The doors at the north end of the courtyard slammed open with an echoing
wham, drawing the eyes of everyone currently milling about on their free day. They all saw a crimson haired war goddess emerge in her finest battle raiment and a look of tightly bridled fury on her face. Following close behind her was a crimson haired man who's imposing figure was only rivaled by the intensity of his purposeful gaze. The two of them scanned the quadrangle for a face both of them knew well.
The masses collectively decided it would be a very good idea to be somewhere else, less they incur the wrath of Pyrrha Nikos on the warpath. People rushed for whatever door was closest to them, all hoping against hope that the Invincible Girl wasn't there for them specifically.
From the thinning crowds emerged two figures approaching from the opposite direction, and Pyrrha's eyes narrowed in recognition of the woman leading the pair. The chocolate skin, the almost white yellow hair, the olive-green eyes, the sacred robe worn in a manner leaving the left shoulder and arm bare while providing a voluminous sleeve for the other, and the confident stride of a woman who genuinely thought she could win this time all added up to make the Golden Lion of Haven Academy: Arslan Altan.
Pyrrha remembered Arslan very well from her days at Sanctum. The warrior nun had grabbed every opportunity to fight Pyrrha with both hands and refused to let go for any reason; the girl was convinced some kind of great rivalry existed between the two of them for reasons Pyrrha hadn't felt the need to understand at the time. Arslan was undoubtedly looking for another fight, but Pyrrha was in no mood to entertain her. Finding Jaune and getting him away from conniving strumpets that would threaten her and Jaune's future children was far more important that whatever Arslan and her companion... Wait... Oh no.
Arslan's companion had Jaune's features! Those features were severely diluted by Arslan's visage, but Pyrrha would know Jaune's nose and eye ridges anywhere! That meant that somehow, someway, Arslan had the power to take Jaune from her!
"Pyrrha Nikos!" Arslan called out to confirm her dreadful realization, "I've come to challenge you for the right to pursue Jaune Arc! Son of Nick and Isabel Arc! Father of Petra and her twelve siblings!"
TWELVE! Arslan had
twelve! no... add Petra and it was THIRTEEN! Arslan had
thirteen kids with Jaune! Pyrrha's eyes narrowed; she would have to boost her own numbers.
"Why!" Pyrrha called out with rage building in her heart, "You don't even know him!"
"But I do know
of him," Arslan replied. "After all, how could I not take notice of the man my rival's moulding into the perfect warrior? Add in the stories Petra has told me and I know I could spend a lifetime trying to find a man more noble than him. Why shouldn't I pursue a relationship with him? See where it goes?"
"Because you're not leaving here with working legs," Pyrrha focused all of the magnetic senses Polarity provided to her on Arslan. Her foe... Her...
Her Rival, had her right hand hidden in her sleeve in a bit of subterfuge Pyrrha had seen a dozen times before. Arslan would turn her dagger into its' rope dart form and use her sleeve to obscure the moment and direction she launched it. But Polarity could feel the mettle of the dart and track its' movement. This subterfuge was wasted on her.
"I figured you'd say something like that," Arslan noted before flicking her arm forward, sending the dart flying.
Or at least that's what Pyrrha's eyes saw. Polarity's magnetic senses insisted the dart was still in Arslan's hand. This disconnect almost cost Pyrrha dearly, and she almost failed to tilt her head out of the dagger/dart's path before it would have struck her in the head.
A single crimson lock fell to the ground.
With a quick tug of the rope the dart returned to Arslan's right hand, and she held it where Pyrrha could see it. The dart was a dagger made of Aura sharpened wood.
"Petra taught me a technique that lets me manipulate how the metal that naturally exists within my body interacts with magnetic scanning, letting me make the metal in my hand look like my dagger," Arslan explained with a savage grin. "Or I could make it look like there is no metal in my body at all."
Arslan took a deep breath then exhaled, and just like that she vanished from the magnetic senses Polarity provided Pyrrha, and Pyrrha felt her heart drop. How did Arslan figure out the secret of her semblance and- oh right time travel.
The Golden Lion of Haven Academy chuckled, "Let's see if your reliance on Polarity has dulled the rest of your senses!" Arslan threw her rope dart again.
Pyrrha raised her shield a second too slow, and the dart landed a solid hit on her shoulder. As Arslan pulled it back again Pyrrha remembered something of vital importance: that her very first fight with Arslan was one of the few fights where she felt like victory was in question, all because of how difficult it was to track the rope dart's unusual movements even with Polarity letting her know where the dart was at all times. She had learned a lot about tracking the movement of metal from those early fights with Arslan, but only now did Pyrrha realize she failed to learn how to track the dart with her ears and eyes.
She didn't have time to learn now, meaning she had two options if she wanted to end this fight quickly. The first was to create distance and shoot, but she knew Arslan wouldn't let her get out of the rope dart's range. That meant her best option was to charge into melee.
