Chapter 10: DramaPhone: WV

Character Change: Viralious - Winter Schnee

Location: Team VIEW's dorm room: common area

The walk back to their dorm was short and uneventful. Shortly after entering, Viralious turned to his team and said,

"Why don't we take the time before we meet with Team CARD to unpack our bags and get to know each other a little bit better?"

Ifiral raises an eyebrow before Eckhart steps forward,

"What could you possibly have to unpack? You are a vagabond who came to Atlas with little more than the shirt on your back. Another thing, what makes you think we should have waited until you ordered it to unpack our bags?" his tone dripping barely hiding anger and annoyance.

Viralious puts his hands up before stepping back, "Look I'm not trying to start anything Eckhart, I was just giving a suggestion to kill the time. Besides I figured it would be a good way to get to know each other considering we're a team for the next four years." He then places his hands down "I believe that we can do great things as a team but we need to actually be a team first." Viralious says in a tone somewhere between exhaustion and negotiation.

Eckhart and Viralious are just glaring at each other, the tension in the air is thick enough you could cut it with a knife.

"Why don't we all take a 10-minute break then discuss some things as a team?" Winter suddenly says cutting in, getting all three other members of her team to look at her. Ifiral just shrugs before moving into his suite and sitting on the bed.

Eckhart just nods, "That sounds…" Pointless, irrelevant, inconsequential "fine". In a neutral tone.

Viralious turns to Eckhart as he speaks and responds afterward, "let's make it 30, give everyone a bit of time to get their heads on straight" before turning and walking into his suite.

Eckhart rolls his eyes before walking into his and Ifiral's suite and shutting the door. Winter is left in the common area of their dorm alone. Sighing she begins to walk to her suite when she feels her scroll start vibrating in her pocket. Pulling it out she looks at the caller ID and a puzzled look appears on her face before she answers.

"Hello mom, what's-"

"WINTER!" Her little sister screams through the scroll interrupting her.

"Hi Weiss, how are you doing?" Winter says as a smile appears on her face

Weiss frowns slightly before turning to her mother who she's sitting on the lap of. "I'm a little sad that you're not here but daddy's just approved for me to get singing lessons!"

"That's great Weiss, you'll be the best singer in this family before long" This comment gets a light chuckle out of her mother as she remembers the first time Winter tried to sing… it did not go that well.

"So Winter, how was your first day of classes?" Her mother says in a soothing voice

"They went… fine. Honestly, we mostly just went over the syllabus… The professors are… knowledgeable on their subjects and most of the students seem diligent." Winter drones out in a simple neutral tone.

"Winter, I mean how are you? Not how your classes are" her mother says in a calm tone.

"Oh, I'm doing fine, not much has happened…" she trails off not finding anything to say

"Winter, what about your team? What are they like? Are they pretty? Are you the leader? Can I meet them?" Weiss suddenly blurts out.

Winter is slightly taken aback by her sister's forwardness for a second before continuing "Oh, my team is fine, we're Team VIEW. Honestly, I don't know that much about them but they all seem like decent people. I mean Ifiral is pretty quiet, he's strong though, Eckhart is a little stuck up, but his heart is in the right place, as for Viralious…" She suddenly trails off trying to think of a way to describe her partner.

"Winter, did you say that your partners are boys?" Weiss looks questioningly at the scroll screen, off to the side she notices her mother is raising an eyebrow.

"Umm yeah they're all guys bu-"

"Weiss, could you do me a favour and bring me some sheet music from your room? I think it would be nice to play a little bit of piano for you and Winter." Her mother suddenly interrupted.

Weiss then suddenly shot off of her mother's lap and ran out the door, leaving Winter to stare at her mother's serious expression.

"Mom, it's not that-"

"Winter, I am sure they are trustworthy people but… I just want to warn you that living with men is very different. That being said I don't think I ever told you about the birds and th-"

"We covered that in first aid class today" Winter's face flushing as she quickly interrupted her mother.

