Untitled RWBY/D&D Snippet 2 (Patreon)

“GERANIMO!!!”

I admit, cackling like a maniac was probably not the standard response to being catapulted through the air into a forest filled with monsters from the top of a cliff to collect some ‘relics’. But in my defense, it was one hell of an adrenaline rush.

As the canopy approached, I held an arm out, the black nails on my fingers stretching and curling into hooked climbing claws. Almost as if on cue, said claws dug into the bark of one of the trees, gouging out four grooves as my forward momentum caused me to swing around the tree like a top. As my momentum died, my other hand came to the tree, clinging onto it like an oversized, scale covered squirrel, still cackling all the while. I probably freaked out a couple people. Still chuckling from the adrenaline rush, I started climbing down. With a bit of speed and a hop, I was on the ground, the last of that initial adrenaline leaving my system. Looking around, I shrugged and started walking. I was sure to find someone sooner or later.

Sure enough, a rustle of shrubbery to my left spat out… ooh-lala! A drop dead gorgeous girl with black hair, golden eyes, a blue tattoo along her right arm, neck, and left leg, two swords crossed across the small of her back, and chest bindings in place of a top. I was going to find some way to talk her into…

“Aero?” the girl whispered, her eyes wide in shock, with a hint of hope glimmering in them.

I blinked, confusion filling me even as something about the name she called me seemed familiar, “Sorry, don’t recognize the name.”

The look of hope that had been forming cracked then died. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, there was some more rustling as a black and white boar thing walked out. By ‘black and white’ I mean it was solid black with what looked like white armor plates on top of it. Ah, right. Grimm. Almost forgot about those. With a sound that was a weird mix of piggish squeal and monstrous roar, it lowered its head and charged at us. I leapt up, grabbing onto a branch overhead, while the girl jumped to the side, a jet of blue flame giving her some extra oomph.

Twisting, I planted my feet against the branch I was on, and pushed off against it, flying towards the boar-beast as it tried to turn around. I was unarmed, had never fought against anything that didn’t have human proportions, and had my aura for less than a week. But I had some other tricks up my scales. My hands twisted, bone and muscles shifting, splitting, growing, until, as I reached the grimm, in place of fingers I had three, foot long claws on each hand.

My claws, coated with aura, gouged lines into the faceplate of the boar-beast as I flew past it, tucking into a roll as I hit the ground. As soon as I passed, a swath of blue flames enveloped it, its scream cutting out almost immediately. As the flames cleared, there was a dead boar-beast dissolving into smoke.

I held off on reforming my claws back into hands, but turned my gaze back to the girl, “We can sort out who you think I look like later, afterall we'll be partners for our entire time here. For now, either call me Torbek or Gray.”

She gave a short nod, before saying, “My name is Azu Teine.”

With that, we set out, looking for the ruins we were supposed to find. It was surprisingly easy to find, a crumpled old temple looking building, with little pillars that each had…

“Seriously?” I asked incredulously. “The relics are chess pieces?”

“They are probably how they will determine teams,” Azu mused aloud. “There are two of each piece, and each partnered pair will take one. Assuming that there are enough pieces for all applicants, then it provides an easy way to combine pairs into teams of four.”

“Right…” I said slowly, looking over the multiple pieces. Most were still there, only two of the pillars were empty. Turning back to Azu, I asked, “Do you know anyone else entering this year?”

Azu took a moment to think, before answering, “One. A girl I met after… years ago. She recently had a falling out with her boss and decided to come here.”

“Think you can guess which piece she’ll end up with?” I asked, causing understanding to alight across Azu’s face. Smirking, she calmly made her way to a pillar and picked up the black horse piece. Giving her a nod, I said, “Well then, back the cliffs, right?”

She nodded, and we made our way out of the ruins. As we did, she glanced down at my still transformed claws, “Those will turn back into hands eventually, yes?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” I answered, holding one up. “On its own it takes about an hour or so, but I can force it back if necessary. Seeing as we’re in a forest filled with monsters, I figured it better to keep them ‘handy’ as it were.”

“Is it your Semblance? I haven’t heard of one that mutates the body like that,” she asked, but I got the sense that there was more she wanted to say.

“From everything I’ve heard about ‘em, no. Semblances are powered by Aura, and I’ve had mine for less than a week,” I told her. “This I’ve been able to do since I was a kid, and I’ve got options besides claws.”

“Such as?”

“Big honking fangs, a giant bug needle-nose, spikes on the end of my tail, one time I formed a scorpion stinger, but had no venom to go with it,” I listed off. “It changes every time.”

“Where did you learn to fight? If you’ve only had your Aura for a week, you can’t have been from one of the combat schools.”

“On the streets, ya either get good or you get dead. The old fart running this place decided to bring me in after I kicked the shit out of another applicant.”

I heard her pause behind me, and turned to see a surprised, incredulous, and somewhat hopeful look on her face, “You defeated a Beacon Academy applicant, without having your Aura unlocked?”

