Author's Note: So today is Surprise Sunday! Extra little one shot for today. Well, part one of a two part one shot, so a two shot?
Anyways, Lent is here, so I made a commitment to release a short story every Sunday up to Easter. Fun huh?
I was supposed to work yesterday but I didn't feel like it, so I conceived this story and spent a few hours on Valentines day completing the first part. My editors were busy so I am afraid to inform you that I edited this myself, I apologize for errors.
"Blaaaake." The overly chipper voice of the faunus' team leader called out only a few feet from her head.
Blake was left with a difficult decision, to pretend to be sleeping and hope that the bubbly brunette would leave her alone or to try to smother the younger girl with her pillow and hope the element of surprise would grant her victory. She took a third option instead by merely rolling onto her belly and covered her head with her pillow.
"Come on Blake, you promised to get breakfast with me." Ruby whined incessantly in a strained voice.
Blake knew exactly what her teammate was trying to do. The voice was a desperate attempt to coax enough sympathy that the faunus would look at the younger girls face, thus allowing her to win the battle with her trademarked 'kicked puppy look'. Normally Blake would be for fighting the good fight and try to resist, but it was too early in the morning for these shenanigans.
"When I said I would go to breakfast with you, I didn't think I would be waking up at 6 am on a Saturday to do so." The raven-haired girl managed to grunt through her pillow.
The lack of a reply gave Blake the brief idea that she might get away with her attempts to stay in bed. The two strong arms that wrapped around her waist quickly disabused her of that notion as they began to drag her out of bed.
"Ruby, stop!" Blake squeaked out frantically as she clawed at the sheets of her bed, trying to find something to cling to and resist the younger girl's antics.
It was hopeless. In the two years since Blake met Ruby, the girl had grown several inches. Now even barefoot, the brunette was taller than the faunus was in her heels. In another year, the former munchkin would probably rival her older sister in height. With the growth in height, Ruby had also put on multiple pounds of muscle. Between constantly wielding her heavy scythe on a daily basis, strength training with Yang, and improving her hand to hand combat skill with her fancy bladed gauntlets, she now easily surpassed Blake in strength.
"Ack!" Blake exclaimed as she was finally pulled off the bed, hanging limply in the arms of her team leader like a kitten hanging out of the mouth of its mother.
All of the bedding from Blake's bed was now laying on the floor as it's owner finally relinquished her grasp on them. It would need to be washed when Blake and Ruby returned from breakfast.
"Now Blakey, are you gonna change or do I need to drag you to the cafeteria in your pajamas?" Ruby said innocently enough that anyone listening would hardly be able to comprehend the actual threat behind the words.
The faunus captive turned her head to glare at the brunette when she heard another voice speak up.
"Silence, you dolts!" Weiss' shrill voice rang out. "Some of us are trying to sleep."
"Hmmph" Ruby replied with an exact imitation of the Heiress.
Well, almost exact imitation. The reaper had her cheeks puffed out in an act of defiance to her bossy teammate. Despite her inferior viewing position, Blake was able to observe the face of her captor. Despite her increased height, she still maintained most of her round childlike face, when she puffed her cheeks out she looked fifteen again. Attempting to use Ruby's current distraction to her advantage, the faunus started to struggle against the vice-like grip she was held in. No matter how hard she tried, she could not get the younger girl to relinquish her grasp. Her efforts did attract the attention of the brunette.
"So, your decision?" Ruby inquired to her captive.
"I'll be good." Blake responded in a falsely dejected tone, hanging limp again.
Ruby released her teammate and knelt down to pick up the blankets and pillows that were askew across the ground, placing them back on their former resting place. In the meantime, Blake grabbed her change of clothes. The raven-haired girl quickly shed her pajamas and changed into her outfit for the day. Her ears flicked back and forth as she tried to pick up the whispers that Ruby and Weiss were quietly exchanging as her red teammate tried to soothe the white one back to sleep.
"Ready?" Blake asked.
"Ready!" Ruby responded joyfully, earning a sharp hiss from her partner. "Oops."
Ruby and Blake quickly made their way to the cafeteria, enjoying the brisk cool air of the school campus without having to deal with the various noises and rambunctious actions of the students that were normally present. Blake took a deep breath as she relished in the quiet and cool air that encircled the feline ears on the top of her head, listening to the leaves as the fell to the ground. Sounds like this were rare to hear and should be cherished.
"You ok, Blake?" Ruby inquired quietly.
"Yeah." The faunus responded quickly while she stopped and stood in the middle of the courtyard, "Just enjoying the quiet that comes with the early morning."
Ruby stopped beside her teammate and tried to enjoy the environment. After only a few minutes the brunette started to become bored and began to fidget with the buttons on her clothing.
"Aren't you hungry?" Ruby asked while trying to remain as calm as possible, slowly starting to bounce up and down on her toes.
"Not really." Blake quipped back, eager to remain in the serene environment as long as possible.
There was no promise that the cafeteria would have as quiet and calm of an environment and Blake wanted to extend the experience as long as possible. Unfortunately her body had other ideas. The loud rumbling that was emitted from her stomach betrayed her words. The faunus desperately clutched her stomach, trying to eliminate the shocked expression on her face. The sly look on her teammate's face made it apparent that the reaper had heard her teammate's stomach's plea for food.
"Sooooo...:" Ruby trailed off.
Blake gave a hasty glare at her friend before starting to walk off in the direction of the cafeteria, trying to hide the blush of embarrassment that christened her face.
