I think there were attempts to calculate the size of the whole student body and it came out to something like 600-800 students for all the years. If Beacon is the best school in the kingdom that only select few get in that seems like an okay figure.
There is a lot I could say, but overall I agree with Nyarky's assessment. Same thing for the above consideration that 600 to 800 students makes more sense than a regular university as we know it; so several hundred members of staff total, including non-combat personnel, sounds like a better figure.
I deliberately keeps the number vagues because the biggest mistake in this sort of case when you're not sure is to actually give an exact number and not let the public imagine all the invisible members of the staff that are working in the background. I can say that I am imagining something closer to the number said in these quotes than the thousands in my rant.
For Beacon, I have no problems with them only showing three teachers, what I find strange is some parts of the fandom acting as if those were the only teachers.
Here, just imagine Stella and Sable are keeping to themselves and mostly interacting with a portion of the total, as is normal anyway. People's monkey spheres and all that.
The pitfall with this school setup is making the instructors and other adults too useless, or rather creating a plot where they need to be useless so the students can do it in their stead. And RT fell right into it. I do not want to be too hard on the writing staff for this one, though; everyone started somewhere and this is not easy to get right.
A good example of a plot where the school setting works on making the students doing something without too much adult supervision in RWBY is the breach, the part on the train to be more precise.
They stumbled upon the plot during a scouting mission that shouldn't have been dangerous, they didn't have time to asks for reinforcements and the teacher even actually is useful here.
On this specific part, it works great.
Now, because we can't have nice things, just don't think about the fact that team RWBY is killing faunus in cold blood by sending them behind the train to be killed by Grimm and not reacting, at all.
Or that Weiss is beaten by a guy that doesn't even have a name and appear only in this single scene.
To be 'fair' I'm pretty sure Weiss loses almost if not every fight she's been in. Wasn't there a meme at one point with a gif of her being sent flying into a wall and the wall being declared the winner?
See, that's why in a magical school setup you should use classical wizards, from say D&D, as your teachers. Than you have no problem with adults being useless. Because them actually being interested in students is much more dangerous for said students. At least when the general attitude of the teachers is "oh well, if they die - they die" they are not actively trying to screw you over. A head of biomancy department deciding that you have some interesting bloodline is much worse.
[X] Weiss Schnee, the heiress of the Schnee company, you don't know why she came to beacon rather than Atlas but you anticipate you will have to see her often no matter what.
[X] Weiss Schnee, the heiress of the Schnee company, you don't know why she came to beacon rather than Atlas but you anticipate you will have to see her often no matter what.
[X] Weiss Schnee, the heiress of the Schnee company, you don't know why she came to beacon rather than Atlas but you anticipate you will have to see her often no matter what.
I didn't expect a quest from you in particular, nice surprise that it's about this game to boot. Hopefully this quest reaches it's destination.
To be 'fair' I'm pretty sure Weiss loses almost if not every fight she's been in. Wasn't there a meme at one point with a gif of her being sent flying into a wall and the wall being declared the winner?
The fact that she loses all her one on one fights is part of the problem here.
Having random white fang lieutenant win against her was already bad, but add to that her losing streak, and suddenly it makes her look pathetic instead of making him seems powerful.
There is a reason I had his performance be that bad when you met *Him* right before Adam.
Not helping Weiss' case is the fact that some of her loses have her completely forgets her own fighting style (I'm looking at you, final battle at Haven).
When I began, I wasn't expecting a quest from me either, still have difficulties wrapping my head around the fact that I am relatively popular too given the number of votes each updates (it's not big big, but it definitely isn't small niche quest low, which is what I expected).
For the destination:
I firmly intend to finish this quest, there are already potential end games in mind, changing with each new vote a little (or a lot, what with the last one doing a traincrash for everyone's plans).
Just, don't expect a 800 000+ words quests, part of how I intend to finish is by keeping the total word count more reasonable.
For Beacon, I have no problems with them only showing three teachers, what I find strange is some parts of the fandom acting as if those were the only teachers.
I mean we know there's more. Even if they don't actually show up on screen, Professor Peach is mentioned by name to be the one in charge of the student trip to Forever Fall Forest.
[X] Pyrrha Nikos, four times winner in the Mistral regional tournament, that kind of pressure means your guts tells you she will be in need of your help, and you trust them… mostly.
