Yooo I'm kinda late.
Because I'm a bad person.
I don't really know what I'm going to write about up here, because to be honest I'm very confused on what to say to you guys since you don't review enough so I can't really respond to anything.
I'd like to do more things here, but I can't, so oh well. Anyways, have the latest chapter.
I can promise that next chapter will be the last person and the start of the story. Also, dear GOD I have NEVER been this dedicated to a story, so PLEASE tell me what you think of it.
Yes I'm begging you to review. I'll strip naked and beg on your feet like a dog. I have no dignity.
Chapter 3: Fantasy Star
"If one day the speed kills me, do not cry because I was smiling."
― Paul Walker, The Fast and The Furious 2
It was around 11:00 PM and the entirety of Beacon is sleeping, except for around fifty people.
Around half of those are the cleaners and the janitors, making sure that the cafeteria of tomorrow would be ready for whatever apocalyptic foodfight awaits it.
Twenty of those are teachers, working tirelessly to give their students extra rest time through boring lectures.
One is a young girl, still perusing the internet for leads on her archnemesis. She drooped here and then, but mostly, the force of her rage propped her up, gave her strength.
Two of them are worried over the above young girl, and was secretly observing her while pretending to sleep.
The last two were named Jaune and Pyrrha, respectively, and they're up on the roof of beacon together, all by themselves. Sparring.
Jaune parried the first overhead swing, but barely managed to move his blade in time to intercept the second vicious swing, and his shield clumsily blocked the sudden kick on his right. He tried to push out against that foot to unbalance Pyrrha, but he was forced to change his tactics and resorted to being flipped into the air by a sweeping kick and falling flat on his face, which worked, because the fight ended with a laughing Pyrrha.
"Oh, wonderful, wonderful," she laughed, clapping lightly. "You're getting much better."
"At being flipped into the air and landing on my butt, yeah," he muttered resentfully.
She extended her hand down, offering to help him up. "Nonsense. You have incredible strength in your swings and your blocks. We just have to work on –" and here, she used all her strength to pull him up, because Jaune is, no matter how wimpy he may look, still wears very heavy armor – "your speed, is all."
Jaune dusted himself off, but his hands came off mostly sticky and wet. Despite the cold night, it was blazing inside his shirt and armor, and his legs were trembling from the sheer effort of having to keep up with Pyrrha. She's that much faster and he's barely keeping up with the surprising ferocity that her lithe form hides.
He couldn't take it anymore. He's that tired, so he fell on his butt with a loud clank.
"Naw, naw," he panted, raising up his hand to stop Pyrrha. "I'm fine, just… really tired."
"Are you sure?" Pyrrha asked, worry etching her voice.
"Well, I'm pretty sure I'm tired…" began Jaune slowly.
"I meant if you're fine or not," Pyrrha corrected quickly. "Jaune, we're training way harder than usual today, and you've just had combat exam earlier this evening. Are you sure you're not pushing it? We're only human, after all…"
"Yeah… I guess you're right."
His breathing slowly settled, and then he took a deep breath. "What's with you, anyways?"
"Hm?"
"Oh… y'see, Dad used to show me how to swing a sword. He'd say: "Jaune, stretch before you start swinging a heavy sword around."
Pyrrha tilted her head. "I saw you do stretches before."
"You didn't, though." Jaune shifted his arms and legs slightly into a more comfortable position before continuing. "My point is, you're freaking fast and strong and yet I don't see you lift weights or practice like a madwoman, and you're actually – like, um, no feelings or whatever – really slender and pretty."
"Aaand?"
"Well, what's the secret? What makes you girls – like Ruby, Yang, and you, I guess, be so strong and yet look so… normal?"
Pyrrha frowned. "It is merely hard work and plenty of training? Ruby and Yang gets it from their uncle…"
"Not that I'd call Yang's style refined," muttered Jaune under his breath.
"And well, I just get thrown into so many matches during my school days that I guess I just got this good."
Jaune frowned, clearly unsatisfied, but Pyrrha was already walking away, striding towards the balcony and looking up to the pale moon in the skies. Since Vale was well away from most industrial sources of pollution, the stars smiles with clarity down on Pyrrha, and Jaune promptly forgot most of his questions because-
She's freaking beautiful.
"Also, Jaune." She spoke to him with his back turned.
"H-huh? Yeah." Remember Weiss, remember Weiss…
"Did you just say…" And she tilted her head slightly, so that he can see the small smile on her face, "Did you just say that I was… how do you say it… really pretty?"
