***Reese***

Here, kitty, kitty. Why am I thinking of kitties? That's a bow, right? Either way, my singled-out target, Blake Bella-something, tries to get a bit of distance, but no way she's outrunning me. My board follows every slight shift of my body and I easily weave through the icy landscape, and once Blake is in range, with a spin I jump off and kick my board doubling as my weapon – or is it weapons doubling as a board? – at her upper body.

Weak move, sure, but I need to see what she's got. Of course Blake easily deflects the first one with her weapon, from what I can tell a short sword with the sheath doubling as another blade, and I send the returning board right back at her with a punch and she blocks with a kick before going on the offense. I catch my board just in time to parry several blows, but am still driven back thanks to these after-images she calls up to get a push forward and easily chain her attacks. Is that her Semblance?

After taking a powerful kick I find enough room to retaliate, and even though she blocks both strikes of my board, the force behind them is enough to send her reeling, giving me space to do a cartwheel backwards and jump on my board again. Much better.

I lean forward to charge straight at Blake, jumping to attack, but she produces another after-image while darting backwards. The clone shatters like ice, or maybe it actually was made of ice, using her environment, clever girl, and Blake hits me just as I get my feet on my board again, with enough force to send me flying and force the halves of my board to separate. Fine by me.

At but a remote gesture both halves fold together and shift into gun mode, flying into my hands. I grab them and immediately start firing while my momentum forces me to do not only one but two somersaults before I stabilize myself enough to be falling feet first. That's nothing, while boarding I had to do a quadruple one before, but it's exactly stunts like that why I'm wearing shorts. Apart from the fact that skirts are impractical and needlessly girly anyways.

I've done landings like this hundreds of times, so I can easily keep up fire on Blake, even if she seems to be dodging or blocking most of it, while adjusting my center of weight without even looking. Aaand... nailed it. Or not. I was on my hoverboard almost the whole time, so I totally forgot we're on a frozen battlefield. As soon as my feet impact the ground I feel them sliding away and myself appropriately falling backwards. Fu-

I can actually hear the audience gasp in shared pain as I land straight on my tailbone with enough force to bounce once before landing on my back. Oow.

I've had far worse, and I still got plenty aura left, but a wipeout like that still hurts like a bitch. Plus in the middle of a battle it's just embarrassing. To her credit, Blake doesn't just use the opportunity to attack me and knock me out while I'm still on the ground and in pain, but waits until we can continue the fight properly. How very sportsmanlike.

While I try to put as little weight on my backside as possible and wait for my aura to kick into gear, from the side I see Arslan trading blows with another blonde hand-to-hand fighter, who judging from the team name is actually not their leader. After taking a few hits, Arslan matches fists with Yang, who actually manages to withstand the power of the strike that produces a sizable shockwave, but a few seconds later she is tripped up by Arslan's rope dart and sent flying anyways. Looks like Yang has some issues with the ice as well, as she almost slips and can't do anything to defend against Arslan's follow-up attack, being sent the ground right next to Nadir.

However before he can be all unsportsmanlike and get in a hit or three, the large ice crystal next to him shatters and turns out to contain enough Dust that the resulting cloud encases almost his entire legs in ice. What was he standing around there for anyways? We may need to work on that positioning stuff for the doubles round. Or just send me and Arslan, we got this no problem.

I carefully get up shifting my weapon back into board mode and using it as a support, making sure I don't fall again right away. The pain in my backside is gone, but I wait a moment longer to observe the rest of the battle, and from the looks of it, so does Blake. Pass the popcorn, girl.

The origin of Nadir's predicament is the enemy team leader, a young girl with a massive scythe/sniper rifle, who just shot that crystal. Bolin rears up behind her to attack, but forgets to watch his flanks and gets sent flying by the fourth opponent, a scion of the Schnee family and from what I hear, heiress to the name; wonder what she's doing in Vale? And now Bolin is one against two and taking some hits. That's what happens when you mess up your positioning, people get outnumbered. Which is something we do not want.

