Face remained silent as the class copied the writing on the board down, calmly watching the class with his arms folded and legs crossed whilst he leaned on the table. He occasionally sniffed, but even then that was silent, making him seem like he was suspicious as he scanned around the room with narrowed eyes. More than half the class had now finished, and silently watched their teacher as they waited for him to continue. A few students were still writing. "Fuckin' Christ, you kids are slow," he muttered, shaking his head. A few of the teens around the classroom rolled their eyes at his insult. They preferred not to be called 'kids'. And as awesome as it was the day before, when he utterly destroyed Glynda, it didn't change the fact that 'sometimes' he could be an asshole. Finally, Jaune put his pen down and looked to Face. "You done, Timebomb?" Nobody understood.
"U-Uh...sir?" Jaune stuttered, tilting his head. Face remained in the position he'd been in.
"Timebomb." he repeated. "Y'know, light fuse, run away? Takes a while to get going, but gets there in the end, and it's worth it."
"I-I...don't understand..."
"Learn to understand," Face replied casually, standing himself up and moving in front of the board. "Same goes for all of you; I guarantee by the end of my time here, I'll have a name for all of you. And remember, the more you mock other people's names, the worse yours'll end up being. Ain't that right, Timebomb?" Jaune paused, and smiled slightly. Timebomb. Not too bad a name. Kinda cool.
"Can we get this going?" Weiss groaned from the front, prompting Face to give his usual, condescending smirk at her. "We're here to learn to be the best, and we won't learn that by listening to your inner monologue." Face responded by reaching back and flicking his kukri out, before pointing the bowie knife briefly at Weiss.
"Good point, Frosty," Face whistled. Weiss rolled her eyes as Face went back to the board.
"Frosty," she muttered, "Great." Yang gave a mocking grin.
"Chill out, Weiss, stop being so cold." The blonde smiled, extending a hand and waiting for someone to high five it. Nobody did, prompting her to slowly put her hand down with a slightly dejected expression.
Meanwhile, in cp_steel...
Spy's hand twitched at the table. Not too much, but he knocked a glass off onto the floor. He gasped in surprise at the tinkling glass, looking down at it through a pair of Deus Specs and wide brimmed green Chapeau that concealed his eyebrows, making it difficult to register if he was frowning or not. The new Sniper, a fellow with a motorbike jacket similar to Face's, no headwear, and a small goatee was sitting on the other side of the table with his feet up as he read the newspaper and smoking. He lowered his reading material and raised a brow at Spy. "What happened?" he asked. Spy looked back at the table, rubbing his hand thoughtfully.
"I'm not sure..." he replied, shaking his head gently. "I think somebody else in the universe wanted a high-five, and got none: I felt the feeling of rejection from here, and my hand twitched, knocking the glass down." Sniper shrugged, raising the paper again.
"Not my problem," he whistled, prompting the room to fall silent again as the only two Mercenaries left in the facility waited for the rest of the team to come back from celebrating a victory. Slowly, Spy looked at Sniper. Drawing a breath and somehow seeing the look Spy was giving him, Sniper continued reading. "I bloody hope you're not gonna try and fuck my brains out, mate."
"No," Spy grinned. "But I do think I want to go and find a contract. You want to come?" Sniper's paper immediately rustled down, and he looked at him with a serious expression.
"Too bloody right, I do." Sniper replied, throwing his paper down on the table and running out of the room with Spy.
Meanwhile, in the classroom that Face had commandeered...
"Now, you've all written this down," he said to the class, gesturing to the board. "But do any of you know what it actually means?" He was met with blank stares. "Thought not." He rolled his eyes, and pointed the tip of his knife at the top left diagram that depicted a Da-Vinci style Beowulf anatomy, arms and legs extended. As he turned to look at it, Blake decided to have her own attack on him.
