Well, its the literal last day of the month, but I still managed two updates for March, despite the apocalypse having apparently kicked off. Seeing as I'm apparently 'essential' the update schedule will continue as usual. Unless I get quarantined, then expect a lot of chapters real fast, since I wont have anything else to do, lol. Hope you're all staying safe and healthy, and make sure to not lose sight of the light at the end of this shitty-ass tunnel we're all stuck in right now.
Isa: Buddy, set up an account so that I can PM ya replies man! As to more DxD characters, full integration is visible on the horizon now (provided my muse doesn't decide to add more crazy shite, heh.) On harems, Issei's will get a touch smaller, as far as Jaune is concerned, you're gonna have to Read and Find Out, lol!
CatScratcher: Glad you're enjoying the slow/steady approach.
random Anon reviewer: Close, but think of fictional lawyers outside of anime for my inspiration for the one we met last chapter, heh.
Connor Worsnop: I think I may be detecting traces of ironic sarcasm in your review, but I cant for the life of me figure out why, haha.
Assorted reviewers guessing at when team RWBY will get in on the secret: I have something very special planned for that, don't worry.
As usual I don't own RWBY, Highschool DxD or make a single penny off of writing this. Enjoy the update friends!
"I managed to form a pact." Ren opens "But I was recognized as well.".
Jaune heaves a sigh as he crosses the room to sit on their futon. "Crap. That makes two of us." He fingers the small card in his pocket that he had received for his pact. A one time use fifty percent off anything from the 'spitfire' line, at Huntress-Chic. Coco had been confused when he asked about a rebate on the clothes line based around her, at at least until he had explained that he had grown up with seven sisters, and how many of his friends in the Underworld had been girls. He knows full well that its only a matter of time until he needs a bribe, er, gift, to even begin getting himself out of the doghouse with his teammates. After being grilled by the brunettes on just how 'housebroken' he was, the two had shared a grin, and sent him on his way. "What'd you get for your pact, Ren?"
_-*R-DxD*-_
Ren opens his eyes to see not his dorm room, but a small studio apartment. The carpet is a threadbare creme, and walls a stained taupe. One corner of the, at most, twelve foot by twelve foot space is vinyl, and has a toilet, shower stall, electric stove/range combo and a sink above a mini-fridge. The opposite corner of the unit has what looks like a field cot set up, blanket resting on it. A couch is pressed against one of the otherwise bare walls between the corners, sitting on it is a slack-jawed mouse faunus, if her ears are anything to go by. "It... it worked?" the petite girl dumbly observes.
Ren nods and looks his prospective contractee over. Shorter than Nora by at least a head, paler than Weiss and just as slim, with chin-length hazelnut hair. Her small, pouty mouth slowly closing as she recovers from her surprise, big, ocean-blue eyes resting above narrow, freckled cheeks are looking him over with increasing recognition. "Of course it did." Ren replies to her observation. "Is there anything in particular you were hoping to get?"
Clad in ratty, faded and torn blue jeans and a dull gray tank-top, the girl glances over to what looks like either an oversized tuning fork, a short-sword or both, and asks "How did you get into Beacon?"
Ren, thoroughly blind-sided now, blinks, before asking "How did I get into Beacon?"
The girl nods excitedly, before tumbling from the stained couch to press into Rens personal space, an eager, hopeful grin on her face. Definitely shorter than Nora. "Yea, I saw you talking with you're team at The Nifty Orchid the other day. I thought you were all talking about a video-game or something, but now I know that you were talking about devil stuff! Oh, and the blonde guy on your team was ahead of me at the start of initiation."
Ren, still of kilter, and not really sure what to do about the cute girl who had all but glomped him and isn't Nora, opts to stall "I don't remember seeing you in the Emerald Forest, or during initiation at all."
If he had thought her face looked a bit pouty, her offering of a tremulous frown at his mention of Beacon has him fighting the urge to hug a stranger. "I didn't get to the combat part of initiation." The apartments sole, bare light flickers overhead. "Is being devils how your team got in to Beacon?"
Ren shakes his head "It hasn't even been a full week since I became a devil, miss..."
"Lacey Fields." the faunus girl replies. "And I don't care what that stupid clerk said, I was ready to finish training to become a huntress, Mr. Devil."
Smiling at the girls resolve, Ren replies "Just call me Ren, please. And I take it you plan to try again next year?" The girl nods, looking up at him with a fire in her eyes that wouldn't be out of place on Nora or Yang. "I think I could help you with that. Where did they cut you?"
"At the field kit inspection..."
_-*R-DxD*-_
"A dozen employee discount vouchers for the diner we ate at the other day. And an appointment for another summons next Friday." Ren answers Jaunes question.
Grinning at the other man on the team, Jaune quips "Not like the food here is bad, but the variety should be nice." Ren shoots a dry, half-serious glare at Jaune. "If you feel like sharing that is, haha"
Ren nods "And Lacey promised she wont go to the tabloids with what she overheard us teasing Pyrrha over, or spread our secret beyond friends that might be willing to form pacts. Apparently if it weren't for the tip we left her, she wouldn't have made rent this month."
