Me: The whole no-renewal/delayal thing for V10 is fine, no biggie. It'll come around eventually. RWBY is RT's biggest moneymaker after all!
Monkey's paw: *simultaneously curls in two digits, leaving the third and middle finger standing*
Me: Hrm.
The devil is also whispering to me about writing a RWBY/BG3 crossover, if only because it'd be a really fun culture clash to drop Penny or somebody on the ilithid ship and have them try to deal with Faerun's *gestures vaguely* everything. The only thing really holding me back is A) I know basically jack shit about Dungeons & Dragons, B) I'm not sure what character or characters I'd want to plunk in there, and C) THERE ARE ALREADY MANY PROJECTS I AM WORKING ON DO NOT ADD ANOTHER PROJECT I REPEAT ABORT ABORT DO NOT ADD ANOTHER PROJECT-
Thoughts?
"So I was thinking," Jaune said as he perched on a stool, watching Ruby modify his shield to include the Dust vents. Neo had already left, and it was just him and Team RWBY in Beacon's workshop now, the evening before initiation. "We're splitting up our teams, but… not our partners, right?"
"Not if we can help it, no," Weiss replied, sorting out Dust on the desk beside Ruby's. "Ideally, it would be some permutation of Arkos/Flower Power/White Rose/Bumblebee, but if we mix up our partners, that's not… technically against plan."
"Big technicality," Yang sniffed, twisting a tiny screwdriver inside her gauntlet's firing mechanism. An ordinary student would struggle to perform a rush job like this –particularly overnight, and especially before initiation– but both Ruby and Yang were mechanically-inclined, and they had both already performed these modifications before. They could get it done if they skipped a few hours of sleep.
"Yes, well, I did say that it was our ideal."
"It shouldn't be too hard," Blake observed from her post by the door. They were fairly assured of privacy, since no other new students should know the passcode to get into the workshop, and most older students would have no need for an emergency modification at this particular time… but fairly was not completely, and with her Faunus ears, Blake made an ideal lookout.
"I was thinking that, since we're splitting the teams anyway, we should split our Ozpin thingy," Ruby said, carefully prying at the ancient metal of Jaune's expanded shield. She had to be delicate to avoid doing any unintentional damage, since modifying a historical mecha-shift like this was always more difficult than simply building a new one from scratch. "Like, when we tell him… guh, we leave out one team."
She gave a grunt, and there was a slight metallic creak as she pried open her targeted crack in the steel.
Yang blinked and looked up. "Eh?"
"Since JNPR's going to be divided between RWBY so we can have more-equal amounts of firepower across both teams, we can, um, choose one team to work with Ozpin, I guess?" Ruby continued, half-focused on her work and half-focused on outlining the thought that had been tickling in the back of her brain for a while. "Like… Team A tells him that they're from the future and all the rest of it, and they're super happy to work with him in whatever way they can, and Team B… doesn't get mentioned. N' then they can do their own thing."
"That idea does have merit," Weiss hummed, flicking a sealed vial back and forth under one fingernail and staring at the Dust as it rolled smoothly across the desk. "We cannot simply let Ozpin take the reins and direct us as he pleases –see what happened both last time and the Fall of Beacon– but neither can we completely disregard our allies and work our own angle, since the problems with that began in Mistral and ended rather catastrophically in Atlas… though I still hold that was as much Ironwood's fault as ours."
"Ironwood's precariousness aside, it is a good compromise," Jaune said, slouching and folding his arms thoughtfully as much as one could on a backless steel stool as he looked up at the ceiling. "Team A cooperates fully with Ozpin and his group and tries to further our goal of stopping Salem that way, and Team B slips through the cracks to help fill in the gaps our way. Between the two approaches, we should finally make some really good progress."
"Given the ratio of NPR to the rest of us, one team is going to be three-to-one and the other two-and-two," Blake pointed out, tilting her head a little as she leaned against the wall. "Which team do we want to be Team B?"
"Three-and-one sounds good," Yang said. "Whether it's Pyrrha or Nora or Ren, it'll be easier for them to keep up with us if there's only one person not in the loop."
She paused a second, then grinned.
"Heh. Loop. Get it?"
"Ruby, feel free to plant your barbarous sister's face into any of the Dust on this table," Weiss said generously as Blake and Jaune groaned. "I'll take it on expense."
"Bad puns aside," Blake said, still making a face. "I agree with Yang. Team A has to deal with placating Ozpin first and actually trying to do anything second, which means that it'd be safer for them overall. You saw that last time: Ozpin and the others believed us, mostly, but they still tried to sit us out a lot of the time."
"Deservedly," Weiss said, and then sighed. "Well, ethically, perhaps. Being twenty-or-so rather than seventeen is still very young, all things considered, and it is particularly so when it comes to matters of warfare and politics. Too young, in their eyes, to be thrown recklessly at the enemy when there are older and stronger soldiers to bear the brunt of it."
