It was exactly the kind of behavior that every commanding officer, martial arts instructor, and male relative would have castigated her for. But that was kinda the point.

Yang Xiao Long was walking down a low-traffic street, alone, at night, barely looking at where she was going and blasting Achieve Men remixes through her earbuds. As far as anyone could tell, her situational awareness was practically non-existent, a shining target willfully painted on her back. She wore denim shorts and a low-cut top, a gym bag slung over her shoulder and blonde hair flowing freely down her back. If she had a care in the world, she was doing an excellent job of concealing it.

She'd been back in the city for a scarce few months after decades away and already it was 'home' again. The streets were labyrinthine but she navigated them unthinkingly, shortcuts and alleyways as familiar as the back of her hand. Memories from her childhood still guided her well, for despite the passage of time the neighborhood had changed remarkably little, apart from the odd storefront banner and a new bus stop.

A figure crossed the street in front of her. Through half-lidded eyes Yang barely seemed to notice him, didn't quicken her pace or change her direction in the slightest. Spinning around, after all, would have put her face-to-face with the three goons who'd been trailing her for half-a-block, whom she was aware of almost without thinking. The instincts she'd honed through countless patrols hadn't been left behind on the other side of the world, as much as she'd sometimes wished it so. Yang was still twitchy about cars that took too long to break, her mind still highlighted anyone whose movements didn't seem to conform to the flow, or whose appearance seemed outside the norm. Mostly it was an annoyance, a subconscious alarm whose siren she no longer had any need for. At least, no need for now that explosions and gunfights weren't part of her daily routine.

Still, an hour after midnight on the wrong side of town, those instincts had their uses.

Yang sighed wordlessly. It was the same set-up to the same story she must have heard a thousand times growing up. And she'd willfully cast herself in the role of 'victim'. Yang loved her old neighborhood in the way only someone whose formative memories were rooted there could, but in retrospect she understood why Dad had moved them to Patch by the time Ruby was old enough to go to school. Some things really did never change.

There were, admittedly, several things Yang could have done that would have been smarter, or at least, less dangerous. Duck into the nearby laundromat, then call a taxi, or maybe the police... But she hadn't earned the nickname 'Dragon of Kandahar' for a habit of playing it safe. If these idiots wanted a confrontation then Yang Xiao Long was damn well going to give them one. For better or for worse she'd never backed down from a fight in her life - a fact well-documented on everything from her service record to her grade school report cards - and like hell was she going to start on streets she proudly considered hers.

Yang paused, sizing up the man moving deliberate towards her. Tall, muscled, and overconfident. She managed to keep the grin from spreading across her face, but only barely. Yang spun around to change direction - more for dramatic effect than any tactical advantage - then gave her most panicked expression as she took in the three other thugs now unambiguously preparing to intercept her. It wasn't exactly an Oscar-winning performance - Yang had never been very good at faking anything, really - but it was more than sufficient for her audience.

She darted into an alley a moment later, sliding into a crevice between two brick buildings she knew went nowhere. She weaved through dumpsters and garbage bags with ease, not even bothering to double-check that they were following her.

She didn't need to. "She went down here, Cardin!" called out one of the voices, completely unnecessarily, sounding more like an overexcited kid than a hardened criminal. Yang could faintly make out more excited shout as the thugs pursued their quarry, but adrenaline was already coursing through her veins, her muscles were practically quivering in anticipation of the coming fight.

Yang reached a chain-link fence she could've scaled in (at most) ten seconds, but instead grasped it dramatically, letting out what she hoped was a hopeless cry. She spun around a moment later, where her four pursuers had arranged into a lazy semi-circle opposite her, boxing her in. One was holding a small knife, loosely, and another had a pair of brass knuckles, but the other two were unarmed, at least for the moment. They looked slightly agitated, maybe even a bit nervous, but the temptation of a defenseless victim had gotten the better of them.

Yang licked her lips.

Ruby would kill her if (when) she found out, but that was what sisters were for. She let her gym bag fall to the pavement below her. The side pouch was already halfway-unzipped, not that anybody noticed. The pistol tucked away inside was fully-loaded, stripped and cleaned just this morning. Yang herself had once thought it overkill - guns had had no appeal to her before joining the Corps - but like her cop-of-an-uncle Qrow she'd come to have difficulty parting with it, its weight as familiar as her keys or her phone.

"What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here all alone?" asked one of the thugs, taking a few steps towards her.

