Hey, thanks to everyone that's been pointing out errors! I'm going to try to set some time away this weekend to comb through everything I've written so far and fix any major errors. I have a bad tendency to think faster than I can type, and so I skip words or merge sentences together. Bad habit.
I'm happy to answer any questions you have, go ahead and shoot me a PM or leave a review!
Enjoy the story.
-Wahs.
...
The door to team RWBY's room was almost knocked off it's hinges as Yang kicked it open and stormed down the hallway, her teammates following close behind.
"This is gonna be so good." Ruby said.
Yang practically growled. "I'm going to punch him in the face."
"You're right, this is going to be good," Blake said.
As they rounded the corner at the end of the hall, they almost ran headlong into team JNPR coming the other way.
"Oh hey you guys!" Jaune said, "We were just coming to find you."
"Did you guys get this weird message from Ozpin?" Pyrrha asked.
"Oh yes," Yang said, a scowl on her face, "Yes we did." Then she simply pushed past them and continued down the hall.
Weiss smirked. "Yang's going to punch this guy in the face." she said.
"Hooray!" Nora said, throwing her hands up in the air and smiling, "Can we watch?" she asked excitedly, turning toward Lie.
Lie shrugged. "I don't see why not." he said.
"Yay! It'll be like a party!" Nora said.
The group of seven students all turned to follow Yang out of the building as she spearheaded her own little march for revenge. Ozpin had been a bit cryptic in his message, but had more or less outlined the important bits; the fact that their attacker was awake and where he could be found. The tone of the whole message was weirdly calm, like he planned this to be a friendly re-introduction. Except for the very end of the message which stated- purely diplomatic approaches are appreciated but not expected. No weapons.
Pyrrha, the bastion of outspoken common sense, was a bit skeptical. "Doesn't this seem really weird to anyone else?" she said as they stepped out the door of their dormitory and headed in the general direction of the dining hall.
"Yeah, it's very weird." Lie said, "But it's also Ozpin, and I'd probably drink bleach if the man told me it would turn to water in my mouth. I think we should trust him and see what he's planning."
"Lie's right." Blake said. "There's no real explaining what happened earlier this week, but if anyone can bring something productive out of it, it would definitely be Ozpin."
Pyrrha nodded, "I guess I just figured that his tone about it would be more...serious. Less like a meet-and-greet and more along the lines of testifying at a trial."
"I like it better this way," Ruby said, in her normal cheery tone, "If it had been something like that, we may have never gotten the opportunity to figure out exactly what happened. Now we can just ask."
"Right, if he wants to talk." Weiss said.
"I'm going to make him talk." Yang said suddenly, wringing her hands as she walked.
Jaune gave one of his normal nervous chuckles, "Well, looks like it'll be a show regardless." he said.
…
"That them?" Cobin asked, looking down the street at a decently sized group of approaching students, led by one particularly angry looking blond. He remained on his crate, he wasn't going to get defensive so there was no reason to stand, he figured.
"Yes, that would be correct." Ozpin said.
Cobin silently prepared for whatever might happen next, resigning himself to the worst possible outcome. "Any final piece of advice?" he asked.
"Yes," Ozpin said, "remain calm, tighten your stomach, and lock your jaw."
"Wonderful."
When the group got the short driveway, the majority of the students remained near the bottom of it, keeping five or ten yards between them and him. But the blond continued onward, coming straight toward him up the asphalt. Cobin examined the way she walked, and her expression. It was all too familiar to him. Yes... he thought, yes, this woman is about to punch me in the face.
"Judges, ready your scorecards!" Ozpin said, directing these instructions to the group of students behind the blond.
The comment caught Cobin off guard. He raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Ozpin. "Huh?" He said, in the moment before it happened. When Cobin would try to make an analogy for the feeling later on, he would say that it was like sticking your face in the cylinder of a running car engine, and allowing the piston to explode up and hit you in the jaw. At the moment of impact his vision went white, his ears rang, and the force damn near knocked him off of his crate. He sat back up and shook his head, feeling the ripe pain blossom from where the punch had landed squarely on his cheek. Then he turned to the side, spitting a mixture of blood and saliva out onto the driveway. By human hands, it was probably the hardest he had ever been hit.
