A/N: Sorry for the long wait. That last chemo treatment really did a number on me and it took me a bit longer to recover than normal. But anyway here is the new chapter I hope you all enjoy.
[...]
Team SPHR started to collectively wake up. Shade and Hunter woke up at their usual time of 6:30 am. Petra and Rona woke up around 7:15 to find that both Shade and Hunter were not in their beds.
"Umm… where are the guys?" Petra asked.
Her question was answered when Shade walked in the door with Hunter behind him trying to catch his breath.
"Freak… you… Shade…" Hunter said between breaths.
"You're just mad because I outran you without breaking a sweat." Shade challenged.
"Do you two always start your mornings out with a run?" Petra asked as she stared at Hunter's massive bulk with his t-shirt clinging to his muscles.
"I do, Hunter just challenges me from time to time. Which he regrets doing every time he does so." He said glaring at Hunter.
"Hey! Just because you can outrun me doesn't automatically make you better." Hunter remarked.
"True."
"When did you you two even wake up?" Rona asked.
"6:30, Shade here woke up at 6:29." Hunter said with a smirk "You owe me five lien by the way."
"Fine." Shade growled opening up his wallet and handed said lien to his partner.
"Wait, did you two seriously bet on who would wake up first?!" Petra asked almost laughing.
"He bet, I just agreed to it. Something I regret every time I do so." Shade said.
Shade look at his watch. A little over three hours till the cafeteria closed for breakfast. Due to classes on break till the new class is finished being assigned, the cafeteria was open a bit longer than normal.
"Well since we have a bit of a break before classes start and the cafeteria won't close for a while, I'm going to go take a shower." Shade stated before walking over to his suitcase. As he grabbed a change of clothes from it a loud shrill screech from a whistle rang through the building.
"What was that?!" Rona asked.
"Sounded like a whistle from Team RWBY's room." Petra responded.
"Must have been Ruby. She's the only one I can think of who would do something like that." Shade added before walking into the bathroom.
"Well I got dibs after Shade." Hunter stated.
"Dang it!" Petra said "You beat me to it!"
[...]
A few moments earlier, Team RWBY was all peacefully sleeping. Everyone except one person as said person rose up and placed a whistle between her lips and blew.
"AHHH!" the rest of the team shouted in surprise, as a loud and ear piercing sound was heard.
"RUBY!" Yang yelled angrily as her sleep was taken away from her by her own little sister. Blake was still recovering while Weiss gave Ruby a disapproving glare.
"Good morning Team RWBY!" Ruby said enthusiastically as she held the whistle, ignoring the fact that here teammates were currently plotting to get rid of that whistle. As she placed around the dorm room she continued talking.
"Our first order of business as a team is… Decorating!" Ruby held up her suitcase. Due to the suitcase being unlatched the front end fell open and spilled everything inside on the floor.
"Can't we do it tomorrow?" Weiss asked "Considering we have no classes yet."
"But we need to do this. After all, it may take some time to finish and we might be late for class." Ruby responded.
Yang thought about it and just shrugged her shoulders, "Yeah, that's a good idea. Besides, we could hit the hay later."
"Yes… that's a good idea." Blake said absentmindedly "I believe it's better to finish this rather than wait."
Weiss gave a defeated sigh knowing there is no way to change their minds on this.
For the next hour, Team RWBY decorated their dorm only for their beds to be in total disarray. Everyone just sighed in defeat.
"This, isn't going to work." Weiss commented.
"Well, it is a bit cramped." Blake responded.
"Maybe we should ditch some of our stuff." Yang added.
"We could throw out our beds... and replace them with bunk beds!" Ruby said excitedly.
"Umm, that sounds incredibly dangerous." Weiss responded.
"And super awesome!" Yang said pumping her fist.
"It does seem efficient." Blake added.
"Well, we should put it to a vote." Weiss said.
"I think we just did." Ruby responded.
Team RWBY rushed over to the beds and got to work. For the next thirty minutes, all was heard from their dorm was full on construction noises. When they stepped back, they marveled at their work. On the left side, which Ruby and Weiss shared, Ruby's bed was held dangerously by a rope over Weiss's bed. The fact that it tilted a bit didn't help much. On the other side, which Yang and Blake shared, Yang's bed was held up by four stacks of Blake's spare books. Blake sighed in defeat just looking at the bunk bed.
"Well team looks like we are done." Ruby said with a smile.
