After 48 hours of intense cyber forensics, Penny was forced to an unsettling conclusion: something really was wrong with her, but she couldn't figure out what.

She'd accessed her system specifications and compared it to the data available to Turchina. To her distress, her operating system's numbers for 100% capacity didn't match her hardware limits. Small percentages of processing power, memory, and storage were unaccounted for.

She was sure that this unallocated, mystery capacity was running a background subroutine she couldn't access, and just as sure that it had taken control of Vocal during that mortifying exchange in the library.

But every attempt to trace those interrupt commands ended the same way: with the other subroutines denying any interrupt commands had come in.

Penny was used to complete self-awareness. Penny was used to being able to trace and map every part of her body and mind: every circuit, myomer bundle, and subroutine. Her self-control was absolute. That was how it ought to be, how it needed to be, both for her own peace of mind and for the safety of those around her.

The safety of those around her…

Was this it? Was this as much as she could be with people?

Was this as close as she could get to having friends?

Would she have to be alone from now on, lest she say something, do something, hurt them even worse, do real harm, unable to stop herself or even know why-

Tactical alarmed. Penny started as higher consciousness refocused. The elevator, somehow, was opening.

Out stepped Professor Ozpin.

"Good afternoon, Miss Pallas," he said.

Penny's first thought of response was, 'I didn't know you could get in here,' but Analysis pointed out that Professor Ozpin had been the one to give her this place. Of course he could get into something that was his.

Well, that was a horrifying metaphor.

Instead, Penny said, "I don't remember you saying you would visit."

"You weren't answering your scroll when anyone else tried to reach you, so I decided against adding to the list of unanswered calls," Professor Ozpin said, somehow sounding playful instead of accusatory. "Nor did I tell anyone else I was coming here. I keep your secrets."

"I see," said Penny. Now she was making the headmaster worried over her on top of her team. Guilt was added to the slew of unhappy emotions she already felt.

Professor Ozpin crossed the room with only slight assistance from his cane. He sat on Penny's charging station and stretched out one leg. "You look in good physical health," he said, "but I never thought that was the reason for your seclusion. Something has happened that makes you feel like you can't be with your team."

Penny was nodding before she knew it. "Yes. I…"

It took her a moment to recall that Professor Ozpin was one of the few that knew her true nature. She could confide in him. Gratitude swept over her.

"…I believe there is a rogue subroutine within me that I can't control," she said. "It's shown that it can affect what I say, and how I view certain people."

Professor Ozpin frowned slightly. "'Certain people'?"

Penny sim-swallowed. "Faunus, in particular."

Professor Ozpin gave a miniscule nod as his gaze shifted off her. What he was looking at, Penny couldn't imagine.

"It is so… different from how the rest of me thinks," Penny said, and her hands trembled as she talked about it. "I try to be kind, and patient, and understanding. No other subroutine cares if a person is Faunus. No other subroutine interjects comments of its own. This… this isn't me!"

Thesaurus suggested she ought to be crying; Emotion Signifying replied she didn't have tear ducts and couldn't comply. Typical.

"I want it out of me," she said, voice cracking. "I want it gone. But I cannot even find it to remove it. So… maybe it's me after all? I can't abide that, but what else… what…"

She petered out, too confused and dismayed to finish the thought.

Professor Ozpin's face was compassionate. "A voice in your head, with different ideas about how to live your life… Hm. Would you believe me if I said I sympathize?"

"I believe you want to empathize, and I appreciate it," Penny said, trying for grace even under duress. "I don't know how you could."

"Well, that's because you give the human brain more credit than you should." Professor Ozpin gave a wry smile. "It's the most complicated piece of machinery in the world, assembled with, as it were, unskilled labor. We shouldn't be surprised when few brains come out totally to spec."

"I don't understand," said Penny.

