Here it is… another chapter!
With this chapter, the tiny scenes of Yun's past life will end. You all know what happens on Excerpt 17.
Enjoy!
(Discord server link: disc /3eSt6QRQ, also on profile. Come to chat :P )
Excerpt 16: Sunset
It was summer break, and I was just… sitting at the bank of a river (presumably), and listening to a lecture about different carbon isotopes. I might have downloaded a couple of viruses onto our school computers, but the software was probably wiped at the end of the day anyways to clear the cache and cleanse all of the downloads that students make with it.
There were only so many computers around, and most of them were hogged by the computer science department.
I couldn't really work, considering that I was blind and no self respecting company would hire a first year college student as anything but a janitor.
The fast food industry was also out of the question. I had tried cooking before, and although I understood the theory, I nearly broke every bowl in the communal kitchens when I had tried to make dumplings.
So for now, I was content to live on as little resources as possible. I was leeching off of the outlets on the college campus, slowly munching off stale bread, and somehow skimping by on water.
I felt like a stiff breeze could knock me over, but it wasn't that bad. I was still alive, and my brain was working.
For now, I faced the setting sun. My eyes were "open", and the orbs stung in the wind. The sting and the instinct of closing my eyes were a painful reminder of my inadequacy and a dream of what could have been.
I have heard news outlets about support for the disabled, and all that propaganda, but the truth is, nobody really expects us to be able to do anything.
There was another deaf kid that only lasted for about four days in college before backing out. The pressure was too much, and despite his rich background, he could only make it into the same college that I, a nobody from the backwater woods, could succeed in applying to.
Now that I looked forward (comedy, haha), I really didn't know how I was going to find a job.
No matter how well I did in school, as long as I wasn't a total genius like Beethoven or Hawking, I wasn't going to get hired.
And I was smart. Just not… genius level smart.
I was just a product of hard work. The countless hours of dedication me, a blind boy with nothing better to do than listen to the same books all day, practice tracing books to learn how to read, and spending every single waking hour either trying to learn or taking brief breaks to listen to the (rather expensive) audio recordings of people reading novels.
"The future was dark for me." I realized, all of my life's efforts desperately trying to convince me that I wasn't going to fail, but I just knew one thing.
If it came up to hiring a normal engineer or somebody that was blind, no matter how smart…
I wasn't the one getting picked.
Everything felt cold for a second. The sun must have set, and all that I could hear was the slow, sluggish beat of my heart, the trickle of breath through my slightly clogged nose, and a single droplet of water falling from my cheek and onto my frayed pants.
How… odd. It wasn't raining.
…
…
"It's going to be fine, Yun!"
"It's definitely not!" I shouted, internally and externally screaming.
"It's just a tournament." Pyrrha said, putting a hand up tentatively.
"Yeah, sure! Just a tournament! My first round is a god damn four versus one! Why? Why did I sign up?"
"Relax!" Nora said, slinging an arm across my shoulder while I quivered from the unexpected contact, nerves absolutely frayed. "You can do it! You beat Pyrrha, and Pyrrha beat CRDL without a cinch!"
Pyrrha's now face sported a rather sour look, and she stopped trying to calm my hyperventilating self down, instead turning to polish her sword (or something)
"But I lost to Weiss, who can't take on a whole team on her own!" I said, my logic trying to work against my own chances of victory.
Honestly, I was pretty screwed.
Jaune just sighed. "If you had a team, I'm pretty sure you could win the first round, at least. But four on one really is a little rough."
I just nodded mutely.
…
The stands were deafeningly loud to Blake's sensitive ears. Her bow was honestly doing nothing about the noise.
"Maybe I should get earplugs."
"Yun's fighting four people by himself?" Ruby said, half surprised and half worried.
Yang just grinned and nodded. "If he can beat me, he can handle a couple of wimps from Vacuo."
"Awfully confident in him, aren't you?" Weiss said, turning her nose to the air.
