Chapter Five
Percy was surprised by the starting point of initiation—instead of starting out at the edge or inside of the Emerald Forest, they were on a cliff overlooking it, all standing in a line. Professors Ozpin and Goodwitch (a blonde, green-eyed woman) explained the specifics. Travel north in the forest, collect relics… partners determined by first eye contact?
He didn't have time to dwell on it, as metal pads underneath their feet were launching him and his fellow students one by one into the forest. To his left was a blue-eyed girl with white hair—she had introduced herself as Weiss. To his right was a familiar face in Pyrrha.
No time to dwell on that, though. They had to land by themselves—and would be watch via cameras by the professors. Percy stretched his senses, finding several creeks in the forest to aim for, and as he was launched he opened his watch up into his shield, using it to change directions and angle towards one of the creeks. The air itself even seemed to part in just the way he needed.
Fortunately his aim was true, and he was able to splash down without much incident. Now he discreetly brought out Riptide, and began to search for others when he heard a loud yell to his right…
Pyrrha was glad she had used her weapons so extensively—maneuvering them to slow her descent and pulling on her semblance she quickly came to a stop on a thick tree branch before pivoting towards the left, where she had seen Jaune falling, and hurling Milo in javelin form towards him.
She had heard a faint "thank you!" in the distance. It was unfortunate that Jaune seemed not to have a better strategy than getting himself pinned to a tree, but better than the alternative…
She had to recover Milo, anyhow, and had just started making her way towards where she had pinned Jaune when she heard some rustling behind her. Pyrrha spun around, her shield Akoúo̱ between her and the potential threat, when she heard a string of curses, and Percy popped out from behind a few trees.
"Thought I heard someone yelling?" she heard him say. His voice was snarky—she could almost hear the smirk on his face.
"Well," she began, "I had to pin a blonde-haired someone to a tree a few hundred feet that way." She pointed in the direction she had thrown Milo. "I figured I should express my condolences."
"Fair enough," she heard him respond. "Who's pinned to a tree?"
"Jaune." Percy's eyes didn't show any recognition. She paused for a moment, unsure of how exactly to describe him. "Haven't you met him yet? Blonde hair, blue eyes, has an air of… confusion?"
Sure enough, he shrugged. "Can't say I have yet, but I'm sure he'd be a good member of the team. He's not malicious, right?"
She sighed. "No, he's not malicious. Just clueless."
She watched as he made his sword disappear—how did that work—before he spoke. "Works for me!"
She began walking in Jaune's direction, motioning for Percy to follow. "Now," she asked, "I've been meaning to ask. How did you learn to use a sword so well?"
"Well," he paused and looked away, appearing to be lost in thought for a moment before he came back into focus, "I had a teacher. Can't say much more than that."
Pyrrha quirked an eyebrow. That obviously wasn't the whole story, but she didn't want to push too hard. He wasn't going to tell her anyway. "Interesting. Care for a rematch after initiation?"
At this, Percy appeared to perk up a bit more—his steps became longer, and he stood up straight. "I'd love to!" That settled that, then. Maybe she'd be able to figure out what exactly about him and his fighting style enabled him to stand up to her, where all of her previous opponents had failed.
Jaune was glad to be alive, if humiliated. He admittedly didn't quite have the whole 'landing strategy' bit figured out before he was launched, and thought he was toast. Fortunately, before he had been turned into a pancake he had been saved.
Unfortunately, that was only because he was pinned to a tree by a javelin. Now, he was left to wait until somebody sympathetic found him. Weiss had come upon him, trailed by Ruby, but she had walked off upon seeing him.
After a couple minutes, he noticed someone else appear through the trees with black hair, pink eyes, and a couple combined pistol-daggers.
"You're in quite the pickle there," the newcomer remarked.
"Well, better than… you know…" he looked down at the forest floor, before looking back up. "I'm Jaune Arc, by the way."
The other man nodded. "I'm Lie Ren, but you can call me Ren." He put a hand to his chin before approaching. "Now let's see about getting you down…"
As he trailed off, there was rustling in the underbrush. Jaune watched as Ren turned towards the source of the noise, only to see Pyrrha step out, accompanied by a sea-green eyed, black haired man.
"Well, the gang's all here," the sea-green-eyed man said. "I'm Percy, by the way, I don't think we've met." He gestured to both Jaune and Ren as he spoke.
"Well, I'm Jaune," he started, and then pointed at Ren. "And that's Ren."
Percy nodded towards them. "Nice to meet you both." He then looked towards Pyrrha. "So, you said you needed to retrieve your weapon?"
She smirked. "Yeah, something like that."She walked up to the tree, jumping and swiftly extricating Milo from the wood before landing on her feet. Jaune fell to the forest floor with a thump.
As he stood, he cracked his back, sighing. At this rate, it would be a long initiation. At least he had a good few partners to get through it with.
Percy didn't know if the relics would end up being so important, because he had already managed to get in a group of 4 people running north through the forest. They had encountered a few Grimm on the way over, but nothing too bothersome—everything had been easy to cut down while they were running, and the only hiccup had been Jaune tripping a couple of times.
