*Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY, it is the property of Rooster Teeth.

Assembly

The last of the students were entering Signal's auditorium. It was a large room with nearly three thousand seats which was more than enough for the number of students currently attending the academy. Today was the graduation ceremony, so all of the graduating students were standing to the right of the stage waiting for their name to be called so they could accept their certificates.

A silent faunus waited patiently as her teacher monotonously called through the roll and assigned seats for the class. She was about five feet tall, and although her fox-like ears added another two inches, she didn't count them into her height. She had long orange-red hair tied up into a ponytail with the bottom two inches bleached white similar to how the tips of her fox-like ears were coloured. She was wearing violet track pants with a similarly coloured track jacket that was unzipped exposing a white tank top. On the back of her jacket was her symbol, a closed mouth encircled by a fox tail. On her left hand, she wore a dark grey glove that ended just after her elbow. Her deep-set eyes were a dark violet, and her full, heart-shaped lips were slightly pursed in annoyance as she looked to her side.

Beside her was a girl with dark red, nearly black, hair who wore a red cloak. The faunus eyed the girl, whom she disliked because the red-haired annoyance had a natural rose scent to her that provoked the faunus's allergies. It wasn't a life-threatening allergy, so even though she had run out of her allergy medication she wouldn't be able to talk her teacher out of his, oh so obvious, name based seating arrangements.

"Roane, Marsali," The teacher called out making the red-haired faunus turn back towards the teacher.

"Present, Instructor" She answered. Marsali looked to the seat the teacher pointed to and quickly moved to sit down. When she sat down, she hastily activated her semblance. She surrounded herself with a dark violet glow that prevented her from making any sound. It was a helpful tool for when her rose-scented friend finally gets close enough to aggravate her allergies.

"Rose, Ruby," The teacher called out, pointing at the seat beside Marsali.

"Present!" Ruby replied happily, quickly moving to her place with a slight bounce in her step. She noticed Marsali's active semblance immediately, "Uhh, dad, maybe I should sit somewhere else."

"What's the matter with that spot, dear?" The teacher asked finally noticing the glow around Marsali, "Oh, nonsense Ruby, Marsali just doesn't want to disrupt the ceremony!" He added boisterously. Ruby looked like she was going to argue, but seemed to decide against it as she sat down nervously beside Marsali.

'Of course, you'd say that Instructor Xiao Long, your daughters could do no harm at all!' Marsali thought vehemently. Her head flung forward with a silent sneeze, 'So it begins.'

The ceremony passed by slowly, and due to her constant sneezing and massive headache Marsali was acutely aware of every single moment. She stared at her scroll confirming how much aura she had left, 'This is taking forever,' Marsali thought to herself as her aura was about halfway depleted meaning she has been maintaining her semblance for about two hours. She could maintain her semblance on herself for well over four hours, though extending it to others was incredibly taxing.

"Yang Xiao Long," A voice called from the stage as a stunningly beautiful, young, blonde-haired woman walked onto the stage waving exuberantly at the audience with a huge smile on her face.

'Well, at least, it's almost over,' Marsali thought to herself tiredly. Her head jolted forward with another silent sneeze, 'I couldn't survive another hour of this hell.' The voice of Signal's headmistress listed out Yang's accomplishments at the combat academy and handed her the certificate to signify her successful graduation.

Marsali rubbed her gloved left hand. 'Two more years before I stand up there myself; though, it should have been three after the incident a few months ago...' Marsali flinched, not from a sneeze, but the memory. 'Why didn't I just listen instead of being a haughty little bi-' As Marsali recovered from her ten silent sneezes in quick succession she turned to stare daggers at the rose-scented girl beside her. 'Why does the world hate me?'

The ceremony finished quickly after Yang left the stage since there weren't many people who had last names starting with Y or Z. Marsali was happy when Instructor Xiao Long finally dismissed the class from the auditorium, 'And our summer break finally begins!' Marsali thought happily as she left the school. She still had to wait for her sister before she left the academy's grounds, but she knew it wouldn't be long before the younger girl arrived.

