"Alright, so here's the deal." Rose began, stretching her arms over her head.

Right now they were in one of the training arenas, Rose having booked this particular arena for two hours every night.

They had agreed to start investigating Torchwick and the White Fang, but the meeting wasn't until Friday. So that meant they had three full days to prepare themselves for what was to come...just in case things hit the fan.

Weiss' job was, in theory, easy enough. She would just go to the library, contact the SDC, and download all the requested information, which she would then spend the weekend pouring over for any clues...Provided that there was nothing around that would call her to their side.

Which, considering how risky a situations Rose, Blake and Yang were going into per the plan, wasn't entirely out of the question.

Which was why they were doing this.

"We need to train. So we're going to train. If we want to be a solid team we have to know how each other works...so right now let's do one on ones." She directed motioning with her right arm between herself and Blake, who was observing with a twitching bow, and with her left gesturing between Yang and Weiss, who were looking on blankly.

"First things first...weapon swap! Trade weapons with your partner. Get a feel for how they fight." Rose directed, pulling Midnight Rose - still sheathed in it's saya - off of her belt and tossing it through the air at her faunus partner.

The where a slight hiss of surprise at the throw, but Blake nevertheless caught Rose's prized weapon. After only a brief moment of hesitation, she handed off Gambol Shroud to Rose and the pair both unsheathed the weapons and gave them experimental twirls.

Both of them found that, in their basic forms at least, their partner's weapon wasn't too dissimilar to their own. Both swords, both with functional sheathes that could be used in combat. The primary differences were just in the weight and balance difference between the two, and that Gambol Shroud had a pistol and a ribbon, whereas Midnight Rose had dust channels and a bow form.

Nodding to herself, Rose turned to observe Weiss and Yang.

The former, holding Ember Celica, the latter Myrtenaster. Both of them holding an identical furrowed look of 'what in the actual fuck am I supposed to do with this?' on their faces.

Rose found herself chortling so hard that she couldn't breath.

Fighting with Gambol Shroud turned out to be as easy as Rose had first expected it to be - she adapted to the chain scythe like a fish to water, ducking under swipes from her own Katana, blocking others with the sharpened edge of Gambol Shroud's sheath.

Gambol Shroud really was like Midnight Rose. With the notable exception of the pistol function of the grip.

Speaking of which…

She whipped the blade back into its folded form and gave that pistol a try or three.

In the end, the fight went much as she had predicted it when Weiss had asked weeks ago; Ruby would rush at Blake with her semblance and do everything she could to overwhelm her partner, only to slash through a shadow clone and be right back where they started.

The fight between Yang and Weiss had ended long ago, with the former having won...though not due to any of the merits of Myrtenaster as a weapon; at some point of both of them flailing around cluelessly with each other's weapons, Yang had just given up and gone at Weiss hand to hand, with or without Ember Celica.

It worked.

And now both of them were just watching while the darker half of team RWBY just… danced all over the arena. Both of them going all out, and yet neither of them able to actually land a hit on each other. Both of them using each other's weapon like it came naturally to them, with the sole exception that Blake wasn't really using Midnight Rose's bow form at all, nor using the dust channels to their full potential.

Now? This was just a battle of attrition. And it became very clear that both of them were used to running - despite panting for breath and being matted in sweat, neither of them were backing down.

The only hits on their aura meters were from the usage of their own semblances.

Rose's semblance was a steady drain on her reserves; constantly using it had her using small chunks of her aura at a steady rate.

On the other hand, Blake's shadow clones were more sparsely used than Rose's speed, but they took a far larger chunk of her aura at the same time.

In the end, Rose won - although it was in a manner that had truly surprised her; she'd just outlasted Blake. One too many shadow clones pushing Blake to the brink, leaving her the choice of getting hit by a swipe from Rose, or using her clone and 'losing' anyway.

There was very little that could wipe the grin off of Rose's face in that moment.

"You're a sadist." Weiss breathed out from where she was collapsed on the floor of the arena, Midnight Rose clutched in a hand that was trying to calm the stitch in her side while blue eyes locked to silver.

Rose grinned. "You haven't given up yet, what does that make you?" She asked, then twirled Myrtenaster in one hand and stabbed the tip into the ground.

She wasn't nearly the expert with dust that Weiss was; the girl was the heir to the Schnee Dust Company, after all. But she knew more than enough to use a multi-action dust rapier to it's potential, thank you very much.

A wave of fire ran at the heiress, who grunted while leaping off to the side and once more beginning the dance, semblance scrambling frantically to create glyph after glyph for her to launch herself off of, trying first to dodge Rose's uses of ice, fire, wind and lightning from her own weapon and then trying to launch herself at her team leader, utilizing Midnight Rose's own dust channels to return the favor.

