While everyone else was busy searching for Blake, Tsutsumi was calmly drinking coffee at a small café in the city of Vale.
The soft clatter of cups and quiet conversations between customers blended into the background as Tsutsumi sat by the window, leisurely sipping from his cup as if nothing unusual was happening in the city at all.
He wasn't exactly close with her.
The only reason he even knew Blake at all was because their teams were neighbors at Beacon and ended up crossing paths fairly often. Team meetings, hallway encounters, training field rotations, situations where people inevitably saw each other whether they wanted to or not. Yet despite all of that, Blake and Tsutsumi had barely exchanged more than a glance.
They rarely spoke.
Most of the time, Blake kept to herself with a book in hand, and Tsutsumi didn't exactly go out of his way to start conversations either. The two of them simply existed in the same spaces from time to time without really interacting.
The only reason Tsutsumi even had her card now was because of an accidental moment where he had managed to reach her heart.
Even now, he still wasn't entirely sure how that happened.
Still, with six people already out searching for her, Tsutsumi didn't see much reason to involve himself.
He took another slow sip of coffee, his gaze drifting lazily toward the street outside.
Besides, even if they did manage to find her, what exactly were they planning to do afterward?
Drag her back?
Tie her up first and haul her back to Beacon like some kind of captured criminal?
Or maybe they planned to beat her up first, then tie her up, and drag her back afterward.
None of those sounded like particularly effective solutions.
Tsutsumi rested his elbow on the table, idly turning the cup in his hand.
Unless someone had a proper way to actually convince Blake to come back on her own, searching for her felt rather pointless. Finding someone who had already decided to leave didn't automatically mean you could make them return.
People didn't work like that.
Just then, a distant explosion suddenly echoed through the air.
The sound was loud enough that even inside the cafe, several customers paused mid-conversation. Tsutsumi's eyes shifted toward the window as a dark plume of smoke began rising in the distance, visible above the buildings.
He turned slightly in his seat, looking more carefully.
The large cloud of black smoke was rising from the direction of the docks.
Tsutsumi slowly stood up from his chair.
Reaching for the camera hanging around his neck and raised it toward the window, adjusting the angle slightly before pressing the shutter.
The image of the rising smoke was captured neatly. At least that is what he believes, if the picture actually turns out into something, then he would have to wait for the picture to be printed out to know.
Lowering the camera, Tsutsumi took one last glance toward the distant dock area before quietly placing a few Lien on the table and stepping outside.
Then he began walking toward the direction of the smoke, his pace unhurried.
By the time something like an explosion happened at the docks, there was a very good chance the others had already made it there first. With Yang, Ruby, Weiss, and the others searching the city, an incident that loud was practically an invitation for them to gather.
And since that was the case, Tsutsumi didn't feel any urgency.
With an explosion like that, the others had most likely already reached the dock by now.
...
Once everyone finally returned to Beacon, Tsutsumi was immediately confronted by an angry Weiss the moment he stepped into the dorm room.
It didn't take long for her to realize that while the rest of them had been running around the city searching for Blake, Tsutsumi had not been involved in that search at all.
"Didn't you say that you don't care?" Tsutsumi asked calmly.
He was sitting cross-legged on the couch with his arms folded across his chest, looking up at the standing white-haired girl in front of him as if he genuinely didn't understand why she was upset.
"I didn't care about Blake being a Faunus!" Weiss snapped immediately, her voice sharp with frustration. "Not you sitting in a cafe drinking coffee while the rest of us ran all over Vale looking for her, you dunce!"
Tsutsumi blinked once, his expression barely changing.
"What exactly am I supposed to do when I find her?" he asked flatly. "Beat her up, tie her limbs together, and drag her back here?"
The room fell silent.
Everyone: "…"
The blunt question hung in the air with uncomfortable clarity.
Because the truth was… none of them had actually thought that far ahead.
"Alright, alright, let's stop this here," Yang finally said, stepping in before the argument could go any further. She moved quickly, grabbing Weiss by the arm and pulling her back a step.
Yang knew very well just how dangerous Tsutsumi could be when he was genuinely angry. Weiss right now was practically poking a sleeping dragon with a stick.
And if she somehow managed to actually anger him, then the rest of them might as well light three incense sticks for Weiss in advance.
"I mean… he does have a point," Nora added as she hurried over to help Yang pull Weiss away before the Schnee heiress could say something even worse.
You knew a situation was serious when the two muscleheads of both teams were the first ones backing off and trying to de-escalate things.
Weiss looked like she still wanted to argue, but with both Yang and Nora physically dragging her back, the confrontation eventually died down before it could escalate any further.
Tsutsumi didn't bother continuing the discussion.
Instead, he simply stood up and walked out of the dorm.
A little while later, he could be found inside Beacon's library.
The quiet environment suited him far more than pointless arguments.
He wandered between the tall shelves of books, occasionally pulling out a volume before sitting down at one of the reading tables and flipping through the pages with steady patience.
Tsutsumi still remembered that this world was supposed to be an AR Wizard world.
If that was true, then somewhere within this world there should be clues, small hints or pieces of information that connected it to the larger system he already knew. His goal was to see whether anything in this world matched the knowledge buried within his memories about Wizard World.
Of course, searching manually through books in a library was a slow and inefficient process.
Compared to the Gaia Library, it was practically primitive.
If he used the Gaia Library instead, then as long as something that happened within this world, there would be no secret that could remain hidden from him.
All he had to do was search for it.
But Tsutsumi rarely used the Gaia Library unless absolutely necessary.
To him, the Gaia Library was a double-edged knife.
