And on the third scale we have our kingdoms. They rise and fall, create and destroy, leave their mark and fade into darkness.
-Page 17, paragraph 1, line 1 of 'The Four Remaining scales'.
Monday, 23:32. Headmaster's Office, Beacon.
"As I've previously said, if we do not get ahead of this now, our children will be-"
"Councilman Bassville, do you even have children to speak on their behalf?"
"You know the answer to that, but it doesn't change my argument-"
Ozpin muted the debated broadcast as the conference call finally came in, he was expecting it, but certainly not looking forward to answering.
"Ozpin, you assured us the 'event' from last year will not breed repercussions."
The headmaster sipped from his mug noncommittally. "And I told you, I'm handling it."
"You seem to have a very different definition to 'handling it,' if this goes on any longer, we'll have to drop our support... Nobody wants that."
"Don't pretend you aren't enjoying this situation." Ozpin replied.
"Don't talk to us like we're your students."
Another sip. "I'll stop talking to you this way when you stop acting like children, it's not like anyone stole your toys... As long as everyone stays calm, you'll find there's nothing to worry about." He took another sip, and swiveled his chair to face away from the screen.
"What about the Penning initiative?"
He was lucky he was facing away, lest his features had betrayed his thoughts. "Advancing slowly, but still well within schedule." A lie, but a necessary one. He moved to drink more of his coffee, but found the mug empty.
He swiveled his chair around again, continuing. "Everything is going as planned, by the time the initiative goes online the rest of the pieces will already be in place."
"We don't like being in the dark, Ozpin."
"It's in the job description, just let me do my job, and you do yours."
"Just don't keep us hanging..." He was disconnected, letting them continue the conversation without him.
He had no choice but make a deal with the devil last year, but he wasn't going to just play the pawn. They insisted on looking three steps ahead, so he was thinking five.
Just as he was getting lost in thought, his scroll pinged. It was the 'secure' line he'd gotten after Atlas so majestically failed to protect his network eighteen months ago.
'Penning phase 1: prep complete' read the subject line, the body of the message was empty.
For the children.
'Go green'. He replied.
He slept, if you can call it that, in his office that night.
Tuesday, 05:43. Beacon.
The hour at which Pyrrha Nikos woke up could only be described as 'obscene'. Her mood only got worse when she figured out that it was the pain in her abdomen that did the waking.
She turned around in her bed to look at the clock, it read quarter to six.
Dust… Is a full night's sleep really too much to ask for!?
She got up regardless, took her pills and left the room with only Miló and Akoúo̱ to keep her company.
Even at this hour the training grounds would be chalk full of hopeful students who get up at such hours to train, like she used to, before the spring holidays - and her accident. So instead, she walked to the secluded spot she found in her first year, and five minutes later she was at that spot - what she assumed was the ancient version of the Beacon monument.
While nowhere near as grandiose as the one in the entrance to the school, this spot was open enough to train, and secluded enough to fumble without anyone seeing you do it.
She took a deep breath, then slowly entered a basic spearman's stance. Miló placed under her forearm, Akoúo̱ raised to protect the torso and her weight placed on her forward leg.
This was one of the first things her teachers taught her, and it felt natural.
First, the basics... She started with thrusts, parries, weight-shifts and relocations. Slowly, painfully, taking each step in perfect deliberation, checking herself all the while for imperfections.
After the first form she moved on to the next exercise, she did this one quicker, more flourished. Adding parries and blocking with her shield randomly between the steps.
Half an hour into the forms, she stopped to catch her breath. Even without her armor she was already sweating, and she hated it.
Just two weeks off my feet and I can't even finish my forms…
This time, she closed her eyes, visualizing six - no, can't handle that - four opponents, a few meters away. They were flanking her, one in front, one on her right, one to her left and the fourth one behind her.
A deep breath and she was off...
Taking the offensive, she charged at the enemy facing her - of course, the armored hammer-wielder wouldn't just stand there and take a hit, he would counter with an attack of his own, taking the hammer in an arch over his head.
My block would be too slow… So she tugged, not physically, but with her semblance, on Akoúo̱.
