Between classes, the sheer amount of homework each teacher assigned, and all the combat practice, Yang quickly came to realize that Beacon was far more intense than Signal was. Not that that was a bad thing, she had done well at Signal and was prepared for Beacon, but over the past couple of weeks, even on the weekends, it felt like she had no free time to relax or do something she wanted. The sad thing was the current workload paled in comparison to the amount of studying that had to be done before tests.
Which is why Yang was currently still in the library at eleven p.m. on a Friday night, several textbooks and notebooks on the table around her. She was going to finish all her assignments tonight, sleep in tomorrow, and then have the rest of the day off. Then Sunday she would look over and improve upon her work, and ask her teammates and peers to review everything as well. This would be the first Saturday in a long time Yang would have all to herself, and she was going to take advantage of it.
Shortly after midnight, Yang closed all her books, put all her belongings in her backpack, put all the books she pulled off shelves back where they had come from, then exited the library. It was about six minutes to her dorm, and when she arrived she opened the door quietly, gently setting her backpack down in the corner, taking off her boots and setting them aside neatly as well. She stumbled a bit as she pulled her socks off, then carefully looked over to Weiss. Thankfully she was undisturbed; in a twist of irony, she woke everyone up when she complained about being woken up. There wasn't any movement from Fort Ruby either, and Blake was still as well. Slowly climbing up to her bed, too tired to switch into pajamas, she pulled out her scroll, turned her alarm off, then fell asleep moments later.
-Rocky Road-
"Yang."
A calm voice and a hand on her shoulder disturbed her rest. "Mmf…"
"It's almost noon. You're not going to sleep all day, are you?"
She pushed the hand away. "...No." With a groan, she sat up. "Don't look at me, I'm not ready yet."
Blake giggled softly. "Late nights and late mornings will do that to you."
"Ha ha." Yang said sarcastically, stretching and rolling out of bed, falling to the floor with a loud thump. She looked up at Blake and held out her hand to be pulled up, but Blake just rolled her eyes and stepped over Yang to get back into her bed. "Cold." She thought to herself, grabbing a fresh set of clothes, her towel, and then headed into the bathroom to shower. About half an hour later, feeling and looking much more refreshed, Yang emerged and grabbed her scroll off her friend.
Blake looked comfortable and wished not to be disturbed, so instead of bothering her, Yang elected to head over to JNPR's dorm. Three loud knocks and a "You're favourite person is here, open up!" later, Yang… was left out in the hall. Three more, louder knocks and a "Don't ignore me!" later, she realized that they must've been out. Returning to her room, she sat down at the lone desk and texted Nora, Pyrrha, and a few of her old friends from Signal, wanting to know if anyone was free to hang out. Pyrrha and Nora both said they were stuck doing schoolwork, and apparently the usual suspects were all in detention, serving their time working in the cafeteria.
"Time to bother Blake!"
Standing up and flopping into bed next to her, Yang completely ignored the way the top bunk shifted so slightly. "Watcha doing?" She asked, even though it was blatantly obvious what her partner was up to.
"Yang, personal space."
Sitting up and putting some distance between them, Yang only cocked her head as waited for Blake to respond.
"I'm reading."
"Well duh!" Yang rolled her eyes. "I can see that. But you and I should do something else!" Laying flat on her stomach and resting her head on her hands, Yang swished her legs back and forth.
Blake just frowned. "Yang, you bought me these books and I want to read them." She held up the novel in her hand to accentuate her point.
"But I'm boooooored!" Yang said with an innocent smile.
"You just woke up!" Blake cried in disbelief.
"No one's able to hang out with me, and you can't spend all your time cooped up in bed reading." Yang tried.
"And why not?" Blake challenged.
"Cause I'm here!" She answered simply.
Putting a bookmark in the pages, Blake rolled her eyes. "Fine. What do I have to do?"
"Hmm. Give me a moment." Yang tapped a finger against her chin as she thought. Blake reopened her book, but was only able to read two words before Yang placed a finger on top of the book and pulled it down so she could make eye contact with Blake. "Let's play some video games!" Blake's expression fell, and a look of confusion fell over Yang.
"I've never played a video game in my life, Yang."
"Oh!" Wondering why she had been momentarily worried, Yang's usual cheery demeanor returned. "That's no problem, I can teach you!" Getting out of the bed, Yang synced up her scroll with the Holovision stand, and she quickly found and pulled up a game that Blake could get play without being overwhelmed. Looking over, she saw that Blake was pulling out her scroll while looking a little apprehensive. "Don't worry; this game is all about working together. Plus its really simple."
She turned back to the screen, where the words "Invasion of the Aliens!" was written in red text in all caps across the hologram. In the bottom right hand corner, Blake's school photo and a notification that her scroll had been synced appeared. Yang nodded, then went into the settings. "Difficulty… Normal… Lives, five… Hazards off… bosses disabled... omega bosses disabled… omega enemies disabled... That should do it!" Starting the game up, they were greeting with pixel art of an army General. "Soldiers! The enemy is on our doorstep! Hold out until reinforcements arrive!" Read the subtitle at the bottom of the screen.
"Alright Blake, our goal is to survive as many waves of bad guys as possible. The aliens will come through doors, windows, blow holes in the walls, teleport in, teleport us around the map, we have limited ammo and health resources, we have five lives each, so let's stick together!" Yang explained.
"Uh, which one am I?" Blake asked.
"The blue one."
"How do I shoot?"
