A day early... yay? Those You Leave Behind will probably be one day early or late as well.

Writing 15 and 17 year olds having conversations you don't remember is hard. I also haven't been in a weightroom in something like five years. Is it odd that I find writing slice-of-life a lot more difficult than writing suspense and action?

21: Back to a New Normal

"Alright, Team RWBY!" their leader announced, zipping onto the table in the middle of the room. "Since it's a new year, we will be getting off our lazy butts and doing more!"

"Oh, great," Yang moaned.

"She does have a point," Weiss reminded her. "We haven't exactly been doing a lot."

"We've been going to school,"

"It's a fairly easy school," Blake pointed out. "Even with our disadvantages."

"It's almost like a vacation," Weiss opined. "A really strange one, but-"

Ruby had heard most of the conversation. "We can't spend forever on vacation! Our world is still out there, somewhere-"

"Is it?"

She turned and pointed a finger. "No negativity, Blake!"

"What do you mean by doing more?" Weiss asked, folding her arms.

"One! We haven't been practising! We haven't been training! We haven't been exercising!" She smacked a knife hand into her palm for emphasis. "This stops now! We can't use our weapons or Semblances, but we can still spar, and we can still keep our bodies in tip-top shape."

"That's actually something I can get behind," her sister muttered. Her partner and the white-haired heiress groaned.

"Two! This world has a lot to offer, but we've barely taken advantage of any of it!" Another knife-hands emphasis. "Remember how I said we'd go to a museum every weekend? From this point forward, we will actually do it! We shall also put more effort into reading more books, watching more movies, and playing more video games to soak ourselves in the culture of this world!"

Is she serious? Weiss whined internally- or at least she thought it was internal.

"Probably," Yang told her. "Sort of."

Ruby hopped off the table. "Third! We haven't been looking for a way home! I don't know how to do that, but we're going to try to find our way back!"

"If we can-"

She clamped a hand over Blake's mouth. "No negativity, Blake!"

Yang slid beside Ruby's partner. "I think the new year has already gone to her head."

"Are we clear, team?" Ruby asked.

Weiss sighed. "Yes."

Blake stated, "I suppose."

Yang shrugged. "I'm in."

Ruby smiled broadly. "Great! School starts in three hours! Let's get ready now so we can hit the ground running!"

"So that's the girl?" Thorvald asked, elbowing his friend and pointing. Although his name suggested a big, powerful Nordic fighter, he fit better into the Scandinavian geek stereotype, with a skinny build and long hair.

"I told you, she's not my girlfriend," Connor complained.

The hoodie-clad Indian boy next to him shrugged. "She could be, maybe?"

Connor shook his head. "No, Patrick, I don't think so. I'm like the last of us who's gonna find a girlfriend. I don't even know how that works."

"You think she's into games?" Patrick, the kid in the hoodie, asked after a pause.

"I dunno. She builds robots, though, and she's pretty good at that."

"So she does stuff with her hands, that's cool. She is kind of geeky looking."

"What are we even talking about?" Connor moaned.

At that point, the girl in question noticed them, spinning around and waving from the far side of the schoolyard.

"Dude, she looks like Ruby Rose," Thorvald noted, adjusting his thin glasses.

"Who?" Connor asked.

"You know that RWBY thing that Monty Oum is making?" Connor shook his head, so he continued, "It's like an anime styled 3D web animation. They've finished two seasons- it's pretty good."

"Oh..." So that's what she looked like. "I thought she looked a bit familiar."

"Hey, Connor!" she shouted, sprinting toward them with a large backpack bouncing up and down crazily on her small frame.

"Are you sure it's not just the name throwing you off?" Patrick suggested. "I mean, there's this perceptual bias thing where if you think something is related you'll draw connections that aren't there."

They didn't get a chance to continue. Ruby zipped in front of them, sliding to a stop. "Hey, Connor! How was your break?"

"Uh, it was good, I guess," he replied awkwardly. "I got the new 3DS for Christmas."

"Really?" Patrick whispered.

She noticed them and greeted quickly. "Oh, sorry! You must be Connor's friends! Hi! I'm Ruby!"

"I'm Thorvald. Yeah, yeah, I know. You can call me Thor, but obviously nobody does."

"Patrick."

"Hey, the bell's gonna ring in a minute, we should get to class," Ruby announced, practically dragging Connor away. "Nice to meet you bye!"

"What just happened?" Thorvald asked as they ran off.

"They're totally together," Patrick muttered. "Together-together."

"No, I mean, she acts like Ruby, too." They shared a laugh at that one. "We should probably get to class."

"Hey, Blake?" Yang asked suddenly as she tossed the remains of her lunch in the garbage. Ruby had dragged Weiss off to show her a robot or something, leaving her alone with her partner. "Wanna go to the gym and work out?"

