A/N: Welcome to Host and Play. As a first chapter, I'm okay with the quality, but I think it could be longer - too much of it is dialogue in my opinion. I'm going to update it with more description soon.

Sorry, there were one or two typos due to me writing this on my phone. Ruby definitely sieved no time on her character.

Anyway, enjoy. Review, favourite, follow, PM me if you want. I'm always up for advice, even just a friendly hi. I'll answer any questions you have in the next A/N.

Seeya next time.

Chapter 1: In Your Face

I was sat comfortably on my bunk, studying for an upcoming test in History, when a small bundle of nightmarishly distilled energy almost destroyed the door from the outside.

I didn't even look up as the deranged torrent of excited words spewed forth from the high-velocity maw of my partner's mouth.

Blake was looking almost as unsurprised as I was, Yang far more.

"Ruby, slow down." I interjected, the fountain of verbal inanity pausing.

"Okay okay okay okay. Weiss?"

"Yes?" I asked.

"You know the money you gave me for my birthday?"

Oh, shiiiit.

"Ruby, what have you done with it?"

Please, don't say she lost it.

"I spent it."

What.

"Eighty lien."

"Yeah."

"Where are the cookies?"

I felt the solid impact of a box of chocolate-infused treats ripple through the mattress.

"And the strawberries?"

I felt the solid impact of a box of sugary fruits ripple through the mattress.

Finally looking anywhere other than the textbook on my lap, I almost fell over as I saw the boxes. Two of them. Two transparent tupperware boxes.

Eighty lien.

"Eighty lien."

"But that's not all." Ruby was grinning insanely.

Oh for Dust's sake.

Yang, though, was clearly intrigued.

"What else did you buy?"

She raised her laptop into the air. On the screen there was a page open, titled " Vapour gift list".

She squinted across the room.

"Did you buy four copies of the save videogame?"

I began to shake. "Ruby Rose, explain yourself."

There was a loud squeak. "The game has multiplayer."

This time it was Blake to speak up. "So you think it would be a good idea to play together?"

"Uhuh."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why is this in any way a good idea?"

"Because... it's a team-building exercise?"

Like hell that's why she bought the game.

"So you can just transfer the game to us over the Dustnet?"

"...yeah." She seemed honestly surprised she was still able to stand. My trademark wrath had not been incurred.

"Fine, I'll go get my Dusttop. What do I need to do?"

About a quarter of an hour later, Ruby had set both me and Blake up with Vapour accounts (Yang obviously already having one). From what I could tell, it was a service devoted to supplying videogames over the Dustnet, including the gift service Ruby was now using to provide me with the game. Ne and Blake had both told her our usernames, and she had then had to "friend" us.

"Okay, done. You should all have it now."

I found a tab layout at the top of the window, and went into Library. Sure enough, there was now one entry in the list.

"Terraria?" Blake echoed

"Yeah. It's a game about surviving in the wild and slowly becoming more powerful, defeating monsters, stuff like that."

I sighed, not altogether optimistically. "Let's just get it over with."

I pressed the Play button under the logo on my screen. A small window came up, and a second later the screen went dark. Then, in big green letters, the words "RE-LOGIC" faded in to the screen. Around it, I had tone to spot a few pixelated animals and trees, as well as some strange... things.

Before I had tine to dwell on it, a menu cropped up. In the background, there were trees and mountains, and the Sun and Moon could be seen rising and setting in quick succession.

Ruby piped up again. "Okay, first we need to make characters. We can do that in single-player. Then I'll make the world and you can join the game."

Somewhat bewildered, I just pressed "Single Player", to be greeted by an empty box titled " Select character". At the bottom were two buttons, labeled "Back" and "New", and I immediately went to press the second of these.

I found a menu full of options, topped by a representation of a walking man.

Character creation.

I immediately pressed the button saying " Male" and changed it to "Female". Yang laughed at the sound of a sudden "oof!" and started switching her own character's gender repeatedly.

"Erk!"

"Oof!"

"Erk!"

"Oof!"

"Erk!"

I have her a pointed stare. "Can you please shut up? I'm trying to make a character here!"

She just grinned.

"Oof!"

"YANG!" I shouted.

As for my own character, I tried to make a fair representation of my real self. Eventually, I became happy with the appearance in front of me, and noticed a small label reading "softcore" at the bottom.

I asked Ruby, to be told just to leave it alone. She proceeded to grin. "Okay guys, I'm setting up a server. Already made the world."

