Penny knew, objectively, that she was a top-tier intelligence. There were benefits to having near-perfect retention, unmatched calculating capability, and a logic-ruled mind.

Even she didn't feel good or confident about how end-of-semester exams went.

As sure as she was of her answers, the lack of timely feedback left room for doubt to creep in. In the moment, Penny could be certain she'd answered correctly. It was only after she turned her exams in, and her professors took the exams away and out of sight, that doubts could and did well up. This usually took the form of, Did I misunderstand the questions?

She thought differently from meat people; she got new evidence of that every time she engaged in conversation. She had no hope that communication was easier or higher fidelity in writing. If anything, writing was even more prone to mismatches and mistakes, because it removed the nonverbal cues that made up eighty percent of the content of a conversation.

Penny assessed that she could know all the material and still fail the exam. That was frustrating and frightening both.

For all of that, Penny was handling exams with far more grace than Weiss.

No sooner had BXPS reentered their dorm than Weiss had plopped down at the desk. She opened three binders and two books and drew a study guide from the last, which she shoved at Penny. "Quiz me," she demanded.

"Our next test is in two hours," said Yang. "You really think you can get any meaningful studying done now?"

"I need to," Weiss said.

"Anything you don't know by this point, you won't know," said Yang. "You'll be better off taking a rest than stressing yourself out about it."

"I can't rest if I'm stressed about it," Weiss said. She looked sharply back to Penny. "Are you going to take this or not?"

"I… do not know how all of your brains work," Penny said uncertainly, torn between Weiss' and Yang's opinions. "I don't know if more studying will benefit you."

"Didn't you get a 98 on your last test in this class?" said Blake as she crossed over to lay down on her bed.

"Which won't help me if I do badly on the final," Weiss insisted, slowly, as if it was painful to have to spell it out. Once more, she snapped the papers in Penny's direction.

"Look, I wanna do well, too," said Yang, navigating around fallen suitcases to sit on her own bed. "But I'm not gonna make myself crazy for an extra point or two, whereas you've been psycho for two weeks now. Your grades are…"

"…not good enough," said Weiss through clenched teeth.

"You're top-two, top-three at worst, in every single class we've got," Yang said. There was no hint of teasing or needling in her voice (at least none Penny could detect; admittedly, she was bad at that). "How the hell is that not good enough?"

"We're on academic probation," said Weiss. Her eyes seemed wetter than before.

"Do you honestly think Goodwitch is kicking anyone in this team out for academic reasons?"

"It's not Professor Goodwitch I'm afraid of!"

Weiss' words begged the question of who she was afraid of, but Analysis had no idea. Yang and Blake looked as lost as Penny felt.

"You know what?" said Weiss, shoving study materials into a bag hard enough to strain its straps. "I'll just go study on my own, then. If no one wants to…"

She slammed the door behind her.

"I swear I wasn't trying to make her do that," said Yang.

"Then why did she?" said Penny, completely adrift.

"She's scared," said Blake. "I just don't know what she's scared of."

"That helps me less than I expected," said Penny. "How can we protect her if we don't know what to protect her from?"

"It's a good question," said Blake. When Penny stared at her, she added, "I didn't say I had the answer, just that it was a good question."

With that, she grabbed her scroll and headed for the door. "Where are you going?" said Yang.

"Lucky me has an extra, team-leader-only test," said Blake.

"Have I ever said how glad I am that you were named team leader and not me?" said Yang.

"Many times," said Blake.

"Do you wish me to say it, too?" said Penny.

"No."

There were few things that Penny actually, genuinely disliked. There were plenty of things she didn't like, as in "had no affection for", a list that included static, Cardin Winchester's idea of fun, and all species of grimm.

Absence of like was not the same as dislike. Dislike was an ugly feeling that Penny did not favor; it fell into that category of negative emotions that she felt she could just as well do without. And yet the things she disliked, she disliked honestly and for good reason.

