Hey guys! So I know it has been several months since I last updated this story. I do apologize for this as I honestly was going through a lot of struggles in my life and I hope you understand. Among these struggles was that I had lost my spark to write and so took a hiatus away from writing in order to work on some personal matters. But I am back to writing my stories and, with this new chapter, will be updating all stories on a regular basis. Enjoy!


III

Sable awoke in a bright room filled with medical equipment. Her head was killing her and as she touched the side of it she found that she had bandages wrapped around it. She slowly sat up and as her eyes adjusted to the bright lights she noticed that she was not alone in the room. Next to her bed in a padded chair was a sleeping Eurig. His blue t-shirt he had been wearing the last time she had seen him had been replaced with a black tank top. Behind him was his Beacon uniform hanging on a cabinet.

Sable was taken aback as she realized that Eurig was much more muscular than she had first noticed. His pectoral muscles were bulging from under the tank top while his biceps, which were no longer mostly covered by his Shade Academy t-shirt, had large veins at the surface. His brow was damp with sweat and his blonde hair looked as if it had just been washed. He wore a pair of bracelets on his wrists that she had not noticed before.

Sable removed the blankets that laid draped across her and slowly tried getting off the bed. However, as she went to stand she almost fell back down as Eurig's eyes snapped open to look at her. It wasn't so much his insanely good reflexes and situational awareness that startled Sable, but that she could of swore that she saw what looked like a bright flash appear in his right palm. He gave her a boyish smile and stretched before scratching his chin.

"So, you're awake? Gave me a scare back there. You freaked out, bolted from the assembly, and when I went to check on you outside I found you passed out next to a pile of vomit with your head split open." He stated in a very matter of fact way.

"Did I wake you?" Sable replied with a hint of embarrassment in her voice as she shifted on the bed.

"What?" Eurig replied. "Oh, no. I was just resting my eyes. I always take a nap after working out." He continued with a small chuckle.

Sable raised an eyebrow at him as she pondered on his statement. She had also been known to take long naps after serious training. But that was for only after her weekly sessions where she would push herself to the point of exhaustion. Most of the time she would only work up a strong appetite after one of her daily workout sessions. After a few moments, she realized she was becoming lost in her own thoughts and shook her head gently.

"Enough about me though, how are you feeling? You've been out for close to three days." Eurig questioned her out of concern.

"Three days!? How?" Sable exclaimed with shock.

"When you passed out you hit your head on the pavement. Your Aura would have normally softened the blow but because of you passing out it didn't respond and so you gave yourself a pretty nice smack. The medics revived you briefly but you sort of went crazy and tried fighting them so they've kept you sedated to allow you to come out of it yourself. Not to mention papers started pouring out of your bag like they had a mind of their own and…" Eurig explained but before he could finish, Sable interrupted him suddenly.

"Where is my bag?" Sable snapped before leaping to her feet.

"It's by the door. Your uniform is hanging on the post on the door as well." Eurig replied in a confused tone as he pointed to the closed door across the room from the pair.

Sable darted to where her bag was laying and quickly started rustling through it. Eurig looked on confused as he tried to understand how anyone who was just in a coma could move so quickly. She barely seemed to acknowledge Eurig's existence as she threw things from her bag on to the bed and floor before sighing deeply and pulling a large crimson leather clad book from the bag.

"Thank the gods! I thought I lost this!" Sable exclaimed excitedly as she held the book in the air.

"Uh, what is it?" Eurig questioned as he stepped up behind Sable and peered at the book, which was held at his eye level.

Sable's tail twitched as she finally realized how much larger Eurig truly was compared to her. The young man must have been at least six foot two, which compared to Sable's five foot seven height seemed huge. Not to mention while Sable was a naturally slim woman, yet muscular and toned in her own right at one hundred and twenty pounds, Eurig was a literal mountain of muscles and had to weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds. Sable skipped forward a few steps and spun around playfully to hold up her book.

