The Voice of Summer

Dear Diary,

I can't believe I finally made it to Beacon! After so long dreaming and waiting I've finally made it. This is my dream come true.

Yang chuckled. "Looks like we weren't the only ones to really want to come here, huh?"

The two sisters sat together on one of the benches out in the courtyard, where they could be alone without having to secrest- without having to preclude – without having to shut themselves up in a dark room somewhere (Sunset had said some kind of long word that Pyrrha seemed to understand, but Ruby couldn't remember what it was).

The day was crisp, a little warm for a spring day; pleasant weather to be out in the courtyard with the wind rustling through the trees.

Ruby barely heard them. She barely felt the wind blowing through her hair. Her attention, as her gaze, was fixed upon the book open in her lap.

She smiled, a little sadly. "Yeah, I guess not."

Yang leaned down a little, so that they were eye to eye, and gave Ruby a squeeze on the shoulder. "You okay?"

"I…" Ruby hesitated. "I wish that she'd been able to tell us in person, you know? I wish that she'd been able to tell us what a great time she'd had at Beacon and that we'd really love it there and maybe not to worry too much about Professor Port or that…I wish she was here."

Yang frowned. "Yeah. You and me both, Rubes. Listen…if you don't want to-"

"No," Ruby said firmly. "No, I want to read this. I want to hear what Mom has to say."

Yang looked at her for a moment, and then she nodded. "Okay."

Ruby looked back down at the diary.

Nothing much has happened yet, because I only arrived here today, but all the same: I finally made it to Beacon!

I know that Dad didn't see the point in me coming here. He thinks that I can already fight grimm perfectly well on my own, so why do I need to come to a school to spend four years learning what I already know.

"Grandpa has a point, I guess," Yang said. "I mean…it's not even the end of first semester yet and we can already kill grimm. You wonder what the rest of the four years will be like."

I told Dad that I can't just rely on my eyes, and I suppose he must have accepted that or he wouldn't have let me come here in the first place.

"Her eyes," Ruby asked, reading and re-reading that sentence over and over again as though, if she read it often enough, the words on the page in front of her would change into something that she could actually understand. "What does that mean? Eyes means…eyes, right?"

"I…think so," Yang said. She put her arms behind her head. "Does Dad ever talk about Mom's semblance?"

"No," Ruby said. "At least, not that I remember."

"Maybe her semblance was to shoot lasers out of her eyes," Yang suggested. She grinned. "Or maybe she could kill grimm just by looking at them!"

Ruby giggled.

Yang laughed a little as well. "Or maybe she'll explain later if we keep going."

"Right," Ruby said, and read on.

What I didn't tell my father was that that's not the real reason I want to come here. Don't get me wrong, I want to fight the grimm. I want to show everyone that we're more than just cattle in a cage. I believe that if we work together we can save the world, and take it back from all the monsters.

But that's not why I'm here. If I wanted to start fighting now I could. Dad would probably be happier that way. Maybe other people would too.

I'm ready to fight. I'm ready to die if that's what it takes. But I want to be just a normal girl for a few years, to have friends and fun and be more than just a warrior.

This makes me sound so selfish, not to mention that I must sound as though I'm not taking this seriously. If someone reads this and thinks that I didn't deserve my place at Beacon then so be it; you're wrong, I really want to be here.

I just want to live for a few years for myself as well.

"No, Mom, that's not selfish at all," Ruby murmured. For a moment she thought of Pyrrha, the champion fighter who had never been…Ruby couldn't exactly say what it was that she had never been; she'd say that Pyrrha had never been a person but if that were true then what was she? It didn't really matter, the point was that reading Mom's words reminded her of her friend a little bit.

Mom got to live…for a while. Maybe Pyrrha will too.

She kept reading.

I have to admit that I got a little lost getting off the airship. But it did mean that I met this really cute boy named Taiyang who helped me find the way to the amphitheatre. He's kind of a goofball, but I like him, he's a lot of fun. I'm not sure how good he is in a fight, but he got in here so I suppose he can't be that bad.

