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Ruby and I were paired up in combat class. I suppose there was no better place to start fighting each other than with our partners. We changed from the plaid schoolgirl skirts into our combat skirts in the locker room. Then we met in the arena. Professor Goodwitch counted us down.

She vanished at the word. I flicked a beam of light into her last position which cleanly missed. The projectile which was made of a sprinkle of light dust from the barrels of Myrtenaster, my sword, was a powerful attack despite the appearances as a small projectile. Ruby reappeared on top of me in a whorl of petals. I heard Blake and Yang cheer from the sidelines.

"Represent team RWBY!" Blake called.

"Go Ruby!" Yang shouted. Cheering more for her sister which was to be expected.

Ruby slashed at me three quick times and slashed out with a booted kick.I deflected them all and she reversed her scythe. It caught me around the shoulders and with a pull of the trigger to give some momentum she pulled me stumbling forward. I glowered at the younger girl. I slashed at her but she vanished. I flicked my blade across the ground and summoned a clock. I dilated time and in the accelerated state I caught her where she reappeared in a quick thrust. I did some damage with that but it was just a start. I leapt at her twirling and brought my blade down which she blocked with a squawk and held up my weight. She kicked my feet from under me and caught me with her blade in a whirlwind of strikes. She spun and took deep chunks of my blue and white aura out. I managed to block her last strike with a glyph. And then flung her back and to the ground.

I tried to pin her with pseudo-telekinesis but she broke free. If only I could do a summoning with my glyphs… but now was no time to think that. I tried to bring a wave of fire down on her but she vanished and reappeared in a wave. She swept down on me before I could block. I saw her aura on the projector. Each time she vanished it cost her something. Same as my glyphs. But time dilation wasn't something I could keep up efficiently.

She hammered me with the blunt edge of her blade. Caught it on the back hand, and spun at me. I tried to block but she had too much momentum with her speed. I growled in frustration.

At this rate…

No time to think. Act. I summoned a wall of ice and tried to pin her down but she shattered the wall with her speed. When she hit me for the last time she cleanly knocked me out of the ring with a sweeping stroke. I lost to a child.

When Glynda Goodwitch called the match I stormed away in a fury. I quickly changed and left my gear in a locker. Ruby tried to meet my eye but I ignored her. When she sat next to me I got up and stormed out of the classroom.

"Weiss, what's wrong?" Ruby caught up to me. It was inevitable. She really was fast I suppose. I turned to glower at her after she defeated me in combat class.

"You. You're what's wrong. In the forest you acted like a child and you've only continued to do so. Setting up bunk beds in our room and everything!"

"Weiss were supposed to be a team…" Ruby whined.

"Not a team led by you." I turned on my heel and stormed away. I walked out onto a balcony where I saw professor Port. I walked up to me.

"Professor," I greeted. He turned to look at me. "I enjoyed your lecture," I continued.

"Of course you did. You're a huntress at heart." He smiled at me from behind his walrus mustache.

"Oh… um…" I stammered it off. It was unbecoming of me. I should be elegant but I hesitated.

"Is something the matter, child?" He wondered. "Confess to me your strife," he bombastically announced.

"It's just… I think I should have been made leader of team RWBY."

"That's preposterous," he dismissed.

"What?!" I demanded. "But sir-"

"I've known headmaster Ozpin for many years and he's never once led me astray." The Professor interrupted.

"You say that even after seeing how excellent I am?" I wondered.

"My dear girl, your excellence on the battlefield is only matched by your poor attitude."

"Excuse me!?" I asked bewildered.

"My point exactly." He pressed. "My dear girl I see someone before me who has spent their entire life getting exactly what they wanted."

"That's not even remotely true." He frowned at me. "Well, not entirely true."

"Do you really believe that acting in such a way will make those in power reconsider their choices?" He further hammered me.

"Well… no… but…"

"So if you cannot be team leader, and indeed, you cannot be team leader, why don't you instead try and be the best friend and teammate you can be?" He asked rhetorically in the softest voice he had assumed thus far.

"Well. I suppose…" I hesitated. Maybe I was a little uptight. Ruby… wasn't the worst. She was energetic, yes but not terrible. It could be much worse. I could be Pyrrha.

"It's getting late," Professor Port looked out onto the sunset with long eyes. Why don't you take a walk around campus to clear your thoughts then return to your team in your room?" He suggested lightly. Then he walked away from me and I frowned after him.

In the end I did walk around campus. It was a beautiful ground. Carefully manicured against weeds and the like with hanging gardens and tall arches. It was nothing like the sleek architecture of back home in Atlas. Everything there was all geometry. Here things seemed more in tune with nature. It was dark by the time I got back to the dorm. Ruby was sleeping on her textbook in bed. The bunk bed was close to head height. I walked over to her and she woke up.

"Weiss sorry I was study and then I fell asleep but-"

"How do you take your coffee?" I demanded.

"Oh um… I don't really…"

"Answer the question."

"Milk and five sugars!" She shouted.

"Just a moment."

I poured her coffee and made it for her and mixed it. Then I handed it to her.

"Weiss…" She stammered off.

"I'm going to be the best teammate in the world," I vowed to her. "Just wait and see."

"Weiss…"

"That's wrong by the way." I pointed to one of the calculus problems in her note book. Then I walked away. "Oh and Ruby…"

"Yes Weiss?" She wondered.

