Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Auburn Sun

Ruby settled down into her bed. The end of the first day, and everything was settled and ready to go for tomorrow. Lilac and Jasper had the shops settled, so she was good on that bit for a long while.

Her scrolled dinged with a new message from Yang. 'Hey Rubes! Just saw the vids from the festival are up!' Ruby translated as she glanced at it. She was so used to Yang's typing that even with the numerous emote faces and misspellings, she could understand her without a problem.

The vids were up already? That was some of the quickest that Ruby had ever seen. She was planning on watching them over the course of the next week after the Festival ended, which was usually when they played.

Ruby navigated to her personal favorite of the bootleg video sites. It wasn't on there, which means it really was the official ones that were released versus the half-baked ones that someone took on their scroll.

Sure enough, on the actual site for the Vytal Festival updated by Atlas, there was a small collection of videos titled for this year's Festival Tournament.

She could rewatch them all now! At least the ones that actually occurred. Some of them seemed a bit broken at times according to the comment list, but Atlas appeared to be listening with a quick 'Ah, sorry! Updating!' comment.

Which ones had she been interested in today? There were a few that seemed good. Tomorrow was the third and fourth years, but they were never as flashy as the first and second years. Mostly because they learned to be flashy at the combat schools, where the teachers could see them and how they moved, allowing them to ease up on the flashiness later.

By then, though, they were usually at Beacon or Haven, Shade or Atlas.

Still, she knew flashy and she knew the techniques and ways to fight that were actually useful. Flashy was entertaining, but for actually trying to learn the not flashy was the best.

Grimm, after all, were an endless enemy. The flashier the moves, the more energy they took, and the less energy they'd have for killing Grimm. Grim as that thought was.

There was Team SSSN, somehow pronounced 'Sun' after the team leader, and that one might've been entertaining. That one had the trident guy on it too, and Sun was a capable fighter on his own, considering he'd helped her take down the rogue Paladin mech.

Ruby glanced at the walls for a moment. How thin were they? The doors were around ten feet apart, and were probably mirrors or copies of each other. The room's opened three feet into them, and extended for an additional six. That left one foot of wall space for wiring and sound dampening.

Yeah, if she had the sound on it probably wouldn't bother anyone. She sat up, letting her nightshirt bundle around in the sheets, before she eagerly turned up the sound to where she could hear it but she doubted anyone else good.

"Welcome back to the Vytal Festival Tournament of Tournaments!" Port sounded out. "Today we have Team Auburn of Mistral against the regaled Team Sun of Vacuo!"

"Regaled, Peter?" Oobleck pointed out. "I doubt they have regaled much in the way of anything yet! Tournament of Tournaments or not or however it is that Peter phrased it, this should be an entertaining fight indeed."

"Although I have to say, from the notes I received from Headmaster Lionheart on Auburn, they need to do their history homework more often!"

"More like they need to actually do it, yes Peter. I'm interested to see if their going to be coming to my class or not, see how much they learned from my counterpart!"

The four boys were staring slack jawed at the commentary at their expense. Ruby had to stop herself from snorting. She remembered hearing that line, but seeing it with context was even better.

"Now Team Sun is made up of four people, right Bart? We have Neptune, Scarlet, Sage, and I wasn't sure if that's actually his name or not but it turns out that it is in fact his actual name, Sun!" Port said. "And for Auburn, we also have four people-"

"Interesting how coincidences are made isn't it Peter? Teams of four names are made up of four people!"

"Indeed Bart!" Port bellowed, as if he just hadn't been insulted. "Now we also have Auburn, from the vast and royal land of Haven and Mistral! We have Nadir, Reese, Bolin, and Arslan!"

With each name called, each boy raised their hands to get the praise from the audience. Ruby thought she might have heard her dad's "Bring out Yang!" from somewhere in the corner.

"And let's see what type of terrain they're fighting on!" Port said, bringing up a small ticker on the bottom. This must have been the recording of the stuff they showed out on the networks. Ruby knew that most of the time it was a simple hologram in the middle of the field.

The ticker ticked, before it finally settled on the picture of a wave. "And it appears to be Beach themed!" Port said easily. "Wait, why do we have a beach theme-"

"That means it's essentially half and half, half on water and half not! Those with weapons that use lightning dust would especially be difficult and prevalent in this type of terrain, which is why the aura limit is being raised from the usual quarter to thirty five percent!"

