drabbles; remnant 'what if' scenarios

[beech]

→ 'what if' scenarios, post cerealia
→ naoki, yang + many others

Ozpin was shockingly obliging about meeting with him.

Sitting alone with him in the room with its one table and two chairs to either side, Naoki was intimidated even if this man likely wasn’t one of Lucifer’s demons, a Fiend, or an otherwise maleficent entity. But he supposed it was because he wanted something, wanted to be here.

“So—as you and Miss Xiao Long have told me, you’re from uncertain origins, no guardians, no past you’re prepared to explain… but you wish to attend my Academy?”

“Yes, sir.” Naoki’s tongue felt as though it was about to stick to the roof of his mouth.

“And… according to this, you don’t have an Aura or Semblance, but other skills and—as I quote ‘he’s really a bada—er, really strong, professor!’ is that right?” Ozpin peered over at him pensively, taking a long sip from his mug. One set before Naoki was rapidly growing cold, though Naoki felt a little surge of warmth at those words. Yang…

It reminded him why he wanted to do this.

“…Yes. Sorry for being so vague about this. But I promise, I want to be here more than anything,” and before he knew it, he was babbling, desperate almost to convey his conviction, “Yang’s here, the people important to her are here, and I want to protect this wo—this place that she lives in, and the people in it. I’ve fought a lot of things in the past, so I’m prepared to do what I have to do.”

When he was finished, Naoki sighed quietly before raising his eyes to Ozpin. He looked at him intently, and his mouth was set in a firm line.

Unyielding, Ozpin thought, and smiled.

“I understand.” While Naoki was busy blinking in surprise, Ozpin continued, “Let’s get the test for you prepared, Naoki Kashima.”



He aced it, unsurprisingly. Quickly and efficiently, leaving even some of the professors who oversaw it stunned. Naoki seemed abashed about the whole thing, chuckling uncertainly even when he spoke about it with Yang later, as she leaned against his warm side outside of the Academy.

“I overheard them talking about how they never saw anything like it before,” she remarked, peering at him.

Naoki cleared his throat. “I tried to keep it low key.”

“Naoki, your ‘low key’ is everyone else’s ‘high profile’.” But she laughed and twined her fingers with his and looked so glad that things had gone well, that he would be here too, that he just couldn’t be bothered to care about anything else anymore. Nothing besides leaning his head against hers.



For a while, people didn’t know what to make of him.

Here was a teenager, covered head-to-toe (presumably) in glowing tattoos, who didn’t carry a weapon, with a horn coming from the back of his neck but who… apparently wasn’t a faunus. When he was asked, he’d smile and say vaguely “I’m just Naoki. Don’t think about it too hard, okay?”

And, if they turned to Yang, they got that answer even more vehemently.

And maybe a fist.

Depending on how the question was phrased, of course.



Cardin, who hadn’t wholly been turned from his habit of looking down on people, made the mistake several people did upon seeing Naoki.

He hadn’t been given a group yet, since he’d entered at this odd time of year before the Vytal Festival. Instead, he’d often shadow team RWBY or JNPR should they have any missions, being in just about the same year as them, and apparently something he’d asked himself from Ozpin until such a day that his team could be decided.

As such, teamless, not too impressive height or build-wise, strange looking and without a weapon, there was that assumption he was weak, that he’d gotten into the Academy through some other means. After all, no student had seen how he’d done on his test.

However.

Sparring day rolled around for the first time since Naoki had enrolled, and he’d readily traipsed his way down to the center when Glynda had called for him. “Do you have a weapon?” she’d asked him, with a quirk of her brow (only he saw) that gave away that she knew he didn’t need one.

Naoki waved one of his fists and grinned, getting a few laughs from the other students—for one, his audacity, two, wondering if he really was serious, and three, vague pity for how this may turn out. Cardin hefted his mace, thinking this would be like any other fight with some newbie who thought they could stand up to him. There was whispering from the students, and Yang leaned forward (to puzzled looks from her teammates), rolling her shoulders, her hands on her knees and a gleam in her eyes.

And.

Naoki had him disarmed and pinned on his stomach (what just happened, Cardin thought in a pained daze) within a span of seconds, and the class was utterly silent.

Aside from one whoop, to which Glynda addressed in a sharp but somehow dry voice, turning her eyes to the blond figure who’d jumped up from her seat, “Sit down, Miss Xiao Long.”

Naoki straightened up, hands with unnerving strength lifting away, before one twisted to offer to Cardin. He smiled, easy, but now Cardin noticed an unnerving sharpness in his eyes, something that made his back prickle and made him want to call on his Aura on instinct.

“Sorry, man,” was what he said, “Wanna try that again? I’ll be fair this time.”



A few days later, Naoki joined CRDL on a mission, and when they returned, all but Naoki himself were pale-faced, shaken, but surprisingly not injured in the least.

“He’s ridiculous,” Cardin would later be heard telling someone who asked what had happened.



“So. Naoki.”

One day about two weeks after he’d come to the Academy, Naoki found himself alone. Without Yang. In a room with her teammates all standing in front of him as he was pushed into a chair. He half-expected a lamp to be shone on his face any moment now—actually, there it was, as Ruby adjusted it to squeaks that Weiss and Blake winced at.

