6 Chapter 6 – The First Day

Beta read by Levi Ackermanlet

The moon shone brightly through the warehouse window, providing an ample view of the table sat at the back of the shadowy room. Roman Torchwick held his scroll up to his ear, the sounds of a conversation muffled, but present. The call ended, and Roman angrily slammed the phone down onto the desk, raising a cigar to his mouth to relax himself. A man with a grey mask and a black hood pushed a trolley up to the desk. Roman reached into his jacket and pulled out a wad of Lien, throwing it onto the side of the table.

"Open it."

The masked man raised a crowbar, and prised open the box on the trolley. As he lifted the lid, he revealed a large amount of dust crystals sat neatly inside. Orange, blue, white, red, green, and a multitude of other colours shone back at Roman as he looked them over. Reaching inside, he plucked out a blue gem and held it up for inspection.

"We're gonna need more men."

~RWBYZ~

Zuko's eyes drifted open slowly as he felt Agni's rays fill him with life. Even in some weird, different world or wherever he was, he would still feel fire each time he rose. He took some comfort in that.

He was up and moving before any of the others in the room, their soft snoozing looking almost cute in a childlike way. Except for Yang, who was snoring worse than uncle as she lay tangled up in her blankets. What a high class lady.

He ignored them as he made his way into their bathroom, a set of clothes draped over his arm. He didn't recognise much in the room beyond the bathtub. Indoor plumbing may have been a fire nation invention, and a feat of engineering that propelled the nation's health to the highest in the world, but apparently here it was just yet another ordinary thing. He felt a pang of anger at that.

It took him a while, but he eventually managed to figure out how to use the shower. He had been tempted to bathe, the tub being the way he normally kept himself clean, but he didn't have enough time. Not that it mattered in the end, as he found himself frozen in front of the mirror.

'So this is it.'

The reflection of himself, dressed head to toe in his new uniform seemed to mock him. He was a prince, but not here.

His fists clenched in anger, and his good eye locked onto his reflected burn.

'If I can find a way back, I promise I will make you proud, father. I will get my honour back.'

If only he knew a way.

"Hey, Zuko! Quit hogging the bathroom!"

Yang's shout and banging on the door brought him back to his new reality, and he turned and left. The blonde grinned as he passed her, completely failing to take note of how she was stood right next to him in her pyjamas. She disappeared inside with her own uniform, as he sat down on his mattress.

He took out one of the textbooks he had been given, and flipped through it searchingly. If there was any mention of different worlds, he needed to know.

~RWBYZ~

"Good morning, Team RWBYZ!"

Weiss fell on the floor, rudely awakened by Ruby's cheer. She sat up straight and practically screamed back at her. "What in the world is wrong with you?"

"Now that you're awake, we can officially begin our first order of business."

"Excuse me?"

Yang held up a box with posters and books jutting out of it. "Decorating!"

"What?!"

Blake lifted her suitcase onto her bed. "We still have to unpack." She opened the case, spilling all her belongings across her sheets. "Aaaand clean."

Weiss groaned and turned her head towards the sole male occupant of their dorm, who had dressed in his new uniform along with the others. But something about him seemed to be…missing…

"Hey Zuko, where's your stuff?"

The other girls looked at him questioningly, having not thought of that themselves. He gave the bag by his feet a slight kick. "That's it."

"That's it? What, a change of clothes and some swords."

"Two sets." He corrected, thinking of the blue spirit disguise he kept buried in the bottom of the bag. "And a knife, but…yeah."

"What?" Yang looked incredulously at him, even as she was hanging up a poster of some group called 'THE ACHIEVE MEN'. "You don't have anything else? Not even some pictures?"

"No." He was growing increasingly annoyed by their decorating. On his ship, he'd been free to hang a flag, decorate his walls with his swords, and store some meditation candles. Even if that was essentially all he'd done, it was still less spartan than what being on the run had done to him. He didn't even have his Earth Kingdom hat to complete the set of rags he wore as clothes.

"So…" Ruby nervously tapped the ends of her fingers together. "Does this mean we can use your space?"

"Go ahead." Honestly, so long as he got a place to sleep he could deal with it. Would deal with it.

Ruby cheered and began to position her scythe on the wall. Likewise, the rest of the team began to decorate their own little corners of the room. Weiss hung a poster of some forest that was apparently called 'Forever Fall', while Blake had set about unpacking her books.

All the while, Zuko was sat bored out of his mind on the floor. He couldn't leave since he at least needed to make sure he got somewhere to sleep, and he couldn't even sharpen his swords since he didn't have a whetstone. So he tried to make himself a little bit more comfortable in his uniform.

