It was nearly time for the match with Team LLAC. Jaune told himself that Pyrrha's confidence was probably justified. Her line was that no doubt they had some tricks up their sleeve and that it would be an interesting fight, but she still expected to win. Nora was also confident, and she again had reason to be. Firing Magnhild's grenades or hitting people with Magnhild when tasered had worked well every time so far and even Yang avoided charging Nora after a spectacular hammer to the jaw which had sent her soaring out of the combat arena in the first month of term.
The more he'd thought about it, he could not think of anything which was a real gamechanger which should make LLAC their equals rather than a tricky opponent. He'd had a long talk with Weiss who had shared her files on Team LLAC. Some of this information reflected the fact that she had known Brede in Atlas and that when her sister had served in Vacuo, TC had been under her command. Weiss had also spent time trying to spot people's semblances, including ones which the students themselves had not worked out.
She confirmed that Brede's semblance was a "dead shot" one and had been revealed three and a half years back. Unlike virtually all students he had actually had to kill people in self-defence. Jaune agreed reluctantly that she was right when she said Brede's sword work was elegant rather than damaging. Jaune knew that mother would love to have Brede on one of her teams as a hunter who could fire rapidly and accurately from a bullhead and got on well with Faunus and humans was more or less her dream LGDF employee. Still, he was a known quantity.
Weiss agreed with Pyrrha that Anne's semblance was a defensive one and perhaps was some form of limited telekinesis or reality alteration. Useful but not an offensive threat. She was not certain about Lydia, but the fact the woman could drive a golf ball three hundred yards with an eighty-year golf club which doubled as a blunt instrument and a rifle was suggestive. Her guess was that Lydia had a sporting all-rounder semblance, and the woman had been using it unconsciously anyway for three years.
She passed on Winter's view that TC had an oddball semblance, possibly a trickster one. Jaune had nodded at this. The Brother Rabbit stories in Mistral were popular among both poorer humans and especially Faunus. The stories from Russel, Fox and Brede all suggested he was cunning and skilled at making his opponents make mistakes. The stories they had told about him suggested that he relied on taking advantage of distractions and confusing his opponents. Not much scope for those qualities in a bare arena.
In the end Pyrrha and Ren had both plumped for the belief that what Team LLAC had was a plan to take Nora out if she charged them as normal by concentrating their fire power and using some as yet undisclosed wrinkle with Anne's semblance. If Team LLAC took out Nora quickly, then Brede would be the spare man and could take his time taking the others out. Pyrrha would need time to take down Lydia especially if she had to deal with the occasional bullet. It was decided that instead Nora should use the grenade launcher and disrupt whatever they had planned. They then had a choice of strategies depending on what they saw at the time.
Jaune saw it made sense. He just could not help feeling that they were just about to throw Brother Rabbit into a briar bush. He was not entirely happy that the match had in effect turned into a challenge and that it was increasingly looking like a tournament match. There would be entrances with theme music and Coco had been co-opted as an announcer and the rest of Team CFVY would be helping out. There would even be two drones filming the fight which would enable Professor Goodwitch to give more detailed feedback to the combatants the day after. It had even been decided that the class would be prolonged to allow all students a chance to watch.
Scrolls were not permitted amongst the spectators. There had been some rows earlier in the term about people releasing footage of Pyrrha fighting to the press and the argument had been made that training sessions were exactly that. People used them to learn, experiment and make mistakes without fear of it being leaked on the ScrollNet. It was generally agreed that having footage released to others without permission of the fighters themselves was not the act of a gentleman or young lady.
Currently Team RWBY were taking on Team BBLE and this was the normal destructive battle when Henry Boxer and Yang were involved. When Henry's quarterstaff hit the floor it caused chunks to fly up in the air and Yang's bullets had much the same effect. Ruby's sniper bullets also took its toll and Cardin and Russel were due to fight just before their fight.
When Team RWBY as expected won the fight after ten minutes, Professor Goodwitch sighed and used her semblance to do the normal repairs to the surface. At the end of the class, Professor Modesty would come in and deal with the fine detail. Although Professor Goodwitch mostly sorted out the surface it was not quite perfect afterwards. Still, it was a case of it being a little uneven rather than treacherous.
