Jaune awoke in darkness. The same darkness he had always known but never seen. People often imagined blindness as an eternity of having one's eyes closed. A true blackness. The truth was, however, for a blind man darkness itself was something that could never be seen because nothing was seen. Without the hope or possibility of light, darkness as a concept could never exist.

Without light, dark was everything. There was no reason to have a word to distinguish it from anything else.

He heard the slow, quiet breaths and snores of his peers. He felt their placid heartbeats.

Thruum-thruum. Thruum-thruum. Asleep.

Their bodies swam with warmth beneath their sleeping bags as their Auras recharged and strengthened through the night. He could hear the light snores of Ruby and the much louder ones of her sister as the two girls slept to his left side.

Jaune quietly extricated himself from his bedroll and left the auditorium.

The hallways, silent to most, were deafening in some ways to Jaune. The soft patter of his own feet, though greatly muffled by his enhanced sense of touch which worked the muscles within his feet to almost slide across the floor instead of stepping, vibrated against his eardrums. Insects – three flies, twenty-seven ants, and six centipedes skittered fearlessly in the night. Their antennae, warm from the blood of their miniature, uncomplicated hearts, scrubbed the polished surfaces of the hall for food. Cold water in pipes ran through the wall to his right, gushing eagerly as it undoubtedly headed towards or from the school's restrooms.

While Headmaster Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch had not expressly forbidden students to enter the halls – some would need to make use of the restrooms, after all – Jaune doubted they would take kindly to students wandering aimlessly in the night.

A depression in the wall caught his interest. He turned and beheld a door which led to a much larger room beyond. Curious, he reached a hand forward, turned the knob on the door, and pushed forward.

A chemical clean smell wafted to his nostrils. Beneath the stale stench of what Jaune had easily determined was the popular Schnee-made Danyzol-9 antimicrobial spray, Jaune perceived a distant, faded smell of sweat and human grime endemic to gyms and training rooms.

Jaune walked silently into the room, taking care to close the door gently behind him.

The subtle scent of alloyed metals met his enhanced nostrils as he moved throughout the room, which seemed to his senses to be a room meant purely for muscle exercise.

He turned and beheld a relatively large cylindrical object hanging numbly from an aging metal chain that stretched down from the room's high ceiling. Jaune knew what the object was the moment he perceived it.

Dad, he thought as he grazed the punching bag with his hand. He felt an immediate pang of pain in his chest and quickly withdrew his hand.

"It is not uncommon for students to use the rec room afterhours, though I must admit you are one of the very few newly-initiated to do so in Beacon's history," a male voice filtered into the room.

Jaune jumped.

I didn't even hear that guy come in. Was I that distracted? Jaune thought.

He focused. One figure. His heart was slow.

Thuuuuuum-thuuuuuum… Thuuuuuum-thuuuuuum.

The newly-arrived figure was a placid ocean beneath atmospheric layers of perpetual calm. To Jaune, this man was peaceful, more so than the dead or the dreaming. And he was still. Almost entirely still, like his form could never be moved by anyone but himself. Aside from the natural kinetic sounds produced by the man's circulatory and pulmonary systems, the man was dead to the world. Even his body heat felt dim to Jaune's senses. His hands did not twitch. His stance did not shift. He was a man possessed of confidence one might have after walking across the surface of the sun and returning unscathed.

"You're not a student," Jaune blurted and immediately grimaced. If there was one thing Jaune disliked, it was stating the obvious.

"I never claimed to be," the man said, a gentle smile in his voice. "You were in the auditorium with the rest of the student body. Surely, you've recognized my voice."

Jaune thought back to when Professor Goodwitch and her boss, Headmaster Ozpin had given their respective speeches to introduce the newly-arrived student hunters to Beacon Academy. His heart sunk at the implications of his new situation.

"Headmaster Ozpin," Jaune said. He quietly lowered his head, preparing for the inevitable admonishment and possible punishment for his night wanderings.

"Very good, Mr. Arc," Ozpin answered. He stepped forward. "Though, I'm sure you didn't need to hear my voice to know who I was."

Jaune paused. The issue of his blindness had come up upon his admittance to Beacon. As much as he was able to feign normal sight around every day humans and faunus, each individual application to a hunter academy required an accompanying documentation of the applying student's entire medical history. He was certain Ozpin knew of his accident and subsequent blindness, but he had no way of knowing exactly how much the headmaster knew of how his other senses had adjusted themselves in the aftermath.

