Author's Note: So in my other story The Golden Retriever, I was coming up with one of my background characters' Semblance and, as he's based on Han Solo I figured I'd give him something that influenced probability ("Never tell me the odds!"). But as I thought about it, I realized that would be wasting a hell of a Semblance on a guy who won't be showing up all that often, and all of a sudden it clicked: who needs the odds being ever in their favor more than Jaune, upon whom falls all of the FNDM's worst horrors?

Three hours and a few beers later and here we are.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. From the rights to RWBY to the letters used to type this feeble story, I'm not the guy you're looking for.

Warnings: Adult language, gratuitous violence, and poor writing. You have been warned.

Chapter 1: Superstition

Luck is quite an interesting concept. Whether it is wishing someone good luck before an important undertaking or lamenting one's own bad luck when adversity strikes, it is a seemingly intrinsic part of the human condition. Fortune constantly make playthings of all sentience, offering someone the serendipity of finding a wad of cash on the street while denying another the simple joy of a morning coffee due to a slip of the hand and a lost wallet.

To a young man named Jaune Arc, recent Huntsman initiate, luck was something to curse and fear in equal measure. For as long as he was able to recall, Jaune's luck wasn't what anyone—even an eternal optimist like his father—could even generously call good. Be it getting picked on by the biggest, most brutal girl in primary school because she had a crush on him or losing the tickets to his high school prom and getting dumped by his girlfriend of four years (incidentally the same person), Fortune had never quite smiled upon the poor boy (though it had given him some nefarious smirks and evil laughter from time to time).

Therefore, Jaune could be forgiven for being leery of anything going remotely his way. Finding someone to create a decent forgery of basic combat school transcripts was one thing, and being accepted into the prestigious Beacon Academy was the natural conclusion to the first, but to then be chosen by one of the prettiest girls he'd ever met (and he'd met some insanely hot girls in the past day or so) to become her partner for the next four years was really pushing his willingness to suspend disbelief. There had to be a catch somewhere in there (nearly getting kebabed notwithstanding).

With such profound thoughts whirling through his head, it wasn't really odd that Jaune had lost track of his surroundings.

THWACK!

"Aw, son of a—!"

"Oh, Jaune I'm so sorry!"

Jaune chuckled nervously, holding his hand to the stinging line of pain tracing across his cheek. "N-no big deal," he tried laughing it off, even though that really smarted. He'd had worse, and it wasn't like this would be the last time he was going to get struck across the face. In Jaune's not insignificant experience with life in general, it was easier to pray for the best while preparing for the worst.

He dug in his waist pouch (and it was not a fanny pack, no matter what Ruby called it the day before) and pulled out an alcohol pad and a little bandage with bunnies on it, then proceeded to clean and cover his new wound. With any luck it'd turn into a badass facial scar (but who was he kidding, really?).

"See?" he turned back to his new partner and offered her a thumbs-up. "Good as new!" His hands fell when he noticed the odd face she was giving him. "What?"

"Why isn't your Aura healing the cut?" she asked, looking bemused.

"My what?" he replied blankly. Shoot, was this one of those Huntsman things he should know about? He knew he should have gone to the library and studied up on this stuff!

Thankfully, Pyrrha didn't seem put off by his cluelessness. "Your Aura," she repeated with a small smile that turned slightly mischievous. "You do know what Aura is, right?"

Panic seized Jaune, and he blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Pfft, of course I know what Aura is...d-do you know what Aura is?"

Jaune fought the urge to punch himself in the face; she obviously knew what Aura was. She probably knew a hundred times what he did when it came to Huntressing if the list of accomplishments Weiss had boasted about in Pyrrha's stead was anything to go by. Seriously, who wins the same competition four consecutive times?

"Aura is the manifestation of our soul," Pyrrha explained patiently, ignoring his foolishness. "It bears our burdens and shields our hearts. Huntsmen and Huntresses use Aura as a shield. Everything with a soul has an Aura, Jaune, even animals."

"So...it's like a force field," he surmised after mulling her words around in his head.

