Blake disliked the cold, mainly because she didn't agree with how it made interacting with other people so different. Talk to someone in cool or even warm weather and they will be themselves, laid back and perfectly calm. In Blake's entire experience that is talking with people, whenever Blake encounters someone in the cold…and ends up talking to them, they always seem to take on different qualities. Yang for instance had changed dramatically over the last few hours, they had spent quite a long time in the store looking for a dress, and once they came out of the store the air was colder.
"How long have we been in there?" Yang asked, "Eh doesn't matter, I got a dress that'll fit me for hopefully this date and a dance?" "Yeah, listen Yang. Even with you awesome personality, you can't deny the fact that you have a…fantastic body." Yang didn't deny it so Blake went on, "So going with that fact, almost every boy you meet if he's the right type, will want to get you out of that dress. Aaaand they will most likely not take in of in the fashion in which it was put on. I guess what I'm trying to say is," Blake stopped Yang and looked at her very seriously, "They will tare the dress off your body if you let them, so please wear it only to the most important occasions."
"And my first date…yeah probably not a good idea to wear a good a dress as this…but I have to wear something nice! What should I get then?" Yang asked totally at a loss, but willing to accept Blake's logic; this didn't disturb Blake or make her uncomfortable. No it was that due to the cold Yang had been in need of a sweater, and instead of getting her own Yang asked Blake if she could borrow hers. Thankfully Blake's sweater was able to fit all of Yang without being two revealing, the black fabric clung to Yang's body nonetheless and made her quite warm.
"Well…hmmm…I agree that you need something nice." Blake said slowly and cautiously, she wasn't used to giving other people suggestions on what they should wear to their first dates, "Wait a minute…did you say first date? You've never been on a date before?" "Oh no, dad didn't like all the boys back home who were asking me on dates. And if I'm being honest, I didn't like them either…eh that's not being honest. The only real reason that I didn't go out with them was because of Ruby." Blake fell silent after Yang told her this, she frankly didn't know what to say.
However having never been on a proper date herself, Blake could sympathize with Yang; not too well however since Blake had been on a date, which was really being used to get near someone who happened to be going on a date in the exact same place. Blake's dates almost always ended in either successful assassination attempts or rescues. The rescues had been saving a Faunus from Human slavers, those jobs Blake had only encountered twice once just barely after she had joined and the other time only 2 years ago.
"That's sweet of you." Blake said suddenly. "Awww thanks Blake! So what should I wear?" Yang asked. The two talked for most of the night checking in and out of stores hardly buying anything, but when they did it wasn't too expensive. Blake and Yang made it all the way back to the dorm without discussing why Yang hadn't taken off Blake's sweater, once they got inside however Yang found it much to hot to keep the sweater on and ended up handing it back to Blake.
It was about 4:00 in the morning when Holly awoke to the sound of bells, 'That's strange, you don't usually hear bells except at funerals and weddings.' She thought not yet willing to get out of bed, Holly realized that she was the first one up and any of her other teammates wouldn't be up for at least a few more hours. She tried and tried but Holly just couldn't go back to sleep, so deciding to find something to occupy herself until the rest of her team awoke; Holly got up and took a cold shower.
After the cold water refreshed Holly she walked out into a dark room, realizing that the light in the bathroom was still on Holly panicked slightly right before she realized that everyone was sleeping so far away from the bathroom that the light didn't reach them. All the same Holly shut the bathroom door just in case, and in the dark made her way over to her bed. At the foot of Holly's bed sat a trunk made of solid oak wood; thankfully the lid wasn't to heavy to lift and Holly opened it and began rummaging through the contents for her outfit.
Rummaging wouldn't be the right word however, because that implies sorting through various and possibly numerous items of clothing. Holly however had very little in the way of clothes; 1 white leather jacket, 1 white fedora, 1 white scarf 12 feet in length, 3 long sleeved wool blouses colors are white cream and red, 4 pairs of white cargo pants colors are white cream red and black, 1 custom shell necklace, 1 white t-shirt. That's only 12 pieces of clothing, obviously excluding underwear socks and shoes; Holly has one pair of shoes and cycles between three pairs of socks and 6 pairs of underwear, which would make Holly's clothing, count jump up to 22 counting pairs as one.
This may seem like a lot, but where Holly came from…well let's just say that if her parents knew where she was and what she was doing; they would be ashamed of her, mainly because Holly's parents had raised her and taught her proper etiquette. After all when you're a long lost princess about to reinstated back into a modern society you must be trained vigorously. Holly had been excited and her big reveal was going to be on her 7th birthday, and 11 years later Holly was supposed to become queen. Cancer got in the way however and Holly ended up missing the boat, metaphorically speaking of course.
