"And here's Miss Valkyrie stepping up to the ball. There's not much space for her to get out of this bunker and onto the green. What club do you think here, Joe? Maybe a wedge? Well, you know Nora, she's got one tool for the job, and she'll make that tool work."

A young woman in an alley was having a conversation, seemingly, with herself. She was standing before a dumpster that would have been unremarkable except that it had been mounted on wheels.

Nora Valkyrie circled the dumpster as if sizing it up before moving to one side and aligning her body with it. "With the small window she's hitting into, it'll be tricky no matter what tool she uses. In that case, she should probably just grab her best club and take the shot."

Nora reached to her back and disengaged the stow above her hips. A grenade launcher came away into her hands that she then mecha-shifted into a two-handed war hammer with a haft as tall as her body.

"And there it is, her favorite club for this and all situations. A hush comes over the crowd as she lines up her shot. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife, or maybe even a spoon if you're desperate or hungry."

Nora held out the hammer from her body and settled into a position like a golfer teeing off.

"Here it comes," she said in low tones, before bellowing, "FORE!"

She wound up and smashed the bottom of the dumpster with her hammer. Which, being on wheels, took the blow as propulsion.

The dumpster rocketed out of the alley, crossed a street, cleared a parking lot, and smashed into the façade of a small printing shop with a violent smack. The impact might have sounded like a thunderclap, but it was a finger-snap next to the cacophony that followed, as Dust-powered fireworks inside the dumpster touched off from an inertial shock-based fuse. With the lid of the dumpster closed, the fireworks rattled and boomed and rocketed off of each other inside the confined space, like an entire hailstorm jammed into a single tin pail.

"And Miss Valkyrie lands it in the hole for the eagle! The crowd goes wild!" said Nora with a pump of her fist. The moment she completed the gesture, she replaced her hammer on its stow and sprinted away from the scene.

The print shop had seemed to casual observation to be empty, with all its lights off and its doors shut and locked. At this new and phenomenal ruckus, though, several figures emerged from inside the shop, figures that (thanks to their heritage) needed no additional lights to clearly see what was going on… and, by inference, had not needed additional lights to do whatever they'd been doing inside the print shop.

All as expected.

As the figures were fully preoccupied with the exploding dumpster on their doorstep, Lie Ren slipped into and out of the print shop undetected.

Penny agonized in her indecision for the next several days.

She was 83% confident that Super Friend Ruby was the same person abducted from the Xiao Long household eleven years earlier. If so, that family's long grief over having lost young Ruby could be salved and a family restored. On the other hand, Ruby had said it would be dangerous for other people to know about her and her real name. It was her secret. Penny had sworn on her first day of classes to not tell people's secrets, to let them speak for themselves.

Even worse was the remaining 17% uncertainty that Special Friend Ruby was not Ruby Rose. If Penny got Yang's hopes up that she might see her sister again, and it turned out it wasn't her sister at all, it would emotionally destroy her. Penny couldn't accept that risk.

Maybe it would be easier if Yang met Super Friend Ruby organically and was able to make that determination for herself? Except that Penny had no way to arrange that meeting, given that she couldn't contact Super Friend Ruby directly. Even Ruby coming to and fighting in the same location as Team BXPS was no guarantee. Ruby had intervened in the warehouse battle, but only Penny had seen her. Even Weiss had been busy with the crystallizer the whole time Ruby had been in the warehouse; Penny didn't think Weiss had ever gotten a glimpse.

The easiest thing would be to show images Penny had saved of Ruby to Yang and let her come to her own conclusions. Even that seemed fraught.

Keeping secrets was awful and Penny hated it.

That miserable fact hung over Penny for the next week there on Patch. Penny and Yang took the time to explore large portions of the island, casually batting aside common Beowolves in the islands' furthest reaches. They played every board, card, and video game in the Xiao Long house, many of them twice. Penny even accompanied Yang to a store that sold boba and tried her best to appreciate it. She had no sense of taste, of course, and she couldn't swallow, but at least it had an interesting texture for her to feel with her hands.

Their time wasn't all play. They also put in work to make the house more livable. All three of them combined to sweep and mop the floors, wipe down all the windows, scour the bathrooms, and pull weeds, though Penny had needed a lot of help in determining what did and did not count as a weed. Tai went so far as to rent a pressure washer so they could cleanse the outside of the house for what was, apparently, the first time in years.

