Chapter One

It bubbled. The stench of the Grimm's flesh, burst asunder, smelled like the carcass of a rotting horse covered in flies and larvae, festering into the wounds. Jaune didn't really want to be there. He wasn't doing this for himself, or he would have already left. He was doing this for his father, and his mother, and his grandparents. If it had been for himself, he wouldn't have taken a single step on the path that led to a hastily stolen pass, a forgery, and then brought him all the way to Beacon's academy for the Elite Hunters. He was a fraud -a good, convincing fraud perhaps, but still a fraud.

He'd never get used to the stench of dead Grimm. Their entire being was made of wrongness, of darkness, of some form of primal, bubbling hatred that seemed to ripple across their corpses and their flesh, and didn't stop even in their death.

Jaune didn't dare sheathe Crocea Mors, because that would mean folding his shield. The forest was judging him, or so was his thought. He hoped he had proven his worth; the dead Grimm a precious offering that would not hopefully be refused. It wasn't as if Jaune thought the forest was alive, of course. He was just praying inwardly for no more Beowolf to appear.

His plead was not heard by the higher entity that governed fate, chance and happy endings. He knew that Beowolf traveled in packs. He had just hoped this particular guy had been a loner. Unfortunately, the twitching of branches and the loud sniffing from the Grimms' snouts told Jaune a different story. Still, Jaune tried to smile.

It was something taught to every little child by every parent and grandparent to have ever existed. The Grimm could sniff you out from a mile away if you were sad, or angry, or felt any kind of negative emotion at all. His grandfather always told him 'Jaune, it is always better to prevent than to cure, so keep smiling and being happy, and the Grimm won't be coming for you'.

He had gone to bed that night trying to plaster a smile on his face, and had woken up with his face hurting all over. The memory made him smile, and as he shook his head and chuckled it away, he tightened the hold on his sword and squared his face. He was Jaune Arc, in his hand was Crocea Mors, the weapon passed down to him by his grandfather, the Yellow Death. He wasn't afraid of a Beowolf.

Now, a pack of twelve Beowolf was another thing entirely, but maybe they'd take turns trying to bite his neck off?

They jumped right in, lunging with their claws extended and saliva dribbling from their mouths filled with sharp teeth. Jaune gasped as he lifted his shield and slammed it against the snout of the closest Beowolf, slamming his blade down to the hilt into the creature's neck as he spun to the side of the creature, slicing away at the hand of another incoming creature. The third however tackled him in the midriff, sending him to sprawl on the ground, the Beowolf atop him and slamming down with its claws on his chest. The shield hastily blunted the attack, as Jaune yelped. The other Beowolf piled on the first one, scratching and biting where they could at Jaune's exposed body.

"He is disappointing, sister," a female voice replied, before the pack of Beowolf exploded above Jaune, a white heeled foot having kicked them away. Red clawed and green eyed Miltiades Malachite did not reply, simply standing with her guard up as the forest teemed with the life of a hundred crimson eyes.

"Thanks!" Jaune said, gasping for air as he tried to smile, quickly scampering back to his feet. "I thought I was done for!"

"Weakling," Melanie scoffed, shrugging before clicking her heels on the ground. "Come on, Hei doesn't like waiting."

"Did I do well?" Jaune asked, sword raised and tip moving to where the loudest growls came from.

"Good enough," Melanie replied. Miltiades was the quiet one of the duo of twins, but she didn't as much as flinch when a Beowolf shot out first from the crowd hiding between the trees, probably to test their strengths. The Grimm ended up nicely carved in half from a barrage of slashes from the red-dressed girl's claws, before Melanie kicked the beast back in the woods with an airborne spin.

Jaune swallowed as more than a few Beowolf began to emerge, slowly walking forward and emerging one after the other. "This is a big pack," Jaune said half-heartedly.

"That's why you're here," Melanie pointed out. "Help clean the area or you won't get paid."

"I know, I know!" Jaune said hurriedly.

"Wounded," Miltiades said. "They smell your weakness," she added, giving a glance at Jaune's right arm, where the cloth had been cut by a vicious looking claw, and small driblets of blood were drenching the black cloth in-between his armor.

"He wouldn't be good bait if he weren't," Melanie grumbled as half a dozen of Grimm took that as the cue to jump into the fray, utterly uncaring of how many of their brethren would fall before reaching their delicious meal. Jaune had other thoughts rather than becoming a 'delicious meal' for the Grimm, and so he ground his teeth and attacked the Grimm coming closer to him.

