RWBY GOES TO SPACE
Oobleck worked tirelessly at the wild assortment of advanced technology at the table.
He had a task to accomplish, and an important one at that.
The professor picked a silver, globe shaped object that gleamed under the light of the nearby fluorescent lamp. It seemed like the right trans-nuclear, photon-ball for the job. And it was biodegradable as well, which would please the Beacon janitorial staff a plenty.
Under the desk, he retrieved a mass of machinery stuck together roughly the size and weight of a car engine. Carefully inserting the ball into a crevice, the glob of tech sparked to life in a brilliant aura of white fire. Brilliant. And it needed to be, to fulfil the task it had been given by Oobleck, who was also given a previously mentioned task. The machine's task was somewhat simpler-to power a custom build stage 7 spacecraft, fitted with photon blasters, an energy shield, 4 bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a plasma TV set, along with other commodities. But Oobleck's task?
Following the destructive events of the BOB (Battle Of Beacon) the whole set of fresh enemies disappeared into shadow, and the good guys needed to seek them out to take the right precautions. And what better way then to search for them from a satellite in space? The operation would be costly, but what better way to cut down on costs than hiring their own students instead of some hotshot pilot who charged too much? And what better team of students to hire than the amazing team RWBY?
/
The ceiling to floor holo-television flickered in audio, while the video lagged.
A pleasant, warm, male voice straight out of a 90's child program was projected lamely by the holo-television.
"Hello there! My name is Gerald! If you're listening to this recording, then you've been selected to take part in the Beacon Space Operation!" bubbled the head of the elderly looking man known as Gerald.
The room the recording was being played in was the size of a fairly large living room. It had white paint smothering the soundproof walls, but prior to the construction of said room, many complications in planning resulting in the Good Paint company being chosen to decorate. And sadly, the Good Paint company was, in fact, crap, and now, years later, the paint was left peeling due to poor mixture of chemicals.
The ceiling was lit up by long rectangular lights that flickered whenever it felt bored (Left unpainted, which is more evidence of Good Paint's complete absence of quality) and the ground was tiled by dingy, cracked grey plates, on which four metal, very uncomfortable steel chairs lay.
The television was at the end of the room, facing the audience, with thick wires and tubes of varying signs of age attached to its spine, that ran back into the walls and into the computer room of Beacon. (The computer room was widely regarded by students to be entirely outdated and pointless. Many pupils, Cardin Winchester included, found the inclusion of touchscreen in the computers to be extremely dated, and claimed it to be a stupid fad in the 21st Century that never caught on.)
Six people were in the room, and four of these people was the infamous team RWBY, well-known to be gifted, attractive, skilled, and silly.
The other two are insignificant in the story, like peanuts are insignificant to the process of applying peanut-butter to bread, but for the sake of you, the reader, their names are Barthomellow Oobleck, the director of the Beacon Space Operation, and Glynda Goodwitch, the newly appointed principle of Beacon, since the previous one disappeared in the BOB.
Since Oobleck had invented the whole idea of the space , he obviously had to man the tough task of overseeing the whole process, from designing the vessel from which the team was to embark on, to supervising the whole procedure on his new Ipad 89. This was going to be close to impossible, not because of the numerous implications of space, but because Apple removed the headphone jack, the sound buttons, the on/off button, the home button, and the metal body and the circuits from their product, leaving the only the glass screen, so as to 'innovate.' Funnily enough, Apple went out of business that very weekend from which the controversial device was sold.
The voice of Gerald crackled, but his tone remained ever so jolly and light. "Yay!" He resumed from the crackle immediately. "Isn't that exciting? The plan is quite simple. We have identified the four invaders that started the whole BOB kerfuffle. They are known as Cinder(An image of Cinder cackling manically atop a roof, her face twisted into a not-so-flattering grin replaced Gerald's glimmering face.) Mercury, (An image of the periodic table appeared, with the element Mercury highlighted roughly in bright yellow.) Emerald, (An imagine of Emerald's back materialised, mostly obscured by the photographer's finger, placed unfortunately on the upper right corner of the lens) And Neo, (Keanu Reeves appeared in a black trench coat, from the movie, The Matrix.)
Neo's figure faded away and Gerald's face snapped back, his smile ever present.
