[IC] Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

[Lucius Cypher]

Gren Orchid

Gren smirked and took out his Scroll. A few flicks of his finger and Gren cleared his phone of his previous data while at the same time downloaded the data he needed to give Shiro some basic functions. "You can use mine. I've been meaning to get an upgrade soon, so you might as well take this one instead of me just selling it off. It's a recent model, though I've added a few hardware upgrades to it." Gren showed one of those upgrades being a miniature hologram projector. He showed a recording of his own fight with Cobalt. "I've also taken the liberty to... Hook you up, namean?" Gren then switched over to the contact list, which provided numbers for just about all the girls in class. Gren figured Shiro might like it, more so when Shiro asked him a question about the ladies.

"Ha! You just now noticed? I hardly ever see you without a new girl near you, Shiro. Beacon has always had some fine huntresses though. However I don't blame you for finally seeing them as women instead of warriors. One tends to forget I suppose." Gren glanced around and looked at the other students. A few caught his eye, but he couldn't claim he felt any particular attraction to any of them. Only one really garnered his stare for very long, and that wasn't because of any romantic feelings for her. Gren just wondered when Sapphire was going to try to step up and be a leader worthy of followers rather then a girl who doles out orders.

He put those thoughts behind him though. He still needed to socialize himself, but there was a bigger beast to face. Math. "Alright Shiro, enough goofing around. Is your body ready?" Gren said as he took out his notebook and raised his pencil.

[harinezumikouken]

Kuhaku Shiro - Mathematics Class

Beaming brightly, Shiro watched the projected hologram of one of Gren's sparring matches in awe.
Frowning again, he tilted his head.
"Wait, I don't remember this fight..Aww, man! Is this one of the fights I missed?"
Pouting, he puffed his cheeks out.
Watching as Gren ended the hologram and leaning in close to see what it was his friend had to show him, his face quickly flushed red.
"How did Gren get all of their numbers? Isn't this some invasion of privacy?"

As far as he knew, with his old Scroll he could only send messages to other Beacon Students. He assumed that they were automatically scanned by some computer and approved before the information was routed to the correct recipient. Assumed, because there was always an odd delay before someone received a text from him. Even though they were within the same room and literally feet from one another. As far as private numbers, he thought that Beacon restricted Scroll numbers to only other members of the team. Unless explicitly shared by a fellow student, there was no way that he knew of to search and get someone's number. Much less an entire list of practically every female in their class.

"How did...?"

Eying Gren curiously, all of his thoughts were quickly wiped away when his friend made the insinuation that Shiro was some sort of player or ladies' man. Which, he figured he was far from. He was warm and friendly to everyone, regardless of who they were. How could anyone mistake that as flirtatious? Flustered, Shiro could only make a few odd noises and sounds. Not able to fully form a coherent word, much less a structured sentence. Begrudgingly, the tiger boy took Gren's Scroll. Looking through the list of numbers that Gren was somehow able to obtain, he thought to delete everyone's numbers then and there but hesitated in doing so. He'd be lying if he said that he didn't think some of the students were attractive. He looked up at a certain fox Faunus when this thought crossed his mind. But, he didn't think he could ever have the courage to outright confess his feelings and ask anyone out. He felt he was too shy. Certainly he could do it if he hyped himself up enough, but he was at Beacon to focus on bettering himself as a person and increasing his skills as a Hunter. Did anyone even have time for relationships when academics were far more important? He got easily distracted enough.

Shrugging his shoulders, he decided he'd go through and delete all the numbers later.
"W-well...okay, maybe some."
He was still a healthy young man, after all.
Considerably more cheerful, he put away his gifted Scroll.
Glancing over his shoulder at the team members of Bastille, he faced to the front as sighed as he organized his papers and looked at his given assignment. Shiro wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he also wasn't the dimmest. Mathematics wasn't his strong point and sometimes gave him headaches what with all of the letters, numbers, and formulas. But, given enough time, he could slowly work his way through his assignments. Usually.

"No. My body is not ready. Why can't Beacon just be about fighting and stuff?"
He pouted, complaining.
Muttering, he set his mind to deciphering the formulas and equations in front of him.
"Whose bright idea was it anyways to mix numbers and letters together? We'll never use this in our daily lives..."
Pausing, he glanced back over his shoulder at the darker-skinned lady of team Bastille. Not even realizing it, he did this periodically. Towards her, the feathery Faunus who returned his pack to him, and Mokuren.

