"So you guys saw the posters, right?" Yang said excitedly as they returned from their classes Monday evening.
"Yes. I was planning on an anime marathon that night, so…" Blake trailed off, feeling her intentions were implied.
"Whelp, too bad!" Yang playfully attempted to pick her partner up just to be pushed away seconds later.
"I'm not going. And you can't make me!" Blake asserted, her voice betraying a hint of a whine.
"What do you think?" Ruby piped up from beside her sister, looking at Weiss.
"What do you mean?" Weiss asked, having not been paying attention to her team.
"Well, that party on the thirty first. Would you, um… wanna go?" Ruby asked as a barely visible blush came across her face.
"I suppose I could be persuaded." Weiss answered. In truth, she'd planned on taking Ruby shopping for a dress that coming weekend. She'd already checked the security plans and cleared the outing with her father. Why I have to clear anything with him now is beyond me.
"Please? I really want to go but I don't want to go with Yang!" Ruby pleaded theatrically, dropping to her knees and folding her hands in front of her face.
"HEY!" Yang shouted, taking offense to her sisters words.
"Then you're coming with me this Saturday." Weiss responded, turning away and continuing her trek down the hall.
"Uh… was that a yes?" Ruby asked Yang who shrugged in response.
"It wasn't a no." Blake said, once again pulling out her book as she waited for the rest of her team to start moving again.
"Alright!" Ruby cheered gleefully. "Let's go back to the dorm, team!"
"Yeah!" Yang cheered, once again pumped up for the evening.
"And do our homework!" Ruby added almost as an afterthought.
"NOOO!" Yang dropped to her knees, reaching her hands to the sky.
Blake walked away to find Weiss watching the spectacle from just around the next corner. "I swear those two are straight out of a bad fan fiction."
"Although it seems our lives would be quite uneventful without them." Weiss responded carefully. She rarely talked to the faunus outside of the group and it often felt awkward.
Blake nodded and continued walking as Weiss watched Ruby pull a laughing Yang to her feet.
The members of RWBY each reached the dorm separately. By the time Weiss had finished half of her Weapon Development homework, Ruby and Yang walked in laden with bags of fast food for the whole team. Weiss returned to her sketch of her weapon's internal mechanism, attempting to draw as accurately as possible so as not to have the countless gears seeming to lock into the wrong places.
She was surprised that the room was relatively quiet compared to how it was when Yang normally walked in, but didn't complain. She didn't even notice the slight pressure at the foot of her bed as she drew the long curve of the injector pin on top of several of the gears. Satisfied with her work, she closed her book and looked up to find herself looking straight into a set of silver eyes.
"Wha-" Weiss jumped back into her headboard as she finally noticed Ruby sitting at the end of her bed holding two Styrofoam containers, each with a burger and fries.
"You looked like you were concentrating so I didn't want to interrupt." Ruby said, handing one of the trays to Weiss. Yang snorted and started laughing loudly, returning the room to the usual level of chaos.
"I don't want to be rude, but next time could you please not stare at me until I finish?" Weiss asked, feeling like she was glowing from the inside.
"No promises." Ruby laughed diabolically, earning her a thumbs up from her sister.
Weiss dropped the subject, sensing she'd get nowhere from an argument. She ate her food and checked the time. There was still enough time to get started on the massive Grimm Studies project they'd been assigned.
"I'm going to the library to start our project." Weiss announced to Ruby, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
About half way to the library, a slight pulse of air pressure and a brief breeze following shortly after announced Ruby's arrival. The couple walked in silence to the library.
Once there, Weiss walked in one direction for reference material while Ruby found a table that wasn't too crowded. Weiss found Ruby at a completely empty corner seat scribbling in her notes. As she drew closer, Weiss identified it as the Weapon Development homework. On the paper in front of Ruby, she'd drawn a long number.
"What's that?" Weiss asked curiously, wondering if Ruby was once again trying to cheat on her homework.
