Guest- That's the plan. I guess.

merendinoemiliano (All)- The first thing I have say is chill, it's here. You have interesting ideas but ones that I won't say anything else on.

TheNiemand- Eh, maybe, maybe not you'll have to see. At this point, they are all either 5 or 6 depending on when their birthdays are.

RWBYSTRQ- I hope this one is worth the even stupider wait.

blackmailingqueen- As you can see, I have.

It was peak autumn. The trees were becoming skeletons and the amount of produce in stores was incredible. The harvest had been good this year.

Even still, the copious amounts of food were not what had a certain energetic 6 year old girl sporting a smile so wide that it looked like it shouldn't be possible for her to achieve and bouncing like a pinball all over the place.

Yang Xiao-Long was excited to see her friend Jaune again after they had met during the Summer. The public school holidays had just started and Jaune and his family were coming over.

It wasn't like they hadn't had any contact since Jaune had to go home due to the public schools starting up again. Tai and Argent had managed to set up a pen pal system between the pair.

According to Jaune, his father, Charbon, had started his training. It had been, according to him, exercises and not any practice with a weapon, yet. He had only just had his aura unlocked, his father had been training him without his aura so that he could 'build stamina', though Yang wasn't really sure what that meant.

They would be staying at a nearby holiday home that they were just renting, for now. Jaune had admitted that if his parents decided that they liked the place, they would buy it permanently so they could travel over there whenever they wanted to.

Jaune had also mentioned that his sisters had gone from utterly distrusting Yang to teasing him about his friendship with her. He had described the change as sudden and weird. Admittedly, Yang didn't know what sudden meant until she had asked Raven what it meant.

Nevertheless, it was a good thing. It meant that she didn't have to be subjected to the constant glares of distrust that the sisters had been sending her way. When she thought back on it, though, as the holiday had gone on, several of the glares had gotten less vicious and one or two had stopped glaring entirely. Maybe the process of acceptance was more natural and steady than both Jaune and Yang had originally thought. "Took longer," being the way Yang had actually described it.

She wasn't the only excited small being within the STRQ household as the sugar-powered hyperactivity machine that was Ruby was excited to meet Yang's friend. She was unfortunate enough to have become ill during her, Summer's and Qrow's trip into Vale, forcing the young girl to stay in her room while Summer looked after her, meaning she was unable meet Jaune the first time round.

They were arriving by ferry into Patch harbour, just outside Signal Academy. According to Argent, they were planning on taking the earliest ferry over which meant that the people within the STRQ household were forced to get up early in the morning.

While Yang was excited to see her friend, she could not be described as a morning person. It had taken her all her will to pull her carcass out of bed and towards the kitchen at what could be described as butthole-o'clock in the morning. In layman's terms, 6:30.

"I'm not used to this house being so quiet," Tai had commented, halfway through his third slice of toast. Everyone turned to look at him with expressions that indicated that they wanted him to explain, "I mean, we never get up this early. I haven't gotten up this early since Beacon and it's very obvious that neither Yang or Ruby are used to getting up at this time. I don't think they ever have before today. So they are all sluggish even though they are clearly excited to see Jaune."

"How early in the morning is it that you are the smart one? Are we sure that I'm still not dreaming?" Qrow asked, his voice full of snark and his tone even more grouchy than it usually was. He hated getting up at this hour. He had been up all night modifying his scythe to try to add an electrical function to the blade. Why? He couldn't remember.

"Qrow, be nice," Summer scolded, she had spent the night simply trying to put a very hyperactive Ruby to sleep and was now very sluggish at the lack of sleep she got herself, "I know it may seem like a miracle but you don't have to point it out!"

Tai's face had went from glaring at Qrow, to smiling towards Summer, to being slammed against the table in the matter of a few seconds. It was very comical to Ruby who had started giggling at the misfortune of the older blond.

"That was very backhanded, Summer," Raven observed. She had actually slept fairly well, having left Tai to put Yang to sleep. She had gotten very tired and had lost much sleep in the past simply trying to get the little dragon to sleep and so elected to make Tai struggle to put their daughter to bed. Needless to say that it had taken over an hour to do so. At which point, Tai crashed out on his own bed, not even cleaning his teeth because of the mental exhaustion and frustration that had been brought about by Yang and her near boundless energy.

"Friends can be backhanded about friends, Raven," Summer replied, somewhat childishly and with a large slathering of grump added in.

"True but still, can't you compliment him or defend him without being backhanded? That's my job."

"Raven, your job is be the grumpy one, why couldn't you be the grumpy like you usually are," Summer snapped back.

"One, because I'm not as tired as you are, and two, am I really as grumpy as you say I am? At least, these days?" Raven calmly replied. She was fully aware about how she composed herself before she had Yang and had steadily become a generally more positive and forgiving person.

"Whatever," came the very grumpy and snarky rebuttal from the team leader.

"Just drink your coffee Summer. That should make you feel less grumpy."

Summer did so, slamming the now lukewarm beverage down her throat in one go, leaving a brown stain around her mouth that looked like a moustache.

"Now wipe your mouth."

"Quit babying me, Raven."

"Fine," the clearly amused Raven replied, before turning her attention to her daughter who hadn't being paying the conversation any heed, instead focusing on how she would react to seeing her friend again. Of course, while wolfing down her cereal. "Yang, eat slower."

Yang didn't hear her mother, still engrossed in thought about what she and Jaune would do. If course, her lack of reaction prompted Tai to ask, "Hey Yang, you alright?"

