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One Glyph to slow down. Second to adjust the angle. One more, to slow down just a little bit more. Weiss had spent a lot of her time practicing landing strategy and by now she could perform maneuvers such as that with nothing short of perfection. It was therefore no surprise when, after placing one last glyph, she landed on the forest ground with grace worthy of a Schnee.
Then again, there probably weren't any points for style awarded at the initiation. If Weiss wanted to get some actual advantage, she needed to stop mentally congratulating herself and find herself some decent partner - which could be hard with that silly 'eye contact' rule.
The heiress took a second to think her strategy through. Sadly, her landing technique required her to remain concentrated during her descent, so she wasn't able to accurately track everyone else's movements in the air. And since her high heels and snow-white outfit would make any attempts at sneaking past an undesirable person futile, Weiss was pretty much forced to let fate decide with whom she would end up getting partnered with.
Damned be the Headmaster for coming up with such an idiotic system. Thanks to him, all the effort Weiss had put into socializing during the past two days were essentially for naught. She couldn't even use bribery to convince some strong fighter to join up with her. Where was the fairness in that?
Still, the time for filing formal complaints against the school would have to come later. Right now she had to make the best of the less-than-perfect situation. She vaguely recalled that Pyrrha had been falling to the west of Weiss' current position, so it made sense to head in that particular direction. It raised her chance of ending up with someone useful as a partner, if only slightly.
Weiss began marching through the Emerald Forest. Aside from the juvenile Nevermore here and there, there were no Grimm within her sight. Presumably it would get more dangerous the closer she got to that temple - assuming that she would manage to find it, that is. Navigation and other survival techniques were never her strongest suit, as she never bothered to learn more than theory - something that, she had to admit, was a mistake on her part.
Just to be sure there was no easy way out, Weiss pulled out her scroll. There was no signal, despite her being in close proximity to Vale's CCT tower. Presumably there were some jammers installed nearby, preventing the initiates from using their devices to navigate or communicate with each other over extended distances. Had Weiss thought ahead and brought some walkie-talkies with her, she would be able to coordinate with her chosen teammates, but right now she had no method of long-range communication. Not one that she could think of anyways.
As Weiss was pondering what she should had done and what she ought to do now, she heard the gunshots coming from nearby. A lot of them. Either a group of students had already formed and was fighting some major threat, or someone was using automatic weaponry. It couldn't be Pyrrha, since her signature weapon was a semi-automatic rifle in its ranged form, but could still be someone good. Regardless, Weiss had to find a partner eventually, and coming to the rescue of a potentially overwhelmed student could very well earn her some extra points on the Headmaster's report.
The heiress put her scroll back into its designated pocket and ran in the direction the gunshots were coming from. These particular noises soon ceased, but other sounds could be heard in their place, such as the cracks of falling tress and hisses of what seemed to be particularly loud snake.
Upon reaching the source of the noises, her suspicions had been confirmed. In a small grassy clearing, a large two-headed King Taijitu was trying to smother a person whom Weiss recognized as Lie Ren, the man she had met in a corridor the day before. At the moment he was skillfully dodging the Grimm's attacks while simultaneously taking shots with two small handguns that made for his weapon. Contrary to what might have been expected, Nora didn't appear to be anywhere nearby. Apparently, these two hadn't managed to partner up with each other just yet. Interesting.
After several fruitless attempts and striking the young man down, one of the heads managed to find an opening and hit Ren out of the air, causing him to drop his weapons. Weiss took a stance and prepared to jump into the fray and save Ren if need be - though the perspective of ending up with someone who nearly got killed by a single King Taijitu wasn't very appealing to her.
Luckily, Ren proved himself perfectly capable of keeping up with the large Grimm, even after being devoid of his weapons. When the black head struck, aiming to impale its prey with large fangs, Ren faced it head-on. In an impressive display of aura-control, he created a shield to halt the incoming assault and then grabbed the snake's fangs with his bare hands.
