As it grew evident that team CFVY would not manage to return to Beacon in time for the Vytal dance, Velvet had sent a message to Yang asking if she and her team could take over planning and setting up everything for her, as she had already helped her out last semester.
After she enlisted Weiss' help the two humans of team RWBY started a discussion about what should be done and how immediately. While her Sister was thus occupied, Blake approached Ruby with a problem for them to solve.
"So I don't think Zwei can accompany you to the dance, and as you promised not to leave him in our room alone, what are you going to do with him Friday night?"
"Well I was thinking that maybe one of my pack could sit him, but then again getting a Grimm into the Dorm would be a challenge.", Ruby replied scratching her chin as she tried to think of a better solution. With Blake standing before her expectating a quick answer, Ruby felt a bit of pressure until another idea came to her.
"Wait maybe we can let him stay in JNPRs room for that night!", the half Grimm shouted, drawing the irritated gaze of her sister and her partner for interrupting them.
"well how about we go ask them and leave these two to their planning", Blake suggested, pointing at their other teammates as she turned to the door. Picking up the little corgi currently perched on her own bed, Ruby stepps behind Blake and follows the cat eared Faunus across the hall to their friends room. Stopping in front of it, Ruby carefully knocks, a moment later, Jaune opens the door.
"Yes? Oh hello Ruby, Blake.", the blond boy said as he noticed the girls standing before the door, "What brings you here?"
Holding Zwei towards the fellow student, the redhead begins to explain, "Well it's about this little guy here. See because Blake doesn't want him to be alone with her stuff, we agreed that I would take him with me while we looked after him for our dad. Now I obviously can't take him with me to the dance, so we were facing a little problem until I thought, 'Hey maybe he can stay with JNPR for that night', so would you mind keeping Zwei here in your room for the night of the dance?"
Faced with not one but two sets of puppy eyes, Jaune had no chance but to agree, "Oh okay, just bring him over after class, I am sure Norra will be excited to play with him until we need to get ready.", turning back into the room he quickly added, "Or does anyone here have a problem with letting Ruby's dog stay here for a night?"
As none of his teammates had any problems they wanted to share, he turned back to Ruby.
"Well then see you tomorrow in class.", with that he closed the door, while Ruby and Blake walked back into their own dorm room, both relieved that a solution had been found so easily. The moment they entered their own room, Weiss was rushing before Ruby, fixing the half Grimm's silver eyes with a stern gaze as she asked, "Ruby, can you really carry the same weight your sister can?"
"Have you ever tried to wrestle with a Grimm half my age?", Ruby asked sarcastically with a roll of her eyes and a deadpan voice before she continued, smiling at her own wit, "but yes I can match Yang when carrying heavy equipment why?"
"Great", the Heiress replied shortly, moving back towards the whiteboard she and Yang had set up in the short time they were alone in the room. Looking over to Blake, the cat Faunus was just shaking her head, as she had no idea how they managed that either.
A few days later, team RWBY was working on getting the ballroom setup right for the Dance the next evening. As they had already hung the decorations on the ceiling and railings of the upper floor, they were now bringing the furniture and equipment in from a nearby storage room. While Weiss and Blake were carrying in tables and chairs, setting them up near the rooms walls to leave the center free as a dancefloor. Meanwhile, Ruby and Yang were carrying in the second to last set of speakers, Ruby grumbling about their progress.
"If Ozpin would just let me call in my guys, we would have been done an hour ago.", the half Grimm complained once more as she sat her speaker down next to the one her sister had been carrying.
"Well I have to agree with him Sis, just think what a school full of Huntsmen in training would do to three dozen Beowolves.", the blonde said as she turned around, waving for her sister to follow her back to where the remaining speakers were kept.
Following after her, the wolf eared girl looked to her side where their Corgi was following her, said ears and tail hanging low, "I know, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't have been quicker if we had gotten them to help us."
As they reached the door, the blonde replied, her left hand reaching for the door handle, "More importantly, did you manage to get a dress that covers your fur and everything?"
Sighing once again as they stepped through the door and turned right towards the small storage room, the redhead answered, "Not really, I mean I even went to a store that caters especially to Faunus with Penny, but even there I did not find a dress that would work.", as she continued, her ears raised a tad and her voice got a little bit of warmth back, "But I did manage to get this rad red and black suit that both looks good on me and doesn't make my gloves look out of place."
As the sisters entered the room they had been headed towards, Yang continued her interrogation with a smile on her lips, "So any boy asked you to go to the dance with him yet Rubes?"
"No", her sister replied flatly, "And why would they, I don't know any boys here besides Jaune and Ren."
After a short look around, the two girls found the last pair of speakers, picking up one each with ease, they turned to leave the room and make their way back through the hallways to the Ballroom. Moving slowly with their heavy load, it took them a bit longer to return but once they got back into the ballroom, Yang set down her speaker in the right hand corner near the door, while Ruby moved towards the left to set down her own load.