"It's not just that people have different thoughts. It's that their brains actually work in different ways. Not necessarily wrong ways, but different. I've encountered a whole cornucopia of neurodivergence over the years. And yes, some people do have to contend with voices in their head that fight with them over what they should be doing."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes," said Professor Ozpin knowingly.

Penny was aghast. "Is there any way to help those people?"

Professor Ozpin gave a satisfied smile. "I take great heart from you asking that question. Listen to yourself, Miss Pallas. Your first instinct was compassion. You forgot your own suffering at the thought of other people suffering. That's a rare trait, and I treasure it. It's one of the reasons for my great faith in you. That is who you truly are, I believe it."

Penny felt the emotional equivalent of her gyro tumbling.

"But to answer the question, yes, some people are able to get help in managing their conditions. It's not as easy as it would be if we were all computers," he said with a nod at her. "We don't have the option of replacing parts or reloading software. Instead, we have to do something harder."

"What's that?" said Penny.

"Make peace with ourselves," Professor Ozpin said.

Penny didn't know what she expected Professor Ozpin to say, but she knew this wasn't it. "Make peace?" she said, wondering if she'd misheard.

"That's right," said Professor Ozpin. "Come to terms with this other self and figure out how to live with it."

So she had heard correctly—though that was no comfort at all. "There's no way for me to communicate with this subroutine, so how can I negotiate with it? And what if it wants something I don't want?"

"You have come to the essence of the problem," said Professor Ozpin.

"That's not particularly helpful," said Penny.

"There's no way to make it easy. I have a lot of experience with this phenomenon, and I assure you, there are no shortcuts or easy modes. It is a matter of understanding and learning and acceptance, and that typically takes time and effort. It's especially hard when the other self is wrong. Understanding why we think or feel certain ways doesn't make those thoughts or feelings right."

"It would be much easier if I could just excise it," said Penny.

"And if you can figure out how to do that, by all means," said Professor Ozpin. "But until you do, perhaps the alternative, however difficult, is the only path."

Penny tried to grapple with the idea. It was so much larger and scarier than she could have expected. She wondered if Professor Ozpin had actually been of any help at all.

"Well," said Professor Ozpin more lightly, "I suppose it's not the only path. There's also the path of denial. However, that tends to backfire rather spectacularly." He gave her a knowing smile. "I can say that from deep experience."

He rose and walked towards the elevator. As he came even with her, he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I also find that problems like this are easier to face in company. For most students, this is where I refer them to counseling. Your… circumstances mean I will not insist on that with you."

"I feel as if an expert in programming and computers would do me more good," said Penny. "Do you know anyone like that?"

Professor Ozpin took his time answering. Was his search running long, or did he have an answer but didn't know how to say it? Penny could never tell. "None I'd trust with your secrets," he said at last.

An expected answer, but a dismaying one.

"Instead," he continued, "even though this is tied up with your other secrets, maybe you can share your burden with those close to you: your teammates and friends."

She looked up at him. "Is this experience talking again? Is that what you do?"

To her surprise, something about him went flat. For a moment, the only correlation to be found was to Ren- null signal. It didn't seem like disapproval, but Penny still felt like she'd said something wrong.

"Good day, Miss Pallas," he said.

He left her even more confused than she'd been when he'd arrived.

"What's the plan?"

Blake started at the words. That made her more embarrassed still. She had zoned out as the bus trundled its way through uptown Vale, which was the opposite of what she needed right now. If she were being honest, she would have said she hoped someone else would come up with the plan, because she had too much in her head to think straight.

Still, this was her problem, so she was the one who needed to come up with the plan. Oh, right, and she was the team leader, so she double had to be the planner.

This was just bad in every way.

Weiss and Yang were still looking at her as the bus made its way ever closer to her destination. Her time was running out. Now or never.

She wasn't going to run away again… right?

She forced herself through a quick breathing exercise to try and steady her nerves, then turned to her teammates. "This might be nothing," she said. "I might be wasting your time."