"I'd almost forgotten what color paint was under here," said Tai. "It's like a brand-new house!"

(Penny thought she understood what he meant. She was proud of the strides she was making in understanding symbolic language, though idiom still frequently gave her trouble, her success rate at detecting sarcasm and insincerity was improving only minutely, and novel constructions continued to ambush her. When the boba shop owner had described an incident as "embarrassing as a fart in church", Thesaurus had nearly crashed.)

Penny was grateful even for the work, because being with her people more than compensated for the relative lack of fun in the work itself. She treasured the comradery.

It was the nights she dreaded, that time when everyone else would be asleep and Penny's mind, from lack of external stimulation, would turn inward. At times like that, she almost couldn't avoid thinking about how, one way or another, she'd hurt someone's feelings at best, and plunge them into danger at worst.

Still, Penny had to describe her days on Patch as enjoyable. Maybe not as enjoyable as being at Beacon with her team, but vastly preferable to being alone at Beacon without her team.

Well, she supposed Blake was there, but—no offense to Blake intended—Yang was more interesting and more stimulating than Blake.

That was the opinion she held when, while sitting at the Xiao Long breakfast table a week before the end of break, she got a call from Blake.

"I hate to do this, but could you come back to Beacon a little early?" said Blake.

"I could," said Penny.

"Yang, too."

"Oh. She will probably need more of a reason to interrupt her break."

"It's about our homework."

Retrieval came up empty. "We don't have any homework to do over the semester break," she said.

"…I forgot. Subtlety doesn't work with you. Can I talk to Yang?"

Penny felt like that comment should have made her annoyed or upset, but it didn't. Logically, Blake was correct: if this was a situation that demanded subtlety, she was the wrong person to handle it. Yang wasn't particularly subtle by meat people standards, but the difference between one standard deviation and three standard deviations is vast.

Penny handed over her scroll to Yang, who took it with some curiosity. If Penny wanted to, she could have turned up the sensitivity of her aural sensors to hear the conversation, but she was confident she'd hear what she needed from Yang. Yang would be honest with her.

Okay, now she was annoyed and upset, just with herself.

Yang's eyes flicked over to Tai, who was watching her with intrigue; she stood, muttered "Excuse me" in his direction, and walked for the bedroom. Tai sighed in her wake.

"Here we go," he said.

"Where are we going?" said Penny.

"Into trouble, from the sound of things," said Tai. "Not like I couldn't see it coming."

He was dividing and subdividing his eggs with his fork. Penny was 80% sure he didn't need to do that.

"Getting into trouble," he said wryly. "She got that from… everywhere, really. Nature and nurture both. Even before she started wearing that sash, I knew, but after…"

He stopped pretending to eat and put his fork down. "Penny? Could I ask a favor of you?"

It was a good thing Penny liked surprises. "Yes, sir."

"Take care of her, will you?"

"I would do that anyway," said Penny. "Yang is my teammate. I take that very seriously."

"Kids," said Tai wistfully. "And you're even younger than them, experience-wise. You think it's that easy. There are teams that stick together for years, sure. Team STRQ, we said we'd be one of those teams. But Raven ran away, Summer died alone on a solo mission no one knew about, and Qrow is working himself to death because he blames himself for the rest of it. You don't know what'll happen, especially for a team full of people that want to change the world."

Penny could not object to Tai's characterization. Yang wanted to keep people from losing family like she had, which entailed slaying a truly colossal amount of grimm. Weiss wanted to reform the industry that formed the bedrock of Remnant society. Blake wanted a peaceful worldwide revolution of dignity, an almost impossible square to circle.

Penny's personal goal to make friends seemed petty by comparison, but also infinitely more achievable.

"You're the one most like me, I can see it," said Tai. "I always got the most happiness from helping other people succeed. I was the rock, and we built the rest on me."

"Is the reverse also true?" said Penny. "Does that imply that I may end up in pain and sorrow like you have?"

"You might," said Tai. "Personal connections are powerful things. When we invest ourselves into people and relationships, it takes a lot of us with it. But that's no reason not to do it."

Penny frowned. "It's not?"

Tai gestured in the direction Yang had gone. "By myself, I can't make a family. No one can on their own. But two people—two people can do that. Being by yourself is safe, but a ship in port is safe, too, you know?"