She thought about it for a moment before putting her book away. "I suppose. I was going to read, but I have been getting out of shape."

They grabbed their backpacks and headed toward the gym. The blonde asked her partner, "Did you bring gym strip."

She nodded.

Yang rounded on the cat faunus. "Wait, if you were just going to read, why did you bring it?"

"I packed it last night after Ruby's speech," she replied.

"Feeling inspired?"

"She does have a knack for it, despite her immaturity," Blake admitted. "Ozpin didn't make her leader for no reason."

"Ozpin... I wonder how they're doing." She chewed her lip contemplatively. "Do you really think there's no way back?"

"Come on, Yang, as far as we can tell, this is another universe, one that doesn't even abide by the same rules," Blake said honestly. "We have no idea how we got here, let alone how to get back. I wish we'd all drop that silly delusion that everything's going to go back to normal."

"It's not silly," Yang chided, more harshly than she meant. "It gives her something to strive for. And Ruby-"

"What if she doesn't find it? You of all people-"

"Do you remember the other half of the conversation, Blake?" Yang interrupted quietly. "Searching is one thing. Letting it take over your life is another. She won't let it take over her life. Not Ruby."

"I suppose."

"Come on, kitty cat, enough of the dark talk," She slapped her cheerfully on the back before throwing open the door to the change room. "Let's have some fun and build some muscle."

They changed quickly and in silence. Yang stripped off her street clothes and threw on a black tank top and orange shorts. Blake had a violet T-shirt and dark grey sweatpants. After double-checking that there was nobody else in the room, she swapped her normal hat out for a grey and blue one.

The notion of gender-segregated changerooms was one they still found odd. Blake blamed the long history of gender segregation, while Yang simply attributed it to Terrans being more prudish.

The weight room was a small, densely packed abode attached to one side of the gym. A handful of students, all male, were spending their lunch break working out. Among them was Gavin, who was spotting for his friend Darrel as he bench-pressed a large barbell.

Gavin nudged him after he finished his last rep and pointed to the blonde. He whispered quietly, "That's her. Yang. Well, Linda, but- I told you this already."

"The anime girl you like?" Darrel took what he thought was a discreet look. "Man, she really is fucking hot."

"First of all, she's not an anime girl," Gavin reminded his friend as he returned the weights to the stack. "She really hates that. Second, no comment. Third, yes, she is hot."

Darrel noticed that she had a friend, a smaller young woman with black hair and a toque. "Who's her friend? The one with the hat."

Gavin chuckled. "You don't remember? That's Bella Blake. She prefers Blake."

"Because of Twilight?"

"I dunno but probably."

They expected the girls to head for the treadmills after finishing their stretching- usually, they were only interested in cardio- and were surprised when they headed over to the bench Darrel just left. The blonde picked up a bar and started shoving weights onto the end with it balanced in her lap. She said something to her dark-haired companion, but the boys couldn't hear it from the other side of the room.

Darrel's eyes widened at the awkward manoeuvre. "Jesus Christ, she's gonna kill herself."

Eager to play the hero, he rushed over and warned her, "Hey, you should be careful with that. They're pretty heavy. If you do it like that, you could hurt yourself."

The blonde girl blew him off completely. "Relax, I've done this before."

"With that much weight?" He noticed that although she had well-defined muscles, Yang was still quite lightly built. There was no way she could lift that. "That's like 300 pounds."

"Really?" the blonde asked, looking at the plates. "What's that in kilograms?"

"Uh..."

"It's just under 150," Blake told them. So she was the smart one?

"Eh, I'm out of practice." She held the barbell out to her companion, who looked like she would fall over with the weight. "Blake, got it?"

"I've got it." She held the bar with both hands, struggling a bit but keeping a firm grip. Yang climbed onto the bench and took the barbell back.

"Wow, I've been out of it for a while," Yang commented after a few repetitions, letting her friend take the bar.

"You want to stop?"

"No way." Blake handed the bar back and she continued.

Darrel stood there, his thought processes locked by a confusion and a mixture of other emotions and feelings.

Gavin sighed as he walked over and almost literally dragged his friend away. "Sorry about him."

"Oh, hey, Gavin," Yang greeted between reps. "Can't. Really talk. Now. See you in. English?"

"Sure." He turned to his friend. "Come on, Darrel, time to do some squats. You've been slacking, you lazy bastard."

"Eh..."

When they made it to the other side of the room, Gavin added, "Besides, I called first dibs."

"You can have her," Darrel told him. "She's like the fucking She-Hulk. And probably a lesbian."

"She is not a lesbian," Gavin countered.

He received a shrug in response. "So maybe she's bi? Those two are totally together."

"They are not together."

Another shrug. "Whatever, man."

There was an awkward pause before Gavin asked, "You still think she's hot, though, right?"

Darrel risked another glance at the two girls. "Smoking. Just fucking scary, too."