Yang managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Did these kids get their idea of how to be muggers from MTV? She was pretty sure none of them had guns, which promised even more fun. Her boots were steel-toed for a reason.

"P-p-please don't hurt me," Yang blubbered, doing her best imitation of a soap opera damsel. "I can give you money!"

She'd already mapped it out in her head. One swift kick to the groin would incapacitate the idiot directly in front of her. If the other three looked like they were scrambling for deadly weapons then she'd just grab the Beretta out of her bag and take cover behind the dumpster. Otherwise she'd stick with the hundred-and-thirty pounds of heavily-muscled physique she'd been blessed with. Three-on-one wasn't even close to even odds, not for the woman who'd topped every martial arts class she'd ever been in and sailed through boot camp with a grin on her face.

"Yeah, you'll give us your money," said the goon, a pasty-skinned man with a shaved head and a pale-green mohawk that looked like the survivor of a botched dye job. He had several inches on her but far less weight, obviously not a gym rat of Yang's caliber. "And then maybe a little something else."

His hand started drifting towards her hair. Yang's pulse skyrocketed. She could smell the tobacco on his breath, see his pupils dilating with anticipation. "You're going to be real quiet now, okay?" Yang stopped breathing. In a few seconds he was going to stroke her hair, and then wake up in a hospital, or not at all. The hand kept drifting closer. She took a half-step back, slipping into a fighter's stance.

Three... two... one...

"Stop right there!"

Surprise and bewildering flashed though Yang's brain, tripping her up as if her foot had sunk through a phantom step late at night. Her carefully-calculated train of thought was utterly derailed at the interjection of an interloper. Lilac eyes swept the alley, desperately trying to figure out what was happening. Her would-be assailant spun around, too, a panicked expression on his face. Had she had the presence of mind to act that would have been exactly the moment for Yang to strike, but she was as off-guard as he was.

"Who the hell are you?" demanded another thug. She still couldn't get a good look at the speaker, not with a dumpster and two punks in her way, and Yang's plans for teaching said punks a quick and abject lesson were entirely forgotten.

"My name is Pyrrha Nikos," declared the woman. She took a few more steps into the alley, positioning herself scarce feet from the muggers, and in Yang's direct line-of-sight. "And you will leave that woman alone."

"Holy... shit."

The curse escaped Yang, vocalized without thought, even as her jaw dropped and her eyebrows flared. 'Pyrrha Nikos' was, in a word - beautiful. And not a run-of-the-mill beauty, the kind plastered on every lingerie ad and glamour mag cover, but more like... otherworldly.

She was dressed in the same kind of workout attire Yang usually spent half her days in, albeit of a brand that cost an order-of-magnitude more. A dark-black sports top and matching shorts clung to her like a second skin, doing absolutely nothing to conceal the kind of physique most Olympians would be jealous of. Her biceps, her calves, her abs... they all looked like they were chiseled from marble and about as solid, giving her the unbowed confidence of a statute from Antiquity. Very few women could make Yang envious with their muscles alone, but this Pyrrha was making a damn good attempt.

Emerald green eyes seemed to pierce the alley like searchlights.

"Okay, how about you give us that fucking backpack of yours," demanded one of the thugs, waving his knife at the second woman with melodramatic menace. "Then maybe I won't beat the living shit out of you."

If Pyrrha Nikos was so much as off-put by the threat she gave no outward indication. "I have no desire to fight you, sir," she said, in a tone that made the honorific sound more like a spat insult. "But I cannot allow you to harm this woman." Her expression softened for an instant, her eyes widening and her head tilting forward. "Just let her go. Please?"

"Fucking hell, just grabs her stuff and let's go," said another of the thugs, this one with blue-grey hair who used way too much product. He pulled out a switchblade, the knife springing open in his hand. "Drop the backpack now or-"

The threat died in his mouth, and if he himself didn't die soon after it would probably constitute a minor miracle. Pyrrha moved with brutal efficiency, side-stepping his arm and landing a blow square in his throat. She followed up with two quick strikes to his head, sending the thug toppling to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

The atmosphere changed in an instant. The remaining goons moved more cautiously, knife-fighters looking for an opening, sizing her up like the proper threat she was. But they didn't have a chance in hell, and Yang knew it. One thug swung widely and Pyrrha was inside his reach a moment later, pounding his solar plexus before delivering an elbow across his face. Mohawk Boy fared even worse. Yang literally blinked and missed it - didn't see how Pyrrha transitioned from a wide pivot to being on top of him, cracking bones with every blow.

