122With a final vote of 70 in favor and 15 against, Jiro WILL be added into the roster of reincarnated students. As of June 27th, 2020, I have gone back and made the necessary adjustments to the first few chapters. Thank you all for voting and I hope that I can make the consequences of the outcome as entertaining as possible.
Beta-ed by xenosaiyan
"I wouldn't worry so much about such hypotheticals, Ms. Rose. They can be quite distracting from your schoolwork."
Ruby and Izuku both whirled around to the new, teasing voice in the hallway.
"Professor Ozpin," Izuku greeted.
The elder huntsman smiled at them, his cane in one hand and a steaming coffee mug in the other. "Mr. Midoriya, would you please go on ahead to your next class? Let Glynda know that I'm speaking with Ms. Rose."
"Oh," Izuku glanced nervously at Ruby, probably wanting to defend her if their headmaster was about to scold her. "Are you sure? I don't mind staying—"
"I appreciate the thought, Izuku, but this is something I need to discuss with your team leader on her own," Ozpin gently commanded. "If you feel the need to speak with me, please do so after your classes. My door is always open."
"It's okay, Izuku," Ruby assured him. "Go on."
Izuku bit his lip but nodded. The green-haired boy turned around and marched down the hall, leaving his leader all alone with their headmaster.
"Did you hear all that?"
"More or less. I make a habit of keeping an eye on the first-years' opening classes. Though, they don't normally feature such dramatic epilogues."
Ruby gave a little chuckle at the professor's wording, but whatever happiness it granted was overcome by uncertainty soon after. "So? Is Weiss right? Did you make a mistake?"
Ozpin shrugged. "That remains to be seen."
"Huh?" Ruby raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's only been one day," Ozpin clarified. "Ruby, I've made more mistakes than any man, woman, or child on this planet. But at this moment, I do not consider your appointment as leader to be one of them. Do you?"
"Well… I don't know," Ruby confessed. "Why did you choose me? I mean, Weiss is a bit of a jerk, and I guess Blake doesn't really talk enough for the job. But Izuku? He's awesome! He's a great fighter, he came up with a crazy cool plan, he made us all breakfast, and he gets along with everyone! Even Weiss likes him!"
"He does have a certain charisma about him. Though I'm not sure he even realizes that such is the case," Ozpin smiled. "That said, do you believe that a leader's purpose is to be liked?"
"Uh, well, I guess not," Ruby replied. "But it helps, doesn't it?"
"It does. But only to the degree that it assists the leader in performing their task. For the leader of a huntsman team, that is to form a cohesive and effective unit that excels as well as possible in all aspects of a huntress's duties."
Ruby frowned. "Including all those laws and rules Weiss was talking about."
Ozpin nodded. "Indeed. Though Ms. Schnee's temper is something she will have to master herself, her point itself was not without merit. A single huntsman could massacre scores of otherwise 'normal' people if they so chose. If the job did not have such a high fatality rate, and the threat of the Grimm was so imperative, I doubt our profession would be allowed such grand freedoms as we are. And since that freedom is necessary to protect as many people as we can, we must do everything in our power to reassure the wider populace that we will use our power responsibly."
"Not goofing off whenever we feel like," Ruby sullenly stated.
"I'm afraid so. Relaxation is important, but there is a time and place," the headmaster lightly chastised her. "Being a team leader is more than just a badge you wear into battle. It is a badge you wear constantly. If you are not always performing at your absolute best, what reason do you give for others to follow you?" Ozpin turned his back on her. "You have been burdened with a daunting responsibility, Ruby. I advise you to take some time to think about how you will uphold it?"
"Uphold it…" Ruby murmured. "What if… what if I shouldn't?"
Ozpin halted mid-stride and turned back to her. "What do you mean?"
Ruby gulped. "I mean… Weiss wasn't completely wrong. Izuku does have everything I have and more. Even if neither of us is a perfect leader, he's a whole lot closer than I am. If my job as a leader is to do what's best for my team, even if it wouldn't make me liked, wouldn't the responsible thing to do be to hand over leadership to him?"
Ozpin cocked an eyebrow, the mysterious professor actually having to take a moment to gather his thoughts. But only a moment.
"That is an excruciating conundrum," he conceded. "I suppose the answer would come down to whether you trust me as your leader?"
"What?" Ruby exclaimed. "What are you talking about, professor? You're not our leader—"
"I am your headmaster, Ruby. Everyone and everything that happens in this school is my responsibility," Ozpin explained. "I have taken care to know everything I can about each student. And while the lineups of each team were decided by the chess piece selection in the Emerald Forest, I chose the leaders from the performances during the initiation and previous records."
"So, you thought I'd make a better leader than Izuku?" Ruby said. "Why? He's him, and I'm just… normal knees."
Ozpin chuckled, that mysterious, twinkling smile returning to his face. "Another thing you will learn about leadership, Ms. Rose, is that sometimes it is best to keep certain information close to the chest for the good of all."
"So you're not going to tell me?"
Ozpin shook his head and started to walk away again. "This is a school. We can give you information to study and hone for tests, but we cannot give you the answers. The fact is, you are your team's leader, Ruby. Not Izuku. And that cannot be changed. So the question is, how will you handle this challenge?"
Ruby's brow furrowed as the headmaster strode away. She wasn't the perfect leader. She wasn't even sure that she was closer to being that than Izuku. But it was clear that she wasn't getting out of this burden.
So, how could she handle it better?
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Apparently, Professor Goodwitch had expected Ruby and Weiss to have some sort of issue, because she had not been surprised in the least when Blake had told her that they and Izuku would be a bit late. The combat instructor had let her know that such tardiness would not be tolerated in the future, but she would be lenient since it was the first day and there would be no actual sparring that day, just a long introductory seminar about safety rules and the expected decorum of the class. Beacon spars could get rather brutal, they were training for fights with Grimm, but by that same token, there was no room for slipups. If the professor called the fight, or anyone's aura went into the red if it was a mutually agreed upon duel outside of class, there would be no room for argument.
Which would be far more tolerable if Blake hadn't been made responsible for ensuring that her absent team members knew all that and everything they missed while they weren't present. Damnit, Izuku! Why did you have to stick your nose into it? You loved notetaking even when you were listening to Professor Port's snore-fest. Blake didn't take notes! She just listened to what she was told while reading her Ninjas of Love. That had worked out fine for her all her life.
But perhaps she needed to devote her attention to other matters. She could memorize all the information from a lecture with ease, but her cat ears were a natural part of her body. It was like breathing. If you were thinking about it, you had to micromanage every movement of the process. But if you weren't, it just occurred naturally. The difference was that her lungs weren't currently being hidden by a flimsy piece of cloth. Her ears twitched around when left to their own devices, so she would need to focus more on keeping them still if she didn't want to be discovered.
She'd gotten lucky with Izuku. From what he'd told them of his past, it was possible that he just hadn't encountered many faunus in his life, enough that he didn't consider that Blake could be a faunus if he didn't see her animal trait. It would do something to explain his interest in Katsuki. Though, she was a bit insulted that he thought she had such poor mastery over her semblance.
Oh well, it was better than him figuring out the truth. She was here to put her past behind her. She couldn't do that if her teammates, especially Weiss, knew she used to be White Fang.
"How far is she in the instructions?"
"Huh?" Blake looked up. Think of the devil and she would appear. Weiss, now once more dressed in their school uniform shuffled up to her partner in the bleachers of the combat arena. She took the seat on the black-haired girl's left, with Yang and the rest of Team AYBN on her right, Katsuki noticeably choosing to be furthest away from her.
