Chapter 2: Just a Pair of Balls

"Fish want me. Women fear me."

— 6 —

Days like this, Shamrock preferred to be a she. The team was gathered here, sans one boy, for a kind of training session. Jaune's insistence. And whenever he had some insistent idea, Blake would always follow along, and after that it was an avalanche. Which is why it was better to be a she. Men might be able to hold up more endurance in the long run, but women had higher pain tolerance. Fights between Huntsmen could last, but they were rarely long enough that natural male endurance made the difference. And her opinion, it was the moment to moment pain threshold that really saved the day.

She gave Saint-Gede an experimental swing here in the basement training room of the gym. Currently in its halberd form, it gave her a decent reach. By her estimation, Weiss was more of a lightning fighter. Quick on the reflex and the uptake, highly mobile, but not good at taking a hit. Blake, on the other hand, focused more on avoiding getting hurt. She could move fast, using her scabbard as a sword itself and the attached ribbon to bind foes and move around quickly. They were flashy like that. Shamrock was better getting around defenses, taking advantage of people not noticing them, and striking where they were weak.

Jaune, on the other hand. He was the only one on the team who seemed perfectly suited to taking a hit straight to the face and carrying on. He rounded out the team of highly mobile fighters who couldn't take a hit very well. It made him a useful figure to have out front. But right now, the only problem was, where the hell was he?

"He didn't forget he asked us to be here before class, did he?" Weiss said, wearing a tighter outfit than normal. Something she could breathe, bend, and fight in.

She wasn't wrong about that before class thing either. Today was Friday, and the only real class on today's agenda was Glynda's combat class. They were setting up for something big now that the school semester was back in session. Everyone's second semester here at school. It was kind of amazing they managed to survive the first one intact.

Sitting down on the duffel bag of supplies, Blake idly pulled out a plastic bottle of Rehydr8—a carb-free electrolyte-filled sports drink Jaune seemed partial to. Popping the cap off and taking a swig, she said, "I don't know. Last I heard of him was a couple hours ago. Said he was going for a run and not to wait up for him."

Weiss tapped her foot impatiently. "Do you know what it says when you're late to something?"

Blake gave her a sidelong look. "That they don't respect your time," she said sufferingly. "You say that every time Professor Port is late to class."

The girl in white gave a kind of no duh shrug. "And then he goes on to not respect my time by just drabbling on. I don't even know why we have that class. I'm pretty sure I can get a better lecture from my book." She held up her scroll, looking oddly pleased with herself. "I actually found this app that scans PDFs and reads them out loud."

Blake's hairbow twitched, probably one of her ears doing something. Shamrock still felt it was weird that her ears moved like a dog. She wondered if there was some canine faunus admixture somewhere in her heritage, and if that actually would have affected things.

"Is that what you listen to at night?" Blake asked.

"What else would I be listening to?"

Blake looked around, at a bit of a loss. "I always just assumed it was music."

Weiss ran a hand through her hair. "Do you really think I would go through all the trouble in the morning of getting rid of that dent headphones leave on your head just to listen to V-pop?"

Shamrock chimed in with, "I always figured you were more of a classical girl." She made a circular gesture with one hand. "Just kind of felt like it was right. I can't really imagine rich people listening to anything else."

With a rather unladylike noise, Weiss said, "Please. All the classical music in Atlas is uncomfortably somber or it's that neoclassical slop my father helps fund. There's no soul in it. It's pretty much all just flavored corporate propaganda and it gets old really quick."

Shamrock raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have pegged you for someone criticizing corporate." Then she paused to think it over. "Or maybe I would? It's not the kind of music that glorifies your family and company, does it?"

Weiss looked to the side. "You know that old drinking song, Open Ground All Around?"

Shamrock nodded. "Jack has taken me to a fair few campus parties, yeah, I know it. How do you know it?"

"The Atlesian version is about a boy who was orphaned in a White Fang attack, who gets adopted by a corporate sponsor who may or may not be a Schnee. Then he finds his true calling as a Huntsman in Atlas with our support, going on to die a heroic death saving Atlas from both terrorists and Grimm. It doesn't have that junk salsa beat it has here in Vale, but it's still a version of the same song the students like to sing in Atlas. It's pretty uncomfortable when you dig into it. At least I think it's uncomfortable. It's a little bit too on the nose and no one seems to really pay attention but me."

