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Twelve Months of Pollination

Summary:

Beacon never fell. The Brother Gods and Salem may or may not exist. Team Ruby lives a (mostly) normal life. A series of snippets from four years of Beacon, with Team RWBY celebrating various holidays together and falling in love. Won't be twelve months in a row; it's twelve months over the course of 4 years.

Underage because Ruby (at least at first)

Also, shameless experiments with the pop culture of an alternate universe. Parodies and Pastiches abound.

Chapter 1: Haunting Night

Notes:

Someday I'll write a fanfic that isn't based on RWBY again. Or at least do a proper crossover.

This is mostly an excuse for me to play around with ideas for art, culture, and folklore on an another world. If any of my ideas for holidays of these tickle your fancy, don’t be ashamed to use them in your own stuff—just remember to give me credit, and maybe let me know so I can check it out.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It was Friday night during their first autumn together as a team and as roommates.   Weiss walked in to see Ruby and Yang squirming together in a bizarre wrestling maneuver.  The blonde looked up and grinned. “Hey Weiss, give us a hand over here, will you?” she said, waving Ruby’s right hand at her.  

“. . . What are you doing?” the heiress asked.  “And what are you wearing?”  This last was directed at Ruby, who was wearing a neon-yellow monstrosity rather than her usual red cloak.

”Do you like it?” the younger girl asked.  Squirming free of her elder sister she straightened up and flung her hands out in a “ta-da” gesture.  “It’s my Jubilee Crepsley outfit!”

Weiss blinked.  ”Your what?”

“I’m guessing the ice princess doesn’t read anything written less than a hundred years ago,” Yang snarked.

Weiss would have commented on that—or at least protested the “ice princess title”—but she was a little distracted by Ruby’s current outfit.  The team leader had ditched her normal combat skirt and corset plus cape and hood ensemble in exchange for a dark purple catsuit with an eye-catching (or eye watering) yellow coat along with a pair of hoop earrings and big purple sunglasses.  “What . . . Is that?” 

“Do you like it?” Ruby asked, twirling.  The coat billowed around her, inadvertently showing off how well the catsuit hugged her developing curves.  

Weiss flushed (something she did more often than she’d like to admit around Ruby) and found her tongue again.  “That’s not—Ruby what is going on?”

”Where going to the Haunting Night party,” Yang explained.  “You need a costume for that.”

Right.  That was tonight.  Weiss was familiar, vaguely, with the Valish holiday of the Autumn Equinox; after the Great War, Vale had exported its favorite secular holiday to the world at large.  Atlesian high society had so far ignored it, but Weiss was exposed enough to popular culture to know a little about it.  

“I guess I should have expected you would love a holiday dedicated to the unbridled consumption of sugar.”  Weiss winced as she realized how harsh she sounded.  That comment was more appropriate to the person she’d been before coming to Beacon.  She’d promised Ruby she’d be better.  “I’m sorry.  What I mean is, why are you getting so excited about a holiday that’s clearly aimed at children?”

”Because everyone likes to pretend to be someone else from time to time,” Blake said, coming out of the bathroom.  Weiss turned to her and immediately did a double take.  Blake was wearing a long white gown with gold embroidery.  A gold tiara rested on her brow.  She smirked.  “Do you like my costume?”

Weiss knew she should answer.  Really, this shouldn’t have bothered her; she shared a room with Yang Xiao Long!  She’d seen Yang in various states of undress!  If that wasn’t enough to inoculate someone against female beauty, nothing was.  “You look . . . Very nice.”

”Thank you,” Blake replied, taking some of the gown in hand and giving a courtly now.

”Nice?” Yang asked.  “She looks perfect!  Blake, I’m afraid to let people see you; you’ll have to beat them off with a stick!”  She elbowed her sister in the side.  “Right, Sis?”

Ruby was blushing.  “Yeah.  You look great, Blake, just like I always imagined Nerwen look like.”

”Nerwen never wore a bow,” Weiss pointed out on reflex.

”So you have read something recent,” Blake teased, clearly unperturbed at Weiss' criticism.

“Please!  The King of the Crowns books are more than 80 years old,” Yang countered.  “I was reading the books to Ruby when she was 6.”

“Did either of you even understand them at that age?” Weiss asked, genuinely intrigued.

The sister’s looked at each other.  ”Eh,” the blonde said, wobbling a hand in a so-so gesture.

”Yang skipped a lot of stuff,” Ruby said.  “It was like the abridged version.  I read them myself later.”

