44

Winter curiously looked at the small tube Tai asked her to give to his daughters. She honestly couldn't understand why he even trusted her with something so personal. There was no lock, no type of protection on the package. Nothing would stop a possible thief from opening it and taking whatever he sent them.

And he gave it to her, no question asked. Just remarking that if she was going to Beacon anyway she might take it with her.

What a joke.

She was more protection conscious even when sending messages to Weiss through the manor staff.

/

She wasn't panicking.

She only saw a very familiar ship of which she knew that there were only two in use and only one of them was flying under the Atlesian military. And had attached pale blue tapes on tips of each wing.

She needed to properly greet her sister, introduce her to the team and…who should she pick first? She couldn't bring all of them, Winter would be too crowded.

Ruby was the leader. She should go as her direct superior. It would be only proper. She also had next to zero social skills and would probably weird Winter out.

Pyrrha was her partner and quite famous. And also knew how to behave. But…it would be like showing off a trophy. Someone she managed to partner up with and siphon fame from. Pyrrha would still go with it but she wouldn't like it.

And Yang… She would personally like nothing more than to bring Yang in front of her sister and tell her everything. They would get along as fellow big sisters and everything would be great! Sadly, her track record for her dreams coming true wasn't very good so far. Especially after coming to Beacon. The only thing that went as planned, at least to an extent, was being partners with Pyrrha.

Unfortunately, before she could even decide which member of the team she should take with her, Weiss realized that she might have another problem.

Where the hell are they?!

Not knowing where Ruby was somewhat concerning but nothing new. She was probably trying to create a doomsday device against grimm or something like that.

Yang was… usually she would know where she was. Oh right, she woke up with a strange glint in her eyes and was prowling the halls of Beacon ever since, looking for her prey.

And Pyrrha was…strange. For whatever reason, the only normal person on their team, became extremely withdrawn. They had managed to work their way through the consequences of their messy mission but as soon as that was over, something went wrong with Pyrrha. She was still trying to be her usual self when around them but they could see her tense shoulders. How she would zone out every once in a while. How she was frowning and deeply in thoughts whenever nobody was looking.

And it all happened after Goodwitch asked her to visit the headmaster.

Information traveled very fast around the school.

Both her and Ruby had tried to ask her what was going on but Pyrrha only brushed them off with a couple of kind words.

She just hoped that it was true and Ruby wouldn't go asking the headmaster. With all of her weapons on her person…

Team leaders held a lot of responsibilities and rights when it came to other team members and if something was happening with Pyrrha and she wasn't informed, she had all the legal grounds to take action. And if she would end up doing anything… Well, she already knew all the contacts on Jacques' lawyer team. If they could make him of all people squeaky clean then bailing out Ruby would be a piece of cake.

Anyway, Winter's ship was already landing. Weiss quickly checked herself in the mirror to make sure she was presentable, earning herself a saucy wink from Ivory, and she left the dorm and made her way over to the Beacon's main gate.

-BBW-

"Okay! Everyone in position?" Ruby shouted out and fixed the protective glasses.

"Ready!" Pyrrha called back, once again wearing all the available parts of her new 'weapon'. The metal wings with gunblades instead of feathers half folded around her person in defensive formation. It looked quite strange from the outside perspective due to the difference in proportion. While there were faunus with wings, none had a span of almost twenty feet.

"Affirmative." Penny spoke, standing on the other side of the borrowed training room, right opposite to Pyrrha.

Ruby gave them both a quick nod before turning to her own machines for monitoring the ordel. "Start the stress test in three…two…one. Go!"

Deep red light shone from Pyrrha's 'wing'. A few minor shifts in the construction and a half dome of red hardlight formed around her. Just in time to meet Penny's onslaught of small low powered laser fire.

Each emitter was calibrated to work with a hexagonal pattern, giving her fully deployed shield a honeycomb look.

"All good! Penny, switch to the big one!"

A short pause, lasting only a couple of seconds, began. Penny recalled the Floating Array and started charging the main laser. Pyrrha used her semblance to separate several individual swords from the wings and formed a multilayered hexagonal shield.

