Interlude 2 Chapter 1: Frostbite

AN: Welcome to the second interlude, folks! This one will be occurring over the course of six weeks in the RWKYverse.

And since I went WAY overboard writing this, I'm going to just skip any form of Author's Note and just let you guys dive on in.

(Perspective: Weiss)

It was official: her life couldn't possibly get more confusing than it already has.

As easy as it would be to admit, it wasn't just from one of her friend's… changes, let's say. Especially when those changes involved your friend growing an extra pair of ears literally overnight. Especially when your father's voice keeps chanting away where you keep it hidden away as best you can, when his voice keeps telling you about how she's an animal now and that she can't be trusted. This, however, was not enough on its own to faze Weiss Schnee.

It would be equally easy to admit that the confusion stemmed from the frantic pace of life these days. Here they were, a mere two weeks after the most damaging attack on Vale in recent history (even if the Breach miraculously claimed no civilian lives), studying for exams and picking up the pace of their studies and training and everything else for the Vytal Festival Tournament, to occur in a mere six weeks' time. And while yes, Weiss' days were indeed busier than they have been in quite some time, they still weren't enough to nearly make her throw up her hands and say, 'I quit life'.

Frustration, while also being a key component of her bewilderment, was similarly not the primary culprit. And she was frustrated. Never since before Beacon, when she was still in her father's clutches in Atlas, had she felt so alone. Oh, sure, she was still surrounded by her friends, her teammates and team Juniper and several other acquaintances. But that was all they ever were: acquaintances. Even her team, Ruby and Kassidy and Yang, the people she felt closest to and held in great regard and sisterly affection, were still little more people she shared a room with. Sisters-in-arms, yes. Confidants and dear friends, yes. But nothing more.

She saw everything: how much Ruby was going out to spend time with Sun (much to Yang's admittedly humorous frustration), the looks in their eyes as Kassidy and Yang gazed at each other, the annoyingly sweet nothings they murmured in their shared bed that they thought she couldn't hear. Hell, even Jaune and Pyrrha, Ren and Nora seemed to have started spending more time together, and everyone except the budding couples in question knew exactly what was going on. But she, Weiss Schnee, heiress to the most powerful company on the planet, did not have that. Nobody that was particularly special to her. Nobody to spend the best – and worst – of moments with. Nobody that she could call her own, for all that such relationships would still only be in their earliest, most tentative, and most fragile of stages at this time in their lives. But no, even this frustration was not what was truly bothering her at this moment.

The straw that had finally broken the camel's back, as Kassidy would put it, was the sight that Weiss now had before her. Namely, the sight of Kassidy Smith herself, on hands and knees, positively gasping for air. Kassidy Smith. Completely and totally exhausted. Fifteen minutes into their training session! It completely boggled Weiss' mind. In front of her was the one person in Beacon with literally peerless conditioning. Usually, training sessions drove her, Ruby, and Yang into the ground, while Kassidy simply shrugged and finished the day off with a good half-hour of running. A far cry from the girl that could currently be easily bested by some kid in a combat academy like Signal.

Of course, everyone in the room noticed. Ruby was watching the scene with a frown, but it was the team's other blonde that was stepping forward to address the situation. "C'mon, K," she reasoned. "I told you it was too early. You shouldn't be pushing yourself."

The two blonde triangles of fur – the mark of an animal, the mark of – twitched at the sound, and Kassidy turned her head towards Yang, the former having thankfully gotten used to her newly heightened sense of hearing in what seemed like record time. While Weiss berated herself for the mental slip-up, because Kassidy was not an animal, the kneeling girl in front of her managed to get out, "It's been two weeks, Yang." She fought for more breath before adding, "I can't remember the last time I went this long without getting some kind of exercise or training in. Two weeks is plenty long enough for recovery."

"Most people don't take two weeks to recover from nearly being torn in half, then being poisoned and dropping into a coma!" Yang screeched. She wandered over to her partner and helped her to her feet, also taking the effort to send some of her Aura over to try and help Kassidy recover quicker. "They take a lot longer. A lot longer! You're not ready for this!"

