RWBYKNIGHTS 2.0: Volume 1

Chapter 23-2: Assertion in Battle

Yelena winced as she threw a threatening glare at the still prideful Free, enhanced by a little of her frozen arts headed towards his direction. This eventually shuts him up as he turns to her in both surprise and confusion.

"You could have at least waited..." Yelena commented as she turned to face team RWBY. At the very least, they both knew each other, though she was worried about something else...

"Waited for what? Anyways, at least we know team RWBY." Free asked in complete innocence. In his logic, choosing to go first was completely reasonable, if not, the most logical.

"So what? Are they going to use training bullets or what?"

"The hell are training bullets? You got aura right? Just face your mistakes with your aura." Free scoffed, eliciting a bigger wince from the non-aura Yelena. Again in the logic of Remnant, this was entirely reasonable for Huntsmen in training, with even the younger Ruby seemingly understanding of such a spar.

"Your Northern Solitas is really showing huh, guess you don't spar too often." Sky chuckled, name-dropping where Yelena *supposedly* lives and catching Cardin's attention, "Eh, don't worry, nobody usually dies on sparring."

 "Usually?-" This time it wasn't Yelena surprised, but instead Jaune, his eyes as wide as they could be.

"Yeah, heard a bunch of stuff from Vacuo's Shade Academy... Some dumbass noble's son got killed on day one of sparring. Faked his transcripts and his initiations. Got popped in the head by his sparring partner's gun. Died on the spot."

"What a dumbass indeed." Both Cardin and Free simultaneously agreed with a slow nod, increasing the non-aura Jaune's terror even further. Though Yelena couldn't help but chuckle as well.

Oddly enough, talking about the death of a student brought the four to their first-ever agreement, as well as the four laughing with each other for the first time. Yelena had definitely dodged bullets before from some PMC mercenaries hired by the smaller Ursine nobles, the type of rich jerks that bought the most expensive Originium bullets. She was somewhat fine, albeit still taken aback by how serious they were treating such a spar. Turning her sights to Ace, the man also catches her gaze, and simply nods, with a 'Yeah, this is how this works around here' face.

"Well then, team RWBY, FLWY, get on with it, we ain't got all time for this," Ace explained as he waved them down the ladder which led onto the semi-circle arena, and behind that arena was a corridor that led them to the locker room. Inside, the eight began to prepare, with Ruby looking at Crescent Rose with a solemn glare, while both Yang and Blake looked at her pitifully.

As for FLWY, Yelena could not help but notice that Free was wearing his combat prosthetics like they weren't damaged during initiation, only to raise a brow as she noticed that his entire locker was stuffed full of extra sets of prosthetic arms, with the damaged ones also stashed in it.

"I got more in a locker space back at Vale, though those are mostly my other variants," Free explained, having noticed Yelena's surprise.

"Variants?" Yelena couldn't help but perk her ears at his wording.

"Yeah, besides being a mercenary, I used to fight in Vacuo's fighting pits, it ain't about winning, but entertaining the viewers, and what better way than to strap highly unstable crystals onto my arms and turn my limbs into flamethrowers? It's about giving them something new to see."

"Where do you even find those limbs?" Besides Free's rather dangerous lifestyle and lack of any self-preservation, Yelena was rather intrigued with his prosthetics.

"Made most of them. However, unlike any other weapon here, most of my prosthetics are all replaceable and only have a single function. Heck, the design for these grappling hands were based on hydraulic rescue tools, there's a lot of power in these hands, but it's merely that, unlike Ruby's Crescent Rose, there isn't anything going else in here. Same with my other variants."