"Hey, Ruby, wake up." Torn from her sleep by Weiss shaking her shoulder, Ruby groaned and rolled over.
"No, seriously, wake up. We're in Atlas." Ruby sat up, suddenly excited. Her hair stuck out in random directions, giving her a wild look.
"Really?" she asked eagerly.
Weiss rolled her eyes. "Why would I say it if it wasn't true?"
"Yaaay! I'm so excited, I've never been to another kingdom before! You're from Atlas, aren't you?" she cried as she threw herself out of bed.
"I am. It's nice enough, I suppose. Personally, I prefer Vale. It's much quieter, less rushing around, and the weather's better. Atlas is still my home, though."
"I guess that it'll probably be pretty snowy here, right? Hey, where's Yang and Blake?" she said, looking around the room on board the Atlesian cruiser North Star that they had shared on the three-day trip from Vale to Atlas.
"Correct. It tends to snow here in late autumn, which means that we should all get warmer clothes. As for Blake and Yang, they're putting most of our stuff in the car my father provided to get us to the hotel in the city center that we'll be staying at for a few days."
"Your father knows that we're here?"
"He's on the council, Ruby, he definitely knows about us. He would have been part of the approval process for our coming here."
"Your father's on the council?!" Ruby asked, now even more excited than she was upon learning that they had arrived.
Before she could reply, Weiss' scroll buzzed in her pocket, which she withdrew and glanced at. "The dynamic duo is done, so grab whatever they missed and let's go. We can talk while we walk there." Scrambling, Ruby gathered up the wide variety of things she had not put into a bag and attempted to pass some off to Weiss, to no avail.
"Okay, I'm ready, let's go!" They left the room, shut the door behind them, and started making their way to the hangar where they were supposed to disembark.
"As I was about to say, unlike in Vale, where there's only three councilors, Atlas has thirty. Well, technically, thirty-five. Each time one dies or is otherwise removed from his post, the others choose a replacement from the nation's most respected generals, businessmen, and scientists. My father, as the most successful businessman in Remnant, has a very prestigious position in the council. He's one of five High Councilors, who are the faces of the council, chosen by the Thirty. They can vote just like the others, though." Weiss said with a hint of pride but also with a barely perceptible hint of disdain.
"Wow, Weiss, you're rich and famous! You're like a moviestar!"
Weiss pouted. "Don't be a pest, Ruby. You know how I feel about my family."
"Soooorry, Weiss~" she replied sweetly. "Go on, though, this is really cool! I love learning stuff. Tell me about the city!"
"As you wish. The city of Atlas is much older than Vale or Vacuo, yet not as old as Mistral. But you'd never know it. The city is really modern, much more so than Vale. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many huge buildings there are. The tallest, which is the Schnee Dust Company Building, has over 200 floors, but most are between 70 and 150 floors. It's so tall that on cloudy days, the top floor is way above the clouds. Since it's the biggest and most populous city on Remnant, the city's divided into about 30 wards, and each ward is run like a little city of it's own. The biggest buildings are in Weistadt Ward, which is also where we'll be staying."
"Oooh, cool! Wait, oh man, are we staying on a high floor?" Ruby asked, suddenly concerned.
"Floor 78, I believe. Why, are you afraid of heights?"
"No, I think they're cool, but Yang's terrified of them. Geez, she's gonna freak out! Well, she won't show it, 'cause she's gotta do her 'big strong sister' thing but inside she'll be like Yang jelly!"
"Well, that's not-" she began to say until she was cut off by a crewman of the warship bumping into her, apparently by accident. She almost fell over, but Ruby caught her.
"Excuse you! Watch where you're going! I've got dust in this bag, you know, and it would really screw up my day if it all exploded in my face!" she exclaimed, her lopsided ponytail bobbing with each exclamation, as if to add emphasis to what she said.
The skinny blonde seaman jumped up. "S-sorry, I didn't mean to, honestly! It won't happen again!"
"Good. Now, where were we, Ruby?" she said as she continued along through the hallways of the ship with a sour look on her face.
"Man, Weiss, you really know how to lay into somebody," Ruby said with a touch of sympathy for the frightened seaman that they had left behind.
"Well, he should have been more careful. So should you, for that matter!"
Ruby groaned. "I can't believe you still haven't forgotten about that."
"You could have killed us both! Anyway, it was how I met you, so I can't really forget it," she said, softening up.
Ruby looked at Weiss with a face that was, for once, unreadable. "Y'know, you're really a big softie, Weiss, you just don't want anybody to think you're weak. You should soften up more often."
