Bands
"Yeah, let's keep that bit of information away from Yang. Though the one year period isn't that bad." Summer replied sweating slightly at the thought of Yang committing manslaughter to get her sister out of her own mess. She also thought 'Well, Yang will probably still try to kill him…"
"It say anything else about Sperata's?" she asked
"Just a list of the requirements to become a Sperata and things that being one provides to her." Arthur explained as he thought about the lines that mentioned something about 'rings' which once again caused Arthur to pause and shiver at the implications of a ring to a bride.
Of course things just couldn't stay normal for Arthur, as the moment he thought about the rings that his Tome suddenly began to flip open surprising them both, albeit Arthur a little less as he had already witnessed the phenomena before.
The Tome began to rapidly flip through its pages, stopping on a page with an illustration of Ruby wearing her regular attire standing amidst a field of roses with her Scythe, Crescent Rose held in her hand curving around her body with a shattered moon in the background highlighting the scene with a subtle silver glow.
Seeing this image Arthur gaped as he thought 'Isn't this the drawing Ashe did last year after her RWBY binge…" remembering the week long stint where Ashe had locked herself away in his room, strangely enough with a sketchbook and markers.
"Okay, I need a copy of that" Summer stated as she looked in amazement at the intricate drawing she could see of her daughter. Soon snapping out of it when the picture began shining a blinding silver light causing both Summer and Arthur to turn their heads away and cover their eyes until the light dissipated.
Once the light was gone Arthur and Summer blinked a couple of time to clear their eyes of any afterimages. Arthur being the first to see what had happened to the Tome. Which now had three ornate bands atop it. Two of which had a similar design of an illustrious black metal with a red centre with thin silver lines on the edge of the red, and finally atop both of the bands was a small ruby the had been inlaid with more silver. The other band stood out from the two as it was much simpler in design; the entire band was carved from a light, ashen wood with a small sapphire inlaid atop it.
'Oh god' Arthur thought as he stared at the three obviously rings in horror, while from the side of him he heard a deafening… 'squeak' causing Arthur to flinch as he clutched he ear in pain only just seeing Summer lunge for the rings in a flurry of red and white petals successfully picking up on of the red rings holding it up to her eye inspecting every detail. Completely ignoring the fact that a book just materialized the ring out of nowhere.
Once she was done inspecting it she looked at Arthur with a wide smile as she slowly took a step backwards. "Summer don't you dare." She took another step back "Summer no." and then she disappeared from the infirmary in a storm of red and white petals "Summer!" he shouted as she disappeared.
"Oh, sweet ever-loving god. Why hast thou forsaken me" he muttered as his head fell onto his pillow. Only to flinch moments later as he heard a roar from somewhere in the academy which he accurately predicted as being Yang, yet moments later he also heard another loud and meaty 'Thwack!' which he also predicted as Summer once again knocking her own daughter out with a karate chop.
'You know what, screw this, please be a dream… Nightmare, yeah, nightmare sounds right.' Arthur muttered as he placed the Tome and rings on the nightstand and laid his head back and quickly fell into sleep. Not waking up a single time during the night, even as numerous roars and 'Thwacks!' could be heard around the academy throughout the night.
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"Owww… What, happened" Yang whined as she nursed the back of her head for the second time today.
"Your mother knocked you out to prevent you from killing Arthur." Weiss bluntly stated while sending concerned stares at the still maniacally cackling Blake, while ignoring the bulge of fabric on the top bunk of the bunk beds that team RWBY had put together in their room on the first day of lessons, almost causing them to be late for their very first lesson of the year. This bulge was of course Ruby, hiding from everyone, and failing, miserably.
"Arthur!" Yang yelled as she stood up and marched towards the door of their dorm room, throwing it open with a loud 'Thud!' causing even the bulge of fabric that was Ruby to flinch at the loud noise. But didn't go much farther when she heard from behind her "Yang, stop." This was said by Ruby, who had decided to slightly lift up the blanket she was hiding beneath only revealing two silver orbs, and if you looked hard enough you would see that surrounding the two orbs was cherry red skin.
"Ruby" Yang said with a soft caring voice "Big sis has to go kill a man so he doesn't harm you, I'll be back in ten minutes." Her voice still sounding caring while her face morphed into a psychopathic, bloodthirsty visage with blood red eyes and blazing yellow hair.
