A team's first solo mission is supposed to be a simple and relatively safe one; STRQ's was anything but that.

Summer combat rolled under the foreleg of the Widower, a large grimm that resembled a mantis, before cutting upwards with Petal and bisecting the grimm. Before aiming and firing Thorn at the smaller Widower attempting to flank Tai while he was dealing with one of the matriarchs.

Summer took a second to rest as she reloaded her weapons, making sure to keep an eye out for any ambushes. It was supposed to be a simple mission, just some light reconnaissance. They were just supposed to go see where all those missing caravans were going and report what they found to the nearest settlement so they could put a bounty out for whatever was causing all this trouble. In and out with minimal combat, like a scouting party was supposed to do.

And they were going to do just that after they came upon the mangled remains of the trucks, and the armored cars that were protecting them, covered with the insect like grimm. That was until, through an unfortunate series of events, a flare was lit. Giving away their locations and highlighting a tasty meal for the beasts.

Summer looked around the forest toward her teammates. Tai had just managed to decapitate the matriarch he was fighting. The Widow's natural armor, which was much thicker on the larger ones, making his blunt style of combat particularly effective against them. Really, he was the only one effective against the larger ones. The rest of the STRQ simply couldn't cut through the armor.

Apparently, there were some drawbacks to most of the team using bladed weapons, not that she would ever admit that to Tai.

Though even their firearms were having a difficult time punching through. The .45ACP that Summer's weapons used weren't exactly a slouch when it came to pistol calibers, but they simply couldn't do anything to the Matriarchs. Harbinger's shotguns could do a decent bit of damage when fired point blank at them, but those shells wouldn't last forever.

As Summer moved to rejoin the fight, she could see Qrow moving amongst the trees. With surprising speed, he harassed the horde that was descending on STRQ. Cutting groups down into manageable sizes and stemming the flood of grimm somewhat. He was probably the only thing keeping them from being overwhelmed at this point. As he shifted Harbinger into its scythe form and cut through several grimm in one swipe.

What a fitting test for both Summer's skill as a weaponsmith and Qrow's skill with a scythe. It could take quite some time to get used to a new weapon, and this being his first mission using Harbinger, it looked like Qrow had been using it for years already.

Summer cut down her own set of smaller Widowers as she made her way back to Tai. She'd mostly been supporting him as he took down the grimm too large for any of the rest of them to do anything about. Cutting down anything that tried to attack him as he fought. Leaving her own partner without any support as the battle raged on.

What was happening was rather clear to Summer, they were fighting a war of attrition and losing. Summer was down to her last few magazines of ammunition, she only had about forty percent of her aura left, and she could guess that her teammates were probably equally exhausted from the fighting. Which made one thing rather clear.

If they kept fighting here, they would die.

What Summer needed to do, as she cut through a few more grimm on her way to Tai, was clear. She had to get her team together and get out of there. They could retreat to the settlement which they came from. There were other huntsmen and regular soldiers there. Hopefully that would be enough. It wasn't a great option, but it was the best they could do for now.

Summer would just have to get the rest of STRQ to actually go along with her plan. Which was going to be easier said than done if Raven disagreed with Summer's plan, and she almost always did.

"Tai," Summer said, as Tai tried to catch his breath. His long blond hair was drenched with sweat and stuck to his forehead. "We can't hold out here for much longer. We need to get out of here."

"That might be the best idea you've ever had." Tai said, trying to grin and seem a little less terrified than he was. Maybe for Summer's sake, probably for his own. "Lead the way." The flames of his semblance activating started to flare up. Apparently, he'd saved a little power for whatever plan Summer came up with.

Speaking of plans, Summer didn't really have one besides getting the heck out of there. "Tai, you go…" She paused, looking around for the twins. Qrow was still doing a great job cutting up the larger groups. Raven had apparently just finished cutting up one of those groups, as she stood around a pile of quickly decaying grimm carcasses. "Get Raven. I'll get Qrow and we'll meet up with you two."

