51

"Soooo…how much do you think they are going to embarrass Beacon?" Blake teasingly commented. All of them, even Ruby, have been in the stands waiting for the first second round match to begin and… It wasn't like they had that much against the pair from team CRDL, who somehow managed to advance, but they all simply liked Penny more.

And they also all knew that this match in particular would be a one-sided slaughter. Penny probably could take their entire team by herself, now there were only two of them and she had a back up.

Although they did wonder about her choice of the partner for the doubles match.

She picked Jaune.

And considering what they saw of him during the team battle… In short, he was a damage sponge.

Her other two teammates were also rather interesting. One was some sort of protage who was as precise with her handguns as Ruby. The other one made them question whether he had any training to begin with.

"Are we making bets about how long it will take?" Ilia asked and threw a hundred lien card into Weiss' lap. "Three minutes."

"Minute and a half." Yang joined in.

"Hmm… two." Blake did too.

"I'm taking ten percent." Weiss deadpanned. "What? You are using my lap!"

"Actually, compared to the usual rates, you are rather cheap." Pyrrha chirped in and also added her bet. "One minute."

"Wow… A Schnee who isn't trying to take as much money as possible? Did the moon come together as well?" Ilia teases.

"Hmm, should I check under my chair for a bomb?" Weiss shot back without missing a beat. Then she shook her head. "Let's just focus on the match. For example, Ruby!"

"Huh?!" She looked up from her scroll, where she was optimizing the dustsuit design for Weiss.

"What is that thing on blondie's sword?"

Her hand briefly blurred and she pulled out a detachable scope from…somewhere. Weapons were allowed into the colosseum. Ruby did follow these rules, right?

All they could see from the stands and questionable camera angles (Who put a breast obsessed pervert up there?) was that around the crossguard of Jaune's rather plain looking sword was a bulky piece of gray steel with a double spiral going out.

"Oh? They put that piece of crap on something?" Ruby replied with disappointment in her voice.

Weiss sighed. "Maybe you'll explain what it is?" Besides, Ruby's definition of quality when it came to weapons could be a bit too high.

"Aura compressor."

"And what is that?"

"Remember when we were learning aura boosting?"

"Unfortunately." Weiss grumbled out.

"Well, it does the same thing, just instead of knowing what you are doing, it's done by a machine."

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?!" Weiss shouted out. "I wouldn't have to waste my time with all the stupid meditations!"

"Pff..naah. Those things are terribly inefficient! It would be only useful if you had so much aura that you wouldn't know what to do with it."

Ilia and Blake shared a glance. From Ilia's semblance they knew that he had about as much as Ruby did. Which was a stupid amount of aura.

/

As the match' countdown was slowly coming to an end, he started to wonder how much his life had changed in the last year.

First he became an uncle.

Then, when he visited his sister to meet his nephew, he might have used a possibly fake Argus ID to sneak into some sort of recruitment of the Atlasian military. Full medical check-up, physical exam aaand… by the time they figured out it was fake they already had unlocked his aura.

What followed was a mix of soldiers trying to chase him down and doctors running around screaming that they discovered a miracle. He didn't really care but boy, did he appreciate the distraction.

He hoped that after successfully escaping and narrowly avoiding admitting to it in front of his parents, he would be able to breathe easier and maybe apply to Haven or even Beacon.

Then, two weeks later, two letters arrived.

One was from the main Atlesian hospital, asking him to come and participate in some tests.

The other was from the military, stating that he could either come to Atlas, agree to whatever things their scientists wanted to do and then properly enroll or the next time he would set his foot anywhere where Atlas has policing authority he would be arrested on a slew of charges.

Well… There wasn't that big of a difference between being a huntsman and a specialist, was there?

His parents still protested.

A month later he was finally ready to begin, he just hoped that he wouldn't be slowing down his team too much.

To his surprise, he didn't participate in the normal team creation.

No no no. Apparently he was already so special, freak or a miracle, depending on who you asked, that he was included in some sort of new training program.

Which resulted in a team of him, a glorified farm boy with little to no training and more aura than the rest of his team combined, Penny Polendina, a daughter of Atlas' top scientist who could probably take out all of them in one against three, Ciel Soleil, a gunslinger protege that was personally trained by the general whenever he got time, and Tim Glimmah, whose only claim to fame was that his father had donated an insane sum of money to the military.

And as a part of their enhanced training program they were supervised by the poster girl of the army, specialist Winter Schnee.

And now, not even a year later, he was at the most famous tournament on Remnant… Why couldn't they send Ciel into the doubles round instead?

