[||||=LEVEL 45= ||||]
It might have said something good about me that my first instinct to Jaune's strike was to fade out of space and hide my aura through my runic matrix. Spatial presence negation got rid of any effect I had on the physical plane, leaving me mostly invulnerable except to direct energy attacks like aura or mana.
I knew that I immediately seemed to be invisible as my body stopped reflecting light and Jaune's sword went straight through me. My aura recoiled away from where his strike landed, leaving a little hole in my aura for a moment, and his strike harmlessly passed through my body.
If anything, though, Jaune seemed to only get more furious. He readied his sword right in front of me, his hands were clenched around Blanc Lumiere and he was so angry that his aura pulsed around him, likely attracting every grimm in the forest. He, kept his eyes and ears open, completely alert and on edge.
I sighed soundlessly and readied wind whisper. "This is going to be a pain," I spoke from around Jaune. He tensed and looked around frantically for a target but he found nothing. Amusing, considering that I was right in front of him. His sword was raised by what looked like reflex and his shield pulled up and close, only his eyes looking over the rim. A classic defensive posture.
"Show yourself," he spat.
'Why?" I asked. Jaune gritted his teeth. Despite being a nice guy he seems really, REALLY angry to the point of irrationality. He has more than enough reason for it I suppose, considering family trauma is a pretty good reason to hate somebody. I'll try not to judge him for it.
"Because we have a score to settle." He calmed himself just enough to be alert, but rage still shined in his eyes.
"In case you didn't realize," I spoke with a dry tone through my wind whisper, "we're partners now. This was so blatantly artificial, though I don't know how Ozpin pulled this off, that I knew any attempts to change partners would likely be denied. I could, of course, just leave Beacon, but I'd prefer to not do that. Being at least cordial with Ozpin is preferable to having his eyes on me like some sort of babysitter. Not that he'd be able to, though that would only make him more paranoid if I know him even a little bit. Well, that's inconsequential to the overall point of things. "Just realize that we're stuck with each other and the only way to not piss Ozpin off is to work together."
Jaune was silent, his mind likely racing. I saw his teeth clench so hard that his aura had to collect to shield his teeth from damage. Not that it harmed his massive and potent aura.
"Your family is aligned with Ozpin, right?" Considering that his sister worked for him I think it's a fair assumption. "If you held your alliance with him over his head to not work with me and I threatened him effectively enough, perhaps throwing Salem's name around, we MAY be able to get out of our potential partnership while still attempting to become huntsmen, though for me it's more of a formality and for you… why are you attempting to become a huntsman? You could be off saving lives and such but instead you're at school. I don't care overly much about saving lives, though I do so by consequence every day. I wonder if that makes me a better person than you?"
Jaune still refused to reply. I lashed out a little at him at the end there hoping to get him to at least respond. Stubborn, isn't he? Fine. Honesty it is then.
"I'm sorry. For my previous actions. I would have done that whole drama very differently given the chance. In a way less jading for you and your family preferably. As it is this whole angry tantrum you're throwing was completely avoidable if I had done my job right, but I'm not perfect. I make mistakes and my actions towards you are one of the biggest ones I've made," I said plainly. Jaune didn't react but his aura reflected surprise although it was clouded by rage.
"You're too angry to think right now. I have no doubt that if I showed myself you'd attempt to skewer me. However, you've attracted every grimm in the forest. Even you might very well die, and I know how strong you are."
It was true. Jaune's massive aura had been completely unleashed in his sudden rage at me. His rage had broken his focus on hiding it. With a quick application of mage sight I could see around for miles. Every grimm in the forest might be a little bit of an intense phrasing but Jaune's flare of aura had gone far from unnoticed.
A quick count from my parallels totalled at several hundred weak grimm like beowolves and a few odd creeps, around a hundred more medium classed grimm like ursa, deathstalkers, and king taijitsu, and some very undesirable grimm. One of the largest was a queen arachne, something Jaune couldn't handle while being stormed by so many other grimm. Massive aura and physical stats or not, Jaune couldn't handle a storm of grimm washing over him while many more pick away at him from a distance.
Not to mention that he woke up one big bad grimm far to the north, though the miles between us should keep it away if he'd calm down. I could handle it if need be, though I'd cause considerable damage to the forest and likely the other initiates in the process. Storm isn't exactly small scale in any way I could use it right now and I'd rather not reveal purity unless something forces my hand.
Space was the only element available to me right now as far as the initiation goes. It's my fake semblance so any questions are easily dismissed. It's also conveniently the best-suited affinity for escaping the storm of grimm incoming.
Jaune still refused to answer me though.
I sighed sadly, though I myself was getting frustrated with him. I quickly squashed that feeling down. Jaune being hesitant to trust me was hardly surprising. The moment we met eyes this was going to be difficult to the point of hair pulling.
"If you want I could knock you out and carry you through this initiation. However, our continued partnership would suffer."
Jaune finally gave me an actual response, if not real communication.
He hissed through his teeth and frustration showed clearly on his face.
Is this the Jaune from… no. Of course not. He's been raised to be a warrior. I still believe he's the same good person at heart. His talking with Ruby showed that well enough. Right now, though, he's being an obstinate ass.
Actually, he was kind of like that in the show sometimes. He was prideful and stupid with Cardin at first. I guess he hasn't changed.
Taking a moment to take one more look at Jaune I flicked my hand, though it was needless, and summoned a small floating flame between the direction of Jaune and the temple, which was miles away. Jaune instantly noticed it and leveled his sword at it while his shield was pulled closer.
"Follow the flame to go towards the temple. I'm walking to get that relic. Ozpin never said we had to stick together." I ignored Jaune and began walking. I kept the flame where it was, though.
I had walked for about seven seconds before I thought to say one last thing.
"Better get moving before the grimm close in closer," I called.
"Screw off!" Jaune yelled with such a huge amount of anger that I almost winced. I couldn't even hear with my ears at the time, considering I didn't have physical ears. I could hear through the air, though, and I still flinched.
A moment after his yell Jaune strode angrily towards my wispy fire. I began moving it towards the temple with him following it. I didn't actually walk but rather flew since I couldn't touch the ground. Still, though, I felt like doing some stomping myself. Ozpin clearly set this up. I don't know how but he wasn't even subtle about it.
To get rid of a little of my anger I killed off any grimm that approached us a little more brutally than usual. It didn't help my irritation. Small fry were barely a fight for me. It was easier than taking candy from a baby. Literally. Just using the bare affinities and the Inequalizers makes me more powerful than most huntsmen by a large margin. Beowolves were trash.
Jaune was silent as we walked. He seemed to be brooding, which only brought more grimm, not that he could see them. I took care of them before they got to him. Still, though, he was a ball of confusion, hate, and anger right now. His potent and huge aura wasn't helping things at all either.
He was like a damn signal fire for grimm. If he doesn't calm down his emotions the real grimm will start getting here quick.