Second on the list were programs that threatened her autonomy and pushed her into antisocial behaviors. First and foremost was people suffering with Penny unable to fix it.

Friends were supposed to emotionally support each other. They were supposed to help out and make things better. When her friends suffered, Penny felt bad twice: once from sympathy, and once from despair at being unable to help.

Her friends were, to greater or lesser extents, suffering. She could tell that as she looked at them in the classroom where they would take their next exam.

Weiss had bloodshot eyes from staring at study material and not sleeping. Penny could enforce bedtime and lights-out, but she couldn't compel sleep. She'd heard Weiss running through study exercises under her breath deep into the night, reciting Dust interactions and grimm taxonomy and the campaigns of the Great War for hours until passing out from exhaustion.

Jaune and Blake looked little better. Had the leaders-only test caused them this much distress? Had they really done so poorly? Penny didn't know how that could be. She thought both were splendid team leaders, and if their performance in other classes was reflected in their leadership class, they were in no danger of failing.

Was that something that happened? Did bad team leaders fail those classes and lose their leadership positions?

Her worries for her friends intensified.

"Good afternoon," said Doctor Oobleck as he darted around the classroom, distributing grading slips. "Standard examination procedures, you've all attended enough of my classes to know those, we will begin momentarily. I hope everyone has their heads in the game and has adopted those preparatory practices that will give you clear minds and high focus."

Tactical demanded Penny inspect Weiss for these properties. Nothing about Weiss' ragged appearance suggested high focus or a clear mind. And at that, she looked more composed than Jaune or Blake.

"Mr. Arc!" said Doctor Oobleck as he zipped in front of Jaune. "You seem spectacularly unready for this examination. What could be the matter?"

Jaune blearily looked up at the professor and muttered something that sounded like, "Leadership class."

Instantly Doctor Oobleck's expression softened, and his voice went quiet, almost inaudible even for Penny. "Ah. I see." His eyes tracked over to Blake. "You and Miss Belladonna?"

Jaune nodded.

"Was it Maru's Drift?"

Jaune nearly sobbed.

"That would do it," said Doctor Oobleck quietly. "The timing of the leadership exam is never convenient. Every year, someone is unlucky about when, precisely, they are put to the test. Which is a fundamental part of that exam, when you think about it."

Jaune made a choking noise.

"That said," Doctor Oobleck continued, "this is still academia, and accommodations can be made."

He drew a pen and wrote at the top of the Jaune's answer page, "+5". Before anyone could process their surprise, he'd zoomed in front of Blake and written the same thing on her paper. Then he was back at the bottom of the room, passing out exams. "Good luck everyone," he said snappily, "do your very best, your time starts now."

Penny only noticed because her seat put her at the end of the line for receiving the exam, but in the seconds that elapsed as she waited for Dr. Oobleck to get to her, Tactical flagged Weiss. Penny saw Weiss staring at Blake with frightening intensity while the hand that held her pen crushed it to dust.

"Brutal exam," said Yang as the team staggered back into their dorm.

"It was about as expected," said Penny. "Dr. Oobleck is very consistent on testing the topics he covers in class."

"Which is a relief, because Professor Peach isn't," said Weiss, pushing past her teammates to go to her bed and start stuffing things into a bag.

"You're gonna go study alone again?" said Yang.

"And you're not," snarled Weiss, "fitting our patterns and with predictable results."

"I can come with you and quiz you," said Penny. "That method has been very successful in the—"

"No!" said Weiss as she whirled on Penny and extended a finger in her direction. "You stay away from me. I want nothing to do with any of you right now." Her eyes fell on Blake. "Especially you."

Blake flinched.

"Hey, what's your problem?" demanded Yang.

"Oh, now you're interested in my problems?" said Weiss, sounding almost hysterical.

"I told you at the start of the semester I'd help you with the heavy stuff," Yang shot back. "Are you gonna let us help or just scream at us? Because if it's the second thing, you know me, I'll give as good as I get."

