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X3runner: Ruby is cute as hell in this also velvet is best girl material she's not there yet and kinda goes against my personal tastes for best girl archetype (mordred from fate apocrypha type) but she's getting there. Coco has jaune under control kinda like a working wife has a house husband under her thumb (not as in there romantic relationship as in the power structure) also I kinda feel for jaune he always compared himself to the literal best of the first years seeing the almost immeasurable gap and now he's seeing the best of the second years the gap between them has to be even more immense and disheartening.

Not sure I'm comfortable with the comparisons you're making. I already said this won't be a harem story. Nice of you to notice Jaune's situation.

Adislt: is his semblance can really be unlocked by this method?

btw will you still use jaune's canon semblance or will you tweak it a bit, in my opinion his semblance should be strenghten, so his semblance can strenghten anything he want either it's durability, sharpness, healing properties of anything...because his canon semblanceunless RT still hid some part of jaune's semblance to usis like half assed job

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I... I... This comment is so stupid that I'm actually having difficulty processing how I'm supposed to respond. I'll consider your words when you actually read the story.

Ch. 7

Jaune hadn't expected the quiet in the absence of his team. He wasn't surprised by any means and there was a certain amount of relief when he didn't wake up to Nora spinning Ren around like a teddy bear. The crushing weight of loneliness quickly snuffed that reprieve. The crinkling of his shirt, the shuffling of his sheets and blankets, and quiet thumps of his feet against the carpet were the only sounds in the room, all his. Soft noises, before so completely muted by the dynamic and vigorous antics in JNPR's morning activities, now heard so clearly that Jaune felt startled by his own movements. A warm shower helped temporarily, washing away the bleak atmosphere and sapping the tension out of his muscles. Its effects, not at all as permanent as he had hoped, vanished the moment he shut off the water and he was left wondering Water or sweat? in the heated air of the dorm bathroom.

When he did come out, he almost flinched at the lack of a Pyrrha's morning greeting or Ren's silent nod. His anxiety built in the silence, shoving his actions into high gear. Rushing. Scrambling now. He didn't want to be in the room anymore. Feet crammed into boots, straps fastened on his armor, and hands hastily hooked the sword to his side. The clenched grip on the handle did little to comfort him and he didn't bother doing a quick glance about the room before the door swiftly shut behind him.

His haste wasn't warranted at all and dread replaced anxiety; the Mess Hall wasn't any better. The room appeared muted with scant conversation dispersed about the tables, a polar opposite to the obnoxiously vibrant cacophony of the day prior. Alone, without his team and now alone without the school. Oddly enough, the scattered groups of two-to-three didn't stare at one another, more keen to focus on their own problems and stare at food they hardly touched. Jaune resisted the urge to hunch over, forcing himself to eat more quickly. The Bunker has to be better than this. Today is my first lesson with Coco...

…

He slowed down and began savoring his bites. Cinnamon pancakes with butter and syrup, accompanied by warm coffee. They'd labeled the dispenser with "Special Brew" that morning. Nora wouldn't have been able to sit still. Jaune smiled.

It was a quarter till nine when he left the cafeteria and headed into the courtyard. His stroll felt warranted, with quite literally no one outside to see him sneak around the back of the colosseum. One brick push, one palm print, and one elevator descent later, he had reached the bottom.

Coco Adel lay splayed out in the middle of the floor, eyes closed and unmoving. Her beret was on the floor next to her hand and her hair flared out like a river delta. His heart leapt into his throat and he immediately dashed to her side, rolling her over and pressing two fingers to her neck. Her eyes shot open and locked gaze with his. He froze immediately, unable to break the stare.

…

The corners of her mouth tugged upwards. "Well, Doc, are you gonna perform CPR on me? I don't think I can breathe properly quite yet." Heat began rising to his cheeks. He spotted a glint in her eye, something that he couldn't quite place, and quickly stumbled to his feet.

"I-uh-but-why-um... I-you-"

"Me, yes. Come on, use complete sentences."

His right hand immediately flew to the back of his head, scratching at it vigorously while he looked everywhere but back at her. "I-um... uh, why were you o-on the floor?"

"Contextualizing." She folded her hands underneath her hair. "A way of mental preparation. Trust me, it's necessary." She peeked at him through one hand and dangled her left hand in the air. "Be a gentleman and grab my purse for me, will you?" Her finger drooped lazily, pointing to a small black bag that seemed to act more like a box than a purse.

Jaune crossed his arms. "Why can't you get it?"

"Because I'm lying down."

"Is the purse gonna help you stand up?"

A fine eyebrow slid horizontally away from its corresponding cheek. "You know, it's not gentleman-like to go questioning the motives of women. You already have a hard time understanding them without our efforts to be cryptic."

He rolled his eyes and strolled over to the accessory, looping his fingers through the handle and pulled.

