And then a bunch of unimportant stuff happened but eventually they got launched into a forest. The usual landing strategies were employed, and Ruby used her Semblance to tackle Blaze and land in a tree. With the two of them together, they held hands and leapt down onto the forest floor.

Elsewhere, Weiss was fighting a bunch of Grimm, remembering her training and rocketing towards one Grimm in a lethal Stinger attack. But before she could strike true and begin a Million Stabs before High Timing it up and switching to Swordmaster to do an air combo before Helm Splitting it back to the ground, someone who stole most of his moves from a different source got involved.

A swarm of rose petals struck the Grimm and became a girl dressed in red and black, slashing the beast apart in one hit before throwing her armoured brother at another Grimm hard enough to crush it.

Weiss stumbled to a stop and swung her blade in a random direction, sending out a wave of fire, but Blaze grabbed a nearby Ursa and threw it at the fire before it could start a forest fire.

"Hey," Blaze casually greeted her.

"Oh, great! Crater Face and her lover-boy." Weiss groaned.

"I'm her brother, you jerk!" Blaze snapped.

"That makes it even worse!" Weiss shouted back.

"We aren't together, you dolt!" Blaze shouted back.

"Then why do you hold hands so often?"

"Why is nobody holding your hand?!"

"Because unlike you, I don't need anyone to hold my hand!" She shouted, and pointed at Ruby. "You should be more careful around dust! You could have blasted me off a cliff!"

"How about I make it up to you by throwing you off the nearest cliff myself?" Blaze shouted.

"Guys, quit fighting!" Ruby yelled. "We all saw each other, so we're teammates now! We need to work together to complete this task!"

"Forget this task! I'd rather fail than work with two dunces who don't even know how to be safe around dust."

"Would you give that lie a rest? You crashed into us, and your suitcases full of dust fell to the ground. Big SDC suitcases for tiny dust vials, I'm sure those suitcases can take a few knocks, right? Everything would have been fine if you didn't take that dust out and shake it in my sister's face! She's already apologized for the mess you made, now stop disgracing yourself already! God, I'd say you're a disgrace to your family name if it was ever worth anything. Go berate some Faunus slave who's forced to listen to your nonsense, I'm out of here. Come on, Ruby. Let's leave this ice queen alone with her friends."

He turned and started walking away, fully intent on leaving Weiss to deal with the Grimm around her.

An enraged Weiss silently readied her sword, and prepared to strike from the back in a fit of rage, before stopping. "Hey, you!" She decided to call out. "Blaze Rose, isn't it? Once I've defeated these Grimm, you're next!"

He stopped, laughed, and returned to the fight. "Don't make me laugh, that flimsy little toothpick of yours couldn't even pierce my armour!" Blaze laughed, drawing his rectangular red and gold weapon from his back. He clenched his left fist, activating the Yang-inspired gold-lined crimson gauntlet on that hand. Its thick metal segments started to spread themselves out and massive 50MG Dust Bullets far larger than a shotgun shell were revealed. This wasn't a weapon for turning a rapid flurry of blows into a devastating stream of gunfire, this was a weapon for turning single one-armed punches into decisive battle-ending strikes, no matter how the arm-shattering forces of recoil blasted him back or wore on his aura. He wished he had a Semblance like Yang's that could turn that devastating recoil into even more damage on his extra strikes, but he still hadn't unlocked his Semblance. For all he knew, it could be anything.

The red and gold rectangle in his right hand unfolded itself, steam spraying out, motor engines whirring. Segments stretched and locked into place until the device was a mighty tower shield with a sharp triangular base and a long sword hilt sticking out of the top. He shoved his shield onto his left forearm, leaving his fist free for punches, punches made into lethal rocket strikes by that deadly left gauntlet. "This shield's name is Mordread. I mixed Gravity dust with lightning dust to create Magnet Dust! It's infused with enough of that stuff to bounce back any projectile, or keep any melee attacker's weapon helplessly stuck to it. But that isn't a sword..."

He drew the hilt from his shield, revealing that it lacked a blade. And then he revved its gold snakeskin handle like a motorcycle, rotating its multicoloured round dust-filled Pommel to craft a long and flaming yet weightless Zweihander blade out of red Fire dust. That incredibly long blade would be difficult for a grown man to wield without aura, yet the thing was as weightless as it got without a solid blade, balanced in the hilt for manoeuvrability that would rival a fencer's foil. Yet with the weapon's ability to change dust type and weapon shape freely, it could easily take on the explosive force of fire dust, the shocking power of lightning dust, the chilling cold of ice dust, a standard force blade, or the deadly weight of gravity dust. "That's a sword!"

