…

…

Eh…. This… was not going to be fun.

At least, not yet. Currently her time was spent being boggled at the cost of assorted materials she'd need. Her main issue, however, is that she had no idea how money still works.

… She did do some research into Dust. After all, it's a very useful thing to learn about. But, she wanted to make a grid of lights, not… bombs.

"Look here! This one guide talks about how to construct far range combustion propelled grenades? It's throwing out classical elements like they haven't gone out of style! Where's the silica? Where's the selenium? This is like an RPG rule book!"

She sighed, and started looking for information on local butcher shops.

….

What in the world is this woman doing?

Branwen had set up an analytical recorder to investigate the scroll usage of Mrs Woods. So far, she was an hour into listing prices for fire dust, wind dust, water dust, ink pots, needles, butcher shops (blood and bones), and a wooden mannequin.

She also occasionally looked up some rather unusual terms, and repeatedly put down the phrase (not RPG)

…Why would she assume rocket propelled grenades?

Despite him trying to figure out why this was happening, that list was it. That was literally everything she ever typed.

No context, just random words and searches.

The only other thing she even USED it for was to check the academy map.

… Actually… there was one time she opened a messaging app, and he soon got a ringing message.

A message which quickly turned his mood a bit less confused, and closer to downright disturbed.

["Qrow Branwen. I need my weapons to fight your nieces and team."

…

"No."

"Four on one. I'm not going to kill them, if you're afraid."

…

"You're mad, Kid."

"Nope. They are. It's this or I'm to-be-dead. WML."

"?"

"Wish. Me. Luck."

…

"That was the worst option for you."

…

"You're doomed."]

...

Paige frowned at his response, and put her phone away.

Now, everything was technically prepped. Now she just needed a pay check, and to… not die.

….

She leaned down on the floor and thought about what to do.

At 4:40 she had to be tapped awake.

"Eh?"

"Hello. You're sleeping again."

"Damn it."

Paige rolled away from her tapping assailant, and when her assailant went closer, to the increased stress of Ms Rose, Paige grabbed them by the arm and heaved themselves up.

… "Ah. Ruby. Aren't I meant to be trying to beat you up later?"

"We… couldn't find you anywhere, so I went down here to prep some equipment."

"Pkay." she mumbled. "What are you doing?"

… "Wouldn't that give you an advantage?"

Paige stared, and Ruby stared back.

"Four versus one?"

"Oh yeah." Paige muttered.

…

"Since I found you… we were all rather ready. Do you want to do it now? Or later?"

Paige thought a bit as they began to walk out the workshop. "I could do it now. The main thing I'm now worried about is how you all react to my ability. You sure you want to face it?"

…"We can't just disable it. That's worse, so we just came up with strategies to fight you when you're using it."

Okay. I can probably handle this.

They ended up in the arena room at 5:04, for Self Directed Sparring.

Paige didn't know the normal turnout, so she assumed this was a moderate size, being eight-or so people. Branwen was at the door, passing her weapons off to her. She felt her familiar weapons in her hand, and she noted the slight excitement.

"Okay, team. What's the rules?"

…

"We incapacitate you. You incapacitate us. Or, the normal rule if your Aura is down to the red levels."

Paige winced slightly at the weapons. Those… are going to hurt really damn badly.

Scythe, Gauntlets, Sword, Rapier… None of those looked fun to face.

Paige called out, prepping her shotgun at her opponents.

"Do you all mind if I use something to help me see better?"

…

…

"Hold up… you need glasses or something?"

Paige reached into her buttoned breast pocket and removed a small convex Lens rimmed with small markings.

This wasn't the real, full-strength Eye of Earth she had acquired from her time alongside her old team, but it still helped and wasn't as awkward as reaching into her shirt. The Earthen Lens, as they had called it, allowed perception of the soul, and it functioned as a boost to The Eye.

It was technically made irrelevant by her soul powers, but she wasn't using them currently, so she was pulling out her full Atlas roster.

