Chapter 8: Training Day
Needless to say, Yang was shocked when, after skilfully dodging a punch, not a difficult feat by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly something a beginner should know, the young red-head lashed out with her own punch. Yang was ready to block, and she did… What she didn’t expect was to be hit with so much force that she was sent flying backwards, impacting a tree with enough power to split the trunk in half and send the tree falling over. “Woah, damn!” Yang shouted.
She grinned as her eyes turned red, and Apple Bloom raised her fists, ready to block. Yang came charging from the trees and rammed her fist at Apple Bloom, and sent the girl flying backwards, she flashed a bright red as energy rippled across her body, “Agh!” She shouted as she slid to a stop on the ground.
“Ok, I guess it’s Scootaloo’s turn… Bloom, take some time to recover your aura.”
Bloom unsteadily got to her feet and moved out of the way for Scootaloo to take her place. Yang got back into a fighting stance and raised her fists, “Ready?” Yang asked as Scootaloo tried to copy the stance.
“Yeah,” She said.
Yang ran forward ready to throw a simple punch, Scootaloo jumped to the side and tripped, falling over. Yang paused and moved to help Scootaloo back up and start over again, but the filly rolled to the side instead, leapt to her feet, and kicked Yang over. Scootaloo lept back when Yang caught herself and jumped forward, throwing a punch. Scootaloo felt her pegasus magic reach out and she jumped into the air, soaring over Yang, “Good, looks like you know how to aura jump!”
Yang lept into the air after the girl, who raised her hands over her head. Slowly, whisps of white vapour started to collect around her arms and she merged them into a ball of puffy white cloud, then aimed the ball at Yang and punched the cloud with all her might. There was a loud boom as a bolt of lightning struck Yang in the torso, sending her back down to the ground.
Yang staggered to her feet, “That was cheating! You only won because you used your semblance!” Scootaloo fell back to the ground with a thump. “Ok, let’s do this again, no lightning this time…” Yang finished as the two girls readied themselves.
Ruby ignored the sounds of battle going on outside, Yang was giving those faunus girls some lessons, and Ruby had to suppress her desire to go out there and join in on the action… Perhaps in the coming days they could have some two-vs-two fights.
The glare of the dust-powered arc welder was a nice distraction as she reinforced Crescent Rose’s shaft and added a retractable spike to the other end of her scythe. Her weapon was nearly finished as another fight outside wrapped up, she could hear Yang’s voice, “Wow Diamond, you’re strong, you might not be Apple Bloom, but damn… It’s Sweetie’s Turn, and no semblances.”
Ruby didn’t know any of the faunus girls that well yet, but they all seemed nice… She remembered the brilliant light that shone off them as they unlocked their aura, she remembered what it felt like when Qrow unlocked hers, and she remembered when Tai unlocked Yang’s… Those girls were powerful, and despite their lack of combat skill, she knew already that they were going to pass the Beacon entrance exam, once they got a bit of training of course. She couldn’t help but feel some envy, she wanted to go to Beacon too, she wanted to train, she wanted to become a huntress, she wanted to discover what happened to her mom, she wanted to save people, she wanted to kill monsters… She would need to wait two more years.”
Ruby closed her eyes and made an effort to calm herself… She didn’t want to wait, but she would if she had to, for now, she just had to watch from afar. She put the fully repaired Crescent Rose away and turned to the boxes the girls had brought with them. Inside were a mass of mechanical parts, she drew the papers from a folder placed inside each box and gave them a look.
They were schematics, very well done schematics, detailing the four girls weapons… A longsword whose blade could split in half and reveal a dust cannon in the crossguard… A thirty-millimetre autocannon where the barrel could fold down to create a handle and stock retract into the firing chamber to form a hammer… A poleaxe with a dust crystal stuck into the end to act as an aura channelling staff… And a pair of pistols that exclusively used tanks of dust as ammo and had knife-bayonets.
