The days passed slowly, and it was around the 3rd quarter of the first semester that Jaune, with the assistance of his father and Cyris, managed to get his tier 1 powers mostly under control. While he couldn't use them constantly, he was able to access the powers almost at a moment's notice. His aura control had improved drastically, and his sword skills were approaching the level where he could hold off both Dove and Russell from Team CRDL at once. It was about this time that Robert Arc and Ulquiorra decided that Jaune could at least begin to work on his tier 2 powers.
Thus it was that Robert, Cyris and JNPR were back in the clearing that Robert had taken the Headmasters to to show them his Resureccion.
First, Cyris and Robert tested Jaune on his control of his T1 powers, then Robert began his explaination of T2 powers.
"With your Ceros and Balas, there is a significant relationship between the two techniques, as they both work off of compressing the user's aura into a 'container' made of the Contractor's aura. With the Cero, however, the technique uses a spherical container, while the Bala uses a disc shaped container."
Now Cyris stepped up to speak. "The way my trainer taught me how to fire these techniques was probably the easiest way to understand it. With the spherical container of the Cero, you use a thick container that can contain a much larger amount of your aura, then to fire it, you pull the majority of the concentration of aura of the shell back towards you. This will weaken the front of the sphere, allowing the blast to break out in the direction of the weaker shell. Because the Cero uses a more concentrated shell, it is too heavy to fire the shell along with the blast. With the Bala, you use a thinner, disc shaped shell that you launch with the blast. Because aura naturally moves slowly through the air, Ceros are slower than the Bala, which is about 20x faster due to it's shell's shape helping break the air resistance. Also, the shell has the added benefit of becoming shrapnel when the Bala hits and detonates."
Quickly the group backed off as Cyris and Robert prepared a quick side by side demonstration of the two techniques. Both of them equipped their weapons, Robert's punch daggers and Cyris's trident form of his weapon.
The trident was formed by two athames, or ceremonial daggers, that had unusually thick handles and longer than normal blades, both blades being inscribed with words. The left half of the trident form bore the words "Preserve Honor," while the right proclaimed "Protect Life." Several variants of Dust were embedded in grooves that ran down the length of the blades. It's name was mirna noḱ, or peaceful night in a language from the time of Earth that Tier had learned before the fall of the barriers. (A/N: I used google translate to convert it to Macedonian, I thought it would be cool.)
While Cyris formed the Cero in front of the center tip of his trident, Robert formed the Bala around the knuckles of his fist.
First Robert punched his Bala forward, as it took slightly less time to charge. It impacted a tree across the length of the clearing, with a sonic boom following it. The tree promptly disintegrated into splinters, and the shell's shrapnel shredded the surrounding trees, leaving deep gouges in the bark.
Then Cyris called out, "Brace yourself!" and fired his Cero. The cone-shaped wave of devastation ripped through about 50 meters of trees depth-wise, and at it's widest was about 40 meters wide. Everything within the area of destruction was just... gone, as if it had never been there.
Jaune was staggered by the sight. But Robert simply chuckled and said, "Guess you were the right one for doing that demo, my Cero's aren't quite up to your level, kid."
Cyris nodded in appreciation of the compliment. Then the two experienced arrancars came over and while Cyris began teaching Jaune the Cero on one end of the clearing, Robert decided to run NPR through some forms to help them get stronger to where they could keep up with Jaune.
But just outside the range of the arrancars' Pesquisa, a shadowed figure was once again watching them. Leaning forward from the thick branch he stood on, the figure shot forward towards Jaune and Cyris's side of the clearing, becoming a blur through the air from his single leap.
Robert, while working on teaching Ren a way to make his punch a little more concise and efficient, felt something enter the range of his Aura sense. In an instant, his Punch daggers were on his arms in their active state, and he disappeared with a Sonido, leaving NPR to stare at the spot he had just occupied.
Cyris, fractions of a second later, tackled Jaune to the ground, just in time to let the two of them avoid a horizontal slash from a katana aimed to sever both their heads from their shoulders.
Just then, Robert reappeared, his punch daggers trapping the offending blade between Robert's fists. And this gave the group a chance to get a good look at their attacker.
