In this chapter... things happen. This chapter begins right where the last one left off.
To the guest saying that the Blake should be the leader of BYRN because it starts with B and if I want Ruby as leader I should find a name that starts with R, the names need to be colors, so... I highly doubt it's possible, trust me, I tried. Thanks for the review anyway, I guess.
I recently decided to finally watch One Punch Man... and it's awesome and way better than I expected, especially since I love carefree and OP MCs. And he's like the epitome of that, worrying about sales while fighting a terrifyingly powerful monster. Sad that there isn't a second season, but just a few days ago, Madhouse apparently announced that there will be. Madhouse making a second season. This is a thing unheard of!
(3rd person)
"This is awkward... there's a lot of people looking at us," Ruby says quietly.
And indeed their were. Everyone who'd been having their match had already finished and so the whole class had been watching their fight.
"They were just watching our match," Pyrrha says.
There weren't enough arena's for all the pairs to fight at the same time, the main reason why there even was a time limit aside from the class length. The teacher had told them to go take a shower after their fight (instead of after the gym class which normally follows) because they were both drenched in sweat. Especially Ruby.
"I'm soo tired!" Ruby whines as she puts Crescent Rose back in her locker with some difficulty.
"I can't remember the last time I had such a challenging fight," Pyrrha says.
"Still, I didn't expect your scythe to be non-magnetic," Pyrrha says with an 'oh well' smile.
"Magnetism? Is that how you controlled your spear and shield in midair?" Ruby asks, taking off her combat clothes and leaving her in her underwear.
"Yes, my Semblance is magnetism," Pyrrha admits.
Ruby grins slightly, "All the metal in Crescent Rose, aside form some wires, is titanium."
"Yeah, I thought it would be something like that," Pyrrha says.
"Well, either way Ruby, you're really good. You caught me off guard quite a few times during that fight, which is quite a few times more than happens normally," Pyrrha says.
"You're awesome too, most people can't stand up to continuous attacks from all sides," Ruby says with a smile.
"You didn't use the scattering into rose petals thing even once in our fight, why?" Pyrrha asks.
"First it's somewhat disorienting, second, once I start forming back into a person, I can't stop the process, but you can already see where I'm going to appear, so you would be able to basically get a free attack off. In general, you could see where the rose petals go, so even if I use it to avoid an attack, I'm just opening myself for any attack of your choice. That's why it's more effective against Grimm, who are too stupid to capitalize. Also I can only use it so often, so against a person I try to save it for when there's some heavy attack I can't dodge, and then I try to just get as far as I can before reforming," Ruby explains.
Pyrrha pauses to process what was said for a moment and then says, "I suppose that makes sense."
"There is one way I can use it against a person though, but not in such a fast-paced fight," Ruby says, suddenly rose petals start forming and filling the room, once the room is filled with rose petals floating about after 10 or so seconds, Ruby scatters.
'I see... so if there are a bunch of rose petals in the air, I don't know which ones are her. Still, I should be able to watch for a cloud of moving ones...' Pyrrha thinks, trying to see rose petals where Ruby was moving, and finding none.
"Boo!" Ruby says from behind her, startling her.
"How did you do that?"
"You were looking for moving rose petals, right?" Ruby asks.
Pyrrha nods.
"However the rose petals natural move around, so if I just disperse the rose petals that are me and you can't see a general pattern," Ruby says.
"Unfortunately, it takes prep and concentration and the rose petals only last a short while," Ruby says, catching a dissolving rose petal.
"I see. Anyway, as nice as it is that the room smells like roses and not sweat, we should probably go take our showers," Pyrrha says.
Ruby suddenly blushes, realizing she was in her underwear the entire time.
"Hey Ruby, Pyrrha, you two were both awesome!" Yang says.
"That was one of the coolest fights. Evers!" Nora says.
Weiss looked unhappy, but was trying to hide it. Probably because she found out that either A, there was someone as strong as her role model, Pyrrha, or B, that Ruby was way, way stronger than she was.
