A/N: Semi-important.

I'd previously written Pyrrha's section a few chapters ago in first person POV, but I've decided that any POV that isn't Jaune himself shall be written in third person. This will not only help you readers not to get confused, but it will also keep myself from getting mixed up.

GL; HF!

X

My wordless scream went on for several seconds, muffled by the pillow but still understood by my teammates to be one of pure frustration. Pyrrha left her spot at the desk and came over to me. It seemed she was trying to console me and sate her curiosity at the same time, because she asked, "Jaune, is the song she picked that bad? I confess that I've never heard of it before, nor have I ever had the time to watch many cartoons."

I pulled myself up with a sigh. "It's not the worst song in the world, but... How do I say it? Any cool points I might've earned by playing other songs first will get destroyed."

I rubbed the back of my head and looked directly at her. "Though that reminds me: have you decided on what you want me to sing, Pyrrha?"

"I have, actually," she confirmed with a bashful smile, "but I'm not sure if I want to put the stress on you now that you have Nora's song on your mind."

Quest update!

(Expert) JNPR performance - All

You have the chance to put on a full four song show, one for each member of the team. Can you get enough practice in before the big day?

Success: 50,000 EXP, Massively increased closeness with JNPR, ?

Failure: Decreased closeness with JNPR, ?

There is no penalty for declining. Do you wish to keep your current quest or upgrade to Expert?

I pondered the quest update for a moment. 'If I stay up all night practicing, it shouldn't be too much of an issue; plus, I already turned down one Expert difficulty quest already in Goodwitch's class. What kind of gamer would I be if I didn't take a big risk once in a while?'

"I think I'll be okay doing multiple songs," I answered with a smile. "It'll be like a private concert. Sounds like a good bonding experience from where I'm sitting."

"Maybe, but where are you going to find the time to learn two songs," asked Ren with a raised brow. "We still have classes to take. I know we haven't been given any particularly difficult tests yet, but..."

"I'm a night owl by nature," -'Since my Semblance became a thing, at least'- "so I'll get in plenty of practice. Also, it'll be three songs I need to learn, 'cause I'll be performing a song from you, too."

That seemed to surprise him a fair amount. "You really don't have to. I'm already grateful that you're going along with Nora's shenanigans-"

"Are you saying I'm a hassle, Renny?"

"-so you don't need to give me any special treatment," he finished in the same tone he started with.

"I know I don't need to, but I want to. Music is fun for me, so it's all worth it in my book. Just don't choose another... 'Nora song' and I'll be okay." I laughed to myself when I realized that I was in the hilarious position of having two teammates who were actively trying to not bother me too much while I was telling them to do just that. 'Stop being so polite, you two. This is how I gain experience.'

Pyrrha and Ren shared a silent exchange, using their eyes to ask the other if the whole scenario was okay. Ren was the one to break the silence saying, "Very well, I look forward to watching your performance. I don't have a song in mind right now, so can I perhaps get back to you tomorrow?"

"Sounds like a plan. I don't want this to hang over my head all semester, so how about we plan this thing for next Saturday?" The quest had a week deadline, so it seemed like my only option anyways.

Nora made a rather invigorated jump straight up with glee. "Yeeees! We'll find a nice spot around campus and have a picnic! Special picnic pancakes, soda, maybe some sandwiches. Wait, Jaune will be too busy practicing to cook. Ren, how confident are you in your tuna salad sandwiches?"

The verbal onslaught continued while the rest of us went about our evening. I felt a quite a bit of excitement at the thought of performing for my team, but I knew that I'd really have to bring my singing and playing skills up if it was going to go off without a hitch. Promising Pyrrha that I'd go to sleep at some point, I grabbed my guitar and went out towards the cliffs once more, the crisp evening air brushing past my cheeks.

Stopping before I reached the sheer rock wall, I found myself a nice patch of grass and settled myself in it. I had Nora and Pyrrha's song selections, so I was going to focus on nailing those two down a bit before figuring out what my own song would be.

