The days following Sedeqe proclaiming that she would be coming to see Jaune and Pyrrha passed by rather smoothly, if Jaune himself had to say anything about it.

Though the small band of friends Jaune had were all still relatively surprised at the new batch of information shown to them, misunderstood as it had been, the novelty of it gradually wore off, and many hours afterwards Jaune received a message from Sedeqe herself, saying she'd be arriving by port on Friday night.

Though this had reduced the time before she was expected to arrive in Vale to four days instead of seven, Jaune didn't necessarily mind the change in schedule.

As far as he was concerned, the sooner he could get everything over and done with, the quicker he could just return to his life as the wimp of the group, a nickname he'd mentally given himself when he tried to categorize everyone he was relatively close to.

Though he was still trying to find words to describe Ren, Nora and Ruby, he had already designated nicknames to everyone else based on their role, Blake being the bookworm, Yang being the short tempered cheerleader, Pyrrha being, for lack of a better phrase, the bad ass of the group, and Weiss as the stuck-up princess.

Jaune recalled his nicknames for everyone and mentally shrugged to himself at his own method of naming as he was brought back to the present by the Ruby's voice beside him.

"Jaune?" She called out to him from his side.

They were walking inside of the library now, with Ruby's voice barely being an audible whisper due to the quiet atmosphere, them browsing through books.

"Yeah Ruby?"

"Are you okay? You seemed pretty deep in thought there." Ruby commented, half glancing at him and half glancing at the books in the shelves, a list in her left hand.

This was something proposed by Weiss that everyone agreed that they would do for the year, since they had all of the same classes.

This agreement was that everyone would be divided into pairs of two, with the chosen pair going to the library to pick up any books that would be needed for any homework assignments they had for that day.

There had never been a fixed system for which pairs would always go, as the pair was always decided by everyone drawing straws, the distributors being the ones who had gone the last time.

At that point, Jaune had gone to get the books with Ren, Blake, Weiss, and, needless to say, Ruby.

His experiences with Ren and Blake had been fairly similar, with them being brief and quiet, while his experiences with Weiss were predictably filled with him trying to make small talk with her only for the girl to give him the cold shoulder, her expressions reflecting her reluctance in being the person to be paired with him, which Jaune could only somewhat understand.

While he was perfectly aware of the fact that his flirting with her had gotten on her nerves, he had momentarily stopped after a couple of weeks worth of failed attempts, with him only trying again to ask her out on dates as per Sedeqe's requests/commands.

In the times where Jaune had been paired with Weiss however, it was well after he'd stopped any and all attempts at "wooing" her.

Though he was, again, aware of the fact that he and Weiss weren't exactly what people would call close, he honestly saw no reason that the task of him simply being friendly would evoke that bad of a reaction out of her.

Sure, if she didn't like him because she had gotten a bad first impression of him, he could understand her being reluctant to being paired with him, but was it really necessary to send an icy glare his way almost every time he tried to talk with her?

He mentally sighed, bringing himself back to the present, "Don't worry, I'm just fine."

"Were you thinking about your date with Pyrrha tomorrow?" Ruby asked with a playful smile.

She knew of the change of schedule simply because of the fact that he had asked Pyrrha if she'd be alright with it, to which she agreed, as Nora was present.

With Ruby and company somehow knowing about the change in schedule the day afterwards, it didn't take Jaune long to connect the dots.

"No. I'm just thinking about how weird it is that you're not jumping at the chance to take a nap for once," Jaune told a half-truth.

While it was true that he actually had been thinking about seeing Sedeqe again, it was also true that Ruby often decided to take naps whenever she and Jaune were paired up.

The reason for this was extremely understandable; Ruby had skipped two years of training and education at Signal Academy, her combat school before Beacon, all due to her skill with fighting enemies with Crescent Rose.

While she was fine when it came to the training side of things, educationally Ruby was still a full two years behind everyone, to the point that even Jaune himself, with his just above average grades, imagined that she'd be better off if he helped her.

It was common knowledge within the group that Ruby had immense difficulty adjusting to the new workloads provided by Beacon, a not very surprising sight being her desperately fighting sleep as she sat in class, her head bobbing down so that it hung itself before springing faintly back up, Ruby taking notes that, at times, made little to no sense, the worst of these being her somehow mixing in comic book characters into her notes in her geography course.

This behavior didn't fail to catch everyone's eye, and though Jaune had refrained from offering help because Ruby already had help from Weiss and their teammates for school, he was forced to help her, in his own way, when he was paired with her for the very first time for checking out all of the books.