Penny filled in the back part of that idiom: that's not what a ship is for.

"Relationships with people are hard and risky and take a lot of work, but they unlock joys a person could never feel alone. When it's you and another person, you can be more, feel more, live more fully.

"I know that investing so much of myself in Raven and Summer and Qrow has cost me. You look at me and see someone who's damaged. That's fair. Losing something you put so much of yourself in will do that to you. But don't think for a second that I was wrong or mistaken to do that. Those people gave me more of a life, and a better life, than I ever could've imagined.

"That's why I'm scared for Yang," said Tai. "Partly it's selfish. She's all I've got left, she's my whole heart. If something were to happen to her, there wouldn't be much left of me.

"But I'm scared for her, too. All while she was growing up, she kept people at a distance. It's like she knew the whole time she was at Signal that the people there were temporary. They weren't her people. She was friendly, but she kept her heart from them.

"Well, that's changed. I can see it. She's giving herself over to all of you now. I don't want her to stop or change her mind. I can see the joy it brings her. All I can do is hope that it keeps bringing her joy, that it stays this good even when it's hard."

Penny reeled from the torrent of words engulfing her, from a new perspective she thought she'd have to create a new subroutine to begin to understand.

Tai gave a smile where humor was only a small constituent. "I just popped a few circuit breakers, didn't I? Blew a few fuses?"

"I wish I could engage with your words more fully," said Penny, "but getting along with other people is very difficult for me. That's why I'm at Beacon in the first place: to learn all of that."

"That's as good a reason as any," said Tai. "The moral of the story is, you said you were Yang's teammate and you'd take care of her. For both of your sakes, I hope you do."

Penny evaluated 23 possible responses to this. No response seemed to match more than 30% of Tai's meaning. "Language is failing me," Penny said. "Perhaps a hug would be more meaningful."

Tai smiled. "Lucky for you that I love hugs."

Penny got down from her chair and embraced Tai. That did a decent job of conveying understanding, she hoped.

"Aww, how sweet is that?"

Yang had returned and was grinning.

"Very sweet, I'd say," Penny replied. "Do you want to join us?"

"When I'm saying my goodbyes," said Yang. "For now, we've gotta pack. We're going back to Beacon a little early."

"There's a surprise," said Tai; Penny assessed that as sarcasm with 43% confidence. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

"With what I know you did at Beacon, that's the most useless advice ever."

"Alright!" said Tai with a fist-pump. "New record!"

Yang laughed. Penny did, too.

"Before you go," Tai said, "I just wanted to say something."

He stood, his face serious, and walked to Yang. He put his arms on her shoulders, a move which was nearly level; she was almost his height.

"You're a good woman," he said with no trace of humor. "I'm proud of you. I love you."

It was a small number of simple words, but the impact this made on Yang was all out of proportion. Her knees buckled, though she saved it; her eyes started to well up, and when she spoke, it was in a small, shaky voice. "Thanks, dad."

"Go knock 'em dead," he said.

"I will."

Penny smiled.

If Tai had been worried she'd be scared away from interpersonal relationships, he needn't have bothered. Penny was there, all the way there.

No matter what.

"This is more people than I expected," said Penny.

All these people would not have fit in Team BXPS' dorm normally. Luckily, Weiss had taken her many suitcases back to Atlas with her, so there was considerably more room in the dorm than normal. Enough, in any event, to fit Penny, Yang, Blake, Just Sun, Ren, and Nora.

"And it'll be even more people when our teammates get back," said Blake.

"My team's on its way," said Just Sun. "I called 'em in ahead of schedule. They whined, but they're coming. Neptune will get here soon, Sage and Scarlet two days before the semester starts."

"Pyrrha's coming back the day after tomorrow," said Nora. "Jaune'll be back the same day as Sage and Scarlet. His family has his ticket, and they're not giving it to him until then."

Penny wondered if Jaune was trying his hardest. A boy who managed to sneak into Beacon with fake transcripts surely had some amount of enterprise.

"What about Weiss?" she said.

Blake looked grave. "Her scroll is out of service."

"Has something happened to her?" said Penny with worry.

"I don't think so," said Blake. "If anything bad happened to the Schnee heiress it would be a newsworthy event. It's all quiet instead."

Penny wanted that to be reassuring, but she saw no legitimate reason someone with Weiss' resources could not be contacted. If Jaune's status was mildly concerning, Weiss' was greatly concerning.