The leader - 'Cardin', she presumed - grabbed a knife from inside his jacket and rushed towards Pyrrha, hoping to gut her while her attention was still focused on now-unconscious Mohawk Boy. With a panicked curse Yang scrambled for her pistol, struggling to tug it out of the bag and disengage the safety. She was swearing at her own idiocy, for letting herself get caught up in the spectacle rather than doing something useful. And now some Good Samaritan was going to get stabbed because Yang had felt like playing Hero-

-Pyrrha twisted at the last possible second, Cardin's blade sailing past her and chipping against brick wall instead. Pyrrha moved, unfazed by the near-miss, twisting the blade from Cardin's hand with a maneuver that almost surely dislocated something important.

She wasn't done, no, to Yang's surprise and amazement and glee. She moved in a flurry of blows, her knees and elbows and fists blurring together as she bludgeoned the leader with a maelstrom of her own body. She even managed to get the two of them airborne - somehow - spinning the thug around with such ferocity that he must've blacked out from the g force alone.

With a thunderous crash the brawl was over, Cardin's limp form landing atop an overflowing garbage can. Yang regained her senses in the nick of time, stashing her gun back in her bag before her rescuer (or at least, 'rescuer') could turn around and face her.

"Are you alright?" Pyrrha asked, a second after Yang had zipped shut the pouch of her gym bag. She didn't even sound out of breath, speaking in a calm and reassuring tone.

Yang made eye contact with the woman for the first time, staring deep into those emerald-green eyes. One gear clicked, then another. She blinked.

"Sweet Merciful Zeus, you're The Invincible Girl!" The expression of deep concern vanished from Pyrrha's face, replaced with a mask of polite neutrality, a familiar contortion. Yang inwardly kicked herself, for having all the tact of an excited fangirl.

"Um, yeah, I mean, I'm fine." Her hand was rubbing the back of her neck before she knew it. "Are you okay?"

Pyrrha blinked, as if only just realizing that she'd emerged from a tussle of epic proportions. She glanced at her own knuckles, a mildly annoyed expression crossing her face when she realized she was bleeding. "I'm unharmed," she declared, wiping the worst of the blood onto her shorts. "We should call the police, though. Before..." she glanced at the muggers, "...they regain consciousness."

"Or, you know..." Yang took a short, sharp breath "... we could get dinner?"

It wasn't one of the better segues of her life.

"I'm... sorry?" Pyrrha replied a moment later, the confusion in her voice suggesting she wasn't entirely sure what language Yang was speaking, or if the noises were even intelligible speech at all.

"I just meant we can skip the cops," Yang hurriedly amended, grabbing her gym bag in one arm and leading Pyrrha away with the other. They were back on the sidewalk a few seconds later, the wreckage of the brawl already fading into shadows.

"Is there a reason you don't want to call the police?" Pyrrha asked, a faint note of suspicion creeping into her voice.

Yang barely caught it. "What? Nononono, nothing like that," she backpedaled, raising her palms up in a gesture of surrender. "I just meant that, um, for you... beating four guys senseless might cause a bit of a stir." Pyrrha paused, contemplating this for the first time. "I mean I'm sure your publicist would love it, but the Legal department..."

Yang let the sentence trail off, and Pyrrha filled in the blanks herself. Even if she was wholly in the right she could still face months or even years of legal headaches - police reports, courtroom appearances, press conferences, tabloid gossiping. Those were headaches her Sponsors would no doubt prefer to avoid. And her paparazzi would no doubt salivate over...

"Come on, lemme buy you dinner while you think it over," said Yang, not giving her any more time to ruminate. "My treat."

Pyrrha Nikos was not entirely sure where she was, or how she got there.

That was true for many people in a metaphysical sense, but in her case, also very literally. One minute she'd been intervening in a mugging, the next she was being strong-armed into a twenty-four hour diner by someone who could only be described as a force of nature.

"Here you are, two Junior's Specials," said the waitress, a skinny girl whose voice was accented with an Aussie twang, as she set down two gargantuan hamburgers. She seemed to be in good spirits despite the misfortune of a graveyard shift. "Just eat around the charred bits, m'kay?"

"Thanks, Velvs," replied Yang, with the casual familiarity of a routine patron. Two calloused hands reached around the hulking lump of meat a moment later, Yang practically unhinging her jaw to fit it all in. "Come on, it's great, I promise," she harangued, managing to finish chewing before speaking, if only barely. "All the protein you need to replace whatever blood you lost."

