Randy takes a chug from his water bottle as he watches Mayumi beat into a punching bag. He always took her as a little tyke, but judging by the jelly-like swaying of the bag each time her gloved fists smacked into it, she had some power behind her. Sweat beaded on his own forehead just seeing her pale skin covered with moisture from her efforts. Though he had to admit, a lot of the sweat dripping from his pores was just as much from his own efforts. Pixie had instituted a hard program which they were to start before their assignment. Planks, pushups, weight lifting, sparring, and fervent running made up her difficult work out routine. Pixie was ecstatic about it and Mayumi seemed used to the labor. While he's sure neither Gabriel or himself are unfit, this certainly is a step above the fitness routines they are used to. Even Atlas, he's sure, isn't this strict.

"Come on boy!" Pixie cries with the harsh scream of a banshee, slapping Randy's back with a firm hand. "What exactly are you doing standing around? I told you, we've only got a few seconds for drinks! You'll have plenty of time for rest afterward when you'll be enjoying the great taste of an after-workout protein shake!" she chirps. Randy sends her a withering gaze, though she only adjusts her sports bra and tightens her high-flying ponytail without giving him a second thought.

Randy begrudgingly heads back over to Gabriel, who's leaning against the wall watching Pixie hound Mayumi. Mayumi barely reacts, just tiny nods between strikes as she adjusts her posture to meet Pixie's standards. Randy chuckles.

"They sure are something else," he says. He stretches his hands above his head, feeling his shoulders pinch together.

"Yeah, well, get working before she comes over here. I don't want her near me," Gabriel mutters, standing nearby in case Randy were to drop the weight. Randy lays back on the bench and grips the bar above him, tensing as he lifts it and starts to go through the motions of raising and lowering the bar to brush his chest.

"Why - ng - n-not. She ain't-S-she ain't that bad," Randy sputters between deep breaths. Gabriel shrugs.

"She just seems a little aggressive, don't you think?"

"Eh...excitable maybe," Randy murmurs as he drops the bar into place and sits up. His shoulder muscles burn and he absentmindedly rubs them.

"You don't think she's the slightest bit too excitable?" Gabriel asks, staring at Randy with a pleading gaze, almost begging him to agree. Randy pauses to consider. Pixie's an interesting cat, that was for sure. From her love of the fangs that marked her a faunus, to the breathless way she buzzed over past battles. She sure was lively and, he'll admit, a bit strange. But, he thought this was a far cry from enough to be scared of her. She meant well, and the way she draped herself protectively over Mayumi seemed sweet. He thought it was almost motherly, the way she fawned over the younger girl.

"Naw, not at all. Hey! Talking about something else…" His voice trails off as he stands, leaving the bench ready for Gabriel. "What do you think about the mission? I heard in Atlas they didn't have much field training, and it was mostly military based. Is that true?" he asks eagerly. Gabriel slowly nods, choosing his words carefully.

"Yeah…I don't think I've ever actually gone on a field mission. I watched one, we went on a field trip to see some guy take out some Grimm in a dust mine. It was exciting, I guess. Not as exciting as being on a field mission, I'm sure. You been on many?"

Gabriel lays back and Randy prepares himself as a spotter, keeping his hands near the bar as Gabriel lifts it.

"I've been on a couple. I've seen plenty, though. We had to view a mandatory amount of field missions at Signal academy, plus my parents were huntsmen so when I was little I gotta watch them go on some of their simpler assignments. I always found it exciting, and I remember killing my first Grimm in a field mission, it was pretty neat. Have you ever killed a Grimm?"

"Well, of course I have," Gabriel breathed as he sets the bar on the rack, sitting up. "Not through a formal field mission, but yeah, they teach you how to kill Grimm. Just, instead they bring the Grimm to you," Gabriel explains, as if this was normal. Randy stares at him with his mouth hanging open, though he quickly shuts it. His mother always told him how absolutely impolite it was to sit there catching flies in your mouth.