The book was large and had crimson colored leather as it's cover. On the cover were a series of strange blue runes and spirals. In the center of the cover was a large lock that mysteriously had no keyhole in it.

"This, dear Eurig, is my prized possession! It's one of my weapons." Sable grinned in hopes that her friend found her weapon as cool as she did.

"But it's a book? Most people who come to these schools have like, I don't know, an actual weapon." Eurig questioned her as he tilted his head at the book.

"It's not just a book. It's a grimoire." Sage Inari chimed in from the doorway nearby.

Both Eurig and Sable nearly jumped out of their skin as the older faunus made his presence known. Somehow, in all the excitement over Sable's book, Sage had managed to sneak into the doorway without either of the two students noticing. After a few moments, Sable's tail started to sway back and forth as she beamed at her father.

"Hey, dad! Snuck up on me. I guess you're here to check in on me?" Sable questioned her father in a playful tone as he entered the room fully.

"More for your mother's sake than yours, to be perfectly honest." Sage sighed heavily. "You're lucky that she didn't book the first airship here to drag you back home by your tail."

"Dad!" Sable whined in protest and blushed deeply. "Do you know how embarrassing it'd be if she did that?"

"Probably less embarrassing than what happened earlier?" Sage chuckled playfully before ducking a punch thrown by his daughter.

"Excuse me, not to break up this heartwarming family moment but what exactly is a grimoire?" Eurig chimed.

Sage laughed playfully as he had almost forgotten that the young man was still in the room with them.

"Well, Mister Nyral, a grimoire is an ancient weapon from a time where Dust weaponry was in its infancy. Not much is known about them except that there are very few remaining in Remnant and that it seems to be infused with Dust. In a weapon sense, it can expel its pages before they take the form of whatever their master wishes them to be. Sometimes it's a bow, sometimes it's a blade. It also seems that grimoire may have minds of their own in that they seem to choose who may use them. Among other odd properties." Sage explained quickly.

"Other properties?" Eurig questioned as he looked at the odd book.

"You'll have to see for yourself. I've got a meeting with Ozpin that I'm late to. He said something about wanting to discuss somethings with the new instructors. Meanwhile, I believe that both you and my daughter have your first class of the day shortly. You both have combat training with Professor Goodwich soon, so you may want to hurry along to her." Sage responded as he glanced at his watch. "She gets a bit touchy when people are late so make sure you both get going quickly." He continued.

"There are other new teachers besides you?" Sable asked curiously.

"Just one other. She's an interesting one but from what I understand she's been out of the Huntress game for a long time. I'm sure it's nothing too vital of a meeting so it should be fine that I'm a few minutes late. Either way, I should get going. See ya, kid." Sage nodded at Eurig and Sable before leaving, shutting the door behind him.

Eurig stood silent for a few moments as he watched Sable's father leave the room. He turned around to speak to Sable but nearly jumped as she removed her shirt and fished a stick of deodorant out of her bag.

"What the hell are you doing?" Eurig exclaimed as he covered his eyes and blushed a deep red.

"I'm cleaning up, duh. What are you doing?" Sable replied as she spread the deodorant onto herself.

Eurig couldn't help but still a look at his topless friend for a few seconds. Besides her toned body, he noticed a large tattoo that covered a large part of her body. The part on the front of her body appeared to be a snake like tail on her right hip that rose upwards onto her abdomen before wrapping around her side and continuing up her back. Eurig shook his head as he realized that he was staring at her.

"I'm wondering what made you think it'd be okay to strip down to your bra with a guy you don't know in front of you!" Eurig turned his back to Sable and snatched her uniform off the door before holding it up behind himself.

"What's wrong, big guy? Never seen a girl in her bra?" Sable responded teasingly as she took her uniform from her friend.

"I don't really think that's an appropriate question, Sable." He replied with a deep blush as he kept his back to Sable.

"Oh, settle down." Sable answered as she changed into her uniform. "If you're uncomfortable with as harmless as me in a bra then I won't do it again." She continued, feeling bad about her actions.