As they met up in the center of the room once more, the half Grimm addressed her sister, "So what do we need to carry in next?"
"Let's get those long table for the punch bowls and snacks", Yang replied with quickly, already turning around to find the tables she mentioned. After she made sure Zwei was still at her side, Ruby quickly caught up to her sister as the two of them stepped through the doors once more.
Despite Ruby's earlier doubts, the dance had turned out to be somewhat enjoyable. Although how much of that was due to Jaune changing into a dress halfway through the evening, before the entirety of team JNPR had started a surprisingly well synchronized dance number was up for debate.
But even so Ruby was on her way outside to catch a nose full of fresh air, her sensitive senses not quite able to ignore the smell of all the dancing and thus sweating students around her. As she finally stepped out of the ballroom and into the fresh night air, the half Grimm thought she felt a pinch of fear for a moment. Looking up at the roofs she believed it had come from, she noticed a black clad figure running quickly over them towards the CCT tower.
Rushing towards the building herself, the wolf eared girl started to dial her lockers recall code, as she had not hidden her knives in her sleeves and was not confident enough in her unarmed skills to win a fight with only her bare claws. Sadly this meant she was unable to activate her semblance, as she would have more than likely lost her scroll or wouldn't have been able to call her locker to ehr position until she stopped.
As she turned towards the entrance of the CCT tower, her locker finally arrived next to her. Noticing a knocked out guard barely hidden beneath a bush next to the entrance, the half Grimm pulled Crescent Rose out of the locker, and entered the building.
To the wolf tailed girls immense surprise, she found all the guards in the lobby had been knocked out as well. Moving to the back where the elevator was located, she saw it rising, hopefully containing the intruder. Remembering the floor it stopped, she called it back own with the push of a button, wishing it would move faster the whole time.
When the lift finally arrived, she got in quickly and pressed the button for the story the intruder had probably gone to.
As she stepped out of the elevator, Ruby unfolded her weapon into its staff form as she found herself in a room filled with rows upon rows of terminals. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, despite her perfect night vision, she perked up her ears to listen for any sounds that seemed out of place. Only a moment later the furred appendages on her head picked up some muffled clicking as if two cloth wrapped vials impacted each other, behind a nearby set of terminals.
"Come out, I know where you are.", the half Grimm proclaimed confidently, holding her weapon diagonally to better intercept any incoming attacks. Which was quite evidently needed as the woman hiding behind the counter jumped up and kicked out at Ruby, who caught the attack on the center of her weapon, but even then the force behind it pushed her back just enough to give the intruder some breathing room. She immediately used it to empty a vial of dust in the air before her summoning a series of obsidian like spikes that were hurled at the wolf eared girl. Ruby quickly dodged to the side, striking the few spikes that would have still impacted out of the air while her opponent used another pair of vials to create a pair of scimitars made of the same dark and glass like substance.
As the half Grimm struck at the masked womans side, the black haired intruder ducked low to avoid the attack before closing the distance between her and Ruby, thus turning the length of the redheads weapon against her. Even so, thanks to the long time she had been using a staff by now, Ruby managed to keep up with the dual wielding woman's quicker attacks but was hard pressed to launch, much less land a counterattack of her own.
After a quick burst of her semblance, Ruby managed to keep the woman at a more favourable distance, but even so each strike she sent the woman's way was parried by one of her blades as she slashed at the half Grimm with the other, just to have it intercepted by the other end of the girls weapon. They continued to trade blows like this for a while, neither managing more than a few hits that did barely reduce the others Aura, with Ruby keeping herself interposed between the exit and the intruder.
Trying to break the stalemate, the woman activated Dust hidden along her sleeves, hurling flames at Ruby. The tailed girl barely managed to dodge out of their way, opening the way towards the elevators for the intruder. Unwilling to let her opponent escape, Ruby fired a shot at her feet, which caused her to stumble for a moment as the redhead's Semblance brought her back between the raven haired woman and the lifts.
This stalemate continued for a few minutes, until both of them were surprised by the 'ding' of the arriving lift car. Fearing it contained the intruders accomplice, Ruby turned around as the doors opened, revealing Penny in the green dress the two of them had bought together earlier that week. Before she could turn around, the wolf eared girl could her one of the rooms windows shatter. Turning around she noticed that the Woman had used her moment of distraction to escape through it.
"Friend Ruby is everything in order? I saw you leaving the dance in a hurry -hic- so I decided to follow you as quickly as I could -hic-"
Putting down one end of Crescent Rose, as she wouldn't be able to sheathe the weapon any way, Ruby leaned more of her weight on the weapon before she replied.
"No, not everything is in order. I followed a suspicious figure here and when I cornered her, she attacked and we had a short fight until she made her escape. But let's go find Professor Ozpin so I can inform him about this."
So thank you all for reading, hope you all had a start into the new year as good as mine(I went for a swimm in the lake).
See you all next chapter