Pyrrha charged, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Xander charge Petra with his spear held high while Petra counter charged with a pair of wooden hook swords. Then she was within melee distance with Arslan and she couldn't spare them any of her attention.
Pyrrha's blade was a fury of motion, and Arslan deflected and parried using her wooden dagger with all the skill and finesse Pyrrha expected of her old foe, her, her
Rival. Pyrrha did her best to keep Arslan on the defensive, but it didn't take long for Arslan to find the right tempo to shift Pyrrha's relentless assault into a risky back and fourth between the two of them. One moment Arslan would be on the offensive, Pyrrha the next, both of them searching for openings in the other's guard.
It galled Pyrrha to admit it, but without Polarity letting her know where Arslan's hands and feet were she was having a hard time keeping track of them. Sure Pyrrha was occasionally slipping through Arslan's guard and landing good hits, but Arslan was slipping through Pyrrha's guard just as much if not more and landing hits that were just as good. She could still win, she had to, but the fight would be over already if Arslan hadn't found a way to bypass Polarity!
Then Polarity picked up something big coming in fast from above, and Pyrrha leaped back to avoid the impact. Arslan reacted a second too slow and was sent tumbling though the air an impressive distance before she used her rope dart to arrest her momentum and land on her feet.
Pyrrha looked at the figure standing in the dust from the crater and felt her heart swell with relief and gratitude as she saw Yang step out. Her friend had seen her in need and was coming to her aid and...
...A second figure emerged. A girl with a mixture of Yang and Jaune's features. Pyrrha felt her heart twist as she realized her friend was her foe.
"Sorry P-Money," Yang drawled as she pulled her fist back, "
But Mama's gotta do what Mama's gotta do."
Yang punched, and Pyrrha pulled her shield up in time to block it and the followup blast from Yang's wrist mounted shotgun. Pyrrha noted that Yang's daughter was charging Arslan, and then she turned her focus onto Yang. The blonde brawler was furious in her assault, but Pyrrha could sense her with Polarity. Every punch, every kick, every shot felt like it was telegraphed from a mile away when compared to the attacks that had been invisible to her magnetic senses.
This was much more manageable. All she had to do now was wait for Yang to overextend herself and then she could take her out of the fight with three well placed strokes and then she could-
Her magnetic senses screamed another warning, and she jumped just in time to avoid getting shot by Gambol Shroud. Blake Belladonna then swung in with twin blonde cat faunus and the three of them attacked the previously fighting pair.
The twins wasted no time lashing out at Yang with weapons that were obvious imitations of Gambol Shroud, while Blake herself was all action and no words as she engaged Pyrrha. Blake was good in a straight up sword fight, but Pyrrha was better. They both knew this, so Pyrrha prepared to charge forward the moment Blake prepared to disengage and-
A knightly young man who looked like a mixture of Jaune and a Schnee tackled Blake to the ground, while Pyrrha had to limbo-duck to avoid getting skewered by Weiss' rapier.
"WEISS!?!?" Pyrrha exclaimed as her sword crossed with the heiress' blade, "But you don't even like Jaune!"
"I'M DOING THIS BECAUSE JAUNE WILL BE AN EXCELLENT HUSBAND AND FATHER! NOT BECAUSE I LIKE HIM OKAY!"
The absolute insanity of that statement made something snap in Pyrrha's mind. Dropping all subtlety with her power she grabbed Myrtenaster with Polarity and ripped the blade out of Weiss' hand with a thought, hurling it through the air and embedding it deep within the trunk of a tree. She then backhanded the ice queen with her shield, sending the heiress tumbling head over heals through the air.
It was time to end this farce. Pyrrha stretched forth her hand with the intention to grab every weapon with Polarity and disarm all her opponents in one fell swoop-
Arslan delivered the people's elbow to the back of Pyrrha's head.
--------------------
Using her Aura sensing abilities should have made finding Jaune Arc a breeze, but May realized her mistake the instant August pushed the doors to the courtyard open.
She already knew that August's aura felt a lot like his father's, so it stood to reason that all of Jaune's kids had auras that felt like their father's. That meant the biggest concentration of Jaune feeling aura hadn't been Jaune at all, but rather a bunch of his kids in one place.
The scene before her was absolute chaos. Pyrrha and a boy that looked a lot like her were wrestling with Arslan and a girl that looks like her. Weiss had just destroyed a tree and was locked in a furious sword fight with Blake. Two young cat faunus were dueling a boy who looked like Weiss, while Yang and a girl that looked like Yang were charging towards the wrestling Pyrrha and Arslan.
"That's them?" May asked unnecessary.
"That's a lot of them," August confirmed.
