Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY and various other sources that will be referenced.
A/N: Enjoy. (Edited: 6 Apr 2019: see end)

Day 1:1 Beta Test Server shutting down

"*Yawn* This is more boring than I thought."

"Yeah, there isn't really anything to do now other than spamming World Chat."

Tonight (or is it 'today'? It is, like, 3:10 a.m. currently) is the last night for the highly anticipated 'Remnant Network Online' (RNO) open beta. At 4 a.m. sharp local time, beta servers will be turned off for the next two months for hardware upgrades and bug patching, before the actual release of the mobile-based Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game inspired by the animated series, RWBY.

The man yawns again in open-communications. "Yeah, Boss. I don't think I can stick it out anymore."

The listener squirms on his bed until he finds the magical spot of comfort. "Just go to—" Darn it, he is yawning now too. "—go to bed, Renault. It's like, 2 in the morning for you? I got no work on weekends, but you do."

"Alright David." Renault's female avatar nods, the emulation setting copying the owner's motion through his phone. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

"See ya, buddy."

And Renault logs off and, with his avatar consumed by a swirling sky-blue twirl of light as he disappears, leaving David alone in the Beacon Academy's garden. At this point of time, most players that are sticking it out until the actual server shutdown are hanging out with their favourite 'Non-Player Characters' (NPC) of the series or chilling out in common locations. The garden is a rarely sought-after spot by 'Player Characters' (PC) that he found, where Renault 'Ren', Tammy 'Fey', Mei-Ling 'Linen' and him 'Dusty turns it into a place for them to gather for Mission runs (Team DFRL for Daffodil, because both Linen and him are nerds. Fey and Ren enjoy the anime and simply go along with it) and general 'Away From Keyboard' (AFK) area.

David yawns again, this time taking a hand away from his Bluetooth controller to push the Virtual Reality (VR) gear up to his forehead to rub the sleepy tears dripping off his eyes. Maybe lying in the bed sleepy while waiting with nothing to do is a bad idea. David is too lazy to get up and move, however, perfectly content to just lie on the bed as he waits for the official shutdown.

It is not as if anything special will occur. Many games' servers shut down all the time for scheduled maintenance. And with the closing of the open beta, all character data, except donation contributors, will be purged and everyone will begin anew when release servers are up. David has no real reason why he wants to do that, but it is not as if he has anything planned for Saturday. He might as well have fun spamming World Chat like all the current random players like him are doing it and then sleep until the afternoon. With the VR gear reset in place, David lies down on his bed and rests his hands and controller on his stomach.

There are two perspective viewpoints for playing this game. Some players find it easier to play from third person perspective, which is done from an over-the-shoulder camera shot. Since he uses a VR gear plus controller, David opts to play through the first person perspective (or eyes) of his male avatar. He uses the controller's thumb stick to make his avatar look around, confirming that the garden is devoid of life, both PCs and NPCs.

However, the chat system—in the lower left corner of the screen—is filled with the life with unintelligible gibberish. Occasionally, he still spots scamming websites of people shouting to buy in-game currency 'Lien' at the cheapest rate of five bucks per several thousands, which gets 'F'ed by other legitimate players until the message disappears due to traffic. David joins in with an 'F': an acquired meme for another reference originating from another game.

The time now is 3:30 a.m.. Rather than continuing to sit in the bench, David thumbs the controller's stick and moves his avatar about. Exiting the garden and entering the Beacon Academy, David chances upon a throng of PCs, forming a venerable train that is trailing behind the famous NPC that brought about the animated series' name: Ruby Rose; First Year Academic Student.

The game's timeline is set in an Alternate Universe (AU) to the original series. The teams that made the series have already been decided and set in this game, leading to the appearances of teams RWBY, JNPR, CRDL and CFVY. However, by this beta period, that is the extent of the game's storyline, thus it is a bastardised version of first season. All PCs begin as hired Hunters to prepare the Emerald Forest for the First Year Academic Students' initiation, getting a 'trial by fire' style of tutorial to the game's combat and mission mechanics. After the whole thing is done, PCs are free to interact with the heroes and heroines of the series in the academy setting, although all the NPCs have only a few dialogue lines attached to them as a reply currently.

NPC Ruby Rose is written to bare her curiosity and love of all things sharp and Hunters, so anyone interacting with the NPC gets a dialogue about 'weapons' or 'autographs' based on your reputation with the 'Hunter Association' and 'Beacon Academy' organisations, but without an option to reply to the NPC's inquiry. With a 'Reputation' status that PCs can build with certain organisations, players will get more dialogues options from and to NPCs—although those options have yet to be implemented for this last beta testing. Finally, with their destinations pre-determined by the developers, even though the NPC will 'talk to' players, they will not stop in their movement to talk with them, which leads to some strange 'walking conversation' that nerds like himself like to role-play at times.

David is not exactly a big fan for Ruby—that spot is held by Pyrrha Nikos—but he joins the PC train since he has failed to find out where NPC Pyrrha is meant to be at this in-game time throughout the beta test. The crowd of PCs is so thick, he has to switch to a third-person perspective so he can see above every avatars' heads, but he is still blinded by all the equipment effects of the PCs. NPC Ruby leads the randomly jumping, randomly dashing, chat-shouting PC train to a T-shaped corridor that is supposed to be the classroom area. Once there, she walks up to the wall and turns around to face down the way she came, programmed to wait for something to occur.

