Bullies: Part 1
A/N: Someone was asking about the effects of GOI's on Ryo. They do affect him, but no he doesn't get gain their attributes. It will come up in later chapters so I won't get too into it now. For now, enjoy the chapter!
Three weeks have passed since team RWBYZ venture into Vale. They quickly got into a routine and adjusted to their classes. Zelle would be the first up and would train in one of the many empty training rooms and take a shower over there. They would then all meet up for their first class of the day. Run through classes where Zelle had to enlist the help of Weiss and Blake to assist him with the schoolwork, as he still had difficult with Remnant's writing system.
They hung out with team JNPR a considerable amount during this time. Having gotten to know each one of them individually. Ren way a pretty quiet guy that would really only speak when he had either a strong opinion or had too. Nora was a bouncing ball of energy. Zelle swore that if Nora and Ruby were left together alone, Beacon would have collapsed. Pyrrha was overly polite and yet and could kick everyone's ass to next Sunday. Jaune was, well, normal. Everyone had a major quirk, except Jaune. He was the only one that acted like a normal teenager.
Everything had gone pretty smoothly with a few hiccups here and there. Ruby had attempted to get out of doing homework by having Ryo eat it. Zelle got a haircut to remove his black tips. Jaune was getting bashed during combat class. Oh, wait that was happening now.
Jaune was bent forward breathing heavily. His head was still facing towards his opponent Cardin who was looking at him smugly with his mace on shoulder. Cardin had been Jaune's opponent the past three classes. Surprisingly it had been Jaune initiating the fight choices, despite losing every time.
Jaune got up and dashed at Cardin attempting a lunge at his stomach. The telegraphed attack was easily dodged by Cardin who then used both hands to swing his mace. Jaune managed to bring his shield up in time to prevent the mace from hitting him, but the force launched him back and lost his grip on his shield.
Pulling himself up, Jaune gave a warcry. Bringing his weapon up he attempted a downswipe with his sword which Cardin easily blocked. Jaune grit his teeth trying to overpower the much larger boy.
"This is where you lose Jaune."
"Over my dead-" Jaune took a knee to a gut and the handle of the mace to the head knocking him over. Zelle winced when he saw that. Head shots were always the worse as they dazed the opponent for a moment and was a good way to start a combo. Cardin lifted his mace up to finish Jaune before the buzzer announced the end of the match, forcing Cardin to stop his strike.
Zelle contemplated the match. Jaune was improving fast, but it didn't make sense why he was so bad to begin with. Wasn't this supposed to be a school for the best of the best hunters? According to Glynda anyway. His thoughts were broken off as he heard Glynda call his name.
"Yes, professor Goodwitch?" Zelle asked
"Cardin would like to spar with you considering his aura has only gone down marginally. Seeing as you two haven't fought yet, this would be opportune." Zelle sighed at her explanation. He had been avoiding the known bully like the plague. Whenever he was near him, Ryo got agitated and made Zelle's skin feel prickly.
Zelle simply nodded and stood up. As he passed his team, he heard encouraging words from his team, including a good ol' 'kick his ass' from Yang. Zelle stepped into the arena, not even bothering to change into his combat gear. Glynda didn't say anything about this, used to his lack of care regarding his state of dress.
"Are you both ready?"
Zelle simply summoned a glyph and pulled his still unnamed sword out. He really needed to get on that and swung it around once with one hand before planting it in the ground. It was currently loaded with his favorite dusts, air and lightning. Cardin took a wide stance, mace hefted upward.
"Begin!"
Cardin charged with a warcry. Zelle sighed. He was making this too easy. He created three glyphs floating over him and began launching blats of condensed air at Cardin. The first volley struck and blew him back, though he managed to keep his footing. Cardin tried again and the same result occurred. Zelle had yet to even move yet.
"You know this isn't going anywhere right? A direct assault won't work on me like that." Cardin grit his teeth and charged again.
"Shut up!"
