Chapter 40: Be Still, My Vocal Cords
Hey, friends, readers, and other people! It's me again! Who it is, I'll leave to you to figure it out. Anyway, before we get to going over this chapter I typed up, I should tell you that Monty Oum owns RWBY, not I. I really don't own anything I talk about, unfortunately. If I did, there would be a ton of subliminal messaging in those works. Now that you know that well enough, let's get to the story, huh?
Weiss wasn't planning having lunch (of the solid kind) on Wednesday. Now that the music list was finalized, she wanted to practice her vocalization as soon as the day was over. While more practice was always a good thing, this unfortunately meant that she couldn't talk or do all too much. If she did, then her throat would be unsuitable for the amounts of practice she was planning for today. So, she tried to minimize the possible damage to her voice.
Of course, leave it to Yang to take advantage of this. As Team RWBY made their way to the cafeteria, Yang was making a lot of jokes at her expense. Weiss' patience was being driven to unthinkable ends.
"Whoever isn't a loser, speak up!", was Yang's latest incredibly lame attempt to troll Weiss.
"Huh?", noised Ruby, a little confused.
"Really?", was Blake's incredulous reply.
Yang's grin was spread from ear to ear. This was simply too good. The gods of comedy and unnecessary trolling had surely blessed her today. Weiss' face grew red at Yang's teasing.
"Hey, I'm just saying that if you can't talk, you just don't have much going for you.", Yang said in her defense. She raised her hands in a blocking gesture. "Besides, if you said anything, you're not a loser.", she also pointed out.
Right now, Weiss' face began to resemble a volcano. She was bright red, fuming, and ready to blow up at a moment's notice. Ruby grew concerned, since Weiss was giving the color of her cloak a run for her lien.
"Yang, could you please stop? It isn't nice to make fun of her.", Ruby asked, pointing her thumb to Weiss. If Weiss could talk, then she would express gratitude to her girlfriend.
"Don't be hatin' Rubes!", Yang said, her grin growing. Ruby looked on in worry. She knew that look. That meant that she had thought of another joke while talking. This wasn't good.
"Hmm, maybe that joke fell a little SHORT. I bet Weiss would know something about that. What do you think?", Yang said, taking a jab at Weiss' short height. Yang looked at Weiss expectantly, with a grin that could be best described as the one someone who regularly ate fecal matter would have.
"Don't punch her, don't punch her, don't punch her, don't punch her…", Weiss kept on chanting in her mind. She thought that Yang's face would fit nicely around her fist. Oh man, Yang was lucky that Weiss refused to talk. Otherwise, she would be buried underneath landslide of insults.
Blake groaned at what she was hearing. Her girlfriend(-ish. They didn't really do too many romantic things.) was letting out the side of her that was like an overgrown child. While it could be endearing sometimes, Yang didn't know when she had run other's patience into the ground. But, once Yang got to be like this, even Blake couldn't stop her. They just needed to wait for her to get tired. Either that, or when someone tried to attack her. One or the other would be happening soon.
"Can you just give it a beak? Please?", Ruby pleaded. It was only a matter of time until something bad happened.
"Hey, Weiss knows what I'm TALKING about. SAYING all these jokes is pretty good, right? Or are they too SMALL to stand on their own?", punned Yang. Three in a row was a pretty good try for her. But then, her thoughts about her records were cut short as she was launched through the air.
Making the glyph disappear, Weiss' mood visibly changed. Sighing in relief, she smiled a little. Blake and Ruby looked and shrugged at each other as Weiss merrily walked down the path. Seeing noting they could do, they just decided to walk with Weiss.
"Wow, I'm pretty far up.", Yang thought as she careened through the sky. In hindsight, she really should have seen this one coming. Maybe the comments on her height were a bit too much. Oh well, she couldn't dwell on that now. All she had to worry about now was to activate her aura before she hit the ground
Well, whenever that might happen. It didn't seem like that would happen any time soon.
Yang scanned the sky around her, waiting for gravity to take over. Man, gravity sure was taking his/her sweet time making her fall.
"Oh, that's a pretty bird.", she thought as a bird flew by. It was a neat bird. It had blue feathers and black plumage on it's chest. "I think I'll call it George.", Yang decided.
Now Yang could feel gravity kick in and decide where she would land. Unfortunately, it was right on the cafeteria. This was a convenient shortcut, actually. Well, better make her aura appear before it was too late.
"See ya, George.", she thought as she tried to wave goodbye to the bird. Unfortunately, all she could do is flail around uncontrollably as the air whipped past her at a fast rate. Now it just seemed like gravity was over-compensating for earlier.
Folding her aura around her, Yang crashed through the cafeteria roof. The other students really didn't care. In fact, not many people looked at the busty blonde that crashed through the ceiling. Weird stuff happened here all the time. This was nothing much to worry about.
"Oh hey, ice—", was Yang's last thought before she crushed the frozen yogurt machine under her. It was a tasteful landing, indeed.
When Team RWB walked into the cafeteria, they were a little surprised that Yang landed in there. They were less surprised that she wasn't moving too much. She must have spent a lot of aura to absorb the shock of the impact. But hey, she was a big girl. She could deal with it.
Ruby was less concerned about her sister than the fact that Yang had crushed the desert bar. While she knew Yang could recover relatively quickly, she also knew that it would take a while to rebuild the desert bar. Plus, Beacon would probably take the difference out of Yang's student account. That might become a problem later. But, she pushed her worries aside as Team JNPR waved them over to their table. It was time for her to stuff her tummy with the sugary, tooth rotting food she preferred to eat.
