Chapter 3: At The Periphery
| Lie Ren POV |
Lie Ren has always been a remarkably light sleeper. It isn't a quirk he was born with, nor is it a trait he particularly enjoys possessing. It is, quite simply, a skill for survival.
When you spend the formative years of your childhood fleeing a ruined settlement, dragging a traumatized, orphaned girl through the unforgiving wilderness of Anima, sleep ceases to be a luxury. Sleep becomes a vulnerability.
Every snapped twig echoing in the pitch-black forest, every rustle of dry leaves brushing against the canvas of a stolen tent, every subtle shift in the direction of the wind—these were not minor disturbances. They were potential death sentences. They were the warning signs of a creeping Nevermore or a prowling Beowolf smelling the fear radiating off two starving children.
Years of this existence had fundamentally rewired his brain. Even now, resting on a surprisingly comfortable mattress within the highly secured, fortified walls of Beacon Academy, Ren's subconscious refused to sleep completely. A part of him was always listening to the noises of his environment.
Which is exactly why his eyes slid open a fraction of an inch at precisely 01:12 in the morning.
The sound was incredibly faint. To the average person, it wouldn't have even registered over the soft hum of the dormitory's air conditioning unit. But to Ren, it cut through the silence like a siren.
Scratch... scraaaape... tch.
It was a slow, methodical noise. The sound of sharpened metal biting into solid wood.
Ren lay perfectly still, his breathing shallow and strictly regulated so as not to betray his wakefulness. His first, immediate thought went to his oldest and closest companion.
Nora.
She was sprawling on the bed opposite him, one leg dangling over the edge, softly snoring. She had returned to the room nearly an half an hour after her supposed 'rescue mission' to find their missing team leader, and Ren was not a fool.
When she had bounded back into the room alongside a very bored-looking Jaune Arc, the vibrant, undeniable cheeriness in her steps was all the evidence he needed to know Nora drank coffee, probably a lot of it.
Ren knew it. He knew she had likely badgered or bribed Jaune to buy her coffee since he didn't know about Nora's strict caffeine embargo he enforced. And knowing Nora's uniquely terrifying metabolism, giving her caffeine stimulant mere hours before she went to sleep was a recipe for disaster.
So, when the scratching noise began, Ren's initial deduction was logical: Nora's caffeine high had hit critical mass. She couldn't sleep. She was restless. And in her hyperactive state, she had probably leaned out the window, spotted a stray cat wandering the campus grounds, and reeled the poor, unsuspecting animal into their dormitory to play with it. The scratching had to be the feline sharpening its claws against the baseboards or the doorframe.
If that were the case, Ren fully intended to pretend he was completely unconscious. For his own sanity, he would ignore the cat. He had a grueling first day of classes approaching in in the morning. Dealing with Nora's contraband petting zoo was simply beyond his current capability.
My apologies to the Beacon Staff, but I was simply not strong enough was what he thought, giving a small prayer before he tried to go back to sleep.
Scraaaape... tch.
But the noise continued. And as Ren's groggy mind sharpened, he realized it lacked the frantic, random rhythm of an animal's claws.
This was deliberate. This was synchronized. It was the sound of someone carving something with intention.
Very, very slowly, Ren turned his head against his pillow, opening his eyes just wide enough to peer through the gloom of the dimly lit room. The pale light of the shattered moon spilled across the floorboards, casting long, distorted shadows against the walls.
His gaze drifted past Nora's dangling foot, past Pyrrha's quietly rising and falling shoulders, and landed on the wooden frame of their dormitory door.
It wasn't Nora. It certainly wasn't a stray cat.
It was Jaune.
Ren held his breath, his pulse ticking up a notch in sheer confusion.
Their blonde, gangly team leader was sitting down at the floor by the doorway. The moonlight hit him from the back, illuminating a face stripped entirely of the goofy, nervous energy he had displayed throughout initiation. There was no awkward smile. No wide-eyed wonder.
His expression was board, completely slack, yet also focused.
In his right hand, Jaune held his weapon, Crocea Mors. But he wasn't holding it by the hilt. He had his bare hand wrapped directly around the razor-sharp edge of the steel blade, gripping it just inches above the point like one might hold a massive, unwieldy pen. It was a bizarre, dangerous way to handle a sword. A single slip, a single flinch, and the blade would slice his fingers to the bone.