"Hmm. Eight." Lie said.
"I'd give it an eight and a half," said Nora.
"Definitely at least an eight," Blake said, "but the form was a little rough around the edges."
"I agree, eight." Weiss said.
"Definitely a ten!" Jaune said, prompting Pyrrha to lightly elbow him in the ribs. "Gah! I mean… nine?"
"Eight and a half," Pyrrha said.
Ruby laughed. "Pfffffft. You all are way too generous," she said. "Seven."
Yang whipped around and glared at her little sister. "Are you kidding me? Seven?" She said.
Ruby nodded, not allowing herself to be intimidated by her elder. "The hip rotation could have been a lot smoother." She said.
"Hey!" Cobin said, regaining his senses, and prompting Yang to turn and direct her glare back at him, "You get three freebies. That was one. Use your last two wisely."
"Is that three-per-person?" Nora asked excitedly.
Cobin shifted his head to look around Yang at the orange-haired girl who had pulled a rocket launcher on him. "No," he said.
"Explain yourself!" Yang practically screamed at him.
"Miss Xiao Long," Ozpin interjected, "in the future ensure that you demand information from someone before you attempt to break their jaw. Makes them more liable to actually be able speak."
"Yeah!" Cobin said, prompting Yang to reverse-punch him in the stomach. Cobin made an "Oof!" noise before doubling over and clutching his gut. "That's… that's two…" he wheezed.
"Let's give Sergeant Cobin a minute to rest while I attempt to explain the situation." Ozpin said, "Gather around, children. He won't bite. Will you?" All Cobin could do was groan in response. The rest of the students made their way up the short drive and semi-circled around Cobin and the Professor. They all looked at their headmaster, waiting patiently for some combination of words that could clear up this insanity. "First of all that let me just state that no one really understands the Sergeant's situation completely, not even himself. What I am about to tell you about what is known is to stay between everyone present." A wave of nods rippled across the group of students, prompting Ozpin to continue. "The most important thing to know is that he is not from here."
"You mean, not from Vale?" Jaune asked.
"No," Ozpin said, "not from Remnant." and with that, an ocean of confused looks and open jaws erupted before Ozpin.
"How's that even possible?" Pyrrha asked.
"We don't know," Ozpin said, "but he is not registered as a citizen with any of the kingdoms, and all of his memories are from another world. But, most notable of all is the fact that he doesn't have an Aura."
"That just means it hasn't been activated yet!" Weiss said, defiant of the information that was being presented to her.
"We tried, many times." Ozpin said, "If he was born on our world, he would be the first in the history of our entire race, human and faunus, entirely incapable of generating an Aura." The students grew silent as it dawned on them that maybe this wasn't some god awful joke. Maybe it was real. "No one can remember exactly how he and his vehicle made it onto the plaza in front of the dining hall, and all of the security camera's footage for the plaza is corrupted for a period of three hours preceding the unfortunate spout of violence you all got involved in earlier this week."
"Hey! None of this is any excuse," Yang said, getting angry again, "lets not forget that regardless of where he came from, he got here and immediately attacked us!"
"Alright!" Cobin shouted, getting irritated. He stood, and glared back at Yang. "Before I get sent back to the hospital, allow me to give you a brief lesson in large scale military strategy." His tone was sharp, he was done playing nice. "You see, where I come from there's this awful little thing called counter insurgency. It means you have to fight a war without being able to differentiate the innocent civilians from the guys who want to feed you to their dogs. They could be anybody; women, kids, old folks. Anyone and everyone may want to see your head on a post and you really don't know until someone takes a shot at you. I was in a combat zone. A bomb went off underneath my ass." He pointed an accusing finger at Yang, "And when I woke up I was surrounded by children with guns and grenade launchers. So EXCUSE ME for being a little bit ON EDGE." He practically screamed at her.
