As disappointing as it was, she knew that she had to live up to the responsible leader she knew she was, "would a child sacrifice their mission for the good of half the class, Princess?" she mumbled to the wind with a pouty bitterness that could never sting with her unfortunately 'immature' voice.
" Hey, if they're barely trying to hide, then why do we need to?" her sister had joked upon their discovery, a horde of Grimm moving through the caves they'd found under the forested canyon floor.
She whizzed between the trees, avoiding collisions a bit too narrowly for even her excitable liking. Her objective had been reversed, initially to avoid detection of her classmates; her eyes now scoured the blurry crimson forest for any sign of them.
Weiss had suggested Ruby be the messenger, as the fastest of the team she agreed. They couldn't make a dent in the inky tendril of monsters they'd found marching through the caves but they could still stop the offshoots from getting out until reinforcements arrived. The plan had failed immediately and the girls broke off into their own scattered fights, "Who would have thought no leader would be worse than her" the heiress said with a scowl as she stared down the charging Boarbatusks.
"As if one of you wasn't annoying enough…" she muttered as she lunged to the side of one and slashed at the belly of the other once it was propelled into the air by her glyph.
She got a perfect hit, " as expected", not wasting a single movement and cutting to the perfect depth to kill her target and disengage to the next, " efficient" Winter's voice coldly congratulated her.
It was strange just how much she could get out of the monotone voice, how even the slightest shift of a one word response could mean the difference to a compliment and a scold for sloppy work. Just like she had practiced, she swivelled around with the Boarbatusk starting turning to ash behind her, it's distinguishing features blowing away into an amorphous semi-quadrupedal form before it hit the ground.
She caught the end of a flash in the corner of her eye at the start of the pivot, the Grimm had been knocked on its side with a sizzling wound to its side. It writhed to get up but was blown away with another flash, a narrow bolt of lightning hitting it square in its exposed belly, almost disintegrating it.
She kept her blade in its guard position as she followed the direction of the attack, black medieval looking clothes with copper plates over joints and other vital areas. What drew her attention the most was the long sword, longer than she was tall and made of the same copper as its wielder's armour.
She recognised him but certainly wouldn't say she knew him, his face didn't bring any names to her mind. She only remembered him because who wouldn't remember someone turning up in renaissance fair cosplay to class.
"Are you hurt, Lady Schnee?" he called out.
"Oh no" she muttered, "No, I was fine… Port's class was a one-time mistake, I assure you" she responded with the cold yet graceful authority that she'd had drilled into her since her brother was born. She'd only gone to make her own later in life.
Before her strange classmate could speak again, a series of crashes approached them, growing louder. The pair turned to face the noise with their blades readied.
They saw movement through the gaps in the trees, a dark shape being sent hurtling through thin tree trunks and bouncing between thicker ones with flashes of light and blurs of yellow. A floral shirted man seemed to sink into a tree before springing out of it with the force akin to one of her gravity glyphs; he slashed two short curved blades into its chest, the force propelling it through the final thin log.
Her teammate launched out after the boy, her turn in the leapfrogging barrage. The Beringal hit the ground hard in a pile of splinters and branches; Yang had fired her gauntlets and propelled herself high above it, charging up a clearly telegraphed downpounding punch.
The force the huntress-in-training hit the ground with was almost enough to make the it shake. A cloud of dust and dirt formed around the impact site, blowing away to reveal a smug blonde confidently making her way over, "I see you found a friend, Ice Queen"
The white boots at the end of jumpsuited legs swung back and forth, narrowly missing the back of her stony perch, "You aren't going to see much when looking down on the canopy you know" Teph called up from below her.
"Come on, it's a nice view. Besides, you heard Greene, training's over" Gemma chuckled back to her darkly dressed partner.
"Gemma, if you don't leave, I will come up there for you… how did you get up there anyway?"
"Weeell, we were here to train so I decided to train my grappling" she called back with a mischievous smile, "so unless your funky little heirloom can do that, I'd suggest you start climbing~"
"Fine!" she shouted back with an irritated grimace, grabbing onto the short rock face.
Bagorrab's Claw, her black matte metal gauntlets that begun half way up her forearm and ended at the knuckles on the back of her hands were worn over a pair of fingerless gloves. Instead of shooting gold blades out from the small boxy knuckles, gold metal spikes came from an angle, hitting the space in-between Teph's fingers and narrowly missing the webbing.
Gemma's orange eyebrows raised as she saw her teammate quickly scale her way up. Teph would jump and swing from small holds with the spikes assisting her grip, it took her seconds to get up to the two meter mark.
She could only give an impressed nod as Teph hoisted her top half up and stood on the ledge, breathing a little heavier from the sudden upwards dash, "Gemma, unless you want to walk back to Vale and spend the night at the shuttle station, we're leaving now" she said sternly.
"I will leave, if you just sit down for like five minutes, probably less" she offers back, earning her a groan from her partner.