Of course, as soon as he had that thought he was proven wrong. The Fates weren't in this world, but it appeared as if it still functioned the same way.
As they were running, Jaune cursed, tripping over what at first appeared to be a decent sized log—except trees aren't normally pitch black…
Before their eyes, an enormous scorpion-like creature, a Death Stalker, emerged from the underbrush of the forest.
Oh, shit. Jaune let out a high-pitched scream, and Percy yelled the obvious: "Run!" The four began running, faster now, from the creature. After less than a minute of running they emerged into a decent sized clearing, with the temple they were supposed to retrieve relics from on the far end. If they wanted to get there, though…
They turned and faced down the Deathstalker, Percy readying Riptide and opening up his shield, and Ren, Pyrrha, and Jaune also getting into combat stances. The Grimm started by striking towards Ren claws moving to grab him and stinger descending to strike, but he dodged backwards and unleashed a hail of bullets on the creature.
For a moment they failed to coordinate, all attempting strikes at the various unarmored bits of the monster. Jaune was almost grabbed by a claw, knocked onto his back, and Percy stepped in to hit the monster back, brute forcing his shield against the offending claw.
He hadn't faced anything like this since—oh, shit. That'll work. "Pyrrha!" Percy shouted. She jumped backwards from the monster, allowing Ren to step in and parry a few blows. "I'm going to bait the stinger down! When I do, cut it!"
Without checking to see if she was following along, Percy stepped forward into the Deathstalker. It focused all of its attention on him, and tried to go for the claw-grab into pincer strike trick—as per his plan, Percy dodged the claws, with them snapping on each other and then returning to resting position, but let the pincer come down onto his shield, falling to his knees before blocking to maximize its vulnerability.
As the Grimm began to raise it out of reach once more, he felt the air move, and a streak of red in the corner of his vision. He looked up and watched as the stinger was cleaved from the tail, and was sent flying. The Deathstalker screeched in pain, and the claws again came towards him, but this time not in a planned attack, but in anger.
Percy rolled forwards into the Deathstalker's guard, next to where Pyrrha had landed, and motioned towards its head. She got the message, quickly maneuvering her shield to server as a launching platform, and he jumped off it, propelled high into the air above the Deathstalker's head. With a loud crack, he pierced through the bony shield protecting its brain from above, and it stopped moving, and began dissolving into smoke.
Tapping inside the handle of his shield to shrink it back down and capping Riptide, he got up off the ground and turned back to the impromptu team. "Nice work, guys!"
"Nice planning on the fly," Pyrrha said. Ren nodded, with Jaune getting up off of the ground and rubbing the back of his neck.
He waved a hand. "You took care of the stinger, and boosted me up to make the attack in the first place. I'd give you more credit."
She shook her head, but Jaune jumped in before they could continue. "Guys, the relics are over there, and once we get them we can get back to the cliff…" he trailed off as they watched a pair emerge from the trees much closer to the temple—one with yellow hair, the other with black.
Percy broke the silence."Yeah, we should probably head on over." He took out Riptide once more, brandishing it in front of him. The others followed his lead, and they began making their way across the clearing.
Yang was happy to have met Blake first. Don't get her wrong, she loved her sister Ruby. But to be partners with her? Well… there was such a thing as too much Ruby.
Things had been relatively uneventful, and in their walk towards the temple, and the relics, they had only encountered a few small Grimm, nothing that Yang and her new partner couldn't take care of. While Blake had been quiet during initiation, she wasn't standoffish, and the silence they found themselves in had been a comfortable one.
Emerging into a clearing near the temple, the pair was about to start making their way to the relics when on the far end of the clearing they spotted a fight happening.
"Who are they…?" Blake pondered, before Yang interrupted her.
"Hmm…" she started, placing a hand overtop of her eyes to narrow her field of vision. "Looks like a guy named Percy that Ruby and I met earlier, the tall guy with black hair, a blonde… maybe Jaune, a black-haired dude who I don't know, and Pyrrha Nikos with the red hair and armor." She paused for a moment. "Are they fighting a Deathstalker?"
Blake confirmed her thoughts. "Yeah, they are. They might need some hel—" Blake suddenly stopped speaking, as it appeared that Pyrrha and Percy executed a killer move on the thing, her cutting off the stinger, then launching him up and into its head.
Both Yang and Blake took a step back, "Wow. When did they find time to practice that move?" Yang questioned. The apparent ease and confidence with which they had first baited the Grimm into exposing itself to a crippling attack and then exploited its vulnerability with a killing blow was awe-inspiring.
"Well, I did overhear her talking about how they had already sparred before initiation", Blake said. "Perhaps they're both from Mistral, and have practiced together. From what I heard they were pretty evenly matched in spars."