[X] Penny Polendina, the mysterious student that Ironwood recommended, for some reason, Ozpin found it funny to not give you her identification pic, and Sable agreed as soon as he saw it.
Well, plenty of things suffer of this "quality" in RWBY, and like with most of those things, people keep them anyways most of the time because they have a love or at least interest towards the character/concept.
And well, when they don't it gets cut out, like what happens with Jaune here, like what I've seen happening multiple times with Salem.
Which is all to say, its Worm fandom all over again lol (oh how many Cauldron, Zion, and sometimes even Endbringers cuts I've seen (fuck, not even thinking about the ones that cut even the fucking ogmc itself))
[x] Penny Polendina, the mysterious student that Ironwood recommended, for some reason, Ozpin found it funny to not give you her identification pic, and Sable agreed as soon as he saw it.
Which is all to say, its Worm fandom all over again lol (oh how many Cauldron, Zion, and sometimes even Endbringers cuts I've seen (fuck, not even thinking about the ones that cut even the fucking ogmc itself))
To be fair, when you see the number of fics that get killed by Leviathan, I personally think that not enough fics removes the Endbringers, or at least that too many try too much to include them when they could simply not have them appear in town.
Same with the S9.
As for cutting out Taylor, I have the opposite impression, where most of the fics forcefully pretend she is there even when the character they use is nothing but a doppelgänger wearing her skin and name, and sometimes not even her skin.
Adhoc vote count started by Nyarky on Feb 19, 2024 at 2:08 PM, finished with 77 posts and 35 votes.
[X] Penny Polendina, the mysterious student that Ironwood recommended, for some reason, Ozpin found it funny to not give you her identification pic, and Sable agreed as soon as he saw it.
[X] Pyrrha Nikos, four times winner in the Mistral regional tournament, that kind of pressure means your guts tells you she will be in need of your help, and you trust them… mostly.
[X] Weiss Schnee, the heiress of the Schnee company, you don't know why she came to beacon rather than Atlas but you anticipate you will have to see her often no matter what.
[X] Penny Polendina, the mysterious student that Ironwood recommended, for some reason, Ozpin found it funny to not give you her identification pic, and Sable agreed as soon as he saw it.
Penny Pollendina adjusted her Tiara. Today, she was wearing her third one, a simple band with her symbol cutting it in two vertically. She didn't want to risk one of her more complicated ones for the test, seeing as it required combat.
She looked around her launching platform at the other candidates, listening with one ear to Ozpin himself explain the rules. A simple mission, all in all, the only unexpected parameter being the almost random nature of getting a partner, sure, the best students should be able to control their flight enough to get closer or farther from others, but most wouldn't.
She herself was willing to let fate decide, but at least one candidate, an imposing young man in armor with a stylistic bird prominently displayed on his torso (Cardin Winchester, age: 17. Coming from Pharos. Medium results in combat classes, Medium results in strategy and leadership, Low results in history. Noted for potential racism toward Faunus and misogyny) was not so inclined, judging by the dismissive look he gave to the youngest person present, a girl in red and black cradling a scythe as tall as her (Ruby Rose, age: 15. Coming from Signal. High to very High results in combat classes, High results in weapon maintenance and creation, High results in strategy and leadership, low results specifically in hand to hand. Here on recommendation from Qrow Branwen, instructor at Signal and uncle, no traces of nepotism despite allegation, all signs pointing to actual talent).
When Ozpin finished his speech by asking if anyone had questions, to no reaction, the launch platform began their job one by one. It took only three launches for Penny to see that not only were the delays going to make choosing who you landed close to difficult, the platforms also had semi randomized strength leading to even less control.
So when her turn came and she found herself hurtling through the air, she simply closed her eyes, stopped the calculations on the other candidates' expected positions she had running in the background, and enjoyed the feeling of freedom that came with freefall. She didn't keep her eyes closed all the way, of course, but she refused to even look in a direction that could lead to her seeing where someone else was, she wanted to savor the surprise.
Unfortunately, all good things had to end and she quickly had to use her landing strategy, a simple use of her blades to swing around a tree to bleed momentum, before she found herself on the ground. Contrary to a normal human, she couldn't lose directions, so she instantly was running away from the launching point and towards the most probable location for the ruins they were searching for.
