//------------------------------//
// Best Day Ever (Rewritten) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Best Day Ever


Pyrrha wasn't exactly clear on how all of this had started. One moment, Ruby was flicking food at her sister from across the dining hall, the next minute, Sunset - dripping cream off her face from the pie that had struck her - had planted her foot on the table and yelled something that sounded like 'It. Is. On!' and then... Pyrrha was especially fuzzy on the ‘and then,’ but, well... now YDRN, WWSR, and BLBL had piled up the tables into a vast barricade at one end of the dining hall - with Nora perched precariously at the very top, and all the rest ranged about below like her guards - and she, Pyrrha, was charging up the hall with a baguette in her hand, and that must have happened somehow, even if she wasn't certain exactly how.
All she knew was that, as ridiculous as it might seem, it was also rather exhilarating.
It was probably exhilarating precisely because it was so ridiculous. She hadn't felt this rush of giddy enthusiasm for years on the tournament circuit.
But, as her dozen opponents armed themselves with various foodstuffs - it was an unusual breakfast selection today, with whole watermelons and roast turkeys and cream pies and all kinds of things she hadn't seen at all during the first semester - she felt it now, and she smiled in anticipation of what was to come.
Nora pointed magisterially down the hall at the advancing Team SAPR. "Get them, my minions! Attack!"
"'Minions'?" Weiss squawked, but in spite of that, the members of the three teams - most of them, at least - leapt forward in obedience to Nora's command, snatching up watermelons from the tables in front of them and hurling them at Pyrrha in a great barrage.
Pyrrha grunted as she leapt through the air, slicing the first watermelon clean in two. Its bisected halves landed on the floor at the same time as Pyrrha did. She spun on her toe, slicing two more watermelons into halves, obliterating a third with a strike that shattered it into fragments as red as blood, kicking one back at her opponents where Yang shattered it with a punch. Pyrrha shattered another watermelon, bisected another; her face and her clothes were getting covered in sticky red watermelon juice, but she didn't care because this was gloriously silly - her 'enemies' were hocking watermelons at her, for gods' sake, and she was fighting back with a baguette roll - like nothing that she'd ever done before.
The watermelon barrage continued, but suddenly, every single one of the swollen green fruits that had been launched through the air at Pyrrha stopped, sticking in the air, held there by some vast invisible hand.
Pyrrha glanced over her shoulder. Sunset stood just behind her, brow furrowed with concentration, one hand outstretched and wreathed in the green glow of what Pyrrha now knew to be Sunset’s magic. With her free hand, she scraped some residue of cream pie out of her fiery hair and gazed down at the mess on her fingertips as a result.
She winked at Pyrrha and smirked wickedly at their opponents. "Okay, let’s do this." 
She jerked her hand forwards, just a little, and all of the watermelons were hurled backwards upon those who had first hurled them like a great wave descending on the shore. The members of the three teams scrambled for cover or just to get out of the way. Cardin upended a table to duck behind, Weiss grabbed a raw swordfish and impaled two watermelons upon the point, Flash simply took the hits from three without so much as flinching; most dodged, but Sky Lark and Russell Thrush weren't so lucky: both were struck hard enough to hurl them backwards and across the floor, where they lay in moaning, twitching lumps.
Lyra and Bon Bon were the first to charge. The former had a baguette like Pyrrha, but Bon Bon looked to have tied one end of a string of sausages around a turkey, while the other end of the sausages were wrapped around her hand.
Until the moment when she started using her bizarre weapon like a flail, unrolling the string of sausages as she threw the turkey at Pyrrha.
Pyrrha dodged, but the sound of an impact and a cry from Jaune told her that Bon Bon's strike had found a mark.
"Jaune, no!" Ruby cried. "You will be avenged!"
Bon Bon whirled her sausage-turkey flail around her head, her expression intense as she threw it at Pyrrha a second time. Pyrrha leapt, her whole body turning in mid-flight until she was upside down, her long ponytail falling. She could see the sausages beneath her, taut as they reached the limits of their length.
And Pyrrha reached out and grabbed them with her free hand. She landed on the ground and pulled before Bon Bon could react.
The other end of the sausage string was still wrapped around Bon Bon's wrist, and she was yanked forwards, her eyes bulging as she flew like an arrow straight into the baguette which Pyrrha slammed into her face.
