jaune saw how quickly everything had occurred. "So what exactly just happened?"

"I uh, don't really know." Sun scratched his head seeing the redheaded girl wave kindly at them.

~000~

"So how exactly did you decide to show up just now again?" Ruby asked Jaune as the White Fang members were taken into custody by the Police.

"I uh, was just walking around downtown at night when I heard a big boom," Jaune said incredulously with a nervous chuckle. "Just like you and Penny did," he said nodding to the girl he had just been introduced to.

"Right, which is why you showed up before Torchwick made that big explosion," Blake noted.

Jaune was saved when Yang and Weiss appeared, walking towards everyone sitting on the wooden crates.

"Look she's actually-"

Weiss brushed past her team leader and walked up to Blake looking up at her bow.

Blake sighed. "Weiss I'm not with the White Fang anymore. Actually I-"

"No need." Weiss took her perfect posture while standing in front of her. "In the last twelve hours we've been looking for you, I've decided. That if something really big comes up like the White Fang, you'll let us know. Not just some stranger."

"So wait, you really don't care then?" asked Blake.

"Nope! As long as you're not one of them anymore." Weiss said eloquently.

"Wait a minute. Where's Penny? Where's Jaune?" Ruby said seeing both gone.

~000~

Jaune sat on top of the rooftop of Beacon again, his knee hanging off the ledge as he watched how beautiful the stars glimmered and the green lamps of Ozpin's office shined.

"Admiring the view again Mr. Arc?"

"Pr-Professor!" Jaune grew startled seeing Ozpin walk out onto the rooftop.

"How are you Mr. Arc? I heard there was some trouble at the docks tonight."

Jaune frowned. "Oh yeah, I fought a bunch of guys, and I actually didn't do so bad."

"Hm. You sound disappointed," said Ozpin.

"I mean yeah. I just saw Weiss and Blake talk and I felt out of place. Like I didn't belong."

"You felt out of place among your own friends?"

Jaune nodded as his Headmaster sat down right next to him. "Yeah. I don't know why but, even though I've trained so much this past week and improved, I still feel off."

"You're lacking something your friends have that you don't." Ozpin surmised.

"Well what is it?"

"Connection. I knew Lionel when he was your age, and he was just like you. He thought he could do everything on his own, that he never needed help from his friends. You're still trying to find your place at Beacon, even if you're better at fighting."

"You knew Lionel? But that must mean you're over a hundred years old!" Jaune looked at him in surprise.

Ozpin chuckled. "His semblance was something special. He didn't just create Fire out of thin air, he had a remarkable amount of Aura just like you, and he was able to turn it into flames. Ignition was considered to be something not of this world."

"What do you mean?"

"Not everyone can simply transform Aura into fire, Lionel moved with incredible fluidity and heat and at times almost invulnerable to damage. You could almost say he was Fire given form."

Jaune looked at him, almost in shock of what he said. "You mean Ignition let him...become Fire?"

"In a way yes." Ozpin shrugged. "I only met warriors like him every hundred years. Who knows, the Semblance could be hereditary through genetics."

As Ozpin stood up and began to leave, Jaune turned to him. "You're saying I can be as strong as him? You're saying I could have Ignition?"

Ozpin shrugged. "Then again, you could have a different one. Regardless you do have the potential to do great things Jaune. It took great courage to do what you did tonight, especially with your lack of experience. Good night."

"Good night Professor." Jaune turned back towards the stars.

'Is that even possible?' Jaune looked down at his brown fingerless gloves. 'Ignition might be one of the most powerful Semblances of all time, and I spent my whole life eating cereal and doing nothing…' He curled it into a fist. 'I have to be the best Huntsman I can be.'

Jaune stood up and walked towards his dorm. He had to finish his essay.

~000~

Jaune presented his essay in class aloud after clearing his throat. He looked to Oobleck who nodded and let him go ahead.

"For my essay, I chose Maria Calavera. The reason why I chose her is in large part why I didn't choose my great grandfather Lionel Arc. People say that Lionel was the greatest Huntsman of all time, but I disagree. Maria might not have the best track record or the most notable accomplishments, but she appreciated what she had." Jaune went on, looking over his classmates. "Maria's Semblance allowed her to see things almost before they happened."

"Maria's Preflexes let her save the lives of countless people. And she didn't do it for money or glory, or for her pride, she did it because she loved being a Huntress. She connected with the people she saved, and protected the innocent with a smile on her face. She did missions for years stopping assassination attempts, terrorist attacks, and political instability. Maria loved surfing, in fact she surfed with villagers after saving them from Grimm. She was always happy and fun to be around, she was always on the job putting people's lives as her top priority. And she was a true Hero."

Jaune turned his paper over. "Maria served as a Huntress for every country in the world. And despite never failing a mission, she died doing what she loved, protecting those who mattered to her. Be they powerful or not. And she was never found. Maria Calavera left a legacy to be proud of, showing how being a Huntress was meaningful in and of itself. Which is why I chose her. I always struggled with my family name and not having any combat training, and I wanted to become a Huntsman just so I could get stronger and put that all behind me. But researching Maria taught me the most important thing I could by the end of my first semester here at Beacon."

He smiled at Pyrrha and Ruby. "People are a blessing, so cherish them. Being a pro-Huntsman isn't about strength, it's about duty, humility, and respect. Thank you."

The class applauded as Weiss went up next, the class finishing out the semester with their final essays.

As Weiss read her essay aloud, Jaune sat at the back of the class with no one watching checking his skills.

[Aura Sword - LV 1 (0/100). Infuses the user's aura with a sword attack. Sharply increases the sword's cutting power and speed. High AP, STR, and DEX required to use.]

[Power Strike - LV 1 (0/100). A skill that allows the user to strike the target with strong force. Passively boosts Damage and Critical Chance rate with increased levels. |Increase 15% critical rate. Increase 50% attack damage|.]

[Thrust - LV 4 (23/100). A basic technique done by twisting the user's sword hand forward. Requires SP to use.]

[Tear LV 2 (46/100). Done after completing a successful thrust and entering the sword within the mass of an opponent. Tears the sword out from the target with maximum effectiveness. Requires high SP.]

Jaune put the [Menu] away and focused on his last class for the semester.

~000~

~000~

~000~

Next chapter will serve as a small interlude between Jaune's first and second semesters. I first want to acknowledge the massive support I've received for writing this, I have a lot of stuff planned ahead so stay tuned. Thanks everyone.