It's early one day in the city of Vale as Ruby, Blake, Reginald and Sapphire are all shopping together in a local general goods store. As the three girls clutter together, looking at this and that, Reginald is left carrying the bags, waiting for them to be done.
The boy lets out an annoyed groan before asking, "Are you done yet? I'm sick of being designated bag carrier."
"Nope.", Blake coldly replies as she and Sapphire continue looking at cheap Dust crystals.
"These are pretty well cut, where'd you get them from?", Sapphire questions the manager, who's standing behind the desk as they peer through the glass at his gems.
The man gives the children a cheeky grin before crossing his arms and gloating as he says, "Well, I don't like to brag or anything, but I know a pretty cool guy who works at Dust Til Dawn. He sells me the stuff pretty cheap in exchange for special chips. Would ya believe it?"
"Wow, that explains why these things are so cheap!", Blake adds as she's looking at a necklace encrusted with multiple warped Dust crystals, the crystal each giving off a unique glimmer and shine.
As they look at the Dust in amazement, they're interrupted by the sound of Ruby from across the store shouting, "Blake! They've even got books!"
With a twitch of her bow, Blake rushes across the store to the girl to see the man's collection only to be surprised that he has a whole aisle full of books, eight long shelves lined on each side with nothing but books of all sizes. The dusk colored girl quickly picks up a thick book before saying, "A copy of The Great Catsbee.", in amazement before running over to another book. As she sees the cover, she gasps and picks it up before asking in complete aw, "An original copy of To Save A Mockingbird? How did this even end up here!?", and rushing across the aisle oncemore to a group of book. "And all six volumes of King of Thorns? What doesn't this guy have?", Blake ask as she smiles at this new found wonderland.
Ruby's eyes widen when she hears this and she quickly blurts out, "They have Volume Six here!? I've been looking for that one! Gimme!", as she holds her tiny hands out to her friend desperately.
Blake gives her a confused glance before asking, "You read King of Thorns? That's a bit...mature, especially for you, isn't it?"
"You can learn a lot about people if just talk to them, Blake.", Ruby happily replies as Blake hands her the book. Ruby holds the book close to her chest as she lets out a squeal of joy before saying, "Oh, I can't wait to see what happens with Jaune Snow. He's my favorite~ Oooooh, maybe the dragons will finally get here!? I can't wait to read it later."
"Why are you guys looking at books?", Reginald growls as the girls with an annoyed glare as he stands at the end of the aisle.
"Because we can.", Blake shoots back before returning to the comfort of her books.
Reginald just grumbles to himself in response before looking over to Sapphire and asking, "Why did you invite these guys anyways? We could've been in and out, just like that! But no, we had to be all friendly with the bookworm and the toddler. What a pain."
"Calm down, Reginald. We're just helping them buy supplies. It's not their fault they can't afford them.", Sapphire replies, but Reginald raises an eyebrow at her.
"It's not their fault they got bad grades and can't afford their equipment? You want to explain that one, 'Boss?'", Reginald fires back at his leader, causing the one-eyed warrior to let out a tired sigh.
Raising a finger in front of the ill-informed boy, Sapphire gives Reginald a calculated scowl and says, "First, Weiss isn't sharing her school income with her team, so they're already down one member when it comes to Lien." She then puts up another finger before adding, "Second, Yang's been barely scrapping by in her classes since middle school, not to mention her terrible spending habits, so she has no money left to share." "And third, Ruby skipped a couple grades, so she's still catching up on the things she wasn't taught back in Signal before coming here to Beacon. So stop being such a pain in the ass. Besides, you could use some more friends after your falling out with Persi.", the confident leader finishes as she puts a third finger up and glares over at her team-mate.
Reginald only rolls his eyes before walking off as he says, "Whatever, just hurry up so we can go get our actual equipment. I'm not waiting around here all day for you three to finish gossiping about the most recent copy of 'Boys Gone Crazy' or something."
Sapphire just chuckles at this however, before walking over to Ruby and saying, "Now, what's this I'm hearing about Jaune Snow? Is he some boy you know or something?"
"Oh, he's just my favorite character from King of Thorns since all of forever, that all!", Ruby gleefully replies as she suddenly shifts into complete fangirl mode.
Sapphire looks at one of the books, taking in the odd emblem on the front of its hardback cover as she tells the little red girl, "Wow, didn't expect you to be such a reader, Ruby. Especially this kind of adult material. How'd you even get into this kind of stuff?"