Pyrrha let go of the sausages as Bon Bon flew backwards towards the barricade of tables.
Lyra attacked, her baguette held in both hands. Pyrrha parried her first few slashes easily, then went on the attack, driving Lyra backwards as she beat down the other girl's guard. She prepared a finishing strike-
Blake descended upon Pyrrha from above, a baguette held in each hand. Pyrrha parried. Blake was scowling with the effort, but Pyrrha was smiling because who would have thought that something like this could be so much fun?
They separated, each backing off a step, raising their baguettes into their guard of preference. Then, they charged.
Blake had been holding out on them, Pyrrha realised as they clashed, bread striking bread in a cacophonous rhythm of dull thumps ringing in an increasingly high tempo. She'd never seemed that skilled a fighter in their sparring class – not bad, but nowhere near Pyrrha’s level – but she was making Pyrrha work for this. Whenever Pyrrha thought that she'd gotten in a decisive blow, it turned out to be a clone which dissolved like shadow once struck, and only at that point could she see the real Blake about to hit her from the side or sense her presence behind her. Pyrrha parried every blow and forced Blake back with her counters, but it was a slighter margin of error then she was used to dealing with. Blake had definitely been holding back.
It was honestly a little bit of a relief when Lyra re-joined the contest. Two vs. one wasn't ideal, but Lyra provided a fixed point to focus on, restricting the places that Blake could be, and when Pyrrha focussed on Lyra, she made Blake focus on protecting her teammate, and that shut down Blake's options yet further. Not quite enough, as the fight continued. Bread thumped against bread: slash, parry, counter. Pyrrha wasn't losing, but she wasn't winning either.
She spotted Bon Bon picking herself up off the floor and preparing to rejoin the fight. Three against one would be far from perfect.
Pyrrha leapt, backflipping away from Blake and Lyra to land on one of the tables. Her feet scattered trays and dishes in all directions. She reversed her grip on the baguette and threw it at Bon Bon like a javelin. It flew straight and true and hit her squarely in the forehead, knocking her down again.
Pyrrha jumped down off the table as Blake and Lyra came for her, snatching up another baguette to replace the one she'd thrown away.
A sound from behind distracted her for a moment; she glanced, then turned her head as Ruby came surfing along the row of tables, riding a dinner tray, scattering everything in her path down onto the floor in two messy troughs before she and her tray made a flying leap off the table straight at Lyra. Lyra raised her baguette to parry desperately, but when the tray struck her and Ruby kicked off it, she was sent flying backwards across the hall, knocking tables and chairs askew as she went until she crashed through the far window and out into the grounds somewhere.
A look of glee settled upon Ruby's face... right up until Blake attacked her in mid-air, hitting her with a flurry of blows that hammered her into the nearest pillar hard enough to crack it.
Pyrrha dashed across the dining hall, leaping over the nearest table, discarding her baguette as she scooped Ruby up in her arms and carried her out of the way of the collapsing pillar. She placed the unconscious Ruby, her eyes closed, her face childlike in repose, gently on the ground.
Then she got up and glared at Blake.
Blake glared right back as she settled once more into her guard.
Pyrrha charged, picking up baguettes one after the other and hurling them at Blake in a rain of baked rolls. Blake batted a few aside with her own twin rolls, then Blake flipped out of the way as three baguette rolls buried themselves in the floor where she had just been standing. Pyrrha grabbed a tray, dumping its contents on the floor, and spun one foot after the other before she threw it straight at Blake Belladonna. Blake dodged the ungainly object, contorting her body as it flew past. Unfortunately, she had contorted her body in such a way as to leave her open as Pyrrha descended upon her, baguette in hand. She twisted, trying to regain her balance. Pyrrha didn't give her the chance. She struck Blake once, twice, three times, knocking her up into the air. Pyrrha leapt after and above her. Blake looked up at her. Pyrrha hammered her down. Blake landed on a table that shattered beneath the impact, and all that had been on the table shot upwards like an explosion before half-burying Blake beneath it.
Pyrrha landed. She saw Sunset, arms outstretched, levitating an enormous quantity of stuff - trays, plates, turkeys, watermelons, baguettes, pies, cakes, even chairs and the tables themselves - while Cardin, Flash and a back-on-his-feet Russell looked on in wide-eyed horror.
