Beacon's courtyard opened up past the main gates like someone had decided that first impressions were a moral responsibility. Tall trees, clean stone, towers catching the afternoon light at angles that seemed architecturally deliberate. Students were filtering in from the airship docks in clusters, some looking around with carefully performed composure, others not bothering with the performance at all.
Ruby and Yang stopped walking at approximately the same moment.
"Wow," they said.
Yang recovered first, taking in the full sweep of it with her hands on her hips. "The view from Vale's got nothing on this."
Ruby had already stopped being a person. She was vibrating slightly, eyes gone huge, locked onto the students moving through the courtyard around them.
"Ohmygosh, sis " her voice had climbed half an octave " that kid's got a collapsible staff she started drifting sideways " and she's got a fire sword, oh, a fire sword
Yang caught her by the hood and pulled her back.
"Ow ow
"Easy." Yang reeled her in like something caught on a line. "They're just weapons."
Kaito, who had been standing slightly behind them with his hands in his pockets, made a sharp sound.
Both sisters looked at him.
He had his head turned toward Yang with an expression that, behind the sunglasses, managed to communicate something between betrayal and disbelief.
Ruby pointed at him. "Thank you."
"'Just weapons,'" he said, like he was quoting something deeply irresponsible.
"They're an extension of ourselves," Ruby said, turning to Yang with full conviction. "They're a part of us. They're she gestured broadly at the fire sword across the courtyard "so cool
"Why can't you just swoon over your own weapon?" Yang said. "Aren't you happy with Crescent Rose?"
Ruby pulled Crescent Rose from her back and snapped it into its scythe configuration in one practiced motion, the blade catching the light.
"Of course I'm happy with Crescent Rose," she said, and meant it completely. "I just really like seeing new ones. It's like meeting new people." A pause. "But better."
Yang gave her a look.
Kaito did not give her a look because he agreed with her.
Yang reached over and flipped Ruby's hood down over her face.
"Ow
"Ruby. Go make some friends."
Ruby pushed her hood back up, squinting. "But why would I need friends if I have you?" She glanced sideways. "And Kaito."
Yang opened her mouth
Then, in the manner of a weather event, a group of students materialized around Yang from some direction that didn't fully make sense, and they were already moving, already talking, already heading somewhere with the momentum of people who had places to be, and Yang was swept along with them or possibly was the momentum, it was difficult to tell
"Actually, my friends are here gotta go catch up kay, see ya, bye
And then she was gone.
Ruby spun. Stopped spinning. Stood very still with the dizzy expression of someone whose landmark had just relocated.
"Wait where are you' She turned again. "Are we supposed to go to our dorms? Where are our dorms? Do we even have dorms?" Another turn. Her eyes had gone slightly unfocused. "I don't know what I'm doing."
She took one step backward and walked directly into a luggage cart.
Cases went everywhere.
Kaito watched this happen.
He watched a girl with silver-white hair spin around, take in the wreckage, and arrive at an expression of absolute affront before Ruby had fully registered she was on the ground.
"What are you doing?"
"Uh sorry (Kaito unnoticed in the back round mimicked the scene)
"Sorry?!" The girl picked up a case with the energy of someone who had been waiting for something to be furious about and had found it. "Do you have any idea what damage you could have caused?"
Ruby held up one of the cases. "Uhhh…"
"Give me that." The case was snatched. It opened to reveal a soft crystalline sound, the contents catching light in ways that Dust did when it was very pure and very expensive. "This is Dust mined and purified from the Schnee quarry
"Uhhh…"
"What are you, brain-dead?" A vial of red Dust appeared under Ruby's nose. "Dust. Fire, water, lightning, energy
"I I know
The vial got closer. Ruby started coughing.
"Are you even listening to me? Is any of this sinking in? What do you have to say for yourself?!"
Ruby sneezed.
It was a very special sneeze. It was the kind of sneeze that only happened when someone's face had been in close proximity to a vial of Fire Dust for an extended period. It went off like a small celebration flame, a burst of frost, a crack of static all of it directly into the white-haired girl, who stood very still for a moment in the aftermath, covered in soot that was already fading.
"Unbelievable."
Kaito had found a low wall nearby and was sitting on it.
He watched the whole exchange the heiress, the Dust, the sneeze, the snow and electricity, a vial skipping across the cobblestones to rest at the feet of a dark-haired girl sitting alone reading a book, who picked it up, read the label, and looked over with the expression of someone doing a quiet assessment.
Ruby apologizing. The heiress escalating.
"Ugh you complete dolt. What are you even doing here? Aren't you a little young to be attending Beacon?"
The dark-haired girl Blake, something in Kaito's read of the situation decided approached with the bottle.
"It's heiress, actually." Both Ruby and the heiress looked over. Blake's delivery was completely level. "Weiss Schnee. Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, one of the largest producers of energy propellant in the world."
Weiss straightened. Smiled. "Finally. Some recognition."
"The same company," Blake continued, without pause, "infamous for its controversial labor forces and questionable business partners."
Weiss Schnee's face did several things in quick succession.
Ruby chuckled.
