Bud 3.1

Oh, Gods. Anything but this. I hadn't ever had to deal with this before, whose idea was it to put me here?

Two dozen preschoolers were running around in the next room, their teachers barely audible over the racket they were making. The door was built in two halves, each of which could swing independently, and the space between them was big enough to peer through, so I got a clear view of the kids that would be taking up my next hour.

"How often do we have to do this?"

Challenger chuckled. "Not often. Less often if it turns out you're bad at it, but there aren't many people that really are. You don't need to be all that charismatic to keep the attention of a bunch of five-year-olds- when you're a superhero, that is."

He was being entirely too happy, which was saying something coming from me. "You enjoy this kind of thing, don't you? Why can't you be the one to do it?"

"Because for all you know, you're amazing at this!" He caught my expression and continued, "...okay maybe not, but you never know. Now, they've finally quieted down out there, so it's time to move out. You ready to do this?"

Alright. I could do this. How bad could it really be? "As I'll ever be, I guess."

I looked through the crack again, watching and listening as the kid's teacher told them what was going on. "...we have some very special visitors here today, and they'll be reading you a story. Be sure you pay very close attention, and they might just let you ask a few questions at the end. Now, if they're ready?" She said the last part more quietly, glancing toward the door, and the PRT guard in civilian wear knocked twice on the door.

I reached for the door handle, before remembering to put on my mask at the last second. Wouldn't that be the worst way to accidentally put my face out there? It was a funny thought, and I grounded myself there. Humor was good, it kept things positive.

I reached for the door handle before pausing. "Hey, are we allowed to use our Sem- powers at all in here?"

"Don't do anything to any of the kids, and I don't see why not. What are you planning?"

I smiled, not that he could see it. "Just wondering." My Aura stretched through the crack in the door as I heard the teacher beginning her introductions. "You've met one of them before, but the other's pretty new, so stay respectful, okay? Everyone, this is Scatter."

As she finished, and rose petals began floating around the other side of the door, I scattered myself and pushed through, reappearing on the other side much like I'd done while sparring Assault, reforming with a bow.

In hindsight, that might not have been the best move, given how the kids went from miraculously well-behaved to rowdier than they had been before in the span of about three seconds. I caught the teacher sending me dirty looks as she waded into the crowd once again, and slumped a little as Challenger came into the room the normal way.

"I probably could have told you to avoid that, though." I chose to ignore his barely suppressed chuckles as I thanked my mask for hiding the blush that had probably climbed to my ears.

How was I supposed to know? "I've never really been around little kids before," I muttered, not totally sure he could hear me over the noise.

He stepped forward, just to the brim of the mob, and I could see a few kids noticing that he was there and putting their hands together as if they were about to start clapping. What was he doing?

I got my answer as he raised his own hands and clapped in a distinctive beat, beat, triple-beat pattern, and every kid who heard him stopped in their tracks and repeated it. That got the attention of the rest, and they all clapped together when he did it again.

"Hello again, everyone." Challenger had to pause as the mob of kids shouted as the entire mob shouted responses in the vein of 'Hello Challenger' together, then started giggling amongst themselves. "Like Miss Rathman said, this is Scatter, and she'll be reading your story today."

I didn't take the groans that followed that sentence personally. Not at all. Nope.

"Hey, now that's not being very nice, is it?" Challenger continued. "I can't be the only person who does this, right? Right. So let's all sit down and listen to the story, and maybe we can get you all a surprise after, huh?"

That got them sitting down and quiet. I shot Challenger a thankful glance and nod that I hoped he could interpret the way I hoped. Then, I sat down, picked up the book that had been leaning against the chair but had since fallen to the floor in the ruckus, and started to read. "Once upon a time, in a faraway country, there lived a King."

"You know, that story didn't make a lot of sense. There are easier ways to get rid of elephants than filling a palace with enough mice to scare them out. I'm not sure how wise those men actually were."

"To be fair, it was a little kid's book. Slaughtering all the elephants may not have been the best way of getting the moral of the story across."