"Helping you out's never a waste of time," said Yang.

Despite how casually Yang spoke the words, they carried such genuine emotion they almost stalled Blake out. She collected herself just in time. "An old acquaintance got in contact with me last night. I don't know how they got my number," she said with a shake of her scroll, "but they asked me to come meet them today."

"The same acquaintance who pulled you aside during the concert?" said Weiss.

"A different one, but from the same part of my past." Blake couldn't meet their eyes; she looked out the window. "I don't know what kind of meeting this will be. My instinct was to deal with it myself, but… I've been trying to be better about involving my team when it matters.

"So here's the plan," she continued before Weiss could look smug. "The meeting place is a shop, and there's a café on the other side of the street. You two will take overwatch position on the café's patio so you can see into the shop. Once you've been there for five minutes, I'll go into the shop to have my meeting. If it looks like it might get rough, I'll use hand signals to call you in."

"I didn't bring my weapon," said Weiss, looking at Blake's shoulder. "You didn't, either."

"I didn't want to presume what kind of meeting this would be," said Blake. Yang could get away with being armed at times like this because she didn't look armed; the bracelets that concealed Ember Celica, which Yang was wearing, looked like a bold but innocent fashion statement.

"So I'm not any more armed than you are," said Weiss. "I can only support us with glyphs, and without my Dust, my options are limited."

"I'm messaging you the code to my locker," said Blake. "While you're sitting in the café, feel free to mess around with your scroll, but have the app ready to call in our lockers if we need them. Yang and our semblances should buy us enough time for our lockers to arrive. We only need a few seconds."

"Can do," said Yang. "Also, you may have skipped this part, but who exactly are we up against?"

Busted.

"If we're going to be fighting for you," Weiss said in agreement, "I want to at least know whom I'm offending."

Blake's heart sank. Even now, she didn't feel strong enough for this talk.

Well, depending on how this meeting went, maybe she wouldn't need to be? She could always hope.

"Tell you what," said Blake. "If this goes how I want, then we'll never speak of this again. If any part of it goes bad, I'll tell you everything afterwards. Is that fair?"

"Fair enough," said Yang. She started to extend an arm around over Blake's shoulders.

Despite herself, Blake flinched.

Yang processed this instantly. Instead of touching Blake, she put her arm on the back of the seat, close enough that Blake could feel the heat that always radiated from Yang, but not close enough to touch. "We've got your back," she said firmly. "No matter what happens."

"It pains me to admit it," Weiss said crossly, "but Yang put it well."

Blake fought to keep her hands from trembling. "It's good to hear you two say that."

"Any time," said Yang with effortless sincerity. She jerked her head. "This is our stop, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Blake. Breathe. She could do this. "Let's go."

If only Penny were here. Blake needed all the help she could get.

Even Penny couldn't focus on the same problem indefinitely.

There were only so many ways that she could query her processors, only so many times she could get back the same negative responses, before frustration got the better of her. For perhaps the first time, she wondered if she shouldn't be more of a machine, more driven and single-minded on trying to solve a given problem.

The thought didn't survive long. If she was more of a machine, she'd have no chance of making friends. She still held out hope for that.

Instead, she deployed a tactic she'd seen her teammates use when they grew frustrated with a problem: she took a break.

As Gauntlet's heavy metal stylings blared from her scroll, Penny lost herself in weapons design work. The paired long swords were a step in the right direction, but there was always room for improvement.

The biggest problem was the limited ammunition the rifles could carry. The small number of shots and cumbersome reload mechanism meant she couldn't sustain long-range fire, and even if she used Dust payloads for enhanced effects the rifles weren't terribly powerful.

If the rifles had neither power nor endurance, perhaps they were just a placebo. Sure, they could thin out smaller grimm and give her options for dealing with ranged or flying grimm, but they wouldn't help much against the most dangerous foes.

