AN: Hey guys, I'm back with a normal-sized chapter again. I had some fun with this one, but I still feel like I'm not good at writing action. Let me know how I did.

I also got no answers last time about how I should go about issuing writing challenges, so if anyone has ideas for how to do that, let me know.

I also just realized that Volume 8 premiers on November 7, and Melody of Memory comes out on November 11.

Man, that's gonna be a busy week.

Anyway, on with the chapter! Enjoy!

Chapter 21

"That should be most of the Grimm in the area," Aqua said, dismissing her Keyblade. She looked to her two companions, Peter and Bart, whom she had asked to accompany her to the Emerald Forest to thin the Grimm's numbers for her class's upcoming practical examination. "And thank you two again for agreeing to come out here with me."

"Think nothing of it, my dear!" Peter said happily, brandishing his weapon, the Blowhard, a Blunderbuss-style shotgun with axe blades on either side of the stock (when she had asked him how he aimed, he only responded with "aiming is for the weak", and she decided to just go with it). "I always relish a chance to show the Grimm why they should fear the might of Peter Port! Ha ha!" he boasted while striking a pose. "Besides, we needed to get Barty away from his books for a little while," he said, pointing at the green-haired man in question.

"I will admit, I may have shut myself away for a bit too long," Bart said, folding his weapon, Antiquity's Roast, back into its thermos form. Whatever was in there caused the weapon to shoot flames when it was extended, so she doubted that it was necessarily safe to drink. Regardless, he regularly drank from it anyway. "Quirks" like these helped her to come to a basic realization about the staff at Beacon.

They were all completely insane.

Thankfully, if there was one thing her Keyblade training had taught her, it was how to adapt to insanity. It allowed her to deal with the sheer madness of some of the worlds she had visited after she became a Master.

Besides, with her family, the ability to roll with the punches was near essential.

"But it does feel nice to stretch my legs every once in a while," Bart continued. "Are you going to need help with anything else?"

"No, but thanks," Aqua said with a smile. "I think I can take it from here."

"I have to say, this practical team examination of yours is a novel idea," Peter said, surprising Aqua. What was the point of being in teams if they didn't have any classes dedicated to cultivating teamwork? Didn't the Vytal Festival have a tournament where students fight in teams? "What will you be having the students do, anyway?" Aqua smirked.

"That's a surprise."

Weiss once again found herself alone, looking over everything she had found on Professor Branwen. What she had found so far didn't give her a lot of confidence.

She had married someone named Qrow Branwen a little over a year ago, but before that her last name was Eraqus. She had an extensive hunting record going back the last decade.

And that's where things got weird.

Her records only went back a decade. After a certain point, there was no mention of her even existing. Almost as if she had just appeared out of thin air. Since that was obviously impossible, the only explanation was that Aqua Eraqus wasn't her original name. But what could that original name be?

And then there was her Semblance. That summoning glyph she used was remarkably similar to ones belonging to the Schnee family, just without the trademark snowflake design. She could have initially written it off as simply being similar, but she felt that she couldn't just leave something like that alone, and then she had learned about her completely unknown history.

Once that revelation came to light, she couldn't stop the flood of speculation.

Was it at all possible that Professor Branwen's original last name was "Schnee"? She knew from the conversation she had with the professor that she was 28, which made her a few years older than Weiss's older sister Winter. And as far as Weiss was aware, there were no other branches of the Schnee family. Her mother was an only child, and her grandfather was the only surviving child of the family after the War, so there were only two places where any Schnee blood could have come from: her mother or her grandfather. If one of Professor Branwen's parents was the bastard child of Nicholas Schnee, it would make sense why she had never heard of another Schnee family member, but then why would her name need to be changed?

That made it far more likely that the professor's mother was Willow Schnee, Weiss's own mother. That would make Professor Branwen the illegitimate child of the Schnee heiress, and since Weiss's mother was the one out of her parents that actually had Schnee blood, since her father had married into the family, it would have given her a claim to inherit the family business. After all, any child of Willow Schnee had just as much Schnee blood as Weiss and her siblings did, and she was born first.

