It was exactly 06:30 when Pyrrha woke up.
She didn't need to check the time to know this, as it had been routine for her ever sense she competed in her first tournament all those years ago.
Her life before she entered those tournaments seemed like it belonged to a completely different person.
A person who liked waking up at one in the afternoon after staying up at night.
A person who loved hanging out with her friends.
A person who had a simple life.
Before she won the mistral regional tournament at age 13.
Before she became famous.
Before she lost all her friends due to said fame.
Before she lost a normal life.
Still beacon, she told herself, would be different.
Here her fame wouldn't matter. She would make new friends and live the life of a huntress.
Still some things never change.
So awake at 06:30 on the dot.
As she opened her eyes, Pyrrha got up and slowly looked at the clock on the wall.
06:30
Well she was probably the first one up so it would be best to hit the showers.
The team had been exhausted by time they had reached their new room so not much had been done apart from putting all of the luggage in the corner to be unpacked.
Figuring that it would be good idea, Pyrrha pulled herself up out the bed and started to make her way to the showers only to notice something strange.
She wasn't the only person awake.
Her new partner and team leader Ruby was doing push ups at the foot of her bed, still in her own pyjamas, while listening to music on her headphones.
"Ruby?"
Her team leader and partner didn't hear her.
Going for a more direct approach she tapped Ruby's shoulder, causing the team leader to jump right out of her skin and roll onto her back.
"Pyrrha!" Ruby pulled down her headphones. "Don't scare me like that!"
"Sorry," Pyrrha apologised after a small chuckle. "What are you doing up?"
"Just some exercises," Ruby explained sheepishly. "Usually it'd just be a run but well I haven't really explored Beacon yet, so I thought why not push ups?"
"Keeping in shape is admirable," But Pyrrha had a concern. "But isn't this a little early?"
"Nah, it's fine," Ruby wave away. "I've done it for a few yes now, ever since meeting-
Then Ruby cut herself off which only ignited Pyrrha's curiosity.
"Met who?"
"He was a-free-I mean a sol-" Ruby took a moment to collect herself. "He was an war vet, he really pounded into me, the idea of constant training and an early rise."
"B'sides I only got up half an hour ago," Ruby finished with a mumble.
"Alright Ruby, would you like to take a shower now?" Pyrrha asked.
"Nah, you can go first Pyrrha, I wanna finish my exercise anyway."
Nodding, Pyrrha went to her first suitcase and extracted one of her uniforms before going to the bathroom and locking the door.
Going over to the shower at a leisurely pace, she fiddled with the knobs until she found a warm setting.
Putting on the water, Pyrrha set out her uniform and got ready for her shower.
The shower had turned out to be pretty decent as far as showers went.
Now fully dressed and ready for the day, Pyrrha exited the bathroom, only to have Ruby to immediately rush in past Pyrrha with a quick:
"Scusemegottago!"
She probably needed the bathroom.
Taking a look at the room she could see that Blake was now awake and sitting on her bed.
"Good morning."
"Morning," came Blake's reply.
"Sleep well?"
"Fine, you?"
"Pretty well."
An awkward silence ensued. They haven't really interacted much have they?
Time to change that.
Leaning on one of the desks, Pyrrha searched for a good icebreaker.
"So, which academy did you attend before coming to Beacon?"
Blake's reply was instant, "I didn't."
Blake didn't offer any further explanation and the tone indicated she wasn't going to offer any.
So it was probably a sore subject. Right. Moving on swiftly.
"Do you have any hobbies?"
Blake considered this for a moment.
"I like to read."
Pyrrha smiled at that, common ground.
"So do I," Pyrrha told her. "Although I haven't gotten much chance to do so in recent years."
Between her parents drive for constant training, the tournaments, dealing with fans/sponsors and needing near perfect grades at Sanctum, Pyrrha never really had the time for reading anything other than her textbooks anymore.
"Because of the tournaments?" Blake asked perceptively.