"I know you said you don't really care for the music from this country, but what about its classics?" Blake asked, idly bouncing one of her crossed legs.

"Are we talking classics like It Was a Good Day or La Valéaise?" Shamrock asked.

"I think the second one is the national anthem," Blake said, shooting Weiss a look. "Or was it Gods Save the King?"

Leaning up against one of the terminals used to summon combat dummies, Weiss flicked her ponytail. "La Valéaise is a revolutionary song they like to play at football games. And I'm pretty sure Gods Save the King hasn't been the anthem since the Revolution."

Blake shrugged. "I know the Royal Army still likes to play it."

"Yes, but that's the Royal Army," Weiss said, making a gesture at nothing in particular. "They're living a fantasy that died eighty years ago. It's actually pretty sad. It's like they can't move on into the present. The age of kings is dead. Move on with your lives."

"Is it really any better than the corporate nationalism or whatever it is that they play in Atlas?" Blake asked.

Weeks ago, Shamrock would have been convinced that would have been a low-key attack on Weiss. One of the two of them would have found it offensive, and they would have fought over. Instead, Blake made it sound like a perfectly normal question. And Weiss took it as just part of the conversation. It kind of amazed Shamrock how far the two girls had come with each other since, you know, Blake punched Weiss in the face.

Kind of amazing how that worked. Shamrock wondered if she should punch Jack in the face as hard as possible and see where things went with him. Not that she had a problem with Jack. But, y'know, boy was a looker. Yang too, if she could ever get her hands on that brawler. Shamrock didn't really want to punch any of her teammates like that, because she was terrified of the rabbit hole that would go down at this rate.

"No," Weiss said, shaking her head. "Instead of making me feel dirty with unfortunate implications, the classic stuff from Vale just makes me want to kill myself. There's only so much singing about being poor and dying on the streets and wishing for a revolution I can take before everything just sounds the same to me." She held up her rapier and spun the revolving chamber of Dust in the handle. "So when I have the choice to listen to anything, I choose to listen to nonfiction. For the most part. The app I use actually licenses Lapiné to read things, so it sounds like an actual human being. Or, well, a slightly mechanical human being."

"Who's Lapiné?" Shamrock asked.

Weiss opened her mouth to speak, and then suddenly looked sheepish. "Uh, a construct vocaloid singer. Atlas technology used to try to make machines sound like people. I actually have a couple of her officially licensed albums on my scroll."

"So," Shamrock said, leaning against Saint-Gede like a pole, "instead of V-pop, you're all about that A-pop?"

Weiss tucked her hair behind her ear self-consciously. "It's not really pop music. It's more like, you know, something else. It's got more art and culture and cultural significance."

"I think those are all fancy synonyms," Shamrock pointed out.

Her partner flustered. "At least it's not rap music!"

Blake was giving her a somehow smug look. "So, what you're saying is—"

A door slamming open prevented her from trying to tease Weiss. It was coming from the upstairs entrance, one of the main ways into the training room. Shamrock grabbed her weapon and transformed it into a revolver for reasons beyond her. It just felt like the right thing to do. Everybody else looks vaguely on edge as someone half ran, half stumbled down the stairs.

Jaune burst into the room, cheeks red like he was drunk, panting hard and looking somehow gaunt. He ran towards the center of the room and just kind of collapsed, rolling into an uneven pile of limbs up against Blake's bag.

Everybody exchanged glances, and without needing to say anything, were all standing ready with weapons in hand. Their eyes followed where the boy had come from, waiting for something, the other shoe to drop. But instead, Jaune just panted there on the ground, leaking sweat from everywhere like he was standing outside on what would be a comparatively cold day in Vacuo.

Nothing followed Jaune. No one was chasing him. No one was coming to ruin the day. Slowly, their attention all turned to the boy.

"Jaune?" Blake asked with worry, crouching down beside him. She was still holding her sword in one hand, her sheath at her hip. In her other hand was that bottle of electrolyte sports drink.

Jaune coughed before reaching out to snatch the drink from her hands. He drank the purple liquid all in one pull.

"Jaune, what's wrong?" Blake demanded with more force, shaking his shoulder. "Why are you late? Why were you running?"

With this almost manic glint in his eyes, the boy smiled and slurred something to the effect of, "Joy to you, we've won." He broke out laughing.

