Mit Livs Eventyr [RWBY]

If there's one thing you're rapidly learning, it's that humans aren't logical creatures. They work on instinct, mood and impulse. Ruled by thoughts and feelings you don't fully understand, not yet. If you're to survive in this place you have to learn, even if it's by imitation and rote. So that's exactly the note you make at the top of both your journals (albeit in less obvious wording), and depart for your first class hot on Ruby and Cardin's heels.

First thing's first. You corner Pyrrha just outside Professor Gotthard's classroom in a hall on the second floor, and wait patiently until Ren and Nora stream past with the rest of the students. Pyrrha's giving you a dubious look, arms folded but she's still waiting for you to speak, so that's something.

"Captain stuff," you explain. "Look, here's the thing. You already know what the problem is, you pointed it out to Ozpin yesterday. We're just two pairs rooming together and as far as he's concerned that's not a team."

"Wouldn't really call us a pair, but yeah," she replies laconically.

"I need your help," you say simply. "I can't crack that on my own and- look. Here's the deal. I try to be friends with Nora, you try to be friends with Ren."

She leans back at the waist, considering. "What're we calling 'friends' here?"

You shrug. "We ask them to hang out without the other and they say 'yes'?"

Pyrrha unfolds her arms. "You're on."

"I didn't mea-" she's already headed into class "-alright."

It's a lecture hall, arranged in three ascending U-shaped tiers. All twelve students would only fill the first row - or at least they would, if the other two teams actually sat together. Ren and Nora are in the middle of the right wing - you take a seat beside her and Pyrrha sits next to him, but Cardin's sitting in the second row on the left with Taube while Sky and Russell keep a noticeable yet cordial distance in the first, and Ruby's team is just all over the place. Her up front with Yang, Weiss behind them, and Blake so far up the back that at first you thought she was running late.

The clock in the corner strikes the hour and Gotthard sweeps in as if waiting, spring-loaded, for that exact moment. Her eyes dart around the room, gaze lingering longer on some than others, a slight tightness in her lips, but she makes no further comment. Perhaps she's merely pleased everyone turned up on time. She strides behind her desk and briskly waves her key-wand at the blackboard behind her. Three waiting sticks of chalk come to life with a subtle violet glow, scratch-scratch-scratching away at the board as she turns her full attention to the class.

"Semblance," she says. "Dust. Widely-known, poorly-understood. It will be my job to adequately educate you on both. You are Hunters-to-be - 'common knowledge' will not suffice. Now, to get an indication of where we're starting, why doesn't someone tell me what they think a Semblance is?"

Weiss and Pyrrha raise their hands. Gotthard pauses a moment to glance at them both in turn. Finally she indicates Weiss with her wand.

"A Semblance is a unique trait that, with sufficient training, allows you to project your will onto the world and people around you based on the key concept you were born aligned with," she recites crisply, as if she's been practising her response in the mirror. Pyrrha drops her hand irritably, only to freeze mid-motion as Gotthard points at her anyway.

"Your Semblance is your destiny," she says without skipping a beat. "Your life in a word or two. If you accept it, work towards it, it's your blessing. Try to run from it and it becomes your curse. Developing it always starts with you."

Weiss shoots her a look. Pyrrha ignores her. Gotthard rests the tip of her wand in her free hand, idly rolling it back and forth across her palm.

"Yes and no," she says at last. "Admirable answers, but inadequate in the same way as defining water with 'something you find in a river' or 'something that falls out of clouds'." She turns and taps the board with her wand as Weiss and Pyrrha slump in annoyance. The bewitched chalk sticks have sketched 'DUST' and 'SEMBLANCE' in big bold letters on either side of the board. The former accompanied by pictures of what you think are piles of raw ore, flasks of fine powder and industrial mechanisms. The latter, a picture of the beast you and Pyrrha fought in the forest. You know its name is 'Grendel' without having to read the label at the bottom. You've been digesting it all night.

