(I did promise a long ass chapter earlier, but it was delayed, until now)

When we got back the house was completely empty. Blake gave me another kiss on the cheek, this time a bit closer to my lips. It was nice, but I didn't realize how teasing she could be, cause right after that kiss she slowly pulled away, breathing a bit heavier to get me thinking, then once she had finally pulled away she marched over to her chair and started reading, a smirk playing over her face.

"Better go find them" She says seductively, just to torment me further. I sigh and walk out of the room, and begin a search for them. Found Ruby in the armory admiring all the weapons that some use, so I slip out and look for yang, which wasn't hard. I heard her before I smelled her, an echoing cascade of varying punching sounds. I followed that into one of the combat area's vast training rooms, and she was relentlessly hitting the bag. Some sand was leaking out of it, and there were two broken bags lying on the floor next to her. In the distance was a small whimper, guessing dad's teaching in here somewhere…

"Hey Yang, c'mon"

"How'd Blake do?"

"Her form is currently unpracticed, but she has conquered her beast"

"Cool, alright let's go" Yang delivers one final punch and the bag flies off the hook and hits the ground, then I lead Yang back into the room with the four gates, along the way Yang occasionally winked or flirted with some people.

"Well, here we are"

"Cool place, where do I go?"

"Go touch the sun"

She smiles and presses her fist to it and I tap her shoulder as the world blinks away and into her training ground, a small black platform amid an actual sea of blue flames.

"Woah" She looks around, while I fall. Yeah not enough room for both of us on the platform, so I use my nevermore mask again and watch from above.

"The light represents protection, support, and is generally symbolized by fire. Your aura will be able to act as a shield for others, and this training is unique, as you can access your defender form here"

"Annnd I do that how?"

"Your energy is more potent coming from the sun, but as you can see we don't have a sun here, so you have to make your own with your aura"

"Ok then" Yang forms a ball of her aura, but it's highly unstable and flickers out pretty fast. We're gonna be here for a while. And we were. It was at least an hour until she got a stable one, but she didn't have enough aura to make it powerful enough to manifest as a mini sun to draw from. So we had to leave while Yang let her aura regen. It was kinda funny, but wasting no time I went beowolf and hunted down the red reaper. I think I scared her since in my rush I tripped over a wooden staff and almost crushed her, only missing since she took out her scythe and used it as a shield. I got up and took off the mask.

"h hi"

"You scared the crap outta me!"

"Sorry sorry, uh it's your turn to go now"

"Did Blake do good?"

"She needs to train in her beast form but she did acquire it"

"And Yang?"

"We're going to try again tomorrow"

"Oh…" She looked a bit saddened, then perked up realizing it's her turn.

"What are we waiting for?" And then she vanished into rose petals. She returned a moment later a bit sheepishly.

"So, uh, where to?"

I roll my eyes, which can't be seen due to the mask over them. "Follow me" Wasting no time I barrel out of the armory on all fours, claws adding traction to my sprint as Ruby follows me without using her semblance. Damn she is fast, the darkness path is perfect for this fairy tale character I suppose.

"Here we are" I announce as we enter the room, and she looks over to the moon gate.

"That mine?"

"Yep"

"This is going to be sooo cool! Wait, how'd Yang fail hers?"

"The defending role of the sun first requires the user to form a perfectly spherical sun that can maintain itself long enough to power up the person who summoned it, Yang spent all her aura trying to make one of those, so when her aura is back tomorrow we're gonna try again. Now, please place your hand on the circle that looks like a black sun"

As Ruby complies I put my hand on her back and in a sudden blindness instead of a flash, we find ourselves on the top of a hill overlooking a grassland that is remarkably and completely flat. The moon hangs overhead, it's pale light giving Ruby her shadow.

"First step is simple. Channel your aura into the presence of your shadow"

"Ok, here goes" I can see a dark red flicker from her body and into the shadow.

"Try bending your shadow with your aura"

She does easily.

"Wow, that was fast"

"I'm a fast person"

"Next comes a fun part. The darkness allows for shadow manipulation, but also allows a manipulation of an enemy's mind with illusions. In here that can be done, but you must be able to create at least one of them before you can have a chance of doing it outside this place"

"Ok then…"

"Let's start with something simple" A beowolf spawns and looks angrily at her.

