Blake returned to her dorm to find her three team mates waiting for her expectantly at the door.
"What?"
"Somebody looks like she's in a good mood." Yang's face with lit up with glee, and Weiss's disdainful expression clearly meant she was passing her usual judgement onto her... or Serana.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Blake glared at the blonde.
"You look like a huge weight's been lifted off your shoulders, Blake." Ruby explained. "It's almost like you're..."
"Happy?" Yang suggested, none of them aware of the accuracy of the statement. But, of course, Blake denied it.
"I got Serana to her dorm, and she's going to see me in the morning before classes start." Blake got defensive. "I can be in whatever mood I want."
"Fine, fine..." Yang gave up on prying, but not before smirking as she turned back to her bed and saying. "She is kinda hot though..."
"Yang, what does that have to do with anything?" Blake asked, taken aback by the rather backhanded comment.
"She has that nervous nerdy look to her, and she'd kinda pretty. Just sayin'." Yang replied evasively before climbing back up to her bed for the night.
"You clearly have something to say." Blake turned towards Weiss next, glaring at the heiress.
"I do." Weiss replied. "But it's not negative like you assume."
"So let's hear it." Blake narrowed her eyes.
"I think you two are more alike than you think, Blake." Weiss replied. "And I think it's very noble of you to be assisting her the way you've done - and no doubt plan to in the future."
Blake's surprised expression was briefly flashed over by a shadow of confusion. She'd clearly not been expecting that from the very judgmental heiress.
The next morning, Blake woke up at the usual time the four of them set their alarm for, and got out of bed. Since she had someone to assist, she was also quick to get herself ready before disappearing down the hall to knock on Serana's door.
"Blake?" Serana's voice came through the door in an instant, sounding very muffled.
"Yeah, it's me." Blake replied, pushing the door open to see that Serana was just beginning to shove the lid of her coffin open. The small act took Blake a second to remember that Serana didn't sleep in the still neatly made bed less than three feet away. "How'd you sleep?"
"Like the dead." Serana joked, which brought a brief smile to Blake's face. "How about yourself? Did your team members give you a hard time about me?"
"No, surprisingly." Blake shook her head, then noticed that Serana had slept in some rather... revealing robes. "Oh, um..."
Serana's orange eyes glinted in the near-darkness, as if she was smiling. She'd gathered that Blake had superior night vision, so it was obvious what she was looking at.
"I received these robes as a gift from a Daedric Prince, named Nocturne. They're enchanted." Serana slid the side of the robes aside - flashing her long legs to the nervous girl - to reveal her Garter. With a quick flick of her wrist, she had her Beacon uniform on, ready for the day at hand.
"It's sunny out today." Blake warned the vampire, but Serana smirked.
"Allow me to explain the feeding process in greater detail on the way to classes." Serana replied as she followed Blake out of the room and closed the door. "For the first day after feeding, the sun's powers over me are nearly eliminated. It's only a slight discomfort on my eyes at this point. After twenty four hours, the sunlight's effects start occurring. I won't be hurt by it just yet, but it is distinctly warmer against me. Third day is when it starts to sting, and fourth is burning time."
"So you get a two day grace period, it seems." Blake concluded.
"Indeed." Serana smiled, falling silent as they passed another four students, clearly another team. All of them were male, and unlike Blake and herself, they wore their uniforms quite slovenly, almost... disrespectfully. "Who are that team?"
"Team CRDL, or Cardinal." Blake replied. "They're all bullies, so don't even think of biting them."
"I was more inclined to teach them some manners, if it came to that." Serana replied. "Back in Skyrim, bullies were usually taught respect by physical force."
"Well, as you're probably painfully aware, this isn't Skyrim. We have different rules."
"Shame. I even have the perfect weapon to scare the Nine out of them."
"The Nine?" Blake asked, unsure of what Serana meant by the number.
"Oh... um..." Serana blushed slightly. "The Nine are divine beings we worship in Skyrim."
"So they're your gods?"
"Is that the word for that here?" Serana asked. "Well, I guess that's an easier way to say it."
"In other words, you'll scare them into submission." Blake concluded, smiling in amusement.
"Quite." Serana agreed, and together they fell silent as they crossed the open courtyard, heading in the direction of their first class of the day - Ozpin arranged for all of Serana's classes to be with Blake, as a form of security for her.
For someone considered highly intelligent back home, Serana was having a small amount of difficulty with her classes. Blake, of course, was helping her throughout.
"Thank you." Serana whispered to the girl, who nodded after a quick explanation of what was confusing the vampire. "This is so new to me..."
"It's alright. Just don't ask Ruby or Yang for their notes." Blake returned to her own notes with a smirk.
"I can only guess why..." Serana muttered to herself, noticing that the two sisters - which was surprising, given how different they looked - weren't exactly focusing on taking notes like Weiss and Blake did. Ruby's was hard to read, and Yang was drawing all over her page. Badly drawn images littered the surface, making Serana internally cringe.
That afternoon, after a break for the midday meal - or as Blake called it, 'lunch' - it was time for a more hands-on class... out in the Emerald Forest.
"Today, you are hunting for Ursa. The first team to find and defeat four Ursa will be deemed the victor. You will return to this spot upon successfully completing this mission."
