As the first year class walks through a beautiful forest full of trees with red leafs with Professors Peach and Goodwitch leading the way. "Wow, this place is...wow.", Yang begins to say as her eyes widen with wonder at the sight of the eye catching trees against the blue sky.
Professor Peach looks over her shoulder to the girl with a slight smile and says, "Yes, the vibrant colors throughout all of Forever Fall are quite beautiful. But remember, we aren't just here for the scenery."
"Yes, we must remain focused in all environments, even one such as this. We must focus on completing our objectives as swiftly and effectively as possible, as this place is full of the Creatures of Grimm and we don't want to have to bring any of you back in body bags.", Glynda adds as she turns around and sternly looks to her students.
Professor Peach nods in response to the other Professor's advice and says, "That is quite true, however, if you lose yourself in your mission, you'll forget to enjoy the little things in life. You should try your best to have a fine balance between a focused mind with an open one."
Letting out a heavy sigh at Peach's playful response, the blonde professor rolls her eyes in annoyance before saying, "None the less, let's get to today's objectives. You all will need to set up a base camp for your team and collect a few jars of the Forever Fall sap from these trees."
Professor Peach claps her hands happily before saying, "Yes, we'll be using this sap for our upcoming experiments next week. Be aware that even though the sap tastes incredible, you should refrain from eating too much of it. This sap is a slight tranquilizer, so ingesting too much sap will cause you to pass out."
With this, the students all split up with their respective teams to set up their camps. Jaune tries to do the same, aiming to follow after Nora, Ren, and Pyrrha, but Cardin stops him from behind, grabbing the boy by his shoulder. "Ah, there you are, Jaune. I've been looking for you all morning. How about you come hangout with me and my team. We'll have all kinds of fun.", Cardin suggests to the boy as Jaune looks back to the bully with fearful eyes.
The blonde warrior looks back to Pyrrha, who glares back at him before letting out a huff and walking off to rejoin the rest of her team. As he sees this, he lets out a defeated sigh before reluctantly saying, "Sure, why not?", and leaving with team CRDL.
Sapphire and her team watch as Jaune leaves with the jerks and Persi asks, "Why is he even hanging out with those jerks?"
Reginald looks to his partner with a slight grin before saying, "I wouldn't worry too much about that. Jaune's got that all under control."
"What exactly aren't you telling us, Reginald?", Sapphire questions the silver tongued boy with a slight glare aimed his way, but the boy just shrugs it off.
Reginald, trying to dodge the question, simply puts his hands behind his head before looking up at the sky and saying, "I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise for you guys. Just keep your ears to the ground and you might just find out."
"Very well, let's find our location for our base.", Ash suggests before walking off ahead of everyone else in search of a nice place to start setting up their campsite.
"Hey, wait up!", Sapphire exclaims as she and the rest of the team follow after the boy.
As they leave, Yang and Blake carry their baggage, looking for a spot to set their base camp with Ruby and Weiss behind them, but they're quickly separated when Glynda and Professor Peach call for the red and white duo. When they get close to the Professors, Professor Peach tells Weiss, "Miss Schnee, I've been working very hard with Professor Goodwitch to help you two with your...situation..."
"I'm still against this in its entirety, but since Professor Peach asked me so kindly to look into the matter for you, I will search for a way for you to be placed on another team, Miss Schnee. But as of this moment, you're still teammates, so I expect you to act like it. Do I make myself clear?", Glynda continues as she looks down at the girls, pushing up her glasses with a single finger as they start to slip down the bridge of her nose.
Weiss happily nods and replies with, "Of course, Professor. As long as Ruby can act more mature, I think this will work out just fine until then."
Ruby takes this quick jab with a scowl on her face, but lets it go with a deep exhale before saying, "If that's what you want, feel free to lead the team today."
Weiss, who seems to jump a little at this response at first, preening her feathers at the thought of being the leader and saying, "Finally some sensible reason out of that little head of yours. Very well, I'll take up the responsibility of Team Leader for you." As the heiress strolls past Ruby with a confident stride, she flips her ponytail dramatically, causing Ruby to give her a less than impressed look and reluctantly follows her lead.
