Thursday, 10th April, 79AGW.

Lecture Hall D2, Beacon.

1:49 pm.

“I hope you’re all still following along!” Professor Peach said happily, “Mr. Arc, what are the two types of pollination a flower can undergo?”

Jaune frowned down at his book for a moment before speaking.

“Self-pollination and cross-pollination?” Jaune said hesitantly.

“Exactly!” Professor Peach exclaimed, “Explain them to me!”

Jaune looked emboldened by his success and studied his book for a moment longer.

“Self-pollination is when the flower gets it from another flower of the same plant,” Jaune said slowly, “Cross-pollination is from different plants?”

“Correct!” Professor Peach said excitedly, “Well done, Jaune! Ms. Rose!”

“Yes!” Ruby squeaked, starling upright before laughing awkwardly.

“What are the two methods by which a flower can be pollinated?” Professor Peach smiled brightly.

Ruby swallowed nervously and then scrunched her face up in thought.

“Biotic?” Ruby said suddenly, “And, uh… Abiotic?”

“Yes!” Professor Peach cheered. “Well done! Now, Ms...Nikos, explain them to me!”

Ruby sat down with a sigh of relief, and Pyrrha took center stage.

“An abiotic pollinating agent refers to the pollen being transferred via wind, or other natural occurrences.” Pyrrha said, smiling, “Biotic is the opposite, in which it is transferred by the actions of a creature, most often birds or bees.”

“Fantastic!” Professor Peach said, smiling around at all of them. “Well done, Ms. Nikos—I think you might just be my favorite class! Does anyone have any questions about what we have covered today?”

Lima understood what he had to do and raised his hand solemnly.

“Yes—Mr. Morta?” Professor Peach said happily.

“I was just wondering about the Bird’s and the Bee’s, Miss,” Lima said innocently. “My guardian told me about them once, but I forgot!”

Teaks head hit the desk with a soft thump, and he groaned quietly to himself, along with half of the class, and Lime could almost feel the burning gaze of Weiss trying to set him alight from across the room.

“Why are you like this?” Teak mumbled.

Professor Peach’s brilliant smile practically lit up the room before she dove into the subject.

Thursday, 10th April, 79AGW.

Emerald Forest Assembly Area, Beacon.

3:03 pm.

Goodwitch looked up from her scroll after a moment and nodded.

“Today will be both similar—and vastly different from what you have done previously,” Goodwitch explained, “You will receive no instruction from me except this; There is a time limit. Look to your scrolls; you will find your objectives listed there. If you are eliminated, return here; if the time limit runs out, return here.”

“Good luck.” Goodwitch smiled, making sure to meet each of their gazes.

Lima retrieved his scroll and found the objective almost immediately, along with a directional arrow. He turned and started in the direction it pointed, vanishing into the tree line—others followed, before splitting off—This clearly wasn’t a team-based exercise, as Lux, Teak, and Claire all went in different directions.

The objective itself was simple, ‘Reach the destination within five minutes.’ A timed run to an unknown area in the Emerald Forest, not exactly difficult, but it was interesting none the less.

The forest flashed past him as he dashed between the trees, and a few minutes passed by before he glanced down when his scroll beeped, telling him that he had completed the objective. He looked around but found nothing of note—The scroll beeped again, updating the objective.

“Find a red flower.” Lima read curiously and turned back around.

He’d passed by four of the things on the journey here, his eyes far too accustomed to spotting red in the dark, but they were still minutes away at least; he had better get a move on.

He eventually located one of the flowers and plucked it from the vine, waiting for his scroll to once again update with the next objective. Whatever routine was checking his progress didn’t do it instantly; it might have actually been Goodwitch checking upon them with the camera’s spread about the forest.

Eventually, his scroll updated, and he stared at it.

‘Deliver the package to B.B.’

“Well, I never thought I was going to become a flower delivery boy,” Lima said, bemused. “Now, who the heck is B.B?”

He ran through the list of people he knew that had names starting with B and almost immediately hit upon the most likely candidate—Blake Belladonna. Lima thought back to where everybody had entered the forest; Blake had been on his left side, somewhere to the west side of the forest then, if she didn’t angle away too far for her own objective.

Heading west, he used his scroll to send a message to Ruby, asking for Blake’s current location. He didn’t receive a message back for almost two minutes, and he angled further north towards the quadrant of the forest she had indicated.

The power of communication—he hoped this wasn’t supposed to be a test on pure tracking capabilities, but even if it was, he should be able to argue that tracking people required the use of creative methods. Whether or not Goodwitch would accept the explanation was another matter entirely.

If everybody had the same type of initial directive, find an item in the forest, and keeping in mind the high level of competence she had shown in every other class—Blake had probably already completed it and moved onto her secondary objective already. Which meant she might have moved to deliver her own item to another member of the class.

He shot off another quick message asking for an updated location, and Ruby instead sent him her teammate’s number. He took a moment to place it in his own scroll before shooting her a message.

‘Objective deliver a package to B.B. Ruby supplied number. Requesting current location. – Lima.’