But Jaune's hand didn't tremble. As if he was completely used to it.
Ren watched, utterly transfixed, as Jaune dragged the tip of the blade down the wooden frame. He was carving something into the wood.
The movements were fluid, a complex series of intersecting geometric lines and curves that Ren couldn't quite decipher from his angle. It looked like an ancient Mistrali words, or perhaps a dialect of a language Ren had never encountered in his extensive travels across Sanus.
What struck Ren the most was the steady, absolute certainty in Jaune's posture. This wasn't the first time he had done this. He carved the wood with the practiced ease of someone that had done this a thousand times before, his wrist flicking and locking into place with precision.
Is he marking our territory? Ren wondered, his brow furrowing slightly in the darkness.
Some of the more remote, superstitious villages outside the kingdom borders had strange customs regarding new dwellings.
They would carve wards over thresholds to ward off evil spirits, or paint symbols in animal blood to ask the local deities for safe passage.
Perhaps Jaune hailed from one of those isolated, deeply traditional settlements? It would certainly explain his ignorance about even basic things like the name of grimms—a foundational concept taught in every modern combat school.
A traditionalist background could also account for his bizarre, shifting personality. The nervous, bumbling boy in the locker room could simply be explained as a secluded villager unaccustomed to the overwhelming bustle of modern city life.
And the stone-cold tactical commander who had lead them through the execution of a Deathstalker? That could be the real Jaune—A person from a village that fought Grimm with traditional tools and superstition instead of advanced mecha-shift weaponry.
Ren watched as Jaune finished the final stroke of the carving. The blonde boy remained crouched for a long moment, staring at the woodwork, before pushing himself up to his full height. He rolled his shoulders, the joints popping audibly in the quiet room, and walked back to his bed, throwing himself onto the mattress without so much as taking off his clothes.
Ren slowly closed his eyes.
It was unusual, yes. But... Jaune hadn't done anything to harm them. When the chips were down in the Emerald Forest, he had put his own body between the Deathstalker's stinger and Ren's chest. He had taken a blow that would have shattered a lesser man's spine just to keep Ren breathing. You don't take a hit like that for a stranger unless you possess a core of genuine, protective heroism.
Jaune Arc was a tad odd, but he was a good guy. That was what Ren decided.
Ren let out a long exhale, releasing the tension in his muscles, and allowed the exhaustion of the day to finally drag him back down into a dreamless sleep.
When Ren opened his eyes again, the digital clock on his bedside table read 7:00 AM.
The dormitory was already a whirlwind of absolute chaos. Nora was practically jumping around the room, her caffeine-fueled energy from the previous night having clearly compounded rather than faded. She was bounding between her bed and her dresser, singing a completely nonsensical song about breaking legs and eating pancakes.
Pyrrha was already fully dressed in her armor, looking impeccably put-together, though there were faint, dark circles under her eyes indicating she hadn't slept as soundly as she would have preferred.
And Jaune was groaning loudly from his mattress, dragging his hands down his face as if the morning sunlight physically wounded him like a vampire.
"Up and at 'em, Team JNPR!" Nora shrieked, vaulting over Ren's bed and nearly kicking him in the chin. "First day of classes! We're gonna learn! We're gonna fight! We're gonna eat breakfast! In that exact reverse order! Come on, Renny!"
Ren sighed, sitting up and rubbing his temples. "I am awake, Nora. Please refrain from causing damage to our dorm before eight in the morning."
He went through his morning routine with his usual rhythm. By 7:30, they were all dressed and ready to head out to the bustling cafeteria for their first meal as official Beacon students.
Nora grabbed Jaune by the arm, physically dragging the complaining, exhausted-looking blonde out into the hallway. Pyrrha followed closely behind, offering Jaune a sympathetic, somewhat smitten smile.
Ren was the last to leave the room. He stepped out into the corridor, pulling the heavy wooden door shut behind him.
As the door clicked into place, Ren paused.
He stopped completely still, his pink eyes locking onto the wooden doorframe right next to the electronic lock.
He stared at the spot where, just a few hours prior, he had watched Jaune Arc carve something into the wood with the tip of his longsword. He had heard the wood splintering. He had seen the steel digging deep into the frame.
But there was nothing there.
Ren leaned closer, squinting, running his gloved fingertips over the polished surface of the doorframe.