It could provide answers to almost anything, but knowing too much could easily become dangerous, not just for him, but also for the people around him. Information had weight, and sometimes learning something you shouldn't know could drag others into trouble as well.
So, unless the situation truly required it, Tsutsumi preferred to rely on ordinary methods.
And so he remained in the library, reading and searching through various materials from morning all the way until midnight.
By the time Pyrrha finally found him, the library had already grown nearly empty.
She spotted him sitting alone at one of the tables, surrounded by a small pile of books, still reading as if he had completely lost track of time.
"Tsutsumi," she said gently as she walked over.
He looked up from the page.
Without saying much more, Pyrrha simply reached down, grabbed his arm, and dragged him out of the library.
...
He continued spending the following weeks almost completely locked inside the library.
Day after day, Tsutsumi moved between the tall shelves, pulling down books, reading through them, and placing them aside before moving on to the next.
History, mythology, world geography, Dust research, Grimm ecology, combat records, ancient legends, anything that might contain even the faintest clue related to what he remembered about Wizard Worlds.
But after going through more than half of the entire library's collection, he still hadn't found anything even remotely connected to those memories.
Sighing quietly, Tsutsumi finally closed the book in his hands and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
At this point his eyes were starting to feel dry from staring at pages all day, so he decided to take a break and head toward the cafeteria.
However, the moment he pushed open the cafeteria doors, he froze.
"What the…?" The entire place was completely trashed.
Tables and chairs were overturned everywhere. Plates had been knocked onto the floor, food scattered across the ground like someone had decided to turn the entire cafeteria into a battlefield. Drinks had spilled across the tiles, turning parts of the floor sticky and slick, while chunks of fruit and pieces of bread were splattered across nearby walls.
It looked less like a cafeteria and more like the aftermath of a small war.
Shifting his gaze further inside, Tsutsumi immediately spotted the source of the chaos.
On one side of the room, Nora, Ren, and Pyrrha were standing together on top of several stacked tables like they had claimed some kind of high ground.
"Hahaha! I'm king of the castle!" Nora shouted loudly, hands planted proudly on her hips as she looked down at the four girls standing on the opposite side.
Ruby suddenly stomped onto a table of her own, dramatically pointing at Nora while holding a small milk box in her other hand.
"Justice will be swift! Justice will be painful!" she declared.
She squeezed the milk box, sending a stream of milk spraying wildly into the air before raising her fist like a heroic proclamation.
"It will be delicious!"
Behind her, Weiss, Blake, and Yang stood up on nearby tables as well, cheering loudly like soldiers responding to a declaration of war.
Tsutsumi stared at the scene in complete confusion. "What the fuck am I watching?"
Before he could process it any further, the battle escalated.
His own teammates were now throwing watermelons like ballistic missiles.
Yang charged forward first, shoving both her hands into two roasted turkeys and using them as makeshift boxing gloves. With a loud shout she smashed straight through an incoming watermelon, sending a spray of juice and pulp exploding everywhere, splattering across her hair, face, and clothes.
Ignoring the mess entirely, Yang continued charging forward, punching through multiple watermelons in rapid succession.
Blake followed right behind her, flipping forward gracefully before grabbing two long breadsticks from a nearby table. Holding them like swords, she slashed through several more incoming watermelons as she fought alongside Yang.
The blonde then threw her turkey "gloves" forward like projectiles.
Pyrrha backflipped away to avoid them, landing lightly before grabbing her own breadstick and rushing forward to meet both Yang and Blake head-on.
With a few swift movements, the red-haired champion deflected their attacks and pushed both girls back.
Watching all of this unfold, Tsutsumi's eyelid twitched sharply.
He might be the destined Destroyer of Worlds, but seeing this much food being wasted right in front of him caused a completely different kind of anger to rise inside his chest.
His heart as a cook simply couldn't accept it.
If Oguri Cap ever witnessed something like this, she would probably cry tears of blood seeing the amount of perfectly good food being thrown away.
Attack Ride: Time Vent!
The chaotic scene inside the cafeteria rewound instantly, everything snapping back to the moment before the food fight had begun.
Tsutsumi's hand shot out and caught the slice of cake that had been flying directly toward Weiss's face.
However, the sudden reversal of time collided with the momentum of everyone's previous movements.
The table in front of them erupted into chaos.
Weiss stumbled forward and crashed into the back of Tsutsumi's hand. Ruby's knees slammed into the edge of the table, causing her to lose balance and fall backward. Yang fell as well, dragging Blake down with her in the process.
Nora leapt upward only to trip mid-motion and tumble backward onto the floor. Ren had been leaning forward, and the sudden shift caused his stomach to smack directly into the edge of the table.
Pyrrha nearly toppled off her seat but managed to catch the edge at the last moment, stopping herself from falling.
While most of the cafeteria remained unaware that time had just been reversed, the eight people directly involved in the chaos immediately felt something was wrong.
"The hell was that?" Tsutsumi asked, his voice carrying clear irritation.
"Tsutsumi!?" the seven of them exclaimed almost at the same time after finally noticing him standing there.
"Eh? Wait! What just happened?" Ruby quickly scrambled back to her feet, looking around in confusion. "Didn't we just?"
They had been in the middle of a full-scale food fight. Why is everything suddenly back to before it happened?
While Team RWBY looked around in confusion, Team TNPR slowly turned their heads toward their leader.
This wasn't the first time Tsutsumi had reversed time while they were present.
They knew exactly what had happened.
Still, seeing the anger clearly written across his face, Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha could only give him awkward, sheepish smiles as they silently apologized without saying a word.