Weiss watched, her eyes now wide open with surprise, as Ren tore both on the fangs right out of their respective sockets. The black head attempted yet another charge, but the student effortlessly avoided the attack and countered by stabbing one of the fangs into the Grimm's eye. He then delivered a vicious palm strike to the fang, causing it to surge through King Taijitu's skull and kill that part of the large Grimm in an instant.
Weiss found herself reasonably impressed. It appeared as though Ren was just as strong as she hoped he would be and was, currently, without a partner. He was no Pyrrha and having him as a partner would mean having to deal with Nora as well... but sometimes, you just couldn't have everything.
The snake's surviving head prepared to strike, just as Ren prepared to repel its assault. Neither of them, however, ended up getting a chance to do anything. Before the King Taijitu managed to launch an attack, Weiss was already in the air, propelled by several glyphs. She struck the serpent's head with Myrtenaster, damaging though not piercing its skull, and then unloaded the full canister of fire dust, further hurting the Grimm as well as propelling herself backwards using the recoil from the blast.
She landed, gracefully as always, right next to Ren. The young man scanned Weiss with his pink eyes, to which she responded by flashing him a slight, friendly smile. That's right, I just came to your rescue. You're not going to be ungrateful and berate me simply for not being Nora now, will you?
"Thanks for the help." Ren said after a moment's hesitation.
"You are welcome." Weiss replied. "Now, should we finish that thing off?"
King Taijitu, or rather what remained of it, didn't seem to be posing much of a threat anymore. Its only remaining head had been critically damaged by Weiss' attack, leaving the beast dazed and on the verge of collapsing.
Weiss didn't want to waste any more dust on the wounded Grimm, so she charged at it head on. Ren followed suite, grabbing his weapons and running towards the beast.
To its credit, King Taijitu tried to attack even despite its wounds. Sadly, its fangs managed only to strike the ground when both students dodged its attack - Weiss jumping to the right, her partner towards the left.
Immediately after dodging, Weiss spun ninety degrees and, with a quick thrust of the Myrtenaster, drove the blade into the Grimm's red eye. Ren did the same on his side, impaling the other eye with one of his razor-sharp blades. The serpent twitched in place for a while, before it finally turned motionless.
Weiss waited a couple seconds just to be sure. Only after seeing that King Taijitu started to dissipate, as all Grimm did upon their deaths, the heiress sheathed her rapier and walked over to her partner.
"It looks like we have dealt with one problem." She stated, aiming to get straight to business. Ren was more likely to accept her as a teammate if they started working together straight away. "Now we need to locate that temple the Headmaster told us about."
"That shouldn't be very hard." Ren replied, his weapons seamlessly sliding into his sleeves. "I think I've seen some structures when I was falling down. They should be to the north of us right now."
"I didn't see anything like that." Weiss admitted. "You must have good observational skills."
"Perhaps." Ren shrugged in response. "I'm fairly sure I can lead us right to the temple. But there is one thing..."
Weiss looked at her partner expectantly.
"Once we reach that place, we have to team up with another pair by choosing a Relic. Are we going to just form a team with the first two people who arrive to meet us, or are we going to wait for someone that fits us personally?"
Ah. Ren apparently still wanted to get his not-girlfriend on his team. It was inconvenient considering the kind , but Weiss could work around that.
"I'm not sure." Weiss said slowly. She was pretending to pretend to sound indifferent, so that her partner would perceive her words as a concession on her part. "I don't know many people here, so I'm not sure who would or wouldn't be a good teammate. If you'd like it, I can just leave that choice to you."
It wasn't a lie, not entirely at least. If it turned out that Nora was already in someone else's team by the time Weiss and Ren arrived, then the promise would be essentially meaningless, as the heiress' interests would line up with Ren's perfectly - to find powerful teammates, Pyrrha Nikos preferably being one of them. If Nora failed to arrive within a reasonable timespan, Weiss would probably manage to convince Ren that waiting further would endanger their chances at passing the initiation at all. And if Nora arrived on the scene with some unimpressive partner... well, then things got more messy, but depending on the circumstances there could still be a way for Weiss to avoid having the ginger girl as her teammate without downright breaking the promise.
