Chapter Three: Where do I sign up?
As we sat at a table in front of an outdoor cafe that didn't turn us away because of my lion ears, I brought up something that was bothering me, and had been since the fight with the thugs.
"Pyrrha, is there some way I could fight Grimm without a Hunter's license?"
The champion's vivid green eyes blinked at me, nonplussed. "Of course, we can just go to Forever Fall Forest, Grimm hunting isn't legally limited to certified Hunters, Hunter trainees and anyone with combat training can hunt smaller Grimm if they want, though for anything more dangerous than an Ursa non certified people are strongly advised to run away, and none of the Kingdoms have any legal liability when it comes to injuries and deaths sustained during a non certified hunt, they basically see it as a case of 'if you're dumb enough to get in over your head on your own time it's your problem'."
"Fair enough." I shrugged, it made sense to me, if you purposefully put yourself in danger then it was your fault if it got you hurt.
"So what brought this about?"
"I want to know something: whether I was trained to fight monsters, or just people."
Silence hung in the air around us as we both thought about that question.
"You know..." Pyrrha's calm attitude was unmarred by the dark turn my thoughts had taken us in. "Even if it turns out that you were only trained to fight people it doesn't mean that you were a criminal, necessarily, you could have been in law enforcement."
"At seventeen? With this?" I held up my mechanical arm. "I don't think so, no officer of the law is paid enough to afford something this advanced, I have a limited sense of touch in this hand! A prosthesis this state-of-the-art would be worth millions. I'm a teenaged Faunus, I highly doubt I've ever seen one million Lien in one place in my life, legitimately at least. That plus the fact that the serial number was removed leads me to believe that it was stolen, but I can't be sure, I could have been kidnapped, used as an experiment for some new type of prosthetic, then had my memory wiped and the serial number filed off to prevent me from me from identifying them, but that sounds like the plot to a bad action movie and I sincerely doubt that it's what actually happened. The simplest solution is usually right, not always, but quite often, and given what we know of me it's highly likely that I was a criminal of some kind, honestly even if it turns out that I was trained to fight Grimm that doesn't really mean much, it's sorta a survival necessity to know how to deal with monsters, but it would make my next plans easier if I was."
Pyrrha's eyebrows furrowed. "Next plans?"
I smiled over at my friend. "I'm going to take the test to get into Beacon."
"That sounds like a grand idea! If you make it in we'd be classmates." Pyrrha's smile lit up her face at the idea. "Well, then I guess we have our next destination: retrieving the rest of my combat gear so that we can do this together."
I wasn't about to object, I'd seen how good Pyrrha was in a fight, and would have to be stupid, drunk, and concussed not to take the offered backup, and I was none of those things, though the possibility of brain damage was still up in the air, I'm an amnesiac after all. "Alright then, let's do this."
I don't know what I was expecting Pyrrha's home to look like, but a luxury condo wasn't it, the redhead was so humble and down to earth that it was easy to forget that she was a famous athlete, and apparently rich. Pyrrha seemed to notice my sudden discomfort as we stepped through her doorway.
"Azure? Are you ok?" Pyrrha asked, a concerned frown wrinkling her perfect features.
"Y-Yeah, I'm fine, I just got something, not a memory really, just the thought that the last time I was in a place this fancy I wasn't on good terms with the residents." Or rather that I had hated the residents, the sudden surge of remembered anger had caught me off guard, but it hadn't changed my actual mood any, it was just a memory, shapeless and vague. I idly wondered who they'd been and what they'd done that just being in a place that vaguely reminded me of them would inspire a blunted memory of hatred, then I dismissed the thought, whoever those people had been they weren't here and thus didn't matter.
Once Pyrrha was clad in her combat clothes (the clothes she'd been wearing when we first met) we flagged down a taxi, which took us to the Forever Fall forest, Pyrrha paid the fare, as I, naturally, didn't have any money, I resolved to pay her back when I got the opportunity, that resolution was expanded when, during the cab ride, Pyrrha handed me a pair of ammo clips that her father had apparently kept for his own use, since he was currently in Mistral Pyrrha was sure he wouldn't miss them, plus he had around a dozen.
The forest of Forever Fall was beautiful, everywhere was awash in red leaves that nearly glowed in the sunlight, but apart from a brief moment where we both stood and appreciated the view neither Pyrrha or I wasted time with sightseeing. The pair of us ran into the forest, weapons out and ready for trouble.