"Yeah… now I think it's best if we get something to eat." Weiss deadpanned "Considering we wasted over an hour and a half." Both Yang and Blake nodded in agreement.
"Alright team! To the cafeteria!" Ruby announced as she sped out of the room only to run face first into Team SPHR knocking them all down.
"Ow! Ruby, please watch where you are going." Shade said with a wince of pain.
"Sorry!" Ruby apologised.
Weiss just facepalmed while Blake and Yang helped everyone up.
"You guys okay?" a voice asked.
Everyone turned around and saw Team JNPR staring at them with their heads popping out of the door to their dorm like a human totem pole.
"Yeah we're fine." Hunter said as he dusted himself off. "You guys hungry? We're heading down to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat."
"That sounds wonderful." Pyrrha said before everyone heard a loud rumble. They all looked at the source of the sound the saw Nora holding one of her hands to her stomach. Her cheeks were flushed and she had a big smile on her face for some reason that only she knew.
"Come on Ren! Let's see if they still have any pancakes left." Nora said as she dragged her friend by the arm to the cafeteria.
"Yeah, I'm not sitting next to her again." Hunter remarked.
Shade burst out laughing as he and everyone else headed out to get breakfast.
"What's so funny?" Rona asked.
"Nora stole his pancakes yesterday when he wasn't looking." Shade responded.
"And the fact that the cafeteria wouldn't give me any more cause of her as well." Hunter added.
Both Petra and Rona burst out laughing while Hunter just grumbled.
"So Yang, is there anything you can tell us about professor Silver?" Blake asked.
"Besides some stories that she has told us about those creatures she fought and how she hunted them, there's not that much." Yang answered but a thought popped into her mind. "Although, I was wondering. How did you know about the yoki flow in Grimm?"
Blake thought about it for a moment and decided to tell them the truth. "I know a guy who can sense Grimm and can read the energy flow in them to the point where he can dodge their attacks before they even make a move by sensing that energy." Blake explained. "He sorta is…"
Blake was cut off as her scroll rang and she knew who was calling due to the ringtone. Maybe it's better if he explained this than myself, She thought. Blake quickly answered her scroll and set it to speaker mode.
"Speak of the Grimm…"
"And they will answer." A voice on the other end of the line responded with a laugh.
The troubled feeling she had since two days ago finally disappeared as she heard the man's voice. "I thought you were supposed to meet me here at Beacon two days ago." Blake said with a scowl even though the guy couldn't see it.
"Sorry sis, there was a storm at home and it delayed the ship a few days and also the fact that we were attacked by a Sea Dragon didn't help." the man said grumpily. "Really wish I could see a non-Grimm version of those. Anyway, a few people got hurt but me and Dahlia managed to take it down before it got any worse. I think I have a new way to use my Semblance now."
"Jad, I swear your Semblance gets crazier and crazier with every new idea you come up with." Blake groaned.
"But it works!" Jad laughed. It was the same laugh her father did all the time when she was at home. "So, sorry I'm going to be late but I won't miss the initiation next semester. I'm going to be arriving in Vale in the next few days and staying there till I get into Beacon."
"That's good to hear." She said with a smile. "By the way, there is a new professor here with the same sword as yours and she has your 'talent'.
"Wait! What? She can sense Grimm energy?" Jad asked as his stunned voice sounded from the scroll.
"Yeah, apparently she taught my team leader how to do it as well. Ruby isn't as good as you when it comes to sensing Grimm but we did learn something the hard way. Apparently, there are other creatures out there that have that energy in their bodies and they are worse than Grimm."
"What happened?" he asked with concern dripping from his voice.
"We were doing our initiation. Fight a few Grimm and retrieve something from the forest. But as we retrieved the item we were about to be attacked by a large amount of Grimm until a Deathstalker's body fell from the sky and crushed half of the hoard. The Deathstalker was killed by a woman and then she killed the rest of the Grimm before attacking us. I could tell the woman wasn't human or faunus and Ruby managed to identify her as a creature known as an Awakened. I hoped the name meant something like that she would have a few monstrous features like claws, teeth and the unnatural urge to eat people. How wrong I was. Turns out she was a true monster. She transformed into something that shouldn't even exist. If professor Silver hadn't shown up, I don't think we would have survived." Blake explained.