We need a way to get Nadir free before the others can capitalize on their numbers. ...I think I got it. And apparently, so does Bolin, as he charges his opponents, but instead of actually fighting just runs and dodges his way past them and reaches a large crystal formation on the half of the battlefield covered in fire and stone, then breaks off a piece of it before tossing it over to me in a very well-aimed throw.

I catch the crystal and just about now Blake's face falls when she realizes she should have attacked me at some point as I infuse the fire crystal into my board and take of with a taunting wink at her.

With the element in my board all I need to do is skate past Nadir once and the ice not only thaws, but evaporates, freeing his legs just like I know it will. I don't even wait for the result and just quickly do a turn, it would be rude to keep my opponent waiting after all.

Blake tries to block my attack with both halves of her weapon, but thanks to my power-up, it's not enough and I kick off my board backwards, sending her flying through an ice pillar as my board embeds itself in the ground. I quickly grab it and hop on, setting off the Dust it absorbed before charging again. Blake just barely dodges my fiery slam and gets up, then uses her Semblance to evade the next strike, dashing right past me as her duplicate takes the hit and burns up – obviously as long as she had aura left, this wouldn't happen to an actual human –, running in the other direction and using the blade part of her weapon attached to a long ribbon like a hook to quickly move around a corner and vanish out of my sight.

Get back here, kitty. I turn around and chase after her, quickly finding Blake in the shadow of several large ice pillars with her back to me. Bad move. In the middle of a battle I'm not above taking cheap shots like that either. Sportsmanship is nice and all, but let's be real, I also want to win.

With a smirk I pick up speed and jump, slashing with my board and hitting Blake right from behind – only for her to disappear as soon as I contact her. Her Semblance again? Crap. Before I can react, Blake's weapon flies past me from the side, anchoring in some bit of ice and pulling taut right in front of me, the ribbon hitting me in the stomach and right off my board. I gasp as the impact knocks the air out of me and I start falling, but before I can even try to recover, Blake appears in front of me, aiming her foot at my midsection, and all I can do is try to tense my muscles before taking a pretty powerful kick to my stomach – that also send me flying straight out of the ring.

I hit the barrier in front of the stands before dropping onto the ground face first as the siren announces my ring-out as well TKO by aura and one of the commentators quips about me not wearing a helmet. Jerk.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it! I strike the ground in frustration. How could I be so stupid? That trap was far too obvious. And it's not even the first time that happened to me, Arslan always says I need to work on my situational awareness. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Man, that sucks. I stand up and grab my board, discharging the remaining dust in as a rather impressive jet of flame that hits the barrier and makes the spectators behind it flinch away and the cast me angry glances. But I don't care, it's not like that bit of fire is gonna do anything to a forcefield of that caliber.

Nothing I can do about that now, I just have to hope I did enough damage to Blake that the other three can turn this around. I tuck my board under my arm and make my way along the side of the battlefield to get a better view of one of the large screens.

As the battle goes on, both of the boys get kicked around a bit, and I can almost hear Arslan's exasperated sigh as she has to free both of them from a massive ball of ice that the Schnee heiress trapped them in. However that also leaves all three of them bunched up, letting the other team pull off an – admittedly impressive – display of teamwork that lets the blonde one, Yang, score a triple-TKO on all of them.

Oh, god damn it. So much for Team ABRN. Day 2, first match, and we're out. And of course I just had to mess up and get eliminated first. With my mood significantly fouled I nonetheless wait for the rest of my team at the exit of the arena.

The others look about as frustrated as I do, and the boys just head towards their locker room without a word while Arslan walks up next to me and pats me on the shoulder with an encouraging smile. "Hey, don't be so down. A loss in a tournament isn't the end of the world." I know her well enough to tell she's just as frustrated at losing, but as always she does her best to cheer up the rest of us instead, always the team mom.

