Ahhh...sweet, sweet, Saturday.

Ren and Nora had gone out to explore Vale. More accurately, Nora had dragged Ren out of bed, for what she had insisted (loudly and completely unprompted) was 'not a date'. Weiss had left to do...okay, she had no idea, but she assumed it was whatever boring things corporate heiresses did on the weekends. Drink tea, eat scones (what was a scone even?), and play croquet, stuff like that. As for Ruby, she was enjoying the start of the weekend like civilized people should, meaning that she was lying in bed, still wearing her pajamas. With a paper bag full of cafeteria cookies at her side, and her Scroll playing an animated cartoon, Ruby was perfectly content. The cartoon was a little light on plot to be honest, but holy cow did the hero have a cool weapon. She wanted a giant laser glove with a chainsaw-sword sticking out of it that turned into an automatic armor-piercing grenade launcher...

Knock-knock.

"Come in..." she sighed. That was probably Weiss, come to nag her about their History assignment. It wasn't due until Wednesday, dang it! Couldn't a girl enjoy her Saturday morning in peace?

"Um...I don't want to just break down your door, sorry." Okay, not Weiss! Ruby hurried to let Jaune in; the blond boy fell face-first onto Weiss's bed and lay there. "Thank gods it's the weekend..." he groaned.

"Um, you should probably get off Weiss's bed." Ruby advised. "She's not gonna be happy if you mess up the sheets, you can..." Get on my bed? No, that didn't sound right. "...pull up a chair."

Jaune did so, giving Ruby a better look at his face. Her friend looked...tired. And not regular tired, but the soul-sucking kind of tired that came from watching paint dry or hearing Professor Port talk for two hours straight. "Jaune? Is something wrong?"

"No!" he said, entirely unconvincingly. "Just...do you mind if I hang out here for a bit? I need some time away from the dorm, is all..."

"Are you guys not getting along?" Ruby asked in concern. She'd had some growing pains with her team too (well, one teammate in particular), but they could at least stand to be in the same room!

"No, Sable's been...trying to help. Maybe a little too hard?" Jaune said uncertainly. "So, I kind of haven't been doing too good with classes, you know? Thursday night, he just rolled into the dorm with half a library on a handcart." He shook his head. "And told me I'd better read them all by end of semester, or I'm gonna flunk."

"Uh..." Ruby had no idea how to respond to that.

"And we've been doing extra training every day." Jaune went on. "Basically, he hits me with his sword a bunch and then tells me all the reasons I suck..." he shuddered. "So if I see him today, I'm scared he'll be all like 'Oh, we don't have classes today? Great, more time for you to catch up!'"

"Wow...yikes...so, do you want a cookie?" Somewhat at a loss, Ruby held out the bag. Cookies always cheered people up. "We can hang out and just watch cartoons if you want."

"That sounds amazing." Jaune accepted the cookie as if it were some sort of holy relic. "Mmm...tastes like friendly human contact..."

"What about Yang and Blake?" Ruby asked. "Are they not friendly?"

"No, they're fine!" Jaune paused. "Well, Blake never really says much, she's always reading some book or another. And Yang's...cool...kind of wish she'd stop calling me Vomit Boy..." he muttered the last bit under his breath. "But she isn't, like, you-friendly, know what I mean? No offense."

"No, I get it." As great as Yang was, Ruby had to admit her sister's loud, teasing...generally Yang-y personality could be a bit much for some people. "I'll tell her to tone it down!"

"Please don't. They think I'm pathetic enough already." Jaune begged. "Can we not talk about team stuff? How about this show, huh?"

Maybe that was the right idea. All work and no play makes Jaune a dull boy, or so they said. Jaune probably just needed a little time off and he'd be back to his normal self...well, she wasn't exactly sure what his normal self was, since they'd known each other for about a week. But she definitely liked him better all goofy and smiling than in his current depressed state.

Yep, rotting their brains with junk food and Saturday morning cartoons sounded like just the thing.

"I'm not sure it was wise to leave those dolts unsupervised." Weiss sat across from Sable, somewhere in the bowels of the Beacon library. A chessboard lay between them; fittingly enough, she played white and her brother black. Perhaps it wasn't directly related to improving her skills as a Huntress, but honing one's strategic insight never hurt, even if it was via board game. And it was always enjoyable to kick Sable's...posterior...at something. She suspected their respective partners were spending their weekend in a far less erudite manner.

