The Grimm with a soul

A shared expierience

The past few weeks had been both incredibly eventful, and incredibly calm. Team RWBY's raid on Roman Torchwick's hideout had been more successful than originally expected. Ruby and her team had slowed down their enemies, as well as the Grimm, giving Teams JNPR, CFVY, SSSN, and the Atlassian military, enough time to ready themselves and launch a counter-attack. They pushed into the tunnels and continued to slay the Grimm, insuring that none could break through again. There were still members of the White Fang hiding below ground, most of who had not expected to be flanked or were left onboard the train, and chose to either die fighting or surrender.

The march was slow given the debris, but thanks to General Ironwood deploying a full company of his armour division, they were able to punch through and allow the Huntsmen and the soldiers to press deeper. Their mission, though unknown to the Huntsmen-in-training, was to recover any and all intelligence that remained, in whatever condition they found it. Correspondences, notes, dossiers, hard drives, maps, manifests; anything that could provide the Huntmasters with information about their enemy's plans. Unfortunately there was not much intelligence to gather.

Despite his cleverness in covering his tracks, Torchwick had not been able to escape, and was currently being held "prisoner" by Ironwood. Only compiling due to the deal he had made with Shadow, but his knowledge wasn't needed.

Unfortunately for the elder Huntsmen, there was one piece of information they weren't provided; a piece held by Yang Xiao Long. Team RWBY had been asked to file reports about their assault on the train with Doctor Oobleck. Ruby's report was most appreciated as she had been captured by Torchwick, and Ozpin and Ironwood were hoping that she would have been privy to information that they had not yet discovered.

However, they were looking in the wrong place, as Yang's report would have held information that would both illuminate and complicate the situation...if she had chosen to mention it. Yang had lied in her report that her opponent had fled after taking too much damage, leaving out that she had been saved by an unknown warrior. This warrior, clad head to toe in black with a strange helmet, and possibly wielding a sword, had scared off Yang's attacker, before leaving without a word by opening a portal. Without question the knowledge of this new player would be valued by Ozpin and his allies, as not only someone with the power to create portals alarming, but attempting to discover the allegiance of said warrior, would be paramount.

Of course none present would have been able to identify this new warrior. No emblems or insignias, no Kingdom crests, no uniform, nothing at all to point to their origin. Yang hadn't even able to tell what gender they were, or if they were Human or Faunus. With nothing to work with, and given that she was barely conscious with blurred vision at the time of her rescue, Yang decided not to mention the warrior; as a way of thanking them, if nothing else. Both the White Fang and Torchwick's goons had appeared to have gone underground, making no visible movements, signaling that they may have gone dormant for the time being. This then left Huntmaster-General Ironwood and Huntmaster Ozpin to their own devices, combing over the intelligence they recovered, along with continuing to plan the Vytal Festival Tournament.

This had been what the others decided to focus on as well, as both Team RWBY and JNPR began to train for the upcoming event. Their recent battles had made it clear that they needed to sharpen their skills, as well as polish up their teamwork. Both captains were aware of this fact most of all, Ruby for being so easily defeated and captured, and Jaune for being himself.

They realized that things needed to change and change quickly, not only for the upcoming tournament battles, but for all battles to come. If they were to be true Huntsmen, to take on not only the hordes of Grimm, but evil people, Human and Faunus alike, they would need to improve. Ruby began focusing on refining her tactics and team combinations, maximizing not only her effectiveness as a sniper, but the effectiveness of her teammates.