Weiss sat up with a stretch, looking around to wake up her team only to pause as she realized the entire room had seemingly been turned upside down while they were asleep.
The most obvious part was they were down a bed. While before there were four in the rather cramped room, now there were only three. Each bed, including hers, had been shifted to make better use of the new space. A desk now sat against one corner and a half filled bookshelf sat under some (admittedly quite beautiful) red and black curtains. Next to Weiss' bed, her suitcases were organized by size and shape.
"What- what is this!?" She demanded into the air, causing Blake, who was sleeping with bow on (who did that?) to shoot up and look around like she expected an attack, only for her sharp eyes to lighten to an impassive look as she did. Reaching out, she shook Yang by the shoulder.
"Your sister went redesigning the room while we were asleep again," Blake deadpanned. Again? Again!?
"She must be more pissed about Ozpin than she was actin'" Yang mumbled into her pillow, like she hadn't been informed someone, her sister apparently, had changed the layout of the room while she was asleep. Which reminded her-
"Where is she?" Weiss demanded, looking around wildly for her "team leader" (like Weiss would have accepted that, even before she made it clear she didn't want the position. That just made things easier).
Blake slid from her bed and opened the door, calling, "Ruby!"
After a few seconds, Ruby's voice called back, "What?"
"Where are you?"
"On the Orbiter, playing with Chiro."
"Chiro?" Weiss asked.
"Her dog thing," Blake said, "You messed around with the room?"
"Couldn't meditate. Should I get back to the Link?"
"Probably," Blake said while the bathroom door slammed shut behind them. Glancing back into the room, Weiss noticed that Yang had finally got up, her dog sitting loyally in front of the bathroom door.
"The Link?" Weiss said, "wait, how do you know these things?"
"I lived with them for ten months," Blake said, "the Link is how Ruby controls her Warframes."
"Are you dating one of them then?" Weiss said, quickly realizing she was gonna be isolated from her team compared to the other three.
"No, Ruby just offered me a place to stay, she's nice like that."
Out of the common area stepped a tan warframe with… Were those live wolf heads attached to it!? What the absolute hell!
"Voruna today?" Blake said.
"Thought about sticking to Citrine, but figured I should show what my frames look like," Ruby said.
—
Pyrrha's first day at Beacon hadn't started the best, honestly. It wasn't anyone's fault, it just hadn't started well.
Everyone in Team JNPR had failed to set an alarm last night, meaning they had slept until the warning bell echoed through the halls of Beacon, forcing them to scramble to get dressed in their new uniforms and hurry to the dinning hall to choke down what food they could before bolting to the first class of the day, Grimm Studies, just before the final alarm.
They slid into seats behind Team RWBY as Professor Port, a rotund man with a bushy mustache and eyebrows, stepped into the room. Pyrrha settled into the seat behind Team RWBY's leader, eyes flickering down to the girl as she pulled out her notebook, noticing the girl was already looking out the window with a look of boredom on her face even as she braced a hand with a pencil in it on her own notebook.
In the Beacon uniform instead of the strange outfit from when she had suddenly appeared from one of the aliens during Initiation, it became clear how skinny the girl was. And speaking of the aliens…
Pyrrha glanced back to where a alien with four resting, multi eyed wolf heads, two on its shoulders and two on its hips, stood like a statue, a heavy ax on its back. Looking back at the front of the lecture hall, she glanced down at Ruby Rose's notebook to see a pair of sketches of the Grimm on the board. They weren't professional by any standards, but definitely better than a child's doodle. If Pyrrha had to rank it, it would be "advanced amateur".
Then Port began to monologue. It couldn't even be called a lecture as he droned on and on about his conquests as a Huntsman. But at the same time, his nearly closed eyes scanned the room, even as Nora's head hit the desk and began to gently snore, even as Jaune's eyes glazed over, as Ruby Rose's eyes closed and her head rested on her hand.
That one was interesting, because her hand kept moving, writing down chicken scratch. Was she… Transcribing the monologue?
"-and with all that said," Port said, cracking an amused smile, and Pyrrha nudged Jaune back to reality while Ren shook Nora awake. Ruby Rose's eyes opened slowly and she turned the page of her notebook, "I suppose one of you lucky students would like to fight a Grimm, wouldn't you?
A cage rose in the center of the room, a boar-like Grimm ramming into the grates and squealing with unrestrained malice the moment it saw them all.
"A Boarbatusk, one of the few types of Grimm that can survive in captivity long enough for us to use them for lessons!" Port called over the squealing, "Now, who would like to face it?"
Ruby Rose's hand began to raise at the same leisurely pace she had given the night before, and Pyrrha's hand shot up like a dagger, the sparks of competitive spirit that had been all but blown out of her igniting.
