Full Disclosure: I DO NOT own any of the RWBY characters from the canon show. They belong to Rooster Teeth and the late Monty Oum, may he rest in peace. Any characters you see here that aren't in the canon show are my OC's.

"Blah"= Spoken

'Blah'Thoughts

--0--0--

--Raven Branwen--

"Ow! Son of a--!" Matthew began, not being able to finish as he received a punch to the face from Taiyang, sending him back and sliding across the grounds of the combat training room, "...ow..fu--!" Matthew stopped himself from cursing, likely due to the glare aimed at the back of his neck, courtesy of Summer Rose.

"It's been 10 minutes and he hasn't been able to land a single hit on Tai.." Summer commented with a sigh, "he isn't going to make any headway at this rate."

"Well, it's not like we can train him. Not yet, at least." Qrow said, "remember what Ozpin said?"

Oh, how could I forget?

--0--0--

(A few hours ago)

"I'm assigning you four with the mission of training young Matthew here in the ways combat."

...Come again?

"I'm sorry, Professor," I began, feeling...puzzled? No, that would be putting it far too lightly, "our mission is...to train this child?"

"WHO YOU CALLIN' A KID?!" The boy's, now named Matthew's, sudden outburst surprised everyone including the Professor, and even himself, a few seconds after he said it, his surprise evident on his face, "..did I just..?"

"Well, I suppose that's another memory presenting itself." Ozpin said to Matthew with a hand on his shoulder. Matthew remained silent for a moment before nodding.

"Wait, what do you mean by that, Professor?" Summer asked, a confused expression on her face.

If I didn't know her better, I'd be surprised by the fact that she already accepted this mission.

Then again, she was itching to help the boy the entire time before Ozpin arrived, so...

"Ah, yes, that." Ozpin began, removing his hand from Matthew's shoulder, "You see, during our conversation, it came to my attention that young Matthew here has exprerienced a rather..severe case of memory loss."

"Really? How bad?" Tai asked.

"Aside from a few...unpleasant flashbacks, all I remember is my name." Matthew said with shrug, though he winced slightly at the mention of the "flashbacks".

"Really?" Tai asked, concern in his voice. Matthew's only response was a nod, "geez, sorry to hear that, man."

"It's alright..." Matthew reassured, though he seemed a little hesitant to do so, "since the Professor's got a plan..."

"..wait, that's why we've got to train him?" Summer asked, "but what does fighting have to do with his memories?"

Hmm...

"..it's meant to trigger them, isn't it?" I asked, causing Matthew to gain a surprised expression, and Ozpin to only raise his brows slightly and smile.

"Correct. Very good, Miss Branwen." Ozpin complemented, though I internally scoffed and nodded quietly on the outside, "Just as Miss Branwen said, the purpose of Matthew's training is to awaken his memories by triggering them at the sight or feeling of something familiar to him. A sort of 'Phantom Pain', if you will."

"That..doesn't sound very good..." Summer said in a somewhat worried tone.

"Indeed. Unfortunately, the process of regaining memories, at least in the form of brief flashbacks, have been rather...painful ones for young Matthew." Ozpin said.

"Yeah, you can say that again..." I heard Matthew mutter as he looked at the floor with a wince.

"Ok...well, when do we start?" Summer asked with a small smile and a light shrug.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Matthew twitch as she'd asked.

"Actually, if possible, I was hoping you would start today, to give Matthew a small preview of what's to come." Ozpin said, and I noticed begin to slowly inch his way away from Ozpin, a nervous expression on his face.

"And where exactly are you going?" I asked, causing Matthew to twitch and not look at any of us or Ozpin, opting to look only in the direction he likely would've bolted in if I hadn't spoken up.

"...likely to the combat training room. You're certainly quite an eager, young man, aren't you?" Ozpin said, "But you aren't going in the right direction, you know. You shouldn't try to navigate your way around an area you're completely unfamiliar with." Ozpin advised.

I then noticed Matthew gain a somewhat surprised expression before his face calmed down and gained...a smile? And a seemingly somber one, at that.

'What was that about?'

I narrowed my eyes slightly in suspicion, taking a mental note of the occurrence to remember it for future reference, if needed.

"Ooh, ooh, I'll take him!" Summer exclaimed, her hand shooting up into the air.

"Summer, we're all going." I reminded my excited leader with my hands on my hips.

"Wha?...OH! Right..sorry..!" Summer bashfully apologized.

"Ah, yes, one more thing." Ozpin began, "in order for Matthew to regain his memories at a proper pace, it would be best that the training should be done somewhat slowly. Thus, I'd advise that any sparring begin with Mr. Xiao Long, due his expertise being in hand-to-hand combat."

"You got it, Professor." Taiyang and Summer both said, while I simply nodded.

"...and you, Mr. Branwen?" Ozpin asked.

...huh...I forgot my idiot of a brother was even here.

Qrow's response was muffled snoring as he had his face shoved into parts of his blanket that had fallen off with him.

"..he'll be there." I said, Ozpin simply nodding with a smile in response.

"In that case, my work here is done. Your work however, Team STRQ has only just begun." Ozpin said before walking away.

"..So..." Matthew began, "..should we go now, or..."

"Uh..yeah!" Summer exclaimed, quickly leaving the room, dragging Matthew by the arm.

"..I swear, I don't even think she realized that she just ditched the rest of her team." I commented with an exhale.

"Well, you know how Summer is. She's excitable." Taiyang said with a shrug before leaving the room.