"Blake's semblance is actually an advanced version of a shadow clone shadow users can create. Blake can alter her clones and use them as actual shields and use them to attack, but ours are merely decoys, try creating one to the sides of the beowolf to keep it from attacking you"

"Alright…" Her aura starts being channeled into a copy of herself, and she effectively throws the copy from herself. Sloppy, but it worked. I sit down and curl up in a ball while watching her attempt to create a clone she doesn't need to throw like a ball away from her body to make it appear somewhere. After a boring ten minutes of this me and the beowolf are both asleep. Don't ask how I ended up laying on top of it's shoulder, but I did. Another fifteen pass when Ruby wakes me up, and shows me her creating a clone five feet from her, which could be useful, but she definitely needs more practice.

"Good enough for now" I snap and the beowolf wakes up and hits the clone, and both of them vanish.

"Now then, lets try again" An ursa appears out of nowhere and swings a paw at her, which she dodges, then takes out her scythe and slashes at it, just to discover her scythe is passing through the ursa with no effect.

"The clones, gotta make the ursa mistake you for a clone" I say, curling back up and offering no further support to the scythe wielder, even when she smacks into the ground in front of me due to a lucky shot by the ursa. Then another and another. When is she going to stop blocking with her scythe and use a clone? I get how difficult this is but putting two and two together should be simple. Finally she does manage to get a clone right in the ursa's face and it smashes into it, both disappearing into shadow like fragments, which dissolve into the air quickly.

"Good, good. Now, this is going to be a fun one. Last test, which is also the hardest. A shadow warrior can move at impressive speeds and manipulate illusions, so they can combat groups with some success, with that scythe and your semblance it should be a lot easier. So…" Suddenly the land was filled with what amounted to about three hundred beowolves that did not have any plates on them save the mask.

"What?…" Ruby looked stunned. Didn't help that the beowolves started already sprinting at her, with a ten yard gap. And the first beowolf made contact with a shoulder charge, sending her back, and she got up looking terrified.

"You can do it, kick ass"

She turns and dodges the next, suppressing her fear and letting natural skill take over. She fires a blast down to propel her high into the sky, then another and another as she shot the beowolves from above. She created five clones which fell down and gathered the pack's attention as she went higher. When she came down they were sniffing where the clones were, confused about this event change. Little red fired a shot behind her and to the left, sending her to the side of the pack, which turned to face her as she dissolved her body into rose petals. Reappearing at the other side of the pack her aura had been missing a giant chunk compared to how much she had left, and the pack now had eighty four members. Looks like the lack of armor on them was a downfall, but I don't make the rules. Soon after that she fired round after round into the wolf grimm, not bothering to add aura due to the lack of defense they had. By the time the pack reorganized and assaulted her they were down to sixty. Then they hit a clone. I honestly don't know how she did the following, but somewhere along the line she ditched the clone, moved to the other side of the pack, and began firing on them again. Down to forty. And she did it again, down to twenty. Then she directed her aura into her shadow and it moved behind the beowolf and she traveled through the shadow to the back of the pack, where she began slicing them apart, dodging attacks with her semblance and returning them with bullets and slashes. When she finished she actually collapsed from exhaustion. So I took a nap. I woke up to see the reaper standing over me, nudging me awake with the scythe. Her shadow had taken on the black sun look, so I walked away from her and donned the deathstalker mask, then turned to face her.

"Ready?"

"Yep"

And she was gone into rose petals, but I felt her before I saw those petals. The amplification of her natural speed combined with her extreme speed semblance let her dash and slash through me before I knew what was happening. Then she shot me right in the face, and I woke up in the real world with my headache again. Ruby got up and stretched, then activated her shadows and ran out of the room, in a literal blur. What hell had I unleashed? It was dark now, so I went to the house we were staying in to find Blake in beast form on the roof, so I jumped up and scratched her ears, earning a purr from her as she shifted back to normal, and I kept scratching.

