"Do you have everything packed?"
"Yes, Blaine."
"Including your weights?"
"They'll have weights at the school, Blaine."
"A man should have his own weights. 'Heavy burdens now makes carrying future burdens all the easier.' - Brocrates."
"... I'm pretty sure that wasn't his name. And also that he didn't say anything like that."
"Fox boy." Naruto felt a weighty, powerful hand drop onto his shoulder and squeeze lightly. "You should take your own weights."
Naruto opened his mouth to respond and froze as the pressure on his shoulder started to increase. Slowly turning his head to look at Blaine, he saw the former huntsman with a solemn look on his face, nodding slowly as though his head was bobbing to an unheard rhythm. Sighing defeatedly, Naruto's head sank. "I'll take my weights." he agreed, sullen.
Blaine slapped him on the back hard enough to stagger him. "Good man! Now, let us thank Brodin for conferring this new wisdom unto you! Mighty Brodin, who is in the Iron Temple, hallowed be thy-" Blaine chanted, moving through bodybuilding poses as he went.
"I'm gonna go pack again." Naruto called as he returned to his room for what would hopefully be the last time. Blaine might have shared a home him while not at school but he really was too much to handle sometimes.
"Don't forget your spares!" Blaine called after him in the most muscular pose.
"Right!" Naruto answered. 'At least he's not doing it in a speedo this time.'
-(-)-
The airship for Beacon students was... grander than Naruto was expecting. On the outside it had appeared to be very similar to his transportation from Atlas to Vale, if much larger. That part made sense what with the greater number of passengers. Something like 200 students attended Beacon at one time, he found out during one of his few periods of independent research.
No, it was the inside that surprised him. Comfortably appointed, fancy looking arch windows lining both sides and soft bench seating running underneath on both sides. Viewscreens appeared at intervals along the walls, showing a live broadcast of the Vale News Network.
Naruto grimaced as another Beacon student looked at him then back to the news feed. The White Fang crashing a faunus rights rally was a big news story. A lone faunus fighting them off was apparently a bigger one. He'd been getting attention any time he left the house for the past few days. Some old lady had come up to him out of the blue, said "You're one of the good ones.", gave him a nod and walked off. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? It sounded like it was meant as a compliment but something about it offended him and he wasn't sure what it was.
Mentally shrugging it off, Naruto looked around at the other students. A lot of them were returning after the summer break but some were clearly new. The blond boy in old fashioned armour and casual clothes looked sick with nerves. The short girl in black and red looking uncomfortable with... Yang. He shuddered and moved on. Then there was... His jaw hung open on seeing the welcome yet unwelcome familiar face making her way towards him. 'Oh, there is no way.' "Why. Why are you here."
"Well that's a pretty silly question!" the chirpy bear faunus responded with a warm, toothy smile.
Naruto cocked his head to one side. "You know, you're right? That was a dumb question since the answer's obvious. But that just raises further questions, ya know? Like, 'If you're a student at Beacon, why the hell'd you bail at the rally?'"
She tilted her head, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Because I don't want the White Fang to kill me?" she ask-answered, before smiling again. "You seemed up for it though, so I figured I should let you do your thing!"
"That's nice of you." Naruto deadpanned.
"Thanks!" she chirped.
"I was being sarcastic, ya know!" Naruto growled.
"Oh, well then you're a jerk!" the bear girl corrected, still wearing a carefree smile.
Naruto gave her a queer look. "It's... really hard to stay mad at you when you're always smiling like that, ya know.", he grumbled.
Something in her eyes changed, another emotion leaking through her friendly façade. Not necessarily malice. More... mischievous, maybe? "I know, right? You should try it! Really takes the wind out of humans' sails when they want to pick a fight."
An unpleasant memory reared its' head in the fox's mind. "I, uh... I used to... I don't do that anymore."
"Huh? Why's that?" she asked, her expression back to the pleasant smile.
"It's not important." he dodged.
"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't wanna know." she pushed.
"Look..." he searched for her name, "Topaz. Just drop it."
"But-"
"Hey, Whiskers!" a new voice chimed in. Naruto's head immediately snapped in the direction of the voice, jaw set, eyes narrowed in anger. "Whoa, easy there!" Yang put her hands up in a placating gesture. "Just wanted to meet your new friend!"
Topaz looked from Naruto and his slowly relaxing expression to the blonde girl's bewildered eyes darting back and forth between the two faunus. "You know this girl?" she asked Naruto.
