"Ruby!" Jaune shouts the moment he clears the cafeteria doors. A dozen heads swivel in his direction in surprise, but he ignores them in favor of bellowing his friend's name again. At least, he hopes they're still friends. He should have apologized to her sooner for violating her preeecious weapon.

{Even if she did punish you pretty severely for that.}

But Light, what was he thinking, sitting on her rifle-scythe?

{Trying to keep your head safe and secure, that's what.}

Hey, he's trying to have an angst session here. Shut up.

{…}

Anyways, he should have gone straight over to Ruby after Pyrrha had talked to him, instead of looking guiltily away from her every time he caught her staring at him during dinner.

He catches a flash of her crimson cloak around a corner and sprints in that direction. By the time he rounds the corner, she's already running. Though it isn't the full-tilt, colors-blurring-into-the-air fast that he knows she's capable of, she's already at the end of the hallway and in the process of turning.

"Ruby wait I'm sorry!" he shouts, just as she disappears from sight.

He begins to run forward, even though he knows that Ruby will be long gone before he reaches the spot he saw her last. Before he's taken more than two steps, though, the mouse girl pops her head back around the corner inquisitively. He slides to a stop as the rest of Ruby's body follows, until both stand at opposite ends of the hallways in awkward silence.

Ruby's not looking directly at him. Without really knowing what to do or say, Jaune settles with blurting, "Are you mad at me?"

He blinks. She blinks, her mouth hanging halfway open for just a second before she snaps it shut. They'd both said exactly the same thing at the same time.

Ruby stares at some distance point over Jaune's shoulder and, crossing one leg behind the other, uses the tip of her boot to draw slow circles on the floor. "You're not mad at me?" she says shyly.

Jaune rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. "I thought… look, I wanted to apologize. For… inappropriately touching Crescent Rose."

"Huh?" Realization slowly dawns over her face, quickly followed by furious irritation. "You… you did! You rubbed your booty all over her… what are you doing?"

Jaune wishes he could work up the bravado to run headlong into the nearest wall and knock himself unconscious; but all he can do is repeatedly thud his forehead into a row of lockers. At Ruby's question, he turns his head in her direction, though he keeps banging the side of his head against the same place. "Punishing myself," he mumbles.

"But… why that?"

"Have you never heard of banging your head against the wall?"

Ruby looks confused. "No."

Jaune pauses. "Isn't this the universal sign for mortified self-embarrassment?"

The Mouse frowns. "I thought that this was the way to show that you're humiliated." She demonstrates by puffing up her cheeks and going cross-eyed.

Jaune can't help it. The face is so unexpectedly amusing that he bursts out laughing—followed quickly by him choking on his own breath in fear when Ruby immediately morphs into a ferocious demon from the fiery depths of mousy doom, complete with glowing red eyes in a face cast into shadow, wickedly sharp buck teeth, round twitchy ears, and extremely pointy fingernail-claws. Just as quickly, though, Ruby's form shloops back into the shape of a normal cute teenage girl who quietly pouts to herself, "Why do I even believe anything Sun tells me nowadays?"

"I'm sorry," gasps Jaune as he tries to catch his breath. "I… what else did he tell you?"

"He told me that the best way to catch someone's attention was to stare as intensely as possible at them."

Oh. That would explain what she was doing throughout all of dinner. And he'd assumed she was silently judging him. "It's true," he admits, "Though definitely not in a good way. It is a pretty good way to intimidate people." Then, as an afterthought, "And/or seriously creep them out."

"Oh." Ruby cautiously approaches the lockers and hesitantly thumps her head against the metal surface once, looking down the hallway at him as for confirmation.

Jaune grins wide at her from his end of the row of lockers. "A couple more times."

Ruby obeys, sending vibrations his way through the metal lockers, before she turns a suspicious glance his way. "You're not pulling a Sun on me, are you?"

{Seems like everybody has their own experience with this guy.} "Um, my version of 'pulling a Sun' is a surprise kiss. With tongue."

Ruby doesn't look surprised in the slightest. "Ha. He would."

{Ew. Ew ew ew.} "So. Um. I violated your baby, you knocked me into the sky. We're even?"

