Weiss cringed, awakened by an irritating beeping. Her eye cracked open, unfocused and roaming the shadowed room dully before an annoyed slap stopped the noise and she was finally able to make out distinct shapes. In the bed within her view, Ruby stirred awake, sat up with her head hanging limply to contemplate her lap for a second, before letting out a soft but distinct sigh and kicking the blankets off her body. Ruby slid out of bed and stretched with a small grunt of exertion, rising up on her toes as her curled fists strove to hit the ceiling.
Far too groggy to care about the way Ruby's pajamas bunched and moved as she stretched, Weiss shifted her one working eye to the window and judged that, by the darkness outside, the sun wasn't even up yet. She sighed and heard a thud from behind her, prompting her to roll tiredly onto her other side to get an eyeful of Yang's muscled tummy; she also found that the blonde's hair was spiky and askew, looking brilliant yet horrible all at once. Weiss smirked a tiny bit and closed her eye, trying to let her mind drift back into the haze clinging to it as Ruby and Yang's footsteps provided some ambience.
They moved as quietly as they could, bless their hearts, but Weiss's eye cracked open once more as they began to mumble. She rolled her eyes in a private moment of irritation and caught Blake's golden yellow eyes peering at her from the corner bed, both sharing a tired, annoyed moment as Ruby and Yang got dressed and exited the room.
Shifting in place and nuzzling into her pillow, Weiss closed her eyes and listened carefully as her teammates walked down the hall and out of earshot. She managed to count sixteen of their steps before she fell asleep again.
Ten minutes later, she was stirred awake by a smell. She squirmed under her covers, but the heady aroma called to her… she rolled onto her back to glare at the ceiling, not pouting, experiencing a mixture of envy and exasperation as she smelled coffee.
"Don't drink all of it." Yang chided in a whisper. Ruby made a quiet, unhappy noise, and Weiss rubbed her tired eyes and shifted her gaze in time to see her partner pass Yang the cup, letting the blonde chug down the rest. Sitting on a desk was a tray full of hearty breakfast foods and, sticking out like a sore thumb, was a chocolate chip cookie. Weiss's eyebrow twitched at the sight of the dessert, and she draped her arm over her eyes to try and drift off for a third time.
Gentle clinking and swallowing kept Weiss awake. It wasn't loud enough to get angry over—there was a very clear, conscious effort from the sisters to give herself and Blake some peace and quiet—but Weiss was used to her utterly silent, dark room. Nobody entered her room before she was alert enough to greet them except for Klein, and even then only on days she needed to be up early and he made sure she was awake with the pretense of bringing her breakfast in bed. Weiss was fairly rigorous in being up on time as a matter of principle… unless she was nursing a champagne-induced hangover.
Then her schedule could go jump off a cliff.
She let out a soft sigh, rolling her head and shifting her arm to uncover her eye and see how the final occupant of the room was doing.
Two beds over, Blake was fast asleep. After the alarm clock, nothing disturbed her. Having spent most of her teenage years in a tent, surrounded by noisy, active Faunus, this was heaven; she had a nice comfy mattress, with a fresh, clean pillow, and her two awake colleagues were trying hard to be stealthy. It was a courtesy she would have appreciated more if she wasn't unconscious. Weiss had no clue how the dark haired girl could just ignore all this, but she felt a stab of genuine envy as Blake gently snored… hopefully, with practice, Weiss could master the same skill.
However Blake had managed to tune out reality in its entirety, it seemed that routine and ritual caught up to her half an hour later with the first peeking rays of sunlight. She woke herself up, feeling wonderfully loose and calm, her hair bent and poofy around her head as she sat up. She smacked her dry lips, tugged at her shirt, and frowned as she realized she'd failed to change the night before. Her nose crinkled and her ears swiveled— tried to swivel, but the ribbon was a bit tangled and pulled fiercely. She hiccuped softly in distress and hastily corrected her headgear, reducing the tension on her poor, trapped extremities.
The pain atop her head lessened and her disgust in herself for not changing suppressed, she looked around the room; Weiss sat at a desk, trying to not drink all the orange juice and eat all the eggs under the lamplight–at least that had better have been her plan because Blake immediately wanted some of both–while Ruby held her sister's feet. Yang was doing push-ups, with Ruby counting each motion for her. Both wore running shorts and tank tops, each with their respective color scheme. Blake paused, taking a moment to admire Ruby's lithe, pretty form in her tight clothing, but her eyes then fell on Yang.
She licked her dry lips again. Her partner had strong legs, of course, but that butt was something else. Blake shook her head, removing all those idle, early-morning thoughts. She got to her feet and stepped past Ruby and Yang, taking the milk off the tray. "Cafeteria's open this early?" She asked, hiding a yawn.
"Thirty-six—opens at five AM!—thirty-seven—breakfast foods only though—thirty-eight…" Ruby answered.
"Cool… and the cookie?" Blake muttered, sipping the milk, then cringed; skim milk. "Tell me they have whole milk." Blake set the glass down and pushed it away with one finger, as if it had insulted her ears.
"Forty-two—specially ordered—forty-three—and yes—forty-four…"
"Good." Blake went and tossed on the rest of her clothes from the night before, pausing to stare at her pink-stained vest before pulling it on and buttoning up. It was still far too early to pretend she cared. Weiss stared after her, setting the orange juice down as Blake combed her fingers through her long tresses to work out some of the knots and kinks while heading for the door. "I'm going to grab some breakfast."
"I'll join you!" Weiss announced as she stood up with a sudden enthusiasm, much to Blake's chagrin. With a defeated sigh, she resisted the impulse to deny the girl outright or just march out the door and pretend she hadn't heard anything. This was nothing to get upset about, it was her new life, fighting and eating and living with her partner and Ruby and… ugh. She nodded to Weiss, and silently vowed that she would do her best to tolerate the Schnee for the sake of the team, and for the sake of staying incognito…
"Might wanna get dressed before we go." Blake commented dryly, making a point to stare at Weiss' stomach. Weiss glanced down at herself and realized that with the lamp behind her, the sheer material of her gown was doing less to conceal her modesty and more to project a perfect silhouette of her curves to the world. Blake's eyebrow slowly rose as she made out the details of Weiss's shadowed hips, and Weiss made a mortified little sound of distress. Now wearing a cute blush, the heiress hugged her chest and scrambled to a box of her clothes. She quickly foraged through the immaculately folded garments until she pulled out her school uniform and promptly ran into the bathroom. Blake smirked when she heard the lock click.
Glancing back down, she noticed that Ruby and Yang had switched places, and Yang's focus was broken with a pout. "Had to say—seven—something, didn't you? Eight." Yang counted, staring at the bathroom door with a small, nostalgic sigh. "Nine—girl's got some grace—ten."
"I'm sure the whole school would have loved to see it." Blake pointed out, pushing out any hint of agreement in favor of watching Ruby's perfect form; her small, thin muscles flexing and turning red as she exercised with smooth, quick pushups. Blake leaned back against the door and checked the clock on her scroll impatiently, wondering if she could justify going without Weiss, but decided that it would be asking for trouble. Weiss seemed like the sort who would get all offended if left behind, and she was sure Yang, at least, would call her out for ditching after agreeing to the company.
Ruby probably had one of those 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed' tones that she hadn't heard since her last talk with her Mom… Blake stuffed her scroll back into her pocket and distracted herself by analyzing the sister's workout routine.
This was clearly a well-practiced convention; despite her smaller frame, Ruby wasn't straining to match her big sister's efforts, only taking a brief break to sip some OJ before getting right back into it. Yang was encouraging, and when it was time for sit-ups, they did them side-by-side. Blake noted the difference between the two activities: push-ups they did separately, sit-ups they did together, possibly just how they'd always done it. As the time and exertions ticked past, Blake began to tilt her head, wondering when they were planning to stop. It wouldn't do to have them too exhausted to function in class, training was important but so was pacing yourself...
Blake quietly recalled when she had been the drill instructor for her camp in the Fang, barking out numbers and orders, shouting out names and allowing for breaks. She wished more of her recruits had been as dedicated as these two, looking back. It was an informal position but had a sense of power; the older, often male resistance members listened to and respected her, and some even sought to impress her, especially after a failure. Blake was always stingy with the compliments, but wasn't afraid to acknowledge when they were performing better. The hidden-Faunus was mildly impressed with Ruby and Yang's perfect forms, considering she had to correct men who were twice their age.
That was all before Adam decided she needed to do more front-line work, and, despite her repeated insistence, refused to believe that the camp morale had tanked without Blake to provide a steady stream of motivation and consideration. Yes, she'd trained them because she was one of their best fighters, but it meant so much to her to nurture their strength and build them up from the often skinny, malnourished rookies they'd arrived as. But, Blake had played the perfect soldier and partner, always listening, always complacent, never willing to argue too deeply… Blake squeezed her eyes shut, silently counting to fourteen and vowing to just go get some food at twenty before the door to the bathroom open.
Weiss walked out in her school uniform and heels, looking natural in both. She briefly glanced down at Yang and Ruby curling on the floor, and stepped around them. "Let's go." She said with a smile.
Blake straightened, stretched, and popped her neck before nodding, "Sure."
"Do you want to comb your hair first?" Weiss asked, pointing to Blake's still messy locks. A quick workover with her hands had only reduced, not negated, the disaster that was her bedhead.
Blake thought about it as she swept her fingers through her hair once more, then shrugged it off, "Nah, I'll be fine. It's just breakfast." Despite her casual tone, she was watching Weiss like a hawk.
"It'll only take a minute, I promise." Weiss said. Blake frowned and flattened her back against the door as Weiss pulled a comb out of her purse. "Here, let me—" She reached up, and Blake grabbed her wrist tightly. Weiss stopped, startled, and finally seemed to look Blake in the eye, confused and a touch put out by the sudden anger burning in those golden orbs. Weiss's wrist went loose and her brow gently knit as she struggled to figure out how she'd offended her teammate. "I-I just-"
"Just… don't push it." Blake ordered in a terse tone, making Weiss frown. Blake let her hand go, and Weiss reluctantly put her comb away while Blake spun on her heel and opened the door. "Let's go." Blake grunted while slipping out, her cat ears feeling itchy and exposed from their close encounter with Weiss's hand.
Blake all but marched down the hall, Weiss rushing out to follow after exchanging a confused glance with the two sisters. Ruby and Yang were both sprawled on the floor, panting and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. "... What was her deal?" Yang asked, staring at the door upside down, her mouth somewhat pinched in thought while her nostrils flared to keep her lungs pumping.
"What? What'd I miss?" Ruby asked, her chest rising and falling rapidly with each breath. Yang glanced at her sister and debated accusing her of looking up Weiss' fetching new skirt but… nah. It was still too early for that.
"Nevermind." Yang sat up, stretching her legs out so she could lean way forward and pinch her big toe, a few vertebrae popping and making her purr contently. "You ready to go running?" Yang asked with a grin before switching to her other arm and its opposing foot.
"What, giving me a choice?" Ruby smirked as she stood up, pressing her hands to her lower back and arching backwards, grumbling unhappily when she failed to draw a 'pop' as loud and satisfying as Yang's had been.
"Hell no." Yang grinned brightly.
As it turned out, very few students were awake around this time. It seemed plenty opted to stay in bed, and Blake certainly didn't blame them; there hadn't been a precedent set, so nobody wanted to be awake if they didn't have to be, and Blake silently envied them. She hit the call button for the dorm-wing lift, and did her damndest to wait patiently.
By her side, Weiss had her arms crossed and eyes closed. She didn't seem irritated, just tired, and Blake didn't blame her either. At the same time, Blake wondered if she should have been so quick to dismiss the offered comb, considering her scalp itched a bit, and there was a curl trying its best to leap into her view at the slightest twitch of her brow.
Pride alone, however, did not keep her from sheepishly reneging on her denial as she watched Weiss from the corners of her eyes.
Blake had nursed a grudge against the Schnee family from the moment she could understand the plight of her people. There were hundreds of individuals deserving of the White Fang's attention–many who showed a significantly more open hostility and attempt to quash any hopes for equality–but the Schnees took precedence for their long-standing business practices that essentially turned the Faunus into slaves, as well as fostering a strong, anti-Faunus sentiment with the elected officials they supported, and the basic workers' rights that were denied. It had taken nearly ten years after the Color Wars for Faunus to finally gain something resembling equal rights in all four kingdoms, and even then, were often paid less and regarded as more expendable. Laws, in turn, weren't always obeyed in private, and attitudes towards a 'lesser race' didn't disappear with any legal decree.
The Schnee Dust mines were notoriously harsh for Faunus during that period of time. Slim rations, poor equipment, low wages, abysmal safety standards, and perhaps most tellingly, lax security against Grimm attacks. Numerous Faunus families to this day dreaded receiving a white envelope with the Schnee Dust Company stamp, which opened on the infamous: 'We here at the Schnee Dust Company must inform you with tremendous sorrow of the passing of your kin…' Sometimes, the bodies weren't even sent back home, and simply put into a grave with a wooden marker with no name, somewhere deep in the woods that scavengers could easily dig up.
After being brought under equal and fair employee laws, the Schnees exploited every possible loophole, cut every corner they could, abused every technicality there was, and used Faunus prejudice at the time to ensure they could get away with it without so much as a slap on the Faunus workers still suffered from diseases and conditions they'd been afflicted with before those ironclad laws had been placed throughout the four kingdoms. Working conditions in the mines were better, but still heinous, and many faunus still had difficulties getting access to Dust as 'Dust licenses' were introduced, essentially forcing the Faunus communities to become literate overnight and prove they were 'safe' in using Dust. It was all an attempt to ensure the Faunus couldn't catch up, especially now that they had their own continent and a popular civil rights group… well, most of the White Fang was still about civil rights.
Standing next to Blake was the public face of those oppressors. Blake shot Weiss a look hovering near a glare as the white-haired girl looked ready to go back to bed, but kept herself roused with a pinch to her wrist. Weiss was featured on numerous posters and talk shows to discuss her family's newest business ventures and inspire a sense of Schnee 'purity' in the public eye. She had a beautiful face, a lovely voice, was a talented performer, and was well-read, but Blake picked up from a few interviews that perhaps Weiss didn't understand–or possibly didn't know–the conditions the Faunus were kept in. She was quick to defend her family and company, giving good sound bites for the media, and using the same defenses her family had always used.
She had always held an almost personal grudge against Weiss as a person–and privately stole from Weiss the songstress–until yesterday. Weiss had emerged from the Emerald Forest with somebody else's interests in mind, somebody whom she had shown pure antipathy towards only a few hours before. She wasn't acting like a spoiled brat, or some alpha bitch with a chip on her shoulder, but like a huntress. From that, she'd transitioned into a pretty, rich, noble young lady who, while deeply confident in herself, remained level-headed, and even approachable. She was still a bit of a naggy, know-it-all perfectionist, but Blake had known far stupider people with much longer monologues.
Blake still did not like being on a team with her, but at the same time, her traitorous curiosity begged her to watch and learn. It troubled her that some small part of her wanted to connect with Weiss, to understand how she could put on her fancy jewelry and get in front of a live studio audience to try and downplay the suffering of thousands.
"Sorry." The voice broke Blake from her thoughts, and she turned swiftly to face Weiss as the heiress let out a haggard breathe and lifted her chin to look at Blake, her eyes bright and clear, but her frown filled with an unsure remorse, "I didn't mean to bother you earlier." She sighed. "I just thought, you know, we should look our best and—"
Blake waved her hand idly, dismissing the apology. "It's nothing." She insisted, knowing full well it was anything but, "I just don't like people touching my hair." She looked away from Weiss, mentally kicking herself for feeling an ember of pride when her companion's expression brightened... after all, Weiss was still a Schnee.
"Then I won't, but if you want a borrow a comb…" Weiss trailed off and patted her purse. Blake resisted a theatrical roll of her eyes. On top of advertising for the enemy, it seemed Weiss also never learned how to quit while she was ahead.
"Sure, Weiss. Thanks." Despite herself, she meant it. She could have been more dismissive, but this was her new life, she would have to treat Weiss like a person, at least until she did something publically to justify that sort of thing. Blake shivered when she realized the thought of catching Weiss hurting someone was putting her into the mood to sing. She would not be petty, being wary was fine but actively rooting for someone to give her an excuse to get angry was… terrifyingly familiar and nothing she wanted to be a part of ever again.
The two fell silent, Weiss unaware of the storm of emotions coursing through Blake. Blake thought she'd have every reason to hate Weiss Schnee just from watching her treatment of Ruby, but then she started acting like a human being; showing concern and thoughtfulness. Or had she? Surely some fancy rich school or another drilled the ideas of manners and public relations into all their little Atlas drones… who knew what Weiss really felt and what was a committee approved checklist of platitudes designed to make her and her company look good? Blake frowned…
"This elevator is taking forever." Weiss snarled, and Blake felt a flutter of a smile as she imagined some stuffed-shirt acting coach helping Weiss learn how to deliver that sentence in that exact inflection of impatient aggravation. "Let's just take the stairs."
"Mmm, alright." Blake and Weiss both turned, scanning the hall for a stairway access, but they barely took two steps when the doors opened with what felt like a mockingly cheerful bell-chime; they both sighed in annoyance and turned back, ready to stomp inside and press every single button on their way out to punish it.
Ren and Nora both stepped out, or, rather, Ren stepped out, holding a plate of fresh greens, while Nora staggered and sagged against him tiredly, eyes barely open as she drooled against his black nightshirt shamelessly. "Hello Blake, Weiss." Ren nodded to them both. The two girls greeted him in return before he hooked an arm around Nora's waist and guided her to their room.
After staring into the empty elevator a moment, half expecting someone else to emerge, Weiss and Blake quickly stepped in once the doors began to slide shut and descended, prompting Weiss to give a small 'hmph', "It's simply unbelievable how inconsiderate those two are with their PDA."
"Hm?" Blake queried, her mind stirring, searching the past minute or so for an answer, "Oh, Nora and Ren?"
"Yes!" Weiss answered with her arms crossed, a pout forming on her face. "It's unprofessional the way that girl hangs off of him, they should really show more consideration for others around them. Not everyone wants to see them… snuggle." her lip peeled back, baring one canine in distaste.
Blake rolled her eyes; there it was, the Schnee bitchiness Blake had expected. Not that she completely disagreed, the two lovebirds practically never broke contact with each other, and it often left Blake feeling… envious. Not that Weiss would be allowed to know. "I thought you princess-types were all over fairytale romances like theirs." Blake prodded. Weiss let out a rather impolite little grunt.
"Let me tell you what a 'fairytale romance' is: it's some shameful tale of failure and willful impotence where I'm stuck in a tower, awaiting a prince to defeat my evil stepmother-slash-nightmare dragon and rescue me so that I don't have to lift a finger to help myself." Weiss's annoyance turned to grumbling, "I wonder if he'll rape me in my sleep too, my favorite fairytale romance trope."
Blake stared at the shorter girl as she crossed her arms and fumed softly, mumbling fragmented sentences about perverts, impalements, and litigation. She hid a smile with a small cough.
"I mean, to be fair, all the old, original fairy tales involved gross crap like that." Blake rolled her shoulder, stepping out with Weiss once they were on the ground floor. She paused long enough to help the Heiress press every single one of the elevator's buttons… let it run for the next half hour, it deserved it. The silly moment of rebellion struck Blake as odd; it was so immature compared to what she'd expected of the heiress' idea of revenge. "At least you don't have to make out with a frog. Though, out of everyone in the world, you seem the most likely to be trapped in a tower somewhere. Schnee Manor has… three of them?"
"You're thinking of our company headquarters, each tower was meant to represent a fundamental pillar of our business philosophy…" Weiss trailed off and swallowed, clearly pushing down some memory or another. "And if you must know, being trapped in a castle isn't as horrible as you'd think; my father confined me to my room when I was fourteen for pouring punch on my brother's lap an hour before." Weiss clarified in a dry tone a moment later, prompting a raised eyebrow from the dark-haired girl that was, currently, growing more and more annoyed at the ease of the conversation they were sharing, "One advantage to living in a mansion? I had more than enough linens in the closet to make a long enough rope substitute and leave. I didn't need my latest suitor barging into my room to 'rescue me' to escape. Not that the drug-addled buffoon could have defeated my maids to get to me, nevermind the actual guards..."
Blake felt her mind grind to a halt, and a small laugh threatened to leave her belly, "... You seriously bedsheet roped your way out of your own room because your stoner boyfriend couldn't sneak into your bedroom?" Blake asked with wide, golden eyes, staring at the girl whom she had long presumed was nothing more than a complacent puppet to the Schnee family.
"The party downstairs had a chocolate fountain." Weiss answered in such underwhelmed dryness that Blake snorted, the two walking down the large, empty halls towards the cafeteria, "I was not going to miss out on it, nor was I going to fall for my father's stupid ploy to try and trick me into swooning over some slow-talking, smoky-breathed, idly rich moron. It was well worth the reprimand and the stomach ache later; that fool decided I wasn't worth the trouble because he was not comfortable with the idea of a free-roaming girlfriend who wouldn't await his arrival into the wee hours of the morning. I was devastated, of course." The distaste in Weiss's voice grew until it was practically oozing out of her pores, and Blake blinked slowly.
"Wow." Was all Blake said, drawing a curious glance from Weiss.
"'Wow' what? You'd be surprised how many rich, young nobles expect utter compliance."
"It's not that, I'm just…" Blake trailed off, and her voice fell to a near whisper, "relating…"
Yang threw the dorm room's door open with a happy, "We're back!" that was barely audible over the sound of the door crashing into, and bouncing off off, the wall. The sudden, peace shattering noise made Weiss slap a hand over her mouth to stop herself from spitting out her orange juice as Yang strode in, a thin sheen of sweat staining her clothes and making her skin glimmer.
"Could- hack! Cough!—couldn't you have knocked first?!" Weiss whimpered, rubbing her throat. "You are su—hcchk!—such a—" Weiss couldn't finish the statement amidst a sudden coughing fit.
"Ah, you'll be fine." Yang slapped Weiss's back, making the heiress double over with a yelp. "Sides, it's my room too, princess. So... how's breakfast?" Yang snagged a half-eaten muffin off Weiss's plate and finished it for her in three large bites, despite the rather shrill cry of indignation.
"They have fish tacos." Was the only thing Blake said between bites, while Yang ignored the pale fists banging on her shoulder in outrage. Blake had a small ball of tinfoil on her plate, along with two more foil-wrapped tacos ready to be chowed down upon.
"Mmm, Nice… Fish tacos…" Yang just gave an infuriating smile until Blake rolled her eyes in annoyance. Yang barked out a laugh and stepped away from Weiss' ineffectual revenge and into the closet.
Blake ate and Weiss mourned the loss of her muffin as Ruby walked in, looking more exhausted than Yang, but not anywhere near to the extent they were the day before. She was equally sweaty, and added to the stench of body odor slowly choking the room. Weiss may have said something about it between sips of her juice, but Ruby didn't notice as she plopped onto her bed with a groan.
"You alright?" Blake asked, walking over with her breakfast. She watched the younger girl groan, and force herself to roll onto her stomach and wiggle to the far side of the bed so she could dig through a box and pull out her school uniform, which was vastly smaller than Blake's own. Ruby laid it out and dug out fresh undies while Blake silently admired Ruby's musculature; most girls her size relied almost entirely on Aura to do the heavy lifting, but Ruby probably had more raw strength than Blake, despite her shorter size. The addition of Aura would only exacerbate the difference between them, but Blake was willing to bet her little leader wasn't quite as light or sure on her feet.
"I'm fine, this is normal for me. I'll just need something to eat." Ruby rolled her shoulders, wiping her sweat stained hair off her brow and leaving her with a cowlick. Blake hid a chuckle. "They have a really n-nice track out there, and the gym is like a gym-gym, with weights and stuff."
"I'd hope so." Blake cocked her head in thought, glancing at the half-eaten item in her hand, and held the taco out to the tired girl. Ruby sniffed it curiously, then took a bite. Blake suppressed a pleased grin as she hand fed her team leader, and Ruby seemed relieved as she chewed and swallowed, licking her lips with a pleased hum; good, Blake often had difficulties getting along with fish-haters. "You and Yang should probably shower before me 'n Weiss. It'll help clear out the air a bit." She furthered her point by waving her hand front of her nose with a small smile.
"Sorry." Ruby mumbled, then stole one more bite from Blake's breakfast, earning a playful swipe at her messy hair as Blake accused her of theft, then stood with her clothes folded in her arms. "I won't be long!" She promised, then slipped into the bathroom as Weiss finally seemed to recover.
"Ugh…" She grunted, while Yang stepped out of the closet with her own clothes. Blake had returned to her seat and was watching as Yang sorted out her uniform, taking note of the color of the underwear she set aside for the day: black with a flame pattern. Blake itched to complain about cliche, but decided it wasn't worth giving Yang another reason to try and brag...
Ruby was honest about not taking long, she was dressed and in her uniform–with the addition of her goggles and cloak–not too long later in time for Weiss to finish lecturing an entirely unconcerned Yang about table manners and food-sharing etiquette. Yang went in next, and Blake suspected there would be a much longer wait for Yang, but the blonde was out in a surprisingly timely manner. Her hair was still a drenched mess as she plopped herself onto her bed, but without saying a word, Ruby sat behind her and helped her groom. Blake couldn't decide who she was more envious of: the sister under the comb, or the sister that got to manage those glorious locks. It was doubly adorable when Yang would shift to whap Ruby's face with her hair, drawing an angry stammer and a smack to the back that left Yang giggling.
