(Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY)

Chapter one: Arrival

James Azure sat on the Airship to Beacon, he was five eight, one hundred and twenty pounds, and had messy brown hair and clear blue eyes, he wore a white dress shirt, the first two buttons open, a blue vest, and tan pants, his special weaponized black umbrella nicknamed Umbra's Arm was leaning against the wall beside him, his arm was crooked in front of his mouth to allow him to cough into his elbow, and he was coughing hard and deep in his chest, it was so bad that his lungs had begun to burn after only a minute, but he weathered it easily, he was used to it. James had been born into a rich family, the youngest son of the head of Azure Transportation, unfortunately, he had also been born with a chronic cough that had almost gotten him disqualified from the entrance exams despite his considerable intellect and combat skill. A couple of the other passengers looked at him nervously, quizzically, or disdainfully, this last one came from a skinny boy with a light green mohawk, and a single, spiked, shoulder guard, the mohawk boy taunted him.

"Beacon must have really lowered their standards if they're letting sickly little weaklings like you in." Rather than answer with words James picked up Umbra's Arm, pointed it at the boy, and pressed a button on the side of the curved handle, a wire shot out of the tip, headed straight for the mohawked boy's nose, he scrambled away, looking terrified, and fell out of his seat, but the wire stopped before it made it all the way to where his face used to be, then it retracted back into the umbrella.

"Beacon must have really lowered its standards if they're letting in cowards like you." James returned coolly, the now blushing mohawked boy got up and walked away, several of the onlookers congratulated James for putting him in his place, they'd only been on the airship for fifteen minutes, and apparently the green mohawk guy had already established himself as a jerk.

A girl walked over to him, a look of disapproval on her pale, incredibly beautiful, face.

"What was that?" She asked, her voice matched her face, lovely, and stern.

"I taught an idiot that just because I have a chronic cough doesn't make me any less capable than anyone else on this airship."

"By attacking him? He may have needed to learn manners, but attacking him was too far."

"You thought I was attacking him? My weapon's whip feature was extended to it's full length, ten feet, fired diagonally across this airship, nobody was in any danger of being hit, even if he hadn't jumped back, he would never have been harmed. I was just scaring him, if I was attacking him, I would have shot him instead, Umbra's Arm has a gun feature as well." James coughed briefly.

"That doesn't change the fact that what you did was unnecessary, childish, and foolish."

"Granted, I tend to have very little patience for people like him, and I tend to overreact when I'm taunted about my health, or told that I'm inferior because of it, I don't regret it, but I do recognise that I went a little too far." The girl blinked her arresting ice-blue eyes, obviously she hadn't been expecting him to agree with her. James looked her over without moving his eyes from hers, she was just far enough away that his peripheral vision showed him most of her, she stood at five three in her heeled boots, except for a bit of black lace at her neckline and the red lining of her bolero jacket her entire outfit was white and very light blue, knee length high heeled, platform boots, a combat dress with a stiff, flared skirt, and over that the bolero jacket, with wrist length sleeves that widened slightly at the wrists, and the jacket itself was elbow length. Her hair was white as snow and bound in a high, off-center ponytail that fell to her waist held in place by a tiny tiara-like object at the base of the ponytail, a scar ran down through her left eyebrow and eyelid, the only flaw in her otherwise perfect features, a rapier with a rotating selector of Dust vials in the guard, was strapped to her waist.

"My name's James Azure, what's yours? If you don't mind my asking?"

"Weiss Schnee, a pleasure I suppose." Weiss seemed to be calming down.

"The pleasure is mine, I assure you, and judging by your name, appearance, and the symbol on your jacket, I presume you're the younger heiress of Schnee Dust."

"That's right, I am."

"Nice to meet you."

"You know, most people who know about my family are either intimidated, or start sucking up to me."

"It's kind of hard to be impressed by an heiress to the world's largest Dust company when you're an heir to Vytal's largest transportation company, I've never really cared about titles or fancy names, including my own. So, sorry Miss Schnee, but you won't get any of the usual responses from me." James coughed hard, once.

"That's a good thing, do you mind if I sit down? You seem like better company than those near my previous seat,"

"Suck ups, cowards, or annoyances? And feel free."