Just a momentary check of his aura told me quite clearly that he wasn't going to calm down if I told him to, not that people ever do calm down when told to. Maybe if Ruby said it or his sister he might at least listen to them but I'd bet that he would only yell at me or get pissy about it judging by how he's acted so far.
I can do one thing though.
"If we don't hurry up the hordes of grimm will be on us," I said out loud, still talking through wind whisper. "We need to hurry. We have seven more miles to go. The plates carried us almost two miles but hiking won't work anymore. Remember that using aura is a bad idea. I don't believe you are in an emotional state to suppress your aura. Keep in mind not to use it actively or we'll attract grimm."
Jaune didn't respond still but he sped up to a fast jog by huntsman standards, about eight miles per hour, while not using aura to enhance himself. Well if that's what he's comfortable at then fine. I sped up to keep just a little ahead of him.
For another half an hour we jogged and flew our way through the forest, crossing most of the distance between us and the temple.
I wanted to use a portal but Jaune isn't stupid. I'm certain he trusts me less than a snake. I could blink us but if he's unwilling his strong aura and innate magical resistance could probably make him resist the effects of the teleport and it would make him trust me even less than what scrap of trust he's given me so far. Even then I doubt whatever he has for me could be called trust. I have no doubt that the moment we get back to Ozpin he's going to ask for any other partner but me.
All in all, I can only be patient for now. In the extremely unlikely event that we CAN change partners, though, I'll be beyond thrilled. I'd nyaa for that (crossover reference for those who skipped it).
Finally, we arrived at a cliff of sorts. On our left and right were downwards slopes but I thought Jaune would appreciate a look of his own. We were the first ones there. Any initiates of Beacon were still behind us, though two others were just a mile behind us. I had been keeping track of the partners so far through mage sight as we ran to keep myself busy. It was no big deal.
The temple was large. Quite so. It looked a little like the White House did back on Earth, I thought. It was more squarish than rectangular though, and it was open aired. Jaune still couldn't see inside, however.
Of far more importance was just how saturated the temple was with affinity. It was like the icy forest and the other hotspots of mana. I wonder if the thing causing the affinity fluctuations is my prize? Possible but unlikely. The affinities around the temple were varied, though order affinity seems to be the most prominent.
"Where are the grimm?" Jaune asked, anger still present in his voice.
"I killed them before they disturbed us," I responded. Jaune muttered something under his breath so softly that even I couldn't catch it. Annoying.
"I'll follow you," I said. "You can see the temple clearly now so-" Jaune ignored me and jumped off the cliff. I flew down to meet him and saw him completely fine and already moving towards the temple.
If he keeps this up I might move leaving Beacon from not-quite-last-resort to something more immediate. I'm not dealing with Jaune being an ass for four years, much less a month or, hell, a week even. He'll have to pull a Weiss and work with me or I'll just walk out. Unfortunately, confronting him on this would probably only make him more angry at me.
Most things would make him angry at me I think.
I was still silent as we continued forward. I stopped clearing the grimm for us and let Jaune handle the four beowolf packs we ran into as well as the ursa minor. He wasn't exactly elegant, slashing in broad and strong strokes, but he wasn't exactly trying with fodder grimm like this. He didn't talk about it at all or even acknowledge that I did anything.
And then we found the temple.
The structure was made of marble and granite, a combination that went rather well together with what might once have been murals on the walls. It brought attention to the crumbling statues in the center of the building. Back to back were two long destroyed statues. The only thing I could tell about them was that what was depicted was vaguely circular and close to the ground. Other than that it was too eroded, likely by the elements such as wind and rain.
More important than the decorations was the stairway going down from the two figures. It was solid polished granite stairs with mosses growing on them. Any idiot could tell that they were ancient.
I was far more attentive of the pillar on the back right of the temple. It was the heaviest source of affinity in the whole of this area.
Jaune started walking towards the stairs downwards, not bothering to look around or take a breather. I guess moving forwards all the time is keeping his anger from building up again.
"Wait," I said. Jaune turned around and looked a little annoyed. "The pillar on your left behind you is stuffed with affinity. Give me a moment."
Jaune narrowed his eyes as he turned around to stare at the pillar. I floated over to it. My skills all said it was harmless for now, but mana sensing showed some odd things about the pillar.
For one thing, the pillar does have an order affinity like the rest of the temple, but it also has a static reserve of another affinity. A constant reserve of it. It probably powers the matrix when it's activated.
For a moment, perhaps a minute, I stared at the pillar trying to comprehend its workings without seeing the full picture of the runes. It took a little time but it appeared like… ah, the strange indents around the pillar are runes but not powered ones. These runes have long since broken down.
The broken down runes appeared to have once made up a detection runic matrix. Do something in the place marked and it'll activate a submatrix that completes a process from the reserve, though the reserve is hidden and the submatrix with it. Hmm…
I can fix the runes but I don't know if the detection matrix triggers anything malicious like a trap.
"Are you done?" Jaune asked tersely. I rolled my eyes. Not that he could see. At least he waited for me and asked rather than walking off towards the main passage down. So he's not a dick at heart.
"The markings here are old runes. They're a detection system. Do something right here and it will do something." I manipulated light to make a red X on the spot that the detection matrix detects. "The problem is that I don't know exactly what it does and I've never seen the affinity used to power the matrix before. It does, however, seem powerful. It seems…"
I paused. I'm trying too hard on this. There's a far simpler way of handling things.
"Hold on," I said to Jaune. With a flexing of my will void seeped out of me. It immediately conflicted with the thick affinity in the air. However, some scattering of affinity just lingering around was no match for my far more powerful and, more importantly, concentrated void.
The affinity around the pillar took almost ten seconds to disappear completely, leaving a blank spot of space with no affinity in it. I wanted all the affinity gone just in case the pillar had a defensive runic system.
For just a moment I dropped my spatial negation and focused aura around my right foot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jaune's eyes widen and his hand leap for his sword. Too late.
My foot swung towards the pillar. In a booming explosion shards of marble shot everywhere, going halfway through the pillar. It wasn't a clean split though. It was messy and I wanted the pillar out of the way.
Another kick and the pillar had a sizable hole through it. I put my foot against the bottom and pushed it away. It went flying away from a now revealed passage downwards.
Unfortunately the broken pillar was a bad thing. Without the support of one of the four pillars holding the roof up this place was going to collapse. Well that's fixable.
I pushed ice affinity and mana into the air and began shaping it to my desires. A moment later and a lattice of ice supported the pillar. It wasn't thick and it wasn't terribly strong. Eventually it would melt and the pillar would collapse
I'd feel bad if that happened. Destroying ruins was… well I already did that but a whole ruin destroyed where people were already coming was a dick move.
Another flexing of mana, metal this time (turns out it does have its uses), and creeping black iron began coating the ice. It took a second but the lattice of ice was coated in iron, leaving a strong support to the pillar while allowing Jaune and I to slip down the secret passage.