By this point, Kassidy finally managed to clamber back to her feet. "Bob says I'm ready for this, Narud said I'm ready for this… literally the only person who think I'm not ready is you," Kassidy argued. She caught a thrown water bottle, courtesy of their team leader, before saying, "We knew that I wasn't going to be in top shape immediately. Much as I hate the thought, Colossus was really, really useful."

"I know," Yang sighed. "But –"

"Yang," Kassidy interrupted. "Exactly how many 125 pound girls do you know of that can trade punches with you? Or outrun Ruby?" Shaking her head, she added, "If I understood the notes correctly, a bunch of how my muscles behaved wasn't how they're supposed to. I'm gonna need time to build up my muscle mass and conditioning if I want to be back where I used to be. We've been over this."

"I know," Yang whined. Then she actually pouted, "Doesn't mean I have to like it."

All three of them were treated to the sight of Yang Xiao Long pouting. Weiss was pretty sure that, out of the corner of her eye, Ruby was fumbling her Scroll to try and get a picture. She waited a few moments, long enough to allow her partner to take that picture (and she made a mental note to ask for a copy later), but then promptly intervened. After all, this was her training session with Kassidy, and they'd wasted enough time as is. She laid a hand on Yang's shoulder and reasoned, "Come, now, you're taking up our training time. The experts all agreed that Kassidy's body had managed to heal. At this point, all she needs is plenty of work to get back to top physical form. That means a lot of workouts, and I think we all know that you're going to be her workout partner for the vast majority of the time."

"Ain't that right," Kassidy cut in. "I'm fine, Yang, honest." With a little more grumbling, the blonde oaf that wasn't in the middle of a training session finally backed off, allowing Weiss and the blonde oaf that was in the middle of a training session the room they needed to get back to work. Kassidy stood about a dozen feet in front of her and asked, "You want to keep hammering away on my footwork, or want to do something else?"

Weiss was about to answer in the affirmative, but stopped herself when she inadvertently glanced at the sword still sheathed on her back, over her left shoulder. And the pistol still holstered at her hip. And the knife sheathed at her boot. And another knife on her hip. And a third knife behind her right shoulder. Weiss had meant to get to this at some point today… and it might be her curiosity getting the better of her, but Weiss had even started rationalizing the decision before shaking her head at Kassidy. "Maybe later. For now, how about a quick spar? It should help me better gauge where you need the most work."

Kassidy nodded, and brought her left hand over her shoulder, but made no move to draw her blade. As she's taken up recently, she seems more than comfortable in letting her opponents make the first move, trusting her reactions to be able to counter whatever it is that's thrown at her. Weiss drew her blade fully, letting the rapier hum in her grasp. If she didn't know any better, then she'd be tempted to say that she should beat Kassidy easily, even with taking things easy. Kassidy had a mere fraction of the strength and stamina she enjoyed with her augmentations. They'd measured her reaction time, and found it to be more than twice as long as it used to be. Weiss held nearly every advantage imaginable.

Which made it all the more chilling to know that if this was an actual fight, Weiss would still lose. Horribly. Kassidy didn't seem to realize, but the stunt she pulled in the train took the entire team's dynamic and threw it out the window.

Ruby was their team leader, a tactical prodigy with greater mastery over her scythe than some full-fledged Hunters do over a sword, and at this point was easily capable of supersonic speeds. Weiss was cunning and ruthless, second to none in her precision and peered only with Pyrrha in her ability to assume control over a battle. Yang was… Yang, a force of nature and veritable goddess of war that one could only hope to survive. And every. Single. One of them had lost their fights. Horribly. Ruby had been thoroughly trashed, and in fact was only alive because a mysterious woman arrived to save her. Weiss had been similarly beaten, and was similarly only alive because of a savior. Yang had been captured, chained to a wall and doomed to die, if not for one person.

Kassidy Smith. The oft-derided weakest fighter in Beacon. The Auraless girl that had a worse record in Professor Goodwitch's class than Jaune Arc. She had no Aura and no Semblance. She had no formal education, no years of training at a combat academy or tutoring by the best money could buy. All commonly accepted logic and reasoning stated that in a fight, she would be the first to lose, and the first to die.