The solution to both problems was evident as Penny continued her research: the newly developed particle beams that Atlas was fielding. They would be a large firepower upgrade, and they didn't need reloading at all. They were energy intensive, but if Penny drew from her internal power supply, she would have many more shots. More shots than she could fit bullets into the same space, at least, and the greater stopping power would mean she wouldn't need as many shots to begin with.

It was a splendid solution with one minor difficulty. The specs and blueprints for particle beams were not available anywhere that Penny looked. For that matter, particle beams had only been officially fielded on capital ships; it was unclear if the technology could scale down. She could redesign Elektra around what she thought a particle beam's characteristics might be, but until she got more detailed technical information, she couldn't go further.

She had some faith that Professor Hickory had more access than she had, so he could help her get and customize the specs she needed. Until then, these designs could not be completed.

Which meant that this diversion, entertaining as it was, had an inescapable end point.

Penny didn't pace, but she thought she understood the impulse. She felt trapped and restless at the same time. She felt like she needed to be doing something, and also like she couldn't do anything. She was as stuck with her personal struggles as she was with her weapons design.

She didn't feel like she could go back to her team, not without some confidence regarding how she'd act when she got there. But, Analysis pointed out, this didn't mean she couldn't go anywhere.

Maybe going back to the beginning might help settle her thoughts. Back when she was accepted to Beacon, Professor Ozpin had said that it was easier to know where to go if you knew where you came from. Penny might never know her full history, but she could go back as far as she could remember.

Yes, this was a good idea. She'd go by Receiving, where her shipping container had been opened and her first memories began. Then Medical, then the library, and then…

Vale, yes. To the stores she'd visited, ending with From Dust Till Dawn. She needed more face tattoos anyway.

She wondered if there were face tattoos shaped like question marks. That would certainly fit how she felt.

To her relief, she felt much better when she had a plan and some destinations in mind. Yes, this could only help her. Maybe she would jog something about this mystery subroutine loose, or maybe she would understand herself better. Either was fine.

Taking a simulated breath, Penny went back to the beginning.

Blake took care not to look at the café opposite her target. She'd received a text from Yang earlier saying that she and Weiss were in position. She would trust that, and not give the game away by obviously looking for them now. Instead, she walked for the front door of what had been one of her favorite places in the world.

Tukson's Book Trade.

Every time she'd visited Vale, she'd loved coming here. She'd never had much money to buy books—child revolutionary wasn't a high-paying profession—but Tukson had been indulgent enough to let her use it as a library, swapping books from her collection for books on his shelf. More than just her love of books was wrapped up in the place. The store, and Tukson himself, had everything to make a young lady feel comfortable: books, privacy, a Faunus proprietor, and a comrade-in-arms all in the same place. Blake couldn't ask for more.

And then...

For as long as she'd been at Beacon… that door had closed to her. It hadn't been safe for her to come back. It hurt, when this shop had been a safe place for so long.

She realized she'd slowed her walk to almost a crawl to avoid having to enter. If she dawdled any longer, she would risk attracting more attention than she wanted. Stiffening her spine, Blake opened the door to the ring of a small bell.

"Welcome to Tukson's Book Trade," came a rich baritone voice from the back of the store. "Home to…"

"...every book under the sun," Blake finished with a pained smile. "I think I've heard that one before."

Tukson had been moving about in the back of the store behind the counter, but when Blake's words reached him, he stopped whatever he was doing and moved to where he could see her. He was above average in height, with hairy arms below his polo shirt that were suggestive of fur, and his face had thick mutton chop sideburns. He looked far too burly for the owner of a bookstore, but Blake knew better: he had the soul (and recall) of a true collector.

He looked grave at seeing her, but he managed a small smile. "It's good to see you again, Blake," he said.

"I've missed this place," she said, taking a deep breath of the comforting aroma of used books. "I think this is the longest I've gone without visiting in…"

"…three years," he finished for her.

"Sounds about right."