But first, Ruby made sure to grab up some frozen yogurt from where Yang lied. Taking an uncrushed bowl, she scooped some off of Yang's torso. Bleh, it was blueberry flavor. Well, maybe Weiss would like it. She took a quick glance at her sister, who was still in shock from the fall. At least she didn't get a head injury. Those healed slowly, even with the help of aura. Yang should be up and at 'em in no time, given her current state.
So, Ruby took the frozen treat to Weiss and got in line for her own lunch. Hopefully, nothing too bad would happen for the rest of today.
The rest of that day wasn't too bad. That lunch session in particular was fine. Surprisingly, Weiss really did like blueberry frozen yogurt. And, Nora's bizarre story about combining mechas and the power of love got at least half of everyone's attention. Eventually, before the lunch session was over, Yang managed to get up and join Teams RWBY and JNPR at the table. Sure, she was pretty sticky due to being covered in confectionery and other sugary foods, but that wasn't a real issue. After one quick tongue bath from Blake in the closet, Yang was mostly as good as new.
As for the classes, the teachers didn't really mind that Weiss wasn't talking today. At least it allowed other students to answer questions in her place. Weiss often tried too hard to answer every question asked. So, it was refreshing to hear other opinions.
So, as the last class ended for the day, Team RWBY thought that the universe had tossed them a bone today. Well, mostly a bone. Okay, maybe not the entire bone. Maybe just half of it. Or, just the marrow. But at least they got a part of the bone to begin with. That was more they could say compared to some of the other days that Team RWBY (plus or minus some members) had to slog through.
Walking back to the Dormitories, Weiss decided it was a good time to get started on her practice.
"Do re mi fa so la ti do. Do ti la so fa mi re do.", she vocalized, practicing her pitch and scale.
"You know, I kind of expected you to talk normally once you opened you mouth.", Yang observed.
Weiss shot her an annoyed glare. "If you MUST know, I'm doing my warm up routine. If I'm to be singing for the entirety of the show, it's important to get my routine started early.", she explained. Yang simply threw her arms up in surrender. Weiss knew what she was talking about better than her.
"La la la LA la la LA la la", harmonized Weiss, massaging her throat while making noises. Everyone decided it was best for them not to comment on Weiss' techniques. She knew what she was doing. Plus, it was towards a good cause.
Honestly, how bad could it be?
Roughly five hours later, Weiss hadn't stopped her practicing. Ruby had stopped listening around hour two, and decided to drown her out by listening to the music on her scroll with her headphones. That, coupled with the book currently covering her face, drowned out the world to her.
Yang and Blake weren't so fortunate. Yang didn't have headphones, and holding a pillow over her head didn't help much. Blake's enhanced hearing form her Faunus ears made things even worse. In fact, her singing was amplified to her. It must have been the pitch doing that. As a result, she was being driven mad. A cat Faunus and loud, close noises didn't mix too well.
"Would you please just stop?", Yang begged, still holding the pillow over her head. "It's past ten o'clock! I need to sleep!", she cried, holding the clock up to Weiss' face.
Weiss refused to heed Yang's pleas. In fact, she decided to practice even louder. Her practice was good on two fronts: getting her voice just right, and getting revenge on Yang for her earlier jokes.
Blake wasn't handling this whole practice thing well at all. She was pacing around the room, clutching at her ears and groaning. Her eyes darted around frantically. Damn her ancestry! All of these loud noises were making her jumpy! This was worse than the time Yang brought in that laser pointer!
Luckily, salvation arrived in the form of a knock at the door. Weiss opened it to reveal Jaune and Ren standing there, in their pajamas. Both of them looked rather tired.
"Weiss, can you please, keep it down in here?", Jaune asked of her. "My whole team is tired. Just please stop the singing already!".
"Look, I need to do this to get ready for this weekend. If you don't like it, you can deal with it.", Weiss replied, annoyed. This was her practice, damn it!
Ren at this point shoved Weiss out of the way and into the room. If looks could kill, then Beacon would have to be declared a Zone of Alienation. Grabbing the digital clock of of the desk, he shoved it towards Weiss.
"Can you tell me the time on this?", Ren asked, dead serious.
Weiss looked at him nonplussed, and replied "It says it's ten twenty.".
"Right. Now, we've got a room full of tired teammates, of which one of them needs her sleep desperately. And if they don't get their sleep, that one person will kill everything in sight with a big hammer in the morning. Do you understand? She. Will. KILL. Us.", Ren explained in a menacing, almost flat voice. Jaune looked sheepish standing in the hallway, as if he wanted to say that but couldn't.
Weiss hadn't considered that Team JNPR might hear her loud practicing. Now, the thought of an angry Nora with a hammer that also shot grenades was completely terrifying. Given the right amount of time and ammunition, she could level the entire building.
"O-okay, I'll stop. This was good enough for today, anyway.", Weiss said, agreeing with Ren's sentiment.
"Thank you.", he replied, still sounding annoyed. He then walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him. Never mess with a sleep deprived Lie Ren.
Sweet, sweet silence filled the room at last. Weiss sat down on her bed, while Blake flopped onto hers. All of that pacing around made her pretty tired. Unfortunately, Yang then broke that moment of silence to pieces.
"Remind me to get them a thank you card tomorrow.", Yang said, half seriously.
"Oh, very funny, Yang.", Weiss snarled.
"You think so?", Yang asked, her eyes lighting up. A heavy silence grew between them.
"No.", Weiss replied coolly.
Yang slumped back down on her bed. "Aww…", she moaned.
Well, all things considered, that Wednesday overall wasn't too bad. At least the universe saved them some marrow. That was enough to carry the day to completion.
Whabam! Another chapter completed! I must admit it's nice to have the end in sight, now. Not that it's a bad thing for me to keep writing like this, but at least now I have a defined destination. So, anyway, if you could drop me a kind or critical message in the reviews section, that would be great. This is The Draigg, signing off currently.