It had been hours since the sun had set. They had returned to their rooms some time ago. It was the time he would normally be asleep, except there was something keeping him up that night.

A certain something that had its arms around his chest and its lips on his neck.

"Come on, Jaune." Her voice was heavy with want, but there was still a note of annoyance to it.

"I- it's just…"

"Is it Pyrrha again?" Ruby said, pouting up at him.

"Yeah, I should- I mean, she-" He train of thought jumped the tracks as her lips brushed his. Even the slight touch sent a jolt through his body. He wanted more. He wanted to hold her, to get more of that exhilaration. And yet, he couldn't move. It felt like his limbs weighed a ton.

"I miss her too, Jaune. But you can't bring her back by making yourself miserable, can you?" She was whispering into his ear. Even the warmth of her breath on his skin was a rush. He finally managed to put his arm into motion, tracing his fingers down her unblemished side.

"There we go." Ruby pulled back and smiled at him. "This is going to be fun." She held up one of her hands where he could see. She was holding a knife. Jaune's brain didn't have time to react before the blade tore across his throat. He fell backwards onto the bed. Ruby was on top of him immediately, her lips greedily taking his blood. Any joy in contact was gone.

Her face came into view once more, her lips dripping blood.

"Thank you so much, Jaune." Her tone was downright euphoric.

That was when the scene dissolved. Jaune was in his bed, under his covers. He could hear Ruby snoring from her bed. Jaune sighed. After several weeks of such dreams, he should have been used to them.

"…And he said that I had to get out because there was a storm coming, but I'd been waiting to swim all day, so I just kept at it-" Nora's story was interuped by a forkful of pancake. She stuck it in her mouth, then attepted to chew and talk at the same time. She only succeded at the latter."ulp. And that's how I disovered my semblance."

"That's… Quite the story." Ruby said, still gawking. The four were currently sitting around a table, enjoying breakfast at their hotel. Ruby was still carrying her old book from the day before. She seemed reluctant to even put it down.

"So, what's your plan for today?" Nora asked. "It seems like there's nothing left to do here."

"What did you do yesterday?" Ruby asked, ignoring the look Jaune was giving her.

"Went bowling, went to a theater, tried to write my own Opera, got kicked out of a theater for trying to sing during the play-"

"So, uh, anyway, Jaune and I are going to be asking around at the Geborgencumb University for any information about that one… problem." Nora stiffened.

"I can help." Ren offered.

Nora leaned over and whispered in Ruby's ear. "Why do you need to ask around more? I thought you said you had that figured out."

"I may have exaggerated a little. It's more like… sixty percent." Ruby whispered back. The look Nora shot back said that she was not pleased.

"Do you… want to… come with us?" Ruby wanted to kick herself for how awkward she sounded. It wasn't that Nora was mad, exactly. She had seen Nora mad plenty of times. There was something else in the way Nora was looking at her, something she couldn't place.

"Actually, I think I just thought of something else to do today."

It was in a small, plain building near the outer wall. There was a short line of Huntsmen and Huntresses leading up to a counter. A group of receptionists were discussing possible jobs, ranging from guard work to hunting down any known Grimm in the area. Nora was thankful they line was moving quickly; waiting had never been her strong suite.

When it was Nora's turn, she looked through the list. It had to be something she could finish in a single day. There was a report of a group of Ursae about three miles away.

"I'll take this one."

"Alright." The receptionist said. And who will you be working with?"

"Whaddaya mean who else? I can take them all by myself."

The receptionist shook her head. "We don't sign off on Huntsmen going alone."

"Yeah, well, I don't need you approval! I'm a Huntress!"

"You do need our approval if you want to collect the bounty." She gestured towards a line of chairs on the wall. "Have a seat and wait. I'll let you know as soon as we have another Huntsman to join you."

Nora flopped down in a chair, arms crossed, pouting. This was nothing she couldn't handle by herself!

"Are you Ms. Valkyrie?" She looked up. He was a tall, lanky, clean-shaven man. He definitely looked like a Huntsman. The tan button-down shirt, tan pants and pith helmet looked almost ridiculously old-timey. His weapon, a massive axe, was rather odd-looking; the head was a half circle strip of metal with a blade on the outer edge, and there was a gear mechanism about halfway up the haft. "I heard you were looking for a partner."

"And you are?" It was purely a formality. It didn't really matter who he was, as long as he was willing to take the job with her.

"Mateusz Srebro."

"Gesundheit."

He shot her a look saying that he had gotten tired of such jokes ages ago. "I heard you needed a second for a job?"

The creature in front of her, a black mass shaped like a parody of a bear with white, bone-like plates on its face, roared at her. Nora wasn't impressed, and promptly brought her hammer down on its head. Its roar barely had time to turn into a whimper before it evaporated. Srebro dispatched another with a swing of his axe.

