RWBY: Remnant's Blond Bard

Chapter 26

Pyrrha was in her element in the private gym she brought him to.

Jaune watched with no small amount of awe as a girl his age benched, ran, squatted, and just about did anything she put her body to ten times better than he ever could. The amount of training that must have gone into this was insane, and she didn't have the Semblance-assisted option of dumping arbitrary points into a stat, so that made her achievements even more impressive than his.

It was all he could do to keep strumming and keep using his Bardic Music on her so they could get an accurate reading of how much his skill helped her. Pyrrha didn't do much talking throughout it all, wanting to focus on her performance for best accuracy, but he didn't need to see her previous benchmark to know this was better.

Her shocked expression said it all.

"E—Enough," she said, jumping off and panting slightly. He stopped his music and Pyrrha grabbed a water bottle and a towel, burying her face into it for a few long seconds. "That was intense," she said. "And ridiculous! I struggled on that routine just two days ago."

"I told you my Semblance was real."

"I never doubted you." That was a lie, of course, but Jaune couldn't blame her. His Semblance sounded like complete nonsense. "But it's strange, it must do more than solely motivate because motivation alone wouldn't have let me do all this. And I'm not crashing right now, either."

"Why would you be?"

"Think about it. If you were giving me energy to burn as fuel, like calories, then once your music stops I should lose all that energy. Given I've just expended it all, you'd expect me to suddenly crash and faint. Or at least lose the ability to stand. I'm not. I feel about as tired as I normally would after a workout."

"Huh. What does that mean?"

Pyrrha frowned. "I'm not sure. I don't want to say you're creating matter from nothing because maybe I'll lose body weight tomorrow from this or need to eat more later. You could just be fooling the body into thinking it can push itself further."

"I don't think so. Weiss sang better when I did this. Willow felt better."

"Hmmm. Good point. I don't know about the addictive aspects of it myself but maybe that's because I burned off the excess energy. Maybe Willow got addicted to it because she wasn't burning off your Semblance."

Interesting thought. His skill said it would boost the person, but Willow was usually just drinking or sitting around at the time, so maybe it had lingered in her system like unspent calories, except weighing on her mind instead of her waistline. Weiss and Pyrrha had both used up the buffs he put on them, which might explain why they weren't so effected.

"But it's all guesswork for now, isn't it?"

Pyrrha smiled. "Yeah. We don't know anything about this. Other than that it's amazing. You could genuinely become a huntsman with this, you know."

It was temping.

Jaune would be lying if he said it wasn't.

Then he looked at Pyrrha's level, over four times higher than his, remembered that the terrorist had nearly killed him in three punches, and came back down to reality. "No thanks. I get that I could boost other people but I'm one good hit away from turning into a fine red mist, and I'd have, what, half a year to get up to scratch...?"