Black Paladin

Chapter 15: Training Daze (R&W)

AN: Sorry for the wait. But it is a two parter.

Professors Port, Oobleck, and Goodwitch came to the breach site. The nine of us have a less than believable story, consisting of one half, 'We got here and they were all dead! We swear!', and the other half, the 'Well we were on the train when it crashed, and then there were Grimm, and then there weren't.' We could all honestly say however, we had no damn idea what happened.

As the Atlesian Knights arrested Torchwick, we all heard him tell Emerald and Mercury, " Oh, I can't believe that you caught me, you've really taught me the error of my ways." As the Atlesian Knights move him to the airship, we all hear him continue, "He-hey, watch the hat!"

We get a ride back to Beacon with one of the airships, and after they drop us off, we sit by the edge, watching the Atlassian Dreadnoughts float over Vale.

Yang begins, "Well, we did it."

Blake says, "We did it."

Weiss responds, "If we don't get extra credit for that, I'm gonna be seriously disappointed."

I look around and ask, "Wasn't our mission to clear Mountain Glenn from Grimm?"

Yang continues, "Ya, an army of Grimm invaded Vale. I wouldn't count on it."

Ruby continues, "Plus, I mean, we didn't solve everything. A lot of people were hurt, and we still don't even know why they did this, or who that mystery girl was."

I ask, "Which one, the one with the fireballs from when you first met Torchwick, the Tri-Color girl from when he fought us using a stolen Paladin, or today when a scary women cut Yang and me to ribbons."

Yang looks confused at me, "I fought Tri-color girl."

I look at her, she looks at me, the rest are looking at us confused. I ask slowly, "Tall, slightly more so than you, black hair, Grimm mask, Katana? No?"

Yang pulls a worn photo out of her wallet, and Blake and Ruby both gasp slightly, "Her?"

I look down, and see a woman's face I don't recognize, but an outfit, and hairstyle I definitely do. "Yep."

Yang punches me off the cliff and four gasps ring out, as I float there, about a foot from the cliff. I float back to my seat, snarking "She was standing over your unconscious body, with a White Fang mask on, and a sword. I assumed the worst." I pause, "That would explain her quip about me starting it."

"It does sound like an uncomfortable situation." Blake finishes.

A long pause permeates the group, until Weiss says, "Well, not every adventure has a neat and tidy ending."

Blake continues, "We might not have all the answers, but we do have a lot of dangerous people behind bars. And I think that's something we could be proud of."

Ruby says, "Yeah! And if anyone tries something like this again, we'll be there to stop them."

Yang lies down on her back, "Yay, teamwork, camaraderie, good guys, go, team, alright, good job... So, what now?"

Weiss slowly remarks, absentmindedly, "Well we could train, but someone hasn't given us the chance to." a little pettiness coming out in her voice.

Yang turns to ask, "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean…" She yells, at Yang "That someone seems to ignore us entirely, and trains with his girlfriend and her lousy team." she finishes and looks down, studiously avoiding my gaze.

I look to Weiss, "Weiss, do you have something to say?"

She pauses, before beginning, "I have hoped for months, ever since JNPR began training with you, that you would offer to work with us, that you would walk in, and say 'You know what, I shouldn't only train someone else's team, I should help my own team as well.'"

I pause, looking over the four, seemingly all feeling the same way, and I realize, "I…" I began.

"No, you…" Weiss began.

"I wasn't sure you wanted me to." I say, concern creeping into my voice. "Whenever I brought up helping them, you felt… something… I wasn't and still don't know what, but fear or angry and I didn't want to offend by offering to help."

"Offend!" Weiss demanded.

"Yes." I defend, "Offend. I tried my best to avoid conversations that brought up negative emotions in any of you. Each and every time I brought up training, negativity shot up, and so I avoided the conversation. I thought you say me, working with JNPR and… I don't know what I thought. But I wouldn't, couldn't, risk losing the friendship I had with any of you."

"What do you mean?" Ruby asks.

