"I just… I don't understand what I did wrong!" Pyrrha sobbed into her sleeve, sitting on her bed and leaning over far enough so that her face hovered just above her legs. "Was I not nice enough?! I helped him as much as I could, didn't I? I trained him! I believed in him!"

Nora, sitting next to her, put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her teammate towards her. "Of course you did. You did everything you could for him."

Over to the side, Ren lay down with his head propped up against a pillow and a book in his hands, one leg crossed over the other. Silent as usual, he didn't seem to feel any obligation to join in on the conversation. The only one missing was Jaune. Of course, he'd begun to spend much more time outside the dorm as of recent. Wherever he went, Pyrrha didn't know and hadn't asked.

"But then why doesn't he like me?! What did she do for him that was so amazing? I just… don't understand it."

Nora sighed. "You did more for him than anybody could have asked of you. I don't understand it either. But sometimes that doesn't help as much as you think it will, anyways."

Pyrrha unburied her face from her hands and looked up at her, still hunched over. "Well then what does? How am I supposed to know what to do if I can't even figure out what went wrong in the first place?"

"I am so glad you asked," Nora said, flashing a toothy smile. "If you'd like my expert opinion, you should start by having a conversation with Jaune. You know, the kind you sit down for. Who better to answer all your questions than the man himself?"

"What's even the point?" Pyrrha looked away again, staring at the wall in front of her with glassy eyes. "He already found somebody else, and she probably makes him happier than I ever could. What good will talking with him do if it won't help me be with him? It's pointless."

Nora shook her head. "Well, you can at least be friends with him again, right? Think of this as a first step towards the rebuilding of your relationship."

"I don't want to be friends with him. I want to be his girlfriend…"

Pyrrha almost broke out crying again. She knew Nora was trying to help, but what good was talking to him going to do? He had someone else. He didn't care about her, at least not like that. Not in the way she wanted him to. Talking wouldn't change that.

"Not much can be done about that right now, Pyrrha," she said, patting her on the back, "But if you talk to him, you can at least get some closure. It can't hurt, in any case."

But what if it did hurt? What if he told her something she didn't want to hear? What if the problem was something she couldn't change, that she just wasn't good enough for him? What if – even worse – he told her that he knew about her feelings and had chosen to ignore them because this Cinder girl was simply… better.

Pyrrha sat in silence.

Nora grinned and rubbed her chin. "You wanna know something I've always wondered about, Pyrrha?"

No response from her fellow redhead.

"Why do you think college relationships always end so quickly? Isn't that funny? Oh, and the first girlfriends never stay, do they? I kinda thought that was funny, y'know, 'cuz this is Jaune's first girl and we're in college."

…

"I… suppose that is true," Pyrrha said, her voice muffled as she spoke with her face shoved back into her sleeves.

"That's not even to mention the long-distance thing. She's an exchange student, isn't she? A few more months and it's back to wherever she came from. I doubt that kinda romance ever lasts all that long. Besides, they've only been on one date. In any case, it won't be easy for Jaune to keep up with all that even if it does last."

Pyrrha shook her head. "That's wrong. To hope that they break up, I mean. I…" She took a second to think through her next words. "I don't enjoy seeing him do this with someone else, but I can't root for something like that. It'd be cruel."

"Yea? Now, what about when you caught her following him around? Creepy, wouldn't you say? Personally, I think stalking's a lot more wrong than not wanting the stalker to date their stalkee."

Her teammate's mention of the incident took Pyrrha by surprise. She'd mostly forgotten about it, having stayed focused on Jaune's attention to Cinder rather than the other way around. Now that she thought about it again, though, feelings of concern found their way back to her.

She didn't think it was necessarily her bias speaking when she agreed with Nora that yes, following the two of them around had been weird. But Pyrrha was a celebrity, and she was used to people stopping to stare. At some point, she had been forced to accept that kind of thing as normal. She may have not liked it, but that didn't stop it from happening.

"We've been over this, Nora. Cinder was probably looking at me because I'm famous and people do that to famous people. Sure, it struck me as strange, but it wasn't a big deal. I'm used to it."