"If I don't get away from that boy for a bit, I am going to spontaneously combust." Sable grumbled. "I'm supposed to be the leader of a Huntsman team, not a gods-damned babysitter! Bishop to d5."

"Language." And ugh, that was a skewer. Weiss could only move her white queen out of harm's away. "Strange that he should be so ill-prepared, isn't it? Ruby skipped her last two years at Signal, at least, but Jaune's the same age as us."

"Apparently he went to some tiny school out in the wilds. Torch Academy, never heard of it before. If this is what their top student is like, they seriously need to have their accreditation revoked." Sable frowned at the board. "It's not even cathartic beating him up, there's no challenge there whatsoever!"

Well, it was true that schools outside the major cities tended to vary greatly in quality. For every Signal Academy, there were a dozen cut-rate diploma mills. Weiss had heard stories of schools down in Mantle that would teach their students nonsense like Remnant being flat, or how magic existed and you could learn it yourself by hunting down a wizard and giving him enough beans...eh. She was sure there was a logical reason the Arc was at this school (though 'logical' was proving a low bar at Beacon). Not as if he was on her team, anyways.

Sable pushed his black bishop forwards, and a white knight came off the board.

It was the middle of their second week, and Jaune was not back to normal. Or maybe being depressed was normal for him at this point. In which case he was back to normal after all, but either way, he was not a happy camper.

"Jaune?" Ruby asked gently. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Huh?" Jaune lifted his head out of his breakfast, bits of egg clinging to his nose. "Yeah Ruby, just peachy! Never been better!"

"Man, what did you and Icy-Hot do last night? Must've been a real pounding." Yang teased. "You're usually not this worn out."

"So. Many. Rounds." Jaune sighed, innuendos going completely over his head. "I'm getting better at resisting, I think? But that just makes it go on even longer..."

"Long or not, doesn't seem like he had much fun, eh?" Yang elbowed her leader. Sable had a collection of empty coffee cups that Ozpin would've been proud of stacked in front of him. Faint shadows could be seen under his blue eyes. "He's been extra cranky this morning."

"I have not! And stop calling me that!" Sable shouted, sounding very cranky indeed.. "Seriously, Yang? Here I am, working myself to the bone for the team, trying to teach that idiot to hold his sword straight, and you—" Yang burst out laughing, and he slammed his hands on the table. "For fuck's sake, Yang!"

"But that's a good sign, Jaune!" Ruby chimed in, blocking out Sable's rant. She wasn't supposed to hear that word! "You only lasted a few minutes your first time right? If you last longer that means you're getting better at it, even if you feel worse afterwards. That was how it was for me when I started with Uncle Qrow—"

Yang stopped laughing. "Rubes, can you not say it like that?" she said, rather nervously. Sable continued going off about her lack of maturity, although Ruby didn't think screaming at the breakfast table was very mature itself.

"What's wrong with how I said it?"

"Can you all stop it?" Weiss demanded. "We're trying to eat breakfast here! It's too early for your entendres and profanity and profane entendres—"

"Aww, little Weiss-cream knows about double entendres?" Yang cooed. "I'm proud of you!"

"Fearless leader! Fellow redhead!" Nora shouted in Ruby's ear, pulling her into a headlock. "An urgent matter demands our attention! Ruby, we must bring balance to the hair colors!"

"Nora, what are you even talking about...hrrrk..." Ruby tried to loosen the other girl's grip on her neck. She really should have seen something like this coming. It was a suspicious sign when Nora stayed quiet while everyone else yelled at each other.

"Nora, you're suffocating her, give her air. Good Nora." Ren said soothingly. "She insists that, er, 'a Nora Valkyrie from a parallel universe' visited her in a dream and gave her a warning. Since there are three of us here with black hair, and three blondes...oh, she's counting Weiss as 'close enough to blonde', for whatever reason—"

"And only two redheads! Ruby, we're outnumbered!" Nora shook her leader insistently. "We need to recruit another one!"

"Nora, I don't think that's how any of this works." Ruby said, utterly bewildered. Splitting the group by hair color made no sense at all. It wasn't as if Sable, Blake and Ren were best friends (were they friends at all?); same for Jaune, Yang and Weiss. Besides, it wasn't like they could just steal some other team's redhead!

