This is a work of fan fiction, created for entertainment purposes only and with no claim to the characters depicted. Ownership of RWBY characters and concepts belongs to Rooster Teeth. Dungeons and Dragons and the d20 System belong to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. The World of Ere setting belongs to Landon Porter and Paradox-Omni Entertainment.
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Chapter 25: Monkeyshines Part 1: Weiss Meets World
Weiss really hoped her face would stop burning. And that Blake would stop smirking at her for it.
It was her alleged friend's fault anyway. She should have warned her that Sun would answer the door shirtless—or mostly shirtless. That was not a thing normal people did! It wasn't even summer, it was late fall to the point that it might as well have been winter. There were even scattered patches of snow left as testament to that!
Now she was struggling not to take note of the highly defined abs peeking through his white cotton button down which wasn't in any way buttoned down.
Sun, either used to this level of surreptitious ogling or not noticing, just grinned brightly at the pair and stepped aside with a dramatic bow. "Ladies, welcome to Casa de Wukong come on in, make yourself at home."
"Hey Sun," Blake said with an easy smile Weiss was not used to seeing from the normally aloof girl, "Are we the first one's here?"
"Nah." Sun gave a shrug as the two girls stepped through the door and into the kitchen. The room was fairly large, but cramped thanks in no small part to a big chest freezer against one wall, an extra-large island counter, and the various and sundry cooking appliances of the 'As Seen on TV' variety that littered almost every surface. "Neptune's downstairs getting the terrain off the table from Mordheim last night."
Evidently, he was taking notice of Weiss's expressions, as he saw her puzzled expression at the unknown word. "Oh, that's a minis game me and the band play. Sort of like roleplaying but you're running an army instead of a character."
"Right." Weiss managed. She'd spent the previous day in Blake's company getting a wealth of foreign concepts drilled into her head and she did not need to learn that there weren't just different RPGs out there, but a whole ecosystem of nerdish things people did for entertainment.
Taking that in stride, Sun closed the door and gestured toward the refrigerator. "You guys want a drink before we head down? We've got a couple different kinds of soda, juice, my mom's awful experimental smoothies if you like chia seeds and summer squash..."
"Sodas are good." Blake said, cutting off more description of Sun's mom's 'experiments' because she knew how far and how bad they could go. The woman wasn't even a health nut, just born with more curiosity than common sense. It made Blake wonder how she ended up being a CPA rather than a scientist. "Weiss?"
Six-pack passed through the Schnee heiress's mind looking for something to connect to. "...Yes. Soda is fine. Perfectly fine." The words couldn't have held more tension if they were supporting a bridge. She directed a sharp look at Blake as their host make his way over to the fridge and got their drinks.
Leaning over, Blake whispered "Just wait," she said in a teasing tone she had to have learned from Yang.
As much as Weiss wanted to ask what the hell that meant, Sun was already back holding a number of bottles in his arms. Tilting his head to read the labels, he declared, "So okay; we've got orange, ginger ale and turkey grav—oh damn it, Dad!" He tried to shift the bottles in his grasp so as to position the offender into a place where he could dump it on the counter but failed. "Ah screw it, we'll just this one to Torchy. Can't let a good practical joke go to waste, eh?"
With that, he motioned with his head for them to follow him and Blake set off, leaving Weiss to bring up the rear. Not even five minutes in and she was yet to be convinced that she belonged there. There had been doubts the day before, but they were mounting with all the jargon, the cluttered house and the very idea o gravy flavored soda joke or not.
But, she reminded herself, she'd had the same misgivings about public school in general, about participating in sports, and every one of the people she now counted as her friends. Things weren't inferior or wrong here, they were just different. She could handle different. She had to handle different if she wanted to interact with people like a normal human being rather than this strange species called a Schnee.
So she squared her shoulders and marched after Blake through a door just off the kitchen leading into a stairway.
The Wukong basement was... interesting. If Weiss had to describe it as anything, she'd say 'patchwork order'. Nothing matched, but everything was in its place. It was a finished basement sectioned off into at least three rooms: the main room, one Weiss spied through an open door which contained a washer and dryer, and another beyond and arch where a desk and bookcases could be seen.
