/ - A second chapter is here. A tad shorter than the first, but I tried to have more narrative than dialogue in this one, for Weiss' sake. I honestly wish I could write out ten-thousand word chapters of this stuff for you guys, but it tires me out too much for something like that, I have no idea how people do it. Regardless, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for the kind words on the previous chapter.

Weiss wasn't going to lie. She had, everyday for the past six days, thought about her and Jaune's (and Ruby's) little gathering atleast once. However, Weiss also wasn't going to clarify further, so the exact number of times she had thought about her and Jaune (and Ruby) over the past six days would not be established, because it was embarrassing, and the heiress was yet to shake the scars from last week. The stinging reminder of Yang's stupid little blackmail still remained, and the lingering memory of her... 'alternate universe' comment - which only stung more the more Weiss reflected upon it - refused to leave her. She hadn't been wholly serious at the time, obviously, it was simply an excuse; a small, offhanded comment that had come from having spoken before she had thought. Winter had warned her of the dangers of speaking before thinking, and Weiss was now very much familiar with them.

Though, she would be lying to herself if she said she hadn't thought of the matter of the comment. The idea of swapping places with a Weiss in a universe where Jaune was smitten with her made good daydream material, and it didn't hurt to indulge - in the prospect that things could be a lot easier - within the confines of her own, tangled mind. But, alas, daydreaming had only gotten the girl so far in the past week or so; it had taken her a distance that brought her closer to accepting her hormonally amorous ordeal, but no closer to Jaune himself. Which was somewhat of a disappointing of a result with how thoroughly she had daydreamt about it considered.

It was a brisk Saturday morning that RWBY's dormitory found itself suspended in a comfortable silence. Weiss, the one most appreciative of the silence, was sat up against a stack of pillows lined up along the headboard of her bottom-bunk bed. A worn notebook rested in her lap, though the textbook next to her sat closed and untouched as the heiress' mind was racing to and fro too much to facilitate any modicum of study. In her stupor, she hadn't taken account of what her teammates were up to, though she doubted there was much to guess; she presumed Ruby was lounging around with her scroll, Blake was reading another of her questionable paperbacks, and Yang...

"You excited for your little rendezvous, Weiss?"

Well, Yang was doing what she knew best. Being an inscrutable nuisance. "Be quiet, Yang."

The girl laughed, leaning against the dormitory door. "What? Are you concentrating on something, perhaps?" She whistled a noise of thought. "Just the two of you hanging around, all alone..."

Weiss steeled herself, gripping a corner of her notebook between her index finger and thumb. Since Yang had caught wind of the upcoming occasion - from Ruby, on the same night - she hadn't left Weiss alone. "Be quiet, Yang."

It continued. "No one to disturb you..."

The corner was ripped from the page. "Your sister's going to be there. It's not a date."

The blonde, kitbag in hand, smirked. "Oh, I know." She smiled mockingly. "The joys of young love."

Breaking the back and forth came Ruby, who, with scroll in hand, flopped down from her bunk. She protested against Weiss' dismissal. "Hey! I worked hard to get you that date, Weiss."

Weiss pouted at her partner in fury. "It is not a date. You are going to be there, which nullifies the date part. A date is two people."

Ruby's eyes gazed in thought. "Uh..." She perked up. "What about a double date? That isn't two people."

"That is two of two people who are dating."

Yang glanced at the upside down screen of Ruby's scroll, and recognised the levelled text blocks of blue and white. "Who're you talking to, Rubes?" She nodded at her scroll.

Ruby glanced at Yang. "Just Jaune."

The blonde contained a laugh, looking to Weiss. "Seems you've been beaten to it, Weiss."

The heiress glared ice at the idiot girl. "I could have sworn I told you to be quiet."

Yang continued, looking back to Ruby. "Has he mentioned their little date yet?"

Ruby returned to her top-bunk bed, returning to her relaxed form. "Nope."

Her sister laughed a laugh she couldn't contain this time, shooting Weiss a pitiful look. "Oh, Weiss."