At that time, Ruby was deeply suffering from sleep deprivation, and it visibly showed in the bags that had formed under her eye sockets, as well as the general lack of optimistic energy that would characteristically fill her silver irises.

"Ruby, do you want me to handle getting the books for today?" Jaune could remember asking her that day.

"No Jaune," Ruby had given him a forced smile, "I can handle it, don't worry."

He more or less forced her to sit down in a chair to wait for him when Ruby, who had the list of books they needed, actually forgot numerous times where she was supposed to look for said books after looking for them in the matter of a few seconds, as well as mixing up the words for some titles of the books.

After Jaune had successfully checked out all of the books, he came back to where he'd left Ruby to find her on her cheek as she sat in an almost limp state, her breathing and closed eyes revealing that she was taking a nap then.

He then proceeded to sit down with her and waited for a half hour before waking Ruby up, and Ruby had developed a habit of just napping while Jaune did most of the work whenever they were paired up together ever since, her only taking some of the books they'd brought out.

It was possible that her sleeping schedule had changed for the better however, Jaune noted, realizing that he hadn't actually had the chance to go for the library run with Ruby in quite a long time.

Regardless, Ruby took Jaune's words without anger or offense, simply accepting his words lightheartedly and speaking with a shrug, "I don't feel as tired today as I usually am, so I thought I'd actually help out for once."

"What are you planning?" Jaune asked without thinking, tone and gaze knowing as the latter was aimed at her.

There were so few things that actually gave Ruby the energy to be in such of a happy state, especially now, during a weekday, that Jaune knew it had to be either fighting or her planning something that caused it, as the only third and fourth alternatives to her having a large amount of physical energy was her drinking coffee, which tended to put her in a fouler mood than before during her withdrawal stage of consuming caffiene, and worrying about someone, neither ever reasonably being a reason to be happily energetic.

As she didn't have Crescent Rose in her holster, Jaune only needed to recall how bad Ruby was when they were being trained in hand to hand combat, as well as how she complained about how it was "such a useless class to take when they would always end up using their weapons anyways," in order for him to use the process of elimination to know she was planning something.

"I'm not planning anything Jaune." Ruby immediately denied, which only made Jaune all the more suspicious of her, even if she hadn't anything about her plans to anyone, at least as far as he knew, as was her habit when she wasn't fighting.

Despite his skepticism however, Jaune didn't let it show on his face, looking back at the piece of paper Ruby had in her hand, "What else do we need to check-out?"

"Just a few more books for Oobleck's class." Ruby said, Jaune nodding his understanding before walking a bit forward, leading Ruby to the History section of the library.

As they reached the section and started to look for the books they needed, Jaune heard Ruby ask behind him, "Do you have any plans for your date with Pyrrha?"

"Not really." Jaune said without looking back at her.

"Why don't you?"

"I just wanted to go out with her, nothing more than that."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Okay then." Ruby responded, walking in front of him while wearing a serious expression despite this.

As she stopped walking and fully faced him, Jaune too stopped, seeing her looking up at him for a moment.

When she failed to meet his expectation that she wanted to say something, Jaune assumed that there was something behind him, and as he turned to see what she was looking at, he started to ask, "What's wrong?"

When he turned his head, he found nothing behind him, and as he turned to Ruby again, he could see her expression looked somewhat troubled, her looking down as though trying to find the right words to say, the boy finding her cheeks to be noticeably redder than they usually were.

"Jaune..."

"Ruby, are you alright?" Jaune asked somewhat worriedly.

Maybe he'd been wrong about her planning something.

Based on her expression, someone she cared about might've been in some kind of pinch after all.

"I'm alright Jaune, it's just..." Ruby sighed softly, "There's something Yang wanted me to give to you."

"Couldn't she have given to me herself?" Jaune asked, knowing full well that was the more likely thing Yang would do.

"She wanted to, but she said it'd be less conspicuous if I did it."

"What did she want to give to me?"

She paused for a moment, then said, "It's in my locker right now. I'll give it to you after we bring the books back."


Several minutes later, after Jaune and Ruby had in fact brought everything back to their teams and left immediately afterwards on the basis of Ruby saying she needed to talk to Jaune, they were before Ruby's locker, the girl opening it up while speaking with him again.

"Yang said she didn't want to get herself completely involved, but she still wanted to give you this," Ruby pulled out a brown paper bag, the opening wrapped tightly up.

She stared down at the bag for a minute longer, the redness on her almost sickly pale cheeks evident, before, almost reluctantly, handed it to Jaune.