May's heart sank with sorrow knowing this was the way things were going to be. Was there a way to stop this? Make everyone calm down? If there was she couldn't see it. She pulled her rifle from her back with a heavy heart and-
-the glint of a sniper's scope on a rooftop shined in the corner of her eye. A surge of adrenaline made May roll forward before a lightning dust round impacted the ground where she had been standing. Flipping back up she fired in the direction the shot had come from, already knowing that she wouldn't hit anything.
To her left August had just finished an almost identical roll and fire maneuver. May gritted her teeth with knowing that she was now in a sniper duel with Ruby Rose or possibly Ruby's kid, and that her son was in a sniper duel with whichever one wasn't shooting at her.
Now sniper duels are normally all about stealth, a nasty game of hide and seek usually won by who fired first unless someone messed up. Stealth was out of the question in this scenario, meaning this was all about mobility and the speed of the draw.
As May fired at the red clad reaper and ran along the edge of the courtyard she knew she was at a mobility disadvantage, and their were good odds she'd never hit Ruby. Fortunately, Ruby wasn't just a sniper. She was also a blender with a scythe, meaning if May could avoid getting hit for long enough Ruby would abandon the high ground to attack her in melee.
That wasn't much better, but if Ruby came down then maybe she could trick her into switching dance partners and she could sneak away and try to find Jaune again?
It was a long shot but it was better than nothing.
--------------------
Two people walking by a window overlooking the courtyard were engaged in a conversation about what flavor of jelly went best with peanut butter when the sound of gunshots caught their attention. They both looked out at the window and came to a stop at the sight before them.
"Renny," the shorter of the two started, "Is that all our friends and a bunch of strangers trying to kill each other?"
"That's what it looks like," Ren confirmed.
"Huh," Nora shrugged as she reached to open the window and pull Magnhild from behind her back.
Ren stopped her by putting his hand on her shoulder, "Maybe we should get Jaune to help out with this."
"You're right, we wouldn't want him to miss the fun!"
--------------------
As Xander rolled under the swing of Nicholas' sword and jumped over a Glyph the boy had placed as a trap he noted that while things could be going a lot better, they could also be going much worse. With a swing of his spear Xander swept Nicholas' legs out from under him, forcing the knightly boy to dismiss his Glyph lest he land in his own trap. And yet before Xander could take advantage of his opponent's prone state Yang Xiao Long was suddenly in his face tying to blast him point blank, forcing Xander to backflip away while delivering a solid kick to Yang's jaw. Yang probably would have tried to pursue him once she stopped stumbling back from the hit, but by that point Nicholas was up off the ground and Yang found herself blocking the knightly boy's sword strikes.
The whole fight was going like that. The instant someone looked like they were getting an upper hand over their opponent someone else butted in and forced the party that had been winning to disengage and look for an opportunity to reengage by stepping into someone else's fight. It was a vicious cycle that Xander wasn't seeing an easy end to anytime soon.
While this was all happening May and August were running circles around the courtyard firing at the rooftops where Ruby and Julian were also running circles around the courtyard shooting back. Then, as Xander charged Xia, May did something Xander didn't expect. The hoodie clad sniper flipped her rifle around to its' ax configuration and dove into the wild melee behind Xia. All of a sudden Xander found himself between Ruby Rose and her target, and he spun around just in time for an angry cloud of rose petals to slam into his chest.
The red reaper rematerialized as her rifle Crescent Rose shifted into its' scythe mode, which she brought down in a vicious overhead strike Xander blocked with his spear. The two of them proceeded to turn their two polearms into whirling windmills of death as they both prodded the other's defenses. They struck at the same time, but Xander used his variant of Polarity to make sure Ruby's strike was off, forcing her to step back in order to avoid a spear to the face.
"Oh, right," Ruby muttered as she flipped the switch on a hastily cobbled together add-on attached to the side of Crescent Rose where it couldn't interfere with the weapon's form changing. The add-on hummed for a second, and then Xander felt his eyes widen as the entire scythe disappeared from his magnetic senses. So that's what the weird dohicky on Julian's weapon was for.
Ruby's next strikes were much harder for Xander to parry, because while he could still sense the movements of Ruby's hands and the positioning of her footwork with his variant of Polarity knowing those things didn't tell him the length of Ruby's next strike as her hands moved up and down the grips of the now invisible to magnetism scythe. But he could do this! It was just blindfolded combat practice in reverse! He had been tapping in and out of fights with Petra and Arslan, this should be easier than that!
Yet as he tried to focus on Ruby's next swing Xander felt an enormous weapon being aimed at him from the edge of the courtyard, and he saw Ruby's eyes widen in shock. Xander rolled forward. Ruby jumped high.
Crimson energy seared through the air the two of them had occupied the moment before. Xander looked over his shoulder and saw Ash and Ashley standing in one of the courtyard's entrances, both of them armed with some extremely heavy ordinance.