"And we're all to presume that you do?" she piped up. Ruby, Weiss, and Yang didn't really want to tell her to shut up, since she wouldn't stop angrily chewing them out after the lesson the day before. All they'd done then was laugh when he'd laid a verbal smack down on Cardin, so none of them really wanted to think about how mad she'd get if they told her to stop being angry with him. As usual, Face turned and raised a brow, however this time there was no trace of mockery as he stared Blake in the eyes.
"Blake," he said finally, "No matter your...views as to how I teach, bear in mind that I am the teacher, and my job is to teach you things. But you are a student, and your job is to listen. So as far as you're concerned, I do know this."
"But you actually don't," Blake cut in, "So you're not doing your job." Face gritted his teeth.
"My duty here doesn't need me killing anyone, like you think I do," he snarled. "But if you continue to test me I'll see just how much damage this knife does against Aura."
"You want to go back to jail?" Blake shot back. The class watched the exchange of harsh words with great worry. "Even if you did beat me down, you'd stay rotting in a cell for the rest of your life."
Face narrowed his eyes, and Blake did the same.
"If you've got something you're trying to prove, you do it now," Face snapped, jabbing a finger at her. "Because if you even try to take me down, I'll put a bullet through your head so fast you wouldn't even be able to comprehend that you were fucking dead. So shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and listen." Nobody even breathed as Face continued glaring at Blake. Finally, the girl leaned back in her seat with a victorious smirk.
"Fine," she said mockingly. Face pulled a sarcastic grin, and twirled his knife.
"Good! I'm glad we got that one straightened out, Shiner," he replied casually as he returned to the board. It took Blake a few seconds to register what the nickname actually meant, and she growled in pure, unfiltered rage as her eye stung in remembrance to the injury. The rest of team RWBY winced at the incredibly sharp insult, and just prayed that Blake didn't do anything stupid now she was baring teeth and clenching her pencil hard enough that the wood began to crack. Face, meanwhile, continued as nonchalant to the anger he had caused as ever. "Now then! After that brief yelling match, I'll begin to explain why dead things taste better when you cook them. Take notes, you may well need them at some point." A few class members muttered that their teacher was insane as they flipped open notepads to write things down.
As psychotic and grim as those things may be.
Ten minutes pass.
"...and so it was when I was too hungry, with no tigers in sight, which was the point that I decided that he was no longer worth having as a hostage, and decided to pull out his teeth, then ram them into his eyes. Then I ate his dog." Face said almost proudly, leaning on his desk and checking his fingernails. The class was almost bone white in horror at what he'd just recounted so calmly. "But the thing is, I disposed of his body legally. Since he was already listed on Mann Co.'s 'Top 100 People to Murder Before You Get Arrested' list, I received a congratulatory bouquet from Saxton Hale and a sausage roll." After a few seconds where somebody may or may not have had a heart attack, Velvet raised a hand. "Ah! Velvet! Haven't heard from you for ages!"
"Um...hi." The Faunus girl carefully waved, slightly concerned that he was plotting horrible things whilst looking at her. "Yeah, I was wondering, did they honestly pay you for murdering people? It seems a bit...immoral."
"Course they did!" Face replied cheerfully. "In one year of work, I made well over seventeen million dollars. It was immediately stolen by some charismatic guys with masks, but then I got paid again to not talk about that." A few jaws dropped. Some guys stole millions from him, and he just didn't seem to care.
"And they just...got away?" Nora asked. "You didn't hunt them? What about your money?"
"Nope, not a problem for me," he replied calmly. "As I mentioned, I pretty much lived life as a survivor, hunted my food, and gathered my supplies. Having money didn't make a difference to me, so outside of that instance, it all remained untouched for at least fourteen years." A few more jaws fell open.
"How much did you get paid for all that time?" Cardin piped up. Face thought for a moment.
"Eh...two hundred and twenty." Face replied, scratching the back of his head almost in embarrassment. A few students snickered at the low wages. Two hundred and twenty thousand? Considering the average wage in Vale was about forty thousand lien a year, then that wasn't impressive for fourteen years. "Million." Those students stopped.
"You could buy a small country with that much money," Lie Ren noted. "Why did you not?"