I hadn't expected for there to be any Grimm on the outskirts of the forest, and I wasn't disappointed, we slowed our run to a walk once we'd decided that we'd gotten far enough into the forest. My lion ears were standing straight up, swivelling on my head to try and catch as many ambient sounds as I could, my eyes swept the forest around us, the trees were widely spaced, allowing for plenty of sunlight so visibility wasn't an issue. It was twenty minutes before the first Grimm showed itself, a lone Beowulf sniffing the air in our direction.
"Hey, Pyrrha, you can just stand still, he'll never find you." I couldn't resist the whispered swipe at my friend, who just rolled her eyes with a small, good natured smile gracing her face, shifted Milo into it's rifle form and shot the monster between it's burning red eyes, the rifle shot punched through the bony mask and snapped the wolf monster's head back, before it collapsed like a puppet with it's strings cut and began to dissolve into black smoke. Howls floated out of the forest around us, Pyrrha took a stance behind me, I heard Milo shift into one of it's melee forms, Pyrrha was ready for whatever came, I had to be the same. Narrowing my eyes in focus I levelled Death and Duty at the black shapes bounding through the trees towards us. The first Beowulf burst from the trees, only for me to shoot it in the throat with Duty, six of its packmates barrelled straight towards me only to be met by Death and Duty's bullets, the fifth and sixth Beowulves received painful but not debilitating wounds as both had managed to move just enough that my shots hadn't killed them and continued their charge, I extended the blades on both guns and rushed in to meet the charge, reckless, I know, but if I'd stayed where I was Pyrrha could have been caught by a claw from behind. I ducked under a claw swipe and rammed Death's blade into the offending monster's stomach, I didn't remove the blade as I sidestepped the creature, which resulted in my momentum tearing the blade free of it's victim, gutting the demon as I slashed upwards with Duty's blade removing the sixth Beowulf's arm at the elbow, spinning in place I landed a kick that snapped the monster's opposite back leg, two blades flashed and the dissolving corpse of the Beowulf fell to the forest floor in three pieces.
Retracting the blades on my guns I swept the forest around us with my Faunus eyesight, then, upon seeing no immediate threats I turned to face Pyrrha, who stood in the center of a circle of at least a dozen dissolving corpses, she was smiling over at me like nothing had happened, I, for my part rolled my eyes, that had barely been a warm up, the purpose of this endeavor was to come at least close to my limits when fighting Grimm, we needed to find more monsters... Well... That was a sentence I'd likely never thought before today.
It took an hour before we found another group of monsters, this time a trio of Ursai, which got cut to pieces without a single shot fired, the bear demons were too slow and clumsy to lay a claw on me, Pyrrha hung back and let me take them on myself. We were there to test my abilities after all, and I wasn't even breathing hard after the third Ursa collapsed and began to smoke, Death and Duty's blades impaled through the top of it's skull. I sighed in exasperation as I retracted the blades back into their guns and sheathed the twin pistols, we were here to test my abilities, and apparently they were greater than I'd originally suspected, or I'd overestimated the strength of the Grimm, if I was going to really test myself I would need to fight either a larger group than we'd encountered thus far, or just a bigger Grimm.
"This isn't working, I'm not getting any kind of challenge from the monsters we've seen so far." I griped.
Pyrrha voiced her own opinion. "On the contrary you've shown you have the ability to thrive at Beacon."
"Thanks Pyrrha, but I'm still not ready to pack it in yet, I want to see how I do against something big." Especially since I suspected she was just being nice, it was the biggest flaw in her character I'd seen thus far: she was way too nice for her own good.
Pyrrha shrugged. "Alright, but the entrance tests end in two days, you should get yours done as fast as possible."
Wait... Seriously! "Alright then, that speeds up my timetable considerably, we'll just have to cut this short, we can go hunting again another time, though it would have been nice to know that earlier!"
"I'm sorry!" Pyrrha quickly apologized, seriously, that girl needs to stand up for herself more.
I let out a sigh. "It's fine Pyrrha." There was no point in getting angry when Pyrrha looked so guilty.
It took us about half an hour to get back to Vale, Pyrrha was looking embarrassed the whole way, but beyond my initial irritation I wasn't really bothered by what had happened. It took another fifteen minutes in a cab whose driver kept giving me dirty looks, I was also pretty sure he'd taken a few unnecessary turns to draw out the ride and enable him to charge us more, jerk.
