Chapter 3: Nine-thirty to Eleven

Ruby Rose

There is nothing more embarrassing than to speak a language you don't even know how to pretend to speak. It was already something Ruby never felt comfortable doing, always afraid to look like an idiot around her new friends. Now doing it in Spanish made it worse. Imagine constructing a sentence piece by piece and not ever really understanding what it was leaving the top of the tongue. That was all exacerbated by how much better most of the program was at it. She wasn't jealous, per se, she wasn't even the worst. Nora apparently didn't know a word of Spanish; she just wanted to go to the same school as Ren. As such Ruby could milk just a bit of her dark Spanish history to keep from being the worst, but that just made her feel bad for her new Danish friend.

The actual course was fairly simple. They all gathered together and went through the alphabet and basic practices of the class. Ruby found herself sitting next to Penny throughout the first class on one of the multicolored couches, trying to give Yang some space after all her hard work chauffeuring Ruby around. It was fairly interesting and laid back to have such a small class, only ten students when combined with the professor's assistant. All the little subdivisions of friends found their spot in the dorm lobby to do whatever was requested for them. Some early vocal drills closed them out in which Weiss was most adamant about being chosen. It was no shocker why, she was perfect at it. She was kind of a teacher's pet, but Ruby found it more impressive than annoying.

Some of the changes between high school and university struck her as soon as class closed. No homework was directly assigned. Apparently all the books and homework was assigned online, along with all the papers and projects due, one of the many things she was supposed to learn on her own. This offered a level of weird freedom where Ruby could finish as much of the class as she wanted as soon as she wanted, which seemed to make her less inclined to do so.

The next big change was as soon as class was over. The program students weren't a cohesive entity, instead many of them went off to do their own things. Blake apparently went off to work at some part-time job; others, like Yang, went to classes in totally different buildings; and Ren just went to nap in his dorm room, apparently more of a night person than a morning person. Ruby found herself alone in the dorm lobby until Penny would come back around eleven AM. She spread herself along the slightly curved couch of one section of the Foreign Language dorm lobby. Well, she was mostly alone. Weiss Schnee had no classes either. She instead sat alone near a whiteboard, working on what appeared to be physics problems.

For a while Ruby pondered getting up, brushing off her black band shirt and hoodie, make the short walk, and try talking to her again. She wanted to, wanted to badly after kind of having everything blow up the day before, but Ruby found herself fussing with her now near brick-of-a-phone's Gameboy emulator, trying to get some bootleg Pokémon game to work. No real reason to conserve the battery, after all, it's not like she could call anyone with it. That and thinking about distractions like her three other courses made the awkward more bearable. She had the late class in Anglophonic Lit, luckily with Blake, before that a university level Calculus with Penny and a few of the others. Her next class was physics, her preferred science of all required sciences. She would have it with Penny and Velvet apparently, though it only dawned on her that they weren't the only ones. If Weiss was doing physics work, she had a physics class, and if she had a physics class it would be the Foreign Student Program class. This awkward silence was going to last from nine thirty till eleven.

That was unless Ruby broke it. The thought imported some courage to her, for she was standing up, her recently acquired charmander left on the wayside in search of greener pastures. Weiss gave off an unapproachable aura despite seeming completely obvious to Ruby. Still, the red head pushed forward, brushing her hair a little bit as she walked towards Weiss. Honestly, she had no real explanation as to why Weiss seemed scary. She in actuality was just a pretty short and thin girl in a black dress with white flowers along the shoulders. The bow that held up her lopsided pony tail was still the same red ribbon. A pretty cute style, actually. Up close she had the finest handwriting even with dry erase markers, something that was kind of suppose to be messy. Ruby could see why, she had such dainty delicate fingers. Now dainty was a good word for her even if she scared the bejesus out of Ruby.

"Hey Weiss… whatcha working on?" Ruby knew, but just walking up all in her face asking about her kinematic equations was a bit of Yang-like strong-arm approach, something Ruby never had the charm to even attempt. Weiss stopped her work, the dry erase marker eased to a pause on the symbol for momentum. Just a look up, her blue ice eyes peering for a moment before returning to the task at hand, some question dealing with elastic collision.

