JUNIOR DETECTIVES!

Sun: What an adventure, am I right?

Neptune: You are right. And when you're right, you're right, and you…

Sun: Yeah?

Neptune: I was gonna say, "You're always right," but… Anyway! Yes, some adventure.

Sun: I think we learned some valuable life lessons we can pass on to all the Junior Junior Detectives out there.

Neptune: Uh… don't use idiots as your lookouts?

Sun: Nope.

Neptune: Teamwork is the ultimate weapon as long as your team has the war corgi?

Sun: Nuh-uh.

Neptune: Well, those are the things I learned. What about you?

Sun: If you're trying to do a clandestine break-in, don't spoil it with illegal parking.

Neptune: That is hyper-specific, and yet indisputably true.

Sun: Does that mean what I think it means?

Neptune: Sigh… you're always right.

"I'm coming around with your latest scores now," said Dr. Oobleck, darting about in his usual overcaffeinated manner. (Ozpin had completed repairs on the coffee maker just in time to avert disaster.) "As a class, you all are showing marked improvement. Still not up to my standards, but that is what school is it for, is it not? If you came in knowing everything already, there would be no point!"

Weiss looked for a moment like she might argue the notion, but when she received her paper, she became preoccupied with Dr. Oobleck's grading comments and dove into them instead.

A paper fluttered down in front of Jaune. He winced. That grade… was higher than he expected, on second thought. It was gruesome, sure, but leaps and bounds better than his older performances.

Not going on patrol in Vale sure freed up a lot of study time, he had to admit. He hadn't put on his HuntsMan mask in the two weeks since the Death Tractor incident, and his grades had recovered nicely in that time. Why, Ms. Goodwitch's more recent glares had only made him feel bad, as opposed to feeling like he was an embarrassment to kingdom, school, and family.

Motion to his side drew his eye. Pyrrha's paper had found its way to her. She gave it a curt nod and began to scan it critically. She neither advertised her grade nor inquired about anyone else's.

That was another thing, he noted. Pyrrha's wrath had cooled, starting about the same time. She wasn't back to normal, exactly; she seemed distant and confused more often than not, like she was trying to wrestle down something inside her. Still, that was much better than her leaving impact craters in the training rooms and trailing flames wherever she walked.

Jaune was very curious what that all meant.

Whatever it meant, though, the cause seemed clear: he'd been around a lot more, and so had she. Ren confirmed for him that Pyrrha had been out a lot during his HuntsMan days, which suggested she was lonely and looking for something. Poor Pyrrha. Jaune needed to do something to make her feel better—other than be around more.

Not just as team leader and friend, he realized. He wanted her to feel better because that was good in itself.

And he wouldn't be able to do that if he was going out to play superhero all the time.

After all… he'd done his duty, hadn't he? He'd protected Vale from Torchwick and Neo (again) and turned the Red Huntress back to the side of virtue. That was plenty of do-gooding for a student. Maybe he could afford to let others take a shift protecting Vale while he bulked up enough, literally and metaphorically, to take the job back properly.

Pyrrha must have felt him looking, because she put her paper down and turned to him. "Yes?" she said.

Jaune started. "Sorry, didn't mean to make you nervous," he said with a forced chuckle. "It's just… you helped me make up my mind about something."

She looked confused. "You're… welcome?"

He smiled, and this one wasn't forced at all. "You're the best, Pyrrha. You really are."

Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

The bell rung. Pyrrha shook in surprise. "Darn it," she said, scowling at the speaker above them.

Jaune laughed. "Come on, I'll walk you to lunch."

She brightened at that. "Really?"

"Sure," he said casually, crumpling up his paper and tossing it into the trash can. "It's about that time, and I have something to do there anyway."

Her smile wilted. "Oh."

"B-but it's much better going with you to do that than going alone," he rushed to recover.

Caught between reactions and emotions, Pyrrha swallowed and put on a brave face. "Let's go, then."

"I told you I couldn't drive," said Mercury with a shrug.

