Author's Note: New chapter is up, enjoy.

Pyrrha stumbled through the halls of Beacon with a smile on her face. Her legs were sore, her arms felt like they were made of lead, and it felt like her Aura was on fire, but she couldn't have been happier. They'd been training with her Magic again, much as they had been for the last couple days, and Ozpin had been beyond grueling. Any thoughts of him getting the position of Headmaster through nothing more than manipulation were banished after seeing him in action. He was a genuinely good teacher. Patient yet insistent, he had a tendency to know when you were going too far and needed a moment, or if you could keep going.

For many it would have been overwhelming; for Pyrrha, it was exactly what she wanted. It actually reminded her of her first coach. At the time she had thought he knew everything there was to know about fighting; she still respected the man even after all these years. Once she'd started winning tournaments however, her family had replaced him, instead paying for a team of people to support her during training and fights.

Ozpin and him would have gotten along well, assuming they didn't already know each other. The world had turned out to be a far smaller place than she could have ever imagined back before Beacon. Or perhaps it was just their line of work, Huntsmen only made up a small portion of the population after all, so it wasn't insane to think that they all at least knew of each other, especially when it came to the influential ones like Ozpin.

Despite all his training, she hadn't been able to mimic his move entirely yet, but aside from the pain, she was managing to feel… something stir inside her as she tried to do as he instructed her to. He had insisted that was good progress, even if it had taken them a few days to get to that. The mere fact that she was able to tell the difference between her own Magic and his was proof that their theory had some merit to it. Now it was just a matter of practice and repetition.

As she walked, she couldn't help but wonder what else he could teach her. There were so many new possibilities and things she could learn. She had missed moments of discovery like this, figuring out her fighting style early on had been an experience she hadn't truly appreciated at the time. She had gone through a few different weapons before settling on Milo and Akouo, this felt much the same.

So lost in thought was she, that she didn't catch herself as she collided with another student.

"Sorry." Pyrrha apologized as she fell backwards. Normally she would have been more than able to catch herself, but with how tired she was, it was a miracle she only fell on her backside and wasn't sprawled out on the floor.

"No, no, I should have been watching where I was going." She recognized the voice instantly, even as she looked up at the familiar gloved hand trying to help her. She gripped his hand a little harder than was probably normal but, considering the size of his Aura, he didn't even seem to notice.

Jaune pulled her up with a muted smile.

"It's no problem, I am a little distracted today." Pyrrha rubbed her hand against the back of her neck. "I should have been paying attention."

Jaune nodded to her, pulling his hand back. "So we're both at fault, nobody takes the blame?"

Pyrrha smiled brightly. "That sounds fair to me."

He returned it, though again it seemed muted in some way. He moved to step around her, already starting to say his goodbyes. She spoke before she could stop to think however. "Is something wrong?"

Jaune froze, and only then did Pyrrha realize it might have been a bit odd to call him out in such a public location. Thankfully, the halls were pretty much abandoned at this time of day. Which, now that she thought about it, only seemed to lend some credence to the fact something was wrong.

"I'm fine." Jaune answered far too quickly, and judging by the way he winced he knew that as well. Pyrrha didn't say anything, simply waiting for him to realize she wasn't going to let it go. He sighed and looked away after only a second or two. "It's nothing big, just… trying to get used to Beacon is all. I wanted to get a moment away from my Team."

Pyrrha didn't know what to think. She couldn't recall any issues with Team JNPR so early on, not until the Team CRDL issue anyways, but that only came about because of Cardin learning about Jaune's fake transcripts, and surely that hadn't happened already. They were only just past the first week for the new year, so they should have had another week or two before that got revealed. That wasn't to say Cardin wasn't the problem anyways though, he had bullied Jaune since nearly day one from what she recalled, and it wasn't a stretch to assume it had happened this time as well.

"I know you don't know me very well." Pyrrha said, trying to act like admitting that it didn't hurt in the slightest. "But if there is something wrong I can help. I am technically part of the faculty here." It was very much a technicality, so much so that it might even count as a lie, but if it got Jaune to open up to her, one she was more than willing to use.

Jaune looked hesitant. "I… I think it's important we figure this out on our own."