Zelle merely facepalmed and pulled his weapon out and turning it into his cannon form. Aiming it with one hand, he fired. Cardin couldn't hold on. He was blasted off his feet, as his armor crumpled in on itself. He hit the ground and continued rolling until he fell off stage.
"Victor by ring out is Zelle."
Zelle checked his aura reserves. 97%. That was much better than his 78% when he fought Yang. She could take a hit, lots of them actually. But man did he love his air blasts. You could barely see it coming and it hit like a freaking truck. It didn't work very well against people who could actually weave and he would need his lightning glyphs to land a hit, though those didn't deal as much damage.
Zelle simply shrugged and was about to get off stage before Glynda asked, "Mr. Zelle, considering you finished your opponent quite quickly, would you like to have another duel with another student. We still have plenty of time in class."
Zelle was going to decline and realized there was one person that he actually hadn't fought yet. Zelle stopped walking and slowly turned around. "Actually yeah. Let's do that."
Glynda was caught off guard, Zelle typically refused those offers. With the exceptions of his team and NPR, he typically had little to no trouble with the other students. Typically removing them from the fight quickly with his glyphs. But he had already fought everyone on his team except-
"Oi, Little Red. Get down here!" Everyone turned to look at Ruby as she looked around confused and pointed at herself. "Yes, you! It's time for your evaluation." Yang shuddered when she heard that.
The last time she heard that, she had been blasted by what felt like hundreds balls of air until she got blasted off the arena. It didn't matter how much she powered up, he would always create larger blasts of air to keep her away from him. That fight ended fight with some light bruising on her end.
Weiss and Blake also looked mildly uncomfortable. While his melee prowess was mediocre, his glyph expertise could rival that of Glynda's who was known as the Witch for her extensive knowledge on the subject. He was also highly creative. He beat Weiss by destroying the landscape with earth dust causing her to constantly have a gravity glyph activated to stay steady, before he began destroying her glyphs with an odd blue lightning, forcing her into a melee. She had to focus to maintain her glyph and fight him. With her diverted attention, she ended up taking the flat of the blade to the body knocking her out of the fight. He hit almost as hard as Yang.
Blake actually managed to beat him. She had been able to outmaneuver his glyphs and get in close and avoid his deceptively fast attacks. But it was by a hair. While she didn't take any direct hits like Weiss, she took several glancing ones that still hurt. She ended up winning when he accidentally struck a fire clone when making a sweep, and she managed to get him to forfeit by holding the blade to his throat. Her aura had been close to seeping into the red regardless.
Despite witnessing those fights Ruby couldn't help but get excited and quickly zipped her way into the changing room. Zelle smirked and looked at Glynda. "I'll be right back, I think I will need to change for this one."
A few minutes passed before Ruby made her way out excitedly clutching Crescent Rose. To be honest, she had been wanting to fight Zelle since she saw his fight with Yang. The opportunity had never presented itself until now. Zelle came out shortly after, wearing his leather armor. His sword hefted on his shoulder.
Once both on stage, Glynda prepared to start the match.
"Ready."
Zelle hefted his sword in front of him, in a ready stance. Crescent Rose unfolded into its scythe form and swung it around a few times before planting it in the ground to where the barrel was pointed towards Zelle.
"Begin!"
Ruby immediately began unloading shots at Zelle who simply raised his sword to act as a shield, the bullets bouncing off the thick steel. Three light-green glyphs appeared behind Zelle and behind firing small concentrated blasts of air at Ruby in return.
"Eep!" Ruby screamed. As she pulled Crescent Rose out and rolled out of the way before taking a knee and firing a couple more shots at Zelle before unloading her magazine and sticking one in with a black marker in. She swept her scythe in front of her dispersing a second volley of condensed air blats. Her weapon being large enough to disrupt the attack.
She pulled her Scythe back when she saw something peculiar. The sword opened in the center revealing the dust cylinders that Zelle sometimes carried around. It popped out and was caught by a storage glyph. Zelle held the sword out and a cylinder of fire dust appeared out of another glyph which he caught in the indent. The metal then folded back up.