The story was starting to make sense. Weiss's mother had a daughter from an unknown man a few years before her father married her and they had Winter. Her father, wanting to make sure that only his own children had any inheritance claims, had struck her name from the public record, and wiped away all traces of the existence of Aqua Schnee (unless her first name was changed, too). This would essentially force the girl to grow up as a pauper, since she officially didn't exist. Then, when she was 18, she emerged on an island off the coast of Vale, under a new name, Aqua Eraqus.

It's also possible that that's why her Semblance was similar to hers, but different. Semblances were typically supposed to be unique to the individual, with the exception of the Schnee Family's, which was the only hereditary Semblance in existence. It's always identical from one Schnee to the next. She had it, even if she was still developing it, her sister had it, her mother and her grandfather both possessed it, and her younger brother Whitley would have it if he had decided to become a Huntsman instead of a carbon copy of their father.

But was it possible that having Schnee blood but growing up outside the family would cause Professor Branwen to develop the Schnee Semblance, but develop a variation in its appearance?

Unfortunately, Weiss could only speculate about the professor's lineage, since she hadn't been able to contact Winter since the semester started, and calling home to ask her mother about it would require her to go through her father first, and she really didn't feel like dealing with him. Especially since he would undoubtedly ask her why she wanted to "bother" her mother, and might flat-out refuse to let her speak to her.

And, truth be told, ever since her mother had started drinking, she wasn't very pleasant to deal with either.

Before Weiss could decide how to feel about a potential long-lost older sister, she discovered a new problem related to her professor: the last name "Branwen".

It didn't take much digging to learn that the name Branwen was the same as a notorious bandit tribe in Mistral. In fact, according to the Global Rogue Huntsmen Database, the tribe was currently being led by a woman named Raven Branwen. The worrying part was that searching for more information about Raven led to the revelation that Raven Branwen was a Beacon alum, alongside her twin brother: Qrow Branwen. The same Qrow Branwen that the possible illegitimate Schnee child named Aqua was currently married to.

That might explain where she was until she was until she was 18 and re-emerged using the Eraqus name. Maybe she had somehow gotten away from Atlas and fallen in with the Branwen tribe. By all accounts, Qrow was no longer a member of the tribe and was actively working as a Huntsman, but who's to say that he wasn't still close to his sister, and that was how she had met him?

This presented a new problem for Weiss. If an illegitimate child of the Schnee family was completely scrubbed from the official records, was aware of it, and then became part of a notoriously brutal bandit tribe, then there was a distinct possibility that she might see the Schnee family as her enemy. Would she want revenge for being robbed of her birthright? Would she come after Weiss? Kill or hurt the heiress to get her revenge? But then why did she go out of her way to help her on the first day? Or was her plan to get Weiss on her side, and use her to either get back into the family or somehow turn Weiss against them?

And then there was the fact that half of Team RWBY were apparently raised by Professor Branwen and Qrow Branwen. How did Ruby and Yang factor into things? Were they part of whatever plan the professor was hatching?

Things just kept getting more complicated, as she also learned the names of the remaining two members of the Branwen Twins' team from Beacon, Team STRQ: Summer Rose and Taiyang Xiao Long. Two people that share the last names of the aforementioned half of Team RWBY. Weiss didn't even know where to begin trying to untangle this web of connections…

"Weiss? You in here?" Ruby said loudly, throwing the dorm room door open and turning on the light switch, fully illuminating the bulletin board that Weiss had tacked all of her research onto, with red string to connect the images together. Weiss jumped up in fright, spinning the board around so Ruby wouldn't see what she had been working on.

"Oh, there you are," Ruby said happily.

"Ruby!" Weiss yelled in a scolding tone, praying to whatever was out there that Ruby didn't see. "Haven't you ever heard of knocking?!"

"Why would I knock on my own dorm room, silly?" Ruby asked, as if basic manners were completely ridiculous.

