Oh, What a Spectacle!

Chapter 6

Blind Lead the Blind

Advanced Dust Mechanics was probably Nora's favorite and least favorite class, all at once. On the one hand, explosions... but on the other hand... Glynda didn't like explosions...

Oh, what a world, what a cold, cruel world. At least she had Ren next to her...

"Miss Valkyrie, which type of dust is best used against Ursai?"

Oh shit she doesn't know. She just hit the things with her hammer. And grenades. But mostly the hammer. What the hell is she supposed to know about Dust application? WHY IS SHE HERE? IS THERE A GOD!? WHAT DOES THE FUCKING SLOTH SAY!? WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DEEP AND PHILISOPHICAL INQUIRIES PINBALLING AROUND HER SKULL!? WHY!? WHY!? WHYYYYY!?

"Miss Valkyrie, it would be nice if you could answer the question before sundown," Glynda informed her dryly.

"Uh, Uh, Uh..."

Ren started fanning his face. Was he hot? Of course he was fucking hot, he's Ren. Nora knew that damn well. Did something stink? She didn't smell anything out of the ordinary, save for the lack of smoke and explodeyness that this class was supposed to entail. Oh, Monty, he was looking at her. And he was fanning himself more. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?

"Nora, just say fire dust!" Weiss harshly whispered from in front of her. Oh, yeah.

"Ice Dust!" Nora shouted, smiling.

Weiss snapped back in her chair, Ren facedesked, and eeyup guy shouted 'EEYUP!' at the top of his lungs. While Glynda was distracted with him, Weiss and Ren both looked at Nora.

"What?" she asked, smiling.

"How can you be that dull?" Weiss asked. "How? HOW?"

"Nora, we've gone over this exact question at least six times this week, and you give any answer that isn't correct every. Single. Time. What is going on?" Ren asked, exasperated.

"Well, there's a lot of things. Our shipping betting pool, our game night tomorrow, WHATEVER IT IS THE FUCKING SLOTH SAYS, nigga, I DON'T KNOW! Plus, you know this is a trick question, that's why the right answer isn't right!"

While Weiss' brain feebly attempted to keep up with Nora's rambling, Ren's more acclimated faculties compelled him to sigh. "Nora... you are failing this class."

"Would you kindly all be quiet for at least twenty-five seconds?" Glynda asked, having cowed eeyup guy. "Nora, that answer is incorrect. Would anyone else like to try and answer the question?"

Ren sighed. "Fire Dust. The Ursa's mass gives the flame more fuel, while the creature is too slow to weaponized any flaming appendages."

"Correct. Next question. What is-"


"-THIS BULLSHIT!?" Lancaster shouted, staring at the obstacle course set up just inside of the athletics hall.

"An obstacle course," his brother, Zebulon, noted, blowing an errant lock of white hair out of his eyes.

"Yes, I can see that, but why!? You know I'm not athletic!" Lancaster laments, slouching.

"Dude, you carry a quad-barreled cannon that deploys from a backpack on your back, held up with no support other than four braces attached to the backpack, requiring you to still carry the cannon for the most part, and it fires giant laser beams. If anyone here is athletic, it's between Nikos and you," Maddox informs him.

Pyrrha looked at the obstacle course, and chuckled.

"Something funny, Pyr?" Jaune asked, still nursing the black eye that had gotten him a weird look from everyone in the class.

"Everyone seems so intimidated, it's not a large obstacle course. The hardest part will be jumping from beam to beam on that ascending pathway," Pyrrha explained. "You could do that, Jaune."

Those bars were barely big enough to accommodate his heel, let alone give him any sort of foot hold for a jump. "Uh..."

Oobleck looked over the griping students- and Pyrrha- with a sense of mixed pride and disappointment. The exchange student, Miss Sustrai, had skipped every single one of her classes save for this one up to this point, and Lancaster was possibly the only person in Remnant that could fail a Physical Education course. Well...

Yeah, he forgot Jaune. But he was getting better!

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen! This is a fairly straightforward class, today, in that, the moment you reach the end of the obstacle course, you are free to go!" Oobleck informed them. "Allow me to give you a quick overview."