"Look at me, Mr. Ren," Face sighed, putting his hands behind his back and beginning to pace along the front of the room. "And be honest: Do you think any living human being would want to live in a country run by yours truly?"
"Well, professor," Pyrrha raised her hand calmly. "I certainly wouldn't mind that country, so long as training would be in abundance." Face gave her his usual 'what?' look, and a few students rolled their eyes.
"So...wait, I've got this right?" Face began. "You. Would live in the Remnant equivalent. To Australia."
"Yes," beamed the rather polite student.
"And you wouldn't mind the fact that you would be mocked for not getting into fights, weighing over three hundred pounds, whilst having no brain power?"
"I'm certain I could convince them fighting wouldn't be a problem, I have helped defeat a Deathstalker."
"So you would enjoy being attacked by wild animals and people that're still upset over Tom Jones?"
"Who's Tom Jones?"
"A dead person."
"Oh. Well...I suppose I wouldn't mind it, then."
"You. I like you. You're polite. Are you efficient?"
"I suppose so."
"What's your plan to kill everyone you meet?"
"Um..."
"C'mon, I can't officially consider you a Professional if you're polite, efficient, but don't have a plan to kill everyone you meet. The Professional's Standard."
"That's not real."
"It bloody well is, I lived by it for fifteen years of my life."
"So you lived by something as real as your love life?" Yang asked, raising a brow and smirking as she folded her arms and the class began 'ooh'ing' at the daily banter delivery.
"You say that like you know what it's like to have been with multiple people at once," Face shot back, grinning. Just then, Cardin piped up.
"Sllllllut!" he called out. Immediately, everyone but Face cringed at the imminent smackdown. He understood, though. Kind of.
"Knock yourself out," he whistled, looking at Yang and gesturing to Cardin. She smiled back.
"Mmm...I think I'll wait until he's not expecting it." She turned to look at him. "Sleep with an eye open." Cardin swallowed, and immediately began to rethink his choice of words.
"Well, someone's learning." Face scratched the back of his head, and put his hand in his pocket as he began pacing.
"The only thing I've learned from you is how to make people fear you," Yang replied calmly. "I suppose I should thank you for that."
"Well, no problem. You're certainly welcome to go haunting people with me on Halloween, if that's your thing."
"No, no it isn't. We're all too old for Halloween."
"You're never too old to dress up!" Face laughed. "Last year, I wore a pink unicorn hat and pulled a guy's arms off, and the year before, I killed a giant flying eyeball whilst wearing a top hat! It was great fun!"
"How much did your company pay you to shut up when you were robbed?" Weiss asked sarcastically, raising a hand. "Because I'll sell my father's company and use all the money to get you to stop assaulting our ears." The class laughed.
"Who said my employers paid me to shut up?" Face replied. "The bank robbers sent me a letter that told me that if I didn't tell anybody they'd stolen my seventeen million dollars, they'd give me seventeen million dollars." He paused. "Wait a second."
Just then, the double doors to Face's side slammed open, and instinctively, he reached for his revolver and turned on the spot. Rather than the SWAT breaching team he had been expecting (he liked to flip the table for cover when that happened), Professor Oobleck was standing in the doorway with a pair of students behind him and dragging a large trolley with a sheet over a very large object. "Ah! Professor Face!" cried the green-haired man excitedly, before zipping over to stand in front of him. "I have exciting news for you!"
"Can't be any less exciting than being told to go to a family funeral, let's hear it," Face replied casually. Oobleck didn't even seem fazed by the grim statement, turning to the two boys by the door.
"Bring it in, boys!" he called over. The two nodded, and began to push the large trolley in. The taller boy had combed blue hair with a set of goggles on his fringe, whilst his companion, a Faunus with a monkey tail, had a blonde mess of hair. As Face narrowed his eyes at the Faunus, he was certain he recognized him from somewhere. Blake certainly understood this, and didn't make eye contact.
She just hoped that Sun didn't recognize Face either.
