To any outsider, it would appear Blake became quick friends with her team leader. While Ruby might hesitate to confirm they were friends, she would at least smile and say they got along. The truth, however, is that Blake was studying the strange redhead. She was afraid to just come out and ask her about 'princesses' and her falling out of the sky, mostly because she wasn't sure Ruby remembered her from the beach and she didn't know where to start. After the first week, she came to her first conclusion.

Ruby Rose was frustratingly sane.

Since officially becoming a team, Blake noticed nothing out of the ordinary. It was genuinely maddening to the bow-headed girl. Was she the one going insane? No, Ruby herself was clearly real, other people were interacting with her. So the beach event that took place a week before she met the girl again at Beacon must have been real. The alternative was that Blake dreamed a perfect representation of someone she never met, shortly before meeting them for real.

Another possibility was that Ruby herself was aware of the strangeness surrounding her and was actively hiding it. That could mean the girl was insane and simply aware of her insanity, but again, Blake has been watching carefully for a week. She was fairly certain that was enough time for someone truly insane to slip something nonsensical into conversation by accident through the raw power of chaos theory. But no, not another mention of princesses or the like, just a normal girl.

A normal girl, two years younger than her classmates, with combat skill that out-shined all the first years and most the second years, as well as surprisingly competent leadership skills for someone so young. It made Blake all the more curious about Ruby's previous training, and indeed, about the girl herself. But it was clear to Blake that if she wished to probe her leader's deeper secrets, she was going to have to do more than simply observe.

More frustration came at the realization that Ruby had no personal effects beyond what she wore day to day. She brought no posters, no books, no stuffed animals, nothing that gave any hints. Even her weapon was on her at all times. At least, that's what Blake was supposed to assume. Assuming she bought that 'spatial manipulation' was a real semblance that allowed Ruby to shrink her weapon into nothing in a flash of red light without causing a singularity from the hyper reduction of mass. Then again, apparently there was a kid in Atlas who could duplicate themselves, so who knew.

It left Blake with only one option to learn more – asking questions. And again, she had no idea where to start. If Ruby was intentionally secretive, too blunt a question could result in her stonewalling the inquiry. She was going to have to be careful…

It was a Friday after classes when it finally happened. Yang had gone to hang out with friends and Weiss was in the library quite possibly studying something they weren't required to study. This left Blake alone with Ruby in RWBY dorm. The bow-headed girl was on her bed with a well-worn book in hand, but she had a difficult time reading. She realized very quickly she was alone in the dorm with her team leader, who was lightly reading over material actually in their curriculum and occasionally looking at a colorful device that looked like a toy scroll from ten years ago.

Blake eventually gathered the courage to ask, "What's that?"

"It's nothing," Ruby answered quickly and pocketed the device.

Blake flinched. That seemed a casual enough question and she was already being shut down. She casually turned a page in her book, if for no other reason than to give off the illusion she was still reading. What the hell am I supposed to ask? "Hey Ruby?"

"Yeah, Blake?"

"Have you ever been to the beach?" Blake asked carefully.

"I grew up on Patch, Blake," Ruby giggled, "It's an island. I could leave my house in two different directions and walk to the beach in ten minutes. I used to sneak out to the beach when I was five."

"What about Vale's beach?" Blake peeked at Ruby's face from over the corner of her book, hoping to gauge the redhead's reaction.

"I mean, sure, once or twice," Ruby shrugged. "Why?"

Okay, so she doesn't remember me, Blake concluded. "I don't know, I guess I just can't help but be curious. Yang isn't quiet about her home life, and who doesn't know where Weiss comes from. But I don't know much about you?"

"Okay..." Ruby turned to Blake slowly, her mind thoughtful. "What about you?"

"Me?" Blake blinked.

"I know Yang, she's my sister," Ruby explained, "And I didn't know about Weiss before meeting her, but the internet is a wonderful thing. But I don't know anything about Blake Belladonna. Well, there is a well known Belladonna family in Menagerie, but their daughter's name isn't public record. Also, they're faunus."

Blake winced imperceptibly. "Wait, did you look me up on the internet?"

"I figured it was only fair, you did eavesdrop on me," Ruby reminded her of her slip up in the Emerald Forest.

Blake's eyes widened. "Oh. You remembered that."

"It stuck out since I was nowhere near the ballroom when I was talking to Professor Ozpin," Ruby explained.

Blake's eyes returned guiltily to the words in her book. "Sorry..."

Ruby frowned. She didn't want to appear that she had secrets to protect, but she did have secrets to protect. "Why were listening in, anyway?"

