A/N: I'm not dead just easily distracted.

DISCLAIMER:

PIXELKIND: ...so you're telling me all we have to do is unite the four Relics, summon the Brothers of Light and Darkness, and just ask them to give me the rights to RWBY and Harry Potter?

OZPIN: well, yes, but there's even odds of them also killing literally everyone. Again.

PIXELKIND: that is a risk I'm willing to take

[ACT 2]: Dead Man Talking

[CHAPTER 14]: Lost In The Sauce

[ALTERNATIVELY]: In Which the Coolest Upperclassmen Ever Make Their Presence Known

"Ladies and gentlemen," began Harry, "today is a day for celebration. Not just for us, but also for our sister Team RRVN"

Weiss eyed him dubiously. "I don't think-"

Harry continued talking. "My fellow team leader and I have prepared a variety of activities to celebrate getting out of Mega Detention and the end of the holidays."

Ruby grinned from next to him and dropped the massive binder in her arms onto the lunch table. Weiss sighed and pulled it towards herself.

"Alright, lets see what you've got. 3-legged races, paintball fight, Smash tournament, food fight-" She looked up at Harry. "You want to celebrate getting out of detention with Goodwitch… by starting a food fight?"

He shrugged. "It's just an option. Also its less starting the food fight and more just participating in it."

"Well, who would end up starting it?"

Harry shrugged, flicking his wand behind his back. "I dunno…"

At that moment, a resounding crash of metal rang out from directly behind them, followed by a wet splatter.

"Probably Winchester, though."

Yang slowly reached up to touch her hair. Her eyes flared red as she turned to face the now prostrate Cardin. "You…," she hissed violently. "You got beans in my hair."

He glared back at her, oblivious to his impending doom. "You got your hair in my beans!"

Yang's hair caught fire.

Harry pointed his weapon upwards as his foe lounged upon the wreckage of the room, piled high in a twisted monument to chaos. "You… you monster! We were supposed to be team leader buddies!"

Ruby let out a cold, high laugh. "You poor fool, you should have seen this betrayal coming for miles. It was almost too easy."

He glared and clenched his fist, squirting ketchup across a nearby lunch table. "Whoops- I mean, JUSTICE SHALL BE SWIFT! JUSTICE SHALL BE PAINFUL! AND IT SHALL BE DELICIOUS!"

Ruby smirked and rose to her feet. "The Queens-Plus-Ren of the Castle will not fall easily. BATTLE FORMATIONS!"

Weiss swiped a baguette off a nearby tray and brandished it in the air. "DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR!"

Nora casually picked up a watermelon in each hand. "Don't worry, we provide both!"

Yang shoved her fists straight into a pair of roast chickens and smacked them together with a sickeningly wet slap. "Bring it on."

Ren sighed and pulled… a pair of leeks? Out of his sleeves? Why did he- no, best not question it, that way lay the road to madness.

Blake was taking a page from Harry's book and hefted an entire raw tuna.

Pyrrha grabbed a serving platter and a swordfish.

There was a moment of silence as the tension between sides rose. Harry opened his mouth to shout the order to charge, and-

A lunch table crashed into the middle of the battlefield, bouncing twice before screeching to a halt on the far side of the room. A voice rang out across the room, filled with sadistic glee.

"PREPARE FOR TROUBLE," shouted Coco Adel from atop an even higher twisted monument to chaos.

"Make it… quadruple?" mumbled Velvet Scarlatina from her position at the base of the pile of tables.

"To protect the world from devastation!" intoned Yatsuhashi Daichi, brandishing a glorious amalgamation of baguettes and cheese in the shape of a greatsword and tied together with sausage links.

Fox Alistair sighed and stuck his arms through a stack of cheese wheels. "Yeah, yeah, we're Team CFVY, fight us already."

Coco groaned and massaged her forehead. "Damnit Fox, we had a thing going and you ruined it."

He frowned and pointed at her accusingly. "It was an anime reference. I'm blind. That's just insensitive!"

She waved him off flippantly. "Anyways, we're here to see what you got. Bring it on, Freshmen!"

Harry made eye contact with Ruby. "Truce?"

She nodded. "Truce."

Harry grinned and levelled his ketchup bottle at Coco. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's get this bread."

Neptune frowned curiously as he followed his friend across the Beacon grounds. "...so how cool are these guys? As cool as me? Cooler?"

Sun tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I mean… they're not cool in the conventional sense at all, but they're super chill. They'd fit right in back in Vacuo."

