On his extra-large custom black scroll, Ozpin rewatched the security camera footage from the Xiong Club. Taiyang’s daughter’s performance was impressive, undoubtedly a valuable addition to Beacon… Another intriguing development was the airship currently en route from Atlas. Ozpin had remembered when James informed him of the Schnee girl’s wish to attend Beacon... Since then, the general had given him the complete list of everyone exiting the kingdom, and now it seemed that the girl was really going through with it… This year was bound to be an interesting one.
There came a beeping noise and Ozpin moved to check the notification… A signal from the Vale Police Department, gunfire had been heard near the north industrial district, suspected terrorist activity. Ozpin allowed his eyes to narrow to slits.
The report from Night Lark was a footnote in the week’s events… Four faunus girls found just outside the walls, survivors from a destroyed unmapped settlement no doubt. He was about to close his scroll and get ready to sleep when there came a text from the one person he didn’t want to hear from at this hour.
He mouthed the words as he read them, “Qrow: Autumn attacked, spine damaged, aura damaged, requesting medical airship.” Ozpin kept his hands steady with great effort as he took another sip from his coffee, trying to not let his rage show… This was going to be a long night.
Morning light shone through the distant trees as the ship came to a stop at the shore of Patch. The fillies stared at the little village, it almost looked like Ponyville, but the structures were mostly brick and concrete, but it carried with it the same familiar feeling. In the distance was a large series of structures behind an ornate brick and concrete wall.
“Welcome to Patch!” Ruby shouted as she hopped in place.
“I like it, feels like home,” Apple Bloom replied as she carried everyone’s boxes off the vessel.
“I’m going to head home and warn dad about our guests,” Said yang, rolling her two-wheeled vehicle off the ship.
“Make sure we have some food waiting for us!” Ruby replied.
“Will do,” Yang retorted, hopping on her vehicle and starting the engine. Before she drove off, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom mounted their boxes to the back of the vehicle, and Yang promised to move them into their shack-turned-workshop. With that, she drove off down a dirt path toward the forest. Scootaloo simply stared at the vehicle in envy as it moved out of sight.
“That over there is Signal,” Ruby said, pointing toward the walled building in the distance.
“You go to school there?” Asked Diamond.
“Yep… Only have two more years, then I can go to Beacon.”
“I kinda wish you could attend with us,” Sweetie Belle replied.
“Come on, let’s go, I want to see what your house is like!” Scootaloo said.
Built into the roots of the Golden Oaks Library was a hidden room, filled with arcane devices and machinery, a cage placed in the center, lined with custom-built arcane sensors. Coming through the door came a purple alicorn, she rushed to different machines, flipping switches and dials, each of the ungodly advanced works of arcane engineering were built and maintained by the mare to a state of perfect functionality.
Magical energies started to fill the room as devices came to life. After throwing on a lab coat and safety goggles, Twilight turned to the door, “It’s ready now, you can bring him in, Fluttershy.”
Carefully, the pegasus lead a collared beowolf into the room, the creature’s fur standing on end, and solid-red eyes scanning the machines, fear evident in body language. When he spotted the cage, the creature shrunk and tried to pull its head back, the collar being the only thing keeping it from bolting out the door.
Fluttershy pulled on the leash, but the monster fought back, “Lusus, get in the cage,” She whispered to the creature, “We aren’t going to hurt you,” But the wolf responded with stronger pulling. “Lusus!” Fluttershy yelled as she was pulled forward and fell to the ground. With anger and magic, Fluttershy floated off the floor and stared into the wolf’s endless eyes. The creature shrunk back, moving slowly away from the pegasus.
She moved between the door and the monster, and Lusus started backing up, away from the pegasus' stare, unknowingly moving itself into the cage, “That’s it Fluttershy, you can stop now,” Twilight said, pulling a lever and closing the cage door. The pegasus closed her eyes and drifted back to the ground, landing without a sound.
“Can I be here for this?”
“I’m sorry, but no…” Twilight replied, “I can’t risk your magical presence interfering with the scan, and the scanners are only calibrated to ignore my presence, not yours.”
Fluttershy nodded in understanding and left the room, closing the door behind her. “I hope this goes better than when I used this on Pinkie,” Twilight muttered to herself. She turned to a cabinet of medical supplies and retrieved a trio of syringes, each had a gemstone on them that cast a stasis spell on the contents of the syringe. “Should only need one, but it’s best to have backups, just in case… This is going to hurt, Lusus.”
She tried to stick the syringe into the monster’s flesh, but it’s skin proved too tough, she pushed it harder and harder, eventually, the syringe’s needle snapped and cracked apart under the telekinetic pressure. Swearing under her breath, she drew a replacement from her cabinet and cast a spell on the tip, “Let’s try this again,” This time, the needle stuck right in without any effort, eliciting a look of confusion, then understanding from the alicorn.
As the needle drew a glowing red ichor from its body, the beast howled in pain and anger, and Twilight winced at the noise, not wanting to cause unnecessary pain to the entity, no matter how dark the magic coming off the being was. “Only two more, then we’re done,” she said in a futile attempt to console the beowolf.
Extracting two more syringes proved equally as unpleasant to the alicorn, but in the end, she had her three vials of ichor. “Ok, now to see what you look like on the inside…” She moved to another lever connected to machines that were further connected to magical sensors. When it was pulled and dials were twisted, the magical energy in the room grew exponentially and the wolf started to growl and howl and whimper.