He nudged Pyrrha, "Watch out for where the damage is concentrated and let's see if Anne stands near it."
Pyrrha nodded, "It may help on a defensive telekinesis semblance to have a weakened floor. You may be right. Still, it's not as though much of the surface is affected."
Around 11.45 the arena started to fill with second years. At 11.50 Professors Lee, Peach and Port arrived. At the same time Dr Oobleck arrived with an old woman who was dressed smartly and had a stick. Cardin went over and greeted the woman. While he was doing so Dr Oobleck had a brief word of encouragement with Anne. It was known that Dr Oobleck had been her sponsor and was a form of mentor to her.
At 12 most of the third and fourth years who were not on field trips arrived as did Professor Ozpin and another old lady in a wheelchair with three attendants. Cardin also went over to this woman and kissed her on the hand. He vaguely knew that Cardin and Lydia had some relatives in common and that the money in the family was held by two great aunts who were among the wealthiest people in Remnant.
The two low ranking teams who were fighting each other seemed to be disturbed by the large and distinguished audience and began to suffer from stage fright. Eventually the fight ended, and Professor Goodwitch gave her normal useful, if direct, feedback.
There was one match to go before theirs. It was a doubles match with Cardin and Russel taking on two members of Team LMDE (known as Lemonade). He expected that this would be quick.
At that point Team LLAC left the arena for the changing rooms. Team JNPR were dressed in combat gear ready to fight and wondered what Team LLAC were up to. They had seemed dressed to fight, albeit in their normal slightly eccentric manner.
He started to feel queasy. There were around two hundred people watching and he realised why he had been told that it was rare for people to do well in their first Mistral Regional match. Still Pyrrha and to a lesser extent Nora and Ren were used to it. He was pretty certain that Anne at least was in the same boat as him. The main problem was that he was nervous about the challenge. He was frightened that Team LLAC had a plan which relied on his perceived weakness. He knew that he needed to keep away from fighting TC or Anne at close quarters near the ring out zone because of their unarmed combat skills.
Pyrrha nudged him, "Team Lilac's got the right idea. Let's go into the corridor and prepare early."
Pyrrha did the things she always did before a match which included adjusting her armour, checking her equipment, and stretching. Jaune followed suit while Nora and Ren had their own rituals. The extra formality made it all seem more serious than the usual battles, even the ones with Team RWBY where they expected the fight to be on equal terms.
Yatsuhashi appeared from the arena. He said, "Coco will start your music in thirty seconds." The coin toss had resulted in Team JNPR making the first entrance. Yatsuhashi counted down the last five seconds and opened the arena doors for them and they walked into the arena to the sound of a rousing version of the Hall of the Mountain Grimm. Pyrrha had said that she felt it was wrong to use her old theme for the team as a whole and had liked the stories Jaune had told of the Ansel LGDF using classical music and rock songs when the bullheads dealt with Grimm.
There was loud applause as they entered the arena. Nora had prompted Yang and Julia in advance to start off some foot stomping and clapping to the rhythm of the music and it caught on with the audience. The music closed at the first appropriate place after they reached the centre of the arena. Coco had been invited by Lydia and Pyrrha to announce the names of the team members. They had been amused by her running commentary when she and Yatsuhashi had trained/punished Dove and Sky. In Team JNPR's case her announcements were suitably flamboyant. It helped in some ways to calm him down being distracted and amused by her hyperbole and alliteration.
He looked across at the other side of the arena. There was a coat stand and next to it were two golf bags and a black briefcase. Velvet was standing next to it and after the final introduction went toward the doors to call in team LLAC.
The music for Team LLAC then started. Jaune smiled to himself as he recognised the voice of the performer. It was that of the Faunus singer Foxy Heart and must be from her new album Foxy Rocks. The team strode slowly and purposefully through the doors. All four were wearing long black coats and dark sunglasses. Anne was carrying a dark briefcase, Brede had one of his rifles, Lydia and TC had a golf bag each and TC also had his cross bow.
Nora said, with more than a hint of jealousy "I love the power walk." Jaune knew that Ren would soon be choreographing one for the team.
He then registered some of the lyrics which included the declaration "We're going to take you out." He and Ren looked at each other. Such a forthright challenge was out of the character for the four people facing them but must mean that they thought they had a chance. Nora just cackled and said, "That's fighting talk" while Pyrrha said to herself, "Finally." He made a note to ask her afterwards why she had said that. As it was he turned to look at her and she blushed.
