"You didn't."
"I really, really wish I was joking," Dove groaned. Jaune was staring at him, mouth open. Then he turned to look at Yang, Nora, and Russel in turn. The three of them were grinning—their leader definitely wasn't.
"So... you rode it."
"Yes."
"Stole an airship."
"Borrowed!" Russel corrected him.
"Crashed it into the Grimm."
"Yep."
"...And they just gave you detention?!" Nora nodded vigorously.
"That, and I'm pretty sure Goodwitch hates our guts," Russel added, "but between Yang and Nora that was bound to happen at some point."
"Hey!" Yang protested. Nora kept nodding.
"Honestly?" Jaune sighed and poked at his scrambled eggs. "I wish my team was running around blowing things up and getting into trouble together."
"We didn't blow anything up!" Dove insisted.
"Yet."
"What was that, Russel?"
"Nothing, boss-man sir!"
"Is your team still being all..." Ruby trailed off, then made a vague gesture with one hand.
"Yeah, but I think I made a breakthrough last night."
"Awesome! What happened?" He couldn't help but grin at her enthusiasm. Secretly, he was kind of glad she'd blown up Weiss the day they'd arrived—otherwise they wouldn't have met before initiation, and he honestly had no idea what he would've done if he'd had only his teammates to turn to as friends. This way, he could at least hang out with BRYN and RSPR while they were being... them.
"I got sick of them yelling at each other in the middle of the night, so I set a rule where we're not allowed to talk after curfew," Jaune explained.
"And... they agreed to that?" she asked, wide-eyed.
Jaune nodded. "I thought they were gonna ignore me, but... yeah. We can sleep and do homework, now!"
"Never thought I'd see someone be glad about that," Yang chuckled.
"The bar's pretty low."
"Any progress on the whole... them hating each other thing?"
Shrugging, Jaune returned to picking at his food with a fork. "Not really. I just... I don't know what to do about that." He turned to give Ruby and Dove pleading looks. "Do you guys have any ideas? I'll take anything, at this point."
"To be honest," Dove said dryly, "Most of my leadership strategy is remembering to wear a parachute."
"Aw, you know you love us!" Yang slung an arm around his shoulders, prompting him to kick her under the table and scoot a foot or so further down the bench.
"I guess I could look on the bright side," Jaune mused. "None of my teammates have pushed me off a cliff."
"We didn't push him!"
"That's exactly what you did, Yang!"
Ruby threw a blueberry, which bounced off her sister's nose. "Guys! Focus! Jaune needs serious help here." Jaune ducked his head, turning his attention back to his breakfast. He couldn't help thinking of how much she'd been holding back while sparring with him.
"Hey, don't look at me! If I were leader of that team, I'd probably have punched them all out by now."
"...I'm pretty sure that would end with me in the infirmary," Jaune pointed out.
Pyrrha frowned thoughtfully. "Ruby, you ran into Weiss on your first day, didn't you? Maybe there's some tricks to dealing with her?"
Ruby let her head fall to the table with a thump. "I ran into her. Literally. And then I sneezed and the Dust she was carrying blew up."
There was a long silence at the table.
"Okay, so tell us what you did," Russel suggested, "and then Jaune can do the exact opposite of that." Yang smacked him hard on the arm. "Ow!"
"Oh, I talked to Blake, too! And that wasn't a total disaster!"
Jaune perked up a little. "Any tips? She's... a little less prickly than the other two, but I can't figure out how to talk to her."
"She likes books," Ruby replied, frowning thoughtfully. "That was all we really talked about. Oh! That, and she seemed kind of... pessimistic, I guess."
"Great." Jaune had already known both of those things—he'd seen her buried in a book more than once, and a lot of her sarcastic comments were pretty cynical.
Then, Ruby sat up a little straighter, as if struck by a thought. "Where are they, anyway?"
"Huh?"
"I mean... Cardin's over there." She pointed across the cafeteria to where Jaune's partner—unfortunately—was sitting at another table with a team of older boys. "But Blake and Weiss aren't here, so... where do they eat?"
"The library."
Jaune snapped his head around to look at Dove. So did everyone else.
