11 Ch 10: Welcome to Beacon (3)
Ruby and Ray turned to see a familiar young man holding out his hand hesitantly towards Ruby.
"Aren't you…" Ray started.
"Vomit Boy!" Ruby finished, jumping to her feet and pointing her finger at the boy.
'Vomit Boy' was a 6'1" young man with white skin, short messy blond hair, dark-blue eyes, and a toned, muscular physique. He would have been considered handsome if it hadn't been for his aura that radiated a stark lack of self-confidence. Instead, he just looked like a cute animal begging for attention.
He wore a black short-sleeved hoodie with detached reddish-orange sleeves. Covering his hoodie was a white chest plate and spaulders with rerebraces jutting out from under them on his arms. Below, he wore faded blue jeans with a tear in the left knee and black high-ankle sneakers. He had two belts of different shades of brown crisscrossing his waist, his sword, Crocea Mors, hung on his left hip from the inner one, and a pair of small pouches hung on his right hip from the outer one. A set of brown fingerless gloves with a little black metal plate on the back and a white metal plate peeking out from under them completed his outfit.
"Hey!" 'Vomit Boy' shouted, clearly offended at the nickname.
"Ah! Sorry, sorry, I'm Ruby Rose." Ruby hurried to apologize.
"Rajeev Rose. But you can call me Ray. All my friends do." Ray said, reaching out to shake the boy's hand.
"Jaune Arc." Jaune replied, shaking Ray's hand in a firm if submissive grip, instinctually placing his palm under Ray's.
Their introductions done, the trio turned to walk around Beacon and talk.
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"All I'm saying is that motion sickness is a much more common problem than people let on!" Jaune had been on this rant for a while now, trying to justify his accident on the airship in some vain hope that he could explain away his new nickname.
"Though he seems to be the only new student at Beacon afflicted with that 'common problem'." Ray whispered to Ruby.
Ruby snorted, trying to hold back her laugh, "Look, I'm sorry. Vomit Boy was the first thing that came to mind."
"Oh, yeah? What if I called you Crater Face?" Jaune retorted.
"Hey, that explosion was an accident!" Ruby protested, glancing at Ray in worry. If her brother started to call her that and Yang caught wind of it, she would never live this down.
"Hmmm. Nope. No crater, so that doesn't work. Maybe something like Sneeze Bomber or Rocket Nose." Ray pretended he was giving Ruby's new nickname some serious thought before disagreeing and throwing out some suggestions of his own with an impish smile. Ruby just groaned and rolled her eyes, hoping Yang never heard either.
"Well, the name's Jaune Arc! Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue - ladies love it!"
""Do they?"" The twins turned to ask him as one. Their faces showing the exact same expression of skepticism, completely blank except for one cocked eyebrow that said more than a thousand words.
"Th-they will!" Jaune stammered out. "Well, I-I hope they will. My mom always says that… Never mind."
Ray pats Jaune's shoulder, and Ruby chuckles awkwardly at that.
"Sooo, I got this thing!" Ruby whips out Crescent Rose, unfurls it, and stabs it into the ground.
"Whoa!" Jaune jumps in surprise. "Is that a scythe?"
"It's also a customizable high-impact sniper rifle!" Ruby explains, with a proud smile on her face.
"A-wha…?" Jaune was completely lost.
"It's also a gun." Ruby simplifies, cocking it.
"Oh. That's cool!" Jaune turns to Ray, noticing that he doesn't seem to be carrying a weapon. Ray smiles, realizing what Jaune must be thinking, and holds his right arm straight out in front of him, palm down, while rolling back his jacket sleeve to show off one of Bloody Storm's gauntlets.
"This is my weapon. In anyone else's hands, it would just be a set of gauntlets and greaves. But in my hands." Ray smiles mysteriously and channels his Semblance into the studs on the back of his right hand. Azure lightning begins to spark around the ten studs as they slowly lift off his gauntlet. Freed from his gauntlet, one could see that while the top halves of them were round, the bottom halves were tapered into a point giving the studs a teardrop shape.
"My Semblance is called Electromancy. Basically, I can generate and control electricity. Using that, I can charge these Storm Tears with electricity and change their polarity in relation to my gauntlets, the planet, each other, and any other metal I touch, allowing me to move them around relatively freely. Like this." Ray explains, before sending the ten studs he has activated flying towards Jaune point first at subsonic speed.
