God damn, was applying for jobs boring. Of course, things get exponentially more difficult when the people applying don't have any sort of US ID. Without the proper papers, finding jobs for the girls is going to be a little difficult. At the very least, you live in a small area right outside a major city in Texas. Hopefully, the hometown vibes are strong enough that you can disappear into that good old fashioned country life, where people can get a start with nothing but a name and a good work ethic.
Another thing to worry about is the White Fang members. They were hanging around in an abandoned farmhouse, which means that they're kind of ticking time bombs. Hopefully, nothing comes of them and they stay quiet until you and RWBY fix the teleportation machine. And hopefully, the meeting you set up with them doesn't end in you getting shot. In order to find out about one of their members and their teleportation Semblance, you'd be meeting them in person. A lot to worry about.
Those can both come at a later time. For now…
"Officer?" you ask, opening your front door. Before you is a bog-standard police officer, who silently looks past you into your house. Blake was behind a corner on the couch and Yang was messing about in the kitchen. "Can I help you?" you ask, piecing together why a cop might be coming to your house. Thankfully, the cop wouldn't be able to see Blake, reducing the chances of her being seen without her bow.
"Afternoon," the cop says in a friendly voice. "We've had some reports of suspicious activity in this area and were asking around. You haven't seen anything going on, have you?"
Well, damn.
It was a pipe dream, but you had hoped that things would stay quiet. It'd been a few days since RWBY and some White Fang members somehow teleported into your garage, but no one aside from you actually knew. Thankfully, they came at the perfect time where nobody was physically around to see them. Still, there was a few things that would have been hard to miss.
You think for a moment. You… have to lie to a cop, otherwise things will likely escalate. There's enough evidence in the news to inform you that A. people from another world and B. a cat girl from another world wouldn't exactly be treated with the most respect. Should they be found out, RWBY wouldn't be able to just go back home. You fear dissection, but the most likely possibility is that RWBY gets detained, interrogated, experimented on… God, there's a lot.
Hell, the idea of the military getting ahold of Aura and Dust frightens you. You don't want to introduce superhumans into modern wars any more than you want them running around with Fire Bullets.
All in all, it's best to not let anyone find out about RWBY. But you can't be completely clueless without drawing suspicion. This was already annoying…
"Uh…" you say, pretending to think, but actually deciding what information to pass on. "I didn't see anything, but there was this big noise the other day that people are talking about. Don't know what it was, but nothing else really happened."
"You don't know anything about it?"
"Nope. Just say people talking in the neighborhood chat. Nothing's been going on with my electricity or anything like that, so I didn't think anymore about it. Why? Is there a problem?"
"We're still looking into it at the moment. You and your neighbors will be informed when there's more updates."
"All right then. Anything else?" you say, hoping you sound casual despite the racing in your chest.
"No, there isn't. If that's the case, have a nice day."
The officer nods and begins to walk off, promoting you to thank him and close your door. You step back in and let out a massive breath.
"So… that went well!" Yang says, setting out plates.
"From now on, none of you can answer the door. I just had to lie to a cop, but I think I prefer that to you guys saying anything."
"So cops coming to your door isn't normal here, I take it?" Blake asks.
"We get gunshots here once a week and I've never seen a cop in the area. They're aware something big happened."
"You can't trust us to not blab?" Yang says, smirking. "My poor heart."
"You know what he means, Yang," Blake says, looking up from one of your many books. "We have a high chance of slipping up and saying something they won't understand."
Yang dramatically waves her face with her hand. Switching to a country accent, she says, "Oh, my, Mr. Offisa. I'm just a simple woman with my Dust-powered motahsai-kel and my robot-hand." She waves her mechanical arm.
"Were those words? Mark, I think she's losing it already."
"She got the right idea. You guys don't know what normal life here is like. If you start talking about Semblances or Dust or whatever, people might catch on."
"We should tell the White Fang guys that there's people investigating. They need to be extremely careful. We can do that later when we meet up."
"Good call. The guy didn't say anything past, 'suspicious activity,' which means they probably don't know much."
"The machine probably let off some big power surge if I had to guess. Something that'd alert the higher ups."
"Yeah, something like that. They hopefully don't know anything about you guys."
"And let's keep it that way. Less trouble the better." Yang sets the table with her freshly cooking meal. A huge benefit of having her live with you is that she knows how to cook far better than you ever did. "Enjoy~" she says, putting down a large pot of pasta.
