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Long ago, in a land far away from ours, there was once a hero known as the Rusted Knight. He was brave, fearless, and some might even call him courageous. He would gallop in on his heroic mount, a jackalope with antlers of gold and fur as pristine as cream in snow. With his rusted blade, he beat back the terrors of the far-off land in the Ever After, protecting it from the dangers of the Jabberwalkers. Amongst all others, the Rusted Knight is a hero unlike any other, a knight peerless. And this...
...is not his story.
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"RUNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING!"
The mission was simple. Or, well, it was supposed to be simple, anyways. Jaune just had to go in, find a few Grimm, then report back to the village so they could hire a REAL huntsman. Jaune could do that; he sees and reports things all the time! But things started dipping and diving south when his scroll buzzed and startled him. Mom checking up on him, maybe; he didn't check yet.
The noise got the Grimm's attention, but the startled yelp and following panic to turn the scroll off was what really drew them in. And now, here he was, running through the forest to escape a bunch of hungry mouths with sharp teeth that wanted HIM on their menu. Not today, though, because there was a way out; a ravine that was just short enough for him to leap across... or so it looked, until he was actually over it. Long story short; it went DEEP.
"Hop. skip, and-" Caution to the wind! "JUMP!" Oh, textbook! Jaune wasn't sure how he made it, but he sure made it! The Grimm, however, weren't so lucky, as they spilled over the edge and feel into the rocky chasm. "Ha HA!" He laughed, well deservedly, too, as he peered over the side. "No lunch for you, today! Maybe check on a few rocks while you're down there, huh?" To illustrate his point, he kicked a good-sized rock down, sending it and some dirt along with it.
A lot of dirt. So much dirt, in fact, that the cliff started giving away. Jaune turned around in time to run, but not fast enough to get out of the collapsing slide of soil and mineral. He found a vine or a root or maybe an old rope of some kind to cling to, but it too was giving away. There were others close by, so he took a chance, not having any other options left, and jumped along the cliff face from one footing to the other. The wall gave way, little by little, and Jaune's former tormenters were down at the bottom, snapping and snarling and jumping and snapping to get ahold of him. This could be the end for Jaune Arc, but hope has a funny way of making you see the possible in the impossible.
There was a sturdy branch not too far for Jaune to jump to that seemed embedded enough to climb out with. Putting his faith in his pull-up game, he lunged and clung to the root or vine or old giant rope or whatever he found and leveraged himself to atop it. He gave a sigh, grateful to be that much further from the Grimm below him. Next time, he'd see about asking one of the villagers to help him out.
Except that next time might not actually happen. Jaune's weight became too much for the branch he laid himself upon and began to pull away from the cliff. A massive ball of clay fell beneath, squashing some of the Grimm, which was good. The bad was that the Grimm started climbing it, and the branch was about to break, which was bad. Jaune tried to escape fate by reaching for the limb still inside the cliff, but his shift became too much, and he fell to the monsters below.
Luck still seemed to be on his side, however, though whether such luck was good or bad remained to be seen, as the clay ball began rolling forward, forcing Jaune to run on nature's natural treadmill and struggle to keep his footing as he and the giant sphere rolled away to who knows where. One of the Grimm took advantage of the momentum and lunged from the side, spinning Jaune off balance. It reeled back its head, only it to be skewered by a new black branch while Jaune was still carried by the gargantuan orb and tossed into the air, landing safely on a dam of black mud and branches. He was grateful for the solid landing until he realized he'd become an example of the "out of the frying pan" statement.
The dam was from a unique kind of Grimm known as Dammers. They were about as large as a pony, had teeth so sharp that they could crush stumps into splinters, and they had a habit of building homes near rivers, blocking off any source of water to villages who really need it. They weren't large enough to be an active physical threat like Beowolves or Creepers or what have you, but they are a threat to infrastructure using, ironically, infrastructure. Jaune could probably take them.
"OW!" Jaune kicked at a Dammer as it nipped his calf. "Get off me!" He cried as another chewed on his arm. "Hey, give that back!" A third Dammer took Crocea Mors and began chewing on it, causing it to shift from sheath to shield inside its mouth and lopping off parts of its face, killing it. Before Jaune could retrieve his weapon, Dammers began swarming from all side, gnashing their teeth in a less threatening way than the Grimm at the bottom of the dam... that were now climbing up to finish the job. "Stay back! I'm warning you!"
Jaune made his threat with a stick he pulled from behind him. It was a load bearing stick. The Dammers, knowing this, fled to escape the incoming collapse. The other Grimm below, however, didn't notice and continued climbing. The ground gave way beneath Jaune, even as he hopped to get clear of the rising water, sinking platform, and the Grimm that were climbing over the walls. Taking hold of Crocea Mors, he held the shield aloft as the first beast lunged for him.
The huntsman tumbled backwards, into the water, and found himself being sucked into the dam from the cracks he'd unintentionally created. The cracks grew as he was pulled in, the water pressure building around him before he was through and face-first with the mound of clay still on the other side. Struggling against both his need to breath and the lack of hydrodynamics in his shield, he dragged Crocea Mors up and wedged it between the ball of clay and the breaking dam. Pushing with all his draining might, the dam finally gave way and sent gallons upon gallons through the ravine, carrying Jaune, the Grimm, and dam debris along the flow of the new current. Some debris were launched with so much force, they destroyed any Grimm that entered their path. Jaune, however, was lucky enough to make it out alive.
Swimming with the current, Jaune made it to a shoreline and pulled himself out as a soaking wet and coughing mess. Some of the villagers found him and hoisted him to his feet. Blinking from the dirty water in his eyes and slightly light-headed from the lack of air, he gave a goofy grin. "I did it~."
Suddenly, Jaune was in the air, carried off to the village as the huntsman they knew they hired. They were cheering his name, calling it in a chant for the hero who not only investigated the Grimm threat, but discovered and foiled the Grimm plot to steal away their water! Jaune wanted to argue, but the motion of his being carried was making him too ill to speak against his accolades and ascension into legendhood.
"Jaune! Jaune! Jaune Arc! The Peerless Hero of Remnant~!"