Pyrrha remained somewhat ambivalent about the burger, and more generally about any establishment serving meat at this hour, but it was clearly a gesture of gratitude, and it would've been impolite to refuse. She wordlessly conceded, taking a bite out of her first hamburger in months.

"I'm Yang, by the way. Yang Xiao Long." She didn't wait for Pyrrha to finish chewing. "And you don't need any introduction at all, do you, Miss Nikos? Or should I just call you The Invincible Girl, like everyone else?"

Pyrrha blushed a little at the name. "Please, that's just a silly name some people in marketing came up with," she said, evidently embarrassed by the moniker.

"I heard they went with it because everyone kept butchering the spelling of 'Pyrrha'," said Yang.

"That was a bit of it," Pyrrha admitted, inwardly shuddering at all the ways the 'y' and 'h' in her name had been rearranged over the years. "Though mostly it was to undercut fans who kept trying to make 'The Dyke Dominator' stick."

An awkward silence followed that, the hint of bitterness in Pyrrha's voice leaving Yang unsure as to how to proceed. She settled on moving to a completely different topic entirely.

"So what were you doing out this late?" after a half-minute's chewing. "If you don't mind me asking."

"Oh, not at all," said Pyrrha, relief plain on her face as a new avenue of discussion was opened. "I was just going for a jog. My training schedule's been a bit of a mess recently, so I had to sneak some cardio in rather late. I suppose it's remarkably fortunate that we crossed paths."

"Yeah, destiny, or somethin'," Yang agreed, her mouth still half-full of burger.

They finished the meal in comfortable silence, apart from a few passing words when Velvet swung by to top up Yang's coffee. The burger was good, Pyrrha had to concede, though it probably contained a day's caloric allotment for her. Tomorrow morning's workout was just going to have to be that much more punishing.

"So are you a regular here?" asked Pyrrha, once their crumb-dusted plates were scooped up by Velvet, the waitress having little else to do at this hour.

"Kinda," Yang answered, with a warm smile. "I used to come here practically every day with Dad when I was a kid. We moved away, I moved back, started coming here twice a day again. Place hasn't changed at all though," she said. "Hell, I don't think it's changed since the '50s," she amended, with a pointed glance at the decidedly retro furnishings of the joint. Pyrrha mentally debated if the decor was properly 'retro' or just 'very old'. "It's the kind of place where you know everyone and everyone knows you."

Yang took a sip of her coffee, some monstrosity filled with more cream and sugar than could possibly be healthy. "You want me to bandage up those scrapes for you?" Pyrrha glanced again at the small cuts that dotted her skin. She'd washed up in the bathroom once they'd arrived - none of the abrasions were serious by any definition - but Yang was already waving before Pyrrha could object.

"Hey, Velvs, could we borrow the first aid for a few minutes?"

The waitress rolled her eyes with the weariness of someone who'd grown jaded by years of shenanigans, but she dutifully retrieved the kit all the same. "Anything less than a 30% tip and your mornings eggs are going to have some new ingredients," she growled with mock menace, as she laid the battered first aid kit on the table. She flashed an apologetic smile in Pyrrha's direction. "I'm sorry, Yang is something of an acquired taste. And best in small doses."

"Not at all," replied Pyrrha, though the polite statement was a fairly reflexive one. Velvet gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder before strolling off.

Yang moved with a practiced ease that was hard to miss, quickly finding the antiseptic wipes and bandages, assessing the small lacerations with a veteran's eye. "Here, let me just..."

For all the calluses on her hands there was nothing but tender care in Yang's touch, to Pyrrha's pleasant surprise. Despite her brash boisterousness Yang moved with remarkable delicacy, apologizing each time alcohol stung an open wound, her attention so consumed she didn't even crack jokes or steal glances.

"Thank you," said Pyrrha, as Yang finished putting everything back in the kit. "You've received first aid training?" Despite her intonation it wasn't really a question, Yang knew. She tried to come up with a funny anecdote that would've sated Pyrrha's curiosity, but most of them involved IEDs and would probably have killed the mood.

"Good skill to have," replied Yang, with rather conspicuous evasiveness. She took a long swig of her coffee. "But I mean, nothing compared to what you went through in your MMA days, right?"

Pyrrha smiled a little at that, wordlessly admitting that she'd taken far worse beatings on national television than in any alley. "You're a fan, I take it?" she asked, completely unnecessarily but for the sake of conversation all the same.