"I always wanted bunk beds."

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When I went to bed with Ruby's bed hanging precariously above me I was in my soft blue nightgown. I had worn it on our first and second nights as well. Ruby was already in her pajamas with hearts on the bottom and a big heart across the chest of the black shirt she wore. I decided she was adorable. Blake was similarly in a nightgown and was quietly turning the pages of her book. Yang was already asleep and snoring lightly below Blake. Blake's eyes glowed in the dark.

"What's your book about?" I asked Blake quietly.

"Hm?" She wondered looking up.

"Your book? What's the plot?"

"It's about a man with two souls. Well a boy and a man. He reincarnated you see. Into a young farm hand."

"Aura?" I asked.

She nodded and closed the book next to a small candle by her head. "It's very complicated but they have two flavors and they are slowly becoming one. It would be difficult to adjust to someone else suddenly knowing everything about you. Meanwhile you have to adjust to all their life times of memories. The boy becoming a man struggles. It's a coming of age story."

"Oh. Do you like it?" I whispered. She nodded.

"The author is a personal favorite. She's very good. She describes well and her action flows. She uses metaphor and theme deeply."

I thought for a moment. "What do you think of our literature class?" I wondered quietly.

She made a face. "I've never been one for romantic poetry. Real life isn't a fairytale. Life has many shades of gray and it's more black than white. At least in my experience."

I thought about family members disappearing because of the WhiteFang. "Yeah. I get that." When I thought back on family it led to a thick and heavy feeling which I didn't want to ponder much. Sure my relationship with them was alright… I supposed. I was probably closest to Winter, my older sister. My mother was a sweet woman even though she had been absent in any way that mattered and at the bottom of a bottle. It wasn't like she had ever hit me or gaslit me.

Blake cocked her head at me. "Something on your mind?" She pressed.

I made a face this time. "Family trouble," I confessed.

"Ah," she agreed. "It can be complicated but my family isn't hostile. They'd really rather I did something else with my life," she confessed.

"I could have done anything. I could even have done nothing if I wanted…" I trailed off. "But I wanted to lead as a huntress. Like my grandfather. He was a hunter for Atlas before he founded the Schnee dust company."

Blake just nodded, her amber eyes reflective in the low light. She seemed content to wait for me to go on. I hesitated for a moment but did.

"My father never approved of my and my older sister's career path. He'd rather we focused on business. But I don't know. I always wanted to be a huntress and with the tools at my disposal I had quite a bit of privilege. It's only just hitting me now how much privilege I had."

"Because you're rich?" She wondered.

"That and because I'm a human and a girl and from Atlas and a Schnee." I bobbed my head in agreement. "How many young people want to become hunters but simply can't afford the training involved. My sister and I are both hunters now. But we didn't have to be. It could easily have gone some other way. Like I said I could have done nothing if that pleased me. Not many people can say that. How many miner children grow up with nothing ahead of them but the mines. How many farmers in Mistral have no choice but to be farmers like their parents and grandparents before them. I got to be a huntress. I got to be a hero. Well not yet but I will be."

She gave me a single nod of understanding. She had a contemplative look in her eye. She reached up and rubbed her bow gently before she stopped and quickly retracted her arm back to her chest. She frowned lightly.

"It's easy to say you're a hero when you have power," she decided.

"I want to solve problems for people," I clarified. Ruby shifted above me and Yang rolled over onto her side and let out a sigh.

"That can be heroic. I just wouldn't classify your grandfather as a hero, however."

"Why not?" I wondered.

"The exploitation," she dismissed. "Even if he saved some lives personally he personally repressed so many others. I suppose that's better than what your father is currently doing but still. He worked for the establishment. His questionable business practices left many faunus disenfranchised. How many miners died just to make him another Lien. He put prices on people's heads."

I frowned at her words. To me my grandfather had always been some noble figure. Sure he fought against the revolution on the side of reaction but that didn't make him a bad person, did it? But then that hadn't been Blake's point. Blakes point had been the repression and commodification of Cetra life. It was brutal but…

"But… people need to be forced to work. If people don't work, society collapses."

"Would you?" Blake asked. I frowned again. I wasn't forced to work and improve myself. I did it anyway.

"I suppose that I would work. Given the choice," I hesitated. I was deep in thought.

"The craziest thing about being anti establishment is you will point out things which are issues. People will agree with you. And then just do nothing." Blake squinted her eyes. I hummed at that.

She put out her candle. Then she rolled over on her side and began breathing deeply. I thought but couldn't forget Blakes words. All my life I believed that people needed to be coerced. But I had the evidence of my own life in my face pointing against that. I didn't need to be coerced to work. But brutal jobs, nobody wanted to work those. But they were necessary. But with robots were they? Or could we do something about it. I wasn't sure. Maybe if each person was more liberated under a different economic system things really would be better. I wasn't I knew that the current system wasn't without its cruelties. In a world where it was work or die work wasn't guaranteed. People didn't have a right to food, work, healthcare, or housing. Things would probably be better if they did. They could leverage for better conditions if their livelihoods weren't tied to their jobs. Maybe the shackles really could be taken off. And I could think it but I couldn't believe it. With the Grimm and monsters at the gates there was a gun to all Cetra's heads at all times. Society might not be the best but it was stable. And that was what people really needed. Stability.

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-WG