Ruby couldn't react to capitalize on her opponent reloading. Zelle had never changed out dust in the middle of a fight before. Though, she needed to act now while she still had a sliver of an opening. Pulling the trigger, she launched herself towards him at crazy speeds.
Zelle brought his sword up just in time, even still he had to tilt his head back to avoid the sharp curvature of the scythe. They had a battle of strength before Zelle threw her off, causing her to skid back away from him.
Ruby disappeared in a petal of roses and it was only years of battling hordes of grimm and honed reflexes that allowed him to duck under the whistling scythe. He turned to see her hovering in the air with her turning with her scythe rotated all the around. He attempted to retaliate, his sword flying a short arc towards her. What he didn't expect was at the end of her swing, she fired another round behind her, causing a sudden change in momentum straight towards him. He tried to bring his sword up but wasn't quite fast enough.
The scythe blade struck his throat and bit into his throat, mere millimeters from his throat, the only thing keeping him from his death was the thin veil of aura. With a tug, he was pulled off his feet and sent into a tumbling mess.
"So this is what it feels like when I do this to people. Maybe I should do this less… nah."
He skidded to a stop and began coughing. Glancing up he saw that one attack docked him a quarter of his aura. Jesus. What was this girl made of, solid iron? She was looking at him worriedly, as he continued his coughing fit. She decided not to attack him. It took him another thirty seconds to stop his coughing fit.
"That was a good shot Little Red. But it's my turn." After he finished saying that, six emerald glyphs appeared around him, encompassing his body. Four around him and two above and below him.
Everyone was surprised by what happened next. With a deep voice that barely sounded like his at all, Zelle spoke.
"Unum corpus terrae."
The four glyphs surrounding his body had turned a brown color. Ruby stumbled as the ground shook slightly after he said that. She didn't know what was going on, but whatever it was, she needed to stop it.
Planting Crescent rose, she fired two shots in quick succession only to see them do nothing to him.
"Veloces pedes fulguris."
Ruby activated her semblance and in the blink of an eye, was in front of him swinging. Only for it to contact the brown glyph and bounce right off it. Ruby retreated by firing a couple shots at the glyphs sending her to the opposite side of the stage. She narrowed her eyes.
The glyphs above him turned yellow. When she struck the glyph, it felts stronger than Iron, so it seems like she was going to have to wait out whatever happens out. She didn't have to wait long, the glyphs simply disappeared. She looked around warily. As if waiting for something to jump out at her.
Everyone else was confused by what happened. Weiss was even confused as to what happened. She didn't know what those words meant or what purpose they served. The only one who had an idea of what was about to occur was Glynda, but she wasn't about to tell Ruby. That would be unfair.
"All right Little Red, round two." Ruby gripped her scythe tighter at Zelle's words but didn't say anything. Settling for taking the lull in battle, she too the time to reload her Scythe. The two stared off at each other before Ruby made the first move.
Activating her semblance she disappeared from view and was on Zelle. However, something different happened than last time. With lightning quick reflexes, he deflected the strike away. She disappeared again and the same thing occurred. Zelle blocked another two strikes before going on the offensive. Taking a step, he pushed off, creating a boom that followed in his wake as he chased after Ruby.
Startled, Ruby activated her semblance and another boom sounded. All people saw was a blur of red being chased across the field by a blur of green, creating a game of cat and mouse. Petals eventually rose up and Ruby fired several shots at the ground towards Zelle. Zelle nimbly moved out of the way of the shots.
Bending his knees he shot up at Ruby. She brought Crescent Rose down, attempting to get him before he reached her, what she didn't expect was the Scythe to make a grinding noise as is it attempted to bite into his skin and him to pass undeterred, slamming the tip of the massive sword into her stomach.
