Ruby: Come on, you guys! Hurry it up! It's almost time for the next chapter!
Yang: Easy there, little sister. I'm sure everyone's still taking some time to get here. At least give them all a chance to sit down or something.
Ruby: Well what're they doing just standing around and taking their time for?! There's all kinds of awesome stuff happening here today!
Weiss: And we'll get to all of it in due time. For now, how about we just wait for the readers to actually start.
Blake: We may have to wait for lyokoMARVELanime as well. He's not even here yet.
Weiss: Well, that's a little inconsiderate. He puts all this work into the third chapter of this story, tells us to be here as early as possible, and yet he can't even be bothered to show up on time?
Ruby: Hey, on the bright side, we won't miss anything, right?
Yang: I'd be a little more excited if the current atmosphere wasn't so...mellow and dull.
Blake: It does feel pretty stiff right now.
Weiss: Then I guess it's a lucky thing I know how to fix it. Ruby, would you mind helping me start up the music for one of my songs?
Ruby: No need, Bestie! I've got something in store that'll solve all our problems, and keep you from having to do a thing. Check it out! [hits something on her Scroll]
[cue "This Will Be the Day"]
Aw yeah!
Blake: That's better!
Yang: I love this song!
Weiss: It's catchy, and made for a really great theme song.
Team RWBY: [all break out into a huge dance number as their show's first theme song continues playing all the way through]
[end song]
Ruby: Man, that song brings back a lot of memories.
Yang: Yeah, good times.
Weiss: Still, should we really be messing with lyokoMARVELanime's sound system like this? I don't think he would appreciate us using it to basically play at being DJs in some club.
Yang: I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Besides, we're just playing songs from Ruby's playlist right now. Even if it is one that I've got on my playlist too.
Blake: Nice! What else do you have?
Yang: Funny you should ask. Ever since we got here, I've been looking into lyokoMARVELanime's archives of various different types of Earth music, and I've found some really good stuff. Check this out. [dials up a song on her Scroll]
[cue "Baby I Like It"]
Blake: Niiiice.
RBY: [dance to the song until Yang stops it]
Yang: And how about this one.
[cue "Walk This Way"]
Ruby: Sweet.
RBY: [dance to the song until Yang stops it]
Blake: Yeah, those are pretty good, but I've got a pretty good one too. [pulls up song on her Scroll]
[cue "Move Along" By All American Rejects]
RBY: [nod along to the beat of the song until Blake stops it]
Ruby: Okay, those are nice. But I've got a couple new ones too. Check it out! [cues song on her Scroll]
[cue "Everything is Awesome"]
Yang: Why am I not surprised? [joins Ruby and Blake in dancing along for a few minutes]
Ruby: Well how about this one?
[cue "A Little Faster" by There For Tomorrow]
RBY: [all nod along to the beat again]
Ruby: And let's not forget...
[cue "Fight As One" by Downstait]
RBY: [all nod along while dancing in place]
[end songs]
Yang: Yeah, that's a good playlist. [turns to Weiss] Okay, Ice Queen, what songs have you added to your playlist?
Weiss: The same. All the same as you guys.
Blake: Uh-huh, sure. Let's hear some then.
Weiss: Okay. [pulls out Scroll but doesn't actually bring up any songs] Oh look at that. The buttons aren't working.
Ruby: Scrolls don't have buttons, and even if they did, you're not even pushing them.
Weiss: Uh...my battery's dead.
Yang: They never go dead! Let's hear some of your songs.
Weiss: No! I don't want to. They're mine.
Ruby: Play one!
Weiss: No! Don't you dare.
Blake: Get her!
Ruby: Wait! [cue funny chase scene music] Okay, now get her.
Weiss: Yikes! [runs for it]
RBY: [Begins chasing Weiss]
[cue hilarious chase around the studio using every funny chase gag you can think of as Weiss tries to get away]
Blake: [sneaking up on Weiss] I've got her!
Weiss: [gets pounced on by Blake] Hey! No fair!
Ruby: Quick, play a song on her playlist before she get up!
Weiss: No. No! NO!
[cue "Don't Think Twice" by Utada Hikaru]
Yang: [sniffles a little after a few minutes] It gets me. Right here.
Blake: [sheds a tear or two] I just...I can't. It's so sad. It's just so sad! Turn it off!
[end song]
Ruby: [wiping a few tears] Why would you have that in your playlist?
Weiss: Because it's a nice song! "I want you for a lifetime, but if you're gonna think twice..."
Ruby: Stop it! Please stop! I don't want to cry when we're not even doing a sad chapter!
AN: [finally comes in] Hey! Who's using my sound system to play "Don't Think Twice"?
RBY: [instantly pointing to the culprit] Weiss did it!
Weiss: And just what's wrong with that song?
AN: You're kidding, right? Have you not at least seen the Kingdom Hearts 3 cutscene movie? Do you know when that song is played in the game?! Every time I so much as think of that song now, I'm reminded of that scene at the end between Sora and Kairi!
Weiss: Oh...Yeah. I guess that's fair.
AN: Well, I'm no longer in a great mood, or at least not in a good enough mood to answer reviews, so just start today's chapter, please. I'll answer everything in the ending note today. If you need me, I'll be in my dressing room, punching my Xehanort punching-dummy. And not crying. Because I'm not gonna cry. I...I already shed all my tears after seeing that scene the first time through, and I'm pretty sure that I've nearly dried out my tear ducts for a good long time after all the tear-jerking moments we've had in movies, video games, and all other forms of fiction this year. If you hear anything that sounds like crying, that's just me faking it every time I punch the inflatable Xehanort dummy...Okay...Enjoy the story! [leaves just as tears are beginning to form in eyes] Shut up! I'm not crying! There's no tears!
I do not own anything from either the Kingdom Hearts or RWBY franchises, or any other franchise mentioned in this story.
Chapter 3: Initiation
Despite his attempts to make others believe otherwise, or at the very least make Aqua stop calling him a hopeless sleepyhead, Ventus was not really as lazy as you would think. He just did not do well with getting up if he was enjoying a peaceful rest, and despite the cold hard floor of Beacon's ballroom, Ventus was doing just that. At least he was able to once his friends had finally ended their shouting match with Ruby, her sister, and that other, rather moody girl in white, but that all changed when he heard excited cheering coming from someone that sounded like they were on one serious sugar rush. Cracking an eye open to look at the time on his Scroll, Ventus merely groaned upon seeing that they still had plenty of time to get up and start getting ready for the day ahead of them. He could have attempted to go back to sleep, but the very strange thing that decided that it needed to be up at such an ungodly hour apparently had other plans, so he ended up dragging himself out of his sleeping bag. Turning to his friends, he saw that Lea and Roxas were already up and tidying up their spaces, while Jaune and Sora were already long gone.
Finally, he looked to see what had dared to disturb his sleep, and was left glaring a little at a very hyperactive redhead who was dancing around another teen boy in a green outfit as he too dragged himself up out of bed in a similarly subdued manner as him. From what he could tell, the other boy had probably known the redhead for a long time, because he certainly seemed to be handling her eccentricity with incredible patience, but that did very few favors in improving Ven's morning mood. In the end, he just sighed as he set to work tidying up his area and heading to grab himself some breakfast. Upon arriving at the cafeteria, he easily found Sora, who was munching down on quite a mountain of pancakes. When Ventus asked how the normally lazy bum had managed to get up before him, Sora just replied that the same redhead had woke him up too in her attempts to wake up her friend.
"I think there might be a chance that nearly everyone going to this school is a bit crazy," Ventus sighed once he heard that.
"Maybe, but I wouldn't say that. I mean, Jaune seemed pretty normal, and so did Ruby, you know aside from the fact that she's a couple years younger than most of the other students," Sora shrugged in return.
While he would admit Sora had a point in saying that Jaune seemed relatively sane, it was the latter of those two examples that got Ventus's attention. "How do you know that Ruby's younger than the rest of us?"
"Oh, she and Yang were here just a moment ago before they headed for the locker rooms," Sora explained right when Lea and Roxas sat down. "Apparently, Ruby still had two more years of studying to do at another school before she was eligible to come to Beacon, but she ended up impressing Ozpin enough that he was convinced to let her skip ahead."
"Is that right? Sounds like Little Red's a lot more special than we originally thought," Lea commented once he had shoveled his own helping of breakfast food onto his plate.
"On that, you and Yang would agree. She's insisting that everyone's going to end up thinking that Ruby's the, and I quote, 'bee's knees,' or something," Sora informed him after scarffing down a few more pancakes with a few gulps of milk soon after.
"Bee's knees? Seriously? Who says that anymore," Roxas asked with a chuckle.
"I'm a little more focused on how you mentioned that only me and Yang are thinking that about Ruby," Lea pointed out. "Is she not too thrilled about getting into the school or something?"
"Not that I could tell. From what I gathered, Ruby doesn't really like the idea of being treated like she's some kind of special case," Sora shrugged.
"Well that's a little weird."
"More like refreshing and a sign that she's a lot more humble than other people would be in her position," Ventus corrected. "Anyone else would likely be rubbing that in everyone else's faces, but she just wants to be treated like any other student."
"My thoughts exactly," Sora agreed with a smile.
The rest of their breakfast passed by in relative silence, save for when the hyper girl from earlier and her friend came in to get their own meals, and the two seemed to follow after the Keyblade wielders all the way to the locker room the whole time after. Meaning that they all ended up having to listen as she rambled on to her friend about some bit of nonsense or other, but the one thing that they did get from her excitement was some mention about teams. That left them a little confused, as they were unaware of what that had to do with anything in regards to anything they would be learning at Beacon, but it did not seem like they would be likely to get answers from the odd duo. They seemed a little too caught up in their own little world to really be that bothered by anyone else.
The odd pair aside, the matter of teams did seem like a very popular topic today, as the four Keyblade wielders all heard nearly everyone talking about it in one manner or another. Some were questioning how teams would be formed, others were making strategies on how they could get on the same team as a certain friend or two, and the rest were just talking to certain students in an attempt to talk them into trying to partner up with them. After thinking it over for a minute, it did make sense each of them that the school would want to place their students into teams, since they would more than likely have to work with other Huntsmen after they graduated at varying intervals, but they could also see how it could help the kids learn how valuable having dependable backup was. Sora especially could speak from experience on how great having a team to watch your back could be, having worked with Donald and Goofy throughout most of his adventures, and even from his experiences in teaming up with people from certain worlds, and while the rest of his friends did not work in groups as often as Sora had, they did have at least a little experience in working together with someone else to know how much help that could be. The only question now was how were they going to ensure that they all ended up on the same team?
Normally, none of the four would be too picky about who they would work with in a group, but considering that they were trying their best to keep it secret that they were all from other worlds, along with how they would likely need to leave Remnant at any time if something or someone started stirring up trouble on another world, the four Keyblade wielders all agreed that it would be better for them to end up on a team together. They just wished that they knew how teams were formed, because it would make forming a strategy that would guarantee that happening a lot easier. So, once they were suited up and ready to move out, they spent a little extra time in the locker rooms listening in on the conversations that the other first year students were having on the topic, hoping that they could at least glean a clue about how the process worked.
Their attempts at gathering clues did not go very well, but their listening in did allow them to take notice of a small argument between a certain pair of sisters. "My dearest sister Yang, are you implying that you do not wish to be on the same team as me," they heard Ruby demanding.
"W-what? No! Of course I do," Yang insisted, not noticing that some of their newest friends were coming over.
"Morning you two," Sora greeted cheerily, breaking up the argument between the sisters as he and Ventus approached.
"Hey Sora," Ruby waved happily in return, her previously cross mood vanishing in an instant. She then looked to his blonde companion and said, "Hi Roxas."
"Sorry, wrong spiky haired blonde. My name's Ventus, but you can just call me Ven," Ventus revealed.
"Oh wow, Lea wasn't kidding when he said you looked like you could be Roxas's twin brother," Yang noted as she and Ruby looked him over, picking up on all the similarities between him and the dual Keyblade wielder.
"Yeah, we get that a lot," Ventus nodded. "So, I'm guessing you two are excited for initiation, huh?"
"You know it," Ruby proudly cheered as she pulled her scythe out of the locker she stored it in yesterday. "Despite what Yang says, there's going to be no more awkward small talk or 'getting to know you' stuff, because today, I get to let my sweetheart do the talking."
"Your sweetheart," Ventus questioned.
"She's talking about her scythe," Yang explained. "Ruby's a total weapons nerd. She thinks that seeing new weapons is better than meeting new people."