Logic and reasoning that was rendered completely moot and invalid after the Breach. Ruby and Weiss both fought what were probably their peers in combat, and they both lost. Kassidy did three better than them – first, by winning her fight; second, by winning a fight against Roman Torchwick, a crime lord with decades of experience and the training and Aura competence of a fully-fledged Huntsman; and third, by doing all of that without using her augmentations. Even if nobody was willing to admit it, even if nobody else at the school even knew about it, Kassidy just cemented herself as the best fighter in RWKY; possibly, if Weiss was being optimistic, even challenging Pyrrha as the best fighter in Beacon's freshman class, period.

And Weiss didn't know how she did it. Sure, Kassidy knew her away around a brawl… but Yang can maneuver her way around a brawl better. Sure, Kassidy's fast and can think even quicker… but Ruby's even faster. Sure, Kassidy has a knack for manipulating a fight to be just where she wants it… but Weiss has spent the past year and a half learning how to do exactly that, both from her military specialist of a sister and the best tutors money could buy. There were pieces missing to the puzzle; pieces that Weiss desperately needed, if for no other reason than to make sure that she didn't lose the next life-or-death struggle. She hoped that this spar, Kassidy's first spar since their mission to Mountain Glenn, would shed light on those pieces.

It was with this hope in mind that Weiss poured energy to fuel her Semblance into the floor around them, determined to not give her teammate an easy first spar. Still, even as both their eyes narrowed, Weiss had to remind herself that this was for Kassidy's benefit, not hers. With the Vytal Festival Tournament a mere six weeks away, Kassidy had an absurdly short time frame to learn how to use her Aura, rebuilt her physicality to where it used to be, and, essentially, relearn how to fight. Thus, rather than go for the smart play and start things off with a feint, Weiss instead subtly cast a Glyph at her feet to increase her momentum, allowing her to simply rush Kassidy as quickly as possible.

Weiss covered the fifteen feet separating them in a meaningless fraction of a second… but that was still enough time for Kassidy to react. No doubt reacting to Weiss' muscle movements, the blonde girl twirled out of the way. What Weiss was not prepared for, however, was how this twirl didn't simply carry her to the side a little bit, but rather a full semicircle centered on Weiss, covering five or six feet in a maneuver that put her on Weiss' exposed back while also appearing to thoroughly demolish the laws of physics.

While Weiss just barely got Myrtenaster around to block Baton – and oh dear Oum if that wasn't the worst name for a sword she'd ever heard of – before engaging in a high-tempo pace of probing Kassidy's guard, she found herself contemplating Kassidy's latest trick. Despite having had literally zero training in the usage of Aura, and despite having shown incredibly little aptitude in figuring it out on her own, the blonde menace had figured out how to use her Aura to reduce friction on her feet and zip around like she was on an ice rink. And it wasn't a case of Kassidy being an idiot savant, this was a case of using her Aura so instinctively that Weiss would've confused it for her figuring out her Semblance almost instantaneously, were it not for the fact that she'd then promptly shown all of them how she did it.

Almost as if she suddenly grew bored of the tentative swordplay that had accomplished little thus far, Kassidy lunged past Weiss' next thrust shockingly quickly and got inside her guard with truly unnatural maneuverability. Weiss had to bite back a yelp and waste a fair chunk of Aura dragging herself back from the sudden aggression with a Glyph. Kassidy merely kicked once and started sliding across the floor to give chase. When she caught up, she didn't return to the bastardized fencing style that she'd adapted from Weiss' tutoring; no, this time, she was using something more akin to Ruby's high-tempo, high-momentum frenzied style. Perhaps Weiss didn't give Kassidy's combat style enough credit? Was this her secret?

