It had started as a strange morning from the beginning. Pyrrha was in a state of resentful sluggishness, grumbling at the audacity of a world that expected her to get out of bed when she was still tired, and yet, at the same time, in a state of almost transcendent serenity, so well ensconced on Cloud 9 that all the troubles of that world were a thousand miles beneath her. Both had the same root cause: she'd stayed up far too late last night, on the rooftop, stargazing with Jaune. So what if her mind and body were well past their comfort zone, facing a day of almost certain physical exhaustion? Her heart was practically singing as she tied her laces, adjusted her circlet, and readied herself for breakfast.

Of course, her morning enthusiasm would be particularly short lived from a sudden, almost-certainly-RWBY-related, banging on the door. She winced, as she felt Cloud 9 dissipate around her. Ren was the one to get the door, for all that it mattered, as a short, white-haired girl shoved him aside and stormed into the room. Yep. Cloud 9. Gone.

"ARC!" She shouted, as her partner jumped to awkward attention. Pyrrha gritted her teeth and tried to pull some deep reserve of politeness up for the girl who had everything she ever wanted, and never appreciated it. "Could you please," with no politeness found, Pyrrha focused on just keeping her mouth shut, "explain to me who the Sang Bleu society is, and how do you know them?"

Jaune rubbed his neck, "Oh. Uh, they're, um, well—how did this come up?"

Weiss huffed. "My father called this morning. They apparently found a photo of the two of us in Vale and," she started jabbing her finger into Jaune's chest, "drew some fairly! Extreme! Conclusions! from it."

Ah. An already sore subject for Pyrrha, made even sorer by learning that there had been photos, and those photos looked exactly as she assumed they looked like. Earlier in the week, Ruby had had the idea to try and keep Blake from killing herself through overwork by making "Operation: Find Out What the White Fang is Doing With Roman Torchwick" (a name Ruby refused to shorten) a joint RWBY-JNPR operation. Ruby proved to be a surprisingly canny leader in this, figuring out how to make use of their individual strengths and personalities in a way that made them more effective than eight teenagers really ought to be—and part of that was realizing that a teenaged Faunus introvert wasn't going to win the charm offensive with shop owners. But Weiss Schnee had the standing, access, and, when she remembered she had it, people skills to get answers. Ruby, second only to Pyrrha herself, also knew that Jaune had some legitimate talents of his own, even if he was… fairly Jauneish in terms combat. But he was sent with Weiss in the hopes that he'd be able to pick up some unobserved detail that everyone else had passed over, which, even Weiss had to admit, he'd proven himself capable at that. Pyrrha had very much wanted to go along, but Ruby had vetoed that option—a little too odd to have two celebrities investigating Dust store robberies. Weiss had the noblesse oblige to excuse her interest, and Jaune was enough of a nobody that the two of them got to enjoy a fun day in Vale that Weiss insisted was not a date and the part of Pyrrha that Pyrrha didn't like insisted it was.

Jaune interrupted her reverie. "They're a bunch of creeps. I'm really sorry if they got you in trouble with your dad, and really, really sorry if it made things awkward. They used to bug my dad a whole bunch when I was a kid, and he always said they weren't ever worth listening to."

"I'm sorry," Ren made a rare interjection, "but why would the Sang Bleu Society have an interest in Schnee family business? They're a Valean society, they're not particularly invested in Atlesian family issues."

This was starting to get confusing. "I'm sorry Ren, but who are they?"

Ren sighed, "It's a club of old, moneyed families across Vale. It's a social club, they do charity works across the region, fairly… self-important, but we stayed in one of their shelters for a while, but…" He nodded to Nora.

"I started a fire!"

Before she could start explaining the story, Weiss cut her off. "Apparently, they think this dolt and I are dating, and… they approve."

"Oh." Jaune said. Then realization hit him, "Oh."

"And now my father…" she struggled for a moment, as though the words were painful to speak, "also… a-approves." She practically spat out the last word.

"Aww, that's so cute! Bunch of old weirdos matchmaking teenagers like that's a normal thing they should be doing!" Pyrrha still hadn't quite mastered telling if Nora's tone was in line with her thoughts or if she was just always some variation of cheerful. "But why do they care about this again?"