The trolley rolled in front of Face's desk, and Oobleck proudly pulled the sheet back to reveal the still-twitching corpse of an Ursa. It was definitely larger than Face had expected it to be, being almost twice his height even lying down. He didn't want to think about how tall it was in combat.
Actually, he did, because he'd always wanted to repeat what he did with the Giant Soldier Robot when Gray Mann attacked cp_steel, where he clambered up it, rammed a knife into its face, and then unloaded an SMG clip into its head until it fell down and he commando rolled off. It would have definitely been cool, had he not have been grabbed by the Giant Heavy and had his limbs slowly removed.
Regardless, he placed his hands into his pockets and began pacing around it as Oobleck looked over it with his coffee in hand. "An Elder Ursa Major. Been alive for hundreds of years. We found this one trying to infiltrate the rear of the school, and we shot it with an experimental paralysis dart."
"So it's still alive?" Face whistled, opening its eyelid. The eye inside looked back at him, and he was certain that the creature was sizing him up as well.
"Absolutely," Oobleck replied as the two students went to stand over by team RWBY as the class began to speak amongst themselves. "All life functions are fine, except for its kidneys because one of the ingredients to the paralysis agent was alcohol."
"So it's alive and drunk." Face said. "And here I was thinking that a witch in a secretary outfit was weird."
"Alive, drunk, and yours to use," Oobleck corrected, sipping his coffee. "I remembered you mentioning that you didn't have a subject for today's lesson, so here it is."
"And it's being executed and disposed of here," Face nodded, patting Oobleck on the shoulder. "Thanks. Cheers, Oobleck."
"No problem, my good man! Although now you owe me coffee." Face chuckled and rolled his eyes as Oobleck and his students left the room. However, as he began to make his way over to his desk, the monkey Faunus boy pushed a shoulder roughly into Face as he went by, leaving with his hands in his pocket.
"Fuckin' twat..." Face muttered, dusting his shoulder and continuing his walk to his desk. "Right, kids!" he yelled over the noise, prompting the students to gradually quieten down. "Who here...is a fan of mercy?" No response except confused glances. "No? Nobody likes mercy?" Finally, a girl in the back with a beret and dark sunglasses raised a hand.
"What do you mean when you say mercy, sir?" she asked. Face grinned, and gestured to the immobile but conscious Ursa in the centre of the room.
"It's alive!" he announced cheerfully. "Breathing! Viva la Vida! And it's also the test subject for this next part of the lesson. So if all of you want to watch it suffer with no way to end the pain it's going through, then that's your choice. Unless, of course, somebody wants to show mercy...?" He trailed off his sentence, gesturing with his hands. There was no response, again. Everybody was either too confused, disgusted, or intrigued to bother replying. "No? Well then." Quite calmly, Face didn't hesitate to go to the other side of the Ursa and deliver a heavy boot to the side of it, flipping it off the trolley and onto the almost conveniently placed sheet. It let out an almost painful grunt as it fell onto its bone-plated back, and its limbs flopped uselessly by its side. Face paused.
"So it can still feel things." he said at a normal volume. "Good, it had this coming." And without further hesitation he went over to its kneecap, drew his revolver, and unflinchingly put a .44 round through its knee. The roar of pain was near deafening, but all the creature could do was move its head in obvious pain whilst Face began fishing around in the wound. There was a barely audible sound of bone fragments flicking together gently as he moved his fingers through the mess of mangled meat and broken bones. Finally, he found what he was looking for, and ripped it free, much to the Ursa's discomfort. In his hand, he was holding one of the bones from the Ursa's leg. However, it differed in that the point closest to the ball of the kneecap was the perfect size for a blade hilt, and the bone itself stretched a foot in length. He held it up. "Any ideas what you could do with this?"
"Turn it into a knife?" Jaune asked. Face span and pointed to him.
