The first class they'd found themselves in was, of course, Professor Port's, with Grimm Studies, and though Blake and Yang had arrived just seconds before the bell, Ruby and Weiss had been left with roughly seven minutes before the bell, and quickly set out about getting ready. Notebooks and pencils being all they'd need for this class so far already placed on their desk, they waited patiently for the class to begin, talking quietly among themselves while waiting.
Now, with the class finally in full swing, Ruby reclined back on her chair a bit, sighing as her premonition of the class being a boring one came to pass. The professor was already talking, listing off the various nicknames that the people of Remnant had come to give the Grimm, but neither Weiss or Ruby were fully listening, the ladder opting to draw a few little doodles on the cover of her notebook while the former made rough sketches for a new armor augment. The class was passing by mostly uneventfully, save for the occasional poke from some buffoon above them with a bad haircut, and the sisters had all but given up hope on the class having any redeeming qualities. Well, that was until the Professor called for if anyone among them thought they had what it'd take to be a true hunter, which immediately seized their attention, causing both of their hands to fly up in unison.
"Oh-hoho! Well then, looks like-" the Professor began, though Ruby and Weiss far more swiftly a short game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Weiss managed to come out victorious, giving a small, triumphant cheer.
"Yes! Wooh!" She celebrated, getting a small punch from the redhead.
"Yeah, yeah, just go get yourself ready for combat." Ruby droned.
"Hey, don't get mad at me because you suck at Rock-Paper-Scissors!" Weiss taunted lightheartedly, before jogging off to the locker room to arm herself...
She was glad Ruby had reminded her before curfew the previous night to put a spare set of equipment in her locker, because she soon came to realize that aside from Myrtenaster, she would've had no other equipment to use in her locker otherwise. Sighing heavily, she laughed it off for a moment before actually starting to equip herself, starting with her body-glove, followed by linking up to her actual armor, then attaching all her extra equipment that gave her that iconic Hoots Trooper look.
She was just about finished, only needing to snap her helmet on, before she felt a tap on her shoulder from behind. With wide eyes, she realized that someone had actually managed to sneak up on her from behind. Swiftly lunging left, she ducked low, drawing out Myrtenaster and slashing horizontally towards whoever had managed the impressive feat, though was stopped short as her gauntlet clanged and locked against metallic greaves, moved only so much as necessary to stop the attack.
"Now now, you wouldn't try to hurt the very clone that trained you, would you?" The figure said, following it up with a slight chuckle. "Nice reaction speed, by the way. Even if your attack was predictable."
Weiss let out a sigh, bringing her blade back to it's sheath. Standing back up and turning about to face the owner of the voice, she let herself crack a small smile as she found herself face to face with a taller lady who looked very similar to Ruby, immediately picking her out as Gaz by the red markings on her armor. She was noticeably missing her helmet, though a quick second look showed the helmet tucked neatly in the clone's left arm. Her hair was short, drawn back into a small ponytail, with a few locks of hair left unkempt just off her bangs.
"Gaz! I didn't expect to see you here, much less in full armor. Aren't you supposed to be back at the manor?" She inquired, easing up some more and cracking her neck some.
"New orders came in from the top. Us twenty Hoots Troopers sent to your manor have been replaced by a small detachment from the 263rd Siege Battalion, and split up among the Kingdoms evenly, three at each Primary Academy, two at each Secondary Academy. Diamond and Domino are here with me, Boil and Burner were sent to Signal." Gaz explained quickly, before looking Weiss's gear up and down, nodding in approval at the small changes the girl had made. "You look good, Sis. The little personal touches suit you."
"Oh, thank you, Gaz! Ruby thought so too!" Weiss beamed, before thinking for a moment, and looking around for a moment. If Hoots Troopers were here, then that must mean... "Gaz, if Hoots Troopers have been deployed, then an attack must be imminent..."
"Smart girl." The more developed clone sighed, before kneeling down. "You're not wrong, but to say 'Imminent?' No, not quite... at least not for a few more months. The clones are being waken up, prepared for their first real deployments. The fleet, likewise, is currently being prepared for a swift, decisive counterstrike as soon as the Empire makes their move... but I can't say too much, not right now. Trust me, you'll know when the time comes, for now, just stay vigilant... and have fun, of course!"
Weiss smiled, giving the clone a brisk salute, before Gaz snapped her helmet on, and stalked out the locker room swiftly. Looking back to her own gear, she gave a small nod, before snapping on her own helmet, and resting a hand on Myrtenaster.
Looking back the way she'd come, her smirk widened as she realized she'd have a small audience watch her kill the Grimm, whatever it'd be, and she was nothing if not a talented showman...
