Ruby Rose - Morning - Beacon Academy Locker Room - Vale -
To Ruby, the next morning was a complete blur. Waken up ridiculously early by Yang for the purpose of getting to the showers early which, while not a bad idea, wasn't worth the extra hours of sleep in Ruby's opinion. It couldn't really be helped though, Yang's morning routine was a marathon compared to her own, haircare alone taking up more time than Ruby's entire routine. She was quite happy with her short and rather manageable hair seeing that everyday for her entire life.
This was followed by what had to be the most crowded and loud breakfast she had ever experienced. Signal, being on a school on such a small island like Patch, didn't have all that many students and Ruby felt like she would miss it.
The line for the food was half an hour long and that was just from the freshmen being on campus. The rest of the student body would be arriving tomorrow once the first year's orientation was over with, she had to assume that Beacon had multiple lunch blocks to 'thin the herd' so to speak.
Regardless, one second she was waking up still bleary eyed and the next she was standing in front of her locker. Yesterday before bed, all of the students had received a message on their scrolls containing a locker number and the combination to said locker. Ruby wasn't certain how she felt about not having Crescent Rose on her person at all times, but rules were rules.
After entering in her combination and retrieving her weapon, Ruby sat down on the nearby bench and and started going through some standard maintenance. Mecha-shifting weapons, despite being extremely versatile and convenient to carry, had several downsides. One being that the upkeep on such a weapon was rather difficult and meticulous.
Another is fragility. In order to collapse to such compact forms and extend back out on a dime many mecha-shifting weapons were rather prone to getting easily broken. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem when in the hands of a person trained in the use of aura, the increase in durability giving the finicky armaments the boost needed to go from a trade off of attributes to a superior choice in nearly all capacities.
With aura enhancement factored the biggest downside to mecha-shifters was the money needed to make repairs if it did break. However, that downside was again bypassed by Ruby and any other student of Signal. Seeing as they all forged their own weapons, they obviously knew exactly how they worked and could make repairs themselves, provided the correct materials of course which were far less expensive than paying someone else to do it.
Ruby flipped Crescent Rose over in her hands several times, paying close attention to make sure that nothing was out of order. After assuring herself that there was no problems and then reassuring herself twice more, the red hooded girl realized that she was no longer alone on the bench.
Yang was now sat down next to her and most likely had been for who knows how long. Ruby had a hard time attending to reality when she was focused on something. Her blonde haired sister perked up instantly upon noticing that her younger sibling was finished with inspecting her weapon, previously looking bored out of her mind with her chin resting in her hands and both elbows resting on her knee.
Practically exploding off of the bench Yang gave Ruby a grin.
"Ready for today Sis?" she asked. Ruby also stood placing Crescent Rose on its holster on her waist and reached her hands to the sky, giving her back a stretch.
"Yup. Sooner I can get to fighting something instead of talking to it the better." Ruby responded, followed by a groan as she felt the muscles in her back loosen up. Yang laughed.
"We still have to be on a team, you're not getting out of socializing that easy." Yang reminded her.
"I could just be on your team. Boom, no socializing necessary." Ruby commented. Yang looked nervous for a moment.
"Ah, there would still be two other people. Beside it's pretty likely that we won't even be on the same team in the first place."
Ruby fully turned her body to face her sister stared at her. Yang reached up and started messing with her hair, a classic nervous tick of hers. Ruby walked up and poked Yang accusingly on the chest.
"My dearest sister, are you implying that you do not wish to be on the same team as me?" Yang started laughing as soon Ruby finished talking, the most suspicious thing that she could ever do.
"No, of course I do!" Ruby was unconvinced. "I just think that it would be good for you to...you know, break out of your shell." Yang said. Now that, Ruby believed. With a roll of her eyes she removed her finger and sighed.
"Yeah, you're not the only one." Ruby started walking towards the locker room exit. Yang was confused over her sister's last comment but fell in step.
A peculiar sight awaited them at the exit. Blake and Jaune both resided at the exit, the former observing the latter with a look of mild amusement, while the blonde haired boy struggled to get his feet out of a block of ice freezing them to the floor. Jaune noticed their approach and gave them a pitiful look.
"Help?" He pleaded. Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation, extended Crescent Rose and went to work. Yang, meanwhile turned to Blake.
"How?" She asked. Blake smirked.
"He saw Weiss earlier and decided to try and 'clear the air'. You can see about how well that worked." Blake explained. The two of them watched as Jaune nervously begged Ruby not to cut his foot off and Ruby snorted and told him that there was no way she would mess up that badly.
"Geez, that girl can sure hold a grudge." Yang said.
"She seemed more angry that the person she was talking to seemed more interested in speaking with Jaune than herself." Blake added.
"Where were you during all this?" Yang asked. Blake shrugged.
"Watching. Enjoying him annoying someone other than me this morning." Another commotion broke out by the attempted rescue from the ice.
"At worst you'll lose a toe." Rub jested. Jaune didn't laugh. Yang and Blake however, did. Though the dark haired girl only showed it through a shaking of her shoulders.
"So you two been hanging out all morning?" Yang questioned. Blake nodded.
"Apparently the both of you got up early and left him asleep, so he found me at breakfast." She said. Yang shook her head.
"That guy is just a lost puppy, isn't he." Yang cackled.
"More like a kitten trying to get out of the rain. He looked so pitiful I couldn't say no." Blake joked. Yang laughed again.
