Disclaimer: In which the Author makes no claims to ownership.

"Having the right gear won't make your mission a success, but having the wrong gear will doom it faster than you can say 'Grimm.'"

Ruby frowned as her sister snickered. "Blake."

A moment later Yang huffed and fell silent.

Elbow, Ruby decided, probably.

"Each of you has a yearly equipment allowance that you can use to acquire personal gear through Beacon at cost."

Professor Pullman was tall, and old. His hair was shaved short, the color of gristle; and a trio of prominent claw scars started on the back of his head, wrapped around the left side—barely missing the ear—and then cut down across his face barely stopping short of his mouth. A black patch covered where his left eye was.

"Not that it'll do you much good."

"Why not?" Ruby asked.

"Remnant's a big place. Even the limited parts we live on are huge," he replied. "Everything from ice-flows on Solitas, to swamps and jungles of Anima, to the deserts of western Sanus. Mountains south of Vale. Oceans, lava fields… Huntsmen and huntresses are free to find their niche, but one of the reasons they are encouraged to find a niche rather than do everything is the sheer amount of specialized gear needed to operate at peak efficiency in any given environment.

"Your trainee licenses will also allow you to purchase personal gear at hunter supply businesses. They generally have examples of current military gear from all of the Kingdoms, plus equipment offered on civilian markets at prices that are generally better than civilian stores. You will need to graduate and obtain full licenses before you can purchase hunter-spec vehicles, heavy weapons, and the like, and even then, most heavy gear will be outside of your immediate price-range."

"Do you have a personal gear list that you recommend for, uh, as broad an environment as possible?" Ruby asked.

"Why, as it just so happens I do," Pullman grinned which twisted his scars in highly unsettling ways.

Ruby had her scroll out before it even beeped, a few rose petals drifting to the floor. The equipment list was…not short. She taped one of the recommended Equipment Carriers, Personal, and found a list of packs, frames, harness, belts, pouches, equipment carriers, cinches, straps, inserts, and repair kits that ran for over three pages.

Oh, wait. It was modular. She could take the parts and literally design her own pack! Ruby scrolled back to the top of the parts list. Let's see, she'd need a frame, and a pack, straps, belt, chest cinch, ooh, a hydration bladder sounded good and that meant she'd better get the water purification kit as well, a repair kit just in case, and a maintenance pou—oooh, there was a sock-sheath intend for a shotgun that'd be just about perfect for a spare barrel for Crescent Rose—and a detachable assault pack would be a good idea, extra ammunition pouches—a medical pouch? better get two—and a pouch for grenades because she might be working with Nora, and there even was a carrier with armored sleeves for vials of Dust!

"Now," Professor Pullman jerked Ruby's attention away from her scroll, "I know better than to suggest that huntresses who have less than two weeks at this fine institution might have made…less than optimal field-wear choices," Pullman said. "That said, one of you is already wearing one of the finest boots there are. Ruby Rose, please come up and tell us about your footwear."

Ruby slowly walked up to the table and sat on it, lightly kicking her legs. "So, the, um, Modular Battle Boot was designed by a partnership of Mistral and Atlas. It comes in black, brown, or gray, and your choice of ten trim colors—"

"Always important," Professor Pullman said dryly.

"And, er, well…it's modular!" Ruby added. "So if you've stripped the paint off your weapon, but only have a gray primer on it and you need to deal with a sudden Grimm attack, you can pull off the red trim and put on the gray to keep everything neatly accessorized!"

Pullman's frown was even more terrifying than his smile. "You accessorize your appearance to your weapon?"

"Of course!" Ruby chirped. She looked at the others in the class, then, slowly, back to Pullman. "Doesn't," she hesitated, "um, doesn't everybody?"

Pullman's face twisted into that horrific smile again. "By swapping around inserts and parts it'll keep feet dry and warm from temperatures of negative thirty up to fifty degrees. And they're configurations for different environments: deserts, jungles, swamps, glaciers…

"There are also a host of accessories that are fully compatible with the MBB," Pullman continued as Ruby hopped off the table. "Including everything from cleats and crampons for added traction, to snowshoes, to spats and gaiters for added foot- and leg-armor.