"Not too far," Yang informed the tardy heiress. "She's just been going over standard combat practices. What'll be different from training and spars we had in combat school."
Weiss bit her lip. "I've missed that much? Do you think she'll go over it again—"
Blake held up her notes. "Got you covered."
"Oh," Weiss remarked, taking the notebook and examining the writing. "Thank you. Your penmanship is lovely."
Blake shrugged. Her mom had made her take calligraphy classes when she was younger.
"Where's Ruby?" Yang asked. Her brow furrowed in worry. "Where's Izuku?"
"I left them behind at the changing room. I think they were talking to Professor Ozpin," Weiss replied.
"So he's with her…" Yang muttered. The blonde got up from her seat and ran up the bleachers. Professor Goodwitch raised an eyebrow but didn't stop her lecture. The huntsman academies were more similar to colleges than high schools. Students didn't have to ask to go to the bathroom, but they were responsible for whatever they missed.
Of course, Blake doubted Yang was going to the bathroom.
"What was that about?" Weiss inquired.
"Eh, she just wants to give Izuku the protective older sister talk," Jaune explained. "It's a sibling thing."
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "My sister never did anything like that."
"She never let you see her doing anything like that," Jaune responded. He flashed a smile that was probably supposed to look charming but instead came off as fake and awkward. "She probably just didn't want to worry you, Snow Angel."
"Ugh," Weiss groaned, turning away from the blond boy.
Blake caught Jaune's disappointment flicker across his pouting face, Pyrrha giving him a soft pat on the back. Though, the cat faunus regretted to say she identified more with Katsuki's eye roll at the sight. She had nothing against Jaune, and he was far from a stalker, but after her experience with Adam, she sympathized with Weiss wishing the young team leader would stop flirting with her.
Speaking of, Blake's partner's face was marred with a pensive frown, not even looking at the notes she was taking down from Professor Goodwitch's lecture. And considering how dutifully she'd written the notes from Professor Port's class when he'd bored them all to tears and she'd been so furious at Ruby, it was somewhat concerning.
"I take it Izuku wasn't able to help you and Ruby?" she inquired.
"What? Oh, yes," Weiss stammered, her brow furrowed. "He caught up with us, but I brushed him off. I… I talked to Professor Port."
"Really?" Blake remarked. "About what?"
"About whether I should have been team leader."
Blake cocked an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure there's no changing that once the decision is made."
"It doesn't matter," Weiss said. "He told me he trusts Professor Ozpin's choice."
"And you're upset about that?"
"I'm… I'm not sure," the white-haired girl confessed. "He also gave me some advice. About being someone who's been given everything in her life. About how my… attitude was a hindrance to the team and wouldn't convince anyone in power to reconsider their decision."
"Great," Blake shrugged. "So you know what you need to do."
"But I don't," Weiss insisted, her voice cracking. "I understand that chasing after leadership and continuing to cause friction within the team is irresponsible, but does that mean I just ignore the problems that are already there? How can I be a good teammate when one of my teammates would be a far superior leader to the one that is the leader, and I can't bring the subject up without causing turmoil, but if I leave it alone, I'll be condemning the team to less than optimal performance."
Blake felt her eyebrow twitch, but not for the reasons she would have expected from listening to a Schnee's internal dilemma. Weiss's debate was… vexingly familiar.
To do nothing and passively try to work with the current system, or force change through more disruptive, possibly dangerous means. It felt wrong to compare the differing ideologies of her father and Sienna Khan to something as relatively puny as a teenage girl needing to keep her attitude in check, but the parallels as Weiss put it were quite visible. Blake had once faced a choice in the grander debate when she'd left her parents for Sienna Khan, chosen to use violent means to force humanity to respect the faunus, and she had seen that it had provided many benefits.
But the drawbacks, what they opened the door to, what they had allowed Adam to become… it wasn't worth it.
Of course, there was the key difference in the different issues' timeframes that made her advice to her partner far easier to give out.
"Weiss, it's only been one day," Blake pointed out. "I'll admit, Ruby did not put her best foot forward in Port's class, but I doubt that's all there is to her."
"But that can't be a part of her," Weiss said. "We're training to be huntresses. We have to put all our effort into our studies or else people could get hurt later on when we graduate and aren't the best we can be."
Blake shrugged. "That's a long way off. We're here to learn how to be huntresses, not already be perfect when we start here. Ruby's attitude is something she'll need to work on just as much as you will yours. So, maybe give her the same time to improve on her weaknesses that we'll all need."
"Izuku doesn't," Weiss argued. "He's studious, and thoughtful, and focused like Win… like a huntsman should be."
And now it made a bit more sense. You couldn't be in the White Fang without hearing about Winter Schnee, General Ironwood's right-hand bitch as she was called. While the term was certainly derogatory, not even Adam would disparage her combat skills, the Blood-Soaked Bull actually looking forward to encountering her for the challenge she would pose in addition to his personal grudge with the Schnee family. If that was what the specialist's enemies thought of her, to her little sister she might as well have been a demigod.
Weiss was striving to be a huntress like her sister and measured everyone else by that same standard. Blake could understand that. She'd once been determined to be like her father before it had seemed like he'd failed their people, and Adam, before she'd realized what he had become. But idolization like that, it was dangerous both for the people doing it, and the people they worshiped.
"You haven't known Izuku for any longer than you have Ruby. And just because he's made a good first impression doesn't mean he's perfect," Blake said. "He's a student too, there are things he still has to learn. You can't jump to judgments so quickly."
"Yeah, I mean, Izuku only got an average score on the practical exam," Jaune chimed in. "He did way worse than you two did."
"Supposedly," Katsuki growled.
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "How do you know what we all got on the practical exam?"
"Oh, um... well..." Jaune stuttered, nervously rubbing his arm. "Yang showed us. Her uncle is close with Ozpin and got her the list."
"We're sorry," Pyrrha apologized. "We shouldn't have looked at your scores without asking."
"No, you shouldn't have," Weiss sighed. "But… it's fine. Are you sure that Izuku did worse than us? An average score doesn't sound like him."
"Not at all," Katsuki muttered. "Something is up."
"Or he just had an off day," Blake suggested. "He told me that he's had trouble controlling his semblance before. He said it used to be so bad that he broke his own bones."
"Broke his own bones…" Katsuki murmured, almost absentmindedly. "He hadn't made the borrowed power his own…"
All four of the other huntsmen-in-training turned to the wolf faunus, eyebrows raised.
"What are you talking about?" Blake queried.
Katsuki blinked, almost as if he'd been woken from a dream. He scowled at them all. "Talking about what? What're you all staring at?!"
"You!" Weiss said. "You just said something about Izuku using 'borrowed power'. What was that about?"
"How the fuck am I supposed to know, Ice Bitch?!"
"Ahem!"
All five students sat ramrod straight, suddenly finding themselves the focus of Professor Goodwitch's very displeased glare.
"Team RIBW. Team ABYN," their teacher intoned. "I suggest you keep your chatter to yourself. I would prefer not to have to give anyone detention on the first day of classes."
'But I will' was left unsaid, but all of the huntsmen-in-training got the message. Even Katsuki meekly nodded to their professor's command. The blonde huntress acknowledged their actions and went back to her lecture, knowing they wouldn't be foolish enough to trespass over her decree.
Of course, Blake had been known to rush into things like racial tension and terrorism without thinking, so defying Glynda Goodwitch was only slightly more dangerous than her previous occupation. And a detail of what Jaune had said made her raise an eyebrow at her partner.