The young man was tall and lanky, with a messy shock of auburn hair held out of his face with a grayish-black bandanna emblazoned with the number 11. He wore a gray long coat with the same numeral on its back. Black slacks and a black shirt with the words "Got Death?" in blood red completed his attire. His arms and even his face were sporting multiple scars, some quite grisly for someone who didn't look over 20 years of age. Scariest of all was the maniacal grin on his face, showing two missing teeth on the left side.
Even with his (slightly chipped) sword trapped by Robert, the stranger didn't seem concerned whatsoever. Instead of struggling to free his weapon, he took one hand off of his sword and punched Robert in the left elbow, loosening the older man's grip on the blade and allowing him to yank it free.
By now Jaune and Cyris had scrambled to their feet and drawn their weapons. Cyris' tridents' staff began to shorten, then the whole thing split in two as the blade rearranged itself into a long pair of daggers. While Robert and the mystery man were seemingly having a stare off, Jaune rushed to the rest of his team while Cyris edged up to flank the man while still positioning himself between JNPR and the attacker.
What they didn't expect was for the young man to drop his guard and begin to chuckle. "Good reactions. Maybe this won't be boring after all." He smirked. "You, Blondie, what's your name?" He asked, shouldering his blade.
"Robert, and you had better have a good explanation for trying to kill my son, kid." replied the elder Arc, who still had his guard up and ready.
"Ah, I'm Ryan, and don't worry, I doubt his Aura would break with me holding back that much. I know the bluenett's wouldn't." Ryan's grin widened as he focused in on Cyris, who glared back through narrowed eyes.
"I don't think that's up to you to test, Mr. Ryan. What do you want here?" Cyris spat out, already on edge from the way he was being looked at.
"What do I want? That's simple!" Ryan said, and disappeared with a speed trick, reappearing behind Cyris with his sword already in a downward stroke. "I wanna have a good time!" he yelled. Just as the sword was about to connect with the Faunus's shoulder, he ducked down and to the left, spinning on his left foot, and brought his right leg in a sweep towards Ryan's legs, forcing the attacker to jump.
But rather than just jump Ryan flipped forward, never wavering in his attack, and forcing Cyris to parry with one of his daggers. Ryan just laughed as he landed, spun, and swung his sword in a downward arc, which was once again caught by Robert's fists clashing onto either side of the sword. But before Ryan had a chance to escape again, Robert made a decision.
"FLY IN FURY, DRAGRA!"
A massive burst of cyan energy erupted from Robert as he once more donned his Resurreccion. The massive domed armor, the upper and lower jaws of a dragon on the left and right fists and the stark white outfit would normally be an imposing site and make any adversary back down, but Ryan was no ordinary opponent.
He just smiled wider.
"NOW we're getting somewhere!" the maniac exclaimed, before bashing his right shoulder forward and freeing his blade once more. "C'mon, Arrancar! Show me what you've got! And I'll do the same! I'll show you a GREAT TIME!"
"How is fighting a good time?!" Robert roared back. "I'll tell you something, kid. We aren't trying to make enemies of you, but don't take us Arrancars lightly! We will defend our own to the bitter end! And when you swung on my son, you poked the sleeping giant with a very sharp stick. So you'd better be prepared. Because I'm not holding back!"
With that statement, two orbs of electrical energy formed around Robert's fists, and he lunged towards his opponent with a fearsome roar.
Punches and sword strikes were exchanged at such speed that NPR were completely lost as to what was happening, Jaune was just seeing a blur, and only Cyris could keep up with what was taking place.
Where Ryan was just randomly slashing and hacking at Robert (while still cackling maniacally), Robert was defending a zone and shooting out punches whenever he saw an opening. But after two minutes Ryan got a lucky stab through Robert's guard, and the Aura infused sword left a long cut on Robert's face, just below his eye.
Hissing in pain, Robert kicked Ryan away even as his own Aura healed the wound, and began to charge a massive ball of electrical energy between his fists, and spoke.
"Dios... Ruego Nos... Perdon." (Spanish for: lord, I beg you forgive us. Yes, I copied this straight from Gantenbainne and Chad's fight in Bleach chapter 260)
Reeling back, Robert thrust the ball forward, and it shot towards Ryan at an unavoidable speed. Then...
"Nobiro! (Grow!) Hozukimaru!" Another blur landed between Ryan and the incoming projectile, which split in two just as it was about to impact. All parties involved watched as the blast missed Ryan by an inch or two on either side, and exploded in the trees behind him. And standing there, wielding a bladed staff, was Jake Marss, the shinigami contractor the group had met when Robert had given his Resurreccion demonstration.