"No feelings! Just being… y'know… objective." He felt the heat rise in his face.
Pyrrha just chuckled lightly. "You know. Not enough people say that to me."
Jaune paused. "Hmm?"
"I mean, I think they'd be afraid of offending me or something, thinking that they're not worthy of me, or some silly thing or the other like that… but it's very nice of you to be honest with your opinions like that." He couldn't see it anymore, now that she's fixing her gaze on something distant on the horizon, but he's sure that she'd be smiling at this point.
She let that hint hang in the air for a good three seconds before Jaune managed to completely blunder through it like a sack of lead.
"A-ah… yeah, I guess. Should we resume? I'm all ready for-"
"You probably should change your clothes first. It's freezing and you wouldn't want to catch a cold for tomorrow."
Considering all the homework due tomorrow I'd rather catch that cold… he rumbled internally.
-insert probably clothes changing scene here-
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Just kiss already," muttered the blonde boy.
"Mm?" said the shadows.
"I meant those two. Like damn, you can practically scoop all the tension out of the air and eat it. Would it kill people to be honest for once?"
"…"
"A-ah. Right. Probably would."
They were sitting atop a tree overlooking Beacon's balcony, observing Jaune and Pyrrha returning inside, into their dorm. To their sides, they can see Beacon's outhouses, one of which appears to be surrounded by wooden platforms, presumably to be used in the preparations of the upcoming ball. As the door creaked to close, they stayed on the tree for a few more minutes, just to make sure that nobody else would inconveniently catch them, then the blonde boy dropped down onto the balcony.
The shadow next to him didn't follow.
"What, you're not gonna come?" he asked.
"…"
"I told you – Emerald Forest at night's best place to practice. No one to catch us and plenty of monsters that you don't have to pull your punches against."
"… Alex and Max won't be happy."
"True that." He paused for a moment. "They're not really into risks."
He glided around the balcony aimlessly for a moment, clearly restless. Glide is the proper word to use – because he wasn't wearing shoes, but rather, he was wearing rollerskates. "Well, what are we gonna do then? Just hitting each other all day long isn't going to make us better, y'know."
"…"
"I'd wish you'd talk for once."
"I just did."
"Quit nitpicking. Still though… that Jaune dude's something else, ain't he? No training, no finesse, and yet he's… well…"
"…"
"Yeah, he really isn't going to cut it, not against plain monsters like team RWBY. But hey, considering how little training he got before he came here, he's practically a monster waiting to be trained. That strength is scary."
"…"
"I mean, the rest of those really incredible people at Beacon are pre-trained, right? They got previous training and stuff. And he doesn't, and yet he's just below par…"
"…"
"Say something."
"No."
"God damn you."
He sighed and continued to glide around the balcony aimlessly, and shivered slightly. That Pyrrha girl wasn't kidding when she said that the night was cold. Sometimes he wished that his wardrobe includes more than a red jacket and a black shirt, but then again, he really liked the meteorite blazoned on the black shirt, and that red jacket's signature.
It is, after all, an incredibly nice-looking jacket.
He really wished that that nice-looking jacket would have longer sleeves.
"Fuck this," he said after a while. "So we're not training in the Emerald forest then?" he asked the shadow.
It shook its head slightly.
"And after all the trouble we took to sneak in. Well, not like its much 'trouble' anyways…"
Again, the rustling leaves filled in the silence between the conversants. However, it was the shadow's turn to speak, at last.
"… you know, if Beacon is hiding something so powerful, why wouldn't there be more guards?"
"Oh, I'd expect they'll be inside. After all, putting guards outside screams "I'M HIDING SOMETHING DON'T LOOK" to everyone else, and you know what most people do when they're told not to look."
"… yes."
"Anyways, I'm tired, and I'm bored, and –"
A jaunty tune interrupts their conversation. It originated from the blonde's pockets.
"'S Max? Shit, we're dead."
"… What shall we tell him?"
"Eeeh. We practiced during the evening hard, and then we went for a walk. That's more or less what happened, anyways."
He opened the phone. "Yo."
There was a sigh from the other end. "Get back here already, Alex's more or less done."
"… thought you'd get at least a bit upset because we sneaked out."
"I know you well enough to expect you to skip out of practice since it's not challenging enough."