"Got it!" Tai said, before running off to his partner. Now all Summer needed to do was find hers. She ran towards the direction she'd last seen him, but with him being the fastest on the team by a decent margin, he probably had a speed semblance or something, that wasn't going to be the easiest of tasks.

Summer dodged and weaved through the grimm. Cutting off limbs and through bodies as she went. Before she stopped. Suddenly there were no more grimm as Qrow jumped down from one of the trees, next to her. "I think that's all of them," Qrow said, keeping Harbinger ready in case they were ambushed. "Good thing too, I just ran out of shells."

No, something was wrong here. "It seems we killed them all." Raven said, adopting a smug smirk as she stood with her arms crossed. Tai standing next to her. "And to think, you wanted to run right at our moment of victory. And just when I was starting to think you could be a half decent warrior." Summer simply ignored her as she spoke.

Grimm didn't just stop like that. No, their numbers should have started thinning out gradually. Not just evaporate in a moment. Summer scanned their surroundings as the others spoke. "Well, It was looking pretty bad there for a while." Tai said, coming to Summer's defense once again. "We were lucky they stopped coming when they did. A few more minutes and I would've been toast."

Raven scoffed. "If you're in that poor of shape already, then you need to work on your stamina." Raven said, as Tai delated. Summer wasn't paying enough attention to the conversation around her to wonder if that was an innuendo or not. Instead, her mind was racing to explain why the grimm stopped their attack the way they did.

Maybe Raven was right and they'd just killed them all, but it was odd that all of the attacks stopped at once. Maybe there was another team nearby who'd stopped the flow, but Widowers didn't come from a single nest. So, that shouldn't have been the case. Summer couldn't shake the feeling that they were still in grave danger.

And it seemed Summer wasn't the only one concerned. "Everything alright, Summer?" Qrow said, still keeping Harbinger at the ready, unlike his sister who sheathed Omen sometimes before regrouping with the rest of the team. During their time at Beacon Qrow had always seemed to have a better sense for when things were about to go bad than anyone else on the team did, so if he was on edge too, it only reinforced Summer's suspicions. "I can't remember grimm ever stopping their attack like that."

There had to be an explanation for it. These types of grim aren't pack hunters, and they display little strategy when they fight in groups. So, these grimm planning an ambush was very unlikely. "Summer is just looking for a reason to justify her cowardice." Raven said, with not a single bit of irony.

It was possible that there was something about the Widowers she was forgetting. Usually, they only pop up in southern Anima, and both the combat schools and the academies tended to focus on the local grimm. So, it was possible. Maybe she was forgetting about a variant?

"Now hold on, Rae." Tai said, Raven rolling her eyes at her nickname. "You can't just insult Summer for her not knowing the attack was about to end."

But it wasn't the end, and that was made clear when a wave of dread and terror fell over the team. That could only mean a few things, and none of them were good. And, as Summer spotted a pair of red eyes amongst the canopy of the forest, a few things were made clear.

They couldn't kill that thing, and they couldn't outrun it either.


Summer had learned many things from those early days at Beacon.

She had to. The finer points of leadership didn't exactly come naturally to her at first, and for a time she thought her team not actively fighting each other was the upper limit of their teamwork.

'Jaune had gotten lucky in that area' Summer thought as she watched Jaune train in an otherwise empty training room. That evening Jaune was working on his defense. He blocked another blow from a training bot armed with foam batons as the bot gradually increased the speed of its attacks.

Though Jaune's leadership abilities were nearly as underdeveloped as the rest of his combat abilities and general fitness, he did seem to have a better natural feel for it than Summer did. Or at the very least he didn't treat his team like they were there to make him look good. Which was, admittedly, a low bar, but one that many first-year leaders didn't overcome.

Jaune moved his shield to his left attempting to block another strike, only to find that the training bot had feinted and attacked towards his right. Jaune tried in vain to swing his shield back around to block it but was only meant with a baton hitting his stomach. He fell backwards onto the padded floor of the training room.

"Two minutes and thirty-six seconds," Summer read off the timer attached to the bot. Which was usually there to allow someone to use these bots in training alone. Without having to have someone else run a stopwatch. Though it did help Summer overcome her inability to use a stopwatch in this case. "That's better than your previous best by seventeen seconds."

