As you can tell by the summary, this is going to be a one-shot collection about the adventures of Team STRQ. The titles/themes of each chapter will be driven be word prompt which I'm currently getting from a random word generator. However, please feel free to send in a word prompt yourselves if any of y'all are interested.
How inappropriate these stories will get... well it's too soon to tell. You'd expect with that title, I'd be putting a higher rating, but we'll see...
Anyways, this first chapter is pretty fluffy, which is perfect to balance out the angstiness of the next chapter.
This story is also being cross-posted on ao3, under the same title and username if you'd rather read it there instead of here. The formatting is definitely better on there, and i sometimes include links in my notes that doesn't let you see :/
Enjoy!
Summer and Tai had a problem. The problem namely being their two stubborn, obstinate, and sometimes just outright irritating sibling teammates who were being their normal stubborn, obstinate, and irritating selves.
Really, they should have seen it coming.
"I can't believe they refuse to go." Summer confessed angrily to Taiyang as she stormed through the rows of bookshelves, her teammate strolling behind her with a large pile of books in his hands. Every couple steps, Summer would stop to look at the list of books she needed in her hands, stop in front of the correct shelf to quickly glance through it, find the book she was looking for, and then add it to the pile of half a dozen books she had already picked out. Tai had just started to struggle with the amount of weight in his arms but decided it was probably a good idea not to complain when his team leader was already on a rampage.
"It's the ball Tai, the Vytal Festival Ball! It's the first time we're gonna be able to see the other teams, the first time they're gonna see us. And if we go and they don't, do you know what the other teams are gonna see Tai? Do you?" Summer continued, her speech getting faster and faster as she stewed in her irritation. Tai tried to open his mouth to answer, but she was too quick for him, "They're going to look at us and see nothing but a divided mess of a team. They're going to look at us and instantly underestimate us because we're not as bonded and together as we should be."
Summer continued up the aisle hastily to another shelf, picked out four books in quick succession, and then added them to the pile. Tai groaned at the added weight.
"Wouldn't the other teams underestimating us be a good thing, Sum? Strategy wise?" Tai groaned out.
Summer stopped in her tracks, thought about what he had said for exactly five seconds, and then continued in her rampage.
"Maybe," she acquiesced, she hadn't thought of that before, but she quickly shook the idea out of her mind, "But wouldn't it be better if we walked into that room, one unified front of pure badassery and had the competition quaking in their dress shoes, and nicely tailored suits and dresses from fear alone?" She explained, turning around to show a sparkle of pure glee shining in her silver eyes.
"Careful, Sum, you're starting to sound a bit too much like Raven." Tai teased.
Summer groaned, rolled her eyes, and returned to her task, "All I'm saying is last year, we were team STRQ: the idiots who couldn't keep anything together, the ones who almost died on their first real mission, and were most likely to get kicked out of Beacon because of it. But now we're team STRQ: the best team at Beacon and well on our way to compete in the Vytal Festival Tournament to win it all. I just want people to know that we're serious about this." She sighed, looking down at her feet.
"We trained through the entire break, Summer, I think they'll figure it out," Tai said, peeking his head around the stack of books in his hands to smile at her.
"I know, but we put so much work into making all this a reality, I just want to be able to show how much."
Tai sighed, "I get it."
"You do?" Summer turned to him, excitedly.
"Yes."
"So you'll help?" She asked, almost to the point of jumping up and down.
"Of course." He agreed.
Summer squealed as she rushed over to him to wrap her arms around his waist. Unfortunately for them, a number of books in Tai's hands had grown to maximum capacity, and Summer's momentum was enough to knock all of the books, and both she and Taiyang to the ground. As they both lay on the ground, Summer cushioned by Tai's chest, the other students around the library glared at them with daggers in their eyes. Summer immediately blushed at the embarrassment of it all.
"But if I do, you're the one who's gonna have to convince Raven." Tai declared, smirking.
Summer closed her eyes, forehead falling onto Tai's chest as she groaned.
"Look, man, all I'm saying is it's gonna be an awesome time. Pretty girls in pretty dresses, handsome boys in nice tuxes if you're into that, good food, nice music, and all that stuff. If you don't go, you're totally going to miss out." Tai said to Qrow as he followed the other boy through the streets of Vale, looking for a weapons store that sold Qrow's favoured brand of whetstone.
