28

Chapter 28

"How does that even work?!" Weiss screamed into her metaphysical ear as a beautiful glowing crystalic soldier rose from the glyph, giant bow in hands and oversized arrows on its back. "It had only a big sword when I killed it, why does it have a bow?!"

Because it's up to me what my troops wield. Ivory explained as she continued to study the construct.

"That doesn't make any sense! The glyphs don't work that way!"

And yet the proof stands right in front of you. With a short mental comand and a small dose of aura, the arrows disappeared and the bow started reshaping. It straightened and became thinner. Soon enough the summon was wielding a spear. Neat.

"Are you done playing with toy soldiers?" Yang asked her with a smirk on her face. When they decided to have a spar Yang didn't expect to wait for her to show off.

The fight itself was rather calm for neither side was truly trying. Ivory would send groups of summoned grimm at Yang who would quickly destroy all of them only to wait for a few seconds while Weiss was trying to get a hang of the summoning proces. This continued for cycle after cycle. Weiss decided to put the whole shared control idea away for some time. She definitely saw the possibilities but their current understanding of each other was simply not good enough to make it viable in combat. Instead they decided to focus on making Weiss able to use all the facets of her semblance and keeping Ivory up to an acceptable level when it came to physical combat.

-BBW-

This felt like a war council, or at least what Pyrrha imagined a war council would look like. And why were they on the roof exactly?

The reason why both of their teams had gathered at the roof of the dormitory was that they would be going on a school trip to the Forever Fall forest and Ruby and Blake decided to share whatever information they could find about the place in preparation for the event. Call it an overkill for a supervised school trip but they were definitely dedicated.

Blake projected a map of the most likely location of their trip and the rest of them gathered around the image.

"Did all of you do your homework?" Blake asked. The question was followed by a series of nods. Two day ago both Ruby and Blake had 'assigned' to their teams that they were to find out a general lay-out of the forest, notable structures as well as the common types of grimm they would find there.

Pyrrha definitely appreciated the forethoughtness, she would also study her opponents before the match if the situation allowed.

She really enjoyed Beacon. She changed a kingdom to escape her own fame and except the times she was dragged out into the city her plan was working perfectly. Of course, the student body held her as a freaking saint but her immediate circle treated her like any normal person. Although with friends like these the term normal was becoming somewhat loose.

She was sure that Ruby and Nora were holding a secret competition over who would break more social cues.

Ilia followed Blake like a lost puppy most of the time and whenever she was alone, she became VERY irritable.

She thought Blake to be normal, she did look so when they first met but… The constant verbal teasing, questionable taste in literature and using anti-huntsmen tactics during spars quickly changed Pyrrha's perception of her. They were still good friends but Pyrrha had to constantly watch both her tongue and her moves unless she wanted to unknowingly present a teasing opportunity.

For the longest time she thought that Ren was the most normal person in their group. Then one day when she was coming back from her morning run she saw him and Yang have a very tense standoff over the rights to use the kitchen. And the cheering from Nora and Ruby didn't help either. In the end Blake proposed a cooking competition. Her dietologist would most likely suffer a heart attack if he ever heard of all the unhealthy things she had to try out that day and judging by Weiss' look, she was thinking the same. Not that she regretted it, both of them were surprisingly good cooks with quite a variety of dishes at their disposal. In the end they started taking turns cooking for both teams.

Despite this chaotic and sometimes even volatile combination of people they were all getting along. Well except Weiss and Ilia who would usually do their hardest to ignore each other go get into another glaring contest.

The meeting ended after about ten minutes with everybody being on the same page. With this amount of preparation, what could go wrong?

/

"Nora! Stop! We need to bring it to the bullhead, not eat it!"

"Blake! Help me! It's in my hair!"

"Weiss! Bring out ice dust! We need to stop the fire!"

"I can't! I didn't pack enough!"

In the end team CRDL got the highest mark from the 'mission'. They had collected the second highest amount of tree sap and received bonus points for killing a lone ursa that wandered into their landing zone. Team RWPY had the highest amount, mostly because Weiss was an overachiever, but they also got a heavy penalty for setting the forest on fire. Team BLAN had barely passed with their miniscule amount, which led to a three to one vote to put Nora on a diet for at least a week as a punishment.

-BBW-

This office was a prison for one while a command center for another. The headmaster who should have been in the heart of his domain was chained by fear, shame and betrayal. The usurper was sitting at the other desk while fiddling with paperwork that needed 'adjustments'.

