Hello everybody, and welcome to my first fic. This will be a Jaune x Weiss romance story taken slowly. I want it to be as realistic as possible. But, this story won't be only romance, the characters will grow through the many different events.

Anyway, I started this fic with the simple idea of changing Jaune's family's weapon, then I realized that it could have a butterfly effect on the rest of the story, and I went with it. And so, the teams will be different from canon, but the 8 principal characters will still form the two major teams. This first chapter is short, but it was needed to introduce Jaune's personality, his equipment, and his backstory.

Now that everything is clear, I will leave you with the story.

"Hey… I'm Jaune."

Ruby opened her eyes, seeing that a tall blonde teen had interrupted her miserable sunbathing session. She had let herself crumble to the ground out of sheer frustration over her own social awkwardness not ten seconds earlier.

Since the moment her sister left her alone, Ruby had managed to trip over some rich girl's luggage and cause an explosion. Then the black haired girl who saved her from the angry heiress's wrath abandoned her without one more word.

This blonde boy smiling down at her hand extended was a welcomed sight, so she grabbed his hand and let him lift her off the ground.

"Hey, I'm Ruby." She greeted back, smiling shyly at being found lying on the ground by a perfect stranger, but getting more confident once she saw his smile was not wavering.

He looked like he was just a tad older than her. She would need to get used to that considering she was the youngest person invited to attend Beacon, by two years nonetheless! He was wearing white armor on his upper body, and she could see the handles of two swords sprouting from behind his right shoulder. She would need to ask him about those!

But, before she could ask Jaune about his weapons, Ruby wrinkled her nose at a recognizable scent.

"Aren't you the one who threw up on the ship?" She regretted her outburst the moment it left her mouth. She really was horrible at first impressions.

"Pfff… Yeah, that was me." He seemed embarrassed, but still had a small smile on his face. "At least I didn't blow a hole in front of the school."

That was fair, she supposed. At least he wasn't angry at her.

"Ok, ok, let's just forget what I just said ok?" She would prefer not to destroy her third chance of socializing in a row. She decided to change the subject of the conversation to something more manageable." So… I've got this thing." She reached for her weapon, her baby, and activated its opening mechanism: the scythe deployed itself in front of Jaune and caused him to move back in surprise.

"What… is that a scythe?" He looked at the weapon as if it was a bomb about to blow up in his face.

"Yup! This is Crescent Rose, a customizable high-impact sniper rifle combined with the blade of a scythe. I made her when I was studying at Signal Academy." She lifted it from the pavement where it had gotten lodged and let a prideful grin show on her face.

"Wait, you build it yourself?" He looked impressed and stunned when she nodded in confirmation. "That looks a little extreme for a school project."

"Yeah, I may have gotten a little overboard while designing it. I'm a real dork when it comes to weapons." Jaune nodded at that last remark. "So, what have you got?"

"I have the two swords of my family." He grabbed the handle of the leftmost sword, from her point of view, and got it out of its scabbard, a smile growing on his lips. "This one is Grey Dusk."

"Woah…" Ruby's eyes widened when she saw the blade.

"My family has passed it on from generation to generation for as long as we know. The first Arc mentioned in a written record already had it, along with the other family sword.'' Jaune planted the tip of the blade into the ground while talking, letting Ruby examine it.

Grey Dusk was two-thirds as long as Jaune was tall, the boy measuring about 6 feet according to Ruby. Made of good steel, such a thing was easy to recognize when you had experience, the blade was quite wide and fairly thick near the handle. Its steel crossguard went upwards at an acute angle. Runes lined the entire length of the sword, they were filled with a very recognizable substance.

"Dust!" Ruby looked up to Jaune to see him nod in confirmation. "Dust swords are so cool! How do you activate it?"

"Voice command. Back off a little and I'll show you." Ruby did what he asked, a questioning look on her face. "Grey Dusk, activation."

The runes lining the sword started glowing a greyish white, Ruby let out a whistle.

"Wait, didn't you say that the sword was like, super old? How would it have voice command?"

"That was added recently, my sister Cyan modified the swords to make them better adapted to a new user." A fond smile crossed Jaune's lips. Probably because he's talking about his sister. "Before that, the wielder needed to use their aura to activate the sword and its different functions. Cyan is as much a weapon nerd as you, so she had a great time working with the swords." Ruby giggled at that small quip.