"If they didn't want to put us on the front line, then maybe they should've sorted out their shit before our generation came along," Yank muttered savagely, cranking her screwdriver.
Ruby tried not to flinch. Their mom had tried to fix it, she had been fixing it –hadn't she?– and then she was gone, and then she was gone, and then she was-
Hands pausing on Jaune's shield, Ruby took in a deep breath and closed her eyes, strangling the urge to cry. No. Her emotional state was a bit delicate right now, but everything was fine, they could fix it.
It was fine.
Nobody had noticed her brief tremble.
She was still steady.
"So Team A –the team that gives Ozpin the heads-up and lets him dictate how they plan– is gonna be two of us and two of NPR," Ruby said aloud, drawing attention back to her. "Team B is going to be three of us and one of them. We're gonna communicate between teams, right?"
"Sneakily," Jaune said. "We should probably wait until after we've actually been sorted out before we start planning how –trying to get one of my team to keep a secret is going to depend a lot on which member we get and how."
"True," Weiss nodded. "Since we don't know who is going to be our front team, so to speak, how should we play initiation, then? Skilled? Subtle?"
"Maybe somewhere in-between?" Ruby suggested. "Good enough that it seems obvious later, but not so amazingly awesome Team B doesn't slide under the radar?"
Yang made an iffy noise. "That'll be tricky…"
"Eh, speak for yourself." Jaune smirked briefly, before his smile fell. "Which reminds me –after we tell Ozpin and my team, what do we want to try and take care of first?"
Ruby's hands clenched on the smooth, convex surface of his shield.
"Salem stirs up trouble by turning people against each other," she said. "And the only reason she can do that is because she has agents that can infiltrate places for her. If she actually walked up to any normal person, they'd freak out and think she's a Chill or something."
"She's winding her forces up for a big push on Vale," Blake said, and now it was her turn for a small, deadly smirk. "If we take out her agents here, that'll at least buy us a lot of time, if nothing else."
"Before we met up with you guys, Neo said she'd do some scouting on her and Torchwick's side to see when/where/how we can get Cinder," Ruby announced to the group, getting interested glints from the eyes of Blake, Jaune, and Yang. "Since she fought me while helping Torchwick escape the Dust robbery-"
"-pretty sure she was mostly fighting Goodwitch, sis-"
"-she fought me, eh, it would've been yesterday, so she's probably still in Vale," Ruby repeated stubbornly. "What we don't know is whether Mercury and Emerald are here too, and when Cinder would be most vulnerable. Adam probably isn't in Vale, yet, so Blake…"
"I'll put out feelers," Blake said, her mouth tightening a little as her eyes went cold.
"Right, yeah, and Watts is who-knows-where, so we probably won't be able to get our mitts on him until after Cinder's been stabbed. Sound good?"
There was a moment of silence as everyone silently sifted these plans in their minds, searching for any weak spots, any likely additions, whether or not they felt like the best move.
"So, next meeting will be after we've got our teams sorted out and Neo calls in what she's learned about the bad guys' plans and locations," Jaune announced at last, and Team RWBY gave more-or-less unanimous nods, each with varying levels of distraction.
Ruby only had to spend a few hours tuning up Crocea Mors so Jaune wouldn't splat on the forest floor, and she spent the rest of the night before initiation sleeping as soundly as she ever had –was that the right phrase when this was only her third time?– the night before her entry into Beacon. She didn't need to worry about Neo coming in for a sudden assassination, or feel bubbly and excited over finally getting into Beacon…
She just felt tired, honestly. Another night, another mission. Another thing to not screw up.
Of course, she did still pile her plate high with sugary goodness at breakfast –all that time traveling across Anima had starved her sweet tooth something fierce; she needed to restock even if she was in a body that hadn't experienced her sugar shortage– and bantered with Yang and Weiss. Blake was a comforting presence beside her, and Jaune was buffing up his alibi of being totally-not-previously-involved with RWBYJNPR 2.0 by eating a breakfast burrito in the locker room and polishing Crocea Mors.
She hoped he'd do a good job at convincing Pyrrha he A) didn't know her and B) was going to be a good person to partner with.
Ruby hoovered up her syrup-soaked pancakey goodness and then scrubbed her face with a wet napkin as she trailed the other students towards the locker rooms, mentally going over plausible cover stories and her pre-fight systems check for Crescent Rose. Her sweet baby had never misfired once, but Ruby didn't intend to break that record anytime soon.
She kept half an ear out for Jaune's conversation with Pyrrha, but since Weiss hadn't detained her for a chat –instead passing the championship fighter with a single cool nod that probably did more to endear Weiss to her than any previous enthusiastic speech– it seemed like Pyrrha passed right by him, and Jaune didn't want to jeopardize his not-searching-her-out thing by starting a conversation out of nowhere as Pyrrha retrieved her sword-spear and shield and gave them both a quick once-over.