"Oh, what?" She swallowed her haste, taking notice of Yang's bag. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?"

A flash of realisation passed her eyes as she swung her arm infront of her, examining the small, digital watch that sat upon her wrist. "Uh... yeah, actually." She heaved the kitbag over her shoulder and opened the door. "Thanks for the reminder. I'm off, see you later."

Weiss breathed an internal sigh of relief. "Have fun."

"See-ya, Yang."

The girl paused in the open door, looking at her partner. "Blake?"

The faunus waved a brief yet genuine gesture of goodbye, continuing to focus on her book. Her partner rolled her eyes and smiled, waving to her teammates, then walking out and closing the door behind her.

Weiss looked to Blake, who was lost in yet another one of her books, and didn't seem very intent on moving anytime soon. "I presume you have somewhere to be aswell?"

The faunus girl smiled. "Mhm, I'll head to the library once your date arrives."

Blake's jest infuriated the girl more than it should have, considering the only sensible person apart from Weiss had now jumped on the bandwagon aswell. "He's not my date."

The raven girl sighed a sound of mocking thoughtfulness, and turned a page in her book.

It was near midday now, and the clock on the wall had ticked by too many times to count. Weiss had gone from sitting idly with the thought of her need to study, to prancing about the small dormitory kitchen with the thought of her need to get it together. To say she was nervous would be an appropriate claim, and the dry of her mouth and the unrest of her heart had given rise to stress, which would explain the half-eaten bar of chocolate that hung from the grip of her right hand.

Her mind had refused to settle across the morning, and she now found herself scrambling for the simplest reassurances and comforts to ease her nerves. The sugar of the chocolate hadn't helped, infact, she was convinced it had actually made her situation worse by allowing her brain to fabricate more outcomes for the day per second. Anticipation was her enemy, and 'epicureanism' would be her ally. A very Weiss word.

This would be fine. There was nothing of concern, it was her, Jaune and Ruby - it was a get-together.

And even if it wasn't a get-together and Jaune had interpreted it as a date, she looked fine. Her hair was fine, she had slept fine, her outfit was fine, her subtle makeup (which she refused to admit she had taken added care to because of the occasion) was fine.

Everything was fine. Fine, fine, fine.

It would be fine.

Jaune had arrived casually, which had settled Weiss' worry that it was a date, and dashed Weiss' hopes that it was a date. So she was... ambivalent... to the situation, really. He was wearing what she had expected - jeans, that Pumpkin Pete's hoodie which never left his wear, and socks, because he had insisted that shoes were of no use whilst in one's dormitory.

Well, he hadn't put it like that, obviously, it had been more of a 'socks are comfier'.

She wasn't complaining, per se, casual was good, it relieved pressure and meant Weiss could relax. Her earlier stress had now subsided and she found herself simply hoping for the best; it was just an informal event that demanded less attention than doing her hair in the morning, nothing of concern.

But, while Weiss was settled with the cicrumstance, her dreamscape wasn't, because this wasn't exactly what it had envisioned. Far from it.

"Right, so you know how to hold it?"

"Yes... yes." She spun the scroll around as she glanced at how Jaune's scroll sat in his hands.

"Alright. So you've got the movement pad on the left..."

Movement pad - more of a translucent ring. "Mhm."

"Left goes left, right goes right, up jumps, down ducks."

Left goes left, right goes right, up... "Mhm."

Jaune glanced at her with a cautious smirk on his face. She quickly returned it with a reassuring smile. He nodded. "You've got the buttons on the right. Left button does a light attack, right button does a charged attack - which does stun damage but is slower. You have to build up stun damage to actually stun your opponent, it doesn't stun with just one hit."

Buttons. Stun. "Mhm." She nodded slowly.

He paused for a moment. "Oh, and the direction of the movement pad controls the direction of your attack."

Right.

"And different button combos perform different movesets."

Right.

