Sometimes, Pyrrha wished her contract allowed her to drink alcohol.
Sighing through her teeth, she plastered on her best smile. Today she was to meet with one of her sponsors. Usually this would be handled by her people, but the company was recently undergoing a change in leadership and the new leaders wanted to meet her.
Mentally, she wondered how they would treat her. Cold, to try to bargain for a better deal? Warmly, for the same reason? Might they actually be fans of her? Or would they be a duo, playing off each other to pressure her and her agent? She had been trained to deal with it, but it was still not something that she looked forward to.
Pyrrha sighed again. Sometimes, she wondered if she had made a mistake coming to Beacon. She'd hoped that her stint away from her home country would let her have a fresh start, a normal social life, actual friends.
But it really hadn't. Weiss had practically tripped over her feet to ingratiate herself to her, only backing off after a considerable amount of polite rejections, and the same borderline fanaticism was widespread in the rest of the students. Ruby was friendly enough, but the girl already had a whole team to distract her, and the same went for Yang and Blake. The only two she really could call her friends, Ren and Nora were joined at the hip. Russel hadn't cared about her fame sure, but it was because he simply didn't care about her.
In the end, she still had nobody she could-
"Pyrrha?"
Pyrrha turned around. Standing behind her, in an extraordinarily expensive suit even by her standards, was-
"Jaune?"
"It is you!" The blond's grin widened, looking absurdly happy to see her for some reason, and he gripped her hand, pumping it hard. "How are ya?"
"I'm grand. What are you doing here?" Pyrrha winced slightly, having defaulted to the tone and speech pattern that she would use with clients.
"Oh, admin stuff." His eyes narrowed in a way that suggested that he generally liked his work, but not this part. That look lasted not even a second before he grinned again. "What about you?
"Oh, nothing." Pyrrha glanced at her agent, trying to warn him away. This was the one person she had ever met that did not know who she was, she wasn't going to jeopardize it.
Her agent tilted his head but kept away, standing beside Jaune's staff, a fairly attractive brunette with short hair.
"So how have you been?
"Oh, same old. Trainings, studying, the usual…"
"Ahhh, jealous… I wish I was a Huntsman. But well, only son slash heir to a business conglomerate, you know how it is. Besides, look at these noodly arms." He flexed his arms and grinned.
No wonder he and Ruby got along, they were both balls of positivity. She forced away whatever envy she might have felt from how close they were.
"What's wrong?" He frowned. "You look frustrated."
"Well, this has been a hard week." Pyrha let her smile fall and her shoulders slump, her usual polite tone becoming shaky. She was not lying, this was their test week, when any sane Beacon student would be locked away in their room studying with their lives, but here she was wasting precious time waiting on a sponsor that didn't even have the decency to be on time.
"Whaaattt? Come on, you're exaggerating. You're Pyrrha Nikos, you can do anything."
Pyrrha tried smiling. The tone he used on her name wasn't the same kind of blind worship her other fans had, it suggested that this was probably the tone he used for any of his other friends, he would speak about Cardin in the same tone if he knew him.
"Pyr?" At her lack of response Jaune deflated slightly, his teasing giving way to concern. "Are you ok?"
Her fake smile widened, trained from years of practice. "Yes, I'm fine, it's just that it has been a hard-" few months "-week."
"Pyrrha!" To the redhead's shock Jaune grabbed her head, forcing her to look at him. "Listen to me."
"I don't know what you do, but I've seen you fight. Videos of it at least. Your semblance is amazing. You are amazing. And most importantly, you're Ruby's friend." He moved even closer, his hands sliding over her cheeks and his eyes bare inches from hers. "I won't sit here and let any friend of Ruby's look down on themselves like that."
"I-you-Ruby-"
beep beep beep
"Ah dang!" Jaune pulled away from her, letting Pyrrha breathe. "I'm late!" He pulled her into a quick one armed hug before spinning around. "I'm so sorry, I'll speak to you more next time, see you around Pyr!" He rushed away, his staff brisk walking behind him
Pyrrha wasn't sure how long she stood there before her agent coughed, snapping her out of her daze.