"Leave, him, alone." Ruby ordered, noting that Blake was staring at her intently while carrying a notebook instead of her scroll as she was intently writing in it as she watched the scene playing out.
"You can't be serious Rubes! You were tricked into signing a contract that turned YOU into HIS bride!" Yang pointed out getting a soft squeak from her sister who once again hid beneath her safety blanket.
During Yang's chat with Ruby, a knock could be heard, and as the only one of the team that was relatively 'normal' at this point Weiss took it upon herself to open it, meeting the entire team of team JNPR, who lived in the room directly across from theirs.
"What? Now's not exactly a good time for this." Weiss stated tired, annoyance evident in her tone.
"Oh, hey Snow Angel." Jaune said as he leaned against the door frame of team RWBY's dorm "Just wanted to see how a beauty like you is doing on this fine night." He said, getting rolled eyes from Weiss who then immediately slammed the door in his face, but it didn't close as it ended up crushing his fingers in the process causing him to scream in pain as the door stayed slightly ajar.
"What he was trying to say, is that we heard shouting, everything okay here?" Ren asked, trying to fix his leaders mistake as Pyrrha checked on Jaune's now bright red fingers. Nora on the other hand had noticed Ruby bundled up atop her bed.
"Oh oh, what happened to Ruby? Who did it? Can I break their legs? let me break their legs. I'm gonna break their legs. Ren, I want pancakes." Nora asked, asked again then pleaded as she then decided she was going to inflict bodily harm and suddenly felt like having pancakes in the middle of the night.
"Yes!" "No!" Yang and Ruby yelled, causing poor Nora to get confused as she began to analyse the situation that she knew nothing about "What about… one leg and an arm?" she bargained
"Nora, please be quite…" Ren asked as he placed his hand atop his face in exasperation. Pyrrha soon arrived next to him along with Jaune, who was lightly blowing on his hand.
"Just come in, maybe you can prevent a crime by getting Yang to talk." Weiss explained as she offered for them to come in with an exhausted expression. Getting confused stares from the four new people who shared concerned glances with each other.
Once they were inside they noticed the bundle of blankets of a very poorly and obviously hiding Ruby.
"Ruby? Are you okay, what happened?" Pyrrha asked as she peered into the small gap in the fabric that Ruby had been peeking out of but this quickly disappeared as Ruby flushed even brighter and completely closed the gap not muttering a word.
"What happened to her?" Jaune asked getting a tired sigh from Weiss, as well as noting the cackling Blake on her bed as she was furiously writing in her notebook, either not having noticed their presence or just simply not caring, this sight sending shivers down all of team JNPR's backs. Also noting that Yang was now having an intense discussion with Nora about, advanced techniques of breaking bones while keeping the victim awake sending even more shivers down the spines of Weiss, Jaune, Pyrrha and Ren as they had not known that their own team mate had a frankly scary amount of knowledge on breaking bones.
"I-if, you really must know, Ruby got her mind abducted into a book where she met with a lady who lives in the book who tricked her into signing a contract that essentially means she is now betrothed to Arthur." Stuttering as she quickly took her eyes off of Nora who had somehow found a collection of ominously human like bones that she was using to demonstrate proper bone breaking procedures to Yang who was intently taking notes in her scroll.
"Wait, what?" Jaune muttered in response having not fully understood the extremely succinct explanation.
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"Wow, just, wow." Jaune muttered in complete awe at the strange tale he had just been told.
"That, I don't even know how to react to that" Ren replied as he began to hold his fore head.
"That didn't actually happen. Did it?" Pyrrha asked getting blank stares from Weiss and Yang.
Then there was Nora, who, having understood what had happened, decided to brush up on her more 'violent' techniques.
"Should we stop her?" Jaune asked in concern, flinching as he heard a sharp 'Crack' as the leg was torn off of a training dummy.
"Nora, Arthur didn't know what was happening at the time from what Weiss told us, he was still unconcious at the time." Pyrrha said as she tried to calm her eccentric teammate, also flinching as she watched the head of dummy magically fly away as it was punched in the chest.
"Don't defend him. He may not have known about it, but he shall still feel my wrath." Yang stated as she cracked her knuckles "Nora, roll out" she said as she began to walk towards the door of their dorm, only to be knocked out once again as the door flew open, launching Yang to the other side of the room and out of the open window.
"Yang!" Pyrrha and Jaune shouted as they ran to the window and peered out it, seeing the Yang was hung limply over a branch of the tree outside the window, both working in tandem to pull Yang back inside before she woke up and fell to the ground.
