.

there's a path running under the city

where the stones and the hills divide

there's a path we can walk through the loss and the pity

.

the birthday massacre – leaving tonight

.

RWBY

NJKA

27 Days Prior to Beacon

Afternoon

"Wow," Jade says. "For some reason I never realized how big schools are."

You try really hard not to think that's funny, because that would be kind of mean considering she had never been in a normal city until a few days ago, let alone here.

She has a point, too! This is actually your very first time personally setting foot on campus, and it is so, so cool. The whole place is like... magical! The buildings are way bigger than you expected, too, and there are cool complicated archways over a lot of the sidewalks, little grassy courtyards and stuff that are all super well maintained, there are even a few ga... uh, crap, what's that word? Gazo? Gabezo? Whatever! Those little thingies. And towering over everything else is Beacon Tower, shining green at its very top, so high up that it's crazy.

"This is kinda bigger than I expected," you say. "Plus it looks really homey! See, you can tell somebody had to fill in and paint over bullet holes in like every single wall and there are scorch marks in weird places and, and... and it's just so cool!"

"Do 'cool' and 'homey' mean the same thing to you?"

You stop for a second to think about that. Like, your actual house is pretty cool and it's full of cool people, or two of them at least, plus the best corgi in the entire world. So...

"Yeah, I guess so! How come? Was your house not cool?"

"No, no! It was really nice," she says, and you're not sure if you should have asked that or not because she kinda looks sad and you hate that but also she seems happy to talk about it? People are so complicated. Maybe it all evens out to 'not a mistake,' which is pretty much the best you can hope for when it comes to people, anyway.

"What was it like?" You've been trying super hard these past few days to like, not interrogate her about her mysterious life, but it's reaaaally tempting and it's not like there can be anything too weird to say when it's just her old house, right?

Jade pauses to look at her little sheet of hand-written directions. You're not actually sure why she wanted to do it that way but you couldn't bring yourself to stop her because her handwriting is adorable oh my god?

"Well, it was really big! Bec and I had a ton of space, even if I don't count the rest of the island. Everything was a little bit fancy. My grandpa had it filled up with tons of hunting trophies and stuff... I had a big garden where I grew a lot of vegetables, even though all of my pumpkins kept disappearing somehow..." She furrows her brow and her ears twitch. "I still don't actually know what was going on with that whole mess. It wasn't Bec either, he only ate irradiated meat."

"Wait, irradiated –"

"Grandpa had a whole personal library, too! Although some of his books were, um." She clears her throat. "Maybe not the kind of thing little girls should have been finding. Not that that was his fault! He couldn't exactly could tell me what not to read when he was stuck taxidermied by the fireplace, you know?"

"Wait, he was wha –"

"Oh, hey! Are those students?"

You blink. That... you must have just heard her wrong or... well anyway! You turn to look where she's pointing. There are a couple of teenagers hanging out at a table under one of the gobozes. Huh... shouldn't it be, like, mostly empty right now?

"They have weapons – I mean I think that box thing must be a weapon, right – and the other guy has wrist blades, and they're not dressed like boring civilians, so... probably? Why are there still students here when last semester's been over so long that the new one's almost a month away? Shouldn't they have just gone home?"

Jade slows down while you pass by, watching. The girl is talking about something that you can't quite hear, and she doesn't look at you but she has big bunny ears so you're pretty sure she knows you're here. It's weird, noticing things like that! Jade being around is making you notice all kinds of stuff. Speaking of, you look back to Jade and her expression is... complicated?

"... Maybe this is home for them," she says, and what does that mean? Yeah, it probably feels kinda like home here, you bet you'll start feeling the same way eventually too, but – oh.

Oh.

That's really sad. That sucks a lot. But it makes sense... a lot of Huntsmen and Huntresses are probably doing this because they've lost something. You can relate to that, but it never really occurred to you that some people would be doing it because they lost everything.

You feel kind of like a dumb jerk. Jade doesn't even have a home anymore, so you really should have thought more about... well...

"That's really cool! I didn't expect them to do stuff like that."

Huh? She sounds happy. Sure it's cool but there's nothing happy about people not having anywhere else left to live, is there? Or are you misunderstanding her somehow? ... Oh, wait, no, you get it! If Beacon lets homeless students stay here even when school is out then she has a safe place to live after this, too. Okay, that's a lot less depressing! You'll just... focus on thinking about it that way. Maybe it is pretty sad, but it's also kinda awesome that the school actually helps.

