They made it to class on-time, but only just. (By Penny's internal chronometer, they were 116 seconds late to class, but Professor Port said they were "on-time". Penny made a note to investigate alternative definitions of "on-time". Team JNPR arrived moments after Team BXPS, so maybe it was just relative.)

Penny found "being in class" to be delightful. She was able to be around many people, but with a focus to hold her attention. Truly an ideal mix: it kept her from trying to parse the thoughts and feelings of the entire population. She could maintain processor loading just above single-person-interaction levels this way, which was nice.

The class was interesting in its own right. Professor Port told a riveting story about hunting a Beowolf as a young man and followed it up by having a student fight a Boarbatusk he'd captured. As grimm fiercely resisted captivity and swiftly perished when captured, this implied Professor Port had greatly overpowered it very recently before class, two sure signs of his expertise. Penny took a note to pay close attention to Professor Port's lectures in the future.

(As for the grimm itself, Weiss vanquished it in a matter of moments, reconfirming for Penny that she had ended up with a terrific partner. Professor Ozpin's system was working well. Unfortunately, Weiss did not appreciate Penny's bellow of "For the glory of BXPS!" She took another note to workshop different cheers to use instead.)

Her other classes were also interesting, if lacking the thrill of Port's. Professor Goodwitch explained that her combat class would feature plenty of duels soon enough, even if she was starting with lectures on rules of engagement. Her second lesson, she promised, would be about vigilantism and adherence to local laws and mission boards.

She gave a piercing look at Yang and Penny as she explained that. Penny wondered why.

At lunchtime she successfully deployed her food allergy excuse to evade the situation. She used the time to do additional research in the library on food allergies to ensure that this excuse would be ironclad and that she could deploy it without triggering Jiminy. Jiminy protested that she was violating the spirit of the thing, and though she had no defense she kept on anyway.

When her team rejoined her at their next class, it was alongside Team JNPR. Apparently JNPR had sat with them during lunch: Yang and Jaune knew each other, Weiss had wanted to sit by Pyrrha, and the teams had talked all during Initiation, so the ice was pre-broken. Already Yang was referring to JNPR as their "sister team", which gave Penny mixed feelings.

On the one hand, new acquaintances and possible friends were terrific to have, especially if they were already friends of friends. Creating a friendship web between BXPS and JNPR seemed wonderful.

On the other hand, JNPR had Nora in it. Penny wouldn't have minded Nora's energy, and perhaps would have even enjoyed it, were it not for Tactical blaring constant warnings about how a walking ball of electricity was a deadly threat to her just by existing. It didn't help that Weiss and Yang had told Nora about Penny's feats of strength during Initiation, because now Nora wanted to arm wrestle Penny more than ever. When she wasn't talking about that, she was none-too-slyly bringing up Penny's "jetpack", a topic Tactical refused to let Penny discuss.

Penny wasted much of her first Armaments class. In her defense, that was an accident.

Professor Mesquite gave the impression of having recently been on fire. A smoky smell attended him as he bustled around the class, while the ends of his orange-brown hair looked singed. The first twenty minutes were devoted to a lecture on safety procedures; Weiss muttered something under her breath about that being ironic.

After the safety lecture, Mesquite did an initial survey of the students' weapons. Penny thought this splendid. She'd internalized the phrase that "a warrior's soul is her sword", so learning about her teammates' weapons meant learning about their souls.

Mesquite got to Blake first. He inspected her weapon with only occasional touches with thick-gloved hands; Blake still squirmed the entire time.

"This is a kluge," Mesquite said. "Non-standard parts, and the blade's made of different metal from the pistol."

"I had to make do with what was available," said Blake, and she hunched over some.

"The pistol isn't Dust-rated beyond basic Burn, either. Same reason?"

"I could never guarantee I'd have access to Dust ammunition," said Blake, though she looked like she'd rather not answer at all. "Making the pistol that versatile would have been… too elaborate."

"Well, it's not too elaborate for us," said Mesquite, running gloved fingers along the outline of the weapon. "All Beacon students get subsidies for ammo an' upgrades. As-is, this pistol's light on stopping power, but if we upgrade it to handle Dust rounds, we can increase its power and versatility both. It'd probably be the simplest change to make, since you wouldn't need to change up your fighting style any."

Blake nodded but said nothing.

"Think about it," said Mesquite, before moving on down the line. "Oh, right, Miss Xiao Long. Send Taiyang my best, wouldja?"

"Sure thing," said Yang.

