AN: For now we're going to be focusing more on the Beowolf. I'm a little apprehensive to go to deep on the stuff with RWBY since we're starting to enter territory being covered by these early episodes of Volume 3. Expect a lot of Njala, Oobleck, and Wolf. /
Beowolf:
Bright bays of lights far above were harsh against the pale tiles of one of the training rooms in the Amity coliseum. It was on one of the higher decks and the roaring cheers and jeers of the spectators out on the stands rumbled up through the trusses below. They were a bit distracting to the wolf as it sat on its haunches watching the Green-haired man pace side to side.
It had been a few days since festival had begun in earnest and the coliseum's racket was becoming nothing more than white noise; a soundtrack to the recent changes in the wolf's life. It had gone from scaling cliffs in the Valean outback to residing in an apartment in some sort of floating structure. It was quite a difference, though the wolf had adapted quite well. Being able to use its scroll uninterrupted for a while at a time, as well as being able to be tutored by "Black" made things a bit more comfortable. Seeing "Red" was still a bit awkward thanks to her initial clinginess.
Around the humans which had been posted as its security the beowolf was unwilling to look at the Shepherds' weapons. It had learned that the people that were around were doing it to keep it under control, as opposed to safe. Not that it was surprised, just that it was initially a bit unsure about the reasons for the constant presence.
The wolf didn't need to sleep or eat, and without direct lines of sight it found it difficult keep track of how much time was passing. Only the rumblings of the coliseum and the small courses on pictography defined time.
That, and the green-haired-man's presence.
At very regular intervals the man would appear and try and observe something of the Grimm. It had taken the beast by surprise a few times before it came to realize that it was beneficial to play along. The man seemed to consistently have some sort of mechanism for the beowolf to take apart and figure out. It was generally a boon to the grimm since it didn't have to do much most the time, and it sometimes got these pieces of technology without understanding why exactly it was getting the present.
Right now, the green haired man was trying to show what exactly needed to be done in order to get the next little piece of the puzzle that was being constructed.
A rather sizeable chalkboard was being drawn on, chalk scratching pictures into the surface at rapid speed and the requirements were becoming clear slowly but surely. A rather dramatic image of the green-haired man protecting something small and spherical from the shadow of the beowolf. That seemed a bit odd to the beowolf as it hadn't really done anything to terrify the man aside from read silently for hours at a time.
Once the man was finished he produced – seemingly from nowhere – a small oval-shaped object roughly the size of half a human's fist. The wolf recognized it as an egg. Of what in particular the beowolf didn't know. Grimm didn't keep any pets (at least Beowolves didn't), so the thing could have come from one of those cows humans keep alive as far as it knew.
"Break the egg." The green man said. Break was a verb that the Grimm knew, or at least had linked to 'attack', 'bite', and 'hit/punch/kick'. This was actually a bit clearer than the image thanks to the new word 'egg'. It would have to show that one to "Black" when it saw her next time. Maybe something showing a cow and a round thing dropping out of its… Mouth? Where?
Shaking itself of the consideration it stood up straight and watched the man put the egg on top of a small stand at the far end of the room. Apparently the short jog across the room was the only thing keeping it from the egg. That and the man standing right in front.
Once the man had taken a final sip from his thermos and relaxed the beowolf sat back a bit, raising up its hands to get ready for whatever the human was going to do. Then the man disappeared, reappeared somewhere in the beowolf's vision, disappeared, and then finally came to a rest in front of him.
Blinking twice to try and catch up, the beowolf leaned down to look at Oobleck, who was looking at it expectantly.
"First, speed." The man said, motioning to the egg. "Run. Sprint. Accelerate."
The wolf caught the gist, 'run fast break egg' was the queue of the day and it obliged. Crouching slightly to get itself some leverage, it sprung forward with all its strength, that initial burst sending it-
Before it had hit the ground from that initial bound Oobleck had already passed and was holding the egg up above his head, holding his other hand up for the beast to stop. It acquiesced, leaning back with one hand to catch the ground and slow it to a short and slippery stop.
