AN:

Chapter Title: Not so fun trip
Arc 1: Regular People Chapters

"Hold on Ruby, take a moment and breathe what happened?" I asked, setting my Oud down after the culture class of using the eastern instrument to play a song from ancient solitas.

"Weiss got into an argument with me about leadership and what we should be doing first and it kind of ended in me blowing up at her- I- didn't mean to! I just was so sick of her thinking she was better than me..." Yang was at her sister's side pretty much immediately.

"Where did you last see Ms. Schnee heading?" Manus asked standing very straight and looking like he might take on the world if he had to.

"She stormed away after I yelled at her in the forest, I went around asking the other teams near ours but no one has seen her." The cloaked girl sounded a lot more worried than you'd think she might after having just went off at Weiss. "I'm worried she might have been attacked by Grimm- despite what she thinks I know that she struggles to fight groups of Grimm and has a hard time focusing on multiple targets."

Did she? That was interesting, I had never really looked out for that sort of thing in our team but I guess someone like Ruby would see those sorts of things.

"For what it's worth Ruby I have the best eyes here so I could go fly around and see if I can spot her." My offer was taken, I didn't so much as get a yes out of her as I did have this small girl crash into my chest in a hug and somehow managed to lift me without effort as she swung me around before I was dropped as she kept saying thank you.

With that as Yang laughed some I went and put my armour back on and grabbed my gun and knife before taking off into the night sky while I heard Manus ordering the rest of them around while I flew out into the forest-

I began panning the area flying low enough above the forest that I could see, but also high enough that my wings beating in the wind wouldn't disturb anyone sleeping down below.

The crescent moon hung full as it could be in the sky surrounded by all the distant stars, under the sound of my wings flapping I crossed above the forests canopy at a pace that would make a falcon blush, though the searing speed was only a possibly because my eyes for all they were worth were also good at picking out detail. The death lines made what I was looking for stick out even more.

Amongst the scouring I couldn't find any trace of the white haired heiress anywhere in the hour that I spent searching, there were no remnants of fighting or a struggle, there weren't any Grimm only the natural wildlife of the forest.

Personally I wasn't bothered whether or not I found anything, or hell maybe if I did find something and it was nothing more than a decrepit eaten away at gory corpse it wouldn't be the worst of the things I had seen, nor would I care all that much seeing as I didn't really care for Weiss as things were at the moment anyway.

Especially now that she was wasting our team's night because she couldn't return in a timely fashion or just not be a stuck up bitch about who her team leader was, you'd think a staff member would have stepped in to do something but considering how bad things have gotten I'd guess not.

Tossing up whether or not to just fly back to camp and give up for the night I landed down on the ground in a small opening not really caring to take in the sights around me as I decided to take a shot in the dark- not literally of course that would probably cause problems.

Reaching down deep into my chest for something raw I shouted out "WEISS!"

I walked around for a few minutes shouting out her name with maybe ten or twenty seconds between each just so that if there was a reply I could hear it.

Right before I was about to do the final one I heard a distant muffled cry for help and began heading toward it.

It wasn't long until I was jumped by what I could only call a pack of Beowulves, being more specific it was four of them, one of the four looked like some kind of new Alpha- I made quick work of them with my knife and Semblance before continuing in the direction I heard the call from.

What I found was a huge opening that looked like a Goliath had stomped through the area, there were several trees knocked down or ripped through and shredded with their bark everywhere. Huge divots in the ground and just generally the area looked like that battlefield I had thought there wasn't.

Matching this there was also a trail of blood leading out of it and what looked like the signs of someone dragging themselves out of this hell, a bit of moonlight glinted off someone silver that was strewn into the wreck.

Getting closer to it I grabbed onto the mangled twisted toothpick of steel and yanked on it with both my hands around it, managing to get it free, finding what appeared to be a very broken and completely unusable rapier…

Didn't Weiss use a rapier?

