For some reason, Weiss woke up this morning in an awful mood. She had bad mornings sometimes, usually after unpleasant dreams, which is what she suspected happened today. It was hard to be sure, though, as the dream was fading away from her before she'd even fully woken up. It was… Winter had been in it, although that itself wouldn't make it unpleasant. There was… a conflict? A fight? She couldn't remember if it was a physical fight or a verbal one, or who it was between… Was Father there? That would probably explain the queasy feeling she had.
When Ruby decided not to get up to run with Weiss this morning, the disappointment Weiss felt was… confusing. And it compounded on her bad mood, made her kind of angry. It was Thursday. They'd only been running together for three days and already Ruby was quitting on her.
No discipline.
So Weiss ran alone. It felt… empty. Less. Over the past couple days Ruby had gotten over her need to try to outrace Weiss at the start and they'd fallen into a rhythm together, running side by side. Ruby tended to fall a little bit behind at the end of the second lap, but then completely destroyed Weiss on the third when they were using aura.
Which was definitely annoying. If there was an upside to Ruby being a lazy bum today it was that Weiss didn't have to deal with that frustration.
Though it also meant she didn't have a metric to compete against.
Sure enough, when she finished her third lap today she wasn't nearly as winded and jelly-legged as she'd gotten the past few days. She hadn't pushed herself hard enough. Hadn't found that 110% that she discovered when trying to catch up to Ruby.
Her anger came back. She knew that it wasn't Ruby's responsibility to make her train better, but she still felt… cheated.
'Bah!'
When she got back to the room, Ruby and the other two were all still asleep. She stomped her way into the bathroom, making more noise than necessary. Maybe the noise would make it clear to Ruby that Weiss was upset and make her feel guilty for bailing. And if not, well maybe she deserved a little discomfort.
A little vindictive, perhaps, but… Weiss was mad and didn't really know what to do about it.
Now she felt angry for being angry. Her mood was going in an irritable circle. What was going on with her?
She'd gone to bed late, having stayed up to print out and go through Winter's tactical playbook with Ruby. Maybe she was just tired.
She brushed her teeth, cleaned her face, showered, unlocked the door, and then headed into the closet. She took her time getting dressed, delaying the process to the point she was just standing there in her underwear waiting to here the bathroom door open and for Ruby to start showering.
After almost ten minutes of just loitering and fiddling with her jewelry box, Weiss had to accept that it was time to just get dressed. The disappointment she felt was uncomfortable and she didn't like it, but… she'd gotten used to picking outfits with Ruby in the morning.
'Fuck.'
She was getting too used to having Ruby around.
She dressed, picking her outfit mechanically, so checked out she'd almost walked out of the closet when she realized she was wearing the wrong shoes.
Maybe she needed a nap.
Back in the room, Blake was now up, sitting at her desk in her pajamas and yawning as she flipped through the twenty-two page binder that Weiss had put together for her and Ruby had left on her desk. One binder for each of them, twenty-two pages of Winter's formations and tactics and callouts defined in detail. A treasure, really.
The version that Winter had given Weiss was written with specifics for her old, now-dead team, so it needed some tailoring for Team RWBY, but Ruby and Weiss were both excited about that kind of project. It was… kind of depressing reading the sections Winter had written out for her individual teammates knowing that they had all died in front of her, but… Weiss didn't know what to do with those emotions. She wanted to run to Winter and give her a hug, though neither of them had ever really been huggers.
Winter had apparently made another version after she became a military officer that was tailored to army squads, assigning roles and describing behaviour for soldiers, medics, mechs, and other non-huntress units, but she felt her old one would help Weiss' team more.
Yang was awake too, laying in bed and looking over at Ruby. Kinda weird, but whatever.
Ruby was facing the wall, so Weiss couldn't tell if she was awake. She wanted her friend, though, so she hopped up to hang off the edge of the bunk and gave Ruby's shoulder a shake.
"Ruby, you up?"
Silence prevailed for long enough that Weiss was about to give up and step down when Ruby gave a quiet, "Mmhmm."
'Uh…'
This was weird and very un-Ruby-like.
"You okay?" Weiss asked.
"... 'm fine."
What… what was wrong? Clearly something, but Weiss had no idea what to do. Did Weiss make her mad? Was that why she didn't want to run or choose outfits or even turn around and look at Weiss right now?
Weiss ran back through their conversation last night. It… end fine enough. They'd played some chess after dinner—something they'd been doing since Monday and was actually a lot of fun. Ruby gave names to all her pieces {a wide range of names like naming her queen Ruby, white bishop Weiss, queen-side knight Blake, and queen-side rook Yang, to naming her king after her dog, Zwei, and her pawns after something called a Twitch emote. Then she'd acted out dramatically goofy fight scenes whenever a piece was taken. It made the two games they'd played last night take the time of three or four normal games, but it was amusing. Then they'd gotten back to reading through Winter's manual. There was… Weiss had nagged Ruby a bit about it being time to sleep because Ruby was too excited reading through the formations to actually get some rest. Maybe Weiss' nagging had annoyed her? Although that was more or less a normal part of the day, as Ruby never really wanted to go to sleep. There wasn't anything special about yesterday's instance.
Didn't track.
"Weiss," Yang said behind her. Weiss turned to find Yang swinging down from her bunk and gesturing Weiss back. Something in her expression was sad and tired—and not in a 'she needs sleep' way.
Something was wrong.
Yang stepped up to where Weiss had been hang and reached around Ruby to give her an awkward hug.
"Hey, cookie monster," she said softly.
"... Mmm."
"Want me to go get you some cookies for breakfast?"
Through the gap under Yang's arm, Weiss saw Ruby nod.
"Whatchu want? Chocolate chip? Sugar? White chocolate?"
Ruby was quiet for a moment—which was ultra weird on its own considering they were talking about cookies. "All of them?" she decided quietly.
Yang grinned and kissed the side of her head. "You got it, Cap'n."
She hopped down and nodded for Weiss and Blake to follow her out to the hallway.
"Is she okay?" Blake whispered before the door had even closed behind them.
Yang shook her head. "Today's…" She trailed off, pissing Weiss off. There was something bothering her partner and Weiss needed to know.
"Today's what?" Weiss demanded, the harshness and volume in her tone a jarring disconnect from the hushed conversation of earlier.
Yang gave her a glare, like 'pipe down', then continued. "Today's the anniversary of the day Dad and Uncle Qrow told us Mom wasn't coming home. That monsters got her."
Ever wounded, resentful, spiteful feeling Weiss had felt for her friend reared up and slapped her in the face. Why had the idea she landed on for why Ruby didn't want to spend time with her that Ruby was being petty over some slight? Of course that wasn't what was going on. This was Ruby.
The reality was so much worse. Weiss wanted to run back in the room and apologize for every angry thought she'd just had and for slamming the door and for—
"She's gonna be pretty down today," Yang continued, seeing that Weiss and Blake were both speechless. "And nothing you say or do can pull her out of her funk. Believe me, Dad and I have tried everything. Just… let her be quiet and sad. And do not, under any circumstances, ask her about Mom. No 'what was she like?' or any of that crap. She'll smile and be totally normal and then wander off alone and sob for hours." Yang turned to walk away, then turned back. "That might end up happening anyway, but don't make it a sure thing."
"This sounds—"
"What do we do?" Blake cut Weiss off. She paused, though, and looked at Weiss apologetically.
Weiss waved for her to continue, mostly because she wasn't sure what she wanted to say. 'This sounds unhealthy,' maybe. Like they needed something to help Ruby… find peace? Or something? Instead of just avoiding the issue and hoping she didn't break.
But then again, what the hell did Weiss know about coping with the death of a loving mother?
Blake continued. "We're… bringing her cookies to eat breakfast in bed. Are we supposed to, like, baby her today?"
Yang shook her head. "No, just be normal. Don't call attention to her quietness. I'm just getting her cookies 'cause… well, 'cause it makes me feel better."
