What Happens Next (Slay The Princess/RWBY)

Given the lack of new votes:


Mentor win, surprised nobody asked who the two students where, I mean, one is probably easy to see, but I am not sure the second is.

As for poor, poor Distraction, I find it incredibly funny that the form that would have given you a *she's clearly not the true enemy, we can ignore her* effect was... ignored.

Have a slightly in advance update.

You are going to have a talk with Ozpin about his sense of humor, a long talk.

The reason for that thought is the young woman you are currently watching take her place as the leader of the newly appointed team PRNS (Princess). Not only did Ozpin find it funny not to tell you that someone who could easily pass as a family member with you, with a similar face with freckles as the biggest difference, and hair that is just like yours except for hers being red, not to mention she is wearing a tiara, was among the students. But he also had the gal to name her team Princess.

And worse, because things could get worse, somehow, the girl had unconsciously begun to think of you as her mother as soon as she had seen you, you are too young to be a moth….

You cut the intrusive thoughts worthy only of the idea of a mother taken from someone that only knew of them from sitcoms, and recenter yourself to something more dignified.

Which, of course, is the exact moment you feel a change that had been slowly coming to your perspective coalesce into a true vessel. You observe the changes and conclude that the second years had disseminated the fact that you had accepted to have Velvet Scarlatina and Yatsuhashi Daichi as apprentices. Or maybe Glynda, knowing how you work now, had helped the impression along, in hopes of making your job with them easier?

No matter, you will make these two into people that can help others through their problems in life.

Back to the matter at hand, the very proud and confused by the decision young woman who still thinks of you as her mother.

All you know about her is that she comes from Atlas, with a direct recommendation from Ironwood, and that she is there and not his academy due to *an incompatibility between the mindset her semblance reveals and the environment of Atlas academy*. Which isn't much but is revealing all the same.

The girl seems to have appeared from nowhere in the records, as if she was born much more recently than her apparent age would implies, alone, it would not help, but combined with her resemblance to you and her instinctual thinking of you as mother… there is one particular event that happened right around the time the girl was added to the database, something that has a big significance for you that others, not named Ozpin, would miss….

You had heard that people had felt the moment you had revealed your true nature in full to the tired wizard, and it seems that there were more repercussions than just a big feeling of things being about to change that washed through the world if someone who is most likely actually related to you in some way has appeared now.

How convenient that your job allows you to ask for some time to discuss with students in a private setting. You can simply present a desire to know more about the problems about her Semblance and work under this cover to learn more, and actually learn about her Semblance too, you won't sacrifice doing things right on the altar of convenience.

"Dear? I know the ceremony was boring, but you could at least pretend to be there enough to see when it is finished, no?" Sable says in a low tone. You know him enough to feel that he is intrigued by what could have made you fall in introspection right now, but he is willing to wait for you to be in a more private setting to talk about it.

And he is right, the ceremony just finished, with a team RWPY being the last ones to receive their name according to the screens. You look a little at the members and instantly concludes you will see all of them frequently for one reason or another. The leader is the young Ruby Rose, who you will follow to make sure her two-year skip don't burden her too much. Another member is Pyrrha Nikos, whose dossier is so full of red flags you wonder if she didn't flee to Beacon to escape begin under her sponsors' thumbs. The third is Yang Xia-long, which is noted to have anger problems… and be the sister to the team leader. And the last… Cardin Winchester may not have garnered as much attention from you had he been in another team, the teachers would have been able to work on his racist and misogynistic tendencies slowly through exposure and you would maybe have seen him once or twice in routine meetings… had his team leader not been a 15 year old girl, his entire team being one flavor of prodigy or another judging by their dossier, and him being an average student with quite a lot of pride from what you have seen in his own data.

"This has to be a really big problem if you get lost in thoughts again right away…. Want to talk about it in our room? We don't need to see any students till tomorrow." The voice of Sable startles you, again. You must be really out of it.

"Yes, We have much to discuss. Take me to my chambers, brave knight." You overplay the proud Princess, telling him much about the gravity of the situation. Of course, he instantly understands and bows lowly, taking the hand you offered while he did so and kissing it.

"Of course, your majesty. This loyal servant will escort you so that you can rest in peace."