“Didn’t even pull out the teeth or claws, just bare knuckles and wrapped feet,” I ever so humbly… okay, I was bragging. But come on, Huntsmen and Huntresses were seen as superheroes, and knowing that I was able to beat one of them (or at least, someone training to be one) without having their soul magic BS was one hell of an ego boost.

“That is… quite impressive,” Azu said, her eyes roaming my form in a way I recognized. Not the lustful, hungry gazes of the girls that walked in on me in the shower last night (though if I wasn’t mistaken there was a hint of that there too). She was eyeing me up in an attempt to glean as much as she could about my physical capabilities.

I let her look, even as I turned around to continue making my way to the cliff where we were supposed to get picked up. Keeping an ear out for any more of the grimm that might appear. Something about Azu seemed familiar, and for the life of me I couldn’t place why. Was it something to do with whatever the ROB had done to make the tiefling build I’d made viable? Shit, did this body have someone in it before I was sleeved in?

I’d been in this body for twelve years at this point, my memories of my life before meeting ROB were…sketchy, at best. My earliest memories of being here on Remnant were digging through dumpsters for bits of moldy bread to eat. I don’t even remember having memories before that.

My reflections took a back seat, as there were the sounds of some sort of scrap in the distance. Sharing a glance with Azu, I leapt up into a tree (Aura boosted athletics for the win!) in an attempt to get a better look at what was happening. When I did, I admit that my eyes might have widened quite a bit.

“That… is a big ass scorpion,” I muttered as the giant black and white scorpion burst out of a distant cliff face. Right, I was strong, fast, and tough, but I didn’t like my chances against something that big. With that in mind, in the words of The Gambler, sometimes you gotta know when to fold ‘em. “Time to get a move on,” I hollered as I jumped down to rejoin Azu.

There was a cliff with administrators and free food waiting for us.

[hr][/hr]

“You will be Team Cardinal, led by Cardin Winchester,” the Old Man spoke up, The Bitch and his lackeys moving off the stage. Azu had been right in her prediction, about the purpose of the chess pieces, and including the two of us, there were twelve people left.

“Azu Teine, Torbek Grayscale, Neo Vanille, and Ilia Amitola, step forth,” he said, and we did, prompting me to glance at my future teammates. Besides Azu, my teammates were a pale, white haired girl even shorter than I was and a girl with dusky skin and brown hair tied up in a ponytail. “You chose the black knight pieces. From now on, you will be Team Granite, led by Torbek Grayscale.”

The remaining eight girls (nearly half of whom were the ones to get an eyeful in the shower), were divided into teams Ruby and Juniper, and we were shown to our dorm rooms by the tall sexy librarian (who was apparently named Goodwitch). The layout of our dorm was fairly compact, with four beds, a single attached bathroom, and a living area to relax and work on homework. Our luggage, those of us that had any, were already moved into the dorm and placed by beds.

“So,” I said with a clap of my hands, getting my teammates’ attention. “I have some ideas, if we’re going to be working together for at least the next four years. I’ll ask about us using one of the training rooms for sparring practice; but for starters, I think we should go over our capabilities, what we can do and our interests, that sort of thing.”

“Azu Teine,” Azu immediately spoke up. “My semblance is Blaze, and it lets me control fire, and I have implants of Fire and Lightning Dust that improve my reflexes, temperature control, and generate both fire and bolts of lightning. My weapons are Twin’s Secret, paired Dustforged blades that allow me to better direct the fire I generate.”

“Ilia Amitola,” the dusky skinned girl said, from her spot sitting on her claimed bed. “My semblance is Chameleon, it lets me change the color of my skin, eyes, and hair. My weapon’s called Lightning Lash, it can be loaded with Dust and has a whip and rapier form.”

‘Neo,’ the pale girl “said”, holding up her scroll with her name on the screen. ‘I’m mute. My semblance is Overactive Imagination, it lets me make physical illusions. I have a reinforced parasol named Hush for my weapon, and I’m pretty good at fighting.’

“My turn,” I muttered, before speaking louder. “Torbek Grayscale, call me either Torbek or Gray, I answer to both. Don’t know what my semblance is yet, since I’ve had my aura for less than a week. Don’t have a weapon either, but I’m the best damn unarmed fighter I’ve ever encountered. I’m also crazy strong, fast, tough, and can force my body to mutate and grow claws, fangs, and tail spikes.”

We chatted a bit more, getting a feel for each other, though it was mostly them asking how I could do my mutations/why I looked so inhuman. Azu and Ilia actually seemed to have more answers to the latter than I did, and gladly shared with me. Apparently about twelve years ago there was a lab raided in Vale that had been experimenting on kids, trying to make super soldiers or something. Of the kids rescued, the overwhelming majority had some form of physical mutation, and most of them were crippling.

Still, all in all I’d say Beacon was off to a fantastic start.