Weiss went in next. Blake kept track of the time, and noted Weiss took quite a bit longer than Yang had. Weiss did, however, come out with a fetching mask of makeup to accentuate the best parts of her face, while also smelling like the good part of a perfume store; the subtle mixture of shampoos, body wash, lotions, and scented sprays making Weiss smell… dreamy. Blake stopped herself from chasing Weiss with her nose, and focused on gathering her clothing while listening in behind her.
"C'mere Princess, sit." Yang ordered.
"Why? What do you want?" Weiss pouted, just starting to put up her familiar side-fixed ponytail.
"Just do it!" Yang responded with a mix of command and confidence, her blonde mane now a more orderly mass of chaotic curls from Ruby's touch. Reluctantly, Weiss obeyed and sat in a chair as Yang pulled the heiress's hair over the back.
Blake ducked into the bathroom before she could see Yang get to work, wanting to avoid the inevitable temper tantrum.
She locked the door, stripped off her stained clothes from last night and tossed them into the hamper with the rest of the discarded garments. Examining her reflection in the mirror,she let out a small, relieved sigh as she undid her ribbon and freed her ears. Neither the Nevermore nor the Deathstalker had broken her aura, so the fight, chaotic as it was, left no lasting marks, but Blake quietly counted the little off-colored lines left on her body from her time with the White Fang.
Her ribbon sat on her clean school clothes, her large, black cat ears twitching in the mirror. Blake turned the shower on and stroked her Faunus ears, massaging away the discomfort of being bound all night with a sigh. As much as she hated the idea of hiding who she was, she was terrified of revealing herself to the Schnee. Yang was a loudmouth; there was no way she could keep a secret, and Ruby had mysteriously bonded with the heiress, so she couldn't tell her without good reason.
Blake closed her eyes and reaffirmed her mission: she would not reveal herself to anyone, she would take classes, grow stronger, cultivate her skills, and stay far away from Adam's reach.
She quietly inspected a miniscule white scar just above her left nipple, wincing at the memory of a night gone horribly wrong. His anger had carried over into their shared sleeping bag after a day filled with failure, and it was the first time she had to stop him and order him out. He was simply too furious, too rough, too much like…
… like an animal.
It was the first time Blake had felt like just a piece of meat. It was a far worse feeling than being called a traitor, or being kicked in the ribs by some snickering anti-Faunus thug. A friend, a close ally, somebody whose ideas made the world seem so much more malleable had hurt her when her defenses were down. Blake had never had to use her aura when she and Adam were alone before, but those furious, grabbing hands, pulling at the delicate spots of her body…
She understood he was angry, but she was not his stress-relief toy. She would have gladly massaged his feet and kissed his pains better if he had just kept some sense of self-control…
Blake dismissed her idle musings with a sniff and slipped into the shower, trying to enjoy the hot water, trying to forget a worse time. She quietly thought of Ruby; she was young, true, but seemed sympathetic and well-read. She lead with her words and her actions, much as had Adam had done, and both had carried a sense of righteous fury when at the intersection of victory or defeat. However, Ruby had directed her fury towards the Grimm, whereas Adam had directed his rage towards the humans. It was a much less difficult moral quandary when the Grimm were involved…
She let her eyes roam the shower as she worked the hot water into her hair and paused; hanging on the wall were four small, wire cages. Three of them had beauty products in them for hair-care, skin care, and more. Only one cage was empty, and Blake realized she hadn't brought her own cleaners. She glanced down in the corner of the shower, and sitting on the edge were a few off-brand products that would certainly get the job done, but…
Blake got nosey and poked through the shampoos and lotions curiously, able to determine who owned which product: Ruby had the fewest products, with two bottles of moisturizer specifically for the eyes. Yang favored lustrous shampoos for blondes, and apparently liked the smell of cinnamon. Finally, Weiss owned dozens of tiny bottles of many scented oils, creams, and soaps, with two large, very expensive bottles as her primary cleaners. Blake grumbled in bemusement as she found that Weiss apparently shared in her tastes in hair-care, while Ruby had the right moisturizing body wash. Was it right to ask them…?
"It couldn't hurt, right…?" Blake whispered to herself. It wasn't as if cosmetics were at a premium, they were right next to a city they could shop in freely without the authorities swarming them. Blake laid her ears flat as she could as she crept out of the shower and cracked the door just enough to speak. "Hey! I… I sorta forgot my shower stuff, could I borrow some of yours?" She asked loudly, feeling utterly ridiculous despite knowing it wasn't really a big deal.
"Go ahead!" Ruby chirped.
"Yeah, knock yourself out." Yang added.
"I don't mind, but try not to make a habit of it." Weiss cautioned, as if this were all some elaborate plot to use up her shampoo.
Blake shut the door and felt her cheeks redden. Well that had been easy...
She made sure to use as little as she could of what was available to get the job done. She avoided citrus-y smells as much as she could, and sighed when she finally convinced herself to use Weiss's product. Schnee-brand Snow-scented shampoo... How did one even capture the smell of snow? It was ice formed around dirt, did it smell like a waterlogged room in need of sweeping? She popped the cap open and sniffed curiously, blinking at the surprisingly alluring scent. It seemed like a thin mixture of vanilla, cocoa, and mint, giving it a sharp iciness amidst an enchanting sweetness...
It was nice. Really nice. Blake glared at the bottle the entire time she used it.
She stepped out of the shower, dried, and dressed. She checked herself in the mirror, twisting her hips to swirl her new skirt, and her reflection granted her a small smile. She looked good, she looked ready. She smelled amazing. She was a student now. What a strange change in her life's direction, from freedom fighter to student…
She sighed and pushed her reflections aside for now. She had a team to learn how to cope with a new, normal school life, brooding could wait. She wrapped her ribbon carefully around her ears to hide them and stepped out of the restroom.
Weiss stood in front of the full-body mirror, looking pleasantly surprised at how well she pulled off a Vale braid. She lifted and delicately spun the two, thick tendrils of hair tightly wrapped around one another, held in place by a white scrunchie at the very end, her cheeks turning pink as a smile overtook her. She twirled, watching her hair swirl around her. Blake blinked in dull surprise, but Weiss was too interested in her own hair to pay her any mind.
Yang pet the chair she had tended to Weiss in, smiling promisingly at Blake. "C'mon partner, lemme make you pretty… er." She threw in a playful wink.
"Oh, uh…" Blake tensed nervously. "I think I'll pass, I like my hair loose-"
"C'mon, it's our first day! Let's start this whole school thing off with a Yang!" Yang fired a pair of cocky finger guns at Blake, making her look left and right for a way out of this. She did not expect Weiss to slide up by her side and place a hand on her shoulder.
"Blake doesn't like people touching her hair." Weiss said firmly while warmly stroking Blake's shoulder. Blake had never felt so conflicted in her life… except two other times she was trying to repress with all of her might at all hours of the day.
"Wha'? Not even a little? C'mon Blakey, I'll be real nice." Yang held her hands up pleadingly, and Blake shook her head.
"Uh uh. Sorry Yang, just got a thing against it." She tugged one of her long, ebony locks, and Yang pouted loudly.
"Fiiiiine. Jeez, I was just gonna do pigtails…" The blonde whined. Blake's eyebrow twitched. She turned to give Weiss a blank stare, and the heiress seemed to get the point and withdrew her hand, but still flashed a victorious little smirk before going back to her seat. Blake throttled the urge to scratch at her shoulder nervously.
"What time is it anyways?" She asked, brushing the conversation aside.
"Seven fifty-five." Ruby answered, putting together her school supplies in a little mailbag. She smiled over her shoulder at her teammates, and Blake could see her all but quivering in place as she packed. Blake hid a smile; their little leader was all excited to go to class.
"Man, we still got an hour." Yang plopped into the chair with a grunt, arm hanging over the backrest, "We should go explore!" She offered with sudden enthusiasm. "Check out everything on campus! There's gotta be some cool places to just hang out and chill."
"If we check the syllabus we could get a head start on our lessons." Weiss offered, looking excited at the prospect. Yang couldn't have been less impressed by the idea.
"Boring!" Yang huffed.
"Why don't we just relax? It's only our first day." Blake added.
"It's school, we can't just sit around all day! We should get busy early and get used to the hustle and bustle of a normal school life." Weiss eagerly opened her scroll to access Beacon's database.
Yang let out an aggravated groan. "I wanna do something."
"Studying is doing something!" Weiss shot back.
"We have nothing to study for." Blake reminded her.
"Not unless we dig a bit! See, period one, History of Remnant with Dr. Oobleck." Weiss was going through a box of textbooks, and the other two twitched… "It's school, what, did you think we'd spend all day just… carousing?"
"I thought I'd get to meet babes. At least ones who are fun." Yang snorted, and Weiss planted her hands on her hips.
"School is not just for fun and definitely not for 'meeting babes.' We have to get serious, so stop lazing around!" Weiss huffed.
Blake watched the two go back and forth with a small pout, then glanced to Ruby. Ruby seemed generally distant from the conversation, though she was listening in. She offered no opinions, no options, nothing…
"I think we're missing a very important detail here." Blake spoke up, a hint of conspiracy and betrayal in her eyes, and Weiss turned on her with a small, curious frown. Yang was silent, eyebrow raised, interested in what Blake had to say, "Ruby is team leader, she should decide what we do."
At that, Ruby sat up straight like an iron bar had replaced her spine. She whirled to face the three, looking pale and panicky as she suddenly gained all of their attention. Weiss was frowning silently at her, Blake was curiously staring, and Yang let out a chuckle.
"Know what? Sure. What are your orders, sis?" Yang asked with a confident urge in her tone.
"We should study." Weiss said immediately, staring into Ruby's goggles.
Ruby froze up as she stared at the three of them. Explore, study, or relax? She trembled a tiny bit, then slowly looked away from them. She looked out the window, at the beds, at the boxes… they were already looking to her for answers and direction, Ruby was content to let them sort it out democratically!
"Well, uh…" Ruby said with cotton tongue, her brow wrinkling in distress.
"Come on Ruby, what is team RWBY going to do? We have an hour, we should prepare." Weiss said firmly. Yang made an unhappy grunt.
"Don't push her, let her decide." Yang ordered.
Ruby winced. She had no clue. She tapped her fingertips together anxiously. "I, uh, I-I dunno, but, well…" Ruby froze up as the girls began to lose interest, Weiss openly sighing in dismay. "N-no no-no… okay, um…" Ruby glanced to the boxes at her feet, the boxes around the beds… "W-we should, uh…" The barren walls, the empty bookshelf between the beds… "Um…" And the room was so cramped with four beds… "Decorate."
"... Decorate?" Weiss's eyebrow raised.
"Y-yeah, we should decorate." Ruby swept her hands out, as if presenting the room to them for the first time. Weiss's frown deepened. "No no! Don't—it's important!" Ruby felt her knees knock. "We need to decorate! And-and unpack all of these boxes. They're everywhere, and, l-like, we should make the room feel, uh, lived in. Make it homey! So let's, uh, let's unpack." She offered. After a second of thought, Blake and Yang both moved to their beds to grab their boxes while Weiss looked at the floor, hands on her hips.
"Well… fine. Okay." Weiss said with slight disappointment, but then she knelt down to start sorting out her luggage.
Ruby trembled a tiny bit, this time in relief, and bobbed her head. "I don't want to see a single box in the room or in the closet by the time classes start, s-so… let's get moving!" She tacked on. She chided herself as she went to grab her other things… they were already moving…
Boxes were opened and emptied to be sorted. Ruby and Blake took over one bed to sort through their collection of books, and had to be snapped at by Weiss on several occasions to return to actually sorting and shelving rather than just chatting about their literature.
Weiss made repeated trips into the closet to get personal items together and Ruby, Blake, and Yang paused to watch with increasing worry as the mountain of clothing and shoes around Weiss's bed steadily grew larger and larger. Then the jewelry boxes opened...
"—genuine Vacuan royal sapphires, all set in solid gold. It's probably worth more than this entire room." Weiss bobbed her head, smiling in great pride as Blake, nearly afraid to touch the necklace she was trying on, tried to oh-so-carefully remove it.
"And you brought it?" Blake asked with a raised eyebrow, numbers racing through her head.
"Of course." Weiss's expression shifted to confusion. "Why wouldn't I? It's one of my favorite necklaces." Blake's response was an impartial hum as Weiss returned the necklace to the jewelry box she'd brought.
"I'm a princess!" Ruby announced enthusiastically. Weiss glanced at her partner, currently adorned with Weiss's graduation tiara, and her eyebrow twitched. "Kneel before me, peasants!" Ruby ordered, hands on her hips. Blake blinked, and noted that for this silliness Ruby could suppress her stutter.
Weiss groaned and took the tiara, leaving Ruby whining like a kicked puppy. "If you want to try anything on, just ask and be super careful. Most of this is very expensive."
"Wow, and boys always told me pearl necklaces were easy to get." Yang indelicately flicked the pearls hanging around her neck, making Weiss screech in horror. Needless to say, the jewelry was put back into safety and locked away tightly.
Blake set the last of her books on the room's small bookshelf. She frowned. She had brought her whole personal library of twenty-two novels with her, and Ruby still had her massive pile of reading material to shelve. Then there would be their collected textbooks… they really needed more places to put books. Actually, as she maneuvered around a pile Yang's clothes dumped on the floor and nearly tripped on Ruby's action figures, she realized they needed a lot more room period.
They also needed to empty the closet first.
Boxes lined the room, every flat surface was covered in clothing, magazines, books, and little personal items of traditional, historical, or entertainment value. Yang was busy trying to figure out a twisting cube puzzle Blake had brought while Ruby anxiously looked over Weiss's entire makeup collection. Blake had finished unpacking well before the other three, but they needed a place for Ruby's Heroic Hunters model collection, somewhere for Yang's weights…
… and that wasn't getting into what they'd need for Weiss.
"... This would be way easier with bunk beds." Blake said absentmindedly as she stared at the mess of a room, prodding one of Yang's skirts with her toe.
"That's crazy, besides the fact that buying bunk beds and relocating the old beds would be horribly expensive, what would be the point? The only thing we could do now is make our own... and I don't see how would we could make bunk beds out of these." Weiss asked with a crinkle of her nose, patting one of the springy mattresses testingly. "They'd need to be tall and stable."
"W-what if we got rope?" Ruby offered from the floor, flipping through one of Weiss's fashion magazines. Weiss and Blake looked from her to each other with contemplative looks.
"None of us have rope." Weiss concluded, shaking her head. "We're just going to have to—"
"I can get us rope." Blake piped up.
"—live with—wait, how can you possibly get us rope?" Weiss asked in exasperation, her fists on her hips as she scowled up at the taller young woman.
The dark-haired beauty shrugged as her entire team stared at her for an answer. "Gotta be some rope in the school. I'll go dig through some supply closets, try to scrounge some up."
"Oh! See if they have any screws and hooks and stuff too!" Yang called from the other side of the room, hefting a big, heavy box over one shoulder with incredible ease.
"We are not stealing from the school!" Weiss put on a firm expression, and one of her feet began to tap, like a bomb ticking to go off in a movie.
"Teeeechnically all facilities are open to students, including equipment for modifying the room, so if, theoretically, a student needed rope, who are they to complain if it improves the quality of our homelives?" Yang offered with a cheeky grin. Weiss's eyebrow twitched and she turned to try and talk Blake out of this anyway, only to find the door open and Blake already gone.
"If you get caught, do not make me an accessory to your criminal activities!" Weiss huffed at the world in general as she began to move her clothing to the closet, tuning out Ruby and Yang's poorly suppressed snickering.
By the time Blake got back with armfuls of rope, a box of screws, and some wall hooks, the clothes had been moved into their single, shared closet. Ruby, Blake, and Yang shared one side of the space, their outfits loosely pressing together. The other side was dedicated solely to Weiss's outfits, wall-to-wall with everything from gorgeous dresses to casual, lay-about clothing. Yang was briefly awe-struck by the sheer amount of quality threads Weiss had on hand.
When all the materials were dumped onto the floor, Blake shot Yang a curious look as the blonde smiled in pure delight; it was time for some good old-fashioned elbow-grease and improv!
When all was said and done, Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose. "... Please tell me we aren't keeping it like this." One of the middle beds precariously hung over a corner bed. Ruby, Blake, and Yang crossed their arms as they admired their work, and Weiss just groaned as they gave each other a thumbs up. "This is so going to backfire."
"I call dibs!" Ruby waved her arms madly as she began to climb, the creaking ropes making Weiss whimper.
"I want a top bunk!" Blake moved to the remaining two beds with a nearly gleeful expression, causing Yang to snicker and Weiss to sigh.
"We are out of rope though." Yang pointed out.
"... Still dibs…" Blake mumbled, crossing her arms and looking stubborn.
"Well… We have a l-lot of books." Ruby pointed out from the bed she had taken over. The other three looked to her with quizzical expressions as she hopped down. "Look," She held up one of her hardcovers, "Fellowship of the Twelve."
Weiss and Yang both gave the book a confused glance, neither having read the novel, but… "Garbage bin." Blake nodded slowly, drawing quick, surprisingly looks from the other two. Ruby tossed Blake the book, and it was balanced on one of the four bedposts.
"Books hold a valuable wealth of information or offer hours of entertainment! I thought you two were bibliophiles?!" Weiss insisted with a scandalized expression, watching in fury as Ruby and Blake ignored her and went through their collections.
"Yipperman and the Froggy Bog?" Ruby held up a thick hardback.
"Ugh." Blake sneered, and Yang caught the book with a grin as she added it to the stack. "Wait, you have a signed copy of Love in the Wilds?" Blake waved the old, dark book. Yang pulled it out of Blake's hand and added it to the stack.
"N-not mine, it was my… um… a-aunt's." Ruby glanced to Yang, but the blonde remained calm. "Mantle of Summer?" She waved the book as Weiss finally seemed to get past her outrage enough to creep closer and look over the assorted novels.
"Trash. How about Beyond Belief?"
"Keep it! Oh, my Holy Trilogy set!" Ruby held up a trio of leather bound tomes, worn and faded with age and travel.
"Anyone going to read it?" Blake asked, looking around. No response. "Stack it!"
"Is this an original copy of Blind Hunters?" Weiss asked, flipping through one book.
"Nah, it's j-just printed to look old, try bending a page." Ruby advised. Weiss did so, feeling this springy, plastic quality of the page, making her nose crinkle.
"... Ew. Add it."
Blake obliged.
"What about Saint Monia's Siesta?" Yang asked, holding one up.
"It's garbage, but it's sexy garbage." Blake shrugged. Yang blinked and stared at the cover.
"Eh, keep it…"
The process continued until Ruby and Yang successfully stacked the final two beds. They shot each other a thumbs up and a smile, and Weiss and Blake tested it for balance. "This is seriously an awful idea." Weiss muttered under her breath.
"You aren't doing anything to stop them," Blake countered, stepping back with a nod. "And everything's stable."
"If you don't rock it too hard, that is." Weiss sighed. She silently pulled and squeezed her braid as she stared around the room like it was brand new. There was plenty more room between the beds, the boxes had been reduced to a bare minimum and mostly consisted of the extra things Weiss couldn't find a place for, so they were stacked at the foot of the bottom bunk Ruby had claimed the top of.
Weiss looked up to Ruby's bed thoughtfully, examining the ropes with worry as an idea occurred to her. Without a word, she stepped out of the room amidst her teammates' curious looks and walked past rows of dorm rooms. In short order, she found a supply closet.
She returned to the dorm with two bedsheets in her arms, handing them to a confused Yang. "I think if we tied the ends around the ropes and hooks, we might be able to give Ruby a privacy curtain." Weiss explained. The blonde gave her a slow, almost uncomprehending blink while Ruby, sitting on her bed, glanced over in surprise.
It took almost ten seconds of uncomfortable silence for Yang to finally say something. "Weiss," She said, almost sounding shy, "Thank you." Yang bowed her head in a polite way before quickly heading to Ruby's bed. Ruby took the blankets and started planning how to afix them. Weiss stood on several stacked boxes to help, shooting Ruby's goggles a look as Blake helped Yang go through the last of her boxes.
It hadn't seemed like much of a big deal; it was purely for the good of the team. Ruby deserved the comfort of her own bed and the privacy her condition entailed, all Weiss did was put the team's best interests first. The team she wasn't in charge of, as she'd always dreamed...
She sighed and tried to suppress her disappointment. Her vision of life at Beacon couldn't have been a perfect match for the reality of it, but still, how was she supposed to cultivate leadership skills if she was only a member of a team? Weiss's expression darkened just the slightest bit. Ruby wasn't a bad person, but was she a good team leader? She mulled that over as Blake dug out Yang's calendar.
The dark-haired member of the team stared at Ruby's goggles with enormous curiosity as she realized there was most definitely something about her young leader that she hadn't seen before, but she decided to not press the issue for the moment, and flipped through the months to find March before setting it on the currently-full bookshelf, with just enough space on top for the calendar. She paused for a second to reread the date. "Hey, Yang?" She called, drawing an acknowledging hum as the taller of the two sorted her weights. "What's the red square mean?"
"Red square?"
"Around the date?" Blake tapped the glossy sheet. Yang looked at the calender, her eyes widening in comprehension, and she shot to her feet. "Yang?" Blake called with a raised eyebrow as her partner stepped into the bathroom. "... At least close the door if you have to go so bad." Blake deadpanned.
A short laugh echoed out. "Please, the thought of seeing me pantless thrills you!" The sound of the cabinet banging echoed a moment before Yang walked out with a cheerful call: "Ruby! Happy feminine hygiene day!" She said perkily, throwing a small package. Ruby caught it in one hand and groaned loudly, the contortions of her cheeks and brow telling Weiss and Blake both that she was not pleased.
"Today? B-but school s-starts today! That's not f-fair..." Ruby mumbled as she slid off her bed and put the pad in her school bag. Weiss cringed the moment she realized what it was, while Blake just shook her head.
"Welcome to a woman's life, Ruby. Biology doesn't take days off." Yang seemed surprisingly cheerful as she tossed a pad into her messenger bag.
"E-even though I'm out of the h-house for the first time, a-and it's m-my first day of classes? Ever?" Ruby asked with a grouchy dryness that made Yang chuckle.
"It's not that bad, you did take your pill during breakfast, right?"
"Well yeah, n-no preggers for me." Ruby didn't sound any less relieved, but Weiss shot up with a small, mortified squeak and dug through her boxes. Blake watched in confusion as Weiss pulled out a green, plastic medicine tray and dry-swallowed one of the pills inside. As she caught on, Blake had a private moment of embarrassment and decided not to comment.
"You don't need to worry about getting knocked up, whatever boy decided to try and slip you the noodle wouldn't be a boy long enough to manage it." Yang said with a raised eyebrow. Ruby scoffed and squirmed, and Yang let her serious expression melt into a smirk as she laughed at her little sister's embarrassment. "We should totally invest in a mini-fridge or something. Stock up on ice cream and cookie dough, like a medicine cabinet for cramps!"
"T-that's a lousy excuse, we always crave ice cream and cookie dough." Ruby pointed out, tying the last corner of the sheet. She sat on the edge of her bed, drawing the curtain back and forth testingly, her feet idly kicking the open air.
"But it's so much more satisfying to eat it when you're on your period." Yang hummed. "Hey, we get, like, a lien allowance for weapon repairs and Dust, right?" Yang perked up.
"I think so. The Team Guidelines email should tell us." Weiss answered as she went through her bag again, assuring herself that she still had all the necessary materials to be a proper student.
"Hmm." Blake answered, digging up her utterly ancient scroll to read. Weiss and Yang took note immediately; it still had a solid back, even! Blake read for a few moments, then raised an eyebrow, "According to this, we get a four-hundred lien allotment every week." She couldn't hide the… intrigued tone in her voice.
Yang whistled, long and low, "Bank! That's better than my old summer job!"
"Do keep in mind that it's to be split between all of us, so don't get too extravagant." Weiss reminded her duly. Yang grinned.
"No worries! Maybe I can get a loan from dad, buy a mini-fridge, get a TV... aww man, I wonder if I can get us a mini-bar…" Yang rubbed her hands together with a mischievous smile before a pillow knocked her out of her plotting.
"TV and mini-fridge maybe, but we are not giving you an e-excuse to liquor up." Ruby said defiantly, causing Yang to cross her arms and huff.
"Whatever, mom." Yang threw the pillow back, knocking Ruby flat onto her bed, the ropes creaking and making them all stare at the suspended bed a touch nervously. When it seemed safe, Yang cleared her throat. "Hey Weiss," she called, picking up the calendar and selecting a silver marker. Weiss shifted her attention, tilting her head curiously. "When do you start?"
"Start…? Start my…" Weiss winced. "My thing?"
"Yes, your period, Weiss, c'mon, we're all girls here." Yang looked to her curiously. Weiss squirmed, her cheeks turning a bright red.
It took a few moments for her to finally admit, in embarrassment, "My last thing started last week, two Sundays ago." She didn't know what she expected, but Yang tapped her chin with the butt of her pen as she read the calendar, mumbling under her breath as she counted and marked the day. "Why do you care? It's my business." Weiss asked, arms crossed over her chest.
"A: I gotta live with you, and you are kinda bitchy, but no offense, it's a sexy kind of bitchy." Yang answered, making Weiss's blush turn a deeper shade of red as she stared at Yang in disbelief. Yang continued, wilfully ignorant of Weiss' scandalized expression. "So, knowing when you're gonna be extra bitchy will be nice. B: we can stock up some food for you too! What's your big comfort food?"
"My comfort food?" Weiss asked slowly, trying to rub the red out of her cheeks. "Like, what do I eat when I'm comfortable?"
