Author's Note: So I saw the famous Key and Peele skit and not long after that, a screencap parody where Oobleck verbally lashes the heck outta Team RWBY during attendance. Many months later, I turned up with my own, two-parter version.
This scene always played out like a skit in my head, so it was interesting translating that to a story. It was deliciously fun thinking about how to comically make Winter channel a sergeant unused to life outside the Atlas military. Imagine nobody knows about Cinder's big plan yet, and that for some handwaved reason RWBY forgets about Neo.
Also, I think in a direct parody, the White Fang lieutenant would be Mr. Garvey.
The students settled into their seats, an outdated desk-by-desk lineup where the prongs in the chairs connected to the tables. It was study skills, where the classroom surroundings reflected no focus on any particular subject. This in turn reflected perfectly the students' lack of effort. Shunted into the archaic parts of the school for a napping period or plain bad scheduling, the people inside these walls usually ceased paying attention to academic success. The only thing that kept their focus over the comic book reading, chitchat, and the touchpad clacks of texted word was the stark giant whiteboard standing against the chalkboard-green walls.
That was the only thing that kept their focus on a normal day. This day, the ring of the bronze hallway bell was met with the strides of a woman in white moving swiftly into the room. She reached the table in front of the whiteboard and, before setting her hands on it, spoke.
"At attention, circus clowns," she said, her voice broadcasting clearly across the air. "I'm your substitute teacher, Sergeant Schnee. I spent the last five years overseas in the Atlas military. So don't even think about messing with me."
As she'd continued to speak, the sounds in the room had begun to quiet down. She kept her gaze traveling, an unblinking pan settling across the room. This is where she wanted them.
"All clear?"
The students were now facing the board. There were nods and a few hums of affirmation.
Winter swiped the clipboard off the table. "Let's take attendance."
She started reading the roster. In the second row of desks, Cinder Fall leaned to the student sitting next to her.
"Isn't that the heiress's sister?"
Winter's eyes stopped scanning the clipboard halfway through the sentence. She looked up, staring Cinder dead in the face.
"So that's how you start the war," Winter said, dropping the clipboard and letting it rattle on the table. "Speaking without permission to test basic insubordination."
There was a very tense silence. The rest of the class turned to Cinder as Winter left the table to walk down the floor. At the desk, her heels clicked to a stop, Specialist uniform in full display, and she sized down Cinder sitting in her seat.
"I recognize you from the files they sent after calling me in," Winter said, as Cinder's tiny smile curved into a U among the other students' sudden fear. "Transfer student, absent from seven classes in the past five weeks, and playing it cool through the recycled guise of pulling C-pluses across the board. You try vainly, for pretending to be an average student even outside the confines of your domicile does not conceal your intent to disrupt academia by encouraging classroom anarchy." Some of the student's mouths were open. Winter wasn't done.
"You're in the open, subordinate," Winter said. "Consider yourself singled out and under suspicion." She let it settle in. Everyone's eyes were on her as she raised her arm to point at Cinder.
"I got my eye on you, Private Fail."
Cinder said nothing, the rise of her eyebrows the one hint she'd processed the words. Winter returned to the table and called out another name.
"Corporal Addle." There was a prolonged silence. "Is Corporal Addle present?" Winter lowered the clipboard, looked around for confirmation. "Team leader Addle is not here today?"
In the next moment, it clicked. A sophomore raised her hand from the middle of the room.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'm Corporal Coco Adel," the sophomore said.
"Ad—" Winter looked down at the clipboard, then lifted it across her chest, turning her head to the wall for a moment before swinging her gaze onto Coco.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?"
The tone was hushed, parceling the silence before the punishment came in. "Coco Adeeeeel," Winter repeated, drawing up the latter name to exit nasally. "What?" Coco shrugged, her eyes flicking around the room. She lowered her shades to make eye contact as Winter's number on her commenced.
"Corporal Addle, supersonic princess with a million-dollar car," said Winter. "Weapon: firearm; a Gatling gun sealed inside the very compact briefcase that resides under your desk." At these words a few students bent hesitantly, to check out what Winter was talking about.
"I've heard you're proficient at wielding this weapon, Addle," Winter said, her voice rising to a limited, but horrifyingly civil indoors tone. She waited another second. "But I spent the last five years deployed in the Atlas military." The civility broke. "Nothing is stopping me from jump-kicking that briefcase from under you and smacking you on the head with it before I throw both of you out the goddamn window."
Coco decided not to tell her she'd hurt herself if she so much as slapped that briefcase.
Winter lowered the clipboard's contents back into view. "Private Bayadoña," she said, immediately looking up.
"Here," said Blake.
"Thank you," said Winter, and Blake sighed with relief. "Now." Winter put her finger on the next name as Blake lowered her arm. "Team leader, Private Rosé."
The private's three teammates stole glances at her from the front row. Winter tried again. "Where is Rosé today?" She spread her arms out, challenging the class for an answer. "Is Rosé in the room right now? Or." She closed her arms in to hold the clipboard in both hands. "Is. Our prodigal 15-year-old team leader. Out. On frivolous AWOL?"