"I didn't realize Ruby was that strong," Blake comments.
"Who did you expect to win?" Blake asks Yang.
"Well... I've never seen Ruby lose, except against fully trained Hunters or when she was just starting, and even that not always, but Pyrrha's got basically the same track record against stronger opponents, I really had no idea of either's limits," Yang answers.
"Are all the other matches over?" Ruby asks.
"No, there's still some people fighting," Yang answers and the 8 walk over to the edge of pit where 2 third years were fighting 2 others.
"How did your match go?" Pyrrha asks Yang and Blake.
"I won, but Blake's pretty tough," Yang says.
"Your Semblance feels so unfair," Blake says.
"Ruby doesn't seem to have too much trouble with it," Yang says, pouting somewhat.
"You shouldn't compare people to Ruby, it's completely unfair," Blake says jokingly.
"Uh... Ruby, are you alright?" Pyrrha asks as the girl falls face first on her desk.
"I can't do this..." Ruby whines without lifting her head.
"This assignment is due until next week, you don't need to finish it right now," Pyrrha says, walking over to Ruby and putting a hand on her back.
"But I hate studying. If I don't do it now, I'll never get around to it," Ruby complains.
"Okay, do you want some help?" Pyrrha offers.
"Yes please," Ruby says.
"What are you having trouble with? Math," Pyrrha asks, leaning over Ruby's shoulder to look at her computer.
"No! Math is awesome. Without it I couldn't have made Crescent Rose, or the bullets, or the program which predicts where my bullets will hit-"
"Wait, Crescent Rose has something like that?" Pyrrha asks.
"Yeah!" Ruby says cheerfully.
It seemed she was writing the history essay due next week (and given earlier today).
"Ruby... did they not yet cover how the Great War started in your school?" Pyrrha asks, not remembering exactly when she learned about it.
"No," Ruby says sadly.
"Hmm... that was just recently, huh," Pyrrha wonders aloud.
"How about this, you take a break for now and we'll go get something to drink, and meanwhile I'll tell you about it," Pyrrha suggests.
"Alright," Ruby says with a sigh, closing her laptop. She stretches and yawns and get up.
"I feel like I've been sitting for hours," Ruby says.
"You have, Ruby," Pyrrha says.
"Eh... wait really?!" she exclaims.
"That means it's already late," she says with a frown. She runs over to the window and pulls aside the drapes, seeing the sky darkening, close to sunset.
"Oh well," she says with another sigh.
"Come on, let's go get some coffee," Pyrrha says.
The two walk exit their dorm and Ruby asks, "Oh yeah, where are Blake and Yang?"
"Yang dragged Blake off for partner bonding or something. I mean literally dragged her off, I'm surprised you didn't notice," Pyrrha answers.
"I've lived in the same house as Yang for 15 years. If I let that sort of thing bother me much, I'd always be distracted," Ruby says.
The two walk down to the small kitchen in the dorms where people could make themselves things like coffee or a small snack. Theoretically, it was also equipped with a stove and such but because the cafeteria food was pretty good, people didn't really use it. Or that's what the second year students they'd asked about it told them.
"Ruby, you should really go to bed, you can finish it tomorrow. If you don't go to bed soon, you'll be sleepy tomorrow," Pyrrha says. Yang and Blake had yet to return but they had called and said they were on their way back.
"But I'm nearly done!" Ruby complains.
Pyrrha chuckles, she hadn't expected Ruby to be the kind to stay up late studying. Playing games? Maybe. Studying? No.
"When Yang and Blake come back, go to bed, alright?" Pyrrha says.
"Hmm... maybe," Ruby says.
A few minutes later, Blake and Yang enter the room. "Hey guys!" Yang says.
"So... tired..." Blake mutters and climbs into her bed, fully clothed, and collapses face first.
Yang walks over to Pyrrha and quietly asks, "She been there all day?"
"Pretty much. We went to get some coffee earlier, but aside from that, yes," Pyrrha says.