"Like her!" Nora pointed dramatically to the end of the table. In what seemed like an utterly contrived turn of events, a redheaded girl was sitting there alone, eating a bowl of oatmeal. Oh, that was the girl who'd ended up on a team by herself, wasn't it? Now Ruby remembered the red-and-gold person who'd briefly been with them in the forest temple. What was her name again? Something starting with a P...Pear, something like that.

Nora's shout attracted the rest of their group's attention. "Oh, her! Kinda sucks that someone had to be odd one out." said Yang. "Man, I was kind of hoping we could be a team of five after she helped us with that Death Stalker! Girl really knew how to use a spear." Sable grunted something about it being too much to hope for.

Ruby stood up from her seat. "Ruby, what are you doing?" whispered Weiss. "She probably doesn't want to be bothered." She ignored her partner, walking down the table until she was right in front of the lonely girl. Part of her wondered what she was doing, going up to a stranger who was probably really cool and strong. But oh gods, it sounded so sad living in an empty room, sitting in classes and eating meals all by yourself. She didn't know if she could handle Beacon without Yang, and her new friends, and all those other people who were ordered to live in a room together. It was her solemn duty as a leader to stick out the hand of friendship, like Jaune had on their first day!

"Hello!"

"Hello there." The other redhead looked up. "Ruby Rose, was it?"

"You remembered?" Ruby asked in surprise. Then she realized she'd never gotten the other girl's name. "Um...I'm really sorry but I kind of forgot your name! We just thought you might get lonely since you don't have teammates and all, and I was thinking you could sit with us. Only if you wanted to of course! If you're more of a lone wolf kind that's totally cool too..."

The girl's green eyes went wide. "You really don't...? I mean, it's perfectly all right! And I'm Pyrrha, Pyrrha Nikos." She looked longingly down the table at the clump of people. "Are you sure it's all right? I wouldn't want to impose on you."

"Hey, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet!" Ruby borrowed Jaune's little phrase, and it seemed to work, judging from Pyrrha's smile. "You seem nice, I'm sure you'll get along with them all!"

"Nora's a lot of fun, and Ren's so cool." she listed, walking back with her new friend. "Yang's my sister and she's great too. Weiss seems icy but she's pretty nice when you get to know her. Jaune's just super nice in general. Blake...uh...doesn't talk that much, but she reads a lot so she must be really smart. And Sable is...uh...very passionate about stuff?" She really needed to think of some nicer things to say about those last two. "Hey everyone, this is Pyrrha!"

"YAY! Redhead recruitment success!" shouted Nora. She unexpectedly (unexpected to Pyrrha, quite expected to everyone else) wrapped the taller girl in one of her trademark hugs.

"AAH!" The entire table was forced to duck and cover as silverware flew in all directions. Jaune, sadly but unsurprisingly, was too slow and took two spoons to the throat. "I'm sorry!"

"It's—" *cough* "—fine..."

"You get used to it." Ruby and Ren said in unison.

Combat class with Goodwitch was first that day. Ruby hurried towards the classroom; Team SJBY was already making their way inside. The four boys that made up Team CRDL followed them closely. Cardin Winchester, their leader, pushed his way through the door, knocking Jaune off balance. With a yelp of surprise the knight crashed against the doorframe and to the floor.

"Cardin, watch where you're going!" Sable's voice came from inside, sounding typically annoyed.

"Oh. Sorry." Cardin gave a lazy wave of apology before heading to his seat. Ruby frowned. It had been a quick thing, but she was sure that Cardin had moved deliberately towards Jaune right before they collided.

"Are you okay?" Wasn't she asking Jaune that question a lot, these days? She was getting pretty sure the answer was 'no'. "Jaune, it looked to me like Cardin knocked you over on purpose!"

"Don't tell them!" Jaune blurted out, much too quickly. "I-I mean, no, I'm sure he didn't mean to..."

"I'm pretty sure he did mean it! And I think you do too." Ruby leaned in closer. "This isn't the first time, is it?"

"Since I lost to him last week...but, nothing to worry about! He's just messing with me a bit, you know, pulling my leg, having a laugh...it's a dude thing." Jaune said with a fake smile. Ruby wasn't fooled for a moment. "Ruby please, my team can't know about this. I...I don't have much dignity left, but let me keep what I've got. I'm begging you. Favor for a friend?"