The main room had a pool table as the very first thing that greeted people when they exited the stairs. Beyond that was a cluster of variable seating ranging from a leather love seat, a well worn plush couch, a paisley recliner, and three chairs from three different dinette sets clustered around a long, low table. There was a big screen television behind the three chairs, flanked by a set of heavy duty shelves filled with boxes upon colorful boxes that upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be board games.
Having not known there even were board games beyond monopoly and chess, she was so preoccupied with that she almost missed the other occupant of the room. And that was pretty amazing because he had blue hair. Not old lady blue either. Vibrant cotton candy blue. It was a good dye job too because she spied neither hide nor hair (heh) of any roots showing.
"Hey Neptune this is Weiss the friend Blake told us about," Sun said, finally managing to set the bottles down at the edge of the table.
The young man, Neptune, was in the middle of putting little plastic slabs covered in plastic trees and boulders into a box, but paused to regard Weiss for a moment. "Queen Elizabeth from the Halloween party, right?" He asked with far too much pride in recalling that.
Weiss wracked her brain, trying to remember him. The hair turned out to be a godsend. "Yes. And you were... well you wore a tuxedo very sharply if I recall correctly."
"Actually, I was James Bond. MI6 Agent 007." He did a terrible impression of Sean Connery while bowing. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Your Majesty." Giving her a playful smirk, he took the box in his hands over to an open space on the shelf to put it away.
Sun rolled his eyes at his friend's attempted flirtation and plopped himself down in the arm chair. "So, ladies; what're we playing?"
"After a lot of discussion yesterday, I think we've come up with something pretty solid." Blake sat down on the love seat and pulled a folder of paper character sheets out of her shoulder bag. "Just to make things simpler, I'm playing Weiss's character's bodyguard. I'm a miare rogue with feats from the Shadowstep path—the one that lets you teleport around in dim light."
A snort escaped Sun.
"Shut up," Blake ordered, deadpan.
That only made him grin bigger. "Hey, I'm not the one who plays a catgirl at every opportunity."
"It works for the character: claw attacks count as light blades and I'm specializing in that," Blake insisted. "Besides, the miare aren't 'cat people', they're a mix of a lot of animals."
"But mostly cats," Sun replied before taking mercy on Blake an turning toward Weiss. "And what're you playing?"
Weiss swole with pride and lifted her chin. "I am playing... and angel," she announced.
"Hailene." Blake corrected.
"They have wings, they're angels," Weiss replied haughtily.
"See what I have to work with?" Blake asked. "Anyway, she's a mage on the cryomancer path with Eldritch Warrior because she wants to hit things too. The back story is that she's the daughter of a merchant family who's read far, far too many adventure stories and I'm a mercenary hired to keep her from dying."
"Sounds like we have a newbie in our midst," a voice called from the top of the stairs. The owner of said voice descended into view with an arrogant smirk and swagger. He wore a black silk shirt with white slacks and dress shoes. His red hair was more carefully groomed than anyone else's in the room, even Weiss's. "Never thought you'd be the one doing the hand-holding, Belladonna."
Before Blake could give her reply, Sun had a more pressing question. "How the hell did you get in here?"
"Just take one guess," Torchwick said blandly as he cleared the archway to the stairs, revealing two young women. One had mint-dyed hair and dark skin. Dressed in a cream-colored sun dress and a green jacket, her lip was curled in amusement as she sidled past him.
"I figured we were invited anyway and it wasn't like your locks were even the lest bit serious," Emerald Sustrai declared, easily crawling over the back of the couch to bounce down on the side closest to Sun's seat. "Don't worry, I locked back up once I got in."
The other woman was a girl—or at least looked a good deal young than anyone else in the room. Half of her brown hair was dyed pink and she was dressed with similar expense as Torchwick with a white silk shirt, tan pants and prim little riding boots. All of her focus was on her phone as she absently lounged in the archway.
Sun shot Emerald a glare, but knew she felt no shame, so didn't take it any farther. Instead, he chose to make introductions. "Weiss, these are Emerald, Roman, and Roman's little sister Neopolitan." He raised an eyebrow to Torchwick. "Is she actually going to play this time?"
