Weiss wasn't entirely sure where she was. To be entirely honest, she was completely lost. She knew, vaguely, what direction the Beacon cliffs were in and thanks to the late morning Sun she had a rough idea of the location of the cardinal directions, but that's all she knew. It didn't help her situation that this was the first time in her life she'd been in a forest. There was so much green and brown around her it was almost sickening, not to mention the earthy smells of what she could only assume were decaying plants, the squelch of the forest floor as she walked, the copious mud that, despite her best attempts to avoid it, was starting to coat her boots, and the relentless buzz of all manner of insects that made even Ruby's restless chatter desirable, it was all Weiss could do not to load Myrtenaster with fire Dust and burn the whole forest down!
I never would have thought it possible I would miss the frostbitten snowfields and bleak mountains of home so much, but here I am. Forests always looked so much more peaceful and clean on the postcards. Weiss lamented her alien surroundings as she forged on, tiptoeing around the ickiest terrain and utilizing Myrtenaster as an extremely overqualified machete to cut away hanging vines and moss, and to occasionally vent her frustrations on errant tree branches. Some ten minutes of this and Weiss was seriously considering that refusing Atlas Academy to study at Beacon was the worst decision of her life.
That's when an Ursa exploded through the forest beside her and landed almost on top of her in a shower of splinters and vaporizing Grimm matter. Her Aura flared automatically and effortlessly repelled the debris. Before the abomination had even hit the ground Weiss had already determined it was dead, so obviously mangled and savagely perforated it was. Her attention immediately turned to the swathe of destruction that the corpse had cut through the forest, several hundred feet of disintegrated forest filled with settling splinters. The sounds of combat reached her ears, a single human, female, against at least one Ursa by the sounds of it, she quickly surmised, and then she was sprinting towards the fight with the aid of a glyph. The three hundred feet of the path was traversed in four seconds.
There, Weiss found a large clearing and a familiar blond brawler removing her fist from the eviscerated back of the second Ursa. The victorious huntress was wreathed in flames about her hair and shoulders and her head snapped up to fix Weiss with hard red eyes.
They greeted each other in unison,
"Oh, not you!"
Blake found the Emerald Forest oddly pleasant. Having spent the last couple of weeks in the human city of Vale, it felt good to have some space to herself. Not to mention the constant fear of discovery as a former agent of the White Fang was significantly eased now that she wasn't surrounded by hundreds of human huntsmen in training. She knew she was still being constantly surveilled, obviously. You didn't survive in the shadows for as long as Blake had without an aura finely tuned to detect when you were being watched. Not to mention, Professor Ozpin had to have some way of making sure the initiates obeyed the rules of the initiation. Knowing that, Blake certainly didn't have her guard down. Plus, the whole deadly Grimm filled forest thing. When I think about it that way, the fact that being alone, and more or less lost, in a monster filled forest while under constant surveillance by people who would certainly imprison, or even kill, me should my past be discovered is the circumstance in which I've been most relaxed in weeks, well, that pretty much speaks for itself. Blake mused as she skipped easily across the branches of the forest's upper canopy.
She was making good speed, which made sense considering how much of her life had involved moving through forests. Her toned physique, powerful aura, and feline instincts and balance made the thick branches as easy to maneuver as a paved street. Right now her plan was to make her way to the small stream she thought she'd spotted from the air. Her goal was to make it to the abandoned temple, and she thought it stood to reason that a temple would be built in proximity to a water source. If that idea didn't pan out, she could always double back to the cliffs and wait for students who'd gotten their chess piece to come through. Then, she could retrace their path to the temple, grab a piece, and wait around for some unpaired to student to show up. Though the initiation itself was rather odd, especially the eye contact rule, Blake had no doubt she'd pass it easily. Few of her fellow hopefuls had her tracking experience and fleet-footedness, she imagined.
Up ahead she spotted a Nevermore perched, back turned to her, in the branches, a hundred meters out. It was about her size, with its wings folded at least. Most importantly, it hadn't noticed her yet. Blake weighed her options. Nevermores often traveled and hunted by themselves, when they reached a certain age and size. This particular Nevermore seemed large enough to be by itself, but if she was wrong? One Nevermore this size was nothing approaching a challenge to Blake, however, a dozen was a different story. Going around would waste precious time and risked her losing her way, however small that risk was. I'm going to have to fight out her eventually, at least here I can start the fight on my terms. Her course decided, she gingerly removed Gambol Shroud from its sheath on her back and snapped it into its dedicated pistol mode. The Nevermore had just enough time to hear the sound and cock its head in confusion before it was struck by the Dust bullet. The monster's neck exploded in a cloud of black while its limp body fell silently from its perch, the head went spinning vertically into the air, disappearing into the thick leaves above.
Blake held absolutely still, eyes scanning for any indication of retaliation and ears straining for the heavy sound of a Nevermore's wings beating the air. Her aura was somewhat thrown off by the fact she was being spied on, but not by her enemies, current enemies at any rate. She would later wonder if part of the test was being able to use aura to detect enemies while it was constantly being distracted by observers. Seventeen beats of her heart had passed since the shot when she sensed a Nevermore swooping towards her back. She rolled across the thick branch she was stood on to steady herself against the tree's trunk as she snapped Gambol Shroud into its katana form and held it out where she had been standing. No sooner had she done so than the Nevermore, screeching in the last moment of its attack, was silenced and sliced cleanly in two. Blake grunted with the impact, but the sharpness of Gambol Shroud, both physical and aural, cut through the mass of Grimm and diverted its velocity easily enough to keep her in place.
Three heartbeats later, she just managed to crouch beneath a swipe of talons from the branch above her. She sprung back up with Gambol Shroud's sheath held in her offhand and caught the retreating claw of the Nevermore with the sharp edge, pinning it against the trunk and severing it crudely. She sensed another one clawing its way up from behind her and jumped to the branch in front of her as her previous perch was destroyed with a savage bite and a flurry of frustrated caws. The Nevermore above her whose left claw she had destroyed threw itself at her in more of a tackle than a dive as she heard yet another one caw and drop into an attack dive in front of her. She spun with grace and precision the envy of the greatest ballerina and immediately released two shots at the one-clawed Nevermore, barely three meters from her and closing rapidly. She activated her semblance and disappeared just as the second shot left Gambol Shroud's barrel. Both shots landed between the Nevermore's eyes and its lifeless body impacted branch Blake had been standing on with a violent thud. The other Nevermore who had been diving towards her could only caw in confusion as its beak impaled its broodmate. That second impact broke the branch and the living Nevermore was sent tumbling with its fellow's corpse.