The first thing that Blake noticed when the pair of them walked into the cafeteria was that they were the only two in the room. The red and black duo made their way to the buffet table in the back. While Blake merely selected a croissant and a cup of tea, Ruby piled her plate high with various different fruits and pastries, topping her selection off with a cup of hot chocolate. After collecting their food they made their way to one of the many open tables.
They sat undisturbed for the next half hour. Their conversation topics ranged from school to friends to weekend plans. Sometimes they sat in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the peace of the empty dining hall and each other's company. Each period of quiet was always broken by the antics of the younger girl. As they finished with their food Blake felt the mood shift slightly and Ruby got a determined look on her face.
"So Blake, can I ask you a serious question?" Ruby voice was hesitant despite the appearance of her visage.
"Yeah," Blake replied evenly, trying not to show her curiousity, "what is it?"
Ruby squirmed a uncomfortably, trying to choose her words carefully.
"I-It's about W.."
The younger girl trailed off as the focus of her gaze shifted from her teammates amber eyes to the space behind her. Blake's ears twitched and rotated to listen to the new footsteps echoing through the cafeteria.
"W-What's going on with her?" Ruby sputtered out.
Blake rotated in her seat to see the newcomer shuffling towards the far side of the cafeteria where various food and beverages were laid out. With the new girl's head hanging in sorrow and arms limp at her side, it was one of the saddest sights that Blake had ever seen. Her body mimicked more of the motions of zombie from one of Blake's novels than those of a human.
Ruby and Blake watched the girl reach the table of food and lethargically place a large stack of pancakes on her plate and douse them with generous amounts of syrup. She slowly turned around and walked to the nearest table, gingerly placing the plate down and sitting in the adjacent chair. Instead of starting to eat, the girl merely stared at her food for a few minutes causing confusion in the pair of girls observing the scene.
Slowly the girl pushed the plate of untouched pancakes across the table in front of her and brought her head down onto the table with a loud thunk and a soft whimper.
"Nora!" Ruby exclaimed as she got up and zipped over to her friend's side in a flurry of rose petals.
Blake got up from her seat and ran over to join her team leader in aiding their friend. Dozens of scenarios played through the faunus' head as to what was causing the morose attitude of the normally hyperactive redhead. They last interacted with the exuberant hammer wielder just the previous day and she had been as happy and upbeat as ever. Something very severe must have happened suddenly to put the girl in her current state. Even more curious, while Nora was a notorious chipper morning person, they had never seen her out of the dormitory before 7am, and never venturing around campus by herself.
When Blake got close to the redhead head, her feline ears were able to pick up the the muffled sobs from the mopey teenager and her eyes were able to pick out the pools of liquid forming on the table underneath the other girl's head. Quickly sitting next to Nora and placing her hand on the girl's shoulder, Blake was at a loss of what to say. Comforting people was never really one of her strong suits. Lucky for her, Ruby decided to speak up instead.
"Nora." The brunette said softly, "What's wrong?"
Nora didn't give an immediate response, instead she continued to sob into the table, giving no sign that she was aware of the two girls surrounding her. Blake looked over the redhead's back at her teammate. She and Ruby exchanged worried glances, they have never seen Nora in this state before, the girl was near catatonic.
"Noooraaa." Ruby sang out trying to elicit a reaction from the girl. "What's eating ya?"
The silence from Nora was expected now, but surprisingly, the heard her voice after a few minutes.
"He's gone" She choked out, her voice still muffled by the table.
"What!?" Blake and Ruby responded together.
"Who's gone?" The faunus followed up.
"R-Ren…" Nora gasped out between sobs. "Ren's g-gone."
"Nora," Blake gasped back, hugging the girl's arm and feeling tears start to build up in her own amber eyes.
"I'm so sorry." Ruby's voice was shaky and weak.
Blake felt truly sorry for the girl. While she didn't know either Nora or Ren very well, but she was quite familiar with how it felt to lose someone close to you during her time in the White Fang. From what she was able to observe from how Ren and Nora behaved together and what she had heard from her teammates, the two of them were orphans and grew up with only the two of them looking out for each other. Blake thought about how she felt when she chose to walk away from Adam, but this had to be worse. At least he had the chance for redemption, if Ren was dead then she knew Nora's world would be crashing down on top of her.
"Ren's gone on a mission this weekend," The redhead finished, her voice growing from a sob to a wail of despair, "I won't get to see him until tomorrow night!"
Blake blinked slowly and leaned away from the girl she was just comforting. Ren was just gone for the weekend? Sure she would expect someone to be a little disappointed if one of her teammates was gone for the weekend, but to flip completely around and be filled with despair and sloth was unimaginable.
"Uh, what?" Ruby inquired to the sad teenager.
Nora sat up in her seat and wiped the tears and snot from her face with her hand and transferred it onto the side of her pink skirt. Still sniffling she turned to the red and black duo sitting next to her.
"I don't know what I am going to do without him." The hammer wielding munchkin stated, her voice a little stronger and more steady than before.
"Oh!" Ruby shouted out to Blake. "I know what we can do to cheer Nora up!"
Blake cringed slightly, her sensitive ears folding back against her head to try to muffle out some of the sound from the energetic brunette.
"One of the new students I met during Operation: First Year said something about them baking cookies today." The reaper kept babbling.
"And?" Blake asked back, trying to see the relevance of the statement.
"How do you guys feel about a cookie heist?"
Happy Valentine's Day to all of you.