"The first and third, some musclebound fool named Cardin Winchester, kept talking about his family like I should know them, he got quite annoyed when I told him that I had never heard the Winchester name before."

"You're better off never hearing about them, they're famous Hunters, and complete and utter assholes, pardon my language, please. They regard anyone they feel to be inferior to not be worth the air they breathe, this group includes, the Faunus, those they see as weak, and anyone whose bloodline isn't at least as prestigious as theirs, my father has had business dealings with them in the past, and Cardin is no exception to his family's rule."

"You've interacted with him personally." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah, my father and his father tried to encourage us to become friends, we sparred together quite a bit, however, I hate his personality, and he hates that a boy much smaller than him, who has bad lungs to boot, beat him in every sparring match, so needless to say, our fathers' plans didn't work out."

"Well, he did seem to be something of a pig." Weiss commented.

"That's putting it lightly, Cardin, like most of his family, doesn't believe women shouldn't be on the battlefield, they hold firmly to the idea that women should be in the home, making life easier for the big strong men when they come home from killing all the scary things that go bump in the night." James replied, his scathing tone showing his opinions.

Weiss smiled a bit. "I take it you don't share that view."

"I have three older sisters, two of whom are active Huntresses, and all three of them can take me down in a fight without much difficulty, if I had a similar view to Cardin, I never would have lived to see seventeen."

They shared a quiet laugh at their respective mental images.

"See, you've already proven to be better company."

"That's not saying much, but thanks for the compliment."

The duo talked amiably for the remainder of the flight to Beacon.

As they were walking off of the airship Weiss posed a question. "James, I was wondering about your weapon, why is it an umbrella?"

James brandished Umbra's Arm. "Simple, it's unexpected, but extremely versatile, I built it myself, and put as many surprises as I could reasonably fit into it, the shaft is reinforced, so, even though it's hollow, it's still an effective weapon without any of it's other features, the canopy is made of a fireproof, bulletproof mesh that can stand up fairly well to blades and claws as well, there's a retractable blade in the tip, and the whole tip can open up, revealing a gun barrel, and as you already saw, there is a ten foot coil of razor wire that can be extended and used as a whip. Umbra's Arm is much more than just an umbrella. Really, Weiss, a person's weapon says a lot about them."

"What does mine say then?"

James coughed several times before answering her.

"Well, a rapier is a simple, elegant, sophisticated weapon, it requires precision but is extremely lethal if used properly, it's perfect for finding and exploiting weaknesses in an opponent's defence, and your rapier's Dust capabilities give it even more utility than a normal rapier, you are a refined individual, always trying to be in control, however you're also practical, and proud of the achievements of your family, you probably use your family's Dust exclusively, although you don't seem to approve of what their methods have been in the past eight years, if you didn't want to distance yourself from something, you wouldn't be here, and I'm sorry, that last observation had nothing to do with your weapon, if it was over the line I do apologize, just trying to state how I see things."

"No, you're right, I don't like how my father has been running Grandfather's company, though I'll have you know I still don't like it when people badmouth my family."

"Of course you don't, and I don't plan on bashing your father's image in public, I'm just pointing out that you aren't the type of person who approves of the kind of backdoor dealings and occasionally criminal business practices, that he seems to be engaging in more and more of over the years."

"How do you know about any of this in the first place?"

"My family is one of the backdoor dealings, and accomplice to some smuggling operations."

Weiss looked uncomfortable. "Ah, I see."

Suddenly a girl in a red cape, who was spinning in circles, started to fall backward, James caught her before she would have fallen on the cart full of Weiss' suitcases.

"Woah there! That could have turned out very messy, please look where you're going Miss, are you alright?"

The girl straightened, she wore a black and red combat dress like Weiss', a long, hooded scarlet cloak, black tights, and black and red combat boots, her belt held several loose rifle rounds, a silver rose,and clipped to her back was some kind of boxlike object, which was, of course, red with black lines, her short, naturally red highlighted black hair framed a currently embarrassed face featuring large silver eyes.

"I'm sorry about that! My sister just left me here, and I panicked and got dizzy..."

James cut her off. "It's not my luggage you nearly landed on, so just apologise to Weiss and we can just forget the whole thing ever happened, just an accident that didn't result in any trouble, right Weiss?"

The heiress nodded. "That's perfectly acceptable, no harm done."

