Standard Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY or anything else I may reference. I have some claim to my OCs.

Chapter 5

The Emerald Forest is an interesting mix of nerve-wracking and dull. Nerve-wracking because I know there are plenty Grimm in here, and dull because in the time since encountering the Beowolf pack we've only encountered a lone Ursa.

Art insisted on taking it alone to 'even the score'…I knew I shouldn't have said 'counts as mine', it implied a competition.

Anyway, after walking for a while longer (with occasional tree climbing to check our bearings), I found myself descending a tree on the hill I spotted earlier.

"See anything?" Art called as I made my way down.

"There's a promising clearing in that direction." I said pointing. "I'm pretty sure I saw the top of a stone construction of some kind. I think we're nearly there."

He smirked. I swear that's his default expression. "And how many Grimm have we encountered?"

"Fine, I get it, you were right. Can we move on now?"

"Dude, you need to relax. I can see that's going to be an ongoing project for me." He finished this statement by giving me a 'pat' on the back that sent me stumbling forward several steps.

After regaining my balance I glared at him for a moment, and then started heading for the temple. "Can it wait until tomorrow?" I said irritably. "We may not be in as much danger as I thought but I still want to get this done as soon asOOOFF…"

I was cut off when my partner tackled me to the ground and scrambled to the nearest bushes pulling me along.

"Art! What the fu-"

"Sshhh!" Art gestured frantically for quiet. He seemed rather wide eyed. He then pointed to the sky.

"Nevermore." He whispered.

I looked up. "Oh."

Nevermore. As far as the Grimm go, the Nevermore is easily the most feared. The bigger ones like this are capable of obscene amounts of damage if they really get going. They can use those feathers to aerially bombard a target, basically any vehicle large enough to do sufficient damage could get sliced to pieces.

Not something we want to fight.

"Could it even hear us from up there?" I whispered.

"Do you really want to test that?"

I took another look at the intimidating shape above us. "Whispering it is."…Hold on.

'Wait a minute, is this…'

I unfolded my rifle and flipped up the scope.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just taking a look, I'm not crazy enough to shoot."

I sighted on the Nevermore. 'Ah, I thought so.' "I don't think that Nevermore is too concerned with what's on the ground."

I lowered my rifle handed it to Arthur. He took the rifle with some confusion, but he raised it and looked through the scope at the Nevermore. He spent a moment getting the view centred, and then froze.

"Sam?" He said in a low voice.

"Yeah?"

"Are there two people riding that Nevermore?"

"That is what I saw."

"…Well…They clearly possess a great deal of courage and confidence in their skills…"

Ruby has more confidence in this than Weiss if I remember correctly.

"…or maybe they're just bat-shit bonkers…"

…

"…possibly both." He handed me my rifle back.

"That's…one way of looking at it." I looked at the Nevermore, it was past us now. "…Should we do something."

"Like what?"

"I dunno…They aren't exactly safe there. Even if the Nevermore doesn't get them" And I realise it won't. "They're really high up."

"…Sam, we were catapulted of a cliff into the forest. Why couldn't they use their landing strategy again?"

"I…don't know." That's actually a very good question. Ruby could slow her decent with her scythe and Weiss could use her glyphs…Why was the fall such a big deal?

"As you've been saying, we need to get moving."

####

Once we got back among the trees we lost sight of the Nevermore.

We walked in silence for a minute. Arthur broke it.

"So you said we're nearly there?"

I nodded. "Yeah, we should be there in-"

"Hello!"

A new, clearly female, voice called out from the forest.

"Hey! I know you're there!"

Art replied. "Uh…Hello?"

There was the sound of someone heading towards us. Then a girl came out from the bushes. She was a bit shorter than us, probably of a similar height to Ruby. Grey eyes. Short hair, about to her shoulders and it was…dark blue?...Oh who am I kidding, there's people in this world with green hair so this is just par for the course.

She had grey pants, a blue t-shirt and some sort of brown leather vest. She had a sheath on her left hip, this being for the machete in her right hand. On her left hand she had a gauntlet, but this one had two gun barrels on it and seemed meant for shooting only.

Somewhat unsettlingly, there were quite a few splashes of blood on her, admittedly I wasn't one to talk as point blank full-auto into a Beowolf causes some splatter, but it is just unsettling when the person in question carries a machete.