"I'm being serious Bart why is there a beach theme? I want to go to the beach now."

"No time Peter! We have a fight to commentate!" Oobleck was saying. Ruby chuckled. She knew that only about half of what they said was commentary, and the other half was improvised on the spot. Although with these two, probably close to three quarters improvisation and one quarter scripted. If that.

"All fighters okayed the rules, they know what they're doing," Port answered, "And thus the fight begins in 3...2...1!" he called out.

Arslan ran forward and threw one of his darts straight at Sun. The monkey faunus blocked it with his staff, before giving a mocking laugh, right before Arslan jumped forward using the rope connected to it.

Classic trick, and Sun paid for it by being slammed down into the sand. Ruby glanced at the pained faunus. Team Sun had won this one, hadn't they? Oh, that was why. Sage and Scarlet had double teamed Arslan, letting the boy try to do some backflips to dodge.

"Oh, and Arslan gets a good solid hit in on Sun there!"

"He should be keeping an eye on her hands and her weapon, not her face!"

Wait, Arslan was a girl? Ruby stared at the small screen; so she was. Oops, oh well, Ruby knew better for now though. Arslan hadn't come in for weapon breakage at least.

One of the other Auburn guys came running in towards Scarlet, who instead of flipping took out his hook and tripped him, before stepping on his back to send himself flying into the air. Bolin, Ruby thought his name was?

"And there goes Scarlet, gliding through the air with the greatest of ease!" Port announced.

Then Nadir, or one of the other Auburn guys, pulled out a submachine gun and fired wildly towards Scarlet, who had to end his glide early to land directly on him. Guns versus a hook, Ruby knew, it wouldn't be easy for either of them. But once Scarlet got his gun hooked at the end of it, the weapon went clattering away and landing in the water of the fake ocean.

Then it turned out Nadir was a brawler, too. Sage was tanking the hits from another member, and it wasn't until Sun came by with his gun nunchucks that Bolin went down, freeing up Sage to assist against Arslan who seemed to have it out for Sun.

Not that Ruby could blame him. Her. Darn it, the scroll screen was so small she couldn't make out the fine details. "Point to Sage and Sun there, knocking Bolin out into the water with forty percent aura! Arslan seems to be tearing up the sand to get at them-"

"To get at Sun, Bart, look at her! She has murder in her eyes and there isn't any amount of sand that's going to stop that murderfest!"

"Please note that the Vytal Festival does not condone murder and will stop the fight long before any actual murder occurs," Oobleck said in his traditional speedy manner.

"Condoning murder, boy no! I barely have any idea, Oh my!" Port said glancing as Scarlet and Nadir were sent flying into the air from a nearby dust explosion from Neptune and Reese. The blue haired boy, Neptune, seemed oddly wary more of the ocean part of their arena rather than Reese.

Neptune had that trident that she'd seen earlier! To overpower it by that much, Ruby had to wonder how that had happened. With Bolin almost down, and Arslan focusing entirely on Sun who now that he realized she was after him, was dodging remarkably well, that meant it was three on two.

And if there was anything that could be said, Sage and Scarlet worked well together, their weapons melding against Nadir and Reese, with Neptune offering small jabs here and there. Nothing yet that would presume the amount of lightning dust that he used in it...

Then Bolin was out of the water and soaking wet, only to get pushed back in an angry Arslan, Sun having essentially jumped onto his head to get away from the girl. "Ooh, she's angry enough that she's going from hurting the other team to hurting her own team now!" Port explained.

"That can't be pleasant for him! The water isn't actual ocean water, it's still fresh water, but the force of water crushing down on you in waves is still a thing that the fighters need to be aware of!"

"Yes, he's still being pushed down! And look, he's trying to call for help from Reese or Nadir, but Sage, Scarlet, and Neptune have them both on the ropes!

"Oh wait, look at that!" Oobleck said as Scarlet hooked Reese's hoverboard, which was awesome in Ruby's opinion, and managed to toss it towards the outer sands, where it promptly skated off the edge and into the out of bounds area. No wonder she hadn't had to fix it. It was still in perfect working condition.