"BOOM! Short fuse today, Timebomb, I like it!" Face grinned, making a pistol gesture towards Jaune. The boy smiled as Face returned to the class. "Correct! The main shin bone of an Ursa leg can be fairly easily removed and sharpened, making a very effective knife or 'shank', as they call them in prison. It doesn't just have to be a bone, either: You can use a stick, a rock, a larger piece of wood, a toothbrush, anything. As long as it's big enough to hold in your hand, and just the right size for a knife, you can sharpen it then use it for a quick fallback plan if things go south." To demonstrate his point, he moved to his desk and picked up his knife, quickly scraping it against the bone to produce a rapid series of scratch sounds as white bone meal flew everywhere like shrapnel. It was almost surprising to see how quickly he could convert something so simple into a weapon.
And after a few more seconds of cringe-worthy grinding noises, the piece of leg had been converted into a solid, bone-white spike with a handle. He calmly put his metal knife on his desk, and held his makeshift dagger up. "This small, white spike has the capabilities to save your life." He said it aloud, almost matter-of-factly. "Let's just say an Ursa's coming at you, and your weapon's been thrown away! What're you gonna do?" Yang raised a hand.
"Punch it in the face," she said flatly.
"But your weapon's been thrown away."
"My weapons are strapped to my wrist. They're shotguns."
"...two things. One, that is the most genius idea I have ever heard. Two, let's say they're out of ammo or something."
"She still punches like a freight train," Cardin piped up, embarassed. His cheek hurt slightly at the memory of when he tried hitting on her. Face made a mental argument about how he'd taken pistol rounds with more force, but didn't bother saying it aloud.
"Whatever. For anybody else, you would whip out your trusty Urshank, and do this." Face punctuated it by turning around and beginning to repeatedly stab the Ursa lying on its chest. The animal groaned in pain at the stabbings as its lifeblood leaked from punctures in its side. There was no sound from the shanking except a quiet tik noise with every entrance.
tik tik tik tik tik tik tik
It didn't stop, keeping an almost perfect rhythm. By the time Face had finished after about a minute, his hand was covered in blood and the white spike was a bloody crimson. The Ursa just lay there shivering, and Face held the knife up. "Just like that, folks," he announced. "How many stabs? At least fifty. Or more. But I still hurt it. Better than dying like a pussy ass bitch." Weiss groaned loudly and threw her hands up slightly.
"This is ridiculous," she complained, "Nobody would ever even have one of those with them, let alone get close enough to an Ursa to use it."
"And if it picks you up?" Face asked, folding his arms and raising a brow. Blood dropped from his new shank.
"What?"
"They pick you up. Ursas are known to pick people up and use their bony external skulls to headbutt their victims to death. They also hold you a few feet from their faces when doing this. What're you going to do in that situation?"
Weiss straightened up as though she knew the answer. She always knew the answer. "Pull out Myrtenaster, raise it up, an-"
"That would imply that your...needle can penetrate its thick hide. Maybe with Beowulves, but not large Ursas. What do you do in that situation?"
"Stab it."
"With what?"
"Myrtenaster."
"You're only a few feet away from its face. You'll have a difficult time manoeuvring that meter long sword into a viable stabbing position. Were it me in your situation, I'd do this." Ignorant to Weiss' (and everyone else's) protests, Face took his shiv, moved to the Ursa's head, and shifted it to look towards the class so they could see what he was doing. It opened its eyes, seeing more prey, but its body refused to operate. Ensuring its eye was open, Face gave the side of his knife a small kiss, before placing it in front of the Ursa's eyeball. He forced it at a slow pace, but firmly, into the socket, slowly twisting the blade whilst the beast's head thrashed in vain protest. Blood came spurting from the wound like a burst water balloon as the bone shard forced its way through red eye substance and began to rip and tear its way through the visual nerves of the Ursa's left eye with a sound like crunching paper. At this point, the Ursa was screeching in agony, and a good quarter of the students in the class stood up and just walked out with their heads down.
Nobody wanted to see this.
Ren leaned over to Pyrrha, Jaune, and Nora, his frown the same as theirs. "I know that's a Grimm, but this isn't right," he said, calm tone betraying the extreme worry and disgust.