Neptune tilted his head. "You know, I can never tell if that's supposed to be an insult."

"Depends who you ask," Sun quipped as he threw open the cafeteria doors.

Chaos.

The twisted wreckage of what used to be a pile of lunch tables was strewn across the floor, along with what looked to be the entire menu. A single tower dominated the center of the room, where four upperclassmen armed with food were trying to subdue… was that Pyrrha Nikos? Yeah. With a swordfish and serving tray in place of sword and shield.

Neptune nodded slowly. "I, uh, see what you mean."

"Hey, look, Sun brought backup! C'mon, we're regrouping! Accio backup!"

Sun and Neptune found themselves sliding across the room to where Harry and some redhead midget's teams were hunkering down behind an overturned table. A haphazardly crafted staff made of two baguettes jammed into a cheese wheel was thrust into the Vacuoan's hands.

Sun gave his new weapon an experimental twirl. "Alright, what's the game plan?"

"Well, under my leadership we got creamed, so…" Harry turned to his diminutive companion and saluted dramatically. "Your orders, Commander Ruby?"

She frowned. "What do you guys usually do, then?"

Harry, Weiss, Yang, and Blake looked at each other for a moment, before turning back. "Rush in and hit the enemy?"

Sun and Neptune nodded. "Yeah, that sounds right."

Ruby groaned and massaged her forehead. "The Remedial Self-Preservation classes are starting to make a lot of sense now… Let's see… Their teamwork is better than ours, so we're aiming for divide and conquer. I don't know how long Pyrrha can last so we need to take pressure off her. I think we focus on Coco, followed by Fox, then Velvet, then, uh, the big sword guy? We'll leave Pyrrha on Fox, so we need to lock down the other two… Harry on Sword guy, Yang on Velvet? Everyone else, focus on Coco unless they need help. Got that?"

The makeshift army nodded as one. Ruby hopped onto the table they were hiding behind and pointed towards the battle with Croissant Rose. "Then let's GO!"

Harry grinned and vaulted over their barricade, snagging a sausage chain to complement his ketchup bottle. He flicked it out, wrapping tightly around the center of the giant man's equally giant cheese sword and pulling it back. A squirt from the ketchup bottle had the thick red condiment splashing towards his enemy's eyes, but it was blocked by the hilt of the glorious two-handed abomination of a weapon.

The man's eyes settled on Harry as he smoothly untangled his blade from the sausages in a single motion. "So you are my opponent, yes? You should know the name of the man who will destroy you. I am Yatsuhashi Daichi of Team CFVY."

Harry grinned and pulled his makeshift whip back. "I am Harry Potter of Team PWBL, and it is you who will taste defeat!"

"Good one," shouted Yang as she hammered her chicken fists against… Velvet's bare arms? Was that allowed in a food fight? Ah, wait, she'd wrapped string cheese around her hands and arms to make an improvised dairy cestus. All was well.

Yatsuhashi grimaced at the repeated wet thwacking sounds but brandished his weapon all the same. "Then let us begin."

The bread-and-cheese approximation of a greatsword whipped forward at a frankly surprising speed, forcing Harry to dance backwards to avoid it. He gave a retaliatory flick of his sausage whip to his opponent's face, who responded by ducking under the attack and smoothly transitioning into what promised to be a devastating uppercut.

It was at this point Harry realized you can't really block a giant sword with a sausage chain or a bottle of ketchup.

Thinking quickly, he tossed the latter into the trajectory of the attack and leapt onto the lunch table behind him.

The bottle was pulverized by the blow, splattering ketchup across the ceiling and also Yatsuhashi. While the giant paused to clean the condiment from his eyes, Harry frantically scanned his locale for anything still shaped like a sword.

No? Oh well. Plan B it was. Harry grabbed his sausage chain with his other hand, pulling it taut.

Yatsuhashi recovered and glared at the smirking wizard.

"It's over Yatsuhashi," Harry taunted. "I have the high ground!"

A wry grin spread across the man's face as he dropped into a different stance. "You underestimate my power."

And then he crushed the table with his giant cheese sword, catapulting Harry into the air.

That was okay. He could work with that.

The giant launched another thrusting attack at him, taking advantage of his inability to dodge midair. Harry twisted his body, looping the sausage chain around the tip of the sword and pulling it back as he fell down on the other side of his opponent.

Yatsuhashi quickly reversed his grip and spun around, his second jab being redirected by the still attached sausages.

