RWBY: Isekai

Wow I hate magic. Go figure. (I) [Volume 1]

Hazel Cantrip was, by her own account, a witch of some renown.

By her own account, she was also an apprentice who had not yet been trusted with the good cauldron.

She came from an old and respected line of witches.

Except in reality, her family had kept goats.

She had studied under a master for 11 years.

But again no, she had taught herself from a book she found in her grandmother's pantry.

She had never lost a duel.

But she had never been in one.

If a person managed to be all of those things at once, I could only conclude that she was not keeping track of what she said about herself.

Almost everything I know about Hazel Cantrip, I know from Hazel Cantrip.

Aka not an ideal source.

The one thing she did say consistently however was a single sentence. As far as I could tell, it was the only way she knew to start a conversation, and she used it on strangers whenever she could.

–May I show you some magic?

Well, it doesn't matter.

Needless to say, at the start of this story, I had never heard of her. Nobody I knew had. I was not the sort of person a witch introduces herself to, and neither was anyone I knew.

At our school, as at any school, the students nobody picked eventually picked each other. By the middle of Grade 10, there were 4 of us left over, and we became a group the same way the last 4 people against the gym wall become a team. Nobody chose it. It was simply what happened once the teacher ran out of names.

Priya Nandakumar.

Marcus Thibodeau.

Kelsey Lamb.

And me.

Now I know what you're thinking: What the fuck are these names?

Well they won't reappear after this chapter again, so they needed to stick out.

Anyways! Substitute teachers hated the name Nandakumar since no one really knew how to pronounce it. Obviously unless they told you. Similarly, Thibodeau was pronounced 3 different ways by the teaching staff and a fourth way by Thibodeau.

Lamb was pronounced exactly the way it was spelled, which, according to Lamb, was the problem.

Mine? I will get to.

It is said that you can choose your friends.

However, in our case, it was more that we were what remained after everyone else had finished choosing.

Did I say that already? I feel like I did...

Oh! I should mention my own standing, since it will come up. I was 17 years old and about to start Grade 12. I passed every subject except French and Chemistry, and I passed Chemistry only in the sense that my mark began with a 5.

I had failed the written test for my G1 licence twice, meaning the other 3 all had cars. I had a bus pass, and a habit of standing near the other 3 at the end of the day in a way that made it easy for one of them to offer me a ride.

It usually worked.

I was not someone strangers had anything to say to. I assumed I would go my whole life that way, without once being asked an interesting question by a person I did not know.