"Ahhhhh!" *thud* "Ow~~~~"
Sarah let out a pitiful whine, upon hitting the ground. Her blanket followed soon after, covering the girl partially. She slowly pushed herself off the ground and shook herself like a dog, causing the blanket to fall off. Drowsy from both the fall and the lack of sleep, Sarah got up on her exposed feet, shivering a little, when they came into contact with the cold ground. Partially blind, the girl slowly navigated through her room, until she could feel the handle of her door. She pushed the door a little, before turning the handle, in order to avoid unnecessary noise and potentially wake up her guests. With the door opened, Sarah could see into the living room. Technically at least. There was no source of light turned on, not surprising, given that it was around two in the morning. The only thing she had to navigate was the Fritz Box with its tiny lambs showing which functions were currently available. The "Online" lamp was still turned off.
This tiny thing was quite enough for Sarah to walk through her living room without bumping into anything. Given that her living room was pretty sparse, to begin with, it was a no-brainer for her to find the bathroom door. Although, it probably would have been a good idea to use more of her brain, as the front part was now complaining very loudly about the blunt force trauma it received from hitting the bathroom door. Luckily it seemed that the sudden noise did not wake up anyone from the shared bed. Sarah could hear one of the girls groaning in her sleep and another one made sounds of movement. But none of them did anything more and soon the only sound in the room was the slow and steady breathing of the four.
Sighing silently, the brunette entered the bathroom and turned on the light, disorienting herself for a couple of seconds, until her eyes had adjusted themselves to the light. Looking at the mirror she could see that her hair was messier than it usually was after a night in bed. Blood veins were clearly visible in her eyes, making it look like she spent the entire night in front of her computer. Her head certainly felt that way.
In order to accommodate for those things, Sarah turned the faucet, allowing water to flow into the sink. She then proceeded to use said water to splash it into her face. It was a well-tested method of clearing her head from drowsiness, allowing Sarah to think properly once more.
~That was...one fucked up dream. I need a little rush.~
Turning off the faucet, Sarah silently exited the bathroom, turning off the lights. She stood there for a couple of seconds, listening if she accidentally woke up one of her guests. Hearing no movement, the host-oriented herself on the wall, having one hand constantly touching it. She did that until she reached the kitchen, where she silently closed the door and turned on the lights. The sink was filled with the dishes used during the evening meal. Sarah had been too lazy that evening to clean them. Besides, the kitchen smelled of food almost 24/7.
The girl walked over to the fridge and looked inside. In a matter of seconds, she took out a cola can, opened it and drank half of its contents in a matter of seconds. Afterward, she let out a huge sigh of relief, feeling the cold liquid filling her stomach. Soon enough the unhealthy mixture of sugar and caffeine would enter her bloodstream, making her feel even better.
"Is it really a good idea to drink something like this right now?"
"Aiie!" Sarah shrieked, upon hearing a voice. Turning her head, she found out that the kitchen door had been opened and that a pair of yellow eyes was looking at her from the darkness. Startled she took a few steps back, hitting the window's ledge. Sarah watched the pair of orbs intently, as they came closer until a person was revealed in the light coming from the kitchen light bulb.
"O-oh! Blake, was it?"
The girl with the bow on her head nodded, showing no emotions on her face. "I heard you scream." the checkerboard colored girl asked. "Had a nightmare?"
"...Yeah. Kinda obvious, huh?" Sarah chuckled, taking another sip from her can. "Sugar helps me calm down."
"That sounds...contradictory," Blake stated as a matter of fact.
"Oh, it's pretty simple. For the next ten minutes I'll be wide awake and afterward, I'll drop dead and fall asleep. It's helpful when I have to deal with such pesky emotions, such as sadness, compassion and the such. Haha, oh, the sugar is already working." Sarah laughed over her own words, emptying the can in between laughs.
Blake looked at the girl strangely. "Are you alright at least?" the hidden faunus asked, approaching the girl. "I know something like this isn't easy to cope with."
"...I'll be fine," Sarah replied, deciding to take another cola can out of the fridge. "Oh, do you want something?"
"Some tea if it is not too much trouble."
"Sure." Sarah nodded enthusiastically, opening a couple of cupboards. "I hope you like lemon. It's the only tea I really drink."
