Yep. I'm alive. I think.

This is going to be a bit of a shorter chapter for a few reasons, explained properly at the bottom.

"Pssssst" Cyrus hissed, poking at Nicky's cheek aggressively, the latter still being nestled in the warm embrace of her bedding. "Nicky. Wake up." Jabbing harder this time, he managed to illicit a response from his sister in the form of her slapping his arm away; sighing with exasperation, he stood up and pulled the covers with him as he did so, causing her to shiver and curl up defensively.

"Five more..." Her sentence was broken by a loud yawn. "...minutes." Turning to bury herself in her pillow; dissatisfied with the response, Cyrus placed his foot on the small of her back and began to press down lightly, the discomfort eventually causing her to place her arms up in surrender. "Fiiine… I'm - huurgh - getting up."

"Finally." Glancing around, Cyrus groaned. All the other beds were empty, and most of the people in the ballroom were almost ready to head to the cafeteria. "You're the last person still in bed. I could be eating breakfast right now, if I didn't have to wake your sleepy ass up."

"Wait… I'm the last one..?" Propping herself and scanning the room, Nicky gave out an exaggerated wail of despair. "Awww… all the good food'll be gone…" Facing Cyrus again, she nodded her head towards the exit. "Go and eat, I'll catch you up."

"You sure?"

"Yep."

Burying his hands in the pockets of his thin jacket, Cyrus began to step away. "Don't take too long, alright? I'll save you a space." With a thumbs up from Nicky in response, he began to make his way towards the exit of the room; it wasn't long before a familiar blonde jogged to catch him up.

"Hey, you're Nicole's brother right?" She asked, extending her hand out. "Mind if I stick with you?"

"Erm… sure." Slightly taken aback, Cyrus merely smiled to her and accepted the handshake. "Marie, right? Name's Cyrus."

"Nice to meet you, Cyrus." Smiling back, she buried her hands in the pockets of her bomber jacket, a brown leather one with a bright yellow vest underneath. "Where is your sister, by the way?"

"Oh. She…" Cyrus took a deep sigh. "...she was the last person to get up."

"No shit, really?"

"That's right."

"Damn." Marie thought for a moment, furrowing her brow as she did so. "Does she know that they stop serving breakfast in ten minutes?"

"Nope, she does not." Cyrus answered, looking a bit uneasy as they entered the cafeteria; joining the moderately-sized queue of people. "I'll have to grab her something while I'm up here."

"Good idea." Marie mused, grabbing herself one of the serving trays. "You guys are from Atlas, aren't you?" Noticing Cyrus' nod, she continued. "Cool, you ever been to Vale before?"

"Nah, we haven't." Grabbing two cans of drink from the shelf next to them, he placed it on his tray. "Aside from the odd holiday to Mistral, we never really left Atlas."

"Damn. Well if you want, I'd be happy to show you guys around." Telling the server what food option she wanted, Marie took the plate with her breakfast on before continuing to Cyrus. "Vale is a really nice city, lots of old historic stuff and things to do."

"So I've heard." Paying for his and Nicky's food at the till, the two left to try and find an open table; finding one, they began to make their way there. "Back in Atlas everything is so pristine and modern; some of the stuff I've seen already here is so… jarring. It's weird."

"Haha, I've been told it has that effect on people." Giggled Marie, taking a mouthful of oats while Cyrus did the same from his bap. The two remained silent for a few moments as they ate, focused more intently on their meal than small talk; that was until an arm grabbed the spare sandwich on Cyrus' plate and sat next to him.

"Morning Cy." Nicky said, unwrapping the piece of food as she did so; looking over at Marie, her face lit up with a smile. "Hey! How you doing…"

"Marie."

"Right, Marie. Sorry, terrible with names." Chuckled Nicky, burying herself in her sandwich in a feeble attempt to cover up her lapse of memory.

"Don't worry about it." Marie answered, exhaling sharply at the frantic efforts of Nicky to save face; smiling back, she continued. "I'm good, thanks. I was just talking to your brother about Vale." She took a brief break to take a bite of food. "Apparently this is your first time being here."