Well, you could both be totally wrong, but something about the way the gondola kids look so completely at peace here makes you doubt it.

The two of you kind of just walk for a few minutes, taking in the sights. There are a few more students scattered around and all of them just seem to be hanging out; like, nobody's in uniform or anything. So that's more evidence for the school housing thing! Maybe!

"Ooh, that sword obviously turns into something but I can't tell what? That looks like a lot of moving parts so I bet it's awesome and – oh my gosh do you see that?! That hammer! It's got a weird blade on it is that a glaive? Is that a hammer that's also a glaive because that is so cool?"

"... Actually, now that you're already talking about weapons... I'm kind of nervous about mine? Right now this is still just a battle rifle. It's not even the one I'm forging back at Mr. Gun, and that one's still just going to be a gun that turns into a different gun. I don't have anything to do at close range except whack things with it like it's a weird club."

Hmm. Hmmmm. Only having mid range and long range options does sound pretty dangerous.

"I guess you could stick something sharp on it for now? Like a bayonet, maybe! And then you can figure out more stuff later if you want, so it won't just be a gun-gun?"

Her ears perk up.

"Yeah... a bayonet makes sense. I don't think that I'm ever going to be able to fight much up close, but that's better than nothing. Thank you!" Her smile is so bright and honest. It's a really nice change of pace, seeing her less depressed! You're not sure if she meant for anybody to notice she'd stayed depressed but she isn't super good at faking things and even if she was... ears just don't lie.

"Oh no it's nothing! I'm just, you know, trying to help! And be helpful about stuff!" Augh, that was totally redundant and unnecessary! Why are you suddenly feeling nervous? It's not any of the usual reasons, or at least you don't think it is...

Maybe you jinxed things thinking about feelings, because Jade's good mood starts fading as soon as you enter one of the main school buildings and that's kind of not great but now it's easier to blame your own actual nervousness on the smaller amount of nervousness from being inside of Beacon holy crap and not stop and spend any time at all thinking about any other possible reasons. Perfect.

... This is really sucky, though. She doesn't seem to have much more to say and you can see her ears slowly pulling farther back, practically a little more with every step. Well, her face also looks nervous, but sometimes faces are hard and you totally misunderstand them so it's kind of nice to have something else to interpret for once, even if you're not interpreting a happy thing. As much as she's mysterious, you kinda still have an easier time telling how Jade is feeling than you do with pretty much anyone but Yang and Dad. You bet that if you were a Faunus, you'd be a dog, too! But what kind of dog? Zwei already has dibs on being a corgi... Wait, what kind of dog is Jade? Is that even a thing, or are Faunus just whatever?

The two of you go on winding through the halls. You're sort of just absorbing the atmosphere and she's starting to triple-check her directions over and over even when she obviously remembers them. Is she going to be alright?

"Um, hey, are you... feeling okay?"

She startles like she forgot you were there.

"Y-yeah! I'm fine, I'm just... a little bit stressed out, I guess."

... Okay, well, it makes sense to be stressed right now but this is... really quickly getting to the point where 'stressed' doesn't cover it at all.

You're still trying to think of something useful to say or do when you come to a sudden stop outside the testy place, which is apparently also a sparring room. There are some benches in the halls outside most of the classrooms, so you guess you'll just wait for her there? It can't take too long to test someone for this, can it?

"... they're not here yet," she mumbles, and oh jeez she looks even worse now. Now that you think about it, that's right, she was meeting friends here or something! She's been talking to them on her scroll a lot which is a little weird but then again didn't she think they were dead or something? You think she thought they were dead or something. You know she definitely hasn't seen any of them in a while. Maybe it's not actually that weird after all.

It's not like you aren't paying attention! You swear you are! You just keep having trouble processing the fact that she had really good reason to be afraid that everyone she's ever known was dead. That kind of thing is, um... kind of a new concept to you! There has to be a thing to say that'll help out, right? You're her friend, you have to help.

"Don't worry, I'm sure they'll get here soon!"

... Is that really the best you have? What kind of friend are you? It's just, you're not used to being reassuring to anybody but Yang, who will never admit to anybody else on Remnant that you take care of her almost as much as she takes care of you. But that's the problem right there, isn't it? You're used to already having memorized the right way to respond to basically everything and you don't have a lifetime's worth of practice figuring out how to help Jade. Heck, you've only had a couple of days.

