(A/N) Unfortunately, I know darn well that the next chapter is going to be late. I haven't had a working computer for weeks and haven't even started the next chapter because of it, but because I don't want to leave my Beautiful Hunters without something to whet their appetites for two whole months or so, I threw this together for you. It's an idea that's been rolling around in my head since last year thanks to a beautiful tumblr post I saw.

In regards to my computer, here's the short version: there was a hardware issue that prevented me from refreshing it, reloading it, reinstalling windows, and even recycling the whole thing.

The long version is that, in the last computer I had (an Asus Notebook, but I have an HP Envy now), there was a lot of volatile hardware right underneath and around the mousepad, and since the mousepad gets the most abuse on a laptop, that hardware was slowly being damaged, eventually breaking it beyond use. I hadn't even had that laptop for eight months before it broke down. Naturally, I'm not going to pay the $700 it would take to fix this thing, a price more than what I paid for it, when the same issue was going to repeat itself only half a year down the line. Instead, I paid the $953 after tax to get this masterpiece.

Oh! Not only that, but I also got into a car wreck like three days after I got my new computer! How great is that?! I'm honestly surprised the thing still works…

Am I bitter about the whole thing? Noooo not at all! Whatever would give you that idea?!

That aside, it feels so good to write again, and I promise I'll get 3.2 out as soon as possible.

Valuable Lessons

Every single person you meet, every single child or adult you interact with, you have a chance of making an impact on them. You can change them in some way, hurt them, help them, completely change the course their life may be taking, and all with only a single minute and a few words- nothing else. People change people. As iron sharpens iron, so does one person change the heart of another.

That's what Weiss's favorite nanny told her when she was a toddler, still wet behind the ears and innocent of the way the world worked. She was a religious woman, not that Weiss had ever considered herself the same, but the lesson made sense. Her father, a shrewd businessman, had always told her that the facts are irrefutable even if no one believed them, and the truth is the truth no matter what language it is spoken in, and the evidence always pointed to the idiom "people change people" being an absolute truth. Looking back over the past year and how she had come to know Team RWBY, she had become a different person thanks to them.

Ruby was a child. She was sweet, caring, and much to Weiss's discomfort, tenaciously affectionate. She knew how to treat people. Ruby could take the saddest, most depressed person and after five minutes, get them smiling and laughing again. She was the kindest person the heiress had ever met, and Weiss hated to admit it, but Ruby was a perfect role model and an even better leader. Everyone loved her, and even Weiss had to say that she admired the girl as well. Ruby was like her little sister, and the lesson that Weiss had learned from her was kindness, fairness, and compassion.

Blake on the other hand, was Ruby's polar opposite. While the team leader was loud and wanted to play all the time, Blake was distant and often cold, choosing to remain by herself at times rather than demand attention from her friends. She'd call herself an introvert in that regard, and Weiss had often referred to her as the quiet type. What did she teach the heiress? Blake was the perfect example of calm. She was the type who would listen and observe, rather than throw her voice into the chaos with everyone else, and what Weiss learned from her was the value of silence. More accurately, she taught Weiss that her mouth got her into trouble.

Grey, perhaps, taught her the most important lesson. He was unbelievably loyal, and would fight anyone and everyone if it meant protecting the people he cared about. Weiss had never knew what it was like to have friends until he came along. He taught her how to open up her heart to those around her, and the sense of accomplishment that helping those around her, those she cared about could fill her with. If he wasn't there, Weiss wouldn't have lasted at Beacon.

The worst part about returning to Atlas is that she would never be able to see him again.

As for Yang… Yang was incredulously dense. Her personality reflected fun, apathy, often times laziness, and crude humor. She was a handful at best, and verbosely infuriating at worst. Whatever Weiss had learned from her, she didn't know. As far as the princess was concerned, the blonde bimbo was the last person she wanted to share anything with.