"Great." Jaune said, picking himself up off the floor and dusting himself off. "It's getting easier to handle the speed and power, but I wasn't expecting the thing to do a fake out. I'm pretty sure Grimm don't do that."

"It's called a feint, Jaune, and you're right, most grimm don't." Summer said, as she watched sit down on the nearby bleachers and wiped some sweat from his brow. He'd been training for well over two hours at that point and they'd been doing this drill for nearly thirty minutes. It was getting close to curfew and most students didn't train this late, but he couldn't afford not to. "Most being the key word. Some of the older, and smarter, grimm use some basic tactics in a fight. Not to mention the fact that you'll spend a decent bit of time fighting off bandits and aura using criminals."

"Well, I guess there was that Torchwick guy who Ruby fought." Jaune said, mostly to himself. Before looking back to Summer. "But how common are bandits, and why are they sending huntsmen to deal with them?"

"Wow, you really did grow up sheltered." Summer said with a smirk as Jaune gave her his 'I'm not in the mood for this' look. Brothers, he looked too much like Nick when he made that face. He probably had Nick to think for the sheltering. "They're far more common in Vacuo, Mistral, the unclaimed portions on Anima, and Menagerie than they are here in Vale or Solitas."

"They tend not to be active in Solitas simply because, outside of Atlas, Mantle, and a few other settlements along the coast, there isn't much to raid up there. Not to mention Atlas' tendency to bomb anything that could pose a threat into submission."

"That's one way to do it, I guess." Jaune said, before taking a drink of water. "I mean, it would be effective. Probably the safest way to get rid of a large group of them if you really need to, but aren't you risking killing civilians, if they have any hostages, if you do that?" Jaune paused. "And what if you're wrong about who you're attacking?" He said quietly.

"Couldn't agree with you more, Jaune. But Atlas has a certain way of doing things." Summer scowled. "Not really caring much about collateral damage is just standard procedure there, and one of the many reasons I avoided taking missions there when I could."

"I'm guessing the cold also had something to do with that?"

"I'll admit that I'm more a fan of the summer months than the winter ones. And you can save your jokes about Summer hating winter for another day there, Tai Jr." Summer said, as Jaune closed his mouth. "But really, having an entire kingdom hold its nose up at you gets very old very quick."

"I'll make sure to take as few missions in Atlas as I can manage then." Jaune said, with a smile. Before pausing for a long moment and putting his head in his hands.

"Something wrong, Jaune?" Summer said, Jaune peaked up at her. Before sighing again and sitting back up.

"Do you think I should tell them that I faked my transcripts, Summer? Ruby, Yang, and Ren. They all deserve to know I'm a fraud, don't they?" Jaune looked at Summer for some kind of answer but found none.

What was she going to tell him?

The right thing to tell him at this moment was yes. Not only did he need to tell his team that he didn't get into Beacon legitimately, but he had basically not trained beforehand. But if Summer told him that he would be expelled and sent back home with Summer following right behind him.

Summer thought that Ruby would understand why he did it. Heck, she would probably even offer to help with his training. Summer didn't quite know how Ren would react, other than he wouldn't act rashly. Yang however, Summer knew exactly how she would react. She would march to Ozpin's office to tell him herself. Her baby sister's partner being only a little better than a civilian in combat was unacceptable.

That would be the right and honest thing to do, to have Jaune tell them, and the best thing for him. But that's not what Summer was going to tell him to do.

"Well, do you want to stay here at Beacon?" Summer said, trying to leverage his dream against him. "Because I don't think that's going to happen if you tell your whole team about you cheating your way into Beacon."

"Of course, I do. I can't exactly go anywhere else if I want to be a huntsman, and I don't want to leave Ruby, Ren, or Yang behind." Jaune said, and of course he wouldn't want to leave his friends. It didn't seem like he had many friends back home from the little she'd learned of his childhood during their last week together. "But if I stay here, I'm just going to get them hurt."