"Professor Goodwitch, I presume these Ursa are stocked here, and not wild?" Serana asked, glancing at Blake who smiled slightly at her question.
"Correct, Miss Volkihar." Glynda replied, nodding slightly to the vampire for catching on. "There are exactly enough for all present teams to defeat. So, in a sense... you're to eliminate all twenty of them."
"Only twenty?" Serana smirked, confident in her abilities. If what she'd managed to read on the creatures was true, they were almost identical to the bear population that frequented the forests of Skyrim.
"Yes, only twenty, Miss Volkihar. However, since you are without a team, you must kill four... alone." Glynda reminded her, and Serana tapped her finger on the grip of Auriel's Bow.
"Easy." Serana winked at Blake as Glynda's expression became quite curious.
With a wave of her hand, Glyda signalled for the class to proceed, and all of them ran off, leaving Serana to pause at Glynda's side.
"I'll explain about my confidence after class, Professor." Serana smiled with a small nod before dashing into the undergrowth, already nocking an arrow into Auriel's Bow.
As a general rule, Serana disliked using one of her most powerful vampire powers, the Vampire Lord transformation, because it reminded her of Harkon too much, but since she was in such a drastically different dimension, she resolved her personal feelings about the power and decided to only use it in an emergency. Because it seemed that Remnant wasn't totally peaceful.
Grimm, as they were called, were wild, feral beasts that attacked humans on sight. And it seemed they were pretty much everywhere. The type that she was currently hunting, Ursa, were the bear-like Grimm, and from her expert experience as a warrior, she determined that they were a reasonable threat, so she was using stealth to her advantage.
The first Ursa she encountered was quickly dispatched with two of her Daedric Arrows, which she quickly retrieved from the ground as the Ursa seemed to fade away into dust. She paid it no mind for now, since it made retrieving her arrows all that much easier, but she wanted to speak to Glynda about it when she returned.
Fifteen minutes later, she'd racked up two more - likewise dispatched with relative ease - and was just about to pick up her fallen arrows when she sensed movement behind her and instinctively dove out of the way.
Rolling to safety, she spun on her knee into a kneeling position, already drawing back Auriel's Bow when she scowled. This Ursa was different. Bigger, with numerous large spike-like protrusions on it's back and shoulders.
Serana assessed the surroundings for a moment, then concluded that the new Ursa hadn't approached forcefully. It had been following her, stalking her like a cunning predator.
That meant it knew what she was doing, and it knew how to avoid detection.
"So... they have intelligence." Serana concluded to herself before using her Embrace of Shadows power, and moved across the forest clearing, drawing back two Daedric arrows at the same time. It was such a large creature that this technique wouldn't be too difficult to pull off, but she still took her time to aim at the creature's flank before releasing both arrows.
With a roar, it turned towards the direction she'd fired, unaware that she was already on the move, once again preparing two more Daedric arrows in Auriel's Bow.
Several times, over and over, she fired the double shots, until the massive beast started to slow down, staggering. It was weakening, which was good.
Serana's Embrace of Shadows was almost used up, so she then slung Auriel's Bow onto her back and reached into her Garter to produce her Daedric Dagger in one hand, and the other retrieved another Daedric Artifact, Mehrune's Razor. She flipped them both around into a reversed grip and sprinted straight at the Ursa, impaling both blades through it's neck.
With a gurgling sound, the beast keeled over to the side, and Serana shimmered back into sight just as Team RWBY came crashing through the underbrush nearby.
"Serana?!" Blake called out, holding two bladed weapons, a cleaver and a thinner sword. "Did you just...?"
"Is something wrong?" Serana slid both of her blades back into her Garter, then put her hands onto her hips.
"You killed an Ursa Major singlehandedly... Few Hunters or Huntresses can truthfully say they've done that." Weiss explained. "How many have you killed so far?"
"All four." Serana replied, smirking slightly. "These Ursa, even this so called Major, are not very difficult for me, to be completely honest. I've fought larger, more powerful beasts regularly back home."
Blake nervously glanced between Serana and her impressed team members, who were all nodding in approval.
"I'd like to hear about what things are like back where you're from, sometime." Yang nodded, also glancing at Serana and her team - particularly Blake - with her hands on her hips.
"How many have you four killed?"
"Three, we were just chasing one when we heard the Major's roars." Ruby replied, holding her massive scythe in her hands - easily the largest weapon present - then asked. "So, you're done, huh?"
"Indeed. I'm on my way back to Professor Goodwitch right now." Serana nodded, then noticed that Blake was discreetly pointing to the left, giving her the direction she needed to go. "See you later."
With that, Serana turned and marched through the forest, inwardly thankful for Blake's covert assistance. She still wasn't familiar with things yet, especially locations and directions.
A/N: Two things: First, my bad for the upload being a day later than scheduled. Second, before anyone starts bitching at me that Serana's overpowered, take note of two things: First, the Ursa Major was highly wounded when she rushed in for melee. Second, she used Mehrune's Razor. I know in Skyrim it's a 1.5% chance to instantly kill, but in this, for the sake of my brain and sanity, it's a guaranteed kill. However... She only uses it to finish Grimm off, never as a primary dagger.