"I am glad that you are alive to tell me about this." Jad said with a bit of relief. A voice said something on Jad's end of the line and then he responded again. "Okay Blake, I wish I could continue talking to you but I'm about to enter another deadzone out here. I wish you luck for you, your team and any friends you make there. I'll call you this weekend when I arrive in Vale. See ya later sis."
"See ya, Jad" Blake said before the line went dead.
Blake looked up from her scroll and noticed that they were at the cafeteria's front entrance. After they all grabbed their breakfast and joined Ren and Nora at a table, they continued their conversation.
"So who's Dahlia?" Yang asked.
"She's a friend of mine." Blake answered before eating her food.
"What's she like?" Ruby asked innocently.
"She's like a field medic who is a bit obsessed with trying to create a way to make something that can copy her semblance." Blake responded before taking a sip of some tea she had.
"What's her semblance?" Petra asked.
"She calls it Medi. Dahlia can create a beam of aura that heals others extremely fast, but it has limits. She wants to build something that can break those limits and surpass them."
"That sounds like a useful semblance." Hunter commented. He looked back at his stack of pancakes and noticed they were gone again. "What the heck!"
Everyone looked at the other end of the table and saw Nora eating Hunter's pancakes, again. Hunter just groaned with his head in his hands while Ren just facepalmed. Rona and Petra let out a silent chuckle.
"So Ruby, Yang. I was wondering what kinds of stories did professor Silver tell you two?" Weiss asked.
Ruby finished up the cookie she was eating before she answered. "Well she told us many stories about her adventures before we met her. One of them is so sad though."
"Sad?" Weiss asked.
"Oh, you mean the one where she lost someone close to her." Yang added.
"Yeah that one, but I forgot the name of that person." Ruby said sadly.
"Clare…" a voice answered behind the group. They turned around and to their surprise, Teresa was standing behind them holding a tray of food.
"Teresa! Uhh… why are you eating here? Professors usually eat in their studies." Ruby said awkwardly causing Teresa to lightly laugh.
"That is true. But remember, they are still preparing it for the time being." She gestured with a nod of her head towards the table and the three teams made room for her to join them at the table.
"Oh that's great!" Ruby said joyfully.
"Who is Clare?" Petra asked.
"She's my daughter. Well, adopted daughter actually. Her family was killed by a Yoma and then it abused her till she shut herself out from the world to the point where she became mute. I was on a mission to hunt a group of them down that found themselves in a small village. The Yoma that abused her for fun was part of that group and thought it would be a good idea to use her as a shield. I cut the creature down before it could make a move. That is when I first officially met Clare."
"Did you adopt her at that village?" Ruby asked innocently.
"No I didn't. I was a bit more cold back then." Teresa answered a bit saddened about the memory. "When I was about to leave the village, the village chief tried to give me some money for dealing with the Yoma but I told them that I was already hired by someone else to deal with the problem. That's when Clare walked up to me and grabbed ahold of my leg. I shook her off but she kept coming back. That's when I kicked her away from me when she tried to do it for the third time."
Petra, Rona, Pyrrha, and Ruby each had their own versions of shock on their faces but they all listened to Teresa continue her story.
"That is one of my few greatest regrets I've ever done in my life. I left the village right after that. Clare managed to follow me deep into the wilderness to the point where she passed out from exhaustion. I had tried to lose her a few times by going through difficult obstacles for her. But she was the most stubborn and persistent person I have ever met. I actually jumped off a large cliff and managed to land safely. At the time I thought that particular obstacle was too much for her and she would give up. Clare proved me wrong and followed me right off that cliff. Using some branches she made it down but it wasn't gracefully. She passed out a few moments later from being malnourished and dehydrated. I was about to leave her there but I had remembered some bandits that saw us together and then I knew I couldn't leave her out in that wilderness alone."
"I take it that's when you let her accompany you through your travels?" Petra said.
"For a bit. I planned on leaving her with a good family at the next town of village my next job was at. During that time, I got her some food and water and she kinda grew on me. But all that time she never managed to speak at all. I didn't know her name for some time so I decided to call her Clare, which surprisingly was actually her real name." Teresa said with a bit of a laugh.
"I would never have guessed that if I were in your situation." Hunter commented offhandedly.
"I doubt anyone would." Shade added.