I stayed in the room, looking at the door for a couple seconds before walking over to my brother's peacefully slumbering body on the floor.

And kicking it in the ass. Hard.

"AGH! WHY?!" Qrow exclaimed angrily, though I easily shook it off with an eye-roll.

"Training room. Be there." I said before leaving the room.

"Oh, I will! I'll be there to kick your--!" The end of Qrow's likely proclamation to beat me was left unheard, as I'd already walked too far away to hear the rest.

--0--0--

I sighed, massaging the bridge of my nose with my eyes closed.

"..hold on...I think he's starting to get a little better!" Summer exclaimed.

But how good could he even be doing?

A slight sense of curiosity biting away at me, I gave in and opened my eyes to see Matthew's progress.

And to my small surprise, Matthew was fairing fairly well against Taiyang. Not in trading blows, of course. But he'd been doing a fairly good job at dodging Taiyang's attacks.

At his worst, Taiyang's attacks were only grazing him. But that didn't mean he didn't have any weaknesses, aside from his lack of any offensive charges at this point.

He was doing a good job at dodging, but his footwork was still too grounded and not agile enough. And I'm guessing Taiyang's noticed this weakness too, at this point.

And he should exploit it right..about...

"Agh?!" Matthew exclaimed as Taiyang did a reverse sweep kick, causing Matthew to fall in his back with a thud. Before Matthew could recover, Taiyang already had a fist pointed directly at his face.

"..god dammit..." Matthew said with a sigh, Taiyang pulling his fist away and getting up. I then noticed Summer shoot out of her chair from the corner of my eye.

"SWEAR!!!" Summer shouted at Matthew, pointing a shaking finger accusingly at him. Matthew remained silent with a surprised expression for a few seconds before smiling and laughing lightly.

"Here." Taiyang offered a hand to Matthew. Matthew took it and was pulled up by Taiyang, the two letting go after Matthew was on us feet, "And before you ask, you will have to give her money. She's got a jar."

"Yeah, I figured.." Matthew said with a sigh, smiling, "...so, how'd I do?"

"..well, overall, you were...how do I put it?" Taiyang hesitated.

"Terrible?" Matthew asked with a raised brow and a smile.

"Well, I wouldn't say terrible...but you could definitely use some more work." Taiyang concluded, "your defense wasn't too bad, considering you were able to dodge all of my punches. But, your footwork was too grounded and not very agile. Next time, try to be more loose, you know. Like water.."

Oh god, not again..

"Be like water..." Matthew said with a surprised expression, wincing slightly. The wince was so minuscule that nobody else had apparently noticed it aside from me, "..Bruce Lee..." He said the name with a warm smile, but...

...Who?

"Who?" Taiyang asked, understandably confused, "..You mean Spruce Lee, right?"

"Uh..yeah! My bad!" Matthew said, laughing as he rubbed the back of his head. Though I could tell the laughter was forced. At that point, my distrust towards him had only risen further, as a question constantly ran through the my mind:

What the hell is this kid hiding...?

"..Anyways, as for your offense...well, your attacks were predictable and sloppy at the start, and you didn't even have one by the time you started to get better at dodging." Taiyang said, "Why didn't you start attacking later on?"

"Well..to be honest, I guess I just focused all my attention to dodging and kinda forgot that I had to attack too." Matthew said, "...huh.."

"What?" Taiyang asked.

"I...I feel like I've said that before..." Matthew said with a surprised expression on his face, "...you know what? I think I'm gonna call it a day. What time is it?"

"Uh..." Taiyang trailed off as he looked in our direction.

I lazily checked my scroll a--...wait, what?

"10:15..." I replied in surprise, and everybody else shared the emotion.

"Wha--HOW?!" Summer exclaimed, "We left in the afternoon, and it didn't even feel like it was that long. Did we sleep at some point?!"

"Not that I know of.." I replied, soon shaking the surprise away with a shake of my head, "Regardless, I think I share Matthew's sentiment. We should head back to the dorms and sleep."

"What Raven said!" Summer said, causing me to smile lightly.

Even though I knew I would leave all this behind after graduation, having a friend like Summer felt...nice.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Matthew staring at me, a small blush on his face. He quickly noticed and looked away, walking to the exit and leaving me slightly confused.

Though I quickly brushed it off as not important and decided to leave with the rest of my team and Matthew.

-End

A/N: At last, Chapter 5 is out!! This one took me a bit longer, and it's starting to look like this might be where updates start to slow down compared to before. Or they may pick up again after this. Who really knows?

Before I begin the comment responses though, I do wanna mention why I included the Bruce Lee reference in the chapter. The reason is because, according to his Wikipedia page, Taiyang's fighting style is based off of Spike Spiegel's, who in turn was a practitioner of Jeet Kune Do--Bruce Lee's martial art. Or at least, he practiced an art resembling it. Regardless, the connection was there, and it's also in Matthew's past, so I put it in.

Now, onto the responses!!

Comment Response:

alertpoet09: Well, you'll have to wait and see how Matthew's appearance affects their lives.

As for the whole updating part...well, I don't think I need to elaborate on that.

Also, a few exceptions I wanted to include, since they were recent, but not on Chapter 4:

Imdelayed: Glad to hear it! Thanks!

ExS-DrlfTeRr: Believe me--it's not one of those. And I'm plenty aware of how much mental shit someone would have to go through with a sudden change in species. Thus, one of the reasons why I didn't do it.

Peace out and see you guys next chapter!!!