She said she'd let it fall to chance, right? Ruby thought, her lips twisted to one side in a frown as she pumped the bolt on Crescent, making sure that nothing stuck. It should be okay…
Pyrrha was going to be a problem.
Pyrrha was their weak point.
They knew Nora and Ren –she'd fought by their side in Kuroyuri and watched Ren take down that Nuckelavee twice– and Ruby could recite tons of personal information about them to help convince them that she was their friend from the future. Not only did she have less of that information on Pyrrha to begin with, there were probably entire magazines full of trivia lists on what Pyrrha Nikos The Absolute Coolest Invincible Girl liked and disliked.
Nora and Ren weren't important enough to try and trick. Pyrrha was.
And not gonna lie, Ruby was a touch worried about that. But Jaune was her partner… he knew her best… he'd probably be able to convince her, right?
Right?
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly. Crescent Rose was all in order, and she slung it over onto the magnetic plate on her belt, standing up from the bench again. Ruby was focusing on one thing at a time: first, gather RWBYJNPR into four partnerships, then split them apart into two teams that were very much not RWBY and JNPR.
Most importantly than that, partner up with Weiss again.
"Would all first-year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation?" Professor Goodwitch's voice chimed over the intercom as Ruby headed for the door. "Again, all first-year students report to Beacon Cliff immediately."
She was careful not to make eye contact with anyone except Yang on her way to the cliffs, because the best way to sell this –to both NPR and their teachers– was to make it look like nobody on Team RWBY knew each other. Weiss and Blake should never have met each other before Beacon –much less Yang or Ruby, and forget about Jaune– and the more obvious they made that, the more the five of them working together would lend credence to their time-travel story.
She pulled an Emergency Stress Cookie out of her spare Dust pouch and began munching on it as Ozpin went through his speech.
"For years, you have trained to become warriors, and today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest…"
"See? I told you!" came Nora's voice as Ruby's shoulders relaxed slightly. Same rules, same line formation –she glanced down the row to see everybody she cared about in the same positions as they had been the first few times. At least things weren't being unduly complicated…
"…Are there any questions?"
Silence across the cliff.
"Good! Now, take your positions."
Ruby shoved the last bit of cookie in her mouth and crunched heartily as the pneumatic sounds of the launch pads thudded their way down the line, bending her legs to take her weight on the balls of her feet. With a woosh, her pad shoved her up into the sky, and despite herself Ruby gave a little laugh as she soared like a bird above the spread of the trees below.
Wind whistled past Ruby's cheeks as her ascent peaked and she then began dropping through the air, hurtling towards the Emerald Forest. Her eyes flicked from side to side, tracking Weiss's white shape as it vanished into the leafy tree cover. A quick twist of her hips and Crescent Rose was aimed downwards, and Ruby shot, racked the bolt, and shot again, slowing her descent.
Leaves rustled and scratched against her Aura as Ruby plummeted through the topmost branches, and she twirled Crescent Rose again, collapsing and stowing it onto her back seconds before her booted feet slammed into a thick, twisted old branch. It barely had time to sway and creak under the weight of her impact before Ruby had activated her Semblance and was dashing off along it in a flicker of red, heading for where she had seen Weiss land.
As per their plan, Ruby didn't necessarily have a problem with partnering up with Ren, Nora, or Pyrrha… but still. But still. Weiss was her partner –her original, only partner– and that charred and blackened skull danced before her eyes and ached behind her back teeth every time Ruby blinked.
That isn't real. That didn't happen. Not anymore.
Her heart was beating quick in her chest, though, and it wasn't because Ruby was running her way along branches high above the ground in a forest alive with Grimm. The thought of failing Weiss like that again…
Ruby's mirrorlike eyes sharpened to pure steel.
Not on my watch.
She bounced from branch to branch, then grinned, paused, and dropped on a dime, her hood and cloak flying up above her as Ruby plummeted down to the ground. Weiss, who had apparently not been prepared for the suddenness of Ruby's descent, barely managed to stop a jump and a shriek as Ruby landed with an ecstatic pose less than five feet away from her.
"Hey there!" Ruby chimed, spreading her arms to the crabby heiress, who was biting down a smile as her heart undoubtedly swooped with relieved joy in the same way. "Partners?"
To hell with subtlety, Blake decided.
As she and the other students were all launched through the air and began to drop, her eyes searched the plummeting mass of bodies for Yang's distinctive bright blonde hair. Finding it, she unsheathed Gambol Shroud, clicked it into kusarigama form, and waited a few moments for the bodies to clear out before she hurled it overhand towards her (former?) partner.
Her Aura skated over the shimmering blackness of the ribbon as the Gravity Dust woven into it helped the satiny threads lengthen to a ludicrous extent, and Gambol Shroud latched onto Yang like a lizard thwaping its tongue onto a fly, wrapping several times around her ankle.
