Outcasts and Outlaws Chapter 2-

Who Needs Friends?

Before this chapter begins, I quickly want to say thanks for all the support on the first chapter; I hadn't expected to get any follows from it so it was a pleasant surprise. So, thanks to everyone who followed and please leave reviews. This chapter is concentrating on Connor's first impressions of Teams RWBY and JNPR.

Connor awoke sharply to the feeling of sunlight on his skin. He looked to his right to see light pouring through the window as he'd forgotten to close the curtains the night before.

'Talk about a rude awakening' Kane lightly joked. He sounded in a better mood today, probably looking forward to kicking some ass in the sparring matches.

Connor slowly turned his head back around, still drowsy from his sleep cut short, and noticed something different in the room.

A small wooden box with golden decorations and a sturdy lock sat on the dresser on the opposite side of the room. Connor hadn't seen it there before. 'Had someone brought it in while was sleeping' He wondered.

'What do you think is in it, Kane?' Connor asked, taking advantage of Kane's good mood.

'It's just the right size for your weapon.' Kane replied.

Connor picked up the box and took a closer look at the decorations, and then noticed that it had a small golden lock.

'It's locked; we're going to need a key.' Connor bluntly stated.

'You could always just punch through it.' Kane suggested.

Connor contemplated this as he set the box back down on the dresser, being careful not to rattle its contents.

'It's such a fine box. It'd by a shame to just smash it open.' Connor commented, trying not to let Kane's side of him influence this decision. 'Besides, we'll probably be given a key later.'

'Just punch it.' Kane commanded, growing impatient and starting to lose his good mood.

Connor sighed and drew back his hand, curling it into a fist as did so. Just as he was about to throw the punch, he heard a knock on his door, but desperate to see what was inside the box, punched it anyway.

Ruby Rose stood outside the door in her school uniform. On her way to class she had decided to pop in and pay her new neighbour a visit. She looked up at the name plate. 'Connor Kodomo.' 'A strange last name,' she thought, 'and why isn't this kid part of a team like the rest of us? Why put him in a room by himself?'

She thought back Yang's words on the matter. Telling her to stay away from this stranger, as he might be a weirdo. Ruby wasn't sure, but she thought Yang meant he'd turn out to be a pervert or something, which was completely unjustified. He'd only smiled at her.

She raised her hand up and knocked on the door and then heard a bang from inside. Worried that the occupant might be hurt, she opened the door and looked inside.

Connor heard the door creaking open and turned his head to the left, his hand still in the remains of the box. Standing in the doorway was he had seen the day before. The one who had been wearing the red combat skirt. The one who'd waved at him.

He noticed she was staring at his hand that was still in the box, a curious expression on her face. He looked at his fist and realised that in his efforts to smash the box open, he had cut the knuckles of his hand on the shards of wood that had resultantly been created, and blood was know flowing freely from them.

'Are you ok?' She asked, her voice shaking a little.

'I'm fine,' Connor replied, 'It was Kane's idea.'

'Who's Kane?' Asked the redhead, voice still shaking.

Damn it, Connor thought.

'Well, the cat's out of the bag now.' Kane said.

Not just yet, thought Connor.

'He's no-one.' Connor stated and then asked, 'Who are you?'

At this act of attempted friendship, the girl seemed to drop her guard and become surprisingly more cheerful.

'I'm Ruby!' She announced. 'What's your name?'

Connor hesitated a moment before answering, taking his metal gauntlets out of the box, and then answered.

'I'm Connor Hikaru-Kodomo.'

'Oh, yeah. I forgot I saw the nameplate outside the door.' Ruby remembered as Connor slipped his gauntlets onto his lower arms. 'Are those your weapons?'

Connor didn't reply in words, instead he flicked his wrists, causing sharp blades to extend from each gauntlet, and then he simply looked at Ruby awaiting her response.

He gasped in shock when he saw that Ruby was standing with a look of amazement on her face. He'd never seen someone so fascinated by his blades before.

Connor smiled and said, 'You like them?'

Ruby, still in her daze of amazement replied, 'They're amazing! Where did you get them?!'

'They're just some old blades.'

Ruby dashed over to him in a flash of red petals and began to prod and inspect the blades.

'They can conceal themselves within your gauntlets and they're as sharp as needles!' She exclaimed, and then poked a tip of one of the blades, after which she dashed back to the other side of the room, holding her now bleeding index finger in her hand.

'Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!'

Connor smirked at this. It was the first time he'd found something funny in a long time, something about this girl brought out his lighter side. He hadn't previously known he'd had one.

His smile disappeared when a taller girl with flowing blonde hair stopped in the doorway on her way past, and seeing Ruby with even a tiny wound seemed to set her off.

'Rubes? Did this guy hurt you?!' She yelled, on the edge of fury.

'No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!' Ruby replied frantically. 'He wasn't hurting me, it was an accident!'

The new girl doubted that and stepped forward to get a better look at Connor.

She stared at him for a good few seconds before giving up and introducing herself.

'I'm Yang, Ruby's older sister.'

Connor took a second to think about, deducing that it explained the protective behaviour, and then replied.

'I see.' He replied calmly.

Yang stepped closer to Connor again and looked right into his eyes, once again very serious.

'You lay a finger on Ruby, you won't be seeing anything.' She warned.

She then turned around and walked out of the room, grabbing Ruby on the way, who managed to quickly say a quick goodbye.'

Connor sighed and started towards the door, thinking about Yang being an overprotective sister. In the middle of his daydream, he bumped into someone on his way out of the door and whoever it was dropped an entire case of dust to the ground causing the bottles inside to smash.

'You oaf!'

Connor snapped out of his daydream and looked at the person now standing in front of him, a white haired girl in a white combat skirt and high heels.