"Wrong!" Nora shouted, making her flinch. "She was trailing Jaune with intent to strike, and looked at you because you were there to protect him. But at some point, this succubus isolated your man and took him as her own! What, are we supposed to sit by and let all this happen? I say we ought to help our friend and leader!"

The sheer absurdity of what had come out of her teammate's mouth was enough to dry her tears. She was known to go off the rails once in a while, but seriously, what was she talking about?

"Calm down, Nora," Ren said from his side of the room.

"In a little, Rennie!"

Pyrrha swallowed. "I'm… not sure that's entirely reasonable."

"Oh yeah?" Nora crossed her arms. "What do you think happened, then?"

"Well," she said, sighing, "Cinder stopped to stare at me because she was surprised to see a celebrity and Jaune happened to catch her eye, either then or some other time. I doubt she was stalking anyone. We can't assume something like that."

"Ridiculous. Unfounded and laughable," Nora said matter-of-factly, puffing out her chest.

Pyrrha almost smiled. Almost. "Then what do you suppose happened?"

"Obviously, this girl saw him around in the hallway or somewhere, and for whatever reason found him so unbelievably attractive that she had to know more about him," she said, earning a rare eye roll from the usually polite Pyrrha. "So, of course, she began stalking him. Now, does that sound like a healthy relationship? Nope! And that's why it's your moral obligation to help him out of it."

Pyrrha stared up at her friend, who sat up straight, proud, and almost certainly very wrong. In a strange way, she envied her. If only she had half the confidence of Nora, she probably wouldn't have waited so long to ask Jaune out.

"And what exactly do you think 'helping him' entails?"

"I'm so glad you asked." Nora beamed. "First step is gathering evidence."

"I'm sorry, but what you're saying is senseless," Pyrrha said, shaking her head. She stood up off the bed and straightened out her clothing. "I appreciate that you mean well, but this… this isn't what I need right now, and it's time I get out of the room for a bit."

"Alright, I'm sorry. I'll drop it if you want me to."

"No, no, I just need to go and blow off some steam is all."

Ren spoke up this time. "Just let her go, Nora. I'm sure she'll talk some more about it later."

Nora relented. "Alright, fine. But don't think I won't-!"

In a move Pyrrha would have usually avoided out of courtesy, she shut the door behind her without waiting for her friend to finish talking. She knew that she was trying her best, but the last thing she wanted was to get wrapped up in some conspiracy surrounding her love interest. What she needed right now was a way to relieve her stress. So even if it wasn't a regular training day, that meant it was time for that, if nothing else just as a way to get her mind off things.

So to the roof it was for her.

/-/

Cinder walked into the dorm with her chin held high. Emerald and Mercury both picked their heads up to look at her as she entered, the latter quickly losing interest while the former kept her gaze fixed on her boss. She looked back at neither.

"I've got that intel you requested, ma'am," Emerald said, turning her body to pick up a folder laying beside her on the bed. "It doesn't seem like they've filled in all the details yet, but it's a start."

Wordlessly, Cinder reached out to take the folder out of her hands and glanced over the contents, details of Beacon's security measures for the Vytal Festival. The girl was right; there were certainly some holes they hadn't plugged yet, but it was very valuable information nonetheless. Plus, she imagined they would keep the finished plans wherever Emerald found this rough draft, so it was good to know that she could rely on her to get her hands on the real thing.

"Very good, Emerald, but do tell me these are copies. The last thing we need is for some professor to find a few files missing and trace that back to us."

"Of course they are, ma'am."

Cinder stretched her arm out to hand them back to her. "I'm glad. Now find a spot for those. No more leaving these things out in the open, either, and that goes for both of you. Put them somewhere you're confident no one would spot them if somebody else were to wander in here."

Emerald looked puzzled at the request, but complied and promptly lifted up her mattress to stuff the files between it and the bed frame. Cinder figured that would do just fine.

Things were going along smoothly, very smoothly.

