Chapter 19

New Tasks

Ruby and Tide dashed out of school as soon as Mr. Howard ended class.

Surely enough, as soon as they arrived, Alice gave a smile and said, "booth one, that Ampharos told me you two were taking exploration team jobs now."

Tide nodded, and the two went into the booth, moving the curtain over the entrance. Once they placed the orb on the console, the hologram activated, and the globe said, "Searching for Jobs within 20 miles….searching…searching…one job found"

A picture of a Pokémon with some text was displayed on the orb. Tide leaned in towards the hologram and read the description aloud.

"I've lost my steel globe in headwater hollow; I'll be at the cave's entrance every day at 5:00 PM. Monty-Reward of 560 Poké" Tide finished.

"Retrieving an important item sounds like a great starting point!" Ruby exclaimed.

The duo headed out of town, and when they arrived, an intimidating pokemon was waiting at the entrance. Monty was a bipedal, mole-like Pokémon with a dark-brown body and diagonal, red splotches. Three markings were on his front, resembling scratch marks, with two under each arm, and two on his back. He had short legs with small, narrow feet, each containing three toes. His small white face was long and thin, tipped by a pink nose. His eyes were back, on either side of the bridge of his nose. Under his eyes, on each side, were two thin, red stripes. A large blade roughly twice as large as his face extended from his forehead. The top of the blade contained two smaller blades, resembling fins. His arms were thick and had three large blades instead of fingers, with two smaller blades on top of the middle ones.

"Are you the exploration team?" Monty asked in a gruff voice.

Tide froze, only for Ruby to push him forward in encouragement.

"Um…yes, I'm Tide, leader of Team Beacon!" The Mudkip said as confidently as he could.

"I take it y'all are rookies…I don't honestly care. I can't get past all the ground types here; if you can, the reward is yours," Monty admitted.

Tide and Ruby nodded before dashing off into the cave.

Headwater Hollow had its fair share of ground types. Still, Tide's water attacks more than made up for Ruby's disadvantage.

After about 30 minutes of searching and battling wild Pokémon, they found the orb.

"Well, this isn't good," Tide muttered.

The steel globe was about the size of a large fruit and was a gleaming ball of metal with engravings all over it. The orb was intact, but the creature holding the orb presented a problem.

Coiled up around the orb, sleeping soundly, was a massive Pokémon. It was at least 30 feet long with a silvery-gray body made up of rock-like sections. Three of those sections had long rock spikes coming out of them on either side. It had a massive head mainly made up of its large, wide jaw with sets of large square teeth inside. Along its bottom jaw were ridges. Several small, square lumps covered the underside of its lower jaw. Its eye sockets were slightly deep-set. Its head had two long ridges going from the eyes up to the top of its head. The tip of its tail was conical with a blunt tip.

"How are we gonna get the orb?" Tide questioned.

Ruby sized up the distance for a moment before bursting into rose petals and reappearing with the orb in front of her.

"Nice job!" Tide demanded, forgetting to whisper.

The Steelix stirred for a moment, causing the two to hide behind a rock, the Steelix scanned the area for a moment before closing his eyes and going back to sleep, not bothering to check if the orb was still in his possession.

Ruby and Tide carefully made their way out of the cave and gave the orb to Monty, who was still waiting for them.

"Not bad, Not bad at all; open up the expedition orb for me," Monty requested.

Tide nodded and pulled up the job request. Monty pressed the contact button on the hologram's display and entered a short password.

"Since you two are clearly new, every time someone posts a job, they get a one-time password to confirm the job's completion without going to the guild. I get around a lot, so I'll make sure people know you're the real deal," Monty said before dropping the bag of coins and taking the orb.

"Really! Thanks!" Tide exclaimed.

"Try not to get yourselves killed," Monty mumbled before holding the orb between his hands and rolling up to resemble a drill before tunneling away.

As Blake entered Xavier's tent, the Xatu was deep in reading a book, telekinetically hovering it in front of him. Blake overrode his control and shut it to get his attention. Her psychic powers had increased massively in the month she and the old bird had been training.