Ruby opened her mouth to reply. Admittedly, she didn't have much friendship experience, but she was pretty sure friends weren't supposed to just let friends suffer! She was also unsure if Jaune had any dignity left to lose in his partner's eyes, but that was mean. She wouldn't say it out loud. But friends weren't supposed to tell each other's secrets either, were they? That was the kind of stuff that made people stop talking to you and delete your Scroll number. Dang it, friendship was hard...

"Miss Rose! Mr. Arc! Kindly pay attention!" Professor Goodwitch called. "Miss Rose, you can take the first battle of the class. As for your opponent..." Goodwitch looked down at her Scroll. "...why don't you face Mr. Schnee here?"

A murmur of interest came from the class as the two team leaders returned to the arena in their combat gear. After the first week of fights, there was a consensus that the first years could be split into four tiers. Pyrrha Nikos stood alone in the top tier, the Invincible Girl staying true to reputation. The four members of Team RRWN and three-fourths of Team SJBY comprised the second tier. There was some grumbling over the year's top talent being concentrated on two teams, with wild theories about collusion, rigged launchpads, and a second set of relics on a grassy knoll flying around. The third tier consisted of the rest of the first-year class. The fourth tier was Jaune-tier. Every student who'd lost could, at least, reassure themselves that they weren't Jaune Arc.

"Fight well." Ren whispered, while Nora and Yang gave Ruby a loud cheer. Pyrrha gave an awkward thumbs up, in acknowledgement of their minutes-old friendship.

"Sorry, Icy-Hot." Yang said, as her leader gave her a dirty look. "Blood is thicker than water, and all that. I'm sure you understand."

"Good luck, Ruby." said Weiss, a slight smirk on her face.

"Ooh, ice-cold. Or is that Weiss-cold? Hey, at least you've still got Blake and Vomit Boy!"

"Yeah." Blake said unenthusiastically.

"Uh...I'm sure you'll both do great..." Jaune copped out, as his partner and best friend both looked at him expectantly.

"You're a bunch of traitors, and I'll enjoy disappointing you all." Sable stomped his way down to the ring. "And Yang, stop calling me that!"

"GO, FEARLESS LEADER!" Nora yelled after them. "KICK WEISS'S BUTT!"

"No, I'm Weiss!"

"Do I look like a Weiss to you?!"

"Miss Valkyrie, it's been two weeks. Please learn your teammates' names." Glynda Goodwitch sighed. "Are both students ready? Very well, BEGIN!"

In a blur of rose petals, Ruby went straight for her opponent. Back at Signal, a lot of her fights had started and ended just like that. Most people simply didn't react in time, before Crescent Rose turned them into (metaphorical) puree. Tink! The scythe struck against a wall of ice that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the arena. Welp, her fellow team leader was not most people.

Behind the ice wall, Sable clicked Schwarzfeuer's Dust chamber over to lightning. Good, he'd bought himself enough time for the setup move. A pale yellow glyph resembling a clock's face formed under him. After electrocuting themselves gods knew how many times, he and Weiss had finally gotten it to consistently work last year. Sable dashed around the wall; between his enhanced speed and the element of surprise, his black sword landed a few hits on Ruby before she retreated in another burst of petals.

Rotating the Dust chamber again, Sable went on the offensive, roaring a battle cry. Schwarzfeuer lashed out lightning-fast, sending a towering wall of fire after the girl. In his experience, most people would instinctively take cover or simply freeze in terror, giving him the chance to close in and batter them with a combination of swordsmanship and point-blank Dust attacks—

His fellow team leader was not most people. Ruby instead stood her ground, leveling the barrel of her weapon at him. Oh shit!

Ruby squeezed the trigger just as the inferno washed over her. Trailing flames behind it, her bullet smashed through a hastily formed white glyph and hit Sable center of mass, sending him flying. Ow ow ow, being on fire sucked! She was going to smack herself later for thinking up that plan. As many childhood fire drills had taught her, Ruby stopped, dropped and rolled, coming up with her cloak smoking slightly.

Still, painful as her idea had been, it had given her some much-needed breathing room. Ruby shifted Crescent Rose into rifle form and unloaded on the recovering boy, forcing him to throw up more ice walls to hide behind. Ha! That sword of his had some fancy tricks, but Ruby had yet to meet a sword that could cut bullets (maybe someone could, weapons were crazy like that).

