A/N: Obligatory reminder that the fic has a blog at lionheartedfic dot tumblr dot com, with fanart, updates on chapter progress, and extra setting information. There's been some excellent new fanart lately, so check that out!
wait near the end of September, wait for some stars to show
try so hard not to remember what all empty playgrounds know:
that sympathy is cruel, reluctant jester or simpering fool
..
the weakerthans - fallow
NJKA
3rd Morning, Spring Semester
For once, you don't actually spend most of your night visiting dreams. It was a tiring day! Also, you are pretty excited to see what this whole human schoolfeeding thing is like, and that seems like it will be easier to do if you aren't yawning the whole time
The first thing you do when you wake up is grab the revolver from under your fluff rectangle; you never know who might be getting ready to stab you in an atavistic rage. Nobody is doing that, though, which is nice! It looks like Jade and Nepeta are still asleep and your resident ticking delayed-action explosive device is sitting on the edge of her sleeping platform, staring blankly at the floor.
You give her a little wave; she doesn't really acknowledge you. Well, that's alright! You're still all caked with dirt and grass stains and stuff and there is definitely a dihydrogen monoxide-based grime scourging station in here. There's nothing quite like scalding liquids to get your pan working in the evening. Morning, rather.
Since you're smart and also commit enough crimes to avoid poverty, you did check in some belongings last night, and they seem to have been placed here before you first arrived in this dormitory block, which means that you get to wash your hair extra-luxuriously.
Once all that's done, you change into the kinda adorable institution-mandated uniform you got before coming here. You wonder if Kanaya hates these or if she thinks they're fun! Well, right now she hates everything, but a saner version of her would probably have a more meaningful opinion to share.
It takes you all of this time and re-emerging into the main block without any real incident to notice something that should have been very , it's hard to rattle you even a little bit, and this definitely is just a little bit, but if you're right about this it represents some next-level fundamental psychological changes.
You should really check on the other trolls to see if they're feeling it (or rather, not feeling it), because you're a pretty poor benchmark for basically anything ever. Nepeta is awake now and hasn't been responding to all social interaction by being annoying, so you will have to ask her first!
"Hey Nepeta!", you say. "Is it just me or do we barely have any territorial instincts left? I haven't wanted to kill you guys even a little bit!"
There's a long silence; she looks at you like you're crazy, which is fair considering that you are definitely crazy, then her tail stiffens and kinda whacks into her sleeping platform trying to drop lower than it has room to.
"... I didn't even reel-ize," she says. "I thought I was just ocray with Blake beclaws, uh..."
"Because you want to rail her until she falls asleep in your lap," you supply cheerfully. Nepeta glares at you, tail bristling. See, now she looks like she wants to commit a murder. That's more like it.
"Yes, that," she mutters. "You're gross. Anywaves, I guess it's just... whale... diffurent?"
"Welcome to losing yourself," Kanaya says. You thought she sounded dead inside yesterday, but she just keeps finding new lows! "Or did you not consider the implications of having your soul violated by forcible placement into a pack mammal's horrid flesh?"
"You don't have to be rude aboat it." Nepeta is still bristling, but you're pretty confident it's not because of you anymore. It seems like you're all kind of hitting your limits in terms of how much Whiny Teammate you can put up with. "I am going to drown myshellf in the scourging station now and think about anyfin but this!" She stands up, grabs a little sack of her stuff from under her platform, walks past both of you without causing much of a stir, and is just about to shut the ablution block when she shoots back over her shoulder, "I don't mean that litterally, by the quay. I'm not Kanaya."
Kanaya does not get a chance to respond before Nepeta's shut and locked the door behind her. She moves like she's about to get up, then just sits back down, digging her clawtips into the sheets. You consider whistling, but no, that might make her snap, and then you'll all be late for schoolfeeding.
Jade yawns and stretches, sits up and rubs at her eyes with her knuckles. Then she sees Kanaya, who currently resembles an overloaded reactor core that's about to detonate.
