Chapter 2

There was something to be said for the sterile life Weiss had lived for most of her life. While it tended to make the average day a dull blur with little to really feel proud of, at least one didn't have to deal with outright stupidity.

Before she'd managed to get her first cup of coffee..before she'd mustered the energy and awareness to get out of 'bed', her "leader" and her brute of a sister had managed to embarrass themselves. Weiss admittedly didn't know all the facts, but any story that begins with a fight over a bar of soap and ended with two girls tangled on the floor after a high speed collision wasn't worth learning in any detail.

As the third class of the day ended, Weiss put her books into her bag and gave herself a mental slap to the back of the head. Sure, the team she ended up in wasn't what she'd imagined, but that didn't mean she couldn't make the best of it. This was Beacon, the most prestigious Hunter academy in Remnant. Anyone who was accepted here and got through initiation had something worthwhile to bring to the table. Besides, part of the point behind Hunters and Huntresses was that they were elite warriors that could adapt to any situation and have more of an impact than a battalion of troops.

As if some higher deity read her thoughts and had a sick sense of humor, a loud clattering drew her attention to the unmistakable sight of Jaune tripping on the leg of a chair and all his school materials scattering from his hastily filled, unzippered backpack. Dear god, how did someone that clumsy get into Beacon? Why did he end up with Pyrrha, the shining example of what a Beacon student should be like? Unable to go around the fallen idiot in the narrow space between desks, Weiss could only watch as her preferred partner helped him put various pens, pencils, notebooks, and calculator back into his bag.

Years of self-analysis let her know the exact cocktail of feelings the sight highlighted. Jealousy of Jaune's luck, which she hoped would dissipate over time..either his luck or her jealousy, didn't matter, she just wasn't a fan of feeling jealous of others. Annoyance that she couldn't just bypass something she didn't even want to acknowledge. Sure, shimmying against either set of tables was an option, and might even give her an excuse to step on his hand or something, but that would mean giving others a decent hint of what she was feeling, which could lead to mockery, among other things. A surprising amount of exhaustion of dealing with people who weren't as easy to categorize as servants, merchants, her father, sister, or any of the company employees. The first week of classes hadn't even finished yet, and she was already feeling 'physically' fatigued of dealing with her peers? It's not like she could just go to her room and sleep it off, she shared her room with three other students!

Thankfully, once Jaune got out of her way, there were no other outright obstacles in her path. She could get to the locker room and switch uniforms for the final class of the week. Some people called it "gym" class, a term that didn't really work with Weiss. Sure, it required a good deal of athletic ability to excel in, but the word implied it was just to keep you in shape. Others called it Parceur de Combatte, and to a degree, that felt more accurate. A good deal of it involved quickly and efficiently going through various obstacle courses, and many of the best students of the class tended to move similar to a tracer (double check term), but again, it didn't feel accurate enough for Weiss's taste. The official name, "Simulated Navigation and Survival Training", just couldn't really grasp the nebulous class. It changed from teacher to teacher how it went, part of the very point was to be as unpredictable as possible and physically demanding!

Glancing behind her, her teammates all seemed to be preparing for their last class in their own little ways. Yang was cracking her knuckles, grinning widely enough that Weiss's cheeks hurt just looking at her. Blake did a momentary check to see how secure her bow was, tightened it, and began stretching her amrs while she walked. Ruby seemed somewhere between apprehensive and terrified, visibly mumbling various encouragements and platitudes to herself as she dug her scroll from her bag.

Turning on her own scroll and checking the map of Beacon, Weiss wasn't surprised to see there were multiple doors to the same room. And unfortunately, she recieved a message soon addressed from her next professor.

{To all ye young adventurous souls,

You have each been assigned different starting locations, where suggested clothes have been prepared for you in lockers with your randomly assigned number are. Extra credit for those who actually wear them. The only criteria for failure is not arriving to the room on time.

We are going to have such fun together.

Your Dungeon Master,

Professor Viridian}

Oh dear..of all the classes to have someone eccentric in charge. It was like putting an artist in charge of decorations, it made things all the more unpredictable, and Weiss could use some more predictability around here. Two floors down, first hallway to the right. Changing room was the second one. Why was there a peculiar looking plastic gun taped over the first door, and a stuffed beatle over the other? Blake seemed to be going to the one with a gun, and frankly that was the only member of her team she could see. The others must have been sent to one of the different entrances. Again, kind of peculiar. Why separate the team for this class when absolutely everything else so far was a team experience?