"So, I'd guess by the color that this is wind Dust." Jaune confirmed her guess with a nod. "How can you use it? Can you push things with gusts or create tornadoes?"

"Yeah, creating gusts of wind is one of the most basic functions of the sword." A small frown made its way across Jaune's face while he talked. "But I haven't really tried the more advanced functions. I got the two swords just before heading to the city actually, so I had no time to train with them."

He didn't practice with his weapons? That seemed odd to her, having to train without the equipment you will actually use in combat. He was probably a good swordsman, though, otherwise he wouldn't have made it to Beacon.

"Oh, I see. Well, you'll definitely have time to train after initiation! We could even train together! That would be so cool!" Ruby's face brightened at the idea of sparing with her new blonde friend. Was he her friend already? Heh, might as well look at it with a glass half full kind of perspective. She would now have two blonde sparring partners!

Jaune laughed lightly. "Yeah, we can spar together all you want after initiation. I'll definitely have to get used to these swords." Jaune's face was not reflecting the confidence transmitted by his voice. For a moment Ruby worried she came at him too powerfully, but the small smile appearing on his face reassured her in that regard.

Ruby already felt good around Jaune, he looked like a genuinely good guy and a friendly conversationalist. She could also sense that he wasn't the most confident of guy, something which she could relate to. This somehow made her feel better around him, like they were bonding over their mutual social awkwardness. That made her think…

"Hey Jaune, I was wondering, why did you help me back there?"

"Heh, why not? My mother always said: strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. And anyway, you didn't look really menacing, so I guessed that approaching you to talk had small chances of leaving me crippled. That's high praise when you consider the others around here." A grin appeared on the blonde's face at that last comment.

"So you don't find exploding girls menacing? That's quite brave of you." He laughed at her quip.

"Well, I don't carry a lot of Dust on me, so the risk of explosion wasn't so high. I also assumed that seeing how well exploding in the face of a stranger worked to get on their friend's list you would think twice before doing it again." Ruby snickered at his comment.

"Yeah, I'll need to take note of that for next time. I really hope I won't see that girl again until initiation."

Jaune's eyes widened in sudden realization at her words. "Talking about initiation, we should get to the auditorium for the welcoming speech. If not, we could be in trouble!" Jaune's face scrunched up in a stressed expression.

Oh, yeah, the speech. Since she could see no more students around where she and Jaune were talking, she could only assume that everyone else was already gone to hear the headmaster. If they were late there could be consequences. And wouldn't that be impressive? The youngest student invited to Beacon being expulsed because she missed the initiation? Calm down Ruby! The initiation can't happen so soon after the airships arrive at the school, everybody would need some time for preparation.

"Yeah, but … where is the auditorium? I was just following you this whole time."

"I have no idea. Do you think there might be a directory? Or at least some sort of recognizable landmark? A food court if we're lucky?" Ruby's laugh at his questions only made him smile. "Our best bet is probably to go near the main building. If we meet anybody on the way they might even direct us."

"Sure, that sounds good. The rich girl went in that direction anyway, so we might as well follow her." Ruby started making her way to the central building of Beacon while Jaune deactivated his sword with a simple voice command and put it back into its scabbard.

They made small talk while walking until they finally started seeing other students. The last teenagers outside the school were being steered inside by adults, either guards or teachers, Ruby assumed. One of these adults saw the duo approaching and got their attention with a quick shout.

"Students! You should hurry up or you will miss the presentation! Now is there anyone else left outside? No? Perfect, now let's close that door!" The two teens were assaulted by a storm of questions to which they had no time to respond since the green-clad men doing the asking pushed them in the school and closed the door behind in what felt like a nanosecond. Ruby didn't even have the time to react before a voice reverberated in the room they now stood with the rest of the future student body.

"Now, I will make this brief." Ruby immediately recognized the man talking, headmaster Ozpin. And while the headmaster made his speech, Ruby's mind couldn't help but wander.