Weiss took the bottle back, gathered her luggage, and departed at a speed that suggested she had better things to do and wanted everyone to know it.
Ruby watched her go, shoulders sinking slightly. "I promise I'll make this up to you she called. Weiss didn't stop. Ruby sighed. "I guess I'm not the only one having a rough first day." She turned. Blake was already walking away. Ruby looked around the empty courtyard, then slowly lay down on her back on the cobblestones like a person who had run out of directions.
"Welcome to Beacon."
A shadow fell over her.
"Hey." A hand appeared. Blond hair, green scarf, the particular complexion of someone who had recently been ill. "I'm Jaune."
Ruby took the hand and stood up. "Ruby." She looked at him. "Aren't you the guy that threw up on the ship?"
From the wall across the courtyard, Kaito slowly put his face in his hand.
Then he started laughing not loudly, but genuinely, the kind of laugh that came from somewhere that didn't get out much. He pressed his knuckles against his mouth. His shoulders shook.
He heard footsteps.
"Kaitoooo." Ruby materialized in front of him, hands on her hips, hood slightly askew, looking at him with the betrayed expression of someone who had been through a lot in the last four minutes. "Why didn't you jump in? Big meanie."
"Jump in," he repeated, straightening up.
"Yes. At any point. Any point at all."
"You had it."
"I sneezed electricity on someone."
"You had it eventually."
Ruby made a sound of deep injustice and turned to Jaune, who had been standing slightly to the side, watching this exchange with the uncertain expression of someone who had arrived mid-context.
"This is Kaito," Ruby said, by way of explanation. "He's known me since we were four and he is not helpful."
"I'm very helpful," Kaito said.
"He ate all my cookies."
Jaune blinked. "…Is he coming with us?"
"Where are we going?" Ruby asked.
Jaune paused. "I… was following you."
The three of them ended up on a winding path alongside a river that ran through Beacon's inner grounds, which was scenic enough that it felt almost intentional, like the academy had landscaped specifically for this kind of wandering.
Jaune had apparently decided that motion sickness was a topic worth defending.
"All I'm saying is it's a much more common problem than people let on
"I know, I'm sorry, Vomit Boy was just the first thing
"What if I called you Crater Face?"
"That was an accident —"
"The name's Jaune Arc! Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue " he pointed finger guns " ladies love it."
Ruby squinted. "Do they?"
"They will. I hope they will." A pause. "My mom always says never mind."
Kaito walked on Ruby's other side, hands in his pockets, listening to all of this with the quiet attention he gave most things that were worth paying attention to.
Ruby pulled out Crescent Rose and stabbed it into the path.
Jaune took a large step back. "Whoa
"It's a customizable high-impact sniper rifle," Ruby said, with the pride of authorship.
Jaune blinked. "A-wha
She cocked it. "It's also a gun."
"Oh. That's cool."
"So what've you got?"
Jaune drew his sword. It was a real sword — straight, clean, clearly old, the kind of blade that had a history rather than a spec sheet.
Kaito looked at it.
"Swords are so last year," he said pleasantly.
Ruby made a noise that was half agreement, half apology on his behalf.
Jaune looked mildly wounded. He produced his shield anyway, expanded it, tried to demonstrate its retraction mechanism, achieved instead a brief mechanical argument with his own arm before the shield shrank back down and clipped onto his belt.
"It gets smaller," he said. "So when I get tired of carrying it
"Wouldn't it weigh the same?" Ruby asked.
"…Yeah." He looked at the ground. "It does."
Ruby patted his arm. "I'm kind of a dork about weapons, so I went a little overboard designing mine. Did you make yours?"
"It's a hand-me down. My grandfather used it to fight in the war."
"That's a family heirloom," Ruby said, and meant it as a compliment. "Not many people have an appreciation for the classics."
Kaito said nothing. He looked at the sword again, reading its age in the grain of the handle, the wear pattern on the grip. Someone had used that sword a great deal, once. It had survived enough to end up here.
He filed that away too.
"So why'd you help me back there?" Ruby was asking. "In the courtyard."
Jaune shrugged. "Why not? My mom always says strangers are just friends you haven't met yet." He looked around. The path had curved twice now. The river was still running alongside them. "Hey, where are we going?"
Ruby looked at Kaito.
"I know where to go," he said.
She squinted. "Then why are we wandering?"
"I figured we'd waste time." He glanced at her. "You were having a conversation."
"We could've been having the conversation going the right way —"
"You seemed like you needed to walk."
Ruby opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at the river. Looked back at him.
"…I did kind of need to walk," she admitted.
Jaune pointed between them. "Do you two do this a lot?"
"Constantly," Ruby said.
Kaito said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
The path curved again and Beacon's main hall came into view ahead — unmistakable, lit warmly against the late afternoon, students filtering toward it from several directions.
Ruby looked up at it.
Jaune exhaled. "There it is."
Kaito had already started walking toward it, unhurried, hands still in his pockets.
Ruby fell into step beside him. Then, after a second, so did Jaune because the path went that way, and because strangers were just friends you hadn't met yet, and because some directions were easier to follow when someone was already walking them.