[Forsythe]

A shadow tendril shot up to the air, stabbing right through the paper plane and pulling it down into Diamond's hand. She could hardly be called satisfied with that response. They waited to see how they do on the actual mission last time and look how that ended! Crumpling the paper and tossing it to the nearby trash bin, she took her scroll and sent a text instead:

We did that last week and the result was two of our guys being changed and I saw the look on your face. That kind of thinking will get us all killed. Shouldn't we be... I don't know... Training or something? Get to know how the new guy fights and stuff? Some routines, like 'Actually wait for the person you sent to have a look to get back and tell you what's going on ahead'?

She had a look at the assignments of the class and frowned. She didn't know much of this math, her own self study focused on numerical stuff - things that help you brute force or otherwise get a combination to a safe. Why on Remnant were they teaching her this, so she could... Nope, she couldn't even figure out a funny retort, that's how useless this stuff was for her job.

[Flood]

Cobalt opened up his textbook and smiled. Now this was some work he could get behind. He quickly began writing down processes and formulas as he solved each problem quite easily.

After a few minutes he put down his pencil and closed his book. He wasn't a big fan of math but it was something he could do at least. It was then that he noticed the paper airplanes fluttering around the room. They were being thrown by his teammates, most likely for communication purposes. The real question was, what were they talking about? The airplane they were communicating with got thrown in the trash, he was most likely going to be looking at that after class and after everyone was gone. In the meantime though he would probably just observe his teammates.

[Abillioncats]

Emerald Felicia - Math Class -

Emmy let out a hiss when another airplane rammed into hers. Who dares!? She looked around, but didn't find who had thrown it. When she saw one of Diamond's shadow tentacles take out Ebon's airplane she cackled, served it right!

Emmy however still had an assortment of airplanes on her desk, she didn't want them to go to waste, she slowly formed a plan of what she could do with them. Her cat ears popped up when she got an idea. She giggled as she began to write a message on one of the planes.

Once that was done, she threw the plane towards a group of students, she wasn't sure where the plane would end up, she left that to fate. Fate choose Ben as it was, it landed in his hair. Whoops. Hopefully he'd read what was on the side of the plane.

Message on Plane

Secret message time! :D Write something and then let it fly!

[NaraK]

Sangue

Sangue had managed to reach Mathematics class and remained silent as she attended it. She managed to dose off and wake up about three times already, though she was doing an admittedly good job for someone who wanted to have both sleep AND Math class at once. At this point, all the numbers and letters were starting to look like each other, and her brain slowly wandered off to thinking about jiggling jellyfishes.

She blinked as she woke up again, trying to focus on her class again.

[Ryonara]

With class underway Ebon put his scroll away and took out his notebook. Math wasn't a hard subject for him, just tedious. A lot of his training during his time as a hunter-in-training was actually basic education like this, so he wasn't completely ignorant of the stuff. He quietly got to work but entertained himself by flying more airplanes, using his telekinesis to manipulate them without lifting a finger. And instead of just one, he had four paper airplanes flying around. But that wasn't the only thing about the airplanes: Using his telepathy he also put in the random thoughts of everyone around him, trying to spread a bit of baseless gossip. His planes took flight filled with thoughts. Their main objective however was to maintain air superiority, and thus whenever Emmy would send one of her airplanes out, or when someone else does, Ebon's own would swoop down and try to knock them out of the air.

All the while Ebon tried to work on the math problems.

[HereComesTheSnow]

Luke Schwarz -- Know when to Hold 'em, and...

He sighed, evidently unable to make his teammate budge on the subject. He couldn't say he didn't try... but now all he could do was minimize the fallout. Pencil flying over paper, he began to furiously work at each equation, silently thanking whomever spun the threads of fate that this was mostly review from what he'd learned last year, as most math classes tended to do in the first week or so.

Thank Kami-sama for level grinding and summer study sessions!

Words he'd never in his life thought he would string together into the same sentence.

Beacon was a crazy place, indeed...

He worked diligently, trying to both make up for lost time and work through everything clearly enough that he could share his "notes" with his classmates who'd decided that they... well...

Don't feel like studying in class.

He grimaced, brain searing from the effort like any of his muscles after a fight, but worked onwards.

