The scene opens up circling around Amity Coliseum, until it stops on a landing/departing pad for the airships as one takes off. With the sound of a lightning strike, Hedge and Pyrrha appear.

Pyrrha: "You know, that was pretty cool. Freaky, but cool." She removes her hand from his shoulder.

Hedge: "Yeah, you get used to it after a while."

Pyrrha: "And you're able to control where you want to appear?"

Hedge: "More or less. Distance is a huge factor though. The further out I teleport, the more aura it can drain. Yes, I could use my shoes to fly the whole distance instead, but that isn't as fast as me teleporting. Leo always tells me to not use that ability whenever we race."

Pyrrha: "Then aren't you worried you might not be at full strength for the fight if you are chosen next?" She was worried he just handicapped himself for the next fight. Then again, like Zion said, he'd probably welcome the challenge.

Hedge: "You don't have to worry too much about that. Remember, I have a pretty high reserve of aura thanks to my training, and it recovers pretty quickly too. I should be near full if not capped off by the time next match starts."

She did remember him having huge reserves of aura at his disposal, much higher than your average first year huntsman in training. Jaune's aura was probably just below Hedge's, as she recalled informing her blonde leader that he had a lot of aura to work with when she unlocked it for him. She never actually sparred against Hedge in Goodwitch's class, namely because she knew he was a strong combatant, even putting Yang and Nora to shame. Well...almost.

He would always fight Yang without Chaos and Destruction, and while the blonde brawler was able to put up a good fight each time, she could never land her trump card on him, as he would always tend to dodge or completely teleport away from her semblance-empowered strike. She would always berate him for running away all the time, however he would always counter with stating that it was a strategic maneuver, which Pyrrha had to agree with. Yang would always telegraph her strike, and while she was able to land it on the other first years, Hedge was the exception.

Nora, on the other hand...

The hyperactive ginger of Team JNPR was able to go toe to toe with Hedge right from the get go, and that was thanks to her semblance. Being able to channel and absorb any form of electricity through her body to enhance her speed and strikes was very helpful against Hedge, as the first time they fought, Hedge was actually defeated by her. He may have an immunity to any form of electrical attacks, but his aura still takes the damage without hinderance.

This shocked (pun intended) everyone in the class that someone of a renowned team, and a Vytal Festival finalist no less, was able to be beaten by a first year. This didn't sit well with the HAZL team leader, as he did congratulate Nora on being able to beat him, and he vowed to train to be able to beat her. Their fellow classmates would always ask Goodwitch to save some time for the two to fight, as they knew that things would get crazy. Their record against each other? All tied up. (AN1) Students were hoping they'd settle the score during the tournament, but since Pyrrha had moved onto the Finals and not Nora, the two would have to settle the score after the tournament.

Hedge: "Come on." Hedge speaking again broke Pyrrha out of her thinking. "We don't want to miss the selection process."

Pyrrha nods. "Right." The two rush off to the arena stands to meet up with their teams.

Ozpin is seen in his office in the tower with his mug in hand about to sit at his desk. At the same time, Professor Theodore is seen in his office as well. Both are watching the broadcast of the tournament as both Professor Port and Doctor Oobleck announce the next match.

The first contestant announced: Penny Polendina of Atlas.

Her opponent? Neither headmaster expected this.

Hedge Badnic of Shade.

Both contestants appear in the arena center after Hedge retrieves his swords from his locker. The center platform rises as both fighters prepare themselves.

Penny: "Greetings, Mr. Badnic. I must say your achievements are well known throughout the world. It's an honor to fight against you."

Hedge: "I appreciate the compliments, Penny, but just know. You may be Ruby's friend, but that doesn't mean I'll be holding back."

Penny: "Then let's give the audience a fight to remember."

Unbeknownst to the two, and everyone in the audience minus Ruby, Emerald was sitting in the stands, despite it being advised that Mercury and his team had flown back to Haven so he could heal up. This is not the case, as Ruby ran into him in the storage hallway. Something wasn't right in her eyes.

Oobleck: "Fighters, are you ready?" Both Hedge and Penny get into their battle stances, Penny drawing her swords from her backpack, and Hedge grabbing Chaos and Destruction from their sheathes, lightning sparking over him.

