"You have very beautiful eyes."

"Focus."

"I'm just saying, the way your golden irises pull around the vertical slits of those pupils is—"

"Shut up."

"…"

"Maintaining eye contact is probably the most important thing when it comes to dominance. That means no twitching eyelids. Your left one."

Jaune breaks eye contact by burying his face in his hands. "I can't do this," he moans. "How the heck am I supposed to learn Faunus 101 in fifteen minutes when I failed Basic Psychology?"

Blake gives a little hmph as she leans against the brick wall of the alley they'd retreated to. She'd insisted he needed a crash course in faunus behavior after he smiled and waved at the Rabbit he'd sat next to on the airship, and said bunny girl had immediately scampered for cover. "This is a way of life, Jaune, not a class." A pause. "Nobody in combat training takes a psychology class."

"I, uh… I'm a late bloomer, so my dad, uh, I mean… Hey, look at this!" Jaune flexes his arm and pushes a finger underneath his shoulder guard. "See? Muscle!"

"What are you doing sneaking into a battle school without basic combat training?"

Jaune looks anywhere but at his (buddy? companion? mentor?) acquaintance. {How much can I let her know? She already holds power over me just by knowing who I am—and I can't forget that she knew my name beforehand. How many secrets should I keep from her? How much should I share? I can't really integrate into faunus society well without at least pretending to open up in some way. I need an alibi.}

Blake sighs. "If you're just going to make something up, the least you could do is look convincing." She mimes a contemplating look before turning judgmental eyes upon him. "That was your thinking face. It's a defining human trait. You're obviously going to lie."

"No! I… I was just… thinking about how to phrase it. Hee." He mentally beats his head against a wall at the nervous little giggle; like that wasn't at all suspicious. "I'm not the best fighter, as you've probably, um, noticed."

Blake folds her arms across her chest expectantly.

"My dad, he noticed this. The day I broke two arms and four legs. Only one of them was mine, y'know… just my left arm. It's actually sort of a funny stor…" And he would have continued into the tale of how he accidentally blew up a shipment of Dust with a plunger and two marshmallows had not Blake nailed him with a deadpan glare. "Uh, never mind. The whole shindig was caught on the security cameras, though. How I managed to not snap my neck or lose a leg andIknowthisisn'tmakingmelookgoodatall but really, I swear, getting out of that situation without losing a head or two took a lot of on-the-spot thinking." He beams proudly. "In the end, my dad saw my brains in action and decided I was a better fit for strategy!"

Blake only has to raise a single eyebrow to pop Jaune's bubble of confidence.

"Okay, fine," he huffs. "Luck might have played a… minor role."

The eyebrow climbs upwards a millimeter.

"A small miracle?"

His acquaintance seems to take this as an acceptable answer and drops the eyebrow.

"But that's why I'm here in Menagerie," he adds hurriedly. "You know, to increase my odds. Of pwning. And stuff."

"Your papers."

"Huh?"

"Never mind that you need transcripts to get into battle school, like qualifications, achievements, awards. Tell me your backstory. Who are you?"

She already knows too much about him. Even worse, she somehow knows when he's lying, so he's left to tell her nothing but the truth. Slowly, he's just going to feed her more and more of his identity, filling in her blanks, until she has complete mastery over him. How did he manage to get himself into this situation not an hour after touching down in the capital?

"You're wearing your Thinking Face again."

"Uh—"

"Don't get the wrong impression: lying is good. It's the only way we—you're going to survive at Zodiac Academy." She takes a couple steps until she's right up in his face, and even though she's shorter than he is, her burning golden eyes stare him down effectively. "But you better be damn believable when you look straight into their eyes and lie. Some faunus build entire networks based off trust. Sheep. Boars. Tigers. Dogs." Her lips curl in disgust. "If they ever find out that you're not really who you say you are, you will crush their world—and they'll come back at you to make sure you feel the same way."

Spooked, Jaune takes a step back and hits the alley wall behind him. "Okay. I got it."

Blake closes the gap yet again, trapping him simply by placing her arms on either side of his body and leaning in. "Do you?"