"Which is why I want to get away," Weiss said slowly.

"Oh, so this is charity, got it," said Yang with something meaner than her usual teasing.

Penny could see her teammates getting more upset, but no subroutine could either tell her why or suggest a remedy. "Why are we doing all of the shouting?" she asked, starving for data.

"If you hadn't noticed, we're on academic probation," Weiss said, "but apparently that's just me!"

"We already went over this," said Yang without losing volume. "It's no big deal, we're not in—"

"It is!" shrieked Weiss. "It's a very big deal! Not to you, obviously, but it means everything to me! And we wouldn't even be in this position if you all had listened to me at literally any point!"

"I listen to you all the time," Penny said. Emotion Signifying was keeping her volume down and her tone inconstant.

"Not when it counts," hissed Weiss. "Did you read our debrief of our little White Fang adventure? If you had, you'd look back and see that at every juncture where we went wrong, every time we made a bad choice, it was over my objections! I was the one saying we shouldn't be doing this, we should stop, and no one listened! I got pulled along with you maniacs against my will, and now I'm getting punished for it!"

"We all are," said Yang.

"This isn't punishment for you," Weiss sneered, "your parents don't care if you do well or poorly! And you don't even have parents!" she shot at Penny.

Penny felt like she'd been stabbed, but Weiss wasn't done, turning her gaze on Blake. "And we don't know what your situation is, Little Miss Mysterious, but it doesn't matter because you're getting bonus points!"

"I'm getting bonus points because you all died!" Blake exploded.

Weiss' ferocious momentum faltered.

Blake dropped her gaze and hunched her shoulders under the eyes of her teammates, like she was trying to protect herself from their stares. She walked back to her bed and sat on it with her knees against her chest. "The leadership test wasn't a written one like the others," she said quietly as she rocked back-and-forth. "It was a scenario in a tactics simulator, like a video game. Jaune and I took it in turns. The premise is… one team leader is disabled, the other has to take charge of both teams, to… to try and save a t-town…"

Blake's rocking back and forth was getting fiercer.

"…and I couldn't do it! There was no way! I looked a-at everything, I tried different things, I asked every question I could think of, and… and there wasn't any way out! Everyone died—JNPR, all of you, everyone in the town…"

"What the hell kind of test is that?" said Yang.

"I couldn't even save a single person," Blake went on as if Yang hadn't spoken. "When everyone else was already dead, I had Penny pick up one civilian and carry her away with her jetpack… a-and a Nevermore came out of nowhere and got her mid-flight. I couldn't save anyone. Not even one.

"And Jaune went even faster. He put himself on the front lines and d-died in the first few moments. And I get it! He had himself die first b-because he knew what was coming, he knew how it was gonna go…

"And all of this just reminded me how stupid I am," Blake said fiercely.

"You are not stupid!" Penny blurted out.

"Don't lie to me!" Blake shrieked.

"I cannot and I will not," Penny said with desperation. "You are anything but stupid."

"Then why can't I do this?!" said Blake, tears falling down her cheeks. "I don't know how to keep us out of trouble and fight the White Fang. I don't know how to beat Adam while keeping us all safe from him. I don't know how to stop the Vale branch when they have a point, when they've got legitimate grievances that I agree with! When I actually want to be right there with them! I don't know how I can help the Faunus when I don't even have the courage to openly be a Faunus!"

She wrapped her arms around her legs and curled up into as small a ball as possible. "I can't do this," she said again. "I don't know how. I can't even pretend it'll all work out, that it'll be okay, like a real leader would do. I don't believe it, so why should you?"

She looked up at Weiss. "Hate me if you want, but you don't hate me more than I hate myself."

"I don't hate you," Weiss mumbled, unable to make eye contact with anyone.

Penny wrung her hands together. She had to do something, and even if this was the wrong thing, it had to be better than nothing. "Blake, I know you do not generally like or seek physical contact, but I think you are very much in need of a hug. Would you allow it?"

