Prologue
First Notes:
Firstly, a shout to Richard Fern and Kirako, for pointing out obvious, glaring mistakes such as using ' instead of " for dialogues.
This is an updated version of Chapter 1, henceforth a prologue.
'Um,'
It was a soft, meek voice, tinged with concern; so faint that it struggled to be heard over the 'click! clack!' of designer loafers beating a march across the ancient timbers of a long hallway.
'Did you, um, get to talk it out with Fox?'
Coco Adel, senior huntress in training, pretended not to have heard anything. She continued on her way, her heels perhaps striking the floor a little more forcefully than necessary as she gripped a tall sheaf of nondescript brown dossiers to her breast.
She was clad in her favoured ensemble, in rich coffee and cream tones, a sharp cut ribbed sweater and specially tailored military style fatigues. Beret cocked at an aggressive angle and aviators tucked securely in her breast pocket. He had come in a tee and shorts. Not that she cared.
"Um," the little voice continued, barely a whisper. "I really think you should go talk to Fox."
"Room F-A17," Coco announced, giving no indication she had heard anything out of the ordinary. A brass nameplate indicated her destination; a modest looking door that was probably far older than she was. "We're here."
"Oh, okay then. Shall I get the door?"
"Please and thank you," Coco sighed.
Velvet Scarletina, a lithe, waifish girl darted out and swung the door open. Daintily dressed for casual office work, the girl would have been a white collar worker's fantasy - had she lacked the mark of a Faunus. A pair of dark brown rabbit's ears emerged from the crown of her head.
They entered together, into a small, windowless, unassuming room, daubed in the dull gray of someone utterly inconsequential. Fittingly it was sparse, containing only a simple desk and two chairs; completely utilitarian in a 'ignore the lowly scum that resides here' kind of way.
Coco loathed it immediately. Being lowly scum had never gone down well with her. Irritably, she tossed the stack of dossiers onto the desk, watching with dark satisfaction as they hit the wood with a thump and scattered.
"It's been a week, Coco," Velvet was there at once, an anxious expression on her face as she gathered up the scattered documents into something resembling order. "The two of you have to sort it out sooner or later."
"There's nothing to sort out." Coco groused. Nudging a pile of dossiers aside, she swept her beret off her head and in one fluid motion and set her feet upon the table. "And it has not been a week."
"Er, yes it has." Velvet said despondently. "It's been a week and half a day, to be absolutely precise; even Yatsuhashi is getting concerned."
"...I see," Coco mumbled. The man was slow to anger, but fierce when provoked. "Well, you tell him that it's none of his business."
"Well, he told me to remind you that-"
"Well," Coco snapped. "If Yatsu want to say something, he can say it to my face, tomorrow, when this stupid administration module is over. Right after we appraise all these useless applications."
Velvet's face fell, defeated, and Coco felt a stab of guilt running through her chest.
"You know what," she sighed, cooling her tone. "Let's just start, okay? The new La' Prétentieus autumn range premieres tonight and I wanna' go; we've - I've got VIP invites."
"Oh, okay. That sounds... nice." Velvet nodded, agreeing to the offered compromise. She teetered alongside and sank demurely into a chair. "If possible, I'd rather not miss my work shift later."
"Wait a second," Coco laughed darkly. "We got shoehorned into unpaid, unscheduled overtime and that's what you get worried about? Your new job?"
"It helps with tuition." Velvet shrugged.
"How's it going anyway?"
"Oh, it's not too bad - there's Faunus on the staff and it's close to the station," Velvet said offhandedly. "And we've just got paperwork for now."
Coco groaned at that word. Of the four of them, only Velvet had the saintly patience to deal with paperwork with any form of good humour.
"Um?" Velvet blinked. "You disapprove?"
"Velvet," Coco fixed her team mate with a withering glance."That's good for you, but if I wanted to push papers around for a living, I'd be a lawyer, not a Huntress."
"Okay," Velvet agreed politely. With a free hand, she patted the stack of dossiers, "I've got them in alphabetical order. Shall we begin?"
"Fine," Coco huffed, slumping back into the chair as Velvet busied herself allocating space on the desk.
"Let's stack the forms for the Royal Beacon Military Academy here, over here for the Beacon School of Culinary Arts, over here for the Beacon Biotech Institute and right over there for the Beacon Academy."
"This naming scheme sucks."
"It is a little ostentatious, isn't it?" Velvet admitted. "They're all named after The Shining Beacon Knight after all."
"King Vale, Founder of the Kingdom." Coco mouthed. "That man must have had the smallest member in the world if he needs half the buildings in the country named after him." She smirked in satisfaction as Velvet reddened, pretending not to have heard.
"Anyway, let's put the Beacon Academy Engineering College applications there. The Beacon Academy Theological Seminary over there..." Velvet continued.
"What about the Beacon Academy Teaching Hospital?" Coco grunted. She couldn't let Velvet do everything.
"Hmm, right over here," Velvet said, patting an empty spot immediately next to the stack for the Beacon Academy for Hunters; their Beacon Academy.
"Done."
"Mmm, now last, but not least, oh! It's the Beacon Academy for Theatre." Velvet piped up, genuinely enthusiastic. "They've just opened this year but they're doing really well - they've got a production for The Last Stand of Menagerie going on right now."
"Controversial. I like it."
"Their costumes do need a little work though." Velvet added. "Here."