Pyrrha was disappointed, but not surprised. Jaune, for all the things she loved about him, hadn't started out like that when he first got to Beacon. It had taken a lot to get him to move past his machismo and accept her help, she figured it only made sense that he would still fight it. He was under the impression that he had to do this all alone, that if he asked for help then people would know he had forged his transcripts and snuck into Beacon.

Perhaps it would have been best to let him work it out in time, to allow events to unfold as they had before, but without Team JNPR, then there was no guarantee it would happen. Team RWAN wasn't off to a great start, who was to say that Jaune might never reveal the truth to his partner in this time, and thus never grow past it? It was still possible, but it was a risk she refused to take. Not when his betterment was at stake.

"I also offer training," Pyrrha said, again something that was technically true. She had trained Jaune before and had even taught Ruby a couple of her tricks, so it wasn't a complete lie. He didn't look convinced however, and so she decided to do something she hadn't ever been willing to do before, and take a more direct approach when it came to her partner. "Like I said when Team CFVY and I were showing you around last week, I know a few tricks even a beginner could use to great effect."

His eyes widened in panic before he quickly looked away. "I-I'm okay."

"Jaune… I know the truth. It's okay if-"

"There you are, Jaune." Pyrrha's head fell as she heard another person walk up. The voice was easy to recognize, even if most people would agree they hated the sound of their own voice. Jaune's partner walked up beside him, looking him over before her eyes shifted towards Amber. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Pyrrha rolled her eyes, it was obvious she was, and yet she acted as if she was ignorant of that fact. "We were just having a talk about-"

"We were done anyways." Jaune didn't let her finish, stepping away from her and down the hall. "I'll meet you back in the dorm, okay?" He didn't wait for his partner to say anything, walking away without ever looking back. She cursed internally when he refused to meet her eyes.

He was gone before she could say anything though, leaving the two girls standing there otherwise alone.

"I just want to help him…" She knew how much stress he was under, the doubt and fear, but she also knew what he was truly capable of. With the right kind of help he could be amazing.

If only he'd let her help him.

"Jaune can be a bit stubborn at times." The younger champion said. "I haven't known him for long, but I can tell."

"I know." Pyrrha replied with a little bit of irritation. She'd noticed it quickly too, though that should have been obvious considering they were the same person, but that didn't help her current issue any. "And it's not always a bad thing." She felt the urge to defend her partner, even if he wasn't willing to accept her help. "When he sets his mind on something he can accompl-"

"How about you leave sorting this out to me." Pyrrha's head snapped around to her younger self, shocked to silence by the surprisingly forward response, as well as the painfully polite smile that adorned her face. To her it was obviously fake, and looking under it revealed a far darker emotion. One Pyrrha wasn't sure she could identify. "I am his partner after all. Or at least let our Team try and figure it out."

Pyrrha watched her past self in silence, and even as she walked away she couldn't contemplate what to say. In the end, she was left to stand there alone.

"I can't believe her!" Pyrrha snapped for not the first time, pacing back and forth in Team CFVY's shared dorm room. "They've only known each other for a week! She has no right to be so… so possessive!"

Coco couldn't help but smile as her friend ranted mostly to herself. The amusing part was that she was also ranting about herself. It was times like these that Coco genuinely loved her Team's newest member. There wasn't any other place on Remnant where you could find a love triangle so complicated.

"Isn't that what you would do though?" Fox made the mistake of speaking the obvious logic into being however, and Pyrrha rounded on him in an instant. Coco was pretty sure she even saw her friend start sweating under the glare the usually polite girl fixed him with. An impressive feat considering he could actually see her facial expression, though the still silence was likely clue enough that he had made a mistake.

"I would never have done that!" Pyrrha's voice dipped slightly, despite her anger she was managing to stay mostly quiet.

"But… She's you." Fox didn't sound like he was accusing her, if anything, he sounded confused.

"Well, that's not entirely true." Velvet's voice was soft, only able to be heard due to the relative quiet whenever Pyrrha stopped ranting. "Nikos is on Team RWAN while our Pyrrha was on Team JNPR. I'm assuming that your team wasn't quite so-"

"Infuriating?" Pyrrha filled in the word she thought most accurate; though, judging by the way Velvet winced, that wasn't what she had been trying to say.

"I was going to go with argumentative." Velvet held her hands up in a desperate attempt to stop Pyrrha from 'correcting' her. "But you get the idea. They've been arguing non stop since initiation after all."