"Oh yeah, that's right!" Putting her food down, she leaned over the table slightly as she excitedly talked to Marie. "There's all the old stuff isn't there?! Like, the big castle in the city and all that."

"Haha… yep. That's… that's right." Replied Marie, a hesitant grin resting on her face, overwhelmed by Nicky's enthusiasm. "Do you like history then?"

Nicky was about to speak, but was interrupted by the sound of Cyrus' chair being pushed back; standing up and stretching, he looked at the two girls. "I'm going to head off, need to make a few last minute checks on my gear." Picking up his tray and taking a step away, he stopped and turned to face Marie again. "You got her talking. Have fun." Smirking at her, he started walking away again as Nicky launched into a long ramble about her love of history.

"...so how do you reckon they'll - select the teams?" Lily's question was briefly interrupted as she pulled her shield off the brace in the locker, clipping it onto a small metal plate resting on her back.

"I'm not sure. All the teams seem to be made up of two pairs though, maybe that has something to do with it?" Azura replied, clutching the two custom-made daggers; the finish on them was still pristine and the shine perfect, they had been freshly made for her to use at Beacon.

"Yeah… sounds straight-forward enough." The taller girl fiddled with several lines following the length of her arm and shoulder, leading to the shield mounted on her back; with a satisfying click, the components locked together to form a flexible rail for her shield to slide down her arm. Covering her wrist was a silver bracer, the rails ending roughly in its middle at a second locking mechanism.

"I suppose that raises another question though." Squinting with thought, Azura fiddled lightly with the weapons in her hands.

Lily looked at her "Hmm?"

"How do they pick the pairs?"

"That's… that's a good question, actually." Lily answered, reaching to her hair and tying it into a single ponytail as it shimmered in the late morning light seeping into the locker room; her hair's light purple tone matched the décor of her combat outfit, a suitably lightweight combination of a jacket and several pieces of body armour, combined with reinforced leggings and shin/knee guards. "I suppose we won't know until we're actually in our initiation."

"Makes sense." Replied Azura, her gear consisting of a loose-fitting robe top that exposed the tunic she wore underneath; her legs were partially covered by a pair of soft and baggy shorts capped off with a pair of plain boots. She wore minimal armour, as she liked to be quiet and light on her feet in combat.

Resting a slightly-ragged shawl on her shoulders, Lily sat down on the bench nearby and allowed herself to slacken slightly. "Today's going to be a long day… I can tell."

"…You will be using your own landing strategy."

"I… uh… I'm sorry, what?" Skye asked, taken a little aback by the statement from the headmaster; she turned to Jacko, standing on the pad next to hers, with a confused expression. "Landing… strategy?"

"That just means stop falling."

"Stop falling?!" Shaking her head in disbelief, Skye hesitantly positioned herself on the large metal plate underneath her feet. On her right, the student two pads down was flung away. "We could die!"

Jacko's eyes widened with surprise then furrowed his brow with a hint of doubt. "I… just figured the 'not dying' part was implied."

"That doesn't help the situation!" Skye yelled, as the person on her other side was thrown off the cliff.

"Well at least we're clear on the issue!"

"HOW?!" Skye screamed. "How are we any clearer on what's happening right now?!"

Jacko merely shrugged. "Stop falling. Don't die." Scratching his head momentarily, he continued. "Seems pretty clear to me!"

"Jacko! This isn't helping anything! For fu-" Interrupted by the whirring of motors underneath her feet, a loud click interrupted Skye's exclamation as she felt herself get hurled towards the forest.

Sailing through the pleasantly warm air, Skye felt the unsheltered heat of the bright sun wash over her body as she hurtled through the sky; fighting against the drag of the air flying past her, she began to slowly bring her arms and legs in towards her core. Pressing her eyes closed, she felt the gradual decay in her momentum as she approached the end of her fall; opening her eyes to a squint, she saw herself rapidly reaching the forest floor.

Shit shit shit SHIIIIT! Skye would have yelled the words out loud, had it not been for the sudden impact with the ground; slamming into the earth and throwing dust and dirt all around the clearing she had landed in. Sitting for a moment, she did her best to catch her breath. "Never… again." She mumbled, grabbing her hefty sword from its hold on her back, and using it to prop herself up.