Whatever, she just wanted to get this over with and hopefully find some way to relax. Assuming one 'could' get an athletics class that lasted an hour and ten minutes 'over with'. Opening the locker assigned to her, three fifty one, she took one look at what she was supposed to put on and cringed. This had to be some kind of mistake.

Taking the offending garment out, she suddenly wished she had Yang's fire semblance. Then she could burn this pink tutu and forget it ever existed. It wasn't even her size, she'd have to shrink by a foot and a half in order to fit in this thi -

Her internal rant was cut off by what sounded like a horn blowing, if the horn was meant to sound like a lion with laryngitis. Almost absently, she checked the time. Huh, she could have sworn she had a good five minutes before class when she came in here. Either she'd been staring at the..abomination in her locker longer than she thought, or her scroll's clock was being remotely messed with. Both were just as likely.

A speaker in the wall let out a few taps, like someone was testing if their microphone worked, before Professor Viridian decided to start speaking. His voice almost sounded like what you'd expect to hear in a documentary. "Ah, first years. So cocksure, so full of potential, with so many different experiences under their belts."

His voice suddenly shifted to something more frightening as he began what could only be described as a gleeful rant. "Well you'd better check your belts if you've got 'em, 'cause I'm gonna knock the pants off you! Ihehehehehehoaw! I've spent all week coming up with this dungeon, tested it on some masochistic volunteers, and I must say, I almost feel guilty throwing something 'this' brutal at you in our first time together! Don't feel too bad if you can't make it to the end, three quarters of the second years couldn't! As hilarious as it was to watch them scramble all over the place, the highlight reel for you guys will probably be even better!"

Weiss felt her shoulders slumping with every word. Great, success was not expected, and their teacher would be recording how they all failed. Well, there was nothing she could do about it but go as far as she could and hope to retain some dignity. In the five or so seconds of creepy giggles, she decided to see if she was the only one given something she couldn't possibly wear.

Around a fourth of the other students had put on whatever clothes they'd been given. Some strange suit that looked like an oversized apple, what looked like a chain-mail bikini, a tuxedo..there was absolutely no pattern at all. A few students had the sense to put clothes of their own in their bags, and one or two had simply changed their shoes to something more suited for running. In hindsight, Weiss should have thought of that herself. Silly her, she'd hoped their teacher would let them change into their battle outfits, or put them in uniform track suits or something.

Once Viridian stopped his creepy giggling, he spoke seriously for the first time. "Your objectives are as follows. First, reunite with your team. Second, find your way to one of the exits. You will be timed. If you find an exit before you find your team, double back and find your team or I will shut that exit off. If you fall into certain traps, you will be removed from the dungeon, thoroughly mocked, and if your team wasn't there to see it they will be notified that they don't need to find you to leave. The time limit is fifty minutes. If you're still inside and conscious when time is up, you will be retrieved."

A buzzing noise filled the air in the middle of the last sentence, a hidden compartment of the locker releasing a multitude of bugs Weiss didn't bother trying to identify swarming out as he finished. As the locker room devolved into a screaming mob frantically trying to find an escape from the bugs coming from seemingly everywhere, Viridian's last words were barely audible. "As Dungeon Master of Beacon Academy, I hereby say get a move on."

Twenty four minutes, forty three seconds. That's how long it took for Weiss to be knocked unconscious. On one hand, she did better than over half the class. On the other, she was eliminated before the rest of the team, and the way she was knocked unconscious felt rather humbling.

The first and most obvious danger was the bug swarm, which had followed her group of students for a good while, and occasionally popped up whenever any student stayed still for longer than two minutes. Weiss still didn't know what they were, she wasn't an expert when it came to flying insects. Just that they somehow managed to put people to sleep without stinging or biting anyone. Possibly during the weekend, when she wasn't studying, doing homework, or trying to relax, she'd try to find out just what they were. All she needed to know was they looked like some kind of beetle, flew in swarms, and Professor Viridian had some method, either his semblance or some trick she couldn't think of, to make them go wherever he pleased.