Weiss was about to comment that that wasn't really a priority when she caught herself.
Ruby wasn't the only one that lost a mother on this anniversary.
"You doing okay?" she asked. It seemed like an appropriate question. And she did want to make sure Yang was okay.
"I'm… yeah, I'm fine," Yang said, the pause the only thing betraying that she might be lying. "I learned to cope with moms disappearing on me a while ago."
The bitterness in her tone said that maybe she hadn't, really.
Blake leaned in and hugged Yang's arm as they walked. A silence spanned a little while as they all tried to figure out what they should say next, if anything. Weiss wasn't sure she was qualified to give any opinions on any of this. She wanted to help her friends feel better and she was willing to follow Yang's lead on how to do that.
"And tonight's gonna be fucking rough," Yang added, breaking the silence.
"The night terrors," Weiss remembered.
"Mmhmm."
"Night terrors?" Blake asked.
"She has nightmares about Mom getting torn up by Grimm," Yang explained to her partner, her tone so tired and depressed it made Weiss' heart twist. "Used to be a lot, now it mostly only happens on anniversaries, like today or on Mom's birthday."
"... Oh."
Weiss stopped. "I'll go keep an eye on her. You guys get her cookies."
Yang nodded as Weiss turned and headed back to the room. Inside, Ruby was still laying in bed, back to the room.
Should Weiss talk to her? Go… sit up there with her or something, let her know she had support? Yang had said to act normal, but… what was normal with things like this? Normal would have Ruby bouncing around the room right now and Weiss would be trying to wrangle her in and get her to do homework or read textbook assignments. So…
'Maybe I should read our History textbook to her,' Weiss joked to herself. She wiped the grin off her face immediately, though. Now wasn't the time for jokes.
After standing in the middle of the room for who knows how long internally debating, Weiss decided 'Screw it'. Weiss didn't have any idea what 'acting normal' in this situation was even supposed to look like, so she abandoned that plan. She climbed up to Ruby's bunk and sat herself down behind the small of Ruby's back, folding her legs under her with her feet hanging off the edge of the bed.
She had no idea how anybody could sleep in a top bunk. This was so… ugh.
Ruby was just laying there, curled up on her side, eyes half open as she blinked slowly at the wall. She didn't react to Weiss' arrival.
"Hey," Weiss greeted her partner.
"Mm," Ruby said, not turning.
This was so off. Before now, Weiss hadn't realized how much she'd gotten used to making eye contact with Ruby when they were talking to each other, and now she felt so off kilter not seeing those big silver sparkles.
"So I was thinking about what we could do while Yang and Blake are futzing around training Emerald…" Weiss started.
Ruby stayed silent. It almost made Weiss wince.
"So we're gonna be in a park, right?" Weiss continued. At this point she sort of felt like she was just talking to herself, but… she'd done that a few times before when she was feeling particularly lonely at home after Winter left. No big deal to do it now. "I figure we could do, like, a picnic. We could get some nice takeout—maybe some nice deli sandwiches or something—and have a little picnic off on the side while they do whatever it is they're doing. And I could bring a case of Dust and we could work on those exercises some more."
"... Mkay."
Ruby's lack of enthusiasm was physically painful. She should be jumping up and down right now, delighted at the idea of a picnic. Even knowing what was wrong, Weiss couldn't ignore the whisper in the back of her mind telling her that Ruby just didn't want her around. It was a familiar voice, the same one that told her that Winter left home to get away from her, the same one that told her that her parents' falling out was her fault, the same one that told her Whitley hated her because he blamed her for their family's state as much as she did.
Klein told her that voice is an idiot, but Weiss had never been able to fully agree. It had to be here, though, because… because she knew why Ruby was so sad right now and it had nothing to do with Weiss.
In a stupid, self-centered way, it kind of hurt that Weiss wasn't able to pull Ruby out of her funk. Apparently their friendship wasn't strong enough to fill the mom-shaped void in Ruby's hurt.
Weiss mentally kicked herself as soon as that thought flitted through her head. It was so incomprehensibly stupid for her to be trying to compete with a dead woman—especially Ruby's mother.
'Stupid.'
"We could also bring the chess set," Weiss added. That seemed like an appropriately picnicy activity.
"... That would be fun," Ruby agreed quietly. She turned and looked at Weiss and gave a small smile.
Weiss beamed back at her and reached over to give Ruby's shoulder a squeeze, feeling ridiculously triumphant for managing to get such a small reaction.
Ruby turned back to the wall and Weiss stayed where she was, arm draped across Ruby's side, rubbing the girl's shoulder with her thumb.
"How long do you think it will take for Yang to learn all the roles and formations in Winter's playbook?" Weiss asked. Cracking a joke and making it a question would probably pull Ruby more into the conversation.
"She'll get it," Ruby stated simply. "She's smert."
"Mm. What do you think Professor Rustheart will have us do today?" He'd implied a spar of some sort, though Weiss wasn't sure with whom.
Ruby just shrugged and hummed an 'I don't know'.
Shutting down again. Maybe that was okay? Weiss liked quiet company, though Ruby usually gave her the company without the quiet. Maybe now was the time for it.
They just sat there in silence for a few minutes. Weiss passed the time tracing random shapes over her thigh with her fingernail while she absent-mindedly rubbed Ruby's shoulder with her other hand.
Suddenly, without any prompt or change in the situation, Ruby rolled over, sat up, and wrapped her arms around Weiss in a tight hug, burying her face in Weiss' back just above her left shoulderblade.
Weiss froze, caught off guard by the sudden change. Should she say something? Do something? If Ruby was doing this it meant Weiss had done something right, and she'd been being quiet, so maybe she should stay that way.
She opted to continue staying silent and reached up to rub her hand along Ruby's forearm where one was wrapped across her chest, just continuing to give soft physical comfort like she'd been rubbing Ruby's shoulder.
Ruby let out a long, deep breath into Weiss' back and Weiss could feel her relax.
Okay, so Weiss was on the right track.
They stayed like that for over a minute when Yang and Blake returned, each carrying a stack of plates. There were upside down plates covering right side up plates, making plate 'ufos' that presumably had food inside. There were several smells coming from them, the scent of bacon powerful enough that it obscured the other ones.
"I got cook—!" Yang stopped and blinked in surprise at the scene that greeted her. "Oh, hey," she said, looking at Weiss because Ruby's face was hidden from her view.
Weiss lifted her hand in a small wave, not wanting to disturb Ruby's peace by jostling her.
"We got you some cookies and bacon, Ruby," Yang restarted, setting down one of the 'ufos' onto Ruby's desk and taking off the top plate to reveal a stack of what looked like a dozen cookies next to a couple strips of bacon. She then placed the other ufo she was carrying on Weiss' desk. "And Weiss, they had fruit salad today and we got you some." She took the top plate off to reveal a fruit salad mix of what looked like sliced banana, cantaloupe, apple, and grapes with yogurt mixed in.
"Oh wow, thank you." Weiss wasn't expecting that and she was immensely grateful. She hadn't registered her hunger until she saw the food.
Yang gave her a funny look. "Of course, silly. You two wanna come down?"
Gently, Weiss patted the back of one of Ruby's hand to silently repeat the question.
After letting out a long groan, Ruby nodded into Weiss' back and pulled away.
Weiss summoned a couple of grey glyphs below her and used them as stair steps down from the bunk. She left them there in case Ruby wanted to use them too, but instead Ruby just rolled off her bed and fell to the floor.
The fall was too fast for Weiss to even shout in time, but her panic felt like a zap of electricity shot down her spine. Ruby slipped into her semblance just before she hit the ground, though, and bounced off the floor in a spray of petals.
"Ruby!" Weiss shrieked, stepping forward to jab Ruby in the ribcage with a toe when she popped back into reality. "Don't do that! You scared the crap out of me!"