Then the laser hit. Pyrrha stood her ground as the room was bathed in yellow light as the attack was stopped by her defense.

"Pyrrha! Adding secondary targets."

Here comes another headache… Pyrrha slightly frowned behind the visor as multiple frisbees, tennis balls and other simulated targets started flying around the room. And wasn't it a pain in her butt to split the attention between blocking and aiming, even if the program dealt with tracking.

Catalog emotion: pride.

Done.

Penny watched the show Pyrrha was putting on in satisfaction. Was this how her father felt when she did something cool? It was her first attempt at proper software and it seemed that it worked perfectly.

"Enough!" Ruby called out after two minutes of continuous action. Pyrrha was already battling the small headache but it wasn't as bad as the ones she was getting before. Penny was actually the one who was worse after the ordeal.

While Pyrrha's weapon system was hooked up directly to Beacon's power grid, she was on her own and firing her laser for a long period of time drained her quite a bit. And that was with a slightly changed test plan. The original involved a shoot out between her and Pyrrha to test her own shields.

She knew that emotion. Fear. No. Something less severe. Trepidation. Pyrrha had thrice the guns she had, her shields were statistically two times superior to hers and Pyrrha had essentially unlimited energy supply while also having about ten times more space for storing dust.

"So…what are the results?" Pyrrha asked Ruby after she was done removing her heavy equipment. And damn, her shoulders were aching. Usually she would use her semblance to ease it up but today she wanted to avoid making her headache even worse. Which led to having to carry the full weight on her shoulders.

"Everything within expectation." Ruby replied without looking away from the accumulated data. "The strain was acceptable and the power consumption was at twelve percent."

"Oh! So you already have a power unit in mind." Penny added.

"Yep! Just waiting for all the stuff to arrive." Ruby replied with a smile. "Although… it's taking them really long… I knew Atlas was big on bureaucracy but I'm going to graduate before they finally send me my things!"

"Technically, it would be either Weiss' or my." Pyrrha cheekily added and slightly giggled at Ruby's pouting.

"Anyway-" Ruby continued, seeing that Pyrrha would admit that she was in the wrong. "Currently I'm estimating that secondary weapons will have about 15%, primary will have 40%, 25% for processing and 10% for mobility. The rest is for emergencies."

Penny's eyes slightly widened. Ignoring the fact that Ruby intended to strap even more weapons on Pyrrha she asked about something more innocent. "Only 10% for movement? I'm not sure there exists a technology that would make it that efficient." She would know. While walking and running was easy, the jets were really hungry. As well as cooling.

Ruby was about to answer when she stopped with her mouth still open and looked to Pyrrha. An obvious question in her eyes.

Pyrrha rolled her eyes. Penny had already seen her semblance and while she was around the same social skills like Ruby or… well, most of the people she seemed to spend her time with, she was still very perceptive. "My semblance is polarity." She kindly supplied. "The main idea is that it would only have some basic movements and emergency options. Most of mobility would come from simply moving it around directly."

"But wouldn't that drain your aura too much?" Penny innocently asked.

Ruby and Pyrrha shared an awkward glance. They did some calculations over the break focusing on exactly that. The current estimation was that Pyrrha's aura would only last for about three minutes of all out combat before her aura would run out while the power cell would last for about thirteen, fifteen at best.

"That's… a work in progress." Ruby awkwardly supplied while poking her fingers together. Pyrrha only nodded along. If only she could somehow get Yang's reserves…

"Well, Jaune's semblance is an aura transfer and… he has a lot." Penny offered. It was probably wrong to share knowledge that would be used against them in the tournament but… Ruby already knew a much more important secret and Pyrrha openly told her about her semblance despite it not being exactly open knowledge.

A couple minutes later, Ruby called the training over and done and Penny excused herself. Once she left Pyrrha shot Ruby a slightly worried glance.

"Ehm… I'm not sure how to say it but…I think there is something strange with Penny."

While Ruby frowned a bit at the wording, she would let Pyrrha finish her point.

Pyrrha uncomfortably shifted. "It's just… When I was using my semblance-"

Ruby's eyes widened. She already knew where this was going. What to do now..?

