Chapter Text
The plane's engine thundered in Yang's ears as it came to a soft landing. Professor Oobleck was off the plane and chugging his coffee in an instant, while the girls were still gathering their things. Blake stepped off first, exhaustion making every step heavy and slow as she followed after their speedy professor. Weiss kept a straight face, but the bandage on her right arm threw off her perfect symmetry. Ruby used Yang as crutch, leaning on her sister the whole walk back to Beacon quad. Bags under her eyes dropped and drool spilled from her mouth as she slipped in and out of sleep.
Yang was full of energy though, still running on her adrenaline high. At the entrance gate of Beacon, Professor Oobleck addressed them and reviewed their mission. Most of his lecture was too fast and blurred together for any of the girls to make sense of, but they heard his final "Same time next week girls!" Before he burst off back to his office.
"I think I'm ready for a hundred year nap," Weiss's strong front finally broke as she fell onto Yang as well for support. When Blake was tired, she was grumpy, so she had nothing to add as she made her way towards the dorms.
Once inside, Yang- who had picked up and carried Weiss and Ruby about halfway across the quad- lay the two girls down on their individual beds. Ruby was asleep and snoring instantly, the way she always did wen they were kids. Ruby would run and play, evading sleep, until exhaustion overtook her.
Weiss rolled onto her back and pulled her hair out from the high up-due. She yawned gracefully before curling around a pillow and slipping into sleep peacefully. Blake on the other hand face planted onto her bed from tripping over Ruby's discarded shoes. She didn't move from where she fell and was soon snoring.
Yang was still rolling and sparking with energy. The sun had only barely touched the horizon and there was no way she was getting to sleep anytime soon.
She shut the door quietly behind her and left the dorms. Across campus at the communications building, Yang sent a message to her father to update him on her and Ruby's training at Beacon. He worried about how Ruby was adjusting, and how Yang was doing in class.
She had no other messages to respond to so Yang closed out and retrieved her scroll from the machine. Outside in the spring air, Yang thought about heading over to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat. She stopped though when she heard the infamous laughter and pointless arguments of Neptune and Sun.
"No, no. Everything would be the same, except our weapons would be pool noodles instead."
"What kind of alternate universe is that? I'm talking about instead of being hunters, we're detectives in an under water city."
Yang sprang up behind the two boys, wrapping her arms around their shoulders. "Hey guys, what are you up to?"
Neptune yelped in surprise, but Sun wasn't phased. "We're heading to the Rec building. Pump some iron, spar a little. I'm coming for you, Yang. Soon I'll pass you and I will be crowned the King of Abs in Vale." Sun flexed his arms and Yang rolled her eyes, shoving him aside.
Neptune laughed at Sun and the two instantly got in a childish slap fight. Yang rolled her eyes and forced the two apart again, a little more forcefully this time. Neptune went sprawling back into the vine covered wall running parallel with the path. Sun helped pull him from the vines, but not without a few leaves and flowers caught in his gelled up hair.
Sun mocked “Awwwwww” at him, but Yang smiled. “I think they’re pretty.” she said, but couldn’t keep the giggle out of her voice. She plucked one pink bud from his hair and sniffed it. “Sweet.”
“Oh would you guys shut up,” Neptune grumbled, shaking out the remaining foliage from his hair. “Let’s just get to the gym.”
The Beacon Rec Building was the newest addition to the campus since it had to be rebuilt after a fire crystal incident a few years ago. The first floor was made up of a gym with weights and treadmills, a weapons’ range for shooting practice, and a medical bay. the second floor held twelve rooms for teams of four to spar and two large rooms for mass paintball training simulations. Twenty rooms for individual practice on the third floor. Yang stepped up to the front desk first, singing her name in and logging the time she entered. While Neptune and Sun signed in after her, Yang checked the room reservation board. There were three open spar rooms; she selected one and typed in their names.
The three had to cross the gym to get to the elevator. It was sleek and silver with teal lighted highlights, much like the rest of the renovated building. Fast paced techno music played as the elevator took them up to the second floor. Two hallways divided the blocks of rooms, green lights glowed over vacant rooms and red lights over occupied. At the end of the right hallway, a yellow light blinked over their reserved room and Neptune led the way towards it.