It was painfully constricting, particularly around his neck. Thankfully though, it was at least mostly black, and it even had some orange in with it as well. Orange was close enough to red in his mind, and he was thankful the black wasn't something worse like a dark blue. He managed having to disguise himself as some Earth Kingdom peasant, but a Water Tribal? He shivered at the thought.

When the girls were finally done, they had ended up pulling all the beds into the centre of the room before they realised the problem. Ever grumpy, Weiss felt the need to point it out first.

"This isn't going to work."

"It is a bit cramped." To her surprise, Blake agreed with her.

"Maybe we should ditch some of our stuff..." Yang suggested, though not with the intention of losing any of her own things.

Ruby snapped her fingers as she had a brain wave. "Or we could ditch the beds... and replace them with bunk beds!"

"Umm, that sounds incredibly dangerous."

"And super-awesome!"

"It does seem efficient."

"Well, we should put it to a vote!" Weiss crossed her arms in frustration, not exactly enamoured with the idea of trusting her life in Ruby's construction skills.

"I think we just did."

"That's not true, Zuko hasn't voted." She turned on him expectantly, only to find him already trying to hang his mattress from the corner ceiling. He paused as he felt her eyes bare down on him.

"You ladies do what you want."

With his vote now received, he returned to knotting some ropes together as the other girls began to awkwardly mount their beds on one another. They ended up using a mixture of ropes, and book stacking to fit the beds in place, with Ruby hanging a blanket over hers to form a tent. Zuko's was much the same as it was before, only hanging in the air with a series of ropes serving as reinforcement.

"Objective complete!" Ruby cheered, standing back to appreciate their work. "Allllright! Our second order of business iiiiiiiis...classes... Now, we have a few classes together today. At 9, we've got to be-"

"What?! Did you say 9 o'clock?" Weiss shrieked as she leapt to her feet.

"Uuuum..."

"It's 8:55, you dunce!"

Weiss didn't wait for a response before she was sprinting out the room and down the hall.

"Um… To class!"

~RWBYZ~

"Monsters! Deeeemons... Prowlers of the night! Yes, the creatures of Grimm have many names, but I merely refer to them as prey! Ha-ha!"

Zuko stared in silence at the professor's terrible joke. He'd gotten lost very early in the class when the man had begun using all sorts of terms Zuko had never heard of. He glanced at the notebook by his hand, pages upon pages filled with questions.

What's a Fanus?

What's aura?

Four kingdoms?

Age of human existence?

Dust powers?

After a while, he'd simply given up and tried his best to at least pick up what he could. He'd figured out at least that Dust was some sort of material that powered things, much like how the Fire Nation had been using coal for their ships.

"Uhhhh... And you shall too, upon graduating from this prestigious academy! Now, as I was saying: Vale, as well as the other three kingdoms, are safe havens in an otherwise treacherous world! Our planet is absolutely teeming with creatures that would love nothing more than to tear you to pieces! And that's where we come in. Huntsmen! Huntresses... Individuals who have sworn to protect those who cannot protect themselves! From what, you ask? Why, the very world!"

Zuko groaned to himself. Could this teacher be any more dramatic? He'd already been charged with capturing the second most powerful being in the world when he was a child. The Avatar practically was the world's power, being second only to Zuko's own father.

"That is what you are training to become. But first: A story. A tale of a young, handsome man... Me! When I was a boy..."

Giving up, Zuko let his head slam onto his desk.

'Even the Royal Tutors weren't this boring, the bunch of stuck up old know it alls.'

Zuko allowed himself to dream that he was back in the palace again. First the tutors would drill him on fire nation history, each and every day as if something new had happened since. Later would be the war lessons. Logistics, moral, terrain strengths, supply lines, intelligence operations, Zuko had covered all of it.

"...Despite smelling of cabbages, my grandfather was a wise man. 'Peter', he told me..."

Later in the day would be combat training. Always fire bending, never his swords. Nobody, save for his uncle, really knew that he was actually trained in sword fighting. His uncle, and master Piandao.

"In the end, the Beowolf was no match for my sheer tenacity, and I returned to my village with the beast in captivity and my head held high, celebrated as a hero!"

The man wasn't supposed to have been teaching Zuko the way of the sword. He'd actually been sent to the man to learn battle tactics from his days in the war. Until one day, Zuko had picked up a sword, and became one with it. It was wrong though. He shouldn't have learnt it, even if it had been useful later on. He should have spent that time fire bending so that he hadn't been such a dishonourable failure.

"The moral of this story? A true Huntsman must be honorable!"

Of course that was all he was really, a failure. Never listening, never succeeding. Always failing when people had been counting on him.

"A true Huntsman must be dependable!"

Like that war council. His uncle had been counting on him to keep quiet. To know that it wasn't okay to speak. But instead, he'd been an idiot.

"A true Huntsman must be strategic, well-educated, and wise!"