Cobin and Yang and just looked at each other, locked in a competition of silent anger while everyone else just stared at them.
"You know," Jaune said, "that does make it a lot more understandable."
"What?!" Yang snapped, turning to look a Jaune.
"Thank you!" Cobin said, pointing at Jaune "High speed, low drag right there."
"I don't even know what that means…" Jaune muttered.
Yang turned her attention back to Cobin "Listen here you…"
"Yang, Stop!" Ruby said.
Yang looked toward her little sister, her agency suddenly gone. "But…"
"That's an order as your team leader," Ruby said, quick to bring down the hammer.
Yang scowled at Cobin one last time before stepping back and giving him some breathing room. Then, to his surprise, the smaller girl stepped to him, with the presence of someone much older, and larger than she was. She looked at him without anger, but in a way that demanded respect. It dawned on Cobin suddenly that this was the one that had damn near cut him in half earlier in the week. She stood directly in front of him with her arms folded, and the energy she gave off almost completely negating the fact that Cobin had to look down slightly to meet her eyes.
"Uh…" Cobin said, stumbling with what to say, "is your head alright?"
"Did you intend to hurt my team and my friends?" She demanded of him, ignoring the question.
"No," he said, softly but firmly.
"Do you intend to try and hurt them in the future?"
"No."
"Okay," Ruby nodded, "if Professor Ozpin trusts you, than I trust you." then she changed her stance, putting one foot forward and bringing her hand up to point right in Cobin's face. "But if you try anything, I will stop you, and I won't miss a second time." She then turned to the rest of the group, standing off to the side. "Agreed?" she asked them.
The general consensus was a chorus of muttering and scratching of heads, before Pyrrha spoke up again. "I need to know more," She said. "I'll trust Ozpin's judgement that you won't bring any harm to us, but this is too little information for me to just extend my trust to you." The muttering that followed this statement seemed to be more agreeable than before.
"I'll take it," said Cobin.
"And that will have to be good for now," Ozpin interjected, "it is still a school day and you all still have a first block to get to. So run along before you're late." He said, shooing them away.
The entire group groaned, but after a second slowly moved as a single mass back down the driveway. Cobin watched as they walked away in silence, probably lost in all of this new information they had taken in before even arriving at their first class. To Cobin's surprise, the small girl turned back and waved, smiling at him as they exited the driveway and turned back down the street.
"That's Ruby," Ozpin said, "a very… interesting student of mine. And you appear to have peaked her curiosity."
"Yeah, and what does that mean?" Cobin asked, a bit worried.
Ozpin just chuckled. "I'll have to be going now, too." He said as he began to stroll down the driveway himself, "Call me if there's an emergency. Otherwise, welcome to Beacon!" He said over his shoulder at Cobin.
"Thanks professor," Cobin said after Ozpin was out of earshot, "you gave me the warm-and-fuzzies."
Cobin shook his head, he was even more sore now. He sighed and grabbed his crate, dragging it back into the shop. There was a bit more light in the sky now and the rays streaming in through the side windows and skylight painted an even worse picture for the status of his living quarters. There was grime on everything, even the dust itself had a greasiness to it. He realized that it wouldn't make any sense to try and do anything in here until he got it cleaned, so he resigned himself to that.
He walked over to where he had set the backpack down on a workbench, and opened it, digging under his blouse to find his MP3 player. It was going to be a long day, and he was going to need music. He pulled the little gadget from the backpack and had a sudden, depressing realization; while he had had the MP3 player with him at the time of the explosion, he did not have his charger. The device that contained his music, his last real connection to the world he had come from, probably had a shelf life of only a few hours now. He sighed, and went to put the player back in his backpack, opting to save it for another time. But as he did, his pocket began to beep.