Apparently, Ren realized the answer, "Wait. Jaune, you're not—I mean, you're an Arc, but you're not the-"

Jaune just became more embarrassed, "Guys, they're kooks, it literally doesn't mean anything."

"They're Royalists, aren't they?" Ren said with a low whistle.

"Wait, what doesn't mean what?" Weiss's tone softened—it seems she didn't know what was going on either.

"Well, uh," Jaune was back to rubbing the back of his neck, "Vale doesn't really have a surviving royal family line, but they, uh, kind of, sort of," his voice was getting higher and faster with each word, "think that the Arc family has the strongest claim to the throne? And ever since my dad died, I'm the oldest male Arc? Butthey'recompletelyirrelevantandtheydon'tknowanythingandthey'rejustnotworthlisteningto, I'msosorryaboutallthis!" By the end, his voice was almost completely indistinguishable from air released from a balloon, as Weiss grabbed him by the front of his shirt to pulled his face down to her level.

Through clenched teeth, she said "So they thought that we were together, because…"

"Probably because they think your family also thinks, and supports, that we have a claim to the throne."

"And they're a pretty conservative group, especially where the Faunus are concerned," murmured Ren, "So it seemed like a pretty advantageous alliance for your father. He backs a return to the monarchy, they help him quash criticism of Schnee company practices in Vale, it's a traditional marriage alliance."

There was a brief pause as everyone tried to take in the meaning of this. Weiss released Jaune, who staggered backwards and fell into his bed. Exhaustion and annoyance were starting to win over Pyrrha's mind, and she was well past the point of dealing with yet another reminder that Weiss had such an advantage over her. Honestly, now international businessmen were trying to set her up with Jaune? "So it's just a weird and awkward story and you have to tell your dad you're not dating Jaune and not to listen to rumors. Got it. Can we get to breakfast now?"

Nora was quick to chime in, "Yeah! Renny and I need pancakes!" But then she took on a sudden contemplative air, "But wouldn't it be crazy if an extremely rich industrialist could give the necessary financial backing to a network of established and influential families to actually reestablish the monarchy? And wouldn't it make sense that an extremely rich man, particularly one who felt insecure in his own wealth and family name, would see tying his family to royalty as the one accomplishment that would prove that he was a worthy Schnee patriarch? Boy, that would just be about the craziest, yet still deeply plausible, thing, wouldn't it?"

Another silence hung over the room as the wheels started turning in everyone's head. As if on cue, two figures popped into the still-open door.

"Hey guys," Neptune Vasilias, in his all-too-practiced-at-playing-it-cool voice that always made Pyrrha immediately suspicious, "Sun's mooching sense just went haywire, wanted to see what was going on."

"I keep telling you, if you call it a mooching sense, they're less inclined to give you stuff."

"Jaune's going to be king!" Nora shouted.

Neptune stepped back. "Whoa, really?"

"Yep!"

"Wow, nice job, man. Real cool!"

Weiss practically screeched at that. "Neptune!"

"I mean… not… cool?" He answered apologetically, "Sorry? I don't know what you want me to say?"

"Wait, what's going on with Vomit Boy?" Another voice was drawn to the commotion.

"He's gonna be-" Nora shouted, but was cut off by Sun.

"Hey! We were here first, we get first dibs."

Yang scoffed. "Uh, no. I heard 'King' and 'Jaune' and if I'm hearing that I have a chance at having a royal wedding, I will -literally- punch out –literally- everyone in this room to get it." Pyrrha would like to see her try. "I've wanted one of those since I was 12."

Ruby's head popped up at the door. "Why?"

"I want my wedding to have, like, 50 horses. And cannons, and, like, a hundred guys in uniform. But don't worry," she patted her sister on the head, "we'll totally get an extremely scandalous divorce afterwards and you can marry him and get to be a princess and all."

Ruby's face took on the color of her namesake. "YANG! I don't wanna be a princess!"

"Pfft, object all you want, I've been to at least five of your birthday parties that suggest otherwise. Also, I don't hear you objecting to-" At that, Ruby started flailing her fists against her sister, only to get pulled back into the hallway in a headlock. Nora raced out of the room, dragging Ren with her, to cheer on the fight. As the room emptied out, Neptune and Sun advanced on Jaune, almost certainly to make some kind of unbelievably dumb request, so Pyrrha neatly moved in to the middle of the room to intercept them. Sun and Neptune were nice enough, but bodily ejecting someone from the room would be a good way to work through some frustration. She really just wanted breakfast, and to move on from this, frankly, disastrously annoying morning. Unfortunately, the brawl in the hallway brought the final member of Team RWBY to stop by.