As team SAPR finally finds the best spot to build their base, they set down their bags and get ready to set up their tent. "Alright, who's set up a tent before?", Reginald asks as he looks to the rest of his team.
Sapphire chuckles and asks, "Who hasn't set up a tent before?", to which Ash and Persi raise their hands. Nobody's exactly surprised when Ash raises his hand, but when Persi raises his hand, this earns the Faunus confused looks from both his partner and leader.
"What? I didn't exactly get to go camping back in Vacuo.", Persi quickly shoots back in response to their confused looks.
Reginald raises an eyebrow at this and asks, "But isn't Vacuo the most laid-back of the four kingdoms? What gives?", to which Persi lets out a loud groan.
"Vacuo isn't exactly all partying and fun, it's more complicated than that. And long-story-short, I didn't exactly have a great childhood there. Let's just leave it at that, okay?", Persi replies, instantly hoping that someone would let the topic die.
Reginald surprising lays off, saying, "Fine by me. Let's just get this thing setup then."
"Actually, I have a better idea.", Sapphire informs them before picking up another bag of stuff and handing it over to Persi.
The bear looks down at with a furrowed brow before opening it to see it's full of glass jars, all of which are empty. "You two go out and collect our team a few jars of sap while we get the tent ready. I want to get a head start on the other teams.", Sapphire orders them before returning to the tent bag.
"W-what? But, don't you-", Persi begins to say before Reginald answers the call with, "Fine, let's go Persi." The bear looks over to his partner, surprised by his new attitude before complying with their leader and heading out to collect a few jars of sap.
As the two boys walk off together, Ash asks her, "Is that truly a wise strategy? Professor Goodwitch did inform us about Grimm being in this forest. Shouldn't we stay together?"
"Nah, they'll be fine. Besides, they can use a little alone time together.", the confident leader answers her partner with a slight smile aimed his way, to which Ash gives her a stern nod as he picks up a few pieces of the tent.
As he looks to the pieces with a befuddled look, he glances over to Sapphire and asks, "How exactly do you put these pieces together?"
Sapphire, now realizing her slight error, puts her face in her open palm as she lets out a defeated sigh and admits, "Yeah, this'll take a minute."
Deeper into the forest of Forever Fall, Persi and Reginald are walking together as Persi carries the bag of jars. "So, do we look for a big tree to tap or does that matter?", Reginald asks with a slightly confused look to his partner.
Persi just shrugs in response and replies with, "I don't think that really matters. We just need to tap a few of them to get enough sap for a few jars. I don't think we'll get a whole lot of sap from just one tree."
Reginald nods before rummaging through the jar bag and pulling out a few tapping devices. "Alright, here we GO!", Reginald exclaims as he goes to pierce a nearby tree with the tapper. With his arm coated in his aura, he stabs the tapper right into the tree and a slightly red sap starts to slowly trickle out from the wound. "Good, good, this is progress.", Reginald mutters to himself as he grabs one of the jars and holds it right under the tapper. The well-dressed boy looks over to his partner and says, "Come on, grab a tree and get some sap.", to which the boy complies.
Following his partner's example, the Faunus walks over to a nearby tree and taps it the same way Reginald did, but his sap is flowing much quicker than Reginald's.
"Looks like you hit the jackpot! We'll have this done in no time!", Reginald suggests with a cheeky grin on his face as the sap continues to pour out from their trees.
Persi just glances over to his partner before returning his gaze back to his jar and focusing on his work instead.
After an awkward moment of silence, Reginald looks over to Persi with a slightly concerned glance. "Hey Persi.", Reginald quickly says, gaining the boy's attention as he looks over his shoulder to Reginald. Reginald takes a deep breath before saying, "I'm sorry."
"What was that?", Persi questions the silver boy, raising an eyebrow after hearing what Reginald just confessed.
Reginald lets out a slight growl under his breath before saying, "I'm sorry I was such an ass before, okay? I know we're partners and all, and I should be trying harder to be less of an ass, but-", but before he can finish, Persi cuts him off by saying, "It's fine." Reginald reels back a bit at this, not seeming to expect the Faunus to take his apology so easily.