The metal door slid closed behind Yang, who was the last to enter. The room had a high ceiling and metal plating walls and floor that were controlled by a panel next to the door. Sun was standing at the holographic panel. “Are we against each other? One on two? Teams?”
“Let’s do a round of team.” Yang decided while she spread her leg apart a little and bent down to stretch. The buzz of a promise of a fight tingled in her toes and kept her jumpy. She decided to let some energy off on holograms before beating the crap out of the boys. She stood up and stretched her arms as well. “Hand to hand, or weapons?” Neptune asked as he stretched too.
Sun smirked and pointed at him “Good thinking, Nep.” He added hand to hand to the computer and shrugged his shirt off. As she pulled her gauntlets off, Yang wasn’t sure what difference that made, but she guessed the show wasn’t for her as she caught Neptune eyeing him. The three left their weapons by the door and stepped into a formation.
The whur of the machines starting got Yang on her toes. She flexed her fingers and stayed alert. Sun was bouncing from his left foot to his right in front of her, and Neptune kept a poker face. Teal lights rained down from the ceiling, building synthetic opponents. They moved fast and agile, cornering the trio as soon as they appeared. Sun jumped high above, landing behind the crowd and kicking their feet out from under them. Neptune was quick and light, dodging jabs and giving them right back to the holograms. Yang was as explosive as she always was. Her punches went through three holographic soldier at once and kicks sent them flying back.
More appeared to replace the ones destroyed and Yang didn’t stop. Their blank faces reminded her off those goons she fought a long time ago in Junior’s dance club. Yang sprinted across the room, punching two synthetics’ heads in and slamming the third to the wall. The blocks that built it felt apart around her fist, and Yang smirked at the dent she left in the metal plating. After an hour or so, Yang finished off her assigned number of opponents early and got the chance to admire both of the boys’ fighting styles and how well they worked together.
Sun was agile and light, flipping and spinning and jumping all over in his attacks. Neptune was fluid and changing like water. He moved like the ocean; attacking swiftly, retreating back to dodge an attack, then moving in again to strike. Sun watched Neptune’s back and kept him from being too overpowered, while Neptune corrected mistakes by Sun. They were laughing and joking, standing back to back as they took on multiple fake fighters. Their fighting styles complimented each other’s, and Yang’s bombshell head-on style didn’t mesh.
Yang walked over to the panel by the door and ordered a water bottle. It dispensed from an opening in the wall and she chugged it two swigs. As much as Yang loved fighting, and had plenty of energy left over, it wasn’t as fun being the weird third wheel. Sun and Neptune were on the same team, and knew each other better than anyone else. Yang wasn’t apart of that here, her own team was back in the dorms sleeping.
She hadn’t even had the chance to whip out Ember Celica, but Yang was no longer in the mood to fight. “I think I’m gonna head out.” She yelled so they could hear her. Sun groaned in fake agitation “Lame!” he yelled back, and Neptune told her goodbye.
Yang rubbed at Ember Celica’s plating on her way back to the dorm. The paint was chipped on her left cuff where she had misjudged her punch and clipped a concrete wall on their mission. They had fought beowolves, which normally weren’t hard to handle. But hundreds of them? It was understanding how tired her teammates were. The sky was streaked in pink clouds that complimented the pale blue sky. Yang could see the light fractured moon rising as the sun set.
From the head of the hallway, Yang could hear Jaune whining about something and Ren yelling at Nora for doing what he told her not to do. A usual evening in team JNPR’s dorm. What struck Yang odd though, was the bushel of pink rose buds and petals laying at the base of Yang’s team’s dorm. Their sweet aroma filled the hallway and instantly lifted Yang’s dull mood. She bent down to look closer at them. They seemed familiar, but Yang couldn’t place them. Amongst the petals laid a card the length of Yang’s thumb. In beautiful cursive handwriting, the words “Be mine” urged color onto Yang’s cheeks.
An admirer? But who would admire Yang? Sure people thought she was hot, would bang 10/10, but not many people actually developed a crush on her. She instantly pushed it out of her thoughts as she stood back up and used her scroll to unlock the door. Inside her teammates were still snoozing. Yang pulled her boots and gauntlets off and crawled into her bed.
It was probably another attempt form Jaune to swoon Weiss (she couldn’t figure out how Jaune didn’t realized that Weiss just wasn’t interested) but the warmth in her cheeks was still there as she fell asleep.