"Well, it all kinda started when I was young. I would go on the net and look up older fairy tales, you know, like Aria and Wonderland. But, when I did, I only got the originals instead of the 'child-friendly' ones. I guess that's what got me hooked on them. It kinda opened my eyes to how scary things can really be instead just having a bad day at school or something. But what really got me interested was the fact that as time went on and I read into the newer version, they were all watered down, probably to make them more appropriate for bed time. It's kinda poetic really, having something fun and interesting come from such a dark and twisted. It's kinda like this world, in my opinion. Remnant is full of monster and dark things, but someone needs to make it a better place for everyone else. We're like heroes rewriting this world into a more family friendly world, you know?", Ruby quickly explains all in one breath, earning confused looks from Sapphire and Blake. The red hooded girl nervously laughs as she rubs the back of her head and says, "I guess it makes more sense in my head."
"So, with that being said, do you think Weiss being so hard to work with is going to stop that?", Blake questions her leader, causing Ruby to stop and try to think of an answer.
As the girl puts a finger to her chin, the hooded girl gives her answer, saying, "Well, I didn't exactly think this'd be a walk in the park. So I guess Weiss being such a problem is just proof that this is the kind of world I'll have to work in if I want to make it better. I'll have to deal with people like her who think I'm not that great, or as good as she is, and just suck it up. If it means fixing this world, then I think I can deal with it."
Sapphire gives the young girl a firm pat on the back, which causes Ruby to stumble forward a bit before telling the hooded Huntress, "That's the Ruby Rose I know, determined until the very end! Now let's get out of here before Reginald finally decides to ditch us here."
"Speaking of ditching, where's Yang? Wasn't she supposed to meet up with us earlier?", Blake asks them with a slightly concerned look on her face, to which Ruby nods.
"Yeah, I sent her a message last night, but she never replied. I hope nothing bad happened to her.", Ruby nervously replies as she looks to her scroll to see not a single message from her sister.
Sapphire however has an answer and snaps her fingers before saying, "That's what I was going to tell you guys earlier. I can't believe I forgot that." They both look to her with confused glances before Sapphire quickly explains the situation, saying, "I'll tell you the details in a bit, but Yang's fine. She's sleeping in our room."
Back in SAPR's dorm, Yang is waking up from a long night's rest, stretching her arms and yawning loudly as she sits up. She rubs her eyes with one hand as she reaches randomly around the bed for her scroll. When she finds it, she picks it up and presses the yellow button in the center, and to her surprise, it beeps three times, denying her access.
As she lazily opens her eyes, she mutters to herself, "What the... Why isn't my scroll working?" Squinting at the holographic screen, Yang takes a good look at the device and sees it's in perfect condition, causing her eyes to widen as she says, "Wait, this isn't my scroll!", and quickly tosses it down on the bed in a panic.
"Blake, have you seen my-", Yang begins to say as she throws her head over the bed before her head crashes into the ground. "OOOOOOWWW! What the-", Yang begins to growl as she rubs the small lump on her head before realizing she just hit her head on the ground. "Wait, this isn't my bed!", Yang thinks before looking around to see where she's at. She looks at the walls to see a couple of posters on the walls to her left and right, a poster of techno-dubstep cover on the wall to her right, then a poster of what looks like an edgy band dressed in all black on the wall to her left. "Where the hell am I?", the blonde questions herself before looking to the stand to her right to see a sheathed blade. As she looks the sheath up and down, the groggy blonde realizes who's blade it is, gasping as she reels back in the bed before saying, "Ash!? So I'm in SAPR's dorm!?"
"Bingo.", a familiar voice replies to her from across the room.
Yang quickly looks over to its source to find Coco standing in the doorway to the kitchen as the girl takes a sip from her favorite coffee mug, a plain white mug that has a tear drop on the front and text under it that says: 'Your Tears.' "Coco, what are you-", Yang begins to ask before the girl quickly replies, "I could ask you the same thing, Yang." "Waking up in another person's bed isn't a normal occurrence for you, is it? It's okay if it is. Get that stress out however you have to, girl, but don't lose yourself in it.", Coco continues, causing the busty blonde to blush wildly.
"I-We didn't...I don't think we- Shut up!", Yang shouts, stumbling over her words as she tries desperately to defend herself.
Smiling at her new little sister's expense, Coco just laughs, but her laughter suddenly stops when another, much kinder voice calls out from the kitchen, "Come on, Coco. You don't have to be so mean to her. The poor thing just woke up." As the voice gets closer, Yang can see Velvet, who also has a steaming mug of coffee, walking into the room.
"How did I even get here?", Yang asks herself as she rubs her head, trying to remember what happened last night.
Velvet looks to the confused blonde, her brown eyes filled with concern as she observes Yang's lack of memory, causing the Faunus to ask, "What exactly do you remember from last night?"
