Arbor II
Flying was so much less fun when you couldn't use your wings.
Still though, Yang could ride the air pretty far and pretty fast just by blasting streams of fire behind her. Oobleck had kindly set up the launch pads to fire everyone in different directions and different speeds, and she'd had one of the shortest trajectories. But that was fine, she would still go a lot further than most since few of the others had ways to control their trajectories midair with any great effect. She pulled a pair of aviator sunglasses out of the pocket of her leather jacket and flipped them on to look around.
Unfortunately, Pyrrha was way far ahead of her. She could see a few of the likely partnerships falling from the sky. Ruby was flying in the same general direction as Nora, Sage and Dove were basically already flying together, and Sun was likely going to be partnered with a smallish Nevermore.
He didn't really stand a chance. Able to control his flight with nothing more than a bamboo pole and some arm-flapping, he couldn't do anything but fall at the giant Grimm, which turned from its nest to look up at him. Yang glanced once more at Pyrrha, flying off into the distance.
"Oh for the luva ..."
Yang punched the air viciously and pelted after Sun.
Still. Could be worse.
Ruby's crash-landing was almost elegant. Slowing herself down with the recoil from her sniper rifle, she caught the edge of her scythe on a thick tree branch with its cutting edge concealed and flipped around it twice before landing in a diveroll.
"Gotta find Nora, gotta find Nora." How did a girl that exuberant manage to be so stealthy? Ruby couldn't detect a trace of her and she'd seen the girl crash-land pretty close to her. She ticked off a list in her head.
"Okay, if not Nora, who else? Pyrrha's a better fighter, but Oobleck basically blasted her into the ocean. Sage seemed nice, but he never says anything. That leaves Sun, who might be eaten by that Nevermore, and ..." She blasted through a bush into a small clearing and looked up straight into the eyes of Cardin Winchester.
And a giant pack of beowolves.
Sun was about one second from falling into the Nevermore's jaws when Yang body slammed its head from the side. The thirty foot long bird toppled over, its head smashing into the ground through a couple of trees. Sun slid down its neck on his staff like a snowboard as it fell, executing a flip onto a tree branch off the "jump" formed by its collarbone. The bird slashed its tail at the tree, toppling it, and jumped for Sun again.
"Come here, little birdie!" Yang taunted, throwing herself at it. The bird smacked her to the side with its tail as it flew, but it was knocked off balance enough for Sun to dodge it. Yang fell to the ground and punched fireballs. They struck along the Nevermore's body, splashing along its armored hide. She shot blasts of flame at its wings, but those only mildly upset its flight.
"I could use some help here!" Sun yelled from a tree somewhere out of sight, gunshots echoing.
"Come on, fight me!" Yang screamed, throwing herself once more. She landed on its neck as it turned to chase Sun again, and it immediately bucked midair to try to throw her off. Yang held on, and flipped into the air in front of it, catching its jaw with her hands. She slung it into the ground, sending herself flying a hundred feet into the air. Sun, seeing his chance, jumped at it as it impacted the ground, breaking apart the exoskeleton-like structure protecting the base of its neck before jumping back. Yang fell in a torpedo of flame, her fist impacting the Nevermore in the same place. A shockwave swayed nearby trees as the Nevermore exploded into black dust and slowly sublimated into the air.
Yang and Sun looked at each other awkwardly.
"Sunny out today, isn't it?"
"Great, leave it to my luck to get partnered with animal," Cardin sneered.
"As much as I'd like to pound you into the dirt for that, we've got bigger problems," Ruby said.
Cardin turned halfway to the pack of beowolves, swinging his mace onto his shoulder before abruptly leaping forwards at them. He took out two with a single swing of his mace, the first one exploding as it passed through the beowolf's head. Ruby surged forwards in a flurry of rose petals to join him. It was a massacre. The pack was easily twenty strong, charging from all sides, but Ruby carved through it with Cardin smashing them left and right as he followed. They passed through a dense section of woods momentarily and then opened into another clearing, that just happened to have the pack's alpha in it. Where most beowolves stood six to nine feet tall, pack alphas could grow to massive heights, twenty feet or more, but preserved their agility and relative strength.
