50

Chapter 50

"When I finally thought that you would actually start being decisive-" James ground out while rubbing the bridge of his nose. "-you go back on it and continue dragging your feet!" He fixed Ozpin with a glare. "She already agreed to take the powers! Why do you prolong it needlessly and put them at risk?"

Ozpin sighed. "I, on the other hand, think it was very mature of her."

The matter of the current argument was that Pyrrha Nikos, while agreeing to accept the powers, wished to undergo the transfer after the Vytal Tournament concluded. Her reason being that she didn't want to worry about controlling the new power while fighting. Ozpin could sympathize, he saw plenty of young girls who would suddenly discover their status as maiden cause enormous amounts of destruction simply by accident.

"This show is secondary to what truly matters!"

"And we are already placing a great burden on her." Oz calmly replied. "If anything, we should give her the opportunity to enjoy her normal life for the last time." He looked at the other two people present. "Regardless, I agreed with her proposal. Unless the situation changes, Miss Nikos will become a maiden right after the tournament's conclusion." He locked his fingers in front of his face. "I would like to discuss a different matter. She also asked for her team to be brought into the fold, so to speak. At least partially."

James huffed. "I'm against it. They're still children. But if the rest decide to do so anyway, I want full disclosure for specialist Schnee and at least a partial one for Clover Ebi."

"Heh, I suppose if we are letting the Schnee princess in on the fun, we might as well tell the Ice Queen…" Qrow remarked. "But I have to agree with the girl. Ruby already used her power. It doesn't matter if it was done by accident or not, she already has a target on her back. And if we are telling her, might as well tell the entire team, she would tell them anyway."

"I'm opposed to this decision." Glynda rained on their parade. "Oz, you are already letting them get away with a lot of things. We can manage the consequences while they are still at Beacon but if you give them that much freedom I doubt they will be able to handle the responsibility."

"Riiight…" Qrow took a sip. "So we will only tell Nikos and make her keep quiet from the rest?" He skeptically asked. "Remember those regulations about the chain of command? I'll tell you right now that Ruby does remember them and if we start pulling her teammate on solo works she'll start asking questions. And well, I may have not been paying them too much attention but their team looked like a really tight group last time I checked." He briefly looked at James and smirked. "Using 'classified' as an excuse will probably earn you a sniper muzzle. Or maybe another flight through a wall." In hindsight, he probably should stop poking at the fact that Yang managed to one-up Glynda but come on… Everybody agreed that it was hilarious.

"Qrow! Enough!" Oz immediately interjected before Glynda would decide to throw Qrow through the windows of his office. He was on a three year streak of it not happening, for brothers' sake. Explaining it to the insurance agents was always a pain…

-WoR-

"I see that your preparations for the tournament are going at full force…" Blake sarcastically commented as her team and PW of team RWPY were returning from the training arena.

"Because there is barely any reason to." Weiss offhandedly replied. "Unless we get really unlucky, we should pass the first round with no difficulty. I think we can all agree that Yang and Ruby can handle a team by themselves and Pyrrha had already proved that a few days ago."

"I don't think you should compare CRDL with actual teams. The four of them make two proper fighters on the best day." Ilia dryly commented. "I still don't understand how they even get to participate in the tournament. Beacon can't be that desperate…" She shook her head at the end.

"Well… they let the two of you into the school so either they really are or are just bad at screening potential students." Weiss said with a small smirk, her eyes briefly darting towards Blake and Ilia.

Pyrrha just sighed and sent the two girls an apologetic look. Weiss wasn't doubting their abilities in the slightest. Their past affiliations on the other hand… They may have accepted them but as Ilia and occasionally Blake would bring up SDC's practices, so would Weiss bring White Fang into the discussion. Neither really meant the things said but if left to continue they would spiral into some very nasty stuff.

As they were nearing their rooms, Blake's face scrunched in disgust. "Dammit… Somebody must have sneaked something in."

"Is something wrong?" Ren evenly asked.

"Booze." Blake answered while continuing to wave her hand in front of her face.

Weiss sighed. "I swear, they make a giant mess out of me ordering some parts for Ruby but nobody cares when people are running around drunk."

To their surprise, they found the source of the smell in front of RWPY dorm.

"Yo." Qrow Branwen raised his flask in a greeting.

Nobody was impressed.