"...They didn't need to kill all the elephants either. They could have just chased them out," I responded, more than a little embarrassed. "What kind of palace is big enough to hold elephants anyway? Who has that much space?"

Challenger gave me a funny look at that. "Lots of palaces, as far as I know. Kings were rich, they could afford to have the room."

"Seems pretty wasteful to me. They only had so much room to expand to, or they would have started losing... people." It took another odd look and a few seconds for me to realize what I was saying. "…right. No Grimm here, so no limits on expanding. I forgot." And just like that, my mood went down the drain.

"It's alright. It's interesting, actually, the little ways that something as massive as the Grimm must have changed things. You had limited space, so did things get built higher than they would have here?"

I could tell what he was doing, and it wasn't going to work out the way he imagined. He was trying to get me talking about home, but it wasn't going to help. Each mention, each tiny difference, felt like it was wearing away at me. At home, we had to deal with the Grimm, but that wasn't the case here. At home, we built our cities tall in order to stay in the naturally-defended areas, but here the cities were more spread out.

I took a second longer than normal to reply, trying to find a way to change the topic. "Yeah, that was a thing, kind of. It's a long story. Umm… hey, how did you know how to deal with those kids so well?"

I almost groaned at how obvious that was, but Challenger didn't make anything of it. Taking the change in topic in stride, he responded, "I've been visiting that school in particular for a while now. One of the perks of being a long-term Protectorate member is that I get greater freedom of choice over what PR events I do, and I try to focus where I can to a few places."

I couldn't see his face through his featureless silver mask, but I could practically hear the smile on his lips as he said it, in a way that reminded me of… the sound of Kali Belladonna's voice when she'd looked at Blake the one time we'd met. As if whatever he was thinking about was so positive, so inherently good, that they couldn't help but smile. A few places, he'd said…

"Those places wouldn't happen to be ones that have people you know, would they?"

He turned his head suddenly to look at me, then gave a short laugh that was barely more than a slightly harder exhalation than normal. "You picked up on that fast, didn't you? Yeah, one of the munchkins back there was mine, and I've got two more at an elementary school near the Towers. They're all a little young to tell them anything about… well, what I do for a living, but I wanted to make sure they had a good impression of everything we do." He paused for a second. "That's not always true for a lot of kids, and a lot of the time it gets even worse for the kids of capes. Has anybody told you how powers tend to spread, here?"

This wasn't a good sign for how this conversation was going. "I… know some of it. How people get them, in this world."

"In this world? No, sorry, nevermind. That wasn't quite what I meant, anyway. Kids of parahumans have a tendency to get powers of their own - New Wave's a good example, if you know them."

"Yeah, I know them. They're the other big hero team, right? All one big family?"

"Yep. The problem is - and I'd appreciate it if you kept it quiet that I brought this up - if you ever talk with them for an extended period of time, you start to notice things about their family and issues with how they function as a group. I'm not going to bring up any details, but I don't want my family to end up like that."

"Are you sure it's the powers that did that? Families can fall apart without them." I was coming across a little defensively there, but it was hard not to feel a little attacked. I'd grown up in a family with powers, after all.

Challenger nodded slowly. "I'm not going to say that it happens to every family with powers, and it might not be related for New Wave… but I can't help but draw the connection. In the worst case, I figure I get to surprise them with my being a superhero." He paused, then chuckled a little. "Even if it does wound my pride a little when one of them says that their favorite hero is Dauntless."

We both laughed at that. What he'd said had gotten me thinking, though. PR was important here, and I needed to figure out how well I was doing what I was doing. I was fairly sure the teacher hated me now, but the kids were… a lot harder to read. "Hey… when you get a chance, could you ask them how they enjoyed that? I couldn't really tell, and I'm worried about figuring out this whole public relations thing, and-"

"Don't worry, I can ask," Challenger interrupted. "Based on what I saw though… you weren't amazing, but you weren't bad, either. If I had to guess, they were a little more hyper because they hadn't really heard of you before, and the PR people will have you trying this again after you've been around for a while."

"Well, if I'm around for that long," I responded.