Blake reappeared above the Nevermore responsible for her first destroyed perch. Falling, she released a quick shot into the top of the creature's skull and then drove the blade of Gambol Shroud into the tree to prevent a sudden reunion with the ground. As she did so, she brought the sharp sheath in her offhand down in a long arc to behead the probably dead Nevermore beneath her. She kicked her legs off the trunk for extra momentum and wound up perpendicular with the tree as the sheath forced the Nevermore's neck against the trunk and ripped through it with a reverberating crack, and the sheath cut deep into the tree. The definitely dead Nevermore's corpse hit several branches with wet squelches on its way to the ground.
Now she was suspended in a cross formation perpendicular to the tree, one arm above her with Gambol Shroud speared into the tree, one arm below her with the sheath cut deep into the tree, and both her legs held out away from the trunk. She quickly got her legs beneath her, contorting her body in a way that would probably break a normal person's back and which even caused her a bit of pain. She pushed with a level of lower body strength totally impossible without aura, and rocketed off the tree, leaving it vibrating like a tuning fork. Twisting in midair, she got oriented feet-first in her direction of travel, and hit the trunk of a nearby tree with enough force to shatter a regular person's kneecaps but which her aura absorbed entirely. An easy push off the trunk and she somersaulted into a ready posture onto another tree limb. She surveyed the area with quick glances as she idly reloaded Gambol Shroud with a fresh magazine.
She spotted another three Nevermores diving towards her and raised Gambol Shroud towards them, but just before she pulled the trigger she heard a gunshot and then a very human shout from below. A split-second later a vortex of rose petals raced past her, and her eyes struggled to move fast enough to track the floral oddity. When it reached the trio of Nevermores, who had just started to crane their heads to track the roses, the petals shifted and solidified into a human figure wielding a massive mechanical scythe. Of course, that makes sense. Blake thought, as she watched the person, a girl, I think? spear the first Nevermore with the bottom of her scythe, twirl the scythe rapidly to bisect the next one, incidentally flinging the first's corpse off the scythe and towards the horizon, and then shoot the final Nevermore with her apparent gun-scythe. The three foes dealt with in the span of a little over two seconds, Blake watched the girl spin her scythe around her, fire another shot, and then her vision was dominated by a thousand rose petals.
A moment later the face of the girl(? I'm not so sure anymore, maybe she's a tomboy?) resolved before Blake. She/he was smiling broadly and had his/her hand beside her/him, waving enthusiastically, "Hi! I saw you fighting, or, well, part of your fight, and you were frickin' crazy badass! You were cutting heads off like snap, crack, pop! And then those three Nevermores were coming in so I thought, 'Ruby, you can totally destroy those Nevermores and make a kickass introduction to your partner.' And then I did it and now we're, um here, and we're partners?" The kid's hyper-friendly demeanor started to fall apart as he saw the pure confusion that Blake knew she was exuding. Looking nervous, he(? Sounds like a boy, I think? Blake still wasn't sure) continued, "U-unless you already have a partner! I mean if you do then you're not my partner, I think, not that I-I don't want you to my, to be, I mean, I-uh-um…" He sputtered, looking absolutely crestfallen, and hung his head. Blake was about to speak when the kid raised his head; he cleared his throat and put on a polite, if clearly strained, smile. He offered her his hand to shake and said in a soft, genuine voice, "Um, I'm Ruby, Ruby Rose."
Blake just stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide if her partner was better or far, far worse than she imagined he'd be, then, being so distracted and off-guard, committed the greatest faux pas of her life to that point, "You're a guy, right?"
Chapter 8
Sometimes life gives you lemons, and sometimes senile headmasters give you Weiss Schnee. Yang was confident she knew which one was the more bitter gift. At least you can sweeten a lemon, make lemonade. If I covered Weiss in sugar no one would even be able to tell! She complained internally. She was trying to look on the brighter side. On the plus side, the morning's breakfast had been delicious, courtesy of Summer Rose, and she got to beat the shit out of a couple of Ursas. On the con side, she'd gotten saddled with an arrogant, stuck-up, narcissistic, bad-tempered, manipulative, spoiled, rude, and seemingly incompetent bitch for the next four years/until she had her fill and decided to deep throat Ember Celica. Or until I give the pleasure to White-out. Yang snorted derisively as Weiss stopped for the umpteenth time, looked around confidently, and led them in an entirely new direction to get lost.
Yang hadn't planned on letting the fifty pound sack of prissy privilege lead her around endlessly, but after the thirty second argument that had been their only conversation in the forest so far she'd decided just to play along with Weiss' ego until she admitted she had no idea what she was doing. Absent that epiphany of humility, which Yang had no inclination of holding her breath for, she was using her own mental map of the forest (flying above the forest with blasts of Ember Celica did have some purpose beyond just looking fucking cool) to plot out a path that should lead to someplace around the temple, and she'd knock Weiss unconscious and carry her there if she had to. Y'know, now that I think about it, knocking Weiss out has a lot of pros and no cons. I get to punch something, I get to punch Weiss, I don't have to listen to Weiss, I don't have to worry about Weiss not being able to fight, and what can she actually weigh? Ninety pounds? I could lift her with a finger. But Ruby wouldn't like it, what a pain. I knew I should have been the one to give him "the talk," I could have given the little budding flower some practical advice on what to look for in a woman. Mom probably just told him to, "follow his heart," or someth-
Her train of thought was derailed by a sudden impact with Weiss, whose ill-advised sudden halt now found her swiftly falling face-first toward the thick gunk of the forest floor, screaming like a dying cat. She may have been able to catch herself and regain her balance had she been wearing footwear with more traction, but as it was she was certainly doomed. Yang, on instinct, had immediately moved to catch her falling ally, but halfway to Weiss' shoulder an evil thought entered her mind. Smiling like a loon, Yang took a firm grip on Weiss' off-center ponytail near its base and yanked it back with all the care she might have thrown away an apple core with. Weiss let loose a shrill shriek before she took control of herself and exclaimed, "What are you do-woah!" and was cut off when her back impacted what she first took for a length of steel rebar but quickly realized was Yang's left arm, the same arm which had saved her/nearly torn off her head.