Pyrrha palmed her cheeks, feeling how warm they were.
Oh.
Oh no.
…
"The Headmaster sure picked a good time to have tests huh…"
"It's standardized Yang, tests in all Vale combat schools have to take place around this timing." Despite her words however, Weiss Schnee couldn't stop her eyes from wandering out the window, listening wistfully to the fair music and sounds of a parade.
By some horrible coincidence, the Vale Annual Fair was taking place at the exact same time as their preliminary tests. This meant that whilst the students were trying to focus on their revision, the rest of Vale were partying within hearing distance of the suffering students.
Emphasis on suffering. Weiss glanced around the room. Yang and Ruby had defaulted to their usual position of sprawling across the table and over their notes. Blake's eyes had a distant look to them, Nora looked like she was on the verge of eating her paper just so she wouldn't have to look at it, and Ren had the eyes of a Great War veteran trying not to have a PTSD episode.
The only one who seemed to be at least somewhat calm was Russel, who had miraculously detached himself for once from his usual circle of odious friends to study with them, likely because they had better grades.
"This environment's not helping." He flipped his textbook shut. "Anyone got any ideas?"
"Maybe the library?" Weiss's words sounded weak even to her, they all knew how crowded the library would be.
"Wait!" Suddenly revived, Ruby leapt up from her seat. "I know a place!"
…
"THIS is the place?"
The "place" Ruby mentioned was a three story townhouse with roof facilities, located in one of Vale's priciest districts.
That alone would have impressed the others, but Weiss had spent enough time around the homes of the wealthy to tell that the house was even more expensive than it looked. The smell of chlorine, indicating a rooftop pool that would require structural reinforcement. The custom made door frames. The tinted windows.
In fact, given how land-strapped Vale was and the neighborhood it probably cost as much as one of her father's country vacation houses despite being smaller.
"Yep! Jaune said I could use this place if I needed to study!" Ruby pushed open the door, waving at them to enter the house like she owned the place.
If anything the inside was even more impressive than the exterior. As they passed by the many open doors, Weiss could see an entertainment room, a library with a fireplace and a grand piano, a mini movie theater and even a place that looked to be solely a hobby room, its walls littered with telescopes and maintenance tools.
Ruby was already raiding the kitchen, pulling armfuls of expensive chocolates and branded milk out of the fridge.
"Ruby, are you sure we're allowed to take his food?"
"Yeah! Just go ahead! Someone comes and restocks the fridge every month. They donate the rest to charity or something. C'mon!" Ruby gestured at the fridge again, and after glancing at each other, the two teams dispersed.
Weiss opened the cupboards, marveling momentarily at the collection of expensive snacks, most of which she hadn't seen since leaving Atlas, before deciding on a box of jeweled fruit cake..
After robbing Jaune of thousands of lien worth of food, they settled on the roof, which was divided into two portions, a smaller area with several cushioned seats around a table and a larger area with a pool. Ruby and Blake had apparently wasted no time, already curled up on the sofa digging into an assortment of chocolates and sushi.
Laid out on the table was a plate full of exotic foreign fruits, mandarin oranges, rockmelons, honeydews, which had been cut into a platter and put in an expensive ice Dust vacuum seal for freshness.
"Wow, he hooked you up to a sweet place, huh Rubes." For some reason Yang's voice sounded funny, even as she dug into her one hundred fifty dollar tub of spiced ice cream. "How come you never bring us anywhere like this Snow Queen?"
"The Schnee Dust Corporation doesn't have any properties in Vale Yang."
"Then why don't you buy one? Would be nice to have a team RWBY vacation house."
Weiss tried desperately not to roll her eyes. "That's not how money works, most of our capital is tied up in investments and stocks, or in the hands of our stakeholders. And even if I controlled all of them, my father owns all of our companies, I can't just cash out anything without his permission."
"Well Jaune seems to be able to afford these just fine."
"Oh Jaune owns all his companies, so that's probably why."
"No wonder."
"What do you mean 'no wonder'?"