"For god's sake, Max, we were fighting wooden dummies – "
"Or, I could offer to sell sneaking privileges for you?" said Max, his voice suddenly attaining an oily-slick sound to it. "Just, oh, several –"
"You did realize you took all of my money with two of the phony drones that you wanted to build and never returned it, right?"
"I could sell your money back to you."
"… Discarding the question of selling money back to someon-"
"Money exchanges do it all the time."
"Different currencies, Max.
"Ah, but you see, I can convert the money that I took from you into a different currency a-"
"And what'd I buy it back with?"
"We'll set up some sort of long-term preapproval payment services, and –"
"Whatever. We're heading back. We... sorry, I mean I'm gonna be a bit late, though."
"Hmm?"
"Coupla of kids are eavesdropping on us."
He closed the phone, and turned to the two newcomers standing on the balcony's railing. It was a boy and a girl, and they both respectively had silver and emerald hair. Despite the moon being behind them, he can instantly tell that at the very least, the girl had dark skin.
"Well then, why don't you two introduce yourselves? We're all students here, aren't we?" said the blonde-haired boy.
He casually stuck the phone back inside his jean pockets while idly gliding around the balcony again. The shadowy figure that was accompanying him was already gone.
"We've never seen you around the campus," said the silver-haired one calmly. But it was a dangerous kind of calm, the kind that professional gangsters use to suggest an immediate eruption of violence.
"Your face isn't around the student records, either." This time, it was the emerald-haired one. "And I'd know all the faces on the student record, too. So fess up. Who are you?"
The blonde haired kid scissored his legs and spun to a stop, wheels locking into place. "Hmm. Hmm. Oh dear. But y'see, neither of you are on the student records either, so let's not be hypocrites."
The silver-haired one narrowed his eyes. "Oh?"
The blonde haired kid smiled. "Oh, I'd imagine that you'd sneak in and apprehend the records officer, who no one pays attention to, and then pull one, three, five strings, and then you'd get yourself the student ID passes, and you'd pass as a student and all that, but you're not actually on the record itself, because then old schoolmaster Ozpin would just pick you out from the student lineup and then you'd be in a heap of trouble, hmm?"
He wagged his finger at them and smirked.
The emerald-haired girl briefly locked eyes with her partner, and that was all the confirmation that the blonde haired kid needed.
God bless your deductions, Alex. I swear that if I get out alive I'll buy you a normal wheelchair or something. Or at least get you a girl of your own.
Actually, that implies that I wouldn't get out of this alive, which I totally will.
"Alright, kid, you're coming with us," said the emerald-haired girl.
"No, Emerald, we should totally just kill him." The silver-haired boy
"I agree, you both should just totally kill me." The blonde haired kid spun in a half-circle, skates making a slight noise on the concrete, and turned his back to them, arms held out to his side in exasperation. "People these days. They see a problem, kill. They don't see a problem, kill anyways. What's with me and meeting murderous psychopaths, anyways?"
He turned around to face them again. "Besides, I'm sure you wouldn't want to shoot the messenger," he said as he grinned.
Emerald had just about enough with the blonde's antics, but then she stopped, just before she drew her weapons. "Message?"
"Yeah, from Torchwickety."
The silver-haired person uncoiled and relaxed "Well? What does that asshole want? He should be working on his job, we got Beacon covered, he doesn't need to poke his head unnecessarily into our business. What, he thinks Cinder's incompetent or something?"
"Ah, so there's three of you. Now it makes more sense," said the blonde boy, smirking and nodding. "Well, he wants you to know that you can't shut up and stop leaking vital information to outsiders."
"Damn it, Mercury, don't you know when to shut up?" seethed Emerald. "I swear, you've let slip of our plans to how many people already?"
"What's the matter? He'd be dead anyways. And everyone else just laughed and didn't believe it."
The blonde haired boy gulped. They're both advancing on him now. "No chances of you two going easy on me, is there," he said, while slowly gliding backwards.
"Not a snowball's chance in hell."
The blonde-haired boy backed off some more as the pair advanced, until his back touched the wall. He was nervously sweating, although his voice still remains snide and he's still somewhat smiling.
"Aww. So tell me, is this the part where you beat me up unconscious and carry me to a secret location to torture and then kill me? Or do I die in a single kick, like poor old Tukson down at Vale there?"
"You're really trying to kill yourself, are you?"
"What's wrong with doing my homework? I come prepared."
"Well, our homework happens to be murdering yapping squirrels like you," snarled Emerald. Her hands circled around her back warily, grabbing her twin emerald pistols, as Mercury's greaves started to click.
