Hunting Is An Individual Sport
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Summary
Step one: Be me, a shitty Jujutsu Sorcerer.
Step two: Die full of regrets under the sky you failed to protect.
Step three: Wake up in someone else's body.
Step four: Realize the new world is as equally as shit as your old one.
Step five: Fuck it, we ball!
Meanwhile, Jaune Arc fails so hard at initiation he knocks himself unconscious trying to be a hero.
Spoiler: it just gets worse from there.
Much, much worse.
But hey—at least it's funny.
Until it isn't.
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Preface
Gojo: "Okay, I win again. This is unusual. You rarely ask me to train you Megumi. Are you in a rush after Yuji surpassed you?"
Megumi: "Well, beggars can't be choosers."
Gojo: "It bothers you that much to rely on me? Megumi, listen. I think you have just as much ability and potential as Yuji does. The problem is just your mindset. Megumi, you don't know how to bring out your best, do you?"
Megumi: "HUH? Are you saying I haven't been giving it my best?"
Gojo: "I'm not saying you haven't. I'm saying you can't. For example, in the baseball game the other day, Why did you go for a sacrifice bunt?
Did you want Nobara to advance the bases, even if it meant that you'd be out? That's a splendid attitude but Yuji and I would always go for the home run.
I'm not saying a bunt is a bad idea. And everyone has their roles to play. But jujutsu sorcery is an individual sport."
Megumi: "Coordinating with other sorcerers is important, isn't it?"
Gojo: "Sure. But no matter how many allies you have around you, when you die, you'll be alone.
You can only piece together undervalued data on yourself and others. You can't imagine a stronger future version of yourself. Maybe that's because of your trump card?
You believe that in the worst case, you can resolve everything at the cost of your life. But at that point, forget about me. You'll never even measure up to Nanami.
Dying to win and risking death to win are completely different Megumi.
Give it your best.
Be greedier.
Only then can you finally step on the path of being strong."
3 Days Before The Shibuya Incident, The Tragedy That Caused 2,317 Deaths.
Chapter 1: Did You Know The Name Jaune Means Yellow?
[Beacon Academy, 54 minutes into Initiation in the Emerald Forest]
| Pyrrha Nikos POV |
'The Invincible Girl.'
A title that felt less like a crown and more like a beautifully gilded cage.
Everywhere I went, the reactions were identical. Whispers behind cupped hands. Wide, star-struck eyes. The sudden, suffocating distance people placed between themselves and me, as if stepping too close to a statue might break it. I had four consecutive Mistral Regional Tournament victories under my belt, and a face plastered on the front of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes boxes.
In the eyes of the public, I wasn't Pyrrha Nikos, a seventeen-year-old girl. I was a brand. An untouchable idol.
It was exactly why I'd packed my bags and crossed an ocean to attend Beacon Academy in Vale. I thought, maybe, just maybe, crossing borders would strip me of that suffocating legacy. Here, surrounded by the best and brightest of a completely different Kingdom, I could just be a student. A partner. A normal girl.
But reality is rarely that kind.
That morning in the locker room, my hopes had been swiftly dragged through the mud.
Weiss Schnee. Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company.
The moment her sharp, ice-blue eyes had locked onto me, I saw it. It wasn't the star-struck awe of a fan, nor was it the genuine curiosity of a potential friend. It was the calculated, predatory gaze of a businesswoman looking at a high-yield asset. She wanted me on her team not because we clicked, but because I was the strongest piece on the board.
My stomach had tied itself into a knot. I had politely tried to sidestep her aggressive networking, my mind racing for a polite excuse, an exit strategy—anything.
And then, salvation arrived.
It came in the form of a scruffy, slightly uncoordinated blonde boy who literally bumbled into our conversation.
"I'm Jaune," he had said, striking a pose that was charmingly forced. "Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue. Ladies love it."
I couldn't help but smile. He had absolutely no idea who I was. Even when I mentioned the cereal box, his eyes had simply widened in innocent surprise, completely oblivious to my fighting record or my fame. He was awkward, painfully out of his depth, and genuinely trying his best.
He treated me like just another person.
For that alone, I decided he was exactly what I was looking for.
I needed to be his partner.
Whoosh—!
The violent rush of wind snapped me out of my memories. Below me, the dense canopy of the Emerald Forest was a blur of vibrant green, completely ignorant of the dozens of heavily armed teenagers being catapulted into its depths.
My landing strategy was textbook. I twisted my body mid-air, allowing my shield, Akouo, to take the brunt of the kinetic energy as I crashed through the upper branches, bleeding off my momentum until I dropped onto the forest floor with a light thud.