Harry eyed the giant cheese sword that had just punched a hole in the cafeteria floor next to his head and took a moment to reconsider his life choices.

Fortunately for the continuation of his lifespan, the power went out at that particular moment.

"What just…"

A pink flash of light drew everyone's eyes to the far wall, where a brightly sparking Nora was holding a fork stuck in a toaster. She blinked. "What? Pyrrha gets a metal tray as a shield but I'm not allowed to put forks in toasters?"

Harry tilted his head. "She makes a fair point."

Nora picked up Melonhild and pointed it at him. "THANK YOU!"

And suddenly, Harry was in the middle of being suplexed, Coco Adel was splattered red and flying through a broken hole in the roof, and Yang's legs were sticking out from between two vending machines.

What?

Right, everyone has weird superpowers. Guess they can't all be as obvious as super speed or magic runes or electricity steroids.

Not that his head cared all that much when it was smashed into the ground. Gotta love Aura, man. Saves you from concussions.

"Semblances," he muttered weakly as his opponent left to take on Nora. "They're using their semblances. Let's use ours."

Neptune frowned over at his prostrate body. "You already said that."

He did? "Then this Yatsuhashi guy has a weird one."

Wait, if semblances were allowed… Accio Baguette!

The rigid bread slapped into his hand, and he jumped to his feet. He brandished his weapon in the air. "WE RIDE TO VALHALLA!"

The vaguely amused voice of Fox Alistair echoed in his head. "Sorry, kid. It's over."

Something yellow flashed in the corner of his eyes, and then everything went black.

The dim blue light from the communications hologram reflected in the gears above Ozpin's tower office, giving the room a dark, cold ambience.

"What do you plan to do about the Mountain Glenn situation? It's not often we have time to interrogate a criminal like Torchwick before he breaks out… I do hope you're doing something about it, Oz."

Ozpin rolled his eyes. "James, I've been doing this for quite a few years longer than you have. I have a team in mind."

"A team? A single team? Four student Huntsmen versus Oum knows how many White Fang?"

Ozpin sighed and put down his coffee cup. "I'm not an idiot. They're a wonderful team who have proven themselves in a real world situation. I have no doubts that they can complete this mission successfully. They're resourceful, they're focused, and most importantly of all-"

His scroll beeped. He pulled it out and sighed again. "...they just got in a food fight. I'll be right back, I have to make sure Glynda doesn't expel them."

Harry was woken from his wonderful nap by the curious sensation of being held upside-down by his ankles and shaken vigorously. He slowly opened his eyes to see… a completely clean and normal cafeteria? Was that whole mess some bizarre fever dream?

Wait, no, Weiss was covered in pizza sauce and Professor Goodwitch was looking at him funny.

"Winchester started it."

Weiss frowned. "What he means to say is, 'I started it by tripping Winchester into Yang'."

Goodwitch's eyebrow rose. Harry looked at his teammate in betrayal. "What did I do to you, Weiss? Is this about Rufus? Rufus is great."

Weiss glared at him. "YOU BROUGHT AN ANIMAL INTO OUR DORM AND DIDN'T EVEN TELL ANYONE!"

"It's not like he's taking up any space."

"YOU INSTALLED A TERRARIUM IN THE WALL! THAT VIOLATES AT LEAST FOUR SEPARATE SECTIONS OF THE RULES!"

He waved his arm flippantly, still upside-down. "Eh, it's not harming anyone and I can put it back to how it was at literally any time."

Weiss sighed and massaged her forehead. "I'm done. I'm done with him. I don't know if I'll even survive a year like this."

Goodwitch frowned but turned to Team CFVY. "And you bunch! What were you thinking?"

Coco blinked lazily, still trying to straighten her coat. "Something like, 'Lets see what these freshmen got', actually." She pointed at Nora. "I like this one's spunk."

Nora pumped her fist victoriously from her position embedded in the wall.

Goodwitch sighed. "Have you learned anything from this, by any chance?"

Harry raised his hand. "Team CFVY are a bunch of badasses and you shouldn't try to fight them?"

She sighed and dropped him. On his head.

Jaune was very surprised to wake up alive on the floor of a cave. If the fall hadn't done him in, the Grimm surely should have.

Oh. He hadn't even lost consciousness in the first place. And all his limbs were intact. And he was glowing.

He drew Crocea Mors and stared in wonder as a shimmering golden glow enveloped the sword.

"Is this that Aura stuff? I'm a magical glow stick now? Cool."