Your closeness with Blake has decreased by 1!

I looked around me to check if she was nearby, finding nothing and no one. 'I didn't do anything else wrong, did I? I'm pretty sure Ruby would remember to pass on my message, so maybe... maybe this is her answer.'

My body dipped far enough for my head to thump the body of the guitar. 'Damnit, I might not have the luxury of waiting for her to reach out to me first. I guess I'll have to be more aggressive in my approach than I thought. Sorry, Dad, but your advice might've been wrong for this.'

Using my scroll to bring up the "Livin' in the sunlight" song, I reset my position and started to practice. In the back of my mind, I prayed that I hadn't become the instigator of drama for team RWBY.

-Ruby-

The weekend had been pretty weird for Ruby Rose.

It had started off simply enough. Saturday morning, she gathered her team together in the fields after seeing Jaune when he'd knocked on their door. Blake had remembered to show up for the training session, so the morning hours had been filled with rather productive spars. Say what you would about the Ruby's age, she could feel in her bones how she could properly improve after Blake had wrapped Gambol Shroud around her ankle and thrown her into a tree.

Her head hurt for a while, but that only gave her more incentive to get better.

She'd even managed to create a team attack that Yang and Weiss could use, where her partner-slash-new bestie used her ice dust on the ground and Yang punched it, causing a ton of steam to appear and blind their foes. Now she only needed to figure out how they could see past the steam and the attack would be set.

After a lunch of strawberries and cafeteria pizza (sausage and pepperoni, yum!) Weiss managed to get everyone studying in their dorm room, which was cool...

...ish...

...not really, but Weiss had been happy, so far be it from Ruby to ruin her good mood. That, however, was when things took a turn for the strange.

While Ruby was in the middle of balancing two pencils on her hose, she remembered that she was supposed to pass on Jaune's message and proceeded to do so. Rather than being thankful or, at the very least, dismissive in her usual attitude, Blake's reaction was like she'd been shocked. Her teammate's mouth flipped between being open and shut for a moment before she mumbled a "K" and reapplied her book to her face with as much force as she could.

Nobody missed this. Yang gave Ruby a questioning eyebrow and received two raised hands and a shrug in response: it was a mystery to her, too. Yang, sitting at a desk, looked at Blake and asked, "Did something happen, Blake? If Jaune needs to apologize for something, I'll be more than glad to help you squeeze an 'I'm sorry' out of him."

Blake shook her head rapidly. "It's nothing, Jaune didn't do anything bad. Just... don't worry about it, okay?"

"If you say so, Blake." It was clear Yang didn't buy it for a second, but what could we do? It was obviously personal, whatever it was. Ruby was sure that Blake and Jaune were mature enough to handle whatever had happened between them.

Emphasis on "was." It was now seven P.M. Sunday evening and Blake had been mysteriously missing the entire day. She wasn't in the dorm when they woke up, the cafeteria ladies said that they never saw her in the food lines, and Weiss had confirmed with the librarian that Blake hadn't been to the library ever since she'd been spotted running out like her life depended on it. The librarian noted that a blond boy matching Jaune's description had been trying to catch up to Blake before the latter successfully fled the scene. Naturally, the bow wearing girl had ignored all of their scroll calls.

Concerned for her teammate, Ruby called for an emergency team meeting back in the dorm room. A piece of paper with the words "Return Blake to normal!" was slammed on the desk that Ruby had moved to the middle of the room. "Alright, girls, we need to figure out two things: why Blake is avoiding us, and how we can fix it. Do we have any ideas?"

"I think I've got one," answered Yang. "What if one of them flirted with the other and got too inappropriate? Jaune was the guy who called Weiss 'snow angel' when he'd known her for less than a day, so it isn't too hard to believe that he might've made things awkward."