A lull in the fight. Apparently, Sable had no desire to be used for target practice again, and was waiting for Ruby to come to him. But Ruby had a better idea than trying to shoot her way into the frozen fortress. Grinning, she fired Crescent Rose at the ground and activated her Semblance in the air, passing over the wall completely. She prepared to hit her opponent from behind as the ground approached, white and glistening. Hey, the arena floor wasn't normally like that...

"Whoa!" Her boots slipped on the frozen over floor. She felt something push against her with great force, and the next moment she went flying out of the arena. A black glyph faded from the white floor. Snowflakes didn't have faces, but she felt like it was mocking her all the same.

"No! Not like this!" Another shot from Crescent Rose and her momentum reversed. Scowling, Sable pointed his sword in her direction, and Ruby felt as if she'd been hit by a hurricane. She continued firing the sniper rifle, slowly making headway against the gale. Behind her, she heard the sounds of various students screaming and running for cover. "Sorry!"

"Come on!" Sable ground his teeth at the sight. Apparently the elemental essence of Wind, condensed into crystalline form, was no match for a gun. Ruby was going to make it back to the arena at this rate just from firing in the opposite direction. Away from him...oh! He launched himself at the girl with another black glyph. Still dealing with the last of the Wind Dust, Ruby had no time to bring her rifle to bear. But with catlike reflexes, she somehow twisted her scythe's blade to knock his sword aside. The deflected wave of flames reduced an unfortunate bench to kindling. As they began falling back to the ground, Ruby reached her free arm out...and hugged him?

A moment later, the two rematerialized, barely inside the arena boundary. Ruby's instinct had been to dash back with her Semblance, but with Sable blocking the way, she had decided to just take him with her. She'd never tried carrying someone against their will before, and holy cow that had not been fun. There had been a feeling of sheer cold that left her dizzy and shivering, but hey, it was better than a ring out! Sable looked rather dazed as well; traveling on the Rose Express took a bit to get used to. The leaders got unsteadily to their feet and stumbled back towards each other, both Auras now in the yellow. The whole room watched in silence as sword and scythe clashed in honorable combat...then Sable kicked Ruby in the knee, throwing her off balance.

"That's dirty!" Ruby protested. In response, Sable closed the distance and smashed the pommel of his sword into her nose, grabbing her cape to hold her in place. Ow! Crescent Rose was still in her hand, but at this angle it would be near impossible to wind up for a hit with the scythe. With the scythe...Ruby's hand fumbled to the hidden switch, gears shifting as the blade and haft retreated. She lifted Crescent Rose, now in rifle form, and cracked Sable over the head with the heavy slab of metal.

"Argh!" The boy lost his grip, and Ruby scrambled to put space between them, popping off shots—

"Sable Schnee's Aura has fallen into the red! The winner is Ruby Rose."

"Whew..." Ruby gasped for breath. 22% to 15% was the final score on the Aura meters. "That was a really great fight!"

"DAMN IT!" Sable disagreed, very loudly.

"Language, Mr. Schnee!" Goodwitch scolded. "And both of you, kindly try to minimize the collateral damage next time." She gestured to one side of the classroom, which looked as if it'd been hit by a firing squad, typhoon, and forest fire all at once.

Whoops!

"Your sister's quite skilled with that scythe." Blake remarked. "Must have taken a lot of practice to move using the recoil like that."

The girls of Team SJBY had the dorm to themselves, since their leader had dragged Jaune off for their daily torture...sorry, training session. Sable had been in a particularly foul mood after his combat class defeat, and she suspected the blond was in for great deal of pain. Blake had come to cherish these hours as a time to relax ever so slightly, a time to talk to her partner without worrying about stepping on a land mine. Yes, it was a shame Jaune had to suffer for it to happen, but gods did she need it...wait a minute, that was the same reason humans tolerated faunus getting killed in the Dust mines, wasn't it? Oh no, she was being corrupted already!

"Sure is!" Yang brightened up on the topic of her sister, derailing Blake's increasingly guilty train of thought. "She's wanted to wield a scythe forever, because of Uncle Qrow."

"Crow?"

"Qrow Branwen. With a Q." Yang corrected, somehow detecting her misspelling. "Like I said, he's our uncle, really badass huntsman...he's got this scythe called Harbinger, and it's got, like, four different forms! Ruby always thought it was the coolest thing. Bit too complicated for me though." She grinned sheepishly. "I just like punching stuff."

