"...And then, as the poor, frightened girl yanked the cloth off the mirror, a scream echoed throughout the night as she saw...herself!"

"EEEEK- Wait...why's the scary?" Ruby Rose asked, confused. Her team, JNPR, and Team CFVY were all sitting in the latter's dorm room, telling scary stories at the latter Team's insistence. Well...mostly Coco's.

Coco leaned forward, using the light on her Scroll to silhouette her face from below in the dimness. "...she was wearing last year's footwear!"

"EEEEEEEK!"

That one was Jaune, actually. He was holding onto Pyrrha's arm like his life depended on it.

"Pffft, that's all?" Nora scoffed. "Laaaaaaame!"

"Yeah, that was kinda lame," echoed Yang. "Like, is there anything special about the shoes, do they try to eat her feet or something?"

"They clash horribly with her slacks.~"

Velvet gave a loud sigh. "Alright, Coco's turn was a bust-"

"Hey!"

"-who wants to go next?"

"Eh, I'll give it a try," Yang shrugged, taking her Scroll out. "You know what they say about hitting rock bottom…"

Yatsu tried to play the diplomat, coming to Coco's defense. "It wasn't that bad. The buildup was good."

"Fair's fair, the buildup was quite good," Weiss remarked. "But I also agree with Yang that the ending left something to be desired."

"Not enough blood," Nora added, munching on what used to be a large bowl of popcorn.

"Feh! Critics, all of you…," Coco scoffed.

"Anyway…" She turns her Scroll light on, holding it under her face. "…have any of you guys heard about the ghost that haunts these halls?~"

"Like…metaphorically?" Ruby asked.

"Literally." A devious grin spread over Yang's face, causing Ruby, Jaune, and Velvet to wince in fright a bit. "They say it happened many years ago, back when this Academy was still under construction. The story goes that a young girl around our ages was goofing around with her friends in the scaffolding of this wing, having a good old time. Now, safety measures weren't as stringent as they are nowadays, but there were still plenty of warning signs around to let people know of the danger."

"There weren't any workers around to warn people away?" Blake wondered.

"Nope. Like I said, safety measures were different, and even if they wanted to, would you want to tussle with a bunch of Huntsmen without an Aura to at least soak damage?"

"Well, I mean-"

"Anyway, please save all questions until the end of the tale. Now, where was I- right! I remember; the girl and her friends were climbing up the scaffolding, and long story short, she got careless and fell to her death."

Those same three people from before all gasped in shock.

"Everyone was sad and mourned her passing, and eventually the school was finished, and for the first few years, nothing extraordinary happened. However…"

"…however?" Weiss promoted.

"When the fifth year started…things happened."

"What kind of things?" asked Ren. Nora was currently sitting against his side, still munching popcorn.

Yang continued, "Mostly little things, stuff you wouldn't think were too out of the ordinary: stuff not being where you left it, weird sounds a night, the odd bit of movement out of the corner of your eye, stuff like that. But soon reports started coming in of students seeing things…"

There was a pregnant pause.

"…w-what kind of things?" Ruby shakily asked.

"Well…,~" Yang leaned forward, grinning evilly, "one of the new first-year teams said that they could see someone walking around the halls at night they didn't recognize who didn't leave any footprints when they walked. Another team said that they could hear a voice when each other them were alone that didn't belong to anyone they knew. Yet another team kept finding their things vandalized, but they could never prove who did it. …but do you want to know the worst thing that happened?"

Ruby frantically shook her head "no", but all the others all leaned in closer, Yang taking that as her cue to continue.

"…one team who ended up staying in what was supposed to be the dead girl's old room suddenly disappeared!" After a few seconds of startled whimpering, she continued. "It was the strangest thing: no one could remember hearing any struggles coming from the room that night, but the next day when someone went to check on the team, they found the room completely messed up, like someone had tried to tear it apart. And there was no sign of the students themselves, even their weapons were missing."

Ruby gave a frightened gasp at this.

"In fact, the only sign that someone had been in that room at all was a message scratched into the bathroom mirror: 'You don't deserve to be here.'"

"Um…w-which room did this happen in?" Ruby shakily asked.

"Oh, you already know which room, Sis; it's ours."