"Huh, you don't say," Ventus nodded, knowing that Sora was likely going to change that view soon enough just from hanging around Ruby. The guy just had that effect on people. He then looked to Ruby again to see her cuddling her scythe and asked, "So…she has that thing's safety turned on, right?"
"My beautiful Crescent Rose would never hurt me," Ruby cooed happily.
"Okay…So, we've been hearing some people talking about teams. Any chance you guys know what's up with that," Ventus inquired. When Yang and Ruby both looked at him in wonder, he explained, "I only had time to skim through the brochure before I found out that someone had enrolled our group at this school."
"It's pretty normal. Every year, the new students get grouped up into teams of four. It's pretty much normal at every Huntsmen academy. Didn't you guys know that," Yang replied.
"Uh…No, not really," Sora sheepishly shrugged. "But it does sound like it could be fun to have a group of friends working with you to help you get through the school year like that, if not the entire time you're attending the school. Kinda wish my old school did that, too. It would have been a huge help at times."
"Tell that to Ruby," Yang informed him. "She thinks she doesn't need to meet new people and learn to work together with them in order to grow up."
"I still don't see what meeting people has to do with fighting, and again, I don't need people to help me grow up. I drink milk," Ruby declared with pride.
"I don't think she means growing up in the literal sense, Ruby, and you'd be surprised how much meeting people has to do with fighting," Sora told her. "Meeting other people helps you to form connections with others that will see you through good and tough times, right to the point where you wouldn't even need a weapon to help you fight. Not so long as you've got a strong heart that's filled with ties to others."
Yang nodded in approval of this, while Ventus just smiled, having heard and given similar speeches to that before, but only the former made any kind of comment afterwards. "You know something, Ruby? Maybe you should be on a team with Sora. Not only would you get to spend more time with your first boyfriend, but he could really be a huge help for you in breaking out of your shell."
At first, Ruby and Sora were blushing up a storm when Yang mentioned the boyfriend thing again, while Ventus was just nervous about how Sora would react to it, but when her sister finished talking, Ruby went from flustered to indignant. "What the!? I don't need to break out of my shell," Ruby snapped in response. "That's absolutely…"
"Ridiculous! There's no way I put my gear in locker 636 yesterday! I would've remembered having to count that high. Ugh, why does this have to happen today," Jaune moaned as he passed by the four, studying a sheet of paper that he had wrote his locker number down on in the hope that he had made a mistake.
While Sora, Ven, and the sisters continued talking, Lea had noticed that Jaune was having trouble, and soon went to provide some assistance. Upon getting a better look at Jaune's paper, he quickly figured out what the problem was. "I think you may be looking for locker 36 in aisle six," the redhead stated. Jaune's head immediately snapped in Lea's direction, and the redhead explained, "See the dash there? That's probably to indicate what aisle your locker is in."
Jaune turned back to his paper to study it again, and said, "Huh. I didn't notice that because of the smudge. Thanks Lea."
Lea nodded in return and was about to go back to his friends when his eyes came to rest on something that made him scowl. "Oh great. Ice Princess again," the former Number VIII of Organization XIII moaned, having spotted Weiss talking to a girl with red hair and decked out in gladiator armor that looked like it could have come from Olympus.
Jaune had gotten his weapons from his locker by that point, and had ended up overhearing his comment when he got back to him. When he looked to see who Lea was talking about, Jaune ended up coming to the wrong conclusion, and asked, "She a friend of yours?"
"Don't insult me," Lea huffed in return. "After the way Schnee treated some of my pals, I wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with her."
"Well, maybe she just hasn't met the right people yet. I mean, she seems pretty nice from where I'm standing," Jaune argued in Weiss's defense.
Lea had to admit that Jaune was right to say that Weiss was acting nice to the redhead, but after working with the likes of Vexen, Marluxia, and Ienzo back when he was Zexion, he was more than well acquainted with the signs of someone who was only being nice just to get ahead in some way. Whether or not the gladiator girl was aware of this, Lea was not so sure, but he would admit that it was nice to see that the bratty girl was not acting like her usual stuck-up, cranky self for once. "Maybe, but so far, I've never really gotten that impression," Lea told Jaune.
"Hey, people can act different around certain folks. It just takes the right bit of courage to really bring out their better side," Jaune insisted.
"That's some pretty tough talk, Vomit-boy. When's the last time you asked a girl for her number," Lea challenged.
Jaune just turned to Lea and stated, "Watch and learn."
"I'm watching," Lea nodded, and with that, Jaune strolled over to the two girls so that he could introduce himself.
"You know what else is great? Me, Jaune Arc. Nice to meet you," Jaune introduced himself, attempting to act all suave and confident, but the only thing he did was bring an annoyed look to Weiss's face while Lea just sighed in disappointment, feeling like this was not going to go well.
"Do you mind," Weiss questioned, dropping her nice girl act for her usual attitude.
"Nice to meet you, Jaune," the redhead smiled in greeting, a fact that Lea easily picked up on.
Jaune did not seem to notice the redhead's eagerness, as he simply kept his attention on the heiress before him. "So, Weiss, been hearing rumors about teams. I was thinking you and me would make a good one. What do you say?"
"Actually, I think the teams are comprised of four students each, so…" the redhead girl informed Jaune, giving Lea another fact to file away on the team matter for later. Jaune on the other hand took that information and rolled with it in a different way.
"You don't say. Well, hot stuff, play your cards right and maybe you could join up with the winning team," Jaune proudly informed the redhead, making Lea chuckle a little out of pity, already seeing this going from rocky to straight up downhill.
For some reason, the red haired girl still smiled at Jaune's declaration, but that did not stop Lea from feeling that he should step in and try to save the poor boy's skin. "Really? I'd love to see how you would get her on that team when it's already got a full set of four. Those four being Sora, Ventus, Roxas, and of course, yours truly," Lea commented as he walked over.
"Ugh, and now I've got to deal with you again," Weiss grumbled.
"Nice to see you too, Ice Princess," Lea shot back.
Before the redhead could ask anything of Lea, Weiss just moved in between her and the two boys and asked, "Jaune and…Louise, is it?"
"It's Lea. Get it memorized."
"Right, whatever. Anyways, do you either of you have any idea who this is," Weiss then questioned as she indicated warrior girl.
"Nope, not yet," Lea replied.
"Not in the slightest, Snow Angel," Jaune said, making Lea do a full face-palm.
"Yeah, there's no saving this now," Lea muttered to himself, even as Weiss carried on.
"This is Pyrrha," Weiss introduced, ignoring Jaune's attempt at giving her a pet name.
"Hello again," Pyrrha waved merrily, basically being the exact opposite of Weiss in every way imaginable.
"Pyrrha graduated top of her class at Sanctum," Weiss continued. Clearly she felt that she would have to do all the bragging on Pyrrha's behalf.
"Impressive," Lea nodded, not sounding nearly as impressed as Weiss was probably expecting.
"Never heard of it," Jaune shrugged with a smile.
"Ah! She's won the Mistral Regional Tournament four years in a row…A new record," Weiss added on, thinking that might stir up some ideas for the two.
"Again, impressive," Lea responded in the same way as he had before.
"The what," Jaune asked.
Now Weiss was at her wits end. Not only did the blonde idiot not getting a clue about what she was trying to tell him, but the red haired hothead she met last night was just acting like everything she said was no big deal, so she just went for thing that she could think of that at least one of these two would give some kind of reaction to. "She's on the front of every Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes box!"
This time, Jaune reacted in the way that Weiss was expecting, as he let out an excited gasp and exclaimed, "That's you?! They only do that for star athletes and cartoon characters!"
"Yeah, it was pretty cool," Pyrrha shrugged like it was no big deal. Her smile ended up turning into a frown though when she admitted, "Sadly, the cereal isn't very good for you."
"How many cereals are," Lea questioned. He then turned to Jaune and asked, "More importantly, that's the thing that helps you recognize her? Really man?"
Much as she loathed admitting it, Weiss did have to agree with Lea on that, even if only in her head, so she pressed on before the thought of admitting it out loud could make her sick. "So, after hearing all of this, do you really think you're in a position to ask her to be on your team?"
"I guess not. Sorry," Jaune apologized, hanging his head low as his previous display of confidence was shattered.
"Hey, it wouldn't stop me or any of my friends. Sora especially," Lea shrugged. When Weiss shot him a disbelieving look, he just shrugged and stated, "We don't really care that much about a person's titles and accomplishments. I mean, they're pretty cool, sure, but we're more interested in the person than what they can do or have done."
"That's very noble of you," Pyrrha complimented. She then turned to Jaune and stated, "And actually, Jaune, I'd think you'd make a great leader."
"D'oh, stop it," Jaune cooed.
"Seriously, please stop it. This kind of behavior should not be encouraged," Weiss pleaded.
"Sounds like Pyrrha's on board for Team Jaune. Spots are filling up quick," Jaune informed Weiss, now back in his attempts at flirting. Lea tried signaling for the kid to stop, but Jaune either did not notice or was unable to read the signs all that well, because he just kept on going, regardless. "Now, I'm not supposed to do this, but maybe I could pull some strings. Find a place for you. What do you say?"
Lea just sighed the minute Jaune had finished, and began counting down in his head for the moment when Jaune's downfall finally hit him. He fully expected Weiss to straight up slap Jaune, not just for the words, but also for the fact that the kid was getting a little too close for her comfort, but instead, she quickly begged Pyrrha for help in getting him to back off. Running on instinct, Pyrrha quickly drew her javelin and tossed it, sending Jaune flying away and pinning him to a wall by his hoodie. Now Lea was impressed, both by his fellow redhead's quick draw skill, and her accuracy. Sure, it was basically point-blank range, but he did not remember Xaldin ever being able to pull that off as well as Pyrrha just had. Of course, he also never remembered Xaldin apologizing for doing something like that either, or for anything really, like Pyrrha did after the fact, so his respect for the warrior girl had definitely gone up quite a bit.
He was about to comment on the whole thing, when Glynda's voice suddenly came over the intercom, announcing, "Would all first year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation? Again, all first year students report to Beacon Cliff immediately."
"Looks like its show time," Lea grinned excitedly upon hearing that, as the rest of his friends started to join him, while Weiss and Pyrrha headed out ahead of them.
"It was nice meeting you," Pyrrha smiled to Jaune as she retrieved her javelin.
"Likewise," Jaune sighed in dejection after he had dropped to the floor.
Normally, Lea would not kick a guy when he's down, but the opportunity was just too good to pass up. "You know what I learned from watching that, Jaune? A few new things about what not to do to impress a girl."
"Having trouble there, Ladykiller," Yang asked once she and Ruby had joined the two with the rest of the Keybearers.
"I don't understand," Jaune bemoaned. "My dad said all women look for is confidence. Where did I go wrong?"
"'Snow angel' probably wasn't the best start," Yang advised.
"Agreed," Lea nodded. "Besides, you can't fake real confidence. You've got to have a little more confidence in who you are as well before anything else, and that means that you've got to accept that you do have a few weak points as well as strong points. Got it memorized?"
"I guess," Jaune shrugged.
Ventus then decided it was high time that Jaune got names to go with the faces of the two people he was not entirely familiar with yet, and said, "Oh, by the way, Jaune, these are our friends, Ruby and Yang. Ruby, Yang, this is Jaune."
"Yeah, we've kinda already met on the airship over," Yang admitted.
"We did," Jaune asked. His face then paled when recognition flashed through his eyes, and he asked, "You were the girl who's shoe I threw up on, aren't you? Sorry about that."
"Aw, no big deal. I was able to clean it up pretty easily afterwards," Yang waved off. "But yeah, you're probably going to be stuck with us calling you Vomit-boy for a while after that."
"Oh great," Jaune moaned.
"Hey, it could be worse. You could have accidentally puked in her hair," Ruby shrugged, before she let out a small shudder. "She would definitely want to kill you then."
"That's not too surprising. Most girls are sensitive about their hair anyways," Lea shrugged.
"Trust me, it's a lot worse in Yang's case," Ruby warned, and for some reason, Sora, Roxas, and Ventus all felt a shiver go up their spine that made them feel inclined to believe her.
"Well, then I guess she'd better hope she never fights me, because I can't always control the level of collateral damage I inflict. Got it memorized?"
"Do you always say that, or any other variation of it," Jaune asked.
"Yes, yes he does," Roxas confirmed. "It's his go-to catchphrase, so you don't really need to seriously memorize most of the things he says. I wouldn't try to anyways, considering not all of his advice is that great."