"Wonderful," Ruby muttered.
The alpha roared its challenge, and as was his wont, Cardin threw himself at it.
The wolf swung down with one clawed hand and smashed Cardin downwards, but he caught it with his mace and landed on his feet. Ruby dashed forward to slash her scythe at one of its legs but only managed to scratch the tough hide. It was still enough to distract the alpha's attention. It turned to her and snapped its head down to grab her with its teeth but Cardin hit it in the side of the head with his mace. An explosion of flame augmented the impact. The alpha spun around but with its back claw it slashed at Cardin, slicing through his shirt and leaving a red bloody mark on his chest. Ruby caught the foot with her scythe but instead of pulling the beowolf over like she'd planned, the wolf jerked her off her feet. Cardin grabbed her ankle midair and yanked backwards. Ruby felt like she was being split in two but she held onto her scythe. The wolf, pushing itself backwards to try to maintain its balance, fell heavily on its back. Ruby caught its neck from beneath with her scythe and pulled upwards as Cardin smashed its head into the ground with his mace, severing it.
Ruby sat back, gasping and holding her sides. Hopefully that one didn't leave stretch marks.
"Get up," Cardin said. "We've got a mission to do. I thought dogs were supposed to be stronger than that."
"So much for bonding through trauma," Ruby muttered. "What an asshole."
"So I was wondering who I was going to get for a partner here. You know, I usually always stick with the same guy, Ren, we work really well together. But of course when we wanted to go here you have to pick one guy to be a scientist in order to be partners so he did that because I'm a lot better at hitting things with my hammer than thinking about hitting them with my hammer and he's basically the perfect student. So I was thinking about people and obviously Yang and Pyrrha are like the best ever but Ruby's really nice and she seems to have a really good handle on things, you know? Honestly I don't know that much about you per se and you're always hanging out with that Cardin guy which kinda makes sense given you're teammates and all but he's kind a jerk to some people, no offense to you since you guys are friends. But you're actually a great listener, which I just love in people. There's nothing like someone who ..."
Dove pretty much tuned the redhead out. Since apparently he wasn't going to get a word in, might as well concentrate on finding his course pack.
Still. Could be worse.
"Oh hello! Nice to really meet you Sage."
"Likewise, Pyrrha."
...
"So, do you have any ideas about what we're looking for? I was thinking that temple in the middle of this quadrant."
"Sounds good."
...
"Nice day to be outside, isn't it?"
"Quite."
...
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your first expedition into the Forbidden Forest!" Peach said from the front of the group. "The Forest is broken into five sections, four quadrants numbered clockwise from the cliff and the Core. We will be staying in quadrant 1 for most of this class. It has the lowest Grimm activity out of any area in here. Quadrant 3 has the most Grimm out of the quadrants, it is on the far side of the forest. The famous Temple of Quetzalcoatlus is in quadrant 2, just west of here. The most dangerous part of the forest is the Core. Not visible from above the treeline, there's an underground volcano in the center of this forest that is a major Grimm hotspot and the source of all Grimm in this forest. Stay away from it unless in the direst of circumstances."
The forest was brightly colored from above but the dense foliage cut out most of the light of day, leaving the forest in perpetual twilight. Jaune clearly not at ease, looking at every shadow. His hand never left the pommel of his sword. Scarlet was also jumpy, despite Neptune's attempts to keep him in line. Even Weiss was a little spooked.
To Blake though, it was almost funny. How romantic, a forest of perpetual twilight in the fall, which just happened to be filled with monsters that want to eat you. She'd had about as much experience with Grimm as anyone who didn't go to an academy like Beacon could ever have. This section of the forest was dense by normal standards but was still not dangerous to a group of this size with two fully trained hunters, even if one of them was an older person. Blake was confident in her ability to defend herself and Weiss definitely seemed competent enough, if not confident enough.