"For the purposes of your education at Beacon, 'Semblance' is defined as the power of archetype." Gotthard turns on her heel, a stick of chalk picking up the slack on its own to make notes in an impossibly delicate 'hand'. "Professor Kay will explore this in greater detail, but for now the key lesson is that, for example, it is not even unique to humans and faunus."

She taps the Grendel illustration, to a few murmurs of confusion. "This beast has a Semblance. Indeed you could say that it is a Semblance. Its archetype and it's entire being are one and the same. It is a Grendel, and thus pursues particularly raucous partygoers and festival feasters with all the cold-minded determination of an Atlesian battle-drone. It can conceive of no other course of actions. As specimens of a Grimm species age they may become more complex, may pursue their archetypal goal with greater levels of animal cunning, but they will pursue it all the same. To do otherwise would be literally unthinkable."

It's strange to hear it laid out so academically. Strange to hear it and understand it at all to be honest. Her words bounce around in your skull, colliding and combining with the Groom's. To be a Grimm is to be the sum of your pursuits, the apex of the stories you devour. Humans have their own stories, of course, but you never even conceived that they each possessed a fragment of the same power. You always assumed that Hunters were a special class of being, superior to the common prey. Curiosity piqued, you probe at the souls within you.

Jaune has a Semblance, of course. It's customary among the Arcs to go to a reading if it hasn't already made itself apparent, by fourteen at the latest. You find the pearl of memory and clutch it tight, mesmerised by its light, drawn to its warmth. A bright thread connects the memory to the strain you felt while bearing his banner - he must have knowingly channelled his Semblance to help him lose weight ahead of Beacon. Burned away the soft and shameful parts of him. His word is 'Pyre', written proudly on his entrance submission, and what a brilliant blaze must have been destined to consume him had you not cut his life short.

And the detective... hm. He has one, Gotthard said everyone does, but he doesn't know it. He never bothered to learn. Sharp, cigarette-scented images flash before your mind's eye. Department psychics and special investigators on loan. Fuckin' weirdos that smoke for breakfast and order coffee to stare into instead of drink for dinner. The guys with the crazy eyes that sniff the body and look like they're tweaking out just being near a dead guy. Then the actual tweakers. The Dust-heads that swear up and down they can control their habit, that they just need it to keep ahead of the curve. They never lasted as long as the weirdos. Too easy to buy. Yeah, he took one look at that and decided no news was good news as far as whatever his soul had to say for itself.

You jolt in your seat, blinking rapidly as if lurching out of a microsleep. Close enough, you suppose. You missed some of Gotthard's lecture, but the detective's soul filled you in pretty well anyway. Instead you check how watch your fellow students are reacting, searching for notes to put in your journal. Weiss, Cardin and Blake are paying the least amount of attention, clearly already familiar with much of the subject matter. Russell seems distracted somehow, eyes unfocused - lingering on an unpleasant memory? Yang seems to be only half paying attention, slouched back in her seat with her hands behind her head. Ruby, conversely, is sitting on the edge of hers and fixing Gotthard with the kind of unblinking, unwavering stare you didn't think humans were capable of.

The weirdos with the crazy eyes, the detective seems to repeat in your ear. Your eyes slowly track left, casting a subtle glance at the three Hunters-to-be in profile beside you.

"-brewing of refined Dust supplements both elementally-typed and not, which will be the subject of your classes with the Sisters-"

Ren, looking to all the world like a statue - barely moving, barely breathing, barely blinking. Nora looks, not disinterested precisely, but something else. Orphaned colonists, no one but each other to depend on, and Jaeger's comments... is it because they already know? They know how immersing yourself in your Semblance can distort you because they've already done it?

