Chapter 6
Pyrrha took point and Jaune followed right behind her as the pair cautiously made their way towards the forest temple.
"Hey, uh, Pyrrha," Jaune asked softly. "Is this normal? I thought we'd run into some Grimm by now, or at least hear gunshots, or yelling, or. I dunno, something."
Pyrrha frowned in consternation. "No Jaune, it's not."
She had planned to circumvent as many Grimm as she could. Jaune seemed funny and nice, and she knew that it wasn't an act because he hadn't known that she was a world-famous sport-fighter when they introduced themselves, but it was also clear that his huntsmen skills were a bit… lacking at the moment. Nothing they couldn't fix later though!
The problem - and it was almost funny to think that it was a problem - was that there weren't any Grimm around to circumvent. Pyrrha saw plenty of tracks, but most of them were a couple of hours old at least and the fresher ones all seemed to be heading southwest. That was odd, and oddly behaving Grimm was almost never a good thing.
Pyrrha shuddered as her imagination involuntarily pondered what it would feel like to be disemboweled by a Beowolf. Why did Ruby have to say that stuff? Pyrrha knew how to fight Beowolfs for Pete's sake! They were the first Grimm any new huntsman fought. But still…
"I don't like this, Jaune," Pyrrha said. "Keep your eyes peeled, okay?"
"Uh, okay," Jaune said, looking as nervous as she felt when she turned her head to scan the forest behind them. "Good to know that we're in danger. Yeah, good. I'll just, uh make sure nothing sneaks up behind us. Or above. Don't wanna get ambushed because we didn't look up, right? That'd just be embarrassing."
Pyrrha smiled as she pushed a branch out of her path. Even if he wasn't as skilled of a partner as she would have liked, it was nice to know that he did have good instincts. "That's a great idea, Jaune."
"Of course," Jaune said proudly. "That's me, mister great ide-augh!"
"Jaune," Pyrrha exclaimed, her heart leaping into her throat as she whirled around. When she realized that he was just holding his cheek because the branch she just pushed away had whipped back and hit him in the face, she laughed with relief. Then she sheepishly realized that she should have held it until he passed.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it, it's just a scratch" Jaune laughed as he pulled his hand away.
That… wasn't right.
"Why didn't you activate your Aura," Pyrrha asked, confused.
"Huh?" Jaune asked, poking at the scratch with his finger and then pulling it back again to examine the tiny smear of blood.
"Your Aura."
"Gusundheit," he said.
"Jaune," Pyrrha asked with growing anxiety. "Do you… not know what Aura is?"
Jaune waved her off, looking away. "Psch! Of course I do! Do
you know what Aura is?"
Pyrrha sighed, and then smiled. She
had always liked explaining Aura to people, usually her fans, and the situation they were in wouldn't take that away from her
"Aura is the manifestation of our soul. It bears our burdens and shields our hearts. Have you ever felt you were being watched without knowing that someone was there?
***
Weiss considered, as she ran northward, that she might have misjudged the Ruby situation a little bit. A White Fang assassin wouldn't pass up a chance to take her out like that, and if they were trying to send her a message, they were doing a very poor job of it.
She leapt and flipped into a forward handspring to clear a fallen tree trunk that was as thick as she was tall.
The problem was, now she was just right back to being confused. Why was Ruby putting on this whole show? It couldn't have just been to give her the compass, you didn't act like a slasher villain to give people compasses!
She came to a small, crumbling cliff and scaled it without slowing down by bounding from boulder to ledge.
The show wasn't over either. Ruby hadn't said anything since her disappearance, but Weiss could
feel the crazy girl's gaze through the prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck.
"Hurry, Weiss," Ruby's soft voice drifted out of the forest, making her heart skip a beat. "You need to hurry."
Weiss was beginning to pant with exertion, but she didn't let that stop her from moving faster. She wasn't running because she was scared, of course, it was just because she wanted to get a partner while the getting was good. She didn't care who at this point, just so long as she didn't get saddled with the budding murderer!
"I am hurrying," she snapped out between breaths. "But why do you care anyway?"
Weiss didn't actually expect Ruby to answer. She was mostly just trying to provoke Ruby into giving her another chance to try and pin down her position. To Weiss's surprise and delight though, Ruby actually, finally dropped the spooky act and snapped back.
"Because I can't keep Grimm off you forever! This isn't as easy as it looks, you know! So maybe show some courtesy and speed things up?"