Paige slipped on the contact, and delivered a good, hearty bash to her chest to hopefully kickstart The Eye before the fight in case the activation process decided to get uppity.

She shuddered as it shot through her vision for a stuttering second before solidifying as a soft glow. Wow. It really worked.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

"Ready."

"Ready."

"Ready to kick your ass!"

…

"Good."

Blair. I'm using none of the quantity souls. Just a little help from my friend, you.

Want me to walk them out, Paige? It won't hurt them.

…

Nope. That's a bit too much right now. We'll get back to that later:

Paige stood still as the people blurred into action.

…Okay, she had to admit that it wasn't blurring into action, since they already had their souls shining bright.

Bit of a showy move, if you ask me.

Snowy started what was very suspiciously a full-on magic circle shining blue-white, Brown just twisted their gloves to reveal a rather large cylinder, Blake stood still and went to a horizontal guard, and Ruby…

Well, Ruby started spinning the scythe around like nobody's business.

Paige started shooting at Snowy first, letting off a couple of rounds. They hit her in the chest, and… nothing. Little flakes shot up and dampened all her attacks.

… It's not that multiple rounds wouldn't hurt…. but still, she expected more… pain. This young lady just casually magic-ed past a few shotgun rounds.

She flinched, though. It hit at least, it's not like she just ignored it?

… No, White hadn't ignored it. She had lost a small chip on her little green bar on the interface above. So, get those down and I win, eh?"

Paige's hopes started falling short. It was likely that she couldn't get four soul empowered combatants death with as a relatively human person, so she decided to just start having fun.

This was accomplished very simply: Throw an axe at Ruby's face.

It clanged like a metal pan, and flew out of the ring. Ruby took that chance to slice down with her scythe, embedding the weapon into the ring. What caused Paige actual stress was when she began to see levers pulled, making loud "KA-CHUNK"s like a steampunker's dream machine, and…

"Gun. It's also a gun."

Ruby grinned, and Paige leapt up and started her outmanoeuvring tact-

-shit. I don't have my wings this match.-

Then the combined force of a two projectile weapons, a sword, and a blast of blue cracked her spine, broke an arm, and maybe even a leg or two.

"Hell."

Paige fell forwards, and laid in the silence.

This is going to hurt.

….

The girls were all in various states of shock.

"It was Yang's idea."

"MEDICAL STAFF? We have an accident!"

"We just broke a teacher."

"I'm doomed."

… None of them approached the teacher. They were primed to expect something.

-and something is exactly what they got. Despite it being more aptly described in the moment as the stuff of nightmares, Mrs Woods got back up, struggling a few times to relocate her arm, and wiped of her hands on her trousers.

"Relocate her arm" meaning her arm bent completely backwards, and "wipe of her hands" leading to her legs being coated in an unnatural amount of blood, so thick it gave the saturated trousers a reflective coating.

"Man! Forgot how unfair you folks have it. Ready? Let's retry."

Paige beamed, one of her best comforting tactics, and she saw her opponents look nervously at her. This was weird, so Paige chose to give a clear and calming gesture.

"A..Are you sure, Mrs?"

"I'm fine!" Paige pulled out a hand and raised it in a thumb for a second before it fell limply. She lifted it back to the normal position and wiggled it a few times as it healed.

Black.

Mother in white.

She went for Snowy first.

To drown out the flurry of images, Paige planned out her moves in a loud internal monologue.

Dodge scythe below… duck under sword swings- nope.

As a slice and a fist connected in a pincer, she fell to the floor.

Good news was that for her injuries, "very very slowly began to heal" was never a phrase she had to deal with. Souls helped for that, but she always had a fine baseline of regeneration.

Paige may have cheated by using up a few souls… but what they don't know never hurts them.

Black.

Mother in white.

Glimpses of cavern darkness, forests at night. sun and sands and shadows and snows…

Dying scream, as always. They always make noises. Why?

Then, as always, it eventually ended with a young maiden holding a weapon of humans. It may have been seen before, may have not, but that changed nothing of about how it would end.

The swing of an axe.

Black.

The Lady in white.