"Is it me, or does it sound as though Mom had a crush on Dad from the moment they met?" Ruby asked, eagerness and amusement blending in her voice.

Yang looked a little…Ruby couldn't exactly say what Yang looked like, but not as enthusiastic as Ruby felt. She looked a little troubled, though Ruby couldn't work out what was wrong. "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, it does."

Ruby tried to imagine her father was an adorable cute goofball…strangely enough her imagining ended up looking a lot like Jaune.

Less strangely, she could imagine her Mom having a crush on a guy like that – and not just because she'd gone on to marry him; someone cute and funny and kind…

"Ruby?"

"Huh?"

"You spaced out for a second there."

Ruby laughed. "I, uh, I was just trying to imagine Dad the way that Mom just wrote about him."

"I can imagine it."

"Really?"

"Yup."

After he said a few words to everyone, Professor Ozpin took me aside. He's been so nice to me, and not just because I wouldn't be able to come here without his support. He's so considerate, he made sure that I was okay and that I wasn't feeling overwhelmed. Maybe it is because of my eyes a little, but it's still nice.

"Ugh, the eyes again," Ruby said with a scowl. "Come on, Mom, explain!"

Yang laughed. "She probably wasn't expecting this to be read by anyone who didn't know." Her face fell. "She probably thought she'd explain it herself."

"It must have been something really cool if Professor Ozpin was interested in it, right?" Ruby asked. "Maybe he could tell us."

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Yang said. "He might want to know where you got the diary from."

"Oh, right," Ruby murmured. She didn't want to get Sunset and Jaune into trouble. "It is still only the second page, so maybe it comes up later?"

"We can hope."

Tomorrow is the Initiation, the final taste before my time here really begins. I can't wait, but at the same time I'm kind of nervous because I don't really know a lot about how to do people at all. Coming from outside the Kingdoms

"Mom grew up outside the Kingdoms?" Yang said. "Wow, that's…no wonder she was a badass even before she got to Beacon."

I don't really know how to get along with other people. But that's why I want to be here, so I can finally do all that stuff. And then I can go back to fighting.

So sure, I'm nervous. But at the same time I can't wait to meet my new team-mates.

And that was the end for that day, and that page.

"Do you want to read the next day?" Yang asked.

"Yeah, you?"

"Let's do it."

Ruby flipped over the page.

Dear Diary,

I have a team! I'm the team leader!

Okay, so I should probably go back just a little bit.

Like I told you yesterday, I was as nervous as I was excited about the initiation today but looking back it was really cool. Professor Ozpin fired us all off a cliff and into the Emerald Forest, how cool is that?

Yang snorted. "She really was a supermom, wasn't she?"

The rules were that the first person we made eye-contact with would be our partner for the next four years. Luckily, the first person I made eye-contact with was that cute boy I met yesterday, Taiyang. Turns out he really does no how to fight. He doesn't use weapons, but he punched a beowolf's head clean off in one hit! I've never seen anything like it. He must have some kind of strength semblance, but there wasn't time for him to really explain it.

Then we ran into these two siblings named Raven and Qrow Branwen.

"Uncle Qrow!" Ruby cried. "Huh, I wonder why we've never met…Aunt Raven? No one ever even talks about her. Do you think…do you think she died, like Mom? Is that why they don't mention it?"

Yang's expression had taken a turn for the down once again. "Maybe," she said. "There are just some things that Dad doesn't like to talk about, and the same probably goes for Uncle Qrow too."

Qrow is really cool; we'd only met up for five minutes and he was already flirting with me. He was just kidding, though, he's way out of my league.

Besides, I kind of prefer guys who are honest and don't put up a big front. Qrow's cool, but it's like he's trying a little too hard to be something he's not.

Raven, on the other hand, is kind of aloof. She doesn't say much, not even to Qrow, but she says even less to anyone else. I wonder if she's lonely?

