Chapter IV - These Four Kingdoms
Yang
“…And to commemorate those fallen in the Remnant War, the Councils of the World proposed a single idea: a paramount event of prestige, a— a mixing, as it were, of world-wide culture, to take place, moving with the light of the Kingdoms, to represent our unity as one whole. Can anyone tell me the name of this event, and where it is set to take place?”
Yang slouched back in her seat and raised her hand, already feeling dully bored. Who would have thought Beacon matched right up to Signal in the boredom factor, huh? “It’s the Vytal Festival. It’s in Vale this year.”
“Precisely, precisely! Thank you, Miss Long. And can anyone tell me—“
Yang tuned out Professor Oobleck’s chattering lecture and nudged Blake, who was sporting the same glazed look of every kid that passed through this room. “You bored, too?”
Blake didn’t turn to look at her, but a slight smile curled the corner of her mouth. “How could anyone get bored in here?” she murmured drily, hushed, pulling at the collar of her uniform.“It’s such an interesting class about these four kingdoms of ours.” She wasn’t taking diligently taking notes, as Yang had assumed— which relieved her; her partner wasn’t a total washout, then— but drawing a lovely scene of a forest at dusk, a whirring freight car winding along the foremost of the page.
Folding her arms above her head, she leaned back against the plush and wood paneling of the rows. Oobleck had darted back to the lectern that was on the podium of the room, and was expounding something about combat tactics or cobalt taffy, she wasn’t sure. His chatter all blended together. “I’m gonna conk out, Blake. I can feel my boredom growing.”
“Like your sense of bad humor?”
“No,” she said grudgingly, “like a poisonous tumor.”
“So you’re essentially implying that this class is a disease.” Blake looked up with a crooked grin. “I’m inclined to agree.” Her eyes darted past Yang, and narrowed. “Looks like trouble up in their alley.”
Yang leaned forward slightly, and turned her head, balancing on her elbows, and saw what Blake was referring to. Weiss was glaring daggers at Ruby, and Yang was surprised her sister wasn’t smoking from the anger in her eyes.
“She’s not finding any solace from the fact,” Blake muttered, “that we’re team RWBY, and not team WYRB.”
“What, team wirb? It doesn’t really roll off the tongue like RWBY does.” Amused for a heartbeat, Yang rocked back in her seat. “Well, she can get the ants out of her pants, I say—“
“Ahem,” Oobleck paused his lecture, eyebrows raised in their direction. Yang and Blake quickly shut up, jaws snapping shut like a rubber band springing back into place, and he continued.
Yang clocked in the thirtieth minute of the class with her seventh eye-roll.
“Oddball says—“
“Do not call me that again, or I will melt Crescent Rose into an anatomically incorrect dick.”
“Yang says,” Ruby continued without missing a beat, “that we have class with Professor Port next.”
“He’s the pudgy one with facial hair that we’re all mentally shaving instead of listening to his great recounts of how he heroically slew a Grimm.”
“That’s one way to put it.” Blake was reading, again; her vast mini-library dwarfed the bookshelves that were filled with a meager, sparse collection of books that the rest of the team had. Upon cajoling Blake to at least dwindle the large populous of books she owned, she had, instead, added another bookshelf and meticulously organized it, which the team had acquiesced without comment. “Don’t expect to acquire a great deal of knowledge there.”
“We should still pay full attention,” Weiss said stiffly. “It’s illicit to ignore the teacher.”
“Lighten up, Salty,” Yang said with a gaping yawn.
“Why does everyone keep calling me that?”
Because you’re being an asshat to my little sister, Yang thought mutinously, tugging at the jerkin of leather emblazoned with a ball of flame that wrapped around her thigh. She didn’t voice the thought. “We should go. I heard he makes you suffer through a book he wrote about his heroic exploits if you’re late to class.”
“What a terrifying prospect,” Ruby said, looking aghast, before she bounced up and sheathed Crescent Rose through a belt on her back, ammo jingling. “Oddball—“
“Ruby, I swear—“
Ruby laughed before skipping off through the door. As it swung wide around her, Yang could see the barest hint of a snarl fixated on Weiss’s face, and she exchanged a glance with her partner.