"Ha! I knew you were here." She looked behind her. "Hey Danni! I told you I sensed someone!"

Sensed?

Speculation was cut off by the arrival of another girl. She was on the taller end of the spectrum, had brown eyes and platinum blonde hair in a ponytail at the back of her neck. She had a white duster coat, brown pants and a black shirt. She also had a pair of rather elaborate looking bracers, they were made out of grey metal and covered in flowing yellow lines, they each had a lightning bolt symbol on the top.

Her weapon though…was simpler than mine. It was basically a grey metal rod, about 6 feet long, which came to a point. It had yellow lines running down it and I was pretty sure it was collapsible, but the end was a conical point not a blade, and I had doubted it had any sort of gun mode.

She glared at her partner. "I wasn't questioning that they were here, I was asking how you knew they were here."

"Um, I was curious about that myself actually." I chimed in.

She turned to us and smiled. "Sorry about that Harriet here is a bit…enthusiastic…" The other girl, Harriet, rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I'm Daniela."

"But because that's a mouthful to say every time I just call her Dani. Anyway, as she said, I'm Harriet, call me Hari." Harriet spoke up with a grin.

Art raised an eyebrow. "Hari and Dani?" He said with his trademark smirk. He turned to me. "Is there a joke here? It feels like there should be but I just can't think of it."

I however was somewhat distracted by Harriet's grin. "Uh, looks like you've got something caught in your teeth there…is that…fur?"

Daniela's smile became rather forced. "She bit off a Beowolfs ear."

Art and I were so completely silent it nearly passed through into anti-noise. I glanced at Art, he still had that smirk on his face, but it had taken on that glassy quality that comes when someone doesn't know what expression to make and so goes with the one they already have.

Harriet's grin just got wider. I made a mental note to try not to piss her off.

I tried to get things back on track. "Um, so…How did you know we were here?"

"It's my semblance." Harriet said. "It's a sort of area awareness, I can vaguely sense everything within a certain radius around me. I need to focus to sense details, but knowing people, or Grimm, are moving around is fairly easy."

Okay, now that's impressive.

"That's pretty useful." Art said. He looked like he thought it as impressive as I did.

Daniela seemed to perk up at that. "Yes, it does give us a great deal of utility. An early warning system gives plenty of time to prepare for a fight."

'Why is Harriet rolling her eyes?'

"Of course I myself have a rather powerful ability."

I responded with some confusion. "Uh, that's cool but I don't think we asked…"

"She's going to tell you anyway." Harriet deadpanned.

"My semblance is a natural affinity with lightning. I am quite skilled with projecting bolts and my bracers allow me to gather it easier. I can also channel it through my spear to electrocute anything that I my stab with it."

'Oh, that explains her weapon somewhat.'

"Did we give the impression we wanted to hear this?" Art whispered.

"I don't see how."

Daniela continued. "I can actually generate such voltage that I could hypothetically electrocute any Grimm."

After taking a moment to make sure she wasn't going to start up again I spoke up. "That's…actually pretty cool all things considered. But I couldn't help but notice the 'hypothetically' in there."

Her smile faltered somewhat. "Yes…well, I could kill, for example, a Deathstalker, but the amount of power I use up would drain me considerably, so if there were any other Grimm around…But anyway I always keep some lightning dust on me to give me a recharge." She shifted uncomfortably, clearly unhappy at admitting this.

"Well, this has been interesting, but I think we should probably keep moving."

'Thank you Art.' "Agreed."

Harriet shrugged. "Sounds good.

"Yes, we're nearly at the temple so we shouldn't.."

"Nobody cares Dani."

'Thank you Harriet.'

####

After a few minutes of walking the four of us saw the edge of a clearing up ahead. Through the gaps between the trees there was what looked like the top of the temple.

Art jogged ahead to the edge of the trees. "Finally, looks like we're he-what the fuck!"

The rest of us quickly ran to the edge of the trees. We were at the top of a hill looking down at the clearing, the temple stood in the centre, but that wasn't what drew our attention.

"Well…" I said. "Looks like we missed one hell of a party."

