Was originally planning on writing this at some undetermined point in the future, but instead, I'm writing it now as a tribute to the late Monty Oum. Took the names of the main cast, put them in a box, and pulled out the partner/team assortments that I will now attempt to make into a valid story. Enjoy.
Chapter 1:
(Ozpin)
"...That being said, the first person you make eye contact with with will be your partner for the next four years."
Upon finishing his explanation of the team building entrance test, he took a moment to appreciate the reactions he had garnered. Most of the lineup muttered with quiet shock, surprised that such an important function would be determined by seemingly random chance. There was the occasional 'I told you so' and outright 'WHAT?!', but mostly quiet acceptance.
"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest." Ozpin continued. "You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die."
Looking around again, he could tell almost everyone gathered already knew this; the exceptions being a pink themed girl who looked like the Vytal Festival had come early, and a blonde knight who was starting to realize he was most definitely in over his head.
"You will be monitored for the duration of your initiation, but our instructors will not intervene. You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path containing several relics. Each pair must choose one, and return to the top of the cliff. You will guard that item, as well as your standing, and be graded appropriately." Ozpin paused for a moment to let his last statement sink in. "Are there any questions?"
The aforementioned knight raised his hand.
Pretending not to notice, Ozpin continued. "Good. Now, take your positions." He stood back, watching the first few initiates catapult into the forest.
"Uh, sir? I've got a, um, question." The worried knight asked as another candidate was sent off. "So this landing strategy thing, what is it? You're like, dropping us off or something?"
Deciding to humor the boy, Ozpin responded. "No, you will be falling."
"Oh, I see. So, did you hand out, like, parachutes for us?"
"No, you will be using your own landing strategy."
"...Uh huh. So like, what exactly is a landing strateg-EEEEEEEEEEEE!" The blonde sword and shield user was cut off by his own launching pad ejecting him from the clifftop.
Ozpin slowly turned around to watch the descent of the remaining airborne students. Another interesting batch, looks like an eventful year ahead of us. Ozpin thought as he sipped his coffee.
(Weiss)
After Weiss was launched away from the cliff, she waited for the top of her trajectory, and expertly cancelled her momentum with two of her glyphs, then hovered on a third to stay where she was. High above the ground, she looked around at her fellow students. Need to find Nikos, I'll make due with the other two people on my team but I need to find Nikos. She thought as she continued to look around. Finally, she located the Mistral Champion smashing through a few trees to slow her momentum. Weiss was about to dissipate her glyph and move to secure her teammate, when she noticed Pyrrha waving up to her and gesturing. What is she-
"INCOMING!"
Weiss had just enough time to turn around and register the same blonde ignoramus she had spoken with earlier that morning, before he barreled into her. The unexpected force broke her glyph and sent them both on a collision course with the ground. Correcting her revised trajectory would have been hard enough without a terrified individual clinging to her and screaming 'I don't wanna die!' Thankfully, Pyrrha stepped in and managed to catch Jaune's hood with her spear and pull the flailing individual off of her, at the unanticipated side effect of further editing Weiss' flight plan. The last thing she registered was an unfortunately angled tree branch seeking to make an acquaintance with her cranium.
(Jaune)
If anyone asked what Jaune remembered about his first twenty seconds of hunter training. He would only be able to recollect a fuzzy memory of falling and something or things colliding with him before his face decided to make friends with a tree.
(Pyrrha)
That was not what she meant to have happen at all. She'd been looking around for Jaune, when she saw him on a collision course with the heiress. She did what she could to signal Weiss, but only managed to distract her from noticing him herself. She then did what she could to rectify this by separating the two, only to watch both of them collide face first with the painfully immobile trees. Pyrrha went over to make sure they were both okay, before putting the two unconscious hunters in training next to each other and leaving the guilty Spartan with her newest dilemma. I can't leave them here unguarded, but the instructors said they wouldn't intervene, and the forest has Grimm so I can't safely carry both. I should've just let well enough alone and let luck decide my partner. Pyrrha sat down on a nearby log, looking at her two unconscious charges while she mulled over her options and berated herself.
Not coming up with any particularly good ideas, Pyrrha resigned herself to the fact that she would just have to carry both of them and manage, somehow. That is until she heard a nearby bush rustling. The Mistralian looked, hoping to see someone willing to help. Her hope rapidly shifted distinctly unladylike thoughts upon identifying the white bone mask of a Beowolf. Beowolves only attack in packs, and I have to guard these two. This situation just could not get any w- she cut herself off before she gave the universe another opportunity to make fun of her.