It waited at that point for the hand to drop, but the man disappeared before the beast got the signal to move. Turning its head to try and keep up with the blistering place of the man but it was proving to be quite difficult. Shepherds all seemed to move more quickly than their charges, but the speed differed from a sprint to the near-invisibility of the man whom the grimm was facing. He was by far the fastest thing the Grimm had ever seen, followed only by Red.
There was a crack somewhere in the distance before the man reappeared, and by the time the beast noticed what was happening it was back to the side it had started, but against one of the corners. Oobleck appeared on the other side rolling his shoulders and rubbing his hands together. Now he held a scroll not unlike the Beowolf's and was making notes on it.
The beast shifted slightly, uncomfortable with the fact that at some point, against its will, it had been moved a fair distance from where it last remembered existing, to a wholly new point. It was more than a little bit disorienting.
"Again!" The voice called, the man making a circular motion with his hand towards himself. The beowolf tilted its head slightly, grumbling, before leaning back into its crouch.
It coiled up before leaping, and this time found that the man was staying in place. The initial burst of speed gave it most of its momentum, and with the strength of its kick-off it didn't normally need to exert that much energy to keep it going. Against the smooth floor there was little traction though so there was some awkward sliding of its feet against the floor. It maintained its course, however, and made a beeline towards the egg-jective.
Oobleck:
The examination wasn't direct, but it worked.
The doctor had been considering ways to observe the beowolf for differences for a while now. Observations if its normal living patterns gave up some information, but since it remained physically inactive while within the bounds of its house arrest there were few times to see how it adapted in structure.
Watching the beowolf leap from an advantageous viewing angle showed where the beast's speed came from in the first place: raw power in the legs. The 'animal' (Oobleck was aware of the controversy using such a definition for the Beowolf, but he ignored it in his notes) gained momentum by crouching like a human sprinter, or a pouncing cat. By putting all of its force into its legs it allowed it to dive forward fast enough it would look like a stride, when really it was more of a pounce.
The force had been enough for it to leap considerable distances, as he had seen when it leaped from the bullhead to the top of the cliffs out in the wilderness, but it seemed to struggle to get that speed on a hard surface.
Adaptation of movement is based on native flora and fauna, possibly. When leaping it leans, as if to drive ends of feet into ground for lateral leverage. Here, floor is designed to take severe impacts and deflect blades. Standard acceleration would be impossible, has to substitute. Explains the clamoring.
The beowolf looked like it wanted to keep itself up by re-gripping the ground, but without the means to do so it was running much like a human would, not like a bounding animal. It took some of the speed off so Oobleck had to extrapolate the speed of the beast under its ideal circumstances of dirt and rock.
As the wolf passed the fifth mark that Oobleck had drawn out in his diagram he checked the time, watching as the stopwatch clicked over to the second mark. The man operated at a speed that others found quite unbearable, and he marked down the velocity of the beast after a quick calculation and then moved to return the beast to the starting point again.
He was doing something rather roundabout, but he decided that having a common objective over all these tests would be the best for the long-term. Having something to break for the probable technological treat that the prof- Doctor had procured probably seemed like a pretty good deal for the beowolf. It was a conditioned reaction, and while Oobleck was sure the Beowolf would eventually become tired of the game, he wasn't quite sure just yet how long it would take for the beast to truly give up.
Grabbing the Beowolf under the armpits and turning with his legs, Oobleck was able to fully rotate the beast and send it back the way it was coming, pulling it through the air to the final destination. The entire process took forever in his eyes, even if it was quite fast to most humans (or a grimm for that matter), but by the time he was done the Beowolf was at rest at the starting point again.
Appearing back at his spot at the other end of the room, and motioned for the experiment to continue.
Beowolf:
Several rounds of sprints later, the beowolf getting farther and farther with each test, the Grimm found itself skidding to a stop without being moved back to its starting place. It was suspicious so it slowed down and stopped, keeping its eyes on Oobleck who seemed to intent on his scroll to really do anything as of current.