Ruby mumbles something about 'worst first' ever, but Jaune quickly forgets about it when she pastes on a smile and says, "Even."

Jaune doesn't dare venture into the bathrooms until most of his fellow freshmen have settled into their sleeping bags. It's a co-ed bathroom, after all, and, well, not that he doesn't appreciate the female form, but… he's a late bloomer. Not quite as fully developed, y'know? Besides, there's always the chance that somebody would give him the swirlie or wrestle him into the nasty drainwater on the shower floor. It would be totally be his luck to catch crabs without actually losing his V-card...

He hangs his towel and his super-comfy onesie {don't diss the onesies} over the shower curtain holder before slipping underneath the hot stream of water. He clears his mind of worries and lets it go completely blank, just letting the heat soak into the very little muscle he has.

Ah. That's good.

{Okay. Your first day at Zodiac Academy wasn't so bad. You even made some friends! Including one who doesn't exist. Also made an enemy. Forget about that, though. You didn't die!}

{Still, you're way in over your head.}

All the things he should have done before he left. All the ways he's already failed so far. All the things that could have gone a million times better had he approached it this way. If he'd done that instead. He should have waited a month. Should have taken more classes. Studied more of humanity's limited documentation of faunology.

…But really, if he hadn't decided to embark on this faunus journey last week, that month of more preparation would have stretched into a year. And that year turned into a lifetime. And he would have ended up doing some boring behind-the-desk job for his dad's company. It's not like he wouldn't appreciate management or administration, but the Arc legacy has always been out on the battlefield. Coming to Zodiac as soon as possible was the only way he could force himself to man up, otherwise he would have just given up.

So that sleeping bag on the floor of the common room surrounded by a hundred faunus freshmen? Currently, that little 2x6 square-feet of land is his life's greatest accomplishment so far. (Second greatest accomplishment: Pyrrha's sleeping space is right next to his. He's sleeping right next to a girl!) He's survived one day in the company of faunus without dying. He's the first human since the end of the War to make such an effort.

{Ha! Take that, Roman!}

He only gets a millisecond warning in the form of a female-shadow falling on his shower curtain before his towel is snatched away. "Hey pervert!" calls an unfamiliar voice. "Rooster Teeth sends their regards."

He just barely stops himself from exploding out of the shower stark naked in a desperate attempt to reclaim his towel. What is this, junior high? "Hey… can you give that back?"

"Just sayin'," the girl's voice continues lazily. "When Schnee has it out for you, you'd better watch your—" Her words transition into a squeal of fear as what sounds a lot like the clean shing of a quickly-drawn blade echoes through the bathroom.

"Out."

Footsteps patter away.

Jaune shuts off the stream of water and listens, but there are no more sounds. Instead, his towel reappears as a shorter woman-shadow swings it back onto the curtain holder.

"Thanks," he says honestly.

"I am glad that I could assist you again, Jaune."

Jaune really does burst out of the shower this time. "Penny," he gasps, blindly trying to wrap the towel around his waist because his eyes are too busy making sure that the orange-haired girl doesn't magically disappear on him again. "Where—how—"

Penny grins brightly as she procures another towel out of nowhere and drapes over her own face. "There we go! Now I can't see anything." She pauses. "Not that I wasn't appreciating—"

"Penny!" Jaune quickly dries off his body and, maintaining his constant watch on the mystery helper, leaps right into the onesie. {See? Convenient.} "W-what are you doing here?"

Penny blows against the towel like they're really long bangs. "I'm. What is that phrase? Lending a hand, yes."

He snatches the towel off her face. She's still there, smiling brightly. She hasn't disappeared yet. Can he blink? His eyes are getting sort of dry. But what if she just teleports on him again? "How do you keep doing that? Disappearing on me?"

"Oh? You mean this?" Penny instantly disappears from sight.

"Penny!" He jumps forward, hand brushing through the space where she'd once been. Nothing. She's gone again, and this time he'd unintentionally asked her to do so. Growling in frustrated despair at his horrible luck, Jaune runs straight for the wall to bash his head against its surface, but chickens out and screeches to a halt at the last second. At least, he tries to stop, but the tiled shower floor is slick with water, so he keeps sliding until he body slams the wall at such a high velocity that he bounces off and topples over backwards.