Blake thought hard on how to answer. Screw it, cards on the table… She took a deep breath to muster her courage and returned, "You don't recognize me, do you?"

Ruby did seem to stall for a moment. "...Should I?"

"From the beach in Vale?" Blake continued, "When you fell out of the sky…?"

Ruby went quiet. Eventually she cleared her throat, "No, no, are you sure it was me?"

Blake had to admit she was surprised. She wouldn't have guessed Ruby would go straight down the impossible denial route. "You kind of stand out in a crowd, if you didn't notice."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you," Ruby shrugged with a nervous smile.

Blake blinked. Well, at least that's not a lie… "Okay, what about that comment about princesses?" Blake asked next, knowing Ruby couldn't deny that one was her.

Unfortunately for Blake, Ruby had time to prepare a response to this, given she actually remembered that event. "I don't know, Blake. I guess I was just trying to sound impressive? I could of sworn there was a princess somewhere in Atlas, it's that kind of place."

"You've been to Atlas?" Blake didn't buy it for a second.

"I didn't say that," Ruby disputed, "I just thought there was a princess somewhere for me to pretend meeting."

Blake frowned. Making up meeting a princess to sound impressive didn't sound like the Ruby she got to know, but she didn't have any solid theory to argue. "Fine. Where did you train?"

"Why does this feel like an interrogation?" Ruby crossed her arms.

"It's an innocent question. Like I said, I just want to get to know you," Blake defended, "and you haven't told anyone where you trained."

"I trained very far away," Ruby threw out her usual response.

"Where?" Blake pressed, "Does your school have a name?"

Ruby sighed, realizing she was going to have to come up with something. She needed more time, without looking like she was thinking up an answer. "Where did you grow up?"

Blake blinked. "Excuse me?"

"If we're getting to know each other better, I wanna know where you grew up," Ruby pushed on, internally relieved her bid for time worked. "I told you I grew up on Patch, so?"

Blake clammed up. She didn't want to talk too much about her own past, lest her own secrets come out. Whether Ruby was aware of it or not, she had stumbled over the perfect strategy to end Blake's curiosity. "I-I grew up outside the kingdoms. I didn't really stay in one place long enough to call anywhere a 'home'..." she (in her own opinion, pathetically) excused.

Ruby raised an eyebrow, confused by the change in the bow-headed girl's demeanor.

Luckily for both of them, Weiss entered the dorm at that moment, giving them both a good excuse to end the cross examination. "Where's Yang?" Weiss asked, completely missing, or perhaps ignoring, the tension in the room.

"I dunno," Ruby shrugged.

Weiss looked like she was about to scold Ruby for not knowing, but managed to stop herself before beginning to regress. "I suppose it is the weekend. But I was hoping to go into Vale as a team this afternoon."

"What for?" Blake asked.

"They're setting up the Vytal Festival!" Weiss smiled. "I even heard the first groups of exchange students are supposed to arrive! I figured it might be the perfect excuse to… bond? As a team?"

"That's not a bad idea," Ruby nodded. "I'll shoot Yang a text."

"They're setting up the Vytal Festival already?" Blake asked while Ruby fiddled with her scroll.

"It's true that the week-long fair and tournament the schools host are the big event, but technically the festival itself goes on for weeks." Weiss answered.

"Yang's already in Vale," Ruby announced, "She says she'll meet us when we land."

"Off to the air docks!" Weiss happily announced.

Yang was at Vale's airdock when the Beacon transport carrying her team landed. She waved with a large smile. Soon enough, the team was wandering the streets of Vale, with Weiss wearing a large smile. "A festival dedicated to the cultures of the world! There will be dances, parades, a tournament! Oh, the amount of planning and organization that goes into this event is simply breathtaking!" she nearly sang.

"You really know how to take a good thing and make it sound boring," Yang smirked.

"Quiet, you!" Weiss crossed her arms.

"If we're here for the festival, why are we walking toward the docks?" Ruby asked, scrunching her nose at the smell of fish.

"I've heard that students visiting from Vacuo will be arriving by ship today," Weiss's smile returned. "And, as a representative of Beacon, I feel as though it is my solemn duty to welcome them to this fine kingdom."

"She wants to spy on them so she'll have the upper hand in the tournament," Blake deduced quickly.

"You can't prove that!" Weiss failed to plead innocence.