Ruby watched as Weiss sauntered into the room with unmatched swagger, noticing the girl nod ever so subtly towards her. Rolling her eyes, she opted to recline lightly in her chair, looking down at her sister likely about to butcher a beast, she sent a small wink her way, the smirk on her own face growing wider by the second. Yang and Blake simply looked down at the girl, wondering idly how she'd handle whatever came out of the cage.
"Send that whelp to hell, Weiss." Ruby spoke, receiving only another nod from the girl in confirmation. After a few more seconds, and a raise of the professor's eyebrow, he cleared his throat, raising his axe as he'd seized the class's attention.
"Let the Match... Begin!" He yelled, dropping the axe down and breaking the lock.
Weiss scoffed as it was just another boarbatusk, not even bothering to draw Myrtenaster for the fight. She was almost insulted that it was just raw cannon fodder sent her way, and drew forth her hidden blade from her gauntlet. catching it in an underhand grip, Weiss quickly assumed a ready stance, just in time to meet the Boarbatusk's charge.
It practically wasn't even a fight, as at the last possible second, Weiss had lunged to the left, side-stepping the Grimm easily, and letting it's velocity do the rest of the work as her monomolecular blade easily cut through it's bone plate armor, cutting deep from front to end. The boarbatusk immediately collapsed to the ground, before fading away. Weiss's blade had made a mockery of the bone plate armor, having met virtually no resistance to speak of in the cut. Looking back at the disintegrating corpse, Weiss only groaned in dissatisfaction at the lack of a challenge, before kicking away the upper half of the tusk she'd severed. She wanted to spit on the corpse, but remembered that she was, in fact, wearing a helmet that covered her face, so instead just opted to kick it disrespectfully, before looking back to the Professor who was donning a look showing how impressed he was with the effortless display.
"Bravo! Bravo! It seems we are indeed in the presence of a True Huntress in Training!" He exclaimed, swinging his fist jovially. "Now, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. Be sure to cover the assigned reading, and remember! Stay Vigilant!"
Weiss rolled her eyes under her helmet, before stalking out of the room, onward toward their next class. Ruby had gathered her things while the fight was going on, and quickly vaulted herself over the desk and jogged briskly over to Weiss, patting her older sister on the shoulder.
"Killed it back there, Weiss. Figuratively and literally speaking, of course." Ruby cheered, giving Weiss a small thumbs-up.
"Thanks, Rubes. Now, our next class should be combat, right?" Weiss inquired, returning the gesture to Ruby.
"For Blake and Yang, yes. Given our training, Ms. Goodwitch said that attending the class is optional for the two of us... I'm planning on going. Good to keep the skills honed and sharpened, y'know?"
"Hah, as if we don't already put them to use every chance we're given!" Weiss joked, slinging an arm around Ruby. "I'm going as well. Doubt we'll learn much, but there's just something so therapeutic about showing up our peers, y'know?"
Her joke was met with some muted chuckles from the girl, who simply nodded afterwards, gently pushing ahead and leading her team off to the next class...
The day passed swiftly, leading the team back to their dorm where Ruby finally gave the green light to begin formally decorating. For Weiss and Ruby, this mostly just consisted of laying about small knickknacks to make the room feel more homely. Blake set up a lot of books in their bookshelves, and Yang hanging up a few posters, none of which Ruby recognized.
She didn't bother with trying to decipher some of the messages that the posters conveyed, though did make it set strictly so that they kept those little things like that on THEIR side of the room. She'd personally rather not look up from modifying weapons on her desk to see some guy in a hoodie crouching with a hand over his mouth and donning wide eyes. Though she didn't particularly mind the Faunas putting books about, as some she'd recognized, and some? Well, she was an avid reader herself, and wouldn't mind a good, new book every now and then, after all, there was only so much entertainment one could get from rereading a book on squad based tactics for the twentieth time.
Oh her own side of the room, Ruby and Weiss had also laid out two exercise mats, so they would at least have a dedicated workout station come curfew or the gym be unavailable. It was a simple amenity, but one they would be able to get plenty of usage out of... and an effective means of punishment for insubordination or incompetence from either of their two teammates.
While the two sisters silently prepared the room further, the other two girls of the team had quickly and quietly excused themselves, opting instead to just trek down the halls for awhile to put some space between them, the clone, and the clone lover. Yang's beef was really only with Ruby, and was still bitter over being handled like some helpless child just the day before. Needless to say, she was not a fan of that girl being made leader.
It was absurd! To think a clone, inferior in all rights to their naturally born betters, was leading a team full of people who were naturally born? Preposterous! She would've even taken Weiss as a leader over that thing, and she couldn't express just how annoyed that girl made her.