I immediately straightened up, my eyes scanning the sky.
The rules of Initiation were simple: the first person you made eye contact with after landing became your partner for the next four years.
I had a target in mind. I just needed to find him.
"Where are you..." I muttered, narrowing my eyes against the sun glaring through the leaves.
A distant scream caught my attention.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
It was getting louder. Much louder.
I squinted upward and saw a flailing, uncoordinated blonde streak hurtling through the sky like a thrown ragdoll. He had absolutely no landing strategy. No shifting center of gravity. Nothing. If he hit the ground at that angle, he'd break every bone in his body.
'Got you.'
I unslung my weapon, Miló, and seamlessly shifted it into its javelin form. I took a brief step back, adjusted my stance, calculated the wind resistance and his trajectory, and threw.
Thwack—!
The javelin flew true. It caught him perfectly by the hood of his hoodie, the momentum carrying him straight into the thick trunk of a massive oak tree. The blade embedded itself deep into the wood, pinning him securely several dozen feet above the ground.
"Thank you!"
His muffled, relieved voice drifted down through the branches.
I smiled, a genuine warmth blossoming in my chest. First step: secured.
"I'm sorry!" I called back.
Now, all I had to do was get him down, make eye contact, and we'd be set.
Finding the tree took less than ten minutes. Extracting him and officially becoming partners took even less.
But what followed left me utterly bewildered.
"Aura?" Jaune had asked, blinking his striking blue eyes at me as if I had just spoken to him in an ancient, dead dialect.
We had ventured into a dark, foreboding cave—mostly because Jaune was convinced we'd find the required 'relics' inside—and he had ended up getting his cheek swiped by an errant, jagged branch in the gloom. The cut had bled. It hadn't healed.
"You... you don't know about Aura?" I asked, struggling to keep the absolute shock out of my voice.
Every Huntsman in training, every child who had even picked up a wooden sword, knew about Aura. It was the manifestation of our soul. Our shield. Our lifeblood in combat against the Grimm. How could someone pass Beacon's entrance exams without even having it unlocked?
"Is it... like a forcefield?" he guessed, chuckling nervously and rubbing the back of his neck.
I stared at him for a long, silent moment. My mind raced.
Maybe he was from an incredibly remote village? Or maybe his previous mentor was a traditionalist who believed in forcing a student to unlock their Aura in a life-or-death scenario? It sounded completely barbaric to me, something out of a dark ages textbook, but the world was vast and customs varied.
I couldn't judge him. Not when he was the first person to look at me without expectations.
"Here," I said softly, stepping close to him. I placed my hands on the sides of his head. "Close your eyes and concentrate."
I closed my own eyes, dipping into the deep, churning reservoir of my own soul.
"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality..." I chanted the old words, feeling my red Aura flare to life, casting a warm, crimson glow against the damp cave walls. "Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all... Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee."
A sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me. Unlocking another person's Aura always carried a heavy toll, but this... this felt heavier than usual. I opened my eyes.
A brilliant, blinding white light erupted from Jaune's body. It was thick, substantial, and incredibly vast.
'Such a huge amount of Aura...' I thought, genuinely awestruck. The cut on his cheek knitted itself closed in an instant, leaving smooth, unblemished skin behind.
"Whoa," Jaune whispered, looking down at his glowing hands. "It's like a forcefield!"
Before I could explain further, the cave around us trembled.
Rumble.
Pebbles and dust shook loose from the ceiling.
Deep in the cavernous dark, a pair of massive, glowing red eyes snapped open.
"Jaune..." I whispered, my grip tightening on Miló.
A colossal stinger, dripping with virulent purple venom, smashed into the rock wall right where Jaune's head had been a fraction of a second before.
"Run!" I shouted.
Skitter. Skitter. CRASH—!
The Deathstalker tore through the forest behind us like a living siege engine. Century-old trees were snapped like dry twigs under its massive, armored claws.
"Keep moving!" I yelled over my shoulder, deflecting a rogue boulder the beast had kicked up with my shield.
We ran blindly through the dense foliage, the cacophony of breaking timber and the monster's enraged hissing pushing our adrenaline to the absolute limit. My legs burned, but we didn't stop until we finally broke through the tree line.
We burst into a massive clearing. In the center stood an ancient circular ruin, surrounded by broken pillars and an overlooking cliff face. A deep, mist-filled chasm bordered the far side of the ruins.
And perched neatly on pedestals in the center were... chess pieces.
The Relics.
