Chapter 2

Well, That's Certainly New

Blake had a small moment of curiosity when Ruby said she was going for a run earlier. It wasn't that it was 'completely' out of character, but in the small amount of time she'd known her hyperactive leader, taking a 'run' wasn't one of her usual ways to burn off excess energy. Practicing with her scythe, doing some comical reenactments of a movie she liked, doing various things to try breaking the multitude of barriers around her partner, those were far more common activities. Still, if one of the fastest people in Beacon wanted to run around the campus for a while, who was Blake to judge?

To be honest, Blake had the feeling that something needed to change. They worked reasonably well together in whatever school assigned team exercises came their way, but it that was partly because the team exercises felt..tentative. The teachers knew the students hadn't known eachother for long, so they weren't being particularly pushed in that area just yet. Still, whenever she looked at team JNPR, she felt almost..jealous. No, jealous wasn't really the right word for it. That implied she wanted to be on that team. What she wanted was for her team to start having some of the same dynamics.

Pyrrha had quickly become the team mom, for lack of a better way to put it. There was this underlying sense of euphoria around her, like she had found her little spot in heaven somehow didn't feel she'd earned it but didn't want to say anything since that might somehow wake her up and put her back in hell. She tried to spread her superior experience around as much as she could, visibly tutoring the rest of her team whenever she could. Sure, Jaune got most of her attention, but that seemed more because he needed a good deal more help.

Not to say Jaune was dragging his team down, though he probably felt like it at times. What he lacked in skill he made up for in passion. Where he had trouble grasping school related material, he easily understood people..which made his whole flirting with Weiss seem like such a big anomaly in Blake's eyes that she would almost think he was putting up a front, but why? And while he tended to fall into the role of stumbling goofball pretty frequently, there was something about him that just gave you the sense he'd sooner beat you over the head with his own severed limb than let his team down. The fact that he was actually a pretty talented leader in combat didn't hurt, either.

Nora was a big bundle of energy, and her off-the-wall antics gave the impression she had little to no restraint. But as unrestrained as she seemed, she picked and chose when and how to cross lines. She was smart enough to know what would actually hurt people, and what would at most annoy. It's like she made it a personal mission to spread as many smiles as she could, and she was surprisingly difficult to get a read on.

Then there was Ren. Like his childhood friend, he was difficult to really get a handle on. Most of his words in public were just little translations for Nora, bringing her stories back down to earth when she added various details or just clarifying something. But there were little things he did that showed he'd made a connection with his other teammates as well. A comforting shoulder pat here, always having a spare..'anything' whenever someone ran out of ink in their pen, or didn't bring any paper for that particular class. Whatever he was to team JNPR, it was behind closed doors that he probably shined.

It was hard not to see the potential simalarities in team dynamics whenever Blake observed JNPR, and it was hard not to think about all the annoying little things she wished were clicking between her teammates but weren't, at least not yet. Of course, her choice of current reading material probably wasn't helping. A story about a talented captain with a poor string of luck ending up stationed in a hellhole, having to deal with obstacles all around 'including' her less than cooperative crew. Kind of hard to avoid thinking of her problems when she was reading something that said "yeah, it could easily be a hell of a lot worse".

Well, it would be reading if she hadn't read it before. At most she was scanning words, remembering how the scenes went, turning pages at the right time in case anyone was paying attention to her, and stewing in her own thoughts. She didn't even remember when she gained the habit, much less why she was doing it when the only other person in the dorm with her was Weiss, and based on the way Weiss seemed to be mechanically looking over her notes for the day, the silver haired girl wouldn't notice if Blake just conked out for the night. Hm, seven pm seemed a bit early to fall asleep, though..still, maybe a nap would give her a better idea of what she wanted to do.

As if sensing she was putting her book away and about to change into her pajamas, her scroll went off. For half a second, Blake was a little confused. Yang and Ruby started their run less than ten minutes ago. But who else would be calling her now? One of the teachers? Why?

Grabbing her scroll, seeing it was something from Yang, she was once again caught off guard that it wasn't a text or a call, but a video message..she didn't even know you 'could' leave video messages without your call being missed or something. And it looked like it was sent to Ruby and Weiss as well. Wasn't Yang supposed to be out running with Ruby? Maybe it was a side effect of leaving the White Fang less than a month ago, but Blake herself tense up. Hopefully it wasn't noticeable when she said, "Since it's probably the same message, want to watch it on the same scroll?"

Weiss took a moment to compare the two scrolls to see if it was really the exact same message before saying, "Alright. It wouldn't make much sense for us to be watching the same thing out of sync."

And so they hit play on Weiss's scroll, and saw Yang standing just outside of Lounge Room 33.

["Hel-lo! Not too sure you want to go through the same routine for the third weekend in a row? Want to change things up without going wild out in town? Well, you're in luck! Because I've just managed to find us a little adventure to go through without having to even leave Beacon. For those of you who aren't Ruby, don't worry. You won't have to do anything other than watch when you get here. And just so you aren't coming 'completely' blind, here's a little taste of what's waiting for you here. Hope you like the trailer, 'cause we are probably going to 'love' the actual thing."]

Trailer? Were they going to watch a movie? No, wait, if it was a movie than why did she say Ruby had to do something when they got there? Yang and the familiar scenery faded to black, replaced by a bit of text in a box..hm, visit a website..content rated..strange, she wasn't familiar with an RP rating for anything.