She missed her friends. As she ate dinner at her family's mahogany dining table, Whitley at her right and a briefly visiting Winter at her left, it was painfully obvious that the coldest part of the meal wasn't the parfait that would be served later for dessert, but her father's discerning gaze from across the table. The tension between himself and Weiss was suffocating to those around them. The Schnee matriarch, Regina, and Jacques' mistress and business advisor, Scarlet, both of whom Weiss loved dearly, seemed to suffer the greatest. Granted, Regina was already on her fourth bottle of Chardonnay, so she was probably too drunk to care about anything other than her next glass, let alone that the woman who arguably stole her family from under her was sitting across from her.

Sitting there underneath the judgemental ire of her father, Weiss realized how badly she needed Team RWBY with her. Ruby would crack uncomfortable jokes while hilariously misunderstanding fine etiquette, while Blake made wry comments under her breath at her father's less than kind attitude, Yang making inappropriate remarks in an attempt to flirt with Scarlet and Winter. Not to mention that Grey could ease her mind just with his hand tightened around hers, whether or not he called out her father for how he treated her.

On second thought, Weiss didn't want Team RWBY to be at her mansion with her. The inevitable drama that their presence would cause aside, Weiss instead wanted to reunite with them, wherever they were. She needed to escape.

"Are you alright, Dear Sister?" Whitley asked with a dry, pitiable smile, "You haven't touched your au gratin potatoes. I thought they were your favorite." Her brother's words were kind, but there was a venomous subtext behind them of how much he despised the woman before him.

"Worry about yourself, Whitley," Winter demanded across from him, not bothering to look up from her plate to which she was giving the same treatment as her little sister.

"Of course, Winter," the boy retracted, dipping his head politely, "All I was saying is that Weiss has been rather depressed since she returned home. One would think that she actually prefered to be back at that lower class academy in Vale."

Both of the Schnee sisters glared at him from under their lashes, ready to tear into him with even Scarlet on the other side of the table looking like she was ready to argue. Unfortunately, Jacques took the lecherous pleasure of stopping it before it could begin.

"Now, Whitley, it's quite alright," the CEO regarded him cruelly, "I'm sure Weiss must have her reasons for missing such a place after spending a whole year in those cramped, rundown dorms of theirs. Please, give Weiss a bit more time to recover from the culture shock of returning to her true home."

The awkward silence once again returned to the dinner table as the youngest of the Schnee siblings bowed his head and returned to his meal after shooting the girls a humorless smirk. Winter raised her eyebrow at Weiss. The girl was no longer turning her vegetables over absentmindedly, but was now gripping her butter knife with her jaw set in a tight line.

Weiss, her father, and her brother were constantly at odds, but keeping with Blake's lessons, she maintained her silence. Even if it killed her, she had to bite her tongue. Before she had left for Beacon Academy, Weiss wouldn't have hesitated to lash out with the fire of the ancient dragons behind her, but now she knew that at best she would have to wait for the right opportunity to say anything. It would have been much easier to verbally destroy them, but much less effective than the alternative. Unfortunately, Jacques made it difficult.

"If you ask me, Beacon deserved its destruction," he continued, "If their security detail had been a bit better, or maybe if they didn't have such an apathetic leader like Ozpin, then maybe they could have prevented such a disaster." Weiss looks up from her peas with a bright fury in her eyes.

"Dear, hundreds of people were killed," Regina slurred, her eyes unable to focus on her husband. Jacques waved her off like she wasn't even there, making her bow her head and avoid eye contact with everyone else and behaving like the worthless piece of trash Jacques constantly reminded her she was. She finished her wine.

"I'm not the only one who believes so, either," the bourgeoisie continued, "Most of the Atlesian and Mistralian councils think that it was the lackadaisical approach to his training and organization of his soldiers that not only allowed the attack to happen, but let it progress to the point where Vale fell. If Ozpin was such a good teacher, then how had his students failed so spectacularly? And what about the Atlesian military that turned on their own allies?"

"Need I remind you, Father, that the Atlesian Knights were a Schnee product?" Winter said coldly, wiping her mouth with her napkin. Weiss nodded in agreement, grateful that her sister was always ready and willing to defend her comrades in arms.

