Roman Torchwick had a certain way that he liked to wake up every morning, which was trained into every team of the service staff at his mansion back home. Each day they would wake him up to a fresh cup of tea, two spoons of sugar and a dash of honey, the right smell to wake him up. Not that he actually drank it, tea was a commoner's drink as far as he was concerned. No it was just a nice smell to wake up too. He would then proceed to go down to his indoor gym, a personal training helping him go through various exercises to train every bit of his body to tip top shape. Following that was a light breakfast, studying, and then assorted other activities depending on the day.
Which was to say when a whistle went off right next to his ear at seven in the morning he was a little more than surprised. Despite years of training the most the young man could do to being woken up by the sound was to fall flat on his face out of the bed in a mad rush to defend himself in a half asleep state.
"Good morning team Crimson!" Emerald spat out the whistle in her mouth and grinned toward her newly founded team. Mercury rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and gave a loud yawn but seemed to adapt a bit faster than Roman, stretching himself out. Cinder woke up with a small yawn but seemed to take the whistle blowing in stride. One could only know Emerald for so long before this kind of thing became the norm after all. "I will now be giving the floor to our amazing and beautiful team leader, Cinder!" Emerald jumped onto Mercury's bed and landed directly on his lap, using him as a comfortable chair
"Um…right…" Cinder scratched the back of her head, a small but very awkward smile on her face as she looked over the team that she was now supposed to be leading. "So with this being our first official day as a team I thought it might be useful for us to do a team building exercise together, something to help bring us closer together as both teammates and friends." Hopefully one that didn't involve having their lives put into danger by the appearance of an S class Grimm.
Mercury raised up his hand for a moment. "Could our first task be throwing away all of Roman's boxes before it collapses on us and we drown under a sea of junk?"
With that said all four of the young Hunters to be turned their heads to the left corner of the room and the massive pillar of objects that had been stacked on top of each other the previous night to make enough room for all of them to sleep, each marked with 'property of Roman Torchwick'. The stack reached all the way to the roof, was stacked fast enough to make it very likely to fall over with just one wrong breeze.
"I second this agreement," Emerald said with a smile, looking toward the collection of boxes. "I say we burn them and dance on the ashes."
"What?" Roman stood up and pointed his finger at them. "No I veto that vote."
Emerald jumped up and grinned, crossing her arms over each other. "Only the leader has veto power, your request for a veto has to be approved by the chairmen of affairs."
"Chairmen of what?" Roman blinked in confusion. "Who the hell is the chairmen of affairs?"
Mercury raised his hand into the air. "Right here."
"What?" Roman threw his hands up into the air. "I didn't vote for you, I demand a reelection."
"Denied." Mercury said with a smile. "It's a lifelong commitment, and I don't take those lightly you know, wouldn't be very responsible of me if I gave away my position after only having it for a few hours."
At this point the orange haired young man was without words, simply sputtering impotently and moving his arms in very violent pantomimes.
Cinder gave a chuckle and stood up. "As fun as it is to send each other into violent rages I do believe I might have a better solution then throwing away all of our worldly possessions," Cinder reached back onto her bed and laid out a small map of the room along with locations for them to store their things, which seemed like it would fit the majority of what was there for the group. "I had a bit of trouble going to sleep last night, and I figured this would come in handy."
Roman starred at the paper, mouth open for a moment as he realized that Cinder had even taken into account the dimensions of the room, most likely just from eyeballing it. He had seen contractors who worked for his father come up with much sloppier designs with days to spare, and she had just thrown something like this together.
"Heh, leave it to Cinder to go all out on something like this," Emerald gave a quick shake of her head and grinned, moving around Cinder and jumping on her from behind with a hug. "Let me guess you are letting this whole leader thing get to you and are going to be that overprotective parent that doesn't let us get a single thing out of place right?" she began to poke Cinder's cheek a bit.
Cinder blushed a bit at her friend's accusation. "I would have done the exact same if I weren't the team leader and you know it, it's not exactly like I want power to go rushing to my head."
Mercury jumped up from the bed and looked over the plans before clapping his hands. "Well not like we can sit around all day and talk about it, come on fancy pants let's get this place looking nice."
"Do I look like the help?" Roman asked, a bit of a sneer to his voice. Moving about a room was supposed to be what someone hired a butler for, doing it all himself seemed like a demotion of his rank.
