Ch 81: Pillow Wars (1)

*Deep Husky Narrator Voice* "A long time ago, in a bedroom far, far away."

"PILLOW FIGHT!" Ruby shrilly shrieked as she leaped across Ray's dorm room to wallop a confused Jaune across the face with her pillow. The first casualty in a gruesome battle for bedroom dominance.

*Gah hoo* Jaune cried out as he was knocked to the floor. As he laid there on his back, watching the loose feathers float through the air, riding the slipstreams created by the passing fluffy projectiles, he tried to remember how this entire mess had started.

Turning back the clock a few minutes…

######

"Excellent job, everyone!" Ray shouted from the top of the wooden platform with sweat streaming down his face after another day of Hell Training, "I'm especially glad to see that so many people stuck around after their tests finished yesterday to take part in the last session of the semester."

Around the borders of the mass of wet, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted students below as if to encircle them to prevent anyone from escaping, girls, and more than a few guys, with black badges with Ray's burning lotus emblem on it in azure-blue over a depiction of Beacon Tower in bright gree sewn onto the right breast of their workout clothes puffed out their chests and beamed with pride. Over the semester, Ray's fan club had evolved into his unofficial enforcer unit. Their duties included hunting down students every Saturday morning to make sure no one escaped or skipped out on his Hell Training and, in general, doing anything they could think of to make their idol's job as a teaching assistant easier without getting in his way. President Hime had even gotten Ozpin to recognize them as an official club somehow.

"Now, before you all limp back to your cozy beds, I'm afraid I have some bad news." Ray said, still smiling down at them all. However, his smile began to cramp as he saw the entire student body drop to their hands and knees to brace themselves against the ground.

"Oi. What the hell are you idiots doing?" Ray asked, his smile twitching.

Everyone was silent for a moment before some brave soul spoke up from the midst of the crowd. "You're not going to suddenly max out our gravity bands and tell us we are going to do one more round of sets to celebrate the end of the semester?"

"Of course not!" Ray snapped back at the timid voice angrily, a significant tick mark appearing on his forehead. "What kind of evil monster do you take me for."

No one had the courage to answer him this time, but their averted gazes and the fact none of them had moved from their braced position was more than sufficient as an answer. Even his own sisters were pointedly looking away from him and whistling innocently while remaining on all fours.

*Hah* "Fine. I get it. I'm a sadistic slave driver. But seriously, stand the hell up already. I have an important announcement to make." Ray let out a sigh of annoyance as he crossed his arms in front of his chest and motioned with one hand for everyone to get up. Eventually, they all did, though their hesitation and wariness while doing so caused Ray to tap his foot impatiently. But at the same time, he felt like smiling on the inside. Glad that, after study and suffering together over this past semester, everyone had all grown close enough to joke so freely and casually with each other.

[I'm going to miss this happy, simple life. But you can't stay a kid forever. The world just won't let you. All we can do is win as soon as possible so that we can quickly return to these care-free days.]

*Ahem* Ray began once everyone was standing once more, "This is not only the last Hell Training session of the semester but the last Hell Training session of the year. There will be no Hell Training during the fall semester."

At those words, a momentous cheer erupted from all the gathered students below. People were jumping for joy as if they hadn't been dead on their feet only moments ago while holding on to their neighbor with tears streaming down their faces. Even the members of his fan club and the stronger students like Teams CFVY and RWBY couldn't contain their joy.

Ray raised his voice to be heard over the joyful hubbub. "There will also be no Aura Manipulation classes next semester." His words caused a confused and worried silence to descend upon the previously jubilant masses. While Hell Training was aptly named, and none of them would miss it even if they did understand the benefit of it, Aura Manipulation classes were a different matter entirely.

""Why? Are you leaving? Are you in trouble? Is there something wrong with the Aura Manipulation you've been teaching us? I want to keep getting stronger!"" A cacophony of shouts shattered the silence as the shocked students began to bombard him with questions.

[How am I suppose to answer any of your questions when you won't stop talking.] Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Ray gestured towards Hime, who was standing at the edge of the crowd nearest the platform. Understanding what he wanted, she quickly jogged over to a bat-eared Faunus boy who was also wearing a Ray Fan Club badge and spoke loudly into his ear to be heard over all the noise around them. With a nod, the boy clapped his hands together in front of him, activating his semblance, Silence, stopping any sound from being produced within a specified area. In this case, the gaggle of jabbering students.

"The reason for these two things is the same." Ray began to explain once silence was forcibly restored. "Simply put, the other schools' headmasters and board members don't trust me. What I have been teaching you is all brand new and, in their eyes, experimental and extreme at best or, at worst, utter insanity. They don't want it being taught to their students until it is better understood and tested to ensure it is safe. Professor Ozpin was open-minded enough to allow me to teach all of you as a sort of test program. However, since we will be having students from other schools joining as at the start of next semester for the Vital Festival halfway through the semester, it will not be possible for me to continue teaching you all."