"Yeah, that sounds about right from what Ruby told me when she met him."
A loud crack rang out and Jaune cried out in joy. Blake rolled her amber eyes and the black and yellow themed girls made their way to eachothers company.
Ruby Rose - Mid Morning - The Sky - Vale -
This was the weirdest test ever. Of all time. Seriously, who came up with catapulting students off of a cliff?
Ruby soared through the air over the treetops of the Emerald Forest, firing shots backwards to keep her speed up. She wanted to make as much distance into the forest as she could off of this initial momentum.
Wind whipped at her as she streaked through the air, but Ruby wasn't bothered in the slightest. Her aura defended her eyes against any irritation the air could've caused and her constant use of her semblance throughout her life taught her the do's and don'ts of fighting wind resistance.
She couldn't keep up the pace for very long though, even with using her sniper rifle to extend her time in the air the combined weight of her weapon and herself couldn't help but become victims to gravity's pull. Ruby eyed the quickly approaching scenery and found a particularly open area to land safely in to her left.
Swinging Crescent Rose to the her left side and shifting as much of her weight as she could in that direction she successfully changed her trajectory to align with the clearing. Repositioning her weapon forward she fired several rounds at the earth in order to slow herself down as much as possible, decelerating as quickly as she had propelled herself forward moments ago.
Her impending landing rapidly approaching, Ruby decided that she had reduced her speed enough and with a flourish of her wrist and a twist of her her body, brought herself to a crouch on top of the handle of the sniper scythe, blade now behind her and pointed toward the ground. She kept a tight grip on the handle, took a deep breath and braced herself for the impact.
The blade of her scythe made contact with the ground first and she felt it draw on her aura to keep from snapping as it dug into the ground. She rode her scythe across the ground very much like one would a surfboard on water, the blade leaving a long trench of ripped up dirt as her weapon brought her to a stop. Letting out the breath she had been holding, Ruby hopped off of her scythe and pulled it out of the ground.
She took in her surroundings. Other than herself, the clearing seemed empty but that would probably change soon. Grimm were just as attracted to noise and motion as they were negative emotion, it was just that they could detect negative emotion from much farther off than any of their other sense could reach. So, essentially, she needed to leave quickly because she had caused a bit of a commotion when she had landed.
Ruby had two options on what to do next. She could either start looking for the abandoned temple that housed the relics Ozpin had talked about before he launched them off of a cliff, or she could go on the hunt for a partner. Looking for a partner first would at least get the hardest part out of the way, that being social interaction and in theory it would be safer to search as a group instead of alone. However, if she looked for the ruins she was sure to find a partner eventually since all of the students would be headed there and it would probably save her some time, since she was fast enough to both find it and avoid any grimm she came across.
A noise caught her attention and she quickly abandoned her thoughts. Straining her ears she identified it as footsteps, several of them and quickly headed in her direction.
A burst of motion entered her field of view as a familiar girl, dressed in all white, burst out of the foliage surrounding the clearing.
Weiss spun around the moment she got through the tree line, seeming not noticing Ruby's presence at all and pointed a rapier in the direction that she had come from. Ruby quickly found out why the girl was distracted when multiple beowolves also came charging into the clearing. Weiss didn't hesitate to act, reaching to the handle of her sword and spinning some sort of rotating canister that Ruby assumed held dust of some kind. Weiss stabbed the tip of her rapier into the ground just as the wolves got close and ice sprung up from the ground, spearing through several of the grimm's bodies.
The white haired girl removed her blade from the ground and lunged forward, stabbing an advancing beowolf through the bottom of it's jaw. Another leaped at her from her right and the girl took notice immediately and twirled around to face it as if dancing. A deadly dance it was too, wrenching her rapier out of the beowolf's head and ending the move slashing across the attacking one's jugular.
Ruby allowed herself a moment to be impressed. Weiss was quick on her feet and elegant in her motions. Unfortunately the girl seemed to be faced with a completely rediculous amount of enemies and was quickly become surrounded, no matter how many of the monsters she struck down. Ruby smirked and crouched down, whipped her scythe around towards the fight and felt her semblance wash over her body, a feeling of weightlessness settling in.
Seems her decision had been made for her.
Eh, could of been better but I'm so late that I just wanted to get this out. Combination of work, my birthday and some housework that caused the delay. A bit of laziness too, I won't lie. I did finally watch the Cowboy Bebop movie though, fucking immaculate work of art. I also checked out Castlevania on Netflix and watched about half of Fate/Zero and GATE. Fate/Zero was very good so far and if there is one thing I have to say about GATE it is 'blatant in its intentions'. I still enjoyed it though.
Moving on, thank you to all of the follows and favorites that came in while I was busy. Didn't think this would even get a small following but I appreciate it none the less. Special thanks to everyone that reviewed, please continue to leave feedback. Even the negative things you have to say are valued.
Speaking of the negative things people have to say, apparently some people don't like Jaune much. Understandable I suppose, he is a bit overused as a focus point of fanfiction, but he is still a part of RWBY and a good character. So if you don't like his presence, I would advise you to steer away from this story now since he is, and will continue to be, an main character of this story. Not the main focus of course, that belongs to Ruby and Weiss, but he is one of the tagged characters for a reason.
Little Changes in this chapter: Jaune and Blake spend a bit of admittedly one-sided quality time together, Ruby dirt surfs on her scytheboard and Weiss and Ruby's first meeting is a bit different.
Thanks for reading!