Mit Livs Eventyr [RWBY]

You're overcomplicating this. You're not Jaune. You're the monster puppeting his body on tendril-strings, the well of shadow lurking in his hollowed-out shell. His Semblance is just another function of the disguise, another string to tug or organ to tweak so that it obeys you. If his corpus must be your mask, then you might as well make the most of it.

You look down at your hand, resting on the varnished walnut wood of the desk. Watching the tendons and sinews subtly work beneath the pale skin as your fingers flex. You idly wonder how deep the disguise goes. Men and Grimm bleed alike, but if someone opened up your belly would it be steaming innards or shadow that spilled free?

Hm. You suppose it's best not to get in a situation where you have to find out. That sounds like it would hurt a lot in this body.

Up at the front of the class, it's the erasers' turn to glow and levitate. They carefully and neatly clear a portion of the board, leaving just enough room for the chalk sticks to rise again. Gotthard slips into her seat as they work, setting her wand down on the desk.

"-and in the interests of that, we will be working on your keywords for the rest of today." A word cloud sketches itself the board behind her, the central bubble of 'Witch' seated neatly just above her head. The lecture hall fills with the keening scratch of chalk on slate as the other chalks busy themselves, fanning out the cloud into subdivisions such as 'Contract', 'Geas', 'Hex', 'Curse'. "You may use the rest of our allotted time to copy my work with your own Semblance - you may be surprised by what a simple word-association can unearth. Self-examination is in frighteningly short supply these days."

Your eyes narrow slightly. 'Witch', written so brazenly up on the board. Her own Semblance, obviously, but you do a little word-association of your own. Your nostrils twinge and flare, and the strange scent of Grimm that lingers on Gotthard comes into sharper relief. A higher order of Grimm, seated comfortably around the median links of the food chain - Beldam. Those monsters that approximate the shape of wizened old women, and visit all manner of terror and torment on human settlements unless appeased or slain. But how can a Huntress carry such a strong scent of Beldam?

You immediately snap to attention, fearing a repeat of your earlier humiliation. Or your even earlier cowing by Ozpin. But you're in luck - Gotthard's attention is focused on Yang, wryly reminding her that the more work she gets done now, the easier it will be to work on her essay. You breathe a soft sigh of relief and turn your attention to the work at hand. You should try to at least look like a student.

You spend much of the time simply staring at a near-blank sheet of paper, a cluster of pen-marks slowly growing as you tap-tap-tap away next to the circled 'Pyre'. Thinking is hard. Thinking laterally is harder. You glance around the room and are slightly relieved to find that you're not the only one having a little difficulty. Yang's glaring a hole through her paper, face screwed up in an almost comically deep scowl - albeit maybe she's just still sore about Gotthard's prodding. Nora doesn't have much down and she seems much more interested in a doodle of herself slouched on a throne, surrounded by riches and scantily-clad attendants. It's coming along quite nicely.

Over on the far side Russell doesn't seem to have written anything at all, consumed by silent frustration as he glares down at the page. You notice Gotthard notice too. She rises, the scrape of her chair on the floorboards prompting Russell to lift his gaze. His eyes widen in panic, head dipping down again as he hurriedly draws a circle and... that's about as far as his burst of energy gets him. His pen is still hovering an inch above the page, jittering nervously, when Gotthard reaches him. She blocks your view with her body, whatever words she has for him pitched too low for you to hear over the scratch of pens. You let your gaze wander again.

Everyone else seems to be doing more or less okay. Pyrrha, Ren, Weiss and Blake in particular seem to be writing like machines. You return to your own stubbornly blank page and frown - it really wouldn't do for the team captain to be upstaged by two-thirds of his subordinates this badly. At a loss for alternatives, you drag Jaune and the detective up to the surface and point them at your paper.

Almost immediately the detective suggests 'witchburning'. Perhaps it's just Gotthard's scent still on your mind. Perhaps it's just him being droll. You write it down anyway because you sense the seriousness behind the sarcastic deflection. It isn't as intense as the memories of Jaune's past you witnessed at Torchwick's Favourite Place, but a wave of feeling and thought washes over you all the same. Fire has power, real power. It's as old as history, the first weapon man ever wielded to fight off the dark. It's a rare Grimm that isn't harmed by it, rarer still that doesn't revile it. Sometimes when the Grimm are among you, when the Hunters aren't around to help you and you have to be sure, fire's all you get. It comes with the memory of screams, high-pitched and pleading, the crackle and stench of burning flesh.