For a moment Mercury didn't say anything, before a vicious smirk came over his face. "Well if you would rather a guy like me had his hands all over your stuff I guess that's fine, just don't expect me to return anything valuable."
Roman felt his heart drop as he moved toward his stuff. It might have been beneath him to deal with such things, but he wasn't about to let that brute ruin anything of his, no matter what it was.
For most of the morning there was mostly silence in the room as the four went about setting it up to Cinder's designs, only broken by the occasional joke or curse from a stubbed toe.
Finally the room was completed, and the result wasn't actually half bad once they had actually started to work together on it. By the end they had finished and had a room that actually looked halfway presentable, with their four beds centered in the middle of the room and all of their various supplies and knickknacks around them for easy access, effectively splitting the room into four parts for things they wanted to keep.
"Heh, looks like we took that one down," Emerald said with a smirk, jumping down on Mercury's bed.
He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "You realize that isn't your bed right?" he asked with a slight smile visible on his face.
"My bed is boring, why the heck would I lay on my bed when I can just as easily lay down on a different one?" Emerald asked with an almost innocent expression on her face.
"You spent literally ten minutes picking out the softest bed for yourself!" Roman exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air to signify just how close to his wits end he was.
"Well yeah, I mean of course I want the best bed, duh." Emerald gave a shrug toward Roman's questions, brushing them off.
"Speaking of time, I don't suppose any of you have been keeping track have you?" Cinder asked, looking at the three other members of her team, who had suddenly taken on a rather 'doe in the headlights' style of look. Cinder slowly pulled out her Scroll and looked at it, seeing they had maybe a handful of minutes before class started. "So…we need to run."
The four nodded and burst out of their room, getting the attention of their roommates, team JNPR as well. As soon as they saw the other team rushing they joined in, nearly tripping over themselves to ensure they wouldn't be late for their first classes. Once inside of the building Jaune gave a wave toward his team and broke off from them with the other members of team CREM.
"Mind if I sit with you guys in class, still really don't know anyone so…" Jaune scratched his neck nervously at having to ask something like that.
"Of course Jaune, I imagine we can free a seat for you." Cinder said with a kind smile.
Emerald suddenly jumped between the two and batted her eyelashes. "Oh Jaune you should take a seat right next to me, fill my lonely heart with your light, something like that hm?" she gave a wink to the two of them as their faces turned scarlet.
"What no it's nothing like that!" Jaune said, still beat red and waving his hands around.
Cinder leveled a death glare at her friend, which caused Emerald to let out a small squeak and hide behind Mercury. "Hey when did I become the meat shield?" he asked with a hint of offense to his voice.
"You are taller than me, thus by you should provide me protection from the scary fire girl." Emerald explained, still taking shelter behind him.
Roman pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply at the idiocy of his teammates. They were supposed to be hunters in training, not common riffraff that would be caught joking around while wandering the hallways. Ever since he had gotten onto the team he had seen nothing but them joking around and getting to know each other. No discussion of strategy, or formation. As if they were supposed to be friends and not just fellow soldiers. It was pathetic. At the very least he wouldn't be caught dead acting like one of them.
Finally the group reached their destination and migrated toward the front, but only found four seats waiting for them. The group paused for a moment and looked around at each other before Emerald spoke.
"So good luck finding another seat Roman." she said casually as she slid into the seat on the furthest end of the row.
"What in the name of sanity are you talking about?" he asked, looking toward the green haired girl.
Mercury took a seat next to Emerald and rested his head on his fist. "Well I would hazard a guess that she thinks that either you wouldn't want to sit with us, or we would all rather the goofy blonde sat with us in your place," he shrugged. "I mean, either or honestly."
Jaune cleared his throat and took a step back. "Actually I think I will just go find my own seat, this is one of the few classes you all have together, and I don't want to break up the team."
Cinder gave a small nod and a smile to him. "Much appreciated Jaune, I am sure we will have time to meet up soon."
He offered a smile at that and turned to go grab one of the other open seats as the rest of the class began to enter into the room.
"We huh?" Emerald said with a small wink and playful tone.
"We, as in our teams, I realize it's your humor but must you be vulgar in every interaction?" Cinder took a seat next to Mercury and prepared her papers to take notes.
