Team RWBY built a routine over the following week. Their mornings were much the same as the first night, though Ruby got more sleep now that her children could be nearer. Today, the members of team RWBY woke with the alarm, to their leader already up and nearly finished dressing, her red cloak clashing with the Beacon uniform.
"Good morning, Ruby. Why are you up so early," Yang inquired, before hopping off the bunk with a stretch, "and where are your wolves?"
"I let them out when I woke up so they could go hunt...and today's first-come-first-serve on cookies for breakfast. Don't wanna be late," Ruby replied, fastening her last boot before she left, the last sentence half-yelled through the door.
"That can't be healthy for her," Weiss remarked, her eyes affixed on the clock. The rest of the morning went without noise or further strangeness. Exiting the room, they found themselves amongst their peers, a wave of bodies pulled towards the promise of Monday's pancakes. A certain energetic redhead sped down the hallways, nearly crashed into Blake, and disappeared around the corner screaming about syrup. Nora's team tried to catch up, to no avail.
The remnants of team RWBY, just outside the cafeteria, reached the aftermath of what looked like a glorious fight. Part of the wall between two double doors had been "renovated" to fit a third. In a pile of debris, the recently-infamous leader of team CRDL lay unconscious. An older woman clad in extravagant brown clothes, a beret, and sunglasses stormed past, fuming and searching, presumably for the rest of his team. Yang took the lead, searching the cafeteria tables for Ruby's signature red cloak. The only sign of Ruby at their normal table was an abandoned tray full of cookies, which only served to worry the older sister further, before she spotted her, by chance, beside a tall Mistralian man, rabbit faunus, and darker skinned guy. Yang strutted over, Weiss and Blake not far behind.
As they got closer, more detail could be discerned. Ruby had her hood up, staring at the hands in her lap. It was clear she had been embarrassed by something.
"Hey, you okay, Ruby," Yang asked right away.
"Yeah, what happened here," Weiss followed up.
Seeing that Ruby was preoccupied with her own thoughts, the tall guy spoke up in a smooth but cut short voice, "hello. I'm Yatsuhashi. Your friend here was insulted by those bullies. Seeing as she wouldn't fight back, our leader, Coco decided to for her. She is most likely hunting down the rest of his team."
"Why would they insult Ruby?"
"He knew! I don't know how, but he did, and he started making fun of me about it." Ruby raised her face to look Yang in the eyes, bloodshot silver met lilac. "He knows I'm… gay, and he yelled it out loud in front of everyone so now everyone knows!"
While everyone started discussing possible ways Cardin could have found out, Ruby's words panged Blake's mind. She suddenly remembered the one detail about the day after initiation she forgot about. The rustling she heard behind them when they went to find Ruby. That's how. And it hurt Blake to only now realize it, after it was too late.
"I'm sorry, Ruby." All six of the gathered hunters-in-training turned to look at—or in Fox's case, listen at—Blake. "I forgot all about it. When we found you in the forest, I heard something following us. I didn't bring it up for reasons you now know, and I forgot on the way back."
Ruby snivelled, "it's okay Blake. I don't think it could have been prevented, if that is how they knew."
The sound of doors slamming open caused the seven of them to turn towards the back of the cafeteria, where an angry Coco strided in. She veritably stomped over, plopped herself in a stool, and looked Ruby dead in the eyes. The intensity of her gaze scared the reaper enough for her to release a meek sound.
"Listen, Freshy. You're a student at Beacon, the finest school for huntsman and huntresses this side of Remnant. This is a combat school, I don't care what Ozpin says about being a trade school now. If someone is picking on you, fight them. Especially someone as fucking pathetic as Cardin and his lackeys were. The teachers will not give a flying rat's ass about bullying here. It is expected that you can handle that on your own. Understood, missy? Next time I find you in trouble like that, I will not intervene, and I won't let anyone else either. Fight your own fights. Now, if you'll excuse me, I would actually like to eat breakfast this morning." And like that, she was gone again, disappeared into the crowd of people starting to line up for food.