Nora was just averagely excited for meeting a new person, Ren raised an eyebrow, Blake and Ilia were doing their hardest to ignore the smell of alcohol, Pyrrha was slightly worried that something bad happened, making her previous agreement with the headmaster void, and Weiss was simply glaring at him for the idiotic exchange of comments between him, Winter and Yang she had to endure.

"Oi, what's with all the frowning? You are Ruby and Yang's teammates, that almost makes us like a family!" Qrow called out with mock offense.

"I already have a dysfunctional family, no need to add more." Weiss replied with a heavy frown.

Qrow smirked and nodded. "You know, I was once invited to your family's wine cellar. Shame I had to go on a mission."

Weiss shuddered at the thought. "Thank brothers for small mercies…" What the hell her mother had to be thinking?! "Anyway, if you are looking for them, then you are at the wrong address. Ruby is probably still trying to get herself poisoned by paint and I haven't seen Yang since the end of the classes."

"Right, because I didn't notice it while standing out here and waiting for either of them to show up."

"I find it strange that while on Patch, you would show yourself only a couple times a year, now that I'm at Beacon, it looks lately like you are here every other week." Yang spoke up, some distance behind the rest of the students who turned around in surprise.

"Well… I was on Patch only when I had free time. But here it's more work-related." Qrow replied with a shrug. "Actually, I'm here to say bye. You know, with the tournament around the corner I doubt you'll be able to run around yourself so somebody's gonna do it."

"Make sure to visit Ruby then, or I'll drag you back." Yang added as Qrow made his leave. Then she turned to her teammates. "Be happy that he didn't start with his stories… They are dumb and all end with him getting drunk and chasing after a waitress."

"Hmp!" Weiss turned away from his retreating form. "My sister had made her opinion on him quite clear and while I prefer to make my own conclusions… I'm sorry to say this, Yang, but your uncle is not someone I would like to familiarize with."

"That's a rather exclusive club, Weiss." Blake added with a smirk. "Well, I need a shower, so I guess see you tomorrow. Don't be late for the opening ceremony."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Weiss replied with a way too serious tone.

Almost an hour later, team BLAN was at last done with showering and changing their clothes. It always took this long because while Nora was used to and more than happy to give Ren an unnecessary (from his point of view) show, the two other girls still preferred to have their privacy.

"I wonder who we will meet in our first match…" Nora wondered aloud after throwing herself down on her bed.

Ilia snickered. "I hope it will be CRDL, to beat them up on live tv… It would be great."

"That probably won't happen." Blake rained down on her dreams.

/

"Hmm… yes, team CFVY is probably the strongest team from Beacon." Coincidentally, Pyrrha and Weiss had a similar debate on their own. "After ours, of course." Pyrrha gave Weiss a weak smile. After spending years in the tournaments, Weiss' enthusiasm was a bit foreign for her. On the other hand, Yang was more preoccupied with thinking up new ways to drag Ruby away from her toys. "But I don't think we are going to go against a Beacon team for a while."

"Why is that? The matches are randomized, or at least that's what I know." Weiss looked up from a chart of all competing teams.

"Well, the matches are randomized but it's somewhat of a silent agreement that the representatives from the same place should avoid fighting. It was the same during the Mistalian championship." Pyrrha went to explain. "The main idea is that if two Beacon teams were to fight in the very beginning, then no matter who would win, Beacon's chances would lower because they would simply lose one team."

"Hmm…would be sad if we kicked out Penny's or Sun's team this early…"

-BBW-

"-for the sake of unity and prosperity-"

Weiss listened as headmaster Ozpin kept pushing his speech, while she was slowly developing progressively more disturbing ways of torture for Ruby.

Who couldn't be bothered to show up for the opening ceremony. Which led to Weiss needing to stand on the podium along with all of the other leaders of the competing teams.

She was of course somewhat pleased to be on the pedestal but… Brothers damn it, why their supposed leader couldn't be more responsible?!

/

Dammit!

Ruby was mentally cursing. Mostly herself.

Missing the opening wasn't that big of a deal. It was actually a good thing because she wasn't sure how she would handle standing in front of so many people.

If only she could give something for her sister's confidence… Weiss would handle it just fine. She was the one most invested in the thing anyway.

