Chapter Two: Status Quo
Ruby was concerned for her friend. Last night, she had found Pyrrha in the Beacon training room. At three in the morning. That might not be necessarily eyebrow-raising, since, it IS Pyrrha Nikos after all, so she has to train at some point during her busy day. However it didn't look like training to Ruby. To Ruby, Pyrrha looked, well, un-Pyrrha like, all the natural confidence she seemed to exude had been gone. Instead, Pyrrha had looked downright sad. A hug later and Pyrrha had been crying. However that wasn't the concerning part to Ruby. Well it was, but the next part was even more concerning.
The next day Pyrrha seemed completely fine, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps a little more withdrawn and sleep-deprived, but it wasn't anything someone would notice by looking at her if they weren't looking hard. That was concerning to Ruby, especially after the previous night. To act as if nothing had happened…
"See something you like sis?" the teasing tone of Ruby's older sister pulled her out of her reverie.
"Huh?"
"You've been staring at Pyrrha for like, ten minutes." Yang leaned in conspiratorially, a predatory smile on her lips, "Does someone have a cruusshhhh?"
Pink tinged Ruby's cheeks as she shook her head, embarrassed at what her elder sister was implying, "I don't have a crush!" The embarrassment faded, "I haven't been staring at her, nope!"
Yang cocked an eyebrow at her. "I ate most of your cookies…" Ruby's eyes shot down to her plate. There was half a cookie left on it. Out of two dozen.
Teasing was one thing, but stealing her beloved cookies from right under her nose was another thing entirely. "YOU MONSTER!"
As Ruby launched herself at Yang in righteous cookie vengeance, the blonde was only able to get out "Don't get yangry about it" before impact.
I'm fine.
It was lunch on a Sunday. The status quo was being maintained. Yang was teasing Ruby. Nora was telling wild stories with Ren offering the occasional commentary or more often than not, corrections. Blake was reading a book. Weiss was doing her best to ignore everyone. Jaune was… was…
Jaune wasn't maintaining his role. He should be asking out Weiss or talking to Ruby about some video game.
Instead he wasn't there. He was getting ready for his date, with Velvet.
I'm fine.
Ignoring the fact that Pyrrha had hoped, HOPED it would be her going out with the Arc teen, she was fine. She hadn't been hoping for an entire semester she'd be in Velvet's place. It wasn't Velvet's fault. Not really. It was Pyrrha's fault for assuming certain things. Like her partner having any form of interest in her outside of friendship. For assuming that maybe the person she thought viewed her as not some ideal of a champion may of thought of her as something more than a friend, for assumin-
Pyrrha cut the line of thought.
I'm fine.
More important was to figure out what to do with her day. Usually she'd be helping Jaune with homework, or training. Or once in a blue moon going out to Vale in a team outing. With Jaune…preoccupied, it wouldn't be much of a team outing without him. Sure, she could go with her other teammates, Ren and Nora, but ultimately, she'd feel left out. Ren and Nora had each other, despite Nora's insistence on not being 'together-together', Pyrrha would just feel like a third wheel.
Great, another place where I feel out of sync.
She sighed. Her friends were leaving the cafeteria. Status quo was going to be maintained. Yang was going to have some 'fun' in the town with her partner... or more like Blake was going to keep her from blowing up half of downtown. Nora was going to see a new pancake shop that had opened, with Ren tagging along. Weiss would drag Ruby by the ear to the library so she could make up for the younger girl falling asleep in every morning class. That would leave Pyrrha with Jaune who'd need extra help with weekly homework.
But Jaune wasn't here. That just left Pyrrha alone.
I suppose I could always get a nap in, I'm lacking sleep from last night to be cert-
"Hey Pyrrha?"
The girl in question blinked in surprise at being addressed before turning to the person addressing her, the young red hair leader of team RWBY, Ruby. Everyone else had left the table while Pyrrha had been mulling over her thoughts.
"Hello!" Pyrrha said in a slightly tired, but still warm voice punctuated by a small hand wave and a smile.