Unlike the swordswoman, Cyrus used his armour's built-in stabilising thrusters to slow his descent and make his landing with much more grace. Taking a moment to pat down his body and look around, he took in his surroundings; he found himself on a raised hill overlooking part of the forest.

Slowly, he began to make his way down the grass-covered slope, sinking into the lines of the trees below him and entering into the shade, away from the warm summer sun. He had to tread through a small amount of undergrowth, but nothing severe enough to hinder his movement; however, it was enough to narrow his view.

Cyrus reacted a moment too late as the feline Grimm burst from the undergrowth, the powerful legs of the beast shoving him onto the ground before turning to leap onto its floored prey. As it leapt, the young huntsman raised his feet to kick it back and his aura hummed as his semblance activated, a set of three hexagonal projections appearing over the soles of his boots, the cyan-toned plate of solidified aura appearing between him and the beast. Kicking out, his semblance catapulted the beast into a nearby tree; it barely had time to recoil before a burst of explosive dust shots smashed into its neck.

Cyrus picked himself off and brushed down his clothes, the now-dead Grimm beginning to slowly disintegrate where he had killed it. Looking over his gun to make sure it wasn't damaged; he recalled his semblance, the aura plate fizzling out. Content, he continued on the path towards the relic site, which was a good distance north-west of his own position.

He had made good headway into his trek, covering several kilometres of the distance towards the relic site and dispatching individual Grimm as he went; shortly into his stretch on an old bridle path, he heard rustles coming some distance to his left. Running to take cover behind a tree, he took a small peek around the trunk to attempt to find where the noise had come from; thankfully, the cause of the commotion did so for him.

A quick swish of a blade was all he heard, as several large ferns in the direction of the noises fell to the ground; in their place stood two of his peers, one of them he instantly recognised as his sister, and the other a skinny male in cream and orange coloured robes.

"Nicky?" He called, coming out from behind the tree and lowering his gun.

Nicky looked to see who called her name and made eye contact with Cyrus. "Cy!" She yelled back, jogging up to him with her companion in tow. "Finally. Do you have any idea where we are?"

Taken slightly aback, Cyrus looked around at his surroundings. "About two kilometres out?" Glancing up to see the position of the sun, he realigned himself. "To our north east."

"Ah. Right." Turning to her companion, she sighed with resignation. "I guess I was taking us the wrong way. M'bad."

"No problem, don't worry about it." Adjusting one of the shoulders on his robe top, he reached his other hand out to Cyrus. "Name's Jacko, yourself?"

"Cyrus."

"Sweet." Scratching the back of his head, Jacko looked between Nicky and Cyrus. "So… do you two know each other?"

"Yeah, he's my big brother." Nicky responded, reaching up to grab Cyrus' shoulder while beaming.

"Yep." Cyrus added, looking back up at the bright summer sky. "We can talk while moving, come on."

"Oh, cool. So where you guys from?" Jacko asked, glancing at the two of them. "Atlas, I'm guessing?"

"That's right. What about you?" Nicky replied, hacking through the undergrowth with her sword. "Where's home?"

Stepping over a large log, Jacko dusted himself off. "Vale, but not the main kingdom." Tucking his hands into his pockets and keeping pace with the other two, he continued. "Me and my friend are both from there, hope she's doing okay."

"Friend… eh?" Giving the redhead a quick elbow, she flashed him a quick smirk while Cyrus sighed behind her.

"Bit early for teasing isn't it? You barely know the guy." Cyrus threw out the statement, sounding more like he was thinking out loud than actually speaking to them.

"We're going to be partners for the next four years, might as well get started now."

Exhaling sharply, Cyrus slackened his stance and lowered his gun. Pointing to their right, he looked at the other two. "There's a stream there, we can stop and take a break if you guys want. Make sure we're good to go as we get to the relic site."

"Good idea, I'll sweep the area and make sure there's nothing hiding. You two take a seat, alright?" Nicky began to walk towards the surrounding foliage, moving her arm as the large claymore transformed into its spear form.