Persi looks over to Reginald, the Faunus' slit pupils focusing on the other boy's remorseful expression, as he continues, saying, "It's fine, you're not the only one who acted like an ass. I shouldn't have been so pissed at you for a single mistake. We were in the heat of it all, so I can't really blame you for not seeing me there."
"Not to mention getting tunnel vision on that Schnee brat. I'm..I'm just sorry about all that...", Reginald adds, defeat ringing true through his voice.
Persi lets out a heavy sigh as he hears this before saying, "It's fine. We're partners, so we're gonna be stuck with one another for a while. If I didn't forgive ya for something simple like that, then we'd never be able to work as an actual team now, would we?" They look to each other, both giving the other a slight smile before hearing a deep growl from the depths of the forest.
Reginald quickly ties his and Persi's jars to their tappers before looking around for the source of the noise. "You heard that, right?", Reginald asks with a slight growl as Persi stands up and draws his weapon from his back, backing up against each other to eliminate their blind spots.
The bear gives his partner a quick nod before answering with, "Yeah, if I had to guess they're probably not friendly."
"Then we'll just have to give them hell now, won't we?", Reginald cheekily suggest as his wires zip around them, seeming to create a small barrier. And as the silver boy glances over his shoulder at his partner, he gives the Faunus a quick wink as he says, "Just try not to get in my way this time, okay?"
Persi just chuckles at the boy's cocky attitude before shooting back with, "And try to watch where you're weaving those thing, don't want to cut down the whole forest now, do ya?", as he cocks his shotgun.
Later that day, elsewhere in Forever Fall, Jaune is walking through the forest with four jars of sap. He's mostly exhausted, walking slowly as he tries desperately to keep from dropping the glass jars in his hands. "Alright, I'm gonna tell him off and go back to my team with this sap and tell them that this is what I was doing all day. There's no need to get them involved in all this anyways.", Jaune thinks to himself as he continues walking through the forest.
As he walks into a more open area in the forest, he sees Cardin and the rest of team CRDL laying about in their camp site. "Oh, there you are Jaune. And you've come back with four jars?", Cardin says as he sees the jars in Jaune's hands. Cardin lets out a slightly annoyed chuckle with an irritated glare aimed at the blonde before saying, "Oh Jaune, I knew you weren't that bright, but I thought you'd at least be able to count. I told you to get six jars of sap, six. I guess this'll have to do."
"Cardin, these jars are-", Jaune begins to say before he's suddenly cut off by Cardin as the bully says, "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, we have one more job for you to do.", and he pulls Jaune off with him.
Cardin drags Jaune off to a nearby hilltop along with his team and they quickly lay down on the ground as they look over the hill. "Cardin, what are we doing here?", Jaune questions the brute, earning himself a punch to the back of the head.
Cardin quickly growls back at the ignorant boy, "Shut it, just keep your head down and your mouth shut." The leader looks to Dove, who's peering through a pair of binoculars, and asks the boy, "Dove, do you see her yet?"
Dove replies with a quick series of nods and says, "Yep, giant red head at two o'clock.", before putting down his binoculars and pointing off to their target.
Jaune picks up the binoculars to see what they're talking about and when he looks to where Dove's pointing, he sees Pyrrha as she's tapping sap from a tree and Ren and Nora who're work together to quickly tap a tree farther away from the redhead. The crimson warrior finishes filling a jar with the sap before removing her tapper and sealing the jar with a confident smile as she admires her handiwork.
The sight of the girl's smile causes Jaune to smile a bit before Cardin snatches the binoculars away from him. He looks up to Cardin and asks, "What's going on Cardin? What are you planning?", to which the plotting bully grins.
"Payback.", Cardin coldly replies as he looks to the redhead off in the distance with a sinister grin on his face.
"Pyrrha? What is he-", Jaune begins to think before Cardin slams his fist against the ground and growls, "That's the one. Red hair, thinks she's better than everyone and that she's soooo smart. Russel, the box."
Russel quickly complies to his leader's wishes and hands his leader a box marked with a 'W' on the front.
As Cardin snatches the box from the snot-colored boy, the confident leader says, "Alright, boys, last night Jaune manages to round up a whole box of Rapier Wasps for me. Now we're gonna put them to good use." Cardin then grabs one of the jars and says, "According to one of the essays he wrote for me last week, these little bastards just love all things sweet. I'm thinkin' we get ourselves a little payback and show her not to mess with team CRDL."