"All day, every day, as a short range, it has been expanding, but day one, about 9 feet, I could feel every emotion, all of them. It's one of the reasons I staunchly stopped Weiss from talking about the White Fang or Faunus, it brought up negative emotions in her, fear that lead to anger, Blake's pain and loathing and angry and betrayal and a myriad of others, Ruby and Yang's disappointment. It was a mess, and one of the reasons why I tried to smother those conversations. I also smothered the occasional SDC conversation for much the same reasons. I didn't want my team angry at each other."

Four faces, slightly shocked until Yang asks, "How far…"

"Yesterday, maybe a mile. Now?" I say, looking over at Vale, "Further, much further."

Weiss asks, "Why couldn't you risk alienating us."

"I have made eight friends in my life." I say slowly, "RWBY and JNPR. The eight of you are the only people in my entire life I could open up to even slightly."

"Surely your parents…" Yang began.

"Single mother, no aunts or uncles, she died when I was four." I say, quickly, and sorrowfully.

Another short pause, until Ruby tackle/hugs me, and we almost tumble off the cliff.

"So the training thing…" Weiss continues, after pulling us back from the ledge.

"In Spartum," I say, and I hear four groans, "Yes, yes, I grew up in hell, we all know that. But, there, children grew up "learning", hear getting beat over the head with, you either do it yourself, or you ask a superior."

"I fail to see why…" Weiss continues.

"Weiss, if Jaune were in Spartum, as he is today, he isn't bad enough that I would consider offering to teach him. Generally speaking, It would be kinder to buy him life insurance and toss him in the forest."

"That a messed up analogy." Yang says.

"The mercy package was a real thing when I left." I say, resignation flooding my voice.

"Damn." Yang said, to the ashen faces of the rest of the team.

"I wouldn't offer to help anyone train. Where I come from it is the highest insult that can be levied. I offered to help Ruby experiment with her own speed, but I had the track for...other things." I finish lamley.

The four look at me, confused, "What?" Blake asks.

"I'll show you tomorrow, provided none of you have a problem with bugs." I say. "Then we could train, if you wanted." I said, with a slight flinch.

"That sounds like aplan." Weiss said as we all stood, and we walk back to the room.

The next day, after a brief session with Oobleck telling us how we are going to make up missing the rest of the week-long session in Mountain Glenn, we went into the forest, bringing JNPR with us.

They were all shocked by what they discovered, my experiments with both my abilities and the abilities of Grimm.

I had a lot of explaining to do to Pyrrha afterward.

The next day at breakfast, Ruby asked a very important question. "So, your swords…"

I pause, my smile fading, "Their umm, they're gone."

"What are you gonna do?" She asked.

"Well, I was hoping you and Weiss would help with that when we aren't training." I said.

Weiss looks up, confused, "Why?"

"I was going to make 2 swords, one mechanical, and I need Ruby's help with that one, and one a dust focus, and I was hoping that you would help me with that." I explain, gesturing for them to follow.

Ruby asked as we approached, "Why don't you make it like you did Balta and Diva?"

"Ruby, you looked at Balta and Diva right? How many moving parts did they have?" I ask.

"They must have had some for the…" Ruby began.

"Not should, did?" I ask slowly.

She paused, Weiss looked at her confused, Ruby said, "I don't know… it just…"

"Worked. A smaller part of my abilities was that I could demand it form together, and split apart, and it just would." I explained, summoning a piece of paper, ripping it in half, and weaving it back together. "It takes some effort with a thing I am not familiar with, but with something I knew well? It took no effort at all. This time, I want to make weapons that aren't just Grimm material, I want real, hunting tier weapons." As we arrived at the armory, and on the displays for blueprints, I called up the rough sketches I had of Balta and Diva.

"I made Diva in three days of desperation, after I lost my previous sword fighting Grimm, I needed it fast, and the design reflected that it moved how I wanted it to move, because it only had 1 moving part, the chamber, the rest was me shaping the blade into what I needed it to be for a gun. Balta was two smaller swords that I forged individually, one containing all the fire dust I could afford that day, one all the ice dust I could afford about a week later."

Weiss looked in on the design for Balta, and asked, "High purity, especially for weapons, is very expensive, I can't imagine that you could get much, especially after you told us about your situation."

"It would have been much more expensive if I used S class dust. I could afford B." I explain.