"Yeah, but I made a totally idiotic mistake and fell for a seriously obvious trap. I mean, why would you just stand there and turn your back to the enemy? And it's not like I didn't see her Semblance before, I just didn't-"

"Reese, save it." Arslan's voice takes an authoritative edge for a moment before immediately becoming softer again. "We will do a proper debriefing and see what we can learn from this later, but let's be real. Even if you had stayed in and maybe even defeated your target, in the end I don't believe it would have changed anything. They really had their coordination down, and each of them was pretty strong on her own. We were just outmatched here."

Arslan isn't one to be dishonest just to be nice, so she's not saying that just to cheer me up, but because the other team was in fact that much better. Sounds like all of us need to put in a bunch more training.

I sigh. "If you say so."

"I do say so." Arslan smiles. "Now come on. We can head down to the fairgrounds and have our debriefing over ice cream. My treat."

"Well, alright." As usual, her smile manages to be contagious, and besides I'm not gonna say no to ice cream.

We head for the girl's locker room, passing who I guess is a combatant for the next match carrying a pair of katar daggers, while I rifle through my pockets for my locker key – and don't find it. "Ah, damn."

"What's wrong?" Arslan stops in her tracks.

"I think my key fell out of my pocket when I got thrown out of the ring. I need to get it, just go ahead, I'll be right with you."

Arslan nods and continues her way while I turn around and hop on my board, careful to not hit the ceiling, and take off, swerving past the girl with the daggers and back into the arena, searching for the sector where I landed. There, next to the maintenance door. I brake and jump off, easily catching the board in my left, and start scanning the ground.

...Gotcha. I pick up the key and as I make my way back, the battlefield shifts into neutral mode, and as I round the corner to the hallway to the locker room, the commentators announce the next match, Atlas' Team FNKI versus Team BRGD [Burgundy] of Shade. I am a bit curious about the guys from Atlas, but right now I'm not in the mood for any more battles, I'll catch some more tomorrow.

"Never miss a beat... never miss a beat..." Huh?

"Whoa!" I'm not paying attention to my surroundings, and suddenly something, or rather someone, colorful crashes straight into me and I land backwards on the floor. "Ow! Hey, watch it!"

The culprit is right in front of me in a similar position as myself. It's a girl with bushy orange-red twintails, a blue tank top, a pink skirt and white arm- and shin-guards, wearing roller blades and I think that's a pink tail, so either she's a Faunus or has some pretty odd accessory on her back.

"Ouchies." She almost jumps up, easily balancing on her roller blades, and only then looks around and registers me. "Oops... Are you okay? Sorry about that, I'm late and I need to get to my match and-" She's talking pretty fast. Is that girl okay or did she hit her head just now? From the way her tail is swishing around behind her, I'm guessing she's a Faunus, some sort of feline, most likely.

The girl holds out a hand and helps me up and then quickly scans me. "Is everything alright?" I just nod and she already continues. "That's good. Oh, hey, I saw you in the arena just now, you looked plenty cool zipping around on your board like that!"

"Um, thanks."

"Ah, sorry, I have to go, my match is about to start! So, see you, I guess. Bye!" And with that she just takes off, darting down the hallway to the arena.

Um...okay... Well, I think I can clearly say she's not in Team FNKI, Atlas has far too much of a reputation for discipline and stuff. I think I'm gonna watch the recording of that battle later on, I kind of wanna see how this chick fights on roller blades, just for how it's similar or different to my board. Though I don't think her skates are her weapons too.

In the locker room I just quickly wash my face and adjust my hair, there's time for a proper shower later back at Beacon. I grab my stuff, and with my dark blue handbag over one shoulder and my board under the other I leave the locker room and find Arslan and the others waiting for me near the exit to the docks. Time to get some ice cream!

We take the next shuttle off the Colosseum, and on the way I get into thinking about how much Arslan acts differently when around only me, Nadir, and Bolin. While she's always warm and passionate, outwardly she's more brash and fiery, but to the team, while still direct to the point of brutal honesty, she's also caring and encouraging if any of us needs it.