"-use in weaponry will be part of Regin's class, but I'll touch on it now for completion's sake-"

And then Pyrrha. That answer of hers, dying to be let out. Her belligerent need to get to Beacon as soon as possible no matter how many miles of Grimm-infested forest lay between her and it. Something about her demeanour; if anyone's disinterested in the lecture it's her. It's an imposition. Yes, the story tastes a little familiar now. She's racing towards her destiny and Beacon isn't a crucial stepping-stone so much as an obligation. She-

"For example... Arc!"

Gotthard brings her wand down on the table in front of you with a crash. You snap your head back around like lightning, wilting before Gotthard's pitiless gaze. She practically towers over you.

"Y-yes ma'am?"

"Pay attention. You might learn something."

You seem appropriately cowed (albeit for all the wrong reasons), so Gotthard mercifully lets you off with that warning. She straightens up - her wand none the worse for wear despite its seeming fragility - and addresses the class as a whole once more.

"Mister Arc's weapon is not of his own making, but fortunately it seems he picked well when he chose to join us here at Beacon," she says. "The untyped Dust woven into its design acts as a repeater, allowing him to project his Semblance further and at greater potency. However, if his internal perception of 'Pyre' were the more immediately-obvious pyromancy, then perhaps he could use it as a focus to rain fire down on a specific area from the back lines, where he would otherwise be restricted to fireballs. Or perhaps he could give it to Miss Schnee in a moment of need?"

She glances at you and Weiss in turn. "No two people can be wholly alike in their Semblance, even should they share the exact same keywords. Only Grimm can be so inflexible. However there can be said to be two very broad and generalised categories of application - internal and external. Your banner may function perfectly in Miss Schnee's hands, only to be no more than a big stick in Miss Yang's."

"Big stick's all I need," Yang remarks. You notice she tipped her chair back on the hind legs at some point. She shrugs flippantly. "No amplifying perfection anyway."

Gotthard doesn't smack the desk in front of Yang. Oh no. Instead she smiles sweetly, wand held daintily before her between the tips of her forefingers and thumbs. "I would so love to hear more, Miss Yang. So much in fact, that I cannot wait to see your ten-page essay on the exact specifications of your Semblance tomorrow!"

There's a pregnant pause. Yang freezes, staring up at Gotthard as she silently tries to puzzle out how serious she is. Gotthard's wide smile doesn't waver in the slightest. She merely pumps her eyebrows once.

Yang mumbles.

"Beg pardon?"

"(yes ma'am)"

"There we are."

Gotthard turns on her heel and strides away, stopping level with her desk. She lets the moment sink in for a few beats, glancing up at the board - perhaps to double-check if she missed anything. She smacks her palm with the tip of her wand to emphasise her next words. "Know your tools. Know your role. Know your limits. Know yourself. These are a Hunter's watch-words."

You almost want to scream at her. Leap out of your chair, hurl yourself over the desk, scramble up to Gotthard and clutch at her dress. 'Tell me!' you want to cry out. 'Tell me all of these things because my entire existence is riding on this and I have no idea what I'm doing!'

Where are you even supposed to start with a stolen Semblance? In the forest it was just instinct, leaning on whatever training Jaune managed to make stick - you honestly just assumed the power was inherent to the banner. What does this even mean to you? Do you have two Semblances? Do you only have half a one? You just need to... get this straight in your head. She said it was about internal perception, so you need to pick a perception. Unless you can tap into Jaune's power consistently, this mission won't last long.

[ ] You're a parasite riding in Jaune's hollowed-out body. Hijacking what was once second-nature to him. His Semblance is just another function, right? No different than his muscles or his lungs.
[ ] Jaune's soul isn't technically gone, not completely. You have enough of it left to raid for memories. His Semblance is just part of that, right? Utilising it should be no different.
[ ] Pyre burns things away to fuel itself. Tuned it, whether consciously or unconsciously, to lick at the fat until it bubbled and hissed and melted away so that his comfort-eating would leave no more shameful marks than it already had. Why should you be any different? You have countless meals stewing within you, countless fragments of story in the well. Burn those as fuel.