Trees, sea, stone, flesh,

The screaming, the crying, as always-

Paige laid down for a moment, denying her eyes sight.

It wasn't going to be fun to think of this again.

Instead, she began to contemplate the best way to fight four stupidly broken girls without using anything ridiculous.

…

Bullets. Mostly bullets, honestly. But, now that she fought these girls for a second, she realised some of that useful aid would be pretty good too, right?

She smiled.

"Blair."

"I have some friends for you."

Woods was down for 52 seconds when she stood up, faltered slightly, and squatted low to the ground.

Yang punched her with a low hit, and she was down.

"Come onnnnn! That's not fair, Friend!"

They lifted herself back up limply like a puppet; and called out.

"Hiiiiiiii Angie! You're looking lovely today!"

… "What?"

Blair. I was thinking you'd do the girls, not me.

But you can't stand up, Paige!

….

Oh yeah. Not fully back yet without doing more of that shit again. Have fun piloting the ship. I'll intervene for the more technical aspects.

Blair tried to help and reached out to grab Belladonna. The snap was evident, but she had a goal to do.

Her hand reached out to lightly touch Blake.

The young woman's eyes grew wide and Paige caught a thought of shouting out loudly.

Oooh shit. Blair, they did have a system to tell the safe people apart.

I'm taking control back, okay? You got a record for fastest bullshit break. Keep the girl still calm, but not unsettlingly so.

"Mrs Woods. We need to stop this. You are…. uh…. very seriously damaged."

"Yup. Sure am. Know what else?"

… Paige started theatrically falling about like a ragdoll, never fully getting down, but getting very close to doing so.

Nobody moved to try to pick her up to a standing position yet.

"What do you think friends are for?"

…

PAIGE. If they're friends, I want to not fight them too badly. They're…. friends! Friends let friends be friendly with other friends.

With Blair's support, she forced herself to get ready to quickly get back to her feet soon from her falling position, and prepared to watch some chaos.

...

…

Two of the opposing players had very brief moments of glitching on their matching Aura measurements as the meters shot to slightly off full, then quickly returned to their previous positions.

The fighters below did not notice this.

Paige took a few steps without continued support, and Blake looked dow as soon as they quit touching.

"Hey! I can move around again!"

"That's good, Blak-"

…

…

…

The suspense quickly crept into the ring.

"She touched you? Are you able to continue? Keep eye contact with us in order."

Blake Belladonna looked up, and calmly looked in the eyes of everyone in her team, going in the team's name order.

She sighed.

"Am I allowed to not fight? I thought we were all… friends, at least?"

…

"Blake? Did you not notice the last few days?"

She sighed at the question. "I'm not in the mood to fight. Do we have to do it?"

…

Her team stared at her in disbelief.

"Fine. I'll take the silence as a yes." Blake muttered softly.

"I… I don't care if you fraternised with the enemy! I'm going to keep fighting." Ruby said.

"I'll support my partner's decision."

"I… huh. I still think I just want to punch her in the face."

The observers watched the match, and as one, a complete beat down was expected. It wasn't that it didn't qualify as one before… it was just going to get worse.

"Bumblebee!"

… Ruby hesitated as nothing happened.

"Bumblebee!"

"Bombus Apidae!" Blake shouted.

Everyone turned to watch her smile glowing with pride. Her eyes were, in juxtaposition, worn and drooping.

… Why is everyone choosing today to crack? "Yang. Blake. You aren't doing anything! Can you please start fighting?"

The two blinked in unison.

Weiss and Ruby saw Yang give out a grin of pure malicious intent."You asked for it."

Blake swung her sword and called out "HUP!"

… My god. We went insane from sleep deprivation. That's it.

Ruby shook her limbs slowly, then mouthed out multiples of seven, three, and 46.

She wasn't not in control of herself, so they all weren't under any outside control.

…but who? Why was now the best time to go insane?

"HUP! HUP!"

Blake started to fight Weiss, and she had to start dodging her sister's fists.

Something…. Isn't adding up here. she thought, spinning around to kick her sister in the neck.