“Yeah?” he asked, shielding his eyes and squinting. “I don’t know what the sudden shake-down is about, but that light’s kind of painful…”

Ruby mumbled something about the atmosphere not being right without it, but did turn off the lamp to Naoki’s grateful sigh.

“So, Naoki,” Weiss started again, with a vaguely frustrated glance sideways at Ruby. “We had some questions for you.”

“Fire away.”

“…” Weiss paused, her lips pinching slightly in a frown as though this wasn’t how she expected this to go, when Ruby, fearless leader she was, interrupted.

“What, exactly, is your relationship with Yang? My dear sister? And our dear teammate? And—and Blake’s dear partner,” Ruby emphasised, gesturing at Blake.

“Just ‘partner’ is all right,” she mildly put in.

“Blake, come on, this—”

Weiss sighed, her hand to her face, shaking her head from side to side before she looked back at Naoki. He was just watching everything with a wide-eyed and curious expression. “Your answer?”

“My relationship with Yang is, um…” Naoki trailed off as the girls craned in closer, leaning back slightly. “…uh… complicated?” He grinned. “You should ask her.”

“We did, and she said the same thing,” Blake sighed.

Naoki laughed.

Fearing they were really going to get off track at this rate, Weiss cleared her throat with her most authoritative Schnee a-hem. It had the desired effect, Naoki’s eyes shifting to her. “Are you not going to tell us?”

“Then!” Ruby burst out before Naoki could respond. “Then, what are your intentions? You can tell us those, can’t you? You have to.” She leaned forward, pointedly jabbing him in the chest with one of her fingers.

Naoki looked thoughtful at that, and he leaned back in the chair, his arms folding over his chest.

“My intentions are…” He paused. “Haha, if you look at me that hard, I’m really going to be nervous.”

“As well you should be,” Weiss told him sternly. “If your intentions are untoward…”

Naoki raised his hands quickly in surrender. “They’re not,” he said hastily. Too hastily. Weiss wondered, and Blake lifted one of her eyebrows slightly. “I just…” He glanced away. And, to their surprise, he began to blush, one of his hands raising to rub his cheek. “You know. I want to be… by her side. And make her happy and…”

He cut himself off with a groan, covered up his eyes with his hand. “Sorry. I don’t really know how to put it.”

“No, that’s…” Naoki glanced up to Blake. She was pressing her lips together, looking as though she was trying not to smile. It was kind of funny, seeing him so sincere, and clearly embarrassed. They’d all spoken to each other before this point and he hadn’t shown that face before. “That’s enough.”

“Honestly,” Weiss huffed and put her hands on her hips.

“I’m still not convinced,” Ruby put in quickly, pointing her fingers at her eyes and then at Naoki. “I’ve got my eye on you, mister!”

And she did—they did, watching whenever Naoki joined them on their missions, for lunches, in classes or in-between, saw the way he treated Yang. When Naoki brought back cookies for Ruby one day, a book for Blake on another, and sat patiently through Weiss’s incensed speech on doilies even another, they had to come together and concede that this guy, as strange as he was, didn’t seem to be bad.

Certainly not when he’d bodily grab an ursa moving for Yang’s back and fling it off into the forest somewhere.



When Naoki had first arrived, it was more than just his appearance that’d drawn attention. It’d been his almost immediate, comfortable closeness with Yang, surprising even her team and JNPR. All of her tension from the last little while, her frantic searching for something seems as though it had gone, and some of them really wondered if he was the cause of it somehow.

Still, it was a relief not to see her working as hard—for her team, most of all.

Things had settled fairly quickly into a routine.

Naoki had a room to himself (until he got a chance to get a team) down the hall from RWBY and JNPR, and many days he spent with the door and the windows flung open. He spent the first week or so by himself, but slowly he came around the more Yang dragged him this way and that and the more times he went on missions with everyone.

Now it wasn’t a surprise at all to pass by his door and find him chatting on amicably with Pyrrha or Weiss, in the middle of some sort of weird book club moments with Ruby and Blake. Days with people like Jaune were usually more outdoorsy ones where he’d be out of his room for hours, Naoki quickly becoming the one to drag him along for guy time. Ren could breathe a sigh of relief then, his studying uninterrupted.

Mostly. Nora was still there, after all.

However, no-one ever wandered by to see his door open when he was with Yang.

On those days, his door was firmly shut. Their voices could be heard inside, but they’d always grow softer, too soft to be heard if anyone was curious enough (only Ruby was curious enough, had dared to knock one time only for Naoki and her sister to welcome her in readily and then they’d just played games and fooled around and she didn’t get to find out any details of their secret time).

But, it really didn’t remain a secret for long that they were together, if it had ever really been one in the first place. They’d been vague, but had never refused anything… just smiled and didn’t answer.



Really, Yang had no complaints about Naoki being at Beacon with her. He fell in well with everyone, soon shifting from a cautious ease into a more natural one. It’s still tough for you even when you fixed your world, huh, she’d thought several times while watching him talking with the others.

