I always loved training arcs in anime early on and I thought RWBY would have been so much cooler if we got to meet the professors and experience what makes them tick a bit more. So this oneshot is here to show off the unique strengths and quirks of each professor while giving them alot more characterizaiton. Plus it gives a justifiable reason WHY Team RWBY get good enough to avoid getting obliterated by a whole ARMY of paladins when just ONE of them was almost enough to push them ALL to their limits.
Thinking about it in hindsight, getting into a fight with the White Fang probably wasn't the best idea. Sure, they weren't the most dangerous group of baddies in the world, but they had a lot of people and a lot more weapons. It wasn't that hard to get through them all to make sure Blake and Sun were safe at the docks.
Mass manufactured weapons and adults without proper training couldn't hold up to her baby and years huntress training—even if she didn't finish it yet. Sticks, stones, and gunfire couldn't break past her aura and no White Fang member was going to get back up a hit from Crescent Rose.
Sure, Torchwick and the mysterious huntress were able to hold them back and run away. But nobody got hurt, so it all worked out in the end. At least that's how it should've been if Ms. Goodwitch and Ozpin hadn't given them a 3-hour detention for the rest of the semester!
Letting out a big sigh in frustration and hoping that she wasn't the only one that was bored out of her mind. Ruby decided to try to take her mind off of things by checking in on her teammates to see if they were doing any better.
Blake was just brooding and blankly staring at the wall. Probably deep in thought about the White Fang or something important.
Weiss had decided that doing homework from other classes was "the best course of action" to "be as efficient with her time as possible." Meanwhile. Yang was just looking around the room, probably just as bored as she was.
But Professor Goodwitch's office didn't really have much to look at. The whole room looked more like the library than an actual classroom or an office. Besides the large window behind her and the door to the room, bookshelves and filing cabinets covered every wall and the most of the extra space was taken up by her desk.
The massive L-shaped piece of black and white marble looked like it was about the same size as a lunchroom table. But between her two monitors, the mountains of books and folders it was flooded with, you could barely even see Professor Goodwitch at all.
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Suddenly, Ruby saw a familiar purple light spreading across all the bookshelves in the room as every single book floated towards Professor Goodwitch like they had minds of their own. Professor Goodwitch had used her semblance to move some books and folders around before, but it wasn't like this.
Every single book floated towards her right side, one at a time, in a perfectly straight line like she was doing a role call for a field trip. As she was typing away at her computer, she gave them a casual glance before they were sent floating back to exactly where they were before.
After watching them for awhile, Ruby felt like they were actually alive, with their own little personalities and quirks. Even though it was probably because she was just bored, she noticed that each book didn't move at the exact same pace as the rest.
The thinner ones looked like the moved just a little bit faster than the rest, some books floated side like they were holding hands.
Even though Yang and Weiss would've called her childish for thinking of them like that, it still brought a smile to her face.
What she didn't notice was the fact that Glynda had one too.
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Unlike her sister, Yang didn't feel a sense of childlike wonder, she saw an opportunity. Even though most people thought that she was a dumb girl relying on brute force and nepotism to get by.
She wasn't as crazy gifted like Ruby was, who could build a weapon that was complex enough to make their local weaponsmiths jealous when she was just 13. But you couldn't be the daughter of the headmaster of Signal without knowing a lot about aura and semblances.
Even though each semblance is unique, every semblance can be broken down into through two main categories. Emission-based semblances that uses a person's aura to do effect things besides the user's body, like Weiss' glyphs or Blake's clones. Enhancement-based semblances that use aura to affect a person's body, like Ruby's superspeed and her strength boost after taking a couple of hits. Then there's the odd-balls with passive semblances that are active as long as a person's aura is up and/or when certain conditions are met, but less than 1% of huntsman even have a semblance like that in the first place.
Since Professor Goodwitch's has an emission-based semblance she has to concentrate on what she's targeting in order to use it. On top of that, the emission-based semblances use more aura depending on mass of its target's. So having hundreds of books suspended in mid air, sorting through them, and returning them back to their spots can't be easy even for a huntress like Professor Goodwitch.
After waiting for thirty-minutes of waiting, Yang saw her moment. When Professor Goodwitch pick up her scroll to talk to headmaster Ozpin, she knew that this was her best shot.
With her ears busy listening to the headmaster, the workload from her job, and her semblance wearing her out, this was the perfect time.
Even if they were just twenty minutes away from the end of detention, she could make those twenty minutes count. That's a whole twenty minutes of sleep, training, or just going back out into the town, so why shouldn't she take her shot?
Even if she got spotted leaving, as long as she could run out of the range professor Goodwitch's semblance before she could react, she'd be able to leave a whole twenty minutes early.
So, she snuck out of her chair and tiptoed her way towards the door as Professor Goodwitch had her nose buried in some kind of book while talking to headmaster Ozpin. As she was making her great escape, only two of her teammates noticed.
Blake was rolling her eyes with a little grin on her face, almost egging her on to see how things worked out. Yang knew that if she could get away with it, she wouldn't be the only member of team RWBY to take an early exit.
Weiss furrowed her brows in frustration before glaring at Yang and pointing at the empty seat she left behind.
"Stay put you dolt, we only have 20 minutes left today and if you do this, they'll make the rest of the semester even worse." Weiss mouthed back to her.
But unfortunately for the Schnee heiress, her quiet words fell on deaf ears as Yang slowly crept towards the door and prayed that its hinges didn't squeak.
Thankfully, the stars aligned and she was able to get the door to open just enough for her to get out of the room before Professor Goodwitch could turn back around.