Holly sometimes wished that she could tell someone what she was, and who she was. No one knew that she, Holly Scordato, was meant to be crowned queen only a few short hours after she turned 18. 'Looks like school will get in the way of my queen dome, can't say I'll be too disappointed though, my mother and father ignored me…after I got cancer they paid me more attention then I could bare.' Holly's obsession with the Grimm had caused her parents to ignore her, and thanks to this fact Holly's hasn't seen them in person for many years.
Sure there are the television programs that come on all the time, interviews and messages broadcasted from the royal north palace of Remnant. The royalty of the north was a fickle thing, not one person knew quite what to do; it had sprung up almost immediately after the Great War had ended. The only reason why people hadn't gotten rid of the queen and supportive husband system is because it was instrumental in putting the broken pieces of Remnant society back together; with the help of Arthur Schnee of course, the great man who practically discovered Dust and invented its many uses.
Holly sat alone in the dark, right before the moonlight shone through the closed, but unblocked by curtains, window. Once that seemingly unimportant thing happened Holly galvanized herself, quietly as to not wake the others, into grabbing her normal outfit and taking it to the bathroom Holly did this so she could dress in the light, once she was done Holly stepped back into the dorm room. After checking to make sure everyone was still asleep Holly moved to the doorway and let herself out into the school corridor. Shutting the door quietly behind her Holly said equally as quietly, "Blast it I can't see a bloody thing!"
"Well that's interesting!" A face appeared out of the dark…not really a face more like white teeth and the strangest eyes that Holly couldn't seem to focus on, "I've never heard anyone swear like that before, and that accent…you're British…right?" It was Adrian, who else could blend in with the dark with almost no effort. "Yeah so what? You got a problem with that, wee little man?" Holly retorted.
"Uh…Scottish, and British perhaps?" Adrian sighed right before he brought out a flashlight, "Eh whoever you are, you're sure someone. Very interesting if I do say so my self." Holly blushed and asked moving out of the path of Adrian's flashlight, "What are you doing out here…and why aren't there any lights on in this place? They have ruddy electric or what? Oi! Something funny?"
Adrian was laughing but stopped once Holly shushed him saying that people were trying to sleep. "I'm sorry, but your accent…" Adrian said. Holly reverted back to her English accent, one she had developed to disguise her normal very royal and yes…British/Scottish accent. Holly said, "Listen to me Adrian…what was your last name again?" "Oh, sorry. My last name's Cross." Adrian said then directed the flashlight beam at the ceiling, "And as for why I'm out here as well…I couldn't sleep. They don't have electricity because…I actually don't know why they don't have it. Strange isn't it? Every single night they have to turn it off, I've been here for years and never once wondered why."
"You've been here for years?" Holly asked. "Of course I have." Adrian said like it was obvious, although thinking for a moment he realized that it would be obvious to Holly, "Although you probably wouldn't know that, let me explain. Can you keep a secret?" Holly stared at Adrian for a moment before answering with, "Of course I can, don't be stupid. But why would you tell me a secret anyway? You trust me that much and you've just met me, why?"
"Because I hold one of your secrets? Not saying that I'll tell anyone yours but I just thought, what if I told you one of my secrets…just so we're even?" Adrian asked and when Holly nodded he continued with, "My Aura Semblance is special, it gives me Herculean strength when I activate it, but that's not the secret. One of my secrets is that I can…control the elements, and that's why I don't carry around a weapon. No need right?"
"Yes no need indeed. So tell Adrian, what's the real reason why you're up so early?" Holly asked and Adrian responded, "Up so early? Do you even know the time? No hold on." Adrian pointed his flashlight at a clock on the wall; the clock read 6:28. "Oh look at that, almost time for everyone to get up. Don't suppose we should get back?" Holly said to Adrian with a melting smile, just before she went back into her dorm room. Adrian walked up to the door but lowered the hand he had raised to knock; he realized that he did indeed need to get back to his team.
Somewhere else in the school Ruby opened her eyes, and in those storm gray eyes was the gleam of mischief. Swinging her legs out of her bed, Ruby jumped down to the floor. Landing lightly Ruby got dressed quickly, in the dark because she had done it many times before. Throwing open the windows to the morning sun Ruby took a whistle she had hung around her neck and gave it a great blow. The piercing and high sound rang out in the small room, and instantly woke everyone up.