From where she was now laying on her back on the floor, Ruby stuck her tongue out at Weiss, then pushed herself up to her feet. She grabbed her cloak from where it was hanging on a bedpost and wrapped it around herself, then shuffled over to her desk. She gave Yang a long hug that Yang returned with enough strength that Weiss was worried her partner might just pop. When her sister finally released her, Ruby plopped down in her chair and started nibbling on one of her cookies.
"I love you, kiddo," Yang said, ruffling Ruby's hair.
"Love you, too," Ruby mumbled through her cookie.
It seemed Yang was pretty bad at her own 'act normal' advice too.
On the other two desks, Blake unloaded her two stacks of plates with her and Yang's breakfast, Yang's a pancake folded in half (with half of a second pancake stacked on top) to fit alongside her typical pile of bacon and eggs and Blake's was the other half of Yang's second pancake and some bacon and fruit salad.
"You shouldn't have gotten so much food," Weiss said. "I was gonna get us some food for a picnic while we're out at the park."
Yang blinked down at her pile of food. "Oh, woops. Alright, I won't eat too much."
"I'll go get us some forks and knives," she said, slipping out of the room.
With Ruby focused on the plate in front of her, Yang raised a questioning eyebrow at Weiss.
Weiss had no idea what Yang was trying to communicate and raised an eyebrow back at her.
Yang nodded at Ruby, then jerked her head the other way.
'...What?'
Rolling her eyes, Yang pointed over at Ruby's bunk (probably what she'd been trying to indicate with the jerk of her head), then pantomimed a hug.
'Oh.'
Ruby noticed the commotion going on in her peripheral vision and turned to look at her sister. Yang quickly moved from pantomiming a hug to just crossing her arms.
"Sup?" she said.
Ruby frowned at her like Yang was a total weirdo (fair), then went back to her cookies.
Yang turned back to Weiss and raised a hand up, non-verbally asking "what the heck?"
Weiss shrugged.
Yang didn't seem to want to take that for an answer, though, because she kept gesturing inarticulately for some sort of explanation.
What the hell kind of answer did Yang even want right now? Was Weiss supposed to sign language a response? She didn't know how and she very much doubted Yang would understand it if she did.
After a couple annoying seconds of Yang being a monkey at her, Weiss had had enough.
"Yang, stop trying to lick Ruby's ear!"
"What?!" Yang jumped.
Ruby turned to give Yang a grossed out face, leaning away.
"I didn't do that!" Yang bursted out.
"Why are you so weird, Yang?" Ruby asked in a tone that made it more of a statement that a question.
"But I didn't do it!"
Ruby shook her head disapprovingly and turned back to her cookies.
Glaring, Yang shook her fist at Weiss, then drew a finger across her throat, then made a V with her index and middle fingers and pointed at her eyes, then at Weiss. Apparently she couldn't decide which pantomime threat to settle on.
Weiss bit her bottom lip to keep from cackling.
When Blake came back, they all ate their breakfast together. Weiss was tempted to ask how they were allowed to take plates from the cafeteria, but… it didn't really matter and she didn't really care. The older three talked, each of them tentatively trying to pull Ruby into the conversation in various ways to no real avail. Ruby was just defaulting to monosyllabic responses or shrugs.
A couple hours later they were all showered, dressed, armed, and packed, sitting together in a towncar Weiss had called and riding over to Vale City Park where they were meeting Emerald. Weiss did not at all approve of Yang's determination to try to get Emerald into Beacon, and she wasn't even going to participate in their training, but she'd still be there with her team because… well, because.
They were dropped off at the edge of the park—which was huge. A massive expanse of green in the middle of the city, wide enough that Weiss could barely make out the skyscrapers on the far side of the park. A sidewalk ran the perimeter, with several more spidering across the hills and through the trees creating trails for visitors to walk. Here and there, statues, monuments, and other points of interest dotted the landscape, giving people something to admire and congregate around.
Weiss handed the blanket, Dust case, and chess set she'd brought with her to Ruby for her to set up wherever Yang decided was a good place to train and split from the group to pick up some food from one of the restaurants nearby rimming the park.
Unlike this morning, Weiss was glad for the alone time. She used the solitude to relax her composure and stop hiding the rollercoaster of emotions this morning had brought. Though now most of what she was feeling was… tired and confused. This thing with Ruby was not something she'd ever been educated or trained for.
She rubbed at her temples and tried to breathe her frustrations out her nose as she waited in line at a deli that looked rustic and smelled delicious. The line extended out the door, dozens of people here to enjoying the park in the nice morning weather. Some people gave her funny looks when they noticed the sword hanging from her hip, but Weiss paid them no mind. There was a chalkboard by the door with the stores menu handwritten on it and Weiss sent a picture of it to her team to get their orders while she waited.
When she got closer to the front of the line, she almost turned around and ran to another restaurant. The cashier and at least three of the cooks that were visible in the back were faunus.
'Why are there so many damn faunus working in the food industry? Everywhere I go there's an animal making my food.'
It was so tempting to leave and find an establishment with actual hiring standards, but… she'd already told her team what she was getting. They'd given her their orders. If she left and went somewhere else she'd need to explain why, and when she did Blake would… and Yang would… even Ruby would be mad. She could try lying, but she was pretty bad at that. Always had been.
No, she'd just have to… to deal with this. They couldn't be that bad; there were so many people here getting this food, it must be good despite the... unsavory nature of the cooks.
She ordered, avoiding eye contact with the cashier. While she waited for her name to be called, she sat as far away from the handoff plane as possible. And when she left with her order, she did so in a hurry.
It was when she got outside that she realized the distraction of the faunus made her forget to buy Ruby a couple of the cookies. She mentally kicked herself as she dialed her partner.
"Hey, Weiss," Ruby said, her tone flat and missing the classic Ruby cheer.
"Hey, where'd you guys set up?"
"Um, a bit aways from the Vytal War Memorial. If you're on the path where we got dropped off and take the first left you'll find it."
"Okay, on my way with chips and sandwiches. And lemonade."
"Cool, thanks."
The line clicked, the end of the call so abrupt it gave Weiss whiplash and made that voice in the back of her head grow louder.
'She's not mad at you, idiot,' she told herself again. 'Shut up, voice.'
She followed Ruby's directions and found the memorial after about twelve minutes of walking, a tall obelisk made of alternating bricks of white and black stone. Over a dozen people milled around it, families and couples posing for photos or standing around talking. About a hundred feet away, Weiss could make out the silhouette of Ruby's cloak under a large, wide tree, Yang and Blake walking around a little bit behind it.
"This is a nice spot," Weiss said when she made her way over to Ruby's side.
Ruby was sitting on the picnic blanket, back against the tree, Crescent Rose propped up beside her as she watched Yang and Blake, who were taking turns swinging their fists and swords around. Showing each other forms or something? The Dust case and chessboard were stacked next to Ruby. A corner of the blanket was folded over and Weiss took a second to walk over and fix it because she knew if she let that sit there it would make her brain itch.
"Blake picked it," Ruby said as Weiss set paper bag full of sandwiches and drink tote with four large lemonades down on the now fixed blanket corner.
Weiss sat down next to Ruby and hugged her knees to her chest like her friend was. "Does Yang know when that girl is getting here?"
"Dunno."
"Mm. Did you want your sandwich?"
"Not yet. Can I have da lemonade, though?" Ruby reached a hand out toward it and opened and closed it repeatedly.
"Sure." It was nice to see Ruby showing signs of life. Weiss crawled over to grab two of the lemonades, handing one to Ruby.
Ruby took a sip and puckered up in a sour face that made Weiss laugh.
Personally, Weiss loved it. It was just the right mix of sweet and sour, and it was ice cold.
"Hey, Blake and Idiot!" she called to the other two. "Your lemonade's here if you want it!"