"Cinder and Jaune sittin in a tree-" Emerald's song was paused by an eraser being thrown directly between her eyes. "Ow!"
"And maybe next time you will think before you talk." Cinder said with a sly smile.
For a moment Roman thought about escaping to another part of the room, but finally thought better of it and sat down in the chair next to Cinder without any further discussion.
For a few moments there was noise throughout the room as people introduced themselves or met up with old friends on the first day of class, however the door to the teacher's office opening signaled the end to the chatter as they waited to see just who would be teaching them. Instead of an actual body what the students were treated too was a small mountain of books being held up by a man who was quite hidden behind them.
"Hello future Huntspeople and welcome to Grimm Sciences 100, Anatomy and Tactics," the voice behind the books sounded rather youthful, if a bit strained by carrying the books. "Normally Professor Port would be here today to teach you, but he is a bit busy dealing with an outbreak of Beowolves in his hometown, so for today," the man tried to take a step up the podium but missed his footing by one step, falling and sending his books flying into the air, landing atop his prone form on the ground. "Let's pretend that didn't happen, kay?"
Roman let his head fall against the desk with a groan as he realized that the teacher was just as bad as the rest of the idiots at the school. "I am the only competent one in this entire place aren't I?" he asked with a tone of horror to his voice.
The young man pushed himself up from his place among the floor and turned his back to the class, revealing that he was wearing a black coat and his hair was red, and quite messy. "Normally I rotate out with Ms. Goodwitch with your combat training, and also help with advanced weapons training, you guys can call me," he quickly reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a piece of chalk, his hand moving like a blur across the board until his full name was written in white across the board. "Professor Taurus," he turned around, revealing a pair of horns sitting atop his head and a smile on his face. "So, any questions?"
Roman looked to the teacher head in shock for a moment. A Faunus teacher, at Beacon? In his mind there was nothing more impossible then that, after all what happened if it turned out he was sympathetic to the Black Fang? He knew that the school held itself to some weird sense of equality, but even they wouldn't push it to the point of insanity.
The Professor looked around the room and scratched the back of his head with a small frown. "Okay so it doesn't look like we have any questions, I guess that means we just move into the lecture?" he kicked one of the books up to his hand and flipped a few pages before nodding. "Everyone pens and paper out, we are going to start with a basic review of the Grimm ranking system before moving on to your first paper topic, the various evolutions of the Beowolf."
The class let out a collective groan at hearing that they would already have a paper on the first day, but quickly got their supplies out to start taking notes.
It took a moment for Roman to get back into the swing of things, but found a piece of paper and pen already in front of him. When he turned his head he saw Cinder with a small smile on her face, giving a small nod before turning to her own supplies. He didn't exactly know what to say, or if he was supposed to say anything. Did she not think that he had his own supplies? Was this some sort of power play from her as a leader to bring him under her thumb? Roman realized the lecture was about to begin and promised to find out later, getting ready to take notes.
"Okay, so the Grimm ranking system starts with E class, although not actually much danger to humans with any sort of defense they can still cause plenty of trouble if the pack grows to quickly…" Adam closed the book and spoke at a quick but bearable pace, taking small pauses now and again to let people catch up.
Roman smirked to himself, remembering back to his hired tutors and online instruction. This was going to be cake for a man of his caliber.
"So we got our butts handed to us yesterday," Yang said while finishing a long stretch in her chair, eyeing the other three women around the table. "We lost the Grimm, the Black Fang, and Ozpin still has the final artifact."
"If you intend to just state what we all already know then there is no real purpose to this meeting." Weiss said in a bland voice as she examined her nails.
Yang grit her teeth toward the white haired woman and shot a glare her way. "Yeah just keep it up with the attitude Princess." her eyes flashed red for a moment.
"Oh, do you intend to do something to stop me from acting however I wish?" she asked, a sly smile coming onto her face. "If so perhaps I should take my money, weapons, and manpower and find use for them elsewhere."
"Oh but that would be a total waste," from seemingly nowhere Ruby appeared behind Weiss, wrapping one slender arm around the woman's neck and resting her head on Weiss's shoulder. "Especially when things are looking up for us."
Weiss froze as she felt Ruby's arm against her throat, slowly counting backward from five before responding. Mocking Yang was one thing, she was just crazy. Ruby was a sociopath and utterly insane, one wrong word in a position like this might end up with her in the grave. "Oh, are things looking up for us?"
