The Pre-Tournament Entertainment

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss woke up exactly where she fell, grass tickling her legs as the sun glowed in her face.. “Good morning, team RWBY!” She heard Ruby yell, Just like she did any other morning, once upon a time.
Weiss didn’t even react to the noise, finding she couldn’t even bring herself to resent the fact she was constantly hearing voices. It was the closest she got to seeing the girl for real.
“Well, time to get moving then, Weiss.” She said to herself, dimly hoping to hear some reply other than the wind. In some ways she almost missed sitting in front of the fountain. Even if it was just a fake image of her team leader, it was a lot better than the reality she found herself in on a constant basis. Still, she just got the wind as a response, and she realized that’s all she should have really expected.
She was actually sad about the fact that she didn’t get to hallucinate in a delusional haze. Weiss knew it was nothing short of pathetic, but she also wondered if it was the only time she’d ever see a familiar face during her time in the Omniverse.
And then she wondered if she couldn’t find a way to make Omni bored of her.
Shaking her head at the thought, she knew she couldn’t do that. At least… Not yet. Whatever pain she felt from just living at this point, she had an obligation to her leader that transcended that. Even if she spent a hundred years looking, she’d make up for what she’d done.



---20 minutes later---


:”First, food…” she found herself saying with a slight groan. “...probably water, too.’
She recalled what the guy from the stall had said earlier. She may as well hike it over there - not like she had a lot of options to choose from in the first place. She needed energy to train… or get omnilium, however it worked in this world. And she needed to see if she couldn’t find Ruby while she was at it. She could be here… the idea filled Weiss with the closest thing she’d felt to “Happiness” and “excitement” in a while, and she realized she was smiling for the first time in a while.

She found herself walking, not grudgingly, but almost happily at the idea. That girl, for whatever else she wanted to do in life, was definitely fight-happy. She might even have entered the tournament by now. She hadn’t seen her name on the list… but she might just be on her way here. Or maybe just coming to watch - though that seemed unlikely. Ruby never missed a chance to show off her skills with her sweetheart.

“Of course, I also didn’t used to mope around and struggle just to wake up in the morning. Six months is a long time…” The smile disappeared from Weiss’s face. Her steps stopped, and her eyes widened as she stood straight in the middle of the carnival area.
If Ruby was here… Was she okay? Plenty of stuff seemed harmful here.
She could be hurt… or imprisoned somewhere.
She might be completely alone - and feeling as bad as Weiss did right now.
She might have even been a secondary, instead of a prime, and-

Weiss’s heart stopped at the thought, and she found herself breathing far too fast.
“N… No, she’d be okay, I know she’s okay. She’s too…” Weiss took a breath, thinking of something, anything she could do to avoid this subject.


“...I can’t. I can’t think about this.” Weiss muttered to herself. She had a goal. she knew what to do next. If she let herself think about those sinister “what-ifs”, she'd just succeed in going insane. She needed something else to focus on.
As she walked, she saw a sign. “Looking for participants to opening show - coliseum - participate in a battle against ferocious beasts for fun and profit.”
“It’s a dumb idea. I’m already going to be in a dangerous battle pretty soon. I should be using this opportunity to train and fortify my body, not throw myself into a dangerous battle without any meaning..”
But then again, Weiss had already made a bunch of stupid decisions just getting here. What was one more?

---30 minutes later---

“Aren’t you already signed up for the tournament of primes?”
Weiss sighed. “Does that mean I can’t enter the match?” She asked.
The small man behind the wooden booth shook his head emphatically. He kind of reminded weiss of a talking bush, with his dirty blonde hair covering half his face and his beard halfway to the floor. A dwarf, that’s what the bespectacled man was called here...

“Well, no, I just… It’s rare for a competitor to enter into two different tournaments at the first time… You’re aware that if you get too injured to fight in the first round of tomorrow’s tournament, you’ll be disqualified before the match even starts, yes?” The man asked.
Weiss tapped her foot impatiently. “No. I figured I’d let someone wheel me in on a hospital bed. I’m more than aware of the risks I take, thank you. I definitely don’t need someone who doesn’t know me second-guess my decisions at entering a life-threatening tournament… while I happen to be sort of immortal.”

“Still not sure if that’s a blessing or not, either.”

