Blanc's room, the day of semester finals in Combat Class
Blanc slipped on his repaired coat, not having had time to make a new one yet. Methodically he began to prepare for his semester final exam in combat class. He slipped his Tonfa, using the set that did not have engraved glyphs that he used for training, into the holsters in his coat, then picked up his bag which contained a few extra trinkets he'd prepared for dealing with Coco and Velvet.
Fox and Yatsuhashi were standard melee fighters. Fox was known to have good aura control, and used it for navigation as well as combat. It'd be a requirement given his blinded state. Unfortunately for him, Blanc would be blinding that too. Yatsuhashi was strong and wielded a large sword. He was extremely effective against larger grimm but would be slow and easy to overwhelm. Coco and Velvet were not.
Coco's weapon was known to be a collapsible minigun. How she stored that inside a handbag shaped container was unknown, but the density should have made her unable to carry it. He suspected that it somehow relied upon her semblance, whatever that might be. Velvet mostly fought with her hands and feet, making her the most dangerous of her team, to Blanc anyway. He'd never seen or heard of her using a weapon, but she carried a backpack of some sort, and took pictures of people in the use of their weapons, and he had a suspicion. Coco was the only one of the four he'd met in the future; none of the others had survived. It wasn't a story he was familiar with. Coco'd had a daughter that was at the fortress in that final battle, but he didn't know anything more, and was certain she'd perished with the rest of humanity there.
Team RWBY's battle had gone well, though in the end they'd lost as expected. Yang had been the last holdout, smashing her way through two of the three remaining in team SNRS before finally running too low on Aura. She'd relied on her semblance, too much perhaps, and while that made her a devastating combatant, it required her to take blows. Ruby had hung back, trying to use Cresent Rose's sniper form, but the other team had been prepared. Blake and Weiss had removed the first opponent while working together, using a combination of a shadow clone and an ice dust blast from Weiss rapier, but both had then quickly been removed as well, while Ruby fell as Yang took out the first of her two, who had just knocked Blake out of combat. In the end while the girls had worked well together, the other team had planned well and knew more about RWBY than RWBY knew about them, and it showed.
JNPR's bout had been decidedly different. From the outset, team AZRE had been wary of Pyrrha, and it showed. That let JNPR control the battlefield, as small as it was, and Jaune had planned around that and taken advantage of it, separating the opposing team and allowing Ren and Nora to work them together while he and Pyrrha kept their teammates away. The last member of AZRE had simply yeilded, alone and facing four opponents, one of which was perhaps the greatest fighter to come through Beacon, perhaps ever.
But with all that, there was too much hype around his own bout. Beacon, or more precisely Gramma Goodwitch, had far too much confidence in his abilities, particularly knowing he wouldn't utilize his time semblance. Testing the others teamwork he could understand, but he was going to be facing a second year team, all alone. That team would be geared up, and unlike the third year bullies he'd bested in the courtyard outside the dining hall at the beginning of the semester, they would be prepared for him. They were the best team in second year, they'd be fresh, and so he'd had to come out with something new if he wanted to make it anything but a short bout.
Part of him recognized this as an opportunity to slip back into the shadows; lose some of that attention that came to him after his fitness test. Another part of him, the Schnee part he sneered at, couldn't accept allowing an easy defeat for that purpose. The Arc part of him could accept it, but not without giving it his best. The problem was he knew he could win; with his semblance there was likely no one here who could stop him, particularly if it was a surprise. He could be tired out and worn down, his father's genetic gift of a fantastically large aura pool and his mother's gift of glyphs, and his combat trained adrenal gland were still limited. But no four people would be able to do that. Team JNPR eventually might; his father outmatched him in Aura and Pyrrha was, without a doubt, the prodigy of warfare people believed her to be. And all of that would pale compared to the stolen power, which even above his true semblance must remain a secret. Only Yang and the maiden's guardians knew that secret about him, and it would stay that way until Pyrrha was introduced to it, which he hoped would not be by him. That time was coming, he knew.
He slipped out of his room, quietly, and headed toward arena. They'd had to hold this in a bigger space due to all of the spectators; an arrangement they'd made for JNPR's bout as well. Pyrrha hadn't been comfortable with the fame but Jaune had soothed her and kept her spirits up. He didn't want to think about how that'd been done or the promise that had been whispered in her ear while they accepted the accolades of the observers, nor the blush it put on her face. He'd congratulated Yang in his own way, though he'd taken much more time reciprocating on her than she had when she'd performed on him before class. He'd aced his history exam, in no small part because of her help, and he wanted to thank her. He also wanted to relieve their mutual frustration, and it had gone a long way to patching things up between them after she'd left that night following their fight. He was feeling hopeful, and he shared that joy with her. His neighbors weren't very pleased with the scream - he guessed Yang had learned to control that later in life, but she was quiet vocal now.