"Today's topic: identifying Grimm! As you can see over here, this is a pattern left by a beowolf traveling through the density of the forest. You can see the way that the plants' stalks are bent sideways at these specific levels marking the external structure of a beowolf. As I'm sure all of you are aware, Grimm have no discernible interior organs, rather a large sac of solid material that defines their shape. This beowolf is approximately four feet in height when walking on four legs, which means it's roughly eight feet long. We can follow this trail to get a closer look at it, shall we?"
Jaune gulped as the group followed the trail to a probable Grimm nest.
Still.
Could be worse.
"I am really beginning to question his teaching methods!" Sun screamed as the pack of ursai drove them back to what appeared to be a thirty foot wide moat of lava surrounding the Temple of Quetzalcoatlus. Conveniently, it had a sign next to it, saying cheerfully: "Course packs ahead! Enjoy your first day!"
"Oh really?" Yang shouted back, firing fireballs into the veritable sea of Grimm to try and keep them back. "Did you start that before or after he potted you down a Nevermore's gullet?"
An ursa suddenly knocked a giant swath through the pack, knocking over its comrades before falling into the lava. A trail of rose petals blasted through the abrupt opening before materializing into a gasping Ruby and a rather displeased Cardin, knocked apart and tumbling head over head several times before coming to a rest close to the lip of the moat.
"That," Cardin spat, "was not the plan!"
"The plan changed slightly when we ran into that!" Ruby gestured vigorously at the pack.
"You did not have to use my head to punt a seven hundred pound ursa fifty feet!"
"Why not? Your skull is certainly thick enough!"
"Oh shee-it," Sun said, awed. "What a comeback."
"Yang? Yang! What are we gonna do?" Ruby shouted.
"We've got to cross into the temple somehow," Yang said. "Our objective is right here, and we can't fight that." She emphasized her point by splashing more fireballs across ursa hides.
"Then fly us across!"
"Ruby!"
A grenade shot out of nowhere from the temple, blasting a hole in the Grimm pack, accompanied by a shout of "Got em!"
"Guys!" Pyrrha shouted from inside the temple. "There's a bridge on the other side!"
"Perfect!" Yang shouted.
"Only thing is, it's on fire!"
"You can not be serious," Sun moaned, holding his head in his hands.
Then the ursai charged.
The four of them ran along the edge of the moat. It was broken in a couple of places to allow lava to continue to flow past it from the center of the forest out to the mountains. Sun and Cardin jumped over them, Ruby cleared them with bursts from her semblance, and Yang rode a torrent of flame like a jetpack in her boots. The ursai kept chasing but were stalled temporarily at each break. It took about thirty seconds to reach the wooden bridge, which was well and truly on fire. Ruby dashed across it first but Cardin's weight seemed to bring it to the point of no return. Sun and Yang got caught halfway when the bridge collapsed. Midair, Yang wrapped Sun in her jacket and threw him bodily twenty feet onto the ledge before falling into the lava.
"YANG!" Pyrrha and Nora screamed. The others just stared, slack-jawed, at the slowly bubbling pool.
Yang's head popped up, lava sliding through her hair. "I don't suppose anyone brought a spare set of clothes?"
Ruby caught Nora as she fell.
"It's injured," Weiss said.
"Good observation." Peach's voice was much more subdued now. "You can see its stride is uneven. Can anyone tell me where it's hurt from this angle?"
"Right forearm?" Blake suggested.
"And how about how it got injured?"
Nobody said anything. Then Ren spoke: "That's not a wound, it's diseased."
Peach's eyebrows shot up. Most of the group turned to look at him.