I always say she's the team mom, but in actuality, it's more like she's the cool big sis I never had. It probably helps she is in fact the oldest child, with another sister and three brothers younger than her. All I got was to be an older sister myself to my pair of twin brothers, but seeing as both of them are into skateboarding and are training to get into Haven once they're old enough, I think I did a decent enough job.

We land at the fairgrounds around Beacon and quickly find a large ice cream stand. Looks like compared to Mistral in Vale there's a higher demand for ice cream, giving rise to a lot of interesting flavors. Cinnamon, Rose-flavored, Peach, – sucks that they don't have this in Mistral, I really like peaches – and whose idea was it to make marshmallow ice cream, and why is it so delicious?

Once everyone is loaded up, we find a bench to sit down in the shadow of some large tree and do our "debriefing", which is more of a game of "point out my own mistakes before the others do". I know, I know, I need to work on my situational awareness and maybe think stuff through just a bit, but that would mean slowing down, and when I'm on my board I don't do slowing down.

Apart from the positioning issues the boys had, Bolin also made an unnecessary one-liner instead of just attacking, and Nadir… didn't really accomplish much, but it would be mean to call him 'weak' or something, he was just unlucky. He kind of always is. If one of us trips and falls into a river during a mission, it's gonna be him. If all four eat the same spoiled food, guess who gets the poisoning. And this time he was frozen for like half the battle, and then just got whacked around by the Schnee heiress before getting stuck in a massive snowball.

Like often enough, there's not really much to complain about for Arslan. She's a very competent and fierce fighter, yet manages to stay level-headed all throughout and try leading the team. But we all agree we need to work on our coordination and maybe come up with some special combination maneuvers.

However no one is in the mood for training right after our battle, and besides Arslan insists we're here to visit the Festival, not do more training like we did at Haven the last few weeks. There's gonna be two whole years to get better and redeem ourselves at the 41st Tournament, when we're in 4th year. I think that one's gonna be in Mistral, so we'll even have a bit of a home field advantage. But right now it's time to "take the day off and enjoy ourselves" – leader's orders –, so that's what we'll do.

As usual for Nadir and Bolin that means returning to our dorm and reading or playing video games respectively, and Arslan says she'll join them and meditate a bit, then catch the rest of the battles after the lunch break. But I'm not in the mood for any of that right now, so I suppose I'll hit the city on my own; it's the capital, so I'm sure there's a skate park somewhere, and if not at least some interesting stores.

So I say goodbye for the moment and while the others head back towards Beacon I go the opposite direction, across the fairgrounds into Vale city. There's Team RWBY talking to a green-haired pickpocket, from the looks of it without even catching on to her, but then why would you steal a wallet just to give it back right away? Hang on... okay, my wallet's still there, good.

I could go over to talk to them and be a graceful loser, but screw that. Arslan's much more the type to do that, and besides if I hadn't messed up- Don't bother. Nothing I can do about that anymore, except do better next time.

I don't think I've seen the other girl fight so far. Or I just missed it, yesterday I only watched two of the fights. Haven's Team CSTL [Celestial] was eliminated by Beacon's Team CRDL, but from what I hear our freshmen of Team TRKS [Turquoise] made it to the next round in the very first match of the Tournament, so Haven is still in the game, though I guess all 8 Teams from one school getting kicked out in the first round would be seriously unlucky; plus there's like four more Haven Teams who can still make it.

As RWBY and the green-haired girl part ways, I move on, looking for any familiar faces or interesting stuff to do. Hey, there's Sun and Neptune, but the latter is currently in the process of hitting on a pair of girls that are in turn trying to hit on the former. I think Team SSSN will have their first match later today, so I could go and wish them luck, but I'm not intent on disturbing the... nice… conversation the four of them are currently having. Besides if Neptune tries hitting on me again, there's a serious chance I am going to literally hit him. In the face. Again.

The other half of the team is sitting close by, chatting while keeping half an eye on their companions' antics, so I head over to them instead.

"Hey, guys. How you doing?"

Both of them look up. "Oh, hello," Scarlet says while Sage just nods in greeting. "We're fine. And you?"

