"So," Weiss said, walking through to the living room clasping a Beacon Academy-branded mug brimming with steaming, black coffee, "what's on the agenda for today?"
"You know, Weiss, not everything is a business meeting- despite what your old man may say, aren't I right, Yang?" Ruby looked over at her sister who was entranced with the act of clipping her fingernails with the little metal device used for such things. "What?" Yang asked, confused, as her sister and Billy glanced at each other and giggled. She looked at Ruby, and then developed a face of utter enlightenment when she realised just what Ruby and Billy were laughing at. "Oh for fuck's sake!"
For at least seven agonising seconds after that (as measured by the omnipresent metronomic ticking and tocking of the cheap wall clock), the group sat around the chipped, veneered coffee table in a silence more painful than a kick to the balls from Viktoria Modesta. "Anyway..." Ruby picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened, "do you guys have Faunavision out in Patch?" Yang facepalmed and sighed audibly as her sister geeked out over the campest, least musical music contest in all of the World of Remnant; it certainly beat The Grimm Factor and Menageriefestivalen by a long shot for both viewership and importance upon the music industry.
"I highly doubt they do have it in that godforsaken hellhole of an island, and honestly, Ruby, that's the only reason anyone would ever want to live there." Weiss answered, barely breaking the intense eye contact she had with her coffee- which was like her in that it was hot and bitter. Billy and Emily simultaneously fired her a look of death. "Actually," Billy rectified Weiss' racist assumption with a great degree of glee, "we do have Faunavision. Not that it's something I'd ever sit down and watch. I'm straight."
"Sure you are." Yang jibed, making sure to sound extra facetious. "No one comes to Beacon and leaves straight. You'll probably bang that lanky weirdo in the really battered, scratched up Stetson."
"Charlie?"
"No one else dresses like he does, do they? This is Beacon Academy, after all- it certainly isn't Brokeback Mountain, as much he would like it to be." Billy and Emily looked at each other and both screamed "OOOOOHHHH!"
"If you're quite finished insulting that poor freak of a boy, may I continue?" Ruby asked her older sister rather impatiently. "Yes, Rubes, you can continue."
"Thank you very much. Now, I do have an idea about the next Faunavision Song Contest in Mistral."
"Is that idea that it'll be a pure and unadulterated pile of wank?" Billy cut in, before Ruby gave him her evil stare and he stopped smiling. "As I was saying before I was interrupted, I think I have a good idea. One of us should put our name forward to do Faunavision."
"Sure!" Emily laughed, before turning to look at Yang, whose eyes were now firmly focused on Emily's cleavage which- although very small- was visible through the yellow shirt she was wearing, "How difficult can writing a slightly dodgy Eurotrash pop song and miming it really be?" Yang looked at her girlfriend- this time in the eyes, not the areolae, and sighed. "Very." She replied. "First, you've got the national final." Ruby decided then to interrupt her sister with, "Ours is called Voice of Vale!" She looked at a defeated-looking Yang and elected to simply continue her soliloquy. "Then you have to make sure the song meets contest rules, rehearse, create staging, go to Mistral to actually rehearse on stage and then win!" She came to a halt, her face as red as her Crescent Rose from a sudden inability to make an intake of breath while talking about Faunavision. "Well," Emily replied, "that sounds like a load of...."
She'd have loved to have finished her sentence, you can be sure of that, but whomever had just decided to hammer on the hollow, wooden door clearly had other plans. He knocked twice more. "Ruby." Three more knocks. "Ruby." Three more still. "Ruby."
With a heave and a sigh, she stood up and walked towards the door to let the mystery visitors inside.