“When did you read them?” Blake asked, turning her attention to Weiss.

”Well, I . . .” Weiss shuffled uncomfortably.

The Cat Faunus grinned.  “You watched the movies, right?”

”What are you even doing?” Weiss asked, desperate to get the conversation back on track (and trying to ignore the laughing sisters).

”Jubilee is a vampire,” Yang explained, waving a bottle of dark lip gloss.  “I’m trying to draw the scars on her finger tips, but Rubes is too ticklish, and I keep messing up.”

“Ruby reads teen vampire novels,” Weiss drolled.  “Wow.  I’m actually surprised.”

Ruby blushed again.  “Hey!  The Saga of X-23 is really good!  And Jubilee is a great character!”

”Right . . . Shouldn’t you have purple skin if you’re pretending to be a vampire?”

”That’s only the ones that kill people,” Yang corrected her.  “Like, a lot of people.  At least that’s how it works in the books.”

”Right, so Jubilee is all dark and tormented by her temptation to kill people and the need to be a sacrificial martyr warrior.”

The other three burst out laughing.  “Heck no! That’s her girlfriend!” Yang laughed.

”Yeah,” Ruby added between giggles.  “Jubilee is kind, loyal, friendly, and yeah sometimes she gets a little sad over what she’s lost as a vampire, but she’s positive!  She tries to get X-23 to be more outgoing and confident—X-23 is a cloned Wolverine Faunus whose Dad well actually he’s the guy she was cloned from it’s complicated is this sort of legendary warrior, and she has a regeneration Semblance and retractable metal claws built into her arms and feet and she has this berserker mode because she was raised by this evil organization . . .” Ruby gushed.

”Ruby, breathe,” Blake ordered.

”I’m sorry,” Ruby squeaked.  She hung head in a poor attempt to hide her blush.

“It’s a series about a teenager who was raised to be a tool for other people who ran away from that and spends the rest of her life getting into Sci-Fi and magic adventures with her friends,” Yang explained.  “Rubes picked up the first book ages ago, and now she’s got a whole shelf full of them.”  The blonde smirked and leaned over to whisper in Weiss’ ear, “That’s how I figured out Ruby was into girls.”

Weiss blushed at the implication (and at the parallels she was noticing between the plot of the books and someone’s real life). “That’s nice,” she said at last.

“Anyway, do you think you could use your Glyphs to hold her still while I draw draw a bunch of fake scars on her finger tips.“

Weiss considered chastising them for reducing her family’s Semblance to a cosmetic trick but decided against it. It wasn’t worth it, she told herself.  Instead she instructed Ruby to hold her hands out and conjured a Glyph around the fingers, locking them in place. She noticed that Ruby was wearing fingerless gloves which looked surprisingly nice on her.  

“They’re you go, Sis,” Yang announced free drawing the last line across Ruby’s pinky.  “One sexy Vampire costume complete.”

”Yang!” Ruby yelled, blushing again.

”I’m kidding, Rubes,” Yang laughed.  “Like you’d ever wear anything skanky.  Or I’d let you.”

Then why is she wearing the catsuit? Weiss wondered.  Even obscured by that hideous yellow jacket, it was distracting.  So distracting that Weiss didn’t realize that Yang was asking her a question.  “Wha-what?”

The brawler rolled her eyes.  “I wanted to know if you needed to use the bathroom.  You should use it now, because I’m about to change into my costume, and then I’ll need to use the mirror to do my makeup.

”No, I’m fine.  Thank you.”

Weiss sat down at her desk and began reading.  “Weiss, what about you?” Ruby asked.

”What do you mean, what about me?”

”Don’t you want to join us?”

”I have more important things to do than go to some dress-up party,” Weiss said.

”Come on, Weiss, please?  Think of it as a team-building exercise,” Ruby pleaded.  

"No."

"Consider it a way to learn about other cultures," Blake argued.

Weiss frowned at that.  "I don't have a costume," she said, trying to avoid the question.

Yang grinned, and Weiss became very, very afraid.  "I have an idea."


A few hours later, Weiss stood in the assembly hall which had been converted into a “spooky” part atmosphere.  Jack-o-lanterns, rubber bats, and fake cobwebs decorated the corners while a giant Gaudy Banner read “HAPPY HAUNTINGS! 101!”  She couldn’t even find it in herself to complain about the misuse of the exclamation mark.  Possibly because she was more concerned with the pounding music blaring from the speakers.  Weiss promised herself she’d take part in the organizing of the next big event.