Weis was too busy trying to focus on not tripping over the softball-sized rocks that lined a river-bed she crossed at a run to concentrate, so it took a second for the meaning of what Ruby just said to hit her.
"What," she screeched indignantly as she skidded to a halt in the middle of a tall grass clearing. "You're the reason I haven't seen any Grimm!?"
"I said go faster, not stop!"
Weiss heard an unfamiliar sound like something between a thunk and a clink ahead and to her left. She didn't know what it was, but if she absolutely had to take a guess, she'd say that was probably the sound that a knife made when it hit the bone armor of a Grimm.
"What is wrong with you," Weiss shouted. "Are you trying to make me fail the test? There's easier ways to do that, you know!"
"Why would I do that," the girl's voice asked, sounding almost as confused as Weiss felt and coming from ahead and to the right. Somehow, Ruby had managed to cross in front of her without being seen.
"I don't know, that's why I'm asking!"
"Well I'm not trying to make you fail, that's stupid. And why aren't you running!?"
"Because this is the initiation exam for a huntsmen academy you dolt! How am I supposed to demonstrate my abilities if I don't fight any Grimm!?"
The moment of silence after she asked that question was a little long, and very pregnant.
"...oh."
Weiss would have buried her face in her palms if she wasn't so busy scanning the trees for psycho children, and if they weren't already occupied with her rapier and compass.
"Great," she groaned. "The wannabe serial killer is a moron."
Ruby's giggle came from behind her this time.
"I'm not a serial killer, silly. You have to kill a lot of people for that. Like, at least three. And not all in one place."
What.
"Anyway," Ruby continued as if she hadn't just said something very concerning. "How does a King Taijitu sound? That's impressive, right?"
***
"Uhh, Yeah," Jaune said. "I actually have felt that before."
Pyrrha nodded. "With practice, our Aura can be our shield. Everyone has it, even animals."
"What about monsters?"
"No. The monsters we fight lack a soul. They are creatures of Grimm, the manifestation of anonymity. They are the darkness, and we are the light."
"Right, that's why we fight them!"
***
Weiss didn't have the time to react to Ruby's question, and if she was being honest, she didn't mind that. She was tired of trying to figure out how to react to the little psycho that had latched onto her for some inexplicable reason. It felt… not good to fight, but relieving to have something she knew how to handle. She could fight, and do it well enough to force her father's hand and let her enroll at Beacon.
An obsidian snake with a head the size of a large car launched out of the forest with its mouth wide open in an attempt to either bite her in half with fangs that were as long as she was tall or swallow her whole. She avoided it with a backflip and used a mid-air pirouette to bring her rapier around and slash at its body as it barrelled past. Her hit was a glancing blow, though, just strong enough to cut into its hard scales, but not enough to penetrate deep and cause a serious wound.
The King Taijitu used its size and momentum to circle around the spot where she landed, trying to catch her in its coils, which tightened just a hair too late to stop her from jumping up and back and landing on its body with a click of her heels, then running along its spine towards the head. She had hoped to get on top of its skull where it would have difficulty doing anything to her, but the King Taijitu's head caught up to her before she could get past its turning radius.
Abandoning her plan, Weiss leapt left while the Grimm's body coiled off to the right until it came right back around and crossed itself. She barely avoided the snap of its mouth with a high leap that she turned into a front flip with a half-twist and left her off to the side and high above the battleground with a perfect line of sight to its huge, blood-red eye. She slashed Myrtenaster through the air and conjured up a glyph under her feet, which she used to launch herself towards the eye with her weapon outstretched and ready to pierce it.
Unfortunately, the King Taijitu was quicker than something that size should have been. It reacted to the movement and converted its forward movement into an upwards helix that would intercept her from the side. It was a good thing that, what it had in speed and agility, it lacked in intelligence. Weiss smirked as it fell for her trap.
She brought her hands into her chest and accelerated the small twist that she had put into her jump into a fast spin, sending her skirt and ponytail flying out in wide arcs. She made a quick hand sign movement with her left hand and thrust Myrtenaster forward right as her spin brought her around to look directly down the King Taijitu's throat and then triggered the ice dust stored in one of the chambers in her weapon's hilt. The frozen crystal that she sent flying towards her opponent weighed more than she did and was travelling as fast as a bullet. She couldn't miss.
***
"It's not about why; it's about knowing," Pyrrha clarified.