For her part, Yang had somewhat overestimated the level of force she'd needed to use on Weiss, and so, to prevent the annoying white-haired princess flying backwards into the ground, she had simply used her arm as a wall to absorb Weiss' momentum. Smug as the devil and radiating self-satisfaction Yang supplied an answer to Weiss, "I believe I just saved your multi-million lien face, White-out. Do be more cognizant of your surroundings, hmm?" Yang looked over to Weiss, expecting to see her fuming and flabbergasted that Yang knew what cognizant meant, but instead found the heiress swiftly turning from her and stepping away with an imperious huff. But not before Yang caught sight of the few tears that ran down the petite girl's wincing face.
Her moment of selfish victory shattered like glass and cut into her heart, and suddenly Yang found herself feeling like the most terrible monster in the world. Weiss continued on without a word and Yang followed suit. But now, instead of belittling Weiss in her mind, Yang observed her closely, but reluctantly. She saw the slightly too fast rise and fall of her shoulders which indicated hurried breaths from pain or fear. She saw the hands that, with forced casualness, went up to the face for a brief moment and then returned to the sides with a hint of moisture that Yang knew wasn't sweat. She saw, past the high collar of the dress, flashes of red skin around her hair and knew that in a couple of minutes aura would replace them with the flawless of ivory skin that had been there before, and she also knew that without aura that red would darken to more sickening colors and persist for days. I didn't pull her hair that hard, did I?
It was then that Yang considered just why it was she had felt such intense scorn for Weiss. We got off on the wrong foot to start with, and her stuffy, arrogant attitude didn't help any, but between my own hostility and Ruby's Ruby-ness I know we couldn't have been the easiest people to get along with. She also reminds me of some very poor "friends" I've had. And maybe, just maybe, I felt a little threatened by the way Ruby was starting to cling to her. So, to summarize, we got started wrong, I made no attempts to get to know her or even engage her at all, and I may have subconsciously been jealous of her. And then I go and nearly rip her head off and rub it in her face. In her mind Yang saw the tears of pain and the grimace that had existed on Weiss' face, but now they were on a younger Ruby's face, he was looking up at her, eyes wide in fear and confusion, a bright red welt growing on his cheek, a strand of golden hair clutched loosely in his hand, and Yang, feeling so repulsed by herself that she feared she might vomit, came to a sudden epiphany on Weiss.
She's just like Ruby. Not just physically, though they were both of similar build and nearly identical height, and they both had a nearly ethereal grace to their movements so that you felt they might just float away with every step they took, and, yes, they both had such clear, expressive eyes that always betrayed their feelings no matter what they might manipulate their countenance and body into portraying. More than all of that was the way they talked, the way they interacted with people, wrongly and at odd angles. Always stiff and lifeless when they were pretending but overwhelmingly emotive when they weren't. She'd only known Weiss for about twenty-four hours but thinking back on her many passing conversations with other students it was obvious that Weiss was pretending. She had realized it then, of course, but she hadn't grasped its true significance. Is that why Ruby was drawn to her? Because he sensed in her a kindred soul? It seemed very possible. Yang had no way of knowing just why it was that Weiss acted the way she did, but considering her background she could make a pretty good guess. Atlas had always seemed like a cold and harsh place to Yang, what must it be like for someone like Weiss? Born into incredible expectations and demands? Had she ever really talked to someone? Had she ever even had a friend? Surely she must have, but then, why leave Atlas? Why come, alone, to a foreign country and leave behind all the wealth and privilege she'd always known? Yang had to imagine it was for more than just a change in scenery.
She considered apologizing right then and there, but decided against it. Weiss was plainly proud, if not outright haughtily arrogant, and had clearly attempted to avoid Yang realizing that the incident had caused her anything more than routine annoyance, thus it was unlikely that Weiss would be willing to engage in some genuine heartfelt confession with her erstwhile assaulter while lost in the middle of Grimm territory.
Speaking of Grimm. Yang felt a malicious gaze on her and immediately rolled at a right angle to the direction she sensed it from; the action saved her from a nasty strike as a Beowolf came slashing savagely at the space she had just occupied. Ember Celica was done expanding by the time she recovered from her roll and she immediately used it to send her fist rocketing toward the confused Grimm. She was rewarded with the indescribably satisfying feeling of ripping through the Grimm's head with her bare hands. Said head, along with most of the hapless creature's neck, was instantly vaporized and the corpse was sent flying, Yang noticed it break through several trees with wet squelches before she turned her attention away from it.
A dozen meters away Weiss was engaged with a few Beowolves and Yang took a moment to appreciate the girl's seamless use of her semblance with her dexterous swordplay. Huh, I guess White-out can fight, go figure. Yang turned away to face her own pack of Beowolves she had felt gathering around her. They were scurrying around her, some positioning to her flanks to attack from her blind-spots while others would take her attention in the front, the typical, ancient hunting practice of the animals that inspired their name. With all the negative emotions Weiss and I were giving off, I'm surprised it took this long. Yang cracked her neck, smiled, and closed her eyes. I do feel like a monster. She felt the first Beowolf leap at her and her fist was through its abdomen. The eviscerated monster went flailing away through the air and Yang turned to meet the gaze of the next one. Its bloodthirsty, red gaze was met with her own.
I am a monster. And she lost herself to the pleasure of battle.
"…"
The silence stretched on, the wind blew.
"…"
The silence went on, a faraway bird chirp happily.
"…"
The silence continued, Blake coughed uncomfortably. "It's just, um, I thought you were graceful like a woman?" Blake had never been in a position quite like this one.
"…" Ruby continued to study his boots.