He was going to enter Beacon, and make his parents proud. In order to do so, he needed papers. He needed good papers, well-forged. And he could always consider this an impromptu training regime for when he finally entered the academy. Better to have some training on the field than none, right?

As powerful jaws snapped an inch away from his face, held back by his shield to the Grimm's throat, he yelped and yet kept his eyes open, striking and plummeting his sword in the Grimm's chest, stabbing at the creature until it fell with a startled growl. His shield bashed and shattered the upcoming snout of another Beowolf, even as his sword hastily parried a claw, which gripped and bled upon the blade.

Clutching Crocea Mors' blade, he pulled and sliced the Beowolf's fingers off, before pushing the blade back up in a forward thrust, straight through the mandible and shattering the white-bone skull.

A red and black claw passed an inch away from his hair as he ducked hastily, a Grimm that had been seconds away from carving his head off with a claw suddenly being clawed in return.

"T-Thanks!" Jaune exclaimed through chattering teeth, even as Miltiades said nothing, simply resuming her fighting.

"Don't sweat it," Miltiades replied, swiftly rending through a trio of Beowolf, pushing her lithe frame through the chests of each of them, emerging from their backs as she spun and gutted her opposition at the same time.

Jaune balked at the sight. 'It's always the quiet ones' seemed to be appropriate for the show, but he held the words on his tongue back as he had more pressing matters. Namely, another bunch of Beowolf.

The Grimms' corpses now made the ground difficult to navigate, forcing Jaune to resort to standing on the back of the fallen foes if he hoped to get a good enough foothold to resist the upcoming attacks from the seemingly never-ending horde.

He was wondering what could possibly bring all of these Grimms in the place, but it was a question for a time where he wasn't risking a gutting by sharp claws or a snapping of limbs and neck by feral jaws.

It felt like ages, but in truth couldn't have been more than half an hour, until finally the last Beowolf yielded, falling on the ground dead. Jaune would have soon followed from tiredness -his movements had become sluggish halfway through from fatigue, and he was sure he wouldn't be feeling a single muscle on his body come the next day.

"Still alive?" Melanie asked in surprise, "Beginners' luck is a thing then," she added.

"Ah, ah, ah," Jaune chuckled nervously, gasping for air in-between. As he squeezed his knees with his hands, sweat falling down his brow, his heart drummed in his chest. When he stood up once more, his right arm stung where the drenched cloth touched his wound.

"You should get that cleaned," Melanie said, before flipping open a cellphone and making a call for a pick-up.

Jaune sighed, and began to pat his clothes for a handkerchief. He finally found one -never go outside without a handkerchief was one of the few mottos his sisters had made him learn. 'If you break a woman's heart the least you can do is give her something to wipe her tears away' was something that still made him stutter and blush at the thought. His sisters were the most horrible of teases.

A few minutes later, the roar of an engine reached Jaune's ears, before a jeep came into view through the forest's only beaten path -and their rendezvous point. Two of Hei's henchmen were on it, one on the driving seat and the other next to him. Jaune squirmed in between the two men as the jeep could hold three person in the front and three behind, while the two girls took the back and stretched comfortably.

"Here kid," Henchmen number two said, passing a package filled with papers -the forgery for beacon- to Jaune. "Boss' always true to his word. You did a good job."

"Ah! Th-Thanks," Jaune said, grabbing his 'future' in his hands. Literally. He needed the forged documents to enter Beacon. Without Beacon, he had no future.

"So, where do we drop you off?" Henchmen number one said, driving through the forest and back into glorious civilization, not even looking at Jaune.

"Uh...near the post office?" he had to send the documents to Beacon after all.

"Fine by me," Henchmen number one said with a lazy shrug. A few minutes of awkward silence followed, as nobody said another word -if not for Henchmen number two starting to hum, soon joined by Henchmen number one.

"Stop it," Melanie scoffed, and the duo immediately shut up.

Jaune swallowed once more as the jeep came to a halt in front of the post office, and once he was dropped off, he watched the jeep leave without any of the others even saying goodbye.

Well, this was done. It had been a one-time thing, and it was over with. He squared his shoulders and resolutely marched inside the post office covered in filth, grime and with his right arm drenched in blood.

The clerk didn't even bat an eyelid. To the unassuming clerk number seven, it was just another normal day in town.

Author's Notes:

This will be going in interesting places. Not yet, but soon.