Ruby turned to face her sister. "What's all this about a tourrrnnn- whaa?" The young leader was quickly distracted. As she turned her head, a peculiar scene entered her periphery. She recognized the store 'From Dust 'Til Dawn', and it was destroyed. Broken windows, tossed shelves and police tape surrounding the outside. Ruby wandered to the edge of the police tape, and her team followed. She looked to one of the two detectives looking over the scene. "Was this place robbed?"

The detective nodded, "Second Dust shop to be hit this week. This town is goin' insane..."

"Isn't this the same place you saved?" Yang asked her sister.

"Yeah," Ruby nodded, "That's the scene that got me invited to Beacon."

"This must suck to see..." Yang noted.

"They left all the money again," the other detective called out.

This caught Ruby's attention. She recalled the night of the robbery she stopped.Calm down, we're not here for your money… "I wonder… someone was flying that airship..."

"Rubes?" Yang overheard.

"Who even needs that much Dust?" The first detective wondered aloud.

"I don't know, an army?" the second responded.

"You thinking the White Fang?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking we don't get paid enough."

Weiss crossed her arms and hmphed. "The White Fang? What an awful bunch of degenerates."

"What's your problem?" Blake sounded offended.

"I simply don't care for the criminally insane," Weiss explained flippantly.

"The White Fang are hardly a bunch of psychopaths," Blake crossed her own arms and narrowed her eyes. "They're a collection of misguided faunus."

Ruby's eyebrow began to raise. She knew what faunus were. A subset of Remnant's population that were mostly human, save for various animal attributes that differed from individual to individual. They were an oppressed people for centuries, only gaining equal rights in a few of the kingdoms in the past few generations. They were perfectly equal in Vale, though in Atlas they were still fighting a bitter fight. And racism is a lot harder to stamp out than bad regulations. The source of Ruby's confusion was that she wasn't sure what the 'White Fang' was...

"Misguided?" Weiss nearly laughed. "They want to wipe Humanity off the face of the planet!"

"Then they're very misguided!" Blake defended, "either way, it doesn't explain why faunus would rob a Dust shop in the middle of downtown Vale..."

"Blake has a point. That guy I helped arrest, what was his name again…?" Ruby cut in, "Torchwick? He was robbing Dust and leaving behind the lien, and he was human. At least, I'm pretty sure he was. And he had a partner that got away."

Weiss frowned, but didn't relent. "That still doesn't change the fact that the White Fang are a bunch of scum. Those faunus only know how to lie, cheat, and steal."

"That's not necessarily true," Yang defended.

Team RWBY was interrupted about that moment by a commotion from the docks. Apparently, a faunus stowaway had taken his moment to escape the boat, and subsequently the police. The faunus, a lightly dressed boy with blond hair and a blond monkey tail, ran right past them, winking as he did so. Ruby noticed a glint of weaponry under his loose shirt. "I think he might be a student."

"Well, Weiss, you wanted to see the competition, and there it goes," Yang smirked.

"Quick! We have to observe him!" Weiss announced.

The team gave chase, but quickly lost him. Weiss's ensuing search for the 'rapscallion' and 'the filthy faunus from the boat' sparked yet another argument between her and Blake. This argument heated quickly and showed no signed of slowing down, even as the sun set and the team made their way back to Beacon.

"You ignorant little brat!"

"How dare you talk to me like that! I am your teammate!"

"You are a judgmental little girl!"

"What in the world makes you say that!?"

"The mere fact that you would sort that Faunus boy with a terrorist group solely based on his species makes you just as much of a scoundrel as you believe him to be!"

"So you admit it! The White Fang is just a radical group of terrorists!"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

Ruby took the opportunity to pull Yang away and have a private word. "So… remind me what the 'White Fang' is?"

"Right," Yang remembered her sister had a three-year gap in her knowledge of Remnant's recent history. "So, the White Fang started as a faunus peace organization. Protests, stand ins, marches, all for faunus rights. Though the last few years, their methods have become… morally questionable. Less boycotts of anti-faunus businesses and more fire-bombings."

"Okay, I get it," Ruby nodded. "What I still don't understand why Weiss and Blake are so angry over it."

"Well, Weiss is a Schnee straight outta Atlas. The SDC is a major White Fang target, and Weiss's dad isn't doing much to mend bridges if you get what I'm sayin'," Yang explained. "As for Blake… I'm not entirely sure, honestly."

"I don't understand why this is causing such a problem!"

"That is the problem!"

The argument indeed lasted all they way back to the dorm. Heated words were still being slung back and forth between Weiss and Blake even as the moon shone brightly through RWBY dorm's window. Ruby and Yang still didn't know what to do, watching uncomfortably as the scene played itself out.