Jaune decided to be honest. Truthfully, he wasn't sure if he could even get away with lying to a man such as the one that stood before him. Nor was he willing to risk the man's ire if he tried.

"I could have listened to your heartbeat. Or your breathing patterns. I'm actually surprised I didn't notice you before you came in here," Jaune said.

"And why is that?" the man asked. His voice sounded genuinely curious to Jaune's ears.

"I don't think I've ever smelled stronger home-brewed coffee in my life," Jaune admitted and grinned sheepishly, hoping the man wouldn't take offense.

A short, pleasant laugh reverberated throughout the exercise room.

"Fascinating! You are certainly full of surprises, Mr. Arc," Ozpin said and Jaune let himself relax. The man sounded pleased.

"Thank you, sir," Jaune said.

"Well, my curiosity is sated for tonight," The man made a head motion towards a metallic device on his wrist. "Or, this morning, rather. Feel free to make use of the rec room for as long as you desire, as long as you're confident you'll be prepared for initiation today. Farewell, Mr. Arc."

And the man was gone.

Jaune turned back to the punching bag, which swung slightly in the emptiness of the room.

"How about one more round, Dad? For old time's sake."

Jaune allowed himself a small smile and curled his fists in front of him.

The sound of raw fists pounding against a punching bag reverberated peacefully in the comforting silence of the morning.

Jaune stood silently as Professor Goodwitch and Headmaster Ozpin gave their respective speeches regarding the incoming Beacon class's imminent initiation. Apparently, such an initiation constituted being shot with no immediate back-up into a forest teeming with Grimm. Suffice to say, Jaune was a little surprised if not mildly apprehensive. He had never been shot into the air before and had no idea how his enhanced senses would act while he traveled tens of miles per hour through open air.

Perhaps that was one of the reasons the school organized their initiation the way they did, Jaune realized. Entrance exam scores of at least 90% were required for every student just to be considered by Beacon's admissions staff for entry into the academy. Ultimately, such exams only tested knowledge, physical ability, and experience every candidate student possessed.

I guess it makes sense that Beacon's initiation ceremony would test the adaptability of new students. I just wish I knew the specifics beforehand. Or that the penalty for failure was death rather than expulsion.

He sighed.

Nothing I can do about that now.

He tensed, cracking his knuckles as he did so.

Jaune wore a dark red, padded sports outfit he'd found once in a Valean Hunter store. The outfit had originally been designed for hand-to-hand sparring practice but he'd had the armor upgraded to the point of having the ability to deflect lower caliber bullet rounds and minor stabbing implements. The armor's true strength, however, lay in the fact that it was very light, and consequentially, allowed Jaune to react to his sensory feedback much quicker than he would otherwise. The click of a firing pin on a gun and the direction in which the weapon was pointed would allow him to effectively analyze, predict, and avoid the trajectory of enemy fire. His sense of sound would also notify him of the shifting of joints in enemies close by, his sense of touch registering the change in pressure their movements exerted on the surrounding air gave him a hyperefficient 360 degree sensory apparatus he could react to almost instantly.

I wonder how the others are doing.

Ruby Rose. Thud-thud… Thud-thud… Thud-thud.

Nervousness. Apprehension. Not so different from me, I guess.

Nora Valkyrie. Than-thin… Than-thin… Than-thin. Excitement. Not so much like me.

"In two minutes, you will all be launched into Forest. The first person you make eye contact with will be your partner for the duration of your education at Beacon. Your objective will be to work with your partner to retrieve a relic from ruins deep within the Forest. I need not remind you of the dangers you face from Grimm in the area, so remain vigilant. Good hunting!"

Jaune listened as Professor Goodwitch finished her initiation briefing. There was no collective gasp from the students when they'd heard that they would be launched into the Forest and left to fend for themselves and Jaune was reminded of the fact that most of the students at Beacon had very likely received years of training for similar scenarios.

If nothing else, at least I don't have to worry about ending up with an inexperienced partner, though I suppose I could manipulate the odds if I wanted.