For one thing, their plans for Beacon seemed to be nearly complete. The only reason they hadn't been finalized months earlier was because she needed information that could only be found at the school itself, but now that she had most of that, the only hold up would be waiting for the Vytal Tournament to actually roll around. Soon enough, the other half of the maiden powers would be rightfully hers.

Of course, all of that paled in comparison to the progress she'd made on the other, more important, side of things.

Memories of the other night that hadn't once left her mind came back more vivid than ever. She thought about how kind he'd been to her, how good he'd tasted. And, of course, when he'd told her that he loved her. Jaune really loved her! It was such an indescribable feeling, knowing that her darling had the same kind of feelings. Nothing else really came close.

They'd kissed, too. The flavor of his lips still lingered on her own. If just kissing him had been that amazing, then she couldn't wait to take things further with him. Imagining it had her knees weak.

Still, though, her work was far from done. She couldn't just make him fall in love, she had to prove to him that loving her was worth it. She had to make him happy in a way nobody else could. That way, he'd have no reason to think of leaving her. Only then, when he realized that she was the only person he needed in his life, could she relax and focus completely on enjoying herself. Maybe she'd tell him the truth at that point, too.

Cinder took a seat at the desk. "I want both of you out of this room. I have personal business to attend to. Well? Hurry out."

Mercury sighed and rolled his eyes, but got up and made his way to the door. Emerald, meanwhile, looked up at her in confusion, but a stern glare back sent her on the same path. With the two of them cleared out, she now found herself alone.

Sitting with her legs crossed, Cinder reached into her pocket to pull out her scroll and dial that oh so cherished number. The ringing chimed out through an empty dorm, and after a period that felt much longer than it probably was, Jaune's beautiful face finally appeared on her screen.

"Hey, Cinder. What d'ya need?"

"Hello, darling," she said, curling a lock of hair around her finger. "I wanted to make sure we're still on for training tonight. You still want to do that, right?"

"Yeah, of course. I can meet up with you if you just give me twenty minutes."

"Lovely! I'll meet you out on the roof in twenty, then. See you soon!"

"See you soon, then," Jaune said, flashing a smile before he hung up and her screen went dark.

Cinder beamed and hurried to change out of her school uniform. At last, some more alone time with him! They hadn't gotten as much of that as she would've liked today because of classes and his schedule, but once she got him to leave his friends behind, they'd have a lot more.

Oh, and it looked like that might end up being easier than she'd initially thought it would be. He and Nikos had seemed much more distant than usual as of late. At first, Cinder had assumed that they'd go back to being all buddy-buddy in no time, but that hadn't happened, at least not yet. It was undeniable now. Something had happened between the two of them, and whatever it was, she loved it.

They no longer sat next to each other in classes, or walked through the halls side by side, or did homework together in the library. Perhaps Jaune had realized he didn't need her and told her to back off, or perhaps Nikos had decided it was useless to pursue him and given up. In any case, it was beyond refreshing to see her leave him alone for once.

Cinder got to the roof early. As she opened the door, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, greeting the cold night air with her hands on her hips. She had to admit, this was a nice spot. It was remote and out of the way, for one thing, so there wasn't much of a concern over other students coming to interrupt her. She could enjoy the moment, just her and her beloved Jaune.

When she opened her eyes, she quickly became aware of another figure there with her. One that was not, in fact, her beloved, although one that did pre-occupy her thoughts quite a bit over the past few weeks. Her mouth curled into a scowl.

"Nikos…"

The girl in question looked over awkwardly from across the roof, turning her head towards her in the middle of some leg stretch. The two stared at each other for a moment before Nikos broke eye contact and continued with what she was doing.

Cinder cleared her throat in a failed attempt to get her attention. Her scowl deepened.

"Excuse me," she said, her tone betraying whatever politeness her phrasing might've conveyed. "I was just about to meet Jaune here. I'd much prefer it if you left."

Pyrrha looked back at her, surprised. "Oh, um… Sorry. I'll… do that."

Her words were shaky and weak, as if she were on the verge of tears and would start sobbing any second. It was more pathetic than anything else, really, to see someone so often lauded as some kind of champion seemingly on the edge of a breakdown. Not to mention how quickly she'd given up her little spot. Cinder had anticipated at least some pushback, but the girl couldn't even muster that. Apparently, she needed to lower her expectations.