He pointed his sword at the nearest Grimm, which was another one of those drill bird abominations. He'll call them… Diggles. Suitably insulting for a stupid bird thing that should never have existed in the first place.

"Hey, Diggle!"

The Grimm's malevolent red eyes turned their infinitely wrathful gaze upon him.

He glared back. "Yeah, you. You wanna fight? Not gonna lie, I'm basically a badass at this point."

It pressed its ridiculous drill beak to the ground and tunneled its way downwards.

He snorted. "Heh. That's what I thought. Frickin nerd."

And then it erupted from the ground directly in front of him, screaming it's awful Diggle war cry.

Jaune really missed home.

[OMAKE #7] MageTide Part 2: A Warmaiden's Banner Is Meant To Fly

You eye your employer carefully as the two of you carefully pick your way through the forest. Over the past two days you've traveled together, you've come to the unfortunate realization that you aren't particularly meant to get out of this alive.

Throckmorton Schnee doesn't seem to want you all that dead, of course. He simply doesn't expect you to survive an encounter with "The Crimson Widow." Over the past two days you've discovered he is ruthlessly pragmatic, and likely wouldn't let such a little thing as a 100% employee mortality rate stop him from applying his craft to the best of his ability.

While your job description may be 'hired protection', your role in the operation is closer to 'bait' than anything else.

But then again, you aren't just any old brainless muscle; You are Noir Arc, and you have been trained by the best swordmasters in Mistral. Your blades are forged from the finest of steel, and you possess a Semblance that has been described to be a godsend in the endless battle against the dark tides of Grimm.

You also possess a mentality that has been described as somewhere between suicidal and outright insane, but that's neither here nor there. You are, as they say, here for a good time rather than a long time.

Throckmorton holds up his hand, indicating that he has located the Dust vein. Which turns out to have been a subtle way of describing a crystal two feet taller than you jutting out of the ground like some sort of inexplicably mineral shrubbery. There is likely even more underground, but the two of you have neither the time nor ability to transport quite that much of the valuable resource.

The crystal sits at the edge of a heavily webbed clearing. You reach out a hand, tugging on a nearby stand and watching the soft blue of your Aura sizzle against it. Your quarry is a Boneweaver of the Steelspun variety, known for their webs of razor-sharp threads. The Grimm is likely somewhere between 200 and 300 years old, judging from the strength and volume of the silk.

You step into the clearing, bones crunching under your feet. To suffer defeat at the claws of a Boneweaver such as this is to suffer a fate worse than death; similar to their non-demonic counterparts, they wrap their defeated prey in their "silk." The difference is that the Grimm do not eat; they simply bask in the fear their victims feel as they die a death of a thousand cuts.

You turn your head, issuing instructions to Throckmorton. "Begin once I have its attention, but pack it as you go in case I'm forced to call retreat."

He nods, fully expecting you to die before you get the chance.

The Crimson Widow emerges from the ground, bones and dirt cascading from the arachnoid behemoth. Its body is almost completely covered in thick bone plating, a testament to its age.

You remove the Arc Standard from your back and plant it in the center of the clearing.

The flag unfurls, and your soul sings.

This is your Semblance: "Light of Victory." Where your banner flies, those who consider it theirs are blessed with increased Aura reserves and regeneration.

With a precise pulse of Aura, the Blast Dust sheathed with your sabers ignites, flinging the simple steel blades into your waiting hands.

Your name is Noir Arc, and you've been hired to slay an Ancient Grimm. Although this is the first time you've faced such a creature, you believe yourself to be up to the task. You whip your twin sabers through the air experimentally; they are perfectly balanced, as always. As the chitinous demon approaches, you grow increasingly sure your story has only just begun.

The telltale blue shimmer of your Aura reaching maximum capacity brings a smirk to your face. Your name is Noir Arc, and you're about to put your money where your mouth is.

A/N: So Team CFVY crashes the food fight, Ozpin got the Mtn Glenn info out of Torchwick before he broke out, Jaune's aura does actually work and now he has to actually fight a Grimm Diggle.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind y'all that the MageTide omake series is canon to NGA and will eventually be relevant to the plot in ways that would be ruined if I actually explained it, so if you skipped it last chapter I recommend going back and giving it a look.

Did something make you laugh? cry? throw your laptop across your room? Did I do anything particularly well, or is there anything you think I need to improve on? Let me know in the reviews! A key aspect of improving skills is feedback, and that's what reviews are there for!

Thanks for reading!