When Pyrrha and I stepped out of the car I flipped the driver off with my mechanical arm, taking a measure of satisfaction when the racist jerk started at the sight of the metal bird I was flipping him, then drove off looking scared. I let out a dark chuckle at that, seriously, the hell is wrong with me? The guy was undeniably a massive tool, but that didn't make it okay to scare him like that, satisfying for sure, but not right.
Beacon's entrance exams were held in a huge oval building, a sign outside proclaimed it to be Lighthouse Stadium, home of the Vale Regional Tournament. Just past the doorway, a skinny man with disheveled green hair, glasses, and a wardrobe that looked as if he'd thrown it on at a dead run sat behind a table with a clipboard and a sign that announced his station as a registry for anyone wanting to take the Beacon Entrance exam, there were at least six empty paper coffee cups and a strange green thermos, which my Semblance showed me was actually the idle form of a weapon, some kind of fire club thing, by the look of it... What? Don't look at me like that, it was a weird weapon, that was the best description I could come up with.
Pyrrha hung back as I approached the green haired man, after all, she already was bound for Beacon, she'd never be allowed to stick around in the testing area. My lion ears twitched with my nerves and my fingers, both mechanical and biological, tapped against my thighs, I had a nervous tic, I'd have to work on getting rid of that.
"Hello young man! My name is Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck, yes, I assume you are here to take the entrance exam for Beacon Academy." Dr. Oobleck spoke in a rapid fire manner that had me hesitating a second in order to untangle his words.
"Uh, yes sir." I wasn't really sure what to make of the plainly eccentric man in front of me, on one hand he looked like your stereotypical nutty professor with a serious caffeine addiction, but he also had a mechashifted weapon on his desk disguised as a travel thermos, and every combat instinct in me was screaming at me not to get on his bad side.
Dr. Oobleck's thin, sharp-featured face broke into a bright grin. "Excellant! Sign here and we'll get this ball rolling!" A flat, tablet style computer and a stylus were shoved into my hands, without looking down I signed on instinct, I mean why not? I haven't lost any of my other muscle memories, right? Unfortunately my signature is nigh on illegible, though I did manage to make out a "T" at the beginning of my last name before passing it back over to Dr. Oobleck, great, now I have a last initial, isn't that just dandy? (Just in case you have trouble reading sarcasm, that was it.) Though honestly I was in fact quite thrilled that I'd finally gotten a clue to my identity, just underwhelmed, this was just one letter after all.
"Very well, young man! Do you have a copy of your last physical examination?" I shook my head mutely, I mean what was I supposed to say? "No, sorry, I don't know if I've ever gotten a legal medical check up, I'm an amnesiac, see, and on top of that I'm pretty sure my arm is stolen."? Yeah, no.
Dr. Oobleck frowned slightly, before launching back into his head-dizzying speech. "A medical station has been set up down the hallway and to your left, you can get one done there, an up-to-date physical exam is a requirement for Beacon's Entrance exams, it shouldn't take more than ten minutes or so. Good luck." With that I headed over to the indicated medical station.
The station was a repurposed room of indeterminate original purpose, just a small bland cube now filled with medical equipment, a pink haired woman in a white lab coat occupied the center of the room, the name tag on the coat read 'Dr. C. Williams'. Dr. Williams turned as I entered her room and gave me a professionally friendly smile.
"Welcome! I'm Dr. Cherry Williams, and you are?"
"I'm Azure, Dr. Oobleck sent me to get a physical for my entrance exams."
The doctor nodded. "Fine, do you have any medical conditions which might affect the test to notify me of before we start? Other than the prosthetic arm of course."
"I've got amnesia, does that count?"
The doctor shot me a sharp look. "Yes, it would, how much of your memory has been lost?"
"As far as I can tell almost all of it, my last name, my exact age, my birthplace, how I ended up with a robotic arm, any details about myself, though my instinctive responses, reflexes, muscle memory, and learned skills all seem intact, I have no way of knowing exactly how much was lost." I shrugged. Dr. Williams looked at me for a few seconds, then she pulled another flat handheld computer, from which she extended a pair of wires, which she attached to my forehead with electrodes, my aura flared up around me unbidden, until Dr. Williams detached the electrodes and pressed a few keys on the screen of the computer before commencing with the rest of the physical, checking my eyes, ears (both sets, I had to stop from twitching when she checked my lion ears, it tickled like hell), and reflexes, she also checked the area where my mechanical arm had been attached to the rest of my body, even going so far as to detach the prosthetic to examine the artificial joint that had apparently been implanted to replace my original shoulder, as well as weigh the arm itself, after which I was weighed and measured and some blood was drawn and examined.