"Lemon is fine." Blake tried to assure, but the success was limited due to her none-caring way of speaking. Nevertheless, Sarah heated up some water and took out a cup for Blake, placing it on the table. Additionally, she placed sugar and milk on the table as well, not knowing what her guest's preferences were. Five minutes later both faunus and human were sitting on the table with blake slowly moving the spoon in her cup.
"Sorry for waking you up, by the way."
Blake looked up from her cup with a raised eyebrow. "Why are you apologizing? Your reaction was completely normal. In fact, so far you have been able to hold yourself together, which is actually quite concerning. Hiding your emotions like that is never a good thing, especially after...a traumatic experience." A small voice in Blake's head was calling her a hypocrite.
Sarah's reaction to the little speech was to blink dumbfounded. "Wow," she said, opening her coke can. "That sounded...kinda deep. Yet at the same time cheesy. Like, bad movie cheesy." she commented, drinking from her cola. "But in all seriousness, I'm more or less fine. I'm not as shaken as I thought I'd be."
It was a total lie. For someone as life experienced as Blake, she could easily see through lies like that. It was all in the details, the unfocused eyes, the small twitch on the lips, the tapping of the single finger...Blake had been on a couple of infiltration missions for the White Fang.
"I guess the dream was just an aftershock. Kinda like after my parents forced me on the roller coaster ride that one time. I panicked so badly, I hurt my arm and had nightmares about the ride for two days straight." At that moment Sarah grinned like Ruby when the team leader had eaten the cookie from someone else's plate.
Seeing as the girl wasn't ready to talk about this as of yet and who could blame her, seeing as this has only happened a couple of hours ago, Blake decided to change the subject.
"If you are sure. While we're here, are there any books you read?" the cat faunus asked.
"Pff, oh god. I haven't read a book outside of school purposes for five years. And I'm out of school already, so nope. Don't have a book right now." Sarah explained.
"I see." Blake took a small sip from her tea.
"Do you read anything?" Sarah asked.
"Yes. Mostly romance and adventure novels." She didn't mention that some of her materials were 18 plus.
"That so?" Sarah shrugged, looking at the clock in the kitchen. "My mom loves to read. She reads every evening before going to sleep. Not sure what she reads, though, was never interested." she informed the Faunus. "I'm happy with my manga. Do you read any mangas?"
"...Not really. I prefer fewer pictures when reading something."
"Everyone their own, I guess."
Sarah yawned, feeling the sugar rush fading away already. Seeing as she had an already opened can in her hand and knowing that it wouldn't taste good in the morning, she decided to drink it all at once. A heavy weight could suddenly be felt in her stomach.
"Ahh, that was good. Not gonna be able to sleep for another couple of minutes, but meh. It's a weekend. Not gonna need to work 'till Monday."
Blake actually stopped in the motion of drinking her tea. Wasn't it already Wednesday? She thought back to the previous days and the lessons she had. And indeed, from her calculations, it should be Wednesday. She took her scroll out of her pocket and checked the time. Around two in the morning and it was actually Thursday.
"You know…" Sarah spoke up, seeing Blake holding what the brunette assumed to be a smartphone or iPhone. "I can actually try to get the internet back online. Just need to reset the box in the living room."
Blake thought for a moment but shook her head. "No, I don't want to accidentally wake up the others. We have had quite the day behind us."
"If you say so." Sarah shrugged again. She stood up and threw the two empty cans into a trash container underneath the sink. "Welp, I think I'm gonna hit the hay soon. Oh and if you really need to contact someone and I'm still asleep-" Sarah opened a cupboard and took out a couple of toothpicks wrapped in plastic "- there's a hole in the back of the box. You need to push one of those inside to restart it. And you need to push really hard, by the way. Once that's done, it'll take about thirty minutes until it's back online. Really sucks, the thing at my parent's home only needs three." She yawned. "Sorry, tend to ramble when I'm sleepy. Good night."
"It's no problem," Blake assured. "Thanks for the tea. Good night."
Blake watched her host stumble through the darkness of the living room for a while until she disappeared in her room. Blake's cat hearing abilities allowed her to listen to the girl behind the door hitting something and cursing quite considerably until everything went silent. Finishing her tea, Blake turned off the lights and silently made her way back to the temporarily shared bed of Team RWBY. If the faunus was honest, she'd almost rather sleep on the ground. Sleeping in her clothes was uncomfortable enough, but sharing such a small bed with four people?