"Alright team, this will be our last set of classes before the weekend! And this is a time when teachers usually have us hand in our homework and take tests, or quizzes. And so I command you all to eat a delicious breakfast!" Ruby shouted, which she found totally necessary even though everyone was wide-awake. Yang hearing her sister's morning speech laughed.
Blake said only slightly miffed at being woken up again with a whistle, "Don't you mean healthy breakfast? I'm assuming you buy into that stuff about it helps you focus better?" Ruby replied happily dodging a pillow thrown from a will groaning Weiss, "No of course I don't buy into that stuff! If you can't focus during the day, well that's because you're stupid!" "Oh dear, Ruby you better keep you're philosophy inside you. You can't just go around saying things like that to other people…you're sure to hurt their feelings." Yang said claiming the bathroom first much to Weiss's discomfort.
Weiss calmed herself with a thought, 'Now calm down Weiss, you don't need this. You were raised better than this…well the times when mom and dad didn't…' Well the thought didn't quite calm her down but it did detract Weiss from her anger. Despite her outer image of self-control and properness Weiss was actually a very temperamental person, the anger stemming from the mistreatment and trauma her parents had put her through at an early age.
"Ruby, do tell me, why in the hell do you insist on waking us up like this? Every morning!" Weiss asked her voice the same it always was around Ruby, slightly crazed but all the way through cold. Ruby firmly explained that she did this because, "Well because I'm technically you're boss…well team leader. And anything I say goes! Granted I don't ask for much, so this shouldn't be too hard to bare, now will it?" Ruby looked at both Weiss and Blake innocently, and both of them couldn't help it. Blake agreed almost immediately.
Weiss on the other hand simply knocked on the bathroom door and asked, "Yang you done in there? There's like three people out her waiting to take a shower." Yang called back, "I'm done, I always take fast showers! Oh and you're wrong." "How am I wrong?" Weiss asked incredulous.
Yang opened the bathroom door and then shoved Weiss inside, "Because I know Ruby's already taken one, she did this all the time to my family back home. Our uncle Qrow certainly didn't like it, but our father loved it! So that's why Ruby still does it today!" Weiss simply shook her head and said to Blake, "I wont be long." True to her word Weiss exited the bathroom 10 minutes later. When she walked out into the room, with her clothes on of course, Weiss discovered most of the team gone except for Blake sitting on her own bed. When Blake saw that Weiss was done she took her turn and in about the same amount of time that Weiss took, Blake was done and ready to go.
When classes were all done with everyone was excited for the weekend purely because they didn't have schoolwork. Another reason everyone was excited was because next week would be combat week; the Beacon school schedule was set up to where the first week would be academic week, and the second week would be combat week. The pattern would repeat itself until the school year ended with one final combat week.
The academic week was entirely focused on the classroom and various activities that one would expect when coming to a school. It was combat week that set Beacon and one other prestigious school apart from the rest. All combat week was teams getting assigned kill missions, basically where teams would get sent out to hunt down and exterminate Grimm. How long the assignments would take would vary on how many the teams had either failed at or succeeded at.
If you were apart of a team, take ICRS for example, you would want to be successful as often as you could be. All students at the beginning of their first Academic week had been given standard issue scrolls (sort of like tablets but slimmer and more shaped like a smart phone), which would be used to receive messages from the school among various other things. The scrolls had told the students that the more they succeeded during the Combat week would determine the difficulty of their next assignment during their next Combat week.
Even if a team succeeded during the entirety of a Combat week, unless their performance had been greatly improved from their previous performance, most of the time the team would be given a passing grade for that week. Team ICRS incidentally was very excited for next week, they were however equally nervous as well.
Holly sat in a chair, wearing her usual summer outfit. Holly's white jacked was draped across the back of her chair; she had taken it off since no one was around. Holly's arms were that of a gymnast, in fact the rest of her body was that of a gymnast. Granted it wasn't quite the shape of a female adult gymnast, but it still held it's own. Holly didn't like showing this side other, mainly because when her parents had raised her they had said, "Be sure to never show or flaunt you body in public." Later once Holly had begun her obsession with learning everything there was to know about Grimm her father had advised, right before Holly had disappeared, "Do wear some sort of jacket, won't you? It would do your old man some comfort."
And so to this day Holly never took it off in front of others; the only ones who had seen holly without her jacket on were her teammates. When they had seen what Holly looked like they congratulated her, and Holly felt warmed and was amused at her teammates. Also Holly was happy to know a group of people, however small that genuinely liked her…that meant that every time Holly didn't tell them who she really was, it nearly tore her apart.