Chapter 135 - Easy way or Hard way

Ren looked toward Jaune who was quietly eating some noodles he had just ordered.

"Are you going to take that Jaune?" Jaune looked up from his bowl toward them.

"She's not wrong." Jaune then went back to eating his noodles.

"I'm kidding, he knows I'm kidding." Nora said as she begins talking quickly, the color slowly draining away as she gets more worried that he would become depressed before their next match.

"Don't be so nervous! The worst that can happen is we lose, that is just a few more years of walking around school with everyone knowing we're failures, our friends will slowly abandon us to preserve their social status, we won't be able to show our faces in class, no one will sit with us in the cafeteria, Ren and I have no parents, we have no home left to go to, we'll be officially renamed Team Lose-iper!" Nora said going from a burst of mad laughter turning into sobs as she slams her head on the counter at the end.

"So, yeah, we're feeling pretty good." Ren completely pushes the depressing mood around Nora continuing the conversation.

"Don't fret. If anything, we should be looking forward to a fight with actual guidelines, and not, well, ...murderers." Pyrrha said also pointing toward the bowl that Weiss had. The shop owner nodded before disappearing and coming back with another bowl.

Nora saw Pyrrha ordered and pointed toward what Yang was having while Ren pointed to what Jaune ordered. The shop owner sped off getting their orders. Pyrrha gave her card to pay for everyone on her team.

"Yeah, don't sweat it, we've all faced way worse before." Yang said while being close to finished with her food.

"Let's see. Grimm invasions, violent extremists, a destructive sociopath..." Blake said.

"Don't forget the mad scientist that has an obsession with androids. We only finished that a couple of days ago." Shallot cut in while finishing his bowl while rubbing his stomach.

"And that's all while we're still in training! Oh, imagine what it would be like to graduate!" Ruby said with stars in her eyes.

Jaune had a shiver run down his back remembering what they could do and looked at Shallot.

'I'm pretty sure they are going to rule the world at that point.' Jaune thought while thinking about how while they were on the ship about to head back from Dr. Merlot's lab what Shallot did.

~~Flashback begin~~

While they had all gotten back on the ship Shallot was looking at the island thinking about something.

"What are you thinking about?" Blake asked him seeing that he was still looking at the island.

"Once we are far away enough from the island don't fly away yet." Professor Port who was in the front heard him and gave a nod.

After they were a fair bit away Shallot jumped out of the airship and started flying above it. He compressed the ki above his finger with it being only an inch in diameter. He fired it at the island and once it hit the ground he flipped his pointer and middle finger upward while flicking his wrist.

Everyone on the ship didn't see anything until they heard a loud explosion and then the entire island went up in an explosion covering it in a dome of light, blocking everything from their vision.

When the light vanished the island wasn't there any longer.

Everyone in the ship had their mouth hanging open seeing that he just erased an entire island. Shallot floated back inside the ship while blowing on his finger.

"Can't have him coming back thinking that he can recover anything since he decided to run. Just used a small move to deal with the island." Shallot said while sitting next to Velvet.

"Even if you use a small amount of ki it can be dangerous which is why I plan to train you until the tournament and you should be able to best the others if you go through my crash course. That is until you come across our team that is." Shallot said without sugarcoating it for Velvet.

~~ Flashback End ~~

Jaune shivered thinking about not only do they have to worry about being matched up against Shallot's Team but also watch out for Velvet since she trained with them before the matches started.

Velvet still comes by after their fights to get training and spend some time with Team RWBYS.

Weiss was looking at her card that was rejected with a downtrodden look on her face.

"Maybe then I'll be able to pay for a meal." Weiss said before she ate the food that Shallot paid for.

Everyone sat here eating their food before pushing the empty bowls back while Shallot had another stack in front of him. All of them were feeling full when they heard the speakers on the fairgrounds.

"Would Team JNPR please report to the battlegrounds immediately!" They could hear that it was professor port over the speakers calling for Jaune's Team.

"Yes! Like they were scheduled to, several minutes ago!" Professor Ozpin also cut in making Jaune look at the time on his scroll seeing that it had already passed the time where they were supposed to start the match.

"Well, it looks like this is it." Pyrrha said while standing up.

"Go get 'em!" Ruby said some words of encouragement to them seeing that Nora was still depressed and Jaune might have over-stuffed himself since he was sitting next to Ren.

While they were walking away Shallot stood up while stretching and turned to them.

"Let's go and watch their fight. I wonder how much they have progressed with the tips that I gave out." Shallot said while Blake also got up.

They left the wheelchair there since Blake wanted to walk around saying that she needs to move after eating or she's going to fall asleep.

Team RWBYS then headed toward Amity Colosseum to watch the match. While they were heading there they could see that Team JNPR had just made it to their waiting area for the beginning of the match and it hadn't started yet.

It seemed that they were giving everyone some time to get into their seats before the match was starting giving them five more minutes.

"That looks like a good seat." Emerald said while walking behind them.

Neo was staring daggers at the back of Shallot's head while Shallot started whistling just to mess with Neo. He would probably have Neo stay the night after the fights for today and have her walking with him.

He didn't really care for the small plans he was planning at first and was planning to just make them bend through force if they didn't listen. After Cinder connected to Ozpin's servers he connected to Cinder's device giving him access to everything she had.

He knew that information about Salem and just needed to go have a "conversation" with Salem and see if she would like to do this the easy way or the hard way.

He didn't mind the hard way since it would let him assert his dominance. What Shallot didn't realize was that while Shallot was thinking about it he had a smile on his face that sent shivers down Cinder's back when she saw it.

~~~

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