"Good morning, Glynda."
"Good morning Professor..." Glynda trailed off as she stepped into the Beacon courtyard and witnessed controlled chaos. "Ozpin?"
"Fascinating, isn't it?" Ozpin asked as he took a sip of his coffee.
What he was referring to was a flurry of students dashing back and forth between the campus buildings. At first it seemed at random but on careful inspection the two professors could see some unspoken coordination between the students.
Or... Student, singular, might be more accurate. Plural grammar is complicated when it comes to clones.
"What are they doing?" Glynda found herself asking after watching mesmerised for quite some time.
"Learning their way around campus, I suspect. It always amuses me to see how people adapt the shape of their souls to such mundane tasks."
"Very poetic, sir," the huntress said, rolling her eyes as she knew it was at the least a small dig at her using her semblance for such mundane tasks. While she understood Ozpin treating them with some amount of reverence, she couldn't help but feel doing so was limiting their potential. "Well, I'm off to get the combat stage prepared for today's classes. Good day."
"And to you, Glynda."
As she headed for her destination Glynda noticed she had one of the blonds tailing her trying not to be discreet. "I suggest you don't make a habit of stalking people, Mr. Fox," she said aloud and kept walking.
-(-)-
"Hey, Ruby, over heeeeee..." Naruto shouted on seeing his first friend at Beacon enter the Grimm Studies classroom, but trailed off as he saw the rest of her team following her and realised who was on it.
"Naruto!" the girl cheered before blurring into the row in front of the fox faunus and most of his team. "Wait, where's your fourth?" she asked, confused seeing only three of his team there.
One of his teammates, the boy with a mohawk hooked a thumb behind him, pointing at a burly redhead in the back row. "Throwing himself a pity party for not being the leader of our team. Hi, I'm Russell."
"Topaz!" the only girl on their team cheered.
"Ruby Rose! Leader of Teeeeeam RWBY! Nice to meet you guys!" The younger girl was overjoyed she was making more friends already. "And this is-"
"Weiss Schnee." the white-haired girl cut in coldly as she took her seat. "We've met."
"Eheheh... Yeah," Naruto agreed, rubbing the back of his head, ears twitching nervously. "Naruto Fox is my name. Maybe we could start over? Clean slate?"
"No."
"Oh. 'Kay then," Naruto shrugged. He tried.
"Blake," the dark haired girl introduced herself curtly but not unkindly.
"Yang!" the blonde imitated her partner with more exuberance.
"So you guys cut it close. You end up getting lost?" Naruto asked.
"Nah," Yang answered for the team of girls. "We were so busy decorating our room-"
"We made bunk beds!" Ruby cheered.
"-That we lost track of time."
"Oh, that makes sense," Russell nodded. "We did that last night."
"Heheh, we were all so pooped after initiation and fighting that nevermore and the Deathstalker we pretty much just fell into bed last night." Ruby explained as she sat down. Tilting her head back, she saw Naruto looking down at her, the pair grinning at each other.
"MONSTERS!" Professor Peter Port bellowed as he slammed open the teacher's entrance door. "Demons! Prowlers of the night! Yes, the creatures of Grimm have many names but I simply call them "prey"!"
-(-)-
Cardin waited for the rest of the class to leave, taking the opportunity to continue his brooding session. The class was dull on its own, an old blowhard blowing himself hard as he talked up his grand accomplishments. Seeing that pompous Schnee girl nearly get chumped by a boarbatusk. That was fun. Watching the animals and that traitor making nice with her team, not so much.
Watching the last of his classmates leave, he stood to leave himself, following the others. Best to stay away from the others or he might do something he'd... greatly enjoy in the moment but end up regretting later.
Or that was his plan until he was confronted by the lead animal in the hallway.
"So. How long ya plan on keeping this up, Cardin?" the fox asked, arms folded.
"Outta the way, freak."
"Okay, I kinda get that appealing to your conscience and desire to be a decent human being is a dead-end."
Cardin snorted. "What would you know aboutt being a human being?"
"... In any case," Naruto growled, "You get that the way you're acting you'll just end up getting kicked out, right? You understand that?"
The redhead stayed silent. Get kicked out. Work with animals, under an animal. Both options were unacceptable.