No! Thought Azura as the Beowolf's paw slammed into her side, sending her twin daggers flying from of her hands as she tumbled to the ground; breathing heavily, she barely managed to leap out of the way of another strike from the beast, a large Grimm easily twice her height. Stepping backwards as the beast approached, she looked desperately for something to use to fend it off.

Mind blank, keep your mind blank, Azura. She repeated the statement in her head like a mantra, trying to purge the fear from her mind to try and avoid sending the Grimm into a state of total bloodlust. Using the extra time from not getting torn to pieces, she brushed her hand on the rock face behind her, hoping to find a piece of stone that she could do something with. As her searching grew more frantic, Azura began to resign herself to her situation, pinned to a rock face with a twelve-foot Grimm between her and the only way out of this situation. Then she heard a rustle from the foliage above her head.

Skye walked across the rocky path, the thick treeline around her reminding the swordswoman of her home as sunlight filtered through the thick canopy above her; still reeling from her sudden landing, she was grateful that her semblance had mostly resisted the blow. She would have been still absorbed in her thoughts, had she not heard the deep bellow of an adult Beowolf come from her left. Without even thinking, she unslung the large sword from her back and sprinted towards the source of the noise.

Skye burst out from the undergrowth as she leapt from the small outcrop overlooking the large Grimm, and one of her fellow hopeful-huntswomen; using her fall, she crashed down onto the Beowolf, impaling her massive blade into its neck and down its spine. Landing, she tugged the sword out of the twisted flesh.

"You okay?" She asked, stepping back from the dissolving corpse of the Beowolf and resting her sword in the ground. "Did it hit you?"

"Y-yeah." Sighing softly, Azura stood and brushed the dust off her clothes. "A couple times." Walking over and grabbing her daggers, she clipped the weapons to her belt. "So, we're partners now?"

"Guess so. Come on, the ruins are this way." Skye held the sword in a resting position and began to walk towards the forest, her brisk pace forcing Azura to jog in order to keep up. For a while, they walked through the forest with little trouble; aside from a few run-ins with Aye-Ayes and a stray Beowolf, their time was quiet.

A thunderous roar bellowed through the trees; Skye immediately went tense and drew her sword as she judged the sound, trying to figure out where it came from.

"This way." Azura said, unclipping the daggers from her belt and running to their right. Darting through the trees with the spryness of a fox, she rushed towards the origin of the roar; forcing her way through a bush revealed a titanic Ursa Major standing over another student. Without hesitating, Azura leapt at the Ursa's back, aiming her dagger and firing the blade into the nape of its neck; with her other dagger she shot the blade into a nearby tree and pulled on the tight wire connecting it to the handle.

Using the first strike to distract the Ursa, she ducked to avoid a vicious swing of its paw and rolled around it, catching the wire on the Grimm's leg and winding the wire tight around its shins. Pulling the snare, Azura did her best to hold the beast in place. As if on cue, Skye then leapt out of the brush and slammed into the creature's abdomen to knock it over; as it fell, she brought the edge of her sword down onto its legs, slicing them off at the knee. Stepping up and embedding the blade into its chest, she flicked the trigger on her sword, and electricity surged through its body. Shuddering for a moment, it then went limp and began to dissolve underneath her.

Azura ran up to the student who had gotten caught in the pit; brushing off the dirt and letting them turn over, she immediately recognised the face. "Lily?" Wide violet eyes stared back at her, the Vacuan girl sat still in complete shock, paralysed with fear.

"What's wrong with her?" Skye asked, sitting down near them and resting her sword against the rocky outcrop.

"I… don't know. I think…" Looking Lily in the eyes, Azura's own widened. "She's petrified, that thing terrified her."

"If she's terrified of Grimm, why is she here?" Skye asked, with her eyes narrowed in doubt.

"I'm sorry..?"

"I don't mean anything rude by it, but being a Hunteress is hard if you freeze up whenever you see a Grimm." Elaborating, Skye slackened her position a bit and rested against the rock face. "If she wants to survive, she needs to get her act together."

Hearing the criticism, Lily slowly turned her head to look at Skye. "I… I don't. D-don't…" Tears brimming in her eyes, she tucked her head into her arms and pulled her knees up.