Cardin and his team quickly stand up, ready to initiate the plan as Jaune just looks up at them with a concerned look on his face. Seeing this, Cardin grabs Jaune by his chest plate and pulls him to his feet while telling the blonde, "And you're gonna be the one to do it.", as he shoves the jar of sap into Jaune's hands.
"Do what?", Jaune questions the bully with a more panicked look on his face, to which Cardin bluntly replies, "Hit her with the sap, you idiot."
Cardin then grabs Jaune by his short blonde hair and growls, "Or I could have a little chat with Professor Goodwitch? But if I did that, you'd be sent home a complete loser, wouldn't you Jaune? You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?" Jaune reluctantly looks down at the jar of sap as Cardin tells him, "Come on, we don't have all day. Either you wail that jar at that little know it all, or you're getting sent home on the first airship out of Beacon."
The blonde holds the jar up, as if he's going to actually throw the sap at Pyrrha, and Cardin begins to grin along with the rest of his team. Jaune's concerned look quickly shifts to anger, however, as he sees Pyrrha actually enjoying herself, laughing at Nora burping after sucking down a whole jar of sap on her own, much to Ren's dismay. The boy quickly spins around to Cardin before exclaiming, "No!", causing the whole team to look at him with slightly confused glares.
"What did you just say?", Cardin growls as he takes a step towards the boy, his voice seeming to shake Jaune to his core.
But Jaune holds to his guns and shouts back, "I said, NO!", before chucking the jar at the bully in retaliation for all the torment he's been put through these past weeks.
As the jar breaks across Cardin's chest plate, it covers his family crest with the red sap, causing the prideful leader to growl in anger. "You're gonna regret that, Jauny-boy.", Cardin threatens before charging up to the boy and punching him full force in the stomach.
Since Jaune didn't have his aura up, it causes the boy to drop to his knees in pain as he holds his stomach and gasps for air. "I think it's about time we had a nice, long talk together, Jaune.", Cardin says ominously to the boy before knocking Jaune out with a swift kick to the head and looking to his teammates, who only give him worried looks.
The enraged brute glares back at the cowards and growls, "Don't just stand there, pick him up. We're taking him to Sheer Cliff."
As Dove and Sky spring into action, they pick up Jaune, holding the boy against his will, they follow their leader through the forest as he says, "We'll show you what happens when you mess with team CRDL."
When Jaune wakes up, he finds himself with his face in the dirt and his head throbbing. He tries desperately to lift himself off the ground, but before he can the boy's met with a swift kick to his ribs from an iron boot.
"Ah, you're finally waking up, huh?", Cardin dickishly asks the beaten boy as he flips Jaune over on his back with his foot like he were roadkill.
Jaune looks up to see Cardin with a cocky grin on his face and his three teammates standing a few feet away, watching with slightly worried looks on their faces. "You know Jaune, I was willing to look past your idiotic idea of shorting us on sap today, but going off like that like you're all big and bad, well, I can't have that now can I?", Cardin continues as he continues to beat on Jaune as the boy covers his face with his forearms.
After a few swift kicks and stomps, Cardin continues, saying, "You should really remember your place, Jaune. You're nothing. Nobody likes you, and if I'm being honest I could just dump you out here in the middle of nowhere and nobody would even care." "You don't have any friends! Your team hates you at this point! And I doubt your family would be happy to see a failure like you come crawling back home! Maybe you'd just be better off dead!", Cardin continues mocking the defenseless boy, now shouting at the boy as the beatdown goes on.
Cardin suddenly stops his beating to grab Jaune by his chest plate and drag him over to the cliff. The crazed bully holds Jaune over the cliff with both hands firmly gripping the boy's chest plate as he says, "How about I just drop you off this cliff!? Since you threw that sap at me, you clearly have a deathwish, so I might as well help you out! That's what real friends are for, right Jauny-boy!?"
The power-crazed bully start to break down into laughter at the sight of Jaune's frightened face as the boy tries desperately not to fall to his death, but that quickly changes when they all hear a loud, ferocious roar come from the nearby forest. They all nervously look around for the source and Cardin tosses Jaune back to the safety of solid dirt before drawing his mace with an irritated scowl on his face.