"What if I was doing something private?" Weiss asked.

"Well you weren't, so what's the problem?" Ruby asked. "By the way, what's with the bulletin board?"

"Nothing!" Weiss shouted, before composing herself. "It's for, uh, a project! Yes, a class project." Ruby looked at her suspiciously for a second, and Weiss could feel sweat on her brow.

"Ok!" Ruby said suddenly. "Don't take too long, though, we've got our trip to the Emerald Forest today." And just like that, Weiss was alone in the dorm room again. She let out a sigh of relief.

In hindsight, compiling this information in the dorm was a terrible idea.

It wasn't long before Weiss was standing with the rest of her team, along with the rest of the Advanced Combat class in a clearing in the Emerald Forest. This was her first chance to see the kind of weapons that Team CVFY possessed, those four still being complete unknowns. The boys of that team had more overt weapons, the copper-skinned boy (Fox, she believed), having a pair of what appeared to be tonfas, and the giant, Yatsuhashi or something like that, had a truly intimidating-looking greatsword. The girls, however, didn't seem to be carrying weapons, at least not obviously. Their leader, Coco, looked to just be carrying around a handbag, and the Faunus just had a small rectangular box on the back of her belt.

Team CVFY weren't the ones she was really interested in observing, however. No, she really needed to observe the Professor, who was standing in front of them in her (admittedly stylish) combat outfit.

"Went from a 9 to a 10," she heard Coco say quietly, for reasons Weiss couldn't even begin to imagine.

From where Professor Branwen was standing, Weiss was able to get a good look at her face, looking for any telltale signs of Schnee blood. For a start, she was beautiful, which was a point in favor of the Schnee connection, if Weiss said so herself. After all, both her mother and Winter were very beautiful women, and Weiss knew she was pretty as well, if not on the same level as the women in her family. Granted, pretty much all the girls in Beacon were beautiful, so that wasn't exactly a conclusive test.

So, Weiss started looking for more definitive signs. Her eyes were blue, like Weiss's and Winter's, but they were a more vibrant shade. Obviously the professor's hair was blue, but it could be dyed, so Weiss tried to examine her roots more closely to see if there was even a hint of the Schnee's signature white hair. Well, Schnees except for Winter. Her natural hair color was black, but she's always dyed it white.

Speaking of which, the professor's eyebrows were also blue, which meant that it was either her natural hair color or she also dyed her eyebrows.

Overall, there were no obvious physical signs that Professor Branwen was a member of the Schnee Family, so she had to just keep an eye out for any more subtle signs, whatever her intentions might be.

Speaking of intentions, why were they in the Emerald Forest, anyway?

"Welcome, class," the professor greeted, "to your practical team examination."

"So, uh, why are we in the forest?" Yang asked. Weiss was about to admonish her for speaking to a professor like that, but then she remembered that both she and Ruby were Professor Branwen's daughters. How could she already forget such an important detail?

She needed to keep an eye on them, too.

"We need plenty of space to play capture the flag, after all," the Professor answered almost playfully.

"Capture the flag?!" Nora asked excitedly. "No one told me we got to play games! This is the best class EVER!"

"Nora, please," Ren urged.

"You can keep thinking of it as a game if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it," the professor warned. "I want you all to come at this with everything you have. I'm going to have two teams go up against each other in two matches. This will be a test to see how well you guys work together so I can track your progress, so you can't hold back if we want it to be accurate. The goal of this exam is to capture your team's flag from the other team's base. While you will be graded for this, it won't count towards your final grade for this class, since this is purely an exercise to examine your teamwork. In terms of how you go about getting the flag, anything goes as long as you don't seriously injure someone. The only thing that matters is getting the flag. How many people you defeat or even if you choose to defeat them is secondary. That said, I will determine that you've been defeated if your Aura falls below 15 percent, just like in Professor Goodwitch's combat class. However, there is no 'out of bounds' here. You have as much space as you need, within reason, of course. I trust you can tell that running 5 miles in the opposite direction isn't going to work, and that you need to keep the fighting away from the rest of us."