"So what we lookin' at Doc? How long do I have to live?" I quipped, a sarcastic half smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
Dr. Williams rolled her eyes. "Well at least you retained a sense of humor, you've got signs of previous head trauma, including lesions on the temporal cortex of your brain that..." My eyes glazed over as the topic of discussion went totally above my head, my physician noticed and sighed in resignation. "You have a couple of bruises on the part of your brain that stores experiences and detailed memories, you've also got a tiny bump just above the brainstem, where your aura's self-healing is controlled, otherwise your amnesia would have lasted all of two hours or so. As is, you're looking at approximately two months of slowly regaining individual memories, until the bump is gone and your aura can just repair the rest of the damage on it's own. I'll include a note into your written test. Other than that you seem like a relatively healthy young man, your body mass index is low, just barely within normal weight, and you're slightly malnourished, but your eyes and ears seem healthy. You keep your lion ears clean and free of parasites, you've got a decent musculature and your reflexes are excellent, even with your robotic limb, in fact you seem to have taken to your prosthetic quite well, it's only a few months old, but that's enough time for your body to reject it if it were going to, so I doubt you need to worry about that. All in all, you've got a clean bill of health, you'll need to eat more dark leafy greens and red meat, you're a little iron deficient, and of course there's the whole memory loss thing, but that will resolve itself soon enough." As Dr. Williams had been giving me a run-down of my medical condition she had been filling out a form, which she handed over to me once it was finished. "Here you go, hand this over to Bart, er.. Dr. Oobleck that is, you'll get a written test, then after that's over there's the combat exam, and an interview."
I let out a long breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding, sure, the written test sounded like institutionalized hell, I had the feeling I hadn't liked that kind of thing even when I had memories to guide me through them, and I wasn't looking forward to the interview either, I mean what would I say? I suspected it would involve a lot of uses of the phrase 'I don't know' and that gets old, fast, but now that the testing was about to begin I felt all nerves slide away into a kind of comforting stillness, either I'll pass the test or not, but worrying would get me nowhere, therefore it had no place in my mind at this moment, I'd let it out later, when it wouldn't get in my way, but until then the mission came first, even when that mission was just a test to get into Beacon. I stopped in the middle of the small hallway and blinked, mission? Who the hell WAS I before I lost my memory?
Once I'd handed over my medical exam to Dr. Oobleck the disheveled coffee addict appeared to speed-read the whole document. "I see... Complete Retrograde Amnesia is quite rare my boy. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll perform well." With that, Dr. Oobleck handed over a small packet, my written test, since I was the only person taking the test today I could basically sit anywhere, as long as I was within sight of Dr. Oobleck. I sat on a bench and went to work, surprisingly I was able to answer most of the questions on the test, not all of them, but I was at least confident that I hadn't completely bombed the test... Probably... Let's face it, I have no way of knowing how well I did until I'm graded, I don't even know how I knew any of those answers, they just sort of... came to me, it was a little creepy to be honest, but I'm not complaining.
My interview went about as well as I'd expected, neither I nor my interviewer (an elderly fat guy who introduced himself as Professor Peter Port, I didn't like him much, he seemed like someone who liked to hear himself speak) left the interview as anything other than annoyed. Finally it was time for the combat test, the only part of the exam I was looking forward to, certainly the only one I had a chance of acing.
I stepped out onto the arena floor where the combat test was to take place, a short guy with silver hair and a rat tail stood in the ring, waiting for me. A stern looking blonde woman wearing what looked like a cross between business casual and strict librarian topped by a tattered black and purple cape, stood scowling at me from the other side of the combat ring as I sidled up to the pair, she looked like that was her default expression, so I didn't take any offense.
"Good afternoon Azure, I am Professor Glynda Goodwitch, combat instructor and deputy Headmistress of Beacon Academy, this is Shiroh Lee, a second year student, he will be your opponent for this portion of the Entrance exam." The blonde indicated the silver haired rat Faunus, who gave me a small nod in greeting, which I returned. Taking my spot on the other end of the ring from Shiroh I drew my pistols and held them down at my sides, Shiroh settled into a stable stance and raised his fists, the metal bracers over his forearms extended over his knuckles as he did so.