Pyrrha gave a light chuckle. "You can look at it like that, sure," she said. "I can unlock yours, if you want."

"That sounds grand," he smiled, parroting her words to Weiss from earlier that morning. She returned it and stepped toward him, pressing a hand to the side of his face.

"Alright, close your eyes and concentrate," she commanded, and Jaune did as he was told, feeling a little hot under the collar. This was a little more intimate than he had been expecting, though he supposed it would have to be, since she was unlimbering the bonds holding back what was essentially his soul.

His discomfort melted away, however, when Pyrrha spoke. It was as though he were hearing her not with his ears, but with his very being. They resonated within him, sending shivers racing up and down his spine while his skin broke out in goosebumps.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality," her voice, paradoxically powerful and soft at once, reverberated in his mind. "Through this, we become paragons of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death." Distantly, Jaune felt her other hand press against his chest, right above his heart. "I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee."

As soon as the last word was uttered, something erupted within him, like a geyser of strength and vitality he'd never known was there had just been tapped. He opened his eyes, ready to thank her, only to see her slumped over and panting lightly.

"Pyrrha?" he asked, worried, but she simply waved him off.

"I'm alright," she assured him. "I used my Aura to unlock yours, but the energy that protects you is now your own." Jaune felt a strange warmth beneath the bunny bandage, and he checked to find that the scratch he'd acquired earlier was all but gone, leaving nothing but a silky line of new skin in its wake. "You have quite a lot of it."

Jaune watched as the white glow that surrounded his form slowly dimmed and sank back into his skin. "Wow," he breathed, not quite believing the situation. Not a month ago, he couldn't dream of being in the Emerald Forest with his very own force-field to protect him from the creatures of Grimm, yet here he was. Perhaps his luck was finally turning around?

In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have tempted the universe with such a blasphemous thought. Why the hell would the winds of fortune suddenly begin blowing in his favor without an honest-to-goodness miracle or some other sort of divine intervention?

As Jaune sailed through the air, he cursed the brief flash of optimism he'd felt upon having his Aura released. When would he learn that hope was the worst of the four-letter words? Although he supposed that entering a Deathstalker's cave and yanking on its stinger wasn't the smartest idea he'd ever come up with. At least he'd gotten a hit in with his family's sword that blinded it in at least three of its eyes, even if it had been mostly because he'd tripped on his fallen torch when it took a swing at him.

His (totally manly and not girlish at all, shut up) scream was cut off abruptly when he felt something crash into him at high speed. Or had he crashed into whatever it was? Regardless of the semantics, Jaune and the unknown object slammed into a tree trunk, where he took a moment to gather his wits and bite back an instinctive groan. It was a good thing Pyrrha had unlocked his Aura earlier, otherwise he'd have broken at least half a dozen bones from the mid-air collision alone.

Jaune was distracted from the slowly-receding pain by something shifting in his lap and a tiny whimper. Looking down, he found none other than Ruby Rose rubbing her shoulder.

"Hey, Ruby," he said with a weak grin. "Just dropping in?"

She winced and rolled her eyes. "You know, I think that was more painful than the actual impact, and I grew up with Yang," she informed him, and he chuckled. "Thanks for catching me."

"It wasn't exactly on purpose," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "But I'm around any time you need an airbag."

He helped her to her feet, and she dropped lightly to the ground to meet up with her sister. Jaune took a moment to get the lay of the land from on high. On a small hillock, pressed up against a bluff was a semi-circular ruin of pillars and plinths, upon which rested black and gold objects that Jaune couldn't quite make out from his perch, while several people were gathered near the temple. There was a dark-haired girl with...were those cat-ears on her head? Beside the cat-girl was the blonde girl Ruby had called her sister the day before, and a little closer to the treeline was a ginger girl and a green-clad boy with a pink streak in his otherwise black hair.

As he watched, Pyrrha ran into the clearing with the Deathstalker hot on her heels. Gritting his teeth, Jaune was about to go to his partner's aid when an incredulous shriek from above made him raise his eyes skyward.