The walk to the new arena was longer than to normal class; the air was quite cool for Vale, which was equatorial and stayed warm most of the year. Atlas would be a frigid wasteland right now. As he walked, more and more students were headed in his direction; far more than had been there to see JNPR. Pats on the back, encouraging words, some snide remarks, and someone he didn't see slyly grabbing his ass later, he made it to his entrance.
Beacon Arena, center of the stands, shortly before the bout
Yang was nervous; Blanc was powerful and a great fighter, and undoubtedly hers, but this bout was also extremely unfair. They'd all been unfair, to be honest, but this one so much more so. Other than JNPR she'd missed the other bouts, spending time preparing for their own. They'd had a good plan but it had fallen apart when the opposition improvised around it, and she'd got her fight on, but it hadn't been enough. In single combat there wasn't anyone on team SNRS who she wouldn't have beaten, but she knew her team still had work to do. They mostly worked well in pairs; Ruby's plans all seemed to be about that. They were good tactics, but that's all they were. She simply didn't have Jaune's strategic mind. Which was also something Blanc had inherited from his father, according to Ren. That gave her hope about the upcoming fight, but not much, particularly because she knew her man would be handicapping himself.
Blake sat to her left, Ruby on her right, and Weiss next to her. JNPR sat behind them; Pyrrha directly behind. Yang thought Pyrrha'd find it nice to be a spectator at something like this rather than the subject. Pyrrha's emotions seemed to always be on her sleeves these days, now that she was with Jaune. Jaune was calm and joking with his team, but Pyrrha was practically chewing her nails.
"What's up, P-money? You look like you're about to watch your first child out there instead of your friend." Ruby elbowed her, Pyrrha glared a bit, and Blake and Weiss just looked a bit confused at the analogy. "I'm fine. I just think it's terrible unfair." Nora patted her on the back. "Don't worry, Mr. Impossible is on the case. He's gonna take them down!" Jaune grinned, and Ren smirked a bit at her enthusiasm. "He'll be fine, Pyrrha." Jaune assured her.
CFVY came out into the arena, setting up. No last minute planning or pep-talks occurred; Coco was at the back of a diamond, Fox in front of her. Between them, Yatsuhashi and Velvet were on the left and right, respectively. Coco already had her minigun out, barrels slowly spinning, while Yatsuhashi kept is massive blade on his back. Fox and Velvet were both relaxed. Then, Blanc stepped out onto the field.
It was almost like a movie opening; he walked up confidently, the sun at his back, his coat occasionally swirling back in the wind. He was carrying a bag, which he dropped at his feat as he stepped up to his place, opposite fox, then drew each tonfa, reaching across his body, and swinging them up along his arms, mirroring Fox who'd settled into a ready stance. Now, Yang's feeling mirrored Pyrrha's, and she found herself actually biting a nail.
Down on the floor of the arena, Blanc was setting his plan. They'd deployed as he expected. Coco was their only ranged fighter, so they put her at the back and protection for her from the faunus and the big guy. Fox would be their aggressor. On his belt lay two of the devices he'd created for this fight; the rest were in the bag. He stretched out his aura, sensing Fox's as expected. This was how he overcame his blindness; he used his aura like a kind of sonar, sensing changes in objects moving inside it. Unfortunately for him, it was something that Blanc had mastered as well, and worse, Blanc could force Fox's aura away, which would blind him.
Yatsu would have to intervene or they'd lose Fox, and that would let him put something between Coco's minigun and himself. He expected Velvet to hang back and defend their gunner and team leader, but if she attacked he'd just use her as more cover. Blanc had Jaune's strategic mind as well as his aura, but had more training to refine it tactically.
"Begin!" came the shout over the loud speakers, and Fox charged forward. Blanc flooded the area of his arena with his own aura, pushing Fox's away, who then stumbled and stopped, confused and searching. Blanc closed his eyes, searching with his own aura and picking out where Yatsu and Velvet were as he heard the minigun spin up in the background.
His acceleration glyph flared in his mind, and everything slowed as his mind sped up. He stepped into Fox's space, quietly and below the noise of the now firing gun, using Fox as a shield, then threw the two discs on his waist out, past Yatsu and Velvet. Their glyphs, brown and simplistic, flashed and then large mounds of earth punched up through the arena floor between the minigun and him, cutting Coco off by use of earth dust.