Hands catch his shoulders before he drenches the back of his onesie in nasty drainwater. His head falls back to look straight up into the eyes of his savior... only all he can see is the ceiling. There's no one there; nevertheless, something is still supporting him, keeping his body off the floor.

{First a non-existent friend, now an invisible one?}

A flash of color ripples through the space above him as Penny materializes, her loose orange hair falling like a curtain around their faces. "Ta-da!" she grins.

Jaune quickly scrambles to his feet. "How did you…" He twists around to face her, grabbing her shoulders with both hands and bending down to see her eye to eye. "Okay, explain this to me."

Penny taps a finger against her chin. "Hm. What do you call it? Oh yes. I am part chameleon!"

"You're… you're what?"

"I have the ability to perfectly match myself against any environment," she explains. "And I will use it to the best of my ability in order to complete my purpose."

"Huh? What purpose?"

Penny smiles and turns away. "Good luck to you, Jaune."

Jaune practically pounces forward to prevent her from escaping. "No, don't!"

Penny's head swivels in his direction, surprise etched on her face. "Excuse me?"

"You can't just drop in and out of my life without… without telling me!" He lets his hand slide away when she turns around inquisitively. "Seriously, give a guy some prior notice at least, will you?"

"You… would like me to notify you before I approach you?" She shimmers out of sight but just as quickly reappears with a small, "BOO!"

"Eee!"

"Not a good idea, then?"

Jaune recomposes himself into a cool guy who did not just scream like a little girl a second ago. "No. In fact, don't do that ever. Just… oh!" He remembers the trick that Pyrrha taught him with the Scrolls. However, his Scroll is tucked into the bottom of his sleeping bag, and he has no guarantee that Penny will still be around if he leaves. Speaking of which…"Penny, where are you sleeping?"

"I don't sleep."

"Wait, what?"

Penny blinks innocently. "I don't need to sleep. So I don't."

That's… not regular, even for a faunus, is it? Despite their unique heritage, faunus are still half-human in the end, and that includes the need to sleep at least six hours a day. Still, the variety for faunus is so drastically different all across the board that Jaune can't exactly disagree without proper research.

"Oh. Well then, do you want to come with me to my sleeping bag so I—?"

Penny's pure expression doesn't change in the slightest when she says, "I do not believe in love at first sight and must decline."

"What…" The realization hits him like a kick to the crotch. "No, Penny, not like that. There's this trick that requires our Scrolls…"

"I am unsure whether 'scroll' is a euphemism for a certain human anatomy, but in either case, I do not have one."

"Penny!"

"This conversation has ceased to be productive, so I will take my leave for now. Good luck on your Initiation tomorrow."

"Penny, that's not what—" is all he gets out before she disappears from sight. "Couldn't you least take a couple seconds to walk away before you—"

Penny blips back into his vision perched on a window sill ten feet away, waves a goodbye, and blips back into nothingness again. The only problem is that the window is a solid frosted glass pane; it's not meant to be opened, but to let light into the showers.

"…Disappear."

Maybe she's just psyching him out.

It's definitely working.

-flashstep forward-
(weeks)

"This isn't right. This just isn't right!"

She doesn't say anything. Keeps her eyes focused on the task at hand, just barely paying attention to the quivering bunny girl next to her.

"This is wrong. Maybe she isn't one of us. This is still... she's still...!"

Blake makes a quick and decisive incision. Nothing explodes. She furrows her brow and continues to work, only pausing to quip, "Not for long, she won't."

"She's still alive, dammit!"

Blake actually has to withdraw her claws from the cavity (so she doesn't accidentally sever anything important) to look at Velvet in surprise. The quiet girl never curses. But the Rabbit glares at Blake with huge, brown eyes full of compassion, of mercy and love, and it only reinforces the idea that Velvet was never cut out for this. Her kicks had the power to send heads flying, but she could never bring herself to murder. She shouldn't be here, no matter how clean and bloodless it was. She didn't deserve this.

"Get out of here," Blake says.

Velvet startles, hard. "What?"

"You heard me. Get out."

"But Bla—"

"I've seen you hanging out with Coco," Blake barks. Then her voice softens. "You deserve better than me."