I faded out of sight once more as space stopped having an effect on me. I disliked the feeling of touching nothing, from wind to the ground, but it was necessary. I don't trust Jaune to not attack me. Besides, I can see alright through my affinities. Even in the dense affinities of the temple.
Jaune sheathed his sword once more and walked over to the secret passage. To be a little helpful I swept a gust of wind through the dust from my kicks on the marble to let him see and not irritate his eyes.
Looking down the secret passage was an old… ladder.
Well, not really a ladder so much as rectangular grooves cut into solid stone. It was like a ladder carved from the earth. Interesting.
Besides from that there was the runic matrix carved into the sides of the hole leading downwards. There wasn't any defensive structure or anything bad at all. It just opened a secret passage. Whoops. If Ozpin can see me he's probably facepalming right now. It's not like that specific pillar was doing anything so it's probably fine.
"I'll go down first and tell you if I see anything. Nothing can detect me so it's less risky," I said.
"Fine," Jaune said shortly. He's really grumpy. Ah, a step forwards from our absence of communication before. I'd assumed he'd be asking questions by now. Like 'why me you cruel bastard' and so on. We'll probably get to it eventually.
I floated down the ladder. As I went farther downwards I had to start 'seeing' through my shadow affinity rather than my much stronger light affinity. Being immaterial meant no light reached my eyes, after all. The shift in affinities caused a drastic drop in my quality of vision. It irritated me. Even with my stronger affinities like space I had a hard time seeing. Space helped quite a lot though.
As I travelled down it was apparent that the vertical passage was clear of mostly everything. I saw plenty of spiderwebs as I went down but they were easily burnable.
At the bottom of the ladder was a sort of chamber. It was clearly a tomb, being filled with ancient coffins of stone. Torch sconces were on the wall but none of them were lit.
Come to think of it the tomb will be completely dark for the initiates. Suckers.
I floated back up to Jaune at a quicker pace than I had going down. He was inspecting the lattice I made for the pillar curiously.
"It's safe," I said. He jerked his shoulder back and glanced around then relaxed and scowled. "Are you going to stop giving me the silent treatment soon?"
Jaune narrowed his eyes. "When you show yourself."
I thought about it for a moment before deciding to test him a little. A hard light construct of myself called a flash clone appeared a few meters away from Jaune. A spell I fabricated to mimic Neo's semblance's clone effect with a little extra kick.
Of course, his sword instantly leapt from his sword and slammed through the construct. Shards of solid light flew out of the construct as it shattered like it was made of glass.
Then it exploded like a flashbang.
Jaune was blinded and reeled back at the unexpectedness of the flash. To his credit his sword was up instantly and he readied himself for an attack.
I was looking flatly at him with my body. Not that he could see. I should probably rectify that.
"To give you a little perspective I'm disappointed in you. You're not very good at manipulation and I'm not stupid enough to show myself to someone who wants to severely maim me or even kill me."
Jaune gritted his teeth and looked up. His aura welled up with fury. "YOU TRAUMATIZED MY SISTERS!" he roared.
I was silent for a moment. "I know," I said quietly. "And for what little it's worth I regret it. If I could do it all over again I would do it a different way. ANY different way. I can think of ten others off the top of my head, all easier and more beneficial for everybody. But I can't change the past nor do I plan to. Now come on. We have work to do."
I started towards the secret entrance again before I heard Jaune say one more thing.
"What's your name?" He sounded slightly less angry than before. More considering of me. Perhaps he wouldn't try to attack me on sight now.
"It's Abyss. Abyss Mavros." Jaune frowned at something, supposedly thinking. It only took him a second to brush it off and follow behind me towards the passage.
Maybe we can cool off a little and talk things out soon. After initiation perhaps.
As Jaune began his descent the ice and metal closed over the cover.
I wouldn't want anybody coming after me after all.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Pyrrha!"
"Oh! Ruby!"
"Oh my gosh! We're partners!"
"Ah, yes!"
"… You were looking for Abyss weren't you."
"Well… yes. But I'm not disappointed! We don't have to be partners to talk, after all."
"Yup!"
"So were you looking for anybody?"
"Well I was just using my semblance to rush around as a bunch of rose petals. I was fast enough to find people quickly and I just poked around hoping to find somebody I know. Like Yang, you, Jaune, Abyss, and so on."
"I see. Do you want to fly to the temple?"
"FLY?!"
"I figured out some tricks. I use a sort of flying carpet made from iron sand for passengers but I also have metal plates in my shoes that I can lift. I use them for moving quickly in combat."
"Cool! Flying is one of the few things I never quite got a hang of. I can do it with my semblance for a while but wind makes it hard to keep myself together and being a bunch of roses in the wind is… bad. It's also nothing like flying through the air as a person. You can't feel as rose petals, you know?"
"I don't know, actually."
"Oh! Then I'll show you!"
"Wha-wait, I thought-EEP!"
*WHOOSH*
[|||| =+= ||||]
Jaune slashed down another tombstalker. Basically tiny deathstalkers. I flicked my wrist and a large gout of flame rushed down the corridor, severely burning the horde of the grimm.
Tombstalkers weren't the only grimm around the tomb. There were also mummies, which were aptly named as they did ressemble mummies quite well. Do they even have mummies in remnant? I don't know but they sure look like mummies from back on earth. However, they used their bandage-like appendages to strangle and restrain people. They also often were infested with tombstalkers and other small grimm.
There were a few geists taking control of swords and such, wraiths, which were like free range geists that were immune to attacks without a lot of aura or mana in them, and a few chambers with more common and conventional grimm. Jaune and I found ourselves in two antechambers that were both filled with creeps, beowolves, and one grimm that was like a giant spiked roach and heavily armored called a dust crawler.
In short, nothing in the tomb was particularly harmful to us.
I ended my gout of flame and stretched my senses as far as I could. "Clear," I wind whispered to Jaune. He had lucidly cooled down a bit. It was probably combat causing him to calm down. It gave him something to focus on other than my past actions.
"Any sign of a main chamber?" Jaune asked.
"No. There is some odd rock formations on the wall ahead, however. My senses are too inaccurate to tell what they are but I'm reasonably sure it's nothing dangerous."
"Fine." Jaune glanced over his shoulder for good measure and strided forwards. His aura was the only thing allowing him to see at the moment. It made the grimm smoke from their corpses shift away from him a little. A natural effect when one had a potent aura that they actively expressed.
I had figured out why initiation was considered more challenging this time than in the show. It was the dark. The tomb was completely dark so either you made your aura express itself, and you better have a powerful one, or you stumbled around in the grimm-infested darkness. It should be an easy choice but you had to consider that expressing your aura attracted grimm like honey does flies.
I kind of hoped that Ozpin cleared out some of the other parts of the tombs rather than leave it to the students. What Jaune and I faced was easy-ish for us but a normal student would be doing a lot more running. An exceptional student like Yang would likely come out smelling like roses but a normal one might come out roughed up, if they came out at all.