'How can you fight in those?' He asked whilst still looking at the heels.

'Don't change the subject!' The girl yelled angrily. 'Look at what you've done!'

Connor looked down at the mess at his feet. Dust of all colours spreading across the floor. He looked back up at the girl and recognized her instantly, Weiss Schnee. He decided to take the opportunity to have a little bit of fun.

'I'm sorry, who are you?' Connor joked.

With this, the Schnee girl grew even angrier. 'You don't know who I am?!' I am Weiss Schnee! Heir of the Schnee Company!' She shouted furiously.

'The same company known for its questionable business partners.'

Both Weiss and Connor looked behind them to see a girl in black clothing walking towards them.

'Seriously, Blake?' You're going to start that again?!' Weiss screamed, shattering Connor's eardrum beyond repair.

Blake ignored Weiss' screams and continued walking, only saying, 'We're going to be late for class.' As she walked past, this seemed to touch a nerve in Weiss.

She quickly turned and walked away, telling Connor to clean up the mess as she went.

Connor looked down at the dust pile and sighed. Kane chipped in, 'You heard the lady.' Connor responded by cutting off Kane and continued on his way to his class. At this rate he'd be the last one in.

'Jaune, wait!'

Connor turned around thinking 'What now?' and saw a guy in chainmail armour running down the hall, trying to get to class on time, followed by an equally fast girl in Spartan armour, whom Connor also recognized.

'Jaune, you're going to trip!'

Right on cue, Jaune fell over and landed right at Connor's feet, who picked up Jaune by the scruff of his shirt and stood him up.

'Umm… thanks. Who are you?' Jaune asked nervously.

I'm-'Connor started to say before having his sentence finished by the girl in Spartan armour.

'You're Connor Kodomo, correct?' She asked as she came to a stop, having caught up with Jaune. 'I saw you're name on the door, she continued, 'I'm Pyrhaa Nikos.' And she stuck out her which Connor took hold of and shook firmly, then Pyrhaa continued on. 'I could have sworn I've heard that name somewhere before.'

'Great,' Connor thought, 'Looks like my past has gotten my some unwanted attention.'

'Ignore her; she's not worth the time.' Kane suggested, and Connor agreed, so he stayed silent.

After a minute of complete silence, Jaune spoke up. 'Pyrhaa, we should be getting to class.'

Pyrhaa nodded and walked past Connor towards the classrooms. Jaune turned to follow her, but just before he did he spoke to Connor.

'My name's Jaune, by the way.'

Then Connor said something that shook Jaune to his very bones, told a secret that only he and Pyrhaa knew of.

'Can't fool me with faked documents.'

Jaune, too scared to speak, simply ran in the other direction to tell Pyrhaa.

'Jaundice Arc' Kane explained, 'He got into beacon with faked documents. In actuality he has no combat skills or training whatsoever.'

Connor sighed wearily. Not only did someone maybe know who he was, but he was already doing a terrible job of making friends.

'Who needs friends?' He said to Kane, not noticing the ginger haired girl in pink armour standing beside him.

'That's a mean thing to say.'

Connor acted on instinct, turning around lightning fast, whipping out his blades as he went and holding them up in front of his face.

The ginger girl didn't seem scared at all. Instead she smiled and cheerily stated, 'What fun is life without friends.'

Upon hearing this, Connor lowered his guard, but didn't put away his blades and responded, 'I've gotten along just fine without them so far.'

Nora frowned and moved a little closer to Connor. 'That's sad,' she said sounding upset, 'Everybody needs at least one friend.'

Before Connor could tell her otherwise, a black haired boy in a dark green shirt stepped out of the doorway opposite ruby's room. Connor noticed that the boy had a steak of pink in his hair.

'That's my friend!' Nora exclaimed excitedly. 'Ren!' She shouted as ran towards him, stopping an inch away from his face and glared up into his eyes.

'Nora, what are you doing?' Ren asked, already sounding exhausted.

'I was just talking to the new guy.' Nora answered, pointing to Connor whilst bouncing up and down on her heels.

Ren looked over at Connor, giving him a look as if to say, 'Sorry for the trouble.' And then spoke to Nora again.

'Nora, leave the new kid be. We need to be getting to class.'

A look of shock overcame Nora's face. 'Oh my god, you're right! We're gonna be late!' She screamed as she grabbed Ren's hand and ran down the hallway with him, knocking over Connor as she went.

'There are some weird people in this school. Connor said to himself before getting up. He heard footsteps and looked to his left to see Professor Ozpin walking towards him holding a coffee mug.

'I see you've met teams RWBY and JNPR. Quite the characters, aren't they? Ozpin said.

Connor replied wearily, 'You got that right. How do you expect me to fit in with these people?'

Ozpin replied quickly and sharply, but not harshly. 'Give it time and I'm sure they'll grow on you. Anyways, shouldn't you be getting to your first class?

Connor laughed, 'I'd be there by now if not for all the distractions.' Connor had surprised himself yet again. That was the first time he'd laughed for years.

Ozpin shared in Connor's short laughter. 'I wouldn't worry too much. You've only got one class to attend today at any rate, so you'll have plenty of time to make friends.'

Ozpin took a sip of coffee from his thermal mug and continued, 'Well, I must be going, I have much to do today.' With that, he walked down the corridor back to his office.

'Time to make friends?' Kane said to Connor. 'He's reading you all wrong.'

Connor countered Kane's statement. 'I don't know. There is one person I might be able to get along with.

'You mean that Ruby girl?' Kane asked in disbelief, 'Don't tell me-'

'Shut up.'

'Whatever,' Kane said, 'You always were a bit of a hopeless romantic. Just make sure you remember why that can't be.

With that thought in his mind, Connor started on his way to his first class, anxiously anticipating what awaited him at Beacon.