Sunset threw her hands forward, and upon the command of that swift gesture, all the things that she had levitated to hang above her shot forward like a river in spate. Russell wailed as he tried to run. Cardin swiped futilely with a turkey stuck on a baguette as though he could swat everything that threatened him away. Flash braced himself against the floor, grabbed a dinner tray to use as a shield, and prepared to take it head on.
The storm broke upon them. Cardin and Russell were swept away by it, carried away by the tide of dinner and furniture until it bore them into the wall. Flash stood against the hurricane for a while, not seeming to feel it at all as turkeys slammed into him, as plates shattered against his tray. That must be his semblance, Pyrrha realised. Some kind of shock absorption that lets him take hits without flinching. But it had limits, and when Sunset hit him with an entire table, it was enough to knock him sprawling.
Weiss leapt through the storm, jumping from tray to chair to table and then to the next tray, flying through the midst of Sunset's tempest as though it were nothing at all. Sunset tried to hit her with the detritus of her assault, she tried to keep the wave of debris swirling in motion so that Weiss would lose her footing and fall, but Weiss skipped through it all as though everything had been placed perfectly to give her places to jump off, and she descended upon Sunset with a swordfish in hand.
Sunset flung out one hand, and a flagpole flew from the wall and into her grasp. She wielded it two-handed, like a staff or a spear, and with it, she parried Weiss' first flurry of lunges as she landed on the floor.
Weiss drove Sunset back. Although Sunset worked hard in her training, and her hand to hand skills were improving constantly, she was no match for Weiss' well-honed skills with a sword, or even a swordfish. The dead creature, eyes glassy and mouth agape with surprise as it must have been when it was hauled out of the water, flickered forwards in a series of silver flashes, rattling against Sunset's staff as Weiss drove her hard in a series of perfectly poised, well-honed lunges. Weiss grabbed a bottle of ketchup off the nearest table and squirted it out on the floor in a wide arc, skating over the crimson substance with a dancer's grace, getting behind Sunset who, by contrast, flailed in an ungainly manner for balance on the suddenly wet and sticky floor. Weiss struck for Sunset's exposed back-
Sunset teleported away, and the instant she reappeared, she surrounded herself with a howling vortex of food and plates and the remains of smashed chairs, all of it swept up from the floor around her, all of it swirling around Sunset as though she stood in the centre of a tornado, protected as if by one of her shields from any approach of her enemies.
Or so she thought.
Weiss stared at this maelstrom of detritus for a moment. Then, grim-faced, she attacked. She leapt through the vortex, not only passing through it but using it. She attacked Sunset from every direction, using the very debris that Sunset had counted on to shield her as her springboards, leaping down at her from precarious footings, balancing on the most unlikely of objecs, battering Sunset from all sides, hammering her left and right and up into the air as the vortex she had created died around her.
And as Sunset began to fall, she found Nora waiting for her, with a flagpole of her own and a watermelon spiked to the top of it.
Nora grinned as she punted Sunset so hard that the watermelon shattered and Sunset was hurled through the ceiling and into the blue sky above.
There was a momentary pause as everyone waited to see if she would come down again.
She did, after a little while, crashing back through the ceiling in a different place, making a second hole in the roof, landing in a clatter of debris and with her face in a conveniently placed custard pie. She rolled over onto her side and then stopped moving, although she did groan occasionally.
And Pyrrha was left alone. One against five.
This never happened on the tournament circuit.
Pyrrha smiled. This was all so exciting!
She grabbed an armful of baguettes as she made a rolling leap, dodging a pair of turkeys flung at her by Yang - although a pained 'why?' from poor Jaune told her that he had once again taken a blow meant for her - as she started throwing them at each of her opponents. She caught Weiss and Dove, knocking them down, but Ren dodged, and Nora and Yang simply batted the makeshift missiles aside.
And then they came for her.
