Rogue Huntsman
Caza
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There was a nevermore in the corner.
Its name was Lanza, or so the board said. Two docile, yet guarded red eyes lingered in a dull gaze on the lowest row of seats before it, pools of smoldering, bright red light shining as they swept back and forth in slow, methodical repetition.
Paranoia… or just a natural defensive response to a crowd. It's a docile grimm in a classroom, surrounded by half-wits in training with experience in the field of combat, each with a major in some concentration in the art of killing grimm.
All it'd take is a sudden movement and one student with a twitchy finger to irrationally charge toward the adolescent creature on the ground floor of the classroom.
Pretty sure it was a male, but then again, juvenile grimm all look the same. In terms of this avian creature, however, the bridge of its beak and the shape of its body gave away its masculine biology.
The strategy worked, if it was even an attempt at such, to quiet a usually noisy room of pre-emptively dangerous, potentially armed, five to six-foot morons with developing degrees for poking black things with sharp sticks and pointed pieces of metal.
This is why Remnant has trust issues. We arm children with weapons of destruction, train them behind secluded walls of school superpowers with sticks so far up their asses they force all students to come out trained in both combat and the region's most… prestigious, if not incredibly biased, cultural beliefs.
Atlas is the most infamous of the four. The kingdom shoves its militarized way of life down the throats of every student attending its academy.
So much for academics. Why not just raise an army…?
The world wouldn't take kindly to that notion, of course, but what of it? We're already raising armies to fight off the grimm in every school across the world.
And here we are calling them schools. We might as well call them what they really are. They're training grounds for soldiers to by used by those in charge.
Lanza's eyes swept past my lime green irises and stopped, narrowing its burning gaze as it took me in. Its beak scraped momentarily against the ground, clenching in a sudden rise of aggression.
Nobody sat within three seats of me, now nobody sat within six. It doubled the field of avoidance hovering over my head in mere seconds as the shuffling of bodies soon came to a stop. A small smirk formed across my greedy lips.
Looks like I have Lanza to thank for a little privacy-
The abrasive sound of shorts sliding smoothly across the bench to my right struck a chord in my ears before my mind recognized an invading presence at my side.
What the hell…
"Yo."
Something soft, warm, and dainty poked my cold cheek. It wasn't as soft or as warm as the voice that accompanied it. It was lax, happily so, and was layered with small degrees of giddiness and nervousness.
She sounded carefree, which explained the fact she risked her life touching me, but there was more to her…
I glanced at her, a mild curiosity digging into my skull and implanting itself at the front of my mind. Her smile was real…
As real as one could make after practicing all their life.
"What's up? Sitting alone?" she asked, placing her cheek in her hand with a quiet 'hmph', bright purple amethysts for eyes twinkling at me with incredible depths of intrigue, curiosity, and…
Something else.
"I would be, if you weren't here," I replied, crossing my arms in a tight lock as I leaned back on the bench. My back pressed into the wall behind us, the base of the long desk on the next inclined level acting as my backrest.
"How far would I need to be for you to be alone?" she asked further, tilting her head and shifting where her long, cascading brown locks of hair fell. Throughout their flourishing streams lay streaks of dark purple, melding with the rest of her hair in an unnoticeable contrast.
"Further than you'd think," I muttered.
"Off campus?"
"Off-planet," I grumbled back, getting an amused grin out of her. I wasn't trying to.
"Well, seeing as how I can't leave the planet, looks like I'm stuck here. And since you won't be alone no matter how far I get, I'll just stay put," she shifted the balance in her arm, causing her tilted head and supported chin to move idly from side to side as she smiled at me.
Who the hell is she…
"Anyone can leave the planet. They just have to jump high enough," My response was more truthful than she probably thought. Though, something told me her mind wasn't exactly the usual… considering she was sitting next to me.
Every other student avoided me unless they were too naïve to turn away or directly associated with me academically.