"Which again brings us to money issues…" Blake says, setting her book down and moving to the table. "'We can't be noticed,' followed shorty by, 'we need to go out and get jobs.'"
"There's a couple of at-home jobs out there. I work from home," you say. "I put in a word to see if there are any openings."
"You code, right?" Yang asks in between bites of pasta. "Ruby's good at that."
"Pretty much. They don't ask a lot of questions, either, and she wouldn't have to talk to anyone after a week or so."
"Sounds good for her!"
"As for you two…"
Yang lifts her robot arm and makes the hand spin around. "I'm not bad at fixing things, plus I work on my bike. Any mechanics around?" She takes another bite of her food. "Or a cook! Always like the look of those old parlor places."
"Honestly, I should stay out of sight," Blake says, wiggling her ears. She'd thrown on a bow the second the doorbell rang, but now was free to remove it. "But I can't code. Weiss can't either."
"She's also never held a job in her life. Yeah, she's changed since we met her, but I don't think she'll take well to working retail."
"I won't take well to working retail. Brothers Grimm, this would be easier if we could teach combat skills."
"Sadly, that's not an option. Your guys' Aura is still shot, plus nobody is going to be able to acquire a gun on a ribbon, let alone learn to use it. I can take you, Yang, to a few of the restaurants here and see if they're hiring."
"That still leaves me and Weiss."
"Leaves you and me for what?" Weiss asks, walking down the stairs. "Oh, you made lunch?" she says, noticing the pot of pasta Yang had prepared.
"Jobs. Mark thinks he can get Ruby a job that lets her stay here, and Yang could probably find a job as a cook somewhere."
"And no, fashion model is out of the question," Yang snarks. "Wouldn't want your face plastered everywhere for people to look into."
Weiss frowns at Yang. Getting a small plate of food for herself, she sits down next to you and begins eating. "Haha, very funny. I'll have you know I hated doing those. I was just a doll for my father to show off."
"The dresses were cute, though."
"They were, but they were NOT meant to be worn. Honestly, fashion is a massive waste of everyone's energy if you can't even run in it."
"Combat skirt," Blake states, looking at Weiss' newly purchased white sundress.
"This is not a combat skirt. My normal outfit works well in the field, as I have proven NUMEROUS time, thank you."
Yang stifles a laugh. "But yeah, not a great idea to plaster your face all over the internet here. Don't want you getting recognized or anything."
Something clicks in your head. You look in front of you and see something you haven't really seen or thought about: (most of) Team RWBY just sitting around being all casual. The last several volumes have been mostly action with little room to breathe, so it was nice to see them so low-key. Something about it being just a regular home they were in was also interesting. It was weird not seeing them in the fantastical locations of Remnant, nor in loud, colorful outfits. They were just in regular clothes, having a regular meal. Like regular people…
"Umm…" you start to say, formulating your thoughts as you go. "Actually, that might not be a bad idea."
"What do you mean?" Weiss asks. "I thought you didn't want us bringing attention to ourselves."
"But what if it wasn't YOU? Or at least, we don't have to tell people it's you."
"Are you gonna explain that or are we gonna have to guess what you mean," Yang asks, clearly not enthusiastic. "Cuz I'm really sick of the double talk and not getting to the point lately."
You shrug. "I don't know if it's a big thing in your world, but here, cosplay is a thing." Seeing that WBY was a little confused, you elaborate. "People dress up as cartoon, game, movie, whatever characters and take pictures. RWBY's huge on it."
"What are you getting at?" Blake asks.
"Usually, people have to build the cosplay, like, work out to put together your outfits and weapons and junk. People pay so that they could make more and take more professional photoshoots.
"Is this a sex thing? Cuz this is starting to sound like a sex thing," Yang asks.
"No–" you start before remembering a certain voice actress for a certain Cinder Fall, who is well known for lewd cosplay, including Cinder. You also remember more than a few cosplayers that make a living dressing up (as well as undressing) RWBY characters. If you regularly followed RWBY-related porn (which you TOTALLY don't), you'd remember videos of each of the girls in front of you in professionally made cosplay sex videos.
"okay for some it might be a sex thing"
"Well, that plan has died the second it was brought up," Weiss frowns.
