Ch 37: Rose vs Lilie

Glynda took a moment to fix the damage Ray and Nora's game of wack-a-grimm had inflicted upon the innocent arena while Ray announced the next parring.

"Our next match will be… Ruby Rose vs. Lie Ren."

"Yeah! Alright!" Ruby cheered as she released a flurry of rose petals and dashed down to take her position.

"Go, Ruby!" Yang called out to her little sister before turning to address the girl behind her, "Sorry, Nora. Looks like your man is going to lose."

"Ha! You shouldn't underestimate Ren. He won't go down easily." Nora countered. Then she seemed to fully register what Yang had said, "But I mean, it's not like he's my man. Sure we have been friends since we were kids and have been together forever, but it's not together-together. You know?" Nora seemed to get more and more flustered as she tried to deny that there was anything more between Ren and her, even as her smile grew.

Blake, Yang, Pyrrha, and Weiss looked back at her with a knowing look as Ren took up his position across from Ruby. Pyrrha and Weiss had returned from escorting Jaune and changing her clothes, respectively, during Ray and Nora's match. Jaune was still in the nurse's office resting with what was diagnosed as a stomach ache from excess stress and wouldn't be returning for today's class.

"I look forward to an enjoyable match." Ren said to Ruby with a bow.

"Oh, yeah. Uh, me too." Ruby fumbled for a moment before bowing back.

"Ready?" Ray asked, raising his hand.

Ren brought StormFlower out of his sleeves and brought them up to point at Ruby as they deployed. Ren nodded to Ray.

Ruby deployed Crescent Rose into its scythe form and held it parallel to the ground behind her, blade out. She cocked it once and nodded at Ray.

"Begin!" Ray swung his hand down.

The match was over in an instant. Ruby fired Crescent Rose behind her and accelerated at Ren. Ren jumped over her swing and fired down at her. Ruby performed a few quick steps like she was dancing between raindrops and avoided his gunfire. As Ren reached the apex of his jump, Ruby twisted her wrists and exploded the Aura she had wrapped around Crescent Rose's blade, shoving it back on a similar trajectory it had just traveled. Only aimed slightly higher, right at a suspended Ren. Unable to move in the air, Ren took the full brunt of Ruby's backswing and was sent flying towards the arena wall. He tried to reorient himself in mid-air so that he would land feet first on the wall. However, Ruby never gave him the chance. Using her Semblance, she dashed past him to intercept him with Crescent Rose's blade.

"REN!" Nora screamed. As Ruby's scythe blade neared Ren, she saw an image flash through her mind of Ren being torn in two by the scythe. With his inertia from being sent flying and the momentum Ruby had transferred into her scythe from her dash as she spun to strike at the defenseless teen, it seemed like a distinct possibility. However, Ren wasn't that weak.

Sensing the impending threat, Ren twisted around and just barely caught Ruby's scythe blade with StormFlower's knives. His efforts to block the slash were at least partially successful. StormFlower was knocked out of his hands, and he was sent flying once more back the way he had come with less than half his Aura remaining, but he had survived.

Again, Ren was flying towards the arena wall. This time, however, he was completely out of control. As he tumbled through the air, Ruby used her Semblance to dash past him once again. There was no way Ren could survive a second blow like that. He was weaponless and couldn't control his tumbling body. Thankfully Ruby had a different idea this time.

Instead of swinging Crescent Rose at him, Ruby reappeared directly behind Ren in his flight path and aimed the barrel of Crescent Rose at Ren as she stabbed its blade into the ground. Ren slammed his back into the top of Crescent Rose full force and had the wind and some gastric juices knocked out of him. Ruby glanced at her scroll on the inside of her left arm and saw that Ren still wasn't in the red, if only barely. So, before Ren could fall to the ground, She fired a snipe round at point-blank range out of Crescent Rose right into Ren's back. With that shot, Ren's Aura finally dropped into the red as he bounced a couple of times across the arena floor.