"And that's Reese's weapon out of bounds, which means that, off and there they go!" Port commented as Sage promptly knocked Reese into the air, finished off into the water by Scarlet. Now both Bolin and Reese were in the water, slowly swimming back to land.

The water came up again as Arslan was knocked into it, Sun finally tired of dodging. He had that infernal smirk on his face that just said volumes of 'I'm good'. Ruby had only seen it a few times, but she knew from Yang and Blake that the faunus was really, really good at dodging and riling people up.

So now three of them were in the water. Sun turned towards Neptune, and there was an 'oh' on his face as he slowly tiptoed forward. Finally, the thing she...oh, that's what he did. Activated lightning dust plus water on three of them.

Just pure luck, then. Ruby froze the video, staring at the output. Normal lightning dust was a small spark, based on the amount. It was a lot less than actual lightning, for obvious reasons, but enough to shock a few people into getting their auras knocked out?

Yeah, Ruby could see it. Especially if several of the crystals were out of date and expired, and had their potency varying wildly. It made a lot of sense now as to why his trident needed to be remade.

"Alright. Team SSSN versus Team ABRN...Sun wins," Ruby muttered under her breath. She glanced at the clock. She had time for a few more...and maybe she could watch over Yang's fight again. She'd been distracted earlier.

Silver Mist

Ruby glanced up at the clock again. She'd already watched through Yang and the rest of Team PABY's fight again, and while it was good in that they didn't just rest on Pyrrha doing what Pyrrha did best, they probably could have won a lot faster and easier if they'd been supporting her rather than her supporting them.

Although that also did more to show off Team PABY's skills rather than than just Pyrrha. Team PABY was more than 'just Pyrrha and friend's after all. And maybe that had been Pyrrha's call as leader; everyone already knew how good she was so it wasn't a question of how good she was; it was a question of her leadership skills.

And Yang had fought decently well, if Ruby had to guess. Fighting another bruiser up close and personal is exactly Yang's strength, and it showed well. She had complete control over the direction of the fight, with the only minor upset being the same attack that essentially destroyed one half of Ember Celica.

Granted, it'd taken her two hours to get it back to fighting shape. The other winner's weapons, too, had taken the same amount of time depending on what was wrong with them. Some were just flat out broken and needing to be reforged, others were barely dinged.

The one that pissed her off the most though were the ones that didn't take good care of their weapons. The ones that shattered during the fights? That could only come from either extreme single impacts, which very few people even with aura could use right now, or from never caring for their weapons to begin with.

The amount of signs of abuse made Ruby wish there was some kind of protective services for weapons, where people would get a random visit from a man wearing a black suit or would simply say, 'Your weapon needs to come with me' and then there would be crying and begging and the weapon would just stand outside uncaring as the person didn't care for them and maybe she was taking this a bit too personally but she really didn't care all that much because the idea of weapons staring down their owners in complete disregard was funny to her.

Also because she doubted that Crescent Rose would do that to her. Maybe some of the others that she'd made, such as that copy of Executioner that she had named 'the Dumb one' would hate her but really it was just a fire-based explosive mace with spikes.

She had made three different mauls that did the exact same thing and sold those in less time than 'the Dumb one' had sold.

Where was she going with all this? Right, watching Team SILV's fight. They had won, she knew, but now how. Myrtenaster had come into her shop, but it was well taken care of and hadn't had too many scratches on it. The dust barrel had essentially been exploded out of her, which means that bit was the only bit that needed to be reforged.

But how had it been broken? Who had their opponents been? Some team from Haven, she knew.

She glanced down at her scroll, and the clock on the wall. As the time went on, she'd find herself with less time to watch, especially watching full fights, so tonight was the best night for it. Especially since tomorrow was the third and fourth year fights, and those ones would probably end up with a lot of broken weapons.

Granted, most of those weapons were probably capable of aura infusion, and that meant they were a lot stronger and less likely to be broken by the laws of physics suddenly demanding themselves on them.

Crescent Rose had been designed to be, and it was, Ember Celica was capable of it but Ruby didn't know if Yang truly actually used the feature. Mio was, Pyrrha's weapon, and Mors...well, Crocea Mors the original hadn't been. And Jaune didn't say he wanted it like that...although actually hadn't there been a statement from Pyrrha that said Jaune didn't actually know how to use his aura well?