It was true. He'd spent almost an hour analyzing the various heart rhythms of his classmates and correlating them to specific individuals. He was fairly certain he could determine who a person was from a good distance away.

His thoughts drifted to the Schnee heiress – Weiss, he'd heard someone address her – and he decided that it would be best if he avoided her if they happened upon one another. While he had no doubt that she was skilled, at least enough to pass the Beacon entrance exams, she hadn't exactly taken a liking to him. The stench-ridden Cardin was out as well for obvious reasons.

The quiet faunus girl – Blake Belladonna – interested Jaune. They hadn't spoken or interacted with one another in any way, but to Jaune, she felt lethal. Hyperaware of both herself and her surroundings. Not just because she was faunus with enhanced senses. The careful way she walked, taking care to create the least amount of pressure and friction on the ground as possible with her feet suggested a history of stealth training or perhaps actual combat experience. Oddly enough, none of the humans seemed to recognize her as a faunus, or if they did, hadn't made a mention of it. The latter seemed to Jaune to be highly uncharacteristic of most humans. The former suggested that she was disguising herself in some way. She, along with the prodigy Pyrrha Nikos, was on his list of potential candidates for partnership.

Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long interested him as potential partners as well. Both seemed strong to Jaune and were, from the way the sisters tensed subtly and searched suddenly with their eyes whenever the other dropped out of the sight, protective and loyal in addition to being relatively friendly during his interactions with them.

A mechanism shifted beneath Jaune's feet. He crouched instinctively, readying himself for his inevitable ejection from Remnant's surface.

Almost as if in slow motion, he felt and heard another click from a mechanism under his feet. Automatically, his senses honed in on the mechanism and showed him two large metal gears turning slowly, applying massive amounts of pressure to a spring-locked mechanism within the hexagonal platform on which he stood.

Any second now.

The platform trembled minutely, growling hungrily as if in anticipation of sending yet another student towards his potential death.

Jaune kept his face oriented towards the sky and the sun, the area from which all the heat of the world originated. The platform beneath his feet burst upwards sending him soaring towards the distant sun he could almost taste.

Now, he flew. Free, above the land.

Unbound.

The air felt different.

Gone was the constant solid foundation of the ground below or even the rare aircraft floor which had provided a conduit through which sonic vibrations could travel more easily than air. It was a new sensation to Jaune and felt oddly freeing. While he had long ago mastered his senses to the point that he could consciously block out stimuli, it still required effort. Not feeling tactile vibrations that were ever-present in solid surfaces was a novelty.

Then he remembered he was tumbling through open air with nothing solid between him and a seventy-four foot fall.

In a fit of near-panic, Jaune grasped for his cane and drew it into his hands, expanding it. The cane's elongated form created a sharp whistling sound over the constant ruffle and shuffle of air past his falling form.

Jaune concentrated to get a readout of the approaching land below.

Fifty-seven trees and hundreds of smaller plants littered the expanse below him a two-hundred foot radius. Their outlines were just barely perceptible to his hearing as they shifted in the wind. He could smell them, though the velocity of his fall and relative distance to the trees hampered that somewhat.

Within half a second, he'd scanned twenty-four individual trees that were closest to his projected path.

That one. He thought as a tree which stood tall and defiant against a forest of deceptive darkness, entered his perceptive range. He pointed his cane in the air and depressed a button on the side.

A short crimson blade ejected itself from the bottom end of the cane, trailing a thin cord behind it as it lanced through the air.

With a satisfying 'shryyykkkkt,' the red appendage slammed into the side of the tree, scraping away centuries of bark and tree syrup as it dug deeply into ancient tree's trunk.

Jaune depressed the button on his cane once more and the extension cable became taut. His body lurched towards the tree almost as fast as he had fallen previously but he raised his legs and landed gracefully on the side of the tree. His tactile awareness immediately returned to him and he was suddenly aware of every groove and fault in the tree. He adjusted himself so he stood almost horizontal, facing fearlessly downward as he held his attached cane in his left hand for leverage.

Jaune smiled. Near absolute control over one's own physical movements had its advantages.

Unlike the relative vacuousness of open air, the feeling of being suspended on a vertical surface was comforting to Jaune. Jaune supposed it had a lot to do with the fact that he was no longer technically "flying blind" when it came to his senses. Of all his enhanced senses, his sense of touch was the one he used most often.