Especially when I was alone.
The girl looked up in thought, staring at the ceiling as she hummed. Her gaze told me she was staring through the ceiling with the way her mind started to wander, the focus in her eyes dulling.
"How high do you think that'd be? Wouldn't the gravity of the nearest planet pull you back down eventually?"
She was asking questions she didn't want the answers to, a strategy most dependent individuals drew upon when seeking social interaction.
"Bring whip cream and hold your breath, I'm sure you'll be able to propel yourself to the nearest ice cream space store with life-support."
"There's ice cream in space?!" She gasped… literally. Her shock told me one thing, her tone told me another. She was playing with me, skirting through the conversation like a professional ice skater in a rink with children and couples falling all over each other.
She knew what she was doing.
"All kinds. The asteroids are made of them, after all. They have stations that orbit like satellites and droids that mine passing debris, scavenging the frozen goods into storage units before transporting shipments down to Remnant." My tone remained even.
I was finding enjoyment in this, albeit the smallest hint of a twinge.
"Why didn't anyone tell me about this?!" her small hands suddenly found their way to my collar and tugged. The force she used was weak, only managing to shake herself back and forth as I remained stationary.
It's what happens when a mass of significantly larger proportions crossed paths with one minuscule in comparison. They always get trapped in the gravitational field emitted by the larger celestial body, and they either slingshot around its orbital barrier… or crash into its surface and eradicate themselves.
"Nobody told me ice cream came from space!" she exclaimed, eyes wide and almost teary, mouth open in shock and astonishment with a small trace of hurt due to the revelation I just threw at her and the fact no one told her before.
I turned my gaze away and let her decide whether or not it was still safe to be touching me. Then again, the image here wasn't exactly a favorable one. Here I was, an engaging, excited, cute girl sitting next to me who happened to be avidly talking to someone like me, someone who single-handedly crafted themselves a reputation of infamy from day one.
Her voice wasn't exactly the subtlest of voices, either. It was designed, forged to gain attention, to gather and flourish under the involvement of others. She seemed like the kind of person to cheer someone up.
Maybe I could use her to give Kitsuki someone to talk to…
"Why do you think it's so cold?" I asked, cementing the idea into her mind. If she was smart, she'd realize the vacuum of space didn't freeze anything, it just removed the production of heat from objects it contained.
It doesn't freeze anything, as the movies depict.
She gasped again.
"You're so right… it is cold!" her mind suddenly began turning, I saw it in her eyes, flicking back and forth as she came to realization after realization, "This explains everything!"
"It explains why you're so hyper," I returned.
"That too!" she replied with a quick, emphasized smack to the desk in front of her, "The drifting ice cream balls in space probably keep their form due to the pressure of the vacuum! And the removal of heat just keeps them in a constant state of a chilled, delectable treat of possible extinction!"
We were playing each other and putting on a show, it seemed. She was bouncing enthusiasm around like a plague, sweeping across the room and calming down the individuals worked up about the nevermore in the corner.
She was playing her cards in such a way to turn a bluff into a royal straight flush of the highest value possible in a game of go fish.
She used me to quell the tension in the room… no, not just quell it… she downright destroyed it.
Just… who was she?
All discomfort in the room had long since vanished, each now falling to varying degrees of amusement at this girl and the notorious prick engaged in a conversation so ridiculous, it might as well be reality.
She was a genius who plays the part of the fool.
"Now you know what killed the dinosaurs. An orbital bombardment of galactic ice cream balls large enough to wipe them into extinction and simultaneously introduce the ruptured world to the delectable treat found in every corner store across Vale," I turned my eyes back to her now after glancing toward Lanza, whose gaze still had yet to remove itself from my image.
"Poor prehistoric creatures… they never got to taste the ice cream…" she muttered in disheartenment, slipping her chin and cheek back into her palm as she squished her pretty face into its support, "Ice cream's like my life essence. I couldn't imagine living without it."
