Yatsuhashi felt bad that he and his fellow students were inadvertently destroying the forest, but not bad enough that he let it hold him back.

He drew Fulcrum and swung the sword hard from right to left, twisting his body and using the momentum to start spinning. “Hyaaaah!” he cried.

He held the blade out, flat side up, using it to slice his way through the trees as he spiraled downward. Not so much a leaf on the wind as a helicopter seed, the kind he’d loved dropping from heights as a child.

The forest whirled around him. He burst into a clearing with a flurry of twigs and leaves. He focused on a sturdy tree in his path, seeing it loom larger in flashes as he continued spinning. He tensed his muscles, and at the right moment he flipped the sword around and plunged it into the trunk, blade side down.

“Sorry!” Yatsuhashi mumbled to the tree.

The sword embedded itself to the hilt in the tree and then slid downward. He grunted as he held on, planting his feet against the trunk to slow his momentum further. The wrapped sword hilt grew warm, then hot, then burning under his gloved hands.

He hit the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth and staggered backward, somehow maintaining his balance, even while still dizzy from spinning. When he yanked Fulcrum from the trunk, the tree split in two and fell on either side of him. It screamed.

- RWBY: After the Fall, Chapter 2