"Thanks. I appreciate it." Ren replied, seemingly unaware of how little his partner's words really meant when it came to the point. He then walked towards the edge of the clearing. "Follow me. We'll find a way somehow."
Weiss ignored the little twinge of indignation upon being told to follow and marched in Ren's footsteps. As they walked deeper into the forest, she couldn't help but look back at the past several minutes and congratulate herself on how smoothly things really went.
While the situation was by no means perfect, Weiss still found herself satisfied with how everything was unraveling. She already succeeded at finding herself a decent partner and earning his trust. Now she just had to complete the team in an acceptable manner.
Make sure that she wouldn't end up in one team with Jaune. Make sure that she wouldn't end up in one team with Nora, as long as there was a way to justify it to Ren. Show enough leadership abilities to be later appointed as a team leader. Meeting all the above objectives would be tricky, but still perfectly within the range of her abilities. It was a challenge, but a pleasant one, with clear goals and an abundance of tools.
Things were coming together quite nicely.
Ruby was speeding through the forest, leaving a trail of rose petals behind her. Despite her heightened reflexes, she was still risking slamming into a tree or some other obstacle, but at that particular moment, she could hardly care less about trivialities such as that.
She clearly remembered the Headmaster's words – the first person she would end up making eye contact with would be her partner for the next four years. It was a very important matter and Ruby wanted to make sure she would get a partner with whom she would get along well.
But who exactly would that be? Yang was an obvious choice, but there was no guarantee Ruby would manage to find her before anyone else did. Besides, for some silly reason involving making friends and growing up, Yang was apparently reluctant to get on a team with Ruby. It was a shame, but maybe Ruby could humor her sister and find herself some other good partner. Maybe even take her revenge by making Yang jealous.
So, who fit the bill besides Yang? Jaune was really nice and probably fairly strong as well, even if he didn't have too cool of a weapon. Ruby liked him, though obviously not in a way Yang joked about. He was just a nice dude.
But did he like her in return? After all, she did scare him off the first time they talked by being intrusive as hell. He seemed genuinely glad to see her earlier that day, but what if he had just been pretending in order to be well-mannered or to gain in Yang's eyes? Ruby wasn't sure either way, but she didn't want to risk being stuck with somebody who secretly disliked her for the next four years.
And then there was Weiss. Ruby really wasn't sure what to think of the white-haired girl or what that girl though of her in return. Their first meeting obviously didn't go very well, but later on in the auditorium Weiss seemed willing to befriend Ruby… until she got angry again and stormed off.
Ruby was so ingrained in all these thoughts that her worry came true – she slammed into something. That something was hard, enough to make Ruby's head hurt considerably upon impact. Carried by momentum, Ruby ran a couple more steps before stopping and turning around.
It turned out the 'thing' Ruby hit her head on was, in fact, a girl. One at least a feet taller than Ruby, with long red hair, clad in bronze armor. After a while something clicked and Ruby recognized that the girl was Pyrrha Nikos, a renowned tournament fighter who could swiftly beat just about anyone her age, such as a fellow student who just stupidly bumped into her.
"I'm sorry! I wasn't looking where I was going!" Ruby took a few steps back, just in case she would end up needing a little headstart.
Luckily, the redhead didn't appear angry, just dazed and somewhat confused. She looked at Ruby with her emerald eyes and, contrary to what could be expected, smiled.
"That's alright, I wasn't hurt or anything." Pyrrha said, getting up from the ground. "Actually, I think you got it worse than me."
Yeah, she probably did. Ruby's head did hurt considerably and she would probably end up forming a bump afterwards. But then again, it was her fault for not being more careful.
"Still, I'm sorry." Ruby apologized once again, before realizing something. "Hey, since we made eye contact and all, does it mean that we are..."
"Partners?" Pyrrha shrugged. "It looks like it. I'll be glad to fight at your side..."
"Oh, it's Ruby." The brunette extended her hand as a greeting.
"Pyrrha." The redhead replied, somewhat redundantly. She shook Ruby's hand, gripping it quite tightly - it was like a milder equivalent of Yang's strangling hug. "It is nice to meet you, Ruby."
"Same." Ruby replied, unable to come up with anything better.