Yang's grin was more than a little sheepish. "I had a roommate who really was. It's kinda funny, she was this super straight-laced, Old Money, business school student but she had the biggest crush on you. Loved watching you beat the living shit out of some dude in the mixed matches." The old memory kept a smile plastered on Yang's face. "Hey, um, mind if I take a selfie? This might literally kill her."

Pyrrha's acquiescence was wordless, and she shuffled over to give Yang space on her side of the booth. Yang hastily unlocked her dented old Samsung, pulling up the camera. She nuzzled as close to Pyrrha as she could...

A moment before Yang took the photo, Pyrrha's smile.... changed. Yang watched Pyrrha's expression morph on her phone's screen, her own confusion plain on her face as she snapped the shot. Pyrrha had had a small but easy smile on her face the entire evening, the kind of smile that could make Yang feel instantly at ease even coming down from an adrenaline high. As soon as the camera was out, though, her smile had doubled in size but lost all of its warmth. It was a familiar expression, a reflexive one, the kind Pyrrha had learned to display a decade ago when photographers became a daily affair. It was a perfectly photogenic smile, but nothing more.

"Thanks for that," said Yang, pocketing her phone without forwarding the photo, at least for now. She remained on Pyrrha's side of the booth, though, at a proximity that went a hair beyond the bounds of propriety.

"And thanks for, um, rescuing me, and all that."

"Not at all," replied Pyrrha, hastily, blushing as red as her hair. "I just saw those men follow you into the alley and wanted to make sure that you were safe."

There was such warmth in her words, such honesty and nobility, that Yang couldn't keep something from fluttering inside her chest. The same something that was telling her the time to make her move was now.

"About that," said Yang, taking the opportunity to slide just a little bit closer, 'til bare arms brushed. "I never really got the chance to thank you for saving me," she continued, licking her lips with all the subtly of a shotgun blast. "You know, your... reward."

Without a moment's more warning Yang made her move, planting a kiss on Pyrrha's lips that was neither wholly chaste nor unduly exploratory. Hormones rushed through her blood like waves, and Yang rode them to an exhilarating high, feeling a warmth spread throughout her body as Pyrrha, just a little, kissed back.

The seal was broken a moment later, Pyrrha pressing herself into the booth's corner with an urgency that bordered on manic. Hands which had been drifting to Yang's sides were suddenly neatly folded in Pyrrha's lap, a nervous sweat threatening to break out across her body.

Yang felt a flicker of uncertainty pass through her, at the uneasy realization that she might have miscalculated . She normally considered her own instincts second-to-none, be it on the battlefield or the bedroom, but the apprehensive expression on Pyrrha's face forced her to confront the probability that they'd been wrong.

"Sorry, that was... maybe a little aggressive," said Yang, sliding back a bit. Without Pyrrha's body heat, the booth suddenly felt as cold as a freezer.

"No... I mean, yes... but not..." Pyrrha clearly floundered for words. "I very much enjoyed the kiss, and nobody except sponsors have bought me dinner in years, but what I'm trying to say... " The woman who'd faced down four muggers without a moment's hesitation was suddenly looking for an escape vector. "It's not right."

Yang furrowed her brow at the unexpected objection. "Are you seeing someone?"

Pyrrha blinked. "No," she said, in a tone of voice suggesting that Yang was asking the complete wrong question.

"And you said you liked the kiss?" Yang continued, inviting further clarification.

"It's just... if I rescued you, then it's inappropriate for me to expect some kind of payment. You don't owe me anything simply because you were attacked."

Yang couldn't quite stifle a guffaw-snort, earning her a rare scowl from Pyrrha. "You're worried about taking advantage of me?"

"That's not quite how I would have phrased it," said Pyrrha, though her semantic gymnastics were confirmation enough.

"Okay, um, give me ten seconds here." Yang hurried back to her side of the booth, picking up the gym bag she'd deposited on the floor and unzipping the side pouch. With a conspiratorial glance about Yang slid the pistol out, just enough so the metallic barrel was clearly visible over the edge of the table. Pyrrha's eyes widened at the sight but she said nothing, not until Yang had dropped the bag back beside the booth.

"You had a gun the whole time?" Pyrrha asked, leaning in close so she could drop her voice to a loud whisper.

"Yeah," Yang confessed. "I may have slightly misrepresented myself as a damsel-in-distress there."