"Um, excuse you, but I seem to recall that my advice was something you sought out on principle for months after we first met, and still do from time to time," Lea grinned back.
"Doesn't mean that all of it was great," Roxas jabbed in return.
"Okay, you guys, you can wrestle and joke around later. We've got a test to ace with flying colors," Sora interrupted, knowing that those two would do just that once they got going.
The others all nodded in agreement and then began making their way out of the locker room and over to Beacon Cliff. At least, they did once Ruby and Sora had helped Jaune back on his feet again. The poor boy certainly needed a friend or two to lean on after what had just happened.
When all the first year students had arrived at the cliff, they were directed over to a line of metal pads and told to stand on said pads. Sora and his friends were all a little confused on how that was supposed to help show they were ready to become students at Beacon, but none of them questioned it too much. They were sure that the answer would reveal itself in due time, so they just settled for listening to the instructions and speeches that Ozpin and Goodwitch were giving as they stood before the gathered students.
"For years you have trained to become warriors, and today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest," Ozpin began.
"Now, I'm sure many of you have heard rumors about the assignment of teams. Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion," Goodwitch noted as she gazed over the various kids, and giving the Keyblade wielders some form of relief over the fact that they were finally going to get answers on that very subject. "Each of you will be given teammates…Today."
"What? Aw…" Ruby whined in a worried voice, while the Keyblade wielders began to grow a little worried. Not to any great extent, as they were sure that they could still find a way to end up on the same team together.
"These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon. So it is in your best interest to be paired with someone with whom you can work well," Ozpin carried on from where Glynda left off, unknowingly drawing another scared whimper from Ruby with his words. "That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."
While the Keyblade wielders were now a little more concerned after hearing that, it did help them feel a bit more reassured in the fact that, even if they were not all on the same team, they did now have a way to guarantee that they would at least end up with one other person in their group. Ruby on the other hand felt like her world had just shattered, and she squeaked out a very worried, "What?!"
"See? I told you," the hyper redhead from earlier that morning could be heard telling her friend.
"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die. You will be monitored and graded for the duration of your initiation, but our instructors will not intervene. You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path containing several relics. Each pair must choose one, and return to the top of the cliff. We will guard that item, as well as your standing, and grade you appropriately," Ozpin finished, making sure to keep the instructions as clear and simple for everyone before asking the obvious question that always followed afterwards. "Are there any questions?"
"I got one. Will we lose any points for any collateral damage to the forest, like say, small forest fires that would likely burn down several surrounding trees," Lea asked, earning an eye-roll from his friends and incredulous looks from many of the other students.
"Not too seriously, no. As I said, it would be in your best interest to not hold back if you wish to survive," Ozpin replied.
"That's all I need to hear," Lea grinned savagely.
"Oh boy," Roxas, Sora, and Ventus all sighed as one, knowing where that particular grin normally led.
"Any other questions," Ozpin asked. Jaune raised his hand to ask one, but this time, Ozpin swiftly ignored it. "Good! Now, take your positions."
All at once, every one of the students had crouched down like they were about to jump forwards or charge into battle at any second, save for Jaune, and since they figured it was better to follow the crowd, Sora and the others all dropped into their own battle stances, without summoning their weapons. Jaune still attempted to ask his question, but at that point, the four had tuned him out, as they were more preoccupied by the fact that their future classmates were all being launched into the air by the platforms, which turned out to be catapults. As more students were sent flying, the rest were either getting more excited or more tense at their upcoming flights, but whether they were ready or not did not really matter at that point.
When the redhead from earlier let out a jubilant cheer, Ventus could not help but comment, "It's official; she's very easily excited by everything."
"You have no idea," the excited girl's friend commented before turning to introduce himself. "Lie Ren. Ren to my friends."
"Ventus Kunsanagi. Call me Ven," the blonde replied.
Ren nodded in return and then simply said, "Best of luck, Ven."
With that, the green-clad boy was sent flying, with Ventus not far behind him, followed Roxas, another large boy in armor, and then Lea, who could not help but throw a challenging smirk towards Yang before he went. Yang was more than happy to accept that challenge, and she threw a quick wink to her sister before sliding a pair of sunglasses on and letting herself be catapulted away with an excited whoop of her own. Ruby only smirked in response to her sister's wink, and then offered one to Sora as she mouthed out, "Good luck."
Sora could barely finish forming his returning smile before Ruby was sent off, right when Jaune was about to ask his final question. "So, um, what exactly is a landing strateGYYYYY?!"
After Sora watched Jaune flail in the air after getting catapulted up for a couple seconds, he looked to Ozpin and said, "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
"I admit nothing, Mister Hikari," Ozpin replied, but Sora was still able to see the smallest hints of an amused smile on his face before he was thrown into the Emerald Forrest as well. He then turned to watch the future Huntsmen of Remnant and the young Keyblade wielders sail through the air to the Grimm infested forest, calmly sipping on his mug of coffee all the while, and quietly murmured, "Now, let's see what these heroes of the Second Keyblade War are truly capable of."
"BIRDY NO," Ruby could be heard shouting as she descended to the forest. Of course, whether or not anyone heard her besides Sora, the Keybearer could not say. He was a little busy using his Glide ability to float down the remained of the way to the forest, and from the look of things, it seemed that Ventus and Roxas were doing the same. Lea, he was not so sure about, because as far as Sora knew, Lea had not learned all of the same abilities as the rest of them, so he had no idea how the redhead was going to land safely. Then again, the sound of various, fiery explosions could have been a clue as to how Lea planned on doing so, but given all the gunshots and explosions that he had been hearing recently, that could have been just about anyone here. Either way, he would probably have to try and find Lea later on to make sure he was okay, assuming one of the other two did not find him first.
Setting that goal aside, Sora finally coasted down past the tree line of the Emerald Forest, and ceased all further use of Glide so that he could drop straight to the ground, but not before he used Kingdom Key to spin around a branch or two so that his landing did not end up injuring him. He may have survived his fair share of large falls and drops before, but that did not mean he was willing to really test how good his endurance and pain tolerance was. When his feet hit the ground again, Sora dismissed Kingdom Key and prepared to set out into the forest, making sure to take care of where his eyes wandered in case he came across another student before he met with one of his fellow Keyblade wielders. Sure, it may have been a little mean or even rude to do that, but considering that your partner was decided based on who you first made eye contact with after landing, Sora knew it was going to have to be a necessary evil if he wanted to be partnered up with one of his friends.
At the sound of someone landing in front of him, Sora quickly locked his gaze on the ground, until a familiar voice asked, "Nice use of Glide back there. Think anyone would believe it if we said it was part of your semblance or something?"
"Hey, it's not like anyone was really paying that much attention at the time unless they were already down here," Sora smirked in return as he looked up to see Ventus standing before him with a grin on his face. "Besides, I know you were doing the same thing."
"Well, if you've got it, then you should use it, especially when the situation calls for it," Ventus shrugged while resting his hands behind his head in a way that was just like how Sora did. "So, looks like you and I are partners now, huh?"
"Yep. You know in a way, this will be a lot like old times," Sora said, earning a curious look from the blonde. "Hey, you've been watching my back without me realizing it for years now, and even before I knew it, I was saving your life for even longer, all because I was keeping your heart safe inside of mine."
Ventus smiled once he heard that bit of reasoning, and said, "I guess that's one way of looking at it, but this time is definitely different. I'm going to actually be fighting alongside you for real now, and I'll be wide awake the entire time too." That got the two boys to let out a brief laugh for a short time, but not to the point where they forgot what they had to do right now in order to get through initiation. "So, what's our next move?"
"Well, I know that we should head for that temple and get the relic Ozpin mentioned, but I'm a little worried about Axel. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how to use Glide like the rest of us," Sora informed Ventus.
"Don't worry. I caught a glimpse of him on my way down. He was using his fire powers to help slow his descent like an improvised jet engine or something. I think Roxas had landed close to where he was, so I'm sure they'll be fine and partnered up with each other by now," Ventus reassured him. When Sora smiled in relief, the blonde knew he had alleviated at least one of his friend's worries, so that just left their main objective to address. "Now, how do we get to the forest temple from here?"
"We head this way," Sora replied, already walking in the direction he had indicated.
"Wait, what? How do you know that," Ventus asked, surprised at how sure Sora sounded, especially after hearing about how often Sora would stumble around trying to find places in his previous travels.
"Ozpin said that the temple was in the northern part of the forest, right," Sora reminded him. When Ventus nodded in reply, he continued on, saying, "Well, one thing that I've found as normal in just about every world is that the sun almost always rises in the east and sets in the west. Remnant is no different, and since its still morning, the sun's still in the east, which means north, is that-a-way."
"Okay, but how do you know that," Ventus repeated, still not quite getting how Sora could be so intelligible on this matter.
"I live and grew up on a world made up of Islands, Ven. That means everybody at least learns the basics of sailing even before they're old enough to learn how to drive a car," Sora answered as simply as possible. "Using the sun and stars as a way of charting a course or what direction you need to go in is one of the oldest sailing tricks in the book."
"Oh. Right," Ventus nodded, now feeling a little sheepish for forgetting about the fact that Sora's home was Destiny Islands. Riku had even mentioned that nearly everyone there had learned the basics of traveling by sea to him once, so Ventus really felt like he should have considered Sora knew as well, even without his adventures at sea when he visited the Caribbean.
Forgetfulness about old conversations and past experiences aside, the boys did now have a direction to travel, and they took to it as fast as they could. The sooner they grabbed a relic, the sooner that they could figure out a way to ensure that Roxas and Lea would be on a team with them too. Not that they planned on ignoring anyone that may have ended up needing help if they ran into someone along the way, of course.
"Aw yeah! The dream team is back, baby," Lea cheered happily as he and Roxas made their way through the forest. Just like Ventus had suspected, the two best friends had landed very close to one another, and had quickly become partners. As one could tell from the redhead's jubilant cheering, Lea was very glad to know that his best friend would be his partner for the rest of their time at Beacon, whether they spent the next four years at the school or not.
Roxas was just as happy as his best friend of course, and made sure that Lea knew it too, but he still could not stop himself from pointing out the problem they were facing, "Can't really say we're a dream team since neither of us knows which direction we need to go," the blonde said.
"Pfft! Like we need to worry about stuff like that. With our luck, we'll find our way to that temple without even trying," Lea confidently boasted.
"Or we could end up walking right into a nesting ground for any variety of the Grimm," Roxas pointed out. "You know, like that one time when we were at Halloween Town on a mission for the old Organization?"
"…You're just never gonna let that go, are you," Lea asked.
"I was blasted with ghost flames from a dozen Gargoyle Heartless multiple times over, hit with so many lightning and ice attacks you would think that I had been hit by an attack from Larxene and Vexen at the same time, and nearly flattened by at least ten different Large Bodies, all because you thought it would be a good idea to cut through that one graveyard! What do you think," Roxas reminded his best friend.
"We were fine! It's not like we nearly died, or something," Lea protested.
"Said the man who caused those Gargoyles to come after us because he thought it would be a good idea to set a bunch of gravestones on fire."
"They were the key to a secret passage! I thought we needed to do something special to open it up when just tapping and pushing on the things did nothing!"
Their argument, though not entirely serious, had to be put on pause, when they heard a loud roar echoing in the distance. Knowing that it had to be one of, if not a small pack of the Grimm, the two former Nobodies set out to see if any of the other students were fighting said creature at the moment. As it turned out, someone was doing just that right then: one Lie Ren and his redheaded friend to be exact. What really surprised the two was how the girl was just dancing around the creatures like her life was not at risk, grinning like a maniac the whole time. Apparently, Ren was not too concerned about it, as he was busy shooting some of the bear-like Grimm, which Lea and Roxas had learned were called Ursai, with his pistols.
Seeing another Ursa coming up from behind the redhead, Lea took the initiative and rushed in to help, his Keyblade coming into his hand in a blaze of fire. One simple swing later, and the Ursa was easily beheaded by the fire-themed Keyblade, and another three soon followed when Lea shot off a powerful fire spell at them. Ren and his friend barely paid it much notice beyond acknowledging the new arrivals were there, which served Roxas pretty well, as it meant he would not have to jump in and save anyone before he went to town on the Beowolves that were now starting to slink into the clearing as well, making it a point to only use his Keyblades when taking them down, as he wanted to save his strength for a moment when it would matter most.