"3."

"2."

"1."

"Begin!"

Penny launches her swords at Hedge with a wave of her hands. Hedge counters this with his own electrical swords to fight his way toward her. He could close the distance quickly by teleporting, but he didn't fully understand how Penny's swords worked. For all he knew, she could be anticipating him to do so, and ready with a counterattack, so he decided to play this slowly. With a jolt of his semblance, he shot off an electrical slash at Penny from Destruction, causing the girl to dodge to her left. Hedge moved to capitalize this as he ignited his shoes to launch himself forward poised for a strike with Chaos.

However, Penny was quick to recover, as she was able to move her swords to block the strike. What happened next was a blur to those with untrained eyes. The two clashed their swords multiple times so fast, it was like if they had Ruby's semblance, but for their attacks rather than just for movement.

Port: "Now this is a match! Wouldn't you agree, Barty?!"

Oobleck: "I'd very much agree with you, Peter. Mr. Badnic and Ms. Polendina sure are putting on a show for us. I'm not sure who would come out on top."

Down in the stands, the AZL members of Team HAZL were watching on with bated breathes. They hoped the match would go on without Hedge using any of his dark powers, but considering how riled up he could be if he couldn't best an opponent quick enough? Well, they hoped that if he did use his powers, it wouldn't be that bad of an outcome.

The two continued trading sword strikes, but Penny decided to maneuver a few of her swords to strike Hedge at an unfavorable angle, something he caught at the side of his vision and jumped into the air, activating his shoes. With a sharpening of his swords against each other and with a yell, Hedge's aura exploded out. To his friends, they didn't see any physical changes to him, or feel any negative aura off of him, so it was safe to assume he wasn't utilizing his dark forms. Penny looked up astonished at his display of power.

Hedge: "A blind spot attack, Penny? Not very cool." A smirk brandished on his face. "But I take it you got a lot more left in the tank, right?" He briefly looked up at the aura reader to see where he was. "65%. Not too bad, but I have to be careful not to go too overboard with semblance usage."

Penny, unknown to everyone, was analyzing the situation. Although she could attempt to maneuver her swords to keep Hedge at bay, she came to the conclusion that an aerial battle was the thing to do. "You're right. I do." So, she activated her "jets," using some of her swords to make them act like that, and took to the air. Her swords spring into action, ready to strike at Hedge.

The HAZL leader activated his own swords to meet them. 'She can fly, too?!' Hedge and Penny continue their battle mid-air, while Emerald is looking on trying to find the right moment to interfere with her semblance.

Emerald: 'Gotta do something and do it right. For Cinder.' Speaking of, she received a message on her scroll from said person asking her when she was going to interfere. She responds back that she is looking for the right moment to do so, but a quick response tells her to stop hesitating before the match comes to a natural close.

However, what would happen next would not be because of interference from Emerald and her semblance, but from someone else not seen from the public eye.

Doctor Badnic was intrigued from what he was seeing from within Hedge's mind. This Polendina girl was very interesting. He somewhat recalled there being a scientist with that last name in Atlas before his...banishment. While they weren't partners, they did share ideas with each other. This girl...wasn't human. She may have a soul, how that scientist managed that, even he didn't fully know, but he smiled at this revelation. He knew the one way for turmoil to be aroused for his Queen, and he had just the thing to use.

With subtle movement, Destruction started to glow again while Hedge and Penny continued their bout, the dark aura seeping its way up the handle and over Hedge's arm. He was so focused on the fight, that he didn't seem to acknowledge that his movements, and ferocity of his attacks, got much more erratic. His dark power activated and he was now in his first phase. His summoned spears however were switching color from their usual yellow to now red.

Both combatants broke from each other, and with a grin, Hedge ordered his swords into a circular formation in front of him, red sparks starting to form in the center. Penny recognized what type of attack he was going to do, as she did the same formation back when dealing with Torchwick at the docks to take down some of the bullheads, so she configured her swords into the same formation, green sparks forming in the center. To the audience, they thought they were about to see an epic clash of attacks, some thrown off by Hedge's color swap on his spears, but still excited to watch. Penny brought her arms together and thrusted them forward, a large green beam being fired towards Hedge. Hedge raised Destruction forward.