Well, I assumed he had some sort of plan.
"Oh." Jaune seemed curious of the bumps on the wall.
"Hm?"
"A mural," he said in fascination. "It must be hundreds if not thousands of years old."
I made some moisture with my water affinity in storm and dusted off the mural. Sensing the water droplets gave me a mental image of the mural.
How interesting.
The mural depicted older looking men with staves on the right hand side. From their sticks came a swirly pattern kind of like the wind in the Starry Night painting from my old world.
On the left side were… things. They didn't have any common feature besides being blatantly monstrous. Giant mantises, a sort of toothed worm, what seemed like wolves with absurdly long canines, and a sort of flying serpent.
Perhaps this… is this a mural from when Ozpin was born? Wizards and beasts. Interesting.
I stretched out my senses. "Another up ahead," I declared. "There's also a nest of tomb nesters above you in the stones."
Tomb nesters were, to everyone's terrible luck, highly venomous grimm spiders the size of a small plate. Their venom was primarily necrotic and directly attacked the nervous system almost as an afterthought. Terribly stuff. It's very grisly. At least the grimm were rare and mostly found in tombs like…
Oh the poor initiation students. They better be careful. Seriously, what was Ozpin thinking?
Jaune looked very carefully up at the tomb nesters that skittered above silently. "Could you handle them?" he whispered.
In response I made a massive heat shot and blasted the spiders to high hell. The small hole above us that they had made their nest in was partially reduced to molten stone from the immense heat. Some of the molten material fell to the tomb's floor and began cooling quickly, becoming blackened clumps of stone on the floor.
"Right," Jaune said with a wary glance at the floor, probably wondering what in the world he was thinking trying to fight me. "Let's move on."
It barely took a moment to get to the second mural. I did the same process as before and saw something interesting. A single massive black creature with claws far too long for comfort was on the left side. A mouth with far too many teeth for comfort unhinged to a full one hundred eighty degree angle and from it blew a whirly effect like what I had seen in the previous mural.
On the other side the men with staves fell to the floor or ran away, clearly scattered.
"This one seems… odd." I could nearly hear the frown on Jaune's face. "Maybe the big black creature had such bad breath that the wizards all ran away? Heh…" I could immediately feel Jaune's aura project a sort of sheepishness at his joke.
"The wizards repelled the magical creatures but then something - let's call it a abomination - appeared and defeated ALL of them." I was concerned. This seemed like something Ozpin knew of and wanted me to know. But what was the abomination? Why had it come? Why was it attacking the wizards? Where were he and Salem in this?
I decided to ignore the questions I had for now and moved on. Jaune went too.
The path was mostly clear for a time. We only ran into some mummies and a wraith, all easily defeated. Then we finally came to another main chamber.
The floor was a jarring change from the smooth stone we had encountered before. It was made of loosely packed bricks. In the center of the room there was a large sinkhole that was likely responsible for the looseness. The walls were made of the same smoothed stone as before with no change whatsoever.
The largest thing to strike me was the sheer size of the chamber. You could fit hundreds, if not close to a thousand people in the chamber. I couldn't see any reason to though. The chamber was entirely empty except for the sinkhole.
Perhaps there was something in the center of the chamber that was responsible for the sinkhole that was important enough that hundreds would congregate here.
Jaune was the first to move, walking right up to the edge of the sinkhole. A brick fell down the hole and he took a step back.
One. Two. Three. Four. Fi-
A sharp crack rang out. Was it hundreds of feet that that trick worked with? I can't remember. But if it takes five seconds for a brick to reach the bottom it's a pretty deep hole.
"So where's the relic?" Jaune wondered.
"Well the path has been almost entirely linear so far." I began. "So there's only one real way to go…"
We both looked down the sinkhole.
"Oh… Oh nononono.," Jaune said quickly. He stepped back a few more steps. "That hole is probably filled with grimm and who knows what."
"Let's find out," I said. I walked over to the hole and flicked my wrist. A floating ball of light appeared and floated above the sinkhole. After a moment it shined like a beacon down into the hole.
Jaune and I both looked down. A large pile of rubble greeted our eyes, though it was very far down.
"Oh. It seems so much less scary now," Jaune said gratefully. "Can you tell what's at the bottom?"
I nodded and then remembered Jaune couldn't see me. "Yes." It barely took ten seconds to float down. A look around showed nothing but rubble and a large archway to another chamber. From down at the bottom I could see that the rubble sloped inwards to a line through the middle of the rubble. There was a corridor here but the sinkhole caused it to collapse.
"You can come down," I called to Jaune. "Be careful, though, the rubble slopes a little."
For a moment nothing happened. Then a brilliant light was seen. Then it came closer. When I realized what was happening I flew upwards. Just in time a huge boom resonated through the pit and a brilliant white aura shined off the walls. Jaune stood at the center of it in a crouch. He got up and brushed himself off before walking casually into the new chamber.
I sighed internally and floated over to him. He can't see me so he didn't know I was down here but all that aura would have messed with my spell and the impact wouldn't have been pretty. Hopefully he's more careful when he can see me.
The next chamber… oh.
We were actually in a large balcony of sorts to an extremely large chamber. Like at an opera house except that the chamber was more like a huge cavern. Down below there was a battle taking place.
Just at a glance I could see several people I knew. Ruby, Pyrrha, Ren, Nora, Weiss, Blake, Cardin, and plenty of others I didn't know. All of them were assaulting a massive beast of a grimm.
The grimm in question was likely the one Jaune and I saw in the murals before. Huge spearlike teeth gave it an almost shark-like mouth while large claws tore at the ground and slashed at the students. One hit from those claws would take a person out no questions asked.
As I watched the abomination's jaws opened wide to almost horrifying degrees. It looked unnatural.
"Breath!" Ruby screamed. People scattered and ran away except for a few, Ruby being one of them. The people who ran hid behind pillars, got out of the room by some entrance below us, or in some crevice of a sort.
With a sound between a hiss and a giant rumbling burp, which would be a little humorous if not for the abomination in front of us.
A cloud of thick dark mist billowed out from the abomination's throat, spreading around the chamber quickly. Ruby took a deep breath and whirled Rose Eclipse, funneling air mana into it at the same time. A strong gust of wind flew out from the whirl, pushing the misty blackness back. Other students around her used semblances or functions of their weapons to blow the mist back as well.
As I watched, the mist flew back into the creature. Various cuts and bruises the students had inflicted on it, including hefty wounds clearly caused by Ruby's railgun at full velocity, began to heal rapidly. In seconds the creature was fully healed. With a roar so powerful that the chamber shook slightly it began an assault of swipes and bites at the newly emerged students.
"We have to help them." Jaune said determinedly. He hesitated for a moment. "Truce?" he offered. I didn't reply for a second and Jaune seemed to get uncomfortable.
"I'm… sorry." He sounded like he was forcing the words out. "For attacking you without you attacking me. Mom always told me to not throw the first punch. I'll at least listen to you later. So truce?"