Eh, either way he'd figure it out at some point. Everyone did right around the end of the second year if not the third or fourth. Qrow's weapon, Harbinger, had so many dust lines running through it that it was near impossible to break.

Although that was only because Qrow's Semblance was constantly on and not one that he had to put forth effort into starting...which meant he had more aura to throw around than most others.

She scrolled down to Team SILV's match, versus Team MIST. Right, a pole user, an axe shotgun, a self-replicating frisbee that was remote controlled, and a gunsword. Because sometimes even the classics needed to be called 'is it gun? If not, add more gun'.

And all four weapons could be used as guns.

Soon Port's voice could be overhead coming from her scroll. "And we are back with Team SILV versus Team MIST! Bart, what are we looking at here?"

"We are looking at the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company and the rest of her team, Team Silver! Cyril Ian, who may or may not be returning to the Vale News Network after his stint at Beacon, Lie Ren who hails from Mistral but came to Vale, and the last on the lineup is Nora Valkyrie, a surprisingly strong and fast girl who I'm glad can keep up with me!"

"And we know all about that now don't we!? These four have a remarkable record, including several missions that if my ears didn't deceive me included several hours of Ms. Schnee screaming at Mr. Ian."

"Your ears do not deceive you Peter! Mine certainly don't, although I wish they did."

"What's the current bet of them getting together by the end of Beacon?"

"Let's see, approximate odds before Ms. Goodwitch finds us, one out of fifty. Get those bets in! Right right, the match!" Dr. Oobleck's voice said.

There was a small scream from the side as Ms. Goodwitch stomped in, ranting at them both to not bet on their students love lives. The crowd was laughing loud enough that it was coming through the speakers, and despite the small dot that was Weiss Ruby could tell that she was furious. And embarrassed.

Cyril wasn't, for some reason.

Their opponents were though. Team MIST was standing around, wondering when they would be introduced. After another round of yelling and shouting at the two supposedly professional huntsmen, Ruby did note that they had been introduced, although her mind slipped from what their names were.

The ground was essentially a mountain top, although Ruby wondered who designed these strange environments. Especially because no one would willingly attack Grimm at the top of a mountain, that was just silly. It was just asking for nevermore to come by and grab them, or for other flying Grimm to come by.

The pole guy jumped in first, bounding around the mountain top to attack Weiss first. It was a good plan, except that Cyril was right next to her and it was the opening move. He lashed out with his whip sword, managing to sneak it around the pole guy's leg before slamming into Nora.

So then if the pole guy had been taken out so quick, then how did Myrtenaster...how he hadn't, that's why. Even Nora's hit barely dented into his aura.

The frisbee guy and the axe shotgun were racing Ren up the mountain top. He was a good fighter, Ren was, but the axe shotgun was also a good fighter. Her long hair never actually got in her way, despite the acrobatics and near insane movements that she was pulling. The frisbee guy though, now he had a cool weapon Ruby admitted, was making one fanged frisbee after another, throwing them and exploding the fragments onto Ren whenever he was close enough to them.

Weiss realized that Ren needed assistance, and she ground her rapier into the ground, causing a long chain of ice to appear there, racing towards the top.

The last girl, the one with the gunsword and small scales that were obvious to anyone with any knowledge of faunus background, was heading her way.

Just as Weiss was about to dodge the first lunge, pole guy came back from the ground where Nora had hit him, who was also running towards Ren and was about to completely take over the mountain, Cyril managed to get in the white haired girl's way.

Weiss dodged the strike, but also tripped over her partner, ensuring that they both were hit by the frisbee guy. Flashes of aura both white and cerulean flared up, just long enough for Port and Oobleck to comment on 'not getting on each others way'. Which added another sense of humor to it, as they kept ragging on each other for getting in the way of their own commentary.

Ren and Nora were trying to both actively fight the frisbee guy now along with the axe shotgun girl. But axe shotgun did lose against hammer grenade launcher, and Ruby suddenly remembered that Nora had bought a few 'extras' from Ruby that she was sure that no one knew about. Or at least hoping.

