Pyrrha Nikos took her seat, front and center, in Professor Glynda Goodwitch's philosophy class. She hadn't spoken to her team, beyond pleasantries and necessities, for a full two days. Her teammate, Nora Valkyrie, caught her eyes and mouthed, "Are you okay?"
Pyrrha faked a smile. Jaune, as usual, was oblivious. Professor Goodwitch power-walked into the auditorium and pointed at the clock right as the chime for class sounded.
"Good morning, everyone," she said.
Glynda turned to the left wing of the auditorium and nodded a second greeting, to the foreign teams.
"And hello to our guests. Let me see… Atlas, Shade, and Haven Academies are all here today. I never thought I'd get to teach a class this well mixed. Thank you for attending, everyone."
She turned to address the class again.
"I hope you all have yesterday's lesson on Causality fresh in your minds; it will be on the test tomorrow. The tournament is not an excuse to slack in your studies. Today, we're going to start our ethics and morality section. But before we do that, I have an unfortunate announcement."
Professor Glynda was kind and motherly. Her kindness was disarming. Pyrrha had only recently learned of her secret pastime. Still, she didn't expect to feel Glynda's aura in an offensive state. The professor tensed her body and flexed her soul. A wave of terror stormed the auditorium like a blood tide. Pyrrha reacted on training and held her calm. Glynda's body relaxed, and the wave ceased, and Pyrrha sighed free from the assault.
"You guessed it," Glynda said, "Panic Drills will now be a part of every class. Not just Aural Mastery."
From the room's center, Cardin shouted, "God Damnit!"
"Language, Winchester. I know, it's not the most fun thing we do." Glynda turned back to the foreign section, where she focused on a single student.
"You there, from Haven. It's not often I see a student so composed."
Everyone turned to see Cinder Fall, her legs crossed under her skirt, smiling and relaxed.
"We have panic drills in Mistral," she cooed.
"Where are your teammates?"
"You might remember that a Vale student named Yang Xiao Long broke Mercury Black's when he tried to shake her hand. So my teammates all flew back home with him. I'm staying to take pictures and buy souvenirs for them."
Glynda shrugged as if accepting the explanation. But Pyrrha saw in her what others did not. Glynda kept her warm smile, but the creases beside her eyes flexed. This was suspicion. Class continued.
"Okay. Well, I'll repeat what I said before, Children. The world is changing. Teams are no longer a luxury. Huntsmen have to work together to survive. And that means controlling your aura. Because if you panic, your aura projects that panic onto everyone around you. But when you are calm, you cannot project your calm. It is unfortunate, and it will disrupt class, and no, it isn't negotiable. This is all at Ozpin's orders. He's especially concerned due to recent events. So…"
Pyrrha's team captain, Jaune Arc, raised his arm. "Recent events? Like team RWBY riding that White Fang train into the wall?"
Glynda pursed her lips as his tactless blurting. "I can't get into specifics," she said.
Everyone turned to look at the back row, to team RWBY's usual seats.
Ruby Rose sat alone in the corner. She lifted her hands. "It wasn't us!"
"It wasn't team RWBY," Glynda confirmed. She spluttered, "W-wh-where- Miss Rose? Where are your teammates?" Glynda stared Ruby down.
The girl shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Uh… I don't know," Ruby lied.
Again, Glynda pretended to accept.
"We should move on with class. Today we're discussing 'The Train Dilemma.' Has anyone heard of The Train Dilemma before? No? Good. A train is going down a track, and there are five people tied up on the track. The train is going to kill them. You are standing too far away to reach them in time. But you are beside a lever. If you pull the lever, the train will divert onto a side-track. However, there is one innocent person on the side-track as well. What do you do?"
In the foreign section, an Atlas student stood to full height, clapped his heels together, and saluted.
Glynda nodded to him. "Flynt Coal of Atlas, I believe?"
Pyrrha and her team turned to see him.
"Huh?" Ren said.
"That's not… Oh my gosh," Nora mumbled.
"He looks different in his uniform," Jaune whispered.
Pyrrha recognized Flynt Coal, team FNKI. In the tournament, he'd worn a radical three-piece suit with outlandish colors. His teammate, Neon Katt, had been a skirted raver girl on roller blades. In uniform, they were cogs in the Military-Dustrial complex.
Flynt said, "A soldier's first responsibility is to humanity, not individual humans. I believe that the same is true for civilian huntsmen. We have to consider the effect on society, if they were to witness a huntsman intentionally killing someone below their station. Damaging the relationship between huntsmen and lower classes is not a worthwhile risk. So pulling the lever is not something I would do."
Glynda raised a finger to seize on that point. Pyrrha stood before Glynda spoke. She turned around to face Flynt, to show her disgust.
"How can you say that?" she demanded.
Flynt squared his shoulders to her. "Those are the facts of the job."