["This game has not yet be rated."]

Ah, that explained it. Most of the games Blake was familiar with were point and click adventures, most of which were made by..ah, there it was, the StrangeReal Studios logo. Hm, and a logo she wasn't familiar with, for a group called Infinity Ward.

The screen shifted to a dark, stormy night with a strange looking aircraft passing by, almost prompting Blake chuckle out of reflex at that kind of cliché opening, then in a flash of lightning all she could see were intense, angry eyes. The sort of eyes she was all too used to seeing on her old friend and mentor Adam. Trying to keep any potential memories from flooding her mind, she focused more on what was actually going on on screen.

The camera dived into one of the intense man's eyes, to a scene with a small squad moving in a forested area with mountains in the background. Yet another of those strange aircraft was at the top right. It made Blake think of a Bullhead, only..no engine. At least, none with any visible jet flair and exhaust. She couldn't see 'how' it was staying in the air since it looked like a bulky hunk of metal with a tail.

The scene changed again, this time to a grassy area during the day, to a man wearing a suit with a lot of foliage attached to it. He gestured to the camera, his hand telling someone to follow him.

["Move."]

And the camera moved to show the man moving through the grass from two different angles before it switched to a greenish tint, and a new location. A man with a shotgun was kicking open a door. Cut to soldiers wearing all black and their faces obscured by some kind of gas masks running through a rainy ship. Blake couldn't keep her brain from sending a short but fast little montage of all the missions she'd ever went through with the Fang, but she could at least keep the turmoil from showing on her face.

Now she saw a small fleet of those aircraft, and based on the motion blur above them, apparently they were airborne because something was moving very rapidly above them. The rest of the trailer felt like a blur, various action scenes in a damaged city, the occasional moment of seeing a red flag with a pair of yellow..curved things. Were those supposed to be swords of some kind? Hard to tell, not a good angle. Then it cut to some kind of hatch opening..certainly plenty of smoke coming from in there.

A short cut to attacking dogs finally broke Blake's self control. Even if they 'were' just on a screen, even it 'only' lasted a second or two, that was still a very familiar breed, doing a very familiar thing. If Blake had still been holding her scroll, she would have dropped it. If Weiss wasn't so engrossed with what was going on on the screen, she might have asked about the short, high pitched noise Blake made or why her arms automatically rose to neck level before she regained herself.

As more scenes of gunfire and fighting in the city took place, Blake couldn't help wondering if Yang somehow knew, somehow suspected her past, or if this was just an innocent bit of unintentional torment. Between all the various action scenes, a bald man with a mustache and beard was handing a gun to a man wearing a red had, a tactical vest of some kind, and yellow rimmed glasses. At the minute ten mark, he cocked his gun at the camera, aimed, and fired right into it, making the screen a blinding white.

When the white cleared, all that could be seen were the ruins of the city..it looked like a hundred years had passed, and a desert had claimed what man once owned. Then several seconds of dramatic music, showing various scenes so fast Blake could barely register them all, and finally they exited the intense man's eye, and zoomed out enough to see his mustached face just before he put his gasmask on. As whoever the camera was seeing from reached for his own mask, two words rang out.

["Ready up."]

And finally the screen shifted to black again, and the words "Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare" popped up on screen. Whatever the voice said at the end was not in a language Blake understood, that was for sure.

So..Yang's idea of fun was the team watching Ruby play an action game of some kind that seemed pretty disconnected with what they were doing at Beacon right now. Really, Blake was a little torn. On one hand, it 'did' seem like an interesting story, and experiencing something like that with others would certainly be an interesting experience. On the other, just based on how she reacted to seeing masked people in black and a short bit with a pair of attack dogs..probably not the sort of thing she'd typically 'want' to see with other people around.

Since she couldn't really make the decision for herself, Blake figured Weiss should be the one to decide. "So, think we should go to Lounge 33? Go along with it for a bit?"

Weiss turned to look at her notes, probably thinking she should do something more productive..but then again, given how good her memory tended to be, looking over her own notes some more probably wouldn't improve her grasp on the class material that much. Then she looked at her scroll again, moving the timer to the ruined city at around 1:17 before saying, "It's probably a waste of time, but..I can't deny I'm..curious. Lounge 33 it is."


Closing notes: Well, part of me wanted to put both the trailer and the intro before the game begins in this chapter, but then I decided it's probably best if we mostly take Ruby's perspective when they're actually going through the game. She is, after all, the one who's going to be playing this thing.

Since part of me felt it was a little strange to have characters in Remnant reacting to something that's very clearly from Earth, but, well, them interacting with stuff from our world is part of the point here, I decided to just make a lot of the things that outright talk about Earth made by a group called StrangeReal Studios. If you can guess where I got the name StrangeReal, you get a cookie..assuming Ruby doesn't devour all the cookies I've got right now. And no, it's not part of the Schnee commercial empire..those guys are filthy rich enough without me giving them more sources of income, and if they had a firm hold on the entertainment industry as well as energy and military? Kind of a scary image.

Oh, for those curious what the trailer looks like, here is the (current) Youtube link.

Trailer: watch?v=LhuIjNSg7Gg (Really ? You don't want me putting an entire youtube link so people could see what I was working with? Makes no sense to me.)

Yeah, I spent this chapter just going through a minute and a half worth of footage. We'll see how long the rest of this fic turns out to be.