Ruby held her arm in place for a moment, before suddenly jumping away and clapping her hands. "Yep, our time table just got a bit longer, turns out that one of the brats had some wacky Aura that managed to cleanse some of the infection away."
Yang's attention snapped to her sister as the news. "Then we should capture whichever one did it, that way we can make sure…"
Ruby held up a finger to stop her. "As nice as it would be to just grab whoever we like I doubt it would be that simple. We know that one of two teams that fought the Mega Oozaru…"
"Still not its name." Weiss pointed out.
"… has the member, but that is still picking from a group of eight potential fighters, and I doubt Ozpin will let them just walk around without guards, besides," Ruby frowned a bit. "Without the Black Fang we are at the disadvantage of no longer being able to play the race card." Ruby finished, shooting a glare toward Weiss for having interrupted her.
"And that is where I come in," a voice spoke from the corner of the room, stepping out of the shadows and toward the three women. The person was dressed in a tattered black robe with its hood pulled to cover the back of its head, their face being covered by a white mask with a bird's beak on the front of it, and painted red eyes. "Greetings, my name is…"
Before the man could finish his speech Weiss idly waved her hand and summoned a spear of ice in front of her, launching it into the man's heart. "No one is allowed in here other than us." she said simply.
The man fell down to a knee and coughed a few times, before his coughs suddenly turned into a laugh. "Yes, as ruthless as ever, you really do take after your father. While in every way except for the whole pathetic failure sense," the man yanked the spear of ice out of his body before tossing it to the side and standing up. "As I was saying my name is Shade, and I have come to offer you assistance."
Ruby gave a nod and smirked toward Weiss. "Don't worry about him too much, I was the one who invited him."
"Is that so, and why were we not privy to this invitation?" Weiss asked, getting ready to attack again if this was some sort of trap.
"Oh don't blame Ms. Rose, I asked her to hold off invitations in order to test just how you would react," Shade touched fresh hole over his heart. "And might I add your beauty is matched only by your murderous intent?"
Weiss looked over the man and turned to Ruby. "You think he can be an asset to us?"
"We can use him so long as our goal is to fight against the entire world, isn't that right?" Ruby asked the strange man.
"Oh of course," Shade gave a deep bow to the three. "I am but a humble servant to those who week the end of all things."
"Oooh so he is an anarchist?" Yang asked with a grin. "I like him already."
"Something akin to that, now I heard you were having a numbers problem and deniability, I wish to offer my help to that end," he snapped his fingers and the door to the room exploded inward, followed by five figures dressed in full black body armor, with a crossed out wolves head on the front of each one. "Ruby asked me to prepare a plan in case we ever lost the Black Fang's support, to that end I created my own little group, the Humanity Reform League."
"The anti-Faunus terrorist organization?" Weiss leaned forward and glanced outside, seeing that her own forces had been knocked out or were being held at gun point.
"Sorry about this ma'am!" one of the soldiers in red armor called out. "But to be fair, this is pretty much all Grif's fault!"
"Hey!" another soldier with light orange armor cried out. "I wasn't ready to ninja soldiers, I am hired very specifically to open fire at large crowds of people, not fast moving freaks!"
"It is fine Sarge, I believe if our friend here wished to kill us it would have happened by now." Weiss laced her fingers together and looked toward Shade. This was just a business meeting, and in the end no matter what label Shade intended to use he was just a man showcasing a new weapon.
"One time terrorist group," Shade reached under his coat and pulled out a pistol, executing one of the soldiers and letting him drop. The other four didn't flinch. "A mutual friend of mine spend a number of weeks turning them into perfect machines, you might all know him as Ashford Mangle?"
Yang and Weiss shivered as Shade casually dropped the name of one of the most monstrous serial killers in the world. He had once been a scientist working in Atlas under the Torchwick research and development department, but once it had been discovered he was using live test subjects to try and create super soldiers he was quickly ejected and thrown into a jail cell, where it had been reported he had died.
"Impressive to be sure, so then," Weiss waved for him to take Blake's empty seat. "Shall we?"
Shade laughed briefly and walked over, taking a seat and leaning forward. "Indeed, let's discuss our future plans."
