From the stands floating high above, Jaune leaned slightly against the railings as he watched the chaos unfolding below.
Entire groups of fighters appeared as moving specks among the terrain. Dust clouds rose from explosions of power while flashes of light and color erupted across the ground—born from Runes clashing against one another.
It was impressive and also difficult to follow.
Even with his sharp eyes, Jaune found it nearly impossible to track the exact movements of the Rank Two fighters once they began fighting. The distance between the stands and the battlefield certainly did not help, but the real problem was speed.
Rank Two combatants were simply too fast.
Even the strongest Peak Rank One fighters wouldn't be able to keep up with them. Their bodies moved with such terrifying acceleration that entire exchanges of attacks could happen in the blink of an eye.
Five seconds of combat could easily contain dozens of strikes.
Blades flashed, fists collided, Runes erupted, and bodies blurred through the air faster than most observers could properly process. The result was a battlefield that often looked like bursts of sudden violence followed by shifting clouds of dust and shattered terrain.
Fortunately, the screens mounted throughout the spectator platforms helped somewhat. The invisible cameras(which Jaune still didn't know how they worked.), followed the fighters, giving the audience just enough time to understand what had actually happened.
Even then, it was still difficult.
If a Rank Two fight were happening directly beside him, Jaune suspected he would have a much easier time understanding what was going on.
His weakness sense would help.
It wouldn't allow him to sense the fight perfectly, of course but it would give him a general feeling for the flow of battle.
The problem was that his special sense had limits. The limit was range. At this distance the battlefield was too far away for his Rune to properly grasp.
Still, Jaune could not help but wonder about something.
If his weakness Rune was capable of sensing flaws and vulnerabilities in living things, perhaps it was not entirely inaccurate to say that it functioned similar to an organ.
Maybe the Rune itself was the organ.
The thought lingered in his mind for a moment before a familiar voice broke his concentration.
"Did you know dad was in Vale?"
Ruby's tone carried a mixture of surprise and curiosity as she leaned forward over the railing.
Yang shook her head immediately.
"No way. That's news to me too."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. The old man didn't say a word." Yang huffed out, her lips curled slightly in annoyance. "That sneaky bastard probably planned it like this."
"Planned what?" Ruby asked.
"C'mon Rubes, this." Yang gestured toward the battlefield below where Vale and Atlas was going head to head. Taiyang's earlier attack had left a large wide scar across the section.
"He shows up out of nowhere during the Vytal Tournament without telling either of us. No messages, no calls, nothing." Yang shook her head in disbelief. "I bet he wanted to surprise us."
Ruby slowly raised one fist. "Well he deserves a punch for that."
"Oh definitely." Yang smiled.
She bumped Ruby lightly with her shoulder.
"But I'm the one doing the punching." Yang grinned. "You can bake cookies instead."
Ruby rolled her eyes dramatically.
"Hey. I can punch people too, you know."
Yang looked amused. "Sure you can."
Ruby huffed.
Weiss, who had been quietly observing both the conversation and the battle unfolding on the screens, glanced toward the two sisters with a curious expression.
"Your father lives in Patch, correct?"
"Sort of." Yang nodded slightly.
Weiss raised an eyebrow.
Yang leaned back against the railing watching Weiss for a moment. "He's usually stationed around Patch, yeah. But he travels a lot."
Her gaze drifted back briefly toward the battlefield.
"Rank Two fighters don't stay in one place very often so dad gets called in whenever Nightmare Zones pop up in different regions."
Weiss nodded thoughtfully. That was fairly standard behavior for Rank Two individuals. They were too valuable to leave idle.
Whenever dangerous Nightmare Zones appeared, powerful fighters like Taiyang were often deployed to eliminate them before they could bleed into the real world.
"His Runes appear to be quite formidable," she said calmly.
Yang chuckled. "Yeah. They are."
"Actually, one of them is the same as mine." She tapped her own bountiful chest lightly.
Weiss looked interested.
"Kinetic?"
Yang nodded.
"Yep."
Her eyes followed the footage of her father as he moved across the battlefield with explosive bursts of speed.
"Originally, I was... kind of inspired to create something similar, based on his fighting style. Didn't expect it to be the exact same, of course. Pleasant surprise."
She paused for a moment before adding something else.
"Though his version is way stronger."
Weiss tilted her head slightly.
"Mastery?"
"Probably at that level." Yang shrugged. "Or really close to it."
Jaune hummed thoughtfully as he listened to the conversation. Jaune opened his mouth slightly. He was about to ask what other Runes her father might have.
But before the question could leave his lips, something on the screen caught his attention. Something very interesting had just occurred during the fight.
Taiyang had taken to fighting the large, muscular woman from Atlas's team.
Though the cameras were focused on him, his movements were still difficult to follow. His body blurred again and again as he unleashed a relentless barrage of punches against his opponent.
Each strike cracked through the air like artillery fire.
The woman facing him was enormous even before whatever ability she was using had begun to take effect. She was tall, broad shouldered, and heavily muscled, wielding a massive hammer whose head alone was nearly the size of her torso.
Strange glowing constructs surrounded both her and the weapon.
They looked almost like translucent forcefields, layered discs of energy that hovered around the hammer's head and her arms.