Yang tries to remember as much as she can and says, as she remembers the events going on, "Well, last night I took Ash to the Three Bears dance club. When we got there, we were dancin and havin a good time. Then I had a drink here, a shot there, a bottle of rum every now and then-"
Before the blonde can finish her train of thought, Coco spits up some of her coffee into her cup in complete shock, lowering her cup to her chest as she lowers her shades to look directly at the young girl in front of her. "A whole bottle of rum?", Coco questions the blonde with a slightly concerned look on her face.
Yang quickly fires back, "It wasn't that big of a bottle! I can handle myself!"
"We weren't questioning that in the slightest, please, go on.", Velvet sheepishly replies as she motions for Yang to continue.
Yang holds her head in frustration as she tries desperately to remember what all happened last night. "I don't know! I had my booze, and after a couple of dances with Ash, it goes black. I can't remember it!", Yang growls back at the bunny girl, her face turning a slight tint of red from her failure.
The confused blonde jumps a little when she hears Ash say, "That's about right.", and she turns to see he's just getting out of the bathroom. "After you showed me how to dance properly, you had a few more drinks and almost punched one of the bouncers for touching you. Then you threw a chair across the dance floor when one of those twins you introduced me to tried to talk to me.", Ash explains, causing Coco to snicker. Ash goes on, explaining the event that transpired, saying, "After that, the owner asked you to leave, but you offered to arm wrestle him instead and called him a coward when he didn't take your offer. It was almost midnight when those twins escorted us out of the club. I managed to get us to the airship docks before the final airship departed to Beacon. And when I helped you to your dorm, you couldn't find your scroll, and when you used mine to call it, we heard it ringing in your dorm."
Hiding her now completely reddened face, Yang tries to make herself smaller as Ash continues on with the story, saying, "Then, you said you would just sleep in my bed, which I agreed to. When I managed to carry you into the room, mostly everyone was asleep, but Sapphire easily caught us. She helped you into her extra pajamas and helped me place you in the bed. I simply slept over in the corner so you could have the bed to yourself."
As Yang hears this, she lets out a sigh of relief before suddenly realizing what she did. "I'm sorry you had to do all that for me! It won't happen again!", Yang exclaims before quickly getting out of bed and trying to rush to the kitchen, but Coco stops the blonde by putting her arm up to block her path.
"And where do you think you're going, Goldilocks?", Coco asks sternly as she glares over her sunglasses at Yang. Coco points over at Ash's bed and says, "Sit back down, I'm not done with you yet, kid."
Unable to defy Coco and Velvet, Yang obeys and sits back down on Ash's bedside.
"Now, what exactly gave you the idea of drinking yourself away while your team's falling apart, Blondie?", Coco questions, scolding the girl as she walks over to her with sass in her hips.
Yang lets out a heavy sigh before saying, "I don't know. I was havin a good time with Ash, teaching him how to dance and whatnot, but something kept eating at me."
Velvet raises an eyebrow at that and asks, "What could be eating at you so badly that you'd try to drown yourself in alcohol to escape it?"
"It was Pyrrha, she said something to me the other day. It..it made me feel helpless... There's nothing I can really do. I couldn't stand up and save you from Cardin, and I can't save my own team from tearing itself apart. I can't do anything. If I do, it'll only make more drama and screw things up further, so I decided to do what I learned from my uncle, drink until the pain's gone.", Yang explains with her head hung low as she tries desperately to avoid the bright lights coming in through the curtains.
"Oh Yang, look up at me sweetie.", Coco calls out to the hunched over girl, her kind words sounding as sweet as honey as Yang hears them. Yang looks up to the brunette with a sad look on her face, hoping for some form of wisdom or kind words to ease her mind, but what she receives is far from sweet. Instead of caring and loving words of wisdom or a gently pat on the shoulder, Yang gets a quick slap across her face from her 'big sister.'
As the blonde holds her now scuffed cheek, Coco scolds Yang for her terrible thought process, growling, "Yeah, jumping in at the wrong moment will fuck everything up for your team. Maybe you'll make things worse, but if you jump into it at the perfect moment you need to, you can go miles to solving any problem. If you just give up on the idea that you could fail, you'll always fail no matter what you do. Doing nothing is worse than failure, Yang. At least you can learn from your failures."
"I can't just 'jump in' and try to fix this! Weiss is seriously pissing everyone off around her! How can I just 'jump in' on that!?", Yang fires back with her yellow aura healing her slightly injured cheek, but Coco stands firm, not backing down to the red-eyed ball of rage before her.
