Penny was beginning to worry. She and Weiss had been traveling on some variation of north for far too long. Not only were they wasting time, they were approaching regions of the forest that had been marked as more dangerous and outside of the usual training areas on the maps that she'd seen.
Here there be grimm, the maps had said. It was inaccurate, because grimm were everywhere, but Penny thought she understood the sentiment.
"I'm sure this is the way," said Weiss, but she sounded much less sure than she'd been the first three or four times she'd said it.
In which case, maybe Penny had a chance to change their course. "I could fly up and check for us," she said.
Weiss stopped and looked back at Penny. "You can fly?"
Penny popped her wings into flying position, the most visible indicator of her flight module. "I am flight mode ready!"
"What is that?" said Weiss.
"A jetpack," said Penny. It was close enough that Jiminy didn't trigger. Technically, she was wearing an optional, detachable flight module that drew power from Penny's main battery, which was why she couldn't use it indefinitely; it competed with her other systems for power and using it limited her endurance. All of that was minutia, and less important for Weiss' understanding than a more straightforward explanation of how Penny could fly at all. Hence, jetpack.
Weiss held part of her lip between her teeth for 3.2 seconds, then said, "Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt to check."
Before Weiss could change her mind, Penny fired a burst of thrust that tossed her above the tree line. She turned herself in the direction she knew the temple to be and was gratified to see that her dead reckoning was correct. She descended almost as quickly, using short bursts of thrust to moderate her return.
"We are far out of position," said Penny. "We need to change course to the southeast."
The words didn't seem to register with Weiss, and Penny belatedly realized that humans lacked an internal compass. Which was the reason they'd gone so far astray in the first place, come to think of it.
"That way," said Penny, pointing thirty degrees from the opposite of their old course.
Weiss flushed, but also sputtered at Penny. "And you couldn't have said that earlier? You could have checked at any time!"
Penny knew she had to tread carefully. Speaking clearly and slowly, she said, "If I had tried to change our course earlier, when you were so upset with having me as your partner, would you have listened?"
Weiss' mouth opened to snap off a response, and Penny half-winced in anticipation of the blow… but no words came out. Weiss checked herself before she spoke, and before Penny's eyes seemed to reconsider.
Penny dared to hope.
"I like to think," Weiss said in low, slow tones, "that I'm a rational person, which means I ought to change my mind when the evidence shows I should."
The forest all around them seemed to quiet as Weiss carefully chose her next words.
"If, in the future, it appears I've lost my way about that," she said, "I would appreciate if you'd politely tell me so."
Penny beamed at Weiss. "That is a rational approach to things! I am very proud of you, Weiss!"
Weiss blinked and swayed backwards as if she'd been struck in the face. "Really?"
"Really!" said Penny. "Among other things, it means you might reconsider being friends!"
"Let's not get carried away," Weiss protested.
Penny was undeterred. "One step at a time, then. And the first step is this way, towards the Forest Temple!"
Weiss' face twitched, but she managed to say, "I'll follow your lead."
Now Penny could feel proud of herself for knowing where to go. Turning on the spot, she plotted a straight-line course towards the temple. "This way," she said. "There is a clearing up ahead that we can cut across to save some time."
Penny started off slowly to make sure that Weiss was actually coming with her, but when she heard the crunching of leaves as Weiss followed, she smiled and put a new pep in her step.
Yang couldn't keep a smile off her face. She was finally here, finally at Beacon, and she'd already punched several Ursai into oblivion and gotten a kick-butt partner. So far, so awesome.
Blake didn't seem the most talkative type. Yang had made a few attempts to draw her into conversation, but Blake had resisted so far. That was fine for now. It meant that Yang was able to keep her ears open.
She heard sporadic bursts of gunfire and large-scale crashes and booms to their general south. Not surprising; the Ursai she'd demolished would hardly be the only ones around. This was a combat mission, in a way that field trips at Signal sometimes weren't.
Still nothing to the north, though.
"Is there a reason our path is so meandering?" said Blake.
Yang turned her grin on Blake, feeling only slightly abashed at being called out. "You could tell, huh? You're good at land navigation, then."
Blake looked away, as if what Yang had said was somehow embarrassing.