He had forgotten that he had put the scroll in there, and with his free hand he reached inside and grabbed it, figuring it was probably another message from Ozpin. But when he opened it, the holographic screen displayed: "UNENCRYPTED DIGITAL STORAGE DEVICE DETECTED. COPY ALL ACCESSIBLE FILES?" No way, Cobin thought, as he pressed the glowing "YES" icon. The screen changed to display the words "PLEASE HOLD DEVICE UNDERNEATH SCREEN TO BEGIN FILE TRANSFER." Following the instructions, Cobin held his MP3 player underneath the holographic screen, which zeroed in on it. Within a second, a little bubble popped up, saying "NOW DOWNLOADING SOUND FILES-62 GIGABYTES." The whole transfer was done in seconds, and when it was, it prompted him with the question: "BEGIN PLAYING SOUND FILES?" Okay, he thought, lets see if this actually works. He hit the play button and the scroll immediately began playing the introductory tones of a song he knew very well…
"In tomorrow I see no promise… and yesterday looked like today…"
The speakers that were built into the scroll itself weren't great, but he decided that they would have to suffice. That is, until the screen displayed the message: "CONNECT TO LOCAL UNENCRYPTED PA SYSTEM?" Well, just hitting yes hasn't failed me so far, he thought as he hit the "CONNECT" button. Instantly, the song that had just been coming from the tiny scroll could be heard clearly throughout the small building, coming from speakers that were hung from the walls…
"Woke up, got up, near eleven o'clock, butt naked except, I was wearing my socks. And that's cool 'cause most the time this floor cold…"
Alright, he thought, this won't be so bad after all.
…
In your average Army recruiting center, you might see posters with such motivational phrases as "Every Soldier Is A Warrior" or "Every Soldier Is A Sensor." But the one, absolute truth about all soldiers, no matter where you go, is that Every Soldier Is A Janitor. It's true that even in higher level units, when you just start and are coming up through the ranks, you'll spend a significant amount of time scrubbing muck and grime that someone else put there off of something that doesn't belong to you and isn't your responsibility, that's just the way it goes. So janitorial skills are quickly developed by anyone who spends even a short period of time in the military, and Cobin was no exception. He was well versed in the art of cleaning, and had quickly located the supplies and gotten to work scrubbing, dusting, sweeping, and mopping every surface and under everything that he could move. With the state that the shop was in, it was quite a task and he worked at it through lunch, all the way into the late-afternoon.
When he finally stood and wiped his hands off on a rag, the floor was spotless, the cobwebs were gone, the metal of the lift and the various tool cabinet shined, and the thick dust that had hung in the air when he arrived had vanished. He was pleased with his work, but his sense of success was suddenly overshadowed by the sound of his stomach growling. Better do something about that, he thought, good a time as any to go and try to find the staff cafeteria. But, looking down at his once again dirtied uniform, he realized that he would need to change. Which probably would have been a good idea regardless, as the uniforms he had been given would be a lot less conspicuous than his ACU's. He grabbed the duffle bag off the counter and and went back into the washroom, closing the door behind him. He changed quickly into the heavy-duty black pants and grey t-shirt, and opted to wear the boots he had been given as well, completing the whole "local worker" look. Finally, he washed his hands and his face in the sink. When he looked up, he saw himself in the mirror for the first time since he had arrived, and paused. He didn't look any different, save for maybe the black-and-blue bruise sprouting from his cheek, but something about seeing his own reflection in this new world finally cemented him, made him feel like his feet were on the ground for the first time since arriving. Seeing his own face, and knowing completely that it was his face, made it completely real.
He shook his head and turned, heading back toward the main shop area. When he pushed the door open, the first thing he saw was none other than the small girl with the scythe, sitting on top of the hydraulic lift, maybe six feet in the air and swinging her legs back and forth to the rhythm of his music.
"... I think it was a sunday, sometime in January, I could be wrong and I guess it isn't necessary, but I remember that the ground was made of snow, and if you went outside, you'd better bring your coat…."
The girl smiled and waved at him, "Hello!" she said.
Cobin nodded in response. "Well, this is an unexpected visit." he said, approaching the lift. Now he had to look up to see her, but somehow, psychologically, it felt like this is what he would be doing even if she was on the ground.
"Well," The girl said, getting a little rosy-cheeked, "I've been watching you for like a couple hours from the skylight so I figured it would be rude if I didn't say hi or something."