At that moment, Ruby looked like she was ready to spring upward and grab onto the ceiling at the slightest provocation.

"You should have kept it ambiguous."

"Huh?" The blonde girl glanced over at Blake. "Kept what ambiguous?"

"The location of the room," she clarified, "If we didn't know which room actually belonged to the dead girl, then all of us would have been wondering if it would have been our own rooms where this happened. Now it's only us who have to worry about that, and none of us actually believe in ghosts."

"Precisely," Weiss echoed, "I couldn't have said it better myself."

"Also, that story's been around longer than we've been here," Coco added. "Not really breaking any new ground, Blondie."

Yang scoffed. "Yeah? Well, I at least know how to set an atmosphere!"

"At least mine was original-!"

They each immediately received a bonk on the head from Velvet. "Knock it off, both of you! We're all friends and none of us are the best storytellers-"

Nora conspicuously cleared her throat.

"-so let's not ruin the evening by bickering."

It was a command more than it was a light suggestion, one which Coco and Yang decided to heed (though they still shot each other a quick glare).

"Alright then, anyone else want to give it a go?"

"I'm gonna go get some snacks!" Ruby suddenly declared, jumping to her feet, "You can start the next one without me, I don't mind."

"Feeling scared?~" Nora teased, popping a kernel of popcorn into her mouth and chewing. She also wore a smug grin on her face.

"What, m-me? S-scared? Psssh, as if!"

"Your stutter begs to differ," Weiss noted.

"Shut up!" She pouted, turning to Team CFVY. "Which way is the vending machine again?"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

"…because of course it's out of order!" bemoaned Ruby as she stood in front of the currently out-of-order vending machine, the tiny packaged snacks taunting her from within.

And no, she couldn't simply reach up through the hatch and grab a pack of roasted nuts from the bottom row. She learned that the hard way one year when Taiyang had taken her and Yang to the beach for vacation one year.

She sighed. "I guess I'm gonna have to find the other one now…" She wasn't entirely keen on trekking further into the Second Year dorms; she only barely remembered where everything was on her own floor, and that was just because Team RWBY's room was a bit of a walk to the elevators; walking aimlessly around an unfamiliar floor to find a working vending machine just felt like more trouble than it was worth, even if it gave her an excuse to sit out a bunch of the ghost stories.

Granted, she didn't have Weiss's brand of navigation skills…

"Gobbin' at it won't work. Trust me, I've tried."

Ruby was grateful that Crescent Rose was currently locked up for the night because if she had him with her right now she might nearly have bisected the poor, pale-skinned girl standing behind her when she whirled around. As such, she ended up doing "karate" at the girl instead.

"Whoa, whoa!" The girl held her hands up in surrender, pointed, silver fox ears atop her head twitching in surprise. "Easy there, Sheila, no need to get all buggered on me, crikey!"

Once Ruby's heart stopped trying to escape her rib cage she put her hands down. "Sorry…uh, I guess I'm still a little jumpy, huh?"

"Are ye normally?" the Faunus girl asked. She brushed a lock of her ashen grey hair behind her ear, looking bashful. "Also, kinda my fault; I tend to sneak up on people without even trying."

"Not really," Ruby shook her head, "…sorry for almost hitting you, by the way."

"No harm done, prolly wouldn't 'a hurt me anyhow. Might wanna lay off the bev if this keeps happening, though."

"I'll keep that in mind. Oh! I'm Ruby, by the way. Ruby Rose."

"Pleasure. Mine's Silverfox." Silverfox pointed to her ears. "Folks weren't the most creative, you see."

"Could be worse," Ruby shrugged, "they could have called you 'Vav'."

This was apparently high comedy to Silverfox, since she suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh, crikey, that's the best thing I've heard in ages! I didn't know Beacon started teaching comedy!"

"Uh…it doesn't?"

"Oh, no fooling?" Silverfox took a deep breath. "Guess I'm a bit out of touch nowadays…"

It was hard to get a read on this girl.

"So, uh…I don't suppose you know where another vending machine is, would you?" Might as well ask while the person was here, after all.

"Absolutely! I know this place top to bottom, been here long enough." She motioned for Ruby to follow her. "C'mon, don't drag ye heels."