One of the other common ways people we knocked out were guns hidden all over the place. Each of the colorful, plastic monsters fired a colorful liquid. It wasn't paint..possibly a dye? It was hard to tell if all they did was stain cloth or had some other effect, Weiss was lucky to avoid any hits and didn't see anyone collapse or do anything more than make a shocked yelp if they were hit. So really, it wasn't the guns all over the place that took people out, but the things people did to try avoiding getting shot. Running without looking carefully enough and stepping onto a trap door. Dodging into subtly marked hallways with traps meant to bludgeon people into unconsciousness. Hell, the most horrifying sight was probably seeing some panting guy lean against a wall to rest, mumbling that he couldn't believe he made it through the previous hallway untouched, metal clamps coming out of that wall to capture him, and the whole thing spinning as he screamed. She couldn't even tell that wall could spin around! Did that sadistic teacher grab some people who weren't actually part of the class just to add dramatic effect and scare the crap out of people?! Whatever other dangers there were, Weiss didn't see well enough to confirm. She just treated the entire environment as hostile, not even trusting the ground beneath her feet, and all around becoming a nervous mess. In hindsight, it was a little embarrassing that she became that scared of a non-lethal environment, but..a wall grabbed someone, and demonic little insects kept coming out of nowhere if you stopped moving for too long! Who wouldn't be knocked out of their equilibrium?!

Yang. Xiao. Long. She enjoyed the hell out of the class, and at one point compared it to a haunted house. She'd put on some blue outfit that Weiss couldn't identify, at one point saying "look Ruby, I'm a blond Chun Li", whatever that was supposed to mean, and frequently suggested going into areas filled, absolutely filled with traps. After the second time, it was clear Yang 'knew' she was sending the team into the worst possible environments and having fun with the resulting chaos. She was arguably a bigger enemy than whatever Professor Viridian could come up with.

Ruby was more of a bundle of nerves than Weiss, jumping at every little noise, from the legitimate sounds of someone just around the corner making shocked noises, to randomly generated sound effects that occasionally came from the speakers, and even the moments where Yang did something as stupid as yelling "boo" in her ear. At around the twenty-four minute mark, Ruby'd gotten so tired after using her semblence to get away from every perceived threat that she couldn't walk anymore. So Yang decided to carry Ruby, cracking more jokes..and Weiss felt her patience finally snap.

She didn't remember exactly what she said, or really the chain of events themselves. So when she woke up in a room full of everyone else who had been eliminated, she didn't really know what to think or feel. Relief that she wasn't in that madhouse anymore. Surprise that she had been eliminated without noticing. Outright shock that Pyrrha was down here with her, and was the only member of team JNPR to be eliminated.

There wasn't much to be said about the room. It was a dull looking place with gray stone walls, the mortar holding them together was dyed to look like dried blood. A large flat screen monitor was set up along a bunch of bars, and behind the bars were the occasional fake skeleton dressed in torn up rags in various positions. The most easily visible one was just to the right of the monitor, leaning against a wall, one hand in a two fingered salute, the other reaching to the rear of his pelvis, possibly to scratch an itch. Yes, nothing much to say about the room other than "okay, the professor is very theatrical" and "I am probably going to get used to seeing this room in this school year". On the opposite side of the room to the monitor, rows of benches were set up, each row higher than the last, and it looked like there were enough seats for about two hundred and sixteen students. Strange, since the entire freshman class was only one hundred and thirty six strong.

Until Professor Viridian started showing his "highlight reel" at the half hour mark, the only pass times were awkwardly talking to the other students about the booby trapped labyrinth, keeping oneself occupied with their own thoughts, and watching unconscious students get seemly float down from various holes in the ceiling of the room they were in. It was kind of disturbing to see that swarms of whatever these were could be strong enough to carry people regardless of weight. And every time a fresh body came down, at least one relative newcomer would scream or otherwise panic until they learned the bugs weren't out to get them anymore.

Then the highlight reel started, with Professor Viridian's commentary coming from the speakers. He alternated between praising people's creativity in the heat of the moment to pointing out their mistakes with varying levels of levity. Weiss couldn't help wondering why someone who certainly sounded like he enjoyed the spotlight wouldn't show his face to the majority of the class.

"Welcome, welcome. Sorry for the wait, I just wanted to be sure there'd be enough of an audience so plenty of people could learn from one anthers mistakes. Don't feel too bad about not making it to the end, very few first years ever do for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it's because whatever Dungeon Masters or whatever they called themselves in your previous schools didn't have a certain je ne sais quoi. Perhaps you had a bad run of luck and didn't have the reflexes or right habits to make up for it. Hell, it could be anything. So don't feel too bad when people see how you fell, this is all a learning experience. Better to trip over yourself in an insane environment when the risk is humiliation and unconsciousness than when it could be permanent injury or death."