"Yeah," Yang began, "He did mention that to me, but she's hands-down the best duelist among huntresses-in-training in Mistral. She won their kingdom-wide youth dueling competition all four years she was eligible to compete. All four years! Anyone who can actually keep up with her…"
Blake finished the sentence for her. "Would be an excellent huntsman. Now, if they haven't practiced that, and that was just on the fly, then I don't know what I'll say other than I don't want any part of fighting them. If they tell me they're partners, and that was improvised, whatever they can do now will pale in comparison to what they'll achieve in the future."
"Well, on that lovely note," Yang began walking towards the temple, "We should get our relics. That way we can make it back up to the cliffs and enjoy the rest of the day."
It was as Yang and Blake made their way to the temple, with the other group of students jogging towards it as well, that an enormous squawk rang out, and along with it two screaming voices.
Percy wasn't surprised that he saw Yang across the field. No, what surprised him was that as they were getting into speaking distance a Nevermore arced across the sky, with it evidently holding two hostages—one red-haired, and one white. Ruby and Weiss.
As their two groups combined, and their number grew to six, the Nevermore stopped its directional flight and started to circle overhead. Pyrrha pointed at the bird, transforming her weapon into a rifle as she did so, and the message was clear. Everyone, including him, equipped their ranged weapons (except Jaune, whose sword appeared to be single-form).
As they began to open fire, taking care to aim for the head and avoid hitting Ruby or Weiss, the Nevermore let out another deafening caw and began to dive towards them, folding its wings in for a moment before angling them to swiftly glide down and begin attacking in earnest.
Seeing this, Percy put his pistol back into its holster and prepared to grip Riptide with two hands. Before he could do that, however, he had to chart out a plan. "Pyrrha!" He shouted, pointing at the enormous bird. "Want to do the thing with your shield again?"
She nodded. "Do you want to pierce it or land on it?"
He thought for a moment. "Get me onto it, and I'll climb it with a sword. That should take care of it."
As the bird dove in for its flyby attack, Percy got a running start, jumping and landing both feet onto Pyrrha's shield before jumping off it. The combined strength of both of them easily got him into the air, and he managed to get an arm around one of the bases of the wings, swinging around onto its back and immediately plunging downwards with Riptide.
The thing let out another enormously loud noise, and dropped Ruby and Weiss. Now it's my problem. He took Riptide out of its back and began slowly climbing towards its head, using Riptide as a handhold combined with the feathers, which were surprisingly well-attached. As he climbed, the Nevermore began flying more and more chaotically, hoping to throw him off.
As he reached the head of the thing, it appeared to want to try one more trick. It had flown pretty high up, and entered one last dive, folding its wings in and plummeting towards the ground. With his hair sticking up in the wind, Percy first stabbed Riptide down into its left eye before slashing its throat.
As the ground approached, he managed to jump off the bird's now-still body to achieve some separation, and one thought occurred to him: I hope my Aura is strong enough to eat this fall.
Surprisingly, his Aura had indeed managed to absorb the impact of him hitting the ground. When Percy had compared the feeling to the Curse of Achilles, he hadn't been kidding, although when he had checked out his scroll he saw that his Aura wasn't doing particularly well. It would be better if he avoided jumping from large heights, then.
After that, all of the eight present—Percy, Pyrrha, Ren, Jaune, Yang, Blake, Ruby, and Weiss—had at least introduced themselves, and some had gotten into conversations on the walk back to the cliff after grabbing their relics. It felt like there would be at least some semblance of a group of friends, which he was more than happy to participate in (even if Weiss had threatened to skewer him when he made jokes at her expense).
He was jolted out of his memories when Ozpin began announcing the teams. He hadn't encountered anyone outside of the group of 8 during initiation, so he couldn't judge based on personalities whether teams would be cohesive. Based on appearances, though, some would certainly function better than others.
As Ozpin neared the end of his team announcements, Percy and his team, composed of himself, Pyrrha, Ren, and Jaune, were ushered up onto the stage at the front of the auditorium. They had been privately informed beforehand, but he supposed it was important for everyone to know each other's teams.
"Perseus Jackson, Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune Arc, Lie Ren. From today, you will be known as Team PPRJ." The professor paused for a moment, and gave Percy a glance. "You will be led by Perseus Jackson."
A/N: Alright, the teams are formed! It's pronounced Pepperjack, fwiw, which is a type of cheese and at least kind of a color. I'll take what I can get on that front. I tried not to let the initiation drag on too much because, honestly, its difficult to innovate with.
Hope you all enjoyed! Have a good week! See you next Tuesday!
Addendum, slight spoilers added after a couple of reviews: Nora will exist, and will be a relevant character (on the levels of the main teams), but it was either her or Ren not on the team, and I
1) couldn't actually think of a passable team name with Nora (although if you have any you can leave them in reviews to prove my stupidity), and
2) can only really imagine the link between Nora and Ren bringing her into the larger grouping, and she'd either join in with Ren or drag him over. I prefer him in the team and her barging her way in because if she was dragging him over he'd proobably be a bit excluded from the team, at least for a while, because of how quiet he tends to be.
Long story short, Nora will appear in Chapter 6 or 7 depending on some editing and timing I'm working through at the moment.