A/N: This is a rewrite of "The People of Sparks", hopefully with less Mary Sue characteristics by showing more screw-ups and painful injuries. It's not nearly as fun as the preview scenes because there is only a certain quantity of awesome that a peasant can have (without getting assassinated in less than subtle fashion) until they discover the REAL conflict and embark on real upward social and economic mobility.

Be warned, the main struggle here will be human versus human. Everything else is an afterthought, though Salem will play a large part in the storyline. Then again, if I ever wrote an Attack on Titan fanfic I would go for the "The ruling class created the Titans to herd the peons into manageable spaces" angle. That means exactly what you most likely think it means for the origins of the Grimm.

Chapter 1: I Have Never Fought, Nor Shall I

Mistral City General Hospital, August, 595 AD (After Dust)

"She'll beat it, somehow…" that was her student, it sounded awfully unsure though… and there was a nurse, maybe, saying something, then the door closing. Well, she wasn't surprised, given what she could dredge up of the last mission in her mind… the stabbing disjointed pain below her knees was a good hint as to exactly what went wrong given those memories…

"Status?" She croaked out, feeling a straw being put to her mouth and pulling in some water for her parched throat. "Thanks."

"There's enough left that you can afford the highest quality indirect adaptors." Well, that was good, her student knew well that she hated the idea of direct adaptors for their risks.

"How many limbs left?" She could still move her fingers, or she thought she could, and they didn't hurt too badly, and there weren't localized pains on her skin self-awareness, so that probably wasn't an issue…

"They managed to save a bit below the knee in both legs, your arms are fine though."

"Fuck, that's going to take at least a year to get over. Am I healed enough to move on my own yet?"

"Yes, they've fixed up everything else. I blew all our pay from the summer missions and winnings from the Tournament on it." She didn't mention the portion of her Marshmallow Flakes contract money she'd burnt on the healing.

She managed to peel an eye open, looking at the true redhead in the room "I'll pay you back someday for it."

"You've taught me more than enough that I can't ever repay you for, it's—"

"Good attitude there, you know what I mean, right? Lots of friends that way, though I do wish you'd have just had them heal me to being able to recover on my own. This is gonna be really, really expensive…"

"Maybe it's time to just quit risking your life for money."

Amber laughed humorlessly as she looked over at the girl she'd mentored since she first came to Sanctum for high school "Pyrrha, what other marketable skills do I have that can bring in a better income in this crap-sack world when I'm just an average girl? What trade or professional schools can I afford, particularly with the shortage of opportunities compared to the number of people who aren't willing to be on the front lines? There's no going back… put me in for external adaptors with bone reshaping to even out the pressure, please."

"I already did for the bone shaping and nerve reconstruction, because I was certain you didn't want anything interfacing directly with your nervous system, and your parents signed off on it."

Amber stared up at the ceiling, thinking about the costs she'd examined before when discussing some of the occupational hazards with her mentee. "You used some money that was just your own, didn't you?" Because there was no way she could have touched Amber's admittedly very large nest egg. Even her parents wouldn't have that authority unless she died or became vegetative. Speaking of which… by the clock, her parents would both be at work right now, which explained their absence here.

Pyrrha grimaced "It's my money to do as I wish with."

"Correct application of forcefulness, standing up to pressure, very nice."

"You're just teasing me out of frustration, I recognize this move."

"Are you not the same?" Both young women chuckled. "Looks like I'll have to defer Beacon then." For obvious reasons.

"I'm still surprised you got in at all without an Aura, since, well…"

"I know, these things happen easily to us. But other things come easily to us too, you know this well."

"How could I forget? You showed me amply on day one of my being assigned to you."

Amber grimaced, thinking back on how the Bounty Office had refused to pay her as much as they should have due to not believing her solo claim. Pyrrha's word had counted for little as she was just starting at Sanctum, and the disasters that had been Amber's first two participations in the Regional Tournament, High School Circuit, probably had something to do with the Bounty Office's standard reaction to her walking in—not that that would be quit the same anymore given prosthetics—being… wait… "You didn't order any prosthetics yet, right?"

"No, because I suspected you'd want to build or modify your own."

"Good, that's a relief then. It's a lot cheaper and I'd know my equipment better, important even for someone with my combat style."

"You're unusually talkative."

"Been silent for… how long has it been, Pyrrha?"

"Two weeks since I brought you in, one week since the infections forced amputation."