Earth dust was relatively worthless. It was mostly used in construction and mining, but only good for manipulating large amounts of dirt in vague ways. You could excavate with it, which was it's usual use, or when constructing roads or bridges and dams you could move large piles of earth into position. The dirt was never very stable, so you had to do something with it relatively quickly or it would fall back down into mounds. But Blanc didn't need it to last; he only needed it to block the minigun while he took out the close-range fighters.
He worked over Fox quickly. A couple of tonfa-point gut-punches and an upward slash with the back of his right tonfa were enough to take his aura well into the red and out of the fight. Yatsuhashi responded with a leaping smash, his giant sword breaking up the arena floor where Blanc had stood, but by then Blanc had accelerated forward; his limbs using acceleration glyphs and closed in on Velvet. She was using her aura like as shield to block his strikes, quiet effectively though it was chipping away at her supply, when Yatsuhashi responded with a hard horizontal slash that Blanc felt with his aura.
Blanc dropped his left Tonfa, grabbed Velvet, and dropped back onto the floor, pulling her into Yatsuhashi's blow and dropping her aura enough to also disqualify her from continuing. Blanc easily rolled away from Yatsu's vertical slash, smashing into the ground but not with the power his leaping blow had, and Blanc was on his feet, tonfa back in his hand and rapid punching blows knocking the asian man's aura down steadily. Yatsu was just too slow; Blanc dodged every strike, never taking a hit, and responded with two or three hits like rabbit punches, but feeling more like jackhammer blows thanks to his glyph-accelerated strikes. He finished off the giant man when Yatsuhashi made another horizontal swing. Leaping up over the blade, he'd kicked forward into the man's jaw, knocking him down and reducing his aura enough to put him out of the fight.
By the time the earth walls fell enough to let Coco see the rest of the battlefield again, she stood alone against Blanc and understood why they called him Mr. Unstoppable. He was already darting across the floor at her as the mounds fell. She had the gun in position, firing, but he slid down along the ground, accelerating forward with glyphs. As she brought the gun down to hit him, he hit the mounds, slightly to the left of center, and flew up into the air as if he'd leapt from them, coming down with a twist so he was facing his opponent. It was over a few seconds later; she couldn't bring the gun to bare on him. He was inside her guard, and as the gun swung round to meet him, already striking her and blocking the barrels. She tried to shrink the gun back into her handbag but her aura was already too low by the time it finished.
The crowd was stunned, and deadly quiet. They'd expected a show, but this had been a massacre. The time on the clock hadn't reached a minute, and all four of the more experienced hunter trainees were defeated, without a single blow to Blanc's aura. Blanc slid his tonfa into his coat and reached out his hand, shaking Coco's, and she felt a jolt of familiarity with someone she'd really never met. "Do I know you from somewhere else?"
He smiled at her, a bit more of a smirk to be fair, and responded. "Maybe in another life. Good fight." She looked up at the scoreboard as her teammates joined her. "Hardly. You smashed through us like we weren't there." He scratched the back of his head, looking down. "I came prepared - brought a couple of toys." Fox looked angry. "You... you blinded me somehow."
Blanc looked sheepish, though Fox likely couldn't see it. "Yeah, sorry. I know how you see and I know how to stop it." That didn't seem to settle the man, but Yatsu put a hand on his shoulder. "Be calm, my friend. He bested us in an unfair fight with the weight of numbers stacked against him."
"How about he take me on without blinding me."
Yatsu looked ready to take offense at his friend, but Blanc readily accepted. "Sure, I wouldn't mind a friendly rematch. I'll even promise to not flood the arena with my own aura." It was enough to settle the man down. Velvet snapped a picture of him. The crowd opened up with screams and applause, and it was announced that Blanc was the victor.
Unfortunately for him, that is when he noticed the cameras, the video announcers, and the news crews. "Shit." As the reporters streamed out onto the field, he ran, yelling back at them an apology. He grabbed his bag, ran into the locker rooms, and disappeared.
Yang felt a hand on her shoulder. "I think you better go see him, don't you?" She looked up at Jaune and smiled, getting up and leaving to find her lover. The stadium started to empty, slowly, but no one tried to follow her into the locker rooms. Blanc, however wasn't there. She had no idea how he got out, but when she called him on his scroll, he was almost to his room.
"Hey, you slipped out pretty fast."
"Yeah, I kind of went through the wall and ran here. Want to come over? I'll be heading out with Jaune and Pyrrha tomorrow. I'd like to see you before we go." He was grinning.