"They bring the Grimm to you? Are you sure, I heard it was near impossible to catch one! How did they even get it into the city?" Randy exclaims. Even if someone was lucky enough to be able to, he knew in Vale it was strictly off-limits to bring one into the city, let alone a school. They always found ways to escape, you couldn't just catch a Grimm.

"Atlesian technology you kno-"

Before Randy can hear what he was sure to be a mystical explanation, the doors to the training room open and a tall, thin boy with lanky arms and dark hair washing over his forehead walks in. He's got a long, thin staff with blades on both sides, and a slick grin on his face. His other teammates follow. One is a stout girl with broad shoulders and more muscle in her chest than anything else, or so it seemed, the other is a boy with equal height and build and matching sandy colored hair and piercing blue eyes. The last one seems perfectly average compared to his notable companions, but the look in his eyes matches that of the one with the slick grin. Randy watches them curiously until he realizes that they're approaching their bench press. He watches them strut right on over and the tall thin boy places a hand on the bar.

"I like this bench," he says with a voice as slimy as his dark hair and smile.

"Oh, well, it's pretty similar to all the other ones," Randy offers. "We could also just move. I don't know why it would be too big of a deal."

"Naw, we like all of these benches."

"Oh, well you'll have to just use any of them then. Seems fair," he says with a shrug. He turns back to Gabriel, ready to continue with the workout.

"No, I don't think you quite understand. I like all these benches, I don't like seeing other people working on them," the dark-haired boy says, placing a hand firmly on Randy's shoulder. It felt much too cold for a normal hand, though Randy felt too stiff to push it away. Gabriel now stood, and finally he spoke to the boy for the first time.

"Hey, let go of him. You're being obnoxious, you don't need all of these benches," Gabriel says bitterly, holding a glare. The boy laughs.

"Aw, come one. Besides, we can pretty easily make you, can't we? Where's your team to help you?" he teases. Randy is about to open his mouth to tell them about Pixie and Mayumi when suddenly the boy's face goes white as a ghost's, along with the faces of his teammates. There's a soft giggle that Randy recognizes, feeling his chest swell. Of course they had a team, and that team was right there behind him!

"Of course they have a team! Don't be stupid!" Pixie oozes. Leaning forward, she places an arm over Randy's shoulder, shoving the hand of the boy's off with a flick of her wrist. Her voice is smooth and bubbly, like foam skimmed from the top of a soda-pop.

"Eh? What, he pay you to hang around him?"

"Naw, he don't ev'n have to, hun. What? You pay them to hang around you?" she asks, gesturing to the larger of his companions. Her arm slides from its perch on Randy's shoulder as she approaches. She moves with lithe grace, as if she's simply gliding over the floor. She sets a warm hand on the lead boy's shoulder, her face resting inches from his.

"What's your name?" she asks. Randy hears something sharp in her voice, as silky as it is.

"Reo?" he offers with the inflection of a question in his tone. Pixie pats his cheek, then raising her hand she slaps him across the face.

"What the hell!" he barks, stumbling back and holding his cheek, where a palm-sized welt was quickly fading with a quiet glow. "Are you crazy?"
"Do you still want this bench?" she offers sweetly, gesturing to the row of benches.

Reo snarls hotly, whisking around to nurse his face, as well as his pride. The average seeming boy hurries to his side, nagging at Reo to let him look at the wound.

Randy turns his attention to Pixie, who has found herself a seat at the edge of the workout bench, examining her pale blue nails with a frown.

"I believe I chipped a nail on his face, how unforgivable," she murmurs to herself. Randy suspects that she didn't care if he, or anyone else, heard. "Well, anyway, that right there was a lesson you should all take to heart. See what I did there? Got his attention on me rather than his aura, aw, he didn't even have it up! You can use something like that to slide past someone's defenses, bet they won't teach you that in combat class," she says with a thin smirk.