"I've been silent for long enough, and talking is helping me fend of hysteria, so… if it gets too annoying, go home or go on another mission. It's good to have more money sitting in the bank just in case, and we both know…" Amber trailed off, leaving unsaid the current state and prestige of the Nikos family.

They spoke at length, talking about their last mission and the landslide it had ended in due to Amber's usual methods of making things explode until the problem was solved backfiring on her unexpectedly. After Amber's parents arrived, Amber immediately demanded that they do the paperwork for her to be released due to how much healing Pyrrha had paid for from their partnership funds.

The younger girl would go back to school in the fall, leaving Amber with a rather final and fatalistic-sounding "Thank you, for everything."

Amber's response to the closed front door from where she sat on the stairs of her family home was a light chuckle and "You know me too well, Pyrrha… you know exactly the right buttons to push."

Sure, Pyrrha still visited occasionally, but she kept things social instead of mostly being about business, rather unlike their past interactions. Perhaps Pyrrha too thought Amber would be better off changing jobs, but such was the way of the Gifted, or as they called themselves, Aura-users. They could not really understand, even if they were aware of the Ungifted masses, how the Ungifted were stuck to the lower rungs of the social ladder. The average humans were practically invisible, nameless, and just more collateral damage statistics to be written off by the Gifted and their social class of the "Hunters". In this world, the Ungifted were below even Faunus in status, because at least the Faunus were all Gifted who had tapped too far into their powers and picked up adaptations, or were descendants of the same. Such was why the White Fang were feared now that they had decided to speak the only language of power, the language of force.

Amber Stone was not content to just be a nameless statistic for the rest of her life. There was exactly one path to climb the social ladder for an Ungifted. She had to join the Hunters, and ideally marry into a wealthy, high-ranked Gifted family. Of course that latter part was patently impossible even as a minor concubine given there were plenty of women out there who were vastly better than her in physical and mental appeal. Her former mentee Pyrrha Nikos as a prime example. For the ambitious, reality was a mere stumbling block that existed to either be overcome or, sometimes, casually overlooked for mental health purposes.

Amber Stone considered herself ambitious, and so that was exactly what she was going to do.

Flight to Beacon from Vale City Center, Kingdom of Vale, 597 AD

Clank, clank, clank, clank…

"I'll ask you one last time… why?" Pyrrha Nikos said to her fellow freshman, the source of the clanking of metallic hooves on the boarding ramp.

"This is the path I chose, I have no others."

"That's the same damned thing you told me when I visited you in the hospital for every damned one of your crashes!" Pyrrha was usually a lot more soft-spoken, but toward her old mentor who had been obsessed with risk avoidance when they had previously worked together, she could be quite angry indeed. "You know full well you could have gone into engineering or something!"

"The only real money in engineering is Dust-related, and you know full well that that's restricted to Aura users for safety purposes." There had been a number of accidents in the second century After Dust which made Aura usage capability mandatory in Dust research facilities, because any explosions or other issues could be safely contained. There were intermittently still other incidents that had to be cleaned (mops or hoses often required for splattered body fragments) up, caused by freelance researchers operating outside the law and doing something stupid.

Pyrrha let out a disbelieving laugh while putting away her carry-on suitcase and stowing her backpack under the seat in front of her "Given you engineered those legs after somehow getting schematics from Atlas combat droids and military-standard prosthetics?"

Amber slung an arm over the girl two years younger than she was—though that would mean basically everyone on this flight—once they'd strapped themselves in "Ah don't say it so loud, Pyrrha, I hear the Schnee Dust Company heiress is starting this year with us, don't want to annoy her over perceived rule-breaking, even though it was through perfectly normal channels." She was not lying, because it was not exactly abnormal, though legality was another matter entirely.

"So how did you get the data?" Pyrrha probed, gently, leaning closer to keep it quiet.

Amber smiled "Bah, external imagery, sales brochures, and such were enough to figure out the math myself!"

"I swear you keep making me think your talents are wasted in the Hunter business."

"Aww, Ren, look at that! It's so nice to meet a young man and young woman so publicly affectionate with one another!" An orange, white and pink colour schemed girl said loudly, while putting her rather tired-looking companion in a headlock and forcing him to look at the two ladies already seated.

Amber kept her opinion of the misidentification suppressed. "Ren, was it? I think your girlfriend wants you to be more affectionate when you are together in public."

Nora released Ren's head almost instantly "Oh we're not 'together' together, it's just that we've been together so long that… uh, that didn't come out quite right… but my name's Nora Valkyrie and this is Lie Ren. What are your names?"