"So, Ruby is now so fast she could defeat an army in the blink of an eye if she didn't have an aura limit"

"that's…unsettling"

"Yep"

"And Yang punched a hole in the basement, hers not go over so well? "

I roll off her and look up at the stars. "Nope"

"What happened?"

"She ran out of aura during the first trial, at the end of it she got the basics down, but didn't have enough aura to continue"

"Well, hopefully she'll get it tomorrow"

Blake looks up to the stars and I roll on top of her and bury my head in her neck.

"You're a tease you know that?"

I can tell she's nervous because I can hear her heart pounding in her chest. I can feel mine, and my tail is back to wagging around.

"Anima…"

"Shh...relax my kitten"

"O ok…"

We spent the night cuddling on the roof, oblivious to anything else, save Yang occasionally breaking something and the sounds of machinery in motion as Ruby works on her weapon. They were a part of my family now, and if they weren't, well the next several years of school would be shit.

And I woke up being dragged. Yep, Yang...And the worst part was I had been asleep on a beautiful faunus for the past two hours…

"Yang?"

"Oh, your awake" She dropped my arm and I got up stretching.

"You really want this to be done huh?"

"I want to be able to protect us, the team I love, so yeah, lets hurry this up"

We walk into the room and Yang touches the sun and I touch her, and in that blinding flash of light we are in that area again, and once again there seems to be no place for me on the platform so I embrace the nevermore form to keep from plunging into the fiery hell under me. Yang wastes no time trying to generate the sun orb again, this time she had a perfect spherical orb after five minutes. Next she creates the fire within it that turns said sun into an aura reactor, and it converts the sphere surrounding it into pure heat energy, which Yang reabsorbs into her body. The aura gives her a radiating yellow glow to her body, and two seven by seven foot platforms of black metal form and combine, and I land on one.

"Now, your aura will have been changed due to the fire present in it from the flaming catalyst. You will regen your normal aura over time as you use your current elastic like aura. To get more of it you have to recreate the sun or draw direct solar energy"

"Bit cliche huh?"

"Yep, but it's what you gotta do"

"Got it, what's next?"

"That large ursa over there-"

"What large ursa?"

I sigh as shadows on the next platform wrap around themselves and turn into an ursa the size of a garbage truck covered in bone plates.

"That" I point "large ursa over there will attack me, and you will have to pump your aura into me to keep me alive for thirty seconds. If I die we will both be penalized, me from the standard headache feeling, and you with a sudden burst of nausea"

I don't feel so safe, but Yang's blazing yellow aura does find itself accumulating around me, and she is really trying hard to maintain the link. Then a massive paw bats me away, and hell did it hurt, but Yang's aura kept the damage down. I got up and ran at the bear, and it smacked me around again, and again. AND AGAIN! HOW DO INSTRUCTORS PUT UP WITH THIS PART? Yang passed, but at the end of that I did have a broken arm and internal bleeding, so it seemed a good a time as any to go over how she can use her aura to heal wounds.

"Y Yang...P pump some aura *cough* Into my wounds. T think *cough* healing thou *cough* thoughts…"

I thought I died, but the stinging feeling remained, so I slowly opened my eyes to discover my arm and wounds had healed within the thirty minutes I spent passed out due to blood loss. Of course Yang spent almost all her aura to repair just a broken arm and soe opened veins, but I lived, did not expect that. Getting up slowly I stretched to make sure everything was functional, and smiled at Yang over there, who was sitting down waiting.

"Done being KOed?"

"I think so, despite a slight stinging pain I feel great"

"So what's next?"

"You'll be using your aura to help boost my attacks, if you need to replenish your stock go ahead"

Yang shakes her head and channels her aura into me, this time it seems unstable, signifying the damage variety. I went into ursa mode and her aura was channeled by me into my hands as a wall about five feet thick made of solid steel appears and I begin pounding holes into it, expending the aura Yang had given me. I used my own aura to help reduce the pain that comes with relentlessly smashing your hand against a steel wall, despite the damage being achieved to the wall itself. That went by fast, and we moved on to the final part.