"Ah, but it's not due today."
His rollerskates made a slight whirring noise, the dynamos concealed within them at full charge. He couldn't kill them, and he certainly could not defeat them in a fight, but as for taking them out of the fight and far, far away from him…
"Because you see, my really, really sexy lady, you've made a fatal error."
"Hmm?" The pair never stopped advancing. It was around 10 more meters to death.
"You see… your shoelaces are untied."
It wasn't, surprisingly, a desperate gamble. Equally surprising is how well this alleged distraction works, because as humans, everyone was conditioned to do certain things in response to certain stimuli.
In this case, that stimuli was to look down.
They glanced down, a very quick glance that one would throw towards a passing car or motorcycle, one that would ensure that every attention would still be at their main target, but their target was already a blur in front of them, moving fast, just as fast as Mercury expected Ruby would, becoming a blonde-red-black blur. They were caught off-guard by that speed. Cursing, Mercury kicked at him, but the target spun low on his skates and bent his knees, the foot going above him, and continued the spinning momentum into a kick of his own, and Mercury crossed his arms to block that kick -
====================================Fantasy Star=======================================
Mercury had expected some pain. It was a good kick, with the full momentum of the person behind it crashing into him, so why didn't he feel any pain? Why did it feel like he simply just got tapped on his arm? And why is there so much wind blowing aroun-
He opened his eyes.
The Emerald Forest was below him, and he was flying backwards, high and fast, watching Beacon slowly become smaller and smaller.
He sighed. This wouldn't kill him, but having to walk all the way to Beacon will. He's going to kill that snot nosed punk.
He closed his eyes and waited until his downward
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Mercury?!"
After the kick, Emerald tried to react, but before she could aim and pull the trigger, the second leg had already kicked her wrist, which, while not nearly enough to knock the gun off her strong grip, managed to do the intended effect of-
Paralysis?
Purple lighting flared through her arms and she yelped as her entire arm went numb. The gun clanked onto the floor. The lightning flared, and her eyes suddenly became unable to perceive anything but white, and sharp pains bounced around her skull.
"Nngh!"
There was a sound. Her gun went off.
"Well, that's sure to attract attention now," muttered the blonde-haired boy. "I was hoping that I'd paralyze you and then take you for questioning and stuffs, but I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon."
"U-ugh. At least… tell us your name."
The blonde-haired boy smiled. "What, and put me at a disadvantage? Sorry, I'm big-mouthed myself, but I'm not an idiot."
"T-then you'd be s-sorry d-d-dat you ebeh c-crossed us." The electrocution has spread to her tongue. She couldn't speak.
He turned his back and walked all the way to the back wall, and put one foot on the wall.
"Mmm, well, then it wouldn't matter if I throw you off into the Emerald Forest as well, right? And you couldn't even report this to the proper authorities, heh…"
"H-how-"
"By the way, if you have to report to this Cinder boy you're talking about, tell him that… mmm."
He thought this for a while, hands on his chin. Emerald tried to move her hand slowly towards her other gun, but it wouldn't respond. He had zapped her good.
"Yeah, tell 'im that Sparkles did it."
"You're wh-"
He pushed off the wall, and she blinked, and she was a swinging leg, and a light tap on her belly.
The 'e' faded off into the distance with a swift roundhouse, forming an arc over the forest.
His phone rang again, and he answered. "Yo."
"Sparks." It was Alex. "Where are you?"
"Mmm… heading back to 'base'. And by base I really mean house."
"Any reason you're not back yet?"
"Couple of who appears to be Torchwick's underlings caught us sneaking around, so I was right in assuming that they had people at Beacon already. Do I get to say to you 'I told you so'?"
"… You really could've endangered our entire mission, you know."
For the first time, the blonde-haired boy 'Sparkles' sagged a bit. "Yeah, yeah, I get the idea. To be honest, I very nearly blew it. If they weren't distracted those two would probably have kicked my butt."
"Well, you are our resident combatant…"
"I mean I could probably go even on one of them, but two of them? They'd shred me. They really would. Most people wouldn't even react to me approaching, but he got a full goddamn kick off."
"… so at the very least we know that his henchmen are getting better."
"Not henchmen, and there's not only two, there appears to be a third somewhere, and now they know that Sparkles did it."
There was a relaxed sigh from the other side of the phone. "Oh, alright then. That just means that they'll never see us coming."