Although, he had to agree that with him they had a better balance when it came to the offense/defense proportions. With Ciel, the two of them would have overwhelming attack capabilities but should they lose momentum, the match would get turned around immediately.

And he saw what some other teams could do…especially the one with Winter's sister.

Still, being nothing more than a shield for Penny sucked. He didn't spend the last year getting thrown around the training hall just for that!

And he had an appropriate surprise on his person. And it had nothing to do with the leader of the enemy pair being a dick to him and Penny or that he wouldn't be able to test it out otherwise. Or wanting to show off for his family to see.

Regardless, as soon as the match started he pushed the button to activate the weird contraption that was strapped on his sword, which proper name he had already forgotten.

/

"See! That's exactly why that thing is a useless piece of junk!" Ruby proclaimed, seeing as Jaune's aura started plummeting down immediately after the fight started. "Now he will pump all his juice into it, it will amount to nothing and Penny will have to go two on one…"

Then he swung his sword which at this point was glowing with faint golden light.

And the fight ended.

A giant golden wave of compressed aura blew across the entire arena. Both Sky and Russel's aura was quite literally punched out of them and were thrown back by the attack.

The fight ended in under thirty seconds.

In the audience the jaws have fallen.

Weiss was sputtering about the moronic high tech crap that would inevitably blow up something important and, more importantly, end up wasting money.

Ruby was switching between being in denial of, in her opinion, failed technology and being stary-eyed about the big cool shiny sword swing.

Pyrrha just took a deep breath, shook her head and took the money.

/

In Ozpin's office, the two headmasters were watching the live-feed of the match. Or the quick one-sided bout, it was hard to tell.

"And you were accusing me of sending overtrained students to the tournament." Oz teasingly drawled out after watching Arc's attack. "Mine at least know restraint."

Ironwood only huffed, more focused on a different Atlasian pair making their way onto the arena.

-BBW-

Weiss could only sigh as the older boy in front of her kept piling up the generic grievances against the Schnee family that she had heard dozens of times.

Blake and Ilia were at least creative.

Blaming Jacques for shady predatory practices against the competition? He should be lucky that his parents didn't suffer an unsolvable case of mercenary drive-by.

Would he also blame her for fighting back?

Half-listening to Port's pre-match rambling, she finally had enough and shut what's-his-name up by creating a glyph directly in his mouth.

Thankfully it worked and after giving him a second to mutter something about biting his tongue due to a simple small barrier glyph in his mouth, she decided to finally give him a piece of her own mind.

"Listen up, whoever you are." She fixed the significantly taller boy with a glare. "If I wanted to listen to this kind of pathetic insults, I would have called my father! So keep your mouth shut and at least try to move your arms more productively than your mouth." She coldly finished, turned around and started walking towards the designated starting area.

Flynt huffed and started walking away as well.

Neon and Pyrrha just shared a look and awkwardly followed their partners.

"So…which one do you want to fight?" Pyrrha tried to make Weiss refocus on the tournament.

"Hmpf!" Weiss gave it a very short thought. "Deal with that buffoon, if you would. He would probably start crying about oppression if it was me who beat him."

"The other one is a faunus so…"

"Ugh, so what? If I wanted to strangle a cat I would have gone to Blake a long time ago…"

Tactically, it would be more sound for the two of them to gang up on… probably Flynt, he looked like a less mobile fighter. Both of them understood that but

Weiss didn't want to interact with him.

Pyrrha and Weiss, while individually great fighters, had a rather lacking synergy when it came to fighting one, small opponent. Mostly because Weiss preferred large scale dust attacks while Pyrrha would like to fight face to face. In the end it would be more trouble avoiding friendly fire than any benefit from a 2 on 1.

In the end, Pyrrha was yet to reach her opponent but she could already see the explosions of ice shards, a product of Weiss' discount guided missiles, ie. nevermores charged up with ice dust.

/

I really, really hate the speed semblances!

"Youu missed 3!" The damn catgirl yelled from behind the veil of semi-frozen mist.

She couldn't get a direct hit with her birds and the less said about how her hulking knights were trying and failing to catch Neon the better.

"I say we should cut loose."

And do what? Throw a goliath at her? Weiss silently scoffed and deeply frowned as the girl was now circling around, and blocking out her vision with a freaking rainbow! Enough of this!

With a sharp gesture, six summoning glyphs appeared around her, each creating a single giant ethereal arm, sword in hand.

With another one, she spun them around until she finally felt it collide with something. A moment later she could see Neon fly away, her dumb rainbow trailing after her.

Before she could get up, Weiss was already putting her semblance to work. Four out of six glowing swords merged into a giant curved bow. The two others merge into a gigantic arrow.

