章 15: Oppenheimer
Blake's trek toward Beacon Academy was exhausting. When she got back to team RWBY's dorm by scaling the walls, she barely had 3 hours of sleep available to her by the time she hit the sack.
She kept the shell in her arms and gently tucked it beneath her other belongings. She would ask Ruby to modify it tomorrow and probably give it to Hanns the moment school ended. Lunch would be the best time to let her work on it.
She yawned profusely, she couldn't keep her eyes open for more than a second. Her exhaustion was mounting and without a second thought, she fell across her bed without even lifting the covers, still in her combat outfit.
Blake realized that she hadn't even unpacked yet and she really wanted to get up to get out of her combat outfit and slip into comfortable pajamas but at this point, she didn't even care anymore.
She would have to explain to the team but that's future Blake's problem. Not even 2 hours later she was getting nudged by Yang and Ruby who looked at their teammate who was sprawled across her bed like she just arrived after drinking all night.
Ruby of course knew she snuck out at night but Yang didn't even notice Blake's combat-ready appearance before she lifted her and forced Blake into the bathroom to change.
Meanwhile, Blake could only hear muffled voices, Yang and Ruby were trying to talk to her but she didn't bother to let any words enter her brain at the moment. Blake was half asleep but the moment she felt getting lifted up and thrown to the bathroom she knew what they were asking of her.
She changed and got ready for the school's second day and was already showing signs of sleep deprivation. She even accidentally put on her uniform backward from the lack of sleep. The moment she got out of the bathroom she went back to her bed and smacked face first into the covers.
It felt like seconds had only passed before the loud blaring of a whistle woke Blake up along with a recently waking disgruntled Weiss. Ruby enthusiastically greeted the whole team. Though it hadn't been appreciated by Blake and Weiss.
"Good morning, team RWBY!"
Blake didn't stay up to hear the rest of the conversation. She heard pieces of it like Weiss' usual crankiness and something about redecorating and needing to unpack. A few minutes went by and the beds they had were haphazardly made into bunk beds while the rest of the team excluding Blake arranged their belongings. She didn't notice Yang looking and smirking at her sleeping while standing up.
Ruby was elbowed by her sister, Yang, who grabbed her whistle and pointed at the sleeping Blake. Yang took a deep breath and walked behind Blake and let out an ear-piercing noise directly at the dozing Blake.
"Gah!" a startled Blake yelped.
"What're you sleeping around for Blakey, stayed up too late reading that smut of yours?" a smile was now present on Yang's face. The half-asleep Blake immediately snapped her eyes open.
"It's not smut! It's good literature!" she denied.
"Uhuh, yeah right! I took a peek inside while we arranged your books for you. Didn't see as the extreme type to read that kinda stuff y'know?" teased Yang.
"Yang, what's smut?" Ruby was genuinely curious and didn't want to get left out of the conversation.
She was their fearless team leader after all and she didn't want to be out of touch with her teammates. Before any of them could respond to Ruby, an embarrassed Blake immediately tried to change the subject.
"Can we move on from this conversation and get to class, speaking of which, what time does class start?"
Ruby took one look at the book she had and told Blake about their first class.
"Umm, we have class at nine and-"
"Nine?! It's 8:55, you dunce!" Weiss rushed out of the room while the rest of the team followed suit. Across their room team, JNPR eyed their sister team's state of panic and realized they were about to be late as well. The teams had barely reached their classroom where Grimm studies were being taught by Peter Port.
As the professor went on to introduce his class, the tone at which he speaks accompanied by the long boring stories he told was met with half the class falling asleep. Blake immediately dropped down to sleep while Ruby was starting to feel tired from hearing the professor's lecture.
Blake had tuned out almost all the classes she was in, for the professors who were more attentive to sleeping students she slept while her eyes were open which was something she discovered she could do.
Lunch came and it was time to inform Ruby of what she had in mind. Ruby was a bit dejected from something. Weiss had been acting a bit too cranky for today and Ruby felt like she was not fit to be a leader.
Blake felt a bit bad for pushing Ruby to do something while she was feeling down but she thought that maybe she could cheer her up by showing her the shell she got from Hanns.
"Ruby?"
"Huh?... Oh! Umm Blake… sorry to let you see me like thi–" Blake shushed Ruby as she slowly let out the shell from a bag she got to hide the shell in while going around school.
Ruby immediately took away the shell and started to blab on about weapons and how huge the gun that must've fired it. She couldn't wait to check the massive shell in the workshop. Blake felt relieved that she managed to cheer up Ruby but she still had to ask for it to be modified into dust rounds.
"I know you are going through a lot on the second day of school but can I ask you if you could maybe infuse that with dust?" Blake pointed at the shell Ruby was carrying.