"We found them!" Jaune gasped, bracing his hands on his knees as he fought for breath. He jogged forward, completely ignoring the sheer danger we were still in, and snatched up a golden Rook piece. "Look! It's a Rook! Let's just grab this and get back to the cliff!"
Before I could agree, a massive shadow fell over us.
"Look out below!"
A high-pitched scream tore through the sky. I snapped my head up.
Ruby Rose, a small girl in a red hood, was literally plummeting out of the sky, falling from the clutches of an absolutely colossal Nevermore—a giant raven Grimm that blotted out the sun.
"Ruby?!" I yelled.
But she wasn't the only one.
Falling right behind her, screaming in absolute, unfiltered panic, was Weiss Schnee.
"Aaahhhhh!"
Ruby managed to utilize her sniper-scythe, firing a high-caliber round into the ground to bleed off her momentum and land in a rough roll.
Weiss wasn't so lucky. She was hurtling toward the hard stone of the ruins, arms flailing, completely out of control.
"Weiss!" Ruby screamed, scrambling to her feet.
In a split second, before my brain could even calculate the trajectory to intercept, Jaune moved.
He didn't activate a semblance. He didn't use a specialized landing strategy. He simply sprinted toward a broken pillar, jumped onto the uneven stone, and launched himself blindly into the air, right into Weiss's path.
"Jaune, wait!" I cried out.
He intercepted her mid-air. It was brave. It was completely selfless.
It was also incredibly stupid.
Because he hadn't planned for the descent.
Wham—!
They hit the ground like a sack of wet bricks. Weiss landed squarely on top of Jaune's back, effectively using his body as a fleshy, Aura-padded cushion.
"Ugh!" Weiss grunted, rolling off of him and frantically dusting her pristine white dress. "You... you oaf! Watch where you're catching people!"
But Jaune didn't respond.
He lay entirely motionless on the cracked stone, face down.
Panic seized my chest. Falling from that height, even with his massive new Aura... if he hadn't braced properly, he could have snapped his neck. Or suffered severe cranial trauma.
"Jaune!" I dashed forward, completely ignoring Weiss, and dropped to my knees beside him. I gently grasped his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. "Jaune! Are you alright? Wake up!"
His head lolled to the side. He was unconscious. The chaotic screaming of the Nevermore circling above and the distant, heavy crashes of the Deathstalker catching up to us faded into background noise.
"Jaune, please..." I shook him gently.
For a torturous three seconds, he was completely unresponsive.
And then, his eyes snapped open.
I froze.
The air around us didn't just drop in temperature; it felt as if gravity itself had multiplied. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up like I had just been struck by ambient electricity.
Every single combat instinct I had honed over years of tournament fighting—every survival mechanism drilled into my DNA—screamed at me simultaneously in a deafening, unified voice.
DANGER.
FLEE.
LETHAL THREAT.
My grip on my spear tightened so hard the metal groaned. My knuckles turned stark white. I had to physically bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from flinching away from him.
He was looking right at me.
But the eyes weren't the bright, innocent sapphire blue they had been just moments ago.
They were a flat, piercing gold.
A predator's eyes.
No, not a predator. A predator hunts because it's hungry. The entity staring through those golden irises didn't look hungry. It looked exhausted. Too tired to care. It looked like an abyss that had seen thousands of lives snuffed out and couldn't care less about seeing a thousand more.
It was a look completely devoid of fear, and steeped in profound irritation.
Jaune grunted. His voice was deeper. Rougher. As if he had just woken up from a slumber that had lasted decades, rather than being knocked out for three seconds.
He didn't scramble away. He didn't ask what happened. He simply placed a palm flat on the stone and slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position.
He looked around. At the broken ruins. At me, gripping my spear like a lifeline. At the giant, screeching Grimm bird circling the sky above.
And then, his golden eyes narrowed.
"Tsk."
He clicked his tongue in absolute, unadulterated annoyance.
"Can't even die right," he muttered under his breath, his voice laced with a bitter, cynical exasperation that chilled my blood. "Fuck me."
I didn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. The aura of danger rolling off the boy I had met this morning was so intense I felt like I was locked in a cage with a starved Beowolf.
What was this? A Semblance? A second personality triggered by head trauma?
"J-Jaune...?" I managed to stutter, my voice barely a whisper.
He stopped muttering. His gaze snapped back to me.
For a second, the heavy, oppressive malice in those gold eyes focused entirely on my face.
And then...
SMACK—!
He raised a hand and slapped his own cheek with enough force to crack bone. The sharp sound echoed sharply over the chaotic noise of the ruins.
My shoulders jumped.
When he looked back at me, the suffocating pressure vanished. It was sucked away so fast I felt a moment of mental whiplash.