Yang turned and gave her a thumbs up and Blake waved an acknowledgement, then said something to Yang. Whatever she said, it made Yang give her a playful glare and the next thing Weiss knew the two of them were running around like schoolchildren playing tag. Yang was trying to tackle Blake and Blake was skipping about with her semblance and just general acrobatics, whipping out the physics-defying ribbon from Gambol Shroud to try to trip up her partner, laughing all the while.
It was a rare event where Weiss felt her most mature team member was Ruby, but that's where they were right now.
Ruby had a small smile on her face as she watched her sister and Blake frolick around, occasionally taking small sips of her lemonade and sour-facing after every one.
"Want to play some chess?" Weiss asked her.
Ruby nodded.
Weiss scooched around, patting down the blanket where it got scrunched up, and situated herself in front of Ruby, setting up the chessboard between them. Her back was to Blake and Yang now, but she didn't really mind that. They were just being children now and Weiss didn't really care to watch whatever they were going to do when the homeless girl got here.
Ruby just quietly sat there, eyes switching between the scene of idiocy behind Weiss to Weiss' hands as she got all the pieces set up. Normally Weiss would be cross about having to set up both sets of pieces but she found she didn't mind at all right now.
"First or second?" Weiss asked. The proper question would be 'white or black?' because white was always supposed to go first, but Ruby insisted that rule was ridiculous. She wanted to be black every game and she wanted Weiss to be white because that matched their color schemes.
Honestly, Weiss couldn't really fault that logic.
"Mmmm… First."
As was her habit, Ruby opened with a pawn to E4 and, after Weiss stepped her own pawn up to block, then moved her queen out. On the second turn. Because she was crazy.
That wasn't quite accurate. It was because Ruby had decided the Queen was her, and she kept trying to have the queen be the 'hero' of the game and capture as many pieces as possible.
She'd also sacrificed her queen on multiple occasions to save lesser pieces, including 'Weiss', her white bishop, a habit Weiss found worrying if that's something that translated to real life…
The annoying thing about Ruby's insistence on opening with queen plays was that Weiss never learned any defenses against it. Winter had never been so brazen with her queen so she'd never had to. It meant that she was usually forced to wing things instead of getting to set up a play she was familiar with, like her preferred Argus System or Solitas Defense.
And Weiss wasn't very good at winging things. So far she'd always been able to win without too much difficulty because of Ruby's reckless queen gameplay, but other than that fluke the girl was actually improving incredibly quickly and the games were closer than Weiss would have liked. She wasn't outclassing Ruby to the same degree Winter was outclassing her before she left home.
Weiss played defense, trying to catch Ruby's queen in a couple traps with her knights and a bishop, and pulled her Dust case over and popped it open.
"We should try playing and doing the Dust exercises at the same time," she suggested. That seemed like a fun mental exercise.
Ruby drew her eyebrows together in a subtle, watered-down Ruby pout, though.
"C'mon, it would be good practice," Weiss pressed.
"You already beat me up in chess and casting and now you want to do both at the same time?" Ruby grumped.
"I—no! I'm not… okay, first of all, casting isn't a competition. You're just training to get better and I'm helping and you are getting better! And second, again, I wouldn't be beating you so badly in chess if you weren't so damn reckless with your queen!"
She punctuated her point by taking her turn, capturing Ruby's queen with her knight.
"And now you killed me," Ruby pouted.
"Well you were asking for it," Weiss said, making sure to visibly grin to make it clear she was just teasing.
Ruby pouted.
They played in relative quiet for about ten minutes, occasionally doing one of the fundamental Dust exercises at Weiss' insistence, before the runaway girl showed up. Weiss spotted her nervously making her way over from the monument and, when the girl caught her eye, jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Yang. That was enough of a contribution as far as she was concerned. This was Yang's project, ill-advised as it was.
The girl came over and was walking past their picnic setup when she noticed Ruby and stopped.
"Uh, hi. I'm Emerald," she said awkwardly.
"Ruby," replied Ruby with a small wave. "I'm Yang's sister."
"Ah. Cool." The girl looked between Yang, who was approaching, and Ruby a couple times. Likely thinking what Weiss had when she'd met these dolts: 'How in the name of aura are these two related?'
"Wait, are you on the same team?" the homeless girl asked.
Ruby nodded. "I got bumped up a couple years."
"Whoa."
"She's being modest," Weiss cut in. "She stopped a gang of lowlife thugs from robbing a Dust shop and a professor and the headmaster saw and invited her to join the incoming class on full scholarship." She gave her partner a smile.
Blushing slightly, Ruby looked down and poked her knee. "Yeah, that too."
"Hope I can get one of those," the intruder muttered.
Doubtful. There was no way this random homeless girl was as talented as Ruby.
"Well, let's see what you can do," Yang said, finally stomping close enough to join the conversation. "Emerald, this is my partner, Babe von Sexybutt."
"My name is Blake."
They shook hands.
"Hi. So… partners, huh?"
Yang grinned maniacally at Homeless Girl's question and Blake blushed.
"Not that," Blake said quickly. "We got assigned partners during initiation by… walking into each other in the woods."
"Oh."
"You didn't have to protest that hard," Yang grinned at Blake, earning her a light kick in the shin. "Now c'mon, Emerald. Let's get away from these nerds and do some fighting."
Weiss stuck her tongue out at the blonde before the three walked away.
She and Ruby kept playing chess, Ruby watching the "training" going on behind Weiss most of the time.
"She any good?" Weiss finally asked, feeling a little hurt and peeved that Ruby was distracted from her.
Ruby shrugged a bit. "She's aight. Not really Beacon material, but she seems to at least have balance and coordination. Maybe she can get there."
"Mm." That was unconvincing. If Ruby, who was pretty much the most encouraging person Weiss had ever met, was saying maybe?
Although it might just be the mood she was in.
They ended up playing two games (both wins for Weiss, the first handy, the second a lot closer) before the other three came over to rest and eat.
"Did you want a sandwich, Em?" Yang asked as they settled down around the chessboard between Ruby and Emerald.
Weiss was very cognizant of the homeless girl sitting on her blanket but had the feeling she could ask her to get off.
"I'm okay. I ate already."
'How are you affording food?' Weiss wanted to ask. Or rather, she didn't want to ask because she suspected the answer would either be stealing or dumpster diving and she didn't need to hear either of those things.
"So you decently quick and you've got good footwork," Blake said as she unwrapped her reuben. "You need to stop slashing so much, though. Those knives are better for stabbing, at least until you sharpen the blades."
"Yeah," Homeless Girl agreed.
"What would help you most is getting you an actual huntress-class weapon," Yang added.
"Don't really know how to go about getting one of those."
"Hm. Well our uncle made ours for us. Melted down one of his old weapons for Ruby and my dad's old gauntlets for me. Don't suppose you've got any huntsman family members to give you hand-med-owns?"
"Not that I know of."
"Durn. Blake, how'd you get Gambol Shroud?"
Blake's eyes went wide. "Uh… I found it."
"'Found' it?" Weiss repeated.
"Yep."
"Where exactly did you 'find' a weapon like that?"
"... Around."
Yang laughed at that. "Just tripped over it at a weapons testing facility, ya know?"
Blake looked away.
"And Weiss," Yang continued, "I'm guessing you just, like, bought yours?"
"I didn't buy it," Weiss huffed. "I had it custom built."
"That's… the same thing."
"It is not!"
"It's basically just buying before it's made!"
Weiss blinked. "Well… yes, but it's still not the same thing."
Yang laughed and turned back to Homeless Girl with an apologetic shrug.
The girl shrugged back. "Well I can't buy one and I doubt I'll be 'finding'" — she put air quotes around the word — "one anywhere any time soon."
"I resent those air quotes," Blake muttered.
"Hey, Ruby?" Yang said, turning to her sister. Weiss thought it was just another attempt to pull the girl out of her funk and into a conversation, but apparently it was something more. "Didn't you say the forgemaster guy is having you smith some practice weapons before he lets you make your new Crescent Rose?"
Ruby nibbled the end of her straw, which irked Weiss. "Yeah?"