Weiss especially had been a little difficult to deal with. At first, the girl had moved around for an hour. Blake guessed being who she was, she had the most comfortable bed in the entirety of Remnant and as such it was quite a lot to demand from the heiress to not only sleep on the couch but share it with four other people. Eventually, the heiress managed to fall asleep. At first, Blake had been relieved, thinking she might finally get some sleep. But oh how wrong she had been. After about twenty minutes, the heiress had all of the sudden tightly wrapped her arms around the faunus. Just like she did once Blake returned to bed.
"Not again…" the faunus muttered, feeling Weiss subconsciously snuggling her face against Blake's now exposed cat ears. At least once a day the faunus tried to give her ears some "fresh air", so to speak. Unfortunately, it seemed as if Weiss silently adored her fluffy ears, seeing as her subconsciousness ordered her body to stay rather close to Blake. "This is going to be a long night." The faunus mumbled to herself, closing her eyes.
XXX
The following morning, Yang woke up with her sister cradled within her arms. Ruby's breathing was slow and steady, her face showing a content smile. Yang smiled right back and slowly stroked Ruby's hair. The younger sibling hummed in approval, snuggling her face into her older sister's chest. The blond chuckled a little and placed her chin on the collective strand of red and black hair. She could now feel Ruby's breaths tickling. In a way, this was pretty comforting for the teenage brawler. Having her little sister in her protective grasp was a very comforting experience for Yang, always had been in fact. She had developed a kind of motherly instinct over her sister, because of her mother's passing. Of course, the blond would never be able to replace Summer, no one would be able to do that. But nevertheless, Yang did the best she could to be there for Ruby to the best of her abilities. Which might or might not have resulted in her sister gaining a certain fondness of fighting not to mention killing. Grimm only, mind you. At least Yang hoped it was Grimm only.
A sudden movement underneath her arms caught her attention all of the sudden. Ruby had woken up and was looking directly at her sister's face, her silver eyes still half closed. She let out a cute little yawn, making a good imitation of a puppy at that moment.
"Morning Yang." the redhead mumbled.
"Morning sis," Yang whispered, slowly stroking her sister's back. "Sleep well?"
"Mhmm." Ruby nodded placing her head back on Yang's chest. "You're the best pillow. So snuggly."
"And you're the best teddy bear." the blond replied, hugging her sister just a little tighter. "Reminds me of the old times. When you got sick, I snug into your bed to keep you company."
Ruby giggled lightly. "Yeah. And when I recovered, you'd be the one who was sick. Dad got really angry at you that one time."
"Good thing he couldn't really shout at me because I felt really like shit. By the time I recovered, he already forgot about it."
The two sisters shared a smile and just laid there in the dimmed room. Rais of sunshine were already entering the room through tiny slits in the shudders, yet none of the two felt like getting up. Instead, they silently decided to keep quiet and listen to the breathing sounds of their respective partners. For a time, the two were content in just doing that. Ruby especially enjoyed feeling Weiss' back pressed against her own, as it gave her a sense of closeness to her partner, something she'd been trying to build up the entire semester. It was a work in progress.
Sadly the calamity had to be broken eventually. It was by none other but their host Sarah, who appeared to have grown a lion's mane overnight. Seriously, from what the two could see, it appeared as if the girl had transformed into a lion faunus. A very tired lion faunus, who had her upper body hanging low, almost dragging her arms over the ground. In a zombie-like fashion, the girl raised her arms and almost violently took the WLAN-box of the wall. She turned the thing around a couple of times as if she was searching for something. Yang and Ruby gave each other a look before they proceeded to silently observe the girl. Eventually, the girl let out a groan, smacking her own forehead with the device in her hands. She hangs it back up on the wall and then sluggishly moved to the kitchen, where she was out of sight of the sisters.
"What was that all about?" Yang wondered, feeling Ruby shrug in her embrace.
"Dunno. Maybe she's not a morning person?" Ruby guessed.
A moment later the sound of bare feet hitting the wooden floor appeared once again and so did Sarah. She held something tiny in her hand, which was barely visible in the dim lit room. Once again she grabbed the box from the wall and turned it around. With a growl, the girl began to what could only be described as to stab the back of the router multiple times and in rapid succession. Weiss and Blake shifted a little bit from the noise but remained asleep.
"What's she doing?" Ruby whispered to her sister.
"Acupuncture?" Yang offered, as the thing in her hand or her fingers to be precise slightly resembled a needle.