Teph's legs cross and cave, collapsing her into a sitting position, leaning back on her hands, "Should I start a timer?" she impatiently asks
Gemma rolled her eyes at that, "Come on, you said you hate time trials, besides, we never just sit down and talk"
"Okay firstly it's been a busy start to the year, and secondly we're on one right now, except there's more consequence than having to start the level again" Teph said back coldly, Gemma could sense a pang of guilt in her words though.
"So what made you want to be a huntress?" Gemma continued.
Teph sat forward and shot her a deadpan stare, " bit of double meaning in that question" she thought to herself, "Gemma, if we stay here too long we're either getting swarmed by grim or having a miserable fucking evening and next day of classes. Why are you asking me this now?" she said in a tired and frankly just done with it voice.
"Hey, language!" Gemma said back with slight disgust in her voice and matching look of disapproval.
"Gemma, by the gods, spirits, brothers, or whatever your no-sweary parents taught you, I really want to go back to the dorms" Teph clipped back.
It took Gemma a few seconds to reply, that let Teph knew something was off. The little smirk that slowly grew on her face cemented the thought, putting Teph on edge, "I'll leave... If, you promise me a night out, just us"
" That's an awful ide-what's that?" Teph thoughts were interrupted by the crimson canopy starting to collapse. Trees disappearing in a line sending birds flying from their fallen roosts, "Yeah sure, lets get going, now" Teph clipped back while standing up, noticing the line had started to turn in their direction.
The white and yellow girls sprinted through the red forest floor. One jumping over a rock and skating along an overlapping line of glowing white SDC symbols over the flatter stretches of ground. The other, playing chicken with their pursuer, waited until the last second to propel herself out of the way of a particularly thick tree with the recoil of her gauntlets.
Just like last time, it would take a bit of planning on their leader (also known as her sister)'s part to take out a Grimm like this. A King Taijitu snaked (get it) through the forest after the girls, black and white heads dodging the trees only for the body to crash through them anyway. To Yang's amusement, sometimes the trunks were just too much for their opponent and it had to reverse and coordinate both heads around the tree.
The two headed snake did just that as Yang's boots dug up red grass with her landing. Both heads hissing (as snakes tend to do) and snapping at Yang and the heiress while still way out of reach. The revolver cylinder in Myrtenaster clicked into place the tiny viewing window shone black and Weiss's emblem appeared in black before the pair. Yang grinned as she saw the red blur in the corner of her eye.
Yang and Weiss felt nothing from the glyph as it pulled the black and white heads towards them, their bodies wrapped around the tree trunk. The force of the glyph caused the tree to crack as their bodies stretched, heads still snapping at the girls past the glyph.
Weiss's smirk joined Yang's grin as she saw it too, Ruby had left her semblance form. She was coming at the snake's midsection in at an angle, Crescent Rose held out as she spun like a red buzzsaw. She made impact, cutting clean through the taught section where black faded to white and white to black, her scythe kept going past the attack, digging up a clump of earth at the base of the tree.
Ice blue eyes widened as the black head gnashed at her. The glyph dissipated just meters before the heads would hit it, the snakes weren't dead yet.
The golden girl's gauntlets clicked as shells loaded into position, her arm cocked back and lilac met the hollow red of the Grimm's eyes. Its mouth opened and her knees bent, the head flew at her and she launched herself up. The head passed beneath her and Ember Cecelia came down just after with a satisfying wet crack that planted the half-Grimm into the dirt.
Weiss went the other route, lunging forward and planting a knee into the dirt she went under the fanged maw. She stuck her rapier out, keeping it at an angle so the tip dug into the underside of the snake while letting her distribute the force down onto her joints instead of relying on muscular strength. Her match with Yang yesterday had really nailed in the hard fact that it was really not her strong suit.
The Grimm slid along the ground, flaking away and turning to dust as it rolled into another tree. Where a pair of girls were standing, "Thanks for the help" she called out to them, panting slightly.
"Sorry, I would've but I don't have much range" Gemma called back, "Does this mean we won the exercise?" she continued.
Weiss had initially started to turn back to her team until the yellow coated girl said that, "Wh-No! It's been called off because of the Grimm!" she said in disbelief, the black clothed girl next to the target of her frustration rubbed her eyebrows with one hand.
"I-I'm just kidding, I'm Gemma and this is Teph, the GT of ERGT" her voice is noticeably nervous now and her partner isn't doing much better, turning to her with a grimace that looks like she just bit into a lemon.
"And where's the 'ER' then?" Yang asked, walking over to Weiss to join the somewhat distant conversation.
"Uhhh, I-I'm not entirely sure, what about you guys, where's your R and B?" Gemma called back with Teph turning to glare at her.
"Hear that Ice Queen, they've heard of the exploits of Team RWBY" Yang teased, "Ruby's nearby, Blake is… being herself, off brooding somewhere on her own" Weiss continued with an eye roll.