Smiling, Pyrrha interjects "The food was good. I wouldn't mind going again."
Looking over to his partner, Jaune prompts "How'd your summon go?" Pyrrhas face falls back to a scowl.
_-*R-DxD*-_
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
"It's Pyrrha-freaking-Nikos!"
"Are you really a devil?" The smell is enough to make her want to gag.
"Is that how you keep winning in the tournaments?" She doesn't think any of them have bathed, or washed their clothes for at least a week.
"Can I have your autograph?" None of the three of them looks to be under two hundred pounds.
"Do you think you'll ever do another swimsuit edition shoot with Combat Elucidated?" There are posters of her plastering the walls. Most of them stained in, mortifying, locations.
"How does this whole summoning thing work? Is it your semblance?" And the three of them haven't let her get a single word in edgewise since they summoned her. Much less asked for something she could do to form a pact.
Suddenly, she realizes that the room had finally gone quiet. Each of the fanboys is holding out a different item at her, and a marker. The leftmost has the aforementioned Combat Elucidated swimsuit edition poster she did two years ago, the paper stained at her face, crotch and breasts. The second has a tattered red t-shirt with her emblem on it. The third, most embarrassingly, has a yellow-tinged pair of tighty-whitey underwear. "Umm... between me not doing autographs normally, and the fact that you three summoned me as a devil, I don't think anyone would believe they are legitimate autographs. I'm, I'm sorry."
_-*R-DxD*-_
Pyrrha shudders. "Fanboys. I was summoned by fanboys. Whatever they wanted, as soon as they saw it was me..." the tournament fighter trails off with a shudder.
Nora reaches over to sympathetically pat her teammates shoulder "Hey, it could be worse. You could've been summoned by a crotchety, cheap old man who has you spend hours moving around all the heavy stuff he can't, then, not give you anything or form a pact because 'you didn't do enough to earn it.' Wouldn't that suck?"
The rest of the team look at the hyper ginger in silence, before Jaune asks. "I take it that's how your summoning went?"
Nora nods, her usual grin slowly creeping back across her face. "Yup, I thought I had the worst first summon possible, but, thanks to Pyrrha I know I didn't now. Nope! No gross undies getting shoved in Noras face!"
The other redhead sighs, then looks back towards Jaune. "How did your summon go, Jaune?"
He shrugs. "It was Coco and Velvet." the rest of the team freezes, but Jaune waves them off calmly. "They only know about me. Coco's birthday is coming up, so she and Velvet were having an early party while Fox and Yatsuhashi set up wherever her actual party this weekend is gonna be. I was an extra set of ears for Coco to vent about her modeling gig, then told some stories about what high society in the underworld is like."
Rens eyes drift shut and he leans back against the wall. "That doesn't sound too bad. What did they give you to form a pact?"
The blond cracks a grin. "Something I can use to smooth things over and start apologizing with when I end up putting my foot in my mouth and piss off Nora or Pyrrha."
"When?" Pyrrha asks in a dry voice, right eyebrow cocked.
Jaune looks over to his partner, still grinning. "Growing up with seven sisters I learned a lot of things. I can dance pretty good, I'm basically a trained masseur, have a veritable cookbooks worth of comfort food recipes committed to memory, and have no delusions that any male living in close proximity to more than zero girls can avoid pissing them off indefinitely."
The room falls into silence for a few moments, before Nora, voice bordering between tight and judging, interjects "What was that about massages?"
Recognizing the tone, Jaune hastily replies "And you just spent the last few hours doing heavy lifting. How inconsiderate of me. Lay down on the floor and I'll get your back."
As Nora trots to the center of the room, stripping down to the tank-top she had been wearing under her blouse and jacket in the process, Pyrrha prompts "You never told me you were housebroken, Jaune."
Forcing out a chuckle that he assures himself doesn't sound resigned or desperate, Jaune moves to start giving Nora a life-preserving shoulder rub. "You know, Coco said pretty much the same thing when we were figuring out their token to seal the pact."
Facing the door, Jaune entirely misses the thunderous look on his partners face when she replies "Did she now."
_-*R-DxD*-_
The rest of the week proceeds almost normally. Classes continue as they had since the semesters start, team RWBY is a source of chaos and entertainment, Jaunes team and peerage keep up their nightly training and grim slaying around summonings and the formation of pacts. However, the freshman dorms are far from peaceful. The teams that had suffered, losses, do their best to keep the introspection private. But as with any life-changing decision, reality isn't so clean or neat.