Ruby started fighting the Grimm around them, since these two were determined to stand around and watch Blaze show off his weaponry.

He activated his right gauntlet, expanding to reveal more massive dust cartridges. But this wasn't a weapon in its own right, this was something else. Metallic vices on rotating metal arms emerged from that gauntlet to clamp themselves onto the sides of his sword hilt, screwing themselves shut. They could rotate and bend to and fro, they kept a solid grip on his weapon, and they wouldn't get in the way of his sword swings or restrict his weapon's mobility in any way. And as he fired one cartridge, Weiss saw exactly what that gauntlet was for. The sound of cannonfire rang out to blast their eardrums and shatter those of anyone listening without aura, delivering pain to the Grimm, as all the densely-packed electricity in a single 50MG bullet of dust was unleashed in a single strike, the spent shell ejected and falling to the ground. Lethal amounts of shocking electrical dust zapped its way through the metal arms and into the weapon's hilt, electrifying the crimson blade and wreathing it in deadly gold. Before everyone's eyes, lightning wreathed the Zweihander to engulf and lengthen and widen and sharpen and thicken it, turning the reasonably long and thin sword into an impossibly long and thick seven foot testament to Dust's power. "And this? This is my sword!"

"For your weapons to handle so much dust... Such craftsmanship..." Weiss gasped.

"You've seen my sword, Mordread. You've seen my sword, Excaliber. You've seen my left gauntlet for shooting foes with whatever I want, Double Down. And you've seen my right gauntlet for enhancing my Excaliber's power beyond its limits, Ante Up."

Weiss seemed only a little shaken by the prospect of fighting this man, until she remembered that he was not a man, but a child. And she'd faced foes with far larger swords before. He wielded mighty weaponry, but how well could he use it?

And did he really have a counter for... That trick she could do?

She pointed her sword at him, forming a Gravity Dust-infused Glyph beneath him. And just like that, the mighty warrior was brought to his knees, and then to his chest, stuck to the ground.

"You're weighed down by all that armour, and all those weapons... All the Dust in the world couldn't do you any good if you can't lift a thing!" She gloated.

But his overcharged blade, touching the ground, sent flaming thunder shockwaves in random directions as it started to overheat. Some waves homed in on Grimm and struck true, incinerating them. Some struck trees and started small fires. Weiss dodged one that headed right for her, losing concentration on the Glyph beneath Blaze, which shrunk and faded away.

"You fool!" Blaze grinned, hopping to his feet.

Weiss remembered him and formed the Gravity Glyph beneath him again, disabling him once more even as a forest fire started to rage and numerous Grimm started to arrive. Weiss looked uncertainly at the worsening conditions around her, and considered bailing.

He turned his head up at her and grinned. "Did you forget... how my armour works?"

For a brief moment, the Gravity Runes on his armour activated, and his red and gold armour turned black. And then he fell right at Weiss, becoming a lethal projectile she leapt twenty feet in the air to avoid.

He aimed his gun gauntlet at her, preparing to fire, but she formed a row of Glyphs beneath him that increased his speed.

And so he sped up and missed his chance to shoot as he sailed on past her, falling horizontally without end.

Weiss landed and turned to watch him go, wondering if he was going to stop and turn around any time soon.

Could... Could he even do that? Or was he using this as an excuse to leave this fight? Was he not sure if he could win? Was he the type to never fight someone unless he was sure he could win? Did he intentionally start this fire to leave behind a situation he had an excuse to leave? Was he secretly a tactical genius hiding behind the veneer of a foolish and cheerful peppy little airhead with an admirable protective streak and a hidden well of burning fury?

"Well, he's not stopping any time soon." Ruby said deadpanly. "Guess it's just you and me now."

A burning tree fell near the two girls as the forest fire grew into an inferno even the Grimm started to flee from.

Weiss grabbed Ruby and fled, and once they'd gotten to safety, they called each other idiots or whatever. Weiss blamed Ruby for getting in the way of an attack and "Not showing the proper restraint" even though she was the one whose lack of restraint almost started a forest fire. She then called Blaze a dolt for actually starting a forest fire with the weapon she'd forced him to drop. She'd been impressed before, but now it seemed she'd completely lost all respect for the young man and his weaponsmithing abilities. Ruby sliced a tree in half that very easily could have been the absolute knucklehead known as Weiss. Looking back on the good old days before everything hit the fan, even an adult Weiss herself would struggle to believe there was ever a time when she was this detestable. They argued a lot later, too. But some day, they would become very close.

Meanwhile...