Chapter 2: Flare

It was time for graduation at Flare and two girls, Raine Dash and Sera Masumi, were ready for the test. Raine is a sporadic girl who uses twin daggers that doubles as pistols for weapons. Her semblance is Blink, it allows her to sprint short distances at near the speed of sound. She was adopted by Masumi's family at 9 years old, prior to that she had been in and out of foster homes constantly, the foster parents saying she was too destructive. Her original parents were the definition of scum, her mother father would be gone all day, the father working for the family, the mother doing drugs and gambling away the father's hard-earned money. Her mother would come home and yell at her about her problems, she would blame Raine for their financial troubles, that her birth ruined her family. The father, in order to protect her from her mother, put her up for adoption at 6 years old.

Sera has lead a relatively quaint life. Her semblance was Illusion, creating non-physical copies of herself to distract enemies. Her father is the extremely well known detective that had retired around the time Sera was twelve. In his spare time, he would search for new forms of dust so he could sell it to the Schnee Dust Company. Her mother stayed at home and practiced imprinting dust into clothes, apart from her servants. The servants of the family were extremely racist to Sera, the family being a faunus family. They tortured her, both physically and mentally, leaving her traumatized. When the family adopted Raine, it was a godsend for Sera. Not only did it give her a friend, but she had discovered the servants had carefully planned the assassinations of the Masumi family and were going to steal everything of worth right after. Her weapon was a specially modified heavy needle rifle, it was modified to allow for shifting ammo.

Her father, during his research, had created regenerating dust that could be used infinitely, however, there was a catch. This regenerating dust, though incredibly fast in regen speed, was incredibly weak, requiring several pieces to be present for it to do anything. So her father turned it into special weapons clips and modified a hunting rifle to be capable of firing the needles. It took several tests, and failures, before the needle rifle was made. And then the thoughts of waht this could do in the wrong hands rolled through his mind, "If this was stolen by the White Fang, the things they could do with this technology..." he thought to himself. He, inevitably, decided against selling it and kept the only version of the rifle in his basement. Later on, when Sera wanted to use it to get into a Combat School, he said that the one he made was defective, and had her make one of her own, so it could be built to her specifications.

"When can we get to the hunting?!" Raine said, impatiently. "We will, until then, wait for your turn." Sera said. "But waiting is so boring!" Raine muttered. Sera was about to reply when a teacher at the school stood on the pedestal, "Students, we are gathered here to see if you survive an actual hunt. As the rumors say, you will be hunting an Ursa alone, the only backup you have is the teacher going with you, for safety reasons. If you are about to be killed, he or she will save you, at the cost of your graduation. Now the graduating class will gather at the airships for departure to Forever Fall Forest in one hour. That is all." And with a swish, he was gone. "I can't wait to test my skills!" Raine shouted. "Remember to be careful, it is the spikey one we're talking about, not the more cuddly ones." Sera said. "I know! I know!" Raine said, almost shaking in anticipation.

The girls attend combat school, "Flare." It is an Atlas based school, named such due to its resemblance to Signal and it's one of few school's that allow students to be admitted to Huntsman Schools across the world. Most students, however, still attend the the Atlas Huntsman School, as it feels more like home to them.

ONE HOUR LATER

"Well, lets get going!" Raine said, bolting onto the airship. It took off towards the forest. Raine was extremely antsy, almost falling out of her seat jittering about. Sera was cleaning her gun and making sure none of the dust casings were damaged. After a short flight, they reached the forest, releasing ropes for students to climb down. After a few minutes of walking around, Raine found her quarry, trying to climb a tree. "Alright, let's do this!" She shouted, rushing at the grimm. She reached it and ran up its body, slashing into its back and jumping off, and Blinking back to the ground. It turned around, agitated by its attacker's failed attack. As soon as it had its belly toward her, she lunged, slashing and shooting rapidly, killing it almost instantly. After the fight she took some sap from the tree and left for the ship.

Sera was leisurely walking through the pretty red forest when she found her prey. She took out her weapon, set it to single fire, and fired at the Ursa, gaining its attention. "Let's dance." She said, setting her gun to automatic and letting loose a salvo onto the Ursa. Though some shots had missed, the needles peirced the head plate of it and cut through it, killing it.

Sera and Raine were on their way back when they heard a girl scream a couple hundred meters between them. "Sera!" "Raine!" They thought and ran to the source of the scream.

It was Walter Murphy. He wasn't the brightest Hunter at Flare, however his medical knowledge was unparalleled by the other students. He could fix a shattered bone, but give him even the easiest weapon to wield, and he would still manage to get himself killed.