Weiss blushed, looked away, and didn't say anything until they got to the hangar where Blake and Yang were waiting for them.
"Wow. Just.. Wow."
"Yeah, that's what a lot of people say." Team RWBY stood in an elevator, quickly ascending one of the taller towers in Weistadt Ward, not far from the epicenter of the city. In front of them, a seemingly endless expanse of skyscrapers and buildings stretched from horizon to horizon.
Blake and Ruby were practically glued to the windows, taking in the breathtaking beauty of the massive metropolis. Crystalline towers glistened orange in the twilight, like fiery ghosts rising from their graves to bask in the fog that hung around their midsections.
Yang, however, practically clung to the handrail, and wouldn't look at anything but the floor.
"You see that really tall tower there, the one with a lake around it?" Weiss asked.
"Yeah, what about it?" said Blake.
"It's floors all slowly rotate around, and every ten levels there's a park in the building."
Ruby gaped at it. "Weiss, I can't believe you lived here! It's so cool!" she exclaimed.
"Well, I didn't live here, in the city, but I did come here a lot."
"Where did you live, then?"
"The Schnee estate is about a hundred miles away from the city, in the countryside. My father prefers to live in solitude but work in the city, so he takes an airship into the city everyday. He wanted us to come tonight, but I told him that we wanted to look around the city for a few days."
"Ooooh, we're gonna have so much fun!" Ruby squealed.
"We can't forget why we're here, though, and it's to stop the White Fang." Blake reminded her.
"Oh, come on, Blake, don't be such a downer! The White Fang is important, but so is having fun!" Ruby replied in a sing-song voice. The elevator doors parted, and the display above them showed that they were on the 78th floor, where they would be staying, courtesy of the Schnee Dust Company, which owned the hotel that occupied floors 70 through 80.
Yang practically bolted out of the elevator, and was visibly shaken by what they had just experienced.
"You alright, Yang? Heights getting to you?" Ruby asked, not unkindly.
"Y-Yeah, I'm fine..! Heh. The view isn't for me, that's all," she said, reassuring herself more than anybody else.
"If you say so, sis," Ruby replied knowingly. They reached their room, which Weiss opened with a swipe of a card, and entered the room that they would call home for the next few days.
"Whooah! This room is huge! Awesome!" Ruby exclaimed, before stopping in her tracks in the kitchen. Her eyes grew wide.
"COOKIES!"
Weiss smiled, a rare occurrence for Team RWBY.
"I asked them to set out a plate of cookies before we arrived. I knew you'd appreciate the gesture." Before Weiss even finished her sentence, Ruby already had two cookies stuffed in her mouth a third in hand.
"Mmph! These are awesome!" Ruby cried, her mouth still full.
"Don't talk with your mouth full!" Weiss scolded. While Ruby and Weiss were arguing over cookies and the finer points of eating them, Blake and Yang were claiming beds for themselves. Yang naturally chose the one as far away from the very large windows as possible, and flopped down onto it.
"So what's for dinner, Ice Queen?" Yang asked from her corner of the room, where she was now huddled under a blanket.
Weiss huffed. "Anything you want, as long as you don't call me that."
"Anything?" Blake asked, looking up from her book.
"Yes. Anything."
"Even ice cream?" Ruby put in, earning an icy glare from her partner.
Yang patted her stomach as she leaned back in her seat. "Oh man. That was awesome."
Ruby and Weiss agreed, and Blake would have agreed, too, if she wasn't falling asleep at the table.
They all sat inside a Mistralian restaurant, which, true to get word, Weiss had taken everyone to.
"Weiss, you rock. Thanks for dinner." Ruby said, speaking up.
"It was my pleasure."
"What will we do tomorrow?" Ruby asked.
"Well, I was thinking that we could-"
"I have somebody to meet tomorrow, actually," Yang interrupted, earning her a nasty glare from Weiss and a quizzical look from Ruby.
"Here? In Atlas?" Weiss demanded.
"Yeah."
"Are you gonna tell us about it?" Ruby asked.
"Nope. Not yet, at least." Everyone was quiet after that. It wasn't really Yang's way to keep people in the dark, she tended towards compulsive honesty, so naturally the other members of Team RWBY were concerned.
Later that night, when they got back from dinner, and the other two were asleep, Weiss and Ruby had an emergency meeting about it in the hallway outside their room.
"What is she hiding?" Weiss wondered.
"I don't know. It's not like Yang to keep secrets. She's too loud and honest, y'know?"
"Whatever it is, I don't like it at all." She looked straight into Ruby's eyes, pale blue meeting silver. "Keep on your toes, Ruby. Even family can be dangerous."