This wasn't a horrible position to be in, the hammer deflected off her shield, but the magnetic pull gave her a spin, and a moment later she was crouched, facing away from that enemy, with Miló's spearhead buried in the ground, and the other end of her spear - the muzzle of her rifle mechanism, just two inches away from her opponent's armored chest.
She pulled the trigger.
The bullet did not pierce the armor, but it would devastate his aura, as well as leave him hopelessly off balance and very open to a follow up, so she stood up, tugging again. This time it was on the business end of the spear, which spun in her hand and placed itself in the perfect position for a backward thrust.
While she didn't spend a shot on this attack, it still had the force to finally tip the hammer-wielder over.
But now her position was problematic, so she jumped backwards, using Miló, with its point on the hammer-wielder's torso, as an acrobatic pole.
She landed and got into a defensive stance just in time to meet the coordinated assault of her next two opponents, one with a spear, the other a sword and both unarmored.
The attack was well performed, she barely ducked under the sword aimed at her neck, or parried the spear aimed at her leg. She then took a half-step backwards.
Funny thing about training as a team, it's almost impossible to practice the off chance of a failed combo, there are just too many things that can go wrong; so when this happens, the fighters will almost always switch to easier tactics.
So with both attackers now aiming at her chest, taking the advantage would be relatively easy, she pushed on Akoúo̱, making sure the shield had the force behind it to deflect both attacks, giving her the opening she needed to place the spearman in close quarters and the swordsman behind him.
Without armor, a speed type combatant depends heavily on the concept of not getting hit. This has its pros - but also its cons, the biggest of which, is the fact that it takes a lot less force to take down an aura and draw blood. So forgoing the time it takes to prepare a proper thrust, the timing is significantly reduced, just aim and pull the trigger.
Which leads to a bleeding spearman thrown at a swordsman, knocking the two prone.
Refocusing, Pyrrha noticed the first opponent was on his feet again, and the fourth opponent was just standing a few paces away... With a shotgun.
I hate shotguns.
Pyrrha was definitely not ready for that particular turn of events, and had no choice but take the hit. Even straining her semblance to deflect the pellets could only do so much, and she felt a spiking pain in her spear arm.
She knew it just her wounds reopening, but she didn't let that stop her.
She charged at the shotgun, ignoring the tactical suicide and allowing her semblance to consume the little energy she had left to distract the gunman long enough to complete her attack.
Even with pain all over her body and the blood dripping from her hand, a proper thrust, powered by her rifle mechanism, had no trouble skewering the vitals of the shotgun wielder.
Two down, two to go. She was tired and in pain, but by now the hammer-wielder was upon her, and the swordsman finally extracted himself from under his friend.
She bashed her shield into the hammer aimed at her head, and followed up with a rifle powered thrust, to little effect. It did give her the opening to throw Akoúo̱ at the swordsman, however.
Without the assistance of her semblance, Akoúo̱ was wholly ineffective, what's worse, the shield won't come back, and the hammer-wielder was already attacking again.
Pyrrha dropped prone and tumbled backwards. She would normally never consider a useless move like that, as any conscious opponent can simply take a step forward to and attack again.
Hammers, though, with their extremely short range were the exception to this. The hammer-wielder would still need to bend after his step if he wanted to continue his assault.
And so she allowed Miló to leave her hands and, powered by a trigger pull, the spear pierced through the eye slit of her opponent's helm, taking the third man down.
Her body seemed to become a full choir of pain, her imagined assailant must have stomped on her stomach to keep her pinned, an event she should have predicted.
Only the swordsman was left. He stood above her lying, bleeding frame in apprehension of the destruction she has wrought on the rest of his crew. With his enemy now unarmed and without shield, he took his time to prepare a coup de grâce.
A grave mistake.
Pyrrha lashed out, grabbing the man's leg and forcing him down to his knees. He struggled, but Pyrrha was already grabbing higher and higher up his body leading to his neck.
A stab with the sword caused another part of her body joined the chorus, but she could no longer differentiate the origins of her pain, and by this time had her arm locked around his neck, suffocating him.
The swordsman thrashed, fighting to escape her hold. That wasn't the only front she was fighting though, as her own consciousness was also slowly fading.