"You want some too, ugly!? Come get some!", Cardin exclaims in his rage, to which a large Ursa leaps out of the forest to face him.
The Grimm's armor is unlike any Grimm they've ever encountered beforehand, and as Jaune looks up at it, he thinks, "T-that Grimm, it has bones all over its body! What the hell!?"
Seeing this, the weaker members of team CRDL are beyond terrified by the giant Grimm and run off to the safety of their campsite as Russel shouts, "That's a big Ursa!"
Cardin doesn't back down though and decides to face the beast alone, but as he courageously swings his mace at the deadly beast, the attack only bounces off of its boney armor. "I-It's strong! My attack did nothing to it!", Cardin thinks, disbelief filling his eyes as they widen at the sight of the Ursa's large paw coming straight for him. The monster's attack hits the boy clean in the chest, causing Cardin to skid along the ground until he finally comes to a stop by the cliffside, stabbing the handle of his mace to slow himself down to a stop.
The Ursa rushes him down and goes to swipe at him one more time, but Cardin successfully blocks the attack with his mace, though he loses it over the cliff in the process. With his weapon gone, Cardin is at the mercy of the Grimm, which chooses to swiftly eliminate him with one powerful swipe of his claw.
Cardin sees this attack coming and quickly thinks, "I can't use my nova here! If I do, it'll take the whole cliffside, and I don't have enough aura after that attack to fly myself back up here if I fall!" Panicked and afraid for his life, Cardin closes his eyes as he waits for the end, but when the attack doesn't come he's more than confused. He opens his eyes to see Jaune standing there in front of him, protecting him with his shield.
Jaune manages to force the beast back with a quickly bash of his shield, thinking, "Attacking it won't do anything, its armor's too thick... We'll just have to stall it until we figure something out... Someone, anyone, please come help us..." , as he holds up his sword and shield, ready to hold off the beast to the best of his ability.
Back with Ash and Sapphire, they've finished setting up their team's tent and are helping Blake and Yang set up their team's tent. "I can't believe we'll be here all weekend.", Yang happily notes as she finishes hammering in the last of the pegs to hold down the tent's corners.
"Yeah, this place is full of all kinds of nasty Grimm from what I've heard. We'll need to set up a patrol schedule to make sure none of them get the drop on us.", Sapphire adds as she and Yang step back from the tent to get a better look at it.
"Hey guys! Wow, you guys finished setting up the tent already!?", they hear a familiar voice happily exclaim from behind them, and when they look to see who it is, they see Ruby and Weiss coming back with jars full of sap.
Sapphire cheerfully smiles to the girls and says, "Yep, and it looks pretty good if you ask me."
"I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much.", Weiss fires back as she walks over to the tent and passes Blake the jars she's carrying. She quickly slips off her designer boots before stepping into the tent. As the heiress thoroughly inspects the tent's structure, she thinks to herself, "It's structurally sound... No visible mistakes that I could find, at least not yet. And she even divided the rooms up just like I asked, very good.", as she keeps a stern look on her face. The snow colored girl steps out of the tent and slides her boots back on as she says, "It seems up to my standards, so I believe it's time for me to fulfill my part of the bargain."
"Here ya go, four jars of sap, as we promised.", Ruby says to the one eyed girl as she hands her four of the jars she has with her.
As she sees all the sap the duo brought her as payment, Sapphire lets out a nervous chuckle and says, "You guys don't have to give us this much. We only helped set up your tent. It wasn't even that much work honestly.", but Weiss shakes her head, refusing to accept Sapphire's pity.
"That simply won't do. A good leader never goes back on her word, so as promised we'll be giving you half of our sap from this run. But don't think just because we're even now that you'll beat us here. We're just getting started.", Weiss confidently replies to the other leader as she looks over at Sapphire with a fire burning in her eyes.
Seeing the clear charisma in the heiress' eyes, Sapphire chuckles at this new side of Weiss and asks, "What, are you making this into some kind of competition or something?"
"Yeah, let's make this into a full blown competition! Whoever has the most sap by the end of this has to-", Yang begins to suggest before getting cut off by the sounds of girlish screams.