"But you saved me."

"I just pulled you out of a cage you never should have been in. You don't owe me anything. Now get out."

Having somebody like Velvet along for the ride would only hold her back anyways.

-end flashstep-

"And we ate so much food that Ren locked himself in the bathroom for hours—"

"That's enough, Nora." Ren wipes his mouth with a napkin properly, his petite breakfast platter finished.

Nora shovels three pancakes into her mouth all at once, washes it down with a gulp of syrup straight from the pitcher, and swallows most of it before speaking again. "Aw Ren, life isn't any fun without its embarrassing moments!"

"I suppose you would know, as yours is just one long moment."

There's a slight lull in the conversation at this comment. Jaune tries to take the opportunity to speak to Ren, but that's before Nora splutters indignantly, showering him, Ren, and Pyrrha with gooey bits of chewed food. No matter how animated Nora gets, though, Ren's response is just as calm and mellow as always, and the banter continues onwards.

Leaving no room for Jaune to butt in with his question about Miltia.

"Jaune? Are you feeling alright?"

Jaune turns his gaze to the redhead sitting next to him. An amused smile lingers on her face as she turns from the playful argument that Nora and Ren are still having, but the concern in her eyes is showing itself once again.

"Uh… I…"

"Nerves? I heard you tossing and turning all night."

Nerves don't even begin to describe how he's feeling. If everything is randomized, from the combatants right down to the time, then Penny couldn't know that his match was today; either way, whenever his Initiation is, can he at least survive long enough to not get his school invitation revoked? Is his single reopened chakra enough to keep him alive if a Dragon brings an ocean of water down on his head, or if a super-fast Snake punches his face in? He'd concluded that he needed to look around for Miltia again to see if she was up for another quickie

{That sounded better in my head.}

but, even though Melanie Malachite is sitting in the same corner with her clique and Cardin-the-Guardian, Miltia still hasn't made an appearance.

If she even exists.

{This is just too complicated.}

Okay, he needs to look at the facts: he'd randomly encountered her in the school courtyard and she'd practically promised to meet up with him again, but he hasn't actually caught a glimpse of his non-existent friend within the Academy proper. Melanie and Cardin had both made public appearances at dinner; Miltia had not. Still, when he'd met the trio earlier on the airship, the two had treated Miltia as a separate person. Tifa treated just the name of Miltia with some degree of loathing, so much that she ignored Jaune by association. Finally, during their awkward conversation in the tree, Ren had at least expressed that the revealing of the Girl-Who-Doesn't-Exist meant something significant.

Ren's his greatest lead so far, so all he needs right now is for Nora to shut up. "I just need to ask Ren a question. A really important one."

"Oh. Then why didn't you just say so?"

{Huh. Why didn't he just butt in?}

Pyrrha taps Ren on the shoulder. Just as Ren is turning in their direction, however, the headmistress' voice blares throughout the cafeteria. "Welcome to Zodiac Academy, initiates."

Ren quickly stands from his seat. "That's my cue," he says curtly.

"Bye Director dude!" Nora shouts enthusiastically. "You better give me points for being awesome!"

Ren gives her a wordless wave as he departs, and Jaune buries his face in his hands as his greatest lead disappears. As the Director for the West house, Ren will probably spend the next week judging and sorting initiates into Directions… meaning he won't be available at all for questioning.

"Today marks the first day of initiatory duels. Please check your Scrolls regularly for notifications, as fights will occur at random and unexpected times in simulation of real-world experiences. The first match of the year will occur in the grand auditorium—"

A massive wave surges forward at this announcement, seeing as the auditorium is within the same building. Pyrrha, Jaune, and Nora are washed along with the current, out of the cafeteria and down several flights of stairs. At one point, Pyrrha grabs Jaune's hand to keep them from being separated {stop blushing like a schoolgirl, idiot} while Nora doggedly tails behind them, all the way until they find seats in the auditorium. The atmosphere in the room is so drastically different from yesterday's—a humming, fanatical sort of energy that infuses everything and everyone—that Jaune hardly recognizes the place. In fact, it feels like the entire student population of Zodiac Academy has been crammed into the amphitheater surrounding the lowered stage.