Here, Glynda stepped in. "Mister Coal, if you were certain that no one was watching…"
"I would pull the lever, Ma'am," Flynt nodded.
From across the room, Coco Adel said, "I wouldn't."
Pyrrha looked to the opposite wing, where team CFVY was nodding agreement with their leader. Glynda introduced, "Coco Adel? Care to explain?"
Coco shrugged to Pyrrha. "If you pull the lever, you're taking an action that causes an innocent person to die. That's murder. But if you don't act, you haven't done anything wrong. All that happens is a train accident."
From the foreign wing, Cinder spoke again. Her voice was too smooth. Pyrrha couldn't help but hear in the woman's tone a post-cynical confidence that belonged to an adult.
She said, "It can be difficult to accept when Fate requires an agent. It's easier to accept a grim future, so long as we are asked to do nothing in the present."
Pyrrha's attention split between three opponents now. At her side, Jaune sat rigid like he was caught in a crossfire.
Pyrrha stammered, "Wh-but- What does Fate have to do with this?"
Everyone turned to Cinder. She marinated in the attention. Then she poised to answer, licking her lips, inhaling so her chest heaved. Pyrrha felt disgusted at that lust baiting.
Cinder had poised to answer. But she didn't. She pointed at Jaune and asked, "If he was the man on the other track, would you still pull the lever? Or Would Miss Adel's and Mister Coal's excuses suit you then?"
Pyrrha hesitated.
Cinder smiled, though it was a sharp and cruel mark against the curves of her face. Pyrrha had forgotten to be on the offensive. She saw Jaune thinking it through. He looked as if he was really in that position, at her mercy. And he didn't look confident that she would save him. She didn't know.
"Why Jaune, in particular?" she asked.
Cinder shrugged, abandoning her predatory and aggressive posture. "He's your teammate."
The glee in her voice said she'd meant more. Pyrrha wondered how this stranger knew her deepest feelings. On a second thought, she wondered how Jaune didn't. She still had no answer. So Cinder raised her voice for the room.
"Did I hear correctly that Causality was the topic of yesterday's lecture?"
"Yes, excellent memory," Glynda nodded. "I'm happy to see someone paying rapt attention. Specifically, we covered Determinism, Pre-Determinism, and Fatalism."
Cinder turned back to Pyrrha. "Then Miss Nikos must be aware that the outcome of the dilemma was never in her power to begin with. Tell me, Pyrrha, as a native of Mistral, you adhere to the Legacy of the Gods, yes?"
Pyrrha felt outrage, like her face had been held to a fire. She corrected that look and tried on something more polite. She licked her lips.
"Excuse me, but-"
"Religion is not today's topic," Glynda interrupted. She stepped forward to emphasize that she was unhappy.
Cinder shrugged. "I already asked if she would kill her teammate," she noted.
"You don't have to answer that, Pyrrha," Glynda asserted.
Pyrrha looked to Jaune again. He leaned in closer and whispered, "Would you?"
She couldn't answer that. She folded her arms and said to the classroom, "Yes, I try to temper my conduct for the Legacy of the Gods. But that doesn't mean I expect it from others, or use it to judge their conduct."
No one raised their pitchforks at that. Though she knew there were audiences that would. She didn't dare glance in any faunus' direction.
"You're in good company," Cinder smiled.
Pyrrha nodded, accepting that solidarity. She waited for Cinder to continue.
"Here is the relevance. If you believe that the gods laid out a path for us, and if you accept that they have selected us as their agents, then Destiny should not be a foreign concept to you. As a matter of virtue, you must apply your own direction to your life. If you ever believed Jaune would tear you from the righteous path, you would have to choose between him and your way of life. The same choice is presented by the train. Because the gods must see that you have chosen and adhered to a destiny, and so they poison it with Fate, a Destiny you have no part in creating and which you are powerless to create. Or do you believe that you can ignore Fate?"
"What I believe," Pyrrha said, "is that we can envision a future that is distinct from the way things seem to be going. And that by making choices, we can effect dramatic changes on the world around us. That's why choices are difficult. Because we are all imagining the outcome we create by pulling the lever."
Cinder shook her head. "Choices are difficult because we lack knowledge, not because the future is malleable. Yielding to Fate is how humanity survives. Imagine if we had battled every hurricane, or tried to leash the tides. And siding with fate has brought us prosperity. Where would we be if we had not let the winds choose our trading partners, or if we had settled ambivalent to mineral wealth?"
Cinder remained smooth and clam. Pyrrha's slow cadence and tone was gone. Too late, she realized she had lost her temperance. She shouted, "The train may be a metaphor, but it is not a metaphor for nature!"
"The train is nature. The people on the tracks are nature. Everything, even you, are just as much a part of Nature's cycles as..."
Cinder's throat bobbed as it seized up. One of her eyes was covered at all times by a bang of hair. But the other sparkled with a realization. And it truly sparkled, the way a burn crystal flickers when shaken.