"You realize you are defending an organization that hates Humanity, don't you?" Weiss pointed out, "The Faunus of the White Fang are pure evil!"

"There's no such thing as pure evil!" Blake countered, "Why do you think they hate Humanity so much? It's because of people like Cardin, people like you, that force the White Fang to take such drastic measures!"

"People like me?" Weiss reeled.

"You're discriminatory!" Blake shouted.

"I'm a victim!" Weiss shouted even louder.

The dorm finally got silent as Weiss took a breath and calmly elaborated. "You want to know why I despise the White Fang? Why I don't particularly trust the faunus? It's because they've been at war with my family for years. War, as in actual bloodshed. My grandfather's company has had a target painted across its back for as long as I can remember. And ever since I was a child, I've watched family friends disappear, board members executed... an entire train car full of Dust, stolen. And every day, my father would come home, furious. And that made for a very. Difficult. Childhood."

Blake's eyes nearly became sympathetic, until Weiss's voice turned sharp. The heiress spun on her heel and added, "You want to know why I despise the White Fang!? It's because they're a bunch of liars, thieves, and murderers!"

"Well maybe we were just tired of being pushed around!"

Blake's words caused a heavy silence to blanket the dorm. Everyone's eyes widen in realization, and Weiss backs away slightly.

"Blake…?" Ruby reached out.

"I… I..." Blake became a black blur as she sprinted out of the room.

"Blake!?" Ruby called out after her, dashing to the door.

"I can't believe it," Weiss crossed her arms. "A terrorist, sleeping next to us!"

"We don't know her side of the story," Ruby quickly pointed out.

"Do we need it?" Weiss shook her head, "She'll probably just lie to us, like she apparently has been for weeks."

Ruby groaned. "I'm going to go look for her. She can't have gotten far yet."

"We should be calling the police!" Weiss argued.

"No!" Ruby shut the heiress down. "Yang, make sure Weiss doesn't do anything stupid."

"Got it, boss," Yang nodded. Ruby left the two alone in the dorm and ran down the hallway.

Blake didn't know where she was going. She ran in circles, lost in thought. It wasn't until she found herself at Beacon's fountain that she realized she hadn't even left the school grounds. She slowed to a stop. Her eyes passed over the fountain's centerpiece, a statue depicting a group of huntsmen rising triumphant over a pack of Grimm. She slowly reached up and undid her bow, releasing a pair of cat ears from their fabric prison.

"There you are."

The voice made Blake freeze. How did they find me so quickly? She nervously turned around and was surprised to see Ruby was alone. The redhead nodded to her and quietly stepped up next to her, eyes passing over the statue as well. The silence dragged on, becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the secret faunus. She had almost managed to unfreeze her feet to run once again when Ruby finally broke the silence.

"Is it racist if I call your cat ears cute?" the young leader asked.

Blake was so surprised by the innocent question, she stopped herself from taking off. "I, um… wouldn't mind it from you. I know you're being sincere."

"Well then, your ears are cute," Ruby smiled.

"T-thank you..." Blake stammered.

The silence returned, but not for nearly as long. "Weiss may not be willing to hear your side of the story, at least not yet," Ruby spoke up, "but I am."

Blake opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't the words she wanted.

Ruby sighed. "Are you a bad guy?"

"No!" Blake defended quickly. "Or, I don't know, or, I mean…" her face fell, "I don't want to be..."

"Okay," Ruby nodded.

"Okay?" Blake wasn't sure she understood correctly.

"If you need time away from Weiss, to gather your thoughts, I understand," Ruby promised. "I'll tell the team I couldn't find you. We'll probably search Vale for you tomorrow. I'll find a few moments to break away in the afternoon and meet you somewhere, and we can talk. Okay?"

Blake was in quiet thought for nearly a full minute. "There's a cafe… open balcony, not too far from the Dust shop from today..."

"I'll meet you there," Ruby confirmed.

"Just like that?" Blake was in disbelief.

"Interrogating you while you're all emotional like this will do no good," The leader half-joked, "and if you don't show up, I'll just have to hunt ya' down."

"R-right..." Blake nodded.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow," Ruby smiled and walked away.

Blake still wasn't quite sure she didn't just imagine that scenario. She finally unstuck her feet and walked away from Beacon. As she passed the standing pillars of the courtyard, someone familiar was leaning against one seemingly waiting for her. The golden haired monkey faunus from the boat earlier that day. He smirked at her, "I knew you'd look better without the bow."