Now that she was here, in Beacon with all the other aspiring hunters and huntresses, Ruby felt a surge of confidence animate her. For her whole life she had fought to get here; the best place for her to learn how to protect the people of Remnant and become like the heroes in the stories Yang read to her as a child. She might be young, but she had been chosen by Ozpin himself. She might not be a social butterfly, but finally she will have the chance of letting Crescent Rose do the talking for her. She might be unprepared for what the initiation will throw at her, but she knew that she would prevail!

He was doomed. Doomed, condamné, verurteilt. There was no other way to see it. Why did he even want to be a hero? It wasn't like heroes were in short supply, dozens of teenagers had converged on Beacon for the yearly initiation.

What good could an untrained and inexperienced kid like him do in a school like this anyway? Even if he passed the initiation he was more likely to slow down his teammates. He didn't train at a combat school like signal and never had any practice with any type of weapon. He never even saw a Grimm in his 17 years of existence!

Wow, relax Jaune, having a mental breakdown in the middle of a crowd of teenagers won't help your situation in any way.

Jaune's thoughts were interrupted when the green blur serving as a teacher shouted that they had arrived at their destination.

The young group had been dismissed by the headmaster and his group of teachers after an admittedly short speech. The teachers then led the mass of students to the locker rooms where they could leave their weapons for the night. Ruby wished him goodnight before running to who was apparently her sister, a gorgeous blonde haired girl.

The teenager made his way through the horde of students, trying to find his locker. Number 636 according to the letter he had received one week before. He found the locker after a short search and removed his backpack as well as his two family swords.

He gently placed the two swords in the locker, Grey Dusk on the right side, Red Dawn on the left. Ruby didn't have the time to ask about his second sword earlier, lucky him since he knows basically nothing about it. The same size as Grey Dusk, Red Dawn uses red fire Dust, much more volatile than the grey wind Dust used by its sister sword. In fact, the Dust is apparently so volatile that his sister recommended that he only activate it when in a safe location far from anyone. Therefore, he still hadn't tested it.

He had told it true to Ruby earlier, his swords were new acquisitions. His sister Cyan had given them to him two days earlier, when he told her he had been invited to Beacon for the final test before admission. She also gave him the journal in which she took all her notes on the swords and her modifications of them. This journal was incredibly important for his future training since it also contained all the voice commands for the functions of his weapons. Without the information contained in the journal, he would be left with two basic steel swords.

Without these swords, Jaune would have been forced to buy his own weapon with the meager economies he had made over the years. That would have given a morbid spectacle to his peers at initiation. The worst thing with this plan is that it was exactly what he intended to do before his Cyan approached him.

He had been too afraid of the reactions of his family members to tell them Beacon invited him, his sister's perception was the only reason why he confessed. Confessed indeed, considering he had cheated his way through the first exams with fake transcripts.

So Cyan had questioned him, and he told her everything. But, instead of asking him to stop his plan, telling him off to their parents, or worse, to the police, Cyan helped him. She gave him the swords she had been working on for months and helped him flee the family house. She also told him how proud she was that he wished to protect the people, even against their parent's wishes.

Jaune stopped his daydreaming, prepared what he needed for the night, as well as the journal, and made his way to the ballroom. He simply had to follow the slow stream of students still making their way there.

Jaune prepared his makeshift bed in one corner of the room, changing to his onesie under the cover wishing nobody paid him attention. He then made use of the lights on the ceiling of the ballroom, which were still in function, to study his sister's journal.

He had time to put to his memory some of the most basic functions of Grey Dusk before the lights were extinguished. He put the journal under his pillow, before resting his head and closing his eyes.

His last thoughts before drifting off to sleep went his quasi-meltdown earlier in the hallways of Beacon. It was true that he was as unprepared as one could be to become a hunter; no training and no particular skills. But, he couldn't let that overcome him. His goal was to protect the people, to be a hero. For that, the best way was to become a hunter, and so a hunter he would become.

For the first time in days, Jaune felt genuine confidence flow into him. He would become a hunter; he would be the hero the next generations would look up to. He would pass the initiation.

Voilà, now that the introduction is done, you can expect action in the next chapters.

If you feel compelled to post a review, positive or negative, then please do. As long as the negative reviews are constructive I know they can be useful.

Anyways, I shall see you in future chapters!