She is dangerously close. Terrifyingly so. Not one part of her body is touching him, yet she may as well have plastered him to the wall with her aggressive dominance. The tiny part of Jaune's mind that isn't peeing its pants takes note in how effective her body language is. Eyes mostly; black pupils narrowed to slits. A low growl in her throat. Arms caging him in. Her bowtie is interestingly flattened against her black hair; and he's probably a terrible person, because it's this sight that snaps him out of his fear. She looks like a pissed cat.

...Is she a pissed Cat?

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and looks her dead on in the eyes. "Fine. Tell me how to lie."

Blake leans in past his face, her lips tickling his ear again. "The best lies have a grain of truth in them. Start there, build on it, and keep telling it to yourself until you believe it. Then you can believably tell everybody your new truth."

Jaune maybe hears like half of what she says, because the second that his mind is no longer quivering in fear, it becomes very aware of how Blake's body is practically on top of his. {Rowr. No, have to tame the tiger…} "Uh… do you really have to be this close?"

"I suppose I could let your face be seen by the ice princess currently blocking the entrance to this alleyway."

Jaune doesn't even need to look past Blake's head, because said ice princess conveniently screeches right then, "Ugh! You dolt, what do you mean we're missing one?"

It is pure reflexes that forces Jaune to find the safest hiding spot: behind Blake's back. "Eep."

"Your job was to guard the cases, Taurus," shrieks the girl hysterically. "I can handle difficulty just fine on my own. Lie Ren!"

"I'm on it." A streak of green blurs straight up a two-story building, materializing upon the roof as that magneta-eyed guard who'd pulled Jaune to his feet earlier. He remains poised there for a second as if frozen in time; then, so quickly that Jaune would have missed it had he blinked, the man darts into the distance, leaping from roof to roof. Though his movement is so ridiculously fast that he almost vanishes from sight, it's not constant—more like a moment of deceptive peace shattered by a lightning strike.

And then he's gone, leaving the ice princess and her scary guard #2.

"I can't believe this!" the white-haired girl rants, stalking back and forth angrily. The light refracts off the feathers of her jacket at a thousand different angles—a shifting crystalline rainbow that Jaune would appreciate tons more if he wasn't terrified about possibly losing functionality of his family jewels in the near future. "How could we lose a case? We never encountered any thieves…"

The back of the redheaded guard is turned towards them, so Jaune can't hear what he's mumbling—but icy terror floods through his veins when the girl exclaims, "The perverted klutz!"

Blake shrugs his hand off her shoulder. He realizes that he's been squeezing it with a death grip. "I'll distract her," she says offhandedly.

"You'll… you'll what?"

Blake points up, then to the left. "Use the fire escape and head that way. Zodiac Academy is a massive multi-ecosystemic bio—"

"Say wha?"

Blake sighs. "It's a really big place."

"Ohhh."

"We're only a couple blocks away, so just pick an uphill direction and run for it and you should eventually hit a wall or gate. I'll distract the Heiress Schnee in the meanwhile."

Jaune hesitates for a slight second. Maybe he's just being too suspicious, but it kind of feels like… well, Blake's doing a lot of stuff for him. Like he keeps on owing her more and more, especially since they're still practically strangers. She's pretty much led him to the Academy, coached him on basic faunus behavior, and even now is covering his escape from another girl who'd called him a pervert. {For someone who laughs at Dogs and Tigers, Blake is putting an awfully large amount of trust in this weird senpai-kohai relationship we have going on.}

"Why are you doing this for me?"

"Would you believe me if I said that it was out of the goodness of my heart?"

"You're lying." The words have slipped out of his mouth before he can suck them back in, and he immediately regrets it… especially when he catches the tiniest of smirks curling a corner of Blake's mouth upwards.

"Would you like me to introduce you to Weiss Schnee proper?" she asks instead, an exaggerated look of innocence on her face. "I'm sure the daughter of the general who brought the Faunus War to a relatively diplomatic conclusion would love to meet the mysterious human who copped a feel on her."

"All I did was look up her skirt! By complete accident… y'know, I'm just going to leave now."

Jaune supposes that he should have expected it… but the building he'd climbed up only has one fire escape.