Blake sniffed. "I guess."

And Penny was right there immediately, wrapping Blake up in an attempt to ward off the fear and pain and whatever other feelings Blake might be having, whether Penny understood them or not.

She applied little of her strength. She wanted to ground Blake, not smother her, and she was starting to understand the difference. Penny wanted to feel some gratification for her expanding knowledge of emotional matters, but that would only matter if she was actually making things better. She hoped that she was. She knew she was on the right track when Blake squirmed in her grasp and pressed closer against Penny's chest.

For a moment, Penny envied her teammates. To them, softness and warmth felt like comfort, and Penny was neither of those things, couldn't be either of those things. She was metal and electricity and silicon with a thin likeflesh gauze stretched across. She couldn't bring Blake all the comfort she needed. Penny could only hope to make up the difference with sincerity.

She heard a whimper and looked up. Weiss was standing with her arms tight across her body. The wide eyes and aggressive posture of her fury were long gone; if anything, she looked more like Blake than she ever had.

Now Penny wanted to wrap her up in a hug as well, because she could see Weiss in almost as much distress as Blake had been, but Tactical warned her the logistics of that just wouldn't work…

And then Yang was stepping close to Weiss, her voice low and warm. "You'll only be alone if you make yourself that way," Yang said. "You don't have to be. You can make it better."

"Can I?" said Weiss, and her voice shook almost as much as her body.

"Yeah," said Yang. "It won't be very Schnee-like, but you can."

Retrieval eventually made the connection: to the last time Weiss had said something about what her family did or did not do. I was taught that Schnees never apologize. And yet, before Penny's eyes, Weiss became less like that ideal and more like herself than ever.

"I'm sorry," she said to Blake. "I spoke like I was trying to hurt you. I went too far." She glanced up at Yang. "Is that enough?"

"It's enough," said Yang. She stepped forward and gently placed her arms around Weiss, who fell against the taller woman like a collapsing building.

"It'll be okay," said Yang quietly. "It'll be okay."

For 2.3 minutes, the four of them stayed like that, and Penny had the impression that they were less a team and more a crash site. Each one of them mangled and broken in their own ways… which, ironically, put them in like company.

Tactical pinged. At first, Penny wanted to disregard, comforting Blake was far more urgent—but she found something about the report intriguing. "Blake," she said, "in your simulation, you said that a Nevermore caught me."

Blake didn't speak, but Penny felt Blake nodding against her chest.

"I travel faster than a Nevermore in level flight," said Penny. "Are we confident the simulator models our teams' capabilities correctly?"

"Maybe?" said Blake, but there was a waver in her voice that hadn't been there before. It curdled as quickly as it'd come. "It wouldn't have mattered. Even if we were all twice as strong as the simulator said, we'd all still die. There were too many."

Weiss picked her head off of Yang's chest, an intense look on her face, "Maybe that's the point."

Blake sniffed. "…what?"

"If there are enough grimm in that sim to kill us all twice over," said Weiss, slowly, as if computing the answers as she was going, "then there's no way to win. How could there be?"

"There has to be," Blake insisted.

"Why?" said Penny. "Forgive me if this is just my ignorance, but are all test scenarios winnable?"

"They're supposed to be. That's how you show what you've learned, by applying your knowledge successfully," said Blake, but she sounded much less sure as she looked to Yang. "Right?"

"That's all I've seen in school," said Yang, "but Beacon's crazier than my other schools, you know?"

Penny thought she was starting to see the shape of it. "I model possible courses of action in advance. Many times, the course I want to take is flawed, and the model suggests that was a bad idea. But I don't think that makes having the idea wrong. Very often, I learn from the bad ideas—from failures.

"Blake," said Penny, growing more confident, "I believe the goal of the scenario was to inflict failure."

"No way," said Blake.