Yang let her off the hook. "A friend of mine landed to the north of us. I'm not worried about her, not worried worried, she's super strong. I just get the feeling she hasn't been out much before, so she could probably use a hand."
Blake gave Yang an appraising look. "One of the people you were with on the dock yesterday?"
"That's right!" said Yang. "Jaune will be fine, Pyrrha took an interest in him and nothing can go wrong there. Penny, on the other hand…"
"What about her?"
"Have you ever known someone who you'd trust to watch your back in a matter of life and death, but you wouldn't trust to look both ways before she crossed the street? That's Penny."
"You want to protect her," said Blake in tones so even and steady Yang couldn't tell if Blake approved or not.
"It's kind of a thing for me," said Yang, and as jovial as her voice was, she felt herself fingering the sash on her bicep. "Don't worry, though," she said, pushing the grin onto her face again. "You don't have to feel left out. I'll protect you, too!"
"You shouldn't," Blake blurted.
Yang raised an eyebrow, but—contrary to what her dad always said—she did know when to keep her mouth shut.
Blake looked away, only keeping enough vision to the front to keep from tripping over things.
Mentally filing that away under "Don't mention again but absolutely try to figure out", Yang strolled along, heading generally northeastward and wondering what, if any, grimm had the stones to take her on. "I love your bow, by the way," she said.
Blake blinked at her.
"It goes great with your… shirt!"
"Riiiight," said Blake.
Yang laughed at herself. "Sheesh, that was so weak you could… call me… Jaune?"
Her joke had been interrupted by titanic crashing noises to their left—to the north.
"Isn't that where you said your friend was?" said Blake.
"Yeah," said Yang, breaking into a run. "Let's go."
"This was a mistake!"
Weiss' shriek of recrimination reached Penny only dimly, as she was far more concerned with the monstrosity that now filled the center of the clearing. It hadn't been until Penny and Weiss got into the clearing that they realized it was not a natural formation: it was the crash site of a Vale Defense Force Bullhead. The airship had apparently smashed through several trees before hitting the ground. Its wings had separated from the fuselage, but all three of those major assemblies had survived more or less intact.
Which meant they were available for animation.
The Geist had waited until Penny and Weiss were near the middle of the clearing before it acted. In a swirl of motion and dust and shadow, it sucked up the fuselage, wings, and tree trunks to amalgamate itself a new body. The fuselage served as its torso, while a tree trunk and a wing made for mismatched legs just as the other wing and tree trunk made for slapdash arms. Broken rocks and scraps of metal formed the joints for its limbs, while the Geist's giant, cyclopean eye stared at them from what had been the cockpit.
The monster now had a body taller than two city buses are long.
It swung its wing-cum-arm down at Penny and Weiss. The two girls scattered in opposite directions, but the sheer force of the blow pushed them even further away from each other.
Well, Professor Ozpin had told them to destroy all opposition they met…
Penny brandished Elektra and unfolded it to its full combat size. "Over here, you big piece of junk!" she shouted at the monster. It gave her the attention that she'd asked for and swung down with a giant tree trunk arm.
Penny stood her ground, digging in with both feet and holding the flat of Elektra aloft, braced with her off-hand. The tree trunk came down with terrific force, and the impact jarred Penny, but there was no true damage. The ground at her feet cracked, but that was all.
Penny pushed right back at it, throwing the weight and strength of the Geist away. She heard a distant "wow" from Weiss and felt a rush of giddy pride.
The rush vanished a moment later as the Geist kicked out her, and the angle was all wrong for her to block it.
She did her best, but this impact was much more dangerous and sent her flying far away from the Geist. She plowed a furrow into the forest floor at her landing. Her gyro nearly tumbled from the combination of hits, and it took Penny almost two seconds to ensure that her balance was intact.
Regaining her footing, she looked back to the clearing. Weiss was having a turn attacking the Geist now. She was creating platforms with her Aura, bright white shapes that looked like encircled snowflakes, and she was leaping from one to another as she tried to get to the level of the cockpit.
