There was a stream just nearby, and Weiss insisted that they get Ruby cleaned up before someone mistook her for a serial killer.

Ruby hadn't wanted to. She'd already wasted so much time, and now she needed to start looking for Jaune all over again. But if she was honest, a ten minute delay wouldn't matter that much. It had been hours since they'd landed in the forest. If Jaune was still OK after all this time, he would probably still be OK in another ten minutes. He was with Pyrrha Nikos, after all.

Besides, she really, really, really didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with her new partner. First impressions were important, and even a small improvement in their rapport over their whole careers might save a huge number of lives in expectation.

No, wait, she was doing that thing Yang told her not to do again. She was actually just scared that the girl wouldn't like her. Maybe the other thing was true too, but it wasn't her actual motivation.

Ten minutes, round trip. It made her stomach twist up a bit, but she could spare that.

"What are you in such a hurry for, anyway?" Weiss asked, leaning against a tree while Ruby scrubbed as fast she could.

"I need to find Jaune." Ruby replied, distracted. "He might need help. I was trying to track him, but I ended up finding you by mistake."

"Jaune?" Weiss asked, sounding confused. "The idiot you and Nikos went flying off after? Do you know him?"

"He's not an idiot!" Ruby snapped, whipping her head around to look at Weiss. "Why would you even say that? He could be dead."

Oh dear. She might be a little on edge.

Weiss looked back at her, wrinkling her nose. "Did you not see his face? He knew something like that was going to happen. And he told professor Ozpin, directly, to launch him anyway. In my book that makes him an idiot."

Ruby couldn't seem to say anything. She didn't know whether to be angry or confused. How could anyone think like that?

She must care whether Jaune lived or died. Surely she did. You couldn't be a human being and not care whether someone was killed in front of you.

A feeling bubbled up inside Ruby, anger and refusal and disgust. Something familiar but hard to place.

Weiss stood up from the tree, her body a little bit tense. Ruby realized her own hands were balled up, gripping big fistfulls of her skirt's fabric. She had no idea what her face looked like.

Weiss' face was neutral and expressionless, like a pale white mask.

That was enough to make the connection. Ruby recognized the feeling now. A tiny voice in the back of her head whispered, softer than she'd ever heard it: She's wrong.

Ruby's face flushed with shame. That feeling wasn't meant for people. Never, never, never for people. Not even the worst of the worst, let alone the girl in front of her who had made all of two callous remarks about a boy she didn't know.

Ruby's hands relaxed at her sides, and she turned away from Weiss. She resumed scrubbing with hard, angry strokes.

"Give me another minute or two, then we should move." she said, voice sounding more normal than she felt. "There are probably Grimm on the way."

~o~O~o~O~o~

They used Weiss' glyphs to leave the river at speed before any Grimm could arrive. Weiss would never have been able to keep up if Ruby used her semblance, and the smaller girl outright refused to let Ruby carry her.

There had been a moment, when it came time to leave, where Ruby thought the other girl might refuse to come along at all. But in the end they'd stayed together.

Ruby was trying hard not to think about what had happened. She was pretty sure, now, that she'd scared Weiss. What sort of huntress scared people? But if she spent too long dwelling on that, she knew how she would start to feel, and the Grimm would be on them again.

They stopped a mile or so away from the river. Small beads of sweat stood out on Weiss' forehead, and she was breathing heavily. Those glyphs had to be her semblance, but apparently using them was somewhat taxing on a physical level, which was strange.

Ruby was burning with curiosity about so many things she'd seen in the fight. But it was always at least a little bit rude to ask someone about their semblance, and given their last interaction...

Weiss turned to look at her, and Ruby looked down at her shoes, fiddling with the hem of her clothes, unable to meet the girl's eyes. She heard Weiss sigh.

"Ruby..." the other girl began, hesitant.

Ruby's stomach tightened.

"I'm sorry."

Weiss sounded like she was biting down on a lemon as she said it. Ruby looked up at her, surprised, and saw that the other girls' mouth was pinched tight. Weiss closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through her nose. Her voice sounded oddly stiff.

"I think we just had what you would call a cultural misunderstanding," Weiss continued. "Since coming to Vale I've been surprised, over and over again, by how similar it is to Atlas. The CCT system really has brought the four kingdoms closer together. But those similarities make it easy to forget that there are also important differences."

Ruby was very confused at this point. There was no way Atlas as a civilization didn't believe in the value of human life. That couldn't be sustainable, could it?