Roman cursed under his breath as he felt his hand begin to cramp from trying to follow the teachers every word. It turned out that a class like this was nothing like the online courses or tutored sessions he had grown accustomed too. He was used to structure, control, getting exactly what he needed quickly.
But this was different, as Mr. Taurus would regularly go on small tangents, bounce about, or even fly into small stories to explain what he was talking about. By this point he had scratched out more then it seemed he had written, trying to cherry pick what was and wasn't important to know.
He briefly glanced toward his other classmates and saw that none of them were having the same difficulty, indeed they seemed to be handling it with ease.
Mercury and Emerald were even passing a note between each other as they listened to their teacher. And the worst of it was that Cinder seemed to excel at the lesson, asking questions or making small points at times when a question was asked.
How was he supposed to prove that he was more suited for the role of leader when in substandard conditions such as this?
"Okay class go ahead and put down your pens, that's all for the lecture today," the class let out a collective sigh of relief as the teacher finished up the lecture. "We still have some time left over through, and Professor Port happened to leave a special treat for you guys," Adam moved over and pulled the cover off of a small metal cage, which began to rattle and shake as it was revealed. "A little bit of combat training for extra credit."
Roman leaned forward and saw his opportunity to prove himself in front of not only his team but the rest of the class and even the teacher. He would show just how much skill he had, and then once word got around he was sure Ozpin would realize his mistake and place him as the true leader of the team. "I would like to volunteer!" Roman bellowed, throwing up his hand.
"Hm, eager," Mr. Taurus looked Roman over before nodding. "Okay kid go change into your combat gear and get ready."
Roman stood up and looked toward the rest of his team, expecting to see disappointment or some such in their faces. Instead they smiled and gave him thumbs up.
"Kick its Grimm butt Roman!" Emerald said, raising up a small flag with his name on it.
"You can do it man, show 'em how tough you are." Mercury said with a small wink.
Cinder simply smiled and gave him a nod.
They might joke around at each other, but the other three knew that at the end of the day they were a team, and each of them would willingly support each other. They might not have really liked Roman, but at the very least he had stood with them the day before, and that told them all they needed in their eyes.
Roman simply looked at them in confusion, not having expected this positive of a reaction. "I…uh…right of course I will," he said with confidence before walking out of the room toward his locker. "Nothing in this place makes sense." he said under his breath.
The Three Uses of Dust- An abridged lecture by Professor Ozpin
Dust in its many forms is now synonymous with life itself on Remnant, having become the main energy source that keeps the world running. I will keep this lecture brief, as going into more detail would require a classroom environment. For today I will be going over the three uses of Dust in today's society.
The first use is domestic, Dust fuels the generators that provide various basic needs. Flash Dust generates electricity to fuel the various machinery, Aqua Dust purifies the water we drink, Terra Dust allows us to safely build structures without heavy machinery, and much more. Each of these jobs are done by Dust Casters from various Universities. Without their aid much of things we take for granted in our daily lives wouldn't exist.
The second is of course for hunting down the creatures of Grimm. Dust in any form is harmful to Grimm, but when converted to bullets or energy through a weapon, or channeled into an attack or through Aura it becomes quite lethal. It also makes it ideal for law enforcement officers, as even when it is packed into a bullet Dust will not actually kill humans, at most it will hurt them to the point where they can't fight back, making it a perfect nonlethal solution.
And third but certainly not least Dust offers the most important thing in the world to all living beings, it offers hope. Without Dust the creatures of Grimm would run wild throughout the world, and human and Faunus alike would be forced to cower in caves, hiding like our ancestors did. It is hope for a better tomorrow that drives Hunters to fight their hardest, knowing that they can use the power granted to them through Dust to protect those they love.
For more information on this subject please enroll in classes at your nearest University, and please, have a nice day.
Roman's pride has dragged him into a fight against the Grimm left behind by Professor Port, but will his jealousy and pride prevent him from fighting at his fullest? And at the same time the mysterious Shade and his assassins begin to form their alliance with Ruby's forces. What will happen next? Find out next time on Ignition Spark pt. 2!
Thank you to everyone for reading. Sorry that this chapter has taken so long to finish, but I am actually working on getting back into the groove of writing for RWBY. I realize this chapter might be a bit rough but I would still love to hear all of the thoughts and opinions you guys out there have on it. Until next time!