He blinked. "Uh, yeah, right." There was a pause, neither of us sure how to continue the conversation. He took the initiative, changing the subject. "So I heard that you were going to be doing some training with the Wards this afternoon, right? I don't suppose your worries about those kids had some founding in that?"

That made me laugh. "Nah, I wasn't really worried, about this anyway. I've hung around enough teenagers with superpowers to have a pretty good idea of how they work. I grew up leading three of them, as one of them. I don't think I'll have any issues."

"Are you sure? The Wards might not be quite the same as your old team, for any number of reasons. They won't have your team's experience at first, either, and I'd be willing to bet that none of them are quite ready for whatever you're planning."

"Ah, it should be fine. I've never met anyone who didn't enjoy doing this, and a few of them already kind of know what they're in for."

"Alright, everyone, gather around! Who's ready for day one of the Rose Huntsmen academy?" I shouted into the training room as I pushed the doors open. Idly, I noticed that the damage from my spar with Assualt had been repaired over the last few days, and the entire room looked as good as new.

The Wards were scattered around in various places; I didn't see Shadow Stalker, but the others were immediately visible. I could hear Kid Win flying his hoverboard a handful of inches over the second-level balconies, practicing evasive maneuvers based on the rapid shifts in the pitch of the board's buzzing. Vista was in the same place I'd found her the first time she'd practiced with me, beating up the same training dummy with some much greater efficiency than before. From the looks of things, she'd taped… wood twigs to the dummy's limbs, and was using her power to dance around the mannequin while peppering it with blows from every angle, with Triumph looking on from outside the ring. Those three were in full costume, but I spotted Clockblocker, Aegis, and Gallant in a group in the far corner, talking quietly. Gallant was in what looked like a stripped-down version of his sci-fi knights armor that was lacking the full plating, and the other two were in workout clothes and domino masks.

I could already tell who was going to be putting in the most effort in at first. Hopefully, that would change as things continued and they realized how useful this was going to be. Where was Stalker, though?

I got my answer seconds later. The Wards turned to see my coming in and started moving towards me, and a shadow fell past Kid as he flew down from the second story. I caught a glimpse of a dark shape with hints of a bone structure visible, and instinctively took a step back and was halfway to a guard position before realizing what I was seeing. Shadow Stalker was wearing her cloak and mask over workout clothing, which was an odd level of commitment to this whole thing if you asked me, and exuding a sense of satisfaction through her body language over managing to put me on my back foot.

I had the inklings of an idea as to what her deal was, but I still hadn't really put the pieces together. There was something vaguely familiar in how she acted though, that I really couldn't place.

"I'll take that as a yes. Alright, first things first, we're going to see where you're all at, skill-wise. You normally practice by sparring with each other, right?" There were a few nods, so I continued. "That means you all have pretty good ideas of how you fight, so I'll have you working together in two teams. Clock, Kid, and Vista, I've already seen you spar, so you're one team. Triumph, Aegis, Gallant, and Stalker, you're the other."

I saw some nervous shifting at that. Some of that was probably thinking about the unbalanced teams, but I had plans to deal with that. The bigger issue was the glances some of them were giving own teammates - The entirety of the Shadow Stalker's team was looking toward her, their expressions absolutely dripping with doubt, and Vista was giving Clockblocker a look that I couldn't really read. It shouldn't be an issue though. I'd figured out my issues with Weiss quickly enough, and it wasn't like these were permanent teams, anyway.

I continued, "If things turn out to be too unbalanced, I'll step in on one side or the other. You can use your powers as much as you want as long as nobody gets hurt - and I'm trusting you all to know how far is too far." There were more nervous glances at Shadow Stalker following that statement. Uh oh. I guessed I'd be keeping a closer eye on her over the course of this. "If somebody says or otherwise signals that they're out, then they're out and you need to shift targets. Once you're out, move out of the line of fire as quick as you can, and I'll grab you if I need to. Any questions?"

There weren't any, and the teams each moved to one of the side walls to plan before the challenge started. I was hoping that the first team had learned something from what we'd discussed in the time after my spar with them, but I wasn't sure. I knew I could count on Vista, at least, but from the body language I was seeing in that huddle, the other two weren't paying her a whole lot of attention.