"You took the practical exam?" she inquired to Weiss. "Why? I mean, you're you. You could have easily gotten in with recommendations."
"You're not wrong about that," Weiss whispered, almost bitter. "I'm a Schnee. More than that, I'm the heiress to the Schnee legacy. I've trained all my life to excel, to be the best huntress I can possibly be. And yet people look at me, and they don't see me. They see my father."
Blake frowned, recalling her own gut reaction to meeting Jacques Schnee's daughter. "You're not wrong about that."
"Exactly. I haven't forgotten our first meeting," Weiss sighed. "But I do understand it. What my father has done to my family's company is monstrous. His business practices cut corners at the best of times and at their worst? Well, there is a reason Katsuki calls me what he does."
"I call you Ice Bitch because you're an Ice Bitch," the wolf faunus said. "I don't give two shits about your damn family."
Weiss cocked an eyebrow. "Um… thank you?"
"You're welcome."
Weiss coughed and turned back to her partner. "People see me as his child, his… pet. And I'm not. My sister escaped his control by becoming a huntress, by becoming one of the most incredible huntresses the kingdoms have ever seen. I'm going to do the same. And I will not cut corners on that mission. I will make my way on my own merits and restore my family's good name."
Blake smiled. "It's a wonderful goal."
"I'll say," Jaune said. "That's amaz—ow!"
"Leave them be, Noodle," Katsuki ordered, gripping his team leader's ear. "They're having a moment."
"Stop that," Pyrrha hissed, slapping the wolf faunus' hand of their leader.
Blake and Weiss shared a look and broke out into mutual grins. Childish as it was, the interaction between their sister team was undeniably amusing. And the fact that it was childish did well to illustrate an important point.
"Weiss, you wanting to be the best you can be is admirable," Blake complimented her. "But we're all still kids. We'll all grow into huntresses worthy of the name in time, but don't try to rush everything. If we try to force things to happen without thinking, we'll cause more harm than good. Putting Ruby or Izuku on pedestals when they're still students won't help anyone."
"No, I suppose it won't. I'm not anywhere near Winter's level yet. Expecting them to be is hypocritical," Weiss groaned. "I'm actually going to have to apologize to the girl who nearly blew me up."
"Don't worry. Ruby seems pretty forgiving," Blake teased. "I think you'd have to kill her family before she swore eternal vengeance."
"Oh haha. As if there aren't enough nutjobs like the White Fang after my head," Weiss countered, but the smile on her lips assured the cat faunus that her cover was still sound. "Thank you, Blake. I'm glad to have a partner as level-headed as you."
"Right…" Blake replied, forcing her smile not to crack with nervousness and her cat ears to stay perfectly still. "Don't mention it."
Level-headed? Huh. So that was the image she projected? Ironic. Blake couldn't remember the last time she was level-headed in anything. She leapt into things without thinking. The White Fang, her relationship with Adam, her Ninjas of Love books, a level-headed person would never have made her many mistakes. Even her attendance at Beacon was driven by instinct, by a need to do something just, to make a difference in the cruel, brutal war.
She thought she was doing the right thing. But she thought she had been doing that every other time as well. She wouldn't be exempt from the consequences. No one at Beacon knew who she really was, but if they discovered the truth… well… Strangely enough, Weiss, for all her attitude, had grown on her. She didn't want her partner to hate her.
But if the truth came out, she would.
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Yang wasn't really going to the bathroom. Honestly, if her dad knew why she was doing what she was doing, he'd ground her for a month.
Well, he'd check to make sure Izuku really was on the level, then he'd ground her for a month if she was wrong. Of course, given that even she suspected she was being paranoid because of Katsuki's words, he'd probably still lecture her on jumping to conclusions.
Fortunately, by the time she reached the entrance to the combat arena, her target was already shuffling down the hall, his brow furrowed and a frown across his face. All thoughts of interrogation instantly fled Yang's mind at the sight of the depressed boy.
"Hey, Green Bean," she tentatively said. "Everything alright? Where's Ruby?"
"Oh, hey Yang," Izuku responded, his head coming up. "Ruby's fine. Professor Ozpin just needed to talk to her."
Yang raised an eyebrow. "Anything I need to worry about?"
"No, I think he's just giving her a pep talk. She and Weiss had a big fight and he's trying to help her figure out how to solve it," Izuku looked down, ashamed. "When I tried, I just made things worse."
"Eh, don't worry about it too much," Yang assured him. "I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose."
Izuku shrugged. "Does that matter? I wanted to help them bridge their differences, but instead, me just being there, being here, made Weiss even madder and Ruby think less of herself."
Yang's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean you made Ruby 'think less of herself'?"
"She thinks she's a bad leader because she thinks I'd make a better one," Izuku explained, sagging back against the wall of the doorway. "Which is ridiculous! Yes, she was goofing off in class, but that doesn't make her a bad leader. She's an amazing fighter, and her plan to take out the Nevermore at initiation was brilliant. I can't even get my aura to… ergh…"
"Can't even get your aura to do what?" Yang inquired.
"It's… trouble with my semblance. I haven't mastered it as much as I would like," the green-haired boy explained. "But because Ruby and Weiss both think I'm some perfect leader material or something, they both think less of our actual leader. And I can't help without them thinking I'm being humble and making things worse. I don't know what to do."
Yang decided then and there that Izuku was on the level. This trouble with his semblance was probably the explanation for why his practical exam score was only average instead of what his performance in the Emerald Forest implied it should be. And if he was tearing himself up so much about the trouble Ruby was having because of a problem that wasn't his fault, and only related to him at all because Weiss was looking for any reason to be mad about the team leader pick, then he would easily have her back when the more dangerous parts of huntress life bore down on them.
And if she was Ruby's all-knowing, advice-giving big sister, then she might as well extend that comfort to her sister's partner.
"Nothing," she declared. "Do nothing."
"What?" Izuku squeaked. "I can't. I have to help."
"And this is how you do it," Yang explained. "Izuku, do you really think I didn't want to be on the same team as my little sister?"
Izuku pursed his lips, his fingers rising to his chin. "I never really got the sense that you wanted to avoid being on her team. I mean, you encouraged her to be friends with me, and by implication that meant you wanted her to be my teammate, but that doesn't necessarily preclude you not be on the team, there are four people to a group after all—"
"I did. I did want to be on her team," Yang interrupted, before that intense mumbling of his could get warmed up. What even was that? "But I didn't want to let her run to me to be her partner as a crutch. Ruby needed to go out in the world and make her own friends, make her own way. She couldn't hide behind big sis's skirt forever and I can't always solve her problems, no matter how much I might want to. Do you get it?"
"… yes," Izuku nodded. "I think I do."
"Sometimes you've got to let people fight their own battles," Yang clarified. "You can support her as her partner, but she's the leader. Only she can decide how she's going to do that."
Izuku groaned, his face sinking into his palm. "I was just thinking that was part of the reason Weiss was mad at Ruby, and here I am making the same mistake. Again."
Yang patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it too much. We're all here to learn. Besides, wanting to help isn't exactly a bad instinct. You've just got to let Ruby come into her own, and let Weiss get her head out of her ass. I mean, she's got to realize that the headmaster made the choice he did for a reason."
"Yeah, you're right," Izuku smiled. "Thanks, Yang."
"No problem, Green Bean," Yang grinned. She clapped him on the back and turned him towards the combat arena. "Now, come on. You're already late, and my bathroom break is way over."
"Bathroom break?" Izuku squeaked, his cheeks red and his eyes locked on the other student's arm on his back.