She giggles in a stomach-sinkingly shaky way and it is super definitely not real laughter. One of her arms is kind of wrapped around herself, hand squeezing her other arm, and she's digging her nails into her skin pretty hard. And now harder. And now really hard.

You've seen that behavior before. Well... not for years, and 'seen' is the wrong way to put it – although you guess technically you've seen it with your eyes even if that's not really the main sense that was involved – but that's not the point, the point is that if you put all the signs together they are screaming 'this girl is about to flip out' and there are like a billion reasons you can't let that happen.

"I'm supposed to go in there in two minutes," she says, free hand fiddling with her scroll. "I just sort of hoped they'd b-be here already? So I didn't have to... s-so..."

Okay. Okay. You are bad at this but there's one thing that makes everybody feel better probably maybe you hope, and there isn't actually time for anything else, so you make sure she's looking at you and won't be surprised, and then you give her a hug.

It's kind of weird to hug people who aren't in your family. Hugs are a really easy way to make bad things be at least a tiny bit less bad but you're not all that sure what's inappropriate for friends or what, and it's also just weird to be hugging a body that's not shaped like Yang or Dad or Uncle Qrow. Has anybody written a book about how to hug people right? Somebody should do that. You would buy it instantly.

She goes stiff for a second, but then she hugs you back and you can feel some of the tension bleed away. Good! You did the thing and it helped! Plus she smells like a gun store and that's kind of a nice bonus. Everybody wins!

... How long do you hug someone who's not family before it's weird? She's awfully clingy, though, so you guess it doesn't matter what's normal or not. It suddenly occurs to you that she might not actually know what's normal either and that's pretty sad because normally normal people know what's normal so she's probably even less normal than you've been thinking and in your experience things are a lot easier for normal people, or at least normal people always seem like things are easy for them? You kinda wouldn't know.

Eventually she lets go and you kinda give her some space. She takes a slow, deep breath, and yeah okay she does let it back out all shaky-weird, but it's still better than if you hadn't done anything. It has to be better.

"Thank you," she says in a tiny little voice that you've heard her use before. You want to be happy about this! You didn't screw up! But... even after knowing Jade for just a few days, you can tell she's not actually a shy person at heart, not at all. People like her should be smiling all the time and it kind of hurts to know she isn't. You wonder if maybe she used to, before... whatever it was that happened.

"Okay, well... wish me luck!"

"Good luck! You don't need it, though, you'll be fine!"

"Right," she says, and does the deep-breathey thing again. "Yeah. You're right. It'll be fine." Jade smiles at you, and that would seem like a good sign except her ears are saying that happy is pretty much the last thing she actually is.

Then she opens the door and steps through and she's gone.

You sit down on the nearest bench and try not to worry too much. You're not a worrier normally, at least not like Dad is, and really you'd say you hate worrying about anything but there's not much to do about it, is there? It'll be okay, though. You weren't lying, it really will be! You've seen Jade at target practice now and she's seriously good, like, if she had gone to combat school her GPA would be at least a 3.5, so she's definitely for real going to be fine! Professor Ozpin seems really nice too so you don't think she'll have to feel nervous around him.

"Excuse me! Hi! Hello!"

Whoa! Okay, you are suddenly not alone in here. Two girls in clothes that are sort of 'casual huntress' levels of cool are headed your way. It looks like they're both Faunus; the girl who was talking to you has big curly horns and the other one has a long swishy kitty tail. Maybe these are the friends Jade was talking about! ... Or maybe you're just racist. You hope you're not! You're pretty sure you're trying not to be but how would you actually know if you're screwing it up ooh that's a revolver the horned girl's got holstered there, isn't it? She also has what's maybe a thin sword in a sheath but honestly you're more interested in the gun. Unless they combine. That's always awesome.

Her outfit makes her look like something you can only describe as a 'party archaeologist' in mostly black and bright friendly red, with a darker red gear symbol on her chest and at least one more belt than she actually needs, maybe even two. Her smile is super big and that would probably make you less nervous if it seemed like a good thing but you're kinda not sure if it is a good thing? It's a little too big and wide, like she could open it way too far and bite off somebody's hand.