"Ruby, time to go sleep," Yang says to Ruby, putting a hand on one the sitting girl's shoulder.
"In a bit," Ruby answers, not really paying any attention to Yang.
"What happened to going to bed when they got back?" Pyrrha asks.
"I said maybe," Ruby answers, continuing to type and not looking away from her screen.
"Ruby, you have 10 minutes, and if you don't finish up by then, I'm forcing you to go to bed, even if it means tying you down," Yang says.
"If she resisted enough for tying her down to be necessary, wouldn't it also be completely pointless since she can do that scattering into rose petals thing?" Blake asks.
"I didn't mean literally," Yang answers.
"Fine. I should be done in ten minutes," Ruby says.
"Now go away," she adds because Yang was still hanging over her shoulder.
"Yang, you should probably do your homework too at some point," Blake comments.
"I'll get to it," Yang says, waving her off.
"No she won't," Ruby says.
Yang scowls. "I thought you were doing your homework."
"I am, you're just loud enough that I can't ignore you," Ruby says before suddenly disappearing, appearing standing next to her bag and pulling something out. A pair of headphones.
They were wireless and specially modified to be charged with Aura (much like scrolls made for Hunters).
Ruby sits back down and turns on her music, continuing to work on her essay.
"...And done," Ruby says closing her laptop, getting up, stretching, and yawning. She takes off her headphones and puts them on her desk, next to her computer.
Yang grabs Ruby from behind, literally picking her up and throwing her onto her bed.
"Yang!" Ruby says with an angry pout before jumping back down, grabbing her sleeping clothes, and stomping into the bathroom to prepare for bed, leaving behind a giggling Yang.
The door opens, a bottle of shampoo flies out at inhuman speed and hits Yang square in the face, the door having already closed. "Ouch," Yang says after catching the shampoo, rubbing her nose.
"You kinda deserved that," Blake comments from her bunk where she was reading her book, though it looked like she was wrapping up.
"Oh shut it, Blake," Yang says in a playful tone before turning off the light and getting into her own bed.
Two weeks later, when they were already settled in and used to their schedule, teams BYRN and ARSN (Ruby and Weiss still didn't get along) sat together at lunch.
"Gah! Let go! It hurts!" a rabbit faunus cried as Cardin Winchester, the school bully, and his team yanked on her ears.
"See, told you they were real," Cardin says to his teammates. Blake fumed inwardly, but was too scared of revealing her own faunus heritage to do anything. Ruby on the other hand, grinned devilishly.
"I'm gonna go get myself another drink," she says, her devilish grin turning into an mischievous smile, gulping down the last of her milk.
She stands up with her tray, walking past Cardin to the drink machine and pauses at it for a bit before picking the sweetest, strongest smelling, thickest, gooiest, and stickiest drink and filling the cup to the brim with the pomegranate (it stains) goo. Yang, realizing what Ruby was planning to do, chuckles to herself as Ruby makes her way back. Just as she past behind Cardin's back, she 'trips,' then 'catch' everything on her tray with it again, except the drink, which bounces at an angle and lands upside down on the top of Cardin's head.
A deathly silence falls over the room as people turn to look, then Ruby utters a quiet and utterly innocent, "Oops, sorry."
Some people remain frozen, others start laughing madly. Yang, Blake, Jaune, and Nora were most certainly in the latter category. The rest of the two teams were in between, certainly approving and laughing inside, but not the type to not hide it.
She then shrugs, picks up the cup, and walks back to drink machine. Well, starts, at that point Cardin snaps out of his stupor and fumes. He was the one who did that sort of thing! He was the one people feared! He wasn't the one who people spilled drinks on and pretended it was an accident!
Cardin gets up, entirely forgetting about Velvet, gets up and turns towards Ruby before yelling, "Get back here!"
Ruby turns around with a 'who, me?' expression, causing Cardin to fume harder and those laughing to laugh harder. Yang bangs the table with her hand, muttering, "That's just cruel, Ruby."
Velvet, who was terrified for Ruby, manages to send her a grateful look.