But now she had a different problem. She might have got away with not showing up at the beginning, doing that with their first match though…

That is why she ignored all the freaked out visitors and bullhead pilots. She didn't have time to wait for them to get her up to the Amity Colosseum.

Her semblance was just better in every way.

Thus, as an opening act of the RWPY vs ABRN match, the viewers were given a show of a bright red torrent of petals ascending from Beacon.

"I'm here!" Ruby shouted out after blitzing through the arena's underbelly and finally reaching her team. By the time she had arrived, all of them already saw the camera footage of her little show.

Weiss already had a rant ready but when she saw Ruby, the only thing she could do was facepalm and sigh in exasperation.

Pyrrha was surprised for a second before starting to giggle.

Yang pulled out a handkerchief and started rubbing Ruby's face with a determined look in her eyes, despite all of Ruby's protests.

All of that came about due to one small detail.

Lately, Ruby spent all of her free time finishing up Pyrrha's Golden Paragon.

Improving some parts with proper combat data, putting up the last parts of the armor which were left out so as to allow her easier access to the insides of the machine…

And painting the whole thing.

The problem was that while Ruby had covered herself in the proper gear, there was still a small gap between the mask on her mouth and nose, and her goggles.

Which resulted in a bright golden line across her face stretching almost from ear to ear.

"Dammit, Rubes… It's not going down." Yang huffed out after a few minutes of trying to wipe the paint down.

Meanwhile Ruby was trying to make herself look as small as possible while burning red from the shame.

Weiss put the hand away from her face and took a proper look at her *sigh* leader. "I know that we all told you that you are forbidden from hiding in your hood but now… I think it's for the best that you do so."

Ruby immediately proceeded to hide under. Pyrrha just tried to give her a reassuring backrub.

/

Arslan silently cursed when the first opponent of her team was announced.

Team RWPY, the strongest first-years of Beacon.

Among all the visiting teams, the top priority was obvious. To gather intel on all the possible opposition.

And team RWPY immediately sent shivers down everyone's spines.

Pyrrha Nikos.

There was nobody at Haven who didn't know of her.

The undefeated champion. Enough said.

Then there was the Schnee heiress.

She didn't have much accomplishments, her sister on the other hand was one of the poster children of the Atlesian army. And there was still a fierce debate whether it was Nikos' management who begged the Schnees so that they would take her fame outside of Mistral, or it was SDC who paid Nikos to take the girl under her wing so that she would share the spotlight.

Then came the two sisters.

And while nobody heard of them in Mistral, once at Beacon there were a lot of things to look up. Money was exchanged, favors were owned but in the end…

The two descendants of the greatest Beacon team since its inception.

One was the strongest fighter at the prep school, something she shared with Nikos at Sanctum. Second was some sort of child protege who got in two years early and was now a hero of Vale due to leading a team who stopped White Fang attack.

And all of them, with the exception of Weiss Schnee, were undefeated when it came to Beacon's combat class. Which was mostly because they had never fought against each other.

She didn't want to think about all the crackpot theories as to why it was that way.

No, the main question was: What to do now?

So far, she could only come up with a rather vague idea of divide and conquer, which almost entirely relied on Bolin's ability to distract Nikos long enough for the rest of them to handle the team and then beat the Invincible girl in 4 on 1.

-BBW-

"Ladies and Gentleman! Welcome back to the Vytal Tournament!" Port's commentary roared across the seats. "And now, the first battle of our Beacon's team! Please welcome: Team RWPY!"

The audience exploded in cheers, equally spread between Pyrrha's fans and those who were supporting the heroes of Vale in general.

"And from Mistral's Haven! Team ABRN!"

There was still some polite cheering but it was obvious which team did the audience favor.

/

Yang was rather bored. This entire thing was a complete farce, the only vaguely interesting thing from her point of view was the betting pool. Too bad their team had about ten to one odds on winning so betting on herself would have been pointless.

So when the fight finally started, she just stood in place and waited for the enemy team to come to her. Weiss had dragged Ruby away because apparently Weiss still had something to say about Ruby's attitude towards the tournament and Pyrrha, the only one who had experience with this kind of thing, ran off towards the ABRN starting position, already prepared to take on the entire team because hers was doing everything except fighting.

At last, one of the visiting students finally showed up. A fellow blond and enjoyer of the color yellow. Immediately she charged at Yang, a short distance away she leapt into the air, reading the straight punch.