"Ah, sorry about that!" he said, his voice raising half an octave, returning to the slightly goofy, awkward tone he'd used when we first met. He rubbed his reddening cheek, chuckling nervously. "I think I hit my head pretty hard there. Sorry, I'm just a bit confused right now 'cause my head's all swimming... ahaha..."
He was smiling. He was acting like the Jaune from the locker room.
But those eyes were still gold.
And beneath that nervous laugh, the shadow of the predator still lingered. My instincts were slightly muffled now, but they hadn't stopped humming. It felt exactly like standing next to a coiled viper that had just decided it wasn't going to strike—yet.
He wasn't lying down to pounce, but I still felt overwhelmingly like prey.
Before my brain could even begin to process the horrific shift in his demeanor, a shadow blotted out the sun.
"WATCH OUT!" Ruby screamed from a few yards away.
A barrage of massive, blade-like feathers rained down from the sky as the Nevermore banked sharply above us. They slammed into the stone, exploding the ancient masonry like artillery shells.
"Whoa!" Jaune yelled, scrambling to his feet. He threw his arms up, his white Aura flaring as a stray chunk of debris bounced harmlessly off his shoulder.
SKRREEEEEE-ONK—!
From the treeline we had just escaped, the towering form of the Deathstalker burst through the canopy. Its glowing red eyes locked onto us, its golden stinger dripping acid onto the grass as it clicked its massive pincers.
We were trapped between a giant raven and a monstrous scorpion.
Nora Valkyrie, a hyperactive girl in pink who had arrived riding a smaller Grimm just minutes before, swung her massive hammer with a wild grin. Her partner, a quiet boy named Lie Ren, stood beside her, his dual machine-pistols drawn and steady.
"It's the whole gang!" Nora cheered, oblivious to the sheer scale of the threat.
"Get back!" I shouted, moving to step between Jaune and the advancing Deathstalker. If he was concussed—if that weird personality shift was a symptom of a brain bleed—I needed to protect him.
But a hand clamped down on my shoulder.
It wasn't a reassuring pat. It was an iron grip.
"Hold the line, Pyrrha."
I turned my head. Jaune was standing beside me. He had drawn his simple longsword and shield, Crocea Mors. His posture had completely changed. His feet were planted shoulder-width apart, his center of gravity flawlessly balanced. The goofy, uncoordinated boy who swung a sword like a flyswatter was gone.
He was holding that blade like it was an extension of his own arm.
"What do you call this giant scorpion?" Jaune asked.
His voice was dead calm. It didn't waver. There was no panic, no adrenaline-fueled shake. He asked it as casually as asking for the time.
"It's a Deathstalker," I replied quickly, my mind struggling to keep up with his sudden tactical shift. Did he really not know what a Deathstalker was? The Grimm were humanity's greatest enemy. They were taught in primary school!
"Deathstalker," he repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth like a bad taste. He narrowed his golden eyes, analyzing the beast's armored carapace. "Right. The shell is too thick for standard piercing attacks. Slashing will just dull the blades."
He didn't wait for my input. He stepped forward, his voice suddenly cutting through the chaos like a whip crack. It was a commander's voice. Absolute. Undeniable.
"Hammer girl! Gun guy! You're with me and Pyrrha!" Jaune barked, not even looking at them as he kept his eyes locked on the Deathstalker.
Ren and Nora actually stopped. Even Weiss paused her bickering with Ruby.
"We focus the scorpion. Red and White, you take the bird. Keep it off our backs," Jaune ordered, pointing his sword at Ruby and Weiss. "Go!"
It was so authoritative, so utterly self-assured, that everyone simply obeyed. Ruby and Weiss dashed toward the ruins to deal with the Nevermore.
The Deathstalker hissed, charging forward like a runaway freight train. Its pincers snapped, aiming directly for Jaune.
"Pyrrha! Take the left pincer. Don't aim to cut. Hit the joints. Force it to keep its guard wide!" Jaune commanded.
"Understood!" I moved on instinct, trusting the cold logic in his orders. I dashed to the left, shifting Miló into its rifle form and firing a volley of dust rounds directly into the crevice of the Grimm's heavy left claw.
The beast shrieked, swinging its massive appendage wide, exactly as he predicted.
"Gun guy! Blind the right eye! Hammer, get ready to shatter the armor plate under its chin when it rears back!"
"Got it!" Ren shouted, blurring forward. He flipped over a swipe from the stinger and unloaded a relentless stream of bullets directly into the Deathstalker's right eye.