The announcements of the names of the members of Team LLAC brought a couple of surprises. TC removed the coat and underneath was light coloured trousers, shirt and tie which looked like a version of an Atlesian military uniform suitable for desert warfare. Lydia was wearing white flannel trousers; a white shirt and a V necked white jumper and took out her cricket bat from the golf bag and a box of balls. He heard some heckles from the audience along the lines of "It's not cricket, you know." Lydia ignored them and did her normal stretching exercises. Brede was wearing a dark suit and a bulges suggested that he also had a shoulder holster with a revolver in it. TC handed him one of the golf bags and took the other for himself. Anne was wearing black trousers as part of what looked like the uniform of a waitress in a smart restaurant. The glasses had been taken off by Lydia and TC, but Brede and Anne had kept theirs on.
Lydia used the cricket bat to prod the spot where he was certain that Yang had caused the surface to splinter and then turned to Jaune and winked at him. He looked across at Pyrrha who shrugged and said, "Ignore it." Jaune nodded but still felt ill at ease.
Coco gave them a thirty second warning and the combatants started to move into position. Team LLAC started switching weapons around between them. He stared at the line up facing them. As expected Brede was at the back although closer than Jaune had been expecting. He had taken what looked like a medium sized club out of the golf bag he had, presumably to defend against Nora. Anne was in front of Brede, and he saw that the gap between the two was less than normal. She had the brief case in front of her with the locks opened and had Lydia's baseball bat in her hands. This suggested that they were prepared for a Nora charge.
Lydia had the hockey stick in hand and was to the left. TC was on the right and had a loaded cross bow in his hands, but Lydia's golf club was next to him. He had laid out ten golf balls in front of him.
He still could not think of anything better to do than to start the match by having Ren taser Nora and her use the grenade launcher function of Magnhild. He and Pyrrha would use their shields to defend against the bullets from Brede and TC's bolts and advance steadily with Pyrrha firing as they went.
Coco did the countdown from ten, at which point Lydia and TC put their dark glasses back on. At five team LLAC started moving within their half of the arena, Lydia dropped the hockey stick and moved backwards taking two cricket balls out of her pockets, Anne moved to the left swinging the baseball bat, TC started to move towards the centre. He did not immediately look at Brede as he wondered what the other three were up to.
As soon as the whistle blew to start the fight, he realised that perhaps he should have watched Brede. The club had transformed into a grenade launcher. Ren tasered Nora who brought Magnhild up to fire. TC and Brede fired their weapons and Lydia threw what he suspected was a cricket ball at him and Pyrrha.
He felt no impact on his shield and then realised that the grenade had fallen short but had damaged the arena floor. He then realised that the grenade, the cricket ball and the first bolt had not been intended to harm aura but were instead smoke bombs with some tear gas added. He heard Nora fire another rocket grenade. He could hear sounds of pummelling which he could not make sense of. As far as he could tell the crowd were as confused as he was.
He thought, I know many Faunus have excellent night vision, but does it work with smoke? To the side he heard Nora go, "Ouch" and assumed that meant that even if they could not seem team LLAC, Brede at least could see them.
While Nora, Ren and Pyrrha had excellent response times and could deflect most bullets with their weapons and shield rather than use their aura, the smoke meant that they had no time to react. He suspected that Brede and TC were firing on the move. If Lydia could see through this smoke and the two men could fire through it then if she suddenly appeared in front of one of them she could do a huge amount of damage. Nora fired another rocket grenade, but more in hope than expectation. He could still hear the sound of pummelling and wondered what was happening.
He shouted, "The glasses must give them infra-red vision. Ren, Nora, get behind me and Pyrrha."
He told them to advance quickly behind his and Pyrrha's shields. At this point Pyrrha and he slipped on some marbles, they both grabbed hold of the other person to try and keep upright which resulted in them both falling over. As they did so a bullet and cross bow bolt passed above his head and aura and hit Ren and Nora. A series of golf balls followed. He got to his feet and said, "Let's shuffle." He assumed that the marbles had been in the briefcase Anne had been holding and had been sent in their direction.