(Blake)
Cats always land on their feet, Blake was no different in this regard. After she came to a quiet and graceful stop on a tree branch, she mentally ran over her options again. Lie Ren would be her first choice, but she was honestly okay being partnered with almost anyone. She decided to climb to the top of the tree she landed on and scope the surrounding area. She didn't see much. Looks like everyone's moved deeper into the forest. Her eyes tracked what looked like a glowing blonde comet flying over the trees, contemplating whether or not to follow when her thoughts were interrupted by nearby gunfire. I stand corrected, wonder if someone's found some Grimm. With that she made her way to the source of the noise.
Blake's guess proved correct when she spied Pyrrha Nikos facing down a pack of Beowolves. While she was debating whether or not to show herself, Blake noticed the unconscious pair propped up on a nearby tree, or more specifically the lone Grimm sneaking towards them while Pyrrha was occupied. Not stopping to think, Blake pulled out Gambol Shroud and fired a few shots to dispatch the Grimm.
The unexpected gunfire startled Pyrrha who turned around to look for the source. She spotted the ninja responsible for the support, incidentally opening her back to another opportunistic monster. Instead of yelling a warning Blake found it to be more expedient to act herself. Launching herself forward off of her own afterimage, she brought her sheath down and severed the beast's neck. Not stopping there, the yellow-eyed girl flickered around the clearing, finishing off the stragglers that Pyrrha had missed.
Just as quickly as it had started, it was over. Blake looked around and, after confirming that the pack had been eliminated, looked up at the spear wielder.
All things considered, Pyrrha didn't look to be in that bad of a state, just surprised at the sudden appearance.
"Blake Belladonna." Blake held her hand out.
Pyrrha was jolted out of her surprise by the sudden gesture. "Uh, Pyrrha Nikos. Thanks for the help by the way. I was in quite a bit of trouble before you showed up." She responded, turning to look at the still unconscious pair. She paused for a moment, then looked back to Blake. "So... Are we partners now or..."
The look Blake gave her as a response was answer enough.
"Right, sorry for being so distracted. Just wondering what I should do about these two." She said honestly, gesturing towards the two unconscious trainees.
"If each of us carries one of them, we can still watch our backs." Blake offered.
"You'd do that?" Pyrrha asked with mild surprise. Blake gave a nod of confirmation and moved forward to hoist the heiress over her shoulder. "Then I guess that's two I owe you." Pyrrha said with a small smile, doing the same with the knight.
"What happened to these two anyways?" Blake queried as the new partners started towards the temple.
Pyrrha chuckled guiltily for a second before she started the recounting of events that led up to their meeting.
(Ruby)
Gotta find Yang. Gotta find Yang. Gotta find- "YAAAAAAANG!" Ruby yelled into the forest. She had spent the last few minutes searching frantically searching for her half-sister, managing to avoid the other students all the while. This is bad, this is really bad. What if I can't find her? What if someone else finds her fir- *BOOM*
Ruby stopped where she was and looked in the direction she heard the explosion come from. This was the only thing that gave her warning enough to dodge the large bone plated projectile that went sailing through the trees towards her. That looked like an Ursa, no one else hits that hard, it must be Yang! Ruby thought excitedly, and raced through the trees to reunite with her sibling.
(Nora)
She was having the time of her life. Serious Grey Man had directly given her not only permission, but orders to destroy everything in her path.
And so she did.
Nora had barely touched the ground since launching off of the cliff. She had started by smashing the first things in reach, in this case, a group of especially unfortunate trees. After those were gone, she reloaded her precious Magnhild and looked around for the next nearest thing to smash. Her heart soared at the sight of several angry Ursai lumbering their way towards her.
The resulting conflict could only be described as the single most explosive game of Bounce the Ursa that Remnant had ever seen. After a minute or so of gleeful smashing and sending one particularly unlucky Ursa blue-shifting out of the clearing, Nora remembered that she was supposed to be looking for Ren. Thus she engaged the Valkyrie Family Sloth Imitation Technique, otherwise known as the VFSIT.
No less than two seconds after using the VFSIT did Nora hear someone entering the clearing. Her immediate response was to hop on her hammer and gleefully launch herself towards her childhood frie- That's not Ren.
Nora only went to the trouble of identifying the alarmed girl in red as not her lifelong companion after she was most of the way to her. To her relief though, the other girl had the presence of mind to evade Nora's trajectory (and impact).
Hopping off of her hammer, Nora looked over at the other girl, who did the same.