Blake shook him. "Speak sense, dammit."

"Running. I was out running." He sat up slightly, propping his back up against the bag. "Give or take twenty six point two miles in just under four hours. An old-fashioned marathon." He coughed, needing to breathe a lot heavier to speak through all of that.

Weiss looked at a loss. "Twenty-six miles? Why would—are you trying to get yourself killed?!"

"If I run fast enough, the gay thoughts can't catch me," he said with a laugh, and coughed. "Was a pretty good eight-and-a-half minute mile pace. But holy shit my organs and legs!"

"That's how you die, Jaune!" Weiss said.

He gave a nonchalant shrug with one hand. "Mir bol'she nravitsya—" He coughed and inhaled sharply. "Kogda razorvan ya na tysyachu melkikh chastey."

Blake made an expression like she had just bitten into a lemon. "Ti znayesh Slasczy?" She spoke it like she was trying to recount some old play she had rehearsed for back in a Sheikh's harem, loaded with all the half remembered unfamiliarities and uncomfortable implications.

Jaune actually stopped breathing there for a moment and just stared at her. "Ya uchilsya Russkomu yazyku v shkole. Shto Slasczy?"

With a look of almost disgust, Blake rolled her eyes and just stepped away from the boy. "Alright, he's trying to screw with me in a foreign language. I'm pretty sure he's fine." She glanced back at him. "You're fine, right? Your brain isn't fried from running that far and you've lost the ability to speak the language? You have to tell me if you're not fine."

"What was all of that?" Weiss asked.

Blake shrugged. "Slaczy. It's one of the more common languages out there on the Sanus frontier. I picked up a little bit during my time out that way."

"Oh, like the real name of the Fishery, the Kovacsmuhley or however it's pronounced."

"Yeah, like that." Blake waved her hand like dismissing a bad smell. "He's saying he prefers it when he's shredded into a thousand little pieces." She elbowed him, frowning. "Don't know why you had to be so obtusely dramatic about it."

"Are we sure his brain isn't fried?" Weiss asked. "Why would anyone run that long?"

"To run is human," Jaune said, which prompted another one of those little twitches under Blake's hairbow. It was funny how being aware that she was honest made Shamrock more observant to that little work. She had to wonder if Blake always did that, and she just never noticed until Weiss pulled off the girl's hairbow that one time.

Jaune seemed to catch what he had just done, and grimaced. "Or really, to run is what any of us featherless bipods be good at, whatever Diogenes might argue we be. Faunus traits don't change that basic biology that we all have in common. We can sweat and we have two legs. We can run and we can run and we just don't fucking stop. That's why this world belongs to us, not the Grimm." He made a gesture like a maestro conducting an orchestra. The sword on his arm clinked with the motion. "It's not Aura or steel; it's that we can just keep going until our legs fall off. At least I've got that kind of endurance. I think. Pretty sure I only burst one lung."

"But twenty-six miles?" Weiss asked. "I mean, I really appreciate how seriously you're taking your training, but isn't that a bit much?"

He wiped the sweat off his forehead. Then, with an unhappy look, tried to use his shirt as a rag. It stuck to his body and his forehead. With a sudden an uncharacteristic look of sheer annoyance, he grit his teeth and pulled his shirt off. It was like the boy just hated wearing clothes. He wiped his face on the black cloth and tossed it aside.

Shamrock couldn't help but roll her eyes.

"It's called a Marathon, Weiss," Jaune said.

"A what?"

For a moment, the boy looked troubled. As if that hadn't exactly been the response you have been expecting, but with some thought, made all too much sense to him. It didn't seem to leave him very happy.

"It's an ancient tradition in North Mistral," he said. Somehow Shamrock got the distinct impression he was lying, but didn't know why. "Pyrrha told me about it."

"Since when have you two been friends?" Shamrock asked mildly. There was just something weird about this whole thing and she couldn't put her finger on it. She exchanged a look with Weiss, and it seemed like they both had the same idea

He blew a puff of air through his lips. "Ya no sé. Anyways, that's beside the point. The point is that Pheidippides died laughing, saying joy," Jaune said. "He was the guy who first ran the marathon. But I'm better than him. We're all better than him, because we're all a team. So I'm just gonna stand back up and get to work like nothing happened." With a sharp intake of breath, Jaune got to his knees. "You got everything I asked for in the bag?" he croaked.

