FOOD FIGHT!!
A few of you may have noticed that I don't show the antagonist plot, this is my way of writing, to help the readers associate to the reaction of the evil plot as it unfolds, which has changed with the new pieces in play.
I own nothing, feel free to RR.
The trip back the next morning was relatively uneventful, Ozpin sat on his own side of the bullhead, with Ruby and the others on theirs, Ruby was fiddling with something on her Tac-pad, while Blake and Yang looked out the window as the clouds drifted by.
They got back, and made their way back to Patch, where they stayed the next few days. When the Summer break was nearing a close, they all headed back to Beacon, wanting to get settled in before the Semester started, Weiss was not far behind, landing a few hours after they did.
"Right, this Semester I plan to focus on Team attacks," Ruby said as they were settling down in the Cafeteria for lunch, JNPR at the table beside them, with Nora elevating boredom by throwing grapes at Yang, who was catching them in her mouth without fail so far.
"Team attacks?" Weiss asked,
"Yeah, in certain situations, for example, the higher brackets of the Vytal tournament, there will be times where only a few of us will be there at the same time, so, we need to be confident in working around, and with each other's combat styles."
"Maybe we should try that," Jaune piped up, having stopped paying half-attention,
"So, during our drills, I will be calling out codenames for different pairs, and during our hand to hand, we can pair up against each other."
"Ok," Yang smiled at her sister, and catching another grape, "So what names do we get?"
"You and Blake will be Bumblebee, we will be Sunset, You and Weiss will be Freezerburn." She began listing off,
"Blake and I will be Ladybug, Weiss and Blake will be Checkmate, and Weiss and I will be White Rose."
Weiss cleared her throat before speaking up then, "Why those names in particular?"
Ruby just shrugged, "They incorporate, or are synonymous with the colours or emblems we use to identify us, are memorable, and easy to say during a combat situation. Ideally, they'd be all 1 syllable, but that leaves too much up to guesswork."
Another Grape was caught by Yang as she looked thoughtful, before responding with, "Well, we know that you will drill it into us one way or another." An apple and a quiet "boo" from Nora is what she got in response.
"Oh please don't tell me this is going to be a thing now," Weiss asked, referring to the fact that ever since they had been back, Yang had been jamming in puns into conversation whenever she got the chance.
"What, do my puns make you Shiver, Weiss?"
"Gods, if I have to put up with this the-" she was cut off by a cream pie landing squarely in her face, which caused Ruby to snort, as they all looked at an ashamed Ren, and the rest of his team pointing at him.
In a very, un-Schnee-like moment of aggravation, Weiss picked up the remains of the offending pie, and threw it back at her attacker, only to miss as it landed on another student behind them.
"Who threw that?!" He stood up and looked around, only to get another grape to plink off of his nose, courtesy of Nora.
"Food fight!" Yang yelled at the top of her lungs as half the Cafeteria turned round, and after a moment began throwing food at one another.
It didn't take long for the rest to follow, and while Ruby was caught unawares by this sort of thing, it didn't take much encouragement from the rest of her team, mainly Yang, to join in on the fun.
And in less than 5 minutes, almost all the students fled as JNPR had stacked all the tables at 1 end of the hall, with Nora laughing tyrannically, sinning "I'm Queen of the Castle!"
"Sisters! We must overthrow this corrupt Queen!" Ruby yelled to rally her team, as they charged upon the Table Castle.
"Off with their heads!" Nora instructed her minions, leading Jaune, Pyrrha, and Ren to charge forward, Grabbing what food items they could to be used as improvised weaponry,
"Yang, Turkeys up ahead!" Ruby instructed, and Yang followed through, scooping them up as she ran, using them like boxing gloves she sent Ren flying back as Pyrrha went to take on Ruby both using Baguettes as swords, they parried blow after blow, neither seemingly gaining an advantage over the other, before Ruby had to jump back to dodge a watermelon flung by Nora.
Several more were flung, with help from Jaune, and causing Ruby to have to jump very far back, and spend time batting the others away with the very sturdy pieces of long bread. It gave Pyrrha the ope ing needed to send her far enough back that she should focus on Blake, another Baguette wielder. They went back and forth, but eventually Pyrhha's wheaty swords broke, allowing Blake to kick her back towards the wall.
Ren picked up a few leaks to try and take on Yang, but slipped up on a ketchup trail spread by Weiss, and barely managed to dodge a ground strike from Yang, which left a small crater in the floor. He spun to his feet, ready to block Yang's next blow as they entered a small stalemate, which was broken by Yang pulling away, and letting Ren stumble forward, allowing Yang to roundhouse kick him into the Soda machines at the base of Table Castle.