"We'll come back to other footwear. Let's start with sleep systems," Pullman said as he dropped three compression sacks on top of the table.

"The HT-MSS-37 modII," he said, unsnapping the first. He flipped something, there was a soft hiss, and it spread out into a box about two meters long and a bit more than a meter high and wide. "The best there is with a price-tag to match. Developed for the Vale Army and skipped over for something a little bulkier, a little heavier, a little less versatile, and half the cost.

"The outer layer in an inflatable one-person shelter. You can stake it down and use it as a tent, or string it from trees and use it as a hammock, or even anchor it to a cliff-face and sleep hanging off the side of a mountain. It's fully ventilated, with integrated insect-screens, and the sides have break-away fasteners in case you need to get out in a hurry; take note, this is not a good idea if you're up a cliff face or in a tree. The base has an integrated insulation mat. And the whole doubles as a compression bag. Inside the shelter are nested sleeping bags, just pick the right layer for the local environment. They can be used individually separate from the outer shelter, if you want, though mind the environmental factors. As a combination system, it is rated down to negative thirty. There is a small, integrated Dust reactor that can be removed to save weight. With burn or ice Dust, the habitable environmental profile reaches out to any practical environment.

"Note the practical environment. If you try to go to sleep inside an active volcano as at least one person with more lien than sense tried to do, you will die and it won't matter how much ice Dust you load…"

Okay, it wasn't as exciting as weapons, but this was pretty neat too.

"…also doubles as a litter for casualty evacuations and a body bag." Pullman grinned horrifically again. "The latter isn't its most common use, but it's close.

"Now, moving on to the bag Vale went with in its place…"

"How are the new hires fitting in?" you ask.

"Which ones?" Flattery asks dryly.

"Presumably the ones we hired after the SDC fired them." I'm 'Amy Chiaroscuro' at the moment, so I'm tied in via a three-way video conference rather than directly interfacing with your implants.

"Well enough, I suppose," Flattery acknowledges. "It helps that their shift-leader was essentially free to do his own recruiting. Their qualifications were being seriously miss-utilized by the SDC. I'm not sure that we can make effective use of two or three of them, not yet anyway. On the other hand, Oscar says Rosetta is excellent at conceptualizing attack strategies even if she doesn't have the technical skills to make them reality."

"You aren't actually designing…what are you calling them?"

"Plagues," Flattery said. "Oscar says they actually behave more like viruses, or at least the one that attacked the SDC did, but the term 'plague' seems to have stuck."

"Lovely," you remark. "And I notice you didn't answer my first question."

"We are. Only on standalone systems," she added quickly. "But Oscar convinced me that we need to understand what it is we're trying to prevent, or treat, so…"

"Lovely," you sigh. "Alright, just…keep them from getting out."

"That we can do," Flattery agreed. "Actually, the more I'm finding out, the more disturbing I find the whole thing."

"How so?" you ask.

"How much do you know about, well, computer infrastructure?" I ask. We are both occasionally finding the need to work around the fact that we're the only ones who know we're stage-managing our reinvention of the future more than a little surreal.

You shrug.

"Well, we're calling it the candy shell," I continue. "If you try to get into a system, the security is actually pretty robust. Actually, the shell is hard enough that unless you have access, it's almost impossible."

"Almost?" you repeat for Flattery's benefit.

"Only almost," I smile. "That's enough to stop, well, almost everyone. But once you get past that shell, the inside is pretty gooey."

"Uh-huh," you say. "It strikes me that there's still a lot of stuff happening between computers."

"Yeah, well, that's mostly the CCTs," I reply.

"The CCTs themselves are very nearly impervious from outside attack," Flattery said. "I don't claim to understand the details, but all of our staff agree. At the same time, the whole system is very fragile. If one goes down, we lose planetwide communications."

"What about that 'almost?'" you ask.

"The high-level threats," I reply. "Those could be a problem, but pretty much aren't…because they understand enough not to be a problem."

"What Amy means is, while there are those who are perfectly capable of getting past the candy shell, nobody, or nearly nobody, tries. As much as could be gained by taking down one company or the like, nobody wants to risk the CCTs. Taking out world-wide communications has the potential to bring more trouble, entire Kingdoms, not just huntsmen and huntresses, than it's worth. Apparently, this concern is why a number of…call them attacks, have not happened. In several cases they were preempted when someone tipped off local authorities before a plague could be released."

