Chapter Two
Mostly everyone was awake early the next morning. Alex was early even compared to everyone else. He was excited and nervous and he was trying his best to contain it. He had finished his breakfast by the time the others started coming in.
"Alex, you're up early." It was one of his older friends from their previous academy. "Although I'm not entirely surprised." He sat down with a tray of food in front of Alex. Both of them were very similar physically to one another, from the build of their bodies to the colour of their hair.
At a glance, one could think they were siblings, maybe not twins but related in some way at the very least. On closer inspection, one would see that Noel had much sharper features.
"Good morning Noel. Excited for today?" Alex didn't particularly like Noel very much, but he still counted him amongst the people he could consider a friend.
"Of course. I can't wait." Noel always seemed to be brimming with confidence. "This should be a challenge worthy of my skills." Alex knew the confidence was not misguided. Noel was more than capable a fighter.
"Want to go warm up after breakfast? I haven't sparred with you in ages."
"We sparred two weeks ago," Alex replied. "And no thanks, I want to stay focused on whatever they plan on throwing our way." Their sparring sessions would tend to leave both of them exhausted. Alex wanted to impress the Academy as soon as he could. He didn't want to waste his energy.
"Ah. Maybe you're right." Noel shifted his focus to his breakfast as Alex tried his best not to look at any form of time telling device. He knew he would only get more nervous as it closer to time.
Gabe spent most of the time in the armoury admiring the weapons his fellow initiates were armed with. He had not much else to do as his own armament was simple. All he had to do was slip his gun into its holster that he wore on his right side and slip the knife he carried as an emergency backup into the sheath on the other.
In truth, he was trying to calm his nerves.
No matter who you were, being on the verge of the initiation into Beacon Academy would make you anxious, and Gabe was no different. Diana was next to him setting up her quiver of arrows.
"What should I take with me today," she hummed to herself in a playful singsong manner. Soon after she started using her bow-blade, she began developing custom arrows to use with it. Some were enhanced with Dust. Others with more conventional methods such as blunt noise making arrows she used to employ to distract guards while sneaking out of campus. Most of her arrows were normal arrows, but when fired by her bow carried a much more powerful punch than one would expect.
"No need to look hard for interesting weapons," Gabe admitted to himself. "Diana's is plenty."
Seeing all these fancy weapons used to make him feel much worse, but that was when he first started his training. Initially in awe of these weapons, he eventually proved time and time again that sometimes, the simplest things can beat the most amazing of weapons.
"You done yet?" he turned to ask Diana only to find she was already at the door, waving for him to hurry. "Come to think of it, where's Roy?" he asked himself.
By the time Roy made it to the armoury, it was mostly empty. He was late and he knew it. It was not something he had planned to do knowing that he was in an academy where the instructors were all more than capable when it comes to combat. "I wonder. Do punishments here include getting your ass handed to you by an instructor?"
He scurried over to his locker and quickly put on his armament. He strapped on the battered old pair of steel greaves that had helped him in many a fight before grabbing his main weapons. His trusty pair of tonfas each meticulously well maintained. Inside each tonfa ran a gun barrel that fired out of the front, short end of the tonfa.
The grips doubled as magazines which made it quite impractical to reload in the middle of a fight, but Roy liked the extra firepower his guns afforded him. Doubly so when his opponent didn't know there were even guns hidden in his weapons. He was confident enough to rely on just his martial prowess with his tonfas, but he knew sometimes having a gun or two would do him good.
As soon as he strapped on a few extra magazines of ammo, he dashed out the door.
"You're early," Roy said to Gabe as he took up the spot next to him.
"You're late," Gabe replied. They were with the rest of the fresh trainees on a cliff overlooking a forest. Diana was to his other side, raring to go. Gabe tried his best not to notice Roy's interest in her.
"So… who's she? I mean, you're always with her, right? She your girlfriend or something like that?" Roy's voice tone was a teasing one which irritated Gabe slightly.
"She's… a friend of mine," Gabe replied. Diana, overhearing this, leapt in to join the conversation.
"Ooooh… you're the one from last night!" she said excitedly.
"Diana, this is Roy. Roy, Diana." Gabe did the job of introducing the two reluctantly.
"Well hello there Diana," Roy said with a theatrical bow. "Pleasure to meet you."
"Great, wonderful introduction," Gabe said but no one was paying him any attention.
"Now, why would a pretty girl like you be doing something as dangerous as this? Surely you could find something more comfortable like being a model?" Roy said.
"I dunno about whether I'm pretty or anything like that," Diana began. "But I know for sure nothing can be as fun as this."
"Come again?" Roy was perplexed while Gabe just looked away.
"Nothing comes close to being as fun as kicking ass and the adrenaline rush of fighting, right?"
"O… kay then." Roy was momentarily caught off guard but he regained his composure. "It seems you are more than just a simple beauty."
"How can he say all that with such a straight face?" Gabe murmured to himself before cutting in between the two.
"So, what do you guys think we're doing here?" he asked. "And more importantly, what exactly are those… square thingies on the ground?"
Roy crouched next to one of them and prodded it with his finger as he examined it. "Looks like a launch pad or something to me." Gabe quickly put two and two together.
"We're going to get launched into the forest to start things off." Gabe was not as surprised as he was expecting himself to be.
"Looks like it."
"Really? Great! I've always wanted to go skydiving." Diana somehow managed to seem even more excited than she was already.
"You are correct," said a voice. The three of them turned to find Headmaster Ozpin behind them with a cup of coffee in hand. "Although, I do not believe that it would be all that difficult to deduce." He walked away without a glance back.
"Look on the bright side," Roy began. "It's better than being launched out of a cannon."
Ozpin paused when he heard those words. "That would not be a bad idea," they heard him say before he continued walking.
"I feel so sorry for the next generation of students here," Gabe said.
"Why? Getting shot out of a cannon sounds fun too."
"Unlike you, most students probably have more wires connected than loose ones in their brains."
The objectives were simple. Survive the land, find a teammate, make your way to find some treasure and make your way back. There will be creatures and beasts and all other manner of things waiting.
As they were unnecessarily reminded, death was a possibility here.
Even though he didn't want to hear it, Gabe knew what being a Hunter entailed. He knew all about it when he made the decision.
Diana came here for the thrill. She needed her fix of action. The time she spent tinkering with her weapon between graduation and induction into Beacon did nothing to quench her thirst for adrenaline.
Roy accepted it with no complaints as he readied himself on his launch pad. He still had that playful air around him, his body relaxed but his eyes were focused on the task at hand.
One by one, students were catapulted into the forest.
As it grew closer and closer to his turn, Alex's nerves started to really get to him.
He wasn't entirely sure how he planned to land, but he was confident he could come up with something mid-flight. He rested a hand on each of his sword's grips, the familiar feel calming him a little.
"It's go time then," he said to himself just before he was launched into the air.