"You're not Ren/Yang." The girls in pink and red said respectively. An awkward silence followed, both of them shifting uncomfortably.
Finally, the quiet was broken by Red Hooded Girl jerking her hand forward, "Ruby Rose."
Nora looked down at the offered hand, and couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. But I wanted to be partners with Ren. Oh well, she seems nice. She took it all the same. "Nora Valkyrie, at your service." She chirped back.
(Ren)
Knowing Nora, as Ren was fairly certain he did, she would probably blaze a pink tinged trail of destruction all the way to the forest temple. It was with this line of thought that he used his agility to salvage his momentum from the fall and send himself bounding through the forest until he once again met the ground and calmly slowed to a walk. He started making his way through the forest, keeping his senses open for anything that would indicate Nora's presence (explosions). After several surprisingly quiet minutes, his ears picked up on a bush rustling quietly behind him. Another student would likely announce their presence to avoid friendly fire, this forest doesn't house Creeps, also, Beowolves, Boarbatusks, Deathstalkers, and Ursai are louder than that, and Nevermore rarely attack under dense forest cover, leaving... Ren finished turning around and spied the massive black snake making its way towards him. King Taijitu.
He readied his Storm Flowers and waited for the giant snake to make a move, scanning for opportunities all the while.
(Yang)
Yang had always been slightly jealous of Ruby's ability to cover entire city blocks in mere moments. And so, she decided to see just how fast she could get going when she had no fear of hitting anyone or anything important. Thus she found herself soaring over the trees like an unstable dust rocket with the aid of Ember Celica.
She eventually decided that two full clips of ammo was enough and dropped into the tree cover, jumping off of trees as needed to slow her momentum, she hit the ground and rolled to finish her landing.
"Nailed it." She said upon standing up. Then she paused a moment and looked around. "Now what?"
In the process of ricocheting off of the trees inside the tree cover, she had lost her bearings entirely. So Yang picked a direction and started walking.
Several minutes later, all Yang had managed to accomplish was reloading Ember Celica and getting herself thoroughly lost. "Hellooooooooo? Is anyone out there?" Cause I'm getting bored. She stopped when she heard rustling behind her. "Ruby, is that y-" Yang turned just in time to make out a large white snake's head lunging for her. "Nope."
Leaping out of the way, Yang readied her gauntlets and stared down the snake, who was hissing angrily at her. "What afraid of a fair fight or something?"
The bone white head lunged forward again, mouth open. Yang propelled herself backwards with a flaming slug to the snake's gullet, easily evading the strike. "Jeez, who taught you to aim, your grandmuh?" She trailed off, spotting a thin golden strand falling slowly to the ground in front of her. Yang saw red.
The snake never knew what hit it.
(Ren)
Upon driving his Storm Flowers into the beast's eyes, Ren merely held on and perched on its head until he got a good enough grip. Upon doing so he yanked both of his weapons towards each other, stabbing into the brain of the blinded snake and ceasing its thrashing. He crouched and pulled out his weapons, brushed them off, and stowed them in his sleeves.
Upon finishing, he looked around with mild confusion. King Taijitus have two heads, so where's the oth- Ren was pulled from his thoughts by the white half of the snake plowing through the trees towards him. Head not included, that came separately and moving significantly faster. So much for the sloth call. Ren thought with a small smile, as he made his way towards the previous location of the other head. Jumping into the other clearing, Ren said with a small smile, "I still don't think that-" 'RAAAAAAAGH' Or tried to say before he got a faceful of fireball for his trouble. He had the reaction speed just enough to pulse his aura and prevent any real damage, but still got his bell rang and was blown back into a tree where he slumped to the ground with a quiet groan.
(Yang)
As hard as the decapitating punch had been, one punch wasn't enough to vent all of Yang's wrath at having some big dumb stupid snake take a strand of her precious golden hair away from her. She was still on fire and glaring around when she heard a bush behind her rustle. Not falling for that again. She thought as she whirled around and poured the rest of her fury into a red dust shell and fired it at the next intruder.
Yang smiled in satisfaction as she saw the shell connect and detonate on contact. She was about to walk away in satisfaction at having vented properly, when her ears picked up a small groan from the smaller Grimm she'd sent propelling. That's weird, thought I got it. Must have been an glancing hit after all. She turned back and went over to where the Grimm was laying.
Correction, person was laying.
Yang connected the dots as she saw the green and white clad boy bring a hand up to his head and let out another quiet groan.
"Oh shit! I'm sorry!" Yang yelled as she ran over to the downed student. "I thought you were a Beowulf or something, I didn't mean to set you on fire, or explode you; I'm so sorry." Yang said apologetically.
