After getting my credentials loaded onto my Scroll, I was allowed free reign to the Beacon training facilities. I also had a map of the campus downloaded onto the high-tech super-phone and managed to eventually find my way over to the gym.

A couple minutes into my exploration of what it had to offer showed that making the trip over to Beacon had been worth the effort. The equipment in the gym was state-of-the-art miracles of modern science. I'm talking gravity-dust-enhanced machines that simulated up to a hundred tons of weight. I'm talking marvels of engineering and dust manipulation to make hyperdense free weights that made Osmium seem like a joke.

It was as awesome as it was humbling because even as strong as I was now, I was still a ways away from maxing out anything Beacon's gym had to offer.

"Oh, this is going to suck so bad," I grinned as I loaded my body with hundreds of pounds of additional weights before hitting the treadmill and setting the incline to an "easy" 5 degrees as a start. I made the incline progressively steeper as I kept a steady 15 mph jog for the next hour. Then I moved on to the stairmaster and continued to work up a sweat.

My inhuman endurance started failing after another hour. So I went for fifteen minutes after the idea of death started sounding like a good idea before I stopped and took a lunch break.

Since I wasn't a student, I had to pay to eat at the cafeteria, but that was fine. I couldn't exactly ball out if I wanted to live the rest of my life solely on my family's inheritance, but I could afford to eat out every day if I stuck to living in a modest apartment like I'd done.

"Lapis? Is that you?" a familiar voice called out from my right as I was eating my turkey club sandwich.

"Oh hey, Velvet, right?" I said once I swallowed the bite of food I'd been chewing. I recognized the bunny faunus as one of the waitresses of Bistro Cafe who had defended my food on the day I interviewed for my line cook job.

Velvet sat down with her own tray of food and an entourage of three other people. She looked embarrassed as she asked, "Have you been a student at Beacon all this time without me realizing?"

"What? No. I'm just visiting today to get a workout in. Although, it is a surprise to me that you are a student here," I said as I sized her up. She was wearing the same uniform as the overwhelming majority of people on campus.

"What's that supposed to mean," the woman sitting to Velvet's right asked heatedly.

"That it's unlikely for me to anticipate that the adorable, dainty and apologetic waitress I was familiar with actually turned out to be a Grimm killing machine," I looked at her strangely. "Look, I'm sure you guys know Velvet better than I possibly could after interacting with her for less than a day, but you have to admit she doesn't quite carry herself with the presence of a fighter."

"He's got you there, Coco," the tall guy to Velvet's left admitted.

"Adorable?" Velvet quietly asked, but was totally ignored by everyone.

"Hmph," Coco snorted as she stabbed a piece of meat with her fork, "As long as he knows better than to disrespect her, I guess we can be cool."

"Not that I really care to get your approval, but okay," I shrugged before addressing Velvet, "Anyway, why do you work at the Bistro Cafe, if you don't mind me asking. If you're an apprentice Huntress attending Beacon wouldn't it be easier for you to get paid by doing E and D Rank missions?"

"Huh? Oh, um, because we're not really allowed free reign to the mission board for the lowest level of missions until we're through with half of our freshman year. Most people don't really need the extra cash with the stipend the school gives us for ammo and maintenance expenses for our weapons, but I do since I use expensive hard-light dust heavily," Velvet explained.

"Does that mean you plan to quit working at the restaurant soon?" I asked.

Schools in Remnant started in January and ended in December without any of the erratic holiday and break scheduling I was familiar with from Earth. Instead, they had four-month long breaks, one for each season spread evenly every three months — Work only stopped in staggered phases and only for two weeks every three months, but overall it seemed more economical and pleasant for everyone involved.

"I'm not really sure," Velvet said. "I like working at the restaurant, but I value my team even more. It all depends on how much time we decide we're going to dedicate towards completing missions and if enough is left over for me to keep working as a civilian."

"Uh, I don't know about you guys, but I hoping we'd just use the free time they gave us for training to do missions. Was it expected for us to go mission crazy or something?" The shorter dark-skinned man of the two in Velvet's team commented.

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"I was of a similar mind," The taller boy said.

"Aw, man. I was kind of hoping we'd try to compete for most missions or something," Coco whined.

"No can do, team lead. Unless of course, there aren't any other crazies like you trying do missions for the sake of it. You wouldn't want to take Velvet away from her precious job, right?" The dark-skinned guy remarked dramatically.

"I'm sure she'd appreciate it if you volunteered to go with me on missions that don't impose a full team requirement," Coco challenged him.

"Yatsuhashi? Buddy? Back me up here, will ya?"

"You made your bed, now lie in it," the taller man said.

As the three of them jabbed at each other Velvet asked me, "So, working out. Um, why here? I can't imagine there aren't closer options for you than a half hour trip to Beacon via airships."