"I knew what to expect, he told me 'bout your weapons one time—that's one proud papa. Dual-range shot gauntlets. Hm… maybe we could reduce the size of the travel form a little more, but overall these are well-crafted."

"Yes, sir," said Yang, and her smile made the lights above her seem dimmer by comparison.

"Miss Schnee," said Mesquite as he moved to the table Weiss and Penny shared. "Multi-action Dust rapier, I see. Six slots for Dust, that gives you access to all the basic types plus some advanced, I like that, and the materials used are top-shelf, no surprise there… but it's simple, weirdly simple."

"It doesn't need to be complicated," said Weiss, tilting her face so her nose was elevated. "Combining Dust with my semblance gives me far more versatility than I'd get from a complicated weapon alone."

Mesquite hummed. "So it's not a sword, it's a wand."

"It functions perfectly fine as a sword, thank you," said Weiss, loudly enough that chatter from some of the other tables cut out.

Mesquite ran a finger along the edge, which would have sliced open his gloves… had the edge been sharp. "All your kill-power is in thrusts. Without a cutting edge you can't do much with slashes. I imagine you've drilled a lot on how t' compensate?"

"Yes, I have," said Weiss shortly.

Mesquite didn't seem perturbed. Instead he turned to Penny, and his face brightened. "Hey, Miss Pallas! How'd Elektra do on its trial run?"

"Splendidly," said Penny. "As well as could be expected."

"But not as well as it could?" said Mesquite with a raised eyebrow.

"In two out of two battles I didn't use the Fire Dust Projector. Under re-analysis, I'm not sure when I ever would, other than as dazzle. The Projector is short-ranged, and if my enemies are that close I can smite them with the blade."

"It has advantages, I'd argue," said Mesquite, "'specially when outnumbered, but you've got a point about wanting more reach. The flamethrower won't stop ya from gettin' kited."

"Precisely," said Penny.

"Well, half the reason we went with the flamethrower is that you were already using Burn Dust, so it was simple to integrate. Time was short, and any range was better than nothin'. Now that you have a little more time, ya got options."

Mesquite revealed a button on their workbench that raised a touchscreen. A few more presses and he'd navigated to a "firearms schematics library". "Here are some ways people have added guns to their weapons," he said. "See if anything there speaks to ya."

He walked to the next table, leaving Penny to peruse the library. Penny started looking through the library; images and plans flipped before her eyes, one after the other, faster and faster as she drank it all in.

There were so many options! Just for mounting there were weapons that incorporated guns into their guards or hilts, coaxially mounted guns aligned with the blade, blades that mecha-shifted to reveal guns, blades that mecha-shifted into guns, weapons that split into two guns, and even guns that shifted form into different guns.

The guns themselves were amazing in their varieties of firing pattern, loading mechanism, caliber, ammunition capacity, ammunition type, barrel length, effective range, spread, muzzle velocity, rounds per minute, recoil…

Faster and faster she looked through the images, trying to soak up the possibilities for later analysis and synthesis, but for now, as Mesquite had suggested, looking for something that spoke to her, and going through as many possibilities as she could get her eyes on to find just that—

"Penny!"

Penny froze. Weiss' tone had been one of alarm. Penny turned to see what the problem was.

Weiss was looking at Penny with wide eyes. "Are you alright?!"

"Yes," said Penny in puzzlement. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You were clicking through those pictures so fast it was like you were having a fit," said Weiss. Oh, Penny realized: Weiss had been concerned.

"I assure you I am fine," said Penny. "My motions were deliberate."

"You weren't looking at those pictures long enough to even see them," Weiss said stubbornly.

Oops. Penny hadn't been trying to analyze in real-time, just get the data in for later use, and since her memory was high-fidelity, she didn't need long to ingest the images… which, apparently, was not how meat brains worked.

"I suppose I should slow down a little," Penny said. To maintain cover, she thought for Jiminy's sake.

This did not appease Weiss. Penny started looking at the images at a more sedate pace, one every 2.5 seconds, but noted Weiss was still shooting looks at her as if waiting for her to do something wrong. It took some of the fun out of weapons-gazing.

By the end of the day, Penny had seven syllabi for various courses, "homework" in two classes that she'd completed in near-real-time, and an increasing sense that she was missing something by skipping meals. That was team bonding time she just couldn't access! Well, she'd compensate for that.

"Now that we have reassembled," said Penny after her teammates had returned from dinner, "we shall commence with Friendship Things. To start, I think we should paint each other's nails."

"I am perfectly capable of painting my own nails, thank you," said Weiss.