The slightly annoyed façade Blake was putting up broke. "Yeah."

He pulled out a bottle of diet &mp'd Up. Faintly glowing with his Aura, he popped the bottle cap off with his teeth and chugged the sugar-free amphetamine soda. After a moment of catching his breath, the boy stood up. He was drenched in sweat, leaking it all over. Not a single inch of him was dry. Jaune spat to the side, an impressive feat, considering he shouldn't have had that much water left in him at this point. It was mostly a mix of saliva and blood.

Jaune assumed a fighting stance, his weapon holstered to his arm, his fists raised in front of him. "Alright. Blake and Weiss, you're together. Shamrock, with me; you and I never train enough together as is."

"Are you for real right now?" Shamrock asked dubiously. "Is this really a thing we're doing right now?"

"Jaune, just sit down!" Blake said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Despite the distance he had been running, and his running outfit, he was still wearing his full armor. That had to add a not insignificant amount of weight.

"We're Huntsmen," he said, voice suddenly hoarse. The sweat rolled down across his body, running down his scars like they were valleys. It seemed to pool around the tattoos of his left arm, forming up into greater rivers of sweat. "We can't expect to go into battle fresh. So I just ran a marathon in under four hours because I'm trying to kill myself productively."

"Jaune!" Blake gasped.

"I mean metaphorically. Ain't no way I'm finna die when I got y'all to live for." His body was glowing softly with that weird no color Aura of his. It almost hurt to look at, in an abstract kind of way. "The only one who gets to kick my ass is me, until I have lived fast, died young, and left a beautiful corpse. Metaphorically. I mostly just feel it in my hip flexors. Only one of my knees hurts and that's pretty fine. I actually managed to make it the entire run without Aura. But now that I've got mine up, I'm rested and ready. Let's get this thing going. I didn't just drag you out here for no reason."

He raised his arms again, bouncing slightly on his running shoes. He looked ready for a fight, yet had at the same time looked somehow unsteady. Like he was forcing himself to look like he wasn't half dead for the sake of the audience. Shamrock doubted anybody could look steady after running as long as he had. And sure, he might just be claiming he had run that distance, but knowing how insane the boy was, Shamrock genuinely believed he had to run that far just to show up here. It was equal parts a mark against his character and a mark in favor of it.

"And now we's finna spar. Because out there in the field, we might not have the choice. We might be dead on our feet when the Grimm come for us. We have to learn to fight exhausted. Learn to give it 110% when we've already given it all we done got, savvy?"

"Jaune, stop being a dumbass!" Blake stamped her foot.

"And when we've trained and figured out how to fight with teammates we're not used to," he said, "we're going to sit our asses down and relax as we watch our fellow students kick each other's asses, knowing that we're better than them. That we train harder. And because of that—" He reached out a hand and touched Blake's cheek. "We are oh so pretty. Much too pretty to die."

Blake pushed his hand away, a slight flush to her cheeks. "That's enough! I get what you're going for, but it's just stupid. Stop being stupid. You've been acting kind of crazy ever since you got back from vacation. Can't you just chill? Take a timeout?"

"A timeout? That's funny," he said in an almost dream-like tone. "I ain't heard me no bell."

Shamrock leaned forwards on her weapon, using it almost like a crutch. She'd seen Jaune do this kind of thing. Blake didn't seem to realize it, but Jaune had done this back when they'd first met. After a fashion. Drunk and high off his ass, he'd been going out of his way to do something. But back then, he'd been hurting his teammates and not himself, unless you counted his liver. Weiss almost seemed to vaguely respect the effort Jaune was putting in.

But Shamrock saw through it. In a way, calling him out back when she'd drawn the short straw to pick Jaune up from the hospital that night after Weiss tried to activate Jaune's Aura, well, Shamrock felt that that was the catalyst to the last time he got like this. And that had ended with a Jaune everyone hated convincing them to go after the White Fang. An impossible, stupid deed that even in his worst moments, he'd been able to whip up with his people-fu sorcery.

Here? She had no idea where it'd go.

So Shamrock just asked one simple question. "Jaune, what's bothering you?"

And it was like she'd got a lance through his heart, the way his expression and entire demeanor collapsed. "What?"