"Chaos Torrent!" A red beam of similar proportions to Penny's fired off and both met in-between the two. People in the audience were awed at the spectacle that was happening in front of them, some even scared that, what was effectively a beam struggle, would get out of hand and possibly destroy the barrier that protected them from any stray firearm shots.

Visible strain was seen on Hedge's face, and surprisingly, despite Penny's true "identity," she was even struggling to push forward against Hedge's beam attack, strain evident on her face. Penny knew she had the ability to make the beam stronger, and would most definitely result in some scolding from both the General and her Father, but she knew she needed to do something, otherwise the beam would overpower her attack, and that would not bode well for her. Deciding to worry about the repercussions later, she pushed her systems over their normal limitations, alarms blaring in her vision, but she ignored them and her attack gained more force behind it. It started to push towards Hedge, his face contorting in regards to the additional strain from Penny's attack, but something in his mind was grinning at this, no doubt wanting this to happen.

As the beams continued to push closer to Hedge, a shadow left Hedge's body, and what seemed to look like Hedge's "Chaos Torrent" attack had stopped as Penny's attack hit Hedge head on, bringing up a dust cloud from the explosion. Everyone looked on in silenced wonder, trying to look into the cloud to see if they could find any feature of the hedgehog Faunus, and although they couldn't see anything of him, they didn't hear a buzzer signaling his elimination.

Some people tried to look at the overhead screen for the aura reader, but as they craned their heads up, what they saw was shocking to say the least, causing a few to gasp. Penny heard a few of those and wondered just what was going on, but then her sensors went off, alerting her to something ABOVE her.

She moved her gaze above, and for one, she was surprised on how Hedge had moved above her without being detected by her systems, but secondly, she was shocked at HOW he looked, because as she focused on his eyes, they told her that there was one thing on his mind.

Kill.

Hedge crossed his arms across his chest, and while moving faster than the eye could see, boosted downward toward Penny. Now, you would think with the type of being Penny is, she would be able to react fast enough to dodge the incoming attack. She didn't even have the chance to do so, as Hedge blurred past her, and he landed on the ground of the arena stage they were using in a crouch, arms stretched out, as if he had done an attack. But it wasn't the type of attack that Hedge had done on Penny, as everyone was focused on her after noticing he had reappeared down below. No, it was the DAMAGE and EFFECT he had done to her.

Penny's systems' alarms were blaring, alerting her to the internal damage that Hedge's attack had done, but soon after, her body had split apart, an X-shape evident on her body from said attack, but it wasn't just the brutality that Hedge had committed, but rather instead of everyone seeing blood come out Penny, her body was actually sparking. Penny wasn't a human girl, she was actually an android. Something that Atlas had created and played it off as a regular student. Just how many others had they created?

Port: "No!" He was shocked of the outcome of the fight. Oobleck was too, but he just wasn't voicing it. Penny's split body fell to the center platform, her swords of Floating Array stabbing or clanking into/onto the ground around her body parts.

The smokescreen in the air was starting to dissipate, and while most of the crowd was shocked at the admittedly devasting outcome of Penny's demise, the ones who focused their gaze to said smokescreen were even more shocked, as whom appeared was none other than Hedge, arms crossed as he had braced for Penny's laser attack, and while he looked scuffed up from it, he didn't look as damaged as he probably should have been.

Doctor Badnic had decided he had enough fun and had Hedge start floating back down to the arena stage, while his double was still in the same pose as before. Some wondered just how strong Hedge actually was, as he had never used either of the two abilities he just busted out. A laser attack and able to make a doppelganger? That seemly is able to be undetected until they eventually appear?

Once Hedge had landed back onto the arena's center platform, his doppelganger decided to stand back up while putting its own Chaos and Destruction back into their sheathes on their back, and turned to walk toward its owner, but not before an evil smirk graced its lips, unseen by the crowd, viewers or Hedge himself. Speaking of Hedge, he hadn't even registered what had happened or that he even had a doppelganger to begin with. Once the doppelganger disappeared back into Hedge, all reality seemed to be snapped back into him as he reeled himself and looked around, the crowd was eerily silent and wondered himself where Penny was and why she wasn't attacking him, but then his gaze fell on her split-up body, wires evident.