Ash tossed the laser bazooka to the side and pulled out a minigun that had been modified to shoot wooden stakes, while Ashley leveled a recoilless rifle at the crowd.
"Say Hello To Our Little Friends!" The dark haired twins yelled in tandem. Then they opened fire and everyone was looking for cover.
--------------------
Jaune Arc groaned as he looked up at the sky with his back on the grass. Dorothy chuckled as she reached out a hand to help him back up.
"You got a lot closer that time," She grinned as he accepted her hand and let himself get pulled back to his feet.
"Thanks," Jaune rolled his shoulders and rubbed at a spot that was thinking about bruising, "It's always good to know you're improving."
"I have to say you're being a pretty good sport about this," Theodore observed. "Not a lot of people would put up with getting knocked around as much as you have."
"Well, I'm just happy to help," Jaune smiled, "And it's pretty obvious you guys need the practice."
"What do you mean by that?" Dorothy tilted her head in confusion.
"I can tell neither of you have been on the same team before," Jaune explained as he took a swig of water from his bottle. "If I was as fast as my friends I could have waltz through the holes in your coordination."
"He's not wrong," Theodore allowed.
"In fact, if we go again I think I can get close enough to make you pull out your weapon," Jaune boasted.
"I don't have a weapon," Theodore shrugged, "My teleportation glyphs are ideal for ranged combat, so there isn't much point in me getting close to anybody."
"What if the bad guys get close to you?" Jaune pressed.
"If they're human or faunus then I'll use my three black belts to hold them off until I can teleport away," Theodore answered as he picked up a rock. "If they're a creature of grimm or a mindless robot? I do this," He made a blue glyph and a red glyph in the air in front of him closer together than any of the glyphs Jaune had seen him make before. Apparently there was a reason for that, as the two different teleportation effects interacted with each other when they got that close, turning both glyphs purple as they visibly distorted the space between them. Theodore tossed the rock through the distorted space, reducing it to fine sand as it came out the other end. The Schnee boy then waved his hand, demonstrating that he could move the shredding distortion about according to his whims.
"That's so cool," Jaune whispered in awe. Theodore couldn't stop himself from preening at that praise.
Jaune then looked to Dorothy, "What about you? You have a weapon you haven't used yet?"
"If I'm touching it I can control it," Dorothy replied, "I usually steal other people's weapons and turn them against them or improvise with the large objects my semblance lets me pick up."
"Respectable." Jaune nodded before asking, "Why haven't you turned my sword or shield against me then?"
"Uhhh... it didn't seem fair?" Dorothy demurred.
"If you hesitate in a training environment you'll hesitate in the real world," Jaune admonished. "Let's have another go, only this time-"
The door to the training yard slammed open and the familiar voice of Nora called out: "JAUNE! PYRRHA'S GETTING GANKED! RUBY'S GETTING GANKED! WEISS IS GETTING GANKED! YANG IS GETTING GANKED! BLAKE IS GETTING GANGED! A WHOLE BUNCH OF STRANGERS ARE GETTING GANGED WITH THEM!"
"What!?! Who!?! Where!?! Why!?!" Jaune whipped around to see his teammates in the doorway.
"We don't know why," Ren explained in a voice that was somehow both calm and urgent, "But there's a big free for all fight in the Star-Maiden's Memorial Courtyard, all our friends are involved and it seems like they're all seriously trying to hurt each other."
Jaune turned to Theodore and Dorothy, "We have to go help my friends!"
Theodore and Dorothy both look as if their minds had skipped a gear and they didn't know what to do, so Jaune turned up the pressure of his best 'please help I need you' face that had always gotten his older sisters to act. Something in Theodore's eyes melted, and Dorothy seemed to choke up a bit.
"Alright," Theodore sighed, "I guess this is what we're doing now."
The five of them started running.
--------------------
Ash did his best to suppress the cackle that wanted to bubble out of his throat as he pressed down the trigger of the stake shooting minigun. Seeing the chaos unfold before him tickled a part of his psyche he didn't have before he was eight, and he always hated feeding that part of him. He and his sister were probably in for a long talk with their therapist if they managed to get home. Next to him Ashley openly giggled as she fired another round from the recoilless rifle.
As he turned the minigun to make another sweep over the yard a cloud of rose petals came down from above them, and suddenly Julian was there driving his scythe into the mechanisms of the gun and ripping it apart. Ashley tried swinging the recoilless rifle at the silver eyed boy, only for August to charge in from their left and cut the gun apart with his axe.
Without any suppressing fire the brawl resumed with Yang and Xia charging Pyrrha and Petra, Arslan charging Nicholas, Ruby charging the faunus twins and so on until everyone was engaged in a new fight except for May, who was doing her best to army crawl out of the battlefield.
With Julian and August right on them Ash and Ashley were forced to draw out their daggers and defend themselves in melee. A melee that slowly migrated into the greater fight in the center of the courtyard...