Black and White
"Well, that would appear to be the last of our teams," huffed Glynda Goodwitch as she took her place beside Ozpin. Her neutral, exacerbated tone did little to hide the burning rage within. With their keen eyes and vantage point they held atop the launching grounds overlooking the landscape, they could see all within the Emerald Forest. Anything truly hidden beneath the canopies, however, could easily be watched from the black and gold, tablet-sized Scrolls they held in their hands. Suffice to say, nothing could escape their watch.
Goodwitch, however, was not focused on the forest, nor the potential students within it. She was busy burning a hole in the side of her boss' head with her glare. Ozpin appeared blissfully unaware of such a thing, sipping down the last of his hot chocolate and nodding to himself as the silver-eyed girl met up with her sister. Such was good: Ruby Rose was sure to be safe, now.
Alas, his ruminating would have to end. Glynda's glare could be ever so distracting when it was just at the edge of your peripheral vision.
Ozpin sighed, and spoke without turning his head. "Proceed, Glynda—"
"Have you lost your mind, Ozpin! Perhaps you may have seen enough potential in that Arc boy not to have Oobleck sweep him out of this forest in an instant, but this?" She thrust her Scroll in his face like incriminating evidence. "Him?!" On her screen was a different pair: Weiss Schnee and Adam 'Belladonna' circling one another with a swath of the forest burning behind them. Their words were muted, yet clearly biting. The latter looked like he was about to explode at any given moment. The former's cheeks were already red with indignation.
Ozpin already missed his hot chocolate.
"You've placed a literal terrorist in our midst! It is not just Miss Schnee that is in danger but every student in that forest! How long do you think it'll be before he snaps, Ozpin, because it looks to me like if one of us doesn't step in now we'll have the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company dead and a psychopath hiding on our campus!"
Seeing no way to avoid having to talk to the increasingly irate witch, Ozpin closed his eyes and sighed once more. "Have faith, Glynda. Our foes seem rather keen on turning allies into enemies, I'd say it's about time we consider the same. Besides, there is no such thing as pure evil. Dare I say it, not even Her." He paused. "Even so, I can assure you that I have numerous contingencies for if I am wrong." He didn't like admitting it, but, he was no stranger to the concept. He could only hope this was not going to become one of his many mistakes.
As Ozpin changed the view of his Scroll to match Glynda's, he decided praying would perhaps be better suited.
"If you think I would ever want to be on a team with you, then you must have lost your mind!" the Schnee girl shouted at him as they circled one another like a pair of predators. Both of their eyes searched for even a single sign of weakness. The growing forest fire burned far away from them both, yet the scent of burning pine still filled their senses.
"Leave, then," Adam growled. "Be my guest! I would love to have you get thrown out of this place. After all, it isn't as if there aren't any instructors watching and grading your every move and would see you flagrantly throwing the rules aside, right? But please, it's not like something as silly as rules and law would ever stop a Schnee from getting their way, right, Princess?" Adam scoffed.
"Like a barbarian such as yourself should be so judgmental! You can scarcely even follow the rules of combat: we are meant to strike in turn, not leap in each others' way!"
" 'Strike in turn'? Do you really think the Beowolves would just sit there and look pretty like one of your pathetic androids while you do so? Maybe if you spent more time actually practicing as you did shrieking about things not going your way, you'd be a fighter worth a damn! Stick to your training dummies, and stay out of my way."
The Schnee took a sharp breath, eyes flaring and fists clenching as she stormed towards him. Adam gladly did the same until they'd met in the middle of the circle they'd been treading, barely inches away from one another.
"I'll have you know that I have trained and prepared for this day more than you can even fathom! Those flames could have killed you!" She jabbed a finger at him, and Adam harshly slapped her hand away. The Schnee winced, and he scowled.
"In your dreams, perhaps. You can scarcely take down a single Beowolf: whatever training you had was clearly not enough." He jabbed a finger back into her chest. "You should've stayed in Atlas, just like dear old sister." Adam stormed off into the forest with a flick of his coat. He couldn't help but smirk as he heard the Schnee's scream of rage and felt the wave of fire decimate a tree beside him.