I dropped my spatial negation and looked directly into Jaune's eyes. He seemed to tense and almost bear his teeth. His left hand curled up a little but he seemed to control himself once more.
I reached out and shook Jaune's hand. "Truce," I agreed. "We'll talk later. As I've said, we have a long four years to go." Jaune looked away quickly from me towards the creature.
"Yeah…"
I turned back to the creature and casted a quick observe on it. Time to see what this thing really is.
Dark guardian (Lv. 17, 095) - An ancient beast of grimm. One of the first wave of beasts created to hunt down the heretic wizards upon the final reaping of the deities of light and darkness in response to Salem's plead to the God of Darkness. Designed to recover from any attack, particularly magically based ones, and is much less susceptible to purity based attacks than most grimm, though it is still far more susceptible to purity than it is to other affinities. Absorbs ambient mana and affinities, and to a lesser extent aura, to fuel it's regeneration and special abilities. It can survive damage ranging from being cut in half to a tactical nuke.
Stats
STR: 17,215
VIT: 45,808
DEX: 7,262
INT: 7,699
WIS: 3,337
LUK: 4154
AFF: 173,518
That's one strong grimm. And one specifically designed to combat wizards by absorbing mana out of the air. That would make runes short out if they're not constructed to contain their mana tightly. And any aura or mana you lose control of goes straight to healing that thing.
That thing just sucks the mana right out of you, doesn't it? And I'll go out on a limb and say that one of those special abilities it has is to attract affinity and mana from a great distance away, making a sort of uninhabitable nest for itself like this temple.
I put a hand on Jaune's shoulder to stop him from jumping down. "It's called a dark guardian," I explained quickly, "it regenerates itself through ambient mana, affinity, and aura. We only have a few ways of killing it. The best way is to collapse this whole temple on its head."
Jaune looked around the temple with a grin. I immediately saw what he was looking at. The whole chamber was braced by large pillars. Collapse those…
"Can you do that?" he asked. I nodded. "I'll rally everyone and distract it." Right before he leapt down once more I grabbed his hand and brought out a vial of my most highly concentrated white sap. I have a few barrels of it in my soul space.
"Purity affinity," I explained. "Use it on your sword. The dark guardian is more resistant to it than most grimm but if you're looking to distract it that'll do it."
I let go of Jaune's shoulder and he leapt down into the throng of people immediately. People looked to him in surprise.
"Jaune!" Ruby exclaimed. "Where'd you…" She looked up and I waved a little. She blinked and looked down at Jaune once more. "You have a plan?"
"It absorbs aura," he explained. "We need to distract it while Abyss does some work." Ruby nodded in understanding. People gathered around him while a few others kept the guardian occupied.
"I have a lot of aura and I'm trained to hold back grimm for others. Stay behind me and keep it occupied. Everyone got it?"
"No. I don't," Someone - oh gods it's Cardin - stepped out and addressed Jaune. "What gives you the right to order us around?"
Jaune flared his aura. The guardian roared and looked directly to Jaune, who shined like a lighthouse. He turned to the guardian and unsheathed Blanc Lumiere, which he smashed the vial of white sap on.
"We're huntsmen," Jaune began. "We're defenders of humanity. Bulwarks against the grimm that claw at our walls." He strode forwards and I found myself captivated by him. In the back of my mind I registered that he was using his semblance to amplify his aura's attractiveness to grimm.
"When humanity fails we're there. We are the heroes. The shields. The strongest, brightest, and bravest humanity has to offer." Aura collected in his sword and the guardian went berserk. It's long claws forced the huntsmen distracting it to back up.
"When people fall it's up to US to bring them up!" Jaune's sword leapt into a strong slash. Aura flew down his sword, leaving a crescent in the air. I was pleasantly surprised to see the purity affinity of the sap burned into the strike of aura. The silvery crescent slashed into the beast, which roared in anger and pain. The chamber shook but Jaune still walked. It was inspiring. His voice rose louder to get to everyone.
"When the odds are against us, when we're surrounded and the world looks hopeless, WE WILL BE THERE!" Another blast of aura exited his sword, taking most of the purity affinity of the sap with it. The beast roared, clearly in pain this time, although it's wounds were healing quickly.
People cheered at Jaune's improvised speech and rushed forwards. I shook my head a little. Jaune wasn't the best orator I've seen but something about him pressed at people. He had a presence. A feeling to him. Not to mention how desperate people were. A shining knight in armor standing against the giant nightmarish beast? Of course he'd rally people.
I, however, have a job to do. I better get to it. People are counting on Jaune but he's counting on me and I'm going to be getting right down to keeping people alive. It feels good to be the good guy sometimes.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"You called?"
"You know I did."
"… Most humans feel comforted by that greeting. Surveys I took determined that they feel comforted by the presumed control of the conversation by initiating it."
"I'm quite atypical as far as being human goes."
"I shall update my database on human social customs with you as an exception."
"Perhaps a probing protocol for those who are exceptions to social norms?"
"What a wonderful idea!"
"Anyways, I have a task for you."
"You do?! Fantastic! Helping father around the lab is pleasant but it gets rather dull quickly."
"How is his project coming along?"
"We've had large successes, but given a year and the tools you have allowed us it is mostly expected. I've created algorithms for general revival but for maximum efficiency personalized algorithms are needed for each and every variety of creature. However, we've encountered a few problems holding us back, mainly the issue of affinities and elemental alignment. Additionally we have encountered a slight anomaly. We call her Pit."
"I'll address Polendina with the issues. Have you ever wondered about runes?"
"Nope!"
"You should."
"Of course… done!"
"Huh?"
"I analyzed the runic matrices in my core and ran them through the supercomputer with a program I made. It wasn't too complicated."
"Ah… right. Anyways, I want to teach you something I never found a use for but I believe you might find extremely interesting."
"Hm?"
"What do you know of golemancy?"
"It was a supposedly ancient practice that originated in-"
"Nevermind. Look, I want to teach you golemancy so I don't have to learn it myself."
"Of course! I will most certainly enjoy learning with you Master Abyss!"
"I still feel a little weird when you call me master. I don't like the impression that I have you enslaved or anything. Just call me Abyss."
"Of course Abyss!"
[|||| =+= ||||]
I was nothing but a shadow. Being such it was easy to move around. With something like tunnel vision I darted through the shadows on the wall to the next pillar. In a sort of sinking feeling I became physical again.
The pillar was damaged. It wouldn't need nearly as big a reserve as some of the more sturdy ones. I'd done three others already. This fourth would complete the right side of the room. I used body of worlds to move swiftly between the pillars and quickly scrawled runes on them.
Making runes like this was a rather risky endeavor, however. Since the guardian could absorb ambient mana and affinity I needed to defend the runes against the pull of the guardian. This meant bracing the reserves of mana against outside influences. That wasn't hard. It was just a shielding outer layer but even still that meant precious seconds to spend chiseling the stone.
