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Chapter 27: Changes We Didn't Want (Part 2)

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At the next Vytal Festival, Robin was very eager to see just how much he had improved. Unfortunately, there was nobody for him to test himself against. Both Yang and Raven did not show up that year, leaving the main contest to be between Robin and Ren. The rest of the students weren't even worth mentioning. After Robin's intense training, taking on a huge group of wimpy slackers was as easy as breathing.

Ren was much more skilled. His hits were stronger and much more agile, but ultimately lost to Robin's wealth of knowledge and superior body. With at least one competitor, Robin was able to exercise a bit. However, the lack of presence of both Yang and Raven was extremely disheartening.

= I wonder where they are? ..If Raven's not gonna show up, that can mean one of two things. She's either decided against participating this year for whatever reason, something came up, or she's training to get herself even stronger.. =

In reality, Robin's guess was on the mark on all three cases. Raven was pushing her body to the limit and strived to get stronger as fast as possible. Why didn't she go to the competition? Because other than being a treasure chest of experience points, the competition itself was pointless to her. Why did she have to waste four days having fun and beating up children when that murderer was still on the loose?

So the years passed by just like that. Robin would train his very hardest to become the strongest Hunter while Raven trained her hardest to become the strongest killer. Different reasons, but they had the same goal. In a race for the title of strongest, they trained in their own unique ways.

Robin would do research and intense practice to master his skills and weaponry. As the years past, he once again saw Yang at the festival. Unlike before, she had a sadder and more painful look. However, her brute strength was at an all time high. Her fighting style was wild and powerful, but Robin was someone who had studied countless ways to defeat all kinds of martial arts. He easily defeated her yet again.

Yang was a bit peeved, but smiled instead as if to laugh it off. That year, Robin had learned that their father bought his two girls a dog in order to cheer them up. As he was walking by, Robin accidentally overheard the reason for their sadness. Regretful that he accidentally heard something personal, Robin walked away quickly.

Back in the village, the children began learning how to handle a gun and Robin mastered that within a year. His other weapons skills were also being mastered one by one. The bonuses in damage was doubled in each respective weapon, and Robin simply began focusing on incorporating his skills of hand-to-hand combat to other weapons and expanding his aura pool.

Robin never got his rematch with Raven. Every year she would skip the festival, and Robin became disappointed.

= Did she run away? =

He never knew why she decided to quit, but it didn't change his goals in the slightest. To become the strongest, he continued to train. Consequently, Team COBRA did as well. Inspired by Robin's tenacity, they all began to train to become stronger. They didn't really have the lofty goal of becoming the strongest, but they did many things together, all the while growing closer as friends.

In a few years, Team COBRA became the strongest faunus children within the village and bested the middle school students in strength. Their parents were shocked. As Hunters outside of the kingdoms, they didn't really aspire to become the strongest. They merely lived their lives day to day and exterminated whatever they needed to. They had never chosen a mission that was too difficult in case they endangered their loved ones. At this rate, their own children would become stronger than them at a young age.

Robin's parents were especially troubled. Robin's abilities and aura was progressing at an amazing pace. Mastering the sword at the age of 7, they praised him as a genius. He was probably destined to become one of the top Hunters in the Kingdom of Vale. They were extremely proud, but their small village just didn't have the facilities that could let him reach his maximum potential. Thus, they decided to call a good old friend of theirs.

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“Hello?”

*Hey there Qrow, this is Joseph.

“Oh! Hey there Joseph! It's been a while.”

*It certainly has been. We didn't meet you at the Vytal Festival last year either.

“Haha. I've been a little busy...I had to fill in for some people when the festival comes around, so I haven't been able to come.”

*No, I totally understand. Hey, I'm calling you today for some advice about Robin.

“What do you mean?”

*Well, I don't mean to brag, but Robin seems to be a genius. Unlike me and Christina, his aura is getting extremely high, and he's already strong enough to hunt with us during our missions. But Rakshata's simply too small to help him get where he wants to. Apparently, his dream is to become the strongest Hunter. Well, I was hoping if you knew something we could do, Qrow.

“Hmm...!!”

An idea popped into Qrow's head. If he pulled this off, maybe he could even fix Raven's situation as well. She had secluded herself from the world, and constantly went hunting Grimm to become stronger. Death constantly followed her, but Qrow knew that too much would break her. Qrow began to explain to Joseph his plan.

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10 years had past, and Robin had progressed very far in his path to become stronger. Currently he was level 47. This huge boost in leveling was only possible with his involvement with Grimm extermination. Even the weakest of Grimm gave an abundant amount of experience. Although he was nervous when killing his first monster, they had given him a weaker foe to start him off. After a couple kills, Robin started to get more active. The sensation of killing the creatures seemed to somehow feed his inner desire for action and excitement.