"Are you sure you don't want to give any interviews? I bet you could even get to see Lisa Lavender!" She needled him. "Ah shit, I should have just thrown the match. My stupid fucking Schnee pride is going to be the end of us all." It'd been the wrong thing to say.
"Come on babe, it'll be okay. I'll be right over."
As it turned out, she wasn't. First she was stopped by her teammates, then JNPR, and then outside the arena, lots of disappointed 'Mr. Unstoppable' fans who'd hopped to see their new hero, many of whom were classmates and knew she was his girlfriend. In the end, it was Fox who helped her out, intimidating a path for her with his stare alone. "Um, thanks!"
"Just tell that man of yours that next time, he won't be so lucky." She didn't know how to respond, so she waved and left. Remarkably, he waved back, though she didn't see it.
JNPR Dorm, after Blanc's semester final
Jaune was helping Pyrrha with closing her luggage, having already packed for his trip. They'd be going to his home first, so he was packing lighter than she, but in truth she also had a lot of other things he just didn't need. That meant more bags, and stuffing them more. Jaune was surprised at how much she'd accumulated.
They were both taking their armor. Blanc would be joining them, and Jaune wanted to show it off. He couldn't explain Blanc's relationship, of course, but like any father, he had pride in the work of his children, and Blanc had made these for Pyrrha and him specifically. They were, beyond being functional, works of art, and the glyphs were created by hand. Because of their size, both would be wearing them on the trip. They'd chartered a bullhead rather than taking commercial passage, both because the town where Jaune's family resided wasn't on too many commercial routes and because they needed the extra room for their armor and bags. Pyrrha was taking some things back to Mistral for a traditional solstice festival, as gifts, and Jaune would be picking some up at home. Unfortunately, Blanc would be leaving them and going to Patch to spend the rest of his break with Yang and her family.
Both Pyrrha and Jaune were out of sorts; Pyrrha was nervous about meeting Jaune's family, especially because all of his sisters would be there, and some of their children, and apparently she was the only girl Jaune had ever brought to meet them. Jaune was equally nervous, as well as excited. He couldn't wait to introduce them, though the idea of what his sisters might put them through was a bit unnerving.
Though they'd been invited, Nora and Ren had decided to stay at Beacon over the break, more for the time alone than anything else. Both couples had been intimate, and trying to schedule that sort of thing had been painfully awkward. Jaune's memory of coming back and finding Nora pinned against a wall while Ren was wrapped around her from behind had seared into both his and Pyrrha's memories, though his lover laughed at it. And that time when Nora had walked in while Pyrrha rode him, and begun to cheer them on and offer tips was mortifying. Thankfully Ren had pulled her out of the room, but it had also killed the mood, though the couple laughed about it now.
Pyrrha seemed to fret about nervously; picking something up, then setting it down and picking up something else. "Pyrrha, it's going to be okay. They'll love you!"
"How can you possibly know that?!" she replied, snapping at him. It hurt him a bit, but he stepped to her and took her into his arms. "Because I love you." She smiled at him, and then kissed him, taking comfort from his arms and his expression of love.
Blanc's Room
She pushed him against the door, turning him toward her just as he shut it behind her. No words were spoken before she claimed his mouth. His hands slipped into her voluminous hair, pulling her in and welcoming her, as her hands slid down his arms to his chest, then to his abdomen, around to his back and then his ass, pulling his groin into her own.
He pushed back against her, reaching down from her hair to her ass and lifting her so that she could wrap her legs around him, grinding upon his hardened member. The two hunters shuddered with the feel of it, and Blanc wasted no time, walking her back into his bedroom and throwing her down onto the mattress. She laughed, sitting back up and reaching for him. She grabbed his belt, pulling him to the bed, and began to unbuckle it. "Not going to stop me?"
He smiled at her, taking her hands away from the buckle, and then undoing it himself. "Not tonight. Tonight, I'm yours."
This took me a while to get done, and in the end I had to give up on trying to do the fights for RWBY and JNPR. I hope you're not disappointed, but those are the breaks.
I considered writing out the rest of the sex scene here; even planned it out. A bit of it, a hint so to speak, works well with this story I think, but I don't want to be explicit and just turn this into smut. I enjoy smut as well as any other person, and I write it decently I'm told, but I don't want that for this story. I reserve the right to change my mind.
The next arc begins in the next chapter, and there I'll have a lot more freedom, and I'll have a lot more ways to do it wrong. I've hinted at some things in previous chapters and not really dealt with them. I'm not sure if I'll deal with them here, but I have to at some point, soon, or the story gets a bit absurd.