The first minute was uneventful, no Grimm, no other student, only her and the trees. This boring monotony was cut down by her almost running in another person, a pale girl with a white combat skirt (Weiss Schnee, age: 17. Coming from Hyades. High result in combat classes, Medium results in strategy and leadership, Very High results in dust usage. Current heiress to Schnee dust company), their eye meeting and sealing their future as partners from now on. She quickly recovered and offered her best smile.
"Sa-lu-tation! It seems we are now partners, I am Penny Pollendina!" She added a wave. "Can I have your name?"
"Weiss Schnee." Was all her new partner answered, a haughty air stopping all attempts at discussions short… or at least intending too, as Penny didn't care for such things.
"In that case, Partner Weiss, I think we should tell each other our fighting style. We are going to spend at least 4 years together. Plus, it will help with this mission."
"What would help would be to find our objective rather than loosing time on pleasantries." Was all the cold girl gave, before she began walking.
"In that case, I have to tell you that this is the wrong direction, the most likely point of interest from there is in this direction." Penny told while indicating what her calculations and vision of the forest from above had told her was a perfect place for a set of ruins.
Weiss didn't say anything in answer but she did change direction to head towards where Penny had pointed to, progress! She was sure that they both would be fine partners in no time. Especially since they were both from Atlas, she was sure she could use that to strike conversations later.
Their walk was easy, they only met some young Beowulf on the way and quickly dispatched them. Penny used the occasion to study Weiss' abilities. From what she could see, the girl was just as good with Dust as her dossier implied, and she had a good grasp of the esoteric uses of her Semblance, though she did not seem able to summon. Penny did note that the heiress was a little too reliant on having perfect positioning before a strike, and missed some occasions due to the irregular terrain of the forest as a result. Did she only train in a flat arena? This was so interesting, Penny was so happy to be have managed to convince uncle Ironwood and Father that she would not be well in Atlas academy, she would not have been able to learn this otherwise… oh, but then she might have encountered someone just as interesting in Atlas! But, no, she couldn't stand the discipline of the place, she was sure Uncle Ironwood meant well, but he was training huntsmen, not soldiers, he should allow more creativity. Semblances had been found to thrive on self-expression, stifling it would hurt him in the long term.
Peny decided to use the low level of necessary concentration the fights required to draft a note to send to Uncle Ironwood about this, she included graphs and several studies from Vale's scientific community to demonstrate her point. Should she include videos from Weiss fights too? No, it would be impolite to do so without permission and her partner may asks how she was able to film without a scroll. While Penny did think telling her nature was a part of a good relationship between teammates, it was too soon to do so.
Soon enough, the pain reached the apparent end of the forest, with a set of ruins right in front of them.
"Objective found! Let's find the relics Ozpin was talking about, don't you agree, Partner Weiss?" Penny happily said.
While Weiss didn't utter a word at her remark, Penny did see that the tension in her posture had diminished in the short time they had spent together. Before they could move further though, an explosion was heard from the woods. Both of them turned to face towards it, Weiss taking position slightly behind Penny to support her.
They still didn't expect a girl riding an ursa coming, nor the ursa falling from too much damage when she used her hammer to try and steer it. The girl (Nora Valkyrie, age: 17. Coming from Pharos. High results in combat classes, Low results in strategy and leadership classes, Medium results in weapon creation and maintenance, Medium results in Dust usage. Marked as Orphan, potential concentration troubles, hyperactivity) made a disappointed noise on seeing her steed down, then saw Weiss and Penny and instantly regained her smile.
"Hello!" She cheered.
"Sa-lu-tation!" Penny cheerfully answered, prompting an eyeroll from her Partner.
"Nora, have you stopped with the Ursa?" A young man asked while walking from the woods (Ren Lie, age: 17. Coming from Pharos. High results in combat classes, Very High results in aura manipulation, Low results in strategy and leadership. Marked as Orphan, same village of origin as Nora.)
Said Nora didn't answer his call, having seen the set of chess pieces inside the ruins and being in the process of taking a white queen to put on her head. Prompting a sniff from Weiss.
"Should we take our own relic?" Penny asked her partner. At her nod, she took the closest one another white queen. While she was wondering what they meant, another pair of students came running from the forest.
"I am telling you I have all rights to be here. I was first in all combat classes and I actually took a test with an outside judge present to confirm I could." Ruby told to Cardin. How unfortunate for these two to end up partners.