Pyrrha also noticed her reaction and stopped talking, finding it slightly amusing how Ruby's face would scrunch in thoughts.

"I- I know what you mean but… could you keep it to yourself, please?" Ruby earnestly asked. "It's really private and Penny is very self-conscious about it. So… just don't really mention it or…just ask Penny. Just be nice about it, okay? It's kinda her secret to tell anyway."

Pyrrha slowly nodded. "I understand." She didn't. Most of her body was metal and it simply made no sense. Sure, she had recently met General Ironwood and his entire right side was prosthetic but this was going even further. What the hell must have happened to her so that she would need… a full body prosthetic? But if Ruby knew and was okay with it…

Although… Was she really that unperceptive? She was essentially the last one to learn about Blake being a faunus. Then there was Weiss who she was pretty sure was slowly developing a second personality. She would never say it though. Frankly, sometimes she wouldn't mind having one too so that she wouldn't have to deal with all the crazy things happening.

At least now she herself had a secret to hide. Yay! She was special!... What a joke. It was Ozpin's secret and… why did she have an inkling that while mr. Branwen said that the sisters weren't aware of it, they actually knew quite a bit about their little group.

Thankfully, Ozpin gave her time to think about the whole 'maiden' thing. She actually tried to not think of it at all and simply enjoy whatever normal time with her team she could have.

-BBW-

Greeting Winter went off without a hitch.

…

Then Weiss had to face reality. While technically everything went exactly as planned at first, it was obvious Winter was quite upset with her. An unspoken agreement was made to not talk about all the messes Weiss was getting into lately. At least not in public. People would have rather vocal opinions about a Schnee going bloody vigilante against White Fang. Even if both sisters agreed that it wasn't that big of a loss. Too bad Vale was the kingdom that cared about the sanctity of life the most.

Then everything went to hell when some drunk showed up and started verbally harassing Winter. It wasn't even catcalling or some anti-Schnee slogans. 'Jimmy's lapdog?' Not only was he disrespecting the Atlasian military, he was talking down to her sister for achieving such a high position! Talk about jealousy… 'Daddy issues?!' Well…their family was definitely screwed, mostly due to Jacques but Winter was the one who handled it the best! 'Tai expanding his harem beyond his team?' What did that even mean? They had only been on one mission together. And why was Winter getting so angry over some uncultured swine? Although… no. Nonono. Sure, she would be happy for Winter if she would finally find somebody but if it was Yang and Ruby's dad… Awkward. The age difference wouldn't be that much of a problem but her relationship with Yang would be really weird in that context.

"Can you stop overthinking everything and deal with this peasant?" Ivory finally decided that she had enough and made her displeasure known. "He is wasting my time, your time and Winter's time. Slap that annoyance away already."

Sure, sure… Weiss replied with a mental eyeroll. Glad to have you back. After figuring out she could move around by possessing a summon she would spend half a day away only to come back completely drained and go into deep slumber. And dear Brothers, was she an ass when woken up without getting her beauty sleep…

A medium sized ursa rose from a glyph and gave the black haired man a threatening growl. She wouldn't let it attack of course. While idiocy was annoying and his rudeness towards her sister would definitely justify violence, she was still a noble huntress. She would only make him back off and go on with her day.

Too bad the target of her ire wasn't really a helpless civie. She only realized that after her summon's skull was cut clean off by an oversized longsword.

"Really now? Using grimm against a huntsman…" He shook his head, the aggravating smirk growing even wider. "But if that's how it's gonna be… come on! I'm waiting, Ice queen." He pointed the sword down and stood in a very laidback manner but what little could be seen of his muscles betrayed his readiness for a fight.

To his surprise, both sisters pulled out their weapons. He snorted. "Go away kiddo, you are an ice princess at best."

Winter bristled. "Leave my sister out of this, Qrow!" She could…tolerate…his words against herself. It was extremely tiresome but she was slowly building up immunity. But if he dared to talk that way to her sis-

"Would that make mother an ice empress?" Weiss said aloud with a perfectly serious face.

Winter could only incredulously stare at her. "Wha-?"

Qrow burst out laughing. "Told you Beacon would be good for her! Pfff, Schnee with a sense of humor…" Through his laughter, he barely managed to take a couple gulps from his flask.