The boy took the bag and felt that it was filled with very few things, whatever the contents were, and after realizing this, asked the obvious question, "What is this?"

"It's... it's something that should come in handy," Ruby said in a sheepish tone as she closed her locker door, slowly turning to face Jaune, "Keep some in your - wait, don't open it here!"

She said this frantically as Jaune tried to look inside of the closed bag, her hand grabbing his to stop it, her red face becoming pale as her heart nearly stopped.

"What's in here Ruby?" Jaune asked again, voice taking a note of surprise.

"I... Look, I can't tell you right now," Ruby's eyes glanced over at the people walking in the hallway, before going back to Jaune, "Just keep a few in your wallet just in case..."

"In case what?" Jaune asked after she trailed off.

"Just keep some in your wallet Jaune," Ruby said in a way that could be seen as a warning.

Before he could respond, she walked away, and though he wanted to call out to Ruby, to tell her that he didn't even have a wallet to begin with, he refrained from doing so, watching her as she turned a corner in the hallway before looking down at the half-open bag again.

Making a fully conscious decision to disobey what Ruby said, Jaune opened the bag up completely and held the opening in the light so he could see the contents.

Looking inside the bag made him freeze for a moment.

He continued to stare inside blankly as he slowly realized the reason that Ruby said not to open it up to begin with.

Inside the bag lay a few condoms.

Of all the things to give him, Yang had wanted to give Jaune condoms.

There were no two ways of looking at what this meant.

Jaune had a blank expression as he rolled the opening of the bag closed, his eyes half-lidded as he did this, before he walked, with the bag tightly clutched in his hand, to the nearest trash can, throwing the bag away before promptly trying to completely forget about the bag and its contents.


When the day had finally come for Jaune to go and meet his eldest sister, he was surprised at just how nervous he felt as the day wore itself on.

Few words were actually exchanged between Pyrrha and himself in the many hours that passed by in that day, the closest things to this being some awkward stares between them that were only broken by an equally uncomforting greeting.

If Jaune didn't know better, he would've thought that Pyrrha was extremely nervous when it came to her thinking of the "date" they were about to go on.

However, Pyrrha, in truth, for the past few days, seemed rather excited by the thought of the semi-scheduled events, if her actions said anything of it.

Many times Pyrrha could be found picking out her attire for the event, changing it to fit her liking to it.

Though Jaune at one point questioned her on this, she seemed to look nervous when he did, her asking if she was overdoing it.

Having seen her go about it so happily however, Jaune simply gave her a half-hearted warning to not overstimulate her imagination of how Friday night would go - it was still them only going out to meet his sister after all - as to avoid any chances of her being disappointed by it.

Even though he had it rooted deeply into his mind that what he and Pyrrha were doing wasn't a date, Jaune was guilty of the fact that he too gradually gained a dating type of view of their plans.

It was pretty hard not to when he started setting aside a budget simply for that night so the duo could get something to eat, in the event that they would feel hungry for anything.

When the day finally ended, Jaune had been heading straight to his dorm room, as was usual for him at the end of the day, in order for him to rest his mind a little.

The same could be usually be said for Pyrrha, but since everyone had picked straws for who would go on today's library run, with Ruby and himself being exempt since they'd gone the last time, Pyrrha hadn't joined him because she'd be going with Yang for it.

It was when he was a few halls away from reaching his dorm that it happened.

As Jaune was just about to turn the corner to reach his dorm room, he came face to face with a girl with orange hair and green eyes.

"Oh, hey Nora." Jaune waved his greeting to his companion, him intent on walking past Nora, only for the girl to raise an arm in front of him.

Jaune looked down at Nora's arm, not understanding what she was doing.

Before he could voice it however, Nora spoke, "We've been given strict orders to help you."

"Huh?"

She didn't respond verbally, but physically, bending her lungs down before wrapping his arm around Jaune's waist, moving forward as Jaune was thrown onto Nora's shoulder, the girl yelling back behind herself, "Sun, I've got the package, come on!"

Seeing the blonde faunus running suit behind Nora, who carried him hostage style past many of their peers, Jaune questioned them as calmly as possible.

"What the heck are you guys doing?!"

"That is currently classified!" Sun yelled in response, Jaune just starting to struggle to get off of Nora's shoulder when the running girl skidded to a stop in front of a door, Sun stopping next to her and grabbing the door handle, throwing it wide open, it slamming against the wall, revealing another dorm room, Nora hurling Jaune off of her shoulder with a grunt, him flying inside of the room.