Weiss turned to her enemy and brandished her rapier, releasing ice, fire and lightning dust into the arrow.

"Do you surrender?" Weiss asked, her voice haughty, intentionally putting on a show with her gesturing and the arrowhead sparking above her head.

Neon, who had just gotten up from after being hit by the flat of a giant blade glared back, grin splitting her face. "Oh, I'm just getting started!"

"So much of this false bravado…she doesn't even know how outmatched she is."

Let's get this over with. "Shame." Weiss commented and the arrow was launched, exploding upon contact into a myriad of colors and earning Weiss a victory. I hoped this tournament would be more…impactful, perhaps? I think I'm starting to understand Yang's and Ruby's lack of interest in it.

"At least we got to show off a bit."

/

"So the little princess was too scared to fight me herself, huh?" Flynt shook his head. "And let me guess, her daddy dearest paid you a small fortune to carry her through Beacon."

Pyrrha had plenty of experience with pre-battle banter and all things considered, he was quite polite. She also could clearly hear uncertainty in his voice. Add to that that he was keeping a large amount of distance between them and was trying to position himself in a way that there would always be some obstacle between them…

Like always, her opponent had already given up and was now preoccupied with saving their face.

At least Weiss was having fun if the explosions were anything to go by. She was a bit worried that the faunus girl could cause some trouble for her partner up close but Weiss was on a team with three predominately close range fighters. She would be fine.

As for her own fight… She just didn't feel like doing anything. She was just tired of all these posturing and meaningless performances. Even Weiss wasn't in it for the fame, she had plenty of that already, no, she was fighting just to stick it up to her father.

So while her opponent was hidden from her sight and weapons, his metal weapon was rather easy to find for her semblance.

And then Weiss decided to end her fight with overwhelming force. Or Pyrrha assumed so when a third of the arena was wiped out and Neon Katt's aura went from 85% to 0.

As Pyrrha was slightly distracted, Flynt decided to take his chances. His partner was down and he didn't have any illusions about his chances against the two Beacon trainees. Jumping over a rock he activated to try to get a good hit in before she could turn around.

Unfortunately, when he tried to blow his trumpet, it only released a weak high-pitched whine. "What the-" And then he was introduced to Nikos' flying shield.

/

"I believe you were saying something about restraint, Oz"

"She is from Atlas, it's still your fault."

-BBW-

"And for the first singles match!" From Haven! Mercury Black!" Port's voice loudly carried over the seats, while the man himself was wondering whether there was any connection to the assassin Marcus Black. "And from Beacon! Blake Belladonna!"

The match was probably the best one so far, mostly because this time it wasn't a one-sided curbstomp. Both fighters were close to mid-range acrobats who weren't throwing around dust so the audience could actually see the fight.

Mercury had some problems with the fight. For one, he was having too much fun and needing to hold back was ruining it. Two, he was pretty sure that the girl was Taurus' ex which meant that he could beat her up to get back at him. But… Taurus was an asshole and would probably enjoy seeing his ex get beat up. Should he be nice to her in that case?

Blake on the other hand, uncaring and not knowing about her opponent's dilemma, capitalized on his momentarily uncertainty and in perfect fashion, for Adam's former pretty much apprentice, she went for a limb. Specifically his outstretched leg that had almost hit her stomach. As her blade started to dimly glow purple she was about to realize why exactly was this kind of attack banned in tournaments.

Aura is blunt, even when covering a sharp edge. So while a hunter covers their weapon in combat, they trade attack potential for enhanced durability of a weapon. Filing the weapon from the inside on the other hand makes it slightly more brittle but much more destructive against grimm. Against another person with an active aura, it does something different. While aura cannot cut, unless a specific semblance is involved, it can push away the aura it hits.

Another thing is that the aura needs a conduit to cover something. The best conduit is the physical body that generates aura. For a body of flesh, the aura covers it evenly. For weapons or… let's say weaponized prosthetics, the further it goes from the body, the thinner the protective layer of aura gets.

So when Blake swung her sword, using a technique that would have most likely only given a somewhat deep cut, even without an aura-break, it completely cut Mercury's right leg just under his knee.

Silence descended on both the arena and everyone watching.

The audience was horrified by the brutality until the cameras zoomed in and showed that there was no blood.

Blake herself was terrified of what she had done, a small part of her blaming Adam for teaching her to fight like this. And then she heard a sound akin to a falling tin can. It came from the severed leg. And Mercury's stump wasn't leaking blood but some brown and clear liquids.