"Weiss! Are you here?" I yelled out, I said all those things earlier about not caring but now that I was here and I felt like there was a chance to make a difference I could finally truly make a step towards atoning for all those who I killed to get here.

Re-spotting the trail of something that dragged itself away I followed it for five minutes before coming across a massing tree that had the ground under it hollowed out like some kind of hut-

"Mother of Khonsu- Weiss are you alive?" I found the broken and blood covered form of the schnee girl, her white dress caked in a deep crimson, most particularly around her left arm which also appeared to be broken in multiple places along with said arms hand which was mangled. She looked like she had been slammed through several trees, something had taken a bite out of her and then exploded.

Her eyes were lidded and barely open like she was dazed but just barely conscious.

I stopped and took a moment to calm myself and assess her situation, there was a small torch that I had taped onto my handgun so I brought it out and turned the light on so I could properly see everything. I didn't want to drag her out/move her and find out afterward that it caused more damage.

She looked well enough to move so I asked her if she was awake.

"Weiss, are you awake? And are you able to move on your own?" I didn't get a response out of her so I just reached in and slowly moved the girl out being extra careful around the damage she had.

Now what the hell was it that Serqet said about treating broken bones that were sticking out of the flesh?

Fuck I didn't have anything but the clothes on my back and my armour, how the hell was I meant to make a sling?

Oh.

Right.

Clothes on my back.

Damn it, I liked this shirt.

So I took off my breastplate and shirt, tearing the t-shirt some and fixing it around the much smaller girls frame to make a sling and putting the arm in it before putting the armour back on over my now bare chest covering it.

You know, I understand that this whole experience was meant to be about survival and things being "real" but real was annoying sometimes and that's why lots of people didn't like to deal with it. Also I can't imagine the professors when deciding to do this excursion would have guessed something like this could have possibly happened.

Anyway once things began looking up for the situation I debated whether or not it would be worth walking back to lean on the safer side of travel, but it just seemed stupid after a moment of thought. So I took the bloodstained white haired girl in my arms deciding to carry her bridal style as I started to beat my wings and take off into the sky- it was at this point I was just sort of wishing that I could use my scroll to call the rest of team SLVR or even my own team.

But like I had said already there was no connection out here because of the density of the forest, I was about an hour more of flying out from where the camps were as well so it would be even longer yet until I got Weiss to someone who could actually help.

[Decisions]

When I was approaching about thirty odd minutes of flying the heiress began to come to murmuring and her eyes opening to the dark world around her, I probably should have expected it to happen but once she was awake enough to move without thought she freaked out and attacked me trying to get out of my grasp- which would have had her fall like two hundred feet to her death.

Because what else would someone think if they had fallen asleep in a cave dying after being attacked by Grimm if what they saw when awakening was a jackal or wolf faced individual flying them to gods only know where.

"Wait! Stop moving around damn it! I'm trying to fly you to safety-" Her frantic fist cracked across my face, halting my flight as I hovered and looked at the girl I had just half an hour ago been worried about.

I felt like dropping her and just taking back what was left and telling everyone she was dead when I found her, though Weiss looked like she regretted it somewhat at least afterward coming to the realization that it was in fact Azrael the bird winged teammate of her partner's sister.

She apologized for what it was worth and immediately went right to remembering her injuries that she had just provoked and made worse because of it, I knew this because tyler knew this.

There were some reopened wounds spilling blood on me, and while that wasn't new for me, I'd rather not be in a situation where it's happening.

Maybe I would get more out of just using my eyes on her at the moment anyway.

"If you could not do that again then that would be great otherwise I'd have no issue with just letting you fall from this height and not following after you." She looked very shocked amongst the pained expression she was trying to keep under wraps.

Sighing, I looked out toward the horizon.

"So what happened to you anyway? No one gets this hurt from falling over a tree's roots." I said as I turned myself back to flying toward the camp and because keeping her conscious for now might keep her concussion from messing her up.

Finally she spoke after a long silence between us.