"Oh, it's you." Weiss gave an audible sigh, clearly not intending to be interrupted during her work. It made Ruby question exactly what she thought she was doing here. "Studying physics. My next class is at twelve thirty." Ruby felt the same usual social pressure magnified, but she had to go for it. She already looked like an idiot, so there was no backing down. Nervous as hell, Ruby sat herself down at Weiss' table just opposite of her. Best spot possible, next to her was too close and a little personal space pushing and a chair away felt too on purpose. Just opposite from was a perfect balance. All was good.

"We have the same class!" Ruby announced maybe a bit too excitedly. Weiss hardly reacted, though she did pause for a moment. Whatever hope Ruby had for a response dried up rather quick as the Heiress just continued working, hands busy jotting and amending her own calculations. "So, why are you studying? We don't know what the professor will cover." Ruby just wanted to keep the conversation going no matter how weirdly frankensteinian it might end up as a consequence.

"You'll never get ahead if you wait for them to feed you information. I'm studying the basics ahead of time. It'll put me ahead." Weiss smiled with a sense of pride and self-satisfaction. She clearly took pride in being the best of a class, which Ruby kind of got. It was a little bit of a braggart's attitude, though she hardly knew Weiss enough to call her arrogant. Still, everyone needed to be proud of something, being really good at school sounded like a pretty cool one to be.

"I don't know. Isn't the point of class to learn?" Ruby questioned, not really meaning to discredit, but trade her philosophy on it. Weiss took it a little more personally, rewarding the question with a leer of sorts. Maybe questioning her wasn't the best, though she was still talking, that was a plus. Hopefully with a bit more effort Ruby could build a friendship out of something more than arguing.

"The point of class is to prove you know it. It's why we have grades." That made a certain amount of sense, though a bit more cynical than Ruby hoped. She would like to believe if everyone gave it their all, there would be no need for grades just learning without fear of consequence or reward. A little idealistic, but it sounded nice. Ruby didn't say anything back, lost in contemplation for a moment when Weiss asked the question. "Don't you and your friend hate me or something equally as stupid?" Ruby feared this might be the source of their real issue. Yesterday's shenanigans.

"I don't hate you… Blake just thought we were fighting, I think. She's really cool, I think if you two talked you'd get along," Ruby offered, wanting that sort of ending. Blake was pretty great, though Ruby had known her for just over a day. She was clever, and actually really nice beyond the initial don't-care act. In fact, trade a detached attitude with a really irritated one and the two of them were pretty interchangeable in terms of initial approachability.

"I don't think so. I know the type," Weiss countered, tossing the proposal aside. She sounded for once a little more open to Ruby, though she didn't appreciate the negative attitude about Blake. Still, Weiss seemed a lot more at ease, which put Ruby at ease. "I thought you were here to start a fight."

"No, I just want to be friends," Ruby reinforced earnestly. Weiss still seemed suspicious; her lips in a disapproving flat line, but Ruby could swear her eyes showed a bit of curiosity, at least in the idea of making friends. "Wanna study together?" Ruby offered, hoping to poke some of that initial curiosity. For whatever it counted, it seemed to work a little bit.

"There are some vector equations over there if you really must." Weiss kept up with the kind of big barrier act, but she seemed at least a little happy to have someone to work with. Probably just appreciated Ruby's initiative. Either way, Ruby proclaimed operation 'make Weiss kind of like you' an absolute success. Well there was a bit of a hiccup.

"What's a vector?" Fair enough question. Ruby wasn't the smartest person in the world, but no one she had ever known spent a lot of time talking about vectors. In fact this had been the first time she had heard the word outside of sci-fi movies and anime pseudoscience. She figured it was sort of a made up thing, like flux capacitors and stuff. Weiss on the other hand considered it a very stupid question, her eyes raised in concern, that intricate scar highlighted on her expression of honest surprise.

"Something with magnitude and direction… how much physics do you know?" she asked, illuminating just how much Ruby was out of her league.

"I took a class in high school once." Ruby laughed at herself nervously, her silver eyes darting around trying to find something less obvious to look at than Weiss' scar.