"Well, what if you gave one of those practice weapons to Emerald?"
"I'm pretty sure that would be a misuse of school resources," Weiss interjected.
"Shut up, Weiss," Yang said, not even turning her way.
"Hey!"
"So what do you think?" Yang asked Ruby again. "Could you make her a weapon?"
Ruby slowly straightened up. "That… could be really cool! Actually getting to make a weapon for somebody? Hm… What would you want?" she asked Homeless Girl.
"Um… I don't know?" The girl twisted the skin of her forearm nervously with her other hand. "Apparently I like slashing."
"Scythes are good for slashing!" Ruby exclaimed, sounding like her normal, animated self.
"S-scythes? Aren't those for farming?"
"No, they're for reaping, gosh!" Ruby folded her arms and leaned back against the tree with a grumpy grunt.
"Oh. Right. Uh…"
"I think she prefers smaller stuff," Blake said. "Maybe you could make her a kama?"
"Pretty sure the only one here that thinks punctuation can be used as a weapon is Weiss," Yang grinned.
"Not comma, you absolute blonde," Blake laughed. "Kama. K-A-M-A. It's basically a small, one-handed scythe. Here." Blake pulled out her scroll and brought up an image and showed it to the rest of them. Sure enough, it did indeed look like a handheld scythe.
"Whoooa," Ruby breathed. "I had no idea those were a thing! I'll do it! Wait, did you want that?" She directed the question at their guest-intruder.
"Uh… sure? It looks like something that would feel good for me."
"Sweet!" Ruby was now fully animated and alive. "And I can probably also make it a pistol! And, and… do you want two? You seemed to like dual-wielding those knives."
The girl scratched her arm. "I already feel bad asking for one."
Weiss snorted, which earned her a glare from Yang, but whatever. This girl was clearly freeloading off of them and taking advantage of Yang's good heart.
"Pssh, don't worry about it," Ruby said, waving a hand dismissively. "They've got tons of metal and gun barrels and stuff at the forge. Won't be a problem. And if it is, Weiss can pay for it!"
"I can what now?"
"Well that's settled!" Yang practically shouted, jumping to her feet. "C'mon, Emerald. Let's see how fast you dodge."
"Dodge what?"
"My fists for starters. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll throw Blake at you."
"Uh, no," Blake said, standing too.
"Like you could stop me," Yang teased, earning another kick on the shin.
The three wandered off to play in the grass again like children, leaving Weiss in peace with Ruby. They got back to their games, Weiss still nibbling on her pastrami on rye between moves because she was a slow eater.
"Nine millimeter's probably a good caliber for a scythe-pistol, yeah?" Ruby asked, her brow furrowed as whatever silly gears existed in her head turned. "Like it'll hit hard enough without being heavy and unwieldy. It would kinda just end up being a long-barrelled pistol with a funky bayonet at the end, huh?"
"I suppose so," Weiss hedged. She didn't really know what Ruby was talking about. She couldn't picture whatever it was Ruby was seeing in her head and she didn't really want to think about it anyway because she didn't approve.
"Although the magazines would need to be pretty small to keep the weapon balanced, and that would mean she'd need to reload a lot, and it'll be hard to reload if she's dual-wielding…" She squinted at Weiss, though Weiss got the impression she was just thinking and not really looking to Weiss for any sort of answer.
Weiss shrugged.
After a moment more of contemplation, Ruby shrugged back and refocused on the chessboard. "I'll figure it out," she decided.
"I'm sure you will," Weiss replied. That wasn't entirely true: she had no idea if Ruby could do this. She was certainly enthusiastic enough about weaponsmithing but Weiss had yet to see her make anything. But today was… the day that it was for Ruby and Weiss felt the tiny fib was worth cheering her partner up.
Sure enough, Ruby gave her a small smile, then switched to a smug grin and moved her knight. "Check."
Of course she fell into that trap. She simply couldn't resist making plays with her queen.
Three moves later, Weiss had her checkmated.
"This game is stupid," Ruby pouted. That was normal. She had angry words for chess and the 'chess balance team' (whatever that meant) after pretty much every game. She hadn't quit, though, and didn't even seem to get discouraged for the next game.
"Well seeing as it's not sentient, I don't think it's the game that's stupid," Weiss teased. Kind of a mean joke, but she tried to make it clear that she was joking with her expression.
Ruby narrowed her eyes. "I 'spose you're right. Fine, you're stupid!"
Weiss snorted a laugh and started resetting her pieces. "Clearly you've got this all figured out. I wonder why you can't seem to—"
"Essscuse me?"
The interruption annoyed Weiss. When she turned to find a little blonde girl, with pigtails and overalls, with her hands clasped in front of her, that mollified her a little bit. She was still annoyed, though.
The girl must have been… four? Five? Weiss had no idea how to gauge children's ages. Behind her stood what appeared to be her older sister, same tan skin and blonde hair, though the girl wore her hair in a nice braid that was far less visually offensive than pigtails. She was wearing crocs with socks, though, which… uggggh. Behind them both, far enough that he clearly was just watching and not participating in the conversation, was a middle-aged man that Weiss presumed was their father.
Weiss just wanted to enjoy a nice day out with her team. First they had hobo girl coming in and making herself the center of attention and now these randos were here interrupting Weiss' time with Ruby. Why couldn't people just go away?
Ruby seemed confused, though not nearly as offended at the intrusion nearly as much as Weiss.
"Hi, cutie!" she cooed, looking a little nervous. "What's up?"
The little girl grabbed the pinky of her left hand with her right and looked up and back at her sister, who gave her a nod and two thumbs up. She turned back to Ruby. "Are you hunchesses?"
"Yep!" Ruby confirmed happily. "We're students at Beacon. Um… I'm Ruby!" She held her hand out to the little girl, looking a bit unsure of herself.
Weiss was glad Ruby hadn't introduced her as well. She wanted to do that herself. The whole 'let me introduce the person with me' thing seemed to be something men liked to do.
"You gotta shake her hand, Bailey," the older girl said. When the little girl, Bailey, didn't seem to understand, the older girl knelt down beside her and pulled the hand that was balled up around the pinky finger and put it into Ruby's.
Ruby shook the little hand with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Bailey."
"Nice tah… meet you!" Bailey replied, break in her words a pause for breath or a pause to figure out what to say or whatever reasoning there was behind the weirdness of little children speech.
From the way the older girl was excitedly shaking, Weiss had a sneaking suspicion that coming over here was more her idea than Bailey's.
"I'm Weiss." Weiss didn't want to touch icky strangers so she just gave a tiny wave.
Bailey waved back, her arm swinging widely from side to side like she didn't have control of her motor functions.
"Are you—" the older girl started, then stopped when Weiss and Ruby turned to look at her, her eyes going wide with nervousness. "Um, you said your name is Ruby? Are you the girl that stopped that robbery and got admitted into Beacon for it a year early?"
It was kind of an absurd feeling to have Ruby be the publicly known individual instead of Weiss. At first it kind of irked her, but then she realized she like it better this way. Her renown came only from her last name and it was a fame she was fine doing without. She'd get famous on her own by being the best huntress in the world.
"Two years early," Ruby corrected proudly.
"How'd you know about that?" Weiss asked the girl.
"It was in the papers," the girl said. "I read the Huntsmen section every Sunday." Her expression became a bit self conscious. "I'm, uh, a bit of a Hunt geek."
"Me too!" Ruby said, putting the girl right at ease.
"Is it true that Nidas Rustheart is one of your professors?"
"Yeah! He's awesome."
"He's a huge dork and completely unprofessional," Weiss amended.
"Wei-eisss," Ruby whined.
"What? It's true."
"Yeah, that's why he's awesome."
"I think you and I use that word very differently."
"Yeah, you use it wrong."
"Wrongly."
"No you."
"I've been trying to follow you but I couldn't find you on Blabber," the girl said, cutting into their bickering.
