Fangs

Chapter 2: New Year, Old Prejudice

"What's wrong Amy, nothing to say? Fox got your tongue?"

Gilda was always like this. No matter the situation, she would find an opportunity to insult me, and almost always tried to find a way to reference the fact that I was a Faunus.

Even if it didn't really make sense in context, like this time. I pointed that out to her. "You do realize that's not how the phrase goes, right?" I said blandly.

Of course, that didn't stop her. "Oh, I'm sorry! Did I insult whatever weird pride you have? Should I go find a cat-person to apologize to?"

I clenched my teeth and clenched my hands into fists, my sharp nails barely not drawing blood. I couldn't let myself respond to her taunts any more than I already had, because I knew what would happen if I did anything that could be construed as an attack on her.

And so did she, as the wide grin on her face indicated. Gilda opened her mouth to make what would likely be yet another nasty comment, but instead shut it and went quiet.

Suddenly, a tanned hand slapped down onto my shoulder.

"Amy, hey! How've you been?"

I turned towards the owner of the hand. "Hello, Umber," I said resignedly.

Despite my tone of voice, I was thankful he had shown up. Umber was one of the few people that Gilda tried to act nice around, and so as long as he was here, she would at least pretend to be nice.

"Ack, Amy, so cruel!" Umber gasped dramatically, grasping at his chest. "You wound my heart with your words!" The grin on his face contradicted his words, of course.

I gave him a small smile, and responded in kind. "Then maybe you should harden your heart, because my words will only become harsher."

Umber gave a short bark of laughter. "Well, Amy," he said, "I see your tongue hasn't dulled any since last year!" With a grin still on his face, he turned to Gilda. Reaching a hand up to ruffle his spiky brown hair, he casually asked, "So, you hanging around any longer?"

"Ah, no," Gilda answered sweetly. "I'm sorry to go, but I really should be getting my things to my room. You know how it is; my family can only be stay for a short time, and I shouldn't keep them waiting any longer than I already have."

She turned to go, but only made it a few steps before she stopped short. Looking coyly over her shoulder past golden locks, she called out, "I'll be sure to see you later, Umber!"

Umber watched her stride away for a few moments, and then turned to me. "So, how was your summer?"

I looked at him, both amused at him and slightly pitying him. Umber was a nice person; Cerise and I often joked about him being somehow incapable of being purposefully mean. Sure, he could - and would - fight against other people, but he never did so out of any kind of malice. Unfortunately, this inability to be intentionally cruel seemed to have also lead to Umber being… rather oblivious. So despite Gilda (and a good number of other girls and guys) at the school flirting with Umber regularly, he remained blissfully unaware of all of it.

Umber was still waiting for an answer, so I told him, "It was decent. And yours?"

His face lit up, showing his obvious desire to talk about his own summer. "Mine was amazing! We went on a trip to Vale, and it was weird, seeing the differences between there and Atlas! My siblings and I even got to go on a tour of Beacon Academy with Mother! We saw all the different facilities they have, and met some of the professors! Did you know that Professor Port…"

I absentmindedly listened to Umber as he went on about all of the 'amazingly cool' things he got to see and do over the summer break. He didn't seem to notice when I lightly grabbed his arm and started steering him towards the school, caught up in telling me

"Oh, did I tell you about the student teams we met? They were great, and all of their weapons were so cool! There was a girl who had a shotgun-mace, and then one guy who actually had a whip, but it could fire these Dust-powered spines that exploded!"

"Umber." He kept talking. "Umber," I repeated. Nothing.

"Umber!"

"And I- huh?" He looked over at me, a confused expression on his face.

With a sigh, I asked him, "Maybe you should wait on the story? We do still need to get moved in, and I was hoping to get some tasks done today."

He shrugged and grinned. "As you command, Amy!"

I looked away, embarrassed. How can he say something that weird without hesitating?

Umber and I passed under the arch of Forge's gates, walking into where we'd be living for the next few months.

"So, what elective did you take?" Cerise asked, continuing to unpack as she did so.

Umber and I had walked all the way to the dorms, which were at the furthest point away from the front gates. (It was assumed by most that it was to prevent students from sneaking off-campus at night. Needless to say, it didn't really succeed in that.)