"And we'll need all these people's help when they get here," said Blake, "because the pace of things is picking up and we can't wait for them. That's why I called you back early."

"Not that I'm complaining about getting some action," said Yang, "but when we left for break we were all losing our minds at how slow things were going. What changed?"

"Three things," said Blake. "First, I called my parents..."

"Sweet!" interrupted Yang. "And you told them you were sorry?"

Blake shot Yang an annoyed look. "Yes," she said shortly, "of course I did."

"And you told them that you love them?"

"Yes, Yang, I did."

"And you promised you'd call them again without it taking years or the fate of the world forcing your hand?"

Blake flushed a little bit.

Yang shrugged. "Okay, tell them that next time. Or, even better, call again when you get a minute. You never know which chance will be the last one!"

Blake glared at Yang with such intensity that Tactical was tempted to classify her eyes as weapons.

"Continue," Yang said graciously.

Blake collected herself. "Anyway… my parents had some ideas about trying to steal away the looser support that Adam's got, but more importantly, they still have contacts from when they were in the Fang. Some contacts all the way at the top. I'm still working that angle, but when I have more to say about it, I will.

"The second thing is that we got off academic probation, which means we're also off restriction. That's freed me to be more active in tracking down leads in Vale."

"I was under the impression the White Fang was looking for you," said Penny. "If so, going into enemy territory alone seems reckless to the point of madness."

"Who said I was going alone?" said Blake.

"We've had her back," said Nora.

"Yep!" said Just Sun. "We go to different places in different combinations so there are never any patterns even if we're seen, and we're pretty stinking good at not being seen."

Penny hoped that Emotion Signifying was up to the task of conveying her skepticism. Yang certainly was.

Just Sun seemed to get the message. "What?"

"Not to do the 'takes one to know one' thing," said Yang, "but you're a tall, loud, stacked blond, and Nora is Nora. Subtlety doesn't seem like your thing."

"Counterpoint," said Just Sun, "when I want to be sneaky, I totally can be. You're talking to a professional user of the Vacuo public transportation system!"

"And you only think I'm not sneaky because you've never seen me be sneaky," said Nora cheerily.

Penny gasped for effect. "But if you were being sneaky and we never saw it, that means you were doing a brilliant job!"

"You got that right, sister," said Nora.

As Thesaurus dug for alternative definitions of the word "sister", Yang looked to Ren and said, "And Ren is Ren, I suppose, so he gets a pass."

Ren gave the impression of a smile without committing to it.

"I guess it all checks out," said Yang. "Okay, so you've been down in Vale gathering information. What else?"

"The third thing that's changed," said Blake, "is that the Emerald Tower is moving."

It was quiet for a moment, before Penny said, "That would seem to be structurally unsound."

"I mean," said Blake, "that Professor Ozpin has been calling us- or at least me- into his office so we can pass the information we gather to him. We don't know everything he's doing with that information, but we know it's working."

"How can you tell?" said Penny.

"The White Fang had ops they were planning against repeat abusers," Blake said. "A shop here, a restaurant there, an employer there. We've been tracking which ones the Fang were planning to hit... and those abusers have gotten law enforcement attention. Not necessarily for Faunus abuse, but whatever the cops could make stick."

"We're using the White Fang's own intel to bust bad guys before the Fang can get to 'em," gushed Nora. "The bad guys still take it in the shorts, but the Fang's sitting there with their finger up their nose. No credit for them, and their guys are sitting there like, What are we even doing here?"

"That's only the half of it," said Blake, growing more animated. "We found that the Fang is moving all their stolen Dust out of the city, and we ID'ed two routes they were using. A couple days later, an airship using one of those routes was forced down, its crew was arrested, and its Dust cargo was confiscated."

"Yeah, kicking butt!" said Yang.

Blake looked down. "Sort of," she said. "The crew wasn't White Fang after all, just some sympathizers. Putting more Faunus at the mercy of law enforcement is not what I want to be doing. I want to resolve this fight with the Fang, well, within the Fang."

"It seems like the Fang is making it everyone's business," said Just Sun.

"I know," said Blake, "but there are things we can still do. After I talked to Professor Ozpin about it, the second bust on that route was done by Huntsmen, not cops, and they didn't take the crew into custody. They took the airship and the Dust, dropped the crew off at the border of Vale, and let them go."