Unlike the last time that the Keyblade wielders fought the Grimm, they were now fully rested and ready for anything, so they managed to tear apart any of the dark, soulless creatures that came within their crosshairs easily, and since that was the case, they took some time to analyze Ren and his friend's fighting style and weaponry. Not that they were able to get too much on the redhead, seeing as she appeared to be acting as a distraction for the most part, until she finally drew the weapon she was carrying on her back, and fired on the monsters, revealing it to be a grenade launcher. The explosions that followed definitely left quite the mark on both creatures and surroundings, but more importantly, it left several Grimm disoriented enough for Ren to rush in and slash them apart with the blades on his pistols, with Roxas following up to cut down any that he had missed.
The last of the Grimm met their end by Lea's hands, as he transformed Flame Liberator into his chakrams, coated them in fire, and tossed the blazing, metal weapons through every Grimm that was left. With a snap of his fingers, the flames instantly expanded, burning the Grimm until even their ashes were incinerated, while also setting a few trees on fire. Seeing this amount of overkill from Lea was nothing new to Roxas, but it was to the other two, even as the redhead caught his weapons on their return trip and transformed them back into Keyblade form, so the blonde was a little worried about how they would react.
It turned out he did not have anything to really worry about, as the girl was still grinning, even as she zipped over to Lea and excitedly screamed, "That was awesome!"
"And a little excessive, maybe," Ren pointed out.
"Hey, if they couldn't stand the heat, then they should've ran when they saw me," Lea lightly jested in return, earning a tired sigh from Roxas as he shook his head.
The girl apparently did not notice any of this, as she was already launching into a rapid barrage of questions. "How'd you do all that stuff with the fire? What's your weapon called? What's your name? Where are you from? Do you like pancakes? Do you want to be best friends?"
"Nora! Please! Slow down," Ren half-shouted, raising his voice for the first time that day, at least as far as Roxas was aware.
Nora did not seem too bothered by her friend's outburst anymore than Lea was by the girl's rapid rate of speaking when she asked his questions. Even more shocking to Ren though, was the fact that Lea was able to actually answer all of that. "Controlling fire is part of my semblance, my weapon is a Keyblade known as Flame Liberator, the name's Lea Firebrand, I'm from a town that's really far away from any of the kingdoms, I like pancakes alright, and sure, why not? You seem pretty cool…Nora, is it?" While Nora just nodded with a happy hum, Lea noticed that Ren was staring at him in awe, to which he explained, "A couple of my friends are a lot like her when they're on a serious sugar rush. You either learn how to interpret hyper speak, or you just pray that it ends quickly and they shut down from the overload soon. Got it memorized?"
Ren could only nod, not really able to think of anything he could say, but Nora on the other hand did have one idea. "I like this guy, Ren."
"Yeah, that's what I'm a little afraid of," Roxas muttered, thinking that there was a chance that he would now have to deal with two Leas. He then turned to the more sane-looking of the pair and said, "You had some pretty good moves back there. I almost had a hard time just keeping track of where you were at some points. Almost."
"Thanks, Ven," Ren nodded in return.
"Uh, sorry, wrong blonde, but you are pretty close since Ven is a friend of ours. My name's Roxas," the dual Keyblade wielder corrected.
"Oh, sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Roxas then glanced over to see Lea and Nora were having their own conversation, and while he could not hear all of it, he did pick up on a mention of sea-salt ice cream at least once. He had a feeling that Lea would try to get him in on that conversation, and as much as he would have loved to tell someone else about the wonders of his favorite ice cream flavor, they had a much more important matter to deal with. "So, I don't suppose you guys know which way we need to go in order to reach that temple, do you?"
"We were actually just heading that way now," Ren informed the blonde. "You two are welcome to join us, if you like."
"Gladly. It's better than what Axel had in mind for getting us there," Roxas smiled in relieved thanks. When Ren looked at him in confusion, Roxas knew what the boy was likely wondering about, and said, "It's Lea's nickname from a while back, but he prefers his real name these days, unless he says otherwise."
Ren nodded in reply to that, and then proceeded to move on, calling out to Nora as he went to let her know that they were leaving the area now. The two redheads quickly fell in step behind their best friends, but the whole group paused once again when Lea looked up and asked, "Hey guys, what are the bird-like Grimm called again?"
"Nevermores. Why," Ren asked.
"Because there's a really big one circling around somewhere close to here," Lea revealed, pointing in the direction he had spotted the creature.
Looking up at where Lea was pointing, the other three discovered that, sure enough, a massive Nevermore seemed to be flying around near the area that they were moving towards. That alone would have had some of them worried, but it was not until Roxas said something that they grew even more concerned. "Is there…Is there someone riding on that thing?"
"Come on, Roxas. Who would be crazy enough to ride on the back of a savage, killer monster like that," Lea asked as though he had just heard something silly. When he looked again though, he saw that there did appear to be someone on the bird, and said, "Oh, I guess those people would be crazy enough to do that."
"Or absolutely brilliant! We'd be able to get to the Forest Temple in no time," Nora cheered with a look in her eyes that Ren recognized and more often than not, feared.
He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when he remembered that they had destroyed all the Grimm in their area earlier, when another Ursa suddenly burst onto the scene, and Nora's manic grin grew a little more. "Nora, no," Ren pleaded.
"NORA, YES!"
"Oh boy. I have a bad feeling about this," Roxas groaned as the girl took off towards the bear-like monster.
"Why? This looks like it'll be fun," Lea grinned savagely before he followed the girl.
"And the bad feeling just got worse."
Roxas and Lea were not the only ones to meet up with some of the other students, because it was not long after they started their trek that Sora and Ventus ran across Yang and Blake. Not that it was hard to find the girls, considering that the Keyblade wielders had heard a massive explosion just seconds before some of the forest was burnt down in a straight path. To be honest, they had been expecting to find Lea when they arrived, so it was a little shocking to see Yang and Blake staring at one another as a recently killed Ursa faded into ash. When they finally managed to ask what happened, Yang just chuckled and admitted that the other Ursa she had killed before Blake stepped in had cut off a strand of her hair. After Blake confirmed that to be true, the two boys made shivered a little, and made another mental note to avoid messing with Yang's hair in addition to the one they made earlier when Ruby warned them against touching said girl's yellow locks.
After that point, the four had ended up traveling together to the find the Forest Temple, without a single Grimm in sight. Ventus had joked that Yang's tantrum probably scared a good number of the monsters off, but what he found surprising was that Yang actually laughed and agreed with him. It was hard to say if it was because she was that confident or just overestimating herself that much, but after seeing the destruction she could cause from a distance, the boys did think that she was a little justified in being so cocky. Of course, they were not complaining about the lack of enemies to fight, but Sora and Ventus did not once run across the Creatures of Grimm since their arrival in the forest, so you could not fault them for feeling a little bored.
Eventually, they finally reached what seemed to be the temple that they were looking for, and quickly proceeded down so that they could grab one of the relics that Ozpin had said they would need to retrieve. Not that they really felt much a need to rush, but given that other students were liable to show up soon, or maybe more of the Grimm, it did make sense that they would want to grab a relic and go as soon as possible. When they arrived and saw the relics themselves, all four were a little surprised by what they found lining the circumference of the circular ruins.
"Chess pieces," Blake identified with a questioning tone.
"Well, not the weirdest looking relics I've seen," Sora admitted, thinking back all the various types of treasures he had seen on his adventures, including a certain lamp.
"Some of them are missing though," Yang noted as he examined the various pieces around them. "Looks like we weren't the first ones here."
"Well…I guess we should each just pick one," Blake shrugged.
"I don't know. What if there's a significance to which pieces we choose," Ventus asked, getting curious looks from the other three. "Each of the teams at Beacon are made up of four people, right? Well, Ozpin only mentioned how our first teammate would be decided. He never said anything about the other two. What if the relics we choose have something to do with it?"
"Ven's got a point. We should think carefully about which one we pick, especially since we don't know if any of the missing pieces were picked up by people we know and would want on our team," Sora agreed.
Yang and Blake could both see the reasoning behind the two's thinking, and carefully studied which pairs of chess pieces were still present while the boys did the same. Oddly enough, they noticed that even the pieces that normally only had one for each side, meaning the king and queen pieces, had a matching pair in the same color, and the two white king pieces were still there. Seeing that, Sora quickly scooped up one of the white king pieces, thinking that it would serve to clue in Lea and Roxas on which one they should grab if they came to the same conclusion that he and Ventus had, and from the nod that Ventus gave, he knew that his partner agreed with his choice, even if it was a little cheesy and obvious in its own way.
Yang's decision came to her much more easily than Sora's, as she found a pair of chess pieces that were still complete, and quickly scooped one of them up. "How about a cute little pony," Yang asked her partner.
"Sure," Blake agreed with a small smile, even if she did roll her eyes a little at the childish glee her partner had used when announcing her decision.
The two pairs then met in the middle of the ruins, just as Yang said, "That wasn't too hard."
"Well, it's not like this place is very difficult to find," Blake pointed out.
"No kidding. I'm surprised Lea and Roxas haven't stumbled upon this place already just from walking in a random direction," Ventus admitted.
The remark had actually worried Sora a little bit, and he could not help but ask, "Do you think we should wait for them, just to be on the safe side?"
"I'm sure your friends are fine. All we need to worry about is getting back to the cliff with our relics," Blake reasoned. The way she said it may have sounded a little cold, but she had intended it to come off as reassuring in her own way.
Yang was about to voice her agreement with Blake when a very high-pitched shriek suddenly echoed from somewhere in the forest, making all four of them worried. "Some girl's in trouble," Yang exclaimed as she looked in the direction that she thought the scream came from. "You guys all heard that too, right?"
"Kind of hard to miss," Ventus pointed out, with Sora nodding in agreement.
When Blake did not say anything, Yang turned to her partner to see her looking up at the sky, and asked, "Blake? What should we do?"
Blake's only response was to look back at Yang while pointing upwards, just in time for everyone to hear a familiar voice calling out, "HEAD'S UUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPP!"
Turning their gazes to the sky, Yang, Ventus, and Sora were all stunned to see Ruby dropping down at break-neck speeds, flailing about as she dropped. Seeing his friend in trouble, Sora broke into a run, while shouting, "Ven, give me a boost!"
Ventus barely had time to even nod in recognition of the request before Sora had jumped as high as he could, but he still managed to cast a quick wind spell just ahead of his friend, creating a small whirlwind in front of Sora. Upon entering said whirlwind, Sora could feel his Flowmotion powers activating, and used that extra boost to rocket himself towards Ruby even faster. Soon after, he managed to catch the red-hooded girl in his arms, and after making sure he had her secure in at least one arm, Sora summoned out his Keyblade, pointed it towards the nearest tree branch he could see, and used his Airstep abilities to pull them over to said branch. Upon making contact with the branch, Sora allowed his Flowmotion to carry him and Ruby through a quick spin around the tree limb, and then launch them both off in the direction of the other three. When they finally landed again, the blue aura of Sora's Flowmotion faded away, and Ruby could be seen holding tightly onto Sora with her eyes closed.
"You okay, Ruby," Sora asked, prompting the girl to finally open her eyes.
When she turned her gaze to her rescuer, Ruby found her eyes locking with Sora's, and almost instantly froze up as she felt her cheeks go hot. From her perspective, Ruby thought she could see a very passionate fire in Sora's eyes that she had only heard about from the stories of the heroes in her favorite books, yet at the same time, she saw something else as well. It was hard for her to really describe what it was that she was seeing, but not for reasons that Yang would probably suspect. There was definitely a very real warmth in them that reflected kindness Sora had shown her up until now, but more than that, Ruby felt like she could see a hidden trace of fear. It was like he was truly afraid that she would have died just then, and beyond that fear, there was something else; a deep sense of hurt that she could not quite identify.
Whether she recognized it or not hardly mattered at the moment, as she had unintentionally tuned out the world around her the moment she had realized who had caught her, and as a result, she had ended up leaving Sora's question unanswered until he repeated it again. Not that she was really able to give too much of a reply at the moment, given that her brain felt like mush right then. "Y-yeah. I think so," Ruby slowly answered without much thinking.
"Great. So…can you let go now? I kinda can't breathe," Sora told her.
It was only at that point that Ruby realized that Sora had set her back on her feet, and she was now holding onto Sora for no real reason. At least, none that she could think of right then, but she still jumped back with a small yelp once she had released her hold on him, stuttering a small apology after the fact. "Did your sister just fall from the sky," Blake asked Yang. She then turned to Ventus and asked, "And did you just launch your friend into the air with a mini-tornado?"