Teresa nodded and then continued her story. "The night before we entered the town known as Rokut, I told Clare of my plans to leave her with a good family and my wishes for her to live a normal life as possible. She cried herself to sleep after that." Teresa's voice suddenly became serious as she remembered what happened next. "A bit later I left our camp to find some food for us to eat and I ran into one of the bandits that saw me with Clare. He wanted revenge for me removing his hand the last time we met and he knew two things. The first was that the group I used to work for had an ironclad law that forbids me from killing people. Personally I'm not that type of person in the first place. The second was that he knew he couldn't kill me but he wanted to inflict the most pain he could think of to me in the worst way possible."
"And that was?" Yang asked.
Teresa turned to Yang. "Yang cover your sister's ears. I do not want her hearing this part of the story till I'm ready to tell her myself." She said coldly.
Yang nodded and covered Ruby's ears with her hands. Teresa continued her tale in detail earning a mix of shocked and angry looks from everyone. Yang now knew why Teresa didn't want Ruby to hear that part. After a few moments she nodded to Yang and she removed her hands from Ruby's head.
"What happened?" Ruby asked.
"We will not repeat what Teresa told us." Hunter said trying to hold back his anger. The plastic fork in his hand snapped but he could care less about it.
Ruby looked at her sister and saw Yang's eyes were a deep crimson red and her hair was ready to burst into flames at any second.
Teresa coughed to get their attention before returning to her story. "Before he could fully commit the act, Clare snuck up behind him and struck him with a stick she found. From the wound she caused on the man she must have used all of her strength in that one attack. The man turned to her and struck her down. He continued to attack her until I held his sword I stole from him to his neck. He tried to worm his way out of my threat but I dug deeper and told him that it was my choice whether I broke the rules or not. The man then ran off back to the rest of his group.
All of Team SPHR, Nora and Yang grinned at the thought of Teresa putting the fear of god into the man.
"I reached down to help Clare up off the ground and like usual, she clung to me. At that moment something happened that I would never forget. Clare spoke for the first time since I met her. She saw a wound that I had for some time and asked me about it. I told her about it then she said some words that I will never forget even after I die."
"What did she say?" Pyrrha asked.
"The words she said was 'From the moment I first saw you, you've looked so sad. Your face shows so much pain. Your eyes are like mine. You looked so sad, so hurt, so lonely… as if you couldn't stand it.' I realized that when we first met she wasn't clinging to me for her comfort but it was for me. A few other things happened. But the most important thing to me was that the little girl I was taking care of, who was not even half my size, taught me that tears can flow from these silver eyes of mine."
Everyone nodded in sympathy and a few of them had tears in their eyes.
"The next day we arrived in town and I did a bit of shopping to get Clare some new clothes before doing my job of hunting down the Yoma that was there. I managed to find and kill the Yoma with little effort. I met with the town's chief and asked him if he knew any families that could take in Clare to help raise her. Clare was a bit upset about this and she fought with me, but I made her a promise. I promised her that every chance I could get, I would come back and see her. We said our goodbyes and she watched me leave the town."
"Just wondering, where is Rokut?" Weiss asked.
"That doesn't matter anymore, Weiss. An hour after I left Rokut, the same bandits I ran into rode past me towards the town. The town's chief told me they had nowhere to go due to the fact they were surrounded by mountains. Fearing the worst I ran back to the town to find everyone killed. As I was about to confront the bandit's leader and saw the same man who attacked me was dragging Clare by her hair and her entire face was covered in blood. That man noticed me and began to taunt me. He said he would do the same thing to her that he tried to do to me while enjoying Clare scream my name. That's what sent me over the edge. People like that are lower than Yoma and Grimm. I broke the rule and killed every single one of those bandits. Because both me and Clare were the only survivors of that town. Rokut burnt to the ground from the fires that the bandits lit."
"Well I'm glad those bandits are dead." Jaune said while getting a few nods from everyone at the table.
"Me too, Jaune." Teresa said "But both me and Clare were now on the run. The group I worked for, known as the Organization, were now hunting us both down and even sent their top warriors to kill me and capture Clare. We managed to keep them off out trail for a few weeks before their hunters managed to catch up with us. I managed to fight them off for the most part but through some trickery they managed to defeat me and capture Clare."
"Oh no." Pyrrha said as she covered her mouth with her hands.
Teresa smiled at them all. "But there is hope in this. Before they could kill me, Ruby, Yang. Your grandmother and a friend of hers rescued me. I planned on getting Clare back immediately but I was severely injured and needed time to heal. Emilia Rose and her friend agreed to help me get Clare back and Emilia's friend managed to help me fake my death to keep pressure off of Clare and make them think I was gone for good. A bit after we made our plans Emilia asked me to teach Ruby here how to sense Grimm like the both of us could if she never made it back from a mission and handed me that letter for Ruby and Yang's father."