"They air-spawned a Nevermore on top of Penny just to spite you," said Yang. "They were never gonna let you win."

"But that's stupid!"

"That's realistic," said Weiss, and her fingers curled from where they were still holding on to Yang. "I've been in plenty of situations where my choices were completely immaterial. Where my only choice was how I was going to lose."

"I don't accept that," said Blake, digging in. "I refuse to believe there's no way to win. There has to be a way to make things better."

Penny smiled. "In that case, Friend Blake, I believe you have passed the test."

Blake's Thesaurus crashed.

"As Huntresses," said Penny, reciting words back from their classes, "we are supposed to be both strong and inspirational. 'Paragons of virtue and glory, infinite and unbound.' We were further taught that resilience is a primary virtue. Even after you told us you don't know what you're doing, you said there has to be something you can do. I think that is a bravura display of resilience, don't you?"

"I don't feel very 'resilient' curled up in a ball on my bed," said Blake. "Holding on to other people just to… you know, exist."

"At least you didn't act like a child," said Weiss, lowering her eyes. "At least you didn't start raging against everyone around you, deserving or not."

There was a brief but horribly awkward silence.

"Look, I'm trying, okay?" said Weiss. "I'm trying. If you knew my family, you'd know that makes me unusual."

"I can imagine," said Blake.

"And you're trying, too," said Penny to Blake.

"We all are," said Yang. "We all have things we struggle with, and the important thing is we realize it and help each other through it, as long as we're all trying to get better."

Weiss frowned and looked up at Yang. "As annoying as it is, you don't seem like you're ever struggling with things."

"I can put up a front with the best of them," said Yang with a cocky smile. "But I told you half my issues on day two, if you remember."

Penny remembered. In high fidelity. Her friends' problems were a priority for her, even if Yang had said it wasn't Penny's job to fix it. Penny's eyes went to Yang's sash all the same, and she wondered if there was a way, after all.

"I remember that," said Weiss. "But… you just said 'half'. What's the other half?"

"Oh, crippling abandonment issues and a creeping dread that everything could turn to shit at any moment," said Yang. "No biggie."

Weiss shook her head. "'No biggie', she says."

"I don't know if you've noticed," said Yang, "but I can take a lot more pain and punishment than most people. I'm okay. Heck, I think we all are, or at least we will be. Right?" She scanned over to Blake, and somehow extracted a nod from her team leader. Then she looked down at Weiss, whom she still had in a hug. "Right?"

Weiss met Yang's eyes for 1.3 seconds before making a noise like a gasp and retreating to arm's length from Yang. Weiss tried to keep her eyes level, but given the height difference between her and Yang, that just meant she was looking at a different prominent part of Yang, and with a yelp she looked to the side. "Right," she said at last, though her voice sounded very thick.

With a knowing grin, Yang let go of Weiss and flopped backwards on to her bed. "And this is why exam week always blows," said Yang. "Take a bunch of hormonal teens—present company excepted," she added with a nod at Penny, who appreciated it, "pack them in tight, then add the extra pressure of exams, and boom! Everyone's issues pop up in spades, like someone stomping on a tube of toothpaste."

Penny considered this. "That would make quite a mess."

Yang gestured at their room at large. "Exactly."

"So all of these abnormal behaviors are stress responses," said Penny. "Blake's feelings of responsibility and inadequacy grow stronger, Yang looks to take on other people's pain to mask her own, and Weiss makes her frustration everyone's problem."

"Hey!... okay, fair."

"Penny," said Blake as she looked up at Penny from within their ongoing cuddle, "don't ever try to be a guidance counselor, okay?"

"Okay," said Penny, and it was easy to give up something she'd never wanted. "But why not?"

Blake gave a wry grin. "Because tact and subtlety are not your strong suits. Even when you mean well."

"Again unlike the Ice Queen," said Yang, "who also doesn't do tact or subtlety, but says it's everyone else's fault."

"Specifically, it's your fault," said Weiss, glaring in Yang's direction.