She got there a little too late. Before she could launch an attack on the Geist's eye, it swung at her with a tree trunk arm. To her credit, Weiss didn't soak the blow, instead hopping onto the arm and stabbing into it with her rapier to secure a foothold. Undeterred, the Geist dipped that arm down, then flung it upwards like the arm of a catapult.
And, as if thrown from a catapult, Weiss went flying.
Penny didn't hesitate; the orders went to her flight module before Tactical could even make that recommendation. She launched like she'd been shot from a cannon, streaking past the Geist far too fast for it to attack her and zooming off to get Weiss.
Weiss had just about recovered her body, but was still flying, when Penny caught up to her and snatched her out of the air.
"What are you doing?!" said Weiss.
"Catching you," said Penny.
"My hero," Weiss sneered. "I have a landing strategy, you nitwit, I would have been fine!"
Penny realized with embarrassment that Weiss was right. "Well," said Penny, "now we can work together to attack the Geist." To make good on her words, she banked around back towards the clearing, where the Geist was clearly visible.
"And why would we want to attack it?" said Weiss. "Our mission is to retrieve a relic, not to tangle with grimm we don't need to, especially not very large, very dangerous grimm like that."
"You have a point," Penny admitted, but it didn't feel right. Huntresses didn't avoid or run from the grimm, did they? That wasn't what the title implied.
She knew she was supposed to destroy grimm. She couldn't name the subroutine that was so certain about it, but she felt it as truth.
"We should destroy it anyway," she said. "What if some other students encounter it now that it's been disturbed?"
"Please," said Weiss, "who could be stupid enough to blunder into a giant monstrosity like that?"
A sound like the blast of shotguns reached the flying girls, and they saw small explosions peppering the Geist's torso. Yang and her partner- Blake, Penny realized- were charging into the clearing, guns blazing.
"Well," sighed Weiss, "that answers that question."
"Let's join them," said Penny.
"No," said Weiss. "If you circle it while flying, I can attack it with Dust from the air."
"Acknowledged," said Penny. She angled herself to zoom past the Geist's eye in the hopes that it would focus on her, when she was much faster and more agile than her friends on the ground.
From below her, Yang called, "You go, girl!" Penny's smile was lost in the wind, but she hoped Yang saw it.
In her arms, Weiss brought her rapier to bear, its pommel almost on her chest and the point aimed at the Geist. Penny could just make out something blue-white gathering at the point of her sword.
Weiss stabbed as best she could while being carried by a flying gynoid. A spear of ice erupted from the tip of her sword and lanced towards the Geist. It smacked into the Geist's mask, but not its eye. The Geist still recoiled in pain before swiping at Penny again.
Weiss shrieked in alarm, but Penny dodged the blow with a whole decimeter to spare. That was a vast space as far as she was concerned. As the enraged grimm tottered about, Yang and Blake attacked it again, concentrating on the tree-leg that would be easier to break… though 'easier' didn't mean 'easy'. A grimm this powerful, and that could hold together this much material, imbued that same material with unnatural resilience.
Which made it all the more impressive how Yang was punching the tree trunk apart, blasting splinters of wood in all directions.
The Geist hopped. It was an absurd word to use for something that massive, but Thesaurus assured Penny that no other word fit. The Geist sprang up in place and came right back down, but with so much momentum as to shove its attackers away with the air pressure alone. It followed with a new round of kicks. The first one looked like it was about to hit Blake, but there was a blur of darkness, and Penny's optics briefly reported two girls before shadows vanished at the foot of the Geist and the real Blake, safely removed from the impact, resolved two meters away.
A second kick targeted Yang. Yang must have decided she couldn't dodge it, because she leaned into it instead, lowering her shoulder and bracing. The blow was still more than strong enough to send her flying, but she contorted herself to land on her feet, albeit after skidding a fair distance.
Weiss had not been idle. From her perch in Penny's arms, she sent two more attacks at the Geist, one pillar each of stone and ice. These crashed against the Geist's body and dented the fuselage of the crashed Bullhead, but neither seemed to bother the Geist at all. It looked up at Penny once more, and Penny prepared herself to juke, but it didn't swing at her. Instead, it looked back to the crash site and hovered its wing arm over the debris there.