In addition to getting involved with the hunts, Robin finally completed his own weapon: Pantomath. It had four forms. It's neutral form was a giant, silver great-sword which was currently hanging on a holster located on his back. The great-sword can then detach into two halves which is the second form. This allows Robin to dual wield swords. The third form was the axe form.

From the second form, midway along the blades was a joint. By pressing a button, the upper half of the sword swings back and creates two axes. The last form also came from the second form. By attaching the ends of his dual swords together at the hilt and pressing a button, they connected and altered itself to form one long staff with blades on each end.

However, that wasn't all his Pantomath had to offer. Along the middle of his great-sword was a barrel. When Pantomath transformed into its other three forms, the barrel is exposed and can fire rifle rounds when he pulled a trigger. Furthermore, at the bottom of the hilt was a compartment allowing Robin to insert cartridges filled with dust rounds and dust powder. The rounds were used when firing his gun, and the powder interacted with his weapon depending on which on he used.

A lot of research was done when Robin was creating his weapon. Through trial and error, he finally created something that was versatile and suited him best. Robin was extremely pleased. However, he was not very pleased with his current situation. Right now, Team COBRA were studying together at one of the tables in the outdoor cafeteria. And Robin was currently tutoring Conner in math.

“So what you want to do here is find Y. And in order to do that you need to solve the equation for X.”

“Ok.” Conner replied holding his chin with his thumb and index finger.

“To do that, you have to isolate X and divide that side by 5.”

“Ok.”

“Then you plug it into log(5/X) and minus 3 to get the value of Y.”

“Of course!”

“You didn't understand a single word did you?”

“Not a damn word.”

*POW* Robin dropped a karate chop on Conner's head.

“Take this seriously, Conner.”

“I am taking this seriously. I'm just wondering why we need to use letters and all these complicated equations in math. We can do the basic operations. Isn't that enough?”

“Sigh..how did you expect for us to get the technology we use today? We use letters to represent stuff we don't know, and then we find it through the same equations I'm teaching you now.”

Conner banged his fist onto his palm.

“I see! So it's like this. If we take Blake's C-cup and minus Ophelia's flat A-cup, then we'll get 2, right?”

At that moment, Ophelia drove a fist into Conner's chin. He fell out of the chair and to the floor. Getting on top of him, Ophelia started beating him with a barrage of fists while Blake looked down at the ground blushing. In between punches, Ophelia was speaking in short bursts.

“Who.. are you... calling... flat....SWINE?!”

= Rest in peace. =

After the beating was down, Ophelia proceeded to use Heal. The white warm glow healed up Conner's injuries as if it didn't even happen. As expected of the Sadist Doctor. Conner got up after admitting defeat and turned to Robin to speak.

“Well, I think I'm done for today. I'm going home.”

“Alright. It's getting late anyways. I think I'll head back too.”

The group stood up and was about to leave. Then when Robin tried to take a step forward, he foot refused to move and he tripped to the ground. Reaching his hands out, he tried to stop himself before hitting the ground. But the moment his hands came in contact with the ground, the “ground” sank and his hands fell into the hole. Robin did a beautiful face-plant.

Upon looking at his feet, he found his shoelaces were tied together and around the leg of the desk. Scurrying away in the distance was a fox faunus. Robin raised his fist and yelled.

“DINKLEBEEEEEERG!”

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Grumbling to himself for falling for such a petty trick, Robin entered his house to find his parents smiling at the dinner table.

“I'm home. What's up mom? Dad? Why are you smiling?”

“Well Robin,” Christina said. “You've become pretty strong recently.”

Nodding in agreement, Joseph continued.

“That's right. You've become so strong, in fact, we're worried about holding you back, so your mother and I came up with a solution.”

They looked at each other and grinned.

“You're gonna go to the Myriad School of Combat! Starting tomorrow!”

Robin blinked. Myriad was a pretty famous combat school only the strongest got in, but it was located inside of Vale. Going there and back to the village of Rakshata was simply going to take too long.

“But mom, that's at least 4 hours away. How am I going to get home from there?”

“Oh no worries. You're moving!”

“Tomorrow you're going to take your stuff and start living inside of Vale! Don't worry about being lonely, we've talked with everyone else. The rest of your friends are coming too! I'm sure you'll be fine.”

The two parents looked at him as if it was a done deal. Meanwhile Robin couldn't help but be a bit anxious. School inside the kingdom was gonna be harsh. Unlike Rakshata which consisted of many friendly people, Vale was the home to discrimination and false relationships. Furthermore, it's a combat school, a place with hyperactive teens in the middle of puberty.

= Am I going to be ok? =

Yay for Qrow's plan for human interaction! Yay for teenage carnage! Huzzah for Robin's weapon!!

Fun fact 1: Definition of pantomath -- person who knows everything.

Fun fact 2: Robin's weapon is inspired by this.

Credit goes to CrosmirSketch for creating the weapon. I added my own little twist and changed the color scheme to match Robin.

Rate, comment, enjoy! Thanks for reading!