A lot of non-NPC-related things happen. David has to switch off his local-chat window just to get rid of all the inappropriate 'emote' spam showing up in the window of these PCs spamming with NPC Ruby as target. David is rather ashamed for himself that he had once been that way, but he is mature now. What he will do is getting a screenshot picture with the NPC. The 'Camera' function has several options for PCs to play with, and there are two that are the most important to get a picture with the crowded NPC: The 'Hide Nearby Players' and 'Selfie' options. The latter will spin the camera around to centre around the PC, in this case himself, while the former option will make all the PCs disappear from his screen while he is using the camera.

With those options selected, the once-filled corridor is emptied instantly, leaving only David's black short-haired male avatar, in a beige coloured cosmetic trench coat that is left unbuttoned, standing one head taller beside NPC Ruby. Next, he turns off the 'Special VFX' option, which gets rid of the shiny sparkles that adorn his Dust-infused (RNO's version of Epic-grade) equipments, leaving a gunmetal grey shirt with a black-streak exposed under the trench coat, extended until the belt that is lined with cosmetic dust vials and a pouch, which is holding up a pair of dark blue jeans baring cracks of dull dark-blue. Holsters that increases his inventory space is cosmetically equipped on his right thigh. During the moment of David messing with the settings, his avatar performs an idling motion of stretching his legs with his fingerless-gloved hands and pacing the ground in his black combat boots.

Once the settings are done, David shifts his avatar about until he can see NPC Ruby and his avatar standing next to each other, with his pair of Tonfas—which has a special player-created cosmetic costume equipped on it, giving the pair a ferocious-looks of an organic, spiky and bladed weapons—hanging on his back clearly visible over his shoulders, then finally snaps a last screenshot. It is a beautiful Melee weapon with a built-in Sub-Machine Gun (SMG) fired under-slung, its artwork referenced from another game called 'Warframe', though Tammy and Mei-Ling have opinions about its aesthetics. The special costume is a reward for being a certain-tier cash donation contributor, sent to the developers through the use of the Cash Shop Voucher. It also ensures that his PC's name is reserved for when the game is released, together with extra bonuses that is not available at this time.

It is 3:52 a.m. by the time David has done with the last screenshot. The hallway is once-again filled with PCs after putting away the camera option. The chat window is scrolling with new text chat even faster now. He can barely see a sentence before it gets bumped out of sight by 'F'. Why are they spamming 'F's for? David snorts and joins in with the slow typing via using the keypad typing using the pointer controlled by the controller, which means a 'F' every 10 seconds or so. He gives up after the second 'F'. If anything, the chat degrades even further, with people just end up spamming 'asdlkj' or something, which is the only line David could recognise before it vanishes.

It is about time now, 3:59 a.m.. David will miss this fun action role-playing game (A/RPG). He is going to be bored for the next two months playing older games until RNO's release.

4:00 a.m.. Everyone in front of him vanish in a swirl of sky-blue tornado of their own. The rapidly scrolling chat window comes to a halt with a gibberish last text message and fades away seconds later. David looks to the left and right and sees nothing but empty corridors and NPC Ruby, still staring forward silently. This is a period of disconnection limbo where his phone's client-side network is attempting to reconnect to the server. Eventually, a message telling him that 'Connection lost. Please log out and try again.' will appear and forcefully shut down the game. And so he waits.

And waits.

He inhales and exhales a sigh.

And waits….

...maybe even the message got frozen. Guess I'll log—

"Um…" A feminine sound pulls David's attention and he looks down. NPC Ruby Rose, with her pair of silver orbs shyly looking up at him, a pen in one hand and a pad in another, suddenly reaches out to him with both items while bowing nearly to a right angle. "CANIHAVEYOURAUTOGRAPHPLEASE?!"

...Um…What? "Ah, sure." David confusedly takes both items. "You are…"

"RUBY!" She all but yells out in excitement, bouncing back to a straight pose before she embarrassingly shrinks back. "Ruby Rose, sir."

David's brain short-circuits as he signs similarly to a birthday card for his gaming guildmates—To Ruby Rose/Stay Awesome/Dusty—automatically. He stares at the un-NPC-like RWBY main character all but snatches her pad when he stops writing. "THANK YOU THANK YOU!" The hyperactive girl yells with a bow, then turns to skip her merry way away while holding the pad like it is the Holy Grail. "OHMYGOSH THIS IS AWesommee…" Soon, her voice fades away with her person around the corner.

When he can no longer hear the NPC, David turns to look at the pen that the NPC?! has forgotten to take back. It feels like he is hold a pen, not a controller?! He turn his wrist and it really feels like I just turned my wrist and rests the pen on his palm, feeling the expensive, metallic black pen rolling on his skin. That allows him to read a small engraving on it: You can do it. W.S.

'…What the fuck?!'

A/N: ...Should I make first page/chapter into an A/N-chapter for inputting mechanic notes like this?

RNO mechanic notes

Reputation: Affects standings with certain organisations. Certain dialogue options and benefits will be unlocked base on your standing. This is the current list of planned organisations with reputation (before bonuses)

Beacon Academy (Neutral)
Hunter Association (Friendly)
Kingdom of Vale (Neutral)
(more to come)

(Edited: 6th April 2019)
1. Changed 'Epic-Grade' to 'Dust-infused' and minor detail changes to David/Dusty's clothing and weapon looks
2. Reduced David/Dusty's height
3. Minor Grammar/Text edits

As you can see, I have no Beta-reader to check my stuff. I'm editing on the fly as I write next chapters. Hopefully it'll get better next chapter, in terms of needing to do on-the-fly edits.