— 7 —

"Jaune?" J. Shamrock asked, uncomfortably shifting in their chair. Headmaster Ozpin only kept the two chairs in his office for that reason. It was a subtle power play. He, of course, had the nice and comfortable chair behind the desk. The other one was more of a torture device, dragged out of some catacomb-like storage rooms beneath the school just for these kinds of interviews.

"And the rest of your team," Ozpin said, adjusting his glasses.

"This going to be like some kind of essay?" they asked. Squirming slightly, they adjusted their collar.

He shook his head. "Say as much or little as you want. That's the point of this exercise."

Shamrock looked around, eyes settling on the clockwork gears behind his desk. It seemed to give them something to focus on. "Weiss is my partner. I have thoughts on her. A lot of them."

"Why is that?" he asked mildly. It was all part of the little game. Pull at threads and see where they went. Compared to politics, this was easy. Kids were always so eager to talk about how they felt, when they thought you were listening.

To be honest, Ozpin was. Even if he wasn't, he could fake it. One culture he'd been born into in the far past had been experts at that. Like the Heartlanders in Mistral, whose habits of nodding and affirmative noises when you were speaking made them look like good listeners who were agreeing with you, before they ripped into you with arguments and spite. Decor meant a lot to them.

Here, however? Ozpin was digging for nuggets. Specific bits of information. But he wouldn't turn down learning more about his students straight from their own mouth. Bias and preconception colored everything. It was why Shamrock was just one of many students he'd been talking to today, from various teams for various reasons.

Shamrock found their voice. They spoke very slowly, like they were thinking one word at a time. "She's, I guess, my friend. Never would have thought I'd be friends with a Schnee. She's someone who reaches out when you push her. She knows where she's weak and she's quick to realize that in others. I respect that. You'd think she'd be some self-focused narcissistic lost in her own world, but she's not. She's just trying to figure out how reality works outside her ivory tower back home. She's good to train with, and she's been helping me study. Doing better at reading."

"You didn't have much of a chance growing up?"

They gave a weak smile. "How many of us come from places where reading was a luxury?"

"Too many."

"So, she goes out of her way for me. That means something. I feel like I don't need to pretend around her. Who- or whatever I am, she's happy with it and it's cool with her. Took a while to get there. She's prissy. A perfectionist. Really screwed in the head, but she knows that, and it's why she's able to work on it. I respect that."

"And Blake?"

They rubbed their hands together, before laying them across their lap. They sat in a way that somehow seemed feminine and delicate to Ozpin.

"Blake is okay, I guess. She's trying hard, a lot. Most of us do. It's part of why we're here. No one comes here to be a piece of merde, so to speak. I think… I think her heart's too big for her chest. She cares a lot about a lot of things. More than she can really handle. Sometimes it kills her, feeling helpless, but she doesn't let it stop her. When she finds a way to do it, she goes for it. We all sort of listen to her when she does that."

And here they were getting to the meat.

"Would you say she's become the team leader you've all chosen?"

Shamrock paused, and shook their head. "No. That's Jaune."

His lips tightened fractionally. "How so?"

"Because she listens to him," they said. "When we all started out, we broadly went along with his ideas at first since we thought it was the rules or something. At least I did. Weiss hated him. So did Blake. But he was able to snake his way to convince Blake of stuff. And with them two combined, we followed."

Shamrock spread their hands. "Jaune's got that sense of, I don't know, bonhomie. It's a recent thing, I want to say. He was a complete mess when he got here—lost in himself, a complete asshole, irresponsible, a compulsive liar, all the works—but he broke out of that. He smiles and doesn't stop. Ever. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it works. But he's always doing something. He's why we sit at the front of every class. He's the one who sets up time to study, taking things seriously in class. He's the one who drags us all to train and practice fighting with each other. Hell, he got us all to go out to sushi. Pretty much everything we do as a team together, even if he's not the leader, we go with it. He has ideas and direction. He can convince Blake or Weiss of anything when he tries, and once that happens, the scales tip his way. He's good at that. Like he knows how to press the right buttons to get what he wants, and we're all happy to go along."

"So, he's still acting like your team leader even without the legal authority."

"Yes."

"Does that bother you?" he asked.