Weiss pauses, "Your swords were forged with B class dust?" She chokes out.

"Yah…" I trail off.

"Your sword was capable of some of the most potent dust glyphs I have ever seen. The power behind the swords you demonstrated was levels beyond anything I could manage with similar mass, or volume, even in crystals!" Weiss begins.

I interrupt, "Weiss, when forged into a receptive material, what amplification factor per percentage can Dust expect with say… Grimm materials?"

She stops cold. "Steel is currently the most potent medium for dust infusion at a three percent improvement per percentage, cutting off at an equal split, efficiency fails to improve remarkably until above ninety percent for channeling." She looks at me, "What are your materials?"

"It varies on density and internal orientation, but Balta had six up to seventy-five percent, and a measurable three-fourths of a percent." I say, letting her mind spin.

She looks back to my design and noted the dust I measured out. "You used those properties specifically, you had seventy-five percent Grimm in your blade, and it had a one hundred percent efficiency in casting and a three hundred percent amplification of dust resources, but that would be low class S scale, not the rediculous level you had."

"I said seventy-five percent, not the fifty of steel." I said.

"Four hundred and fifty percent." Weiss said, thinking, "That would be the S class purity that you demonstrated."

Ruby cut in, "Could that also work for charge dust?"

I turn, "Yes, why?"

Ruby looked at the design for Balta and asked slowly, "You were going for a mix between a Mistrali, and a Vacuan broadsword, right."

I pause, and smile, "Yes, the Vacuan was too thick, and the Mistrali was too short. Why?"

"I think I know how we're going to make you a gun, and it's going to be fantastic!" She opened a new blueprint, and began to work, at a speed only she could keep up with.

As she worked, editing and designing something interesting from the words I can actually pick up, I turn to Weiss and say, "So I was thinking of using the white dust I acquired from the train, and my unique properties, and have dust chambers like yours, to make a dual precision and power casting instrument." I turn, and use the board to draw a short sword, that transforms into a spear and designated the dual elemental slots. "So, is this good?" I ask.

"Well," Weiss begins, taking up the pen, and as she explained the ins and outs of dust casting weaponry, I realize something.

As she finished redesigning the weapon, I say slowly, "I made a mess creating Balta."

"Given the design, you showed me, yes, but we are going to make a weapon the envy of casters everywhere."

"Thank you, both of you, I never knew any of this."

"Welcome!" Ruby calls, before returning to the design.

"You are welcome." Weiss says.

I look over the design, "I can fabricate this myself, so, what did you want to go over personally."

"I...don't know. Whatever you consider a priority." Weiss said.

"Get Myrtenaster. I'll hit one or two general topics today." We go, leaving the overhyped Ruby there to finish her design.

We walk to the training ring and I explain, "First, we are going to cover defence. Your only strategy at present is avoidance and the occasional parry, so we're going to work on that, then…" I pause, thinking aloud, "Range is good, offense is light, light but good, I obviously can't teach you anything about dust…" I pause, again, and a lightbulb goes off, "Your semblance?" I turn, asking, "What is your semblance?"

She pauses, doubt flooding her, and I continue, "I've don't think I've ever seen you use it, or have I?"

She curls more into doubt, and begin to speak, "It's a family semblance, and I… can't use it."

I pause, stopping her, "Weiss, I promise you that you can. Your semblance is just that. Yours. You can't be you incorrectly, you also can't use your semblance incorrectly. You can fail to know how your semblance works because even for family semblances, every member has a slightly different way of using it. You are you, not your sister, or anyone else."

She smiles, hope flooding her, and she strutted into the training hall.

I followed her, and began to speak, "Defensively speaking, you are the weakest on RWBY, Blake and Ruby's semblances allows for evasion on a scale you can't match, Yang is a defensive wall, and I have my armor to fall back on. You have the mobility of your glyphs… Weiss how do your glyphs work?"

She looks up, confused, "They redirect kinetic energy, and can apply different amplifiers, and multipliers to the force present. Why?"

"Put a glyph up, empowering energy away from you, toward me." I say, creating a dense mace behind me.