He points out a few hurdles, vertical posts, and bars. "You must run through the Irregular Terrain section first. This is going to be the easiest part. If you trip or hit something, you must go back to the beginning of the course. Good news! It isn't that long of a walk."

He then points to a nearly vertical wall with some handholds. "Then, there's the Sheer Wall section. Just climb up the wall and over the other side. If you slip and fall, you must go back to the beginning of the section."

Then, to the series of beams on the path Pyrrha had mentioned. "Then, there's the Ascending Pathway. Thank you for naming it, Miss Nikos, you have no idea how much that vexed me. You must jump from beam to beam until you clear the wall at the end of the path. Should you fall, you must go back to the beginning of the section."

After that, another series of beams alternating between high and low. "Then, there's..."

"The thingy!" Lancaster shouts.

"The Thingy section! You must navigate through the beams by going over, through, or below them. Should you hit a beam, you must go back to the beginning of the section."

Almost done, Oobleck points to a single beam a good distance from the ground. "The High Line section! You must make your way from one end of the beam to the other. Should you fall-"

"You must go back to the beginning of the section, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we done?" Emerald asked, tired of this already, despite having not even started.

"We are at the last part, Miss Sustrai!" He points to a series of drones standing in array at the end of the course. "When you reach that section, you are allowed to use your weapons, but not your Semblance, to defeat the drones. Once someone enters this section, no one else can enter until they either complete the section or are struck by a drone, in which case, they must go back to the beginning of the course. Understood?"

The group all nodded in the affirmative. "How many drones?" Emerald asked.

"Twenty. And by the way, just to be fair, the metal has been depolarized so that Miss Nikos does not have an unfair advantage, and Mister Maddox's Five Gates are currently locked down so that he has none, either. Could you confirm that for me, Mister Maddox?"

Asher raised his right hand, but the strange, claw-like gauntlet made a low, hollow *plink*.

"Very well! No handicaps! You may begin in five..."

Jaune swallowed a lump he didn't even know he had in his throat, and thought back ruefully to the fact that he just ate a shit ton of bacon.

"Four..."

Lancaster's ears folded, the fox Faunus growling with the determination to not be the class fuckup.

"Three..."

Emerald cracked a small, almost imperceptible grin as she realized how easy it would be to gimp the competition.

"Two..."

Pyrrha checked her ponytail, making sure it wouldn't come loose and cause her hair to get caught on something.

"One..."

"GO SAYS ME!" Lancaster shouted, running ahead of the others and straight-up barreling head-first into an Aura disruption field. "Ow, fucking shit!"

Oobleck sighed, and waited for Lancaster to rejoin the rest of the students. "Does anyone else wish to test the Aura disruption field?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"Then go."

The field visibly discharged. Maddox and Pyrrha shot forward like a pair of sprinters, with the lanky male clearing the first hurdle a mere fraction of a second after her. Emerald was right behind them, followed by Zebulon, then exchange students Sage and Scarlet, then Jaune, then Lancaster. Lancaster tripped over a hurdle, and was forced to restart. Jaune knocked his head against a bar towards the end of the course, forcing him to do likewise. Everyone else proceeded to the wall without incident. It took Lancaster another two tries to clear the hurtle, while Jaune managed to avoid getting barred in the face. The order headed to the wall was Maddox, Pyrrha, Scarlet, Emerald, Zebulon, Sage, Jaune, and Lancaster.

The wall was a different matter. Sage fell once almost immediately after getting on, while Scarlet's acrophobia manifested in him trying to hitch a ride on his partner's back. For a man with a flight Semblance, that was pretty damned embarrassing. Mark Nutt would be so ashamed of him. Emerald managed to clamber to the lead-not so unintentionally kicking Lancaster's fingers to drop him to the floor-with Pyrrha not far behind, while Maddox's foot accidentally caught Zebulon in the face, causing him to lose his grip. Jaune made it almost completely up the wall before falling down. By the time he was going back up, Lancaster had already passed him - he damn well knew how to climb, he grew up in the woods, after all . This left the order at Emerald, Pyrrha, Maddox, Zebulon, Sage, Lancaster, Scarlet, and Jaune.

Then, the pathway.