"Yaaang, you make him sound so sketchy!" She felt her skin bristle at the apparent insult. Jaune was her very first friend at Beacon for Oum's sake! He was nice, he could cook good food, and he always listened to her ramble on and on about weapons or whatever had her attention that day. Sure, he could be as awkward as she was sometimes; but there was no way that a guy who was as nice to her as he was could be a creeper.

Yang put her hands up defensively. "I wasn't trying to make him sound bad, I was just throwing out an idea. I mean for all we know, it could've been Blake that asked Jaune out. She could be into blonde guys."

An image of Blake asking Jaune for a date flashed through Ruby's mind. She wasn't sure why, but the thought made her chest tighten uncomfortably.

'Wait a second,' Ruby thought before addressing Yang. "Even if one of them asked the other out or whatever, why would that make Blake avoid the three of us? That makes no sense."

"Ah, good point," Yang conceded with a nod. "That just leaves me with the opinion that we should ask Jaune what happened."

"I concur," followed Weiss. "We won't get anywhere without additional information. Let's go to the source."

Silently agreeing with them, Ruby sent Jaune a message asking him to come to their room. He came over within a few minutes, his eyes scanning the room for something or someone as he let himself in their unlocked door. Apparently failing to find his target, Jaune sighed and said, "You called me over about Blake, didn't you?"

"Uh-huh," answered Yang as she frowned and crossed her arms. "She's been avoiding us, her team, the entire day, so this is the part where you tell us what you did wrong so we can order you to fix it."

"If I knew how to fix it I would've done it already," he replied with another sigh. "As to what I did wrong, I can't go into detail with making this whole thing worse than it is."

Weiss moved to his left and crossed her arms like Yang had. "Explain."

Jaune stood where he was, clearly struggling to come up with the right words. Ruby wanted to ease his mind in any way she could, but felt stuck as to how to do that. After a couple of moments he said, "Look, we all have things about ourselves that we wouldn't tell people we just met, right?"

"Right..." Ruby said as she pondered where he was going with this.

"Well, I was talking with her in the library when I, for lack of a better way to say it, wound up guessing one of her secrets completely by accident. The thing I 'guessed' must've been a sensitive topic for her, because she got mad at me and-" He abruptly cut himself off, taking a second to correct the sentence as he strangely massaged his throat. "Blake got upset and ran away. I actually went looking for her today so I could apologize, but I couldn't find her anywhere. I never meant to hurt her, I promise."

The RWY girls examined him carefully, looking for any sign of deceit. Weiss seemed skeptical, but Yang and Ruby glanced at each other and agreed that he was telling the truth. Yang turned back to him and said, "I believe that you're being honest, but that still leaves us with a missing teammate. Where did you look for her?"

"The usual places: the cafeteria, the library, and the courtyard. I asked some other students, but nobody knew anything and I don't have her scroll information. What about you girls?"

"Same places," sighed Ruby. "The only thing I can think of is to wait until Blake goes to classes with us. She has to show up somewhere."

"I hope so; I really do." Jaune turned to walk out, but as he opened the door he offered some final words. "I truly am sorry for what happened."

With that he walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. None of the girls had it in them to speak, but Ruby's eyes rooted to where Jaune had been standing. Her first friend at Beacon was depressed over something he'd done, and she felt that there just had to be something she could do.

"Ruby? Where are you going?"

She ignored Yang's question has she almost ran out of the dorm room. Her hand immediately went up to knock on JNPR's door, but she stopped when she realized that Jaune was sitting against the wall by RWBY's door, his face in his hands as he gave the biggest sigh yet. "Jaune? Are you okay?"

Jaune lowered his hands just enough to see her standing next to him. "Honestly?"

"No, I desperately want you to lie to me." Ruby didn't know where the impulse to joke had come from, but it at least got Jaune to chuckle for a moment. Progress. "This really is eating you up, isn't it?"

"Yeah... yeah, it is. We've barely been here a week, and somehow I've already screwed things up royally. Story of my life right there."

