"C'mon." Randal hissed as he watched the fight playing out in front of him. Standing next to him was Goodwitch, who was also watching the duel between her two students.
On the stage, Jaune and Cardin Winchester stood facing each other. Cardin wore a cocky grin on his face that made Randal want to punch him. He hated smug bastards. The armored student held his weapon, a large two handed mace, over his shoulder. Jaune on the other hand, looked to be barely standing. He was breathing heavily, he was having difficulty raising his weapons. They had been at this for the past ten minutes. It didn't take very long for everyone to realize who was going to win with Jaune's ill disciplined fighting style and obvious inexperience vs Cardin, the school bully.
"Wait for him to make the first move." Randal advised, even though he knew Jaune wouldn't hear him or heed his advice. Just as he thought, Jaune raised his sword and charged his opponant, shouting a battle cry. "Don't use your shield to block the counter attack, just dodge it." Cardin swung his massive club at Jaune, who raised his shield to block the attack. The resulting impact sent the blonde boy flying, he lost his shield as it flew off into the crowd. "And now it's game over." Randal sighed. He looked to Goodwitch with a silent plea. She nodded.
Finding his third wind, Jaune charged at Cardin, holding his sword with both hands. Cardin blocked to attack and kicked Jaune in the crotch. The suddenly higher pitched lad fell to the ground. The victorious Cardin raised his weapon over his head, ready to bring down the final blow. That's when Randal made his move. In a flash, he rushed up to Cardin and shoved his elbow as the leader of team CDNL was brining his weapon down. The sudden attack threw him off balance and he fell over.
"That's enough, Winchester." Randal said. "We don't want team JNPR to lose it's leader so early in the school year." Randal offered a hand to Jaune and helped the depressed and humiliated blonde to his feet. Cardin replied with a glare. Ever since the two young men met, they'd been butting heads. "Professor Goodwitch, wasn't there an announcement you wanted to make?"
"Yes, thank you, professor Ethelric." The older teacher said. He was never going to get used to being called that.
"I'll let you get to that then. C'mon Jaune." The new teacher pat his student on the head and led him back into the crowd to find his shield.
It had been about a month since that night when he last saw Mercer. No new leads on King popped up, and Mercer hadn't spoken a word to him, so there was nothing to do but take up the job Ozpin had given him.
It was daunting, almost terrifying to the young man. Here he was, a dropout student teaching these kids how to fight. Showing them the little tricks that could save their lives one day. It was almost as if he held their lives in his hands. He didn't like the idea. However, he took up the role with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. In fact, he'd been working closely with the lovable goofy blonde, Jaune. Randal was no idiot and could tell that Jaune wasn't up to par with everyone else here at Beacon, and that he probably got into the academy because of his family rather than his fighting skills.
Because of this, Jaune had become one of Randal's favorite students. Unfortunately, Jaune didn't see this as a good thing. And this was making it hard to help him.
"So, did you see how I took down Cardin?" Randal asked Jaune after class in the cafeteria. The rest of team JNPR and all of team RWBY were getting their food. The assistant professor had been sitting with the two teams because he didn't exactly fit in with anyone else. The teachers all knew him from last year and he could see the pity in their eyes when they looked at him, and any students other than the freshmen all knew him too, and also gave him that pitying look, or they flat out blamed him for the massacre. Sometimes it was a bit of both.
"Yeah I did." Jaune sighed, tossing an apple to his teacher. "You don't have to brag."
"Brag?" Randal asked quizzically. His eyes lit up when he realized. "No! I'm not bragging! I'm asking did you see HOW I took him down?"
"Uhh, you shoved him?"
"Exactly!" Randal exclaimed with a mouth full of apple. "When you go up against an enemy with a large and heavy weapon like Cardin's you need to knock them off balance. Doing so will give you-"
"Will you stop?!" Jaune snapped, causing Randal to blink in surprise. "Look, I appreciate that you're trying to help, but please, just keep your advice to yourself." The blonde knight stood up. "I gotta use the bathroom." He said, walking away from the table. Randal shook his head, he'd pushed too hard again. Why couldn't the kid just listen to advice? His inability to listen to others would get him and his team killed.