Several months ago, when Kassidy had met her older sister, her blonde teammate had said that she didn't have a fighting style, instead making things up on the fly. While Weiss had berated her earlier, fast forward several months and she was more inclined to agree. Kassidy didn't have a fighting style; she had five or six fighting styles, and would rapidly swap between them in the middle of a fight to keep her opponents off guard. A bastardized version of Weiss' fencing-based style, Ruby's momentum-based wide swings, Yang's brutal brawling… Weiss was even pretty sure she saw hints of Ren's martial arts focus in one of them. Kassidy wasn't the most technical fighter, and she most certainly wasn't an expert in any of them, but she knew enough to somehow make them all work, and she was definitely an expert in versatility and keeping her opponent guessing. Even ignoring her firearm, Kassidy seemed to have an answer for just about anything.

Of course, being competent and being an expert were two completely different things. Weiss, unlike Kassidy, might have focused on one style to the exclusion of all others, but that merely made her all the more proficient in it. And nobody beat Weiss Schnee in her ability to manipulate the battle to her advantage. In an ideal world, Weiss could have accomplished what she wanted to do with a time dilation Glyph the easiest, but Kassidy wouldn't give her enough space for that.

So instead, Weiss simply remembered how Kassidy herself had explained using her Aura to 'glide' across the floor. It felt so wrong, so wasteful, but still she let her Aura pool around her feet, then under them. With what was effectively a layer of Aura between her feet and the floor, Weiss found that she now had a greater degree of control over how she moved on the ground. She could feel a decent bit of Aura slip from her control and simply evaporate while doing this. Instinctual Aura technique that suddenly gave Kassidy unparalleled and peerless maneuverability over short distances or no, it was still incredibly wasteful. Weiss determined to try and find a better solution in her spare time.

Now able to match Kassidy's boosted mobility, Weiss started zipping all around the room, forcing Kassidy into a high-speed chase that repeatedly left her open and exposed, a set of circumstances that Weiss was all too happy to exploit. If Kassidy had managed to retain her prior level of physical fitness, then she probably wouldn't have had a problem keeping up and instead make Weiss sorely regret turning this spar into a contest of endurance. As it stood now, however, Myrtenaster sung true and relentlessly drilled into Weiss' opponent. It clanged off Kassidy's freshly repaired armor a few times, but still bit painfully into unarmored portions of Kassidy's body. The large spurts of dark blue Aura wildly shooting off to ward off the blows showed that Kassidy didn't really know how to let her Aura defend herself, letting instinct control it in the background. Weiss noted it as yet another area of improvement.

What had truly doomed Kassidy in this spar, however, was the fact that she had a shockingly low amount of Aura. Even after all their work. Even after the months Doctor Narud spent on his serum. Even after a week of lying in a coma. Even after Yang transferred a generous amount of her own Aura to help Kassidy overcome her augmentations. Thrusts from her blade that Weiss was used to taking around five to seven percent of Yang's Aura per strike, was taking up to twenty, even thirty percent of Kassidy's Aura; a frankly unacceptably large percentage even given Kassidy's wasteful defenses. Sure, Kassidy didn't have the years of training with her Aura that they did to build it up… but it was plainly obvious from day one. Kassidy would never have as much Aura as her peers. One final slight upon her by the mad scientists of Project Colossus.

And that would prove to be Kassidy's undoing this time, as it doubtlessly would many times in the future. Weiss neatly slipped under Kassidy's horizontal slice, coming back up to drill her rapier into Kassidy's thigh one last time. The buzzer sounded, alerting everyone to Kassidy's Aura dropping into the red, and the blonde was so shocked, in addition to the pain of having a pointy metal stick shoved into her leg, that she dropped her Aura gliding technique and promptly faceplanted into the stone floor at high speed (which coincidentally took another two percent off her Aura levels). Yang and Ruby both bolted up from where they were sitting off to the side, and all three of them had to strain to hear their teammate wheeze out, "Ow," from her face-down, prone position. While Yang rushed over and helped her up to a sitting position, Kassidy asked, "Remind me again how you talked me into thinking live weapons training was a good idea? Think I'm gonna be limping for the immediate future… damn does that thing hurt."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "You'll get used to it, you oaf." From there, the four of them all got into a discussion about where Kassidy was weakest and where she was strongest at the moment – and where she'd need to improve the most in order to hold her own with the three of them when the time came for Beacon's in-house qualifier matches to get into the Vytal Tournament in a few weeks' time. Weiss, however, would be lying if she said that she was giving the conversation her full attention. Their spar was practically a textbook win for Weiss – she didn't get hit once, no missed strikes, barely lasted three minutes, and the whole time she was in (mostly) complete control. Which, again, made it no easier to acknowledge that she still would lose in a life-or-death struggle with Kassidy. The biggest and most obvious culprit was the fact that her handcannon didn't make a single appearance in their spar despite Weiss' declaration that all weapons would be fair game. Now, granted, Weiss didn't use any Dust either, but between Dustcasting and pulling the trigger on a large-caliber handgun, somehow Weiss got the idea that Kassidy would come out ahead on that trade.

