The night was quiet. It was a warm night, the sounds of bugs filling the air. It was soon to be summer. All across Vale citizens peacefully in their homes, or worked quietly at their guard posts. The streets were empty save for a few late night travelers passing through the main street.
The bugs went quiet.
In the days to come investigators would try to piece together what happened. Given the time there were only two eyewitnesses. The first was a baker headed in to start baking some fresh goods. He stated that he noticed that the crickets had stopped chirping and, looking up, noticed a reddish glow coming from the direction of Beacon Academy, before the explosion.
The other witness took weeks to track down, a woman from Atlas returning from a business trip. She claimed that she had been driving right past the school, and that before the explosion, she heard a deep rumbling laughter.
A few days later, the entire case was hushed up, and a few months later, the school was reopened.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Ruby was excited. She had finally gotten the acceptance letter for Beacon Academy, the private academy for science, technology and engineering. Not only accepted though, but on a full ride scholarship. She had been worried that her dad wouldn't be able to keep up with the somewhat high tuition if she didn't get enough scholarship money and that shed have to get a job at the same time, but now he didn't have to worry.
She had packed all her things yesterday, her toolkits, her huge bin of scrap and parts, her acetylene and welding torch and her equally large bin of electronic components, circuit boards and programming laptops, most of which she had built herself. After about a 4 hour drive she was there. At the front gate of the grounds, the school motto, "In harmonia progressio", carved into the archway above. Progress in Harmony. Fitting for the largest school with Alumni like Ciel Soleil, James Ironwood, and the headmaster himself, Doctor Ozpin.
Entering through the gate, she could see a couple of hundred students gathered on the quad, greeting the new students. They were split up in three groups, based on the majors the students had applied for. The students were handing out flyers for clubs, helping carry items to the dorms, off to the left, or giving students tours of the main building, directly in front of her. To the right was the combined dining hall and administrative building. From what s remembered, behind the dorms were the playing fields, a soccer/football field, running track, and tennis, and basketball courts. Just because it was a school for brains didn't mean they did not encourage them to exercise their bodies too.
She walked over to the middle group, the technology group. Even though she was taking a split technology/engineering course she decided she'd go with the technology group, as their dorm would probably be best. Scrap and parts she could get from anywhere, but circuits were harder to get. Hopefully whoever she got as her roommate would let her….borrow things occasionally. After wading through the other new students, she found a new student guide, who got some others to help carry her things to her new dorm, second floor room 204. On the door was her name, and one other, Weiss Schnee.
Ruby had expected to meet some famous family names when she was here, but the child of probably the biggest tech company, Schnee Electronics, the daughter of the most decorated student to ever graduate from here, Jacques Schnee, to be her roommate. Ruby almost fainted right there. The dorm was bigger than she would have thought, with a main central area with two desks, two workbenches with swivel lights and magnifying glasses and a small sink with a mini fridge. To the left and right were doors, opened to reveal two bedroom areas. The left one was already occupied, the girl she assumed was Weiss was talking to someone that could only be her father; they had the same white-blonde hair.
Ruby really would have liked to talk to him, she had dreamed of working there someday, but by the time she had set her stuff down in the right room, he had already left. That was just like him from what she had seen at tech conferences, straight to the point, direct, then gone. Still, she walked over to introduce herself to her new roommate.
"H-hello? You're Weiss right? My name is Ruby, I'm your roommate." Weiss was wearing very expensive clothes, white/blue gradients with light gold trim. Gucci, probably custom made. It made Ruby feel a bit self conscious about her much more casual, and cheap black Levi's, red Converse and basc off the shoulder black and red striped shirt. Ruby could practically feel the judgement. Still Weiss did shake her hand.
"I suppose you know all about my family, so listen up. I'm not a walking purse, dont touch my stuff, and dont bother my when I'm working, got it? This is my half of the room you have no real reason to be over here."
"Oh...yeah ok, got it. So I guess you want the left desk and workstation then?"
"Yes I do. You catch on quickly, great job." the response was positively dripping with sarcasm.
Ruby went back to her room, unpacking her bedding and after throwing it haphazardly over the bed, and threw her clothing up into the closet. Afterward she put up her band posters, ACDC, Metallica, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and the like, plus plastering the other wall with her schematics, designs and other plans, though none of her super secret plans, which she kept locked in a box in her new desk. The desk had three drawers, so she filled one with her tools, and the other with some blueprint paper and pencils. Under the workbench she shoved her bins of parts and electronics. Fully set up, she looked over at Weiss's side. Everything was incredibly neat, every single tool placed on a pegboard in its own outline, parts separated into baggies based on type, size and even coloring. Ruby shrugged, everyone had their own ways of organizing. She personally could plunge her hand into her parts bin and pull out exactly what she needed by feel only. Finally she pulled out her somewhat crumpled schedule. Her first class was a fun one, Electronic Design 8am, she'd get to make stuff all semester. After that she had History of Electronics 10:45, bleh, then an hour break before Engineering Questions: How things work. And then she had the rest of the day free. That was her monday wednesday and friday schedule. Tuesdays and thursdays she had two classes, a required two hour mathematics course at 7am and a three hour lecture hall class at 3pm booooring, but also required.
From behind her she heard weiss suddenly pipe up. "Write your schedule down on the whiteboard so I can know when you'll be here or not." looking over Ruby saw Weiss had indeed put a whiteboard up on the door, a little dry erase marker clipped to the side. Looking at Weiss's schedule, she noticed the had the same Electronic Design, and the same Lecture Hall, and that she had the Mathematics at the same time but a different teacher, based on the room number she had put. She quickly wrote down her schedule. Before going back to her room to call her dad to tell him she had made it ok and was all set up. After hanging up she left, and noticed Weiss had re-written her schedule to be neater. Ruby smirked and went to go get a meal at the Dining Hall.