Ren was quick, Nora was strong; Yang was both fast and strong, if not as fast as Pyrrha normally. Together, they made one hell of a team. Pyrrha squirmed, striking out in all directions with her bread roll to fend of their assaults. Nora's windups took a while, but Yang was so agile that Pyrrha rarely had the chance to take advantage of it. She couldn't even really parry punches or hammer blows; she just had to focus on keeping one step ahead as the watermelon - Nora had found another one - hammer slammed into the ground again and again and Yang tried to punch her in the face with her turkey gloves. She managed to take out Ren, the weakest link, catching him across the jaw with a solid blow that sent him flying. Nora growled in anger as she swung her melon-on-a-pole, but Pyrrha ducked beneath the pole and grabbed it as it passed overhead so that she was swinging Nora, lifting the other redhead off the ground and slamming her into Yang. 
Pyrrha watched and waited for the two of them to get up, if they would get up. 
Yang was the first to leap to her feet, her turkeys gone, charging at Pyrrha with her bare fists. Pyrrha grabbed a nearby tray to use as a shield, taking Yang’s blow which dented the metal, even as Pyrrha infused it with her aura. She lashed out with her leg, tripping Yang and slamming the tray into her face, knocking her back again as Nora came at her.
A touch of Pyrrha’s semblance was sufficient to ensure that not only did Nora miss Pyrrha, but she swung all the way around and hit Yang square in the face, knocking her down for good. 
“Uh oh,” Nora squeaked before Pyrrha hit her with an uppercut that sent her flying up towards the ceiling. Pyrrha leapt after her, tossing a tray up into the hair and holding it there with just the barest touch of polarity, leaping onto it and using it as a foothold. She hung suspended in the air for a moment as Nora flailed desperately for purchase. 
Then Pyrrha leapt towards her, straight as a javelin and as graceful as a dancer, and wrapped her arms around Nora’s shoulders. 
“I’m sorry,” she said as she drove Nora head first into the ground. 
Nora groaned, but she didn’t try to get up again after that. 
Pyrrha stood and surveyed the devastation all around her. She looked at the other students on the floor. And then she started to laugh.
"I don't think," she said, “that I have ever had so much fun in my entire life."
"Ugh, speak for yourself," Sunset groaned. She lifted her head up. "So... did we win?"
Pyrrha stopped laughing long enough to reply. "Yes. Yes, Sunset, we won."
Sunset whooped, or tried to. "Awesome. The Invincible Team. Ugh." She groaned as her head slumped down onto the floor again.
Ruby, by contrast, was beaming excitedly. "I knew that you could learn to have fun if you tried! And all it took was...uh," - she looked around - "destroying the cafeteria? Uh-"
They were interrupted by the sound of clapping from the open doorway of the dining hall. 
Team RSPT stood framed in the doorway, or at least, most of them did. Ciel, covered in watermelon fragments, looked very displeased as she stood with one hand upon Penny’s arm, restraining what appeared to be Penny’s desire to join in. Rainbow Dash was shielding Twilight with her body… but she was also applauding. 
“That was awesome!” Rainbow yelled. “You guys decided to have an amazing practice fight like that without inviting us? Come on, guys! I thought we were friends.”
“And as your friends, you should be thanking them, Miss Dash,” Professor Goodwitch said as she appeared behind them, “for ensuring that there is not another item to be reported to General Ironwood about your behaviour while at this school.”
Rainbow yelped. “Professor Goodwitch!” she said, leaping around and coming to attention. “Are you sure you’re not a ninja?”
Professor Goodwitch stared down at her, her expression unamused.
Rainbow laughed nervously. “So… uh… words can get taken out of context and-”
“Miss Dash,” Professor Goodwitch said acidly. “Perhaps you should take your team somewhere else.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Rainbow barked. “Team Rosepetal… move out!”
She led the way, marching stiffly past the deputy headmistress. The rest of her team followed, even if Ciel looked as though she was dragging Penny, who waved to her friends as she was led elsewhere. 
Professor Goodwitch’s heels clicked upon the dining hall floor as she stalked inside. “As for the rest of you-”
“Let it go,” Professor Ozpin said calmly as he approached her from behind. His smile was genial, even benign. “I think we can indulge one day of blowing off steam before the semester begins.”
Professor Goodwitch huffed in annoyance. “They’re supposed to be the defenders of the world.”
“They’re supposed to become the defenders of the world,” Professor Ozpin corrected her. “And they will. But for now, they are also children, so why not let them play the part?” His voice became almost melancholy as he turned away. “After all, it isn’t a role they’ll have forever.”