Their momentum continued however until they slammed into the ceiling. Everyone waited with bated breaths as they looked at the boards. Before Ruby had a large lead in aura reserves. Now Ruby was at 45% vs. Zelle's 55%. Two forms broke away from the dust of the ceiling. Ruby landed roughly taking a knee using Crescent Rose to hold her up. Zelle looked no worse for wear. Ruby stood up taking deep breaths. That last strike had knocked the breath out of her and chunked her aura. Taking out over 40% of her reserves with one hit. He hit as hard if not harder than Yang who was known for her 1 hit knockouts.
Before Ruby could come up with another plan, Glynda's voice cut across classroom.
"That's the match." Ruby looked towards Glynda and took offense to this. Did she think she was going to lose that easily?"
Glynda, recognizing this look shook her head. "It's not that you can't continue, it's that your teammate is going to be very sick in a moment."
Zelle wasn't listening to them though. His body was on fire. His legs were jelly. He had a massive migraine. It was like he had an awful case of the flu. He bent over and puked and tried to keep his balance. He could see a fuzzy Ruby a little ways away and could make out some voices saying things. One stood out though.
"Zelle, disable your glyphs right now!" Geez, Glynda didn't have to be so mean about it, with a thought, Zelle disabled his Enhancement glyphs and felt instant relief spread through his body. Though that didn't stop another wave of nausea to hit him and cause him to puke out his breakfast. He could hear the disgusted sounds of several students, most noticeably Yang and Weiss.
Zelle felt a hand on his back and glanced to see Ruby awkwardly rubbing his back. Zelle would've said he was fine if his whole body didn't feel like he had just gave himself food poisoning and the flu at the same time. Luckily he was saved from any more embarrassment when the bell rang.
"All right students, you are dismissed. Ms. Rose, please change out of your combat outfit before you leave. Zelle, you stay here." Glynda announced. Ruby looked uncomfortable leaving the unmoving Zelle, but reluctantly made her way back to the locker room.
WBY gave idle waves towards Zelle as they exited the combat room until only Glynda and Zelle were left in the room.
"Why in Oum would you use 'that' in a duel. You don't even have full control over the ability yet and you know the risks. When I taught you to use that, I never would have expected for you to use it on a classmate, let alone your teammate."
Zelle grit his teeth partially in frustration that he was being berated but also to stave off another wave of nausea. "I know what I was doing. I had nothing in my arsenal that could deal with that kind of speed. That was my only hope to win in a battle against her."
Glynda sighed tiredly. "Zelle, you are no longer a guardian." Zelle's eye twitched. He was still bitter that they attempted to strip his title from him. Apparently he shouldn't have had the title anyway as he wasn't a licensed hunter and after a heated discussion between Ozpin and Zelle, he managed to keep his title and the benefits that came with it. It was still a sore subject when brought up.
"There is no reason for you to do this to yourself all the time. You have plenty of time to get stronger. Just take your time with these kind of things." Glynda added softly. Zelle felt his stomach drop at her tone. Glynda had basically become his guardian when he came to Beacon and they had developed a soft spot for each other.
Zelle sighed tiredly. The nausea was slowly receding. "I know, it's just." Zelle paused and rubbed the back of his head.
"I have this 'feeling'. Before I left Kirya, over the course of three months before I came here, the Grimm there had slowly increased in numbers and level of aggression. It bugged me but I was keeping myself busy enough that it wasn't much of an issue, but now that I have time to think, I feel like it's an omen of sorts. As if something is headed our way." Zelle shook his head as he spoke.
Glynda stood there quietly as she listened. "Yes, but that's all behind you now. Your safe here." Glynda tried.
Zelle smiled, but there was no warmth behind it. "Then what does that make Kirya?" With that, Zelle turned around and planned to get some lunch. Professor Peach was never in, so being attired properly should be no issue.
Glynda watched him leave quietly. He had never told her about this. She stood there for a moment longer before making a decision. She would give Brune a call.
…..
"So, there we were. In the middle of the night."
"It was day." Ren interjected
"We were surrounded by ursai."