The heiress stood the back of the room, hoping desperately that no one would see her.  Then again, nobody could recognize me, right?  Right?  The costume Yang had made for her was assembled from various things in the four girls' wardrobes.  She was dressed in a bright pink party dress.  That alone was out of character for her, but over it was thrown her school jacket as well as one of Ruby’s combat skirts.  Her socks and shoes were likewise mismatched.  The key part was her face; Weiss was now wearing two different shades of makeup, divided down the middle.  The good news was that it hid her noticeable scar.  The bad news was her hair was still Schnee-White.  She’d changed the style, but not by much.  She had a single pigtail on her right side, and the rest hung lose about her shoulders.  

Speaking of unrecognizable, Ruby was darting around the room showing off her costume and admiring others’.  Where was the shy introvert who could barely talk to her on their first day?

“Uncanny, isn’t it?”

”WHHHAAAAHHHHH!” Weiss shrieked.  Turning around, she saw Blake had snuck up beside her.  “. . . Wha . . . What do you . . . Think you’re . . . Doing?” She forced out as she struggled to regain the breath she’d lost in that scream.  It actually made her glad for the music.

Blake smirked.  “I was asking if you thought Ruby’s transformation as uncanny as I did.”

Weiss looked back at the group.  She spotted her younger partner’s bright yellow coat as the girl chatted it up with Team JNPR.  Both Jaune’s blocky robot costume and Nora’s sloth suit did nothing to dissuade her that she’d stumbled into a children’s party; on the other hand, Ren was dressed in an elegant kimono inspired by the nobility of feudal Mistral, and Pyrrha had donned pale grey makeup and a white gown to create a haunting rendition of a ghost bride. 

They all seemed to be having a good time.  Ruby did another twirl to show off her costume.  Weiss wondered (annoyed) how many of the students had taken the opportunity to ogle her in the catsuit.  It was tempting to go up to her partner and lecture her about it, but . . . “I’ve never seen her so comfortable around so many people.”

”I know,” Blake said looking out at the party herself.  ”Maybe she’s one of the Belonging Kind,” The Faunus suggested.

”What is that?” Weiss asked.

”You don’t know?  It’s what your costume is based on.”

“No.”  Weiss shrugged.  “I’ve heard of it.  I believe it’s some Valish urban legend about imposters or something, but I’ve never cared much for those.”

“You’re not completely wrong,” Blake teased.  ”The story goes that the Belonging Kind is a kind of monster or fairy that’s adapted to live in cities.  It feeds on alcohol, produces counterfeit money from its own cells, and can shape-shift into anyone: changing its appearance, clothes, and even its behavior to perfectly fit into whatever social environment it finds itself in.”

Weiss looked down at her costume again.  Then she looked out at the people around her.  She saw the way they all mingled together so easily.  So many different costumes and ideas.  Yang was walking around in a pink leotard that exposed her stomach, matching knee-high boots and elbow-length gloves, and a cape of the same color.  Penny was dressed as some kind of zombie nurse.  Sun and his partner Neptune were dressed like pirates (probably an excuse for the Monkey-tailed Faunus to continue avoiding to button-up his shirt).  Even Professor Goodwitch was enjoying the party; the teacher was (ironically) dressed in a stereotypical witch costume that looked like it was made of leaves and seemed to be lecturing some kind of space alien.  The troublemaker was covered in blue makeup with her hair dyed a darker shade; she had (fake?) horns, shoes that were designed to look like hooves, a tail, and wore very revealing "armor."  It was only by focusing on the beret and sunglasses that Weiss recognized Coco Adel of Team CFVY as the culprit.

They were all different, yet they all fit in.  They all belonged.

"I don't."

"What?" Blake asked, looking at her.

Weiss looked away.  She hadn't meant to say that out-loud.  "What I mean is . . . I don't know what to do.  This isn't like the parties I'm used to."

Blake was silent for a moment.  "Me neither."

Weiss turned back around and looked at her.  Weiss had always hated being called "princess," yet here was Blake (once her biggest critic in the school) dressed like a queen, and it fit her perfectly.  Yet, her teammate seemed to be serious.  "Really?" she asked.

Blake nodded.  "We don't celebrate Haunting Night back home.  We have our own festival for the dead, but we don't dress up."

"Then, why are you here?"  Weiss' voice came out in a whisper.  

"I told you earlier.  It's . . . nice to pretend to be someone else for a night.  Ruby agrees."

"Really?"