"I am sure that's true," said Penny generously, "but this activity is not for the purpose of having painted nails, it's for the bonding experience of doing it for each other." When Weiss still looked skeptical, Penny turned to Yang for backup. "Isn't that right?"

"Yeah, I've done that sort of thing," said Yang.

"Sensational," said Penny. "What about you, Blake?"

"I haven't done much nail painting," said Blake from the shelter of her bed. "I think I might be bad at it."

"Then this will be a learning experience," said Penny, undeterred. "Learning together is exciting! I hope we can learn many skills together, even ones as trivial as painting nails."

Blake still looked hesitant, but not like she was actively opposed. Weiss kept her arms crossed. "This is so juvenile," she said. "I ought to be studying."

"We barely covered any material today," said Yang. "Today was all the setup stuff. Unless you want to relive the dramatic tale of Peter Port's Beowolf hunt."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "We took out a Geist that had possessed a gunship. I don't see how we're supposed to be impressed by someone fighting a single Beowolf."

"Well," Penny said, "we had our Auras and semblances to help us. Our professor did not."

The other three looked at her as if for the first time. "What?" said Yang.

"He mentioned it in the middle of the story," said Penny. "The story was set shortly after the Academies were founded, and before he got his Huntsman training. He captured the Beowolf alive with only his natural abilities."

Weiss opened a notebook and rapidly flipped through its pages. "I can't believe I missed that," she said. "I'm going to have to pay even closer attention in the future."

"I'll help you with that," said Penny, "because friends help each other out! And what better way to build up our friendship than by doing Friendship Things?"

Emotion Signifying squished up her face in a combination of 'adorable' and 'pleading'. Weiss turned to Penny with a sharp remark on her lips, but it never came out. Instead, she looked at Penny's face, and Penny looked right back at her.

"Oh, fine," said Weiss petulantly. "We'll do this one time. I hope you like blue, because that's all I have."

"Blue will do nicely, Friend Weiss," said Penny.

"Don't call me that," said Weiss.

"Okay," said Penny, and hiccupped.

Sure enough, painting each other's nails was as intimate and as edifying as Penny could have ever hoped. It felt good to take responsibility for another's wellbeing and discharge that duty well. Penny was startled but gratified to realize that letting another person take care of her was almost as enjoyable. What better display of friendship could there be? Watching another's back in combat, perhaps, and the time would come for that, but combat was infrequent; these opportunities she could make.

She was impressed with herself that she only squealed in delight three times.

The only problem with it was that it got over. After a mere 15 minutes, everyone's finger and toenails had been painted some shade of blue or white. (Penny had argued successfully that toenails were included in the broader term "nails", no matter how much Weiss protested that they would be invisible inside their shoes.) That wasn't too big a problem, though, because it meant that they could start another Friendship Thing!

Penny returned from the bathroom where she'd stored the nail polish. "Okay," she said, "what Friendship Thing should we do next?"

"No more," said Blake as she sat in her bed with a book in her lap.

"I really should study," said Weiss.

"But our situation with regards to studying is the same as it was 17 minutes ago," said Penny, "when you consented to not study."

"For as long as that activity took, and no longer," said Weiss. "I can't believe I missed a vital detail like Port doing that hunt without Aura. What else did I miss?"

Penny had her next argument lined up when Yang said, "Well, for me, I'm gonna let all this air dry. I'm going on a walk. Hey, Penny, wanna come with?"

When Penny looked at Yang, Yang gave a small, silent nod, as if her offer was more than mere suggestion. "Very well," Penny said. "I shall accompany you."

"Great," said Yang, and she led the way out of the room, then out of the building entirely.

Campus was quieter than Penny would have expected. She'd explored Beacon in her first days after awakening, and she'd noticed at the time how serene the grounds felt. She'd attributed it to the absence of people. Surely when the student body arrived there would be more bustle.

Perhaps not. It seemed like most everyone was in one building or another, with few people walking about, and those few not much engaged in conversation. Penny would have to adjust her expectations, if this was normal for people.

There were times when Penny felt like she didn't understand anything.

"Still getting used to how friendship works, huh?" said Yang.

Like this time.

The words were so sudden and with so little lead-in that Penny's subroutines had to bounce them around a few times before finding one that could answer. "I suppose I am," said Penny. "I haven't had friends before, even though I've wanted them very much."

"I get the feeling Weiss hasn't had many friends before, either," said Yang. "Except she thinks she doesn't need 'em. And Blake… I'm still working on Blake."

"Working on…?"