"Winter… Please just promise me that you'll understand that some people might try and use you to get your name… so just be prepared for people to treat you… differently"

Winter stared at her mother for a second pondering her mother's words… She had always been treated differently because of her name. She was the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. Her father had tried and failed to produce suitors for her, multiple people changed their tunes to her after they realized she wouldn't fall for them… Worst of all she knew her mother was right, after all she was speaking from personal experience that she was too blind to accept.

"I understand, mother, but they're not like that…" Weiss suddenly returned and hopped onto her mother's lap holding a simple sheet of paper that held the notes for a children's lullaby. "Eckhart doesn't care about the company… something he has made clear to father, Ifiral honestly doesn't seem to care about anything, so I think I'm good on that front. Viralious… He's well he's straight up told me he doesn't care about my name or where I came from… I guess what I'm trying to say is that he's honestly the best partner I could have gotten…" Winter says with a slight hesitation to her tone, there's a hint of pride but also a hint of sorrow. Her mother just looks at her before smiling.

"Winter? What are you talking about?" Weiss says in a questioning tone.

"Something for when you're older, dear." Her mother responds and starts running her hands through her hair. "Now then, I believe that we should let Winter go for now, she's bound to have a bit of homework to do." Weiss pouts slightly but turns to Winter

"Don't forget to call Winter, I want to hear all about your lessons!"

"I will Weiss and thank you for calling," she says hanging up. "I needed a distraction," she says, dropping her smile into a frown and walking towards her suite.

Character Change: Winter Schnee - Viralious

Location Team VIEW's dorm room: VW suite

Viralious looks at the bag sitting next to his bed, it's a simple rucksack and is mostly filled with his spare clothes, the rest of his Lien, a few odds and ends ranging from first aid equipment to survival equipment. But most importantly at the bottom is a picture frame. Pulling it out he places it on the nightstand next to him. The smiling faces at a promise and plan that wasn't going to happen anymore. Viralious just stared at the picture for a moment then placed it on the small desk next to his bed… picture facing down.

Sighing Viralious pulls out his phone and begins to dial Zeliska… until he remembers that it was currently 6 AM in Vacuo. Honestly, I doubt she would like to be woken up by my problems. Slowly he begins to look through the rest of the contacts in his scroll… before eventually landing on his stepdads. Facepalming Viralious takes a deep breath and presses the call button.

The scroll rings twice before the rugged blond man appears with a somewhat surprised and annoyed look on his face.

"It's great to hear from you, Viralious but I don't know if you could have picked a worse time." his stepdad said with a slight hitch to his tone.

"Sorry about that Tai, if it's a bad time I can call you back." Viralious said, raising an eyebrow.

"No, it's fine. It's just Ruby's first day at preschool and *sniff* I was just thinking about your mother." Tai responded slowly, wiping a tear from his eye.

"Oh, I see…"

"So, what's up Kid, I got your message… Atlas huh honestly I wouldn't have expected that from you. Then again, you did love the Air conditioner."

This got a small chuckle from Viralious before he continued

"Do you remember the part where I mentioned I was team leader?"

"Yeah, congrats on that means you impressed old Iron Dick."

"What?! Okay, out of everything I wasn't expecting that from 'Swear Jar Tai'." Viralious responded, taken aback slightly.

"Sue me, he can have a stick up his ass sometimes. Now what's up with you being the leader?"

"I honestly don't know but it feels like one of my team members has it out against me specifically… Like everything I do is the wrong choice or a personal attack." Viralious says, leaning back and placing a hand on his neck.

"Geez this sounds familiar."

"What do you mean?"

"Both Qrow and Raven didn't listen to Summer or take her seriously as a leader for a while after we became a team. I don't know how Summer ended up getting Raven in line, but I know that she tried to get Qrow to open up to her… and well you saw the end result." Tai responds reminiscing getting lost in his memories

"I have a sinking suspicion why Raven ended up following Mom." Viralious says rolling his eyes.

"What was that Viralious?"

"Oh nothing… Tai I'm sorry about the house… I really am I'll do what I can t-"

"Oh, don't worry about it"

"What? You're not mad?"

"Oh no I'm pissed. Immensely and if you ever come home you can expect to not leave your room until Ruby has graduated." Tai said scowling, though his eyes showed the same jovial tone they always did.