"If he beat me, he's probably going to pull some annoying tricks out to win this match too."
"So you're trying to assure yourself by believing in the person that beat you, so you don't seem as bad." Blake said tranquilly, not at all caught up in the excitement the frenzied crowd as currently in.
Apparently Professor Port was also excited about this matchup, because his tone was even more boisterous than usual. Blake's ears wished they were somewhere else now, but she actually wanted to see how the match would go. Even if, outwardly, she was just staring forward in the general direction of the arena with a rather vacant expression.
"On one side we have Beacon's team Yun! The only one person team in the last decade of Beacon's history! How will the champion of the Mistral Regionals that emerged during the heart pounding battle with the Invincible Girl two years ago fare against the lovely ladies on the other side?"
Port paused to take a breath as Oobleck took over the commentary while the crowd cheered, some people holding up blurry pictures of Yun's cloaked and masked figure (no doubt taken via scroll) in support.
"On the other side, we have team NDGO, huntresses from the venerable Shade Academy. They've certainly be a crowd favorite according to the polls, but will their beauty be matched by their skill? Let's find out… in this match.
The roulettes had stopped behind team NDGO, and a lush jungle had emerged behind the huntresses in training. With her enhanced, faunus vision, Blake zoomed in on Yun's eyes flitting to and fro, most likely considering the most advantageous location to fight in.
Behind Yun, a barren desert with a couple of small rock formations rose, an artificial sandstorm starting up in the biome and sending sand all over the arena.
Blake narrowed her eyes as the girls subtly widened out to form a line before the jungle. They, too, knew that Yun couldn't be allowed in the jungle. If so, they would lose their advantage.
"What will you do now, Yun?" Blake thought, eyes narrowing and focusing on Yun's figure once more.
…
This was my first match in the Vytal festival.
"Alright, Yun. It's make or break time. Either you win this and get a literal million lien, or lose and get stuck being a huntsman for the rest of your life."
Memories of previous college exams flashed through my mind, the dark scene (since there were no images associated with that nameless feeling of existential dread) sending shivers down my spine, even when the struggles occurred (literally) a lifetime ago.
We stepped onto the completely flat platform. I faced off with four other girls.
Their weapons made no sense, as always. One girl carried a golden stave with a green gem on it, another was carrying some sort of cutlass, another one that used a sword with some another gem on it (which was probably dust), and the last one that held just knives.
I drew my sword, now terribly unsure that I could even beat them.
The announcer said something, but I didn't hear it (I was learning to kind of drown out Professor Port's voice anyways), and I instead focused on who to take down first.
"Okay, so the easy mark is probably stave girl. There aren't any edges on the spear thing, just a single point. I can grab the point when she goes for the stab. The cutlass wielding one is probably the worst opponent, because I don't know what kind of mechashift sorcery that thing does. Maybe I could-"
"And begin!" the announcer shouted.
The girls all ran at me, rather ferociously. I was jerked from my thoughts suddenly to reveal that behind the girls was a dense, thick jungle. I chanced a look behind me and saw a flat desert, with a couple of rocks on it for cover.
"I am definitely not fighting in that open area."
My opponents were five meters away now.
Panicking, I threw my sword at them and ran for the trees.
My blade spun through the air, casting the golden sunlight to be reflected off of its silver blade. The incomprehensible act of throwing away your only weapon made the arena freeze.
All was silent as the only sound in the arena (except for the obnoxious battle music) was the pattering of footsteps as I hastily ran into the trees.
The girls stared at the sword until it imbedded itself into the concrete between the jungle and the desert.
"Well, Yun goes swinging into the match, using a bold move to distract his opponents while he runs into favorable terrain!"
Professor Oobleck tried to salvage the situation, spouting out the words like bullets from a machine gun.
The arena unfroze, and my opponents ran into the jungle as I watched from a treetop, now slightly more relaxed. My hands ached, my practice in making holes in wood by hitting it really hard with my fingers aiding me in creating handholds.