"Uh…" Ventus nervously replied, doubting that Sora was going to be able to give him much help right now since he was busy making sure Ruby was okay.
"I…" Yang tried to answer, but unlike Ventus, she ended up being cut off when they all heard something big lumbering towards them.
Shortly after they had turned to the source of the noise, they saw an Ursa lumbering towards them, swinging its arms wildly, and they instantly prepared themselves for a fight. It turned out unnecessary as a small explosion from behind caused it drop down, while someone very excitedly shouted, "YEE-HAW!"
"YEAH," another individual added, and a minute later, Ventus dropped his arms and his jaw at the sight of Lea and Nora tumbling down from the Grimm's back, laughing like a pair of kids that had just gone on a rollercoaster ride. "Now that was awesome," Lea cheered before he looked back at the bear-monster he and his new friend were just riding. His smile then fell a little when he said, "Uh…Nora…"
"Aww, it's broken," Nora moaned sadly upon turning to see the state of the Grimm she and Lea were riding on.
"That sucks," Lea almost whined. "I wanted to go again after we grabbed our relics."
"No! Never again! Do you hear me, Axel," Roxas could be heard shouting as he stepped into the clearing with an exhausted Ren right behind him. "That was almost as bad as that time in Halloween Town," the blonde then muttered under his breath.
"Nora," Ren then panted tiredly to his own crazy friend as she started to examine the Ursa. "Please…don't ever do that again."
"Um…Ren," Lea called out, prompting the boy to look up and see that Nora had disappeared from where she was just standing and rushed over to the relics, having now grabbed one of the white rooks.
After letting the girl dance around for a minute while likely singing some random tune in her head, Ren finally decided to try and get a lid on his friend's antics again, and shouted, "NORA!"
"Hehehe, coming Ren," Nora giggled cutely as she skipped back over to him, leaving a bewildered Yang, Blake, and Ventus in her wake.
"Did those two just ride in on an Ursa," Blake asked, referring to Nora and Lea.
"Roxas, what…" Ventus asked.
"Don't ask. Please, just don't," Roxas interrupted before his look-a-like could finish.
Yang was about to try and comment again, when a shrill sound came from another direction, and they all turned to see Jaune and Pyrrha running for their lives to get away from a huge, scorpion like Grimm. "SOMEBODY HELP," Jaune cried out as he ducked and jumped away from the Grimm's massive claws.
"Jaune, Pyrrha, split up," Lea shouted as he rushed over, his Keyblade at the ready.
The two just did as asked, allowing Lea to unleash a medium level blaze of fire magic right into the scorpion monster's face. When the blast hit, the creature let out a shriek of pain before it backed away from the charging pyro, having seen that his blade looked like a flame as well. It did not break off its chase entirely though, as it was soon turning to go after Pyrrha again, much to Lea's irritation, and Jaune's concern. Jaune was about to join Lea in chasing the monster that was after his partner, when he stopped short upon hearing Ruby say, "Hey Jaune."
"Oh, hey Ruby," Jaune nodded in return. "Hey Sora."
"Hey Jaune," Sora smiled in reply.
"Hey Nora," the ginger-haired girl declared as she stepped in between the three, startling them all a little. When she noticed how they were looking at her weirdly, she just kept smiling and said, "I wanted to be included, too."
"Did you two just run all the way here with a Deathstalker on your tails," Blake then asked Jaune.
"Grrrr…" Yang growled, before she exploded, literally. While everyone was a little surprised at how her hair seemed to just light on fire while her eyes had turned red, they were a little more concerned over the fact that all the craziness had finally made her snap. "I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something crazy happens again?!"
No one said a word, leaving the whole area quiet save for the sounds of Ren's panting as he came to stand next to Nora, and the sound of the Deathstalker as it entered a fight against Pyrrha and Lea. Exactly two seconds later though, Ruby gently tapped her sister's shoulder, and pointed up at the sky as she nervously said, "Um, Yang…"
The blonde hung her head, almost afraid to look at what her sister was pointing at, and muttering about how she did not mean literally two seconds, but she still did look up along with everyone else to see Weiss hanging from the talons of a massive Nevermore that was circling above them. "How could you leave me," Weiss cried out as the bird cawed from above.
"I said 'jump,'" Ruby called back, weakly.
"Wait a minute. That was you two we saw on that thing," Roxas asked as he glanced between Ruby and the bird that her obvious partner was currently hanging onto for dear life. "How'd you even get on it?"
"Long story," Ruby sighed in response.
"She's gonna fall," Blake then stated.
Ruby just waved her off, saying, "She'll be fine."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Ventus cautioned.
"Why?"
"She's falling," Ren deadpanned in response for the blonde.
Hearing that prompted Sora to start getting ready to rush to the rescue again. He may not be Weiss's biggest fan at the moment, but he was not going to let her fall to her death because of that; he's not that mean. What he did not expect was for someone else to actually beat him to the punch, as Ventus was already charging forward, catapulting himself into the sky with his own wind magic. Upon reaching Weiss, Ventus easily caught her in one arm, and said, "Hold on! I've got you!" After that point, it was just a matter of simply Gliding back down to the ground again, circling around in various directions so that they were not too far from the others, and did not get sick from just going in one big circle the whole time. When they finally landed, Ventus set Weiss on her feet again and said, "Don't worry; you're safe now."
Weiss finally registered what had just happened, she could not help but look between Ventus and her previous position in the sky, amazed at what she just went through, and what the blonde next to her did. At any other time, she probably would have told Ventus off for talking like she was some damsel in distress that needed saving, but for some reason, she could not find it in her to do it this time. Eventually though, she did recover enough of her usual attitude to finally say, "I didn't need you to save me that badly."
"Maybe not, but I just couldn't help it. When I see someone in trouble, I don't really think about anything other than how I can help," Ventus shrugged, not at all phased by Weiss's apparent attitude. Then again, that might have had something to do with the fact that it lacked its usual amount of bite at the moment, or it could have just been because he had not seen her at her worst like the rest of his friends.
It did not look like he was going to see that here either, because Weiss actually smiled at him a little and said, "Well…I suppose, I thanks are in order all the same."
"Ah, don't worry about it," Ventus reassured her.
"Very well then. I won't."
That got Ventus to finally deflate a little, especially with how nonchalantly she had said that, but he still managed to get it together again when he next spoke. "I mean…you could thank me a little bit."
"You should say what you mean," Weiss admonished.
From where he was standing, Sora could not help but smile in amusement, as that conversation reminded him of the last time he had spoken with his friend Auron. It had even gone almost word for word, too, at least until it was brought to a screeching halt by Pyrrha and Lea suddenly dropping right at everyone's feet due to a hard hit they took from the Deathstalker. "And both the mood and sense of déjà vu has been killed," Sora muttered.
"Great! The gang's all here. Now we can die together," Yang sarcastically grumbled aloud.
"Not if I can help it," Ruby smirked, and the next thing anyone knew, she had begun charging at the Deathstalker with a battle cry, drawing her scythe and unfolding it to its full length so that she would be ready to attack at any second.
"Ruby, wait," Sora shouted, worried for his friend, but the girl was already well out of reach, and blasting towards the Deathstalker even faster thanks to a boost of speed from firing her weapon behind her.
That blast of speed put Ruby right within striking distance of the Deathstalker, and she made sure to hit it as hard as she could. Sadly, it was not hard enough, as the scorpion Grimm's armor was just too tough for Ruby's scythe to break through, and to make matters worse, the Deathstalker was also able to retaliate far faster than Ruby was expecting, so she could do nothing to keep herself from being bashed aside by the thing's massive claws. Thankfully she was not too badly hurt, but it did sting quite a bit. Not that she was willing to admit it, because after she had gotten up again, she had quickly shouted, "D-Do-Don't worry! Totally fine!"
"Yeah, I must be watching a different fight, because she does not look fine to me," Lea stated, his worry very clear in his voice. That concern only grew when he saw Ruby slowly turn towards the Deathstalker again, looking much more scared than she had before. Thankfully, she was able to get off a quick shot on the monster with her scythe, and used the recoil of the blast to try and get away, spinning her scythe back into its carrying case on the back of her belt as she ran so that she would not be slowed down too much.
Yang was about to rush out and help her sister, when something strange caught her eye. "Uh, does anyone else see those shadows near Ruby and the Deathstalker moving," Yang questioned.
"Shadows…moving," all four Keyblade wielders repeated, all of them now extremely worried.
"Oh no, don't tell me," Ventus groaned as he looked to where Yang had been with the rest of his friends, ignoring the curious glance that Weiss had given him upon hearing the remark.
Sadly, Ventus's request would end up going unfulfilled, for there, rising up from the ground that they had been slinking through as they approached both Huntress-in-training and her monstrous target-turned-pursuer, were a number of familiar, inky black, beady-eyed monsters that all four Keyblade wielders recognized all too well. "We've got Heartless, boys," Lea shouted as he readied his Keyblade again, with Roxas and Sora doing the same soon after as they joined him in charging their old foes.
"Ugh! I told you not to tell me that," Ventus groaned miserably. All the same, he still summoned out Wayward Wind and made to follow his friends. It did not stop him from continuing to grumble though. "Just once I'd like for us to go somewhere and NOT have to deal with these guys."
"Aw relax, Ven. It's just a bunch of stupid Shadows. We can take 'em easy," Lea said, trying to lift his friend's spirits a little.
Not even a second after Lea had spoken, those Shadows were joined by numerous Neo Shadows, Novashadows, and Flutterings, all of which were either staring down at the four Keyblade wielders or the fleeing Ruby. Seeing this increase in enemy numbers and types, Roxas instantly turned to his best friend and shouted, "You and your big mouth!"
"I'm sorry! How was I supposed to know there was more of them?! It's not my fault they waited until the last second to jump out at us," Lea protested, even as he shot off several fireballs to destroy the Flutterings that were charging towards him and Roxas.
A Novashadow was just about to pounce on the two best friends, until Sora had leapt in and cut it down with Kingdom Key, and shouted, "Focus, you guys! Let's take the Heartless out now, and scold Lea for jinxing us later!"
"Sorry," the two apologized, and they quickly set to work doing just as Sora suggested, easily eliminating several Shadows with one swing of each of their Keyblades.
Ventus made it a point to blast all the Flutterings out of the air with several wind spells, and even added in Wind Raid to further decrease the number of dark creatures that were flapping around their heads at the moment. He was about to try and use one of his Shotlocks when he remembered that he had to watch what he was doing with certain powers since the other students were present. His momentary pause would have led him to get his head clawed off by a Neo Shadow, had Roxas not tossed Oathkeeper at the offending Heartless in time. The thrown Keyblade made quick work of several other Heartless as well before returning to its owner's hand, but Roxas was able to hold his own with just Oblivion until it had, and Ventus had made it a point to provide Roxas with a good deal of assistance as well to make up for forcing Roxas to step in and cover him like that.
Lea and Sora were practically back-to-back as they threw out whatever elements they could at their opponents, though the former was using more fire spells than he was anything else. Sora was just glad that they could pass off a good deal of their magic abilities as something that involved the use of Dust, because otherwise, he had no idea how he would have been able to explain how their Keyblades could throw around the natural elements like it was nothing. Even so, he knew that he and his friends were still having to hold back a great deal of their powers, like how he was doing his best to not use any of his Heart Binders or Attraction Flows, as there were just some abilities in their possession that they could not explain away via Dust or Semblances. Still, even without being able to freely summon incredible theme park rides or old friends for assistance, Sora was not helpless, as he proved when he took down several Shadows and Neo Shadows with some well-placed lightning spells, and a little bit of Flowmotion magic that he was able to start up using an ice trail he created using Blizzaga.
Lea was just about to burn through some more Novashadows when he noticed that the Nevermore from earlier had shot off several large quills that separated Ruby from the others, and pinned the poor girl down by her cape. Seeing the Deathstalker still coming after her, Lea instantly turned to his current partner-in-battle and shouted, "Sora, we can handle the rest of these guys! You go help Ruby!"
"I'm on it," Sora shouted as he changed Kingdom Key into Shooting Star with just a thought, thankful that he had equipped his usual default Keychains before the exam had started. With a surge of energy provided to him by his Airstep powers, Sora raced across the battlefield towards the Deathstalker, just as it was about to bring down one of its massive claws on Ruby, and managed to parry the blow just in time. Sadly, he realized a little too late that he had not accounted for the scorpion monster's stinger, and by the time he looked up at it, it was already coming down too fast for him to deflect it.
