Here's chapter 131, everyone.
"Don't be so nervous over there!" Nora called out, preparing for her sparring match with Weiss, who was sighing to herself, after realizing what she had asked of Nora. "I'm not gonna break any bones, promise!"
Weiss rolled her eyes and prepared a few dust crystals, placing them into the revolver chamber of Myrtenaster. "You tend to forget that these are sparring matches, and not actually going all out, so that promise means nothing, Valkyrie."
Nora chuckled a few times. "You keep calling me that. Soooo, should I start just calling you Schnee?"
"That's… Ugh, that isn't what I was going for. Just refer to me however you'd like. If I can't stop Yang from calling me Ice Wolf all the time, I highly doubt I'd be able to stop you from doing the same." Weiss admitted, closing the chamber and spinning it.
"Hey! I'm totally able to control myself and call you by your name. Besides, I was just messing with ya, Weiss." Nora had a determined expression on her face as she was ready to spar.
"Whatever, just please don't end up burning my outfit with those explosions of yours." Weiss requested as she took a battle stance, leaving Nora confused for just a moment, since she thought she'd become a wolf at the beginning, but then remembered their team sparring match.
"Gonna conserve some of your aura, huh?" Nora guessed with a smirk, waiting on the all good to start. "Doesn't matter, cause I'm so making sure you can't get a chance to become a wolf in this fight."
"Spar. It is a sparring match, Nora." Weiss reminded, silently muttering to herself that she shouldn't have asked the girl for a match.
"Sparring is just another word for fighting, just with more holding back our punches, silly… Meaning punches are still being thrown." With a wink and a groan from Weiss, Nora was ready to go, getting a bit impatient as Weiss sighed and shrugged, realizing whatever she said wasn't gonna make her see how a spar wasn't meant to be taken all that serious, but still, something about this made her smile a bit.
While Nora was a bit much to deal with, Weiss herself had more of a happy outlook on this little moment. For one, it was something she didn't have to be so overly concerned about, like everything in her life recently, seeing as both the discovery of a race of animals being able to become humans, plus the long kept secret of having a different mother altogether was incredibly overwhelming. So if having to spar with the school's most energetic first year was all she had to 'worry' about, she'd easily accept that, though even she knew that it wasn't gonna be an easy time, whether that meant taking punches a bit too hard, or dealing with the annoyance of the girl's more out there personality.
"Just promise not to go too crazy… Honestly at this point you should know that the school's staff won't exactly be thrilled with craters, and broken walls. Other than that-." Weiss yelped when Nora shot over her shoulder, a canister from her launcher that hit the floor behind her. Luckily the training area in Beacon wasn't fragile and can easily handle one grenade shot. "W-What the heck was that for, Nora?!"
"Uhhhh, well like, you kept talking, and I was getting a bit bored, soooo, can we go for real now?" Nora asked, as Weiss was extremely annoyed at how she'd do such a thing, but sighed, still on the side of not being too upset, but almost getting to the point of regretting her choice.
"Fine." With her rapier in hand, she spun the chamber on her weapon, having it land on the ice dust crystal, and slashing horizontally at Nora, surprising her since a straightforward attack wasn't usually how Weiss handled things, so when she jumped out of the way, she noticed the ice wasn't technically being aimed at her, but the floor, and since it landed where it needed to be, Nora ended up slipping, but Weiss didn't wait for her to fully tumble, knowing that someone like Nora wasn't dumb with fighting, and knew she was all about the heavy hits, meaning she wasn't the fastest around.
Playing to that, she thought of a way to attack, and with the image in mind, she attempted her best to try the idea out, and when she saw her glyphs appearing around Nora, she felt a spark of joy, since she was improving much faster with her glyphs. Nora on the other hand gasped, falling on her butt and seeing the glyphs in shock, but as she looked to Weiss, and gave her a smirk. "Just a sparring match, huh?"
Weiss rolled her eyes, mostly doing so much in the short time due to being more annoyed at the grenade shot that went over her shoulder earlier, and dashed over, landing on one glyph and using them to propel herself at her friend, slashing at her with her rapier, and when she landed on another glyph, she repeated the attacks, but as Weiss knew, Nora wasn't dumb and swung her hammer at Weiss on the third dash at her, meaning she had to quickly adjust her dash, but with the momentum already going, Weiss had little time to dodge, and was nicked on the arm, which luckily her aura took most of the damage. While she did take damage, she felt a bit proud of herself for being able to use so many glyphs already.
Being sent a bit away from the staggering hammer strike, Weiss picked herself up as fast as she could, watching Nora smash the ice under her, making sure it wasn't a factor in their match, so she took that moment to swap to gravity dust, but wasn't outright going to use it just then.
"Okay, not bad, but I can see which dust crystal you're about to use. I do have eyes, silly." Nora taunted, as Weiss rolled her eyes, knowing it was a bit of a flaw, but she couldn't exactly memorize which dust crystal she'd be using when spinning the chamber.
Not wanting to make a conversation in between their fight, Weiss quickly ran over, wanting to take the chance with using speed to outdo strength, as she watched as Nora swung her hammer down, so she used the gravity dust just then, making the hammer float a bit when their weapons collided, with Nora smirking, since she felt justified in seeing the dust crystal Weiss was going to use. Even if she did know that Weiss was going to use gravity, it didn't stop the situation from being a bit annoying, and since the gravity affected the hammer specifically, Nora couldn't keep her grip on it, fighting back the gravity to no avail, letting Weiss get in a few jabs of her rapier against her.