"Uh, how do you know that?" asked Russel.
"I go there to study," the other boy answered, "when one of you is being loud. So, always."
"Heh..."
"Not sure about Blake, but Weiss had her lunch there yesterday."
Jaune frowned. He'd known they were avoiding the cafeteria, but... well... he supposed he'd never thought about where else they'd be able to go. "Did she say anything?" he asked.
"She came up to me and asked to borrow my textbook. Hers had a page missing."
"Why go to you for that, though?" Yang asked. "Did you know her before Beacon or something?"
"No. But who else would she ask?"
There was a small lull in the conversation, before it turned back towards other subjects—school, their professors, and the epic wrath of Glynda Goodwitch. Jaune didn't join in. He was still mulling over Dove's words, so deep in thought that he jumped when Pyrrha told him breakfast was over. His plate had barely been touched.
"Why?" Yang groaned, like a lost soul howling out of the depths of hell.
"Do you want the short version, or the one that includes citations from medical journals about how important the spine is and the running total of how many times we almost broke ours?" Dove asked, narrowing his eyes at Yang over the cover of his textbook.
"But it was fun!" Nora protested. "This is... this is torture."
"A cruel and unusual punishment!" added Yang.
Russel put his hand on his forehead and wailed, "The horror of it all!"
Dove kept glaring, making Nora fidget in her seat. He looked a tiny bit like Ren when he did that, which made her wonder if he was some kind of long-lost doppleganger. Not Ren 2.0, because that would imply he was better, which he wasn't. Unless you counted being better at being a wet blanket. It occurred to her that maybe her Ren was the Ren 2.0, and she'd only just now met the original, inferior Ren that he'd been based on.
...Nah. Then her Ren would have to be renamed something like Dove 2.0, and that would just be awful.
"Nora."
Her head snapped up, and she found that her partner was looking at her. "Uh-huh?"
"Essay." He tapped the book in front of her.
"Ugh, this is the worst!" She shoved her book away. Dove pushed it back. "See? It's chasing me! Just like a Grimm."
"It's only an essay," Dove said, as if that was in any way relevant. Of course it was an essay—that was why it was the worst. Plus it was on safety, which had to be the most boring of all the topics. At least it was Professor Port supervising them rather than Goodwitch, so they could talk instead of just writing the whole time.
"You know, I expected Beacon detentions to be more hands-on than this," Russel mused.
Nora perked up. "Totally! They should be, like, making us wander around in some forbidden forest looking for a monster!"
"That's what we're in trouble for in the first place," Dove pointed out.
She stuck her tongue out at him. He rolled his eyes—at least, she was pretty sure he had. It was hard to see them, what with how he always kept them almost closed. She was glad Ren didn't do that—it would be a total shame to hide a color like that all the time.
"What color are your eyes?" she asked, poking Dove in the arm. He gave her a funny look.
"...Why?"
"'Cause. I can't be your super awesome main-kick if I don't even know your eye color."
Russel chuckled. "Main-kick?"
"Well, obviously I'm not the side-kick."
"Point."
"And you two are more like partners-in-crime, you know? You're fun."
"If you really want to know," Dove said, "They're brown."
"Aw..."
"Wha—hey!" Russel pointed to his own brown eye. "Not cool."
"Well you don't need to have pink ones," Nora explained, "But if I'm going to have a sort-of backup partner, he should really get with the program."
"I'm not getting colored contacts."
"Who said anything about contacts?!" Nora leaned forward, poking him hard in the chest. "Are you planning something? 'Cause I'll have you know, impersonating Ren isn't going to work. We have passwords."
Dove raised an eyebrow. He looked almost as unimpressed as Ren did, sometimes—he was totally going to try to knock him out and take his place one day. But Nora would be ready.
"Why on Remnant," he asked, very slowly, "Would I want to do that? And besides, we have completely different body types."
"And don't you forget it!" Nora declared, then turned back to her essay. There was about half a sentence scrawled near the top, which she figured was probably enough for now. They were here for two whole hours, after all. Every Saturday. For two whole months. Goodwitch had been really, really mad.