"Something like that," Pyrrha said in an uncomfortable tone.
"Right."
Further conversation was ended with Ruby leaving the bathroom.
"Good morning!"
Ruby was also in her school uniform with the addition of her cloak being pinned to the blazer. Neat.
Wordlessly Blake took her uniform and slipped into the bathroom.
"Are you having a good morning Pyrrha?"
"Yes Ruby, have you?"
"Yep!"
Then Ruby turned her head in the direction of Yang, who was still seemingly asleep, and a mischievous grin grew on her face. The younger girl then went into her luggage, searching for something as Pyrrha watched curiously.
Giving a noise of victory, Ruby pulled a small silver whistle from her suitcase. Then she immediately went over to her sister's bed.
Oh dear.
Ruby pulled her head back and got ready to blow into whistle.
"Ruby?"
The young leader froze.
"Yes Yang?"
"You weren't about to try and wake me up with that whistle, were you?"
"Noooooo?"
"Good, cause I'd hate for you to be late to class, because I threw you out the window."
"Well you still need to get up," The younger girl put the whistle down.
"Fine," Yang pushed aside her sheets and yawned as she left her bed.
"Mornin' Pyrrha."
"Good morning Yang."
"Where's Blake?" Yang yawned.
"Here," The girl in question said as she left the bathroom.
Ruby grinned enthusiastically. "Now that everyone's awake we can do the first order of business!"
When no one asked what, Ruby elaborated.
"Unpacking!"
After Yang had gotten changed, the unpacking of everything had gotten well and truly under way.
Most of the stuff was found a place without much fan fair until Ruby tried to claim one of the desks as her own.
"Ruby no."
"But Yaannnnngggg."
"No."
"What's the matter?" Pyrrha asked.
It seemed like Ruby had put a massive sack on of the two desks, she had no idea what was in it.
"Ruby wants to take one of the desks, for her stupid project," Yang said gesturing to said desk.
"My project is not stupid!" Ruby complained, "It is of vital importance!"
"What is the project?" Pyrrha asked, from the corner of her eye she saw Blake stop sorting her books to look on.
Ruby brightened and with an attempt at showman's flair she said, "Allow me to present, the future of...stuff! The one, the only-"
"It's a robot," Yang cut in.
"Yang!"
"A robot?" Blake asked
"Yep," Ruby then opened the sack, to reveal a torso with two arms and a head but no legs. It didn't look much like the Atlesian Knight-130 models she would sometimes see when visitors from atlas were at the tournaments.
Instead this robot looked more like a proper human in body armour without the legs.
"You built this? Ruby that's very impressive." Pyrrha told her partner.
Ruby responded by blushing as red as her name.
"Why build a robot?" Blake asked as she wandered over to get a closer look. "It doesn't look like any of the Atlas ones."
"Nah, it's a friends design I'm following," Ruby explained "And I'm building him for… fun I guess."
"Well I have no problem if you want to keep it here," Pyrrha told her
"Me too, if you can keep me up to date on your progress."
"You like robots Blake?" Yang asked.
"Call it a passing interest."
Yang nodded. "Fine. You can keep it here, but you have make sure there are no fires this time."
Fires?
"Fires?" Blake reflected Pyrrha's own thoughts.
"Yeah… Ruby near burned down our home at Patch roughly four times," Yang informed them, "And she did burn down the Signal workshop and armoury."
Pyrrha blinked, that sounded like a hazard.
"It was an accident," Ruby mumbled sheepishly. "But it won't happen again!"
"That, is what you said the second time," Yang said drily.
Following that the unpacking ran smoothly with one minor hiccup.
The beds had ended up in a jumble in the centre of the room.
"We need to rearrange."
"It is a bit cramped."
"Maybe we should ditch some of our stuff..."
"ᵒʳ ʷᵉ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵇᵘⁿᵏᵇᵉᵈˢᵎ"
Who said that?
Ruby grinned, "Great idea! We could make bunk-beds!"