The girl, who was obviously younger than anyone else in this year's class, nodded enthusiastically. "Of course! I'm sorry for nearly tripping over your luggage Weiss."

"It's no problem, thankfully James was able to catch you before you landed on those suitcases, some of them are full of Dust."

"Thank you for catching me James! My name's Ruby Rose, nice to meet the two of you!" James and Weiss introduced themselves.

The name Rose sparked a memory for James. "Rose... Like Summer Rose?"

"Yeah, she was my Mom."

Weiss was confused. "Who?"

James answered her. "I've always known I wanted to be a Huntsman, so I researched famous Hunters, Summer Rose was one of the best Huntresses of her generation, she went missing in action eleven years ago." Ruby's eyes were slightly dimmed.

"Yeah, I was four when she went missing."

"If you were picked up two years early, then I'd say you are definitely your mother's daughter, Ruby, I actually met her, when I was five, she saved my life." James told the young girl, who smiled up at him, the light returned to her eyes.

"Really?!"

"Yeah, I'll tell you about it later, right now, we've got to get to the auditorium."

They walked in silence for a short period, before Ruby took the boxy object from the fastening clip on her back.

"So... I've got this thing!" The little red cloaked girl pressed a button on the side of the mechanism, and it unfolded into a huge, six foot long scythe, with a sniper's scope attached to it. Her two companions stopped dead in shock, here was this sweet looking little girl, holding a gigantic scythe like it weighed nothing and grinning like a mother showing off her first baby, which, James suspected, was strikingly similar to what she was actually doing.

Weiss spoke first. "That's a scythe."

Ruby beamed proudly. "Yup, she's also a customizable, high impact sniper rifle! I call her Crescent Rose, and I built her myself!"

"Very impressive, this is my weapon Umbra's Arm, like you, I built it myself, and I gave it as many special features as I could fit into it."

Ruby's eyes went misty. "Oooh! Like what?"

James extended the collapsed sixteen inch blade in the tip of the umbrella. "It's also got a razor wire whip, and a .38 caliber gun, the canopy is fire, bullet, and claw proof, and the shaft is reinforced to make the whole thing an effective weapon."

"That's really cool! So what about you, Weiss?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Of course I have to find the two biggest weapon nuts in this school to be around."

James grinned like a kid at christmas. "Of course! So, are you gonna show us your weapon?"

"Fine." Weiss drew the slender rapier from her belt, holding it out for her companions to examine. "This is my Multi Action Dust Rapier, Myrtenaster, as you can see, it's equipped with fire, lightning, ice, wind, gravity, and force Dust."

Cruel laughter interrupted the weapon conversation, they looked over to see Cardin and three others, including the guy with the green mohawk, standing around a tall blonde human boy in ripped jeans, a black hoodie, and a white chestplate and shoulder armor, a sheathed longsword at his side, he was between the four bullies and a small blonde girl with grey cat ears sticking out of the top her head.

"Excuse me Ladies, I've got to go remind a childhood acquaintance of some lessons I taught him, that apparently didn't stick very well." James headed over to the group, Ruby followed close behind, but Weiss hesitated before joining them, though she did join, she hung back a bit.

"My, Cardin, you never seem to learn anything from all the times I've kicked your ass for stuff like this, ganging up on people is something only two types of people do, cowards, and those who are fighting for their lives, since neither of these people are a danger to your continued existence, this makes you a coward."

The large, orange haired boy who wore a thick breastplate embossed with the Winchester crest, a golden bird with it's wings outstretched, turned and faced the other boy, who was coughing into his sleeve.

"Oh, it's just the sick freak, and he brought along a cheerleading squad, how nice."

"Either of these girls could take you down without *cough* blinking, and you already know that I can take you, and right now, that's exactly what I want to do, so, either leave these two alone, or I get to have a warm up before initiation tomorrow, which will it be, humiliation when I beat you into the ground, or humiliation when you prove my accusation of cowardice correct by running away?" Cardin growled, and extended his mace, a huge metal club containing a fire Dust crystal, James smiled and raised Umbra's Arm. Cardin stood at six five, James, was five eight, Cardin was broad shouldered and muscular, James was skinny and, while clearly not weak, he wasn't very impressive looking, Cadrin held a massive mace in one hand, James held an umbrella, but James was the only one smiling, he held himself with a confidence that he never fully felt out of combat, taking a fencer's stance the umbrella wielder coughed once, which was all the encouragement Cardin needed to come barreling toward his opponent only for his mace to strike air as James stepped forward and to the left, flipping his umbrella so that he held it in the middle, the hooked handle sweeping low to catch Cardin's foot, sending the orange haired thug to the ground, the tip of Umbra's Arm opened and James pointed it between the larger boy's eyes, Cardin froze in the act of getting to his feet.