She stared in awe of the designs, they were quite the works of engineering, whoever designed them had an understanding of mechanical design that far surpassed her own… This raised another question in her mind, where did these girls get these patterns… This only added to her growing list of questions, how did these girls survive the trek to Vale from outside the kingdom, and how are they so powerful, why do they not know anything about aura or semblance, how had they never heard of dust before she met them… All questions she would have time for later, now, she set herself to work in assembling the weapons from their schematics.
Princess Celestia retired to her room, as she did every day after day court, exhausted from the endless litany of minor concerns, political manoeuvring, and vain noblemares demanding things from her. She had lived a very, very long time, and had millennia of experience in ruling nations, she had perfected her government through trial and error, creating a perfect society through thousands of years of social and political experimentation, at least as close to perfect as possible… There were very few things that could surprise her.
The news that eight foals had vanished in Ponyville was concerning, but certainly nothing that hasn’t happened before, the surprising part were the reports that, apparently, Discord had sent them to another world. She was going to be talking with the God of Chaos at a later date, for now, her student had scheduled a talk with her.
She felt the magical pressure and heard the popping noise of teleportation and sighed, turning to open the door. “Twilight, I presume you have come to talk to me regarding Discord’s actions?”
Twilight was wearing her shielded labcoat, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept, in a telekinetic grasp she held a pile of papers. “Yes and no,” She replied, pulling a few enchanted syringes from a padded saddlebag, filled with a brightly glowing red liquid.
“W-What is that?” Celestia asked, staring at the blood-like substance, the material practically radiating dark and malignant energies… Energy she had only felt from two other ponies before, Luna, and- “Is it Sombra, has he returned again?!”
“No, my Princess…” Twilight spoke fast, as if worried, “Three days ago now, Discord sent the fillies off to another world, and he also sent a creature from that world here. It wasn’t fully sapient, as far as I can tell, and Fluttershy was quick to take the creature into her care… It was a semi-corporal entity similar to an Ursa, Tantibus, or Windigo, and resembled a large wolf with an ape-like body structure, black etherial fur, and bone-like protrusions across its body, particularly a skull-like mask covered in glowing red markings.”
As Twilight spoke, Celestia became more and more worried, both about the foals in this other world where such creatures existed, but also about the nature of this creature… The more and more she described it, the more it sounded like a creation of Sombra. “The creature appeared mostly docile, but was quick to turn hostile and would require exposure to Fluttershy’s stare, or a long period of isolation, to calm, at least according to Fluttershy… It seemed attracted to her pet, Angel Bunny, for some reason, and for the entire time it stayed at Fluttershy’s cottage, it never ate or drank…”
“Where is this creature, I want to inspect it for myself…” Celestia said.
Twilight sighed. Not a good sign, “I brought the creature into my lab to study it, after taking a blood sample, as you can see here,” She said, levitating up one of the vials, “I put it into a cage lined with custom-made arcane scanners, an upgrade on the kind I used on Pinkie Pie two years ago now…” She suddenly wore a grim expression, “Unfortunately, exposure to magic caused the subject to expire… Fluttershy hasn’t spoken to me since.”
“I see… In that case, may I inspect its remains…”
“Confusingly, and unfortunately, the creature’s body did not remain for long following its termination, the body seemed to rapidly liquefy, the liquid rapidly vaporizing, and the vapour seeming to dissolve into magical energy from there, there is nothing left of the creature apart from the lingering magical energies still saturating my lab.”
There was a pause as Celestia thought. Suddenly, Twilight spoke up, “Fluttershy took pictures of the creature before it’s accidental termination,” She passed a few pictures to the Princess, who closely scrutinized the creature…
“Twilight, these are intriguing discoveries, and I will ask you to keep them to yourself for the time being… I will bring one of the creature’s blood samples to the Royal Canterlot Institute of Magical Biology.”
“Princess,” Twilight began, “I feel an important next step is to find a way to travel to this world without relying on Discord and his… Unpredictable nature… Next time he sends something to this world, I’ll analyze the spell he does it with and see if I can’t isolate the spell matrix.”