"Every kingdom," Weiss said, "needs to control the spread of negative emotions to keep the Grimm at bay. Here in Vale, there is a strong social norm that certain upsetting topics simply aren't mentioned, or are only discussed very carefully. This social norm is especially strong around death. Operating in this framework, what I did was inappropriate. I discussed Jaune's situation in a way which upset you, hurting you and endangering both of us.

"In Atlas, things are reversed. There is a very strong social norm that you should never become upset, no matter what topic is broached, or in what manner. Citizens are considered responsible for their own emotional state, and are expected to learn coping strategies that allow them to remain calm and engage intellectually, even in very stressful situations. It is probably hard for you to imagine, but in Atlas, the way you responded when I called Arc an idiot would be considered just as inappropriate as my next words seemed to you."

Ruby blinked. That...made perfect sense, on an intellectual level. Those were both very reasonable coping strategies.

On an emotional level, she was still mad about what Weiss had said.

But maybe Weiss was feeling the same way? That Ruby had been indescribably, inexcusably rude?

Except she'd been big enough to look at it objectively, see where Ruby was coming from, and apologize?

Ruby cast her eyes back down. "I'm sorry too." she said in a small voice. "I shouldn't have...well..."

"No, it's my fault." Weiss said, rather insistently. "I'm the one abroad in a foreign kingdom. I even read up on the cultural differences, to avoid mistakes exactly like this one, and then entirely failed to apply what I learned."

"I still shouldn't have reacted like that," Ruby replied. "I could tell you were scared, for a second."

"I wasn't scared," Weiss sniffed.

That broke the tension, somehow, and Ruby giggled.

Weiss smiled, looking oddly relieved. "Well, I guess you do have a sense of humor in there somewhere," she said.

"Why would you think I didn't?" Ruby asked, confused.

Weiss' smile widened just a hair.

"No reason."

~o~O~o~O~o~

Weiss and Ruby sat together in the tallest boughs of a tree. Ruby had Crescent Rose's scope pressed to her face again, scanning the treetops for nevermore.

Hopefully Jaune was still close enough for the Grimm to find him. Otherwise, well...she'd probably think of something.

From one perspective, Grimm spotting was incredibly boring. But from another perspective, it left her more than enough spare mental energy to talk, at least until it was time to quiet her emotions.

"Soooooo..." Ruby said slowly, getting Weiss' attention. "How do people in Atlas feel about being asked how they managed to manifest a stable cyan energy shield without a multi-ton regulator?"

Weiss chuckled. That was good.

"They feel fine about asking. You should feel free to ask me anything. As long as the question is in good faith, you literally can't offend me."

Ruby whistled.

"That's a pretty broad mandate."

Weiss moved somehow on the branch, but Ruby couldn't see what she was doing with the scope pressed to her only open eye.

"Yes, it is. Please hold me to it."

Weiss didn't seem like she was going to say anything more. Ruby didn't want to push, but...

"What can you tell me? I know we just met, but if we're going to be fighting together, anything would be helpful. I can go first, if you want."

"Hm. No, that's fine. How much do you know about the Schnee?"

"Um...basically nothing? I know it's the name of a big dust company."

Weiss sighed. "Well, I suppose that's what I signed up for by going abroad. I can tell you what's publicly known, at least.

"The Schnee family is very, very, very old. We've managed a large fraction of the dust industry on the continent of Solitas for so long that historians disagree on what century we started.

"Let's see. I assume you at least know about the assimilation, right?"

"Yup," Ruby replied. "Er, what we're told here is that the king of Mantle tried to ban all forms of self-expression, hoping it would reduce the population's levels of negative emotions. Which sounds so silly that I'm sure there's more to it."

"There is," Weiss said, a little bit of irritation creeping into her voice. "First of all, it wasn't a measure taken lightly. There was an...incident. I don't know all the details, but the situation was dire.

"Also, the goal wasn't to limit the negative emotions of the population. Or maybe that was part of it, but it wasn't the main goal."

"What was the main goal, then?" Ruby asked.

"I can't say. Class 1 restricted information."

Ruby had no idea what "class 1 restricted information" was - whether that was an Atlassian thing, or whether it was the kind of thing she wasn't supposed to learn about until she was initiated - but she certainly wasn't going to bring that up right now.

"In any case, the Schnee rose from powerful to dominant during the assimilation, mostly due to the efforts of my great grandfather. I assume you also know why there are so few hunters and huntresses, yes? Why we don't just activate everyone's aura?"

Ruby nodded. "The exclusivity of exceptionality. They teach us that in grade school, here. 'If everyone's special, then nobody is.' Our semblances are the physical manifestation of what makes us special. The more hunters and huntresses there are, the less powerful they tend to be. There's some sort of geographic component, too, I think? Or maybe it's based on population sizes? Somehow it matters how many hunters and huntresses exist in your kingdom, not just how many exist in the world."

