"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaahhh!"
The tiny black bird continued to glide gracefully as the four-eared, blond humanoid soared past it, beginning to arc downward into the forest below. The bird took little notice, choosing instead to enjoy its flight undisturbed.
"Birdy, no!"
thwump!
-(-)-
Naruto struggled to take in a gulp of air. The air resistance from moving at high speed didn't make it easy. In hindsight, screaming out all his oxygen probably didn't help him at all but potential imminent death seems to bring that reaction out of people.
'Okay, think think think think think. I can get out of this.' The trees slowly moved up to meet him, promising pain on impact. 'Right, telling myself to think isn't thinking. Okay... Grabbing a tree will break my arm... Maybe if it was a clone?'
Not having a better plan, he put his hands together, spawning two clones that shared his forward (and downward) momentum. Each clone grasped one of the originals arms and reached outward with the other, hoping to grab something on the way down.
As the three identical blonds passed through the tree canopy, the one on the left managed to snag a high branch with his claw blades towards the base. Three things happened in rapid succession: First, the momentum slowed slightly and shifted direction, slightly more forward than downward. Second, the claw blades (and the clone's fingers) broke from taking the impact poorly. Third, in reaction to the broken fingers, the clone vanished in a puff of smoke.
As the other clone and the original continued moving, the second clone found it had more time to choose a good hold thanks to the lessened speed. Taking advantage of this, the clone spotted a good, strong branch before it came into reach and reached out for that one specifically, managing a full, tight grasp on it as the two of them sank past it. As they dropped, the clone's arm took an enormous chunk of their momentum directly onto its shoulder socket, dislocating it and dispelling the clone.
All that was left was a ten-foot drop to solid ground. Safe enough even for those without aura if you know how to land well.
As he hit the ground feet first, Naruto took it on the balls of his feet and sprung forward in a roll. Taking a few deep breaths as he continued to ride the adrenaline, he slowly stood to his full height again, checking himself for injury. All things considered, he was a bit ruffled but otherwise, fine. Sheathing his claws, Naruto dusted himself off and started looking around.
'So, this is the Emerald Forest.' he thought to himself. 'Doesn't... really seem greener than other forests. Hm.'
Putting bland naming conventions aside, he started walking in the direction he had been launched, assuming that was the direction he was supposed to go. 'So I'm looking for... relics. Relics that could be literally anything but I guess I'm supposed to know them when I see them? Oh, and find a partner. Right. I suppose... I mean I could just double back to the cliffs and grab Topaz...' Images flashed through his mind of him waiting on her hand and foot for the next four years. 'Nope! Nope. Pot luck it is!' he decided resolutely, shaking the horrible mental images away as he kept walking. 'I mean, come on! How bad could it-'
He stopped walking as a cracking scream cut the air above him followed by a loud thud and a wooden grinding. Dropping through the canopy, a blur shot past him, embedding into the tree and sliding down it, cutting two gouges into the bark with a pair of daggers. The form ripped its weapons from the tree and stood, taking a deep breath and revealing to Naruto's eyes a green mohawk. Time seemed to slow down for the fox faunus as the other boy he now knew to be Russell Thrush turned around.
'Noooooooo!' even his internal scream of anguish was slowed down to a bassy moan of horror, even as Russell dusted himself off and looked up to unwittingly lock eyes with Naruto.
"Crap!" Russell moaned thrashing his head back before cradling it in his arms.
Naruto's eye twitched. "Hey, if this makes you miserable at least I get somethin' out of it."
-(-)-
Topaz yawned as she dropped like a lead weight off the cliff. She was a little embarrassed by the shenanigans with the launchpad and the fall down the cliff was worryingly long but none of that overrode the early wakeup call. Bears were not morning animals and neither was she one.
At around halfway down, her descent seemed to slow. Gradually at first, then down to a tenth of her previous velocity as she hit the ground in the ruins below, bending her knees to absorb what force remained. "That wasn't so bad." she mused to herself before looking back up. "Trip back up won't be as fun though." Shrugging, deciding such things were future Topaz' problem, she started to wander towards the forest, absently humming a random tune.
Watching the sky above she looked for the student who got launched the shortest distance. "He'll do." she decided as she saw one barely even reach the forest.
-(-)-
The two new 'partners', Russel and Naruto were getting along as well as one might expect. They walked side-by-side, though not out of camaraderie. No, both boys just refused to let the other move ahead and take the lead. Further, neither would look at the other.
The silence was tense. And awkward.
Naturally Naruto felt compelled to break it. "So." he started, still looking ahead.