At that point, we split up. Male and female dorms were kept separate, with only a single entrance on the ground floor connecting the two areas. The dorms themselves were arranged by year, with first years being forced onto the top floor while fourth years got the ground floor. As third years, Cerise and I had a room on the second floor, which Umber had tried and failed to tease me about. He was in his fourth year, and was inordinately pleased at the fact that he wouldn't have to use stairs to get to and from his room.

Contrary to the stereotypes about women, Cerise and I didn't have all that much luggage between us. Cerise had a large suitcase and a second smaller bag, while I only had the one big suitcase for my own belongings. We easily made it up the stairs in one trip, although Mr. Rosario had tried to insist on carrying the larger of Cerise's bags.

I had to admit, the expression on his face had been amusing when Cerise lifted it above her head easily with one hand. It was as if he hadn't realized his daughter had been attending a combat school for the past two years, and therefore was much stronger than him.

After that brief amusing incident, we found our room, Cerise said her goodbyes to her family, and the process of unpacking our belongings began.

Which brought us back to where we were, with Cerise asking me about my elective.

"Literature," I responded, coincidentally at the same time as I was taking out the few books I brought. Most of my time outside of class was spent eating, studying, training and sleeping, but I figured that I might occasionally have the time to read before bed. "And you?"

"Art!" She almost sang the word. "I've missed being able to just relax and paint a pretty picture. It'll be nice to have that opportunity again."

I paused in my unpacking, turning to give Cerise a smile. "That sounds nice. I have to admit, my choice is mostly just so that I know I'll at least get some reading done this year… Unlike last," I said with a grimace.

Cerise made an expression to match. Second year had been full of stress; it was the year we were supposed to come up with and create our weapons. Personally, I thought it was a bit early to craft weapons, especially since there were still a few students who had yet to unlock their Semblances. And given that a fair number of warriors created their fighting styles according to their Semblance, it made more sense to make the weapon after that point.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, flawed or not, the result was a whole year of stress and hard work, making sure that each and every part of your weapon was as good as you could make it. Technically you could change it after that year, but the teachers also graded your weapon based on effectiveness. So if a student made a sub-par weapon to save time, with plans to replace the parts with higher-quality work later…

Suffice to say, the few students who had tried that in years past (long before we had arrived at Forge) had failed out of the combat school rather quickly.

The teachers used their stories as indirect threats if we didn't make our weapons flawlessly.

It was rather terrifying.

With a final shudder, I wrenched my thoughts away from thoughts of last year, and unpacked the very item that had resulted from that year's hard work.

Regia Sagitta. In one of the pre-Remnant languages, it translated roughly to "Royal Arrow", although admittedly, there was still a lot about those languages that we didn't know. Still, it had a nice ring to it, and fit the theme of my weapon rather nicely.

Regia Sagitta was a bow spear. I didn't have a fancy name for it, the way that some Hunters apparently did for their personal weapons, but I figured there was no point. The chance that someone else would recreate my design was almost zero, so why bother giving Regia Sagitta a description it would never need?

In bow form, Regia Sagitta was a combination of angled pieces angled to form the shape of a bow. At the center of the bow, a closed half circle arced out in the direction of the user, the grip being the piece that closed it off.

Unlike a normal bow, Regia Sagitta's draw power came from the string itself, not the limbs of the bow. While it had some flexibility, the mechanisms that controlled the string were what gave the fired arrows their speed and power.

To turn to bow form, the limbs of the bow straightened and came together, shifting along the half-circle section until they combined. (The string automatically retracted during the process, keeping it safe.) Then, the bow-grip retracted into the sides of the half-circle, and the blade extended out. The grip of the spear itself was within the middle section of the spear, and was revealed when Regia Sagitta fully extended.

My weapon's base form was simply its spear form without the blade or grip extended, with the handle of the bow extended to allow for it to quickly changed into and used in either form.

...Even in my own thoughts, I could never decide whether the way I thought of Regia Sagitta's features was too simplistic or too complex. But then again, most Hunter-style weapons are similar, so I wasn't exactly alone in having a weapon with oddities.