Yang couldn't help but chuckle. It was good to know that her sister's partner wouldn't have the guts to try anything inappropriate towards her. Even better to know he was just what he seemed: an awkward, dorky, but talented guy just trying to make his way as a huntsman, same as the rest of them.
Katsuki could keep his paranoid ramblings to himself. Everything about the Green Bean was perfectly fine.
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The elevator of the headmaster's office dinged open. Ozpin looked up from the paperwork on his desk and smiled at the entrant.
"Sorry to intrude," Izuku greeted. "But you said your door was always open—
"And I meant it," Ozpin assured him. "But I will admit, I did not expect you to come immediately after classes. Did you make any progress with young Mr. Bell?"
"Our teams ate lunch together," Izuku awkwardly chuckled. "But things were awkward enough between Ruby and Weiss that I couldn't really strike up a conversation. He was focused on his food anyway. Then Yang told him to chew with his mouth closed, and then he called Yang… something I don't want to repeat. After that, she called him… another thing I don't want to repeat."
Ozpin cringed. "I suppose I should have expected both literal explosions and verbal explosions when those two became partners. I suppose we'll have to wait for Glynda's first proper class for the former to occur."
"Yeah," Izuku replied. "With any luck, some exciting combat will jog Katsuki's memories. He always did love fighting."
"Many who walk these halls do," the headmaster acknowledged. "So, what was it you wished to talk about? If it is about Ms. Rose and Ms. Schnee's debate, I have intervened as much as I dare at the moment. If things escalate, I will step in, but I do not believe they will."
"No, it's not that. Well, not exactly," Izuku said. "I've accepted that I have to let Ruby and Weiss handle their own struggles, however much I might want to help."
Ozpin cocked an eyebrow. "An excellent conclusion. But then what's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, it's just… well…" Izuku shuffled. "Back home, I'm not just training to be just another hero. I mean, I am training to be a hero, and I don't care that much for fame but… my mentor All Might was the Number One Hero, the Symbol of Peace. He entrusted me with his quirk, and has helped me every step of the way so that I could replace him and maintain society's stability."
"An admirable goal," Ozpin noted. Even on Remnant, having such a symbol, a singular figure that the people could look through and know for certain that they would be safe, would be invaluable. The security that such a huntsman would provide could, in theory, drastically decrease negativity and with it the threat of the Grimm on any particular kingdom or settlement. "But what is it you need from me?"
"Part of being the Number One Hero is to lead the way for other heroes," Izuku said. "I am completely fine with Ruby being the team leader, but I still want to know why she was the superior choice. I want to know where I can improve as a leader when I return home, so I can be the best hero I can possibly be."
Oh. And here he was thinking that his little wordplay with Ms. Rose would see the end of this topic. Perhaps that was naïve of him when dealing with such enterprising youths. Fortunately, Izuku was the one person to whom he could actually divulge his reasoning.
"In terms of combat strength, tactical ability, and charisma, both you and Ms. Rose are equally qualified to serve as leaders of a huntsman team, though what kind of leader is needed depends on the individual makeup of each group," Ozpin revealed. "You have an edge in live battle experience while she has an advantage in aura control, both disadvantages that can be dealt with given training and time."
"I see," Izuku muttered, his brow furrowing. "That makes sense. Ruby's familiarity with Remnant's nature provides her with a natural ability to bond with and inspire others. Meanwhile, even though I've done my best to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, there's only so much I've been able to learn in my short time here. But that also factors into my own abilities, though whatever experience I have over her is only because of the villain attacks I've made it through, otherwise, she has fought more Grimm than I have—"
"Mr. Midoriya. Please."
"Oh, sorry, professor."
"It's no trouble," Ozpin assured him. "But to be completely truthful, the deciding factor in my choice was your… exceptional circumstances."
Izuku tilted his head to the side. "My circumstances?"
Ozpin nodded. "A team relies on its leader, survives on them. I can name many who have survived the loss of a team member, but few that pulled through the loss of their leader. Because of this, a leader must be devoted to their team and the missions that they set out on. And, though I have no doubt that you could fulfill that were you born on Remnant, the fact is, your primary responsibility is to find and restore your friends. A burden already far too heavy for me to feel it permissible to place that of leadership on your shoulders as well."
"Oh. That… that makes sense…" Izuku murmured. The young boy's brow furrowed, not a single word slipping out of his lips.
"Does this disappoint you?" Ozpin inquired. He knew from experience that sometimes the hardest thing to hear was that you were doing nothing wrong, that there was no improvement you could make to bolster your situation. Sometimes, a person could do everything right, and life could still be… difficult, at the best of times.
"It's… I don't know what it is," Izuku replied. "Coming to another world to find them, in my head I thought it would be like diving into a dungeon in a video game, I guess. Everything would be against me and I'd have to struggle and fight to free them from an immortal witch, with everything against me."
"A bracing scenario," Ozpin remarked, not mentioning that he himself had lived a similar situation for many, many lives.
"But it's not. It's not a dungeon. It's just another… world," Izuku elaborated. "Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and the others have no idea about Salem or what she's done to my friends."
"I have gone to great lengths to ensure that status quo," Ozpin noted. "The despair and death if the general population knew about Salem's immortality… I don't have to imagine it, and will never let it be repeated on a grander scale, I assure you, my friend."
"That's not it. I didn't realize that the people here would have their own lives, their own goals to protect people," Izuku said. "They're just trying to become huntsmen – heroes – and trusting me to watch their backs. And here I am unable to give them my full help. I'm handicapping them and they don't even realize it."
Ozpin could barely believe it. Here was this boy, on an interdimensional quest to rescue his classmates who'd been kidnapped by Salem for a war they had no part in, facing odds that could generously be called 'titanic', and he was feeling guilty for his mission hampering the natives he'd known for barely a week.
He and Ms. Rose really were a great deal alike, as they both were to the late Mrs. Rose. Which meant it was the headmaster's job to keep them alive.
"Izuku, it has only been one day," he said, repeating the words he'd told Ruby earlier that morning. He rose to his feet and clipped his way across the office. "Your quest has hardly done any permanent damage to your teammates, and whatever trifles your presence may have contributed to are not your fault. This path is not an easy one to walk, interdimensional traveler or not. And I can't see you leaving them to be hurt for your own sake."
"But what if there comes a time when my goal to save my friends conflicts with their duty as huntresses," Izuku panicked. "What if Salem's already gotten to one of them and Ruby and the others want to take them out to protect Remnant before I have a chance to restore their memories?"
Ozpin smiled at his young friend and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "We will cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, focus on Mr. Bell. Once his memories are restored, we'll have one more ally to find the others."
Izuku glanced to the side, still unsure. He stepped out of Ozpin's grip and bowed to him. "Thank you, professor."
The green-haired boy walked back into the elevator and descended back down to the school proper.
Ozpin sighed. In the end, he could only offer his aid and his reassurances. Brave and courageous he might have been, Izuku Midoriya was still only a child. By his own admission, his world was far better off than Remnant, with mankind flourishing across the planet. And here, he met a group of friends who all desired to protect their post-apocalyptic civilization and were putting their all into 'fighting the good fight' so to speak. Meanwhile, he himself sought to rescue only six people that he personally cared about. Put in those terms, his own goals did seem comparatively self-centered and perhaps dishonest to his teammates.
But only in those terms. Izuku put far too much on himself, and the fact that he was considering how his mission affected his team's aspirations just from how his presence indirectly factored into Ruby and Weiss's argument, was proof of that. He wanted to save his friends, but he didn't want to hinder Remnant's natives while doing it. If they understood the full details of his situation, Ms. Rose at least would probably try to help him.