The wood was entirely smooth. Completely pristine. There were no scratches. There were no gouges. There wasn't a single grain of sawdust on the tiled floor beneath it. It was as if the wood had never been touched, entirely immaculate and unblemished.
A cold chill, utterly different from the warm morning air, crept up the back of Ren's neck.
He didn't dream it. He knew the difference between a dream and reality. He had been awake. He had heard the scraping.
So how could the wood be whole? How could carvings simply vanish without a trace overnight? Did Jaune use a semblance to repair the wood? Or was the carving never truly done to begin with?
"Renny! Come on!" Nora's voice echoed loudly down the corridor, breaking him out of his spiraling thoughts. She had jogged back down the hall and was currently tugging on his sleeve with the strength of an Ursa. "The pancakes are calling our names! The syrup waits for no Huntsman!"
Ren looked at the pristine wood one last time, his mind racing with impossible theories. He looked down the hall at Jaune, who was currently yawning, his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking like the most boared, unremarkable teenager on the planet.
"Coming, Nora," Ren said quietly.
He allowed himself to be dragged away toward the cafeteria, a deep, unsettling knot forming in the pit of his stomach.
It was probably nothing.
Probably.
| Pyrrha Nikos POV |
Grimm Studies with Professor Peter Port was... an experience.
Pyrrha sat rigidly in her desk, her posture picture-perfect, her hands folded neatly in her lap as the rotund, wildly mustached professor bellowed from the front of the amphitheater. The classroom was massive, tiered like a stadium to accommodate the influx of new first-year students.
"And there I was! Surrounded by a pack of vicious, bloodthirsty Beowolves!" Professor Port boomed, striking a dramatic, completely impractical pose with his blunderbuss-axe, sweeping his arm wide to encompass the entire class. "But did I falter? Did I succumb to the terror of the Grimm? No! For a true Huntsman knows that fear is simply a spice added to the magnificent dish of combat!"
Pyrrha offered a polite, attentive smile, nodding along with his story.
Internally, however, she couldn't help but dissect the story. If he truly had been surrounded by a pack of adult Beowolves in that specific, narrow gorge he was describing, his footwork in the story was entirely wrong. He claimed he charged the alpha head-on while ignoring the flanks, which, realistically, would have resulted in his hamstrings being shredded by the other Grimms within seconds. It was clearly exaggerated. Just a tad.
Perhaps it was meant to be an inspiring fable rather than his tactics? A way to build morale in the new students? She decided to give the professor the benefit of the doubt.
She turned her head slightly to the left to check on her team.
Nora was at least having fun with the lecture, for the action pack content of its story if nothing else, as she hang's onto Port's every word as if she we're watching a movie, clearly ready to jump up and fight a Beowolf with her bare hands. Ren was sitting still, his eyes open but glazed over, clearly retreating deep into a meditative trance to survive the hour-long monologue.
And her leader, Jaune?
Pyrrha's polite smile strained slightly at the corners.
Jaune was completely, utterly dead to the world. He was slumped forward over his desk, his arms folded to create a makeshift pillow for his head. He had been asleep exactly five minutes after Professor Port started speaking, and he hadn't woken up even once since.
Pyrrha felt a pang of sympathy. Poor Jaune. He must not have slept well last night.
To be fair, their morning had been quite chaotic with Nora's little wake up call and they had been busy decorating the room after breakfast. By the time their alarm rang for class, they had to rush navigate the labyrinthine halls of Beacon to get to class. They had barely made it to the classroom building before the final bell rang.
Although that was when her poor team leader got struck by a bit of bad luck.
Pyrrha and her team had been speed-walking down the corridor, with Jaune being dragged around by Nora and looking utterly miserable about the early start time. They had just passed through the wooden double doors of Professor Port's classroom.
Suddenly, the doors behind them violently burst open outward.
"We're gonna be late!" a panicked voice shrieked.
It was Ruby Rose, leading the charge of her newly formed team, Team RWBY. They were crashing through the door at full speed without looking at who was Infront of them. Which was Jaune, who was just stretching his body when they crash at full force right into him, dogpiling him completely.
He didn't even have time to blink before the heavy doors slammed into him, followed immediately by the tumbling bodies of four teenage girls.