"Okay. What about developing that redundancy?"

Flattery nods and picked up a scroll and considers it briefly. "Gerald acquired an artillery system Atlas developed for its air dreadnoughts. It was produced just after they went to the all-energy cannons for their primary weapon systems, and so was never used. We've, well, put two barrels together to lengthen in—it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the general idea—and set up a test facility on an island west of Anima.

"That's the good news.

"The bad news is that even if the tests go well, we're looking at ten years, minimum, to develop something commercially viable, and it's probably going to be twice that. We just…keep finding more problems and too damn few solutions."

"Such as?"

"How to aim it, for one," Flattery said. "We need multiple satellites in multiple orbits. If we can't move or aim the gun, that means the satellite needs to be able of producing a great deal of…delta-V, or we risk being able to only put satellites into a very narrow band."

"Options?"

"Expensive, and more expensive," Flattery replied. "We can either create a large number of immobile guns or…one of the solutions put forward has a barrel that is more than four kilometers long, and almost wholly immersed in the ocean. It'd be suspended from the surface by large floats. By adjusting the position of the floats and length of tethers, we'd be able to adjust the point of aim of the gun."

"Ouch," you say.

"But it's worse than that. Maintaining global communications is a not-minor part of your plan. Without satellites, that puts us back on trying to keep the CCTs up, and they are just too vulnerable. You can only be at one place at a time, and they only need to be successful once.

"We may, however, have an interim solution."

"You do?" you ask, while at the same time asking 'Amy?'

'Wait until you hear this,' I reply. 'You'll like it. Gerald will flip a nut though.'

"It wouldn't be as efficient as satellites. They'd wear out faster, needing more frequent—likely much more frequent—replacement. And while satellite systems would be sufficiently distant to be protected from nearly any physical threats, this would only be sufficiently protected from most physical threats. Individual nodes would and likely far more vulnerable, but the cost should be sufficiently low that we could deploy a great many more of them…maybe."

"Detectability? Cost?"

"As long as we keep the comm net restricted, the detection values should be fairly low. It'd be visible to anyone looking in the right place, but unless someone happened upon one by accident no one should have a reason to look…at first. Once they start broadcasting to everyone on the planet, they'll be quite obvious. And once people start actively looking, finding them will be straightforward if probably not particularly easy. At first. Cost is…more than I can quantify at this time. Certainly less on a per-unit basis than a satellite, even without launching costs.

"We should attack the SDC now, while it's weak."

"Adam…don't you trust me?"

"No."

Cinder laughed. "How remarkably…honest." Her chuckle died abruptly. "Right now, the Schnee Dust Company and the Atlas Military need one another. Attack one, and the other will leap to its defense. However weak the SDC is, the White Fang does not have the resources to attack the Atlesian Military."

"We have more resources than you think."

"Not in Atlas," Cinder said flatly.

"And if we do it your way?"

"If we do it my why the SDC and the Atlasian Military will destroy one another. Besides, you are thinking too small. This opens to us all sorts of future opportunities…"

"…forty minutes…thirty meters…" Yang frowned at the colorful square of plastic, then down at the worksheet laying half-complete on the open book on her bed. "Forty minutes…thirty meters…" she followed the lines from each of the numbers to a box where they converged. The box was split in two and she glared at the red number on top before underlining the number below with a thumbnail and scratching it down on the worksheet.

"Y'know, Rubes," she said, looking over the edge of her bunk at where Ruby was sitting at a desk with her own plastic square, "when you first told us about these weekend classes, I thought we were going to be doing something fun."

"This is."

"No. This is math."

"Math today, fun tomorrow." Ruby flipped her plastic square around. "Back me up, Weiss."

"Why should I?"

"You like homework."

"Do you have any idea what saltwater will do to my hair?"

"Ruby?" Yang asked. "Is there something you forgot to tell me?"

Ruby snagged a cookie from a plate on the desk. "You go swimming all the time back home."

"So?"

"What do you think the water around Patch is, Yang?" Ruby asked patiently. "Don't worry about the water, Weiss. Yang is kind of obsessed about her hair. You can just use her stuff."