Jaune took a moment to get his bearings.

No fewer than two hundred and sixty-four distinct mammalian hearts pulsated eagerly with life within a six-mile radius of his position, not including the thirty feet of tree bark and air between himself and the forest floor. The heartbeats were too distant at that range for Jaune to tell if they belonged to his fellow classmates or the forest's surprisingly fledgling indigenous wildlife. Wildlife that for some reason the Grimm had not snuffed out in the thousands of years of opportunity they had to do so.

Jaune shook his head.

I really need to stop distracting myself.

He made his way quickly down the rough bark of the ancient tree until his feet touched the forest's green, fertile floor. He pressed another button on his cane, which sent a signal pulse down the cable connecting his cane to the blade he'd lodged in the tree bark above. The blade retracted into itself and was dislodged from the bark. It fell and hit the ground. The cable retracted along with the blade into the cane with an audible click.

A branch snapped.

Jaune stilled, focusing his senses on the area from which the sudden sound originated.

The first thing that reached him was the stench. It was a smell that spoke of centuries of death and decay. Of mountains of rotting corpses festering in the sun while vultures and maggots, drawn by the smell, began to feast but soon died as well, for the bodies had been poisoned by something beyond death. Beyond decay.

He could hear the creature's steady breaths as it observed him from behind a dead bush. He felt its pulse quicken and slow with anticipation, excitement, and hunger. The creature was hungry although it lacked a stomach. Lacked any of the typical swish-wish-growl sounds generated by a gastrointestinal tract.

Jaune had fought Grimm before. It had been part of his training since his new senses developed themselves. Yet his perception of them hadn't changed and neither had his fear. It was natural for the living to fear the unnatural. Forces beyond reason or comprehension. Beyond natural scientific reality. The Grimm was a being that ate to satisfy a hunger it should never have felt. It was an entity that shouldn't have existed because it lacked the ability to derive energy from digesting the beings it so hungrily consumed.

It was wholly, completely, intractably unknowable. A hole in the notion of life itself.

The creature leapt forward.

Within two milliseconds, Jaune had drawn his cane once more and pressed a button at the center of the device. The red surface covering both ends of the cane retracted, bearing two blades that almost hummed with excitement at having been released once more. Jaune grabbed the cane along the middle and pulled outwards, separating the cane into twin shortswords that gleamed bright crimson under Remnant's morning sun.

Rouge Mors. Red Death.

He twirled the weapons in his hands.

The Ursa Major snarled and slammed the ground with its meaty twenty-three-inch paws, kicking up dirt, shredding the life of the green plant matter below and cracking and shaking the surrounding land.

Jaune held himself still, his physical balance impeccable in the face of the force generated by an Ursa Major's ground pound.

It swiped its right paw toward Jaune. The blond boy strafed backwards. The Grimm's paw hit nothing but air.

He slashed vertically with one of his shortswords. Metal met flesh in a characteristic cry of shhhhkt.

The Ursa Major recoiled backwards and howled in pain as it cradled the stump that had once been its right paw. The severed appendage hit the ground with a thud.

Jaune blurred over to the howling Grimm and slashed at its neck, severing the head.

He'd found them all. Eleven distinct heartbeats. Eleven classmates.

Every organism had a slightly different heart rate. This difference was much more pronounced between species, so Jaune wasted no time narrowing down the local heartrate sounds to what he'd termed a "humanoid heart rate." Given, faunus weren't exactly human, but compared even to wildlife they were often close enough to fit into the category he'd set for humans. He wondered how a faunus (more than likely used to humans comparing him or her to animals) would react to someone comparing their species with humans.

He shook his head of silent musings as he moved swiftly and soundlessly between the trees.

He still hadn't decided who he wanted to partner up with yet. A part of him was anxious about being stuck working with another person for four years; Beacon, despite its isolation, was renown for the partnerships it forged between its first-years. It was not unheard of for such partnerships to last for decades after its members graduated from the Academy.

Which lead to him to a fact he'd come to accept as he moved in the general direction of the eleven friendly heartbeats. He would have to make a decision while he could, or risk being saddled with someone he didn't like or vice versa. Or if he were really unlucky, both. He wanted someone who was at least a reasonably competent and experienced fighter, though he was certain most, if not all of his new classmates fit that criterion.