[Krayzikk]

Ben nodded at Shiro's introduction, but didn't pay much attention once the Faunus started to talk with his own teammate instead. He took a look, instead, at the textbook pages in front of him. Derivatives, mostly, by the look of it. A few limit definition of derivative problems, and then a page of functions to derive. Simple enough stuff. If he had to guess he would have said they probably covered limits the week before, so they were moving on. Fortunately, he hadn't been lying; he was familiar with the work. Skipping over the definition problems, he'd come back to them later, he started in on the derivatives.

Until noticing, a few minutes later, that Sangue seemed to be having trouble staying awake. Scooting over in his chair slightly, he lowered his voice to address her without drawing too much attention.

"Hey, Sangue. You alright?"

[Ookawa]

Skyra decided it'd be a great idea to skip maths. She hated mathematics anyway, except for the few times it came in handy for her. Instead she enjoyed the nice midmorning sun shining on her face. Her ears twitches slightly listening to the various sounds of the wildlife around beacon. Lying on the grass like that a quiet purr emitted from her chest while she started to hum. After a while she started to sing to the tune she was humming.
It was an old song her foster mother used to sing to her when she got injured in a training battle. Slowly she took deep breaths of the fresh and clean Beacon air while singing that song.
She didn't want to study Maths anyway, she'd rather learn some history or even poetry. One might not think of Skyra as a lover of the written art, but she really was. She had worked hard to keep her image as the tough girl on the block, but her foster parents, and as she heard her real parents, too, were heavily engaged in all kinds of different types of art, especially literature and poetry. Lying in the grass like this she because reminiscent of everything that happened in her past. To say life wasn't tough on her would be a big lie, but this attitude of hers helped her survive especially in regions of Remnant where girls, like she was, couldn't follow their dreams. To strike her down on this path of her, she let nothing stand in her way and that was just as she wanted it.
Slowly her eyes closed as Skyra continued to bathe in the sun, her ears still twitching regularly.

[KabenSaal]

After her outburst, Mokuren had decided that leaving maths was the best idea, so the evil would not taint her mind anymore. In her place, she had left a very good dummy, made with from a vague, ancient Faunus secret. It allowed her to trick everyone and skip out, doing something of nothing. Or nothing of something, either way, she did it, and did it well.

Not quite sure what it was, however, Mokuren wandered. The halls where not that full, with most in classes, and so she was free to meander where ever she wanted. It first led her to the cantina, where she uterlized the Secret Faunus Art of Pilfering Food. Few Faunus where lucky enough to live in a situation where they could rely entirely on purchased food, and so pilfering said food was a good skill to have. Mokuren found in her possession, after the fact, some sweatcakes and a few brownies. They smelled good, and she knew exactly who to share these with.

Mokuren thought for a moment, and realized that Skyra had not turned up at the maths class, even when all the latecomers had come and been late. Therefore, and thusly, she must have skipped it. So, Mokuren set off, to the outside, where she took a deep nasal breath. There was just something about Skyra's scent that set her nose on fire, and she couldn't have hidden in a leather tanning factory. It was vague, at firt, but Mokuren managed to follow her nose to a field where the morning sun shone down, and Skyra laid with her eyes closed. Such a helpless position, Mokuren couldn't do anything but put the bag of food down, and draw her sword, standing guard and glaring at the nothing, as if daring it to try anything with Skyra, and get stabbed as a result.

[NaraK]

Sangue

These "exponents" and "limit functions" are outsmarting me. Thankfully, this isn't as physically challenging than sparring with huntresses armed with dual shotguns, but...

But...

It's so... What do you call it...

Sangue felt her eyes slowly close as she slouched over a bit... but the voice of Ben jolted her back to reality.

The red-haired woman practically slammed her pen against her own table as she opened her scarless eye wide, her scarred eye still barely closed. She blinked as she turned to her team leader, looking like some sort of rabbit caught by a clever trap.

"..."

Sangue shook her head softly, her shoulders loosening up when she realied it was her team leader talking, not a teacher that dared to obliterate her pride. "I feel... a bit tired," she admitted. "What... about you?"

@Krayzikk

[Krayzikk]

"Well, I think Lauren might have knocked my brain loose, so I'm kinda afraid to sleep." Ben commented, smiling to show he was (mostly) joking. He cast his eyes down and over his teammate's paper, getting a look at what she was working on. "It looked like you were having a little trouble focusing yourself. Math really puts you to sleep after a sparring, doesn't it?"

"Or it would for me. If I could sleep without getting the 'you're a team leader, Ben' lecture."