At first, all he saw was a massive crow Grimm he thought might have been called a Lost Lenore or something to that effect. After a second look he noticed a smudge of white that, upon closer inspection, resolved itself into the white-haired vision of beauty he'd met in the locker rooms. It seemed as if she were about to fall...

...and there she went.

"Confidence is all you need to attract a good woman, Jaune." The words of his father floated up to the forefront of his mind, and Jaune knew immediately what he had to do, even if he was reasonably sure it would net him even more pain than he'd already been put through.

Then again, it was his dream to become a hero, and what was a hero but someone who helped people without thought for themselves? Mind made up, Jaune leapt off the branch with his arms outstretched. Remarkably, Weiss landed securely within his grasp, and as they fell he mustered up his most charming smile for her.

"Can't have you hurt on your way down from heaven, can we Snow Angel?" he grinned as he curled around her and spun so that his back was to the ground.

"What are you—?" she began to exclaim, but they hit the ground before she was able to finish her thought.

As a young man who may or may not have gravely insulted the gods of chance and circumstance in a past life, Jaune Arc was no stranger to pain. Sure, there were the bullies who attacked him on a regular basis, and the accidental injuries inflicted upon him by his loving family, but the most common source of misery for Jaune was the tripping and falling from various heights several times daily. Once as a youngster, he'd slipped on a discarded feminine pad, ricocheted of a wall via his face, and then bounced down two flights of stairs. He'd been hospitalized for a month before going home with both arms and his groin area in a cast.

Jaune knew, therefore, just how much pain to expect when falling from so high with the added burden of another person weighing him down. So he was incredibly surprised when the agony which assaulted his nervous system was rather...lackluster compared to what he'd anticipated. Why, it was as though he'd only tripped off a curb and into the way of a decelerating vehicle!

How have I lived so long without Aura? Jaune marveled to himself even as his breath was squeezed out of him by the hard earth on one side and a pliant but still undeniably solid female body on the other. This stuff is amazing!

As he got to his feet, hoisting his passenger up along with him, Jaune felt practically invincible. At least, he did until a small, sharp quartet of knuckles buried themselves in his yielding gut.

"What kind of brain-dead buffoon are you?" snapped Weiss. "Did you even have a plan for landing safely?"

"Well yeah, obviously," he replied nervously, taking an instinctive half-step back. Growing up with seven sisters had allowed him a unique insight into when a woman was about to beat the ever-living shit out of him, and Weiss seemed a hair's breadth from flying off the handle. "You're not hurt, right?"

That simple argument seemed to cut the legs out from under the diminutive girl, and her eyes widened minutely as she processed his answer. "I am, thank you for asking," she said almost automatically before regaining a little of her indignation. "That still doesn't excuse the fact that you disregarded your own well-being simply because I am a Schnee!"

"Gesundheit," he said, helpfully offering her a tissue from his waist pouch.

"That's my family name, you ignoramus!" she shrieked, batting the tissue aside furiously.

"Oh," Jaune responded blankly. Did that sound familiar? He thought it might, but...well, he had taken more than a few knocks to the head growing up. Perhaps his memory was permanently damaged? After all, he hadn't recognized Pyrrha, and she was on the box of his most favorite breakfast cereal of all time! "It's a nice name?" he tried with a weak smile.

Weiss' pale complexion pinked dramatically in rage, but before she could do something unspeakable to him, Ruby's bombshell of a sister saved him from what he could only assume was eternal horror. "Nice catch there, Lady Killer," she complimented, slugging him on the shoulder hard enough that it would have bruised were it not for his totally awesome force-field. "I call dibs on the next rescue."

"Uh...what?"

Yang smirked, jerking her thumb back toward Ruby, who was on her way to grabbing a relic. "Well, you already saved my sis and the Ice Queen here—" the blonde girl pointedly ignored Weiss' outraged objection (though whether that was to her new nickname or that she needed saving was up for debate). "—so I call the next save, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor."

She flicked his nose playfully while he stammered. "But you're way strong," he mumbled. "I doubt you'd ever find yourself in a damsel-in-distress kind of situation."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Yang approved, slinging an arm around the both of them, and steered them over to where the others were.

