A/N: Because plot bunnies will not leave me alone. Enjoy.

000

It might be surprising for some people to hear, but watching Pyrrha Nikos train was dreadfully boring. She was incredibly skilled, sure. In a competition as cutthroat as the yearly Mistral Regional Tournament you didn't get to be a champion – even in the junior divisions – without both being fabulously naturally gifted and dumping an obsessive number of hours into honing that gift to a dangerous razor's edge. However that didn't change the fact that overwhelming majority of Pyrrha Nikos' martial training boiled down to improving her fitness and long tedious hours of ingraining increasingly complex maneuvers into muscle memory. The fact that it obviously worked since she had won the yearly MRT tournament three years in a row didn't change the fact that after the first hour it became incredibly dull to watch.

Still, spying on her training was necessary. I'd taken to watching Pyrrha train as often as I could, especially as this year's MRT was quickly approaching. Why was I spying on her, one might ask? The reason was simple – simply, it was to make sure Pyrrha didn't become champion four years in a row. That was my "mission" right now, and it could not afford to fail. Pyrrha Nikos winning the MRT for a fourth time had become an unacceptable outcome. The... fun and somewhat faded memories I had of watching another "Pyrrha Nikos" in another life maybe made things a little harder, but... worrying about a stranger's feelings wasn't the sort of luxury a person like me could afford. That had been made abundantly clear early on. Remnant, I'd found, was a far less cheerful and tolerant place than the web-show RWBY had led me to believe.

The gym that Pyrrha trained in was the most famous one in Mistral outside of Heaven Academy, the Mistral Gymnasium, an absolutely gigantic building that reminded me in many ways of an aircraft hangar. It was divided into many subsections of different sizes and containing different equipment, and Nikos's sponsors had been quite generous in renting out a sizable space for her exclusive use. However whoever had designed the building probably didn't put in too much thought into securing the place from snoopers and spies. The rafters of the building were full of seldom used maintenance platforms, battens and fly systems for lighting, all of them secured with little more than a padlock on a metal gate. Getting in undetected had been, quite frankly, trivial at that point.

No matter how boring it was, I continued to intently watch Pyrrha as she went through the same maneuver with her shield and spear yet again, her coach spewing out a constant stream of minute corrections and encouragements. Memorizing everything was important, as it might provide the critical edge needed to bring her down. I sat with my legs crossed on a metal walkway high up in the ceiling, concealed in shadow, and resisted the urge to sigh as I lost yet another afternoon in this boring – but very necessary – endeavor.

That's when I felt it – vibrations on the metal walkway I was sitting on. A moment later, the sound of footsteps, the rustling of cloth, the crinkling of something that sounded like plastic. I narrowed my eyes. It sounded like someone was coming up here – no one was supposed to come up here. Could it be someone with the same intentions that I had? The smart thing was probably to hide, but... I wouldn't have been opposed to a confrontation either. Before I could decide on what to do the person in question came into view.

My gaze became cold and distant as I noticed who had turned a corner into sight. It was a security guard. He was a broad man who looked somewhere in his late twenties, looking down as he walked while pulling a pack of smokes out of his pocket. Funny, I knew for a fact that no security was supposed to come up here, ever. Apparently this joker was going to catch me where I wasn't supposed to be because he'd wanted to sneak off somewhere to have a smoke.

Inconvenient. By no means insurmountable, but inconvenient.

The security guard was so busy trying to light up a cigarette that he didn't notice me until he was just three or four steps away. He stopped when he saw me, eyes widening and taking an involuntary step back, cigarette almost falling from his lips. I just stared at him, eyes so brown they were almost black regarding him with a blank look as I waited to see if I would need to handle this with words or violence.

"Uh, hey," he said after he regained his wits, fear briefly passing through his face. He wasn't supposed to be up here either after all. "Um. Hey, listen girl. I was just doing my rounds. You can't be up here, you know."

Liar.

I said nothing, just stared at him. It seemed to unnerve him. He licked his lips nervously, eyes roaming over my body. How utterly... unimpressive.