Surprisingly, it was Scarlet who cleared it first, as even Pyrrha tripped over one of the rungs due to a slightly miscalculated leap. Zebulon nonchalantly hopped from beam to beam, whistling Tchaikovsky's '1812' all the way. Emerald managed to make it after him, only to slip right at the end and hit the low wall. Despite her protests, she was forced to restart. Maddox managed to make it on the first try, albeit much more slowly than the others, and, perhaps out of pity, caught Jaune to keep him from falling forward over the bar they had both landed on. Jaune still fell short of the next one, but hey, Maddox's Gate of Blessings would have an extra charge next time he needed it. Pyrrha's face became stern as she focused all her attentions on the beams, and managed to power through without so much as breaking her stride. Emerald's second run also went better, with Lancaster managing to keep neck and neck with her, despite having fallen twice already. Sage had slowly but surely made it through on his first try, and Jaune managed to clear it after three very, very grueling landings, including one directly on his groin. The order heading past the halfway point was Scarlet, Zebulon, Maddox, Pyrrha, Lancaster, Emerald, Sage, and Jaune.

The... Thingy was not too terrible. While Pyrrha dove, slid, and hopped through the gaps in the middle beams, Maddox simply clambered up and ran across the top, while Scarlet and Emerald rolled underneath. Jaune attempted to mime Pyrrha, only to trip and hit his head again. Pyrrha saw this, and winced, leading Maddox to pat her shoulder in sympathy before they moved on. Zebulon had similar luck to Jaune, only he hit two rungs, due to trying the top route, while Lancaster and Sage rolled, as well. This left the order at Pyrrha, Maddox, Scarlet, Emerald, Lancaster, Sage, Jaune, and Zebulon.

The High Line was ridiculously easy, in Pyrrha's eyes. She simply went arm-over-arm, leaving her to totally-not-cockily check her pulse while Maddox made a show of trying to tightrope-walk across the bar. He nearly fell, but caught himself with one arm. Still, his cockiness cost him, as Lancaster of all people had shimmied past him like the world's most socially inept caterpillar. Emerald did a similar routine to Maddox, only more successfully, while Scarlet's imitation led to him failing miserably. Sage just proceeded as Pyrrha had, with Jaune slowly bringing up the rear. By the time he had got to the end, Zebulon got tired of being stuck behind him and swung over, shimmying over him. The order going into the final obstacle was Pyrrha, Lancaster, Maddox, Emerald, Sage, Scarlet, Zebulon, and Jaune.

The group had all stopped, ready to bound in as soon as Pyrrha finished her business with the drones.

"Miss Nikos, are you ready?" Oobleck asked.

"Yes, Professor," she replied, rolling her shoulders in anticipation.

"Then let's begin."

The drones' single eyes all glowed a bright blue, as they locked on to the Mistralian, and began moving forward.

She simply threw Akoúo̱ first, the shield bouncing between drones like a pinball as she shifted Miló into rifle form and bounced a few shots off of it. This little dalliance only took out five drones, but stunned the majority of the survivors. Acting quickly, she withdrew her shield and shifted her weapon into javelin form, lobbing it at the nearest drone and rushing forward, shifting to rifle again and using the recoil to withdraw the weapon from the drone's chest.

Maddox whistled in amazement and rolled his eyes, then awkwardly looked over at Jaune, who had a new set of welts on his head from the collisions he endured in class. "She's good," he said.

"The best, I'd bet," Jaune replied, almost as if he were speaking of an elder sister, or a trusted friend.

"Not inclined to disagree with you there..." Jaune either didn't notice the slight pink on his cheeks, or didn't care.

"We'll see," Zebulon muttered, checking Minus's chamber.

Pyrrha, in the meantime, had switched her weapon to sword form, blocking one of the drone's attempts at a slash to the leg, and countering it with a neat decapitation. She switched her weapon to rifle again, holding it at the hip as she rapidly gunned down three more, before shifting her weapon to javelin again and firing it out of her hand and through another drone's head, leaving nine.

Lancaster growled again, bearing his elongated canines. "I'm next."

"Mate whoever goes first gets it next. You don't just call dibs," Scarlet informed him.

"Are you suggesting that I help you breathe?"

"I suggest you say no and move on," Zebulon informed Scarlet, sighing at his brother's jealous anger.

"... okay then!" The transfer said, raising his hands and stepping away from Lancaster.