Nora grabbed a flag pole hanging from the wall, and stabbed a leftover Watermelon, as Weiss tried to close the distance with a swordfish.
Her lunge was blocked by the new hammer, and the Valkyrie began swinging round to try and hit the Heiress, who gracefully dodged each blow, but the pressure was strong enough that she could not make any attacks of her own. Until Yang came out of nowhere, and launched a turkey into Nora's stomach, she slid back, allowing Weiss to make her move, using the Swordfish to slice at her, but it had more of an effect as a bludgeoning weapon as it sent her flying back.
Blake was being kept on her toes by Jaune, who had learned a lot from Ruby and Pyrrha, keeping on par with the Faunus with just his fist and another leak that was left by Ren, it wasn't long before Blake's bread broke and she was sent flying into the wall, out of the fight.
Pyrrha capitalized this, and focused on Yang, using the Soda cans to her advantage as she created a flowing shield that occasionally shot projectiles at her assailant.
Ruby would have helped if she was not trading blows with Ren again, this time using trays and breadsticks to block and throw respectively.
Nora, noting that the brawler was slowly gaining an edge, rushed to help the Amazonian, and together they turned the tide as she used the Melon hammer to send Yang through the roof.
Weiss, after taking a moment to catch her breath, lunged at Jaune, but was caught off guard by the seeming randomness of his attacks, and was also knocked out of the fight.
Ruby and backed up "Just me then, huh?" She asked her assailants, Nora grinning, as she twirled her hammer.
"Well, let's make it count." She charged towards Jaune first, using some soda cans Pyrrha discarded as grenades as he was tossed out of the fight. With him out of the way, she picked up one of the Turkeys Yang had used, and like her, charged at Ren with a turkey glove, forcing him into the air as he tried to move away.
The spartan Wall vaulted as she landed a combo before sending him into the table pile, causing it to fall to the ground.
Pyrrha and Nora waisted no time while she was focused on Ren, getting into position to attack Ruby as she landed, with the head of RWBY barely managing to block both assaults, being sent skidding back.
"I didn't want to have to do this…" she warned, which got Nora's attention,
"Ooh! What!?"
With a smirk, Ruby transformed into a burst of Rose petals, spinning round in a circle at very high speeds, picking up the various bits of debris from the room, and funnelling it into a tornado, before funnelling it towards the two remaining members of the fight, who were blown into the wall on the far side of the room, getting splattered with various foodstuffs, and drinks along the way, before falling to the floor.
The teams met up and congratulated each other, laughing at the absurdity of it all before the doors flew open.
A very angry looking Goodwitch stormed in, and swung her riding crop, gathering up all the tables and debris, and putting it back into the proper places.
"Children!" She yelled at them, "Do not play with your food!"
She was about to go into a full-blown rant, when Ozpin put a hand on her shoulder,
"Let it go," he assured her.
"They're supposed to be training to be the protectors of the kingdom!" She protested, "And half of them are probably going to be going up against her!"
"And they will, but right now, they are children, or at least need to rediscover that part of themselves, so let them play the part."
He turned away sardonically, "Afterall, as you say, it is not a role they will play forever, Especially with what is going on in the world right now."
"That was amazing!" Nora exclaimed as they all recovered, "Why have you kept that from us~!"
"Because," Ruby said, "It's always good to have a trick up your sleeve."
It was at that moment that Yang finally landed again, crashing into the table before getting up and brushing herself off, giggling like crazy.
"We heard you got to be with the two Aliens that came in that ship," Pyrrha pointed out, "Did you know them?"
"Oh Yes! What were they like?!" The ginger of JNPR sprung up in RWBY's faces,
"Well, Chief is probably the most decorated member in the UNSC," Ruby explained, having gone over her extra-terrestrial ties last semester, "He's the poster boy for the Spartans, and as you could guess from seeing him on the broadcast, stoic, to the point."
"What about the other guy," Jaune asked, "The Arbiter, didn't you say you were at war with them?"
"Turns out a lot happened between me coming here and them arriving, but long story short; The war is over, and they joined forces because of it, I was unsure about him first, but he's alright."
"Sure looked cool enough, and he was even taller than you!" Nora exclaimed, "I thought that was impossible unless we're talking about Grimm."
"It is rather strange for us to see a full-on Alien, having just Faunus to compare to," Ren admitted.
"Yeah, well, you get used to it pretty quickly."
"So are they still in Atlas?" Pyrrha asked,
"Yup, talking over the tech required to make a fully functional space ship."
"Wow, never thought that would be possible," Jaune said in amazement, "People from Remnant into Space, at least not in my lifetime."