"Yeah." Ruby suddenly turned melancholy, sprawling out onto the sofa, hugging a pillow. "He gives me so much… And I don't have any way to repay him… I'm a bad friend…"
"Why don't you jus-"
"If you want to keep that arm I wouldn't." Russel, who had raised his hand ready to do a crude jerking off motion, quickly lowered it.
…
"Mercury, hurry up!"
"I'm coming I'm coming. Geez, who pissed in your cereal this morning."
Rolling her eyes, Emerald strided up to the nightclub, flashing her ID.
Their mission today was to scout out the local nightclubs. Nightclubs were a common and convenient front for gangs. For one, illegal savings could be massaged into the nightclubs earnings. Two, it was normal to see shady looking people walk in and out of them. And three, all gang activity and discussions could be disguised by the noise of nightclubs.
Cinder had ordered them to scout out as many as possible. They were new to this city, they needed to know how many were fronts and how many were legit, and more importantly how secure were the ones that were linked to gangs. The plan was basically the same for all the nightclubs. Go in, use her semblance to infiltrate the club's security, with Mercury running distractions or interfering as needed.
Luckily for her, this nightclub hadn't seemed to have ever heard of redundant security. After sneaking past the guard at the door to the back rooms, there was nobody else around to stop her from taking photographs of all their important documentation and sneaking back out to the alleyway where Mercury was waiting.
"Ok." Sending all the photos she'd taken to him, Emerald sat down and began reading.
"Don't you think it's kinda weird?"
"What is?"
"How all the nightclubs we've been to so far are owned by the exact same company?"
Emerald looked down at the list. Huh, Mercury was right for once. How had she missed that?
"Mors Entertainment."
…
"-and that covers next year's curriculum." Sighing with relief, Glynda Goodwitch closed her binder and set it aside.
"Now, for the budget."
The entire room seemed to slump, and even Glynda's usually unflappable expression twitched in slight despair.
"How is it?" Ozpin's posture was unaffected, but his voice had the voice of a man who was waiting to be told the outcome of his loved one's operation.
"It could be worse, our income is stable, our fundraising events hit their quota this year and our current investors show no sign of leaving. However, expenses are mounting. With the recent recession our maintenance costs have increased significantly with no increase in money to match it. The Council is also calling for a budgetary hearing next week."
"What are our options?"
"I have already reduced the funding allocated to non essentials, and cut as much of the transport budget as possible. Professor Oobleck will also be going to the hearing to speak to the Council about an increase in our funding."
"What about the school dance? Can we cut spending on that?"
"I already have. The decorations, music, even the quality of the fruit punch, all have been scaled back." Glynda huffed, already anticipating the complaints from the seniors over the downgrade from last year's vastly more extravagant ball.
"Perhaps we should look into finding new investors."
Glynda nodded. "Do you have anyone in mind?"
Ozpin laced his fingers together. "Glynda, do you remember Jaune Arc?"
"Ozpin no."
"Why not? I have looked into him, the boy's financial situation is more than capable of supporting sizable donations to Beacon."
"Ozpin, Jaune Arc is seventeen. The boy's legal guardians are in other kingdoms. Even if he were willing, for Beacon to solicit a minor, even one as wealthy as him for donations would reflect poorly on us."
"Well, it does not have to be us that approaches him." Ozpin moved his threaded fingers together over his mouth. "We know that he is close to a certain student of ours."
"We are not using Miss Rose as a honeypot Headmaster."
To his credit, the headmaster looked chastised. "Just exploring our options Glynda."
Omake (not canon this is just for fun):
"Ozpin no."
The headmaster was currently sitting in front of a large board, where he had pinned pictures of several of their female students, all with strings leading back to Mr Arc. On the board were Miss Schnee, Belladonna, Nikos, Valkyrie, a whole host of other seniors and freshmen, as well as Miss Xiao Long and Adel, the former of which was likely to go down just as poorly with Qrow as Miss Rose and the latter Glynda was sure was a lesbian.
"Look Glynda, all I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be Miss Rose doing the honeypotting."
"But that's worse Ozpin, you do see how that's worse right?"