"Thank you, now you heard your father. We can't be late for Goodwitch's class. We can talk more on the way there." Eurig grabbed Sable's wrist as he spoke and dragged her out of the room.

A short time later, the duo was approaching a crowd of students situated outside of the combat training hall. Eurig hesitated a moment and stopped Sable with a gentle, yet heavy, hand on her shoulder. She turned to him, tilting her head to the side in a confused manner.

"What's up?" Sable asked her companion with a somewhat worried tone. She noticed that he had suddenly not acted like himself.

In fact, Sable had noticed that Eurig had acted a little odd ever since he spoke to her father. Sage could take a bit getting used to at times, even to the point that some of his own colleagues found him to be strange. But even so, Eurig had only spoken to her father for a few minutes. And even then, he hadn't been really part of the conversation as much an audience of it. While Sable pondered on what could be causing her friend to be acting so funny, Eurig sighed with frustration.

"Look, I know we aren't really supposed to ask this sort of stuff. But, since we are teammates I figure it'd make sense to get to know each other in a more tactical sense." Eurig started with a small blush as he tried to word his intentions just right.

"What?" Sable's tail flicked as she hung on the silence between the two of them. "You still thinking about me in a bra? Look, it's normal for a boy your age to…" She started to trail off before Eurig shot her a glare that made her stop in her tracks.

"Can you be serious for just thirty seconds?" He snapped at her, his hands crunching as he balled them into fists.

"Jeez, okay what's on your mind. Damn, it's almost like you don't have a sense of humor." Sable shrugged before smirking mischievously.

"If you are selected to spar with anyone, it's okay for you to back out of the fight. After all, you did sustain a pretty nasty head injury." The young man voiced his concerns as gently as he could, for he could already tell from his partner's antics that she was extremely proud and stubborn.

"I should punch you in the face for even suggesting I do such a thing!" Sable snapped bitterly at him before taking a step toward him.

Even though Sable was pathetically outsized by her mountain of a friend, Eurig could see in her glowing red eyes something stir. For a moment, the red in her eyes darkened in color. Before he could fully react to what he saw, or at least thought he saw, it seemed that Sable had noticed something as well and quickly turned away and fished a black bandanna out of her bag and tied it around her neck before clutching at it.

"I'll be fine, okay? Don't worry about me so much. I mean come on, we've been here for like a minute and you're already trying to be protective?" Sable muttered under her breath as she began to walk towards the crowd.

"One more thing." Eurig replied as he pointed at Sable's grimoire. "Is that your semblance or is it really a weapon? You haven't met the rest of our team yet but they are going to be quite nosey to find out everything they can about their leader. Especially if she gets selected for combat sparing and suddenly uses a book as a weapon." He continued.

"What? My grimoire being my semblance? Don't be silly, big guy. I told you it's one of my weapons. My semblance isn't exactly something I really enjoy discussing. It's not that I don't see your point. It's just I can't talk about it just yet with you." Sable answered in an apologetic tone before walking up to the crowd of students.

As Eurig and Sable made their way through the crowd, Sable couldn't help but hear several students talking about her. There were, of course, a few students making the typical racist remarks but more so there were students talking about her accident at the new student assembly.

"I saw it happen, you know. She was freaking out and just started puking everywhere. Then bam! Right into the pavement. Thankfully, one of the teachers was walking by when it happened." One of the normal, non-transfer, students was saying to one of her friends.

"Do you know which teacher it was that helped her? I heard it was one that nobody has really seen around here." The other student remarked.

"No, but it's true that he doesn't teach here. I heard he teaches at Signal Academy and nobody knows why he was here. He disappeared shortly after the medics and her teammate came to help. I do remember he was tall, skinny, had really greasy black hair, and had red eyes." The first student replied.