Mercury was at a loss. Sure it was the plan for him to lose and then Em would illusion the girl into attacking him after the fight was over. But the fight wasn't over and he was missing a leg. Did he somehow screw up? Was Emerald already pulling her stunt? Oh right! Now everybody could see that his legs were fake so the whole simulated injury thing went down the drain.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE THOSE ARE!" Mercury yelled loudly enough for everyone to hear it.

That brought Blake out of her stupor as she shamefully looked away from Mercury and then lunged for the missing part of his leg. "Sorry! I-I can…I know! Ruby! She can fix it!" As she was fumbling with the piece of prosthetics, some more tubes and bolts fell out. "Ehm…I'm sure it's salvag-HEY!" She reflexively went down as the compressed air bullet passed over her head. "I'm trying to help you!" She turned around and glared at the backstabbing ass.

"I heard no bell girlie." Mercury said with a smirk, standing on his hand. "By the way, sorry about the bow."

A chill went down her back. She slowly looked behind her.

There it was, slightly torn up, laying on the floor. While she was able to avoid a direct hit on the head, her bow wasn't as lucky and was blown off her head.

"Finish him off already!" Ilia shouted out.

"Yeah! You can do it Blake!" Ruby joined in.

"C'mon, you had worse!" Came from Sun.

She got outed.

Surrounded by people and cameras.

But…did it even matter at this point? It wasn't like she was the only faunus competing. And she was pretty sure that over a half of Beacon had figured her disguise anyway.

And what mattered the most, the people she cared about already knew and were cheering her on.

And with her opponent having very limited mobility, she easily jumped over him, caught his remaining leg in the ribbon and threw him out of bounds.

-BBW-

Somehow, he had ended up as the 'bad guy' of the match in which he was dismembered.

What a joke… Cinder was bad but those reporter-bitches that were in Ozpin's pocket were downright evil. He got his leg cut off but 'oh no! He took a cheap shot! That's bad sportsmanship!' and screw Emerald too! She could have at least tried to salvage the original plan but nooo, she had to get confused and ended up doing nothing at all! At least Cinder was too preoccupied with ironing out the details of the attack to tear them both a new one over their screw up.

/

For Blake, the consequences ended with only being yelled at by Goodwitch. A couple 'I told you so's, some 'this is the last warning's and one 'pull it out in combat class and I'll personally skin you alive' was all it took for her to be let out to celebrate her victory.

Or hide from her other classmates who wanted to ask something dumb about the ears, only made worse by Ruby and Pyrrha who decided that she was outed anyway, and had forbid her from wearing her bow.

/

That was the end of it. For the ones participating.

In the bigger world…there were consequences.

A human girl with the last name Belladonna was just a silly coincidence.

A feline black haired faunus with that last name had a different response. Especially after somebody found a photo of younger Kali Belladonna in which the now faunus 'queen' looked almost identical to the young huntress. Aside from the height. And the haircut.

And the faunus community around the world exploded.

It wasn't just some human tournament with a token monkey faunus anymore.

Their princess was there, fighting among the best each academy had to offer, standing side by side with Pyrrha Nikos as an equal. And if a few photos of the two of them sharing a laugh were to be believed, they were quite friendly.

The Valean faunus cheered and partied, making a killing for any open bar.

On the island of Menagerie the capital launched a spontaneous festival of their own and accidentally barricaded the parents of the girl in their home with stands, soon to be used fireworks and other colorful things that could be even remotely associated with celebrations.

/

In the privacy of her personal house, not just a giant tent, Sienna was watching the recording of the match that put her subordinates into a frenzy within an hour.

She allowed herself a small smile. That was the right way to get things done. Like always, the faunus would flock to Belladonnas on their way for a better future while her and the White Fang would deal with the problems that the law couldn't reach.

And everybody will be happy.

She tiredly sighed. It was a nice idea.

There was just one small problem.

The last time she had any news on the girl, she was still supposed to be the second in command of the Valean cell. But she was apparently at Beacon for over half a year.

Of course, it could be a deep infiltration but theory was unlikely.

Taurus had neither the brains to come up with it and definitely not the patience to wait for it to bring any results.

She was also pretty sure that the reports he was sending her didn't have all the necessary information. Or he was outright lying.

It was becoming more and more obvious after that shitshow with trying to get grimm into the city by some old tunnels.

Unfortunately, there was little she could do about it. He was the cell leader so unless she went to Vale personally he would be in charge. And if the Belladonna had jumped Taurus' sinking ship then it must have been very bad already. The girl used to be obsessed with the guy, if even she couldn't handle his crap then Brothers know what kind of idiocy he had spiraled into.

The only thing left was to hope that he wouldn't ruin everything, now that things finally started to look better.

/

/

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