"Pyrrha Nikos is the beautiful young lady I have the good fortune to be with, and my name is Amber Stone. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." They shook hands.

"Oh we should really be getting to our seats soon. See you later!"

"See you later then!" Amber kept the smile up, looking down the aisle out the corner of her eye, until she saw them settle down in a row of seats considerably behind her. Then she slumped back in her seat and pulled her arm back from over Pyrrha's shoulder, thinking.

"You alright?"

"This is the first time I've managed to pass myself off as a man in public. I'm actually quite impressed… the only difference from last time is a few more scars and wider shoulder pauldrons… and a haircut to fit more comfortably in the helmet. Well, looks like I've settled on some of the more detailed parts of my appearance then."

"Be careful of the two-to-one ratio then, you don't want any girls to be mad at you for being dumb enough to be duped."

Amber chuckled "You mean the fact that there are two women over the age of twenty-five per man?"

Pyrrha frowned "I thought it was twenty?"

"That was before I started working as a teaching assistant, they still haven't revised the textbooks to accommodate the work I did at Sanctum and the ripples it made. The ratio below twenty-five is currently about one point seven women per man, just because guys still tend to be the ones dumb enough to get themselves killed far more. Still, because everyone has a mother and a father, the reproductive success of both groups will be the same, which means the ratio at birth should be about one to one. It's testament to male pride or perhaps foolhardiness that it gets skewed that far that early in a human life expectancy."

"I don't think the settling down part of your life plan will work very well if you keep up that opinion of men, even asides the general air you throw off."

"Ah, girl talk is different than public speaking. And I don't think my odour, body, breath, or otherwise, is nearly so bad as you seem to be saying, hah!"

"Hold still for a moment…" Pyrrha leaned in particularly close and took a couple sniffs "Yep, same scent as when I first met you, nitrocellulose, weapon grease, and steel. Yeah that general air isn't gonna help…"

Amber laughed "Be careful, Pyrrha, I'll know where you live… and you wouldn't want to give the men… fresh men, literally… the wrong impression, do you?"

"Anyone who can't be bothered to accommodate an imposing, scary companion of mine isn't worth my attention anyhow." And anyone too stupid to decline the company of Amber's brand of firepower was dumb enough to be worthy of the receiving end if Pyrrha's memory—which was quite good—of watching the Mistral Regional Tournament, High School Circuit, back in Grade 7 and 8 were correct. There was something to be said about managing to fail at the finals only due to excessive collateral damage. Then there was the later rounds when Pyrrha came along, where thanks familiarity with her style the older girl kept getting trounced by her mentee due to not using the more lethal tricks she could have easily pulled off.

"I think you should have added 'scarred' to that" Amber pointed at the diagonal cut from over her left eye to her right cheek, where it stopped just short of two parallel claw marks that traced along the edge of her jawbone, then at the tear mark directly across the bridge of her nose, and a gouged patch in her left cheek. Without Aura she had to rely on technology for comparable effects of hovering and such, and it had a much bigger signature, but it should get her out of a jam often enough to be well worth the crashes during thruster pack manoeuvring practice. "Oh hey, there's someone who likes wearing his armour even during his time off." She noticed a blonde boy across the broad central aisle, a boy who was wearing the core pieces of a set of armour, though he didn't look so good, to put it politely. "I swear everyone else seems to rely on their Aura as a crutch around here…" She groused, looking up at the people chatting at the front of the room "Unless that red-caped girl has armour under that, there are so few people who have any damage endurance beyond their Auras here."

"I do remember what you said about my outfit back when I settled on this style."

"I remember it well too, I think it was something on the order of 'you fail armour forever', a reference to the trope of 'you fail physics forever'?"

Pyrrha smirked, focusing her vision on the blonde boy sitting on the other side of the aisle because focusing on Amber would be too close for comfort "Exact words… well, exact phrase, but whatever."

Amber turned her head "Looking at the blonde over there now that I noted him? Well… not necessarily a bad choice, good-looking, and if my information on this year's Beacon entering class is correct he should be the son of the Arc family if that sword and scabbard at his waist is any indication." Most of the people who preferred carrying their weapons around with them were standing, but not this particular young man… "An influential family, very famous, although not very wealthy, not bad at all… and he has seven sisters so he should be well used to appeasing women and catering to their wants. The way he carries himself suggests he's airsick though, which is not good for a Hunter… but the lack of overdone musculature suggests he's not too macho, which means he's unlikely to exploit the sex ratio too much and take much of a harem despite his family name and reputation. All in all, he has the Amber Stone Stamp of Preliminary Approval so far… you should interact with him and if he does turn out to be a Mr. Nice Guy then that would be great! You were shy before, so I'm not sure you could rein in assertive men as much as sometimes necessary…"

"Amber?"