"Close enough. You can imagine, then, how monumental an event the assimilation was for the expression of aura in Mantle. The number of people who could plausibly be called special dropped precipitously. The number of newly activated auras fell and fell, until it was as low as its ever been since the age of heroes.

"This is also one reason why Mantle invested so heavily in technology. It allowed our large civilian population to protect itself from the Grimm without the need for aura.

"But I'm getting sidetracked again. The point is, during this period where semblances were rare, and thus potent, the Schnee family was growing tremendously powerful even while eliminating every last trace of individuality in its members."

"Wait," Ruby interrupted, shocked. "Your family was assimilated?"

"Of course. Everyone was. In Mistral the assimilation was something imposed on the lower classes, but in Mantle, it was for everyone. It was a new way of life. You've heard of the Atlassian rules of etiquette? Those all have their roots in the assimilation. Everyone was trying to speak the same, dress the same, act the same, have the same hobbies and the same conversations...

"Most of the glyphs I use were developed during that period, when the Schnee semblance was at its height. Things are harder, now, and some parts of the semblance have been lost to us entirely, but I'm still standing on the shoulders of giants."

"Wait, hold on," Ruby said. "I really don't follow. Why does it matter how powerful your granddad's semblance was during the assimilation? Is yours similar enough that he could help you learn to use it?"

"Oh," Weiss said, sounding surprised. "When you said you knew basically nothing, you meant basically nothing. I shouldn't have assumed.

"Ruby, the thing that makes me special is the exact same thing that made my grandfather special, or my great grandfather, or my sister, or anyone else in my family. We're all special because we're Schnees, so we all have the same semblance."

Ruby's brain hiccuped. What?

She looked up from her scope at the girl beside her.

That could happen?

Weiss was just sitting there, totally nonchalant. If she was messing with Ruby, she had the best poker face in the world.

"Huh. That's...fascinating..." Ruby said, working through the implications. "I want to know more about that later, but can you share anything more tactically relevant? What does your semblance even do? Not, like, all the details. I just want to know roughly what to expect, the same way you know to expect that I'll be moving very fast in very short bursts."

Weiss turned on the branch, looking away from Ruby as she leaned back against the trunk. Ruby hoped she was just thinking about what to say, and not upset or something.

After almost a minute, Weiss spoke, the words sounding rehearsed. She must have been checking and double-checking them in her head.

"I draw glyphs with my semblance, allowing me to regulate the expression of activated dust. Each glyph regulates the expression in a different, specific way. These glyphs are hard to learn, and even harder to create, especially for my generation. I still only know a few. Some of these glyphs are multipurpose, working with different kinds of dust to achieve different effects. Others, like the cyan shield you saw, are more narrow. Either way, they all depend on dust to function. No dust, no semblance."

Weiss seemed to be done. Ruby knew she wasn't getting the full story. When Weiss had fired her blast of ice at the ursa, there hadn't been any visible glyphs. And none of this explained why repeated use of the white glyphs had been making her sweat. But even Ruby knew better than to push more right now.

"Thank you." Ruby said, meaning it. "I won't repeat any of that. Your semblance sounds really powerful, Weiss. Maybe you didn't need my help against that ursa at all."

"Almost certainly not," Weiss said, deadpan. "My semblance happens to be very well suited to fighting a single powerful opponent. But I appreciate the effort."

Ruby stifled a giggle. She wondered if Weiss realized how blithe she sounded, sometimes.

"How did you end up fighting that thing, anyway?" she asked. "You don't exactly seem like you're prone to bursts of negative emotion. Was it just bad luck that it stumbled across you?"

Weiss' expression darkened.

"Oh, right. I forgot to tell you about that. Hmph. It's a little embarrassing, actually."

"What happened?"

"You remember that stream near the clearing? It has a rocky bed. The damned thing somehow taught itself to take the larger rocks and smash them together. It sounded enough like gunshots that I went to investigate. I don't know why it bothered, but it lured me several miles to that clearing before ambushing me."

Ruby took a few seconds to process that. She swallowed, slowly, then put the scope back to her face, resuming her search for a suitable nevermore.

She was starting to understand exactly why Ms. Goodwitch had been so cross to find her in the woods after dark.

~o~O~o~O~o~

There was someone else near enough for the forest's Grimm to sense, but tracking them was slow going. With two people, it was harder to quiet their negative emotions enough to make the Grimm look elsewhere, but they managed.