They had been like this for a good five minutes, and Blake was starting to wonder if she had already damaged her relationship with her partner beyond repair. He hadn't said a single thing since her faux pas, unless one could count the strangled and animalistic noise of despair he'd made upon hearing her initial question. "…A-anyway, you were very impressive. I applaud your skill as a warrior?" She hadn't intended the last part to sound like a question, something she could say for most of her attempts to lift the boy's spirits, but she was just at such a loss!
Her praise for his martial prowess seemed to at least get through to Ruby as he lifted his head ever so slightly and quit nervously digging the tip of his boot into the branch they were both stood on. "…"
Buoyed by this apparent progress, and never one to squander opportunity, Blake continued, "I'm certain that between us we'll have no trouble completely the initiation. So let's, uh, press on, um, partner?" Gods, what am I saying? I couldn't sound more insincere, and I'm not even lying! What's wrong with me? I didn't know I was so bad at talking to kids. There's no way this is goi-
"…p-partner…" Ruby whispered, looking up to meet Blake's desperate eyes with his own dead gaze. After a few seconds of uncomfortable eye contact a little life seemed to enter Ruby's eyes. Then, without warning, he turned on his heels, sighed deeply, rubbed fiercely at his eyes, proceeded to stretch while muttering something, and turned back to the befuddled Blake, all smiles and bright eyes, "Hi! I'm Ruby Rose, nice to meet you, partner!" He offered his hand with a genuine, warm smile and unreadable silver eyes.
Blake, bewildered and bewitched, accepted the handshake this time around and, falling back on her taciturn nature, said simply, "Blake Belladonna."
Ruby's grinned widened a bit and he gave her hand a single, soft shake before releasing it. The silence returned, it was still awkward, but at least not totally oppressive, and Blake was starting to get a grasp on what she felt about her partner and their first encounter up to this point, she didn't dislike and that was more than enough for now. We need to get moving. I didn't want to complete initiation too quickly and draw attention, but if I'm one of the last to pass that will draw its own kind of attention as well. Not to mention, there's simply no telling what kind of attention I'll receive and situations I'll wind up with Ruby as my partner. Am I really going to be with this boy for four years? At least he can fight… Blake suppressed a world weary sigh. "We should get moving. I can lead the way." She looked to Ruby, still smiling, and he nodded his assent. "You might have some difficulty following me, let me know if you need me to slow down."
At that, Ruby's smile turned wry, "Don't worry about that, Blake." It was a strange expression on the boy who she'd only seen either jubilant or emotionlessly distressed.
Blake nodded slightly and took off in the direction of the river. Between her finely tuned aura-enhanced jumps and liberal application of her semblance she was a nearly untraceable blur to the standard human eye. Her own eyes were significantly sharper and faster than even the average aura user's, but even she had a hard time keeping up with her surroundings moving at her top speed, without the aid of her aura to sense her surroundings and guide her feet she would wind up looking decidedly less like the avatar of feline grace she was now. It was that very same indispensable aura which kept her apprised of her partner following her.
He followed in short bursts of incredible speed, she estimated around an order of magnitude above what she was managing, but what he exceeded in velocity he failed in efficiency and elegance. He shot like a pinball in zig-zags and rebounds that rather distinctly disturbed the environment he went through, loud and obvious was something of an understatement for the way he was traveling. In contrast, if one failed to glimpse the flicker of shadow that Blake made dashing along the branches you would never realize she had been through, even if she went right above your head, if Ruby passed above your head you'd be lucky to escape being bowled over and dashed into a tree.
Quite the juxtaposition, he and I. I'm not certain that bodes well for how well we'll get along, but opposites attract and all that… At least there will be a little poetry to the relationship. Blake considered. She wasn't certain if she was warming up to Ruby, but she was starting to acknowledge some ways in which their relationship could be interesting and amusing if not warm and amicable.
They traveled like that for some time, through some stroke of fortune not encountering any more Grimm, Either we're moving too fast for any Grimm that have noticed us to decide to give chase and/or the rest of the hopefuls are keeping them busy, and after ten minutes they arrived at the river Blake had spotted during her descent. River was perhaps too flattering a term for the daintily gurgling stream they found, but it seemed to Blake large enough for any ancient temple builders to construct their building in convenient proximity to. Plus, maybe it had been a bit more grand back in the day?
They followed it downstream, Blake had observed it upstream from where they were now when she had spotted it from the air and felt confident there was no temple to be found around it from where it broke through the cliff face to here. It had been around two hours since initiation began, but neither of them felt tempted to drink from the fresh water. Aura could sustain their bodies for as long as it lasted and having repeatedly used it for combat and travel that day, neither of them felt the slightest bit tired or thirsty. One of the many paradoxes of an aura-user's life, the harder they fought or worked while using aura the better they'd feel, at least, until they reached that critical breaking point and the magic disappeared.
Thirty minutes into their trek along the stream and Blake was actually starting to enjoy herself. The forest was deceptively peaceful and the soft babble of the brook compounded that serenity. Ruby had been less of a handful than his introduction had intimated to her, though she suspected that was a combination of being in a combat zone and trying to avoid annoying her, and he was simply humming an oddly catchy tune as he followed behind her. They could certainly be making better time, but even at the moderate jog they were moving at Blake was confident they'd search the only reasonable stretch of stream the temple could be around in another hour and a half, thus leaving her plenty of time to implement plan B if they failed with this attempt.
She stopped, making a quick survey of the surroundings, and was about to head off to search the area as she had been doing at five intervals since they started down the river, when Ruby jogged up beside her and stopped her, "Hey, Blake, I've been thinking." He looked up to her with something like admiration and surprise.
Blake gave him her attention and cocked her head slightly.
"Isn't Blake a guy's name?"
