Author's note: I recognize that it might be a bit odd for Jiu Jitsu to exist in the RWBYverse, but honestly, if we can include "Spruce Willis" and the "AchieveMen" as throwaway gags, I don't really see much harm in name-dropping a few martial arts here and there.

Chapter 3 - Discordance

The first few weeks of classes had gone by without much in the way of incident, at least by the standards of a Huntsman academy. Professor Port's infamous "qualities of a Huntsman" test had become almost mundane over the years of his tenure. Most mention went to what kind of Grimm he'd managed to capture and set loose on whichever first year had been gullible enough to raise their hand, or worse, been randomly picked because nobody had volunteered. This year, it had been a Boarbatusk, or so Port had told Covacs. He recalled when his team had been in that class. Blauer had raised his hand, and, with his ever-present cocky grin still plastered on his face, sauntered over to the front of the lecture hall, and stood at the ready in front of the cage. When the Beowolf came charging out, Hoffman stood his ground, calmly sidestepped and, in the blink of an eye, drew his longsword and sliced the beast's head clean off in a single, fluid motion. The anticlimactic nature of the event had the entire room in near-hysterics. To his credit, Port had simply stood there, stroking his mustache.

"Outstanding. You slaughtered a neophyte Beowolf in a single stroke. You are truly an opponent to be feared."

Blauer turned, "Perhaps, mein herr, you should have captured a more impressive specimen."

Port bowed his head slightly, "That is also true."

Sam snapped out his brief reverie and looked at his watch. The black face in the worn stainless steel bezel showed that he had about 5 minutes to spare before he had to be in Port's Applied Physiology class. Before he rounded the corner, something caught his ear. He stopped and listened. Even without his Semblance, it wasn't difficult to overhear the heated argument.

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you?! You're supposed to be a leader, and all you've been so far is a nuisance!"

"What did I do?!"

"That's just it! You've done nothing to earn your position! Back in the forest you acted like a child and you've continued to do so!"

"Weiss, where is this coming from? What happened to all that talk about 'working together?' I thought you believed in acting as a team!"

"Not a team led by you."

Schnee stormed off, as her team leader stood there, sulking. Covacs turned to see Ozpin standing behind him. He might have been startled, had the man not made a habit of being able to sneak up on him.

"I'll assume you heard as much as I did. I'm guessing you'll want to talk to her? Both of them, maybe?"

"Actually, I thought I might give you a go at it."

"I've got class in a few minutes, I would need more time than that. Besides, why me? You're more qualified."

"They'll need to learn to rely on each other, not to come running to the headmaster every time there's a problem. In fact, I've found that students in her position are far more receptive to advice from their peers, than from someone like me or Glynda. I'll let Peter know that you're indisposed."

"Won't even give me an opportunity to refuse? That's low, sir."

Ozpin flashed a knowing grin, "You're one of the top-ranking leaders in your class. I'm sure you'll manage."

When he turned the corner, Rose was still standing there, clearly feeling sorry for herself. He briefly activated his Semblance and heard Ozpin's footsteps heading away from him.

"Hey, Ruby."

She sighed, "How much did you hear?"

No point in denying, "I heard enough. Want to talk about it?"

A shrug, "I guess."

Dining Hall

With breakfast concluded and AM classes in full swing, the dining hall was mostly empty. The two team leaders sat across from each other. He spoke first.

"So, you think Weiss is being unreasonable?"

"Yes! She's done nothing but snap at me! 'Dolt,' this, and 'immature' that. She hasn't given me a chance!"

"You sure about that? Maybe she's been paying more attention to how you act when you think nobody's looking. From what I've heard, she's not so far off the mark calling you 'immature.'"

"But-" He held up a hand.

"I'm not holding that against you. You're a full two years younger than everyone else in your class. Do you know when the human brain is considered 'fully developed?'"

"...no?"

"Twenty-four years. That's how long it takes for a person to be considered fully matured."

"Then I guess I just need to tell her that. Get her to understand."

He shook his head, "I think she already does, at least somewhat. Think about what her expectations are, realistically. You were admitted, two years early, to the second highest-ranked Huntsman Academy in the world. She knows that, in order to do that, you had to have seriously impressed somebody. So, in her mind, she has a certain expectation of how someone like that ought to act. Because you're in a leadership position, the fact that you haven't lived up to it is on you."

"But why? She came up with that on her own, and I didn't ask to be made team leader. She can have the position if she wants it."

"You do that, she won't feel like she earned it. You need to play the hand you were dealt, and you need to take ownership because it's contagious. When you take ownership over everything, even things outside of your control, your teammates will fill in the gaps and start taking it for their parts."

"But, Ozpin told us that we should trust our teammates, that we should delegate responsibility?"

"There's a time and place for both. As the leader, it's on you to know when and where."

"Okay, but how will I know?"

"Trust your instincts, and trust that they'll only get better with time and experience. It won't always go the way you want it, and that's where the real test is. If your teammates recognize that you can own failures and adapt, they'll stand by you, no matter what. That's the kind of loyalty you earn."

When she didn't say anything, he knew that she understood. She spent almost a full minute sitting there, chin resting on her knuckles, digesting the lesson, letting the words soak in. She took a deep breath, nodded, and stood to leave.

"Thanks, Sam. I'll talk to Weiss, and let you know how it goes."

"I'm not your boss, I'm a colleague. Your responsibility is to them, not to me."

She nodded again, and left him alone with the memory of how he had learned the lesson that he had just passed on.

Mountain Glenn, four years ago.