"Is this the sort of story I want to know, or will I feel dumber for having heard it?"

Weiss and Sun answered at the same time

"Extremely dumb."

"Extremely cool!"

Weiss glared at Sun, who simply kept talking, "Jaune's the king of Vale or something. I dunno, but he's rich or powerful or something now."

"Wait," her eyes blinked rapidly, "what?"

"Yeah, I didn't hear the story, but it's probably true! My 'available assets' sense has never been wrong."

In a flash, the faunus girl had somehow snapped right past Pyrrha and grabbed Jaune by the shoulder. "Jaune, is this true?"

"Ummm, no?" He wasn't prepared for the question. "I'm not… trying to be? I guess?"

"Jaune! If you are going to be in a position of authority over anything I am going to need you to clearly and swiftly take a stand on-"

"Ahem."

All eyes turned at the stern voice of Glynda Goodwitch. She stood at the doorway, arms crossed, eyes clearly conveying she was none too pleased with the commotion. But to her right was Headmaster Ozpin, standing as aloof and serene as he always was.

"Mr. Arc," Ozpin addressed the teen, "It seems you've been… appraised of some of the situation." He took a sip of coffee. "But first, I would like you to know that Beacon has long depended on the financial support of Vale's government, and I think you'd agree that, should you have future influence on that matter, it's-"

Now it was Professor Goodwitch's turn to shriek "Tell him what we agreed you'd say!"

He chuckled, but then turned serious. "Mr. Arc, we do need to speak with you, privately. If you'd come with me, you've been excused from your classes today."

Jaune, eyes wide and suddenly pale, looked to Pyrrha, who met his gaze with an equal amount of shock. Had it just been other students, it wouldn't have mattered, just another distraction from the usual mixture of adrenaline-and-boredom at Beacon. But if the faculty were stepping in, if there were private meetings, then this was something real. This was, well…

Pyrrha swallowed hard. "I'll take notes for you. And!" she suddenly cut in, "It'll be alright, whatever this is. We'll stick by you, no matter what."

Jaune gave a weak laugh, "I mean, we've gone through crazier stuff at Beacon. Right?"

It took all her years of media training to pull together a smile in return.

She could practically feel the rumor mill buzzing around her as she ate breakfast. Ren and Nora, out of concern for her feelings, tried to get a conversation going about an upcoming test in Oobleck's class, but there was just no way around the fact that the rest of the table was much, much more interested in talking out the possibilities this new piece of insanity offered.

Namely, Blake.

"If we're going to pull this off, we're going to need a real popular movement among Vale's citizens—we've already got moneyed support, so now we've got to look at winning over the crowds. We'll need slogans, organize some rallies, make sure that everyone in Vale knows about this, has an opinion, and has our opinion specifically. So get to thinking slogans—I want something you can chant, something for speeches, something for bumper stickers."

"Are you his press manager now? And when'd you become such an expert about popular referendums?" An annoyed Weiss shot back.

"My time in the White Fang wasn't all about violent resistance, you know," she glared. "I have a lot of experience with organizing protests, distributing petitions, lobbying elected officials…"

"Yeah," Yang added, "all the stuff that didn't work."

Blake ignored her. "And the big lesson I've learned is that, if we want to make this a real thing, we're going to need to go for the lowest common denominator. So, here's what I'm thinking…"

Pyrrha tuned her out. Caffeine hadn't kicked in enough for her to really pay attention, and this whole thing was just too bizarre. Looking around the cafeteria, everywhere she looked, people were shooting furtive glances at her table. She was used to it, the price of being a celebrity, but at the same time, this was different. She's long come to terms that there was nowhere she could go where she wouldn't be an object of spectacle. (Well, that wasn't true. It was never like that with Jaune.) But she wasn't used to her partner now being the target. It wasn't a life he was prepared for, she knew that for certain. She still hadn't really adapted to it, and she'd been getting gawkers ever since her first tournament victory. She heard snippets of conversation from the room—Cardin insisting that he'd never recognize "a king I could beat up in my sleep," two girls from Vacuo gossiping that he was to be wed to Weiss or Yang or both—and all of it had a surreal quality that made her wonder if she was still just dreaming and would, shortly, wake up, refreshed and hopeful for a new day, with a weird dream she could joke about with Jaune.