At the escort of her team, Ruby returned to their usual spot across from JNPR, surprised to find her tray of cookies untouched. Unbeknownst to her team, the wolves have made multiple attempts to cheer her, including Hati's nearly successful break-in. Their mental support helped to keep Ruby's mind on track. She had school to focus on, not the inevitable reactions from people she hardly knew.
Their meal came to a close as the bell heralded the first of many passing periods. They received their schedules yesterday, shortly after news of the arrival of a new teacher. A large portion of freshmen and some sophomores were to attend morning combat with Professor Goodwitch. Teams RWBY and JNPR took their seats at the front of the auditorium, chatting while they could before class. The bell rang again, and the professor walked to center stage. The click of her heels was loud enough to hush most of the voices. All other conversations faded into the pressure of silence.
"Welcome to sparring and combat. Freshman, over the next month, I will evaluate how you fight by pitting you against your own team. This will let me see where you need to improve, and you will need to learn how your team fights. The key to successful teamwork is understanding. After your fight, you may discuss amongst yourselves, quietly, to figure each other out. Now, who would like to volunteer first?" Professor Goodwitch's introduction was no-nonsense and to the point. A second passed before a team near the back rose their hands, and the spars began.
Each fight was practically free-for-all, with no sense of priority behind the combatants' targeting. One team accidentally wiped themselves out before their fight could begin in a messy Dust explosion. Watching the fights pumped team RWBY's excitement through the roof. Yang fidgeted in her seat, subtly shadow-boxing as she watched. Weiss's hand occasionally grasped at the air where Myrtenaster usually sat. Even Blake was less subdued than normal, her book lain open across her lap and her attention on the stage. After the third fight, Ruby shot her hand skyward with all of her semblance behind it. Petals covered erupted forth, but a draft ultimately caused the roses to fall mostly on her team. They faded quickly.
"We'll go!" Ruby shouted at Professor Goodwitch's next prompt for volunteers. With a smirk at her enthusiasm, she nodded towards the young leader. RWBY followed their leader back to the lockers to change into combat gear and pick up their weapons.
The quartet gathered on the stage as the ring sprung to life, a blue glow that outlined the boundaries of their fight. As they took their stances—Weiss faced the audience, Ruby stood opposite, and Blake and Yang took either side—Ruby assessed the situation in her head. She knew Yang would have to go out first, or her semblance would win her the match. Weiss could very well have air superiority, and Blake… she still had yet to see her fight. The countdown began after each signaled their readiness; the glow shifted slowly from blue to red, and the fighters drew their weapons to the sound of subtle mecha-shift whirring.
The Reaper's scythe, tall and streamlined, poised on her shoulders like a good friend's hug. Almost as if it were an afterthought, Ruby flipped up her hood with her free hand. Petals flew freely, but dissolved back into the aether momentarily.
The Princess's rapier, thin and polished, held toward the ground in a duelist's challenge. A glyph sprung to life beneath her feet, glowing white and angled forward.
The Shadow's cleaver, wide and worn, gripped in a habitual manner at her hip, one hand on the cleaver-sheath; the other was ready to draw. Her eyes watched carefully, and her stance neutral.
The Brawler's gauntlets, short yet heavy, assembled themselves from compact form in an engineering marvel that took months of their wielder slaving away at Signal, though mostly for the grade. She assumed a boxer's ready stance.
On the word 'go,' Ruby blinked the distance between her and her sister, already throwing feint blows. The speed and ferocity caught Yang off guard. Block after block missed, but not a single opening was taken by Ruby's scythe. The rifle barked several times as Ruby built up momentum, her sights set on knocking Yang out before her semblance had a chance to activate.
Weiss altered the angle of her glyph backwards and rocketed into the air, surprised by Ruby's movement. Blake, for her part, kept calm and left the sisters to their devices, her eyes locked on Weiss's movements. She dashed over and sacrificed a clone to bounce off towards the airborne Schnee. Weiss landed on a gravity glyph upside down, part to get a vantage over the arena, and part to keep her skirt from falling. She quickly parried her teammate's risky draw-slash, but due to gravity, missed on the riposte. The heiress smirked regardless and dropped her glyph in favor of four vertical ones surrounding Blake. As she landed, the barrel on her rapier clicked over to white. Expertly, and without thinking of it, she weaved each glyph full of Dust to allow her semblance some tangibility. Weiss jumped between the glyphs with a degree of randomness to confuse Blake, who rapidly attempted to follow her movements with the amber eyes. With the last glyph spent, the duelist dashed towards her teammate, rapier aimed to stab.
