The prompt for this one was "RWBY finds old yearbooks of Beacon while cleaning Tai's attic"
Weiss, Blake, and Yang were sitting around in the living room of the Xiao Long cottage. It was the long weekend just before the start of the Vytal Festival Tournament, and Ruby and Yang had convinced their partners to spend it on Patch. Weiss, of course, had said that they should be training or studying up on their opponents, and Blake was rarely interested in traveling more than necessary, but in the end both were swayed. The monochromatic pair had to admit that they had been curious about the place where the sisters grew up, not to mention what their father was like.
The three girls sat in a somewhat awkward silence after their leader's sudden disappearance. She had insisted that she would be back in a minute, but it was now approaching five. Frantic movement could be heard from the attic.
"Do you have any idea what she's doing?" Weiss asked.
"Not really," answered Yang.
"It sounds like she's looking for something," Blake put in.
"And I found it!" cried Ruby, appearing in a cloud of rose petals at that very moment. In her hands was a large leather-bound book that still had a fair amount of dust clinging to it. The team leader hastily brushed it off and set it on the coffee table in the middle of the room. The front of the book was emblazoned with the words "Beacon Memories" in gold print.
"A yearbook?" asked Weiss.
"Yeah!" answered Ruby excitedly. "It's from the year our parents graduated. I thought of it when you mentioned our yearbook photos."
Yang chuckled. Mentioned was a bit of an oversimplification. Weiss had been using Ruby's pose in the team photo they had taken last week as evidence of their leader being 'a complete and utter child.' When the diminutive girl then blasted out of the room, Yang had worried that she was running from Weiss' criticism, but Ruby's hurried excuse and the noise from the attic had suggested otherwise. Now they had an explanation for her sudden disappearance.
"Our dad showed this to us once before," explained Yang. "But that was ages ago. It'll be cool to see it again now that we've actually been to Beacon."
Blake moved to sit closer to the book and opened its front cover. On the first page was a photo of Beacon's courtyard, looking much the same as it did now. She was about to keep going when Ruby appeared beside her and began tearing through the book, searching for something. Blake recoiled from the rose-colored storm of movement, but her face soon worked its way into a smile.
"Here!" cheered Ruby, displaying the page she had found. On it was a team photo of four fourth-year students. Glancing at it, Blake and Weiss were immediately able to recognize a younger Taiyang Xiao Long. The other young man in the photo was not someone they had seen before, but they guessed that he might be the famous Uncle Qrow. As for the two women, one resembled Yang but with black hair and red eyes, while the other could have been Ruby with a white cloak. It wasn't hard to guess that they were Raven Branwen and Summer Rose. The caption beneath the photo labelled them as Team STRQ.
"There they are," sighed Yang. "Dad doesn't keep very many photos of the four of them together, but this is one of my favorites."
Weiss and Blake could see why. It was a good photo. The four teammates stood together with Summer in the middle. Raven and Tai were on her left, close to her even while holding hands with each other. Qrow was on the other side, slightly more distant but still seeming to lend all of his support to the others. The team leader practically glowed in their presence, her smile radiant and her silver eyes glittering.
"Yeah, it's nice," agreed Ruby. "Only thing that would make it better is if they had their weapons."
Weiss rolled her eyes before turning to look at the reverse page. On it was another team of fourth-years, this one all-female. The photo was labelled Team BRWN. Weiss realized that they looked every bit as close and as happy as Team STRQ did, but without knowing anything about them she felt none of the same emotion that she did looking at her partner's family. That was the way with yearbooks; the people you knew seemed to have a wealth of stories behind every photo while the strangers may as well have been featureless shadows.
"I wonder if there's anyone else in here we know," said Blake.
Weiss blinked at the comment that seemed to run parallel to her own thoughts. "Who else would there be?"
"I don't know," replied the Faunus. "One of the professors maybe."
Ruby looked like she was about to go tearing through the book again when Weiss cut her off. "I'm not sure. I thought I saw the date on the spine; this was nineteen years ago, right?"
Yang nodded in confirmation. She knew her parents had wasted little time after graduation before procreating. Yang thought they had done a pretty good job of it, if she did say so herself.
"So I guess Goodwitch and Peach are too young to be in here, and Port is probably too old," said Blake.
"I heard he was a TA my dad's first year," Yang added. "So he definitely would have graduated by this point."
"Maybe he was already teaching," suggested Ruby, turning towards the back where the faculty photos were.
Weiss shook her head. "No, he spent ten years as an independent Huntsman after finishing at Beacon. You'd know that if you paid attention in class."
Ruby was about to try to come up with some retort or excuse when she reached the faculty section of the yearbook and her hand came to rest on a very familiar face. All four girls noticed and turned to examine the photograph of Headmaster Ozpin.
"He looks the same," breathed Blake.
"Yeah, weird," agreed Yang.
Team RWBY stared at the picture of their headmaster for a moment longer before a thought occurred to Blake.
"What about Oobleck? He's about the right age."
The other three girls considered for a moment, and then Ruby turned back to the start of the team photos and began hurriedly flipping through them.
After several seconds of searching they found him among the second-years. Bartholomew Oobleck looked even scrawnier as a teenager than he did as an adult, but the respect that Team RWBY had gained for the doctor in Mountain Glen stopped them from judging too harshly. Then Ruby noticed the caption beneath the photo.
"Team ORNN? What kind of name is that?" The other three girls followed their leader's gaze to the bottom of the page.
"I think it's supposed to be 'orange,'" suggested Blake.
"Then why doesn't it have a G in it?" protested Ruby.
"Because none of the team members' names started with a G," answered Weiss. "Ozpin did the best he could with their initials, and they got ORNN."
"Just look at the other page," added Yang. "Team WASH, that's not even almost a color."
"Let me see that," said Weiss. She read the names of the four students and tried to come up with a better team name from their initials. After a minute, she realized that WASH was the best they could do.
At that moment, the Huntresses-in-training gained a sudden appreciation of how difficult it had to be to make a decent team name out of the initials of the four members. Spelling 'ruby' with a W suddenly didn't seem so egregious.
The girls continued flipping through the book, finding more team names that failed to inspire awe. Some were like Team ORNN, just one letter away from being a perfect name. Others, like Team GREN, really should have worked, but somehow didn't feel right without a fifth letter. Still others failed completely at evoking colors, like Team BEDD. Weiss found herself especially unimpressed by Team SDWK.
"I know what you mean," agreed Yang with a wry grin. "With a name like that, I'll bet you could walk all over them."
Her teammates groaned for a moment before turning to the next page. As soon as they saw the name of the third-year team, their mouths dropped open. Yang immediately began to howl with laughter, while the other three just gaped in shock.
At that moment, the front door opened and Taiyang came in laden grocery bags. He heard Yang's laughter and saw the girls gathered in the living room.
"Hey," he said in greeting. "Did I miss something good?"
Ruby shot up from the couch and turned to face her dad, the yearbook in her hands.
"Dad!" she cried. "When you were at Beacon, was there really a Team ASSS?"
When I started writing this, the only thing I was planning was the part about the teams with less-than-stellar names. It's hard making a good team name out of four initials! That's probably the most difficult part of Ozpin's job.