"Fawning over your weapon?"

Cerise's friendly teasing broke through my thoughts yet again. Internally, I berated myself for becoming distracted for the second time in one day.

Out loud, I replied, "To be honest, I'm still impressed that I managed to come up with the idea for it and build it." Cerise giggled quietly.

"It is more complex than mine," she agreed. "But you seem to like it a lot, so I guess it was worth it."

I gave a wordless sound of agreement. After that, the conversation seemed to die out, and both of us finished our unpacking in silence.

In a short amount of time, the last of my belongings had been taken out and appropriately placed. Looking at Cerise, it was clear that she was deep in the process of unpacking.

"I'm going to get some training in before the semester starts," I told her, making sure to grab my weapon as I stood. Cerise paused, looking up at me as she responded.

"Alright," she nodded and smiled. "I may try to catch up with you once I'm done here."

"No need to rush," I told her. Reaching the door, I opened it and stopped for a moment. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Cerise returning to the tedious task of making sure all of her belongings were correctly placed in the room. With a small smile on my face, I shut the door behind me.

"So, what'd you wanna do for training?" Umber asked, stretching his arms out.

I'd run into him - almost literally - just outside the dorms, and when I told him my plans for the afternoon, he decided to tag along and help out.

Which was good, because with a partner, I could actually train something I needed to work on.

It had been easy to find a free practice area, both because Forge had been built with combat practice in mind and because it was the day before classes started. Most students, like Cerise, were still getting themselves unpacked or settled in.

Responding to Umber, I told him, "Now that you're here, I think I would like to work on making my Semblance more useful."

I expected an odd look, but he just nodded and agreed.

"Sure, sure. What were you thinking?"

"Dodging practice."

This time he did give me an odd look. When he spoke, it was with a tone of confusion.

"Dodging practice?" He asked. "How's that supposed to help you with your Semblance? Doesn't really help you use it at all."

I sighed. I had hoped to not have to explain exactly what I intended to get from this training session, but Umber hadn't figured it out on his own.

"You do remember what my Semblance is, right?"

He was silent long enough for it to be suspicious. "...Enough."

I sighed again. "And by that I take it you barely remember at all." At his sheepish grin, I rubbed the bridge of my nose, tail twitching behind me.

"I guess I'll have to explain it to you again, then. My Semblance allows me to create a temporary illusion of myself, while turning my actual body invisible. I can only maintain the illusion and invisibility for a short amount of time, but it can give me a significant advantage in a fight. However, the moment anything disrupts the illusion-"

"It disappears," Umber cut in. With a grin on his face, he added, "Once you got started, I remembered most of what you told me."

"Now that you realize why I want to practice my dodging, can we begin?" I asked. I managed to keep hidden my small amount of irritation. I had explained this multiple times to Umber over the past two years, and he still managed to forget it.

"Sure, sure," Umber agreed, and pulled out his weapon.

Even after having seen it multiple times, Umber's weapon was impressive to me. He had named it Vulcanus, and the thing was a large battle-axe combined with a grenade-launching machine gun.

Or rather, that was how Umber described it. It didn't actually launch grenades, instead shooting out blasts of Dust-powered energy that exploded similarly, but that was a matter of semantics. Vulcanus fired its projectiles from the bottom of the weapon's shaft, opposite the end where the massive axe blade was. Along the pole were two handles that allowed Umber to hold Vulcanus steady while he fired it, with the higher of the two being directly opposite the blade. The axe-head itself actually only had a bladed edge, with the majority of it consisting of the rather massive ammo box that kept Umber from running out of ammo in a short amount of time, especially given that the ammo box was expanded to hold more than possible given its actual volume.

All in all, Vulcanus was a beast of a weapon, one that Umber had trained tirelessly to be able to use effectively. In exchange, once he had learned how to use it, Umber proceeded to become one of the top combatants in his year due to the immense power he could bring to bear.

And now I was asking him to attack me with it so I could get better at dodging.

"Ready?" Umber asked, weapon held up in preparation.

Taking a deep breath and releasing it, I left my own weapon in its place across my back, and bent my knees.

"Ready."

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