The two of them then stood in place for several moments, both waiting for the other one to say something more.
"So, what is our next great move?' Ruby asked, breaking the silence.
"Well, we need to reach the temple, choose ourselves a Relic and form a team with two other students." Pyrrha replied, failing to address the actual question.
"Right. But, um, where is that temple?"
"I do not know. To be honest, I'm not sure where we are in relation to our goal." Pyrrha said, sounding somewhat apologetically.
"I don't really know either." Ruby admitted. "Do you have anything that would help us find the right path?"
"I do not think so. I checked before we were launched and our scrolls appear to be jammed. I don't have any map of this place and the compass would be useless even if we had it."
"Why would a compass be... eh, whatever. There are better ways to find the right direction." Ruby walked over to the nearest tree and looked at it from all sides, until she knew which one was the most overgrown. She then crossed her hands and smiled with pride. "There. The moss grows mostly on this side, so that's where the north is."
"Actually, I'm pretty sure that is just a myth. The moss doesn't care whether it's facing north or not." Pyrrha pointed out. "Also, does that mean that you know the direction in which the temple lies?"
Ruby's silence was telling.
" I'm not criticizing you or anything." Pyrrha quickly came to reassure Ruby. "Having an idea like that speaks well of your creativity and improvisational skills."
"But it doesn't help us in any way, does it?" Ruby asked with resignation in her voice.
Pyrrha's silence was telling.
They stood there awkwardly for the next minute or so. The wind blew, the leaves shimmered and a squirrel came nearby looking for something to eat, but none of these things provided any sort of solution to their problem.
Was that how it ended? The youngest student in Beacon's history and the Champion of Mistral getting thrown out of the school on their first day because they got lost in the forest? It sounded too lame to be possible.
Desperate for some kind of clue as to what she should do, Ruby looked up at the sky above. Perhaps she would be able to roughly tell the directions from the position of the sun, which at that time should be on the south-eastern part of the firmament, but just as Pyrrha pointed out, that wouldn't exactly help them very much. Not knowing where the temple was located, there was nothing they could do with that information.
However, Ruby also saw something else among the clouds. A Nevermore, one of the largest she had seen in her entire life, was circling hundreds of feet above the trees. From that height, they could get an excellent view of the entire forest...
"Pyrrha?" Ruby said, not pulling her eyes away from the Grimm.
"Huh?" The redhead turned towards Ruby once more.
"I think I have an idea. I just want you to keep an open mind..."
Blake jumped from one tree to another, distributing her weight carefully as to not break the branch she now stood on. After it was clear that the branch was stable, the cat faunus made yet another leap, flying several meters above the ground and landing on yet another sturdy tree.
That wasn't the fastest, the safest, or even the most comfortable way of travelling across the forest. Cat instincts or not, Blake would gladly take the usual way and march on the ground, if not for one, crucial advantage that jumping from tree to tree offered. Namely, the element of stealth.
She wasn't hiding from the Grimm, of course. She doubted there were many creatures in the forest which could seriously threaten her and sneaking around the Grimm was more complicated than that anyway, since they could sense emotions around them in addition to simply using sight or hearing. No, she was only hiding from other students.
And didn't that sound pathetic. Hiding from other students, as if she was a shy kid afraid of being bullied. But of course, the situation wholly validated hiding from her peers. She wasn't afraid of them, really, she was just afraid of ending up with one of two specific people as her partner.
Because seriously, how unlucky had it been that two Schnees went to the exact same school as her on the exact same year? They were just as Blake would expect them to be as well - smug, self-centered and only perceiving others as pawns in whatever strange game they were playing.
Well, maybe that was a little unfair. That Jaune guy was fairly polite to her the day before and Blake realized that she reacted a little too impulsively to hearing his family name. She had no evidence that the boy any ill intentions towards her - after all, neither he nor his sister was responsible for all the messed up crap the Schnee Dust Company was doing.
But then again, there really was something off about him as a person. The way he acted, the way he talked, even the way he looked at other people made it seem as though he was constantly searching for opportunities to advance some personal agenda. Perhaps Blake was biased, having fought the SDC for years now, but she would still rather avoid ending up with that kind of person in a team.