Still no reply. Yang was in full on daydream mode. A daydream which attended when she felt someone prodding her shoulder. Yang snapped out of her daydream, somewhat annoyed. She turned to the source of the prodding which turned out to be Ruby, who had noticed how she hadn't reacted to anything and decided to do something about it. If course, her young mind went straight to the easiest solution. Brute force, kind of.

"Whuh?" the young blonde girl intelligently asked.

"You alright Yang?" Tai asked again, with a slightly concerned expressions on his face.

"Yeah, I was thinking," Yang quietly replied.

"About what?" her adorable cousin adorably asked. Adorably.

"Jaune," she replied even quieter.

"It what way. Do you like him?" a slightly less grouchy Summer asked, seeing an opportunity to tease the little dragon.

"Yeah, he's my friend, why wouldn't I like him?" Yang answered not noticing the potentially embarrassing situation she had just out herself in.

Qrow however saw where this was about to go and jumped on the bandwagon that Summer had set in motion, "Yeah but do you like him?"

Yang blinked in confusion, what did he mean by that? "Yeah?" she tentatively answered.

This caused Summer to start giggling and for the other denizens of the STRQ household, not including the also very confused Ruby, to smile. "Do you think he's cute?" Raven, of all people, asked.

Yang's face started to turn red, "Umm..."

"Guys, I know it may seem fun to tease Yang but we need to be going otherwise we'll be late," Tai piped up.

"Tai, you sure you're feeling alright? That's the second time that you've said something smart today," Qrow asked.

"Qrow, if we'll be late by teasing Yang then we'll be late by teasing Tai. Everyone, finish your breakfast as quickly as quick as you can and let's go," Summer ordered, putting a halt on the ribbing of Tai before it could really start.

The next few minutes saw a clattering of plates and mugs, the scraping of chairs across the ground, and the slamming of the front door, which nearly broke off its hinges.

There was a mad dash and an exclamation of, "There's the ferry!" by Tai, some tripping, some tumbling, and some piggybacking in the hurry to get there. Qrow now had a footprint imprinted on his face, Yang had twigs sticking out of her hair and a sore forehead after smacking her herself against a tree branch, and Summer's pride would need some time to heal after she basically got left in the dust by everyone else, which is embarrassing for the teams fastest member.

As the ferry opened up to disembark, a panting group that would be known as the STRQ family, even though they never really called themselves that, arrived at the terminal. A moderate sized building, built for managing the tourists that were common on Patch.

As the masses of people disembarked, it was very obvious to tell which ones the Arcs' where. Even with the many ridiculous hair colours that could be found on Remnants, none quite reached the level of ridiculous that was the Arc family. There was such a variety of colours that many of the other people that were disembarking were staring at them the whole way. To a regular family that would be quite jarring but very little about the Arcs could be considered 'regular'. After all, this was the family of Charbon Arc, known for his eccentricity, especially when it came to his children. It clearly rubbed off on some of them as they could only be described as overprotective of the younger members, Jaune and Rouge.

Speaking of which, the only male child of Charbon and Argent Arc had clearly grown taller, standing the same height as his eldest sister, Verte. Admittedly, as they were both children this was not all that impressive but it was clear that he would be much taller than his siblings in the near future. This echoed his father as the man was notably tall and could very easily intimidate people simply by towering over them. His only younger sister, Rouge, was now walking completely on her own, despite the fact that she was barely a year old. She could also solve maths problems that were meant for 10 year olds, and could both talk and write. She was regarded as some kind of prodigy by basically everyone she met and it weirded a lot of people out, even the insanely eccentric Charbon.

As soon as Jaune spotted Yang standing beside her father, he pushed his way through the crowds of people in front of him, and ran towards them, his family quickly following him to make sure he didn't get lost in the crowd. Qrow was the first of the group to notice the young lad pushing through the crowd but thought it best not to spoil the moment for Yang.

As soon as Yang notice Jaune she grabbed Ruby and ran towards her friend. She may have been slightly tired but the adrenaline in her system meant that she didn't care, all that mattered was making sure that she got to Jaune and that Ruby met him. They skidded to a halt in front of each other with Ruby not stopping soon enough and crashing into Yang, "Oww...", the four year old muttered as she rubbed her nose.

"Hi Yang," Jaune said, just very happy to see his friend again though not to fixated that he noticed the smaller girl behind Yang, "I guess you're Ruby."

"Yep," the younger girl replied, popping the 'p' as she did so.

"Nice to meet you, Ruby," Jaune offered his hand to the girl, which Ruby took, having seen Tai do so with other people before.

"Jaune, wanna have some fun?" Yang asked, noting that both children families had caught up to them.

"Of course."

Man do I feel guilty. I have a multitude of reasons this took nearly a year to do and why the chapter is shorter than the previous even though I had wanted to have it be longer. For starters, I had to finish off school and that meant studying for my exams, a lengthy and stressful process. Then I did some work on it during the summer but ran into writers block. There was also the fact that I am also redoing the Naruto story Memories and that is planned to be very long and very time consuming. Then college reared it's head and I had to take time to do work for that.

I honestly feel that the product that I have produced is rather lacklustre but I felt that I had to get something out there to show that I wasn't dead and neither is this story, especially before it became year since it was last updated. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, I hop to get the next chapter up sometime in the next two months, perhaps over the Christmas holidays.

DaPika