"I agree," Pyrrha nodded. "He surely could have killed it before he did this. This...this is too much."
"Eh, at least we know it's dead," Nora shrugged. She got more than a few looks of shock from her team, prompting her to look back innocently. "What? That Ursa was an Elder Ursa. I heard them saying it. The older it is, the more people it's probably killed. So it kind of had this coming."
"Nothing would have ever had this coming, Nora," Jaune sighed. "This is inhumane."
Finally, after another minute, Face finally stood up slightly, put his boot against its neck, and wrenched the spike free of the burst eyeball, a trail of gore and nerves linking the empty socket to the tip of the shank. He finally stood, and sighed almost contentedly as the Ursa made quiet moans of agony. He turned, and faced the much smaller, more alarmed class. "And is that fucker going to headbutt me now, Frosty?" he asked Weiss, arms outspread. "I don't bloody well think so."
Weiss remained silent, staring at the Ursa in...what? She didn't know. Horror? Disgust? Sympathy? The feeling that it had deserved it? It was a Grimm, after all. But what Face just did was inhumane. Nothing could have ever deserved something that cruel. And how could he be so unmoved by what he'd just done?
Yang looked over to her teacher, watching him almost calmly brushing the stray pieces of gore from his clothes. He shot his victimized Ursa a glare from the side, listening to it weakly crying out for its pack. "Dirty little fucker, I tell you what." Face whistled, before twirling the knife in his fingers and giving it a quick flick to throw the blood from it. The blonde glared at him.
"That was disgusting!" she cried, standing slightly with her fists on the table. "How could you do something like that and not even care what you'd done?"
"I used to do that on a daily basis," Face glared back. "I have done it to men, I have done it to women. Many of them were undeserving of what my client paid me to do, but I did it, and I just walked away. Every. Single. Time. If you think it bothers me to do this to a creature that's probably killed a hundred innocent families over its lifespan, you are sorely mistaken."
"I don't care that you're going to kill it," Yang spat, "But I do care that you're dragging it to death without caring that it's still a living creature!"
"I've killed living creatures for most of my life, Yang. I've tortured women to death under the orders of disgruntled Soviet mobsters. I've ripped a man's teeth out to get some educational resources for a dentist. I've walked into police stations during SWAT training day and killed every soul in the building. I have snapped a tiger's jaw and beaten it to death with it. I've pulled off a charging Rhino's horn whilst impaled with it and then stabbed it through the skull. So killing this overgrown Grizzly isn't going to cause me a morality problem."
"Well, we have a problem with it," Blake cut in, standing up. "It's inhumane, cruel, and nothing deserves this!"
"Nobody ever does, Weiss." Face calmly gave the bone shank a twirl, before slipping it into one of the belt loops on his hip. Most of the remaining blood simply scraped off on the fabric, soaking into his trousers, but if it bothered him it was unnoticeable. He finally returned to looking at the rest of the class. "Anyway! One-sided arguments out of the way, who would be willing to recreate that as evidence you were watching?" No hands went up, and Face rubbed his face as he sighed. "Fine. Fine! Extra credit to whoever does it." Still, no hands. Face shrugged. "Is this because none of you paid attention? Am I gonna need to do that again?" At this point, people were re-entering the classroom, and paused on hearing the sentence just in case they'd need to turn around and walk out again.
Begrudgingly, a hand finally raised, and Face smirked with his hand on the hilt of his shank. He exhaled, and looked up. "Well volunteered, Velvet."
A few jaws fell open as the second-year Faunus shifted past the rest of her team on the row, and began to make her way to the front. "Velvet?" Jaune piped up. The girl looked at him with a flat expression as she went to the front.
"Yes?" she replied in a smooth Australian accent. Jaune sat up.
"W-Well, I, ah, d-didn't know...you would do this...sort of, uh, thing." Velvet continued making her way to the front.
"I normally wouldn't," she said calmly, standing next to Professor Face. With an almost expectant smirk, Face extended his hand, holding the hilt of the shank towards Velvet. In an almost eerily calm way, she took the knife, and looked down at the heavily wounded Ursa.