A pause. "Not really, no. I feel like I'm a bit of an afterthought a lot, but I'm used to that. I almost like it. I can fit in here. It's only Weiss who really clicks with me like that, but I don't think she'd be a good leader. Blake, I don't know. She's trying hard to be like Weiss for me, but she's always looking to Jaune to make calls. And Jaune is just Jaune, never stopping, and trying to make himself, and us all with him, into better people. This is the third Jaune Arc I've met, and far from the only one to act like that. Put him in a role and he becomes it. He blends it."

Ozpin nodded, letting out a breath. He put his hands together, eying Shamrock. "The third Jaune Arc?"

Shamrock stared back at him in a way that made him feel like he was being interviewed, not the other way around. "Yeah. I've met Jaune Arc three times. The first time was during the entrance interviews. We met there and talked. He seemed like a nervous wreck who didn't know what he was doing. A little jumpy. Stuttering and not really having an idea what was going on, but still pressing on. We talked a little bit. Wished each other well. And then I expected him to wash out and to never see him again."

"But you did."

"Uh-huh. Next time, and we were on a team. He looked the same, if a bit more disheveled, and had a completely different accent. Made me think he was pretending to be what he thought people expected back during the entrance exams. I tried to say hi and that I was happy to see he made it. With this look of pure confusion, he asked who I was. And when I told him, he just made a face and said, 'Nah, you're not. You're a shadow person. Pretty badass to be on a team with someone who doesn't exist.' He laughed, but I just got these chills. Like in a single joke, he'd seen right through me, torn apart everything I was trying to be, and thought it was funny. Didn't seem to remember me at all."

"And the third Jaune Arc?"

They spread their hands. "He's the one out there today. The one acting like a leader. Obsessed to the point of complete self-destruction with whatever task he seems to think is best. Like he's taken up the colors of his role and made it all he is, blending in, mixing with them like clothes in a washing machine."

Ozpin cocked a brow. Shamrock had far less to say about the current Jaune. He supposed they'd gotten that out earlier, talking about the team. But he still wanted to ask. "So, he's like a chameleon? He blends in."

Shamrock gave a single mocking laugh. "No. I blend in. Jaune tries to stand out. Put him in any room and he wants to be the center of attention. He wants people to acknowledge him and talk about him. He's like that in any role you put him in. I guess he's… he's more like a deranged angler fish."

Ozpin squinted down his glasses. "Are we talking about the deep sea fish right now?"

"Yeah," they said. "The deep sea angler. They draw you in. That's how they hunt. In the infinite darkness of the depths, they are the light. They are everything you hope for to find when you live in darkness. But when you swim to the light, all you find are teeth."

Shamrock smiled wryly. "The thing is, that's just the female of the species. The male is a smaller, more pathetic animal. He lives his life in darkness the same as everyone else. But when he finds his light, he finds his purpose. The one thing he was born for. The male angler fish will attach to the female, and become one with her. He will shed his body parts until all he is is a pair of balls pumping into the female. He is that nothingness in the darkness that becomes one with the thing you want. Until he is the ideal. Giving up every bit of himself to be part of something better, part of the light, part of that thing you want. So he's a Huntsman. He gives up everything he has, throws it all to the side, until nothing remains but the Hunter. Until he is the ideal we strive for. And he's killed every single part of himself that doesn't correspond to the dream. Leaving what he used to be as just a pair of balls pumping into the thing he's become. That's Jaune Arc."

"Well," he said with his own kind of smile. "I wasn't expecting to philosophize about the mating habits of deep sea fish today."

They looked sheepish, taking off their top hat and wiping their brow. "Yeah. Jack, one of my friends here, says I have this weird habit of trying to psychoanalyze people. Which is why I want to know why you're so interested in Jaune."

"I'm not especially," he said offhandedly.

Shamrock narrowed their eyes. Slowly, they became a bit more masculine. His peculiar Semblance. Even the voice adjusted with it. "I could talk for hours about Blake or Weiss. You asked a couple questions, but you mostly let me say my piece. Like they were an afterthought, just a formality, a smokescreen for what you really wanted. Because when Jaune came up, you were all questions. Like there's something you're digging at with him outside the usual."

The lie came as naturally as he breathed. "His therapy is reaching its conclusion and I wanted to see what his teammates thought of returning him to the role of official team leader."

The boy across from Ozpin just stared in complete, uncomfortable silence. He got the sense Shamrock didn't buy that, but didn't know how to call out his Headmaster of all people on it.