Arguments in common rooms and hallways are common. Teams trudging towards Beacons Tower as if to an execution as regularly as towards detention. Tear-streaked group hugs are as common a sight in said towers entrance hall as bare-knuckle brawls. Students stomping around angrily, or shambling like hollowed out facsimiles of themselves. Every day a few familiar faces are replaced, or teams re-shuffled to keep neat groups of four. On the plus side, Dun, the rooster faunus who had been added to Team FSJC, now RSLT, or 'Results', the day of Ozpins speech to the freshman is pretty good on his acoustic guitar, and the purple-mohwaked teen isn't too shy to play in their floors common room. The music is nice for studying, and while his singing isn't the greatest, his low, raspy, smoky voice – a result of the scarring to his throat from his accident last year, apparently – fades into the background easily enough.
None of the teams that were still in tact for Ozpins speech lose anyone, which, apparently, isn't the way things usually go. Part of Jaune wants to think how he, and his team, had acted towards the end of the speech may have had something to do with that, but he's pretty sure that's just his pride talking. All things considered, most of the students are glad that the week is over come Saturday. For his part, Jaune is considerably less relieved that it is the weekend as he sits with his team on a bullhead bound for Forever Fall.
Of course, Jaunes nerves have nothing to do with the fact that they are heading for their first multi-day grim slaying outing. Or, 'field trip' as Professor Goodwitch had called it. No, his nerves are directly linked to his older sister, Aurora, sitting across from him on the bullhead, the look on her face one he has feared since he was old enough to recognize it. All seven of the Arc sisters, as different as their personalities are, get the same one when they know or think their brother is up to something, and trying to hide it. An almost arched eyebrow, mouth in a tight near-scowl, for Aurora its a tapping foot, but crossed arms or drumming fingers are just as common. Her strawberry-blond ponytail shifts in time with each tap of her foot, khaki cargo pants rustling ever so slightly, white crop-top and denim vest looking dull compared to Stalwart Guardians well polished blade, the bastard sword propped against the transports wall for the trip.
As they are sharing the bullhead with team RWBY, Aurora doesn't press the issue, for which Jaune is thankful. Until Yang picks up on her fellow older siblings mood, and Jaunes place at its source. The normally bombastic, happy-go-lucky blonde goes placid as soon as she does. Signature smirk gone, fists planted on her hips – which causes Blake and Weiss to squawk and shuffle over to the empty seats that had been next to them, and glare daggers at Jaune as well – Yang side-eyes him almost constantly for the remainder of the trip. This, unfortunately, sets Ruby to a constant state of fidgeting and babbling, which leaves Weiss annoyed and grumpy. In short – the six hour ride in the back of a military transport sucks more than it normally would.
As the eight trainees and their assigned minder amble through the white and red forest Ruby does her best to casually sidle up to Jaune. It isn't subtle. "So, Jaune, why's you're big sis looking at you like you ate all the cookies last night and blamed Saber?"
Jaune scratches the back of his head, and, after a moment, decides its best to not comment on how specific her question seems. "I honestly have no idea." He lies through his teeth.
Ruby looks at him with equal parts concern and pity. "In trouble and don't even know why. That sucks." Oh, he knows why. Auroras best friend Cobalt had probably noticed that he hadn't flinched, slowed, or reacted at all when he had seen Fionna die last weekend. It had taken nearly a year of life or death battles, once Sairoarg had started taking him on missions likely to have them, for that reflexive aversion to seeing another sentient being killed – be they friend or foe – for him to be able to fight on undistracted. Hard experience had taught him that that flinch can easily see you wounded or worse.
Jaune chuckles half-heartedly at that "Hopefully she'll wait until we make camp to tear into me. Only Saphire gets worse tunnel vision when it comes to yelling at me when she thinks I deserve it. Hopefully Yang won't get involved." And he would have to take the scolding and either lie to her face, or stonewall her. Combat Schools aren't a place able to harden a person that way. Jaune wouldn't be surprised if it isn't expected of Beacon students until they are at least at the end of their Freshman year, maybe not even until well into Sophomore year.
Ruby kicks a rock as they pass it. "I wish I could say she wont. But I've seen her back up enough of my friends when their older siblings yelling at them when we were at Signal that I can't lie to you that way."
He shrugs, having accepted his fate before the bullheads had landed in the forest. She pats him on the shoulder reassuringly, then dashes off to where Weiss had just finished tapping another tree, and was waiting on her partner and team leader so they can continue trying to fill their jars. It had seemed like such an easy task when professor Goodwitch sent them out into the forest. One jar of sap per student for Professor Peach. That had been nearly four hours ago, when it was still fully light out. Now dusk is closing in, his team only has two jars filled up, and they will need to make camp soon. He ambles over to where Ren is filling, painfully slowly, one of the two Jars Pyrrha has been carrying. Nora is standing near the tree they are at, arms crossed and pouting through the pinkish tinge on her face.
"Guys, we're volunteering for second watch when we set up camp." He informs his team.
Nora groans and rolls her head "WHY would we do that Jaune? Second watch means less sleep for us."
Pyrrha opens her mouth, hopefully to defend his decision, when a thunderous crack has all four teens wheeling about to see what had made the noise. Standing a few feet from the rest of her team, Crescent Rose pressed to her shoulder in its sniper rifle form, barrel smoking and pointed roughly in the direction of the ridge a few miles distant. When she realizes that eight sets of eyes are on her, and none of them particularly happy, she offers a sheepish chuckle and half grin. "Ursa Major?"