"Umm…" Ruby looked unsure of her words, as if trying to pick out what to say, "H-how are you doing?"
The elder red head's face twitched ever so slightly, "I'm doing fine, a tad bored." I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine.
Ruby tilted her head, "Y-you weren't fine last night so I was worried," the girl's eyes widened as she realized what she had implied however slight of an offense it might of been, "I-I-I mean, that's not to say that you aren't fine, but you were, uh, crying and then you show up like nothing happened, uh.. um…" she bowed her head, her chin nearly touching her chest, "You sure you're okay?"
That's right, Ruby was there last night Pyrrha's sleep deprived brain slowly remembered. Last night had been a bit of a haze to her due to…well… due t-
"Pyrrha?" The younger girl once more pulled the zoned out Pyrrha from her thoughts.
A tight smile graced Pyrrha's face as she regarded the fellow red head, a smile forged from years of being the public face of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow cereal. A smile fake as the cereal was bad for you. "Sorry, I'm just a little tired."
"Oh." The short haired teen accepted the response, "If-if you aren't too tired wanna hang out?"
Pyrrha's head tilted. This was out of the norm. A quick glance around showed that Weiss was no where around. A concerned look started to form on Pyrrha's face while internally she was confused. The status quo was breaking in multiple places now. "I'm not too tired, but don't you have to study with Weiss?"
Ruby didn't shy away. Rather a goofy grin appeared. "Wellllllllllllll, Weiss' dad is in town so she had to go see him at some stuffy company meeting. So I thought, hey, Pyrrha is probably free today 'cause Jaune busy," the Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow cereal smile cracked for a moment at his mention before it was fixed, "Soooooo are you free?"
It's either this or a nap… and realistically I'm probably not going to be able to find sleep so easy. Looking down at her half picked over food, Pyrrha gave Ruby a slight nod, "Let me finish my food, then sure."
It was certainly a different type of Saturday for Pyrrha. Instead of spending the time to help Jaune or to improve her own abilities, she had several new experiences. Right now it was called Soul Calibur III: a game of two warriors fighting each other in the quest for a sword… or something? Ruby hadn't been very clear on the story of the game, merely that there was some sword called Soul Edge but it was nowhere near as cool as Crescent Rose.
Pyrrha hadn't had the chance to play many video games. After she started to win tournaments, her trainers had given her barely any time for activities outside of training or school. She had played a few times as a kid but that was before Sanctum, but that was easily over five years ago. Consequently Pyrrha was nowhere near Ruby's skill level in the game. The result was getting her sash-covered-butt handed to her round after round after round.
Failure. That was a feeling she hadn't experienced in a long time, having someone consistently beat you on a level playing field. Or was it? Failure certainly seemed to be the key phrase of her dynamic with her partner, it would seem. But that wasn't even a thing she h-
"PLAYER TWO DEFEATED"
"Pyrrhhaaaaaaa you gotta focus!" Ruby whined, even in the throes of victory, having defeated Pyrrha in the game fourteen times. In a row.
"Sorry!" Pyrrha's focus returned to the game as she tried to beat Ruby's scythe wielding character with Cassandra. She was going to win at least one match!
Failure, however, wasn't the most unique experience of the day. Rather it was when Pyrrha finally won a match after more failures then she'd care to admit: a facial expression not created to reassure people that she was fine or calm someone. Something that couldn't be ingrained into her by her publicists.
A goofy, genuine smile.
AU: This chapter took a while to finish. Most people always get sorta pissy at their first chapter and want to redo it. I think I can safely say the first chapter for Acceptance is my best work on this site. I very nearly put a completed tag on it because I didn't think that I could get anywhere near that level of quality in a second chapter.
I'm not going to say this is better then the first chapter, because its not. But I hope its close enough to it that you, the readers, are still interested. Like I said before this is definitely going to be a slow posting story. Namely because its a very drawn out bit and unlike, say, Dilation, it takes me a bit longer to write the chapters, just getting a concept down.
I hope you enjoy it and have a great weekend everyone!
Edited June 8th, 2015 by ASouthernRussian