Jaune hit the floor of the well-lit room with a surprised expression, his bearings a bit scattered, disabling his ability to get back up at that moment.

He could only see Sun looking down at him with a smile, "Alright, package secured. The heist is done on our end."

"What the heck are you guys doing?" Jaune asked again, Nora returning her attention to him.

"Don't worry Jaune. Just put on the clothes we set out for you." She responded with a smile.

"Gotta look sharp for your date!" Sun raised his index finger in a playful manner, reaching for the door handle despite himself.

This was all Sun said before he slammed the door shut.

Jaune groaned slightly as he forced himself to get up after regaining his bearings, looking around the room to find that one bed had a full set of clothes laid out and ironed for him.

Looking at them, Jaune face palmed, sighing softly with closed eyes.

This had Yang written all over it.

How long she'd been planning this, Jaune didn't know.

As he walked up to the bed, Jaune picked up the shirt that had been chosen for him, it being a gray long sleeved shirt, he looked it over, finding that it looked to be just his size, or at least close to it.

Eyebrows furrowing themselves, Jaune instinctively placed each of his hands on the lining that'd separate the front of the shirt to its back, pulled the front side of shirt that would wrap around a person's neck back, towards himself, with his right thumb, and held the revealed back of the shirt into the light so he could see what size it was.

When he saw the size it was, Jaune blinked when he saw that the size of the shirt was one that would fit him perfectly for that moment in time, and quite possibly for a long time in the future, lest he were to grow again sometime soon.

The fact that it was his size, when he'd most definitely had never seen the shirt before, creeped him out somewhat.

When had they bought this?

How did they know what size shirt he wore?

As he pondered this question, Jaune came to a realization.

Not too many days ago, on the very same day that Jaune had gone on the library run with Ruby in fact, he had returned to his dorm room to find that the clothes in his closet had been rearranged in his section of his team's closet.

He had only noticed because usually his regular clothes would be organized by color, going from bright to dark, moving in order of an artist's color wheel, going from red, to orange, to yellow, to green, to blue, to purple, and to claret, in that order. While he admittedly didn't have all of these colors in attire, this had been his reference to organizing them.

When he'd returned to the dorm room and had opened the closet however, he found that some of the shirts he had had lost their orderly pattern of going from bright to dark, minute as the changes were.

At the time Jaune had seen this, he simply asked Nora, who had been sitting in the room with her face buried in a book, if anyone had gone through his clothes.

With what seemed to be a smile and tone of someone who was trying their hardest to stifle their laughter, Nora responded by saying no.

In that moment, he wanted to question what she had found so funny, but Jaune deducing that it had been the book she'd been reading, he had thought nothing at all of her laughter, and simply thought that he had been seeing nonexistent changes in his clothesline.

At the present moment however, Jaune slowly turned to glare at the doorway, where Nora and Sun were sure to be behind.

So Nora had been a part of Ruby and Yang's plan...

He thought this before slowly looking back to the set of clothes, throwing the shirt down carelessly on the bed and picking up the jeans that lay next to where the shirt had been, them being a significantly darker gray than the shirt, checking the size and finding it to be one that'd fit his size exactly.

Seeing this, the evidence that someone really had gone through his clothes became all the more potent.

He glanced at the remaining three items on the bed, finding them to be a scarf that had black as its primary color that had white cutting it into identical squares throughout it, a pair of black shoes that looked to have paper taped to them, and a ball of what he could only assume to be black socks.

He set the jeans down on the bed, and then walked to the shoes, drawn to them by the pieces of paper, and lifted them up, one for each of his hands, his look being that of curiosity before turning into one of annoyed exasperation instantly.

In blue pen, on pieces of torn out loose leaf paper, were the words "Left" and "Right" taped onto each corresponding shoe.

Why, he thought to himself, why would anyone do this?

Just because his shoes had the words "Left" and "Right" written on them didn't mean he didn't know which shoe came onto which.

They had just been that way when he bought them!

He knew she had been trying to help, but did Yang really think he couldn't tell the shoes apart?

His face grew into a scowl.

"Well screw you too Yang." He said bitterly.

Throwing the shoes onto the bed again, Jaune reached his right hand behind his head, sighing as he scratched the back of it, hand holding his hip.

Alright, he thought after a moment, since they had gone through the trouble of buying these for me, he might as well wear them.