But given the outlandishness of the truth and his own experiences getting each generation of his circle to believe in the impossible, Ozpin did not think that was wise. No, they'd think Mr. Midoriya mad and the headmaster would only be able to compensate so much for that. And gods forbid if Salem got wind of the situation. All the work they'd done to make Izuku seem as mundane as possible, having him attend Beacon as a student, fabricating an average score for the practical entrance exam in case she had one of her minions hack their records, it would all be for nothing and she'd spare no expense acquiring him and any reincarnates she found along the way.
No, for now, secrecy was their best option. Just as it had been for him these many, many millennia.
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Katsuki didn't know what to expect from a first day of school. His time with his parents in Mistral had been chaotic at best, Kali's schooling at the orphanage hadn't exactly been traditional, and huntsman academies weren't exactly known for the predictability of their curriculum anyway. Thus, when he'd prepped himself to be worked to the bone from the word 'go', and proceeded to get a day of lectures and safety speeches, including in his combat class, he'd been left with a fair bit of energy to work off.
Which was how he found himself in the academy gym tenderizing a punching bag.
The so-called 'Beacon Recreation Center' was undeniably a step-up from the rundown sandlot he, Kirishima, and the other huntsmen hopefuls had worked out in back in Kuo Kuana, but he found he didn't care much for the atmosphere. Back home, it'd been pure, restless energy, trying to forge itself into something resembling technique, relaxing simplicity. Here, surrounded by sterile, stainless exercise machines and other students keeping their distance or shooting him distrustful stares, it felt more like he'd stepped from the classroom onto a battlefield, one that he was far less suited for than a usual fight. He could have just kicked the asses of anyone who gave him trouble, but then there was his promise to Kali…
Argh. Maybe the coward didn't wear the bow just because she was pathetic, but because dealing with these racists was a waste of time. Whatever. He'd deal. He'd deal and come out stronger along the way, just like he always did.
For now though, he didn't want to be bothered, so he taped up his hands and started laying into a bag. The few punks who'd looked like they were going to give him trouble, led by some… Win… Win-something… his hair was flat… led by Flathead, flinched away when they saw how viciously he was going at his target. Bullies they may have been, but a bully was just another word for someone who wasted time picking on other people to feel better about their own fear. Seeing his nonchalant show of strength was more than enough to intimidate them off.
His punching bag getting unexpectedly firm against his strikes and a sea of golden hair swinging out from behind it revealed that it had been less effective with his partner.
"You finished showing Moon Eyes around the room already?" he inquired, continuing to hammer into the bag. "You better not have touched my Road Warrior of Vacuo book."
"Don't get your hair in a twist. Ruby knows well enough not to touch someone else's comic books without permission. She says you can borrow the next few volumes from her if you want to," Poofy Hair informed him, fortifying his punching bag from the other side. "She said she had to study though. Ruby! Studying! On the first day of school!"
Katsuki scowled. "You here to bitch about your little sister not spending time with you, or was there something you wanted?"
"Well, you can't borrow my Road Warrior books with that attitude," Poofy Hair snorted. "I just wanted to tell you that you were being paranoid. Izuku hasn't completely mastered his semblance. That's probably why he got the average score, not whatever grand conspiracy you've cooked up in your head."
For some reason, that made Katsuki growl, even though he'd heard the coward say something similar during combat class. He piled more power into his punches, trying to blow his partner off the bag. "He's hiding something."
"Yeah, he's hiding that he has trouble with his semblance. He only told me because it slipped out while we were talking," Poofy Hair countered, rolling her eyes. "Why are you so sure that the one guy who actually wants to be your friend is up to no good? Are you that used to people hating you?"
"I don't give two shits about what worthless people think of me."
He knew that Broccoli Hair was hiding something. There was some truth to that spiel he said in the kitchen about wanting to use Katsuki as a rival to improve himself, but that wasn't all. The wolf faunus didn't know what or why, but his instincts were screaming at him that the bastard wasn't just some doormat huntsman hopeful.
And then there were the flashes, visions that crept up on him ever since he'd met the green-haired bastard. It had started with that big blond guy he'd glimpsed during initiation and hadn't slowed down since. When they were all getting settled in last night, he had looked up from stashing his single Road Warrior of Vacuo volume under his bed to see a kid version of Broccoli Hair holding out a hand to him, asking if he needed help.
He wasn't looking down on him, he knew what it felt like to be looked down on, but for some reason, Katsuki had still boiled with anger and thrown a punch at what turned out to be nothing. He'd accidentally smacked the Wet Noodle into the wall of their room.
His dreams had been haunted by two adults, a man and a woman who resembled him somewhat that he longed to reach out and hug in a way he hadn't felt since his parents died. When Broccoli Hair had tried to keep Moon Eyes from ignoring Professor Port's lecture before the Ice Bitch blew a gasket, he'd seen an image of the child Broccoli Hair standing between a small kid, two extras, and a kid version of himself lacking wolf ears. Said something about him needing to stop being 'mean' or something.
Then, during combat class, when the coward mentioned that his semblance used to break his bones, he'd gotten a whole rush of images. Broccoli Hair launching an uppercut at him that blew away a building and shattered his arm. Broccoli Hair breaking every limb he had firing air blasts at some guy shooting ice. Broccoli Hair standing before him with his arm in a sling, talking about making his 'borrowed power' his own. Whatever that meant.
But somehow, Katsuki did know what that meant, at least partially. The green electricity that shimmered around the bastard and made him go faster was the same titanic force that used to break his bones, but now with some actual control applied to it. Thinking about it in hindsight, it showed some decent growth from the visions he'd gotten of Broccoli Hair's past to how he was now.
Except he had never met Broccoli Hair before!
He thought he might have been going crazy. Seeing things from a past he was never a part of. A past that he was positive Broccoli Hair knew about. Half of him wanted to drag the green-haired bastard into the sparring ring and beat the answers out of him.
But he couldn't risk that. Whatever this nonsense was about, Broccoli Hair had both their teams wrapped around his finger. If he made a real move on him, they'd go running to Ozpin. The headmaster may have wanted to be more inclusive, but Katsuki knew that whether he was called a loose cannon or a crazy faunus, those in power would kick him out the first chance they got. And he couldn't let that happen. He needed Beacon. He needed people like Pyrrha, competent rivals to help him grow. Back home there was only Kirishima, and you could only get so far when your fighting instincts were tuned to a single person.
So for now, he'd bide his time. He'd keep studying, keep training, become as strong as he possibly could. And he'd watch, wait for the right moment when he could go twelve unrestrained rounds with that green-haired bastard without their teams or any of the teachers raising a fuss over it. Then, he'd see just how well he'd mastered this borrowed power of his.
"Yo, Sparky! Loosen up your shoulders! It's ruining your form!"
His eyebrow twitched up into his forehead. "Shut up, Poofy Hair."
"Don't get like that with me! I saw you fight in the Emerald Forest, and I'm pretty sure I know boxing better than you. So loosen up your damn shoulders!"
Katsuki growled and upped his fisticuff onslaught. Until that time came, he was still stuck with Poofy Hair.
He loosened his stupid shoulders.
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Izuku had long ago realized that he wouldn't be able to become the Symbol of Peace without stepping over others. He had knocked Shinso out of the Sports Festival and eliminated those third years from the provisional hero license exam despite the fact that it was their last chance and he'd have two more. By definition, there could only be one of the World's Greatest Hero, and he'd have to work his way to the standing.