"I fell asleep in the workshop, didn't I?" she whispered.

"Ms Belladonna was currently engaging in a duel of steel with her teammate! For some mysterious reason, she's chosen an unusual method of combat! This seems to be quite a change to her normal routine, folks!"

If you thought about it, you could have replaced the surname and pronouns to anything and this announcer's dialouge would make sense. Belladonna was posed in a defensive stance, and was swinging her sword in bald swings. That was probably not the norm for people here, with all their over the top weaponry.

This sword technique was accented by unceasing sounds from her whenever she swung her weapon.

Unceasing.

It was made even worse with the fact that she somehow wasn't even getting hit.

Blair was having a lovely time giving suggestions.

"Ooh, we could try a sweeping kick here, after a lunge!"

"HA-GAH! That HURTS." Blake shouted.

Her attempt at an offensive leg sweep was dodged by the incredible move of Weiss's perfectly executed "Step Back".

Weiss's beautiful performance was followed by the crushing follow up of "Heel Drop with an Aura Enhanced Shoe."

From the crowd wincing, and Weiss immediately leaping back to the edge of the stage… the foot in question was not in a good state.

"Damn it!" Yang shouted. "You should've just worn them out! Now you lost the chance for the offensive!"

"Traitor!" Ruby called out with equal force. "You're working with the enemy!"

Yang gestured at her sister. "See? She gets it!"

Ruby stared at her sister.

"Hold it." Ruby muttered as she swung her scythe. "Which one are you talking about?"

… She watched as her sister paused her onslaught and caught the scythe with a couple of fingers.

"I'm talking about those two acting like idiots. Who are you calling traitor?"

"You, Yang! Why are you doing this?"

… "Doing what? Blake's acting insane because she didn't sleep last night and wants to quit. I'm staying around here because theres something more important at stake than this fight."

Ruby leaned her head in confusion. "You… set up this fight, though?"

They sat there for a second, until Yang came upon a good answer.

"Just work with me here, okay? I don't get a perfect chance every day to violently beat up my nerdy sister's crush."

Ruby gasped in disbelief. What crush? She wasn't crushing on anyo-

Yang turned, swept Ruby off her feet, and…and pointed her fist away from her sister.

"You're next, woman! You know my sister's feelings, and you're facing hell for fighting her instead of facing her with grace!" she shouted out to the room.

…

Woahoahaoahoahaohahoaoh who are you pointing at WHO ARE YOU POINTING AT?

Ruby slowly, unwillingly, followed the line of her sister's arm across the ring to stare at… W-

"-WHAAAAAAAAT?"

At their opponent.

The teacher.

The member of faculty in question stared and complained at Yang. "Blair, shut up and don't ruin their life."

Yang grinned.

"Who's that?"

…

…

…

"RUBY. YOU WHAT?"

Nooooooooooooooooo.

Ruby glanced towards the audience.

The audience that consisted of most of the peers she was friendly with. This was so embarrassing that she expected to look down at least once and realise that she's naked.

Nopenopenopenope I AM NOT DOING THIS.

… I'M DREAMING.

Paige had just been trying to have some fun, knowing that victory was slim and inconsequential. Ruby's red faced screaming was a rather funny addition to the show.

It became much less innocent when she saw Ms Xiaolong's eyes turn red.

It's a coincidence. That's just part of her ability. Ruby told me herself in her rant.

The young woman, now red eyed, grinned and strode forwards to her, whistling a descending melody accompanied by her hands bushed off and sleeves rolled up in time to the tune.

Paige caught the tune and stared, despite actively being injured and likely to get even more damaged soon.

Blaaaaair. Did you ask for help from anyone?

..

…

Was I not meant to?

As the melody ended, Xiaolong's hair started to glow a vivid yellow.

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit.

Blair, why, oh WHY did you get ANGELINE?

Paige started to feel that Qrow wasn't just trying to be pessimistic. After all, how damaged was she already? She didn't need to list it to know it qualified as inevitable paralysis in most situations. She knew this was far above the damage she had taken from other incidents as well. Paige took one combined attack, and she was already having to heavily rely on Blair to hold herself together.