The man huffed. “Fine. It’s not my problem anyway. Have fun or whatever, you’re on in an hour. get into the prep area.”
Weiss nodded, and glared. “You’re right. It’s not.” she replied, walking through the gates.
She’d heard that tone from way too many people these past six months.

“Weiss, You need to think this through.”
“Weiss, you need to think about your future.[/]”
“[I]Weiss, there’s a time where you have to accept reality.”.

“Shut up.” She found herself muttering, before sighing. She was in a whole new world entirely, and here, there weren’t any more distracting voices.
If nothing else, she was finally in a position to fully focus on what was important: Finding her leader.

“Just for the cost of my world, the rest of my friends, any idea what’s going on around me, most of my mental health…” She thought bitterly.

Weiss took a breath. She walked towards the door to the coliseum's back entrance - unless the little guy had taken enough offense to direct her somewhere else entirely. She was a little surprised as she found it to just be an unlocked, shabby-looking wooden door. If nothing else, they seemed relatively confident no one would break in.

Then again, this probably wasn’t where people went if they were the star attraction. Weiss had only signed up for a match as an “opening act”, so to speak.
Weiss pulled on the handle, the door groaning loudly as if in protest at the action. A badly lit room was inside, and Weiss was surprised to see candles of all things. Just how low-tech was this place?

Well, it didn’t matter, she supposed. If Omni really just pulled people from anywhere he wanted as he pleased, it’s not like she could count on her competition being the same. She just hoped these people were ready to keep a tournament like this under control, if it came down to it. The idea of Torchwick coming here and showing these people just what he could do with dust wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Hello?” Weiss asked into the incoming darkness. “I was told to report here for a match. So… I’m here. Or is this just empty and I’m talking to absolutely nothing right now?” Weiss asked into the dark.
A hand grabbed her from behind, one large, firm, and calloused.
A hand grabbed her face, and Weiss felt her movement abruptly halt. “Come here, princess!”
Weiss immediately dashed forward, rolling her shoulder as she did so, and turned around as she drew Myrtenaster, just on instinct.

An entirely dumbfounded knight stared back at her, his body mostly concealed behind the comforting defense of steel plate, and his hands held up in a sign of peace.
“Wow, wow, hey, sorry.”
Weiss blinked. She’d just allowed her memories to run away with her, again.

“I’m just here to give you access to anything you need here and explain the basics. You’re able to bring your own gear in this fight, since, frankly, it’s better for the crowd’s to show off a prime’s flashy distinctiveness, but anything you want for gear is here. We have all manner of weaponry and armor available.”

Weiss nodded. “Thanks, but… I think I’ll be okay. Armor’d slow me down too much.”
The man’s eyes seemed to relax slightly behind the slits Weiss could see in his visor. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Armor’s not that big a weight, ya know. average suit of full plate’s only tween 15 and 25 pounds, and it’s spread all over the body proper, right? I might not be able to beat ya in a footrace with this on, but I bet you’d be surprised how fast I can be.”
Weiss raised an eyebrow.

“The place I’m from doesn’t really have armor like that anymore, to be honest, so I actually don’t. When you have car-sized Grimm smashing people around, the trauma wasn’t stopped by armor.”

“These grimm some sort of animals?” the knight asked. “Yeah, I can see that, then. This outfit’ll stop a sword, easy, but you don’t want to deal with the bastard with a good enough club. And I guess it wouldn’t help you all that much given what you’re fighting.”
Weiss realized she’d gotten so caught up in idle chit-chat that she hadn’t realized she had a fight to win. “On that note… what am I fighting?”

“Some dire wolf they caught. Served someone from the old horde, so it really can’t think of much but fighting and eating. Some of the orcs figured it might be a kindness to at least let it die fighting rather than imprisoned, so here we are with a match in five minutes.”
Weiss’s eyes widened. “Five minutes?!”