On Blake's end, while her views miffed the abomination at best, she honestly didn't know how she'd keep her sanity being on a team with a freaking Schnee... Well, given that it was practically Weiss's sister, and proclaimed itself such, she might as well have had two of them on her team... just great. And then there was the fact that they so quickly picked her out as a faunas...
"What the actual hell." Blake thought bitterly. "Nobody has ever seen through the disguise so easily, I mean... Bows are common, and the only ones who've ever pegged me as a faunas despite the bow were other faunas! But with these two, I might as well just not be wearing it! Ugh!"
Then, of course, the fact came back of their equipment. Hoots Trooper gear. Of freaking course they'd have Hoots Trooper gear, and Hoots Trooper training no less to back that up. That being said, she knew how Hoots Troopers fought, and these two just weren't there yet. They were just lacking a certain grace that the troopers held in combat, their fighting styles, while it was easily the way a Hoots Trooper would fight, in comparison to the one she'd fought, they were somewhat sloppy. Their training must've been incomplete before coming here, and their presence at Beacon was most likely just to hone said skills, build up that smoothness that they lacked.
"Ugh." Yang began, seizing Blake's attention. "I still can't believe that Ozpin named that... that... that FREAKING CLONE, as our leader! It's inferior to us!"
"I think you may need to review the meaning of that word, Yang. While I'm not happy to be being led by a clone, and I'd rather even Weiss lead over it, that thing is undoubtedly a superior fighter to us, and given it was in fact trained by Hoots Troopers, it's likely been trained on how to be a good leader." Blake reasoned, though the admittance of such left a foul taste in her mouth.
"Ugh. Whatever! Lets just go and... I dunno, find SOMETHING to get our minds off that abomination's existence." Yang grumbled, leading Blake back down the halls once more, though both came to a sudden stop when rounding a corner.
Looking up at the new figure, she was clad in the same Hoots Trooper armor that Weiss and Ruby wore, though the colors of her armor excluding personalized paint scheme was the same white and grey as Weiss's. Her visor was black, and she had yellow markings across her armor, in the form of three small diamonds lined up horizontally over her heart next to the three pouches over her right breast. The right side of her pauldrons was yellow, and two parallel lines over her wrists, with her shoulder pads all yellow. Her greaves had a single yellow line descending down from her knee pads to the front of her boots. Her waist-cape was white, with black diamonds dotting each side. Her helmet had the same rangefinder and fin that their teammates had, though the face of the helmet was grey, unlike Weiss's white, and a yellow line descended down vertically over the left side of her face. She was armed with two XA-25s, each holstered on either hip, and in one hand, her right hand, she held a sort of bullpup blaster rifle that neither recognized.
It was glaringly obvious that they were now face-to-face with a Hoots Trooper, one Blake was familiar with. She'd encountered three Hoots Troopers in her time, and barely survived against any of them, though she did memorize their names, burned into her memory from nightmares. This one was Diamond, an absolute monster of a woman, who had stormed several of the White Fang's secret camps a year and a half ago.
While her encounter with Boil was terrible, and her fight against Gaz was a nightmare, Diamond might as well have been a literal demon walking among man. In twelve hours, Diamond had all but obliterated White Fang operations in Atlas, butchering over a five hundred of her kin in that short span of time, and leaving the Atlas branch of the White Fang leaderless.
She remembered how that strange gunship had stopped, and merely hovered over the camp, and descending from a rope they'd lowered, Diamond had repelled down, her gun blazing from one hand. To say she had utter murdered her kin would have been one of the grossest understatements that Blake could've heard, as the Fang' didn't even stand a chance when she had arrived. It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter, one that she and Adam had barely escaped from with their lives, and not unscathed. She could only pray that she didn't recognize her, after all, in Atlas she was wearing a mask and a hood, but she honestly had no idea just how much each Hoots Trooper knew individually, how much they remembered...
Diamond, looking down at the two girls, narrowed her eyes at Blake behind her mask, but didn't say anything. Ozpin had already briefed her on this girl's presence and how she'd turned a new leaf, but that didn't mean she trusted her, not in the slightest. She knew that Belladonna had escaped her once, and if she showed the slightest hint of treason here, the girl wouldn't escape her a second time, she could bet on that. Snapping her attention over to the blonde, she recognized her as Yang Xiao Long, though held little care for the girl.
Thinking for a moment, she knew that Ruby was the leader they were talking about, and the last thing she wanted was for her older/little sister to have unnecessary struggles with her own team. After another split second, she made up her mind, and pursued trying to ease the hostilities...