"What? You don't like her sparkling conversation skills?" Torchwick asked, rounding the table to take one of the chairs. He kicked it around to face the other direction and say on it backward. Meanwhile Neo was slowly drifting from the arc to the couch, eyes never leaving her screen. "But actually, yeah, I convinced her not to just sit there and look like a creepy Victorian doll for once." He pulled out his own smart phone and after some tapping, he held it out for Sun to read.
Taking the phone, Sun scanned over the information. "So you're a human bard—not surprise there, Mr. Peacock. A dueling cane? Seriously?"
"It was a legitimate form of self defense back in the day," Torchwick defended. "Plus, it's not all I have: I've got a three-shot rifle too. Specced for the Bard Knack 'Valorous', so I can fight frontline my good man."
"O...okay." Sun rolled his eyes and continued to scroll through the character sheets. "And Neo is... a halfling combatant? Really?"
At the mention of her name, Neo glanced up, but Roman spoke for her. "It's all she ever plays online: tiny little women whose shtick is nickle and diming people to death. Don't ask me why she doesn't play a rogue, but she's usually pretty badass." He smirked in his sister's direction before adding, "But we'll see how she is actually playing face to face instead of on a message board now won't we?"
Neo sniffed and tossed her head at the taunt before returning to her phone.
Sun watched Neo for a moment on the off chance that she might have something to say before giving up and turning to Emerald. "How about you, Em? I'm betting rogue."
A lazy smile spread across the green-haired girl's face. "Trying something new this time: cleric of Dey, Goddess of Doing What Must Be Done. Which is like a rogue with a divine mandate if you read the flavor text. Halfling, by the way, so we've got two shorties in the party." She posted up for a high five and, without looking, Neo slapped her palm.
Then she frowned and looked at Weiss, "Kind of surprised to see you here. Sure you're up for playing a mage as your first character? They're pretty complicated." Unlike Sun and his other players besides Blake, she went to school with Weiss even if she only knew her by reputation and in passing.
Weiss could tell that the other woman wasn't trying to provoke her, but her pride made her back straighten anyway. "It's just a matter of picking the right spell for the situation. I am fully capable of that, thank you very much."
The reaction was not one she'd expected. Emerald just stared at her with a wry 'are you kidding me?' expression. "You're the one that's gonna get frustrated. Just remember I tried to help and take it out on Roman or Sun when you finally snap." Done with Blake, she seemed to finally notice Neptune. "I didn't hear what Blake's playing, but there's cat people and rogues in this, so that's a given just like how Roman just has to play unusually beautiful men. That leaves you, blue boy. What're you playing?"
A casual look from Sun to Neptune to Roman has Weiss thinking what this group would even consider 'unusually beautiful' for a man. It was like Emerald and Blake had built a strategic handsome reserve. Between Sun's abs and Neptune's smile and Roman's fashion sense, they had the makings to Frankenstein up a perfect man.
Unaware he was being mentally harvested for his best features, Neptune sat down next to Roman and picked up a backpack from beside his seat, coming up with a sheaf of papers like the one from Blake's folder. At the top of it was a few detailed black-and-white drawing of a winged figure in heavy armor wielding a shield with a sunburst motif on it and a trident.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Neptune announced dramatically, "Paolo Hydennepoura, which means Cloudcutter. He's a hailene templar cleric of Hessa."
Roman gave the drawing a low whistle. "Nice. But how do you fly in heavy armor like that?"
"So many feats," Sun groaned. "Considering you guys and your usual antics, I'm just going to go ahead and guess Blake and Weiss are the only ones that even pretended to make competent characters."
"Pfft." Emerald blew a raspberry. "Who cares if our numbers are high if we still manage to get the job done? Besides, it's a one shot—it'd actually be funny if this ended with our bodies getting stacked up like cordwood. Then again, it's you running this and not Blake."
Blake huffed. "I said I was sorry about that, okay? It was the designers fault in the first place. Why would you make a level 1 ghoul that deadly?"