"How can you snack like that?" Weiss asked.

"She's still growing," Yang said.

"I'm still growing. We are all still growing, Yang."

"Point," Yang agreed. "But Ruby's semblance burns energy like no one's business, and it pulls from her body's reserves, not just her aura. No idea what it'll do now."

"Still hungry," Ruby muttered.

"But, Rubes. You have us sacrificing a weekend to do math? Why do we even need to know this?"

"Have you looked at chapter seven?"

Yang gripped her mattress as she stuck her head over to look at her partner who was sitting underneath and reading a book. "Unlike you, I don't make it a habit to memorize the entire book before the first class."

Ruby scratched down one more answer and turned to her partner who had a history textbook open. "Trade?"

Weiss waved off-handedly at her copy of the same worksheet as Ruby had just completed.

"Seriously, Ruby. What's the worst that could happen?"

Ruby looked up at where her sister was now sprawled on her bunk. Instead of replying she pulled out her scroll. The overhead lights dimmed, and the room's holo-display lit up.

The video was old, in color, but the colors were distorted, and the image was grainy. It was the kind of thing common to the Great War. Ruby walked back to her partner as men clustered around a figure in a canvas suit and heavy dive helmet laying sprawled on the deck of a boat.

"What are you doing you dolt?" Weiss complained as Ruby put a hand in front of Weiss' face. She glanced at Blake who was pointedly reading a novel, then squeezed her own eyes shut and stuck another cookie in her mouth.

"Gaah."

Peanut butter, Ruby thought, trying not to think about the gush of red fluid, too thick to be just blood, pouring out of the vision port as the people in the video unscrewed it.

"W-what was that?" Yang asked.

Ruby opened her eyes again and quickly shut down the holoscreen.

"Double mechanical failure. A poorly maintained non-return valve was stuck open, and the surface-supplied air failed, resulting in a pressure differential of more than ten atmospheres between the inside and outside of the suit."

Weiss looked at Blake. "Do I want to know how you know that?"

"I looked up what the worst was that could happen," Blake replied without looking up from her book. "Turns out it is getting your organs shoved into your helmet, and your blood sucked up ten meters of air-line."

"Figures," Weiss snorted. "I suppose I should be grateful Ruby stuck her hand in my face."

"Probably," Blake agreed without looking up from her book as she turned a page.

"Yes." Yang's voice was flat, but she swallowed heavily. "And you want to do something where that can happen?"

"We aren't talking about hard-hat diving," Blake said. "And we'll be at much shallower depths."

"But—"

"It's graphic," Ruby said. "You can see the result. But if you'd reach chapter seven you'd know that there are an awful lot of ways you could be hurt, even killed, if you do something wrong. So…do the math. And then you trade with Blake to make sure you've each done it correctly."

"I still don't understand why you thought to sign us up for this course," Weiss commented. "Your answers are good, by the way."

"I didn't think it was something any of us had done, and it looked like it would be fun."

"Not really practical, though," Yang said.

"There are a lot of sea-based Grimm. Having an introduction to how to be safe in the environment is a good idea," Ruby disagreed. Bagging a kraken would be major kudos for a team of huntresses-in-training, not that she had any intention of trying to take one in their own environment, that was what Dust-launched harpoons and explosives dropped from a boat were fo—ooh, maybe they could put hamsters or something in a pressure vessel, wrap the explosives around it, and then wrap meat around that…that way the kraken would sense both meat and aura and when it ate—

She shook her head, making a note to save the thought for later as she went back to the topic at hand. "Speaking of, we're swapping partners for the pool this weekend. I'll partner with Yang. Blake, you'll be with Weiss."

There were the expected groans from Yang and put-upon look from Weiss, but otherwise they seemed to go along with it. Good. It was only a matter of time before Blake's previous loyalties came to light. The more Weiss trusted her with her life, the better, since it was pretty clear that it'd only come out in the most dramatic way possible instead of a calm, reasoned discussion. Why did people have to be so hard? Why couldn't they be more like weapons?

"W-we're inside your mind?" Jaune yelped.

You nod and hum an affirmative.

This only seems to make his near-panic worse.

"You didn't think you'd fallen asleep in my office, and we just happened to be sharing the same lucid dream of us walking along a Vacuo beachfront at midnight…did you?"