Penny was distracted from seeing what it was doing by a growing ball of orange at the end of Weiss' sword. "No!" Penny shouted, and she rolled to her left, raising her right side and spoiling Weiss' aim. The blast of fire sailed harmlessly into the air and dissipated.
"What was that for?" Weiss demanded. "I had that shot!"
"That's what I'm afraid of," said Penny. "Geists don't feel pain when the things they possess are damaged, and it would take even hot fires many minutes to compromise that tree trunk. You would have given it another weapon instead of stopping it!"
"That wasn't my—what's it doing?!"
Penny looked back at the Geist, which had been making new additions to its form while Penny was distracted. Some material flowed to its tree trunk leg, patching up the holes that had been chunked out there, but something entirely new sat on the end of its arm, which it brandished at Penny.
Oh, right. That wasn't just any Bullhead. That was a Vale Defense Force Bullhead. And those carried weapons.
In this case, a six-barreled, rapid fire, recoilless rifle.
Penny turned sharply away from the Geist and tried her best to evade as bullets filled the air around her. Weiss shrieked and there was a thrum of power just behind them, followed by the sound of bullets smacking against something solid. More of those Aura platforms, perhaps? Regardless, Penny focused all her energies towards getting back into the cover of the trees before that barrier gave out or the Geist was able to angle its shots around it.
There was a cracking, then a splintering, and Penny felt rather than heard or saw as a fusillade of bullets filled the air around her. An aileron roll, short dive, rudder tilt into slide, and burst of extra thrust later (accompanied by ever higher shrieks from Weiss) saw her get into the tree line with only four bullets having hit her Aura.
Which was still highly damaging.
She touched down behind a tree with the trunk between her and the Geist. That didn't stop the Geist, exactly, as new bursts of gunfire blasted into the tree, and she heard heavy footfalls as it advanced.
Yang and Blake were hiding behind the next tree over and panting hard. "Since when do grimm get to have guns?" said Yang, sounding offended by the notion. "That's so broken! Only the good guys are supposed to have guns!"
"That's what Geists can do," said Penny. "Since it can convert anything it touches into a projectile, you could say its whole body is also a gun."
Their chatter ceased as a new flurry of bullets cut down several large branches and sent them falling between the groups.
"This is Blake, by the way," said Yang with a jerk of her thumb.
"I am Penny, this is Weiss."
"Charmed," said Weiss dryly.
"Good to know, but we need to focus," said Blake. "We can't let it use its firepower, so we've got to lure it into the trees. It won't have much room to maneuver in here, and we can use cover to get close."
Penny and Weiss' tree shuddered as more bullets blasted against it, and sawdust drifted around both sides of the trunk. "It would appear it's quite content shooting at us from the clearing," said Penny.
"What if you gave it something to chase?" said Blake.
Tactical crunched the numbers. "I could grab the Geist's attention with flight mode, but I am 90% certain that it would shoot me down in under ten seconds. I would need about fifteen to get out of weapons range and entice it to chase me."
"What if I bought you five seconds at the beginning?" said Weiss.
Penny nodded. "That would make all the difference. The first few seconds are the most dangerous. Once the range opens, the probability of a hit drops dramatically."
"We'll pitch in," Blake said with a glance at Yang, who gave a thumbs-up, "and we'll attack once it's drawn in. Then you can circle back to help us finish it."
Penny nodded—then jerked back to Weiss as a new thought reached her. "You evinced great dislike of me carrying you while flying."
"I dislike being filled with bullets more," Weiss said primly.
"That seems logical—did the Geist stop firing?"
There was an eerie silence. As if compelled, all four students peaked around the edges of their respective trees.
And saw an enormous rock hurtling through the air at them.
"Incoming!" Blake yelled.
Penny saw that it was coming towards herself and Weiss, and it had probably been meant to knock down the tree they were using for cover and smush them like insects. No problem.
Penny stepped out from around the tree, cocked an arm back, and—milliseconds before the rock hit her—punched.
The rock shattered, showering her with gravel and sending the largest chunks flying to all sides of her, but nothing came close to Weiss, and that was precisely Penny's goal.
Except now she was in the Geist's line of sight.
"Oops," she said as the recoilless rifle spun up once more.
Then there was an impact that carried her back into cover. Yang had borne her out of the way, and Yang's Aura sparked against the bullets she'd soaked.