"Skye." Azura finally said. "I understand what you mean, but that isn't the way to do this." Turning to Lily, she grabbed her cheek and held up her face to look in her eyes. "Lily, look at me." Looking up, Lily saw the reassuring and warm tone to Azura's irises. "You're okay now."

"Y-yeah." Lily replied, starting to blink away her tears.

"Are you able to move? Quicker we go, quicker we're out." Holding her hand out, Azura helped Lily off the ground.

"Come on, let's go. As nice a day as this is, I don't want to stick around." Skye commanded, hosting herself up with her sword and lifting it up onto her shoulder.

Lily gave a heavy sigh as she kept pace with Azura, the pair walking a few metres behind Skye. "Thanks."

"Hmm?" Azura replied, clipping her daggers to her belt.

"For sticking up for me." Brushing her hair aside, Lily looked down at her boots. "I… just don't know what came over me. I saw it and… and froze."

"Don't worry about it. I still remember the first time I saw a Grimm." Noticing Lily looking at her, Azura continued. "I was about seven; my dad was away on business and we couldn't get someone to look after me, so I had to go with my mum on a mission. She'd been sent out to investigate some disturbances at a small mining camp in northern Mistral." Azura took a deep breath. "On the second morning, I had been walking around the courtyard when a Skoocoom jumped in from the treeline; biggest creature I'd ever seen and covered in armour and spines. I… screamed, as kids do, and it turned and looked straight at me."

"What happened?" Lily asked.

"It started coming towards me pretty fast, and would have gotten to me if my mum hadn't jumped in and stopped it. I've never seen her move so fast, watched her riddle the thing with holes and it was down in seconds."

Lily's eyes went wide. "Woah…"

"Yeah, my mum was pretty cool." Smiling wistfully, Azura rested her hands into her pockets. "I think that's what made me want to be a huntress, watching how in control she was…" Noticing the confused look on Lily's face, her smile brightened and she waved her hands in a slight panic. "Anyway, let's focus on walking!" Calming herself down, Azura looked at the sky. "It's going to be a long day…"

Yay! It's here! I actually got a chapter finished!

As you can probably notice, this one came in at about 2/3k words shorter than the previous one, and this is for a few reasons:

- First chapter was the intro chapter, meaning it ended up longer than I planned.

- This is the 'middle' chapter of the Initiation arc, a lot of it is bridging last chapter to the next chapter, and linking up all the characters.

- Been busy so I've had less time to write.

Now onto the more general stuff; I'm fairly happy with how this chapter turned out. Some hopefully not super ham-fisted dialogue, some exposition, few odd skirmishes here and there. Let me do some more character development on quite a few of the characters.

In terms of next chapter, I'm not gonna lie, I have my super huge-deal exams coming up from the 10th of June through to the 21st that decide whether I go to university or not, so as you can imagine they'll be my main focus for the next month and a bit. But once those are done, I have 2-3 months of free time! Isn't that great? So I'm going to place a fairly reasonable time-frame for the next chapter at very late June or early-mid July, I won't be committing to intensely writing it until after my exams, only really working on it before that when the urge hits me in my downtime. So yeah, cool. Cool cool cool.

As far as longer-term goes, I have a reasonably good plan for how the story will progress for quite some time (internal shipping, angst, watershed events, etcetera) and I I've worked out how it'll probably be structured:

- 3 chapters for the arc (4 for super important ones or if I feel like it needs it. Pacing!)

- A Fireplace

- One-Shot chapter (usually some kind of comedic piece (spoilers, first one will probably be Mr. Introvert Cyrus realising he's on a team with three girls.)) These will be canon but not always chronological.

- 'Volumes' will probably be 3-4 arcs long, usually where the last one is a big and defining event.

Lastly, as you may have noticed, there's a cover image now! Using the miracle that is school computers having photoshop, I created a little banner/card for Cyrus, including his symbol. It isn't perfect and I whipped it together very quickly, but hey, it's better than nothing, right? I'll probably eventually make them for the other three too, but this'll be it for at least a while.

I think that's about it. Until next time;

- Nyx

(PS; if anybody actually cares enough, I'm open to any questions you want to ask, and if I get any I'll do a little Q&A section in the next Fireplace)