Of course, Pyrrha took that moment to land in a barely-organized heap at everyone's feet. Jaune was at her side immediately, helping her sit up. "Pyrrha, are you okay? I'm so sorry for abandoning you like that."

"I don't consider being flung away at high speeds by a Deathstalker to be abandonment, Jaune," Pyrrha gently assured him. "Though we still have the same problem at hand."

As the giant arachnid bore down on the group, Ruby took the opportunity to do something ill-thought-out. Well, at least to Jaune it was, but then again he'd been inundated with a lifetime of poor luck so anything that could in any way result in bodily harm was considered ill-thought-out to him.

Jaune called out a warning as Ruby took off at ludicrous speed toward the Deathstalker with Crescent Rose pulled back in preparation for a grievous strike, but she was too quick. Her scythe was knocked off-kilter by the canny scorpion's pincer, and the imbalance sent Ruby flying backwards. She turned to put some space between her and the Grimm, but the other monster in the area decided at that moment to tag-team with its ground-bound kin.

Massive pinions seemed to sprout from the earth as the big crow (or was it a raven?) hurled its oily black feathers crashing downward, and one of the enormous things struck at just the wrong moment, pinning Ruby's red cloak in place and jerking her to a halt, right in the path of the rampaging Deathstalker.

Yang was the first to run to her sister's aid, with Jaune not far behind. The airborne Grimm (seriously, the first thing he did after he recovered from whatever injuries he would no doubt gather from Initiation was go to the library and read up on the creatures of darkness), swooped around low and sent off another volley of feathers, directly in their path.

Jaune's sharp eyes noticed a feather on a collision course with Yang a moment after it was loosed. His fellow blonde was too focused on her imperiled sister, and Jaune recalled her banter just a minute before.

Don't screw up, don't screw up, he chanted to himself, using the cadence of his inner voice to increase the tempo of his legs as he strained to catch up with every last fiber of his being. He drew level with Yang and he threw himself forward, deploying Crocea Mors' shield right as the feather struck. The razor-sharp point of the javelin-sized projectile glanced right off the stalwart barrier at the most perfect angle and rebounded over Ruby's head, ruffling her hair with its passing, and lodged itself straight into one of the Deathstalker's remaining eyes as it rushed forward to take out the red-and-black clad girl.

Before anyone could so much as blink, a white blur rushed past them and, with a large circle full of eldritch marks made of pure light, unleashed a devastating wave of ice upon the dark arthropod, freezing it in place. Yang, who hadn't broken stride even when Jaune leapt in front of her, reared her fist back and swung a hard hay-maker backed by an explosive Dust round into the feather, driving it all the way through the Deathstalker's body. The creature's death rattle battered Jaune's ears, but he breathed a sigh of relief when the thing began to dissolve into hideously black smoke.

"Well, that's one way to do it," Yang said after a moment of silence. She turned to Jaune with a grin. "That was a hell of a save there, Vomit Boy; we'll call it even for ralphing on my boots yesterday."

Shrugging, Jaune accepted the ribbing with a good-natured smile. "It's definitely a feather in my cap," he quipped, wishing he actually had a hat to make the idiom more relevant, but he'd take what he got.

Yang seemed to appreciate the joke, though, as she let out a bark of laughter. "Ha! See, Ruby? I'm not the only one who makes awesome puns!" With a quick two-fingered salute to Jaune, she headed over to help Ruby free her cloak and save her from the scolding Weiss was dishing out. Retracting his shield, Jaune rubbed his shoulder gingerly. That deflection he'd somehow managed to pull off was indeed amazing, but it hadn't done his poor body any favors, Aura or no.

Shaking out his arm in a futile attempt at alleviating the pain, Jaune cast his eyes up toward the avian Grimm. It was circling warily after watching them take down one of its brethren but he had a sinking feeling that its caution wouldn't last long.

"We should probably get going before Big Bird up there stops messing around," he called loudly enough for both groups of initiates to hear him.