Sable shook her head and blocked out the chatter. If she allowed herself to start to care what the other students thought of her then he was certain she would vomit from disgust. It was bad enough that she was forced to attend this school but now she was apparently the latest big thing to gossip about. She managed to smile slightly, however. The one good thing about being at Beacon was that she made friends with Eurig.

While Sable was barely paying attention to her surroundings, Eurig elbowed her to get her attention. Sable glanced to him and saw that he was standing with two female students. One of the students was tall and slender with short pixie style silver hair and light purple eyes. She had a kind face and looked to Sable with respect and gently nodded towards her. The other female student was about Sable's height and rolled her eyes at the sight of her. She had long, braided hair with greenish blue eyes.

"Sable, I'd like you to meet our team. First is Teal." Eurig gestured to the one with red hair who just raised an eyebrow. "And this is Lilac." The taller girl smiled at Sable.

She looked as if she was going to speak when the crowd of students began to enter the building. Sable followed the rest of her team in and they took a seat towards the front of the room. The students chatted amongst themselves when Goodwitch entered the room, to which all the students grew silent. Professor Goodwitch stood silent in the middle of the floor and looked through the room as she checked off names on her scroll. Her eyes stopped on Sable and her team and Goodwitch frowned more than she usually does.

"Thank you for finally joining us, Miss Kitsune. I hope your injuries have healed nicely and that you're ready to begin your classes." Goodwitch looked back down at her scroll as she checked off Sable's teammates.

"Inari, ma'am." Sable spoke up with an annoyed tone, to which Goodwitch's eyes darted up.

"Excuse me?" She replied.

"My family name is not Kitsune. It's Inari." Sable stood her ground.

"If you have a problem with what our records have as your name then you can take it up with Professor Ozpin. Otherwise, please keep quite." Goodwitch responded with a glare. "Now, with that out of the way let us get to business. We will be having two sparring matches today. The first is to demonstrate how two fighters with similar fighting styles may struggle to overcome each other in battle. The second is to demonstrate the same point but with fighters of different styles. This is to show that some battles require more thinking than skill to achieve victory." She continued.

Professor Goodwitch stood silent for a few moments while she looked through her scroll and selected the first two students to spar with each other.

"Now, first we have two brawler style fighters. Everyone watch closely and take notes on how if you are skilled enough, your fists are just as good of a weapon as a blade. Yang Xiao Long and Eurig Nyarl, please meet in the sparring area." She then walked to the edge of the fighting area and sat in a chair behind her desk.

Shortly after, Yang and Eurig were standing across from each other. Yang was grinning from ear to ear while Eurig had a serious frown on his face. As they stood in the center, Goodwitch brought up the large screen above them to display their Aura gauges. Yang's gauntlets shined in the dim light and she stretched, never allowing her confident smile to leave her face. Meanwhile, Eurig leveled his hands over each other and used his middle fingers to push a button on each bracelet around his wrists. Suddenly, his bracelets snapped open and armor plating shot up his arms to his shoulders. His frown quickly turned into a smile like Yang's as he entered his fighting stance. Yang responded with her smile changing from one of confidence to one of pure excitement.

Meanwhile, inside Professor Ozpin's office, Sage strolled in with a nervous look on his face. The meeting he was late to was well underway and he could tell from the raised voices that it wasn't going well. As he entered the conversation came to a sudden stop as Ozpin, Ironwood, and a black-haired woman with red eyes all turned to look at Sage.

"Ah, Sage. I was worried you'd miss this since your daughter fell ill. Thank you for coming as fast as you could." Ozpin said with a gentle and understanding smile.

"I apologize, sir. I had to check on Sable. She's doing much better and is awake. Have I missed much?" Sage responded with a nod.

"Just some very vocal disagreements and the introduction for our newest instructor since we are going to be teaching our students survival training starting this semester." Ozpin replied as he motioned towards the woman with black hair.

"And who might this be?" Sage asked with a tilt of his head.

"My name is Raven Branwen. And as Oz said, I'm Beacon's survival new instructor." The woman answered with a confident smirk.