"Not... really?" he answered slowly. "I mean we were in combat class together for a year but the most interaction we had was her handing me my ass every few weeks." He shrugged, seeing no harm in the girl's request. "Topaz Smoke, Yang Xiao-Long. Yang, Topaz."
"Nice to meet ya!" Yang greeted, bouncing on the spot. "And this is-" she started as she turned only to see empty space behind her "not here." she frowned. "Sorry, I was gonna introduce you to my little sister but she's kind of... socially..."
"Retarded?" Topaz suggested helpfully.
Yang narrowed her eyes at the girl who was still smiling at her. "I am, like, a thousand percent sure there's a better word than that but... Kinda." she admitted.
Suddenly, as the news was recounting the story of a string of robberies the viewscreens vanished, replaced by a holographic image of a stern-looking woman with an incongruously sweet voice. "Hello and welcome to Beacon!", the woman spoke. "My name is Glynda Goodwitch. You are among a privileged few who have received the honour of being selected to attend this prestigious academy. Our world is experiencing an incredible time of peace and as future huntsmen and huntresses, it is your duty to uphold it. You have demonstrated the courage needed for such a task. And now it is our turn to provide you with the knowledge and the training to protect our world." With that, the hologram faded and all of the students who had previously been watching it, now saw out of the window their first view of their new home for off in the distance.
"Yang! Yang!" a voice called from a nearby window. "Look, you can see Signal from here!"
Yang gave the two faunus a lazy wave and smile before moving to join her sister at the window. Naruto, wasn't paying attention though. Instead he was running the hologram's speech through his head. "Our duty to uphold peace, huh?"
Sounded like 'hold the line' to him.
-(-)-
Naruto's first impression of Beacon Academy was... big. Big and fancy and extravagant and all sorts of other impressive sounding adjectives. Signal he could handle. One big building with a tower in the middle. Beacon? Over a dozen buildings the size of Signal all with ancient-inspired architecture to make it look even grander than it already did. The path from the airship to the academy proper was at least a quarter mile long and the only thing you could do while walking it was marvel at how impressive the Academy was.
A year ago Naruto had been living in a hole in the ground. The drastic change was making him dizzy.
Shaking his head to clear the fog in his thoughts, he instead decided to focus on his... acquaintance. Topaz had decided to walk with him to the academy. He wasn't sure what to make of her. She annoyed him but could smile and the feeling would go away. Related to that, he was uncomfortable with how easily she could manipulate him. The right tone of voice and 'that look' and he crumbled. He needed to figure out a way to avoid it in future.
Pushing that aside, he tried to strike up a conversation instead. "Didn't they tell us to be ready in our combat gear?" he asked the girl. He was wearing his. Either her battle outfit was very simple, basically the same vest-shirt-pants outfit from when he met her, or she wasn't wearing hers.
Her constant smile turned sheepish. "My outfit is kind of... heavy. And bulky. Not really the kind of thing I would wear unless I really need to. I asked ahead and they said it's only for ceremony that we wear our fighting gear today so it's fine."
'Heavy? Like armour?' Naruto wondered, looking her over. That didn't seem right for a girl of her stature.
Topaz noticed him looking and stopped, giggling. "Like what you see?", she asked, striking a pose.
And so, faced with flirting so obvious the girl may as well have held up a sign with red flashing lights reading 'I'M FLIRTING WITH YOU', the fox faunus' brain entirely locked up. All it could come up with as a response was a slightly slack-jawed "Uhhh..."
Luckily for the vulpine teenager, the sound of something collapsing boxes saved him from saying something stupid. Head swinging around to observe the welcome distraction he saw the girl in black and red from the airship on the ground being berated by some other girl in an outfit so white it gave him eye-strain to look at it. He was satisfied with just watching after mentally labelling white girl as a bitch and red girl as a doormat. That is until white girl pulled out a container of red dust and started waving it about wildly. Seeing something that could end in disaster, Naruto quickly moved to intervene, moving into the white girl's blind spot and snatching the small jar of red dust out of her hand.
"Wha- Hey!" she complained in a whiny tone. "How dare you! Give that back!" she demanded, reaching for it.
Naruto merely swayed his arm back out of her reach. "Not until you tell me who taught you how to handle dust!" he denied, surprised by how much it pissed him off seeing someone do something stupidly dangerous. Qrow must have rubbed off on him a little, he decided. "I'm just minding my own business over there and then I see you yelling at some girl, then you start swinging this in front of her face like it's a salt-shaker instead of an unstable explosive!"