Oh dear Dust, how little time had she spent on her character?

Never mind. I clicked "done" and entered my name into the box that cropped up. It then returned me to the list of characters, now with just one entry, Weiss Schnee. I saw a button to favourite the character, and pressed it instantly, but refrained from pressing Play just yet.

"Okay, ~and done." Ruby.

With this, I saw a small notification in the corner, reading "Cookies735 had invited you to play Terraria." I moved the cursor to it and clicked. Immediately I was presented with my list of characters again, and I pressed the Play button on Weiss Schnee.

A loading screen. I waited.

Then I was presented with the game. Blake, Ruby and Yang were already there, each having tried to make their character mirror themselves as much as possible.

The first thing I noticed was that the game was two-dimensional, just height and width. Interesting, but I wasn't going to complain. I could see trees, grass, the lower slope of what I guessed to be a hill, and a bunny.

Ruby's avatar was jumping around. "Yeah, Team RWBY is ready to begin our quest for godhood!"

I groaned. "First, dearest leader, how do I move?"

The process of learning to control my on-screen self was not as arduous as I expected. Within two minutes, I was comfortably able to walk, jump, and poke things with a copper sword.

Having explained the fundamentals of the game, Ruby then turned to a different matter.

"Okay guys, we need to start work on a home base before night falls. There are monsters around at night."

Oh, wonderful. "Anything else?"

She paused for thought. "Well, there are apparently pots and chests sitting around on the surface with all kinds of useful loot... maybe some of us should go searching for them.

"That sounds like a good idea." Said Blake. "How good is what we have at the moment?"

I pressed ESC, finding only an empty inventory but for the three tools at the top. A "pointy" copper shortsword (for... poking), a "shoddy" copper pick (I guessed I could use that to mine), and a "godly" copper axe (obviously for cutting trees).

Ruby replied. "From what I can tell... useless."

I facepalmed. "Yeah, okay. How about Blake and Yang go exploring, while you and I work on building?"

Ruby perked up. "Great, I can cut down trees, you can build a house!"

I smiled. Time to prove my creativity.

Ruby explained to me how to use the pick properly, and I proceeded to make a large flat area, picking up the dirt blocks as I went. Blake and Yang wandered off to the right (east?).

It was after Ruby came back with a small pile of wood and I began to build a floor on the ground that I saw... what in Dust's name was that?!

"Ruby..."

Her avatar walked over to me. "That's a slime."

I squeaked a little when the lump of pixelly green goo hopped towards me, and landed on a defenceless bunny.

The effect was instantaneous. The bunny exploded into bits of fur and blood. I squeaked again.

"What the hell do I do?!"

"Use the shortsword. Kill it."

With a great deal of trepidation, I moved towards it, and prodded it with the sword.

It bounced back, and I could tell from the splattering noise and health bar that I had injured it.

I poked it once more. It was nearly dead, and I was almost confident until it jumped and landed on my face. In the corner, I saw the "health" value drop by eight, and one of the five hearts was cut in half as my character flew back.

With a yell, Ruby dashed forward, and I watched her kill it with her own sword.

"That was my kill!" I was indignant.

Yang laughed. "Me and Blake have already killed four of those."

I deflated a little, and went back to building.

Suddenly, Yang exclaimed. "Chest!"

I huffed. "You draw enough attention to it as it is, Yang."

Ruby. Death stare.

Blake looked at me. "No, we found one."

"What's in it?"

She concentrated briefly. "Spear. Some healing potions. Bit of rope. Torches. And, uh, a Recall potion."

Ruby looked up. "Great, anything else?"

"N-uh."

She looked concerned.

"Dunno what that is. Yes, there is something else."

"Can you describe it?"

"It's sorta like red grass and trees. Looks like something died there. There's just a lot of it."

Blake suddenly seemed to jump out of her skin. "Yang, there's a-!"

Yang stared, aghast. "Oh God! Kill it with fire! Burn Dust! Burn it! What the-"

She looked shocked as we all received one message.

"Yang Xiao Long's flailing about was finally stopped by Face Monster."

Well, death one to Yang.

I saw Blake suddenly appear on my screen in a flash of blue, the remains of what I could only guess was the recall potion disappearing. Yang flickered into existence a moment later, as she spluttered.

"Hey, I do NOT flail about!"

Blake replied with a cunning smile. "It was right up in your face. I'm not surprised."