"The city was retaken almost immediately, as well," Scarlet said with a dark scowl directed his way, glancing at Weiss briefly who looked like she was going to throw up, "Even the grimm dragon has been relocated after becoming dormant thanks to that flash of light on top of Beacon Tower."

Weiss jumped. She had been there leading up to the huge explosion on top of the school. Grey and Ruby had tried to rescue Pyrrha, but whatever had created the light that had decimated the academy almost entirely had plagued Weiss for months.

"Yes, but the attack still happened due to Ozpin's negligence," Jacques growled, clenching his fists, "After all, it's better to avoid a problem than deal with one, isn't that correct? Not to mention that it was Glynda Goodwitch that had retaken the city- not her formerly complacent superior. Huntsmen are soldiers, not people, and need to be bred into the weapons they are meant to be."

At this point, Weiss felt like her eyes were popping out her skull as she resisted jumping down his throat.

"Team RWBY is the best example of Ozpin's inability to lead," Jacques finished, his voice low and threatening, "One of Weiss's teammates- yellow, was it? She attacked an innocent man who had been withdrawn from the tournament, and another one, the goth girl, I believe, was not only a filthy animal, but a terrorist as well."

Weiss closed her eyes tightly during her father's verbal destruction of her team, trying her hardest to shut him out. Blake? She was a faunus, true, but she was also the one who would most likely bridge the gap between the two races and usher the world into an era of peace. And Yang? She was a brute and a bimbo to be sure, but she was also the best big sister Weiss could have asked for aside from Winter.

"Oh, and let's not forget the team leader and her boyfriend-" Winter and Scarlet both furrowed their brows like they were about to murder Jacques who had not yet taken the cue to shut up "-such a terrible leader would of course choose to date someone like him. Forget her approach to leadership, turning Weiss into the mess she returned to us as, her boyfriend was such a slouch. What was he, a nameless drifter? A homeless sellout? In any case, I am pleased to hear that he-"

A shred of white hairs fell of his head, fluttering onto his plate. Everyone, even Regina who was too drunk to react immediately, recoiled at the sound of the dinner knife embedding itself into the back of the wooden chair next to the patriarch's head. Silence had filled the room save for one faunus servant in the corner who had dropped to her feline knees in fear, simpering into her hands. Weiss's eyes looked dead, void of emotion. Mutely, she returned to her chair without retrieving the knife she threw, satisfied with both the action and the result it had caused and yet not even cracking a smile, and when she picked up her fork to devour her parfait, she shared a look with Winter and Scarlet. They all had the same cocky smirk on their lips.

Somehow maintaining his composure, taking a few deep breaths to either contain his rage or not to panic, Jacques laced his fingers over his mouth, eyes closed. When he was finally able to speak again, the overcast Atlas skies in the windows behind him seemed to shroud him in darkness, but even that evil air surrounding him couldn't break Weiss's victory. As the other maids pulled their broken down sister away, Jacques attempted to regain control.

"Pass the salt," he demanded, his voice a steely calm.

Weiss had finally figured out at the moment of his request what she had learned from Yang. The blonde was a party girl, a rockstar, a loudmouth, and primarily, she was a comedian, and beyond all else, she was also Weiss's unofficial big sister. If someone who filled such an important role couldn't teach Weiss something, than who else could? Weiss was simply unaware of what that lesson had been before now.

Yang had taught Weiss the divine value in puns. If Jacques wanted the salt, then how could she possibly deny such a request? With a single, swift, fluid motion, the former heiress threw her arm out over the table, grabbed Whitley by the collar, and threw him across the table so hard that the dishes were launched into the air from the force, flying across the room. Jacques didn't even try to catch his only son. However, he did manage to jump out of the chair at the last moment before Whitley crashed into the place where he was only a second before, both of the men gaping bemusedly at the show of force.

Weiss didn't wait for a response. Winter, Scarlet, and even their own mother laughed furiously at the situation, Scarlet even going the extra step and cheering for more destruction, so Weiss could only leave the room. If she could be so bold, she would call her victory nothing less than a blaze of glory.