Pyrrha retrieved her spear and shifted it back to sword form, raising her shield to block a pair of drone's overhead swipes, pushing them back with a thrust, before deftly weaving between them and leaving deep gashes in their torsos. Once again readying the rifle, she fired over the top of her shield at another drone attempting to strike. She swung about, the barrel of the gun catching a drone's head, which she stepped on with one of her heels.

Maddox looked extremely uncomfortable right about now, as did Lancaster, whose discomfort was more of an anxious variety.

Pyrrha finished the last of the drones, save for one, with the rifle, before shifting it again to javelin form. A drone approached her from behind, and she nonchalantly shoved the butt of the weapon into its face, and fired it, causing the blast to leave a nice hole in the drone's head, and the javelin stuck into the floor.

"Finished," she said.

Oobleck nodded in approval, while Maddox tried to play off his sudden bout of awkwardness.

They didn't have to wait long to get back into it.

"THEN LET ME AT IT!" Lancaster shouted, flicking a lever on the side of his backpack, Magni deploying in front of him with all four barrels facing the fighting floor. The drones' built-in nanoreconstructors reassembled them, as Pyrrha grabbed her spear and left the field, but stopped at the edge. She'd wait for Jaune, make sure he made it.

The drones all turned to face him.

"Hello, BOYS!" He shouted, as he stepped over the threshold... and fired.

The blue bolts slammed with loud blasts into the drones and the floor around them, kicking up large clouds of dust and nanomachines. Lancaster may not be the best fighter in the world, but if you had a big-ass four barreled laser cannon with a low-stability, high-intensity refractor array, you didn't need to be. The first salvo of four shots alone took out eight of the drones, and the second flattened 6 more.

Then they were way too close. And although Lancaster wasn't the best fighter, that didn't mean he couldn't fight. He dove under one of the drone's swings, grabbing a shortsword from a destroyed drone. It would do.

One drone attempted to stab the faunus, who rolled out of the way and slashed its ankle, dropping it to the floor, where he buried the blade in its head. He grabbed the drone's blade from its side, and chunked it at another, the blade neatly cutting deep into the drone's head and sending it back.

Unfortunately, he neglected to note the one that was about to hit him in the back.

"Bro!" Zebulon shouted, a moment to late as the sword slammed into Lancaster's shoulder, making a neat cut in his blank white Aura.

"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"


The final section had gone well, after that. Zebulon managed to put up a good showing, elegantly weaving through the crowd of drones and firing his Dust Revolver/Fighting Knife hybrid. A few of the drones had even felled each other in their attempts to hit the smaller hunter.

Scarlet had played to a similar style. With a battle cry of "MARK NUTT!", he dashed into the drones, swiping his cutlass like a man possessed. One drone foolishly walked into the barrel of his pistol, while he managed to use the grappling hook attachment to grab one unfortunate machine and swinging it like a flail at the others. He ended up getting glanced by another drone, but he passed the second attempt.

Sage? Sage is a bit character with a BFS, how do you think he did? He went full Cloud on the drones without breaking a sweat.

Emerald? Everyone assumed Emerald had destroyed the drones in a show of elegance and finesse, when, in reality, she used her Illusion Semblance to give everyone that impression while she nonchalantly jumped from drone to drone, performing decapitation after decapitation with all the patience of a fanfiction writer on a deadline. She huffed in irritation as she walked off the field.

Then... then there was Maddox.

Maddox's Five Gates, you see, are not a weapon, his weapon is the gauntlet on his hand. The Five Gates are manifestations of his Aura, each with different properties, in the form of transparent, colored shields, each called forth with a finger. With a flex of his index finger, he summoned a red gate- The Gate of Penance, and simply threw it around the field like a buzzsaw, destroying all but a couple of lucky drones, which he dispatched with a green gate called forward from his ring finger- The Gate of Misery, and crushed underneath the weight of the now-solid Aura shield. Maddox, having finished his business, wiped his hands, and walked out of the arena, leaving Scarlet to prepare to attack again.

The group all stared at him, confused as to what just happened, save for Pyrrha and Jaune, because this is a fanfiction, and when you've been in as many fanfics as these two, you've seen some crazy shit.

