Ruby was feeling a mix of anxiety and irritation. As soon as she and her newly-named team had reached their dorm, she had explained what had happened before they'd met at the temple. Specifically, the four creatures that had gored the Beowolves. Blake had found them intriguing, but Yang had something else on her mind.

"So… were they hot?"

Ruby rolled her eyes at her sister's antics, while Weiss seemed to be trying to catch flies.

"We told you about some dangerous, inhuman beasts, and the first thing you ask is if they're hot!?"

"Well, inhuman may be a bit of a stretch. From the way you describe them, they seem to just be Remnans in armour." Blake's observation brought a series of enthusiastic nods from Ruby, which quickly died down when she realised that no one else was nodding.

"Well, if it is armour, it's not like anything the SDC has made. They almost appear organic. They also didn't speak, even when fighting." Weiss crossed her arms. "Furthermore, they were supposed to be here by now. We gave them directions."

"Yeah! We gave them directions to… the… school." Ruby trailed off. An awkward silence followed. "We didn't give them our room number."

"We didn't know our room number!" said Weiss. "They'll probably just head to the courtyard and wait. We can find them in the morning."

"You're right. It's too dark for us to be searching for them, and I think we all need a rest after today's fight." Almost as if to drive the point home, Blake let out a small yawn before getting into her bed. Yang soon did the same, climbing into her own and lying face down. A few seconds later, snoring began to emanate from her pillow.

Ruby and Weiss shrugged, before getting into their own respective beds. Putting on her sleep mask, Ruby looked across at the rest of her team, before lying down fully.

"Goodnight, Team RWBY." She whispered, before drifting off into a peaceful sleep.

:-:-:

Meanwhile, near the school's boundaries, there was a small group of Tenno. The girls' directions would not actually lead them to a suitable meeting point, so they had taken the precaution of tagging them with a waypoint. Once her location had settled in the direction of the city, they had set off towards their meeting. Climbing up the outer walls of the castle, they saw a placard identifying it as a school: Beacon Academy.

The waypoint was in one of the buildings, so they moved through the shadows towards it. If there were any security systems in the courtyard, they would see little more than a blur as the Tenno sprinted toward the dorm. Coming up to the dorm, Mirage climbed up the smooth walls to reach the girls' room. The window was slightly ajar, which was all she needed to get in. Gripping the windowsill with one hand, she teased her fingers under the window, pulling it wide enough to peek her head through.

There were four beds, all of them occupied by sleeping figures. A cursory glance showed that her intrusion had not roused any of them. She slipped into the room without a sound, before leaning out of the window to give the all clear to her siblings. The three outside climbed up in sequence. First, Volt sprang up into the room with a few short jumps, his skirt billowing in the wind. Next, Equinox started climbing the nearby tree, walking across its branches into the room as though they were solid ground. Finally, Atlas took the direct route, simply climbing up from window to window until he rolled into the room with a quiet thud. The four glanced around at the four slumbering girls, before they each knelt down at the foot of a bed.

:-:-:

Sitting in his tower, Ozpin watched the external security feed for the dorm rooms. Closing the feed, he let out a sigh before bringing out his scroll. On it, he typed a single message, to be sent to his colleagues.

New pieces join the board.

:-:-:

Ruby was feeling much better when she woke up. The pain from the Nevermore fight had subsided to a dull ache, and the dream she had had was a rather pleasant one, though she couldn't remember any details.

She decided to simply lay there, slowly rousing herself as the sunlight started to flood the room. Sometime in her sleep, her mask had fallen off, so when the light reached her eyes, she fluttered them open with some mild annoyance. A two-eyed mask was right in front of her face, looking at her.

Ruby launched herself backwards at an impressive speed. Her movement was arrested, however, when her head collided with the wall. She rubbed the back of her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and realised that the noise had caused her team to begin stirring. She also saw that the masked creature was not alone, as the others of its kind were each kneeling in front of one of her teammates' beds.

"Um… Hi?" she said, unsure about her situation, and slightly unnerved by the blank look it was giving her. "I… see you managed to find us. How?" It tilted its head slightly, but made no sound.

By this point, Blake had woken up, and was wiping the grit from her eyes. With one last rub, they were cleared, and she opened them. She took one look at the creature at the foot of her bed, and cried out in shock.

:-:-:

Half an hour later, Team RWBY was up and dressed in their Beacon uniforms, and the beasts were similarly roused. They were silent, standing at opposite ends of the room, trying to see who would act first. Yang broke the silence.

"So, do you come here often?"

"Yang! There is a time and a place for that, and it isn't now." Weiss was taken aback by the blonde bruiser's audacity. The four creatures were in a similar state, if their slight twitch was anything to go by.

"We should find a way for them to speak to us. Based on their reaction to Yang, and your last encounter with them, they can understand us." Blake looked thoughtful for a moment, before speaking up again. "Ruby, could you give them your scroll?"

"I… guess I could do that. All in the name of peaceful contact!" Ruby pulled her newly-acquired scroll out of her pocket, before tentatively walking over and offering it up to them. "The password is-"

Before she could finish, the monochrome one, who seemed to be female, leaned over and plucked it out of her hands. She opened the scroll out into its expanded form, before holding her hand over the screen. The password entry flickered, before unlocking and bringing up a text box. A series of smooth lines and sigils appeared, before consolidating into a more understandable form: "Tenno"

"Is… that what you are? 'Tenno'?" Ruby asked. The monochrome one gave a sharp nod, before she pointed to herself while another set of symbols appeared and translated: "Ehkooihnawks".