The realization alone sends Jaune's nerves into an even crazier frenzy—because according to Penny, he'll receive a notification on his Scroll sometime today to head to one of the twelve areas located around the academy. Maybe it will be this auditorium with its flat concrete stage—but it might be something completely different. He'd read on his Scroll that it could even happen in the tree that he'd speared him to yesterday, or in the sandy dunes of the dry desert biosphere, or even underwater. Either way, when he eventually steps into that mystery ring, there will probably be just as many people watching him fail horribly against whomever the school administrators pit him against.

He is so royally screwed.

Unless… maybe they'll pit him against a faunus who's not one of the Twelve. After all, his transcripts say he's from… Light, he hasn't actually looked at his transcript yet. He hopes his sources were smart enough to write him down as a terrestrial faunus species. He really doesn't want to drown in his arena.

He hopes his opponent is weak. That would be nice, not getting his head smashed against the unforgiving ground within the first five seconds of the match. What about a Sheep as an opponent? Miltia had those retractable claws, yeah, but she seemed a lot more like she'd rather heal than hurt. Plus… what harm were sheep in real life?

How about fighting a Rabbit? A cute, friendly little bunny chewing on carrots—

His thought process is interrupted when two three-dimensional figures flicker into existence in the holographic airspace above the stage, accompanied by their name, species, and a vertical green bar of health. In shock, Jaune recognizes both of them: Cardin Winchester and Velvet Scarlatina.

Excited whispers break out around him as he nervously bops Pyrrha with his elbow. "Doesn't the school at least field the fights after the randomization?"

Pyrrha gives him a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"Just look at that!" Jaune motions towards the scene. At one end of the stage stands the tiny girl in her school uniform, her shoulders bowed into her body timidly, her long brown ears quivering in what Jaune assumes to be fear. On the other end stands a beast of a man at least two heads taller than her… and is he growing? Jaune swears that Cardin has more muscle mass on his torso than he did a minute ago. "This can't be fair," he murmurs.

"You're right," Pyrrha agrees. "It isn't."

She's the most compassionate faunus he's met so far; shouldn't she be saying something more? But she doesn't, and the whispers die down as Headmistress Goodwitch's amplified voice echoes throughout the entire semi-stadium, "Initiates, prepare yourselves."

It's like the calm before the storm, right before somebody dies. Jaune leaps to his feet, unsure of what to do, but needing to do something. "This isn't—"

"CRUSH HIS SKULL!" Nora howls at the top of her lungs. Her voice is the catalyst for the hundreds of cheers that almost drown out the sound of the headmistress announcing the start of the match.

Cardin roars. Actually, it's a bit more on the side of a squeal, but Jaune's emotions are already on overdrive and the sound is outright terrifying. The fear only escalates as the massive hulk charges straight towards the tiny girl with the full intent of leaving her nothing more than a smear across the white flooring.

"Run!" Jaune shouts hysterically. His single spoken word, however, is nothing compared to the swelling shout of an entire student body as Cardin closes the distance between him and Velvet in three seconds. There is no change in his momentum; his mass exceeds the bunny girl's so much that she doesn't even slow him d—

Wait—she wasn't even there in the first place. Jaune realizes this at the same time that Cardin does; the guy, who's packing so much muscle that it's forcing his torso to hunch forward, slides to a stop and begins to turn around.

The air shimmers to the left of Cardin's face as his head turns to the right, but before his shoulders follow. In that split second where his neck muscles are stretched to the max, Velvet Scarlatina materializes out of thin air and delivers a spinning kick to his cheek, overextending the turn of his head.

Cardin stumbles to the side, disorientated. He doesn't even have time to reorient himself before Velvet has appeared in front of him in the middle of a backflip kick that snaps his head back. The next second, she's hitting the back of his knees with a leg sweep, and the second after that, it's almost as if she's teleported above him to piston both her feet into his upper chest. Every blow is accented by a ridiculously amplified and almost satisfying whomp, smack, and thump, feeding the bloodthirsty fervor of the witnessing student body. As the Boar finally crumples backwards, Velvet finishes off with a forward-flipping axe kick to the exposed neck that rings around the auditorium with a sickening crack.