Yang put the calendar down and gave a small, but amused snicker, then pulled up a chair next to Weiss and plopped down beside her. "No, I mean… what do you eat when you're unhappy and annoyed and want to be comfortable? What makes life suck less when you eat it?"
Weiss drummed her knees slowly, debating her response while trying to not stare at the far-too-confident young woman next to her. Finally, she folded her hands on her lap and let out a little huff, "It's… embarrassing."
"Oh please, it's food. Food's great! Nothing embarrassing about enjoying it. When I'm all crampy and need something to take the edge off, I gorge myself on chocolate chip ice cream and pretzels." Yang said casually, leaning against her chair with a comforting smile.
"Cookie dough." Ruby waved shyly. "Sugar cookie dough, chocolate chip cookie dough, snickerdoodle cookie dough, I-I'd mix it at home just to eat it raw."
"Isn't that a health hazard?" Weiss asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Blake and Weiss blinked when Ruby let out a low growl, and her voice dropped an octave to a tone bordering on rage, "All those food and safety warnings are lies! I-it's an anti-dough conspiracy!" Ruby wrung her fists at the heavens. "Nobody's ever d-died from eating cookie dough, they just want us to stop l-living our lives! I will not be one of the sheep!" She announced with a dramatic rise in her voice. Weiss's eyebrow twitched. Blake moved over and put her hand on Ruby's head, the smaller girl going quiet and pouty as Blake awkwardly patted and hoped that was the end to her little friend's ranting.
"... Uh huh." Weiss pursed her lips, swallowed thickly, and clenched her fists. Her eyes darted to and from Yang's curious lavender eyes while she squirmed in place before forcing out a soft, begrudging admission:"... Hot wings."
"Come again?" Yang blinked.
"Y'know… hot wings." Weiss tried to explain as if she was in trouble, staring at her knees, red-cheeked. "Unbreaded fried chicken, covered in a spicy sauce? Hot wings, like-... like you'd find at a Faunus food stall."
"... For real?" Yang seemed genuinely shocked. Ruby was still lamenting the prejudice she suffered as a result of the Vale Food Purity Administration, while Blake was counting her lucky stars that nobody noticed the way her bow bounced when her ears shot up without her consent. "Isn't that stuff kinda cheap for a rich girl?"
"No! I mean, financially, sure but..." Weiss trailed off with a defensive whine. "Ugh, I knew you wouldn't get it..." She tugged at her braid in distress, earning a swat to her knuckles from Yang to stop her from undoing it.
"Well, tell me about it, then!" Yang insisted, smiling at Weiss and gently bumping the smaller woman's knee with her own. "What's with your crush on hot wings, Weiss?"
"It's not a crush, It's…" Weiss pouted. "I mean, I've grown up on haute cuisine from all over the globe. The best chefs, expertly managed nutrition, especially since I started my training to become a hunter. Lean meats with exotic spices, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, artisan breads right from the oven, the occasional sweet from the most acclaimed pâtisseries and chocolatiers on Remnant… but never anything just… gross, fatty, meaty, or spicy." Blake crossed her arms under her chest, leaning back against a desk to listen as Yang leaned forward in open interest. Weiss fidgeted a bit as her teammates gave her their undivided attention. "I was with my father, on a trip to visit the Mistralian Schnee dust mines. A few of my friends from Atlas came along so we could go to the hot springs afterwards, but we needed to kill some time while my father was in a meeting. We were watching the workers during their lunch, and noticed a huge line at one of the stalls."
"An independent stall or a Schnee-sponsored stall?" Blake asked testingly.
"Independent." Weiss's nose crinkled. "Which I don't understand at all, it's cheaper to buy from the company-sponsored stall."
Blake winced as the impulse to snap at Weiss bubbled up, but the realization that Weiss seemed genuinely ignorant made her hold her tongue and try to explain without exposing herself. "A flier I read mentioned that the meals tend to be cheap, nearly expired deli-meat bought third hand from major retailers in Atlus to save on lien, and lacked enough nutritious greens, so eating exclusively at a Schnee stall could leave them malnourished."
"Really?" Weiss looked rightly uncomfortable learning that, but then waved it away with a grunt, "Not that that matters to the story..." Blake wasn't sure whether to be offended at the dismissal of her people's nutritional needs or relieved Weiss didn't notice the way her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed for a moment. "Anyway, we saw a lot of the workers pay for plates with a pile of weird, goopy... stuff. We were all rather curious about it, but we didn't dwell on the matter until Father's meeting went long and the workers' lunch break ended. With the line, and most of the witnesses, gone, my friends dared me to order what the workers had been clamoring for. The servers were polite, and it barely cost a thing, so before I knew it I suddenly had a plate of chicken wings in Mistralian sweet and spicy sauce in my hands. We must have looked like we were trying to perform an autopsy on it; it looked like the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen, and, ugh, Cristal wouldn't stop retching so it made it hard to eat, but Kara kept egging me on so I took a bite and…" Weiss's eyes glimmered, and she smacked her lips gently as she relived the memory. "It was kind of enlightening."
Yang chuckled, hiding her amused smile behind her hand as Blake hid a little smirk. "So our princess realized that us little people can cook?"
"Silence!" Weiss all but squawked, squirming shyly while Ruby muttered about needing chicken wings for dinner. "It left me with stomach cramps all night, and my tongue and fingertips were numb, but it was so good. I ended up finishing the whole plate; my friends couldn't believe I even tolerated it, not that they tried it." Weiss huffed loudly, crossing her legs and setting one foot to bouncing in agitation. "I had just started the whole… girl thing that year, and every time it came up none of my servants could figure out what to feed me to satisfy my cravings. Nothing was fulfilling! But a few weeks after trying the wings, the girl thing happened again. I hadn't had any more hot wings since, but, well, my butler and my chefs were still at a loss on what to give me. I just…" Weiss trailed off, an ashamed blush crossing her face and she realized she was admitting weakness, "I needed those wings again, so I pulled the one faunus chef we had to the side and asked if she knew how to cook them. She did, and two hours later I had them again and it just… satisfied an itch. It kept satisfying that itch." Weiss crossed her arms and set her shoulders, ready to accept the contempt of her peers. They'd demanded honesty and she'd given it, she'd endure their snide remarks as she always had...
"Makes sense to me." Yang shrugged, grabbing a piece of paper Ruby had left behind from the night before, writing it down. Weiss' eyes lost focus a moment, her mental gears spinning to no effect as she tried to process the non-response to her exposed flaw. Finally, with a panicked scramble, Weiss dove to grab her arms. She suspected it was surprise, rather than being restrained, that made Yang halt.
"Don't record it, it's embarrassing enough that you know, I don't need some janitor walking in and selling that information!"
"... Can I sell the news that I love cookies…?" Ruby asked, raising her hand and earning a chortle from Blake as Weiss glared at her partner, until Yang swatted her shoulder playfully.
"Aww, c'mon, I'm just making sure I remember! I know this amazing little wing place in Vale, run by the most adorable Faunus couple!" She offered, beaming with genuine enthusiasm at the prospect of showing a new friend around her town.
Weiss argued with Yang over being publically seen eating Faunus food, and Blake watched with a confused expression. Not that she was a major fan of chicken wings—or chicken in general—but it was considered a Faunus staple. Vacuo had been one of the first kingdoms to fully adopt equal Faunus rights, and the Faunus adopted numerous dishes as a result, and as easy as wings were to make, they spread across the world to other Faunus. The ingredients were affordable on even a Schnee miner's wages, and it even found its way into Atlas, where the fatty food and spicy sauces helped stave off the cold.
It was one of the first areas of business where the Faunus became lucrative, selling food to their own kin and open-minded humans, giving them the opportunity and the financial security to send their children to private schools and begin a Renaissance of education. Of course, food alone wasn't the major reason behind the Faunus finding success, but it helped more than one notable Faunus family find a foothold and respect among human owned companies. Sharing food was a cornerstone in Faunus culture, a time-honored tradition of trading food and stories, and the cooks were often highly respected as a result. Though industrialization changed that somewhat, Faunus still practiced feasting on large holidays, in which the Faunus families all celebrated together, not individually.
That Weiss, of all people, liked traditional Faunus food was both confusing and entertaining. Even if it was only this one dish, it still managed to blow her mind a little. Of course, Weiss didn't want to give that information to the public—which Blake understood from a neutral standpoint—but it was nonetheless interesting. She shook her head and silently recounted who Weiss was and what her family did and so on and so forth ad infinitum until she suppressed that desire to know more about the Schnee.
"What about you, Blake?" Yang's voice shook her out of her thoughts, and she suppressed the urge to wiggle when she looked up and realized Weiss was also staring at her. She rubbed one arm, feeling weirdly exposed by her curious gaze as Ruby grabbed a tube of ointment and climbed onto her bed.
"Oh, uh, fish." Blake responded absentmindedly as Ruby's curtain whispered closed. The quiet, expectant stares of the remaining girls finally wore Blake down, and with a sigh, she elaborated, "Salmon or tuna preferably, but sardines are acceptable, and I won't say no to albacore or mahi mahi. No catfish, though." The words just tumbled out of her mouth, and Yang stared at her in silent surprise, then nodded.
"Ice cream, cookie dough, hot wings, and fish. Sounds manageable. This floor should have a commons room to cook in, right?" Yang puttered through her school things, searching for a student handbook that may or may not exist, ultimately giving up after getting the confirmation from Weiss. Weiss, in turn, waved her scroll that was currently browsing the Beacon homepage as if Yang should have been ashamed of missing the obvious. Yang, of course, completely steamrolled through the subtle jab. "Okay! So, Blake, when do you start next?"
"Start…?" Blake paused, then resisted a grimace. "Right. That. Two weeks, should be Tuesday or Wednesday." Her partner hummed an affirmative and used a purple marker to highlight that day.
"Did you remember to take your pill this morning?" Weiss asked curiously.
Blake stared at her, and silently glanced out the window to hide her discomfort. "I… don't take pills."
"Huh?!" Ruby poked her head out from behind her privacy curtain, her hand still adjusting her goggles. "But w-what if you get preggers?!"
"There are other contraceptives." Blake reminded her with a shrug, trying to brush the topic off. She could still feel Weiss and Yang watching the back of her head, though, and suspected she'd failed.
"Well, yeah..." Yang nodded slowly in agreement, her face pinching into the beginnings of a frown. "But, you know, it never hurts to stack 'em up. Besides, pills stop the cramps and stuff, condoms don't do much to make life suck less a quarter of the time."
"It's not that bad. Nothing a hot bath and a few naps won't fix." Blake mumbled, shoulders shrinking as she made it a point not to look at them. The concern and worry in their eyes made her… uncomfortable.
"That won't do at all." Weiss said, and Blake could imagine her crossed arms and shaking head. "We all need to be at peak performance, even when afflicted with... feminine issues. Do you have some sort of medical or religious reason to avoid birth control?"
"No! It's just…" Blake winced, trying to dredge up as much half-truths about her history as she could that wouldn't automatically pin her as a former White Fang operative. "I haven't ever used them. I was kinda… trained in a… survivalist camp." She admitted, arms over her bust defensively. "I just kinda got used to it. I mean, sure, it sucked at first, but-"
"No buts." Weiss stood abruptly, and Blake felt her spine automatically straighten at the implied challenge. "Blake, like it or not, it's for your personal health, and it's what's best for the team. Even if you don't meet the right guy here, or even if you're Yang," Weiss shot Yang an accusing look, making the blonde click her tongue and wink sleazily at the failed attempt at shaming her, "it'll keep you closer to your best, so we can always count on you. And you on us… even on cookie dough-ice cream-wing-and-fish night. Which sounds atrocious..." Weiss planted her hands on her hips and thought to herself.
"No, it's really not a big deal." Blake argued, brow furrowed, a frown forming. Weiss met her developing glower with a stubborn expression, but didn't try to interrupt. "I don't like yo- people poking through my hair, much less my health. If I don't want to-"
"Blake?" Ruby's soft voice interrupted the beginning of her tirade, and Blake froze. She clicked her teeth shut and looked up to Ruby with pleading, golden eyes. She couldn't take a blindside from her little leader right now… Ruby tilted her head quizzically, her brow knitting slightly as she tried to grasp Blake's inexplicable distress, "Are you scared of doctors?"
"... No…" Blake said softly. Ruby dropped to the floor and set a hand on Blake's shoulder as their eyes 'met', and Blake realized Ruby wasn't planning to join in harassing her, but she wasn't going to drop the conversation, either. "Ruby, I just… I'm uncomfortable, okay? There weren't a lot of girls at… at camp, so I learned to make due on my own."
"I can see it, I s-sort of remember how stressed Dad was when Yang started. He didn't know what to do and even though I had him and her, it made me uncomfortable when it started, too. I didn't want to take pills and admit it hurt s-so I tried going without them at first and it was cruddy." Ruby gave Blake a warm smile, and Blake shuffled on her heels as she tried to resist. "Why don't we go with you? Yang and I's gynecologist is a cool lady, she can f-find you the right brand. It's not weird, all of us do it. We'll go with you and if the pills don't agree with you or something, or they don't help, you can s-stop. Deal?"
Blake stared down at Ruby with a hesitant anxiousness that took every ounce of her willpower to not let reach her ears. She glanced from Ruby, to Weiss, to Yang, all of them looking encouraging, and she crossed her arms behind her back and sighed. "I'll… I'll think about it." Ruby's quick but pleased nod made Blake look back out the window.
She had lied, but just a teensy bit. She was sort-of scared of doctors, but after having relied purely on camp medics for broken bones, open wounds, and sickness, she was hesitant to willingly sign herself up for another one. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad…
"That's not a bad point…" Weiss hummed, looking at Ruby with an approving nod. "I'll go too; I can hardly count on the Schnee medical team in Atlas, after all." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully, and Blake sighed. Weiss seemed insistent on joining her for everything. It should have bothered Blake more, having to interact with her, but their earlier conversation rang through her head again, and the idle curiosity of 'Who is Weiss Schnee?' refused to leave her.
Somebody's scroll beeped and a minor frenzy ensued as all four of them scrambled to grab their devices and figure out what was happening. Finally, Weiss made a triumphant little noise when she spotted her blinking screen, picked up her scroll, and turned off the alarm. Then, the color drained from Weiss' face as her voice rapidly escalated in pitch and volume. "Class-is-in-five-minutes-grab-your-things-go-go-go!" She shouted as she lunged for her purse, startling the others into panicked motion.
A second later, the door burst open and the four of them fled down the hall at a full sprint.
Around the same time team RWBY had finished suspending their first bunk bed, team JNPR was doing their own unpacking. Nora and Ren were drifters with a purpose, but drifters nonetheless. They carried little, with the prospect of a dorm room as a permanent home having been a shared dream. Jaune was a farm boy, who had only brought two backpacks full of anything he could fill them with and thought he might need or couldn't bare to part with.
Pyrrha had, by a large margin, the most luggage; which, despite her allies' reassurances, left her feeling more than a little embarrassed as their room was slowly but steadily overtaken by Pyrrha's decorations and personal effects.
"The Martial Master of Mistral, Volume Four…" Ren, in his school uniform, read aloud as he sorted through the enormous pile of DVDs in one of Pyrrha's boxes, filling a shelf with Pyrrha's collection by alphabetical order. "You do realize the Martial Master series relies heavily on hearsay and stereotypes for the martial arts they use, right?" He asked as he lifted Volume Five out of the box.
"I know." Pyrrha answered, also in her school uniform, as she continued to carefully sort her clothing with a growing smile, "But it's such a fun little spectacle, I always loved the idea of his semblance." She clasped her hands, her expression full of awe. "Could you imagine, every day when the clock strikes twelve at night, you gain extraordinary, intimate knowledge of one of the twelve martial arts of Mistral?" Pyrrha stood, holding one arm forward, one arm back, one leg partially raised in a kicking position. "The actor is actually a master of the Winds of Luigosa, my favorite style." Without a word, Pyrrha spun, her foot kicking out at chin-height, coming down so she could twist with her other foot, spinning across the room in a rapid series of well-practiced roundhouse kicks that only stopped when the tip of one foot brushed the opposite wall. "It's widely considered the most artful!"
"Mm. Wind style has performed so poorly in the last eight tournaments, unfortunately." Ren shook his head in disappointment.
"I know!" Pyrrha visibly pouted as she slowly moved towards the other end of the room in a slow, revolving kata where each breath taken, and each breath passed accompanied her movement like the howling winds between the salted peaks of the Luigosan coastal cliffs. "I am still of the opinion that Achto's four arm style should not be allowed to use their pugilist gloves."
"The original doctrine states that the Hands of Achto were made strictly for fighting the Grimm." Ren nodded, his lips tight with annoyance, more roughly shelving Pyrrha's movies as a tremor of annoyance went through him.
"Considering the amount of corruption that the Mistral Regional Tournament spent so much time rooting out, I would not be surprised if money had exchanged hands to bend that particular rule." Pyrrha sat back at the desk with a sigh, getting back to sorting her clothes.
"The MRT also has much greater public acclaim, while the Twelve Arts Tournaments is less publicized. It would take much more focused internal reformation, and unfortunately, it is a profit-making business. Purity is not the first thing on their minds…"
Pyrrha made a small, aggravated noise just thinking about it.
Nora stuck her head up from behind a bed, where she was working on something Pyrrha and Ren couldn't see. "What's that one style where everyone dresses in, like, just ribbons?"
"The Art of the Bare Yystran." Pyrrha glanced over as she reached into a box and pulled out a very large trophy, depicting a foot-tall version of herself in solid gold, with a hand-engraved nameplate on a wooden base. "A two-pronged style, where the user cultivates a near-supernatural beauty through rigorous dieting and exercise, uses their physical form and flexibility to catch their opponent off guard, and waylay them with attacks that primarily target the soft spots." After a few moments of consideration, she hesitantly set it on top of a desk, then quickly looked to Ren for approval. A quick nod alleviated her fears.
"Yeeeaaaaah, why isn't there more of that?" Nora asked in petty frustration. "I wanna see pretty dancing naked people beat up a buncha chumps!"
"Nora, half the time it doesn't work." Ren called over as he set an empty box aside, opened another, took one look, and scooted it over to Pyrrha. Pyrrha looked into her box of unmentionables and took it into the closet, awkwardly relieved that he hadn't drawn attention to it. "No matter how unearthly beautiful a woman might be, it wouldn't work on a gay man or a straight woman. You would simply be exposed and easy to catch by a well-disciplined opponent."
"Yeah, but even if it's a fifty-fifty shot, you got a pretty good chance of keeping your opponent distracted!"
"A disciplined warrior would not be distracted so easily by some exposed flesh." Ren declared with full certainty, missing the glint of challenge that gleamed in Nora's eye.
"Oh yeah…?" she drawled, her lips slowly rising into a savage grin.
A few seconds later, Pyrrha poked her head out in time to see Nora's shirt flutter down to cover her belly as Ren, red-cheeked, pinched his nose, and crushed his thighs together, glared at his giggling girlfriend.
"Sorry, did I miss something?" Pyrrha asked, making Nora break down into hysterics as Ren whipped his head away, trying to keep his dignity intact as he opened another one of Pyrrha's boxes. Pyrrha glanced between the two other hunters curiously, and chalked it up to an in-joke she couldn't possibly know how to parse.
She sat at the desk again as two of her roommates sat mostly in silence. Unlike the locker rooms of the Grand Mistral Olympic Center, the silence was not one of anxiousness, but Pyrrha was so used to people not making eye-contact, working on their weaponry, not wishing to waste their concentration on smalltalk, and preparing for an all-out conflict in front of thousands of spectators. Even though she was far away from that environment, she felt a knot of stress form in her tummy as the innocent silence reminded her of lonelier times.
Nora and Ren were her companions, her allies, her… her friends. This she knew. Vaguely. She had actual conversations with them, she didn't feel hounded to constantly worry about her physical shape for the tournament, or put on her best smile for the cameras, or answer the same dozen questions she'd been asked over and over again, or asked about some deeply personal aspect of her life.
For once, she sat down with an hour of nothing to do but unpack, and she wasn't questioning if she wanted to continue on like this. Gladiators often had early retirements not just because of physical injury, but the stress of being a combatant and a celebrity status that weighed down on them. Pyrrha was no different, but she was far less comfortable with her fame than others. While she loved the idea of being a hero, an icon, and a paragon of fitness and goodness, she hated having to dress in the best fashions, constantly worry about her make-up and hair, having to constantly monitor what she said, ate, or did so it didn't slip she was anything less than a perfect swordswoman.
Now, here, she could be a teenager. One vying for a position in one of the most dangerous and glamorized jobs in all of Remnant, true, but for the moment she was just trying to move into a new home alongside a team of people who acknowledged her name and her status without a gasp or a glare. She smiled to herself and rolled her shoulder, letting the stress fade a bit as she tried to get used to this new kind of quiet.
Then there was a soft click, the crackle of static and a voice she'd never heard before… "To the cute honeys with the eyes of blue, I got a message of love, from me to you!~"
Pyrrha snapped to attention as the excited voice seemed to flood the room, then glanced towards a loud thump to find Ren rubbing the top of his head in pained annoyance after discovering an empty wall shelf. "Finally!" Nora announced, putting a radio up on the bookshelf between the beds. Her smile went from ear to ear as the room filled with bouncy, energetic jazz. Pyrrha shook her head, her smile growing with the cheery tune.
She watched in unspoken amusement as Nora began to shimmy in place to the music, wiggling her hips with her eyes closed. Nora hummed along to the cheery music and the sensual singer's voice, kicking her feet out as the music became more lively. She was clearly no expert dancer, but she didn't let that stop her.
"Ren!" Nora wiggled up close to her boyfriend with a big smile. "Dance!" She held her hands out, the exclamation more of a command than an invitation.
"You know I'm not a big jazz fan." Ren looked uncomfortable as Nora put on a big pout.
"C'mon Ren, please? You dance to classical stuff with me!" Nora worked her hips as best she could, shamelessly causing her skirt to flutter with every shimmy. Pyrrha couldn't help but watch on with amusement at her joy.
"It's just annoying." Ren waved his hand dismissively. "Classical dances are rituals, carefully crafted to draw out the beauty of two dancers working together. This is just… senseless wiggling."
"But senseless wiggling is what I'm good at though!" Nora stomped her feet huffily. She turned away and looked to Pyrrha with big, pleading eyes, "Pyrrrhhhhaaaa, dance with me, pleeeease?!"
Pyrrha swallowed hesitantly, but the look on Nora's face wore down her possible embarrassment and she slowly rose to her feet. "I-I've never really danced before, but I can try." With that, Nora beamed, happy enough to look silly and throw her limbs around in barely controlled ways to a rhythm, but Pyrrha was used to a much more strict form of movement. She swayed her hips, arms held up and close to her bust as she half-shimmied, half-squirmed to the music.
It did have a nice beat, and Pyrrha tried to get a little adventurous, even offering Nora a smile as her feet moved more. The two 'danced' for maybe thirty seconds before Pyrrha stuck her foot out in an attempt to try something different, and Nora tumbled to the ground with a thump when their ankles locked. Pyrrha squeaked, and quickly retracted her foot. "I'm sorry Nora, I hadn't- it was a total-"
"Foul! Foul!" Nora flailed on the ground, making it difficult for Pyrrha to help pull her up. Nora popped up to her feet with a finger in Pyrrha's face, "Okay, so you gotta watch your feet, see, like, think of it like a fight but without the smashy smashy or the stabby stabby!"
Pyrrha raised her hands to stop her, and frowned in apology, "N-no offense Nora, but I'm no good at dancing. I think I'll sit this one out."
"Aww, c'mon, nobody starts good at anything!" Nora crossed her arms over her chest unhappily as Pyrrha sat down shyly. "Ugh! You're both total stiffs…" Nora's voice fell as she scuffed the floor, and Pyrrha and Ren both shared a guilty look.
The bathroom door flew open, and Jaune stepped out, one hand's fingertips pressed to his forehead, the other pointing at Nora in dramatic fashion. His legs were spread, testing the limits of his school pants before his voice rose: "You!" He announced, making his three teammates blink in surprise. "My blue eyed ba~by, I see you in the waters blue, it's true, when you're around I don't gotta chooo~ooooossss~sse-uh!" His voice rose, making Ren wince as his voice cracked at the attempt to match the singer, but the blonde boy paid no mind to his lack of talent and swept in.
Nora squeaked as her hand was taken, and Pyrrha stared in silent awe as her partner spun Nora around, letting her go so they could stand across from each other. Nora broke down into laughter as her will to dance was renewed, her hips and arms swinging as she and Jaune openly, and happily, grooved.
Ren's eyes widened as his girlfriend showed little care or worry dancing with a boy she'd just met yesterday. There was zero hesitation in taking one another by the hands to spin around, legs kicking, arms swinging, smiles wide and happy. Ren stared blankly, unaware of the way his fingers were digging into his knee harder and harder as Nora gave Jaune a toothy smile.
The song went on for another minute, ending in a dramatic explosion of brass, while Jaune and Nora held each other by one hand, their other hand out in the same flamboyant pose. They were grinning brightly at each other, and let go as the radio started another song.
Hair still wet, Jaune stood in front of the body mirror and combed it as Nora clung to his side in a happy hug, one leg raised behind her. "Eeee! Finally! Somebody who'll dance with me!"
"Ren won't dance with you? He's so light on his feet..." Jaune glanced down at Nora curiously.