"I am just saying, it seems incredibly suspicious that a girl your age managed to skip two years in combat school." Cardin snidely remarked.
"Actually, I can confirm that Ruby Rose was officially recognized as apt for Beacon by several independent parties." Penny couldn't help but butt in, wanting to defend the other girl.
"And how would you know? You have access to the school files? Be realist, the best students could get would be a false version, no way they would tell us the truth on that." Cardin promptly answered.
"I was told by General Ironwood, *hic*, he is a close friend to my Father."
"Oh, great, another privileged kid, what next? The four-time champion of the Mistral tournament?"
As if fate had decided to have fun with him, a new girl entered the clearing right at this moment, a girl who just so happened to be said four-time champion. (Pyrrha Nykos, age: 17. Coming from Sanctuary. Very High results everywhere but strategy and leadership. Refused to skip years for unknown reasons, probable pressure from sponsors suspected but not confirmed)
"Are you kidding me?"
While Cardin was fuming and Weiss appeared to be trying to get Pyrrha's attention, her partner got in view. An athletic girl with lustrous blond hair (Yang Xiao-Long, age: 17. High results in combat classes, Low results in strategy and leadership, Very High results in hand-to-hand combat. Potential anger problems, half-sister of Ruby Rose).
"Well then, it seems we're late to the party, Partner." Yang told, then she saw Ruby. "Sis! Did you get a good partner?" She looks at all the person present. "Quite the good selection, so, which one is it?"
Ruby pointing out Cardin lead to a double take, then a laugh… followed by her getting right in his space while cracking her knuckles.
"My, my little sis seems to have been quite unfortunate. Let me tell you this, if anything bad happens to her…."
"Shouldn't we be taking our own relics?" Pyrrha innocently, making Yang deflate and grumble while approaching the remaining pieces and taking a black rook.
Ruby had apparently came to some conclusion on what the pieces meant, as she instantly took the other black rook as soon as her sister did this.
"It seems everyone had their relics, all that's left is getting back to base, that should be easy." Weiss told haughtily.
Unfortunately for her, a cry was heard from the sky as soon as she finished. Penny looked only to see that a giant Nevermore had decided to come, and worse, another sound was heard from the forest, announcing the arrival of a Deathstalker from the woods.
"Ok, which one of us is in the throes of depression right now? Because those Grimm really zoomed in on us all of a sudden." Yang said while moving back towards the inside of the ruins.
Penny was too preoccupied with trying to see what to do to answer, even if her observation did give her some suspect in Cardin's bouts of anger at being partnered with Ruby. It was strange to have two giant Grimm right there when the teachers had certainly scoured the forest to remove the more dangerous elements. The Nevermore was easy due to its flight, but the Deathstalker was not.
This definitely meant that it was part of the test. Now, what would the judges want? It would be preposterous to expect a first year to take care of such powerful Grimm alone… oh, of course! She was not alone. They were there to promote teamwork! What a wonderful occasion. Penny could use this to bound with everyone.
Meanwhile, at the starting point of the test, Glynda Goodwitch was beginning a report to fire the person in charge of clearing Grimm out this year.
"An interesting development, should we ask a teacher to take care of it?" Ozpin told, still as calm as ever.
Of course, in this case, he had good reasons to be calm, despite telling the students that they would not get outside help, Beacon still kept teachers on hand to avoid any fatal accidents.
"Not yet, there are a lot of students here and Professor Peach has a direct line to their scrolls to monitor their Aura. Should any dip low, she can use her sniper to take care of the situation. I think we can see how they decide to organize while fleeing an opponent out of their league first."
The sound of Ozpin sipping his hot cocoa prompted her to look back at him, only to receive a pointed eyebrow when doing so.
With a feeling of dread, she looked back at the scroll used to watch the candidates, hoping against all odds that they would do the reasonable thing and retreat.
She wasn't that lucky.
Penny was watching for the nevermore while fighting to deathstalker with everyone present. Yang and Pyrrha were taking care of stopping the claws while Ruby and Ren were circling to its back to attack. Penny herself was a little farther away, using her swords to tangle the tail of the beast.
Weiss was too busy providing glyphs to the combatants to fight herself, but her reactions to the rapidly changing situation were on point, like the Glyph she used to stop the flight of Carding after he took a hit from one of the numerous legs of the Grimm, Nora instantly taking his place and hitting the joint with her hammer. While this didn't break it, it was enough to make the scorpion stumble for a moment.