The door to the office burst open and the enforcer walked in. Leonardo Lionheart, the headmaster of Haven Academy, almost fell out of his seat. Fortunately for his nerves, the man immediately turned to the other occupant of the room.

"I take it, you are done with the dogs that were sniffing around?" Watts asked without taking his eyes away from the papers.

"It was a false alarm." Hazel answered in a complete monotone.

"Ho? So you're telling me I made that up to make you run around the kingdom for the hell of it?" He looked up, clearly offended by some slight to his knowledge.

Hazel only signed. "I meant that it wasn't Ozpin or his lackeys looking for you." He then pulled out a book out of his large pockets and put it on the table in front of his accomplice.

Watts took a quick look at the book before smirking. "This brings back memories, one of my first publications." He said in self-indulgence. "Somebody has been looking for me because of this?"

"An autograph."

Lionheart did a double take. Who in their right mind would launch an almost continent wide, underground search for one supposedly dead scientist only to get their book signed. For Watts it only seemed appropriate. He was arguably one of the best minds of Remnant and definitely the very best in his field. Putting so much effort into getting in touch with him was only right.

He took the book and decided to skim through, quickly recognizing which topics were much more interesting for the reader from the way the pages were more worn and occasional notes on the sides. He lightly hummed to himself. The person clearly was more interested in dust application than in robotics and was actually quite capable if the theories described in the notes were anything to go by. He himself had plenty of knowledge regarding the subject but dust based bio-interface was something closer to Merlot's field.

"Did you get a name?" He asked Hazel.

"No, I only met a messenger." After a second of thought he added "It's supposed to be a gift for a teenager."

"You are actually doing it?" Leo asked, very confused by the scientist train of thoughts.

Watts gave him a side-eye glare, peeved by the coward's very presence. And also by the fact that he needed to continuously watch over him and do half of his job for him. "Of course." Still, it was an obligation of the betters to educate the dumber. Or at least attempt to do so. "It's only right to encourage the younger minds to strive forward. Even I wasn't a well-known genius from the beginning. There is an importance to keeping some things close to one's heart but take it too far and the rest of the world would regress back into the caves."

"You talk like you want an apprentice." Hazel commented.

"Nonsense." Watts brushed him off. "I have too much on my plate as it is, without adding a need to babysit some starryeyed moron. Much less this one." He finished writing down a small message and signed with his full name. "Our field of interests are too different and while I would definitely be able to give advice thanks to my experience, sometimes it's better to learn from one's own mistakes. Although…" His brow furrowed in thoughts before he nodded to himself and pulled out a flash drive from his desk. "I suppose if this is a gift then some added value would hurt. Those files are useless to me anyway."

-BBW-

"So how has Beacon been treating you?" Tukson asked the chameleon faunus sitting in front of him.

Blake once again decided to pay him a visit and Ilia tagged along. Blake was now rummaging through the new shipment of books so it left the two of them to catch up.

"It's been… fine."

"That's not a very good answer, you know?"

Ilia just rolled her eyes. "I only went there to watch Blake's back. I never wanted to be a huntress so I'm only making sure not to drag others down." She admitted.

"Yeah, you weren't exactly hiding it before." He checked the room, making sure that Blake was far enough before speaking up. "And what about Blake, any success?" He asked with a knowing smirk.

Ilia's skin briefly flashed pink before she calmed down. She still didn't know how or where did she slip up but somehow he knew about her crush on Blake. "Nothing…"

"Really? I thought that after reading all of that crappy romance she would take a hint soon enough."

"Oh really?!" Ilia slammed her head on the table. "I've been trying, you know? But we are either stuck with the other two guys from our team or she just runs off with that Ruby girl…" She bemoaned. Nothing against Nora or Ren but she really didn't feel comfortable with them around, especially if that involved her trying to make a move on Blake, which would most likely lead to her skin color becoming a rainbow.

"... yes, Blake did mention her quite a few times." Tukson carefully added his thoughts.

"Of course she did!" Small amount of venom evident in her voice. "She is her type."

Tukson raised an eyebrow at that. "And you know Blake's type?"

"Leadership position, idealist, combination of red and black and way too strong in a fight. The girl is pretty much Adam, only instead of having a murderboner for humans she has one for grimm." Ilia recited with a blank face.

"If she is so much like him then why does Blake stick around?" He panicked a bit. He really didn't want Blake to jump from one unstable psycho to another one. "Hell, how did they let someone like that into Beacon?"