"Getting a feel for her," said Yang. "Understanding her more. It takes time, you know."

"I don't know," said Penny earnestly.

"That's kind of where I was going," said Yang. "Penny, we're friends, right?"

"You are my first and best friend," said Penny.

"So I need you to trust me a little on this. I know you want to make friends with the rest of our team. I do, too. But you can't force it. You can't push too hard or you'll push them away."

Yang's words made sense; they did seem to correlate with what Penny had observed from Blake and Weiss. Except… "I thought making friends was an active process," Penny said. "Something you do. Isn't friendship about shared experiences?"

"Sure," said Yang.

"But if we do not share experiences by doing activities together, how will we become friends?"

"Two things," said Yang. "First, some people just don't become friends overnight. You and I, we make friends easily. We bond fast and hard. Not everyone is like that. That doesn't mean they won't become our friends eventually, just that it'll take a little time."

"Days?" asked Penny. "A week? Two weeks?"

"Maybe," said Yang with a shrug. "You can't really put a timer on it. It might take months."

Months? How could Yang be so sanguine about something taking months? Penny hadn't been aware for months!

Oh. But Yang had been.

Compared to Penny, her teammates were old. They were seventeen years old or more. It was a length of time Penny couldn't even imagine, let alone appreciate. Penny's awareness of time went down to fractions of seconds. A year might as well be an eon.

Had Weiss had to go all that time with no friends at all? The idea was a bottomless well of terror; Penny's logic filters ejected it before it could consume her. Even in its absence, she felt a great swell of pity for Weiss.

"Are you saying I have to hold off on Friendship Things for months?" Penny said in a small voice.

"No no no," said Yang. "Totally not. I'm saying take it a little slower. Don't try and do your whole list of friendship stuff right off the bat. We'll get there, promise."

Penny's eyes widened. "You promise?" Promises, she knew, were very powerful things.

"I mean, we probably won't do everything you can think of, but plenty. That's the other thing I wanted to tell you: we'll probably do friendship things you haven't even thought of."

"Really? Like what?" said Penny eagerly. If she could update her entries of Friendship Things, then that would improve her chances of making friends with Blake and Weiss, and probably others too.

"Like hanging out," said Yang.

Thesaurus called up that entry. "You mean spending time with one's friends in a common location?"

"Yeah," said Yang. "Sometimes you can just be around people without doing anything with them. If you're okay with them being in your space, and they're fine with you being in their space, that's a pretty powerful thing, don't you think?"

"I hadn't considered that," said Penny. "So just existing can be a Friendship Thing?"

"Sure," said Yang. "Why don't we go back to the room and try it?"

Penny clapped her hands. "I can't wait! Thank you for all the insight, Friend Yang! Allow me to show my appreciation!"

She went in for the hug.

There was a cracking sound.

"Are you okay, Friend Yang?"

"Yep. I'll be fine. It was just my spine. No biggie."

Blake was reading a book (that she was concealing the cover of). Weiss was studying. Yang was entertaining herself with her scroll.

Penny was existing.

Tactical had some of her cycles, which she devoted to monitoring her teammates in case circumstances changed, but the majority were spent reviewing the past day, folding these new experiences into her old ones. Updating Thesaurus (by comparing her stock definitions to how people actually used those same words) was by itself an enormous task.

"Woah."

Penny looked over at Blake, who had set her book aside to look at her scroll with some disbelief. "It's getting late, I thought for sure…" she paused long enough to take a gigantic yawn. "…that someone would have mentioned it by now."

"Would you like me to in the future?" asked Penny.

"Why are you asking me?" said Blake.

"Because you're team leader," said Penny.

"Oh," said Blake, seeming to collapse in on herself. "Right."

"I think I understand," said Penny. "You need to get a certain amount of sleep every night, and you want to ensure you do." She gasped as she made the connection. "You want to make sure all of us do, because you're our team leader, and you're concerned for our mental and emotional health! What a wise and considerate leader you are!"

Blake got even smaller as Penny spoke. Yang, in contrast, was barely suppressing laughter. Blake looked to Yang for help. "Is this really happening?"

"You could use your authority as team leader to tell her to stop."

"Ugh, that's even worse." Blake looked at Penny. "Alright, you can set up a lights-out alarm eight hours before wakeup."

"Done," said Penny.

Blake stared at her. "You're not going to set the alarm on your scroll? You're just going to remember it?"

There was a beat before Penny realized, once again, that meat people didn't have internal chronometers. "I will do that," she said, and reached for her scroll.