Hedge: "Wha...What happened? Did I...?"

Up in the casters' box

Oobleck: "Broadcast, what are you doing?! Kill the feed!"

Broadcast worker: "We can't. Something's blocking our control."

Then the screen behind Oobleck and Port glitched and the black Queen chess piece appeared on it while the background was red. The PA system pinged on, and a woman's voice came through. She started by stating that this was a tragedy, and then started berating Ozpin first about the dismemberment attack that Yang had done on Mercury, whom was in his office looking on at what had happened wide-eyed. He didn't expect these two things come to bare: an android masquerading as a student, and for Hedge to actually kill another student, but even he could tell that something wasn't right regarding the state of mind Hedge had possibly been in.

General Ironwood was next to be grilled on from the woman, as him being the General and Headmaster of Atlas, and trying to pass of Penny as a student even though she was an android, which even he was surprised that this woman even knew that, when only a select few people should've known that. But he was also intrigued on what Hedge had under his belt. He never told the General that he had that kind of power at his disposal. While there were records of semblances being able to make a clone, Ms. Belladona, Mr. Wukong, and even his own student Mr. Coal coming to mind with their semblances, there weren't any known records of a semblance allowing to make a full copy AND being able to act on their own, WHILE the user is able to move around and not take away any of the user's aura reserves. While he was more focused on the woman essentially hacking the systems and the death of Penny, internally he was a little bummed that Hedge was Theodore's student and not his, because having a student like him would be beneficial in the military, but given Hedge's upbringing, he could understand why he went to Shade and not Atlas Academy. Moving those thoughts out of his mind, Ironwood steeled his mind and made a beeline towards the caster's booth.

Next on the chopping block was Professor Theodore, and by extension, Hedge himself. Said headmaster was in his office looking on dumbfounded that James had a student like Penny in his ranks. He didn't expect anything like this, and this woman was also throwing him under the bus, questioning on allowing someone like Hedge to participate in the tournament with this kind of mindset and admittedly questionable power. She announced that she was a student of Haven and wondered what was in the mind of the other three headmasters to have students like this be allowed to become Huntsmen and Huntresses, and asked everyone if our futures were placed in the hands of the right people, questioning if everyone could trust them.

The screen returned to normal, but then the Grimm alarm blared, announcing that there was a Level 9 Grimm attack coming. A huge Nevermore landed on top of the hard light shield of the arena. Everyone in the audience started to panic, even though Ironwood's voice had asked everyone to remain calm.

Sun: "A Nevermore?!"

Coco: "How did it get past the kingdom's defenses?"

Ren: "It wasn't alone."

The remainder of HAZL looked at the Nevermore, then at each other, while Anne looked at Hedge in the center of the arena, noticing his distraught face.

Anne: "Hedge..."

AN1: I put the record as being tied up and not giving a definitive amount of matches that Hedge and Nora fought. We don't know how much time and classes there were in the show, so just put it as every class the both of them fought each other.

Apologies for putting this chapter out so late. It's been two months since the last update, probably longer since the last official chapter for the story. IRL things playing a huge factor in that, mainly that I'm not liking my job at the moment. It's very stressful and I am thinking of finding a new job, just what to try to look for is going to be the tough part.

Also, I decided to take a cop out regarding Cinder's speech and just go about it with an info dump on what she was stating referring to the people her speech was talking about. Ozpin and Ironwood's parts are basically the same as canon, but now her speech talks about Theodore and Hedge considering it wasn't Pyrrha that accidently killed Penny. Speaking of, Cinder thinks that it was Emerald that led Hedge to kill Penny, but it was all Doctor Badnic's actions that caused it.

Hedge's new abilities: Chaos Torrent and Doppelganger. Chaos Torrent is a move from the titular villain from the YouTube series Sonic: Nazo Unleashed by YouTuber Chakra-X. Doppelganger, well it's pretty obvious whom it is from, but it is from Devil May Cry.

I may take a hiatus from this story once I finish Volume 3, but that might be because of me looking into maybe working on another project. Not sure on if it may come to fruition, still looking to see if able to move forward on it. We shall see. Have a great day/afternoon/evening wherever you are. Peace out.