The second year at Beacon is when students can take what they had learned from their first year and go a few steps further, run with it all, and apply it all to more difficult endeavors they will encounter, furthering their journey's to being full-fledged hunters.

They will have more difficult classes, get assigned to more treacherous missions, and more responsibility in their lives as they progress.

Some teams make it through with flying colors, while others barely squeak through practically by the skin of their teeth, and then there are the slacker first-years that get held back, and have to start it all over again.

All of them have to adapt to the challenges they will inevitably face, and they all do in different ways, some more affective than others, but no matter what it's always unpredictable.

Apply all this, then put Team SMOK in the equation, and it gets straight up chaotic in their world. They are just happy to have the chance to see their second year at all, given what they had seen and gone through.

They tried their best for the most part to keep quiet, mainly due to orders from Ozpin to not say anything about the whole escapade, no matter how many questions were asked, which basically meant they spent the majority of the second semester of their first year avoiding a lot of people, which for Koel, Olivia, and Silver wasn't to tough to do because they of course weren't the most talkative people to ever meet, though Marriott wasn't exactly as easy to keep track of since she is definitely much more outgoing than the previous three, and she often had to be dragged away from any scene in which she could have easily blabbed on about everything, which was normally out of frustration of so much indignation, something she of course wasn't used to considering her background.

But the school year eventually ended, and thus, so did their suffering from everything that had transpired, and they went their separate ways for the time being, until they had to come back together for their next year, hopefully a better year.

But hope was all they could hold on too regarding the situation, and they all had a sneaking suspicion that all they had encountered was done, they knew it wasn't all over, and they had to keep their guard up for anything and everything.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, so for right now…

Marriott and Olivia had found each other at the shipyard after their respective bullheads, in which Marriott put down her things to run over and give the orange-haired knight a tight hug with her strong arms, one that made Olivia gasp and wheeze slightly from the tightness, and once over, they picked up their things after Olivia had actually dropped hers in surprise from the redheaded warriors borderline bearhug, and with suitcases in hand, they went on their way to Beacon while just idly talking about whatever happened over the summer, but they didn't find the other half of their team, and once they got to their ever familiar dorm room, they found why.

They found the door unlocked, and walking in, they found the two faunus sisters talking and taking care of their own belongings, but once they heard the door open, they turned their heads to see their partners in the doorway, and they smiled, Silver's a more welcoming and warm smile, while Koel's was more shy and reserved as expected, and Olivia and Marriott matched their smiles with their own.

Silver placed let go of her suitcase they rested on her bed and waved at the two humans, her smile persisting.

"Welcome back."

That has got to be the WORST freaking summary to ever be written. Like, ever... of all time.

But whatever, this has taken me WAY too freaking long to start, but it's finally here, the second volume of Up In SMOK! Boom CONFETTI!

What's funny is that I'm uploading this at the same time that the sun is being half-covered by the moon for the eclipse, which is awesome, so I'm going outside as soon as this is uploaded. Hope you guys thought the eclipse was cool, but of course I hope you like this prologue, and will enjoy the entirety of this story, no matter how irregular uploads may be. I will say this though, that the first two or three chapters will be uploaded in the next week because I already have most of those chapters written already. Yay, PROGRESS!