She therefore needed to find herself some other partner. She didn't have any strict criteria, she just wanted someone who wouldn't be a total jerk and with whom she could work with fairly easily. She hasn't gotten to spend much time with other students as of yet, but if she had to make the choice based of what she had seen thus far...
"Is anyone out there?" Somebody's voice was coming from down below. The cat faunus carefully jumped into a neighboring tree and stuck her head out from behind the leaves.
On the ground, Blake spotted a lone person. A tall, busty, blonde girl with bracelets that could probably transform into weapons of some sort. She walked through the forest nonchalantly, not paying much care to keeping her vision wide and certainly not paying much care to remaining quiet.
"Helloooooooo? I'm getting bored here." She said, throwing her arms up in annoyance. It further showed that she wasn't particularly afraid of whatever dangers might have lurked inside the forest, as though nothing could really threaten her.
Blake pondered whether or not she should come down. She didn't really know anything about that girl - Yang, was it? - not having exchanged a single word with her thus far. All she knew was that the blonde appeared confident in her abilities, had a sister in Beacon she cared about as well as a bunch of friends to hang out with. None of these was a sign that she was a good person, since even the most bigoted pricks had friends and family they cared about... but there wasn't anything pointing to her being a bad person either.
It's not the White Fang. Blake reminded herself. Most people here aren't vengeance-hungry victims of the system or violent visionaries. Just young people hoping to make the world a better place.
Blake had no way of telling if the girl below was a good person, but she was willing to gave her a benefit of the doubt. After all, she appeared quite friendly at the outset.
And, if nothing else, she wasn't a Schnee.
Blake observed the blonde for about a minute more. She watched her encounter a pair of Ursai, effortlessly dodge their attacks and then utterly annihilate them with the use her weapons, which appeared to have been gauntlets that also functioned as firearms, as well as a semblance which looked quite spectacular with how the flames engulfed her entire body. Through all of that, she appeared to enjoy herself and didn't show any sign of actual fear, even inches from the Grimm's claws and fangs.
Well, at the very least, Yang was a strong fighter. While it might not have been the most important thing for Blake to consider, martial prowess did matter when choosing teammates. And it was better to pick someone whom Blake knew to be strong than some other, random person she would encounter in the forest.
And thus, Blake descended downwards to meet her partner.
The Emerald forest positively teemed with life. Both actual living creatures and the Grimm made their own unique noises, from the honest bees to blood-hungry Nevermores. Of course, some creatures, due to their intrinsic nature, made more noise than the others.
"This is boring. Where are all those scary Grimm? I want to fight an Ursa. Better yet, I want to ride an Ursa! We would complete this test so much quicker if we had an Ursa to ride on. Right Jaune? Jaune?"
Realizing that Nora was calling his name, Jaune hastily nodded his head. "An excellent idea Nora, but I think we are almost there anyway. It would be rude to bother the Ursai in the forest over it."
"Awww..." Nora whined, but actually didn't say anything in the protest. She just resumed walking through the forest, or rather jumping from one large rock to another as though she was taking part in some childish game.
Once more, Jaune pondered whether he had been lucky or not to have Nora s his partner. The girl was, undeniably, somewhat annoying - even in the environment where keeping quiet was an asset, she just wouldn't stop babbling about whatever came to her mind.
Still, it was better than ending up with somebody who would pretend to be his friend off or who openly hated him for his heritage. Nora was neither of those things - she didn't seem capable of any real manipulation and clearly didn't hate Jaune. She might have been somewhat bitter at not having Ren as her partner, but if she resented Jaune because of that, she hid it remarkably well.
How would she do in combat though? Her weapon seemed to be some bizarre mix of a large warhammer and a grenade launcher, which wasn't really all that weird by huntsmen standards, but it didn't match her partner's weapon and fighting style very well. Jaune was a close-quarter fighter who usually relied on endurance to win tougher fights, while Nora used a weapon with a wide area of effect. In a fight with a singular opponent - or a tight pack of enemies, for that matter - they would have to both engage in melee without a ranged support or else Nora would end up damaging Jaune to a similar degree as she did their adversary. It was hardly a perfect combination and Jaune sincerely hoped that they would encounter another pair of students before getting into a serious encounter with the Grimm.