The other girl is... sorta grumpy looking by comparison, but not too much. She also looks a lot, well, shabbier, you guess? You don't mean that in a bad way! She just doesn't have the same level of coordination going on. Her whole setup seems like kind of a rush job and you're pretty instantly sure that it's because she hasn't been able to afford anything better; she's obviously trying to pull something together, plus you can see some kind of bracers under her beat up green jacket sleeves but the metal is obviously cheap and the rest of her deal is just really old looking jeans and a plain black t-shirt with a squiggly thing on the chest that must be her symbol.

Huh, both of them have their symbols in basically the same spot. Weird.

They're also both about five feet away from you now, because you spent too much time staring. Come on, Ruby! You know better than that! You've gotta stay in the moment and not get too distracted or else people are going to think you're annoying. Well, you probably are annoying, but they don't need to know that yet.

"Hi!", the girl in red says again. "We're looking for a friend of ours? Her name is Jade Harley and she has big white dog ears."

"Oh! Yeah, she just went in there to take her exam."

"I said mew shouldn't have wasted so much time trying to find out if that buoy understood what 'mortaility' meant," cat-girl mutters. She said that weird, somehow, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly what was weird about it. Both of them have accents that are completely foreign, too. You don't think you've ever heard anyone who sounds very much like this, not even on TV.

"He'll be fine," the other girl says, rolling her eyes. "I'm not that scary. You'd think he'd never even died before! Anyway, you must be Ruby, right? My name is Aradia! I like your aesthetic!"

"My what?" You're sure you should know what that word means, Yang's said it at least once or twice, but that's you for you.

"Your clothes!" She is right up in your face oh jeez. You kind of flatten yourself against the back of the bench. Is this what it's like for other people to put up with you?

"Oh! Um, thank you! I like yours, too. Red is... it's super great."

Wow. Wow. You figure someone in history must have been more awkward than you are, but you sure don't know who it was. Sometimes you think awkwardness should have been your Semblance instead of speed. Then again, you make things weird super fast and that does fit the theme.

"Also yes I'm Ruby and it's nice to meet you?"

... 'Cringeworthy' should be your middle name at this point. There goes your chance to make a decent first impression. Dang it. Aradia pulls back, which is kinda nice because she was about two inches away from poking you with her nose. Or, um. Biting off your face. She sounds nice, though! You think! But also there were two girls here and you should probably not ignore the other one!

"What's, uh, what's your name?"

"This is Nepeta!", Aradia says before her friend can actually answer for herself. Nepeta – how do you pronounce that, the accent is really throwing you off – shoots her a sour look. Jade actually told you their names already, but you're kinda not good at remembering stuff. She told you a few things, actually! Mostly that her friends are 'crazy, but not in a bad way,' and to never touch either of them ever. That last one left you a little bit nervous.

You also asked if they were as weird as her and then felt like a huge butt for it, but she actually didn't seem to mind at all so maybe she's used to being weird and it doesn't bother her anymore and huh maybe she could teach you how to not feel dumb about being weird? Anyway, her answer was just a slightly intense expression and a firm 'yes.'

"Nice to meet you," Nepeta says, still looking pretty annoyed, but she sounds like she means it anyway. She sits down cross-legged against the wall more or less across from you, which is weird since there's totally room on the bench.

Aradia actually takes the space, maybe a little more space than you're happy about. She has a lot of energy which is incredibly relatable but you still can't shake the feeling that she might be dangerous, which bugs you because what's that all about? That's so not like you.

It's just... that grin. It makes her look halfway normal and halfway like a horror movie bad guy? You have no idea what to think about that. Actually, maybe it reminds you a little too much of how Yang looks when she's doing something illegal.

"Oh yeah," she says, "has your sister decided if I'm real or not?"

That was weird timing.

... Wait, why does she know who your sister is?!

"I... huh? What does that mean? You know Yang?"

Aradia kicks her legs back and forth, scuffing her shoes on the floor. Out of the corner of your eye you can see she's turned her head all the way to stare at you, and you almost think she's grinning even wider than she already was.

"Oh, kind of! I've just been haunting her in her sleep lately, and it's really funny, so I was curious!"

... Okay. That's... that sure is a thing.

You for sure don't regret meeting Jade and stuff, and you'll probably get used to her instantly terrifying adorable friends eventually, or at least you hope you will, but you still can't help but wonder just what the heck you've gotten yourself into.