Penny didn't watch what the others were doing in response, as she finally saw the nevermore coming for a new pass. As soon as it got close enough, she sent her swords towards it, managing to have two catch in its flesh.
"Partner Weiss, make me heavier!"
Weiss promptly answered with a black glyph forming under Penny, doing exactly as asked. Absentmindedly noting the voice of Ruby telling Pyrrha to let Yang take the two claws, Penny began to pull with all her strength, using two of her other swords to anchor herself to the ground, with this and the increased weight thanks to her partner, she managed to stop the retreat of the giant bird.
"Pyrrha! Can you hit its eyes?" She asked, her only answer being the champion changing her spear into a rifle and doing just that.
The Nevermore screeched in pain and began losing altitude. The Deathstalker tried to move to get to Penny, but was stopped by a hit from Cardin in the legs, followed by Ruby getting on the beast's back and cutting the tail with her scythe. On a scream of "Yang!" The blond girl ran to the front of their opponent and delivered a powerful punch, cracking the bone plate protecting it and allowing everyone to finish it off.
Meanwhile, Ren had begun firing on the falling Nevermore, as soon as it got close enough, he jumped and, helped by one of Weiss' glyphs, used an Aura infused palm strike to destroy one of the wings.
The giant bird plummeted even faster, right into the range of a waiting Pyrrha, who promptly stabbed it in the head, repeatedly.
After making sure both Grimm were done for, the students came back to the rally point, proudly giving their relics to a smiling Ozpin. Glynda seemed to have a headache for some reason.
They all got back to the campus, happily discussing who would be in who's team, and who would be leader. Cardin insisted he would be the one leading his team, while Weiss was discreetly praying on being under Pyrrha.
Penny for her part was pretty sure of the combination of each team, though she couldn't know for sure who would be chosen as leaders. From past results in their previous schools alone, she could propose Ruby as one of them, even if her age made things more difficult, but she didn't have any person with a predisposition to leading in her own team.
The ceremony didn't allow her to ponder on it more, as while idly watching the teachers present, she found a woman staring at her (Stella Panoply, age: 35. Coming from: unknown. Past education unknown. Marked as new counselor for the first years of Beacon).
She was clad in a grey dress, and had a complex tiara on her head, for some reason, her grey eyes were stuck on Penny. Wanting to know more, the girl ran a more in-depth search on the mysterious woman.
She found:
[] Several articles and interview about an incident some time ago involving her. (The Distraction)
[] A reference to two second year students asking for apprenticeship under this woman, which she agreed to. (The Mentor)
[] A dossier describing a promising young woman, with a good handling of psychology. (The Counselor)
I hope Penny's POV pleased you, I had a blast writing it.
Really made it quite clear to me why I gravitated to the Princess as POV rather than the more normal Long Quiet too, simulating nontraditional train of thoughts is something I find pleasant. Hope it was visible in the chapter that I was going for really making use of the fact that Penny is a robot and not a human.
Sure, she has a soul and a mind, but I don't see why she would not also have background process, a true ability to multitask consciously, constant fast calculations about the world around her, or things like that. And of course, she has built in internet (or whatever Rwby calls it) access, that girl has connections, that for sure! (Get it? Get it? Because she knows General Ironwood as well as a very important scientist in her father… I'm going to shut up now).
If she seems a little scatterbrained… well, that means I did my job right.
For the partners in team RWPY… I could have gone for Ruby/Pyrrha and Yang/Cardin, which would have allowed Cardin to at least be able to sorta respect his partner and Pyrrha to have another prodigy with her… which is precisely why I didn't, much funnier (for me) that way, and hey, they're still in the same team!
[X] A reference to two second year students asking for apprenticeship under this woman, which she agreed to. (The Mentor)
The Counselor sounds interesting, but after Stella made a whole thing about manipulation not what she was hoping for in truly understanding humanity... becoming a Mentor sounds far better suited for that. A more naturalistic approach to helping young people grow into themselves and an indirect method of understanding humanity. Or at least a facet thereof.
Penny Pollendina adjusted her Tiara. Today, she was wearing her third one, a simple band with her symbol cutting it in two vertically. She didn't want to risk one of her more complicated ones for the test, seeing as it required combat.