"Well, even aside from the Dust in Space problem, you're getting a huge head start." Ruby told them, "If you had the same tech you do without the use of Dust, you'd be around the mid 21st century, at that time, we were just gaining the ability to build proper structures in Space, but before that, we were limited to Rockets weighing over a thousand tonnes, and were only capable of living a couple of dozen tonnes to Low-Earth Orbit, or in simpler terms, just into what we defined as space.
A lot of the time, they were 1 use as well, costing millions, and all burned up in getting up there, it was only when things started moving towards the private sector did reusability really become feasible."
"Really?" Pyrrha asked, "I would have thought governments would have pushed for reusability if everything was 1 use."
"Well, back then, and arguably still, the Governments of Earth, were very bigoted, looking at short term goals, we were fairly close to making it uninhabitable before we branched out and figured out fusion. The big companies were obsessed with fossil fuels claiming that all the evidence pointing towards the fact that they were ruining it was fake, and with 1 of if not the pioneer of Space Travel having its government change every 4 or 8 years, depending on whether they were re-elected, you can see why it didn't work out much. Too focused on making as much money while they're in charge as possible, with the beginnings of Space travel taking too long, as brand new techs often do, they wanted to fall back to a safer, cheaper approach that possibly wasting the majority of their budget on something not proven.
But the billionaire startup companies had the money to sink into it, which is what they did."
"Wow, so no matter which Humanity we were, there was bureaucracy,"
"You have no idea….
Another advantage is that this planet has approximately half the gravity of Earth, so it is easier to get into Space."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I'm honestly surprised you use the same measurements we do, with the different weight, your mass measurement would probably be skewed a bit, but no, when I was looking stuff up, exact same definitions for each of your measurements."
"Huh…" Nora hummed.
"So on Earth, I'd weigh twice as much?" Yang asked, brow furrowing,
"Not only that, but your heart would have to work harder to pump your heavier blood around, your diaphragm would have to work harder to heave the heavier air out, you would feel your bladder full more often as it sinks into you, all sorts, it's not just like putting on a heavy backpack, all of your body functions would have to adapt."
"I never thought of that…" Weiss spoke up, "But it makes sense once you think about it."
"Anyway, we should get going, lunch is almost over." Ruby reminded them, and they made their way towards the doors.
"Oh hey, Sun!" Yang called out, as the Monkey Faunus was indeed standing in the doorway, along with someone who had been caught in the aftermath of Ruby's last move in the food fight."
"Hey, guys!" He called out as they approached, I wanted to introduce you to my teammate, Neptune."
"Hey there." Ruby called, "Sorry about the soda,"
"Naw, it's cool," He replied, shaking off drops of purple, "Though I must say, they tend to wait after a date or two before ladies get soaked."
There was a pause after that remark, before Yang and Nora burst into laughter.
"You're better off trying for someone else there," Ruby smirked down at him, "Not one for that kind of thing."
"You sure? I have been known for my… persuasion."
"Dude, stop." Sun reeled him in, "At least save it when you're not covered in Soda."
Neptune shrugged, "Worth a shot."
"So you're actually here for the Tournament?" Weiss asked,
"Yeah, me and the rest of my team are gonna kick some butt!" Sun punched his palm, grinning at the two other teams.
"Honestly thought you were just a stowaway from Vaccuo."
"Nah, I just snuck into the kitchen for some Bananas."
"Of course."
"Well, I hear that we are in the company of people who met the Aliens that are all over the news," Neptune said, as they walked out of the hall.
"Really?" Sun called, "What were they like?"
"Chief is stoic, Arbiter is a warrior with pride and honour," Ruby said flatly, not saying anything else on the matter.
"Really? That's it?" Sun called out, "The armour Chief wore looks kinda similar to the one you wore to the doc-" he got a hand over his mouth before he could finish.
"Keep that down, no-one but us knows of that," Ruby said in a quiet, stern voice, before letting go.
"As for the armour, yes I have something similar, because while I was born here, shenanigans, lead to me actually being raised with them. Chief is a Human that has an intergalactic empire originating from a planet called Earth."
"So, all people from that branch of humanity have this super-armour?"
"No, and I won't be explaining this further unless we go somewhere quieter, but we are both what are known as Spartans, Super-soldiers within the UNSC, their government."
"What do you mean quieter?" Neptune asked, there's no-one following us."
"When you have been doing wetwork for almost a decade, you learn that you only divulge details when you are sure no-one is listening, that, and since Chief and the Arbiter are here, it is likely that the UNSC will come in force later down the line, and with them, ONI, who will kill you if I tell you everything."
Neptune gulped, "Ok then, no questions, got it."