Ilia rolled her eyes. "She is not 'that' bad. Remember how Adam used to be a few years ago?"

He did. Taurus was still a bit of loose cannon back then but he did treat everyone in the White Fang, hell, all of faunus as a family and was genuinely a nice person. "She is actually even gentler than he was when I just got to Vale. Or at least she would be if she didn't have the social skills of a five year old or was able to stay out of the smithy for longer than a week." She finished. She still liked Blake but it was clearly one-sided. So her only solace was in the fact that Ruby was even worse at reading signals than Blake. Although she did wonder what happened between the two of them that made Blake become much more relaxed around the little reaper.

-BBW-

"Listen up! I'm not going to repeat myself." Weiss was put on a veritable stage in front of her teammates and the tagalongs. Ruby had asked her to give everyone a dust usage course so that all of them had the basic knowledge down. Which led to her asking what she meant by that and obviously her idea of basic dust knowledge was what would usually be a special combat course. "Now, Ruby and Blake asked me to get everyone started on proper usage of dust in combat. I will not be teaching you how to cast or how to mix it with your semblance. We will start with something easier and that is figuring out your elemental affinities."

Why is it so hard? I gave a lot of stupid speaches to fathers buttkissers before.

"That's because you care. You couldn't give a damn about those wastes of space but it's different now isn't it?"

Ugh, she could hear the smirk in her voice. She would let her do it next time. In the meantime she unfolded a small plastic table, put down electronic scales and a variety of small tubes filled with dust of every element. Except the hardlight, that one was synthetically made so it was impossible to have an affinity for it naturally.

"Okay, do any of you know how to find one's affinity?" She asked them.

"You take dust and activate with aura, the one that reacts the most is the one that you have an affinity for!" Nora cheerfully replied.

"Yes, that's the gist of it. You will all take one gram of it and- Yes Blake?"

"How much is gram?"

Weiss groaned. Of course, Vale still had their own backwater units… "It's about-" she did the quick math "-0.035 ounces. Just to make sure, everybody is at least somewhat familiar with the metric system?" She mostly asked for Yang and Ruby, Mistral was technically using metric but there were still some remote communities that would use an entirely different one. Thankfully they all seemed to know it, Ruby giving her an enthusiastic nod while Yang made a 'so-so' gesture. "You do know that Ruby's weapon manuals are all in metric, right?"

Oh, It slipped my mind.

"Very well, you will take three different types of dust to test it out. If you find your affinity from the first three then you are good, if not, pick another type." She continued instructing. "If you already know your affinity then step aside and…" she trailed off, not knowing what to say further. It wasn't like she could start explaining dust casting and leave the other group unsupervised.

"Got it!" Ruby called out and the group split in two. Ruby, Yang and Nora stood aside while the rest came to the table to pick up their samples.

After a few minutes, during which everyone except Blake were able to figure out their affinity they came closer and decided to share the results while Blake continued to try all the available types of dust in search of the one that would react differently.

"So, what did you get?" Weiss tried to continue her dutiful instructor routine. "Let's start with those who already knew theirs. Mine is ice."

"Fire." Yang said, surprising nobody.

"Lightning!" Said Nora.

"Same!" Ruby called out and bumped her fist with her.

"Really? I thought you would have wind." Nora asked, although she was happy that there was another energizing person. In response Ruby summoned a small cloud of petals. It started rapidly spinning and soon enough everybody could feel the small amount of static electricity building up in the cloud.

"Okay… please keep it away from me. What did you find?" Weiss addressed the rest of them.

"Wind" Came Ren's emotionless reply.

"Earth" Ilia said, slightly peeved about having to follow Weiss' orders.

"Gravity." Pyrrha said. That was quite rare. Usually the affinity would be one of the basic elements. Although Ruby had some ideas why she had an affinity for gravity dust.

"Dammit!" Blake shouted, some distance away. The place around her was covered in crumbs of rock and ice, scorch marks left by fire and lighting and her hair was a mess from the wind and water.

"Do you need any help?" Weiss tried. They haven't talked much but the girl was friends with Ruby so she couldn't be too bad. At least she didn't glare at her all the time like her partner.

"Sorry for taking so long." She apologized and stood up properly. "Well, I at least know that gravity and steam are not my type. Ice is… kinda weird." She tried to laugh it off but it was obvious from her expression that she was rather annoyed.

"Right, what about other types?"