Unseen by either, a single feather larger than them both slowly settled atop the felled, burning tree. With negativity comes Grimm.
Adam and Weiss were currently two very negative people.
"Ru~uby, did you hunt me down?" Yang asked her in the best 'big sister' voice she could muster as the Ursa faded away into black miasma.
"Maybe a little..." Ruby mumbled with the best 'little sister' puppy eyes she could muster.
Yang tried to glare at her but, even after so many years, trying to fight back against those puppy eyes was still an exercise in futility. She groaned. "Aw come on, Rubes, I thought I told you that you should've tried to partner with someone else!" Yang tried to chastise her, but just couldn't wipe the grin off of her face: who was she kidding? It only took her the time between launch and landing before she'd tried to search Ruby out. Try as she might, she didn't think she'd be letting her little sis go any time soon.
"Too late, now!" Ruby said in a sing-song voice and skipped up to Yang's side as they made their way through the forest.
Yang just rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, I'm still mad, though..." The snarls of Grimm from ahead got their attention. Two Beowolves crept out from the brush. They were young, with bone plating uneven and spaced out across their furry forms. That just made it all the more annoying to Ruby when Yang not-so-subtly stepped in front of her and deployed her gauntlets.
"Sooo, can I blame you for this, then?" Ruby asked with a snicker. She stepped back and twirled Crescent Rose in her hands, but Yang already jumped into the fray. She didn't even get a shot off before Yang got rid of them.
"Yaaang! I want to fight too!" Ruby complained as they walked on.
Yang just brushed it off with her usual grin. "What's wrong with wanting to protect your little sister?"
"I don't need protecting, I'm big and strong already!" Ruby got the slightest feeling that, maybe, Yang didn't want Ruby to join another team just for her sake alone.
Of course the first words the Schnee said to him after they finished their last argument would be another challenge.
"You know the temple was to the right, don't you?"
"Those were rocks." Adam rubbed his temples: sometimes, he didn't miss that mask of his at all.
"You never even checked. They could have had vital clues on them!"
"There haven't been clues anywhere else: I don't see how there would be any clues now."
"Because the first clue has to be somewhere!"
Adam finally stopped in another clearing and glared down at the Schnee. "Are you incapable of ever actually admitting to being wrong?"
She jerked back in surprise at Adam's sudden question, then growled. "Excuse me? I'm just trying to help and you're insulting me?"
"Perhaps it's because I'm sick and tired already of hearing you act like you know everything!" Adam hissed.
The Schnee trembled with anger and frustration before asking something Adam did not actually expect.
"Just what did I do to you, anyway?! The only thing you've even done is insult me since before we even met! Have I done something to you in the past, or are you just that arrogant and socially inept with everyone?" Mainly because that was the dumbest question he had heard from her, what did she mean 'what has she done'?
"What kind of question is that? Are you blind? Can't you see the hor..." Oh. Right. She couldn't see his horns. Because he was wearing a stupid hat.
"Horrible damage your family has done to this world?" He gritted his teeth through his narrow save.
"Oh, you're one of those." She rolled her eyes. "The ruffians who believe everything they hear about the Schnee family because they refuse to do some thinking and admit just how silly those claims are." The Schnee dismissively waved him off and turned around to look for the way to the temple.
Astounded and incensed alike by her sheer ignorance, Adam just cocked his head to one side.
"Let me guess, head a little too deep in those faunus-sympathizer books?" she prodded on.
He barely recognized the soft click his blade made as he pushed it from its sheath. Adam snapped it back. He had to get away from her. He had to get away before he did something that he would... alright, well, he wasn't going to regret it, but someone, somewhere might, and that counted enough.
"Do some research and actually educate yourself some time, maybe you'll figure out just how biased the people speaking against the Schnee family really are!" So absorbed in herself, the Schnee clearly didn't notice the hatred growing in his eyes. And then, like the hands of some merciful god reaching down, Adam had the wind knocked out of him and found himself careening through the air.