"Are you OK?" Ruby ran up to Ren and asked, concerned when he didn't get right back up.

"I'm fine." Ren replied, "Just waiting for the world to stop spinning." The fight had been so fast, and Ren had been knocked around so much that his eyes were spinning around like crazy, and he had absolutely no sense of balance remaining. Ren held a hand to his head to keep it steady as he accepted Ruby's offered hand to help him to his feet.

As the students just blinked down at the two with their mouths hanging open, they all came to the same unanimous conclusion. They had known Pyrrha was in a league of her own. She was famous, and they had all had plenty of time to accept that fact long before they had arrived at Beacon. But these three siblings are absolute freaks. How the hell were they supposed to maintain their pride and compete with four people their own age who were already this strong? No, scratch that. Two of them were younger than them.

"Ruby's speed can be quite overwhelming. The fact you were able to respond to it twice when experiencing it up close and personal for the first time is something you should be proud of, Ren." Ray praised Ren's efforts. "Just remember, against an opponent possessing superior speed, losing your footing is a fatal mistake."

After Ruby helped a still dizzy Ren back to his seat, the sparring matches continued. Weiss won her match later in the afternoon with the grace and poise you would expect from someone with her elegance.

She had frozen the arena floor at the start of the match and then used her force glyphs to skate around her opponent and keep them off balance as she delivered a series of quick strikes to their vital points with her rapier. Even when her opponent had been able to break the icy floor in the end to stabilize his footing, Weiss had used the gap he had exposed by releasing a big move to land a powerful fire Dust-infused strike on him to end the match.

With her victory, Team RWBY became the only team to have achieved success in all four of their matches, claiming the unofficial spot of the number one first-year team.

On the other hand, with Jaune's forfeit due to illness, Team JNPR had lost all of their matches which should have put them near the bottom of the first-year team rankings. However, with Pyrrha's past reputation and the fact that the three of them who had fought had lost to the 'Monster Siblings', as Ray, Ruby, and Yang were becoming known as, no one was willing to underestimate what they were capable of. In the end, Team JNPR achieved a shaky ranking in the top five of the first-year teams. The most significant question mark for Team JNPR was their leader, Jaune. None of the other students had gotten to see him fight in person yet, but they didn't have very high expectations for a guy who got so nervous before a sparring match that he made himself sick and threw up.

"Hmmmm." Yang moaned after the class was over as she stretched her arms high above her head. "So dinner and bed." She asked her team along with Ray and the remaining members of Team JNPR as they walked out of the arena together.

"We should probably go check up on Jaune." Ren replied.

"Let's go together. I'm worried about him too." Ruby proposed, and hearing no complaints, even from an indifferent Weiss, the eight of them headed for the nurse's office.

As they walked, Ray pulled Pyrrha back a bit to talk to her without the others overhearing. "You know why Jaune was so nervous about the sparring matches, don't you?" He asked Pyrrha in a whisper.

She nodded, "I have an idea." At her level, it was easy for her to see that while Jaune might know the basics and have potential, compared to everyone else at Beacon, his combat abilities were woefully far behind.

"I'll do what I can to teach him in class, but he is going to need more help than that. As his teammate, can I count on you to provide him with some extra personal tutoring out of class?"

"Of course." Pyrrha agreed, firming up her determination. She had thought about offering to help Jaune but had been wavering since she wasn't sure how he would take it. Now that someone else had asked her to help him, she no longer had any reason to hesitate.

"He probably isn't going to take it well the first time. We boys have a lot of stupid macho stuff going on in their heads at our age. Especially when our heads are filled with dreams of being a hero like Jaune." Ray warned, "Just be patient and gentle with him. Let him know that it isn't that you look down on him. It's just that you want to help him achieve his dream. He will come around eventually."

Pyrrha nodded and took his words to heart as she started to consider how she should go about approaching Jaune about the matter.