Coco nodded in agreement, seeing where her friend was trying to go even if Pyrrha didn't. "Spending a week arguing with someone is exhausting, she's probably just in a bad mood. Hell, knowing you, she'll be knocking on our door trying to apologize by dinner time."

Pyrrha sighed in frustration, but after a deep breath her shoulders finally seemed to relax. "She still had no right to say what she did."

While it was nice that her friend was starting to relax, Coco knew that it wouldn't last. Not unless someone prepared her for the next time this happened. "Technically she does." Pyrrha's head turned towards her slowly, her face a mix between betrayal and anger. Despite how that made her feel, Coco pushed on. "She is Arc's partner after all, and were their Team not tearing itself apart, his lack of training would be something for them to sort out."

Pyrrha looked like she might argue back for a moment, but that fire quickly vanished as she turned away. When she did finally speak, her voice was as soft as Velvet's had been. "He's my partner too."

"They don't know that." Coco walked over to her friend, resting her hand on her shoulder. "Painful as it is to admit, you can't forget that. You're starting from square one here."

"I know." Pyrrha sighed, and Coco could hear the sadness there. Despite that, she looked back over her shoulder with a smile. "Thank you."

Coco rolled her eyes once more, that was just like her. Pyrrha was going through something no one else on the planet ever had, she had to watch her friends and the man she loved not even recognize her. That had to hurt in a way that Coco just couldn't understand, and yet she smiled and thanked her friend for doing what friends should. The saddest part was that it wasn't just to be polite, she was genuinely grateful to have someone there to offer her honest words. It was the kind of thing only those who had never had that option understood.

She tried to smile, if only for Pyrrha's sake, and shifted the topic to something at least less heart breaking. "So have they picked a date for the ceremony yet?"

Pyrrha groaned at the reminder, eliciting a smile from everyone else in the room. "The Headmaster said he'd be finding out today."

"Be sure to let me know, that way I have time to prepare." Coco seriously doubted she wouldn't, considering that if she did, she would be going to the event alone. For all the subtle differences between Pyrrha and her past self, this was one thing that clearly hadn't changed much.

She hated being propped up or seen as special in any way. It was one more amusing thing that Coco so loved about her, the fact that she usually brought it on herself. For all of the girl's social awkwardness and desire to stay out of the light, she was just too good at what she did to go unnoticed. Celebrity or not, Pyrrha was always going to be a well known figure.

As if heralded by their discussion, Pyrrha's Scroll beeped as it received a message.

"Speak of the devil…" Pyrrha looked at it like it was rigged to explode.

Coco laughed, moving over to the door to open it for her. "Hurry up, the sooner you get back, the sooner we can start the movie. Yatsu should be back with the snacks by then anyways."

Pyrrha nodded, clearly eager to get it over with. The door clicked softly behind her and, after a few seconds to make sure she wasn't going to come back, Coco turned towards the two members of her team still in their dorm. "Make sure Yatsu stops off somewhere to get some snacks. Tell him to grab some of those grape sodas too, Pyrrha seems to like those."

Fox nodded, no doubt using his semblance rather than the scroll that was literally only inches away from his hand.

"Why didn't you tell her Yatsu went to talk to Team RWAN?" Velvet asked.

Coco sighed at that. After Pyrrha had come back to the dorm it had only taken her a few minutes, and a little prodding from Coco herself, to get the girl talking about what was bothering her so much. She'd tried to hide it at first, acting like nothing was wrong, but it was easy to see if you knew what to look for. The way her jaw clenched itself closed as she thought, or how her hands gripped the edges of her scroll just a little too tightly. Small things, but red flags all the same.

"I don't think she needs to know." In truth, Coco didn't expect much to come from it. Yatsu had gone off to talk with Ruby in the hopes she would sort out the situation on her Team if she knew the trouble was spreading and starting to affect more than just them, but if the younger girl had the ability to do so, surely she would have done that by now.

Pyrrha had the utmost faith in them, but Coco wasn't so certain.

"That's not what I said, and you know it." Ruby tried to reason with her partner, desperately aiming for a calm tone but even Jaune could hear the anger in it. "I'm just saying that a little extra training wouldn't hurt."

"I am well aware of that!" Weiss snapped back. "But I fail to see how it's my fault that our teamwork needs improvement!"