But both he and those he overtook back home were working towards the same goal, to be the best heroes they could possibly be. By being in the same industry, they acknowledged that they'd be competing with each other. The theory of capitalism was that the strongest succeeded after all.
But being a huntsman wasn't a business, even if it was a job. It was a desperate, necessary duty to hold back the Grimm and allow the rest of society to even exist. Ruby, Weiss, and Blake, no matter their different approaches, all wished to become huntresses with all their hearts. Meanwhile, he was just using the placement as a cover to search for his classmates.
His mission was crucial, he couldn't and wouldn't abandon it. But that didn't mean there wasn't a fair bit of guilt gnawing inside him for deceiving his new teammates. He'd only known them a short time, but after the intensity of the combat with the Nevermore, he found he couldn't ignore their wellbeing any more than he could those he cared about from Earth. And his presence was detrimental to them, either by making them doubt themselves or by having an alternate agenda that they knew nothing about, even if it was benevolent. He felt like a character in a comic book that constantly did shady stuff but the author eventually revealed to be one of the more complicated good guys, except those shady actions usually still caused trouble for the more straightforward heroes.
Izuku didn't want to cause trouble for anyone. But in this scenario, he didn't think he had a choice. As he shuffled back to his room from Ozpin's office, he just wished he'd been more attentive sooner. Not thinking of Remnant's inhabitants on the same level as his Earth friends was not okay. Even aside from the moral implications that he did not like, it was a practical detriment to his mission. He knew enough about the new world he inhabited from Ozpin and the books he'd been given to pass as an odd individual, but not enough to truly get its people. He hadn't realized the underlying cause of Weiss's high standards for Ruby until Blake had spelled them out for him because he hadn't thought of the SDC as anything other than a dust manufacturer. He had difficulty figuring out Kacchan's new identity until he acknowledged that there were differences between the person he knew and the boy who'd grown up a wolf faunus.
That wouldn't disappear. Intellectually, he'd known that his friends could have been different people, but he'd put too much faith in the Gods' word that they'd still be the same deep down. Deep down was better than nothing, but hidden depths didn't do much good if they didn't become visible. He'd have to handle who his classmates were now if he was to save who they once were.
In time, he returned to Team RIBW's room and opened the door, ready to get some rest and just get out of this mess of a day.
Except…
"Why is a huntress so limited in how much dust they can carry over kingdom lines? We can't kill Grimm without ammo!"
"Trust me, transporting dust over long distances is dangerous enough as it is. My family's company has to prove to the kingdoms that we can provide sufficient security before they allow certain contracts, or they won't permit it due to the risk of it being hijacked. And that's just for standard use dust, the weapons-grade material is even worse."
"But we're huntresses! Isn't that as good as security gets?"
"You'd think. It's why General Ironwood was able to successfully lobby for a raise in the limit at a previous Vytal Festival summit. Which was how many years ago?"
"Oh! Um… eight! Eight years ago!"
"Correct! Not bad."
Izuku rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.
Ruby and Weiss were seated on the former's bed, a mess of books and papers between them. Their team leader was constantly scribbling down notes while looking back and forth between the different volumes, while the white-haired heiress underlined passages and passed over some coffee. At least, until her crystal blue eyes caught sight of Izuku, at which point she smiled at him.
"Welcome back, Izuku," she greeted, prompting Ruby to look up and wave.
"Hey, partner!" the red hooded girl grinned. "How was your talk with Professor Ozpin?"
"It was… fine," Izuku answered. "Are you guys studying?"
Ruby nodded. "Yup. I need to be the best team leader I can be, so Weiss is helping me go over what I missed today."
"Those are hardly the only gaps in your knowledge. Skipping ahead two years may have been the right move for your combat ability, but you missed a lot of material," Weiss said, before suddenly paling. "But don't worry! I am going to be the best teammate I can be and help you catch up."
"Yeah! We've got this!" Ruby cheered. She raised a flat palm for a high-five.
Weiss cocked an eyebrow, before hesitantly meeting her teammate's hand in the most awkward high-five Izuku had ever seen. Fortunately, Ruby didn't seem to mind, grinning the entire time.
Her joy was contagious. Izuku felt his own weariness lift a bit, thrilled that at least one of the problems he'd caused had managed to mitigate itself.
"I'm really happy to see you two getting along," he said.
Weiss cleared her throat and coughed into her hand. "Well, yes. We are teammates. Whatever issues we may have with each other, it would be irresponsible of us to let it affect the team."
"She means she's sorry for being a buttface," Ruby sniggered.
"I was not a buttface!"
"You were pretty buttface-like."
"Ugh, fine, I admit, my attitude did need to be far more… constructive," Weiss confessed with a sigh. She turned towards Izuku. "I also wanted to apologize for drawing you into our bickering. Whatever Ruby and I need to work on, it was unfair to make you feel responsible for it."
"No, it's alright," Izuku assured her. "I'm just sorry I wasn't able to help."
Weiss frowned. "It wasn't your fault. Just because we're teammates doesn't we don't all have our own individual hurdles to work through. You for instance want to befriend that mangy mutt Katsuki. For some reason."
Izuku chuckled nervously. "Guess it is a hurdle. Still, I'm not going to give up on it. I can't. And you guys shouldn't either."
"Well, duh. That's what the books are for," Ruby teased. "Speaking off…"
She leapt off the bed and grabbed Izuku's hand, guiding her partner to the edge of the room. There stood their shared bookshelf, with Ruby's side filled with a vast assortment of comic books, weapons manuals, fairy tales, huntress biographies, and textbooks. In contrast, his own section was pitifully vacant, supporting only his textbooks, the novellas Ozpin had lent him, and a mix of Weiss and Blake's extra collections (they both had so many that they didn't all fit on their shelf).
Ruby skipped over to her shelf and handed Izuku a sizable comic book trade volume. It took the green-haired boy a moment to orient it correctly in his hands (he still wasn't used to Remnant's books being constructed with the spine on the left) but when he did, he raised an eyebrow at the stylized drawing of a grizzled man covered in armor and robes standing in front of an elaborate steampunk racecar in the middle of a sandstorm.
"The Road Warrior of Vacuo," he read. "What's this?"
"It's one of the most awesome comic books ever. I mean, I always liked Captain Vale and Sailor Shattered Moon better myself, but he's got a lot of awesome weapons. He's Yang's favorite, that's for sure," Ruby explained with a mischievous smirk. "And, when she was showing me around her room, the only non-textbook thing on Katsuki's shelf was a beat-up copy of the first volume."
Izuku's eyes widened, looking at the book with new understanding. "This? Are you sure?"
"Trust me. I know from experience that you only keep a book that beat up around if you know you're going to reread it a lot," Ruby assured him. "If you're going to get him to say anything to you other than 'grrh' or 'shut up, Broccoli Hair', you're gonna need some common interests. You do like comic books, right?"
Izuku grinned. "Yeah. You could say that."
When he and Kacchan had been little, the only thing they'd loved more than playing hero was reading the official All Might manga, especially when they came with Hero Trading Cards. The adventures in the story didn't actually happen in real life, but the authors did liaison with All Might and his agency to maintain realism. Izuku never knew if Kacchan kept up with it after they'd grown distant, but he wouldn't be surprised in the least if he did. After all, even if they did so in different styles, both of them idolized All Might.
There was no All Might on Remnant, but that didn't mean Katsuki Bell hadn't still looked for inspiration.
"Thank you, Ruby," Izuku said, skimming through the illustrations of the opening pages. "This is going to be a huge help."