Nora wasn't a fragile huntress in training though, so her aura wasn't being taken down too much. Still, even she can't tank through everything, deciding to let go of her hammer for now and kicking Weiss back, getting a good hit in, as Weiss honestly wasn't expecting a kick.
With a grunt, Weiss held her stomach, looking to her friend as she thought to herself. "I thought she never let go of her weapon in a fight… Spar, ugh, damn it, she's got me thinking it's a fight now."
"What's wrong, didn't think I could throw in a kick or two?" Nora grinned, holding her hand out to catch her falling hammer, since she knew the gravity effects wore off, and after catching it, she swapped it to its grenade launcher form, firing off the canisters, since that time she wasn't going to let up, since she knew Weiss was trying to get in quick hits to drain her stamina.
Seeing that, Weiss gasped, trying to get away from the explosions, since getting hit was one thing, but being knocked down meant a barrage would come straight for her, but even with her speed, Nora was able to catch her with one canister, hitting her away, though with the thought of taking a barrage in mind, Weiss quickly caught herself, landing on her feet and that moment of realization hit on how to use her semblance, summoning three glyphs stacked on top of each other, hoping it would tank the barrage, and after the rumbling of several shots was felt, Weiss peered over, casting a few shots of fire from another glyph she had formed a bit to the right of the three shielding her from the barrage.
Nora was too distracted to notice the fireballs hurdled at her, as she gasped and recoiled from the several shots of fire. Not needing to use the three glyphs to shield herself, she let them go and rushed over, but Weiss didn't take note of how much aura she was using, having still needed time to adjust to having used so many.
Rushing down was a decent enough attempt, but when she saw how fast Nora recovered, she tried using another glyph to block the immediate swing, but was met with a weakened glyph, which pretty much shattered on impact from said hammer, surprising Weiss as she got hit with the remainder of the swing, and knocking her far off as her aura flickered and Nora was taken aback, not expecting her aura to be that low already.
"H-Hey, I didn't think that you'd be this close to being done already, Weiss… Shit, sorry, I-." Nora yelped when a fireball went right over her shoulder, looking back and seeing it hit the wall behind her, so as she turned around, she noticed Weiss was smirking at her. "Eh?"
"Don't try to coddle me. I simply used a few too many glyphs is all. My aura may be weakened, but it's not down." Weiss kept her rapier up, thinking about her wolf form, but deciding it wasn't the smartest idea to try using it when she was low on aura.
"Hahaha! That's fair… Okay!" Nora readied her weapon as well, the two dashing at each other as their fight continued.
Yang walked with her sister down the hallway, looking at her with a grin. "I know you're already wanting to bug Weiss about hanging out. You know, it's really cute, but you're such a lovestruck dork, sis."
With a groan, Ruby swatted her away, hating how much she teased her. "Oh be quiet. I have self control ya know… And it's not like it's a crime to want to spend time with her."
"It's not, but you are a lovesick puppy, and I'm pretty sure Weiss is supposed to be the one who can turn into a… uh, Wolf." Yang didn't want to say the wrong word and get attacked for it.
Still, Ruby caught that and smirked. "Oh? What was that? Did I just hear my sister almost called my girlfriend a-." Yang covered her sister's mouth with her hand, earning muffled sounds from the rose girl.
"Okayyyyy! Let's just be quiet about that and say nothing was said! How about that one, sis… Hahaha… Right? Like, no talky about the d word." Yang pleaded, as she saw her sister cross her arms, waiting on her to remove her hand, and Yang sighed, slowly moving her hand off.
Ruby looked to her sister with a triumphant grin. "So, what were you saying about me being a, oh, what did you call it, lovesick puppy?"
Yang held her head in defeat, knowing if she kept teasing her about that, Ruby would simply turn it around and tell Weiss what Yang almost referred to her as. "Okay, okay, you win…"
"Good, now-." The two gasped after hearing a small explosion, as they ran over and saw it was the training room. "What the heck? Who's going this hard with training…"
As they both opened the door, they saw Weiss and Nora both on the ground, panting as they both looked out of aura, with Yang blinking and commenting. "Huh… Ya know what, honestly thought only one of these two would be the source of that… How's it goin, Ice Wolf?!"
Weiss groaned, wishing she didn't accept that sparring match after all.
This chapter is more of a welcome back to those who kept up with it after so long, and a bit of practice with coming back to this story. It was gonna be a sparring chapter back then too, with possibly bringing in some extra stuff, but I felt the advancement of Weiss' glyphs was something that needed to happen.
To JJ- I appreciate the kind words, and for always sticking with this story. It was a review you had left back in April that made me realize people still enjoy this story, and I wanted to come back strong and happy with the work I make.
As for what I mentioned in the update previously, a lot has happened, and I wanted to progress a bit with stuff I do. I know I mentioned it already, but I am doing more stuff over on Twitch now, and while this is the place for my stories, at the end of the day, I'd want any of my work to be a positive thing people can enjoy and something to grow, so if anyone is interested in my other stuff, I would appreciate it so much if you could check out my Twitch. (MG_FoxTale) Don't feel inclined to. It's just something I'd like to do to help in de-stressing and just having a good time with.
With the next few chapters, I'm still refreshing myself on the plot points I wanna get through, so bare with me on when this updates. I'll do my best.
I hoped you all enjoyed chapter 131. Remember, reviews are welcomed, but not required. See you all in chapter 132.