Both teams look over to the source of the screaming before seeing Russel, Dove, and Sky all running towards them. Dove and Sky rush past the two teams but Russel ends up bumping into Sapphire, to which she grabs to boy, stopping his escape. "What the hell's going on!? What are you-", Sapphire begins to question the panicked boy before Russel mutters, "U-Ursa! A big one! It's got Cardin! Jaune too!"
"What!?", Pyrrha exclaims as she marches over to the boy. The warrior girl grabs the boy by his shirt and pulls him close with a glare on her face, freeing him from Sapphire's electric grip only to trap him in her furious grasp, before growling, "Where are they?"
Russel, afraid of what the redhead might do to him if he doesn't answer, tells her, "T-they're to the North of here! Near the cliffs!"
With that said, Pyrrha drops the cowardly boy, who runs for his life, and turns to see Nora in the distance at their camp, asleep with Ren looking over her, unaware of what's going on.
"Don't worry, we'll help you.", Sapphire tells Pyrrha she places a firm hand on the redhead's shoulder. Pyrrha kindly smiles back to her friend, but their slightly happy moment is cut off by the sound of Jaune screaming in the distance.
"Come on, we have to hurry!", Ruby exclaims as she rushes on ahead of everyone to scout out the situation and the others rush to follow after her.
As the group arrives at the cliff, they see a large Ursa covered in thick boney armor, which Cardin and Jaune are dodging to the best of their ability. "We have the advantage, let's go team!", Weiss orders as she prepares to strike, but Ruby holds her hand up, halting her movements as she blocks the heiress' path with an extended arm.
"Yang, Blake, Pyrrha, Sapphire, Ash, you all cover the rear! Weiss, I'll need your help with taking this thing down!", Ruby quickly orders as she draws Crescent Rose and focuses her sight on the Ursa's movements.
Glaring over at the little red girl, Weiss growls at her partner, "What!? I'm the leader here! We have the advantage! We should just rush it all at once and take down our target! Do you want those two to get hurt!?"
To her surprise, Ruby quickly snaps back at Weiss, saying, "Just do what I tell you! If you don't they'll die!"
As Ruby watches the Grimm's movements, she sees Cardin dodge it's mighty swipe as he picks up one of the jars of sap laying on the ground. Cardin breaks the jar off a nearby rock and thinks to himself, "It's not a mace, but it's something.", before pointing the jagged end of his new makeshift weapon at the beast. The Grimm quickly rushes Cardin down before knocking him down with a large swipe of his claw and pinning the boy to the ground, but stops and sniffs the air for a moment. It looks down at the sap covering the rock before starting to lick it off with its tongue.
"The sap? It's distracted by the sap!", Jaune exclaims in disbelief before grabbing a jar of his own and opening it, releasing the sap's succulent aroma. The Ursa smells this and looks over to Jaune as it continues to sniff the air. When it picks up the trail from Jaune's jar, the beast starts chasing after the blonde, freeing Cardin in the process, but leaving Jaune to the mercy of the giant bear.
"Alright, I think I know it's patterns now. We'll have to knock this thing off the cliff, so I'll need a boost from one of your glyphs to do it. Can you do that Weiss?", Ruby explains as she transforms Crescent Rose into its scythe form.
Weiss begrudgingly nods before responding with, "We'll just need an opening."
As everyone hears this, Jaune sprints for the cliff, drawing the Ursa closer to their desired location. While the Ursa takes the bait, Pyrrha repositions herself, getting slightly closer to the battle, but staying out of Ruby's and Weiss' lines of sight in order to keep from distracting them.
Weiss quickly forms a series of black glyph behind Ruby and pulls her back like an arrow, and when Ruby shouts, "Fire!", Weiss launches her.
Ruby goes flying into the Ursa like a speeding rose bullet, sending the beast tumbling forward as she and Crescent Rose bounce back off it's hard armor. As the Grimm stumbles to the ledge, it reaches out to grab the nearest thing, that being Jaune in this case. As the beast reaches out, trying to take Jaune with it, the boy starts to dodge its attack as he sees it coming.