But he came around, and she was content.

Mostly.

There was one glaring problem when it came to Naoki being at Beacon and getting to be friends with all of her friends.

That is to say, they barely got a moment alone.

A closed door could only do so much, and goodness knows they weren’t going to do anything in the Academy. Er, well, mostly. Yang had pulled him behind a doorway more than once when no-one was paying attention, and the times they’d sat together in classes, Naoki had very sneakily rubbed the side of his foot up and down her calf. Before, she wouldn’t have been so stirred up by that. Before. Nowadays, it was the toughest test to seize some alone time together, unless they snuck out to town.

Under her team’s watchful eyes, though, even that was tough.

You guys don’t have to worry, we can take care of ourselves, she’d said to them at the beginning, mostly amused. But, they’d still find times to gently interrupt just when they were planning to go somewhere; she thought most of it was unconscious, anyway, but it wasn’t a big thing to want some alone time with her boyfriend, right? It shouldn’t be.

Even Naoki, bastion of eternal patience and good nature… well, no, even he could get awfully impatient awfully quick if she just gently poked at the right buttons. But she could tell he wanted some proper alone time with her without worrying whether or not someone would come knocking on his room door or wandering up to them with a greeting while they were headed out of the Academy, and so on.

Today was that day.

When all of her team were peacefully snoozing (snoring) away, Yang slipped out of the room, tip-toeing down the hall, soft as anything. She tested Naoki’s door. Locked.

Hmm.

Soft knocks gleaned no answer so Yang put her hand on her chin, thinking before an idea came to her. Oh yes, that’d do it.

Approximately two minutes later, a red-faced and adorably sleep-tousled Naoki was answering his door to Yang’s sunny, guileless grin, and started saying something about exuding those kind of emotions right here— before she put her fingers to his lips and beckoned with her other hand. And so, she managed to have him on Bumblebee, speeding out of Beacon in record time, Naoki’s arms tight around her waist.

Hardly because he was scared, though.

“You know, we’re going to have to figure out something other than hotels,” he said as she lead him inside, smiling over her shoulder at him. “Or your wallet is gonna run dry.”

“I’ve got enough for now.” She flapped a hand at him, but once they were in the elevator going up, her hand was twisting in his collar and she was pulling Naoki in for the types of kisses they’d snuck behind doors, in corners in-between classes, quick and not enough at all.

“But doesn’t,” Naoki murmured in-between kisses, “the idea of finding our own secret spot sound fun?”

“Depends on how fast we can find it,” Yang sighed, tightening her grip. When the door opened to a rush of déjà vu, it took a lot longer than last time for them to get out and to the room.



The one thing that didn’t fail to impress him about Yang’s team and JNPR, were how colourful the members were.

—and not just the hair and eye colours, though he couldn’t forget that.

They were kind, sometimes a little awkward, putting their all into everything that they did, maybe a little too bloodthirsty (Nora). But, he liked them, more than he could remember liking many people since his time in Cerealia. He had met some of them before, though they didn’t know him here, and they were still the same people he’d gotten good impressions.

Except now, there was a chance to know them without the different worlds issue, without that kidnapping and worry hanging over their heads.

They were just all so…

“I really like all you guys,” Naoki sighed one lunchtime almost a month after his arrival, his chin in his hand as he gazed down the table. There came a few muffled snorting sounds, coughs as several of them had been drinking at the same time. Jaune seemed one moment from needing a Heimlich before he managed to swallow, breathe, and gasp.

He blinked. And then he straightened up, his hand dropping. “Wait, did I—”

“You did,” Yang’s voice was right in his ear before her arms were around his neck and he was being hauled down, her hand furiously ruffling his hair, “and it was so cute, Naoki!”

While he made protesting sounds and reddened, the rest of the table exchanged looks.

And Pyrrha—

“We like you too, Naoki,” she stated, firmly, “you’re a reliable comrade, and it’s been a pleasure to spend time becoming friends with you.”

“Pyrrha…” Naoki stared at her, still pseudo-headlocked.

Before their emotional eye contact could go on for too long, Yang ruffled him again and he mmf’d in protest as the others began to chime in, though not with some of them commenting that he was way too honest. With each compliment or shared sentiment he got back, Naoki’s face got redder and redder.

“…and our air hockey competition isn’t over yet, you know! I’ll beat you one day,” Jaune was vowing when Naoki suddenly moved from Yang’s hold and to his feet. His face was redder than any of them had ever seen (except for Yang) and he made a few noises before—

“I gotta go.”

And then he was off, speed-walking from the cafeteria, which probably changed into a sprint as soon as he’d cleared the doors.

“…Yang, did we offend him?” Weiss asked after a long moment, but Yang was nearly in tears from trying to hold back her laughter.

“He’s so shy…! He can say that himself no problem but he can’t…hear it…!” She pounded the table with the flat of her hand, laughing, before she stumbled to her feet. “Don’t worry, you all just made him super happy. I’ll go bring him back.”

Eventually, she succeeded, though he looked even more red-faced and a little disheveled while Yang was smiling, proudly as anything.