Chapter 18: Test of Strength
Team's LARD, CSCD and JANE all gathered in the training room with the rest of their classmates, they took their seats with their partners and watched as Pyrrha walked to the front of the room and immediately looked at her sons and then observed Joker and Ace and left herself a mental note.
"Alright then, seeing as it's your first class of the day let's not waste time and introduce ourselves then." Pyrrha smiled at them "As you know, I'm Professor Arc your combat instructor and we'll start today's lesson with two team's sparring against one another." They all looked to each other and weren't expecting this. They all were nervous knowing that they weren't in synch with each other yet. Pyrrha grinned at their reactions knowing they weren't expecting this, at the same time Jaune walked in and locked eyes with his wife.
"So Professor Arc what do you think the teams should be?" Pyrrha called out to Jaune.
"How about Team JANE facing off against Team CSCD" Jaune responded. "It'll be a good test of their leadership skills, you'll get ten minutes to organise yourselves and make a plan of attack."
"I already have a plan. Attack" Ace commented.
"That's a good idea Mr. Teal, but what about when the rest of your team become incapacitated?" Pyrrha responded.
"If they can't hold their own then our fearless leader obviously doesn't deserve to lead" Ace retorted.
"Let's let cooler heads prevail and work together" Emerald interrupted.
"Children" Pyrrha called out. "Please go and prepare yourselves for battle." Both teams went and changed into their battle gear. Castor wore his gold chest armour and pauldrons and grabbed his shield and spear and looked at his team noticing the looks of nervousness and angst. "We'll be fine guys after all our leader here knows what to say, right?" Castor asked his brother.
"Y-Yeah, s-sure I do" Dilan responded nervously. He looked at his teammates and noticed Serah glaring at him, he stood and prepared himself for the fight that they were about to engage in and realised he had to show his strength as a leader now.
"Alright guys we can beat them, because we are a team, we grew up together and from here until the day we graduate and hopefully beyond those days we will fight together" Dilan said expertly. His team cheered loudly and stood together determined to win as a team. They walked together to see JANE in formation waiting for their opponents. Dilan quickly noted Nio standing in the back with Emerald being his vanguard and Joker and Ace holding their ground and as the pointsmen.
"All right guys here's the formation, Castor and I will take point considering we have shields, Clare we need you to guard our flanks considering your hammer and have range with your grenade launcher and finally Serah, we need you to switch with Clare on ranged fighting. Your job is to try and find weaknesses in their defences and exploit it any way you can, and if possible isolate any of their team members so we can pick them off quickly." Dilan instructed to his team. Serah examined Dilan and noticed how quickly he could become mature if when the situation called for it, Clare smiled when she noticed that he became leader he was born to be.
Nio followed his team to change into their battle armour, but before he could follow he was stopped by Jaune who looked at him with a serious look on his face.
"Alright, I'll keep this quick as possible." Jaune muttered to him "I need you to not use your armour while you are inside school premises unless you are given express permission by either myself or one of the other Professor's, with that being said you have permission to use your armour while on training missions or like I said before you are given express permission by one of the Professor's to use it on school premises. Do you understand why I'm doing such a thing?"
"Would it be that I'm too powerful with my armour and you consider me a threat to the lives of other students, sir?" Nio responded back.
"No, it's for your protection and so we don't have an issue of people constantly attacking us so they can get either you or your battle suit." Jaune commented in a serious tone.
"Yes, sir I understand." Nio responded before joining his team. As he entered the room he overheard Emerald bickering with Joker and Ace.
"I highly doubt you and our so called 'team leader' have the capability to handle one of those weaklings on the other team" Ace called over at Emerald.
"I have an idea, how about I come over there and remove your tongue from your mouth." Emerald screamed at him. Nio walked in and changed into his street clothing and grabbed his Sapphire Cutter Mk. 2 from his locker, none of them noticed Professor Port standing in the doorway observing them argue and fight with each other.
"Enough, all of you!" Professor Port yelled at them. "You're supposed to be a team, which means you can't rely on yourself or your partner, you must rely on your entire team because like it or not, you're stuck together for the next four years whether you like it or not so stop being children and work as a team and you will achieve greatness. Work for yourself and you will achieve nothing except for a one way ticket to an early grave, so if you don't wish for the latter I suggest you all take the first step to working together by listening to your leader."
Nio looked at his teammates and observed each of their weapons and formulated a strategy quickly.
"O-Okay, s-s-so first, Emerald I need you to guard me while I-I attack them from long distance and try to catch them o-off g-guard while J-Joker and A-Ace lead the charge and keep them on the defensive." Nio managed to stutter to his teammates.
"So the plan is for us to keep them occupied and not get beaten on while you get to try and pick them off from a distance" Ace retorted.
"He's the leader so at least try to give him a chance to lead us and do what he says this time" Emerald cut in.
"Come on, guys try to work together and give the team a chance" Nio responded. They all acknowledged him and left the locker room and noticed their opponents hadn't emerged from the locker room yet and got into their formation and readied themselves for battle. After a few minutes they watched Team CSCD emerge from the locker room and quickly got into their battle positions.