"Hey!" Yang said a few minutes later as she sat down next to her teacher and gave him an apple, the rest of her team and that of JNPR close behind her. "Why the long face?"
"Stress from my new job and a lot of bad dreams." Randal muttered, taking another bite of his apple. Both were true. Despite the confidence of his old teachers, Randal wasn't entirely sure that he was suited to teaching. After all if he made one mistake, it could cost another team their lives. Plus, he could see the path that Jaune was heading down, and it wasn't pretty. That put a lot of pressure on him. Combine this with his nightmares, in which he strangled a pleading Amber to death, and held Zee's head under the river until she coughed up blood and stopped moving night after night, and he wasn't exactly in the best of moods.
"Ooooooh!" Squealed the red headed girl from JNPR, her name was Nora, right? "That totally reminds me of this dream I've been having for a while!" Her raven haired buddy sighed. His name was Ren, probably. It's hard to remember specific people's names when you deal with hundreds on a daily basis. "So there we were, Ren and I, in the middle of the night."
"It was day." Ren corrected.
"We were surrounded by Ursai."
"They were Beowolves." This story of Nora's went on like this for a while, where she'd say something and then Ren would correct her. It helped lift Randal's mood somewhat, seeing these two behave like this. They'd obviously been friends for a long time.
Some time while Nora was telling her story, Jaune returned from the bathroom and sat next to Pyrrah, who instantly picked up on her leader's depressed mood. Apparently, so did Ruby who was sitting across from Jaune.
"Jaune, are you okay?" The older redhead asked.
"Huh?" Jaune said, not entirely realizing that people were talking to him. "Yeah, why?" Randal saw this exchange and decided to keep quiet. If he was lucky, maybe the girls could get through to their friend. Though he doubted that, his luck wasn't that good after all.
"Well, it's just that you seem a little... not okay." Ruby answered.
"Guys I'm fine." He assured them, it didn't convince them of anything. "Seriously! Look!" He put on his best fake smile. It vanished when he heard a familliar laugh across the cafeteria. Randal turned his head in the direction of the sound and found team CDNL laughing at a rabbit faunus.
"If you guys will excuse me, I've got a job to do." Randal said, standing up and grabing Sibbald in his coat pocket. This was one of the biggest reasons Randal and Cardin didn't get along. Cardin's blatant racisim clashed With Randal's respect for the Faunus. While most of the time, the teacher was willing to let Cardin off with a detention, the past month had been taking a toll on his patience bit by bit.
By the time he reached the bullies and the faunus girl, Cardin was yanking on one of her ears. In a flash, Sibbald was out, extended, and the blade hovered just above Cardin's wrist. The entire cafeteria looked on in stunned silence, waiting to see how this was going to turn out.
"Your going to stop this, or you are going to lose the hand." Randal growled. "Your choice." Cardin didn't even have to think about it. He immediately let go of the girl's ear. "After classes we're going to have a little talk about your behavior, got it?" Cardin scowled at the proffesor, but since student's weren't allowed to carry their weapons outside of classes, he was at a major disadvantage and could do nothing but nod. Too enraged to say anything. "Good boy." Randal smiled. "Now, I'm sure that professor Oobleck has a few errands to run. How about you and your team spend the rest of lunch doing them for him so your dear proffesor can focus on what he's going to teach you in a few hours?"
Once again, with no other option, team CDNL left the cafeteria, grumbling and cursing the Black Wolf as the went. That was the day that the school learned not to mess with a faunus when proffesor Ethelric was around.
A/N: Not much in this chapter, I will admit that. It was actually supposed to come out a few days ago, but then I got my hands on an awesome WW2 flight sim (My favorite kind of game) and lost track of time for almost a week.