Jaune squints in the direction her weapon, and can, barely, see the slowly evaporating form of the grimm she had mentioned. "Good eye kid." Aurora compliments the young prodigy, one hand on her bastard swords hilt, the other holding a small pair of binoculars to her face.
Jaune looks back to his team. "We're taking second watch because I've been edging us closer and closer to the original portal between the Underworld and Remnant. If we move quickly, and leave summoning circles for us at camp, we should be able to get to the Familiar Forest in the Underworld, get three your familiars, then teleport back before the others wake up."
His peerage all light up in anticipation, though Ren does look a touch pensive through it. "If we're gone, who will watch the camp?"
Jaune waves his friend off. "Saber, and I plan to set some wards that should keep grimm away as extra insurance. It'll be fine, don't worry about it."
_-*R-DxD*-_
Jaune and his peerage arrive at the original gateway between the Underworld and Remnant slightly winded, more than a little groggy, and with four hours to spare until sunrise. It looks like any other set of ruins, he supposes, a crumpled doorway wide enough for perhaps two men to pass through side by side, the left side twice again Jaunes height, the right broken off about halfway between the lefts jagged peak and the crown of the blonde devils head. The arch that had connected the two pillars is simply gone. The doorway rises from the center a mostly intact granite octagon. Strange runes, barely visible beyond the ravages of time outline the perimeter of the ten foot wide construct, their path only interrupted by the quartet of steps rising from the forest floor cut out of the platform centered on where the door had been.
"This it?" Nora asks as Jaune walks up the nearest staircase. The site is maybe a half hours walk from the grotto he had died and been reincarnated at. If his parents knew he was this close to home and hadn't stopped in to say hi, he wouldn't hear the end of it for months.
Pyrrha, who had been just behind him on the steps, asks "How does it work?"
Smirking, Jaune extends his wings, and flares his magic. The runes on the platform flare in time with his own power. When the glare resides, they look to be filled with molten tarnish, and far deeper in the stone than they had appeared to be. "Just walk through. I'll go last and that will close the gate back up."
Pyrrha walks through first, followed shortly by Nora, then Ren. Jaune, having made the trip many times over the last few years, strides through the gateway with all of the confidence his peerage had been feigning. The kaleidoscope of swirling colors is disorienting enough, add to that the stretching, compressed racing sensation that lasts for a second that feels closer to an eternity... Jaune had puked his guts out after each trip through this gate for years. The underworld side is just as dark, off to the right of the polished, complete archway, Ren is dry-heaving over the edge of the platform while Nora rubs his back. Pyrrhas right arm is firmly planted on the arch, and holding most of her upper body weight, judging by her pale-faced, stricken expression. "It gets easier the more trips you make?" Jaune offers his team. Noras glare at him is a clear negative response to his attempt at apology for not warning them what the trip is like.
Sairaorg chuckles at the display, Kuisha standing off to his left, arms crossed, a gentle smile on her face. "He isn't lying. I lost my lunch once or twice making the trip at first too, its nothing to feel bad about."
Jaune ambles over to his former king to offer a quick, firm handshake. "Not that I'm not glad to see you Sairaorg, but I was expecting a transport to the Familiar Forest to be waiting for us, and that's about it."
The older devil thumbs over his shoulder to the waiting helicopter with a grin. "And that's about all that there is going to be. I just needed to touch bases with you while you were in the Underworld. Its two AM for us too." Jaune glances around, to notice Kuishas smile is gone, replaced by a pouty frown, and her hair is hanging loose about her shoulders instead of her usual ponytail and bangs.
He sniffs, recognizes the smell wafting from the two of them, and decides not to press any further. "What did you need to tell me, then?"
Sairoargs grin is gone as well now, a grim frown crossing his face. The clack of heeled boots herald Pyrrha taking a place mirrored to Kuisha behind Jaune. "About six months ago, one of my fathers vassal Kings had a bishop go stray. Tirzon Agmadaz, a scumbag, but good with mind altering spells and illusions. The team our Clan has researching this portal and the others in the network noticed an unauthorized use of it occurred about a week after you went home to keep up appearances before starting at Beacon."
Jaune closes his eyes and takes a deep, calming breath. "There's a stray loose in Vale, isn't there?"
Sairaorg nods. "There haven't been any disappearances or killing sprees in the Middle East to indicate he traveled to the Site on Earth, so..."
Jaune nods "We'll get on it as soon as we get back to Beacon."
Sairaorg pats him on the shoulder. "Good hunting." He turns to start walking towards the waiting motorcycle. "And good job sneaking in your trip to the familiar Forest so quickly after Rias' appointment."
Jaune shrugs "Hey, her and Sona were so tied up trying to get the earlier slot, they pushed it back to the thirty first. Its the first now, and still a full moon."