Coco nodded and got to work; picking up a dossier, she leant back, her feet idly shaking on the desk. For several minutes, the room was silent as she tried to decipher the various chicken scratches that batteries of teachers had scribbled on each dossier. A hundred different applications, to a hundred different schools, with a hundred different teachers - each claiming his or her personal pet monkey was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The silence was deafening, broken only by the dry rustle of turning pages and despite herself, Coco began to feel uncomfortable.
"Hey," she said eventually, desperate for some chatter. "Want to go to the La' Prétentieus Premiere?"
Velvet paused.
"Um, I kinda have work shift later. Besides," she said softly as she turned her pages. "I think you should be going with Fox, not me."
"Fox?" Coco rolled her eyes. "Damn it Velvet; Fox this. Fox that. That dimwit wouldn't know how to dress himself without my help. He'd go to King's Street in tees and shorts if I weren't there to..."
She caught herself mid tirade. "Nevermind. That dimwit's stuck with Yatsu in the department handling death certificates anyway. They've got a backlog all the way back to the Battle of Fort Castle. So I can't talk to him."
"Right. They're next door."
"Come on," Coco wheedled, abandoning any pretext of leadership."We haven't had a girl's night out for ages. If we ditch this place now, you'll have time to pick out a dress."
"Nope. Let's not distract ourselves, please?"
"There'll be canapés and bubbly in the VIP lounge!"
Velvet's ears perked up at that mention. "And bribing me with food won't work." she said, unconvincingly. "And we simply can't rubber-stamp everything to leave early.
"We can."
"Coco! I hope you're joking!" Velvet cried, looking horrified at even the suggestion. "What if we admit someone unqualified? They'd hurt themselves!"
Coco rolled her eyes. Velvet was far too kind about these sorts of things. "That's why we have initiation, don't we? So that the poor sods that try to cheat their way into a Hunter Academy die before they kill their teammates."
"Now you're just being mean," Velvet huffed. She reached for the next dossier in the pile. "Alrsdottir Amber - she's applied pretty much everywhere." she read.
"Velvet, I simply can't go alone." Coco cried. "The invitation says plus one guest. It'll be a faux pas if I fly solo!"
"Fox."
"No."
"We should concentrate on the applications."
"Come on, it'll be fun."
"Coco," Velvet said finally, snapping Amber's dossier shut. "If I go with you, will you promise me one thing?"
"Yeah, I guess?"
"Go talk to Fox. First thing tomorrow. And stop being distracting us so we can finish once and for all.
"That's two things," Coco said, hesitantly as she weighed the pros and cons. "But, yeah, sure. Tomorrow."
"And I will leave the party early; can't miss my job."
"Fair enough." Coco agreed. She could work with that. She reached into the pile and pulled up a dossier, this one belonging to some blonde boy. "Alright! Let's speed things up here!" she crowed.
"Carefully please," Velvet warned. "We still have to do this properly!"
"We're huntresses," Coco announced as she skimmed through the fellow's applications. .
Arc Jaune. One of the Beacons. Decent grades. Too easy.
"We're always careful."
Jaune Arc, recent entrant to Beacon Academy awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling. It was a high arched terracotta brick affair with no sign of the supercar posters and that little glow-in-the-dark moons and stars that he had on his. For a brief moment, his heart skipped a beat. Then he remembered exactly where he was and what he was doing there.
It had been three weeks since he had received his acceptance letter and notification of scholarship, and a week since he had stolen out of the house into the dead of night. Yet the occasion where he had visited that bar to 'process' his documentation, hit on twins and witness his first a bar fight seemed only minutes ago; the events of the past weeks melding into a blurred recollection.
Somehow, the biggest gamble in his life had paid off and he could scarcely believe it. Sure, his transcripts were utterly fraudulent, but if he succeeded - if he somehow made it, it would be fine. He could repay his debt a thousand fold and no one need be the wiser.
After all, his intentions were noble, weren't they?
Last Notes:
The old man in the original version was useless, nameless and ultimately a waste of text; and has been deleted altogether in favour of a more natural interaction between Coco and Velvet a which also mentions the other two, strong silent members of CFVY, without having to actually write them. I can't write the strong silent type lol.
Rather than the usual meek, retiring Velvet, I felt Velvet fell into the role of a responsible motherly figure exceptionally better than Coco, who I see as a dangerously competent leader during missions, but a whiney, finnicky , self conscious hipster outside, favouring parties over paperwork, which is a nice contrast.
Hopefully this updated chapter shows a little more, and tells a little less; things like the overtaxed, ancient, backwards bureaucracy and medical system un-thanked Police and soldiers constantly overshadowed by Hunters should be brought in subtly and I don't know if I can do it with my below average grasp of the language - don't be afraid to be critical.
With any luck, I should be able to avoid nonsense like love and first sights and stuff like that, while not falling into the trap of the overly gritty grim-dark setting to the point of becoming a caricature. As mentioned above with Coco and Velvet, I'd like to use different, but plausible characterizations, not just the usual 'tsun' Weiss, Hyper Cookie Monster Ruby, Omniscient Ozpin, 'lusty' Yang or stupid hitler bully Cardin.
As for pairings, I'd like to think that Ruby, Jaune and Company have their hands full with school to give it much thought. Especially Jaune, who is far, far behind everyone else. He does have his crush on Weiss though, despite the fact that it's probably best that he focus on his studies.
There we go. All smoothed out and hopefully making more sense than the original chapter. Honestly, English is so hard.
Also, Jaune is one of my favorite characters, because he is a cute idiot. Weiss don't know what she's missing and Pyrrha has good taste.
Too bad I like friendships more than ships. lol, but we'll see how it goes