"I figured you were hardly helpless," answered Pyrrha, wordlessly sweeping her eyes over Yang's fearsome biceps. "I'm guessing you learned First Aid and marksmanship in the same place?"

Yang grinned at that. "Yup. United States Marine Corps. 2nd Marine Division, 1/8." The pride on her face was unmistakable. "Spent most of the past year running all over Afghanistan - Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, you name it. Kicking ass and taking names."

"And when you returned home, you started taking on petty criminals?" Pyrrha interjected, making the logical extrapolation.

Yang's head swayed side-to-side. "Maybe I got a little bored," she confessed. Her expression quickly sobered. "I definitely didn't mean for you to get involved, though! I really didn't think there were going to be any civvies out at this hour. Definitely none who'd..." she fumbled awkwardly for words "...try to save the day."

Pyrrha accepted her apology with a gracious smile. "While I can't say I entirely condone your... extra-curricular activities..." she began, tactfully avoiding the word 'vigilantism', "I suppose it's a case of 'no harm, no foul'." That Pyrrha was evidently excluding both herself and the would-be muggers from the 'harmed' category was of no small relief to Yang.

"Sooooo.... now that you know I'm not some hapless maiden," said Yang, leaning forward, "would another kiss impugn your sense of honor?" She let slip a hint of a drawl that normally only liquor elicited. Her hands slid across the table, finding Pyrrha's, and she took comfort in the absence of a flinch.

"It wouldn't," Pyrrha admitted. "But we haven't even had our first date yet."

It took Yang a good five seconds to parse that sentence, to get from the gentle let-down to the implied invitation, her emotions rising and falling with every processed phoneme. Then she finally saw the warm smile on Pyrrha's face, and her heart began racing.

"So, um, do you want to go on a date?" asked Yang, with a recovery as smooth as sandpaper.

"Oh, Yang, I thought you'd never ask," replied Pyrrha, her grin and tone equally teasing. Her fingers played across Yang's knuckles, sending shivers down the recipient's spine.

"So what do you like doing on dates?" Yang asked, barely able to keep her cool. "Clubs? Movies? Long walks on the beach?"

"Well, you did buy me dinner..." Pyrrha let the statement hang in the air while she unzipped her backpack. "I'm not sure what your schedule looks like for the night of the eighteenth, but..."

Yang's eyes widened at the small piece of paper being slid across the table. Really, the words BEACON ARENA - VIP PASS were all she needed to see.

Pyrrha took in the other woman's stupefied expression with a shrug. "They give me a bunch of passes to hand out, but I usually don't have anyone to give them to." There was just a trace of remorse in her voice, but she quickly plowed through it. "If you register using the number on the bottom of the stub I believe you're entitled to a Platinum Seat in the upcoming tournament."

"You're fighting in this one, right?" Yang asked, picking up the ticket like it might disintegrate in her hands. "For, what, your fourth Championship?"

"Fifth, if you're counting," replied Pyrrha, with a note of vague disinterest that suggested she really wasn't.

"Wow, I mean, thank you, I mean... yes. This would be awesome," Yang managed to finally get sputter out, and a warm smile blossomed across Pyrrha's face.

"It's my pleasure," answered Pyrrha, and her tone made it clear that it was more than rote politeness talking. "And after that, perhaps I can give you a tour behind-the-scenes..."

They exchanged excited small-talk for the better part of an hour, opening up to each other with unusual ease. They talked about everything and about nothing. About fights and about brawls, about gyms and cereals and workout regimens. About family and about loneliness. Yang came up with no fewer than three date ideas in her head. Pyrrha just reveled in the presence of someone who wasn't the least bit intimidated by her.

"Well, it's getting late," Yang finally said, glancing at the clock on the wall. And that was a significant understatement. "I should probably be getting home."

Pyrrha nodded, and the two collected their belongs in silence, each leaving a rather generous tip for Velvet. They stepped out into the cold evening air, Yang folding her arms across her chest. The streets were empty and silent, the night now clouded and moonless.

"I'm just a couple of blocks south from here, so you don't have to worry about me. Being, you know, mugged or something," said Yang.

"Still," replied Pyrrha, a mischievous smirk coming to her face, "I'd rest easier if you let me walk you home."

Pyrrha's playful smile was matched and exceeded by Yang's exuberant one. "Sure thing," she said, finding Pyrrha's hand and slipping it into her own. "But only to the door, okay?"

She shot Pyrrha a wink and a grin, and her heart was aflutter all the way home.