"Red dust isn't explosive, you dolt! It's combustible!" the girl fumed, choosing to attack him back rather than acknowledge any point he was making. "Now give that back before I report you to the authorities for stealing!"
Naruto rolled his eyes, reaffixing the stopper on the container so it was properly sealed before handing it back to her. In response, the girl turned with a "Hmph!" and an upturned nose before walking away.
It was at about this point that Naruto's anger dissipated and his brain started to catch up to his actions and the facts of the situation. Namely, noticing the very obvious symbol embroidered into the back of the girl's dress. "Ohhh, shit."
"It was very brave of you to stand up to her." a new voice said. Female.
Naruto didn't turn to acknowledge the newcomer. "Ohhh, shit."
"But her family is very powerful, and is no friend to the faunus. You should be more careful around her." the new voice warned before walking in the same direction as the white girl. Since Naruto's eyes hadn't moved in the slightest his barely functioning mind finally attributed the voice to the girl. Black hair with a black bow, black and white outfit.
"Ohhh, shit."
During this little exchange, Ruby Rose got to her feet and looked at the two departing girls before switching to watching the blond boy. 'Faunus." she amended her description, noticing his extra set of ears. 'Alright, Ruby! You can do this! Time to make a friend!' "Um, hi!"
No response.
"Um, hello?" she repeated timidly. "Are you okay?" she asked, touching his arm.
"Yah!" Naruto yelled in alarm at the contact, eyes darting around searching for the hidden SDC ninjas he was expecting to hunt him down. Instead, all he found was the black-red haired girl that had been on the floor last he checked. "Ah, sorry!" he apologised, trying to forcibly calm his nerves. "You, ah, you surprised me, ya know!"
"Sorry." the girl said before visibly gathering her confidence. "Um! I'm Ruby! Rose! Ruby Rose, that's me!" she exclaimed, her cheerful expression shaky as she realised exactly how stupid that sounded.
"Heheh, nice to meet you Rubyrose Rubyrose!" he laughed. "I'm Naruto Fox!"
"That's a weird name." Ruby commented before her eyes widened. "I-I mean-!"
"Nah, don't worry about it, ya know! I know it's weird." he admitted, smiling to put the girl at ease. "Fox was Ozpin's suggestion since I didn't have a last name. Orphan and all. As for Naruto... I don't even know what it means, really. It's from this weird old language that had multiple alphabets so it could mean a bunch of different things."
"Huh. That's... kinda cool." Ruby observed before, again, realising what she just said and rushing to explain. "I mean, not the orphan thing. I mean the not knowing your name thing. Ahh! I mean-!"
"Woah, woah, calm down!" Naruto told her. "Just take a breath! I'm not gonna get offended by saying something dumb, trust me. I do that all the time."
Taking his advice, Ruby took a breath and figured out what she wanted to say. "I meant it's cool how your name can't define you since you don't know what it means or where it comes from. Like, my name's Ruby Rose and that's really similar to my Mom's name and I ended up a lot like her. But my sister Yang's name is like our Dad's and she took more after him. It's like, you don't know anything about your name so it can't define who you are, you know?"
"Huh." Naruto said eloquently. "That... Actually is kinda cool. I never thought of it that way." Quickly looking around, he tried to find Topaz but unsurprisingly, she seemed to have made herself scarce after the Schnee debacle. "We should probably get going, ya know?"
"Yeah. Um, do you know where we're supposed to go?" Ruby asked hopefully.
"I'm gonna guess the big building in the middle. If not, someone there can point us in the right direction." Naruto suggested.
"Great! Let's go!" Ruby cheered. Inside, she was also cheering. 'I did it!'
-(-)-
A/N: Hah. Fun stuff. So Naruto finds out Topaz is actually a Beacon student like him and also finds out despite her being pretty he actually doesn't like her that much. Her habit of disappearing when things get bad probably has something to do with that. To be clear, she's an OC (ish, she's the girl from the faunus rally image in episode 1) and people don't like those. Well that works out fine because in this case, at least for now, you're pretty much not supposed to like her. But we'll see how well I manage that.
As for canon characters, Yang is amused by him, Blake is mostly indifferent, Weiss hates him and Ruby likes him and is grateful to him for saving her from the mean girl.
And... Jaune doesn't get mentioned beyond being sick. Not intentional but he doesn't really have anything to contribute. Ruby wasn't alone and miserable so he couldn't do his nice guy thing.
Usual plug. Fandom Flux youtube channel. We talk writing. We talk storytelling. We talk shit. Also LPs sometimes.
Thanks for reading.