Shuffling was not a quick process, but his and Pyrrha's shields did block the bullets, golf balls and crossbow bolts. Just then he heard a shout from Dove in the audience of "Donkey drop." He only later discovered exactly what that meant, but in practice got the gist when a fire dust grenade went over his and Pyrrha's shields but dropped just behind the two of them causing damage to all four auras. This was followed by three grenades following the same trajectory which also managed to cause damage to Ren and Nora and some missiles somehow hitting ren and Nora from behind.
They finally got out of the smoke and could see that Anne had spent the time they were confused by the smoke demolishing the weakened arena floor using Lydia's baseball bat and that Brede's rocket grenade must have had some dust as well as smoke in it. This meant that the ground in front of them was uneven and that running quickly across it was impractical. He could also see that Nora's grenades had made a mess of the back wall behind Team LLAC. Brede was aiming at them using his hybrid rifles and waiting for an opening. Anne was between them and Brede while Lydia was to their front right with her hockey stick ready to charge them and TC was a little back from her with his cross bow.
He lifted his shield slightly for Ren and Nora called Pyrrha to lift her shield higher. The objective was for Ren to engage Anne and for Nora to take out Brede while Anne was distracted from doing whatever she was capable of. They had discussed this as an option before the fight but had not expected to need to use it.
As Ren bounced off his shield to avoid the debris, Jaune suddenly engaged brain. The marbles had had to go forty yards to get underfoot. Anne's semblance must be stronger than they had thought.
As Nora leapt onto Pyrrha's shield he saw Lydia change direction and run towards TC who turned his back on her and bent over.
He swore to himself. Team LLAC did have a plan; it had just needed a delay to set it up which he had had given them.
As Ren flew towards Anne, she leant down, put a hand on the floor and concentrated. The debris rose from the floor and formed a wall in front of Ren. There was an audible gasp from the audience as Ren in effect charged a concrete wall at full speed. Actually, worse than that as the wall had some momentum of its own and other debris swirled around him damaging his aura.
Nora was distracted by what had happened to Ren so did not notice that Lydia had used TC's back as a springboard to propel herself in the air while carrying the hockey stick. She spun in the air as though she was on an extreme cheerleading squad. She then jack-knifed and caught Nora's trailing foot with the crook of the hockey stick.
Pyrrha threw her shield at Anne taking a route which took her shield outside the ring out area and the concrete. Just before it hit Anne it took a detour, speeded up and imbedded itself into the floor next to Anne.
Both Anne and Pyrrha seemed equally shocked by the result. The debris which had dropped to the ground momentarily, resumed beating up Ren from all sides while Anne moved across and draped herself over the shield. He heard Pyrrha laugh next to him and say to herself, "Well played."
Brede in the meantime had drawn the revolver from the shoulder holster and fired six bullets rapidly at Nora who was now badly off course.
Pyrrha in the meantime was firing at TC who was getting himself back to his feet after being faceplanted by the impact of being used as a springboard by Lydia.
Nora was desperately trying to regain control of her fall and realised that she was in danger of being rung out. She landed just within the arena but facing the wrong way. Brede fired a rifle shot at her and TC ignoring the bullets from Pyrrha fired a cross bow bolt at her while dashing towards the back of the arena. However, the icing on the cake was the debris from Nora's earlier grenade launches moving towards her. Anne wasn't even looking at Nora but was instead staring at the aura level screens.
As a sign of how things were not working out for team JNPR Lydia had landed perfectly and grabbed a cricket ball from out of her pocket and bowled it at Nora. This was the final straw and Nora lost balance and fell out of the arena just before her aura got below 15%. He stole a look at the screens. Despite not taking a hit so far Anne's aura was at 60%.
"Pyrrha, we can't help Ren. Anne's burning off aura using her semblance. There's still time."
Pyrrha nodded.
The next minute Ren was out of the fight. An ice dust bolt from TC trapped Ren in a bad position allowed him to be taken out by the three people with distance weapons plus some debris in about twenty seconds.
Pyrrha was now behind him, taking advantage of the shield aspect of Crocea Mors and sniping at Team LLAC. Taking on Brede, TC and Lydia in a sniping match was like getting in a bum kicking match with a porcupine. There was no way even with Ruby's enhancements he could shield both of them totally.