Heedless of their decreasing height as the forest drew ever-closer, Blake wound her hands into the ribbon and pulled.
A thick tree trunk caught under her feet –purposefully angled downwards– as Blake was slammed to a halt, and there was a twang at the same moment as the ribbon pulled taut, stopping Yang as well. Heaving with all her strength as the muscles of her arms and back stood out in high definition, Blake yanked on Gambol Shroud, snapping Yang in her direction.
There was a series of crashes and crackling leaves as twigs and branches alike broke under Yang's weight, and Blake flipped simultaneously, falling forward and landing on a branch sticking out from the main truck. A weight caught against her wrist a moment later, pulling her arm down slightly, and she craned her neck, looking down over the edge of the branch to see a somewhat disheveled Yang dangling upside-down from the end of Gambol Shroud.
Her blonde hair had several leaves tangled in it, and her clothes were a little ruffled, but she seemed to be mostly unharmed despite having been so unceremoniously dragged through the treetops.
"Don't," Blake said, seeing Yang's ever-sunny grin and knowing exactly what was about to come out of her mouth.
"All right, all right, fine, I won't," her partner sighed, throwing out her hands breezily despite hanging upside-down. Then Yang grinned even bigger, showing teeth, and added, "After all, I wouldn't want my partner to think I'm a bad catch."
Deadpan, Blake twitched Gambol Shroud's ribbon in just the right way so it abruptly unraveled from Yang's ankle and sent her dropping head-first down to the forest floor with a yelp.
"You weren't even trying with that one," Blake muttered to herself, her ears flattening as she glared down at Yang's sprawled body. A muffled voice drifted up from the forest floor a moment later.
"…so you're saying I was barking up the wrong tree?"
"So help me gods, I will shoot you and leave you for the Grimm."
"Hey, no need to get waspish with me."
Click.
"Right. You were warned."
Jaune waited until he was at the highest point of his arc before deploying his expanded Dust shield, feeling it catch abruptly at his arms as his plummeting downward progress was slowed to a long, steady glide. He looked around and pulled with one arm, angling his descent towards where Pyrrha had vanished into the treeline.
Thankfully, it didn't seem like any of the other freshmen were having… ideas… about tipping the scales. Jaune was still a little bit fuzzy on just how famous Pyrrha was to Hunters their age –in his mind, her tournament accomplishments had long been overshadowed by her tragic death and later the joy of reconnecting with her– but if Weiss had been interested in becoming Pyrrha's partner, then he had to assume other students would be too.
Well, not on his watch.
…as creepy as that may sound.
He didn't know how to do this, to be honest. They'd agreed to essentially fuck it all, this time, and try to reform their two teams in something of an even split between those that came from the future and those that hadn't, but how he was supposed to act around Pyrrha before he broke the news was still a glaring question mark on the edge of his horizon.
And that edge was coming up fast, as he soared sharply down towards the leafy green roof of the forest.
Be polite, he told himself. Don't be pushy. She doesn't know you, don't let her think you wanna get with the famous Huntress trainee just because you think she's cool.
He took a deep breath, and retracted his Dust shield as he saw a flash of crimson and gold through the branches. He wobbled a bit as he suddenly dropped down through them, instinctively bringing his shield down to guard against the branches bashing against his face and body. Landing in a forest was a lot harder than landing in the Atlas tundra.
Jaune yelped as one particular branch almost clotheslined him, flipping his body in the air as his feet were suddenly aimed towards the sky as he continued his downward journey –only now he was hitting the branches with his shoulders and back.
"Ow! Oof! You've- gah! got- to- ack! be- kidding- mE!"
His last word swooped up into a shriek as he hit another branch that flipped him right-side-up seconds before he landed feet-first on the ground with a heavy thud.
Jaune staggered a little as the impact rattled through him, before shaking his head a few times and collapsing his shield. Self-consciously, he began to brush off all the torn twigs and bits of leaf from his armor, trying not to still feel like a wannabe idiot who had just spectacularly failed his landing. He'd hit the ground feet-first and everything, without dropping his Aura much at all. The dignity of his landing didn't particularly matter, under those circumstances.
"Um, hello?"
He looked up as Pyrrha gracefully stepped off the high branch she had been perched on, stopping almost noiselessly in a three-point landing a few meters away. When she straightened up, she regarded him with a pleasant, if slightly nonplussed, smile.
"Hey," Jaune said, smiling a little in resignation. "Uh, I'm Jaune Arc. Nice to meet you."
Her smile widened a little.
"Pyrrha Nikos," she said, giving him a little nod as she stepped away from the tree and began to approach. "I suppose we're partners now…?"
"I guess we are."
Well, objective one is taken care of.
"So, um. Yeah. We should… go get the relic?" Jaune said after a slightly awkward pause. "The chhhhthing that Ozpin wants us to find? Yes?"
Pyrrha looked at him askance for a moment, but shrugged to herself and nodded.