"Well, I, uhhh…no?"

"Why don't you ask me what's really on your mind."

"I'm not…I didn't screw up, did I?"

"Not any more than you already have."

"Then why the 'request' for an office visit?" he asks with very little hesitation.

You're glad to see it. Now if he could only show it a bit more often.

"All of my students are receiving one-on-one instruction for this next part."

"What? Why?"

"In part…that," you nod towards the sand behind him.

Jaune turns, then yelps and jumps back as he nearly stumbled upon the sleeping woman from the first time you'd met here.

"Oh, uh…yeah?" he asks with a nervous chuckle. "Who, uh…who is she?"

"Now that is a very good question," you murmur. "She's real. Real in the same way you or I are real, and a Grimm is not. But she is also not-real in the way you and I, and Grimm, are. Her being here is closely related to your own."

"Um… I never seen her before in my life?"

"Is that question, or a statement?"

"Oh, uh, statement. Definitely statement. Definitely haven't seen her."

"Nor had I expected you to," you admit. You may not know who the woman is, but then, you don't really have to in order to know what she is. And here you thought you'd known everything there was to know about Jaune Arc. Well, this certainly explained a few things.

The number of things she could be is vanishingly small.

"When, or if, she wakes, you will find her a far more capable teacher in this than I am."

If she's here and not awake yet…well, there is one sure-fire way to wake her up before everything goes tits-up. Mountain Glen would be just about perfect, wouldn't it? With a little time and effort on your part, but it'd also be worthwhile to consider if there was an earlier opportunity.

"Okay, uh, so how do I wake her?"

"You don't," you reply. "It must be her choice. Forcing the issue would be…bad."

Very bad.

But he doesn't need to know that.

The beach you had been using fades away into nothingness until you and Jaune are standing in emptiness. You aren't floating, but neither are you standing on anything. There is no up down, or even depth. It is also neither black, nor white. There is neither light nor darkness, but you can both see each other perfectly.

"W-w-where are we?"

There is sound.

"We're in your mind."

Jaune looks around. "I, uh, don't suppose you could be wrong? I mean, I hoped my mind wasn't so…empty."

"Hardly," you scoff. You wave his next comment into silence before he can voice it. "Okay. This is, well, they are all hard lessons, but until you are able to do this next piece there is really no reason for us to try moving forward, either with these lessons, or your training at Beacon."

"That's not ominous at all."

"A vague disclaimer is no one's friend," you reply mildly. "This is the moment of decision, from which you cannot go back. What you need to do is build an interface to replace the regulatory function of your aura."

"A what?"

"A mental construct. Something that can engage your senses and that you can interact with, that serves as a representative of your body, mind, and soul, and is linked to the same."

"Why?" Weiss asks.

It doesn't really surprise you that, of all of RWBY and JNPR, Weiss would have the most trouble with this. She is highly rational in a way the others aren't. Her problems with Blake aren't strictly a product of her imagination. It'd probably be easier for all of you if they had been. Instead, they come from knowing just what the White Fang had done to family, friends, and employees, and projecting that into her relationship with her teammate.

"When your instructors first started teaching you about aura, did you know how to feel it? How to manipulate it?"

"Of course not."

"Exactly. Since you will no longer be using an activated aura, but rather that which generates aura, many of those lessons will need to be relearned. Creating an interface accomplishes two critical goals. First, it will start to familiarize you with manipulating your inner strength much as your previous training taught you to recognize and channel an active aura. More importantly, it will establish a foundation for almost everything to follow."

Weiss noted the softly glowing sheet that shrouded her partner's bed and frowned. A little late-night studying was one thing, but this was getting ridiculous. She lifted the sheet, and a carefully prepared lecture died before it could be uttered.

By the glow of her headboard lamp, Ruby was asleep. Her face was planted in a binder full of notes, and she had two textbooks—and a legal pad full of notes—open, and four empty mugs. But it was Ruby's open scroll that captured Weiss' attention.

Sparing Ruby a quick glance, she reached over and plucked up the device. It was currently set up to show…academic scores? That would be useful. Good scores in combat and armory and Grimm studies, Weiss noticed absently as she made a mental note to ask Ruby where she could find the application so she could track her own, not so much for her other cour—

That couldn't be right.