"It doesn't HAVE to be," you point out. "There are cosplayers that sell in-character nudes and boudoir sets and all that, but some just build props and doing safe for work stuff." You see the three girls consider the option. "You guys ARE the characters, plus have the outfits and weapons. If, say, I take pictures and say you guys are just cosplayers with props, everyone will just think you're good cosplayers."
"That's actually not a terrible idea…" Blake muses.
"I'm down for the hustle!" Yang screams, excitedly. "How much do you think we'd make?"
Weiss raises a hand. "This sounds a bit… Duplicitous. We'd be lying to people."
"The other option is you find a job, Weiss."
"…I'll consider the morality issues."
You start thinking of how to monetize your lie. "Yeah… Yeah! If you each make your own account, people can sub to all of you so we can pool it all together. You can say you live near other and do collab sets." You can picture each member of RWBY having their own flavor of patron page, complete with pledge tiers and goals and all that; you'd need to be creative so people don't catch on to what's really happening, but it'd be easy to do considering. You just need to grab a camera and find some decent locations.
"Man, I actually really like this idea!" Yang says. "It'll be like we're models or something!" She looks at Weiss. "Er… we will be, too."
"I hope you have some level of professionalism in taking pictures, Mark," Weiss states. "I have experience modeling and directing, but someone will need to step up."
"Hey, if this takes off, we can hire a professional to take some pictures. I think we'd be fine with some basic level stuff, at first. Maybe like, 'Domestic RWBY,' where you guys are just chilling in normal clothes around the house?"
"Yeah!" Yang cheers. "And then we can sell sexy pics for tons of cash!"
"You can't be serious, Yang…" Weiss glares disappointedly at the blonde. Yang smirks.
"Heck yeah, I am. If this world is ANYTHING like ours, people will pay big bucks for the good stuff."
"I know you're… you, but would you really be fine with everyone seeing you… undressed?"
Yang shrugs. "I don't HAVE to get naked, do I? I just show some skin and rake in cash? Sounds fine by me."
Blake tilts her head and rolls her eyes. "To be honest, she's not wrong. Sex sells is a universal concept."
"But… it'll be online. For people to see!"
"Yo, Mark, you already said there's tons of porn of us, right?" You nod. "See? Doesn't really matter."
"It'll be online, but nobody you care about will actually see, Weiss." A smile stretches across Blake's face as she eyes Yang up and down. "If you think about it, there's literally zero chance of any lasting consequences. Sure, people would be able to see our theoretical lewds, but once we go back to our world, that'd be it. No one in Remnant would ever know."
"N-no one would know…?" Weiss mumbles, losing track of her sentence. She puts her elbows on the table and begins thinking deeply.
"Actually, yeah. Didn't even think about that. You post something online, it's there forever, but we post here, we'll leave it completely behind in like, what, six months? Nothing we do will come back to us. Blank slate!"
You see the gears in Weiss' head go max overdrive. Her lips move at a mile a minute as she speaks to herself before finally saying, "It hadn't hit me until now. I'm not an heiress here. I don't represent a legacy, I don't have an overbearing father that controls my life, there's no history to tarnish, no image to ruin, no role to fill… I'm free." She starts shaking.
"You uhh… you okay there, Weiss?"
Weiss' head snaps towards Yang. "Okay? I'm liberated! In Remnant, no matter what I do, I'll always be the Schnee Heiress. Everything I do represents that legacy. Here, I'm no one. I can do whatever I want without fear of it ruining decades of my family history. I'm not okay, I'm ECSTATIC!"
You, Blake, and Yang all look at Weiss' beaming face. If you think, the only times you've seen her approach this level of excitement and happiness was when she first saw Zwei, and when she started playing with Adrian, Jaune's sister's baby. It was as if every weight was off her shoulders.
"I don't have to look like a princess at all times! I can go out on dates with whoever I want! I can't go shopping without being bothered by the press!"
"You can stick it to your dad by taking dirty photos and selling them online," Yang interrupts.
"I can do such a thing! …If I so desire," Weiss hastily adds, wanting to be noncommittal.
"Wow, she didn't instantly scream no at you, Yang," Blake laughs. "Freedom is nice."
"If there's no chance of consequence, I MAY, keyword MAY, just consider something tasteful."
"It's settled, then! From today on, you're cosplayers!"