"Besides, I'm not my family, anyway, so I would appreciate—" She jumped in surprise at the sudden rush of wind and flicker of black in the corner of her eye. Whipping around, Weiss was left staring up as Adam was flying off in the sky... in the clutches of a giant Nevermore.
He didn't exactly appear displeased by this turn of events.
"Huh, that was easy!" Yang said as they pushed out of the brush and found themselves standing in front of the temple. At least, it might've been a temple a long time ago: standing atop a hill, the stone structure had been reduced to little more than a circular set of old, moss-covered pillars and broken, stone ground. Pedestals holding black and gold chess pieces sat in the center. Some were empty: others had already been here.
"Aw, not easy enough for us to be first, though..." Ruby wandered up to the pedestals and looked them over. Her eyes lit up as they fell on a golden knight. "Ooh, a pony! And it's in your color, too!" She snatched it off and turned to Yang. Whatever she was about to say, though, was cut off by a high-pitched scream sounding off from deeper in the forest.
"Oh, no! Some girl's in trouble! Yang, what should we do?" Ruby looked over towards where the scream had come from. Yang... didn't say anything. "Yang?" She shook Yang's shoulder. "Hello? Remnant to Yang?"
Yang tapped her shoulder and pointed up at the sky. Namely, the gigantic Nevermore soaring right for them.
"... Oh."
The Schnee actually followed him. Adam was almost impressed.
"Are you insane! What kind of idea was this?!" Almost as impressed as he was with the Schnee being so loud he could still hear her voice while atop a Nevermore. While being forced into a partnership with a Schnee made the sweet release of death increasingly appetizing, Adam had decided he wasn't going to allow a mere Grimm to claim him. Wriggling and climbing had left him able to crawl his way to the top of the beast, where he now kneeled.
"A smart one! I can already see the temple from here!" He had buried Wilt into its hide, yanking it like a pilot would a joystick and with about the same effect on the flying beast, albeit with more screeching from the Grimm. "We'll be fine!" He paused. The Schnee, on the other hand, was left holding onto one of its feathers for dear life.
"I'll be fine," Adam corrected himself. He was having way too much fun with this to be safe.
"You'll be fine?! What about me!" She let out a scream when, with a jerk of his blade, Adam turned the Nevermore towards the temple below. He looked behind him with a vicious smirk.
"If you have such a problem with it, just jump, like I'm about to!" Unfortunately, he couldn't see the look on the Schnee's face when he yanked his blade out and was gone with the wind before the situation even clicked in her mind. Adam could, however, hear the last thing she shouted to him:
"WHAT?!"
Ah, petty victories, indeed. Turning in the skies with one hand smashing his hat down against his head and the other gripping his weapon, Adam let out a dark laugh unheard in the rushing wind. Maybe it was just a coping mechanism or just being filled with so much pent up anger that it had overflowed back into neutrality, but Adam was feeling like perhaps things would not be so bad at Beacon, after all. Well, until his petty victories couldn't fuel him any longer, but that was easily months away... weeks... he could last a few days.
Too busy in his thoughts, Adam didn't notice the screaming student flying through the air right towards him until he'd already been smashed into the canopy of a tree. His blade was already drawn and pointed at his attacker before he could think, mind flying back to his White Fang instincts, but a girly shriek snapped him back to the sad reality of just being a student. A student with his blade at the neck of another one. Right. Probably shouldn't do that.
"C-c-come on, man, it was just an accident, I swear! Let's not get crazy, a-alright?" The mystery boy, left hanging upside down from the branches above, panicked and waved his arms about enough so that Adam had to sheath his blade just so he wouldn't cut himself on it. Wait... no, this wasn't a mystery boy at all. He remembered him from the airship. The one Ruby was speaking to. This was—
"Vomit Boy," he stated dryly.
Vomit Boy brought an arm up—well, down, Adam supposed—to protest, then sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, that's me. Do you think you could maybe, I don't know, cut me down? Kinda stuck here."