Team Nefarious had returned to Cinder's warehouse office for what she'd called a "debrief" and which the others euphemistically called a "grilling".

"Are you saying this is my fault?" growled Cinder.

"No," he said hastily, "I'm saying I wasn't put in the best situation to succeed."

A fireball appeared in Cinder's right hand.

"Uh… my talents weren't maximized?"

The fireball grew.

Neo held up a sign that read, "If he gets fried, can I have his legs?"

Roman frowned at her. "What would you use prosthetic legs for?"

She flipped the sign. The other side read, "Drumsticks."

Roman scoffed at her. "You're the one who said we were leaving puns to the blonde!" Neo smiled unashamedly.

Mercury was starting to sweat. "You could have had Emerald drive, you know."

"Leave me out of this," said Emerald. "I can't drive either, plus I bailed you out when you were getting arrested by the Junior Doofuses."

"Or you could have told me I'd parked illegally," Mercury said, looking to Cinder again.

"I… don't know how to drive," Cinder said, the words coming out in embarrassed stutters.

"Oh, right," said Mercury. "We're Team Tragic Backstory. None of us grew up with cars."

"Does anyone here know how to drive?" Cinder demanded.

Roman and Neo raised their hands.

"Yeah, blame them," said Mercury, trying (and failing) to keep his eyes from darting to the burgeoning fireball. "They didn't volunteer for the driving job, and they lost to the HuntsMan, again."

"Beating him wasn't the assignment, robo-boy," said Roman, plucking imaginary lint from his cuffs. "Instead of—what was your phrase?—maximizing my talents, our 'sinister princess'…"

"Nefarious. Queen," Cinder said menacingly.

"…put me in charge of the distraction. I produced a very distracting distraction! Got a ton of attention, cleared out a whole sector of town… The thing is, no part of my instructions said to kill anyone."

"Unfortunately," Neo signed.

"If you never planned on killing anyone," Cinder said, rounding on Roman, "why was your little toy called the Death Tractor?"

"Death Tractor Ten," Roman corrected. "And the reason why is simple…"

"I swear I will light you on fire if you say 'marketing'," Cinder vowed.

"Showmanship," Roman said smugly.

"Doesn't that mean the same thing?"

"Presentation, then."

Cinder growled at Roman.

"I can do this all day," he said merrily.

Cinder raised the hand with the fireball in it, but it overbalanced, fell out of her hand onto the floor, and fizzled.

"Premature discharge," Roman lamented. "How embarrassing."

Neo held up a sign that said, "They make pills for that now," but Roman grabbed the sign and chucked it out the window.

Cinder took a slow inhale that shook under how much emotion it was carrying. "We will reconvene next week," she said, her voice somehow miraculously even. "Until then, make yourselves useful… far away from me."

"Yes, ma'am," said Emerald.

As she and Mercury exited the room, he could be just heard to say, "Prank war?"

"Oh, you're on."

"Until next time," said Roman with a tip of his cap as Neo flounced towards the door. "You know I'll still have to bill you for this, right?"

"I'd expect nothing less from a thief like you," said Cinder in deadpan.

"Now you're starting to get it. That's the power of branding," Roman said as he grinned, before he and Neo made their escape.

Cinder waited until she was sure her underlings were good and gone. Then she turned back to her desk and used the scroll atop it to project an image of her dire foe.

Wonder Zwei. Just looking at the picture made a new, larger fireball spring to life in her hand.

"Curse you, adorable corgi," she said in a voice laden with venom. "I will get you—and your little human, too."

Even in the picture he was mocking her.

Losing her temper at last, Cinder threw the fireball at the picture.

Said picture, being merely a projection, offered the fireball no resistance. It sailed through and impacted against the far wall, spreading flame across its surface instantly.

Cinder's eyes widened. "Uh-oh."

A second later, the fire alarm went off.

A second after that, the sprinkler system went off.

And that, as Yang might say, rather dampened Cinder's mood.