I shrug. "Meh. I'm gonna be fine." That's about the best I got while still being technically honest. "You guys have your first match today too, don't you?"

"Yes." Scarlet nods "Against Team NDGO of Shade. If I recall correctly, an all-female Team, so I hope Neptune doesn't do anything embarrassing." Yeah, you keep hoping that.

Speak of the devil, Sun and Neptune finish their conversation and walk over to us, with Neptune waving after the girls over his shoulder.

"Hey, Reese, what's up?" Sun asks.

"Nothing much. I just wanted to wish you guys luck for your upcoming battle. Hopefully you'll do better than us."

When he hears my voice, Neptune turns around, "Heelloo there, s-" and immediately cuts himself off as he recognizes me; I think he just muttered 'not my beautiful face', so that's a mission accomplished.

"Thanks," Sun says, completely ignoring his partner "We'll do our best of course. Right, guys?" The others nod in agreement.

"And besides," he continues "I think you did pretty well. It's just that, well, you got matched against Team RWBY. Neptune and I got to fight alongside them before, and the four of them are extraordinarily strong. From what they told me, during their initiation, they managed to kill a full-grown Nevermore, and that other Team that was with them defeated a Deathstalker."

"But the other Team had Pyrrha Nikos with them," Neptune throws in "so that's not so much of a surprise, right?"

Pyrrha Nikos, huh? I didn't know she moved to Vale. I fought her in the Mistral Region Tournament final, during our time at Sanctum. She was one year below me, but in our battle still easily and thoroughly beat me. Although for someone so skilled and famous she always seemed a bit lonely; weird. Well, if we're talking power levels like that, if Team RWBY is similarly strong, I guess it's not as surprising we got beaten. It still sucks, though.

"Guess so." Sun nods and then gets out his Scroll to check the time. "Speaking of which, we should get going, Team JNPR's match is gonna start soon, and Neptune and I want to see Pyrrha in battle."

"So do we," Scarlet says and Sage nods "Let's go."

"Yeah," Sun says "Reese, you wanna come too?"

Seeing the Pyrrha Nikos in action again does sound tempting, but I still think... "Nah, for today I'm done with battles, I was about to check out the city."

"It's pretty neat. And the street vendors are so inattentive, it's like taking candy from a baby. I almost feel sorry for them."

"But not sorry enough to stop stealing," Sage reprimands Sun.

"Well, no. I still have to eat, you know."

Yeah, I'm not gonna delve into that. "Alright, see you, guys. And good luck in your fight."

"Thanks." Sun waves over his shoulder as Team SSSN gets up and starts heading towards the shuttle airfield. "Have fun in the city. See you around."

As they leave I once more start in the other direction. Lunch break is over, so there aren't many students around right now; most of them are probably training for, recovering from, or watching the battles, probably this one in particular.

I make my way off the school grounds and into the city proper, taking out my Scroll to look up a map. That's one of the big advantages of the schools being so close to the CCT Tower, you almost always have great reception and up/down speeds. Now, where to go...

AN: There it is, my first ever fic I got to the point of uploading. Constructive criticism (emphasis on constructive) or reviews are very much welcome.

Firstly, a massive thank you to user Dongyrn for telling me to just man up and upload this, and betaing all of it, and giving me some general advice on writing and uploading things. You rock, dude.

As can be gleamed from the tags, this story will eventually lead to ReeseXNeon, which I don't think there is a ship name for yet (the best suggestion I heard is 'XX-Games', from the X-Games and them both being girls, thus having XX-chromosomes). Shoutout to /u/Thothslibrary on reddit for a post of theirs inspiring me to write this pairing.

Apart from CRDL and one OC-Team, the other two battles on the first day were Cinder's and Penny's Teams', which conveniently saves me from having to come up with 'proper' names for them because none were given in canon so far.

I keep feeling I have to comment on every small thing, but then this would get way too long and I don't think anyone actually wants to hear that, so I'm not going to, and instead just let the story speak for itself.