"Did I miss something?" When there's no response, she looks to you and you shrug.
"Eh, not really. So, who else is excited for murder classes?"
Kanaya buries her face in her hands.
You spend a while kind of considering your next move while everybody takes turns erasing the evidence of all the killing you did yesterday, and by the time you're ready to go search for your first class, you've decided to take a certain chance. Jade and Nepeta are the first two out the door, which is convenient.
"Oh hey, Kanaya! Can I talk to you for a minute?" She stops and stares at you as if you're speaking an alien language. Actually, you think you're all doing that, but the simile stands.
"... Very well," she says; you nod to the other two nerds to go on ahead and then shut the door, leading her back over to your respective platforms. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to deal with your problems!"
"... Excuse me?" Kanaya's jaw doesn't drop or anything but she is giving off that same sense of shocked outrage. God, she is being such a drama empress.
"You heard me. I am your partner now and you act like you're always five seconds away from attacking people just for existing and that is going to get me in trouble! It's way too soon in the semester for that, I wanted to wait at least a week before doing anything that could be traced back to us."
"I really don't care if I cause you problems." Her eye twitches a little.
"See, that's what I mean! You keep doing that. Whenever somebody says anything you don't like, suddenly they're your new worst enemy. Even I'm running out of patience. Nobody's hitting on you and pretty much all the arguments you get in are your own fault. So go talk to somebody, because now I've said as much as I can say without it getting weird!"
She's quiet, surprisingly. You actually thought she would start yelling or throw something or just get up and leave, but instead she just looks haunted. That's progress!
"Talk to who, Aradia?"
"I don't know. Anybody, I guess! Aliens are weird, I bet you could find one of them to complain to, and you'd never have to bother doing it again unless you wanted to. Just stop making yourself into such a problem. It's not like you."
Kanaya doesn't really respond to that, either. Oh well. You've done everything you're willing to; you're sure not going to go for the poor thing, so you get up and head out. It might take a little hurrying to make it on time, but you'll be fine. You almost expect her not to follow you out, but she does.
There, that's your selfish good deed for the sweep taken care of.
Now it's time to start your first day at violence school.
RWBY
There's a knock on your bedroom door. You freeze up, anxiety washing over you like a gust of winter wind. Of course this had to be coming, but you weren't ready for it, not in the least. Then again, how could you possibly prepare yourself for the retribution you're owed after misbehavior of this magnitude?
Father doesn't wait for permission to enter; really, you should be thankful he even bothered knocking in the first place.
The look on his face is almost too much to bear. You thought he would be angry; you hoped he would be angry. That you can at least feel resentful about later. Instead, he's disappointed.
He doesn't say anything you haven't thought yourself. Only that you were a fool for risking the your life, and more importantly the Schnee family legacy, to protect a dog. A human being is another thing; acts of heroism may be stupid, but at least they build reputation. Here, there was nothing to gain whatsoever.
Who are you, and what have you done with his daughter? His sweet little songbird, who didn't overstep her bounds or dream for meaningless things or embarrass him?
Father orders you to turn your back to him, and for some reason you do, as if your body simply moves without thinking. You couldn't stop it if you tried. If you love animals so much, he says, then you ought to be treated like an animal.
Something tears a burning line into your back and you scream. You've always heard rumors about the Schnee dust mines; how could you not? You are no fool. Despite your beliefs, the reasons for your apathy, you know that it's wrong how your family business finds ways to pay lower wages to its Faunus employees, is stricter on them, is distinctly unfair.
However, you have never believed for a second that there could be any truth to the worst of the rumors, that the poorest Faunus with no other recourse are treated like slaves outright, given lashes as punishment for disobedience or failure.
But if your father is willing to do it to his own daughter, then maybe you were wrong.
You try to be strong, to grit your teeth through the pain, but it's too much, it goes on for too long, and eventually you're reduced to a pale ruin of yourself; crying, begging for mercy. How stupid of you to bother at all.