"An astute observation, Ren," Peach said. "You can see from its pattern of movement. Its leg is not torn or dislocated as one might expect from a traumatic injury. It's stiffened. Nearly immobile from the shoulder joint down. Because they are physiologically so different, the disease is not capable of interacting at all with anything that isn't Grimm, but is contagious within them and applies a tetanus effect, slowly increasing in strength until it kills over the course of a few days. Normally we wouldn't introduce you students to this sort of thing for a while yet but this one was conveniently here and it will likely die within two or three days. Let's look at it." She walked forward, quietly and quickly. Blake and Weiss looked at each other before following closely. The other students seemed a little less eager, but followed a little distance behind with Oobleck bringing up the rear.
"It's not dangerous," Peach said, drawing up next to it. The beowolf snarled at her but didn't try to attack or even move. Its leg was stuck, in a normal position but immobile. "You can see here what I'm talking about. It already has traces of the tetanus in its other paw. Look at how its hind paws are flexible and relaxed into the uneven ground, but both of its front paws have the same odd spasm."
"Do Grimm even have physiology?" Weiss said. "How is it possible that they can get sick?"
"That's the question," Peach answered. "Here at Beacon, we've been studying the Grimm since the Great Recession about two hundred years ago. In all that time we've encountered nothing to indicate that this was even possible, until Beacon's very own Doctor Oobleck found a sick one six years ago."
Oobleck took a dramatic SCHLURP.
"This definitely had nothing to do with the Recession. Certainly in that time there was nothing to indicate anything other than Grimm simply disappearing, or rather, the rate at which they spawn into our world going down. But more on that later. Would anyone like to examine this beast before we kill it?"
Ren and Weiss stepped forward and approached it.
"It won't attack you. The sick ones, even in the early stages, just seem to stop caring."
Ren grasped its frozen leg with one hand and tried to move it. "Feels like a rigor mortis."
"An odd description, but accurate. That's why we refer to it as tetanus even though Grimm don't have muscles."
Ren produced a green hand scythe from his sleeve and positioned it above the leg. "Weiss, give me a hand here?"
"You're just going to cut it like that? When it's still alive?" Jaune gasped out.
"Of course," Peach said. "Grimm don't last long when they die. You have to conduct experiments on living ones."
"What if you don't like dissecting living things, even if they are Grimm?" Neptune's voice came out weakly.
"Then don't specialize in Grimm biology. I sure as hell didn't."
"Ugh, this is going to take forever to wash out," Yang moaned, trying to shake ash from her hair, as the disheveled and exhausted group climbed the steps leading up Beacon Cliff.
"I've had some sadistic teachers in my time," Pyrrha said. "But Oobleck is something else." The group grumbled their agreement.
The 'course pack', of course, had turned out to be literally a couple of sheets of paper stapled together with a list of resources and a class schedule for the semester. Upon seeing it, Cardin had explained in explicit detail exactly what his plans were for Oobleck and his copy of the course pack. Nobody disagreed.
Fortunately, they'd at least been provided with some materials to get out. Unfortunately, those materials summed to two metal poles and a length of rope. After having woven some leaves into something that gave Yang a slight semblance of modesty, Pyrrha managed somehow to lasso an overhanging tree branch with the rope. After some hair-raising Tarzan swings and a long battle of eight fighter students versus the huge pack of ursai, they'd made it out of Quadrant 2 without further incident apart from the odd beowolf encounter. The sun was almost setting by the time they made it to the top of the Cliff to find Oobleck sitting on a folding chair, staring out over the forest with his perpetual mug. He sprang up as they approached.
"Ah, you're back! Excellent! SCHLURP You may consider that your first real test at this school. In life, tests come quickly and without warning. But in this class, all the tests are marked on your schedule. Any questions?"
"Yeah, um," Cardin said. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Oobleck pushed his glasses further down on his nose and peered over them at Cardin. "Every scar you got today is one you don't get on the field where nobody can help you. Experience is the best teacher and if you graduate from Beacon you are going to get a lot of it. Tomorrow we are sparring. You are dismissed."
Nobody had the energy to fight it.