"What about Clare? What happened to her? Ruby asked.
"Your Grandmother's friend has found her alive but she is living the life I used too. I received word of this two days ago. He is trying to find a way to get her out without the Organization hunting her down. Besides, I'm fulfilling my promise to Emilia to teach you how to sense Grimm after she did so much for me." Teresa said as she finished her story. "Is there any questions?"
"What's a Yoma?" Blake asked narrowing her eyes slightly.
"Yoma are creatures that feed on people." Teresa explained "They are an extremely weaker version of an Awakened but they average in strength somewhere between an Alpha Beowolf and an Ursa Major. Do you all remember what Rosemary looked like before she transformed any bit of herself?"
The three teams nodded as Nora spoke up. "Yeah, She looked like a normal human being."
"That there lies the problem with Yoma and Awakened Beings. When they are hiding in public, they can look just like normal people, even talk like a normal person and only when they grow hungry is when they show their true nature."
Hunter shuddered at the thought of what almost happened to him. Teresa noticed this and decided to give him some good news.
"Don't worry about fighting an Awakened. Those that are just as strong as Rosemary or stronger are rare among Awakened Beings. Also, an Awakened rarely appears and we mostly killed them all." she explained.
"We? Wait there's more people like you?" Ruby asked with stars in her eyes.
"Well yes, there is forty seven of us that 'graduate' each generation and I was part of the seventy seventh generation." Teresa finished as she got up from the table with her empty tray of food. "I have to go and prepare for tomorrow morning's class. I hope my lessons will be helpful for you all."
With that Teresa returned the empty tray to where it was supposed to go and left the building.
"Well that was an emotional roller coaster." Shade stated.
"I have to agree with you there." Hunter said before finishing off his food.
"I can't believe she slaughtered all those bandits." Weiss said with wide eyes.
"Believe it or not, Teresa isn't the first person to do something like that." Shade remarked. "I have heard of stories before where groups kidnapped the children of what they thought were your everyday average person and demanded a ransom or do that 'act' to the children. Problem was that the parents fell into one of four categories. They were people who were either highly trained in the military or as a Huntsman, very rich and powerful, a cop who had years of training, or was just your average person who went over the edge and tracked down the group themselves. They did whatever it took to get their family back and most of the time, those that got their children back knew where the bodies were buried without anyone knowing."
"Didn't something like that happen to LaRue's three kids?" Hunter asked.
"Yeah it did. She was lucky that she and her partner didn't get kicked out of the program." Shade commented.
"What did they do?" Jaune asked with a bit of fear in his eyes.
"They took a powerful mech that they trained for years to use and went and tracked down LaRue's kids that were kidnapped by a cartel who wanted the mech. Instead of giving it to them, they used her to wipe out the cartel and rescued the kids. Because the military didn't want anyone knowing about the mech, they hid the mech away and made it seem like it was just another military raid." Shade explained, but that last part wasn't true. The incident where the Mark-4 Jaeger Hydra Corinthian, took down a powerful mexican cartel made headline news until the Kaiju attack that happened five weeks later back on Earth.
"As my aunt told me, 'Never kidnap a mech pilot's kids, unless you want to be turned into paste.'" Shade finished.
Nora snickered as she didn't even try to hide the huge evil grin on her face.
"Well guys!" Ruby said as she got up from the table. "Enough of this doom and gloom. Lets go explore Beacon and see what it has instore for us." And with that the group put their empty breakfast trays away and went out to explore Beacon Academy.
[...]
A/N: I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to write this filler chapter and I remembered I forgot to add the part where Jad calls Blake in at the end of the last chapter. My bad.
Yeah, Jad and Dahlia are both my OC's that I made to help fill in some major plot holes that I found while figuring out the timeline for this story. They will make their official appearance later in the story.
Also a few exciting things happened as I was writing this chapter. First was for all you Team Fortress 2 fans out there, NISLT has returned to youtube after so many years. He even posted a new video today 3 hours before I finished this chapter as well.
The other thing that happened was that Alan Walker posted his new song today and I enjoyed listening to it while writing this chapter.
Anywho, I hope you all enjoyed this new chapter and please leave reviews I love reading them.
BN: Mostly just a few grammar edits. Overall the story is going well, and I'm excited for when it really kicks into high gear.