Her glyph pops up, rotating in place, and asks, "Why wo…" I swing the mace as hard and fast as I can manage, and it bounces out of my hands, clattering across the floor, and dissolving.

The glyph knocked me backward, almost all the way across the room, Weiss standing there in shock, demanded, "What was that?"

"Did you see what happened?" I ask, ecstatic.

"What?" She asked.

"Your glyph. It reflected the power of my swing, it rejected the force I put behind it, and then my power directly." I jump up, "You said your glyphs require little effort, just simple concentration, your Glyphs can act as a powerful defensive barrier, at least physically."

She pauses, then a smile blossoms over her face, and a cage forms around me, and she asks, "How powerful?"

I look around, and I grow dual sets of plate shields. Guarding my front and rear and lash out. My front and rear, shields absorbing the full force of the blows, bouncing back and forth, impacting the two barriers, after six jarring blows, the rear shatters, sending me headlong into the wall, embedding myself, I groan, "Uuuuuhhhh."

She looks shocked, she demands, "You didn't need to test it!" She runs up and pulls me from the wall.

"I really did." I sit up, uncurling from my ball, and stretch, "You needed to know the strength you have behind the glyphs if you are going to use them in combat." I stand, asking, "So, how much force will break those glyphs?"

"Six bounces, and the seventh failed completely." She said, looking down.

"Weiss, the power I was experiencing when I was between them was devastating." I wave my hand, and a small Beowulf grows out of the shadow cast. "Can you raise it again?"

She nods, and once the Beowulf was contained, I snapped, and it attacked. The first strike bounced, and after the second it just seemed to disintegrate.

"What happened?" Weiss asks.

"Standard Grimm particulates have little to no ability to absorb exterior kinetic force. The armor can take more, but your glyphs circumvent this by applying force to the entire body, even internally. The first strike probable killed it. The second just dissipates the dead material." I explain, before spawning a small Nevermore.

She does it again, just a wall between us, and the bird. It unleashes its feathers, and they ricochet and shred the Nevermore.

"Grimm are regularly seen to attack each other, as well as people. Species can exist in small packs when united by an Alpha. Nevermores are almost exclusively found alone unless they are nesting young. That defence, if you can sustain it among the hail, would be very useful."

I spawn a Geist, and she cages it again. Its hand passes through the glyph, much to her chagrin. She turns to me, and I explain, "Gheist can ignore stable passive aura, but are stopped by an active aura."

Weiss looks confused, and I explain, "Something I have discovered, is that a Geist can possess things with passive aura, but can't with active aura." I pause, thinking, "Active aura is the shield you use around yourself, and the energy preserving your weapon. Your clothes, due to the amount of time they spend around your aura have an imprint, but not enough to hold off a Geist." I point over to the creature, "The glyphs are passive aura until exposed to force, as the geist limbs don't have any mass, ergo any force, and therefore can pass through the glyph. If…" I see her point at the glyph, and the arm disintegrates, cut off from the mask. "Exactly that, it can stop a Geist from passing through."

I continue, "One other interesting fact about team RWBY was that all four of you have the active aura in your clothes. Only a few teachers have active aura running through their clothes."

I look to the clock on the wall, and say, "I think that's enough for today, I need to make sure Ruby doesn't do anything...overzealous."

We walked back into the shop, and Ruby was waiting by the printer, and that was possibly more concerning than seeing her work. As Weiss and I walked up, we heard the printer stop. Ruby turned, and called, "It just finished, come look!"

We walked over to her, and she held up a set of drawings and began explaining. "This is a broadsword, made to the exact specifications you gave before he left, long, sturdy and it morphs into a spark dust railgun. It-accepts-both-the-custom-rounds-that-he-used-for-Diva, and some-smaller-easily-manufactured-rounds-for-rapid-fire.A-set-of-secondary-rounds-for-larger-Grimm-without-using-the-larger-Diva-rounds-there-like-bullets-but-are-a-small-conductive-cores-with-a-shell-like-a-deathstalker's-tale-and…"

"Ruby!" I say, stopping her, "We can't understand you past your second acceleration."

She pauses, and blushes heavily, "Sorry."