"Oh! And you stack combo from attacking repeatedly, and not getting interrupted. If you get the stack high enough, you can proc a pretty strong attack through a charged attack."

Right.

"Ready?"

Weiss' eyes lost their confused daze, and she looked up from the controls on her scroll. "Yes! Yes, I'm ready."

For her first 'date', Weiss, in her dreamscape long before Beacon, hadn't envisioned sitting on a set of cushions and pillows infront of a television, being taught how to play a video game for the sake of her partner who was sat 'studying' in the background. Though, when she had first come to Beacon, and first met Jaune, she hadn't envisioned being inconveniently smitten with the boy, and him being the one sat with her. So envisionments had come to be of little value to the heiress as time went on, and she instead came to tolerate the intangible reverie of her time at Beacon.

But, once Ruby was removed from thought, it really was just them, with no one to disturb them. She would try her hardest to learn the game, they'd laugh and indulge in repartee, they'd grow closer, and maybe he'd put his arms around her and show her how to do a certain mo-

"Okay! Game's started." The boy moved the movement pad back and forth quickly in habit, his character performing a peculiar dance on the screen. "I guess you can try to hit me, first."

Weiss' dreamscape shattered in motion, and she returned to reality. She scoffed. "What do you mean, 'try'?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you played a single game that uses a controller in your life, Weiss?"

"No."

He smirked at her. Okay, very funny Arc, but it was Weiss who would have the last laugh. She would not be stumped by a trivial little game.

She threw the movement sensor upwards in her confidence, and tapped the left button twice (for good measure), and in under three seconds, one of the most glorious displays of combat prowess Weiss had witnessed unfolded on the television. Her character was launched into the air with a frontflip, she peaked in the air as she rolled forward once more, building momentum, and her legs span round into the move. She hurtled down almost immediately, cracking down the heel of an extended leg directly into the head of Jaune's dancing character, who froze in injury. The leg settled there for a moment as Weiss' character fell backwards towards the ground. She caught herself with both arms behind her back, planted on the floor, and thrust the suspended leg down, throwing Jaune's character downwards and from his feet, crushing his head into the ground. The surface shattered with ceremonious shards of concrete, and Weiss' character jumped up into a pointing taunt, laughing an 8-bit sound of mockery as her opponent clambered from his humiliation.

Jaune sat still for a moment, the scroll in his hands rendered inactive. He hadn't expected something quite like that from the Schnee heiress, he was expecting more of an unceremonious jump, then maybe an out-of-range attempt at a jab. Not... that.

"Alright." The boy sat up, planting his fingers against the scroll's controls. "I think you've got the hang of this." His character darted across the screen, and pursued Weiss' now fleeing character.

"No!" The shock of her triumph escaped her, and faded into a rushing sense of fear. Weiss clamped the scroll in her hand and scattered the movement sensor around to escape Jaune, laughing in her panic. "Please! That was by accident, I don't know how to play this game!"

Weiss had suffered crushing defeat, a crippling strategic loss. She had humiliated herself, and not even managed to pull through on a single of the five matches they had played. The closest she had gotten was with an abuse of the game's mechanics in which she stun-locked Jaune's character with an unorthodox method - landing charged attacks until the stun threshold was filled, hit with another charged attack to stun, then stand next to the stunned opponent and jump. This would cancel the stun animation, yet keep the stun threshold full, so the following charged attack would stun again, and cause damage. Simply rinse and repeat until you win. She had found the method by pure chance, of course, but it was somewhat of a triumph none the less.

Unfortunately, Weiss eventually missed a jump, and Jaune was able to land a light attack, ending her reign.

"You won every single one." She muttered, the golden glow of 'PLAYER ONE VICTORY' still ingrained in her eyes.

Jaune only shrugged, humming in reassurance. "Yeah, but I've played this game plenty." He relinquished his scroll and reached for another chocolate in the box that was now positioned infront of the two, placed there after match three by Weiss' demand. "You've played for..." He glanced at the clock, unwrapping the chocolate. "...an hour and a bit."