"Was my selection not enough for you?" he said with forced humor.

"How could it be?" she said, reaching for the same. "You've got every book under the sun."

"Ah," he said with a knowing nod, "then it was the service that was the problem."

"I've never had better customer service than here."

"Well, I'm stumped then," he said. "What kept you away?"

Her good humor withered on the vine. "You know what," she said quietly.

He looked at her steadily, unflinchingly. "I know a little bit," he said. "Not everything."

The air between them seemed to grow chilly, almost frozen. It felt like the bookstore was getting bigger, pulling her and Tukson further apart.

"How did you find me?" she said.

"A friend of mine spotted you at a concert. After that, I asked around with my peers in the book business and found you'd been patronizing other shops." He shrugged. "It wasn't that hard."

"I wasn't really hiding."

"Looks like I truly don't understand," said Tukson. "Blake, why did you leave the White Fang?"

There it was. It was out in the open. It was a relief, for there to be someone she could speak frankly with. She'd been running over this topic in her mind again and again without being able to voice any of it. Now, at last, it was exposed to the light.

"It wasn't something spur-of-the-moment, if that's what you're thinking," said Blake.

"I didn't think that," said Tukson. "You were raised in the Fang. I didn't think you'd give that up lightly. Not someone as devoted to the cause as you."

"The cause," Blake repeated. The words felt wrong on her tongue. Foul. "Current leadership loves to talk about 'the cause'."

"So did you," said Tukson. "I still remember you, at thirteen years old, coming in and talking my ears off about how Menagerie was just enforced segregation, the balm for the Kingdoms' guilty consciences, and how true equality wouldn't exist until discrimination ended at home."

Blake remembered it. She felt like it had been a lifetime ago. "I still believe all of that," she said.

Tukson raised an eyebrow at her.

"Other people don't," she said.

One of the things that had always made Tukson comfortable to be around, and that had made him so successful as the owner of a bookstore, was that he didn't feel the need to chatter. He had no problem with being quiet and always knew when that was the better course. He kept quiet now, patiently letting Blake put her thoughts in order and gather her nerves.

"I may have grown up in the White Fang," she said, "but I chose to stay in, even when that... cost me. I wanted to help the Faunus. I wanted to save, to protect. But as I grew older, as I got better at seeing through masks and hearing through lies, I started to realize something. That's not why other people joined the White Fang, at least not these days."

"A group like the White Fang attracts all sorts," Tukson said.

"Maybe," said Blake, "but a group will tell you what it values by who it rewards with power. And the people rising to power in the Vale Branch aren't idealists. They don't define victory by how many Faunus we help. They define it by how many humans we hurt."

"Blake," Tukson said worriedly, "you're getting into dangerous…"

"Adam isn't fighting for the Faunus," Blake blurted out.

Tukson didn't speak. His warning was moot. His face set like stone.

Blake couldn't face him. She lowered her gaze and wrapped her arms around herself, but she managed to keep talking even when it felt like her tongue was made of cement. "Fighting to defend ourselves is right. Striking at people who hurt the Faunus to force them to stop is defensible. But Adam has gone much further than that. Hurting people isn't a side effect for him. He enjoys it."

"There are surgeons who enjoy cutting people up," Tukson said. "Doctors who get off on the blood and the guts and sticking their hands in people. That doesn't mean they're wrong for being doctors. They can do a lot of good that way."

"But that's because doctors heal," said Blake. "That's the point of surgery—to make the patient better. Adam isn't performing surgery. He's inflicting pain for the sake of it.

"And not just on humans."

Tukson flinched. Much of what Blake had said before, he'd heard before, she could tell; none of it reached him because he had defenses already in place. This was new.

"Adam has charisma," Blake said, her face burning with shame. "He can reach people. He knows how to stoke their anger, how to feed their fears… how to play on their insecurities… how to make them feel small."