…

He tugged harder but the purse didn't budge. Brows furrowed, he gripped the handbag with both palms, interlocking his digits. There was a slight squeaking sound before the possession finally rose, his fingers straining more than the actual handles sown into the lid. Now that he looked more closely, the bottom itself appeared to be lined with metal plates.

Stride more of a hobble, he deposited the anvil onto her lap, almost fainting when she gave no reaction. She tossed the black hole like a paperweight, flinging it high in the air, before flipping off her back to her feet and casually slinging the purse around her shoulder.

"Now, before we start-" She cut herself off, looking him up and down. "... Where's you're camera?"

/-/-/-/

"7 minutes and 34 seconds.." Coco let out a low whistle. "That's actually not too bad for a 2400 meter run. Which means that Yatsuhashi's fitness training is paying off! And look! You're not even that tired."

Jaune offered a bird from his position, struggling for air on the floor, and was rewarded with a kick to his ribs.

"Come on, get up you big baby." She kicked again, this time prodding with her heel instead of her toe cap. "You're already eight minutes late for our lesson."

Rolled onto his stomach, his lips trailed spit along the floor tile before he slowly pushed himself onto his knees. Head hung low, he drew in deep gasping breaths before finally surging to his feet. He peered around for the girl of misery and... found no one. A quick 360 laid that fact bare and he even went so far as to go looking under his feet.

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Glance left. Glance right.

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Jaune clapped his hands together and turned towards the door. "Well, if the lesson's over, I guess I'll just go-"

Coco slammed into the exit sideways. "Lesson over? Have we even done anything?"

"How... H-How are you doing that?!" Jaune stipulated, looking her over. She stood upright on the door where she'd landed, as though the metal sheet were the floor. Despite the fact that she already craned her neck back so that she could see him properly, the second-year managed to appear innocent while tilting her head to the side.

"What do you mean?"

"You're standing on the wall."

A fine eyebrow rose. "What wall? We are in a box of sides. For all you know, I'm on the floor and you're on the wall."

His stomach lurched abruptly and his perspective shifted. He still stood on the floor, feet rooted in place, but now he looked... down at his mentor?

"Before we start, I should clarify this situation with an analogy." The room spun again, this time sending him towards the ceiling. He braced his spine, thought that proved unnecessary. His 'landing' left no dents on the panels, in contrast to the impressions of Coco's heels on the elevator door. "If we were to compare your development with cooking, you'd be an unstuffed turkey." Another wave of nausea. Upside down? Sideways? He wasn't sure anymore. Maybe he was lying down now. "Oh, don't worry. We're filling you as we go. Yats, Fox, Velvet," She waved off-handedly as he stood up, pulling the room out from under him, didn't bat an eyelid as he careened into another wall. "They'd be the gloves performing the labor, the hands sculpting the clay, the frosting that decorates the cake."

"Can you be consistent with this stupid anecdote?!"

"I didn't eat breakfast and I'm hungry!" On her last word, he slipped off to the left and hit the wall at terminal velocity. "Now, as I was saying, where I fit into all this... well, I guess you could call me the mixer."

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"Technically, shouldn't I have come to you first before the others in that analogy?"

The demon shrugged and catapulted his carcass so that he landed on the same wall where she stood. "If the others did their jobs, then hopefully you have the precise stamina, reflexes, fitness, and versatility. My job here is to deal with your thinking; how you go about dishing out the pain and whatnot."

Not bothering to get up, Jaune groaned his riposte into the floor. "Why me? You seem to be doing a fine job yourself." He jammed his eyelids shut as the room, and his stomach, rolled yet another time.

She leaned over his head. "Y'know, wisecracking is fun and all, but doing it all the time really su-UUUCKS!" She lurched forward abruptly, right as he himself felt something yank at his gut. He toppled backwards while she fell. He slammed against the ceiling back-first while she rolled into her landing, coming up knees bent and hands extended for balance. Her hands trembled. "I," She looked around uncertain before turning back to him. "I didn't do that."

The look he shot Coco mixed of fury, fear, and incredulity. "The Oum you mean you didn't do that?! You're the only one who can!"

"I know that! I'm say it wasn't my-" Abruptly, her eyes bugged out and she stopped short. She slowly turned her head to look at him, staring straight through his irises (or so it felt). He had a feeling he wouldn't still be breathing if looks could kill. The muscles in her arms and thighs flexed, becoming more pronounced along the sleeves of her clothing, and she began shaking vigorously.

Jaune would have pointed out the odd behavior were he himself not experiencing a similar ordeal. Face down on his stomach, his cheeks only scrunched further into his eye as time passed, preventing him from even looking at his mentor. His ribs creaked, the cage already seeming to flatten to a sheet, crushing the organs within. His breath stolen, the panic mounted within his head, pounding faster to his heart, and the crushing pressure continued building at a faster rate.