She glanced at Ruby, then back at the scroll. There was a grade for an assignment they hadn't even gotten back yet! In fact, many of the entries had little notes or notations that were consistent within grades from a specific class, but only that class. Each class had its own notations.

Somehow, Ruby had linked her scroll to the Professors' gradebooks!

Weiss touched an icon, and the program closed. But it also revealed the folder (Leader Stuff) it had been placed in. And listed as sub-subfolders in a subfolder named 'Grades' was not only Ruby, but Sister, Partner, and Friend.

Not just grades. There were more subfolders listed by neat, tidy little subjects. Medical history, disciplinary, judicial, vehicles, contact, location…

Weiss quickly sat on her bed and pulled out her own scroll. It took less than a minute to find the student handbook. Yes, team leaders would be informed of disciplinary issues and poor grades and in upper years often had to make emergency medical decisions. But there was nothing that suggested they'd have access to the amount of information implied by Ruby's scroll!

She started to open her own grade report, but paused. She flipped to the judicial tab. Both Ruby's and her folders were very minimal in size. Yang's, judging by the size of the file, was not—wild parties and drunken antics, no doubt. And so was Blake's. In fact, Blake's looked to be quite sizable.

Weiss started to open it, but hesitated again. "Not that any of you have stuff to worry about because I enjoy stories and can wait for you to tell them to me…" That insufferable cookie-gobbling dolt, she seethed. But she backed out once more and opened 'contacts', then firmly tapped 'Weiss' and then her emergency contact. No doubt it'd be her father, but it'd be interesting to see if they were the public lines to the house or office, or if she had the private codes that bypassed the secretar—

Winter? Weiss stared at her sister's holopic before her gaze swept down the orderly infographics. Not just her civilian line, but…those had to be her military contact codes. The ones that even she herself did not have.

More than a little shaken, Weiss closed the folder, then locked the scroll. She slowly stood and placed it on Ruby's be—

"I'm not asleep!" Ruby protested as her body jerked upright, a page of notes ripping from the binder as it was firmly plastered to the left side of her face.

"Dolt," Weiss said, remembering to breathe.

"Weiss!" Ruby yelped. "This isn't what it looks like! I wasn't sleeping! I was—I need to go!"

"You need to sleep," Weiss corrected.

"No, uh, I mean…Ireallyneedtogo!"

Weiss blinked at her, then the four mugs registered and with a sigh she stepped back.

"Uh, I know you don't like me using my sembl—"

Weiss snapped her fingers and pointed, trying not to sigh as her hair and nightgown were buffeted by gale-force winds and the room suddenly smelled of rose petals. It was far too late, and she was far too tired to worry about cleaning them, and a few were always missed anyway.

At least they'd dissipate on their own before they totally wilted.

"So, um…"

Weiss glowered at her partner. "Even Blake has a better taste in reading material to fall asleep with," she said, peeling notepaper from Ruby's face.

"Uh…"

"Stay there," Weiss ordered. She turned and closed textbooks, stacking them and the binder neatly together before crossing to place them on Ruby's desk. The coffee mugs joined them. Then she handed Ruby her scroll, retrieved her own, and pulled Ruby from the dorm room to the small kitchenette for their block of dorms. It was, given the hour, unsurprisingly empty. But then, it was rarely used even during the day.

She parked Ruby in a chair, then went to the refrigerator and poured them both mugs of milk. She placed one in front of Ru—when had she grabbed that cloak?—by, sipped her own mug, and then placed it down firmly in front of her.

"Alright," she said. "Explain."

"It's all Torchwick's fault," Ruby said.

"Roman Torchwick? The thief?" Weiss asked.

"Crescent Rose doesn't like off-the-shelf ammo," Ruby said. "I hand-load each one special, just for her. I was running low and From Dust to Dawn is open real late so I stopped in to pick up some more bullets and casings and I saw they had the new Weapons! issue. And that's when Roman Torchwick and a bunch of goons came in to rob the place. Funny though, they weren't after the money, he wanted the Dust. Anyway, I broke it up, chased him, Professor Goodwitch showed up, and we fought them off."

"Them?" Weiss asked.