Without any time to think, Sora jumped over to Ruby, shielding her with his body much like he had done for Kairi at one point during the battle at the Keyblade Graveyard, and snapped his eyes shut, awaiting the blow. To his surprise, it never came, but instead, there was the sound of something freezing over at a rapid pace, while a certain heiress's voice commented, "You are so childish."
"Huh," Sora asked as he opened his eyes.
"Weiss," Ruby asked in surprise as she opened her eyes as well to see that the girl she ended up the reluctant partner to was standing over her and Sora with her sword pointed down at the ground where a massive wall of ice seemed to begin from.
"And dimwitted, and hyperactive, and don't even get me started on your fighting style," Weiss continued from where she left off, turning to face Ruby as she did, quickly telling Sora who she was addressing between the two of them. He actually just starting to get angry with Weiss again, when the girl surprised him by saying, "And I suppose, I can be a bit…difficult…"
"That's putting it mildly," Sora muttered under his breath.
"Hush you! I'm trying to make a point," Weiss snapped. She then cleared her throat and turned back to Ruby. "As I was saying, while all of that is true, if we're going to do this, we're going to have to do this together. So if you quit trying to show off I'll be…nicer."
"I'm not trying to show off. I want you to know I can do this," Ruby finally admitted. Apparently she was still worried about being seen as a charity case or just any variety of special, and from what Sora could figure, it seemed like she had been trying a little too hard to prove that to Weiss especially today. Not that he could blame Ruby, given how receptive Weiss had been towards Ruby's attendance at Beacon thus far, so he was very pleasantly surprised at the next thing that Weiss said to her.
"You're fine," Weiss reassured Ruby, and in a much gentler voice than her normal one, no less. Even more surprising was the fact that Weiss smiled a little when Ruby let out a long sigh of relief, but that smile quickly vanished when she turned to Sora and warned, "I'm still not quite sure how I feel about you."
"Yeah, that's pretty fair, I guess," Sora shrugged with a smile, while holding his hand out to Weiss in a silent offer for at least a temporary truce from their animosity up until now.
Weiss just offered a ghost of a smile in response and accepted the handshake before helping him to pull Ruby's cape free from the Nevermore quill that was pinning it to the ground. Once she was free, Sora and Ruby both turned to see that the ice wall Weiss made had actually frozen the Deathstalker's tail and claw in place, and from what Sora could tell from the shadowy wisps that were floating about, it had the added effect of destroying some Heartless that had gotten close to them. Looking around, Sora could see that his friends had dealt with the remaining Heartless as well, and breathed a sigh of relief in knowing that their old enemies were gone for the moment. It was short-lived though, as he quickly picked up on a familiar, powerful darkness that he had the displeasure of encountering a few too many times for his liking.
"You guys all feel that too, right," Ventus whispered once Sora had rejoined the group, hoping that only his fellow Keyblade wielders heard him.
"Yeah, hard to miss. If that's not a Darkside, then I'm old Xehanort reborn," Lea remarked just as quietly.
"Do you think Ozpin or Yen Sid knew that the Heartless were here," Roxas questioned.
"Doesn't matter. If we don't deal with that thing now, we're going to have a lot more problems later on," Sora informed them, and they all nodded in agreement.
What none of the four Keyblade wielders noticed was how Blake's bow had been twitching a little throughout their conversation, or how she had turned to watch them shortly after it first started doing so. From the way her eyes narrowed as she looked at them, one would think that she had overheard the Keybearers as clear as day, but she did not look like she was going to call them out on anything just yet. Even if she wanted to, there was another problem that they had to deal with right now, and it was still flapping overhead as it cawed as loudly through the sky.
"Guys, that thing's circling back. What're we gonna do," Jaune asked as he pointed up at the Nevermore above them.
"Look, there's no sense in dilly-dallying. Our objective is right in front of us," Weiss reminded everyone.
"I'm sorry, did you just say 'dilly-dallying,'" Lea teased, earning him another scowl from Weiss, and an elbow from Roxas. "Ow! The hell, man?!"
"Enough already," Roxas admonished.
"She's right," Ruby stated, unknowingly finishing Roxas's statement before he could, earning her a surprised look from Lea and a satisfied smile from Weiss. "Our mission is to grab an artifact and make it back to the cliffs. There's no point in fighting these things."
"Run and live. That is an idea I can get behind," Jaune agreed.
"Besides, it may be better if we leave before anymore Heartless show up, especially if there's a chance that some of them have already started heading for the school," Sora added.
"Yes, about that, just what are these 'Heartless,'" Pyrrha questioned.
"To make a long story short, the Heartless are creatures of pure darkness with only one goal: to devour other people's hearts and make more Heartless. Basically, they're like the Grimm, except when they end someone, they turn that person into a Heartless as well," Roxas simplified as best as he could.
"How do you guys know so much about them, though," Yang asked, voicing the question on everyone's minds.
"The Heartless are basically like the sworn enemies of anyone who wields the Keyblade. The four of us have actually been fighting the Heartless for the last two years or so. Give or take a day," Sora explained. "And other wielders have been fighting them for even longer."
"If that's the case, how come none of us have heard about this until now," Blake questioned.
"Because we've been trying to keep it secret. Imagine the kind of panic people would be in if they found out that there are creatures out there that are capable of something even worse than the Grimm," Ventus reasoned. It was not the full truth, but it was as close to it as any of the four friends were willing to give for now.
"So how do we stop them if we find anymore," Ruby asked.
"If we see anymore Heartless, try to leave them to the four of us. We've got a lot more experience fighting them than the rest of you, and personally, I don't want any of you to get hurt trying to fight them," Sora instructed. His voice then turned a little quieter as he added, "I've already lost enough friends to the darkness as it is." Once again, Blake was throwing a curious look in his direction, making anyone who could have noticed think she had heard him, but no one seemed to notice, as they were still busy making a plan on how to proceed going forward, and from the look of things, Sora was already way ahead of everyone. "Besides that, if we move back towards the cliff, we may be able to get to an area where we can hold better ground against any enemies we run into, whether they're Grimm or Heartless."
"I saw some ruins in the area of the cliffs while Weiss and I were up on the Nevermore. Think that would work," Ruby asked.
"It may be our best chance," Sora reasoned.
With that settled, Ruby, Jaune, and Roxas all grabbed a chess piece of their own, Ruby taking the white knight, Jaune a white rook, and Roxas the white king. They had done so at just the right moment, as the Deathstalker's icy prison could be heard cracking apart, indicating that it would be free at any minute. "Time we left," Ren nodded to everyone.
"Right. Let's go," Ruby ordered as she took the lead in everyone's departure.
"We're right behind you, Ruby," Sora nodded as he soon came up alongside her.
Only Yang and Roxas did not rush off right away, and Blake had quickly taken notice of the fact. "What is it," she asked the two blondes.
Yang just continued smiling as she watched her little sister taking the lead like a seasoned pro, even when Ruby paused to look back and make sure everyone was following, striking a rather heroic pose without even realizing it. When she saw Sora move to stand alongside her like a true partner, her grin did grow a little more, but this time, it was not in teasing way. If anything, Yang felt like she was looking at the beginning of something truly great when she saw the two standing side-by-side like that, and it just made her all the more proud of her sister. "Nothing," Yang finally replied to Blake, but from the look on her face, Blake had already figured out what she was thinking at the moment.
Roxas was smiling in a manner very similar to Yang's for many of the same if not similar reasons, but unlike Yang, he gave a little more of an answer to Blake's question. "It's just…It's good to see a bit of the old Sora again. I think coming here is definitely going to be just what he needed."
Blake and Yang were a little confused by what Roxas meant when he said that, but now was not the time to ask him about it. Right now, they had to get back to the cliff with their relics and avoid getting eaten by anymore monsters, so they quickly rushed off after the rest of their group. If they had been paying a little more attention, they probably would have seen just how much closer the Deathstalker was to breaking free of the ice holding it, or how several Shadows had suddenly appeared to speed up the process.
The twelve teens all made it to the ruins that Ruby had mentioned without any trouble, and true to Ruby's word, the place was definitely a much better location than the clearing the Forest Temple was in if they had to get into another fight. It was only further enforced when they all had to take cover upon seeing the Nevermore flying over their heads. Unfortunately, it seemed like the oversized bird had figured out what they were trying to do, because after circling around the area ahead of them, it eventually perched itself atop the tower that stood between them and the cliff that they were trying to reach, and let out a loud screech as if challenging the teens to try and get past it.
"Well that's just great," Yang grumbled as she glared at the Grimm in front of them.
Their problems quickly increased, when suddenly, a massive, shadowy creature with a heart-shaped hole in its torso and pointed tentacles for hair rose up from the chasm between the Nevermore's tower and the teens' position. "And there's our Darkside," Lea stated.
"Our what," Nora asked, being closest to the pyro.
"Darkside. A really big, really strong type of Heartless. Basically, THAT," Lea explained as he indicated the Darkside in question.
Before anyone could comment on Lea's explanation, the sound of trees collapsing reached all of their ears, and they turned around to see that the Deathstalker was now freed and being flanked by a few Neo Shadows as it ran towards them. Clearly it was still upset about how Weiss had frozen it in place, and everything else that the group had done to it up until now. "Oh man, run," Jaune shouted, and no one even thought of arguing with him.
The only downside to Jaune's plan was that there was only one direction they could run in, and that led them right towards the Nevermore and the Darkside. Knowing this, Ren instantly shouted, "Nora, distract them!"
The ginger haired girl quickly broke off from the rest of the group, ducking around the razor sharp quills that the Nevermore began shooting at her, and then pulled out her grenade launcher so that she could fire it at both the Grimm and the Heartless that were standing in their path. Her blasts did manage to chase off the Nevermore, but they had little effect in driving away the Darkside. Thankfully, Ventus had the perfect solution for that, as he quickly infused his Keyblade with wind magic to once again use Wind Raid. Using his superior skill over wind magic, Ventus was able to direct Wayward Wind into the Darkside several times over and eventually succeeded in getting it out of their path, but not before the Deathstalker had closed in on both him and Nora.
Thankfully, Blake, Ren, and Roxas were able to jump in and force the scorpion monster back with a rapid barrage of slashes, allowing Weiss to pull Nora and Ventus to safety using her glyphs. When Pyrrha saw that her new friends were now all clear of the Deathstalker's range of attack for the moment, she quickly spun around and converted her javelin into a rifle so that she could start laying down some covering fire, allowing them to catch up without worrying about anymore attacks from behind. Sora was quick to join in on Pyrrha's efforts, as he still had his Shooting Star Keychain active, and it was a simple matter for him to transform it into Double Arrowguns so he could begin blasting the Deathstalker as well, along with the Heartless that were running alongside it. With Sora and Pyrrha working together, not only were all the Neo Shadows destroyed, but the Deathstalker was kept well away from their group until they were all on the bridge across the chasm.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the bridge was not where they would want to be at that time, because the Nevermore soon came back around again, and crashed through the bridge, splitting the group almost completely in half, with Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Sora, Jaune, Nora, and Ventus all on one side, while Ren, Pyrrha, Blake, Roxas, and Lea were stuck on the same side as the Deathstalker. To make matters worse, the Darkside had come back up again, flying towards them at speed that none of the Keyblade wielders knew that it could possess. That did not stop Sora from opening fire on his old foe with his Arrowguns, but he was soon forced to cease fire when the Darkside suddenly threw a very fast fist in his direction. Diving to the side, Sora managed to avoid the hit, while Ventus used the massive Heartless's arm as a bridge up to its face, which he hit several times over with Wayward Wind, at least until the Darkside stood up straight again and attempted to swat him off. Thankfully, it ended up missing Ventus since he jumped clear just in time, landing alongside Sora just as he had switched over to the Starlight Keychain so that he could attempt to hit it with his Blades of the Round Shotlock.
Seeing that Ventus and Sora were struggling with the Darkside, while Ruby, Yang, and Weiss were attempting to shoot down the Nevermore, Jaune turned to see how the fight with the Deathstalker was going, and quickly figured out what they would need to do to turn this situation around. "We gotta get over there," Jaune told Nora. "Lea and Roxas will be more help fighting that Darkside thing, and the rest will need our help once they leave."
"Let's do this," Nora grinned, approving of that plan.
"Yeah, but, uh…I can't make that jump," Jaune admitted as he looked down at the chasm that was keeping the two groups apart.