"I don't know kid, but I know damned well that trying and failing is better than doing nothing. Because if you sit here and do nothing, you'll regret it for the rest of your life and just keep asking yourself 'what ifs' or some bullshit. It's just better this way.", Coco sternly replies as she looks down into her mug with a slightly saddened look on her face. Coco motions for Yang to leave, only telling the blonde, "Alright, that's all I had to say. Go on and go to bed.", as she looks down at her cup in deep thought.
"Go to bed, but-", Yang begins to ask before Velvet jingles a set of keys in her right hand, displaying them for Yang and Ash to see.
Ash nods and says, "I see, so you obtained keys to both teams' dorms then."
"Correct. As 'Big Brothers,' we might have to do checkups on your at home behaviors, so we get keys to your dorms. Pretty handy in situations like these though too, right Coco?", Velvet explains, to which her leader simply nods without a word.
Yang gets up from Ash's bed and heads towards the kitchen exit as she says, "I guess I can give it a shot when I wake up. I think I'm gonna go back to bed though, if you guys don't mind."
As Yang walks past Coco, however, the fashionista slaps the busty blonde on the ass as she says, "Good idea, I'll see you tomorrow morning."
"Coco, we've talked about this! You can't just go around touching people like that! That's not okay!", Velvet exclaims as her pale face turns pink from embarrassment, but her leader only chuckles.
"Oh~ So firm~ Such texture~", the cheeky leader notes as she grabs her own face and admires Yang's butt, making the muscular girl very uncomfortable.
And as Yang goes to leave, Ash stops her as he grabs her arm. Turning to him with a slightly embarrassed face, Yang's surprised to hear the boy say, "I just...want you to know I had a great time last night. Learning how to dance...it was...fun."
"Oh, I enjoyed it too. Maybe we can do it again some time?", Yang happily replies as the embarrassment melts away from her face before leaving for the comfort of her bed.
As she leaves, Ash mutters to himself, "I think...I think I'd like that."
Back in Vale, Ruby, Blake, Sapphire and Reginald are all walking through the streets before stopping in the city's main square. "Alright, here's copies of each team's list. They color coordinated based on which team needs what.", Ruby explains as she hands everyone a copy.
Sapphire stands next to the little red leader and points at the letters next to the items and continues Ruby's explanation, saying, "We even labeled who has to pick up which item using our last initials. Now, all we have to do is split up into two groups of two and we'll go hunt down these tools."
"Salutations, friend Ruby!", a familiar voice shouts out from behind them, causing the group to turn around and see Penny standing there with a smile on her face and her arms behind her back.
"Penny! I haven't seen you in forever! How've you been?", Ruby quickly replies as she hugs the young redhead.
Penny stands there, somewhat unsure what to do other than say, "I am well, friend Ruby. And what about you and your friends?"
"Oh, we're okay. We're just hunting down stuff for our Dust Class. We're heading to Forever Fall tomorrow, so we need to make sure we're well equipped for the journey.", Ruby happily answers the ginger, causing Penny to look at her with a confused look.
Penny, not sure if it's okay, sheepishly asks, "Would you, by any chance, like me to accompany you? I can help you find deals around Vale."
With a kind smile across her face, Ruby quickly replies with, "Of course, you're a friend, so feel free to tag along as long as you want."
"Yeah, we're all friends here. And with the five of us all working in tandem, we'll get this done in no time.", Sapphire courageously adds before Penny lets out a fake cough.
"Um, perhaps you meant four of us?", Penny asks her as she points to the group, but Sapphire shakes her head.
As Sapphire begins to point to each member of the team, she says, "No, we have you, Ruby, Blake, me, and Reg-", but stops when she sees that Reginald's already gone and disappeared on them. "Wait! He's gone!? Where the hell did he go!?", Sapphire growls as she looks around for the boy, but he's nowhere to be found.
"Who cares? He can handle himself. Let's just go out on the town and get those tools together! Girl power rules! Right Blake!?", Ruby exclaims before looking to Blake for solidarity, to which the girl reluctantly nods with a slight smile on her face.
They go to find their tools, but stop when they hear someone say, "Well at least I'm not the only one who lost their team-mate today." As they turn to see who it is, they see Pyrrha walking over to them from across the street.
"Hey Pyrrha, did I hear you right? You lost your team-mate too?", Sapphire questions the amazon with a raised eyebrow, to which the girl gives a defeated nod.
"I was shopping with him in the downtown district, but he disappeared.", Pyrrha explains as a frown forms on her face, causing the two leaders to look to the redhead with worried glances.
Penny takes a moment to think about this before asking, "Is it possible he ran away?"