"It's this button here." Yang pointed to one of the buttons. "This circle moves you, this circle rotates you, and this one lets you throw grenades if you have any."
"What're those bars on the side?" Blake's brow furrowed as she looked at the screen. The aliens had started attacking, and she'd shot a few of them before noticing numbers were appearing and going up. "Scores? Why are we being scored? I thought we just had to survive."
Yang laughed at Blake's confusion. "You get points when you land hits and kill aliens, and when you repair damage done to the base. You use those points to buy more ammo, refill your health, and you can also set up automatic turrets that will kill the bad guys for you."
"That's dumb. Shouldn't the turrets be activated all the time during an alien invasion? Why do we pay for them, or for ammo or health? Aren't we soldiers in the military? Don't most soldiers-"
"Blake!" Yang whined. "Just play the game! Stop asking so many questions!"
"...It's a dumb game, is all I'm saying."
Pausing the game, Yang turned to her partner and quickly said, "It wouldn't be fun if you weren't being challenged. The whole point is the struggle to survive! If you had infinite health, ammo, and money, their wouldn't even be a point in playing!" She turned the game back on, and a silence settled between the two broken only by the sounds coming from the game. After a couple of minutes passed, Yang said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you."
Blake didn't respond immediately, but her response wasn't what Yang was expecting. "It's okay, I was doing it on purpose."
The game paused again. "You what?" Yang asked, unsure of what she'd just heard. She turned to Blake, who was smirking at her.
"Not so fun when it's being done to you, is it?"
"Oh my gods, you're impossible!" Yang tried to sound upset, but she couldn't stop herself from laughing. "And I wasn't nearly that bad." She resumed the game, but Blake's little hum didn't escape her notice. A more comfortable silence settled between them this time, and Yang was able to better focus on the game. "For someone who's never played a game before, she's doing really well." She thought. The one time Ruby had managed to convince Weiss to play a similar game (but with Grimm rather than aliens), everyone had witnessed the incredible, patented, filmed and shared with JNPR: the Weiss Schnee breakdown. Complaining about pretty much every aspect of the game, Weiss had stormed out of the room with Ruby chasing after her. (It hadn't helped that all three girls were teasing Weiss about being so bad.)
While Yang had been prepared to tease Blake in a similar fashion, now she was only able to compliment her. The girl hadn't died once, had racked up a considerable amount of points, and was easily holding her own in a completely separate area from Yang. "You're pretty good at this."
"Well, it is pretty easy." Blake said.
Yang had to agree with her. "Well, you wanna make it harder? There are a bunch of things I have turned off."
Blake simply shrugged. "Sure." Was all she said, setting her scroll down and flexing her fingers.
-Rocky Road-
"What the hell is that thing?!"
"Run Blake, you don't have enough ammo to fight it!"
Blake's eyes widened as the large, spider-like creature chased her. "Where's an ammo crate?!" She looked all over the hologram, but the fire and explosions coming from both the regular enemies and the boss kept putting her focus back on running away. It really only took about three minutes for things to start picking up after Yang had turned the difficulty up. The number of enemies that attacked at once had increased dramatically, and they were coming from all different angles, too. Blake had done the same thing this new round as she had the first; run off in a completely different direction than Yang. That had turned out to be a bad idea, as she'd quickly run out of ammo and been forced to use a knife (not a good idea when enemies were attacking from all 360 degrees), and then a giant spider looking thing had shown up.
Yang was closing in on Blake's location, but the poor girl was low on health and wasn't doing very well running. "Eat this you crummy aliens!" Blake's little soldier ran past Blake, and Yang quickly lay into the enemy chasing after her.
"Thanks partner." Blake bought some ammo from a crate just past Yang, and then turned around and started shooting as well. The duo backpedaled as they fired, killing off the smaller aliens until only the larger alien remained.
Unfortunately, the two were far too low on ammo to kill it, and neither had the funds to get more. "Well…" Yang faked a voice crack as she kept circling around the alien boss, "I guess this is it." She reached up and wiped a non-existent tear from her eye.
"It's been an honor." Blake's voice was flat and monotone, intentionally exaggerated.
The two set their scrolls down and closed their eyes, then a moment later they heard, "Game over!" coming from the stand. Yang snorted, then started laughing at the silliness of the situation.
"That was a little too hard." Blake admitted. "Maybe we should turn off the bosses?"
"Yeah… Let's do that."
-Rocky Road-
About an hour later, Blake and Yang were still playing. Now that the balance was fine tuned, it was much easier to have fun while being challenged. It seemed that no matter what, there was always something throwing Blake for a curve; there was a surprising amount of variety in the alien ranks, and holing up in one place wasn't a viable strategy. So Blake and Yang kept on the move, moving up and down floors while leading the aliens into 'kill tunnels', racking up points and buying new weapons, setting up turrets and traps, until eventually something forced them to stop playing.
"I don't think I've ever heard anyone's stomach growl that loudly before." Blake commented as she disconnected her scroll from the Holovision.
"Well, first time for everything!" Yang exclaimed, hoping that the blush she was feeling wasn't noticeable to Blake. "Let's go get something."
As they exited the room, Blake bumped into Yang lightly. "Well, that was fun. I definitely see the appeal."
"Better than reading boring ol' books?"
"Mmm… nah." Blake said with a smile. "Though I guess it would give me something to do when I'm not in the mood to read."
Yang fist pumped the air. "Awesome! I'll show you a bunch of other games we can play next time, alright?" She turned to her partner, and was glad to receive a nod in confirmation.