The other side of the room had almost the opposite problem. Shadow Stalker wasn't bothering to even try and participate in the planning, and outside of a token attempt on Gallant's part to get her involved, she looked to be ignoring everything they had to say.

It was probably fine. Team RWBY had gone through these kinds of issues, and we'd worked it out in the end. It had taken a while, and they'd gotten some help from Team JNPR and the professors, but we'd managed, and these guys would too.

After a few minutes, I called out to the room, "Alright, everybody get ready! We're starting in ten seconds!"

The second team, minus Stalker, broke their huddle with a small cheer, while the first team moved apart more quietly. Kid WIn's hoverboard whirred to life, and he flew above his teammates as Aegis did the same on the opposite side. Vista held a few steps back behind Clockblocker, though she didn't look happy about it. Shadow Stalker edged toward one side of the battlefield, with Gallant and Triumph keeping their distance below and behind Aegis.

I was standing on a first-level catwalk, between the two groups and opposite of Shadow Stalker. As the groups settled into position, I put my hand in the air with three fingers extended, and counted down.

"Three!" Vista let out a steadying breath, Triumph inhaled, and Gallant raised his arms, light flickering around them.

"Two!" Shadow Stalker crouched for a lunge in Clockblocker's general direction, while Clock himself reached into a compartment on his back.

"One!" Aegis and Kid, suspended in the air as they were, didn't seem to outwardly react, but could imagine their eyes narrowing as they focused on their targets, and only on their targets. A rookie mistake.

"Begin!" Triumph and Gallant let loose, a cone of hard sound and a spread of formless blasts of emotion-altering light shooting across the no-man's land as Kid Win's lasers strafed the other side. They wouldn't do any real damage, but they had enough kick to them to get Triumph covering his face. Only around half of the beams were actually hitting what Kid was aiming at, given how Aegis was chasing him around the room, and that number quickly dropped down to zero as their chase rose into the air and started looping around the catwalks.

On the ground, Clockblocker was running as fast as he could toward the slight cover granted by the boxing ring. Triumph's blast was spread out enough that it wasn't actually doing any damage, but Gallant was putting enough shots in the air that cover was still needed. Vista was growing the boxing ring while also shifting it closer to the pair. Once they got to cover, I saw her looking up toward the ceiling, making changes to the second and third levels as well, trying to impede Aegis while giving Kid more openings to fire.

It… really wasn't helping. The field was locked down, and things didn't change. Clockblocker started setting up sheets of paper as defensive barriers, ensuring that the fight wouldn't be moving for a while. Triumph and Gallant glanced toward each other, swapped a couple of hand-signals, and split up, trying to flank the fortification, but Clock continued setting up more paper on either side. The fight in the air continued, but Kid wasn't doing anything that would stop Aegis while Aegis wasn't nearly fast or maneuverable enough to catch Kid. It was a stalemate, and it probably wouldn't be changing anytime soon.

I nonchalantly walked in Gallant's direction over the catwalks, keeping an eye on the battles above and below me to make sure nothing was actually changing. He wasn't moving directly under them, but he also wasn't keeping an eye on anything that wasn't Clock and Vista. He wasn't even looking for Kid Win when he could be ambushed from above at any point. Vista was looking up there since she was helping her teammate evade, but she was the only one to do so.

On the other hand, neither of the flyers was paying any attention to the fight below them, either. Whoever won up there would probably turn their attention back to the ground, but until then it was essentially two different fights. I'd need to fix that.

Time for me to enter the fray.

Ruby continues to be far more optimistic about her abilities in this field than she has any right to be.

I might have misstepped somewhat in where this chapter fell - I probably should have moved the first segment to the end of the last arc and moved the beginning of next chapter to the end of this one, but it's a little late now, and I had to cut the second half of the fight scene or balloon the chapter by an extra thousand words. I might fix it if I ever get around to rewriting.

The Spacebattles move still hasn't happened, but I'm still trying to find the time. It'll happen soon (tm), I promise.

As always, thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!