"But no one said-" Blake was cut off by Ruby, "What do you guys think?"
"Sounds awesome."
"It does seem efficient."
"I've always wanted bunk-beds as a kid," Pyrrha told her.
With that they got to jury rigging a set of bunk-beds using rope for Pyrrha's and Ruby's and books for Blake and Yang's.
Now Pyrrha's bed was simply on the ground on the left side of the room, Blake's bed was next to her books, which are used to raise Yang's bed over it by placing the novels on the posts while Ruby's is hanging from ropes on the ceiling over Pyrrha's own bed with a blanket used as a tent over it.
"I'm not sure the rope will hold," Pyrrha told her partner.
"Eh, we can just get some stronger ropes and strengthening dust over the weekend." Yang replied for Ruby. "Now we have to get to class."
"What's first?" Blake asked.
Ruby got out her time table, "First it's...Grimm studies with professor Port, from 09:00 to 11:30, then-"
Pyrrha looked at the clock in horror, "Ruby, it's 08:50!"
The rest of the team shared her horror.
"We're going to be late!"
With that the whole team rushed out of the dorms to class.
Looks like she wouldn't be having breakfast today.
When team RPBY entered class just on time the red and blues weren't with them.
Much to Sarge's very vocal displeasure.
"Come on Wash, we have to be there for our future red," Sarge argued. It was time's like this that Wash wished that that Tucker or Donut was here instead of Sarge.
"I've already told you Sarge," He reexplained for the 3rd time this morning. "We are not going to Ruby's first class with each teacher, so that she can make a good impression without you two distracting her."
"Hogwash," The red leader dismissed. "I have never once distracted Ruby in any of her classes."
"You got her to argue with her last mechanical teacher at Signal for over 5 hours," Wash pointed out. Those were 5 hours he really wanted back.
"He deserved it!" Sarge bellowed "Who ever heard of things like using the schematics or not putting a bomb in your robots gut."
Wash was glad he convinced Ruby that, that was a bad idea for Lopez 3.0.
"It doesn't matter," He cut off Sarge before he could rant about robotics. "We are leaving Ruby alone for now and finding both beacons library and gym."
"And the cafeteria," Pipped up Caboose. "Then we can get ice-cream!" three years and Caboose still had trouble with the unable to interact with the rest of the world concept.
"Fine," Sarge grumbled. "But we also have to find the armoury! And see all of those advanced weapons."
"Deal."
With that the trio went up and down the corridors passing a couple of different classrooms and the odd student that had the morning free.
When they eventually found the library Wash was impressed.
It was big and seemed to have rows and rows of books (paper ones not the modern digital ones found back at home), on top of several computers.
It was certainly better than the collage library David had went to a lifetime ago.
Beacon's gym was even more impressive, on par and possibly surpassing the gym at project freelancer and blowing the chorus military gym out of the water.
It had two dozen treadmills, a room dedicated to punching bags, a track the size of three football stadiums and an Olympic length swimming pool. And that was just the first room out of three.
But while not as grand as the other two rooms Wash liked the armoury best.
The three space marines looked at the rows apon rows of weapons, some seemed unassuming like what seemed to be a purse, to more extravagant weapons like a quadruple barrelled rocket launcher.
Sarge sat at one of the many workbenches and was looking at the large amount of tools.
"You know," Sarge started at length. "With these tools we could have Tres Point 0 done by the end of the month."
"Yes, but we need to get him insured," Caboose informed Sarge. "Do we have him on an extended warranty?"
"Of course not blue! Warranties are nothing but lies sold by the corporations to make a quick buck."
"I think it would be a good idea."
"You would you big blue idiot."
Tuning out the conversation Wash wandered to the edge of the armoury to inspect the weapons there, when someone entered the room.
Or rather two did.
"Alright everyone remember here they set their weapons?"
"Yes Coco, I remember where they set their weapons."
It was two females, one human one Faunus.