Jaune's jaw hits the ground at the same time that Cardin's body does.

The guy gets back on his feet within seconds, however. Though his breathing is frighteningly erratic, it magically steadies when he audibly pops his neck in both directions over the thundering of the crowd, beady eyes watching his fast-moving prey. On the other hand, Velvet seems to have tired herself out already and is moving slower; so much that Jaune can track her movement now as a brown blur whirling around Cardin's muscular form, landing multiple hits that keep him on his toes. However, Jaune notes how Cardin's health bar is falling almost too slowly to be possible; the Boar takes all the hits like a tank, waiting for just the right moment—

A massive fist blasts forward and up in an unforgiving uppercut, tossing the Rabbit right up into the holographic airspace. When she passes up through the projection of her health bar, the three-dimensional image explodes into a dense cloud of green pixels that fade to yellow as they reform; the crowd goes wild at this while Jaune nervously bites down on his fist. She can't take another hit like that—a single punch knocked her health down 60%.

{Is every fight going to be like this—literal survival of the fittest?}

The blurry brown mass loses its controlled form and blossoms open into a tangle of brown hair and awkwardly twisted limbs. While Jaune is nervously sweating a waterfall in fear of Velvet's safety, though, even Pyrrha is roaring in approval—like a literal Tiger, thrumming bass notes that echo from the depths of her well-endowed chest...

{...pervert.}

Cardin roars again as he crouches, then leaps into the airspace right above Velvet. He could easily body-slam the helpless bunny girl into the stage, but instead he wraps her tiny head in the entirety of his massive palm. As they both begin to fall, he shoves Velvet's fragile little skull straight towards the unforgiving floor with enough force to pulverize half the arena itself into a fine cloud of concrete dust.

Though the volume builds up to such unbelievable levels that he can't even hear himself think, Jaune still manages to catch Nora raging, "IS SHE DEAD YET?"

The gigantic dust cloud that poofs up around the stage shields Cardin from sight—and giving away the path of a figure that darts up and out of Cardin's clutches. Jaune is speechless when Velvet breaches the cloud layer to the roaring approval of spectators. For a second, she simply hangs there in full sight of cameras that project her image into the holographic airspace: an anthropomorphic hare with glinting yellow eyes and long brown hair that whirls around her head like a ghostly halo.

"BREAK HIS LEGS!"

Velvet shoots straight down into the dust cloud. Jaune can't see anything that's happening; all he can do is watch the in disbelief as Cardin's green health bar slowly but steadily whittles its way down to yellow… and finally to red.

Headmistress Goodwitch's voice rings out over all. "STOP."

A wind procured out of nowhere blow away the covering of airborne dust, revealing Cardin kneeling in the middle of a small crater, his beefy arms protecting his head. Strands of wispy brown hair are tangled in his fingers—his would-be victim must have literally torn herself from his grip at the last second to avoid pulverization. And with the subsequent reduced visibility, Cardin must not have been able to lock onto Velvet's agile form until she was already out of his reach. The sneaky guerilla fighter herself crouches six feet away, every muscle flexed and poised to strike. The cameras pan up to her face yet again to show that the long brown ears atop her head are still quivering.

It definitely isn't because of fear. Velvet genuinely looks like she'd like to kick Cardin's head off. With pleasure. And is horribly disappointed that the headmistress called the match to an end.

Is this the same girl? The scarlet, panties-flashing, embarrassed girl of yesterday?

"Cardin Winchester," Headmistress Goodwitch's disembodied voice announces, "North!"

The holospace above the stage darkens ominously before consolidating into a massive and defensive tortoise. Sorted already?

"Velvet Scarlatina: West!"

The projection of the black tortoise explodes into white snow that gently drifts downward; a white tigress flash-steps into this calming scene and stretches lazily.

His Scroll vibrates unexpectedly, sending shivers throughout Jaune's entire body as the central button flashes with a message signal. With apprehension, opens up the device and taps the blinking icon in the upper-right corner of the holographic pad, whereupon it expands to fill the entirety of his screen.

Jaune Arc of Lemming, check in at the Pool of Zen by 09:30.
Your opponent is Weiss Schnee of Rooster.
Best of luck.