To distract herself—and also Dove—she turned to Russel. "How'd you know how to do that, anyway?"
"Huh?"
"The airship, dork," Yang laughed, punching him in the arm.
"Ow. Like I said, my dad taught me a little when I was twelve."
"Ooh, was he a pilot? Was he a fighter pilot? I heard there's a kind of airship in Atlas that has a spear on the nose, so they can fly it into really big Grimm—and that's how you knew how to aim it so well!" Nora had to clench both fists to keep herself from leaping to her feet.
Russel blinked at her a few times. "Uh, not exactly. He was a pilot for a little while, but it was just shuttling people around Vale. Like a fancy bus driver. He showed me how to steer."
"I notice you haven't mentioned him teaching you to take off," Dove grumbled. "Or land."
"I did fine, didn't I?!"
"You were awesome!" Nora stopped trying to stay in her seat and popped up, accidentally knocking the mostly-blank essay to the ground. "Best pilot ever!"
"Agreed," Yang added, "But I wanna know how you started it. That seems like a handy trick."
"Please don't," Dove let his head fall onto his textbook with a thud. Nora wondered why he kept hitting his head on things like that—he didn't seem to have a hard enough skull to get away with it.
"Uh..." Russel shifted uncomfortably. Nora's heart leapt—was this it?! Was he going to reveal his secret double-life as a daring airship thief? Or maybe he didn't just steal them... he raced them! In the skies above Vale! And hooked up a ton of lightning Dust to the engine to make them go even faster, and he would have all these intrigues with the other racers and secret rivalries and—
"I stole a car," he admitted, pitching his voice lower so that Port wouldn't overhear. "Just once! Uh, don't tell anyone? I mean, I never got caught and it'd be really hard to prove at this point, but still."
"But... why?" Yang asked, and Nora leaned forward to listen.
"Joyride?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I was... kind of a delinquent when I was younger. Stopped most of that stuff when I decided to come to Beacon."
Nora narrowed her eyes. He was lying. He always did that weird neck-rub thing when he fibbed about something—she'd seen it this morning when he'd told Oobleck he'd done the reading. Then again... why lie about stealing a car for fun? She and Ren had stolen stuff plenty of times, back when they'd only just met, but that was always food. It seemed kinda scummy to take stuff just because, and not because you needed it.
Hm... Russel could keep his secret, for now. Mostly because they only had an hour left and Nora should probably start writing, but also privacy or whatever.
Sky lay on his bed with arms and legs splayed, his head tilted all the way back to stare at the ceiling. His feet were bare, and the room was just cold enough that his toes were slowly going numb. He didn't move to cover himself with his blanket.
As of right now, he had been in two spars in Beacon. One had been against a rival team, YRON, that he'd never actually interacted with before, and in the other he and Ren had gone up against Dove and Nora alone. It had not been fun. Not even a little. Sure, Goodwitch had said that even if they'd eventually lost, they'd put up a good fight and it was nothing to worry about. That didn't mean that it hadn't been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life—because Nora didn't want to hit Ren with her grenades. So, being the only other target, Sky had spent the entire fight screaming and dodging and getting thrown halfway across the arena. She'd still attacked Ren, too, but not nearly as much or as... enthusiastically.
In both fights, he'd been eliminated first. Actually, he was the only casualty of their team battle. Ruby and Pyrrha had beaten an entire other team by themselves. Sky honestly couldn't even fathom that. He could barely follow fighters as fast as his teammates. People like Cardin who put all their focus on strength would struggle to hit someone agile, like Russel, but Sky couldn't even dodge well-choreographed attacks. He was, in short, useless against quick, dodgy opponents, useless against big, strong, tanky opponents, and really just useless all round.
Heaving a sigh, he sat up and looked around. Ruby was scribbling busily in the corner. Ren and Pyrrha were nowhere to be seen—he knew Pyrrha had gone off to one of the training rooms, because she had told him so. He guessed Ren was probably with BRYN, because he always was. His partner was really in name only, if he thought about it. He tried not to.
Sky flopped back onto his bed, turned over and buried his face in his pillow. Stupid combat schools, he thought, putting combat in their curriculum. He'd never been any good at sparring, so he wasn't sure why he was even surprised.