It was fairly obvious (at least to me) that we were a bit behind teams RWBY and JNPR. There were Nevermore feathers, we could see the gap in the trees where the Deathstalker had smashed its way through, there were tracks from the Deathstalker, and there were pieces of ice from where Weiss had frozen said Deathstalker.

I knew what had happened. But my travelling companions were wide eyed and slack jawed.

Art spoke up. "We certainly missed something." He started making his way towards the temple, the rest of us followed. "It looks like there was a Deathstalker and a Nevermore here."

"Likely at the same time." Daniela chimed in.

"There's no blood, so whoever they were fighting got away." I added.

"And the Grimm aren't here either so they probably chased them." Art said.

There was silence. I knew that RWBY and JNPR could handle it, but they didn't.

Daniela broke the silence. "Okay, this is…worrying, but we can't do anything about it. We need to get the relics and get out of here."

We made our way to the ruins.

"Chess pieces? The relics are chess pieces?" Harriet said when we got there.

There were twenty pedestals. Two of each piece in each colour, pawn, rook, knight, bishop, king, and queen.

Art looked at them. "So we just pick one?"

I shrugged. "Guess so."

He turned around, then turned back holding up the black king, with his smirk back.

"…For some reason I'm not surprised you picked one of the kings." I deadpanned.

He shrugged. "Eh, why pretend."

I rolled my eyes.

"Uh, Dani, what are you doing?" That was Harriet.

Art and I looked at them. Daniela was holding Harriet back from the pieces while she stared at them thoughtfully.

Then she turned to us. "Hey, we told you guys about what we can do. How about returning the favour."

Art and I looked at each other, and then turned back to Daniela. I spoke up. "Uh, why now?"

"Just humour me."

Art shrugged. "Okay. I mostly do close combat, my axe is also a shotgun, and my semblance allows me to release short range concussive force. Either directed or as a shockwave."

'Close combat specialist. Cool. Maybe I should have asked about this myself.'

"I feel like I should have asked earlier, sorry."

Art shrugged. "I didn't ask about yours, so it's no big deal."

"I didn't ask Dani about hers either, she just told me." Harriet deadpanned.

I let out a snort of amusement at that.

"And what about you Sam?" Daniela asked, completely ignoring Harriet.

"Well, I'm not sure how to explain it exactly, but I'm aware of trajectory or vectors…something like that. It means that I'm very good at judging where a shot will land. It takes a few moments to get details on really long range shots, but I'm getting faster. It also works with living movement to some extent, but that's more difficult due to constant changes. Give me time to line up a shot and I can hit from considerable range."

"So you could shoot a Grimm through the eye at long range?" Art asked.

I shook my head. "No. At least not yet. I'm getting more precise, but that's more of a long term goal."

It's a work in progress, but one day I may be able to completely blind a Deathstalker in less than 15 seconds. But like I said, that's a long term goal.

Daniela nodded, still looking thoughtful, and then smiled. She walked up to the pieces and selected…the white king.

'What? Did she figure it out?'

She turned to the rest of us. "Okay people, let's go." She walked off.

Art raised an eyebrow. "What was that about?"

"…I think the four of us are going to be on the same team." I replied.

"Huh?"

"Never-mind. Let's just go."

####

In comparison to finding the temple finding the way back was fairly easy, we just head towards the cliffs this time and that's a landmark that's difficult to miss. It was made even easier since all we really had to do was follow the trail of smashed trees left by the Deathstalker as it chased the soon-to-be teams RWBY and JNPR.

We must have been about halfway back when Harriet stopped us.

"Wait." Her face showed a look of concentration. "We've got company."

Then the howling started.

I originally intended to show the fight in this chapter as well. But it was getting longer, I was haveing trouble with it and this seemed like as good a place as any to end the chapter.

So, here I've introduced the other members of the soon-to-be team.

Daniela Keller and Harriet Nall. Their last names came from a random name generator.

Their semblances were originally ideas I had for Sam, but in the end I gave him a weapon more Earth-like and a semblance that allows him to be effective with it.

Yes I did give him a semblance that could be summed up as 'Improbable Aiming Skills', but there are limitations. No ricochet trick shots, for example.

Next chapter should finish the initiation, reveal the team name, and hopefully start going into the team dynamics.

Bye.