There came a series of flashes of light from the sensors as they finished charging and started imaging… The wolf howled in pain one last time as the energies penetrated its body and it convulsed, dropping to the floor of the cage, silent. Eyes wide, Twilight rushed toward the lever and pulled it back up with all her might, then slammed her hoof on the emergency discharge button. The magical energy in the room vanished as it was all channelled up the tree by hidden emergency conduits, and out from the tree’s top in a simple beam of light.
She rushed to the cage, but by the time she threw open the door, the beowolf was already evaporating, flesh turning to sludge, sludge to vapour, and vapour to nothingness. Twilight let out a series of profanity that only she, herself, heard, thankfully. Then muttered into her hooves, “Fluttershy’s going to kill me…”
Moments passed, but she soon gained the courage to check the readout. She held back tears, not only from ending the life of Fluttershy’s new friend, but also at the lack of useful data she collected, the imagers had bearly started to map the creature when it evaporated, all it could tell her was that it possessed no skeleton nor internal organs, and she knew, just on simple logic, that it was an incorrect analysis.
With a grunt, she moved over to her samples still lying on the table, “No… This won’t stop me,” She muttered to herself, “Your mysteries I will explain…”
Coming down the trail, the girl and fillies could plainly make out a wooden two-storey cabin with some kind of watchtower extending upward from the structure's roof... Sweetie couldn't help but wonder if that technically made the building three-storey. As they approached, Yang and an older man with yellow hair wearing a vest and shorts came out of a door and waved. “Hey, dad!” Yelled Ruby as she ran up toward the pair.
“Tai, these are those four faunus girls I talked about,” Yang said, pointing to the fillies.
The vested man, Tai as Yang called him, looked at the girls with speculation, “Hmm,” He said, “Yang says you four girls came from somewhere outside the kingdom,”
Diamond nodded, “Yes, sir… My name is Diamond Tiara, and these are Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo Allgood,” She said, pointing out each of the fillies as their names were called, “We don’t really have much money or anywhere to stay, at least until we attend Beacon.”
“Yeah… A story I’m all too familiar with…” Tai began. “Well, come inside, we can have something to eat and you can tell us more about yourselves, let me go get the oven prepped.”
“Yes, I’d greatly enjoy that.”
“Hey, after breakfast, I was thinking we could do some sparring,” Yang began.
“And I should get Crescent Rose all fixed up so we can get started on your weapons,” Ruby continued.
“That sounds great…” Scootaloo said.
“It’ll be a great opportunity to see how strong the average Beacon student is, after all, if this entrance exam is anywhere near as tough as you make it out to be, we need to be the best fighters we can,” Sweetie continued.
“Come, we have the time to get at least one fight in while dad’s cooking,” Yang finished.
With that, the yellow-haired girl led the fillies behind the house. Ruby ran toward the shed that looked to the fillies like a miniaturized version of the Apple Family barn, and inside the Crusaders saw all kind of tools and machines. Atop a workbench was a mass of red-painted metal, that looked like a mechanical claw next to some kind of boxy contraption.
“Let’s start with Bloom, you look nice and strong,” Yang said, “The rest of you better back up.”
The fillies did as told and cleared the area so the two girls could fight, Yang took her gauntlets off and set them to the side as Apple Bloom stood there, confused. “You ready?” She asked.
“Yeah, I guess-” Her words were cut off. Faster than anyone could react, Yang shot forward and rammed her fist right into Bloom’s cheek, sending the girl sprawling to the ground, bleeding from the nose.
“Oh… I-” Yang began, “I thought you were ready…”
“Ow…” Bloom commented, rubbing her cheek, “That hurt… A lot.”
“Why didn’t you block it?”
“How? You were faster than my sister on an apple-bucking day.”
“You could have taken that hit with your aura…” Yang commented.
“What’s an aura?”
Yang wore an expression of disbelief and shock. Ruby popped her head from out the shack to look shocked too and walked over to help the girl up. “Y-You… Don’t know what Aura is?” Ruby asked.
“Should I?”
“No wonder you don’t have a home anymore…” Yang commented, whispering to herself. Only the faunus with extra ears were able to catch her comment.
“How do you expect to go to Beacon without Aura?” Ruby began, “It was the first thing they teach us in combat school.”
“Well, we don’t exactly have a combat school where we come from,” Sweetie replied.
“If Aura is that important, then teach us how to use it!” Scootaloo shouted.
Yang looked thoughtful, “Well, most people think of Aura as an ‘extension of the soul’, much like how a common belief is that a weapon is an 'extension of the body'… I don’t really understand the philosophy about it, but whatever it is, it’s useful as hell.”
“Yeah, just look,” Ruby began, retreating into her shack to retrieve an obscenely sharp bladed tool of some kind, “Watch,” She said, as she jabbed the blade down into her own arm.
For a moment the fillies watch, horrified, expecting her to cut right through her arm and make a bloody mess of herself, but the moment the blade struck her flesh, there was a little shimmer of red energy around the impact point, almost unnoticeable, and she pulled the blade back to reveal the only thing cut was the sleeve of her dress.
“That isn’t the only thing it can do,” Ruby continued, she carefully lowered the blade to her skin and gave a look of deep discomfort as she cut a small gash into her hand, then a moment later, a field of red closed around the cut and it started to fade, the skin stitching itself together and not even leaving a scar, the small cut taking a minute to heal. "The only thing I wish it could do was block out the pain completely, it still hurts when you get hit..."
“Well… When dad’s available, we’ll get him to unlock your Aura and we can get started, until then, I don’t think fighting’s a good idea,” Yang commented.
“Yeah, and now we at least know what you need to train first,” Ruby cheerily retorted.
With that, the girls marched toward a door, intent on showing the fillies around their house.