“There’ll be trouble with them soon,” Blake said, following her gaze. “Mark my words.”
“I can see that. I just wish she wouldn’t be so— furious about it, you know? Ruby’s only fifteen; she’ll idolize her older partner, and if she’s going to go around and make snide comments about Ruby not being good enough or something—“
“She got accepted into Beacon. I think that’s plenty reassurance that she’s capable, Yang. Weiss is just angry because she’s a Schnee. They’re— a prideful bloodline.”
“That’s putting it lightly.” Yang glanced at her partner; her face was entirely, carefully blank, all sharp and unforgiving like an angel’s statue. A team I’ve got nothing in common with, a partner I can’t synchronize to, and now someone out to get my sister.What a year this is going to be, she thought, surly, before following the rest of her team— still team RWBY, at least, not team WYRB— the door.
Later on, as she crouched, chest heaving as she panted, in the training room. Her feet were bare, and the punching bag, dark with indentions where her fists had blown into it, swayed on its braided rope. Sweat rolled down her skin, making her hair stick to her neck. Her shirt clung to her and she shook her head, blood thundering in her ears. She had foregone Ember Celica to help with this, and her hands were bruised and aching, a red flush blossoming across her jutted knuckles. Her semblance hadn’t kicked in, and it didn’t do so until her Aura lowered. For now, she was a regular combatant.
She drew her arm back experimentally before driving it into the punching bag with a grunt. With a satisfying thwack, the hit connected. The bag leaped back from her, jerking around on the rope, and she rolled her shoulders.
“I would hate to get in your way during a fight.”
Yang narrowed her eyes, raising her eyes up to the rafters. Blake was sitting on the edge— how on earth had she climbed up there without Yang noticing her arrival?— feet dangling over, and she looked coolly amused. She lopped Gambol Shroud around the beams and dropped down, stopping just short of the floor as she swung around gracefully on her own weapon, like it was a child’s swing, and not a deadly combo of guns and swords.
She stuck out a foot and kicked off the wall, spinning lazily in the air. “Hey,” Yang said by way of greeting, and turned away, attacking the punching bag with renewed vigor. One, two, three! She grunted and tried a whirling roundhouse kick. It sent her staggering away, a jolt lancing up her leg.
“Kicking is not your strong suit,” Blake pointed out, idly swinging like a pendulum.
Yang gulped in a breath, tired, and she faced Blake with pursed lips. “Really, what gave it away?“
Blake’s brow furrowed, flummoxed, and Yang sighed. “It was a joke.”
Blake didn’t comment, but she pushed herself off the wall again and twisted around to look at Yang. “I saw that your sister and Weiss seemed to have reconciled their differences.”
“So she’s not trying to go all Medusa-turn-you-to-stone-with-a-glare on Ruby anymore? We’re good as team RWBY and not team WYRB?”
Blake’s lips twitched, as if Yang had startled a smile from her. “I think we’re safe for now. They probably found middle ground.” Her partner slid from the loops of darkness and pulled Gambol Shroud into her palm with a twangy crack. Yang frowned at it. “What do you even call that weapon?”
Blake didn’t smile, but her eyes glinted, two chips of frozen fire. “A variant ballistic chain scythe.”
“Gee, that’s a mouthful. How about ‘swingy swingy sword-gun?’ What’s it even do?”
“Ridiculous,” her partner murmured, before she traced the silvery-gray pattern of flame stamped on cartridge. “I’ve had it for so long,” she murmured, eyes studying it. “It’s an extension of myself. I won’t divulge everything it’s capable of.” There was a wary nuance to her voice.
“Okay.” Yang shrugged, a little stung, and turned, rubbing her hands with leather before sending punches to the stilled punching bag. It jerked round, her fists finding steady rhythm as they alternated, smacking on the worn cloth. Blake watched her for a few moments before she dashed her weapon to the ceiling with a single sharp motion. It arced upward, the cleaver end of the gun sinking into the rafters— solid beams of oak, whorled and darkened with age— and Blake flipped upward onto the beams again.
“Making your exit, huh?” Yang called up into the shadows, but without a trace, her partner had been swallowed up in darkness, leaving her alone in the empty training room once more.