Summer shook her head. "The only person you've managed to hurt so far is yourself, Jaune." Summer said, as Jaune rubbed the spot where a Beowolf's claws had sunk into his side. "If you ask me, you're probably one of the better first year leaders so far. If anything, you're probably going to pull your team out of some sticky situations that probably would've ended badly if you weren't there."

"If you're going to lie to me, Summer, at least make it a little believable." Jaune scoffed. "The only thing I've managed to do as a leader is make breakfast and let Ruby name all of our team attacks. Heck, the rest of the team was the one who came up with most of the ideas. I just wrote them down."

"So, what you're telling me is that you've already developed a good rapport with your teammates. They feel comfortable sharing their ideas with you and you're willing to use those ideas when you believe they would work." Summer said, almost sounding a little proud of who might as well be her apprentice. "Not to mention the fact that you're willing to go out of your way to do things for your teammates that have little benefit to yourself. That's a lot more positives than you would expect considering you haven't even known each other for a week yet."

Jaune looked up at Summer. Still clearly not believing her, but at least he was willing to hear her points out. A great trait for a leader.

"Yes, you are lacking in knowledge, but that alone isn't what makes a good leader. Look at Weiss," Summer said, before Jaune quickly turned his head to the door. Worried she'd just caught him talking to himself. "I didn't mean literally, Jaune." He turned back to her, "She's been taught by a bunch of random Atlas elites, and her team is a mess. How many times has Nora come over to your dorm because Weiss said or did something Nora didn't like?"

"I think she's slept in our dorm more than in her own." Jaune said, rubbing his chin. "But Ren and her are dating, I think, so it makes sense she would be over all the time."

"They are dating, trust me." She'd seen what they got up to in the middle of the night, and it was almost as bad as when Tai and Raven started dating. "But my point is that nobody on her team respects her as a leader. Not even Pyrrha really does, though I don't think she'll ever speak up about it."

"But your team does. Because you listen to them." Summer said, and that was not an easy skill to develop. At least for most people who saw themselves as leaders more so than they actually lead anything. "It took me months to get STRQ to even just work together, let alone function as an actual team. Heck, we finished this challenge week in dead last place."

"Your team was really that bad?" Jaune asked. Summer was good friends with his mother, Blanche, and she'd no doubt told him a few stories from back in the day. Though Summer could imagine it was mostly the good or humorous ones. People tend not to like remembering the bad times with their dead friends. "I mean, with how Ruby and Yang talk about your team, it seems like your four were unbeatable."

"Well, we did win a Vytal tournament and were one of Oz's… preferred teams for difficult missions." No need to open that can of ancient worms today. "But it was a long and hard road getting there." The understatement of a lifetime.

Really, they were a mess for most of their first year. But once Summer had gotten Raven to actually listen to her and for Raven to stop acting like several very insulting things Summer was too polite to say, things started to improve.

Raven stopped acting like Summer stole something from her. Really, if Ozpin had made her that leader all those years ago, it's hard to imagine her acting too differently from Weiss. As much as Raven would hate being compared to a Schnee, if how she treated Willow back in the day was any indication.

Tai was pretty much always a good teammate, and Qrow started to stick around with the rest of the team more. He'd stopped sneaking off most days as the end of their first year grew nearer. And he was actually treating her like a real partner, and not someone who was in danger just from being near him. At least until Gretchen Rainart died and Qrow almost quit, but that was a story for another day.

"So no, I think you're on your way to being a good leader and huntsman." Summer said, "Even though you cheated a little, you still passed initiation. But it would still be a bad idea to tell your team about it."

Jaune looked at Summer for a long moment without saying a word. Then he spoke. "What about Ruby," He said, "She's my partner. She saved me. She unlocked my aura. Maybe it would be a bad idea to tell the rest of the team now, but she'd probably understand. Right?"

Summer sighed and pinched her brow. Apparently Jaune was adamant about telling someone about his misdeeds. Out of his team though, Ruby would be the least likely to throw him out. So there was that.