Ursae had pretty much stopped being dangerous partway through her time at Beacon. Unless something unexpected appeared, this was likely to be an uneventful fight. She swung her hammer sideways, sending another Ursa flying into a tree.

It had taken more than an hour for the two of them to hike out to the lightly wooded foothills where the Ursae lurked. It would take about as long to hike back, and the fight probably wouldn't last three minutes. Maybe they should've brought bikes?

Another Ursa came out of the brush and roared at her. She thought about shooting it, but grenades cost money. And never seemed to actually do as much damage as just swinging the hammer. She smacked it aside.

One extra-large Ursa came out at her, flanked by two others. The biggest one charged. She swung her hammer upwards, and threw it back between the other two. It didn't dissolve. Nora grinned. This was going to get interesting.

Or not. The three Ursae exploded in quick succession, followed by the trunk of a tree. Nora looked to one side to see Srebro, the head of his axe turned ninety degrees to form a massive crossbow. He walked over to where the tree had broken and picked up a metal ball the size of Nora's fist. "Three with one shot. Not bad."

Nora gawked. Killing the three of them wasn't so impressive by itself, but his timing was certainly good. "Did you plan all that or something?"

Srebro chuckled. "My dear, you can't plan everything out. I'm simply good at improvising."

The two of them checked through the surrounding area for a few minutes, but didn't find any more Grimm. They started back to Geborgencumb.

"You're certainly a gifted huntress for someone so young."

"Thanks. I dropped out of one of the most prestigious academies around. Wait, is it "dropping out" if the school got overrun by Grimm?"

"I may need to call upon you tomorrow night." He said gravely.

Tomorrow? Nora gulped. "And, uh, why tomorrow? Is that when they're having the big spring thing?"

"Yes, the spring market is tomorrow night. And I suspect it will have a very unpleasant guest."

"Who's that?" There's no way he could know. No one outside their team knew what happened that night.

"I know you'll think this strange, but…" He hesitated, and then took a deep breath. "A werewolf."

Nora stopped in her tracks. Her blood ran cold.

"I know it may sound ridiculous, but it's true. I've seen its handiwork at several outlying villages." He waved his hand, as if wiping something away. "Dead, all of them. A city the size of Geborgencumb won't go down so easily, but the casualties could still be horrible."

"That's- I mean- How do you even know something like that is here?" Nora tried to sound skeptical, but she'd never been good at hiding her emotions.

"I found the remains of a village call Haewencroft. The population was dead, including the werewolf's old host. I found a trail left by some travellers. I've been tracking it for almost a month, and it led here." He shook his head. "But I still haven't been able to find them, and I'm sure the werewolf is going to stay here until the full moon."

Haewencroft? Host? He knew what happened there. He knew how the werewolf seemed to work. This just got worse and worse. "But isn't the problem solved, then? The werewolf's dead."

He shook his head. "The first person to approach the Werewolf's body becomes the new werewolf." Nora had already known that, but she was hoping to get him off track. "It would be best to find the host quickly and… dispose of them."

Nora gulped. "But, what if the host doesn't… deserve it? What if they're not a bad person?"

He stopped, turned, and gave Nora a severe look. "I can assure you, they are most certainly not. There is no moral dilemma in this case."

"And why's that?" Nora asked, her stomach already sinking.

"When someone becomes a werewolf, the spirit, for lack of a better word, consumes them. On the inside, there is nothing left of the original person. The spirit tries to emulate their behavior, but it's purely to keep the people the host cared about around until it can devour them at the next full moon."

It hit Nora like a train. Her heart was pounding, in a way it hadn't since she'd seen a massive cainid shaking Ren like a chew toy. He had to be wrong. He had to be. There was no way, right?

"You know the host, don't you?"

Nora didn't respond. She didn't want to talk about this. She wished she'd never met him.

"They've been acting differently, haven't they?"

"…Different how?" Nora forced out. Whatever he said, she knew she wasn't going to like it.

"On the one hand, they'll try to be more affectionate than normal. It's a way to reassure you that they're still the same person. On the other had, their behavior is far more suspect. They become more secretive. They're more prone to lying. And they become more sadistic. Mind you, they won't make a big show of it; They'll try to find plausible deniability, try to mask it with normal behavior. Is any of that true?

Nora thought back to breakfast that morning. "…Maybe." She said. She flinched at how weak her own voice sounded. She'd faced mortal danger plenty of times, but this kind of fear was something she'd rarely had to face.

Nora had learned early in her life what it meant to be alone. She would give anything to never go back.

Srebro turned away from her. "Talk to her if you wish. You'll find I'm telling the truth.

Nora looked at the path ahead of them. It would take more than an hour to hike back to Geborgencumb. She wished it were longer.