"Well, I suppose we'd better be going, then," she replied politely, turning to head off. Jaune nodded and fell into step beside her, using proximal nudging to guide her in the vaguely correct direction.
They made good time on their way to the ruins, although that was perhaps helped by him knowing the route very well by virtue of walking it twice, and also the fact that neither of them really spoke at all.
Pyrrha, he could understand –he was a stranger to her, and she was still uncertain of him. Jaune, meanwhile, didn't want to make a bad impression on her, and since he didn't know how to fake a good impression if he didn't pretend not to know her, he defaulted to a stony –more like desperate– silence.
As they walked through the forest together, he focused every ounce of willpower he possessed into biting down on his tongue and keeping back the stream of inane babbling that threatened to burst free at any moment. Jaune knew that was a problem of his –the second he got nervous, he opened his mouth and the words just began to pour out.
He didn't want to chatter like an idiot about whatever topic slid into his mouth first –wow nice weather we're having, I mean really nice, huh, it's kinda weird that weather is the topic people default to when they don't know what to say, n-not that I don't know what to say, aha, man this weather's really something; good for, uh, killing Grimm and stuff– and so he kept his mouth shut with all the stubborn determination of a criminal under interrogation.
He just hoped that it came off as more him being focused on the mission than him being a bizarre weirdo.
As the awkward silence drew on, though, he realized that even that might be sending the wrong message, and coughed.
"I, uh, I'm sorry if I'm being… weird. I just want to, uh, get this done right," he said gingerly.
"Hmm? O-oh, no, it's fine," Pyrrha said, quickly smiling in the gracious way that she did when she was trying to let someone save face. "You don't need to worry about me."
He winced.
"No, I, ah, I mean the mission. Retrieving the relic things. I don't want to mess up, so, um, sorry if I'm being, like, rude," Jaune said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I know you're, like, some famous tournament fighter or whatever, but that just means you probably don't have much experience in practicals –ah, not to say you'd be bad at it, just… um, we're students, you know? so we all have, like, our problem areas to work on. Yours is probably fieldwork like this, and that's fine! I just, well, y'know, I kinda tend to talk a lot when my mind's worrying over something, so it's better to just not say anything. Safer that way n' all, but I didn't mean to make it aaaaa…"
…aaaaand realization.
He clamped down on his tongue so hard and fast, his teeth sparked off a reflexive coat of Aura.
Pyrrha giggled.
"I think Pyrrha just impressed me even more than before," Blake said as the wind rushed past.
"Oh, same," Yang agreed. "Running that far with a Deathstalker on her tail?"
She whistled in awe –and then ducked as a pincher the size of her own body whistled through the air where her head had been.
"Wow," Blake deadpanned, shooting Gambol Shroud off again into another tree fifty feet along as she paused on a branch. "If only you had a ranged option like literally everyone else."
"I have-" Yang jumped over another swipe, flipping in midair to send a round rocketing into the Deathstalker's bone mask. "-punch!"
Blake hummed a disbelieving note as she curved gracefully through the air on her Dust ribbon.
"And yet, you're trailing so far behind me."
"And yet, I'm the only one attacking."
Further banter was interrupted by the earsplitting roar of the Deathstalker, which seemed frustrated that neither of them had been reduced to a tattered piece of bloody flesh pierced on its claws or stinger. Several pieces of unassuming forestry were reduced to kindling as it smashed through trees and shrubbery in pursuit of Yang –who was running on the ground– and Blake –several dozen meters ahead, swinging through the treetops.
She had to take her final jump in a semicircle as they hit the open space before the ruins where the relics, curving out in a wide arc to the far left as Yang ran ahead.
"Oh. Hey, guys!" Yang shouted, lifting one arm in a cheerful wave as she charged down the slope with the Deathstalker chittering and hissing in hot pursuit. Pyrrha and Jaune whipped around from where they'd been standing by the pedestals that held the chess pieces, and Jaune's eyes widened.
"Blake, the tail!"
"On it!" Blake called back from the tree, hurling her kusarigama. It spun around the base of the Deathstalker's stinger with a crack of gunfire, the ribbon pulling taut as Blake heaved backwards and turned, digging her cleaver-like sheathe into the trunk with one hand as she held onto the Dust-infused ribbon with the other. For a moment, the Deathstalker was jerked to a halt, and the ribbon twanged and held as Blake grunted, digging in her heels.
"Pyrrha, hold its side!" Jaune cried as he darted in on Yang's side, bracing himself and raising his shield to block the thunderous blow of the Deathstalker's claws, a side-swipe that would've knocked Yang off her feet at best and pierced right through her Aura and body at worst.
"Right!" Pyrrha cried, rushing in to block the strike of its claw on Yang's other side.
"Lemme know if the ribbon snaps!" Yang cried, taking a step up onto the clicking mandibles and putting her other foot between the sets of glowing red eyes. She cocked her fist back, and with a roar of her own smashed a Dust-loaded fist directly into the iron-hard bone casing on top of the Deathstalker's head.