[HereComesTheSnow]

Luke Schwarz -- Phone a Friend

...

...

Come on, you can do this. It's negative exponents.

Derivatives of negative exponents.

Wh-What was the rule for those again? He'd written it down somewhere...

Okay, he'd found it. Negative exponents are fractions, right. Duh. Rewriting it in a less abstract format now...

But, that was only one out of many, many steps to this particular doozy of a problem, and try as he might, he was thinking that he may have found a roadblock insurmountable on his own. His efforts to do so were admirable, but mistaken.

Luckily, I do get to bring friends!

A glance to his left-- Ben was trying to talk to that quiet redheaded teammate of his. Sangue Naga. No dice.

To his right-- Jack, out cold and stubbornly refusing to change it until he heard a bell. Nothing.

To his rear-- Napoli and Gratia, whose very presence seemed to tick eachother off. Sc-Scary!

To his front-- A familiar, newly cut short head of hair. Perfect.

Reaching out with the eraser end of his pencil, he tapped the only truly present teammate he had in this class, who once again had proven herself a reliable lifeline.

"Cian," he asked in hushed tones, not wanting to be to abrupt or disruptive. "What do I do with the e on number 13? It's giving me a real headache."

[Abillioncats]

Emerald Felicia - Math Class -

Ebon's airplanes had interfered once again! With a low growl she focused on the airplanes still flying in the sky. One by one sharp changes in the air currents caused Ebon's airplanes to sharply change direction, suddenly heading straight towards the ground in a collision course.

She was tempted to send more airplanes out herself..but she was quickly getting bored of that. Nobody else seemed interested in them anyway, save for whoever it was that was making the other airplanes, but they kept knock her's down! With an audible sigh Emmy placed her chin on her desk, before rolling her head onto it's side so that she was resting against the table. She didn't want to admit it, but combat class had made her tired. It didn't help that calculus made her sleepy.

She felt her eyes getting heavy, it was harder and harder to keep them open. She finally just gave in, allowing her eyes to fully close as a soft purr began to emanate from her chest. Her tail swayed slowly to and fro as she began to lose consciousness.

[Suku]

@HereComesTheSnow
Cian Kuze
"I am actually unsure I am still trying to figure it out. Once I got a solid answer I will try to help you." Cian replied without looking up from her own papers numbers scrawled all over the place. Math as she stated was not her strong suit but she could get by problem was that this was giving her more trouble than she was hoping for. With a frustrated sigh she erased what she was working on to to rework it once more. She knew how to calculate the paths and all that for her own shots but for some reason she couldn't solve this problem.

[Guess Who]

Robert Fallson - Math Class

Robert stared at the ceiling of the classroom in defeat. Out of all the problems that he was given, he only started about half of them. The other half he didn't even know where to begin. Out of all the problems that he had begun, he only finished about half of those. The other half he didn't know what the next step could possibly be. Out of all the problems that he finished, only half of those was he actually sure that he did correctly. The other half he simply made up steps to make it look like he put more effort into the assignment than he actually did. Robert looked around the room to see where everyone else was with their set of problems.

"Great, I'm the first person to finish aren't I? Because that's always a good si- Wait a minute," he said right before noticing the only other student that wasn't working furiously on the page in front of them. Rising from his seat, Robert made his way to the fox-faunas. "What was her name again? Mokuren right? Something like that. If she's finished her workload than maybe she can can help me with mine. Though, she was trying to hack her textbook with her weapon... I'm now having second thoughts about asking her for help." Robert gave a shrug as he neared the possibly definitely less-than-sane girl. "Oh well, I've already gotten this far. If I go back to my seat now, I'll just look like a weirdo," said the boy who always audibly said whatever it was he was thinking out loud.

The red-haired boy poked the Mokuren dummy in the shoulder to get her attention. "Hey, uh, Mokuren right? Do you think you could help me with this problem? I've been stuck on it for a while and you look like you've finished, he asked. Robert waited a few minutes for a response before realizing something was up. "Mokuren? Hello?" he asked. He waved his hand in front of her face to get her attention. "Anyobody there? Remnant to Mokuren. Come in, Mokuren." Getting a bit weirded out by the girl's lack of reaction, Robert decided it was best to leave the strange girl alone. "And I thought this assignment was messing me up," Robert said as he took his seat again. "Ugh, what now?"