Fighting in dense forests and low visibility conditions? The jungle terrain was made for me.
The four huntresses in training slowly approached the tree line, any weapons held up defensively. The cutlass wielding girl had transformed her weapon into a crossbow, and was pointing it up at anything that might have moved.
I slowly slid down a particularly smooth tree, and with years of experience of sneaking around Xin, I rolled into the underbrush. I channeled Chi into my fingers, waiting to strike.
I could hear a whispered conversation, and closed my eyes to concentrate.
"—we splitting up?"
"How else are we going to find him?"
"We have to end the match somehow."
"Let's go in partner groups, just in case."
So I've turned the situation into a two against one situation. Not bad.
I slid out of the underbrush and climbed another tree with a Chi-assisted leap to see what they were up to. My dark robes and white hair were actually useful for once, my robes blending in with the shadows and my white hair above the tree line blending in with the general white color scheme of the arena stands.
"There." I thought, spotting golden hair through the branches. The other one with her was the one with violet hair and the crossbow sword.
I risked a leap, and landed onto a different tree.
"I have to gain the momentum somehow." I thought, looking down at my empty scabbard.
Oh, wait. I could throw that.
I took the wooden scabbard tipped with a bit of metal, poured it to the brim with chi, and aimed it like a javelin.
The projectile, aided by gravity, streaked towards the crossbow-sword wielder's head.
A cursory glance upwards by the blonde caused them to notice the rogue projectile. An instinctual deflection occurred, and they looked up in the treeline, looking for the threat.
"He's over-"
It was already too late. I got the girl in a chokehold, rapidly pressing pressure points on her throat to silence her, before kicking the back of her knees to make her legs crumple. Her weapon fell to the ground, and I had to kick her forward into her partner's spear thrust to avoid it, before using the girl's back as a surface to leap off of, hiding back behind a tree stump again.
"Nebula!" the blonde shouted, aborting her attack and catching said girl in her arms.
Nebula, which was apparently the name of the girl I had just mugged of a weapon, tried in vain to speak, but only air came out of her mouth as her tongue locked up. An aura flare later, and the healing energy quickly corrected the irregularities caused by Chi.
Her eyes then widened as she began to shout "Behind y-"
I had brained her teammate with the crossbow, having no idea how to shift it into sword form.
The hefty blow caused a green ripple to emanate from the point of contact as the girl stumbled away. Nebula, unfortunately, recovered and went on the offensive, picking up her teammate's fallen weapon and raising it for a clumsy stab.
"Dew! Call the others!" She shouted, using the butt of the spear to try and bludgeon me with it as I blocked the blow with her crossbow, took advantage of her nonexistent guard of her abdomen (both her arms were up in the air, trying to force the end of the stave down on my head) and kicked her straight in the gut.
She was actually blown back by the kick, before slumping down after hitting a tree. I grabbed her arm and sent a pulse of offensive Chi through her, before the odd effect of her sky blue aura flaring and scattering into tiny shards of light happened.
A buzzer sounded, and I threw away her crossbow into the woods, grabbed the fallen spear/staff/ornament (seriously, the gem was almost as big as my hand), and retreated into the woods.
The remainder of her team chose this moment to break through the dense overgrowth and discover the unconscious body of their teammate, before casting a look at each other, sensing the nervousness in each other, and then form a circle, weapons pointing outward. The blonde girl had a stick instead of a spear this time, so the formation was a little less intimidating.
Still, I couldn't handle whatever sorcery their weapons had (especially if they were imbued with special properties).
I looked at the gem on the golden stave that was probably dust, and sighed. Every time I tried using dust in the beacon labs after school, it exploded. The ice dust types coated the hand that I was touching the crystal with in ice, while the wind dust gave me a whole new hairstyle and made papers swirl around in the room.
But come to think of it, don't I just need something like an explosion?
I grabbed the crystal in the middle of the spear and began to channel my Chi through it. The green gem, presumably wind dust, began glowing ominously.