One thing's for sure, they both really know how to fight. Watching them was incredibly, they're so well-coordinated that you wouldn't believe it. Together we're going to be an awesome team, I can feel it!

Oh, yeah, teams. I should probably go back to that. So, after Tai and I met up we had to go to these ruins. It was on the way that we met Qrow and Raven, who had partnered up with each other. So we got to the ruins and we find these chess pieces, and Qrow and I each took a white knight. Then we had to get out of the forest again and we got attacked by some ursas.

This is the best part. Up until now I hadn't been using my eyes, only my Solstice Rose; but there were just so many grimm and we were already so tired that I had to use my eyes on them.

It tired me out. The guys had to carry me the rest of the way out of the forest, I was so exhausted my body just wouldn't move at all. I was worried. I was worried that they were going to think that I was weak, or else that once they found out about my eyes they'd stop treating me like I was a normal person; I was afraid that I'd stop being Summer Rose and become a Silver-Eyed Warrior to them.

"A silver-eyed warrior," Ruby whispered. "What's that?"

"I don't know," Yang said. "A…warrior with silver eyes?"

"But I've got silver eyes and I never did anything special with them," Ruby said.

"Yet," Yang said.

Ruby started to shake her head, and then paused. "He mentioned it."

"Huh?"

"Professor Ozpin," Ruby explained. "When he came to see me after I fought Torchwick, he noticed my eyes."

You have silver eyes.

The two sisters looked at each other for a minute, neither one speaking. Professor Ozpin had taken an interest in Mom on account of her eyes, and now he had let Ruby into Beacon too, and pointed out that she, too(?) had silver eyes.

That couldn't just be a coincidence, could it?

"What does it mean?" Ruby asked.

"I don't know," Yang replied. "Let's…let's just keep going, okay?

But everyone was really cool about it, even Raven. They were impressed, sure, but none of them treated me any differently.

Of course I hardly knew them before they found out about this, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that they're treating me like a person (and Professor Ozpin says that using my eyes will get less tiring with training and practice, so that's good).

Together we're Team STRQ (pronounce Stark, although Qrow won't stop saying he would preferred to pronounce it Strike) and I'm the leader. So, yeah, that happened.

I'm back to being nervous and excited at the same time. Excited, obviously, because this is so cool and I feel like I have friends for the first time ever and everything's going to be great, but nervous too.

Nervous because I'm responsible for Tai and Raven and Qrow, and if anything happens to them then that's on me.

Still, I have three team-mates now and I think, I really believe, that they could become three friends. My first three friends.

And if we work together, I'm sure that everything is going to be okay.

"That seems like a good place to call it a day," Yang said, gently but firmly shutting the book.

"What?" Ruby asked. "Come on, Yang, we have plenty of time left to keep going."

"Maybe, but why rush?" Yang asked. "There's plenty of time to read through everything. Savour it, you know."

"No," Ruby replied. "Don't you know what happens next, or about the Silver Eyed Warriors? What Mom just described, it doesn't seem like a semblance to me. Does it seem like it to you?"

"I've never heard of a semblance that can tired you out when you use it once, but what else could it be?" Yang said. "If it isn't a semblance, then what is it?"

"I don't know, that's why we have to keep going!"

"Which we will, later." Yang took a deep breath. "I just think that the last thing Mom would want is for you to neglect your own life chasing answers about her." She smiled. "Don't get so wrapped up in reading about Mom's time at Beacon that you forget that you're at Beacon, understand?"

"I guess," Ruby murmured. "Hey, Yang?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it okay if I talk to my team about this?" Ruby asked. "I mean, Sunset and Pyrrha are really smart, maybe they can…I don't know…work something out?"

Yang was silent for a moment. "If…if you want to tell them, then that's your choice. I can't tell you what to do any more."

Ruby bowed her head. "Yang?"

"Yeah, sis?"

"If Mom was here, do you think she'd be proud?"

"No, I don't think she'd be proud," Yang said. "I know it."