"Jaune's right," Pyrrha agreed, glancing skyward as well. "We've got what we needed, let's head back to the Cliffs."

Everyone else agreed, and they took off toward the bluffs that loomed over the Emerald Forest. Above them, the Grimm angled toward them and kept pace as the scurried toward their goal using the trees as cover. However, as they neared the sheer rock face the treeline ended, and several dozen yards beyond that so did the ground. A massive tower complex hung suspended over a deep gorge that seemed placed specifically to hinder their progress. Thin bridges spanned the chasm with no guardrails or safety measures in sight, and worst of all, the Grimm chasing them knew that they would be sitting ducks if they tried to cross here.

Hovering at the edge of the forest, the group of Beacon hopefuls tried to figure out a plan.

"I can probably distract it with Crescent Rose," Ruby said. "My rounds can punch through most Grimm hide."

"Don't you know anything?" Weiss admonished. "A Nevermore's feathers are arranged in a way that any sort of bullets would lose their momentum before it got past the first few layers."

"Well I could still get its attention," the younger girl groused.

"Nora will be able to help if we go down that route," the guy with the pink lock supplied, gesturing to the ginger girl. "Her grenades would destabilize its flight pattern at the very least."

"Alright, so we've got a way to keep its attention," the cat-girl said. Upon closer inspection, Jaune realized with much embarrassment that what had at first appeared to be feline ears were in fact the loops of a black bow. He was glad he hadn't mistaken her for a Faunus aloud; there were some people in the world who would have unfortunately taken that as a grave insult. "Now how do we take it down?"

When no one said anything, Jaune spoke up. "Weiss, can a blade bypass that thing's feathers?"

With a thoughtful look, Weiss nodded hesitantly. "Given the right amount of force and speed behind it, yes," she explained. "However, even if we could cut or stab the Nevermore, it would take a lot to take it down, short of beheading it."

Stroking his chin, Jaune pondered for a moment. "So cut off it's head, or..." he muttered to himself.

"Or?" Ruby prompted hopefully. Looking up, Jaune was startled to see the others looking at him expectantly, even Weiss.

"No or," Jaune shook his head. "It's a stupid thought. So we'll need to decapitate the sucker, and I'm pretty sure Ruby's the only one with a weapon big enough to manage that." His gaze drifted to the Nevermore (he knew it had to have been something like that), which was currently tracing circles in the sky above the bridge/fortress/tower/whatever. "Weiss, can you do anything besides shoot ice with your magic circle things?"

"I can affect local gravity, dilate time, and create a variety of elemental effects given the proper Dust type," she rattled off with just a trace of haughtiness.

"Right, okay," Jaune assimilated the knowledge, turning to the dark-haired beauty next to Yang. "Er..."

"Blake," she said flatly.

"Right, Blake," Jaune coughed, blushing. "Blake, that ribbon around your arm is elastic, right?" Blake nodded, frowning lightly. "How much weight can it hold without snapping?"

"At least three times my own weight," she replied after a moment of consideration.

A plan was coming together in Jaune's mind now. "Alright," he said. "Here's what we're gonna do..."

After-Action Report: And there we have it. As you can see, I've taken a few liberties when it comes to Jaune's personality. He's more or less the same person, but he's a lot more cautious because he's always had a bit of bad luck (understatement) in this story. Thus, he's got that waist pouch (and totally not a fanny pack) full of stuff. His motto is, Be prepared, and he takes it pretty seriously.

For the purposes of this little tale's core concept, Jaune's Semblance, which we'll just call 'Heart of Gold' just for giggles, basically skews probability in Jaune's favor nine times out of ten. Instead of ending up hanging upside down after the crash with Ruby he gets a lap full of cut girl. Rather than making a complete fool of himself trying to 'rescue' Weiss, he manages to spin it so he looks noble. And then there's the feather hitting the shield just right (insert meme here) to pierce the Deathstalker's weak point.

Next chapter, we'll see the downside of Jaune's Semblance, and the rest of initiation.

Thanks for reading, please review or PM me to share your thoughts, and have a great day!