Chapter 9
Ruby Rose was not socially oblivious, merely inept. So, he was quite aware that the first impressions he'd made upon his partner were not ideal, however, knowing that you're failing and knowing how to succeed are two entirely different things. Stuck with a superb comprehension of his failure and totally clueless as to how to change that, Ruby had decided to completely ignore all the faults in his relationship with his partner, at least until after initiation. Thus, he was found languidly trailing a few meters after Blake, totally undoing her efforts to stalk stealthily through the brush, and pointedly not remembering the indescribable face of incomprehensible emotion she graced him with after his graceless assault on the femininity of her name. What even was that face? It was like, like staring into the antiphysical void of unadulterated malice from whence all Grimm are surely spawned, or that feeling when you reach down to grab another cookie but open your eyes to find your plate empty. Though, if he weren't so perplexed, and disturbed, by her reaction, lack of reaction?, he'd be cackling to himself with delight for turning the tables on Blake in their moniker-themed duel.
Distracted as he was, he totally failed to notice Blake stop, and signal to him to do the same. "There's som-" He collided with her. Crouched just behind a bush on the precipice of a ten meter drop, Blake was suddenly welcomed, face first, into the thorny embrace of the wild shrub and found herself teetering on the brink. She had been so focused that her reaction time was delayed by nearly a second, Sloppy, that delay could be fatal. As it was, she still had plenty of time, about half a second, to physically prevent her fall; assuming that Ruby wasn't about to careen into her, scythe first. With her senses now on full alert, focusing her aura to any particular point on her body to abate any damage from a clumsy stab would be subconscious and practically immediate, but that didn't mean it would be painless, as the rapidly healing cuts on her face, courtesy of the bush's brambles, attested to. Therefore, in the interest of not wanting to be stabbed in the back or wind up in a tangle with Ruby where he might find one of his hands pressed onto her breasts like a generic Mistralian anime, Blake used her semblance to move a couple meters backwards diagonally.
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There, she was treated to the sight of Ruby flailing and tumbling off the short cliff. She moved to the edge, curious to see how her partner would act, and arrived just before she heard a shot from below and Ruby went soaring past her, nearly catching her in the face with a wildly kicking leg. "Wooooaaaah!" He yelled as he continued another twenty meters skyward by Blake's estimation. Blake sighed and jumped down, the ten meter fall barely felt through her aura-reinforced legs. She really hadn't wanted to risk tumbling into the unknown with Ruby, but, having now seen the immediate area, there being little risk of being stabbed in the back by Ruby's scythe, and the brutal annihilation of any surprise they might have had, now there was no reason to stay back.
A quick check with her aura and Blake lifted her arms up, hands upturned claw-like, and applied a bit of extra aura to cushion Ruby as he fell right into her arms. "Woaaaaaaaaaah-ugh-uh…" He was now held by his upper arms in front of her like an over-sized rag doll. He blew a strand of hair out of his face and smiled sheepishly, "I, uh, still had high mobility rounds loaded from the fight earlier, but I could have caught myself. Not that I don't appreciate you catching me! I mean, I couldn't really like literally have caught myself, but I could have landed okay with, uh, aura, y'know… ummmm,I mean, sorry for hitting you!" His rapid switches between exuberant apologies, shy admissions, and cringes at his own awkwardness both endeared him to Blake and brought on the early pangs of a headache. She released him and he fell to the ground with a muted, "Uagh." Before hopping back to his feet and following her.
Blake glanced back to him, "Have you switched out your ammunition yet?" And had to restrain a smirk when his mouth fell into a small "o" and he nearly tripped over his feet. She turned away as he started fumbling with his magazines.
Ahead of them was a structure that Blake might have expected to be found pictured next to "ruin" in a dictionary. Almost entirely bereft of a roof, lacking most of its wall, and covered in vegetation, it looked like what they were looking for. Plus, there were all the brand new chess pieces sitting pretty on the pedestals and the obvious tracks leading to and from the temple. Blake thought this was it.
"Blake, do you think this is it?"
"Yes." Blake thought she heard a broken fragment of her spirit escaping in her voice. Four years of this? Maybe this is my penance for always wanting a younger sibling.
"Wow! That was pretty easy! Good job partner!" Before she could blink Ruby had dashed up to her, lifted her arm, high-fived her, and run up to one of the pedestals, the scent of roses lingered after him. It took Blake a moment to process it, but she had to suppress a shiver when she did. He actually could have killed me before I even realized he'd moved. That was faster than he moved in the forest. He's at least five times faster than Adam, and he's just a kid! He might be a kid, a clumsy and careless one even, but he's dangerous. Very dangerous. I need to keep my guard up around him. "I guess we should take one, huh?" He looked back to her.
"I suppose so." He looked away, evaluating their options, and didn't notice Blake's sharp gaze and her hand linger over Gambol Shroud. After a while she let her gaze wander away from him, but she never turned her back to him, her hand was never more than a split second from drawing her weapon, and her semblance was on a hair-trigger, if not a petal trigger.
Ruby was all but teleporting from one chess piece to another, evaluating each from a multitude of angles. Considering that he didn't spend more than a second on any of them, Blake wasn't sure just what it was he was looking for, she suspected he didn't either. She made her way to one of the pieces, a knight that gleamed gold. Blake could tell it wasn't actually gold, she wasn't sure what it was made of, but it had certainly received a lavish amount of polish. Ruby rushed over, Blake gripped Gambol Shroud a little tighter, "Ooooh, d'ya like this one Blake?"
Blake wanted to distrust this utterly strange boy, but seeing him fawn over this chess piece, apparently looking for what he imagined she had seen in it, she had the urge to smile. She didn't, of course, but the impulse was there, and that confused her. She had certainly had plenty of experience with not knowing how to feel about a person, but Ruby was just the strangest mixture of innocent and dangerous. She felt that headache coming back, "Let's go with that one."
"You got it, partner!" He snatched it up immediately and tossed it in the air, laughing, "That was so easy! Jeez, I was expecting this to be a lot harder. What about you, Blake?"
"It's not over yet, Ruby." She reminded him. This has been easy. Too easy. That headmaster, there was something about him, he wouldn't make a test this easy, would he? Regardless, we should start heading back immediately. "We should get go-" Ruby flew past her and a moment later she felt two sources of aura coming from the direction he was going. There, just emerging from the tree line about one hundred meters away were two girls. They were too far away for Blake to pick out too many details, but they were clearly both competent fighters from their auras and confident but tense gaits. The blond girl sprinted past her white-haired companion and engulfed Ruby, who had crossed the hundred meters in a little over a second, in what was either a bear hug or some spine crushing martial art. Blake assumed the girl's name was Yang from Ruby's screams.