"Regular gyms don't have equipment that really pushes me," I said as I finished my meal. "Plus, it's a good warm up, running all the way over here while getting rid of any Grimm in the way."

"That's a joke, right?" Velvet asked with a slight chuckle. She stopped and looked concerned when I didn't deny it, asking, "Right?"

"Nope," I stood up and made to leave after adding, "See you around."

Back at the gym, I worked on my strength. Starting with chest presses followed by squats, then weighted pull-ups, calf raises, weighted dips, and glute bridges to get most of my functional muscles working. The lowest weight setting I used was about 300 lbs for my pull-ups and the heaviest I could manage for now was three-ton squats.

It was glorious and soul sucking. Just like the good old days, training under that unhinged old man Roshi!

Two hours passed before I took more than a three-minute break between my routines and during that time, I noticed Coco's Ki signature approaching. Turning to her direction, I saw her and asked, "What's up?"

"Nothing, I just didn't expect to see you still working out here. Lunch was two hours ago and you looked like you had been training even before then," she said.

"My weekly schedule has room for two, maybe three, days dedicated to just working out. Today's one of them so I plan on sticking around until around four or five o'clock."

"And all that time is going to be spent in the gym? You don't do sparring?" She asked.

"I'm not a student here. Not really sure my guest pass works for that. Besides, I don't have teammates around to spar with anyway."

"What about me, big guy? I heard that little tidbit you told Velvet about running your way over here. I want to see if you're all talk," she said.

"Hey, if you're offering," I grinned, "by all means. Lead the way."

We walked out of the gym and over to another room where the rest of her teammates were already present. It was an open arena with only the concrete floor and no environmental factors.

"Hey again," I greeted Velvet. At her confused look, I added, "Your teammate invited me over for a spar and I couldn't pass up the chance to see how I compared to a first-year student at Beacon."

"You need to rest or can we start this right now?" Coco asked.

"Give me a sec," I said before summoning a Stamina Potion and drinking it. "Alright, whenever you're ready."

"What the hell was that?"

"Do you have a storage space for a Semblance?"

"Did you just take drugs right in front of us?"

A lot of questions were thrown at me and I answered them as succinctly as I possibly could.

"Not a Semblance. I don't have Aura. That's my power. I don't know how or why it works. I drank a Stamina Potion to get over my fatigue from working out for the last half hour or so," I said while summoning a new sword.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Yeah, uh… Are you going to be alright without Aura? You know pretty much all our weapons are military grade and we use live ammunition, right?" Coco said.

"As long as you're not using anti-tank rounds I'll be fine. I've been shot before and normal bullets don't hurt more than a bee sting," I said.

"If you say so," she accepted before nodding towards Yatsuhashi to begin a countdown.

The seven-foot-tall man counted down from three and Coco charged at me the moment he said, "Begin!"

As she got closer, she reached for her handbag and swung it at me. It was slow enough for me to decide I wanted to catch it with my hand instead of parry it with a sword and I quickly learned why that was a bad idea. The damn thing had the force of a cannon behind it!

I was literally forced to drag my heels a couple of feet to counter the energy transferred through her swing.

As she came in again for another hit, I dodged her deceptively powerful swing and tried to kick her. "Tried" being the operative word as she dodged and went for a punch at the same time.

Her punch went through the afterimage I left behind as I appeared behind her and kicked at her feet to drop her. My kick connected, but her Aura held strong, preventing me from kicking her feet out from under her. In the time it took me to process that, she had somehow unraveled a minigun out of her handbag and had its multiple barrels pointed at me.

"Sorry about this," She said as the barrels started rotating.

"Yeah, no," I said as I used the Afterimage technique repeatedly to reposition myself away from where her gun was pointed. She tried to follow me, but I constantly used the ridiculous acceleration forces to always be a step away from her bullets as the roar of minigun fire resounded in the mostly empty room.

Eventually, I managed to reposition myself close enough again to hit her. I landed another punch and her aura flickered reactively.

I backed off as she swung her minigun in a sweeping motion that would have connected had I not moved away.

"Stop!" Yatsuhashi yelled out causing Coco to reflexively take her finger off the trigger. When we both turned to look at him he pointed at his scroll and said, "You're in the red Coco."

[Congratulations! For defeating Coco Adel, you have earned two Rare Gacha Coins!]

"What?!" She rushed to pull out her scroll and verify what he was talking about. "But he only landed two hits!" She looked away from her scroll and at me as she questioned, "Are your hands actually freight trucks in disguise or something? I've literally been hit by one and lost less Aura from that than your punches."

"Thank you," I smiled. It was a nice compliment.

"Ugh," she groaned in exasperation.

"Anyone else want to fight?" I asked.

Yatsuhashi nodded.

He then proceeded to one-shot me into unconsciousness the moment I tried to parry his massive six-foot-long sword.