"Is... is that your Semblance?" That's a crazy weird Semblance if it is one, but you can't imagine any other reason for it if she's being serious. Maybe she's just playing a stupid trick on you and she knows about Yang from talking to Jade. Ugh! That would be exactly the kind of thing Yang would do herself. This is the weirdest twisty train of thought you've had in a while.

Aradia replies with a wink and a mysterious smile.

"It's tidally her Semblance," Nepeta says brightly.

"Aww, you ruined it," Aradia pouts. "I could have made it so much weirder!" Then she smiles again. "You took the bait, though. I almost thought you'd screw that up."

Nepeta groans and flops her head into her hands. You're suddenly feeling even less sure about what's going on here than you were before.

"Purrlease stop hitting on me right now? You're seariously stressing me out, and not in a good way."

Aradia shrugs and sighs, although she doesn't exactly sound like she feels bad about... whatever is happening? It's basically just getting weirder and yeah Jade said her friends were super weird but somehow you still weren't expecting this? What even... you're not even good at normal people stuff, how are you supposed to make sense of these two?

"Sorry," Aradia says, and she does actually sound a little sorry! "I was just bored. Hey, cheer up! We get to do some hunting!" Nepeta perks up instantly, not really like somebody just flipped a switch in her brain but also a little bit like that. Whoa, what if brains had actual switches for different feelings? Like if you were mad you could just turn that off and not mess things up, or if you were really, really, really, really sad and nobody else understood at all you could just –

"Yes!" Whoa! Okay maybe the switch thing was a good metaphor? "It's probubbly robots or something but still! It's been furever since I got to just claw something to death, you know?"

Um. Okay. That's not concerning at all.

Aradia... actually seems put off too? For a second there you were expecting her to say something just as creepy or even creepier, but –

"Hey, I was thinking... what's up with the puns?"

Or maybe it was something completely silly that you had only halfway noticed and she doesn't mind the weird part at all. At least they've sorta forgotten you're here! This way you don't have to keep saying dumb things and embarrassing yourself over and over.

"I alwaves do puns," Nepeta says.

"Yeah, sure, but not like this! You've got one in almost every sentence lately, sometimes two! It's cute but it's also sorta weird for you, you know?"

"I don't want to talk about this," Nepeta says, pun-free. "And de-fin-ately not here!" Okay, there was a pun for sure, you think! "I mean, I'm just... moby it's because I'm a little nervous. I catn't help it. It's not a big deal."

Even you can tell she said that exactly the way somebody does when it's totally a big deal and they're trying to change the subject. That's so weird, though. She just talks in puns all the time, you guess? Yang is going to love her. Wait, that's terrible, your whole life is already full of bad puns and jokes and now your (only) friend's friend is this girl? Why is your life like this? What did you do to deserve this?

"The important part is we get to destroy a lot of stuff," Aradia says. "Just think about that! And then we start learning how to be even better at destroying things! And we'll probably find weird old ruins and mysterious caves full of monsters!"

"... Yeah," Nepeta says, looking a little happier again. You think. You wish you knew anything about cat tails, but you guess Jade is the only one you'll get to cheat with. Oh well! Maybe you'll do some research later, it might be useful! "Yeah! It'll be fun. I'm reely ready to take a break from the universe and just... get to hunt monsters and paint stuff and see new things and be alive again."

... You really hope you get to find out what their deal is someday? It sounds pretty depressing so maybe you don't actually want to know... no, you need to try to know more stuff when you get the chance to. It's hard to be a good friend when you barely know anything about a person and suddenly you know someone neat who wants to be your friend and you are not messing that up by slacking off instead of learning about her friends, no way.

As long as no one tries to drag you into their super weird conversation, you think you'll be –

"Anyway you're new," Aradia says, leaning over way too close again, "so let's see if we can't learn a thing or two!"

– you'll be just... fine. Welp. Now things are about to be so much more awkward.

"Jade said something about you having a scythe? I am very interested in that."

... Or maybe things are about to be amazing.

You think the grin spreading on your face is probably almost as big as hers.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

been a while, y'all. it might be a while again, but hopefully not

stay tuned to find out how many different, escalatingly ridiculous and complicated ways i can make ruby misremember the word "gazebo"