The Knights of Grimm - Act 4 - Whispers of Arkhonex

Chapter 17 - The Congregation of Dawn

Jaune

So much has changed...

That thought has been recurring in his head as of late, long before leaving his home with his friends. With his shirt off, not only can he see how much his body has changed since he first started at beacon...but the things he has also collected along the way. Thanks to muscle building lessons with Sun and Kassius he is much bigger than he used to be, with a six pack and defined pecks and arms. However, his body carries shards of memory on it as well, the three slash marks across his stomach when the Beowulf attacked him during the Battle of Mistral, before it fell to her control. The electrical burns from the tower on the Volcanic Chain Islands...

...the stab wound from Hyde, using Crocea Mors against him.

He does not hold it against the Demon, because he was not in his right mind, he was being manipulated by Vir Nominis Umbra, channelling some kind of old nature back into him. As Jaune looks at his body, he touches the bandage around his healing wound and he slowly...yet carefully...pulls it off, looking at the mark of which that has been left behind. He winces, gritting his teeth as he stares at the stab wound that his aura has been working hard to repair the damage of. Blood once stained these bandages, sticky hot claret covering their white soft structure.

But now the new ones do not have a speck on them, his aura worked fast, Ruby is still struggling with her wound she suffered from Corsac at times. Wincing and limping, however his has already completely healed back to normal. Leaving nothing more than a scar behind.

This has happened before for him, not only after his beating from Cardin in Forever Fall but also after he was hit by the lightning strike after fighting Pyrrha. He does have some slash marks from her, but they have started to fade as well, but the lightning scars are permanent.

Jaune turns to his side and he lifts his arm to cast his shadow away from the markings, to see the scars. Until the bathroom door opens and he sees Pyrrha about to walk inside, both of them gasp and spin round, eyes meeting. "Oh!" They both gasp when seeing each other, Pyrrha still wearing her armour of course. Jaune's is in the corner though, with his folded up Pumpkin Pete's hoodie and the rest of his armour pieces.

Pyrrha nervously stammers as she looks at him, undeniably admiring his physique...he has changed a lot since the days training at Beacon.

For the better too.

"I – uh – I'll wait outside..." She stammers, but Jaune shakes his head, getting more comfortable around her in situations like this. At the end of the day they know they love each other so they might as well stop beating around the bush about it.

"It's okay." He assures with a soft-spoken voice, reaching out and holding her smaller and firm to the touch hand. She looks back at him and she can't help but smile right back at him, walking into the bathroom with him and closing the door behind him. She looks at his chest...at first admiring the pecks and the six-pack, but then her eyes focus onto the scars he has collected. She gasps, her eyes widening when she notices some she never saw before, like the Beowulf slash.

"When...when did that happen?" She nervously asks him with widened eyes. He looks at the slashes across his belly, they were pretty deep too, he was lucky that the Beowulf had not disembowelled him. He chuckles as he prods his belly, no wobble in it like there used to be in the past.

"Beowulf. Happened just before Ruby...lost her eye." Jaune explains, still shuddering over that horrifying memory of when he saw that arrow darting towards her face, nearly killing her instantly if she had not turned to petals.

She may have lost her eye.

But that is a worthy sacrifice in comparison to losing her life.

Pyrrha steps forward and she gently moves her fingers across the scars, feeling the bumps of which where the lashes have formed. Jaune feels his heart hammer with attraction towards her, butterflies dancing in his ribs. "It must have hurt..." She softly says to him with a saddened voice, he chuckles nervously...no matter how much time he will spend with her, even when they are both in a relationship, she will always make him nervous.