An odd noise broke into his thoughts. When he turned his head to look, he found that Ruby was tapping her pencil on the textbook in her lap. The rhythm was odd, sort of syncopated, and Sky drummed along almost absentmindedly. Her pencil went still.
"Oh, it's okay!" he blurted out. "I don't mind."
"Um..."
Dead silence. Great. "I just meant... uh... tapping doesn't bother me. I do it too." Not when he was reading, but often when he was anxious about something. He frowned, looking at the pile of papers in front of her. She was taking notes, scrawling hastily in the margins as she read through her book. There were a lot of notes, too.
She turned a page, and he heard her make a tiny, dismayed sort of noise in the back of her throat. He was pretty sure he knew what page she was on, now—he liked chemistry, but he'd still quailed a little at the sight of an entire page devoted to a table of Dust varieties, from the commonplace to the esoteric, and how to calculate the intensity of their effects if mixed together.
"We don't have to know all of it," he said. "Well, Oobleck says we do, but I talked to one of the older students and she said we only need the basics. Fire, Lightning, the core types."
Ruby slumped in relief until her forehead was pressed to the page. "Oh my god."
Sky laughed. "I know."
"Just... look at it."
"Yep."
There was another long silence, while Sky cast about for something to say—or, failing that, something else to do besides watch his teammate study. Then he noticed that she was still tapping the pencil, this time on a blanket where it wouldn't make as much noise.
He squinted towards the notebook she was writing in. Her scribbles took up a full page, all for one chapter. "Do... you need any help?" he asked.
She looked up, flushed. "What? Nope. I'm totally fine, just need to... um... let it sink in?"
Sky's eyebrows rose before he could help himself, and she turned hurriedly back to the textbook. He couldn't quite parse why she'd reacted like that. It was an honest offer, and... now that he thought about it, two years was a lot of theory to skip.
"Uh, Ruby?" he asked. "Did you ever learn what a logarithm is?" The tips of her ears went red.
She folded her arms and avoided eye contact. "I'm fine!"
Sky bit his lip, hesitating. Then, tentatively, "How about... we trade."
"Huh?" At least she was looking at him, now. He shifted nervously from foot to foot.
"Well... I figured I could help you with some of the theory stuff, since I'm guessing you skipped a lot of it coming here this early." When her face fell, he hurried to add, "and maybe... uh... you could teach me how to be a little less useless at sparring?"
Ruby stared at him, eyes wide. He started to panic. "I mean, not that... uh, I could help anyway, I get if you don't want to waste time! But I figured this way we could both feel like things were even, you know, and uh..." She giggled. He wondered if there was a hole anywhere in the dorm he could disappear into.
"It's fine! It's just... you're not useless, y'know." Sky blinked.
"I mean, that's nice of you to say—"
Ruby rolled her eyes at him. He was actually speechless for a moment, unsure how to feel about the fact that even she thought he was being awkward and embarrassing. Then, "I mean it! You figured out how to kill the porcupine thingy, right?"
"Razorpine..."
"Yeah, that. See? We wouldn't have been able to beat it without you."
"That's not really combat, though," he pointed out.
"Is too!"
"It's kind of related, I guess, but you did all the strategizing and if I'd been the one shooting at it we all would have died, and—"
"Is too!" Ruby stuck her tongue out at him for good measure.
"...Fine. Agree to disagree." Sky hesitated, then stuck out a hand. "Do we have a deal?"
Ruby shook it. "Yep!" Then she narrowed her eyes and poked him in the shoulder. "But you're still not useless."
He grinned sheepishly. "Let me prove it, then?" he asked, pointing at the textbook. Ruby hesitated.
"Um... Can we start with the sparring part? I think I'm going to do something... like, Brine level destructive if I have to look at this any longer."
Sky frowned. "I'm not sure how to feel about this."
"Huh?"
"Well, you are about to beat me up. So..."
"I am not!" She hopped to her feet and picked up her scythe, which kind of undermined her protest.