"Ugh, no, he's such a stiff!" Nora openly pouted, and Ren stood up as a sudden shot of adrenaline ran through him. He wasn't even aware he was frowning; he walked behind Nora, set a hand on her shoulder, and gently squeezed. Immediately she fell against him, resting her back against his chest as her hand snaked into his. A small squeeze relieved most of the tension, but Ren still felt a tiny, bitter taste in his mouth that he was not happy with. He glanced down at Nora, as she looked up at him. "So stiff!" She repeated, reaching up to poke his nose. "Boop!"
"It's just… all it is is random moving." Ren mumbled defensively as he stared at the back of Jaune's head.
Jaune turned to look at him over his shoulder, shrugging a little bit. "Sure, but, like, it's fun moving. You look dumb for a second, but it makes you feel… loose. Gives you energy." He then put on a cocky smirk, "And women love it! I mean, that's what my sisters said." Sitting behind them, Pyrrha silently confirmed it with a tiny whimper.
Ren's eyes narrowed a tiny bit as he considered it. "Exercise and a good breakfast provide much the same." He countered.
"Yeah, but those aren't as fun. With dancing, you get the music, you get to show off a bit…" Jaune's swayed his hips left and right, and Nora giggled. Ren glanced up and sighed.
"I just don't see the point." He shook his head, releasing Nora. He moved to go back to his seat when Nora called back.
"You also don't see the point of makeup, but look at Pyrrha!" Nora pointed to the redhead. Pyrrha blinked slowly, her cheeks reddening the tiniest bit. "She's gorgeous!" Pyrrha turned more red at the compliment.
"It's just a little eyeshadow and blush, nothing excessive." Pyrrha countered bashfully, but Nora made a dismissive noise.
"Oh please, miss bedroom-eyes." Nora shook her head, and Pyrrha instinctively touched her forehead, trying to figure out what Nora meant.
"Makeup looks fine in the moment, but it has no additional value. We're hunters Nora, we'll get sweaty anyways. Besides, I like you. The natural you." He said with an honest shrug, but Nora sighed and shook her head.
"I know, but… like, we won't be hunters all the time. I just wanna look a little girly sometimes, especially while I still can." Nora admitted. Ren chewed his inner cheek in frustration, Pyrrha thought for a second and glanced toward the bathroom a moment, and Jaune…
"Y'know, I had seven sisters." Jaune admitted with a hesitant tone, moving to go sit in a desk chair. "I could, y'know… I mean, if we had any on hand, I can do a little, tiny, totally basic makeup." He winced as he admitted it.
"... Really?" Nora and Pyrrha both asked at the same time. Jaune groaned, blushing as Ren moved to chewing his tongue.
"Really." Jaune shrugged again and tried to look completely casual about it. "I had sisters! They wanted me to do girly stuff sometimes, it's not my fault I can dance and do makeup! It's just, y'know, how I was raised!"
"Wow, Jaune." Nora just snickered as Ren shook his head.
"It's nothing to be embarrassed about Jaune, I'm sure many girls would find it impressive." Pyrrha nodded, trying to be consoling, but Jaune just threw his hands up.
"That's what they told me! But how many women have you heard say 'I totally dig a guy who knows how to do a Vacuo eye contour'?! None! They want strong, beefy, hairy men with big-"
"Pause!" Nora ordered, her hands forming a T shape while staring Jaune in the eye as the boy swiftly stopped gesturing to his crotch. "You can do a vec-curl?" Her eyebrow crawled up her forehead while her fists planted themselves on her hips.
"... Maybe…" Jaune answered in a soft voice, scuffing one foot against the rug.
"Pyrrha?" Nora asked in a suddenly gentle, sweet voice. "Would it be okay if I borrowed some of your makeup? I'll pay you back, I swearsies." She all but cooed. Pyrrha stood, and nodded after a second of staring at Jaune.
"Don't worry about paying me back." She went to the bathroom and returned with her makeup case, giving it to Nora. "My talent agency pays for it, not me." She shrugged one shoulder as Nora grew a big, ecstatic smile, taking it and scampering over to Jaune as the blonde sighed, but opened up the case to carefully look through the contents, Nora bouncing at his side the entire time he was taking stock.
"I still say it's a waste." Ren frowned from his chair, watching Nora as she pulled up a chair in front of Jaune once he finished running inventory. He had a strange feeling that wouldn't leave his gut, despite his repeated attempts at his normal emotion-quelling techniques. It was a cold, bitter feeling that he did not like, and it made him look at Jaune with distaste. That he liked even less. Jaune had saved Nora, Jaune had lead them to victory, why was he feeling… jealous? He shook his head. It was nothing. It was dancing and makeup.
"Okay, hold still, this'll probably tickle a bit. Gonna lay down a little foundation…" Jaune spoke as, with the impeccable precision of an artist, he began to work on Nora's face. He hummed, he stuck his tongue out in concentration, he told Nora when to relax, when to blink, when to keep her eyes wide open. He lightened her cheeks and added a small amount of blush, and moved to her eyes. It was a slow, delicate procedure, but he did not shake and took shallow breaths. "Hm, y'know, Nora…" He spoke as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You've got a very round, like, cute face, y'know?"
"Mhmm?" Nora chewed her lower lip to stop herself from smiling. Ren hid a growl.
"I don't think a vec-curl would suit you, you need sharper features. My little sister Jean pulled it off really well, but you're a little more like Jill. Let my try something different." He held the bottom of her undecorated chin and slowly moved her around as he thought, his appraising eye rolling over her facial features like a judge. He chewed his lip, made a popping sound with his tongue, bounced his eyebrows, and finally gave a little sniff of approval.
Pyrrha watched with big eyes as he finished his work and nodded. He sat back with a satisfied look and closed all of Pyrrha's cases, while Pyrrha closed her mouth and swallowed her suddenly dry tongue. For reasons she couldn't even articulate to herself, a barely heard, primal part of her wanted to plant her flag fast and early, but she held back with a slow, shy roll of her jaw.
Ren stared as Nora stood and walked to the mirror, his expression changing from annoyance to mild shock. Her cheeks had always been faintly red, like she'd always been the slightest bit embarrassed, but Jaune had brought out a loveliness in her face that made Nora look endlessly blushing, a mild, adorable embarrassment. Her brow was delicately rounded to make her look happy, but her eyes… Ren's fingers twitched. Black and smoky, with long, pumped curls and enough mascara to make the fine hairs pop in such a fetching way. Her lips were a glossy red, making them look smooth and shiny, a far-cry from her normally wrinkled, pale smile.
Anything Ren felt towards Jaune at that point was momentarily forgotten. He stared at his lover as she looked into the room's mirror, her whole neck turning red as she reached her hand up to touch her reflection's face. She dipped her head and blinked shyly, lifted her chin and smiled cockily, turned to the side and puckered her lips… Ren had a sudden thrill shoot through his leg, and he felt the urge to whisk Nora away to somewhere private.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped down on his emotions. Makeup wasn't a realistic resource they could expect out in the field, even as good as Nora looked in it, he couldn't constantly expect Jaune to sit there with her, to make his girlfriend pretty.
He stood suddenly, wanting a glass of water. He made a move to go to the bathroom when a hand took his. He froze, squeezing Nora's fingers with familiar affection, and he turned to look at her. She had an embarrassed, unsure look on her face. "Ren?" She asked, rocking on her heels. "Am I pretty?"
Ren didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He looked into her eyes, at the way the touch-ups brought out the absolute best features in her, and he felt his own eyes water. A tiny smile tugged at his lips, and he nodded the smallest fraction of an inch. She was still the most beautiful girl he knew, and now, even more so.
Nora read his face like a book. He was so quiet and subtle with his emotions that she had gotten used to the little tics in his expression and movements. It was very rare that his eyes glimmered the way they did now, so she couldn't stop herself from grinning in a mixture of joy and triumph. Ren gave a small, amused sigh.
"Y'know, the first few classes are probably gonna be just dumb, boring introductory stuff. We could take the morning off…" Nora suggested, running her finger over his elbow naughtily. Ren felt that thrill shoot down his leg again at the suggestion, and the heavily restrained, wild part of him was demanding he accept. Jaune and Pyrrha stared as his hand touched her back, then slowly moved down to cup her bottom through her skirt, drawing her close and making her purr a moment, then move his grip back up.
"Don't be ridiculous." He said in a tone of gentle amusement. "We'll have time later. We should get ready. If you'll pardon me, I am thirsty." Ren left Nora's hand, stepping into the restroom to grab a complimentary cup and fill it.
Nora's smile went from pleased to brilliantly feral as she turned on her roommates, her expression both distressingly predatory and fetchingly smoky. "Jaune, you dreamboat." She marched over, sticking her pointer finger under his chin and tilting his face up so they could look each other in the eye. "You, sir, just got Nora points. Which are like brownie points but better." She turned away, hands on her hips, and revelled at her reflection.
"Another satisfied customer!" Jaune chuckled shyly, refusing to meet Pyrrha's eye as she grew a mischievous little smile. He swallowed in embarrassment at the way she snickered, and tried to roll his eyes.
"That was impressive, Jaune, it almost looked professional!" Pyrrha examined Jaune's features closely, especially the way his lips drew tight as he refused to meet her eye. "You said you had sisters…?"
"Seven of 'em!" Jaune quickly jumped to reply. He held his hands out as if he was trying to talk down an angry junkyard dog, his nervousness both odd and adorable. "When I was a kid, my older sister gave me a choice: help teach the little sisters, or be their test subject, and I dunno about you, but as a guy, I don't wanna wear makeup! Not that I have anything against guys wearing makeup–I mean Ren could probably pull off some eye contouring and a bit of foundation could help bring out his dimples–but my skin dries out easily enough and I so, so don't wanna find out that I have an allergy like Janice 'cuz hoo that was not a fun two weeks for anybody and-" A finger to his lips stopped his rambling, and Jaune froze solid at the overly affectionate touch until Pyrrha took her hand back with a small, red tinge to her nose.
"Is there anything you think would improve me?" Pyrrha asked, gesturing to her face. Jaune's eyes slid up from an empty space on the floor to meet Pyrrha's, before, silently, he took all of Pyrrha's face in. Pyrrha felt her blush grow as Jaune tenderly touched her chin, wordlessly directing her to look wherever he motioned so he could evaluate.
He had done so fearlessly, despite his embarrassment, and Pyrrha had to suppress a dirty surge of adrenaline that shot through her body as a boy–a simple farm boy with no fame, fortune, or glory–touched her. In the world of a high-class celebrity like herself, Jaune was the very definition of a nobody, 'somebody who had no business being in the presence of such talent' she could hear the tabloids saying…
She felt a little bloom of warmth in her heart as she remembered she wouldn't have to put up with her sponsors and promoters demanding a specific appearance and class of people she interacted with, and that warmth spread to her whole body as Jaune took his hand off of her chin and looked her in the eye. "I think–and I'm not criticizing, just saying! I think a thin layer of gloss on the lips to brighten them up. I mean, they're thin, you can't help it! But, uh, Lydia always said you wanna make the smallest details pop." Jaune dug into her make-up kit, his idle mutterings telling Pyrrha that he hated the cherry red color, before pulling out a nice, unopened terra cotta. "I think this'll work? It'll blend better with your skin without fighting your hair." He popped the lid, and his hand loomed closer to her mouth, causing the heat in Pyrrha's expression and chest to grow as, instinctually, she pursed her lips and her eyes began to slowly close, as if that tube of lipstick might suddenly be replaced by the charming boy's lips, his hot breath washed across her face- "Oh!" Jaune exclaimed, "did you wanna do it yourself?"
Not a single rational thought emerged from the hormonal fog that filled Pyrrha's brain, "Just do me." She ordered with a feline hiss.
Once her words registered, Pyrrha's eyes opened wide to take in Jaune's confused squint, and Pyrrha would have sold her closet of designer clothes for the chance to go back five seconds and slap her mouth shut. She was only partially aware of Nora's wide-eyed stare from the corner of the room, and the redhead's sudden, frantic escape to the bathroom to babble at Ren. Pyrrha silently willed herself to expire then and there to escape the embarrassment, but the lipstick tapped her lip.
"Okay." Jaune answered with a shrug, and the heat of the moment turned to a mixture of cold relief and disappointment as Jaune innocently applied the lipstick to her.
When Jaune turned away to get her makeup case set up for next time, Pyrrha swiftly turned a different direction to fan herself with one hand and pray that the walls of their room could not talk.
When Nora and Ren emerged from the bathroom, the tall boy's eyes silently took in the postures of his two teammates, then went to Nora's excited smile. Experience allowed them to communicate without saying a single word to each other, and Nora's toothy smile and pointed look in Pyrrha's direction made Ren sigh and shake his head.
Nora's lips tightened and she bobbed her head quickly, and Ren rolled his eyes, tilted his head at her like he was about to discipline her, then strode into the room while glancing up at the clock, "Everyone, it's twenty 'til, shall we go?" He asked, putting on a wisp of a smile.
"Yes we shall!" Pyrrha shot up so quickly, Ren swore she vibrated on her feet before racing to grab her bookbag. Ren looked back down at Nora, Nora looked up at Ren, and her smile only grew as he groaned.
"Sounds like a plan, but let's swing by the cafeteria first and see if we can grab something quick." Jaune ordered as he went to the door, bumping Pyrrha's hip with his own on the way. "C'mon partner, first day of classes! Let's start on a high note!" He sounded excited enough, pumping his fist into the air as he exited. In his somewhat forced exuberance, he completely missed the way Pyrrha squeaked before chasing after him on fluttering tiptoes, with an almost airy bounce that made her ponytail dance with each step.
Nora and Ren stood silently in the middle of their new room, staring at the empty doorway before Nora's elbow dug into Ren's side, earning a grunt and securing his attention. "Babe, do we look that stupid?" She asked.
Ren tugged her elbow to have her follow him out the door, setting a quick pace to catch up to their comrades as he mulled the question over. After a few contemplating hums and a few more jabs from Nora, Ren simply shrugged noncommittally. Nora groaned and tousled his hair.
"Charmer." She deadpanned, earning an amused smirk as they joined Jaune and Pyrrha in waiting for the elevator. "Oh, who wants to bet money we run into my girlfriend's backline again?!" She watched the doors eagerly as the others blinked in confusion.
"We're not late!" Yang announced as she nearly busted the wooden door down.
The class of hunters stared in shaken surprise as Yang staggered in, the door not entirely canceling her momentum when she'd shoulder-charged it. Ruby meekly following behind her and offering the tiniest of apologies as Weiss and Blake stumbled in after them, panting heavily, their bags loosely held over their shoulders.
Bartholomew Oobleck slowly lowered the newspaper he was reading at his desk to evaluate the four girls before he rose to his feet carefully, almost in slow motion. Team RWBY snapped to attention as the scraggly-dressed man set his paper down with a firm slap and tugged at his loose tie. He picked up a piece of chalk and turned towards the blackboard, presenting his students with his lean back. "Ruby. Rose." He spoke, his voice little more than a violent snarl as he slowly wrote her name in large, blocky letters.
Ruby squeaked, her lip beginning to quiver as he turned to stare at her through his gloomy glasses. "D-d-doc-doctor Oobleck…?" She whimpered, but his gaze shifted to her right.
"Weiss. Schnee." He snarled, writing her name underneath Ruby's. Weiss went pale—well, paler—an arm outstretched as if chasing a fleeing grade. Oobleck then glanced to the next girl, "Blake Belladonna… and Yang. Xiao. Long." He wrote each name, and the entire class of hunters watched on with a mixture of pity and worry. Ruby wordlessly glanced at her fellow students and sought out Jaune, who sat with a quiet, pale expression, and though their eyes met, though they fought together, Jaune took the coward's way out and looked away with a whimper… Dr. Oobleck carefully set the chalk into its receptacle, his movements slow and precise, then he whirled, hunched over as he stared at the team with a animalistic ferocity. All four of them suddenly felt very small… "How… DAAAAAARRRRRE YOOOOUUUU?!" He suddenly roared, rising to his full height with his hands outstretched in furious dismay.
Every teenager in the room watched on with a wince as the Doctor stared at the floor in clear agony, team JNPR shrinking down in their seats to avoid being seen. "Um… Professor?" Yang spoke up.
"Doctor! It's Doctor Oobleck to you! I didn't get a PHD in Remnant History and Archaeology for fun!" He all but spat, giving the four girls a grieved look. Yang shut her mouth tightly, and silently glanced to Blake for help. Blake was squeezing her bow to keep her ears from falling flat. "Don't think I don't know!" He suddenly bellowed. "You have each made my list for the atrocities you've committed during your initiation!" He shouted, pointing at them with a quivering finger.
"Atroci- what?!" Weiss looked at their teacher like he'd gone mad. Well, madder. "We didn't hurt anyone during our initiation! We passed like everyone else!" She threw her arms out, and the whole class shrank back in an attempt to avoid the doctor's next wrathful words.
"Oh, you most certainly did! With flying colors at that! Congratulations by the way, your victory over the Grimm was most certainly well executed and triumphant—BUT AT WHAT COST?!" Oobleck whirled towards the blackboard, chalk suddenly appearing in his hand, and Team RWBY stared in escalating comprehension as he drew three tall towers in record time. "The Ignopolus!" Spittle flew all over his desk, "One of the last vestiges of an ancient religion that worshipped Ignus, 'he whose palms cradle the sun!'"
"WAIT YOU HAVE FOOTAGE OF THE—" Nora's shriek was quickly blocked by her terrified boyfriend's hand, who did not want the doctor's sights on them again.
Ruby looked to Yang. Yang looked back. Both girls shrugged as Blake silently raised a hand. "Um… sir? We had no control over the destruction the Nevermore caused, and if we hadn't done, err, that, we woulda died."
"W-w-we d-didn't kn-know the b-b-b-boom w-would b-be th-that b-big!" Ruby squeaked, trembling under Oobleck's angry stare.
"Or that pink…" Blake grunted under her breath.
"Indeed, Dust can be unpredictable in dire circumstances and depending on whose aura does what, but I can never forgive you!" Dr. Oobleck bent over his desk in grief, a loud, frustrated sigh escaping him. "You four passed, and therefore I am required to teach you, but don't you dare think for a second I will enjoy tutoring you… you wrecking balls!"
"Hey! We are all skinny, curvy, and sexy bitches!" Yang crossed her arms over her chest. Ruby and Weiss both blanched, slinking away from the Yang alongside a nervously smiling Blake, and Yang's view was suddenly eclipsed when Oobleck seemed to simply appear directly in front of her, staring her down behind his opaque glasses until the pretty blonde was turning pale, a nervous swallow bobbing her throat.
"Language." Dr. Oobleck spoke in a precise and controlled manner as he addressed team RWBY in a chastising tongue, with Yang as the currently wilting object of his ire, "Your crimes aside, we do need to start class–but you are staying on my list–so please take a seat–without destroying them–and get out your things–not your weapons."
The four girls awkwardly filed into four available seats situated conveniently by team JNPR. Ruby sat down first, next to Jaune, who was hunkered down so low in his chair, the younger girl wondered if he could actually see over the desk. "Hi Ruby." He whispered so quietly, that Oobleck didn't hear it, even in the completely silent room.
"H-hi J-J-Ja-J- hi." Ruby whimpered, lowering herself into the chair with a tiny sniffle as Jaune watched Oobleck pace back and forth like a crackling storm in front of his desk.
"'S'okay… he laid into us too…" Jaune gestured to the rest of his team. Pyrrha had her face in her hands next to him, followed by Nora, who was flailing in Ren's grasp as he struggled to keep her from harassing their professor for the footage of the explosion.
"... 'm sorry." Ruby sighed, feeling responsible for the dressing down, considering the whole 'make a bomb, explode all the things' thing had been her idea.
"Hey, could be worse." Jaune briefly bumped her knee with his own, causing the girl to grow a small smile at the friendly touch.
"Students." Dr. Oobleck began, cutting through the noise and drawing everyone's attention. Standing in a more composed manner, Dr. Oobleck lifted a telescoping rod in one hand, then hit a button on the wall behind him. "Today begins our first class in the History of Remnant. You may be asking yourself: 'what can I learn here that I haven't heard before?'" As he spoke, the blackboard behind him revolved slowly, revealing an enormous map of Remnant, all of its continents, their regions, their cities, their towns, and unexplored locations marked, at least what was visible beneath the dozens upon dozens of papers stuck to the map, with a massive series of red strings connecting each location. "The answer is simple: our mistakes."
Dr. Oobleck stepped out from behind his desk and paced slowly, not looking at anyone as his voice rose loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Between humans and Faunus, between the Vacuo-Vale alliance and the Mistral-Mantle allegiance, from the wars of ancient times, to the skirmishes of recent history, one thing is apparent," He hit a button on the side of his desk, and now, covering the map, was a holographic display showing numerous treaties and armistice agreements from over the years, "we are learning. Not very quickly, but we are learning. Centuries of warfare amongst ourselves has lead to millions of deaths, not just at each other's hands, but at the teeth and claws of the Grimm that our strife inevitably calls."
The hologram changed with a click of a button on his pointer, revealing a large picture: the iconic painting of the King of Vale and the Premier of Mistral shaking hands during the Vytal treaty signing appeared; a scene of comradeship, understanding, and weariness over what had come to be known as a senseless war.
"We have fought less and less over the years, and war seems outlandish in this time of peace, but let me assure you, the same thing was thought by our ancestors before the Color Wars broke out." Dr. Oobleck lifted his gaze, looking at every single student in their seats, and put on a small, almost fatherly smile. "Students, we are not politicians, but that does not mean that we are not leaders. Since the dawn of our history, hunters are seen as icons of morality, the bearers of our ideals and our strength, no matter where we come from, who we were born to, or where we are now, we carry a torch; illuminating the darkness of the future as we strike forward and lead the people of Remnant towards a better time." His smile fell as a new hologram appeared, one displaying a Newspaper.
The headline read: 'Crime Wave Grips Vale Ports! Shops destroyed, Dust stolen, people afraid. President Victoria promises to increase security.'
"But just as we hold the torch, there are those who lurk in the dark. They use fear and violence for personal gain, from the lowliest criminal…"
The hologram switched again, this time to an old newspaper from the Color Wars: 'Emperor Khan Declares Ban on Colors; Mistral Feeling Grey! King Oscar condemns, but Atlas stays quiet!'
"... To the most well-intentioned king." Oobleck shut the hologram off, slowly moving to the center of the room to look up to his students. "I have taken this job to teach you, our future hunters–our future torch-bearers–what it means to be a person of Remnant, both in the past and now, the inalienable rights of Remnant, and how our history has shaped our present. With this knowledge, I have hope that each and every single one of you will step out into the world knowing, without a doubt, your right from your wrong, and actively strive not to repeat the mistakes our ancestors made."
The room was quiet, mulling over his words, and Oobleck suddenly stomped his foot.
"That said, prepare to take your notes!" He was off like a shot, reappearing by the map, the pointer in his hand wobbling from the speed. The classroom was filled with the sounds of shuffling bags, rustling paper, and the testing taps of mechanical pencils as Oobleck went off at light speed. "Picture this: Vale, only one hundred and eight years after the establishment of our capital, the winter is harsh, food is scarce, the bread lines stretch across three blocks, the king missing for the fourth week in a row…"
The scratching of pencils filled the hall as Dr. Oobleck poured in the facts and figures. Pyrrha, Ren, and Weiss wrote mechanically, neat notes with indentations to designate a relation to the topic and room in the margins for extra notes. Blake filled her pages from the heading area to the margins, writing in quick, fast scribbles that ignored the standard procedure, utilizing years of frantic recording. Nora chewed her pencil, waiting for a name, a date, and what they did. Jaune stared in bewilderment as he tried to write down names, numbers, facts, and figures, but mostly ended up with an incomplete mess. Yang wrote with fine handwriting, not going the extra mile as Weiss did, but her organization was good and had just enough fluff in case she needed to do extra credit.
Ruby was on her third page already. Her hand moved like a mechanical arm, recording every last word the professor spoke, sweat beading on her forehead, her tongue stuck out from between her lips. She filled each page as best she could as she strained her ears and listened to Dr. Oobleck.
She had to give Beacon her one-hundred percent, no less. She'd lucked her way in here, there was going to be no give and all take. Her hand ached, but she continued to write, she had to absorb everything…
It was like Professor Goodwitch told her, she was being tested above everyone else here. She was the youngest student at Beacon, and with the most dangerous semblance. She needed her professors to see that she was serious and tame.
She would get good grades, perform her best, and prove her worth as a huntress.
An hour flew by, and Doctor Oobleck concluded his lesson by tapping away at a console on his desk. "Everyone, keep your notes available, we are now moving on to classwork! If you and your partner are not sitting next to each other, arrange it so that you are. Your pairings will be sharing classwork grades, but all homework and tests are scored individually." Holographic displays popped up in front of each pair of students displaying the Vale continent, and under a drop bar was a list of twenty names of people, events, and locations. "Your classwork today will be to pin each of the given keywords to their appropriate location, as close as you can get it, and put a brief–and by brief I mean one paragraph–summary of each keyword. Keywords may share locations. Remember to use your notes and your teammates, but be wary of matching entries!"
Ruby looked to her left. Weiss and Yang were already switching seats to sit next to their respective partners. Weiss looked into Ruby's goggles, "I'm hoping you took notes?" Weiss asked with a raised eyebrow as she turned her notebook's pages back. "Because I am willing to share notes, but if you expect me to allow you to copy mine after the fact-"
"N-no no! I have them!" Ruby showed Weiss her notes. Weiss looked over the scrawled, though legible words with a discerning eye, and a slow frown formed. "Are-are they okay?"