And he was massively screwed. He was looking up at two king Taijitsu. Both were poised and ready to strike. He was cowering against a tree, desperately clutching a rather strange chunk of dust. It was a strange shade of green, unlike "primal" green dust, it had a strange healing aura about it.

They were ready to make a light meal out of him when Sera and Raine meet up behind them. "There you are!" they shouted at each other, gaining the attention of the massive snakes. They stared at the the duo, and lunged at them. The girls dodged out of the way, moving out of the way of the giant serpents with ease. Sera moved out of the immediate lunging range of the snakes, then she started firing needles at the one of the two snakes, embedding themselves into the soft skin below the scales. Raine used her semblance to get on top of the snake, trying to carve into its head. All the while Walter was almost crying in the corner, flailing a scalpel around to defend himself. The girls were busy trying to save him and he did nothing to help. Raine was successful in carving through the scales and thru part of the flesh before being violently thrown off by the other taijitsu, temporarily incapacitating her. "Raine!" she shouted, then created a illusion of herself to get away from the taijitsu and get her friend some help. "Raine! Are you alright!?" "Yeah, but my heads spinning... Behind you!" Raine had seen it coming just in time, giving them both ample time to dodge the incoming snake heads. Then Sera got an idea, "Raine! I'll make Illusions of you while you Blink around to attack them, confusing them in the process!" Sera shouted. "Alright! Seems like a good plan!" Raine shouted back at her dodging another strike. "Now!" Screamed Sera, as Raine started Blinking around, each time the Blink would end, an Illusion of her would appear just before she Blinked again, confusing the snakes and causing them to crash into one another trying to kill the Illusions. Because of this, they, comically, knotted themselves together, making it hard for them to move effectively. "Sera! Do it!" Raine said as she fired at the taijitsu that was missing its head scales, firing the needles thru its brain, killing it. The other serpent was harder to kill however. It had pulled the knot lose enough to escape the trap. Raine saw that one of its scales was pulled up by something, so she took the chance to disable it. She stuck the sharpest points of her dagger into the snake and used her Blink to slice the scales off and cut it in half. With the beast crippled, Sera fired a volley of needles into it, until it bursted into flames.

"Sweet Lord, Walter, what was so important that you pissed off two king taijitsu grabbing it?" Raine asked him. "This!" he said as he showed her the large dust crystal. "What type is it?" Sera asked him "I don't know... but it feels good to be around it, right?" he said. "Yeah, calming even." Raine said, she then looked at her new wounds and sighed, "These are going take forever... to... heal..." she stopped in her tracks as the wounds began to close themselves, wounds that were going to leave scars were closing as if they had only been minor paper cuts. Most of Seras' and Raines' wounds were gone by the time they got back to the airship. The other students had been waiting for them, some with injuries ranging from minor scrapes to long, bloody cuts on their arms and legs. Walter say them and found a way to help "Would all the seriously injured come to me please?" he called out, and some did. The crystal he had found had done its work, repairing even some of the critically wounded students down to minor wounds at worst, fully healed at best. "Good job, Walter!" Raine and Sera said to him, praising his discovery. "you need to find a way to use this for 'the greater good...' or something like that at least." Sera said to him.

TWO WEEKS LATER

"We've graduated!" Raine exclaimed, Sera laughed, "Indeed we have! Its been a great few years, but lets hope we make to the same school!"she said. "Yeah... Let's hope we do." The girls were about to head home when the headmaster came up behind them, "Girls! I've got something for you!" he said to them, and handed them two applications, "These applications were sent by Beacon Academy itself!" The girls looked at each other, obviously extremely happy, "This is it! The best school in Vale! Requested us!" Sera did a "victory dance" of sorts and Raine happily watched her and joined in. "Well, I bid you both great luck as you will be leaving tomorrow to Vale! Oh, and Walter is coming with you, he wanted to go to Vale to learn medical practices." And with that, he was gone. "I guess with that dust crystal, he would make a great doctor, rather than a hunter." They shrugged it off and went back to the home, the home that they would live in for only one more day.

THE NEXT DAY

"We're off! We won't forget to write okay!?"Sera said to her parents and the got on the airship to Vale. Even Raines' father was there waving her off, and Raine had noticed, "Goodbye dad!" she yelled to him as the ship lifted off, And with that they were gone.

-End of Chapter 2-


Author's Note

That was the second chapter, where we have met Raine Dash and Sera Masumi, and another character, Walter Murphy. He's going to be seen around in future chapters and will be seen soon after this. As a way of letting you know, I tend to be working on this in class (but as of writing this I have a month of school left) or in my spare time at home, so it takes a while to finish writing chapters, so it will be a little slow for now.