Ruby had crashed into his chest, sending him sprawling backward onto the floor. Weiss Schnee, flailing wildly, tripped over Ruby's cape and tumbled headfirst over them. Blake Belladonna, trying to vault over the collision, miscalculated and landed squarely on the pile. And Yang Xiao Long, unable to stop her run, simply laughed and belly-flopped onto the entire human wreckage.
Pyrrha had gasped, reaching out to help. "Jaune!"
Most teenage boys, when suddenly buried under a pile of four attractive, flailing girls, would react with extreme embarrassment, intense blushing, or perhaps a flurry of panicked apologies and fumbling limbs.
Jaune did none of those things.
When Yang finally rolled off and the girls began frantically dusting themselves off and apologizing, Jaune simply lay flat on his back on the tiles for a long, torturous three seconds. He didn't blush. He didn't stammer.
He just stared blankly up at the ceiling, his gold eyes completely devoid of light, looking like a man who had profoundly given up on even getting up, wishing to just get buried already.
"I hate it here," Pyrrha had heard him mutter, his voice completely done with everything.
After minutes of just lying on the floor while the girls try to apologize... we'll it was more Ruby apologizing then anything. Yang just laugh it off, Blake just went to find a seat, while Weiss was... well more embarrass then apologetic. He had simply shoved Ruby off his leg, stood up, dusted off his jeans, and walked into the classroom like a zombie marching to its grave after.
So, yes. Pyrrha could forgive him for falling asleep during the lecture. Between the adrenaline of initiation yesterday, the chaotic morning, and the trauma of being used as a landing pad by Team RWBY, the poor boy was completely drained.
"Now!" Professor Port's booming voice shattered Pyrrha's internal reflections, causing her to jump slightly in her seat. "Who among you believes they have the mettle to put my theories into practice? Who wishes to demonstrate the true resolve of a Huntsman?!"
He pointed a meaty finger toward the front of the classroom.
Pyrrha blinked in sheer confusion. Sitting right next to Port's desk, obscured in the shadows of the amphitheater floor, was a massive, reinforced steel cage. It was rattling violently, heavy snorts and the scraping of tusks against metal echoing loudly.
Wait a minute, Pyrrha thought, furrowing her brow. Has that caged Grimm always been sitting at the side of the room?
She honestly couldn't remember. Had someone wheeled it in during Port's impassioned story about the Beowolf pack? Surely she would have noticed a cage the size of a small car entering the room. She prided herself on her situational awareness. How had she completely overlooked a live Grimm?
"I'll do it," a sharp, aristocratic voice announced.
Weiss Schnee stood up in the front row, her chin raised in a gesture of absolute defiance. She practically stomped down the tiered stairs to the arena floor, her pristine white combat skirt swishing angrily.
Pyrrha observed her closely. Weiss seemed incredibly miffed about something. Her jaw was clenched tight, her movements sharp and rigid with pent-up frustration. Perhaps she had argued with Ruby? Being partnered with a girl two years her junior, who was notoriously impulsive, was likely grinding heavily on the perfectionist heiress's nerves.
"Excellent! A volunteer!" Port laughed, waddling over to the cage mechanisms. "Step forward, Miss Schnee. Let us see if your bite matches your prestigious name!"
Weiss drew Myrtenaster, the elegant, Dust-infused rapier spinning with a high-pitched mechanical whine as she dropped into a flawless, classical fencing stance. "I'm ready."
Port slammed his fist onto the release button.
The heavy steel gates groaned upward, and a massive Boarbatusk exploded out of the shadows. It was a terrifying creature, resembling a feral, overgrown boar covered in thick, bony armor plating, with glowing red eyes and jagged tusks designed to gore its prey.
It shrieked, its hooves digging deep into the stone floor of the arena, and immediately charged at Weiss.
Weiss moved with undeniable grace. She side-stepped the initial charge effortlessly, pivoting on her heel and lunging forward, aiming her rapier at the exposed, fleshy underbelly of the beast as it blew past her.
But her strike was shallow. The anger tightening her shoulders made her movements stiff.
"Go, Weiss!" Ruby yelled enthusiastically from the stands, standing up and pumping her fists. "Show it who's boss!"
"Remember your stance, Weiss! Keep your guard up!" Yang added loudly.
"Don't let it flank you!" Blake called out.
Weiss's eye twitched violently. She parried a secondary swipe from the Boarbatusk's tusks, her frustration clearly mounting. The cheering and the unsolicited advice from her new teammates seemed to be grating on her already fragile nerves, pulling her focus away from the lethal creature attempting to eviscerate her.