It was their first real mission, but far from the first time either of them had been in mortal danger. Even at the tender age of 14, they had endured more than their fair share of hardship. Interestingly enough, their involvement in this sort of work wasn't technically illegal, at least under Atlesian law. Thirteen was the minimum age at which one could undertake a paying job, with constraints on hours and tax deductions that remained in place until the age of eighteen. As far as the Atlesian Ministry of Labour Management was concerned, the two teens were officially listed as janitorial support staff, working part-time, 20 hours per week, and earning a generous 10 lien per hour in the employ of Coldharbor Defense Solutions, LLC.

The facade was designed to hold up to even in-person scrutiny from a trained MLM jobsite inspector. Contacts in the right places gave the right people enough advance notice to pull the two young men from almost any given assignment and have them manning their mop buckets in the corporation's headquarters building. Their real responsibilities, however, took them to far less desirable locales than the upscale economic district of Atlas. Assigned to the Reconnaissance branch of Coldharbor's Crisis Response Staff, they were responsible for conducting close-target reconnaissance and providing real-time information to assault teams on the ground when the time to "go kinetic," as it was often called. For their first real tasking, they were acting as an overwatch element for an Atlesian Army unit moving from the outer cordon around the city to secure a block of residential buildings. They had initially been tapped for a surveillance detail on a suspected SLF cell leader, but Atlesian command had decided that this operation had needed a Coldharbor touch. As the closest available assets, they had gotten the assignment.

Samuel Covacs looked through the scope of his rifle, seeing movement from one of the target buildings.

"Hammer, Raven 1, be advised: two crows exiting white side, building one, weapons visible."

"Raven 1, Hammer 2-actual, roger that. We're less than 1 mike out, request you address those targets."

"Two-actual, Raven 1, we see you, hold one."

He turned to his spotter, "They're taking a smoke break, you got the one on the left?"

Elias Aspen took his left hand off his own rifle and squeezed his partner's calf once. That was the signal. Both suppressed rifles spat in unison, Covacs' larger 6.5mm L-111A3 generating significantly more noise than Aspen's 5.74mm M6A3 carbine. At a relatively short distance of 200 meters, neither missed. Both targets hit the ground just as the entry team rounded the street corner to begin their assault. Taking those shots from their position when they did was just one of their mistakes. They hadn't checked to see if any of the dead men's compatriots were looking out any of the windows that faced their hide site, and had revealed themselves to a lone fighter who had seen their muzzle flashes. While greatly diminished by the suppressors, a flash was still visible, especially during dusk, from two rifles firing simultaneously from the same window. Upon seeing this, he immediately ran upstairs to warn his superiors, and prepare for an attack. The assault team was met with much fiercer resistance than they had been anticipating. By the time the building was cleared, the platoon had sustained its first casualties in combat. Two were dead, and a third had been severely wounded.

Unfortunately, this was less of a concern to the sniper-spotter team, who, with no rear security, hadn't had time to set early warning devices. Covacs' Semblance was the only thing that had given them warning. After engaging another insurgent in the building across from them, he turned his head toward the door of the room they had occupied.

"Six men, armed, moving on the back door." Both took a moment to charge up their auras, and prepared for a fight. Aspen dialed back the magnification on his optic and moved to cover the door while his partner picked up his PDR-4 compact carbine. With its bullpup configuration and 9-inch barrel, the 5.74mm-chambered weapon was, from tip to butt, no wider than his shoulders. Both had their weapons set to semi-automatic, silently waiting in the gathering darkness. Aspen fired first putting a 79-grain projectile through a head that had poked around the corner. The wall of the building's single stairwell exploded with gunfire, rounds blowing through the cinderblock construction. That stairwell is their only way in, but not our only way out. We're only three stories up. He moved behind Aspen and smacked his shoulder. Moving. Slinging his carbine, he clambered out an open window, and dropped down to street level. If they're smart, they'll leave two on the ground floor as a containment element. He peered through the front door to see that the enemy had done exactly that. He tossed in a fragmentation grenade towards the pair of enemy fighters, one watching the stairwell and the other focused on the door. The blast alerted the rest of the group, diverting their attention away from Aspen and towards what they thought was a new threat, unaware that they had been maneuvered on. A controlled pair from Covacs' PDR caught one square in the chest as he descended the stairs alone. The remaining three were dealt with while trying to split their attention between the two halves of the pincer enclosing on them. Covacs keyed his radio:

"Raven 1, we're burnt, requesting exfil."

For the two novices, the debrief had been more unpleasant than the firefight. They were seated in an ad-hoc briefing room back at the task force's main base of operations while an Atlesian major read them the riot act. Their immediate superior, the woman who had spent the last 6 years training the two, stood next to them.

"Just how in the hell did you two manage to bungle this mission before it was even in full swing? Two of my soldiers are dead and a third is likely going to be given a medical discharge. All because you failed to do your due diligence and alerted a whole house full of SLF militants! Explain yourselves!"

Before Sam could say anything, the woman they only knew as "Boss" cut in.

"Major, whatever failures these two made rest on my shoulders. I trained them, I thought they were ready. Clearly, I wasn't thorough enough."

"Regardless of who you think is at fault, ma'am, I know that it isn't me. If it were up to me, I would do everything in my power to make sure that the Atlesian Ministry of Defense never retains the services of your company again. Now, if there's nothing else, I have next-of-kin to inform." He left the three alone in the briefing room. Sam stood.

"That was on us. We should have made sure that nobody had a direct line of sight on us from that building. Failing that, we should have found some solution to our rear security, taken the time to set explosive traps, we could have done something."

"Not in the timeframe you had. This was a short-fuse operation that you didn't know you were a part of until the last minute. Now, the line-of-sight problem would have been easily solvable, if I had dedicated more time to teaching you two about concealed firing positions. There is shared responsibility here, most assuredly. But the failure is still mine. Is that understood?"

They sat there for several seconds, digesting the information, before nodding in unison.

"Good. Hit the showers and fuel up, you're briefed on your next assignment in an hour."