"Welcome Blake, I assume you have some reason for being here a day early" the Xatu questioned as put the book on the counter.

"Yes, I was wondering if you had any books I could read" the Mewostic questioned.

The Xatu's beak curled into a smile and said "a perfect opportunity for me to teach you teleporting"

Blake a confused look and asked, "how so?"

"I don't live here, and there are books at my home. If you learn to teleport, then you can take and return books at your own pace, I have quite a collection after all" Xavier mentioned.

"Ok…how do I teleport?" Blake asked, a hint of excitement in her voice.

"one moment" Xavier requested as he spun the sign outside to "closed."

"Now then, before you can even think of teleporting to my home, let's try somewhere closeby, say, Sharpedo Bluff. Close your eyes and imagine the top of the bluff" Xavier instructed.

Blake nodded and visualized, then she asked "Now what?"

"Focus on your desires, you want to go there, now pour your psychic energy and go!" Xavier encouraged.

Blake did as instructed, muttering to herself "the bluff, it's where I train with Blaze…I want to be there…"

A purple aura briefly surrounded the Meowstic, but nothing happened.

Xavier heard a shuffling outside and said "we need to postpone, I forgot I had a seller coming in"

Blake nodded and left, Xavier's seller was a large pokemon with four arms holding a chest in two of them. She had a nagging feeling in her gut that something was happening without her, but she couldn't place it. That strange feeling persisted until she arrived at Shardpedo Bluff for her daily training and saw an exact duplicate of her sparring with Blaze.

"WHO ARE YOU!" Blake yelled as she charged at the imposter, however, her duplicate stopped moving and turned towards her before dissolving into purple energy and returning to her body.

Blake's mind was filled with new memories of showing up and training with Blaze; she had somehow created a shadow clone that could act independently.

Blaze was still in shock before saying "I was wondering while your sword strikes felt weaker, guess a psychic construct can't hit with the same force. The clone didn't talk, it silently drew its sword and waited so I assumed you just wanted to let off some steam"

"Those memories are mine now, I wonder…" Blaze said before focusing her energy and creating another clone that stood still for a moment.

"Walk five steps forward, draw your sword then disperse" Blake instructed telepathically.

The clone did exactly as instructed before fading out of existence. Blake did the same again and told the clone to walk to treasure town's square and back but return. The shadow clone walked away and returned five minutes later before being absorbed into her body.

"My semblance could never do that before" Blake admitted as the clone's brief memory was added to her mind

"Semb..what?" Blaze questioned as he stood there, he had been watching intently as Blake tested her new power.

"Semblance, a reflection of my aura, the energy that comes from my soul can make an invisible shield" Blake mentioned before flashing her purple shield over her body.

The Infernape opened to his mouth but then paused before saying "How do…Oh right some memories but not all…no need to say more"

Blake smiled at the Infernape respecting her privacy and said "I can already create shadow clones for distraction, but with this, maybe I can use them for fighting as well…or learning multiple things at once…:

Author's note- well, that's new

1. Yup, not even stubble on the name for an Excadrill

2. Tide being the leader was planned from the start. It never made sense to me, especially in the second and fourth mystery dungeon games how the less experienced of the two was the leader.

3. It's canon in RWBY that semblances can evolve and gain new abilities. Getting your body transformed and gaining psychic powers could definitely do it. To clarify how these clones work, Blake programs them to carry out set actions, but they act as if they are her. They cannot speak and their strength and durability are dependent on how much psychic energy she pours into each of them. They are made from a mix of her aura and psychic powers so even if she loses her aura, she still can make one. However, without aura they are taxing on her powers, when she has both making multiple ones is easy.

4. Wonder if Ruby's semblance will gain a new ability...hehe

5. Chapter 20 will be the last chapter before a Hiatus, I will explain my plans moving forward at the end of chapter 20, don't worry, nothing is canceled.

Leave more reviews, I appreciate your feedback

Next time- Ruby and Tide have their last day of school while Blake visits Xavier's home