"No! That's not enough! I have to-", Pyrrha begins to think before holding her hand out towards Jaune. As she focuses her thoughts on the boy's chest plate, her gauntlet begins to glow with a dark blackish aura and Jaune seems to be pulled a few extra inches away from the Ursa's claw as it only scrapes his chest plate. Jaune falls over on his butt as the Ursa plunges to its death, letting out a blood curdling roar as it falls, and Yang and Ash look over to Pyrrha with confused glances.
"Um, what?", Yang asks as she looks to the redhead with slightly open mouth and a furrowed brow.
Pyrrha smiles over at the busty blonde and asks, "What? What's wrong?"
"What was that? Was that your semblance?", Ash questions the warrior with a slightly confused look in his eyes.
The crimson warrior nods and goes on to explain, "Yes, Ruby has her speed and rose petals, Weiss has her glyphs, you have your aura swords, and my semblance is Polarity."
"It's quite a powerful semblance. It suites her perfectly, wouldn't you say?", Sapphire notes with a slight grin on her face as she looks over at the confused duo.
Before they can continue their conversation, they're interrupted by Weiss shouting, "What was that!?" The heiress marches over to Ruby, who's still trying to regain her footing from bouncing off the Ursa, and shouts, "That was reckless, idiotic, and nothing if not overly dangerous! It's because of this kind of behavior that I have to keep treating you like a kid, Ruby! What do you have to say for yourself!?"
Ruby doesn't say anything at first, only glaring up at the princess and as she places Crescent Rose back on her back, she finally speaks up, saying, "Do you even know what that kind of Grimm was? It was an Elder Alpha Ursa. They're a rare kind of Ursa that only appear in these woods, and they're beyond strong. They eat the sap and leaves from these trees along with their usual diet to get harder than average armor that most of our strongest blunt weapons can't even break. And as an Alpha Grimm, it can call for reinforcements. If it knew it was at a real disadvantage, it would've howled to tell its buddies that it needed backup."
With that said, they hear a loud howl come from over the cliff and Jaune looks over to see that the Ursa is barely clinging to the cliffside, plunging its claws into the stone wall to keep from dying. The boy quickly chucks his open jar of sap down at the Ursa, hitting it straight in the face and causing the beast to reel back and fall off the cliffside wall into the ocean below.
Weiss' and Ruby's eyes widen in fear of what's to come as they hear the sound of rustling leaves nearby. "Group up! They're coming!", Ruby orders and the others follow suit, with the exception of Cardin.
As the team of Huntsmen and Huntresses back up against one another, they look around for any signs of movement, which they see moving straight for them through the woods. "There they are! Get ready!", Pyrrha exclaims as she and the other Huntsmen ready their weapons.
To their surprise, Grimm don't leap out at them, but their boney masks do. Eight Ursa masks crash against the ground with a loud thud, and to their surprise, they hear a familiar voice say to them, "Hey, you should watch where you're pointing those things." When they looks for the source, they look up into a nearby tree to see Reginald sitting up there as he says, "We might just take that as a threat."
"We?", Weiss questions the cocky boy as he looks down at her with a grin before Persi steps out of the woods with two King Taijitu masks in one hand and his axe in the other.
"Looks like we weren't the only ones to run into trouble out here. What happened to you guys?", Persi asks the group as he tosses the masks down next to Reginald's pile of masks.
Sapphire lets out a loud chuckle at the sight of their handiwork and says, "Looks like they eliminated their backup for us. Good call, Ruby. I doubt we'd 've been able to take that many Grimm with just the eight of us."
With her face slightly flushed from the complement, Ruby rubs the back of her head nervously and sheepishly replies with, "Really? I just thought that plan up on the spot. It was nothing, really."
And as she watches this unfold from the sidelines, Weiss just growls as she bites her lip, her pearly white teeth digging into her pink lips. "Why I- I should! UGH!", Weiss growls at the hooded girl before storming off back to their campsite.
With Weiss gone, Reginald and Persi rejoin their team and as they talk to one another about what just happened, Jaune walks over to Cardin. Cardin scowls up at Jaune, but the boy extends his hand out to him, offering for him to take it. The defeated bully reluctantly takes it and as Jaune pulls the boy up, he pulls Cardin close and tells him, "You don't control me now."
Cardin chuckles and mocks the boy again, saying, "Yeah right, I still know your secret, Jaune. Do you really want me to tell everyone about it?"