"Why would they even teach us that in combat classes? Aren't we mostly learning, like, Grimm extermination and stuff?" Randy asks. That's all his parents ever did, hunt Grimm. Sure, maybe they'd help the police wrap up an arrest if they were nearby, but they stuck to Grimm for the most part. To Randy, learning about tricking people into dropping their aura seemed rather unuseful.

"Of course that's what they start you off on, but huntsmen can also help out with other things. Plenty can work as bounty hunters, political assassins…"

"Political assassins? Maybe in Atlas-"

"What's that mean?" interjects Gabriel, folding his arms. It's pretty apparent to Randy he had stepped a little too far into Gabriel's sensitive zone, so he raises his arms in surrender.

"Nothing, nothing. Sorry," he apologizes quickly. Pixie chuckles, standing with a hand placed on her hip.

"You guys are cute, now come on. You have more training to do, don't you?" she asks. He swallows a groan. He had been hoping the little episode with Reo was enough to bring an end to today's training. He should have guessed there would be more.

"I guess…" Randy starts slowly, rising as though his back were made of wood to display his protest. Slapping Randy's back like a proud father, Pixie snickers.

"'Atta boy…'atta boy- hey! Mayumi, I didn't say you could stop!" Pixie says sharply, snapping her head to glare at Mayumi who had paused her own workout to watch. With a scurry, just like a little mouse ducking into its hole, Mayumi dashes back to work. Pixie claps, the muscles of her shoulder flexing.

"I want you all in top shape! No stragglers, no weak links on my team!"

~Scene Break~

In an attempt to make the process of reading more exciting, Mayumi is lying with her head hanging off the edge of her bed and a textbook clutched in her fingers. This wasn't the only way Mayumi had tried to make her textbook reading more exciting, nor was it the strangest way. Randy had intervened already to tell Mayumi that no, reading while doing yoga would not make it any easier. In fact, it would just get sweat all over the textbook, which Mayumi found to be both true and unfortunate.

She thinks back to Clover, wishing that he could explain a new way of thinking about history. Although Pixie had promised to help Mayumi, she wasn't very good at staying on task. Or explaining things. It wasn't that Mayumi doubts that Pixie knows what she is talking about, Pixie is very smart and does quite well on the tests, she just isn't a very good teacher.

Mayumi wonders if there is another reason she misses Clover's lessons. He had been more than helpful, he had been nice. It worries her how much she had enjoyed her time away from Pixie, gnawing its way to her stomach where it settled like a heavy stone. Pixie would be angry if she ever found out about these thoughts.

"Mayumi, stop that! All of the blood is going to go to your head, that's not healthy," Gabriel says, hurrying over and pushing up on her shoulders to try and force her into a sitting position. She giggles, Gabriel and Randy had both been rather adamant about putting a stop to all of her odd studying practices. They either said she was being silly, or going to hurt herself, and she supposed both of those were perfectly good reasons to intervene, even though she thought they were the silly ones for all of their effort.

She sits up, pretending that Gabriel had been a help, and thanks him.

"Just, read the book normally," he urges.

"But Gabriel...it's so boring when I read it plainly, I need to spice it up!" Mayumi tries to explain, though she knows that the meaning falls flat to Gabriel, who gives an exasperated sigh and walks back over to his own bed to further his own studies. There was a test coming up in their History course, and they all wanted to be aptly prepared. That and the professor that would be working with them on Professor Port's assignment was supposed to be stopping by to talk to them and introduce themselves. Pixie wanted them looking like good, studious, pupils eager to learn to make the strongest impression.

Mayumi notices that Gabriel keeps glancing up from his book, staring at her. More specifically, he's staring at her tail. A heat rises in her chest as embarrassment spreads across her face in the form of a blush. If she could have managed reading before, there's no way she can now.

"Gabriel, are you okay?" she ventures, closing her book and looking at him.