Yang's look went from horrified, to betrayed, to incredulous. "Was that a pun?!"

I laughed. "Somehow I think so."

By the time I finished the rudimentary house, the sun was setting. I had to admit, it was more enjoyable than I expected.

The house had several rooms. Ruby had given me a few materials she had gathered and told me how to craft, so we had done basic furniture. I had placed walls in, and on a whim made some windows out of fences. I had to say, the design worked. There was so much to craft, too! I felt I was still only scratching the surface after furnishing an entire house. We had a workroom with a workbench, a furnace, and a chair, as well as a dining room with a table and two more chairs. I had discovered it was possible to make sloped blocks with a hammer, so I built in an attic as well.

Ruby had been very impressed by my design, and I had to say I was as well.

It was she who spoke first. "Guys, it's almost night time. Get inside."

I noticed, for the first time, that there was someone rise in the house. Just a man, standing there, in the workroom.

"Ruby, who's that?"

"Oh, didn't you see him earlier?"

I hadn't.

"He's the guide. He can give us advice on playing."

"... He's an AI?"

She tipped her head sideways. "Yeah, I guess so. He's an NPC."

I looked at her. "What's the N stand for?"

"Oh, NPC means Non-Player Character."

"Ohhh." I got it.

"Hey, I can make some wooden armour!"

I frowned. "Is that even useful?"

She shrugged. "Better than nothing."

Within seconds, I saw brownish clothes materialise onto Ruby's character. She then threw an identical set to Yang, who put it all on except for the helmet.

"I'm not covering my hair."

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Fine, just give it to Blake or something."

Yang did so.

My observations were interrupted by a moaning noise. A shambling green version of a human was wandering into the light our house emitted.

"That's a zombie," said Ruby, "it can't get in. Don't worry."

I meh-ed.

Suddenly Yang looked over at me. "Hey Weiss, wanna go mining?"

I meh-ed again. "Sure, why not?"

I dug a small alcove into the back wall of the hut, then began to dig downwards. Blake came and dropped a rope down into the small-but-expanding hole.

I continued to dig down, and the speed increased drastically when Yang joined in. Blake just kept placing down rope.

A minute had passed when Yang said something.

"Hey, Weiss, d'ya think that's a cave there?"

I looked for what she could be talking about. "Oh! Yeah, I suppose it could be."

We changed direction and began to dig sideways. Blake realised this, stopped dropping rope, and began to talk to Ruby about crafting.

When we broke through the wall of the cave, we were met with a variety of pots, as well as what I could only guess were veins of ore. I started digging away at one of these - lead, I discovered - while Yang went around smashing pots with a hammer she got from Dust-knows-where.

"Hey, there's a heart!" What?

I prepared to see a bleeding corpse, or anything. Instead, I saw she was taking about a heart-shaped lump of crystal. Immediately she went to smash it with a pick, then turned to me. "Any ideas what it does?"

I made an educated guess (not that I make any other type). "Heals you?"

She tried using it. There was a "ting" and a small green 20 flashed next to her. "Oh!"

"What?"

"It made my maximum health go up! I've got a hundred and twenty!"

I gave a "huh." "That's useful."

"Wonder how much I can get?"

"No idea."

It didn't take long for her lucky streak to continue, just as I was mining some silver ore.

"Hey, there's another chest!"

Before I could stop her, she had opened it. "It's got a boomerang! And since grenades!"

Keeping my distance, I murmured. "G-great."

After mining a bit of lead, she decided to return to the surface. I followed.

After making an anvil out of the lead, which I suspected to be used for making weapons, Yang looked at her partner. "Hey Blake, you want the boomerang?"

Said catgirl was definitely up for a boomerang. "Sure, thanks."

Yang replaced the wooden weapon with a lead broadsword, while Blake handed Ruby her spear. Not to be outdone, I spent the last few seconds of the night fashioning my own weapon. I discovered I had enough silver to make one of the available weapons. Weighing up the statistics attached to each, I eventually decided on a silver shortsword, not missing the similarity to my Myrtenaster. Most apt. Ruby, meanwhile, inadvertently proved that weapons didn't affect blocks by poking everything she could with her new toy.

As the virtual sun began to rise, she instead yawned. "Okay, that's our first night done."

I caught her drift. "Yeah, I've got studying to do. Maybe we can do more of this tomorrow."

Yang sighed. "Yeah, alright."

I pressed ESC, and left the game.