"Hey, it works well enough for you." Blake quipped. She distinctly recalled the sensation of Ember Celica caving her rib cage in, during their last spar. "Wait, Branwen?" Everyone had noticed that, unlike the other sibling set in their group, Ruby and Yang did not share a surname, barely looked alike, and clearly loved each other very much. Throwing a third name into the mix piqued her curiosity, though. Blake tried to piece together the Rose-Xiao Long family tree in her mind. She pictured a Branwen woman taking two men for her husbands, one blond and muscular, the other slim and redheaded. Like some kind of harem genre protagonist!

"That's...a long story." said Yang, smile fading.

"Sorry." Blake cringed. She, of all people, should know better than to ask personal questions. Curiosity killed the cat, huh? "I didn't mean to bring up anything sensitive."

"No, it's fine." Yang was staring at her hands. "Long story short, Taiyang Xiao Long is our dad, and Summer Rose was our...er, Ruby's mom. My...biological mother was a Branwen, and Qrow's her brother."

"I see." It was hard to miss the unusual strain in her partner's voice, the way she'd stressed her relationship to the unknown Branwen was merely genetic, or the past tense reference to both women. So much for her happy harem protagonist theory. And what would Yang think, if she knew Blake had walked out on her living, loving, mother to become a terrorist?

Sable and Jaune chose that moment to return to the dorm, conveniently interrupting their awkward moment. Their training did not seem to have gone well. Sable radiated such frustration, Blake half-expected a horde of Grimm to follow him through the door. The shadows under his eyes looked darker than ever, standing out on his pale face. Jaune simply looked drained and demoralized.

"Hey, Icy-Hot." Yang greeted. "Mind if we talk for a bit?"

"Fine. Spit it out." Sable growled, folding his arms expectantly. For once, he didn't comment on the nickname. Either he was very tired indeed, or he had finally given up on stopping her.

"Er..." Yang flicked her eyes over to Jaune. "Just with you if it's all right?"

"Jaune, go wait in the hall." Wearily, the blond boy obeyed, shutting the door behind him.

"Um...okay." Yang seemed a bit thrown by how Sable had cold-bloodedly kicked his own partner out of their room, but rallied. "I think you need to cut back with these trainings—"

"What! WHY?" The Schnee looked astonished, and more than a little affronted. "I don't know if you've noticed, but he's still got a long way to go before he can touch one of us! Or beat anyone else in the year, even those second-rates over on CRDL!"

"What are you going to do, do this every day until he catches up?" Yang shot back. "Are you seriously planning to keep it up for a year? Two?"

"What else am I going to do?!" The dark-haired boy shouted. "Pretend everything's fine and get him killed on our first mission?" He had a point there. With his current skills, sending Jaune out on mission sounded tantamount to murder, and even Schnees drew the line there, it seemed. "That would be a disgrace for the team!" Never mind.

"You don't need to do it like this!" Blake could have sworn Yang's eyes flickered red for moment. "I don't know what you do to him, but Vomit Boy looks like he's losing the will to live. And you need a break too, you look like shit—"

"TAKE THAT BACK!" Sable took greatest offense to the comment about his appearance. Blake winced. She was probably going to suffer long-term hearing loss, spending four years with that boy. "Perhaps this is...difficult on him, but Jaune knows he needs to improve. Say what you will about the boy, he's never complained or skipped out." His voice softened briefly at that, then rose again. "And there's no need for you to be concerned on my behalf! I'm hardly a stranger to hard work, unlike some people!"

"Gods damn it..." Yang shook her head. "What about us, then? We need our leader here! Doing, uh, leader-y stuff for us! And honestly, you're a real asshole when you're tired like this...more than usual, anyways. Which I'll admit was kind of funny at first but all the screaming gets old fast—"

"Who's 'us'?I only hear you talking! What do you think, Blake?"

"Eh?" Blake felt like a deer faunus in the headlights, as those ice-cold eyes turned to regard her. Breathe Blake, you can do this..don't say anything about the Fang. Or the SDC. Or faunus rights. Or cats. "Um...I think you're right about giving Jaune extra work. But..." On the one hand, she really didn't want more Sable in her life. On the other hand, it didn't feel right to abandon someone to Schnee oppression like that...even in a very different context. And on Yang's hands, she was sneakily giving Blake a 'prayer' gesture. "You, um, don't have to do all the work, right? Because...you've got us? We'll do it together! As a team! Teams are...all about teamwork, right?" Blake wanted to slap herself. Years of book-reading, just for that! Teams are all about teamwork?