His original plan had been to wait for the ice princess—Weiss—to move on, or for Blake to at least draw her away. That didn't happen, of course, and Jaune remembered that she was probably waiting for the ridiculously fast magenta-eyed guard to return. Speaking of which… what if he did come back before Jaune could leave, and Weiss spotted and sic'd her guards on him? If that green guard punched him while moving at top speed…

His aura might protect him. Strategy lessons said something about aura being the physical manifestations of human souls, psychology mumbo jumbo, yadda yadda yadda. It's mostly a subconscious thing that kicks in whenever you need it, so Jaune is fine to leave it at that.

Some people can activate their aura whenever they want to though. His brother's girlfriend had been able to use her aura to enhance flame Dust, turning her into a hot bomb specialist. Jaune didn't care too much about her because she was just as nasty and spiteful as Roman was, but at some deep familial level, he'd worried for their safeties when they'd fought in the Faunus War.

Roman came back from the War; his girlfriend didn't.

Funny how Blake had described the Battle of Fort Castle as "relatively diplomatic," because it had been a bloodbath. Literally. Attacking under the cover of night was disadvantageous only to the humans, and all fiery and wind attacks with Dust were washed aside by an unknown source of water. When the sun rose, the surrounded lands were stained crimson—all diluted with aforementioned water, yeah, but the exaggerated sight was pretty horrible for human morale. After a few more skirmishes, the War drew to a close and faunus were granted their freedom from Menagerie.

Though many faunus streamed out of the reservation they'd been forced into to establish colonies throughout Remnant, many stayed behind within their particular Clan territories. Jaune supposes that forcing all faunus into a tiny area had been good in the sense that it united long-separated faunus families: the Twelve Clans against the common enemy of humankind. This was pretty much why no human has ever attempted to live within Menagerie… up until today. A defining moment history in the making, starring Jaune Arc!

That is the reason why Jaune cannot lose his family jewels (and die) at the hands of the daughter of the man who washed his fortress in the watery blood of a thousand human soldiers. He's making history here. He's continuing the Arc family legacy—no, he's taking it one step farther, learning how to best fight the creatures of Grimm from the descendants of said monsters.

That one step. Just one step off the edge of this two-story building to make history.

Hopefully his aura will kick in by the time he hits the ground so he doesn't shatter all the bones of his legs.

And that is how he ends at the front gates of Zodiac with a slow stream of blood trickling down the left side of his face.

It's just a superficial scratch from faceplanting into the pavement at much higher speeds than he's used to. The problem with head wounds is that they bleed. A lot. At least his aura had kicked in before he hit the pavement. Faceplanting into the ground at that velocity without any protection should have shoved his nose, boogers and all, up into his brain.

As is, Jaune's dealing by pulling the hood of his black sweater up and over his head. It soaks up a little bit of the blood, but its main purpose is to mask his identity as the dumb blonde who got wounded before even starting battle school.

Curse his stupid luck, because somebody steps into his path and refuses to move. "Like, are you okay?"

Though the speaker is also wearing red, it isn't Ruby. With his hood covering his upper field of vision, all he registers is that her crimson-colored boots run up past the knee. {Seriously, who needs boots that tall?} He pulls his hood down as far as it can go and tries to push forward anyways. "I'm fine," he says curtly, shrugging off her hand.

The girl plants herself in front of him again. "You're hurt," she states. "I can totally help; I'm a Sheep."

"I've had a pretty rough day, sorry. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to find my dorm and die a silent death of embarrassment. Alone."

"Ooooh. I knew I recognized you. You're the guy that my sister totally kicked in the head."

That's when he finally looks up and recognizes her as well—the strapless red dress, the long red gloves, the thigh-high red boots, the circular spiral horns nested above her ears: Miltia, the quiet twin. Aside from clothing and faunus characteristics, she could be could easily be mistaken for her sister. However, there are no sharp weapons attached to her boots; instead, a set of boxes rest on her wrists. They probably shoot ninja stars. Or lasers.

Reluctantly, he pulls off his hood and gestures in the general direction of his head. "It's nothing. Just… just a flesh wound."