Ruby just smiles back.
"Why you smiling, you little bitch?!" Cardin nearly yells.
Ruby tilts her head curiously, her smile never fading.
With a furious expression on his face, he punches towards Ruby, however just before Ruby evades or he would have hit if she didn't, a purple barrier appears between them. "Ms. Rose, Mr. Winchester," Professor Goodwitch says in a not particularly happy voice.
She walks over to them and grabs them both by the ear (human in both cases), dragging them off. Ruby quickly follows instead of struggling like Cardin and the Professor lets go of her ear. She turns towards her friends and gives them a thumbs up with a 'worth it' expression on her face.
After she dragged them a little way she told Ruby to stay put while taking Cardin to clean himself up. They were all currently in their combat clothes, because after lunch they were all going to Forever Fall Forest to gather some sap, which meant that Cardin's was stained. Of course, Ruby didn't feel bad in the slightest, he was a rich asshole and his parents would buy (or likely, get custom made) him a new one if he didn't already have a spare.
A minute later she came back without Cardin, took Ruby to the Headmaster's office, and told Ozpin what the situation was.
Ozpin's response was rather surprising.
"Ms. Rose, while I understand how he may have deserved that and giving him a taste of his own medicine, in fact he likely did, however... don't you think pomegranate is going a little too far?" he asks.
Both Ruby and Professor Goodwitch froze. Ruby's thoughts were along the lines of 'that's much gentler than I expected' while the Professor's were along the lines of 'that's far too gentle.'
Then what follows next surprises her probably even more, "So while you in most cases should not do something of the sort in the future, if you do, do try to make it so that there's no permanent damage," he says. Ruby's mouth opens and closes a few times before she shuts it and nods.
"Well, now run along," he says, turning from her on his swiveling chair back to his desk, covered in papers. He presses a button on the armrest of his chair and the door opens (it wasn't locked), informing her clearly that she was supposed to leave. And she does.
"Ozpin, that is far to gentle!" Glynda says, annoyed.
"Really? I felt that Mr. Winchester deserved that," Ozpin answers, not looking up from his papers.
Glynda sighs. "What of Mr. Winchester?"
"I'll leave him to you, I'm busy," he says.
Somewhere in the dorms, a changing boy shudders in fear.
Ruby gets back just as the rest of her friends were finishing lunch and hurriedly finishes.
"Did you get in much trouble?" Yang asks.
"Professor Ozpin told me not use something that stains next time," Ruby answers and continues eating.
The other 7 at the table freeze, then after a few seconds Weiss says, "You're kidding me."
"I think he felt like Cardin deserved that, but it wouldn't do for the Headmaster to have students doing that sort of thing to each other so I nominally got in trouble," Ruby says with a shrug, eating her last cookie and drinking the last milk in her glass.
"What about Cardin?" Blake asks.
"I dunno, Professor Goodwitch sent him to get cleaned up first," Ruby answers.
And that concludes this chapter! Yes, I am omitting the whole 'Jaune cheated his way in' between this part and Forever Fall. In fact, here he's just a lousy student by Beacon standards who happened not to have a landing strategy, not someone with literally zero training who cheated his way in.
I felt like ending it here because otherwise I'd either take forever to post this chapter or it would end in a bad place, so sorry that it's a bit on the shorter side compared to come of my other stories.
Also thank you to Wulfstorm and THB4 (especially you, long reviews are awesome) for reviewing and everyone who followed or favorited (it's already too many people to just post them all here).
Anyway, please follow, favorite, and review. As I said last time, tell me what you thought, just ask for things, or ask a question Pairings, adventures, bad guys (though they'll only last a short while each time), good guys (I probably won't accept OC's, but feel free to ask), or whatever else you can think of.
I'll try to reply to every review, at least while I can. To guests, if you ask a stupid question, I will still answer. And I will answer in the author's notes where everyone will see. So if you don't want that and still want to ask a question that might be stupid, just make an account. In general though, guests asking questions is annoying because there's no way to directly reply.