Cinder glared at her as she walked by. "I'll be up here with him everyday from here on out, too, so I wouldn't come back much if I were you."

Pyrrha stopped. Her shoulders slumped and she walked away with her head down. Even without seeing her face, she could tell that it had upsetted her. Good. She'd only really said it in order to make her jealous.

Now alone, a smile crept its way onto her face. Jaune would be meeting her soon.

Sure enough, she didn't have to wait long for him to arrive. Her heart fluttered as he walked through the door. He was early. Three minutes and twenty-two seconds early. How could anybody deny that they were meant for eachother when he was arriving three minutes and twenty-two seconds early for her? He, too, must've realized that they were destined to be together.

Jaune greeted her with a short wave and a smile of his own as he walked towards her. Cinder hurried over to him, pressing her body against his close enough to feel his heartbeat and put her hands around his waist.

"I'm so glad you could come," she said, looking up into his eyes. "You just couldn't stay away from me, could you?"

"Hey now, you invited me!"

Cinder wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers. "You're early."

Jaune chuckled and took a step back, breaking the contact. He reached over his back and pulled out his shield. "Should we get started, then?"

"What, you don't want to have a little fun first?" she said, grabbing his wrist to pull him back towards her and putting her free hand on his cheek. His face went red. "Surely, it would do you good to destress a bit."

Although a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, his smile went nowhere. "W-why don't we wait after we're done? Make sure we get all our reps in and all that…"

Cinder smirked. Admittedly, she found some fun in making him fluster. Maybe she just liked that he found her so attractive that, even though they were dating, she still made him nervous. Or maybe it was just the sort of power it gave her over him. Whatever the case, it was amazing.

"I suppose I can wait just a bit longer. Let's begin, then."

/-/

Cinder watched as Jaune sat down by the ledge of the roof, his body glistening with sweat. Over the horizon, the sunset produced a deep layer of orange.

Jaune put his hand over his chest and gasped for air. "Okay, why don't we call it there?"

"You're improving very fast, Jaune," she said, putting her weapon away. "I must say, you've really impressed me tonight."

Her darling responded with a weak smile that went as quickly as it came. He was very clearly exhausted, his chest heaving up and down with each breath. Up and down, up and down, up… and down… and up…

Cinder bit her lip. Hard enough to draw blood, if not for aura.

She sat down next to him. "I really mean it. I'm not just saying that to try and encourage you."

"Thanks," he said, still breathing heavily. "Your training has helped a ton."

"Well then why don't we start doing it more often?"

Jaune looked over to her. "Hm?"

"We could start doing this every day, if you'd like. Or even if you don't feel like training every day, we can just come up here to spend time together." Cinder turned her body towards him and slid closer. "Talk. Be alone and by ourselves. Like a date."

"I mean, I'd love to, but I usually come over here with Pyrrha…"

She had almost forgotten about that detail. No matter. Cinder could deal with that, she'd just need to take the right angle.

"Really?" she said, frowning. "I figured you'd stopped after you hadn't come up here for the past few days. Or did your schedule change?"

Jaune looked down at the floor and scratched the back of his neck. "Well, no…"

"Do you not want to spend time with me?" Cinder did her best to look hurt. "I- I understand if you want a little space, but I really thought that you-"

"No, no, it's not that. I- Well, me and Pyrrha haven't been as close as we used to be recently, and…" Jaune shook his head and gave her a weak smile. "You know what? I'm sure you don't want to hear me ramble on about all that. Sure, Cinder, I'll come up here with you. Maybe not every day, but when I can."

Cinder smirked, almost taken off guard by how easy that had been. She knew she could convince him one way or another, but for him to give in that quickly was surprising. Surprising, and, in a way, satisfying.

"I knew you would understand," she said, resting her head on one shoulder and wrapping her arm around the other, her eyes closed.

Even though she couldn't see it, Cinder could practically feel his face turning red.