You know what? To hell with it. I'll just partner up with the first person I find as long as it's someone who has better body odor than Cardin Winchester.

Mind made up, Jaune resumed his trek through the forest.

Ruby Rose cleaved through the black carapace of the beowolf. It didn't have a chance to howl in agony before its body was split in half by a scythe that gleamed red and black with its natural coloring and dripping Grimm ichor.

She held the weapon up, expecting the last Grimm she killed to have at least a dozen more reinforcements. Beowolves were tricky that way. She'd read once in Hunter's Weekly that while weak individually, Beowolves were pack ambushers who brought down even the more experienced of Remnant's Hunters through sheer numbers.

She shivered involuntarily at the prospect of facing a veritable horde of the small, snarling beasts.

Now certain that the Beowolf that ambushed her upon her landing had no friends in the immediate vicinity, she allowed her posture to straighten and her feet to move, one after the other, propelling her body forward into the dark of the Grimm-infested forest.

As was natural for a fifteen year-old thrust into a life-threatening event whose conclusion would forever shape or unshape her future, Ruby's thoughts began to wander.

Oh, man. I'm so glad Yang is in the same class as me. Maybe if I find her, we can be partners!

A black form materialized in the trees above her. Four eyes, crimson and glittering with a dark, timeless hunger, watched her unblinkingly.

...Yeah! Then when we get back, Yang and I will be heroes! Vale will bow before my awesome power, and Jaune will be my cookie-fetcher! Mwuhahahaha!

The black form, certain its prey was unaware, dropped down from the trees above the small, black-and-red-haired girl. It was promptly bisected twice by the girl's seemingly impossibly large weapon. If the creature had vocal cords, it might have screamed at the universe for the unfairness of the hand it had been dealt by fate. As fate would have it, the creature could only twitch, croak, gurgle, and die.

Oh-kay, maybe I'm being a little hard on Jaune; he is blind after all. Poor guy. I wonder if he'll be my friend?

"Ruby!" She started when she heard the voice. Weapon raised, she replied.

"Who's there?"

"It's me. It's Jaune," the voice replied.

Ruby raised her eyebrows and said, "Jaune! You're here? Where are you?"

"Above you," he replied. Ruby gave a cursory scan of the green forest canopy.

"I can't see you," she said. "Why don't you come down?"

There was a short pause before he replied.

"Promise not to cut me in half?"

Ruby rolled her eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous," she smirked. "I'd be known as the girl who hurt the blind kid!"

"Oh, ouch," to Ruby, he sounded hurt and she immediately felt bad.

"Come down, Jaune," she said seriously. "I promise I won't hurt you."

"Well, since you promised…" he dropped down less than a foot from her with an audible thud.

Ruby recoiled and brandished her weapon.

"Don't do that!" she hissed when her eyes met the visage of her blond classmate. His face was turned slightly away from hers so she couldn't see his eyes.

"You said 'come down,'" the blond said.

"Not that, I mean don't scare me like you just did," she said.

"You're scared of the blind kid?'" he replied.

Ruby narrowed her eyes and clenched her hands around her weapon.

"Okay, that was low. You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry," Jaune said softly.

Ruby relaxed her posture and shook her head.

"No, I did deserve it. I should've realized sooner you didn't like talking about your - your condition."

'Your condition?!' Crap, that sounds horrible. Jaune probably hates me now.

When the blond simply nodded at her apology, a small sense of relief blossomed within her chest.

"Well, we can be partners if you want," he said. "If not, I'd be willing to help you out until you found one."

"Do you want to be partners, Jaune?" Ruby asked.

"To be honest? Sure, what the hell. If I had to have a partner, who better than the girl who just casually bisects Grimm who ambush her from the trees?" he said.

Ruby giggled.

"That was pretty cool wasn't it?" she said.

The boy chuckled. His laughter sounded pleasant to her, and for the first time since arriving in Beacon, Ruby felt absolutely sure of something. A bout of confidence surged through her like a wave.

"So, partners?" she asked as she waited for him to face her or reject her, though at that point she didn't imagine there was the slightest possibility of the boy rejecting her.

He turned to face her. Tragic blue eyes, youthful and lively, yet forever dead to the world, met her own.

"Partners."