Russell's head twisted in the fox faunus' direction, before quickly looking ahead again.
"Four years of this." Naruto observed.
The mohawk'd teen stayed silent.
"... That would suck." Naruto decided.
It took a while but eventually he earned a response. "Yeah." Russell answered sharply.
"Right?" Naruto asked, finally looking at the other boy. "So here's my thought. How about we bury the hatchet, ya know? I forgive you for makin' my year at Signal a constant headache, you forgive me for... Whatever it is you think I did to wrong you. Bein' a faunus, I guess." he hedged, glancing away as he scratched behind an ear.
The other boy worked his jaw to the side, considering. "... Alright." he nodded as he stopped walking, Naruto doing the same and facing him. "Alright. You wanna have this out now? We can do that. I don't trust you." he said firmly, poking the faunus in the chest. "Here's what I know about you, Naruto Fox. You started Signal in your final year. No history, no weapon, no gear, no fighting style, just your semblance. And yet you get put ahead right to the front of the pack. Ahead of all the people training to do this for years. And yeah, you're a faunus. I got a problem with that. Because all I hear about faunus is those freaks in the White Fang gunning down people in the street! And that on top of everything else makes me wonder why you're really here."
"Huh." Naruto responded eloquently. "Well here was me thinkin' you were just an asshole who hated faunus. See? We already understand each other better!"
Russell just waited for a real answer with narrowed eyes.
"Okay. We'll do the cliff notes of my life story. But let's walk an' talk 'cause this could take a while." the faunus suggested, starting to do just that.
"So, grew up in Atlas. Don't know if you've ever been but it's a bad place to be for faunus. No real paying work, no schooling (unless you get real lucky), a lot of the time no housing either. And just about everyone there hates faunus. One day I get cornered by some humans. They were teenagers and I was, like, five. It's how I got these." he explained, pointing to his whisker marks and tracing one. "Mark of the Beast, they call it over there. Anyway... That experience is how I unlocked my semblance and I used it to escape. Then... Let's skip ahead a bit. About a year and a half ago I'm in charge of getting food for the group of faunus I'm looking after. We basically... Well, literally live in a hole in the ground. While I'm doing that some humans catch wind of me and go faunus hunting. One used to be a huntsman and uses his weapon to clear out a huge section of dirt. He doesn't find us but he does find a whole mess of Grimm digging a tunnel for a future incursion attempt." Looking back he noticed Russell's doubting look. "Hey, you can look this up later. Or ask Ozpin about it. He knows the whole story."
"Anyway, I'd been following these guys in case they found our home and when I saw the Grimm I got my family outside and I went to help fight. The huntsman was surprisingly okay with it given he'd been trying to kill me before that, ya know? After it's all over, I get locked up for 'conspiring with the Grimm' (still don't know how you do that) and my family get taken by the SDC for 'community service'."
"Okay, okay, come on." Russel interrupted. "There's no way they'd blame a Grimm attack on people. Aren't you trying a little too hard to play the victim here?
In response Naruto levelled a deadpan stare at the boy. "Five minutes ago you were labelling me a terrorist for 'going to school'. It's real easy to paint a faunus as a monster."
Russell opened his mouth to retort but found he didn't have one. "Withdrawn."
Naruto rolled his eyes. "Again, this is all still public record. Both Schnee painting me as the villain and the huntsman basically calling him a moron in his own... 'special' way. Moving on." he said with finality as he started walking again.
"At some point Headmaster Ozpin got wind of all this. Don't ask me how. Hell, ask him. I wouldn't mind knowin'. I guess he likes to scout students sometimes when he wants someone for Beacon but they wouldn't normally go. He pulled some strings, got my family to Vale with paying work, got me exiled from Atlas and brought me here too. I guess he thought the effort was worth a trained huntsman with my semblance."
Looking back yet again, all he got was a sceptical look.
"Pull the other one."
And also that.
Naruto let out a quiet growl. "Fine. Everything I've said you can look up. But okay. Point proving time." he said firmly before putting his hands together. In a wave of smoke, the blond and the mohawk were surrounded with identical copies of Naruto. "Scout the forest. All of it." he ordered, the clones immediately scattering in different directions.
Two minutes later
"Ruby Rose and the Schnee heiress just set a tree on fire. That way."
Russell looked in the direction Naruto was pointing and saw smoke rising.
Thirty seconds later
"Some guy with a pink streak in his hair just killed a Tajitu."
Three minutes later
"There's a cave in... that direction." Naruto pointed. "That guy who threw up on the airship and some girl I'm... pretty sure I saw on a cereal box once are going in."