"That's..." Sable visibly tried to think of an objection for several seconds. "...actually reasonable?" He actually smiled then, looking as if a great burden had been lifted. "Yes! It might actually help for you two to rotate in, expose him to different fighting styles! I'll set up a schedule!" He scribbled furiously on a notepad.

"Blake, what the hell? You seriously volunteered us for more work?" Yang whispered. "Welp, guess it's only fair that the whole team pitches in..." Blake sat in stunned silence. Had Jacques Schnee's child just taken her advice on something?

It took ten more minutes before they remembered to let Jaune back in.

"HOLY SHIT!" Crocea Mors came up to protect Jaune's face just in time. Yang's fist slammed into the ancient shield with a sound like a dozen bells ringing at once. Even the indirect hit was enough to send him flying back, landing on his butt.

"C'mon, Vomit Boy! Back at it!" Yang barked. "Bend those knees some more! You gotta lower your center of gravity if you want to take a hit head-on!"

Jaune gulped. He'd been quite relieved at first to hear that his teammates were going to take turns with his training. Blake and Yang were clearly highly talented Huntresses, and while still a bit intimidating, he figured their teaching methods couldn't possibly be as harsh as Sable's. And his first session with Blake had actually gone quite well; the girl's attitude remained as detached as ever, but her drills seemed surprisingly well-organized. He wondered if she'd had to teach people to fight before. Man, they knew pretty much nothing about her personally, didn't they?

As for Yang...well, Yang Xiao Long was a very eye-catching young woman. He'd allowed himself to stare a bit, when she first got up close and personal. After he finally regained the ability to breathe, he decided that looking anywhere but her hands was asking for death. The dents in his chestplate proved as much. Human fists weren't supposed to do that to metal!

"AAH!" His aching arms did not want to try blocking again; Jaune instead opted to dodge the blow. The shockwave alone nearly pushed him off balance. He almost missed Sable at this point. As unpleasant as it was getting stabbed and yelled at, at least it didn't leave him in constant mortal terror.

"Nice! Now dodge this!" Yang jabbed with her left hand, and Jaune instinctively went to his own left. Too late, he spotted the bright yellow gauntlet headed for his chin. Oh shit, a feint—

Pain. Unimaginable pain. Everything went black, save for a pinpoint of white light that grew larger and larger. There was a voice that kind of sounded like an older, gruffer version of his dad...'For fuck's sake, you brat, an Arc never dies in a training accident. Pull yourself together!'. And he was back, staring at the training arena's ceiling. Yang was shaking him.

"Phew! Sorry, that was probably going too hard." Yang apologized. "You all right?"

"I think so..." Gods, but it hurt to move his jaw right now. And his vision was a bit blurry, and his stomach felt...queasy?

Jaune's dinner came back up, right onto Yang's shoes.

"AHH! NOT AGAIN! GROSS! GROSS!"

"..."

Sable glared at the other side of the dorm, where Blake sat almost completely obscured from view by a fort of books and papers. It was such an obvious signal to not bother her that a neon 'do not disturb' sign might as well have been over her bed. What a studious girl that one was. He was sure it was a coincidence that she happened to find herself so busy when they had the room to themselves. And that she only spoke to him when spoken to, in few words at that. And that she always sat at the opposite end of the bench at mealtimes. Well, the Schnee name had that effect on some people, even at combat schools. It was both sad and gratifying, that they could be more frightened of two seventeen-year-olds than of the Grimm.

Bah..he looked away. What was he doing to do about it, beg Blake to talk to him, like he was some sort of puppy? Notice me, Blake! Notice me! That would just be pathetic. He had better things to do, like figuring out how to not lose to Ruby next time.

Step 1. Do not get shot in the chest...

"Bro, I'm straight up not having a good time right now." - Jaune Arc

I swear, I have nothing against our Vomit Boy. Just because I split him up from his waifu, and gave him an asshole for a partner, and made him the butt of various dubiously funny jokes...good heavens, look at the time!

And dear gods, fight scenes are hard. Good thing this show definitely doesn't have many of those, right?

Belated thanks to everyone who reviewed, by the way. I get more happiness than I probably should knowing some Internet stranger reads this thing and doesn't hate it...