It was possible that her own objective had been to evade his pursuit, or something of a similar nature, so if he arrived and she wasn’t found, he would have to resort to tracking her manually. He continued his journey north-west, waiting patiently.

‘E7, Moving East.’ – Blake.

Lima immediately angled north-east as he had just about passed her by.

He spotted her eyes before anything else, standing high on a branch partially hidden by the trunk of a tree—Yellow and bright in the shadows, not unlike Lux’s eyes, actually. Lima wondered idly if Blake was a Faunus as well.

Being able to see in the dark was so damn lucky.

“Delivery for a Miss…Belladonna?” Lima said, squinting at an imaginary clipboard, “Gonna need a signature if you please.”

He caught the eye roll before she stepped off the branch, fell halfway to the ground, and kicked off the trunk—landing neatly in front of him. Lima held out the red flower, and she took it without fanfare.

“Love of my life!” Lima cried dramatically, “We’re practically married now; what are we going to name our children?”

Blake snorted, dropping the flower on the ground.

“I’m filing for divorce,” Blake said immediately, “It was never going to work between us.”

“Ouch,” Lima laughed, “You’re right, it could never work—me a low-class Human, you a beautiful Faunus, what was I thinking!”

Blake flinched as if struck and stumbled back away from him.

Lima’s good humor dropped in an instant, and he spun around, bow already extended and an arrow notched—but there was nothing there, just trees, leaves, and shadows.

“Did you see something?” Lima said seriously, “I don’t have a visual.”

Blake didn’t say anything, and he frowned, searching the area furiously.

“Blake?” Lima snapped, glancing over his shoulder at her.

Blake was staring at him in horror, and he hesitated before lowering his bow.

“You alright, man? You look like I just stabbed you or something,” Lima said carefully, “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

Blakes scroll beeped, and she glanced down at it, the first motion she had made since he had spoken. Lima waited quietly for her to gather her bearings and checked his own scroll when it gave a similar beep.

‘Escape the enemy.’

He glanced back to find Blake staring at him with a hard look on her face, hand gripping her sword. Lima took a step backward, towards the edge of the small clearing. Blake’s mouth pulled back into a snarl, revealing perfectly white teeth.

“Don’t move,” Blake snapped. “How—”

Lima dove to the side, planting a hand flat on the ground as Blake slashed through the area he was just standing in. He pushed off the ground into the air, pressed his foot against the trunk of a tree, and dashed off into the forest.

Blake followed.

Blake was fast, Lima noted; Not as fast as Ruby—thank the gods for that— because he wouldn’t have been able to outrun her if that was the case. She was also agile, able to change direction on a dime, and had no trouble tracking him in the relatively dark forest.

If the wording of the objective had been slightly vaguer, he might have fought her, but it said ‘escape’ which meant this was a test of getting away from a ‘stronger enemy,’ or an ‘unbeatable situation,’ of some kind—he couldn’t just fight his way out of this one.

The thing that stood out about Blake right now, more than anything else, was that she was incredibly pissed off, and Lima had no idea what had caused it. He had only been messing around about the marriage thing, and she had even played along with the joke.

Had the joke about the Human-Faunus relationship not working been too much? He had deliberately put the ‘Low-class-human’ in to soften it. It seemed like an incredibly strong reaction for such a weak joke; maybe he had hit a sore spot by accident, Blake’s berserk button, so to speak.

Lima snapped his head up to the side as a black length of cord swung around a tree, and the sharp blade on the end was brought on a course straight back towards him—the unexpected attack cut a line across his Aura, barely scraping it.

The attack stole most of his momentum, and he was forced to jaunt backward to avoid the follow-up stab as Blake dragged herself towards him with the cord. She planted a foot on the grass and spun, kicking out at him.

Lima blocked it with his elbow before it could land on his cheek, grappled the leg, and dragged her off the ground. He spun, tossing her away from him, but the second he let go of her leg, she suddenly split into two.

Blake kicked off the clone and dove backward him, sword pointed straight forward in a diving lunge.

Lima stepped forwards, halting the point of her sword strike with the palm of his hand before spinning along its length. Blake’s eyes widened as they made eye contact for a moment suspended in time, only inches away, her sword overextended behind him—and then he patted her on the back.

The moment vanished, and Lima tore off in the opposite direction as Blake was sent cartwheeling behind him into the forest from the force of his semblance, completely unable to halt her momentum.

He didn’t look back, and by the time she had recovered, it was too late.

Lima frowned down at his scroll as it updated once more.

‘Recieve package from P.N.’

He thought he was starting to understand the exercise now; it was a loop of sorts. Enter the forest, search for and locate an item, track down a target to deliver the item, fend off the betrayal and escape, then accept the item.

He had participated on one side of the mission already, now he would play the part that Blake had played—most likely betraying whoever came to deliver the item and stopping them from escaping.

Lima imagined that it played out like a survival game, with rotating or changing objectives—Goodwitch indicated there was a time limit, so the exercise would likely have more than one round if the participants were not eliminated fast enough.