Turning to the door, Jaune walked towards it, taking a firm hold on the door handle and pulling it hard back to make sure the door was completely closed. When he found it had already been closed all the way, he locked the door to make sure neither Sun nor Nora walked in on him dressing, and went back to the bed, slipping himself out of his uniform overcoat and shirt, putting the clothes on his body one piece at a time.

When he was finished with everything except for the shoes and the scarf, there came the sound of someone knocking on the door, "Hey Jaune, you almost done changing in there?"

It was Sun saying this.

"What if I'm not?" Jaune asked the faunus in response.

"You don't need to know." Nora replied for Sun.

He had pulled his shoes on now, tearing the taped-on papers off, and was walking to the door while trying to figure out how to go about putting on his scarf, holding his folded up uniform clothes in his hand with the scarf on top of the pile as he unlocked the door, opening it to find Sun walking towards the wall opposite of the dorm room Jaune was in, Nora pacing the hall in a bored manner.

"I'm done." He called out to them, the two looking back at him and smiling.

"You look nice Jaune," Nora walked in front of him, looking down at his scarf, "Why aren't you wearing your scarf?"

"I don't know to put one on." Jaune responded with blunt honesty.

"Why don't you?" Sun asked, hands brought up behind his head as he walked behind Nora, "It seems like it should be easy."

"You put it on then." Jaune said, pushing the pile of clothes he had in his arms to the faunus, who saw the scarf and picked it up, him putting the scarf symmetrically around his neck and trying to wrap it around it by throwing one end over his shoulder.

Finding this solution to be less than satisfactory for his appearance, Sun removed the scarf and tried a different method.

And then he tried again.

And again.

And again.

When Sun had failed to make the scarf come around his neck well for the sixth time, he sighed his defeat and gave the scarf to Jaune, who took it with an air of smugness, "Guess it's not very easy after all."

"I was wrong, I admit it." Sun shrugged.

"Why did you guys get me a scarf like this to begin with?" Jaune asked.

"Well, Yang wanted to -" Nora started to answer, but then realized her mistake and clapped a hand over her mouth with wide eyes.

The damage had been done however.

Had Jaune's arms not been burdened by his school uniform, he would've crossed his arms.

"So Yang was behind this after all..."

Nora looked down at that, and Sun laughed lightly at this, "Guess she let the cat out of the bag."

Seeing as how she'd already revealed it, Nora kept talking, "Sorry. Yang didn't want us to tell you, but she bought everything for you beforehand so you'd be ready."

"Why did she buy me a scarf?" Jaune asked.

"She wanted to buy you one to match your hair, but she thought that'd looked a bit girly." Nora explained in a way that suggested this was supposed to make him feel better, even if it truthfully hadn't answered his question in any way.

As he imagined himself in a scarf the same color as his hair, Jaune realized how right Yang had been in her judgement.

What kind of guy actually goes around with something that yellow on? Jaune thought, vividly imagining someone his age with a yellow scarf on, the rest of the world turned into a monochromatic gray in order to emphasize the yellow's presence in mindscape, the reason for this being unknown to the boy.

Bringing himself out of his imaginary world, Jaune looked at Nora, "But that doesn't explain why she bought it in the first place."

"What, you got something against scarves?" Sun said in mock-offense, smiling at Jaune.

Jaune shook his head, "No, that's not it, it just feels weird to try wearing it is all."

"Scarves look good on anyone though."

"Really?"

"Yeah, just try imagining anyone you know wearing one."

The first person to come to Jaune's mind was Ruby, and he could actually see it; there would be a crimson red scarf hung loosely around her neck, as well as the part of her signature hood that connected the hood and her cape.

For a moment, Jaune imagined her wearing the scarf in her usual attire, but then decided that the clothes she usually wore made the additional scarf look strange, not because the scarf itself was strange, but because the image of Ruby wearing that exact attire had been so deeply engrossed in his mind that the addition seemed outside of the norm for her.

And so his mind wandered to imagining her wearing the scarf with the attire she wore the same night that Atlesian Paladin went tearing through the streets, and Jaune believed that would fit Ruby better, as the image came out not as weirdly to him.

She would still wear her hood along with the scarf, and with her outfit from that day adding a sci-fi edge to it, the scarf made her look cooler in his mind's eye.

Realizing he felt this way towards the image, Jaune then imagined Yang wearing a yellow scarf, Blake wearing a black scarf, Pyrrha wearing a -

"Remnant to Jaune." Sun's hand was waving in Jaune's face, and Jaune jumped from his momentary lapse from reality.

"Sorry, what did you say?" Jaune asked.

"I said not to think too deeply about it, but I guess you were already lost in your own imagination." Sun answered his question.