The human was wearing a very fashionable clothes that gave wash the impression that she was some sort of 'fashionista' as Donut once put it. She even had sunglasses and a dark brown beret.
The Faunus however was wearing the standard beacon uniform and was a rabbit Faunus as evidenced by her large rabbit ears.
"Good, grab Fox and Yatsuhashi's, I'll grab mine and yours."
The Faunus crossed her arms as she went over to one of the rows. "I don't understand why your grabbing my weapon Coco." She grumbled, in a British accent that reminded him far too much of Wyoming, "I have remedial history with the first years after lunch."
"Because Velvet," Coco told her. "We will also be sparing after you leave class."
"Right," Velvet grumbled as she took up two weapons from the row. "Well it seems the maintenance fellows have done good job on our weapons."
Ah maintenance, it did strike Wash as odd that all of the weapons were left here over the summer.
"They better have," Coco examined the purse.
With that the duo left and Wash called over Sarge and Caboose.
"Alright time to leave," He told them in an don't-argue-with-me-if-you-value-your-life tone.
Of course Sarge took that as a challenge. "Why?"
"Because we promised Ruby we'd meet her at lunch and it's almost eleven fifty five."
"Ah, fair point." Sarge conceded.
"Can we get ice cream Agent Washington?"
"Sure Caboose."
By the time they reached the cafeteria, team RPBY was already stuffing their face's, sitting next to team SALN.
Pyrrha and Jaune looked to be in a conversation while Yang was regaling everyone else (excepting Ruby who was stuffing her face in) with a story.
"Then I said now that's a Katana!"
"Then what?" Nora asked with the enthusiasm of a puppy. "Did you break his legs?"
"Better," Yang grinned. "I punched him up so high be went up through two floors and past the ceiling."
Rolling his eyes under his helmet, he took of said helmet and sat next to Ruby, who was stuffing her face in strawberries.
"You know if you keep doing that, you'll have to run four laps in the morning to work off the excess sugar."
Ruby's head snapped to attention.
"Wash!" She said with a full mouth, then looking and spotting Sarge and Caboose who had joined in at listening to Yang's story.
"Which one is this?" he asked. "The one about the alley mugging or the club?"
"Neither, this is the one about Katana-man"
Wash remembered that, a vigilante mistook Yang for a mugger. It didn't end well for him.
"Well we've found the library, gym and armoury."
Ruby nodded, "Cool."
"How was class?"
"It was fine…" Ruby shifted in her seat, "Well it seems interesting, but all we did was listen to the professors story." Then she brightened, "But then we watched Weiss fight a Boarbatusk, which was awesome."
"Well what's next on the agenda?"
"History with proffes- sorry Doctor Oobleck."
Wash nodded and continued the conversation, unaware of the secret Faunus that was listening to half the conversation.
All in all, Blake's first day attending Beacon was better than expected.
The classes showed some promise. Well history showed some promise, while the teacher talked so fast his sentences became a single really long word, he seemed to know his stuff and beyond.
Grimm biology had started with promise but Professor Port had quickly turned it into a story about him that only had marginal relevance to the subject.
Furthermore her teammates all seemed to be pretty decent people. However seemed and are, were two different things.
Her partner Yang, seemed to be the rowdy, very much extroverted type. The type of person that always spoke their mind, regardless of what others thought.
Pyrrha Nikos seemed to be a former tournament fighter who seemed very polite and noble, always willing to do the right thing.
Ruby Rose seemed to be the team leader who got in early, an apparent prodigy, she seemed to be childish and native, with a idolised view of huntresses and hunters.
That is what her team seemed to be.
But things were rarely what they seemed.
Blake knew this well. after all, who would think the introverted human that liked books, was in fact a Faunus running from her past as a former terrorist?
Still, at least she was making progress at figuring out who her team leader really was as a person.
Ruby had seemingly had a conversation with someone else at lunch, presumably the same he was talking to on the airship to beacon. While she found no obvious ear pieces on the girl, Blake knew it was probably a subtle one.