"So, you saw what I did, correct?" Face asked, putting his hands behind his back. Velvet nodded. "Judging by your Aussie accent, this should be preferable for you." Velvet looked back at him with a relatively unreadable expression.
"I'd prefer mercy."
Then, without even a single pause, she dropped the shiv, grabbed Face's revolver from its holster, and with the accompaniment of a loud boom, she put a fist sized hole through the Ursa's head, spattering the surrounding area with gore and silencing the creature for good. The rest of the class stayed absolutely silent, and the sound of 'Record' buttons being pressed to stop filming became apparent. Face, to everyone's surprise, didn't flip out at her. He didn't shoot her a glare, turn to face her, or even sigh; he didn't do anything, really. He remained standing with his arms folded, flat-eyed expression not leaving his face as he looked down on the mangled head. Velvet remained with her neutral expression and a smoking gunbarrel as she calmly lowered the revolver, twirled it in her finger, and then expertly passed it back to Professor Face. The Sniper kept his look at the dead animal, and one-handedly accepted the gun back into his waiting hand, giving it a twirl of his own before slipping it away.
Most of the eyes in the room stayed on Velvet as she calmly walked back to her seat, politely shuffling past her teammates before carefully sitting herself down. For the next minute or so, nobody spoke, until Face suddenly cleared his throat. His normal smile returned, and he faced the class.
"Last period of the day before dinner," he said calmly. "Who wants barbecue?"
One hour of carving and commandeering the observation balcony near the classroom later...
To Weiss, Blake, and Yang, Face was an asshole.
A psychotic hitman.
Crazed gunman.
Not even close to being the 'professional' he claimed to be.
But if there was only one thing they liked about him, it was that the idea of a spontaneous class barbecue on the observation deck at sunset was brilliant. It was made better by the fact that he was a surprisingly good cook.
That is, even considering that his favoured fuel for cooking the legs of Ursa was gunpowder being sprinkled into the grill, causing a loud bang when he haphazardly poured a potent explosive onto the flames beneath the bars.
As they all sat watching the sun beginning to set, teams RWBY and JNPR were sitting on two separate benches, all eight eating Ursa meat. They'd seen it being made, and how brutal it was, but they admitted it tasted pretty good. The two teams remained silent as they ate, until Nora finally piped up. "That was a fun lesson." She received more than a few confused looks at the comment. Overall, Blake seemed the most horrified.
"Don't tell me you're being serious, Nora," she said sternly, frowning at the much smaller girl on the other bench. "He tortured an Ursa to near death in front of the class."
"But we're eating that Ursa right now, and it's delicious!" Nora replied cheerfully. Her hands and mouth were covered in more grease than should have actually been normal for someone her age, which generally seemed to mean she enjoyed what she was eating.
"Blake, admit it," Yang sighed, "This is actually some really good food." The Faunus girl responded by shooting a glare at her partner, who raised her hands defensively. "What? I'm just saying." Blake groaned, and remained seated, folding her arms.
"The food is irrelevant," she said flatly, glaring ahead towards where the sun was setting and bathing her features in a golden orange glow. "What I care about is that we're having to take lessons from this...criminal! Has he even taught us anything since he's been here?" Pyrrha raised a hand.
"He taught us new words, I suppose," she said calmly, gently cutting into some of the meat with a personal knife and fork set. She turned to Jaune. "For example, I think Jaune is a bloody amazing bastard." The blonde boy almost spat out everything in his mouth.
"Mmmph?!" was all that came out as Pyrrha smiled at him, and everybody looked at her in amazement. Her smile dropped.
"Did...I say something?" she asked, genuinely curious. When nobody responded, she dropped her head, and continued eating in silence.
"But look at him," Blake grimaced, gesturing to Face. He had left the barbecue in the hands of Professor Oobleck, and was sitting on the head of one of the large stone gargoyles around the balcony, legs crossed in an awkward looking position as he bit into the meat like it was a chicken drumstick. Occasionally, he would turn his head and spit out a piece of bone, before continuing to chew on it. "He isn't a teacher befitting of Beacon academy."