Chuckling as he swings a leg over the chopper, Sairaorg replies "Yea, and Sona is pissed that someone got one over on her that way. Don t expect any help from me calming her down or staying alive next time you two meet."
Jaune whimpers "Maybe since we're peers now she wont, you know..."
Kuisha lets out a throaty laugh as she slides onto the bike behind her King and wraps her arms around his waist. "She doesn't knoooow~ that yet." The blonde king slumps over in preemptive defeat before Kuisha is done crowing at him. "Oh, and since my king forgot to tell you, your vassal manor is set up near the edge of Bael territory. Maybe a half hours walk from where Misla is, so, well, you technically have a neighbor."
Jaune grins at that "And somewhere to go with any familiars too big or conspicuous to keep at Beacon"
As the duo roars off on Sairaorgs motorcycle, Nora asks "So, how do we get to this forest?" Nora queries.
"I'll handle the teleportation. Just a heads up, Zatouji – the Familiar Master, is a bit eccentric." Before any of his team and peerage can comment, he teleports them to the forest. The clearing they show up in is, ominous. This is compounded by the late night gloom, barely illuminated to a red pall through the canopy by the full moon.
"Two in one weekend! Though considering the time, not strange my friend!" A middle aged man dressed like a junior high kid exclaims from a thick bough of one of the nearby trees.
Jaune shrugs. "Not like you can blame us Zatouji. Its not that often that one full moon straddles your one trip a month rule this cleanly." Clad in a white muscle-shirt, with a sweatshirt tied around his waist above knee length blue-jean shorts. A half-full backpack resting on his shoulders, and a blue baseball cap on his head backwards and a tuft of reddish-brown hair sticking out through the hole, the minion master deflates a bit, looking like he's being forced to do something he'd rather not. "This is Ren, Norra and Pyrrha, they're the ones who need familiars. Bishop, Rook and Queen respectively."
The lightly muscled man leaps from his perch in the tree, a slightly manic look on his face. "Five in one weekend is quite the drain. At this rate we'll need to ship more in by train!"
Pyrrha giggles a bit at the man-childs antics "Do you always-"
"So, when it comes to familiars, what do you seek? One that's strong or who's meek? A drab minion or one that's fleek?" he cuts her off as he bounds directly into Rens personal space. Ren leans back, eyes bugging out a bit when he nearly overbalances, before he steps back to a more comfortable distance.
Nora jumps at the open ended question "So, how do we get a unique familiar like Jaunes?"
Grinning, the familiar master starts walking deeper into the forest. "Your kings familiar comes from a hobby of mine. Breeding familiars is a hell of a time."
Ren, one hand on StormFlower, picks up with the next question as Nora takes a few steps closer to him. "So, are there any familiars that cant be found in this forest?"
The man spins on point to walk backwards as he addresses the freshly minted peerage. Effortlessly stepping over roots, rocks and branches that have team JNPR keeping half an eye on the ground, and still stumbling occasionally. "Normally, the answer to your question would be yes. But a forest infused with this much magic has the biome a mess. Things are so strange, you might even meet a familiar who will dance in a dress!" He then proceeds to cackle at his own joke. Nora tilts her head to the side in confusion, and Pyrrha slowly rubs at her temple.
Before anyone can comment that the man hadn't actually answered the question a kid who looked about Rubys age tugged on Rens arm. The young boy, clad in a fairly plain kimono forest green kimono is looking up at Ren with pleading, sightless eyes. "O-ho, would you look at that! For a bishop like you, a Kodama for a familiar is exactly where its at!"
Ren looks from the apparent familiar to their guide. "A what?"
Jaune, not sure if he can take another rhyming half explanation, interjects "A tree spirit. Pretty good with magic amplification. The spirit can work through a clipping from it at a pretty good distance from the tree itself. And the more impressive ones are able to physically manifest, not just appear as an illusion."
Zatouji nods, arms crossed as the spirit flickers. Its formerly brown hair now black with a pink streak, and blue eyes a shade darker than Rens magenta. Its clothes change as well, to be dressed like Ren, though it has a blade on its back as opposed to a pair of smg's on its hips. "Your king speaks true. Though keeping a tree at a school may be difficult for you."
Jaune scratches at his chin, and does his best to ignore what now looks like Rens pouting little brother. "If he has enough of the tree on his person, or very nearby most of the time, and the tree was moved to my holdings here in the underworld, would the pact still allow them to interact?"
Humming, Zatouji makes his way over to what looks, for all intents and purposes, like an East Asian Cherry tree, though there is a char pattern indicating it was struck by lightning a while back. "It could work, if I helped to modify the pact. And the spirit is so eager it would be cruel not to act." Ren moves to join Zatouji by the tree, the spirits projection trotting happily at his heels. Zatouji hums as he looks the tree, not much bigger than a sapling you could find at a hardware store or greenhouse. "You should be able to take just enough wood. But take care, with a tree this young, to clip too much would not be good."