Nora just grinned with a small laugh before she pushed Jaune back a little ways and transformed her grenade launcher into a large hammer. Taking a running, jump start, Nora then slammed the hammer into the bridge section she and Jaune were standing on, sending the blonde boy catapulting over to the other side, while she herself perched herself on the hammer's head before hitting the trigger so that she would be sent rocketing over as well. While Jaune's landing was basically just him dropping down on the bridge between his friends, Nora's came with quite the bang, as she brought her hammer down on the Deathstalker while shouting, "Nora, smash!"
Her hammer hit the Deathstalker right on its head, but did not really seem to do any damage. Luckily she was able to throw herself clear before the monster scorpion could retaliate with its stinger, but doing so ended up causing her to accidentally push Blake over the edge. Roxas and Lea both turned to try and do something to save her, but it turned out that Blake needed no such assistance. Instead, she merely tossed her sword up and used the attached ribbon to swing herself around. Sure, it put her in range of the Nevermore's talons, but a quick use of her semblance to create clones of herself saved her from danger and helped her to maneuver around so that she was on top of the big bad bird. Striking it several times over with her sword and the bladed sheath she carried her weapon in, Blake was more than a little annoyed that she was unable to do any serious damage to the thing, but she was at least glad she was able to get back on solid ground again after running down its back to join up with Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Sora, and Ventus.
Sora and Ventus were about to join the girls in another round of attacks on the Nevermore, until Ruby shouted, "Sora, we'll handle that stupid birdy! You take care of the Heartless!"
"Got it," Sora replied, and after an exchange of nods with Ventus, he and his partner quickly raced off to chase down the Darkside, which was already gearing up to attack Lea and Roxas, who had since received a similar request from Jaune.
"You sure we can handle that thing? It's tougher than it looks," Blake informed the younger girl.
"Then we'll just have to hit it with everything we've got," Yang decided as she reloaded her gauntlets.
The other girls all quickly followed Yang's lead by reconfiguring and loading up their weapons for long-range combat, and once they were all ready, they let loose everything they had on the Nevermore, even as it continued barreling towards them. It did not do any good, and the Nevermore soon crashed through the tower they were standing on, forcing the girls to scramble up the falling rubble so that they could reach a safer perch once again. Of course, while Yang was quick to start firing on the Nevermore once she had found a new position, and Blake continued trying to find a place where she could do the same, Weiss and Ruby came to a stop where they had eventually landed, at which point, Weiss could only say, "None of this is working."
Ruby knew that her partner was right, but after taking a quick glance around, she started getting a few ideas on how they could change that. "I have a plan," Ruby told Weiss. She then used her scythe to blast up into the air, and shouted, "Cover me!"
Earlier that day, Weiss probably would have argued with the younger Huntress-in-training, but after their little heart-to-heart, she had no problem fulfilling that request with the help of the other two girls. While that was going on, Sora and the rest of his Keyblade wielding friends were doing everything they could to bring down the Darkside, but to their surprise, it was not just faster, but also a lot stronger compared to the other Darksides that they had seen before. Sora had even paused in fighting for a second to switch his Starlight Keychain out for the Nano Gear one so he could use the Zone Connector Shotlock. Sure, it was a little more out there than any of the boys were comfortable with, but they were sure that none of the other kids could see him using an extraordinary power that could not be easily explained away. Besides, the Nano Arms Form of that one would be a lot more helpful here than Starlight's more powerful version of his Second Form. At least, that had been their thought until Sora actually transformed into that form and found himself still struggling to either land or deal serious damage to the Darkside.
"Ugh! What is the deal?! Darksides should not be this powerful," Roxas groaned as he jumped clear of another hit from said Heartless's fist. Said fist ended up opening a dark portal in the ground from which more Shadows began spawning out of, once again, which prompted Lea and Ventus to rush in and start cutting them down. They did not need to deal with any small fries while they were fighting a big boss like this, and that was without accounting for the fact that they were already having that problem.
Sora was not really sure what it was that had made this Darkside stronger than the ones he and the others had fought before, and at the moment, he did not really care. All he knew was that they were going to get overwhelmed if they did not do something to end this fight quickly. The only problem was that the biggest weak point on any Darkside was always its face, and they had no easy way of reaching it without the Darkside attacking them. The other Heartless that it kept summoning out for help made things even harder for them, but after glancing around, Sora was quickly able to come up with a plan. Using the finishing move of his Nano Arms Form, Sora quickly leapt up into a portal and unleashed a series of spikes from within a cube of nanobots, destroying several of the recently arrived Shadows, and freeing him up to relay instructions to the rest of his friends.
"Axel, Roxas, keep the Shadows and any other Heartless that thing summons off the rest of us! Ventus, get its attention on you! When I give you the signal, I'll need you guys to give me a clear shot at its head," Sora shouted.
The other four nodded and set to work carrying out their orders, with Lea burning through several Shadows at once, while Roxas used his powers over light to enhance his attacks and speed just enough for him to make dealing with the ones his best friend missed nearly as simple as breathing. Meanwhile, Ventus was hard at work keeping the Darkside's attention on him through the use of various wind spells and raid attacks. It certainly seemed like he was annoying the Darkside enough, but thankfully, Ventus was not alone in his efforts as live bait, because whenever they had a moment to spare, Lea and Roxas also stepped in to attack the Darkside, or to keep it from inflicting any serious harm on their friend. They kept up this easy flow of combos and attacks for a decent amount of time, but they knew that they could only do that for so long, so they each hoped that Sora was able to do whatever he was going for quickly.
They did not have to wait long, because Sora soon shouted that he was ready, and with help from the other two, Ventus was able to make sure that the Darkside's head was completely exposed to any attack they could throw at it. When the other three turned to see what Sora was up to, they saw he had switched over to the Double Arrowguns form of Shooting Star, which he had now transformed into the massive Magic Launcher. Taking careful aim, Sora charged up his canon to full power, and unleashed the powerful blast of magic energy right into the Darkside's face. His blast landed right on target, and the Darkside could only growl in pain as it dropped back down to the chasm below while finally fading into smoke and ash, while a crystal heart was released from its body and into the air, signaling its defeat.
Once Shooting Star had reverted back into its normal form, Sora switched it out for Kingdom Key once again, and smiled to his friends, all of who smirked back in return, but the job was not done just yet. They knew they still had to help the others, but when they looked up to where the fight with the Deathstalker was taking place, they saw that the matter was already well in hand, once a combined effort from Ren and Pyrrha caused the scorpion monster's stinger to be severed, dropping the point right in its head, and giving Nora an easy target to hit so that they could finally kill it, both from her attack, and from when the Deathstalker dropped down into the chasm below. From the sound of things, the others could tell that it was Jaune who was directing the other three through the whole thing, and they had to smile a little at how impressive his skills in quick thinking strategies were.
"Well, they've clearly got that taken care of. Think the girls need any help," Lea asked.
Sora was about to say that they should hurry over and see until he actually turned to look at what they were doing, and just said, "I think they've got it under control. Besides, it looks like we'd be in for a better show if we just watched."
The other boys turned to see what Sora was talking about, and saw that Yang was actually sending several blasts right into the Nevermore's mouth, severely disorienting it with every shot. When Yang finally jumped clear of her position, the Nevermore had already been thrown off so much that it crashed right into the cliff behind her. Weiss then rushed forward so that she could use her rapier to freeze the Nevermore in place by its tail, allowing Yang to move up onto a pillar that stood opposite of the one Blake was currently on and catch the black haired girl's pistol after she had tossed it over while holding onto the other end of its attached ribbon. Once the two had pulled it to the point of the ribbon being completely taut, Ruby launched herself up onto it, and positioned herself so that she had become a projectile that was loaded in a large slingshot. The only reason she did not get thrown forward right away was because of the black glyph Weiss had summoned to hold her partner in place while she lined up the perfect shot.
"Of course you would come up with this idea," Weiss remarked to Ruby.
"Think you can make the shot," Ruby asked, just to make sure.
Weiss merely scoffed and confidently replied, "Can I?"
Apparently Weiss had forgotten that Ruby did not really get sarcasm, so she was left a little worried when the white haired girl had responded like that. "…Can-?"
"Of course I can," Weiss snapped before Ruby could finish her question.
That was all Ruby needed to hear, as she turned to glare confidently at her winged target, cocked her scythe, and began charging up her semblance. The minute that her glyph had turned red, Weiss dismissed it, and Ruby was shot forward at an incredible speed, with a flurry of roses being left in her wake. A few more shots from Crescent Rose allowed Ruby to reach her target that much faster, until finally, she was perched right on the side of the cliff, with her scythe's blade firmly latched around the Nevermore's neck. Working quickly, Weiss summoned a trail of white glyphs up the side of the cliff, and Ruby did not hesitate to use them in combination with her semblance and the recoil of her weapon to run straight up the cliff, dragging the Nevermore with her. When reached the top, the Nevermore's body was brought to a hard halt, and one last blast from her scythe allowed Ruby to completely sever its head off its body in one swipe.
As the Nevermore's dead body dropped down from where it had been pulled, anyone looking up could see a shower of red rose pelts fluttering through the air before they disappeared into thin air, while Ruby stepped up to the ledge with her cape flapping in the wind, once again letting her strike a very impressive and heroic pose. Whether she had intended to do so or not though, none of them could really say for sure. All they knew was that both that moment, and what she just did could be summarized by the comment Lea eventually made.
"Now that…that is badass," Lea grinned in awe.
"You can say that again," Roxas agreed.
The rest of their friends gave similar comments of their own at the sight before them, except for Sora. He agreed that what Ruby just did was impressive and deserved all kinds of recognition and praise, but what really had his attention was the proud smile Ruby was currently wearing on her face as she gazed back down at all of her new friends. It was a smile that he recognized as one he wore more times than he could count after a huge success in his previous adventures, be it from winning a certain game, having fun with his friends on a specific world, or even simply just saving that world from whatever villain was threatening it at the time. Seeing it on Ruby's face actually made him smile a little more like he did back then, because somehow, he just knew that Ruby was going to end up doing some really amazing things. At the same time, it also worried him a little.
He knew just how fragile a smile like that could be, after going through what he had. Sora once thought that nothing could have ever seriously gotten him down until that day in the Keyblade Graveyard, and knowing that Ruby held that kind of spirit in her, Sora found himself setting his resolve on a new mission: to do his utmost to never let anything break Ruby the way Xehanort had him. Be it one world or all of them, he knew that there needed to be more people like her out there, and he was not sure whether or not he could classify himself as was one of those people anymore.
After initiation had concluded, the students had all gathered in the auditorium again, and were clapping and cheering for each group that was called up by Ozpin as he announced the teams that had been decided upon, their team names, and their leaders. Even without the buzz of excitement, the Keyblade wielders could all tell that this was a very big deal for everyone, right to the point where Sora was sure that if this were taking place in Olympus, the usual fanfare they always heard playing would be trumpeting in the air louder than ever. While it was nice to see all the groups that had been announced, it was not until Ozpin finally called out the names of some of their newest friends that the Keyblade wielders really got excited.
"Jaune Arc; Lie Ren; Pyrrha Nikos; Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as…Team JNPR (Juniper)," Ozpin declared for all to hear. Hearing this prompted Nora to happily wrap Ren in a tight hug, and while Jaune and Pyrrha were happy to see that the two were glad to be on a team together, the former was a left quite stunned by the next thing that Ozpin announced. "Lead by…Jaune Arc!"
"Huh? L-Lead by…" Jaune repeated in surprise, not knowing that Pyrrha was grinning proudly at him after hearing that.
"Congratulations, young man," Ozpin happily praised the boy, confirming that Jaune had not heard wrong.
Jaune's moment of glory was somewhat ruined when Pyrrha's attempt at a friendly slug in the arm caused him to fall over, much to everyone's amusement, but he was still able to get that she had only meant it as a form of congratulations and not as a way of being mean, even without her apologetic smile. When the four left the stage, the next group to come up was a familiar foursome of girls, among which Ozpin knew as the daughters of some of the finest students to have graduated from Beacon, and which he had the pleasure of teaching. "Blake Belladonna; Ruby Rose; Weiss Schnee; Yang Xiao Long. The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as…Team RWBY (Ruby)," Ozpin announced loud and clear. "Lead by…Ruby Rose."
While Weiss's jaw had dropped in disbelief after hearing who her team's leader would be, Ruby could only look around in wonder, hardly able to believe what she had just heard. Her confirmation of Ozpin's announcement came quickly enough when Yang suddenly jumped over to hug her tightly while cheering, "I'm so proud of you!"