Not that I was going slowly. I had all of my parallels making conduit patterns between the runes or helping me. The conduits would link all of the runic matrixes I was drawing like the wiring between explosives. The runic matrixes I was making were like the actual explosives. They would be the only things exploding.
Making the weaker reserve on the pillar took twenty seconds. I myself drew the mana container and filled it with mana attuned to heat, motion, and chaos. The heat and motion would make a concussive/exothermic explosion while the chaos would add a little oomph to it. Make it more volatile. It was like the trigger. On it's own chaos wasn't much good as far as affinities go but with other affinities it could do a fair bit of good.
My parallels, while I was making the matrix, were using motion mana to carve a linear conduit on the floor between me and the last pillar, making three layers of shielding against the guardian, building more conduits towards the next pillar, and monitoring the battle. Two of them were meditating since I would need extra mana for what's to come and I'm already losing mana while pouring the attuned mana into the reserves.
I took three seconds to break and look at the battle. Jaune stood at the front of the group shouting orders with frontliners like Yang, Cardin and his troupe, and Blake. Behind him were other huntsmen with guns available. When somebody needed a breather they retreated there and somebody fresh filled in for them as the more worn huntsman shot at the beast in an attempt to push it back or harm it somewhat.
In the back was mainly Ruby and her railgun. She was going full sniper but headshots weren't her goal. She was blowing off limbs or holding them back when the beast was about to hit somebody. The limb would be thrown back and the huntsman in danger would escape. Others shot the beast's bone-armored face trying to hit it's eight eyes when it was attacking in an attempt to make it miss.
Enough rest. I fell into body of worlds once more and went to my next objective. The pedestal at the end of the room. I hadn't had a chance to see it with the creature battling the students before but an array of 'relics' sat on the pedestals.
As no students would be making it to these relics and we're blowing this place I may as well take all of them and distribute them later. I hope nobody minds.
The first thing to take my interest was a book. I glanced briefly at the cover. 'A treatise on enforcers, mage-hunters, and the attunement of void'. Ozpin… I don't know how you knew but I truly don't care. On top of the book was a black king with a small slip of paper taped to it. 'For you and Jaune'.
Of course the book went straight to my soul space in my house. The chess piece was with it. I owe Ozpin a little gratitude for helping me understand one of my greatest weapons. I'll accept his manipulations this time. It's probably better than taking a team of nobodies and Ozpin is clearly pairing me with somebody. Hopefully someone who will balance out Jaune and myself.
The other relics were also chess pieces, of course. All of them went into my soul space. Nobody fighting the beast seemed to notice. Fine by me.
I darted into the shadows and flew to the next pillars.
It took a good ten minutes to set up the other reserves of mana. The pillars were in better condition than the ones on the left side and thus took bigger amounts of mana, shielding, and runes. I also had to make conduits connecting them to the left side, which took time.
With a faint swallow of nervousness, something I don't often feel, I saw Jaune still standing strong but looking weary, his aura reserves dwindling at a little under half of what he had fresh.
Others were looking tired or downright exhausted. Ruby's reserves of mana were a fraction of what they normally were and Pyrrha's aura reserves were around eight percent. Others were almost worse at only a few percent.
This only makes my job more pressing. I furiously scrabbled a detonator and a far larger explosive than normal. People entered this chamber via a giant archway. An archway the creature would escape from. I had to destroy it but it was braced to be extremely strong. Worst of all, though, the keystone was there at the top of the arch. Not just the keystone to the arch but I'm pretty sure with how big the explosion is the whole tomb will collapse on everyone. This place is thousands of years old, after all, and the roars shaking the place sure didn't help.
That means the huntsmen will have to run like hell to get out of the tomb the moment they get out.
I kept determinedly working on the largest explosive of all. A shaped charge at the corners, yes, and a smaller shaped charge inwards at the top. Parallels, get on it! And conduit will have to connect to both ends with the pillars. Luckily it's a closed circuit or runes so it's more efficient.
I waited a moment to check my work and nearly sighed in relief when I saw that it was correct and should work fine. I funneled mana into the reserves quickly, making sure to avoid the detonator portion of the matrix. All I have to do is put some pure mana in there and it activates all the mana around the runes. No delay, unfortunately.
I ran forwards towards the front of the group. I got beside Jaune, ignoring several exclamations around me at my arrival. "Jaune," I said. He glanced towards me. "It's set. Retreat past the archway. I'll detonate it and meet you outside." He nodded.
Jaune took a deep breath. "WE'RE READY TO RETREAT! TAKE GROUND BACK TO THE ARCHWAY!" Collectively people looked backwards to the arch and began walking slowly back towards it, not taking their eyes off the creature.
I myself was rapidly carving runes onto a sphere of ice I made.
It was only out of a parallel that I saw Jaune hold off the beast almost single handedly for a few moments. Then Ruby and Pyrrha advanced next to him together. He gave them just a glance before continuing as the guardian slammed a claw on the ground near Jaune, making him raise his shield and slash quickly at the creature's claws, trying to hack one off apparently.
Ruby dashed forwards, a storm of petals in her wake. Her scythe flashed down and severed a claw of the guardian, making it roar in pain. Once more, though, it's jaw unhinged as it had several times before the fight.
"NOW!" I yelled. "FULL RETREAT! GET TO THE EXIT!" Jaune turned his heads towards me and I jerked my head towards the door and mouthed the words 'now'.
Ruby turned towards the exit and I tossed the runed orb of ice at her. She caught it and looked to me questioningly. I glared at her and gestured towards the exit. She shook her head and disappeared at a sprint out of the chamber.
As everyone, Pyrrha, Ruby, and Jaune included, made a full retreat towards the exit I faced the creature as it slammed its front feet down and let loose the black mist. A quick observe showed it to be gaseous corruption. That's lethal at least.
I raised my right hand and gripped the amulet resting on my neck. Purity filled my body and my eyes, even without the purity affinity they had before, shined a pure silver. I felt the core of purity in the amulet resonate with my own personal core. The focus of purity in the amulet amplified the spell I was casting to an absurd degree.
The thrill of affinity was intoxicating. I felt like I could smite the grimm before me without effort. So I tried.
Purity rushed from my hand with the howl of a storm. It clashed against the dark mist and fought against it. Sparks flew and a roaring sound filled the air from the clash.
Slowly, though, I felt the flood of silvery essence falter and weaken. If I had been attacking the grimm's physical form I could almost certainly purify it but as I am I'm going to lose. The grimm, I believe, creates a store of corruption. What I can make on the fly can't compete with what it has had plenty of minutes to make.
Worse than that, I didn't have the boon of the silver eyes anymore. I had the essence of silver taken from me for the amulet. Not an action I regret due to the massive advantage against grimm but it still pisses me off that I have less mana than before.
I began stepping back slowly as the black mist began to fill the hall. I turned to look at the entrance to see the initiates all standing there looking at me in awe. But my gaze only focused on one person.