"Do you mean graduate preschool or high/huntsman schooling?" A smirk appeared on Viralious' face.

"Haven't decided yet… anyway Viralious about your teammate give them some time, it's been one and a half days at most, so they'll open up. If not, sometimes they just need a little push."

"That is the most contradictory advice I have ever been given."

"What about Yang's hairbrush instructions?"

"Those just boiled down to 'don't touch my hair bwitch' so yeah actually I think so." Viralious responded in a mimicry of the young child

"I swear she takes after her mother… So, speaking of her, have you talked to Qrow at all?" his scowl turning into a look of worry and questioning.

"Why would I take to the person who murdered my mother?"

"Viralious he-"

"A gunshot through the heart, could a Grimm have done that? No and the only people in the forest were going to be me, mom and him…" anger slowly boiling through Viralious' eyes.

"It could have been someone else… Besides you saw the autopsy, it was Grimm, not a bullet." Tai responds, slinking into annoyance.

" I was there, Tai. There weren't any bite or claw marks. So, unless there's a new type of Grimm that can fire a projectile that perfectly matches a bul-"

"Did you even check if the caliber would have been the same?"

"No, how could I?"

"Then how are you sure it was Qrow? How do you know there wasn't someone else there in the forest?"

"Because I highly doubt anyone else would go to team STRQ's cabin on Patch then shoot the leader of said team."

"Wait, how do you know about that cabin?"

"You remember when Summer and I visited when Yang was born… We stayed there for about a month before heading…" Viralious' voice goes low as he thinks back to that memory.

"Look, Viralious… I'm sorry to dredge up old memories… *sigh* Look, can we talk about something else." Tai responds solemnly and moves his head down slightly.

Glancing down at the time on his scroll Viralious exhales "I think it's best if I just hang up, I'm supposed to meet the team across the hall to for some joint team bonding activities"

"They do that in Atlas?"

"Not officially, it was my idea."

"Huh, not what I would have expected from you."

"Yeah, well I'm full of surprises, Tai."

"Yeah, I'm seeing that more and more. Look, stay safe, Viralious and feel free to call me to talk… Oh just so you know I do have the year off from teaching at Signal so feel free to call during school hours."

"I'll keep that in mind Tai… Hey if you don't mind me asking where are you all staying… I was hoping to send some presents for Ruby's birthday or maybe some interesting souvenirs from Atlas." Viralious's tone is slightly hopeful.

"Currently we are staying in the Signal dorms but hopefully we can get the house rebuilt soon… As for the presents, hold off until we've got the house rebuilt." Tai says with a straight face.

"Any idea of when that will be?"

"A month or two, we've already gotten approval and such… Just need to raise some funds."

"I'll help how I can… after all it's my fault." Viralious' head tilts down as he speaks.

"Don't worry about it for now… after all, insurance covered a large amount."

"You got insurance on it?"

"Barely, Viralious here's a nice tip… Never have to deal with a lawyer."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Oh well, it looks like preschool's out for the day… Here comes Ruby now. Mind if I hang up to get her in the car seat?"

"Oh yeah that's fine Tai. It was nice catching up to you… I'll make this right somehow." With that, Viralious hung up and glanced down at his scroll. He still had a few minutes to kill before his team was going to hash some things out. Sighing he puts his scroll back in his pocket and begins to think about what he could do to pass the time. Before he thinks back to last night in front of the mirror.

Slowly Viralious closes his eyes and imagines his mother's lemure in front of him. Remembering how it had seamlessly followed his mother's orders, whether it was helping to tear through Grimm, helping cut the vegetables for dinner or… carrying Ruby to her crib.

This thought gets Viralious to snap his eyes awake. "Wait what the hell was she thinking! It's got claws why would she have it handle Ru-" Glancing around he notices that there is no lemure in the room signaling that he once again failed at summoning it. Getting frustrated, he repeats the process with Winter's semblance and a glyph appears on command.

