Hey guys, I hit another patch of inspiration, so ive got one more of these thats half complete, and ideas for another, so sometime next week expect 2 more. anyways, on with the chapter.
It was late in the evening during Theodore and Aurum's conversation, when a knock on the door could be heard, pausing to check the cameras, Theodore saw that Rumpole was at the door, likely to check up on him after meeting with Aurum. Buzzing Rumpole in, Theodore excused himself and got up from his desk and went to greet his right hand woman.
"Ah Rumpole, how nice of you to join us, come I want you to meet our new partner!" Theodore exclaimed as the small woman walked in,
"I take it the meeting went well?" Rumpole responded in a curious tone
"HA! Did it go well, It went better than I ever could have hoped!"
"Judging by your mood I would hope so, so are you going to introduce me?"
"Oh my dear Rumpole, where are my manners, this is Ruby Rose, though in the future she will be going by Aurum Lazuli, and you wouldn't believe it, I know I wouldn't have if she didn't show me... She has a Relic!"
Rumpole audibly gasped, "She brought a relic here? Which one? How did she get it from the other school? How do you know we can trust her?"
"Calm down, calm down my dear, She doesn't have one of the four relics we know of, this incredible woman has a fifth relic, and better yet, she has foreknowledge! She comes from the future Rumpole, the future! She has evidence of it, and what a terrible future it is... But! That's why shes here, to help, to fix the future and ensure it never comes to pass."
Turning from Theodore, Rumpole looked to the woman standing by Theodore's desk, The cloaked figure had been writing something on a few sheets of paper that were strewn across the desk, but when Theodore had introduced her, she had turned and stood up, fully facing the duo. Now finally with her attention, Ruby walked up and held out her hand,
"Hi, Im looking forward to working with you over these next several years, If you want any proof of any of my claims I sure I can provide it."
Rumpole eyed Ruby's hand and cautiously reached out and shook it,
"And I hope you're trustworthy enough to work with, speaking of which, what exactly will our working relationship be?" Rumpole responded, turning to Theodore as she spoke
"Ah well, we had some plans, when you showed up I was conducting an interview, just to get the gist of our friend here's total experience, let me catch you up on what we had planned"
Theodore ushered Rumpole to his desk and started showing her the papers on the desk, animatedly explaining what he and Ruby had cooked up, and their plans for the near future
It was a new year for Shade academy, and as with every year the Headmaster gave an opening speech, He introduced the students to the faculty of shade one by one starting with himself, Then Rumpole, the weapons teacher , the faculty medic Opal Manila, and the Grimm studies teacher Sino Mahogany, but after that, where he would normally end his speech with an ominous message, he stopped and cleared his throat, after looking out among the crowd of new initiates, he began to speak,
"And, This year I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming a new member to our staff."
Aurum walked out onto the stage and gently took the microphone from Theodore, She had her cload completely wrapped around her, but her hood was down,
"Hi, My name is Aurum Lazuli, I'm an Alumnus of Shade, and I have been working in the field for 6 years, in that time I have cleared 19 S level bounties and 52 A level missions, along with that I have personally wiped the mission boards of all outstanding S level bounties in Vacuo. This year I will be joining Shade as teacher of The Art of the Semblance, and Ballistics. Thank you for your time, Tonight you will all be sleeping in the foyer, keep your weapons on you, and be prepared for
anything."
As Aurum left the stage Theodore walked back up to the mic,
"In front of me, I see a crowd of hopefuls, you have come here in search of purpose, You will not find it here, your time at shade will only get more and more difficult, and once you leave these halls, even more so. I do hope you're up to the task."
With that, all the student hopefuls shuffled out of the auditorium and followed the signs to the foyer, they all sat out sleeping bags and set up for the night, their new teacher on their mind.