Lovers? I've seen weirder pairs… Yang finally released Ruby who promptly flung himself onto the white-haired girl who seemed just as uncomfortable with the hug as Blake imagined she'd be, the blond girl laughed boisterously. Probably not lovers, then. Friends? Maybe family? Blake half-pondered the relationships between her partner and the new arrivals as she kept vigil over the area while the three made their way over to her. She wanted to leave soon, but two more competent fighters would be a welcome addition for the trip back.
"Blake! This is my sister, Yang!" Ruby announced enthusiastically as they approached, all smiles as usual. Sister? The blond girl, Yang, didn't look much like Ruby. If her hair was dyed it was expertly done, there were some similarities in the facial structures but that might have been more ethnic than familial, Blake wasn't that used to Valeans, her eyes in particular were a striking lilac that were clearly reserved and calculating, a far cry from the unpoliced exuberance of Ruby's silver. "Yang, this is my partner, Blake!" Ruby practically bragged.
Blake offered her hand to shake and Yang took it immediately. Strong, confident, intentional. The hand of a melee fighter for sure. Those gauntlets must be her weapons. "Nice to meet'cha Blake, I hope Ruby hasn't been too much to handle, he's a little, special." She teased good-naturedly and Ruby responded with the expected noises and words of outrage and embarrassment.
"He's fine." She demurred. Despite the blond brawler's warm words and easy-going demeanor, Blake wasn't fooled for a moment. This Yang girl was a killer, maybe not a murderer, but definitely a killer. Fierce, violent, and suspicious, her smile didn't reach her eyes and her stance never left an opening.
"And this," Ruby threw an arm around the white-haired girl, who silently suffered it with a sidelong glare, "Is my close friend, Weiss Schnee."
Blake regretted coming to Beacon.
Weiss regarded the raven-haired girl with hope. She was clearly possessed of a more mature demeanor than Ruby and his rabid sister, not that that was saying much, and, to be sure, the quiet girl didn't exactly exude charisma with her shy handshake and obvious taciturn nature, but at this point Weiss was desperate for anything approaching class. "A pleasure, Blake." Blake nodded and looked away while Ruby and Yang chatted away, Weiss contained a sigh. "Well, they certainly weren't exaggerating about the state of the temple. I presume the relics aren't trapped or anything of the like?" Please, please talk to me. If I have to talk to Ruby and Yang for the rest of the day I'll eat Myrtenaster.
"Ah, no, just like you see them." Weiss noticed Blake still wasn't looking at her. Maybe she's intimidated by my station? Ruby and Yang have already started to make me forget that's the normal reaction.
"Thank you." She replied sincerely and moved a little closer to Blake, smiling with all the force of her hope for normal companionship, "And if you're worried about my last name, I'd ask you to just think of me as Weiss, Gods know Ruby and Yang do." She cringed internally when Blake stiffened as she approached, but smiled a little wider with relief when the girl nodded minutely and muttered some word of acknowledgment. "I appreciate it, Blake. I came to Beacon to get away from all that. Well then, on to the 'relics' I suppose. Somehow I expected Yang to have already managed to break one of them." Weiss muttered as she left Blake and entered the ruin.
She didn't see the white-knuckled grip Blake had on her weapon, nor the dilated, terrified gaze she'd hidden with her bangs and a head turned in imitation of shyness. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It might be an execution after being revealed, it might be a heart attack dealing with her, it might be an aneurysm from dealing with Ruby, but these humans are going to be the death of me. I could have gone back to Menagerie, been a secretary or a guard or something. Gods, what is wrong with me?
Chapter 10
Ruby hummed happily as he idly threw the white knight piece in the air and caught it with his free hand; his other hand was occupied inspecting Crescent Rose who was strapped to his back, running along every seam with purpose and probing every bolt, with rote, clinical precision. He was happier than he could ever remember being, he had a cool partner, he'd destroyed at least a dozen Grimm so far, and he was literally holding the key to his always dreamed of future. He was so happy, in fact, that he was oblivious to the palpable tension that his three companions held between them. Blake, more standoffish than ever, seemed only a twitch away from leaving in a mad dash, Weiss, similarly, looked as though she'd prefer to be anywhere but here, and Yang, caught on her guilt over her treatment of Weiss, yet still too suspicious, and proud, to apologize, ceaselessly flexed her hands, eager for a distracting fight. They were all treating Ruby as something of a wallflower.
All, however, were eager to get the initiation over with and departed the ruin with no fanfare, Ruby cheerfully leading the way.
It wasn't long until they met a rather large obstacle. Namely, the massive chasm that some ancient engineers had decided was the perfect place to build a massive stone… construct? Building? Complex? Ruby wasn't really sure what it was suppose to be or what purpose it could have served besides being cool as shit, which was reason enough to build something in his mind, and thus promptly relieved himself of any other interest he might have had. Yang thought it was supremely silly to build something like this against a cliff over a, seemingly bottomless, light consuming pit, but it looked like it would be very satisfying to break and so spent her mental energy identifying the structural points where a solid strike of Ember Celica would produce the most spectacular explosions of stone. Weiss, quite use to grandiose constructs that openly flaunted their taunts to physics, coming from Atlas and all, merely scoffed internally at how much easier and sensible it would be with a few key placements of gravity Dust and had immediately calculated the cost of said Dust, shipping and tax included of course. Blake just shook her head, this thing made the cliff cities of Mistral look reasonable, though she did feel the strangest urge to push some loose bits of rubble over the edge.
Ruby had just made his first tentative step onto the stone bridge when an echoing roar came across them. From below a massive Nevermore came rocketing, screeching madly as it clipped a small tower and sent it tumbling in a hail of stone and dust. It had just cleared the top of the construct when the first shots of Dust started to pepper its body. The perpetrators were sprinting along the bridge, all instinctively favoring the terrain of the masonry monstrosity as, while the forest would provide much more cover, they were all more interested in killing the thing and finishing. Their mutual discomfort with each other, sans Ruby, ironically inducing their first act of teamwork.
