Author's Note: And so we delve into one of my few planned multi-chapter RWBY fanfictions. I was nervous about the writing style for this one, but it seems to be going well. Hopefully I won't stray from this particular voice as the story progresses.
It took a while to decide the pairings for this fic. I finally settled on Monochrome for the primary one and I think it was the right choice. Now what's left is for me to plan the next update and fret over whether it's in-character. For the rest of you, enjoy.
UPDATE 6/19: How can I make typos in the first paragraph. How.
Weiss had been living near the city for about two months, and while she'd moved into a nice home, it was getting very lonely. She could only walk around each room so many times on her own, and though she'd never said it, she wished her father had chosen a block where there were kids her age. It was a fancy neighborhood, with neatly trimmed lawns preceding stately houses that could have been in those movies where the characters discussed mature topics. Weiss liked to think of herself as mature.
She often looked outside her round bedroom window toward the bay across the woods. Her father told her when they moved that one day he would take her there, but he had always been too busy to follow through. So Weiss would survey it from her window, watching the waves that sparkled as blue as her eyes.
The windows on the other side of her house let her see into the neighborhoods beyond, where the less-fancy people lived. Weiss wasn't so sure about hanging out with those kids. The houses didn't look so bad—they had walls and a roof that held just like hers. Some of the gardens had fences. But the people in those neighborhoods tended to be loud and rowdy, and the parents had standard jobs that probably didn't make much money. They'd certainly buy better cars if they did!
Weiss's father made a lot of money. He was the boss of a large company with several different firms. They'd separated from their old home after the divorce, leaving behind Weiss's mother and sister to go someplace where Weiss's father could work closer to his business. Weiss and her sister exchanged letters, though they didn't always get along.
But even remembering their worst days together Weiss still wished they could see each other, because summer had started and she had nothing to do. The music of an ice cream vendor would drift in the distance with no one for her to run after it with. All her homeschool instructors stopped knocking at the door. Not a single adult she had regularly seen would come around the next three months, except her violin teacher, who taught her for an hour each Tuesday. Even that got old, drawing out the same songs and exercises in an empty room where no one would hear. Weiss didn't even like playing the violin. It had been her father's idea, to help her grow into a proper lady.
Weiss was fond of being considered a proper lady, but as she was ten, she didn't think she needed to be one all the time. So one morning when she told her father she'd practice before getting the potatoes they needed for dinner, she didn't. She waited in the practice room until his sleek grey Ferrari was out of sight. She lay on the floor for a few minutes to be safe, and then went to the dining room table and scooped up the money her father had left for the potatoes. She zipped it into her fanny pack—Weiss's skirt didn't have pockets—and locked the front door after she went outside, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her father worked eight hours straight, six days a week. There was plenty of time for her to explore.
She approached the woods first, but the trees were tall and scary with lots of leaves that could scrape her head. She couldn't see anything past twenty feet, just dirt. Weiss avoided dirt. She turned around to meander in another direction, listening to the birds twitter as she embarked on her first summer adventure.
She was looking down for a while when her foot bumped the aluminum of a crushed soda can. It made a strange tinny sound to her, and she stopped. A crushed soda can sitting on the sidewalk wasn't something she saw every day. Clearly, she'd wandered into another neighborhood.
She looked around. The end of the sidewalk curved into a hill, half-hidden by the houses along the block. An alley stood across the street, obscured by the large brick building connecting to it. Weiss couldn't tell if it was an apartment or a business. After picking up the soda to take to a trashcan she went to investigate. She was leaning in the building's direction when she first heard the screams.
She froze and looked up. The screams were almost overtaken by an awful cacophony of scraping and rattling, and soon the ugliest car Weiss had ever seen came shooting down the hill. It appeared to be a racecar, from what little Weiss could make out at its sudden appearance. It was small enough for her to take the front seat, which somebody was already in, wearing a helmet with goggles and yelling her head off. The girl gripped the steering wheel, seemingly for dear life, a long red cape whipping in the air behind her. As the car thudded to the intersection its left hull came tearing apart. The rest of the contraption made a horrible screeching sound along the road right into the alley. There was a final crash that sent a wooden wheel rolling into the intersection, and as Weiss watched, two more girls came running down the hill.
"Ruby?" yelled the one in front. "Ruby!"
She had a thick tangle of long blond hair, and her voice sounded humored as well as worried. She ran straight into the alley while her friend slowed to pick up part of the car. She noticed Weiss and looked over, curiously, before hauling the part under her arms and disappearing behind the brick building.
It was too unfamiliar not to investigate. Weiss walked to the hill and past the wheel, which was spinning on its wooden hub in the road. She peeked in at the edge of the alley, where the girl in the helmet lay sprawled among the remains of her car. The blond was right beside her, leaning on the concrete wall of the alley's other side and cracking up in laughter. The lid of a trashcan banged loudly as she hit it.
"Okay, okay, okay," she said as the girl in the helmet giggled uncontrollably. "Next run, we make sure the brakes do not work the same way as the acceleration."
She fell to the ground, her arms crossing over her stomach. Eventually the helmeted girl had calmed down enough to ask, "Can we even save anything from that crash?"
"I got part of the door," said their friend. It dropped lower in her arm as she moved the other to brush a strand of black hair out of her eyes.
At this the other two looked at her, then burst into another fit of laughter. It was after another few seconds of this interaction that the helmeted girl locked eyes with Weiss. "Hey, who's that?" she said, pointing.