Alas, not the case.

Classes were a blur. The faculty tried to appear neutral on the issue, to varying degrees of success. Oobleck's lecture had suddenly shifted, by coincidence, he insisted, to the history of Vale's democratic governance, and the importance of egalitarian political rights. Port's approach was more incoherent, but it was some kind of story about saving a princess, and that was probably a Royalist endorsement? But in both classes, it was clear that the subject was something that engaged the faculty as much as the student body.

And with every class, she could feel more eyes on her, more whispers of students trying to work up the courage to ask her for the inside scoop—and the rumors seemed to only get weirder. Crocea Mors apparently could shift into the royal scepter, and he had apparently received it from a woman who lived in a lake. A student from Haven that she didn't recognize was explaining, rather authoritatively, to anyone who'd listen, that Jaune had been partnered with her because she was "the King's sworn protector" who had pledged her life to the royal family at a young age.

The story only seemed to outrage his listener. "He gets Weiss, Yang, and Pyrrha? That's like, incredibly unfair! He's taking all the best girls!"

That seemed to be how the political divide went. Huntsmen weren't an apolitical faction of society, but they were normally social outsiders, only interested in Grimm-related politics, the issues that affected their pay. They were arguably the most meritocratic faction of society and came from diverse backgrounds—Weiss was a wealthy heiress in classes with Ren, a homeless orphan—but they were also excitable teenagers who would grow up to be travelling combatants. Unless they went into politics later in life, they'd never really think about zoning regulations or fiscal policy. The end result was that students made up their mind on the Royalist-Republican divide in terms of, well, fairly shallow reasoning. Cardin, for instance, was the scion of an old and wealthy family, possibly even a Sang Bleu himself, but he personally hated Jaune, so he was a staunch Republican. They were, it seemed, mostly a group made up of men who had some personal issue with Jaune, rather than an ideological issue with kings—the exception was Emerald Sustrai, who had a loud and clear "Kings suck ass!" position, which Pyrrha appreciated for being both a perspective born out of actually politics and one less personally aimed at Jaune.

As for the Royalists, well, this was a group more made up of Pyrrha's friends, but she had a hard time seeing them as any better at the issue. Yang was a staunch supporter of getting to have a royal wedding. Neptune wanted a royal court for balls and other opportunities to meet girls (a statement he made without realizing Weiss could hear him). And Coco had teamed up with Blake on the grounds that a royal court would be an excellent opportunity for the fashion world.

Blake, though, was a mystery. The clear leader of the Royalist faction, even more so than Cardin was for the Republican, and unlike anyone else, she didn't just have an opinion, she had an agenda. She recruited people, she advocated and railed and demagogued and made the case, not just for a king, but for Jaune to be king. She supposed she would have felt threatened, but unlike Yang, she didn't seem to have any interest in marrying Jaune, just making sure he was the head of state. Inexplicable, but Pyrrha resolved to finally ask her what she wanted out of it at lunchtime.

Lunchtime already, she realized, and Jaune was still missing.

She approached Blake's table, a hive of activity as people buzzed around Blake as she gave orders and drew up plans. Sun and Velvet seemed to be her lieutenants, taking notes and calling people over for consultation or feedback. Yang was seated amongst the crowd, participating, but likely not helping. Unusually, at the edge of the table, Weiss and Ruby sat far from the rest of their team, uncharacteristically quiet and exceedingly red-faced. The three shared a sympathetic look of "absolutely none of this is how we wanted our day to go," but Pyrrha figured it was best to give it some time before talking to her "rivals." Besides, she needed answers. At the moment, Blake was talking to Coco, who, for reasons Pyrrha couldn't even begin to guess at why she had them, had a series of high-quality photos of Jaune with key elements of his clothing circled.

"I want to keep what we have and see what we can work with from there—try to work around the fact we don't really have that much time to get up to speed. Definitely losing the hoodie, though, that's unsalvageable. But the general look, the hair, the whole… Jaune-ness, we can work with that. He's not some brutal dictator, not some sneering elite, he's your everyday All-Valean boy, a little dorky, a little muscle, not too much of anything, not too threatening. Not weak, but not someone you'd be afraid of. A likeable guy."