Ruby thought long and hard about what she should say. She needed to be inspirational, a friend that he could rely on. These were the words that would forever boost a friend up from the dark spot in his mind.

"Nope!"

He blinked. "Nope?"

"Nope," she confirmed as she crouched down until she was eye level with him. "You haven't screwed up, because we're all going to get through this thing together and be closer friends for it. After a fight comes the make up, after all."

"What makes you so sure? How can you be confident about this, Ruby?" There was a touch of desperation in his voice, like he truly needed to know whatever secret she knew. It made her sad yet even more determined at the same time.

"Because you're a good guy, Jaune. You made friends with me just because you saw me blow up, became the leader of your team when they all trusted you against the deathstalker, and even managed to help Weiss chill out. A little."

Jaune seemed a bit perplexed. "That's... I mean, those are all true, I guess; but what does that have to do-"

She put her hand in his face to silence him. "Nuh-uh, no buts. I have faith in you, okay? That's all any of us need right now."

He shook his head, but there was no denying the slight smile on his face. "Has anybody ever told you that you're a little weird, Ruby?"

"Hey, I consider myself to be more kick-butt than weird!" She put her hand out and helped Jaune to his feet. "Cheer up, Jaune. After we all get our happy faces back together, you and I can throw a joint-team party to celebrate."

"Haha, that sounds good to me. I can help with..." His sentence trailed off as his expression went vacant. "Party...?"

She was a little concerned. "Jaune? Hel-"

Her friend suddenly grabbed both of her shoulders, a smile growing wider and wider by the second. "Party! Ruby, you're a genius! Thank you, thank you!"

With that he brought her into a hug, lifting her up off of the ground as he started laughing. Ruby's face started to warm up from having her face so close to his, but she didn't want to say anything that would ruin his sudden good mood.

Well, that and the fact that she honestly didn't mind it.

When Jaune was done swinging her back and forth he set her down, smile a little smaller but no less dim for it. "Sorry about that; but you really did give me an idea, so thank you again!"

She struggled to contain the blush that she felt trying to overtake her face. "Uh, no problem. Is there... anything else I can do?"

"If something comes up and I need your help, I'll be sure to message you. See you tomorrow, Ruby!" He turned and sprinted down the hallway, paying no further mind to the girl he'd just left behind. Ruby grinned at his enthusiasm, happy that she managed to get through to him... whatever it was she did.

'Did you hear that, me? I'm a genius! Jaune said so himself, so it must be true.' She spun around and grabbed the handle to RWBY's door. 'All in a day's work for best friend Ruby-'

As soon as the door opened, she came face to face with one Yang Xiao Long, who was wearing the rightly feared 'sisterly-teasing' expression. "You got awful close to lover boy there, huh?"

"Lover boy? Jaune? I mean he hugged me, so yeah." Ruby walked past Yang and kicked off her boots, desperate to avoid whatever dumb words were going to come from Yang's mouth. "I'm just glad I managed to cheer him up."

"And it's a good thing that you did, too, but what I'm talking about is how red your face got for a minute. Is there something you'd like to share with your big sister?" Yang leaned closer and closer as Ruby felt dread pool inside of her gut.

"Not really, no. Yang, don't you dare tickle me! Stop!" Her sides were grabbed and mercilessly attacked as Yang sought to drag out whatever false information she could from the girl. There was nothing to get so worked up over! She just helped a good friend out of a bad spot, that's all!

Right?

-Jaune-

It was so obvious! I should've been able to put the info together, but I spent all day just making myself depressed instead.

Pulling up his game menu, the party chat option popped up first, as if to say "Looking for me? Took you long enough." Naturally I couldn't use the chat if I wasn't in a party, so I brought up the party options menu as well.