"You're a bit of a dolt, aren't you?" Weiss asked, trying to sound tough, but Ruby just laughed. Straight up belly laughed. She didn't mean to laugh at Weiss, but something about being called a dolt was funnier than it was insulting.

"Dolt? Do people actually say that?" Ruby asked when her lungs would finally let her. She didn't mean to make fun of Weiss, but Ruby had been speaking English for a very long time, done a lot of stupid things, but never in her life was she called a dolt, especially with Weiss accent making this cute, such a foreign, prissy, and proper combination. She felt like she was talking to a lady from the eighteen hundreds Germanic states.

"Yes, people actually say that!" Weiss shouted, her cheeks turning red from what Ruby though had to be a potent concoction of embarrassment and frustration. Ruby didn't like making Weiss feel bad, but watching that helped her be more comfortable, see her as more of a person than a solid wall of intimidating ice. People were less frightening when you proved they were in fact people.

"I didn't mean it badly. It's kind of like a cool, like unique thing… I thought it was cool," Ruby backpedaled as honestly as she could while keeping honest. The last thing Ruby wanted was to make Weiss hate her even more, though saying what she did felt a little embarrassing. How was talking to girls such a pain when Ruby already was one. It should have given her, like, home field advantage or something.

"Are you real?" Weiss asked, unsure on how to respond. She seemed to like the compliment, but maybe the sting of the insult hadn't left yet. Still, she was mostly disarming, not quite as aggressive as before.

"Umm, pretty sure, yeah…" Ruby replied with a smile, confident in her existence. Somewhere during all of this Weiss had stopped working on physics and focused on Ruby. At least she had her attention.

"I mean are you trying to mess with me," Weiss clarified, not totally free of suspicion. Ruby wondered for a moment. What could make someone so suspicious for goodwill and friendliness?

"No… I just think you're kind of interesting… wanted to be friends." Ruby didn't really mind repeating it, though she wasn't sure what Weiss wanted to prove this was earnest. "I'm not a particularly tricky person," Ruby tacked on adding her best good natured smile for measure, even if that just meant trying to beam from behind her red tinted hair. Weiss took to her best friendship smile with a slight sigh and some mumbled German Ruby couldn't really make out so well. A silence followed for a moment, neither of them stirring in the moment. Eventually with enough silence for the both of them, Weiss sat closer to Ruby, pushing a sheet of paper towards her.

"Well, you're of no use if you can't even use vectors. Here, I'll show you, but you better not expect this sort of treatment every day. I won't bother with a liability." Ruby nodded in agreement, enjoying her moment of success.

It continued like that for a while. Weiss teaching Ruby bits and pieces of physics, mapping out reality into diagrams of forces, vectors, and numbers. How to manipulate everything with perfect right triangles and mix matched formulas. It felt more like the two of them were playing puzzle games than studying, and despite Weiss' critical moments and all around humorless nature, Ruby found it fun to do together. There was an added benefit of surprising Weiss, too.

Soon enough Ruby was able to catch on. She was not the smartest person, but she could learn quickly, quick enough that Ruby began catching mistakes and solving the myriad of mathematical puzzles, pictures, and problems at almost the same rate as Weiss. She had the edge, of course, a bigger expert on this stuff than Ruby was, but as soon as she started catching up it turned into a race. Instead of figuring out puzzles together, they versed each other, trying to outsmart their respected partner. Ruby didn't care much about winning, though it was fun to try. Weiss most certainly did care though, flustered and surprised to have anything like this sort of challenge out of Ruby. Definitely made studying less tedious and annoying.

Eventually this gave way to a certain amount of silliness, cracking sarcastic insults and the occasional silly pun whenever someone was about to make a conceptual mistake. Weiss hated that at first, though Ruby thought she enjoyed having someone to fight on level with. She did most certainly hate the click of a tongue Ruby would make whenever Weiss made a mistake. Eventually, feeling a hint of evil Ruby did it when Weiss started doing things right, sending the silver haired girl into a mad chase for a mistake that never even existed. Ruby felt awful after a minute, quickly confessing her trickster ways. Weiss rewarded her with a couple of markers and erasers thrown at her face as well as comments, like dunce and dolt tossed around in equal measure. All in all, Ruby just had fun like that. It was nice to hang out and do school stuff with someone for once. Put a lot of bad stuff and stress on the wayside, to be dealt with later.