"I've got an apology to make," Jaune said.

Jaune was sitting at his typical place, in the grouping of RWBY and JNPR together that produced so much heartburn for Glynda... that is, fun.

Weiss sniffed. "You'll have to be more specific."

Pyrrha gave him a supporting smile and reached out for a moment as if to take his hand, before hesitating and hovering in no-man's land, grimacing in uncertainty.

"I haven't been a great teammate or friend lately," he said. "Again. I had a really good reason, though."

"We wait with bated breath," drawled Blake.

"I've been preoccupied with helping people," Jaune continued. "I was on a mission to help people who couldn't help themselves."

"You're apologizing for that?" said Ruby skeptically. "That's, like, the reason we're all here, is to learn how to do just that."

Yang and Weiss shot each other nervous looks.

"But that's just it," said Jaune. "Me going off and doing my own thing was keeping me from learning, from being the best I could be…" His gaze wandered to Pyrrha, whose eyes widened in mild panic. "…and from helping the people who were right here with me all along."

"Sooo…" prompted Nora when Jaune stalled.

Jaune jerked back. "Right! What I'm saying is, I'm giving that up. I'll be here instead."

"Giving what up?" Yang said.

Jaune took a deep breath, stole a glance at Pyrrha to bolster himself, then said, "I was the HuntsMan, but I'm hanging up my cape."

Nora sprang to standing, planted a foot on the table, and said loudly (or more loudly than usual, at least), "Can we hear that again?!"

Jaune staggered back, surprised. The cafeteria around had gone deathly quiet. "I'm… stopping being the HuntsMan," he said, quietly as he could politely get away with, but in a voice that still carried in the unexpected stillness of the cafeteria.

Whatever response he was expecting was not what he got.

The cafeteria erupted in a mix of cheers and groans. Ruby pumped her fist in triumph, Weiss faux-collapsed, Yang shrugged with a mix of cheer and carelessness, and Blake proffered a tiny smile. The commotion was by no means limited to them; the members of Team CFVY were somehow loud without making noise, while Team CRDL was immediately engaged in fierce recriminations. Other teams Jaune was less familiar with seemed hardly quieter.

"What's going on?" he asked to no avail.

Nora, smiling wickedly, picked up the table the teams were sitting at and rotated it about so it was between her and the rest of the cafeteria. On top of the table she plopped down a backpack and opened its zip-top; lien chits tumbled from the opening. "Alright, single file, one at a time! We'll settle everyone today. Single file, crowd me and I break your legs before I pay you off! And have your tickets ready, no ticket, no payout!"

Almost the whole of the cafeteria swarmed in the direction of Nora's impromptu business desk. Even Team RWBY rose and took their place in line, with Yang not-so-gently elbowing a distraught Cardin out of the way. Only Ren, Pyrrha, and Jaune remained at their original, now table-less seats.

"Seriously, what's going on?" a befuddled Jaune asked a second time.

"There was a betting pool," said Ren—providing, as usual, the bare minimum information required to answer the question.

"A what?" said Pyrrha.

"A betting pool," Ren repeated. "Everyone makes bets, and the winners get some amount of the pool."

"What were they betting on?" said Jaune, unsure if he wanted to know the answer.

Ren sighed heavily. "On when you would admit to being the HuntsMan."

"What."

Jaune looked at the line, which seemed to encompass a good chunk of Beacon's student body and some of its staff. Almost all of them had small pieces of paper in-hand, with what had to be dates and odds printed on them. Many students were comparing their tickets. Ruby, for example, was animatedly discussing hers with Coco, who was taking things with an easy grace. And was that Professor Port in the back?

Jaune blinked. "Wait, so everyone already knew I was the HuntsMan?"

"Pretty much," said Ren.

"Wait, Jaune was the HuntsMan?" exploded Sun.

"Do you know how much easier that would have made things if we'd known?" said Neptune.

Ren's eyebrow twitched. "Almost everyone."

"And you all let me try and keep it a secret when it totally wasn't?" said Jaune.