[HereComesTheSnow]

Luke Schwarz -- Oh no

W-What?!

No way! Cian too? This was a terrible miscalculation! His only available backup was just as stumped as he! He'd expected too much from his fellow classmate, freshly transferred in in her own right! Was this the price he payed for committing such a flagrant act of unfairness towards her?

Repent!

I fully repent!

"You too, huh?" he mumbled, not angry so much as flummoxed. "I'll keep asking around, then. If I get an answer out of somebody, I'll let you know."

The problem then became, though...

Who to ask?

...

Warily, he turned to the pair from Mistral situated behind him. Having done well enough to be selected for a foreign exchange program, they had to have the answers, right?

R-Right?

A-hm.

"Excuse me."

[Crimmy]

Gratia Mindaro - Mathematics

The scratching of Gratia's pen against paper stopped. The dark-haired huntress tapped her ballpoint shut, dropping it down onto her workbook and letting it slowly roll down the curved surface to lightly collide with the edge of her far thicker textbook. She rose her head, onyx eyes meeting Luke's gray. There was the slightest hint of an intense, unknowable emotion, before it disappeared into the hardy and utterly uncaring gaze that would have been so familiar to the querying boy. Nothing interrupted the stare. She seemed to be studying him, just like she had during that meeting on the airship.

"Question 13e?" she asked flatly, having already overheard the hushed tones mere moments earlier. "Well, you're fucking slow."

Unlike some of the other students, the Mistralese teenager had already finished the assigned questions, and instead had been taking the time to work ahead and familiarise herself with the rest of the mathematics course. Focus on integral calculus rather than differential, further focus on trigonometric graphs and circle functions ... not too much trouble, but definitely things that she could not half-heartedly work on, lest she fuck up. Not that it was possible. She would not fuck up here of all places.

Helping this guy? Fuck it, not like I have anything better to do.



Ah yes, the real fucking stupid question. She had done it with little difficulty, but whoever formulated it was probably some fucking midget who didn't give a shit about challenging the minds of students. Seriously, ln-fucking-1? That was a goddamned joke.

With little fanfare, she flipped to the back of her exercise book, ripping out a page in a single instant. Gratia Mindaro immediately went to work, tapping open her ballpoint pen again and scrawling on the paper. She did not stop for an instant, the rapid movement of her writing utensil almost hypnotic in its gracefulness.

y =(5x^3 + 5)(5e^4 + ln1)/5x^6
=(5x^3 + 5)(5e^4 + 0)/5x^6
=(5x^3 + 5)(5e^4)/5x^6
=(25x^3e^4 + 5e^4)/5x^6
=5x^-3e^4 + 5x^-6e^4
dy/dx =-15x^(-4)e^4 - 30x^(-7)e^4
=(-15e^4)/x^4 - (30e^4)/x^7



"Don't even fucking bother studying up on this shit," said Gratia, throwing the sheet of paper onto Luke's desk. "It's completely retarded. Go reread pages 381 to 410 instead if you don't want to suck at this. Maybe watch Khan's videos if you're still somehow fucking lost."

Present on the paper was also a step-by-step of how she had done the question, as well as references to the resources Luke would probably need to successfully pass the course. The Mistralese huntress preferred to do things thoroughly. There was no point in half-assing anything.

"Now fuck off and stop bothering me."

[NaraK]

Sangue Naga - Math

The red-haired woman nodded, feeling drowsiness wear her down. She made sure to study a bit of Calculus before jumping into Beacon, but it still wore her down like a giant golden cow.

But Ben had a point. Looking like a lazy person right after just barely being accepted by Beacon seemed like a bad idea, especially for Benjamin Lloyd, their team leader. If anything, she needed to be thankful that she was not paired up by supremely egotistic hunters.

If only she had those styrofoam ball thingies. Then she could draw out a dot for two and plaster them over her delicate pair of eyes. Surely it could at least bring a thirty minute nap-

No, if Ben was not doing it, then she shouldn't. She did not enjoy looking bad in front of her teammates, let alone her leader. Even if she was a bit quiet.

But in the case that Ben could not handle the graphs and the application functions, she would be ready to help him. The same went for her teammates, really.

"Don't stress... yourself out," she spoke quietly (as usual). "We are friends.. right?"

She wondered if she was getting better at this socializing thing. With that in mind, she solved a problem she had nearly completed earlier. Her expression remained idle as ever.

@Krayzikk