As if anybody would be stupid enough to do something like that.

"So, let's get right into it. Team CRDL, Team CVFY, please step forward." The two teams called on stepped forward, Coco wearing a wicked grin on her face. It seemed she was still upset with Cardin for the animal comments he made last class regarding her team mate.

The brute. It wasn't like Velvet had actually done anything to warrant that kind of treatment.

"Team CRDL, you have the base to the east," Professor Branwen said, pointing at the trees in that general direction. "Team CVFY, you have the west. Both teams will start at their base, and I will send an alert to your scrolls when both teams are in position. Also, just a heads-up, some of the other professors and I did our best to clear this place of Grimm this morning, but be careful. We may have missed a few. Now, head to your bases."

"Leave the animal to me," Weiss heard Cardin say quietly to the rest of his team.

"This is going to be way too easy," she heard Coco say.

She was right. It was way too easy.

The other students had watched from a large screen as Team CRDL decided to simply charge straight ahead to Team CVFY's base, leaving theirs completely undefended. They had charged right past Velvet, whom her team had sent ahead to scout. She was able to just walk right up and take their flag.

Which turned out to not even be necessary, as all four members of Team CRDL had been taken down by the remaining three CVFY members, meaning they had no chance of getting the flag anyway.

All in all, it was a pathetic display, and exactly what Weiss and everyone else had come to expect from Team CRDL.

Professor Branwen sighed.

"Well," she said, "That was certainly something."

"They're so strong," Ruby whispered.

"Eh, I bet we could take 'em," Yang said nonchalantly.

"Keep dreaming," Blake deadpanned.

Ruby wasn't wrong. Team CVFY was surprisingly powerful. And their entire team didn't even participate in the fight. Velvet was off grabbing the flag while the rest of the team completely flattened CRDL. She wasn't sure if Team CVFY was abnormally strong, or Team CRDL was abnormally weak.

Although she couldn't deny that it was amusing to see Coco beat Cardin senseless with a handbag.

"Okay, where do I start?" Professor Branwen asked once both teams had returned to the group. "Team CDRL, for some reason you decided to completely abandon your base and charge straight for Team CVFY. Why did you think that was a good idea?"

"We're not gonna just hide," Cardin said. "We were gonna fight like men."

"Then you'll die like men," she responded bluntly, "with your mission incomplete." Everyone was silent. "If this was a real mission, just charging in without thinking is the fastest way to get yourself killed. And if you had a mission to complete like this game, you would be leaving the job for someone else. Leave the macho nonsense behind. It'll only get you and others killed." Cardin growled, but didn't say anything else. The professor looked to Team CVFY.

"As for you, it was risky to send Velvet on her own, especially since the entire team was sticking together. What would have happened if the entire enemy team spotted her? She would be by herself with no backup."

"She can handle herself," Coco defended, "It's not like they could take any of us."

"I know that you're older than them," the Professor said, shocking the rest of the class. "But I said at the beginning of the exercise to take this seriously. You didn't do that, and if Team CRDL was stronger than you thought, then by sending Velvet alone you could have put her in a dangerous situation. Especially if this was real."

"Wait a second," Cardin angrily interrupted her. "What do you mean they're older than us?"

"Exactly what I said," the professor answered. "Team CVFY is a second-year team."

"We're the best second-year team, you mean," Coco challenged, only for Fox to nudge her with a elbow.

"How is that fair?!" Cardin yelled. "You put us up against a second-year team! We thought they were first-years!"

"Why are they even taking this class?" Weiss couldn't help herself but ask.

"First off, I never said they were first-years," Professor Branwen said. "You all made that assumption yourselves. Second, the fact that they're second-years doesn't change the fact that your strategy was terrible. And third, they're in this class because we thought they would serve as examples for the rest of you of what good teamwork looks like. After today I can see that they still have a lot to learn." She breathed out in frustration. "Obviously, Team CRDL failed. Team CVFY, you won the game, but you failed as well. Neither team had anything resembling teamwork or sound strategy. Let's just move on to Team RWBY ad Team JNPR." The two teams stepped forward.