"Juss' as long as you don' do that again." Ren mumbled, still somewhat scrambled from both sudden impacts.
"You got it. Sorry, again." She repeated, offering a hand to the boy. "You okay? I tend to hit pretty hard."
"Gee, really? I hadn't noticed." Ren said dryly as he accepted the lift. "I'm okay now though, takes more than one hit to keep me down."
Yang was still looking him over for injuries, but it looked like he was telling the truth, his clothes were only lightly burned, and he was standing all right on his own. Impressive. She looked up, ready to give a final apology for the friendly fire when she made eye contact. Ozpin's words came to mind for both of them. They both stood there for a moment with eyes locked before Yang decided to amend her earlier introduction.
Hope Ruby finds someone she can get along with. Yang thought as she held her hand out. "Yang Xiaolong."
Magenta eyes looked at the hand and couldn't help but reveal a hint of disappointment before they returned to their previous neutral expression. "Lie Ren, you can call me Ren." He said as he shook the hand and shook.
(Jaune)
The first thing that Jaune registered when he came to was that he was suddenly and very cold. Upon opening his mouth, he realized he was cold due to the sudden presence of water. The result was a very undignified sputtering that accompanied his return to consciousness.
"Told you, a little water and they're wide awake." Said a female voice Jaune didn't recognize.
"Are you all right?" Jaune recognized Pyrrha's voice.
Upon wiping his now damp hair out of his face, "Uh, yeah. Head hurts a little." Jaune responded. He looked in the direction he'd heard the other voice come from and recognized the black haired girl he'd seen a few times around campus but hadn't talked to before. "What happened?"
Pyrrha put her canteen away and looked off to the side with a sheepish smile. "I, uh, tried to help you land." She said while avoiding eye contact.
"Well, I'm still alive so you did a better job than I would've. Thanks." Jaune responded jovially.
Before Pyrrha could respond, their attention was caught by the sound of sputtering from where Blake was waking Weiss.
"Ackpht! What on Remnant?!" Weiss yelled indignantly as Blake stowed her water bottle.
"Can't believe I didn't think of doing this earlier." Blake muttered to herself with a small smile on her face.
As Weiss stood up, she caught sight of Pyrrha. "Ah, Miss Nikos. Have you acquired a partner yet?" She said eloquently, starting the conversation she'd thought through many times already.
"Yes actually." Pyrrha said, gesturing to Blake who nodded in confirmation.
Funny how in all of the different conversations Weiss had imagined, not one had involved an affirmative response.
"What? But I need you for my team! You can't partner with someone else!" Weiss blurted before she could catch herself. She closed her mouth before she could say anything else untoward, then carefully chose her next words. "What I mean to say, is that don't you think you should be a little more careful with who you choose as your partner?"
Before Pyrrha could respond, Blake added her two pennies. "Ozpin said both that we would be partnered with the first person we made eye contact with and observed for the duration of the test. So I don't think there's much room for rearrangement as far as teams go."
Turns out Weiss can still give quite the stink eye when she's only half awake and recently concussed.
"Wait." Jaune said, the three girls looked to him. One still wielding her withering glare. "If Blake and Pyrrha are partners, and you don't have a partner yet..." He trailed off, moving his gaze to meet Weiss'. He was trying to hide his growing smile.
Concussed or otherwise, his implication did not evade Weiss. She looked him over once, twice, then turned her heel and walked out of the clearing with a haughty 'humph'.
"Aww come on Weiss, I'm sorry for the snow angel comment for whatever it's worth." Jaune said to her distancing back, smile gone from his face.
His words might as well have been whispers for all the effect they had.
Pyrrha though was more important in the heiress. "Blake has a point, if any of the instructors saw you make eye contact then they'll have already recorded Jaune as your partner."
This made Weiss stop for a moment. It looked like she was still contemplating leaving. Eventually, her better judgment won out and after a few choice muttered phrases, strode back to the group.
She stopped in front of Jaune and jabbed her pointer finger towards his face and growled, "This does not make us friends." She then wheeled around and once again strode towards the edge of the clearing. "Come on, we should be heading for the temple."
The two girls shrugged and Jaune sighed as they all started moving. Baby steps Jaune, baby steps.
A/N: And that's a wrap. I'm trying very hard to write these characters as they acted in canon, instead of how I want them to act. Criticism is appreciated and I can only say that the next chapter will probably be out sometime next month maybe. If anyone wants to Beta, PM me and we'll talk.