It buckled and reared as much as it could manage, tail twitching and twanging on Blake's ribbon. Yang was not one to be deterred, and Pyrrha and Jaune dug in as the Deathstalker strained to put its claws through their shields. It was debatable whether or not it even knew they were separate from Yang, but it knew that they were trying to stop its claws, which was reason enough to keep shoving them forward.
Old as it was, it clearly wasn't ancient enough to have gained intelligence. Blake was grateful for that as Yang continued busily pummeling the Deathstalker's bone carapace over and over again with her Dust-infused punches. It jerked and reared, hissing like a steam kettle, and Pyrrha and Jaune's feet dug furrows into the soft earth as they caught, deflected, or held the claws, over and over again.
A sharp, creaking snap echoed through the air, and then another, and then another. Yang clasped her hands together, raising them high above her head, and then brought both fists down in a thunderous blow that shattered a large patch off the bone casing on the Deathstalker's head.
Straightening up, she looked at Blake and grinned.
"Throw a lance my way?" Yang called with a friendly wink, and Blake's eye twitched even as she heaved back and then released Gambol Shroud on the Deathstalker's tail. In a heartbeat, Yang thumped her foot twice against its bare head, making it screech and stab downwards with its newly-freed stinger.
Yang, of course, was no longer there, having leapt up and away the moment the Deathstalker lunged with its tail. The stinger pierced deep into its skull and lodged there as the creature stiffened up with a wailing shriek, before its ponderous body swayed and collapsed to the ground.
Yang landed between Jaune and Pyrrha as they lowered their shields, and Blake hopped out of her tree as the Deathstalker's corpse began to collapse to ash and smoke.
"That went quickly," she said as she approached the others, voice dry.
" 'Cause we're just that good!" Yang replied cheerfully, slapping both Jaune and Pyrrha on their backs. They swayed a little at the impact, but Pyrrha, at least, looked pleased by the camaraderie rather than offended by the forwardness. Jaune, of course, just looked happy.
"Blake Belladonna," Blake said by way of introduction, giving Pyrrha a slight nod. "And this is my partner, Yang Xiao Long. If she starts making puns, drive an elbow into her kidney and run for the hills."
Yang gasped loudly, splaying a hand over her chest as her eyes went round.
"What's this?" she cried in faux hurt. "You used to love my puns!"
"That has never once been true," Blake told her, folding her ears back.
"Oh! My heart! My beloved partner of a whole twenty –twenty?– minutes has betrayed me!"
As Pyrrha laughed behind her hand, distracted by their antics, Blake watched Jaune saunter over to the ruins out of the corner of her eye.
"Hey, toss us one of those?" Yang called, coincidentally turning to see him after Blake's eyes flicked toward her and then once in his direction. Jaune, having already slipped an identical rook into his belt pouch without Pyrrha noticing, hummed over the chess pieces for a distracted moment before "choosing" another white rook and lobbing it towards Yang with a gentle underhand toss.
Blake's shoulders relaxed a little as Yang caught it.
So –they'd be Team A, then? Her and Yang and Jaune and Pyrrha…
It was an interesting combination.
And if things went according to plan, this meant that Ruby and Weiss would pair up with Ren and Nora…
"I am not a hyperactive child!" Ruby said, flailing her arms childishly as she stomped along in Weiss's wake. Weiss rolled her eyes.
"Try to lower your speed below eighty and your volume below deafening, and perhaps I might agree with you," she said crisply, pushing aside some branches. "Really, I can't believe I was partnered with such an idiot."
"Yeah, well… m-me neither!"
"Oh, how utterly devastating." Weiss rolled her eyes harder.
"Y'know, you're gonna get your face stuck in a really stupid expression if you keep doing that."
Weiss turned her head slightly, favoring Ruby with a not-entirely-fake glare. Ruby kept her expression stuck in the mulish pose she'd done her best to maintain ever since they began pretending to argue. After all, two strangers instantly melding together as flawless partners would be a bit ridiculous, especially since they didn't know which team was supposed to be the hidden one yet.
"I don't have to listen to this," Weiss told Ruby, attempting to ape her prior lofty tones. "I don't have to deal with you! I am here to become a Huntress, and if you must be my partner for my time at Beacon, I won't have you become a stone around my neck."
"Me?!" Ruby squeaked, looking outraged. "You're the one who's probably attracting Grimm from all over the forest by being so crabby and mean and- and- and bitchy!"
A moment of silence fell across the Emerald Forest, in which Weiss felt that birds really ought to have been flying out of the trees with alarmed squawks. Her eyebrow slowly rose.
"Does your sister know you can say that word?" Weiss asked. Ruby looked briefly haunted, and slung a conspiratorial arm over her shoulders.