Jaune sighed and tried to focus on his homework, knowing that no matter what he said the argument would just keep going in circles. And to think, he'd once wanted to date Weiss. Oh, she was attractive for sure, there was no denying that. She had an air of maturity about her that was almost mesmerizing at first glance, but he had quickly learned better. Despite how she tried to act older than she was, that's all it ever was. An act.

"Ruby has a point." His partner only made things worse however. "Our team work does need improvement, and you are partly to blame."

Jaune groaned internally as she said it, knowing before she had even finished what the heiress' response would be.

"Excuse me?" He tuned out the rest of her words, but Weiss sounded offended, and, in her defense, she had reason to be. It was incredibly ironic to hear Pyrrha of all people say that. If anything, Pyrrha and Weiss had been the ones to continue the arguments from day one. Ruby had tried to reason with Weiss and even turn a blind eye to the not so subtle insults from the high strung girl. Only for Pyrrha to come in and defend her, usually by insulting Weiss in some way.

She tried to be subtle of course, but it seemed to be one of the few things his partner ever failed at. Jaune wasn't sure whether she was doing it on purpose or not, but any time he'd tried to bring it up with either of them, he had been shut down. So he'd stopped trying, hoping that they would get over it in time.

Oh how foolish he had been.

"What do you think?" He wasn't sure exactly who asked it, seeing as how he wasn't paying attention to the argument they'd had countless times already, but now they were all looking at him.

Jaune scratched the back of his head nervously, unsure of what he was supposed to do here. He'd never been the best at talking to girls and, were this any other situation, he felt he would have been too nervous to reply. His nervousness had given way to annoyance days ago however, and so he racked his brain for a way to try and fix this.

For all his Team's faults, he wasn't against it. They'd only known each other for a week or so, but he had learned a bit about each of them in that time. Ruby was nice and, despite her age, quite mature. There was also the added benefit of her sister, or rather, the Team that came with her. Ren, Nora, and Blake were so much easier to deal with than his own Team, and he'd often wondered what it would have been like with them instead.

Weiss was cold, but he didn't get the impression it was intentional in any way, nor was she filled with any true malice. She argued back with Ruby and Pyrrha because she felt slighted, not because she inherently hated them. The few times that he'd talked to her in private, she was the perfect example of what a new team member should have been. Hesitant, but trying.

His partner was also nice, and she had proven to be patient and polite. She didn't berate him or act like what you might have expected from someone who was apparently a celebrity. She felt down to Remnant. Humble.

All three of them seemed to be genuinely good girls, it was just when you put all three together that the fireworks started.

In the end, it was advice given to him by his mother that he fell back on. Having seven sisters meant that he had been drawn into his fair share of arguments between girls and, while he might have once felt awkward doing so with people outside of the Arc family, he was too tired of the arguing to care. "I think you're all jumping to conclusions." The three of them looked at him with various expressions of confusion or doubt. He started with Weiss, hoping that the usually logical girl would appreciate him being direct. "Ruby wasn't trying to say that you are the sole reason we need to work on team work."

Weiss looked away from him to their Team leader, Ruby nodding in agreement. The older girl looked embarrassed by that, as if finally realizing she had been the one to start that argument. She apologized quietly, and though it wasn't exactly the heartfelt hug he had been hoping for, it was progress.

"That goes for you too." His own partner was next. "You've been jumping at any chance to side against Weiss since we were assigned Teams. It's not fair." His partner also looked embarrassed, looking down at the floor in shame.

The room was silent for a long time after that, though none of them moved to do anything to fill it. In that moment he dared to hope that they might come to an understanding.

"I'm not trying to be unreasonable." Weiss was the first to speak and, much to his surprise, her voice was softer than he'd ever heard it. It almost sounded vulnerable. He made to speak, hoping to jump on the chance to build some unity on their team.

Sadly, his partner beat him to it.

"It's just who you are."

Jaune very much doubted she meant it the way it sounded. That was only reinforced by the fact that even Pyrrha looked surprised by it, but that didn't change the fact the words had been said. Such a dismissal, right as Weiss was trying to open up. It didn't surprise him when she moved for the door, and he made no move to stop her. He would have done the same.

Author's Note: I want to say that no, this is not a set up for the Docks. I don't want people to think that. To set up expectations for such when it's WAY too early in the timeline for that.

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter, and as always let me know what you think in the reviews.
Sincerely, SE