And so, it is with some rolling eyes from your colleagues that you retire to your quarters… and instantly drop the act of the pompous Princess in favor of what the instincts pushed on you by Penny wants, namely, panicking as if you were a teen mom in a sitcom.

Sometimes, it helps to let them go wild, preferably out of sight so as to not let others get ideas.

"Did you know that there was a girl that looked like my daughter among the future students? What am I saying, of course you did, I was there when you agreed with Ozpin to not let me see her face before the initiation." You say while walking back and forth.

"Given your reaction, I can infer that there is more going on than just a coincidence here?" Sable calmly answers to your antics. "In fact, I can even go farther and note that you specifically used the term *daughter*, which means that this is how you see her right now, yes?"

"Yes. I don't know how or why, but the girl instinctually saw me as her mother as soon as she saw me in person, and I think she has no idea how normal mothers acts and her only source of behavior is bad sitcoms. Because she is also thinking that I should act as if I was a teenage mother getting her first child in one of those." You explain in a panicking tone. Gesturing wildly all the while.

"Well, you are going to see her tomorrow, right? Why don't you use the occasion to not so subtly offer her better sources on mothers' behaviors?"

You stop on the spot, and turn towards your love, all traces of the panicking mother gone.

"That's definitely a good idea, I will probably do that." Even your tone sounds older than it did during your little crisis. You take a thinking pose. "Now the question becomes of how to tell her about that… I'll see how she is first, no use doing it now."

Then you give an amorous look to Sable.

"You know, such great accomplishment merit recompense, how about trying some of the things we have learned since coming here?"

He agrees readily.

And so, you try roleplaying.

With some friendly colleagues, on a game about dungeons and dragons.

The consensus is that you are too good at playing multiple characters' roles to not try your hand at being a Game master, and that Sable is so fickle in his tactics nobody but you can predict what he'll do next.

A pleasant experience all in all, that you readily agree to continue every week.

---

The next day, you first begin your work by seeing your two new apprentices. While you had a brief interview with them to confirm if you would be taking them or not, you want more details on some of their motives.

To do that, you meet the both of them in your office, using the opportunity to also finish preparing it for the numerous students that will grace it during the year.

Velvet is first to arrive, now way less nervous than the first times you had seen her, almost a year ago now. The young woman seems to have taken your advice to heart and is readily devouring any scraps of knowledge she can on everything and anything her Semblance helps with. Both her fighting abilities and her ability to read people have improved by leaps and bounds.

Yatsuhashi is not far behind, the gentle giant doesn't seem to have changed much. At least, he seems to be a little more tolerant of you now than he was after the bad first impression the Damsel gave him. You are not sure why exactly he wanted to work under you, even if you agreed, pushed by curiosity and the knowledge he was someone who would not do things by half.

After the two greets you, Velvet with enthusiasm and Yatsuhashi very formally, you get to the heart of why you called them:

"Welcome. As I said when asking you to come in, I want to make some things clearer on how your apprenticeship will go. I also want to understand your motivations better, while our interview was enough to get some ideas, we are going to spend years working closely with each other. Let's begin with you, Yatsuhashi, you said you thought your Semblance could be used to help but weren't sure?"

He hesitates, think a little, then relent.

"Yes." Yatsuhashi says almost reluctantly. "I do not know for sure, as I almost never use my Semblance, but I think it might be able to help people mentally…." At your expectant gaze, he continues his explanation. "You see, my Semblance has to do with memory, more precisely, the only way I ever used it was to erase them."

You furrow your eyebrows in thought when he tells that.

"Would I be right to think that you made a mistake with it and that is why you dislike using it now? And also why you reacted so badly to me demonstrating mine?" You ask.

"Yes." Is all you get from him. The man clearly uncomfortable and unwilling to share more himself. He is, however, looking at Velvet with some insistence.

"Yatsuhashi told us that he erased the memory of his little brother from his parents' mind once because he wanted them to care for him and not the newly born baby. Seeing the result… well, I'm sure you can imagine how it was." Velvet helpfully supplies.