"Listen, you can't be up here. Are you a member? If so I'm going to need to see ID and your membership card," the man said, pulling himself up straighter and visibly trying to draw up an air of authority around himself. Please. You're basically just a thug in a fancy uniform.

"Really?" I said in a dull monotone, deliberately bringing up one of my hands to casually cup my chin. "I do not have either of those things, I'm afraid."

I saw him hesitate briefly at hearing my accent. That always tended to happen. I didn't really speak like anyone else around here.

"You mean you don't have them with you, or...?" his question trailed off as his eyes landed on my hand cupping my chin. Or, more specifically, on the unnaturally thick and pointed nails that adorned my hand.

Unnatural for a human, anyway.

He didn't call me an animal or beast or anything, which was nice I suppose. However his eyes did narrow after seeing the black-grey claws on my hand, his posture turning from authoritative to aggressive as his brain realized I wasn't quite what he'd thought I was. His expression transformed from slightly uncomfortable to one that made it clear he found my presence about the same level of appealing as dog shit found on the bottom of his shoes. Slowly but purposefully the security reached down and withdrew the standard police issue night stick he'd had tied around his waist.

"You're trespassing, vagrant," he said, spitting the last word out like a curse. "Come peacefully and I'll lock you up until the police get here. Try anything funny and I'll beat you black and blue out of self defense, and I'll even make sure that the cops have enough to make that charge stick, too." He took an aggressive step forward, attempting to use his size to intimidate me, waving the night stick threateningly in my general direction.

"Well, what's it going to be, freak?" he demanded.

One corner of my lips quirked upwards at his words.

Then I moved.

I was up from a sitting position and attacking him before he could blink. To his credit, the guard must have had some kind of training because he managed to bring up his night stick to put it between him and me. I tightened the muscles of my forearm and flared my Aura.

Snikt!

The thick, pointed nails on my hand grew from half an inch to three inches of razor sharp keratin covered in Aura. With a swipe of my hand I took out his weapon, my claws cutting through the non-Aura enhanced material of his night stick like a scythe through play dough. It fell to pieces, and I relished the frightened look on the guard's eyes before I threw my other fist forward. It crashed into his face, breaking his nose with a very satisfying crunch.

The security guard collapsed with a yell, clutching his face as blood streamed out. I capitalized on my advantage and kicked out, striking him on the head. He moved at the last second however and my foot only clipped him, sending him spinning and eliciting a pitifully frightened shout. I took a step forwards and then kicked him in the head again. Then again. Then again. Finally I managed to render him completely unconscious.

I looked down at the security guard, blood streaming from various places on his head, and only felt a vague sense of disappointment that this racist asshole had gone down so easily. Hopefully I'd given him a bad concussion. A bad concussion would mean he wouldn't remember my face, something I couldn't exactly afford unless I wanted my future visits to Mystral Gymnasium to get a good deal more complicated. Unlike my last world, people on Remnant tended to heal from anything short of death and dismemberment... eventually. The idiot at my feet would most likely be fine. Probably.

Now it was time to decide where to dump him. I began moving to pick him up when something stopped me. It wasn't the presence of something that drew my attention, but rather the absence of something.

The sound of training below me had stopped.

Even though it went through my mind that it was probably a terrible idea to do so, I still stepped up to the edge of the catwalk and looked down.

Sure enough there was Pyrrha Nikos, with a seriously unhappy look on her face, looking up straight at me. The rafters were dark enough to hide in but in this position Pyrrha and I could see each other clearly enough. Our eyes met, hers filled with righteous fury, mine quickly filling back up with a protective barrier of cool indifference.

"What did that man ever do to you?" she demanded hotly, pointing towards the crumpled wreck lying still at my feet.

I briefly looked down at the unmoving racist prick of a security guard before bringing my gaze back up to meet Pyrrha's furious emerald eyes. For some reason I answered her with the truth.

"He got in my way."

The way she tensed up at that, the way her hands tightened around her shield and weapon and the way she shifted her stance as if preparing to run or jump told me that it was definitely time to go.

Jumping onto a beam behind me I knew that my silhouette would practically melt into the shadows. I began to head back, the memory of angry green eyes staying with me all the way back to the Kuchinashi slums.