"Take a nap, when you wake up we'll start the stressful end test"

"But I'm fine with what I got"

"Maybe if you could activate your semblance, but you currently have no build up to ignite it"

"Alright, but I can't just go to sle-ugh!"

I landed next to her and nicked her arm with my deathstalker blades.

"What was that for?"

"The deathstalker venom in my blades conveys a very strong tranquilizer effect. In about ten seconds you'll be tired, ten more and your body will start to shut down, then after five seconds you pass out"

"Oh, thanks I guess?"

"Your welcome"

Ten seconds later… "I feel tired…"

Ten seconds after that… "Well, there goes my arms...Legs...zzz"

I decided to fly around the flaming lands, and explore, until the Icarus effect hit me. For those of you who don't know who Icarus was, he was a century old nevermore who plagued all of humanity for years until one day in an attempt to destroy a mountain village it suddenly flew up into the sun and it's wings were singed off. In my case I got literally shot by fire from the sun for getting too close. And I fell. Right into the sea of blue flames, where I was burned alive and kicked out of Yang's world. I took this reprieve to finally get some food. I had a whole turkey, my dad had cooked it and left it in the stove when he got home, and I had been dragged too far away to smell the sweet juicy bird. It's been a long time since I had one of dad's meals, still kinda feel bad for leaving all those years ago. Bird eaten and consumed, I walked up onto the roof and rubbed Blake's belly while she slept, getting some purring sounds from her. I also decided to read one of her books, and after thirty minutes I went back to finish Yang's training. Then maybe I could get some damn sleep.

After arriving back I casually kicked Yang in the chest, and she woke up, got up, then delivered a buckshot accentuated punch to my face, thank god my aura was up.

"Damnit you don't just start with that to wake someone up!"

"Ow"

"Good" She then delivered a spartan kick to my chest, and I fell down off the platform, so I had to go into nevermore form and fly up.

"Well, now you know how I feel"

"What, I drag you off your kitty cat and you get pissed?"

"If I dragged you off someone you liked you'd be pissed too"

"...maybe"

"Can we continue now?"

"Sure, final test, you have to simultaneously defend one target, and bolster the attack of another. Do that for a total of five minutes and the gate will pass judgement on if you can keep this form, it already sided in favor for the other two, so time for you to join us"

"Got it, bring it on"

I feel a bit bad for not fully telling her what she is bolstering the defense of, as she channels defensive aura into a dummy and offensive aura into another, when all of a sudden a goliath, gigantic elephant grimm, stomped on the defensive dummy. The amount of aura Yang had to put into the defense caused her to be able to feel the pain from the goliath's foot being pressed down onto the dummy. This in turn activated her semblance, which blew my fucking mind, as all of a sudden she tripled aura output, the dummy actually shoving away the goliath, and the other radiating combatative energy. It was amazing. And more importantly, she passed.

"WOHOO" Yang pounded her fists together, and initiated another quite catastrophic thing. See, Yang's semblance has a full blast release mode, which is triggered by said action. Amplified by the natural aura being quick changed into the flaming elastic aura by a sun, which I'm guessing was inside her or her heat being produced by the release produced such light it was the equivalent to the sun's, All her now fiery aura, and her flaming semblance, released like a localized nuke. That was the second time I was ejected from Yang's world, and my god, the delay before leaving the place that you have full awareness of was never more painful. I was scraped into ashes. IT BURNED LIKE A BITCH, I MEAN SERIOUSLY THAT WAS WHAT HELL WAS!

"Goddamn it!" Yang stood up, and yawned. Good, she was tired, maybe she won't pester me while I get some sleep.

"So you going to train us?"

"I'll try, I just read the manual for all this the day I got to Beacon"

"So that's what you were doing instead a listening in Peach's class"

"Yep, wanted to be able to guide Blake through her path"

"So…" We start leaving the gate rooms.

"Yeah?"

"You really like her huh?"

"Yep"

"Cool"

Well, we do work well, I suppose, but one on one socialization with her doesn't work. Arriving back at the house I departed from Yang and slipped back onto the roof and resumed laying on Blake just how I did before I left, and she slid her arms around me like I had never left. It felt good and relaxing to be in her arms, and I smiled as I fell asleep.