"They were beowolves." Ren cut in again.
"DOZENS OF THEM!"
"Two of them." Ren responded demurely.
"But they were no match. And in the end, Ren and I took them down and made a boatload of Lien selling Ursai skin rugs!"
Ren sighed. "She has been having this recurring dream for nearly a month now.
Zelle snorted with amusement at the two's interaction. Seriously, how were these two not a thing yet? It boggled Zelle's mind a bit. His focus was averted from the two's antics as he caught Pyrrha's voice at the end of the table. They were currently finishing up lunch and from what Zelle could tell, Jaune had hardly eaten anything.
Zelle popped into his mind as he thought about his enchantment glyphs. He would need to get better at that. Apparently trying to do two enchantments at once was way out of his reach. He had only been able to hold it for a minute and a half. To be fair he could only hold one for three minute before getting hit by minor side effects but nothing as bad as today.
Zelle's attention was brought back as everyone was looking at Jaune. Zelle leaned over to Weiss and whispered, "I zoned out, what'd I miss."
Weiss whispered back, "Apparently Jaune is being bullied." Zelle nodded. He already knew about Cardin's treatment of Jaune but had figured he would let Jaune himself sort that out.
He heard a cry and he looked over and saw a female rabbit faunus ears getting pulled. With straight, long brown hair, a slim figure, and dark brown eyes, she was an absolute delight to the eyes of any male. The ears even added on to her overall cuteness, if they weren't being grabbed by the topic of their conversation. Zelle grit his teeth.
Zelle cut into whatever conversation Ruby and Pyrrha were having with Jaune. "Yo, Jaune. Pick a number between 1 and 10." Jaune looked confused as did the rest of the table.
"Um, six I guess?" Jaune replied. Zelle's grin turned feral as Weiss leaned away from him a little.
"Perfect." Everyone could almost hear Zelle's voice drip with venom and delight. It was quite hair raising. He suddenly stood up and Ryo appeared at his feet, seemingly appearing out of thin air.
Yang voiced all their concerns. "This can't be good."
…
Cardin was having a blast as he pulled on the ears of the bunny faunus. Her pleading to stop sounding like music to his ears and inflating his already huge ego. The rest of his team were joining about the faunus appearance and were laughing as they watched him bully the small faunus.
After this he would probably go harass Jaune again. That kid would never learn it seemed. All the better for him.
Cardin never saw Zelle coming. A strength enhanced punch sent him sailing over the table and crashing into Sky as the both crashed in a crumpling of limbs. The rest of his team were surprised as they never even saw him coming.
Zelle growled and whispered low enough so only the faunus could hear him. "Either move away or stay behind me." Cardin picked himself up.
"Heh, I was hoping to beat you in the arena later, but this is fine. You're nothing without that fancy sword of yours."
If Zelle wasn't bordering on murderous, he would've deadpanned.
"He knows I went toe to toe with Pyrrha with my normal katana and machine pistol right?"
"I see that you like those animals." Zelle could barely contain his rage and unbeknownst to everyone, black markings began to coat his right arm. "Maybe you should join them and learn your place."
Zelle calmed himself and simply summoned his storage glyph and a red dust crystal dropped into his hand. Cardin simply snorted.
"What are you going to do, blow us all up?" Zelle hummed.
"Not quite."
His hand began moving towards his mouth when a nasally voice cut him off.
"Mr. Zelle, that is quite enough."
Zelle glanced over to a wiry man with short dark red hair. He had glasses and his eyes were so squinted, he might as well have had his eyes closed. He was dressed like a tidier professor Oobleck.
His name was Professor Barry. He was a teacher to the third year students. He had also been watching the entire exchange between the faunus and Cardin and hadn't bothered to step in.
Zelle ignored the man's warning and crushed the dust crystal in his hand. The rest of Cardin's team jumped back as they expected the crystal to detonate as did the teacher, but after a moment passed and nothing occurred, Cardin began laughing.
