Initiation II

<Celestia POV>

"Dammit, why are there so many?!"

I can't believe my luck. Barely an hour into the exercise and I'm stuck with someone I don't know while we're surrounded by Beowolves and Razorwings. 

As I look away, a Beowolf rushes to my side, but before it can take advantage of my inability to defend I am thrown upward by a pulse under me. Avoiding landing for a second, I thrust my electric blue wings out as far as I can, slowing my descent to a snail's crawl as I pull out my ranged weapons in their PDW form.

"I'm not sure Celestia, but I do believe it is because we are in the middle of a forest filled with them."

"It was a rhetorical question Dawn, just focus on the Grimm!"

As I shout this, my bullets raining down on the badly matched Beowolves below, the feeling of danger comes from behind and above me. Acting quickly I create a pulse behind me that throws me forward as I put away my ranged weapons, in favor of my melee weapon's Bo Staff form.

Just barely missing me by a feather's width, one of the Razorwings is unable to fly away as I smash my staff into its neck with some assistance from my pulse. This creates so much force it separates the head from its body.

Flapping my wings hard I am pushed backward, now with all the remaining Razorwings in front of me. In my peripheral vision, I could see Dawn struggling to keep up with the group of Beowolves as flashes periodically go off between her and those she is facing.

"Fuck it!"

As I say that I push my wings as hard as I can, doing the equivalent of a jump in the air, straight at the closest Razorwing. As I come in too fast for it to react, I do a similar move as before but to the bone-like covering it has over its head, shattering it and the head in one blow.

Immediately after, I fling my wings out, stopping all further momentum as I do a burst of movement upward, dodging another set of talons. As I go upward I fold in my wings, decreasing my wind resistance, and flip around, aiming one of the butts of my staff at the back of a Razorwing's head as I begin to fall.

As I speedily approach the back of its head I pop out the blade hidden at the end of my staff, easily piercing deep into its now dented inward head. Standing on its stalled and airborne body, I both push myself off and create a pulse to distance myself from the beak attempting to tear off my wings.

Lightly flapping my wings to keep myself airborne, I look at the few Razorwing bodies I created on the ground in comparison to the rest of them. But looking a little past them, I see a few more coming to join the fun, causing me to groan.

"Ugh, would you all just die already?!"

<Argento POV>

As it turns out, initiation isn't always as chaotic as it was shown in RWBY. So far Eugene and I have simply just been swiftly making our way to the relics while making light conversation, and we've only come across a few Grimm.

"Hey Argento, it looks like there's a clearing ahead."

As I focused ahead of us again, a familiar-looking stone structure was roughly in view. Speeding up to a proper run, we made it to the structure from RWBY that held the chess pieces - however, there were no chess pieces this time.

"Cards?"

"Looks like it." Going up to the cards, which are perfectly balanced on their corners, I pick up one of the cards with a V on it. I assume it's a roman numeral situation for 5, but when I pick it up, even though it's metal it's still surprisingly heavy for its size.

Looking at the other pedestals I can see that none of the other cards were taken yet; this surprised me because even if we were pretty fast about getting here we didn't rush here.

"Finally!"

Hearing a feminine voice behind me, I quickly but calmly turn around to look at the newcomers to the clearing. Now coming out of the treeline was a duo, one of which was the winged faunus that was particularly annoyed at Ozpin's choice of team building.

She had long black hair that faded into an electric blue that reached down to the small of her back, with both her wings and eyes being a similar shade of blue. Her wings, which seem to sprout from her mid back, seemed to naturally rest in a folded position only slightly past her shoulder-width. 

While extended, I assume they would be about twice her wingspan, which compared to her more athletic build and height of what I could estimate to be 5 foot 2 to 4 were quite big. Her outfit heavily resembled Jasmine's outfit from Aladdin with the various shades of blue and exposed midriff, which I assume was a technical choice because of her wings.

[A/N: So basically just an animated Jasmine with her black hair fading into electric blue with wings of a similar color. Her general body shape is pretty similar, but she is of a lighter skin tone because she is not native to Vacuo, which is the desert area of the world. I shall put a reference picture here.]

Next to her was a human woman a few inches taller with slightly larger curves, though she was wearing heeled boots so she was yet a few more inches taller at the moment. She had about shoulder length, wavy hair of a peach color at the base, but as it reached the tips it was transitioning to more of an orange; incidentally, her eyes had the same color phenomenon happening with the peach being more prominent in the middle and the orange on the outer rim.

She was wearing what I can only describe as a pirate-themed outfit - a poofy white shirt under a brown vest with darker brown pants tucked into calf-high heeled boots. Atop her peach-orange hair was a pirate-esque hat, and around her neck gleamed a small locket.

Once they were fully out of the tree line and closing in on the relics' resting spot, I could finally see how tired they looked. Both had their outfits slightly ruffled looking, while they wore tired and annoyed looks on their faces.

With the faunus, the more visibly annoyed one of the two, choosing to brush past me and just grab the relic, the other stopped next to me and Eugene, tired but giving simple greetings and partial introductions. As I passively listened to this I noticed the card Celestia grabbed, as she was introduced by Dawn, was the matching V card that I had grabbed just a little bit ago.

'So if it works as I believe it will, it seems my team is now unofficially created. Though I would've gone back with them either way, it seems like the only course of action to take now…'

"… it sounds good to me. What do you think Argento?"