"Try dying every once in a while, you'll realize what you can and can't live without," I replied, taking the effort now to glance at her attire. She went through the effort of stopping the room from building enough tension to induce anxiety and the possibility of a festering fear, enough so that might have potentially set off the nevermore in the corner.
I might as well allow myself to recognize in case she appears again, but it wasn't like it'd be that hard.
Her elegant, smaller frame was captured in a black crop top, an article that'd ordinarily expose her pale shoulders if it all wasn't hidden beneath a black jacket with rolled up sleeves. They were only rolled up to her elbows, but the lack of bulkiness in the bunched up cloth told me it was a thinner material.
The tail of her jacket fell near where her shorts ended, length measuring slightly past them as it lay folded against the bench beneath her. Maybe she just wanted to look cool, or maybe it was just a preference…
Her shorts were black, fading down to a deep purple, before falling further into black tights and similarly colored combat boots. What was with people and wearing black… black was mine. Thankfully, in a display of pleasant contrast, she wore a white wide scarf delicately around her neck. Its ends were frayed and wrapped in a style to rest the majority of the soft cloth on her chest.
It was an ombre scarf with triangular like ends… she pulled the look off nicely.
"Have you died before? I don't think I have… maybe I did but I just can't remember it," she responded again, voice back to its demeanor of curiosity and engagement rather than its overbearing excitement.
"Once or twice," I said, turning my gaze back to Lanza.
Our professor still wasn't here. By academic rule, we'll be able to leave the classroom if she still doesn't show up within the next five minutes.
So much for the professionalism standards at the most prestigious academy in all of Vale.
"I wouldn't associate yourself with him if I were you," A cold, self-admired voice cut in from in front of us and to the side as a new arrival found her way onto the board at play. It was the voice of an heiress.
"Really? Why do you think that?" the girl beside me asked, turning her attention to the newcomer.
Weiss rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, fixing me with a glare that gave off a mild warning of 'leave this girl alone'.
I wasn't doing anything.
"He's bad news. So whoever you are, just don't bother with him. It'll only lower your status as a respectable individual," her words were as icy as her demeanor, or so she'd like to think.
"Oh, hey, we were just talking about icy stuff. Did you know ice cream comes from space?" the girl asked, giving the white-adorning girl before her a cheeky smile.
Somehow… someway… this girl was a genius in the art of playing people for fools… while being one herself.
"Oh dear god, please tell me you don't actually believe that?" Weiss gave her an exasperated look, flicking another glare my way as the heiress's partner finally stopped standing around and poking her fingers together.
"Weiss… nobody knows where ice cream comes from, maybe they're right." Ruby took the side of avoidance, as usual, attempting to prevent two opposing forces from breaking their resolves and slitting each other's throats.
"No, you dunce! Ice cream comes from little dwarves in the mountains!" Weiss huffed and turned her attention to the red reaper beside her.
Her words were met with silence… well, one that could only last in a sea of muffled giggles and stifled laughs. Four students somewhere on the sidelines suddenly hit the floor in collapsed messes of choked flailing.
The heiress didn't notice.
"Weiss…" Ruby trailed off quietly, softly placing a reassuring hand on her partner's shoulder before giving her a reassuring smile, "That's ridiculous. Ice cream comes from space."
"No, it doesn't! The dwarves make it." Weiss replied with sureness, confident in her beliefs.
"Actually, I thought it came from cows." Someone new stepped in, someone I recognized as the person I sent away for uselessness during initiation. Her lousy pistol would never cut it in an aerial assault against two grown avian grimm.
Even if she used her ribbons.
"Blake, cows make milk, not ice cream," Ruby was quick to correct.
"Yeah, sis is right. Cows can't make milk and ice cream. But, then again, I heard ice cream came from a Schnee's-" Yang was about to say something but she was stopped by something small and hard jamming into her ribcage.