"Oh, yeah." Ruby scratched her head. "Dad hasn't let me make one. Says I'm too young."
The girl gave her a pained look and they seemed to share a 'freaking fathers, am I right?' moment. "Well, I could give you mine and then when you make one you could shoot me a message so I can follow you? I-I can be your biggest fan! Like, I've actually met you, and I already have a slot in my binder ready for when your trading card gets released, and you're from the place where I was born—"
"You're from Patch too?!"
"Patch!" the little Bailey squealed, throwing her hands up. Probably just excited to recognize a word in the conversation.
The older sister patted Bailey on the head. "Yeah! I don't remember it much, though. We moved for my dad's job when I was, like, seven."
Weiss distinctly remembered her life when she was seven, but then again her memory was abnormal.
Ruby nodded, looking like she hadn't totally heard. "Hm. Hey, how 'bout you could follow Weiss, and then when I make a Blubber account she can let you know what my… tag… thingy is."
"Uh, yeah, sure." The girl was clearly nervous to turn to Weiss or address her directly, which Weiss didn't understand at all; what about her wasn't congenial and welcoming? "What's your handle?" she managed to get out as she pulled out her scroll.
"Weiss. that's W-E-I-S-S, underscore Schnee."
The girl's eyes bugged out.
'Yep,' Weiss sighed internally. 'There it is.'
"Yes, that Schnee," she said tiredly, answering the question she knew was coming next.
The girl blinked a couple times, then tapped her scroll a bit. "Holy crap."
"Hoe-y cwap!" Bailey echoed.
"Sssh, Bailey no!" the sister hushed, glancing back at their father. "Don't say that." She looked at her scroll a bit more before looking at Weiss in shock. "You're the future CEO of the SDC?"
Weiss just nodded.
"You're kinda rich, huh?"
"Kinda," Weiss echoed.
"Um… I'm Allison?" the girl said awkwardly, like the knowledge of who she was talking to made her realize she needed to introduce herself… as a question.
"Okay," Weiss replied, not really sure what to say. She'd already given her name. "... Nice to meet you," she decided on, though it was kind of a lie. This girl was interrupting her day. She looked to Ruby to rescue her from this conversation.
After looking at Weiss' face for a moment, Ruby seemed to understand and turned back to the girl. "So yeah! Just follow Weiss and then when I can make my Bloober account I'll get your account from her and follow you and then you can follow me and then we'll all be a big happy follower-family."
"You're gonna follow me?" Allison repeated incredulously.
Ruby shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
Allison nodded to herself a bit, shaking off her shock. "You know, you should just make it. You don't have to wait for your dad's permission. You're in Beacon now, you're basically an adult."
Ruby narrowed her eyes. "This is truuuue…"
"That's not at all how that works," Weiss cut in.
"Yes it is!" Ruby and Allison both objected at the same time.
Well it was nice to see Ruby being herself again, even if it meant she was now being annoying. Maybe between this conversation and her excitement about building Homeless Girl a weapon, she'd be okay tonight?
Weiss' scroll dinged a notification at her, telling her Alliesaurus had followed her on Blabber. As far as online handles went, that was pretty good. Cute, clever, related to her actual name, and it didn't substitute letters for numbers for no good reason like Ruby's scroll ID.
"I wish I had your card already so you could sign it," Allison muttered. "Or even just my binder, you coulda signed that. Wish I'd known I was gonna meet you today."
"I knew," Ruby said with a sage nod.
Allison's eyes bugged out again. "Can you see the future?"
Ruby cackled. "Nah, I'm just pulling your leg. My semblance is way cooler than future sight. Check it out!"
With that, Ruby switched into her semblance and raced in a wide circle around the clearing. The whole lap was nearly as long as a track lap, four hundred yards, yet she cleared it in a little over six seconds. The commotion rattled nearby tourists and Weiss saw Yang look over at their picnic set up and take in the intruders.
Then Ruby skidded to a stop where she'd been sitting, completely crumpling Weiss' blanket.
"Ruby!" Weiss leaned forward and swatted her partner's legs. "Get off! You're ruining my blanket!"
Ruby didn't respond, though, because she was looking around in confusion.
Weiss was about to ask her what was wrong when she was interrupted by the child. As the rose petals started drifting down around them, Bailey let out a squeal of laughter and started chasing them around, trying to swat them out of the air like they were bubbles. "Edahbuh!" she giggled.
Weiss wasn't entirely sure that was even supposed to be a word.
It was then that Yang walked up, hands on her hips, smiling at the scene. Blake was still off a little ways running through attack patterns with Homeless Girl. If this girl liked to dual wield knives, it made sense she'd have the most in common with Blake when it came to fighting style.
"What's goin' on here?" Yang asked.
"I've got fans," Ruby preened.
"Oh?" Yang looked at the two girls, the younger of which was paying no attention at all to them and was just chasing petals around. Whenever she caught one she got immediately bored of it and dropped it to go chase another that was still riding the wind.
Allison gave an awkward wave. "Hi. Yeah, I, uh, read about Ruby in the paper, and… stuff."
Weiss wasn't sure what other 'stuff' there was. That was basically it. She read about Ruby and decided to fangirl over her and now apparently thought they shared some sort of connection.
Stupid. Her team was the only connections Ruby needed. And, Weiss supposed, her father. And uncle. And… dog? Assuming it wasn't an ugly one. They'd said it was a corgi, so it was probably cute enough to be acceptable.
"—be an acronym of all of you, not just your name?" Allison was saying. Weiss was a little lost, having tuned out a bit of conversation, but she also wasn't sure she cared. She mostly just wanted these strangers to go away.
"It is!" Ruby said. "It's R-W-B-Y. Weiss is the W."
Weiss gave a tiny wave.
"Ah," Allison nodded. "That's… kinda confusing."
"Yeah, I still think Weiss should change her name to something with a U to make things simpler," Yang said, grinning mischievously down at Weiss. "Like… Ulga."
Weiss stared at her blankly. "I like you better when you're quiet."
"When is that?"
"When you're somewhere else."
Yang laughed loudly. "Alright, that was good." She extended a fist towards Weiss.
Weiss knew she was supposed to do a 'fist bump' here, but that was dumb and thus, she refused. Instead, she stared pointedly at the fist, then at Yang.
Yang rolled her eyes and turned, walking back over to Blake and her lost cause project. "Whatever. You dorks have fun!" she called over her shoulder.
"How long do you guys think you'll be out here?" Allison asked, the question phrased for both of them but her posture turned entirely to Ruby. "'Cause I bet I can get my dad to let us rush home for my binder and come back. It would only take, like, an hour…?" She looked at Ruby with big, pleading eyes.
"Uh, I'm not sure…" Ruby looked at Weiss questioningly.
'Oh, sure. Force me to be the bad guy.'
"We need to get going soon if we want to do any of the positioning and callout stuff in the Battle Center before Class," she said.
"True," Ruby agreed with a pout.
"It was your idea," Weiss reminded her.
"I know, I knooow. Hmph." She turned to Allison. "Are you going to the Vytal Tournament?"
"I totally can, if I beg hard enough. Why?"
"We could meet up! And we'll have our test print sheets by then I'm pretty sure. That's what my uncle said. So I can sign one of those and give it to you!"
From the expression on the girl's face, you'd think she just won the lottery. Weiss wanted to ask what the hell a 'test print sheet' even was, but she didn't want to look ignorant in front of a stranger. And Ruby had said 'we' will have them like her team was included in that, which made Weiss feel even more like she was supposed to know.
"Allison," the man waiting awkwardly behind them called. When Allison turned to look at him, he tapped his watch (apparently all fathers wear watches because they can't wear actual jewelry). "Stop bothering them. It's time to go."
'Yes, please stop bothering us.'
"But… Bailey's—"
"Allison."
"Darn it." Allison turned back to Ruby. "Could I grab a picture with you real quick? Maybe?"
"Sure!"