Finally, there was a very audible *CLICK* sound. Following that the tiny lamps started to blink slowly for a couple of seconds and turned themselves off entirely. Then, seemingly out of nowhere the top lamp started to blink in rapid succession. Sarah turned the thing around and let out a satisfied "hmph", before putting the box back in its place. Letting out a yawn, Sarah tiptoed to the best of her abilities to her bathroom, having not noticed that two out of four guests were already awake. Once she disappeared behind the doors, Ruby placed her head on Yang's shoulder, feeling much more at ease, now that the noise was gone.
"Mmm, five more minutes?" the younger girl asked.
"Let's make it an hour," replied Yang with a yawn. "Tomorrow, we'll be back to our old schedule. Might as well use the time we have now."
Silently agreeing with her sister, Ruby closed her eyes and allowed Yang to rest her head in front Ruby's own. Yang even managed to make the effort to pull the blanket over the sisters, so that the pesky sun wouldn't annoy them anymore.
XXX
Later that morning everyone had more or less woke up. Weiss and Blake and found themselves in a rather peculiar situation, where they were facing each other and had their arms wrapped around each other's back. They silently agreed to never talk about this, not knowing that Yang had already taken a picture of the two sleeping together.
While Sarah was busy in the kitchen emptying her fridge of everything that looked edible, Weiss groaned and stretched herself. "Ugh, am I glad we don't have to repeat this."
"Agreed." Blake nodded, carefully hiding her cat ears under her bow. "Maybe we should bring our own sleeping gear to the next mission. Just in case."
"Well, I certainly hope this teleport incident will remain a one-time thing." Weiss huffed, readjusting her attire. "Are you quite done yet, Yang? Some of us wish to use the bathroom too."
Once the words were spoken, the door opened and the blond walked out, smelling her own hands. "That's some soap. Really Weiss? You are telling me to hurry up? Last time I checked you're the one spending half an hour each morning in the bathroom."
Weiss in response just let out a harrumph, before entering the small room and closing the door.
Ruby in the meantime was busy looking down at her scroll, frowning. "Come on, come on...urgh. I don't get it. This thing" she pointed at the fritz box "has internet, but I can't get a connection at all." she groaned.
Both Yang and Blake looked at her, before checking their own handheld devices, but both had the same result. "It looks like I can't even make phone calls," Blake stated as matter of fact. Her partner decided to try it out anyways and called her home in Patch via speed dial, but came up with an automated answer, telling her there was no service.
"Nope. Got nothing," she told the others.
"Strange…" Blake muttered, rubbing her chin.
"I'll ask Sarah if we can use her scroll." Ruby declared. "Or maybe asked her password for the internet."
The youngest of the bunch opened the door to the kitchen and was immediately greeted by a groan coming from the other side of said door. "Why me~?" came the indistinguishable whine from the host.
"Oooops. Sorry!" Ruby smiled apologetically.
"Is fine…" Sarah replied and appeared from behind the door. She only wore a white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and socks. "Morning, by the way."
"Good morning!" Ruby greeted back. "Say, could we have your internet password?" The smaller girl asked, pointing at the home telephone lying on the counter. "None of us seem to have a connection."
"Really?" the brunette asked, blinking a couple of times. From her sweatpants, she took out her smartphone and checked the status of the thing. "Huh, everything seems fine now. Wait a minute." She quickly dialed a number on the display and pushed the call button. A second later the sound of her home telephone ringing could be heard throughout the entire apartment. Satisfied, Sarah ended the call and looked up to Ruby. "Everything fine on my end. Uhh...know what? You can have my laptop. I hid my password somewhere and forgot where exactly I put it. It'll be faster if you check that way or use my phone."
"Umm, can we use the laptop? We could really use a map right now, you know...travelling purposes."
"Sure." Sarah shrugged, not seeing what was wrong with that. After all, she still assumed her guests to be a bunch of cosplayers on their way to a con, who luckily got lost and saved her ass.
After two minutes of rummaging through her room, Sarah came out with the bulky device in her arms. The others watched her, as she turned the thing on and fully activated it for the others, by entering her password. As soon as the inner workings of her laptop processed everything in good old fashioned ones and zeroes, it revealed the desktop, which had the picture of an anime woman with red eyes, wolf ears, and a tail. She had white hair, red markings all over her skin, which continued on the white kimono she was wearing and had some kind of rainbow burning disk on her back. She was sitting in a field of flowers, with various animals around her.