Yang let a small smirk cross her face.

/

Arslan was really pissed. It wasn't that they were supposedly completely outmatched but that blond bitch could have at least pretended to take it seriously. Instead she just stood there with her arms crossed while barely looking her way.

She had a different thing coming!

Dumping a third of her aura into her fist to boost the attack power she got ready to make the opening attack. The moment before her fist could connect with Yang's face, her eyes flashed red and…

She caught it! She freaking caught her fist in her palm!

The ground under her cracked and she did sink for about two inches but Arslan was much more worried about Yang's hair suddenly igniting and before she could react, Yang's fist shot out.

By the time everything stopped spinning and she could finally assess where she ended up, she was surrounded by the onlookers and the two commenting professors announced that she left the fight by ring out.

/

Calm down, Weiss. Punching a teammate in the face on live coverage is wrong.

"I think we are approaching the point when it would be appropriate…"

Both Weiss and Ivory agreed that Ruby was, again, having some caveats about fighting…

Glorifying the violence for fun, yada yada.

And then there was that moron with a machine gun who was shooting at them with a skill so good that he wouldn't be able to hit the ground. This little annoyance was dealt by Ivory letting loose her sadistic side and chasing him around by taking over a nevermore, pestering him with crystal feathers and icicles.

"Dammit Ruby! I don't know why Vytal's peace treaty is celebrated by us fighting but please! At least look involved!"

During Weiss' rant, Oobleck announced the retirement of the second member of the opposing team.

"Which one was that?" Weiss paused in her attempts at convincing Ruby to fight.

Finally, Ruby pulled out her weapon and looked around through the scope. "The one that fought Pyrrha."

Weiss nodded. So Yang and Pyrrha already dealt with theirs… Ivory, stop wasting time and aura and deal with that idiot. Also, did you see the last one?

"Charging right at you." She nonchalantly supplied.

At me or at Ruby?

"Well, unless her hoverboard can make a 90 degree turn at full speed and fit inside one meter, she will go for Ruby."

With that being the case, Weiss decided to ignore the issue and leave it for Ruby to handle. That way every member of their team would have one personal win.

It definitely wasn't because she felt just a bit spiteful over Ruby giving her extra headache during a very important event.

/

Reese sharply turned and got ready to hit the cloaked girl with the full charge, hoverboard right to her face.

She felt fairly confident, she was coming from their blind spot and the girl was looking the other way. She was a bit doubtful about winning the match but they were still able to fight!

But her perfect fell apart, along with her target, as upon contact, she simply flew through a cloud of red petals.

Losing her hoverboard in the process, Reese did a flip and landed squarely on her butt. Once she reoriented and took a look around she saw that her target was standing in the same spot, not even a speck of dirt on her, a rifle in one hand, pointed downward, and her weapon in the other. Behind her stood Weiss Schnee and was giving an annoyed glare but she honestly couldn't figure out whether it was directed at her or on Rose.

Further behind the girls, Nadir was covered in ice up to his chest with Schnee's fake grimm perching on his shoulders.

Reese looked at the scoreboard. Arslan and Bolin were out, Nadir was a bit below half and she, while still in the green, was weaponless and stuck in two on one.

Team RWPY on the other hand was all green with Schnee being the lowest and their leader barely spending any despite suffering a direct hit!

She scoffed and meekly raised her hands in surrender. "That's just not fair…"

-BBW-

While the audience cheered for the winners, the losers were slowly making their way through the arena's underbelly, all in various states of disappointment and/or anger.

Fortunately, an opportunity to let those emotions out, showed himself only a couple minutes later.

Arslan immediately rushed at him and slammed him into the wall. "Sun!" She seethed. "What. The. Fuck?!" Normally she would never talk like that or even assault a senior schoolmate but Sun was their main provider of information on the other teams. And he didn't warn them about this.

Despite being surrounded and his team not exactly rushing to his rescue, Sun continued to smile, even if he tried to make it a bit more apologetic. "Hey Arslan… Well, I did tell you that this one would be the hardest."

"Hardest my ass!" She shouted back and had to hold herself back from bitchslapping the stupid monkey across the face. "Hard is when we win but are covered in sweat and lose a couple of people along the way! Not when two of us surrender because they literally couldn't touch them!"