Still, if Ruby was really an Atlas operative, she still hadn't slipped up in her cover.
If Ruby really wasn't a secret Atlas operative and everything was genuine...
Then Blake would be very much concerned about the mental state of her team leader.
It was now the end of the evening, Pyrrha and Yang had disappeared to the beacon gym and Ruby had only come back from exploring Beacon half an hour ago.
Blake herself had just finished 'the man with two souls' after reading it for the past few hours.
Getting up from her bed where she had been lying while she read, Blake went over to Ruby who was working on her robot.
That was another point in her 'Ruby is a secret Atlas operative' theory.
Of course this could only be Ruby being an eccentric prodigy.
And Blake knew that her theory had yet to account for Yang, who was apparently Ruby's half-sister. But with enough time she was sure she could find an explanation.
"Ruby."
"Oh, hi Blake," Ruby said as she looked up from the robot, she wasn't wearing goggles, which was concerning as Ruby was also holding a small blow torch.
"How's the robot building going?" Blake asked, following it up with, "Shouldn't you be wearing some goggles?"
"It's going fine," Ruby told her, making a gesture with her unoccupied arm. "I'm just working on adding some legs."
"You should be wearing goggles."
"ʸᵒᵘ ˢʰᵒᵘˡᵈ ˡᶦˢᵗᵉⁿ ᵗᵒ ʰᵉʳ ʳᵘᵇʸ, ᴵ'ᵛᵉ ᵗᵒˡᵈ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵃᵐᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ʸᵉᵃʳˢ."
Ruby shifted in an embarrassed manner. "Well I keep meaning to, but..." Ruby made a 'you know' gesture with the hand she held the small blow torch in.
This caused Blake to jump back, "Ruby!"
"Sorry!" Ruby then turned off the blowtorch and set it down. "Are you alright Blake!?"
"Fine," The torch never touched her, but Ruby's actions were equal parts negligent and dangerous.
"You really need to be safer when doing work like this," Blake told her team leader. "This is probably how those fires started."
"Most of the fires are from when I worked on the head." Ruby said embarrassed while she started to put away her tools, she looked to be done for the night.
"But I will get those safety supplies in Vale on the weekend!" Ruby declared, before frowning. "If I don't forget again."
Before she could think about it, Blake told Ruby, "I could help going to Vale with you on Saturday."
Wait, why did she offer that?
"Really?" Ruby asked with the enthusiasm of a young puppy.
''Okay Blake,'' She told herself, ''Here's your chance to back out.'' But unfortunately, Ruby looked positively adorable at the moment.
"Sure, I need to pick up some new books anyway."
She always had trouble saying no to cute things.
Ah well, this was prime opportunity to spend time with her team leader and figure her out.
"Awesome!"
And at least Ruby was looking forward to it already.
"Are you alright?"
He groaned where he lay on the ground. He must've passed out.
Opening his eyes he saw an old man standing over him, in the alleyway he had collapsed in.
"Fine," He ground out.
Of course old and ugly was a bleeding heart. "You look terrible."
Well he had to give him that. His armour was completely shattered and ruined.
Turns out thousand foot drops were not conductive to a good clean armour.
"Allow me to help you," Old and ugly pulled him to his feet. I'll bring you home to my wife, her semblance is healing, you'll be on your feet in no time."
What the fuck was a semblance? Ah well it didn't matter.
Time to put on the charm. "I wouldn't want to impose." He said weakly.
Much to his immense frustration and rage it was a weakness that wasn't fake.
"No problem son. None at all," The old man looked at him with a curiosity that he couldn't wait to murder off his face.
"You have a name?"
He gave his most charming smile, the one reserved for potential clients and information dealers.
"The name's Gates, Isaac Gates."
Notes:
And that's the end of that chapter!
This one was fairly easy to rework, pretty much entirely grammar.
Thanks for reading!