"No, and if you love me at all, it'll stay between us as partners."
Chances of deformed expressions or not, Weiss couldn't help but roll her eyes at their most exasperated trajectory once again.
Still, they made tolerable progress –interspersed by more childish sniping at each other, of course– and found the ruins deserted by any of their known teammates or friends. The ground was torn up, however, and as they carefully approached, Ruby picked up a Dust shell that they both recognized.
"Looks like Yang beat me to it…" she mumbled, for audience benefit, and Weiss sniffed haughtily, even as a release of ingrained tension flowed through her. If Yang had made it all the way here and fought something, she'd almost certainly found a partner; and as they got closer to the pedestals, several chess pieces were missing, including the familiar white rooks.
So, one of their two teams had been formed.
The problem then, of course, was which set of partners from Team JNPR had Yang and Blake picked up? And, of course, had the other two members of JNPR already come here and picked up a chess piece?
Weiss did not gnaw at her lip, but she subtly tapped one heel against the other, thinking. Team RWBY and Jaune would probably be among the fastest to the ruins, if only because they all knew exactly where said ruins were, and roughly how to avoid the more troublesome Grimm in the forest. It was unlikely that Ren and Nora would be able to beat them here in any capacity…
A deafening screech split the air, and Weiss and Ruby both whirled –only to dive aside as a body came hurling through the air to land with a thud and an explosion of earth where they'd been standing.
"Whooo-hooooo!" they heard faintly from above, and Weiss looked up and gaped with disbelief as she saw Nora clinging to one of the Alpha Nevermore's talons, much as she herself once had, as the giant beast screamed and circled.
"Ungh…"
Looking down, Weiss watched Ren carefully sit up, rubbing his head with his eyes squinted shut.
She looked at Ruby, who grinned and lifted her shoulders sheepishly.
"Well… it's faster than the Ursa?"
"Ugh." Weiss rolled her eyes again, turning to stand at bay as she lifted Myrtenaster. "I'm surrounded by idiots."
"Hey, uh –you?" Ruby said to Ren, who blinked at her. "Is that your partner up there?"
"Um, yeah," he said, a little blankly. "Nora Valkyrie. I'm Lie Ren."
"Right." Ruby nodded sharply and turned to shout "HEY, NORA! LET GO!"
With a whoop, Nora did as she was bid, swinging her legs to all but launch herself down at them, tucking and rolling once she hit the ground to bounce up only mildly disoriented from the sudden change in g-force and direction.
"I'm Ruby, this is Weiss," Ruby said quickly, "and if me and Ren distract it, you and Weiss can freeze and break its wings to ground it. Sound cool?"
"Alright!" Nora's eyes glowed, and Weiss had to wonder if it was because of the promise of mayhem or approval of how Ruby instantly grasped the situation and moved to offer solutions.
"Let's go," Ren said, and with nods to each other he and Ruby ran for the slight rise that led to the ruins and the ill-fated bridge that Weiss remembered from her first initiation. She and Nora remained where they were, and Weiss caught the flicker of Ruby's Semblance out of the corner of her eye and heard the crack of Crescent Rose's sniper shots as Ruby began working to line the circling Grimm up for them.
"If that mecha-shift has any long-range capabilities, I can amplify and freeze your shots with Dust and my Semblance," Weiss said, pretending that she didn't know quite well how Nora's hammer worked.
"I can launch Dust grenades as a cluster or in single shots, if ya want," Nora said, her eyes flicking all over as she watched Ruby zip up, fire several sniper shots at the Nevermore, and then flick back down again with her Semblance as it screeched and wheeled. Ren fired a moment later, the rapid chitter distracting the Grimm again as it abandoned pursuit and flapped into another turn. They were carefully pushing it to circle around, so that Weiss and Nora would have the most time and the best angles available to bring it down.
"Single shots, I think, at least for the beginning volleys," Weiss said, holding out Myrtenaster and readying her glyphs as a telescoping series of her standard Ice-based glyphs swirled into existence in front of Nora. "Nevermore have multiple layers of feathers, so that they can launch them offensively and still fly. It may take some little time to freeze enough to affect its mobility."
"Fair enough." Nora rolled her shoulders and took a knee, squinting over the sights of her weapon as she raised it in grenade-launcher form. "Ready when you are."
Weiss slid back half a step, so that she could keep Nora's angles of fire in mind as the Nevermore wheeled and change the direction of her glyphs accordingly, and then said "Ready."
She wondered whimsically, as Magnhild boomed and the first roaring cluster of spindled ice slammed into one of the Nevermore's wings and spread, what this version of her and Ruby's Ice Flower attack would be called. Thunderflower? Ice Storm? Frozen Heart?
She darkly suspected Ruby and Nora would try to name it something childish and ridiculous like "Ice-splosion."