Team JANE was caught off guard by their opponent's battle formation when they realised it would be their leader who would lead them along with his brother, Pyrrha approached the middle of the arena she looked at both sides and signalled for them to begin. Clare opened up with a barrage of grenades on them and watched Joker and Ace scatter to opposite ends of the arena while Castor and Serah quickly isolated Joker and didn't give him a chance to react to the onslaught brought on by both of them, Joker tried to counter-attack but wasn't given a chance when Serah froze him in place and immobilised him. Ace tried to charge over to his brother quickly but was repelled by a flurry of grenades from Clare while Dilan quickly closed in on him, without noticing her opponents Clare was quickly incapacitated by a barrage of bullets from Nio's gun. Serah noticed this and quickly threw up an ice wall to protect her and Castor from the next barrage from Nio, she then started charging at Emerald and Nio with Castor by her side determined to take them down. Meanwhile, Dilan and Ace fought each other, Dilan trying to poke and prod at Ace while he tried to get in close with his bladed gauntlets but unsuccessfully getting in at an effective range. Dilan shield bashed Ace and moved back to start firing upon Ace, as he tried to deflect the shots fired at him he felt the blunt impact of the bullets that hit him. Ace realised that he wasn't going to win this battle and tried to retreat but as he tried he was hit in the centre of the chest, legs and forehead which incapacitated him. Pyrrha looked towards Jaune and noticed the smile on his face as he watched the two teams face off against each other.
Emerald saw Serah and Castor quickly approaching them and knew what needed to be done and quickly produced three clones of herself and used two to quickly occupy Castor knowing that they wouldn't last long against him, so she engaged Serah with the remaining clone and effectively forced her to use her dust reserves. She slashed at her which Serah guarded against and stepped back expecting Emerald to slash at her and got caught off guard as she saw Emerald's swords produce a shadow blade thrust towards her and was quickly beaten with a quick assortment of slashes and thrusts and was incapacitated when Emerald threw a huge shadow fist and slammed her into a wall. Adam stood up and went to rush into the arena but was quickly stopped as Reginald stopped him from trying go after Emerald, Dilan watched Serah and then looked at his parents expectantly. He looked back when he realised they wouldn't stop the match, so he ran towards Nio and tried to finish him quickly knowing Emerald would try to stop him. He smiled when he saw his plan work and Emerald and Nio focus him down, Nio tried to stop him by firing at him with his weapon while Emerald tried to rush him quickly, Dilan raised his shield to stop the bullets from hitting him and slid on his knees while aimed his sights down on Emerald and fired at her legs, jaw, temple and ribs, which quickly incapacitated her and allowed Castor a chance to join with him.
Castor and Dilan quickly started to overpower Nio, and Dilan grew overconfident and switched from his usual balanced style to a more aggressive style which caused Castor to halt his advance and step back and allowed Nio to gain a slight reprieve which gave him a chance to activate his semblance and transform his weapon into its melee form and allowed him to push Dilan back and forced him and Castor into defence, without any extensive knowledge of him they didn't know how long they could last against Nio and how long he could maintain his assault. Dilan saw an opening in Nio's attack and used it to make contact with his weapon and blocked his attack and used the strike to deflect Nio's arm and causing him to hold it in pain while Dilan was thrown into a wall with a sickening crack against it. Castor used the opportunity to sweep Nio' legs out from under him and finished him with a shield slam into the ground winding him and causing Pyrrha, Adam and Reginald to quickly dash over to Dilan and Serah who were both slumped against the wall. Reginald quickly checked on him while Adam ran to Serah.
"Quickly get the nurse, his injuries look bad and he's not breathing" he called out to the others. Dilan was carried out in a stretcher to the nurse's office and Serah was carried slumped in Adam's arms while Nio was checked for broken bones while Emerald and Ace were checked for concussion's, and Joker was checked for hypothermia. Clare suffered bruises from the impact of the bullets, Serah was knocked out cold with it being unknown for how long she would be like that. Ace needed stitches from the deadly accuracy of Dilan's shot, Emerald had received a concussion and was excused from classes for the rest of the day while Nio was lucky enough only to receive bruised ribs from the impact of Dilan's shield. Dilan was unlucky and was in critical condition with a possibility being paralysed for life and severe mental trauma, the extent of it unknown from being perfectly fine to being a vegetable for the rest of his life or even the possibility of psychotic breaks. Jaune stood in the infirmary looking at his son and Serah in the beds, he knew what was coming next; he would have to call the parents of all the teams responsible which meant having to hear Weiss scream at her and Nora possibly beating him with a hammer. He also knew if he stood half a chance at living he'd need to call in Ruby, Yang, Blake and Sun, he grabbed his scroll from his pocket when he saw a message from Pyrrha notifying him the parents would be arriving tomorrow which meant he only had until morning to get the all the reports he needed.
A/N: Hey guys I'm back finally and uploading a new chapter, unfortunately I won't be able to give a guaranteed schedule of when I'll be able to update so just keep an eye out and also a big thank you to Iron Brony for the review and as always RWBY and its characters aren't mine and belong to Rooster Teeth. Also I will be updating my other story Expectations and possibly throwing in a few one shots here and there.