"Now then *cough* I believe it's time for you and your friends to leave, Cardin, I won't kill you, but you don't need more than one ear do you? So either you leave peacefully, or I pull the trigger." Cardin grumbled threateningly, but he gathered his cronies and walked away. Before he got very far he turned to Weiss.

"You know you could do a lot better than that wimp, babe, why don't you come with me and spend time with a real man?" Weiss sneered at the dumb thug.

"If he's a wimp, what does that make you, since he beat you in about three seconds?"

Cardin scowled. "He cheated."

Weiss laughed. "Why? Because he wouldn't stay still for you to hit him, like the trainers who were paid to throw their sparring matches to boost your ego? You are nothing more than a sore loser, and a childish thug." Cardin's face turned red with rage.

"You bit-GAH!" The insult was cut off when a wire slashed across his cheek, leaving a shallow cut along his cheekbone. James retracted the whip into Umbra's Arm, he was glowing slightly, navy blue light leaking from his entire body.

"Walk away Cardin, or I won't hold back again." James was really angry now. Dull, rust red light healed the cut on Cardin's cheek, and he wiped the blood off with his sleeve, then he walked away.

Weiss, Ruby, the blonde boy, and the cat eared girl, looked at James in surprize, the glow had vanished, and he'd gone into a coughing fit, when it ended Weiss punched him on the shoulder. "That was completely unnecessary, and could get you kicked out before initiation."

"Cardin won't report it, he'd never admit that he was beaten by someone he saw as inferior, and as for unnecessary, I know you can handle yourself, you wouldn't be here otherwise, but nobody insults my friends and gets off free, especially not him, and especially not you."

(Weiss' POV)

Weiss didn't know what to make of James Azure, at first, when she'd thought he'd attacked the mohawk boy for insulting him she'd figured him to be impulsive, childish, and prone to anger, then she'd learned that he'd had no intention of harming the other boy, and he'd even acknowledged that his actions had been too extreme, and Weiss had decided to try to get to know the well dressed, if a little sloppy, young man, and he'd proven to be calm, insightful, and, if the way he'd handled Winchester in their 'fight' was any indication, skilled, and then, as if determined to break her expectations again, he'd attacked Cardin simply for insulting her, he'd very nearly lost control of himself, unconscious aura manifestation only happens when a person is experiencing extreme emotions, the fact that he'd gotten that angry just because she'd been insulted was flattering, if annoying, why did he think he needed to interfere, anyway? She could have handled the oaf without him, James hadn't needed to risk his career over an insult aimed at someone he'd only met an hour ago. Does he like me? Is that why his reaction was so much more extreme than it should have been? No, that's ridiculous, right? Weiss sighed. "Even so, you shouldn't have done that, you idiot, if you get yourself kicked out over this I will be very angry with you, understand?"

James held his hands up in mock surrender. "I understand, Miss Schnee, no need to worry about me."

Weiss felt a faint heat high on her cheeks. "I-I'm not worried, I just don't want to be responsible for getting you kicked out."

James' face became serious. "If I get in trouble, it will have been my fault, the only thing you did was reject a bully's advances, absolutely no shame in that. I won't let you blame yourself for something that most likely won't happen, now, I do believe we're being rude."

They turned to the two people who had been the targets of Cardin and his group. The blonde boy introduced himself first. "I'm Jaune Arc, and this is...? Sorry, I just realized I don't know your name."

His companion twitched her cat ears in discomfort. "My name is Felicia Zircon."

"Weiss Schnee, the young girl in the red cloak is Ruby Rose, and the idiot boy too foolish to know that drawing blood like he did will just make things worse, is James Azure." Weiss indicated each of her companions in turn.

(James' POV)

"We should probably head to the arena, the opening speech is going to start soon." James said. The five future Hunters headed to their destination. When they reached the arena a girl called out.