"Team RWBY, you take the west base. Team JNPR, you take the east."

"So, what's the plan, sis?" Yang asked once they made it to their "base", which turned out to just be a small mound of dirt with a flag embedded in it.

"One of us needs to stay here to guard the flag," she said. "Yang? You're the powerhouse here. Think you can handle it?"

"Aw, man," Yang whined. "I wanted to go out and fight. Ugh, fine."

"Now for the rest of us. Weiss and I will be an advance team, while Blake keeps her distance. We'll be the main force, and Blake can try to find any openings or scouts. While we keep them busy, you can look for an opportunity to take the flag. It's like Mom said, what's important is to get the flag, not defeat them."

"Makes sense," Blake said.

"It does seem sound," Weiss agreed.

"Let's do this," Yang said, cracking her knuckles.

"Team RWBY, let's go!" Ruby shouted excitedly.

Weiss was walking through the forest with Ruby, both girls carrying their weapons at the ready. She really had to admit, Ruby's plan to divide up the team was sound, and it was telling that she thought so highly of their skills that just the two of them could handle themselves.

Weiss had her doubts about exactly how effective they would be against Pyrrha, but if they were up against anyone else, she had confidence that this plan would work.

That being said, she still had to keep an eye on her to see if she was involved in any possible plans her mother might be cooking up for the heiress.

"So, how do you feel about team attack names?" Ruby asked.

"Excuse me?" Weiss asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Team attack names," Ruby answered enthusiastically. "Like, I shout something like 'Checkmate', and you and Blake do something. We can come up with different combos and give them names so I can just shout a word and we know what attack I mean." Weiss gave it some thought.

"It does seem like it would be useful," she supplied, making Ruby smile.

"I knew it was a good idea. We'll start thinking of some combos later—Duck!" she suddenly yelled, and Weiss dove to the ground, narrowly avoiding a bullet.

"Attack!" she heard a male voice yell, and looked up to see that insufferable Arc fool and Pyrrha running at them. Weiss smirked. She raised Myrtenaster, and thrust the blade into the ground, summoning a glyph beneath her feet. Another glyph appeared underneath Jaune's feet, and in a flash, he was trapped up to his neck in a block of ice. "Oh, come on!" he whined.

"Nice one, Weiss!" Ruby cheered as she charged at Pyrrha.

"Jaune!" Pyrrha called out in concern, but she wasn't able to actually check on him, as she had to block Ruby's attack. Weiss used a glyph to launch herself towards the two girls, but Pyrrha disengaged Ruby and backed up. Without missing a beat, Ruby and Weiss chased after her, their weapons raised. Pyrrha ducked underneath Ruby's swing, and Weiss's thrust had somehow gone slightly off-course, allowing Pyrrha to roll over Weiss's back, before Weiss heard a sound similar to a gong being rung as something hit her in the back of the head.

Did she just throw her shield at me? Weiss thought, still seeing stars.

"Vine!" Ruby yelled, and Weiss turned around to see rose vines sprout from the ground to start wrapping around Pyrrha's ankles. Pyrrha looked down and reacted fast enough to start swinging her sword to cut the vines, and Weiss used the opportunity to attack.

Blake was hanging back like she was supposed to, watching Ruby and Weiss take on Pyrrha, wondering exactly what Ruby's Semblance was. She could apparently summon her weapon, give herself a speed burst, summon a wave of rose petals, launch razor-sharp roses, and apparently grow vines to bind people. She would have moved in to assist them, but then her partner had frozen Jaune solid, so she was just waiting.

And then she saw him. Ren was hanging back from the fight as well, and hadn't seen Blake, since they weren't fighting each other yet.

All those stealth missions paid off.

She smirked and slowly approached him, reaching for Gambol Shroud.