By the end of it they were out of Weiss' printed out review questions, the board covered in depictions of car crashes, air drops, fired cannons, and little werewolf heads Ruby replaced her Xs with for funzies. The tally Weiss was keeping marked a Schnee victory in the end by at least five points. Ruby remembered it being much closer than that, but she lodged no complaint. Weiss could have a landslide victory if she wanted; Ruby was content to just have a new friend. After all, Weiss was pretty good, so what did it matter if it was by five points or by two she won?

"Fine, fine, Weiss, you win. You are pretty great at this after all. I mean you're like perfect at everything," Ruby remarked in half well-meaning flattery and half honesty. After all, outside of maybe being nicer, she did seem good at everything. Language savant and gifted in both math and science. Ruby bet if she asked Weiss she could name off the greats of philosophy and political treatise. The wonders of the kind of education wealth could buy, not to say of course Weiss earned her smarts without a lot of hard work and studying.

"Hardly, I'm not perfect, not yet at least. If I was perfect you wouldn't have stood a chance." Ruby meant what she said pretty innocently, but Weiss took it more to heart than she would have ever hoped. Maybe perfect was like a trigger word for her, because soon enough she was at it again, looking for more work.

"Still really good, I mean you're better at math than me. Plus, like, you're Spanish and English are really strong," Ruby argued, feeling a little guilty for setting off this perfectionist twitch in Weiss. Still appealing to her ego, Ruby saw a smile on Weiss' lips, if only for a moment. It was an impressively cute sort of smile, even if she hid it too much.

"Only due to practice. I had the last ten years to learn English and the last six months to learn Spanish once I knew I was coming here. Nothing particularly special about it, just work ethic." Work ethic she was most certainly proud of, chin held high, a reverse from the kind of low pride she had a moment ago.

"How did you manage that in six months? I spent two years doing it and I have no idea how to speak anything," Ruby asked in actual interest. Maybe she had a big secret. After all, six weeks for an entire language was astounding. Whatever the secret, Ruby wouldn't mind knowing it in the least. She had to learn soon, or Yang's mom would start getting really mad, assuming she was not already totally mad at Ruby for just being.

"There are twenty four hours in a day, think about how much time that is. Question is what are you wasting them on." Weiss had a sharpness about her when she said it, a natural lecturer, though Ruby didn't mind it much at all. She wasn't totally wrong after all, discipline like that was hard to find for sure.

Ruby was about to say something, when her stomach disagreed in heavy protest, growling like a beast from the depths, hungry for the nation's supply of sandwiches and sweets. It occurred in that shiny moment to her that she had skipped breakfast, and worse than that had no means of getting lunch, no money, nothing packed. Brilliant planning on her part. Ruby felt a little embarrassed, and Weiss just rolled her eyes without a hint of surprise, like she could sense Ruby's stomachs rude interruption of their study time together.

"Go eat; we can study when you come back. Those noises aren't very becoming," Weiss ordered, crossing her arms in indignation of the growling maw inside of Ruby. A very irritated best for sure.

"I, uhhh, don't have any money…" Well this was terribly embarrassing, showing up the poor starving girl in the dorms, not to mention the added bonus of being hungry all day on top of looking really poor. Ruby tried to laugh it off, scratching her head to try and be more casual. Weiss wasn't buying it. After giving her the same eye she had all day, she stood, turning and sending the dress a flutter while she walked back into her dorm room, the largest single room in the place.

A moment passed and Ruby feared she had been abandoned, alone in her little corner of whiteboards, funny drawings and math problems. Could a little bit of a loud hungry stomach be really worth walking out on someone? Weiss was such an intriguing and rather aggressive person, but for some reason Ruby wanted to be her friend so absurdly badly. To think skipping Monday breakfast would end up being the bane to her perfect plan to win the silver girl's best friend position. Perhaps life would have been better becoming a Pokémon master for the last three hours. At least it seemed like that if only for a moment.