Nevertheless, Nora pounded away with her grenades as she and Weiss turned in a swift circle, following the Nevermore and continuing to pelt its wings with creaking, expanding layers of ice. The feathers made it trickier; a Ravager or a Lancer would be brought down by a single coat of ice over their wing membranes, but all of that shifting, rustling, individual surface area created by the feathers meant that Weiss and Nora either had to cover the entire wing quickly, build up multiple layers to weigh all the feathers down, or both.
Preferably both.
Weiss appreciated Nora's understanding of that as they rapidly strafed the Nevermore, mostly on the left side, and then let Ren fire a barrage of rattling Dust rounds into its face and chest as it peeled away from its advance on them and angled to meet him with an outraged screech, flapping heavily with its leftmost wing. Ren dove out of the way of the ragged volley of feathers, and Crescent Rose roared, making the Grimm turn again as it labored ponderously through the air on Nora and Weiss's right.
They greeted it with another volley of icy Dust grenades, soaking and freezing its wing as its path in the sky wobbled and it began to drift downwards. Nora cheered, and without consulting Weiss switched to her cluster-bomb form and fired all of them through the glyphs, creating an icy crust around most of the Nevermore's body as it was knocked from the sky with one last bellowing screech, trailing feathers and smoking ice and the not-quite-fog that seemed to serve for Grimm blood.
It hit the ground heavily, sending slight vibrations under their feet, and Ruby was right there to greet it in a whirl of rose petals, spinning in midair several times to gain velocity before she struck down at the base of its neck in Crescent Rose's rarely-seen war scythe form, piercing down through the back of the Nevermore's spine and skull as it began collapsing to soggy ash.
Nora bounced to her feet with a cheer, and without looking, Weiss expertly sidestepped the expected bone-crushing hug when she lunged a moment later. Nora blinked, but then grinned at her undeterred as Ruby and Ren came to join them, Ruby slightly out of breath from all the rushing around she'd been doing.
"That, was, amazing!" Nora gushed, pressing both hands to the side of her face and beaming at Weiss and Ruby equivocally. "It didn't know which way to turn, and then we were all like, whoosh, bang, BOOM! Froze it solid! That's one guy that won't mess with us Huntresses again!"
Ren did something that was almost, but not quite, a pointed cough.
"Oh, and Ren too, obviously. He was mega-awesome!"
"I suppose we should go get our relics now," Ren said in that steady voice of his, although long practice at reading him let Weiss see the small hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, showing his pleasure at Nora's antics.
"Ooh! I'll get them!" Ruby volunteered, and was there and back in a flicker of red and a puff of rose petals. She held up two matching white knight pieces. "These look good enough?"
"Hah!" Nora snatched one from Ruby and held it aloft with a grin. "Now this is what I call a good mount! Nothing like that jerky Nevermore ride!"
Ren sighed, but also shivered a little.
"Hmph." Weiss sniffed and gave a performative toss of her head. "Well, that's relics acquired and initiation passed. It was all simple enough."
"She's cranky I showed her up by doing most of the work after she called me useless baggage," Ruby stage-whispered behind one hand to a delighted Nora and an eyebrow-raising Ren, and Weiss's eye twitched.
And to think, she'd thought sharing a team with Ruby and Yang to egg each other on had been bad enough…
"Russel Thrush. Cardin Winchester. Dove Bronzewing. Sky Lark," Ozpin said into the echoing auditorium. "The four of you retrieved the black bishop pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team CRDL, led by… Cardin Winchester!"
The crowd applauded politely as those four left the stage, and Weiss watched Jaune keep his shoulders stiff as he and his new team walked up, following Glynda's gesture as their faces filled the screen above the stage.
"Jaune Arc. Blake Belladonna. Pyrrha Nikos. Yang Xiao Long. The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team ABNY."
Ebony, hmm? Weiss thought, mentally tasting the name as Professor Ozpin continued.
"Led by… Jaune Arc!"
Weiss caught Blake's eye, and the two nodded to each other. The name still felt weird, the idea of being anything but Team RWBY a blasphemy, but… they'd all get used to it. In time.
"Congratulations, young man," Ozpin said, and Jaune flashed a brief, general smile, and stood firm for the first time against Pyrrha's friendly shoulder-nudge. He turned his head to answer her own excited smile before they left the stage. Weiss took a deep breath as she walked forward with her own new teammates.
"And finally: Ruby Rose. Lie Ren. Weiss Schnee. Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team RRWN. Led by… Ruby Rose!"
The crowd cheered as the final team was announced, and Weiss hummed thoughtfully.
RRWN and ABNY.
Rowan and ebony.
The names were so different, and yet, everything else was so painfully the same. She caught Yang's twitch as she automatically moved to stand by Ruby before remembering that they were on different teams now, the way Blake stood awkwardly by Pyrrha, like she didn't know what she was supposed to do with this extra teammate.
"It looks like things are shaping up to be an… interesting year," Ozpin finished, and Weiss barked out a laugh.
Now, their work could truly begin.