As the giant Grimm reached the vertex of its turn towards the group, Ruby had already evaluated a number of possible patterns of attack and settled on one. "Yang, Weiss! Split off!" He yelled out as they reached the end of the bridge and entered a circular walkway which surrounded a large central tower, any further instruction he might have had was cut off as the Nevermore crashed through the bridge just behind them and sent the whole structure rocking violently. Ruby applied a brief moment of his Semblance to ensure he wasn't sent tumbling and he noticed Blake do the same. He sensed the Grimm circling around beneath them, a general feeling, not an exact location, but he couldn't get a line of sight. Staying close to the creature was essential for him to output his maximum damage with Crescent Rose and so, without hesitation, he leapt from the structure. He sensed Blake do the same behind him, he knew she would. He waited for a period of time, not counting it with his mind so much as feeling it with his body, and then let loose a shot from Crescent Rose perpendicular to his fall, not a high mobility round, but he knew the distance would be short enough that it didn't matter, and landed in a harsh roll on a smaller walkway he had spotted earlier. His momentum carried him into a hard shoulder check with the wall as he emerged from his roll, but he was expecting that and an extra bit of aura absorbed the force easily.
He was unloading a rapid stream of shots at the Grimm before his eyes locked on it, he might have honed in on it by sound but he wasn't certain, he started running along the outer edge of the walkway chasing after his target and putting himself as far over the edge as his honed sense of balance and aura-enhanced body would allow. Blake was following his lead, though her superior senses allowed her to appear as though she would definitely fall with every step she took whereas Ruby merely looked as though he should.
The Nevermore was wholly focused on them now, banking and gaining altitude to dive into them. In doing so, the creature got very near the higher walkway Ruby and Blake had jumped from and left itself wholly exposed. Yang and Weiss took neat advantage of this opening. Yang fell onto the back of the creature with a torrent of blows, shrapnel and fire Dust shredding and burning a swathe across its middle back and wing joints. Weiss, with a boost of speed from a glyph, impaled the creature straight through where the base of the skull would meet the spine on a normal creature. The Grimm howled in pain and reflexively arched its back in pain and craned its head around to get at its attackers. It impacted the structure before it had a chance and everyone's view was immediately turned upside-down and inside-out and plunged into a haze of choking dust and biting stone splinters.
Ruby recovered quickly and, acting on his aura-sense, hearing, mental map from the last he saw, and preternatural understanding of ballistics, unleashed steady shots towards what he imagined was the head of the Nevermore even as he skipped and felt his way across a series of broken stones which may or may not be falling, he wasn't sure yet, and though he couldn't see the barrel of Crescent Rose through the dust. In fact, if it wasn't for his aura minimizing the damage to, and rapidly healing, his eyes, he wouldn't be able to see at all. His magazine ran dry and by rote he released it and grabbed a high mobility magazine to reload. By the time he'd chambered the first round the dust had cleared enough for him to confirm that he was indeed falling. Judging by the distance he'd fallen and the rate he felt he was accelerating it had been about seven seconds since the Nevermore impacted the construct, which was in-line with what his instincts suggested. The plan for the attack and the calculation for the angle for Crescent Rose's shot was completed subconsciously before Ruby could have consciously even grasped all the variables involved, and he could do that fast.
The shot rang out, though no one paid it heed among the cacophony of collapse and gunfire, and Ruby was sent headlong towards an intact-ish portion of the disintegrating ruin. He impacted it at an obtuse angle with just enough aura to help redirect his momentum and avoid critical injury to himself. He fired another shot as he felt his direction settle and then embraced his Semblance. The world melted into trajectories and magnitudes as he lost all sense of self and emotion beyond the all encompassing surety he would strike his target. Precisely seventy-three hundredths of a second after engaging his aura he released it and the world came swirling back into color and confusion. Crescent Rose, in all her scythe-y glory trailed behind him, held by both his hands very near her bottom, and he couldn't help but release a shriek of glee as he flew, feet-first, past the Nevermore, less than an inch from its throat. His velocity was quickly arrested as the main blade of Crescent Rose, wicked sharp and insatiable, bit deeply into the neck of the Grimm.
Yelling in exertion and battle lust, Ruby leveraged the lodged Crescent Rose and pushed himself around to plant his feet against the Grimm's throat, his head pointed nearly straight down towards the chasm. The Nevermore's throat made for a very strange foothold as muscle and cartilage analogues undulated underfoot as the creature cried and roared. With his new position angling Crescent Rose slightly differently he unloaded another high velocity shot that cut deeper into the Grimm flesh but also pulled Crescent Rose more around the circumference of the neck. The punch of the shot rattled Ruby through to his bone and back again and felt to him like he was bouncing around on some strange mixture of concrete and gelatin.
Still pushing off Crescent Rose's handle he "walked" around the Nevermore's neck and fired another shot, slicing deeper yet again as he carved around the flesh. The Nevermore tried in vain to reach him with its beak, but the combination of Ruby's awkward position and the damage his teammates were causing themselves kept it from reaching him. So Ruby continued to cut a savage incision around the Nevermore's neck with increasing pace as the slick internal flesh lubricated the blade. He had nearly completed a full circumnavigation when, with a fierce crack and thunderous boom of exploding stone, the Nevermore's ceaseless struggles finally freed it from the stone it had become somewhat lodged in.
It immediately flapped its massive wings and pushed away from the remains of the tower with an ear-piercing screech of pain and rage. The force of its pushing talons and the wind from its wings was enough to free the remains of the bottom third of the tower which cracked and snapped, hitting smaller structures on its tumble to oblivion. Ruby stumbled with the sudden violence of movement and lost his footing under the slick, black Grimm viscera. He went sliding off the Grimm but his hold on Crescent Rose kept him connected even as the force of the creature's movement combined with another of his shots cut the final distance to connect the main blade with the initial laceration. Her path now free and lubricated, Crescent Rose followed through with her master's momentum, gliding through the flesh with wet squelches, as Ruby's own body acted as a counterweight that put him and his weapon into a grotesque orbit about the Grimm's throat, aided by the occasional gunshot from Crescent Rose.