Jaune's contribution couldn't be more different. Your head fills with more positive words - heat, warmth, light, guidance, protection, beacon, the list goes on. Vivid juvenile fantasies of him striding forth with a blazing sword to beat back the Grimm hordes. You figure that the more you have down the more impressive it'll be, so you take down both of their suggestions.

After a moment you pause, and marvel at the inked scratchings you've made on the paper. Muscle memory carried you through, but reading and writing are still two very novel concepts to you.

The clock chimes once more to signal the end of class, and you all rise to stack your papers on Gotthard's desk. Your 'homework' is to provide her an itemised list of all known Dust aspects, both if and how they are found in nature and how they are created artificially ("and no, Miss Schnee is not your only source, you will use the library like proper students"). This array of divisions and categories is still strange to you. Strange and faintly fascinating. Humans have such a talent for analysing their surroundings - and to have made kinds of Dust all on their own! You're almost excited to get to work.

Your next class is downstairs, but you don't stop on the ground floor. A second flight of stairs leads down into a subterranean level seemingly hewn straight into the flesh of the mountain, lit equally by smouldering torches set in brackets and those bulb-things dimly shining in their sockets, strung together by coppery wires. It's cramped enough that there's a struggle getting everyone through the door, and the walls and ceiling seeming to loom oppressively over you. Jaune thinks it must be some ancient, blood-soaked dungeon only recently converted into more classrooms. The detective figures that it was probably always like this - you store your Dust and derived munitions somewhere it won't take half the building with it if someone fucks up bad enough.

The detective has the right of it. The 'classroom' is small, boxy, and built to weather anything you could possibly throw at it. Dimly lit but for a few flickering gas flames and the glowing orange hearth at the far end of the room, where hangs a genuine cast-iron cauldron big enough to fit inside. The three near-identical women you saw in the teachers' lounge await you; the elder bent double over a walking stick as gnarled as she is, the younger finishing up some scrawled instructions on the backboard, and the middle one simply waiting for you all to squeeze through the door. Separate workstations have been prepared, each laden with arcane-looking glassware and what you assume are sealed canisters of plain Dust marked with oak leaves... but there are four. You may be new to the concept of mathematics, but even you know three groups of four don't divide by four.

"Welcome to your study of Dust class," the matronly one of the trio greets you all. "My name is Professor Verthandr, and these are my colleagues Urdr and Skuld." Skuld glances over her shoulder to incline her head in an acknowledging fashion at you all, then returns to her writing. Urdr gives a tired little smile. "And yes, you'll find the number of workstations is quite intentional. Groups of three everyone, any three you'd like."

'Aha', you say to yourself, 'this is the perfect opportunity for Pyrrha and I to split Nora and Ren up so we can work on getting to know them better'.

In the time it took you to have that thought, three groups have formed already without you. It's a very nostalgic feeling for Jaune. You see Ruby and Yang gravitate to Weiss instantly, no doubt looking for an 'easy A' due to her evident familiarity with Dust. Taube and Sky have latched onto Cardin, no doubt for the same reason. Nora with Ren of course, but Pyrrha managed to muscle in on the pair, so you suppose it's not a complete loss. Which leaves you with...

You step up to the last unoccupied workstation in the back right-hand corner. Blake's already there on your left, arms folded, staring silently at the teachers. She doesn't acknowledge your presence. It's the first time you've actually seen her up close. She's darker-skinned than you, and noticeably shorter and slimmer, even with her ears making up an inch or two of height. They blend seamlessly into the rest of her curly back-length black hair, facing calmly forward and adding to her air of attention. She has her arms folded, drumming black claws on the short sleeves of her white leather jacket. Her brown forearms are bare, but her hands are wrapped in black bindings, and with her black trousers and boots she looks like she's dressed to fight, travel or both at a moment's notice. She's not got the extra bulk Pyrrha does, but neither you or the detective are fooled for a second. She's got an air of alertness, a coiled-steel-spring kind of strength in the lean muscle. The detective's fairly sure that if she wanted to, she could turn and kill you before you had time to react. You're fairly sure he's just getting a little overexcited.