Shuffling came from beyond the white dorm door that was marked Weiss Schnee. Ruby thought about going in there and seeing if she was in some sort of trouble, but as soon as Ruby found the courage the door opened with Weiss pulling out a boxed lunch from what appeared to be the sushi place on campus. For a moment Ruby feared Weiss meant to torture her by just slowly eating the whole thing in front of her, but the girl had two sets of fine plates, far nicer than anything that should be brought to a dorm room, and an extra pair of actual silver silverware she brought along to accompany the cups and a pot of chilled ice coffee.

"I bought it before class this morning, the food is freshest then. I have my own fridge to keep it that way," Weiss explained as she set up the table napkins, silverware, and plates, pouring out ice coffee for both of them, the rich brown looking drink seeming to be like a murky chocolate milk. Opening the case, the selection was more expensive and rich than Ruby would normally have gotten, the sushi pieces some sort of fish wrapped in multicolored rice to make some sort of imagery. Weiss put a section up for herself, splitting the rolls and sides in half between them. She even brought out fine chopsticks with fabric tops.

'Wait, does that mean the silverware is just for show?' Being wealthy is very, very strange.

"You can have half, exactly half. Anymore and Ruby, you will most certainly regret it." Weiss didn't have to say a damn thing, the space between their portions was a better no man's land to Ruby than any front of any war, ever. She was happy snatching up whatever portions she could onto her plate, not even making use of the different sauces of which she could not even hope to name.

"Thank you, Weiss… you're awesome," Ruby replied happy to dig in, the flavors a little foreign to her, but kind of nice. She had never really had sushi before, so new things were totally a plus. Frequent Chinese did enough to teach Ruby how to use chopsticks, though, and her mom filled in some of the fine eating etiquette. Weiss had even better manners, though, each motion almost creepily proper and stilted.

"Don't celebrate yet. It's not for free," Weiss mentioned sipping her iced tea between a rather small bite of a sushi roll. Her eating was a far pace slower than Ruby's, whom was used to competing with Yang and her mom over dinner portions.

"Oh…" Ruby could only voice, almost dead stopping where she was. She had no job, and while her dad promised to pay for everything… asking for money was not Ruby's style. Looked like she was going to have to.

"You will be paying me back." Weiss looked at Ruby for a second, watching Ruby pause looking down, silver eyes on a sushi roll she refused to eat in fear of debt. It made the silver haired girl grimace pushing the plate more towards Ruby, pushing her to eat. "When you can get a job, whenever in the future that is of course. Schnee's collect our debt, but we are not heartless."

'So not at all?' Ruby almost said, but she knew Weiss was just saving face. Her gesture was still sweet, so she enjoyed eating, taking slower bites to match her hostess' pace. The food was lovely, even if the ice tea was a bit more bitter taste than she wanted from her chocolate milk look-alike.

"So why did you move to Spain? You said something about Austria during your speech?" Ruby asked just trying to start up conversation. Weiss paused her eating, as if to think for just a moment.

"I was near graduating at a music academy there. I had to change my program to one my academy didn't offer. Choice was here or Germany. I chose here." Weiss had a fairly rigid tone as she said it, clearly a subject she didn't want to pursue further, though one certainly did. For some reason Ruby felt it had to do with family. No one had been there for her when her mom went away. Maybe Weiss needed that.

"Want to talk about it?" Ruby offered, to which Weiss just shook her head no, ending that line of questioning. Why she left Austria, why she wouldn't go back to Germany, all talk for another time. Though it did leave one less major question. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one. Why do you ask?" Ruby felt herself go wide eyed.

"You're three years older than me?! But you're, like, me sized." Ruby nearly bit her own tongue out trying to stop herself, but the thought was out and Weiss turned red. Clearly a bit of a size complex in there, whether height or chest. It could be either. Ruby just was stupid enough to bring it up.

"Ruby, I will rip the food right back out of you for that!" Weiss stood at the table, in complete refusal to accept her height, standing right over Ruby bending over her to make it more intimidating. The heeled boots she wore certainly helped. "I'll have you know I am a perfectly ordinary size for a woman my age! In fact, plenty of people envy a petite form like mine!"