"Well," said Pyrrha, anxiously pushing her index fingers together, "you were trying so hard, and we didn't want to discourage you or make you feel bad…"

"Hey!" Nora shouted over the tumult, "the 'public confession' prop bet hit, but the 'love confession' prop bet was a bust! No arguing!"

Jaune slumped forward. "I really was the worst superhero ever, huh?"

"I didn't think so," Pyrrha said bracingly. "You did stop Torchwick, after all. Isn't that what really matters?"

Jaune waved a thumbs-up weakly in her direction.

Pyrrha's heart bled for him. She steeled herself for action. "I know how uncomfortable it can be, when people are talking about you, but not about you. Do you want to escape?"

Jaune huffed. "At least I'm decent at that."

"Let's go."

Pyrrha and Jaune made good their exit. No one paid them any mind, except maybe Ren, not that he would tell anyone.

"There you are," said Nora, paying off another bettor. She scratched through the ticket in front of her, but when she looked up, it was in time to see the other students scattering out the doors and windows, like roaches fleeing a light. All of a sudden, she was alone at the table. The only sound was the click-click of approaching heels.

"Miss Valkyrie," said Professor Goodwitch as she approached.

"Professor," said Nora, not batting an eye.

Professor Goodwitch raised an eyebrow. "What's going on here?"

"What does it look like?" Nora replied brazenly.

"It would appear to be an illegal gambling ring," Professor Goodwitch said.

Nora waved it off. "Pfft, I'd never set up a gambling ring that wasn't at least fifty percent legal."

"You think so?" Professor Goodwitch said, as the last witnesses/students fled the scene.

"I couldn't run it if I wasn't good at math," Nora said.

"I'll need to have words with your other instructors," Professor Goodwitch said dubiously. "Or, perhaps, there is a calculation you can run right now for me."

Nora looked, then she reached for her backpack, did some counting, and raised a hand in Professor Goodwitch's direction. "Here you are, ma'am."

Professor Goodwitch took the lien chits from Nora and, for the first time in weeks, felt a smile break upon her face.

"Winner, winner, chicken dinner."

Pyrrha might have thought she'd gotten her fill of rooftops during her stint as a villainess, but the roof of her Beacon dorm was still a pleasant place for her. Maybe it was the memories. Or maybe it was the company.

Pyrrha looked to her side. Jaune was spacing out, his mind elsewhere. He did have a penchant for Big Thoughts, for better and for worse. She liked that about him. She just hoped they weren't messing him up too badly.

She felt her thoughts sour. Not that he'd tell her if they were. He hadn't confided the truth about being the HuntsMan in her, even when literally everyone in school (besides the Junior Detectives) had known it. If he wouldn't trust her with that, they couldn't be that close, surely not as close as she would have liked. And now, after this whole superhero interlude, after all those shenanigans, she didn't feel any closer to him than she had at the beginning.

It wasn't like she was the same person. She'd loosened up some. She felt like maybe, maybe breaking the rules was okay sometimes. Being the Red Huntress had been a different sort of adventure, and she had enjoyed it. No, it was her relationship with Jaune that had stalled, when she'd donned the Red Huntress garb for the singular purpose of advancing that relationship.

Gods above, could she even talk to him about that now? It should have been easier, but it wasn't, not even a little bit. Would she ever be able to?

"It's pretty."

Pyrrha started. "I beg your pardon?"

Jaune and Pyrrha were sitting with their hands behind them, propped up like lounge chairs. Jaune brought one of his hands in front of him enough to wave at the towers of Beacon in front of them. "All that. It's pretty."

Pyrrha nodded slowly. "I suppose."

"It was making me think of other pretty things," Jaune went on.

That kicked Pyrrha's mind into overdrive. It whirled about, wondering if he was implying something about her or, oh no, a million times worse, implying something about someone other than her—

"And that made me think about something that happened while I was the HuntsMan."

Pyrrha's brain screeched to a halt, crashed, and burned.