Ruby swung her Keyblade at Pyrrha's thrown shield, knocking back towards the redhead. Pyrrha caught it, just in time to deflect an attack from Weiss. Ruby transformed her Keyblade into its sniper form and took aim a Pyrrha before she heard a voice.

"Stop!"

All three girls (plus Jaune, who was still frozen) looked up at the voice, and saw Blake approaching, but she had an extra person with her.

She was holding Ren out in front of her, his arm wrenched behind his back, and her sword at his throat.

"Drop your weapons," she said to Pyrrha threateningly. Pyrrha hesitated, so Blake pressed her sword closer to Ren's neck.

"Okay!" Pyrrha said quickly, dropping her sword and shield.

"Nice job, Blake!" Ruby praised, before looking at Pyrrha seriously. "Turn around, hands behind your back," she said, and Pyrrha did as instructed. "Vine!" she called out, and vines wrapped themselves around Pyrrha's wrists, trapping her arms behind her back. "Now, take us to your base."

It only took a few minutes for Pyrrha to lead the others back to Team JNPR's "base". Jaune had been thawed out and brought with them, and both he and Ren had their hands tied behind their backs with vines, like Pyrrha's were.

"Guys, seriously?" Nora asked when the group approached, as she was the one left behind to guard the flag. "What happened?"

"Sorry, Nora," Jaune said, his hung low in shame.

"Nora Valkyrie!" Ruby announced loudly, pointing her finger at her dramatically. "Your team has been captured by us, Team RWBY! Now, surrender your flag, and nobody gets hurt!"

"Never!" Nora declared, gripping her hammer tighter.

"Nora, just do it," Ren said.

"But—"

"We lost fair and square."

"Ugh, fine take it," Nora gave in, putting her weapon away. Ruby quickly ran up, grabbed the flag, and used her Semblance to speed away back to her team's base.

"Well done, everyone," Aqua said when both teams had returned. "Team RWBY wins, but both teams get a passing grade."

"Really?" Jaune asked, shocked.

"How?" Cardin asked. "They lost. Why do they get a passing grade?"

"A pass or fail for this exercise isn't dependent on winning the game," Aqua explained. "It's all about teamwork and strategy. Don't forget, Team CVFY received a failing grade, even though they won." Coco bristled at that. "Both teams happened to come up with the same strategy, and it was a good strategy, too. Team RWBY just executed it better. Weiss, taking Jaune out of the fight to leave Pyrrha on her own was a great idea." Weiss preened at the praise. "Blake, capturing Ren to force Pyrrha to surrender guaranteed that the mission was completed without bloodshed, which is ideal." Blake nodded.

"Now, for Team JNPR," she continued, turning towards the team in question. "When Ren was captured, you made the right decision by surrendering. We don't sacrifice lives to get the job done. The second you start to think that making that kind of sacrifice is a good idea, you have failed as a Huntsman. Because of that you both pass. Good job."

"Now, don't forget that your papers about the weaknesses of the various Heartless is due next class. I also encourage you to reflect on what you learned today, because we will do team exercises like this throughout the semester. Class dismissed."

"Hey, animal!" Cardin yelled, and Velvet turned around to see her glaring furiously at her.

"What do you want, dickhead?" Coco asked.

"I'm not talking to you, bitch," he snapped, his eyes fixed on Velvet. "Your team won't always be here to protect you, freak. Remember that."

And he walked away.

AN: Has anybody else noticed that Winter's eyebrows are black? They are. That's why I threw in that line about her dyeing her hair white.

Now, I know that some of you are going to point out that Weiss is taking a few leaps in logic here, but she's approaching the situation having already reached the conclusion that Aqua is somehow related to the Schnee family, so she is subconsciously warping everything she's finding as being somehow evidence of it.

We also got a new spell for Ruby.

Vine- causes vines to sprout to bind her opponents. Higher level versions will cause more vines to grow. It can also only be used when she's standing on dirt.

As always, thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!