Most of the footage wasn't particularly interesting to Weiss. Huh, so someone tried to get out of the locker room the same way they entered and was taken out. Was kind of expecting that from Jaune, not someone she couldn't name off the top of her head. Oh, so the more dangerous hallways had darker walls, funny how she didn't really register that in the heat of the moment. Ah, so after getting soaked by enough of those colorful liquids, the bugs swarmed at you regardless. Good thing she managed to avoid getting hit at all. What was even more strange was that somehow, Weiss was getting drowsy watching a lot of what happened. Possibly because a lot of the mistakes made were fairly similar and things that she probably would never do. Run away blindly from one threat directly into another, trying to find a corner to hide or rest..

"And here we have the champ! You know her, you possibly have a crush on her..I know I do, let's hear it for Pyrrha Nikos."

That prompted some clapping, a few half-hearted cheers, pretty much everyone including Weiss taking a moment to at least glance at Pyyrha. She had possibly one of the most awkward smiles ever to grace her face as she mumbled hello, possibly because she was completely unused to this particular kind of attention.

"Now, as you can see here, she has a very erratic teammate. Fun to be around, especially at parties, but not the best person to have in an exercise like this. No matter how keen your eye is for danger, when you see a friend you probably aren't and really shouldn't have to consider them jsut as dangerous as your surroundings."

Nora apparently let herself get soaked in whatever was coming out of those guns..even drinking some of the stuff. That, of course, brought the swarms of bugs after her, and she was ridiculously gleeful as they chased her. She ran into Pyrrha along the way..physically running into her, knocking the red haired amazon to the ground, and while Nora had an apologetic look on her face, she didn't even slow down and try to save her teammate. The bugs overtook Pyrrha while she was still on her knees. What really baffled Weiss was that somehow, Nora wasn't down here as well.

"Oh dear, not much she could have done there. At best, she'll just have to tell her mate there to scale back the fun 'just' enough to prevent screwing other people over. Which leads perfectly to our next victim, Weiss Schnee. Her teammate here, well, she's kind of a troll. Part of how she has fun is at the expense of others. Possibly caused by how cutely her little sister acts when scared out of her wits. Still, got to give her credit for carrying her exhausted sister. At this point, poor Weiss has gotten sick and tired of blondie here sending them in circles, making no progress, and just purposely going through the path of most resistance for laughs. It's the sort of clash of personalities that might occur between Pyrrha and her partner. One takes things seriously, possibly too much. The other is possibly going to contribute to you hating this class since they're having way too much fun while you're being tortured. Don't take it personally, though. This is probably the only class you'll have that will never be graded. There's no way 'to' grade what goes on here. You either enjoy it, or make it into a learning experience and hope that the world out there doesn't throw anything too creative at you."

Midway through his sentence, Weiss noticed a large group of newcomers. About twelve, with Ruby, Yang, and Nora among them.

"Ah, and it appears some of you have finally run into the robotic guardians at the halfway point near the exits. I know, little unfair to throw something like that at you when you're unarmed, but hey, you never know what I'll throw at you. Next time, the big surprise might not be colorful robots firing gas pellets at you. For all you know, next time I will put you in a barn, and have you milk cows that actually have acid instead of milk! That is, assuming that genetics expert wasn't 'lying' to me last weekend..ah well, got plenty of other ideas if that one doesn't fall through. Anyway, let's see, what's worth showing on the highlight reel now..or am I going to start doing some reruns already in this show?"

Dinner was..well, Weiss was somehow expecting it to be a somber affair after the entire freshman class failed to get through that maze Professor Viridian set up. It was a stark reminder that while they had managed to be accepted into Beacon, they were still freshman in a four year school designed to forge them into even greater warriors. However, the reactions at the table weren't anything like she expected.

She'd expected Pyrrha to be completely unfamiliar with failure, perhaps be angry that she was eliminated because of her own teammate. Instead, the first thing she said to Nora was, "So..just what exactly was the liquid the water guns fired, anyway?"

Nora took a second to lick her lips as if to remind herself of the taste and said, "Some lemonade, apple and orange juice, milk, and I'm not sure what else. Kind of burned my throat when it went down, but nothing too painful."

Yang blinked a moment in surprise before slapping herself over the head. "Wait, Viridian was shooting alcoholic drinks at us? Crap, I should have tried some of that!"

Ruby looked like she still hadn't recovered from pushing herself so hard out of fear. Her body was slumped and her arms were a little shakey as she cut the meat on her plate. "Probably not a good idea, you'd have to get whatever you didn't drink out of your hair."