Finally, Winter had enough of this idiocy. Especially if this uncultured moron was set on corrupting her little sister. As for Qrow, even if he was still using one hand to hold his stomach amidst his outburst, the other one was still holding the sword.

Meanwhile Weiss noticed a person with a familiar golden mane open a window three stories above them.

Just as Winter was about to jump forward, Weiss caught her wrist. She only managed to turn around when something crashed in front of Qrow, forming a small cloud of dust.

/

"Hey there, firecracker. Missed me so much you couldn't wait?" He taunted with a smirk.

"Not really." Yang casually replied. "Just smelled a familiar scent of cheap whiskey when I woke up."

Both were ignoring the fact that Yang was keeping Harbinger's blade in a deathgrip.

"Hey! I only drink the good stuff!"

Yang raised an eyebrow. "Should I care?"

"No. At least wait another year." ... "Don't give me that look. You know Tai would blame it on me!"

"Tough." Then she gave him a vicious smirk. "You know, you've been around for quite some time and you didn't even bother to visit."

"Oh, so you did miss me." He mirrored her expression.

"Don't flatter yourself." Yang flatly answered. "But Rubes wouldn't mind seeing you, even if I don't see what the hype is all about."

"Still a brat… And that's why pipsqueak is my favorite." Qrow overdramatically shook his head. "I've been working, you know? Can't just run off. Even if I myself wouldn't mind."

"Oh, that's alright!" Yang gave him a wide smile. "You don't have a choice anymore!"

/

Ozpin, flanked by Glynda and James, arrived at the main entrance after seeing that Qrow and Winter were about to have yet another argument.

So far, everything was within expectation. A small crater in the pavement, a couple of scorch marks and two shallow parallel trenches in the ground a couple feet away.

What surprised him was that instead of having to pull those two away from each other, Qrow was yelling at his niece while waving his sword in the air for better emphasis. And the sword was bent at about forty degrees with a very obvious fist imprint right in the middle. The Schnee sisters only stood nearby looking more confused than anything but neither seemed to be guilty of any violence.

Overall, all was good, if only somewhat time-wasting. Still, last time Xiao Long joined a brawl, three separate walls had to be repaired. Hopefully Yang wouldn't try to beat either of her parents in property damage. Or at least not within the confines of his school.

/

"You broke my weapon!" Qrow yelled at Yang, still slightly in disbelief that she somehow managed to do this kind of damage.

"Well, it was your fault you tried to block my punch with it." Yang shot back. "Besides, now you have one more reason to go see Rubes."

"Oh, so you are making a mess and then having your sister clean it up? How very mature of you… What about doing something by yourself?"

"I can shove it up your ass if you insist."

-BBW-

"Can you cut it out already? I get tha-"

"OH DO YOU?!" Weiss didn't let Yang finish. "I can tolerate you jumping out of the building to save time. I can deal with every member of your family avoiding common sense like a disease. But why can't you keep it somewhere where you wouldn't be dragging dozens of other people in your mess?!"

"We didn't!" Yang protested. "Nobody got hurt."

"Because they ran away." Weiss flatly added.

Yang just shrugged. "That's just how we deal with disagreements among ourselves."

"That's the most moronic excuse I've ever heard! And you know who my father is."

"It's not an excuse, it's reality. Just try to take away Ruby's cookies next time she decides to gorge herself. Just don't come crying after she shoves a rocket launcher into your face."

"Wait, that really happened?! I thought Tai was exaggerating!" Winter shouted out.

Both younger girls turned to her, clearly forgetting that they were actually leading her to their dorms. They felt a bit bad about ignoring her the entire time.

Winter, on the other hand, was alright with being left to her own thoughts. Especially the ones concerning her sister.

While Qrow's niece was way too blunt and quite crass for her liking, she was definitely honest, which was a breath of fresh air for someone who had to spend a lot of time dealing with politicians. And Weiss seemed to agree with her thoughts. She may have been berating her for almost ten minutes straight, Winter couldn't feel any heat in Weiss' words and the back and forth between them sounded completely natural, like it was an everyday occurrence. Still, she had some very important questions for the girl.