The faunus sighed, scratching at one of his fox ears. "Look, at this point I don't want to work with you either. You're an asshole. And you have no desire to not be an asshole. So here's what I'm thinking. Let's have this out. You and me, one-on-one spar. We can ask to do it in combat class and if not we can do it after hours. I win, you can be an asshole, all day every day. But in classes, in missions when we start doing them, you're part of this team and you work with us."
"How about you blow me."
"How about you understand your situation a little, ya know?!" Naruto barked back. "Whatever. Either way, the spar is probably happening in combat class tomorrow. I'll beat your ass until you see sense or you can get your ass kicked out and we'll get a new teammate."
And with that little challenge, ultimatum, whatever done with, the blond left the redhead to continue stewing in his own dissatisfaction.
-(-)-
It turned out, asking to spar in combat class was a bust. It turned out Professor Goodwitch did allow volunteers for sparring practice but she also saw straight through Naruto's reason for it. In her own words, "You can get your macho posturing out of your system on your own time and not drag it into my lessons."
Instead, they got to see Pyrrha Nikos dominate some blond guy named Dove, Ruby Rose and Lie Ren dance around each other for twenty solid minutes and finaly Russell got to pick apart Jaune Arc who seemingly didn't know how to use his shield.
But, with combat class ending the day...
"Class is dismissed. Team NCTR, you wished to use the space?" Glynda received nods from the blond team leader. "Very well. To avoid anything... untoward happening I shall stay and spectate. Rules from class still apply, aura in the red, the match ends. Am I clear?"
"Yes ma'am." Naruto answered before jumping down to the stage.
Unseen but not unaware to both combatants, the class hadn't left at the end of class. A common understanding seemed to pass across the room that something interesting was happening. In particular, a certain little red reaper moved her way to the two last NCTR members still in the stands. "What's going on? Are you guys that eager to practice?"
"Naruto's trying to... How should I put it? Settle a dispute?" Russell tried to explain delicately.
Topaz snorted. "Cardin hates faunus and wants to be leader. That a faunus was made leader instead of him has made him the pissiest little bitch in Vale history."
"Ohhh, I get that. We had a simi-uhhhh," Ruby started but trailed off as she realised she was still in earshot of a certain heiress. "But why are they fighting over it though?" she asked instead.
Behind her, said heiress rolled her eyes and looked back to the stage.
"Because they're boys," Topaz said with her own eyes rolling before glancing at the boy among them waiting for a rebuttal.
Russell, who continued to watch the stage eventually felt the two girls' eyes on him and adopted a questioning expression. "What? She's right. Dudes fight all the time, especially over things they think matter. They'll hit each other a bunch and bleed out some tension."
The two girls looked at one another, shrugged and went back to watching the two teammates face off.
"So we doing this or what?" Cardin sneered, arms folded, looking down on the fox faunus, both literally and figuratively.
In a practiced movement, Naruto's hands passed over each other and his fingers flexed, releasing his claws. "Ring the bell, teach."
Glynda's eye twitched at the disrespect and promised herself she would have words with the faunus.
A three-count siren blared and on the third, The taller boy charged forwards, mace drawn as he swung his right hand across himself and pulled back for a one-handed swing, only to abandon the swing to block a hail of bullets on a collision course with his face. Holding up his mace...
He continued to charge...
And his foe continued to move away.
"Do you not have anything for range there, Big Red?" Naruto taunted as he continued to dance away from Cardin, the larger boy utterly unable to keep up. "This is gonna be a bad day for you if not, ya know?"
"Get over here and fight me like a man, freak!"
"But I thought I was just an animal, Cardin?" Naruto questioned rhetorically as he continued to take potshots at his leisure. "Having trouble chasing down the stupid beast?! Huh?! What happened to all that shit-talking you were doing, huh?!"
"GrrrAGH!" Cardin yelled as he brought his mace around with both hands in an enormous swing.
Still yards away from his opponent.
And then the wind kicked up.
From nothing, a gale force wind swelled behind the redhead's swing, slamming into the faunus who was completely caught off-guard. He barely managed to retain his footing.
Then the second wave hit.