Her little sister buckled her over in mere moments.
"W-what Yang was trying to say, was that our uncle told us ice cream was made, yeah, made by those of, uh, of the Schnee family," Ruby rubbed her elder sister's back as she fumbled out her words in a mess of improvisation.
"Ruby, I can assure you, my family has no association to ice cream whatsoever. We are not dwarves, after all." Weiss's response was even and factual, something a dictionary would likely hear before tearing its pages out and lighting itself on fire for the homeless.
Yang shot back up with teary eyes and a partially red face. She was either restraining laughter or Ruby really did puncture her gut and the brawler was suddenly experiencing severe aura depletion, "I-I think we c-can all come to," she had to stop herself to catch her breath, wiping a literal tear away from her eye as she fixed her respiratory systems from seizing up, "an agreement that nobody knows where ice cream comes from."
"Well, I'm sticking with the space ball theory!" the girl beside me kicked back as she made her claim, crossing her arms in front of herself as she flashed each newcomer a nervous, but engaging smile.
She almost seemed more nervous with them here…
Maybe the numbers played a larger role than the absurdity of a single individual's presence.
"You believe what you want to believe, just stop talking to the one next to you. He's more dangerous than you might think," came the heiress's response, switching the topic back to me.
I was content to sit this one out. Looks like my contentment was ruined.
The girl shrugged, "Doesn't really matter. We're all dangerous to different degrees, like you and your ice kabob and her with her melons." She nodded to Weiss and Yang, flashing each one a smile worthy of an award.
"It's more of an ice pick, really," Ruby added thoughtfully, not helping her partner's case of absolute disbelief.
This girl had a way of unhinging the heiress's jaw.
My eyes swept to the one in black, taking in a golden gaze regarding me out of the corner of her eye. She was already looking away by the time I glanced at her, but it was clear who she was keeping an eye on.
She moved down the row slightly before sitting down on the bench in front of us on the level just beneath our row, sitting in an attentive but guarded posture.
I didn't blame her, with ears like that.
"Call it what you will, but my Myrtenaster can still take a grimm down faster than your scythe," Weiss kept finding herself in a constant state of self-defense instead of continuing her warning to the girl beside me.
"I don't know about that. Speed is kinda my specialty," Ruby replied with a challenging smile, before I watched her slip around the heiress in a blur of red and rose petals. The world froze for her, but not everyone.
Some people paid attention, you know.
She stood proudly behind the heiress now as time resumed and the pocket of air she vacated less than a second ago collapsed in on itself, the air she pushed aside in her movements also doing the same as the heiress's hair whipped in Ruby's direction from the sudden rush of wind.
Icy blue eyes dashed to Ruby as the heiress narrowed them into a piercing stare, "Stop using your semblance so recreationally! It should be honed on the training grounds, not used to show off."
"This is how I hone my semblance, Weiss," Ruby retaliated, giving her partner a swift flick to the nose before plopping herself with a satisfied hum next to her teammate in black. Eventually, Yang found her way around to Blake's other side and Weiss regarded the girl beside me one last time.
"What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?" She addressed, giving the girl a careful, meaningful glance, something that spoke more of caution than worry.
"Skyla, but people just call me Sky," the girl in the scarf replied, giving the heiress a playful smile.
She knew from the beginning what she was getting herself into.
The heiress nodded before turning slightly away, "My name's Weiss. Just," she regarded me with another quick glance, "Just be careful around him. He's… unpredictable."
"I will," Skyla replied, allowing the heiress to finally take her seat after a moment's hesitation.
It was one minute till we were allowed to dismiss ourselves from class with no repercussions. That was when two things happened.
The first was team Juniper literally diving into the classroom from a dead sprint through the doorway, sliding in heaps across the floor as each member panted heavily and scampered to their feet. The second… was the professor finally showed up.
And from the faint smell of alcohol on her breath behind the techniques she used to override it, she woke up to a morning bottle of scotch.