Whenever Taiyang's fists struck them, the constructs rippled violently and dispersed the force outward in explosive shockwaves that shattered nearby stone and blasted dust across the battlefield.
Even so, Taiyang did not slow down. Whenever the forcefields exploded, he would take no damage, and seem to become even stronger, with his strikes punching harder and his movements, faster.
Punch after punch crashed against the constructs with brutal force, with air around his arms warping from the pressure of each blow.
But something strange was happening. The girl was growing. At first it had been subtle, a few inches here and a slight change in height there.
Now it was painfully obvious.
Her body was expanding rapidly, swelling larger and larger with every passing second. Her muscles thickened, her limbs lengthened. Even the hammer she wielded was growing proportionately alongside her as if it were bound to the same ability.
In only a short span of time she had gone from tall to towering like a small giant.
The ground cracked beneath her feet as she braced herself against Taiyang's onslaught and swung to counter attack.
Even Taiyang seemed to be feeling the pressure.
His strikes remained devastating, but the increasing size and strength of his opponent was clearly starting to complicate things.
Jaune leaned slightly closer to the screen.
"Whoa."
His attention drifted as the camera view split into multiple feeds. Another section of the screen showed Qrow and Raven engaged in their own battle.
They were fighting two Atlas specialists at once.
One of them was a thin bald man whose Rune clearly involved the manipulation of the wooden roots from earlier. Thick roots and massive wooden tendrils erupted constantly from the ground, twisting and lashing through the battlefield like living creatures.
Entire walls of timber shot upward to block attacks while spearlike branches lunged toward their opponents.
The other Atlas fighter was far stranger.
Jaune blinked slowly as he tried to process what he was looking at.
"…Is that a fishing rod?"
It was.
The man wielding it stood some distance away from the fight, spinning the long sleek rod with surprising finesse. Except this was no normal fishing rod. The device looked highly advanced, with metallic segments and glowing light patterns along its length.
From the end of the line extended multiple hooks. And attached to each hook was a fish. Not ordinary fish. They were clearly made of elemental energy.
One glowed like liquid fire and another shimmered with crackling electricity. The third looked as though it were formed from swirling water.
At first the creatures were small, hanging at the ends of the hooks like strange decorative bait. Then they moved.
Each fish suddenly expanded and twisted, their forms mutating as they transformed into monstrous versions of themselves.
Massive jaws opened wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth. Their bodies lengthened and thickened until they resembled grotesque predatory beasts.
Then they swam, through the air and through the ground. As though the battlefield itself had become invisible water.
The monstrous fish darted toward Qrow's scattered crow forms, snapping viciously as they chased the smaller birds across the sky and through the terrain.
One of them burst up from the earth beneath a cluster of crows, its enormous jaws snapping shut with a thunderous crack.
Another spiraled through the air like a torpedo made of lightning.
Jaune stared at the screen.
"…That's… kind of ridiculous."
Despite the bizarre nature of the ability, the attacks were undeniably dangerous. The fish moved with incredible speed and agility, harassing Qrow's flock relentlessly while Raven carved through incoming wooden constructs with precise slashes of her katana and shadow arms.
The battlefield around them was quickly becoming a tangled forest of shattered roots and drifting black feathers.
Jaune watched the chaos for another moment before something else occurred to him. He frowned slightly.
Then he spoke aloud without really thinking about it.
"Does everyone have some kind of transformation ability?"
The question hung in the air for a moment. As soon as he said it, Jaune began mentally listing examples.
Sun Wukong.
When Jaune and Pyrrha had fought him earlier, Sun had transformed into a massive ape like creature during their battle.
Then there was Auberyn's teammate from the Starlight team. The one who had turned into that bizarre werewolf minotaur hybrid during their match.
Jaune's eyes drifted back to the screen where Qrow's scattered crows continued to dart across the battlefield.
Qrow himself clearly possessed a transformation ability and Raven too. Jaune had already seen her change forms as well.
It was starting to feel strangely common among high level fighters.
Ruby and Yang exchanged a brief glance beside him—a glance that suggested they were silently sharing a joke.
Jaune noticed immediately and looked at them.
"What?"
Neither of them answered. Instead, they both pointed toward the screen. Jaune turned back just in time to see something happening to Taiyang.
The air around his body distorted as waves of power rippled outward. Then he began to grow.
His form expanded rapidly, as his body elongated and scales erupted across his skin. His legs fused together into a long serpentine tail while his torso lengthened and thickened into a powerful coiling shape.
A snout pushed forward from his face adorned with long whiskers which flowed outward like drifting ribbons.
Within seconds Taiyang Xiao Long had transformed completely. The enormous creature that now filled the screen rivaled even the largest Crow form Jaune had ever seen Qrow use.
A massive eastern dragon coiled through the battlefield.
A Loong.
Its serpentine body stretched through the sky like a living river of golden scales. Wind howled around its limbs.
Thunder rumbled softly through the small clouds that formed around its body.
Mist and swirling currents of air followed every movement as though the dragon carried the storm itself within its presence.
The sight was breathtaking.
Ancient and mythical looking.
The dragon's massive eyes glowed as it turned its head toward the giant hammer wielding Atlas fighter below.
Jaune stared at the screen for several seconds then sighed.
"…Of course."