Jacques Schnee has not been merciful once in his life.
Earlier this morning
You wake up with the end of a word you can't remember still hot on your breath, and for a moment you honestly have no idea where you are. Thankfully, it doesn't take too long before reality comes trickling back to you.
This is not your (prison) house. This is your team dormitory at Beacon Academy, a continent away from that man. You try to calm your breathing, swallow to find your throat painfully dry, rub tears and sleep from your eyes.
What a stupid dream. Father may have hit you a few times when you were younger, but nothing outrageous like that ever happened, nothing that wasn't a normal way to handle a disobedient child.
You fumble for your scroll, currently lying ignobly on the floor. 5:30 AM. Ugh. This leaves you two and a half hours to kill before your first class, and your alarm was set for 6:30. There's no way on Remnant you're going back to sleep, either; even if you could, which is highly doubtful, you're not going to risk slipping back into the same dream.
Turning over onto your side, you stop dead upon realizing there are eyes on you. Blake. The rude one from the other day who's partnered with the obnoxious blonde. Oh god. Why is she awake this early? What did you say in your sleep? How much did she hear? What does that strange, sad look on her face mean?
"What -" you begin to say.
"GOOD MORNING, TEAAAAM RWBY!"
You jerk backward and bump your head against the wall; across the room, you can hear Blake snort. Lovely. Your 'leader' is awake now, too. It's hard for you to imagine she's the kind of person who wakes up early, which begs the question... just how loud were you?
Her sister groans and covers her head with a pillow; Ruby hops out of bed and initiates a tug-of-war over it that ends in Yang rolling off onto the floor.
"Why have you done this," she says, lying face down, voice muffled by the carpet. "I thought you loved me."
"Because it's morning! It's already - wait, what time is it?" It apparently did not occur to Ruby to even bother glancing at her scroll before assaulting a family member.
"It's five thirty," you say, bitterly. "Two and a half hours before class. Go back to sleep, you goblin. Leave us alone."
"I don't know, Weiss," Blake says. "It's not that early; we were both awake, after all."
This woman is evil. You'd call her a traitor, but she was never on your side to begin with; you suppose that makes her more of a dedicated enemy than anything else. What you ever did to earn her ire, you haven't the slightest clue. She's apparently just one of the many wacky new characters inserted into your life to by some spiteful god to ruin everything.
"Well, I for one am wayyyy too excited to just go back to sleep, and as your leader, I decree that we use this time to do something important!" Less than two minutes into day one and she's already abusing her power. Why are you not surprised?
"Such as?" Blake asks, instead of voicing some sort of logical objection. Ruby raises her finger in the air as if to punctuate a statement, then furrows her brow.
"Uh... hmm... well, we could, um... dang," she says, whispering the last word to herself. Amazing. She is every bit as stupid as your first impression of her suggested. "Ooh, I know! How about we decorate the dorm?"
... Oh, damn her, that's actually a decent idea, but you can't say that. You won't give her the satisfaction.
"We do still have to unpack," Blake says, lifting a bag from beneath her bed. Its clasp immediately comes loose, dumping various objects everywhere; she seems undaunted by this omen. "And clean. Also, I'm pretty sure classes are at nine, not eight."
There's a long silence while everyone attempts to absorb that information. She cannot be serious. You... could have sworn... did you misread that just because there was no room in your mind for an educational institution lax enough to start its classes at nine o'clock?
"I suppose we'll have plenty of time," you mumble to yourself. You intend to budget your extra hour for fantasies about the deaths of everyone in this room, yourself included.
"Someone shoot me," Yang groans. "Lay me to rest."
... Well, at least you're not the only person longing for a swift exit.
In an hour's time, the dormitory has metamorphosed from a room filled with baggage to a room filled with garbage; it's as if you're standing in the midst of an oddly stench-free landfill. You can hardly see the floor. The beds are like islands rising from a sea of bad decisions.