'How is this girl lifting that with no problem?' she thought before realizing.
'Oh, I forgot that she uses a massive scythe.'
"This doesn't use dust?!" Ruby practically screamed out loud enough for the nearby students to turn their heads toward the two.
"Shhhh!" Blake kept her hand on Ruby's mouth and hid the shell before any of the other students could sneak a look at what they were doing. It was pretty shady after all. Don't need to let the rest of the school know she was technically smuggling in a bomb at the academy. Ruby meanwhile was shaking from excitement from the information that the tank shell didn't use dust.
'Oh no, is she going to suffer a heart attack?' Blake feared it may have been too much for Ruby to let her know that something else could be used for propellants and explosives.
"Just take the bag and work on it, I need it tonight." Blake continued on her way towards the cafeteria, leaving Ruby alone with the bag with an oversized bullet stuffed in it.
'Tonight? Why would she need it tonight?' Ruby was getting suspicious of her teammate. She snuck out decked in her combat outfit and the next day she's asking to make some ammo that could blow up an entire building or three. Ruby ran off in her own world while getting over to her table with the rest of the team in the cafeteria.
She would work on the shell during lunch, she just needed to eat a quick lunch. Still, her thoughts lingered on the possibilities before they clicked in her head.
'Oh my gosh! Is Blake a vigilante?!' she immediately turned her head towards Blake.
Blake stared at her smiling team leader before she winked as if she understood what was happening. Blake only raised an eyebrow in confusion at the gesture.
'Just you wait Blake, I'll be the best team leader you'll have! I'll make sure to pack in as many explosives as I can make!' Ruby thought of the many combinations of dust and experimentation on the shell itself she could do. She would be busy all noon but she's Blake's team leader and she's going to stop at nothing to make her proud.
Lunch came and went for team RWBY, Yang at first was concerned about why Ruby was leaving so early. When Ruby explained that she wanted to work on a few weapons, she immediately understood and let her go. Ruby had been doing this kind of thing ever since she knew what a gun was.
Not even Yang can stop Ruby from spending hours working on a weapon, so Yang got used to it. Weiss meanwhile was still holding a grudge at Ruby.
Ruby was the team leader yet she kept acting like a child, she thought. Weiss had tutors, practice, and training all her life all for it to not matter when the headmaster chose Ruby instead of her.
When they were supposed to study and get ready for the next class, Ruby was nowhere to be found. The minutes ticked by before their team leader waltzed into the classroom only seconds before she was late.
Weiss would talk with Professor port, later on, she was better suited to the role of a leader than that petulant sorry excuse of a huntress. Maybe the headmaster had made a mistake, Weiss guessed.
Hours later…
Weiss talked with Port while Ruby bumped into Ozpin while she finished the modified tank round hidden in the bag Blake gave her. They had a long talk with the professors about their doubts. Weiss asks Port why she deserves the position of leader while Ruby asks Ozpin if she really was the right choice.
They both got their answers in different forms, Ozpin saying that he saw something in Ruby and that he didn't see it as a mistake to choose her, while Port pointed out that Weiss' poor attitude was the main reason why she didn't suit the role of being a leader.
Ruby reached the dorm room after classes and worked on tweaks with the shell. Feeling satisfied, she gave back the bag the tank round was into Blake who accepted it with gratitude.
Ruby laid out her textbooks in front of her to keep studying, she was the team leader after. She needed to try and keep up with the rest of the class since she was admitted 2 years early. She felt her eyes being heavy and nodded off to sleep.
She was awoken by Weiss who asked her how she took her coffee and promptly being disgusted at Ruby for taking it with so much sugar and cream. Weiss started to soften up at Ruby and gave her a cup of coffee before leaving through the room's door.
"Hey Ruby? I've always wanted bunk beds as a kid."
Ruby smiled, before noticing Blake not being in her bed once again. Ruby nodded in understanding.
'She must have left to save some people in Vale again, she's out there to be a vigilante. So cool!'
Meanwhile…
Blake had been walking through the same woods she met Hanns yesterday. She knocked on the seemingly asleep tank in the middle of the forest. Hanns woke up and turned his turret to face Blake. After greeting each other as usual, Hanns asked her to put it inside the breech located inside him.
Blake followed his instructions carefully on how to operate the loader side of the Tiger H1 and loaded it in the breach of the massive 88 mm KwK36 cannon. She slipped in the dust infused round and queried Hanns.
"So are we going to fire it somewhere?" she nervously asked. This thing already had enough firepower, she didn't know how much more damage it could do now that dust had been loaded into the machine.
"No, I have something planned for that. Say, would you like to commit a criminal offense?"
What followed was silence, Blake had to comprehend what Hanns was asking before replying in confusion.
"...What?"
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