As the Familiar Master starts walking Ren through the modified binding ritual, a strange birdcall cuts through the eeriely quiet woods. The rest of the group looks around for its source until Nora lets out a startled squawk. A bird about twice the size of Jaunes hand had landed on her shoulder. Its plumage is mainly black, though a blue tinge can be seen when the light hits it just right. While the birds body is in the sleek ovoid shape one would expect from a crow, its wings are larger, and jointed – closer to those you would expect on a raven than you would the smaller covid it appears to have the body of. The birds talons are tufted, and spread apart like those of an owl. To top off the strangeness of the bird roosting on his rooks shoulder, the neck is slightly elongated, and terminates in a bald, gray head with the long hooked beak of a vulture.
Zatouji, grinning from ear to ear, walks over to Nora. "There's no need to fear! That thunderbird has taken a shine to you, its clear!"
Nora stops shying away from the bird on her shoulder, which almost immediately starts preening her hair. "Did you say... thunder?" a slightly unhinged grin spreading across her face.
A light green light emanates from Where Ren is standing by his tree familiar, then the sound of snapping deadwood starts echoing through the woods. The familiar master nods. "And its good that you found one so young! If she were full grown, the two of you would not get along!"
"Why's that?" the ginger hammer-wielder asks, idly moving to scratch the birds chest.
Jaune chuckles "They're, prideful, from what I've been heard. Perfect for you though, I think, full grown they can cause sonic booms, and call down lightning." The snapping noises cease, and, in a second, even brighter flare of magic, this time colored in the wild patina of his peerage, and the tree is gone. Teleported to somewhere out of the way in his holdings here in the underworld, most likely.
Another nod from Zatouji. "Right now though the little girl probably isn't capable of much more than static shocks and arc flashes. But she'll be able to pull off feats like that if she goes to her classes!"
Before anyone can sneak in a word edgewise, Nora grabs the bird from her shoulder and holds it at arms length. "In the name of Nora Valkyrie and Devils everywhere, I bind you to act as my servant forever!" A green sigil consisting of a pair of rotating squares filled with runes springing to life as she does so, and fading as quickly as she speaks the last word.
"I'm, actually surprised you got that right." Jaune deadpans at the hyper girl.
Nora sticks her tongue out at Jaune as her familiar wiggles free to resume its perch on her shoulder. "It wasn't that hard, I just had to cut out all that stuff about serving from a distance and through a medium 'Touji had Renny add." The ginger haired girl pauses to pout, probably a front, and then adds "Though I do feel kinda jipped that my magic circle only had the two squares instead of four like Rens. Does that mean he got a stronger familiar?"
Jaune shakes his head "More complex magic or ritual, more complex circle." Nora nods, and the group resumes their hike through the silent forest. For about half an hour they continue to amble in more or less companionable silence. Nora occasionally cooing at her familiar or a startled exclamation as someone trips the only things breaking the silence.
That stutters to a halt when Pyrrha slows to tilt her head, and look into the woods, a small, worried frown on her face. Jaune is the first to stop as well, then Nora – more because she nearly tripped on a branch due to paying more attention to scratching under her familiars chin than where she is going than her friends actions however. Ren stops next, a bundle of dead branches under his left arm, familiar spirits illusory from holding on to his right. Zatouji is the last to stop, and, when he turns, he heaves a heavy sigh.
A figure about the size of Jaunes arm slithers out of the undergrowth, from the waist down its body is serpentine, the scales a bright red on the top, and a vibrant orange on the belly said. From the waist up it appears to be a coppery-skinned girl, a dirty bolt of cloth wrapped abound her juvenile chest, her almond shaped amber eyes a bit watery and set in a pouty face. Above its brows a mass of dark crimson snakes writhe about, though the emotions on their faces are difficult to place. "It breaks my heart every time I see a Lamia in these woods. In the days of the Greeks it is said they produced excellent goods." The familiar master gravely intones.
Ren tilts his head in confusion "What does that have to do with Pyrrha finding a potential familiar?"
"They, used to be as sentient as us or faunus, when the Greek pantheon was one of the dominant ones on Earth. Since their fall, a lot of the species associated with their lore and home region have been regressing. Minotaurs retained their intelligence for a generation. Lamias made it a few hundred years. I think there's only one Satyr village left that's clinging to bronze age levels of civilization. The rest are stone age or feral, experts are guessing that they'll start showing up here in a hundred years or so."
The Familiar Master nods sadly. "Be that as it may, a lamia makes for an excellent familiar any day. One with snakes for hair can petrify your foes with her gaze, on top of their illusion magic which is sure to guarantee you'll have your way." Judging by his face, Zatouji wants to change subjects desperately. Not that Jaune can blame him for not wanting to dwell on the fact that a sentient race will be little more than beasts in a few decades at best.
Pyrrha repeats the ritual she had just seen Nora preform, her familiar slithers up to wrap its tail around her shoulder a few seconds after the glow from the magic circle resides. Grinning, Jaune exclaims "Wow, three familiars in just over an hour. The full moon really does make a difference."