And to make it worse….

Angeline was out, and she was being a bitch.

It was fun, though. Even if Angie was a bitch.

… Paige stood up, and started walking away from the frantic girl that kicked herself out of a woman's arms and spun herself into a standing position to face Angeline, the bitch.

Rude. The faster this is over, the faster you can get what you actually need to do completed. I'm just helping hasten the inevitable conclusion.

"ANGELINE. I believe I said to not kill or severely injure anyone." Paige hissed.

And lo, see how I listened to you.

…

…

Paige caught Angeline's thought as she enacted an attack. "YOU SWEPT THAT GIRL WITH A BOOT KICK STRAIGHT IN THE LEGS! Is that not a foul?" she cried out.

See how she took it like the inhuman freak she is. The lass has… a little bit of my respect now. Maybe 1%, but still.

Brandon tried to intervene. Paige. Didn't you say years back that you enjoyed helping people learn? All this is is just teaching.

… "Wow. You heard that? That's embarrassing to know you were there all along."

She did, a long time ago, say that she had enjoyed the sharing of knowledge, but she said that sitting under the night sky in an old car trying to survive all sorts of nightmares alone. It was hard, but she learned, and got better over the years.

Paige laughed, realising that's what made her enjoy this moment.

These students are, compared to the young adult she used to be, better.

She was learning again.

-And some day in the future, she was going to be able to look back and say:

"I helped teach these students."

It was a shame that it was going to hurt so much before they got to that point.

Paige smiled, and accepted fate. She was doomed in this from the start.

"-But let's have a good time before I go, right?"

YEAH! Go Paige!

I'm just going to end this match as fast as possible.

Blake started gleefully swinging around their sword, and started their rambling conversation once again.

"… Have you tried lots of swordy magic? It looked cool. Does it get bigger the bigger the circle is?"

She leaned down, and swung her sword three times, ending in a downward vertical swipe.

"HUP HUP SWOOO-"

BANG!

Blake stopped her talking.

"Did that just… shoot?"

"Incredible! It appears that Ms Belladonna's sword has the ability to fire bullets! Insane, I know!" Paige cried out.

"WE ALL KNEW THAT."

"Student in the audience, I did not! Let me enjoy learning something new today!" Paige shouted, her voice warbling as she flipped herself back and threw an axe at her red faced red dressed opponent, who huffed and shot it out of the air.

"THIS IS A GUN?! I didn't know that! Why did nobody warn me about this thing?!" Blake cried out.

The sword Gambol Shroud, currently in Blake hands, did just fire a bullet. However, it missed so badly that it couldn't even be called a miss, more an absolute travesty of aiming.

She looked up, wide eyed at her opponent, eyes pleading to Weiss like a child that just caused a very big problem.

"DID THAT JUST SHOOT YOU?"

"No. You missed horribly, Blake." Weiss called from across the ring.

….

Honestly, that's probably proof you're trying to throw the match.

Weiss begrudgingly admitted this was practically a farce before they even started. Four against one, when the one has the ability to possess people? The potential for changing plans was ludicrously wide in scope. Her only comfort was in the fact that she had enough faith in her abilities to halt her teammates before their opponent touched her skin.

Blair twitched in horror, clearly disturbed at the thought of her hands being in contact with such a problematic device, and she dropped the sword.

"I forfeit!"

"What? No!"

… "YOU BI-"

"Yang. Watch yourself, or I will freeze you into a statue."

…Actually, in terms of strategic planning, I think I'll just do it anyway.

She leapt back and loaded all her chambers with ice, beginning the starting stages of activation to allow for rapid freezing of everyone else in the ring.

"In a shocking turn of events, one of our contestants has forfeited the match! However shall they manage to win now?"

Hmm… I think I'll freeze them first. Then get her sent medical attention after Yang punches her.

…

Paige, who was gleefully taking on the role of announcer, went quiet as the young woman who quit the match left the stage and walked over to their bag and rummaged through it.