"Oh, you mean Pyrrha Nikos?!" Russell asked, suddenly excited. "Man, she's hot."
Running the memories back, Naruto nodded in agreement. "Yuuuup." Suddenly another wave of memories hit him. "Ah, lucky!" he exclaimed. "We're a little off course. The relics are this way. Looks like we might be the first ones there."
-(-)-
"So what's your deal, anyway? Isn't all that stuff heavy?" Cardin asked his new partner. He felt like even he would have trouble with all the equipment he was seeing on the girl. And he was sure it was a girl. The voice was a dead giveaway. Not only was it a girl's voice, it was a girly girl's voice.
"Nah, don't you worry about me, big guy! I've been training in this getup for a couple of years now. No problem!" came the chirpy reply from the ominous mass of metal and whatever else it was made of.
"So what inspired it?"
"Oh!" she giggled. "You can blame Daddy for that. There was a-" her voice hitched slightly, "An incident. And from then on he got a little overprotective. So he borrowed some heavy insulating padding from the Fire Station and got a friend to, ah, 'misplace' some pieces of their heavy riot armour. Put it all together and you get the Solid Smoke Suit! Most huntresses go for being an unstoppable force, I am the immovable object!" she finished proudly.
Huh." Cardin shrugged. "Alright. Maybe we should hustle. Who knows how many relics there are."
Inside her armour, Topaz smirked. With a giggle, she holstered her weapon, an ungainly contraption of hoses and valves connected directly to her armour, and took off running. "Race ya!"
Cardin blinked in surprise at how fast she could move before grinning and giving chase.
-(-)-
Naruto looked out at the ruins in puzzlement. He saw the relics and true to his theory, he recognised them on seeing them. But something still felt off. "Is it me or does this seem weird to you too?" he asked.
"What's weird about it?" his partner asked, inspecting the relics on the plinths.
"I mean, doesn't it feel anticlimactic?" Naruto pressed. "We're in a forest supposedly filled with Grimm. Ozpin was all 'kill or be killed'. But... Nothing. No ursa, no beowolves, not even any of those little mole bastards!"
"What you're doing right now, that's called tempting fate, Fox." Russell observed before cocking his head to the side. "Mole bastards?"
"Those mole Grimm, the diggy ones?" Naruto 'clarified, walking toward the relics. Seeing the still confused look on his partner's face he shook his head. "Trust me, they're bastards." Looking through the different relics, he sighed. 'Chess. Not my game.' Shrugging, he picked one up. "Alright, job done. Let's go."
In mid-reach, Russell looked at his partner, back to the relic, and shrugged. "Alright."
As the two stepped away from the plinths, another wave of memories struck the fox faunus. "Huh. Looks like we have company." he told his partner as he looked up to the cliff nearby.
"Hey, Whiskers!" Yang Xiao Long shouted as she waved from the cliff.
"You really shouldn't call him that." her new partner said quietly, not even needing to look at the target's expression to know it would be taken poorly.
"Ah, lighten up a little, Blake!" the blonde chided before jumping down the small cliff with practiced ease.
Taking a deep breath in, Naruto nodded. "Yep, that's our cue to leave." he said quietly. "There's the relics, have fun girls!" he said louder before pointedly walking away.
"Geez, rude." Yang groused, watching the two walk off. Next to her Blake sighed, knowing she would need to explain something awkward now.
Not far away, yet another reunion was happening.
And not a good one.
"Hey, Naruto!" Topaz waved.
Following after, a familiar red haired boy in armour ran into the clearing. "Oh, hey Russ, how's it- Oh, man!" he cut himself off as he spotted the blond. "Russ did you draw the short straw or what! How's pet ownership treating you?"
-(-)-
A/N: Huh. That was a quick turnaround on this chapter. Should I bother posting it on New Year's Eve? Who reads fanfiction on New Year's Eve? I'll hold off until tomorrow.
…
…
… DAMN MY POOR IMPULSE CONTROL!
Alright. So I actually went back and fixed some minor canon inconsistencies in the first couple chapters. Most significantly, Jankin Schnee is now the appropriate to canon: Jacques Schnee. And the family history is more in line with canon with Winter being a problem child, Weiss being a future problem child and Whitley being the golden boy.
Also, forgot to really advertise last update but we have a new show on the Fandom Flux channel that is actually relevant! Basically me and my buddy KingofZeroX watch RWBY from the start and give our impressions of it. Me as someone who knows his shit, him as someone who gave up watching after a few episodes and gave up. It's called Zero Interest. Check it out.
Thanks for reading and happy new year.