"I mean, maybe she could even help me with my training." Jaune said, before realizing what he just said and waving his hands in front of him. "Not that you aren't a great teacher and everything, but you know, it might help to train with someone I can…"

"Actually spar against?" Summer said, and Jaune nodded. That was a good reason. Having someone who could watch you and tell you when you made a mistake was fine and good, but sometimes you really did benefit from just sparring with someone, and that was something Summer couldn't do in her current state. Though, there were a few problems with his choice of training partner. "But Ruby uses a scythe, and you use a sword and shield. Then again, she would've learned some basic swordsmanship from Signal or her father. Probably both."

Though Ruby's fighting style being based around speed and momentum didn't really suit Jaune that well. With his aura he was more suited towards a slower combat style that could be an anchor of the battlefield. And Ruby likely had little experience with a shield. Really, Pyrrha would be the best option for a training partner, but that had its own problems.

The biggest being that Pyrrha had a very obvious crush on Jaune, one that he either didn't notice or was ignoring. Either way, him asking her to start spending a lot of alone time with him would probably just be leading the poor girl on. Summer knew a thing or two about unrequited crushes, and she wasn't going to put Pyrrha through that rejection if she didn't have to. So Summer wasn't going to recommend Pyrrha.

So, Ruby it was.

"Okay Jaune, if you feel that you absolutely need to tell someone. You should tell Ruby." Summer said, Jaune giving her a slight smile. "But wait until after you're done with this week's tests. It could be a distraction if you tell her too early."

"That seems like a good idea." Jaune said, before taking one last drink of water and standing back up. "How much time do I have left?"

"About an hour." Summer said, looking over at the clock. Jaune nodded before walking up to the training bot to start another round. He seemed to have a bit more of a pep in his step than he did before. Summer guessed that this whole transcript thing was probably more of a weight on his shoulders than she initially thought it was.

Which, to be fair, it was a really dumb thing to do. But Summer was probably the last person who should comment on people doing dumb things for good reasons.


Day two of everyone getting to see how bad of a leader Jaune was.

He was sure something bad would happen that would expose him. No matter what Summer said, you can't just develop the confidence you need to be a leader in a week. He took a deep breath to steady himself as Prof. Blau began to speak.

"Day two of your tests will be much more interesting than the first. Assuming you enjoy using your attacks more than naming them," He said, "Today we will be focusing on team combat vs grimm. And no, we will not be throwing you into a pack of grimm and hoping you survive. We're only allowed to do that once a year." And thank the gods for that.

"We will be doing so in one of Beacon's four simulation rooms." Blau said, gesturing towards the two large doors behind him, and to the two other doors on the far right and left walls of the observation room. "Now, if you don't know what a simulation room is, by using hard light dust we are able to make fake grimm. And these fake grimm are what you'll be fighting."

"The hard light grimm are programmed to act as their genuine counterparts would." Prof. Goodwitch added. "They will not be able to injure you, however you will feel a burning sensation whenever one makes contact. Though, you will notice that whenever an attack lands the aura levels displayed on your scrolls will drop. This is not an error, but simply how we track what your aura levels would be."

"And much like in real combat, if your displayed aura reached 0% you will be declared dead and have to leave the arena." Blau said. "However, your teammates will have to fight on until time runs out, or you all are 'dead.'"

"With that said, let's see who the first four teams will be." Blau said, reading from an old wooden clipboard and not a scroll for some reason. "Team PNKK, CRDL, MRON, and ARLY will be going first."

ARLY was led to the door on the far right, entering it they found a room that resembled the inside of an Atlesian warship. They were flanked by steel line walls and in front of them was a heavy steel door that would fit wonderfully protecting at a bank but was quite the change from the older style of architecture you saw in most of the rest of Beacon.

"The one at Signal didn't look like this," Yang said, as a man in overalls signaled for ARLY to follow him up a flight of stairs that circled the cramped room. "And you'd think they could afford an elevator." Yang sighed as they began their climb up what looked to be four of five stories of stairs.