For example: What was it about shooting at the reporters? Sure, they were aggravating but… right, family tradition to solve everything by pointing a weapon at it.

But most importantly, she needed to talk about her sister's newly found appreciation for vigilantism. Winter was of course proud but discipline and order had to be upheld even if the cause would justify breaking it. That was a slippery slope and on its end stood a scythe wielding drunk.

She was so deep in thoughts that she didn't notice that they had arrived until Weiss lightly cleared her throat and motioned for Winter to go in.

Bunk beds. Well, one bunk bed and one suspended bed with a… dust lab under it. Closet, reinforced storage unit.

Nothing unusual.

Wait. There were three beds and four people in the team. Or did Weiss really live up to her threat and somehow convince the headmaster to give her her own place.

"Yang and Ruby sleep together. That is if Ruby actually comes back from her lair." Weiss was already guessing her sister's thoughts.

"Right…" Winter lamely acknowledged the answer. Overall, it was much clearer than she had expected. Of course, having a dust lab and keeping weaponry in there went against a lot of regulations but she was expecting something akin to a natural disaster with a small island of order which would be her sister's bed.

She would make sure to take a closer look later. General gave her some time to catch up with Weiss but her duty called. Then she would be able to look around the school, meet the team and their other acquaintances, observe the damage done to Qrow's nieces and whether or not they could be saved. Then call Marrow and ask him whether he would help her hide the body. Just in case. Well, unless they wouldn't send him back to Atlas. Stupid politics. They want the ships to be there but when they offer one of their best specialists, Atlas is suddenly overstepping.

"Oh, excuse me. I've almost forgotten." Winter suddenly called out and retrieved a small, not even a foot by foot, package. "Taiyang asked me to pass it to you seeing that I was going to Beacon."

"Sure, thanks." Yang gave her a small nod of acknowledgement and took the box.

Within a second she opened it and turned upside down, much to everyone's surprise.

Which changed to confusion and bewilderment when after a few shakes a corgi fell out. Their eyes were about to fall out. The dog couldn't possibly fit into that-

Zwei was also followed by about a dozen cans of dog food.

Weiss massaged the bridge of her nose and then slowly dragged her hand down her face.

Winter was just trying to understand what was happening. Maybe even breathing the same air as Qrow made her drunk and she was just seeing things.

Yang picked up the dog without a fuss and brought it up to her face. "Why hello little guy. Did the old man ditch you?" Zwei let out a happy bark and tried to give Yang a lick on the face. She wasn't amused and pulled him out of reach. "Ruby might let you kiss her but I'm not dealing with your saliva in my hair." She flatly stated and put the dog on the ground. "Go take a look around and say hello to the new people."

Winter's mouth was still gaping open in disbelief, even when the small dog ran up to her and started sniffing at her legs.

"Either ignore it and then pretend it was all a fever dream, or just accept it, and get used to some weird things happening." Weiss nonchalantly spoke up to her sister while bending down to pet Zwei. That was all she was going to do. She still needed to keep herself proper around Winter. But once she was gone… Cuddles!

"Weird things?!" Winter asked wide eyed. "There is a difference between strange and breaking the laws of physics!"

Oh you little rascal! Of course I'll give you belly rubs! "Well… I think they didn't get the memo."

/

/

/

Replies

To Kyunin9: I have something planned for Emerald x Weiss but it won't be that important. I already have the Fall of Beacon mostly thought out and Weiss and Ivory will be playing a different role. But you are right about Emerald's semblance not working good, because while she can affect whoever is in control, the other, of whom Emerald doesn't know, would still see perceive things clearly.

To zharshoul: It wasn't exactly about the WF. Ruby is against killing in general, Pyrrha and Weiss simply had to come to terms with killing another living being. Even from others, except Ilia and Blake, it was never about WF but about teenagers going full on vigilante and getting their hands quite dirty. Ilia and Blake were mostly freaked about, well, it could have been them there if they didn't leave.

To Kolt999: Technically, he helped her move on by distracting her with something else. Sounds like a good excuse doesn't it :D. As for not winning in this fandom… :P indeed.