Weiss made sure to scoot well out of the way of the shot. She'd had experience with journalists and paparazzi snapping her photo at events and she'd gotten over the discomfort, but this felt far too disconnected yet personal.
The little one noticed what was going on and ran towards her sister, arms out wide, yelling, "Cheeeeese!"
"Bailey, no! You can't be in the picture!" Allison tried to push the little one away from herself and Ruby.
"What?" Ruby squeaked. "Why not?"
"Causssse… I want to show this pic off to my friends! If I have my baby sister in it, it'll be totally lame!"
Ruby frowned. "But baby sisters are cool," she said quietly.
"Ugh! Whatever." Allison pulled her sister into her side and pressed down on her head, trying to obscure her from the picture as she held her scroll out for a selfie. "Say Beacon!"
"Beaconnnn!"
Weiss couldn't help rolling her eyes at the display. They were all so obnoxiously happy over something so dumb.
"Allison, come on!" the father called.
"Okayokay!" Allison took a moment to check the picture, then dashed a bit away before turning back to Ruby. "Bye, thank you! It was so awesome to meet you!"
Ruby waved back. "You too! We'll see you later!"
Bailey ran back to her father with the arm-flailing gait of a drunkard. Or child, apparently. "Daddy, look what I got!" she yelled, a rose petal balled up in her tiny fist. Cute, though the crumpled rose petal irked Weiss a bit. They were special and pretty and deserved better treatment than that.
The man gave Weiss and Ruby a perfunctory wave as he led his chatty daughters away.
Weiss breathed in and out a deep sigh of relief, noting that Ruby seemed to relax a bit too.
'Talking to people makes her nervous,' Weiss remembered. They were sort of similar in that way, though for Ruby it was self-conscious nerves about embarrassing herself and for Weiss it was just a general distrust and dislike of people.
Ruby's shoulders slumped a bit as she exhaled. "Well that was nice," she said quietly.
"Mhm," Weiss hummed, noncommittal. She didn't want to spoil the mood, though, so she made up for her lack of enthusiasm by giving her partner a smile.
The smile she got back was the tame, watered-down smile from earlier today. Already back to grieving?
Had Ruby been faking her happiness that whole conversation?
… No. There was no way. Ruby wasn't the type of person to fake or filter herself…
Right?
"You mind if we take a break from the chess for a bit?" Ruby asked, rubbing at her temples. "Kinda want to just relax for a bit." She pulled the cloth of her cloak tighter around her shoulders and huddled in on herself.
"Ah," Weiss intoned, a bit disappointed. "Okay." She scooted back to sit against the tree next to Ruby. She watched her other two teammates and their hobo apprentice in silence for a bit. Blake was using Yang as a demonstration dummy, showing the girl how to target slashes and place her feet to maximize power in her swings.
Weiss admired Blake's form. It was more fluid than Weiss', focused more on moving side to side than forward and back, and she slashed where Weiss would thrust. It was nice to watch, though it looked like it would be exhausting to keep up in a fight. Not something Weiss wanted to emulate, but she could admire it.
"Can I have some air Dust?" Ruby asked after a couple minutes.
"Of course!" It delighted Weiss that Ruby had taken to practicing her Dust casting. She'd more or less gotten the hang of the Basic Wind Technique B that Professor Goodwitch had had her do in front of the class. She needed to work on keeping the ball of air tighter and smaller and was still having some trouble with the rotation reversing, but she was able to do it about eighty percent of the time now.
When Weiss handed Ruby a tiny, light green Dust crystal from her case, though, Ruby turned it into a lopsided, flailing tornado in her hand.
"Ruby, that's not the exercise," Weiss admonished.
"I knowww, I'm just playing," Ruby whined like she was that Bailey girl's age.
Weiss wanted to snap that her 'just playing' cost fourteen lien, but not when Ruby was like this. And besides, who actually cared about fourteen lien?
Ruby swiped her hand out, sending the magic air out in a wave. "Wind slash!" she whispered.
'Dork,' Weiss thought with a smile.
She pulled the Dust case over so Ruby could grab whatever she wanted, then started practicing herself, with fire Dust. She was skilled enough even with fire that she did an advanced form instead of the trivial circle that the professor had assigned, a figure eight with two streams going in opposite directions. Weiss hated using fire, but she really liked this exercise; it was hypnotic. She also really needed to practice her fire and earth casting, as she'd been putting them off for a while because she didn't like feeling like she was bad with them.
Plus, she really enjoyed showing up Yang on her best element.
Weiss watched a bit of the other two training Homeless Girl as she sat with Ruby. Blake was teaching her how to balance herself and move her feet so she could dodge Yang's attacks. She was pretty bad at it, only really able to dodge about thirty percent of the strikes, and when she got het her aura would flicker even though Yang wasn't going anywhere close to all out.
Yeah, she wasn't going to get anywhere. Even Jaune or Remus would knock her on her ass.
"Wish I'd brought my violin," Weiss remarked as they waited.
"That woulda been nice," Ruby agreed quietly.
It was nice that she thought so.
A little while later, Weiss checked the time to find it was already 11:30. They'd wanted to get to the Battle Center at noon so they could spend an hour working on callouts before Professor Rustheart's class at 1:00.
"Yang!" she called out. When Yang looked over, Weiss tapped her wrist like the man from earlier sans the watch.
"Already?!" Yang yelled back.
Weiss nodded. Technically, they didn't have to leave for another ten minutes, but… Weiss wanted to be done here. Homeless Girl had taken enough of their time already.
The three of them wrapped up and slowly walked back over while Weiss shooed Ruby off the blanket and rolled it up. There was grass and dirt sticking onto the bottom side, which was annoying. She'd have to run this through the wash.
"... to keep your guard up," Blake was saying as they came into earshot. "And stop leaning so much on your front leg."
"I remember," Homeless Girl said. "I'll practice."
"And work on keeping your aura up," Yang said. "All the time. Never let it drop. I know it takes a lot of concentration now, but eventually it'll be like breathing."
"Never had to learn to breathe," the girl grumped.
Yang snorted. "Yeah, well breathing is for normies. You gotta train to be a superhero."
"Hate that word," Blake muttered.
"What, superhero?"
"No, normie." She waved her hands. "It's such a dumb word!"
"Your face is a dumb word!"
"Weiss, back me up here," Blake said. "It's a stupid word, right?"
"All words are stupid when Yang says them," Weiss answered honestly.
"Hey!"
"But it would still be stupid even if you were the one saying it, right?" Blake pressed.
"Well I would never say it, so… yes, I suppose it's a stupid word."
"Ruby, tell your partner her face is stupid!" Yang practically yelled.
Ruby was standing a few feet away, eyes on the ground as she kicked around some of her rose petals that were laying on the grass. "Huh? What?" she asked, looking up.
"Nothing," Weiss sighed. "Your sister's an idiot. Let's go back to Beacon." She looked pointedly at the intruder.
"R-right," the girl stammered. "Uh, thank you guys. I'll see, uh, you later?"
"For sure!" Yang agreed. "See ya, Em. Hopefully we'll have some weapons for you the next time we meet. Right, Rubes?"
"Mhm."
"Bye," Blake added.
The girl walked one way, the team walked another.
"So, to the Battle Center?" Blake asked.
"Yep!" Weiss chirped, the relief of being alone with her team again infecting her voice.
"So… do we need to make a chessboard or something?" Yang asked.
They stood in one of the fluorescent-lit, dirt-floored battle rooms in the Battle Center. Three hundred feet by three hundred feet of open space for them to train in.
Weiss waited for Ruby to say something, to have one of her clever ideas, but she was back to being withdrawn and solemn, flipping through her playbook without reading any of the words. "I supposed that would help us visualize things," Weiss reasoned. "Um… How, though?"
"Can you draw lines with earth Dust?" Blake asked.