"… you wanted to talk about, Weiss?" Her name being called got Weiss' attention, and she snapped out of her stupor quickly enough for Kassidy to repeat, "Something else you wanted to talk about?"

Suddenly getting nervous – Weiss still cared about her public image enough that she didn't want either Ruby or Yang seeing her admit that she was scared – Weiss took a glance at the half-sisters before asking, "Mind if I ask you later?"

"Go ahead, Weissicle," Yang said. Weiss moved to fix a withering glare at her for using that insipid nickname again, but faltered when Yang's brows furrowed and her mouth thinned into a barely-present crease. "Ask her. Think Rubes and I have the same question, anyway."

Kassidy shot looks at the three of them, eyebrow raised and head tilted, one ear – the mark of a traitor, the mark of a – flicking subconsciously, and asked, "Uh… mind if I ask what's going on, guys?"

"How did you do it?" Before Kassidy could ask what she meant, Weiss sighed and simply let it all out. "On that train, when I got beaten by Blake… I should have died. I would have died, if you hadn't saved me. I… I've never been so afraid before. That my life was at the mercy of someone who hated me, hated everything I stood for, and that it was due to the kindness of another that I'm still here. And while I understand that we're all a team, I can't… there'll be times that I won't be able to rely on you, that you'll be too busy or something, and I won't have anyone to save me if I lose again. I don't… I don't want to be that scared. Not again." Finally having mustered the courage to look Kassidy in the eye, Weiss ignored the widened hazel pupils. "I lost my fight with a peer, and I lost it badly. You, on the other hand, easily won your fight with someone who, quite frankly, should have been out of our league. By a lot. So, how did you do it? How did you beat Torchwick?"

"Yup, we've all got the same question," Yang interrupted, before Kassidy could say anything. Kassidy's ears twitched up at her fellow blonde's words from their ever-increasingly drooping posture, and the woman wasn't far behind them in turning to face her girlfriend. Yang continued with a voice that kept getting softer and softer, "I… I wasn't there for Ruby. Again. I was… I was too weak. I wasn't strong enough. I almost died… again." Her lilac eyes brimmed with tears, and her voice broke as she pressed on, "I promised that I'd never leave her, and I almost broke it, again! Goes… heh, goes to show what my promises are worth these days, huh?"

"Yang," Kassidy forced out, her own voice breaking slightly. "That is not –"

"Teach us, K," Yang interrupted. "The world's… the world's pretty damn dangerous out there. We all kinda got a front-row seat to that a couple weeks ago. And we can't always have ya saving our sorry butts every single Oum-damned time. Teach us, K. Teach us how to be strong, like you." Yang's voice dropped to a whisper, and she added, "Help me keep my promises. To Ruby. To Weiss. To you."

Kassidy turned her head, and Weiss got a great view of how her ears had completely flattened against the top of her head. Out of the corner of her eye, Weiss saw Ruby solidly nod towards Kassidy, not saying a word. Slowly, Kassidy asked, "You want to know how I beat Torchwick?" When three hasty nods were her answer, Kassidy closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. "I understand where you're coming from. And I really, really want to help you guys. You three… you and Bob are everything to me these days, and if I can even try and help you, I will. I want to help you."

Weiss felt her hopes falter. "But," she prompted.

"But no," Kassidy completed. "I won't teach you."

