RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC32: Falling Up (Cinder and Co.)-4

"I never fought him except that one time in--" Cinder suddenly realized she shouldn't bring that up. "Well, never mind. Go on."

"I didn't think you'd be enjoying this," Oscar said.

"Oh, I'd love to hear how clueless they all were," she said. "It's so gratifying to remember how easy it was for us."

"That sounds disheartening to me," Pyrrha said.

"Okay, but this woman--" Royal pointed a Cinder rather rudely. "--walks into your school, and she's like 22? 23?"

[I couldn't find any canon answer to this. One site said she was 17 when she met Emerald, but it was a fan site, from what I could tell, so it's probably not right. But she's confirmed to be in her mid twenties by the creators, so that might be a good estimate.]

"Younger than that!" Cinder acted as if that was something to be offended over.

"How old are you?" Oscar asked.

"I...don't know, exactly," Cidner said strangely.

"Oh..." they said awkwardly.

"I must have been...20 or 21 then," Cinder decided.

"I didn't realize you were younger than Winter," Pyrrha said.

Only these three people would probably not have added "other than mentally" to that statement.

"My point was, does she look the right age to be a Beacon student?" Royal said. "No one thought anything of it?"

"Well, age is kind of hard to figure out," Oscar said. "Shine says everyone here looks really young."

"Everyone inside the kingdoms?" Royal said slyly.

"Yeah," Ruby said, "you know...Besides, people didn't graduate Beacon till they were 20 anyway. The really odd thing was her being old but still in the first year category, but some people join a little later.... It's not unheard of."

[And actually makes sense why no one thought it was odd she was there.]

"And she wasn't the only one who was more skilled than other people. Blake never had formal training in a school and she was better than most of the first years," Pyrrha said. "And so was I, but I trained all the time. So no, it wasn't a dead giveaway. Jaune, on the other hand...I'm still certain Ozpin knew all along."

"He did, actually. He said so," Oscar said.

"Anyway," Ruby said pointedly, to get back on track, "after that, stuff went crazy when Beacon fell."

"Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Mrs. Arc," Royal said, which tickled Pyrrha pink, but isn't that when...you reportedly, well... died? I saw your statue. It was nice. I saw your fights too. Atlas loved you."

"I was fortunate to get a lot of support from them," Pyrrha said. "Weiss and I met at some events."

"We did too," Royal said, unexpectedly. "But you wouldn't remember me."

"What? We did?" Pyrrha said.

"Only at one or two of them my father made me go to," Royal said, matter-of-factly. "Of course, he'd have made sure to have met you. Probably would have asked you to wear our sportswear. But you got your armor specially made, like most of the really committed fighters. Ironically, it's the military that gets them made in bulk."

"Why is that ironic?" Oscar asked.

"Uh...Nevermind," Royal said.

"It was so long ago...I'm sorry, I can't place you..." Pyrrha stared at him.