Why… Why can I copy Winter's semblance perfectly, but I fail to copy mom's? I've used it once before but…

Viralious' thoughts are cut off by Winter entering the room; she quickly glances down at the glyph spinning on the floor before giving Viralious a confused look.

Stumbling over his words, Viralious quickly dissipates the glyph "I was just getting a little bit of practice in with my semblance, seeing if I could do that repelling glyph that you used on the Geist. Obviously, that was a failure"

Winter raises an eyebrow before looking back at Viralious "Well, you need gravity dust to do that. Without it you can make platforms and use the aura to shoot some basic projectiles I guess."

"Ah well I guess that makes sense. So, are there any other effects if you use other types of dust?" Viralious responds

"Well, I can try to use lightning dust to increase your speed but…I don't think moving at twice the speed would help much…Especially since I can't control how long it lasts."

"Huh well maybe we should use it on Murt, his stories would only last half of class then." Viralious says with a slight laugh.

"And have an even harder time keeping up with him? No thank you" Winter responds, chuckling.

Viralious then glances down at his scroll and notices that there's about two minutes until the "Team meeting". "So Winter, how would you feel about training with me sometime this week?" Viralious asks.

"Do you mean like sparing or like semblance control?" Winter puzzles.

"How about both, I mean might as well since if you can't apply your semblance in an active combat scenario it's no different than not having one."

Winter smiled slightly as her partner was surprisingly enthusiastic to learn more about her semblance and it would hopefully allow her to better understand him… considering he seemed confident in his decisions about his name on the outside but now she had listened to two phone calls with him wavering in confidence. "Alright, as long as you're alright with losing." She responds with confidence.

"Well then, I'll do what I can to not lose."

Suddenly they hear the sound of the other suite's door opening and Ifiral gives an exasperated sigh signaling that it had been a half hour.

"Well, he's surprisingly punctual wouldn't you agree?" Winter says pointing to the door.

"Probably Eckhart dragging him out on time. Gonna be honest, half expected him to sleep." Viralious responds walking towards the door.

The two walk into the common room of the dorm and notice Eckhart was already sitting on the couch, his arms crossed.

"Okay so why don't we start by simply asking each other a question. Something you want to know about the other person or something about their fighting style?" Viralious said as he walked over towards that couch.

"And why would you come up with something like that?" Eckhart says, raising an eyebrow.

"I honestly figured that we should learn a bit more about each other. You know since we're going to be living together might as well learn more than everyone's preferred coffee order. That being said, if it's too personal you don't have to share it unless you want to." Viralious retorted.

This got a small chuckle out of Ifiral.

Eckhart rolled his eyes before speaking "Alright, Then I'll ask a question to you Viralious. What's your experience leading a team?"

"Never done it before and honestly didn't plan on it. My sister Zeliska was always the better leader and we figured she would be the leader back when we got to Shade." Viralious explained truthfully. Earning a raised eyebrow from Eckhart.

"And why did you choose to come here instead of Shade?" Eckhart responds, smirking slightly.

"Well, I know you already know this considering you sat in on my meeting with the general. Some complications arose with one of the professors there and I figured it would be better to go somewhere else… I burned a few too many hou- I mean bridges with that though." Viralious responds glancing towards the floor at the end.

"So-"

"Ifiral, if you don't mind me asking, how much fine control do you have over fire with your semblance?" Winter quickly stammers out interrupting Eckhart before he could ask another question.

Ifiral picking up on the heiress's idea nods before responding, "I would say I have decent control, can't stop it from burning something. However, I can redirect it and maybe condense or spread it. Now then if you don't mind me asking, how do dust mixtures work with your semblance. Like for example if you used stasis dust, what kind of a glyph would that be. "

Winter thought for a second before shrugging "Honestly I've never tried it… my guess would be it simply allows me to better control the effects of it like how it is with Ice or fire dust."

"Maybe we can test that out at some point while doing semblance training, Winter." Viralious responds smiling slightly. Before turning back to Eckhart "So Eckhart mind if I ask you a question or two?"

Eckhart once again rolled his eyes before responding "I mean you just did but go ahead."