Which was good, because Ruby was sure that her experimental ammunition was most likely going to end up banned in most of the civilized countries. It was rather explosive, and tended to not be the most stable of ammunition.

Well, no one did know about it until Nora launched one towards the top of the mountain. Where there had once been a mountain top, or rather a large mound of dirt that represented a mountain top, was now an explosion of dirt. "By the Gods!" Oobleck said.

"That is awesome!" Port yelled. "However much dust she packed into that grenade, I want to know because I too want to blow up entire mountains!"

It hadn't blown up the entire mountain, and it had the red trail that Ruby had designed to show that it was the experimental type.

Ren and Nora stared at the destruction and devastation in distinct shock, and so were Weiss and Cyril. Team MIST on the other hand was now down to three members, as frisbee guy had been hit almost dead center.

His aura was cut down to half, and with the blows from Ren, his aura was below the legal quarter for this bout. Hence, frisbee guy was out. Which was sad, because Ruby wanted to know how he managed the self-replication trick, because if that wasn't a Semblance then she wanted to learn that so badly.

But that was probably a Semblance thing. It was definitely magical enough for it.

Although with that much destructive power, no wonder she had texted Ruby later with a very emotive 'sorry for spoiling things'. Ruby hadn't even known why that was until now! On the other hand that meant that she could flatten mountains with it that was awesome she couldn't wait to use it more on the Grimm that'd be so cool-

The pole guy then turned to try and hit Nora, only to get Cyril's whip-sword yet again and thrown into the dirt cloud. Weiss came in with a wind bursted stab, only to find that axe shotgun girl had her axe right on Weiss's face.

With Cyril and Nora then facing off against pole guy, who was doing surprisingly well despite it being a two on one maybe he was the captain or something, that left Weiss and Ren to be against axe shotgun girl and the gunsword girl.

To be honest, they worked together pretty well. Whenever gunsword was going low, axe shotgun was going high, and they often both took a few steps back to fire a few shots. Only Ren could truly fire back, no matter how many glyphs Weiss used.

But against the onslaught of both of their shots, eventually they would hit against Ren's aura, and the fact they were near impossible to hit, eventually brought him low by sheer attrition.

But there was no throwing down of Ren's weapons, no exclamation of 'Could I get some help!?' that Ruby had been expecting. Instead, he nodded and bowed towards the audience, and calmly walked off.

"And that's called sportsmanship there Bart!" Port was saying. "No anger, just calm and collected. That's Lie Ren, in a nutshell!"

"For now. At least until- wait there she goes," Oobleck said as Nora decided that she was done fighting pole guy, and instead used one of Ruby's experimental grenades mixed with a launch and slam of her hammer...

Well, it destroyed another half of the mountain. It also knocked out gunsword girl and axe shotgun girl. It also took out Nora, who instead came up and was grinning at the audience before she danced and skipped to where Ren was sitting, his hands in his face at Nora's rather 'explosive' temperament.

Pole guy was then focused solely on Cyril and Weiss, and while both of them were good pole guy was simply better. He tripped them up plenty of times, occasionally firing a rifle shot out of the end. Cyril's whip-sword had lost its surprise, and so pole guy essentially danced around it.

Weiss's glyphs were the biggest part of trying to control him, but the problem was that she was attempting to combat him. If Ruby had been in Weiss's shoes, she would've stopped trying to physically hit him with Myrtenaster, instead letting the actual blows come from Cyril, and instead used her glyphs and dust to control the battlefield.

Although Ruby knew firsthand how difficult it was to think tactically in the middle of a fight. It required planning, forethought, and the ability to- why was Weiss running straight at pole guy and screaming?

That's how Myrtenaster broke Ruby thought. A solid hit against a pole esque weapon. And then the whip-sword managed to get pole guy around the legs and slam into the ground again and again.

"Huh. That's how Team SILV won. Hope they do better on the second round..." Ruby noted absently.

Trying something a bit different with the naming of these skits...

Also thinking of starting a patr e on. Not to release stories early like I've seen some other do, but rather to help others, give tips and tricks that I've found help me, small things that help me out as a writer, and for those that want to support me an author. Not sure if there's support or not for that.

Until Next Time!