Miltia's eyebrows furrow slightly. "If it's just superficial, you should have, like, healed already." Her hand is surprisingly firm when she grabs a fistful of his black sweater, but a second later she releases a bit of her grip and becomes very uncertain, losing the ditzy speech in the process. "May I?"

"Can you what again?"

Irritation flickers across her face as she gently pulls him down to her level so that they're face to face. "I'm a Sheep," she enunciates very slowly.

"Er… you really don't have to…" He is really failing at life right now, because she's definitely implying that being a Sheep means something significant, and that any respectable faunus should know what she's talking about. "…do whatever you're planning on doing."

The edges of her mouth curl upwards in a tiny smile. "But it's just a flesh wound," she echoes, lifting her right hand to his forehead.

Her touch is extremely warm; almost hot, but not uncomfortably so, and it pulses down from the site of touch to ripple down his head and shoulders. Her eyes slip closed as the warmth flows down him and she murmurs, "Your chakras are so stagnant. Haven't you ever used your semblance?"

Okay, that's scary. Miltia is glowing. A haunting white light seeps out of all her pores and from between her closed eyelids as, just like that, the throbbing pain of his head wound vanishes. The base of his neck blossoms in warmth soon afterwards; the effect trickles down his body, flowing through paths of energy down his spine and upper arms.

{Sheep are healers, dammit. Why can't I remember this?}

"What did you—" He cuts himself off when her knees buckle, barely managing to catch her before she hits the ground. "Miltia! Are you okay?"

The girl braces herself against Jaune, seemingly unable to stand. "So weak."

He awkwardly lowers her to the ground till they're both kneeling, though she still clings to him for support. "You really shouldn't have."

Despite her apparent fatigue, she manages to give him a half-lidded glare. "I was talking about you," she slurs. "With your chakras blocked for so long… how did you even survive the War with an aura so weak?"

"I… uh…"

She slumps back onto her own heels. "I opened up your first chakra." She's abruptly back to being shy and embarrassed, avoiding his gaze. "The… survival chakra, blocked by, um. Fear."

Oh. He does remember something like this from classes. Metaphysical lines of energy in the body or something. "Those… uh, chakras… they're not real."

He could have worded that a lot better, because Miltia glowers at him. "Chakras are not physical," she snaps, "But they are still very real." Again, her anger subsides rapidly and she's back to being awkwardly clumsy. "Melanie keeps telling me off for being all preachy about chakras when I have so much trouble keeping my first chakra open and clear." She bravely meets his eyes. "So I know how you feel. About getting into battle school, even though you aren't a warrior."

Jaune nods wordlessly.

Miltia takes this as encouragement to continue. "I wasn't sure at first when, um, Melanie said that she'd help me if I accepted the offer. Medics… should still be able to fight, she said. Look at the Battle of Fort Hospice; we lost all our Dragons but one that day. And I saw that, but I just didn't think that… y'know, since we totally aren't fighting anymore. We've reached a peace, and peace is great, right? But then she was like, just in case… just in case we do begin fighting again, I should totally be able to defend myself. Fight for myself. Win for myself." She looks into his eyes again, gaze confident and proud (and speech right back to imitating her sister's). "That's totally like why we're here, right?"

It's completely disorienting to hear his reasons for fighting repeated from the other side—the former enemy's side. Still, he nods and helps Miltia to her feet when the girl tries to get back to her feet. "Where's your guard?" he asks to change the subject.

"Who, Cardin?" Miltia sneers quietly. "Father was like, if the Heiress Schnee has guards, so should the Malachites."

Schnee. Malachite. Though he has no clue what these names mean, he remembers that Blake's advice to not let his ignorance show. He can probably assume that they're big. War generals? Company holders?

"So your dad hired a Boar?"

"More like a pig," she snorts, cocking her hip. It doesn't look very natural on Miltia's body; it does look like something Melanie would do though. "You'd totally be a better guard than he is."

"Uh… thanks?"

"That totally wasn't supposed to be a compliment." She looks him over. "How do you even fight?" When he hesitates, she adds, "Don't worry about revealing your weapon. Schnee might still pretend to be all about honor, but Malachites have always fought to win." Right when she speaks that last word, she curls her hands into fists and punches the air. Each forward thrust causes wickedly sharp crimson claws to shoot out of the little boxes on her wrists with a clean shink.