Jaune let his dissatisfaction with the stair situation be known about halfway up. Yang and Ren being a good bit ahead of him and Ruby having reached the top about twenty seconds after they were told to go up. He had to make sure not to trip on rose petals. "We might need to add some more cardio to your workout routine," Summer said, floating over open air.

"While you're planning my next workout, do you think you can go haunt Prof. Ozpin until he installs an elevator?" Jaune joked, keeping his voice low enough to not be heard by the rest of his team. Summer laughed and shook her head in response.

"Trust me, if I could haunt anyone right now, it wouldn't be Ozpin." Summer said, before looking down to the floor below. "You know, I think this building sitswhere the old forge used to be."

"There used to be two forges on campus?" Jaune said, and it did make sense. It seemed like most huntsmen in training were very particular about their choice in weapons. So having as much space as you could to let them repair them or whatever they needed to do with them seemed to make sense. "Why'd they get rid of this one?" If they had two, he probably wouldn't have had to listen to Ruby complaining about the forge being too crowded.

He didn't exactly mind, but she still should have reserved a spot earlier. The early bird gets the worm as his mother liked to say. A lot. Too much.

Summer shrugged. "They weren't the last time I checked. But that was over a decade ago now." Summer said, stopping for a moment and looking up at Ruby and Yang before looking back to Jaune. "Back then I think the plan was to refurbish everything and reopen it. They closed it for a few years after they built the new one. It's really a shame, that forge was one of the first buildings constructed here at Beacon."

"Well, at least you had a few happy memories with it before it was gone." Jaune said, resuming his treacherous journey to the top of the stairs.

"More than a few. I actually forged Qrow's weapon at that forge." Summer said, sounding more than a little proud. "And there was that one night we snuck in and…" Jaune looked at Summer after she paused. "You know what, that's a story for… never." It didn't take a Dust rocket scientist to figure out where Summer was going with that, and he couldn't help but wonder if Summer would be blushing if she could.

Jaune finally made it to the top of the staircase, finding Ren and Yang looking through a window into the simulation room, and Ruby asking the workers who were running it about fifteen didn't questions a minute. "Come look at this Jaune," Yang said, having noticed Jaune finally made it and waved him over. "This thing looks like something you'd see in a good post apocalypse movie."

It was more than just something you'd see in movies, but the worst nightmare for most of Remnant. Jaune looked through the window at what could've been any city in Vale if enough grimm decided to attack at once, or at a bad time. The observation room, or Jaune guessed that was what this room was for, was several stories above the mock streets.

Most of the buildings had chunks taken out of them, from what he didn't know. Smoke billowed from a few and the streets were filled with old abandoned cars and a few buses. A few sandbag fortifications still stood. The only thing missing that gave away that it wasn't the real thing being the lack of any of the city's inhabitants. Human, Faunus, or the grimm that took it over.

"Just like Mountain Glenn," Summer said, Jaune guessing that STRQ might have been present during the battle for the city. The city fell only a few years before Jaune was born, around the time that they would've graduated he thought. "I didn't really expect for it to be so accurate, but I guess it's best that it is. Maybe if we had something like this…" Summer trailed off.

"What was this thing based off again, Jaune?" Yang asked, pulling Jaune out of his thoughts.

"Mountain Glenn," Ren answered before Jaune had the opportunity to. "The largest settlement to fall since The Great War ended." And a great example of why Jaune wanted to be a huntsman. What's the point of hiding behind the walls of a city if they don't hold for very long? You have to take the fight to the Grimm.

"That's right, and you all get to fight a bunch of fake Grimm in it. Fun right?" One of the engineers said, with Ruby rejoining the group. "I'm going to need you four to step onto those platforms over there." He pointed to four pods that hung over the cityscape. Why they had elevators into the simulated city, but not up into the room that took them into it, Jaune didn't know.

Jaune nodded as Ruby rejoined the group before they headed to their platforms. "What were you talking with those guys about?" Jaune asked Ruby as Ren and Yang stepped into position.

"Well, I was asking them some questions about hard light dust. Since they work with it a lot, and I wanted to make sure that the ideas I have for my next weapon project would actually work." Ruby said, happily talking about her favorite subject as she tended to do. Before her eyes went wide and she looked up to Jaune. "I was supposed to ask about the simulation stuff, wasn't I?"