"Hey Ruby! I saved you a spot!" The small scythe wielder turned to her newfound friends.

"Sorry guys, I've gotta go be with my sister Yang, see you all after the ceremony!" Then she dashed off to stand with a well endowed blonde girl who looked nothing at all like she should be Ruby's sister.

Felicia looked around the crowd until she spotted two other people. "Sorry guys, but I need to go talk to my friends, I got separated from them earlier, and they're probably worried about me."

"No need to explain, just go talk to your friends, it was a pleasure to meet you." James said.

The Faunus girl smiled. "It was great meeting all of you guys." Then she walked over to her friends, a pair of boys, one tall and broad shouldered with gold streaked white hair, the other was average sized with blue hair, the big guy had a huge sword strapped to his back, and the blue haired guy had two hatchets strapped to his belt.

"Great, now where am I going to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to!" Jaune complained, before quickly remembering Weiss. "Umm, no offence Weiss."

The white haired heiress sighed. "None taken." Weiss may have been nice, usually, but nobody would call her quirky.

"Well, if you're looking for a girl to talk to there seems to be a redhead dressed like an Amazon eyeing you pretty intently about ten feet behind us." James pointed out, all three turned to look, Jaune waved at the girl, who smiled, and waved back.

"That's Pyrrha Nikos, four time winner of the Mistral regional tournament and top graduate of Sanctum academy." Weiss informed the boys.

Jaune just looked confused. "What?"

Weiss sighed in exasperation at Jaune's cluelessness, even James was a bit taken aback, but he spoke up. "The Mistral Regional is a fighting tournament for junior combat school students, the most famous in the world, and Sanctum is Mistral's biggest and most prestigious junior combat school, that girl has serious skill to be able to have done all of that, still, we're all just first years here, besides, fame isn't all that great, it mostly gets you insincere 'friends' and people who just want money or favors, she'd probably really like it if someone actually just wanted to be her friend, you should go talk to her." Jaune walked over and struck up a conversation with the red haired celebrity.

"Did you seriously just set Jaune Arc, possibly the most inept Huntsman in training in the world, up with Pyrrha Nikos, who is quite possibly the best Huntress in our class?"

"Yup."

"I hope you realize this likely isn't going to end well."

"I respectfully disagree, Jaune may be a borderline incompetent now, but he's got the right attitude and mindset to be a Huntsman, besides, he's an Arc, he'll get better, and if he can become friends, or possibly more, with Pyrrha, he may be able to unlock his potential, and once that happens, he'll likely surprise us all."

"Why would his family have anything to do with it?"

"I'm almost as surprised that you've never heard the name Arc as I was when I heard Jaune had never heard of the Mistral regionals, the Arc family is full of powerful and influential Hunters, if Jaune has even a spark of his family's brilliance, he's going to be one hell of a Huntsman once he comes into his own."

Weiss sniffed. "Yes, well not all of us have wanted the life of a Hunter since childhood, so not everyone has performed extensive research into historical names."

"True, and I'm sorry if I'm coming off as judgemental, but you didn't strike me as the type didn't do any research into the potentially powerful students coming in this year, and no matter which way you look at it, the latest scion of the Arc line would have come up in any search of that kind, even if only for his name."

"I did do extensive research on this year's outstanding candidates, there wasn't even a mention of Jaune Arc anywhere."

Now that puzzled James, before he got distracted by a thought. "Was I in on the list?"

"What list?"

"The list of candidates you researched."

"Yes, you were, you're a two time winner of the Atlas Regional tournament, and you fought off a group of Ursai attacking a frontier village you and your father were visiting during one of his business trips last year."

"You really did do your research."

"Of course."

Headmaster Ozpin began his speech at that moment. "I'll... keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people. But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose, direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step."

"You will be sleeping in the ballroom tonight, tomorrow, initiation begins, be ready, dismissed." Professor Goodwitch informed the crowd.


(Author's Note: I readily admit, I'm ADHD, I'm currently working on five stories (including this one) at once, as always, please read, review, and most of all, enjoy, thank you, P.S. for those of you who care, yes I've made Weiss somewhat nicer than canon, and that will affect how she reacts to things, but I've tried not to change her too much)