Russell at least bothers with a low "hey" as he shows up on your right. He looks distracted and flustered for some reason, perhaps even a little paler than usual, nervously raking his claws through his half-feathered mohawk. You glance between the two of them. Categories. You don't understand how anyone could class them together. They don't even look alike.

"I see a few of you are already quite familiar with the practices we'll be discussing today," Verthandr begins, "but given that the rest of you are not, I can only ask you to bear with us. Now..."

She turns to the blackboard, Skuld helpfully leaning out of the way and tapping her work with the stick of chalk for emphasis. It appears to be a basic diagram of the path that raw Dust ore takes from being mined to being used.

"Once extracted, the ore is refined into either cut crystals or a fine powder, depending on the circumstances," Verthandr explains. "At this stage it becomes safe to transport en masse. Highly toxic when ingested, but very powerful. Just one of many reasons why Dust is a semi-controlled substance, and shipments are closely guarded. And why I would recommend that none of you taste-test your Dust."

Russell shifts uncomfortably beside you.

"We will be working with the 'untyped' form today, which forms the base for the basic Semblance-enhancing supplements that some of you will already be familiar with. Elemental-aspect Dust can be used in more temporary enhancements to be carried and used as needed in the field, but we'll be exploring that in more depth later. For now-"

"Would anyone like to know how to make a pipe bomb?" Urdr asks sweetly.

"Th- Urdr I think it's important we work on the fundamentals first-" Verthandr starts.

"When you use lightning-Dust the casing shrapnel comes out electrified, it's great!" Skuld chimes in with a look of manic glee in her eyes.

"That's quite enough of that!" Verthandr snaps. Skuld mockingly mouths a few words, rolling her eyes, as she turns back to face the board. The matron clears her throat. "Yes, Dust is the major component in all forms of munitions, and a later part of the course will be instructing you how to construct explosives and ammunition for yourself. Responsibly." She glances at Skuld dubiously. "Now, you all have your groups sorted I see. Follow my instructions, and watch me carefully. I will instruct you how to brew your own supplement, and at the end of class one of you will drink your work. No need to fret - the brew will be weak enough that mistakes will only lead to an upset stomach."

The various groups huddle a little closer to their workstations as Verthandr takes over blackboard duty, wiping away Skuld's work to make room for her alchemy instructions. Skuld drifts across the room to Urdr's side instead, leaning in to listen to the older woman's murmurs. She nods and guides Urdr over to the desk, helping her take a seat.

You take stock of your situation. The lesson's begun in earnest, and all the other groups have at least cracked open their canisters of golden Dust and made a start of it. On your end, Blake's just hefting yours and shooting a dubious look at the oak-leaf mark. Russell hasn't made a move either way. The workstation equipment looks completely incomprehensible to you, and neither of your prey are any help either.

It occurs to you that you could probably ingest raw Dust just fine, given the circumstances. It then occurs to you that that's not very helpful, and in fact would cause even more problems than it would solve. You give the desk a hangdog look and purse your lips, racking your brain for something actually constructive to do.

[ ] Just try to follow the instructions and do everything yourself. If the others want to help then they'll help, if they don't it's not your place to be coaxing them anyway.
[ ] Ask Russell what's bothering him. He's obviously uncomfortable about something, whether it's whatever happened in Gotthard's class or something more recent, and maybe if you help he'll do the work.
[ ] Just get Russell to be doing something. Have him repeat Urdr's steps back to you while you do everything or vice versa. At least that's better than nothing.
[ ] Ask Blake if there's a problem with the Dust or something. You get the pretty distinct feeling she knows more than she cares to let on half the time - maybe actually asking her will yield fruit.
[ ] Get Blake to help. Have her repeat Urdr's steps back to you while you do everything or vice versa. Maybe she's just standoffish because no one's approached her. That's how it works, right? Weiss was just an outlier.