"You only need the important parts, not every last scrap of detail." Weiss pointed out, but let it go with a sigh. "Anyways, let's start from the top." She took the first keyword out of the drop bar: Admiral Jameson Bravo. Dr. Oobleck's lesson had covered a number of events that happened between Vale's founding and its slow rise to power, and, thankfully, the events seemed to be in order in the drop bar.
'While Vale was initially considered impenetrable due to the advantage Grimm had over early settlers, Admiral Jameson Bravo was the first explorer into Vale to make use of a military company equipped with Dust-enhanced weaponry. Though he had suffered heavy losses, he created the first self-sustaining fortification able to harvest and trade Vale's natural resources.'
"Is that agreeable?" Weiss asked, leaning away from the holoboard. The event was tied to a spot on the eastern Vale peninsula, where Oobleck had pointed to during the lesson.
Ruby leaned in to read, and quietly nodded. "O-okay, I guess I'll take the next one…"
"Don't guess." Weiss ordered sternly, making Ruby flinch. "If you're to be our leader, you must be sure of yourself." Weiss's eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Ruby. Ruby didn't say anything, she just bobbed her head and shivered as she took the next event: The Eighth Grimm Extermination Act.
Ruby dragged the event from the dropdown menu to pin it on the city of Mistral, meticulously adjusting it a few times until she felt it was perfect, then she leaned over the holoboard curiously. Her hands hovered above it for a moment before resting on it, as if she was trying to position herself for a real keyboard, but being composed of light, the holoboard flashed with numerous confirmed key presses that caused the typing box on the screen to explode into a string of nonsensically connected symbols. The young lady's frightened squeak drew a small look of shock from Weiss, until Ruby scanned the holoboard and rest her finger on the backspace button until the box was empty again. Looking thoroughly embarrassed, Ruby curled her hands into little fists as she reexamined the keyboard.
"What are you doing?" Weiss asked with a suspicious expression, as if Ruby was somehow tricking her. "It's like a solid keyboard, just don't put your hands on it." She informed Ruby, only slightly hopeful that was all Ruby was having trouble with.
"R-right." Ruby bobbed her head. After a moment of thought, she pressed the letter I, so the textbox simply read 'i', and Ruby swiftly deleted it with a quick swallow. Ruby stared back down at the keyboard, tapped the shift button, and hit I again, creating another 'i'. Ruby blinked at the lowercase letter, then meekly turned to Weiss, whose expression was as stoney as they came, "... H-how do I m-make upper-c-case let-tters?" Ruby asked in a tiny voice.
"Do you not know how to use the shift key?" Weiss asked in a dumbfounded tone. With a squeak of embarrassment, Ruby looked back at the holoboard and tapped shift again, repeating her mistake and making a second lower-case i.
"I-it's not working." Ruby mumbled, and Weiss silently lifted a hand to rest a finger on the shift button, then hit the I. An 'I' popped up on the screen, and Ruby blinked, glancing down at Weiss's hand, then up at the screen twice. "I-... I h-hold it?" Ruby asked hopefully, and Weiss's eyes turned into a dangerous squint.
"They teach you how to use a keyboard in elementary school." Weiss's nostrils flared, and somehow, someway, Ruby managed to look even more pathetic as her hands balled up together tightly. "You…" Weiss's lips thinned as she tried to restrain herself from growing angry… well, angrier if she was honest with herself, "Your school did have a keyboard class, right?"
"N-no…" Ruby's expression curdled with terrible shame, and she did her best to look at a spot on the desk that she didn't feel was judging her, "I-I was h-homes-schooled… u-um… w-we d-don't have a-a computer…"
It was ridiculous. Weiss stared at Ruby silently for a long while, staring at her team leader wilting under the revelation that she'd be working with a basic piece of technology that most of the world had been suffused with for the past half-century. Weiss had been typing since before she had started writing, Vale was not Vacuo, electricity was abundant, technology was rampant!
Her leader was completely confounded by the shift key. A dark part of her mind wanted to see if Ruby would break completely if she began explaining what the row of function keys all did...
Weiss made a pair of fists, closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath as her jaw jut out in annoyance. Ruby was ignorant, that much was obvious, but she had her notes. She was not a total dunce, but Weiss couldn't help but feel like she was the victim of a prank, it was a keyboard!
She had to dial it back. Somebody with a power and eyes as phenomenally dangerous as Ruby's had to be treated with the utmost care, of course she was isolated from certain things like… a keyboard...
So Weiss took a deep breath, pulled her chair closer to Ruby, and taking the position of an educator–a leader as it were–she beckoned Ruby to lean over the keyboard with her. "Ruby, you've texted, correct?" Weiss asked pointedly, and with a scrambling nod, Ruby pulled out her scroll as if it were proof, "Good. A texting screen is just a condensed keyboard; don't focus on everything, we only need to care about all the buttons on the left side of the keyboard."
"B-but that's like all o-of the keyboard!" Ruby whimpered, only to gulp in compliance at Weiss's sharpened glare. "O-okay…"
"Now then…" Weiss sighed, stretching her fingers out before beginning a basic typing lesson.
In fifteen or so minutes, Ruby had written her first, fully completed paragraph on a computer: 'In 012, Mistral's acting treasurer Yatta Mondala created an act that paid hunters to exterminate Grimm en masse in Vale. Sending scribes to record the number of slain Grimm, hunters were rewarded 50 lien per kill. This job was dangerous for both hunter and scribe, but paid each extremely well for their services.'
Ruby sat back with a heavy sigh, staring at the screen with an exhausted expression on what was visible on her face. "O-okay, you g-get the next one."
"No." Weiss answered as Ruby blanched.
"B-but-"
"If we are going to be doing work together, I expect basic competence with note-taking and computers. Now, hands on the keyboard, do it again." Weiss ordered, disgruntled by her supposed leader. Ruby hesitated, but sighed in defeat and put her hands on the holoboard. "Good. Now, Abarem Town; don't hit caps lock."
Ruby did as she was told, albeit slowly. For eighteen more terms. Weiss noted that Ruby's information was factually correct, she had a solid grasp on sentence structure and an above-average vocabulary, but she had to be reminded repeatedly how to use shift, how to turn off capslock, where the punctuation was… it was the most backwards thing Weiss had ever seen, her answers were entirely satisfactory otherwise.
Ruby frowned at her sore fingers, stretching them slowly. She had the dexterity necessary for scythe-work, but the stress of learning strained her digits just as much as it did her mind. Weiss corrected a few tidbits of otherwise negligible detail in Ruby's answers, but otherwise didn't deride any of Ruby's work. "Well, it all seems fine…"
"Girls." Ruby and Weiss glanced up to Dr. Oobleck. He sipped from his thermos, and Ruby and Weiss both noticed most of the students were kicked back, screens off. Blake and Yang were standing with team JNPR, Yang getting a hearty laugh out of Jaune, Nora, and Pyrrha, while Blake began to turn green from sipping Ren's water bottle as he extolled the virtues of cordyceps and ground almonds. "Is everything alright?"
"Fine." Weiss nodded, though her eyes shifted to Ruby.
"A-are you s-still mad at us?" Ruby asked in a tiny voice, barely able to meet the good doctor's eye..
"Utterly furious, but more importantly, I want to know how you're handling the work. It wasn't a particularly difficult assignment." He leaned between them both and examined their blurbs. "Mhmm, everything seems in order…"
"I c-can't type very well." Ruby admitted softly, her pale face soft with disappointment. Weiss sighed thickly as Dr. Oobleck raised an eyebrow.
"She's… unfamiliar with the common keyboard, so we took some extra time to familiarize her." Weiss said, still focusing on Ruby. Oobleck hummed thoughtfully.
"I see! Well, we'll determine whether or not it affects your grade when I actually grade it." He stood straight and absent-mindedly rubbed his bald chin. He turned to focus on Ruby, and cleared his throat to get her to look at him. "You shouldn't be afraid to admit your faults. We all have areas of expertise and things we've never learned. I am a hunter, a decorated scholar, and can pilot anything from a skiff to a military-class bullhead, but I have never driven a car, nor have I learned how." He grew a lopsided smirk at their stunned looks. "What matters is that you try, and you are receptive to learning more."
Weiss frowned at her hands as Ruby squared up, smiling in quiet understanding. Weiss spoke up. "But, Doctor, aren't there certain… expectations placed on hunters? Even if we open ourselves up to learning beyond our capabilities, something like knowing how to use a computer seems important to already know."
"Mm, true, but many people still make use of the old-fashioned way." Dr. Oobleck examined his thermos' contents, taking a quick sip before continuing. "I had a young lady four years ago, a faunus from Menagerie. She was sharp, perceptive, good in class, but had religious reasons to not use a computer. All her classwork, homework, and tests were done on paper, she was a fantastic cartographer and had very neat handwriting, but absolutely refused to use a computer."
"Oh!" Ruby perked up. "A-a Naturalist. Was she a pre- or p-post-Fang?" Ruby asked curiously, and Oobleck gave Ruby a pleased look.
"Ugh, of all the movements to come out of Menagerie; an anti-technology one…" Weiss all but sneered at the thought, but Oobleck continued without acknowledging the complaint.
"Post-Fang, so she was perfectly fine with enhanced weaponry! In fact, she was one of the best duelists in her year, using a crossbow of all things!" Oobleck chuckled as Ruby's jaw dropped, and Weiss's eyes widened.
"A crossbow duelist? Did it have a spear attached? Transform into an axe?" Weiss probed, and Oobleck shook his head.
"Just a regular, electrically-powered crossbow with both standard, metal bolts and dust-canister bolts. She had a talent for trick-shots, fantastic to see in a fight, always brought a crowd, but as I said, opposed using computers. Anyways, three years into her tenure at Beacon, she receives a letter from Ba'Rin Tinsam, her religious leader. The good Ba'Rin had declared that things like computers and scrolls would be a necessity if they wished to keep up with the modern world, but strictly for use in communication, education, and news. Needless finery such as wasteful social media and any form of electronic entertainment was regarded as excessive. Their religion still forbids cars, airships, and artificially-powered watercraft, but suddenly she had computers in her life! She and her team used to come to my room after classes and spend hours teaching her how to use a computer and keyboard."
Ruby and Weiss both nodded as Oobleck looked off wistfully, and Weiss straightened her skirt impatiently. "And?" She asked.
"The point is," Oobleck continued after refocusing on the two, "we had a girl who adamantly refused to use our resources until her second-to-last year. Despite this, she excelled. She was intelligent, clever, powerful, and well-spoken, and when it came time to learn about computers, she was open-minded, and her team sacrificed their personal time to help her learn. If I am not mistaken, they are still signed up together today, their bond stronger than ever." He knelt, just enough to be on the girls' levels, and glanced between them with a small smile. "Help each other. Learn. Pride will be your downfall in the field, so if you feel unprepared, use each other, use your team, and use your school. It's not stupid at all to admit your weaknesses." The intercom chimed as the class came to a close, and Oobleck stood swiftly. "Welp! That wraps up this class. Everyone have a good rest of your first day, there's a test this Friday! Do be on time next class, team wrecking ball!"
"Hey!" Yang snapped, but Blake slapped a hand over her partner's mouth, while Ruby and Weiss hurried to help drag the angry blonde out the door before she could get them into any more trouble.
"Weiss?" Ruby whispered, wiggling her rubber-gloved hands. "I. Am. A. Scientist!" She whispered in awe.
"... Don't be stupid." Weiss set her clear, plastic goggles around her eyes and tightened the apron around her waist.
Ruby and Weiss, following the crowd of students from the wall hooks in the back of the classroom, made their way to an empty table alongside Blake and Yang. Blake did not seem pleased with the eyewear and adjusted them frequently, while Yang immediately took ahold of a set of tongs. Ruby squeaked and flailed her hands playfully as the blonde tried to snag her nose.
"I'm gonna getcha!"
"Yang, stop!"
"I'm gonna getcha!"
"Noooooo!"
"I'm gonna getcha!"
"Eek!"
"Girls!" Weiss slapped her hands down onto the table, her cheek twitching. Yang stopped to glance at Weiss curiously, Ruby's nose caught in the tongs. "Stop. Playing. Around." Weiss ordered, visibly frustrated.
"Bud why?" Ruby slurred, flicking the tongs to signal Yang to let her go.
"We're in school! Were practically adults! We can't juuuuuub-" Weiss glared at Blake, the smug, smiling black-haired girl having pulled Weiss's bottom lip out comically using the table's second set of tongs, leaving both Ruby and Yang giggling madly. Weiss briefly turned into an enraged windmill as her arms flew about, grabbing all the tools-turned-toys out of everyone's hands and holding them to her chest with an overly dramatic glare. "Act. Your. Age." She hissed warningly.
"Is that an order?" Yang asked, leaning closer with a cocky smile. "'Cuz, y'know, the only person who can give orders is the team leader!" Yang ribbed Weiss. The heiress's glare turned much harsher as her rage mounted.
"Well unless she starts acting like it then maybe we should have somebody who will step up!" Weiss hissed unhappily, and Yang just gave a thoughtful hum.
"Sounds like a mutiny! Okay, so, in that case, let's put it to a vote! Who wants Weiss as a leader?" Yang asked the table. Weiss raised her hand, and her brow knit together grumpily as she looked between the other three. Ruby, for her part, just looked ashamed. "And who votes for Ruby?!" Yang asked, throwing her hand into the air. Blake followed suit, while Ruby just stared at her lap meekly. "Ruby's still our acting leader!" Yang beamed.
"Yaaaaay…" Ruby mumbled and twirled a finger, and Weiss turned her head away to not meet their smug stares, but her expression was red and tight.
"Okay class!" Professor Peach announced from up front. Ruby and Weiss continued to pout, even as they turned towards their teacher. Professor Peach had her long hair kept tame in numerous micro-dreadlocks, then tied off in a ponytail behind her head. Ruby noted that her outfit hadn't changed much from two days ago: her tank top and baggy pants remained, but an apron was tugged up to her neck and tied tightly around her thick waist. "Let's start with introductions: I'm Professor Peridot Peach, but Professor Peach will be fine. From now until you graduate, I am your go-to source on anything Dust-related." She gestured to the desk in front of her. At one end was a sink, but strewn across the rest of it was vials filled with numerous different-colored Dusts and all sorts of glass bulbs and plastic tubes used in creating small, personalized batches. "You wanna mix Dust? You get the kits from me. You wanna activate your license on campus? You ask me. You wanna order Dust? All requests go through me, and yes, I saw some of you trying to get your hands on 'combat-enhancement' Dust already, so don't think I'm not paying attention!"
Ruby pressed her pencil to her paper in anticipation of the lesson's start. She had never been very good with Dust. Her whole family relied more on fighting power than dust enhancement of any sort, usually using store-bought bullets. Yang had to do a few take-home experiments and record the results for Signal, and Ruby quickly learned how dangerous it could be when she got a little too nosey.
"So, Dust… As I'm sure you know, Dust is used for everything." Professor Peach tapped a button on her desk, and, as with Oobleck's class, a holoscreen popped up above the desk. A scroll, a car, an airship, and a flaming sword were on display. "Modern transportation, communication, and combat would be impossible without the discovery, refinement, and advanced mutation of Dust. You see, kids, Dust is potential energy in physical form, and any form of energy is power. With the discovery of Dust, civilization became possible, as we became powerful enough to fight the Grimm."
The screen changed. Ruby blinked slowly, trying to take in the visuals of the Dust-making process, from the boiling vials of multicolored grains to the liquidized slurry being poured into vibrating mixers. Professor Peach took a vial of red Dust on her desk and poured a little more than a handful into a glass bowl. The class watched as she tossed a lit match into the bowl. A few gasps and coos of delight came from the class as the inside of the bowl instantly ignited, more powerfully than a mere match could have caused. The flame roared and howled, barely out of touch of the ceiling as Professor Peach casually sipped from a water bottle, then picked up a vial of golden dust in her mechanical hand.
"As I said, Dust is power, and power is change." Her mechanical hand entered the flame fearlessly and poured in a portion of the golden Dust. The flame briefly jumped, turning a vibrant yellow, then suddenly froze. The roar and crackle of the flame died, the heat vanished, and the goldish, spiky pillar in the bowl stood still. Ruby silently set her pencil down and plopped her face in between her hands as she stared. "What if I told you that I petrified heat?"
Somebody in the back spoke up, "Isn't that impossible?"
"Not when Dust gets involved!" Professor Peach looked pleased as she flicked the flask of golden Dust with her normal hand. "Many of you are probably familiar with the basics: fire, cold, electricity, earth, air, gravity, and empowerment Dust. However, in laboratories today, we are creating stronger, more potent Dust using the Schnee-Xing process. Class, prepare to write." A scramble of pencils put to paper, and Professor Peach went on. "Schnee Dust Company employee Dr. Mana Yun Xing cracked the code of laboratory-created Dust thirty-eight years ago. By employing advanced chemistry using household things such as table salt, water, iron, fire, and enough vibration capable of setting off an earthquake detector three floors down, we can create flawless, ready-to-use Dust inside the safety of our cities."
Blake raised her hand. "Doesn't this make the dust mines obsolete?" She asked. Weiss huffed.
"Of course not." Weiss answered, suddenly standing as the class and the professor turned their attention to her. "The Schnee-Xing method has created extraordinary results, but in limited quantities. Professor Peach, that thermal petrification Dust you used, am I wrong in saying that it took two weeks and around four thousand lien to create?" She asked, crossing her arms in a way that dared to be challenged.
Professor Peach grinned. "Leave it to Weiss Schnee! That is correct." Professor Peach held up the vial triumphantly, and nodded for Weiss to sit. "I was offered this generous sample from Dr. Yun Xing himself, to show my classes how far Dust has come since we were savages throwing exploding rocks at each other. This Dust is extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming, and has a shelf-life of approximately two and a half weeks, but, you are looking at the future in fire-fighting should we cut that all down. Eight gallons of this can petrify your average house fire." Professor reached up, snapped off one of the golden tendrils outside the bowl, and crushed it between her hands, creating gentle wafts of harmless smoke. "And it can be safely disposed of by grinding it down into harmless ash, break down in the wild, and join the rest of the used dust particles in seeding the land."
Professor Peach tossed the petrified fire into a trash can and reclaimed her bowl. She changed the holoscreen to a set of figures that made Ruby's brain ache: chemical symbols and numbers filled the screen, and Professor Peach planted her hands on her wide hips and beamed. "We have several Schnee-Xing tumblers at this school, thanks to the Schnee Education Foundation's generous donations. As our future hunters, it is important for each of you to understand up-and-coming technology as well as old techniques. We will be going step-by-step over creating the most basic and important Dust to a Hunter's repertoire: explosive Dust. And, just like in cooking, do it right and homemade is better than mass market crap." That caused an excited stir to emerge from the class, and Yang in particular looked in love already.
"Better?! Tell me your secrets, magic woman." Yang growled amorously, rubbing her hands together in anticipation while Ruby began to shiver and choked down a whine.
"Make sure you are with your partner for this! One of you will come up to gather the materials and equipment you need, you'll be given a reference chart in case you need help identifying Dust! Remember, this is an effort with your partner, so be sure to split duties accordingly!" Professor Peach called over the students as they began to move.
Ruby gulped heavily and looked to Weiss, the heiress already drawing on a piece of paper. "Ruby, do you have any experience with Dust making, or mixing at the very least?" She asked in what sounded like an accusing tone, making Ruby balls her hands up nervously.
"N-n-no, n-not really. U-um-um, m-my family u-usually b-bought the b-bullets…" She was pale around her goggles, and Weiss looked up momentarily to examine Ruby's face.
"... You're stuttering more than usual. Are you okay?" She raised an eyebrow, and Ruby shook her head.
"I'm not g-g-go-good with Dust! I-I t-tend to, um, b-blow up…"
Yang spoke up, while running her hand along Ruby's back and giving Weiss a pointed stare that ordered, rather than pleaded, for Weiss to dial it back. "Ruby and Dust don't get along very well. We've… we've tried."
"Well, mixing…" Weiss's brow furrowed, and then her eyebrows popped up in inspiration. "You said you've made cookie dough, Dust mixing is a lot like cooking."
"Except cookie dough doesn't explode." Ruby squeaked fearfully. "A-and Yang makes w-way b-better cookie dough th-than I do. I-I just- I mean- I kn-knew I'd h-have to but I-I'm n-nervous and-"
"Look…" Weiss's hand twitched. With a small, unsure expression, she carefully rested her hand on Ruby's shoulder to try and calm her down, awkwardly stroking her like a particularly dirty pet. "I've been working with Dust all my life…" She thought back to Oobleck's words, and tried to console herself that this was the right thing to do, she was establishing herself as the team leader over this stuttering, stammering young thing. "I'll help you. I always excelled in mixing, all you need to do is follow my instructions." Despite Weiss's words, Ruby still didn't look sure about herself. "Don't look so down on yourself. Look, we'll…" Weiss paused, took a deep breath through her nostrils, and tried to not rush things. If Ruby needed help, then she'd provide it… that was what a leader did. "... We'll take it slow."
Of course, life was not as promising as Weiss was.
"... How?" Weiss wheezed, a black puff of smoke escaping her mouth. She lifted her soot-coated goggles to stare down at the molten and still burning pile of debris that was once a chemistry set on the table, and Ruby carefully pulled herself out of Blake's shaking arms. The taller girl was stiff as a board and nearly as pale as Weiss in silent terror.
"I t-told y-you I s-sucked…" Ruby frowned as she stared at the smoldering glassware. Yang took her partner by the shoulders and sat her down, trying to get her to focus on their work, as if oblivious to how close to immolation they'd all just come.
"Incoming! Outta my way!" Professor Peach roared, her voice piercing the shocked silence that hung over the class. Fire extinguishing foam bathed Ruby's and Weiss's Dust remnants, and the professor pushed her goggles up her forehead with a frown. "Alright, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, front desk, let's talk."
Weiss stood with a mortified expression on her face, Ruby looking so far beyond embarrassed that her neck was sinking into her shoulders. Professor Peach sat at her desk while giving them both a withering stare as the class behind the two girls snickered below their breath.
"Okay, so, what step were you at?" Peach asked, looking into both of their eyes.
"W-well…" Weiss gulped, then shot a sharp glare at Ruby that punctured what little self-confidence the younger girl had left. "We refined the fire Dust with the lemon juice and sieved the hard particles out, I was mixing the enhancing components away from the Dust, and then, then you—" Weiss's embarrassment was soon taken over by genuine anger as the the redhead felt about an inch high.
"I-I was following instructions, I swear!" Ruby squeaked. "I-I-I was warming the water a-and had j-just f-f-finished a-adding the b-b-brown s-sugar to the n-nitroglycerin, then I p-picked up the f-fire Dust to m-mix with the en-enhancing compo-ponents and it just exploded!"
Professor Peach hummed. "Did you shake the flask?"
"No!" Ruby shook her head.
"Did you add anything you weren't supposed to?" Weiss crossed her arms and glowered.
"No! I-it was just the Dust!" Ruby whimpered feebly.
"... Alright Ruby." Professor Peach sipped from her water bottle and stood up. She took a small vial of rustic-red Dust and held it out to Ruby. "Hold this."
"... Why?!" Ruby asked in growing panic.
"We start with the simplest solutions first." Ruby meekly reached out to take ahold of the glass. "The most probable reasons are a Dust contamination or a mishandling of the glassware, but there is also the possibility that—" Peach's eyes narrowed as she saw a flicker of protective black encase Ruby's arm as she watched the vial with fear. The Dust in the tube suddenly sparked, then erupted in a flash of light, a billow of smoke, and a flare of heat that made Ruby turn into a statue of petrified horror, "... you aren't controlling your Aura." Peach finished with a disappointed look.
Ruby wilted as Weiss's eyes turned cold. "I'm sorry…" Ruby whispered.
"I- I can't-" Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, and straightened up, "Professor Peach, may I get a drink, please?" She asked in a tightly constrained voice, and after a second of thought, Peach bobbed her head.
"Granted, but don't take too long." Peach warned her. Without another word, Weiss walked past Ruby and straight for the door, leaving the classroom without even removing her lab wear. Ruby all but melted in humiliation, and had to lean against Peach's desk, one hand to her face.
Her eyes burned, she tried so hard to not tear up, but a few, small, achey hiccups escaped her. With a sigh, her professor took the black-stained vial and set it in her desk sink. She beckoned Ruby with her normal arm to follow her to a different door. Ruby followed her into her office, her head down, aching to remove her goggles so she could rub at her damp eyes.
Book shelves lined every wall where there wasn't a filing cabinet. Above each shelf were different posters, each one dedicated to chemical compounds, formulas, mnemonic phrases for laboratory safety, and famed quotes from scientists across Remnant's history. Professor Peach's office desk was littered with books, and Ruby half-noted that every tome in the room was centered around scientific pursuits as opposed to storybooks; everything from artificial limbs, to vehicles, to Dust, to what the scientists had discovered from the very stars themselves.
Ruby's watering eyes focused on a small device sitting on Professor Peach's desk, which sort of looked like a crane on top of a tiny nutcracker, with an empty plastic bag at one end. Ruby's woes were momentarily forgotten as she stared at the little machine, and Professor Peach pulled the bag off, giving Ruby a chance to read what was on it: 'Vale Farm's Sunflower Seeds.'
Ruby blinked as Professor Peach set a bowl in front of the device, hooked up a bag full of seeds to the back of it, and hit a button. The professor smiled fondly as it clicked, and a sunflower seed was sucked between the crackers, the shell crushed as the two flat surfaces pushed together, and the crane dipped down and flicked the edible innards into the bowl. And just like that, every second, a new seed was flicked into the bowl. Ruby watched, transfixed at the tiny little machine's repetitive, but precise motions.