Ruby yelped and laughed with glee. Ecstatic with the ride, the wild success of his plan, and the swell of pride he felt from Crescent Rose performing so well.
As Ruby enjoyed his bloody, full-body pirouette with all the innocent glee of a psychopath, Yang finally managed to rip and tear her way into the internal workings of the Nevermore's left wing joint and with her own violent euphoria promptly gored and pulped it with a rapid set of punches and shots of Ember Celica. A number of hair-raising sounds resulted from the brutalization and the left wing went limp, immediately forcing the hellish caricature of a raven into a sharp left bank. Yang, a victim of her own success, was thrown from the bird's back into the air. But without a single wasteful movement she rolled with the momentum and twisted about herself to position Ember Celica for a quick shot that pushed her toward a narrow walkway which her feet narrowly scraped onto. A precise shot of her left gauntlet canceled her lateral motion and she took off in a sprint down the narrow pathway towards the Nevermore which had just impacted a structure built into the cliff face and sent a deep tremor through the whole crumbling spiderweb of stonework.
Weiss had just in time planted Myrtenaster deep into right side of the Nevermore and held its hilt in a death-grip as the rest of her body was sent haplessly waving and flapping through the air as the Grimm careened into its newest rocky detour. Without aura she was certain every joint from her shoulders through her fingertips would have been dislocated. When the creature had crashed and seemed certain to stick around for a while, Weiss removed her blade with a grunt of savage exertion and with the aid of aura launched herself off the bird and onto the cliff face. She briefly held herself there with a glyph before using it to impart significant momentum into her which sent her hurtling toward the Nevermore's right wing joint which Myrtenaster pierced like the worlds biggest, meanest needle. If she had the spare breath or energy to speak, she would have said something to the effect of, "Time for your medicine," or, "You're not afraid of needles are you?" though she would have regretted it later.
Blake, for her part, was, and had been for some time, tangling with the talons of the Nevermore. Two of the six digits had already been severed and were no doubt dissipating into the air somewhere at the bottom of the canyon, another was hanging on by a thread of Grimm sinew-analogue. When the right wing of the Grimm was totally severed by Weiss the talons extended in a reflexive pain response and Blake used the opening to dash behind the claw with two intact digits with her Semblance and sliced cleanly through the limb with one slash of Gambol Shroud. With the sheath's blade she cut into the creature's abdomen at an angle and hung there by one hand as she unloaded Gambol Shroud into the remaining claw, the hanging talon was finally severed with one well-placed shot, the other proved more resilient, but, alone as it now was, it was a simple affair for her to dash to it with her Semblance and remove with another strike of Gambol Shroud. The Grimm now de-clawed, Blake used her main blade and her bladed sheath like climbing axes to climb around the barrel of the bird.
She emerged just in time to see Ruby slingshot around the poor creature's neck one final time before he popped the main blade of Crescent Rose to a state more in-line with the handle and went flying straight up. He slipped into his Semblance for an instant and spun around his center of mass as he reached the apex of his flight, he descended in a perfect circle of blades, firing all the way to increase his speed to a total blur, and impacted the ragged flesh of the Nevermore's tortured neck with a sound like a food processor hitting a chicken leg, bone and all. The neck was split asunder with a shower of viscera, but the creature didn't make any audible death rattle, it might have already been dead, Blake wouldn't have been surprised if it was.
Ruby popped back up with a single shot of Crescent Rose, controlled his momentum with a complicated series of flips and landed easily on top of the carcass in front of Blake and Weiss. He released his apparently empty magazine, placed it into an ammo pouch and with the same motion grabbed a new magazine, locked and loaded, spun his scythe three times, slowly vaporizing Grimm matter flying from it, which Blake and Weiss just barely dodged, and in a smooth single motion flicked it into its compact form and placed back onto his lower back with a firm, proud touch. A few hours ago, Blake would have been impressed to see that Ruby had calculated that whole series of moves down to the exact number of rounds he had in his magazine, she hadn't seen him reload during his orbits and she rather doubted he could have, but she was too emotionally worn out and confused by Ruby to care. She standing next to the SDC heiress on a giant Nevermore corpse lodged into a cliff face over a midnight black chasm, all she wanted was a hot shower.
Weiss was in a similar state, though she put double the priority Blake did on a hot shower. Plus, though it wasn't the most intense fight of her life, this was definitely up there and she felt she had acquitted herself admirably. Perhaps four years of Beacon, Ruby, and Yang would be worth it if she got to do this every day. Well, maybe not exactly this. Surely there had to be a way to stab apart a joint without getting covered in all sorts of gore, she'd have to practice it for the future.
Yang arrived at a stone platform only a little removed from the Nevermore just in time to see Ruby land. She gave the surroundings a quick but thorough examination before she dropped her fighting stance and let a toothy grin take her face. "Didn't mom tell you not to play with your food, Ruby?" She called to him, laughing.
The joking voice of his sister seemed to snap Ruby out of his combat mode and he immediately did a little jump of joy and whooped excitedly. "This. Has been. The. Best. Day. EVER!" He whooped again and ran up to Weiss and Blake, gave them a chummy hug that they both robotically returned before they had even processed what he'd done, and started bombarding them with compliments, questions, and non sequitur expressions of joy.
Yang discreetly snuck out her scroll and snapped a picture of her brother assaulting his "friends" with his endless, bubbly stream of consciousness on the ravaged corpse of a Nevermore lodged in a cliff face over seemingly bottomless pit and sent it to Summer Rose. Looks like you raised a player lol. Yang texted. Then she snapped a selfie of herself leaning backwards over the edge of the slowly disintegrating platform she was stood on, smiling happily like a tourist in front of a famous landmark. Her golden, simmering hair contrasted totally with the pitch black of the abyss and she flashed a "V" sign with her free hand next to her face imposed over the blackness of the fall and the crumbling underside of the platform she was stood on. She sent that one to Summer as well. Your daughter's doing okay too! S
She laughed deep and genuine, cracked her knuckles and neck, sighed peacefully.
Then she whooped at the top of her voice and did a back flip. A large section of the platform broke off. Yup, that's satisfying.