Zuko gritted his hands in rage. Now, he'd never be able to right his mistakes. He'd never get his honour back.

"So, who among you believes themselves to be the embodiment of these traits?"

"I do, sir!"

The shout snapped Zuko from his spiralling thoughts as he looked to see who it was. For some reason, Weiss was now standing up in the classroom with her hand raised, and also casting a very non-subtle glare over at Ruby.

"Wonderful! As per his scholarship requirements however…I'm afraid that I must choose Mr Lee for this demonstration."

Weiss grumpily sat back down into her seat, and the classroom went silent.

"Uh…Mr Lee? Zuko?"

Zuko glanced up to see Professor Port gazing right at him.

"…yes?"

"Please change into your combat attire. You have an opponent to face."

He gestured towards the cage in the corner of the room. It shook fiercely as whatever was inside of it expressed its…displeasure, at being locked up. Still confused, Zuko got up and left the room.

~RWBYZ~

When he returned with his swords and Earth Kingdom robes, the classroom was practically bursting with anticipation for the fight. All the time they'd had to spend waiting had made them eager to finally see some action, so much so that there was almost a cheer when Zuko arrived.

He took his place at the front of the classroom, the large rattling cage opposite him.

"Goooo, Zuko!" Called Yang, pumping her fist in the air with excitement.

"Fight well!" Blake was far more restrained, even if she was waving a small flag with RWBYZ printed on it. Ruby on the other hand, took after her sister.

"Yeah, represent teeeeam RWBYZ!"

"Ruby! He's trying to focus!" Weiss was feeling particularly grumpy about not being able to prove herself to the professor.

"Oh, um... Sorry..."

"Allllright!" Professor Port took his place beside the cage and hefted a large axe. "Let the match... begin!"

The cage door fell down as Port chopped the lock with his axe, with Zuko dropping into a fire bending stance without hesitation. It looked like a Grimm version of a Rhino-Bull, only hideously mutated with the Grimm's trademark spikes and red eyes. It took one look at him and charged.

Zuko punched forwards to fireblast it, when only a whisp of smoke leapt from his fist. His eyes went wide, and punched again even harder with his other hand. The second time he managed a spark, but it was too little, and Zuko was too late to dodge out the way as it charged right into him.

There was a cry from the crowd as Zuko was flung backwards onto his back. The Grimm didn't wait for him to stand up before charging towards him again. Zuko managed to rise to a crouch before it caught him, allowing him to dive out the way just in the nick of time.

"Oh ho ho! Well recovered, Mr Lee. Might I suggest your swords this time?"

Zuko tuned out the professor's suggestion even as he pulled out his blades. When the beast next charged him, he was clear of it with ease, slashing at its side as it passed him. One of the swings bounced off a spike, but the other managed to hit its flesh. When Zuko saw it turn to face him for another charge however, he saw that the cut was barely more than a scratch.

'Damn it. Tough hide like a Rhino-Bull too.'

"It'll take more than that, young man."

It charged towards him yet again, and Zuko charged back at it. He dove through the air just as it was almost upon him, hitting the ground and rolling directly underneath. Blood dripped from his blades, a mark of the slash he'd just made.

As it passed him, it faltered in its steps, dropping to the floor after only a few more metres.

'Same weak belly as one too…'

"Bravo! Bra-vo! It appears we are indeed in the presence of a true Huntsman-in-training!" The professor smacked Zuko playfully in the chest, bringing a very real wince to his face. "I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. Be sure to cover the assigned readings, and... stay vigilant! Class dismissed!"

Zuko walked back up the steps towards the classroom exit, most of his team cheering for him as he approached them. Ruby held up her hand as he grew closer.

"Yay! High-five?"

He passed her without comment, his team members watching him in confusion.

'What in Agni's name just happened!?'

He stomped out of the classroom and stopped. Ruby and the others awkwardly following him.

"Uh…Zuko…?"

'First I lose everything I've ever worked for, now this place takes my fire too!?'

"Are you okay?"

Ruby cautiously reached her hand out to touch his shoulder. Just before she reached him, he suddenly snarled and punched a hole in the locker opposite him.

'No! This must be something else…'

He stomped off down the hallway, his mind racing away.

'Find uncle. He'll know.'

Ruby looked from Zuko, to the dented locker, then to her team.

"What was…?"

"I don't know. Is he…embarrassed?" Yang asked openly, remembering the painful looking hit he'd taken.

"So, uh…what should we do?"

Weiss suddenly groaned and turned back to the classroom. Storming off to see the professor and complain about the mistake that was Ruby being leader. The red-haired girl in question hung her head sadly. It hadn't even been a day, and already felt like she was doing a terrible job as a leader. Slowly, she wandered away to try and find Ozpin…maybe she could swap with someone…