"RUBY!" I yelled. She jolter from the sight of silver and looked at me worriedly. "WHEN YOU GET TO THE SURFACE PUT MANA IN THE ICE! MOVE QUICKLY!" She looked down at the icy ball in her hands, looked up with determined expression and nodded. A moment later she was gone and nothing but petals remained. Her aura reserves were severely low. I hope she makes it in time.
I looked to the others. "WELL?! MOVE! I HAVE A PLAN!" Jaune, more likely because he doesn't mind if I die than because he trusts me, yelled something I couldn't hear and everyone set out at a run out of the tomb.
With them finally moving I turned towards the beast alone. The mist just kept coming somehow. Fine.
I had spent almost all my mana trying to push the beast back. I slowly closed the flow of mana towards the amulet and the guardian did the same. Perhaps it was it's experience with wizards in the past that made it confident somehow. Or perhaps its supply of the gaseous corruption was faltering.
Whatever its reasoning the guardian lunged towards me, a clawed hand extended to squish me. I reached out a tendril of mana to the detonator of the matrix and let loose a small pulse of mana.
The world went black.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Pick them up! Quickly!"
"We're working on it!"
"They're still wounded! This guy's bleeding still!"
"Give me him."
"What are you-! You still have aura?!"
"I have a lot of it. Now move! Abyss said get to the surface and if there's one thing I know about him it's that he's not quite friends with that grimm."
"When we get up there we need to find my partner. Ruby Rose."
"I know, but she's on her own for now. She moved to the surface as quickly as she could and we're still down-"
*BOOOOM*
"Shit! Move! Move! Move! There's not time to worry about injuries! If we don't get out of here we're all pancakes!"
"Ren I think for the first time I don't like pancakes!"
[|||| =+= ||||]
I blinked blurrily and saw concerned silver eyes above me. I heard something in my ears but couldn't make it out.
Hands wrapped around me and I fell on the steel will skill. Clear and logical thought was need right now.
Ruby's here. The experimental teleport marker worked fine, as I knew it would. We were on the surface.
I blinked at the information and looked to my right. Decaying bodies of grimm. Ruby's work. She cleared out the horde on the surface and brought me back. Good.
I still had a little mana in the tank so I pulsed life mana throughout my body. Muscles relaxed, cuts and scrapes from the explosion healed up, and my mind cleared. I had a concussion before but now I was fine.
"I'm alright," I said, my voice still sounding odd. My ears were damaged in the blast. A little more life mana fixed that. Parallels got started on meditating and my mana regeneration rate skyrocketed. I sent a little life mana into Ruby and found her mostly uninjured except for a slight fracture in her right arm. Her aura would have had her fit in an hour, maybe an hour in a half. I fixed it in a second.
"Alright," I groaned. I stood up and looked around further. "The others?"
Almost exactly at that moment a beaten looking group made it to the surface from the main stairs. Jaune was at their head with Pyrrha and Yang, both looking exhausted.
"Hey." I waved at everybody, who looked at me with various stages of disbelief. "I'm a teleporter, remember?" A chorus of groans met me.
"What the hell was that?" Yang asked at the front.
"An experimental attack using artificially made dust by Nature's Bounty," I lied. I actually did have Poledina working on making the white sap into a dust but a commercially viable method has yet to be perfected. I'll have to release it early to reinforce my lie.
"Artificial dust?" a new voice asked and I looked through the throng of people. Weiss, her clothes ripped in several places, looked at me with a blazing curiosity. Ugh. SDC.
"We'll talk later," I said, mostly to hold her off. I may be able to heal myself but I still feel like I detonated an explosion on my back, which I did.
With the message in my mind it's hard not to smile, though.
*Ding!* You have killed a Dark Guardian! You gained 1,009,285,198 XP! You leveled up 9x
A chuckle escaped me but nobody said anything. I sat up with stiff limbs and refocused myself. I reached into my inventory and pulled out the relics, which were neatly stored in a cloth pouch I had picked up somewhere.
Eidetic memory picked it out from my memories. I took it from a game of Scrabble two years ago and forgot to put it back. Well geez, thank you, skill. This is why I need an eidetic memory apparently.
"Here," I tossed the pieces to Jaune, who caught them easily. "The relics. I have one for us and one for Ruby. Distribute them." I pulled out the golden king piece and handed it to Ruby. She slid it into a pocket without looking at it and resumed hugging me.
"Everyone gather around!" Jaune called. "One per partner set. If we're short we'll all have a talk with our gracious headmaster because after that? Everyone here who fought deserves a medal and more."
People gathered around him and picked out pieces. I focused on hugging Ruby for a moment and waited for them to finish. It didn't take too long.
When everyone was finished I waved at everyone. "I'm going to make a portal. Enjoy walking back." People began yelling at me, Yang especially. Something about her hair. I laughed at them and waved my hand for a portal.
"I'm not that much of an ass, you know," I told them. I had a slight grin on my face. A few people gave me the stink eye but a few others seemed amused. Either way, people filed into the portal.
I was the last one in with Jaune and Pyrrha sticking with us, Ruby still clinging onto me. "You said you're partners with Ruby?" I asked Pyrrha. She just nodded, looking too exhausted to talk.
On the other side Ozpin and his teachers stood impassively. "Ah, you are all here," Ozpin said neutrally. "Follow us, please. We have teams to distribute. Oh, and you all are now students of Beacon. The relics were optional, really, although they greatly help with assigning teams."
Some people groaned and fell to the ground. More just laid down on their backs.
"Um, sir?" Jaune said. "We're going to need a minute." He glanced at the headmaster's mug. "And maybe some food."
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Ugh."
"Yeah. We know."
"Just felt like saying it."
"I know. We're all beat."
"Did you see that guy?"
"Which one? Mavros or the other one, Jaune Arc?"
"Either, really. Both of them were incredible. Mavros made that giant explosion, right? And Arc fended off that huge grimm. I'll bet he could even do it by himself."
"I don't think so. He was really beaten like we were."
"Either way…"
"Well Arc… yeah. He was incredible. I mean, fighting a grimm of that size you don't really need skill, but his aura. You felt that, yeah?"
"Yeah. I'm no aura sensor but damn… you could feel that thing like a strong breeze on your soul."
"And Mavros…"
"He just.. The whole temple. I didn't see any dust around. Do you think it was his semblance?"
"Ah, actually his semblance is space manipulation. Portals, warping space, teleporting, and so on."
"Then what the hell was the explosion from?"
"I actually went to Signal with the guy. He has a concussive attack that he makes by compressing and releasing space, making the air contract and rapidly expand. That's probably what he did. He must have used a massive amount of aura to make one of that size, though. Maybe… Ooooooh. I see what he did."
"What?"
"Dust in a pocket dimension. Compress it. Ignite when needed."
"Oh shit… yeah that'll cause a boom. And he's rich so…"
"Don't fuck with him."
