"All I'm saying is that motion sickness is a more common problem than people let on!"

"Well, the name is Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue, ladies love it."

"They will! Well, I hope they will. I mean, my mom always says that... Eh, nevermind."

Ruby chuckled. Walking and talking with someone who seemed just as awkward and clueless as she felt made her feel less out of place, and while "Jaune Arc" was firmly cementing himself as a hopeless goober in her mind, she appreciated how friendly and honest he was being.

But she wasn't comfortable enough with this strange new boy to walk with him without saying anything, and he had trailed off into embarrassed silence that just made her feel embarrassed too. She wracked her brain to think of a conversation topic, and in desperation, settled on familiar territory.

"Sooo, I got this thing," she said. Casually, she whipped Crescent Rose off the holster on her back, using the same motion to fold her baby into its scythe-form. The blade slammed into the ground with enough force to bury the tip into the paving stones.

Jaune perked up and drank in the sight. "Oh, a scythe?"

"It's also a customizeable, high-impact velocity sniper-rifle."

"That's cool!"

"So what do you got?"

He drew a sword from the sheath hanging from his left hip, and held the blade steady at chest-level, pointed straight at the sky. "This is Crocea Mors. My great-great grandfather used it in the Great War. This is still the very same blade he used."

"Really?! So it's not just a classic, it's a family heirloom! That's so cool! All students at Signal forge their own weapons, so I made Crescent Rose myself."

Jaune's eyes widened. "Oh, yeah, me too!" With a little desperation, he quickly grasped for the bulky, blocky white sheath on his belt. Much like Crescent Rose, it clicked and clanked as it unfolded and expanded into a full-sized target shield. "This is Crocea Ancile. When I started training with my uncle, Crocea Mors already had a sheath that could unfold into a kite shield, but it was a newer weapon and didn't have a name. My uncle said that Crocea Mors was a masterpiece as well as a piece of history, but he insisted that since the shield was already a replacement, I should make my own replacement with more modern technology."

Stars in her eyes, Ruby reached out to touch it. "So what do they do?"

"Well, mostly Crocea Mors doesn't break when I hit things with it, but no matter how hard or how many times I hit things, the blade doesn't dull. Uncle says it must be just as sharp as the day that our ancestor used it, and that's good enough for me."

"Oooh, I'm jealous! I have to sharpen Crescent Rose's blades every few weeks, and replace them every few months. All four of the main ones in the head, and sometimes the others too. Each one is a custom blade! It's a pain."

"Sorry," he said with sincere sympathy.

"And the shield?"

He grinned, and pointed to a barrel hidden in the circle's edge. "It's also a gun." But he apparently felt that was enough of that subject, as he put his weapons away and continued walking in the direction they'd been going.

Taking the hint and following his lead, Ruby changed the subject to another source of curiosity. "So, why'd you help me out back there, at the courtyard?" Despite her first impressions of him, now he seemed like someone who truly belonged at Beacon Academy, like her sister Yang or anyone else old enough to graduate from combat school. Why was he spending time with her when she clearly had no idea what to do, instead of going on ahead to wherever they were supposed to be going, like Yang did?

But he didn't seem to care. "Eh, why not? My mom always says, 'Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet.'"

"Hmm." Not a bad philosophy. But more urgently... "Hey, where are we going?" Even if she didn't have a clue where they were supposed to be, or when, she thought that he was taking an oddly relaxed pace getting there and this didn't seem to be leading anywhere important.

"Oh, I dunno," Jaune said carelessly. "I was following you."