"Good luck." I started as I heard Shiroh's low, tranquil voice speak from across the ring.
"Uh, thanks?" I answer, though the comment had totally taken me by surprise.
"You'll need it. Survive. Show them." Shiroh nodded at me again, though this time it was with a small smirk on his face.
"The match will end when one combatant's aura reaches the red zone. Begin!" I barely heard Goodwitch declare the start of the match, the moment the word was out of her mouth Shiroh launched himself at me. I raised Death and squeezed off a shot, Shiroh just blocked the round off of his right bracer, on purpose, it hadn't been luck, he'd moved his arm almost before I'd even fired. I backpedalled immediately, my opponent was faster. I ducked a punch and got a knee to the face for my trouble, snapping my head back and sending me reeling, then Shiroh swept my left foot out from under me with a low kick, I barely managed to keep upright, but my stumble gave Shiroh the opening to close with me and unleash a barrage of punches to my torso, then a roundhouse kick to my face.
The kick sent me flying, but I was able to recover and roll onto my feet, extending the blades on my guns. I prepared to face my rat tailed opponent's next charge, only to find him with a smirk on his face, holding three knives in each hand, where he'd gotten them I had no idea, but Shiroh hurled the blades at me with such force that when I dove out of the way they stuck in the concrete wall behind me, ten feet behind me. Holy shit!
I knew enough to tell that this fight was hopeless for me, Shiroh Lee was leagues beyond my skill level, but his words at the start of the match resonated in my head. At first I'd assumed it was just empty encouragement, now I realized that he had been telling me what to do, I wouldn't win this fight, that much was a given, what I needed to do instead was show Professor Goodwitch and whoever else was judging this match what I could do. Shiroh waited for me to close with him, there was a satisfied smile on his face. I slashed at Shiroh's face with Death and struck for his midsection with Duty, the rat tailed martial artist's arms snapped into action, in the same motion he took three short steps. In less than a second both my blades were batted aside and a lightning fast kick slammed into my gut, sending me flying. With a huge crash I slammed into the dividing wall between the stands and the arena. My breath had been blasted away by the kick, so nothing came out when I hit the wall, but I took in a deep breath and struggled to my feet. Shiroh hadn't left his spot, I was right, he wasn't trying to win, he could have done that at any moment, he was just trying to force me to my current peak, well, if that was what he wanted, then that was what I'd show him.
I wiped blood from the corner of my mouth, and spat out a glob of bloody spit while I took stock of my resources, thirty or so bullets, a pair of blades, and fifty five percent aura, give or take five in either direction. I fixed Shiroh with a level stare, retracted the blades on my guns and began glowing blue. All the aches and injuries I'd accumulated during the fight vanished as my aura activated in full. Shiroh pulled a small black bar of metal, from which a knife blade emerged, the knife was then sent whipping toward me. I batted the weapon aside with my metal arm, raised both guns at once and began to fire. Shiroh cartwheeled out of the way of the small barrage, then broke into a run straight for me, I wasn't about to let him get close to me, so I took off running to my left, firing as I did so, Shiroh dodged them all, I'm not talking "get out of the way" dodging, he ducked, leapt, rolled and dove through the barrage, finishing in a roll that terminated with a leg sweep I had to leap backwards to avoid, as I did Shiroh sprang to his feet. I fired three shots at point blank from Duty, Shiroh leaned back and turned his torso, allowing the bullets to pass by harmlessly inches from his face, how the hell did he do THAT?! I extended my blades and stabbed for Shiroh's chest with Death, an open palm snapped across and shoved Death's blade away from it's intended target, but that was fine, in fact it was the best outcome for what I wanted. I sent a snap kick at Shiroh's knee, the martial artist deflected the kick off his thigh, but then I fired Duty into his opposite thigh, silver-white aura flashed as the shot hit right where I'd aimed it. Shiroh's smirk turned into a genuine smile right before he grabbed my right wrist, spun around me and dragged my arm back at a painful angle. Three punches into my flesh and blood arm rendered the limb numb and worthless, Duty clattered to the arena floor as I tried to turn and bring Death to bear.
The next thing I knew I was sprawled on the ground with a buzzer signalling the end of the fight, my head was ringing from the kick that had dropped me like a ragdoll, it had impacted just below my right ear and blasted me into brief unconsciousness. A hand reached down, Shiroh was looking down at me and offering his hand to help me up, I took it.