"Watch its hooves!" Ruby screamed over the roar of the Grimm.
"Shut up!" Weiss finally snapped, whipping her head around to glare furiously up at the stands. "I know what I'm doing! I don't need you telling me how to—"
It was a fatal error.
A Huntsman never takes their eyes off the enemy. Never.
The Boarbatusk didn't wait for her to finish her sentence. Recognizing the momentary lapse in her defense, the beast suddenly leaped into the air, curling its heavily armored body into a tight, bony sphere.
It hit the ground spinning at a terrifying velocity, tearing up the stone tiles like a massive, organic buzzsaw, and ricocheted off a side wall, altering its trajectory to strike Weiss completely in her blind spot.
It was moving too fast. It was an advanced maneuver for a basic Grimm, accelerating rapidly right toward Weiss's exposed flank. She wouldn't be able to bring Myrtenaster around in time to parry the sheer kinetic mass of the spinning attack. It would crush her ribs.
Pyrrha gasped, her heart leaping into her throat. Without thinking, she reached out her hand, the black aura of her Polarity Semblance flaring to life in her palm. She needed to grab Weiss's rapier and physically yank the girl out of the beast's destructive path.
She opened her mouth to shout a warning.
But before the words could leave her lips, and before her Semblance could even cross the distance of the room, something tore through the air of the classroom.
It happened so incredibly fast it was almost invisible.
THWACK.
A sickening, wet, crunching sound echoed through the arena.
"SKREEEEEEE!"
The Boarbatusk shrieked in absolute agony. Its spin completely destabilized in mid-air. The massive beast crashed violently into the stone floor, tumbling end over end, its momentum carrying it wildly off-course. It smashed into the reinforced concrete of the arena wall, missing Weiss by a fraction of an inch.
Weiss stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock, looking at the groaning, struggling beast.
Pyrrha stared.
Embedded directly into the center of the Boarbatusk's right, glowing red eye, sunken so deeply into the socket that only the pink eraser was visible, was a standard, wooden, yellow No. 2 pencil.
It had pierced the Grimm's thick eyes and lodged itself deep into the skull cavity.
The entire classroom descended into a stunned, breathless silence. Even Professor Port seemed temporarily struck dumb by the sudden, bizarre interruption of the fight.
How...? Pyrrha's mind raced, unable to process what she had just witnessed. The sheer force needed to drive a flimsy wooden pencil through the a Grimm's skull was astronomical. It was the equivalent of firing it from a high-powered sniper rifle.
Slowly, carefully, Pyrrha turned her head, tracing the invisible trajectory the pencil must have taken from the stands down to the arena floor.
Her eyes landed directly on the desk beside her.
Jaune Arc hadn't moved. He was still slumped over the desk, his head resting on his left arm, looking exactly like he was deeply asleep.
But his right arm was currently resting flat on the tabletop. His hand was curled into a loose fist, with his thumb pressed tightly against his middle finger, and his index finger fully extended, pointing directly downward toward the arena in a flicking gesture.
As Pyrrha stared, completely paralyzed with disbelief, Jaune slowly cracked open a single, glowing gold eye.
He didn't look at her. He glared down through the gap in his arms, staring directly at the twitching Boarbatusk and the bewildered heiress in the arena below. His expression was one of mild irritation. It was the look of a man who had been awoken from a nap by noisy, inconsiderate children and had decided to end the source of the noise, violently.
He held that annoyed glare for one second.
Then, he casually pulled his right arm back, folded it under his head, closed his golden eye, and went back to sleep, his chest rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm.
Pyrrha Nikos, the four-time regional champion, the Invincible Girl, sat frozen in her seat.
She looked from the pencil embedded in the monster's skull, back to her sleeping, snoring team leader. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, skipping a beat as a sudden, overwhelming flush of heat rushed to her cheeks.
He didn't even stand up. He hadn't even opened both eyes. He had effortlessly derailed a lethal Grimm attack, saved an Weiss from grievous injury, and demonstrated Aura control on the level of a veteran just a day after having it awakened... all because they were being too loud and interrupting his nap.
Pyrrha pressed her hands to her burning cheeks, her bright green eyes wide with absolute, star-struck awe.
Her leader was...
He's so cool.