"Makes sense," Blake nodded, "He's got a good look for civilians—a Huntsman, so he can protect them, but doesn't really evoke the scary, super powered collateral damage look—think we can do something with his armor? It's an ancestral-" she looked up to see Pyrrha approaching. "Oh, Pyrrha, excellent, you're here. Could you give Velvet a quote about Jaune, something about how great he is, you know, the usual thing when you're talking him up to us? We think your name could swing a lot of support to him."

The rabbit faunus timidly approached her with an audio recorder. "Um, if I could just-"

Pyrrha waved her away. "Blake, why are you doing this?"

She cocked her head, "What do you mean?"

Velvet tried to approach her again with the recorder, only to be more forcefully dissuaded. She kept talking to Blake. "This. Royalism. Why do you, of all people, support a king?"

Blake sighed. She stood up, giving some quick instructions to Sun and Velvet, and pulled Pyrrha away from the table. "I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to advance Faunus rights, even if it might seem a little out of character."

"But it's more than a 'little' out of character! Aren't you all about political equality?"

"Hey!" she shot back, "I am about political equality, but Vale isn't Mistral—you probably haven't noticed this, but Valean politics are backwards."

Pyrrha blinked at this. She'd never really thought about Vale's politics, being still registered as a resident of Mistral. Her homeland was known for being fiercely argumentative and political, where you regularly debated issues with your friends, family, and neighbors. She knew Vale was more… sedate in their manners, but she assumed that it was mostly the same, just less intense. "How so?"

"Vale is… it's hardly a real democracy. It's an oligarchy, really. Half the votes for Council seats are purely advisory, they're appointed positions that might listen to the will of the people. Other seats are elected, but they're seats dedicated to special interests, or the old families. Overall, actual democratic representation hardly ever matters, because most of the seats aren't even accountable to their constituents. And most people aren't even aware of it, because Valean law is so byzantine and opaque." She seemed disappointed, like Vale had let her down, personally. "So it's not like I'm overthrowing a thriving democratic system. It's one set of unfair, aristocratic systems with another—but this one," her eyes narrowed, "This one will know that we got him that seat—not the Schnee's, not the Sang Bleu—and he'll know to support Faunus rights, from whatever he's got, whether it's the bully pulpit or the throne."

"You're… putting a lot of faith in Jaune."

Blake cracked a mysterious smile. "You, of all people, are saying that to me? It's definitely a longshot, but if I know one thing about Jaune—if we give him the opportunity to do the right thing, he'll do it, no matter what."

With that, she turned back to her table, back to the hive, shouting to Sun something about posters.

Goodwitch opened her class with a very clear statement that there would be no discussion of outside issues—just fights and technique. When Blake stood up in an attempt to make a challenge, the disciplinarian had shot her a glare so withering, she practically collapsed back into her seat.

"I want the first fight to be Pyrrha Nikos and… Russell Thrush!"

This wasn't going to be a tough fight, and Pyrrha knew it. Still, arrogance was the first step to defeat, and the minute she faced an opponent with anything other than total respect for their skills, that'd be the day she got shown up for her hubris. So she took a quick look to assess her opponent as she walked to the ring. He walked in an exaggeratedly casual fashion, the sort of smug step she associated with Team CRDL, but it didn't take someone of her skills to see through it as a charade. Cardin was the only one of his team who actually had the confidence he projected—this was a dead man walking, looking, desperately, for a way to salvage his pride before the fight had even started.

Internally, she sighed. For all her caution about hubris, this fight had been decided in Russell's mind before she'd even entered the ring. She knew a little of his ability, and he looked like a fighter who favored quick, agile strikes—but she also knew that, in a previous match, he'd been simply outclassed by Blake's speed, and, not to brag, but Pyrrha knew she could beat Blake. If she gave it her all, she'd humiliate Russell.

The crowd was noisy as always, though a little put out that it wouldn't have a proper Royalist-Republican match (she could hear a few voices disagreeing on where, exactly, she stood on the issue), but Nora's voice boomed for leg-breaking, Ruby and Yang cheered for her, and she could hear Cardin's usual, artless jeers. In many ways, this was the most normal moment she'd had all day.