"Torchwick, he had this creepy shadow-lady who was really fond of fire, and they got away in a bullhead. Anyway, after that Professor Ozpin offered me a plate of cookies and the chance to come to Beacon early."

"Of course, he did," Weiss said. Really, she didn't know why she should be surprised.

"And…that's it, really."

"No. That is not it," Weiss said. "It does not explain your grades, or—"

"My grades?" Ruby asked quickly. "There's nothing wrong with my grades!"

Shit! Weiss' eyes narrowed. "You're spending more time cuddled up with books than Blake does. And she at least has some literary taste, as warped as it may be. One does not stay up to all hours with textbooks if one is a pillar of academic excellence."

"But—"

"Do I need to tell Yang? You do recall that part about having a goodnight's sleep?" Her threat to go to Winter had certainly worked wonders on Whitley when they had been much younger…

"No, please, not that!"

…and apparently the 'tell big sister' line worked here as well. "Then start explaining, Ruby."

"I skipped two years," Ruby said, wrapping the cloak around her shoulders and pulling the cowl down over her head as she hunched inside the red material. "That's it, really. I know Crescent Rose and I are an awesome team, and, well, I just get weapons. They're soo cool! And Professor Port has great stories and they're all about how to hunt Grimm! But…I'm not being graded on those two years, but apparently there was a lot of stuff taught that everyone assumes I know…"

"And because you don't, it's making the other course work difficult," Weiss finished.

"Uh…yes?"

"This, we can fix," Weiss said.

"We can?"

"And you don't need to learn everything in the first two weeks."

"I don't?"

"A month should be more than sufficient."

Ruby squeaked and Weiss resisted the urge to sigh.

"That was a joke, you…dolt," Weiss sighed.

Ruby lifted her hood slightly so that silver eyes peered out from under it. "You tell jokes?"

"The things I do for this team," Weiss said in a suffering tone. "The things I put up with…

"From now on, we're doing homework together. Just like the dive calculations."

"But we aren't in the same classes."

"We're in most of the same classes," Weiss said. "And besides, I'll need your help with, gah, camping. We have the course syllabi, we should be able to look at what's being covered and go over background material before we get to those sections. For that matter, Yang can help."

"Eh…Yang's always done the minimal necessary to skate through the stuff that doesn't interest her."

"Why am I not surprised?" Weiss asked. "Fine. Let me know if Yang, or, Oum help us, Blake, show signs of slacking. You may be Team Leader, Ruby, but I will not be on a team of halfwits or academic failures. I really will not."

"Don't you think halfwit is a bit strong?" Ruby asked hesitantly. "I mean…Blake?"

Weiss glowered at her. "I am Weiss Schnee, and I expect, no, I demand, the best," she huffed.

Ruby blinked. "You're being difficult~," she said with a sleepy smile. "But if you try to be nicer, I'll support you on avoiding academic failure."

"Fair enough," Weiss said softly. "Come on, let's get you back to bed…partner."

Glynda glanced up as the chime on her office door sounded, then back down at her desk and grimaced at the paperwork that had fallen out of its tidy little stacks. She jogged them back into order before nodding sharply. "Enter!"

The door swung open and Ruby Rose entered, closing it once more behind her.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Rose?"

"My, uh, Team RWBY has some problems…"

Glynda inclined her head slightly. While she couldn't fault Ozpin's reasoning for the chaotic nature by which partners and teams were formed—understanding just how uncaring the world outside the Kingdoms were, self-reliance, and the ability to trust the inherently untrustable (while also making account for their lack of trustableness) were essential for their students to have any chance of long-term survival—she couldn't help but wish they had the opportunity to…tweak the occasional pairing or team. Between Ruby's early admission and status as team leader, the presence of an older sister, and the placement of Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna on the same team, Team RWBY had more than its fair share of potential trouble points. The only other first year team that came close was JNPR. Although that team mostly suffered from a single ill-chosen member. Team CRDL at least should acceptable internal dynamics even if their behavior was otherwise atrocious. And then there was—

"…and I want us to run a patrol."

Glynda paused, pulled from her reflection by the last eight words spilling out in a sudden rush. She played the conversation back in her memory to see if she had missed something between Ruby Rose admitting her team had problems, to wanting to run a patrol…

No, that was it.