This isn't a surprise, since you've watched the disaster unfold slowly, Ruby and Yang repeatedly insisting 'it'll be fine' while your suspicion that they are both brain damaged feels more and more like a certainty. Blake is clearly not as stupid, which implies that instead she is terrible and antagonistic and has been compounding the problem with gusto specifically to make you suffer.
"Okay, yeah, maybe this isn't gonna work out," Yang says at long last.
"Really? You think? Whatever gave you that impression?" You're not letting this by without comment. If you don't establish yourself as the one reasonable human being in this room, they might start thinking you're one of them.
"Maybe if we have so many things, we should look into alternate ways of storing them?" You'd swear she distinctly glances your way when she says 'we,' both times. You're about to destroy her with a comment about thinning out the impressive stash of lewd novels she thinks you didn't see her hide, but Ruby beats you to the podium.
"Or we could ditch the beds... and replace them with bunk beds!"The mere idea seems to fill her with unholy energy. You, meanwhile, do your best to ignore an odd and difficult to identify feeling in your stomach. Now is not the time.
"That sounds extremely dangerous," you say flatly. "I would prefer not to be crushed to death." That gives you an idea, though, and you quickly realize what a fool you're being; you have to take this chance while you have it. "Actually, perhaps if I had one of the top bunks..."
You'd be able to retire every night knowing there was a chance you'd crush one of these imbeciles into a fine red paste in your sleep. It would be a genuine accident, but you'd still reap the satisfaction.
Okay, that's a bit ridiculous. You don't actually want that to happen. Mostly.
"Dibs on the top bunk," Ruby and Blake say at almost precisely the same time. This is an outrage.
"Didn't I just say I wanted one?" It's impossible to keep the incredulity from your voice. Actually, maybe it is possible. You wouldn't know, since you didn't try.
"I didn't hear you call dibs on one, Weiss," Blake says, smirking. God, you'd love to smack that look right off her stupid face.
"She's right." Yang, sounding dejected, though not half as much as she ought to. "The early bird steals the bed. I don't make the rules."
"That is not how that saying -" you snap, before you're cut off by Ruby.
"Exactly! Now let's get started on this while we still have time!" As though you don't have two and a half hours left. You only wish the process could be so slow; having something to do with your hands is at least a vague distraction from the idiot brigade. "Now, does anybody have any rope?"
"I do," Blake says, because apparently she confused the words 'schooling' and 'spelunking' when she packed her belongings. "I'm calling dibs on the side with my partner, though. You two have fun with that."
It takes you solid five seconds to realize how thoroughly you've just been played.
NJKA
Your first class of the day is Grimm Studies, and you are honestly super nervous! Not so much about the subject itself but just... well... you've never been to school, not even a regular one. Just being in the city was overwhelming, since you're really not used to being around so many people who aren't consorts or carapaceons, and now you're on a crowded campus full of students and everyone is wearing deadly weapons and every hallway you walk down earns you at least one or two dirty looks or unashamedly curious stares at your ears.
It's kinda sad that you're relieved your ears are still hurt, because they ache pretty bad but at least it means all the noise is a little more bearable.
What's making this worse is that you're with your team and not, well, Ruby. That's such a mean thing to think, but you can't help it! Nepeta is nice enough when she isn't treating you like a burden, Aradia actually is nice but a little scary, and Kanaya...
You don't want to spend too much time thinking about her. When you first talked to her you honestly thought you could be pretty good friends, and no matter how much you've agonized over it these past few weeks you still think you made the best decision you could at the time, for both yourself and her, but it looks like the price for it was making her hate you.
Everyone files into the Grimm Studies room, which is really big and looks kind of like a small-ish college lecture hall to go by what you used to see on the also smells weirdly like there have been animals or something in here. That aside, you weren't totally sure whether Beacon is more like high school or college, but you're starting to get the impression that it's a little of both. Assuming the education system here works anything like the ones you used to be vaguely familiar with is probably not going to help you at all.