After matching in the forest for gods knew how long, Jaune and Nora finally reached a clearing. More importantly, they reached a huge rocky structure with a tunnel in it. It might have been a natural cave or a man-made structure - geology was never Jaune's strongest suit - but more importantly, it was the only distinctive structure they came across despite having trekked across the forest for a long while now.
"You think we were supposed to get here?" Nora asked, her usual cheerful tone giving way to uncertainty.
Jaune really wasn't sure whether they reached their destination or not. This place didn't look like a temple at all, but it was possible that the actual temple lied inside the cavern, or that said the tunnel was destined to take them somewhere closer to their objective. It was really just guesswork due to how little information they had been given.
But if it was just a random cave, than checking it out couldn't be very time-consuming. Contrary to the impression one could get from all the adventure stories, most caves were just small underground chambers. It was hard to get lost in one unless you actively tried and no decently-sized Grimm could fit inside. Searching through the cave and determining whether it was worth anything would take them several minutes at worst. Unless it was really an artificial tunnel, in which case it had to lead somewhere interesting.
Ergo, the potential benefits outweighed the potential consequences. Ergo, the right choice was to go inside.
"Perhaps." Jaune replied to Nora's question. "I say we investigate that. Follow me."
Jaune walked towards the entrance to the cave. The inside was shrouded in darkness but that wasn't much of a problem - their scrolls would offer them enough light to get by. Before Jaune managed to pull out his device and step into the dark, however, he heard a loud cough coming from behind him.
He turned around and saw that Nora hadn't moved an inch. She was standing in the exact same place as the moment before, only now she was pointing her finger towards the stone wall.
"I think you should take a look at that."
Jaune obliged, walking over to the wall his partner kept pointing at. It was riddled with drawings that looked as though they were made by someone with very little artistic merits and limited materials - such as cavemen, obviously. They depicted a group of people with spears fighting something that could have been a very large scorpion or, more likely, a deathstalker.
"Those are nice drawings, I suppose." Jaune shrugged. "What about them?"
"There is a Death Stalker drawn there." Nora said slowly, as though she was talking to a child. "That might mean that there is a Death Stalker inside."
"Ah. That's a reasonable conclusion to come to." Jaune replied. He couldn't help but to sound smug now, but he didn't care that much at the moment. "It's also a logically flawed one."
"Huh?" Nora, quite understandably, seemed confused by Jaune's statement.
"You see, those drawings were probably not meant as a warning sign." The young man continued. "If there really was a Death Stalker inside, chances are people would not risk coming so near the entrance just to draw something like that. They would just tell everyone they didn't want dead not to enter the cavern."
"I'm not sure." Nora expressed her doubt. "Someone could have really been brave enough to come here. And even if it really wasn't meant as a warning, there can still be a Death Stalker or some other Grimm there. They like dark caves and stuff like that."
"Well yes, some Grimm could have chosen this cave as a layer by pure chance." Jaune admitted. "But it couldn't have been something very large, lest it wouldn't be able to pass through the tunnel. The worst we can encounter there would be some man-sized Grimm, which is not something we wouldn't be able to handle, I think."
"Alright, I'll trust your reasoning, Mr. Know-It-All." Nora sighed. "But if we end up facing a giant Death Stalker down there, I'm blaming you."
"You can say 'told you so' if that happens." Jaune said, patting Nora on the shoulder. "Now follow me. It will only take us a moment or two."
Huh. It's surprising that a chapter with so many different perspectives thrown into it ended up actually being shorter than the previous two. It seems as though I have some issues with predicting how long a given chapter will end up being. I hope it was enjoyable either way.
A little not regarding the updates to my other stories: The second chapter of Lost and Blind is already mostly written, though I will wait until Monday with uploading it. After that, I think I'll finally update A New Flame and then Black Out The Sky. This story will have to wait two weeks, maybe less long than that provided I write exceptionally fast.