‘P.N,’ was obviously Pyrrha Nikos, and her most likely objective would be to escape from him, while his own would be to—chase her? Defeat her? Eliminate her from the round? He wasn’t sure exactly; he never got the chance to view Blake’s scroll.

Because this was the second ‘loop’ of objectives, Pyrrha would be aware of this as well.

Well, he had nothing left to do but wait.

He’d been completely wrong.

The objectives didn’t follow an easy loop like he had assumed; they changed based on the outcomes of the previous objectives and depended on who failed and who succeeded—and it was now apparent that objectives didn’t end until you either succeeded or were rendered unable to complete them.

Lima watched as Pyrrha, Blake, and Ren strode through the trees below him, searching for him—Pyrrha had a white flower in her hair that hadn’t been there earlier, and Ren had a yellow one—most likely the package they were supposed to deliver.

The fact that all three of them were now together was telling; either they had eliminated their opponents and were tasked with more—the pool of targets had evidently lowered enough that he now had three coming after him.

That was a fight that Lima wanted exactly fuck-all to do with.

He carefully pulled his scroll out and typed out a message—to Ruby.

‘I still can’t find Blake; this is just silly; she’s really angry at me now because we keep missing each other? I give up. Can you just tell her my location, please, so she can come to find me? A4.’ – Lima.

‘Sure!’ – Ruby.

Whether or not Ruby had already been eliminated, she would most likely want to help her teammate complete her objective; with some luck, she might not have considered that he might actually be using it to manipulate her into sending them in the wrong direction. He watched as Blake checked her scroll and frowned before talking quietly to the other two and heading south—towards the fake location.

He waited until they were completely out of sight and then headed East. When they discovered his ruse, they would probably assume that he sent them in the opposite direction of where he actually was, so it should buy him some more time.

Lima grinned when his scroll beeped, showing that the exercise was finished, and to return to the assembly area. He hadn’t seen any of the others since he had messaged Ruby, and when he finally returned, he found a red-faced Ruby Rose. He waved at her—from a safe distance—making no room to come closer, although that was more because of the dangerous look that Blake was sending his way.

If you could kill something just by looking at it, well, he’d be a goner—and he still had no idea what the hell had he done to deserve her apparent fury.

He hadn’t been the only one to evade his pursuers either, Claire’s semblance had been practically built for this type of exercise, so she’d been able to simply vanish from sight whenever needed. Lux looked rather dirty, but she was grinning—most likely, she had let them find her just so she could attempt to fight her way out, and judging by her Aura bar, linked to the rest of the team’s scrolls, she had probably lost.

Teak wandered out after everyone else, looking embarrassed, but when Lima checked, he found the guy’s Aura was completely untouched.

“No luck, huh?” Lima said easily, clapping the shorter boy on the shoulder softly.

“I received the ‘package,’” Teak said embarrassedly, “I couldn’t keep up with them though, and they kind of just ran away.”

Lima snickered, drawing a look of consternation from him.

“Sorry, buddy.” Lima said, smiling, “Looks like we are going to be practicing a lot of running in the future, huh?”

Teak just nodded firmly, eyes narrowed at Lima’s obvious amusement.

“What happened to you, anyway?” Lux taunted, “You get distracted chasing Grimm?”

“Idiot.” Lima huffed at the accusation.

“What did you call me?!” Lux snapped, grabbing him by the shirt. “You want to be my next victim, huh?”

“Judging by your Aura,” Claire teased, “It looks like you were the victim.”

“Claire!” Lux cried in outrage, “Stop taking his side!”

“I’m not!” Claire laughed.

“Well done,” Goodwitch called, drawing all of their attention back to her. “As you can see, these exercises are designed to simulate changing mission parameters while you’re in the field—sometimes things aren’t as simple as delivering supplies to an outpost or defeating a single threat close to a settlement.”

There were some noises of understanding and a few mutters from those that had suffered early losses.

“They are also made to be rapid so that we can run you all through a series of different scenarios and hopefully instilling the need for flexibility and quick decision-making while under stress—both extremely useful traits for all Hunters and Huntresses.” Goodwitch smiled, “Now, the objectives of the next rounds will not be exactly the same as the others, so throw out any misconceptions you have of betraying allies—because it may not be the case this time.”

Different objectives, different plans, acting quickly, and changing circumstances—Lima looked forward to the challenge.

“I will, of course, be allowing you a fifteen-minute break between rounds so that you may recover a portion of your Aura,” Goodwitch added after a moment, “But you will not always be fresh during a mission, so expect to conserve your Aura as much as possible, efficiency is key here.”

Goodwitch turned away from them, returning to working on her scroll.

“Hah, can you imagine anyone being silly enough to use up all of their Aura in the first round?” Lima said teasingly, “Nah, nobody would be that st-Yikes!”

Lima ducked behind Teak as Lux tried to grab him by the throat in retaliation for the targeted comment, and she broke off the attack when Goodwitch looked up at them. He couldn’t help but notice Blake was still watching him with a laser focus that unnerved him.

He was pretty sure it would be better to just surrender if he had her as one of his next objectives—at least until he figured out why she was now giving off some serious serial killer vibes.

Better safe than inside some girl’s freezer, after all.