"I know what you're doing, and I don't understand how you think the eccentricities of 'high society' is gonna make me want me to go to this stupid dance. I don't exactly fit into that kind of thing anyways." Qrow refuted, already clued into what Tai's mission was from the second the other boy 'happened upon him' while wandering through Vale. He stopped in front of the window of a store, stared past inside to see if this was the one he was looking for, decided it was, then went in. Tai followed, to Qrow's irritation.
"That's a terrible excuse," Tai insisted, catching up to Qrow and throwing an arm around his shoulders to stop him from getting away. The shorter boy grimaced in irritation.
"Think of it this way," Tai continued, spreading his hands out in front of him as if trying to paint a picture, "You, a young man from a tribe of savage savages, rising above his savage ways to mingle in what you call 'high society' without anybody knowing it. It'd be like one of those spy movies you like! You could wear a coat with tails on, matching bowtie and pocket square. Heck, even a top hat and cane if you can pull it off. You'd look swanky as hell"
Qrow paused for a minute, almost as if he was contemplating Tai's words, "Swanky, huh?"
"Swanky," Tai repeated, pretty sure that he had Qrow hooked.
Qrow shrugged his shoulders, escaping from Tai's hold, "I guess it could be fun," Tai pumped his fist in the air in celebration before Qrow could continue, "But Raven has to say yes first. I mean could you imagine my Semblance running wild, without her to stop it, at a swanky event like that? People stepping on toes, drinks spilling, dresses getting ruined. It would be absolute chaos."
Smirking, Qrow shoved his hands into his pockets and walked toward the back end of the store to look for his whetstone, leaving a dumbfounded Tai behind him.
Seconds later, Tai realised what Qrow was saying, and ran after him, "You're absolutely screwing with me, aren't you."
"Yup."
"You're gonna go to the ball? Whether Raven wants to or not?"
"Had me at the coattails."
"You're probably gonna laugh the second anybody spills their drink on a girl's dress?"
"Do you even know me?" Qrow turned to smile at Tai, a sparkle of gleeful immorality in his crimson eyes.
"Awesome. We'll go get your suit right after this then. Oh man, Summer is gonna be so happy, I wonder how she's doing with Raven right now…"
Qrow picked the whetstone he wanted to buy, went to the front of the store and paid the shopkeeper as Taiyang continued to ramble. Afterwards, he let Tai drag him to the first formalwear store that they could find, the blond boy chattering the entire way.
After over a year of knowing her, Summer still didn't know why she found Raven Branwen so damned intimidating. As she walked up to the third floor of the dorms, down the hallway to the fifth door on the left to team STRQ's living quarters, she had already come up with twelve different ways to convince her female teammate to come to the ball and was currently working on a thirteenth. When she reached the door, she raised her hand up to knock on it, realised she didn't need to do that, then opened the door with an amount of forcefulness she didn't usually exert, unless confronted with a particularly difficult problem.
As she opened the door, she quickly found the answer to her question.
While Qrow, Summer, and Taiyang would often use their weekends to go into Vale, study at the library, or get some extra training in, Raven had a very strict cleaning and repair regiment when it came to her weapon. Every weekend, she could be found in the team STRQ living quarters sharpening and inspecting the multiple Dust blades held by Talon's multi-selector holster. Her inventory of blades had grown from about 7 when she had come to Beacon to three times that much due to a readily available Dust supply she had not had before. Which is why, when Summer walked into her room, she saw 20 Ōdachi-sized blades, volatile and waiting to be sharpened, lined in a grid formation all over the floor. The blades required so much space, that Raven had actually pushed all of their beds to the outer edges of the room.
Intimidating, to say the least.
"Summer, I thought you and Taiyang were at the library for the rest of the day." Raven spoke from her perch on her bed, scaring Summer and making her jump, "I apologise for the state of the room. Talon required maintenance."
"Oh, no problem Raven, sorry to interrupt you. I just thought the library was too crowded for my tastes, so I decided to study here if that's alright?" She blushed, right hand grasping her left wrist in a nervous tic.
"It is your room as well. Do as you please. Just be careful." Raven stated, going back to sharpen the blade of bright blue Dust in her hands. The room fell back into silence.