It got worse when Anne got just behind Brede and then invoked her semblance again. The random movement of the debris prevented them getting more than a few shots in, but Brede knew when a gap in the barrier would appear and was able to keep shooting. From what Pyrrha said, he was using dust enhanced bullets which caused maybe 20% more damage than she expected. Lydia then started lobbing dust grenades at them.
Jaune ignored the first few which looked as they were overshooting, but then felt aura hits as they seemed to abruptly fall and hit them were they were not expecting.
Pyrrha said, "Telekinesis semblance which only works on small objects, but works on lots of them and she has finetuned her use of it."
"Do you have any ideas?" Jaune knew he didn't.
At that stage, another smoke bolt was fired at them or rather just in front of them, so Jaune had no chance of using his shield to deflect it.
Jaune felt rather like General Lagune must have. Fighting an enemy who could see you when you couldn't see them was not a recipe for success. The narrow arena meant that the tactics worked better than they might have done in a different arena, but he had not spotted the risk even though he had instinctively known that there was one.
He gathered that they were now flanked by Brede and TC on either side and that the bullets and bolts were getting through.
They were now in a four to two situation and had retreated to the back of the arena. Pyrrha glanced behind them at the screens. "Anne's down to 40%, Lydia's at 75, TC's at 65 and Brede is still over 90."
Jaune knew he was still in the seventies, but suspected Pyrrha must be way lower.
She suddenly whispered, "Sorry, Jaune, but I prefer to go down fighting."
She darted from behind and charged through the smoke. After a few seconds delay he charged after her to see that she had run into a barrage of bullets, debris and cross bow bolts and then was confronted by a baseball bat swinging Lydia. An effective four on one attack without people getting in each other's way led to an inevitable result. While she did cause more damage to Lydia than Lydia did to her, Lydia was still in the high forties when Pyrrha was knocked out.
It was now a four to one fight. The four had him surrounded and there were four rather nasty looking collections of debris nearby.
TC said, "Look, old man, if you want we can take you out, but I thought it only fair t' allow you t' chance to surrender or ring yourself out. Crocea Mors is an excellent shield, but it can't protect you from being attacked from all sides at once and Anne can do that by herself."
Anne said, "Mind you if you want to be beaten up by Lydia,…."
Part of him was tempted to quote one of Amber's favourite films. "Never give up, never surrender." His LGDF training took over then. Mother had made it quite clear that while it was bad to lose anyone, she really hated people being heroes and losing everyone in a vain attempt to save a person who was already lost. Her brother had lost his life that way and the lives of hundreds of other people who could have been saved if he had not sacrificed himself needlessly.
He thought better of the gesture, "Fine, but you must let me buy the first round in the bar tonight."
"No problem, old man."
"Young man to you, TC." He walked towards the back of the arena and stepped over the ring out line.
There was a large round of applause from the spectators. He looked round and saw Pyrrha running towards Anne, giving her a hug, and raising her hand in the air. Lydia and Nora joined her in hugging the Faunus woman. Ren and Brede also shook hands.
TC approached him and shook his hand. He said to Jaune, "Don't beat yourself up old man. We've been hiding how good those two were for weeks and this was the best chance we had to beat you."
Professor Goodwitch pushed her glasses up her nose and said "Team LLAC. I think we can safely say that you have proved the concept. Do bear in mind that this will be of less use at the Vytal festival because the arena is significantly larger. In addition, please think carefully before using it on missions. Civilians get upset when you destroy their roads and buildings unnecessarily. However, in confined spaces and a small arena this type of attack is deadly. Miss Harker, I noticed that you deliberately controlled your attacks so that Miss Valkyrie, Miss Nikos and Mr Lie Ren were not entirely depleted of aura. I appreciate the thought, but you perhaps held back a little too much. As the rest of you will have gathered, Miss Harker's semblance is a form of telekinesis. I will be happy to discuss its limits and its additional potential uses with her and her team at their convenience. Finally, I anticipate there will be rule changes before the Vytal festival. The television viewers will not appreciate being unable to see what is happening in the arena and having all contestants wearing dark glasses will be seen as a bad idea. I also suspect that there will be a limit on the number of weapons which will be allowed per team."