I pressed on, channeling chi on my face to protect it(because if the stone rocketed out of its enclosure on the staff, it would undoubtedly hit me in the face and might even cave in my skull). Eventually, the stone reached "maximum capacity", and with closed eyes, I sent one last wild wave of Chi into the staff before throwing it at the three girls.
The golden staff began spewing out visible gusts of wind, the jungle trees and exotic plants quivering in the air with the intense gales. The wind acted as a propellant, spinning the staff as it soared through the air, and like a javelin-drill hybrid, sank into the dirt with a neat thunk right next to it's owner's feet.
Said owner shrieked and jumped back in surprise as the other two turned to look at the disturbance.
Now.
I plunged my hand into the dirt and threw a cloud of earth into the air, the winds still whipping around the girls forming a vortex into which the dirt was sucked in, before being rotated rapidly within the tiny tornado. The particles buffeted the very expensive dresses they were wearing (And didn't they come from a desert? How was wearing such a bulky dress even practical?), causing a distraction.
Snapping a branch off of a nearby tree, I took a leaf from Xin's book and used one of his staff tricks: stab the enemy.
Unfortunately, by approaching the vortex, with my also admittedly baggy clothes, I was also dragged into it.
Not good.
With a sigh, I planned a Chi burst (that name for the technique sounded awfully like something out of a manga or comic book, now that I thought about it), and producing a strong gust of wind on my own, I neutralized the winds of the staff, sending the momentum outwards instead of around.
Being the epicenter of the new gusts of wind, I was kept in place. The girls, however, were sent flying, the leftover winds emanating from the dust causing them to careen wildly, slamming into trees and falling into the plant life in an unsightly manner.
Three buzzers sounded sequencialaly.
"And with that, the match is finished."
I had… won?
I shrugged, taking a couple of deep breaths to calm down, before picking up my sword (still embedded in the concrete near the center of the arena), before waiting to be levitated down into the preparation rooms that happened to be situated below the arena.
Taking the time to admire the architecture and engineering prowess needed to build this floating fortress, I lay prone in the center of the arena, the fact that millions of people were watching my actions not registering in my mind.
After all, I had won against four people! I wasn't dead! And I was closer to the prize money than ever before!
The sky really was blue today, and the sun moved west just a little bit, signaling that noon had arrived.
…
"He clearly is popular among the audience, for some reason." Mercury said, looking at the day's poll results for "most popular Vytal Festival contestant".
"And his fall will be all the more satisfying." Cinder said.
"Hey, boss? I don't think he's actually that easy to take down. No cameras caught how he fought in that jungle biome, and he took out one huntress the instant she found him-" Mercury began.
"What are you saying?" Cinder said, narrowing her dangerous, yellow eyes. A spark of flame flew from the corner of her eyes, trailed along her left eyebrow, and then flew into the air, quickly sizzling off. The display of powers beyond understanding made Mercury gulp nervously.
"Are you saying that you, Mercury Black, son of the deadliest assassin in Mistral, can't beat this… ruffian? If so… you aren't a very worthwhile investment."
"O-okay, boss, whatever you say." The grey haired assassin said.
"Look at this clip." Cinder said, holding out footage from a hacked security camera. On it, Yun's face was comically in shock, eyes wide and filled with confusion as he threw his sword at his advancing foes.
"You will defeat him in the next round." Cinder said, as the heat in the room rose by a couple of degrees. "Or else, we just might relieve you of your legs, since if you fail, you won't be needing them anymore."
Mercury nodded stiffly.
AN
Poor Mercury. He should've been a dentist.
All things aside, I'm really disappointed with Roosterteeth's end of volume stuff. Like somebody on my discord server said, RT's probably going to say "Summer Rose is in the spirit realm" or some more bull like that if they want to keep the ball rolling in the next volume.
Seriously, since when did team RWBY-
Oh, wait. No spoilers.
Well, see you in the next chapter!