Rose was honestly impressed.

Sure, she had had to beat Weiss to a pulp, as evidenced by the bruises and scrapes that covered the heiresses' face, arms, and legs. But Weiss had stopped thinking and that was the goal Rose had set in mind for the night.

The fact that Weiss was actually using Midnight Rose effectively was just a bonus!

She split herself into two separate streams of rose petals, disappearing away from an attack that would have skewered her if she hadn't had her semblance, reforming herself on the other side of Weiss and turning…

...To find Weiss skating across the floor on a black glyph, Midnight Rose in bow form and loosing an arrow at her.

One that actually scraped her cheek.

Rose almost forgot she was in a fight long enough to blink.

"You can use a bow?!" She blurted, jamming Myrtenaster into the ground to build a wall of ice for defense.

"I'll have you know Archery is a very relaxing pastime!"

"Well, I'll be damned Princess."

Swords still weren't her thing, but all things considered...Gambol Shroud at least was more fitting to her style than Myrtenaster was.

Yang Xiao Long was not suited to finesse.

Why stay at a distance and poke at the problem when you could just hit it, repeatedly?

So that being said, the match against Blake was far more of an actual challenge...and an actual fight than the one against Weiss had been.

For one; Blake was apparently no slouch in hand to hand.

That wasn't to say that Ember Celica was nearly her style, but she definitely had a better clue what she was doing with them than Weiss had.

She promised, that meant a lot more than it probably seems.

If Blake hadn't already been tired from her match against Ruby, with Yang having had no real challenge against Weiss, this match probably would have lasted longer than it did, but for the most part this match was just a matter of time; Blake just didn't have any way to do enough damage to Yang to overcome her semblance and her own was built for defense...not offense.

"You good, Goldilocks?" Rose taunted, Ember Celica wrapped around her wrists and a smirk on her lips that was only complimented by the scabbed over scrape on her cheek that had come from one of her own arrows.

"Bring it, Sis." Yang shot back.

Midnight Rose, being as similar to Gambol Shroud as it was, meant that Yang had been able to at least partially figure something out for how to use it effectively.

She still wasn't really expecting Rose to close the 30 foot gap between them in a veil of rose petals and start treating her like a speed bag at the local kickboxing gym.

Even despite her brawler nature, despite the fact that she was used to taking damage and dishing it right back twice over, despite the fact that her semblance was still raring to go, Rose's initial left hook still hurt like a bitch and the series of jabs and crosses that followed weren't exactly light despite their speed.

They hurt entirely because of the speed behind them.

And the shotgun blasts. Those didn't hurt either.

Turns out the kickboxing reference was more apt than she had intended as well, because the knee buried in her gut also hurt like a bitch.

She finally managed to shove Rose away and actually draw Midnight Rose only when both halves of Ember Celica had already clicked empty.

"Son of a…" She panted, her eyes flickering between red and lilac.

"I have got to get me one of these!" Rose whooped, taking a break from the fight to look down at the gauntlets covering her wrists. "You still have the blueprints for these? I could totally go for them being slimmer but damn these are a blast!"

"Hah. Good one, sis."

"...What the hell are you...oh...oh fuck me. Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope-"

"Because shotgun blast? Eh? Ehhhh?"

"No. Just no."

"Can we just play rock paper scissors and say we fought?"

"Yes. Please."

"Nope!"

"Rose!/Quiet, Dolt!"

"So, what did we learn today? Besides shotgun gauntlets being awesome!" Rose fangirled, looking longingly at her sisters weapons.

"That I hate you with a burning passion?" Weiss asked from her location. That is to say, face down and drooling on the floor with all of her limbs feeling like they were made of jello.

"Well, good thing your powers are all ice related then!" Rose grinned.

"I will invent cold fire just to spite you."

"...You know that would do the opposite of spiting me, right?"

"Shut up."

Rose just chuckled, turning to Blake and Yang for their input.

"I need to work on my stamina?" Blake asked, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Nope." Rose disagreed, shaking her head. "You had me on the ropes in the first fight. You could try to improve your recovery but honestly, I just think you could stand to figure out a way to be more...aggressive?"

She scratched the side of her head. "And I don't mean like, sacrifice your style just for the sake of hitting things harder. Maybe dust grenades? Even just flashbangs would be your kind of thing, I think." She noted, nodding to herself.

"And I need to figure out how to use a sword." Yang deadpanned.

Rose grinned. "Perfect. Weiss can teach you with Myrtenaster and you can teach her how to punch things properly."

"I hate."

"Love you too, Princess."