Nora tilts her head "How do you know, didn't Zatouji say you got a custom made familiar?"
Jaune scratches at the back of his head awkwardly. "That, was really expensive, and a last resort after Sairoarg and the rest of the peerage spent an entire weekend wandering out here without a guide, and not seeing a thing."
Zatouji saunters into the middle of the group. "Yea, yea, I make all the difference, now its time for you kids to beet feet. Its been a long weekend and I wanna beat my meat." The quartet of Beacon Students all lean back, looking more than a bit disgusted at the Familiar Masters blunt honesty.
Without waiting for any more prompting, Jaune teleports the entire peerage to the portal back to Remnant. Pyrrha, still blushing a bit at Zatouji's send-off forces a chuckle. "Between the way the Familiar Master got rid of us, and the fact that Sairoarg and Kuisha smelled of, well, sex, I'd assume that the Underworld makes people more depraved, if you hadn't told me otherwise."
Jaune groans. "Gee, thanks, Pyrrha, I had almost put the fact that those two had probably been banging before meeting us here out of my head. Now its stuck there again."
Ren shoots a strange look at Jaune "You, don't, want your former king to be happy?"
"Its not that, its just, he's like an uncle to me, or an older brother. So, while I'm not exactly against him getting lucky, I'd just rather not know about when, or how often, that happens." Both Pyrrha and Ren make understanding noises and their faces relax to more normal expressions at his explanation. Nore still looks a bit confused, but doesn't press the issue either.
_-*R-DxD*-_
As Pyrrhas senses return to normal after the, unique, sensations that come with shifting between worlds, she, and the rest of her team, immediately notice that they aren't alone in the clearing. At the center of the group that had been waiting for them, stands the monster wearing Sky's skin, a jian of light already gripped loosely in his left hand, black wings on display, and cocky smirk on his face. To his right stands another fallen angel, taller than Cardin by at least half a foot, the darkly tanned fallen could be the bullys cousin going by hair and eye coloration. However, his face is fare more brutish, with protruding cheekbones like granite slabs, a chin like a battering ram eyes set deep under heavy brows a shallow nose wider than it is long, and mouth set in what looks to be a perpetual scowl.
Supporting the fallen are half a dozen, well, they look like generic bandits from a summer action blockbuster. All of them are wearing cheap looking night vision goggles, and wielding tomahawks with some sort of gun built into the haft, and a crucifix etched into the blade. Each of them has a buckler strapped to their off arm and is gripping a trench knife in the hand behind the small shields.
For a moment, fear grips Pyrrha, until she notices something about the behemoth of a fallen. Metal. His forearms, shins and torso are encased in thick steel. "Jaune, the big one is armored."
Her leader nods at her, drawing his blade and reveals its true form silently. "This the scum you mentioned, boss?" One of the thugs asks, grinning as he flourishes his ax.
Suriel nods, and the brute lets out a low chuckle. "Take your time boys, and make sure to get them into as small of pieces as you can." His voice a low rumble more akin to an empty dump-truck bouncing down a dirt road than anything that could be expected from something nearly human. "It'll make disposing of the corpses that much easier."
Jaune cuts his eyes across his team, their juvenile familiars already having ran to safety, Rens having taken the branches allowing him to interact with the kodama with itself. "Ren, Nora, deal with the chaff." And at that, he bursts towards Suriel. Pyrrha stalks towards her target, who is manifesting a massive, single-edged great-sword, that, were it forged from metal, not light, would be prohibitively heavy, even for a huntsman of his size. For a few seconds, the two of them circle each other as the chatter of seven SMG's fills the clearing, punctuated by the occasional grunt or crash as Nora lands blows with Magnhild. Then the fallen bursts into action, fast as any striking viper with his horizontal slash. At least until Pyrrha nudges his forearms back and up ever so slightly. She bends backwards under the powerful strike, before springing back upright, letting the momentum propel Miló into a lightning fast slash, opening a slash just under the brutes short ribs. Shallow, though.
The fallen angel grunts, but doesn't slow, spinning on point even as Pyrrha slips past him. He brings his blade down in a brutal overhand chop just as Pyrrha spins to face him again, she catches the blow on Akoúo̱, and can hear herself grunt in exertion. She pushes back on his greaves with her semblance, but he continues to press down on her, forcing Pyrrha to take a knee. She is able to spot Jaune trading blows with a dual-wielding Suriel. The fallen angel a spinning dervish, nearly a blur, even to her exceptional before she became a devil and wit was enhanced, eyesight. In the back of her head she realizes just how much he had been holding back, toying with her. Akoúo̱ taps her forehead just as she couches Miló for a thrust. A thrust that, as a xiphos, would fall short, and her foe knows it. Suppressing a predatory smirk, she shifts her weapon into is spear form and lashes out. Again, she nearly strikes true. This time tearing a chunk of flesh from the fallen angels left thigh.