"That would have been a good idea," Jaune said mostly to himself. A better leader probably would have thought of that, but someone probably tried that before. So, they probably couldn't tell any of the teams that much anyways. "But no, I just wanted to make sure you weren't bored while the rest of the team walked up five miles of stairs."

"Oh, come on, they weren't that bad."

"You ran up them in like two seconds, of course you wouldn't think they're bad."

"Do you know how many walls I had to run into to get good enough to run upstairs?"

"Quit flirting you two," Yang said from her platform. Before Ruby, who was already blushing, or Jaune could protest, Yang started again. "Just get on your platforms so we can fight stuff already."

Jaune stepped onto his platform. The glass dorm sliding shut behind him as one of the engineers called out "Thirty seconds 'till launch!"

"Launch?" Jaune said to himself. "Launch!?" Why was the school always launching its students in the air? And he hadn't even started working on his landing strategy. Oh, he was screwed. He had aura now, but landing on the pavement face first wasn't going to feel good. Summer, sensing Jaune's distress, floated over.

"Okay Jaune, here's what you need to do," Summer said from the other side of the glass. Though her voice wasn't muffled at all. "Hold out your shield to create drag. That should slow you down a bit. Keep your knees bent a little and try to roll with the impact." Simple. It would probably work if Jaune had time to even think about what Summer said. But suddenly being launched again made that difficult.

He went screaming the whole way down, and Summer made a mental note to work on landing strategies.


Weiss sat with her whole team for the first time in days.

They watched on large screens in the waiting room as the first four teams were launched into the fray. Which was a method of insertion into the battlefield that Beacon seemed to prefer, much to Weiss' annoyance. She could make a safe landing easier than most, but surely there had to be better methods. Though, watching Arc screaming the whole way down did bring her a certain amusement.

How someone like him managed to be accepted into Beacon, survive initiation, and be made a leader was a clear sign that Beacon's leadership may not be of a particularly high quality. Though, the fact that certain members of Weiss' team seemed to prefer him as a leader over her did annoy her more than she wished to admit. Speaking of.

"Go Ren!" Nora stood from her feet and yelled in the room full of students silently watching. Cheering on, who Weiss guessed was, her other half as he landed safely on the city streets with a somewhat impressive roll. The rest of his teammates landing around him, the sisters landing with equally good form, and their leader doing an awkward roll as he, more or less, crashed into the ground. "Go Jaune's team!"

"Nora, sit down." Weiss said, not bothering to look away from the screen as Nora most likely glared at her. "We need to gather information on the other teams while we can. It may help us in our later matches against the other teams, if they manage to put up much of a fight at all." Which they were not likely to do. Weiss and Pyrrha alone could conquer any challenge the other teams might present. "And I strongly doubt ARLY is going to put up much resistance against anything with a leader like Arc."

"I've seen worse leaders." Blake said, sitting on the other side of Pyrrha. "Ruby and Jaune were the ones who came up with a plan to take out that Nevermore."

"It was mostly Ruby," Weiss said, not missing the implication of Blake's previous statement. "And one good idea does not a leader make."

"Still more than you've had." Blake said, Weiss glaring over at Blake who wore a small smirk. Before turning back to the screens. "Maybe if you watch close enough you can steal a few of his ideas."

Weiss huffed and turned her attention to team CRDL, and while they seemed to be a much rowdier team than Weiss would prefer to befriend, she'd gain far more from watching them than she ever would with ARLY.

What could she ever learn from Jaune Arc?


Author's Notes:

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. This one was a bit of hard one to write. For that a few more reasons, including my back violently protesting my existence, I'm a bit late with this chapter. Sorry about that, but at least it wasn't a few month hiatus this time.

I also need to work on my fight scenes, and you can probably guess why. Considering we'll actually get to see ARLY in their testing next chapter.

This chapter was once again beta'd by the wonderful Mdk1.

Thanks for reading, all comments and feedback are appreciated.