"You didn't have to do that," Penny said. "My Aura would have held."
"I wanted to," Yang said with a grin. "It's better this way, trust me."
"Hey, are we doing this or not?" said Weiss with a stomp of her foot.
"Right!" shouted Blake. "Penny, Weiss, get into position. We'll distract it, but we won't last long!"
Penny rose again behind the cover of her tree, which was looking quite forlorn by now, and re-extended her wings.
"Don't think this means anything," said Weiss as she approached.
"If you say so," said Penny, and she picked up Weiss with one hand behind her knees and the other behind her shoulders. She limbered Weiss up as if the smaller girl weighed nothing to her, which was the case.
Yang was already tumbling back behind cover with visible Aura damage while Blake was dashing and doing her disappearing-reappearing act just ahead of the stream of bullets. Now or never.
"Launching," said Penny.
The rush came again as she reached for the sky, leaving behind what bound her to the ground. This was exhilarating. This was glorious!
"This is terrifying!" screamed Weiss.
"You'll get used to it," said Penny.
"Liar!"
Tactical screamed at Penny that the Geist's bullets were incoming. "Defenses!" Penny yelled.
There was that sound again, the almost musical tone as Weiss manifested her semblance, followed by the new sounds of bullets smacking against it. "Let's add some stone," Weiss said to herself, and the tenor of the smacks changed, less like they were hitting the Aura construct and more like they were hitting rock.
Penny was more and more impressed. "You can channel Dust through your Aura constructs?"
"They're called glyphs, and not for very long!"
Sure enough, there was a cracking sound, then a splintering sound, and then Penny couldn't hear impacts anymore. She threw herself and her unfortunate passenger into a new set of evasive maneuvers.
With only partial success.
There was a jolt and power surge as her flight module took hits; her net lit up with error messages. "Losing thrust," she said.
Weiss steeled herself in Penny's grip and gestured again, surely throwing forward another glyph, but no new impacts sounded. "We're out of reach," said Weiss, and she hauled her body around to look behind them. "And the Geist is following—it's chasing us, the plan worked! It just got to the tree line."
"Circling around," said Penny, "but I am losing altitude. I think I have enough thrust to get us back."
Penny banked to start her turn and nearly tumbled; more error messages flooded her consciousness.
"Correction, I will not have enough. There is too much damage and too much dead weight."
"Are you calling me dead weight?!" shrieked Weiss.
"In this and only this context," Penny said apologetically. The tops of the trees were getting much closer now. "I will drop you off and then perform a controlled crash."
"As if I'd let you just crash!" said Weiss, and Penny heard a new glyph spring into existence. There was a jolt, and Penny to her surprise felt her altitude stabilizing and her speed increasing.
"What is that?" she said.
"Wind Dust for extra lift," said Weiss smugly. "Now perform a controlled landing, I can't keep this up for long."
"Affirmative," said Penny. She wanted to get back as close to the Geist as possible, and she could see it flailing about ahead of them amongst the trees, no longer paying them any attention. The topmost branches of the trees were coming closer and closer, and the first time one of them snapped against Penny's arm, she said, "Initiating landing procedures," more for Weiss' sake than her own.
The glyph cut out, and that loss of lift meant that Penny fell with less control and more speed than she'd meant to.
The result was that she didn't land with anything approaching grace.
It wasn't quite a "crash landing" because she still managed to protect Weiss, but things didn't work out as well for her.
"Are you okay?" said Weiss, looking down at Penny.
Penny assessed. She was flat on her back, her flight module had just fired off two more warnings, and she'd used much more of her reserve power than she'd planned, but all vital systems were intact.
"I am just fine, thank you for your concern."
Weiss goggled at her. "And are you going to get up?"
"Oh!" said Penny. "I suppose I should. There is still a Geist to defeat."
She sprang up quickly, and started running almost before Weiss did. Unfortunately, her wings weren't registering her commands to retract, and the additional drag slowed her down. To her right, Weiss was keeping pace by throwing glyphs ahead of her and making a skating motion over their surface. Penny was more impressed still. Those glyphs seemed infinitely versatile.