"I think you might have broken a wall," Zebulon informed his taller compatriot.

"Eh. I'm just tired of waiting," Maddox replied, although it was less of him being tired, and more of him wanting to try and interact with someone. "Forget the wall."

The narrator ignores his rude dismissal of the God of this story and moves on to Jaune.

This was the moment Jaune's training was leading up to- well, not quite THE moment, but it was ONE moment where his training would be put to the test. Once Lancaster and Scarlet finished their reattempts and left, leaving only him, Maddox, Oobleck, and Pyrrha in the room, he took a deep breath...

And stepped into the arena.


Blake sat on her bed, reading her latest issue of smut-er, 'literature', waiting for the rest of her team to return. Ruby had already gushed over her glasses for a while, leaving the dark-haired cat faunus to try and play it off like it was just a joke, or some such. She certainly wasn't trying to impress anyone, no sir! Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Blake would never attempt to cater to someone else's desires, no way, Jose. And certainly not just to help try and woo Ya-

Weiss entered the room, her class having just let out, and let out a long, frustrated groan as she sat on her own bed.

"What's eating you?" Blake asked, looking up from her book.

"Nora."

"Sounds like something she would do..." Blake mused, looking back down. "But in all seriousness, what did she do?"

"She's about as dense as a brick wall! Ren and I had to literally scream the answers at her during class for her to catch on that it wasn't 'just a prank, bro!' or some other inane nonsense." Weiss fell on her back, arms spread wide, and groaned again. "Why was I born sane, and given unto a bunch of lunatics?" she cried, internally crying out for the god of Remnant to strike her dead.

"Destiny? Fate? The cruel and fleeting whims of the gods?" Blake replied. "Who knows? Especially with Nora."

Weiss spent a few moments thinking, before something she saw when she walked in came back to mind. The white-haired huntress sat back up, and looked over at Blake, one eyebrow suddenly shooting up in confusion.

"Blake?"

"Yes, Ice Queen?"

"You bought glasses?"

Blake lowered her book, looking over at the heiress from behind her frames. "Yes. Is that a problem?"

"No... but why?"

"Sun said I looked like a nerd with all of my books and such, and figured the glasses would complete the image. So, I intended to make a joke out of it," Blake lied.

"Ah. I see." Weiss never was good at picking up on subtle signals.


One try.

It had only taken one try.

If Jaune Arc didn't believe in Oum before, he certainly did now. He had to run up to Oobleck and make sure he had turned the robots on, and that it wasn't some sort of fluke, before he was convinced that it happened. He looked over at the students who had bothered to stay and watch him.

Pyrrha's smile was downright radiant, her laughter echoing throughout the arena as she tried to keep from jumping up and down with joy. Maddox, having less investment in the blonde, simply nodded his head.

"Congratulations, blondie," he said, giving him a thumbs up with his non-gloved hand. "That was pretty good."

"You were amazing!" Pyrrha shouted, running up to her partner and grabbing his hands. "That was perfect! You did everything I taught you, and you did it perfectly!"

Jaune's cheeks tinted red, and he looked down at the floor. "Well... uh... yeah, I guess so."

While the two gushed over each other, something clicked inside Maddox's head. He didn't know exactly what it was, but it only manifested when he watched the two teammates interact- which he hadn't seen much of, considering his limited interactions with JNPR. But, whatever it was, he didn't like it very much. It was one of those awkward, creeping feelings you get in your stomach when something really doesn't sit right with you, but you don't want to say anything.

Was it... nah, that couldn't be it.


One of you followers come to Louisiana and punch me in the face every time I think of Arkos when I should be writing the rest of this story. As penance, the next chapter will be completely consistent of Pyrrha turning that smile upside down due to video games. Yeah, that seems fair. That, and a hungover Yang seeing Blake's specs.

The Raine brothers' weapons are named Magni and Minus, derivatives of the Latin Modifiers 'Major' and 'Minor'. The latter is pronounced as the Latin 'Mee-noos', not 'My-nus'. Magni is based on the Arc Trooper's Reciprocating Quad Blaster from the Clone Wars animation.

UPDATE 10/17 This story is probably not going to get updated any time soon. My father is missing and no one can get in contact with him. Just hang tight while I try and figure this out.