"So, Do you think that went well?" Ruby asked as the group walked to the teachers lounge
"Well enough that I'm sure our other faculty members want a word with me." Theodore jokingly replied
"Well you did only deign to tell me and yourself about this little plan " Rumpole snarkily replied
The group walked into the teachers lounge and were met with the other three members of staff, All of them were looking at the door, it seemed they were ready to bombard the three with questions, and as soon as Ruby, now slipping back into her Aurum persona, immediately held up her hand,
"I know you all have a lot of questions, but before you start spewing off questions let me sit down and we can all chat over a nice cup of coffee."
The six teachers then all went about the room and made themselves different beverages before one by one before all sitting down and pulling up the various chairs in the room to the central coffee table.
One everyone had sat down Aurum simply gestured for the three teachers to start with their questioning, the first question being age, luckily all three of them were recent additions to shade's staff, having only worked there for 4 or 5 years, with Rumpole having been there the second longest, right behind Theodore. So Aurum Simply answered,
"I'm 27, I Graduated shade at the age of 21 in 62, and I've been out in the field ever since."
The next couple questions were about her weapon and fighting style, which she answered truthfully, But when the question of her semblance came up she paused,
"Well, I'm actually quite unique, I uh, have two? The first one i unlocked as a little kid, I call it petal burst, I kind of, turn into a ball of petals? Its hard to explain, at first we thought it was just super speed, but later on we realized that i actually converted my mass into petals, so I could actually carry people, and I could split into multiple balls of petals."
The asker of the question, that being Sino, hummed and asked, "and the second?"
Aurum scratched the back of her neck and said, "I can alter probability?" with a sheepish smile on her face, Ignoring the dumbfounded look on the three's faces she pulled out a coin,
"I've found that i can make stuff more or less probable, but not certain, but when it comes to actual probability i can make things certain, for example, I can make the chances of me finding 100 L on the ground up from .1% to like 10% so good but not certain. But, if something relies on luck alone, I can affect it to be almost certain, like this, I'm gonna flip this coin, then pass it around, all of you flip it as many times as you like, I can guarantee that it will land on heads every time"
Aurum then slipped the coin three times, and as she said it landed on heads every time, passing it to the next person, as the coin went around she pulled out two d6 dice, and rolled them on the table, when they landed, it was snake eyes, she picked them up and rolled them again, and it landed on double twos, she continued until she got to double sixes, then, she put the dice away and pulled out a deck of cards, at this point the coin had gone around to every one and made it back, so Aurum called for everyone's attention and pulled the deck of cards out of its box, she then spread them out to show they were in factory order, collecting the cards back up she shuffled them, and then passed them to the next person, who shuffled and cut them , then the next, who shuffled it twice, and around the table it went.
When the deck finally got back to Aurum she simply spread it out and everyone there was amazed to see that the cards were still in factory order, not a single card had moved from its original position, smirking, Aururm then placed the deck back in and asked,
"So how many heads did everyone get?"
Around the table she got answers and she tallied them up, "So that was, what uh... 24 heads in a row? What's the odds of that?" Theodore pulled out his scroll, but Aurum held up her hand, "Don't worry about it, ever since I've gotten this semblance I've gotten real good at knowing what the odds of something are, the odd of 24 heads in a row are 0.00000059604644%, that's fairly low, but watch this one, she flipped the coin and let it land on the coffee table, and it landed on its edge, she then picked it up and did it 10 more times, each time landing on its edge, she then said, "Now that happening once is about one in six thousand, eleven in a row? That's astronomical, something like one in one followed by forty something zeros, anyways, It makes for a neat party trick, and it helps out in battle."
The group was quite excited and they all eagerly asked her about more uses for her 'semblance'. The night carried on and eventually everyone retreated to their own rooms around the school, preparing for sending the students through initiation the next day, along with a year of classes to follow.
As Ruby laid down that night in her new apartment on the shade campus, she brought out her scroll and opened up a photo of her team that they had taken in atlas, right after they had been given their huntsman licenses, she looked at the photo with a sad smile, the photo had her whole team and JNR plus Oscar, all of them smiling so brightly, sighing to herself, she felt tears start to form, and she closed her scroll, sucked in a shuddering breath, and sobbed until she fell asleep.