"You threw yourself under me when we fell," Weiss said.
"You are my partner," Penny said matter-of-factly.
Crashes and bangs gave Tactical reason enough to yank her attention forward. Blake and Yang were dancing around the Geist, bobbing in and out of cover and keeping it off-balance. Its gun was smoldering wreckage, large chunks had been taken out of its limbs, and its fuselage was increasingly dented, but they hadn't managed to dislodge it or land a killing blow. Likely they lacked the power for it against something this big and this old.
"We're back!" called Penny.
"Get its attention!" shouted Blake as she darted back once more.
Weiss brandished her rapier and its point began to gather orange again. Before Penny could stop her, she said, "I'm aiming for the eye, not its wooden limbs."
Tactical applauded the maneuver—the flames would obscure the Geist's vision very well. "Excellent!" Penny said.
"Naturally," said Weiss, but the corner of her mouth quirked up before she launched.
Her aim was quite good, with the flames impacting the Geist's mask just below the eye; as the flames and smoke rose, they extended how long the Geist was disoriented. It blindly swung with its wing arm, finally toppling one of the tortured trees around it as it flailed.
Weiss shrieked and went to dodge, but there was no need. Penny leapt into the path of the wing with Elektra raised high and swung with all her prodigious might.
She thumbed a control on Elektra and its Gravity Dust hummed to life.
Between the Geist's swing, Penny's counterswing, and the extra pull from the Gravity Dust, there was enormous relative force between wing and sword, all concentrated on Elektra's cutting edge.
She sheared through the wing like it was paper. The loose piece went flying off into the woods. The Geist, unbalanced from the sudden weight change, staggered.
As Penny landed, she saw a black ribbon wrapped around one of the Geist's legs—and then Blake completed the circle and pulled sharply, keeping the Geist from recovering. "Yang!" she called.
Yang emerged and exploded. Her hair lit up like a bonfire as she fired her gauntlets behind her for acceleration, and with a terrific burst of force and flame she struck the Geist's tree leg, and that exploded, blasted to splinters.
The Geist toppled and fell.
"Penny! Finish it!" said Blake.
Penny leaned forward and activated her flight module.
It sputtered and coughed and gave her exactly zero thrust.
Okay, so she'd have to run into range—except she heard a tone beneath her and saw a glyph forming.
Ah. Weiss was being helpful.
Penny's gyro screamed in protest as the glyph launched her skyward, but she gathered herself, forced a flip to regain her bearings, and retargeted. The Geist was below her, its eye darting about madly, reaching out with its shadows to pull new material into its body- if Penny didn't finish it first. With a little twist, she angled herself to complete her arc by landing on its face.
She readied Elektra in a reverse grip and activated both Gravity Dust and Burn Dust, turning Elektra, as she'd promised Jaune, into a giant flaming blade of utter annihilation.
She fell from the air like a meteor.
There was a blast, an uncanny squeal, an eruption of shadows, and then stillness.
Penny drew Elektra from the smoldering remains of the fuselage. No trace of the Geist remained.
"Yeah! Screw that guy!" shouted Yang in triumph.
"We did it," said Blake, sounding mildly surprised as she approached.
"We did!" said Penny, the glory of victory surging through her. "We defeated a very dangerous opponent and came through the battle unscathed!"
"Um, Penny?" said Weiss. "Your jetpack is on fire."
"We came through the battle mildly scathed. Weiss, could I have some Ice Dust?"
Crisis temporarily averted, the two pairs of partners got back on course for the Forest Temple. After the Geist, they encountered no meaningful opposition. Almost all of the relics were gone by the time they arrived. A pair of oversized knight figures from an extra-large chess set were all that remained.
"Well, I guess this is what we needed," said Yang, flipping one end-over-end in her hand.
"Finally," said Weiss, gathering a knight of her own. "I wonder if any of the other teams had as much trouble as we did."
Booming sounds came to them from the direction of the nearby ravine.
"That's not just weapons fire," said Yang.
"Someone's fighting either a lot of somethings or a very big something," said Blake.
"We should go help," Penny said. Before she could start running, there broke into view what can only be described as a pink, heart-shaped mushroom cloud, followed by a low and chest-rumbling boom.