"About my fake transcripts, sure, go ahead.", Jaune says out loud for everyone to hear, causing Cardin to give him a baffled look. "So what I have fake transcripts, those guys don't care about that. Do you wanna know why, Cardin? Because they're my friends, and friends are there for one another no matter what. But I still have to worry about you telling Glynda or any of the other Professors about all this, so I made arrangements to take care of that little problem.", Jaune confidently continues as Cardin pulls away from Jaune's grip and takes a step back from him, backing himself between Jaune and the cliff.
Seeing his clear advantage, Jaune turns the tables on the bully and starts walking towards him as he says, "You see, having friends has its advantages. For instance, your stealthy Special Ops friend could, I don't know, sneak into the school's records room and replace a certain someone's files with fake ones. Looks like the tables have really turned, huh Cardin?"
With his back against the cliff and his foot an inch off the ledge, he looks down at the long drop and the waves as the slam into the spiky stones bellow then back to Jaune, who's holding out his hand again to Cardin. "All I want is a truce. You don't tell anyone about my secret, and I won't tell anybody about yours. And if you try to hurt my team, try to hurt my FRIENDS, I will ruin your life, got that?", Jaune sternly says to the bully with a slight glare as he continues to hold his hand out to him.
Cardin reluctantly takes his hand and says, "Fine. If you don't bother me, I won't bother you. Agreed?"
"Agreed.", Jaune replies with a stern shake of the hand before returning to his team as Cardin grinds his teeth in frustration and embarrassment.
Later that night, Pyrrha is out on patrol for Grimm with her javelin and shield in hand.
"Hey Pyrrha.", a voice calls out to her, and when she looks, she sees Jaune walking up to her.
"Jaune? Is it time for us to switch already?", Pyrrha asks her partner with a confused glance, to which Jaune shakes his head no.
As he nervously rubs the back of his head, Jaune says, "No, I just wanted to talk to you is all. If you don't mind, that is."
"No, go right ahead, but I have to keep to my route. Do you mind following me?", Pyrrha replies as she motions for Jaune to walk alongside her, to which he nods and joins her side.
As they walk together along the guard's route, there's a slight moment of awkward silence before Jaune lets out a defeated sigh and says, "Pyrrha, I'm sorry. I was a jerk and you were only trying to be nice to me and I kept thinking that I had to be a man and do this all on my own and-", but before he can finish his never-ending sentence, Pyrrha interrupts him by sternly saying, "Jaune.", catching his attention.
He looks over at her, expecting her to be glaring over at him with an irritated look, but finds the kind smile he remembers as she says, "It's okay." "Your team really misses its leader, you know. Maybe you should hangout with them a bit more than Cardin?", Pyrrha suggests, causing Jaune to chuckle.
"Yeah, I don't think I'll be hanging out with him any time soon.", Jaune happily replies with a slight smile towards the girl.
Pyrrha chuckles a bit as he says this before saying, "Well, if that's everything, I need to make sure I focus on my patrol.", as she continues on her path and Jaune stops dead in his tracks, stepping in front of her to block her path.
"There was one more thing...", Jaune timidly replies, earning a curious look from the redhead. She focuses her attention on him and on further inspection notices he's standing there nervously tapping his finger tips together before he asks, "I know I don't deserve it after everything I've done, but...would you still be willing to help me..to help me become a better swordsman?"
When she hears this, she turns away from him with a gleeful smile on her face before recollecting herself and turning back to the boy. With a stern look on her face, she walks over to the boy as she sheathes her weapon and when she gets close enough, she shoves him with a bit of force, causing him to fall over.
"Hey!", Jaune exclaims as rubs his now hurt butt, and Pyrrha just puts her hands on her hips as she looks down at him.
"Your stance is all wrong. You need to be wider and lower to the ground.", Pyrrha scolds him as he looks up to her with a defeated look on his face. To his surprise, she offers a hand to him, which he happily takes before she pulls him to his feet.
As he rises to his feet, the two warriors look to one another and Pyrrha kindly tells him, "There's a lot for you to improve on, Jaune. But if we keep at it, I think you'll be a great fighter.", causing the boy to give her a caring smile in turn.