While Marsali waited for her sister, she pulled out her scroll to check her bank account. Her brother Gorm deposited money into the account biannually from his job off in one of the other kingdoms; Marsali didn't know which since Gorm was very tight-lipped about his work. Marsali usually didn't have to worry about money because of her brother, but due to the medical expenses from her incident a few months ago she realized her funds wouldn't make it through the summer.

She didn't have any way to contact her brother as he usually sent messages to her through the academy and none of the letters he sent had a return address. Marsali looked through the contacts on her scroll, many of whom she hadn't spoken to throughout the previous year, she finally found a name she felt she could trust and dialed the number.

"Hello, this is Sapphire Azura. Who might I be speaking to?" A voiced answered coldly from the other end of the line. From the tone of her voice, Marsali knew she recognized her number.

"Hey Sapph, it's Mars." She replied nervously.

"You have one minute to tell me what you want, Roane." Sapphire's tone made Marsali confident this wouldn't go well.

"I- I need a favour," Marsali's voice was timid and quiet. She was afraid Sapphire would ignore her request, but she had to try. "Yo- You see, I'm worried that I don't have the money to continue supporting Erin, and the money Gorm sends me won't be coming until the start of the school year..."

"Stop there." Sapphire interrupted, "I know you well enough to know you aren't asking for money, so I take it you want me to ask my parent's if Erin can stay over for the summer, correct?"

"Yes," Marsali's voice betrayed a hint of glee at her former friend's quick understanding of the situation."

"One condition," Sapphire said curtly, a hint of warmth showing in her voice.

"Anything!" Marsali replied a bit too quickly.

"You'll be joining us as well." The condition came with a short but joyful giggle.

"I- but. What?" She was dumbfounded at what Sapphire said.

"Marsali, I know things have been rough for you these past two years. I'm going to make this clear; I am your friend, and I'm not going to let you live on the streets again."

"How did you-!?"

"Please give me some credit, I know what happened the week before your parents were murdered. I just wish you'd have a little more faith in our friendship."

"I- I- Thank you Sapph." Marsali was overjoyed she still had at least one friend with her despite how she acted over the past two years.

The two said their goodbyes and Marsali hung up just in time to see her younger sister hopping along towards her. Erin was younger than her sister by a year, and also attended Signal. She wore her Signal Academy uniform, a dark green skirt with a matching jacket over top of a white dress shirt. Her hair was the same colour as Marsali's but was cut short in a messy bob cut. Her eyes were also the same vibrant violet as her sisters and shone with an intensity of joy that her older sister was only recently rediscovering for herself.

"Who were you talking to Mars," the shorter faunus asked. Her eyes showing a hint of worry, "Was it Gorm?"

"No, no, Eri, I was talking to Sapphire. You remember her don't you?" Marsali replied with a smile

"I remember her. You two use to be inseparable!" She shouted with a giggle.

"Well, we'll be staying over at her place for a while, so when we get home, I want you to start packing your things."

"Yay, sleepover! Sleepover!" Erin sang as she giggled.

The two faunus then began to walk towards their apartments on the other side of town.

A/N: Hello everyone, and welcome to the end of the first chapter of my first RWBY fanfiction. I haven't done story writing for quite a few years now, and I am just now getting back into the flow of things, so I apologize if things seem stilted or poorly written. I would also like to give special thanks to Jax (8490bytes on tumblr) for taking the time to proof-read the chapter for me.

Though Ruby any Yang show up in this part, they (and the other canon characters) won't be overly major players in this story. Other than that the story will be sticking as closely to canon as a Signal-based OC-centric story can.

Thank you for taking the time to read the story and I hope that you enjoy it.

~Kayokane

Edit: I found out from Jax that he is not the JaxtheWanderer on this site, so in order to avoid confusion he wanted me to use his tumblr name instead.