It still felt off, though. This was her first match since arriving at Beacon where she couldn't hear Jaune's voice in the crowd.

But Goodwitch had given the signal and years of training kicked in. She might be short of sleep and she might be going through an emotional rollercoaster, but she wasn't The Invincible Girl for nothing. As Russell charged forward, she shifted Miló into rifle mode and fired a few quick shots. He dodged, easily, but that was the point—the weaving slowed his approach, so she herded him into a straight line, a tighter, quicker approach. Thus, he had too much momentum behind his initial feint, and so his attempt to break off the attack left him flat-footed and unprepared for Akoúo crashing into his jaw.

The blow staggered him, as she felt a twinge of guilt—she had overexerted, she had only intended to knock him off his rhythm, but she'd basically ended the match in one blow. He was halfway tipped over, and with a quick roll to his side, she easily swept Miló into the back of his thigh. Again, instead of the force needed to simply trip him, she moved, by reflex, driven by the voice in her head that called for victory in all things, lifting him off his feet and letting him slam into the ring's floor. She shifted again to spear, and pointed it at her downed enemy.

Wasn't even a minute.

"And that is the match. Pyrrha Nikos is the winner."

She admitted, she might have overdone it. "Trial by Nikos," they called it, behind her back, but still, she didn't have to have knocked him down so hard. She chalked it up to being tired and competitive and in a foul mood, but she owed him at least the sportsmanship of helping him up.

She reached out her hand to Russell, sprawled out on the ground, with a gentle smile of "sorry I went too far there."

He spat on her.

She was stunned, dazed. It seemed… just too unreal, as he shouted something about Royalists. She was vaguely aware that Blake had leapt up to yell something as well, but she wasn't hearing words. She wasn't really seeing things, either. She knew she was looking at Professor Goodwitch and she knew she was beyond furious, but she wasn't connecting anything to anything. Ren and Nora had, at some point, come down to her and helped escort her out of the ring and out of the class, but she wasn't sure when or how that happened. Her opponents had hated her before now, but no one had ever- nobody had ever done anything like that.

She needed Jaune. She needed Jaune right now.

As Ren moved to block the door, Nora, eyes welling with compassion, put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in close. "It's okay. You're alone right now, nobody but us is going to see it. You can let it all out here."

So Pyrrha cried.

She didn't go to dinner. She sat in her dorm while Nora and Ren got food for her—Nora had offered to stay with her, but she was insistent that she needed some alone time. Jaune still wasn't back, and, from the pit of her stomach, she knew he wasn't coming back. Not that she wouldn't ever see him again, but that when she saw him next, he wouldn't be the leader of Team JNPR any more. Even if he finished out the year, the reality of his new position would loom over everything, and it'd be another painful charade for Pyrrha to pretend wasn't going on. Would he have time for her once he was gone? She'd always cherish the time they spent together, from initiation and unlocking his Aura, to training him on the rooftops, but what would she be to him once he was king, with affairs of state and a- and a- a bri-

She couldn't finish that thought. The image of Weiss or Yang or any other girl in a glamorous dress, an image that would be broadcast and plastered all over Vale for weeks was just too painful, even more painful than the degradation she had just endured.

She hated herself for her selfishness, but she would be selfless later. She would be happy for him and be the gracious and supportive partner he would need going forward, into the public eye. But right now, it was time to embrace the misery.

She heard the click of the lock and looked up to see Ren and Nora, back from dinner. She was certain her smile didn't look even remotely plausible, but she felt an enormous weight of gratitude for her friends.

Ren set down a plate of salad and grilled salmon, while Nora dropped a stack of chocolate bars on her desk. "And they were stolen!" She cheerfully added, "From the exact sort of people you wouldn't mind got robbed!" Pyrrha laughed—a genuine laugh—and felt a sudden release of pressure from her mind. The day's myopia briefly lifted and she realized that, no matter what happened, she had two very good, very dear friends, who would be there for her. Unlike any time before in her life, she had people to go to for help.

"So," Ren looked at her, "I assume you'd like to hear some of the gossip?"

On one hand, obviously, she didn't, but on the other, the hand Ren knew just as well as she did, she very much did. She nodded.

Ren sat down on his bed and turned to her. "Blake, Yang, and CRDL all got detention, but I think Blake and Yang won't actually have to serve it—I think Professor Goodwitch was more relieved that they gave her an excuse to punish 'both sides' rather than seem like she had a stake."