"What do I think about what?"

"Dude, were you even listening?"

"Mostly… but just in case would you mind repeating whatever you just said?"

Chuckling lightly at me, Eugene backtracks the conversation as Celestia walks toward us, since her teammate is here, and as opposed to me hears it through the first time.

[Dawn] - "So in short, we think it would probably be easiest if we just returned as a group."

[Argento] - "Makes sense. I was thinking the same since you two look like you had your fair share of fighting so far."

[Celestia] - "Man, you have no idea. With how long it felt, I'm surprised we're only the second group to get here."

[Eugene] - "It was pretty smooth sailing for us, so it felt short in retrospect. Any idea how long we've been out here?"

[Argento] - "Exactly 2 hours and 33 minutes since we launched at exactly 9:00, so it's surprisingly almost noon."

"""…"""

As they all looked at me a little strangely for giving the exact time, which I instinctively knew, a loud screech went off above us in the direction of our next destination. As we all looked at it, in the distance was the easily noticeable figure of a large bird-Grimm - one from a well-known scene in RWBY.

[Argento] - "A Nevermore."

[Celestia] - "The hell's a Nevermore doing in Initiation?"

[Dawn] - "Maybe it's more of a scare tactic? Giving those unfamiliar with large Grimm both a taste and warning?"

[Eugene] - "Would they really use a Nevermore of all things for that? It's not exactly the easiest thing to deal with."

[Argento] - "With Ozpin in charge, it's a coin toss on whether it's purposeful. I know they have us monitored for safety, so even if people run into it and can't deal with it, help will come. How confident would you all say you are in taking down a Nevermore with just us four?"

At my words, both Celestia and Dawn looked at me like I was a raving lunatic, but seeing Eugene take my question seriously they look at him just as dubiously.

[Eugene] - "I've witnessed a Nevermore being taken down twice, one by Huntsmen and one by my tribe's warriors, so I wouldn't say I'm an expert on how to fight a Nevermore; that being said, at least given what I've seen from you we would stand a chance at stalemating, with almost guaranteed chances of running away."

[Argento] - "Well I theoretically know how to take one down. I can't say it's the most effective, but reading Grimm Anatomy was one of the best choices I could've made for the sole reason I know it's weak and blind spots."

[Celestia] - "Wait, hold on! Are you two seriously considering fighting that thing?! Not only is that incredibly dangerous at inductee level, but half of us aren't in the conditions to fight something that big for the first time!"

[Dawn] - "I agree with her, I think it would be best if we just went around it or something."

[Argento] - "Well obviously, but in the case we do end up having to fight or run I believe we should at least figure that out. The question is if we want to figure it out on the way there or rest here for a bit and strategize."

While we think of our choices, each of us ends up looking in the direction of the Nevermore. It's nowhere near close enough to spot and hunt us from here, and going at a leisurely pace would give us plenty of time to plan, so we decide to make our way there while planning.

It ends up being a simple journey with a simple plan. For the first leg of the journey, which is the portion that leads up to the Nevermore, Eugene and I would be doing the majority of the necessary fighting to allow the girls the time to rest up. 

The second leg is the area where the Nevermore seems to be mostly staying, and in this leg, we would periodically check on the Nevermore as we tried to go around it while not completely going off course. The third leg is simply just the rest of the journey back, which should also be the shortest leg because of the general proximity the Nevermore has to the area we must reach.

The first leg went just as smoothly as our trip to the relics; barely any encounters and the ones we did were small groups of no more than 5 or so that were easily dispatched. The second leg was tense because even if they were feeling much better there was only so much rest they could get while staying on their guard in the middle of a Grimm-infested forest.

While staying on the fringes in its area, I noticed a distinct lack of Grimm, though because they don't attack each other that can only mean it's because anything further in gets caught by the Nevermore. That or there was just no Grimm in the area.

As I was about to check the Nevermore's position again, since we were almost done with the second leg, a sudden blaring alarm in my soul pointed at extreme danger approaching the backs of the four of us. Without a second thought and an instantaneous flick of my wrist a solid, yet slightly transparent, golden wall appeared behind us, also casting on us all a subtle golden glow.

Before the others could even process my actions they felt a similar danger, but only as it would've been too late to dodge. With four loud, successive cracks the wall splintered and shattered with the sound of glass, which made no sense but now was not the time to focus on such things.

Looking back I could see four massive tar-black feathers heavily floating down to rest on the ground. Through the shower of fading golden shards, we could all see the now very close figure of the Nevermore.

All of the times we checked on the Nevermore it looked undisturbed, so we assumed it was unaware we were there. But in fact, the ones who were unaware of a very particular fact was us - the fact that this was an older Nevermore, and it learned how to strike when least expected.

[Celestia] - "Damn, even with our aura shields that would've hurt a lot."

[Eugene] - "Good thing Argento has freakish levels of aura sense, otherwise we would be feeling that pain and having a tough fight on our hands."

With such a menacing figure looming over our heads, it seemed the full presence fully set in for both Celestia and Dawn, though they looked to be holding up okay. Eugene was calmly and cautiously observing every tiny movement it made.

I couldn't help but widely grin, because I could feel a part of me dying to take a shot at it, to say 'fuck the consequences'. I knew what my decision was, but would the others choose to fight with me or make me run from this perfect opportunity to test my strength?