He grunts in pain, and his weight shifts to the right. Pyrrha applies another burst of magnetism to send the brute stumbling, then surges upwards behind Akoúo̱, shoving to the right with all her might. The fallen angel stumbles more, dispelling his blade as he flails his arms trying to regain his balance. Pyrrha turns on point to see one of the thugs aura shatter under Magnhilds fury, Nora leaves the mans legs a mangled mess with the follow-up strike. The energetic hammer-maiden shifts her weapon into its grenade launcher form and, with a pair of well placed shots, sends three of the remaining thugs flying.
Behind the ginger girl, Ren has one of the thugs struggling to escape a choke-hold, the dirty mans attempts sporadic and feeble enough that she doesn't doubt he will be unconscious soon. What Ren cant see is one of the thugs creeping up behind him. Barely thinking, Pyrrha shifts Miló into its rifle form and snaps off a trio of shots at her teammates would-be ambusher. Rens eyes bug out for a heartbeat as the dust rounds ping off the bandits aura. The taciturn teen spins, dragging his hostage so as to keep him as a human shield.
Pyrrha is just able to see Ren shift his grip on the hostage so that his right hand SMG can pepper the second thug, before a roar of rage draws her attention back to her own foe. She is barely able to sidestep the rage-fueled thrust leveled at her. Before she can react, an upward slash shoves her back and to the left as it crashes into Akoúo̱, tearing the shield from her arm and sending her skidding back and to the right. She throws herself into a somersault to get under the horizontal chop that follows, calling Akoúo̱ back to her with magnetism in the same motion that shifts Miló back into a xiphos. A rising slash is barely able to kiss the leather strap holding the angels breastplate shut as he stumbles at the lack of resistance to his mighty blow.
"Each cut I land brings you a step closer to your new fate, Suriel!" she can hear Jaune exclaim as Ren flys past her, skidding to a halt in a neat three-point landing. He nods at her, before darting ahead again, just in time to avoid Pyrrhas foes next bull-rush. She grunts from the exertion of stopping another powerful chop on Akoúo̱, but the resistance is removed as quickly as it had been placed, the limp form of another thug crashing into the brute. A grinning Nora winks at her, purposely frozen in the follow-through from what must have been a hell of a gut-blow to launch the thug like that.
As Pyrrha stalks towards her downed foe, intent on taking him out of the fight, when she feels her hair shift in an unnatural wind. She jerks her head to the left to see one of the still standing bandits with his arms crossed in front of his face. Until is dark brown aura shatters, and some of the rounds slam into his goggles, ruining the only thing keeping him in the fight. At which point he turns tail and runs. Pyrrha looks in the opposite direction, to see a triumphant looking Ren in a half-crouch, the paired auto-pistols of Stormflower still leveled at the fleeing thug.
As Pyrrha moves to focus on her foe again, her heart ices over, and she nearly freezes in place. Jaune is forcing Crocea Mors down towards a bloody, battered Suriel, his shield no-where in sight, two hands on his blade, the fallen angel pushing pack with crossed light jian. Behind the dealing pair, though to Pyrrhas right, the last two thugs are stalking towards her unaware partner. Thought flees her, reason fail, and, instinctively Pyrrha lashes out at the threat to her king.
A thick gout of flame issues forth from her outstretched hands, weapons dropped in her panic. The flames, if they are that, are far from natural, a deep crimson at the core, fading to a vibrant, acidic purple at the edges. The sound is horrendous, a shriek like a mix between white-hot steel being quenched in water and nails being dragged across a chalkboard holds for nearly half a minute, until thought comes back to Pyrrha, and she halts the flow of flame.
A deep furrow has been carved between her and where the thugs had been. Impossibly smooth, and pitch black, even to her enhanced sight. A violent heat-haze is arising from the tortured land, and the smell of burnt meat now dominates the clearing. A violent heat haze makes it nearly impossible to make out what is happening between Jaune and Suriel.
Where did the bandits go?
A brilliant flash of light throws Jaune back, then solidifies into a fence entirely made of beams of light. "I suppose I should thank the lot of you." the monster wearing Sky's skin ponders, sounding far too glib for his current, battered, state.
Why does the fallen she had been fighting end at the waist now?
The standing angle takes an elaborate bow "Not that any of you will live long enough to use the knowledge, but you have no idea how hard it is to get enough prestige for a promotion when your commanding officers lover is in the same squad as you are."
Pyrrha realizes something feels strange about her arms. She looks down to see a bangle of burnished bronze on either arm. Both is formed from a pair of ruby eyed ouroboros, twined about each other to form eighteen infinity symbols on either bicep. The serpents heads equidistant from each other on both bangles, the spot where the head bites the tail forming a heavy knot on either side of both biceps. Another flash, this one longer, and with the familiar feel of a transportation circle,and it is just team JNPR in the clearing. Well, them, and the three downed thugs.
Pyrrha spots a cauterized arm to one side of the furrow. Further down the too-straight line, a foot lies, the boot igniting as she becomes aware of the scrap of human remains. Realization dawns on the Invincible Girl, and she doubles over to vomit, horrified at what she had just done.
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