Penny cocked her head. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that allow those members of the Fang to try again another day?"

"Potentially," said Blake, "but we're trying to break people away from the Fang, not just capture a few of its members. We have to change the relationship between the Kingdom and the Fang for that to happen."

"I don't understand the cause-and-effect there," said Penny.

"I didn't say it was easy," said Blake. "And I'm open to suggestions."

Penny clapped. "Which we can help you with now that we're here!"

"Exactly," said Blake. "So let's get to work."

Blake was mocking him.

Adam knew she was. Bad enough for her to abandon the cause, but now the traitor was collaborating with the enemy to defeat the cause, and spitting in his eye in the process.

Blake hadn't been there when those supply runs were caught, but Adam knew better. Her fingerprints were all over it.

He was walking towards the edge of the camp. Several Fang were loitering by a fire, including two who'd been on one such waylaid supply run.

"But if you were caught, why didn't they bring you in?" said a grunt.

"Beats me," said the runner. "They had us dead to rights. All they said was, "We're enemies of the Fang, not the Faunus," whatever that's supposed to mean. And then they let us go."

"I can't see any cop ever doing that."

"That's 'cause it wasn't cops, it was Huntsmen."

"Weird."

"I know, right?"

Adam ground his teeth together and walked past. This should have been an opportunity, a chance to directly tie the Huntsman profession to oppression of the Faunus. He knew it was true, that the whole system was corrupt and so complicit, but other people needed convincing, especially as the day of vengeance approached. Adam had to get that groundwork laid to ensure he'd be followed when the time came.

But if these Huntsmen were releasing the Fang they caught, it was hard to force the Fang to be angry at them. He was losing materiel without any moral compensation. This was a degree of subtlety that was unheard of in Atlas, that was rare in Mistral, that was unusual even here in Vale. This was new.

This was Blake.

Adam cleared the camp perimeter and flared his Aura. He found himself wishing some grimm would come by just so she'd have something to slaughter to work out this frustration.

Predictably, when he actually wanted there to be grimm, he couldn't find any. Even when he'd been told there would be grimm close by the camp, "just in case", whatever that meant.

That wasn't even the point, though. Adam had left the camp to make a call. As a White Fang veteran, he knew to keep all information off the nets… except for this special scroll, given to him by Cinder for the sole purpose of contacting her. He didn't know how it worked, it seemed like witchcraft—something about an insider, something about tunneling—but it had worked undetectably so far. Even with Cinder well out of reach, away from Vale for whatever her part of the plan was going to be.

He called.

Cinder's voice was more slurred and groggy than he'd ever heard it. "Adam," she said, "do you have any idea how time zones work?"

"I'm doing you a favor. I'm making sure I'm not interrupting whatever it is you're doing over there," he said. It was true. That he got vindictive pleasure from waking her up was equally true.

"What do you want?" Cinder said.

"I want you to give the order to that assassin," said Adam. "I want us to execute the plan we came up with weeks ago, the plan to remind Torchwick of his place and send our enemies scrambling all at once."

She really must have been sleepy, because it took her an unusual amount of time to process this. "It's too soon," she said at last. "We chose the day for that on purpose, if you remember."

"Things have changed," said Adam. "The enemy is moving, and it's starting to disrupt our operations. We'll fall behind again unless we do something to keep them busy."

He could imagine her eyes narrowing to slits. "Is the White Fang failing to live up to its promises again, Adam? Are you?"

"What about your promises?" Adam demanded. "What blows have you struck for the Faunus?"

"You know all of that is coming at the end of this operation," said Cinder deliberately. "You know that you'll be triumphant when this all comes to fruition. You will get what you want. I admired your patience before, Adam. How you could delay gratification, and not waste time and resources chasing after your little friend immediately."

Yes. Yes, that was something he could do, wasn't it? Adam could wait a long, long time to wreak vengeance. All bills came due eventually.

Except that Adam's revenge and advancing the cause of the Faunus had become the same thing. They might have been different before, at some point… maybe in some cases they still were. But when Adam was the Blade of the Faunus, then someone who defied him was by definition an enemy of the Faunus.

That couldn't wait.

"Move it two days earlier," Adam said.

"Will that even make a difference?"

"Yes," said Adam.

The longest pause yet. And then finally…

"Alright."

Next time: A Night of Jagged Dreams