"We need to know this kind of stuff, Kass," Ruby argued with a weak voice. "We need –"

"There are two reasons I'm saying no," Kassidy interrupted. "The first is that I don't want to teach you that kind of stuff."

"We can learn it," Yang pressed.

Kassidy just shook her head, though. "The second reason is that you can't learn it, because there's nothing to learn." She let out a breath, and looked them all in the eye again. "You want to know how I beat Torchwick? There's no secret, no ancient ninja clan technique, no super weapon. It wasn't anything I owned or anything I learned. It was a frame of mind. A frame of mind I don't want any of you to have." Weiss rolled her hand, prompting Kassidy to explain. "It's the frame of mind of… of a killer. It's the willingness to murder the person you're fighting. The desire to do unspeakably terrible things to them." Suddenly, Kassidy barked out a soft, ironic laugh. "The worst thing Colossus ever did to me, and for once it wasn't by fucking around with my genes."

"It's… just a frame of mind?" Weiss threw out.

Kassidy nodded. "I did not beat Torchwick because I was smarter than him. I did not beat Torchwick because I was faster than him. I did not beat Torchwick because I was more skilled than him. I beat Torchwick… simply because I wanted him dead more than he wanted me dead. Because I was willing to become a monster, to do unspeakably horrible things to him, and he wasn't willing to do so much to me." When they'd all had a few moments to digest the grave statements, Kassidy suddenly asked, "You understand, now, why I don't want you learning that kind of mindset?"

"Yeah, I get it K, it's just," Yang began, trailing off as she tried to put her thoughts in order and seeming to have a better go at it than either her or Ruby. "You don't need to worry – we aren't about to become killers just to make things slightly easier on ourselves. But there's gotta be more to it than that. I mean, mindset alone doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot when someone's got a bigger gun pointed at you."

"You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word," Kassidy agreed. "I… might have picked up a few tricks over the years."

"Teach us," Ruby said, and the sudden virility in her voice made it plainly obvious that this was an order. "Yeah, we beat the White Fang, but they're not going to be the only bad guys out there. We'll probably need to do this again, and we can't afford to lose. Not when there are so many lives on the line."

Kassidy was about to argue with Ruby, Weiss could tell, but the looks she and Yang shot her gave her pause. After mulling it over for a while, Kassidy slowly asked, "You're sure?" All three of them nodded at her synchronously, and Kassidy closed her eyes and hummed, looking like she was trying to talk herself out of doing it. If she was, though, she seemed to have lost the argument. "I have conditions."

"Name them," Weiss demanded.

"Well, just one condition," Kassidy allotted. Suddenly, she stood up and stretched to her full height, and turned a frightful gaze on them that personally made Weiss want to shrink away and forget this line of questioning. "If I teach you this, there needs to be an understanding: there are a few techniques I learned over the years through… various means. These are techniques very specifically meant to kill people. If I teach you this… it's only to be practiced with me in a private area. Again, these are dangerous methods I'll be teaching you. If I catch any of you using these outside of a life-or-death situation for any reason whatsoever… you're going to wish that I left enough of you for Goodwitch to tear into. We clear?"

Yang was about to nod enthusiastically, but then paused. All three of them took a couple beats, allowing the dire warning to truly sink in, before again hitting Kassidy with a synchronous nod.

One final breath was huffed out from Kassidy, before she turned to the door leading out of the training arena. "Alright, then. Follow me."

A day later, Weiss was sitting alone in the dorm room. Kassidy had not been kidding. So far, in addition to some basic and background information, she'd only taught the team two actual combat techniques… and they were both so hideously dangerous that it still shocked Weiss. Including one that coincidentally took advantage of how Aura worked, enabling them to kill someone even when they had their Auras still up. She once again found herself staring at her reflection in the glinting steel, the knife one of three that Kassidy had taken off her person and handed to each of her teammates as a sort-of gift. Of course, whenever they returned to the dorm the first time and Kassidy had promptly replaced them all by sliding new blades into the sheathes, she was all but begging the question of what she was doing with so many knives in the first place. Nobody, however, was in much of a state to question her on it.