It wasn't a Giant Nevermore or a Deathstalker, but it would allow her to begin to gauge the distance between the two of them.
—
Ruby finished her sketch of the Boarbatusk before Pyrrha had retrieved her weapons and come back into the room. She wasn't the best artist, even compared to Blake, but she was decent. How couldn't she be when-
Ruby was sitting in the room shaped like a child's bedroom in the institute where the Zariman kids, "Tenno" as the Orokin called them, were being kept. It wasn't one of the rare occasions where they were allowed to mingle, so she had torn a piece of paper from one of the books in the room and grabbed some crayons and began to doodle out of boredom.
The door glided open, and Ruby looked up and put the piece of paper down. Into the room stepped Margulis, smiling happily, "Hello, my little Empress, how are you doing today?"
"Bored," Ruby said, standing up from the corner of the room and walking over to give Margulis a hug. The warm, motherly embrace came within milliseconds, "time for therapy?"
"No, your wall mates were complaining about hearing banging from your room again, so I thought I would see what you were doing. Redesigning the room again?"
"Still isn't right," Ruby said.
"Hmm," Margulis said, still not breaking the hug, "what would make it right, if you had to pick?"
"Extra bed," Ruby said, snuggling into the hug.
"Then I'll see about getting you an extra bed, little Empress, what have you been doing, other than redesigning the room for the forty third time? And yes, I have been keeping track."
Ruby's eyes lit up and she walked over to pick up the piece of paper, handing it to Margulis.
"Drawing? Do you like to draw, Little Empress?"
Ruby nodded.
"Hmm, I'll pull some strings to get a friend of mine to give you holocall lessons, would you like that?"
"If it isn't too much trouble," Ruby said, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear it nonetheless.
"Nothing is too much trouble for you, any of my little Emperors and Empresses, Ruby."
"Why do you call us that?" Ruby asked, curiosity rising.
"It's my little joke," Margulis said, eyes sparkling in the dim light of the lamp, "do you want to hear it, you have to keep it a secret."
Ruby nodded, not sure who she would tell.
"In an old language I studied when I was younger, they called their ruler Tennō, "Heavenly Emperor". And to me, that's what you all are, my little Emperors from heaven. I think it's better than just calling you that because you were on the Zariman Ten-Zero, that's so… Uncreative."
"Love you," Ruby said.
"And I love you. No matter what happens, don't let anyone take that from you, don't ever doubt it, I love you all with all my heart."
Ruby snapped back to the present as the gate of the cage opened, letting the Boarbatusk lumber out and look around. Ruby channeled the void just enough to kill her presence, feeling her heartbeat slow to a sluggish page as she did. She didn't want to draw its attention by accident. At the same time, an energy rose from Pyrrha, drawing the Grimm to her. Immediately after, two bullets hit the Grimm's eyes like bullseyes blinding it. But it could still smell her, could still sense her.
And sure enough, the thing began to spin before launching forwards like a missile. Seconds before impact, Pyrrha swung her shield down faster than most eyes could follow, an explosion of dust, bone and the stone floor flew out in every direction. Ruby tilted her head, letting a particularly sharp and large shard shave by it and embed itself in the wood.
"PYRRHA!" Jaune shot up, a look of horror on his face.
"Sit down, she's fine," Ruby said, pulling the shard from the desk and holding it in the air, revealing it to be the tip of a Boarbatusk tusk, "see?"
"Wuh-?"
"That," Ruby said, nodding at the fading dust cloud, "was the result of her smashing the Boarbatusk into the ground."
"Very good observational skills, Miss Rose," Professor Port praised as a death squeal came from the fading cloud of dust, revealing the Boarbatusk with shattered tusks and Pyrrha's spear through its black heart. The green eyed girl met Ruby's eyes, and swirled the dory into a resting position.
Well, well, well. A challenge then?
Ruby couldn't help it, she smiled at Pyrrha, watching her falter slightly at it, before returning it. She thought she could stand even to a Tenno.
Adorable.
From there, Port launched into an actual lecture about the weak spots of a Boarbatusk, but it was cut off by the bell ringing. As everyone filed out of the class, she called from Voruna "JNPR, you mind if I talk to you, alone?"
JNPR hesitated, before following her. Ruby was aware of Blake breaking off and ghosting after them, but didn't say anything about it. Finally, they found an empty room, a supply closet, and she leaned her back against the wall. Glancing at Pyrrha she said, "That was decent."
Pyrrha faltered for a second, before saying, "Thank you. Is that why you called us here, because you could have said that in cla-
"No," Ruby's eyes trailed to Jaune, and she asked a question that caused all four to act like she had just drawn Knell Prime off her hip and shot him right in the head.
"Why don't you have any training?"