She thought to how she probably looked to him. "Well, I could have atleast shown I was improving."

The boy held his chocolate in the air, not yet opting to eat it. He looked at her in amusement. "You worry too much, sometimes." He shrugged again. "I thought it was a lot of fun."

Fun... Yes! Of course it was... of course it was. Weiss hadn't felt this much adrenaline through her veins since... well, since she lost her mind at Ruby on day one for her pitiful spatial awareness in the presence of sensitive dust caches. It had been a lot of fun, actually, and the hour they had spent dueling and laughing had gone by without farewell. She had... enjoyed herself.

And she hoped, so had he.

Hoisting up the box of wrapped chocolates, Jaune offered one to Weiss. "You want another one?"

She glanced at the withering pile of sweet-treats, and the growing pile of empty wrapper that was scattered around inside. "Are there any more coconut ones?"

Jaune peered at the remaining chocolates, tonguing a remnant of caramel that had become stuck in his teeth. "Uh..." He noticed a bouncing, untouched blue wrapper. "Yeah, just one, I think."

Weiss smiled, reaching for the coconut treat that lay by itself, positioned there by Jaune's manuevering of the box. "Thank you."

They sat in silence for a moment, with Jaune indulging in golden caramel and Weiss indulging in white coconut.

And Ruby. Well, Ruby...

"So, can I play now?"

Weiss turned around. "You're supposed to be studying, Ruby."

The girl slumped. "I have. I've done..." She glanced at her textbook. "Grimm migration patterns." She groaned the words in boredom.

Weiss looked to Jaune. "We're babysitting a teenager."

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever babysat?"

She made a look of lax dismissal. "No. But I presume it's horrible."

The boy chuckled and nodded. "Stressful, maybe. But it isn't horrible."

"So... when's it my go?" The rose spoke up again.

Weiss sighed, ignoring the girl. "And you're enjoying this?"

Jaune answered the question with a smirk and a look of pity. Ruby's insistence looked like it was about to crash Weiss' party.

In the silence, she looked at him with an inadvertent look of tempered sorrow, and she presumed he saw it in her eyes, given the grow of a wistful smile on his face as he looked back at her. The hour had changed things, and the air felt different and had unnaturally grown tense, with the incorporeal bond between the two - which was once juvenile and unnurtured, which had existed only from the glances of an heiress and the off-topic conversations of the Arc boy - had accelerated to something tender. When she looked back into his ocean eyes, she swore she could see a glow of what she could only refer to as... admiration. These turn of events didn't make the doubtful sense she was used to, and it made her stomach flip.

It was only typical that Ruby was here to sour the moment, and she could feel the tempered sorrow in her eyes reflecting back as a plea of stay in her mind. If she was in an alternate-universe, it would just be the two of them, and he would stay with her for longer. She would have a date.

The moment lasted only a second, and it soon broke. Jaune looked away, scratching the back of his head, and addressed the both of them. "Uh, Pyrrha organised some sparring today, just earlier. So I ought to go." He grabbed his scroll and stood up. "I'll see you guys later."

Weiss nodded, relaxing her posture. "Right." She smiled. "See you later."

Ruby beamed, hopping from her bed. "Bye, Jaune."

The boy nodded, walking for the door, opening it, then leaving, and closing it behind him.

Before Weiss could say anything to Ruby, the door opened again, and that half-confident, half-lost boyish face of his peered around it. "Oh, Weiss..."

"Mhm?"

"Do we have Port homework? For Monday?"

She sighed. "No, Jaune."

He smiled, giving a thumbs-up. "Thanks." And with that, the door closed once more, seemingly for good.

Weiss looked at Ruby, who had somehow ended up on the row of cushions next to Weiss, and was now peering through her. "What?"

Ruby shrugged. "Nothing." She took out her own scroll, waving it at Weiss with a grin.

The heiress frowned, and picked up her own. It would only be courtesy. "Fine. One match. That's it."