"Like it?" Professor Peach asked with a little smile, "I made it some eighteen years ago." She chuckled as Ruby leaned close, her mouth a small, curious little 'o'.
"You made this?" Ruby whispered.
"Back when I was a student at Beacon I used to eat sunflower seeds by the handful! Well, I mean, I wanted to but the stupid shells were always in the way. That, and I got a bad toothache because I was an idiot who didn't brush her teeth." Professor Peach smirked wryly at the memory, taking a seed out of the bowl and popping it into her mouth. She chewed once, then swallowed. "I wanted sunflower seeds, so I got mad, got the parts, and made myself this. Every second, something to nibble on. It is probably the most useless thing in the world." Her smile grew as she said it.
"But it's neat…" Ruby watched it pull, shell, and flick seed after seed, the simplistic mechanical motions doing their job perfectly each time. "Y-you just… made this to shell sunflower seeds? Just sunflower s-seeds?"
"Like I said, useless." Professor Peach sounded thoroughly proud of the declaration. "But it's not like I paid for it, and it still works eighteen years later."
"That's not useless." Ruby frowned, looking up to her professor. "I-I mean, it does its job. Err… I guess I-I wouldn't buy it…" She poked the little contraption.
"Mhmm. My professors at the time laughed and called me a genius. I had the most simple of problems, I could have fixed it with a hammer, but no, I went a little crazy and made something dumb just because I could." Professor Peach ate another seed, and sighed. "I think that's what makes humanity so great. Sometimes, we do stupid, brave, and weird stuff just because we can, and it works, and because it worked we now have things like airships."
"Uh huh." Ruby nodded, looking at the bowl with her lips pursed. "Can… can I?..."
"Sure, sure, go ahead sweetie, eat up." Peach nodded, and Ruby began to nibble at the seeds hungrily. Professor Peach watched her student eat curiously, letting out a small sigh. Ruby was still such a young thing, and Peach empathized with her unpreparedness, but certain precautions had to be taken, and Ruby was not ready. "So, I can think of one of two things…" Professor Peach started, drumming her fingers thoughtfully. "Either you got one hell of an active aura—and considering what you can do I'm not willing to overlook that possibility—or you're nervous."
Ruby's shoulders sank, bunching up as she frowned and nodded slowly. "I-I think I'm j-just nervous…"
"And why's that, sweetie? Dust is potent stuff, but no reason to be nervous. You can't let little aura flare-ups like you had into the lab happen, Dust is ready to jump when it feels too strong of a surge." Peach gave her best consoling smile, but Ruby shook her head.
"I-I can't help it! When it's sealed in bullets and stuff it's fine, b-but I always had trouble with raw Dust. I just… I m-mean, I b-blew myself up as a kid, and w-with my Aura..." Ruby's head hung low, and Professor Peach tapped the desk with one of her metal fingers.
"With your Aura, you call it up the moment you feel in danger." Peach guessed, and Ruby didn't contradict her. "So you have a vial of Dust in your hand, your partner's the princess of Dust, you've got your grade on the line, and you think back to that moment you blew up, so even if you tell yourself you don't need Aura, your soul sees right through you and shines its light anyway…" She continued, and again, no contradiction. "Listen Ruby…" Peach nudged the bowl closer to Ruby, so she'd glance up and look at the pile of seeds inside. "You're talented. The headmaster wouldn't let you in otherwise. You weren't brought in because you knew what you were doing, but because there's so much more you can learn." The professor closed her eyes and thoughtfully pieced together what to say. "Don't feel ashamed. You have every right to be wrong here at Beacon, it is our job to correct you so that you become stronger, and wiser."
"But… b-but now Weiss is angry at me." Ruby chewed her lower lip, eyes closed tightly behind her goggles. "W-we'd just become friends, an-and she's a Schnee, th-this is probably as easy as t-tying her shoes to her, and I-I'm h-her p-partner so sh-she's gonna get a c-crappy grade! And-and…" Ruby sniffled. "I w-worked so hard to get her trust; I f-feel like I accidentally kicked a puppy…"
Professor Peach smiled to try and lighten the girl's misery, then reached out with her normal hand to rub Ruby's knuckles. "Look sweetie, Weiss might be mad right now, but I doubt she hates you. The Schnees tend to be prickly, but they aren't terrible people, though an argument could be made against the current administration…"
"What's…" Ruby looked up with a small frown. "What's going on with them anyways? I hear all these rumors…"
Peach stopped her with a halting palm. "Not my place to say." Peach sighed. "There's rumors, half-truths, stuff too nasty to be true, and some legitimate bad business, and I'm afraid of trying to guess what's true and false. Look, ask Weiss. If she's anything like her aunts, uncles, and cousins, then she'll just love talking about her family."
"If she'll e-even talk to me…"
Peach just gave Ruby a smile. "You gotta try, Ruby. That's all we ask of you here at Beacon, and all Weiss can hope for from you: to try. We're going to work on your Dust control and those shakey nerves, m'kay?"
Ruby hesitated, staring down at her clenched fists, but then gave a very small nod.
After some cooling down, Weiss head back to the classroom while pressing the tips of her fingers against her temple, trying to soothe away the anger. Ruby was young, new to all of this, even if, by her admittance here, she should have the expected skills. No matter what, however, blowing up wasn't going to solve either of their problems, especially, as Weiss recalled, all it did was make Ruby stand around and babble foolishly.
She sipped from a can of orange soda she'd bought from a vending machine near the restrooms and sighed as she approached the doors to the lab. Truly, she was being tested. Her partner, her leader, a young, ditzy, little girl who hadn't used a computer and made Dust blow up just by being near it. Weiss grumbled silently. If Ruby wasn't such a nice person, she'd be unbearable, and Weiss had already vowed to be her partner in front of both Ruby and the Headmaster.
Weiss stopped mid-stride, quietly staring into her canned drink as she wondered… was it possible that Ruby's control of the Grimm caused Dust reactions?... She shook her head and continued forward. An absurd notion. The proximity of Grimm didn't cause Dust mines to go haywire, Dust responded to natural forces and aura. It all came down to just Ruby.
Weiss opened the door to the classroom, resolving to herself to make the explosive Dust all by herself and let Ruby observe. She wanted something presentable, and she'd be damned if she walked out of her first Dust class with anything less than an A+. Ruby, at least, would get to learn through observation. She looked past the rows of lazing students, casually chatting among each other, to her table and watched as Ruby took a deep, calming breath and carefully corked a flask of red-and-orange Dust. Weiss paused, staring at the young girl set the flask on the table, Blake and Yang smiling down at her by her side.
"I-I did it…" Ruby whispered, appraising her work apprehensively.
"Good job Ruby! Dad'll be happy to hear his coffee table's not in danger anymore." Yang put on an amused smile, while Ruby's cheeks puffed up indignantly.
"I'd say it looks like A-material to me. Go show the professor." Blake ordered, a small smile on her face. Ruby bobbed her head and picked up the flask. She walked around the desk, keeping as calm as she could. Her head finally turned, her eyes meeting Weiss's, and she froze in place.
Ruby looked at Weiss, Weiss looked at Ruby, and Weiss suddenly lunged, pulling the flask out of Ruby's hands a split second before her aura flared around her entire body out of sheer apprehension of her partner's scorn. "I can seriously read you like a book." Weiss admonished, hand on her hip as Ruby flinched. "You look wretched! You need to keep your aura in check, you know!"
"I-I know…" Ruby shuffled in place as Weiss lifted the flask and stared at the Dust within. Ruby shrank, rubbing her palms together nervously and willing her Aura to sink back under her skin where it belonged as Weiss silently judged the mixture.
"... The striping is off by a centimeter, there's a dud layer at the very bottom, and there's a noticeable amount of unrefined particles at the top." Weiss popped the cork as Ruby tried to babble apologies and excuses. Weiss wafted the scent of the Dust to her nose, breathed deep, and let it out with a sigh. "... The components were correctly mixed, however, and I don't smell too much flavoring." She corked the flask again and handed it over to Ruby. "Shoddy, certainly not superior to a quality store brand, but usable. And it didn't explode, which is a plus." Ruby took the flask in hand, a stunned expression on her face at Weiss's words. "Let's turn it in."
Weiss followed Ruby to the front desk, where Peach took the flask and examined it in much the same way Weiss had. "Hmm, all in all, I'd say this is worth a pretty solid B." Ruby let out a sigh of relief, though Weiss let out a low growl of anger. Peach fought a smirk as Ruby squeaked and edged away from her partner, while Weiss tried to destroy the vial with nothing more than the focused hate of her glare. "However, there's still time before the end of class. If you think you can do better, you can give it anoth—"
Weiss was already dragging a squirming Ruby to the chemicals table, barking instructions for Ruby to watch and touch nothing. Professor Peach looked on with an amused smirk. The Grimm Girl and the Schnee… she had a feeling this semester would be talked about for a long time.
Then, somebody started screaming as Yang began juggling several vials of dust she'd gotten from pairs who had finished, and Peach scrambled over before Ruby became an only child.
"Are these armored?" Blake asked curiously, breaking Ruby from her trance by tapping the front of the oddly shaped desk with her toe.
The grimm studies classroom was a good bit larger than the others; their history classroom didn't have quite so much space between the teacher's desk and the tiered seats. More interestingly were the informative boards on the wall detailing the anatomies and basic information of common Grimm, and several Ruby had never heard of before.
A low 'twang' drew curious glances when Yang kicked the face of one of the bottom row desks, and a pained shiver ran through her as hopped back with a whimper. "Oooh… ow, ow… yeah, definitely armored. Ow."
"Should have put your aura on, doofus." Blake smiled, making Yang shoot her a pained grin.
"What, and wreck the whole class? I like to practice restraint, Blakey-pie." Yang winked, and gingerly settled her weight back onto her sore foot.
Just below the ceiling were about a dozen stuffed Grimm heads. Ruby knew they were fake instantly, and not just because Grimm didn't leave behind corpses. The black skin wasn't all-consuming enough, Grimm-hide did not reflect light, while the white was too smooth. Ruby knew the consistency by heart… their pitch black skin wouldn't glimmer and glow as if freshly polished, and the armor was like bone; smooth, for sure, but there was this pale, almost eerie quality to them, like they were ripped straight out of a human body.
"You? Restraint? Don't make me laugh, 'Yangey-pie…' Ick, it doesn't ring the same way." Blake crossed her arms in thought. "Your name is so hard to work with, it's just Yang." Blake huffed, making Yang scratch the back of her head, not sure how to respond. "I mean, Blake leaves so much open for changes at the end, but your name is like the perfect finisher by itself."
"Nuh uh!" Yang raised a finger, "Yang," another finger, "Xiao," and a third, "Long. Yang Xiao Long. It's a triple finish!" Yang wiggled her eyebrows. "It's super rad."
Blake hummed in agreement. "I'm pretty fond of Blake Belladonna. Repetitive sound, beautiful to hear out loud, really rolls off the tongue."
"Oooh, Ruby Rose is pretty good about that too! Weiss Schnee though…" Yang worked her chin as Weiss gave her a withering look, as if daring her to insult her name. "Not that it leaves much to be desired, but Yang Xiao Long has oomph, Blake Belladonna and Ruby Rose just flow, Weiss Schnee…" Yang trailed off, cocking her hip as she struggled for a way to articulate herself.
"Rich girl's name." Blake spoke up.
"T-totally." Ruby chirped as Yang snapped and nodded rapidly, patting Blake on the back for putting words to her thoughts.
"What?" Weiss asked disbelievingly.
"It's a rich girl's name. Vaguely foreign and old-timey, and Schnee's a world-renowned name. It's a rich girl's name." Blake shrugged.
"But what does that mean?" Weiss asked haughtily, hands on her hips.
Blake put on a small, clever grin. "Just that you're probably all up your own ass, stuck-up, a real 'do you know who I am?' sort of attitude…"
"Blake! Don't b-be mean!" Ruby scolded, nervously glancing between her teammates while Yang tried not to giggle.
Weiss jut her jaw out and breathed heavily through her nose. "That's not true! How dare you imply that! Do you know who I-" She stopped, blinked once, then quietly stared down at her hands like her entire life had suddenly been turned on its head.
"My point exactly." Blake chuckled.
Sighing and giving up on trying to stop her team from teasing one another, Ruby privately noted that Professor Port must have had a very good opinion of himself as she checked out the presumably gold bust he had next to his desk, but she glanced up as she felt a presence. Ren bowed his head politely, while Nora clung to his arm with a giddy look.
"Is your day going well so far, Ruby?" He asked in his ever-calm voice, examining her cheeks, mouth, and brow for signs of stress.
"S-sorta…" Ruby rubbed the back of her head, a tiny frown forming. She let out a strangled yelp as Nora suddenly crushed the younger girl to her. She was suddenly immensely grateful that JNPR had Dust Sciences at a different time than RWBY...
"Oh, you poor thing! Is it the history? Is it the science?! Is it all that writing?!" Nora held up a hand, her forefinger and thumb already a little red. She stuck her tongue out. "It's all so awful isn't it? We came here to kick butt, not take notes!"
"Y-yeah…" Ruby let out weakly as Nora cooed.
"Maybe later we could have a little study-date, just you and me, girlfriend…" Nora let out a suggestive purr, and Ruby was immediately scrambling to escape her grip. "We could compare notes…"
Ruby felt a sharp pinch to her bottom, and she rocketed out of Nora's arms. The redhead let out a maniacal laugh as Ren squeezed the bridge of his nose. Ruby looked from Nora, to Pyrrha, whom she was currently clinging to like a baby chimpanzee. Pyrrha blinked down at Ruby, their noses almost touching, and Ruby let go to drop onto her bottom like a rock with a pathetic 'ow.'
Rather than be annoyed, Pyrrha gave Ruby a comforting look. "We understand if this is difficult; getting into Beacon early may have left you unprepared you for all of the coursework. If you need any help, Ruby, I'm sure any of us would be glad to lend a hand."
"Yeah! Totally! We all totally understand what we're doing." Jaune puffed his chest up behind Pyrrha, his smile a little too wide, a little too thin. It wasn't like Ruby needed to know that all Jaune did was hand over Dust equipment like some sort of assistant to a car mechanic. "Aaaannnnd who knows, maybe you'll give us a few tips we missed!"
"I doubt it…" Ruby stood slowly, patting her skirt over her backside before Nora could comment. "But thanks. It's w-weird actually being in a school. Especially Beacon." Ruby turned to examine the finely decorated classroom, and let out a wistful sigh. "I still can't believe I m-made it."
Ren bobbed his head quietly. "Nora and I were only briefly schooled before Beacon. We took part in an open-house program for young hunters in order to ascertain some credentials for our manuscripts. Considering its volunteer nature, it was significantly less elaborate or well-maintained."
"Ren and I hunted better lunches than the ones they made for us." Nora grimaced. Ren let out a small, fond sigh, as if relishing the memory.
Ruby nodded, smiling quietly. Jaune, Nora, and Ren began to make their way to their randomly chosen seats, and Ruby turned to join her team when a small 'ahem' caught her attention. She looked up to Pyrrha, and the much taller girl wore a polite, but shy smile. "So it is true, you're fifteen, not seventeen?" Pyrrha asked, hands behind her back.
"Uh huh… c-came in two years early, 'cuz… why not?" Ruby shrugged her shoulders shyly. Pyrrha was a nice girl, but far too good-looking for a conversation's sake. Ruby wondered if the man who designed the Beacon school uniforms liked legs as much as she did, and boy those stockings did not help... She glanced over at her team, noting Weiss's and Blake's bare legs with a blush, but then subtly eyed her sister's shorter stockings. Why couldn't Pyrrha choose a pair that short…? Didn't everybody know that the little flash of thigh was the sexiest thing in the world? "It's really nothing…"
"Oh, but it means quite a bit! Having the skill to keep up with hunters even a year older than you is impressive at this age." Pyrrha tilted her head as she examined Ruby, and it took Ruby a second to pull her eyes up to Pyrrha's face. Pyrrha pretended to not notice. "And with a scythe as well!"
Ruby let out a shy giggle. "Th-that was my uncle's doing, actually, I was super garbage before he helped me. Well, him, m-my dad, my sister, my whole family pitched in to train me, but my uncle taught me how to use a scythe." She mimed spinning the blade around her, and Pyrrha took note of the precise angles and positions of her fingers while she did. It was common for young hunters to shadow their weapon movements, but Pyrrha found herself intrigued by how much of her body Ruby used.
"Ahem…" Pyrrha shifted in place, looking noticeably embarrassed before she seemed to find a comfortable stance. "You… think we could spar some time soon?" Pyrrha asked with the tiniest and most hopeful smile. "I love seeing new weapons and fighting styles, I followed the MRT for years, and I've only seen maybe a handful of hunters bring a scythe into the tournament, with… poor showings, usually."
Ruby gave her a small, sad smile. "I don't think I'll be much help there. I've trained all my life to fight Grimm, not other h-hunters. Well, I've f-fought other hunters but, y'know, super garbage…"
"Still, I'm curious! I mean, you use a great scythe model, correct?" Pyrrha asked, speaking with a rise of excitement in her voice as Ruby bobbed her head.
"Designed after the 1st Mistral Death Legion, in 089!" Ruby's smile turned pleased once again. "The first military division to deploy the great scythe en masse! Th-they also created the official mold for great scythes in the future. They were designed to have far greater killing power than the war scythes used by Vale during the Color Wars."
"But with poor results if I remember correctly; the intimidation factor did not outweigh the skill of the user."
"Yeah, the scythe-user was natural prey to the sword-users of the Zengrove Blade Division, b-b-but there's a trick!" Ruby said, suddenly taking on a firm look, holding her hands out.
"A trick?" Pyrrha asked with raised, curious eyebrows.
"Yeah! See, it's in the pinkie finger, you g-gotta know how to move it just right to let the scythe spin as you extend or shorten your grip on it!" Ruby held an arm out, all her fingers stretched to their full length. "Y-you have to wear smooth materials on your lower arms so you can keep momentum, giving your hand enough time to-"
"Hello future hunters and huntresses of Beacon!" A jolly voice boomed from the door.
"Oooh, show me later?!" Pyrrha asked in a loud whisper. Ruby shot a quick thumbs up, and both girls raced to their seats.
Professor Port all but strutted in with a large musket, holding his chest out to try and shadow his rounded belly, his shoulders squared and thick arms moving with a purposeful strut. He beamed at the class through what seemed to be closed eyes, while notebooks flew open and pencils pressed to blank pages.
He tossed his blunderbuss over his shoulder with practiced ease, ensuring the axe blades didn't come close to brushing flesh or whisker, and he threw a finger out, pointing at the students indiscriminately. "Just yesterday, each and every single one of you proved something irrefutable: that you are hunters! Slayers of Grimm, killers of monsters, banishers of demons, truer warriors that the world has yet to see!" His blunder-axe was swung into his waiting hand, thick fingers affectionately squeezing the barrel. "There is no profession that is more noble, more heroic, more harrowing than Grimm hunting, for we are not fighting mere beasts, nor humans of questionable alignment, we are fighting creatures of darkness! From the youngest Beowolf to the most ancient Nevermore, each of these beasts are defined by their thirst for human destruction! However, while they may have been great and powerful threats in the past, today, they are little more than our prey!"
His hand swung about, pointing to each and every single stuffed Grimm head on the wall. Any student worth their salt would know immediately they were all fakes, but there was still a sense of awe. It was true that there were hunters who embellished their records and claimed great fights; in fact, it was so common that the average layman was suspicious of any great claim without proof. The video age served a great purpose to hunters, as proof of their deeds out in the field were easy to capture and difficult to fake.
However, it was unlikely that a professor at Beacon's records would go uninvestigated, and each stuffed head had a plaque nearby with a name, a date, and an accolade assigned to them. Despite his age, it was clear the man had done plenty to earn his position as a professor of Grimm.
"I am Professor Port!" Their teacher went on, giving them all a whisker-raising smile. "That is, Professor Peter Port! I have been a hunter for over forty years, seen Grimm that dwarfed our largest battleships, and fought Grimm that, to this day, still have no name! I was the receiver of the Mistral Accolade of Great Deeds thrice, and there are still rumors of my work prowling the dunes of Vacuo! But today," he swept his hand out to the numerous black boards, full of detailed chalk drawings of the Grimm, "today, I am your educator on the Creatures of Grimm! I have been in the field studying their habits, captured them to study their anatomy and ferocity, and have slain enough to tell you where their weaknesses lie! If you have questions, I have answers! If you have doubts, I have encouragement! If you have fear, then you and you alone can banish it; from this moment on, exterminating the Grimm are your jobs, and those who fear it do not deserve it!"
He stuck his finger in the air, his blunder-axe over his shoulder in a cocksure manner, as if he was waiting for a round of applause. The classroom remained silent, other than one boy coughing near the back. Professor Port's bushy eyebrows wiggled in annoyance, and he put his weapon on its mount over the blackboard with a subdued grumble.
"Ahem! Anyways, prepare your notes!" Professor Port went to a closet and the class followed his movements as he opened the door and pulled out a life-sized, fake statue of an enormous Boarbatusk. He pulled it to the front of the class and grinned. "It was 512 when I arrived in Clearblue City, though at the time, it was little more than a handful of houses, a mine, and a twinkle of hope in the foreman's eye! It was one of my first missions, and certainly my most dangerous! For little did I know, their operation was being endangered by the Clearblue Killer, an eighty-year old Boarbatusk who could smell the fresh coal, and knew that where there was coal, there were humans!"
Weiss tapped at her notebook impatiently. Professor Port was much like her first Grimm Studies mentor: an old, out-of-his-prime hunter who loved to talk about his kills. She'd gleaned some nuggets of info from his ramblings, but the endless prattling about what he'd eaten for breakfast that day made her purse her lips and blow in annoyance.
"—of course, being a Grimm, it was not drawn to the scent of the pork, but the blood of a freshly butchered kill…"
She glanced to her left after making a note of the blood. Ruby was listening intently, and Weiss could almost imagine those… eyes wide with keen interest in the story. She was such a child… Weiss enjoyed stories and fairy tales, but not in a classroom. She had to focus on her goal, not be distracted by… these…
"That's really good." Weiss whispered, leaning closer to Blake. The black-haired girl flinched at her presence, but shook her head as she continued to copy the chalk-drawing of a Nevermore displayed behind Port. There were a few differences in Blake's version–namely, that it was missing a leg–but Weiss was impressed at how accurate it was.
"—should take note that Boarbatusks dig up roots, preferring to nest underneath trees and in dense groves of branches and vines—"
Weiss quickly jotted the information down.
On the other side of Blake, Yang was considering how to approach her own prey. "Love the headgear." She whispered to the girl sitting next to her. The dark-skinned girl blushed at Yang's lascivious smile, subconsciously adjusting her head cover.
"Thank you! My family made it for me after graduating. It's a traditional Vacuo shemagh, hand-woven from sheep's wool, inlaid with Auratic thread." She put on a proud expression that made Yang flutter her eyelids.
"Vacuo, huh? Tell me if I got this right: 'Unod yaj qin'racash, bonu daga yughraja?'" Yang asked in her best accent. Her smile grew with the girl's blush and raising eyebrows.
"That's… impressive, actually. I-I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name?" The girl asked, turning her body enough to better face Yang.
"Yang Xiao Long, sugar, but you can call me 'mama' if you're feeling brave." Yang winked. The girl tried to stifle a shy giggle, while her partner visibly pouted.
Professor Port's story continued; Weiss wrote diligently, Blake moved on to a sketch of a Deathstalker, while Ruby joyfully watched and listened to the Professor's story, squirming excitedly in her seat. Meanwhile, Yang got a scroll number.
"So!" Professor Port clasped his hands in front of his face with an excited quirk of his moustache. An awkward silence filled the room as the low murmur of conversation died, as if all the students had just remembered Port was still here. "Now that you have been properly inspired by my tale of heroic deeds, I want to move onto the practical part of our lesson!" Heads tilted curiously as their teacher marched to the far right side of the room. As with the other professors he hit a button on his desk, but rather than create a holoscreen, a portion of the wall opened, revealing three heavily reinforced cages.
"Grimm cages…" Ruby whispered under her breath, making Weiss narrow her eyes to try and inspect them from a distance. They weren't the same style as Atlas used, but they certainly looked durable enough to withstand the thrashing of smaller Grimm, despite the less elegant design. They had no openings other than a thin slit on the door for observers to stare at the captive Grimm through, keeping their prisoners isolated from any possible human contact.
Other than the viewing slat, there were no air holes or a place to slide in food or drink. Adding to the Grimm's generally unnerving nature was their lack of dependence on basic needs that other species couldn't live without. Grimm could be buried alive for hundreds of years without air, food, or water, and come out stronger due to age. Several older Grimm had been observed eating meat, but never in a way that implied hunger; they never ate old, preserved, or cooked meat, only fresh, raw meat. They targeted bone marrow, the liver, the stomach, and the fattier parts of their kill, they ate solely for taste, for pleasure. Some ancient Grimm had discovered that eating people inspired fear and revulsion in other sentient races, and made a game of eating their victims alive, or where they could be seen.
Ruby remembered Jaune recounting her nearly being swallowed by the Nevermore. The goal of the Nevermore hadn't been to taste her or fill its belly, it wanted her to awaken trapped inside of a pitch black prison. Without stomach acids, she either would have died of fright, shock, or starvation, and the Nevermore would have thrived all the while on her fear, pain, and hopelessness…
The thought made her skin crawl, and as her fright and paranoia rose, so did the clicking of teeth in the back of her skull. She lifted her boot as a thin, meek claw dug into her sole, and she stomped her shadow once in fury, banishing her terror.