"Come on, Blake, he's just a supply teacher," Ruby cut in. "He'll be gone before you know it." Blake sat back slightly.
"Gone back to his own world, I hope."
"Heard all that!" Face piped up, extending his middle finger towards the group as he continued facing the sunset and sitting on the giant stone lion, continuing to eat without even looking at them. "You should bloody well know by now that my world's a shithole, and this place is probably better than my world, so I might end up setting up shop here and killing Grimm. Tasty little fuckers, I tell you what." Blake groaned, and folded her arms. "Ain't that right, Timebomb?"
"Uh, yes sir!" Jaune replied quickly, raising the piece he was trying to stomach. He wasn't really a fan of eating the enemy, but he did admit it tasted alright. Though, it was greasy. Very, very greasy.
And he was pretty sure he had accidentally found and bitten into the bullet that was in the Ursa's kneecap.
"Good lad!" Face called over. "See, Shiner? Timebomb gets it." Blake was just about to see if he could survive a drop from the gargoyle to concrete when the doors to the balcony swung open. A good portion of the class looked over to the doorway to see Professor Goodwytch standing there with her usual stern expression.
"Just what is going on up here?" she asked Face. The Sniper was quick to put his food inbetween his teeth, hop up into a crouch, and balance walk back onto the balcony. Once he'd removed the food from his mouth and was standing in front of Glynda, he spoke.
"Killed an Ursa. Put the dead body to good use." Face explained as his female co-worker stood with her arms folded and fingers drumming on her bicep, an expectant expression on her face. "Tasted pretty good."
"And you convinced Professor Oobleck to assist you in this unscheduled use of the balcony?" she asked flatly. Face looked over, to see that Oobleck had already dashed off down the hall.
"You say that like he was actually here," he replied calmly. "Well, he was. Kind of. For, like, five minutes. I think. Whatever."
"This is still the teacher's balcony."
"Are there ever any teachers using the balcony?" Face shot back. "Far as I know, they all stay down in the staff room, drink coffee, and laugh obnoxiously loudly at unfunny jokes about politics." Glynda sighed, and closed her eyes.
'He's not wrong.'
"That's...ugh. Fine. Use the balcony." She let out a small huff, and stalked away. Before she left, she turned back. "Remember you're cleaning this up, and you're needed in my chambers to finish up what you were doing the night before."
"Yeah, alright, I got it," Face sighed, scratching the back of his head. "See you tonight." As soon as the doors closed, most of the students that caught a double meaning to Face needing to continue stitching her up grinned at him. "What?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing," Yang whistled innocently, checking her nails. "Just, ah, what you and her were doing...last night."
"It's a private matter," Face grimaced, forcing team CFVY to stifle laughs.
"How private?" Weiss smirked.
"Private enough."
"Is it boosting your relationship with Goodwytch?" asked Coco.
"Well, apparently so, since she offers me a smile when I walk past. Before that, if she saw me doing something I'd normally do she'd threaten to whip me." Blake was still sitting with her arms folded, a fist to her mouth and face completely red as she held in extreme laughter. "I mean, holy shit, do you know how much damage those things could do? Some asshole back where I worked used to hit me with a whip to make me work harder, and it was fucking irritating and stang like a bitch."
"Where'd he whip you?" Yang asked. "Was it in your, ah, 'rear flank'?"
"No, it was normally on my arse for some reason. Soldier was a twat sometimes."
"But I suppose with your 'late-night ventures' with Professor Goodwytch, you're getting used to being whipped?"
"Nope, not at all. She hardly brings it out. Normally, she's actually lying down without clothing, so my job's easier." Nobody heard whatever else he was saying as Blake broke down with laughter, cracking everyone else in the area.
Face didn't get it. He was just saying that Glynda would normally lie down nude to let him stitch her wounds closed.
What was so funny about that?