"No problem," his partner replied. "And hey, if nothing else, it'll be a great read."
"A great read? Really?" Weiss questioned. She sauntered over and looked at the book over Izuku's shoulder. "This looks like a picture book."
"That's the best part!"
Izuku nodded. "The artwork is usually gorgeous."
Weiss glanced through the book's pages. "The artwork of a grimy desert? The linework is quite good, but not for me."
"Then we need to find one that does work for you," Ruby declared, sweeping her arm back towards the shelf. "Anyone on my team can borrow any of my comics!"
"Really?" Izuku gasped, his eyes sparkling at all the new heroic stories he could read. "Thanks, Ruby!"
"That's quite generous," Weiss admitted. "But we really need to get back to studying."
"I'll study. You need to read Sailor Shattered Moon!"
"Oh, come on! You can't hide away in the library reading those Ninjas of Love books with Blake. The covers were so boring."
"You can't judge a book by its cover. I'm sure Blake's books are perfectly respectable literature."
"Respectable, not fun! Come on, at least read Captain Vale. Or Major Atlas if you're feeling homesick."
Izuku smiled to himself and shuffled over to his bed, basking in the glow of his teammates' new, far more friendly argument. It seemed the advice he'd gotten from Yang and Ozpin had proven correct after all. He really did put far too much pressure on himself too often. His teammates may have been teenagers like him, but they had trained hard to get where they were. They weren't helpless incompetents who would live or die if he sneezed wrong. They were warriors, huntsmen-in-training.
And, he realized, they were his friends. New friends, to be sure, but that did not reduce how much he wanted to see them thrive, just like how he'd only known the rest of Class 1-A a week before the USJ Incident had solidified them as comrades. Maybe that was why Ozpin made the Beacon Initiation so dangerous? Life or death situations had a habit of forging strong bonds between strange bedfellows.
He couldn't tell them about his mission yet, they'd think he was insane, but perhaps one day. After he'd restored Kacchan and a few others to back up his story. Hopefully, nothing came up that forced him to truly go against them before then.
But perhaps that was a reasonable hope to have. So far, their efforts to disguise him from Salem's prying eyes appeared to be working, and aside was a crime wave of dust robberies in the city, all seemed quiet in the Kingdom of Vale.
He had time. Nothing was bearing down to kill him just yet.
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He was conflicted when he returned to the club and saw what was happening on the dance floor. Normally, he was opposed to a gaggle of suited men swarming his sister on principle. However, watching her kick the asses of every single one of the bastards was undeniably entertaining.
With the club closed until later in the evening, Momo had declared a mandatory all day, five days a week training session for all of Junior's thugs. They'd done well enough with the few heists they'd managed so far, but having every single one of them, along with their bosses, manhandled by a huntress-in-training that hadn't even entered Beacon yet, was a disgrace to the Spiders' name that would not be allowed to repeat. For hours upon hours, his sister had drilled them in sword forms, staff forms, gun forms, and pretty much every other form there was. When a control freak like Momo learned how to make every weapon, she made it her business to master every weapon. She'd never gone to a Huntsman Academy (Little Miss had shot down the idea when she'd brought it up. She wasn't going to risk her two enforcers for anything but business when the Branwen Tribe was still harrowing their holdings), but he doubted anything less than a huntress could take her.
For the last fifteen minutes of each session before the club had to get setup for the night, his sister indulged in what she liked to call 'practical application'. Every mook was given one of Junior's dime a dozen red dust swords and told to come at Momo with everything they had.
Following that was fifteen glorious minutes of grown men screaming like little girls.
Momo used her favorite quarterstaff for the slaughter, smacking the suited goons across the dance floor with the whole thing, separating it into a pair of batons to dual wield or blasting them back with birdshot from the shotgun modes. He would have given it a cool name like the Double Blast Staff or the Big Bang Blasters, but his sister tended to be more down to Remnant than that. She'd specially designed the weapon so the first part of her semblance could make it as efficiently as possible and to her, it was just 'the quarterstaff'.
Ergh. How dull.
Then again, dull, by-the-book, and efficient was just the way Momo did things. Every move she made in the midst of the mob could have been pulled out of a combat textbook, her simple strikes and deflections handily parrying each of the mooks' attacks and flowing into a brutal countermove. If it worked, it worked. He didn't exactly have a complicated fighting style either.
His sister had dropped the goons down to only half a dozen. One of them came in from the front, only for Momo to riposte his slash and kick him back into two more of the suited idiots, who'd tried to charge in after their fellow.
He let out a round of cackling laughter. The remaining goons were too enraptured by their fellows' humiliation to notice, but Miltia and Melanie, who were hanging out at the bar, zeroed in on him, both of them gulping. What could he say? He drew aggro just from entering a room, at least from people with a few brain cells.
But Little Miss's wayward daughters had nothing to fear. He'd just come home from a long day of mark scouting and birthday shopping. The only thing he wanted to do was give Momo her present, finish the debrief, and then hop online and play some Ultimate Ninja Master—
The remaining three goons broke out into runs on three separate paths. Two of them came at Momo from either side, their swords easily caught and deflected by her batons, which proceeded to swat them down to the ground. However, the final mooks came around behind her while they were doing it and slashed his sister across the back.
-He stopped laughing. He set his bag down on the bar counter and stampeded through the herd of thugs, brushing them aside as easily as if they were made of paper.
In the short time it took him to reach the center of the action, Momo had already recovered from the glancing blow to her aura and kicked the goon in the stomach, a hammer blooming underneath her foot to give the attack extra weight. The bastard was laid out on the ground, clutching his chest as he groaned.
He stomped his way to the center of the room. He smiled at the thug and stretched out his hand to him.
"Not bad, pal," he said all too sweetly. "Let me help you up."
The suited goon's eyes flickered between his hand and his face from behind his sunglasses, but he started to reach out his hand.
Just as he himself held his other hand behind his back, the pad of his thumb about to press into the fabric of his glove along with the other four that touched it from the inside. Once all five touched the same thing, his semblance would activate one way or another.
"Tenko," Momo sighed, more exasperated than anything. "Stop."
At least sixty people heard her command, so his aura and theirs only flickered for the briefest fraction of a second, though he was probably the only one with the attunement and experience to notice it. It didn't really matter, the decay part of his semblance seemed to be the only thing along with the creation part of hers that the Order Command didn't work on, but it was enough to get him to turn to face her.
"He hit you."
"It's training. He's supposed to try to hit me," Momo countered. "So quit it. We need every man we can get, and we won't get quality if we kill them for trying something that works."
Tenko fudged his face in a scowl, but he backed away. He knew she was right. He didn't always get why a single pawn mattered in chess, but she loved that stupid game, so he'd help her play it.
Momo nodded and helped the mook to his feet. "What's your name, boy?"
"Um, my name… ma'am," the suited bastard muttered, his head tilted far too low from Momo's eyes for Tenko's liking. "Ash, ma'am. My name is Ash."
"Did you come up with the idea for that pincer strategy, Ash?" Momo inquired. "And please don't lie to me. I'd have to let my brother have his way with you if you did."
"I wouldn't, ma'am!" the goon hastily assured her. "I did come up with it though. You can ask the boys."
Momo turned to the two fools who'd helped him hit her. They nodded, terrified sweat pouring down their brows. Tenko's sister smiled and returned her gaze to Ash.
"Good work," she complimented. "I'm putting you in charge of leading tonight's heist. After we take our cut for the gang, you'll get first pick of the crew's portion."
The mook's eyes widened. "Ma'am?"