The thin blade passed right through without any resistance. Slowly, 'Blake' dissolved, the guise of the clone replaced with a very confused Weiss. Her confusion lasted but a second, as a boot impacted into her side and slammed the heiress toward the sisters.
Ruby and Yang built a steady rhythm, the older sister no longer surprised by the younger's rapid advance. Instead, she was scared of her future in this fight if she didn't find a way out. She was no idiot. She knew exactly what her sister hoped to accomplish with all that momentum. Not only would it be efficient should it connect, it would hurt.
The white form of Weiss crashed into Yang as another feint went overhead. The scythe was already on its way back around before Ruby had a chance to react. As quickly as she could, she tried to slow Crescent Rose. Even with assistance of her semblance, the blade was moving too quickly. Brilliant streaks of cyan lit across Weiss's body in an instant, cracked like a pane of glass, but failed to fall away. Her aura maintained a sliver of strength to protect. Yang's glowed a brilliant orange, otherwise unfazed by the sudden and jolting appearance of the heiress.
Ruby jumped back, separated from her weapon. Her eyes were wide with horror at how unimaginably hard she hit her partner. She watched as the cyan light pulsed across her fair skin. A quick glance at the onlookers revealed several cringing faces at the sound of the impact, all moving in slow motion. Ruby deactivated her semblance, realizing it was still active. Her mind fell back in pace with time. Weiss fell the rest of the way to the ground, and the sound of her own impact reached the reaper's ears at last; a brutal smack of steel against flesh, subdued from slashing to bludgeoning in a way that only aura-shielding could accomplish, followed shortly by a single blaring buzzer that indicated she was, indeed, out of the match.
Blake glanced up at the aura gauges. Weiss hovered just above three percent and well out of the fight. Yang sat around thirty. Once they realized Weiss was still conscious—given away by the girl's cradling of her own head against the whiplash or headache she no doubt received from that blow—the shadow dashed after their leader, the easiest target available, considering her unarmed status. Ruby drew her handcannon from the folds of her cloak, her favorite—and only—'pocket' for three distinct reasons. With the aim she worked up under her uncle's tutoring, she successfully blew the heads off two clones before Blake was close enough to render her accuracy moot.
Ruby had never needed to rely on her handcannon in combat, save once or twice she used it as it was intended: a backup. Blake's abuse of her semblance—combined with Yang's guard of the disarmed scythe—effectively destroyed any of Ruby's opposition. Blades struck from every direction, and Ruby's semblance only delayed the inevitable.
The buzzer blared a second time as the red leader's aura dropped below twenty percent. Ruby pouted at the sound, before she trotted off to collect her scythe and help Weiss off the stage.
Yang felt her semblance creep up, a familiar static-like sensation that traveled across her body in echoing waves. The goosebumps bounced on the edges of her skin and back again. A smirk found its way crawling across her lips. Flames licked off her hair in waves, and each contributed to the crescendo that was her hidden power. Lilac irises flipped to red in a literal blink of the eye. She slowly walked toward her partner, biding her time, arms held up defensively.
Blake stared at her partner across the stage, softly breathing from the exertion against Ruby, and felt her aura start to block the pain from the lactic acids that plagued her muscles. Yang looked way too confident to be losing, especially by such a large margin. It put the shadow on edge. Something was up. Blake reached back and attached the large cleaver to the magplate between her shoulders. The mecha-shift in Gambol Shroud whirred to life as the blade folded against its pistol counterpart. A quick shot of aura lengthened the ribbon that attached to the hilt. Both hands grabbed the ribbon, and she began to twirl it.
Yang burst forward with help from her shotgauntlets, one foot on the ground as she reached Blake. The first fist punched clear through a clone, but thanks to watching Ruby and Blake fight, the second landed clean on her hip. As Blake flew, she had the wherewithal to toss Gambol Shroud, which wrapped itself around Yang's ankle. Blake's newfound momentum at the hands of her partner was enough to knock the brawler onto her ass. The shadow ripped her weapon away, and flicked her wrist to send it right back, the force of a gunshot helped it along.