There's a name already written on the far blackboard in large, fancy, squiggly script: Professor Port. Time to meet a new teacher, you guess! That'll be fun at least.
It's a little bit of a rush to find seats, and pretty much your whole team has to shoulder-check your way through human students who don't care about getting in your way. You're not a very aggressive person but you just have no interest in taking anybody's crap, and the other three have even less. If anything you should probably be glad no one's been stabbed or shot yet.
Eventually you find space, lined up frustratingly far toward the back of the classroom; Kanaya and Aradia sit next to each other, so you put yourself on the end by Nepeta. It's not that you have a problem with being in the middle in general, but you just... you're not going to sit next to Kanaya. The more you can avoid her right now, the better.
It looks like team RWBY are all situated somewhere in the middle, and PRNAend up near the middle and closer to the front. Their leader is famous or something, and the other students just parted in front of her like the ocean parting in front of that one bible guy.
You can't help but kind of scan the room for other Faunus; you just feel really outnumbered and it's not doing your nerves any favors. It's not always easy to tell who's a Faunus depending on the angle and whether their scent is or isn't overwhelmed by a bunch of other ones, but you end up catching the eye of a girl with big rabbit ears who smiles when she notices you looking, and that makes you feel a little better.
'Hi, we are the same species' seems like a really silly reason to try to befriend someone, but you might do it later anyway. You could use another friend or two who doesn't despise you.
There are so many conversations overlapping in this room that you end up thinking again that you're glad your hearing is messed up. In a day or two you'll be able to understand all of them and that is going to be very distracting.
Everyone quiets down all at once when the professor comes in. He's a big, round man with a huge mustache who kind of makes you think of what Santa Claus might look like if he hunted reindeer instead of having them pull his sleigh and also he traded his beard to make the rest of his facial hair gain a life of its own.
"Monsters," he says, instead of introducing himself. "Demons. Prowlers of the night. Yes, the creatures of Grimm have many names, but I merely refer to them as prey! Ha-ha!"
Professor Port looks up at the class expectantly; you're not actually sure what he's expecting, though. You can hear a student or two sigh, but mostly he's met with silence. He clears his throat awkwardly.
"... And you shall too, upon graduating from this prestigious academy! Now, as I was saying, Vale, as well as the other three Kingdoms," wait, hold on, he wasn't saying anything like that, did he hallucinate part of his own speech?Is he... is he okay?"... Are safe havens in an otherwise treacherous world! Our planet is absolutely teeming with creatures that would love nothing more than to tear you to pieces!"
You can hear Nepeta's tail thwapping excitedly back and forth, and it actually smacks into the back of your chair once or twice. It's lucky the seats here have partially open backs, otherwise this would be a nightmare for her and anybody with a similar trait.
"And that's where we come in. Huntsmen! Huntresses." The professor stops for a second to wink at someone; you can hear Yang go 'ugh,' which may or may not mean it was her."That is what you are training to become. But first: a story. A tale of a young, handsome man... me! When I was a boy..."
You can clearly hear various quiet groans and annoyed mutters from the class, and you get where they're coming from, but... there's something really familiar about a silly old man rambling about his life hunting exciting and dangerous game. As they all start to tune him out, you start to tune in.
He's kind of annoying and a tiny bit gross, but you think you like Professor Port anyway.
Halfway through the class, things take a turn for the intense. Finishing up a long story about capturing a Beowolf live, which you actually found kind of interesting considering how incredibly hard it is to get them to stop doing anything but use their monster strength to murder everything in sight, he changes gears.
"A true Huntsman must be honorable. A true Huntsman must be strategic, well-educated, and wise! So, who among you believes themselves to be the embodiment of these traits?"
"I do, sir!", a very annoying voice calls out exactly as Nepeta says "Me!"