While she still wasn't a social butterfly like most of her friends were, Ruby had been making an effort to be less introverted now that she was here at Beacon. (Hence why she and Velvet would talk shop about weapons sometimes.) And despite only being able to understand 70% of what Silverfox said, the older girl was surprisingly easy to talk to.

"What'd ye say your mutt's name was again?" she asked during the walk.

"Zwei. We got him a few years ago for Nondescript Winter Holiday. Hehe, he couldn't wait to get out of that box when Dad brought it out.~"

"…it had air holes in it, right?"

"Nope. But Zwei never seems to mind that; Dad actually mailed him to us here."

"Crikey, no foolin'? That's the most amazing barker I've ever heard of!"

"He really is, though."

Ruby wasn't really paying attention to the path they took on the way to the next vending machine, so she was a bit surprised she Silverfox suddenly announced that they were there already.

And as promised, this one looked to be in proper working order.

"There ye go; tuck in."

Ruby gave a tiny squeak of glee as she fed her money into the machine, selecting the option for the bags of chocolate chip cookies. Five seconds later the coils turned and the bag dropped into the catch, Ruby quickly reaching in and claiming her prize.

"Thanks a bunch, Silverfox! I owe you one."

"Eh, no big," she shrugged. "I was getting bored anyway, this was fun."

"Oh, by the way, what team are you with? I forgot to ask before."

"Team SABL. Though…you prolly won't see us around much; most of them have moved on already."

"Oh, ok then…" Ruby's gave bent downward, a bit disappointed that she wouldn't get to meet the rest of her new friend's team. "Well, will you still be around if I-"

When she looked back up, Silverfox was nowhere to be seen. It was just her, the vending machine, and her bag of cookies in the hall right now.

"…hello?"

No one answered.

"Aw grapes, I hope I can find my way back…"

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Almost an hour later Ruby found her way back to Team CFVY's room, coming back to find Nora taking her turn at telling a scary story.

"So then, like, a hundred Ursa showed up! The kids were super scared- cuz who wouldn't be when that many Grimm show up, you know? Although…I don't think Ursa packs ever get that big…ah, whatever! It's just a story. So anyway!"

It's Nora, what do you expect?

"…oh hey, Ruby! Got your snack?"

"Yeah." She wiped some crumbs from the corner of her mouth. "Sorry I took so long…"

"Ah, you didn't really miss much," Yang informed her, "Weisscream also failed to be scary-"

"Poverty is a really frightening concept!" she protested.

"-then Velvet tried, but she didn't do good either."

"In my defense, I don't really know a lot of scary stories…" Her ears drooped.

"Nora's been going for the past 35 minutes," Ren interjected.

"Hey, you'll all thank me when I finally get to the payoff!"

"What took you so long, anyway?" Coco asked.

"Well, the vending machine was out of order, so I had to find another one." Ruby took her previous seat. "Another student helped me find it."

"Which one?" Velvet asked.

"Uh…she said her name was Silverfox; she's part of team SABL."

Ruby wasn't expecting the entire room (even Nora) to suddenly become deadly silent, everyone looking at her like she'd just grown a butt on her forehead.

"…what?"

"There's no 'team SABL' at Beacon," Fox explained, "we've been here for over a year now and we've never met anyone with that team name." Coco nodded in agreement.

"W-what? No, I just met one of them!"

"Professor Ozpin didn't name anyone 'team SABL' after the Initiation," Weiss informed the auburn-haired girl, "And if Fox says there hasn't been a team like that before, then I'm inclined to believe him."

"And you said she was a Fox Faunus?" Velvet prompted, receiving a nod from Ruby. "The only Fox Faunus I remember seeing was a guy, and his team graduated last year."

"But then…who did I-?"

Suddenly, things begal to click into place.

"Gobbin' at it won't work…I've tried."

"I tend to sneak up on people without even trying."

"Prolly wouldn't 'a hurt me anyhow."

"I didn't know Beacon started teaching comedy."

"I guess I'm a bit out of touch nowadays…"

"I know this place top to bottom, been here long enough."

"…you probably won't see us around much."

It wasn't hard to see why she'd missed all the signs before, but now that she actually thought about it…

"DID I JUST TALK TO A GHOST?!"

fin.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

You didn't think I'd let Spoopy Day go by and not put something out in recognition of the day, did you?