"J-Jaune." Her voice was deeper, warped almost. "We... We're on the wall right now... Put us back on the floor."

Scrunching his eyes shut, his growled out his frustration. "I don't know... I can't-"

*DO A BARREL ROLL*

…

The force pinning him vanished, the weight lost to the wind. Opening his eyes, the knight looked up... to Coco's body splayed out in the middle of the floor, eyes closed and unmoving. Her beret was on the floor next to her hand and her hair flared out like a river delta.

Again.

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She wasn't moving or talking.

…

Crouching to her side, he leaned precariously and cast his shadow over her face while he peered down at it. "... You're not faking it again, right?" He froze as she groaned and brought a hand up to her head, clutching it with a grimace.

"You're... you are something. I don't know whether there's more good or more bad but that's definitely something." The second year propped herself onto her elbows before pushing to an upright seated position. She glanced at him doubtfully. A sigh escaped her lips. "My semblance is the manipulation of gravity and perspective. The room is my plaything, the people and objects within the toys in the sandbox. Any walls, floor, ceiling – the are the magnets without magnetism, the pull of gravity without a source of mass. While on any of them, I can make you see up, down, left or right in any preference of my choosing."

"So, you lost control." Jaune laughed. "I know you said you weren't doing it but maybe you were. Maybe you made the changes without meaning to." His chuckles filled him with a strong vigor, his second wind pulling the strength back to his limbs. He stood up and rolled his eyes. "Some deity you are, not fully trained to handle your own semblance." The mirth died somewhere in the back of his head upon witnessing the complete fury and irritation barely suppressed inside the eyes of CVFY's leader. The glare those fiery orbs shot at him fell nothing short of molten lava.

"I've spent nine years training my semblance. I mastered it five years ago. I don't make mistakes." His lips parted in protest. "-E.V.E.R."... He closed his mouth. "You, on the other hand, are a very, very dangerous time bomb."

"Me?!"

"You're imprinting. I didn't say anything about abilities, their function, or how they function, yet you still managed to manipulate both aspects. You've begun unintentionally copying semblances simply by close proximity to anyone with a semblance to mimic."

He crossed his arms. "That doesn't sound too bad to me."

"No?" She stared critically through narrowed slits. "Imagine this exercise outside, only you flip gravity on its head, forcing everything skyward rather than land-bound. You'd be in the stratosphere before you know it, unable to breathe until you pass out and fall from a lethal height without aura to cushion your fall." The blood drained from his face as each word spoken hammered home just how f*cked he was. "Still not sounding too bad? How about you increase gravity without meaning to and paste your insides to the point of becoming a human pancake?"

"Okay, okay. I get it!" Misery compounded into his expression, his exhale born more disgruntled than impatient. "What's the fix?"

For the first time since he'd met her, Coco Adel adopted an expression that didn't scream for self-praise, pride, or confidence. For the first time, she looked at him. No. Looked through him. She saw a him, but didn't see him. That silence, the wavering uncertainty, frightened Jaune far more than any Grimm that he'd faced before. "I... I don't know. I-I can't work with this." Something shattered, maybe his nerves, probably his mind. Rooted to the spot, he felt woozy enough to collapse but didn't. He didn't notice her get up or leave. He also didn't notice that which she held in her hand upon her return.

Until the pain hit him. It was sudden, lancing from a single point of his frame: his wrist. The process was agony, sucking away both his strength and fortitude. As his vision returned from the fogged pane, he recognized the sensation; a single band bound to his wrist.

"That is an aura dampener. No aura, no fuel for your semblance, which means that even if you do imprint, you won't be screwed immediately." She yanked him up by his armpit, almost tearing the joint from its socket. "Right now, Beacon is probably the worst place you could possibly be, so go to Vale and find something to do. Here!" Something was jammed into his fingers, a small plastic rectangle. "My card. Buy whatever you want, keep yourself occupied, but don't be around people who for sure have semblances." She turned and stalked towards the exit, her pace rushed and eyes distressed. Her panic didn't lessen the further she got away from him.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to have a chit-chat with Ozpin. You may need to be... moved."

/-/-/-/

I'm sorry that this is late. I'm sorry if the latter half seems rushed.

One of my co-workers ditched like a b*tch to go to China for 3 weeks. Since I'm essentially the store's little piece of play doe (since I'm not in school), I've been assigned all of her shifts.

Every day I have a shift. Because of her I know have 4 times as many double shifts as I had to work prior. As such, coming home from that means that, without exaggeration, I have no energy or patience to write. Today was actually one of my free days, surprisingly, and I do not expect many more of them. Please do not light up my reviews if my chapters end up being shorter or of poorer quality, or if I don't end up posting at all.

Again, I'm sorry. That's out of my control.