"You know, it wasn't like she asked to be leader, and bickering about whatever mistake you believe the headmaster made won't change things, nor will being so hostile towards either of them make you feel any better about it." She said, her voice given a slight metallic tang with her helmet on.
"But... she's a clone! Hoots Trooper training or not, she-" Yang began, only to swiftly get cut off from the Hoots Trooper.
"Had no control over how she was born. Nobody does, clone or not. I can tell you wouldn't treat her the way you do if she were born naturally, would you?"
"I... wouldn't treat her the same as I do, I'll admit... but she's not even a real person! Clones are just... just-"
"Biological droids, right?" She interrupted once more, sighing in disappointment. "I know you more personally than you may remember, Yang, you know, deep down, that some clones are just as human as you are, so I don't quite understand why you LET yourself believe such lies. Tell me, why do you believe such when you know it to be false?"
Yang knew this was just another clone, but Hoots Troopers were... they weren't like any clone she'd met... Summer Rose's clones she was well aware were plenty human, and did in fact build their own personalities unlike the more common clones that she'd see chained to machines in factories or confined to brothels. Those docile clones that dotted factories and brothels against their wills barely had sentience, and their thoughts were restrained to their task, but Summer's clones...
"I..." Yang growled, raising her fist slightly, as though wanting to strike the clone, then relented, sighing and hanging her head. "I don't know. Ruby had said something that got me thinking yesterday, and now..." Yang tried, but sighed in defeat as she found she really didn't have any legitimate answer.
"Hmmm... And Belladonna... how hypocritical of you to judge someone by their birth, yet hide your own heritage so people don't judge you by yours. How about you learn to put your money where your mouth is, hmm? Faunas and clones are two sides of the same coin, in many aspects, which I'm surprised You of all people haven't seemed to figure out by now." She said, making the faunas shrink slightly, a look of fear and defeat playing across her features. Nodding once, Diamond looked both of the two girls down, relishing in their defeated looks, before pushing past them, content on continuing on her way, though stopped herself, noting that there was one last thing to say... and do.
Using her gauntlet, she launched a small nanodart into Blake's arm, immediately getting a small ping on her helmet's HUD on the holomap, titled by her initials, "B.B." The girl of course, didn't notice something so small, and she carried on with what she was going to say.
"Now, do you really think fretting over the mistake you think the headmaster made is going to change his decision or make him reconsider the leader?" The two girls seemingly just hung their heads lower, sighing heavily in defeat. "No, he won't. Those two people in your room are one in the same as both of you... they're both people, like you, and they are your teammates. You'll never work efficiently as a team if you can't even get along, after all." Diamond finished, stalking back off once more...
The two girls returned to their room around 8:30, and saw their teammates studying the materials given by the Professors during the day, each at their own desk. Yang looked over Ruby's shoulder to find highly detailed notes on just about everything that had been mentioned today, and she honestly had to wonder if Ruby's notes would've been more or less difficult to understand than just copy-and-pasting whatever the teacher said onto paper, but pushed the obscure thought away. She was actively aware that Ruby had to know she was looking over her shoulder, but paid that no mind, as she set her forearms on Ruby's desk crouching down to be at a low enough level that Ruby wouldn't need look up to look her in the eye.
Sighing, Yang struggled on where to begin. Should she apologize? Should she just get straight to the point? After a long sigh, and a few more seconds deliberation, she looked directly over to Ruby, momentarily mesmerized by how the light from the lamp on her desk seemingly reflected off her silver eyes.
"Ruby, I..." Sighing heavily, Yang looked around a bit as she tried to figure how to better put her thoughts to words. "I wanted to apologize for how I've... how I've acted towards and treated you these last few days and... well... when we still called each other 'sis.' It wasn't okay of me, and I understand if you'd rather not forgive me."
"Hmm..." Ruby began, looking over and narrowing her eyes slightly at the girl who used to be her sister. "I will never forgive you for how you've affected my life. You made my childhood from ages four to nine miserable, and your bullying of me, I know, played a major role in why dad didn't want me back. I can never, and will never forgive you for that... but, I can leave the past in the past."
Yang's eyes lit up slightly, before nodding, closing her eyes to dash a few tears away. "I... I think you have what it takes to be a good leader, and a hero for this world... just know, that I promise I'm going to be the best partner you'll ever have, even better than Weiss!" She declared. Ruby shut her eyes for a moment, frowned slightly, and for a few moments, Yang had thought she'd angered the young redhead...
Until the girl let out a small laugh, not opening her mouth as it shifted into a ghost of a smile. Looking over at her sister with one eye as she reopened them, she nodded once, signaling her affirmation. "Alright, Yang... I'm gonna hold you to that promise. Just know, You're in for a wiiiiild ride!"