She drew a shuddering breath. "He knows how to hurt."

She couldn't say more. It was too tender still. She wondered if she'd ever get to where she could talk about it. She wondered if there'd ever be a point.

Tukson, bless him, didn't push her for more, staying silent. She could see his fists balled up tight, though.

She was able to force a chuckle. "You know what's really strange? I don't think I appreciated some of this until I had some distance, until I had to be a leader. Thinking about what I ought to do put what Adam did in relief. The more I thought about trying to lead like he did, the more horrifying it got. I knew the Fang was heading down the wrong path, that's why I left, but it took some time to realize just how wrong."

"Is that what you think of me?" said Tukson. "I'm still inside, so I must be just like Adam?"

"If I thought you were anything like Adam, I wouldn't have come," said Blake. "I think you're a good man, Tukson. I think, when you consider what I've said just now, you'll come to my conclusions and do the right thing."

"The right thing," said Tukson darkly. "You make it sound so easy. Well, I guess for you it would be. Or maybe you just think it is."

"It's not like you to speak in riddles," Blake said.

"Adam's looking for you," Tukson said. The words sent ice sliding down Blake's spine. "He sent out the message to everyone. We're supposed to find you and figure out where you might be in the future."

"Is that what this is about?" said Blake. "Are you going to report me to him?"

Tukson's face fell. "No. I don't think I was ever going to, and I damn sure won't now."

Blake felt her shoulders relax. Some of the tension seeped out of her, almost unbalancing her from the loss of its weight.

"If I was," he said, "I would've laid a good enough trap that your two friends in the café wouldn't have made a difference."

Busted again. This day was challenging Blake's powers of subtlety. "My friends are novices at blending in."

"They've never had to pretend to be something they're not," Tukson said with a wry smile. "Lucky them, huh?"

"Yeah," Blake said hollowly, thinking of a scar and a red sash. "Lucky them."

"Do they know about, you know, all this?" said Tukson with a wave in the space between them. "The 'actual child terrorist' part of you?"

"I'm getting there," said Blake unconvincingly. "I'm getting to where I can tell them. This conversation helped a lot with that."

"Glad to assist, princess," said Tukson with a twinkle in his eye.

"Please don't call me that where anyone can hear it," said Blake, feeling her ears go flat beneath her bow. "If Yang gets ahold of that, I'll never hear the end of it."

There was a smile on Tukson's face, and for a moment Blake could almost imagine that this encounter was happening years ago, before everything got so complicated. A taste of simpler times.

The feeling faded along with Tukson's smile. "For what it's worth, I think you're right. About a lot of things—about where the Fang's going, what its leaders value..."

Blake could tell it was taking all his energy and concentration to speak. She gave him space.

"Something's coming," he said. "Something… different, something big. I don't know what, but I don't like it. It feels… wrong."

"You can always leave," Blake said.

"Can I?" he said dubiously. "I don't think I could get away any more than you did. You left, but the Fang still found you. Even if I don't report you, someone will. You can't hide forever. But… maybe…"

He reached over the counter and grabbed a notepad and a pen. He wrote for a moment, then handed her something she recognized as an address. "Start there," he said. "It's the best I can do."

"It's more than you had to do. Thanks," said Blake. She looked at the paper like it held answers for her, not more questions. "I don't know how to fix this," she admitted. "I don't know how to make this right. I don't know how to make Adam stop and still advance Faunus rights at the same time." Summoning her courage, she looked up at Tukson. "But I haven't given up. I'll keep trying."

"And that's more than you had to do," said Tukson. He hesitated, then said, "If you need anything else, it might be dangerous for you to contact me directly. But if you leave a message with the owner of World of Books, it'll find its way to me."

Blake smiled, and to her surprise it felt warm to her. "Panzoa preserve you, Tukson," she said.

The invocation startled Tukson, but he gave an appreciative nod. "And you, too, Daughter of Menagerie."