"What, is that it, orphan?" Cardin mocked.
The professor didn't say anything as he cautiously watched Zelle's hand that was twitching as dust shards were falling to the ground by his feet. The rest of the cafeteria had fallen dead silent as they watched the interaction between the teacher and two students.
"Zelle, I believe a professor told you that was enough." The voice of Ozpin sounded as he stood with Glynda who looked on with a mixture of concern and sternness . Zelle looked over at them then back at Cardin who had cocky smirk on his face. Looking over to the table he saw his team and JNPR looking at him with various levels of worry and concern.
"Fuck this." Zelle said as he summoned another circle which cause professor Barry to take a defensive stance and Cardin to lose his smile. Ozpin and Glynda merely stood at the entrance to the cafeteria.
A small blue crystal landed in Zelle's off-hand, and clapped his his hands together. This resulted in a mass amount of steam erupting from the impact quickly encompassing the entire cafeteria. Shouts of shock and people trying to move in the thick steam began to fill the cafeteria. A few more minutes passed before the steam dissipated enough so people could see as the steam filtered out of the room.
Cardin and his team were on the ground unconscious and Zelle was nowhere to be found. "Well that was something." Jaune said, breaking the silence at the table. Just then Ruby's phone dinged. Ruby opened it up and saw that it was from Zelle.
"Hey guys, Zelle said he would come back tonight and to get notes for professor Peach's class for him." Everyone accepted that and got up to finish their stuff. Blake allowed a small smile to come to her face. She had her doubts about Zelle, but after that display, she couldn't help but like him a little more. It also helped he was easy on the eyes. With a little more pep in her step, she joined her team going to class.
…..
"Fuck Cardin." An explosion resounded as the sounds of dying Beowolves filled the air.
"Fuck that racist prick of a professor." A gleam of steel flashed, decapitating an ursai that had been trying to attack the rampaging man. A blur of grey and white slammed into an Ursa Major, tearing at it's throat
"Fuck Ozpin." A small quake was felt as a group of beowolves fell into hole that had formed out of nowhere. The same mass of grey and white tore into the Grimm that had avoided the hole.
"Fuck Beacon." Several consecutive explosions ate at the air as the last of the Grimm were wiped off the face of Remnant.
Zelle breathed heavily as he unloaded an empty canister and placed a lightning dust canister in its place. It had been an hour since he descended into the Emerald Forest after he lost his temper. He created a the cloud of steam, knocked out Cardin and his team and jumped out a nearby window.
Ryo stood next to him in his alpha form. It had been a while since him and Ryo had gone a good ol' murder spree. Zelle looked around and saw dozens of GOIs lying around. Zelle straightened up and began to collect the balls and began packing them into a satchel. He got his first Deathclaw kill, he just needed to remember where he buried it. He tossed three of the beowolf GOIs to Ryo who greedily ate them up.
After another five minutes of collecting the balls, Zelle stretched. He felt much better after fucking shit up. Slipping his hands in his pockets, he glanced up. It was going on three which meant that Peach's class would be ending soon. He sincerely hoped that he didn't have to deal with Cardin much longer. His distaste for the bully was borderline hatred.
Zelle considered himself a pretty chill guy. He disliked lots of things, like brussel sprouts and Grimm. But he hated very, very few things. He could name them on one hand really. A guy named Spencer in his past life, mumble rap, and bullies. Cardin definitely fell under that last one. A deep breath passed his lips. Ryo had turned back into his dog form and hopped in his hoodie. Zelle started heading back to Beacon. Hopefully the rest of the week would get better.
A/N: For those of you who might be curious the incantation translates to this:
Unum corpus terrae: My body is made from the earth.
Veloces pedes pulguris: My feet are swift as lightning.
If that is wrong we can blame google translate. Something to keep in mind is that while Zelle is capable of using advanced forms of Glyphs, he still has to speak as it helps him visualize what he is doing, whereas more basic glyphs he can use freely.