They ended up in the courtyard—it was mostly deserted, now that it was after seven. Sky made a mental note to keep careful track of the time and make sure they were back before curfew, since... well, Goodwitch was scary. He suspected the existence of team BRYN didn't help her blood pressure that much. Or ABSW, for that matter.
"Okay!" Ruby declared, extending the blade of her weapon with a long, dry scraping of metal on metal. It wasn't loud, or unpleasant—he'd seen her oiling the hinges with the kind of gentleness he usually associated with parents and children. It was ominous. Very ominous. Sky raised his halberd, hoping the inevitable bruises would fade quickly.
Ruby stared at him for a moment. "Um, okay," she said, lowering her weapon and walking over to him. "First thing's first, don't hold it so low." She adjusted his hands until he was holding his axe closer to the middle. "It's hard to spin these babies around to block attacks, so you gotta use the handle for that sometimes."
He nodded, realizing with a start that their weapons were actually pretty similar. That would've been a stroke of brilliance on his part, what with asking her to train him and all, if he'd thought of it before she pointed it out to him.
His team leader strolled back to where she'd been standing before, around ten feet away. "So! I'm thinking... no semblances, and I can go a little slower to start."
Sky nodded. His pride smarted a little at that last bit, but he forced it down. If he'd wanted to do what he was good at, he would've gone to a normal academy. This was a combat school, so he had to learn combat. The Grimm could do a lot worse than just embarrass him.
"Ready!" he called out, even though he wasn't. Ruby darted forward—she'd probably go high, he thought, since her weapon was heavy and would gain momentum from gravity. He hesitated, trying to work out what angle she'd be least able to defend while striking overhand, and lashed out at her stomach. Her blade spun, knocking his halberd sideways and leaving him wide open. In a blink, the edge of the scythe was at his throat.
"That was really good!"
Sky raised an eyebrow. "Uh huh."
"It was! Look, your problem isn't that you're bad at fighting."
"...Really?"
"Nope!" She grinned, then swung at him. He yelped and shoved the axe at her, only for it to bounce off her scythe and hit him on the forehead. "It's that you're thinking too much. Um, that and you need to do a bunch of practice with different attacks and blocks—you know them, it's just that... um, what my Uncle always told me is that you don't really know them until you start doing them in your sleep and falling out of bed."
"Thinking too much?"
She nodded. "Yep. You do this thing where you look at what I'm doing, where Crescent Rose is, and all this other stuff... and that's usually when I hit you."
"Right." He paused, cocked his head. "How do I... not do that?"
"Um..." Her face lit up. "Ooh! I have an idea!"
She stepped back, taking up a ready position. Sky braced himself. Then she was gone, and a blur of red was rushing towards him. He yelped, flailed, took the first and second hits on his shoulder and gauntlet, and then got knocked onto his butt by the third.
"Ow..."
"See!" Ruby hopped up and down, then seemed to realize he was on the ground. "Oh! Sorry, I didn't think—uh, I mean... here." She offered him a hand up, which he accepted gratefully.
"I don't get how that helps," he admitted. "I mean, I just got knocked down."
"Well, yeah. But you weren't overthinking!"
"I didn't block anything."
Ruby planted the butt of her scythe into the ground, making a sharp cracking noise that sounded more like a gunshot than anything else. "Not yet," she said, "but now you know what it feels like to stop trying to puzzle out everything you do in a fight. I mean, you do need to do strategy, and thinking fast is part of that, but you can't plan out everything."
Sky shrugged. "I guess so."
The rest of their training session was mostly her walking him through the more basic attacks and blocks, and then having him repeat them until his arms felt like putty. Eventually, though, Sky took a break from swinging his halberd around and checked his scroll. "...We should probably go. It's almost curfew."
"Aw," Ruby pouted. "Five more minutes?"
"Goodwitch."
"Oh. Yeah, let's go back inside."
"And now," Sky said, wiggling his fingers menacingly, "we go back to those books."
Ruby cringed away from him. "No!" she wailed, then took of sprinting for the room. Sky laughed and followed her, feeling indescribably relieved when she let him catch up instead of using her semblance.
This? This felt like finally making his first friend at Beacon.