"See, one of my biggest foes was the Red Huntress. She was… well, she was something else. You know how it is."

Pyrrha both really knew what he meant and didn't at all know what he meant. How could she have those two opposite ideas at once? This wasn't fair!

"Eventually I guess I impressed her, because she asked me out on a date."

Jaune looked over at Pyrrha, maybe to see if she was following along. Pyrrha tried to force herself to swallow, gave up after several seconds, and rasped out, "How lovely."

"She was pretty," Jaune said. "At least, as much as I could tell beneath her costume."

Pyrrha wanted to puke. She started to pull words together—words about how she really wasn't up to hearing about the other girls in Jaune's life, and how much he wanted to get with people that weren't her—

"But I never really considered her offer."

There was a sound like a record scratch in Pyrrha's mind. "Huh?"

Jaune hauled himself forward so he was sitting more normally, and turned to face her. "I'm saying, the Red Huntress had a lot going for her, but I was never going to go on a date with her."

Pyrrha's heart was riding a rollercoaster. Every sentence out of Jaune's mouth sent her into the heights of bliss or the depths of despair. Sometimes she wasn't sure she could tell the difference. "Is that right?"

Jaune nodded.

"Because she was a villain?"

That made Jaune frown and look up like he was searching the air for answers. "Sort-of. She wasn't all the way a villain, though. Honestly, I don't think she knew what she was. It's complicated."

Pyrrha gave a hoarse laugh at how right and how ignorant Jaune was.

"That wasn't the real reason, though," said Jaune, waving the rest away.

"Then what was?" Pyrrha said, desperation peaking.

He gave her his gentlest, most genuine smile. "Because the only person I want to take on a date is you."

Pyrrha's pulse rate doubled and her eyes went as wide as physically possible. She wanted to say all the things, with the result that they created a traffic jam trying to get out of her mouth, causing her to actually say nothing.

Her lack of response made Jaune nervous and shifty. He squirmed as his eyes darted about. "Uh… if—if you want, I guess I was presuming a little… being pushy… sorry if I was being pushy-"

Pyrrha knew exactly one thing: the Red Huntress would never let an opening like that get away from her.

So she pounced.

Jaune never had been good at grappling.

The two of them ended up in a tangle of limbs and laughter, there on the roof. At some point they kissed.

"Ahem," she said, pulling away abruptly and nervously, some of her reserve coming back to her. She smoothed her school skirt down, embarrassed that she might have gone a touch overboard, though there was no suppressing the smile on her face. "I think I was trying to say: Yes, I will go out with you, Jaune."

"Great," said Jaune, a bit punch-drunk, but with a loopy, irrepressible grin on his face. He looked at his uniform, which was ruffled from Pyrrha's onslaught. "Well, I guess we'd better go change."

"I'm sorry," Pyrrha said.

But she'd never been less sorry in her life.

A finger pushed a button, freezing the image of Jaune and Pyrrha mooning over each other.

"Aww, isn't that sweet? Those idiots finally got together. I was beginning to think that only blunt-force trauma could make that happen.

"But they should savor it while they have the chance, because this was just Phase One of my master plan! Getting those two magnets to snap together was a good start, but getting them to do it on my timetable was the key. Thanks to my help getting Jaune to out himself at the right time, the betting pool payouts worked in my favor. I got maximum profit from it, giving me more than enough funds to take this up a notch!

"You think the Red Huntress was a villain, HuntsMan? You ain't seen nothing yet! Because now I have the resources I need to put Phase Two into action and show you what a true super-villain can do! Soon, all will tremble before the might of the maniacal… Doctor Hammerstein!"

"…"

"That's your cue."

"…do I have to?"

"Yes. Now read your script."

"Sigh… along with Plausible Deniability, her co-conspirator and paramour… wait, her what?"

"I'll be seeing you soon, HuntsMan and Red Huntress… very soon… mua-ha-haaaaaaaaaa! ...nailed it!"

The End (?)