Chapter 10: First Blood

With her rapier in hand, Weiss stands at the front of the class, looking down at a small padlocked cage as it thrashes around violently. Luci hears the cheers and words of encouragement coming from her team. "Ruby! I'm trying to focus!" Weiss yells to the girl on the end of the row, who Luci remembers is the leader of team RWBY from last night. Luci watches as the beast inside is suddenly freed without any warning when Professor Port swings the axe head of his blunderbuss down on the lock to reveal the small creature inside to be a boar looking grimm that Luci had never seen before. It charges at Weiss but she quickly readies her rapier and parries the blow, dodging to her right as she does.

"This is a boarbatusk." The professor begins as it prepares for another charge. Luci also hears cheers coming from the rest of her team but notices that Weiss keeps glaring at them instead of paying attention to the fight at hand. She charges as it does, only looking back at her team briefly but for long enough that the creature tilts its head without her noticing, hooking it's tusks around her rapier and swinging it's head to throw her across the room. He sees that their team's leader, Ruby, stands up quickly but is sat back down by Weiss' icy glare. The boar suddenly charges at her, much faster than before, and Weiss doesn't see it in time, dodging out of the way enough that it doesn't cause any major damage but still hitting her leg against one of its tusks as she rolls out of the way, causing it to smack into the row of desks her team are sat at. Weiss runs towards her sword, which the grimm had thrown to the other side of the room, and gets it just in time to block another charge, pushing her back a few feet. "boarbatusks build up speed as they fight." The professor continues. "They start off the fight slow but when a fight lasts this long..." He stops, seeing the boarbatusk jump in the air and curl into a ball and begins spinning before hitting the ground and launching itself forwards. "Now, boarbatusks have a fatal weakness, does anyone know what that is?"

"Go for the belly! There's-!" Ruby begins.

"Stop telling me what to do!" Weiss yells back, looking away for long enough that the grimm slams into her stomach and launches her against the wall. It jumps up again and spins, launching higher this time aiming for her head but Weiss ducks down in time, creating some kind of symbol underneath herself and launching herself up as it hits the wall behind her, stabbing straight through it before they both plummet to the ground.

"Impressive, miss Schnee." Port praises. "You lost most of your aura but as long as you didn't lose all of it, that's a pass. Congratulations. Please, retake your seat, we still have time for one more exercise, any volunteers?" Port waits a few seconds before pointing up to Judy, looking through the attendance sheet quickly. "Miss... Apelsin, is it?"

"Y-yes?" She replies, confused.

"As the leader of team Javelin, it is your duty to keep your team in order. Since your team was late, I will allow you the chance to prove yourself to the class. Grab your weapon and come to the front." Judy reaches down and picks up Nixi in a huff, throwing her over her shoulder and standing up. "You don't need your bag to fight, miss Apelsin."

"This is my weapon." She replies dryly.

"Then what are those pistols for?" He says, pointing to her waist.

"Those are my backup weapons."

"Well then, since this is a training session, let's make it an emergency simulation. You won't always have your backpack with you, you'll have to make do with your 'backups'." He says, pointing to Nixi. "Put it back." Judy sighs but complies, muttering the usual rebellious phrases Luci is used to, and makes her way to the front. "Now, thanks to yesterday's outing into Emerald Forest, I have a few live grimm. Since this is an emergency simulation, let's make it..." Port ponders for a moment. "Beowolf." He announces, opening a door at the back of the room and dragging out a much larger cage than before with a much stronger lock. "Beowolves used to occupy the Emerald Forest but were driven out while the academy was being established." He says, positioning the cage in front of Judy. "Since you use ranged weaponry much more than miss Schnee, I will have to activate the forcefield to protect the rest of the class." He says, pressing a button under his desk, creating the invisible shield locking Judy, the beowolf and himself on one side of the room, which Judy finds strangely calming. Port looks to Judy to see if she's paying attention, seeing that she is staring down at her revolvers, he swings his axe down on the cage door, taking it off its hinges entirely as the grimm breaks its way out, shooting the door across the room as it pounces.