"Wait," said Penny as a horrible thought occurred to her, "does that mean I can't help all of you when you are having troubles? I thought I was doing an adequate job!" Horrified, she released Blake and held her arms away. Was she part of the problem?!

"It's okay," said Blake. "It was a kind of a joke. You're fine."

Penny nodded, but she didn't close in with Blake again. "When it comes to jokes, I prefer the kind where the joker makes a maximally large smile and everyone else groans. That way I know for sure it's a joke."

"Don't encourage her," Blake and Weiss said simultaneously.

"Too late!" said Yang. "Actually, all of this makes me pretty curious. How do you think JNPR is dealing with all the stress?"

Jaune sat on his bed while flipping through a comic book, with a stack of similar comics sitting next to him. Pyrrha was sitting at the desk and steadily working her way through a pile of study notes. Nora was between two beds doing sit-ups. Ren was asleep.

Pyrrha finished the page she was working on and looked over to Jaune. "Would you like to study together? I'm sure it'll be more effective than studying alone."

Jaune started at the break to the quiet. "Oh, no, that's okay," he said shakily. "After that leadership test I'd rather not think about school for now."

"That's fair," said Pyrrha. "It did seem to shake you up. I'm sorry for reminding you about it."

"It's fine," said Jaune. "Hey, have you ever read any X-ray and Vav?"

"I can't say that I have," said Pyrrha.

"Oh, it's great," said Jaune, grabbing some comics and stepping over towards the desk. "I don't have the early issues with me, but if we start here it'll be good enough, you won't have missed too much…"

Nora stood, turned to Ren's bed, put one arm behind Ren's legs and the other behind his back, and started doing curls with him as her weights. Ren, fortunately, stayed asleep.

"They're probably fine," said Penny.

"I've never seen someone fight the scenario as hard as Miss Belladonna," said Glynda. Oz hummed thoughtfully, but didn't interrupt. "I think she recognized early that it was a no-win scenario, so she put a lot of effort into pushing the limits of the simulator and its ruleset. She even engaged with me on the limits of simulator realism."

"There is only so immersive we can make it," Ozpin granted. "Still, most students don't try to argue the point."

"And she very nearly wriggled out," said Glynda. "Penny's flight ability is something we've never had to deal with before. I had to inject an extra Nevermore to cut her off."

"Miss Pallas does tend to break our projections for how things will go. Still… I find Miss Belladonna's showing quite encouraging, don't you?"

"She is creative and persistent."

"More than that: she refuses to acknowledge what we typically think of as impossible."

"She certainly has below-average respect for rules and laws—but you knew that when you admitted her."

"Yes." Ozpin looked at the results before him, though with his eyes out of focus, like he was looking through them somehow. "Rules have a purpose, but it's easy for them to become habitual—for us to cling to them out of obligation whether they still make sense or not. It's useful, I think, to have people willing to challenge those rules."

"Isn't 'a person with no respect for the rules' a working definition of a sociopath?"

"Touche. Still, would you use that word for Miss Belladonna?"

"No."

"Neither would I. But her relationship with the rules is only part of my point. I'll admit to having a weak point for those who see what the world could be—without being too constrained by what is. You and I, our experience is both blessing and curse. We know how to work within systems and cause incremental changes, we can make things happen… but grand changes are beyond us. We've compromised too often. We've accepted too much. We've settled."

He waved a hand at the papers before him. "She hasn't."

Glynda knew Ozpin well enough to know he never used so many words without purpose. "What do you intend for her?"

"Miss Belladonna was willing to take up arms for the Faunus cause before," Ozpin said, a not-quite-smile tugging at his face. "Let's see if she will again."

Author's note: The idea and content of the "Maru's Drift" scenario is from a story by Kiiratam of the same name, and is used with permission. Also, go read it. It's barely over a thousand words and is worth every second you spend on it.

Next time: We Have Jackets