Having memorized the words on Tukson's note, Blake stuffed it in her pocket and left the shop. She didn't go to the café, instead going back down the street from whence she came. But once she rounded the corner, she dashed off a message on her scroll to Weiss and Yang.

The message was an address and the words, Meet me here.

Yang knew how to look relaxed even when she wasn't. She very much wasn't while sitting at this café on overwatch duty, with Penny unaccounted for and Blake being all… Blake-y.

Subterfuge was not Yang's strong suit. She much preferred to go into these situations with her brightest smile and her biggest ammo armed and ready. That wasn't Blake's style, but Yang wished it was.

Yang supposed she should be grateful that Blake was including them at all. As tense as Yang was on overwatch, it was vastly preferable to Blake sneaking off on her own, leaving Yang behind to lose her mind with worry.

Besides, this way gave Yang an easy outlet for relieving her tension.

"So…" she said to Weiss, "…come here often?"

"I won't if this is all their "premier coffee" amounts to," said Weiss irritably.

"Maybe you shouldn't drink it black," said Yang.

"Ha!" said Weiss. "The best coffee stands on its own. It doesn't need sugars and fats to fool the brain into thinking it's good."

"Snob," said Yang without heat. She put her elbow on the table and rested her face on her hand, a posture that simultaneously dipped her shirt forward and violated Weiss' etiquette training, both of which set Weiss' eye to twitching. "So what's a pretty thing like you doing in a place like this, anyway?"

"Your flirting is so abominable it makes the coffee seem palatable," Weiss said icily, and as if to prove the point she lifted her cup to her lips.

Yang waited another half-second before saying, "My bad, I forgot you were still mooning over Pyrrha."

Weiss didn't quite do a spit-take, but it was close enough for Yang to snort in laughter. Weiss made several coughs trying to keep her coffee from going down the wrong tube before fixing a furious glare on Yang. "Excuse me?!"

"You're not exactly subtle about it," said Yang. "I think even Penny caught on after your 82nd time asking to be Pyrrha's study partner."

"Pyrrha is an excellent scholar," said Weiss with all the dignity she could muster. "She's almost as good a student as she is a fighter. Studying with her would be immensely productive."

"I don't know if you've noticed," said Yang, "but no one on our team is exactly a slouch."

"I… had noticed," Weiss said delicately.

"Our grades are right up there with Pyrrha's," Yang said, driving her advantage home. "But you're not begging to go over notes with me."

"Do you have a point?" said Weiss with a frown that kept on growing.

"You're gonna make me spell it out? Fine," said Yang brashly. "You sit next to her every movie night, even if it means being by Jaune. You sit across from her in the cafeteria, where you try to catch her eye and draw her into conversation. You sit next to her when our teams are side-by-side in class, and you sit behind her when we're front-and-back."

Weiss closed her eyes, crossed her hands, straightened her back, and took a deep breath. "I don't know what you're implying," she said in a perfectly even voice.

"Bull—" Yang began, but she reassessed as she looked Weiss over. It was the posture that clued her in, a posture that no one adopted naturally. It was something that had been drilled into Weiss, again and again, by only the highest-paid etiquette instructors Atlas had to offer.

"Weiss," Yang said, her voice a model of moderation, "do you know what homosexuality is?"

Weiss' outrage was so fierce it was like Yang had dropped the crudest cuss words she'd ever heard from Uncle Qrow. Before Weiss could properly voice her wrath, both their scrolls pinged. Yang drew hers and saw the terse message from Blake.

Meet me here.

"Showtime," Yang said, standing.

Conflict played out over Weiss' face; she resolved it by taking another sip of coffee before rising. "I don't know if I want this to be something or if I want it to be nothing."

"Well, I know how much you love surprises," said Yang cheerily.

"I loathe surprises."

"Yup," said Yang with a smack of her lips, "and that's delicious."

Next time: I Forgot to Say "Salutations"