She stared at the black haired girl as she removed a book and began to flip it open.

"HEY!"

Paige pointed at them and flicked her finger down.

"You can't do that if you aren't participating." she called out.

Her target complained quietly, "fiiiiiiiiiiine. You're no fun like this."

…

Blake sat in her seat, blankly staring for a moment at the sight before her. She looked down at the book in her hands, and then returned to watching the fight.

Her face grew flushed and she slowly raised her hand.

"Can I be un-forfeited on grounds of embarrassing demonic possession?"

"No, Ms Belladonna."

Yang, or Traitor-Yang, as Ruby dubbed her a few seconds ago, took the opportunity to fire a combustible shot at her face, and when she dodged, picked her up and held her over her head.

"Sorry about this, but it's for the best, okay?" she said.

"YANG! Don't you DARE throw me out of the ring!" She paled as she watched her sister's grin widen.

"HA! You need more imagination! I'm not here to beat you, remember?"

…

Paige heard the voice, and did not want to turn to face them.

Angeline. If you get me hospitalised, you're shooting your plans in the foot.

Paige glanced back at the scene, just to check though.

All three women were charging at her, weapons raised to kick her ass.

…She wasn't sure if Ruby Rose classified as a legal weapon, but getting hit with a teenage girl would probably hurt. The fact that the weaponised girl had a weapon herself seemed to make the ensuing beating even worse.

Paige looked, and realised she had only one safe card left to play.

I can't believe I actually thought Angeline wouldn't at least try this. After all, she's not severely injuring them.

…She's just using one as a blunt force weapon. No idea how that's allowed. Brandon muttered.

...

...

...

...

OH. OH WAIT.

Paige blinked once, and realised a solution.

1: If she took this blow, she'd be out of commission for awhile.

2; She knew that was bad, Angeline definitely knew it.

3: Paige was pretty sure her being comatose was not something her little soul team wanted.

4: Using your ally you aren't allowed to severely injure as a weapon isn't okay. At least, in her books it wasn't okay.

Paige was pretty sure it even breaks a school rule somewhere. This is a school for supernatural teenagers to learn to fight monsters, and teenagers are mostly dumbasses.

5: She, as a woman that values the pursuit of knowledge, is a force of scholastic good.

6 (which honestly should have been the first one):

Beacon Academy staff have the ability to end any match between students to prevent harm from occurring to said students.

"EVERYONE STOP!" she shouted out as fast as she could.

The crowd stilled.

Her assailants stilled.

…

...

"This spar is over."

She furrowed her forehead and sighed.

"I am glad to say I've learned something about myself during this spat. Thank you for that. If we were being serious and using every possible ability… that would have gone far more interestingly. I would say this is a forfeited match, since I only won against you all because you didn't know all the caveats of my ability."

Paige smiled. This next bit was the fun part: Inspiration!

"However, if I am being honest, I believe this is my loss. I will gladly admit you are excellent combatants compared to how I was at your age. I was expecting a few combined attacks with some of the ideas you all had developed, shame they didn't pan out, but since I was capable of being in control of your entire team, I was practically the arbiter of victory here."

She paused, and tried to think of a verdict.

"I'm feeling…. your team gets this victory. It started with good plans and just hadn't ended well. The number patterns was a good touch, and the choice of acronym watching could have been a bit… less obvious. I'd have chosen ages or hues from alphabetical order. Thank you for this experience, and I'll see you next week when I am recovered. Can someone please follow up on Ms Schnee's request for me to get medical attention? This hurt me more than I thought."

… She looked up at the people.

… "I deactivated my ability. You all can move now."

A breath of relief emerged as the other people began to move again, and the RWBY's opponent collapsed to the floor in a broken heap.

That… was good, actually. Here's to not having an inflated ego.

As she fell into unawareness, a light bloomed from the back of her head.

She contemplated the future, and one little worrying thought floated through her mind, before unexpectedly being wiped away by the quiet touch that was death.

I'm definitely going to miss the next lecture. Da-

...