"Waa-" Jaunce cries out in surprise, throwing his hands up in surprise to protect himself. The Storm Tears, which now, living up to their name, resembled miniature lighting bolts curved at the last second and proceeded to dance around and between the trio in a display that was as deadly as it was beautiful.
"Semblance?" Jaune quietly wondered to himself, not realizing he had spoken out loud, mesmerized by the light show going on around him. Ray heard him and realized what he was confused about when he remembered that Jaune hadn't graduated from a primary combat school before coming to Beacon.
"A person's Semblance is the manifestation of their innate and personal power as an ability unique to each individual, for the most part. Such as Ruby's Petal Burst, which lets her turn into a shower of petals and move at super speed, and my Electromancy, which allows me to generate and control electricity. Most people go their whole lives without awakening their Semblance. It requires tons of luck, lots of training, and deep personal insight to discover. For Huntsmen and Huntresses, however, it is considered a vital tool that nearly all are expected to have." Ray explained helpfully, calling the studs back into his gauntlet and lowering his arm.
"O-Oh. Of course. I knew that." Jaune said, embarrassed over his lack of knowledge but unwilling to admit it.
"So, what've you got?" Ruby asked, sensing that something wasn't right and wanting to move the conversation along.
"Oh! I, uh…" Jaune unsheathed his sword revealing a basic one-handed arming sword with a golden cross-guard and blue cloth wrapped grip. "I got this sword."
"Oooooohh!" Ruby was eager to hear more.
"Yeah, and I've got a shield, too!" Jaune attached his sheath to the metal plate on the back of his left hand and expanded it to form a kite shield with his emblem, a downward-facing smaller arc inside a larger arc, in the center of the white shield in gold.
"So what do they do?" Ruby asked, tapping the shield. However, this caused the shield to snap back together into its sheath form and bounce off Jaune's hand. It switches back and forth between its shield and sheath forms a couple of times as Jaune juggles it for a few seconds, trying to get it under control. He finally catches it and returns it to sheath mode on his belt.
"The shield gets smaller, so when I get tired of carrying it, I can just… put it away.." Jaune begins to get embarrassed as he tries and fails to talk up his weapon after seeing Ruby and Ray's.
Ray raises an eyebrow at his explanation but decides to remain quiet. Ruby, however, wasn't so aware of when something just shouldn't be said.
"But… wouldn't it weigh the same?"
"Yeah, it does…" Jaune admits dejectedly.
"Well, I'm kind of a dork when it comes to weapons, sooo… I guess I did go a little overboard designing it." Ruby giggled, trying to smooth over her foo-pah.
"Yeah. While I'm more of a member of the 'Simplicity is Efficiency' school of thought when it comes to fighting. So, I made my weapon as simple as possible. A sword and shield set is more than enough to kill a bunch of Grimm if you know what you are doing. So if you are comfortable with it, why over complicate it." Ray patted Jaune's shoulder, trying to comfort him.
"Wait- you made those?!" Jaunce asked, latching onto a different point.
"Of course! All students at Signal forge their own weapons! Didn't you make yours?" Jaune turned to look at Ray in surprise, who nodded, confirming Ruby's statement.
"It's a hand-me-down. My great-great-grandfather used it to fight in the war." Jaune turned back to Ruby and explained, slightly ashamed.
"Sounds more like a family heirloom to me!" Ruby joked, trying to cheer him up. "Well, I like it! Not many people have an appreciation for the classics these days."
"Yeah, the classics…" Jaune muttered as he sheathed his sword.
"So, why did you try to help us back there, Jaune?" Ray asked, trying to change the subject and continuing their walk.
"Eh, why not?" Jaune shrugged. "My mom always says, 'Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet'."
"Hmm." Ruby raises her head to look around. "Hey, where are we going?"
"Oh, I don't know! I was following you. Y-You think there might be a directory? Maybe a food court? Some kind of recognizable landmark?"
"You mean besides the giant cloud-piercing tower behind us?" Ray asked Jaune sarcastically, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the overt tower behind them, baffled at how scatterbrained these two were. Jaune and Ruby turned to look at Ray, their eyes filled with hope. Seeing two lost puppies staring back at him, begging for help, was too much for Ray.
"*sigh* Follow me." Ray turned around with a shake of his head, taking his scroll out of his pocket and pulling up the campus map he had downloaded last night.