He saw TC do a hand pump of delight. He recalled the man saying that one of his ambitions was to force rule rewrites.
Professor Goodwitch then turned to Team JNPR and said, "I am not certain that you could have done anything about that. Every so often even the best hunters and huntresses will walk into situations where their opponents have had time to prepare something nasty. Fortunately, Grimm do not have semblances or aura and most semblances are not so versatile as Miss Harker's. A drawback of the Vytal Festival Tournament is that encourages hunters to hide their semblances. As with any weapon, it is preferable to practice and experiment with it to gauge its flaws and possibilities."
She then looked at the arena and sighed. "Professor Lee and I will repair the arena. Class dismissed."
He looked towards Pyrrha and prepared to apologise to her for allowing her to be defeated. He then realised that unless she was a lot better actress than he had given her credit for, she was genuinely laughing. She came over to him and said, "This is not your fault. We all agreed on the tactics and the rest of us have lots more experience of fighting people than you do. Any given Sunday, remember."
Cardin gave him a bear hug, "Glad it was you and not us. See you in the bar tonight as I'm going to have to make good on the bet with Lydia."
Pyrrha disappeared for part of the afternoon to deal with her publicity people. Despite it being merely a training fight, news that the Invincible Girl had been defeated albeit in a team match was bound to leak out and would be big news in Mistral. Pyrrha said she would tell them she was going to make certain that her people did not blame it on her teammates and subtly remind people that one reason for going to Beacon was to fight people who were not overawed by her and allow her to improve. She also told him to search the ScrollNet this afternoon. That way madness lay.
Nora and Ren disappeared for an hour or two and explained that it was in connection with a bet Nora had made with Anne.
Ruby came round and kept him company. He learnt from her what had been going on while the smoke and tear gas had surrounded them. Anne had emptied the suitcase of marbles and had used the baseball bat to break up the floor. Lydia had also thrown grenades to help the process and bounced the golf balls off the barrier protecting the audience to hit Nora from behind as well as lobing the grenades into the smoke. Apparently Yang thought she recognised the club which Brede had used from a fight in a night club.
Julia then joined them and told stories about how Lydia had taken out Dove in a match at Pharos using golf balls when Dove had tried bullying her. Somehow the two of them cheered him up. They both regarded in much the way Pyrrha had and did not feel embarrassed about talking to him.
That evening in the bar, Pyrrha asked TC "Were you not tempted to keep her semblance under wraps for a bit longer?"
The Lynx Faunus said, "We thought about it. However, for the reasons Glynda gave it is unlikely to be so devastating in the Vytal Festival. If we have the right habitat we will use it."
"But everyone now knows that Anne has a telekinesis semblance."
"So what? Professor G is right t' say that the more practice you get with a semblance the better. We did not know whether it was strong enough t' take your shield out of the equation until we tried it, Pyrrha."
"That was planned?"
"I suggested it as a possibility and necessity is the mother of achievement. She is still naturally a defensive fighter. I still think that there is room for development for both her and Lydia. Lydia had not realised that her semblance extended to gymnastics as well as sports which involve hitting and throwing balls. Besides which there were other good reasons."
Jaune asked "What were they?"
"Too many teams go into fights with your team with the mindset that the best they can hope for is to lose with honour. The fact that we came up with a way to curb stomp you should encourage other teams to think laterally themselves. Second, people will now respect Anne and understand why she is here without having what people regard as a proper weapon. Third, we will now be fighting at the Vytal Festival. Fourth, Weiss at least was working out what Anne's semblance was and I'm pretty certain you had noticed something. We just hoped that you had not thought through its offensive possibilities."
Jaune asked, "Why us and not Team RWBY?"
"Mainly because everyone knows Pyrrha as the invincible girl and proves that we are the real thing. We know how good Team RWBY is, but the outside world does not. It has financial advantages for us. Lydia's great aunt Dahlia has offered t' pay to upgrade her weapons, Brede's uncle Parsifal has already sent us a contribution t' dust costs and we are already receiving offers of sponsorship deals. Lydia's great Aunt Agnes Winchester is also arranging a special training fortnight for us and Team CRDL in the winter holidays."
"What else?"
"The news that a team with two Faunus on it beat her will make some people in Mistral slightly rethink their views on Faunus. It will also help more Faunus think about applying to combat school and t' the academies as a real possibility."