The group, Cyris especially, having not met Jake before, prepared for what ever Jake had to throw at them. But they didn't expect for him to turn around and smack Ryan upside the head.
"YOU IDIOT!" He bellowed. "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!? You leave a note saying 'out fighting' and just disappear? You nearly gave your father a heart attack! I'm just lucky you didn't find the tracker I put in your clothes for long enough to give me an idea where you were going!" As Jake ranted at Ryan for his irresponsibility, his staff glowed and shrank until it became a simple katana, which he sheathed on his hip. Turning away from the younger man, Jake sighed and looked to Robert.
"For whatever it may be worth, I apologize for the actions of young Ryan, here. We're still trying to hammer it into him that he needs to learn restraint, but it doesn't seem to have taken hold yet. Was anyone hurt?"
Robert glared for a second, before taking a deep calming breath and leaving his Resurreccion state.
"No, no one was hurt, though if Cyris had been any slower, this would be an entirely different conversation."
"I understand completely. I will do all I can to keep our future head of the family in check, but just in case, let me give you my scroll info in case he decides to pull this shit again. Should he bother you again, give me a call, I'm the one designated as his minder..."
"Which I don't need." Ryan grumbled.
"What you need is to work on your aura sense, boy. There are three arrancars here! Even you wouldn't have come out unscathed! And if you had killed them, you would not be able to avoid prison whatsoever!" Ryan just grumbled at Jakes' continued ranting.
"Head back home, Ryan. Right now. I'm sick of being stuck with cleaning your messes up. So move your sorry ass."
"Fine." Ryan left with out another word, leaping into the trees and disappearing.
Jake turned back to Robert, visibly deflating from the source of his anger having left. "Again, I'm very sorry for what Ryan did. Can I see your scrolls? We have a secret app I can give you in case he shows up unexpectedly where you just tap your screen and one of us will come collect him."
Robert, Cyris and Jaune one by one passed over their scrolls after making sure that it wouldn't do anything else to their scrolls besides give them a "panic button" for Ryan. (They still planned to have profess... Dr! Dr. Oobleck check the programs, however.) After that Jake apologized again and left.
Once the group was sure they were safe, they quickly returned to Beacon where they were met by Ozpin.
"Is everyone OK?" Ozpin asked. "We saw signs of fighting out in the forest."
"We're fine," Robert replied, before recapping what had happened for Ozpin as they walked to Ozpin's office.
Cyris and JNPR went to see Dr. Oobleck in the meantime, to see about the security of the app Ryan had downloaded. On their way, as they passed the library, Blake walked out, muttering something none of the group could quite hear, and looking very tired. In fact, as she stepped out into the hall, she stumbled, to which Cyris darted over and caught her before she hit the floor.
"Blake, are you OK? You look like you're about to pass out." Cyris was very concerned, you could tell from his tone of voice.
Blake, on the other hand, just said, "I'm fine." and tried to squirm out of his grip, but Cyris wasn't having it.
"You're not fine, You almost fell over. Let's get you to your dorm. Jaune, you guys can go see Oobleck, I'll be there in a bit." JNPR nodded and left, looking concerned. Which left Cyris and Blake alone to start walking back to team RWBY's dorm. Before Blake could protest, Cyris began to speak in a low voice to her as he started gently guiding her to her dorm.
"Blake, what's wrong? You know me. I'll help if I can. If I can't, I'll find someone who can. Please tell me."
Blake was torn. On one hand, they could use a fighter like Cyris. When they were together in the White Fang, he was known as one of the top trainers in the Vacuoan branch of the Fang, despite his young age.
On the other, it was the White Fang they were up against. She was still a member of the Fang when Cyris "quit" and knew the surrounding circumstances. It was only after she herself quit that she understood his actions at that time. Those who were still in the WF were not so understanding. They were almost fanatical in their hunt of the traitor Cyris Cerluene. If he showed up with them, there was bound to be blood spilled on one side or the other.
Tired eyes met eyes full of concern, and Blake's resolve to not tell him crumbled.
"It's the Fang, they're up to something. Something big."
Hey y'all. So sorry about the delay in the chapter being posted and the lousy ending. I've been feeling just blah and unmotivated. Once again, please review and follow/fave, it inspires me to keep going. I wanted to especially thank everyone who generously donated OC's for this story. You all are great!