"Yes?"

"You're rambling again on one of your mad matchmaking schemes. Please don't live vicariously so much. He doesn't look bad and if he turns out nice enough I'll socialize with him and see how things go, but let me deal with this at my own pace, alright? I'm not the nervous high school freshman you met four years ago in the lobby of Sanctum and welcomed cheerily to the school… and you're not the same Manic Pixie Dream Noob that you used to be."

"…Sorry… though I hope my less old moniker of the Mad Sempai still lives on?"

"That depends on how many helpful upperclassman-like things you manage to pull off in our first year at Beacon."

"I guess I'll have to work for it then. Of course, you'll also have to work at convincing people that you and I are not a couple, heterosexual or otherwise, before you can actually make a move…" Amber jerked her thumb in her lap toward the increasingly nauseous-looking blonde across the aisle as an example "and if whoever you're interested in makes a serious move beyond a resigned 'ya know, I had a crush on you, but I see you're happy enough with so-and-so' while they think you're already with someone else… well, you'll have learnt something important about them. This may be good or bad depending on interpretation, and depending on how they view your current relationship."

"You're great at analysis of these things, though I'm surprised given you behaved even shyer than me about boys back in Sanctum…"

Amber snorted, since the claw marks on her right cheek and the gouge on her left, along with many of her other scars, were certainly not from after she lost her feet "Could you imagine me making a move on one of those boys, given the one-point-seven to one ratio and my lack of a working Aura?"

"No, but I can imagine what the team you might end up with would think of it… which means I should try to make sure I'm on your team."

"Hopefully the team selection process is less random than pulling names from a hat… though I couldn't find anything when I went rummaging around their computer systems… except that Professor Ozpin was impressed with my preparations and would let them slide."

There was a lot to be said about rigging traps around the perimeter of the Emerald Forest, commonly nicknamed "Tutorial Forest" by Beacon students. First, and most importantly, it was a hell of a lot safer than Ozpin had originally feared when he agreed to let a certain maniac attend Beacon. He'd been worried she might use nerve gas or something and the wind might turn the wrong way, like how her second participation in the Mistral Tournament had gone. Though in that case it had been a fire, set in the forest chosen as the arena for free-for-all finals, which had gone completely out of control and managed to clear a good portion of agricultural land—and slaughter thousands of Grimm—that Mistral soon took advantage of.

As for why it was a free-for-all final, the stadium they'd used for previous years still hadn't been fixed after half of it was blown up, set on fire, and so on. Being unpredictable and having a penchant for over-preparation was good, especially now that she'd settled down a bit after that landslide and no longer used such flashy moves. Ozpin had been agreeable to her admission based on her immense capacity for massive damage against the Grimm… and also because she was mostly harmless in PVP when not given any time to prepare or plan. This meant less chance of destroying the duelling arenas during combat training… or maybe a good excuse for Ozpin to ask for funds for renovations, he wasn't sure.

When you got to be as old as Ozpin, unpredictability was truly the spice of life. This particular deranged lunatic had more than enough of it to make for a good show over the next years. "I'm hoping the initiation in the Emerald Forest won't be another 'Magical Exploding Forest of Doom' as you pulled in your second Tournament."

"During the summer the Emerald Forest is a restricted area, to give the Grimm a chance to bulk up their numbers again for the students' training purposes. I couldn't get in, but that didn't stop me from dealing with them from outside the perimeter."

"…Did it have something to do with the wildfire I heard about on the news a month ago?"

"Too bad there was a storm at the wrong time, or I could have burnt down most of the forest and the Grimm in it. Fortunately I used cheap accelerants that time, so I didn't lose much on funds, because the bounties were out of reach."

"So you spent the summer break for Beacon kids pretty much camped out around the Emerald Forest thinning the ranks of the Grimm in it, huh? You should have invited me to the fighting."

"What fighting? I didn't participate in any fighting…"

Pyrrha frowned "You must have fought the Grimm, a lot, to survive out there. I know how much negativity you carry within you."