"Renny, that's not the good part!" Nora pouted, "You've got to tell her the good part!"

"I'm getting there. Mostly, the drama's quieted down as sides have started to solidify. The factions-"

"EVERYBODY THINKS YOU AND JAUNE SHOULD BE TOGETHER!"

In the ensuing silence, Pyrrha almost fell off her chair twice. First from the volume, then from the realization.

"What?"

"It's Neon Katt," Ren explained, "It's not quite universal, but she's… certainly promoting a secret love story between the two of you."

Pyrrha blushed furiously and looked away from her friends.

"Pyr-rha, you've got to tell him! You've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta!"

"Nora's not wrong. You… really should take the chance."

Pyrrha was a long way from truly grasping the subtleties of Ren and Nora's demeanor, but she knew them well enough to be able to read through Ren's stoicism and Nora's cheer—there was an urgency, an insistence hidden beneath their words. They, too, were thinking the same thing she was. You have to tell him, so he won't leave us. Nora had once confided in her that she thought of JNPR as her family, as something so dearly precious to her that she never wanted to lose, and now, well…

Inwardly, she resolved that, whatever she did, whatever she had to do, she'd do it for the sake of her friends. They were too good to her, too important, to let them come to harm. Whatever she needed to sacrifice for Ren and Nora and Jaune, she would do it.

Ren and Nora went on to tell her all about the bizarre theories people had come up with (Sun was apparently trying to pass himself off as a long-lost Arc cousin), Yang's slogans (Pyrrha was fond of "Leave Our Arc on History," but the rest ranged from the questionable, "Are You Afraid of the Arc?" to the bizarre, "Arc Attack"), and how close Blake and Cardin had come to an all-out brawl. She'd also learned that Emerald had pulled a 180, becoming a devout Royalist, a turn that, to Pyrrha, had the unsettling ring of her creepy team leader's influence. They joked and talked for a while, until the exhaustion Pyrrha had been holding at bay since the morning, since before all this started, finally forced her to call it a night.

But calling it a night didn't mean Pyrrha could sleep. It didn't matter that she was in bed, running on empty, and that Ren and Nora had long since drifted off. She couldn't really call it a night until Jaune was back. If nothing else, her pride wouldn't allow it.

She heard the click of the lock, and her heart stopped beating.

Jaune, slowly and cautiously, slipped through the door, only to catch his shin on the doorframe. Trying to muffle his curses, he proceeded to stumble right into an end table. Pyrrha stifled a giggle.

"Jaune?"

"Oh! Pyrrha! I didn't mean to wake you." He whispered.

"You didn't. I've been- I thought you'd… might want to talk about it when you got back"

He laughed, a sound she hadn't realized how much she'd missed in only a day's absence. "I'd really like to, I would, but… man, I am dead." He moved to sit down on his bed. "And Weiss's dad is terrifying."

"I'm sorry you'll… probably have to get to know him better."

He looked at her quizzically, "What do you mean?"

"He's… backing your claim to the throne, right?"

"Oh, that? No, I refused that from the beginning. That's why he was so mad at me."

She couldn't believe it. Her heart stopped again. She couldn't dare believe it. "But, don't you… don't you want to be king?"

"Pyrrha, my dad hated those guys. They're a bunch of rich old jerks who think that the only thing that matters is who your parents are. Guys who'll spend a whole day yelling at a kid because they'd never been told 'no' before. I wasn't raised like that, and I don't want to be anyone like that. If I'm gonna be a big deal," he shot her a winning smile, "I'm going to do it the way you did. The way you're teaching me to do it. By hard work."

She was choked up with emotion. "Jaune, I…"

"Besides, I couldn't leave you behind. Not in a million years."

"For what it's worth… I think you'd make a good king." She smirked. "My liege."

"Oh no, don't get that started. I can already hear what Yang's going to do with that."

He wished her goodnight and got ready for bed, but Pyrrha's mind was a blaze of activity. Relief, certainly, but there was something far more pressing on her mind right now. "I couldn't leave you behind." "I couldn't leave you behind." Not "you all," not "JNPR," "you."

But now, sleep overcame her, warm and inviting, and she drifted off, in the full hope and wonder of what tomorrow might bring.