"Pyrrha," Cinder said, "You and I are just cycles in nature, no more distinct than the changing of the seasons."
Pyrrha swallowed. The rhythmic hum of Amber's stasis chamber filled her ears. She felt as if she was standing in that cold room kilometers below the school, where even now the Fall Maiden awaited Fate- awaited Pyrrha's decision about Amber's life.
Glynda noted, "That's very poetic, Miss… Fall."
Pyrrha folded her arms. She glanced to Glynda. The instructor asked, "Have you two met before?"
"Only once, in the chapel."
Pyrrha made a curt down signal with her hand, that she was fine.
Cinder placed a hand over her chest and brought her posture back to humility.
"Miss Nikos is famous. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be so familiar."
"No," Pyrrha said, "That's not what I'm taking issue with."
She steeled herself and met Cinder's eye again. "You're acting like the decision with the lever doesn't matter, because we're mere servants to Fate!"
"We are," Cinder cooed.
"That's absurd. I can't accept that."
"Causality is a fact. And your neurobiology is no exception to it, Pyrrha. You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
Professor Glynda held up her hands to stop them. "Ladies. You two don't have to carry the whole discussion."
"I'm fine," Pyrrha snapped.
She looked Glynda in the eye, to let her know she needed to carry this out. "It… Takes my mind off things," she said.
"Look at that," Cardin snarked. "Even the chosen one gets tournament nerves."
The room laughed softly. But Pyrrha saw in Glynda's eyes that she was understood. Glynda relented.
Pyrrha turned back to Cinder. She swallowed. "You think choice is irrelevant to the dilemma?"
"The dilemma loses its relevance to reality at two points. First, it assumes that there is a greater good, either in virtue or in economy of suffering. Second, it assumes that the lever works. If I understand correctly, Team RWBY believed that they could stop a train."
Pyrrha nodded. "Okay. And you believe that the gods have destined humanity to struggle to survive, and to recreate them and their ways. But if our choices are irrelevant to the success of that plan, then why must we be its agents? All we add by participating is our own experience, in a word: Suffering. And the dilemma becomes: To be, or not to be. I think it's fair to say we all made it into this room by choosing the former. But… Is that why we came here? Just to suffer? The only way I know how to be is to take my stance. Because, if you give me a lever, and a place to stand, I know I can move the world."
The ideas, and the words, had come to her as she spoke them. What she had needed was not the argument with this stranger, but the knowledge that she would have an answer. The class sat in an awed silence, partly awkward due to her spilling out her heart, but partly impressed. Cinder had no answer. Her mouth hung open. Then she nodded, lowly, to cede.
"Beautifully said," she mumbled.
"Thank you," Pyrrha nodded.
Jaune, trying to support her, clapped. Before she could stop him, the class joined in. They weren't too enthusiastic, but Pyrrha forced herself to smile and bow.
She had turned her back to Professor Goodwitch. She saw just as her head dipped, the sudden worry on everyone's faces. But she did not see as Glynda flexed her body, and projected her aura. Pyrrha only felt the pain and terror the professor struck her with. All of Glynda's fears and dreads surrounded her, like a sudden eclipse of hope.
She shrieked and hid her head in her hands. She panicked. And with the force of two auras panicking, the rest of the room fell into dread. Curses and hisses turned the auditorium into a pit of snakes and lions. Their failures cascaded, and Pyrrha felt the added weight as each student's resolve faltered. The lights flickered. The holo-screens fizzled and sparked. And for two minutes, Pyrrha was not a celebrity. She was the girl who'd dropped the ball.
When she opened her eyes again, she felt like she'd woken from a dream that would haunt her through the day. Her muscles shook under her skin. Cold sweat dripped down her face, shaken free by her ragged breathing. She found her chair, and covered her eyes with her fists.
"It's okay, Pyrrha," Jaune trembled, "Everybody does it at least once."
He was recovering. He was comforting her with his voice, just as she had done for him once, and just as he had done for everyone since then. But Pyrrha wasn't recovering. She felt the cold breeze emanating from Amber's sarcophagus. She imagined herself there, trapped, mauled by some faceless aggressor who had come to steal her very soul. Her Destiny ended. Awaiting Fate. Devoid of hope.
She uncurled her fingers. She felt like a coroner was trying to unclamp her corpse's grip.
"P-Pyrrha?" Nora said through clenched teeth.
"Come on back to us," Ren hummed.
"I can't," she said. "I can't do it."
"Okay. Well we'll just wait until you can," Jaune assured her.
"I have to go," she said through tears.
And she left. She saw that no one would meet her eyes. She saw how they shirked her presence and flinched as she passed. She knew she didn't belong among them. And as she left, she heard the tone of Professor Goodwitch's voice. Glynda was ashamed at her duty. But the professor said, "And that's why we drill."