"Ehkooihnawks… Equinox! Is that your name? Equinox?" Another nod, and another set of symbols appeared while she pointed to the brute: "Atlas".

"Wait, Atlas? You mean the kingdom?" Weiss said, slightly confused by this. The Brute shook his head in response, before pointing at himself and the screen displaying his apparent name. "Well, that's probably going to get confusing."

Another set of symbols coalesced into Valic, and Equinox gestured to the jester: "Mihrazh".

"Mirage, I'm guessing?" Yang piped up, earning an enthusiastic nod from the Tenno in question. Somehow, the static mask seemed to show more expression than it had any right to. The final creature stepped forward, with one last set of symbols forming a single short word: "Volt".

"Where are you from?" Ruby asked, walking back to the rest of her team. "Also, there should be a text-to speech option somewhere."

Equinox nodded her thanks, before translating another set of symbols. An artificial voice read out the result. It sounded slightly tinny, and mispronounced some of the more obtuse letter combinations, but it got the message across.

"Origin."

"Origin?" Ruby asked.

"We come from Origin."

"Is that a kingdom?" Yang asked.

"Origin is a system."

"That doesn't help."

"We will show you." With that, Mirage knelt down onto the floor, while Atlas closed the curtains, shrouding them in darkness. Suddenly, she lit up, projecting images of planets onto the walls and ceiling, before they peeled off and became three-dimensional. Ruby counted out fourteen different worlds, all unique.

"Woah…" was all she could say, as the names of the worlds were translated and displayed. Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Sedna, Phobos, Uranus, Europa, Eris, Neptune, Ceres and Pluto. Weiss chose to ask several questions that were on all of their minds.

"You live there? You can travel out into space? How? Dust doesn't work outside of the atmosphere! How did you get aroun-?" She wanted to ask more questions, but she was hushed by Blake.

"Dust doesn't work outside of Remnant, so we can assume that they didn't develop technology that relied on it." She turned to Equinox. "In fact, you don't have any traces of it on your armour, so I would guess that you haven't heard of it."

Equinox gave another nod. "Correct."

"Do you have Grimm on those worlds?" Ruby asked.

"No."

"Then it must be quite peaceful there, right?"

"No."

Ruby was puzzled by this, and was about to ask for more information, when a knock came from the door. Instantly, the illusion shattered, and the four Tenno hid themselves beside the door, so that when it opened it would cover them. Mirage put a finger to where her lips would be, and pointed to the door. Ruby took the hint, and went to open it.

Standing outside was none other than Vomit Boy himself, Jaune Arc. He started a bit at the door opening, before regaining his limited composure.

"Hey, Ruby. What was with that lightshow?" he asked.

"Um…" She ducked her head back into the room and looked around for a second before continuing. "Weiss was just showing us some of her glyphs. Yes! Glyphs! That's what we were doing."

Jaune was slightly confused by her response, but decided to bring up his reason for coming to their room. "So… do you have the timetable? We heard there was a class this morning, but we don't know when or where."

"Sure, let me just check." She then proceeded to shut the door in his face. Jaune could still hear her through the door, though their voices were muffled.

"Weiss, when's our first lesson?"

"I thought you were supposed to know that, team leader."

"Well, forgive me for being a bit distracted by other things right now!" There was a faint sound of rustling paper.

"Here we are, first lesson. Professor Port, Grimm Studies, Room B14, scheduled for… Nine o'clock."

"Wait, did you say nine?"

"Uuuum…"

"It's 8:55, you dunce!" There was a short pause, before the room seemed to be filled with the sounds Jaune would normally associate with a hurricane. He'd heard what he needed, and was hurrying back to his own team's room when door opened again, disgorging a team of somewhat flustered girls into the corridor. Three quarters of the team took off at a sprint, while Ruby lingered to call back into the room.

"Don't break anything!" With that, she ran after her teammates while the door was still closing.

Jaune opened the door to his own team's dorm. Ren was sitting quietly next to Nora, who was bouncing on her bed. Pyrrha was watching them from across the room, with only a small smirk betraying her amusement.

"Guys, we need to get to classes. We've got about four minutes!" With that, all three of them sprang into action, Nora managing to land on the ground with an impressive flip. The team ran out, trying to get to their lesson on time.

However, a small detail was bugging Jaune. Beacon's doors used an old-fashioned spring based system to keep its doors shut. So how did Team RWBY's door close on its own?

:-:-:

So, I've increased the chapter length to 2000 words in accordance with the most common criticism of the story. Is this a good length, or should I increase it further?

Was Team RWBY in character? Did I portray the Tenno in a satisfactory manner? I feel that they would endeavour to make contact in such a way if they were cut off from the Lotus. After all, it pays to have allies.

On that note, the distorted names for the Tenno is the result of doing a literal phonetic translation from the Tennobet, in case you were wondering. The sole exception is the word "Tenno", which should be phonetically written as "Tehno". I couldn't work out a way to justify the girls changing the word to fit the accurate spelling, so I left it out.

The original draft of this chapter had the Tenno meet Cinder before entering Beacon, but I realised quite quickly that it didn't make any sense. She wouldn't risk her plans by exposing herself directly to such an unknown factor, and she's mostly sticking to the shadows at this point in the series anyway.

Regardless, please leave a review, tell me what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, and any suggestions for directions to take the story (No weapon suggestions though. I already have a set loadout for each Tenno).