"Um… maybe?" The lines would have to be really long. When she had discussed what they'd be doing here with Ruby last night, they'd decided each square should be ten feet by ten feet, so she'd need to make eighteen eighty foot long symmetrical, evenly spaced lines… That would be hard. She wasn't sure she'd be able to control her aura eighty feet away…
Although if she started with herself in the middle of the board, she'd only have to extend her aura in forty feet in any cardinal direction, a little further for the corners. Apply Pythagorean Theorem… The corners would be 44.72ish feet away? Not too bad. Although this would still be incredibly difficult. Earth was her worst element and she wasn't quite confident she'd be able to control it well enough to make such a large, symmetrical form.
Yang and Blake were both looking at her questioningly and expectantly while Ruby was still staring at her feet, swinging Crescent Rose around herself in its rifle form.
'Crap.' Weiss always hated dealing with the expectations of those close to her. She always felt like she came up short. For Father, for Klein, for Winter… Strangely, she'd never felt that way with Mother, though the time when Mother cared enough to actually have any expectations of her had long since passed.
Her palms were getting clammy from the pressure, which was absolutely ridiculous. This wasn't something big and important. It was just the four of them practicing some stuff together. Rationally, Weiss knew none of them would mind if she couldn't do this, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that she was failing. If they—
"Weiss?"
Weiss blinked rapidly, snapping out of her train of thought. "Huh?"
Yang was looking at her with her Concerned Mom face. "You alright? You look like you're hyperventilating."
"I'm fine." Weiss rubbed her palms against her skirt to dry them off.
"I could totally make the chessboard," Yang quickly offered. "Just get me a big stick, or… Ruby! Give me Crescent Rose!... Ruby?"
"Hm? What?" Ruby stirred from her thoughts.
Yang paused for a moment. She was turned away from Weiss to look at Ruby so Weiss couldn't see her expression, but she could imagine the worried frown pretty clearly.
"Lemme borrow Crescent Rose," Yang repeated.
Ruby pouted and hugged her weapon to her chest. "No, mine!"
"I just—"
"It's okay," Weiss cut in. "I have an idea."
She didn't have fantastic control over earth Dust, but she had great control over her glyphs.
She'd brought Myrtenaster's case with her to the Battle Center and she quickly glyph-skated over to it to grab a canister of earth Dust to load into her sword's cylinder. She rushed back out to the open space where her team waited.
She started small, just summoning two white glyphs 'diagonal' from each other that she eyeballed to get about ten feet in diameter. She pushed aura into the hilt of her rapier where it flowed along the silver embedded underneath and to the active chamber in Myrtenaster's cylinder, triggering the earth Dust within. The magic started to flow towards the blade, but Weiss willed it to instead follow the invisible threads connecting her to her glyphs.
The middle rings of the glyphs glowed green with the magic getting introduced to them and Weiss force the Dust to take the form of short, square blocks of rock that rose about four inches off the ground. The magically formed rock was a slightly darker brown than ground beneath their feet.
Good. It meant it would be easy to do a checkered effect. She'd just need to make thirty more of these squares. Make them the 'black' spaces on the chessboard.
The two squares she'd made used about a third of the magic from the Dust, and Weiss quickly made more glyphs to have a place to send the energy building up at the base of her blade. This would be one of those situations where it would be better to have the pressurized flow canisters she'd taught Ruby about.
If her affinity for earth was higher, she'd be able to get more use out of each of these Dust canisters. She ended up needing to use all six of the earth Dust canisters she had in her case. Annoying, but it is what it is. And it was worth it because at the end of it she had a huge chessboard arranged on the ground, dark brown on slightly darker brown.
… Hmm. Now that she took a step back and looked at it, it was pretty hard to distinguish the spaces from each other…
"It's kinda hard to—"
"I know," Weiss agreed, flustered, cutting off Blake. "Sorry."
She did the same thing as before, but this time filled the 'white' spaces of the board in with ice Dust. It only took two capsules instead of six, and it took only twenty seconds instead of almost a minute.
Weiss liked ice.
"I guess I could have just done the ice squares, huh," she realized abjectly. If she'd just made the light blue spaces on the board, they would have been easy to differentiate from the base ground. That was stupidly inefficient of her. Not that she'd have difficulty replacing the wasted Dust, but still… she felt dumb.
Yang put her hands on her hips and looked around, impressed. "Have I mentioned how awesome it is that you're on our team?" she asked.
Weiss blushed, her heart doing a happy little dance in her chest. "You could stand to mention it more."
Grinning, Yang squinted at her. "Naaah, Ruby says it enough for all of us. Right, Peanut?!" She yelled the last part at her brooding little sister.
"Hm? Yep! What?"
Yang 'tsked' at her sister and walked over to put her arm around the small girl. "Where do you keep going, doofus?"
Weiss thought that was a strange question, considering she knew? Right?
"Nowhere," Ruby mumbled.
Yang ruffled Ruby's hair. "How's it feel to have a fan?" she asked.
Ruby smiled at the ground. "Pretty cool."
"Yeah? Weird, Uncle Qrow told me that his biggest fan is super annoying."
"What? Who?" Ruby's eyes went wide.
"You."
The innocent curiosity disappeared and Ruby gave a grumpy glare as she pushed Yang away. "Yer dumb and fat!"
"True true," Yang agreed easily. "Now come on, you need to help Weiss explain ya'll's nerd shit to me and Blake 'cause she sucks at it."
Weiss bristled. "I do not! I haven't even started!"
"Yeah, well we've all had to listen to you try to explain Dust equations…" Yang started.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Yeah, what's wrong with her Weissplanations?" Ruby piped up with a frown. "She teaches stuff good."
"Well," Weiss corrected reflexively.
"I've heard it both ways," Ruby said.
"Then you've heard it wrong." Weiss turned to Yang and put one hand on her hip and pointed at the blonde with her sword. "Now you, shut up and get your binder and don't sass me ever again!"
"Oh Goddess, she has an Angry Professor alter ego," Yang muttered, walking over to grab her binder where she'd left it on the ground.
"Please don't give us homework," Blake pleaded with a twinkle in her eye.
"Well if you learn well now, you won't need any," Weiss replied archily.
A stifled laugh escaped Blake. "As long as you're on this power trip, you should give Yang detention."
"Hey!"
"I am not on a power trip!" Weiss argued. "Now… shut up and open your binders to page one… Er, two."
Her teammates all followed her lead, Yang rolling her eyes exaggeratedly, Ruby still uncharacteristically quiet and Blake staying characteristically so.
"Ahem!" Weiss started. "So… keep in mind we'll probably change things to curate them for our team, but… here goes. So… so… The idea behind this is to use our understanding of a chessboard to give us concise callouts for positioning on the battlefield and to use chess pieces as descriptors for behavioural roles for us to use so that we can quickly and easily convey orders in the heat of battle. I—"
Yang's hand went up.
"What, Yang?" Weiss sighed.
"I'm already lost."
"Freaking—! Ugh! I don't know what you want. I'm using words that make sense. Maybe try just thinking about what you're hearing for one sec—"
"Weiss," Blake cut her off, extending a hand out as if to calm her. "Relaaax. You're probably right, and what you said probably made sense, but it was kinda esoteric and hard to keep up with."
Weiss huffed. Blake was smart! If even she was confused… But Weiss didn't know what she needed to fix because she didn't think there was anything broken.
…
"Ruby, can you help?" she asked.
Ruby gave her a small smile and nod. "'Course," she said quietly, and that was all it took for Weiss to calm down, relaxing muscles she hadn't realized were tense.
Ruby took a moment to gaze down thoughtfully at the page in her binder. She took a deep breath… then looked up.
"Okay…"
Hey guys! Sorry this took a few days longer than I'd anticipated. I put too much stuff in here and felt like I needed to keep going because I wanted this stuff to be in Weiss' POV so I kinda trapped myself into a long-ass chapter. In fact, I'd initially planned for this chapter to end and the end of this day, but that would end up being a bajillion words so I'm just gonna cut it here and adapt for Ruby's POV next chapter.
Hope you liked it!