"It's also a gun?" I finish, questioning, as I go to pick up the designs. As I look at them, I can see it forming, the concept of the weapon before me. I can see how my power flows through the blade.

"It looks amazing." I look through the pages; the detail, the care she had taken with each and every line drawn, the way it all flows together. "Thank you, Ruby."

She stands tall, "You're welcome."

I turn to Weiss, "I'll run Ruby through a couple things at the ring, and be back before dinner, can you tell Yang not to freak out?"

"Sure." She says, "And this?"

I snap, and the papers roll into a thin tube, and I create a tube for them to be safe inside. "I've got that covered."

I wave, and Ruby and I head for the ring in the forest.

As we walked out toward the ring, I begin to explain, "First, I wanted to thank you again for that amazing design."

She blushed slightly, "It's nothing."

"It's really not, I could never have designed something like this without your assistance. Secondly, I wanted to ask if there was anything you wanted to work on?"

She walks silently for a moment, and responded, "I think I wanted to work on my work with Crescent Rose, and you had questions about my speed, right?"

"Yah, so the scythe work first, then we can do a little with speed."

As we arrive I grow a staff about my arm and give it a blade equal to Crescent Rose, not as powerful, not even a nice blade, but enough for this.

I picked up Crescent Rose for a moment, familiarizing myself with how it was used, and I gave it back, concentrating on her style. I mirrored her stance, and explained, "We're going to duel, and you are going see your style, without your ammo support, and see the flaws in it, which should allow for you to improve. Ready?"

She nods, and I begin, her twirling blows raining down, as we both get slightly faster as we continue, me channeling my lack of biology, and her channeling her semblance. As rose petals begin to fall, I fall more and more behind. I fully shift to Grimm and she keeps accelerating until I leap back unable to even see her move.

I jump back, and we pause, and I gasp out, "Lets do speed, I can't handle that today."

We move over to the track, and I wave over to the end of the straightaway, and a line turns red. "I want you to try accelerating past what I can measure before hitting that line."

"I don't really...ummm…" Ruby looked at me and then the line.

"Ruby, activate your semblance. Accelerate yourself and then move." I encourage.

Ruby vibrated for a moment and then stopped, looking strained. Then ran toward the line and back with her usual flourish.

As she gets back, I give her a critical look. "So, what happened?"

"I tried to bring the speed, but it just...wumped." She made a hand gesture of running and then smashed it into her other hand.

I take a small step backward, looking at the track. I look at her again, my eyes taking their black halo again as I look into her aura, I can feel the speed and the power, but I can't quite feel how they work.

I sigh, "One more time, I don't want you to think of it as running super fast. I want you to try thinking of it as deciding you have the power to go faster, does that make any sense?"

"Nope!" Ruby says.

I wave, and two seats rise out of the ground, and I sit. "Ruby, do you know how I move faster?"

"Grimm legs?" She asks.

I smile, "Yes... Ruby, how do you think Hunters go faster than the standard person?"

"Aura."

"True. Now some hunters are faster than others, due to natural speed, preference, and aura." I explain, "Ren goes faster than Pyrrha due to his body and aura being built to go faster. I can outstrip both due exclusively to my extra-weirdness. You, however, are built for speed outside of anything we can even process. Your aura, your semblance, is built for it. Like most things build for speed; fighter jets, Beowulfes, bullets, you lack raw power. However, like all of these things, you don't need to be strong because you are fast. No huntsman alive has been recorded to dodge or outrun bullets. You can. I want to see you do so without needing a massive run-up. Do you understand?"

She looks at me, her mind whirling behind her gleaming eyes. "Ok." She says softly.

"Have you ever seen a fighter jet take off?" I ask.

"Nope!" She says, her happy demeanor returning.

"Well, when they take off and don't have much room..." I wave to the short distance to the line, "They are held in place until they get fast enough to not crash. I want you to imagine you are one of those fighter planes. Hold yourself in place until you hit a speed fast enough. Does that make sense?" I ask.

She nods, going back to the starting line, assumes a starting position, and begins vibrating. A low hum is barely audible, and then she takes off, moving nearly beyond my ability to feel. Then, almost as quickly as she began, she stops.