"Penny! You don't-", Ruby begins to say before Pyrrha says, "No, she's probably right. I've been giving him the cold shoulder recently, so he probably thought I was going to do the same today. He probably left to avoid me."
"Pyrrha, trust me, Jaune's just an idiot. He wouldn't run away from you like that. He's probably just lost somewhere. You'll see him later.", Sapphire says as she puts her arm around the warrior girl, trying to comfort her as she pulls the redhead closer.
Penny quickly snaps her fingers before saying, "I have a proposition! Why don't we all go to collect your equipment together? It could be as Ruby said; 'Girl Power!'"
Everyone just laughs at Penny's enthusiasm, causing the ginger to blush in embarrassment before Sapphire pats her on the back and says, "Good job, Penny. You lightened up the mood perfectly."
"You know what? I think I'd like that.", Pyrrha happily notes as she wipes away the tears in her eyes with her despair melting away from the kinder souls around her.
As Reginald runs down a dark alley, he steps out into the sunlight, gasping for breath as he says, "Man, I think I finally escaped. Let's see how they like carrying their own bags for a change." When the boy finally catches his breath, he pulls the list out from his pocket to see what items he needed to pick up, saying, "Alright, what the hell did they want me to do again?"
Looking down at the list, the silver-colored boy sees he's put under food and water, to which he chuckles. "Alright, basic food and water. I can do that.", he thinks to himself before starting to walk down the street on his own.
As he walks down the street, he can't help but think back about what Sapphire said about him needing more friends and his falling out with Persi. He just growls before grumbling under his breath, "She doesn't know me. I don't need friends. I can do perfectly fine on my own."
As he continues down the street, he doesn't see a single person, and he glances around in confusion and asks himself, "What the hell? Usually there's all kinds of people walking around this time of day. Where'd everybody go?" The silence in the air starts to get to him however as all he can hear is the sound of his own footsteps echoing down the street and back. "Why is this place so quiet!? It's getting on my nerves!", Reginald thinks to himself before rounding a corner to see nobody for miles.
The boy rushes down the street and looks down the next street to his right only to see nobody down that one either. When he looks down the other way, that street looks just the same as before, empty. He continues running down the street before rounding another corner and finally running into someone, literally.
As the two run into each other, they both fall backwards from the collision and landing on their asses. "Hey, watch where you're going!", the person groans in pain and when Reginald looks at them, he sees it's Jaune.
"Jaune? What the hell are you doing here?", Reginald questions the blonde as he pulls himself off the ground.
Reginald's question is only met with further questioning as Jaune nervously perks up at what the boy asked, only replying with, "Well, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be out with your leader buying equipment for the field trip tomorrow?"
"Yeah, but I ditched those guys in the main square. And couldn't I say the same about you? I actually recall Pyrrha saying she was supposed to go with you to do that today? You didn't leave her hanging, did you?", Reginald replies, turning the tables on Jaune and causing the boy to start to panic even further.
"Quick, use that big brain of yours to think of something!", Jaune thinks as he tries to come up with an excuse.
As Jaune struggles to make up an excuse, Reginald just chuckles at the blonde before saying, "I'm just kidding. There's no need to get all worried about it." With the crisis averted, Jaune nervously laughs this off with the well-dressed boy before Reginald says, "Well, if you don't need anything, I've got shit to do."
As he says this, Jaune remembers multiple time when Reginald talked about his involvement in the Atlesian STG along with being a pro Peeping Tom, which causes the boy to grab Reginald's arm and shout, "Wait!"
Reginald stops and looks back at Jaune before asking, "What? You actually need something? I was kind of kidding about that too."
"I..I need your help.", Jaune admits with a defeated look on his face, catching Reginald's attention.
Reginald turns back to Jaune and sternly asks, "Alright, what's going on?"
"I did something I shouldn't have. Now Pyrrha won't talk to me and Cardin has me on a leash. I need your help with getting him off my back.", Jaune quickly explains, saying everything in one breath as he reaches into his backpack. The blonde pulls out a file and hands it to Reginald, and when he looks at it, it says Cardin's name. Reginald looks inside to find transcripts inside as Jaune says, "You were in the Atlesian STG, right? I need you to sneak into the student archives room and replace Cardin's transcripts with these ones."
"These are fakes, aren't they Jaune?", Reginald sternly questions the boy, causing Jaune to flinch in response to his harsh tone.
"Well, I-", Jaune begins to say before Reginald interrupts him by saying, "I don't wanna know."
After a short moment of silence as Reginald looks over the papers, he closes the folder, causing Jaune to look at him anxiously, waiting for his answer. As the boy looks over to Jaune, he grins happily at him and says, "I'm in."