"Weren't you the first one to go?" That was probably the wrong thing to say but he was getting tired of being pushed around by almost every girl he met since coming to Vale. At least she wasn't accusing him of being a terrorist…

"Oh? That's another thing. I threw a LOT of my aura into that punch and she caught it like it was nothing! She broke my aura with one punch and sent me flying into the stands while only losing what?! 3%?!"

"She one-punched a bullhead that was charging at her. You should have known that fist to fist won't work."

She wanted to rage further and her team had their own things to add but… what would that accomplish now? They had lost and there was nothing they could do about it so the best they could do was to cheer the other Haven teams. Wishing them luck through her teeth, Arslan and her team left.

"You could have helped more, though." Sage remarked after they were out of earshot.

Sun sighed and shook his head. "I think I did it well enough." He looked at the upcoming matches and started walking towards their seats. "Besides, would they feel better if I told them that they just got unlucky? Whoever is fighting them next is going to have it easier." Seeing that his team wasn't getting it, he explained further. "Well, Ilia told me that Blake told her that Ruby and Yang are not going into doubles round aaand… I can at least think of a couple ways to fight Pyrrha and Weiss." Pyrrha would of course be a big hurdle but she was still a conventional fighter. Weiss… Weiss had a personal army that she could summon on the spot but from what he knew, at melee she was rather beatable. Ruby and Yang on the other hand? Both could shrug off things that would destroy buildings. "Come on guys, it's BLAN vs BRNZ, I need to make a couple of bets."

/

As promised.

Huntsmen Tactical Combat Unit (HTCU) Golden Paragon.

Height: 4,8 meters/ 15.7 feet

Width: 1,9 meters/ 6.2 feet

Wingspan: 7.2 meters/ 23.6 feet

Weight: 2.5 metric tons (no pilot, no weapons) / 4 metric tons (active combat weight)

I've tried to find something similar for comparison among some other mechs and the best I could find was Lancelot Albion from Code Geass and even then Golden Paragon is smaller and compared to the already mentioned or RWBY Paladin, it's still more akin to an armed exoskeleton than a bipedal tank/BMP.

Equipment:

36 detachable gunblades total, 12 on each wing, 6 on each thigh. Each with a low caliber laser and a small hardlight dust emitter. Fully deployed shields can create a dome with a 15 meters/ 49 feet diameter.

Triple barreled 35mm cannon on right shoulder, once activated it slides down to the forearm otherwise it would get tangled up with the wing. Think Hellsing Ult. Seras Victoria's two guns when the nazis attacked Helsing manor with blimps. Now think three of those welded together to make an oversized minigun.

Laser cannon on the left shoulder. Also slides. Pretty much a slightly modified version of a spider droid laser gun. (See black trailer)

For close combat, on the right arm there is a sword with extendable handle to make it into swordlance if necessary. The weapon is dust lined for added cutting power. The sword is fully detachable but out of combat it acts like a forearm guard. (I guess for the mechanism you can look up Gundam 00 GN-001REII Exia while the sword design is DS3 Nameless King)

On the left arm there is a large hardlight dust shielding unit. It's fully integrated into the forearm and just makes it look a lot thicker.

The unit is equipped with an advanced AI unit, mainly to assist targeting, predict enemy movements and operate proximity alert. Also calculates the minor adjustments to counter recoil. Mainly operates through a 360 degree camera that is mounted in place of armor's 'head' and covered by a stylised winged helmet giving it an appearance of having a visor with green monoeye. (God, Malenia's design is awesome, yes, I'm using her helmet.)

Safety measures:

Shock absorbing foam automatically released should the armor be pierced or can be activated by the pilot.

4 small fire dust stabilizer rockets, 2 large fire dust brake rockets. Essentially, should Pyrrha run out of juice mid-air, the smaller ones would reposition it for landing, the large ones are the brakes and the foam would absorb the impact.

Color: Darker gold with red ascends. (Duh)

Before somebody asks why I didn't give her a railgun. Safety concerns. Thing is, should the thing malfunction and discharge, it would pretty much leave Pyrrha blind bcs all of her contact with the outer world is done through a camera feed. In comparison, should Yang's malfunction, she would just fry her scroll and ruin her hair at worst.

/

/

/

Well… I kinda took a hiatus bcs… I'm a lazy ass and Legend of the Galactic Heroes is great. And long. Opsie.

Anyway…