Rats of Reality

Highschool AU: After flunking many of her classes Yang is transferred to a remedial course, however the students in this new class are different from her other friends; more rough around the edges. Meanwhile, Ruby is greeted with a far to enthusiastic transfer student. [Nuts and Dolts, Bumblebee, Emcury and minor Arkos]

Chapter 1:

When Yang entered the classroom, she was greeted with the strong stench of failure. Maybe she had gotten used to pristine buildings and smiling faces, but she felt like anyone from any background would cringe at the sights before her. Previously, she believed that any and all pupils at Beacon High were like her or her friends, had enough money to get by and generally cared about their futures. Everyone in this class however looked like they expected to remain right where they were forever.

Yang Xiao Long immediately regretted everything she had done to get to this point; standing in this classroom, looking at these 'students' that would be her classmates for the next six months.

The entirety of the class was in chaos. A silver haired guy clad in a leather jacket was practically having sex with this mint haired, dark skinned girl. There was what looked older than a senior, black locks sweeping across her shoulder, smoking with a similarly aged orange haired guy and an extremely short girl with dyed hair. Other students were talking loudly and obviously gave zero shits about getting in trouble since they were throwing paper and various school supplies every which way. The teacher obviously didn't care, her feet were on her empty desk and she was lazily reading a magazine. Yang looked at the blackboard behind the woman, and read the only thing written there: Ms. Salem.

The only normal looking person in the room was sitting in the corner, dressed in school uniform reading a book and ignoring everything— and something about her was off, she was almost too out of place. The girl looked up for a moment at Yang with a golden gaze, she subtly pointed to the teacher mouthing something that Yang could translate into "Don't just stand there." She nodded, inwardly thanking the bow-clad girl for making her situation a little less awkward.

Yang walked over to Ms. Salem slowly, clearing her throat. The pale, red eyed woman looked her over, snatching the schedule change form from Yang's hand rudely, scanning over the note from the headmaster, Professor Ozpin, explaining the normally boisterous blonde's reason for being there, almost halfway through the school year. She tossed it towards the trashcan, missing it and turning back to Yang. "Okay Xiao Long," She said, sighing, increasing her voice's volume as she continued, "You can sit next to Ms. Belladonna, once it stops doubling as a lover's suite, Mr. Black and Ms. Sustrai." She pointed with a spindly finger to a desk that was currently being used for the aforementioned making out session. The guy flipped her off, and the girl rolled her eyes but they moved one desk over, while Yang moved to the back of the classroom, sitting on the seat but not touching the desk part.

She looked to her right, relieved that she was sitting next to someone who didn't seem that bad (in retrospective). Yang held her hand out to the girl "I'm Yang Xiao Long. And you are…?" The girl didn't look up from her book, but answered with "Blake Belladonna."

She didn't say anything else but Yang felt a little more comfortable there. When the bell eventually rang for class to start, surprisingly everyone quieted and resituated themselves into what Yang assumed were assigned seats, since Ms. Salem looked at a seating chart rather than taking attendance. To her dismay, Yang was sitting next to the silver haired guy, and behind his girlfriend— she had a feeling that they'd do that entire note passing, hand holding couple bullshit. She groaned and leaned her head against the wall, listening to Ms. Salem start the class.

"If you hadn't noticed, we have a new student– she transferred from Professor Oobleck's class. Don't weird her out or whatever." Too late for that "So I hope everyone read those three chapters of "The Thief and The Butcher" that I assigned last week, because I'm testing you on it. Don't worry, Xiao Long, you can take the test tomorrow." As Ms. Salem began passing out papers, a series of "feck's spread around the room. It seemed like no one but Blake and that girl in front of Yang had read the chapters. At this point, Yang expected no less.

The silver haired guy was banging his head on the desk and muttering, "Fuck me. The one time she quizzes us…" His girlfriend rolled her eyes and turned to him, "I finished the whole thing the day she assigned it." He continued to groan as she berated him about the whole thing. Yang almost couldn't believe that the two of them were necking a minuet early.

"They always argue," Blake started suddenly, startling Yang "you get used to it I guess." Although the blonde had no idea how she'd get used to any of it, she was glad that Blake had initiated conversation in the first place. "To be honest I don't really know if I can," Yang replied, "I'm not used to this whole thing." Blake gave her a sympathetic glance before she got her test and began o read it over.

Now that the class was quiet, Yang had the next 20 minuets to absorb what was happening. On Friday she had been in a pristine classroom, with people who would go somewhere in life. Yang was smart; she had just gotten wrapped up in parties and hobbies that school became her extracurricular activity rather than the other way around. So naturally she failed the majority of her academic courses and ended up in a remedial class. She just didn't expect Beacon to stoop this low. This particular class doubled as a course that the kids who couldn't afford Beacon's prices could take. It was far better than any other high school in the area. So there Yang was, a piece of fantastical color and naivety among all the hardened rats of reality.

Author's note:

Okay so even though this fic does focus a bit on Bumblebee and all of those ships in the description, that's not all it will be. This whole Yang bit will be her discovering how the world really works, and if this fic is finished (I hope) each character will get an arc, with an overarching Bumblebee plotline. Expect an update tomorrow!