"Anyway," Sun interrupted, "Em's right and this is a one shot to test the new system Ruby suggested to me."
"Wait. You know Ruby?" Weiss asked.
"Oh sure," said Sun, "She part of the League of Evil GMs. That's what the guy at the game shop calls us anyway. Mostly we just trade ideas online and stuff, but yeah, I know her. Penny too."
Weiss absorbed this new information slowly. They lived in a sizable city, but it seemed that the geek scene was small enough to fit in, well Yang's house for a Halloween party. She wondered who else knew who. "Huh," was the best she could do.
Again, Sun nodded. "So. New player, new system, let's get started." He consulted a pile of handwritten notes before reading, "In a world where airships are common, there are some places where travel by land is still the better choice thanks to airborne predators, sky pirates and the like. For that, there are caravans, hire coaches both steam and horse-powered, and in the nation of Novrom, in the Allied Principalities of Abravas, Cincoun, and Hapsearin, they've decided on a novel means of transporting precious ore from the Cincoun mines down through the hills of Abravas, and to the ports in Hapsearin: the steam locomotive. Over the past ten years, the railway in the region has grown, expanding to multiple towns and also taking on passengers. For your own reasons, you find yourselves aboard a passenger train bound for the port town of Neadia from the mountains."
At this point, Neptune seemed to remember something and reached under the table to retrieve a roll of plastic material that he unrolled to reveal a battle map with a 'grid' of hexagons instead of squares. There was already a diagram of a train and some surrounding forest drawn on it.
"Thanks man," Sun gave his best friend a nod before continuing. "The train has four cars: the engine up front here, two passenger cars and this last car is a cargo hauler Anyone that's checked notes that the door leading from the rear passenger car to this one is locked."
"Not for long it's not." Emerald said, looking pleased.
Sun rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I figured. Everyone grab a mini and place yourself where you'd be in the train." He retrieved a plastic tub full of figurines and handed it first to Emerald, who rummaged through and passed it on.
In the end, Emerald's character was represented by a plastic Ewok toy with a tatty green cloak, Neo's by an actual halfling with a dagger, Roman's by a ringmaster in full regalia complete with whip and tophat, Neptune by a merfolk with a trident, Blake's with a female ninja, and finally Weiss by an elf sorceress with a fireball in her palm.
Inevitably, Emerald's Ewok was in the second passenger car next to the locked door along with Blake and Weiss's characters. Neo haphazardly placed her mini in the engineering compartment, while Roman and Neptune arranged themselves in the first car.
Once they were to everyone's satisfaction, Sun gave an approving nod. "You've been traveling a couple of hours and aside from the two engineers and three guards you saw board the last car, there's no one else aboard."
"Five dollars says the track gets blocked by bandits." Torchwick whipped out his wallet and extracted a bill.
"I'll see your five and say we derail somehow." Emerald chipped in, though she didn't produce any money to back that up.
Sun glared at both of them. "Seriously?"
"Just earning a little cash from an obvious trope, buddy," Torchwick said with a noncommittal shrug.
"So what do I get when neither of those happens?" Sun challenged.
"Nothing, you're the DM. You can just make whatever you want up anyway."
While they argued, Blake leaned over and whispered to Weiss, "Do you have ten dollars I can borrow?"
"Ten—why?" Weiss hissed back. Borrowing money from her with no intention of paying it back before Weiss threw a tantrum was more of a Yang thing.
"You brought cash for pizza, right? Let me borrow it for a second and you can have it right back. Trust me."
If it had been any of the others, Weiss might have balked. Yang would blow it on drinks or food or some stupid tchotchke, Pyrrha rarely borrowed money, but when she did it would be for some softhearted in fiscally unfeasible reason. Blake, however was even more pragmatic than Weiss herself, so if she wanted to borrow money, it was for a solid reason.
"Very well, but I only brought twenties or higher." Weiss opened her purse and fished out a bill, passing it to Blake.
"You won't be disappointed," Blake said before slapping the bill down on the table in an uncharacteristic show of force that cut off the three-way argument between Torchwick, Emerald and Sun. "Weiss and I both bet on runaway train," she announced.