The others turned to look. Weiss stiffened, alert. It was scarier now that she'd been caught.
"It's our audience preview before the big race," said the blond. "She's too excited to wait for the actual thing, so she sneaked up on us to check us out in-progress. Alternatively"—she cracked her knuckles and stood—"she's a spy sent to gather information, so we need to sort her out."
Weiss jumped back. "I'm not a spy!" she said as the blond came closer. "I don't even know what's going on! My dad will get you in trouble if you touch me. Stay away from me, you brute!"
The blond stopped not far from the alley's edge and dropped her arms. "Relax. I was giving you a hard time."
The other two were regarding Weiss quietly. The blond crossed her arms. "Let's try this again. I'm Yang. That adorable dork on the ground is my sister Ruby, and this is Blake." She motioned to the girl holding the door.
Weiss lingered a moment to observe Blake. The girl had a black bow on top of her head that stood out above her raggedy shorts and too-big T-shirt—work clothes, Weiss assumed, since Blake's hair was neatly kept. Blake had calm watchful eyes that slanted at the tips, like almonds. She said nothing, only observed Weiss back in the middle of the alley.
Yang's clothes were stained beyond a definite color. She turned around to help Ruby, who tottered on one leg for a moment after she got up. Her skirt was a nice melded shade between red and black, though part of it had torn near the hem. She was flushed in the face but smiling broadly, and gave Weiss a wave before getting back down to salvage the wreck.
"Okay, I'm not looking for any fights," said Weiss, hoping she sounded firm. "But I really don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of any races going on around these neighborhoods."
Her statement was met with three wordless stares from the girls in the alley. Yang broke the silence first, her sentence lilting with a slow uncertainty.
"She…doesn't know?"
"I've never been here before. I'm just passing through to get potatoes for my father."
Yang was still in shock. "She doesn't know," she said, turning to the others.
Blake was looking into the distance. "There was a moving truck in the rich hood a couple months ago."
It was clear a switch had flipped; Yang's face lifted. "You're from the rich hood!" she said, scanning Weiss up and down. "Son of a gun. No wonder you didn't know about it."
"What's the rich hood?" asked Weiss.
"That explains the skirt, too," said Blake.
"A sign of wealth to shame us commoners," said Yang in a somber tone.
"Tell me about the race!" yelled Weiss.
In the back of the alley Ruby snapped to attention, batting a stick of wood in her rush to stand. "We are Team RubyBlakenYang, forged by friendship and the third entrants in the upcoming district competition!" she declared. She flattened one hand in a rigid salute. "At the end of this month we will join our opponents at Half-Death Hill, where we shall race in handmade vehicles toward a checkered finish line. Stakes are high. Danger is imminent. Glory is guaranteed!" She pumped a fist in the air.
Weiss stared at her, and blinked. "Right."
"The race is gonna be awesome!" insisted Yang. "But first, we have to make a car that sticks together." She cringed at the sound of something behind her falling apart.
"I see."
"She might be able to show us where we can get better supplies," said Blake, opening her hand in Weiss's direction.
"Hey, that's true," said Yang. "It would probably beat all our usual go-to places."
"And she could be our mascot!" Ruby was in front of Weiss's face in an instant. Weiss seized up, surprised by the quickness. "You could wave our flag at the race!"
Weiss stepped back. "Hang on. I never said I would help you do anything."
"Another potential ally deserted in the face of our strangeness," said Yang as Ruby deflated and shrank into the background. "You really need to stop scaring them away, Blake."
Blake didn't reply. She was watching Weiss again, a tiny glint passing through the yellow in her eyes. "You said you needed to get potatoes?" she asked Weiss.
"Yes," said Weiss after a pause, caught off-guard that Blake had remembered.
"Where do you usually get them?"
"I don't need to tell you that."
"A couple blocks east of here there's another alley," said Blake. "It'll take you right to the edge of the city. The supermarket's not far from there."
There was a longer pause this time as the three girls waited for Weiss's reaction. "Well, this was an interesting meeting," she finally said, which was not untrue. "But I have to go now. Good luck on your…racecar competition thing." She left the alley. A moment later she leaned back in. "Don't follow me."
She heard them as she rounded the corner. "Man, she was still as a statue," Ruby was saying.
"And formal," pointed out Blake.
"I was really hoping she'd join our team. Nobody wants to be our mascot."
"It seemed she felt it beneath her," said Blake.
"It must be a rich hood thing," said Yang. "I had no idea there were any kids there."
The rest of their conversation was lost as Weiss went farther down the concrete wall. At the corner she recalled what Blake said about a different alley being a shortcut. She walked east until she found a narrow path between two apartment buildings. She went through it, and it turned into a labyrinth. The alley took her one direction to another, making her dodge dirty buckets on the road and the drying laundry pinned to clotheslines stringing across the open windows of neighboring houses. At some point she heard noise and saw the exit ten feet ahead. She stopped, then walked gingerly out to see the bustling city edge she had visited many times with her father.
The supermarket was on her right. It was at that moment Weiss remembered the soda can was still in her hand. She dropped it quietly in the dumpster at the edge of the alley.
The cashier in the market commented he had never seen Weiss alone. Weiss nodded, taking her change and the small sack of potatoes off the counter. On the way home she kept thinking of the way Blake's gaze on her stayed so focused despite the banter of her friends.
Weiss still wasn't sure what a rich hood was. Maybe on her next summer adventure, she would have to ask.