Adam ignored Vomit Boy to scan the horizon and the temple both. He paused when he saw Ruby waving to him and her loud sister looking faintly annoyed at his violent response. Before he could recognize Ruby's attempt to hail him, however, a booming roar came from the forest. A massive Ursa came stumbled out of the bushes, letting out a final, defiant cry before collapsing, dead. The odd, redheaded hammer girl was riding atop its back, carrying along a trembling boy in green clearly born in Mistral. That must've been who she was waiting for in the first place. According to said Mistralian human's request for her to never do that again, her name was Nora.
And according to Nora's sheepish reply when he shouted at her for just running off, her partner's name was Ren. Nora didn't care much for Ren's yelling, however, for she'd bounced back to giddy glee and darted off to grab one of the relics—chess pieces, it seemed—and loudly proclaim herself 'queen of the castle'.
Adam pointed back at Vomit Boy with his thumb. "Does anyone know how he got here in the first place?" Not even a second after the words left his mouth, a scorpion Grimm well over twice the size of the Ursa bowled over the trees surrounding the forest temple. So ancient that its scarred and pockmarked plate had begun to accrue moss and grass, it was scuttling towards the more immediately familiar figure of Pyrrha Nikos. She dived and jumped between pincers that were easily twice her size. Even such a legend in the arena, however, was not a match for a creature as old and experienced as this Death Stalker.
"Jaune!" Pyrrha called out towards the boy, who wriggled all the harder to try and escape his embarrassing predicament.
Yang opened her mouth to speak.
"Pyrrha!" Jaune shouted back. Taking some pity on him, Adam sliced away the branch Jaune was hanging on as he leaped away. Adam landed on his feet. Jaune landed on his face. He cracked a smile that betrayed his growing annoyance with all the yelling.
Yang, agitated, tried once more to say something.
"Adam!" being screamed from the heiress still clinging onto the Nevermore circling in the skies cut her off yet again.
"Uh, Yang? Problem!" Ruby started tapping at Yang's shoulder insistently and pointing back up the sky, not noticing just how angry her sister was getting by the second. Adam was no better: these humans were just so loud!
"Nora!" Nora shouted happily.
"Enough!" Adam roared loud enough to get even the Death Stalker's attention. Coincidentally, it was also the last straw for Yang, who picked up right where he left off:
"Can't you all stay quiet for two seconds before something else crazy happens?!" Her demand was made all the more compelling by the flames that burst to life around her. She got her wish: about two seconds of quiet.
"Adam! How could you just leave me up here?!" shouted the Schnee in disbelief as she clung on to the Nevermore's sharp talon and slipped further and further off by the second. While everyone else's eyes were aimed at the skies, Adam strolled over towards the temple.
"Quite easily!" he called behind his shoulder as he picked up a golden knight. Unorthodox, yet powerful and easy to be underestimated, much like the faunus themselves.
"She's gonna fall," Yang pointed out to Adam with some agitation at his callousness. Adam glanced over his shoulder, did a quick appraisal of the Schnee's condition, then waved his hand dismissively and looked back at his chess piece.
"She'll be fine. Maybe."
"Aaand she's falling." Ren said with no worry at all in his voice. Maybe he wasn't alone on this dislike of the Schnee after all, Adam wondered.
Jaune suddenly scrambled up to his feet and stumbled forward, looking for the falling heiress. Since his eyes were occupied with the ground, however, he didn't know her exact location. Weiss landed on Jaune's back. Jaune landed on his face. Again. It was around when Pyrrha was sent flying into the dirt right next to him that the group remembered there was a very angry, very large Death Stalker currently hunting them.
"Great, the gang's all here! Now we can die together!" Yang proclaimed with far more glee than this situation warranted.
Adam snorted. "Or, we can fight. We outnumber it eight to one." The Nevermore screeched. "Four to one," Adam amended as if that was meaningless.