"I can keep studying," said Weiss. She was still sitting at the desk and writing. "I've learned how to operate on six hours of sleep per night. I have a system in place so I can sustain that long-term."

"If by 'system' you mean 'coffee'," said Yang. "'The power of caffeine compels you!'"

"You got more than six hours of sleep last night, didn't you?" said Penny. "If you really did fall asleep after your shower."

"Last night was exceptional," Weiss said, though her pen nearly slipped out of her hand as she spoke. "Initiation was tiring."

"Doesn't that suggest that your Beacon workload will be more intense than what you're used to?" said Penny, genuinely curious. "Which would imply you'll need more sleep to recover."

Weiss slammed her pen down on the desk. "I will be responsible for my own sleep patterns, thank you very much!"

"Cool it, ice queen," said Yang.

"Calling me that is a sure way to make me not calm down!"

"Weiss," said Blake in lower tones, "it's okay. I think Penny has a point. I spent a few years getting by on less sleep, just like you. I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing. But if we can afford to get eight hours, that's probably better for us. Being around other people and having respect for their sleep can help us to do the healthy thing."

Penny hiccupped.

"You okay, Pennster?" said Yang.

"Fine," said Penny, keeping Emotion Signifying from showing the others her annoyance, since it wasn't at them. Jiminy had cracked down on her lie of omission of not saying she needed no sleep. That boded ill. If Jiminy was going to alert on things she didn't say, it would greatly complicate her life. To her dismay, Jiminy's code was protected and she couldn't edit it. She had to hope this was a fluke.

Weiss crossed her arms and looked at Blake. "Six and a half hours," she said.

"I'd go as low as seven and a half," said Blake.

"Seven," Weiss said immediately, but Blake shook her head.

"This isn't about just you or just me," said Blake. "It's about what's best for all of us."

"Which is your first concern," said Penny, happy she understood this point, "because you are our team leader!"

Blake cringed at those words; Weiss whirled on Penny. "Don't be such a suck-up!" she said.

"I wasn't sucking anything," Penny protested in confusion.

Weiss stared at her. "Was that a joke?"

"Was it supposed to be?" said Penny, less sure than ever.

"How am I supposed to know if you're… You know what, just stop." She stood and collected herself. "If we're going to bed now, I'll need to do my evening hygiene first."

"You can say 'use the potty'," said Yang as Weiss walked past her. Weiss answered only with a raised middle finger. There was a slight delay before Thesaurus identified the gesture.

"Friend Weiss was very rude to you just now," Penny said in a hushed voice.

Yang just grinned. "I probably deserved for her to be ruder."

Thesaurus informed her it would now take an additional 87 minutes to process the day's language results. Or, to put it another way, people were confusing.

Penny waited until the breathing of her teammates became low and slow, enough to presume they were asleep. Then, she surreptitiously snaked her charging cable into her bed and plugged in. Blake turned in her bed when Penny did this, but she never looked in Penny's direction, so Penny hoped that meant Blake stayed asleep all the while.

Blake didn't respond to Penny making her nightly wish on her name-star, either. Penny could have sub-vocalized it to guarantee stealth, but she felt that would have defeated the gesture.

Just because Penny's teammates were asleep didn't mean she stopped watching them and learning about them. For someone in her position, every experience was a learning opportunity. She would take Yang's advice to heart. Just existing could be a team building activity if Penny tried hard enough at it.

She was surprised to discover that her teammates didn't even sleep in similar ways. She'd started to appreciate this the night before Initiation, but it was more obvious now that she had fewer people to look at or consider.

Weiss spent almost half an hour tossing and turning with little rest or relief. When she finally stopped, though, she was almost still from that point on.

Blake moved at regular intervals, but not much. If she was waking up, it was only briefly, and she went back down soon after.

Yang, true to her word, didn't sleep through the night. She fell asleep quickly at first, but jerked awake four times over the course of the night, to the point of sitting up in bed twice. It took some time for her to fall asleep again. It made Penny wonder if there was something she could do to help.

All of this was fascinating insight for Penny, more information for her to parse. Even if she never understood about sleep, though, the evening carried its own satisfaction. Her teammates were comfortable with Penny in their space.

As far as she was concerned, that meant they were at least halfway to friendship already.

Note: As an experiment, and because I have a very substantial buffer, I'm going to be shifting to a six-day posting frequency. Instead of every Sunday at 10pm EST, we're walking backwards in days; this one is Friday, next week will be Thursday, etc. If you prefer the consistency of the same-time, same-day schedule, let me know.

Next time: Great Leader Theory