"I will be taking volunteers!" Professor Port announced, one finger high in the air. "Based on my story and knowledge of Boarbatusks from your prior classes, I want at least three people to demonstrate their understanding of how to counter a much more significant threat than the average Beowolf!"
Weiss's hand shot up immediately and stared down her professor intently. It was her time to show Beacon that she was a huntress. Professor Port looked along the dozen or so hands that shot up while Blake nudged the lounging Yang. "Isn't this your schtick? Show off? Get a little action?"
"Blake, I got my action." Yang held up a slip of paper with a grin. "Besides, what sorta fun is there in a controlled room? I'd rather go into the woods and find my own pig to punch." Blake simply shook her head at Yang's laziness.
Professor Port finally settled on one volunteer: "Cardin Winchester! You're the first up to bat." Heads turned as a tall, handsomely built boy with a weasley smile made his way down from the top row of seats with a swagger in his hips. Blake barely paid attention to the human boy, but noted Yang couldn't seem to tear her eyes off of him. Blake was about to poke fun, but Yang's small, tight frown made Blake reconsider.
"First at bat, that sounds 'bout right." Cardin said in a tone that oozed self-confidence as Professor Port punched in a code into a keypad on the wall. The wall next to it opened up to reveal empty space, but within a minute a student locker filled in the closet-sized opening. The locker opened, and Cardin pulled out a mace with an unusual head.
He laid it across one shoulder as Professor Port unmounted his blunder-axe and walked to the first cage. Cardin stood at the other end of the room, and small barriers shot up from the floor, closing off the stairs from the demonstration floor. "Are you ready?" Professor Port asked, hand hovering over the release button.
"Born ready, teach!" Cardin hefted his mace with both hands.
"Then in three, two, one…!" Port slapped the button and stood out of the way. The door flew open, and out stepped a dog-sized Grimm. Hog shaped, with thick, bony plates across its squat, rotund body, and enormous, hooked tusks, the Boarbatusk's red eyes took on an intense glow as it spotted Cardin.
The class felt a brief, silent moment of worry as the beast let out a distorted, piggish squeal, and charged far faster than its fat little body suggested it could, its head lowered, the tips of its sharpened tusks ready to dig into the back of the leg, or under an arm, but Cardin didn't care.
His mace swung down and around like a golfclub, cracking the Boarbatusk in the face while he slid his thumb over a button on the handle, igniting the red Dust gem embedded amidst the flanges, and an explosion-powered downswing sent the Boarbatusk skidding across the ground on its side, crying and roaring in pain as its small legs thrashed.
"Risky, but a good show!" Professor Port called. Ruby bridged her fingers in front of her face as she watched, her lips pinched together as she silently took in another hunter's approach to combat.
"Too risky, he left himself open to getting gored if he'd missed." Weiss murmured, causing Blake to nod.
"He should have dodged first." Blake responded.
"That's just how he is." Yang grunted, crossing her arms over her chest as her lavender eyes briefly took on a crimson hue, earning a small look from Blake but no more than that.
Cardin's heel crushed the Boarbatusk's neck into the floor while he brought his mace back with a cold grin. A repulsive cough escaped the pig as Cardin slammed his mace into its belly, but as he reared back for another swing, the Boarbatusk's thrashing allowed it to slide back just enough to get it's chin under Cardin's foot to sink its flat, iron-hard teeth into his other ankle.
The muscular boy shouted in pain as he tried to kick his way free, but the Boarbatusk latched on and greedily gnawed at his foot while trying to get back onto its own legs, causing his amber-hued aura to flare to life. Boarbatusks didn't have sharp teeth, but having your flesh and bone ground together between two dull, square presses hurt fiercely, and even with his aura Cardin was discovering this for himself.
"Don't panic!" Port warned in a rumbling tone of authority that, briefly, distracted Ruby with how different it sounded from his long-winded bravado.
Cardin's hand shot out, grabbing the hog's tusk while driving his foot harder into its neck, wrenching its mouth open enough for him to slide his foot out of its jaws. The Grimm took the chance to shake Cardin off its body, sending him back a step as it scrambled to its hooves. With a sudden leap, it curled its body like a ball, building so much speed in that instant that, when it hit the floor, the room was filled with the sound of bone grinding against stone. It launched forward with enough speed to cannonball its way through a house, and Cardin leaned forward, arms crossed in front of his face as it jumped up towards his torso.
Cardin merely lurched back a step, gritting his teeth and snarling as the Boarbatusk tried to bowl him over, but Cardin held out until it stopped spinning. The Grimm gave him what may have been a confused look as it uncurled in the air, but then Cardin's hands grabbed its tusks. He threw the Boarbatusk over his head as hard as he could, grabbed his mace as he spun, and charged like a mad warrior, roaring his triumph as he swung, crushing the Grimm between his mace and the wall.
There was a distinct crack of the Grimm's bony plating, one final peep of distress from the pig, and then it fell with a pathetic whine. It hit the floor, and began to disperse into a black mist.
Cardin ran his thumb across his throat with an empowered grin, and Professor Port and most of the class clapped in a polite, appreciative applause. "Well done, Mr. Winchester! A little sloppy, but nothing some good old-fashioned experience won't fix! Take a seat, you and your partner will be earning some bonus points."
Cardin returned his mace to the locker and threw his arms into the air like a returning champion. He settled back into his seat, where he and his team held a short, excited celebration of his strength and skill. Yang made a low, rude noise that made Blake's eyebrow rise.
"Next volunteer?" Professor Port asked. More hands raised, obviously excited at the prospect of bonus points for killing Grimm. Weiss's was raised as high and straight as she could manage, her brow twitching quietly every second the teacher looked above or next to her. She was still the only volunteer from team RWBY. "Hmm, I see lots of you are excited to try your hand, but I think I'll call…" He looked to the left… "Upon…" To the right. Weiss stretched her spine, sweat beginning to bead from stress. "Weiss Schnee!"
It took a moment for her to realize she had been chosen. Her teammates looked to her as Weiss stood up, and a low, curious murmur went through the rest of the class. Weiss didn't look to them as she walked down to the floor, mentally preparing herself. She took a deep breath as Cardin's locker was replaced by hers, and she took Myrtenaster in her hand with confidence.
She moved to the opposite end of the room and slid her left foot forward, relaxed her limbs, cleared her head, and recalled her sister's advice: defend and counterattack, watch for openings, capitalize on mistakes.
"Y-you got this Weiss!" A small, meek voice rose above the storm of thoughts and strategy in her head. She looked to Ruby as the girl watched her with an apprehensive, though confident smile. "Go f-for its belly!" Ruby called.
A flash of irritation went through Weiss's body at the sound of her voice, a small 'how dare she' briefly muddying her thoughts. Did Ruby assume that she had never taken a Grimm class before? She shook the annoyance out of her head, "I know, Ruby." Weiss said firmly, her eyes focused on the cage ahead of her as Professor Port raised his hand and settled it over the button.
"You only have a s-s-second to react when it charges!"
"I know, Ruby!"
"Watch its tusks!"
"I know, Rub-"
"Aaaaaaaannnnnd go!" Professor Port slapped the button.
The cage opened, and Weiss tensed as she realised the chance to focus herself was lost. The Boarbatusk inside, having heard the commotion of the earlier battle, was ready for its release, and instantly barreled out with a wild scream. Weiss slid forward, the tips of her shoes barely touching the ground as she raced forward to meet it in an Aura-enabled slide. She stared between its eyes and nose, at the thin, dark space where she could jab into its skull, and she lunged.
A perfect straight, but the Boarbatusk turned its head, allowing Myrtenaster's thin blade to scrape against its bony face mask.
"You got this Weiss!" Yang called confidently as Weiss backpedaled, away from its swiping tusks. Her eyes darted across it's body… short, stocky and strong, a frontal assault wouldn't work for her like it had Cardin. She had only a fragment of his raw strength, she'd never overpower the beast directly. She needed to get around it, find a soft spot for her rapier to plunge in and end this instantly.
"Do it for t-team RWBY!" Ruby encouraged next. Weiss slid around to the boar's left flank as it missed a lunge, and she jabbed at its haunch twice before it suddenly turned and grabbed her sword's blade between its teeth. "Don't l-lock your wrist!" Ruby suddenly shouted. Weiss blinked, her wrist firm—too firm!—and Myrtenaster slid out of her grip as the boar tossed her weapon aside and charged to try and run her down.
Weiss lept backwards but the Boarbatusk's armored skull crashed into her chest, making her yelp as her white aura pulsated from absorbing the blow. She slid back a few feet, only barely keeping upright as her knees wobbled, and looked up to find the Boarbatusk still charging her while gnashing its teeth in desperation for a kill.
"Weiss!" Ruby's voice rang out as Weiss rolled to the side of the boar's charge. "Five o'clock!" Five o'clock?! Weiss stared at the boar, briefly puzzled, before a realization hit. She leapt backwards, slightly to the right, and grabbed ahold of Myrtenaster's handle in a smooth motion. "Left!" Ruby cried.
Weiss dipped forward, rolling out of the way as the charging Grimm barrelled in from her left. Weiss shot a harsh look at Ruby, silently begging her to stop helping. She had to do this on her own, she had to be self-reliant, leaders inspire by setting an example, they didn't-
"Eyes forward!" Ruby shouted. Weiss turned to look in time to see a spinning ball of sharp, angry Grimm gunning for her legs. With a sudden, panicked impulse, Weiss threw her hands out and a white glyph formed in front of her, causing the pig to slam into it as if it were a steel wall. With a pained squeak, the Boarbatusk fell onto its back, sliding away. "Now Weiss! Its belly!" Ruby pointed, and Weiss grit her teeth.
She almost wanted to ignore her out of spite, but that was not why she was here. She leapt into the air, feet connecting with a spinning black glyph she conjured with little more than a thought and a short spin of her weapon's dust chamber, and she was launched faster than the Boarbatusk's spinning charge to plant Myrtenaster up its belly, through its chest, and out its mouth as it died squirming, screaming. Weiss scowled at the beast and pulled her sword free, flicking it to slosh off black ichor and staring at the fallen creature until she was sure it had begun disintegrating.
Weiss panted quietly to herself. That should not have been hard… and it wasn't hard, so why was she so tense? She stood, sheathing Myrtenaster and staring at the boar's dissolving corpse in silent displeasure, ignoring the warm applause from her classmates. She had done exactly as Ruby had told her to the entire match, and it bothered her immensely.
She had stepped into the ring to prove herself, to show her intelligence, her strength, not follow the orders of some squeaking hick who couldn't piece together how to use a computer keyboard or refine some basic Dust.
She returned to her seat amidst the applause, and shot Ruby a glare, making the girl freeze. "Do you really think I can't handle myself?" Weiss asked in a low, venomous whisper.
"E-eh? Wh-wha- no! I m-mean, yes, y-you can handle yourself!" Ruby whispered back, a tremor in her voice as Weiss fixated on her furiously.
"Then why are you telling me what to do?! I don't need your help against such a trash opponent!" Weiss hissed, making Ruby recoil, her moment of pride in her teammate turning sour and cold. "Having you bark orders at me doesn't help!"
"B-but… we're partners, a-and I-I'm your le-leader so I sh-should-"
"I never asked for you to be my leader." Weiss grunted. She turned away as Ruby's hands fell to her lap. The younger girl stared down at her knees quietly, her lips tense as Weiss dismissed any pity she had. If her supposed team leader couldn't trust in her abilities…
"Ruby Rose!" Professor Port called. Ruby and Weiss both looked up to see him looking to Ruby with a confident grin. "You seem to have an eye and mind for this!" Ruby gulped loudly as he gestured to the remaining cage. "Why don't you come show the class how you'd do it?"
"I-I didn't have my hand up…" Ruby responded softly, trying to speak through the breaks in her voice.
"And that's perfectly fine! I'm curious to see how our youngest entrant this year handles herself! Please, come on down." Professor Port motioned for her to join him.
Ruby shot Weiss one more look, as if begging for help, but Weiss said nothing, turning her head away with a snooty 'humph!' Ruby slowly, shakily stood up and walked down to the floor, another murmur going through the crowd. There had been plenty of rumors of a younger-than-normal student in Beacon, which, while not totally rare, was still unusual enough to warrant some curious chatting.
Ruby oh-so-carefully cradled Crescent Rose in her arms for comfort as soon as she could hug her darling, frowning to herself. She wasn't entirely sure why this leader business was pushed onto her lap, and she certainly hadn't earned it. Maybe she shouldn't have kept her mouth shut, there was still time to go ask the headmaster to reconsider his choice…
An excited ripple ran through the crowd as she went to the other end of the room when Crescent Rose expanded and locked into its full scythe form. Unbeknownst to Ruby, Pyrrha was leaning in and watching Ruby's movements carefully.
The young student scuffed her shoe along the ground then settled into her battle stance with a weary sigh. She really was proving to be a weight around Weiss's ankle today… maybe this was a mistake. She couldn't possibly prove herself to Weiss now. Not after failing to know… anything relevant to their classes and annoying her.
She just wanted to help…
"Three…" Port's voice seemed slow in her mind as she glanced up, her body loose and relaxed. Well, she'd get through this and go have lunch after. Maybe things would clear up. "Two…" Blake and Yang seemed excited to have her as a leader, as much as she didn't deserve it… "One!..."
"You got this Ruby!" Yang called excitedly as Ruby just stared forward, only half-paying attention. Weiss turned her head to watch with an annoyed stare, half-hoping Ruby struggled as hard as she did.
The door flew open, and the Boarbatusk raced out, already speeding across the floor like a runaway wheel. Weiss's eyes widened. It was opening up with that attack, and Ruby barely looked ready… She opened her mouth to shout when Ruby swung.
A single step forward, and Crescent Rose sliced the floor beneath the Boarbatusk, the force of the blow sending the pig skyward with an abnormally loud 'pop', the beast uncurling in surprise and exposing its belly. Crescent Rose spun around Ruby's body, the morbid sound of the slicing scythe blade following her as she continued her stride past the airborne Grimm. A single shot fired as Crescent Rose cut through the boar's midsection so quickly that the beast could only give a quizzical oink.
Ruby set Crescent Rose's head on the ground and leaned against the pole with a sigh. Maybe some chocolates…? Weiss probably liked chocolate. Who didn't like chocolate? Ruby groaned to herself… She would have to study extra hard to prove she could be a good teammate.
Two halves of the pig Grimm fell to the ground with a crash, both swiftly turning into small banks of rolling black fog as Ruby whimpered unhappily to herself about letting her partner down.
The whole class silently stared as Ruby shuffled over to her locker and put Crescent Rose back into place, Professor Port's eyes opening enough to be visible under his bushy brows. "... Three seconds; I'd call that an A-plus kill!" He announced, and the classroom broke out into staggered, surprised applause.
Ruby blinked behind her goggles, confusion replacing depression as her sister happily whooped. She blushed the tiniest bit, her stride becoming a little more self-assured. Blake's eyes were wide as she watched her team leader return to her seat with an impressed smile. "Well done, Ruby! You made that look effortless!"
"Oh, well, i-it's pretty easy…" Ruby shrugged her shoulders. "I w-wouldn't call it 'effortless;' i-it took me a few months to get that right."
Effortless… Between Ruby and Blake, Weiss continued to stare at the spot where the Boarbatusk was fading. Ruby hadn't so much as exerted herself killing the Boarbatusk. In two motions. She had no clue how to use a computer, she blew up her Dust, but against the Grimm, against their actual opponent, Ruby had been as distracted and stressed as if she'd been putting up laundry…
Weiss felt a cold, nervous sweat form on the back of her neck as she cradled her forehead between two fingers. Her own fight with the Boarbatusk hadn't been difficult, but she'd made mistakes, she had to prep herself, she had to expend Dust, and she had taken damage. Even Cardin had to struggle a little.
Ruby had made the exact same challenge… effortless.
Weiss suddenly stood, her teeth grinding. Ruby reached out to her, calling her name, but Weiss didn't hear her or respond as she ran out of class. She needed to cool off, get a drink, evaluate… she had been shown up by a fifteen year-old girl, who was a complete and total ditz…
First the Emerald Forest test, now here?... How was it that Ruby managed to keep showing her up?! Weiss marched down the hallway, away from her team, away from her headache...
"Miss Schnee?"
Weiss froze at the voice. She was fully intent on heading straight to a water fountain and a chair to try and clear her head, but Professor Port's voice was more important; her was a teacher, she couldn't just ignore him.
She stopped, already halfway down the hall to the next corridor, and stared down at her feet. "I'm fine professor." She spoke up through grit teeth. "I just need a drink."
"You certainly sound like you need a drink, but I'm afraid we don't serve the right kind here at Beacon." Weiss heard Professor Port's footsteps as he walked down the hallway to her. He stopped a few feet behind her, and she chanced a look: his expression was not jovial nor energetic, but one of concern and thoughtfulness. He looked at her with small brown eyes as he laced his fingers together behind his back. "What troubles you, Weiss?"
"… It's not important. Just… personal stuff." Weiss sighed. Her eyes traced a pattern in the carpeted hallway to try and stop herself from replaying that moment in her mind again and again, Ruby's almost leisurely walk forward as she cleaved the Boarbatusk in two, as if it had been little more than a piece of paper floating in the wind.
"Hmm. Miss Schnee, please follow me." Professor Port ordered. Weiss glanced up as her professor walked past her. She hesitantly stepped in line behind him and followed the stocky hunter down the hall. They walked for a few minutes, taking Weiss up the stairs and to the roof.
A guardrail encircled the rooftop, which Weiss hoped was there strictly for security, and not for more… fatal implications. The sun was high in the sky, and it wasn't even noon, yet the warmth of the air hit her hard enough to make her wince. She was so used to the chilly winds of Atlas that Vale's spring mornings still shook her awake better than any coffee cup. The quick change from the air conditioned interior to the morning, spring heat of the outside interrupted her tumultuous feelings, allowing her a moment of thought.
Professor Port walked to the edge of the balcony and looked over the gym yard, his back to Weiss. The heiress examined her teacher with a small frown, and slowly walked to his side to stare over the fields of green. She sighed, feeling as though she was deflating now that she left the stressful hallways behind. "Professor Port?" She asked in a gentle voice. "Against that Boarbatusk, I did well, right? I mean, I killed it, I didn't get that hurt, right?"
Professor Port watched the trees sway in the distance, and answered without looking her way. "You allowed it to disarm you, despite being to its side." He spoke slowly, calmly. "Boarbatusks have limited weapons. From the front, they are nigh invincible, yet despite maneuvering around it effectively, you lost your focus, you let it take your weapon which opened you up for an attack." Professor Port looked to her with an even expression. "You didn't do badly, Weiss, but it was sloppy. Very sloppy."
Weiss grit her teeth, her heart feeling heavier. "I wouldn't have been so out of sorts if Ruby wasn't shouting at me the whole time." She said through a firm, angry jaw. Her fists trembled, her vision going watery as her emotions welled up in her.
"Are you so sure?" Port asked her, drumming the guardrail in quiet thought. "I thought her advice was well-articulated and pivotal. With it, you retrieved your weapon and avoided a second attack. Ruby seemed to make quite the difference in your fight."
"She did not!" Weiss suddenly seethed, chewing her lip in anger. "I don't need her!"
"Of course you don't, but would you have done nearly as well without her?" Professor Port asked with a questioning raise of his eyebrow.
"We'll know next time." Weiss said firmly, and Professor Port quietly shook his head. "What?!"
"Next time, she'll be there too. And the time after that, and the time after that. She's your partner, your team; you, Ruby, miss Belladonna, and miss Xiao Long will be there to watch each other during each fight. That's what a team is, that's what a team does."
"I know that." Weiss muttered.
"Then what's troubling you, Weiss? What's really troubling you? Do you not want to work as a team?" Port asked.
"N-no, it's not that! I want to work as a team…"
"Do you not want Ruby's help whenever you fight?"
"No! I-I'm usually fine with her help, but…"
"Then what, Weiss?" Professor Port pressed on, staring her in the eye as the young huntress made a tight fist and slumped against the guardrail.
It took about a minute of hemming and hawing for Weiss to finally screech, "Who the hell is she?" Weiss grit her teeth, eyes squeezed shut. "I spent all day today teaching her how to use a computer, teaching her how to make Dust, she's barely competent at the most basic hunter skills! She's a babbling, nervous, awkward mess who needs her hand held whenever she's mixing ingredients and typing words; she's an overly nervous little pervert who acts like every dumb fifteen-year-old girl but with a heap of social issues, and then, out of nowhere, she saves my life!" Weiss gasped, taking a deep breath of calming air as her emotions threatened to spill out of her closed eyes. "She saves my life, she comes up with the plan to kill the Nevermore, and she gets made the team leader. Then when it's finally my time to prove I can fight, I'm doing everything she says, and then she kills her Grimm before I can even finish blinking!" Weiss slammed her fist onto the wooden guardrail, taking deep, loud breaths. "I have to babysit her through the most simple, basic tasks, but whenever it's time to do some real hunting, to prove myself, there she is! She walks away like it was no big deal, that saving me was just a normal, simple thing, that making me look sluggish and untalented was just a matter of flicking her wrist! I am Weiss Schnee! Why am I being showed up by some incompetent, annoying, little fool?!"
"Precisely because you are Weiss Schnee." Was the immediate answer. Weiss turned to give Professor Port a wild-eyed, watery look, her anger etched into every line on her face as he stood there, calm and collected, as if the girl in front of him wasn't contemplating gutting him. "I am making some assumptions here, so please tell me if I'm wrong: all your life, you have been incredibly important. You had the weight of the world placed on your shoulders by family and supporters, told that one day you'll surpass every hunter and Schnee to have lived. You've been given the best trainers in everything specifically for this purpose." His eyes opened, waiting for her to say otherwise, but Weiss could only work her trembling jaw as she found herself at a loss. Knowing he had succeeded, Professor Port turned to face the forest again before he continued, "Nicholas Schnee was around my age when I first met him. I was but a young man, having only recently graduated and found a job with a group of contract hunters. My team was hired to help scout and escort Schnee Dust miners to a prospective mine, and among them was good ol' Nick."
Weiss's lip trembled as Professor Port looked out over the yard below, his face gentle and neutral. She wiped her hands on her pleated skirt before covering her mouth with them, hiding her weakness."You met my grandfather?" her voice was distressingly small and weak, and she swallowed in shame of it.
"I fought your grandfather." Port nodded slowly, making Weiss's jaw drop in offense, but before she could demand to know what crimes he'd committed to earn her grandfather's ire, Professor Port went on, "He challenged each of us to a one-touch duel before we set out, and I was among the four people in our thirteen-person company to best him. He was a powerful, incredible opponent, he was a proud and boastful man, but when I chanced a blow that put him on his backside, he laughed and shook my hand. When my commander took a look at his plans and demanded a redraw of the map, Nicholas Schnee listened. When a miner corrected the way Nick swung his pickaxe to avoid overexerting himself, he paid attention. Your grandfather was a real man of the Earth. He had calluses thicker than anyone I'd ever seen, he came back to the camp covered in mud and Dust and smelling like a men's locker room, he arm-wrestled anyone and everyone, he read books heavier than my weapon, he played chess with my company's chief strategist and won as much as he lost…" Professor Port trailed off into a low sigh, smiling at the memory of his old days of hunting. "On top of all of that, he was a teacher. He could grow exasperated and tired, but he always remained calm as he explained things. His lessons were part of what helped me against the Clearblue Killer! If he hadn't set aside an hour and a half to help me install a Dust chamber in my axe, then set aside another two to teach me how to use it, you would have a very different Professor Peter Port in front of you." He chuckled and turned to face her more fully, inhaling to slip into another story when he took note of the sheer intensity of Weiss' focus on him. He remembered that stories about him were not what she was after, and cleared his throat. "My point is, he was smart, strong, rich, handsome, and a good teacher, but all of this was as an elderly gentleman. He still made mistakes to the day we said our goodbyes, but small ones. In order to become the mighty, powerful legend you knew him as, he had to make thousands of mistakes in his life, some small, some extraordinary. After all, in the end, he was but a man: foolish, fallible, and clumsy, and he wanted to make sure his workers and allies learned from his mistakes as well."
"Th-this makes no sense…" Weiss frowned deeply, momentarily stunned by the passionate story. "He was famous for being a brave, noble, and strong company leader. I've seen old newspapers about him from across Remnant! He has hundreds of articles on the Remnet! Why would nobody talk about having won a duel against him? Why would nobody talk about the times he lost?"
"Because his losses didn't matter." Professor Port shook his finger as her jaw snapped shut, and her arms crossed defensively. "What mattered was that he got stronger and won when it counted. The stories don't talk about the number of times he fell down, because his heart and his strength pushed him back to his feet too quickly for anyone to doubt his conviction. People remember a perfect man who inspired their own greatness… but he was far from it. He was a person, just like you, Weiss. Just like all of us."
Weiss worked her jaw slowly, casting her eyes downward, staring at the professor's feet, while squeezing her arms and hunkering her head lower on her shoulders. "I-I never said I was perfect…" She mumbled feebly, imagining a weathered old voice chiding her arrogance, and shivering at the stab of guilt it plunged into her heart.
"And nobody here expects you to be." Port said softly, giving Weiss a gentle, sympathetic look when she peeked up at him from under her lashes. "Back home in Atlas, you are expected to be perfect because of your lineage, but strength comes from learning, and you learn the most from your failures. Do you feel you have failed today?" Professor Port asked in a sympathetic tone, making Weiss's face tighten in thought.