The Grimm wailed in agony, rearing back on its hind legs, exposing its paler underbelly.
"Nora, smash it!" Jaune yelled.
"Boop!" Nora giggled maniacally. She launched herself off a broken pillar, channeling her Aura into her hammer, Magnhild. She brought it down with the force of a meteor.
CRACK—!
The explosive round in her hammer detonated on impact. The Deathstalker's armored chin shattered into a spray of black ichor and bone fragments.
But it wasn't dead.
In its blind rage, the beast lashed out blindly. The massive golden stinger swung in a lethal horizontal arc, sweeping incredibly fast toward Ren, who was still in mid-air.
"Ren!" Nora screamed.
He couldn't dodge.
I braced to throw my shield.
But a blur of white Aura and black fabric moved faster.
Jaune slid across the dirt, driving his shield into the ground and bracing his entire body weight behind it, perfectly intercepting the stinger's path before it could reach Ren.
CLANG—!!!
The impact sounded like a cathedral bell cracking.
The sheer kinetic force shoved Jaune back three feet, his boots carving deep trenches into the stone floor. But he didn't falter. He didn't drop to his knees. His white Aura flared violently, absorbing the lethal strike.
He held the line.
With a grunt of exertion, he shoved back, parrying the stinger upward and throwing the massive beast completely off balance.
"Now!" Jaune roared, his golden eyes flashing with a predatory gleam. "Pyrrha! The legs! Take its footing!"
I didn't hesitate. I shifted Miló back to its sword form and vaulted over Jaune's lowered shield, driving the blade deep into the joints of the Deathstalker's supporting legs.
It shrieked, collapsing forward onto the ruins.
"Finish it!" Jaune yelled, spinning away and sheathing his sword in the shield, converting it to a heavier form.
We didn't need to be told twice. With a coordinated barrage from Nora's grenades, Ren's gunfire, and my javelins, we drove the colossal monster backward, pushing it toward the edge of the chasm.
With a final, desperate screech, the Deathstalker tumbled over the edge, plummeting into the misty abyss below.
"Woo-hoo!"
Nora threw her hands up, immediately jumping onto the remains of the crumbling stone bridge spanning the chasm. She bounced on the unstable masonry, completely lost in the euphoria of victory. "We did it! Did you see that?! Bam! Smash! Boom!"
"Nora, get off the bridge," Ren warned, holstering his weapons.
I let out a long, shuddering breath, wiping a smudge of dirt from my cheek. I turned to look at Jaune. He was staring down into the chasm, his expression completely blank. He wasn't panting. He didn't look exhausted.
He looked... bored.
As if taking down a massive Grimm with three strangers was a trivial, mundane chore.
Suddenly, his ears twitched.
His golden eyes snapped toward Nora.
In a fraction of a second, before the stone even began to groan, Jaune moved.
He lunged forward, grabbing Nora by the collar of her combat skirt and violently yanking her backward, tossing her unceremoniously onto the solid ground of the ruins.
"Hey! Watch the threads—" Nora started to complain.
CRUMBLE... CRASH—!
The exact section of the bridge Nora had been dancing on gave way. Huge blocks of ancient stone sheared off, plummeting hundreds of feet into the gorge below, creating an echoing boom that vibrated through my boots.
Nora sat on the ground, blinking at the empty air where she had been standing half a second prior. She swallowed hard. "...Oh."
"Situational awareness," Jaune said coldly, not looking at her. "The fight's not over until you're back in a safe zone."
He didn't wait for a "thank you." He just turned around, walking back toward the center of the ruins where Weiss and Ruby were standing over a decapitated Nevermore.
I stood frozen, staring at his retreating back.
That was... amazing.
The reaction speed. The battlefield command. The tactical foresight to identify enemy weak points on a creature he claimed he didn't even know the name of.
A desperate, rationalizing thought clawed its way to the front of my mind.
Maybe... maybe Jaune is just nervous in social situations?
Yes. That had to be it. When we met in the locker room, he was out of his element. He was surrounded by strangers, girls, people he was trying to impress. That's why he was bumbling. That's why he didn't know what Aura was—maybe he was joking, trying to break the ice with some bizarre humor?
But when the chips were down... when lives were on the line in the middle of combat... this is who he really was. A seasoned, serious, stone-cold commander.
I tightened my grip on my spear, watching his blonde hair blow in the wind as he approached the others.
Yes. That's what he is. This is only our first day together. I hardly know him.
'Serious Jaune' is just different from 'Normal Jaune'.
...Even if his eyes changed color.
I took a deep breath, pushing down the lingering chill of my instincts, and ran to catch up with my new partner.