Slowly, they began to close on their target, Weiss' glyphs letting them cover ground significantly faster than their quarry, even if she needed to rest for a while after repeated use. They talked as they went, both of them clearly making an effort to fill the otherwise slightly-awkward silence. By the time they'd gotten within a mile or two of their target, Ruby was starting to feel a little more comfortable with her new partner, or at least she didn't find herself wondering after every other sentence whether Weiss secretly hated her.

There were no telltale sounds of battle to follow this time, so it came as a surprise when Ruby and Weiss burst out of a particularly thick patch of forest to find themselves on the banks of a wide river, with a pair of human figures juuuust visible, less than half a mile away.

Ruby's heart leapt, the sudden excitement whirling together with her pent up frustration and stress, the mixture washing her right out of normal time and into her own personal world.

She took off running. Weiss might be upset about being left behind, but she had to see if Jaune was alright, she had to.

It was definitely him. Even from this distance, she could see that one figure was bright white, shining in mid-afternoon sun, and the other was a golden-red. It wasn't hard to put two and two together.

As she drew closer, she started to get a little confused. Jaune was standing up. She'd seen both his legs get broken. That was a hard injury to normalize away in the best of circumstances, and if his aura had been exhausted just this morning, there was no way he could've recovered it by now...

Her confusion was crowded out by her relief, though. He seemed fine. He seemed fine.

As Ruby approached, the strangest thing started to happen. Her time dilation started to go a little bit wonky. Her semblance began to struggle, but unevenly; her aura was moving her hands just fine, but her midsection was a little bit sluggish, and Crescent Rose suddenly felt like a heavy anchor on her back.

It was almost exactly like the sensation she got in duels, when her semblance interacted with someone's aura, the two self-images disagreeing on how the world should be, vying for dominance.

Ruby remembered, then, that among Pyrrha Nikos' many mysterious powers was the ability to interfere with speedsters. It was sort of a necessity, if you wanted to succeed in the dueling circuit, that you have some way of dealing with opponents significantly faster than yourself. In Pyrrha Nikos' case, when speedsters got too close to her - where "too close" conveniently meant "anywhere inside the octagon" - their semblances would start to stutter and fail, even before they touched her.

The sensation got stronger as Ruby got closer, until it changed qualitatively. Her time dilation stuttered, just for a moment, her ears filling with a whooshing noise as the sounds around her sped up and then back down. When her semblance recovered, it felt weak, like it would fade any moment. It stuttered again, and then stopped for good.

Ruby's feet tripped over themselves, the random time fluctuations throwing off her stride. Long years of practice - more years than most people realized, with the way her semblance worked - kicked in, and she managed to somersault back to her feet, running a couple more steps before skidding to a stop behind the pair.

Or, behind Jaune, rather. Pyrrha Nikos had swung around while she tumbled, and as she skidded to a stop, Ruby found herself staring directly into the barrel of Milo.

Several thoughts ran through her head, in quick succession.

Jaune is OK!

Is she going to shoot me?

Oh my god, that's the real Milo!

What happened to my semblance?

Jaune!

Her reactions are insane. Those can't be natural.

Ruby finally looked up from the muzzle of the gun to see the redheaded girl blinking at her in confusion.

"Um..." Ruby said shyly. "Hi!"

"Hello." Pyrrha said back, not lowering Milo even an inch.

Jaune had turned around by this point, a little slow on the uptake, and his face lit up when he saw her.

"Ruby!" he said with a smile.

"Jaune!" she said back.

Pyrrha Nikos looked back and forth between them. Finally, she put Milo away, smoothly sheathing him behind her back.

Ruby normally would have been drooling over the sword-javelin-shotgun, but she was distracted.

Jaune was OK. He looked more than OK. He had a sort of healthy glow she hadn't seen in him before, although maybe that was the light, or the exercise, or just what anyone would look like after surviving what he went through.

"You're..." Ruby said, a tiny hitch in her voice. "You're OK?"

Jaune's face fell a little, growing more somber. "I'm OK, Ruby. I'm sorry for-"

"You're really, truly OK?" Ruby interrupted him. "Your aura's working again?"

Jaune and Pyrrha shared some sort of look. Jaune smiled again. "Never better."

That was enough for Ruby. She tackled him in a hug, arms wrapping around his torso as her shoulder drove into his stomach like a linebacker, taking him to the ground with an "oof".

~o~O~o~O~o~

Author's Notes:

* Thanks to Appliciousness for beta.

* The next update will be on Sunday. We'll find the correct day eventually!

* This is the second big infodump I've done, the first one being at the start of Chapter 2, and I'm curious how people feel about them. Are they enjoyable? Too slow? Too long? Too unnatural? Amazing world building that you now realize is exactly what you were missing in your life?