Oh great, it's her. Weiss Schnee sounding angry as usual, although you're not sure what she has to be angry about right now. You're not sure how you're supposed to feel about her at all. She kind of saved your life, but she's also really genuinely awful, and it's making it hard to decide if it's wrong for you to keep hating her.
Being grateful to someone you really dislike is not fun at all. You guess... you guess if she ever starts being nice to Ruby and being less racist, maybe then you'll give her a chance. Maybe. In the meantime you'll just have to go on despising her with the awareness that you owe her at least one big favor someday.
"Hmm," Professor Port says, "Two eager young ladies, eh? Well, I can work with that. So, let's find out what you're capable of.Prepare yourselves and face your opponents!" He walks to the side of the little stage he's on and drags out a huge cage with some kind of boar Grimm inside. Then he drags out another one.
... You were wondering why you smelled animals in here. Now you know.
Nepeta and Weiss are sent into a small side room one after the other to change back into their combat outfits, which in Nepeta's case is a lot less elaborate. Everybody did have instructions to keep their regular clothes on them in between classes, which you'd thought was weird. Apparently it was because stuff like this happens.
You feel like you should cheer or say something encouraging, but... you're not sure Nepeta really cares about what you think.
"Yeah, represent team RWBY!" Ruby shouts; both Weiss and Nepeta turn to glare at her.
"Ruby, I'm trying to focus," Weiss says. Ruby looks down and mumbles something sadly. Yeah, you're never going to get along with that jerk. Ever.
"Mew go distract and capsize one, I'll claw out its guts," Nepeta tells Weiss. "We'll be fin-ished in no time." Weiss looks at her like she's speaking another language.
"... I have absolutely no idea what you just said," she says. You can't see Nepeta roll her eyes, but you know her well enough at this point to assume that she does.
"Knock it over and I'll kill it," she says irritably.
"Let the match... begin!"
Professor Port pulls out a big axe and whacks the locks off both cages with one quick strike each. That thing looks like it hits hard; he was barely even trying.
Weiss and Nepeta immediately spring to opposite sides of the stage while the boars growl and then... whoa, okay! You were not expecting them to curl up like pill bugs and then do Sonic the Hedgehog spin attacks. Nepeta vaults clear over the one that goes for her; Weiss does something weird and creates a black magic circle thingy in the air. Her boar slams into it and bounces off, and then she twists her free hand and summons a white one to its side that seems to shove it away in a burst of force, sending it tumbling end-over-end toward Nepeta, who pounces on it, digs in her claws, and claws out half its solid black insides, as promised.
"Aha! Excellent teamwork!" Professor Port seems extremely pleased with them.
The remaining boar has already recovered and shot off like a cannonball back at Nepeta, too quickly to dodge this time. She blocks it with her claws crossed in front of her, sliding a quarter of the way across the stage before it spins itself out, then hooks them underneath its tusks and flips it on its back. Weiss jumps into the air, calls up another one of her weird floating platforms, and launches herself down at an angle, impaling it instantly.
"Well, that was easea," Nepeta says, obviously disappointed.
"Bravo! Bra-vo indeed! It appears we are in the presence of a pair of true Huntresses-in-training!" The professor stars a slow clap; a couple of students join in, and then stop once it becomes obvious no one else bothered and they just made themselves look dumb. You give Nepeta a thumbs up; she just shrugs. Ouch. "I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today," Port continues. "Be sure to cover the assigned readings, and stay vigilant! Class dismissed!"
Nepeta makes her way back up to her seat while Weiss, apparently upset by something, stalks over to grab her bag and then leaves her team behind without a word.
"What's her damage?" Yang asks no one in particular. Ruby gets up and follows her out.
Okay, that was a heck of a first class! The professor is pretty okay, and there's hands-on stuff to do sometimes, which is neat. All in all it was a lot less scary than you thought it might be. You're actually kind of excited about whatever comes next after lunch.
... You just feel kind of weird about your partner working more smoothly with a racist you hate than she does with you.
That is not very encouraging.