Judy reacts fast, pulling her guns' shields out to protect her vital areas, one for her face and one for her stomach, and beginning to fire blindly at where she thinks it is. She peaks through the crack between her shields to see if she hit it but is surprised by a large claw suddenly jabbing through, which would have stabbed her straight in the face if she didn't have her aura activated, pushing her back as she reflexively jumps to make distance, hitting the wall behind her without realizing. She looks forwards fast enough to see the claws flying towards her as the grimm charges forwards. She dodges to the left as the claws stab through the wall and tries to fire, only now realizing that she had expended it all in her first attack. She reaches into her pocket to grab her ammo, grabbing it just in time to get smacked back across the room, dropping her left gun as a few bullets come loose of her speed-loaders and scatter across the floor. She manages to keep hold of the two speed-loaders she had in her hand and quickly swings open the cylinder of her remaining weapon, launching out the cases and reloading as quickly as possible before taking aim again. She looks over and sees the grimm slam itself into the forcefield protecting the rest of the class. She fires at its head but hits its outer skull, cracking it down the side but not hitting it hard enough to kill it. It turns back to her and immediately lunges forwards, throwing Judy off and causing her to step back, stepping on one of the cases and managing to stay balanced, trying to block the beowolf's bite. The grimm's right claws suddenly clasp around her gun as it moves around it and clamps its jaws down on her arm, breaking her aura and drawing blood. The pain gives Judy an adrenaline rush and she grabs the creatures lower jaw and tries to pry it off. Everything suddenly goes dark around her and all she can see it the grimm and her own blood. He eyes begin to tear up and her lips begin to quiver, trying to push back but knowing that it is useless, that she can't win alone, and she surrenders to her fate, knowing well that this isn't the same situation she sees in her head but not being able to hold back the flood of emotion that memory brings up. The darkness around her is suddenly dispersed by a blinding light explosion as the it's jaws suddenly loosen. Judy looks back at it, only now realizing that she had her eyes shut since the bite, to see the grimm, already beginning to dissolve, with most of its left side missing as smoke rises from Port's blunderbuss.

"Someone, go get the nurse!" Port yells to the class, not deactivating the forcefield as Luci stands just behind it, shouting something that Judy can't hear very well. Judy looks up and sees the light on the ceiling above her before slowly beginning to close her eyes.


Luci stares down at the medic-bay floor, trying to keep himself awake as the crescent moon reaches its peak. Judy's wound has already healed, to the rest of the team's surprise, but she still hasn't woken up, and Luci thinks he knows why.

"Are you still here?" A girl's voice says. Artemis walks around the curtain, having already changed into her sleepwear, with a candle in her hand. "Vak said he was going to get us some drinks."

"We aren't allowed drinks in here." He replies dryly.

"I didn't take you for someone who follows the rules." She responds, taking a nearby chair and sitting with him. "You guys know each other pretty well, huh?" She says, trying to start a conversation. Luci sighs but talks anyway.

"We haven't actually known each other very long, only about a year, and for the first half of that she hated me." He mumbles, more for himself than for her to hear. "We had a fight when I first came to Signal Academy, but other than that we didn't see each other at all until the end of her third year."

"What were you fighting about?"

"I was challenging people to fight on the first day so she came to stop me, being a second year and all. At her graduation, we had a fight again, but... I won this time." He says, pausing for a second.

"You don't-"

"Nah, it's fine." He says with a little smile. "I injured her pretty bad, shot her leg off." At this, Artemis' eyes open wide.

"But she-"

"She's a faunus, axolotl or something, she can grow back limbs." He explains as quickly as possible. "It took her a good part of the year to grow it back so I went to visit her every day in the hospital." Taking out a picture and handing it to Artemis. She looks at it and sees Luci sitting at the bottom of a hospital bed with Judy standing up, looking unstable, as Luci holds out his arm towards her.