"I don't have an Aura, remember? They can't sense me by my emissions, only by smell or sight. And about fighting… You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Oh, right, your first lesson to me." Pyrrha facepalmed at forgetting the line of "I cannot teach you how to fight, I can't fight myself, as you saw well in the arena where I was being trounced. I can only teach you how to lie, trick, steal, and whatever else, so that at the end of the day you are the one going home alive and in as few pieces as possible, while the other guy does not." Unfortunately for their mentorship, Pyrrha had proven extremely adept at conventional fighting and wasn't so good at learning unconventional methods, though she at least learnt well how to counter them.

Amber patted Pyrrha's hand at the girl remembering. In the meantime, she herself was acting rather stupid and childish, namely eying another blonde jealously. Her particular target had a big, fluffy mane, got away with having no bulky, heavy armour as part of her usual wear, and was standing near the front of the airship, in the gallery area. Most importantly, she made Amber annoyed that she had to rely on stim packs to survive in the past often enough that she was flat as a washboard… "I'm glad you remember."

Bah, she would think on more important things for now than the fact that she was actually mistaken for a man today. There was no point caring about it, even though she knew full well that her value would only decrease as she got older and should really work on catching a decent boy's eye as soon as possible, before the other women acted. Trying to appeal to men by showing off her intelligence and abilities could come later, and took a lot of time to take effect.

Hmm… Maybe she could convince Pyrrha to make them a sort of a package deal. After all, Pyrrha was the type of girl most of the families that weren't at the very top tier would be glad to have as a bride. Having a famous Huntress (as she hopefully would become) as basically a chief maid and home manager of sorts, with a bit of mistress duty on the side, was also prestigious. Of course, maybe it might just be better to not try so hard, because of the Law of Inverse Attraction, which seemed to hold just as true in reality as in the shows her mother was a fan of…

Ah, whatever, they had to survive Beacon first before being concerned with anything else. Oh wait, that was also a problem with the Law of Inverse Attraction. Hmm? Wait… why was the blonde boy from across the aisle coming over to them while looking shiftily around? Uh oh…

"You guys know where the bathrooms are on this shuttle?" Well, they hadn't been near the usual places when Amber and Pyrrha boarded, and so it was apparent the boy hadn't noticed, or hadn't read the safety brochure that should have been sticking out the back basket of the seat in front of him…

That was a relief. On the other hand, the boy vomiting on her as she manhandled him, down the hallway during a patch of turbulence was not a relief. He had looked really quite sick and stumbling about was slower than desired, so Amber basically hauled him along. There wasn't enough room in the aisle to manoeuvre easily with three people, and Amber had reminded her ex-mentee that her outfit allowed vomit to run inside if the boy actually puked.

"Good thinking." The boy had said, before actually throwing up across the front of her armour, though she dodged enough that it only splattered her leg and aroused protest form those around the area… followed quickly by a mass exodus to the gallery area up front.

This was bad, because awkward encounters often led to other things, though this was at least a lot less cliché than ramming each other at a street corner with toast in their mouths. At least her armour was sealed and easy to wash off, though the acrid smell would last until she could give it a better wash than tap-water cupped in her hands and rinsed off over the toilet in the exceedingly cramped bathroom. Only one of them had fit at a time too… so there was plenty of puke that had run down her leg onto the floor before she could bend him over the actual toilet, despite him containing the subsequent torrents until they got there.

"Ah, I'm sorry about that… here, my water bottle should help with the cleaning… I'm Jaune Arc, thank you for helping me, miss…" Well shit, he even realized she wasn't a man, despite her build!

A/N: There we go, set up a quick early (one-sided, with how badly Yang pummels Amber in spars) rivalry and meet a new future mentee. We should hope Yang doesn't decide to participate in a prank war, of any type, anywhere at any point during the evolution of this story, because other than when she's recovering from maiming, it would hurt, a lot.

Please Review as to your hopes for which path this might follow. This includes very important events such as Penny and Pyrrha's (apparent) deaths, and how well Team ATKN ("Attacking") performs when matched against other teams in training arena battles. This mostly depends on how far Amber cheeses those battles, which should correlate with how well they do and how she does socially (respected training fanatic, try-hard failure, or accursed cheater are some possible labels). However, they MUST not perform so well as to displace any other team from the Vytal tournament… so even if they're somehow good enough to be sent theirs would be the off-screen matches at best.

I am not in favour of sending them, given Amber's history with arenas of all types during decisive matches may or may not stretch up to Amity Coliseum.

REVIEW (especially with advice on how to thoroughly avoid Sue territory while still remaining interesting)!