"A reference number to the schematic of my weapon. I had to provide one when Ozpin accepted me since my weapon is a bit unusual." Ruby explained. "I almost missed the initiation because I wasn't finished when it was due."
"I suppose that would be sufficient." Weiss agreed, setting the books down on the table. "I suppose the first job is to figure out what Grimm we should study."
"Hmmm…" Ruby thought as she replaced her notebook with a different one. "Well, I can only speak for me, but I sort of want to learn more about Nevermores."
Weiss thought about this as she started leafing through the assignment. "It seems the purpose isn't to make us learn. Just to amass enough information for a thirty page essay. Nevermores might not be the best choice."
"Port did teach us a lot about Boarbatusks, maybe those?" Ruby suggested, referencing the eighty page notebook that was dedicated to their whole first unit in his class.
"But they're not very interesting. There's only so much to talk about since their anatomy is very basic." Weiss stated. "How Port managed to turn that single story into a unit is beyond me."
Ruby laughed at Weiss's joke. It was rare for her to engage in that type of conversation, so Ruby knew that either she was in a very good mood or they'd become closer as friends. She hoped the latter. "How about an Ursa? Major or Minor doesn't matter, right?"
Weiss flipped through the index in the book she was looking at, finding the pages on Ursi. "There's only two pages in this book. Lets see if the others have anything better."
The next half hour was spent with Ruby and Weiss checking every book in the library before finally asking the librarian if there were any academic materials on Ursi that could be used for their project. Unfortunately the single book that focused on them was checked out and the rest were books they'd already looked through.
"Well, that's somewhat disappointing." Weiss sighed, sitting back at their table with Ruby.
"Yeah, but I guess it couldn't be helped. There's only so many books in the dorm library." Ruby sighed. "I would suggest to go to Vale, but that'll be a bit difficult not to mention wasting our whole weekend."
Weiss hesitated. Sure, she didn't want to waste a weekend doing homework in Vale, but what else could they…
"Ruby? What was the Grimm that was mentioned the most in all the books we looked through?" Weiss asked as a sudden idea hit her.
"Beowolves, why?" Ruby asked. "But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?"
"Normally, yes. But remember what Goodwitch said the first day of class? 'The purpose of Grimm Studies is to know your enemy'. What purpose does knowing our enemies serve?" Weiss prodded, getting Ruby to think to see if her own reasoning was at all flawed before she proposed her idea.
"Well, if we know their strengths and weaknesses, we can make sure we have the upper hand in combat." Ruby responded, still confused. "But what are you getting at?"
"We'll study Beowolves." Weiss said. She held up her hand to indicate she wasn't finished and Ruby closed her already open mouth so Weiss could explain further. "All we can learn from books is theory. It doesn't mean it'll be useful, or even relevant when we fight them. I'm proposing we do our project half from research, and half from experience."
Ruby's eyes widened at Weiss's suggestion. "Are you suggesting…?"
Weiss smiled slightly at Ruby's wide eyed excitement. It had obviously been too long since she'd been allowed to kill the dark creatures with her beloved scythe. "Yes, Ruby. I'm suggesting we do what we came here for. We'll take video with our scrolls and make notes from them after. Then we'll combine it with what we read here and together it should be enough for the project. Also, we could get some decent screen-shots to help build the model for the presentation.
"That'll be a lot of work, you know." Ruby warned, her face scrunching as she thought quickly. "It'll mean we'll be busy almost every day from now until the end of January."
"I believe it's doable. We just need Ozpin's permission to go to the Emerald Forest. And I promised to help you, so I suppose we could do our other homework together from now on." Weiss said. She hadn't fully thought out the implications of her suggestion before speaking it. But she couldn't change the past, so here she was… stuck with Ruby for the next six weeks.
"I'll take care of Ozpin. You go order dust and get me a kilo of propulsive. I'm basically out." Ruby took a stack of books to the sorting cart and dropped them there before leaving.
Weiss sat there for several minutes before finally accepting her current situation that she'd unthinkingly created. She picked up the remaining books and dropped them onto the cart beside Ruby's before leaving to the armory.