"What? Oh. Yeah. I'm fine," he says, hurriedly looking back at his book.

"No you're not. You're usually so studious, and you haven't been reading your book. Something is on your mind." Mayumi's brows furrow, her arms crossing. There was no way she's going to allow Gabriel to lie about his feelings like that. Besides, he wouldn't be able to keep up his good grades if he was distracted.

"Do faunus eat raw meat?" he asks quickly, his face turning as red as Randy's hair as soon as the words leave his lips. "I-I've never seen you guys eat raw meat, but in Atlas...well...everyone said that's what faunus did…" he mutters, his voice trailing off.

Mayumi sits in silence. She isn't sure how to respond. The instinctual response is to snap 'of course we don't!', but instead she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. He isn't trying to be mean. If he has these questions, she supposes it would be nice to answer them.

"No. I'm actually pescatarian. I don't eat red meat, only fish," she explains patiently. He nods slowly, the color slowly fading from his cheeks as he regains his composure. "And no, usually faunus don't eat raw meat," Mayumi adds, her stomach twisting as she thinks of Pixie. As much as Mayumi cares for her, she could not list her dietary preferences as normal, nor could she bring those up here. "D-do you have any other questions then? It's okay for you to ask, as long as you aren't mean about it. It's not like anyone in Atlas would have told you anything true about faunus."

Gabriel hesitates. After a few moments of muling over the offer, the questions come all at once.

"Do you have an instinct to chase small animals?" he asks tentatively, realizing how stupid his question is as soon as it leaves his lips. Mayumi laughs.

"No, that's so silly. Why would I just chase small animals around? I'll chase a cat if I want to hold it, and it's running away," she explains.

"Ok. Thank you." Gabriel pauses. "Can you communicate with animals? Like, understand their body language better? Or..something,"

"Nope! I can't do that," she responds

"Are animals drawn to you?"

"That's not true either," she responds with a laugh.

"Can you run faster than people?"

"Well, as a huntress, I can run faster than your average civilian. But no, I can't run all that much faster than any other huntress," she explains. Randy, who had been reading on his bed, pipes up.

"Hey do faunus have heat cycles?" he asks, turning a page in his textbook. Mayumi glares at him, her nose wrinkling with disgust.

"No! That's ridiculous! Who still thinks that?"

"H-heat cycles?" Gabriel asks, his face beginning to redden.

"I read it online once. A lot of people do, evidently." Randy glances at Gabriel, a thin smirk on his face. "Come on Gabriel, you know you wanted to ask that," he teases. Gabriel shakes his head, turning away and snatching his textbook.

"I wasn't!" Gabriel snaps in response.

"Oh come on, you totally were,"

"A-any more questions?" Mayumi interjects, trying to salvage the conversation.

"Nope!" Gabriel answers. He's trying to sound angry, but the cracking of his voice betrays him.

Before anymore can be said on the subject, Pixie swings open the door, entering with confidence.

"Mayumi! Keep reading. I said no chatter, we have to look good," she says, finding a spot on her bed. She snatches a textbook from under the bed and starts to read it. "What were you talking about anyways?"

"Nothing," Gabriel answers evenly, if a bit too quickly.

A knock sounds at the door before Pixie can respond. She abandons her book and shoots up from her bed, flashing to the door and yanking it open. Mayumi peers up over the top of her book. Before she even gets a full glance at the professor, Pixie's shrill cry and the energetic flinging of her arms give his identity away.

"Professor Dimitri!" she cries with enthusiasm, quickly moving out of the way to allow the young man in. Pixie seems elated about this update, though Mayumi was unsure how she felt about it. Professor Dimitri was nice enough...but Pixie did get rather excitable and distracted whenever she was around people who were nice enough. Deciding to bury her worries, Mayumi instead waves from her bed and sets her book down. All thoughts of Gabriel's questions are washed away as she focuses on the present.