As soon as she could fit her foot through the door and the ambient noise of the school flooded the dead silent room. Yang pushed her aura into a sprint in hopes that she could escape her professor's range and blend in with a crowd of students walking towards their next class.
But right as she made her way to the middle of crowd, before she could even breathe a sigh of relief, she was covered in a familiar purple glow.
"What a bold attempt Miss Xiao Long. Noticing my aura use, using the audible distraction of my phone call with the headmaster, and trying to run out of my range before I could react…if you had used those observations in one of our combat classes, I would have given you a perfect score."
Professor Goodwitch said as she slowly walked out of her office, towards the now airborne Yang.
Trying to muscle through Professor Goodwitch's aura by using her own. Yang's hair slowly became golden as her aura flared to the surface, and her eyes burned red hot with determination.
Using her semblance to push every last fiber of muscle as far as she could, to try and resist the power of her professor's semblance.
But, unfortunately for her, her semblance had a limit and Professor Goodwitch didn't even look like she close to hers.
In the end, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop herself from floating in the middle of the air as she flew towards Professor Goodwitch like one of her books.
"But right now, you're not in combat class. Right now, you are serving detention and from now on Team RWBY will have one extra hour of detention each week for the rest of this semester. Am. I. Clear?"
Professor Goodwitch chided in a strict lecturing tone, before slowly pulling Yang back into the office without letting her touch the floor. Letting the young huntress trail behind her like a balloon as they walked towards her office.
"Yes, Professor Goodwitch."
Yang groaned out in a defeated, uncharacteristically quiet tone, as her face was flushed red from the faint chuckles and whisper she heard from her fellow students and the not so faint chuckles from her teammates.
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After being placed back into her seat, Yang tried to play off her embarrassment the best she could.
She tried cracking jokes about it before they were quickly shut down by her professor's no talking policy.
She tried chuckling with her teammates about it, but she couldn't fight back the tinges of cringe she felt thinking back to what just happened.
She tried looking away from them and letting things die down, but she kept replaying that moment over and over again and eventually she had to do something.
So, she decided to take another gamble.
Worst-case scenario things stay the same, best-case scenario she could get some answers and a distraction from how the professor just embarrassed her.
She wasn't a gambling girl, but there's no way she could go 0 for 2 back-to-back, right?
"So, professor G, how'd you do it? You used your semblance on like a hundred different books for over two hours, you were on a working on stuff on the computer, you were on a phone call with Headmaster Ozpin AND you weren't even looking at me."
"Hard work and practice."
"As the deputy headmistress of Beacon academy there are certain standards I must abide by and responsibilities I must uphold. Or did you think being a leading figure in the academy which has produced the strongest individual huntsmen and huntresses in Remnant fell into my lap?" Professor Goodwitch asked while clearing some space on her desk to look at the young team of huntresses in training directly.
"When you say it like that it makes sense, but doing all of that was crazy. Emission-based semblances need focus, so they should get weaker the longer you use them, he more things you do, and the stronger your targets are. So how did your weakened semblance outmuscle me at over 100%?" Yang asked, as her and the rest of team RWBY leaned in to hear the answer.
"Your understanding is correct. However, you're forgetting one critical factor Miss Xiao Long, you are all children. As experienced as you think you are, you must always remember that there is always a stronger opponent and a new goal to work towards. I have been a practicing huntress for longer than you have been alive, if I couldn't do that much I wouldn't be deserving of my position."
Professor Goodwitch said as she opened a drawer to retrieve her riding crop before opening the doors to her office.
"But if you would like to set a new goal for yourselves, why don't we use our remaining time for some practical experience instead?"
Leading the young, first-year team towards one of the training arenas, Glynda had a mission.
If they couldn't understand how big the world truly was…she would just have to show them instead.
Actions speak louder than words after all.
I would have given Weiss and Blake more attention but I know that would have taken up an extra 2-3 hours I don't have. Writing this took alot longer than I expected but it was still super fun it's own right. For those of you that are curious about how they would have reacted, Weiss would have been amazed at the level of control Glynda has over her semblance. Because their semblances are the same category (even though summoning makes Weiss extra special), it would be like a basketball player seeing prime Lebron upclose or a league player seeing Faker play for the first time. Also, because Weiss never got to grow up in the Schnee household she still has that same childlike wonder in her that Ruby does; she's just better at hiding it.
For Blake, I have a hard time pinning down her exact reaction but it'd probably be a mix of Ruby's wonder at the spectacle, and Weiss' admiration for the technical part of it. Add in a little splash of angst about "this is how huntresses should be like", "if only we could use our semblances for everyday things like this instead of hunting grimm and hurting each other", and some bits about "If a semblance truly is the reflection of somebody's soul, are some souls just made to fight? Could Adam truly live in a peaceful world or is this always how he was meant to be?"
I was going to touch this into the chapter but Yang is essentially trying her luck to run out because she's impulsive, bored, and she's limit testing what she can get away with here at Beacon. At Signal, Taiyang might have been disciplined her well enough so that she's polite but he's a softie at hear and I doubt he would bring down the hammer too hard on her. Qrow is just the type of character to say that "if you break the rules and you can get away with it, you deserve it". As long as it isn't dangerous or too crazy I doubt that he'd care to nitpick rules in a "kiddie pool" like Singal.
Lastly, remember, nobody else has actually seen Glynda use her semblance at this point in the story, before we leave Beacon Glynda is the strongest Huntress we/they know. So it'll be a real spectacle once they get to see her outside of a desk for once.
Update: IDK, I work 2 jobs and this a passion project. So I'll do it whenever I can.