"I'll..." Jaune spoke with a sheepish look, "I'll... just get going now."

He started to walk away, hoping to go to his dorm room, only for Nora's hand to grasp his shoulder, "Wait Jaune, I'll take everything back."

Jaune gave her a half glance back, "Don't worry, I can handle it."

"No, that's not what I meant. Pyrrha's in there right now, and it'll ruin the surprise if you see each other before the date starts." Nora tried to explain, walking to Jaune's side to take his clothes, only for the boy to jerk it away from her grasp.

"It's a date, not a wedding," Jaune replied.

"I know. Let me bring them back for you Jaune."

Once again, Nora reached for the clothes, and Jaune pulled away.

"It'll be fine Nora, it's no problem. I can carry these back mysel..." Jaune trailed off in his sentence when he felt a pair of arms push themselves forcibly around his stomach, the hands the arms belonged to gripping the ends of their forearms to lock themselves in place, Jaune barely registering this before he felt his feet leave the ground, him rising a short distance into the air before the wind blew past his head, and the next second Jaune's scalp rammed into the ground, the clothes falling out of his arms as he was brought to the ground.

The arms detached themselves, letting gravity take its course on Jaune's body, his face being the first to hit the ground, then his chest, then his abdomen, and finally his legs, from his thighs, to his knees to finally his feet, his toes keeping his calves from touching the ground.

Lying in his dazed defeat, Jaune was unable to stop Nora from picking up all of his clothes from the floor, leaving only the scarf, which she dropped on his body, before walking away, Nora never looking back at her opponent, who had never even realized the match had begun when it had started.

As Sun looked at this, he was too surprised to even laugh, looking between the form of a dazed and face-down Jaune and the steadily shrinking form of Nora as she walked further and further away from them.


"Was it even necessary for her to do that?" Jaune asked Sun outside of the dorm room, holding his nose as he asked the question in a voice that was more nasally than normal.

"Hey, you never know, she may have her reasons." Sun shrugged next to him.

"You aren't cold wearing just that?" Jaune asked the boy next to him.

The snow still falling rapidly made it go without saying that it was cold outside, with the wind-shield barrier not helping in any way, yet Sun was only wearing a white t-shirt under his white vest.

"I've been through a lot worse than this. So I'm good." Sun waved Jaune's question away with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

"Doesn't mean you won't get sick from it." Jaune responded.

"I'm a faunus, my immune system works differently from yours."

"Hm." Jaune nodded his understanding, waiting for a few moments more to see if Pyrrha would be coming down yet.

When he looked inside the entrance however, he found a bespectacled man with green hair walking out instead, Oobleck immediately taking notice of Jaune and Sun as they sat outside idly.

He zipped in front of them, looking down at Sun, "Why are you two sitting out here? You'll surely get sick if you remain for too long!"

"This loser's got a date." Sun's thumb pointed itself at Jaune.

"Ah, yes, I'd heard." Oobleck looked at Jaune with a nod.

"Huh? How did you know?" Jaune asked Oobleck with a surprised look.

"Well, it was originally brought to my attention a few days prior to now," Oobleck pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "Your aquaintance Ruby Rose asked me if she and her friends could borrow my classroom for planning something together. I only agreed on the condition that it would not result in the destruction of school property, and Ms. Rose agreed. She and many of her friends took control of the classroom, and just to be on the safe side, I eavesdropped on their plans to make sure nothing bad would come of it," he adjusted his coat, and had it not been for the cold, Jaune would've sworn Oobleck had done this in a bout of self-pride, "As promised, Ms. Rose and her sister planned something with their friends that would not result in school property being destroyed. Instead what they were planning was much worse."

Jaune tilted his head, "What? How?"

"They were planning what they called the "date heist". In this specific heist, there were several steps. The first step was to make sure to have you and Ms. Nikos out of your dorm room to make sure that they could take notes on the kind of clothes you wore. The next step was to rig some straw drawing contest so that they could kidnap Ms. Nikos when she was least expecting it whilst doing the same thing to you," as Oobleck spoke, Jaune felt the pieces of the puzzle coming together in his mind, "Then they planned to force you to change into the clothes they bought you."

"Really?" Though Jaune said this in response to Oobleck, his gaze had turned to Sun, who chuckled a bit and scratched the back of his head.