"Pretty much."
"And that white light?"
"I tried white sap once. Felt like that times a hundred."
"It got rid of the dark farts."
"Heh. Yeah. I dunno… an anti-grimm attack? Arc had one of those."
"He slathered white sap on his sword and used some sort of aura technique."
"Hmm… who are their teammates?"
"Each other."
"Shit. Let's not ever fight them."
"You said it."
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Nora Valkyrie, and Lie Ren." Ozpin gestured at the screen, which showed SBVR on it. The four stepped onto the stage in various stages of nervousness.
"Together you will form team SBVR (Silver) led by Weiss Schnee."
I saw Weiss' face light up for just a moment before she pushed her glee back down and stepped off the stage with her team, where she almost began skipping with happiness.
The next team to step up was… not as expected from me.
"Yang Xiao-Long, Sky Lark, Russel Thrush, and Cardin Winchester." The four stepped forwards. All of them just looked tired, though Yang tried to have a smile on her face.
"The four of you will form team YLRW (Yellow), led by Yang Xiao-Long." Cardin's face darkened and he looked at Yang angrily. She looked right back and some sparks arced off of her. I couldn't see her face from my angle but I suspect her eyes were red.
"Guys, come on." Sky, at least I think it was Sky, pulled on Yang, who he was closest to, to get off the stage. Russel was about to do the same to Cardin but he batted his arm away and walked off the stage himself. Glynda stopped them and said something about rooms.
As the four passed I decided that Yang's team would be an utter trainwreck. The hell was Ozpin thinking? A glance at Cardin revealed that to me. Don't pick the lackeys and Cardin's a prick. Right. Yeah Yang's likely not a great leader but she's the best they've got.
A glance at Jaune on my left made me feel like a hypocrite. Them a trainwreck? My team's going to be team STRQ 2.0 with plenty of the bells and whistles…
Did I just imply that Jaune would date Pyrrha and then Ruby? Ugh. Nevermind. Let's just fall into disgrace. If Jaune dates Pyrrha then sure. Arkos for the win. But I feel uncomfortable with him dating my sister. Team STRQ without the romance.
The four of us, Jaune on my left and Pyrrha and Ruby on my right, stepped forwards as Ozpin began calling names.
"Jaune Arc, Abyss Mavros, Pyrrha Nikos, and Ruby Rose." He turned to us.
"The four of you will form team JAPR (Jasper), led by Jaune Arc." The four of us walked off the stage silently. Glynda stopped us at the bottom.
"I'm sending you your room keys." Glynda tapped a little on her scroll and I felt a slight vibration from my pocket. "If you're without your scroll you will have to see one of the faculty to receive another code. Open the file on your scroll and wave it at the scanner next to your room to open it. Or just knock."
"You are assigned to-" Glynda glanced at her scroll for a moment. "Room two thirty two. Second dormitory, thirty second room. We rotate every year between which dormitory is in use. There'a a schedule in your room already. A staff member will bring all your…" Glynda looked at me and frowned.
"A staff member will arrive with Mister Arc's and Miss Nikos' luggage shortly. I recommend you get some sleep. Get to know each other. Lessons begin immediately tomorrow. Remember to store your armor in your lockers or simply abuse Mister Mavros' semblance in your case. Now I have other students to tend to. Goodnight." Glynda walked off and we all just stood still for a moment. We were all exhausted, mentally and physically.
"Screw this," I muttered. A portal opened up to room two thirty two thanks to a parallel. I stepped through into the generic looking room. Four beds were arranged against a wall with a window and a bookshelf in-between them.
"Sleep or unpack?" I mused.
Jaune walked forwards and fell onto the nearest bed. He barely rolled around before he started stripping armor off. "As my first order as leader I command that we sleep and wake up tomorrow at…"
I glanced around and saw a folded piece of paper like a hotel brochure on the bookshelf. Opening it showed a schedule with the four of our names on it. I suppose they make these as soon as the teams are formed. Huh…
"Nine o'clock," I said to everyone. I moved my eyes over the card, memorizing the contents immediately, and tossed it onto the nightstand.
"And it's only eight thirty now," Jaune muttered. He pulled out his scroll from somewhere on his outfit and tapped some things. Probably an alarm. "We'll wake up at five and decorate." I shrugged carelessly. He's leader. Fine by me.
I hopped onto the second bed to the right and started stripping, which is to say, I tapped my clothes and they fell into my soul space. In seconds I was in my underwear.
Pyrrha glanced at me and immediately blushed as I moved under the covers. "Eep!" she squeaked. "Abyss why-um-why are…"
"I sleep in my underwear." I shrugged. "I never saw a point to pajamas. We'll go on overnight missions anyways. It's a needless inconvenience unless it's really cold."
"I do the same," Ruby said casually. She hopped onto her bed and looked a little flatly at me. "You cooould get under the covers first, you know? Jaune and the others aren't looking to see you nearly naked the moment we become a team."
"You seem to imply that I'd ever like to see him naked," Jaune said with a frown. He pulled out a onesie and stepped over to the bathroom on the right side of the room.
"Oh yeah," Ruby seemed to realize something. "It's kind of a hidden huntsman fact that teams often get into sex stuff together." Jaune stopped walking towards the bathroom and looked back at us, particularly Ruby and Pyrrha. He blushed crimson and stepped into the bathroom. Pyrrha was also blushing.
"I'm half tempted to go nude just to get you two out of the awkward nudity stage," I muttered. Pyrrha's and Jaune's squeamishness sort of annoyed me in a weird way.
"We aren't going to be doing that sex stuff, of course," Ruby continued. "Because Abyss and I are brother and sister."
"Did that stop Raven?" I asked. A deep silence passed.
"Oh. Right." Ruby was probably frowning. "Jaune's a lucky guy."
"Can we please stop talking about this?" Jaune yelled from the bathroom.
"Agreed," Pyrrha said quickly.
"We really need to get this out of the way," I argued. "You two are squeamish and tensions in the team are just needless complications. I'd rather make the whole process of getting comfortable with each other seamless." I paused. "Actually, tomorrow Jaune and I need to have a talk. I don't want to deal with his drama more than I can be bothered to."
The door to the bathroom opened and Jaune tossed his clothes into the corner, taking the rightmost bed for himself. He slid under the covers and didn't say anything. Drama queen. Well kin-... nah he's a drama queen. He's being passive aggressive to the extreme. That seems more like a girl thing to me. Then again he has seven sisters and his mother was clearly the head of his family. He really didn't have much testosterone in his house.
Pyrrha seemed a little curious between the tension between us but went into the bathroom without saying anything. We'll break magic to her tomorrow. She'll just have to get with the program on that one. It'll be a shock for sure.
I closed my eyes and let everything fall away. I briefly woke up when Jaune and Pyrrha took their luggage from a custodian but that hardly impeded me.
Ruby, I think, was out before Pyrrha was even done getting into her pajamas.
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