"Yang?" Sun fell into step beside her as the group dispersed. "I never really got a chance to properly thank you for saving me. Twice."
"Huh?"
"I don't really have any kind of experience with Grimm that big and, well, falling into a Nevermore's open mouth, I thought I was pretty much a goner. And then you 100% bailed me out on that bridge." He gave a small chuckle.
"You can thank me by not hurting Blake," Yang said shortly.
"What?" Sun stopped and stared at her back as she walked away. Her forearms glinted with gold.
The door to the mess hall opened and Yang and Ruby walked in, followed closely by the other six fighters. Not one of them seemed to have escaped the day unscathed. Yang's hair was filled with ash and she didn't seem to be wearing anything other than her leather jacket and a grass skirt. Ruby was limping and holding her upper body stiffly, Pyrrha had a line of bruising from shoulder to elbow of her left arm. Cardin's chest had been slashed by something, his shirt was ripped to shreds and the front was caked in dried blood as well as bruising apparent on his forehead. Nora had a slash across her cheek and several more on her legs. The bracer on Sun's right wrist was cracked and he had slashes on either side of it. Dove had a cracked lip and his nose was at an odd angle. Sage's pants were torn on one leg and blooded. A silence fell over the tables where the first-years sat. Most of the older students didn't bother to look.
"Well that certainly puts some things in perspective," Blake said softly.
"Can you please stop doing that?" Weiss rubbed her left eye.
Ruby, Yang, Nora, Pyrrha, and Sun joined them. Sage sat with Scarlet and the other team had their own table a little ways off.
"So would you guys care to explain what the hell happened to you this afternoon?" Jaune said.
"We took a small voyage to the Forest of Forever Fall," Yang said wearily and started devouring her stew.
"We did too," Neptune said. "And, well..."
"Oobleck was kind enough to give us an airlift to the Q2," Sun said.
"We stopped at a petting zoo along the way," Yang deadpanned. Pyrrha started giggling slightly.
"Cool museum though," Nora said. "Gave out pamphlets and everything." Sun snorted into his drink.
"Songbirds were out today," he managed.
Ruby had tears in her eyes as she struggled out "T-too bad Yang forgot her s-swimsuit."
None of them were capable of speech for a good minute.
"You should come up with a team name for yourselves," Ruby said to Sun as the eight of them sat in the common room for their floor. Sun and Neptune had came upstairs to join them. Ren, Blake, and Weiss were reading books, Nora was polishing her hammer and checking it for damage, and Ruby, Sun, and Yang were losing horribly to Neptune at Mario Kart.
"Team name? Like what, Team Awesome?" Sun and Neptune fist bumped, causing both of them to fall off the Rainbow Road.
"No," Ruby said. "Our team is Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. So you take R, W, B, Y and get 'Ruby'. They're J, N, P, R, which gives 'Juniper'."
"Well," Neptune said. "We've got N, S, S, and S! Team Niiiiice!"
"That's dumb," Sun said. "How about team 'Sun'? S, S, S, N!"
"Even worse. What about the others?" Neptune asked. "R, S, C, D."
"Doesn't Lark go by his last name?" Yang asked.
"Dunno," Neptune said. "He's not very talkative."
"If you use C, R, D, L, you can get 'Cardinal'," Ruby said. "Which is funny because their names are all birds as well."
"You guys are so good at this," Weiss said. "Four teams, and three of their names are literally just a member of the team."
"Hey! Quit it in the peanut gallery!" Sun said.
"Too bad Jaune isn't here to appreciate his success," Ruby said. "Where is he, anyway?"
"He's off with Pyrrha training," Yang said. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be down for that after today."
"That's some serious dedication from Jaune's part, too," Ruby said. "I know you guys weren't exactly swimming in Grimm but you had a long day too. No, blue shell! Noooooo!"
"Sorry, sweetheart," Neptune said, grinning, as he blasted past her two seconds before the finish line.