The knight shrugged. “We were shortlisted. I was probably going to have to conduct the match myself if you didn’t come wandering in. It’s why I’m all geared up.” The knight said with a trace of amusement. “Begging your pardon, but I’m much happier a prime’s doing it instead. No offense, but it’s a lot easier on my mind knowing that the worst that’ll happen is someone getting minorly inconvenienced for a few days, rather than possibly dying.”
Weiss nodded shortly. “I mean, I’m not saying I don’t care if you die or anythi-”

Weiss cut him off. “I don’t really care either. It’s fine. So just direct me to the gate I’m supposed to come out of, or something.”
“Alright. So you know, there really aren’t any rules on this one. No involving the audience is one. Keep to the coliseum, and don’t keep a down for longer than ten seconds. Other than that… You’re fighting a wild animal. Not exactly a lot of formality for that, you know?” The knight asked jovially.

“So where, exactly?” Was Weiss’s only response.
The knight almost seemed to jump in surprise, as if he just realized he never answered her original question. “to your right, go straight till you see the portcullis, should be through 2 sets of doors close together. And good luck.”
Weiss rubbed her temples, before walking slowly forward in the direction the knight pointed her in.
“Good luck, huh? Funny, that guy reminds me of Jaune, just a little…” Weiss thought to herself, feeling a familiar pang of loneliness. “Maybe I should have been a bit nicer to that lunkhead.”

[Weiss Schnee]

The Arena itself was a vast, sandy bowl of nothing. Not all that impressive by Weiss’s standards - she’d been to the Vytal festivals, after all, and the Vytal arena made this entire place look like a child’s sandcastle - but big. Weiss wondered if this fight was really going to be just “one on one.”.

As in answer to her question, she heard the amplified voice of a woman echo across the coliseum. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have quite the match for you - one that might totally change who you root for in the upcoming primes tournament.
“In the blue corner, we have a ferocious beast that’s taken down all challengers until today - The Dire wolf, Redfang!”

The crowd cheered, and Weiss was more than a little shocked. Cheering for an animal raised to kill people was… Weiss focused on her breathing instead. She knew better than to let this get her worked up. Not before a battle was about to be joined, at least. It was odd. She was more bothered by the crowd, the announcer’s shrill voice, and the sand getting on her jacket than the idea of fighting a massive creature. Even now, knowing that she was going into deadly battle in only a few seconds… it somehow didn’t faze her.

The next thing Weiss heard was a snarl, and she immediately brought one hand down to myrtenaster, drawing the weapon with a twirling motion as the portcullis in front of her raised.
“and in the red corner, and a prime entered in the very same tournament this match opens for, I bring you our new challenger, fresh from anonymity but raring to fight… Weiss. Schnee!” The woman yelled into the audience.

Weiss entered to an odd mix of cheers and boos. She’d been outdone in popularity by a homicidal wolf. She guessed it made sense.
“Now, if miss Schnee wins, we’ll probably see her at the tournament tomorrow, fresh and ready to fight. If she doesn’t meet an unfortunate end in Redfang’s stomach, anyways!”
The crowd cheered far more unanimously at the idea of an animal eating her than Weiss would have liked. If nothing else, she’d learned one thing from this experience already:
She was not a fan of Camelot.

“The wolf, Weiss, you idiot” she mentally reminded herself, and as she stepped out of the portcullis, she finally saw him.
Weiss had never seen a wolf, but she’d heard stories of the creatures, beings a little larger than the biggest dogs, all teeth and leg muscle, with a keen intelligence to their eyes.
In physical form, this creature accurately fit the description… with one exception. Redfang was at least as tall as a horse! Red eyes stared back at Weiss, and while there was intelligence there, it was mixed with insanity. All this creature staring back at her wanted to do was to rip her apart, and as it began to circle her, looking for an opening, Weiss could see the restraint evident in it’s eyes.

But still
Was this it?

Weiss almost grinned. When she heard people say things like “dire wolf”, she was thinking of something closer to an ursa or something. The creature in front of her was big, sure, and it had some nasty teeth attached, but…
Weiss had fought Ursa three times Redfangs size with claws bigger than this guy’s teeth, Giant birds that would have been able to simply swallow this wolf whole, and Giant mechanical robots with blades and lasers and cannons.
Even as weakened as she was by the omniverse, she couldn’t find herself being that scared of a big wolf.

Weiss circled in turn, realizing the wolf was checking for openings he could exploit in Weiss’s defenses, and moved in half-steps, keeping to a firm, tight stance the entire time. One arm placed behind her back, the other holding Myrtenaster close to her chest, ready to spring into deadly action at a moment’s notice.