Weiss sighed, slipping her new secondary weapon into a fold in her combat skirt before settling down at her desk to try and complete next week's Grimm Studies homework. Ruby was hanging out with JNPR. Kassidy and Yang were out on a date to eat some of those greasy burgers. Weiss… had nothing, again. She wasn't feeling particularly hungry. She simply had her studies to try and distract herself from –

A knock at the door nearly made her bolt out of the seat. Silently berating herself for being so jumpy, Weiss pressed the creases out of her dress, fixed her posture, and then opened the door.

"Hey, Snow Angel," her visitor said.

"Hello, Neptune," Weiss answered. As welcome a distraction as the young man would be, she really wasn't in the mood for –

"I heard from Sun that you were hanging out here all alone. Where's your team?"

Weiss sighed. "Ruby's spending time with our sister team, and Kassidy and Yang are on a date."

Neptune nodded, before he added, "You look… really sad. Is something wrong?"

Way to lose focus, you dolt! Now you have people commenting on your lack of composure! Fixing her face, Weiss replied, "Not really. I've just had a… long few days. Which aren't looking like they're stopping any time soon."

"If you want, I've got an idea to get your mind off of it," Neptune mentioned. His smug smirk told Weiss that her desire to get her mind off of things must've shown on her face, before it quickly dropped into a friendlier smile. "You hear about that new Mistralian restaurant that just opened up? Sun says it's really good. Want to grab some dinner, maybe take your mind off work for a couple hours?"

"That…" Weiss started, intent on shooting the idea down no matter how much she wanted to say yes. Before she could deny the request, however, she found herself thinking over it again. Thinking over how much she really wanted to go out for dinner, especially since she was planning on skipping the evening meal in the first place. "That sounds really grand," Weiss eventually got out. "Could you give me a few minutes to make myself presentable?"

"Of course, Weiss," Neptune said. "Just let me know when you're ready."

Weiss couldn't help but smile whenever they'd said their brief farewells. She'd just found her distraction for the evening. Didn't hurt that it was with such a fine example of a young man, also.

AN 2: Next chapter will be up September 25.

Right after these Reviewer Responses.

FlouriteFlower: Glad to hear you liked the chapter so much. Harry Potter reference? Uh… how do I admit that I've never read Harry Potter without sounding like someone who lived under a rock? That was just a happy coincidence right there.

EWR115: Again, glad to hear you liked the chapter so much. And yes, "a lot of pain" would tend to be what someone would be in after having all their limbs broken before being at ground zero of a train wreck.

serioushugsies: So glad you liked Mountain Glenn! I wanted to give the area a more personal touch, more meaning than "this one group goes to that one place to do that one thing". Yeah, Blake figuring out what happened to Kassidy is definitely going to be a treat to write, and hopefully a treat to read, as well. Here's hoping I can provide more of what you want!

dwayiam: I… you… eh… uh…

I like to think I do better than "throw random shit in and hope for the best", but… let's be honest, that's probably would it looks like most of the time, doesn't it? At least it seems like I'm decently skilled at talking out of my as… hat.

Tykene: Glad you liked it so much. Here's to hoping I can keep entertaining you, and everyone else that decides to come by.

AgentDraakis: This is the part where I regret not figuring out how to write in "quit hitting yourself". Don't think it would've worked well with the more serious tone in the chapter, though. Well, here's a bunch of Weiss' reactions to a whole load of things, and I've got Blake in the works, too. Yeah, I didn't really leave a lot of clues that Faunus Kassidy was a thing, did I? TBH, the weirdness would've been that she doesn't become a Faunus, and I didn't want to make the story lean too much one way or another, otherwise it'd just be weird if, for instance, I wrote the prior chapters with Faunus K in mind only to change my mind and stick with K being human.

Nemasis Demarini: Time flies indeed. Especially when I keep bringing clocks on my flights with me to make that joke. One hell of a year indeed, and here's to more years to come!

Artoria Pendragon: No spoilers, sorry! Other than that it's going to be a big plot point in the chapters to come, but that's kinda why there can't be spoilers.