"Right…" Summer tiptoed over to her bed where she hauled her backpack off her shoulders and opened it to let a dozen books inside fall onto her blanket. She then toed off her boots, jumped onto the bed and grabbed a book, wrapped her cloak around her and started to read. The room was quiet, other than the sound Raven's whetstone working along the edge of the blade in her hands. It was chilly outside that day, so the large window had been closed, and the strong smell of incense that Raven liked to burn when she was alone intermingled with the smell of her favourite green tea. Every couple of words, Summer's eyes would leave the page and glance to the extremes of her vision to her teammate, who didn't seem to notice that she was being watched.
Well, at least Summer didn't think she noticed.
"Summer?" Raven spoke from the silence.
"Yes, Raven?" Summer replied, looking up from her book.
"You want to say something."
"No, I don't." Summer denied, quite pointedly, going back to her book.
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't" Summer repeated without looking up from her book, she was more forceful this time, but still unconvincing.
Raven sighed, "Summer, just get to the point."
The room was completely silent for exactly 7 seconds, at that point Summer just couldn't keep it in any longer.
"Why won't you go to the dance with us!" She blurted without any sense of decorum whatsoever, a bad choice when it came to trying to convince Raven to do anything she didn't want to do.
Raven opened her mouth to speak, but Summer was too fast for her, "I mean, I know it's not your thing, but if Tai can convince Qrow to go on the basis of coattails, it can't be that hard to convince you. And I know you're not into the swanky 'high society' thing and you always turn your nose up at it, but that's not the point. The point is that if we go together, we present the idea that team STRQ are a unified front, and we are here to win this thing. And could you imagine us walking in there, and people just getting scared of how awesome we are? And I know you would enjoy that because I was telling Tai about it earlier today and he said that I was starting to sound like you and we was totally right and-"
"Summer," Raven said, interrupting Summer's rant. She opened her mouth to explain herself, but Summer was too quick. She leapt across the room to Raven's bed, placing her index finger on her teammate's lips to prevent her from speaking.
"Do not say no, unless you have a really good explanation. Like if you're extremely ill and will in die two days for example, or your allergies will start working up if you're in a room with more than a hundred people and every time you sneeze something explodes. Something like that, because anything less than that is not good enough, Raven. I won't accept it."
From under Summer's finger, Raven's lips opened and closed several times before she could find the words to explain her predicament, "I… I don't know how to dance." She stated.
Summer was silent for almost an entire minute, until she suddenly exploded, "That's it!" She shouted, absolutely stunned by her teammate's confession.
"Yes."
"But… why?"
Raven looked at her in confusion, "I was raised by a tribe of bandits, there weren't exactly many opportunities for me to learn." She explained, even though Summer already knew everything.
Summer shook her hands in front of Raven's face, "No no no no no, I know all about your tragic backstory, and frankly, I don't care, but that's not what I meant. I mean why do you care? You, Raven Branwen, the girl who cut off all six of Deathstalker's legs on the first day we met, before laughing in it's face and stabbing it through the eye. You are scared are going to the ball because you don't know how to dance." Summer was on the edge of laughter but kept herself restrained to protect Raven's pride.
"If I am asked to dance, I will look like a fool. I do not wish to look like a fool, so I will not go to the dance." Raven explained, going back to sharpening her blade as if to signify that the conversation was somehow over. Unfortunately for her, Summer wasn't even close to finished.
"That's stupid. You're being stupid."
"What did you say to me?"
"You. Are. Being. Stupid."
"How dare you?"
"Very easily. You're being stupid, I'm calling you out."
"I do not wish to look bad in front of the other teams."
"You don't care what anyone else thinks about you."
"That's not true."
"You don't care about what I think, you definitely don't care what Qrow thinks-"
"I wish to end this conversation."
"Is this about Taiyang?"
"What?" Raven asked, a bit more forcefully than needed, with the tiniest hint of a blush creeping onto her cheeks. Summer smirked, she had Raven just where she wanted her.
"I can teach you to dance."
"There's only a week left."
"I'm sure you must have figured it out by now, but I'm a very good teacher."
"I don't have anything to wear."
"We'll go get something today. We'll practice all week. You got this, Raven."
Raven contemplated for a bit, but Summer already knew her answer, "Fine."
"Fine."
"Let's go right now."
"Sure."
"I want a black dress. Floor length. Lace. Gold jewellery."
"Sounds perfect."
"Good."