"Good job. Worst opponent for you. Did alright despite that. They'll pass you, I bet." Shiroh said quietly.
"H-how...?" I HAD to know how he'd dodged those shots, but my head was still ringing, and I was having trouble keeping my thoughts straight.
"Semblance. Reflex. Makes everything seem like slow motion. Can react faster than others. It's useful, but annoying, can't turn it off."
Holy shit, and I'd thought magnetism for a Semblance was a game breaking power, constant bullet time reactions bordered on insane, how did he LIVE like that?! No wonder he was a little... odd.
"Didn't expect that last move. Clever. Get stronger and pay a visit to Team LighTNinG's Dorm. Be happy to spar any time. Expecting big things of you." The older student clapped me on the shoulder and walked off.
Professor Goodwitch walked into the arena, she still looked about two seconds from giving me detention, but somehow her features seemed to have softened, while remaining stern. "Not bad, very few people could have gotten around such a vast discrepancy in speed and reaction time, even for just the single moment you managed, that shows potential, though I do suggest you work on getting faster, and think through your approach next time, against an opponent that is superior to you in every way your only hope is to out think them. Your grades will be delivered to..." Mid speech Professor Goodwitch stopped and looked over my shoulder. "Professor Ozpin? What are you doing here?"
I whirled and was about to raise my remaining gun to bear out sheer instinctual panic when a hand grabbed my metal forearm, stopping the motion cold. I tried to pull my left arm out of the grip of the slender, silver haired man in a green suit who had approached from behind me without a single sound, but no matter how hard I pulled the man's grip didn't waver. In his other hand he held a mug full of steaming coffee and leaned against a clock themed cane. Intelligent brown eyes looked me over from behind small framed sunglasses and his expression was pleasant, as if he hadn't just stopped a teenager from attacking him, or as if he didn't still have said teenager's metal arm in a vicegrip. In fact I could have sworn that there were a couple new dents in the metal, before he simply dropped my prosthetic arm and took a step back. I stumbled back a step, my entire body shook from shock, for just a second there I was sure that I had been about to die, and I was absolutely sure that I couldn't have done a damn thing to save myself, this Ozpin guy was the single most powerful person I'd ever met, I couldn't remember ninety percent of my life, but I was absolutely sure of that.
"Well, that could have been messy." Professor Ozpin's voice was amiable, even amused as he leaned on his cane and passed the coffee mug to his free hand before taking a contemplative sip. Almost out of habit I found my eyes flicking down to the cane, which Ozpin immediately and smoothly moved behind his back, shielding it from view, one dark eyebrow arched, I felt my face grow warm from embarrassment, before the implications of that move hit me like a bus: Ozpin knew what my Semblance is, and his immediate reaction had been to counteract it, perfectly, ergo, he knew who I was!
Ozpin must have seen my face change at the realization, because the pleasant expression he wore melted away into a vaguely regretful one. "I'm sorry, I can't answer any of your questions, you need to remember on your own, you need the context of your memories to make sense of your past actions, it would do you no good to have them just thrust on you before you're ready."
W-what? Logically I could understand his reasoning, I'd already deduced that I was some sort of criminal, and if what I had done was worse than simple theft, I wasn't really sure I wanted to know. But that was the logical part of my brain, the emotional part wanted me to scream at Ozpin for keeping my identity from me, my past, my self. Then that cold, logical voice in the back of my mind pointed out that yelling would do very little good, there was no way to make Professor Ozpin to tell me, the very idea was laughable. So I forcibly reined in my instinctual fury and managed to keep my voice even, empty of the swirling mass of emotion burning in my gut. "Please... Please tell me my name at least, and why you're here, because I know it wasn't just to enjoy Vale's scenery."
Professor Ozpin sighed regretfully. "Your name is Azure Tobias, as for why I am here, I wish to offer you a place at my school."
"I accept, now if you don't mind I'm going to go somewhere you aren't, good afternoon Professor." I walked out, detouring only to retrieve Duty, and brushing past a confused Pyrrha by the entrance without even a glance. If I stayed any longer I would have needed to maim something.
(Author's Note: I never intended Azure to have a chance at beating Shiroh, but I'll admit it ended up more of a curbstomp than I'd originally intended, hope you enjoyed it anyway, Shiroh and Team LTNG are going to be recurring side characters during Azure's time at Beacon, so I hope I did a good job with Shiroh, as always read, review and most of all enjoy!)