"Ohmygodyohmygodohmygod!" the new guest squealed as she ran up to Ruby's bunk "Ruby!" she shouted, only getting a slight raise of the blanket showing Ruby's eyes. Noticing it was her mother who was, extremely excited, for some, ominous reason.
"Mom?" Ruby lowly muttered in concern.
"You have no idea what just happened!" she squealed again as she began to squirm holding her cheeks, before looking around and noting "Hey, where's Yang?" she asked in confusion as she saw Weiss point to her left at the door which now had the imprint of a face on it, and then pointing to the window, which Yang was now being dragged through. "Ooohhhh. Sorry~" Summer said as she scratched her head in embarrassment.
"Anyways," Summer said immediately moving on from the daughter she had concussed, for a third time that day "So, I was talking with Arthur about what happened and he explained that there are two ways of annulling the contract." Summer said getting an immediate reaction from the groggy Yang who was now massaging her face.
"Really!? How!?" she yelled.
"Death." Summer bluntly stated.
"I can provide that" Yang responded as she unsteadily stood up and began walking towards the door. "Yang, get back here before I provide YOUR death." Summer angrily added. None of them noticing that Nora had also begun to walk towards the door, only to be karate chopped in the back of the neck knocking her out by Ren, who then picked her up, carrying her over his shoulder and exited the room and entering team JNPR's room.
"Yes mom!" Yang said as she immediately returned to her spot and sat cross legged on the ground while crossing her arms in frustration.
"And, the other, is they both have to consent to the dissolution of the contract after one year."
"That's gonna take too long. Killing him is faster" Yang once again added, showing her budding psychopath.
"Yang, dear, keep interrupting me and I will share your deepest, darkest secrets. Remember that one time you went running around path wi…"
"Okay! You win! Say no more!" Yang pleaded and closed her mouth and pretended to zip it closed.
"Now, that's not even what I came here for. While we were talking his book began shining again," she went silent, building up anticipation "And this appeared!" she shouted as she held up her hand showing a small red, black and silver ring with a ruby embedded on the top of it.
"Is that a…" Weiss began "Ring?" Blake finished
"It's beautiful…" Pyrrha muttered as she analysed the simple yet amazingly done ring.
"Wait. Did you say his book began glowing? Why weren't we told about this?" Jaune asked and was promptly forgotten "Anyone?" getting no response "Oh, okay then." He crossed his arms in mock anger.
"RAAAGGGHHH!" Yang shouted as her eyes turned even redder then usual and her hair burst into even more 'flames' as she charged towards the door, this time fully intending to kill. Yet once again Summer appeared behind her hand raised as she slashed down towards Yang's neck, yet surprisingly Yang was able to dodge it this time, only to get a knee to her stomach knocking the air out of her lungs as another chop came towards her neck, this time striking true, and even harder than before, sending out a lour 'Thawck!' throughout the campus.
And thus the beginning of a sleepless night began for the entirety of Beacon, as later rumours of a particularly voracious Grimm appearing in the middle of the night began to surface around campus.
"Is that really necessary?" Weiss asked, getting shrugged shoulders from Summer who immediately returned to her previous position holding up the ring for everyone to see.
"I'm guessing that is for Ruby then?" Weiss asked.
"Probably, there were three in total that appeared, he didn't say much about it but I'm guessing this is one of the things that is provided when one of those contracts is created." Summer answered as she turned to Ruby with a wide smile that insinuated 'if you don't, I will.'
"Mo-mom wait!" Ruby begged as she began to back away, not going very far as she was still in her bunk and could only go as far as the wall. "Weiss!?" she pleaded only to see Weiss enter the bathroom with her toiletries. "Blake!?" She turned to Blake in a panic, seeing her taking even more notes, except now a pair of glasses had appeared on her face that completely blocked all sight of her eyes from view. Summer inched closer.
"Pyrrha!? Jaune!?" Ruby begged.
"Sorry Ruby, even I can't knock out Yang like that." Pyrrha stated as she looked at the still unconscious Yang that was slumped on the floor
"Yeah… you're on your own Ruby." Jaune replied putting his hands up indicating he wanted no part of this. Her mother took one more step closer, one centimetres from the bed frame, if you looked hard enough you could swear that there was a shadow of a woman with a wide evil smile covering Ruby who was now shivering as if a deer caught in the headlights.
"Now, dear, no running"