Acting particularly embarrassed about it she barely whispered out "It was a pack of beowulves"

I didn't ask any further about it, plus seeing as I dealt with those beowulves prior to reaching her I didn't really want to make her feel even worse about it seeing as I can just look at something to kill it. And that's probably why killing doesn't faze me itself but the idea of it weighing my soul in the wrong direction like I've mentioned before troubles me.

However I did keep up vague idly chat with her until we were within spitting distance of my teams camp and I could see as everyone looked up at the sound of my beating wings, as I touched down I asked the white haired girl if she could walk and when she tried to tell me she could I ignored that and just walked her straight to where our professor had set up her own camp that had a tent as well as cots and such.

She didn't seem all that surprised at Weiss' condition and asked me to set the girl down on a table she had been using after clearing it and going to work on Weiss as I left getting a thanks from both of them, though the schnee's was quieter.

When I arrived back at our camp Yang pried me for details about what happened so she could go and tell team SLVR that the girl was okay, initially I had been reluctant- I think it was just my natural state to be that way- but when I gave in and just told her she hummed away to herself like she was trying to put together something in her thoughts.

Me though.

I was fucking tired and wanted to sleep so I just took off all my stuff and left it under some tarpaulin that I had brought and got right to sleep in the shelter I had made.

[Night of work]

When morning came around there was a particularly enjoyable warmth next to me and I thoroughly enjoyed it as most people would I imagine, but herein lied my issue as I had forgotten that we were out on a mission/field trip and thought I had woken up in Serqets bed as I often did in the weekends.

So it came as a surprise when I went to hold said warmth in a hug and found my teammate and partner blushing redder than her hair, this made me let go and try to push myself away so I could apologise for it only to forget the small space that was our shelter- short of it being my wings fanned out and it completely destroyed it and I was left kneeling on the grass in my underwear looking mighty flustered.

The thing about Scrolls was that you didn't need to be connected to anything to use basic functions like its built in camera, so somehow my leader had managed to awaken before myself and was sitting on a log she must've found and dragged over to the firepit with a big grin on her face as she once again took more embarrassing photos of me.

I'm pretty convinced she plans to show them to my mother and sister since I've talked about them with my team fairly often, though Blake doesn't like talking about her family so I assume there's some drama there that she doesn't want to go into- maybe that's why she's in Beacon and not back in menagerie with her parents?

Anyway after being laughed at I went and grabbed my spare clothes and went to change out of sight before coming back so we could continue on with our itinerary.

First was to collect sap from the red maple trees around amongst all the other similarly coloured forestry, we had been given two jars each that were about a gallon in volume. From what we had been told in lessons across both professors' classes there was sickly sweet aroma and taste about the sap of these special red maples.

Actually before I talk about that I'll talk about how the soil in this forest was some of the richest there was and most anything that grew in it had itself amplified a great deal which was why the sap we were getting was important because it's so much stronger.

For whatever reason it's aroma and taste is so strong that it attracts even Grimm and we've been warned about the dangers of harvesting it. Apparently this specific sap had a… how do I put this… supposedly it can help with longevity and in certain tales it's supposed to have gifted immortality- mostly notably there is the side effect or in my opinion is why the sap is highly valued is because it can act as an aphrodisiac.

Anyway I didn't care for either of those possibilities seeing as they weren't all that relevant to why we were collecting it which was because of another use it had- which were medicinal.

So that left me where I was now staring blandly into the distance while I filled my jars and Pyrrha's along with Blake doing hers and Yang's while our partners were on guard in case of Grimm attack. The redhead and blonde were in conversation about team attacks that Yang had been telling us she wanted to start putting together and mastering when we got back and were training alongside Manus again.

Personally I thought the idea of team attacks was a bit silly considering my fighting style which was just looking at stuff funny and waving a knife to kill it, and it wouldn't fit in anywhere with the others when we were combating Grimm.

The only time something like that would be useful was if we were fighting people and we were trying to keep them alive for whatever reason, to which I had to ask- if we were fighting them in the first place would they be worth saving?