"Our classmates either just won, or just blew themselves to bits," said Weiss. "Either way, it's time we return to the cliffs. That was the assignment, and I would kill to get in the shower about now."
There were no counter-arguments.
"You have a jetpack?!"
"Yes, Nora," said Penny, trying not to show her nerves as she edged away from the excited girl. Nora looked disheveled, with dirt in her hair and soot covering most of her right side (apparently she'd put some of that on herself to simulate the remains of the Ancient Deathstalker her team had exploded), but she was as exuberant and lively as ever.
"Why didn't you tell me you had a jetpack last night?" said Nora, her fingers rapidly curling in a way that only heightened Penny's anxiety.
"It wasn't relevant last night," said Penny. She'd tried a few basic repairs to free her wings to retract, but they remained stubbornly deployed. She couldn't disengage the whole module in this company, either, especially with the extent of the damage unknown.
"We're not getting you a jetpack," said a long-suffering voice next to Nora. It was the boy Nora had slept by the night before and that she'd introduced as Ren.
"I'm not asking for Penny's jetpack, silly," said Nora.
"You're about to ask if you could see Penny's jetpack so you could try and reverse-engineer one for yourself."
"It's not free for now," said Penny, and she took another step away from Nora. A girl with electricity powers that Penny couldn't escape was a terrifying prospect.
"Aww," said Nora, but she was only deterred for a moment. "I'll hit you up later, then."
Jaune was looking at Penny thoughtfully. "So, just thinking about it, with a jetpack, couldn't you have just flown all the way to the temple, gotten a relic, and then flown back? You didn't really have to fight any grimm at all."
Penny gaped at him. "That hadn't occurred to me," she said in awe. "I'm not sure it meets the intent of the test, but it absolutely satisfies the requirements."
"It is clever," said Pyrrha approvingly from next to Jaune. "Almost as clever as your plan to destroy the Ancient Deathstalker."
"Aww, you're just saying that," said Jaune modestly. Weiss made a sound similar to Jaune's vomiting sounds.
Yang jostled Penny with her elbow. "I guess that's something to think about for next time, then."
"Next time?" repeated Penny. "Only freshpeople… er… frosh go through initiation."
Yang's smile intensified.
"Oh!" gasped Penny. "That's the joke, isn't it?!"
Yang gave her a thumbs-up.
"Four more years," muttered Weiss, "four more years, I'm only stuck with these lunatics for four more years..."
"You're up next," said Professor Goodwitch as she bustled past them. They were standing backstage of the Beacon auditorium. All the other first years had been introduced in something like reverse order, with the third and second waves coming up earlier. Now only these twelve remained—down to eight, as a quartet of boys Penny didn't know was called up.
"There are a lot of students still out there," said Professor Goodwitch as she came past again. "Normally we have to beg or compel upperclassmen to stick around until the end, but an unusual number really appreciated the show you all put on."
"The show?" said Yang.
"We have live streams running here throughout initiation," said Professor Goodwitch. "They don't see everything, but they do catch a lot of the action."
Nora's expression was gleeful. "Does that mean they saw Jaune…"
"Nora we swore we would never speak of that again!" said Jaune in a rush.
"It was a good try," said Pyrrha kindly.
Professor Goodwitch checked her scroll, then nodded. "Next four."
Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren stepped ahead onto the stage, leaving the final four students behind. They were all out of things to say, which gave Penny time to work on a problem that had been troubling her.
What would their team's name be?
Thesaurus had tried many iterations of Bs, Ps, Ys, Ls, Ws, and Ss, and very few of the combinations produced anything approaching a color or color-adjacent word that Penny could determine. Weiss' surname should have made it easier, since almost anything could be easily pluralized with the S, but while that simplified the problem it didn't solve it.
"Led by… Jaune Arc!"
Penny gasped in surprise, then clapped eagerly in excitement for her friend. "Good for him!" she said.
"Didn't know he had it in him," said Yang.
"You can say that again," said Weiss.
"Didn't know he had it in him," repeated Penny dutifully.
"Why are you the way you are?"
For his part, Jaune had frozen at the announcement, before being knocked down by Pyrrha. Oh, dear. Penny hoped Pyrrha wasn't upset about Jaune being made leader.