Unfortunately, she stopped trying to turn around and continued to move until she skids around the upper lip of the ring, and flies toward the clearing in the center.

I walk over, holding back a laugh, and help her out of her impact crater, saying finally, "So...you just made a crater with your face." She doubles over laughing, remembering the stupid name Jaune gave her on the first day of school.

I help her up, and on the way back asked, "So, you made me a railgun. Was that a subtle hint you want one too, or what?"

She looks up, her eyes turning to stars, "YES! Yesyesyesyesyes..." She disappears into the design room, and I vaguely hear the printer as I arrive.

She stands, sprints over, and says, her smile terrifyingly reminiscent of Nora's, and says, "High Impact Electrokinetic Anti-Material Sniper-Railgun and a Scythe." She holds out blueprints for a set of parts.

I look at the parts and a thought occurs. "Could you use the..." I check the description, "High Impact Electrokinetic Anti-Material Sniper-Railgun and a Scythe, to stop and turn?"

She looks down, her face contorting again into her 'design face' as I came to recognize it. She smiles, and take the plans from me so fast I actually feel friction from the paper, and starts mumbling about increasing the output even higher and reinforcing "her baby" and know I just made her day.

Over the next several months I spend quite a bit of time with Ruby and Weiss, working on their respective skills.

Weiss turns, sighing, and tossing her hand up in the air. "I can't do it!"

"Why not?" I ask calmly, not understanding why her knight or my copy were giving her problems. It wasn't size, it wasn't ability, but she just couldn't get them to appear.

"They're too strong." She says, and I freeze.

"Duh," I say aloud slowly.

"Well thank you for..." Weiss begins.

"You don't think you are strong enough to command them." I interrupt. She pauses, looks to comment and I continue, "I had the exact same problem early in my experiment with creating Grimm. I had to believe... No, I had to know I was strong enough to both create and command the things I was creating. It was different for controlling other so I hadn't thought about it but that's it, you just said it!" I stand, pacing, and I snap, as A solid white paladin grows into existence, wicked broadsword in one hand, and a slightly yellow deathstalker claw in it's other.

It charges at her, and she initially lashes out with her newly upgraded Myrtenaster, and a bolt of lightning disarms it, and a glyphs cylinder disintegrates it.

She turns to me pissed, "What was..."

I interrupt, "You're mad. Fine. Bring it back!" I demand. And she does.

She twists Myrtenaster, creating a huge summoning glyph between us and out of it the wicked form of the Grimm paladin springs forth, swinging in a crushing overhead arc, and I let it. It slams me into the ground, and then its backhand sends me crashing into and through, the wall behind us.

Weiss gasps and runs over only to find me laughing hysterically.

She punches me on the shoulder and I stop laughing as a gasp of pain rips through me again, "Don't hit..." I stop to slowly stand, "me..." I cough, "Your guardian demon shattered my aura."

"Then you shouldn't have just stood there and taken it you...you...you dolt!" She yells.

"Still think you aren't strong enough to summon one aura-less copy of me?" I cough, smirking.

She pauses, and goes even paler than normal, and turn back to the hole in the nearly indestructible wall of the training room. The one she made by smashing me through it. She twisted Myrtenaster again, and a small glyph forms. Out of it, a white and blue version of me stands, a dozen visible hands grow from his shoulders and fingertips, and I laugh, "So you can't make invisible Grimm parts. Looks like I..." The hands turn invisible as she turns her smug visage to me. "Well damn."

After months of steady progress, Ruby got her 'jumpstart' to work, and she was near instantaneous in getting up to a speed that was horrifying. We also discovered that when you get fast enough...well...

I felt myself fall to the ground, somehow still calm, looking over at my severed lower half. I crawled over on my remaining arm and felt the mass rejoin the rest of my body. I slowly stood, a visible white line crossing from my right shoulder to just below my left arm. I concentrated and it faded. I looked over to Ruby, and we silently agreed never to speak of this event. Ever.

AN: This is the first of 2 or 3 chapter like this, as this one was long, and I am going to go into more depth for some of the other characters who don't have pre-built arcs.

AN2: This is just another hint that Obsidian is something above human and grimm. I will cover this some more later, but for now…

Signing off - V