Aside from the picture, the desktop was rather bare bones for a teenager. It had the standard stuff, two google chrome links (story not sponsored by Google or any other company that might/will be mentioned), a folder labeled "Music" and a folder labeled "Games".
"There we go." Sarah placed the laptop on the tiny table and allowed Blake to sit down in front of it. "You need a mouse?"
"No thanks. I'm good."
"Great. I'll be in the kitchen and prepare breakfast. And please, do me a favor and stop crushing my back, when you walk in."
The girls inside the living room chuckled at the mention of Sarah's misfortune. The girl in question left the three others alone. Ruby and Yang sandwiched their faunus friend between themselves, as the black haired girl opened an unfamiliar browser.
"You sure you don't want a mouse, Blake? I mean, it is breakfast time."
Blake resisted the urge to groan at her partner's joke, while Ruby giggled at the joke. It was one of her sister's better ones.
"Google…" Blake mumbled to herself. "Must be a search engine for some small company." Not one to be picky about what search engine she used, the faunus quickly typed in Beacon Academy. The results...weren't what she expected. There were apparently multiple beacon academies in the world, each having their own website. However, what caught red, black and yellows attention the second it appeared was the very first search result. It read the following:
"Beacon Academy | RWBY Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia" -This was the headline and a link to the website.
" wiki/Beacon_Academy" - The actual website, written down in green letters.
"Beacon Academy was an Academy located in the kingdom of Vale for training teams of Huntsmen and…" - Apparently, these lines were the first few paragraphs of what was written on the site.
"Beacon Academy/Image Gallery · Huntsman Academies" - Two additional links.
….
There was a minute of silence between the teammates, as all of them processed individually as to what they were seeing.
"What the fuuuuuuck?" Yang was the first one to vocalize her surprise.
"We have a fan club?!" Ruby "exclaimed". Well, not really. A better way to describe it would be: "it was a weak, high-pitched shout".
"Okayyyyy…" Blake started slowly. "There are...a lot of of...plausible explanations for this."
"Such as?" Yang asked, her voice indicating she didn't believe her partner.
"Weiss!" Blake snapped her finger, rather uncharacteristic, but at the moment, she was a little bit on edge. "Weiss is pretty famous. I'm sure she has a lot of fans and admirers and by proxy, she must have affected us in the public eye in some way. Not to mention, we took on not only Torchwick but the White Fang head on." Blake silently cursed, realizing what she just said. Their actions surely painted a huge ass target on each of their backs.
"Should we...check it out?" Ruby asked meekly.
"Might as well." Yang smiled all of the sudden. "I'm kinda curious what they have written down about each of us."
"That's what I'm afraid of." Blake and Ruby said at the same time. The two looked at each other dumbfounded, before chuckling. Yang used the opportunity to open the link and after a comparable lengthy loading time, the website finally revealed its contents. On that day, Team RWBY's life was destined to change forever, as the first lines were burned deep into their memories.
"Beacon Academy was an Academy located in the kingdom of Vale for training teams of Huntsmen and Huntresses to slay the various monsters that plague Remnant. The academy was formerly run by its Headmaster, Ozpin, and was destroyed following Cinder Fall's assault on Vale along with the Grimm and White Fang."
Beacon destroyed.
Vale assaulted by Grimm and the White Fang.
At that moment, Weiss decided to come out of the bathroom, adjusting the tiara on her ponytail. "No wonder people with less money call me spoiled," she muttered to herself. "Only having this enclosed space every day...huh? Girls? Are you alright?"
The three members of RWBY looked up to Weiss, showing no emotions whatsoever. Blake simply waved Weiss over to look at the screen. "Huh? What's wrong?" the clueless heiress asked, walking over. Ruby allowed her to place herself between the leader and the faunus. It only took Weiss a moment to fully comprehend of what she was seeing. She gasped, putting her hand in front of her mouth.
Blake's finger moved quickly, as she opened a separate page from one of the links the website provided her with through the various names. And then she clicked another one. And another one. And another one.
With each link, the picture became clearer and clearer for Team RWBY, until they landed on a website called "YouTube". Specifically, they were on the page of a user called "Rooster Teeth", where the first thing that sprung to their eyes was a video playlist, which was titled: "New to RWBY? Binge Volumes 1-3."
Scrolling further down, Blake found that there was a playlist dedicated to Volume 4 of RWBY. After looking at it intently for a few seconds, she scrolled back up. Her hand shook a little as she moves the mouse cursor over to the video labeled: "RWBY "Red" Trailer".