Finally getting back to this story! Yay!

Chapter the Third: In which Thunder is released, Merriment is had, and Partnerships are formed.

As soon as she felt the rough bark of the tree trunk touch her fingertips, she let loose her Semblance's full effect, exploding it in a hailstorm of splinters and pieces of bark. She had only managed to slow her descent by a very small margin through her improvised electric "shield bash" though, so she kept on a steady course for her actual target – the tree behind the one she had just obliterated. She hooked her zweihänder Nightshade around one of the branches and used the rotational momentum to get up on a higher vantage point. Once firmly settled, she transformed her sword into its sniper mode and started to sweep the area with the scope. Her fellow initiates had landed all over the area, making it less likely to run into multiple potential partners at once. She returned Nightshade to sword mode and used it as a brake when she jumped off her branch and spiralled down the trunk towards the ground. As she sheathed Nightshade on her back, she heard more of the excited shouting coming not far from her current location. She flicked her sensitive ears about to pinpoint the noise. There.

She barely had time to register the direction as she spotted the source of the commotion – a young boy, perhaps a few months older than her, sailing through the air still. She calculated his possible landing zone, and took off sprinting.

Slate Amarillo was having the time of his life.

Sure, he might be a little sore in the knees after that damn springboard (seriously, was his the only one wound up that tight, or will everyone be walking funny for the next few hours?), but other than that, he felt great! His dark hair fluttering in the wind, the sun shimmering over his toned (and tanned!) musculature… then there was the fact that he'd managed to figure out how to actually-sorta fly.

Just before he was launched, in fact.

He had vaguely recalled the tidbit that hot air floated on top of cold air, which was followed by the realisation that he could use his temperature control Semblance in conjuncture with his honkin' huge swords as wings. So here he was, soaring high above the Emerald Forest without a care in the world. Wait, what was he doing up here again? Oh right, Initiation quest.

He tilted his swords to break his forward momentum, then angled his body downwards to descend faster towards the glade he had set as a promising landing zone.

"YAHOOOOO!" Mere metres from the ground he put his two swords together to form his hover board, saving him from a messy end.

"Nice save there." Slate jumped high at being addressed so suddenly.

"GAH! WHO GOES THERE?!" as he whipped his head about he came eye to eye with a girl, maybe a head shorter than him. Her strawberry-blonde hair reached her shoulders, perfectly framing her face with inquisitive, blue eyes. She was wearing pretty straightforward combat gear over her street clothes, leather bracers and greaves protecting her forearms and shins, and a metal-studded leather harness over her shirt.

"Well, hello beautiful…" his eyes briefly darted up to her dog ears, flitting about scanning for noises all around them. "I take it you're a good girl?" He gave her his hand to shake. "The name is Slate Amarillo. Looks like we're going to be partners from now on." She accepted his hand and shook it.

"Yasmin Meški. Nice to meet you, Slate." He noticed the somewhat harsh tone in her words as he moved his hand back towards himself. Yasmin held on.

"There's just two things we need to establish before we're formally partners. One. Don't flirt. And two…" Her fist crackled with electricity as Slate looked down. Suddenly his arm spasmed wildly as she cut lose at a fraction of what she really wanted to with people like him.

"… The casual racism stops. Now."

Ouch.

AN: Oh joy, she gets to partner up with a Romeo wannabe. :P

(Recipe for Slate Amarillo: lady-killer styles of Neptune Vasilias and S1 Jaune Arc, Tahu Nuva's mastery of heat and twin fire greatswords plus the ever-present RWBY maxim of "It's also a gun.")

I just realised that Slate's and Yasmin's names both can mean "Black Yellow" and "Yellow Black" respectively. Buzz buzz.

I do not own RWBY, that's RoosterTeeth and Monty Oum.