The Beowolf had been sprinting nearly continuously for half an hour at this point, but it wasn't feeling the normal wear and tear of fatigue that faunus or humans would. There were no muscles to really strain, and no bones to creak, so when it sat back on its haunches with suspicion it didn't do any stretching like a dog would do after such exercise.
Glancing past Oobleck the Beowolf could quite easily see the egg which was the objective of this entire exercise. The beowolf had been waiting for an appropriate time to try and launch an attack against it, but the entire teleportation issue had proven more pressing at the time. Now, however, it was curious as to what exactly the shepherd would do if it came close to the egg.
Walking over to the human and leaning on its forearms while walking in order to muffle some of the noise of its clacking claws, the beowolf tried to keep quiet until it was within pouncing range of the egg. It was surprised that when it got within about ten paces of the man that the thermos he kept with him extended into some sort of long club-like object.
"Fire." The man said confidently, as if he was sure that the beowolf knew what the word meant. Of course it did, and while the beast hesitated for a moment it didn't completely stop, instead pausing just short of the man and tilting its head down at him.
Oobleck raised a brow before a gout of flame leaked out the bottom of his weapon in the general direction of the beowolf, who was quite unafraid of the fire. It went so far as to crouch down and hold a hand out to the flame. Oobleck immediately cut off the current of fire with a look of shock on his face, though the beowolf only grumbled in displeasure before sending a glare in the direction of Oobleck.
Oobleck:
For the professor who had been charged with keeping the Beowolf safe from itself and others, it was a fairly reasonable response to stop the beast from burning itself to death. The jet of flame that came out the bottom of Oobleck's weapon was designed to cling to things, burn continuously and hotly for a few seconds instead of simply scorching and leaving a burn (if a severe one). This beowolf seemed completely uncaring of that point, however, when it attempted to touch the flames itself.
Judging by the expression on the grimm's face (if you could call it an expression) this was not the right answer. Oobleck, trusting his gut, allowed a small amount of flame to arc from his weapon, and brought it up to waist height for the beowolf. He heard stories from RWBY about the beowolf's love for weapons and lack of fear for them, but didn't expect it to go this far.
The Doctor continued to be speechless when the beowolf casually dipped a hand down to take a 'lump' of flame into its palm. Raising it up so it could see it more clearly the beowolf splayed its fingers apart, and in doing so allowed the orange flames to shimmer from digit to digit with each small change of the breeze in the room.
Oobleck saw the flames eat away slowly but surely at the masque that covered the beowolf's hand, but saw that it burned rather slowly. The masque would turn black, then slowly chip off with the upward draft of heat from the fire. The process seemed to cause the beowolf no real discomfort, and it slowly closed its hand, the rest of the masque on its arm turning back before fading away as the fire was smothered.
Holy hell. Oobleck thought, taking a little bit of a step back to reanalyze what the Grimm had done. Old adage of the Huntsmen: Let not the beast walk after being maimed by blade, for it will come back bearing shields. Let not the beast escape while burned by blade, for it will make salve as a remedy. Let not the beast take the knowledge of battle into the darkness, for it will return with war-horns and drums for the kingdom. Supposedly call for genocide against Grimm of all kinds, to destroy all you come across. I didn't think there was a literal reason, true evolution.
But there it was, the 'beast'. A simple beowolf which should have been as easily killed by a blade through the chest as a trampling under the feet of its kin was playing with fire that had burned down dozens of its kind in combat before. It was astounding. It was terrifying.
And Oobleck was seeing it with his own very eyes.
What else could it do? He wondered as the beowolf leaned over him to knock over the egg. It couldn't quite reach, tragically, and it stumbled a bit when it over-extended over the man's head. Oobleck snapped out of it and the moment was lost as he reached back and snatched the egg out of mid-air and put it in his pocket, waggling a finger at the Beowolf.
"We'll try again another time. You have much to teach me, and more than enough time to try and out-maneuver a human."