"Your team is having problems, so you want to run a patrol?" she asked, just to be sure.

"Yep!"

When no further detail was forthcoming Glynda frowned.

"Uh…I mean, if that's okay?" Ruby asked nervously.

"Patrols are not usually assigned to first year teams," Glynda said.

"Um…"

"What problems?" Glynda asked.

"Uh-wha?"

"What problems is your team experiencing, and how will running a patrol rectify them?"

"Oh, well, uh… Weiss has never been camping. And the equipment budget is by semester and use-or-lose."

The first was…perfectly reasonable. As was the second. All students were told this, though the number of first-semester (even first year) students who either didn't listen, or didn't understand (and more importantly, didn't ask for clarification) was rather high. High enough that the unclaimed 'equipment allotment' for first-semester students had been very useful in balancing other parts of the budget in recent years.

Ruby was giving her an expectant look that Glynda quelled with a frown.

"That's it?" she asked.

"Yep!"

"I see…" Glynda considered Ruby for a long moment. "I take it you have a plan to ensure your team's coursework does not falter during this…excursion?"

"Yep!"

Glynda turned to her computer and brought up the patrol routes. It would never do to send a team this new—especially not one with the daughters of Taiyang Xiao Long, Jacques Schnee, or Ghira and Kali Belladonna—into a situation where the risk of death or dismemberment was too high.

Oh, and one mustn't forget the Branwen twins, Glynda added with a mental wince she carefully kept from her face.

"Very well, Team RWBY is assigned a light reconnaissance patrol this weekend in the Forest of Forever Fall. Egress and extraction by bullhead will be provided, as will route plan. Your primary task will be to ascertain threat levels and chart Grimm populations. You may engage singleton and small groups at will, but are to avoid heavy contact. Please acquire pictorial and video evidence and map any Grimm sightings or kills.

"Your patrol duration will be four days, three nights. Bring fifty percent excess supplies. Emergency channels will be monitored and extraction provided if necessary, but depending on what flights are in the area, support may be some hours away." It wouldn't, but Team RWBY didn't need to know that.

"Do be aware of current climate additions and plan appropriately for both clothing and any campfires or activities you may wish to partake in. Live fire is authorized, but again, be aware of your environment before expending ordnance or Dust." The last, well, second-to-last thing they needed was for RWBY, or Ruby, to burn the forest down.

"No." Ruby said as she examined Weiss' scroll. She picked up Blake's. "No." She reached for Yang's. "N—" she broke off as she actually looked at Yang's, then looked away in a hurry as her cheeks heated. "Really, Yang? Really?"

"I wanted to make sure you were really looking," Yang said unapologetically.

"So you show me…that?" Ruby demanded.

"Eh, it's my job as a big sister to corrupt you."

"What if Weiss showed me that?"

"Miss Prim and Proper?" Yang asked.

"Blake then."

"Don't draw me into this." Blake didn't look from where she sat on her bunk reading. She did, however, flip a page.

"She'd better not have," Yang growled. "Big sister trumps partner."

"Well, I suppose it's nice to know where I stand," Blake said.

"What's wrong with my selections?" Weiss demanded.

"We're talking about huntressing gear, not what's being worn on the red carpet at the premier of a Spruce Willis movie," Ruby said.

"I know that," Weiss huffed.

"Then why did you go down the list and order the most expensive item in each category?" Ruby asked.

"Because it's the best, and I refuse to use anything less."

"No," Ruby said. "It is not the best. Just the most expensive. You didn't even look at any of the reviews, did you? And Blake, the least expensive?"

"No need to spend more than you have to," Blake said firmly.

"You do know our equipment allocation doesn't roll into subsequent semesters?" Ruby asked.

"Yes."

"And you can't use the remainder on books."

"I wasn't…" Blake looked up with a thoughtful frown. "Do you think if I said they were relevant—"

"No," Ruby, Weiss, and Yang said at the same time.

Blake huffed a little. "What's wrong with Yang's, then?"

"Oh. She'll just get whatever she thinks looks coolest."

"Guilty," Yang agreed happily.

"Fortunately, you have me!" Ruby said happily. "And we're going to do this again… To the lounge!"