The anger of Yang's semblance finally took over. She deflected the chain scythe head with her gauntlet, caught the ribbon, and wrapped it around her arm. The brawler yanked on it with all of her might. Blake flew toward her, and took the full brunt of her offhand, connected with the airborne girl's jaw. Simultaneous crunch and blare signaled the end of the match. Despite, Blake continued past Yang and landed a few feet in front of Ruby and Weiss. Ruby looked up at the gauges.
Yang Xiao Long — 25%
Blake Belladonna — 12%
Weiss Schnee — 4%
Ruby Rose — 60%
'Wait, what?' Ruby asked rhetorically across the telepathic connection with her wolves. The screen switched to a blank gauge.
Hati's voice replied, 'while we could still hear your thoughts, I couldn't feel your aura when you went onto the stage.'
'What do you mean?'
'I don't know.' Sköll and Fenrir confirmed they didn't know either, both unaware of what Hati was talking about. Ruby could only think of one variable different between the stage and everywhere else.
"Well done girls. Next?" Professor Goodwitch said, unphased. Yang and Blake returned to the locker rooms change into their Beacon uniforms once again, as Weiss and Ruby had during the fight. The duo returned to watch the very end of JNPR's fight, which, unsurprisingly, Pyrrha won. Ren and Nora teamed up against the renowned fighter, while Jaune kept throwing himself against the wall that is the three of his teammates. No more teams volunteered, so Professor Goodwitch began calling teams down. Ruby sat, antsy to ask Goodwitch a question after class, but paid attention nonetheless.
The fights continued, and the remaining three gathered the rapt attention of the students. Admittedly impressive displays of ability alongside a general lack of knowledge of their members, worked against each other for interesting and unpredictable fights. One fight in particular took 20 minutes of combat; one kid's semblance proved too good at defense.
The class drew to an end, minutes ticking down. Purple glyphs sprung to life, chunks of stone thrown at high velocity back into the column they existed previously. The column glowed a bright orange and started to slowly cool, now repaired by the Professor's semblance and a dash of Burn.
"Mr. Winchester, next time, do not strike the support beams as a show of force," Goodwitch berated the musclely bully from breakfast. The Professor turned towards the class.
"Second years, the mission boards are open to you. In a month, you are expected to choose a mission for your first unsupervised hunts. You have been warned, there will be no excuses. Good luck." She clicked her heels, followed like clockwork by the dismissal bell. Ruby told her team to go on, then flashed to Professor Goodwitch's side.
"Ah, Ms. Rose. How can I help you?" she asked, her tone curious.
"Uh, hi. I was wondering what that glow was around the arena? I've never seen something like that," Ruby asked, a hand gesturing to the edge of the platform and into the air, where it stopped inches from the ceiling during the fight.
"That is a gift that was donated to us by the Atlas military. They developed the technology to cancel out semblances. It turned out to be too large for an individual soldier's use, and passing through it does nothing to a Hunter, making it impractical for security."
"Oh, that's really cool! Thank you," Ruby said, before disappearing to gather her backpack from the back of the now empty room. The revelation filled her mind with possibilities, both her own thoughts and those of her children.
AN: Sorry this took so long. School beat me up so I had to put it back in line, and this chapter was difficult to write. I am really proud of the fight scene, though.
I have some announcements. First, I will be editing the previous chapters before chapter 9 comes out. Quite frankly, I used to suck at tensing and I need to fix it. It's such a glaring problem. Second, I have two half-completed chapters for two different stories I'm working on. One based on fanart by Sorairo-Wolf on Deviant Art, and the other is my return to the RWBY x Star Wars fandom. Most people don't know it, but my first story on Fanfiction was a crossover called RWBY: Force Echoes. It was bad.
And, as always, my probably-accidentally-omitted-sometimes thank you and recommendation. Blacsparrow has been doing beta work on this story since chapter two. He's written two important scenes, as well. Go check out his page (my personal favorite of his stories is Black Rock Huntress).