“You can do that when I talk with Discord myself on this matter… An alien world is an interesting development, and if it’s populated by these creatures, all the more reason we should investigate it.”
Twilight bowed and left the room. Celestia sighed, she would need to go to the Canterlot Royal Library and gather all the information they have on portal spells… And of course, she would need to go to Tartarus and recover the remnants of Sombra that were uncovered in the Crystal Empire.
Morning light came shining through the windows. All the girls had shared the bed this time, but Diamond still distanced herself as far from the Crusader’s pony-pile as possible, until she somehow got dragged into the middle of it, even if they were all a little bruised from their training yesterday. The girls were bearly awake when there came a familiar voice from a corner of their room, “Enjoying yourself thus far?”
They got up to stare at… Something… It had the vague shape of a human or faunus, but its body had no obvious features asides from the outline of muscles and facial structure, and a pair of mismatched horns growing from its head, one was that of a deer and the other that of a dragon, its body was a glowing shimmering mass of rainbow light with an emphasis on pink.
“D-Discord?” Apple Bloom said.
“You’ve probably never seen me in this form, the humans have, once, but I normally prefer spending time on Equus… Mostly on account of getting as far from my cousins as possible.”
“What do you want with us now?” Diamond asked, bitterly.
“Nothing my dear… I just came to give you some gifts from home… Seeing as you won’t be going back any time soon,” With that, he raised his hand and four objects flashed into reality again… “Sweetie Belle, Twilight asked that I give you a spellbook, filled with all kinds of powerful spells,” He leaned closer, whispering in her ear, “I may have tinkered with the list slightly, after all, you won’t be needing many of the spells on that list, as they were designed for use on your homeworld.”
He then turned to Scootaloo, “You’ll be getting a few other gifts later, for now, Rainbow asked me to give you this wonderbolt medal…”
He turned to Apple Bloom, “A potions kit… Your attempts at alchemy have always been rather chaotic in the past… I wonder what kind of wonderfully chaotic creations you can put together with access to dust.”
And finally, he turned to Diamond, “This was originally meant for Apple Bloom, but she already has a gift and I feel this was a little more fitting for you… Money… I took the liberty of changing it from Bits to Lien.”
Before he vanished in another flash of light, he turned back to Sweetie Belle again, “Oh, and… Be careful who you show that book to… There are some powerful and dangerous people on this world, and we wouldn’t want them to get their hands on magic like that… Anyway! Sayōnara!”
The fillies looked at each-other, confused… Then smiled. They stashed their gifts away for later and moved to get dressed when suddenly there came a knock on their door. “Hey! It took all night, but I put all your weapons together, they’re waiting for you in the shack!” Ruby called out from the hall.
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Twilight a way to formal with Celestia. Kinda OOC for her.
You should talk Yang, you use your semblance every chance you get. Also, I have a feeling that Scootaloo's semblance is going to be very useful whenever she teams up with Nora
9936358
Well, Yang thinks it's her semblance... (It's actually just her pegasus magic, her semblance is something else)
hm...are the fillies going to take Ruby's place at Beacon, or is the scuffle with Torchwick still going to happen? I'm also looking forward to seeing more of team Sliver spoon; who i am assuming are going to Haven?
9936924
The way I'm writing this, it'll stay close to canon at the beginning, but the further things go along, the more and more deviated from the regular canon it'll become.
9936937
Oh good. I was afraid it was one of those "Insert New NPC HERE" fanfics. I hate those.
9937181
I'm trying to play it logically, seeing how the addition of these new characters will slowly snowball the plot off course... For example, (Some spoilers for future events of this fic): Shenanigans involving team Trass will prevent Team RWBY from investigating the actions of Roman and the White Fang during Volume 2, meaning that they don't get the mission to go to Mountain Glenn, and that leads to future events going wrong, ect... ect...
9936937
cool, looking forward to more.