You think on it. Yatsuhashi clearly doesn't want to erase memories anymore, and you do not think it would be that helpful anyway. Certainly, it might help in some precise cases, maybe in PTSD, but most of the time a psychological problem would either require erasing almost all the memories of a person to remove that way, or be too anchored for even that to work. Was he inspired by the versatility of your Nature? Actually, a Semblance to remove memories may well imply… you will have to think on it later, your two apprentices are looking at you, waiting for your verdict.

"I see. We will have to find a way for you to train other uses of your Semblance, I think my love will be willing to be the guinea pig for that." At their questioning gaze you chuckle. "For a variety of reasons, he gave me the ability to erase his memories once upon a time, and is familiar with the consequences of such a thing." Now the questions have morphed to even greater curiosity in Velvet's case, and incredulousness in Yatsuhashi's. "But enough about such dark topics!" You clap your hands. "Velvet, am I right to think you want to train in using your Semblance to read body language so as to get a greater idea of how people feel?"

At that, it's like a dam has been burst. The bunny girl beginning to talk about all the ideas she had on how to do that. She is so happy now that she knows she can be proud of her Semblance instead of seeing herself as a cheater, and she wants to help others feels the same way. You can see Yatsuhashi look at her with gratitude, and begin to wonder if she wasn't the one to convince him to try getting help from you. No matter what, you know you will be proud of them both at the end. They are definitely willing to work.

And you will benefit too, you can already feel it, the simple bound you have with them, the one that will allow you to learn more, understand more. It will be up to you to make it grow, to make it flourish, at the end of the road is what you came here to learn, to be really able to know how it is to be human, even if you will never be one of them. To be less than a god, and to be more too.

You end the visit with some preparations on their schedule. The two of them are still students in the school in addition to their apprenticeship, and so have an already busy week with all their classes.

Then, as soon as they are gone, you begin preparing with the visit you have both been dreading and anticipating since yesterday.

Penny Pollendina, your maybe daughter.

The first thing you will have to see is how to greet her… a task that will probably color your entire interactions in this meeting:

[] Greet her as the Damsel. Warmly and with enthusiasm. Make her feel at home. You will be able to ask her about what links you at one moment or another, you are sure.

[] Greet her as yourself.
-[] Right to business, you know she knows there is a link between the both of you, and you expect that she is just as curious as you to learn more about it.
-[] Begin by trying to learn a little about her first, her Semblance, for example. What is it about it that makes her such a bad fit for Atlas?

[] Greet her as the Stranger. Not the most normal greeting, but you want to be able to multitask. Also, you want to see if her Nature resonate with yours, how will she react to one of the vessel closest to your true being?

[] Greet her as the Thorn. You think you may need the ability to smell trouble and plot she possess. Ironwood has to have seen how familiar you looked when you met him, why didn't he react?

A/N:

So, as this chapter is about the Mentor more than anything, let me touch on what is different between it and the Counselor (the Distraction would have been closer to the Counselor on that):

The Mentor forges closer bounds with less people, and grows from it.

She is following the idea that the best way to learn is to teach. You will have regular meetings with Velvet and Yatsuhashi, teaching them about psychology, about how to use their Semblances for it and about how to do it normally. By doing so, your own understanding of psychology will increase, from the questions they ask that you will have to think about as you only knew how to act by instinct, without always understanding the root cause. You will still grow from helping the first years as a counselor, but it is not the main source.

The Counselor would have learned from numerous, but individually weaker, bounds.

Whereas the Mentor will grow more from your apprentices, the Counselor would have grown mostly from her patients. Seeing their problems, working on them and helping remove them or at least allow to live with them.

I originally wanted to have the beginning of your talk with Penny in this chapter, but I also had to formally introduce your two apprentices and explain what they wanted.

Plus, that way, you have some control on your first (well second if you count when she saw you from afar) impression towards your sorta daughter.

Not visible from the very occupied Princess POV right after the ceremony:

Dorothy running to get a hug from her (Grand?)father as soon as he is out of view and him accepting with a genuine smile.

Also, may or may not have happened, I'll let you decide:

"Tacao Tabasco, Easter Stygian, Yggdrasil Aesir, Medea Myriad. You four have obtained the white Bishops pieces, and will form team: TEAM with Tacao Tabasco as the leader."