"But after the Battle Of Beacon, or BOB, we have lost their location, sadly disabling our ability to track them down…"
However, the people in the room only heard that far into the tape before an excited yelp screeched through the air, drowning Gerald's pleasant explanation. The source of the yelp, which happened to be Yang Xiao Long, swivelled around in her chair. "Semen?!"
Glynda coughed into the back of her hand. "Pardon, Ms Xiao Long?"
"Semen! Cinder, Mercury, Emerald, Neo! CMEN!"
The nasty joke had become painfully apparent, giving way to a painful silence, giving way to Gerald's voice being audible yet again.
"…Once you get the ship, you shall spend a wonderful week circling the atmosphere of the Earth, locating the crooks! And once you find them, the ship computer will pinpoint them, you will be sent back down to Beacon via escape pod, and professional guys and gals that protect us, or hunters and huntresses to you and me," At this point, Gerald gave a minute little wink towards his audience, paired with an infuriating grin. "….will find those baddies and bring them to justice!"
The recording clacked loudly repeatedly, before spluttering and dying out in a pathetic wheeze of old mechanisms.
Team RWBY looked on, unimpressed.
This whole space escapade had failed to evoke any sort of excitement or sense of thrill in any of the four of them whatsoever upon hearing it a few days ago, but the group's willingness to participate in the project was not of top priority in the minds of Oobleck or Goodwitch. In fact, it wasn't the second priority, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, or even the fourteenth. It was the forty-second, which also happened to be their last priority as of right now, (Which is saying a lot, as the fortieth priority in Oobleck's mind was to watch the new Spruce Willis blockbuster before noon) and by no coincidence.
To the professors, as long as the team was capable of completing the mission, nothing else mattered. They had convinced Weiss's father to let his daughter participate, changed Blake's mind about running away in a simple therapy lesson, and overcome Yang's depression by playing Pharrell William's 'Happy' on a constant 10 hour loop next to her and promising a replacement for her missing limb.
Upon completion of the video, Glynda clapped her hands together, indicating that all attention should be focused on her.
"Please now follow me to the next room" She said curtly.
RWBY stood up from their chairs in a purposely noisy manner, so as to irritate their professors, and followed the headmaster to the next room, which happened to be the school computer lab.
"This is the school computer lab." Glynda announced unnecessarily.
The roof had caved in from a Grimm attack in the top left corner, allowing sun beams to stream down, and the school's pointless touchscreen computers had been relieved of duty and succeeded by a random variation of equipment.
"This is a random variation of equipment." Glynda announced unnecessarily. This time she silently acknowledged her completely needless remark, but what else could she say? She wasn't a tech geek like Oobleck secretly was. She had no idea what any of the equipment did. So she let the tech geek take over.
She motioned Oobleck to continue with a subtle, but spastic head movement. Oobleck took the hint.
Stepping forward, the professor cleared his throat and bounced on the balls of his feet. He was clearly very delighted about the whole affair.
Moving to the table nearest to him, he swept his arm over the tabletop, which had large, bulbous coloured packets lying on it.
"This," Oobleck proclaimed proudly "is your food aboard the ship."
The bags wrinkled up and then relaxed. (Food bags used in interstellar travel had, by this time, been fitted by a self-heating vacuum, that would occasionally suck up the cold air from inside the bag through a device in the cap, and then heat the air to warm the food contained)
"Ooooh…kay…" Ruby, the leader of the team, murmured. "Soooo…are the bags edible?"
"Ah, no."
"So, the food is inside the bag then?"
"Exactly!"
Oobleck grinned and the eyes behind his spectacles twinkled. He pointed at the bags, and tagged each of them with their respective food.
"Pasta, pizza, rice…."
Sadly, not very much registered with the team. Their curiosity had been stolen by the glowing yellow robotic arm laying on the table behind them.
Yang's vibrant purple eyes widened.
The smooth metal exterior glittered like treasure, and an emblem of fire had been printed on the top shell in spirited red, that faded to orange at the tips of the flame.
Along the metal framework, a thin and flexible sheet of graphene was welded over it, and sections of it had been painted to mimic the appearance of Ember Celica.
It was love at first sight. (By this time, Oobleck had gone on to the salads, and remained blissfully ignorant of his missing spectators.)
Glynda groaned and buried her face in her palm.
If this was the Space Operation team, then, Houston, we have a problem.
(Houston base was part of the Apollo 13 space program, over 100 years ago, back when humans were in the dark ages of technology, not having even invented the primitive gun-katanas yet.)