The wolf growled spittle at her, and Weiss realized it had found some perceived opening.
Of course it had, after all. Weiss wasn’t just someone who’d picked up fighting from instinct or perception. She’d spent a decade training. she knew how to feint even with her feet, purposely make it appear that her leg was just slightly too far forward, and it looked like the “champion’ she was fighting was opportunistic but not cautious.

The creature charged forward in a blur of motion, and Weiss barely managed to pull her leg back in time to avoid losing a very precious leg to a bite from a jaw bigger than her arm.
Weiss made sure the wolf wasn’t so lucky, and in the same sweeping motion that pulled her leg from Weiss’s front to her right, she countered with a quick slash of her blade, the attack cutting a thin line of red in her enemy’s flank as the wolf clumsily dodged away from her blade.

Redfang turned to look her directly in the eyes again with an audible snarl, the wound doing little more than to tick it off, and it sprang, throwing it’s whole body into a quick motion that would have probably broken more than a couple of Weiss’s bones without any effort just on impact.
If Weiss stood still for the blow.

Redfang was fast for a wolf, and Weiss wasn’t nearly as fast as she had once trained to be. But as she jumped backwards, using her offhand as a springboard back to her feet, she knew she’d have to be a lot slower than this to take a hit from this brute.

The dire wolf audibly growled as he stuck an unsteady landing, and Weiss activated Myrtenaster’s dust chambers, reversing her grip on the weapon as Redfang charged straight at her.

Weiss struck the ground with her weapon, and flames erupted from the ground, licking at the surprised hound’s feet. The effect on the creature was immediate, and Weiss saw the fear in her opponent’s crimson eyes. No matter how mad it was, it still feared fire, she guessed, and as a row of flame burnt at the dire wolf’s footpads it jumped away from a mixture of instinct and pain.

Weiss didn’t give it the respite it wanted though, and her image blurred as she charged forward, lunging at a speed too fast for the human eye to track as she inflicted a heavy wound on the animal’s right side.

Redfang retaliated with a quick, biting lunge, but Weiss was already a step ahead, and as she stepped forward Redfang’s bite cut only a strand of white hair. “cutting it a bit close there, Weiss…
Weiss, however, was now on the side of Redfang’s body, and she capitalized immediately, her body already pivoting into an elegant twirl as Weiss slashed a crescent arc on the side of Redfangs body.
The wolf pivoted as well, turning just a little faster than Weiss expected, and she found herself suddenly on the defensive, blocking Redfangs teeth with her weapon as he tried to use his superior strength to just push through Weiss’s guard.

“And after a rousing combo of attacks by Weiss Schnee, we have a vicious comeback from Redfang, as he corners her with his superior strength. It looks like this is probably the end of our competitor, folks, but let’s give her a hand for-”

Weiss smiled. It was going to feel good to shut that stupid announcer up.

Redfang pushed forward with brute force, again, and Weiss knew what to expect as the wolf lurched forward.
If Weiss had tried to block the wolf, she would have been crushed under at least a thousand pounds of muscle.
If Weiss let myrtenaster go, she didn’t believe she could kick him hard enough to make him feel it.
So instead, the huntress Jumped,, her feet flying up just as Redfang charged, still gripping Myrtenaster.

The wolf would have been able to just grab the Weapon away from Weiss, normally, and she knew it, but with his body already travelling forward, he couldn’t do much about when Weiss jumped up.Redfang’s face suddenly bent upwards - the body always follows the head, and in this case the head had just been rudely yanked sideways from the body - and the wolf let his grip on the weapon go as he clumsily fell onto his paws, unprepared for the sudden stop to his deadly charge.

Meanwhile, Weiss found herself directly above Redfang.

A slight smile found it’s way to her lips, as ivory white runes glowed on her blade.
Then, only a heartbeat later, Weiss’s boots kicked up dust as they touched the ground, the beast that was meant to kill her was fading into dust behind her, and the audience finally heard the sound of a slash that had occurred a heartbeat earlier.

“Well, uh, folks… It looks like my predictions were all wrong. Please remember that my opinions are not sound betting advice and, uh, take responsibility for your own financial choices, folks! But what I should really be saying is... Ladies and gentlemen, your winner… Weiss Schnee!”