***
Weiss wished she'd studied up on King Taijitus before coming to Beacon, because if she had, she would have known going into this fight that apparently the Grimm didn't think that being a snake big enough to swallow horses whole and fast enough to keep up with a huntress wasn't unfair enough. She didn't evenget the chance to see if her attack landed because that was when a white snake of equal size struck her from behind.
***
"By baring your soul outward as a force, you can deflect harm. All of our tools and equipment are conduits for Aura. You protect yourself and your soul when fighting."
***
"Ugh."
Weiss wrinkled her nose as she stared down the white snake's throat from a far more intimate position than she liked. She had managed to twist just fast enough to turn upside down and place her feet in between some of the smaller fangs in its upper jaw while catching one of the teeth attached to the lower jaw on the palm of her hand. It was only her Aura that gave her the strength to keep from getting her hand impaled and then her body shredded by its teeth. That wasn't to say that she was doing well though. Weiss had never had the power to weather direct contests of strength like this, and all of that force concentrated onto such a small area was draining her Aura rapidly.
***
Jaune opened his eyes as he seemingly had a sudden revelation. "It's like a forcefield!"
Pyrrha smiled and held back a rueful shake of her head at the oversimplification. He wasn't exactly wrong, and had actually figured out that use quicker than most people did, so she'd say it was good enough for now.
***
Fortunately for Weiss, she still had her sword-hand free. She reversed her grip with a flourish and stabbed Myrtenaster upward into the roof of the snake's mouth. Then she triggered the fire dust stored inside.
The resulting fireball blew the head to bits and sent Weiss flying a dozen yards before she hit the ground tumbling. Mid-roll, she drove her stiletto heel into the dirt and used it as an anchor point to let her momentum yank her upright. Simultaneously, she stuck her other foot out as far as she could and dragged it across the ground in an arc to cancel out her rotation, bringing her to a stop looking back over her shoulder at the Grimm, with Myrtenaster still held in the reverse grip and pointed at the headless body which just dropped in a smoking heap.
Weiss coughed daintily to clear the smoke from her lungs and spun around to face the remaining black snake in a proper fencing stance, and that was when she realized that she wasn't fighting two Grimm. They had only ever been one creature, two snake heads of opposite colors attached to either end of the same body, with a whirl of white and black scales where the colors interweaved together.
Weiss smiled. She had the monster's measure now.
***
Pyrrha reached out and caressed the side of Jaune's head. "Now, close your eyes and concentrate."
"Uh, okay," Jaune said, suddenly sounding uncertain.
Pyrrha didn't pay any mind to that and turned her attention inwards. Unlocking another person's Aura wasn't something that just anyone could do, the person doing the unlocking needed to be able to wield their own Aura with both power and finesse. She couldn't let herself get distracted by things like that.
"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality," Pyrrha intoned, using the same invocation that her father had used when he unlocked her own Aura all those years ago. In theory, you could say anything you liked or nothing at all, but a formal invocation made it easier to concentrate on the task. And this one had special meaning to her. "Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death. I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee."
Pyrrha pushed her Aura out of herself and into Jaune's body, attacking the walls that kept his soul contained. She wasn't trying to tear those walls down though, that just would let his Aura spill out and kill him. She was trying to drill a hole, one that Jaune could open when he needed power and then stopper up to let his drained Aura refill.
What Pyrrha didn't expect was the force with which Jaune's Aura shot out when she broke through. It felt like she was caught up in a flash flood and thrown around like a rag doll. It took all of her strength to pull her Aura back into herself, and the act left her bent over double with exhaustion as she came back to the waking world.
"Pyrrha?" Jaune asked in concern as he reached out to steady her..
Pyrrha waved his hand away and stood up straight.
"It's all right. I used my Aura to unlock yours, but the energy that protects you now is your own." She couldn't suppress a wide smile as she saw the scratch on his cheek heal with impressive speed. "You have a lot of it."
AN: As a bonus, have a non-canon snippet that I had to cut.
"Ruby," Weiss asked as she edged closer to the center of the clearing to get as much room, and thus reaction time, as possible regardless of which direction an attack came from. "Have you killed someone?"
"...no?"
Oh. That wasn't good.
"Oh, yeah," Ruby said as if she had just remembered something. "Yang said that if anyone found out, I should tell them it was self-defense."
Somehow, that didn't convince Weiss that it was self-defense.