"If you tell him to be the leader," Shamrock said, "he'll be the best one he thinks he should be. If you tell him he's just another student, all the same. For better or worse. I think he'll rationalize any choice he's forced into and do his best to exceed expectations. To a self-destructive degree. Make of that unhealthy outlook as you will."

Headmaster Ozpin nodded slowly. He didn't want to talk any more to this student, lest he get some ideas and start to figure things out. Precocious students were both a gift and a curse in his line of work.

"Thank you very much for your input, Shamrock," Ozpin said. "That's all I need from you at this moment. You've been most helpful."

— 8 —

My therapist looked over the notes on her computer, checking the response to my survey. Every day before our sessions at Beacon's behavioral health, I had to repeat the same damn computer survey. Was I feeling happy or suicidal (just peachy). How badly was the craving for alcohol (non-existent)? How badly did I need help dealing with my struggles (I'm gucci, mane)? Did I think I had special non-Huntsman powers (no, and stop asking)?

"Well, Jaune," she said, looking back at me. "It's been a productive couple of months. Your survey results are the best we could hope for. And after all this time, I think our time together is coming to an end."

I folded my legs, eyeing her. As part of the deal to keep the rest of my team out of detention, I had to treat her seriously. So I'd done so these past couple months every Friday night before work in the CCTS tower. At least as seriously as I dared be without telling her about my whole multiple-lives thing. I told her about talking to the alcoholic uncle of my friend and refusing to drink. Explained how I'd fought my father and still refused to drink, and how I had nothing left in this world except to be the best Huntsman Beacon ever had. Told her about jumping off the roof with Blake just to prove we could trust each other.

"What's that mean?" I asked.

"It means that with your current mental health and outlook, I think we can release you from this program," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "You insist how badly you don't want to drink, and I honestly believe you. Most people who come through here, we catch them in worse stages of alcoholism. You had a problem binge drinking. You didn't understand what you were doing, and now we've given you the tools to understand. I'd almost say we could approve you for low-risk drinking."

I felt my mouth get a little dry. For some reason, that left a pit in my stomach. I was so recovered they thought I could drink again? Like fuck that would happen. Legal or not, I didn't want to be the man who drank and hurt my friends. Didn't want that fuckface anywhere near Blake or Weiss or Shamrock.

I made myself laugh. "I'm still, I don't know. I don't really think booze fits into the way my world wants to work."

She nodded. "Which is the best possible outlook. Usually we recommend lifelong abstinence, but with how receptive you've been here, we almost think it could work. It's not a recommendation I like, but I'm being real with you. You're real with me, so I owe you that much. I think your own personality and the lessons you've learned will carry you through everything else better than me just telling you no, drinking bad. Because I think you understand that now better than me." The doc gave a little chuckle.

I shifted uncomfortably. Somewhere hidden in one of my bags back in the room, I could feel Qrow's flask of scotch burning a hole in my soul. At least one of my souls. "And what's the catch? What's the other shoe, doc? What comes next?"

She adjusted her glasses. "What comes next is Team BASS. After everything we've been through, Headmaster Ozpin reached out to me. I think you've been doing fantastic, and I highly recommended putting you back as team leader. I think it would be good for you and your friends."

I felt my heart sink into my stomach. This frothy mix of anxiety and sudden joy. My hands felt oddly numb. I could feel my body shake with every pump of blood through my verticals. I don't know why this hurt and was so scary. But there it was.

"No shit?" I asked, licking my lips.

"None at all. And Headmaster Ozpin agrees." She took out an envelope from her desk and handed it to me, giving me this knowing little look. "Jaune, this is still in the works, but I think we can officially approve you for the role of leader of Team BASS. After our session, you and the other team leaders are to report to his office. This semester needs its leaders together for the upcoming student missions out into the world."

And just like that, I was back to square one. In the most productive way possible. Jaune Arc, leader of Team BASS, where I should have been months ago back in September. All because I could lie well enough to a therapist to pretend I wasn't a complete basketcase.

a/n Well, my therapist approved me for discharge and low risk drinking irl, as well as a return to my old work site. We'll see how I deal with this irl, and I'll use it as fuel for how Jaune is gonna handle it. My Command staff is now grooming me for a leadership role (new Army law states once I become promotable, I gotta be made Corporal before Sergeant), all the while cautioning me for my psychotic dieting and workout routine. Fun!