An Aura of Hope: A RWBY Fan Fiction

Chapter Thirteen

The next day, we were told to leave our stuff packed up together; they would take our stuff to our new dorms after the test. We ate breakfast with all of the older students, who weren't allowed to tell us anything about the test. About an hour and a half after breakfast, we were gathered on a cliff, each one of us standing on a different metal square with the Beacon logo on it. The wind was whistling and cool. This would probably have been nice, if not for the overcast promising rain later. It was freaking cold.

Professor Arc stood in front of us in the center of the plates. "Attention students!" he called. "It is time for your test to begin! The forest you see behind me is none other than the Emerald Forest. It is infested with the Creatures of Grimm as well as other unsavory things. So I would ask that none of you venture into it without written consent from a teacher. Today you will be launched into it, however--"

"What do you mean, launched?" came a voice somewhere to my left.

The professor didn't miss a beat. "And you will head northward until you come to an ancient temple. In that temple you will find various artifacts. You and your partner will bring back one of these artifacts. Guard these artifacts with everything you have, or you will perish to the forest. Now you are probably wondering who your partners will be. Well the answer is quite simple, really. The first person you make eye contact with when you land will be your partner for the next four years. This is Beacon tradition, so no complaining."

"What do you mean by laun-" the same person started asking. He was interrupted by the sound of a panel being quite forcefully flipped and the screaming of a girl who used to be on the very last panel. She flew through the air toward the forest. The next panel apparently had him on it, because he screamed something about being incredibly dangerous when he was launched. I realized that each of us had to find our own ways to land safely. One by one, each panel launched in turn going down the line.

I thought about how I was possibly going to do this. I didn't have a gun to slow my fall, I didn't have a big enough weapon to wrap around trees, I didn't have a shield to protect myself.

The launchers were only two away from me. I took my stance: knees bent, leaning forward, Viartannie Ijs at the ready. And I flew.

The roaring wind whipped at my hair as I sailed toward the forest. The rain stabbed at my skin like tiny daggers. I vaguely noticed that it had started sprinkling. Wait... Rain... I can use that. I saw the ground approaching fast and I knew what I was going to do. I held out Viartannie Ijs and summoned my aura. I swung forward until I was about to do a front-flip. I went around once, and I hit a raindrop. It froze immediately and the ice trailed down to the earth. I stopped upside down balancing on my boomerang that was in a big ice ramp like I was doing a handstand. Not something I do everyday. I leaned so that my back fell onto the ramp and I pulled out the boomerang so I could slide down.

"Piece of cake..." I panted. I started making my way northward like Arc said to. I hoped I wouldn't run into any Grimm before I found my future partner. The Grimm around home were hard enough, but I heard rumors about them being twice that size in the Emerald Forest and three times as big in the forest Forever Fall.

The rain was bone-chilling and seeped through my clothes after it started coming down harder. The crunching at my feet slowly turned into slopping and sucking. I wouldn't be able to fight like this, so I looked for more grassy land to walk on so I wouldn't sink. But I quickly found a problem with the grass; a knotted piece of grass caught my foot and I fell. I didn't just flop to the ground, either. I rolled and tumbled down a hill, narrowly missing some trees, painfully ricocheting off the sides of others. From the brief glances I got while rolling, I saw that this hill was very large.

Then I felt myself collide with a body.

Neither of us made any noise, so I knew this person was smart enough to know that screaming is like a call card for Grimm. We were falling together, but all I could see of this person were colors: lime green and blue and brownish yellow and tan.

We came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and my eyes fell shut from the scare. I noticed that this person was laying on top of me and breathing heavily, their head in my chest. We stayed like that for a little while, catching our breath and resting a bit.

Eventually I opened my eyes again and I saw that the person was a girl. She was wearing a lime-green tank top, jeans, and a cute red bow in her hair holding up one of her dirty-blond twintails. I realized that we were in an intimate position pretty quickly, and I felt the heat rush to my face as I scrambled out from under her. She flopped to the ground and jerked like she'd been startled. Well, duh she'd been startled.

She looked up at me with light gray eyes and blushed. "I-I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep on you."

I didn't know what to say. She had actually fallen asleep on me? The thought made me blush even brighter. "I-it's no problem, really. I just..." I trailed off. Should I tell her that I thought of how intimate it was?

"So I guess we're partners now, huh? I'm Avery. Nice to meet you," she said, holding out her hand.

I shook it. "James," I said. "A pleas--"

"RYAAAAA!" came a noise from above us. We looked up to see a huge Nevermore seeming to be fighting in the sky. It looked like a small black toy bird; it was really high up. We couldn't see its opponent, but it looked like the bird was losing. We watched in silence as the bird writhed in the air until finally it set off toward the north.

"Well," said Avery with a gulp, "that was a thing."

"Did we just witness someone dying?" I asked.

"What..?"

"The Nevermore was fighting something, right? Looks like it won..." I said, my voice shaking.

"Oh..."

We stood there for awhile, not wanting to move. Eventually Avery started walking again, and I followed. We walked northward. And we walked. And we said nothing. And we walked until we got to a clearing.

I grabbed Avery by the waist and covered her mouth as soon as we got into the clearing. She struggled and tried to scream out, and I caught her attention and pointed out the huge Nevermore sitting a few hundred feet to our left.