Right across where Winter was standing, the accented mispronunciation finally sank in. Ruby raised her hand and looked Winter in the face.
"Do you mean Private Ruby Rose?"
"SON OF A GODDAMN DUST MINE DETONATED IN THE DESERT!" Winter yelled, snapping the clipboard with one strike to the table. The class was horrified, but Ruby only looked on with childlike betrayal.
"You have got an issue, Private Rosé!" said Winter as Ruby continued to stare at her with an innocent lack of comprehension. The sergeant strode to her in three steps, the edge of her coat gliding with each thump of her heels. "Now you get your underwhelming ass to the linoleum and do eight sets of sit-ups for your reckless untrained insubordination!"
"Sit-ups?" protested the student next to Ruby. "But she can barely sit down!"
"Shut up, Weiss!" Winter said.
Ruby, recognizing it would not be good to let Winter continue to blow her top, got off her seat and rustled her papers getting everything into her binder. The rest of the class watched her as she moved to a back corner in the classroom and started performing her assignment.
"One…two…three…four…"
Winter's body was brimming with barely lidded rage, but as she acknowledged Ruby's cooperation, she slowly stood up straight. "It's clear the insolation and tomfoolery of this classroom makes attendance a chore," she said, letting the anger subside for a bit and flicking the wrist that held the one sheet of paper dangling from half a clipboard. "All the seats are filled, so I'm going to guess unless there's an infiltrator cutting another class, everyone's here." She went to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. "Intel states this is a slack class, but my job today is to teach you how to study with skill."
She uncapped the marker and began writing as Ruby's voice continued to sound in the corner. While Winter's back was turned, Cinder raised her middle finger into view from behind her desk.
In the other back corner of the room, another exchange student finished folding a paper airplane and flicked her eyes up with a smirk on her face. She creased down the wings another time for extra certainty, and then started her aim once before letting the airplane go, her feet still propped up on her desk. The plane had been crafted out of personal triple-colored stationery and was now gliding with perfect trajectory to the front of the room. But before the plane reached Weiss, Yang Xiao Long caught sight of it passing over her head and intercepted it, pinning the base in her fingers quietly so as not to distract Winter. Blake was sitting next to Yang, and leaned in. Yang unfolded the airplane, and after reading what was written inside, she and Blake looked slowly over their shoulders to the sender.
"What is that?"
Winter had turned away from the whiteboard. Blake and Yang jolted, and as their substitute teacher walked toward them, Yang crumpled up the airplane and crammed it into her mouth.
"I don't have time for games, Miss Exshiao Long," Winter said as Yang tried to smile with a mouth full of paper.
Blake, being the only student safe to gamble chances, grabbed the front of her desk. "She was asking your sister for your number," she said, hoping her potential ass-kicking would be mitigated by the truth.
Winter stopped, hands behind her back, and looked genuinely perplexed at the statement. "What does my service number have to do with anything?" she asked Yang, as Weiss hunched over with her fingers on her temple three seats away.
"Uh, General Schnee?" a guy said in the back of the room, leaning out of his seat and pointing as the rest of the class dared not speak. "I think Neo wanted your phone number, for like a date or something."
"A date? SON OF A BIIIIIIIIIIITCH!" Winter screamed, flipping the table down the front of the room. Neo swept her feet off the desk as Winter approached, being the only student short enough to do so without toppling the desk. Neo's smile lifted along with her eyes as Winter spoke in the wake of the crashing front table.
"Are you making a mockery out of the Atlas military?" Trademarked for her selective mutism, Neo said nothing, merely shocked and awed by Winter's dedication to getting angry.
Winter's arm flew in front of Neo to point at her pixielike face. "You are going straight for as capital a punishment as this ridiculous academy allows itself to give. Get up, tricolored freak, and come with me to Ouncepine's office right now so we can tell him exactly what you did!"
Neo's smile faded, and there was the tiniest crease of a frown as she sat back to look Winter fully in the face. Lips slightly parted, Neo raised a hand and, still watching her superior, pointed at herself, and then Winter. Her eyes strayed to the wall, and then shifted to the door along with her finger. She refocused back to Winter, the edges of her upper teeth now showing as she turned out both hands into the cups of a shrug.
"Get your pint-sized ass out of your station before I drag you down the campus myself! Insubordinate, and libertine," Winter announced to the class, referring to the legal complications of a student leading on a teacher.
Neo was out of her seat, hands up to deflect further conflict. She headed toward the door and Winter followed, pushing Neo's binder straighter under her arm before she caught up to stand by her side. They reached the door and Winter spun around. "Bayadoña, oversee operations until I get back," she said to a petrified Blake. Blake saluted to placate, and in the seat next to her Yang painfully swallowed the paper airplane, partly out of fear reflex.
Winter nodded to Blake, gave the class another long, glaring pan, and then she left to be alone with Neo in the hallway. The students watched the door close, and in the middle of the transition they heard Ruby's voice float in from the corner: "34…35…36…"
The door clicked shut, and the footsteps faded. Some people looked at Weiss, who had hidden her head under her binder. Everyone turned back to face the whiteboard.
Not too far away from Cinder, Emerald looked around the room. She shrugged.
"I'd want her number too."