That made Yang outright grimace. "Oh yeah, probably the only part of that whole thing that legitimately scared me. Don't get me wrong, it was damn fun, but a lot of haunted houses at least try to make some fake blood and darker lights to make you feel like you're in a horror movie. This..this didn't feel like he was going for a horror vibe. The yellow and occasionally red brick walls with that bright lighting? Little more cheery than I was expecting. And the robots he pulled out at the halfway point? I could swear I saw something like them in a video game once."

The fact that everyone else laughed a little was just another sign of how little Weiss had in common with her peers. There'd been way too many moments like this in the week for her tastes. It wasn't that she felt 'left out', no, just..she couldn't really think of anything to add, and no justification to shut this line of conversation down. She wasn't sure she'd ever get used to this feeling.

Jaune recovered from his restrained laughter first. "They kind of looked like robots out of Sonic the Hedgehog..if Moto Bugs had grapple guns and Buzz Bombers shot some kind of gas. Might have just imagined that, though. I was taken out 'seconds' after seeing those things."

There was an almost whimsical look on Ren's face. "Definitely game inspired. Certainly explains the Kaizo trap. Thought I was at an exit, the flashing red exit sign above the door, touched the handle, and next thing I know I'm waking up in that weird prison set-up."

While Blake didn't seem as 'in' on the conversation as the others, she could at least hold her own. "Not sure what a 'kaizo' trap is, but yeah, we saw. Congratulations on being the only freshman to get anywhere near that close to the end, by the way."

Ren bowed, or what passed for a bow when you're sitting down. "Thanks."

Ruby was at least polite enough to answer Blake's unasked question. "A Kaizo trap is basically a cheap trick in video games, something that you aren't going to be able to avoid unless you already know it's coming. Usually at the point where you're relaxing, going 'yeah, I got through', and suddenly oops, you failed. I can barely stand it when I've got multiple chances in a game, but only one chance to succeed? Vicious..just how long do we have to stay at Beacon before we can pull off what that second year team did? You know, get to the end with our full team?"

Well, this felt like the best moment to add to the conversation Weiss was going to get. "Assuming team CFVY actually were sophomores and not older, then it's vaguely possible by next year. It's equally possible that even if they were, Professor Viridian might have coached them just so he could play that music in the background."

Whatever she was expecting as a response, it wasn't Nora to slap the table and make short, full-belly laugh. "Don't care, that was awesome!"

She then began to hum the tune, swinging her knife around like she was conducting an orchestra. Where Jaune shifted away from her, mumbling, "Why couldn't she have used a spoon?", and Pyrrha had an awkward smile that seemed to say "Please don't tell me this is a docile as she gets.", Ren just added his whistling to the mix between mouthfuls of food. Again, not what Wiess was expecting, and somehow unnerving. Sure, she knew the pair were friends before they'd even gotten to Beacon, but..well, actually, Weiss wasn't sure what the 'but' to that was. Whenever she saw or heard about the two interacting, her usual ability to analyze herself went out the window.

Whatever else was said during dinner, the silver haired heiress didn't really register. She just let herself do into an old childhood habit of shutting off the rest of the world, focusing only on finishing her meal, and hoping that tomorrow, that small sense that she didn't belong here would shrink instead of grow like it had from the moment she first woke up to a whistle blowing in her ear.

Author's Note

I can't tell how much of this chapter feels awkward to me because Weiss is supposed to feel awkward at this point, and how much feels awkward because of the execution. Ah well, at least I manged to figure out line breaks on , I'll get around to fixing chapter 1 soon.

The class, well, I kind of wanted something that was similar to the Danger Room from X-Men, but without the hard light holographs. So Viridian, named after a town in Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, and who doesn't have a first name yet, was born. I was kind of iffy about throwing in an original character into this fic, especially since RWBY has loads of characters already, but there are definitely more teachers at Beacon than the three we've seen on screen so far, and I just can't see Glynda pulling off the sort of flair this kind of class needed. We'll see how many other teachers I feel the need to create as this story moves along, and hopefully none of the characters I introduce in this story will be annoying or steal the spotlight from the main cast.

As a side note, the tune Nora was humming and Ren joined in with? Two Steps from Hell To Glory. Not really sure there 'is' a way to include music into a fanfic if it doesn't have lyrics, but I get the feeling she'd enjoy the band.

Anyway, next chapter is the next day, from Blake's perspective. How will our reclusive book worm deal with her first weekend at Beacon? Especially since she's going to be dealing with a pair of teammates who feel like fish out of water, and a partner who's going off on her own to blow off steam, among other things.