"How did Naruto not see that coming?" Ruby asked in the stands. "Does he not know his own team's semblances?"
"None of us really fought that much in initiation except Naruto." Russell started to explain.
"Hey!" Topaz interrupted with a pout, "I killed that crocodile grimm, thank you!"
In response, Russell just stared her down.
Topaz gradually wilted under the stare. "Yeah, okay."
"Anyway, me and Topaz talked about ours. Important information, right? Things we all need to know about each other if we're going to fight monsters together. But Cardin's-"
"A dick," Topaz finished.
"... Well, she's not wrong," Russel agreed. "Really, Naruto's at a disadvantage here on paper. Cardin knows Naruto's semblance but Naruto went into this blind."
Down on the combat stage, the situation had not so much reversed itself as evened out. Naruto was still much faster than his opponent but he had to spend most of his time predicting and bracing for the wind instead of going on the attack. "Okay then," he said with gritted teeth as he crossed his claws together in a lattice, only to abandon the pose as the wind he was braced for never came. Instead Cardin was once again barrelling forward to close the distance.
"What's with the crossed fingers thing?" Ruby asked.
Russell scratched his chin. "It's basically like a mnemonic. You know, like we learned as kids for the pointless history stuff?"
"Oh yeah!" Ruby exclaimed, "Like that poem for Valean kings! Daniel, Douglas, debonair; Robert rolling down the stairs-"
"Right, right, like those," Russell interrupted, mostly to not hear the whole poem. "He uses it to get in the right state of mind to use his semblance. He says it's like he has to believe he's in two places at once or... something? I didn't really get it."
"So... What is his semblance?" Ruby asked.
"You don't know?" Russell asked, surprised. "You guys seemed close yesterday-"
"They met two days ago," Topaz chimed in.
"Oh. Huh," Russell said eloquently as he observed the stage for something in particular. "Well, looks like he's about to show you."
Down on the stage, Naruto had failed to keep his distance with Cardin's new tactics. Every time Naruto managed to get space Cardin made a wind-producing swing to halt him... Or he didn't, feinting to get Naruto to hesitate and allow Cardin to close. Thus a pattern emerged. Naruto would get distance for a moment before Cardin would close again and the two would engage in a quick melee, Naruto dancing around Cardin's lumbering swings while Cardin aimed for the one big hit that would turn the bout around.
However...
At some point, Naruto stopped trying to get away.
The dance continued for longer than it ever had before. Naruto constantly moving into Cardin's blind spots, leaving little stabs and cuts behind every time he managed it, coming closer and closer to getting brained by Cardin's mace at every turn. Cardin was starting to sense a trap.
And as his mace finally connected and the Naruto he had been fighting for so long vanished in a puff of vapour, Cardin finally gauged his surroundings.
And then it hit him.
That one moment, that one time Naruto had done that stupid pose he had made a clone. And at some point, probably during one of the times they were fighting close-in, the faunus had switched with it. And with that time he had been given by Cardin focusing wholly on that clone, Naruto had spent his time making more.
A lot more.
Glancing at the scoreboard, the faunus was at half aura while Cardin was at a third. At a quick headcount, he saw around two dozen clones in front of him.
He didn't see the one behind him.
And then it hit him.
-(-)-
A/N: OH that was a fun fight to write. I'm usually shit at them but I think I did a good job here. Let me know.
So. Where have I been? Well... I'm gonna level with you. Saying I've fallen off RWBY would be putting it kindly. I know I'm not the only one by a long shot. And I just couldn't bring myself to write anything for it even outside of my usual rarity of writing in the past. That probably would have continued into my current writing schedule (something comes out every week at least) but... Well, I was confronted with even more flaws in the show than I was already aware of, but at the same time I was reading KatKiller-V's ongoing story and was confronted with the great things you can create based on things that are... Not so great. Props to him for being inspiring. So I'll be attempting to continue this story along with my other active ones. We'll see how that goes.
If you would like to support me directly, there is now a way you can do so through popular donation platform that exists that I'm not allowed to say the name of on this site. You know the one. Please consider helping out. I intend to focus only on writing for the next few months at least but the only way I can do that long term is with your support.
Thanks for reading.