"Good."
And with that, both girls nodded to each other and got up from the bed. Summer grabbed her purse while Raven grabbed her coat and within a minute they were out the door, leaving the room in a complete mess behind them for the boys to clean up when they returned in 15 minutes.
One week later, Taiyang and Qrow were kicked out of their own room, dressed in their suits, so that the girls could change.
"I can't believe they just kicked us out like that," Qrow said, continuously banging on the door.
Taiyang shrugged his shoulders from his spot on the floor, "Girls do that, takes 'em a while."
Qrow joined him on the floor, making sure that his coattails were under him properly so they didn't wrinkle, "Still, Raven's acting as if I've never seen her change before."
Instantaneously, Tai's face began to redden as the inappropriate image sprang into his mind. He remained silent, hoping that Qrow wouldn't notice him.
Of course, he did.
"Gross, man that's my sister." He exclaimed.
"Hey, you brought it up," Taiyang shouted back, trying to defend himself.
"Doesn't mean you were supposed to start thinking about it."
"I'm sorry!"
At this point, both boys were standing up, Taiyang up against the wall with Qrow cornering him in, pointing a finger in his face, "If you try anything, and I mean anything." He warned.
"Hey, I thought it was the older sibling that was supposed to be the overprotective one." Tai joked, trying to de-escalate the situation.
"What can I say, I tend to defy societal norms," Qrow replied, almost growling under his breath.
"Not you can do much about it anyways. When you have your scythe you're pretty tough, but without it, you are nothing." Tai goaded , not even trying to stop Qrow from punching him now. It was just too much fun to rile him up sometimes.
"You may be the brawler, but I'm pretty scrappy myself, Blondie."
"Just try it, Birdbrain."
And just like that, they snapped. Qrow's fist flung out toward Tai's head, which he dodged by moving his head to the right. Qrow was stunned for a second but quickly recovered, pulling his fisted from the hole he made in the wall to take another swing.
"Boys!" Summer Rose's voice rang loud and clear through the hallway, prompting several other doors to open so that students could peek into the hallway to see what was going on. Qrow's fist stopped just an inch before Tai's face.
Summer was livid, "Really? Now? Of all times? What the hell were you fighting about?"
Qrow spoke first, never taking his threatening eyes off of Tai, "Nothing much. Just boys being boys."
"Exactly Summer," Taiyang agreed, turning to the girls a bowing before reaching out to grab Raven's hand and kiss it. She looked at him strangely, raising one eyebrow in amusement, but accepted the gesture anyways.
"Now come, we should be going," Tai continued, tucking Raven's arm through his own, and leading her down the hallway, leaving the other two to stare at the couple. Summer turned to look at her partner, who was still looking menacingly at Tai's back. She placed her hand on his shoulder, shaking him out of his death stare.
"Let's go, partner. We have a dance to get to."
"Right." Qrow quickly bent down to grab his top hat and cane from the floor, then stood up and offered his arm to Summer that same way that Tai did.
"You look good." Summer said as they walked down the hall together.
"Yeah?"
"Yup. How do you feel?"
"To be honest? I feel pretty swanky. You?"
"About the same."
Summer's bright smile was infectious as they walked out of the dorms and across campus, and at the time that Team STRQ has reached the doors to the ballroom, a huge smile was plastered on each of their faces.
Some headcanons that I have, in no particular order:
(1) Qrow's and Raven's weapons are named Claw and Talon, respectively. That is unless RT releases an official name for them and I have to go back and change everything because OCD.
(2) Team STRQ was the Worst Team Ever(TM) in their first year at Beacon.
(3) Again, unless stated otherwise, Raven's Semblance is used to somehow cancel out Qrow's Semblance so that he can, you know, not mess everything up
(4) As stated in the one-shot: Qrow is wearing a tuxedo with coattails, and cane, and a top hat because he's classy(TM); Raven is wearing a floor-length black dress, with a laced bodice, and gold jewelry as accent; Taiyang is wearing a navy suit with yellow tie, and yellow pocket square (look it up, it works); Summer is wearing something similar to Ruby's dress. (Do you see the colour-coding here?)
Thanks for reading! If you liked, please give kudos, or commenting is pretty awesome too!
You can also find me on Tumblr: coreystaves . tumblr .com
Some other chapters should also up, I should be updating on the weekends.