RWBY: Corrupted Save File

Part #22. - Evolution.

His eyes shot open when he heard the loud voices of his two professors tasked with announcing the tournament.

"One on one battles will now begin! Hurry to the arena QUICKLY!" Saffron would never mistake Doctor Oobleck's voice... especially when he sounded as wired as he did.

"Damn it." Saffron gently hit his fist against the wall. He got up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He really should carry some tissues with him or something...

He was seated by the rest of Team RWBY and Team JNPR. In the arena, the final qualifiers were lined up. There were a few people whose name Saffron did not know. The people he planned on paying attention to were Yang, Pyrrha, Penny and Mercury. It was a bit of a surprise seeing Penny in the arena, but after thinking about it, it did make sense that a combatant of her caliber would make it to the finals.

For this round, they decided to do something a little out of the ordinary. They didn't decide the matches beforehand. They were randomly selecting who each student would face right before the match.
Luckily, the fight that had been chosen first was one Saffron was looking forward to; Mercury versus Yang.
The other qualifiers left the arena. Once the arena only had Mercury and Yang, the middle platform rose up, giving a smaller area to fight in than the other matches.

The two raised their arms and got into a basic stance while Professor Port began counting down.
Once he got to "one," Yang threw a punch while Mercury spun around and shot his leg forward. The two collided and knocked each other back. Mercury went for another attack, as he usually did, but Yang flipped over him, avoiding the kick. Yang punched her gauntlets at Mercury, shooting off a shotgun blast which he managed to avoid. The two got close and Yang threw a batch of punches, all of which Mercury deflected with his right arm before throwing a left hook. Yang ducked and the two clashed again, knocking each other back once more. Mercury flipped backwards to gain some distance, but Yang immediately started shooting off shotgun blasts. The young man was forced to close the distance he gained, immediately going for a powerful axe kick. Yang blocked it with both of her gauntlets She pushed him off and he used that to flip back. When he touched down on the ground he ducked immediately, avoiding another shotgun blast, while Yang was open, Mercury pushed off of the ground and hit Yang with a flashkick.

Just when Saffron had gotten a read on Mercury, he deviated from what he would typically do. Yang was in the air, while Mercury was on the ground. He had the advantage, but he didn't pursue. Yang regained her balance and flipped back, landing safely on the ground.
The battle continued while Saffron watched, puzzled at Mercury's action. He didn't change his fighting style after that. He continued to be just as acrobatic, with his kicks powerful enough to shatter rock. He just saw an opportunity, and decided not to take it.
Saffron supposed it could've just been a mistake on Mercury's end, but that wasn't a satisfying answer. Mercury was too strategic to simply miss that.

Mercury formed another tornado of projectiles which he sent down onto Yang with a downwards kick from the air. After the projectiles hit their target, he began walking away. It seemed as if he thought he had won, but the announcer would've said that. So he knew that Yang was still up.
Yang activated her semblance, her eyes changed to red and her hair emitted a faint glow. She rushed at Mercury who dodged her first attacks and tried attacking back. But then Yang switched to an unrefined attack pattern. She only threw punches with lacking form, Mercury got hit by a barrage of punches until his Aura broke. She finished her onslaught with a downwards punch that sent Mercury tumbling across the ground.

"What a way to kick off the finals!" Professor Port commentated.

"Yang Xiao Long wins!" Doctor Oobleck announced.
The platform lowered to allow the combatants to leave. Yang turned away from Mercury and began walking away. Her head suddenly turned back as if she had heard something and she punched downwards, shooting a shotgun blast into the downed Mercury's leg.

"What?!" Ruby yelled.
"Why?!" Blake shouted.

Saffron stayed silent. 
"My word!" Doctor Oobleck exclaimed.
"Cut the cameras!" Professor Port told someone in the booth with him.

Atlesian Knights dropped into the arena and surrounded Yang while Emerald ran over to Mercury to check on him.
A group of paramedics arrived and took Mercury away to treat his leg while Yang was detained. She didn't fight back, and was restrained. The next match was postponed and the colosseum was emptied.
The only one who remained, had been Saffron. Against the orders of the Atlesian security, he snuck back in and walked back to the stands.

The arena was empty, nothing had been cleaned up, as evidenced by the broken rock caused by Mercury.
Saffron hopped onto the railing that separated the spectators' area from the arena and felt around for the invisible barrier set up to protect the spectators. It had been turned off for now, luckily for the boy. He leapt from the railing into the arena.
He rolled upon landing and walked over to the middle, close to where Yang had shot Mercury. He looked around for a bit, trying to remember exactly where Mercury was crouched. He found the general area and he knelt down to look at the panels in the floor. He found a bunch of dust, nothing out of the ordinary considering the amount of dust they created and kicked up from the fight, but what was strange was that there was only dust.

Not a single drop of blood. From a shotgun blast? No way that a buckshot wouldn't cause any kind of blood splatter. His Aura was broken, so the bullets wouldn't bounce off of him. He was absolutely shot in the leg, but he didn't bleed.

Just then, Saffron felt something... it wasn't his Sense of Foreboding skill, no. It was something else. He just knew that there was someone else near. He glanced around before his eyes caught a glimpse of a dark figure against the darkening sky.
It appeared to be some sort of bird. It was quite small, but Saffron felt something abnormal about it. His first thought was to shoot it with a bolt of mana, but he decided against it. He didn't know if it was hostile or not. Saffron didn't have the ability to sense things on Remnant, on account of his Aura remaining unlocked. In fact, he still couldn't sense things with Aura despite the knot slowly getting undone.

That left one conclusion in the boy's mind.

The bird was magic.
Logically, there was only one thing for Saffron to do.

"Ca-KAW!" He squawked at the bird.

The bird squawked back (probably cussing at the boy) and left promptly after that. Saffron completely understood why.