The Cat Faunus smiled.  "Why not ask her yourself," she said before raising her hand and waving it at the yellow-coat wearing team leader.

Ruby saw them and ran over their way.  "Weiss!  Blake!  Are you having fun?" she asked, all smiles.

"I am," Blake affirmed.  "Weiss, however, has a question for you."

The heiress shot her black-haired teammate a glare before trying to put up a neutral façade for her partner.  "Yes, well.  I was wondering, wondering . . . why you liked this holiday so much."  She cursed herself for her horribly worded inquiry.  "What I mean is, why do you like dressing up so much?  You're not normally so eager to spend time in large crowds."

Ruby may have blushed; it was difficult to tell now, between the lighting and the large glasses hiding much of her face.  "Well.  It's fun to pretend.  Besides, I think it's like weapons.  What people dress as, it's an expression of who we are inside."

"It's a disguise," Weiss pointed out.  She'd paid enough attention to know that the origin of the costumes was based in wearing disguises to hide from spirits on the night they were out and about more often than usual.

"Yeah, but what you chose to dress up as shows what you like or what you want to be," Ruby argued.  "Take my costume.  Jubilee's a lot of what I want to be:  fun and supportive, but she's also so confident and fearless, and I, I kind of wish I was more like that." 

"You're already fearless, Ruby," Blake pointed out.  "You charged against a deathstinger on your own during Initiation."

Ruby ducked her head.  "Yeah, but that's fighting.  I'm good at fighting.  I'm not so good at, you know, the social stuff."

"You also kept trying to be my friend when I had done nothing but yell at you," Weiss reminded her.  "That was . . . fairly brave."

She was treated to a 50,000 kilowatt smile.  "Really?"

The heiress rolled her eyes.  "Don't get a swelled head about it."

"HEY!" The trio looked up to see Yang coming over to them.  Weiss tried to keep her eyes on the blonde's face now that she was getting the frontal view of Yang's costume.  Thankfully, Yang's face was worth looking at.  "What are you three doing over here?  You hear that music?  It's dance time!"  She grabbed her sister and Weiss' hands and dragged them over into the middle of the dancefloor.  She gave Blake a look, and her partner decided to follow her teammates.  

Weiss grumbled about the "brute's" actions and how she didn't know how to dance like the rest of the partiers, but she was smiling the rest of the night.

Notes:

“The Saga of X-23” is obviously inspired by both X-23/Wolverine of Marvel and The Saga of Darren Shan (and am I the only one kind of disappointed Jubilee’s no longer a vampire? Given how little she resembled the stereotype of vampires in modern fiction, I think it was an interesting role for her to play). The implications I was aiming for is that Remnant’s vampire mythology matches the Darren Shan reimagining of vampires. I’ve always wondered what Folklore and urban fantasy have to be like on a world with Faunus. Some things (Giants, Little People, and Tolkien-esque Elves) are easy; other mythic creatures are more challenging because you have to imagine what would separate them from Faunus. I always liked the imagination Shan put into his vampires, and I think the warrior culture they have would appeal to hunter society. Though I modified the lore by implying that the Remnant mythos incorporates aspects of the Vampaneze who were a splinter group in the Saga, but that wouldn’t make sense if vampires were to be considered “monsters.”

The “King of the Crowns” series is obviously a pastiche of Lord of the Rings. “Nerwen” is one of Galadriel’s names. It means “Man-might,” which makes it appropriate for a warrior woman (like a Huntress).

The Belonging Kind come from Hugo Gernsback’s short story of the same name. You can find a pretty good examination of it by the Extra Credits folks on YouTube. I always thought they were an interesting idea for a monster adapted to life in urban centers (even though they’re mostly only monstrous in an existential sort of way; i.e. they embody the horror of conformity at the cost of identity), so I made them a part of the mythology of Remnant.

Yang's costume is based on the Flash from the "Tangent Comics" setting. I feel like the heroes there are weird enough to feel "super" on Remnant. Penny is inspired by the nurses in the Silent Hill Franchise. Sun and Neptune are . . . just a couple of pirates (I was as lazy as Weiss accuses Sun of being). Glynda's "traditional" witch costume is inspired by me wanting to make the Remnant's cliché's different than Earth's. Coco is a Draenai from Wow because I like the Draenai. What can I say, I like the idea of these blue aliens dressed in skimpy armor who look like demons but are (according to the wiki) apparently devoutly religious.

The "101" bit is part of my own headcannon and is something that will hopefully be explored later.