Create Party [3 unused slots]

Invite Player

Kick Player

Exp Gain

I held my finger over 'create party', contemplating my foolishness up to that point. Something like my transcripts needed to stay hidden, yes, but my Semblance? The very thing that defined how strong I could be and what potentially crazy stunts I could do? Hiding it from my teammates and friends was stupid because not only was I bound to be sniffed out, I was one day going to be on missions with these people. They needed to know what I was and wasn't capable of. Starting with Blake.

What would you like to name Party 1?

That was a good question, wasn't it?

-Blake-

Blake was lying on the roof of the training arena at Beacon, staring at the stars as they twinkled overhead.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. She was supposed to go through Beacon without anybody finding out about her being a Faunus, keeping a low profile until she was ready to be a huntress. Ready to fight for true equality.

In reality, not only had Ozpin figured her out before the semester even began, but Jaune had seen past her bow and noticed the cat ears. The former was understandable since he was the headmaster; he'd probably lived through and seen just about everything in life. A fellow student, though? And one that wasn't even on her team to begin with?

Her disguise had failed. It was as simple as that. News of her being a Faunus would spread and nobody would respect her opinion when she spoke up. She couldn't bear to see her friends now that they'd surely been told the truth. They were probably angry, as they had the right to be in hindsight.

'It would be easier to just... run away now. Leave Beacon. But with the White Fang still in Adam's hands-'

You have received a party invitation! Would you like to join the party [Jaune is sorry]? Yes/No

Blake blinked at the sudden text box in front of her. It was a semi-transparent blue with black letters, floating close to her face as she stared at the sky. Thinking it to be a delusion, she closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. It was still there when she opened them again. "What the hell is this? I must be hallucinating."

Slowly, Blake reached up and pressed the 'No' button, causing the box to disappear from view. She rolled onto her side and sighed, determined to put it out of her mind.

You have received a party invitation! Would you like to join the party [Jaune is truly sorry about what happened]? Yes/No

There it was again, now between her and her view of the Emerald Forest treeline. 'I really don't need whatever this is. Maybe I'm asleep?'

A quick cheek pinch determined that to be wrong. Sitting up now, she pressed the 'No' button again and waited.

You have received a party invitation! Would you like to join the party [You aren't going crazy, this is really Jaune and I swear I haven't told anybody that you're a Faunus]?

"Thrice you have asked me, and thrice I have denied you." Quoting a line from "The Man with Two Souls", she hit 'No' again. Blake was more perplexed than anything else. She brought out her Scroll and saw that it was still turned off, just like she'd wanted it to be all day.

You have received a party invitation! Would you like to join the party [I can do this all night, Blake]?

They say that curiosity killed the cat. She'd always hated that saying, because she liked to consider herself as being cautious; but this phenomena, whatever it was, now had her full and undivided attention.

She pressed 'Yes'.

You have joined the party [I can do this all night, Blake]!

Welcome to the Game! You have joined the Game at the request of the Semblance holder, Jaune Arc. Unfortunately, as a restricted user, you do not have access to all of the features that The Gamer does. These blocked features include (but are not limited to): gaining experience points, applying SP to stats, using Technical Machines, and the Inventory Screen.

You may, however, examine your own status, as well as use the party chat system freely. New parties may only be created by The Gamer, but you may leave the party of your own volition at any time and maintain use of the status screen and certain options menu selections. To see your menu and usable features, say or think 'Main Menu'.

Please use the limited features available to you to their fullest extent. Thank you!

It was a lot to take in all at once, but her curiosity was only continuing to grow. Before she could begin experimenting with the supposed main menu, another text box popped up.

Jaune: Thank goodness you finally accepted the party invite. We've got a lot to talk about.

X

I had trouble writing this at first, which is why it took so long (I'm sorry!) Thankfully, and hilariously, this chapter was easier to produce after I started work on my new story "One New Message". I shall be alternating which story I write chapters for, so please look forward to reading both stories at relatively even paces.

I hope you enjoyed it, and please consider leaving a review.

For now, GG!