The Professor is a tall, rather thin-looking man with a cleanly shaven appearance and soft, weary-looking blue eyes that looked even wearier at the sight of Pixie. His hair is dark brown, though Mayumi finds thin hairs of a lighter, sandier, color the longer she looks. It's like they're playing hide and seek with her, and everytime he moves his head they disappear, only for her to find them again.

The scratching of a chair against the wooden floor of the room snaps Mayumi back into reality. Pixie has just pulled out a seat from the team's shared desk for the Professor, and he took it with a nervous tip of his head to the young lady. Pixie grins, finding her seat next to Mayumi and leaning against her, holding her arm. Mayumi pats Pixie, biting her lip with worry. Narcissa surely wouldn't be having any of this behavior if she were here! Mayumi knew perfectly well that Pixie understood she wasn't supposed to be acting in a way that would set her apart, and she certainly wasn't supposed to be craving for anyone. If she decides to act on her urges, well then where would they be? Kicked out. That's where. Mayumi clung to her companion a bit tighter, silently pleading for her to calm down.

Dimitri waits patiently for the boys to put their stuff away and when everyone has their full attention on him, he clears his throat.

"So, as Professor Port already explained to you in class, your class has been assigned to go on field missions with trained huntsmen, and for your team I will be filling that role. We leave tomorrow, so I wanted to take this time to sit down with you and run over what your plans are, what your expectations are, and if we need to make any last minute adjustments. I wanted to get to know you all on a more personal level, as well, before we go off to fight tomorrow," he says. Once he's settled in, Mayumi notes that he falls into a simple and relaxed rhythm and his weary gaze catches some light in it. "So," he starts, "why don't you all tell me about your mission?"

Pixie explains the mission in quick, chirpy sentences with the occasional break-in by Gabriel, who either corrects her or adds in any details she missed. Though Mayumi can't imagine Pixie's very happy about this, she continues without so much of a glare and instead pours her focus into Dimitri. As the partnered explanation comes to an end, Dimitri nods slowly and catches them all in a stare.

"And I'm sure you're aware of some of the expectations of this mission."

"Oh, yes," Pixie interjects, "no hurting the farmers or their property and crops, Professor Port told us that would deduct points," she says proudly, beaming at Dimitri as if she now expected a reward for such a keen memory. He rolls over her statement smoothly, only giving her a nod to serve as recognition.

"Yes, but besides just your assignment, everything you do from the moment you step on that airship all the way until you get back here will be representing Beacon. That includes your ride there, your stay at the hotel, your attitude before and after your mission towards the citizens of Nyma. All of that reflects not only on your team, but also on Beacon. You are our students, so we expect you to act like it. Keep the hotel clean, be nice to the workers, be hospitable. I will simply be there to guide you, however, you must interact and function as if I wasn't there. The less I have to step in, the better your scores will be," he calmly explains. "Do any of you have questions?"

The four glance at each other, as if they were searching for any questions on the faces of their teammates. Pixie had been adamant on preplanning, so Mayumi was sure that they all felt much too prepared to have to ask anything now.

"No, Professor. I believe we're plenty prepared," Pixie says with a voice shimmering with confidence.

"You picked a hotel from the school's database?"

"Of course."

"Weapon's ready?"

"Sharp and ready as ever!"

"All packed?"

"What do you take us for, slackers?" Pixie quips, and Dimitri's expression loosens into a smile.

"No, I don't take you for slackers. If that's all, then I'll wish you a goodnight. Get some sleep, we leave at 7:00 tomorrow morning, so I expect to see your cheerful faces bright and early. Understood?"

"Understood," they all echo, some with more enthusiasm than others. Dimitri gives them a curt nod and stands, adjusting the tie around his neck and crossing the room with fluid steps. He carries himself with more confidence than he had with his entrance, and Mayumi hopes he maintains this level with comfort over the next couple days. He was so much more amiable when he was confident with himself.

With a whisk of his wrist, he paces through the door and it falls closed behind him.