"Yes. The next step of the "date heist" was for Ms. Rose and Ms. Belladonna to dress up as a married couple of a sort that would follow you everywhere you went. Apparently Ms. Rose decided to change to something else... what was it? Oh yes! Rubin! She said she would wear a moustache and would refer to herself as Rubin! And Ms. Belladonna would be her, as Ms. Xiao Long said, "the pregnant wife who's happily married to Rubin." Their primary goal was to stalk you and Ms. Nikos for most of the night, and then have Ms. Xiao Long step in and hopefully manage to force you to take all four of them out to eat at a restaurant at your expense."

"... hah..." Jaune forced a laugh out of his mouth, looking slowly down at the scarf in his hand, "This gesture of kindness suddenly feels so much less kinder..."

"You have a scarf? Why aren't you wearing it Mr. Arc?" Oobleck asked him.

For once, Jaune had the answer to one of Oobleck's questions, "I don't know how to put it on professor."

"Ah, let me see it." Oobleck snatched the scarf out of Jaune's hand, then moved quickly, arms a blur, Oobleck moving his hands away a moment later to show that he'd put on Jaune's scarf the right way.

"You... You know how to...?"

"Obviously I do. I wanted to warn you of the impending danger Mr. Arc, so I'm quite glad we had this talk."

"Why didn't you warn me before now?"

"I wanted to, and then I forgot."

Jaune couldn't find it within himself to feel outraged anymore, "Well... I'm glad you remembered at the last minute."

"Yes! A Deus Ex Machina at its finest. Good day to you," Oobleck turned around, "My fair gentlemen!"

With that he zipped out of sight.

"Is his semblance speed like Ruby's or something?" Sun asked Jaune while staring at the spot where Oobleck had been.

"I'm not talking to you." Jaune said in a monotone.

"Hm? But why?"

"Because you were in on this." Jaune fixed Sun with a glare.

"Oh come on Jaune, you really think Ruby is going to go around with a moustache claiming she's a dude named Rubin?"

"Considering the fact that you and Nora kidnapped me, I'm not so sure."

"Lighten up Jaune, it's not like everyone involved is getting something out of this."

"How many people are involved in this?" Jaune asked.

Sun, having been caught, answered honestly, "Everyone except for Neptune, Weiss and Ren."

"EVERYONE?!" Jaune exclaimed.

"Everyone. Blake and Ruby probably helped Yang kidnap Pyrrha, and Nora and I were obviously there to kidnap you."

"But why?!"

"I thought that guy just told you. It's all part of a date heist."

Jaune looked like he wanted to say a rebuttal, but stopped himself, sighing heavily while muttering under his breath, "Screw my life."

Sun patted him on the back, "Don't worry, things'll turn out fine."

"Yeah right..."

When they heard the door opening next to them, both blondes looked up to find Yang at the entrance, holding the door for Pyrrha.

"YOU!" Jaune stood up and pointed at Yang in an accusatory manner.

"'Sup?" Yang held a hand with a smile on her face, as though there was nothing wrong at all.

"Why did you organize for us to get kidnapped?" Jaune yelled.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about." Yang denied and shrugged her shoulders.

Bull.

Crap.

"So, Pyrrha, ready yet?" Yang looked back at the girl behind her, Pyrrha slinking back into the warmth of the dorms but being supportively pushed forward by Nora.

"I suppose..." Pyrrha said reluctantly, looking at Yang after a look to Jaune that told him that she was as exasperated as he was.

This simple optical exchange was enough to calm Jaune down somewhat, him standing a bit straighter now.

Seeing Pyrrha walking out of the building made Jaune look at her outfit, and he could tell very easily that Yang had decided to be more colorful with hers'.

A white colored jacket came over a form fitting green top, a black padded vest on top of the jacket, her skirt being twice as long as it usually was, being a blue jean skirt that reached just above her knees, with very long socks that stretched themselves up into her skirt, most likely to keep out the cold, and Pyrrha's regular high heels.

Looking back up at Pyrrha, she met his gaze, her having looked his appearance over as well.

Staring at one another a moment, the two fell into an awkward silence, it being obvious both wanted to say something, but neither knowing what to say.

Jaune ultimately took the initiative, "You... look nice Pyrrha."

The compliment breaking through the silence, Pyrrha looked a bit surprised, but nodded and smiled, "You look nice too Jaune."

After a few more seconds of silence, Jaune pointed away from the dorm, "Do... you want to get going?"

Pyrrha nodded, smile still there, "Sure."

As the two walked off, Sun was the first to speak when they got out of earshot, "That had to be the most awkward greeting I've ever seen in my life."