"No, no, you're gorgeous! I didn't mean to make you mad! I'm small too, we're like perfectly cute sized!" Ruby replied, waving her arms back in forth in an attempt to build a wall between them. Whatever she said seemed to work a little, though Weiss was still fuming. The better distraction was the dorm lobby door swinging open.

"Hi friend!" It was Penny, running full speed from the entrance to her bedroom, a loud thump as she shut the door. Weiss and Ruby both looked at each other with mutual shared confusion. That was until the door slammed back open and Penny was strutting in with her three drinks that looked like root beers.

"I forgot how much I hated school in the morning. Here, I have drinks for everyone!" Penny marched her way over and tossed one to Ruby and Weiss, popping open her own before taking a sip and sliding her arms around Ruby in a hug. She was most certainly the touchy-feely type, which Ruby adored. It was nice to have warm hugs sometime in the day.

"I don't think I will today, Penny. We have class in an hour," Weiss noted sliding her root beer back to Penny. She just shrugged, still hugging Ruby and letting her chin rest on her red headed companion.

"What's all this?" Penny asked, clearly talking about the problems all strung up along the board. A fairly impressive sight, Ruby thought as she toyed with the bottle, its twist off tip giving her just a little more trouble than it should have.

"We were competing over who could solve more physics problems correctly. I used the blue marker, her red. I won by 5 points," Weiss explained, proudly sipping her ice coffee once again. The damn top finally came off and the bottle's contents were free to be enjoyed. Taking a sip it was fairly cool, but murky tasting, with this weird hint of something else. Something else, but familiar.

"What is this?"

"Beer I bought at the school pub. Not the best, but it tries." Ruby felt her heart sink a little, the bit of her goodie-two-shoes attitude screaming in the back of her head. She could recognize the acidic little extra bit to the overall mix. It was the same taste she had at Christmas parties when her mom broke out the wine. It was the taste of alcohol.

"Penny, I can't drink this!" Yang would have laughed at Ruby if she had heard her say that. Weiss saved her that indignity by just ignoring it. Penny didn't, laughing heartily, sipping again on her beer labeled all in Spanish.

"You're not in America any more, sweetheart. You're eighteen, a free woman!" Penny announced when she stopped her chuckling. She was still sweet enough to give her a tighter hug and whisper, "You don't have to drink it," in Ruby's ear. Ruby took that as an allowance to put the bottle down. She didn't feel like embracing new horizons before her first day of physics. Yep, a real goodie-two-shoes. "Weiss, you only won by two points… actually, you tied. You see number five and seven? You marked them right, but matie you used the wrong friction coefficient!" Penny found that funny, Weiss most certainly did not.

"No way, that can't be right!" Weiss shouted angrily at the red headed duo. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment, and looking over, shocked at how quickly Penny worked through all the problems, she was right. The friction coefficient was off, using static instead kinetic friction. They had tied.

"You did it friend. Penny has your back," the goofy ginger whispered with her usual cheery smile. Ruby was really glad to have her as a new friend. Twice now she had come to her rescue. This time though it undid more progress than it helped. Ruby couldn't blame the sweet heart for trying.

"Uhh… Weiss," Ruby started pulling the silver heiress away from the board and onto her. Ruby decided to just go for the gold, no point in holding back now. Throw down the glove and keep this friend train rolling. 'Do it Ruby,' she whispered to herself a little afraid of how much she was biting off with this one. "Let's do a rematch. Just like before, nine thirty to eleven. We can study together like a thing."

"I'll win next time, Ruby."

And she was absolutely sure Weiss would.

***And here we are, Chapter 3 and we get to watch some longer interactions between characters. I hope my slightly older Ruby meshes with everybody nicely. Kind of weird starting all the way with the beginning with these two. For once I meet my due date for a release! (scratch that one day off, but for important school stuff!) I'm so happy! :D

I want to thank Lazykatze for the edits, I can be a real annoying bitch (Note: Tells me that the chapter is done and asks for edits, no bitchness _ -Kat) about getting edits in and she was lovely enough to work with me through the process. So everyone give her a shout out and read her fic Layers of Ice or Church storm if you're a madoka fan.

See you in two weeks! :D Buh-bye