This got everyone to roll their eyes as Viralious continued, "alright then, you mentioned that you wanted to become Ironwood's successor… Why?"

Eckhart scoffs "I believe I'm the best fit for the job. So, it's only natural."

"So why do you feel you're the best fit?" Winter asks?

"I just am, I've trained for it my whole life."

"What about other members of the military, I mean Clover Ebi is making waves with the new Ace Op program." Winter responds.

"He's too carefree and only gets by based on his semblance without it he-"

"Aren't you the same… I mean with the semblance." Ifiral responds

"What?" Eckhart spits out.

"I mean it's true, seeing your weapon and fighting style against the Geist you really only jumped through your gates and shot the Geist a few times. Isn't that relying on your semblance too much?" Ifiral says in a neutral tone.

"Ifiral I think that was a little out of-" Both Winter and Viralious start before being interrupted,

"I don't have to take this from you… I don't have to take this from any of you." Eckhart screeches then turning to Viralious, "You're just a lost child looking for reason in madness." He then turned to Winter, "You're a heiress who's never and I mean NEVER not gotten her way… You wouldn't know any spoon other than silver." Lastly, he faced his partner Ifiral and his eyes narrowed in pure rage. "And I don't have to listen to a brute with more scar tissue than vocal cords. I bet the scars are from you burning yourself from your semblance you bast-"

Eckhart was cut off by a punch to the face knocking him to the ground. Before he can process what happened, Ifiral grabs him by the collar and hoists him up so he's eye level again.

"Finish that sentence and I'll give you a matching scar you scraggly cocksucker." Ifiral spat into his face

"That's enough Ifiral." Viralious shouts from across the room. Beginning to cross over towards Eckhart and Ifiral.

"Hmph…" is all Ifiral says before throwing Eckhart back to the ground and walking back into his suite.

"You alright?" Viralious says before extending his hand to help Eckhart out.

Eckhart begins to reach for the hand before turning away and pushing himself up. He then glances around the room and places a hand on his cheek. He turns back to Winter before turning on his heel and leaving the dorm room.

A short moment later Ifiral leaves his suite having changed into his combat attire and walks through the door luckily going the opposite direction as Eckhart.

Viralious and Winter both just stood there looking at the common room of their dorm. Questioning what exactly had happened. Eventually Winter turned back to Viralious. "I guess it was a good idea in theory…. In practice I think this could have gone worse." She said with slight worry.

Chuckling Viralious looks at her "Right, worse… Gonna be honest Winter I don't want to see what worse is." He then let out a long exhale. "Well, I guess tonight's team introduction is going to be interesting, missing half our team." Viralious' eyes then showed nothing but pain.

"Why don't we go get something to eat, clear our heads for a moment then meet with Team CARD… I'm sure Ifiral and Eckhart will come around." Winter says trying to salvage the obvious disaster this was.

"Well not much better to do… I guess we could ask simple questions over dinner if you still want to." Viralious says, sighing deeply.

With that Winter beckons him to follow and the two exit their dorm room walking towards the cafeteria.

Surprisingly the Cafeteria was less crowded than lunch when they arrived. Viralious originally hoped that they would have run into one of or both of the other members of their team, but their table was bare. The food selection was about what they had expected from lunch. Winter ended up getting two grilled chicken breasts that upon first inspection were passable and a simple salad. Viralious simply got a hamburger and a slightly bruised apple.

The two ended up taking their seats in the same spot that they had eaten lunch and dinner earlier that day. Viralious was the first to test the waters with the food and found his burger was somehow both charcoal and undercooked… he was honestly impressed. Winter cut into her chicken and mixed it with the salad, not noticing small bits of pink lining the inside… It was warm so maybe it was ok.

The two ended up eating in mostly silence, unsure of how to break the ice… until Viralious bit into his apple and basically found the inside to be rotten.

"If the pay dispute is still going on once we get our first stipend, I'm using some to get actual food we can cook… This is ridiculous, I never thought I would miss eating scraps from old bars in Mistral." He said, throwing the apple down in pure disgust.

This caused Winter to raise an eyebrow, "I thought you said you lived in Patch? Why would you be eating scraps in Mistral?"