"No one would ever believe that someone as silly-sounding as 'Sparkles' would beat them up," he said, chuckling.
"I was being sarcastic."
"I can never really tell." He paused. "Alright, I'll be heading back. 'S she back yet?"
"No, but her locator says that she's on the way. You'd best get going, too, before someone finds out about all the commotion."
"Good point."
"Try to be back in, oh, half an hour... think you're up for the challenge?"
"Nope. That's not even a challenge at all."
"Heh." There was a chuckle from the other side of the phone. "They don't call you McSpeedstar for nothing, do they?"
"Eh, I wonder about that."
He pocketed his phone, and skated to a nearby wall, kicking off it, gaining tremendous speed, and disappeared from Beacon in a blur.
"Allow me to get this straight," said Cinder.
She was angry. She was wearing a red dress today, because it matches the color of the room that she's planning to spend the rest of the day in. One perfectly cut and manicured fingernail rested on her temples, while her legs crossed and her eyes remain closed.
This is her 'unhappily thinking' pose.
"A boy named Sparkles waltzed into the campus, found out about us so easily, and then defeated both of you in the blink of an eye."
Emerald and Mercury said nothing, mostly because they couldn't. To add to the silliness and humiliation of the situation, the Grimm of the Emerald Forest are far less forgiving at night, and while they weren't knocked that far away they only just got back that morning.
They were tired. So, so very tired.
"So how can you both be defeated at once?"
"mnwas a distratchun," muttered Mercury sullenly.
"But I did get something out of him," supplied Emerald, somewhat tiredly.
Cinder raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"The entire time, he appears to be fighting with his semblance. It appears to involve the absorption and release of kinetic energy."
"Intriguing." Cinder opened her eyes. "Go on."
"When he kicked both of us, it didn't hurt. It felt more like a light tap, and yet our bodies were flung all the way into the Emerald forest. I think that he simply transferred the kinetic energy of his movement into our bodies, and so we just went… flying."
"And that means," said Mercury, in calm tones, "that the next time we fight, I'll know exactly how to counter him, because he'll stop right after he pushes all of his energy on someone. And he's going to… oh, die painfully. The usual."
"This isn't the time to tunnel vision, Mercury," reprimanded Cinder softly. "Eyes on the prize. Eyes on the prize. Now, did they state their purpose?"
"They haven't."
"Then we should call for Torchwick and have his men comb the area. We can't be too sure that they're not planning to interfere."
She looked at a distant mirror on the other side of the room. She saw herself.
Boy, was she gorgeous.
"After all, the ball is only less than a week away."
Profile: Sparkles McSpeedStar (known name)
Affliation: Team ANMS
Specialty: Going faster than the speed of light
Combat Role: 1v1 Master, Support
Semblance: Fantasy Star (Kinetic Transfer)
Equipment: Phone, Dynamo Rollerskates, Really Cool Jacket
The team's main combatant, his claim to fame is to win all 1v1 matches by way of kicking the enemy out of bounds. It's very technically a win. Outside of combat, he loves to try and trick people into saying things they shouldn't, and enjoys challenging himself, despite doing unreasonable things. Loves to play games and enjoys going out with Alex and flirting with the girls.
Rarely gets angry and despite his rogue-ish behavior, is actually very calculating inside.
This is the most iffy chapter yet. Because I'm not sure how you would react with Sparkles. That's really it.
I should be able to get the last introduction chapter on friday, but let's see.
(how lazy I am, that is.)
He opened the phone. "Yo."
There was a sigh from the other end. "Get back here already, Alex's more or less done."
"… thought you'd get at least a bit upset because we sneaked out."
"I know you well enough to expect you to skip out of practice since it's not challenging enough."
"For god's sake, Max, we were fighting wooden dummies – "
"Or, I could offer to sell sneaking privileges for you?" said Max, his voice suddenly attaining an oily-slick sound to it. "Just, oh, several –"
"You did realize you took all of my money with two of the phony drones that you wanted to build and never returned it, right?"
"I could sell your money back to you."
"… Discarding the question of selling money back to someon-"
"Money exchanges do it all the time."
"Different currencies, Max.
"Ah, but you see, I can convert the money that I took from you into a different currency a-"
"And what'd I buy it back with?"
"We'll set up some sort of long-term preapproval payment services, and –"
"Whatever. We're heading back. We... sorry, I mean I'm gonna be a bit late, though."
"Hmm?"
"Coupla of kids are eavesdropping on us."