"Last four," said Professor Goodwitch with visible (and understandable) relief.
Penny and her friends walked onto the stage. The lights were shining very brightly, so much that it was hard to look up and Penny felt the temperature change. The clamor from a surprisingly large and boisterous group of students grew to a roar. Penny wanted to say it was more students than had been at the entrance speech that day before. They were certainly making far more noise.
"I guess we attracted a bit of attention fighting that Geist," said Blake, though she sounded curiously unhappy about that.
"No less than we deserved," said Weiss.
"Hell yeah," said Yang.
Penny would take her teammates' word for that. To her, it felt good to have so many people clapping for her and her team. It felt welcoming. It felt warm.
She wanted more of it.
"Blake Belladonna," said Professor Ozpin from the side of the stage, "Yang Xiao Long, Penny Pallas, Weiss Schnee. The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces."
This was it, Penny thought with mounting excitement. They were going to be a real team now. But what would be their name? What could it be?
"From this day on," said Professor Ozpin, looking at them with a twinkle in his eye, "you shall be known as… Team Biceps."
"Biceps?!" shrieked Weiss, audible even over the crowd, which burst into laughter and even louder clapping, while a group of older students in the back broke into chants of "Bi-ceps! Bi-ceps!"
Penny looked up at the screen above them. There spelled out were the letters "B-X-P-S".
Biceps.
Penny joined the applause as Thesaurus registered its admiration. She had never thought to use the X in "Yang Xiao Long". Perhaps that was why Professor Ozpin was Headmaster! He understood these things.
"Led by…" Professor Ozpin continued, "…Blake Belladonna!"
Penny redoubled her applause as she turned to Blake, who looked like she was withering on the spot.
"Bi-ceps! Bi-ceps!"
"Biceps," a stunned Weiss mumbled again.
"It looks like this is going to be an interesting year," said Professor Ozpin with satisfaction. "You are all dismissed. Room assignments are being sent to your scrolls now."
There was one last, culminating roar from the student gallery, and the chants of "Bi-ceps!" went on for four more iterations before fading out.
"We are officially a team now," said Penny, Emotion Signifying fully in control as her excitement boiled over. "I am delighted to be on this team! Congratulations to us all!"
"Once again, hell yeah!" said Yang. She looked at Blake. "Grats on being made leader, by the way."
Blake seemed, somehow, shorter and smaller and weaker than she had before, like a plant dehydrating in time-lapse.
Weiss looked at her teammates with wide, haunted eyes. "I can't believe we're Team Biceps."
"I'd say it fits," Yang said, flexing immoderately.
"Biceps aren't even a color," Weiss protested.
"I dunno," said Yang, kissing her arm, "biceps, like arms, like, you know, flesh tones? Works for me."
"Of course it works for you," Weiss said in a voice like she couldn't breathe, "you can't even spell dignity, but for me to be in a team named that…"
"Do not worry, Friend Weiss," said Penny, "I will do everything I can to make this team so formidable no one will care what its name is!"
Weiss murmured an acknowledgement, which was enough for Penny. It was a sure sign of how disconcerted Weiss was that she didn't protest Penny attaching the honorific 'Friend' to her name. Well, Penny would take that liberty and run with it. It was too late to go back now!
"We have our room assignment," Blake said as she looked at her scroll. The chanting had finally stopped and students were pouring through the exits; Professor Ozpin had disappeared and Tactical was bewildered as to where he'd gone and how. "We can head there now and…" she looked up; her shoulders hunched even more when she did, "…get out of the actual, literal spotlight."
"Yeah, I suppose we oughta hit the hay," said Yang. "Plus, we have to help out ice queen here."
"Hey!" said Weiss. "Don't call me that!"
"What?" said Yang innocently, although Analysis was very suspicious of the way Yang's mouth was curling. "I'm trying to help you. You said you needed a shower, right?"
Weiss looked at Yang with furrowed brow. "I did, why?"
"Well, if we go to our dorm, then you'll get to shower."
"Thank you."
"…right after me."
"I swear I will gut you like a fish."
Penny smiled. She loved her team.
Next time: ...Upon a Star