Torchwick laughed. "Oh please. He's got terrain already drawn on the map and everything. It's not going to be a runaway train. For the same reason, we're not going to be derailed because again, the train is drawn on the tracks. Q. E. D.: we're about to be stopped by something on the tracks."
"How about we just play the game and see what happens. Perception checks for everyone but Neo. Neo..." he scribbled on a sheet of notebook paper, balled it up and tossed it to her, landing it perfectly on the screen of her phone.
She opened it and started reading. At first, her expression read as uninterested. That is until she was halfway done and her eyes widened and she started hastily writing her reply.
Sun couldn't help but chuckle at her reaction.
"Can I pick the lock on the door to the cargo compartment?" Emerald asked.
"Well, you can start," said Sun. "But just as you get done making sure the other two can't see what you're up to..." He caught the note Neo tossed back to him, read it, then laughed out loud. "Alright then. Just as you're about to pick the lock, the train suddenly accelerates. Roman, Neptune, the door to the engineering compartment is kicked open to reveal a blood-covered halfling dragging one of the engineers who has a flowing wound in his chest. Take it away, Neo."
The tiny girl took a deep breath before shouting loud enough that her voice echoed off the basement walls. "Someone show both the engineers through the window! This thing is out of control unless someone can heal this guy!"
While everyone else cringed at the volume of her voice, Blake merely stared down Emerald and Torchwick. "Out money, please?"
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AN: This chapter is out in record time thanks to mrwizard70 via P/atreon! If anyone else would like to make sure their favorite among my current fics (even old ones like TPR, MiM and Azure Renaissance) is the next one I'll post, PM me!
So there's a lot of stuff to talk about here. Going on order, let's start with the fact that Sun's mom is, in fact 'curious as a monkey' and his dad is a practical jokester. The turkey gravy soda is a real thing produced as a gag gift by Jones Soda.
Mordheim is an actual minis wargame my friends used to play. I never played minis games because I didn't have room to play or store them.
Blake's ghoul problem is a reference to the 'Ghoul Surprise', a rather infamous story that came from the D&D 5e playtest where a single ghoul, which should be a reasonable but not hard challenge for a group of four level 1 characters (CR1) proved capable of wiping the floor with them with little effort. They didn't really fix this in the final game. Challenge Ratings in 5e are a cruel joke.
As for the characters, I decided to bring Neo in after a long bout of considerations over whether to make her mute or not. I felt like having her just communicate via passed notes and such would be tedious, so I decided since there's no actual proof whether she's mute or just quiet in canon, I just did what I felt and went with the fakeout we got here.
Like in Arc Reaction, my interpretation of Neo and Torchwick's relationship is more familial than most people's. In this one they're actual adopted siblings where Roman pretty much did all the raising of her himself.
Emerald hasn't had much focus in my little multiverse, so this is her first major role so far. I like Emerald, but I have this nagging feeling there's so much more to her we don't know. I tried to keep up her frenemy style relationship with Torchwick here and extend it to Sun and Neptune as well. For some reason, I've decided she likes Neptune better than the other two.
Torchwick is awesome. He's another one I love to write and he's just getting started her. Everyone pretty much called he'd be a bard, but oddly everyone wanted him to be useless. Considering my personal preferences for characters, styles and classes... that couldn't happen. And yes, the dueling cane is in the actual game. There's an advanced proficiency for it that makes it a trip and grapple weapon.
Sun and Neptune had a moment that ended up on the cutting room floor where Sun scolded Neptune for creeping on Weiss while she was new to the table. I got rid of that both because he didn't come on super strong anyway, and even if he was, Weiss can handle herself.
Speaking of, Weiss ended up pushed to the side a bit here to introduce the others, but rest assured, this is still her arc and it's going to be her interactions with the others that will be the focus of Monkeyshines. Just needed to establish the group dynamic and relaitonships.
Next chapter, it's off to the races as the group tries to stop a runaway train, Weiss and Emerald learn to never split the party, and evil fey koalas?! First the super-weasel in NYSG and now this? Yeah, my setting is weird.