"... Yes." She nodded, scratching at her upper-right arm nervously. "I failed to live up to my own standards. I failed to fight the Boarbatusk as efficiently as I should have… as I know I could have."
"A fair assessment, what I've seen on your transcripts and of your conflict during initiation confirms that you are capable of much more. So what will you do about it?"
"… Practice." Weiss nodded slowly, her heart calm. "I'll practice until I can kill one in my sleep." She faintly growled, and he nodded in approval of her simmering determination.
"And which student do you think, right now, knows best how to fight and kill Boarbatusks?"
Weiss stayed silent for a few seconds, and squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't ask Ruby… I-I have to overcome my limits by myself-" A loud 'smack' made her open her eyes. Professor Port lifted his hand off the handrail, the imprint of his palm still visible in the wood. His tone was like a distant storm, and she shrank back from his ire a step.
"Wrong. You are part of a team, Weiss. You can gain experience by listening to others, especially your partner who you will face danger with on a regular basis. Ruby Rose may seem foolish, awkward, and a far cry from a maiden of culture and refinement such as yourself, but she has proven she knows how to do at least one thing better than you can: kill a Boarbatusk."
"But… I-I can't take her seriously!" Weiss turned to face away from the man, trying to hide her shame and annoyance while avoiding his disapproving frown, "A team leader is supposed to be strong and knowledgeable, she's so preoccupied with her own nerves that she can't even handle Dust! How can you expect me to faithfully follow somebody like that?!"
"And, despite my age, I don't believe my eyes deceived me in how confidently and efficiently she had slain her opponent." Professor Port's eyebrows lifted, and Weiss felt an icy-cold anger slosh in her gut at his fond recollection of Ruby's success, "Even while distracted by your childish feud, she had such impeccable movements! A timely sweep and a powerful Aura pulse to throw her foe into the air, such a clean swing of her weapon, a perfectly timed shot to accelerate her weapon through flesh and bone at just the right angle, she takes after her aunt and uncle more than she realizes!" Port stroked his silvered whiskers thoughtfully, "Her talents as a huntress are exceptional; her talents as a student are, if your frustration and her shame are genuine, less so. I'll know for sure the next time Oobleck storms into the lounge to complain." He chuckled.
Weiss's mouth opened to offer some sort of rebuttal, but as her mind scrambled to find something to preserve her dignity, the rotten realization hit her: she was a fantastic student, well-learned in the building blocks of society's technological advancement, but at a school for hunters, where hunting was done by fighting, Ruby had her own advantages to lean on. If Weiss had only had more time to practice, but what would she have to have given up? She'd had college courses to attend and— she was making excuses for herself, there was nothing stopping her from a late-night, rebellious flight from her house into the woods with a hired hand for some legitimate practice.
"You are both exceptional at different things, Weiss. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort and work to be the best in multiple fields, and the best are often taught by the best." Port gave her a small, almost hidden smile, and Weiss let her gaze fall lower as she caught on. "Don't be intimidated, be emboldened; what an excellent partnership you two have! Imagine how things will be in four years when the two of you have grown and learned together! Imagine what you'll have learned from her, imagine what she'll have learned from you!" Though Weiss's face softened, she did not respond. Instead, she was plunged deep into her thoughts, that intelligent mind of hers whirring as it attempted to demystify the future possibilities he was presenting. Before she could finish, however, the ring of the bell made her lift her gaze to the rooftop exit, and Port chuckled softly, "Ah, the lunch bell! Grimm Studies is dismissed for the day, miss Schnee, you should take the opportunity to enjoy a warm meal… as well as use the recess that follows to set things straight between yourself and Ruby. It's best not to let bad blood brew." He watched her fidget, obviously wrestling with her own pride and stubborn nature, wondering if she would heed his advice. His chest swelled with a bit of pride in them both when she swallowed and nodded, setting her delicate shoulders once more.
"...Yes. Right… thank you, Professor." Weiss answered, her brow tightening in thought as, with a small wave, Port dismissed her. Weiss went downstairs, pondering on his words, pondering on what she'd seen and done in the past six hours… her day was already a chaotic mess, and it was barely noon. This was absurd, Beacon was a manic place full of manic people, and chief among them was her partner…
Her ego itched, wanting assurances that she was the best of the best… but Weiss knew her grandfather would have been better than that, so she had to be too. This was no time to make an ass of herself… okay, a bigger ass of herself.
She paled, realizing Yang might opt to toss her again. Port had been right, making amends suddenly seemed a tantalizing option...
Ruby carefully picked the pickles out of her burger, setting them aside on a distant corner of her tray. When she noticed Blake staring at them intently, she cracked a tiny smile and motioned for her to go ahead. The taller girl flashed a dazzling but brief grin before stealing them in a blur of motion. Ruby let out a weak snicker, then stared at her meal with a tiny sigh before taking a bite, letting the explosion of flavors briefly soothe her. However, one tiny detail was off… "Aww… they forgot my cheese." She whispered, peeling apart the layers once more just to double check.
"Go ask for some." Blake ordered, jabbing a fork into her salad. Ruby leaned over to look at the shredded cheddar on top of her meal… "... No, go get your own." Blake gave Ruby a defiant look as the younger girl wilted.
"I g-gave you my pickles!" Ruby whined. Blake shifted her tray father away from her leader.
"You weren't going to eat them. If you want some black olive for your burger, I'll pass those over right now." Blake held up a damp napkin. Ruby's entire face scrunched up unhappily.
"Ew… Pass."
"Okay, so, that makes it official: breakfast was great, but lunch blows. These chicken nuggets suck." Yang growled, pulling one apart to stare at the inner white meat, as if she could spot the flavor issue like a burned out dust valve in her bike. "They taste like that frozen crap you buy from a store."
"They p-probably are…" Ruby nibbled her burger with some melancholy.
"Lame. At least it's impossible to screw up ketchup." Yang dipped her chicken into the sugary sauce and ate with a smidge of annoyance. They ate, drank, and sat in silence. The lunch room around them was otherwise abuzz with chatter and activity, but Ruby, Blake, and Yang sat in a somber tiredness, weighed down by confusion, annoyance, and misery. None of them wanted to say it, but each knew why this discomfort had settled on them. Well, none of them except Yang. "... Damnit, this is gonna be hard." She huffed before flicking a nugget away as if it had insulted her father.
"Mm?" Blake looked up to Yang as she sipped at her milk.
"Like, what the hell was she even mad about? I mean, it's not like she's gonna fail..." Yang glanced at the empty seat by her side, while biting into a different nugget, this one drowned in ketchup. Blake rolled her eyes, then looked down at her lap as Ruby's shoulders sank and she put her half-eaten burger down. "What do we even say? I mean, we have to live with her, right? 'It's gonna be okay, Ruby's a fast learner, she'll be tapping out forty words per minute in no time? It's okay to be shown up in a fight by someone younger than you, we're all students here?'"
"I d-didn't mean to show off, I was just d-distracted a-and…" Ruby trailed off, but Blake snorted.
"If she's going to have a sour attitude over being shown up then why bother caring what she thinks?" Blake closed her eyes, trying to dismiss the niggling disappointment in the back of her mind, and the constant 'I told you so's.
"She's our teammate, like it or not." Yang puffed her chest up, staring down at her lunch tray as she tried to ignore the impulse to agree with Blake. She wanted to care… especially after actually getting something resembling a humble, human interaction out of her the day before. "We're a team, we have to care about each other. No one else is guaranteed to be out there with us."
"I didn't want to be the one to say this, but she's Weiss Schnee." Blake lifted her head up, both of her teammates sitting rigidly in their seats as she stared them down. "She's someone who spent her entire life with everything handed to her on a silver platter, you're honestly surprised she'd throw a hissy fit because somebody was better than her?" Blake's fork stilled in her hand after gently jabbing at a green leaf, while she considered the few… pleasant moments they had shared earlier in the morning, "She's a Schnee. They don't just magically become better people, you both seem like smart girls, you have to know about the crap they pull. She was raised in that, to be like that. The sooner we accept that she doesn't see us as equals, the easier it'll be to give up on her when she gives up on us."
The table fell into silent unhappiness, the food tasteless as they mechanically consumed it. For a while, Blake thought she had gotten the final word, that maybe she had talked some sense into them, but Ruby's single-worded response disproved her.
"... No." Blake looked at her with a small frown, hoping that her little leader wasn't delusional in thinking she could change a Schnee, but before she could ask for clarification or Ruby could elaborate, a small, subtle 'ahem' interrupted them. Weiss silently stood by the table with a large plate of chocolate chip cookies balanced on one hand, her eyes on Ruby and Ruby alone, her expression somewhere in the crossroads of shy, nervous, humiliated, and hopeful, a charmingly lost look if there ever was one.
Ruby, Blake, and Yang looked up to watch Weiss closely as she shifted uneasily under their scrutiny, took a deep breath through her nose, and finally spoke. "Ruby, can we talk privately?"
Ruby was caught off guard by the piercing blue vulnerability in her eyes. They quivered ever so slightly in… fright? Shame? Weiss wasn't happy, but she wasn't red-faced with anger or broken up by sadness. "I-... uh…"
"Hey," Yang piped up, drawing a semi-irritated twitch from Weiss's cheek, "Look, Weiss, just come sit down, alright? We're a team, so let's talk about this as a team, whatever you say to her, you can say to us." Yang's voice dropped an octave, just low enough to imply some protective distrust on Ruby's behalf, but Weiss shook her head.
"No. I can't." Weiss flexed her jaw in thought, idly musing at the way Blake watched her like she was planning a murder, "This is between Ruby and I, I'm her partner, I want to speak to her as such. I'm Sorry, but-"
"I-it's okay." Ruby stood, snagging a cookie off the plate, keeping her attention on Weiss as she took a slow, calm bite of the treat, "W-we can talk, I can h-handle it." Ruby nodded at Weiss, then gave Yang a stern look. Even with her eyes hidden, Yang knew that she was being silently ordered to not follow. She sighed and held up her hands in defeat, ignoring the sharp jerk of Blake's head as her partner began to glare at her from across the table.
"Good." Weiss gestured towards the cafeteria's exit and lead the way out, Ruby following her at a respectable distance as to not annoy her partner further. It was hard to get a read on Weiss from behind, even if she'd looked so… soft earlier, her posture and walk never once implied she was anything less than a powerful, confident princess. They were well down the hallway when they came across an unlocked set of double doors that Weiss poked her head into, then lead Ruby inside once she was sure it was unoccupied.
They had discovered Beacon's theater room judging by the numerous, descending rows of folding seats that were intercut by walkways, all forming a semi-circle that peered down on a large, wooden stage with a closed curtain. It was quiet, empty, and gave Ruby a spooky feeling like they were disturbing some sort of sacred temple in all of its foreboding majesty, but Weiss clearly did not share the sentiment as she walked all the way down the aisle to ascend the steps leading up to the stage, and Ruby hesitated for only a second as she followed.
She was still tightly knotted up with uncertainty and shame over Weiss's sudden flight from the room, and she was absolutely certain she was the cause of Weiss' previous and current distress. Joining Weiss in sitting at the edge of the stage, the cookie plate laid between them, she felt like the carpet below her hanging feet would open up to reveal a void that would suck her in. It would almost be a relief from the unbearable tension between herself and her partner, but it was not the void that opened up, it was Weiss' bag. Ruby blinked as a can was set next to her, and Weiss cracked open a second can in her hands, sipping at a grapefruit flavored soda as Ruby inspected the offered drink.
"Is that one okay?" Weiss asked gently, and Ruby popped the tab to sip at the canned sparkling lemonade. Her lips puckered and her nose scrunched up at the sour fizz, but the sweetness and citrus taste that followed relaxed her.
"F-fine."
"Good." Neither of the girls looked at each other as they stared out at the empty, dark seats, Ruby wondering what it would have been like if it had been packed with people to stare at her, while Weiss instinctively went through her last performance's setlist in her head. Ruby took a cookie, and so did Weiss, and they both chased their sodas down with a bite of chocolate-packed pastry. "I graduated from Atlas' College of Business and Engineering." Weiss suddenly said after she'd swallowed, not looking Ruby's way, even as Ruby looked at her.
"A-ACBE?" Ruby asked, getting a nod from Weiss, drawing a mystified frown from the younger girl. "I h-heard that place was really r-really good. Dad tried to convince Yang she could go there i-if she didn't want to become a Huntress." Ruby mumbled, unable to even picture how one went about being a student at such a prestigious college. She certainly couldn't picture Yang calmly working on a diagram, even if she was confident Yang had the intelligence to do so.
"The best Business college in Remnant, and I graduated top of my class with a degree in Dust application and manipulation, and a minor in business management." Weiss polished off a cookie and stared down at her drink, her ankles locked together as she let her eyes unfocus so her mind could sharpen, "Dust Daily, the magazine, declared me one of the up-and-coming leading experts in the field of Dust research, creation, and utilization. I've given pointers to Dr. Yun Xing when I was invited on a tour through his lab, and I still receive letters sometimes asking for my opinion on a complex issue."
"Th-that's amazing!" Ruby declared, her smile both genuine and forced. She knew Weiss was intelligent, but she couldn't help but wonder where this was all coming from. "A-and you're only t-two years older than me, y-you're already a singer a-and stuff, so—"
"I can count the number of times I have fought actual Grimm face to face on both hands." Weiss interrupted, her expression drooping a little bit as Ruby went silent, and rather than probe for more information, allowed Weiss to take her time and gather her thoughts. "That includes the Schnee clones my sister would summon for me. My training with tutors was deep, informative, we only hired the absolute best, but my actual field experience? Nil. I'm still… the Grimm still frighten me, and I know I think too much in the middle of a fight. I've seen videos of experienced hunters fighting Grimm, and I try to be like them, but it's so much different being the one standing there. I'm still so green fighting them, I thought I could overcome it and prove I wasn't lacking, but watching you kill that Boarbatusk…" Weiss squeezed her hand into a small fist, "It made me feel like I was an amateur fumbling with Myrtenaster in my first lesson again. I-... I was scared, and angry that you were so much better than me."
"But… y-you're great, you're here at Beacon—"
"And I'm great at the schoolwork, but actual combat? I was disarmed, nearly run down, and—"
"And you killed it." Ruby interrupted, making Weiss flinch. Ruby eyed a cookie between her fingers thoughtfully, and with a gulp, it was gone while Ruby nibbled her fingertip. Weiss looked away from her, sighing thickly, and a tad queasily.
"Because you helped me. If you hadn't called out, I would have stumbled around looking for my weapon, giving that Grimm enough time to attack again."
"S-so?" Ruby asked with a small frown, and Weiss's brow squint in annoyance, "I-it was one mistake, we all make 'em, and you won. It shouldn't matter that you h-had my help, 'cuz next time you'll do better. I-... I mean, I couldn't have b-beaten that Nevermore by myself, y-you and the others helped me."
"Well, yes, we did." Weiss sipped at her drink to think, giving Ruby an opening to continue.
"A-and we're hunters, we're supposed to—"
"I know." Weiss interrupted stubbornly, having to quickly wipe some escaping soda off the bottom of her lip in her haste to cut Ruby short.
"So—"
"No, stop it." Weiss ordered, looking more crestfallen as Ruby silenced, her expression matching her partner's while Weiss's cheeks turned red, her jaw rolled, and a quivering breath escaped her. "I wanted to be team leader." She finally said, her heart and throat tightening as she realized she was about to open herself up, she was about to render herself vulnerable, open to derision and mockery when she needed it the least, just as she was so used to back home. "I wanted to be the one making decisions, I wanted to lead everyone, I'm Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, I'm supposed to lead, but I got passed up by a fifteen year-old girl who can't use a computer," Ruby winced, wilting, "or mix Dust," Ruby tightened up further as Weiss went on, "but when the chips were down and we both had our foe in our sights, you acted like the huntress we're both trying to be. I'm still just a student who needs to master the basics while you deserve to be out in the field helping a seasoned Hunter save lives." Ruby turned rigid, looking back at Weiss as the heiress closed her eyes and spoke in a small voice muffled by her can. "I deserve to be in some nice office, theorizing on the properties of a new Dust compound, safe and ignorant to the danger the Grimm pose…" Weiss lifted her eyes to meet Ruby's through her goggles, and with an embarrassed expression, exclaimed, "but I don't want to be!"
"Why?" Ruby's questioning response was not one of challenge or ignorance, but sincere curiosity at the sort of person Weiss was.
It was not an easy question to answer, since there were a million ways to articulate it, but Weiss dug deep and brought out the most vulnerable piece of her heart: her hopes, her dreams, the fragile pieces of her conscience that would not thrive out in the open in congress with her family or her Atlesian peers. Weiss's answer was a selfish one, so simple it was pitiful, yet so broad it was awe-inspiring, and she spoke it with enough confidence to mean it: "I want my grandfather to be proud of me."
"Nicholas Schnee?" Ruby probed gently, and Weiss bobbed her head, her braid shaking with the motion.
"Everybody talks about how amazing my grandfather was. They'd have you believe he was the strongest, smartest, kindest man alive. He was incredible," Weiss' expression broke into a smile, and Ruby immediately understood, "to have this legendary man in your life, killing Grimm, leading a company, bringing hope and peace and prosperity to humanity! And-and he would bring me sweets, and play tag with me, and he could make Winter smile; he'd tell me stories about growing up dirt-poor, and how much he struggled to get his first loan, but he always accomplished his mission! He was a planner, a fighter, a thinker, one of the most inspiring men alive!"
"'Though I have raised a bratty little girl, she shows the same fire in her eyes that I had when I was her age.'" Ruby quoted, and Weiss's eyes watered up, her lips tightening.
"'She has not followed in my footsteps, and I am glad. I want my flesh and blood to live happy and carefree in this cruel world. Every kick I feel from her belly is like another beat of my heart; I've lived long enough to see us grow greater still, and I am happy.'" Weiss squeezed her fingers together, and Ruby hid a small smile. The former Schnee patriarch was a well-spoken man, both in person and in text, and rather than recount the numerous tales of his rise to greatness, Nicholas Schnee used his autobiography as a chance to muse on his family and mankind. "I want to make the Schnee Dust Company great again, I want to pursue that dream of making our people fearless and happy. I want to provide for them and fight for them and-..." Weiss hiccuped, "All I've done is fight you and make people miserable. And I don't even have the dignity of being team leader, or being a proper fighter. You're both of those things, and I'm jealous, and I'm angry that I'm jealous and- and—"
Hug.
Weiss found herself trapped by the warmth of her partner, who wrapped herself around Weiss' torso in an overly friendly way that left Weiss itching to escape and scream… but she calmed herself, suppressing her overactive narcissism, and sniffled quietly as Ruby kindly proved that she had nothing to fear in revealing herself.
"I'm jealous." Ruby whispered, burying her forehead into Weiss's shoulder, drawing a blank stare she couldn't see, but felt in the subtle shift of Weiss' body. "You're so smart, a-and confident. I was scared y-you hated me for not being good enough after we got to be friends and stuff, I was h-happy you were patient in class, 'cuz… 'cuz I felt like the worst. Y-you're such a great person, and a couple mistakes don't change that. I-I'm proud you're my partner, a-and I just want to be a huntress, and if we get to be huntresses together—" Ruby paused, lifting her head as a thought sprang up within her, "w-we will be." Ruby bobbed her head.
"We will?" Weiss asked, confused by the sudden confidence in Ruby's expression as the younger girl slid off the stage, her hands in tight little fists as her mind ran with the possibilities. "Ruby Rose, what has you so worked up?"
"W-we're going to be hunters!" Ruby turned to look back at Weiss with a brilliant smile, and Weiss blinked. "You're smart, I-I'm good at fighting, that's the two things a hunter needs to be! S-so, I'm going to learn from you! I'm going to be smart, a-and in return, I'm going to show you how to fight!"
Weiss blinked slowly, the sourness and bitter disappointment seeping away as Ruby spoke her words as unquestionable fact. Ruby was wrong, however. She was not an idiot, were it not for her inexperience and nerves she would have performed within Weiss's realm of expectations, so she just needed time…
… Which was what Weiss needed as well. She had beaten the Boarbatusk with Ruby's instruction, but… she would do better next time. "Is that it, then?" Weiss asked, sliding off the stage to stand before Ruby, arms crossed over her chest as they stared one another down. "We're going to learn from each other? We're going to be hunters?"
"Uh huh!" Ruby bobbed her head, almost shivering in excitement at the prospect. "I was scared I wasn't good enough, b-but, I think between the t-two of us… no, definitely, w-we'll be hunters, and we'll do it together. I-I promise I'll do everything I can to get better, a-and smarter, and stronger, a-and I'll try and help you too."
"And how can you be so sure?" Weiss tilted her head, a small giddiness entering her stomach at Ruby's excitement.
"'It's not just the act of doing that makes us great, it's wanting. We grow with want, we act with want, and it will never leave us, but that is w-why we're where we are today.' Th-that's what your granddad wrote, and you said you want to make him proud? W-well you're here at Beacon, a-and you came back, a-and you want to be better, so… so I think he'd be proud of you."
Weiss huffed, turning away from Ruby while tightening her arms around her chest. "Don't talk as if you know my grandfather, you little bookworm…" Weiss looked over her shoulder with a small, hopeful smile, and sighed, "but thank you. If you're willing to learn, I'm willing to teach. And if you're willing to teach… then I'll learn."
"We're gonna be hunters!" Ruby squeaked, throwing her fists into the air as if they'd already accomplished the task four years early, but a quick flick to her forehead left her scrambling to cover the small blossom of pain with a whimper and a questioning stare.
"Don't get too ahead of yourself, Ruby." Weiss ordered sternly, her heart beating… comfortingly in her breast as she thought about Ruby's words. Maybe… this was why? Weiss felt calmer, more confident, the path laid before her seemed to clear up, and she had a new tool at her disposal to overcome the obstacles along the way. Ruby… her leader had planned their victory, fearlessly faced their foes, saved Weiss's life, and… gave her an idea of how to get better. It was a strange conclusion, but it made sense. Her grandfather turned the tide of battle not by his strength alone, but by giving his fellow hunters the desire to win. Weiss glanced up at her leader, seeing somebody who had the makings of greatness, despite her horrific affliction, and she let loose a gentle sigh. "We still have a long road ahead of ourselves, and you still have a lot to learn about being our leader."
"I—" Ruby frowned softly, but then nodded, "I-I do, I d-don't know if I can—"
"So you'll learn. That's the deal, right? We both learn? We both get stronger? We both teach?" Weiss strode forward, and calmly pressed her finger against Ruby's forehead, making the girl gulp as if she was about to be flicked again, "Then let's learn to be leaders together. For the SDC, and for team RWBY."
Ruby silently stared up at the finger prodding her, then pressed her forehead forward to look Weiss in the eye, a small smile on her face. "Okay. For team RWBY. F-for our dreams!"
"... So cheesy."
"You love it!"
She had heard it as clearly as Ruby and Yang had, probably far more clearly than her partner, but Blake felt like she was the only one in quiet disbelief. Yang, at the other side of the double doors, just outside the Beacon theater, relaxed against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting, looking relieved.
Weiss hadn't run away. Weiss hadn't torn Ruby down. Weiss hadn't made sinister demands or expected Ruby to give her both flesh and blood in exchange for a pittance. Weiss had given a pledge to help and, in turn, be helped, the two of them coming together as partners without Blake or Yang intervening to demand solidarity.
… Weiss Schnee was a human being. She was not a Schnee suit, smugly demanding compliance and showing offense at the implication there were self-serving strings attached. She was not a shrieking princess expecting the world to kneel and scrape and give her everything, she was… a dreamer. Somebody with hopes, strengths, flaws, fears, and a role model she clearly adored.
Blake stood in confusion as Ruby and Weiss talked out a plan between teasing barbs inside the theater, which Blake missed in its entirety as she tried to find some way for this alliance to boost the Schnee Dust Company's agenda at the expense of Ruby. Her brow tightened, her frown deepened, the long-standing image she had of a young, white-haired girl digging her heel into the back of the Faunus with a sadistic smirk on her face greying as the thought of a vulnerable young debutante looking to escape her own shadow took its place.
An elbow dug into Blake's side, and she looked up in surprise at Yang, who was grinning proudly. "Let's head back before they realize we're here." She ordered in a low, quiet voice so dripping with approval that Blake immediately thought of a mother seeing their baby make their first friend.
"Don't wanna see if they kiss after they made-up?" Blake asked in forced dryness, and Yang gave a small snicker.
"Cute as it would be, I'd break Weiss in half if she kissed my sister. C'mon, Blakey-pie, I'm still hungry." Yang lead the march back to the cafeteria with a mirthful swing in her step, and Blake quietly watched her legs as she fell in behind her.
… Weiss Schnee wasn't evil. Did that mean she was good to the Faunus? No. It didn't. Weiss was a Schnee, there was still that strong possibility she was filled with prejudice, and she had clearly shown the self-centered sense of entitlement that no doubt infested the SDC boardroom. Even the most philanthropic of the human world could harbor ill-feelings towards the people they shared the world with, or just a casual disregard for who they hurt on the way to fulfilling their goals. But when your goal was to improve the world and live up to a heroic legend...
Blake only vaguely kept on track behind Yang, her mind crackling with the known and the unknown, her fist tightening as Weiss Schnee's calm declarations and reassurances ran through her mind. She was still dangerous, no matter what she said, and Blake needed to focus on that, and guard herself against her own weaknesses if she was going to survive Beacon.