"Doesn't matter." Yang turned to go back inside, pulling a walkie talkie from her shirt pocket, "Crimson Pops, are you and Neko Wife following the targets?"

"Yes, Darkness in the Light!" Ruby's voice came through.

"Don't let them out of your sight, we feast tonight!" Yang punched the air in emphasis, despite Ruby not being able to see her.


"Do you often see your sister?" Pyrrha asked Jaune after a minute or so of walking.

"It's been a while, so not really. I just talk to her often." Jaune explained.

"Why did she decide to come visit then?" Pyrrha asked, curiosity driving her.

"She has her reasons. She always does. She just never tells me."

"I see. I don't mind going to see her though."

"Really?" Jaune glanced at her.

"Yes. I'm quite curious about your family. I always wondered what it'd be like to have many siblings."

"It sucks." Jaune said in a flat tone, almost instantly.

"Oh..."

Pyrrha wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"Sure, it can have its moments, but growing up the eigth son can be hard when you have no other brothers for you to be with."

"I see..."

Once more, they fell into an awkward silence.

"Do you have any friends from Mistral you miss?"

"Hm?" Pyrrha looked up, as though he'd taken her out of a moment of thought, "Oh, no, no one really. The only people I could really call friends were people I often fought in tournaments..."

Jaune saw Pyrrha looking down, as though the thought saddened her, and he patted her back, "At least that isn't the way things are now."

Hearing these words, Pyrrha smiled back at him, then playfully punched him in the shoulder.

However, she was still unable to properly calculate how hard to punch him, and Jaune lost his balance quickly, falling over while skidding slightly on the ground.

Pyrrha whipped her gaze to him immediately, and she kneeled down next to him, "Oh, Jaune, I'm sorry, I..."

She stopped when she heard the sound of him laughing.

Jaune looked up at her after a moment, smile still on his face, "You still have a good arm Pyrrha."

"Uh... thank you." Seeing that Jaune wasn't hurt, she mentally sighed in relief, reaching a hand out for Jaune to take, the boy taking it and letting her help him pull him back on his feet.

When he'd been pulled onto his feet again, Jaune looked towards the city in the distance, then to the stairs leading to the train that'd take them to it, "Ready to go Pyrrha?"

Pyrrha nodded, walking towards the stairs ahead of Jaune, and he kept up his smile until she was in front of him, his face going sour and him grasping his shoulder, mouthing a word of pain before following after Pyrrha.

When he reached the peak of the stairs however, Jaune looked back behind himself, searching through an empty area to look for Ruby and Blake.

Not seeing either one, he kept a wary gaze as he walked down the stairs.

Seeing that he was gone, a lone figure sitting on a rooftop lowered binoculars from his eyes, watching as another pair of girls walked in after Jaune and Pyrrha.

Enduring in the blistering cold, the male walked towards the exit to the rooftop where he'd come from, lifting a scroll up and dialing someone all the while.

"Cinder, they're headed towards the city right now." The male said, eyes closed as he tried to endure a few more minutes in the cold, not going inside of the building for fear of someone hearing him.

"The city...? Very well. Come back for now." Cinder's voice spoke through the scroll, and Mercury ended the call before he walked inside, and the warmth of the inside was so strong that it washed itself over his freezing body like the water of a hot bath or shower.

He hugged himself from the cold, and made a show to himself of saying an exxagerated, "Brrrr!"

Walking back to his dorm room, Mercury recalled why he had been chosen to follow their target Pyrrha Nikos while she was in Beacon for the past few days.

Cinder had initially wanted both Emerald and Mercury following her, but only assigned Nikos to him because of the sudden snow storm that had started a little over a week ago.

He initially protested somewhat when he realized he'd be stuck watching Pyrrha via binoculars through a window, it being and feeling as stalkerish as it could get.

However, when Cinder said that it was his "responsibility as a man" to do the painful work for the women in his life, he used that as a motivation.

This motivation was proving to wear him down however.

For the past few days, Nikos had done absolutely nothing noteworthy other than picking through her clothes when she had free time.

The only good thing that had come of it had been him making the assumption that she was going out for something soon, which, based on what he'd seen, had been completely true.

He wasn't sure how much longer he could endure playing stalker however.

Each day when he finally finished with his role in watching Nikos for any way to strip her of her power in fights, which had been pretty fruitless up until now, Mercury would go inside with his fingers and toes feeling almost icy cold, with the warmth of the building actually hurting them until they reached a more suitable temperature for their environment.

Remembering his pain, Mercury scowled somewhat.

"Responsibility as a man, my foot..." He muttered to himself.