Oh, well that's fucking outstanding, Cobin thought, but didn't vocalize. "Well, can I ask why?" he said, looking down and pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Welllllllllllll…" she started, "basically, I want to like you, because it's obvious that Ozpin wants us to like you, and you don't seem like a bad person. But the others… well, they really don't."
Cobin nodded, "Yeah, I kind of got that vibe," he said.
"Now, because I know they won't go out and look for reasons to like you on their own, I'm doing it for them!" She said, smiling, and throwing her arms out for effect.
Cobin raised an eyebrow. "Okay…" he said, unsure of how to respond.
"I like your music." She said, unphased. "It's very different than the kind of music we have here, or at least the kind I listen to. But I like it."
"Well, it's very different from the kind of music I listened to when I was your age, as well." He said. "What kind of music do you listen to?" he tried, making his best attempt to push the conversation forward.
"A lot of dancey-stuff," the girl said, "music you can move to. Usually about adventuring or fighting, or anything exciting, really."
"That sounds about right for someone your age," Cobin said, "After you've done all the exciting stuff for as long as I have, everyday stuff becomes what interests you. A lot of this music you've heard me play this afternoon is just about people being people. That's what becomes the unfamiliar."
"Hmm." She said, thinking, "So you think I'm unfamiliar with action and excitement, then?" she asked.
Cobin shrugged, "I couldn't say, you do seem like you're able to handle yourself well, but I don't know you. But I can guess that people haven't become unfamiliar to you yet."
"Don't know how they could, I'm surrounded by them all day. Were you a hermit soldier or something? Is that why you were always away from people?"
Cobin had to laugh. "No," he said, "but there's a difference between soldiers and regular people. Not like they're better or worse, but just different. You spend months on end only the presence of soldiers and people that want to kill you, all of the little things about normal people that used to annoy you become endearing."
She frowned. "That sounds… really awful."
"Probably," Cobin said, "but you get used to it."
"Well, I hope you meet some people here that you like." She said, smiling at him again.
Cobin returned it. "Thank you," he said.
The girl jumped down from her perch on the lift, landing with a surprising amount of grace. She walked to him and said "Do you have any friends yet?"
Cobin was a little taken aback by the question. "Um, well, Ozpin is…"
"Ozpin's your boss," the she said, cutting him off. She folded her arms. "I'm asking if you have any friends."
"Well, uh… No. I guess not."
"Okay then," she said, holding out her hand, "I'm Ruby Rose, lets be friends."
Cobin was at a loss for words. "Um… well, I…"
"Come on! It's good to have friends."
"But I'm like… old. And mean. And vulgar." He said, not sure of how else to respond.
"Nope! Don't care!" Ruby said in her normal cheery tone, smiling. "Just say yes!"
Cobin grumbled a bit, but finally gave in. "Well, okay." he said, taking Ruby's hand and shaking it. Despite how much smaller her hand was compared to his, he took notice of how strong her grip was. "I'm Serg… I mean, Rockland. Rockland Cobin."
"Nice to meet you, Rockland." Ruby said, releasing her grip. "I should probably get going, have to go back to the team before they start wondering where I am. Also, have to have enough time to convince them you're not a serial killer."
"Yeah, that sounds important." Cobin said.
She turned and took a few steps away from him until she was back under the skylight, then she faced him again. "Rockland, huh?"
"Yeah, I had weird parents." He said.
"Well, it's cool, I think I'll just call you Rocco."
Cobin's eyes grew wide. "No, not that. Absolutely not."
"Why?"
"Because that's what my sisters called me when we were growing up, and I hated it."
Ruby smiled, "Then it's perfect!" Before Cobin had another opportunity to protest, she said "Catch you later, Rocco!" and jumped straight up, a good 20 feet in the air and back out the open window that made up a good portion of the ceiling, disappearing into the evening air.
Cobin just stared up into the skylight for a minute, mouth slightly open. When he finally spoke again, he said "Shit, how do I close that goddamn thing?"
…
Thanks for reading!
-Wahs.