Jaune looked doubtful at that being all and TC shrugged. "I also had fewer variables t' worry about. No offence Pyrrha, but you still fight like a singles fighter. Best one there is, but still a singles girl. Ren and Nora are a doubles team who rely on Nora's strength and Ren's speed. None of you have had t' really improvise yet or come up with new attacks. Ruby would have had more options to call on and I could not plan for them all. The girl is exhaustingly enthusiastic and is already suggesting new tactics to Anne and Lydia and is no doubt plotting how to use Weiss's glyphs against Anne and how to get Yang into close combat with Lydia to prevent her from throwing grenades and balls at people."
Coco came up to them and said, "TC, Anne said to get your sorry butt on stage and to wear this."
She handed him a pork pie hat with holes in the brim through which the Lynx ears could stick.
The Lynx Faunus raised his eyebrows but went along with it.
Pyrrha turned to Jaune and said, "He's right you know. You've tried telling us for weeks now. Let's work more on team attacks in the future."
TC was soon on the stage and Lydia, Anne, Nora, Blake, and Yang came on stage wearing cheerleader outfits.
The ex-Pharos students in the bar wolf whistled and applauded. Lydia in a short skirt was not something anyone at Pharos could recall seeing. When the karaoke machine started playing a tune, the Vale students broke into laughter.
Jaune understood why when the lyrics started, and the four women sang the words "Top Cat" while dancing around the rather bemused Faunus.
The whole bar erupted when they continued, "Whose intellectual close friends get to call him T.C., providing it's with dignity!"
They went on to refer to him as "The undisputed leader of the gang." They then segued into a song which gave them more scope for dancing which seemed to be entitled "Oh, TC, you're so fine." Yang in particular had great fun raising her eyebrows, winking at TC, and accentuating any conceivable double meaning with the lyrics of the song.
TC did his best to be nonchalant, but for the first time Jaune had known him was clearly embarrassed. There was loud applause when the song ended, and Ren was called up to take a vow as being the choreographer.
Next up was Cardin dressed in fishnet tights, basques and suspenders singing a song from the Dusty Horror Picture Show. Apparently Lydia had let him off part of the bet involving the rest of the team, but him singing "Hot Patootie" and dancing with Julia in the musical interludes brought the house down.
Later that evening TC had joined him and Ruby in a quiet corner while Brede and Weiss chatted in another corner and the rest of their teams were doing group karaoke numbers.
TC said to Ruby, "By the way, I am impressed by how you run your team. They are all so afraid of letting you down, that they dare not shirk their responsibilities."
Ruby laughed and said, "The same could be said of your team."
"No. At least two of the others could have been the leader and we would have come out much the same way. It helps that Brede knew me from the past and is a gentleman in all the best senses of the word, but neither I nor Anne would have had any problem with him or Lydia leading. On your team, Weiss has been taught to believe the world revolves round her family while Blair believes strongly in Faunus rights and could easily spend most of her time arguing with Weiss. Could you imagine either of them being in charge of the other as they were at the start of term? Yang could easily coast and spend her time partying without ceasing to be in the top quartile of our class if it were not for the fear of letting you down."
Jaune said, "She reminds me a bit of my twin sisters. I see what you mean."
Ruby blushed, but clearly found it hard to deny that the analysis had some truth. TC looked at Jaune and Pyrrha, "Much the same goes for Team Juniper. You are the only one who naturally thinks of your group as a team of four. Pyrrha and Ren are too polite to knock heads together and Nora prefers the direct approach. As for Team Cardinal, can you imagine anyone but Cardin in charge?"
Sorry for the delay but there was a mix of my internet access being down and a few days holiday. It also is quite hard to come up with a way for Team JNPR to be defeated without making them seem like fools or the other team seem overpowered. I'm not certain I've managed it, but I would appreciate feedback. I have adapted some aspects from Ruby's dash at the food fight, arena destruction comes from Yatsuhashi at Breach and Yang fighting Team FNKI and I have toned down aspects of Glynda's semblance.
If anyone is interested the two lesser known songs are the theme to "Top Cat" a 1960s cartoon series and "Oh, Mickey" which featured Toni Basil and is from the early eighties. Both are on you tube.