"I don't know. They all give the same result."

"Okay, let's recap." Weiss took out a grinded earth and ice dust. After applying a bit of aura, the earth dust became an average sized pebble while the ice dust formed a rather vicious looking spike, much bigger than the pebble.

"Well, all of the basic dust has been doing like your ice!" She also took a bit of earth and fire dust, one doze into each hand. A moment later she had a head sized rock in one hand and a small fireball flew from her other hand.

"Maybe you have a dual affinity?" Weiss theorized. It was rare to be born with one but one could technically train to the point that their mastery over other types could be on that level. Her sister was on her way to mastering wind and she was sure that professor Goodwitch had probably mastered several.

"More like quadruple… fire, wind, earth and water."

"That's so awesome!" And of course Ruby found herself a new test subject. Who wouldn't want to have a person with multiple affinities right at hand.

While Weiss was a bit confused as to how one person who wasn't even a dust mage had four affinities, the rest slowly spread out around the room to think about the new possibilities for training or even starting out with some of it.

Think I should call Winter? I did technically learn summoning.

"Right, and I learned which end of Myrtenaster is the sharp one. If you want to show off then do it properly. Also, I want to talk too!"

-BBW-

A week has passed since her visit to Junior's club and she still had no response. She was fine with waiting a few days, if this scientist was as paranoid about his toys as Ruby was then it was almost expected. What she didn't expect was for Junior to call her late in the evening telling her that the giant had come back.

This time the bouncers made sure to be out of her way as soon as they spotted her bike. They even made a special space for her to park right near the entrance.

Heh, I suppose I can let Junior be. He is trying really hard.

When she came in she didn't bother with coming to the bar and immediately went to the table where the supposed bodyguard was sitting. It was really hard to miss. She was a bit worried though. She expected for either him or the scientist to call her and talk about the price or something like that. She still had the money on her account but it wasn't like she could transfer it on the spot without any preparations. She didn't want to leave too big of a trail. And if they wanted to do favors…

"So what will it be?" She didn't bother with greetings. It was late, the last bullhead to school took off some time ago and she needed to find a place to stay the night in the city.

Instead of giving a verbal answer he put the book she gave him the last time on the table along with a flash drive. She gave him a look, prompting him to start talking, he clearly came through on his end and while it took away some of the leverage from her side she was willing to negotiate.

"Nothing."

"Come again?"

"I don't need anything from you. Call it a favor from a person who knows. It's a duty of a stronger sibling to spoil the other is it not?" His expression changed from emotionless to a reminiscent smile.

Yang didn't notice any of it. He, some mongrel from the shady parts of the world, knew who she was. He knew about Ruby. Her mind went into overdrive with all the possible outcomes and how to prevent them. Staying true to herself, she chose…

Seeing the girl stand still for several seconds he grew a bit worried. He probably startled the girl by knowing who she was. She was clearly trying to speak up if the clenching of her jaws was any indication. Or she was about to attack him.

"Calm down, I-" He didn't get to finish as Tai's daughter mumbled something he could properly hear over the loud music.

Then she exploded.

If their previous meeting made her respect her as an experienced fighter from a mere glance, this… scared him.

The crushing pressure.

The scorching flames.

"What did you just say?" It was still her voice but it was akin to the threatening growl.

She was definitely terrifying but he worked with an immortal queen of grimm. And he was sure that she could be killed, even if it would give him third degree burns and the entire district they were in would probably be reduced to ashes.

"I was at your parents' wedding." He answered as calmly, ignoring the sweat that was dripping down his forehead.

It worked. The suffocating feeling disappeared but she was still glaring at him with those red eyes.

"Why?"

"My sister dragged me there, she was friends with Tai and Summer."

"Not that. Why did you bring up my sister?" She snapped at him.

"Because you are obviously getting this for her." He answered sincerely.

Her eyes finally changed back to lilac and her hair had stopped glowing. "And you just decided to give me a freebee because..?"

"Because you are not the only one who lost their family because of Ozpin's schemes."

There was a moment of tense silence before Yang decided to continue.

"Figures."

"You know?"

"It's not that hard to find once you know what to look for."

He just confirmed that Ozpin was a head of a secret society and that he, most likely, invited her sister to Beacon under a false pretense.

She just confirmed that she was aware of the true darker side of Remnant.

Neither of them realized how much they misinterpreted each other's words.

"I don't know what Oz did to you but I'll be damned if I let him get to Rubes."

/

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