Jaune takes a step back. "Whoa!"

Encouraged, Miltia mimes another two punches, performs a series of backflips to put a bit of distance between them, and rapidly closes that difference with the same gliding-on-ice effect that her twin had exhibited right before she'd kicked him in the head.

{Not again!}

Jaune's prepared this time, grabbing and expanding his shield to protectively shove it into Miltia's path. He immediately regrets doing so when she collapses against it with a yelp. To make things worse, he doesn't even get to apologize before a powerful force slams into his side and sends him flying. His shield bounces away as he rolls on the pavement, though his aura coupled with his leather gear protect him from scratches and bruises. He spins a little bit more to carry him safely out of his attacker's physical reach before using his limbs to bring himself to a skittering stop in a crouched position, ready to throw himself out of the way of incoming firepower.

Yeah, he's had his fair share of dealing with older brothers literally throwing him around.

There isn't any threat, however. His attacker is Cardin, and though Boars are powerhouses, they're not exactly fast. Before Cardin can take another step forward, Miltia leaps to her feet in between the two of them, her arms spread apart. "Don't!"

Cardin places an arm on her shoulder as if to throw her to the side before apparently remembering that his job is to protect her. "He was attacking you," he growls.

"He was just defending himself," she corrects almost too quietly for him to hear, though he doesn't miss the glare she sends his way over her shoulder. "Though I totally wasn't actually attacking him. It just, like, looked a lot like it."

Cardin shakes his head and tries to push past her, insisting, "He tried to hurt you."

Though Miltia is at least a head shorter than Cardin, she maintains her ground and refuses to let him pass. "Don't touch him," she snarls just as fiercely, staring straight up into his eyes. "I know what you're doing. He doesn't, but I can say in total confidence that he's, like, not interested."

Cardin doesn't move, though he seems to grow more uncomfortable the longer Miltia maintains direct eye contact with him; finally, he drops his eyes and stands down.

{Eye contact in action. Hm. Shouldn't be too hard—}

When Miltia approaches him, though, there is so much imposing presence rolling off her that he finds it hard to look into her eyes (though he does pops up to his feet to, y'know, to make it a bit easier.)

"I'm here at Zodiac to keep my first chakra open," Miltia says softly. "But I got the feeling that your chakras have been closed for a while… and if you're going to survive here, you need those cleared."

"Uh, are you suggesting…?"

Miltia looks at him as if he's being particularly dense. "You totally have six more chakras that need to be opened if you're going to survive Zodiac Academy."

"Oh."

"Here." She presses a small bottle into his palm. "You saw how much energy it took me to open just one of yours, remember? It'll probably take me a few days to recover, so you'll need this if you want to pass Initiation tomorrow." With that, she rejoins Cardin's side and starts pulling the larger man away.

"Wait. Initiation?"

Miltia doesn't look back, however, leaving Jaune alone in the courtyard of Zodiac.

He glances down at the glass flask curled in his fist. The substance inside seems to shimmer with a pale blue light; particles that flow in a strangely fluid manner. Dust—though the cap that plugs the bottle neck doesn't have his dad's dark green gear insignia that marks it as human-made. Instead, there's what looks like a simple five-petaled white flower. Faunus-made Dust?

Well. Six more of those metaphysical energy thingies to open up over the next couple days. Huh. {First Ruby, then Nora and Pyrrha, Blake, and now Miltia. Congratulations, Jaune: a first day full of ladies. Not a bad—}

For the second time today, he finds his cheek unexpectedly pressed against the ground. He blinks, not sure how he got there—until a strong hand grabs the front of his shirt and easily lifts him off the ground until they're eye to eye. Though a white mask with red flame-like markings all over it hides his attacker's entire upper face, Jaune catches just the smallest glimmer through the four slots in the mask. They don't look very happy.

Eye contact. Blake said eye contact. It's hard though because there are only two eye slots on each side of the mask. And there's the fact that this is Scary Guard #2, and where the guard is…

"Drop him, Taurus," comes the expected voice of the one and only Weiss Schnee. "I'll deal with him myself."