With that Viralious went flush and he quickly stumbled out "Oh, it's nothing… just a saying my… mother used to say." His voice had a slight hitch to it.

Winter picked up immediately that this wasn't the truth, "Viralious, It's okay to talk about your past… I mean I understand if you don't but, as long as you didn't do something like plan to murder a family member, I think it's fine."

Viralious looked away, silently praying that he wasn't giving away that not 4 days prior he did that very thing. Looking back to Winter he saw her look of empathy and he took a deep breath. "I won't explain everything as it's really not important but, When I was still quite young my mother and father had a … falling out. It's why me and my twin were separated. Mom decided that the Vacuo desert wasn't the best place to raise a child, so she took the first transport which ended up being to Mistral. We stayed there for a while, but it wasn't easy. Things were a bit dicey and some nights we went to sleep without eating… or at least my mother did." His voice trailed off

Winter looked at her partner. She honestly didn't expect him to open up like that. Sure, he was carefree and studious but he seemed to hold his family situation close to the chest, between the phone calls, running away and changing plans, and… the photo sitting on the desk. "Viralious, I'm… I'm sorry you had to go through with that… I-" she didn't know what to say… "I'm sorry I shouldn't have pushed you to speak about your past." she said, hanging her head low.

Viralious simply shook his head and looked her in the eyes "No, it's fine… Honestly. It's not great to keep everything bottled up…"

"Or else they explode at a later time." she finished.

"You sound just like my sister." he chuckles

"Should I take that as a complement?" Winter questions

"I mean, I was planning on being her partner while at Shade originally, so I'd think so." He said smiling.

Winter was slightly shocked by this, one moment he seemed like he was on the verge of tears the next he's telling her that she's basically all he wanted in a teammate. She was confused immensely. Deciding to take this moment to figure out what her partner was actually thinking she decided to ask a question.

"Viralious do you mind if I ask a question about your family?" she said in a neutral tone.

"Sure, what do you want to know?" He responded questioningly and pulled out his scroll.

"You seem to talk a lot about your twin sister, and now you've compared me to her… So why don't you just talk about your immediate family?"

"Okay, sure" he responded while pulling up a picture on his scroll, it ended up being the same picture that sat on his nightstand, four smiling faces. Winter examined the photo, seeing the two Twins on either side of a woman in a white cloak, and in her arms was a small child wrapped in a red blanket.

"So, I'll start with my sister… My twin I mean. Zeliska she's lived in Vacuo her whole life and it shows. She's rough, street smart, and unstoppable when she puts her mind to the task. When we were 7, she decided that she wanted to try some of our uncle's 'spicy water'…it was whisky so she learned and succeeded in pick-pocketing his flask, the only reason she got caught is she nearly threw up after taking a drink." Viralious spoke as if he was getting lost in a memory, a wide smile plastered on his face. "She also was the most determined to become a huntress… I think she was slightly jealous that I traveled around Remnant with Mom… I sometimes wish that we all could have just stayed together, and I think she did too… I know Mom did." His smile faded down slightly.

"I see, I still don't know if I should take being compared to her as a compliment on paper but I'll take your word for it… So, you spoke a bit about your mother. Do you want to talk about her more?" Winter said in a tone half content and half curious.

"Well, her name was Summer Rose, and she was honestly my inspiration. She graduated top of her class at Beacon, even winning the Vytal festival her last year. She took on dangerous missions and always came back with a smile on her face…" His lip dropped slightly as he continued "She was a great huntress but an even better mom, no matter what she was always kind. Even when Me or Zeliska would do something stupid or mean, she would just put on a gentle voice and calm us down, then pursue us to not do it again." His smile returned in full force. "She was so happy when Ruby was born, like she had a second chance at being a mother… one she was going to ensure was perfect." His smile turned into a deep frown.

"Viralious-"

"You don't have to apologize, sure it's a little sad but… I've got more happy memories to get lost in." He said leaning back in his chair. "Then the last family member of mine would be Ruby, she's only two years old but full of energy and wonder."