"The Spiders need sharp and inventive minds, Ash." Momo proclaimed. She whirled around with a flourish, drawing in the entire audience to her words and majestic face like a siren commanding her thralls. "Let this be a lesson to all of you. Numbers are only an advantage if you bother to think about how to use them. Any trained huntsman will try to bottleneck you, separate you out and whittle you down one by one. You will never be able to match their strength in a fair fight, so don't fight fair. No matter how skilled a combatant, they can only block so many people at once. Do that, and we'll be ruling this city before Torchwick and his pets know what hit them!"
"Yes, ma'am!" the horde of mooks chorused, all of them snapped into their best attempt at a military salute. They were all painfully bad, but the fact that they tried was important.
"Miltia, Melanie, you two and Junior need to get the club set up for the night," Momo commanded. "If you need me or Tenko, we'll be below."
"Of course," the sisters muttered, averting their eyes from their mother's favorite. Once Momo snapped around and marched towards the back of the bar, they started shouting out orders to the goons, suddenly all high and mighty again.
Tenko snatched his bag off the counter and followed his sister. They undid a hidden door in the back of the kitchen and descended down into the dark basement of the club, Junior's real place of business. The information business could be run upstairs in the club proper, but the money laundering that brought in the big lien needed a more discreet headquarters.
Momo sent the man himself packing back up the stairs with a nod of her head. She set her quarterstaff against the wall and sagged back behind a table full of bill counter machines.
Tenko chuckled and plopped down in the seat opposite her. "Well, you got those suckers wrapped around your finger fast. Might be a new speed run record."
"It's not that hard. Put the fear of the gods in them, and then offer tangible promotion based off merit. Establish order and they'll do their best to thrive in it," Momo giggled, unwrapping a chocolate bar from her belt. "Something you'd know if you just didn't try to dust anything you didn't like."
"He hit you," Tenko replied.
"I hit him harder," Momo teased. "Besides, he was the only one who hit me. I wasn't expecting much, but my gods. No wonder Miltia and Melanie's skills have atrophied if this is the best they've had to spar with."
"Yeah, they got squeamish because of Little Miss, and look where all their running got them," Tenko mocked, brushing a lock of his pale blue hair aside. "Stuck in Vale with a weak protector."
Nothing worse than a weak protector who couldn't or wouldn't help. He had put everything he had into protecting his twin sister for as long as he could remember, since their days back on the streets in Anima. When the Spiders' boss had found out about Momo's semblance and tried to make her into his weapons/dust factory, he dusted his goons from the skull down. When the bastard had kept the thugs coming, he'd thrown their lot in with Little Miss Malachite, then an underboss, to usurp the gang entirely.
Little Miss was cruel, enough so that her own daughters had fled out of sheer terror, but she also recognized skill more than talent. Instead of alienating Tenko and Momo for the latter's semblance, she'd employed the pair, and they'd steadily risen through the ranks. He drained and slaughtered the competition while his sister studied to create rare materials. It took a lot out of her to make dust, there was a reason her quarterstaff only ever came into being with one shell in each end, but that hardly mattered when she ran the books better than anyone else on Remnant. Under their care, the Spiders had gone from being a sizable information ring to a criminal syndicate covering Anima, rivaled only by the Branwen Tribe and their protection racket.
And if they could start bringing in resources from Vale, they could crush even then. The hammer and the scalpel would carve up the kingdom like a roast pig.
Tenko pulled some papers out of his jacket and slid them across the table. "These are all the details on the stocks of the stores I scoped out."
"Good, good," Momo muttered, examining the information while munching on her chocolate. "Ash and his crew should bring in a good haul."
"But not even a fifth as good as that SDC shipment."
His sister groaned. "Tenko, I told you…"
"What's the problem?" he challenged. "We've put down plenty of White Fang back home. If Torchwick and his mutts show up, we can take them no problem."
"By which time, the police and huntsmen would arrive," Momo pointed out. "Besides, even if he wasn't there, we're not ready for something that big. "If we were back home, I'd say no problem, but here we've only got Junior's gang to work with. We don't have the men to transport the entire shipment, even if we didn't have to fight as well."
"Ugh. I hate resource gathering," Tenko moaned. "Can't we just take what we can carry and leave the rest behind?"
"It's not worth the risk. We need to keep recruiting and increasing our ranks. We can't do that if we lose half our men in a shootout."
"We're gonna lose half of them to paper cuts. You're training them as well as you can, but if I had to bet between them and those terrorists, my money's on the terrorists. You sure we can't just bribe the cops?"
Momo shook her head. "The ones that are dirty are already in Torchwick's pocket. Not that there's many of them, Ozpin being so close does a lot to discourage… corruption…"
Tenko leaned back in his chair, groaning to the ceiling. "So we can't do that… thing in chess where you turn a pawn into a queen? The other side has more pieces so we can't bring the hurt to the king?"
"No, we can't," Momo murmured. But her brow was furrowed in thought, and after a few moments, she grinned. "But life isn't like a chessboard. There are more than two sides."
"So it's like Kingdoms of Remnant, but not like Kingdoms of Remnant: The Great War?"
"Essentially. Just because we can't turn our enemies to our side doesn't mean we can't set them against each other," his sister declared. "We go in as soon as the shipment arrives, we grab everything we can carry, then we call the police and they jump on Torchwick when he comes for his heist. The dust goes to the stores it's supposed to—"
"—and we rob it from them in a bunch of smaller jobs! Sis, you are brilliant!" Tenko cheered. He pushed his bag over to her side of the table. "And on that note, happy birthday!"
Momo raised an eyebrow. "You're a few months early."
"I've got something else coming in for then," he said. "This is a pre-birthday present."
His sister shook her head fondly. She opened up the bag and tore off the book's wrapping paper. Her eyes widened.
"Is this…"
"The Thief and the Butcher, first edition," Tenko smirked. "And in a few months, we should have—ah!"
Momo leapt over the table and engulfed Tenko in a massive hug, both of them plummeting to the floor.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she squealed. "You are the best brother ever, Tenko!"
That brought a smile to Tenko's face. He gently wrapped his arms around Momo, resting his face against her dark hair.
The world was harsh. The world was cruel. The kingdoms' society and the huntsmen who safeguarded it had abandoned him and the rest of the outskirts to the mercy of the Grimm and criminal syndicates. In his dreams, he sometimes heard the whispers of a great, shapeless darkness, calling out a name he didn't recognize, calling for him to rend everything to dust.
But he had her. And she had him. Neither of them were angels, but they made their way through the world together, a family that would never let each other down.
For Tenko Yaoyorozu Malachite, that was more than enough.
The fun has just begun.
For the MHA characters, I will do an exact description of their semblances in the AN when they are first used in combat. Just so there isn't any confusion on how they work.
Some nice bits and conversation this chapter, Ruby, Weiss, and Izuku all being told to wait before deciding the world has ended, and Izuku connecting a bit more with his new Remnant friends. Meanwhile, Katsuki's memories are seeping through his mind, he knew Izuku the longest of Class 1-A after all, Yang's suspicions are momentarily allayed, and multiple people receive the gift of books.
Oh, and Momo and Shigaraki are siblings. Destruction and Creation, Chaos and Order, Hands and... some body part that Momo is associated with. There is a subtle clue in chapter one that hints towards why and how Shigaraki is on Remnant, though rest assured, it is ONLY him and Class 1-A who are there. No one else from the League of Villains came along for the ride.
Thank you for Reading! I hope you enjoy what comes next!
Go Forth and Conquer!