It felt like an eternity, but her last enemy finally stopped struggling long enough to be considered defeated.
"-rrha… Pyrrha!" Pyrrha finally opened her heavy eyes to a pair of sunglasses swimming around her quickly fading field of view.
"Coco… thought… graduated… what...?" Pyrrha slurred as she felt Coco hoisting her up and starting to carry her. Her vision cleared up just long enough to look around, there was no one around but the two of them, but the clearing looked like the time Nora brought a bucket of red paint to the dorm. At least she wasn't in pain anymore. Was that a good sign?
"Dust, girl… I came because I knew you were going to act stupid, didn't expect you to rip every stitch in your-"
Pyrrha was no longer conscious at this point.
14:00, Beacon central courtyard.
The first day of the school year is, by and large, a minor celebration amongst the student body. With most of the teaching staff gone for the first-year's initiation, the older students take this time to make the rounds, meet up with their friends and (as is the truth for a not so minor minority) copy the assays that were due tomorrow.
Weiss Schnee took this time to coordinate the annual (and very large) shipment of dust her father sent her, ordering the myriad of mooks around as they were transferring crate after crate to an empty room in the third year dorm she was able to secure.
Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long and Nora Valkyrie, on the other hand, were making Weiss's life miserable for it, and together the four of them were, as always, very loud.
Blake Belladonna and Ren Lie's chosen venue was a balcony overlooking the courtyard and their friends. Blake was sitting on the railing, reading a small hardback; Ren just leaned on the railing, overlooking the ruckus outside.
She's not wearing her bow. Ren noticed, and decided he liked the sudden openness from the cat Faunus. Especially the way her ears twitched every once in a while, signifying that she heard something.
After a few minutes, Blake, still transfixed by her book, talked first. "Where are Pyrrha and Jaune?"
Ren startled, but regained his cool quickly enough. "We got a call from the infirmary at six thirty in the morning, apparently she blew all of her stitches, so Jaune accompanied her to the hospital; never heard him curse the way he did, heading out."
She chuckled. "Remind me to never take Death stalker venom."
"Only if you remind-" Ren lost his chance at finishing the sentence when he heard an explosion from down below. Blake almost jumped at the sound, and they both looked to see the results of a Nora powered dust explosion, and heard Weiss's shrill voice - she was screaming.
Seeing Ruby was now preparing one of her famous sneezes, Blake closed her book with a thud, jumped off the railing and headed inside.
"Where are you going?" Ren asked.
"The library," She responded, not stopping. "You coming?"
Ren thought about it for a moment, but his ambivalence was cut short at the sound of a second explosion, and the Schnee girl's renewed screams had an even higher pitch this time.
He shrugged to himself and caught up to Blake.
Afterword, Explanations & Flame prevention:
1st. Pyrrha and Ren/Blake (as a pairing) will take most POVs. Other members of the cast, as well as OCs will fade in and out as the plot progresses.
2nd. Ren X Blake will be a thing, in a Victorian-like, M~T sort of way. I'll experiment with it.
3rd. Timeline: I assume the Cinder arch ends sometime in RWBY's first year, leading the way to much more peaceful (but certainly not uneventful) second year of training for the cast.
About two weeks before the events in my story (the last hunt for the second-years) Pyrrha took a direct hit from a deathstalker's stinger, which transferred a dose of what I non-canonically call deathstalker venom. The venom destroys the soul's connection to its body, which makes (among other nasty effects) healing via aura impossible. The treatment for this is long and painful, it starts with dialysis, continues with antibiotics and consumable dust, and usually involves long hospitalization periods.
*Off screen, Pyrrha discharges herself from the hospital, against doctor's orders, and returns to the academy with everybody else.
A. Ozpin's scene happens that night, before the first-year's initiation; all the students have already gotten to Beacon.
B. Pyrrha's scene is the next morning.
C. Ren's scene happens the afternoon of Pyrrha's scene.
Hope that makes sense.
4th. Yes, I know Milo is a javelin... and a sword... and a rifle... Blame Sanderson for making Kaladin as cool as he is.
I'll try to make it worth your while... (I'll probably fail, but I'll give it a shot.)