By the time I had finished filling one of my jars and one of Pyrrha's there was something in my vision that flickered in a way that wasn't right.

The dancing lines of death that floated about my vision flickered for a moment and drew my attention around to behind me- I squinted as I was sure there was something afoot, none of my team had noticed it.

Maybe it was the years of wandering forests in my spare time or when I was training with my sister and brother but whatever was amiss was disturbing the birds in the area, something I had learned to account for whenever wondering as it meant something was wrong.

I lifted my mask and let my eyes settle on the woodlands uninhibited, my brow going into a deep furrow as I scoured the scenery for whatever was causing my senses to be on alert. For what it was worth I had heard people say Faunus had senses that were akin to their counterparts we evolved with, meaning that we could call upon a natural instinct far greater to that of your average human.

Blake was watching me out of the corner of her eye which meant she was of a similar mind or likely wanting to know if she should warn the others.

Like I had said Yang and Pyrrha were in the middle of a conversation because things were ultimately quiet and there was a low chance of any Grimm showing face, so they didn't get a chance to react-

Snap-crack!

Were the sounds that followed behind the burst of bullets sent from my pistol as they impacted on three jars filled to the brim of sap headed straight for the two in conversation. Glass shattered with the liquid landing on the ground just inches from my leader and partner causing them to look from me to wherever the items had come from.

I settled my eyes on the lines of death that were receding into the forest behind some trees and bushes, feeling compelled to I headed in said direction and was followed by my team, when we came upon the perpetrators we found-

"Team Cadet." I said staring at all their lines wondering whether Anpu and Ma'at would mind me sending them to be weighed or if these wretches would stain and weigh me down more than I already was.

My mask was still off and they were all looking terrified at having been caught red handed except for their pseudo leader in Cardin who while not being the actual leader of the team often acted like he was. As I have said before I hold no ill will toward Arc as long as he tries to be something more and cease to listen or give in to the brute's demands like the other two.

But here it seemed he crumpled and acted like a poor excuse for a human.

Lady of slaughter what would you have me do?

I asked to no response, not that I expected one immediately as my team leader knocked down the ginger bully and began interrogating him which appeared to unsettle my partner despite her voicing an opinion that she'd like to break CADT over her knee again prior to coming on the trip. She had faced them as a whole in a four on one match Manus had arranged when requested when the team had come to taunt myself about my Faunus nature, and by the team I mean Cardin as he seemed to have it in for Faunus as a whole for no reason.

Our tutor hadn't taken kindly to it and gladly let Pyrrha fight them when the ginger later challenged her when I just sent scowls in their direction.

Yang was either really good at interrogating them or they were just really terrified we'd leave them for dead in the forest because they crumpled under her pressure, Pyrrha stance, Blakes blank look and my natural disinterested look.

Though I knew to most people my eyes were frightening, I had never described them properly yet had I?

In short the sclera of my eyes- the white part- were black like a void, my pupil was black like a normal one, but my iris itself made up the rest of my eye in three layers or rings of colour. The innermost ring was a thin layer that acted more like a medium between the pupil and the actual colour of my iris as it was a mix of an azure-black hue and the pinkish red that was the next ring. The final ring as the largest of them was an azure-like blue closest to the reddish pink ring and bled into a maya blue.

Those colours should be about right if memory serves me from when Anastasia was asking me about my eyes, though the only detail I've missed out on is these star like specs in the sclera of mine that mixed with the rest of the colouration often makes people say things like what said concealer had said when we first met.

"And my last name is meant to be Cosmos" pretty sure that's what she said.

Anyway,

Yang appeared to be done interrogating the space cadets.

[Eyes like a Nebula]

On the fourth day in the morning everyone met at Mrs. Khthónios' tent/camp where she had called us all in to see how far along everyone was in completing their assignments and a few other things.

