Dust and Steam

Nigel walks south away from the academy, unsure why he has to take part in a test when he barely arrived yesterday. Taking a sigh as he walks, he stares down at the ground. Grass is new to him, and so is the warmer air and the abundance of clouds. Down south there's always at least 1 or 2 feet of snow but here, it's just grass and dirt.
He looks up to see a robed man on the cliff he was instructed to go to. He spots a few other people, possible the other students, and hurries over to join them at the cliff.
 
"Hey there creepy robed person guy!" Lifira greets as she casually walks up to the starting line--or what passed for it. "We smashing some Grimm's head in today? There's been a striking lack of training fights or duels these past few days."

She casually inspects Richard, her weapon, as she waits for a reply. The baseball bat/shotgun has been freshly loaded with a new canister of Dust for the occasion, with several more in her pack. If any Grimm chose to attack her, even in the water, something was burning to death today.
 
"Morning!" Ren said aloud. He was dozing off on a tree near the cliff, having arrived a little too early. He was quite the morning person indeed, chipper the moment he wakes. He was used to early morning tasks too, so after a stretch, he hopped straight off the tree and looked at everyone. That's when he noticed the hooded man.

"Hoh!" He exclaimed in surprise. "I knew you're up to something!"
 
"Good morning everyone. I hope your stay here was pleasant till now. Sadly, i have bad news for you."
The person turned around to look at them and continued to speak.
"Because of a larger number of students than usual, only one of you will be allowed to attend to beacon. "
He gave the message a moment to echo in their minds.
 
Lifira's grip on her weapon tightens. She nervously glances around to see the others, as a free hand checks her pack for her stun grenades. She notes with some displeasure that there isn't possibly enough, in any situation.

"Seriously?" She says.
 
"What?" Nigel asks. He doesn't know what the beacon even is but it must be important.
"What do you mean? What's the beacon? Why can only one of us get to it?" he steps forward.
 
Ren cocked a brow and shrugged. "Oh cool. So, you're gonna test us for this?"

He looked around at the others. He wasn't quite sure how well they would do, but he liked to think he had more experience then they did. Specially the boy. Ren hadn't seen him around before and he seemed pretty lost on his own. "You do know what you signed up for right?" He addressed the group. "When you're out hunting, surprises will always come."
 
Anette pulled off her sunglasses and casually put them into her pocket. "Beacon is the school." She said to the guys question. She walked closer to the cloaked person. "Then why even let us in?" She began to question. "Somethings strange here." She tried to see who the person was but couldn't. When she couldn't tell she moved away with a sigh.
 
"I barely have any idea what I signed up for. I just got here yesterday and settled in." Nigel says. "I hadn't heard anything about hunting until now. I've done some hunting back in the artic though so I think I'll be fine." he rubs his hands together. "What are you hunting exactly?"
 
Anette looked at the guy asking all the questions. "Grimm." She said. "Hunters and huntresses hut Grimm. That's the whole point of beacon, to teach us to become better hunters."
 
Anette looked at the guy asking all the questions. "Grimm." She said. "Hunters and huntresses hut Grimm. That's the whole point of beacon, to teach us to become better hunters."
"Beacon is the school then?" Nigel says with a tilt of his head. "I need to get to the library next time I get the chance." he says, rubbing his forehead. He looks to the robed man. "So what will we need to do to be chosen to go to Beacon?"
 
The man held a pendant out. It had a simple iron chain, and a symbol that resembled 3 attached triangles was the pendant's decoration.
"Your objective is simple: First, you have to get this pendant from me by any means possible. Then you have to bring it back to beacon where a teacher with blonde hair waits at the entrance.
The rules:
Only the one who brings him the pendant will attend to beacon.
Using force is allowed, but killing isn't.
You can use anything you have at your disposal.
Any questions?"
The man attached the pendant to his neck, then he held his hands behind his back, obviously holding something
 
Ren looked incredulous. "Like, what the fuck man!" He turned to the boy who clearly shouldn't even be around. "You come around here expecting math or something? There's fucking monsters killing people as we speak. If you're here to learn to fight or to polish your skill, you will die."

He looked at the Instructor. "How the hell do you accept applications from kids like these? Are you insane? This kid will just be a fucking bait, unless that's what you'll train him to be then I don't get the point of this whole school if anyone could just walk in and shit."

His annoyance was minor, half of what he said was from concern and another half was pride.
 
"I don't see this as a very good way of seeing who should stay in Beacon but if that's what you want I suppose I can." Anette said to the masked man. "But I still want to know why let us all come in the first place."
 
"Consider this a competition. Well then."
The man took his weapon from his back. 3 staffs that were attached to each other with a chain, and the ends of it had small spheres at them. The whole weapon was pure white, just as the clouds and snow.
"Begin!"
He slammed it with a wide swing into the ground, and with that the ground began to collapse. A huge part of the earth began to move from the sudden impact and made it slide down. he then jumped off it and landed on one of the many ledges along the cliff.
 
Suddenly Anette felt the ground falling apart. She went falling with it but jumped onto other parts of the rocks and made it to another ledge on the cliff. She was slightly lower than the cloaked man. "Competition, alright." She said to herself.
 
Mia had been quiet the whole time, analyzing everything the person said. It didn't make sense. Not to her, anyway. When the ground broke, she jumped to a ledge quickly and started looking for some way to get the pendent. He was obviously very strong. It would be useless to attack him head on. At least, that's what Ethan would say as much as she wanted to hit him with her hammer. She wondered if she could get the others to team up with her, then maybe they could all walk with the pendent together.
 
Lifira frowned. The faunus started rushing off after the man and his pendant.

"I'm not going back, you hear me?!" She screamed as she withdrew her weapon, "I'm not!"

With great speed, she launches off the falling chunk and onto the ledges.
 
Kyra swore under her breath as she avoided falling in with the crumbling ground. Instead she found herself off to the side safely as she sized up the situation. She pulled out her twin guns already, the second the man had pulled out his own weapon. The brunette didn't want to believe that only one of them would be accepted into the school. The school was fairly large, surely it had enough room for all of the students here? Kyra switched her left gun over to the dust paced cartridges, specifically pressure before firing a normal bullet from the right followed by one of the pressure dust packed bullets from her left. Her aim was the ledge beneath the mans feet. As the pressure cartridge connected with the bullet, the bullets launch speed would gain force, it should be enough to at least give the ledge it's very own earthquake, if not shatter the stone. Given, it'd totally destroy the bullet, but whatever. Kyra, still doubtful, tried to close some of the distance.
 
Kyra's strategy had an interesting effect. Her planned small earthquake did happen, but the ledge couldn't handle it and cracked until it broke into pieces. If it wouldn't have been for the little quake, the man's balance wouldn't have been off and he would have jumped away. Instead, he fell together with the rock pieces. It was not over yet though. He used the falling remains to jump in midair and make his way to the rock wall. He slammed his staff into the wall to have something to hold on.
"Not bad. But you gotta try harder."
He stepped on his staff and jumped off it while holding it. Thanks to this, he made it to another ledge, but was a lot closer to the water now.
"By the way. If no one brings this pendant back by noon, you will all fail."
With these words, he wanted to make sure that they would not only stop just looking at him, but also put more effort into it.