To him, it was: even for a bunch of first years, it would be an arduous task but one that could be achieved with only the chance of a fatality. With a prodigy such as Pyrrha Nikos and a Huntsman-level fighter like himself, that would turn 'chance of a fatality' into 'chance of casualties'. More than acceptable for this environment. Much more important to Adam, however, were two things:
One, he loved showing off.
Two, he loved a dramatic battle.
Nora and Ruby seemed to recognize such a thing, at least, the latter all but chomping at the bit to get a swing at the gigantic Grimm. The other students... not so much.
"I don't know, Adam, I wouldn't want any of us getting hurt..." Yang offered as protest, but from the way she subtly moved in front of Ruby, it was clear she meant that she didn't want her sister getting hurt. Ruby, however, had other plans. She must've noticed her sister trying to defend her too, for with a pout and steeling of her gaze, she nudged past her.
"He's right, though! We can totally take it on! I've fought worse!" She reminded him a lot of Blake when she was younger: brash, hardheaded, getting into trouble all the time...
"Oh, really? When?" Yang crossed her arms.
"Uh, guys, it's getting closer..." Jaune mumbled.
"All the more reason to attack now!" Ruby unfolded Crescent Rose and grinned. "I'm going in!"
"Ruby, that thing might really hurt you!" Yang protested.
"I'd like to see it try!" With a 'battle cry' more befitting a kitten—and Adam should know—Ruby took off for the scorpion Grimm alone, firing from her sniper rifle-scythe for extra speed. It was all for naught: if Pyrrha Nikos couldn't challenge it alone, Ruby didn't stand a chance. One swing of its mighty pincer, and Ruby was smashed right into the ground, just like Pyrrha was. She groaned and pushed herself back to her feet, panting already: it must have knocked the wind right out of her.
"D-don't worry! Totally fine!" she called back. As a testament to how little a threat the Death Stalker saw the girl as, it only crept forward, curiously chattering at her. Ruby gasped as she turned to find it only a few inches away from its face. She made the mistake of opening fire on the beast, but the shell didn't even mark its heavily-armored exoskeleton. Adam could see the panic start to set in: not just in her eyes, but in those of her sister. Yang ran after her.
Perhaps she would have made it, if the negativity borne from fear of losing a loved one hadn't drawn the Nevermore's attention. One flap of its wings, and what was once a straight and clear path for both Yang and Ruby to run to each other became a maze of giant feathers as sharp as blades and thick as streetlights. One caught Ruby's cloak, pinning her in place. A second struck Yang, blowing her right back to where she started. Waiting for this moment, the Death Stalker grew closer. All the while, the group only watched, some in horror, but Adam in disinterest.
He briefly noticed the Schnee glare back at them all before readying her blade, but his focus was on the carnage about to play out. This was not his business. Saving humans simply was not something he felt he needed to do: surely, Beacon expected casualties.
His grip on Wilt and Blush unconsciously tightened. Unfortunately, that desire to just dive into her job, Ruby's utter naivety, and her willingness to prove herself at any and every opportunity all kept digging up memories of Blake when they were younger. Happier. When she needed someone to watch out for her, so that she wouldn't go and hurt herself in the cruel world. Old instincts Adam thought were long dead began to resurface.
Frightened, silver eyes looked back at him. All Adam could see was startled, pleading amber.
Black and white traveled past Yang in a blur.
The Death Stalker's stinger fell.
Ruby closed her eyes.
Ozpin smiled. "Do you see now, Glynda? It's said that to even have an aura, a soul must have yin and yang. Light and dark."
Death did not come. Ruby dared to peek an eye open, and the world rushed back to her: the Death Stalker thrashed to and fro, screeching in pain and flailing its now-stingerless tail in a frenzy. It tried to lunge at them, yet a wall of ice was encasing its pincer, locking it in place.
Adam flicked the black ichor from his blade and sheathed it. The detached stinger laid embedded in the ground ahead of him.
Weiss pulled her rapier up from her stark-white glyph that surrounded the ice pinning the Death Stalker in place.
"Black and white."