Amongst those other things was a list of students who had been injured and it appeared Weiss hadn't been the only person who was attacked by roaming Grimm packs, there was an entire team that had nearly been killed by an Alpha Usra and its pack. When I had heard that and saw the team themselves I realised how hard and dangerous being a Huntsman really was.

With a Semblance like mine I had never seen the Grimm as a real threat, and my sister had always been strong enough and more than capable of protecting us back home along with all the guards that were around Valor.

The guardsmen back home wore a uniform of navy blue long sleeved shirts with chainmail with dark steel scale sleeves over that wearing ankle banded black pants and knee length leather boots over them. Most of them carried spears, round shields and a rifle of some varying sort on their person.

Honestly when I was growing up I remembered thinking that they were the coolest thing ever the way they dressed, originally what I had been looking for when I was shopping for equipment before Beacon I was looking for something like that but ended up settling on the armour I had now.

Anyway, among the hurt was Diarmuid, one of Shamhats teammates and her partner if I remember correctly. Apparently while he was out hunting a boar that was apparently two meters tall ran him down while it was being chased by a Beowulf. Basically he got some bruised ribs.

Another student I didn't know personally had a fucking tree fall on him somehow, no idea how that happened, but they had some broken limbs.

I was glad Diarmuid was okay though I had talked with him a few times and aside from two of the occasions we talked involving him asking me to fly him onto a roof to get away from these girls chasing him he was a nice enough guy.

He was actually Scáthach, my sister's teammate's younger brother to a different father, so I suppose he and I were family to the extent of said woman making my sister and me to be her siblings.

My team had pretty much finished most of what we had to do and were pretty much free to do as we pleased and enjoy ourselves until a group event that was planned to happen tomorrow before we leave. So I had elected to go fishing at the nearby river and Pyrrha had come along with me as I walked there now with a fishing rod in hand that I had swiped from Manus.

The mammoth had been talking to me about going fishing in the first place which was why I was going in the first place because he got saddled with guarding all the injured students and making sure no Grimm could possibly reach them.

So he gave the rod to me anyway and sent me on my way at which point my partner had asked if she could join me.

"Pyrrha you remember when I asked you about destiny and fate?" she nodded, waiting to hear my follow up. "I was wondering if there were any gods you believe in or if you were I guess religious in any facet I suppose. I only ask because it appears I'm one of the few people in the entire school who seems to openly worship anything."

She hummed in thought.

"There are a few among one of the pantheon's in mistral my family often make offerings to, like Athene, Apeilōn and a few others." She held a hand to her chin as her face contorted while she thought.

"Oh? All gods related to fighting and strength then?"

She blushed for some reason.

"My family love fighting tournaments in Mistral- I'm a four time winner of one of the biggest tournaments myself."

"Oh right… yeah you're like famous for it then? Must be considering how people mobbed you back in the earlier days of our first week." Guess that had been what I needed to look up. I had a nagging feeling that I wanted to find something out but never did look into it.

"You see your gods in everything then?" she asked curiously as we came to a stop at the river and I began looking for spots to fish from.

The river itself was about one hundred meters across and easily three or four deep.

"I do, but I also think it makes our lives more interesting to see it like that, like looking to the sun and seeing Ra or things like that. By the sounds of it your family's version of him would be Helios riding his chariot across the sky which honestly sounds far cooler."

I did like the idea of the Helios charting the sky in his chariot like that, though all things considered I really just honored any god I found to be interesting like there was a few from the old tribes of solitas that Manus' family were from that I liked so I venerated them when relevant. Some from parts of Anima as well.

Anyhow, I sat down on a rock and cast the line and began another conversation with Pyrrha while I fished.

AN: I'm not really sure how it comes off in this chapter but I just want to clarify that I wasn't trying to make Weiss out to be weak and Az to be the saviour of the day, but rather show that even someone as well trained and competent can be overwhelmed and messed up when Grimm gang up on them. Hence why Az mentioned the other people who got hurt as well. it's also about showing things like Beowulves are something you can play around with.