At that point, Ruby's face gained a little more of a smile, clearly getting more excited than ever before. She knew that it was a bit deal to get accepted into Beacon at her age, but even before that, she had never even dreamed that she would be named as the leader of her team! If the last few days alone had been a dream come true for Ruby, then this was definitely much more than that. The girls were soon leaving the stage so that Ozpin could announce the last four, and this was a group that Ruby was especially excited for. "And finally, Sora Hikari; Lea Firebrand; Ventus Kunsanagi; and Roxas Sheru. The four of you retrieved the white king pieces. From this day forward, you will together as…Team SLVR (Silver)," Ozpin declared as clearly as he had the past few teams, and he made absolutely certain to do the same when he announced the leader of this team. "Lead by…Sora Hikari."
"Like there was ever any doubt," Roxas smirked with pride, truly happy for his former other.
"Way to go, Sora," Ventus praised his partner.
"Aw yeah! That's our boy," Lea cheered loudly with a celebratory fist pump.
Sora just looked between his friends and professor in surprise, until he finally just grinned and said, "I won't let you guys down."
"I know you won't," Ozpin nodded in response.
With that said and all of the teams announced, the students began to disperse so that they could finally receive their dorm room assignments and either mingle amongst one another for a little while longer, or just head off to bed for the night in order to make sure they were rested up for the first day of classes tomorrow. That did not stop Ruby and Sora from meeting up with each other, along with the rest of their teammates. "All right! Congratulations, fellow team leader," Ruby cheered for her friend as she wrapped Sora in a tight hug.
Sora could not help but smile back as he returned the hug, and replied, "I think you deserve more congratulations than me. You got your team named after you."
"Yeah, yeah. Very funny," Ruby giggled in return as she held one fist out to Sora in request for a fist bump.
Thinking back to when he first learned about this from Baymax, Sora happily granted Ruby's request before pulling back and wiggling his fingers while saying, "Bah-la-la-la-la-la-la."
"Huh? What was that," Ruby asked.
"Just a little something I learned from an old friend of mine," Sora replied.
Ruby smiled again when she heard that, and quickly asked for Sora to show her again. This time around, Ruby did her best to copy the movements of Sora's hand while repeating the phrase, much to the amusement of the others, and as he watched the eight kids, Ozpin could only smile happily. His smile quickly fell though, when he thought back to what he had seen the kids fighting on the surveillance recordings of the Initiation. Ozpin was well-aware of what the Heartless were thanks to Yen Sid, and seeing that they were here, and how they had attacked some of his students had left the headmaster very worried. He made a note to mention this to Yen Sid as soon as possible, but aside from that, Ozpin could really only think of one thing to really say at this point. "Looks like things are shaping up to be a…interesting year. May our hearts be our guiding keys."
AN: [deep breath] Aaaaahhhhhhh! Okay. I'm all better now. All good. I'm cool, and I'm now ready to go over the bullet points of today's chapter. For starters, a big lesson I learned after writing all of this was that next time I write out this particular adventure, if I ever do so again in the future, I should probably try to split the events of Beacon's initiation up between two chapters, at minimum, if at all possible, because this one had a lot of stuff happening here. Sure, most it is probably dialogue between characters, but there was a lot more than just that, so...yeah.
Moving on, all the teams are formed, with Sora's team being known as Team SLVR (Silver), and yes, that is the team name that was used in the original version of Remnant of the Key. And in addition to this, we've now been acquainted with all the major heroes of RWBY, both on Teams RWBY and Team JNPR, and hey, look at that, it looks like Lea and Nora have already formed something of a bond.
Roxas: Everyone run for the hills! [attempts to make a run for it, only to be stopped by Sora holding onto the back of his jacket]
Sora: If we've gotta deal with it, so do you, Mister.
Roxas: That's why I'm saying we should run! That's the only way we can deal with it!
Lea: Drama queen.
AN: Ahem. Yeah, I'm sure we all feel that Roxas's reaction may be a little justified by that friendship forming. And speaking of things beginning, it looks like Windchill, or as one fan dubbed it, IcyWind (Be sure to mention which name you like better for the Weiss&Ven pairing, because I think both work great) has just gotten its start. Add in the fact that the Heartless have now made their way to Remnant, and things are clearly heating up to a whole new level for our heroes! And all of those Heartless I mentioned, they are all ones that we've seen before. You can look 'em up on the Kingdom Hearts wiki if you don't believe it. Not that we really used that many different types in this chapter.
Speaking of the Heartless, I know some of you are probably going to think that Sora and the others pretty much blew their secret wide open, but let me just point out that the stuff that they told the RWBY crew is stuff that, while true, has nothing to do with other worlds. They mentioned that the Heartless are enemies of Keyblade wielders, they steal people's hearts to make more Heartless, and all the other most important details. Sure, they left out the fact that the Heartless are capable of destroying worlds, but that would definitely have blown their secret, and would likely have driven them all into an unnecessary panic, Huntsmen-in-training or not.
Sora: Hang on a second. Back when I went to save Ruby in the chapter, why'd you have me ask Ventus for a boost?
AN: To better support the idea that Ven's Semblance was the power to control wind, of course. I know I haven't actually had Ven tell anyone that yet, but considering how many wind-based abilities Ventus has, there was no way he was going to be able to pass that off as being something he could do with wind-based Dust crystals, so, Wind Control Semblance. Or air control, whichever you guys think would sound/work better.
Aside from mentioning that we also got a few more Sora&Ruby moments, I think that the only thing left for me to do now is to answer last chapter's reviews like I said I would last chapter.
Let's begin with "Soulofnone911". Sora will face Tyrian later on in the story (or rather, series, because to be honest, I'm thinking about having this particular story only cover the events of Volumes 1-3 while making a sequel that goes over 4-5, or 4-6, depending on what happens in Volume 7 and beyond), but I wouldn't say that he would be a straight up antagonist like you're suggesting. I can promise that Sora will get off a few shots on that psycho when the fight happens.
"Hamm1999", don't worry, Keyblade Legion will actually be seeing a Stan Lee cameo very soon, most likely in its next chapter. As for Hearts of Avengers, it may be a little bit longer, since I've yet to find just the right place to work it in, but I promise it will happen. As for that Will Smith cameo appearance, I do actually have something similar to that in mind for when it reaches the world of Agrabah in that story. I'm sorry to say that it is very doubtful there will be a Stan Lee cameo in this story though, mainly due to the fact that at this time there is nothing to do with Marvel in it, unless I decide later on to have the cast visit that world, of course.
"Dragon Rider 66" To answer your question, Ventus's last name in this story, Kunsanagi is actually a type of Chinese wind sword, while Roxas's last name, Sheru, is the Japanese word for Shell. As for your question about Keyblades being born from certain bonds that are formed between the Keyblade wielders and the various characters of RWBY like certain Keyblades were in the Keyblades Unleashed Series, I...actually haven't thought about it too much yet. Honestly, I feel like that sort of thing would be more geared to how a RWBY character would get their own Keyblade, if I ever decide to pursue that route. This is not me saying that the RWBY characters will get Keyblades. Right now, that is NOT going to happen, but whether or not certain Keyblades will be created based off of certain RWBY characters is still up in the air at the moment.
Next, "CT7567Rules", I actually have considered starting a DeviantArt profile page for that reason among others once or twice. I've just never really gotten around to it just yet.
Sora: Oh! Roxas, Ven, and I want to take the next answer. Namely the one to the "Guest" of 8/18/2019 who wanted to know how long we think it'll be before Yang and Lea get together. I'd honestly say, give it about two months, but they announce it as official at the dance.
Roxas: I give it half a month before they just start off as simple dates where they're just hanging out, and then another half before they get serious.
Ventus: I'm actually with the guest. I give it a month.
Yang: Hey, do we look like we're easy, or something?
Lea: I know you guys are probably just joking around with us, but I still feel really insulted to the point where I may need to burn you.
AN: Okay, moving on before this gets out of hand. "Lucien - Herald of Oddity", while your suggestion about Lea is interesting, you still seem to have forgotten that all teams at Beacon are made up of four people. Take away Lea, and the Keyblade boys are short one team member, and even if they do still let him join as an unofficial member, he'd have to worry more about his duties as a teaching assistant/teacher-in-training to worry about. Sorry, but Lea's part of the team here.
"Etain-SheWolfOftThePicts", while Sora did technically get seriously powered up by the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, he still did not regain all the powers he once had in previous Kingdom Hearts games. Otherwise, we'd probably still be able to use the various limits like Strike Raid, Zantetsuken, and all those other ones without the need for Second Form, along with a lot of powers he had in Dream Drop Distance and Chain of Memories. Still, you aren't entirely wrong when saying that Sora did get back all the powers that mattered most, in addition to getting very powerful water spells. As for Ruby's reaction to the Keyblade Graveyard, I'm not sure if she would marvel over all the different types of Keyblades, or cry at the state those Keyblade are in.
Ruby: Honestly, I'm not sure how I would react to seeing that in person, either. I guess it would probably depend on the circumstances.
AN: Next up is to "Monkey D. Conan"...
Yang: Before anything else, here's that high-five you were willing to accept! [accepts high-five offer gladly]
AN: [rolls eyes at Yang] Anyway, regarding your question about how the relationship between Sora and Ruby will go for the latter, I would say that Ruby actually falls for Sora a little bit faster than he does her. Mainly because his growing feelings for Ruby will do a bit of a number on him later on. You'll see what I mean when we get there. Lea&Yang, well I'd say that should happen pretty quickly, though it may not be as obvious most of the time. As for Ven&Weiss, I would say that...well, after today's chapter, I think you can make a pretty good guess about how things may unfold as their relationship develops. I'm not saying there won't be moments when she isn't just as cold to Ven as she is everyone else, but those moments will be much fewer in comparison, especially after a certain event in the future takes place.
Finally, a response to the really long review left by the guest reviewer "Someone Random". Ooo-boy. Here we go. To be honest, considering the amount of Grimm they were fighting at the time, under normal circumstances, you would be right, but you have to keep a few things in mind regarding that battle. The four had just walked away from a crash-landing, so their still a bit disoriented, and the Grimm themselves were coming at them in several waves for reasons beyond their comprehension. Add in the fact that this was the first time they were encountering the Grimm, and it only makes sense that they would be facing some difficulties. Although I do agree with you when you mentioned that it is very unrealistic for eight Keyblade wielders to have that much trouble with a particular enemy, depending on the foe in question. It was not my intention to make any of the Keyblade wielders look weak in that fight, just to showcase that they were not entirely prepared for a fight at the time, let alone against a new enemy that they had never encountered before, and don't worry, I totally get letting a rant due to frustration of certain things taking place. I mean, if you'll recall, I went on one earlier in this story about Kairi's role in Kingdom Hearts 3 canon.
As for your concerns about the pairing between Sora and Ruby, let me try to alleviate a few of them. I'm not trying to force it to happen just because the previous author of Remnant of the Key was doing it, because there will be a natural process to its fulfillment. You'll see that Sora will struggle quite a bit with himself as his feelings for Ruby grow, and even more than that, you'll see just what happens to the two of them when he finally finds Kairi again. It adds a little more drama to the story by putting Sora into a specific kind of conflict that he's never experienced before. Again, you'll see what I mean when we get there. To be honest though, I myself have seen a few more fics where Sora was paired up with Weiss, and any stories where he is paired with Ruby either haven't reached the point where it becomes official yet, or just leave a little bit to be desired. No offense to anyone reading this who has done that pairing. Also, why would I want to break up Arkos like that? That'd be just mean in my eyes, especially since I'm gonna find a way to make it so that Jaune and Pyrrha actually do get to share more time together as a couple beyond that one kiss they shared during the Fall of Beacon. The only way you could get me to break up Arkos would be if this was one of those stories where the hero from another series takes Jaune's place in the story or something. Just saying.
Okay, I think that covers everything. Now, all that's left to do is go Onto the Preview!...
Teams SLVR, RWBY, and JNPR are gearing up for their first day of classes at Beacon, and while some are left a little disillusioned by what classes at a school for monster hunters would be like, others have different concerns. Just what will the members of Team SLVR do to help resolve the trouble in Team RWBY's paradise, what sort of revelations will the Huntresses-in-training receive about their other worldly friends, and how will Sora manage to stay awake during class? Class is in session, next time.
Please read and review, and may your heart be your guiding key for your landing strategy.