Winter looked at her partner and felt a slight tug in her heart. His family the way he talked about them were close and loving… even though there were hardships it sounded like they were… a happy family.

"So, Winter Since I told you about my family why don't you tell me a little bit about yours? You don't have to talk about the Dust company stuff, just them in general."

Winter was dreading this question; she was caught between telling the truth and risking alienating her partner or telling a lie that would eat away at her. Eventually she breathed in and decided that a half-truth wasn't a lie, "well, my mother is quite caring although a little absent minded at times. She would always be the one to comfort us and make sure we got better after every scrape or bruise. I have two younger Siblings, Weiss and Whitley. Whitley is still only a baby so not much to say about him. Weiss, well she's honestly the perfect little sister you could ask for, she's always enthusiastic and surprisingly patient. She loves to watch me practice and actually made me the crown that I'm wearing." She said while pointing up at the crown atop her white hair.

"She did a great job on it, honestly I thought it was custom made at a jewelry store." Viralious responded. He paused for a minute expecting Winter to continue. When she didn't, he put two and two together,

"I noticed you didn't mention your father."

Straightening out, Winter quickly began to stammer out "well he-"

"You don't have to say anything else about him, Winter. The fact that you didn't mention him is enough." Viralious interrupted

Winter glanced around the cafeteria and found that it was surprisingly starting to empty by that point, she then quickly checked her scroll and saw that it was going on 7 PM. Sighing she turned back to her partner

"You want to continue this conversation in the room, we can then quickly look over some physics before the quiz on Friday."

Viralious nodded and picked up his tray before turning to her "Cinnamon is a little mean for having a quiz on the third day of classes don't you agree?"

Winter chuckled "Well, it just means that we have to be prepared and on top of things. I mean it's the downside of starting on a Wednesday."

"But the upside is the weekend is closer, ehh I don't know if it's worth it though."

"Would you rather have had Initiation on a Sunday? Then go through a full week of classes?" Winter puzzled

Viralious stopped after putting his tray on the carousel and turned to her. "No, so I guess there is more good than bad with this." Before turning and exiting the cafeteria.

A/N

This chapter was originally going to go longer but I thought it would make more sense to split this up into two. So, if you are wondering what Ifiral and Eckhart are doing, don't worry it will be addressed in the next chapter. So then with that out of the way let's break down what happened.

First off, is Eckhart continuing to be a contrarian, so it leads to two phone calls! First off was Winter. I really wanted to write more child Weiss after watching Ice Queendom (I straight up screamed when one got shot in ep 9) so I worked in a small interaction between Winter and her family. Overall, I thought it was some simple background and Winter's thoughts on her team at this given moment.

Up next was Viralious calling Tai, fun fact, this was originally going to be Zeliska but then I remembered that based off of how I wrote this before Atlas and Vacuo have a 12 Hour time difference so I don't think she would have liked that 6am bitching call. So, it ended up turning into Tai. I wrote this conversation to build some background on what's going on in Patch and give Viralious some ideas going forward as it's fairly obvious where this arc is going at this point.

So, this leads us to the questions, overall they started with simple characters explaining things to each other, getting snippy and clarifying a few things that I thought might need addressing… Then we have the glorious punch. I have a feeling no one saw that coming until Eckhart started throwing a hissy fit. This WILL be addressed more in the next chapter and chapters following it but yeah Team VIEW isn't looking like a cohesive team right about now.

This leads me to the cafeteria scene. So fun fact, both Winter and Viralious's meals were exactly how the cafe at my college made the grilled chicken and hamburgers. So yes, I will disclose now that part of the reason for the pay dispute is for me to bitch about my college's food. It also gave me a good segway to drip feed a bit more of Summer and Viralious/Zeliska's past. It will be explained in full later on, but I think this gives a decent preview. As for Winter's family, I figured turnabout's fair play so might as well have Viralious be the one to learn something about a shitty family situation for once.

So next chapter we will be looking at the other half of Team VIEW with the fallout from what happened in the dorm room.

This is where I would like to thank my editor, AmoebaHewdraw for making sure my writing is somewhat literate.

Until next chapter

Xcom Out.