[Not that I tried all that hard to convince them otherwise. I'm pretty sure those old codgers on the council were just fishing for benefits when they brought up forcing me to cancel my classes next semester. They certainly tried to backpedal desperately enough when I immediately agreed not to teach next semester. But there's no way in hell I was going to be teaching the bitch and her pups my techniques before they've been properly housebroken, so it served as an excellent excuse.]

Ray paused to look around at all the students below him that he had had the pleasure to watch grow over the semester. "It has been a privilege and an honor to teach all of you these past three and a half months, and I hope to get the chance to do so again." Ray finished bowing to all of them.

######

"FIRE!" Coco screamed from one corner of the room as she began throwing pillows as fast as Fox could hand them to her in an imitation of her gatling gun Gianduja's rapid firing rate. In the other corner of the room, with her back to the same wall, Velvet and Yatsu mimic Coco and Fox's rapid-fire teamwork tactic. Together Team CFVY had caught their opponents in a heavy crossfire. At the same time, Ruby and Weiss held sniper posts between them, throwing arms cocked to take out any enemies that tried to disrupt their team's heavy barrage of feathery projectiles.

"Blake and I will distract them." On the other side of the room, Ray, Blake, Yang, and Team JNPR, minus their deceased leader, hunkered down in their mattress reinforced pillow fort as feathers exploded around them. "When you see an opening, Yang, Pyrrha, take out Coco and Velvet. Hit them with everything you got. Nora, you two provide cover fire. Don't let Ruby and Weiss interfere. Ren, while we are doing that, try to sneak behind enemy lines and *Ssss*." Ray made a slashing motion across his throat with his thumb as he handed Ren a small decorative pillow that was only a little bigger than his palm.

"I will not fail." Ren nodded solemnly as he tucked the pillow securely inside his dark green sleeping kimono.

"FOR PANCAKES!" Ray screamed as he vaulted over the wall protecting them and instantly began drawing heavy fire. Ducking and weaving, he danced through the storm without fear. Blake was right behind him, flickering from one location to the next as she made full use of her semblance, Shadow, appearing to be teleporting around the room.

""NOW!"" Yang and Pyrrha yelled simultaneously as they bolted through one of Blake's dissipating clones at a full sprint, both hands fully loaded with fatal fluff.

"Not on my watch. ICE FLOWER!" Ruby shouted and began throwing pillows through a force glyph that Weiss created, sending the feathery projectiles speeding like missiles towards the red and blond haired girls sprinting towards them.

"I DON'T THINK SO!" Nora cried as she hurled a long body pillow with all her strength at the two snipers with enough force to knock their pillows out of the air and send both of them ducking for cover.

"YES! We got them now!" Jaune cheered as he waved the unthrown pillow in his hand above his head. But just as Pyrrha was about to reach Coco-

"FOR COOKIES!" A suicidal Ruby leapt into the air and took Pyrrha's lethal pillow strike that had been meant for her upperclasswoman with her own flesh. Saved at the last second by her junior's selfless sacrifice, Coco didn't waste the opportunity bought for her with so heavy a price.

"FOR COOKIES!" In the spirit of the moment, the usually cool huntress took up the battle cry of the fallen and walloped her assailant clean across the face and then double-tapped her for good measure.

"Ruby! NO!" Weiss wailed as she held the limp body of her friend in her arms.

"Weiss, my BFF," Ruby gasped out with her dying breath. "avenge meeeeeeee…" *Geh*.

Pausing for a moment, Weiss wasn't sure if she should retort that she was not Ruby's BFF like usual or if she should just go with it for the sake of the sacred pillow fight. Before she could come to a decision, she heard a soft voice whispering in her ear, "Worry not. You shall be joining her soon in the eternal slumber." as something soft passed across her throat.

"Assassination successful." Ren breathed as Weiss's body slumped lifelessly to the ground on top of Ruby, and he silently slipped away. Her falling position was purely coincidence because of how she had been taken out. There were absolutely no hidden motivations behind why she now found herself resting her head on her team leader's soft, bare thighs and with Ruby's head resting on hers.

After Ray's announcements, Teams CFVY, RWBY, and JNPR had retired to Ray's dorm room for their weekly trip to heaven and sleepover. Just like they did every week, though, after the first month, they started getting more used to their journeys through purgatory, and their sleepovers began to turn more into slumber parties.

[But since when were pillow fights this extreme, and why do Weiss, Coco, Velvet, Yatsuhashi, and Fox seem so gung ho about pummeling Ray?] Jaune bemoaned as he laid on the ground and watched Nora do a 90-degree backbend to execute a perfect matrix-style dodge to avoid the barrage of lethal feathery projectiles from Velvet that Ray had just practically swum through in mid-air. They had played all sorts of games to liven up their nights together, but none had been as aggressive as this. Not even the Uno tournaments.