If Weiss was asked describe Business class in one word, it would be disappointing. If she was allowed a few more, she would state it was a largely uninformative course that one could pass simply by showing up. If she was forced to say something positive, she would grudgingly admit that it was an acceptable overview that gave her an idea of what to look for.

"Good afternoon," Ms. Patil greeted as she hurried into the classroom. As usual, she was slightly late, something which the heiress found ironic. "Since we just got back, we will have an easy assignment today. In groups, you will look at a marketing failure and analyze why it did not work. Your answers do not need to be correct- I want to know what you think. We will learn the real stuff in the next weeks."

In other words, they were wasting today, too. The small-statured teacher gestured to a section of the room with her hands. "You four will be working together."

"Do we have to work with her?" Lisa moaned, glaring at Weiss.

"In the business world, you will have to work with those who offer what you need, whether you like them personally or not," Ms. Patil told them. "So yes."

She rolled her eyes. "Ugh."

The teacher tossed them a thin booklet, and they pushed their desks Lisa completely ignored Weiss, turning so she didn't have to look at the her. Vicki and Daffodil at least tried to be diplomatic.

"So, how was your break, Anna?" Vicki asked, trying to strike up conversation.

Her answer was curt. "It was fine."

"Why are you talking to her?" Lisa hissed.

"I'm trying to get to know new people," Vicki replied. "It's my New Years resolution. Besides, maybe she's like us."

"I can hear you, you know," Weiss said offhand. "And I am nothing like you."

"Really?" It was almost a challenge.

"I suppose your family is as rich and arrogant as you are?" Vicki didn't get a chance to respond. "As far as I know, my family is dead."

"I'm sorry," Vicki replied awkwardly. Lisa opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and kept silent. Daffodil turned away and slumped into her seat. "I didn't think-"

"It's fine," Weiss replied, feeling kind of bad for killing the conversation and going a little too far. In a way, it was and it wasn't a lie. She honestly didn't miss her bastard father at all, but she was concerned for her sister. "Let's just get started."

"Right..." Daffodil picked up the packet and began reading. "Sally Smart owns the Golden Dreams Laundry Factory in Whistler. It is a small self-serve laundromat she purchased a year ago from its previous owner. The business is not making money and she is almost broke-"

"Well, duh," Lisa pointed out. "It's a horrible name. Golden Dreams makes it sound like they're going to make your laundry dirtier."

"It sounds like a Mistralian brothel," Weiss muttered.

"A what?" Lisa asked.

"It sounds more like a brothel," she repeated, covering her previous mistake.

"What's a brothel?"

"You know, an aristocrat's club." The three Terrans looked at her. She sighed. "It means whorehouse."

"Oh..."

"I would have said a kind of weird sex," Daffodil pointed out quietly. "Like where they w-"

Vicki held up a hand to silence her. "Stop there, too much information!"

"I can't believe we're talking about this," Lisa groaned.

So beneath the surface, they're still the same as everyone else, Weiss admitted to herself. She forced herself to focus, picking up the discarded booklet. "Okay, we can all agree the name is bad. What else did she do wrong?"

"So... grand plans?" Yang asked her sister, dropping her bag in the foyer.

Ruby flopped onto the couch. "Tomorrow."

Weiss whispered to the blonde, "I knew it."

Blake just shrugged, curling up in a chair and turning on the TV.

Suddenly, their leader bolted upright and snatched the remote. "Nope!"

She changed the channel to 36- BBC World News- and flopped back onto the couch. "We should at least try a little."

Tatopatato: What did you dislike about the Christmas chapters?

ODST110: I've been following a more or less consistent weekly release schedule. You can look forward to a new installment every Friday.

some guy: Not exactly, although they'd probably be competitive with them.

GreatWyrmGold: I don't really want to write pages here, but I'll toss a few headcanons down. Next to no gender discrimination or segregation. Tendency toward much more open sexual orientation to the point of not considering homosexuality abnormal. Crappy radar, seekers, missiles in general. Computers slightly behind ours, more focused on automation and robotics than pure computation. No space launch capability, no satellites, limited data networking capabilities. Limited knowledge of aerodynamics. No nuclear technology. Powerful engines and an overall preference for them. Societies that we would consider communist or collectivist as well as undemocratic. I don't think they're that far behind us in science. I do see them having a much greater focus on science with immediate use versus the way-out theoretical stuff, and probably behind on soft sciences like sociology and anthropolgy as well. One headcanon: next to no knowledge of quantum physics.

Happy1K1nob1: No comment.

coolshades45: We'll see fairly soon, and I never said it was one of them.

MrKaboom: Blake has strong feelings, positive and negative, about many of Earth's leaders. Like many of us, she hates Hitler and loves MLK, but because of her experiences the feelings are very strong.

Fourze (chapter 16): That's what I was told when I asked.