She was a well-built woman, something she was probably highly aware of. She was average height with waist length dark blue hair, pairing naturally with piercing dark blue eyes, and her head nestled beneath a black cowboy hat.
I didn't think she was above flirting with students, considering she was young, in her early twenties, and wore tight-fitting black leather pants and black leather heeled boots, each reaching her mid shins. Similarly, she sported a form-fitting tube top that revealed an ample amount of cleavage.
It was as unnecessary as her nevermore, considering the eccentrics of both.
And, just to spite me and this world of black clothes I suddenly found myself in, she wore a shapely, also very form-fitting, long, black trench coat.
I suddenly began to reconsider my own garb, considering how ridiculous I'd look in any proximity to this woman.
Little needed to be noted about her appeal to the eyes, considering nine more bodies suddenly hit the floor and the smell of blood poisoned the air.
I hoped they were dead. It's what they get for staring and fantasizing.
"Hello~" Her voice was too sultry to be a professor's, yet it wasn't enough to be a seductress's either. She was somewhere in the middle… and I doubt she was putting any effort to be, "My name is Professor Miralla, but I prefer you just call me by my first name."
Her name was Caza Miralla, an annoyingly fitting name to pair with her pet nevermore, Lanza.
Ozpin hired some… interesting individuals. By her aura levels, she was easily on a tier far above everyone in this room save for me. But, she was also on a level of authority that leveled itself from actually being authoritative, straying so far away from a role of strictness it was as if Beacon's code of conduct didn't exist.
In fact, I'd rather that be the case, considering the code of conduct allowed the use of riding crops.
"Now, as some of you may have known or heard by now," Caza strolled over to her teacher's desk and leaned against its front edge, supporting herself just enough to cross one ankle in front of the other and place her hands softly on the surface at her sides, "this class teaches you how to survive, track, and navigate your way through unfamiliar and dangerous territories. And, additionally, how to engage grimm you've never encountered before."
Her words weren't the thing being eaten up by the majority of the students across the several rows of seats above, below, and around me. No, some were feasting on something else.
It wasn't the nevermore anymore.
"So," Caza clapped her hands and regarded the classroom in a sweeping gaze, "We're going on a little field trip. Leave your belongings, you won't need them."
She slipped away from her desk and made her way over to the door, turning only to say one more thing as Lanza got up as well and made its way across the room. Something some people noticed, but too few were attentive about anymore given its docile nature.
"Oh, and no stopping by your weapons lockers on the way, it's best you learn this lesson without weapons."
I got up while the majority of the classroom was still in mild confusion about going on a field trip. Their minds had yet to catch up with their eyes and ears, and even then, some sets of eyes were still mesmerized.
That fact was made clear when those I hoped had died suddenly shot up from the ground and rushed down to the ground floor.
The two teams who annoyingly associated themselves with me stood up as well and began making their own way down, and the one next to me stood from her spot soon after to walk down to the end of our row.
Nobody noticed Kitsuki in the back of the room, so I only spared her a momentary glance. She was already standing, but she seemed to be taking things slow to keep to the back of the pack.
Something I had already planned on doing.
The mystery of ice cream has been questioned, the existence of questionable dwarves, asteroids, and kabobs now under scrutiny in this vast empire of crooks and figureheads. Or, so they say.
What? Didn't expect the illogicality of this chapter? Well, I suppose I should break something to you… this is RH, this is my side project of a culmination of OCs and concepts in any ways I see fit, including for the sake of 'why not' moments for hilarity.
Anything can happen in RH.
Of course, though, I still have my usual style and realism in here too.
Looks like we're going on a field trip next chapter.
Caza Miralla and Lanza are OCs created by 'The Baz', all credit of their creation goes to their rightful author. I'm simply using them under a special submission and in relevance to my main story. Read his stories, by the way, they're entertaining.
For now, Favorite and Follow.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP