AN: Azrael says some Arabic in this chapter and I'm not sure if anyone knows that, but I tried my best to research the phrase and make sure it wasn't Arabic equivalent of saying the N-word, it should just mean in effect "son of a bitch". But I just wanted to preface the chapter with this in case my research on the phrase hadn't been thorough enough.

Chapter Title: Waking Hours
Arc 1: Bubbles of Futility Chapters

"I think your friend has had enough." A voice said as I opened my eyes finding that I hadn't been smashed into a pulp-

"Hey who the hell are you and what do you think yo-" I heard Yang's voice in the distance as she yelled cutting herself off as she must have laid eyes on the man as well.

He was almost a carbon copy of me, enough so that he even had the same eyes though the colour of his hair hid the actual greying quite well so on first glance you could have confused him for me. The man stood over me somehow holding back the unconscious weight of Manus with a single arm, that being his right as his left was missing from the elbow down. Aside from the amazing feat of strength considering the four hundred and something odd pounds he was holding back the man was dressed in a forest green tunic, dark hosen with knee high brown boots with plates of metal over the joints on the shoes.

"We aren't on the Field of Reeds yet Azrael, move already- this guy is heavier than he looks." the man chuckled using my name with a level of familiarity that didn't make any sense.

Listening to what he had said I rolled to the right out of the way watching as he did the same dropping the now unconscious form of Manus, getting a better look at him when I stood up I found myself once again trying to comprehend the similarities between us. Though the missing left arm was still a glaring difference between us. He even had wings almost identical to mine.

"Whoa- Holy shit he looks just like you..." My team leader put so tentatively as Blake and Pyrrha came from behind her, both made similar faces of shocked confusion.

"It's nice to meet you all, but we should probably move your goliath friend somewhere safe before anything else happens." He said with those same eyes out in the open for the world to see and not hidden away like mine were.

Without really thinking about why we should even listen to the man and follow his instruction we were all carrying Manus' body along the path he had torn through the forest silently making our way along as the man guided us deeper into its bowels where after twenty minutes of mildly suffering as we carried the body we reached a large campsite with several people who upon seeing us rushed over to help. The campsite had four tents and a large fire in the centre of it where a pot was hanging over it. There were logs set up around the fire for seating as well. The people who came to help us with Manus were two women and a man all appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties.

[Revelations]

"Wake up Azrael!" I had the sheets on my bed pulled off of me as they were wrapped about me though that sent me over the side waking up to hitting the floor of the dorm bedroom face first.

"ibn El-sharmoota!" I cursed out, holding my throbbing face.

I scowled in the direction of my blonde team leader who was standing around with the other two trying not to look like she was the one who put the others up to this as they were currently in possession of my sheets.

Though Pyrrha and Blake dropped them right after.

"What language was that?" The blonde asked before changing the topic.

"Doesn't matter, we've got class in-" Yang checked her Scroll for the time. "Fifteen minutes." she declared before looking down at her own appearance along with my partner and hers, it seemed they all stopped mid racing to get ready for our first class of the term to team up and throw me from bed.

Blowing out a sigh I sat up and stretched as best I could before standing and starting to do my morning stretch routine that usually took me about five minutes, and seeing as a shower wouldn't take me any longer than maybe eight or so minutes probably ten though I was definitely going to be late but I wasn't bothered by that.

It was Monday so I had Howitzer and it definitely wasn't weapons shop/maintenance so I'd get scolded and told to hurry up and take notes to catch up.

When I finished my calisthenics I went into the bathroom with a clean pair of underwear and my school uniform in hand and a towel in the other, as I was undressing from the tank-top and underwear I slept in I noticed a lot of my feathers coming off revealing brand new ones.

For a second time this morning I sighed realising I was finally moulting, forgetting about it for a moment I stepped into the shower stall and began washing myself up.

While I showered I took the opportunity to think about everything that has happened to me since I arrived in Vale. It's been a very interesting journey to get here to see all the new things I've experienced and in general has otherwise been pretty eye opening as to what the rest of the world is really like compared to what I knew of them growing up through all the history books and whatnot I used to love reading.

Looking back on things makes me wonder what my life would have become if I had just stayed in Valor and decided not to become a Huntsman, which I still don't actually have a reason for doing beyond the fact that my sister said it would be good for me to come here and learn about the world properly. And she was right in that I've learned a lot, not only about the world but in my classes I've learned about things I never would have considered or thought that I'd need to know about even if I had just become some no name mercenary that wandered around like a vagabond.

Taking a moment amongst my thoughts I began the process of going through my feathers and brushing out the ones that were loose from the moulting.

When I was finished with that and my hair was shampooed and conditioned I turned the water off and shook my wings before stepping out of the stall looking over to where my clothes were sitting with the towel on top of them.

There was a very big and key issue to the situation though.

Pyrrha was standing there in the nude looking more flustered than she ever had in our time as a team, so deciding that this was one of those moments where it only got more awkward when you said something or stopped to look I did my best to ignore her being there and got on with drying myself off getting dressed and walking straight out without acknowledging her.

Once I was out of the bathroom and in the bedroom I looked around making sure no one was in there before smacking my forehead against the wall next to my bed and whispered-

"Fuck!"

Okay I mean I stage whispered it but still.

Damn it, I didn't want that to happen.

Shit.

Fuck.

Pyrrha didn't talk to me for the rest of the day, she had a hard time looking in my direction without blushing and honestly I couldn't blame her. It was my fault for not paying more attention to whether one of my teammates was in there,

[Trying to forget]

During our first break of the day that happened after my second class which had been with Miss Peach, I was sitting on the roof of the main school building that had most of the classes in them with Diarmuid who was running away from this group of girls that had been harassing him.

While I ate an apple I had grabbed from one of the many fruit trees around the school my friend was telling me about what he got up to over the holiday period, apparently he went home and spent some time with his family and his sister Scáthach who had come home to visit their parents before doing some work around Vale city waiting for the festivities to begin at the end of this term.

I had already seen some shops in town that had begun decorating their establishments with Vytal Festival related things.

Actually… I never did explain what Diarmuid looks like right? I've just said what he wears I'm pretty sure so I'll quickly describe him for you since that's kind of important.

For starters he has long dark hair with a bluish tinge toward the ends combed backward in a rough fashion with a strand hanging down his face that he usually slicks back only for it to fall down, his eyes are a dark amberish gold and his skin is a fair tone. Obviously he's in his school uniform right now so I won't explain that since it isn't important unless you want to know that I've got my sleeves rolled up and that he often doesn't where the blazer and leaves the shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up on the white dress shirt showing the black or grey shirt under it.

Anyhow we were just waiting for the bell to go so we could head back to classes, I had Oobleck's history class next then Mrs Khthónios with Survival Studies and lastly I'd finish the day with Dr Aoi who had become one of my favourite teachers along with Khthónios actually.

Both women made their classes really interesting and easy to sit down and actually learn something in whereas in classes like Ooblecks I struggled to keep up because he didn't care to help people along so much as randomly pick students out of the class at points to see if they had been able to decipher whatever he had been saying that lesson. Which was annoying since I did like Remnants history.

Though I did get a second detention from Oobleck before last term ended when I showed him up in knowing more about one of the places he was discussing, he was teaching us a made up version of events that had been propagated by one of the sides in the story and not the actual account. This got him flustered when I proved it and I got detention like I said.

"Hey Diarmuid, what's Gráinne like? You mentioned her when I ran into you at that music store." I was a little interested to hear about her but really I was bored and wanted something to distract me from all that I had going on.

"Oh? Yeah sure I'll tell you, we can go see her after our last class if you want?" He responded looking down at the people below.

"Sure."

"Well, have you ever heard of that Romeo and Juliet story?" I knew of it and nodded unsure where he was going. "Us being together is sort of similar in a weird way, originally Gráinne's family had arranged for her to marry into a family that I was adopted into, this was about eight years ago when I was ten and she was nine."

He paused for a moment putting his hand to his chin taking on a thinking pose. While he did that I thought about how he just insinuated that a nine year old girl had been arranged to marry someone likely twice her age.

"Though at the ceremony like celebration between hers and my adopted family for the coming together between two great families, she wasn't exactly thrilled to be marrying a man in his thirties-"

"What?!" I almost yelled, I thought the guy would have been like twenty or something, not in his thirties!

"Ah yeah… So she wasn't very fond of that idea and while I was training outside the building they were all partying in she spotted me through one of the windows and abandoned the celebration without anyone knowing and that's when I met her for the first time." He had a troubled expression. "I stopped training when I noticed her-"

The bell rang telling us to head to class and cutting off my friend's story.

"You'll have to tell me later then." I said and he nodded as I stepped off the roof leaving him to find his own way down as I headed to my class.

[Backstory.]

I was sitting alone at the back of the lecture hall while Dr. Aoi went about today's lesson discussing what we'd be learning about over the course of the next four months. The short of it is that we'll be focusing on how to handle ourselves when speaking with local police or equivalents regarding helping them or what have you.

There was more to it than that, but like I said, that was the short of it.

My team were sitting near the front with team SLVR, I was currently sitting with team RKWD which was why I was at the back, well that and I was still embarrassed about this morning and didn't want to confront my partner about that yet or ever if I could.

At the moment I was more interested in watching Shamhat as she went about writing down notes in her books in an odd language I didn't entirely recognise though felt like I had seen before despite this.

She was on my right and her leader Raiden was on my left with Warren and Diarmuid past him, their team was an interesting group really. Obvious reasons notwithstanding Shamhat and Diarmuid, but also the other two were definitely interesting.

Raiden was the son of a high ranking noble in Mistral while Warren's family had one of the supposedly only one thousand hereditary Semblances in existence, which made his family a big deal because apparently the people who were in those thousand families had some of the strongest Semblances known to date. There were also some stories about them being connected to the first people to ever discover how to use Aura and Semblances as well as possibly magics.

I think the Schnees are descended from one of those families as well from what I remember learning about that.

Anyhow the lesson was almost over anyway and I was at the end of my rope for learning today even if it was a class I liked being in.

Speaking of which, the bell rang and everyone got up as Dr. Aoi looked around saying that she was expecting us to start a report about the topic from today. So that was something to look forward to. Picking up my books I headed out of the class with Diarmuid walking through the halls talking about some menial things until we reached the dorms at which point we parted with him saying that he'd message me when he was ready to go meet his girlfriend.

Entering the door it looked like I was the first one back so I went and put my stuff away and quickly changed into a one of the tunic shirts that I had which was one size too big, a pair of cargo shorts and some sneakers. The reason for the one size too big shirt was just because I liked baggy shirts and they were useful for if I wanted to put my wings away so I could get through doors or what have you since they were so large. As I was leaving the bedroom and sitting down on one of the couches in the lounge area to think for a bit, Blake and Pyrrha came through the door. The raven haired girl went straight to setting her things down on the kichenette's island and making herself something to drink while the red headed girl walked past into the bedroom.

I sighed as my shoulders slouched and my body sank into the seat.

I'm aware of how odd it would seem for me to say as much but for whatever reason at the moment I was feeling somewhat down and heavy in a way I couldn't describe more than just that. Adding to that there was something about it all that was nagging at me from the depths of my mind that urged me to go see Anastasia in her office, I knew that I was allowed to go see her whenever since that was kind of part of the whole 'therapy for killing people' thing.

She… She was enjoyable to speak with and even if I didn't feel anything toward those I killed or felt remorse for it at least not for those I thought deserved it, I guess I did have to admit that our sessions did at least distract me from the thoughts surrounding all that.

"Here you go, Azrael." Blake said, extending her hand with a mug that had one of the many different tea flavours she had acquired over the holiday.

"Thank you." I mumbled as she took a seat across from me, seeing her feline eyes sparked something in my mind. "Hey Blake, what did my Mother talk with you and the others about?"

Her ears perked up twitching with attention as she turned her eyes from the t.v. to me tilting her head as a thoughtful expression rose across her face.

"Your mother was..." The cat eared Faunus trailed off going silent, she didn't really sound like she was actually about to answer my question but tell me what she thought of my mother so what she said to them probably wasn't my business.

"She spoke to all of us individually, she went with Yang first on a walk around the school, then with Pyrrha to that old amphitheatre that Manus trains with us at and when she finally talked to me last she took us down to Vale." Blake paused for a moment to think before continuing. "When we arrived in Vale we didn't talk until she brought me to a park."

"A park?" I asked confusedly while she sipped her tea.

"Gaea said it helped calm her nerves to be surrounded by nature." She replied. "Your mother talked a lot about..." Blake cut herself off as my Scroll rang.

"Oh?" I answered it apologising to my teammate as I stood up and left the dorm to answer it only to find Diarmuid standing outside in the hallway with his Scroll in hand showing that he was the one calling.

He motioned for me to follow and so I did, walking alongside him through the hall.

While we were making our way to the Airship platform as I realised that his girlfriend wasn't at the school seeing as he made an effort not to tell me anything about her along the way, I sent Blake an apology message and asked if she could continue when I got back. I felt pretty awful about being able to stay and hear the rest of what she had to say.

Since he wasn't answering my questions about Gráinne I changed the topic to something he would talk about, which was not actually what I did and instead asked him-

"Hey what happened to that Boar that attacked you on the Forever Fall trip?" It was amongst the many things that were always in my head waiting to be answered.

"The O'Dyna, the family I'm an orphan of have this curse-"

"Curse?"

"Yeah apparently we were cursed so that every son of the O'Dyna would never be allowed to pierce the hide of a boar or pig, obviously I didn't think it was real either until I was attacked and went to defend myself and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't land a hit with my Gáe Buidhe and Beagalltach." He paused for a moment thinking about what happened. "Eventually you saw what happened." He signed leaning over the railing on the Airship since we had opted to stand around on its roof.

"How does a curse like that even work anyway?" I'd never heard of stuff like that outside of myths and old tales.

"No clue, your guess would be about as good as mine." he shrugged.

[The Curse of Donn]

When I laid eyes upon Gráinne, my first impressions were that she was really pretty and not like 'wow she's so pretty' I mean in the sense that she just might be one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. Her beauty was unnatural, almost like those old stories of Nymphs, Mermaids and similar creatures in the fae realm.

Man I really haven't talked about that part of my life yet have I? There's so much I still want to talk about that I've just remembered like all the stuff my mother used to tell us about the Brownies living in our house that would come out at night to clean when we were asleep.

Oh man, I really want to talk about that.

Damn… alright I need to do that so remind me some time and I'll do that.

For now I'll get back to Gráinne and Diarmuid who were currently showing me around her house, or mansion as it were. She lived on the outskirts of Vale city in a huge piece of land that was wall off with these massive fifteen foot tall walls and all this super high tech stuff that I think had a bunch of Dust related features… that was actually another I have yet to talk about as well right?

Dust?

To be fair I didn't know much about it either before coming to Beacon where I literally have classes about it and how its used which is why in a way, is why I still regret buying those Dust trench knives for my sister, because of how expensive it is despite being an actually finite resource that Kingdoms have gone to war over for centuries when they figured out how to harness and use the stuff.

But to your average person it's basically useless because of the solar energy that most of the city runs off of or how unless it goes through the tens of hours of refining a Dust deposit is unusable in its raw form unless you want to ingest it. Which I might add is how you kill yourself because its so volatile once it gets into your system.

But again I'll talk about that later, maybe next time I have Professor Quartz I'll bring you along.

Anyhow, Gráinne's house was a fortress and she was rich, beautiful as well as a very grounded individual despite her family's wealth. I think they were involved in property development or something like that. While we were touring the place we ended up in discussion about the supposed upcoming missions Diarmuid and I would be going on with our teams in a few months' time, as well as that Gráinne asked us about the Vytal Festival and our possible part in the tournament. I didn't know much about it so I just let my friend explain away about the festival since all I was looking forward to around it was meeting Skadi again.

One of the things I noticed before we ended up leaving Gráinne's was that there were barely any people around that weren't just servants, or maybe five or so hired guards around. It was interesting to see so few people at such a large property, maybe the family just didn't have any enemies or needn't worry about thieves and such.

Hm… I have met a lot of people since coming to Beacon and Vale haven't I? The two I have been with these last few hours of my day included amongst them of course, it's something I never really thought about being a part of my time here. There wasn't really a moment where I thought to myself prior to coming here or at the time when I was thinking about what to do with my life that I would even find anyone to be my friend. I had gotten so used to only having the companionship of my sister's friends when she would bring them over when we were younger since often enough they were the ones who would look past what reputation I had garnered in Valor. I've spoken before of how I didn't have many friends as a child, but with all these people around me in these past months it's been…

It's been…

My life has changed is what I'm trying to say.

I hope to any of the gods listening to my thoughts that I never lose the friends and family that I have gained since coming to Vale, my life wouldn't be the same and I don't know what it would do to me if I lost any of them.

AN: